-Equus, Canterlot Castle, Twilight-
Peace and Quiet, no annoying lambkin and changeling issues, no crazy cat that trains the local guard and most positively and certainly no hyper destructive cow randomly causing massive property damage.
Just me and fifty pages of wonderful, beautiful, paperwork.
“I always fear you’re going to marry the paperwork like you tried to marry that book that one time.” Spike commented dryly.
“Can we not get into that Spike?” The second I finished saying that, a tree impaled itself through the wall, making me jump.
“Ow, just when I was starting to think I was safe indoors.” I exited the room and saw Jackie ‘Blackcap’ Chickadee impaled on the nearby wall by a tree branch.
“I have a feeling Arizona is responsible for this.” I said dryly, at least it wasn’t an entire weather factory, but still Canterlot Castle was supposed to be shielded from insanity like this. “Discord…”
“Mmm-yes?” The draconequus stated as he appeared in a cheerful manner clamping his mismatched limbs together and fluttering his eyelashes at me.
“Did Arizona do this?” I asked flatly.
“Mmm-maybe.” Not going to ask if Discord enjoyed this or if anyone got hurt… aside from Jackie… again… I actually liked the parrot in comparison to the rest of her family, but her cursed luck was ridiculous. “Also yes I enjoyed it and aside from the walking parrot, nobody else got hurt. I mean it’s not like the tree is suddenly going to spontaneously combust right?”
-Sweet Apple Acres, Arizona-
“And that is why I’m using only one hoof when it comes to bucking your trees.” I said flatly to Applejack. “Be glad that I didn’t buck an apple tree in demonstration.”
“Well shucks, at least we have a new watering hole.” Applejack has hired me for my carpentry and my bucking skills, I was good help and I worked cheap when it came to bucking. I give her a discounts on carpentry because we’re friends.
“Eyup.” Bic Mac stated solemnly as we all stared at Canterlot Castle in the distance, mostly for the fact that it suddenly caught fire.
“Ah don’t worry about it, I’ve done that to Canterlot Castle numerous times and Celestia never got mad at me for it.” Applejack stated calmly.
“Did she know you were the one responsible for those incidents?” My statement was met with a crinkled muzzle and sweat pouring from Applejack.
“Uh…” Responded Applejack eloquently.
-Earth, San Fransokyo, GoGo ‘Wheel Cat’ Tomago-
“Hey Bun, how are things here?” It was a dreary evening after the incident in Saint Canard, Ms. Bunny Shuttle appeared on my helmets screen with a frowny face as I approached at high speed.
“Reloaded, supplies for current crew or passengers successfully received… patient still in dire critical condition that a sneeze can end her life if not watched, we’re doing just ‘PEACHY’ here. At least their friends in Saint Canard and Duckberg have started a misdirection campaign, but we have problems. For one I’m highly recognizable, two everyone inside me is recognizably odd aside from Ocellus who is a shapeshifter.” After a pause Bun added. “You have yet to actually meet Pom’s friends yet, but they are quite surprising in appearance.”
“After the last kaiju battle we had, nothing would surprise me at this… rate.” I paused after entering through the door on the bus. Having known Dormarch as Pom’s PET companion, it was a vague surprise to see he had a flesh and blood body now, having gone form a digital entity to physical biological being. Okay, so the world can throw me some curve balls, also I hadn’t exactly watched the news on what happened in Saint Canard, but I certainly knew that Pom found her friends. “Ooh, you’re so freaking adorable! … If any of you tell Honey Lemon I just did that, I will throttle all of you! Except this little guy. The names Gogo Tamago or Wheel Cat while in my hero costume in public guys.”
I held Dormarch close to my chest with my left arm and started to rub his belly with my right hand, his three mutant fluffy fish tails started wagging.
“I cannot commit to not telling someone eventually, though I will blackmail you for all you’re worth with the recording of what just happened.” Glaring at Ms. Shuttle, I looked about trying to ignore the AI’s grinning innocent bunny face seeming scarier than it should be.
I’ve heard of Cut-Lass from the Cape Suzette fiasco. I think I just woke her up, but she just saw me cuddling Dormarch and shrugged. The goat was cool in my book, she also looked hungry, exhausted and in a bit of pain.
There was also the bandaged Dolly ‘Danger’ Dalmatian, AKA Caper Canine and coolest heroic dog that I know of looking on at Dormarch with some amount of jealousy.
There was also an orange winged lizard and a blue bug creature snuggled together. With the goat, I take it that those three were all of Pom’s kids. Looks like she managed to successfully find them all and bring them together.
They were all looking at me, there was also this strange metal egg on the floor in the back and Pom was floating lifelessly in the stasis module to my left. The sound of a weak heart beep from the heart monitor made me freeze up. Judging by that, Pom was seriously in a bad way.
Seeing her broken body made me think of Tadashi too much, it caused a tightness in my chest as I looked at the breathing tube going down her throat. Just the imagery of Tadashi possible laying there entered my mind and I tried to shake it off.
I was soon introduced to everyone as I got settled in.
“If anything happens to this little guy, I will destroy everyone involved with hurting him and then world before destroying myself. I’ll even rip and tear until it is done while making sure he’s safe from everything possible.” I flexed my right hand glove and my claws popped for a few seconds. “Anyway I’m here to make sure no one attacks you guys or her. Is she really that bad off?”
“All the bones in her body are fractured or in the case of her legs broken in at minimum three places from stress, her internal organs were failing at some point before I stopped that particular problems, she’s lost half the muscles in her body through tearing them to shreds, she needed a slightly funky blood transfusion to survive her wounds from Ocellus and the injuries mom… er Pom… got in battle certainly aren’t helping her with breathing. All of this exacerbated Pom’s arrhythmia in the extreme… it’s a miracle she’s even alive with her heart failing a lot like it has of the last twelve or so hours. The trauma based coma is the least of her problems and the most of our worries.” Dormarch answered from my arm quietly, I tickled his belly and all three of his fluffy fish tails started wagging. “Can you stop that, I’m supposed to be depressed about my friends and family being beaten, battered and broken!”
“So how did this guy happen?” I pointed at Dormarch and held him closer, Dolly started barking something. Hiro should really get around to that animal translation patch for our gear.
“Apparently I’m not an AI, but an alien digital entity that tends to manifest within electronic devices in other worlds, from wherever beings like me come from, as long as there is a functionally high enough technology base. My species, once it reaches a certain threshold, can manifest outside the devices we might come to inhabit. We stop being a less than harmless AI at that point, but a physical seemingly biological entity that can jump back into any device as long as it has a digital interface. I however am still tethered to the PET device on threat of death… were I to disconnect from this I would start dying. The precautionary measures Kahn Industries took to contain me to this device in question are warranted given how dangerous beings like me can be when it comes to hacking computers, as we interact with computer coding on a level that no one else can in a direct manner. Imagine a quick nuclear war wiping out the world.” Squeezing the little guy, he squeaked. It made me feel warm and fuzzy inside despite what he just told me. “Also I’m now Caper Canine’s youngest brother by adoption into the Dalmatian family… that would make me the one hundred and second official Dalmatian to be added to her family.”
“Don’t care what anyone else says, you’re one of the cutest aliens I’ve ever met… Again, none of you are to ever tell Honey Lemon, who also goes by Bazooka Bunny, about this and you will take this to your graves.” I stated scathingly, before coughing into my fist and resuming my every day personality that I am known for. When I get a PET, I knew what my AI assistant’s avatar was going to look like. I didn’t put Dormarch down and kept holding him because it would be comforting for the little guy. No, I wasn’t in a terrible amount of denial, why would anyone ask about that? “Anyway, what do you plan on doing now?”
“Well we still want to get into contact with Ms. Callaghan. Unfortunately we cannot go to her without attracting unwanted attention to ourselves and bringing the mercenaries that either want to capture, kill or possibly ‘otherwise’ do something with mom… Pom. That, at this point, would be synonymous with outright killing her if she is ever be taken out of that stasis field.” Oh right, thanks for the reminder Dormarch.
“Ah… that… at least nothing has happened to Wendy Wower or Abigail Callaghan as far as we know. We’ve been keeping tabs on the both of them just in case some crazy nut wants to hurt them. We get a lot of ‘those’ types of people here on the west coast.” We really did have to check in with Wendy Wower and get Abigail Callaghan to Basemax to tell her what we exactly wanted her help with and why. We’ve all been a little bit distracted lately. “So… what are the chances that we can just use microscopic machines to heal Pom?”
“Bad Idea.” Both Dormarch and Bun stated at the same time before looking at each other with a nod.
“Explain?” I crossed my right arm and both my arms supported the cuddly alien dog, I most certainly did not have a problem.
“Can you put me down first… please?” Looking into Dormarch’s eyes, I took a long deep inhale through my nose and exhaled softly.
“No.” Hearing a bark, I looked down and saw Dolly motioning to me with a paw closer.
Crouching down and looked at Dolly who continued to bark something while rolling her eyes and pointing to her brother with her left paw while barking something that sounded vaguely sarcastic.
Most expressive I’ve ever seen a dog be in my life.
Dolly held up her right leg and extended a paw to me and, knowing what she was asking for, I gave her a ‘five’ with my right hand before standing back up while hearing Dolly make snickering noises.
“It’s not that funny Dolly!” Whined Dormarch. Let’s face it dude, if Honey Lemon saw you she’d be doing the same thing I was.
“Not going to even ask for the context on that one.” I stated flatly.
I was in a vehicle with numerous literal aliens, even if I somehow got the punchline it wouldn’t be bigger than the one I was currently living right now knowing magic exists, aliens exist, magical aliens exist and digital entities that are possibly magical aliens too. What next, ninja pirate robot zombies? No wait, that’d be tempting Obake to come back to life… if he ever truly died in the first place.
Speaking of punching things… I really wanted to put on a pair of boxing gloves and go to town on someone right now, unfortunately I didn’t have a viable target for my ire. Good news for my need to defend these guys, I was raring to go to bat for all of them.
“Can we get back to the topic of why using microscopic machines is a bad idea?” I said blandly trying to get us all back on track.
“You mean machines that can only work with what’s already there, yes, lets.” Since when did Bun get an attitude? I kind of liked it. She was still cutesy and positive, but she had a more worldly edge to her now. Probably came with traveling around and getting to know other people than Honey Lemon or me.
“Since my paws are not going to touch the floor anytime soon.” Dormarch rolled his eyes and didn’t wiggle or struggle to get out of my grip. I silently counted that as a win for me no matter what anyone might think. “It’s like this, would you rather your immune system fight actual problems while the body is weak like Pom’s currently is, or would you have it fighting the machines and ignoring the other stuff. Also the machines wouldn’t be able to rebuild the lost muscle mass from nothing and her body would probably cannibalize the machines for nutrients. I think Pom would prefer not to have machines inside of her, possibly causing other unnecessary health complication and Gizmo Gal in Saint Canard gave us glimpse on how that can go wrong to be torn up from the inside out. There’s also the fact that we don’t know how her magic would react to such a bodily invasion. Plus we don’t want to harm her any worse than she already is, mom wouldn’t survive that.”
“So we can’t rely on that solution, too much room for error…” I begrudgingly agreed, also did Dormarch just call Pom his mother again?
“Incoming nutritional packs via Honey Lemon by Skymax delivery, Baymax has personally vetted them after cross referencing current patient’s health with me. Baymax may be busy for a bit longer.” Announced Bun while looking at me. “Please get them immediately Gogo. Pom only has about a minute of nutrients left in her current bag and her body is currently in a state not unlike that of starvation due to her injuries.”
Sighing, I finally decided to put down the spotty spectacle and was out the door of the bus and pulling a cardboard box out of the recently arrived pink Skymax, I rolled my eyes at what was Honey’s preferred color and watched as it rocketed back into the sky. I carried the box in and got it open, it was full of nutrient packs and several bottles of water.
“Anything I need to know about the process of installing one of these?” I could understand the need for quiet long range deliveries from high in the sky, we had to keep Pom’s location very quiet after the problems with all those mercenaries the last time she was in San Fransokyo.
Pom just wanted peace and quiet, well she’s getting it now and she’s not even awake to enjoy it.
“I’ll walk you through it.” It seemed Dormarch knew what to do and it wasn’t too hard to quickly set up the nutrient feed into Pom once the other bag emptied.
Once I got the nutrient bag up, I changed out her fluid drip as well. Talking with everyone about their adventures in our world. Until eventually, thirty minutes later, I asked an important question.
“Okay should I stay here with you guys or should I go meet up with Wower and Callaghan?” There was a lot of looking around between the people.
“I think you should be staying.” Shanty continued to relax right where she was.
“I do to.” Smolder was a dragon, one that was injured by a giant malevolent mechanical owl.
“If you can talk to Wower and Callaghan in the morning, I think we’ll need at a representative with you to corroborate the reason why we need a dimensional portal. Someone who isn’t too strange or would freak them out.” After saying that Dormarch looked to Ocellus.
“I’m the current leader of our group by way of health right? I guess I will have to go, but I really don’t want to leave my friends too undefended. At most Ms. Shuttle will only be good against big targets, smaller faster ones might be able to break by and into the vehicle. So that means…” Ocellus glanced around. “Dormarch, you’ll have to stay here as a medical expert. Dolly you are mobile at least so you can come with me if you choose to, but you can’t bring your skateboard or helmet… they would be too recognizable on you. Shanty you’re a little too out of it to be moving much, Smolder can’t move and we all know why we can’t remove Pom from Ms. Shuttle.”
Dolly barked held up her paw with a single digit. Basically saying that, yes, she would be okay with doing this.
“Also you might need to wear… a leash.” The minute the word was stated by Ocellus, I saw Dolly’s right eye twitch and her tail go up between her hind legs. At least to her credit she didn’t start whimpering, but the thousand yard stare on that dogs face spoke of less than pleasant memories. “Look at it this way Dolly, we need to convince Abigail to help us and while Dormarch would be a good choice for it, he can’t exactly hide the more unique aspects of his looks like his claws or his tails. You might be running a magical migraine, but at least you’re recovering from that far better than I would and you’re doing better than Shanty is.”
“She be having a shield, I be having to deflect things with my bare hooves!” Shanty stated from where she was laying.
“That and Ocellus’s horn is better, she can use magic again herself in an emergency… should probably stick to lower end stuff though.” Smolder’s comment was met with a nod. “So the two of you should be able to go out without any trouble, provided that Ocellus disguises herself well enough.”
Ocellus looked me over with a critical eye, then after a moment she transformed in a flash of flames. That spooked me a bit and I had a disc in hand when I was face to face with a beige furred cat with shoulder length light blue hair, she was wearing yellow shorts and a blue shirt that said ‘love or bust’ in pink lettering in a red heart. She had a build similar to mine.
“Do you think I’ll pass muster of not being recognizable by anyone or should I change the hair color?” Ocellus was asking me? She looked pretty darn good.
“Maybe you should make the hair brown or red, more like an earthy color.” A flash of flames from her head and the blue eyed female had short brown hair. “Perfect, but can you remember that form for tomorrow?”
“I can stay like this near indefinitely as long as I keep sharing the love.” She said in a chirpy voice.
“Wicked.” I said to the shapeshifting bug pony as she turned back. “Still, it’s going to be a bit of a risk to have Dolly go with you if she’s recognized as Caper Canine even without her gear.”
“I’m sure Dolly can act normal…” After saying this Ocellus turned to Dolly, who proceeded to stand up on her hind legs and leaned against a wall casually to start looking over the claws of her left paw. She winked at Ocellus while pointing to her with a single digit on her right paw while making a clicking noise with her tongue before returning to looking over her claws and trying to be natural as if she were an animalistic. She then proceeded to cross her paws and tried to look cool while staring at the roof of Ms. Shuttle’s body. “Dolly.”
Dolly rolled her eyes and went back to being on all fours then raised her right brow at Ocellus.
“Yeah, I’m sure Dolly understands what will happens if we incidentally attract anyone’s attention to Pom’s location. Anyone like the government, mercenaries, evil villains, not so villainous people with chips in their shoulders, even nice people could be dangerous, a hospital would have assassination attempts which is why we’re here with her in a stasis field. Quite frankly anyone finding out where Pom is that isn’t an immediate friend of ours is bound to end in her death in one way or another.” Ocellus said to me as she turned back to look at Pom. “At least we have people like you looking out for us Gogo.”
“You’ve got Big Hero Six, we’ve got plenty of firepower to keep anyone off of your backs if things go south… which happens around here fairly often. That whole Duckberg distraction plan your friends pulled better keep most people looking in the wrong direction. Though we might want to move Ms. Shuttle, we did drop two Skymax Deliveries here and I’m paranoid that someone could be watching us or have seen them taking off or landing around here.” With that said Ms. Shuttle started up and got rolling.
“I will endeavor to find another quiet spot that many will not tread, we have the supplies to go quiet for quite a while.” Ms. Shuttle took my meaning to move now, which I didn’t mind. “Question, is Dolly even up to fighting, even if she can walk?”
“No, but Dolly might have to in a pinch considering what happened the last time we came through here.” Dormarch gave his sister a worried look and she sidled up to him and gave him a one legged hug and nuzzled him while yipping something. “Fine, but please don’t do anything crazy unless you have to. Reminder, like Pom, you’re not indestructible.”
“You don’t seem to be too injured for someone who came out of Saint Canard.” I finally noticed that Dormarch looked particularly pristine for the mess that was the Saint Canard Crisis.
“I can heal myself, also I stayed out of the way of a majority of the danger.” Dormarch stated simply.
“Right then, anyone want to watch a movie?” Why did I just suddenly make Dolly perk up and start to bark something?
“Thunderbolt, I know it’s a Dalmatian family favorite, but really Dolly?” Dormarch gave her a flat look as she grinned brightly at him.
-The next day, Dolly-
My dog, do I hate leashes, but when needs must. Also had a few scars under the fur from those ninjas, but I’m still the best option for this. Not one hundred percent, but I’m okay enough.
“You sure you’re up for this Dolly.” Ocellus asked quietly in her cat biped form. Seeing no one looking our way, I nodded.
We were being led towards Wendy Wower’s place with the hero in regular clothing. I wasn’t going to tempting fate knowing the horrors that could await us after what Gogo Tomato told us last night about how often this city came close to total technological destruction. Last time was another Tuesday for them.
I was on alert and acting as normal as I could, well as normal as a Dalmatian like me could be anyway.
“Excuse me, but that dog looks…” A familiar girl started to say, only for me to recognize the leashed dog.
“Hey, Bolt!” Just greeting an old friend with as much cheer as I could put into my voice.
“Dolly, what are you doing with a pair of biped cats?” Bolt asked as he gave Gogo and Ocellus some suspicious looks.