-Equus, World Summit, Jade-
“Really now Jaded?” Spoke the unamused Abyssinian Queen of Queens, sitting next to the King of Abyssinia.
Luna now looked like a pin cushion with hundreds of daggers sticking out of her, she looked as equally unamused about it.
“Hey, I stand by my wife’s method of stress relief unless you all want her to go Storm Queen on the world and stop it with maintaining the baked goods trade routes. Goodness knows what the sultan of Saddle Arabia will do if they stop getting their freshly baked special cinnamon rolls via Grubber from the Storm Fleet once a month.” I stated calmly without a hint of a smile on my face, Amira paled immediately. “You should be thankful that I don’t have any control of the Storm Fleet Amira. Also Luna is on the petty kitty list until she gives into pressure for challenging this mere mortal, this isn’t even my opening salvo yet. Like I stated, this is stress relief from having to make trading deals with Discord, he always drives an uneven bargain.”
“Whether it’s for or against me is the chaos you can expect from my nation!” Discord said with a bright smile. “A vote for Discord, is a vote for rampant insanity!”
“I take it Veles is trying for a rigged election for the leader of Chaosica?” I murmured with a humor filled purr. “Bet that’s getting confusing.”
“Yeah, especially when he keeps rigging it in my favor while I’m trying to do the same to him!” Discord shouted while grabbing at his skull in anger. “I want rampant confusion darn it!”
“What.” The Thestral delegate Prime stated flatly out of sheer confusion.
“Thank you!” Discord said to Prime before drinking the glass from a glass of milk and tossing the fluids of the strawberry milk over his shoulder into my glass. I gave him a warm smile and started to lap it up.
“Jaded, can you please not stab my sister with… let’s see twenty, forty… one hundred and thirty seven knives.” Celestia actually stopped to count them with an exasperated look on her face. “I know we can’t die, but this is ridiculous!”
“No, I’m ridiculous!” The confusion god Veles shouted looking like a cross between a centaur and a beholder dressed as a princess clown. He was actually more bizarre than ridiculous.
“What was ridiculous was how I got those knives, apparently the lambkin delegate has an interestingly kinky relationship with their ex.” Yep, none of those were mine.
-Cape Suzette, Nighttime, East Side, Ocellus-
So Launchpad crash landed outside the city and almost into the ocean in the small amount of countryside that Cape Suzette had outside the eastern portions of the city.
Thankfully the Cooper Van was still able to leave out the back, Launchpad went with Mopsy and Bentley. Don’t know where Murray or Sly went when they jumped out over the east side more than thirty minutes ago, given how big the trouble was they were on the hunt for where all the robots were coming from.
We were left to decide what to do on our own, so we decided to go find people to help, whether it was rescuing someone from fire or fighting off aggressive robots. There weren’t as many robot here as there were towards the center of the city.
“I’m so glad these machines don’t have emotions.” No malice to be felt here, just a bunch of machine’s rolling around and attacking people in a seemingly random manner. It was honestly relieving to not have to deal with that pressure pressing down on my skull.
I stabbed the end of the metal part of a destroyed street sign I held through the heart of the robot’s face and then used the lightning eel portion of my anatomy to take down the machine with a violent shock.
“That’s completely understandable Ocellus.” Smolder didn’t sound surprised. “So that big wasp monster thing you’ve transformed into several times is real.”
“As a bug bear is, those things are really quite dangerous. Even if we can’t fully match anything we transform into in terms of speed, strength or magic, we can still use the size as an intimidation factor and it also helps with furniture.” I could deliver enough of a shock through the proportionally sized lightning eel sack to down any of these machines provided I can get through their armor or what passes for their face. Mixing and matching my biology was interesting, now I knew how a manticore or chimera felt while looking like a dragon with no wings. A little bit of the right kind of Minotaur muscle in the right place can give me a slight strength increase for a little extra cost of energy for tweaking my form to mix into my dragon muscles and claws. My base form horn was still burnt out so I couldn’t do unicorn, but I could still get by with transformation alone easily enough. “So figuring out we didn’t need to do a full transformation has broadened my horizons a bit in being able to help adapt to the lack of being to use magic.”
“Sounds like you can do anything.” Smolder stated before spitting a fireball. It didn’t melt the armor on these things, but it did knock one over. I quickly leapt up and brought my makeshift spear down on the weakened heart face while avoiding the two extending arms trying to lift it back up.
“Not really, I can only use the portions of beings I have physically seen sized up or down. So really, I’m still using only things that I know exist and I can’t create something from nothing with just my imagination. If it exists, then I can give it my own personal spin on it biologically like how my dragon form is uniquely me and no other dragon looks like this, but I have to actively think about the parts I’m using like wings or no wings. I know a lot about the lightning eel sack I’m using since the hippogriff navy has had problems with those things from time to time and Silver Stream showed me one.” I finally managed to pull the metal bar free from the twitching robot with a yank. “I can’t heal my horn by transforming into a unicorn, I also can’t use a unicorn’s magical strength. At best I can heal minor physical injuries with my transformations and I’ll never scar, but I can’t heal anything that is immediately crippling as it’ll just translate to whatever form I take on. Turning into a crystal pony or a rock can give me more resilience than my natural carapace.”
“So do you need to be more careful about what you choose to put into a form?” Smolder asks as she spread her wings from under the shirt she was wearing and use them to lunge forward to put her right claw through the face of a machine and proceeded to rip out a fairly large chunk from it.
Smolder’s red shirt stated ‘my girlfriend is all sugar’, I was wearing a green shirt that said ‘my girlfriend is all spice’. I thought it was cute.
“Yes, for instance if I were try for two things that can’t exist in the same space, like an organ that can spray water and an organ meant for shooting fire like a dragon. Both at the same time could cause me internal issues, something that most changelings can’t heal from easily as external wounds by molting.” We made our way down the street, so far we’ve dealt with ten or twenty of the strange robots in small numbers. Smolder was drawing most of their attacks so I didn’t have to worry as much. “So really, I have to keep in mind what I’m doing to my body or else I could have some horrible biological drawbacks and hurt myself grievously. Like take the Lightning eel sack for example, I have to make sure the entirety of my biology is morphed to correctly handle having that sack my body or else I’d be in extreme pain every single time I actively use it.”
The robots were really tough, but not impossible for me and Smolder while tag teaming them. Dragon claws in general were made for rending through tough materials. In fact I think I saw Smolder eat a portion of one of these things out curiosity, she said it tasted okay and she really hasn’t had a chance to eat many gems or jewels on our journey. So she needed a little more literal metal in her diet.
Expensive eating habits aside, we shouldn’t deal with more than three or four of these things at a time.
Thankfully people have been lying low or hiding from the all the relatively aggressive machines rolling around the streets on two wheels, we’ve saved one or two people from fires so far and were trying to be safe about things.
“Help, I need help!” The voice drew our attention and it was on the next street over, Smolder covered her wings under the shirt as we made our way forward and turned to the north to see a… a tiger striped wolf heading our way? “Why are these things after me?!”
“Kidnap Kahn.” The robot behind him droned out with the others echoing him. He was being chased by five of them that were still continually stating ‘Kidnap Kahn’.
I’m sure Pom was at Kahn Industries with the others already and facing much larger numbers of these things than the smaller numbers on the fringes like we were. There were three more coming from the air and landing on the street, making eight we had to deal with in quick succession.
The biped wolf dove under an extending arm and scrambled forward on all fours until he was back up on his feet.
“Hey, this way, we’ll fight them off together!” Called out Smolder while waving at the guy as we moved to the middle of the street. Smolder was getting ready to charge forward.
Even if Pom or Shanty couldn’t deal with the armor on the robots easily, Smolder could rip them to shreds with her bare claws and teeth. My claws weren’t nearly as strong as Smolder’s and I really couldn’t digest metal, but I was still fairly effective if my claws were even as half as strong as a real dragon claws.
“Take this.” I tossed the broken ‘yield’ sign to the wolf and he caught it. “You should know what to do with the pointy end. We can claw them down, watch our backs and we’ll protect yours!”
Like Pom, I didn’t like fighting, but I would like to think Pom was a somewhat decent role model. These machines couldn’t be talked to or convinced that what they were doing was wrong, we couldn’t use the magic of friendship to stop them because they didn’t think or feel. As such the best we could do was disable or destroy them outright.
Smolder rammed into the first one with her horns and avoided the extending claws and started ripping into its chest with her claws.
I moved forward and dodged around the claws coming my way while Smolder was still dealing with ripping the first open.
The robots didn’t work together very well, but they did coordinate at times and this thankfully wasn’t one of them.
I slashed my right claw across its heart shaped, face… eye? In any case I scored a set of claw marks that made it lash out at me blindly with its claws transforming into a whirling saw, I ducked under it and around it’s back to ram my left claw into the next robot coming up on us.
After managing to knock it over I tried to pull free after squeezing my claws on the insides of its head to continue fighting, only my left claw got stuck in it. I frantically tugged my left arm and looked to my left as robot whipping its extending arm for me.
“Don’t push yourself too hard Ocellus, let me take care of most of them!” Stated Smolder as she aggressively caught an arm swinging at me from my left and bit it off before swinging the remaining portion of the arm for the robots face.
“Error…” That was all it got out before its own arm smashed its heart shaped face in and Smolder was already onto the next one.
I heard a smashing noise behind me and I looked back to see the wolf had taken down the one I clawed before it could flail too out of control.
Wrenching my claw free of the inert robots head, I stumbled back and a metal claw lightly scraped across my nose. Smolder grew slightly in size and smashed that robots head into its torso with both her fists grasped together, she immediately shrunk back down a second later.
“Did you just…” I started to ask and Smolder blushed while quickly moving onto the next machine She hopped onto it and started to savagely rip into the glowing heart for a face, the wolf managed to deal with another one and was now holding two halve of the broken yield sign.
Smolder just had a greed growth over me! That was so touching, sweet and a fair bit disturbing as to how far she’d go for me and truly loved me.
Two left, Smolder was already moving towards one as it transformed both its arms.
“No wait, it’s going to!” The wolf tried to state as fire start to build on the tips of the changed claws.
Smolder quickly ripped of her shirt and threw it my way, I caught it as she was engulfed in flames.
“No!” The wolf obviously worried as flames engulfed Smolder, I just sighed audibly.
“… Error… biological still alive.” The robot looked at its flamethrowers and then to Smolder who pulled one arm down and bit off the weapon and started chewing loudly. “Fire is lethal to most forms of biological entities.”
“What, how did she, I mean I thought I saw her bite off the arm of the other robot, but still!” The wolf obviously didn’t see the wings folded on Smolder’s back as she sauntered up to the robot, the other robot was sitting still.
“Blue screen error, rebooting.” The other robot stated.
“Yeah, about that…” Smolder stated, having one again lightly lit on fire. She swallowed the chunk of metal and bit off the end of the other flamethrower weapon. Chewing loudly as she leaned against the extended arms and stare at the robot. “Nice choice of oil, adds a unique flavor to it. This is not the first time someone’s tried to kill me with fire and I’m fairly sure it won’t be last. That it’s even happened more than once is bizarre in and of itself, but in this case I was trying to hide what I was and you almost ruined my shirt.”
The robot sat there unresponsive looking at the bitten off portions of its limbs.
“Kidnap…” The robot started say before Smolder leapt up and stabbed her right claw through robot’s glowing heart and ripped out a chunk of metal that might pass for whatever brains it had.
I calmly took moved over to our wolf friend and took one of the bits of metal from his loosened grasp and sauntered over to the last robot.
“Reboot comp…” I rammed the metal home into the center of the heart and it went down.
“Hello my name is Ocellus and that is Smolder, what’s your name?” I stated with a smile while tossing Smolder’s shirt back to her.
“Are we just going to overlook the fact that she survived what should be a lethal amount of fire?” The wolf asked questioningly.
Sharing a look with Smolder we looked at the wolf and responded together.
“Why yes, we are.” We stated in unison.
“Well… alright then… my name is Mowgli Seeonee and… no, wait… that’s not important!” He shook his head furiously before looking to us. “I got to tell someone where all these things are coming from, can you help me get to Kahn Industries?”
“Sure.” We were going to work our way over there anyway.
-South side, Sly-
So Murray and I might have been a bit off course or our paragliders needed some more work, but Murray was proving to have picked up plenty of muscle for himself. The metal these things were made of was tough, plus we’ve saved a few people from crumbling or damaged buildings in the various attacks going on around here.
Pom’s team landed exactly where they wanted to at least, we wanted to land in the north and instead ended up near the docks in the south.
While Murray can batter these four foot machines directly, I had to be a little more precise with taking them down with single hits.
I charged up may cane with energy and swung it to smash the one weak point on these things. Murray quickly picked the downed robot up and threw it into another smashing it into the street.
“It’s nice to have you active in the field with me Murray.” I smiled as Murray laughed, he was my team’s strong guy.
“The Murray is going showing what he’s really got tonight!” My hippo chum grabbed an extending arm with his right hand and with a sharp yank pulled the robot to him and plowed his left fist through what passes for its head. “Ah yeah, quarter pounder straight to the face!”
“Please don’t start naming everything you do after food Murray, we’d never hear the end of it from Mopsy, also we really need to start heading towards Kahn Industries. Bentley, this is Sly, we went a little off course and landed to the south, how are things and where are you?” I had my binoculars out and was watching as various people barricaded themselves in buildings. “The most we can gather is that the robots are not coming from this direction, they are causing trouble out this way.”
“That’s somewhat helpful Sly. We’re in the middle of a storm of robots here at Kahn Industries, please get over here quick!” It sounds like you were having a party Bentley judging by the sounds of gun fire in the background and hopefully we’ll be openly invited as it sounds like Shere Kahn’s guys needed all the help they could get tonight. “The vans gun is working like a charm, provided I can get the shots to pierce the armor on the robots with enough concentrated fire. The bullet proofing of that metal is quite exquisite, so pick me up a few of defeated robots on the way so I can see if I can make the van tougher or at least improve the turret with them! Thankfully we’ve met up with the Wing and Leap Lamb Teams. Someone must really hate Kahn industries, there’s hundreds of them swarming the headquarters and we don’t have an idea of where they are coming form. Mopsy and I are a bit too busy to find out, oh… that looked painful… Leap Lamb just got put through a shutter!”
-Pom-
The screeching of metal was heard as my body was used to plow through the shutter by one of the flying robots.
“Oof…” I hit the ground on my side the robot landed in front of me and was about to extend a whirling saw towards my unprotected face.
“Kidnap Kahn.” The mechanical drone of these less than expressive robots was starting to get to absolutely everyone.
Guns were fire and for once, they weren’t aimed at me. The robot was down, but another two flew in and while they were focusing one on the other thrust a whirling saw at me as I picked myself up.
That’s when Dolly launched off one of the shutters edges and landed in front of me to block the whirling saw, the screech of metal as the saw broke hurt both our ears until the saw broke itself on her skateboard.
The other arm transformed and started to build up a flame, but it was swiftly knocked upwards by Dolly sending a shower of flames into the ceiling. An alarm went off and it started raining indoors thanks to the sprinkler system being set off.
It was then that several shots blasted out the other robots face.
“Oh dog, my ears! At least you’re safe.” Dolly grinned back at me before clamping her paws on her helmet. “Seriously though, ow, all this gunfire and that thing with the saw. I do not want to become one of those stereotypical deaf Dalmatians before I become an adult! At least my helmet is making up for all the noise somewhat.”
“Do you think my ears aren’t ringing too Caper Canine? I’m not wearing anything to protect my ears and the best I got is my wool.” Groaning this out as I stood up and went to the hole in the shutter and saw the mayhem going on outside.
Launchpad seemed like he was used to this kind of thing. With the fact that he’s a friend of the McDuck clan, that’s a given. Molly on the other hoof looked like this was the first time actually being an active part in a fight, at least she was putting that crowbar to good use.
Did I previously think that eighty were coming? Nope, it was more like a hundred and sixty now.
There were just too many for us to deal with one at a time at the rate they were coming at us.
“There’s too many of them, but what do they want?” This seemed like a lot for kidnapping scheme for one or two people depending on if Mr. Kahn had relatives.
“Aren’t they going to ‘Kidnap Kahn’, that’s all they’ve almost been saying!” Dolly commented, looking ready to follow me back into the fight personally after mockingly replicating the robots mechanical tones.
“If they wanted to do that, there would be more of them flying near the top of the building. They are attacking at ground level. Also Shere Kahn might not even be here.” The guy had to go home at some time from his busy job right?
“You will find that I am what some would say… a workaholic.” Came Shere’s deadpan tone from the speakers around the lobby as we stared through the hole in the metal shutter waiting to see if anymore would breached through. “I know what these are, but I doubt they are here to kidnap me Leap Lamb. The one who made these things previously is no longer among the living, they died of old age a week or so ago. I wonder where they would have gotten the resources to even make this many of them.”
“What are they Kahn?” I asked while looking up.
“They are Mechanical Electrical Laborers or MEL for short, there should have only been one made. Their inventor was one mad scientist named Dr. Axolotl who tried to sell me such an unwieldly and destructive product as an automated maid, he unfortunately swore revenge on me instead of fixing the problems inherent in his clumsy machine. I have since tended to prefer people over machines from that and other incidents you may already know of.” Shere didn’t sound worried. “These appear to be a more weaponized versions than the first one and built in bulk. My research and development team still has the original prototype MEL, it is currently not acting up in the slightest and is still comparably safe and secure. This is not a kidnapping attempt, but an attempt to tear down everything I have built… starting with Kahn Industries and then all of Cape Suzette itself. I fear their sucess.”