-Earth, Krakarov, halfway up the crumbling volcano, Judy-
“Oof… could you have made that landing any softer… Whoa!” I held on for dear life as the ostrich started running away as the tower started sinking even worse and the volcano started rumbling and shaking. The ground was breaking up and the tower was still trying to send a last few robotic falcons our way as it sunk.
Apparently something inside it exploded because of our weight making it whatever critical thing that powered its death ray no longer a factor, but it was now cranking out as many robotic falcons as it could and we weren’t ever on a shortage of those.
The ostrich was rushing southeast down the side of the volcano as areas of it erupted around us, I hope he knew where we were going. I turned around in the seat and started shooting, the chasing falcons swooped and swerved around my shots as we passed over terrain.
I heard a warble that sounded like a warning and held on to the back edge with my left paw as the ostrich leapt over a large river of lava and turned his head back to fire off a quick blueberry croissant into the face of a flacon. Said croissant shattered and a piece of it got stuck into the closest falcon’s wings and it crashed into the river of lava behind us.
Note to self, pastries are weapons when wielded by a large mechanical ostrich with an unerring sense of accuracy. I looked into the distance as the tower was still sending out falcons and the ones almost on us were catching up.
Continuing to hold on with my left paw, the ostrich steered his way through the collapsing bits of terrain and an avalanched of boulders toppling down after us as sections of the volcano fell inward. He jumped every now and then and was picking up the pace and outrunning the falcons, but every swerve and change in direction slowed us down and allowed them to catch up.
I raised my right pistol and fired a quick shot when we got a moment of a straightaway, the blast of electricity missed as the three falcons soared around it. It wasn’t like anyone would have better aim than I would in this situation.
The next two shots I fired were wide on purpose and then a shot a delayed blast in the center, the falcon dodged the first two and then dodged straight into my last shot.
With still three that were close to us, that’s when my ride decided to jump with a spin and landed to go sliding backwards down a slope backwards.
“What are you doing?!” Why did I choose to ride this thing again? It fired a blast of rippling energy from its beak that wiped out another one of the three falcons. Ten more on approach in the distance, several more rising into the air.
The birds head warbled at me and pointed down the slope at the lava below when I tried to aim up at them, I looked up at the two falcons swooping down at us and he insistently pointed his beak down the slope.
The ostrich didn’t seem to be firing on them… wait… I looked down the slope and it occurred to me what my ride was thinking. We couldn’t slow down and we needed to lose our tails… so…
“Three… two…. one… now!” I stowed my pistol as I counted, threw myself forward and grabbed onto the seat.
The dragging of his mechanical claws against the ground stopped as he leapt backwards, sending us over the river of lava, the falcons didn’t have time to pull up and slammed into the liquid rock and melted as we landed on the other side of the river skidding.
The ostrich shifted its hip and swung around to continue running forward and towards a pit, that’s where I saw the Cooper Gang van avoiding lava pooling up from the ground as the large circular pit crumbled around them.
In my distraction I barely noticed when the ostrich clamped onto my ears with its beak, it wasn’t a painful pressure. I was lifted up and he ran around the perimeter of the pit and then tossed my onto the van, I landed on my feet and looked up at him as he leapt off and landed in front of the van what was he doing.
He pointed at the nearby wall and then poked his chest while looking at me, what did he want me to do here?
“What’s going on up here?” Carmelita blinked at me as she poked through the hole in the roof where the missing gun used to be and then looked to the ten falcons approaching and another swarm following in behind them.
“We have incoming, that tower is still producing falcons and that’s all it can do now!” I shouted the both of us pulled out our shock pistols and raised them, Carmelita clambered onto the roof. I looked down. “Back the van up to the wall, the ostrich is getting us out of here somehow!”
“We’ll cover him!” Carmelita wasn’t willing to leave anyone behind, she could easily make it out of here with her leaping ability being on par with Leap Lambs.
“Here, take my gas gun, use whatever is left in the last canister and get up there!” Darkwing called out from below.
That’s when Nick joined us too by starting to climb up onto the roof and he had to hold as the van backed up toward the wall.
It wasn’t too high for us to climb out if we jumped from the roof of the van, but it was too far to carry all the injured out of here and the volcano was going down too fast to get them all out in time.
“Carmelita, can you shorten the cliff to make a ramp up with a few blasts?” At Nick’s suggest, Carmelita turned and started charging a shot on her shock pistol in response.
She let loose a blast and a foot of the wall crumbled into a slope, the robot falcons were already diving towards us.
“Judy, help her, I’ve got the falcons if they get too close.” Nick to aim and squeezed a few rounds of electrified clouds from the gas gun and the shots flew straight, but after too long they expanded and dissipated. “Got a sense of range on this thing now.”
Looking back around us lava was starting to fill up the pit the further it sunk, I turned my own pistol up at the cliff and triggered a charge.
Nick started to fire as the falcons drew into attack, he struck two out of five shots and managed to stop them from crashing into the ostrich moving towards the front of the van head lowered. The falcons were circling around for another run at us.
Carmelita fired another shot and I did too, the cliff behind the van shortened from nine feet up to about eight or seven feet with a slope. We charged another shot, Nick was firing rapidly as they closed it they slowed down and went for the ostrich as he was pressing his head up under the front of the van.
Did it seriously think it could lift something this… the entire back of the van tilted upward and I heard stress noises coming from beneath us. I saw Carmelita giving the incoming birds a glanced as we charged our shots
“We need to break the cliff further Carmelita!” I was still aiming at it
“We need to deal with the falcons, or else we won’t make it up onto the cliff at all!” She returned as another Falcon was blown from the air by a concentrating Nick. “We can’t let them attack the ostrich.”
“Tie breaker here, my point is that the ostrich is already damaged enough as it is, we deal with the falcons first before the next wave comes in. We can concentrate fire on collapsing the cliff afterwards!” Doing so as Nick stopped a falcon from ripping into the backside of the poor metal ostrich trying to save us. Carmelita and I joined Nick in wave of unavoidable fire that took down the remaining seven falcons as the van tilted upwards further. “Hold it there buddy, now cliff!”
The ostrich stop and warbled in a strained tone. We turned and blasted the cliff with two full charged shots, it was now sloping sharply at six feet.
“Okay buddy lift, you can do it! Everyone’s counting on you!” The van lifted up slightly and a jerk as we heard something buckle slightly underneath. “At least push so the van’s back wheel is on the slope, hurry!”
“We’ve hit the cliff enough, anymore and we threaten to crush ourselves with it!” Carmelita stated as the rear of the van heaved upwards and then the ostrich started stepping forward as the van was sharply inclined and precariously balanced on its neck. We had to hold onto the roof, the wheel was almost on the bottom of the slope and the pink hippo poked his head out.
“Just a little more, you’ve got this big buddy!” The pink hippo driver of the Cooper Gang said as he leaned out and looked at the rear wheels almost pressing into the slope.
The ostrich clenched its right legs toes into the ground and then lifted up its left leg, I could hear the metal straining as it pressed its left to the underside and clamped its mechanical talons onto the underside of the van.
Lifting with its other leg and head, I could almost hear it warbling in pain from the stress.
“Stop the falcons, they’re going for the ostrich!” The next ten falcons swooping in were coming low and like Nick said, they were targeting the last active member of Team Leap Lamb getting us to safety.
Despite the wave of fire, seven of the ten falcons were total and the three managed to score hits on the planted leg of the ostrich before we could deal with them.
One self-destructed after it hit the lava doing further damage to our poor friend’s right leg and if that wasn’t bad enough his right foot was slowly being drench in lava now.
In spite of the damage to the ostrich the van lifted a little higher, I heard the sound of rubber squealing as the tire hit the makeshift and uneven rocky slope.
I heard moving underneath, then the right leg lifted away and the van pushed further up the slope. I could hear a pained warble and the van continued to be pushed upward. It slid forward a bit, scaring us and then we saw the top of his head pressing against the vans plow.
Another heave and the van almost manage to make it up the cliff, we bottomed out. That’s when the ostrich lunged forward and butting the plow. Pushing us up the cliff the rest of the way and flopped onto his face and his started to slide backwards out of sight.
We were quiet for a second after the van pulled back a few feet and hit its breaks, the head reared up and the injured mechanical ostrich slowly limped its way up on to the slope. This was a sigh of relief, what didn’t make us sigh with relief was another flight of falcons incoming.
“Come on, onto the van, you can make it!” Murray, that’s right, he’s The Murry, muscle and getaway driver of the Cooper Gang. We’ve been kind of busy with a hectic night.
“We’ve got you covered come on!” I fired four blasts into the air as the ostrich limped forward with impressive speed and managed to hop onto the van. “Drive like a mad hippo!”
“Hey I resemble that remark!” As the hippo hit the gas and we swerved around and started heading downhill towards the edge of the volcano, couldn’t focus on that falcons are tailgating us. With that odd sentence fresh in my mind Carmelita, Nick and I were firing shot after shot into the falcons coming after us.
“Hold, on to something!” The turtle shouted, we quickly crouched down and grabbed the edges of the open roof as the van ramped upwards and we slammed into a sloped that erupted in several magma vents above us afterwards. The world was shaking even worse than it had been before and various spots around Krakarov were erupting. “Not, good, we’re not going to make it at this rate.”
“Stop being so negative Bentley, I’m driving here!” The van swerved as pillars erupted from the ground all around us and then sunk into pits of magma as lava sprayed out.
“I know I’m bordering on passing out from heatstroke here, but… can’t we all focus on surviving this!” I certainly was, my ears were burning trying to bleed off all the heat of our surroundings surging with each new break in the surrounding landscape. I aimed and fired another shot that took out a falcon, that last few that were evading us had their eyes flashing.
“Get down!” Carmelita grabbed us and pulled us into the van, the explosions rocked the van, but we outpaced the explosion. Carmelita clambered. “Can’t this thing go any faster? I mean you always seem to have some method of escaping me personally! Also the next wave of falcons are going to catch up soon.”
“Yes, but I’m saving that for ramping us to safety in the end, it’s going to be a near thing with all this weight. I’m trying to ration our fuel here, we still need to drive back to town you know!” Suddenly the van shifted, it started moving much faster. “What was… no!”
“What was that Murray?” Looking to Sly Cooper and the various others secured to the insides of the van, he was trying to stay calm judging by his.
“Our big buddy leapt off of us… do you think he heard me?” Murray looked in the rear view mirror. “At least he’s keeping up.”
I leapt up and grabbed the edge of the vans sunroof and pulled myself up to see the ostrich trailing after us, it turned its head about to look at the flacons coming down on us.
It warbled a declaration, but the other machines were quite mindless and probably set to attack the closest living thing, meaning us. It just occurred to me that I didn’t see Clockwerk anywhere.
“What happened to Clockwerk?” I finally asked.
“He’s dead, watched him dissolve personally, his hatred is what got him this far and without it he was quite literally nothing.” Sly grunted out. “It was like his mechanical body decayed from thousands of years of aging in seconds.”
“Good to know that his last act might be him trying to get revenge from the grave by sending constant mechanical falcons at us until the tower is finally dunked into the volcano.” A massive explosion took out a large upper portion of the volcano and a wave of quick moving lava started pouring down the side towards us. “There’s also that I guess…”
I took aim from the sun roof as Nick and Carmelita joined me trying to shoot out the remaining falcons coming at us, we weren’t alone as the mechanical ostrich was blasting them too and was staying at least five to ten feet behind us despite its leg and body looking like they’ve seen better days. Its neck was also crumpled in places.
“Almost at the bottom and I’m seeing a lot of lava, you guys finished off those falcons yet?!” Murray was driving like a madman, which is good in this situation that he knew how to handle rough terrain that was constantly breaking apart.
“We’ve got three left, maybe another batch, but the tower has thankfully sunk into the volcano enough that it can’t produce any more.” My answer was followed by a shot from my pistol. Maybe we could get out of here without someone else getting seriously injured, at least we can deal with these meager numbers. “Make that two in the immediate vicinity.”
A mechanical falcon missing its right wing tumbled its way into falling straight into a magma vent.
Team Leap Lamb has had enough injuries already and they dealt with the most number of robot falcons in seconds, we were all going to have bruises after this rough ride. I don’t even think we can match the outrageous number they destroyed with that massive pillar shaped tornado to the sky, I didn’t even know tornadoes came in any other shapes aside from cones.
“Well hurry, up, you’re going to want to be inside when we fly off the ramp Murray is aiming for!” Well if Bentley the Brains said it’s important, then we’d better listen. The two remaining falcons grew closer, but they weren’t getting anywhere when a ball of electrified gas struck one blowing away its head.
The van suddenly jerk to the right as a section of the volcano suddenly collapsed. Carmelita then fire a shot that hit the last one in the chest and blew it apart.
“Ugh, we finally got them.” I ducked down into the van, as did Carmelita and Nick. We tried to find a place in this crowded vehicle to hunker down and hold some of the injured in place.
-Murray-
So volcano is both crumbling and erupting, there’s wave of lava coming up behind us quickly and it was the bottom of the night and three bases loaded… wait I shouldn’t get distracted while driving on a volcano that’s shaking apart!
I veered around a jutting piece of stone in a perfect drift. I’m going to go into racing for a while, we needed a huge break from all the heists we’ve been doing and this was probably the most dangerous thing we’ll ever do in our lives. If there was anything else, I know I’d always be there for Sly and Bentley, we’re family.
“I’m about to hit the booster…” The tire of the van scrabbled against the stone and the pathway down the ramp was collapsing before, but The Murray was not daunted by such danger! “Wish the path was far straighter so we can build up more speed.”
I was veering left and right trying to keep us on the pathway that was narrowing drastically as we made a run up to the wide ramp. I pushed the button and we blurred forward, towards the ramp and took off into the air.
Sure there were a few screams in my ears as we were going up, but I’d think we make it…
At least I thought we would make it until we started plummeting towards the lava.
I realized I was about to become a well done hamburger hippo, along with everyone else who was awake were screaming their heads of as we were falling short of the snowy forest leading up to the volcano.
That’s when something happened, something heavy slammed right into us from below.
The entire van suddenly flipped upwards and forward to land right side up on the ground and I hit the brakes and turned before we ran straight into a tree at full speed.
Still hit the tree though, but it stopped us completely and the damage to my baby was thankfully minimal. This van was everything to me aside from Sly and Bentley, it has saved our lives once again!
“Uhn… everyone okay?” Miss Carmelita groaned as she picked herself up.
-Dormarch-
I scanned our surroundings a bit and sighed.
“Everyone has a large amount of bruising from that impact and the rough landing, but you’re all in relatively stable conditions beyond the seriously injured being a little worse off.” I spoke up as I diagnosed the health of everyone present. “Can anyone get an eye on Optimized Ostrich?”
“Is that what he calls himself?” The grey rabbit, Officer Judy I believe, said before collapsing face forward into the vans floor, finally succumbing to heatstroke breathing harshly. She was still awake so I answered.
“Well it’s his hero name, he likes playing along with the rest of Leap Lamb’s Team. Please rest, you and a few others are suffering from heatstroke.” I did a small scan of the surrounding area. “Can someone go out and check if he made it? I believe he was the one to hit the van to safety and caused us to flip.”
“He timed it very well then, but wouldn’t he fall into the… oh…” Everyone that was awake and aware enough to realize what just happened as Nick Wilde just voice something perturbing to the lot of us. “Stay here Carrots, medical scanners orders.”
“I’m technically not a medical scanner, but it is a function I have.” I retorted, the words ‘search engine’ still ringing in my mind.
Everyone awake and in good enough condition suddenly sat up straight and panicked to get out of the van to see what became of Dodo.
I hoped he was alright, he was made of some durable stuff, stuff that can solve a temporary amount of extreme heat, but falling into lava stream surrounding Krakarov… yeah I could understand their worry and even felt it myself.
-Nick-
Leaving the back of the Cooper Gang’s van I made my way towards the cliff to looking at the volcano as it had a minor eruption and continued to sink into the ground with world shaking effort.
I didn’t see Optimized Ostrich, a second later a clawed left foot slammed again the wall of the cliff coming out of the river of lava and the ostrich pulled himself from the lava. Slightly melting as he did so and clambered his way up slowly up towards us.
“Everyone get back, he’s coming up!” I shouted to Carmelita, Bentley and Murray, everyone else was in the van.
I backed away and the left foot slightly melting, covered in molten bits of metal the poor ostrich pulled himself up and over the edge and chunks of him splattered against the ground.
He opened his beak and a faint pained warbled escaped, we just stared at him in horror as his head was almost falling from his slowly melting body. He slowly retracted his head towards his torso and his legs folded up beneath him in slow jerky movements and the light in his eyes started dying.
-Dodo last memories-
Running forward, crouching at the crumbling edge and then pushing all the legs hydraulics at full power, impacting the van head first and then falling into the inferno. Nothing, but pain since, but still managed to find traction and continued forward.
Shanty was safe… rider was safe… Van was okay… error… damage substantial… 91% functionality loss...
“Come on harmony programs, emergency function… code G.I.A.N.T.E.G.G.” Voices in Dodo’s head were nice, maybe they help Dodo? “Come on, do it now programs, we’re losing Dodo here! Preserve that mind damn it, he’s friendship personified and he’s learned so much! It can’t end this way!”
Sys//.//… fun…. fun…. function-junction… acti...vate…
-Carmelita-
I felt a little sorrow at seeing him die in front of us and that last pitiable warble could be felt by everyone as his melting form stopped moving entirely.
“How are we going to tell them about this?” Bentley walked towards the molten mess that saved our lives twice within the last hour.
“Can we bring him?” The hippo had the right idea.
“Do you think you can even get him…” Bentley started to ask, but then Murray roared.
“You better believe I can, because I want to too!” Their were tears in Murray's eyes. "It just... he... needs to cools down."
“Yeah…” Bentley stated somberly.
-A few hours later-
We were all silent, on the road to Sobaka.