//------------------------------// // 29. Now lacking cannon. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Equus, Equestria, Ponyville, School of Friendship, Gallus- Without Smolder around to hang out with, I had to hang out with Sandbar more. Nothing wrong with hanging out with Sandbar, he was a cool dude, but he was also quite dull at times. I was just on my way back to my dorm after some studying with Silver Stream, it’s easy to say she has a few focus problems and I had a few of my own when around her. I heard something that drew my attention to a side room as I walked along the hallway. “So they were detected trying to come back home just outside the Ever Free Forest?” Is Twilight talking about what I think she was talking about? “Yes, while you were busy trying to forge something approaching good relations between changelings and lambkin, which is unlikely to happen even if you aren’t likely to give up on it. We got four recognizable magical signatures from the area that the portal temporarily appeared in, said signatures should be familiar as they were of a dragon, a changeling, a goat and a lambkin. It is safe to say they tried to return home.” Taking a sip of tea, Starlight Glimmer yawned and stretched out her hooves, looked like she really needed sleep. It doesn’t help she was participating in the research to bring the lost home while also running the school as the head mare. “On the bright side we know they’re all still alive, the downside is that we don’t know where they are currently or what they could be doing. We can’t even trace where our side of the portal suddenly went to, all the experts know is that it went somewhere other than Equestria. We however do have the dimensional coordinates for the place they were trying to come from before the portals dimensional exit point changed locations, they might have incidentally gone to another realm… again. We know that this portal is entirely unrelated to the Grogar Cultists at least.” “So they were close to coming home by themselves, I wonder what caused the portal to change locations?” Twilight crossed her hooves over her chest and looked thoughtful as she levitated some steaming tea to her mouth for a sip. “We could ask the people in the dimension they recently occupied about it, someone apparently had the magic knowhow to open a portal directly to Equestria for our lost and was willing to help them. Maybe they could tell us something?” Levitating a stack of papers out of her saddlebags, Starlight leafed through them looking for something until she pulled out a page and passed it to Twilight. “From what was determined of the magical residue via several experts, the being that made it was relatively powerful and was using the native magic of our lost to locate our dimension. The residue leads to the belief that there was a large amount of safeties built into the magical portal someone created. Something set those safeties off, which is why our lost didn’t come home and instead went somewhere else.” “We have to be careful about this, stable dimensional travel is hard to come by and it would be all too easy to draw beings from another dimension into our world for good or ill by randomly opening portals to other places. Celestia warned me about what happened when she tampered with other worlds too much.” Tossing a cookie into her mouth and chewing slowly, Twilight closed her eyes and swallowed. “As for asking the people from wherever they recently were, it’s quite a risky proposition from what I just said. We’ll keep looking for the lost either way, but I need time to carefully consider if using their last dimensional coordinates won’t make things worse or cause more problems than they’d solve. We most certainly do not want Equestria to be invaded by other worlds.” I had to go tell the others about this, any news was good news in my book. I quickly scampered off looking for one of my three remaining friends I’ve become a bit clingy to recently, our lost friends were definitely still trying. I wonder what kind of situations Smolder and Ocellus were getting into and what they were seeing right now. -Kung Fu realm, wall to the Tower of the Sacred Flame, Gatehouse, nighttime, Smolder- I turned in time to see Shanty about to be killed, Ocellus was trying to bravely charge forward and I was too slow to react as I hastily spat a ball of fire in the direction of the group surrounding Shanty. My hastily spat fireball wasn’t even going to hit the right wolf. The blade started to come down on our little goat’s neck and I looked away closing my eyes quickly. A chirping noise was heard, the sound of flesh being torn and a clang was heard afterwards. I peeked my right eye open and then blinked in astonishment. Shanty had been hit, but the wound wasn’t immediately lethal as there was a small gash on her chest. The blade had been redirected ever so slightly, so what was a lethal blow became a simple injury. The wolf I set on fire was running for the nearest source of water only to be blasted in the face by Ocellus, putting out the flames and taking them down. The wolves looked bewildered, but the wolf with the blade looked down and something small and green shot up into his chin at a blazing speed. Said green thing was behind the wolf and grabbing him by his tail and, once he slowed down, I recognized that it was Mantis. He heaved the wolf by the tail into all the other wolves around Shanty knocking them away and down. Mantis leapt at one of the wolves and with a few slashes of his pincers, he ripped a big chunk of cloth off of the wolf and was back with Shanty pressing the cloth against her chest. If I were to count the time in my head, Mantis did all of this in approximately five seconds, he was proportionally faster than Rainbow Dash. “Hey, sorry I’m late. I might be one of the fastest kung fu warriors in the world, but even that was a bit too close for comfort… I almost just lost a friend and fellow fighting enthusiast.” Mantis then turned back to the wolves starting to crowd him and Shanty. Tilting his head quickly elicited a sharp crack throughout the room that made the wolves back off. “Keep the pressure on it Shanty, I’ll deal with them.” “He’s just a bug, he can’t possible take all of us!” One of the wolves bravely stated. “Guys, listen to me when I tell you this. I am not in the area with all of you.” Mantis spread his legs and made some chirping noises as he brought his pincers up. “You’re all in the area with me!” Like a bolt of green lightning, Mantis started to pinball off the heads of the wolves. They were so thoroughly distracted by his presence that they hadn’t notice me or Ocellus moving over to Shanty. “Are you okay Shanty?” Ocellus asked while helping her sit up. “I’m fine.” Shanty stated despite shivering. “Though I do not be liking how close that was. Can we please be hiding this from Pom?” “You should be more careful Shanty and… well…” I tried say something only for a wolf to break away and try to attack us, while this was happening the gate bursts open. Within a second Tigress was lunging to land in front of us and launched a paw strike that sent the wolf flying into the wall next to the opened gate. Considering the strength of the crunching noise, that guy wasn’t going to be getting up for a while. Taking one glance through the busted gate at Shanty, Po narrowed his eyes on the wolves in the room. “Hey, nobody hurts my friends and gets away with it!” Po rushed in and grabbed up two of the wolves by their chests and proceeded to roughly slam their heads together, he dropped them both on the floor unconscious. “Unless… you know… they’re faster than me of course.” Mantis quickly slammed the remaining two wolves into submission over the course of the next ten seconds. “Where’s Monkey?” Ocellus asked looking at the gate. “He’s holding the area outside.” Looking about for anymore threats, Tigress eventually came over to Shanty. Despite her previous fury, she immediately became tender towards Shanty. “Are you okay Shanty? How much pain are you in? Do you need me to carry you to safety?” That soft spot Tigress had for children was showing itself, she idly backhanded a wolf that was trying to sneak up on her and Mantis made sure they stayed down this time. “I be fine, it being only a small wound.” Listening to the instruction she was given, Shanty continued to keep pressure on the ripped up cloth over her chest and was staying relatively calm. She still whined a bit at the pain. “It might become a cool scar at least. I be ready to get back to fighting soon.” “I can appreciate that kind of attitude, but leave the fighting to the professionals unless we need backup okay? Mantis can you stay with them for a bit until they are ready to move again?” Tigress received a salute from Mantis, she quickly turned her head to Po moving the bodies off to one side of the room. “Come on, we need to keep going if we’re going to catch Shen tonight.” Po and Tigress charged out the back of the Gatehouse down the road towards the tower between the two makeshift barracks that had wolves bearing torches pouring out of them. A gorilla fell from above behind them and groaned in pain, they weren’t getting up though. “Viper went upstairs to help Crane, if you’re worried about him.” Mantis commented on the look Shanty was sending at the stairs. “Now slowly move some of the cloth out of the way so I can see the wound.” Shanty relented with a pained sigh and slowly peeled the bloodied cloth away from the wound slightly. “It’s not too bad, return to putting pressure on it for another minute or… hold on a second.” Mantis blurred away from us and started to go all around the knocked out wolves. Not only did he quickly tie them up with their own armor, he also brought several strips of cloth over to us. “You two wrap these strips of cloth around her chest securely and she'll be ready to get back into the fight if she takes it easy. I have a hard time tying things off, pincers and all that.” Mantis looked off in the direction of the mercenary barracks and saw Po and Tigress fighting back to back against a swarm of armed wolves. They were doing perfectly fine by themselves fighting an entire army off without even coming close to being injured, Po had eager energy and Tigress was a volatile bundle of righteous anger. “Mantis go see how Monkey is doing, I’ll handle Shanty's wound.” Mostly because I got the digits to tie the cloth off with. Not knocking Ocellus’s magic, but I don’t want her stressing herself out with doing small things. Mantis shot through the open gate and I turned to Ocellus as I moved behind Shanty with the strips of cloth. “As I was saying before, Pom is going to fuss over us no matter what happens tonight. She’ll be happy to see us all alive by the end of this, but next time… let me do the distracting and taking hits for the team while you get the door.” I wasn’t exactly a knot tying expert, but Ocellus’s rather eclectic reading habits did have some fun things to learn. One of the things she took interest in was the Filly Scouts, because she was curious about how long the changelings have been learning wilderness survival the hard way… which says a lot about why Thorax has a one hundred percent approval rating among all changelings. “That should do it.” Pulling the knot tightly, Shanty sighed and stood up. “So we don’t have anything better to do, what now?” “The nights not over yet Smolder, we should really try to keep our injuries to a minimum.” Ocellus walked towards the open gate and looked outside and quickly ducked back as an unconscious wolf flew inside and landed on his… nope, her face. The female wolf mercenaries looked like the males at time. It wasn’t exactly hard to get a female mercenaries scent for Ocellus to sneak around with, otherwise they would have smelled the brimstone. “They’re doing fine, even with the added reinforcements coming in from all over the city. Viper and Mantis have gotten most of the cannons and the only cannons we should have to worry about would be in the tower itself.” “You know, we came to help with the cannons, but so far we haven’t done much besides get the gate open and take down a few mercenaries.” At least we were staying relatively safe. “Not that I’m complaining that we don’t need to do any of the heavy lifting, Po and the others are definitely handling it.” “Hey, don’t knock you contributions to helping us out. Without you we wouldn’t have known how to deal with the cannons in the first place. You guys were very informative and we aren’t exactly great intellects outside of fighting and our particular interests, that is to say you guys are really smart… Ocellus in particular.” Viper stated as she slithered down the steps with a friendly smile and somewhat covered in soot. “That you got the gate open for Po, Tigress and Monkey really helps too, Crane would have quite a lot of problems lifting Tigress or Po up onto the wall. Do you remember when he exhausted himself bring the rest of us back to the Jade Palace?” “I couldn’t be forgetting if I tried, his loyalty is being amazing. I be wanting crew members like him someday.” It seems like that pirate dream was still there for Shanty. She tilted her head looking thoughtful. “Couldn’t you be using ladders though?” “Yeah, but making ladders that big isn't easy. Getting them into position while going unnoticed would have been just as hard. Not to mention transporting even the one ladder that could be easily destroyed.” Okay Viper had a fair point about that. “Also, I was just being polite and didn’t want to say this, but finding a ladder that would support Po’s weight would have been... difficult. Tigress and Monkey might have been able to climb the wall. This was much easier and less energy intensive for us. Crane flying Mantis and me up to the rear while he took care of the towers as we got the cannons along the walls was a good plan.” “How’s Crane doing?” I suddenly asked. “Aside from that, you and Mantis are easy for him to carry while flying and it was just logical thinking. It was mostly Ocellus’s idea anyway.” “He’s wrapping up with the last of the thugs at the top of the gatehouse and we wanted your help with something, there’s something odd about the cannons there and I want you three to look at the ones up there to tell me what we’re missing.” When Viper said that we all sent each other curious looks. “Anyway, aside from Shanty’s injury, nothing seems to have gone too horribly wrong.” “Show us the cannon then.” Viper nodded and motioned with her tail for us to follow her as she slithered for the stairs. We followed her up and through a room of unconscious wolves and up into the upper floor of the gatehouse and saw that Crane wasn’t here, just more unconscious forms scattered about. We looked at the direction the cannons were pointed. “I be seeing the problem already.” Shanty motioned to the direction of the tower. “Were all the cannons pointed at the tower?” “Yes, they were apparently ready to take the tower down after we got inside, but that’s not what we were talking about.” Viper motioned us over to the one and pointed something out that had me confused. “Ocellus… what do you make of this?” There was something off about the design of the cannon and I couldn’t put a claw on why. “Hold on a second Smolder.” Ocellus lit her horn and looked into the opening of the cannon and blinked and then hummed a bit. “Well this opens up some disturbing implications.” “Like what?” I said crossing my arms and tapping a foot against the stone flooring. “Well this cannon was designed to explode into a ball of fire big enough to take out the upper portion of the gatehouse and possibly send little bits of metal flying everywhere. It would kill me and Shanty if we had tried to use it against the tower.” It didn’t need to be said that I could take an explosion to the face and basically exfoliate with it to keep my girlish charms fresh. “Shen might be mistaking us for assassins, the end of the barrel is designed to blocked itself off if fired. He might be expecting us to have snuck in to try and use his cannons against him. The other cannons were likely for the Po and the Furious Five.” “While I wouldn’t say you couldn’t hurt a fly Ocellus, I really doubt you would want to injure anyone seriously unless there was a really good reason for it.” I know I’d claw up anyone who’d hurt my best friend and favorite changeling. “Still though, assassins, us, really? We're not firing it, nothing to worry about it.” “What about the fact that Wolf Boss is currently leading an attack on the gate?” Viper drew our attentions and we looked outside to see Monkey and Mantis were a bit surrounded. “Shen was expecting a number of things from us it seems, we’re being ambushed from behind.” “I be having an idea, Viper go downstairs and tell Mantis and Monkey to close the gate and to swiftly move away from it.” Shanty walked up to the cannon and looked to us. “Help me move this over there Smolder, can you be making a fuse Ocellus?” She pointed a hoof to the open balcony and I could see where this was going. As did Viper who nodded in understanding before zipping off. -Front of the gatehouse, Monkey- I leapt up and swung kicked out to knock another wolf back, the Wolf Boss was bringing in reinforcements towards the gates and there were almost too many of them to handle. That’s when Viper joined us by slapping a wolf across the nose. “Guys, back up and close the gate, we need to put it between us and them!” Viper shouted, we listened to her as we were getting pretty tired. Of course Mantis immediately zipped right by me, I made a flying leap and was at the gate helping to quickly close the large doors. “The door bar is gone.” I pointed out. “That doesn’t matter, close it, back away from the gate and cover your head!” Viper stated as something fell from above. There was a small bit of fire on a bit of cloth going into what I now recognize to be a cannon. I immediately closed the door and quickly started backing away from it while putting my paws on my head and closing my eyes. I heard a loud noise even through my paws and was knocked from my feet. Once I was up and the smoke cleared, we saw a gaping hole and a number of wolves laid out all over the place groaning and the cannon that was dropped from above was split open like a blooming flower. “Who wants to check on the them?” Viper said pleasantly through the ringing in my ears. “I’ll do it, I need a break.” Mantis volunteered. “That noise made me somewhat dizzy." “I know they’re helping, but maybe they should go somewhere a bit safer than here.” I watched as the various wolves started gathering their senses, many were rubbing at their own ears. The ones that had been closer to the cannons destruction were out for the count, and I could count a lot of them with more coming by the second. The Wolf Boss was trying to get his senses in order as he staggered back with his gathering forces. “Move forward! Ugh, you try to plan an ambush and it all goes to…” He was blasted in the face by a light that spooked all the wolves, the Wolf Boss collapsed on the spot and that started making them panic. “Nice shot Ozzy!” It was pretty good timing Smolder. “But I would like to say that think they can take care of themselves so long as they aren’t swarmed.” Mantis added a second later before zipping off. “They have to be getting tired, we need to keep up the pressure until we can wake the boss up.” One of the wolves shouted. They started to get organized again, some of them were looking above us with shields at the ready. “We’ll get you for that you sneaky horse... bug... yaoguai!” “They’re regrouping.” Viper muttered. “We’ll certainly be ready for them then.” I stated with a smile. “Yeah, but we can’t keep this up forever. Po and Tigress still have to climb the tower to get at Shen and that peacock can just glide away.” Yes, that certainly was a problem. “Hey guys, Po, Tigress and Crane made it to the tower, we need to buy them more time.” Mantis came darting back into view. “Those three will be fine up there by themselves, I have them tying up the mercenaries we’ve knocked out.” -Ocellus- “I'm fine Smolder, it’s only a problem if I overuse my magic.” I was perfectly fine, the wolves were still going to be on the attack without their leader. “We've rendered the gate completely useless, but now that’s a bad thing… a really bad thing.” “I can be helping them fight!” Shanty was brave, too much so for her own good. “Only if they start getting by Monkey, Viper and Mantis, but I don’t think we need to worry about that.” Smolder looked out over the wolves starting to crowd the gate to see a number of bodies being knocked into the air. “Is that…” “Who is it?” I finished tying up a gorilla’s arms and walked up to see what Smolder was looking at from the balcony. Shanty gasped from between us when several figures finally coalesced into view. “Is that being Tai Lung?!” Yeah Shanty, that certainly looked like the muscular snow leopard that can rip Pom in half. “Why is he here?!” He was obviously fighting alongside Shifu, Storming Ox and Croc. He was also in the middle of an argument with Shifu even as they both kicked two wolves in the head simultaneously with the exact same fluid motion. “He’s… I want to say helping, but given who it is…” I was just as confused as Smolder and Shanty, we hadn’t heard exactly what happened to Tai Lung and only heard references of the Wuxi Finger Hold from Po. “I wonder if they've worked out all their issues yet.” “I will have my rematches with them old man, I'm just making sure it happens!” Tai Lung certainly seemed to be himself. "That would be a no Ozzy." Smolder stated flatly as she wrapped her right arm around my neck and hugged me. "Stop calling me Ozzy, do you want me to start calling you Smol?" I saw Smolder blush and sighed loudly. "Good grief."