-The Grand Time, Teatime-
“Shocking, we have an intruder onboard the ship!” My field tests were going quite well. Now if only GODLESS wasn’t being torn apart by Celestia, I would have to dip into my own funds in the near future to continue all my own pursuits.
We all have our own goals, the leader’s goals just happen to be too truly absurd to achieve and I don’t think they understand the consequences of achieving said goals. Our world needs the gods to function, but I think it’s a novel idea to at least try to take them down. Not that I would try all too hard to do that, but it would still be something impressive to add to my notoriety.
“Are you sure the ship is not malfunctioning?” Shocking could very well enter into his very own field of science with his understanding of lighting and raw energy. All he does with all his power is pick dangerous fights with biologically impossible individuals that even magic can’t explain, that cow being one large scientific anomaly.
Its little wonder that I didn’t like him outside of professional interactions, at least he was willing to experiment and his recent experiment seems to have borne fruit. More power to him and his new companion, I’m not ever going through something like that personally.
“I know every single piece of technology that goes into my airship Shocking, there is no chance a malfunction could be happening this soon judging by my last monthly checkup.” I was quite sure of it, also that rock might have been accompanied by someone. I had a hunch that said rock was no longer in the cage. If the being in question were small enough to slip through the bars… then I’m the one to blame for letting them access to my ship had they seen my trap before it was sprung. “I’m quite sure we have an intruder, find them and stop them from messing up any more of the ship or else I might have to evacuate using my emergency protocols. Said protocols would involve leaving you and your new ‘friend’ behind for the locals, I’d still at least pick up Dispel as he’d have some modicum of competence and could be of use.”
That and I knew Dispel’s secret and it was quite an interesting thing, while he doesn’t necessarily need the armor it helps him by quite a large margin. He had need of my ability to repair his armor and I could make great use of him in exchange. Armor repair wasn’t my specialty, but it did count as a subsection ability of my special talent given I can make my golems armored.
“Fine, Jock and I will start casing the ship. We better get into a fight of some kind.” Always one for priorities Shocking was, something to be appreciated assuredly.
It would be best if I don’t tip off anyone to my mistakes, I prefer them to never be known even if I do make them. The teleportation rune had worked as intended, I just didn’t see who got teleported here and they were now skulking around on my ship because the cage wasn’t good enough to contain them.
Were they a unicorn perhaps? At least not the same one providing the highly effective long range magic bombardment or else I would already be making my way for the horizon. Teleporting through the bars wouldn’t have been difficult, I’ll have to fix that for the next time I set up a trap.
“What the heck?” I saw something on the magical projection screens from my control room, it was climbing up one of the front legs.
I had thought Dispel was kidding about finding a living skeleton and hunting the thing down to destroy it. There she was, the bones of a mare wielding a silver axe that deflected and damaged the close defense tendrils made for the express purpose to swat longma or any other airborne problem away from climbing all over my ship.
Judging by the make of her axe, the skeleton was of Viking origin more or less a few thousand years old. A living relic, one that I could somewhat appreciate because there was something vaguely cute about her, that seemed to be intent on gaining access to The Grand Time.
The scarf she was wearing was of the modern era and more recently made, this meant she was intelligent and not a mindless entity. How a skeleton could barter or acquire something of that quality, I hadn’t the foggiest of ideas given her visage would make it hard for her to enter an establishment without causing a scene.
“What is it Clockwork?” Shocking asked as if he was actually curious.
“It seems we’re about to have another boarder, someone living impaired it would seem.” It was not long afterwards that the walls nearby the staircase ignited brightly, I considered them curiously. I turned the view to behind me and paled. I immediately released the beast golems into the upper tiers and pondered how we were going to handle this situation. “Well, that would certainly explain the urgency to set up walls covered in fire… we’re about to come under assault and not by the longma! Apparently the army of shadow creatures of legend are real, and they are currently flooding the city behind us.”
“More fighting and a zombie is breaking into the ship? I’m up for all that, come on Jock let’s go find us some intruders!” How very droll of you Shocking. “Also if it’s going to be a problem, can’t we just take off and fly away TT?”
“There are several problems with doing that currently that I’d rather not bore you’re feeble mind with, but if we try to take off now then things will become quite inhospitable for us and we may die. Also the being invading the ship from up top is a living skeleton, so zombie isn’t exactly the correct term as she doesn’t have any flesh. Though it’s quite curious that she even has hair.” This situation is about to become three times worse, now that I can see why the longma aren’t entirely focusing their full efforts on stopping us like they had been at the start of my assault. “Now go stop the intruders before they wreck to many of my delicate internal instruments, don’t let them anywhere near the repair facilities unless you think you can take a few hundred longma attacking you all at once by yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m on it and I call the undead one!” Shocking, you always fail to surprise my expectations of you. “I do so relish a good challenge. If Dispel can fight the undead, then I can show him up by doing it better than him!”
At least Shocking was motivated, but sadly that wasn’t always a good thing in this case.
I continued to survey the battlefield as it changed. I had thought it odd that aside from evacuating the lower tier of the city that the longma started lighting up an incredibly big ring of fire around the entire volcano that looks like it was fueled with massive amounts of oil.
The longma had been readying for something far worse than us.
I feel slightly offended by the mass of what looks to be various shadowy creatures encroaching upon us in a feral hive minded manner, it was a good thing that Dispel wasn’t down there and was currently searching for the dragon princess around the middle tier. There was no way the princess wouldn’t want to be involved in the fighting, especially if she’s anything like Shocking about being strong.
Given how there was an endless sea of those shadows at the base of the volcano climbing towards the city. I can actually see where the longma were coming from and will kindly admit, if asked, that the bigger threat wasn’t us in the slightest during this whole fracas.
Even with their natural advantage to the shadows the longma were still going to be fighting both me and that mass of monsters as well. At least until the monsters attacked The Grand Time personally, the stalling tactics that were currently being used by that parrot’s griffon means that they either intended to force feed me to the monsters or force me to fight alongside them against the shadows.
Well now, I better prepare something for that eventuality then. I could handle fighting both sides at the same time, the shadows will require more focus as I didn’t want them flooding my ship. It would be quite hard to get rid of them at that point.
The walls of fire were no threat to me or my machines, the fire resilience I’ve applied to all my golems was working splendidly. Fire resilience sadly doesn’t translate into a resilience to lava or else I would have just dove a machine into the volcano and drilled my way to the treasure within. Thanks to that fire resilience, my repair factory could easily fix the smaller golems from most forms of damage the longma or any other beings could cause.
It was sad to say the repair facility couldn’t do everything, my slowly dwindling wyvern golems weren’t capable of being repaired nor would the facility work while the airship was airborne. I didn’t know how the shadows would affect the golem return function… a test is in order then.
Sending a single golem unit out on the one way teleport to the lower tier, I watched as it was torn apart in seconds and the pieces didn’t come back to the repair facility. The end results were… a bit horrifying honestly. If those shadows destroyed anything else of mine, then I certainly wasn’t getting it back.
Right then, I have a target, but what will my course of action be? My best option is to turn around and use the main gun before it incidentally gets disabled by the intruders, one of which has avoiding the sight of my golems to disable the rear legs.
Hm… I had all my onboard golems widen their vision fields a few inches.
A volatile explosion rocked the ship, it was caused by internal damage and I quickly focused on the damaged area. It seems Shocking had met the skeleton in combat and had gotten a little overzealous, how typical.
I kept my golems from approaching the fight, Shocking didn’t need their help.
At least Dispel knew how to control himself when absolutely needed.
I had much to do and so little time… oh… that... that could be a problem for everyone.
A large flying shadow had appeared on one of my screens, it absolutely needed to be dealt with. I needed the main cannon to stop the mass from surging up the staircase, maybe the longma or someone else can deal with that?
I started slowly turning the ship to face the shadows before they could reach it, beginning charging sequence for the main gun.
-Rear cargo hold, Nefer-
Okay, I was down one rock after using it to break that second important looking thing. Now what do I do without a weapon? I couldn’t just stay hidden and those golems might be able to fix the problem if I didn’t do enough damage.
Also, was everything starting to tilt to the right now?
Something rocked the entire airship and I whimpered slightly at the noise while covering my ears.
Teatime’s ship was clearly under attack, hopefully I could get off of it before anything bad happened to me. Maybe Flotsam was coming to rescue me? I heard the clacking noise of a pony golem preparing to fire at something, I leapt off the box as it went up in a shower of splinters and wood.
They had finally looked up.
I quickly ran for a rope leading upwards out of the hold where there were a number of patrolling pony golems and climbed as quickly as I could while avoid the next few shots. Climbing up through the hole and slamming the metal grate down behind me.
I think I might have ran into something far worse than the few golems down there once I looked at my surroundings.
A pony golem finished being built by the strange cylindrical machine and it stepped forward to have its mouth loaded with that small cannonballs, it then turned its sight on me. I just gave it a weak grin as several other golems were coming out of similar machines that were building them and loading them with ammunition.
All their heads turned towards me, in unison every single one of them raised their right hooves and sharp blades popped out of each and every single one of them. They then started to quickly approach me at a moderate gait.
I’m beginning to regret my decision to try and do bigger things, Captain Blackcap and big sis are going to be so mad at me.
Doing what Jacky does in situations like this, I turned around and ran for the nearest door as if all three of my tail tips were on fire. I jumped up and used my weight to open the door and then tried to run through, only to hop back a second after passing through the doorway.
I nearly took a fist to the head that put a fairly large hole through the metal flooring.
“Heh, this strength, it was worth all the pain to get it! Are you ready to get rocked?” This was that Jock Hawk guy, he seemed far more muscular and bigger than before. He really looked like he wanted to put my head between two of his talons and squeeze it to a pulp.
I mewled loudly and ran between his legs, avoiding several blades from the pony golems swinging and stabbing through the air where my back used to be. Can’t stop, had to keep moving!
I slapped at one of Jock’s legs with my tail as I passed, he acted like he didn’t even feel it as he turned around and nearly stomped on me with one of his boots.
Of course he wasn’t going to feel my tail whipping at his legs, I’m small and cute while he’s a muscle monster now. Well he was one before when he fought Arizona, but now he was bigger than that and there was no way I could possibly fight him!
“Get back here you little rat and be prepared for the rocking of your life!” His thunderous footsteps gave chase to me and I ran to the end of the hallway and then started up a staircase as everything tilted in a different direction. “Slow down and let the new and improved Jock lay the smack down on you!”
One of the good things about being small is that I’m far faster than he is. As I reached the top of the stairs and got another door open, I heard something explode nearby.
Going through the door, something immediately wrapped around my neck and things became bright for a second, I struggled until I realized who was holding me.
“Skelly?” The skeleton smiled as she looked at me, she somehow deflected a lightning bolt off of her axe and then tore a hole through the nearby wall in two swings.
I watched Jock get hit by the next lightning bolt when Skelly dove to the side through the hole with me and it didn’t have any effect on him.