//------------------------------// // 10. Ram-bler. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -The Valley, Equestrian Camp, Pom- I sat here alone thinking about my talk with Panda. Among the places Panda had warned me about, there was Lung Mountain in the distance and the frozen fort up there that protects the entrance into Dragon’s lair. There’s also the Ninja Monkey temple and the tower for the more elite ninja monkey training grounds, it was also where Baboon likes to stay when he wasn’t running around The Valley and or wasn’t at the frozen fort. I sighed, I was still thinking about what I was told of that poor Dragon, those strange monkeys and the general of the opposing force Baboon. Smolder, Ocellus and Shanty should be fine on their own and know how to find the camp once they were done playing with Skunk. Skunk might even hang out at our camp overnight. Shanty needed more friends and I wouldn’t say no to her having a sleepover for what is possibly the very first time in her life. I thought about how adorable that could be and smiled a little. What did I want to do right now though? Did I really want to wander into dangerous territory to try and figure out a way to help some people who probably didn’t even want it? There was still plenty of time in the day, but I wasn’t about to use it getting into a dangerous situation. No matter how much I wanted to help them, they weren’t currently in a life or death situation and did not urgently need me to help them with anything personally. I did at least want to talk to Dragon’s forces eventually, but now wasn’t exactly a great time to do so and I would rather not do that alone anyway. How stressed out was I currently? Moderately, so I could stand to do something calming… oh I know! “I’m going to go on a ramble!” I said loudly to myself, well as loudly as I ever raised my voice anyway. “It’s been a long time since I’ve done some frolicking.” The Valley was peaceful, aside from rogue magical artifacts in use by Dragon’s forces or Dragon’s forces themselves. There was also the naturally occurring environmental dangers and hazards that are easily avoided if you’re paying attention to your surroundings, but I didn’t have much of a problem with that. Lambkin liked to frolic, but we could only do so on absolutely quiet days when our nerves weren’t so horrible. I really needed to get my mind off all the stress of being away from Tianhuo and my beasties while stuck in another world. I needed to relax and unwind from the possible dangers around The Valley and maybe, just maybe, I could get some ‘me’ time in for once. The concept of ‘me’ time just didn’t exist until I just thought about it right this second. I spent so long taking care of my beasties, Tianhuo, helping people and spending time with my friends with whatever they wanted to do, I hardly ever did anything just for myself. I didn’t even visit the local spa and hot springs in Huoshan without Tianhuo with me. Come to think of it, I really did like it that way as it didn’t give me time to think myself into the ground the way that a lot of other lambkin did. I’m actually kind of terrified of the thought of having time to myself to come up with ways that things are going to go horribly the second I blinked. Speaking of, I blinked and realized that I had wandered away from our campsite while thinking. “Okay, don’t panic Pom, you’re at least better than at least half the lambkin back home when it comes to handling your mental state without the aid of a prescription or psychiatric help.” I would seriously like that particular trend to continue without calling for help the second I get lost. I sighed loudly and looked around, this place really was peaceful and I think I instinctively wandered here. Standing on a hill, I looked at the flowers around me and leaned down to sniff one. Smells like the flowers back home, even looked like them too. It was nice to know that flowers were a constant of the two worlds I have visited. Though I bet there is a world out there where the flowers turned you into a ravenous rampaging monster if you eat them. Panda only said to be on the lookout for mystical lotuses or flowers I don’t recognize, considering what happened to Dragon. I heeded his warnings, but there was nothing here to worry about as I recognized just about every flower I saw. Okay, I could do this. No freaking out, no worrying about my surroundings for a while, no thinking too hard about things and most of all, I was going to have some fun by myself. I was getting my first ‘me time’ in… how many years has it been since I first met Big Mama? Cautiously, I gleefully took to hopping through the flowers. Eventually I carefully began rolling through them and maybe even stopped to lightly graze around. I remembered a time when I was younger and my grandpa used to watch me play like this, I really missed my old home of Meadow Hills sometimes. While I was here I should make a crown of flowers for old times’ sake. -Currently inside The Valley’s territory, forest at the edge of the flower covered hills, Baboon- Sitting in the tree I think I spotted someone wandering around the flowery hills. Standing up on the sturdy tree branch, I put my hands over my eyes and looked a bit harder where I saw that movement. There she was, the stranger… what was she currently doing? Huh, she looked kind of adorable doing what she currently was. It would be kind of rude of us to disturb her when it looked like she was enjoying herself in the sun. “Let’s give her a minute, then we’ll move in.” The twenty or so monkeys with me nodded. This was a relatively small unit, but I didn’t expect any trouble today and the task looked so easy with no valley defenders around to get in the way. We really didn’t want to attract attention anyway, this is a stealth mission and not an invasion attempt. This seemed easy… too easy. I mean the stranger looked to be relatively frail. She didn’t look like she could put up much of a struggle, but a part of me recognizes something was off with the thought of her being incapable of taking care of herself. Why were we so hesitant to approach her when all she was doing was smelling the flowers, running around in them, even made a cute small crown from said flowers for herself and rolled down a hill on the soft grass. A monkey chattered something. “Why yes, it does look like she’s just having fun.” Disturbing her felt wrong to me, but we were going to do so anyways. “Four of you spread out quietly, you are going to act as lookouts. Raise an alarm if you see Snake, Crane, Fox, Mantis or any of the other dwellers of the valley that could possibly raise an alarm, especially Skunk. We’re going to do this completely silent once we get closer, do you hear me?” All the monkeys muttered acknowledgment of my orders and started deciding amongst themselves who was getting the job of sitting around and watching for trouble. I’m still wondering where this was going to go wrong. If it isn’t any of the valley warriors, then it’s inevitably Skunk who ruins things for us and he has a tendency to run towards problems the second he even vaguely hears about them. That we were usually the problems that he always had to deal with wasn’t worth much thought. Still can’t believe we keep getting beaten by a kid, my reputation is still somewhat in ruins after the whole nose blowing thing. To this day that was one of the worst ways I have ever lost a fight. -Flower covered hills, Pom- A butterfly tickled my nose and I sneezed, I watched as it fluttered away to land on a flower. I ducked down and watched as the butterfly fluttered gently around between flowers. I heard several distinct sounds and immediately stood up and looked around with worry. Seeing nothing, I shrugged and figured it must have been my imagination. That or the wind, but the wind usually doesn’t sound like several hollowed out coconuts being slapped against one another. After meandering up the hill I looked about and didn’t see anyone, so I should tone down my paranoia that someone was out to get me out here. I was a bit lost, but I at least knew enough to know I wasn’t within Dragon’s territory. I was trying to relax and if I heard another strange noise, I’d just simply run away from the area. -Baboon- The sixteen ninja monkeys just slammed face first into each other, the impacts left them laying in the surrounding grass just out of sight of the stranger in a circle. Slowly I brought my paws up to my face and slowly dragged them downwards. It was mindboggling that they missed her when she ducked down to watch a butterfly flutter around. I wanted to get angry, I wanted to scream, but I didn’t want to alert the stranger that we were out to get her. “Okay, let’s try the regular invisibility trick to grab her this time.” I knew they were good at various invisibility techniques, but this one was the most basic one for any ninja monkey. They become invisible by using the distracting thoughts in someone’s head or the things around them in general. The ninja monkeys were practically invisible like that, but there were some like Ox who could see straight through it. -Pom- Skipping along, I made sure to stay in clearly visible and wide open space where nobody could possibly hide. I was a little less trusting of the tall grass at the moment, but at least I could still have fun. I crossed over two hills looking at logs, large rocks and other things that caught my fancy out here, I eventually dove into a pile of flowers, rolled on to my back and put my hooves behind my head to look at the sky. -One hour later, Baboon- “What do you mean you can’t find the stranger?” If this were a perfect world, then my ninja monkeys would have already caught her. The monkey then reported a major issue to me, after the good news that she hadn’t been seen leaving the area yet. “What do mean some of our team has wandered off?!” It was quickly explained to me by the ninja monkey I just asked. Apparently they got distracted by their own thoughts and wandered off to who knows where. We were now down to five ninja monkeys left actively searching for the target where the other eleven went off to play pranks. Chances are they were going to alert the valley dwellers to our very presence, now If only we hadn’t lost the target among the flowers. “Wasabi.” Ugh, you just couldn’t get good help these day. Sure ninja monkeys might be unreliable at times… but they were mine to order around. The five remaining active monkeys and I froze when we heard a yawning noise behind us. We all slowly turned our heads to the stranger sitting up in the flowers and rubbing at her eyes. “That was a good sheep nap, been a long time since I’ve done that.” She muttered to herself, she glanced at the sky. “Only about an hour, perfect amount of time. I could do a little more rambling in the nearby forest and then end the day by picking up some food for an evening meal.” She stretched out and didn’t even look in our direction, she was really quite close and we could grab her this instance. I nodded to my monkey and held a finger up to my mouth, they nodded and we all turned to sneak up on her. Only for one of the ninja monkey’s to step on a twig that snapped loudly. The resulting reaction will flummox me forever. She squeaked loudly, her ears went straight up, her tail went straight out and then within a blink she was already five hills away. “Wasabi…” I stared blankly after the indistinct white blur several hills over and continuing to put distance between herself and us. The stranger was insanely fast, far faster than anything we have ever seen. Not even Fox and Rabbit could move like that. -Pom- “No more familiars, no more familiars, my wife is going to theoretically kill me if I come home with anymore!” I cried out, having long since associated the sound of a snapping twig with something friendly about to become one of my familiars. So I galloped away before a bond of any kind could possibly form and didn’t bother looking back. I eventually slowed down, took a slow seat on the ground and took a few deep breathes. I tried to feel out a familiar bond, I was thankfully getting nothing. “Oh thank goodness, I know Tianhuo is infinitely patient with me, but I don’t think she’d be that patient if I came home with the number of familiars that I already have in Huoshan.” It could be worse, I could be coming home with double the familiars I already have… the horror at having to take care of three times the amount of familiars I already had washed over me. While I loved all my beasties dearly, even seven more familiars would be far too much for me to handle. Taking stock of my surroundings I found myself in the forest I previously wanted to walk around in. I was in the right place at least, I started looking around and eventually spotted a bush full of blueberries. I sniffed them and started picking the nicer ones, I liked blueberries in general. It reminded me of the times my beasties nursed me back to health while I was still in exile. They all worked so hard together to bring me food and make sure I was getting rest, having Big Mama and my favorite puppies curled up around me protectively felt so nice. I missed my family and I was getting homesickness already. Just tough it out Pom, you had three people relying on you to be their guard against any danger. Don’t worry about being a little lost, the possible bacteria that your body is possibly crawling with given I haven’t bathed in more than a day and there’s also the possibility that something wants to be my familiar out there hunting me down. Nope, I wasn’t having a small panic attack at all… why was my denial so transparent even to me?! “Well then… time to construct something to carry these blueberries with.” Trying to calm down, I looked around as I popped a few blueberries in my mouth. There were certain things I needed to build some improvised rucksacks or at the very least small bags for carrying these tasty berries I was picking. I remember Rabbit talking about carrots, so maybe I could find some wild carrots too while I’m out and about. Shanty had a healthy appetite and needed a healthy meal. Speaking of, I wonder how Shanty, Smolder and Ocellus are doing. I hoped they were having fun at least. Maybe Skunk would bring his big sister Fox to the sleepover. -Next to the lake, Shanty- I be thrusting my left hoof into the face of a ninja monkey and they went sprawling. Standing on my rear hooves wasn’t too hard and it made using my front hooves easier, it was either that or I be using my head more. My horns were tough enough for it. “Yeah, that’s how you do it Shanty!” Skunk was cheering me on as he blocked three attack with his arms and one leg and used the other leg to knock a fourth monkey away with a kick to the chin. He then leveraged the other three monkeys into each other in a rather incredibly painful display of violence that had them running. Apparently this was a small ninja monkey raiding party and they were trying to play pranks on the valley dwellers. Skunk was upset that they were trying to prank him again, so he was in the thick of the fighting himself. I be barely capable of handling one and he was taking on five or more by himself at a time. I be having a long way to go before I can be fighting like that. I blocked the incoming monkey that didn’t think I was paying attention with my right leg and then kicked my rear left leg up to knock them away from me. I lost my balance, fell on my back and looked to see how Ocellus and Smolder were doing. None of the monkeys were going near them, they were all wary around Smolder who stood in front of Ocellus with her arms crossed and just glaring at them. Fire breathing must be being a very intimidating thing to them, that and they knew a dragon with a bit of a temper already and didn’t seem to want to mess with her at all. Ocellus stayed behind Smolder and didn’t look like she appreciated all the fighting going on. “Shanty pay more attention to your surroundings like Pom taught you!” At Smolder’s shout I turned back to defend myself from the oncoming monkey and I wouldn’t be getting my hooves up in time. Fox came in with a flying kick to the skull of the ninja monkey attacking me, both knocking them down and away from me. When she landed she swept another monkey’s feet out from under them with her tail and then, with the barest snap of her wrist as she spun, pulled out her fan and blasted them away with an explosion of wind. She be using only a single sweep of the battle fan she held, but she be knocking those monkeys for the horizon. Fox is being really strong. “Sorry to ruin the fun and your learning experience Shanty, but I don’t think Pom would appreciate you getting hurt. I’m less worried about protecting Skunk because he’s learned enough to take care of himself now.” Fox stated to me with her back to the monkey coming at her, she slapped out the back of her left fist without even looking and knocked the monkey to the ground. “I’ll take it from here and will help Skunk run them off. You are visitors and we would be poor hosts if we didn’t protect you from what is primarily our problem.” The dazed monkey that just took Fox’s paw to the skull shook their head, got up and took one step forward. Only the monkey stopped when Fox turned her head and glared at them, the monkey immediately started running off in fear. “Is it always being so hard to be telling the gender of the monkeys?” They all looked almost the same to me, how did they tell each other apart? Did they even need to tell each other apart? I be having so many questions. “Eh, it likely comes with their ninja training to look that ridiculously similar to one another.” Fox commented dryly as she sauntered over to where Skunk had already downed four of the monkeys giving him trouble and was dealing with the rest of them by himself. “Also yes, it is really hard to tell them all apart unless you can get up close enough to smell them, they have a tendency to blend together visually otherwise. Now if you’ll excuse me, Skunk do you need help or can you do this by yourself?” “I can handle this Fox!” Skunk stated as he grabbed a monkey by the tail and then spun them around to throw them away from himself, he was being quite strong for his age. “I wouldn’t mind a little help though.” It wasn’t being long before they were run off through the forest with Fox following them slightly to make sure they didn’t double back for more trouble. “Well looks like they won’t be causing any more trouble today.” Skunk stated pleasantly, he came out of that scuffle with barely any sweat. -Forest, Pom- I had several packs of freshly picked food. My goodness were plums and bananas really quite common around here, I just walked along enjoying the mostly tranquil forest. I say mostly because I met one of the valleys noncombatants. He still acted as a scout from time to time, but he wasn’t a fighter and was just in general a lazy guy. “So I say to Ox that he was nothing special and we won the day when he started seeing through the monkey’s invisibility technique again.” Bird, the little red bird, has been talking at me about the rubber tree defense that Skunk employed against the ninja monkeys with help from Ox and Bird. I knew Bird embellished his part in it drastically, especially when he says he defeated five thousand monkeys that day. Bird heard that there were visitors and wanted to talk to me, at the most he was just talking at me and I was glad I couldn’t talk to birds normally back in Equestria. He was nice enough though. “Look out, ninja monkeys incoming!” Bird flew up and I sighed, the ninja monkeys landed around me in fighting stances. I just lazily glanced at them and then removed two of my six makeshift packs of food I had strapped to me by repurposed vines. “Oh good, I needed to talk to some of you guys about something.” The ninja monkeys dropped their fighting stances and looked confusedly at each other when I had addressed them calmly. I think they were too used to fighting and they looked a bit battered. They probably just got beaten up by one of the defenders of The Valley and they were notably outside their territory, so this made sense. “Ook eep eek ook ook?” One of the monkeys queried. “Yes, I’m not going to fight you. Can you please do me a big favor and take these two packs to Baboon and tell him I’ll be visiting soon with my friends so I can talk to him about the things going on around here in general?” I hoofed off the two packs to the group retreating group of ninja monkeys. One with quite a few bananas and other fruits, the other was loaded with berries and quite a few vegetables that I scrounged up. “This is a peace offering from me in the hopes that we can be amiable in the future. While we are friends with the dwellers, we would like to ‘mostly’ stay out of the conflict between the two of you and be friends with you too. My name is Pom and it was very nice to meet you, but I’ve got to get back to my camp so I can start working on some vegetable soup for my friends.” The monkeys were about to run off, but I quickly stopped and urgently turned around. “Oh, wait, wait, wait, I forgot something! You can have what’s in this pack when you get to Baboon and deliver my message.” I gave them a third makeshift pack of food which was a different color from the other two. I bowed to them. “Okay, you can all go now and I thank you for your time!” They all surprisingly bowed back to me respectfully, then they ran off.