//------------------------------// // 330. The Airship Approach. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Equus, morning, Canterlot, Tianhuo- I had to be ready, I was showing the guards how to properly defend themselves with hoof to hoof combat. Instructing others wasn’t too difficult and having Ruff, Puff, Tuft and Woof as training assistants and constant little mood raisers was nice, but it wouldn’t stop my constant worries much less theirs even if they were distracted to being quite playful. Speaking of training, I liked having Arizona to take my frustrations out on and she was quite willing to be such a punching bag. At least she knew how to fight back on the level her opponent was capable of. “Ah, this feels great!” Arizona stated as I kept attacking her and she kept defending herself… well mostly defending herself. She apparently liked being beaten up, world’s best living training dummy. “Any questions so far?” I stated as I broke off our spar and looked to the soldiers, one of them raised a hoof. “Um, ma’am, isn’t Arizona like the biggest case for Domestic Violence from what she’s told us about how abusive her relationship is with Velvet?” A fairly decent question, given how often Velvet was at Arizona’s throat. “Neither Arizona or Velvet have reported it as being a problem, they’ve never disturbed their neighbors… even if their relationship enters a realm of… disturbing.” I know I would never hurt Pom, she’s already getting hurt enough as it is whatever it is she’s probably currently doing. The distance between our hearts hurts her as much as me. I felt Blighter come up out of my shadow and snuggled up under one of my legs and barked excitedly in a manner of trying to cheer me up. “Where did that even come from!” One of the Equestrian guards stated in shock, I rolled my eyes. “Oh that’s just Blighter, apparently it’s why her shadow is pink.” Another more informed guard stated, having actually asked me earlier about why my shadow was sometimes pink. It was just Blighter being protective of me. “I thought that was from her mane being on fire!” From what the guard just said, I’m beginning to think Equestria’s education system was fairly messed up. Unicorns definitely needed more normal science curriculum than having everything relating back to magic, Princess Twilight Sparkle couldn’t get those ‘general’ education reforms through soon enough. How else would a giant butterfly have logically earned a medical license in Equestria while working on a pirate crew? Mind you, the butterfly named Belfry was as close to being an outright animal that it completely beggars belief that it could even pass the test for medical license, much less the whole crew passing the same test with their varying education levels from none at all to actually fairly well educated for a Viking. As far as world educational standards went, Turtle Toga surprisingly beat out everyone. This in spite of it being a cutthroat, pirate riddled, island of incredibly dubious living conditions. Education was the one thing they don’t skimp on apparently, makes you wonder why most of the people that come from there take pirate as a main vocation if they were smart enough for literally anything else. -Pokemon Realm, Ransei, a little more than a day later, Illusio, Ocellus- The gently rocking of the airship stilled my nerves as I approached Pom and started to open her mouth. “Mmm?” I was about to stuff the funnel into Pom’s mouth when she woke up, Dolly had spent most of the other day exercising and worrying about Pom’s unconscious form. Darn it, I liked using the funnel… It wouldn’t be long before she woke up from her nap and would certainly be excited to see Pom, personally I’m terrified Pom could grow fangs or go ‘dog wild’ like she had. Shanty pointed out that Pom was using her Wolf Fang Hoof technique to disable her opponents, which she did so while volatilely mauling them was upsetting… at least she didn’t kill anyone. The terror she inspired in everyone was rather warranted and I doubted any of them would want to face her again. “Oh your awake, we all made it onto the airship fine, we successfully forced the Hypno into retreating though we might see some of those units again.” Aw she woke up… and I liked using the funnel. Don’t know what that says about me, but I’m pretty sure other people don’t want to hear about it. “Here, drink this, Sitrus Berry Juice. I have to ask, how did you end up tearing your muscles instead of pulling them like when you did with Cu Chulainn?” I held the cup up to her mouth and she took the drink in a few good thirsty swallows of the tart lemon like liquids. I didn’t need to eat, but my mouth still appreciated flavors every once in a while “Reminder… I do not have super strength.” Pom stated clearly and succinctly as she raised a hoof and started to pet Dolly, who cuddled closer to her. “Though my jaw strength is fairly impressive, bodily moving the Hypno was a bit much for my body compared to mauling Cu Chulainn. Now that I’m through explaining that to you, what’s our situation?” “You missed a whole day Pom. The Inkay ink got us into the air and the Ponyta Prowlers unit from Titania is transporting us towards the city, but once we get into Cerebrum City and managed to offload properly, and hopefully not crash landing on some poor Pokémon, we’re on our own from there. It is still unknown what happened to Kadabraville, aside from your supposition that it could come under attack from the other units.” I sighed loudly. “With some help from Lumber Spry and the Sitrus Berries, that we have for emergency medical reasons or just you in particular, you should be able to walk by the time we get there… provided we can bypass the Sigilyph security. Sigilyphs are the main obstacle to stopping all flying or otherwise Pokémon from getting anywhere close to Cerebrum City. Apparently Sigilyph are even dangerous to Dark Types because they can learn Miracle Eye.” “The Ponyta Prowlers were assumedly shot down far from the city if it’s been more than a day, what’s stopping those Sigilyphs they mentioned from doing that again?” Mind you we haven’t exactly seen what one looks like, but we know that they are dangerous and are said to have very distinct appearances. “Also what does the move Miracle Eye exactly do?” “Right or wrong, the Sigilyph are apparently always bound to follow the current king’s orders, regardless of who that current king happens to be. Big obstacles for us really, especially if we are going to try and invade the flying Castle of Illusion to attack Gilgamesh directly.” I answered and as for what Miracle Eye does, apparently its applications were quite terrifying to deal with. “Well Miracle Eye is why Cotton Murkrow couldn’t get through to Cerebrum City and was taken out herself. She’s even the reason why we know this information. While under its direct effects of Miracle Eye, it disables any Dark Types immunity to Psychic attacks, it stops Ghost Types from being able to go invisible… and worst of all it makes any attack nearly impossible to dodge if you are out in the open and don’t have the capability of flight or can dig into the ground. Basically you should have something between you and them if you are target of the Miracle Eye move.” “So we take them out carefully at range?” She sat up and already had a calculating look in her eyes. “Uh… about that… apparently Sigilyph have a particular thing like what the Shedinja do that makes attacking them at range impossible. It’s an ability called Magic Guard, basically all the Sigilyph of Illusio are immune to any form of long range attack. Basically you can’t hit them with any form of Pokémon artillery.” That’s one of the rubs of having to deal with Sigilyph from what I’ve heard, you can’t hurt them with long range attacks at all. “The other two abilities they could have, one makes their less effective attacks on other Pokémon hit with twice the force and the other cause special effects moves that can end in paralysis, burn or confusion not have those effects occur. We don’t have to worry about that as all the Sigilyph guarding Cerebrum are guaranteed to have Magic Guard.” “So not only can these Sigilyph find a target at long range, attack them from said range with unerring accuracy, but they are completely immune to any form of retaliation… what weaknesses do that have?” Pom asked as she swaddled Dolly in the blanket she had been sleeping under. “They sound like the perfect defense.” “Apparently they specialize in high speed flying and devastatingly accurate long range attacks, but they do have a few weaknesses. They are terrible up close fighters and have poor stamina, not Shedinja poor, meaning that if they are attacked up close and personal under their Magic Guard they’ll go down pretty fast. It really doesn’t help that they can fly.” Getting close was a major issue in its own right, especially notably when a single unit of Sigilyph can wipe entire armies if not taken out swiftly. “Apparently the Sigilyph Seraph units are the main reason why, despite the low population among Psychic types compared to other nations, Illusio has never been truly or successfully invaded by a major force. If they detect us… well things are going to get interesting from there at the very least.” “… Okay… so how are we avoiding them, because I’m assuming the Ponyta Prowlers did something about that involving stealth?” Yeah, they were stealth experts Pom, which is like saying a changeling could hide in plain sight without changing to a disguise form and still not be seen. They however couldn’t hide their true emotions though, among them Inky Dye had a particular unusual set of emotions compared to the rest of the Ponyta. She might seem like Pinkie Pie at first, but there was more to Inky than that. “Stealth definitely seems like the best way to deal with the Sigilyph in any capacity and once we know what they look like, we’ll avoid them to the best of our abilities unless we can get the drop on them.” “Remember their mention of gathering those psychic crystals around the tree? Apparently that’s putting out enough psychic energy that we’re functionally invisible to them at a long range… visually, not so much.” Yeah, I could see the slightly understanding in Pom’s eyes, we weren’t getting into the city without being attacked at least once if we were unlucky enough to be spotted by even one. “However the airship is really quite slow, so maybe we can get in unnoticed, but it’s highly unlikely knowing our collective lucks.” A yawn was heard from Dolly and she slapped her face with her tongue to try and wake herself up and then she realized she was really quite cozy in the blanket. Once she noticed Pom was awake, she abandoned all the coziness and all sleep abandoned her as she leapt up to hug Pom affectionately with her paws, tail wagging excitedly. “Exactly how many psychic types know this Miracle Eye move?” Well there was something Pom she be glad about. “Not many, but it is definitely assumed to be the most dangerous thing a Sigilyph can do is see you and immediately tag you with Miracle Eye, but I think the unmentioned problem with Miracle Eye is that it gives the user tunnel vision with how it was explained to work to me and they can only target one given being with it at a time. So we’d need someone to close in with them fast and get them into melee range to take them down and have numbers comparable to distract them. You are, unfortunately enough, likely to be a volunteer for that eventually.” I was warning her ahead of time so she could appreciate that I brought it up at all. Pom sighed audibly and Dolly said something with several cheerful barks that made Pom smile a bit and cuddle her, those two were adorable. I’m sad to have to ruin the occasion of the two being playful or cuddly with one another. “That aside… we need to talk about two things in particular. Dolly, can you watch the door for us and make sure no one’s eavesdrops on our conversation? You’re going to hear this conversation through Pom anyway and I already know you don’t care about one of the questions, you just probably stuffed it under the words ‘it’s magic’ in your brain and will ignore it.” Dolly nodded and hopped down from the bed and left the room and closed the door behind her. “Okay, first up, Shanty said you grew fangs, did you actually ingest the blood of those you attacked?” It had been my worry that Pom could go completely predator. “Yes.” Pom didn’t act down or perky, she just proclaimed that she swallowed some of the blood from those Hypno. “Did I enjoy it… no. It happened, I’d rather not think about it.” “Well that’s partially a relief, makes me wonder about the next time you call on your wild magic like that.” She functionally became a wolf and tore apart those Hypno. Dazzle was worried, Quetal was curious and Shine basically said she would trust ‘Pom’s Instincts’ with how in tune with them Pom was. Mundo was fairly quiet for a while, but eventually said if Pom started hurting her friends he’d be there to bring her back to her senses if she went too far. He told us several times that Pom should not be treated as a monster, lest she actually becomes one and even then he’d try to bring her back to her senses. Favela was somewhat scared of Pom, but that didn’t bother her friendship with Shanty at all. She understandably wary, but also as worried as the rest of us were. Lit… like Dolly, don’t seem to care, they had some very strange world views. Dolly clearly being optimistic and Lit sharing her optimism probably doesn’t think too far beyond his next meal and being Dolly’s best little buddy and our lightning spewing fluffy bug friend. Wild magic or bestial magic, was the stuff that made Timber Wolves what they were. Pom and Shanty had close ties to their magic. Shanty’s had odd effects like climbing any surface, being able to create blades with a swing of a hoof and her recent water controlling abilities, makes me wonder who her parents were that her abilities seem to make her seem like she was a water born creature. She was clearly a goat, but her past was shrouded in mystery since as far as she can remember she was tied to a bit of driftwood before being rescued from it by a changeling being one of the first few things she could remember from her youth. By comparison Pom’s magic was far more understandable and one to one what with all the stuff related to having to do with canids, canines or any variation of four legged pack animals with similar natures. There’s also that title ‘Canine Queen’ which is basically on par with being very on the nose like being a golden fleeced ‘Chrysomallus’. Canard’s only comment was, we do what we have to in the name of survival for those we care about and those we want to continue on more than ourselves. Having been through as much as he has, those words were haunting as he has made a similar sacrifice… yet he barely survived doing so. Honestly, Canard was another person we could look up to, he didn’t have to come with us to Illusio. He could have just sat safely behind in Helper’s Hamlet and have to do nothing dangerous, more than doing a few Harmony guild requests, until he could be properly sent home. Instead, like what happened to him leaving his home of Puck World, Canard was still a hero and leader through and through. He was probably closest to understanding Pom’s anxiety problems in depth considering he had a few himself, he was surprisingly fatherly towards Cleffa and then there was the whole thing with Sami having hero worship of him. I quietly looked to Pom and she looked to be in thought as much as I was. “I will have to pull out my Wolf Fang Hoof again at some point, how much damage did I do mentally?” Quickly telling Pom and reassuring her that I was still her friend, if a little wary that she could go for my throat with suddenly grown fangs like a werewolf… maybe more like a were-dog. “I’m surprised you’re not asking about physically…” I said after I gave a run up about the mental states of everyone, I was acting in confidence here and Pom seemed alright with Favela being afraid of her. To be fair, even I had some hints of fear in the back of my mind related to Pom. Pom had once said she was scary and I think I laughed it off, here… well she was scary and being afraid of herself was a normal reaction to mauling an entire unit of what were apparently Elite strength Hypno in a minute. “Ocellus, I’m might not be super strong, but I’m more than aware of my capabilities and how to lever them.” One of the more dangerous things was Pom’s mind, I can only feel her emotions… I wouldn’t know what a Psychic would get by trying to get into her head. Judging by the fact that Dolly stopped receiving injuries when Pom connected to Dolly, I would think Pom’s mind to be more dangerous than her body. “I heard from one of the Hypno during the fight that my most dangerous move was Thousand Spears: Huo, then he scoffed at the fact that it take me five minutes to perform and didn’t understand how it could be dangerous.” “If someone gave you five minutes to create a spear of fire with the ability to melt rock, they better be a dragon or completely immune to the outcome. That ability was Forewarn by the way, it allows the Pokémon to know one of an opponent’s most dangerous moves and yours is something that can incinerate a lot of changelings.” Otherwise I’d think the person was an idiot to let Pom get off such an attack, much less have the time to form it without interruption. Sacrificing time and effort is probably the safest thing Pom could in fact sacrifice. “Just bringing it up, because I might have to actually see it and I’ll probably find it exceedingly beautiful. We changelings appreciate fire and light a little too much sometimes, Smolder knows how to breathe fire in a way that will always draw me in.” There was an awkward silence as we all felt the slight shifting of the flying boat beneath us. “How do you think the Ponyta Prowlers survived the fall prior to this?” Finally Pom asks a question to break the silence, I was avoiding asking the second question as much as she was. “I have something of an idea on that, first we’d have to start up with how high up this ship was before the balloon was blasted by the Sigilyph.” I will always look up to smart people, smart people like Celestia, King Thorax, Twilight Sparkle and Discord. Pom was one of the people I have learned admire over the time we’ve been traveling together. I have also learned not to put people too high on a pedestal that you can’t have a decent talk with them. Some would be surprised that I looked up to Discord, he really wasn’t too bad, you just had to understand that he was chaos incarnate and even then he was very intelligent for all the sense he doesn’t make at times. “If they were clinging to the ship as it fell, they could have let go at the last second and would have had a different momentum from the shockwave as the ship hit the ground, thus creating horizontal momentum instead of completely downwards. At best I’d think they got lucky that Lumber Spry wasn’t too badly injured and managed to get the rest of them back up afterwards with some uses of Heal Pulse.” “Hmm… still… something is off about how the ship crashed into the ground, this ship did take damage at some point, but not as much as you’d expect.” Pom was likely overthinking something. “Maybe because the wood used is fairy wood? Anyway, I know you’re going to ask, so you might as well put it out there.” “Does Gilgamesh really need to die?” There I said it, even if I didn’t like the idea of killing… changelings required beings to be alive to befriend to survive and killing wasn’t exactly something we were comfortable with. As aggressive and protective as King Thorax’s brother Pharynx was, we do need the capacity to defend ourselves and be able to kill when necessary… we’d prefer it to not be necessary as much as possible and I can tell Pom was able to follow that train of thought easily. So the real question was, why was Pom rather insistent on it? I can kind of understand why Pom might feel this way after having her device stolen, but that didn’t explain it entirely. Didn’t get a chance to ask up until now, Pom had been somewhat busy in the forest making dinner and or acquiring the much needed ink from the Inkay. “He needs to be stopped, one way or another… it is most likely another.” Pom wilted a bit. “You would think I’m being goaded to anger by him, but there’s another reason for it. He specifically had those Hypno targeting me, especially with the assumption that I was going to be acting in the capacity of a hero. He either wants me dead, riled up or wants me or someone else to get strong enough to stop him and make sure he dies before he pulls off whatever plan he’s got going on. It’s going to be quite bad, unless we stop him specifically and with as much force as we can get.” I wasn’t going to say Pom wasn’t a hero, she didn’t want to hear that ‘she was’, that’s completely fine with me. She had managed to stop all the Binder Blade Forest Pokémon from attacking us and stopped the Hypno from feeding off of them. At best it was a neutral outcome, the Pokémon in that forest were still crazy and the Hypno she took out would recover from their physical injuries and likely would avoid the forest, but were still a threat to others if tasked with being so. “So…” I started only for Pom to interrupt me by holding up a hoof. “Do you have any suggestions for what I could have done differently?” Pom asked pleadingly. “I’d actually like to hear them Ocellus.” “I… don’t know how much better I could have done.” It was a bit humiliating to admit, but I didn’t see any better way to deal with the Hypno then have Pom flip out purpose and maul them. “We could have tried talking them down, but…” “They wouldn’t have backed down, they were there specifically to cause problems for us. Gilgamesh certainly has some pieces of work working for him as well.” What did Pom mean? I tilted my head curiously and she nodded while huffing. “Remember the psychic crystals around the area we were camping at?” I gave Pom a flat look. “I’m fairly certain the crystals are a result of the rising psychic energies in the area that are driving the Pokémon that can’t handle it insane. The Hypno weren’t surprised to see the crazy Pokémon when they showed up, like they almost expected it to be a thing and they are a part of Gilgamesh’s regime.” So if Pom was going where I thought she was with this. “I’m somewhat certain that it’s the end result of something Gilgamesh has set up and the Hypno know something about it, why else would he send them to stop us from trying to get to Cerebrum City? As for what Gilgamesh is planning… I only got a glimpse of his mind, but if the increasing psychic energies around Illusio are anything to go by… he’s possibly planning to commit genocide.” “Genocide?” My metaphorical heart dropped into the pits of my stomach, also my Squeedly Spooch was shaking in horror. Also I sometimes wonder why Ponies were weirded out by normal Changeling biology. “Either of the neighboring kingdoms or all the Psychic Types in this one, maybe even both at the same time. Kill enough Psychic Types off and with their slow birth rates…” Pom shuddered violently. “Let’s hope it does not come to that, he’d be functionally destroying an entire kingdom for an ideal that I’m too well aware of.” “Which would be?” I just had to ask as what would be the reason “He might be committing genocide for the ideal of ‘Survival of the fittest’… whoever’s left alive would be considered the strongest.” Pom… there wasn’t actually much to say to that, who would actually commit genocide for something like that? “My read is that Gilgamesh wants to succeed as much as he wants to be stopped and it’s fairly confusing to say the least from what I know so far. I still don’t have the exact details of his plan and only hunches to go off of, but all of this is in the name of something larger and I want to find out what that is before someone has to kill him to save everyone. I still think Gilgamesh needs to die, but only for the safety of everyone else involved.” Oh right, Pom was a pragmatist. So to her, so far at least, killing Gilgamesh looked like the best option. I can only hope that will change as we moved forward to continue our supposed ‘investigation’, as much as a farce as the investigation was now as we were actively going to be joining rebels to stop Gilgamesh and whoever was willingly working with him even knowing what he was going to do. I guess we were still ‘investigating the problem’, even if we could have left on a technicality by now. Pom wants her device back and to prevent a huge problem that could be occurring, because she is driven to sacrifice herself in a variety of ways to save others. We were going to be quite busy in the near future with just keeping Pom alive, much less doing everything else on top of that. -An hour later, Pom- After feeding Dolly, I was sitting on the deck of the ship and staring into the distance far away and above us at the bottom of the floating continent city with humongous psychic crystals sticking out of the bottom of it. Said Psychic Type crystals were obviously why it was floating. I hoped we managed to at least be well into the city before the Sigilyph even caught wind that we were there, but that was highly unlikely and I would suspect something of Cotton or the Ponyta if we made it without issue. So we have a humongous floating place had an entire city on it and the castle was probably floating even higher up above even that, close enough to see beyond the atmosphere. Hadn’t really thought about space since Elhorn, must be really hard to survive beyond the ether among the stars. It was high enough in the sky that it doesn’t cast as much of a shadow on the ground. Though I’m guessing there were periods where central Illusio had the shadow of the floating city cast on it. It was still quite a distance away as we traveled along the central back of what I’m calling ‘Mapped Arceus’. We came out of the back legs and were now in the spinal region of the Ransei map. “That’s where we’re going? The place looks huge!” Dolly said wide eyed and with some enthusiasm. “Yeah, it’ll be an adventure, but you have to realize the big issues we’re going to be dealing with soon.” I looked to Dolly and she looked back at me with a bit of worry. “If something that big floating above the land falls from the sky… most of Illusio is going to be devastated. If Gilgamesh were set to be destructive in the face of defeat he could functionally do that.” “That won’t happen Pom, we’ve got this.” Sometimes wish to have your enthusiasm, optimism and peppy attitude Dolly. “We’ll get your ability to talk to Tianhuo back from that Hills-a-guess.” “Gilgamesh.” I corrected bluntly. “You weren’t upset by me going all canine?” “Why would I be, you were in control of yourself… well mostly. I also think I was there and so was… I want to say the half of Dormarch we have?” Apparently my fighting spirit has the presence of all the beings I’ve ever had a familiar bond with, two presences in my fighting spirit were a lot more prominent than the others. One having three tails was telling and the other was a wolf that had three bands around their neck, who did I know that wore three collars, on top of a pink scarf and the Digivice that allows her to connect to her family? “Felt like I was there fighting along right with you even if I got knocked out, feel pretty good despite getting badly scorched by brain energy.” Dolly did recover pretty quickly from that, but I put that thought out of mind as maybe her magic giving her minor defensive field around her body. That or it was the application of Sitrus Berries and Heal Pulse from Lumber Spry. Thinking of Digivice, we couldn’t put Dormarch in it, got enough information from asking Sami about how digital cores worked. A Digimon can only exist as long as they have a core, or in our unmentioned situation a place to keep their information together like Dolly and me. So even if we were to transfer Dormarch’s information out of us and into the Digivice, his data would apparently immediately corrupt and then he’d really become impossible to recover. After a discussing how Digimon worked, being Sami was created rather than born, she was the expert on the subject of how her and other Digimon souls worked. Dormarch needed a core to live outside of us, even if the core doesn’t have a body to go with it. A Digimon can feasibly exist without a body, but a core was absolutely necessary. Sami was understanding of my bloody attack on the Hypno, she’s had to do things she wasn’t particularly happy with either and having heard her story it was a surprise she was still as chipper as ever. I at least told her memories were important and that she wouldn’t be who she was without them and she agreed, which is why she has her pleasant disposition. Frizzle was silently supportive of me and more forgiving about me getting extremely violent with the Hypno, she was one of the ones Ocellus hadn’t mentioned and went to get an idea of how she felt about me. She quietly compared it to her first time going through evolution with Dazzle’s help using her Digivice, the one where she attacked all of us in a wild frenzy. Except I hadn’t attacked anyone that we cared about, Frizzle was willing to be quite lenient because of that. “So… want to call my family and see if we can get a connection to Canned Bard’s team?” Dolly knows the mood I was in and probably thought cute puppy antics would stop me from considering all the possible ways Gilgamesh could be screwing with us right now. “Dolly, you never cease to amaze me with how many quirky names you can come up with for people.” Though we should probably check in on the Mighty Ducks, the ‘hockey religion’ vigilantes, to see if they got the memo that we actually have Canard with us. After a quite bit of staring at me with a smile, I finally relented and yipped out a proper response. “Yes. Let’s do it inside though, we don’t want the device to accidentally fall overboard.” The Ponyta Prowlers were wandering the deck as Dolly and I made for below deck past the wagon Dodo was sitting next to. They were making sure we were on course and preparing for tonight, we had a few hours of free time and then we’d begin a nighttime insertion with the assistance of low physical visibility and the psychic crystals hiding our presence from their extrasensory visibility. We would be on approach for the underside of the flying city and would try for the unused airship docks, because Gilgamesh was certain to have made sure nobody was using them under his rule. Since there was no air traffic, the teleportation pads I’ve been hearing about and the agriculture on the floating landmass itself had to be the reason why living this high up was even functionally possible. -Off to the side watching everyone else on the ship, Cotton Murkrow- To tell them now or not, That was the question! Eh, not, it would be more fun that way. Plenty of friends to make, plenty of enemies to meet and say ‘howdy’ to as I be bamboozling them something fierce, my ex-per-tease was about to become the talk of this here kingdom of Illusio. It was also going to be quite fun, stupidly dangerous and full of madcap zany adventures. Geh-heh-heh, they should have an idea of who they are letting into Cerebrum City, the previous king of Illusio certainly would and would definitely have had me detained and under multiple locks and keys before I could get within a mile of the floating city! Oh my beloved Date Masamune, you send me to the best of places to do the worst of things! “If it truly hadn’t been for me, some of my best friends would be long dead you see~.” The grin splitting my beak as I sang and started humming a familiar ditty to myself. Probably should procure a violin whilst I’m setting up in Cerebrum City… probably shouldn’t try to steal the rum, that water goat has a sixth sense about the stuff. “Most ask ‘where did I even come from’ and others angrily ‘where did I go’, but mostly what is up with me, The Cotton the Murkrow~?” I would be making sure my new friends survived this or my name wasn’t being the infamous Cotton, the genius 'birdbrained' spymaster of Avia! -Pom- Why do I feel a chill down my spine, as if there was a Jaded La Perm like entity nearby? Someone was tapdancing on their own grave and I'm absolutely horrified by the feeling. Quick concentrate on something else other than the feeling of impending cat doom! “So anyway Dawkins, did you get in contact with Canard’s team and get them on speed dial?” I asked pleasantly, Dolly’s family was my family too and they were a nice reprieve, especially before flying directly into the mouth of the beast... if we could even get into the mouth before we were all killed.