-Equus, Ponyville, Sugar Cube Corner, Gallus-
“Hey Gallus, is that Gavin?” Pinkie asked as I was sitting at a table with the ever adorable little griffon name Gavin snuggling up to me.
“Yep, apparently I’m Uncle Gal.” That and I was watching Gavin today for Jackie, the fact that she managed to even give birth to Gavin without problem is something else considering how cursed she is on a general basis.
“Uncle Gal…” Snorted Pinkie as she started giggling into her hooves.
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up Pinkie.” I stated blithely and Pinkie Pie immediately does so. “Now can I get something for the little guy here, he looks like he could use a snack, got any baked bads?”
“I still don’t know how you griffons or Spike can eat those things.” Groused out the pink pony. “Though yes, I can make you some.”
“Well I’ll admit that they taste better without the soda and the chips in them.” The minced worms were a necessary part for the flavor and I’m pretty sure little Gavin could agree. “At least I’m not stuck watching Gavin’s cousin Silvers, that little bundle of fun is dangerous.”
“Then who’s watching Silvers today?” Pinkie asked and then Silvers was brought in by Silver Stream who looked a little bedraggled and slightly burnt.
“I warned you.” I stated bluntly to Silver Stream.
“Yeah, but they are still adorable!” Silver Stream stated cheerfully holding up the little chimera and all the heads mewled at me adorably while waving their paws. The dragon head burped up flames and Silver Stream aimed the head at the ceiling and away from every pony around. “I thought it would be a nice day for us Silvers to stick together, I heard you were foal sitting as well.”
“Yeah, but Gavin doesn’t cause nearly as much trouble as Silver, Silvia and Sylvon tend to.” I addressed each head of the chimera that looked at me innocently, about as innocent as Jade could act when she had a piece of fish jerky sticking out of her mouth. “Plus the little guy is fun to be around, those three are trouble.”
The three heads of the chimera all gave me a bright cheerful smiles with closed eyes. That chimera was going to be a real hellion later on in life, especially if they took after my… erg… ‘Abyssinian Sister’… at least more than their other mothers and they were already little troublemakers as it was what with the dragon headed tail.
I don’t know how much worse they could be.
That’s when Silver, the unicorn head of the chimera, eyes and horn lit up and everyone panicked as the chimera was about to have a magical surge in a crowded area.
-Earth, Krakarov Region, Judy-
I was short of breath and my eyes were wide open as I stayed down and hidden, why did they have to be falcons… robot falcons no less!
I continued to wrap my bleeding leg with a torn off piece of my own uniform, all while looking to the sky and keeping my ears pressed against the back of my head as I leaned against a boulder.
I hoped Nick got away, because goodness knows we needed all the help we could get. I was still taking stock of my situation. One of the worst things about the guy having his lair built into a volcano was the heat, that and the magma slug minions that were a sign that something supernatural was going on here.
After Carmelita was captured by Clockwerk, this investigation quickly went to heck in a handbasket. There were forty or more large robot falcons patrolling the region and I had a leg injury slowing me down.
There were days when being an animalistic bunny was rough, but this was one of the worst.
Peeking from behind the rock, I saw at least twenty or so robot falcons flying around in my general vicinity. One wrong movement and they would come to eviscerate me.
Again, why did they have to be falcons? Oh right, because we were dealing with a giant robotic, possibly demonic, owl thing. Well ‘dealing’ would imply that we were succeeding in some capacity. We definitely weren’t, but hopefully Nick could bring some help.
At least I could hear if the falcons coming and pinpoint every single one of them in the air. There were hundreds of them when we were ambushed, but now there were just like forty on constant patrols.
Having that many robots falcons active at once must be prohibitively energy expensive, but this place did seem to have a large geothermal plant built into it and that would explain why the guy could field hundreds of them at once.
Also the tower behind the criminal’s base was hopefully not what I thought it was.
Okay Judy, what did you have going for you at the moment? My shock pistol was still well over half its charge, I wasn’t critically injured, my partner likely made it out okay and I wasn’t freezing to death.
I was more likely to die of hyperthermia, I was better off being in the snow than near the volcano like this and the only reason why I wasn’t in said snow was because of the motion sensors I spotted in the surrounding areas. Didn’t exactly know where I could safely move at the moment.
I was to the west of the only known entrance into Clockwerk’s lair, a narrow pathway beyond a gate that had a ton of mines planted on it by the falcons after my best friend and I got out.
Come on, you’ve been in tougher spots then this. Just got to think of what to do.
Holding my right paw over my pistol I glanced out at the landscape and carefully limped my way over towards the snow to cool off while taking a sip of the canteen I had with my left. First order of business I really needed to cool down and vent the heat from my body through my ears.
-South of Clockwerk’s Lair, Pom-
Sitting in the heat of the volcano felt nice to me, I surveyed the surroundings with my binoculars and saw several things that were not visible to the naked eye. Bentley really knows how to make functional bird watchers like these into something special.
The binoculars could apparently see motion sensors, which I circumnavigated easily, along with a number of other things. Dolly was quietly sitting on my back as I scouted the area with them and she was tense, I could almost feel her itching for some action.
Why does life continue to throw high energy, and possibly maintenance, dogs at me? Not that I’m complaining, because I do love dogs a lot within certain doses. For example, I knew I would never tire of loving my god puppies.
“Dormarch.” I pulled him from my shoulder bag and the PET immediately lit and I received a salute from the fish tailed Dalmatian on the screen. “Can you connect to the binoculars and tell me if there’s anything unusual about what I’m seeing here.”
“Asking for permission to connect to Bentley Tech Binoculars… permission granted.” While Dormarch hadn’t been his cheery self, he was at least willing to help. “For the record, I’m still trying to get used to the stuff I’ve just found out about myself. I’ve a run a self-diagnostic and well… I’ll tell you about it later when we have the time Leap Lamb.”
“What do you make of that tower Dormarch?” Beyond the path leading up to the lair and a little bit on the far side of the central volcanic region was a giant owl shaped tower.
“Pom… that’s… that’s not a tower...” There was a worried look on Dormarch’s face.
“What do you mean that’s not a tower? Sure there’s a large amount of energy being funneled into it, but that seems to be more for the death ray from what I’m picking up.” Bentley of course was actively seeing what I was through the binoculars.
“You don’t see it?” Queried Dormarch curiously, before motioning for me to focus on it. “Okay, the thing may be a tower at the moment with the way it’s sitting, but… it’s actually almost fully functional colossal mechanical owl. It looks to be ninety percent of its construction is completed. It doesn’t appear to have its landing gear and might be capable of flight already.”
“… I don’t think I can fight something the size of a five story building.” Like I’ve had good luck with that before.
“Yeah, that would be a pretty big ask of you.” Thankfully Bentley agreed with that assessment. “Get a sweep of the path up to the lair for me will you Pom? Shanty’s on the lookout for any robot falcon patrols”
I swept the binoculars to the gate, the pathway littered with mines, I focused on the odd placement of the boulders on some of the nearby cliffs.
“I think you need to watch out for those boulders.” I focused the binoculars on them and Bentley marked them down on the binoculars visuals. The Cooper Gang would be leading the assault and their van was being specifically prepped for it.
We already knew Drake would stick with Officer Wilde and try to help find his partner Ms. Hopps.
As for what Smolder, Shanty, Dolly and I would be doing? We would be trying to disable the death ray tower, which apparently is a giant mechanical owl body that Clockwerk might or might not have been planning on moving into after successfully dealing with Sly.
I focused the binoculars higher up the path on a cavern.
“That’s where the controls will likely to be, getting energy readings from there, also biological life signs.” Hearing Bentley mention biological life signs I pointed the binoculars at the magma slug slithering out of the cavern and then I concentrated on one of the robot falcons that was a little bit bigger than I was. “Our van should be able to handle those things no problem, I’ve taken the liberty of adding a lava proof plow onto our vehicle.”
I panned the binoculars up to the path into another portion of the lair from the cavern.
“Can you move the binoculars to the right and down a little?” Following Bentley’s instructions, I saw a path leading past the cavern. The only problem was that it was a lot of open space, but it was a quicker path to the tower. “That’s the way you’ll be going, we’ll draw all sorts of attention to ourselves. Clockwerk is not going to ignore us in the slightest, but he may leave you to his defenses and that will allow you to get closer to that tower sized owl.”
“I do not be liking our chances of actually taking that thing down.” I turned the binoculars and saw Shanty perched on one of the rock pillars barely out of sight of the robot falcons.
Shanty was to the east outside the gates leading up to the lair, near the pathway the Cooper Gang would be using for their assault. Smolder was with her to make sure she didn’t slip and get burned to a crisp in the lakes of molten rock all around the volcano.
“Still no sign of Officer Hopps.” I was worried about the bunny, at least I recognized why Wilde and Hopps sounded familiar. They were around the Camden area when Dr. Mandrill attacked the bank, Dolly even helped them out with the fighting in the streets back then when I took to the sky in a mostly uncontrolled manner.
“Well that’s better than finding a body, Carrots has to be laying low and managed to evade being torn apart.” Out of everyone here, Nick was as worried about Carmelita and his partner Judy as Sly was. “Wait sweep the binoculars back to the left side of the entrance, down a little. There, zoom in!”
“Dried splotches of blood, good eye Officer Wilde. I’m going to start analyzing it…” Before Bentley could say much more, Dormarch spoke up.
“Blood grouping confirms a female grey rabbit’s blood type, I can only hope your partner didn’t go too much farther in. Animalistic rabbits are more vulnerable to hyperthermia than hypothermia, due to a lack of sweat glands that biped rabbits do have, and yes I can distinguish between the two by scanning blood samples.” Rather informative Dormarch, like how dogs pant to exhaust heat from their bodies. Dalmatians were good at handling hot climates, which is why Dolly was perfectly fine with being this close to a volcano. “Do you have sweat glands Nick?”
“Yeah, I’m a more biped than animalistic if that’s what you’re asking.” Nick responded quickly. “Prude Jude is good at faking biped at least.”
“Why would she have a nickname like Prude Jude?” Not important, but I was trying not to focus too much on the giant mechanical owl the size of a building equipped with what Bentley called a death ray.
“Heh, an animalistic she may be, but she’s a prude to naturalists like you.” When Nick said naturalists, I was thinking he was talking about those who acted like animals. “Had to go to a naturalists club with her once as part of a case, basically a place it’s a place full of biped and animalistic nudists to exercise and relax. We were looking for someone at the time and Judy couldn’t look at anyone without feeling squeamish about their lack of clothes, bet she’d actually be pretty uncomfortable around you too Leap Lamb.”
“Did I really need to know that?” Trying not to think about the fact that in general most of the people on Equus were nudists. Thank goodness Minotaurs weren’t nudists, or else I’d have more issues with a few of the visitors that I helped around Huoshan.
“No, but I’ve got to get my fun in somehow, while entirely resisting the urge to rush out there unarmed to be torn apart by robotic birds. My partner is a decent survivalist, she was at the top of her class at the police academy no less.” Mr. Wilde seemed to get somber. “Judy really had something to prove and has long since proved it, but she was definitely compensating for her size and her adorable appearance when I first met her. Also I don’t think anybody knows what it’s like to have almost three hundred brothers and sisters while being the middle child in all of it. It’s a good thing her parents were really good farmers.”
“I think I might know someone who has a comparably sized family.” I looked over my shoulder at Dolly who was sitting there wide eyed and her lower left eyelid twitching.
“Almost…. three hundred… brothers and sisters…” From what was being gathered through our bond, Dolly was trying to imagine the number of her siblings just being doubled and the possible outcome of it. She could barely fathom handling triple the number of puppies, even I didn’t think it was possible. Judy’s parents had to be really good at their jobs to raise that many kids. “To think I thought our family was large and unique… well we’re still the largest ‘animal’ family at least. Don’t know how long that’ll last if we get outed as being close to animalistic.”
“Comparable to Judy’s family? Hah, I’d like to actually see that.” It seemed Nick was both tense and stressed, I was too with Shanty and Smolder being so far out. “Come on Carrots, where are you?”
“Okay guys, start coming on back and I can give you a briefing on a possible plan I’ll have in that amount of time.” It was almost as if Bentley was as quick witted as Equus’s most annoying Abyssinian in existence. Which is more a compliment to Bentley than Jaded.
I put my binoculars on Shanty until she managed to get back onto land and she avoided the sensors deftly. She might not be able to leap as high as I can, but she can really move and I could see her slinking her way between the motion sensors like a professional heading towards my position while Smolder flew a bit higher as she follower our favorite goat.
I wasn’t about to ask what Cooper has been teaching her, because Shanty looked to have learned a lot about taking care of herself. Even then, she still got into danger when I wasn’t around to protect her.
Sighing as the scouting party gathered up, we all started on our way back to the van.
-Cooper Van, ten minutes later-
“Okay, we’ve got a lot of problems going into this. First off, the main pathway is littered with mines, rolling boulder traps and from what Shanty scouted, rock filled with bubbles of a slow acting lethal poisonous gas. There’s no way Clockwerk won’t have found a use for the gas in those boulders. He’s probably already set up a gas trap for Sly.” Bentley was going over each thing we’ve scouted out with a slide show. “That’s going to be the problems we’ll face heading up there, but I’ve already prepared a counter for you Sly. Keep it well hidden until Clockwerk traps you.”
“Can do Bentley.” Sly was staring out the front of the van at the volcano.
“I think Dodo finally be getting what you wanted.” Shanty said as she looked off in a direction at a wall of the van. “He not be finding the rabbit though, also did we really be thinking she would reveal herself to a living mechanical ostrich?”
“That’ll make things somewhat easier then.” Bentley sighed with relief. “Okay, so we’re going to need to know how fast Dodo can get your team through the open pass Pom.”
“Dodo can run at speeds that break the sound barrier when given enough space to build up to it, also he can do that while safely carrying all of our weight quite easily.” Despite being two legs and a neck ending in a head, Dodo was capable of handling a lot of weight. “All the uneven terrain is going to slow him down though.”
“Having a supersonic ostrich machine will help you get close to that mechanical owl body marauding as a tower, but actually getting to it is still going to be a problem. If there are as many robot falcons as Officer Wilde has report, then it’s going to be a big issue as they’ll be likely connected to the owl tower through the geothermal plants we’ll shut down once we make it through.” Bentley showed us a picture of the ‘owl tower’ and it looked more menacing when you got a zoomed in picture of it. “While we’re busy trying to deal with Clockwerk, Wilde and Darkwing will be looking to extract Judy Hopps from the area while our two teams have Clockwerk’s total undivided attention.”
“Carmelita’s not going to want to let you guys go, even if you are helping us out.” Nick sent a glance my way. “She’s not too big on vigilantes either, even if you were technically necessary to saving a lot of people.”
“I don’t think Cape Suzette would still be standing if we didn’t stick around, the robots there were made using a prior models blueprints. If the robots had been made to the same blueprints that the Red MEL had been made with, well... the entire city very well wouldn’t be standing even if you figured out how to deal with the heavily armored robots that didn’t have the same weak point. Thankfully that Red MEL was acting as a central control point for all the other robots.” Clearing his throat, Bentley calmly got us back on track. “We’ll deal with Carmelita after it is all said and done, mostly that’ll be by running really fast and pulling out of the area after we’re sure that Clockwerk is no longer our problem. Sly might pull something, but that’s only if Carmelita is okay by the end of all this. If she’s injured…”
“What can I say, Inspector Fox is my favorite officer and she’s a rather nice view when she’s chasing me down and shooting at me with her shock pistol.” Sly tipped his hat to Nick. “Sorry, but I’m not into guys. Also if Carmelita were hurt, nothing would stop me from making sure Clockwerk wasn’t a threat to anyone.”
“That’s okay, I know this little mink in Zootopia that I might want to start a relationship with. Otherwise I’m kind of married to this job because of my best friend and partner.” Nick didn’t seem to find it too awful to work with us. “Carmelita’s jetpack is probably still out there somewhere, she had to ditch it somewhere before the robot falcons caught up to her. Still has plenty of ammo and fuel left. We didn’t come out here underequipped, we just didn’t expect the number of robot falcons Clockwerk had. The twenty or forty we’re seeing right now? He has at least ten times that waiting in the wings.”
“We’ll deal with it.” I stated with a sigh, receiving some looks from my friends. “We’ll have to if we’re going to end this mechanical monster that ‘Ozzy’ could feel from that far away. Nothing redeemable can put out so much hatred that you can almost feel it in the air like this, even I can almost feel it and we’re not like ‘Ozzy’ when it comes to being sensitive to this kind of stuff.”
“How do we start this plan of yours?” Smolder asked as she got up and came over my way chewing on some gems she had dug up. “I do want to get back to our friends that we left behind for good reasons.”
“I’m glad you asked, Clockwerk thinks he’s well protect well… considering what I asked Dodo to drag here, he’s about to find out what it’s like to mess with someone of my genius.” Opening the door to the back of the van we piled out and saw that Dodo dragging a mostly intact robot falcon with his beak towards us. “Thank you my most intelligent metal friend.”
Dodo dropped the robotic falcon and warbled cheerfully.
“Nick you and Darkwing can start your search once we thoroughly have Clockwerk’s attention, if you want to stay out of it afterwards or help, that’s for you guys to decide.” Bentley moved towards the robot falcon. “Now let’s get this show on the road and we’ll start with giving Clockwerk a black eye!”
-Sobaka, Ocellus-
“Do you think they’ll be alright?” I asked nervously.
“They’ll be fine honey, they’re professionals… I think?” When even Mopsy wasn’t sure, it just made me want to whine more. “How’s your head?”
“Well the positivity around here is nice.” It’s at least cancelling out the mass of raw hatred I could feel in the distance.
“So what’s it like being an Empathic Vampire?” Gosalyn asked with a grin.
“It’s annoying as you wouldn’t believe, I don’t really have that much control over the feelings of others or how hard they will hit me.” At least I know Smolder’s feelings were a certainty. “A true constant migraine around beings like this Clockwerk guy.”
We were currently relaxing at a hotel and staying well out of danger. Sobaka got plenty of visitors, but usually those visitors weren’t as heavily muscled as the surrounding canine bipeds and animalistic people.
“Excuse me, but I believe you are the watchers of my adopted cousin?” We jumped and turned to a duck that resembled Donald, he had a camera hanging from his neck and a shirt covered in floral patterns. His voice certainly wasn’t like Donald’s raspy mess. “I was quite busy in Cape Suzette, but I heard that you and your companions were actively looking for my assistance?”