Baa-Ram-Ewe!

by Darkonshadows

143. Almost Altogether.

-Earth, Calisota Road, Pom-

It had taken me a while to get my wits about me. That guy has killed a lot of people before, especially in cold blood no less from what I could infer about him. There was the downside to being able to profile people and that guy could have chosen to kill me.

It might also explain where the exploding rubber duck, that Dolly found, initially came from. Speaking of my current favorite canine sidekick, we had to get out of here before any of those mercenaries could track us down out here where we were vulnerable and to do that we had to finish what we were currently doing.

“Okay Dolly… one… two… three!” At my mark, I raised my hooves above my head as Dolly hopped off the side of Ms. Shuttle down towards me on her skateboard.

We both hit the lever of the jack at the same time with as much force as we could and Ms. Shuttle popped back up onto her wheels with a whimper.

“Are you alright, can you move?” I immediately asked.

Ms. Shuttle moved back and forth and then gave me a bright smile. We weren’t leaving her out here if she couldn’t move and we would have called Big Hero Six for help otherwise.

“Chemical cannon is still mostly operational, damage to frame isn’t too bad, so… I’m functional and ready to resume transport to Duckberg!” She said with a somewhat chipper tone, but then worriedly look around. “Do you… do you think that mean guy with the gun is still watching us?”

“Hard to tell…” My noncommittal response made the poor vehicle nervous and she let out a slight whine. I walked up to the vehicle and patted her on the side. She was very helpful, but she wasn’t meant for doing heroics on her own and she wasn’t doing so well emotionally either without one of her friends around. This was her first test to see if she could be out on her own, she was being a very brave transport for the most part. “There, there, it’ll be okay, he didn’t shoot me and I’m… okay…. relatively. Say, why don’t you have a nice chat with Dormarch?”

I pulled out Dormarch and heard an explosion. I looked at Dormarch having once again hit a mine in the minesweeper game, I rolled my eyes.

Computers supposedly think at incredible speeds and shouldn’t be nearly as goofy or as bad at logic puzzles as Dormarch is at times, I blame the infectious magic of beings from Equus for his personality. That blame, of course, solely fell squarely onto me as being the only being of Equus he’s been around.

I stepped back on board Ms. Shuttle after her tumble sent me and Dolly flying out of her, no broken glass or anything because her windows and doors all flew open when she was blown onto her side.

Putting the jack back where I found it, I then placed Dormarch in a cup holder up so he could play nice with the other mechanical intelligence.

“Uh… hi…” Dormarch stated meekly as he looked up at her covered in imaginary scorch marks.

“Hey there!” Ms. Shuttle responded cheerfully.

“So… want to play a game of Poodle Wolf together while you drive?” Dormarch asked and the rabbit face seemed happy to oblige him.

“Of course, as long as I am not too distracted from the road. I can do both!” It seemed like they would be fine as I went back to lay down. “At the speed I am currently capable of going due to damages sustained, we will be arriving in Duckberg in nearly two hours with a given an additional time of thirty or more minutes. Incidentally my body may need some repairs from a reputable source once we arrive or I might not be able to make it back to San Fransokyo… but I’m sure we can make it there!”

I was tired and needed the weeks of recovery that Dormarch and the other doctors said I needed. A long vacation from all this mind melting adventure would be nice, with Tianhuo, me and my entire family just playfully camping or spending time on a nice beach away from everything trying to kill me every other day.

“Huh… hold that thought, call from Dolly’s family. They are very smart dogs. We’ll start after I’m done communicating with them to see what they want.” Tuning Dormarch out was probably something I shouldn’t do, but if it was important he would get our attention.

I could almost imagine it, Dolly apparently would be there too if she stuck with me and was serious about not leaving my side. I moved to the back to lay down on a bench.

“Hey Pom… I’ve been needing to discuss some things with you, so can we do that now?” Sitting up to see Dolly approaching me without her helmet and skateboard, I was a little worried.

She looked up at me with a serious face that looked a little comical on a dog that is usually cheerful, carefree and so full of life. I reached down with a hoof and playfully fondled one of her ears, she smiled and her bandaged tail started wagging.

I smiled right on back as I pointed my other at it.

Dolly froze up and looked at her tail, the wagging speed just increased. She quickly got up next to me on the bench and raised her butt at me, looking fairly excited at the prospect of seeing her tail without bandages on them.

I carefully unraveled the bandages and eventually managed to peel them all away, her tail was positively vibrating with how happy she was. The fur on the tail looked a little rough, but I would brush that out eventually as Dolly wouldn’t care about her appearance all that much and would leave it looking like that if I didn’t.

“Okay, where do you want to start Dolly?” Petting her as I asked this, she leaned into the touch of my hoof and nuzzled up against me.

“How about my family, all this crazy stuff we’ve done recently… I just want to talk about everything really.” Dolly’s tail immediately stopped wagging and she looked away from me, I gave her a comforting hug. “Where we’re going, where we’ll eventually end up… I’m just as excited as I am terrified.”

“Okay.” If she needed to vent, I was listening and I had some things to vent of my own.

“First of all, how much more training can you give me?” Dolly was focused, not something I thought I’d see as her general mood is laid back or excited. She also had a heroic streak, which had me worried for her safety, thankfully she already had some good talents for supporting me and was getting quite a lot of recognition as my sidekick. “I want to learn how to bark blast and I want to know how to do it safely, you’re the only one that can teach me how Pom. I’ve only done it that one time and we both know that I have the magical ability to do so, it’s just I haven’t figured out how to channel my stuff yet.”

“A lot more training, have you been keeping up with what I already taught you Dolly? I mean between all the stuff we’ve been getting into, all the traveling and everything.” I think that weird assassin scared Dolly as much as he did me, but he knew something about Dormarch that Dolly and I were still missing completely. “I have an idea of how to help you get a feel for your magic Dolly…”

I barely had a vague idea or a little evidence as to what we were missing about Dormarch, he didn’t seem like much or very important at first glance to anyone other than Dolly or me. If Kahn Industries could just make more like him, then why don’t they just go after Kahn Industries? There must be something quite unique to Dormarch to be worth all the hassle, we just haven’t noticed it or seen it yet as I seriously doubted it was the faint familiar bond I had with him.

Thing was… Dormarch wasn’t aware of our bond and I was being quiet on the subject with him for a few reasons, Dolly was the only other one that new about it.

I wasn’t an expert on technology like Dormarch, but he wasn’t uniquely alone in this world with the Lucky Cat Café waiters and Ms. Shuttle being something like him. Even Dolly knew more than I did on the subject of this technology and she didn’t care much about technology as much as her brothers did. That was just telling on how little I knew.

At best I know how to break machines pretty well at this point, and that was becoming a thing all its own. A powerful martial arts leopard, jade zombie statues, monstrous machines, barely threatening demons and menacing mercenaries. How much more of this would I have to endure?

My major concern was what was the difference between Dodo and Dormarch? Aside from Dodo having a functioning body, both were definitely somehow alive enough to form a familiar bond to. Something about him was like Dodo, a living being despite his mechanically created nature and familiars had to be alive for the bond to even work.

Dragging my thoughts away from the conundrum of mechanical minds and existences, I decided to focus back on Dolly who was waiting on my patiently to sort my thoughts. Unusual for her, she wasn’t pestering me to help her with getting a feel for her magic or anything after I trailed off.

It wasn’t long before I noticed she was still injured by the incident. One last series of thoughts tugged at the back of my head before I could look Dolly over more intently.

Mr. Rieper did warn us that he’d likely be coming after us again. He didn’t sugar coat things even if he did have this strange sense of whimsy about him, he was fairly quite blunt to us about what he does for a living.

He was a killer, there was no mistaking that in my eyes. That was a bad thing to me, but to him seemed it was more like a massive gray area judging from his actions when he could have killed me and washed his hands of ever having to deal with me again completely within a single moment.

So why was I still alive and why the warning? This world had so many questions and very few answers, I think the stress alone was slowly killing me… had killed me actually, several times according to Dormarch.

“Dolly, how hurt did you get when you hit the road?” I hear Dolly quietly whined something akin to the likes of she was fine and I narrowed my eyes at her and began checking her over. “You most certainly are not fine, hold on let me get the aid kit out.”

Dolly’s tail might be better, but her body had a few nasty scrapes from our recent incident and she wasn’t protesting my need to care for her. She seemed exceedingly happy to be looked over by me, I think our bond was getting stronger.

I was somewhat scared of what would result from the magic of our worlds mixing together, but nothing had come of it so far. Dolly had the magic of this world in her and I had magic of my world and a familiar bond linking the two together, but nothing outrageously weird has occurred from the normal stuff a familiar bond usually entails.

This world’s magic and the magic my friends and I carried with us from Equus might be starting to forge something that the people of this world might not be ready for.

-Britain, 101 Dalmatian Street, Dawkins-

“There, that should be the program necessary to communicate with and understand Dolly or even Pom if she starts speaking dog Dormarch.” I was having a nice quiet day, I was making a call to Dormarch to send him the data he needed from the one Fetch device we still had in the house while I still had some free time from pup care.

I gave away a decoy Fetch device when mom and dad fully cleaned out the house of them, it’s still interesting that someone invented a machine that can understand dogs as a language and nobody seemed to realize how revolutionary that was.

“Thank you big brother, I’ve been wanting to understand big sis for a while now without having to type out what she needs of me!” It was fairly nice to help out an artificial intelligence and there were more than Dormarch out there. Hopefully all of them were just as nice and friendly as the one that was proclaiming to be our little brother, he was charming enough puppy despite displaying an older appearance.

“Data sent, will that be all Dawkins?” My modified Fetch device, Fetch Positron, stated in a friendly tone.

“Yes, that will be all Fetch Positron.” I disconnected her from the tablet and smiled as I hugged the sphere with the one large eye to my chest passionately.

I had read every ounce of data, recoded everything in the source code down to the finest degree in my Fetch device to make sure it didn’t have anything malicious in it. I had even disassembled and reassembled it to make sure there were no tracking devices.

Whoever originally made these Fetch things might have had something of a malicious bone in their bodies, I wouldn’t know truthfully, but they certainly weren’t going to use my personal Fetch against my family.

Sure my many brothers and sisters might make fun of me for it, but I was eventually going to finish building my robotic female assistant in full. It was just a tiny side project of mine that the mechanical mandrill parts were going to assist in, that and the ever blessed intellect of Bentley of the Cooper gang was helping me with the design process.

Speaking of… was that a call from Bentley I was seeing right now? My goodness today has been a good day!

“Hello Bentley!” The turtle has been testing my mental fortitude in a games of chess and a variety of other ways. We were kindred spirits with frighteningly high intelligence quotients, despite our differences.

If there was one person I could happily spend the rest of my life in service to, it would probably be him. I’m just not ready to leave the family yet, they still needed me for many things.

“Hey Dawkins, we finished our business in the Kunlun Mountains. We’re ready to meet up with Pom now.” Bentley had a fairly nasally voice that was music to my ears. “To that end we will be needing to coordinate a three way chat when Pom meets up with Ocellus and Smolder to set a meeting point between all our groups. I’m suggesting we meet up in Cape Suzette.”

“The island city surrounded by mountains and is a bit secluded, sounds like a nice place for a meet and greet of your two groups.” I concurred with his estimates of a good meeting point. I’m mostly judging this by all the resources everyone has at their disposals. “I’ll contact Lena and Dormarch to set things up for it.”

“You do that, also thanks for the translation software Dawkins. I’ll try to find out who is behind those Fetch devices and will get back to you later with the information after some digging.” Bentley always acknowledged my intelligence just as much I did his. “Now where were we with our three dimensional chess game?”

“Always a pleasure to work with you Bentley!” My tail started wagging frightfully fast. “Also I believe it was my turn and if I remember right I won the last game.”

“Hey Dawkins, got you the fruit from the strange tree we found in the park. Oh, you’re busy with Bentley, it’ll be in the refrigerator when you’re done!” Dylan came through for me with getting a piece of fruit from an alien fruit tree Pom had left behind.

The fruit looked familiar but tasted bizarre, not that it was a bad thing, just unusual and something to study in comparison to fruits of similar appearances.

-Hours later, Duckberg, Ocellus-

So the beagle boys were a thing, at least we avoided confrontation with them by sleeping over at the Sabrewings.

Webby and her family were less lucky, at least they had a lot of experience with getting constantly into and out of danger and would be fine. That and they were all capable of handling situations in their own ways.

Donald in particular was a really nice guy with a few anger issues, his protective streak certainly matched Pom in its ferocity. That ferocity being of a completely berserk honey badger should someone endanger those they care about. He was the only duck scarier than an angry Webby in their family.

Smolder and I were currently sitting at an abandoned theatre on the beach, near Lena’s secret hideaway that was recently refurbished to take us in. It was a nice spot to relax once it was cleaned up. We sat at the outdoor theater staring out at the ocean as the sun rose up in the sky behind us painting the morning brilliantly.

“This is certainly something Smolder.” I snuggled against the dragon at my side.

“It certainly is Ocellus.” She wrapped a claw around my body, her warmth and love filled me with a pleasant coexistence.

“When Magica was trapped in me, this is one of the few things that kept me sane despite me being under her thumb.” We turned to see Lena ‘the living shadow’ and Violet coming up to us. “So ready to see your caretaker again? She was on her way from San Fransokyo, she should be arriving in Duckberg any minute…”

Something slammed into us and I was frightened as we hit the sand, but the massive amounts of love flooding into me personally was impressive and the form on us coalesced into something white and fluffy.

We were being hugged really hard, by a pair of familiar hooves and it took a moment for Smolder to realize we weren’t under attack. Smolder really wasn’t given much chance to struggle anyway, the lambkin was far stronger than the both of us physically even if she looked tired.

“Whoa… she’s fast...” Lena said slightly disturbed by how quickly this being could move when properly motivated.

“That is an understatement, most would be hard pressed to follow those movements given she moved fast enough to be rendered invisible to the naked eye.” Violet’s commentary aside, I knew who was hugging us and why.

I heard sniffling and looked up in time to see her face dig into both our shoulders as she held us to her tightly. Love was a dominant emotion, underlying emotions were terror, sadness, unbridled happiness and worry.

The most prominent emotion a bundle of constant, almost uncontrollable and somehow comforting to me, levels of anxiety that was Pom Lambchop as she cried over us.

“Hey Pom.” I tried, but she cried all that much harder and tugged me closer, when last she saw me I had been in a coma from magical burnout. My horn was still hurting and completely unusable, but I was still alive.

“It’ll be okay, we’re fine and Ocellus woke up.” Even when Smolder tried, Pom just kept blubbering over us.

I felt some happy emotions join us in the hug and blinked to look at what was the missing Dalmatian, the big sister of the ninety seven other dogs that worked alongside the big brother. She was joining the hug with a bunch of amused emotions, she barked out something that sounded coy and Pom looked up at her with a glare.

“Really Dolly, do you seriously expect me to do that?” Pom stated flatly to the dog sending her a cheeky bright grin. Pom went close to being emotionally flat for a moment, but she wasn’t letting us go. “Fine, okay, I’ll introduce you since you didn’t get to meet them with the rest of your family. This is Dolly Danger Dalmatian, she’s also known as Caper Canine the illustrious partner of Leap Lamb. She used to be one of the two top dogs of the Dalmatian house you visited in Britain.”

The Dalmatian backed away from us and took a bow while sweeping her protective gear off her head, before slamming it back into place with a broad grin.

“You still don’t like being called a hero I take it?” I said this despite the fact that she’s been through a lot to reach us, she still had mercenaries after her and being here with us was going to put us in danger the second Pom does something attention attracting.

“No Ocellus, I don’t… so when did you wake up?” Pom was as I remembered her and that was comforting.

“The Dalmatian house, all of the loving Dalmatians helped me a lot… but… I can’t use my magic.” I received a very concerned look. “I burned out my horn doing what I did in the last world and it needs time to heal.”

“She can still safely shapeshift at least, otherwise using her horn hurts her.” Hearing Lena talk, Pom suddenly stiffened and realized that there were more than just us two here. “Hey there, Lena Sabrewing and this is my annoyingly brainy little sister Violet.”

“Pleasantries and acquaintances wayward caretaker of our friends, we have heard much of your endeavors and exploits.” Violet stated while nodding to us still held tightly within Pom’s protective grasp. “Also I believe I would like to ask for a… ah yes, an autographical signature of your name? Actual and super hero please.”

“Really Vi? Everyone was expecting that to come up with Dewey, but not you!” The duck crossed her arms and shook her head at the hummingbird while letting a drawn out sigh from her beak.

Pom didn’t even question that they were sisters, she just smiled at the two and continued hugging us.

It was around now that I noted the hug was becoming a little bit too insistent…

Okay, Pom was going a little too far now.

“Uh… Pom… you can let go now.” Smolder tried, but Pom just tightened her grip.

“Pom when was the last time you rang your bell?” I needed to distract her from crushing us to death.

“Not for a long while.” Pom admitted.

Dolly barked and yipped in a curious tone.

“She’s asking because I really haven’t used it in a while.” Pom sighed and finally let us go and swatted at the bell and it let out a long soft chime that had her calming down somewhat, it was hardly a noticeable difference in her level of anxiety from my point of view. Apparently it was enough to get her to stop crushing the both of us, never thought I would hear Smolder's scales threatening to crack under pressure... much less my own fuzzy carapace. “Sorry, but… I’ve missed you both and I’ve been through so much!”

It wasn’t even five seconds later that Pom was back to hugging us both incessantly again.

“Heh, how do you think she’s going to act when we see shanty?” Oh don’t even dare joke about that Smolder, even if I knew what was going to happen when she see's Shanty!

Pom quickly pulled out a device and a Dalmatian with fish tails appeared on it.

"Guys this is Dormarch, say hello to the girls back under my care Dormarch!" Stated Pom pleasantly like a proud parent.

Author's Note:

Pom let the dragon and changeling go... no don't keep hugging them harder because they are adorable! Sure one had an fuzzy exoskeleton and the other has hard to break scales, but that doesn't mean you can't choke them to death by lack of oxygen!

Pom and Dolly had some offscreen discussions, it'll come up again along with Pom's idea of how to train Dolly in figuring magic.

Magical fruit trees from Elhorn, the magical beings from Equus and the world's own strange magic that can do the power of friendship given how Webby, Violet and Lena's friendship came about...

Well this world was already odd enough as it is with being 'where dreams CAN come true', so what's a little foreign magic really going to do?

Comments

[Herald of Opera]

so what's a little foreign magic really going to do?

*looks again at Oleander's side adventures already including Kingdom Hearts*
*whistles "innocently" in the sort of way that fools nobody*

[Shadowshame]

Well this world was already odd enough as it is with being 'where dreams CAN come true', so what's a little foreign magic really going to do?

Knowing that you’re invoking fate in that way……a lot of chaotic things