//------------------------------// // 363. Cold Open. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Airship Mauled, Black Market Shop ‘Paws Out’, Jaded- “Nice to know that the friends of my friends Ryu and his Jorogumo lady are having a nice time in Neighpon… so what can I do to get some nunchucks around here?” I asked the male Kitsune whole grinned at me mischievously. “Nothing, because you’re mother already got to us first.” The Kitsune stated with a certainty. “We’re not crossing or stepping on the toes of a witch, especially not one who could ban us from her restaurant for all of eternity.” “Oh come on!” I whined, while my ears and tail wilted. Wait… “Did she ban me from buying boomerangs from you?” “No, I don’t believe she did… ah a loophole. So what are you in for since we have a business transaction oncoming?” The kitsune smiled cheerfully while pressing his paws together. “We have heavy metal, designer wood with which we can carve an image of your face on it, tough hard plastic, anti-magic materials, quad-frame, tri-frame, hexa-frame or the simple pipe bend frame boomerang. We can even get you magical enchantments on the boomerangs too if you are up for it.” “Do you do vigilante suits?” I suddenly asked with my tail wagging madly as I had a demented grin on my face, I could work with this and this Kitsune was my new ‘best friend’. “Also did my mother say there was anything against literal nun-chucks or just nunchaku in general?” “I can tell this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” The Kitsune agreed as his tails wagged. “However we still can’t help you destroy the name ‘Saddle Arabia’ or be involved in any schemes that you are to be liable to be caught up in trying to do so as ‘Mirage’.” “Okay then, once we’re done hashing out the boomerang, the vigilante suit and the fact that I can’t own a nunchaku because mom keeps getting in the way no matter what I try…” I paused and looked around in a conspiratorial fashion. “I need you to send a bottle cap somewhere discretely and it has nothing to do with Saddle Arabia, in fact I’m quite liberally giving you the plausible deniability upfront by telling you exactly where I am sending it and why I’m sending it there. Someone needs it for their collection.” Let’s just say Teatime Clockwork will owe me a favor after I do this for him… after I told the Kitsune exactly where would be going he looked curious and shrugged. After we finished doing business the kitsune only had one thing to say to me. “Thank you for coming in for a pause, now that business is done, get out.” As I exited the store at the Kitsune’s insistence a billowing blue smoke formed in front of me. “Jaded, it has been a long time coming and I cannot take your constant effrontery to my honor any longer, for I challenge you to a battle!” Princess Luna was five to my nine thus far, it was about time she tried this. “How about a battle of wits, unfortunately it seems my opponent came to this battle completely unarmed.” I stated blithely while waving a claw at the star mane princess. “So you might want to go figure out how to do so.” Luna paused and put a hoof to her chin looking up at the canopy of trees and sky in thought with a bit of confusion on her face, she tried to say something once, but then thought better of it. After a few minutes the princess of the night finally decided on something. “You are right, I must go figure out how to arm my wits and then I’ll come back to beat you soundly in such a battle!” With that Princess Luna flew off leaving me staring after her, quite a few people came to watch the interaction and after a long thirty seconds everyone in the general area started laughing. “Did that… did that really… I… what just happened?!” I asked in clear confusion as I turned to the confusion god Veles who was doing a brain scorpion thing today, he was always so cool. “I have no idea what’s going on either.” Well that wasn’t very helpful mister brain scorpion Veles, with candy canes for legs and a stinger made of peanut brittle, his claws were made of a nice smelling hickory smoked wood with fish jerky and his eyes were made of marble. Nice choice of stone really, really adds to the whole confused mess of a monstrous appearance you had going. “I can’t believe you just got away with that Jaded.” A colt named Quick Split stated as he came up to me and I crouched down to be eye level with him, I was getting really good at being around children. All the practice with my nephew Gavin and my daughters Silvers helps. “I mean what do you think she’s going to do when she eventually figures out that you just openly insulted her intelligence to her face like that?” “Well if she resembles my remark… anyway you’re a quick witted colt Split and the answer depends on how long it takes for her to realize it and how much of a head start in planning I’ll have against the immortal pony of the night.” I stated calmly. “I’ll do what I always do when I’ve annoyed someone extremely powerful! I run for the hills, since the hills around here have some really big Maulwurf holes and they have magic resistant skin. Put enough of them between me and her to frustrate her to no end into giving up for that given day when it finally does occur to her. Incidentally, I’ve got some Maulwurfs to befriend now and I’m going to need Fluttershy’s help with that.” -Pokémon Realm, Heading north and on approach for a south western Nixtorm beach, morning approximately three hours before noon, Pom- I’m surprised at how fast Oberon got us here, but I chalk that up to how bad Quetal and Dolly are when it comes to scheming pranks. They were relentless and I didn’t think Quetal had it in him at first. Looking at our bipedal blade weasel friend, he seemed nervous and determined to face the cold north as the airship lowered towards the beach in the distance. “You two horrify me on a number of levels that I can’t even begin to describe.” I stated flatly. “I mean I had a hint with the balloons, the wine barrels, the reed dart guns and… well just about everything else that still surprises me about what happened. It was all with the Queen’s blessing no less.” Quetal and Dolly bumped claw and paws respectively with a grin and a smirk that I finally responded to it after a few hours of riding on the airship, those two were definitely good buddies now after that whole mess we left behind. That and Quetal saved us from drowning when he wasn’t very good at swimming, that was a thing too. “All the Snubbles, Granbulls, Eevees, Sylveons and basically every canine with a chip in their shoulder about Oberon certainly helped our cause, among all the pranking factions that wanted one on Oberon, but I think you just existing had something to do with that Pom.” You know what Quetal, I really should be asking if they rose up into being a cult after I left and I’m not asking because I don’t think I actually want to know. “So all we need to do is step off the ship and then we go monster hunting… I really don’t want to be here, but we can’t always have what we wish for, at least not without hard work. Planning Lord Oberon’s downfall was definitely hard work and the end results speaks for itself. So did you have a relaxing time while we were in Titania?” “I think I did manage to relax a little, I mean the flowers were nice, The Dream felt like home given the magic in the air and it was mostly quiet up until the targeted prank riots started.” I don’t think we would be welcome back anytime soon by Lord Oberon who kept to his word after receiving so many true smiles and the reason for those smiles was rather silly, but at least we’d be welcome back anytime by his wife Titania. “I think all the Fairy Types were quite nice, but I couldn’t help but feel there was some sense of menace in their actions while I was there.” “Yeah, the fact that Lord Oberon was trying to keep us there wasn’t hard to figure out, but I think his intentions were at least on the nicer side of things. You’ve been through quite a lot before arriving in our world and since arriving in this world and I’ve been there for most of what you’ve been through.” Yeah, Quetal was a witness to the horrible things that have happened around me and he was a good friend, having stuck around as long as he has for the dangers I tend to get into proves it. I couldn’t really protect my girls or anyone against the likes of Gilgamesh, much less know how I’m going to deal with the whole informational machine monster we were going to face. On that note… “Dolly, can I have the device for a second? I need to ask it something.” The airship we were on was coming in for a landing on the beach and wouldn’t fly anywhere inland. That was mostly because of the constant blizzards around here lately having just been that horrible and they were caused by Articuno the Pokémon ‘bird of ice’ trying to keep the Kingdom of Nixtorm standing from the monster we were here to face. Thanks to the weather issues, I was of the opinion that Articuno was causing as much a problem as the monster itself that came into this world on our heels and I feel partially responsible for it being here. Dolly looked reluctant, but still pawed over the device and I had to ask. “Yiggy, what are the chances we can beat Skull Chaosdramon X as we are?” I stated as I walked down the gangplank and onto the frost covered cold beach with several Spheals lazing about. “There are many unknown factors, but the chances are smaller without a Digimon partner to assist in combat against another Digimon. However, Pokémon might be able to fight on par with or possibly overcome Digimon depending on their overall capabilities. As such your chances might raise proportionally to how powerful your friends are as much as your own strength.” Yggdrasil.sys’s voice came from the device, but I’m aware it was a pale copy of the actual thing with a limited interaction ability. The informational god had spoken, there was a chance and I wasn’t going into this blindly. An image of Skull Chaosdramon appeared on the screen as I looked at the device that I had little idea as to how it worked or functioned, just that it did. Some say that technology, when sufficiently advanced, could compare to magic and that’s what I’m seeing here. “I would not suggest facing powerful corrupted viral beyond mega level entity such as Skull Chaosdramon X without as much assistance as you can bring up against it, unless it is greatly weakened prior to you facing it. Be aware that personal health is important, eat and drink until full user Pom. Until you are absolutely ready to fight it, do not approach any lethal digital entity of such capabilities with only the bare minimum of preparedness.” Computers back on Equus were quite rare and not very powerful, at most they did quick math calculations and from what I understand of going through two worlds of high level technology… eventually Equus would have computers that can do far more than a bunch of calculations. Technology could come to life all on its own like Dodo, the magical equivalent would be a golem except golems weren’t capable of a familiar bond. Don’t know how to feel about the eventual technological advancements or the implications of the dangers thereof, but apparently its part of every eventual space faring race thing most beings do when they eventually want to get off planet and see the universe they were a part of. I was so very small in the big picture of everything… really don’t want to add space travel as a complication to things I’m already doing, preferred having my hooves firmly planted on a planet. Wanting to fly had a very different meaning to me now. Also I noted that the Yggdrasil.sys avoided answering what our chances were in a fight against such a monster directly. Said monster used to have something called a ‘Genocide Attack’ until Dazzle’s poison messed it up, so really, I shouldn’t be too hopeful for our chances even if it was rendered entirely dangerous in a melee only range. That it was causing enough destruction in the Kingdom of Nixtorm that the various kingdoms were taking note of it being there, this meant that it wasn’t any less dangerous than it had been when it was coming after me or my friends previously with those cannons on its back when they were in working order. I calmly gave it back to Dolly and took a deep, long, inhale of air and then exhaled slowly. The air here was at least invigorating and fairly fresh, even smelled as such with the pine needles permeating the surroundings, but it was also quite cold. That was to be expected from a kingdom of ice. “Are we still doing it?” Quetal asked, he was getting antsy just standing on the frost covered sand on the coastline as he stared at the frozen mountains that was once upon a time his homeland. “We are still doing it.” I confirmed, before I hiked the food supplies onto my back and started forward. Time to start hunting down a monster and put a stop to it… somehow. I have no clue how we were going to do it, I barely even did anything permanent to Gilgamesh. Even if we had, apparently, won that fight. Illusio certainly didn’t come out of it in anything resembling a good condition and with a lot of Psychic Types suddenly homeless. Didn’t know how Aurora was doing or what the other nations like Fontaine that was still recovering from its own issues, just to have more added onto them. This world was falling apart and I’m feeling quite sorry for the people who live here. “Yay, we’re all going to die!” Please don’t look so happy about that Curdle, it’s making my anxiety come back in full force… like it ever really left to begin with. She hopped off the airship to follow us into the supposed frozen wasteland as Quetal tells it, while looking around with wide eyed curiosity. An entire species that devoted its evolution to suddenly lacking flight and becoming tastier was still quite confusing to me. “I’ve never actually been this far outside of Titania’s Fairy Dust Islands or The Dream before. Do you think anyone will actually take me up on eating me?” “Welcome to the rest of this world then, it’s not going to be a cakewalk like you might think Curdle and I don’t think people want to eat sentient mounds of cream and sugar.” Though I suppose Curdle did look like a walking cake topping. I now had a friend I can positively say was made of lemon cream and had peach tarts as functional organs and edible hair ties. What is my life, that there was an actual concern about a Pokémon actively wanting me to eat it? “I’m fairly certain I don’t want to be a diabetic at this point in my life either, already have enough problems with being a golden wool.” “Are you guys going to be okay?” Sir Mik asked as he stood on the railing of the ship, ready to ride it back to Titania. “We’ll be fine from here Sir Mik, thank you for being a good friend and helping us get here safely.” I responded as if I weren’t going on a possibly suicidal monster hunt. Yeah, my mental issues weren’t getting any better, was it that noticeable? “I wish you well with getting back to Titania.” “You’re welcome, let’s shove off for home guys, I want to see if Queen Titania and Lord Oberon are talking again.” Sir Mik was such a nice guy, which fits with the title of ‘knight’ he had. “They might need help to make their relationship a bit healthier than it currently is, also I don’t want to miss the fallout of the newest major resurgence of prank wars. I might actually have to actively protect the queen or king.” I sighed and started forward and past the Spheal playfully lazing and rolling about on the beach and up towards the snow and frozen paths beyond the beach to the north, the temperature was dropping by the second and it wouldn’t likely be going up too far as long as we were here. I looked to Dolly who seemed as energetic as ever and tightened what little wool I grew back out around my body, having regrown enough for full body coverage at the very least over the course of the last few time dilated days of ‘The Dream’ helped with giving me a protective warmth. Fairy Types were surely tricky, but they at least weren’t expecting anything of me anymore aside from maybe Curdle. “Are you okay Dolly?” I asked as she didn’t seem to be shivering or even showing signs of the temperature dropping having an effect on her, you could see her hot breathe in the chilly air. She was a short furred dog species and as such one would suspect she shouldn’t have much protection against the cold. “Huh, yeah, why wouldn’t I be? Is this about my board, I know we haven’t talked about it, but the damage to it isn’t all that bad… though I will be more careful around things like that sword that Guys-a-lush guy pulled on us. It’s far better than you being torn apart by that attack at the very least.” Dolly’s favorite thing and she cared more about me than it. I felt somewhat happy that Dolly was still as positive as ever and she was continuing to have a lot of optimism given the situation we were walking into… on purpose. “Still would like to find materials to fix the damage, so I probably shouldn’t use it as a weapon for a while.” I noticed Dolly rub a paw over where she was slashed open by that attack and looking at her unblemished fur and pristine, lacking scars, flesh. Yeah, that attack had scared me and I apparently let my Chrysomallus side creep up my front left leg to save her. “So you’re not cold?” Just to be sure, I asked. It took me a moment to remember what I had discovered about Dolly’s side of the Dalmatian family with her brother Dante being a Dalmatian Grimm. Her father possibly having the general Hellhound immunity to normal flames in his job as a ‘fire fighter’ would make it functionally impossible for him to die from fire, but not a collapsing building. By all rights, Dolly should have some of her father’s unusual traits, instead it seemed like she had the opposite. Was her birth mother perhaps responsible? I think Dolly having an affinity for being immune to freezing cold temperatures was unusual for a Dalmatian and I’m surprised she hadn’t started throwing fireballs around already, her magic definitely seemed to fit her though. That that nature didn’t include an active ability to spew fire related magic was a little confusing given her cheerful personality. “Nope, never been really cold. I mean I can obviously feel it sure, like sucking on an ice cube really, but it doesn’t affect me much.” Dolly definitely had passive abilities before she became a familiar to me and we uncorked her abilities. “What I really hate is getting too hot, matted fur is not pleasant, I swear springs and summers in Camden are like infernos sometimes.” “Then it’s unfortunate for you that Huoshan is relatively hot year round.” If we ever make it back to the three tiered giant wall of a city alive. “Well outside of Hearth’s Warming season, where the temperature doesn’t drop too much, but at least its cooler like here.” I pointed and swept hoof to the cold sandy beach as we were walking up towards a trail, there were a few Pokémon loitering about. Aside from Curdle offering herself for a taste, we weren’t drawing much attention as we passed by several frosty palm trees. I was wary of one of them actually being an Exeggutor. Nothing was occurring though, which led me to feeling strange… like I wasn’t actually a part of the action going on in the world for once. It was an oddly comforting and slightly twisted feeling. “I’ll deal with it when we get there. Just know that the cold has never bothered me in any way!” In the fact that you didn’t look to be getting cold at all Dolly. “In fact I love sledding, snowboarding and other winter sports, basically any activities you can do with snow really… also might explain why I have a thing for huskies.” “Maybe I’ll take you mud-boarding sometime when we could find a good place to do it.” Which was a thing I knew about, but I’ve never done it on purpose before… mostly incidentally because my canine family kept spooking me into sliding down hills flailing. “Hold you to it!” This got Dolly’s tail wagging and she was affectionately nuzzling me across our bond. I considered the fact that the underworld of Dolly’s world might be impossibly cold. Her immunity to freezing temperatures would make sense in that context, in a different interpretation kind of way where dogs act as mobile space heaters, while still being a hellhound descendant. Again, goodness knows if her birth mother had any mythical creatures in her bloodline too, well mythical in that world… on Equus all kinds of mystical canines were a common occurrence, at least wherever I happen to be at the time. The population of dogs in Huoshan did mysteriously shoot up to almost triple the number of dogs in the area when I started living there. I’m now beginning to think it was my fault that the general canine population took a sharp rise, that and the taming of the local wolves was becoming as easy as saying hello to them outright by just the longma alone. As if the wolves just wanted to live wherever I was settled down at… “How are you feeling Quetal?” I asked, trying to steer my brain away from the ‘Canine Queen’ thing, as he looked rather twitchy about being here as we moved to a path leading up to the nearby mountain. “I still remember… how to get around.” Quetal finally stated with his eyes closed and crossed arms hugging himself lightly with his claws. Between my nightmares and his… I don’t know who is winning and we shouldn’t even be keeping score in the first place. “Also I’m… an Ice Type… I’ll be fine at lower temperatures too.” “Well my body is thickening, but I’m okay with that… I wonder if I’ll start tasting like a nice sherbet or sorbet?” Really Curdle, can you not give me mental images of the frozen treats suddenly being alive like a Vannilish? Reindeer generally sell stuff like that on the streets in Huoshan, this is certainly going to contaminate some of my good memories of talking to the friendly vendors. “So can you lead the way to the kingdom’s main city or town Quetal?” I tried to ignore the possible ruining of icy treats for me and move on with our adventure, as much as I didn’t like it we needed to find the kingdoms capital and ask around to find out where the monster is, so we can figure out how to deal with it once we do know. “Yeah, I can… I can do that.” Quetal calmly pressed the back of his claws against his forehead while wincing, he was not mentally feeling well. Physically he was fine, I was already recognizing the signs of trauma I tried to constantly ignore in myself. “Come on.” With a motion of his left claw forward, Quetal took the lead of our group. “So I haven’t seen any dangerous Pokémon.” At least not yet, I really can’t see Spheals as threatening as their blank stares were less than threatening. There was very little intelligence behind their eyes and friendly natures. “I’m pretty sure if I picked a Spheal up, it wouldn’t care and would just come along without so much as a fuss.” “Spheals are always friendly and cute, possibly sometimes useful like with Fontaine’s unit of them, but wait until we see what is considered the more ‘civilized’ people around here before making judgements. We’re still on the fringe of things.” Quetal warned and I would heed him when and if I finally met someone with a scathing personality around here. “You might eventually see what I was talking about personally, wish you didn’t have to as one of the best friends I’ve ever had.” -An hour or so along the trail through a heavily wooded forest of pine trees- “So how long will it take to reach the kingdom itself in these snowy mountains?” I finally asked, I was getting rather cold. Dolly was still perfectly fine, even humming to herself cheerfully as we walked along. “Two days of travel on foot, we’ve definitely got the supplies for it, but given the weather conditions are going to be harsh if the rumors about how well Articuno is holding off the monster we’re here to hunt...” Trailing off, Quetal looked about the clear air in the forest. There wasn’t a blizzard, it wasn’t snowing and there was just a lot of snow covered trees. There was not much else out here, not even signs of Pokémon despite some smells in the area saying otherwise that there were Pokémon around. “It may be slightly longer than predicted. We’ll need to find a cave for the night, I can already sense a blizzard building up.” “Right, have any ideas on how to find one or do I get started on building an igloo and a fire for it?” It felt like I needed one right about now with how cold it was getting. “It probably be best to get started on that when we find a clearing big enough for it, because Ice Types tend to eat frozen bodies and I wouldn’t suggest becoming frozen alive around here.” Well that was a morbid thing to be telling us right now Quetal. “Right, find us a nice open space to start so I can get to work on that.” Building igloos wasn’t too hard, though doing so without water to freeze in these temperatures to hold its shape might not make it the most structurally sound thing. I already had an idea of how to solve the issue without using our drinking water. It wasn’t long before we were piling and packing down snow into a large dome shape, I had Curdle use my idea to melt the outer layer of the dome slightly. Once the liquefied snow froze back up, we had a working igloo’s outer shell. Now all we had to do was carve a hollow out of it and put a small hole in the ceiling, then get stuff for a campfire to settle in for the night. -In the forest nearby, ???- “Fou?” The beast of envy, with a logos of 'comparison', looked about trying to sense the weird feeling of anti-magic energy in the air as it sniffed around the forest. It was quite an alluring scent. It still couldn’t fully track the monster back to wherever its lair was and had gotten lost, but it might have just found a juicy and just as challenging morsel to hunt down. Licking its chops, the beast started to look around and hunted for the wonderful smell with a watering mouth that grinned. Primate Murder was hungry, but it wouldn't find it's prey before the blizzard set in and it would have to wait for another time to hunt for that delicious aroma. -Origin Space, Arceus- “So… was it supposed to be a cat, a dog or a weird squirrel rabbit thing?” I asked honestly. “Cath Palug isn’t actually any of those, he is simply a beast that changes depending on the environment he is raised in. So he is technically above being any of them despite his current form being a short tailed bipedal fox.” Tiamat leaned back and all her heads smiled at once. One savoring some of my food. “So really Pom’s magnetism in this case might be a horrible detriment. I wonder, was it really a bright idea to let Primate Murder wander your realm?” “He’s not as strong as he could be and while he is quite aggressive to be sure… I believe that he will be an adequate challenge for Pom as much as he thinks she’ll be an adequate challenge for him to hunt down.” I was curious, could Pom befriend the beast or would she have to pummel him into submission before that could happen? Curiosity has me wondering what happened with Lord Oberon and how bad it was, with a single peak into his realm through time and space itself, I gained a broad smile on my face and actually laughed. “Celebi, camera moment!” The plant psychic appeared at my call, saluted and then nodded in agreement at the swiftly delivered order before disappearing back into the time stream. They say a picture is worth a thousand words... but it's more like a memory that can be preserved for posterity. -Western Nixtorm, Igloo in the forested mountains, Dolly- Pom poked a hole through the roof with the strange lance and then used it to prop up one side of the igloo as Curdle and Quetal dropped some wood off to the side. They all set up a camping circle with rocks, then put some wood in and we waited. “Okay… what is everyone waiting for?” Curdle stated and waited for a bit for someone to light the fire, she then noticed us all staring at her since she had the ability to breathe fire now. Not going to lie, I’m kind of jealous of that and wanted to call myself a dragon dog, but nope, fire wasn’t apparently something I did. “Oh… right… I got it!” Curdle blew out some flames to light the bits of wood that would keep everyone else warm for throughout the blizzard. Might even get a good nap in while we were at it. "Fire is going to be really useful around here!" Curdle made me wonder why Ice Types would be weak to Fire Types, isn't ice just hardened water? Wouldn't melting Ice Types make Fire Types weaker or something because things got wet? Me personally, I didn’t see what the big deal was when it came to being cold. It was only a little bit nippy as we dug into some food for lunch, we would be riding out the blizzard that started up outside and it looked fairly nasty. Never saw so much falling snow in my life though, well at least snow that doesn't melt in an hour or two anyway.