//------------------------------// // 74. Outbound Orthcellus. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Equus, Ponyville, Savor Fare Café, Fizzlepop Berrytwist- “These dates are always wonderful Jade and I might have something you can do that would really annoy Twilight.” My kitty perked up from the three cheese vegetable lasagna she was devouring, with some kind of prayer to the orange cat of gluttony thrown in before doing so. “Maybe everyone if you’re good enough to do it.” “How annoyed are we talking here Fizzy?” The maniacal glint in her eyes was something I was never going to be tired of for the rest of my life. “Also does little Silvers want some lasagna too?” Our giggling chimera child was babbling happily at Jade as the dragon headed tail snapped the lasagna off of Jade’s fork, taking half the fork with it in the process. Jade just stared at the twisted bit of metal for a second. Maries, our significant chimera companion and herds main bread winner, sighed loftily at the sight. Likely remembering the first time Maria, the cottage cheese devouring goat head, ate a tin can. “Good thing, we have the bits to pay for that.” Jade muttered in dull surprise, before she went back to being perky while giving me big adorable eyes and tossing the rest of the fork to our daughter’s dragon headed tail. “So what can I do for my cuddly Fizzy and… why are we still taking on that Tiny Ewe as a pet again?” Our herd was one of the weirdest things ever seen in Ponyville when we came to visit, this included the aforementioned Tiny Ewe sharing a salad with Snickers the Turtle Dove. Ponyville was quickly gaining ground when it came to accepting new and bizarre things that weren’t threatening. The populace was less jumpy around zebras at the very least and more open to visitors and immigrants, immigrants like Gabriella ‘Gabby’ Gums the griffon wanting to move in or have a home here after a long courier flight between here and Griffostone. Even if acceptance was becoming a thing, a few ponies were still a bit iffy around the Skeletal Noria the Viking skeleton pony or other spooky things like her… except on Nightmare Night. “One Ewelissa is family now, two she has moxie and knows when to slap a horrible trouble causing beautiful idiot when prompted, three you’re the one that got her in the first place, four Silvers loves her and finally… she’s my familiar…” I muttered that last part out and received a quite humorous look and snort from our favorite rogue. “Shut up Jaded, Tiny Ewes do not represent wild herd deviancies as familiars!” “We both married a chimera and snuggled a wonderful child out of them that is biologically all five of us mashed together, I’m already expecting hell from her when she starts schooling.” Jaded said flatly as she continued to shovel the cheesy goodness into her mouth with a fresh fork brought by the waiter, she slowly dragged her tongue around at me tantalizingly wiping up her sauce covered lips. Stupid sexy kitty, which I happily married. “So… what would annoy absolutely everyone? You wouldn’t bring it up if you didn’t want the family to do something sanity challenging… again… this week… for the eighth… no wait… ninth time since Jackie caused that giant evil quesadilla to blow up by singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star loudly and horrible off key!” “Yeah, Twilight’s phobia definitely made the news that day… oh right, it has been stated to be physically impossible for Changelings and Lambkin kind to interact as friends or in a normal fashion, lots of bad blood there. It’s driving ‘Princess’ Twilight up the wall trying to get them to do more than act through intermediaries and she’s making everyone else nuts by trying to get help with it.” My hope was that this would prove a huge distraction that will get Jade off my back about official royal guard business with finding a way to get the lost back home. Things were going well on that front and we didn’t need Jade interrupting our operations any further. “Your mission, is to do what Twilight can’t and make them be friends with each other… organically.” “Hm… fun.” I saw the thoughtful look on Jaded’s face and a slowly building evil grin. “I need a camera to capture the look on Twilight's face if I can actually manage this… it’s actually a pretty tall order, even for someone as insane as I clinically am. My therapist says I need to do more sane things, but I don’t think she quite gets what we’re about. ‘Normal’ is actually an impossible feat of epic proportions for our family, as if we can ever truly achieve mundanity for more than a solid week. I sometimes want to do mundane stuff, but… well, you know… you at least had me up until you said the word ‘organically’, but I’ll still try to do it that way.” Wonder what kind of havoc that would cause internationally. Wait… “No going near Saddle Arabia… or involving it either! No messing with Saddle Arabia for this Jaded ‘Freaking’ La Perm or I won’t cuddle you for a month!” That it needed to be said by me and hearing Jade whine pitiably in response, I think I just saved a lot of people in that region from several weeks’ worth of pure misery via ‘The Spiteful Mirage’. Maries and Silvers laughed at the hangdog and teary eyed expression Jade was giving me. “H-Whipped!” Marie the snake head stated jovially. -Elhorn, Eastern Mountains Facility, Badly damaged mech warehouse, the mook horror show, currently starring Soldier 1- I wondered how this day could possibly get any worse. “Soldier A, the unsung hero of~… did someone hear that?” Something crunched, we were still cleaning up the mess and losing three fourths of our mech force to a single person from the Cooler Faction. We were all wary when we couldn’t find a body that Commander Carbuncle was asking for and that meant that the elite was possibly still in the base. That was a scary thought, but how much worse could things truly get? I’m sure we’d capture the elite soon enough, he was just one guy and couldn’t possibly take every last one of us all out by himself. We were said to be housing a captive that was nice to look at and the news was that there was just something about her that made everyone want to greedily keep her for themselves. Maybe the Cooler Faction Elite was here to rescue her and there wasn’t going to be some big assault like Carbuncle had planned for? “Yeah, it’s coming from the ramp down to the evil core containment are…” Grunt B didn’t finish his statement. The doors ripped opened down the ramp at the back of the warehouse and we could see one of the two halves of Orthros Omega quickly ripping through the door. Something was off about it. “Do you think the evil cores have turned on us?” I asked blankly as I watched the effort the machines were going through to get out of containment. “What would make you think that?” Grunt B stated, but I didn’t get a chance to answer when it and the second half of the Orthros Omega tour through the blast proof doors entirely. To be fair to the makers of said doors, they weren’t ‘Evil Core proof’ doors, but the machines certainly didn’t feel like ‘pure evil’ anymore. The machines galloped up the ramped and stopped to stare at all of my frozen comrades and me, they looked damaged… almost zombified with pieces of armor falling off of them. Wasn’t the armor those things were made of said to be highly rocket resistant? Also their eyes were blue. “Uh… it’s not giving off a sense of malice like it wants to kill us all violently and maybe continue on to violate our corpses?” I finally answered as the left one surged forward and swiped a paw to send several of our people flying in all directions painfully, their weapons doing nothing to stop it from happening. “Then why are they attacking us?” Grunt B asked. “Maybe they actually aren’t trying to kill us, but want to get us out of the way?” I said before I was slapped through the air and blacked out upon slamming head first into the nearest wall. -Grunt B- “That still doesn’t mean that they won’t hurt…” I had ducked the second paw swipe, unfortunately I didn’t dodge the other paw swinging up and launching me into the ceiling. -Mook Z- “Someone help us, the evil cores have turned good!” A statement I, Mook Z, never thought I would have to say. The only difference was that I wasn’t get the imminent sense of dread, the bloodlust or the feeling that they wanted to tear my entrails out in a painfully graphic manner. At best they were just knocking people out with as minimal force as two badly battered giant metal wolves could manage. My name is Mookler Zedidiah and I knew for a fact that we were all quite boned when the last fourth of our mechs were destroyed swiftly by the two machines that were now set on making us regret the existence of evil cores… or good cores… or whatever was going on! I was smacked in the face by a swinging metal nose and a shelf fell on top of me. -Minion D-9341- I watched in horror as it all played out, the two machines were slowly beating the stuffing out of everyone in the warehouse and were destroying everything. There was nothing we could do. At least they weren’t giving off the usual sense of bloodlust, so they weren’t trying to kill us at least. Even if their outer layer of armor was mostly off and they had no weapons, our weapons weren’t doing anything to slow them down. Also we didn’t have any rocket tubes prepped for this exact occasion, mostly because we never thought it would happen as Commander Carbuncle had good control over Orthros Omega. Carbuncle did feed live people to them, mostly our enemies and sometimes our biggest failures. One would think we had enough mechs to prevent problems like this, but most of those were destroyed by that Cooler Faction guy who had an insane expertise at controlling mechs to the point that it required Commander Carbuncle to come in take care of him personally. Wait… we didn’t have a body so that Cooler Elite was still around… I quivered as one of the machines turned to stare at me. “Assuming direct control…” The wolf stated as its blue eyes flared. I threw down my rifle and ran towards the exit and out into the snow and away from the base… “Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope-” I hear southern Devotindos is nice this time of year, maybe I can even become a dance instructor like I always wanted! Maybe the pigs won’t mind me? Pigs smelled somewhat nice when they sun tanned on the beaches. Yeah, warm weather is far better than being here! -Orthcellus Right- “Why did I say that and in such a manner?” Well that seemed like a rather sane reaction to a giant mechanical pile of moving wolf shaped metal saying something weird or creepy. One that no longer had any of its weapons, tails aside, thanks to Shanty and Pom. These machines really didn’t need them to be threats, they were still moving as if they weren’t heavily damaged. -Orthcellus Left- I rushed out into the snow to start assaulting the base defenses with the machine’s paws, I quickly opened a hole in the southwestern wall by plowing my body straight through it. Being in two places at once was a headache, also this felt weird. At least I know what it felt like to be Dodo now… except he wasn’t as big a problem as these two machines were. Running towards the nearest watch tower I slapped it down with my left paw and caught the falling Yellow Dog soldier in my right and slid him onto the ground. I glared down at him, this made him run off cowering leaving a trail of yellow snow behind. -Orthcellus Right- I tore into the nearer smaller building and ripped down another tower and even clamped my toothless maw around one of the green spindly mechs to shake it like a chew toy. Spitting it out on the ground after the pilot abandoned it, it exploded vibrantly. I was the alpha and omega, hear me roar! “Rwar~.” Why did my roar sound so cute? I was supposed to be fearsome, I was supposed to be… wait… is all of this actually going to my head? I know how Smolder and Spike described greed growth, but wow… I was experiencing that feeling of empowerment now. Blinking I saw a wagon quickly on approach in the distance, it stopped to pick up Hunt’s team and I remembered what I was supposed to be doing before I lost any sense of control over these things. Had to do as much damage as I could... without killing anyone… I guess after feeling so weak and helpless in the presence of so many evil cores, it feels like it was about time I got a little payback for the suffering I’ve been through by putting others through it too. But… I didn’t want to be like Chrysalis by going power mad and here I am… acting… like a pair of big puppies in a playground. I feel bad now. -Orthcellus Left- I wagged my broken jagged tail as Pom and Shanty quickly came out of the warehouse leaning on each other for support, I had to protect them from danger! Pom patted Shanty gently on the head as they continued to move forward. Orthcellus Right was handling things well, I would bodyguard these two from any nearby danger for as long as I could make this last. Also protect Smolder and myself, wow… was I really so small and helpless like that? Smolder is so adorable too… look at her cradling me and nuzzling me. She was quickly following them with me as I stood guard over them. This is kind of putting a new perspective on things for me and… I turned to look at the other me and I immediately knew everything she thought. Wow… the power was kind of going to my head there huh? Okay time to get back to business, needed to give the outer base defenses something to focus on while we escape! I, lefty, will cover our exit, and righty would damage the base more. Not too much though, Exile was still in there… wow is this my sensory range now? I can feel almost everyone in the base from here! No, bad Orthr-cellus Left, stop getting distracted! Rocket going for us from behind, I ran in front of it and took the blast over my already shredded armor. Even with the armor this bad off… it still absorbed that blast like it was nothing. I glared at the one dog on the base that had a rocket tube, he grinned weakly as I smacked him as gently as a large death machine could. Hopefully someone would eventually get him out of the pile of snow he was now buried under. These things are what Shanty and Pom were up against? Well it’s a darn good thing I figured out how to save them and even do this! -Orthcellus Right- Be a hero Ocellus, everyone is counting you to get them to the wagon and Dodo, fourth tower down and occupants safely dropped on the ground without too much injury. If they were running like they were, then they certainly weren’t that badly hurt. I really am going to hate myself for figuring out how to do this machinery control thing later… for now I had more people to scare away from my friends and me… and quickly before I ran out of the tenuous amounts of magic I had left! I leapt and grabbed another spindly machine making an attempt to go after us in my toothless maw and started tearing at the green armor on it. -Shanty- “Ocellus really be going at it, did you know she could do that?” I asked Smolder as I helped prop Pom up, she was tired and I was feeling somewhat similar to her. “Nope, but I’m Proud at how well Ocellus is wrecking face!” Smolder grinned as she held Ocellus’s body close. It was exciting, exhilarating even… but we would not have won that fight, as even without the armor they were still too tough to bring down by hoof. Those machines were being shot at by just about everyone and it basically be doing nothing. We are lucky that Ocellus was here to somehow be doing whatever it was she is doing to control those things. I don’t be thinking Nicole Beta could be doing what Ocellus currently was. I be giggling as I am hearing the distant warble that sounded worried. “Dodo be coming for us, hurry up guys!” I started to trudge faster through the snow and tried to lift Pom up even more, she smiled at me weakly as we got further outside the base and through a hole in the wall created by Ocellus’s destruction. Why hadn’t that Carbuncle guy tried to…? Explosions could be heard coming from behind us. I turned my head and be looking back to see Carbuncle jetting about and fighting the nearest metal wolf, the large machine was knocked onto its side and his gun be rapidly breaking off chunks of armor at a fast rate. “Can’t… hold out… much…” Ocellus said slowly as both machines were actively attack Carbuncle in a coordinated effort. Those two weren’t being nearly enough to stop the high speed Yellow Dog. “A little longer Ocellus, our ride out is almost here!” Smolder yelled out, Dodo came charging up to us and drifted the wagon about to put its back end firmly in front of us. I be helping Pom up first, then Smolder and I got in behind her with Ocellus. The Retrievers all aimed their weapons out the back and fired as we did so, they were taking care of the Yellow Dog soldiers who weren’t focusing all their firepower on the two machines along with their leader. “Losing… control… ugh!” Ocellus jerked backwards and then flopped limply in Smolder’s wide eyed arms. We looked back and saw the two mechanical wolves suddenly stopped their attack and their eyes turned green. The two large badly damaged and battered mechanical wolves looked a little lost, Carbuncle pointed to us and shouted. Instead of doing whatever he just said, they seemed to panic for a second and transformed into two wheeled things and reared up to launch themselves over the nearby wall and off into the wilderness. “Dodo… go... now!” Dodo didn’t need to be told twice as he started picking up speed with slowly running away from the base, he already be knowing how fast the wagon could safely be going. -Hunt- “Uh… did they just become wild machines?” What kind of undefinable horrors would that bring back to bite Yellow Dog this time? No time like the present, we had to get out of dodge and Shanty was already directing our ride out of here. “Does this mean they’ll start reproducing now?” “Don’t think about it too hard Hunt, we got an incoming bastard on our butts!” Ah Biscuit, what would we do without you? The female Labrador was firing round after round into at an enraged Commander Carbuncle and he was catching up fast despite all of us firing on him. He popped an explosive out of the shoulder on his armor and when he got close enough to throw it in he was smashed backwards by Bruno’s sword, leaving a large rent in his armor as he flipped backwards and stuck the landing. “Finally some… what the… that sound…” Bruno looked off to the right of our southwest bound wagon and grinned, the sound of a whine could be heard. It wasn’t Colleen’s bootleg rocket pack either. It sounded like a true rocket knight’s pack, but that would mean... “Axel Gear might be a terrifying bastard, but we're about to be helped by someone that beats him regularly. We’ll make it out of here alright, I still wanted a piece of the action though… I’ll just have to wait for the battle at Devotindos.” Even as Bruno stated this, Carbuncle was already back on us. Before Carbuncle could even get close this time, he stopped and blasted backwards in the air to avoid the blue streak flashing by in front of him. Said streak came to a stop and hovered between our retreating forms and Carbuncle. It was the hero of Elhorn himself, Sparkster! -Sparkster- “Sorry I’m a bit late to the party, got held up by a few Gedol patrols and a few evil cores being activated… hard to travel around these days without someone trying to put a feather in their cap by killing me.” I was confident I could take this Yellow Dog, having seen the base on the way in and the group escaping. “So let me make it up to you, your fight is with me Yellow Dog!” It wasn’t hard to figure out what was happening, the White Knight Couriers were said to be rescuing one of their number from the local Wulfgar Faction based in this region. I arrived in time to see something odd happening with those evil cores before they ran off instead of picking a further fight, that was a problem for later as they weren’t currently endangering anyone. “So you’re the blazing blue hero. You are making me lose my prize, but it would certainly earn me brownie points with Wulfgar if I can deal with you here and now!” The Yellow Dog had some pretty strange equipment, that armor and the explosives it generated would be tricky. A true rocket knight knows that they can plow right through any problem with enough ingenuity. “I’m Commander Carbuncle and only one of us will be walking away from this fight.” “Yeah, you, because I’ll be flying out of here to give escort to the White Knight Couriers to make sure they all make it back to Zebulos alive. If Axel wants them dead badly enough that everyone knows it, then it is my job to make sure they get back in one piece!” Pointing my sword at him, my pack began charging with my magic as I stared him down. “Have at you!” “Gladly!” We rocketed forward towards each other and thus we clashed. -Five minutes later- “How… could I… lose too you!” Carbuncle’s pain filled defeated cry was the last thing heard from him as his armor went up in a series of explosions ending in one large blast. All that was left... was a broken defenseless smoking dog on the ground. I sighed despondently at the fact that I probably just crippled another person for life. I flew away once I heard a number of wolves on approach from the northeast. I had no further quarrel with Yellow Dog. -Twenty minutes later, Pom- I’m so glad that we didn’t have to fight Carbuncle, I spent most of my magic on that charged bark breaker… hurts worse than a bark blast and I’m functionally mute now. We were passing by the submarine when a blue armored figured came down from the sky and landed next to the wagon. This was the second time I’ve seen the hero of Elhorn, Sparkster. He looked a little bit roughed up, but was otherwise unharmed as Dodo stopped to look at him curiously in recognition.