-Airship Mauled, small pyramid, Sekhet Sphinx ‘War Goddess, Physical Education Coach and the world famous landing strip of Airship Mauled’-
“So how would you stop Jade from destabilizing an entire region?” Why they came to me I didn’t have a clue, but the three collectively known as Maries were looking to me for advice about stopping their partner from causing a worldwide economy crash.
“You don’t… I think that’s the point of it, but it’s probably for the best.” It didn’t take me long to consider what Jaded was doing and figure out a way around it, but what she was doing was somewhat ingenious in scope.
“What do you mean?” Mara asked, the saber tiger head looked fairly annoyed with their spouse’s current actions. Maria spoke up next as I petted my pet serpopard. “Also if you can’t help with that, then can you at least get her to somehow get over her obsession with destroying Saddle Arabia at least?”
“The obsession maybe, but you do realize that she is not even actually actively touching Saddle Arabia with a fifty mile pole. Something bad happening to Saddle Arabia is actually likely something she considers a positive unintended side effect of something else she’s doing.” I closed my eyes and sighed while giving it some thought. “I’ve noted that Jade is actively messing with the various economies of several countries at once, without the ability to do math due to her horrible dyscalculia mind you, so what she’s doing is going to fail and I think that’s what she wants to happen and she’s instead succeeding which is why she came to me earlier to rant about failing at failing on purpose. Her long term goals are to get Lambkin and Changelings to organically work together, so she’s doing something that will certainly make her notoriety noticeable on the world scale.”
“Our kitty is a genius if given enough time to think things through and she’s a petty thief at the best of times, but what can she possibly be doing that would make ruining the economy of Saddle Arabia a side effect that she wants to be like a happy coincidence?” Marie the snake head queried up at me. “In any case, Fizzy isn’t buying the fact that Jaded isn’t targeting Saddle Arabia directly for a minute, but we’re of a slightly different opinion.”
“Surprisingly, I’m of that opinion as well. I think she actually isn’t targeting Saddle Arabia directly or indirectly, which makes it all the more impressive that her plans are somehow doing it anyway in spite of the few odd things she’s done. This is getting her in huge trouble with Fizzle I take it?” I considered how to explain it to the chimera before me in a simple manner. “So, she’s diverted the lambkin’s textiles and surplus food production. The changelings have insects that will eat specific textiles to produce silk and they have rare herbs for anxiety medications. So doing a little math, Jaded’s plan is interesting to say the least when she is working on improving the lambkin textile industry production, which in turn is ruining Saddle Arabia’s more expensive textile industry because the changelings are farming silk producing insects locally and closer to Equestria with better quality. One can understand why Jade would do most of this, but the one thing you should be really looking at here is where exactly is all the food being diverted to by Jade? It isn’t going to the changelings, they don’t need to eat physical foods.”
“The Griffons is where that food is going at our best guess, but why would…” All three heads of Maries the chimera froze, their three conjoined brains kicking into overdrive. “The Hippogriffs… the Sea Ponies… the Minotaurs… the Parrots… Pegasi… Earth Ponies… Unicorns… Kirin… Abyssinians… to… Zebras? How is it that we are just now finding out that Jade has one of the weirdest worldwide conspiracies going on that involves chains of various trade goods being shifted ever so slightly? This shouldn’t have been so easy for her to hide from us!”
“Good question, which is exactly what the Lambkin are bound to be paranoid about now. They are a bit more clued in on things than people give them credit for, especially about marmalade and something involving sea ponies or more specifically Queen Novo.” The stares I received made me decide to state something as succinctly as possible. “Don’t ask, you seriously don’t want to know about that… trust the immortal goddess on this one.”
-Earth, Calisota, Duckberg, Killmotor Hill, Mcduck Mansion, Smolder-
So here I was telling my story to a bunch of ducks that lived in a mansion where magic, mysteries and multiple oddities are as common as breathing to them. At least Webby was happy to go into her family’s history for me, took a whole night and a good bit of time into the next morning.
“So yeah, friendship is literal magic where we’re from and Ocellus used said concentrated power of friendship and pure awesomeness to take control of the two deadly machines to rip a way out of the base for all of us. Nearly killed herself using up all the magic in her body doing it too, magic is basically her lifeblood and love is literally what keeps her going.” I’m almost finished telling all these guys why we ended up here. “So after one final job in the previous world, the magical princess was rescued from the evil lizard emperor. We got sent here by their magic to a world where, by their own words, dreams ‘can’ come true. So we basically have to work our asses off to find our way home from here to make sure that they ‘will’ come true. At a guess Shanty ended up somewhere where she can cause mischief. Pom is likely to be surrounded by dogs because she absolutely has the dubious ability of getting drawn into areas loaded with canines of all sorts. It started with a single fox the first world, devolved into a whole wolf army the second, then two large factions of dogs and wolves fighting a civil war with each other and I don’t want to even know how much worse that’s going to get in this world. Just find the largest concentration of dogs on the planet and she’s guaranteed to be at the dead center of it if we ended up separated for the reasons that I think we did after entering the portal.”
“Well my dreams have come true, maybe yours can too if you want to go home hard enough. Just don’t use any technological methods of world traveling around here, it almost destroyed our planet and Gosalyn lost her grandfather to another world.” Webby was an odd duck, cloned from the richest duck in the world and then raised by the maid of said duck that was her unknowing father. Said father couldn’t have known about it until they defeated a fiendish world spanning organization. Webby wore a pink shirt, purple skirt, a blue vest and a pink bow on her head that was absolutely adorable. “I wanted to be so much like my idol Scrooge Mcduck and even dreamed of it. Now that that dream is a reality and… well things have been a bit odd between us since it was discovered I was his daughter. ”
Gosalyn was her friend in Saint Canard, an apparently crime riddled city that her father was dealing with one thug at a time.
“Who was your mother?” Everyone in the room froze with wide eyes at my question. “I know you explained the whole clone thing and how Scrooge is your father and I’m not exactly sure I understand how cloning works, but wasn’t a female involved in your creation at some point?”
“Uh… now that you mention it…” Webby looked unsure about how to continue bringing some of the fingers of her right hand up to her beak. “I may need to do a DNA test to find out about that, May and June were created differently from how I was as they were quick cloned as my sisters and I never gave it much thought that I might have another genetic donor that would be my mother…”
So we were in a place on the far western side of a wide continent near Saint Canard, which was across the bay from Duckberg. I had sat here telling our story while holding a comatose Ocellus’s left hoof tenderly.
We ended up in the perfect location to fit our needs, if the whole ‘world where dream can come true’ thing was to be believed. We weren’t staying on this world of course and we’d eventually find each other. I had a guess as to why we ended up where we did.
Ocellus and I ended up here because we wanted to make friends and figure ourselves out as we move on into the future and my best friend needed tons of love, best place to do that? With friends and family that wouldn’t let you down without a good reason to, plus they loved each other to such a degree that Ocellus wouldn’t be capable of starving.
Parts of her body had started to turn black once or twice before we ended up here and it had me completely worried that I couldn’t go too far from her. They were not necessarily our family, but these locals were good people for taking us in on a temporary basis.
Huey, Dewey and Louie, the three duck triplets were looking thoughtful as they sat on a couch in the living room watching something like a movie screen you’d see at the theatre in Ponyville. What they were watching looked like some weird opera about footstools.
Huey was the uptight one with the red shirt and cap. Dewey was the social and loud one in the blue shirt. Louie was the evil one in the green hoodie, I wouldn’t trust him around any dragon’s hoard… unless it would be guaranteed to help Ocellus in her current condition.
I’d pay almost anything for Ocellus to be okay.
There were May and June, Webby’s clone sisters with a yellow and blue theme went with Webby’s pink and purple. May was the yellow one with the ponytail and June was the blue one with the short pigtails, they looked like triplets even if they were made at different times.
I really missed Garble right now. Sure he could be a pain to others, but he would always be right by my side and protective of me.
Those were the two triplet teams, then there’s the friends in good standing that had been around for a sleepover yesterday.
One was Lena Sabrewing, she had her previous last name evicted from her life as harshly as possible. A teen duck that was a lot taller than the ducks around here who was wearing a shirt with a sweater over it, apparently the Mcduck and Duck families were predisposed to being short in more ways than one.
As Webby explained it. Lena was a living shadow from an infamous sorceress known as Magica De Spell, but Lena was very much her own person and separated from Magica in many different ways and completely capable of existing on her own nowadays without help.
Lena had a lot in common with Webby when it came to the ideas of what being ‘real meant’ for them and Webby’s sisters.
Lena’s adoptive younger sister was a purple hummingbird named Violet Sabrewing. She found me interesting because I wasn’t like most other dragons, myth or real, that she’s ever read about or physically seen.
I’m going to take this as another world where dragons are generally known for being jerks or are possibly evil, but if it was another world where they were misunderstood… well I’ll take things on a case by case as they come at me. I was Ocellus’s shield now and nobody would hurt her while I was around.
“So awkward silences aside…” Huey started up as the screen wasn’t showing their opera at the moment. “What do you plan to do from here?”
“Well I’ve got nowhere to go, no leads on my friends and my best friend in the world is comatose in a way that I’m quite sure your local hospitals won’t ever be able to help with and she practically needs me next to her at all times to keep her fed and alive.” Thinking for the long term wasn’t exactly something that I was good at, Ocellus needed me right now and that’s why I wasn’t willing to let go of her. “I plan to stay here for as long as you’re willing to have me, but I need to eat, sleep and go to the bathroom eventually. There’s not much I can do and I can’t really be dragged on one of your adventures, I’m not leaving Ocellus alone all by herself when she’s helpless like this! Though I realize that I can’t stay with her every waking moment of the day. It’s frustrating because Pom, Shanty and even Dodo could feed her while giving me a break. Just having one of them here would be a big help. It’s so tiring trying to keep her alive, but I’m not giving up on her.”
“We’ll help you look for your friends, right guys?” Webby was enthusiastic, but at least she was trying to keep me in a positive mood. I was becoming a bit more irritable and I had a feeling it was because of Ocellus feeding off of me constantly, but I wasn’t about to let go of her.
“Yeah… about that… like Smolder said, where do we even begin to start?” Louie stated in a calm tone with his eyes glued to the screen and he drank some soda from a can of stuff called ‘Pep’. “They could be anywhere in the world!”
“Well we can always have Darkwing Duck check around Saint Canard and we can check Duckburg at least, then we can start Dewey-ing other things to help find Smolder’s friends.” That was actually insightful plan from Dewey, I had him pegged as being a bit... dumb.
“So make sure that her friends aren’t in locations we can have other people check for us… we have Storkules and Selene in Ithaquack. We know some guys in Egypt that wouldn’t mind money for a burrito or two to put out the word.” Huey pulled a book out from under his hat and leafed through it idly. “We’ve been all over the world and in space… still haven’t been to the moon personally, but our mother assures us it is really quite boring. Even the Moonlanders could help us search for your friends… they started living all over after their invasion was foiled, we can only hope that Lunaris never figures a way out of being stuck in orbit.”
“Moonlanders, Lunaris?” I asked questioningly.
“Yeah, the Moonlanders are cool, don’t worry about it. We’ll point one of them out if we see them, Penumbra tends to hang around the mansion so she’s likely to be the first one you see.” Dewey’s attitude was relatively chipper and he looked like he constantly wanted attention. “Uncle Scrooge has her working as a bodyguard for the mansion after an incident with Louie coming under attack by our worst enemies.”
Scrooge Mcduck, the richest duck in the world, the guy was famous for adventuring and business around here, the guy was also a penny pincher and dragons could appreciate that. Didn’t know much about him since we’ve only been around for about one day, apparently he was off doing something else while the ghost butler and the kids were taking care of things around here and that left them to their own devices.
“What’s wrong webby?” Lena asked as Webby sat in a defeated huff.
“I wanted to do something exciting, but the best option is to wait and see where Smolder’s friends might turn up.” Webby seemed rather upset that she didn’t get an adventure out of us. “I mean no offense, but you two are magical creatures and the most you need from us is for us to call on our friends to find out where yours ended up. I was expecting some kind of dangerous quest through a huge temple full of deadly traps and having to read things in ancient languages that nobody even knows how to read any more!”
“Well sorry to be a disappointment, but you know we just got out of an adventure that had two full blown wars going on at the same time. My friends nearly died several times during all of that.” I stated testily and why wouldn’t I be a bit angry, we’ve been through quite a lot. “So excuse me if I don’t feel like getting into any scrapes while carrying my, nearly dead, comatose friend around!”
“Hey watcha… yelling… oh a dragon, neat!” We all turned to see the male triplets mother Della Duck as they described her, aviator gear and one mechanical leg. She was invading my personal space and I let loose a small blasts of flames to get her to back off as I jealously held Ocellus against my chest. “Right, sorry, backing off, so is this the weekly adventure that’s finally come in?”
“No, mostly they just need help finding each other and a way home that’s safe and won’t take them anywhere else besides exactly where they want to go.” After Webby said that, Della wilted a bit. “They arrived from another dimension or world and have been having issues getting home, I already told them our scientific methods of world traveling could destroy our world. Not that Gosalyn isn’t going to keep trying to get her grandfather back from wherever he ended up, and we’ll be there for her if she asks for help.”
“Yeah, sorry about that, but we get into all kinds of crazy stuff around here. I know what it’s like to not be able to go home, I was stuck up on the moon for ten years and some change. Mostly in mind numbing loneliness, at least you have people with you that are sharing your experience. Makes it a little easier when the burden isn’t all on you alone.” Della seemed to know our pain with the way she spoke and rubbed at her right shoulder. “Of course you couldn’t see your home the entire time like I could, with the gnawing taste of black licorice gum in your mouth for years on end that wouldn’t lose its flavor no matter how much you wished it would being the only way to survive… I actually sometimes thought of spitting it out... Frankly it was torture and losing my leg wasn’t nearly as bad as the licorice taste and the ten soul crushing years of missing my kid’s lives. So I know absolutely what you’re going through… how long has it been?”
“About half a year almost and still going on into what looks like a full one.” My mood was grim. “We’ve been through three worlds.”
“I’m sure you’ll get home eventually, you’re doing better a lot better than I am. I was stuck in one spot, at least you’re making progress in some capacity… that and I can’t touch candy anymore because it’ll taste like black licorice to me. Gyro will hopefully come up with a cure for that nasty side effect eventually.” Della patted my shoulder gently and gave it a quick squeeze. “I didn’t start making progress until I found out the Moonlanders were my next door neighbors, they still are come to think of it… but Earth is a much cheerier place for it. Silver linings and all that despite the invasion… for some reason Britain didn’t think it ever really happened, I think there was an alien themed parades going on that day throughout Britain. So they might have missed it by accident, most of the Moonlanders are not particularly aggressive really and probably joined in on the festivities.”
“So alien invasions, temples with deadly traps, mysteries all over the place… oh my goodness we’re in a Daring Do book!” I groaned out.
“What’s Daring Do?” Lena stated flatly.
“A series of adventure novels written by someone who has likely actually gone on said adventures in our world, I know that Ahuizotl in the book definitely exists in our world.” It was so nice to be able to talk to people that could understand me, but I was going to miss the squeaking voices of the people of Elhorn. “Of course the way the novels are written, they probably exaggerate the things that actually happen. Can… can someone find it in their hearts to love my friend for a bit, I need to go to the bathroom, a good shower and some some rest. Holding onto her for this long has really sapped me pretty badly.”
“Before you ask Della, Ocellus is comatose and literally eating Smolder’s love for her.” Lena answered the raised eyebrow Della was giving me. “I think we’ve all noticed how exhausted Smolder looks, she hardly got any sleep last night and to think I thought I was sometimes restless about being a living shadow creature.”
“Maybe I can do it, I love kids!” Della quickly took Ocellus from me and I was about to protest, I tried to get her back only to flop onto my face after two steps. “So does being drained of your love exhaust you like that? Heh, this kind of tickles. She’s adorable and I can find it in my heart to keep feeding her love, it doesn’t seem that bad. I’m well rested, but you look like you need some time to yourself Smolder, I promise your friend will be fine when you get back. You really need this break!”
“She’s been holding on to her since yesterday.” Webby seemed to pick up on what I was doing, I was burning myself out on feeding Ocellus. “Smolder I think you need some time to recover.”
“Like nothing else, but I’m committed to keeping Ocellus alive.” I closed my eyes. “You’re right though, I can’t keep going on like this. Where can I get a scalding hot bath around here?”
“May, June, do you think you can help her to the bathroom?” The two had been quiet and reserved until Webby spoke to them, they were also watching the footstool soap opera.
Somehow the opera was beginning to make me think of Spike back home the more attention I paid to it for some weird reason. Eh, whatever, I was exhausted and needed time to recover from feeding Ocellus constantly for far more than twenty four hours without much of a break in between.
“Sure thing sis!” May answered, grabbing me.
“We’ll help her clean up too.” June helped picked me up and we were soon off.
-A few hours and a good nap later-
I took hold of Ocellus tenderly, lifting and carrying Ocellus was easier because I’ve had time to get my strength back. That break was something else, but I also needed to make sure she was alright and safe.
I rubbed my face against Ocellus’s upon getting back to her, I think I saw a slight twitch in her lips there for a moment.
“Thank you… what do you have to eat around here for me? Ocellus seems to be doing fine with the ample amount of love around here.” I know that Ocellus was dragging me down, but I wasn’t going to let go. “Please wake up soon Ozzy, I’m not going anywhere without you and life is not easy without my best friend.”
"You're doing great, I'm certain it won't take you ten years to get home!" Della reassured me. "So-- like peanut butter and jelly?"