-Earth, Russia Krakarov Volcano, Clockwerk’s lair, Sly-
“I’m going to save Carmelita Bentley, make sure we have an escape route ready.” I hopped out of the van.
“Pathway opened Bentley, I’ve done my part and I’m back in the PET.” Dormarch’s voice said as I sprinted away through some doors.
I was making my way into Clockwerk’s inner sanctum, it was time to show him my displeasure. When I arrived I saw Carmelita in a position I didn’t want her to currently be in, even if she was cute when she was angry and currently a lovely damsel in distress.
Tightened my grip on my cane, looked at all the traps between me and her and started moving to rescue our favorite and completely fair inspector.
-Entrance, Judy-
Okay, so we were helped by Saint Canard’s crime fighting vigilante, not that he was popular or even infamous. Glad he was here though, because we might need him to figure out how to take down that flying monster currently scanning the landscape for any intruders.
Said intruders would be us three or Leap Lamb’s team wherever they currently were, certainly glad there was no radiation or fallout from whatever they did to cause that massive explosion.
“How are we going to bring something that large down?” I asked as I looked down at my shock pistol and then up the flying behemoth. “I don’t think a shock pistol is going to do enough damage to all of that, our shock pistols didn’t help much against Clockwork either.”
“His name is supposed to be said with an emphasis on an E where the second O is Carrots.” My partner peeked from behind the cover of the large rock as the massive legless machine flew overhead. “Easiest way to take it down would be gravity, but… I don’t even know how that’s managing to stay airborne. It’s flying on metal wings for crying out loud! How can something that heavy fly?!”
“Not going to lie, I’ve seen stuff just as weird as this like Gi-ants.” Darkwing’s commentary aside I spot something stuck on the flying towers left eyebrow.
“Speaking of Gi-ants, there’s the jetpack Nick! Remember when Carmelita ditched it to get away from the falcons?” I pointed it out and they too saw it dangling by its straps. “That thing was made specifically for fighting tough targets like tanks and the like. It’s on loan to us from Tokyolk, Inspector Tezuka heard we were going to be dealing with large machine problems and insisted we pick it up when we arrive. She had it on priority same day delivery too.”
“Inspector Tezuka, the crow that hates high tech criminal’s right?” Wait, how would Darkwing know that? I turned to ask him and he held up a hand. “Part-time SHUSH agent.”
“A vigilante with connections.” Nick grinned, while giving me an entirely smug look. I quickly pulled out my wallet and planted a twenty into his waiting paw which he quickly slipped into his pockets. “Nice.”
“So we can’t arrest him, because he has government backing. He can cover for the Cooper Gang and Leap Lamb’s team and can even legally call this a secret SHUSH mission. Carmelita is going to be quite peeved to hear about this if we survive this mess, especially when Cooper is in her sights and he legally comes to her rescue.” I wasn’t even angry, I was actually impressed with the fact that Darkwing could pull it off while coming off like a complete nobody in a costume based on an old television show to most people. “In any case if we can get to that jetpack, then we can deal with the both Clock-‘werk’ and his massive gravity defying headache currently circling the volcano. Shooting one of those giant wings off has to make it stop defying physics right?”
“How are we going to do that? It wouldn’t be a good idea to shoot at the jetpack with your shock pistol.” Nick’s right, the technology in the jetpack was a bit volatile if powerful. One of the few jetpacks in the world that can sustain flight for more than three hours without refueling, still had about an hour’s worth and lots of ammunition still left in it.
“Leave getting it down to me, I can probably hit it off safely with my gas gun or I can get up there and bring it down carefully personally.” Darkwing twirled his weapon and then opened it up to pull out a canister and then pulled another from his cape as he stashed away the first one. “Getting up there will use a full load of arrow gas, can the jetpack survive a fall from that high up or do I have to go up and fly it down?”
“Fly it down.” Nick and I said at the same time and we smiled at each other. “Jinx. Darn it Judy, (jinx).”
I grinned at Nick and he grumbled passed me a five dollars from his wallet because I said the exact same thing he did and jinxed him. Darkwing rolled his eyes out our shenanigans.
“Hold the fort down here and try not to draw its attention, when I head on up.” Darkwing stated as he started to take aim upwards as the slow flying massive owl slowly circled back around. “If you can, try to meet up with the Cooper Gang by carefully going up that path they blazed through into the cavern up there where Clockwerk’s lair is. They’re our ride out of here.”
-Karakov side, Dodo-
Eating dead flying robots, because maybe Dodo can learn to fly from structural consumption? Though Dodo didn’t understand why he was able to do this, he was never allowed to before.
Also flying seemed… fun?
“That’s right Dodo, flying is fun and you’ve already got a great handle on love and being generous!” PinkPie.EXE shouted from within his head. “Do you think if you got enough of those scattered parts together, would we actually be able to grow working wings?”
Pecking at more destroyed machine parts and continuing to eat them. I remember growing into this current shape from a small form that could fly, Dodo was a Cuckoo Drone before becoming an ostrich type Land Strider. Such a thing was preordained by previous programming and natural growth beyond that was not allowed nor was being ‘nice’.
Dodo liked being nice and friendly and didn’t miss previous programming.
Wait…
Since previous programming was also now no longer available and preventing upgrades and growth, Dodo is allowed to grow wings and modify his current form.
Overall structure will remain the same, Shanty likes Dodo the way Dodo is. Though making a little extra room for friends and being a little bigger wouldn’t hurt. This would require the stored data of EGG Mobile’s hover parts to assist in flight capacity, all necessary parts were present for recreation of the energy efficient hover unit.
So Dodo will use this information to upgrade a bit, while remaining recognizable! First consumption of spare parts to begin the process and then find a place to start metal-morphosis process.
“Ooh… fascinating, can I help with the redesign process?” The purple harmony program suddenly stated with excitement. “Also I wouldn’t suggest starting this process in terrain as unstable as this.”
Dodo didn’t mind helping, the six programs of harmony were his friends and true friendship mathematically equaled good things.
-???, Pom-
My chest was in agony as I felt something press down on it sharply. As I gasped and tried to sit up, I felt a pair of hooves on me, one wrapping around my chest and carefully pinning me down and the other covered my mouth as gently as it could.
“Please, don’t be making too much noise Pom. We’re not exactly being in a good situation.” Still, Shanty held me tight in a snuggle. “Also I’m glad I was able to be getting you breathing again like you be doing for me.”
“Dol… ugh…” I tried to say Dolly, because feeling a crippling pain from my chest stopped me and I put a hoof over where my heart is. I squeezed my eyes shuts and I could feel a few tears dropping from my eyes into my wool.
“Come on Pom, don’t put yourself under too much stress after Shanty just revived you. It took Shanty a minute or two to get you breathing again” Smolder was right at my side a second later. “Dolly’s fine and she’s right here with us, but she’s out cold, still breathing. You, however, weren’t when we landed here. Like Shanty said we need to be quiet, we at least took out all the robots falcons that came at us. Don’t honestly know if that was truly the last of them though.”
“Where?” I turned my head and tried to breathe carefully, my chest was burning. “It’s kind of hard to breathe.”
“Considering where we are… yeah, that checks.” Where were we Smolder? You and Shanty were blocking my view of our surroundings, the most I could see was a solid metal floor and felt some kind of rumbling movement. “It’s hard to breathe for those not naturally built for flight when we’re high up as we are. Your gliding form is cool and all Pom, but when you aren’t using it I don’t think you are meant for altitudes this high.”
“Where.” I stated with a more firm tone, despite how craggily it came out.
“That be the rub, but I think we can be handling it easily enough.” Shanty said while grinning worriedly and looking away. Not a good vote of confidence for where we were from that. “Once we can figure out what we be doing from here. Smolder and I be the only ones to stay awake through what we be doing and it is being quite awesome. The problem is… we be landing on the Heavy Hooter after we stopped going up.”
“Dolly’s magically drained herself, so she’s out until she gets plenty of rest. I at least know what magical exhaustion looks like thanks to Ocellus. You… you lost your ability to breath three fourths of the way up, Shanty thankfully knows how to do CPR.” Smolder looked at my chest and pressed a claw down on it making me wince as my erratic heartbeats made me greedily suck in as much air as I could, then she turned and picked up Dolly to show me that the Dalmatian was still breathing if unmoving and out cold. “Can you be honest with how your heart currently feels Pom?”
“Like it’s going a mile a minute and that my chest is trying to kill me… also did Shanty just say what I thought she did?” I lifted my head up and saw two massive wings swing up and then go back down. We were currently on the giant death ray owl?! “Oh we are so dead if it figures out we’re here.”
“Yeah, don’t know how you guys are getting out of this one honestly.” Smolder shrugged, she could survive this by carefully flying away and not being spotted. Fortunately enough, I knew abandoning us wouldn’t cross her mind. “We’ll come up with something before the owl notices us, we have plenty of time before it will...”
“Darkwing Duck!” Darkwing flew above us holding onto an arrow shaped cloud’s shaft and let go to drop down onto the back of the flying tower sized owl with us.
I let out a long drawn out sigh.
The Heavy Hooter tracked him with its head and it turned a full one hundred and eighty degrees, so it was now staring at us all down its back and its eyes started glowing malevolently preparing to fire its death rays.
“I don’t think I have it in me to actually dodge this…” I stated with a calm finality as I tried to stand up.
“I can’t be cutting through the beam with a single swing.” Shanty wilted. “I also not be having enough water in my body to riptide through it.”
“Sorry Ocellus.” Smolder you were one of the best dragons I ever knew. “Friendship and all that.”
“Don’t know what you guys are worried about, but I’ll find some way to get you all down safely.” Darkwing said turning to us as he twirled his gas gun in his right hand. “Somehow without crashing this thing with you on top of it.”
“I’ve just been revived from a heart attack, Caper Canine is out cold for the short remainder of our lives and we’re about to be hit with a death ray because of you.” The venom in my voice was fairly even toned. “It didn’t even know we were here until you showed up.”
“Hey, don’t worry, I’ve got this.” I’m sorry to think this Darkwing, but I didn’t quite hold your level of optimism here.
He gripped his gas gun with both his hand and fired a second before the death ray, the beam splattered his canister and… I blinked.
To our amazement the death ray was scattered all over the place into many smaller slightly less deadly rays that were nowhere close to hitting us and they were scorching some damage across the giant flying mechanical owl’s back. We passed through the gas cloud a second later.
“Refraction gas, not toxic to anything living either.” Calmly stated Darkwing as he unloaded the canister from his gas gun and put another one in it. “Useful for preventing sunburns on a nice day at the beach too!”
The large mechanical owl flapped in an unusual manner and seconds later a ten or so robot falcons rose up into the air above the Heavy Hooter's back and started to circle around for us.
“Uh…” Smolder intoned dumbly at seeing more robot falcons.
“I didn’t think it still had those left after whatever it was you did… say you girls can still fight right?” Darkwing tried with a weak grin.
“You’re asking us that when we’re basically down two?” Please note that I’m not in a fighting condition here Darkwing, but I would fight if I had to. “Shanty had to revive me since I stopped breathing after what we put ourselves through, I’m not exactly in great health at the moment. So let me ask you a question right back, how many times can you reliably use that refraction gas stuff?”
“So- we’re on a bit of a time crunch now…” Darkwing started off slowly as the robot falcons dived down on us and he raised his weapon at them.
“I can still be fighting, but not at my best.” Thankfully, Shanty was quite aware of outnumbered we were and there was the fact that the death ray could fire again at any time. “This is getting a bit crazy even for me and I don’t be having nearly that much water!”
“Yeah, even if they can’t critically injure me, I can’t exactly go claw to claw with those things alone.” Throws in Smolder with her arms crossed huffing out small spout of flames in anger. “One of them could simply drag me away from helping or protecting you guys.”
“If only you could greed out… but that wouldn’t end well would it?” I saw the look on Smolder’s face, it answered my question before I even bothered to ask what I wanted to. She might be a dragon, but she wasn’t a monster.
Looking up the eight metal falcons almost upon us, I carefully took up Dolly and wrapped my left hoof protectively around her where I sat as I armed my right hoof with her skateboard ready to protect us in the best capacity I could manage.
Shanty glared at the flying bird machines and took up position in front of us with raised hooves ready to start swinging away.
Both Darkwing and Smolder moved forward and started blasting fire and gas, the gas was apparently ignitable and created a directed explosion when Smolder’s flames came into contact with the clouds.
The combination of the two took out at five of the eight, the other three set past them and to us.
Darting forward, Shanty cartwheeled into a wild windmill of flashing arcs that splits on of the eagles in half. She halted her aerial cartwheel drew both hooves together and slashed out both hooves to create a large axe shaped crescent in the air that cut off the lower portion of the robot falcon.
As for the last one, I held up the skateboard as the last robot falcon slammed into it claws first and it tried to crush the skateboard in my grip, I was glad I was still able to brace against the metal at my back with my wool.
It was unfortunate for it that the board wouldn’t be torn apart so easily by physical force as it pressed down on me and I was keeping Dolly glued to my chest with my wool. It was now trying to use its weight to crush us when it was apparent that crushing the board wasn’t going to work.
“You be leaving her alone!” On the back flap of its wings and in the middle of a screech, Shanty appeared lashing her left hoof upwards to tear through its wings and then spun to slash her right hoof through its neck taking its head off.
“Not made of the same materials as the MELs huh?” I said with a shiver as the falcon body tumbled backwards and down the back of the Heavy Hooter’s torso while leaving its severed head, wires still sparking, parked neatly in my lap.
“No, but they are still being hard to cut through!” Shanty looked at the wings as they flapped and several robot falcons came off its wings and soared up, the Heavy Hooter’s head also continued to glare at us.
“Darkwing why did you come up here in the first place when you didn’t exactly know we were hiding on its back?” It needed to be asked before the next eight robot falcons could come swooping at us, I was already standing and cradling a limp Dolly in my left hoof and my breath was getting a bit ragged.
Now was probably not a good time to have a heart attack, after breathing failure I had earlier.
“The left eyebrow has a jetpack we need to help us possibly bring either this thing or Clockwerk down.” Darkwing exclaimed as he and smolder took aim. “Setting dispersal for wide, can you time your fire breathe correctly?”
“Do dragon’s lava surf? Of course I can!” Smolder and Drake Mallard were interacting well enough, plus both of them were more resilient than Shanty, Dolly or me.
“What if the Heavy Hooter is preparing to fire, can you possibly focus on both?” Not like we were doing more than just defending ourselves and he even said we needed to get. I could already almost feel the glare of the tower’s head building energy.
“Then we’ll have to take out this batch mechanical falcons quickly before it fires.” Well Darkwing had his priorities straight. “After I disperse the beam, we can then all go for its head all at once to get what we need!”
Was there a safe way to get Shanty and Dolly down from here? Can I please not have to run towards the glaring head of the tower sized mechanical owl we were sitting on? Its eyes were starting to glow.
“It’s firing right now.” Stating this while clutching at my pained chest with a hoof, really should listen to Dormarch about my health. “Shanty… behind… ngh…”
I rolled from my back to my stomach to face the head, I could see the jetpack dangling from its eyebrow. It looked chunkier and bigger than any jetpack I’ve seen before. I planted Dolly’s skateboard tail first in front of us and held Dolly close as I scrunched up.
Ignoring the explosion behind me, Shanty came up to my side and planted herself next to me in holding the board in place.
“No-no-no!” Darkwing started to shout before the beam struck our position, I was more worried about him as he didn’t have an immovable wall between him and the beam. The shattering of a canister and the pressure of the beam let up on us, as I saw various smaller beams spreading out.
“Is everyone okay Shanty? I’m not exactly doing so hot at the moment.” I slowly stood up, blinking the spots out of my eyes. It was becoming slightly easier to move and I was going to be quite hungry after this, I could already tell.
“Darkwing and Smolder be moving out of the way.” Shanty informed me as I started to move up the back of the giant robotic owl. “Are you being okay Pom?”
“Not really, help me get Dolly on my back, we’re rushing the head now.” As I said this another flight of robotic falcons took wing, the back of the owl was scorched slightly. It was protected from doing damage to itself
“Can’t you be using your bark breaker?” Shanty said as she started helping me trot up the giant metal owls back. “Also why doesn’t it be shaking us off?”
“What do I target that won’t have repercussions for us Shanty? I don’t want you to be hurt by something this large crashing into the ground and being close enough to the death ray that it explodes is going to harm me if I try to disable at least one of the eyes.” The one thing that was still going for me was my mind, which was notably moving far faster than my body could cope with at the moment. We had to get Shanty down safely and to Dodo “If it tries to shake us off it might fall to the ground, if it does that then it might not be able to get up into the air again if it breaks the ground and hits a nasty pocket of volcanic activity. It can comfortable keep flying in a circle and trying to blast us off while sending robot falcons at us, it might even have the ability to generate them quickly.”
“I’m trying to keep you awake and active.” Shanty sounded pained about me hurting, she carefully draped Dolly across my back and I glued her in place with my wool as we moved forward. Me leading with Dolly’s skateboard in my right hoof. “You be having a nasty flank wound.”
“Comes with the territory of doing heroic things Shanty… ugh… I’m going to need a checkup with Dormarch after this.” As we continued to make our way closer to the head, I thought about how we were going to get the jetpack off the eyebrow. “I’m going to have more far more scars after we’re done here.”
I looked back at the flight of falcons as they swooped around and started coming for us claws first, several bolts of energy flew by before two of them were struck from the air from below. Beyond the large flapping metal wings I could see two small figures on the side of the volcano far below.
“At least we be having lots of help!” Stated Shanty as we got closer to the Heavy Hooter’s head.
“Yeah, but how long can they keep helping before the big owl starts targeting them with falcons or its death ray?” Darkwing said as he caught up to us with Smolder flying next to him as we approaching the head opening its mouth revealing a large rack of missiles. “And then there’s that… great...”
-Sly-
"Coopers..." A rumbling voice stated as my nightmares given form stepped forward, my parent's murderer that just trapped me, Clockwerk. "Always with the weakness of sentiment, you and your friends will perish here and I will finally be victorious."