Contrary to popular belief dragons are actually quite reasonable, when they’re not busy being total fuckwads. If they’re already occupied doing that you have two options to choose from. Option one, you can do the immediately easy thing and bribe it with lots of gold and jewels. Option two; you can do the more immediately hard thing and beat the shit out of it until it surrenders and will agree to whatever you demand jut to make the pain stop. Long term, option two is the better choice. If you go with option one you’re submitting and the dragon will keep coming back for more stuff.
The dragon that now stood between us and the city probably had a wingspan of about 120 feet. Both his neck and tail were long and snake like. His head was triangular in shape and vaguely reminded me of a big cat with its slit pupils and lips pulled back exposing his teeth. The afternoon sun shone down on his burgundy scales as he tried to menace us.
“I am Regius and I demand sustenance!” he bellowed
Luna, Scipio and I were the only ones who didn’t flinch, I stepped forward “I am Inaba, Duchess of Inverness. There is no food for you here, leave peacefully or be forced to.”
He roared with laughter “I don’t take orders from such tiny creatures as you. Perhaps you shall serve as an entertaining morsel before I swallow you.”
“Luna, keep everyone safe while I deal with this…inconvenience. I won’t need your help and I would feel a lot better if I didn’t have to worry about everyone’s safety.”
Without even waiting for response I started walking towards him. He bunched himself up like a cat his eyes locked on me his tail even swished a little. He batted at me with his claw only for it to stop when I turned into Antylamon and caught it by the sides. I gave it a hard quick twist and was rewarded with a sharp snap and a roar of pin as his wrist broke. I let go of it and ran up to his elbow, axe’s appearing with a snap.
Before I could manage to take a proper swing he pushed off the ground and started hovering overhead. He looked smug thinking he was safely out of my reach so long as he stayed in the air; I’d have to fix that. With a running start I lept into the air and cut a deep gash across his shoulder as I went up. He dropped a little as I landed on the small of his back. I went after his hip my axes’ impossibly sharp edge slipping between the scales and slicing them off as I dragged it towards his head. He rolled trying and failing to throw me off as I ran counter to it, my blades leaving a twin pair of lacerations as the trailed over his side and up his chest.
My hands changed back and with a quick twist delivered a driving blow to where I thought, correctly, his solar plexus was. The air rushed out of his lungs with a wheeze and we dropped the remaining thirty or so feet to the ground. I jumped off and sprinted up to his head as he rolled onto his side gasping and spluttering as he tried to regain his breath. His tail swung forward tripping me; hands again, land on them, push off, land on my feet, axes again, kept running. As he finally regained his breath I struck out leaving a small gash on his neck with one axe and the other coming to rest firmly on his trachea. He shifted as if to throw me off, felt the blade begin to bite into his neck and instantly went still.
I had hoped that would be the end of it but that damn tail of his whipped around and knocked me to the ground. He scrambled back and continued to lash out with his tail. I was forced to either dodge or be knocked to the ground. He never once took his eyes off me. After putting about fifty feet between us he inhaled deeply and let out a blast of flame. I stretched out a hand, it was time to take this more seriously.
I whisper “Bog.” I didn't need to speak for the spells to work but it was considered common courtesy. The air became super saturated with water and the flames fizzled out about a dozen feet away. “Ceò mòr.” Fog, thick and blinding, spread over the area. I move, light on my feet guided by my sharp hearing. “Slabhra mòr dubh.” Huge chains shot out of my hands, into and out of the ground and tightly binding Regius and preventing him from moving. When the fog cleared I was ten feet from his left cheek.
“Struggle all you want those chains have held someone much larger and stronger than you can ever hope to be.” I leaned against his jaw “Now I’m left with a difficult problem, what should I do with you? I can’t leave you tied up forever, it’s not practical, and I’m rather averse to killing anyone myself. However, I am perfectly willing to let you go so long as you swear to never bother this city again.”
“And should I refuse?”
“Then I break your limbs, drop you off in the middle of nowhere and leave you to survive or die of natural causes, like drowning because you can’t lift your head away from the ocean as the tide rises.”
He paused for a moment “I know things, perhaps I can trade you information for my freedom?”
“What kind of information?”
“I’ve seen strange brown creatures, fifty feet tall easily. I don’t know how they can walk on only three legs.”
“Are there small stocky blue ones with them?”
“Yes, how did you know?”
“Scipio get over here, I want everything he has about them, location, direction of travel, smell, everything.”
Scipio worked without a sound pulling the information from Regius and implanting it in me. I was satisfied that they wouldn’t be causing too much trouble and would be easy enough to track down. I’d have to check for Combine weaponry before I went anywhere near them. If we had any this could be bad, but this might be a first time occurrence. After I loosened the chains Regius made it about three feet before I rebound him.
“We had a deal!”
“We did, I gave you your freedom and then captured you again. Not my fault you didn’t specify how long you got to be free or whether or not I could recapture you.” Loopholes are great when you’re the one using them.
He sagged “Fine, I swear on my mother’s egg that I will never return to this city.”
“Or attack anyone or anything I care about.” He repeated the line and I let the chains vanish. “Right off you go then.” He blinked “Shoo, scoot, skedaddle, get lost, GTFO.”
Thoroughly humiliated and confused he did just that. Awkwardly taking to the air and flying off high and to the northeast. Hopefully word would spread and dragons would give the city a nice wide berth. Then again they might flock here looking for a fight and or honorable death. We’d have to take steps to prevent that.
The rest of the day was thankfully free of incident with Rosy spending the time atop my head. As we walked around everyone who noticed me either waved or nodded, beside me Luna practically went ignored. It didn’t seem to bother her very much, almost like she preferred being treated as an equal instead of a monarch. Then again from what I’ve seen and heard being a monarch here really sucks. Dinner was an extravagant affair with various locally important ponies attending. I had some of the salad but found eating spaghetti with meat sauce MREs worked as an effective deterrent for questions while I was in travel mode.
It probably helped that ponies considered wearing clothes to be sexy. That combined with my physical appearance probably kept most of the stallions and open minded mares away. None the less I would have felt embarrassed about being nude in this form with such a large crowd. A dozen or fewer and I was fine, anymore and I would start to feel self-conscious about it. That was a remnant of my old human habits that stubbornly refused to truly break. So I had to ease into it, like I was doing tonight, by wearing only my underwear of sports bra and panties made from Red Digizoid fabric.
I kept myself open to the emotions within the room, almost everyone was happy or pleased and it made the room feel a little warmer. The exception was the two approaching spots that alternated between cold stoicism, roiling jealousy, and something else. It took me a minute to place it as pure and baseless hatred being directed directly at me. I turned to see a mare and her filly, both with white fur and blonde manes, walking directly toward me. A second or two searching my memory placed the filly as Golden Wonder, which would make the equally haughty mare her mother Home Guard. They stopped just beyond the reach of my arms and stood there noses up eying me with distaste.
After several seconds of trying to unnerve me Home Guard spoke “Good evening.”
“…Good evening…Infidel.”
Assuming the term was a compliment she continued "I should have expected Blue Serenade`s guest of honor to be attired and as a hussy no less, unsurprising but still."
I smiled "Blue and orange, in my culture not wearing clothes is considered extremely rude and will get you arrested in almost every civilized country. Even what I'm wearing now would be considered insufficient in many places. I'm still shy about being nude in front of large groups so I'm working into it slowly. Now, is there something I can help you with Mrs?"
"Home Guard and it's Miss actually. Once I had my daughter my husband became rather useless so I divorced him and left him out in the cold. She is my heir and I trust Equestria's safety enough that we are all the other shall need."
There was something wrong here. They had the same fur, same mane, same eyes, I took a quiet sniff. They even had the same scent! If she had the same cutie Mark she would be a clone. But then again it's your experiences that make you who you are. This would be something to look into later. Before they could blink I had ruffled Golden Wonder's carefully arranged curls into a mess.
"So you're mama's little filly huh? I can think of worse role models." Most of them ended up being assassinated, imprisoned, or committed suicide "I think they would have liked your mom."
Golden may have thought I was giving compliments, which was half right, but her mother could hear the hidden insults. I continued to stand there with a small smile on my face and mischief twinkling in my eyes as I contemplated my next move. It would largely depend on how Home Guard chose to react. If she decided to use more verbal insults she would have to have cautious to avoid offending the hosts, not that she cared. Whatever she was going to say died on her lips as they sank into identical bows.
"Princess Luna, we are honored that you have deigned to grace us with your presence this evening."
"Good evening my little ponies." She smiled at me " Hello Your Grace, I mean, Inaba."
"Evening Luna, enjoying the party? I know it's not a Pinkie Pie Party but I hope you're not to disappointed by that."
"It is fine, Grey Main has done an excellent job considering how short notice this was. I noticed that you only had a little of the fine foods he prepared but three of those meals’ instantly ready. I’m almost afraid to ask this but, what was in it?”
I giggled “First, they’re meals ready to eat, hence MRE, and they were spaghetti with meat sauce. The meat was probably beef from cows, non-sentient, raised solely for that purpose.”
The others looked disgusted and shocked but Luna gave a thoughtful nod “I have heard of lands that raise animals in this manner before but have had little chance to learn of the process. Though it does make me a bit squeamish to think about I am interested in learning about some of it, like how they prevent disease from ruining everything.”
I shook my head “I’ve never worked in that industry myself so my knowledge is limited and second hand. If you’re sure I’ll tell you what I can about it, meaning stuff I know is accurate.”
After about the second minute Home Guard made an excuse so she and Golden Wonder could leave without being rude. Luna only gave them a vague sign of recognition as they left before allowing herself to fall into the excitement she had for knowledge. Our conversation soon moved on to other topics like medicine, pop culture, human history, and space travel. She squealed with delight as I told her everything I could remember about the Apollo Program that put man on the moon. That brought us into the discussion of Science Fiction and I told her about Star Trek, Star Wars, Starcraft, Halo, Predator and Alien. After about two hours of me talking most of the guests had said their thank you and departed. There was a peal of thunder from the storm that had been assembled for the night.
“You have told me much about your world. But I still know very little about you as a person.”
I shrugged “Not much to tell, until I can here I was an average person and was content to live an average life.”
“Stop doing that.”
I raised an eyebrow “Stop doing what? I wasn’t aware that I was doing anything except talking to you and answering your questions.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Stop giving evasive answers, I understand there are things you don’t know or don’t want to talk about. If you would just say so, it’s better than the half answers like ‘an average person’. I don’t know anything about an average person, I know plenty about an average pony but that is completely different.”
I sighed “You’re starting to sound like my mother ‘How was school today? What do you mean fine? What did you do in class?’ It isn’t that I’m being intentionally evasive, it’s that there isn’t any reason to talk about it because it’s something that happened constantly or just isn’t that interesting. Would you want to repeat the detail of every monotonous petition and trial brought before you in court to another who has experienced the same things?”
She thought for a moment “No, my sister is the only one to whom I would repeat such things and I know how much she dislikes holding court. I suppose I can see your point now, the everyday things that have already been experienced countless times do become rather droll. Even the fantastic becomes ordinary when placed within a constant routine.”
Further conversation was interrupted by a peal of thunder. The few remaining guests made hurried excuses so they could leave before the start of the heavy storm the weather teams had scheduled for tonight. I excused myself citing the need to unpack additional things in my room. It was the truth; the clothes I brought back with me were stored in the suitcases which I was carrying in Battle Mode. I just had to dress and digivolve, and then I could start unpacking later.
I put the suitcases in a corner of the room and examined the bed Grey Main had commissioned and received for me to sleep in. It was a simple king sized bed, made of white oak, given a nice light stain, and fit easily into Rosy's spacious room. The matters was rather plush and had been covered with light green cotton sheets. I unpacked my pillows and placed them against the headboard on one side as Rosy walked in from brushing her teeth and climbed into her bed. She jumped as another, louder, rumble of thunder shook the house.
“Are you afraid of the thunder?”
She nodded “Yes.”
“Don’t worry Rosy; it’s just the angel’s bowling.”
“What?”
“It’s something my Nonnie taught me. Thunder storms are caused by angels going bowling. The lightning I when the ball hits the lane and the thunder is when it hits the pins.” She didn’t look reassured “Fine, if you get really scared you can climb in bed with me. But only if you get really truly scared out of your fur okay?” she nodded and climbed under her sheets as I took off my clothes and did the same. “Alright, good night sleep tight; don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
With a flick of my fingers the lights shut off and I curled up to go to sleep, well aware of the fact that there was a dream walker within the same home. As I fell asleep I could feel her pushing at the edges of my dreaming mind, I could either let her in and keep her at arm’s length and prevent her from injuring herself or I could let her try and brute force and get hurt by my new defenses. On the one hand I liked Luna; she was fun and very humble when you got down to the fundamentals of everything. On the other hand what she was doing was also considered to be extremely rude. In the end I decided to let her in and keep her in the “lobby area”.
She was standing on a small section of black and white checkered ground that looked like had been literally ripped from the concrete, it even had a portion still hanging beneath it. The walls were constantly shifting through various dark colors and combinations giving the impression of restlessness while the points of light made you think of stars.
I was standing on a section of beach, complete with gently lapping waves. It wasn't a normal beech though, the water was a dark inky blue color and the sand was gray, almost black, in color. A jagged chunk of black rock stood next to me like a silent monolith. My appearance here had changed since the last time she had seen it. Instead of jeans and a t-shirt I was now dressed in my Battle Mode armor as I looked up at her. Well, down since from her perspective the entirety of the beach, myself included, were upside down.
"Is there something I can help you with Luna or have you become the rougeish type now, breaking and entering and all that?"
The look on her face "I was just curious about what you may have been dreaming about this night." She blushed as though curiosity was some kind of horribly embarrassing act.
"Maybe you can stop by some other night, when I'm actually fully asleep before you try entering and the renovations to my mind scape are finished. Right now it's not really safe for for others to be here. But like I said maybe in a week or so it'll be ready for others to visit. I'll see you in the morning, good night Luna." Before she could blink I had forced her out and locked it down tight, thank you Tapirmon and Bakumon.
With that dealt with I woke up to find that it was still dark outside. A quick check with the Tower told me it was just after midnight local time and I could still hear the storm raging outside, inch and half already meant there might be flash flood warnings. I was lying on my side and something warm and furry was pressed up against my belly and buried next to my chest. Rosy had apparently taken me up on my offer to share the bed if she got to scared. I sighed, kids are supposed to seek shelter with their parents, not their friends. Unless they were a certain kind of friend which we most certainly were not and certainly never would be. I closed my eyes and within minutes had fallen into true sleep with no funky dreams or anything.
I spent the next week doing several things. Rosy and I would wake up around 8; shower, brush our teeth, and eat breakfast. Scipio would meet us outside and we’d walk Rosy to school. From there I would spend the next several hours charging the emerald and then I would fly around digistructing a few Towers before picking up Rosy for an afternoon of relaxation and study. While she worked on her homework Scipio and I would go through my mind, shoring up my mental defenses and preparing a set of counter measures in case someone DID actually get through my defenses. I knew a lot of stuff and we weren’t taking any chances with that knowledge, if it fell into the hands of the wrong creatures…well, best not to think about it.
The Dragon Migration finished on Thursday without another incident and most of the refugees began packing up and started heading back to their homes. Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and this end happened to involve another fight. I had just finished Tower number thirty eight and was thinking about the dilemmas we were facing with numbers thirty nine and forty. One was going to be placed near Canterlot so I had to find a semi isolated area for it that could be reached without having to fly. Forty was much harder, Scipio insisted that it had to be placed on the fucking moon so we could monitor everything on the satellite and the planet, which meant it had to go on the dark side of the moon.
The sound of someone flying broke me out of my thoughts and I degenerated from Antylamon to Lopmon to hide the digistruct machine before my unexpected guest could see me. It was almost five minutes before he landed in the forest clearing Scipio had chosen as the site for this Tower. At first glance I thought he was a human, but a few seconds of careful scrutiny and I was able to tell that it was actually a gorilla with tan fur dressed in a red leotard. He struck a pose that he thought looked heroic and I thought looked ridiculous.
"Halt evil doer!" I looked around "Yes, you! Rabbit creature don't think you can play me for a fool I know all about your evil plot!"
"Well I don't, so please, enlighten me about this 'evil' I'm supposed to be committing."
"I told playing the fool will not help you. Not against I,Saymos the Champion of Hero's! My mission comes from the Nobles representing the good ponies of this world! You shall come with me to The Barn of Lords to face justice!"
That explained SO much "Listen I think there has been a mistake. I am a foreign dignitary with diplomatic immunity so I'm not sure what crimes you think I may have committed but I probably didn't do it."
"If you will not come with me willingly then I shall bring you by force!"
He lept at me and I just finished digivolving to Travel Mode when he hit me with a solid jab across my jaw one of his claws making a scratch on my cheek. I took a step back and brought a hand up to my cheek to feel it, he had actually scratched me. I stared at the blood on my fingers in equal parts confusion and shock, the only ones who had been strong enough to do that were the Royal Knights and Zhuqiamon, and even then there wasn't any blood. I looked up at his horrified face, how strong was he?
"A woman?!" he squeaked
"You scratched me."
He started stammering "I'm so sorry. I didn't know you were a woman! Please I will ask one more time, will you come with me willingly?"
I schooled my face to neutrality "You. Scrarched. Me. That is not an easy thing to do. It means that you are very strong, strong enough that I won’t hold back if you make me fight you. Now I will ask you this once,” I projected trusting emotions down on him “will you believe me if I tell you my side of the story?”
He hesitated, massive confusion and slight sense of betrayal “I might consider it but only if you did so in The Barn of Lords.”
I sighed, he meant well but he was to willing to believe what those in power told him. So he was either young, stupid, or personally indebted to someone important. I stopped projecting as I digivolved to Battle Mode. He was fast, strong, and flight capable, not really enough information to work with so the safe thing would be to put as much distance between us as possible and attack from long range. He seemed nice enough so I'd have to be careful not to kill him, he could be useful later.
It took me half a second to compose myself before I shot straight up into the air. Zero to Mach five in two seconds creates a very impressive and very massive shock wave. Most of the ground in my immediate area was torn apart leaving a decent sized crater behind and the trees for a quarter mile around were knocked over or scattered like twigs. I stopped at about ten thousand feet and looked back just in time to see the pressure wave shred the clouds.
When I was training in the Digital World we discovered that I could not only use magic, like everyone else, but I could also create new attacks. This was a trait that wasn't necessarily rare just uncommon, and if Duftmon was to be believed, also considered extremely desirable in a potential mate/partner/whatever. I drew out the energy for Heaven's Judgement and carefully formed the hundreds of bolts into about fifty roiling spheres of plasma. This was the only one I had had time to create and it was far from perfect but it had more precision and that's what I needed right now.
Spotting my enemy I yelled at him "STAY BACK!"
He ignored me and continued to fly towards me at a decent speed. I really didn't want to hurt him, squeezing my eyes shut I relied on my other senses and attacked with a sweep of my arm "Rolling Thunder." The increased precision came at the cost of some the attacks speed and power, but even a near miss would still have enough power to cause severe burns if it didn't outright kill. He easily dodged the first few shots because I was aiming to scare or stun him so he would reconsider. By shot ten I abandoned that strategy and aimed to actually hit him. This time I was met with success as it clipped his left leg and he screamed, dropping from the sky as he lost his focus. I caught him with about a thousand feet to spare before the ground.
I carefully set him on patch of soft stable ground, my ears told me he was still breathing and his heart was still beating regularly. He was extremely lucky he had only passed out. All the fur on his left leg had been burned off and the point where I had grazed him was covered in third degree burns. I wouldn't, couldn't, leave him like this all he had done was try to do what he thought was right. I carefully dispersed me remaining shots and placed my hand above the worst of the burns. I concentrated on how his leg should look and muttered a single word.
"Cáradh.”
Slowly the charred flesh began to recover growing back over exposed muscle and lightening back to its natural color as it thickened properly. I didn’t heal him completely; just enough that the third degree burns became low second. I didn’t even try to do anything with his fur, mostly because I wasn’t sure if I could make it grow back. I would have to have words with Alice, if I could bleed actual blood, which my senses were telling me I did, then my body wasn’t made of false proteins like a bio-emerged Digimon. Which just left the question, what or who was it made from instead?