//------------------------------// // 406. Metal Hound Chaos! Pt. 10 // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Moon Cell Realm, Mare Melum, Underground Region, Clearing, Pom- “Guys go keep the area clear of enemies, please don’t get involved.” I said over the headset as I hit the seatbelt and popped the dome to climb out of the machine and hop down to the ground. I glared at Fou and Jack, I knew how this was going to go. “Wouldn’t want any of you to die on my behalf at this juncture.” “What are you about to do Pom?” Driver asked as he watched me take several steps forward and take the Paralance into my right hoof. Dolly was still sitting around my neck and I believed she was generally ready to go. “My best Driver.” I said as I started trotting forward. “Hope you have my back, you’re going to be exposed to a lot of danger Dolly.” “Always with you all the way Pom, you know that!” Yeah, there was a distinct lack of magic in Dolly though since the Magitek Armor had been quite draining to use. It wouldn’t survive five minutes with either of these two alone, much less one with them both attacking us. I idly glanced at the machine Fou flipped upside down and mentally told Dolly to keep an eye out for it, it was turning yellow. For someone who grabbed pure energy with his bare claws, Fou looked mostly fine. Saber Jack Wolf survived being swarmed by zombies, that he can cut most things apart with his weapon with one or more swings was something to be wary of and he survived Fou. That’s right, Jack actually survived fighting against Fou, but I seriously doubted he won that fight. “This is going to be a good one, huh? Hey, Blade Wolf here, you know, Jack’s partner. You’re sadly going to be a beautiful mess of slices soon Doggy Messiah!” Again, why was that a thing with me and why would it effect the second voice coming from Jack?! “Jack the ripper is coming out to play!” With that Jack let out a blood chilling highly distorted laugh as the bipedal robotic canines eyes went from red to brightly glowing blood red. There was a subtle red aura of death and bloodlust coming off of him that even had Dolly shivering and less bright eyed than usual, there was something highly off about him now and it felt like he just went berserk… yet he still seemed so controlled about it… dangerous. “Ripper Mode.” Very dangerous. -Pom and Dolly (The definitive underdogs) Vs. Fou (The beast) Vs. Servant Saber ‘Jack Blade Wolf’ (Chunky Salsa Lover)- Pom knew this wasn’t going to go well, she only had the paralance and Dolly, the Dalmatian would barely last ten minutes alone against either of their enemies and that was Pom’s generous estimation of Dolly’s talents. If Dolly was keeping her distance with her skateboard to attack at long range or magic, then it was feasible. The Paralance would only be helpful as long as Pom doesn’t drop or lose it in the fight. Jack surviving Fou was more than enough to tell Pom to never let her back be facing him, much less let Fou attack her without trying to put him between her and Jack. She could instinctually feel that just being near Jack as he was right now was a really, REALLY, bad idea. As far as the weapon Pom wielded went, she didn’t know how to wield what was truly special about the paralance, aside from it being entirely indestructible as far as the serpent summoned by Rider Totsugeki showed and Dolly’s board wasn’t as capable in being indestructible. She was low on magic from the Magitek Armor being draining and she was already on the back hoof before the fight even started. Pom inhaled slowly through her nose as Fou and Jack started forward, a three way fight with two juggernauts was not in Pom’s favor and never would be. If she were to use Shock Ram to even the field of battle temporarily, she would die. Since Fou would match her strength if she got aggressive with him and then proceed to exceed it knowing him like she thought she did, Shock Ram wasn’t the answer here. Though she’s been considering Shock Ram as a way to finally say goodbye to the world for quite some time after narrowly surviving the second use of it. She was currently limited on magic usage and Dolly was too, though Dolly could at least still refuel in a pinch if she blocked an attack. Pom could go beast, but she’d lose some of herself to her Chrysomallus side for doing so and it would be her last resort. Fou for his part was excited to get started, he wondered who would make the first move. Jack was in his Ripper Mode which had Fou happy, as any guy that was tough enough to survive Fou was worth of more than one good fight. Jack had his mission, but he very much wanted to get back at Fou for thrashing him. His bloodlust was screaming to start making both his opponents bleed. In a moment all three moved. Pom crouched opened the parlance in front of her facing Jack to handle the flurry of slashes faster than anything Shanty could hope to do and Dolly immediately slung her board out adding a full momentum boost to it to deflect Fou’s incoming claws. Pom was the first to be attacked for being the weaker one in the battle. This was as Pom was backing away while blocking a tirade of slashes that threatened to knock her off her hooves. Pom wasn’t digging her hind legs into the ground, if she got knocked over then that was it for her as she doubted either of her opponents would give her time to get standing again. She was allowing herself to be pushed back and was back off as the canopy of the paralance shook violently in her hooves and had yet to exhale. The lambkin wasn’t going to be able to keep up with her opponents in raw strength, so she was forcing Fou to intercept some of the attacks coming for her. Jack swung a hard upwards slash in his tirade of insanely fast slashes that were lightly opening wounds on Fou’s nearby body and knocked Pom’s weapon upwards slightly, he immediately fired molten red and orange knives from his hips at her hind legs. The knives were deflected when Dolly reacted far faster than was thought possible as she entered a Dancing Flame state when Pom exhaled moderately and transferred her state to her partner, instead of going into it herself. Pom continued inhaling after Dolly’s successful defense and she managed to reorient the paralance to continue backing away as Fou tried to get at her with Jack and was getting in his way. “Come now, you’re not going to win this fight be being on the…” Jack was shut up when both he and Fou were pushed back by Pom’s front limbs becoming an explosive blur when she exhaled, the paralance fired powerful jets of air with how rapidly the indestructible weapon was jabbed. After pushing both of them back barely even a foot, Pom wasn’t going to get any more room than that, she managed to step to the side to fully put Fou between both her and Jack. Pom was inhaling once again and continuing to avoid going on the offensive. Pom’s front legs were already shivering from the brute force Jack had employed against her, her muscles were already on fire and it had barely been thirty seconds into the fight. Fou lashed out his right claw for Pom and she dodged instead of blocking his attack, given her front legs were already feeling bad after Jack’s first tirade of slashes. Jack decided to attack Fou’s back and angered him. Fou turned to Jack and sped up to match him, attacking with his claws as he blocked the blade as much as deflected it and was giving better than he was getting. Pom tried to back away and let the two go at it when Fou glanced behind him, performed and incredible back flipping leap and put a wide eyed Pom between him and Jack. “Fou!” Fou came at Pom from behind and Jack came at her from the front. Instead of blocking the incoming slash with the canopy of the weapon in her hooves, Pom surprisingly stepped into Jack’s next swing while exhaling and managed to catch his weapon by the base of the blade with the shaft of the impervious weapon and locked her wool before the blow fully hit. The ground cratered to Pom’s left for twenty feet as the force of the blow went through her body in a clearly excruciating manner given the grimace the ewe made afterwards. Dolly, still on Pom’s back, blocked Fou’s right claw with both her front paws on her board, she absorbed the impact using Pom’s body to absorb some of the force and this still created another mass of cratering ground that blasted forth from in front of Pom as she grunted in pain. The Dalmatian then knocked Fou back with her right hind leg slamming into his nose before he could bite her or Pom, Dolly did this while send some of the force from Fou’s blow right back at him. The small dogs blow barely did any damage, but it succeeded in staggering Fou for a second. While Fou was staggered, Pom inhaled and kicked her right hind hoof into one of Jack’s elbows breaking the weapon lock threatening to burrow her body into the ground for a split second. That second was all Pom needed as she had pushed Jack’s arms back slightly, barely an inch, but it was long enough to for Pom to exhale and pivot under the weapon in a wide crouching clockwise sweep. Performing several twists while rising up behind Jack and out of the path of his next downward swing that sent a bloodying slashing wave into Fou torso. Pom bashed the closed paralance again the center of Jack’s spine using the momentum of her spin, this actually dealt some damage to the cyborg canines back and after successfully landing the blow she tried to retreat. She failed to get any distance as the sharp claws of Jack’s tail rammed straight into her right side. It almost went entirely through Pom after bypassing the protective wool covering her body without stopping. Before the claws on the tip of the Jack Wolf’s tail could shred Pom’s right kidney that it burrowed into, Fou leapt onto Jack and clawed into him. While Fou threatened to knock the inattentive Jack over while doing some damage to him, Pom quickly pulled her body free of the deadly tail spikes before they did anything more to her inside and quickly tried to put some distance between her and the other two juggernauts. Barely a few feet of backing away, Pom stumbled and fell into a sitting position huffing and puffing in agony. As Jack and Fou wrestled in front of her, Jack transformed into quadruped mode and continued to fight Fou with the blade in his mouth. That’s when several molten knives fired at Pom from the hip launchers on Jack Wolf’s body, which was why he shifted to fighting Fou in quadruped mode. Jack could multitask with Blade Wolf’s help. Dolly got on to the paralance and managed to open it in time before the knives impacted or skewered Pom while she was incapable of moving. The Dalmatian glanced at the pale looking Pom’s face and then the very bloody wound in her side she was clutching at with her front hooves as she tried to use her wool to ease her suffer, but it really wouldn’t help stitch a damaged organ together without causing some problems. Pom’s wool patch method was meant to be surface leve and not internal. A slightly panicked Dolly quickly scrambled onto Pom’s back, and dug into the bag poking out of her wool. Retrieving a Sitrus berry out of the bag at Pom’s back, Dolly quickly forced it into a roughly breathing Pom’s mouth and got Pom to bite down on the berry. The two were clearly far too powerful for Pom to fight directly for too long at the same time, much less survive even with Dolly’s assistance. At least Pom had three Sitrus berries, well it was two now and the one she just started chewing to quickly swallow. The berry began healing the nasty wound in Pom’s side and replenished the lost blood immediately as it shut and her internal injuries healed. Not that they had too many more of those berries in case Dolly or Pom both got seriously injured like that three more times. It had barely been few minutes and Pom’s strength was already flagging even with the Sitrus Berry giving her some of it back. In that time Jack managed to separate from battling Fou and started for Pom as she was getting up on all fours. Again, if she got knocked down, like she just had been, then they weren’t going to give her much time to recover. Crouching down and turning his head to left, Jack prepared to lunge for Pom and swing the blade with a quick twist of his head. Just as he was kicking off the ground, Dolly had been waiting for that exact moment. “Float!” Instead of kicking off the ground towards Pom, Jack kicked off the ground and went straight up flailing into the air. Pom was quickly up on her hooves and dodging the swiping claws from Fou following Jack, after a whiffed left swing the right claws passed in front of the ewes face as she leaned back and stumbled a bit as she back away from The Beast while taking in some air. While the float spell was being resisted by an angry floating Jack and Fou was taking this opportunity to come at Pom with a violent shift in mood for targeting his prey. Widening her stance and placing the Paralance across her back instead of attacking with it, Pom quickly shifted to utilizing the Fleet Cunning Doe style. She sprung over a wild charge from Fou and slammed both her hind legs high into his spine before leaping away, Pom definitely didn’t trust that she was strong enough to disable Fou at all. Fou swung at Pom after he struck her spine and then lunged forward gnashing his teeth at the ewe as she leapt sideways towards him, much to his sudden surprise. Taking Pom’s body to the face as she rolled over his skull and kicked him in the back of the head with her left hind leg, she then proceeded to push off with her right with a back flip. Upon Landing Pom jumped straight up as Fou turned and tried to lash out at her with a rising claw, but the ewe had already cleared his reach and evaded him to land on all four hooves a few feet away. She sprung forward and started to leap and launch quick, but very weak blows that did nothing more than tease Fou’s fur at best. Pom was going to tease him and not be actively aggressive towards him for what she suspected to be the truth behind Fou’s absurd bursts of sudden unusual capabilities. Fou wasn’t as dangerous to handle alone as he was with another threat around and that threat just got free of the float spell and raised his red sword high above his head as he dropped toward the ground facing Pom. Dolly who was paying more attention to Jack, got a quick mental warning off while Pom bounded about trying to avoid Fou and get in a few quick attacks. As the ewe landed from a jump, she quickly reacted by retreating a few steps and turning to the side to get out of the way of a massive slicing wave that tore through the ground between her and Fou creating a five foot deep ditch. Fou was as momentarily stunned by the sudden attack, shaking his head he charged forward and Pom shifted stances by stomping her front hooves and looked ready to take Fou next attack head on and really start fighting. Instead of doing what Fou expected or wanted, she suddenly went up onto her hind legs by rearing up as Fou closed in to avoid his claw attack. Tired of her evasiveness, Fou swung his right claw out, missed and used the miss as a lead in to lunging forward to ram his right shoulder into Pom’s body sending her skidding backwards a fair distance and bruising her insides badly. Pom still managed to stay standing and she was shivering quite a bit. Fou’s strength was just enormous enough that she couldn’t even cushion against it with her wool and his raw strength pierced through her protection, but that’s exactly what she wanted to happen. Jack seeing Pom’s body shaking chose to go at her and Pom grinned weakly. Sure Pom just received a heavy painful blow from Fou, but she had faked him out with the aggressive Cow Kenpo stance and immediately entered a standing wobble counter stance before she was hit. Pom had a good idea of Fou’s character, he was rather simple and straightforward to understand, but not so much Jack’s character. If he was given an opportunity to take advantage of the situation and tried to do so, then Pom would take advantage of what Jack doesn’t know about her. So Pom manipulated Fou into hitting her harshly with a blunt force instead of his claws on purpose. Sure even Fou’s tackle had hurt, but it gave Pom a good opportunity to set up and do something substantial to Jack as he was her main threat here. Jack couldn’t heal without the Gekko around and the Commandramon were taking care of any outside interference. What Pom was waiting on was for Jack to realize the large machine was going to get up again, which would force him to prioritize it, since it was his mission to deal with it first. She would take advantage of this while she tried to escape and evade Fou. So any damage dealt to Jack wouldn’t be healed from that point further. Jack was on approach in bipedal mode preparing to attack her with the insane speeds his arms could get to, Pom was visibly vibrating as she took up the Paralance, prepping for him to attack her and all she needed to do… was block his next strike. Pom having an unused wobbling amount of force rippling painfully through her body with very little outlet and was about to be struck, as one can imagine hitting her right now was a bad idea. Dolly was helping this force stay contained and on impact would increase the forces unleashed by letting Pom utilize her momentum controlling ability. Pom might not be as strong as her opponents, but she wasn’t exactly defenseless or entirely helpless. She had sacrificed her health for this next moment that was about to occur and sacrifices, when done by Pom or any Chrysomallus, had an unfortunate tendency to escalate the outcome exponentially. With a swing that was nigh invisible, even with Pom entering Dancing Flame to react to it, Jack slammed his blade home into the vibrating Pom that barely got the paralance up in time. The obvious answer to what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object is quite clear, the immovable object would make the unstoppable force either go a different direction to continue being unstoppable or that force would pierce through the immovable object. Something had to give. In this instance the red sword collided with the shaft of the indestructible mystical weapon and Pom bracing for the impact could not have been any luckier to have Dolly as a familiar. The Dalmatian was there to help redirect all the traumatizing forces of momentum gained from Fou all back at Jack so Pom didn’t get hurt as much or sent flying by the raw forces involved. Not only would they redirect that force, but also increase it beyond what a wobble counter would normally do. As with other combination moves between Dolly and Pom, the ‘ripple’ counter going into effect had a fairly devastating effect given Jack’s incredibly massive amount of strength put into the recent blow. “BAWHOOMP!” All that energy had to go somewhere and it was force to Jack, he was sent flying and tumbling along the ground painfully as the blast of force tore up a large swath of the ground up in his wake. He was last seen wrecking a copse of trees that were still standing amid the underground battlefield. Pom quickly planted the butt of the paralance against the ground to stay standing and started breathing roughly as she had some nasty internal bruising from the impact even if ninety percent of it had been redirected. “Pom…. tapped out… after that…” Dolly barked weakly while panting looking a little miserable as she clung protectively to her friend and families neck. Dolly actively sharing her ability to manipulate momentum to Pom while using it at the same time really took a lot out of her and it required them to at least be in contact with one another. Pom remembered that they could even do this from the whole Clockwerk debacle that almost killed Dodo and everyone else involved. “Just hold on a little longer and rest Dolly, I really doubt that that actually put Jack down for long.” Pom wasn’t trying to win this fight and knew she couldn’t, which was their opponent’s objectives. Dolly and Pom were trying to stall long enough to feasibly escape or deal with Jack Wolf at the very least, they were mostly trying to survive the situation and come up with something before Pom gets killed outright. “Ugh…” Dolly was somewhat out of the fight after that last action and she slumped again the cottony softness that was Pom’s wool, the most she could do is keep hugging Pom and maybe be on the lookout for other things like the large machine. Said large machine’s four legs were mostly yellow and black stripes started appearing on it. Fou had been knocked over by the sudden obscenely powerful shockwave and had been about to follow up Jack’s attack. He looked a little shocked and curious about where Jack just went as he sat up and was standing. He glanced at Dolly and at least gave her some respect for acknowledging that she existed as a part of Pom’s pack and that she wasn’t entirely useless despite looking so small. He saw her assist Pom and that she was the catalyst for whatever that was, well he didn’t care much about it beyond the fact that it had happened… he was still enjoying the fight and hunting his prey, plus he even enjoyed amazing surprises like that too. He wanted his prey to be good at struggling, the stronger the better! “Fou!” The fact that Fou was up within seconds of being in a terrifying blast of force like that and still raring to go was quite horrifying. That he was excited to keep going just made him even scarier. Pom had a chill run down her spine and was worried about being able to survive Fou. She wasn’t about to pop another Sitrus Berry so soon, sure she was hurting from containing all that energy, but she wasn’t incapable of movement. She steeled her nerves, fretted over having exhausted Dolly so soon, readied the paralance and stood firm. Fou was coming at Pom fast and he stopped and even Pom stopped breathing for a moment as a red corona rose up from the copse of trees and then they shredded to dust in an instant and Jack came walking forth with a glare on his robotic canine face. Yeah, to say that Jack was angry was maybe a vast understatement given he just turned a bunch of trees into sawdust in an instant and might only be mildly damaged from that the massive counter bomb. Pom was even more disheartened, but stayed firm on readying herself… there was no way she would survive a straight fight with these two without Dolly’s support and abilities. “You know it’s quaint, it’s been a while since Jack has entered ‘True Ripper’ mode, and he can only enter this mode while already in Ripper Mode. You have certainly earned his ire for sure. True Ripper Mode won’t end until you are dead, Jack is dead or Jack kills an entirely different target and he’s quite set on you after that truly astounding trick. Sorry doggy messiah, but he comes for you and I’m not stopping him from cutting you to ribbons!” Announced Blade Wolf and Jack didn’t even tell him to shut up as he continued moving toward Pom and Fou at a steady and even pace while giving off a blood red aura, his blade destroyed the ground where it’s tipped touched and created a divot just by its presence as it created a blackened line as he dragged it alongside him. -Nearby, Commandramon call sign ‘Driver’- “Guys… did he just turn all those trees into sawdust with so many swings there’s no way we could functionally count them all?” One of the Commandramon commented with a bit of fear. “I’m sure even a mega would die to attacks hitting them that fast with that kind of cutting force.” Another stated and I was getting a bit irate that they were letting fear get to them. “Keep covering the area and keep an eye on the zombie in the making, I’m sure Pom is.” I said as I glanced about and saw a vehicle on approach. “Excuse me, but who are you coming into this area?” It was on approach from allied territory that we still surprisingly had, so we didn’t immediately open fire. The vehicle looked like a missile truck. “Here to drop off some heavy artillery and help mom and my big sister out, they look like they need it.” Ah, it was Dormarch… and a cute yellow winged Caerbannog with a heart shaped nose and soulful eyes? Well that’s one way to assassinate someone, look as harmless as possible before you strike. “Give me a second… firing missile!” Dormarch announced and a missile flew from the truck and angled for Jack Wolf. It got within ten feet and then the missile dissolved and the explosives gave off a small whimper of a pop a good thirty feet away from Jack on the opposite side of him as he continued walking towards a fairly wide eyed and terrified Pom. “Whoa, did he just seriously do that?!” “Uh yeah, that guy, I don’t know what he is, but he is well outside anything close to that of a known quantity if he can do that to a missile with what looks like an ICBM payload.” I shuddered violently in my seat as a Commandramon knows explosives when they see them, we’re practically bomb squad specialist by rote of using our DCD Bomb attack. These Magitek Armors were likely less than nothing to that Jack Wolf guy and I can see why Pom wasn’t currently in hers for this fight. Even if we tried to help it would amount to nothing, when we could help keep the combat area clear and be doing at least something. “I think that’s going to continue to being a discomforting factor with these servants moving forward.” -Pom (Agh-agh-agh, staying alive~) Vs. Fou (Excitedly comparing to the new threat) Vs. True Ripper Mode Jack Wolf (Even Moon Cell might have a few problems with controlling him now with his soul blazing out of control)- Pom couldn’t even see how he did what he did to the missile, but she knew that Dormarch had fired it and the end results weren’t exactly comforting. Pom was well aware that if such a missile had been fired at her, she would be severely injured if she wasn’t already bunkered down in her wool by the time it hit. It was very apparent that Pom was the only one getting injured or exhausted in this fight that likely just got a little bit worse. “Fou, I don’t think…” Of course Fou wasn’t going to listen to Pom, he immediately went after Jack Wolf. What followed was Fou slowly matching and increasing his speed and strength to match that of his opponent’s blazingly fast attacks. Pom could barely see Fou or Jack attacking each other and she had to be inhaling to keep up with the action, Jack was actually holding fairly well, but Fou was matching and trying to surpass him without a weapon and the weapon Jack wielded was slowly getting him a slight edge as he started to overwhelm Fou’s ability to heal through raw force. A tired Dolly idly noted the legs of the Excelsus were completely yellow and its body was starting to turn now and Pom ignored that in favor of trying to ready herself for what was coming for her. After a few more moments of Fou attacking with fangs and claw, it seemed like Jack stopped playing and flashed pashed him slashing his spin open making Fou incapable of movement and then he started charging towards Pom. The odd thing about Jack was that his land speed was far slower than his attack speed so Pom had at least five seconds to prepare for his incoming onslaught while trying to think of a way to deal with him. Filling her lungs as Jack came at her, Pom quickly grabbed Dolly with a hoof, planted the Dalmatian on her skateboard and sent her rolling away with a kick. Pom followed that by readying herself for what was coming at her. It was rather sufficient to say that even when she exhaled she only managed to block thirteen of the nineteen slashes that tore into her. Had the Paralance not been in the way of the initial attacks or forcefully knocked out of her hooves and then promptly sent away by the subsequent slashes, then Pom would already be dead and not sitting on the ground trying to stand up from the one slash that ripped through her wool and torso. The slash that hit her was the nineteenth slash that had her on her stomach and trying to stand up. Taking up a stance Jack looked at Pom’s white wooly neck as he raised his blade and intended to finish her off. Pom struggled to get her neck slightly higher than where she saw him aiming as he swung his blade intending to finish her with one blow. She glared defiantly at him as she puffed up her chest. The blade connected with Pom, an exhausted Dolly couldn’t stop it, Dormarch couldn’t stop it and even Fou who was getting up and healing from his injuries couldn’t stopped the swing. The blade connected with Pom’s neck as she raised in an inch high than where Jack intended to hit it and Pom’s body was sent flying. Tumbling across the ground from the sheer force put into the swing, when her body came to a stop it was lying on its back and some blood pooled on the ground around where her neck was. Jack turned his back on her and was only mildly surprised that her head stayed connected to her body as he turned to start attacking Fou who had recovered from all his previous attacks. Fou was to be a violent masterpiece for Jack to bloody. . . . -Nearby Missile Truck, Cuddlestare.exe- “Oh no… Dormarch, you’re mother…” That was horrible to watch. “She’s not dead, but she knows that she really shouldn’t move for the moment. She really doesn’t want to give away what just happened too fast and playing dead is a way to gain some time.” Blinking and looking to Dormarch, I think that his unmoving mother lying on the ground looked pretty dead after taking a lethal wound to the neck would have made him panic more. “It’s only looks worse than it actually is, mom is continuing to stall… though she’s going to need to breathe soon and consume another Sitrus Berry. Jack is far too strong for her and if he gets distracted by Fou who gets stronger through aggression, then that gives mom a chance to continue living for a little longer. Also she wants us to focus on the machine turning into Zombie coding for the time being, if the Eaters show up we’re going to need to focus on those too.” “She just took a blade to the neck, what part of that was survivable?!” I asked because Dormarch didn’t seem too concerned about his mother suddenly taking a blow, but then I noted that Dormarch’s big sister was stealthily sneaking her way towards his mother while dragging the lance weapon. The dogs eyes were constantly on Jack as she quietly dragged the lance towards Pom on her board over uneven terrain. “Well it wasn’t survivable, had mom’s neck been a single millimeter lower she would be gone. I’m thankful Jack didn’t bother to check why mom was giving him better access to her neck and just struck her. He’s powerful and can think and react fast, but he’s not as smart as he is skilled.” It was then that it became fairly noticeable that Dormarch hadn’t taken his eyes off of his mother even as he readied the missile truck to fire when needed. “If there is one thing most people tend to not understand about mom, it is that while she complains about life and living, she is in fact ultimately a survivor beyond her need to help others. While her body can’t keep up with her opponents much less damage them, her mind might be able to make up for the vast chasm in capabilities.” “How did she survive the blow?” I asked after a second with my wings twitching a bit. “Commandramon, don’t worry, mom is trying to come up with a way to deal with this situation and just bought herself some time. Before you ask, yes, she’s alive, don’t draw attention to it. It'd be a a question of whether she'd actually survive the next thirty seconds if you do and I'd rather none of you test that!” Dormarch then turned to me and with a tired look in his eyes. “Keeping mom alive is one of the hardest things I have ever had to deal with, don’t think just because I’m acting the way I am now means that I don’t want to rip Jack Wolf to shreds personally. As for why she survived that blow… wool cushioning and a wedding bell. Her throat is constricted, but she’s trying to stay relax until that clears up from the trauma she just took.” “Wedding bell?” I asked. “Her wool is covering it, she’s been actively making it look like it’s a natural part of her neck since she got it back, but if you look closely it looks like she has an Adam’s Apple based on the bottom outward curvature of the bell. That’s just not natural on a ewe and her neck should not be as thick as it looks to be with how relatively scrawny the rest of mom looks. Though females of some species can have an Adam’s Apple, it would never be nearly as pronounced as a male equivalent of a given species. I have a lot of medical data about anatomy and I really wish I didn’t know how I acquired it all.” Dormarch noticed my gentle staring and he sighed. “Yes, my mom is in fact married thank you very much. I’ve yet to meet my other mother personally and wonder what she’ll be like in person, hopefully nothing like that one from that Coraline movie I pirated onto my PET Digivice. Mom is going to need to pop another Sitrus Berry due to the blood loss she forced herself to suffer to sell the act, but she’ll have those wounds long sealed off by the time she can breathe again. She did just get a large mass of metal burrowed into her esophagus, so it’s little wonder she’s going to have breathing problems… again... mom, please stop trying to give me a coronary problem that digital entities shouldn't feasibly be capable of!” Now that he brought it up, the digital device around his neck looked like a very nice place to live, well for a digital entity like me anyway. I wonder how my friends were doing? -Pony program gaiden, Rainbow.exe the colorful large Draco Volan- “So what you’re telling me is if I flap these flaps hard enough, then I can fly like Wile E. Coyote does?” What, why was Pinkpie.exe looking at me like that? “How… I’m the only one that’s supposed to be capable of doing the references!” Doing what Pinkpie.exe? You watched a lot of ‘Myvision’ on the internet while we were in world with the giant owl that almost killed us, do you think we’re that dense that we wouldn’t watch it too in the middle of our constant arguing?! That ‘DIY Genius Coyote’ show was pretty cool, even if the guy was a little accident prone. “Guys, get the ants out of your PLANTs, the Eaters are really on the moooo-ve.” Applelove.exe just made us start laughing as the blue cow glared at us. “Do you want to know what will stop your laughing… those Eater varmints are all currently eating a path straight towards where Cuddlestare.exe is and there’s fifty of them now, also they are picking up speed. Mind you Pinkpie.exe's clones have been constantly hammering them with jawbreaker cannonballs and has barely managed to take out three of them.” “Oh no, darling, we’re coming!” The white marshmallow cougar Flarity.exe shouted and her PLANT immediately followed after her. “Right, finally some action, this was getting boring! Up and…” I flopped onto the ground on my face. “Do I need to learn how to digitally fly again?” “I’m glad I’m currently a raptor, so I can honestly say don’t make me bite you and mean it.” Purpsmart.exe stated as she ran off incredibly fast. “Why, what did I do? I just want to figure out how to start flying with these floppy paddles for wings!” I was wondering why Pinkpie.exe and Applelove.exe were face hoofing. “They make me feel fat because they are so wide.” “Is that a ten foot pole?” Applelove.exe strangely asked Pinkpie.exe. “Not touching that.” Pinkpie.exe nodded before motioning to the other Pinkpie.exe clones and their gator army. “Rubber hose army, switch to gobstopper ammunition and move out!” “Smile, smile, smile!” The Pinkpie.exe clones shouted while saluting their progenitor and started running after stuffing their manes with their cannons and adorable gators… how did those things even fit in their manes, ZIP files? “What ten foot pole, what are you guys talking about?” I asked as I jumped onto my PLANT since it was going to be faster than I could… oh... this thing can fly! Why wasn’t I using it before to get some height?! "It's because your not smart Rainbow.exe, now stop texting your thoughts so loudly and ride like a leaf on a tornado!" Pinkpie.exe yelled back as she rode ahead on a cannon that was backwards and spewing flames for propulsion while followed by her pink Plant.