• Published 29th Aug 2020
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Baa-Ram-Ewe! - Darkonshadows



"Baa-Ram-Ewe!" - The ancient war cry of the lambkin.

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117. Case... not solved?

-Equus, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Fresh Start-

“The day is going pretty well for me Dr. Permanganate, thank you for asking.” I smiled at the stallion I’ve been sharing some quality time with, he was a truly nice guy. Probably one of my best friends alongside Kuril, Wary Berry and Mr. Refreshment. My jobs as a maid and waitress was a little odd when I had to duck and cover in case of something dangerous happening, but this was far better than living in Canterlot. Ponyville would have probably been calmer, but I’m happy where I currently am in life and I get to play with Silvers. “So how have things been going at the school?”

“Teaching hasn’t been too hard, plus all the families that moved in are easy enough to get along with, the diamond dog pups are eager to learn at least thanks to Dr. Bones.” Potassium Permanganate stated with a friendly tone as he came in. “I think Kuril’s doing a good job overall keeping our town in order, now if only her cooking could solve the economic crisis Jade started.”

“She did it with the best of intentions, plus she’s trying to fix things… not that her fixing things haven’t led to incredibly bizarre disasters before.” Stating this sardonically, I quickly gave Potassium a hug and motioned for him to sit down. Not one week went by without something strange occurring around the family that I’ve become a part of, something as innocuous as a friendly pukwudgie merchant stopping by to sell wares around here was one of the weirder ones. Mind you that Pukwudgies are some of the nastiest warlike creatures to ever exist in the world, some say that they existed purely to ruin somebody’s day at the mere mention of their existence. “So what can I do for you Pota?”

“Toasted cheese sandwich, a side of chips and a flagon of prune juice please.” Nodding to Potassium, I wrote down his order. “Do you suppose Twilight Sparkle will have things well in hoof soon? Celestia and Luna haven’t been retired for even a year and things are already going south.”

“I don’t think Celestia and Luna are going to stay retired after a year or two. That said, I think Twilight will be okay if she gets a day off once every other week. Provided Jade isn’t causing anymore worldwide problems.” I went to the kitchen and got started on his order. “How Celestia lasted almost an entire millennium without too many breaks or a long vacation, I’ll never know and I’ve worked for her personally. In any case, it’s not Twilight’s fault that she has to deal with her friend’s shenanigans, politics and villainous people, on top of knowing both Discord and Jaded as friends.”

“Aside from my ears catching fire, what else is going on Fresh?” Jade came over to me and she looked a bit tired from her trip to the home of the changelings, also her ears were literally on fire… not that it seemed to be bothering her at all at the moment. I hoped that was a side effect of magical alchemy and not something Jade is ignoring intensely with her high tolerance for pain.

“Still not telling you what I know Jaded, just accept that Fizzle has it covered and have a little more faith in her. You have enough to worry about after causing a worldwide economic crisis that’s actually requiring a world summit.” That and I was one of the ones that knew why Fizzle was keeping that information, not what that information was. “You know, leaving you to your own devices is just as dangerous, if not more so, than whatever Fizzle is currently working on. Instead of worrying about her job among the guard in Canterlot, you should be spending more time with little Silvers and your other mates. Also maybe find a steady job that doesn’t involve making a mockery of every legal system in the world…”

“Not a chance Fresh, also it’s so interesting that Fizzy is keeping information from me!” Jade gave me a grin. “Would it really be so bad if I knew what she was dealing with and want to help with it?”

I just give her a flat stare.

“Look, just try to fix the world’s economy first Jade before worrying about anything else in that vein of thought or your reputation as a loveable rogue will be entirely overshadowed by that.” That actually seemed to get through to the Abyssinian and I sighed with relief.

“Hey, I’m working on it!” Jade seemed to be mulling something over. “Though do I have to actually help Saddle Arabia?”

“You’re never going to let that thing go are you?” The grin I saw just said it all.

“If my therapist can’t get me to do it, then nothing short of having my entire personality rewritten to love Saddle Arabia will change my burning desire to mess with that one country in particular. Also I wouldn’t be myself anymore and everyone would come to miss me.” Yeah, didn’t want to be on the wrong side of Jaded La Perm personally, or between her and her favorite metaphorical yarn ball. “That the current economic crisis is hitting them the hardest is one of the happiest accidents I’ve ever pulled off. Enough about my insanity, how are things with you and Dr. Permanganate?”

“Our relationship is going fairly well I’d think.” We’re taking it slow, not everyone could just be in love with a quirky chimera and a sanity challenged unicorn that was queen of an entire nation working as a guard for ours.

“He’s a good stallion and your relationship is probably one of the more adorable and solid ones around here.” You wouldn’t hear anything other than agreement to that Jade. “Did you hear the news that Ponyville received not too long ago? It, curiously enough, came from Captain Celaeno.”

“Oh, do tell?” I just started toasting the sandwich in the oven as Jade came into the kitchen and started helping with orders.

-Earth, New York Streets, Huey-

I watched as Smolder blew an entire billboard in half by putting a hole in the middle of it and the two halves burning up before any of the larger chunks hit the ground.

This saved a lot of people serious injuries, that didn’t mean there weren’t minor injuries from the burning debris that hit them.

No one needed emergency medical aid though and no permanent harm was done.

Things could have been worse. Quite a few people were too distracted by the falling billboard to see Smolder deal with the situation and I wondered if Foxglove saw the culprit that pushed it over.

She hasn’t come back yet and I was worried about the little bat. If she was part of an organization of intelligent animal detectives like she says, then she probably knew what she was doing when it came to chasing down the perpetrator.

Once the excitement was over with, everyone was back to being interested in the one dog amongst them with pink puffs, white fur and a friendly demeanor. Canina La Fur, the dog most infamously known for somehow teaching penguins how to tap dance and is still a famous movie actress.

“Oh my goodness, it’s her! ‘Dewey’ go over and introduce ourselves?” Now if only Dewey could take the hint at the scathing look Smolder sent his way, even I sometimes had problems tolerating my brother. Loved him all the same as he was basically the upbeat morale booster of our adventuring family when times were tough.

“Might as well. Good job with stopping that billboard Smolder!” Even I could tell that the fireball was well executed and that it wasn’t an accident in how Smolder dealt with the danger. The dragon puffed up and placed her fists on her hips. “Oh wait… Foxglove is our translator, we’ll have to wait for her before we can talk to Canina to warn her about someone possibly being after her. We don’t exactly have a confirmation yet.”

“Talk is a loose definition as far as Dewey is concerned.” Trying to be a little less uptight about things, Louie would not get a question from me about where he got that can of Pep he didn’t have a minute ago and we weren’t even near any vending machines that had Pep in them.

The can also had frost on it… did he take the dimensional bag of holding? Mom, Uncle Donald and Scrooge were going to be angry when they find out about this.

“Hey, I’m a dew-pendous person guys.” We both gave Dewey a flat look and he rubbed the back of his head. “Okay so I might over ‘Dewey’ it too much. Can you really blame me with how exciting our lives are?”

“A little.” I answered immediately in unison with Louie, as we watched the book signing get back underway with Canina marking books with a paw print and giving the people happy sounding barks.

Canina seemed to get aggravated anytime her age is brought up and would growl at the person in a slightly unpleasant manner, but she wasn’t showing any outright aggression. She was a very healthy dog regardless of the constant comments about her age.

“Dewey, can you contain yourself and not mention Canina’s age when we introduce ourselves to her?” He looked at me and simply nodded after giving it something close to a thought.

“You’re asking for a miracle there bro, we both know Dewey has no tact to speak of.” Louie stated lazily and sipped form his can of soda.

“I second that sentiment.” Smolder joined in.

“Okay guys, I’m back. I lost the culprit, but I did manage to get an echo profile of the culprit as they left the area. Did anyone get hurt?” Landing on my shoulder Foxglove looked about as they all gathered around me to hear what she had to say, seeing that everyone was okay she sighed with relief. “It confirms my suspicions that we’re possibly dealing with Zsa Zsa the Lethal Labrador, given that the echo profile is that of a Labrador wearing a wig among several other things to look exactly like Georgette Foxworth. I’ll be able to tell her apart from the actual Georgette easily enough.”

“Well that’s good Foxglove, but what do we do once we catch her… are we going to catch her?” Though I’m the one that brought it up, what are we going to do with Zsa Zsa if we managed to capture her or even started the process of trying to? “Do animals even have prisons like that?”

“No, we don’t. It’s why Fat Cat and other animal gangs are still running around, we just run off animal criminals or make sure they don’t cause too much more problems for everyone. As for bipeds and animalistic people, we try to get them jailed if there is a reasonable way to do so and it is completely warranted.” Foxglove muttered with her wings crossed. “We should probably ask Canina what she wants us to do, since she’s the intended victim. We also need to confirm if Canina actually knows Georgette personally or not.”

“Remind me to avoid animals with crafty looks in their eyes in the future.” Louie stated as he crushed his can and threw into the bag of holding inside of his hoodie’s pocket.

I knew it, Louie has it!

We made our way over to the book signing, we purchased a biography for my later perusal and while Canina was marking Dewey’s book with a paw print, Foxglove had an exchange with her.

“I’m with the Rescue Rangers and we need to talk Canina, when will you’re book signing be over with? It’s kind of urgent.” Foxglove received several barks and tilted her head off to the side discreetly. “Okay, we’ll have to patiently wait twenty minutes, Canina really is not one for disappointing her fans.”

-Thirty minutes later-

“Alright… okay. So I have just found out how Georgette is connected to all of this.” Foxglove turned to us after having a small discussion with Canina. “She’s friends with Canina and they sometime spend time together hanging out whenever Canina is in New York. Georgette and Canina both like to gossip and share how hard life is being famous. Also, I don’t think Zsa Zsa is aware that her disguise has been compromised.”

“Don’t worry Canina, we’ll take care of it… so what does she want us to do about Zsa Zsa anyway?” Dewey asked while running his hand down Canina’s back affectionately.

“Canina wants us to either capture Zsa-Zsa or set it up things so the both of them can talk. She wants a chance to convince Zsa-Zsa to stop trying to murder her, she really doesn’t want to deal with the medical bill again after what happened last time.” Foxglove seem worried and nibbled at one of her wings. “I don’t know how we’re going to do that though.”

Einstein and Francis showed up and they started barking at Foxglove.

“Huh… oh… Georgette wasn’t at the theatre, but they did smell another dog’s presence they don’t recognize. It might be Zsa Zsa’s scent, but Georgette wasn’t there.” At least we had that much information Foxglove. Canina started barking something. “That’s why we’re here Canina.”

“I have an idea.” Ocellus stated in curious tone. “Why not talk to Zsa Zsa and pretend you don’t know it’s her in disguise, does Zsa Zsa know Georgette’s very well?”

Canina responded with some yapping and lazy paw gesturing, there was also a smile on her face.

“She’s says she can handle things if she can meet just Zsa-Zsa personally to straighten things out, but she still wants to know what happened to Georgette.” So the evidence was laid out by Foxglove, Dodger and Rita added some of their own commentary to all of this, not that we could understand them without Foxglove being the translator for all of this. “So the locations we’ve checked for Georgette have nothing, but maybe the other Rescue Rangers are having better luck.”

Canina barked something that sounded fairly upbeat.

“Are you sure you can handle the same dog that’s tried to kill you before? Maybe we should be nearby to make sure she doesn’t try to hurt you?” The response that Foxglove received was a shooing paw. “Well we’ll be nearby at least if you need help.”

Canina nodded and yipped twice before continuing about her day, she motioned for us to follow her with a paw.

“This is so cool!” Dewey said bright eyed.

“Yeah, we didn’t exactly expect animals on this world to have issues like this, then again we are still technically visitors to this world so there’s a lot we don’t know.” It seemed Smolder was enjoying the adventure, this was probably one of the few adventures where we weren’t at the center of things.

“You’re right Smolder, even we wouldn’t have known about this stuff going on beneath our beaks if we hadn’t met Foxglove or if you hadn’t taken interest in the Rescue Rangers.” Dewey crossed his arms and looked confused. “Though I swear I’ve seen the Rescue Rangers somewhere before, maybe that spy game at Funzo’s Fun Zone? Makes me wonder if FOWL agents used that game to run scenarios against known heroes.”

“Well I’m glad this is almost over, because I’m kind of getting worried about what’s going on with Webby, we should probably look into that after we’re done helping with this case.” Louie was actively being nice, will wonders never cease? “Still got a nice deal with a troll going, so no matter what Louie Enterprises is on the rise.”

“Uh guys, Foxglove, Canina and the Fagin’s Gang are leaving us behind.” We turned to Ocellus and noticed her waving at us.

We quickly followed after them.

-Fifteen minutes later, outdoor café, Canina-

I swear I am getting almost too old for weird stuff, but I still had plenty of kick left in my paws for a throw down with Zsa Zsa if it came right down to it. I wasn’t rickety in the bones yet!

The one thing I really needed to try was to ultimately clear the air with Zsa Zsa. If she still didn’t see reason after that, then I was definitely going to need that help that little sweet Foxglove offered. Really as a younger Labrador, as long as nothing happened to me, she was going to outlive me anyway.

It would also help if I knew where my friend Georgette currently was, but Foxglove assured me that the other rangers were already working on locating her. All of my little friends were so sweet on me, maybe I could spend the rest of my days being a normal dog while I still can.

Makes me feel sorry for dogs like Bolt who didn’t get a choice in whether or not they wanted to be an actor, given he was forced into his role even if he plays it well and actively believes everything they have him doing.

I saw Zsa Zsa approach me, she was really good at looking like Georgette. As much as her acting skills allowed her to mimic me personally, I doubted she’d be able to copy Georgette entirely. This would have fooled me had Foxglove not warned me about this. It was time to put my own acting skills to a real test against an equally good actor.

Glancing at Foxglove, she nodded while waving a wing at me as she signaled that it was Zsa Zsa.

“Hello Georgette, how have things for been you dear?” I stated as I hugged Zsa Zsa.

Georgette might be a little younger than me, but she wasn’t afraid to listen to my opinions on things even if she wasn’t very touchy feely.

I just confirmed it for myself, the Labrador was disguised as one of my friends and I dearly hoped she didn’t do anything permanent to her.

-Camden Town, Judy-

Okay so Zootopia had a problems this morning, we were only being piped the info now because we have some friends there keeping us in the loop.

At least four mercenary teams, three helicopters equipped with rockets, military grade equipment and a good number of them being captured by the Tail Team. At least six sniper rounds fired, multiple assault weapons used, rockets fired by all the helicopters.

Their target was concerning, given it was Leap Lamb and after watching some news of an announcement of the first commercially available True Artificial Intelligence, I already saw that there was a fairly good motive behind it besides someone putting a hit out on Leap Lamb.

Despite all of that being sent her way, Leap Lamb was only struck by one bullet to the chest and one sniper round that was unaccounted for that also possibly struck Leap Lamb. Last known sighting of Leap Lamb was being carried into Rainbow Falls by a sled dog team, she was still breathing and alive before disappearing.

The situation was watched by the nighttime police squad, but they didn’t engage and watched the situation from a distance. They did pick up the mercenaries after the Tail Team took care of them, not a single bullet could hit the two long tailed speed demons.

One of the confirmed mercenaries that escaped Zootopia was Sabu Taj, a rather notorious saboteur specialist and whatever else she was known for was not information we had. She had sabotaged all the transit systems in the area, not that it stopped their target from getting away.

The damage Leap Lamb did to the mercenaries was… fairly benign. She destroyed the three helicopters, no fatalities despite the third helicopters destruction being more obvious manner, only two mercenaries were taken down by her personally in a painful fashion. One mercenary, a jackal, stated to ZPD that he saw an angel for a few seconds before his chin was turned into broken glass after she split his helmet with a single blow.

“Yikes, three helicopters, what in the world is she made of?” My partner Nick intoned with disbelief, as even I had trouble believing that Leap Lamb was strong enough to bring down helicopters physically.

“Much more than she appears, she was still breathing after being shot with an assault rifle and not too long afterwards supposedly took a sniper bullet too.” The information I was receiving was rather iffy on Leap Lamb after she reached Glacier Falls. As for the weirdness going on around here, it seemed to have died down immensely. “She’s not invincible considering she was actually bleeding, she was injured before dealing with the three helicopters. She was in Savanna Central, went through Western Sahara Square and then got into trouble upon reaching Tundra Town. She was last seen heading to Rainforest… where was she going?”

“The Canal District.” Nick stated immediately.

“What?” I turned to him and his gaze was on the screen.

“This airport specifically. Best place to discreetly board a plane out of the country, she obviously couldn’t go to a hospital after taking a bullet wound. She was fairly paranoid about staying in Zootopia and with good reason if people were out to kill her for at least two reasons, maybe a third if she’s avoiding assassination attempts for being black ops specialist. I doubt she's actually a black ops, she reads more as a police officer with a desk job that was forced into being a super hero.” Nick turned to me and looked curious. “Where was Caper Canine reported to be during all of this?”

“That’s just it, the only sign of Caper Canine’s activities is somehow getting a team of sled dogs organized enough to pick up Leap Lamb. The tailing police officer didn’t see any other signs.” I reported to him. “The dogs weren’t identifiable at a distance and no one saw them going back to Tundra Town, nothing is missing from surrounding places that would even use sled dogs.”

“Spooky.” Commented Nick idly. “That has got to be one smart dog.”

“Still, we should try to keep track of Leap Lamb’s movements, as where she goes danger seems to follow.” Feeling my ears get rubbed, I just let Nick have his fun. “We weren’t going to do any better following the newest Cooper Gang and Hunter isn’t talking as he likes Leap Lamb and is making a profit off of her. So what exactly are we working on now Nick?”

“How about the clockwork owl case Carmelita has running?” Nick stated as he dropped a few pictures in front of me that all had a large owl shaped silhouette. "We'll head to Russia and wait for Carmelita."

-New York, Ocellus-

“I don’t know what they are talking about, but I think Canina is getting through to Zsa Zsa judging by what I feel.” Looking over to our little chiropteran friend, she seemed nervous. “Are you okay Foxglove?”

“Huh… oh… I’m fine.” You didn’t feel like it to me Foxglove. “Just worried about Dale and the others.”

Eventually Canina and an undisguised Zsa Zsa made their way over to us.

“They’ve worked things out, but she has no idea where Georgette is.” Canina told us through Foxglove, Zsa Zsa was quietly looking at the ground with a severe case depression that gnawed at me.

I really needed to know what made her feel that way.

"What's wrong with Zsa Zsa?" I asked and Canina swiftly responded.

"Well, Canina once told her that a talent like hers only comes once in a lifetime." That sounded kind of bad. "What she just told Zsa Zsa is that she should make her up own lifetime of talent instead of just outright copying others. Since Canina's lifetime as a famous dog is closing up, she'll soon wander into complete obscurity a normal dog."

Author's Note:

All glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

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