-Earth WWDCCT, location: Switzerland, one week after asteroid base incident, Mopsy Muttoncoddle-
Ever since I heard how injured Pom became, the Cooper gang has been doing Pom a large favor in drawing danger to us. As much danger as Duckberg drew after the Saint Canard Crisis incident where mercenaries were redirected away from where Pom was.
To that end I had an eternal nemesis bent on killing me named Sabu ‘Neyla’ Taj, someone who wanted Clockwerk’s secret to immortality. She blamed Pom for the incident knowing that Leap Lamb was somehow involved in the metal owls defeat, I’m kind of left holding the bag full of hate meant for her.
Thus Neyla has been coming after me whenever she wasn’t badly injured. Apparently Neyla was having a problems with the guy known as the world’s best assassin, agent forty seven Tobias Rieper. One of the few reasons I was still alive.
I looked at myself in a mirror and saw a good looking poodle staring back, it’s a good thing I’ve become scarily competent at disguises or else Neyla might have killed me five times over. Bentley has also been keeping me alive and active with his training courses, I pretty much needed thief training to survive with this group… things weren’t truly that much harder than when I was selling my body or information.
“Do you have eyes on it Mopsy?” Bentley was doing pretty well in making sure no information about Dawkins location got out, he’s been helping that brainy dog learn new tricks and he’s been enjoying every second of their camaraderie.
“Of course, the coast is not entirely clear, three guys.” I was still a better scout and lookout than I was at actively fighting, stealing or performing silent knockouts. It’s a good thing Sly and Murray had our bases covered in those departments. “The one with the keys is not the desk jockey.”
“I know you’re doing a covert ops thing at the moment Bentley, but can you suggest to me how someone would go about safely moving one hundred dogs, a beloved robot princess and a zombie chicken into a country discreetly?” Dawkins wouldn’t be calling to ask that if he didn’t have a reason.
“Well that’ll be far simpler than what we’re doing right now, just send a message to Scrooge McDuck and ask for Launchpad McQuack to do you a favor. The guy will do nice things for just about anyone he knows in a somewhat friendly manner, he knows and like your family and He’ll get you all there safely. Any vehicle he pilots is going to look like it went through a warzone upon stopping or landing… possibly both at the same time if it’s unlucky, but you’re guaranteed to live through everything with minimal injury if you stay in the vehicle despite how counterintuitive that might sound.” Bentley has been keeping tabs on Leap Lamb’s group since they came back from space, apparently Dormarch was a casualty in taking down tyrannical alien space lizards. “Launchpad is completely safe to be in a vehicle with, I’m betting that any vehicle used by him wishes it were safe from him. Also nobody really seems to pay attention to what Launchpad does internationally, which is the oddest thing about him that he can go anywhere without a passport and has friends in just about every place in the world in ridiculously high positions. He never actually uses his connections for anything aside from maybe a wanting a few spare parts to rebuild whatever vehicles he’s broken most recently. He’s been called an idiot savant at mechanical repairs on par with the rather infamous Wild Cat in Cape Suzette.”
Dolly was fairly depressed about the loss of her little brother Dormarch, she was also apparently abusing a magic like it was a drug. It certainly sounded like she became a drug addict with the way she was abusing her magic for the five minutes of the high and aggressiveness that said magic put in her veins as it doubles her movement capabilities according to what Bentley recorded of it.
Pom’s health had me worried for my dimensional traveling doppelganger, it was to the point that I had to act like Leap Lamb myself to stop Neyla from sniffing around where Pom actually was. Which is why my life is being threatened almost near constantly.
“So about that tricked out wheelchair for my step-brother Delgado…” Dawkins called to talk and he was going to tie up our communications line again, not that I minded and he was a good friend to have.
“This is Sly, I’m in. I like Dawkins to, but can you guys not get too distracted… please?” Hearing Sly announce his movements to me I turned to concentrate on giving Murray directions as a spotter for our heavy hitting hippo. “I wish them well with helping Caper Canine, mostly since I like the Caper part of her name. Still, we’re in the middle of a job here guys.”
“Sorry.” Four voices intoned. I can understand why Dawkins was sorry, he was kind of distracting us in the middle of something moderately delicate.
“Wait… why are you sorry Murray?” After asking that I put my binoculars back on Murray and saw why. “How in the world did you find a combo Hamburger Hippo and Beuno Nacho that was open at this time of day?!”
There couldn’t possibly have been one within five miles of Switzerland for crying out loud!
“One opened here in Switzerland an hour ago.” A likely story Murray, hope you’re enjoying your food.
“My restaurant chain conspiracy theory thickens!” Announced Bentley who was slowly being driven to madness about Hamburger Hippo restaurant chain.
“Excuse me while I stealthily avoid getting shot at here…” Commented Sly dryly and as he tiptoed behind a guard with his cane reaching forward in my binoculars view.
If anyone asked I’m well aware of all the local birds around, especially when and where they appear. I was, ironically enough, actually part of a bird watchers guild for people who like to travel. This was much to the surprise of the rest of the Cooper Gang as it gave me reasons to have binoculars out and looking about, plus it’s nice to have hobbies as an alibi for incredible acts of robbery.
-A few days later, Ocellus’s aftermath thoughts-
Well Shanty, Dolly and the rest of us fully recovered… physically. Mentally, we weren’t going to bother trying to deny we had issues that Baymax was trying to help us with.
Like Smolder letting go of her tight control over her greed towards our relationship, not that it has really changed much. She’s got a lid back on her greed and she’s probably the most restrained dragon I know, not that she wasn’t as tightfisted as Scrooge is about wealth and how to use it efficiently. She’s also been spending time with Honey Lemon, because cute and silly things were a good thing to bond over. Honey Lemon also watched wrestling which Smolder appreciated for the pink loving girly girl of Big Hero Six.
We were making friends for a lifetime here, unfortunately we would have to leave when Dr. Wower eventually figured the portal thing out properly after a few test runs. It would become faster when Abigail Callaghan decided to help after we prevented her from being kidnapped and end up dooming the whole world to an alien invasion with far worse implications than when the Moonlanders did it. Don’t honestly know much about the Lowardian aliens that Kim Possible dealt with.
Penumbra was the only Moonlander that had a warrior’s spirit, having a tendency towards violence or at the very least action. It was a good thing she was there to help escort Shanty to safety. She even proved her warrior status in having taken down a Heavy Hunter Drone by herself, which was confirmed to be a major problem for just about everyone else during the escapade in space.
Shanty has been eating trucks loads of food with Fredmeleon and was enjoying it all, as bad as gluttony is to get over pain and suffering… Shanty had the least to worry about when it came to getting fat. Like how she couldn’t get drunk, her metabolism was absolutely ridiculous… as was Fredmeleons who somehow kept up with her. Nosedive was also packing away food with them and not a speck of fat on him, also his cupcakes tasted too much like Pinkie Pie’s to be a coincidence according to Smolder.
Dolly… she hardly left Pom’s side once we got back, she only does so to exercise and there’s barely any joy in her exercising or eating. It was quite depressing to watch her go through the motions. She was once so full of life and was now in a downward spiraling slump, at least she had more life in her than when Shanty carried her out of the asteroid base.
Speaking of our Dalmatian companion, I think Dolly was addicted to a magical spell she casts once an hour on the hour for a hit of five minutes of hyperactivity while glowing red. The spell made her slightly more aggressive to everyone around her. Thankfully she hasn’t hurt anyone under the effects yet while becoming seemingly rabid. Sure the spell gave her a bit more life in her eyes, but I can tell it was kind of hurting her mentally to keep using it like she was dying of thirst. At least it was helping her physically exercise at insane speeds before exhausting herself, emphasize put on the ‘insane’ part.
I swear Dolly’s situation was like with me and the general changeling addiction to the ‘Candle Light’ spell. Changelings were addicted to casting the candle light spell because it creates a safe magical flame we can stare at that creates dancing light. Fire was very much a thing that changelings enjoyed staring at, that is why changelings definitely needed a fire department that didn’t involve changelings at all.
The one thing I thought that was sane for Dolly to be doing… was curling up around that Digivice thing in memory of her brother Dormarch to get some sleep. She was restless otherwise and Pom would have been a great way to set Dolly straight about abusing that magic as much as she could while awake.
Pom’s condition has gotten ever so slightly better, but she was still comatose and Roddy had shown us a recording of her waking up without really doing so. It was around the time that Dormarch sacrificed himself so familiar bond shenanigans were a probable involvement with that incident.
Me… I was trying to find something to get my mind off the horrors of what would have happened had it actually been Abigail Callaghan that went up there instead of me. I don’t think she would have survived a throat slitting quite as well as I would have in a similar situation when I had been prepared for it.
I wasn’t crazy prepared or paranoid enough match Pom’s level of dedication. I was however well read on personalities. In fact, I was beginning to appreciate just how much suffering Pom has been through in this world for us and anyone she meets.
To that end I was spending time with Bolt, Mittens and Rhino, I was also told Ms. Forrester where we had ended up and even showed her I was a shape shifter. To say Penny’s mother was a little surprised about everything was understating it, she took pride in the fact that her daughter held up so well under the stress.
Penny had stated that Bolt, Mittens and Rhino kept her safe. During that statement Mittens was floating in the air and lazily bouncing Rhino off a wall, Rhino seems to both enjoy that and being a hero. They would carry on with their peaceful lives for as long as they could out of the spotlight, they were heroes all the same and they would keep in contact with Big Hero Six, Kim Possible and The Mighty Ducks in case they ever needed some Power Pet assistance.
San Fransokyo was thankfully, and eerily, quiet. So Big Hero Six didn’t have much problem with progressing the portal building plans to possibly get us out of this world. Progress was going quickly with Tanya Vanderflock assisting in the building of the portal given she was a technological genius of the Mighty Ducks team and rebuilt most of their gear from scratch with local materials. She was interested in SFIT or at least looking around to see what technological marvels this part of the world was coming up with.
Duke was interested in our connections to the world’s greatest thieves on this planet, we gave him Bentley’s contact and told him he had to work on things from there if he wanted to get into some interesting stuff with the noble thieves of the Cooper Gang. Duke was likely to be the only guy to wander away and come back without a word from his team, but they knew of his character well enough by now that he would always be there for them when they needed him.
Grin was watching out for Team Leap Lamb and felt it was important that we stayed safe after having come this far. Nosedive, Wildwing and Mallory were also sticking around to make sure nothing big happened in San Fransokyo after having made sure the Saurians were incapable of being threat, without actually killing them no matter how much Wildwing and his team were quite highly tempted to do so.
The Mighty Ducks were good pillars of harmony, even if hockey was in every aspect of their lives and they couldn’t quit even if they had wanted to. The Puckian version of the ‘elements of harmony’ was apparently a good hockey team, my abroad studies into friendship, magic and harmony continues.
The McDuck Clan were resting after the recent adventure, it was as tiring for them as it was for us. They suffered minor injuries and they had come out of it with a possible set up for an asteroid mining operation around Saturn. If Scrooge McDuck could pull of the first lucrative space venture of this world, then more power to him.
The sword of Swanstatine was an interesting magical object, when it brought out my inner strength… well I never knew what to think of our relation to our teachers back on Equus in being elements of harmony ourselves. Raw undiluted friendship being an inner strength had some rather quirky effects on people, the sword also made me feel just as warm and cozy too, helped Dolly a little bit but didn’t stop her mood from sliding into what it is or her abusing that spell.
Which led me to the next point, I felt sorry for Ms. Shuttle. She was barely that much older than Dormarch and she had loved interacting with him. She was a true AI with emotional capacities and the ability to act outside her programming, kind of what Dormarch was pretending to be once upon a time before we found out the truth.
According to Yggdrasill.sys, which was not to be confused with Yggdrasil of Equus legends and myths, Dormarch was apparently a new form of species even to the otherworldly aliens known as Digimon who live inside sufficiently advanced technology. They found worlds with high levels of technology to randomly insert themselves into.
Digital Monster or Digimon were something like nomadic dimensional travelers that set roots down in various advanced civilizations and tried to live alongside them in unity. They tended to take on appearances or forms based around local myths and legends of said world they come to inhabit.
They were invaders, but they weren’t overly or always actively malicious about it. It’s just that every time they find a new world to inhabit they bring a lot of baggage along with them.
There were problems with taking things from mythology of the civilizations the Digimon meet, because they included the bad people from said legends and mythology as well as the good and then let things sort themselves out from there. Thus tons of bad Digmon come into existence as soon as a new branch world is established and they invade their next door neighbor’s reality by manifesting out of the technology, then subsequently start trying to doom the physical reality of that world in the most ironic ways as feasibly possible. This information was quite intriguing to get from the device and Dolly was notably attentive the entire time it was being given.
The device did warn us that it would be looking at any civilizations we went near, which was rather unexpected that we’d be told outright that they knew they would cause problems if they saw a world with sufficient technology capable enough of housing a new Digimon world. The Digivice now feels like a bomb that will explode in our face, at random, and doom any sufficiently advance world we may or may not visit.
Equus probably didn’t have that sufficiency as our technology was… technologically schizophrenic or Schizo-tech for short, a word I was getting more and more interested in when Mr. Wasabi brought it up as I explained to him how our worlds technology base worked.
We had incredible levels of clean industrial technology, our world naturally tended towards clean energy and we don’t like producing pollution and were slow in our advancements of computer technologies since our world was more environmentally conscious.
If Equus could create magical computers, would the Yggdrasill system be able to interact with such things or would the technology be harder for it to get into for being more magical than scientific?
As for the last thing on my mind, Kim Possible, Ron Stoppable and Rufus were tracking Drakken down as he kidnapped a different scientist for his schemes while we were busy in space. They put Scrooge in contact with Kim’s father and his space program. Scrooge McDuck also got in Contact with Hunter De Ville and offered him a business partnership as long as he was in charge of his business, this was in the effort to see Dylan Dalmatian achieve his dream of going into space and being the first dog on mars.
We were lucky to meet and make so many friends willing to help us… the rare few like Dormarch, Dodo or Dolly, they were willing to die for us and see things through to the end. Pom was unwilling, but completely able to die for people she saw as innocent and needed help.
Pom might not see it, but she was a role model to those around her and even in her state she was still proving herself to be a good one even with her various flaws. Like her inability to win most fights, her anxiety, her sometimes awkward parenting and sometimes she’d willingly overlook some things if it could quickly be deemed not her problem.
One would think Pom has changed a lot, and wasn’t apparently living up to ‘Baa-Ram-Ewe’ to remain true to herself. I believed otherwise, since she had been trying live up to herself and all that that had entailed. I’ve had a front seat to her personality, I would know if she stopped remaining true to herself.
Pom didn’t want to be larger than life, she hadn’t really changed much from what I felt on the meekness, but she has changed in small ways which were inevitable. The notable changes was in her confidence. As while she would rather avoid conflict, things seem to conspire to force her to meet canines of all shapes and sizes and or be thrust into fights she obviously can’t win cleanly.
She was our guardian and I was willing to call her Aunt Lambchop at this point as she meant that much to me and we were a family through the bonds of friendship forged by fire. She was the most needed and important member of our team… she was the adult as she had said in the prior world and she was trying to live up to our expectations on top of her own.
We shouldn’t let Pom handle any of the weight alone, we should be right next to her to lifting some of that weight ourselves when she was breaking her back for us. It is unfortunate that the injuries we’ve accrued mentally or physically have been fairly nasty. Pom needed us as much as we direly needed her on her hooves, she tried so very hard to keep us safe and out of trouble with her own health and sanity being a nasty price to pay.
Pom was more than a teacher, a peacemaker, a housewife, a true Huoshan Guard and a very scared for her life and the lives of others Lambkin, far more than even a diamond under immense amounts of pressure to fully outright break. Whether she liked it or not, and as cruel as it is to think this, Pom was a relatively decent person.
I shook my head and made my way to the portal room, leaving Dolly to her rest next to Pom’s floating body.
Things were proceeding apace and they would soon be testing the portal. We survived another incident scarred, battered, bruised, beaten and hurting… but most of us survived the ordeal. We all had a chance to grieve Dormarch, but Pom… we would help her grieve too when she finally wakes up.
-Red eyed entity-
It was time to make my grand entrance.
-Before lunchtime, Basemax Headquarters, Ocellus-
“So how goes it?” I asked as I walked into the room to see Tanya, Wower and even Abigail working on the portal fervently.
“We’re about to get into our first test, Wendy Wower here is an exemplary genius! Also love her show.” Tanya was quite excited to be working alongside the likes of Wower and Abigail. Now that Wower and Abigail were mostly safe, as Big Hero Six was keeping an eye out for ‘Leap Lamb hunting mercenaries’ or any other problems that may pop up, things were proceeding to the point we could test the portal. “Also Abigail decided to start assisting us too, we’re not sending anything through the portal though. We’re going to run multiple tests to make sure it’s safe before letting anyone near this thing. This is the most science I’ve done in a while since the Saurians went quiet until the whole thing after the Saint Canard Crisis.”
“You’re a genius too Tanya, it’s been great working alongside you.” Wower was happy that she could go back to teaching without anyone threatening her or her friend’s life.
“Really don’t know what to think about a hockey obsessed civilization having commercially available space travel before we ever did. Not that it really helped with those crazy lizards.” This was bluntly and blandly stated by Abigail before motioning everyone back with a paw. “Activating in three… two… one…”
The portal came to life, but something went awry as we saw space on the other side and in the darkness a pair of red eyes opened. Out of the portal slowly stepped an entity, one that gave off an immense pressure of its very presence that was immediately felt as if to be among everything before pulling back.
The entity was large, white and had some resemblance to an alicorn without wings or a horn. Red eyes ringed with green, around the things waist was gold girdle like structure. Only looking at it further, I realized it was a biological part of the creature and not something that was manufactured.
The entities tail shifted about as it stalked forward through the portal regally, its teardrop shaped head looking like it had two ears that just looked like spikes or antenna.
“Hello.” It stated blandly, eyes glowing.