//------------------------------// // 186. Not Playtime? // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Earth, Saint Canard Theme Park, employee backroom, Tobias Rieper- They did not follow me… smart. You may have survived my first attempt, but I’ll leave the lifeless fool to deal with you for the time being. I wonder if you or your companion will even notice the truth behind him. I know he won’t defeat you at least, and I’ll be waiting. I stepped out into the dark city dressed like an Egghead of the reborn F.O.W.L. organization. A fake beak strapped to my face, I adjusted my helmet slightly and set off to find a vantage point and blend in with the others that have taken over the city. Bullets wouldn’t work very well on Leap Lamb, only immediately lethal traps. -Fun House Arena, Pom- Dormarch was being rather quiet from where he sat strapped in to the pink cloth on my forehead, he was either busy coordinating things with Ms. Shuttle or he wasn’t trying to distract me. “How about you show me your pearly whites?” Quackerjack started manipulating his machine. He grinned brightly and laughed maniacally. “Turn that frown upside down, because I’ll show you mine!” I glanced at Dolly and she looked back at me when I pinged her through our bond, we stared at each other for a few seconds and then she narrowed her eyes and nodded back at me before turning to the Quacker-smack robot preparing to push forward on her skateboard. Good, Dolly knows what to do, especially since Quackerjack wasn’t going to ignore her this time. “Shanty… can you possibly get to the cages?” I whispered to the side as the giant puppet of the guy piloting it pulled its arms backs and thrust them forward to start launching bouncing, a large mass of small chattering toy teeth at us. I moved slightly to draw their attention squarely on me, we needed Quackerjack’s full attention. We needed to free the hostages and keep them safe. We also needed to know what the plan was here, it didn’t seem like Quackerjack had one beyond face us. “I can be trying.” Shanty glanced at me, then asked. “So you be doing this all fours then?” “Not fighting this battle on my hind legs, I’m try to keep myself to a four hoof style as much as I can.” I spread my legs out and prepared to fight using the Fleet Cunning Doe evasive style, I needed to figure out how to destroy the giant puppet without burning down the building with us in it. “I’m trying not to put too much stress on any part of myself, which is why I’ll be relying on the both of you.” I hopped backwards as the chattering toy teeth all bounced at me with wide open mouths in an attempt to bite down on me, Shanty moved forward from my left and slashed her right hoof out as she passed by them. A good number of them all split in half. Turning my body around I launched a few one hoof bucks at the remaining teeth that continued to bounce towards me and Dolly took care of the remaining with a few quick sweep of her skateboard to batter them apart. We then moved back into formation with me at the lead, Shanty on my left and Dolly on my right, Dormarch the eyes in the back of my head since I’m paranoid that Tobias might come after us right now while we were distracted. It didn’t seem like he was, but I wouldn’t know. “Okay, this is going to be harder than I thought, but that’s not going to ruin my grin.” Quackerjack stated while rubbing the bottom of his beak with a broad smile. He hit something and giant wooden robot lifted its hands and the fingers popped open and out of the holes in the digits popped several puppets. All of them themed like faceless knights, with spears, axes, swords and were wielding shields. Shanty started leaping up to cut their strings, but Quackerjack didn’t do anything to stop her and he kept smiling. “They have no strings to hold them down, to make them walk… to make them frown~!” The knights came to life and one slashed its sword at Shanty and she deflected with a hoof and was sent skidding backwards. “Caper Canine, focus the spear guys, stay mobile. Cut-Lass, focus the axe guys, don’t take any hits and back off if you’re getting surrounded. I’ll go for the sword guys.” There were at least twelve in all and four of each, small, but no less dangerous. They might be wooden puppets, but their weapons were made of sharpened metal. “Also keep an eye out for any more tricks or his robot attacking you directly.” Shanty and Dolly spread out as did the soldiers as they moved forward. -Caged hostages, ???- I stirred and woke up, I don’t remember my bed being made of hard steel. Must have lost my mattress to an explosion again. Happens more often than I’d like, paying for a new mattress was going to take a while, how do you tell a mattress salesman that you want a mattress that can withstand high yield explosions while it remaining entirely comfortable? Probably need to budget for something unique. Don’t they know that I can’t be killed with explosions by now? I swear, the nerve of some criminals, it’s kind of hard to have an address for getting my mail when it keeps getting blown up. At least the chief knows and takes care of me, he’s a nice guy like that. “Is that Leap Lamb?” A white furred cat stated as I sat up and looked around the cage we were. “Is she really going to fight that thing?!” Another spoke, a grey furred dog, he looked fairly surprised. “We need to tell her about the bomb!” A third voice spoke up, this time it was a male marmoset. What were all these people doing in my house? No, this wasn’t my house. “A bomb?” It didn’t take me long to recognize where we were, this was the theme park I helped build personally and if there were bombs around then they’ll need a bomb disposal specialist to deal with it. Luckily for them I was Saint Canard’s primary bomb disposal expert in the local police force, I just needed to know where it was. “Where is it?” “You didn’t see? Oh right, you were dragged in here unconscious when they gathered us all up in here. Some guy calling himself Negaduck came in and installed a large bomb in that robot when that Quackerjack guy wasn’t looking.” I was informed by a female cockatoo who looked to be having a panic attack, I think I recognized her. Wasn’t she from one of the case files with the claustrophobia and an extreme fear of cages? Yeah, definitely needed to get her out of here very soon. Well that definitely wasn’t good, not good at all. I needed access to it before I could do anything helpful… even if I could get through the cage, I wouldn’t be able to fight. “We don’t know when it’ll go off, but if it does it’ll kill us all and will destroy a good portion of this park!” I looked around and spotted one of the heroes that lived near or in Saint Canard. It was The Sneeze Master, she was a good news anchor when she wasn’t fighting crime or getting sick because of her powers. I then looked to the robot they were talking about and the three taking on the number of puppets attacking them. “I can easily defuse the bomb, but I’ll need access to it.” I started pulled at one of my long ears. “To get access to it I’m going to need to get them some help to beat that guy. So…” “What can you possibly do, we’re all trapped in… what the heck?!” The male Great Dane and various people in the cage were stunned to silence as they watched me work on my method for getting out of this cage so I could help the super hero stuck in that oversized tissue box. Sure my abilities weren’t great and might have disturbed some people watching me actively use them, but they were certainly quite useful. I liked looking on the bright side of things and my abilities were a gift, I was certainly going to use them to save everyone and maybe bring some actual smiles to the people here. My friends on the force would expect that much of me. “Oh my god, I think I know who that guy is!” One of the people said with reverence in their voice as they watch me slowly escape from one of the cages they were trapped in, they must have recognized me from my stunt double work. I wondered when Bonkers would be getting back from his trip? If he were here he would do anything to save the day, even at a great cost to himself, but he’s not here. I certainly am though, so I guess I’ll have to do it. I mean it really beats staying locked up and letting the villain win when I could have done something to help and helping people is my favorite thing in life to do. I’m a good friend, always thinking of others. I wonder if I should find that movie Bonkers wanted to watch and buy some buttered popcorn. -Pom- The sword slashed upwards in an arc, I ducked under it and then speared my hoof up into its head and through it. I pulled my hoof back carefully and then had to spring to the side as the body slashed at me despite barely having a head with the size of the hole I put through it. I had to do another hop back to avoid an axe being brought down on me from the side and Shanty immediately cut it in half vertically from behind as she leapt up onto and then off it before its torso was pierced by a spear that made it finally body split and fall apart. While that happened Shanty took the sword arm off the still attacking puppet and was bashed away and in the face by the shield wielded in its other hand. It finally went down when spinning dolly cut its remaining arm and upper torso off with a harsh skateboard slap against the chest. “Why yes Mr. Banana Brain, that dog is quite dangerous! We can’t focus on them because the hero behind those sidekicks is still our main target!” I sprung sideways as a large right hand of the robot swiped through the area I occupied, I hit the ground rolling and then quickly scrambled backwards when it tried to slap its left hand down on top of me. “She’s not much of a smiler for a hero is she?” “I just want everyone to know, on record, that I don’t call myself a hero!” I shouted as avoided its right kick as it pulled back its left arm and moved into standing. I then tackled the left leg with as much force as I could while its right foot was still in the air, the robot wobbled fell over and Quackerjack went tumbling away. “I’m just doing my job!” I didn’t get the opportunity to take advantage of Quackerjack being knocked off his robot as I was intercepted by two spears when I tried to spring forward towards him. I brought my front legs up in time to grab onto both the shafts before my momentum impaled me on the spears, I could see the tip of the right one threatening to puncture my right eye. “Pom, behind you!” Thanks to Dormarch’s warning, I pushed off the spears and kicking off the ground into a backflip to avoid a sword that tried to stab me from behind. The sword got stuck in the puppet on the right and as I hopped backwards the one on the left charged me. I spotted something going on at the cages as I ducked and spun around the spear charge and bucked the faceless puppet from behind. What I was seeing was a bit weird, but… one of them was slowly getting free. Must be a hero I hadn’t heard of, at least none of us needed to go over there now. “Change of plans girls, full assault on the puppets now, we can worry about the hostages afterwards!” I hopped forward towards the puppet trying to pull its stuck sword free and had to quickly lean back as an axe came for my neck. It passed by in front of my nose and I smacked the side of the head twisting it and sending it into the back of the sword wielding puppet. Now the axe puppet was stuck trying to pull its weapon from the back of the sword wielding puppet that had its sword impaled on a spear puppet. I darted to the right and around the puppets, grabbed the impaled spear puppets weapon arm and forced its spear forward into the axe puppet. Now all three of them were trying to pull their weapons free. At a glance Quackerjack didn’t see what was going on behind him as he hastily boarded his large wooden puppet robot and slowly worked it back into a standing position. A quick glance showed that Dolly took care of the spear wielder I bucked with a swinging smash from a rapid vertical somersault to build momentum. She was at least learning to conserve energy when she used her flow-motion ability or was it possible that the energy conversation was automatically a part of the magic she wields? Behind Dolly, Shanty was generating a cutting force from her horns as she plowed into three of the puppets with her rapidly spinning spherical form shredding them with her forward momentum from a leap. “My body be a shredding saw!” Shanty said cheerfully as she lunged forward again curling up into a rapidly spinning ball. She can’t jump high, but she made up for it by having good horizontal momentum and the ability to rip through wood with the slicing arcs her horns and hooves were generating as she spun through two more puppets. Landing she shifted her hips and then went into a spiraling twirl where she destroyed the three puppets that had gotten stuck on each other in a tornado of three slashing legs. I could vaguely feel Dolly taking care of the remaining puppets and was soon at my side as Quackerjack got his robot back up and standing. “Shanty, we have to keep drawing his attention.” Looking my way and then looked to where my eyes were looking, she nodded and we all faced down Quackerjacks robot. “So you beat my Toy Troops, well don’t think that was the last of my tricks!” Quackerjack pulled on a rope that looked like a bunch of tied together magician scarves. “For I have more up my sleeves!” The robot raised its arms and large sections of wood pulled back like sleeves, revealing multiple tubes that spread outwards. “Do you want some canned nuts? Woo-hoo!” He pulled something and all the tubes started firing spring loaded toy snakes. I stepped backwards as the first one impacted the floor of the around and blew a fairly large chunk out of it. “I’ve got plenty for you, take all you need!” “No thanks, I’m not hungry!” Yelling that back as I dodged snake after spring loaded snake started raining down on us, at least each tube was only firing once. It was the sheer volume of them that was making it a scramble for the three of us to dodge. “Where did you find the time to fill every single can with an exploding spring loaded snake? That must have taken hours!” After several hops and being blow into air by the exploding spring loaded snakes, I focused on Dolly and she moved into position. We all soon formed up behind Dolly and we all took up position of holding up the skateboard up as blast after blast from exploding snakes shoved us backwards. Eventually the hurricane of random blasts around us finally petered out and stopped. “Oh… looks like I’m all out of nuts, guess I’ll just have to go bananas then!” This Quackerjack guy was definitely a maniac, as he stood up on his seat and started to throw bananas our way. “Move!” We all split apart, I started to leap and roll away from the bananas as they exploded around me. “Well Mr. Banana Brain, I would say these heroes are washed up, but we don’t have any water. I’d have more problems fighting Darkwing Duck!” Okay, normally under the right situation Quackerjack comparing me to Darkwing or Drake Mallard wouldn’t have bothered me. In this case I knew Drake Mallard and the masked Darkwing Duck personally, I finally snapped. “Are you seriously comparing us to him? You don’t even know us, he’s actually actively going out and trying to be a hero, he is actively looking for trouble to stop before it can go too far as to hurt the innocent, I’m just trying to live my life and I keep getting dragged into situations where I have to fight maniacs like you for the sake of others! We, my team, are called heroes because we just happen to be in the wrong place and take action to save as many people as we can! We’ve never looked for trouble, we go to where the trouble already started because we just happen to be there and put a stop to it! Darkwing even asked us to take it easy, because for some reason I’m a target of just about every villain in the city because I’m just Leap Lamb. Not many people really even care about who I am outside of this hero stuff and I’d rather they’d leave me alone! Do you even honestly remember why you are doing any of this?! What is the purpose of your ridiculous toy robot? Is it supposed to make people happy? It’s failing spectacularly at that!” I shouted at him, he paused as did Dolly and Shanty who were now looking at me wide eyed. “At least I know why I’m doing this, it’s become expected of me to run into a fight blazing, nearly dying, my body being bruised, battered, beaten and broken constantly. I’m still recovering from a blow to the head that should have been fatal from my last run in, because I was doing Cut-Lass a favor in being there for her friends. I literally have stitches in my forehead right now and here I am facing down yet another ridiculous fight for my life and that of others, from you! Can you honestly tell me you know what it is like to be constantly crushed under a undeniable force of everyone needing a hero in a given moment and that you’d actually step up to be there, that you will at the very least try to move forward into the jaws of a beast even if it is to save a single person! That person might even be a villain and you’d still save them because life is precious you know! You don’t need to be a hero to be a decent being, life is hard enough already without creeps like you running around ruining our attempts to have a nice day!” As I spoke, the guy that got free from the cages was getting The Sneeze Master free from the confines of the tissue box and the antihistamine traps. I wasn’t quite done yet in my tirade either. “But…” Quackerjack started to say. “No, you don’t get to say, ‘but’, to me mister! You are going to listen to me! I am not larger than life, I have arrhythmia from a bullet I took to the chest for a dog, my body is threatening to tear itself apart if I do the wrong thing and I’m not invincible, I never thought I was!” I was screaming at him and the robot took a step back. “I’ve had mercenaries on my case since I fought Dr. Mandrill in Britain, not once have I had a moments peace for more than two weeks. I can barely get a month to fully recover from how broken I am! The only thing holding me together is that other people are relying on me to stay strong! It is quite exhausting being me! I bet you don’t even have to worry about half the stuff that I do, that you can live life so carefree from trouble by simply going insane and having ‘FUN’ at the cost of everything. You don’t have to worry about anything, just go on pretending like life didn’t win against you! I’m still going to struggle with my battle, but I’m not giving up and going insane like you obviously have!” “Wow, you are like… the saddest person I think I’ve ever met. Wish I could help you with your issues, but I’m the villain you know. Not supposed to really talk things out and or discuss our issues in the heat of battle, I’m not even supposed to do feelings I think… wait… if I’m not supposed to do feelings then why can I feel? Have I been faking things all along…” Quackerjack smile slowly slipped off his face until he wasn’t smiling anymore. “Also you’re right, I don’t remember why I’m doing this, I just know that I have to! There is something very wrong with me or this situation here… even Mr. Banana Brain seems to know something is up and he’s the smart one!” “Wait… what?” I looked at the banana toy on his shoulder. It wasn’t a living entity, but it did seem to tilt its head towards Quackerjack ever so slightly. “Oh just stop me already, this isn’t fun anymore!” The robot stepped forward and swept its right arm for me in an attempted to grab me, I leapt up onto its forearm. The left slapped its hand down on where I was. I hopped further up to the left arms bicep and the robot was rocked by a blow as Dolly slammed into the right side of the head’s beak after coming from the nearby pillar. The head began spinning wildly and the robot stumbled backwards several steps until Quackerjack managed to get it reoriented correctly. He looked dizzy and there seemed to be a strange look of being lost on his face, but he moved to sweep me off with the right arm before I could jump up to attack him. The robot took a step forward, only to find it tilting at an odd angle as Shanty damaged the right leg below with several rapid swings. Making it falter slightly as chunks of its wooden leg cracked and bent awkwardly under the force. I tried to leap up and Quackerjack didn’t even bother to swipe at me, I raised my hoof and then… didn’t hit him. There was a strange look in his eyes. “You’re going through the motions… but you…” I tried to finish my thoughts only for him to hit me in the face with a squeaky rubber hammer he pulled from behind his back. He then threw the rubber hammer beneath me as I fell away and my head hit the hammer head softly and my spine was propped up by the rubber hammers shaft… wait, did he just? He just attacked me without actually hurting me? Why did his intent to do harm suddenly change? “What just…” “Ah-choo!” The Sneeze Master blew Quackerjack clean off the wooden machine and it toppled over face first, the beak impaling the ground. I silently watched as Quackerjack quickly escaped.