-Equus, Still doing a completely honest job in Canterlot, just outside the Royal Guard Barracks, Jaded-
“Okay people the results are in, gather around and I’ll tell you how you did… my guess as to Sergeant Shady needing a raise, we should probably double that even if he’s not exactly good with nuance.” Changelings did take things a little too seriously. Nobody should ask him about the barbed Q’s incident, he gets rather testy about all the noodles lost that day. “Duly and Duty Noted want these names to gather off to one side.”
I started reading down the surprisingly short list as Duty and Duly approached, the guard brothers were without a doubt two of the most competent members of the Royal Guard, next to Shining Armor and a few others I’ve met.
“Those of you who are off to the side failed to notice what we wanted you to, as for the rest of you good job, especially you Sergeant Shady. You were the first to find the intruder in this exercise.” The changeling deserved the praise and his smile was frankly adorable, there was more than one way to transform on the planet Equus and I had access to a few of them with Magical Alchemy personally… usually in the form of a decorative mask that counted as a singular object. “We’re glad a majority of you succeeded.”
I wasn’t part of the exercise today or I would have had some more fun with this, but apparently I wasn’t being paid to have fun. Also Fizzy did warn me not to make a mess or else she’d have to suffer through not having me to snuggle in bed… it is no secret that I’m addicted to pony cuddles.
Still made quite a lot of bits today and that should keep all the family bread winners off of my case, see I wasn’t just good at working in a Hayburger! I was the best security consultant around, mostly because I’m usually the one breaking into the places to steal things that weren’t nailed down… the nails are usually the first thing I needed to steal really.
Things have gotten to the point where I’m being paid by stealing my own pay and leave notes on how whatever security was circumvented, like using a wire coat hanger and a graffiti scrubbing sigil, both are completely innocuous and absolutely easy to acquire. Incidentally Agent Fussy Britches, AKA my friend Fancy Pants of noted true nobility fame, had a decent security system against multiple things breaking into his home that most people wouldn’t even think of thanks to me.
Graffiti scrubbing sigils were basically used by Unicorns to scrub paint and other hard to clean substances off of surfaces by using magic, which can deal with most magical substances as well. Said sigils could be used by anyone with even a hint of magic in their blood. Unfortunately nobody understood the implications of what one of these sigils was capable of when it came to magically scrubbing holes into magical barriers since they are technically classified as a magical substance… well at least they are classified as that now.
The sigil was also a handy stain remover provided you made sure the sigil was selectively targeting the stain and not the clothing, thankfully the sigils could not harm a living being… even bacteria. If it could remove bacteria, then it would have to be reclassified as a magical weapon and I wasn’t about to let the idea of that cat out of the bag. That way lies total destruction.
“So what didn’t we notice?” Asked Captain Obvious, no seriously that was his name, Unilaterally Obvious… par for the course for pony names and he was better known as ‘Unil’ to his friends.
“Okay, there is more than one way to shapeshift, I know a lot of them. Celestia has been using a shapeshifting artifact for hundreds of years to hide herself and check up on ponies when in public without them trying to constantly bow and scrape to her to make sure things were going smoothly from a civilian perspective. I think that was method recently destroyed…” Now I know that bit of information about Celestia got all the guards spooked, at least the ones that failed the exercise at least, but I would ignore their wide eyed stares. “Anyway, yes, Celestia has been dodging her own Royal Guard for as many years, so don’t be too upset that she has likely done it to you while she was still running this spaghetti sieve of a nation security wise, as sometimes lacking security is a security all its own. Luna has more capability with shape shifting given she can make illusions to hide her appearances, smell and even the sounds she makes from others. Just a word of warning, she has never smelt or dealt it. She can even change sizes given how quickly she grew from a filly to an adult size alicorn in less than a year. The more notable examples is that your armor has glamour magic on them and we have a changeling here that could easily detect another changeling presence. None of those methods of hiding oneself was used here either. What are you least likely to pay attention to in a crowd?”
“Um…” Captain Obvious started to rub his chin with a hoof. “I’m not sure I’m liking where this is going…”
“You shouldn’t, so I’ll just say that Celestia has been a longtime friend of Queen Novo and you’ve been in the middle doing cross military training exercises with the Longma of Huoshan, The Changelings of the ‘Glad’ Lands, The Yaks of Yakyakistan, The Saddle Arabian Dune Squads- which I accidentally scared off by just sneezing in their general direction, The Foenum Champions from our dimensional sister world, The Buffalo Scouts, The EUP which has been expanding memberships lately, The Wonderbolts, The Minotaur Republic with their leader Forti-… er… anyway yadda-yadda-yadda and etcetera, specifically to make things short Novo’s people are working on spying and the inconspicuous travel aspect of their military exercises. You just haven’t been informed of it… well now you have.” That got a few guards on alert and looking at their surroundings, quite a few of the ones off to the side were looking for the out of place guard who was placed on the roster again and the set up for this was done a month in advance. So really the guard didn’t seem out of place for a number of reasons that they’ve integrated perfectly. Not my doing, but it was quite impressive what Duty Noted had going on with the odd guard and it has been ongoing until we did this exercise. “I had to point out to the hippogriff that snuck into your ranks that wearing the necklace openly with the transformation pearl on it was a bit too obvious, he has been doing so for more than a month without anyone noticing, they rectified the situation by hiding it somewhere else on their person when I pointed it out. Transformation jewel pearl pieces are quite highly regulated by Seaquestria and the Mount Aris Nations, given they can cause as much shenanigans as a changeling can… except the transformation pearl is more effective with its transformation despite the limitations of size, shape and mass that Changelings can somewhat fudge in details with their unique brand of magic. Should a pearl chunk be stolen or misused and Novo finds out about it, she can deactivate any of the pieces remotely and leave you permanently stuck as whatever you currently are when it happens… no I didn’t try to steal one, I was informed by her myself when I talked to her about a friend who has a highly life threatening medical issue and we’ll leave it at that. Don’t honestly want to mess with artifacts that stupidly powerful, have enough of that already, and I already have my own methods of magic to shapeshift.”
The sounds of horror were fairly palpable when I said I could shapeshift, my method wasn’t as easy and was very much temporary to at least an hour. Still, the things I could do in an hour were not small at all and once the Saddle Arabians hear about this with their contact in the guard trying to keep an eye on me... well that paranoia should do more in a month than I could plan for in a week. They only suspected I had shapeshifting from the legends of me in the distant past, now they would be certain of it.
“No I haven’t used any of my methods… today.” I followed up knowing exactly well what the guards here were thinking.
“So… wait… which among us was the Hippogriff spy?” I stared flatly at the pony that said this, the guard shrunk back.
“Gee, I wonder, the only Earth Pony that is here today among all the Unicorns and Pegasus Ponies guards, yet has gone ignored by some of you the entire time. Seriously though, every Earth Pony from your particular units were all given free leave to spend time around Canterlot and none of you noticed the odd one out that stayed here on duty? Thankfully most of you actually noticed it!” I swear I’m quite surprised more assassins hadn’t gotten closer to Celestia over the thousand plus years of running Equestria. “I think I work better with the EUP…”
“To put it bluntly…” Duly Noted added with a firm voice as the Earth Pony among them turned into a smirking Hippogriff. “Those of you off to the side all failed an obvious spot check.”
“I recently looked up a fascinating fact that Earth Ponies are mostly immune to ‘normal’ non-magical plant born toxins with their strong constitutions, which is why no one in the Apple Family has ever had a cyanide poisoning problem from the apple seeds when they have the tendency to incidentally chew and or swallow them daily when they eat entire apples whole and they eat a lot of apples whole! Those of you off to the side that failed the exercise, please take the time to at least learn something interesting about Earth Ponies like I did.” Despite grumbling this, I held out my right claw in a slightly eager manner and both Duly and Duty planted bags full of bits into it. I suddenly grinned broadly. “I wouldn’t want to be tackled or pinned down by an Earth Pony stallion, they could actually hold onto me if I ever stopped moving long enough for them to properly grapple me with their hooves. Also thank you all very much for helping me win a bet and prove a point, this is just adding on to what I’m being paid today for my services!”
Multiple guards groaned audibly as this rogue kitty took her well earned spoils.
“Yep, still she’s terrifying, so should I tell the Saddle Arabians that their theory about her having shape shifting abilities is confirmed like in the legends?” Duty Noted whisper to his brother nearby, barely within hearing range of my ears.
“That’s exactly what the ‘Mirage’ side of Jaded wants, but sure, why not?” Okay Duly Noted has gone up a few places on my respect meter. Might actually let him catch me doing petty theft once or twice. “Better to rip that old bandage off sooner than later. Also, yes, before any of you ask, Jaded has stolen our armor before and has ran around disguised as a pony capturing criminals, she even properly followed procedure for incarcerating them too!”
-Pokémon Realm, Nixtorm, Icy Ruins Mystery Dungeon, current location: somewhere on floor Floor B9, Pom-
“Dead end, why are there so many dead ends on this floor?” That was Dolly, where was I and oh… ow… being caught in a thermal shock blast… is not the most pleasant thing to ever have happened to me.
We were in the eye of it, so it possibly wasn’t the worst it could have been to me and still hurt a lot. Still had wool on my body, so I’m alive at least.
“Oh great, your awake! Guess what, I found out what that orb did!” Dolly seemed energetic and happy to see me up, given I was met by a wagging tail as I took up sitting on the back half of her skateboard. “It turned Fou to stone… and everything else around except for us.”
“It did what?!” I flinched pain and curled up a bit trying to escape the fact that my body was trying to tell me I was still among the living. Wait… Fou was actually in the mystery dungeon with us?! “Agh-ugnnn… okay… not a good time to return to being constantly stressed out.”
“Yeah, don’t know how long we have before he catches up to us again when he breaks free of being turned to stone… or encased in it I guess. Also there are no longer any of the smaller guys.” As Dolly tried to comfort me with a gentle paw. My stomach grumbled and I slowly reached into the bag pulled out an apple and used my wool to core it, promptly split the edible parts into two halves and gave the other to Dolly who looked hungry again. “Been seeing nothing but the bigger ones the further down I’ve dragged you.”
“How unfortunate…” I was about to say the words ‘not like’… derail that thought, DERAIL IT IMMEDIATELY… no… did not want to tempt anything here of all places! Not with Fou around and us possibly getting closer to Skull X. How about I instead… “How long have I been out?”
“About an hour as far as I can tell in this crazy place.” Dolly responded while moving to the corner to peak around it before coming back to the dead end corridor we were in. “So…”
“Shh… I hear something coming, looking towards the corner we saw something large, a tube like shadow that moved like a bear. Wait, how was there any lights to cast shadows on the wall around… here?”
What came around the corner was frankly the cutest Pokémon I’ve seen yet, in fact it didn’t look very threatening at all as it wiggled its way towards us with a determination to attack us with its nubby little blob pincers.
It was some kind of Ice and Bug Type, it was moving so slowly it was hard to take as a serious threat as it tried to gnaw and bite through the wool on my left leg unsuccessfully when I approached it.
This place was just plain ridiculous… I carefully picked up the cute bug and it struggled in my hooves while glowing green not much happened aside from that.
It failed to free itself from my grasp as it struggled against my strong hug, I certainly needed something less than threatening and comical like this to attack me.
The small bug continued to try and bite through my wool aggressively, well as aggressive as it could be as it was slow and the nibbling was tickling me. It was failing quite horribly to struggle out of my grip, sure it glowed several times as if doing a single move on repeat while it struggled… but it didn’t seem to be doing much aside from trying to smack me in the chin with the rounded mound on its cute ice shell every once in a while.
“Pom should you really be holding and hugging that thing after you just woke up from being exploded again?” Dolly sent me a mental apology and didn’t know what had happened. “I think you might be a bit… off in the head Pom.”
“What happened was you creating a thermal shock vortex that explode in what I’m assuming to be a completely contained mystical room with us inside it.” I’m surprised we survived it as well as we did, hopefully nothing died in there. “Just don’t add a sudden large amount of heat to something cold all at once. If you want to warm something up, it should be gradual like a… a microwave from your world.”
Microwaves were one of the few convenient things from Dolly’s world I wouldn’t mind having at home in Huoshan.
I suddenly received a harsh blast of snow to the face and responsively threw the Bug Type I was holding into the ground causing it hit the floor hard enough to disappear.
“Aw-…” I intoned sadly that it was gone.
“Pom, it was actively trying to hurt you, stop feeling sorry for the strange maze creatures here. I’m pretty sure there’s more of them around somewhere anyway and none of them seem normal, even your magnetism doesn’t seem to work on them.” It mentally sounded like Dolly was trying to remember the games of Poodlewolf to draw from as a form of experience and was failing to do so given how little she cared for the game. “Anyway, how well can you move?”
“I’m sitting on the skateboard and my limbs are working…” One of my legs twitched in an awkward direction, didn’t know I was that flexible... okay ow, why does pain have to hurt so much?! I should probably stop being in pain eventually for more than ten minutes, by that I mean emotionally, physically and spiritually. “Mostly… You’re right we have to get out of here and keep going before Fou catches us in this corner.”
“I use my momentum abilities to push us both along and you steer.” Stated Dolly and it wasn’t exactly coming off as a question.
She eventually pushed us out of the corner that we were in and moved us around the corner and I asked her which direction we came from given the four way intersection and came to a stop. She was pretty sure we came from the right and so I chose for us to go to the left.
More winding corridors, more wandering a maze to find an exit and we came across a room at the end of the corridor and saw an active Pokémon immediately start coming towards us. Large mound of fur, a pair of tusks and a pig nose, that was about it as far as features went as it prepared to charge at us as it came closer.
“Dolly can you draw it into presenting its side to me?” On my request Dolly quickly darted forward and avoid the creature trying to stab her with its tusks and managed to get it to turn to the right to continue its attempts at attacking her.
I immediately spat three wads of Bark Buster and the liquid magic blasted into the monsters side toppling it as soon as they hit the floor and then it struggled to get back into a standing position.
Before it could, Dolly immediately jumped up to the wall and bounced of it to turn around and ram into the monsters nose with full force with her front paws and caused it to disappear like most Pokémon did here when hurt badly enough. They always seemed to attack the nearest living being without much thought of others, like me, being present to take advantage of it.
“Fou!” We heard rumble throughout the corridors and the sounds of distant fighting could be heard, sounds of agony of Fou’s opponent before their disappeared also reached us.
Both Dolly and I froze and then started moving us for the other entrance to really start looking for the exit. We continued down the pathway until we had thankfully found the exit, but there was a catch, it was surrounded by trap panels… in fact the floor was basically covered in them.
“Dolly, I kick, you glide.” We didn’t have time to slowly work around all the traps or the large Ice Type bear that was snoring away in the room.
Ramming my rear legs into the floor I launched us up and over the traps at the staircase and Dolly got us gliding to the best of her ability, it was good enough even with all the weight we presented and we made it through the staircase and came out…
I blinked and looked at the cold snow bound ridge we were sitting on, no entrance behind us and howling winds flowed around us. There was a humongous chasm stretching on into infinite to the north and south… if those were the north and south. There was a path over an icy bridge going over said chasm leading to a large darkened archway on the ridge on the opposite side.
There was no way this was a place within Nixtorm… this was still a part of the Mystery Dungeon. I didn’t need to say anything as Dolly helped me get standing from her board and I started to walk forward towards the bridge. I looked over the edge into the chasm, an endless void below full of darkness, an endless void above filled with light between the two massive endless icy walls going sideways.
This was a place to rest and get a moment to catch our breaths, didn’t seem like there were any Feral Pokémon here. We couldn’t stay long, I didn’t want to know what would happen when Fou eventually caught up to us here.
I carefully walked across the ice bridge with Dolly making sure to prop me up in case I started to look like was going to fall over and once we were safely on the other side I sat down, the ice bridge wasn’t too bad to cross and I looked back at the ridge we had been on. If there was something symbolic in all this about this specific place, I wasn’t catching on to it.
We sat down and I started to eat the highly nutritious pollen snacks Oberon made for me, it made me immediately feel invigorated and gave me strength. Dolly ate some and snuggled up to me to keep me from shivering.
We spent a few minutes there and we really need to get moving, so gathering my courage, I pulled the para-lance from my back and got onto my hind legs to march into the shadowy archway with Dolly at my side.
Once we were through the gateway, we saw a vast expanse and witnessed a faintly lit destroyed city of ice, snow, stone and ruins before us. No sign of life in the streets whatsoever and the pathway into this city was before us.
I glanced at Dolly and she looked back at me, she need with determination, I had a firm frown on my face as I marched down the steps for the city streets. No Feral Pokémon attacked as we stepped away from the bottom of the stairs… there simply or probably weren’t any here at all.
-Origin Space, Arceus-
“There, she’s in the Mystery Dungeon’s anchor point with the monster.” I watched quietly as Pom entered streets, not knowing that the monster she called Skull X was awake and had caught sight of her and started to silently stalk her and Dolly. In the shadows of an ancient city.
“Reporting in, I’ve managed to stop the emergence of at least sixty seven other Mystery Dungeons in Ransei. Since the other regions of the world already have them, they are safe from possible Moon Cell incursion via the Mystery Dungeons, however if Mystery Dungeons start emerging in Ransei it can use them to break the blockade.” Okay Mew’s informing me that my plans might be for naught if that comes to pass.
“Can you keep the Mystery Dungeons from emerging?” If I were Moon Cell I’d be taking advantage of multiple spatial points to break into this world from outside of Valora, we needed to put a stop to that immediately, but we couldn’t spare many Legendary Pokémon to leave quarantine.
“Yes, for a time I can, but I’m going to need help… and on that news… Mirage Mew agrees to lend their assistance to saving our world.” That, was actually good news, Porygon and the digital Mirage System Mew would be able to bridge the gap with the Digimon and we could work together to stop the threat trying to destroy both worlds.
Moon Cell would take advantage of the unforeseen Mystery Dungeons appearing all over the place, those dungeons needed to be stopped before they become a huge problem for the already beleaguered nations of Ransei.
Watching the screen a building was toppled as the two were ambushed.
Dolly quickly shoved Pom away on the skateboard to avoid the building collapsing on top of her. This caused Dolly and Pom to get completely separated and that’s when Skull X stated something.
“Target acquired, unit switching from ‘Foothold Protocols’ to ‘Chrysomallus Extermination Protocols’, extermination of designated target Chrysomallus is priority one for Chaosdramon X foothold unit.” Said a blank, hollow and absolutely mechanical sounding voice as Skull X lunged for Pom and she started running as fast as she could with her current injuries, which was admittedly very fast thanks to her Dancing Flame technique.
We watched as Pom evaded and eventually made Skull X lose track of her as she dove into the shadows of the cities ruins and pillars of ice and stone with the large monster slowly tracking her general location.
Dolly meanwhile had managed to get trapped under the rubble and was busy trying to dig herself out of the building Skull X had tried to collapse on top of them both.
That’s when Fou appeared at the entrance of the city ruins and roared loudly, with a single sniff he was heading straight for where Pom was.
-Mystery Dungeon Anchor Point, Icy Ruins Special Zone, Pom-
Among the random pillars I ran as quietly as I could trying to avoid Skull X’s sight after it just ambushed and separated us. Dolly was okay, but a little trapped.
My wool was cushioning my hooves. I absolutely knew that I had to find a place to hide, being out in the open was a death sentence at the moment until I was ready to start fighting it directly. Maybe Fou could do some real damage to it? He’s got the ability to heal really fast.
I gasped as I leaned my back against a pillar of ice and looked around the corner of it… I heard a fluctuating growling noise coming from the chilling darkness as icy mist flowed around the place.
I didn’t see whichever of the threats it was that was coming for me. The noise was like something I’ve heard before, frightening and driving my baser instincts to run. I knew better than my baser instincts, but in this situation I was willing to work with them.
The ruins and caves around me were silent when I started to hold my breath and quickly darted between pillars of ice and then hid under a toppled pillar of stone.
Only then did I allow myself to breathe a little.
I heard Fou’s howl in the distance. I was being hunted, targeted even, by the monstrosity that was hiding and moving in the shadows.
Something that big shouldn’t be able to be so quiet and then there’s Fou who decided to also start being quiet after that howl.
There was barely any light down here, which was being given off by the distant stone walls of the buildings, and only my limited night vision had let me stay one step ahead of Skull X.
I huffed and puffed quietly as sat there, my eyes searched the spacious area of the ruins I was in, looking around and seeing nothing but ice, stone, bits of broken building and the cloying darkness and cold foggy air around me.
Was it scarier to not know where the monsters were or to know exactly where they are, but you could hardly do a single thing about them?
I think nothing being there was as terrifying knowing that something had been, turning my head to left as I thought I saw something move and held my breath as I saw a long metal tail slide out of sight.
The smell of rotted and poisoned fleshed filled my nostrils and my heart started to pound as much as I heard the heavy thumps of feet on snow slinking away.
I couldn’t relax, never relax, danger here and… wait… why did all of this seem so very familiar all of the sudden? I really had to go back and help dig Dolly out, she had the device that was the method for capturing Skull X once he was weakened enough.
A gold glow started to creep up my front legs and I immediately squashed it before the light attracted the two monsters back to me and or the glow infected me further. I glued the para-lance to my side and stayed low while thinking about something being off here.
This was getting quite eerily familiar, also why wasn’t my body half glowing a golden color… wait a minute…
Don’t grow wings… don’t be found by the thing… can’t drop my guard and I know something was definitely up, that’s my natural state of life at this point.
It’s not a trick of my mind, there was something in the darkness and my safety was suspect even if I could feel Dolly trying to quickly dig herself out to come and assist me.
Where do I go, what was I even doing here…
That’s it… this is like in the dream I had back in the Kingdom of Titania! Didn’t Curdle say something about portents of the future or it being something like prophetic? Is that why everything was so familiar!
I tried to keep my breathing slow and quiet as I heard a soft rumbling growl, which was likely Fou closing in on me. I could hardly remember that dream, I tried to forget every detail of it… but the one detail that stuck was that I remember I was alone and that Fou attacked me.
I didn’t have a bag or para-lance with me at that time in the dream though… so things are not exactly going to happen the same way.
Had to keep my ears out, had to use what little sight I had, all I could smell was the stench of that poisonous rot, meaning Skull X was here and waiting for me to break cover.
I could probably feel it’s movements through the ground with my hooves even if there was wool covering them.
This is exactly like what happened last time, since I’m about to be attack by Fou I should…
I still wondered why Skull X was focusing entirely on me, what could it be possibly seeking me out for? Why did I happen to be its designated target? It had even mostly ignored Dolly, it was only after me specifically… also wasn’t I thinking about Quetal being here in the dream too?
It was too quiet and things were far too different, was it waiting for me to come out of cover or was it just waiting for me to move so it could get me with less effort? Did it even know where I was?
I could hear the sound of my own rapidly beating heart in my chest, how could the monster not hear that and know where I was already?
I can’t stay here, I can’t move, what can I do? I needed a way out!
No… Pom… don’t panic this is exactly like what happened in the dream before I got attacked and stuck between the two monsters before likely waking up from that nightmare. Calm down and use logic, the kind of logic that doesn’t come with sleeping.
Dolly was distant, had no clue what became of Quetal or Curdle, unlike my dream I still have my wolf transformation ready and raring to go but I could only do it once and had to pick a good area to do so in. Something of a contained space where I can do the most damage and use Skull X’s size against it.
Dolly coming to me would be a bit hard to do, since it wasn’t safe for Dolly to be near me at the moment.
I would be giving Dolly the time necessary to get free, also I mentally told Dolly that she should be thankful that she wears a helmet after hearing of what her current predicament was like.
In the dark fog and ice covered ruins with two monsters gunning for her, Pom plotted.
She wouldn’t be fighting at full strength after taking that thermal shock blast, but Oberon’s snack had given her a significant boost of energy even if it didn’t heal her battered form. She didn’t feel like she was missing magic or oddly drained like in the dream, but she would pick her battles here carefully.
A distorted growl sounded off and I put my back to the underside of the fallen pillar shivering, then waited, if things went like they did in the dream. I looked to the right and left… knowing that I had to time this just right as I inhaled through my nose calmly.
Fou’s horrific gushing eyes being fresh from my reinvigorated and now living near perfect nightmare, I should be able to get Fou between me and Skull X.
When I looked back to the left, I immediately rolled under the swinging claw and through Fou’s legs suddenly surprising him.
“Fou?!” The creature intoned menacingly as he tried to turn towards me with confusion. He immediately tripped over the para-lance I had left planted at an angle between his legs when I rolled between them and flopped onto his face harshly dazing him.
I ran back to quickly grab the lance and then booked it on all fours with it strapped to my wool by leaping away with my Fleet Cunning Doe skills. I started putting distance between us in as many quick breaths as I could get to Dancing Flame bounce away, as Skull X tried to descend on the both of us after Fou had missed what was supposed to be a surprise attack on me.
The pillar had stopped Fou from being completely crushed under the still moderately damaged Skull X’s weight, I noted the monster wasn’t bleeding glowing cubes and it also hadn’t recovered its size from the injuries dealt by Articuno.
The sudden presence of danger quickly distracted Fou into attacking Skull X and this led to me fleeing the scene with Fou not getting me lethally stuck between him and Skull X.
Now I just had to plan to take down both monsters and survive it… I climbed up the side of a building and started looking around in the barely glow in the dark icy ruins for a perfect place to fight. Maybe a dome with little space for Skull X to maneuver or gain momentum to attack with his limbs?
Hmm… A place where I could do the most damage that would stand up to the kind of fight that we’d be having. I needed a place to fight in that would give me the most advantages that I could make use of when I shifted to utilizing my bestial side.
The collapsing of nearby bits of ice and snow covered ruins signified that Skull X was still prioritizing me over Fou and Fou was at least thankfully prioritizing the bigger threat here given I saw him clawing away at Skull X and doing enough damage to temporarily take the monsters glowing eyes off of me to deal with what I’m sure for it would be a major pest.
I started leaping from rooftop to rooftop, climbing the sides of half toppled building… I guess all that practice at being Leap Lamb had its advantages. I eventually saw the structure I wanted, large… dome like… it looked like it had multiple floors too. It had to have been a library once, one with incredibly thick stone walls considering the building was mostly intact from the looks of it.
That was a decent choice and I immediately started making my way towards it while trying to ignore the sounds of ice, snow and stone being destroyed in my wake by the two monsters fighting each other while giving chase to me.
Running… running is something I’m really good at!