Baa-Ram-Ewe!

by Darkonshadows

178. Metal vs Mettle.

-Earth, Southeastern Crumbling Krakarov, vaguely circular large pit, Smolder-

A warbling noise drew my attention from dragging myself painfully across the ground, thankfully it was Dodo and not one of those metallic falcons or Clockwerk.

“Hey Dodo… come to pick me up?” I don’t think I could stand up, I think Clockwerk might have damaged my spine. He poked me in the chest and I sighed. “Don't think I can stand up.”

He leaned down and carefully lifted me off the ground with his beak and slowly placed me into his back. He warbled somberly and looked at the others that were here with me. We were all a mess.

“How did you survive that for so long?!” Judy, I think the rabbit was called, asked with clear concern for my wellbeing as I was plopped next to Shanty, on top of Pom.

“Born tough… all dragons are resilient, even young like I am. Heh, felt like I was being cracked open by a Roc, giant bird that has a tendency to pick on young dragons.” I grunted as the immense amount of pain below my wings flared agonizingly. This is the most pain I’ve ever felt in my whole life, usually this kind of pain isn’t a thing dragons will ever feel. “Don’t think my spine made it, still breathing though and that’s good enough for me.”

“Okay Dodo, back up onto the cliff and towards the Cooper gangs van to see if we can offload the injured, then we can try to pick up Darkwing.” Thank goodness Nick brought that up, because we were kind of stuff into Dodo’s back.

“I’m still watching the tower, but I think the Cooper Gang has the remaining robot falcons handled until it fires again.” Judy was sitting on the edge of the seat as she looked over to us. “Team Leap Lamb has seen better days huh? I got us covered, but I don’t think I’m going to be doing much running around, my ears are kind of burning up. Wish I had sweat glands.”

“No you don’t.” Nick answered as I nodded off, a nap sounded good right now.

-Sly-

His wings were twisted and he wasn’t able to fly, his face was scorched and his metal tail feathers were all rumpled, just because he looked battered did not mean I was ever going to underestimate Clockwerk. He was already fixing himself as

He was going to charge towards Darkwing, who was still wielding his gun and standing quite tall despite the bleeding wounds slowing him down.

My cane was glowing brightly as I prepared to jump from the spire and into the fight. We needed to take Clockwerk down fast or at least stop him from focusing on being able to remotely control the tower.

All I needed to do was stun Clockwerk and get at least ten seconds to pull off the most impossible heist of this century.

We were on a large circular portion of the volcano that had sunken downwards from the rest of the mountain. Getting out of here isn’t going to be easy, so let’s make this quick.

Okay, time to go!

I pushed off the spire and flipped as I launched forward and raised my staff above my head. As Darkwing fired several blasts of small electrified clouds of gas, they weren’t going to do much to stop or slow down Clockwerk, but it was a good distraction for me.

Timing my intercept correctly, I brought my cane down on Clockwerk and his head slammed into the ground. I bounce back and landed on my feet and attacked his left wing with my cane with an upward swing, knocking it back before he could swing it for me after I clocked his head.

He kicked his left talon forward attempting to skewer me, I rolled to Clockwerk’s right and slapped my cane with an amount of explosive force against his right leg and toppled him. It didn’t take him long before he was standing again.

“Cooper…” Clockwork growled.

“I’m only going to say one thing, you’re going down Clockwerk.” I narrowed my eyes at him and pointed the hook at him while making a gesture to come at me.

“We’ll see.” He responded and slung his right wing around in a sweep.

Hopping over it was simple, ducking the tail feathers that came around afterwards were not, as they all slammed down towards me and I had to leap backwards. Was it weird that his tail feathers were basically acting like a giant claw?

Darkwing fired several shots and Clockwerk swung his tail around after dragging it on the ground and slung molten rock his way, making him take evasive action.

I ran up and smack Clockwerk’s left wing and quickly backed away as he swung it outwards for me. This opened him up for a fully charged shock pistol blast from Carmelita to the head.

“Agh…” Clockwerk’s head had a glowing rent in it as he stumbled back and I leapt forward to hit it with an overhead slam widening it slightly.

I had to quickly turn and run away after I landed and he hopped and tried to crush me with his grasping talons. Looking over my shoulder I saw him lift his right leg and launched it forward while releasing a chunk of rock in my direction.

Diving to the ground I grunted as the slightly ash covered dirt got into my fur and the ball of slightly molten rock his a nearby rock wall.

Once his right talon was on the ground outside a small hole of lava, Clockwerk tossed another rock towards Darkwing who wasn’t doing much damage with his left talon. He was at least slowing down Clockwerk’s ability to heal with rapid shots faster than Carmelita could get off.

“Look out!” I guess that’s the difference between the gas and energy weapon the two wielded.

Darkwing ducked and rolled to the side while using his cape to take the bits of splattering lava. His cape smoldered and had some holes in it, but it didn’t catch fire.

-Nick Wilde-

Judy was busy blasting robotic flacons out of the air and it wouldn’t be long before the tower fired again, though I think it was taking longer since whatever power source it was running on had likely sunken into the magma pool beneath it.

It was up to its belly in molten rock and the world was shaking slightly as the land around us broke and went both upwards and downwards in places. The air was starting to boil the sweat right off my face.

A lot more of the volcano’s cone had collapsed inwards and lava was slowly starting to boil over from the top of Krakarov. We really didn’t have much time here, at least none of the flows were coming our way… yet.

Even so I hefted Smolder up and into the Cooper Van, Dodo was carefully placing Caper Canine down next to me and I moved her inside. He then picked out Pom and passed her to me… after I was done getting three of the injured situated, he hesitated a bit with passing me the exhausted Shanty.

He looked down and nuzzled the goat gently and then carefully lifted her up to me while looking at her with an emotion of love and protectiveness.

I thought the mechanical ostrich was expressive before, but this was something else. It was like he was worried about leaving Shanty to the Cooper Van, he placed her into my waiting arms nuzzled her face and then turned to my best friend gunning down a falcon and warbled.

“What is it, I’m kind of busy!” Several shock pistol shots blew apart another falcon and the gun on the van roared as it not only blasted any other approaching falcons, it was also shooting down the missiles being fired at us from the nearby tower.

“I think Dodo wants you to ride him!” Said Dormarch from the nearby device. “Scanning all individual’s healths… starting with, darn it Pom, a cracked skull, how am I supposed to keep you alive at this rate?! Not to mention the ripped muscle fibers in her heart, arrhythmia flare up making it hard for her to breathe and thankfully only a light amount of heatstroke since her wool is a naturally good insulator! She abused her form of Dancing Flame again. If you want to know Dodo, Shanty is mostly okay, moderate dehydration, she’s exhausted and she suffering from heatstroke worse than Pom, but she is in better health which is not saying much with my people. Dolly has… huh… weird… severe exhaustion, light brain damage that’s already healing on its own, how did that even happen with her helmet? Her body is somehow sapped of its nutrients and is also a bit dehydrated, not nearly as bad as Shanty is though. As for… oh… that’s… quite worrying.”

“What about Smolder?” I asked as I saw the Dalmatian on the screen look up at me, silently noting Judy hopping into Dodo’s back and he took off running for the sinking tower sticking out of the current halfway point up the volcano as it currently was.

“Officer, I ask that you immediately lay her out on her back and make sure to straighten her out on the floor of the van carefully.” Dormarch said slowly as he looked away, as I did as I was told I heard several creaking noises coming from the dragon. How old did Pom exactly say she was, a teenager? That’s… “While there are no signs of suffering from heat, which matches up with the information on dragons I was given by her special someone. She has massive internal bruising… surprisingly no internal bleeding which would have been quite bad because I don’t think there’s anyone on this world that can do some required surgery on a dragon for the worst bit of damage.”

“What happened to my little buddies, little buddy?!” Murray shouted back at us as he stopped looking at the tower and the surrounding shifting terrain from the window.

“Moderate to heavy spinal damage, she might be tough on the outside, but her insides can only be so tough. The bones, while not crushed are all badly cracked throughout her lower back and there are even some chips in there. Thankfully they haven’t floated away from the damaged areas, it would be simple enough to get them back in place and patch them… but we’d need some specialized help to fix that. We also need an understanding dragon anatomy and that’ll be covered by her special someone Ocellus.” Dormarch groaned out. “Am I cursed to bring misery to others or does me just being near them cause misery to show up? In any case, the injury is not life threatening… yet. She can still breathe and thankfully her pelvis, tail and legs held up better but are still slightly nerved damaged by all the heavy bruising. That her scales are cracked must have taken an impressive amount of force, I’ve calculated that her toughness is on a scale that exceeds most forms of steel, chromium, tungsten and the like. I’d surmise from this that Clockwerk is supernaturally strong.”

“Ah don’t blame yourself Dormarch, you’re doing the best with what you have!” Murray stated trying to be in good spirits.

“You’re not bringing misery, you just happened to be around when misery starts happening.” I try to add my own two cents. “I would know, I personally saw misery when Zootopia panicked about ancient predator and prey dynamics during the Night Howler incident. Can I blame myself for tensions being high when I technically count as a predator, there are just some things outside our control dude. You’re a good person Dormarch… now how can I help them? I’m not doing much else and I can be your hands.”

“First get a strip of pink cloth from the bag and I’ll tell you how to tie it around Pom’s head to not make things worse.” Dormarch pointed in a direction on the screen and I got the bag. To think Pom went into this not wearing it and she’s going to end up wearing the pink strip of cloth anyway. Come to think of it, it’s the only thing she wears beside the bell around her neck. “Yes, I know how ironic it sounds, but it’s perfect for her head injury at the moment until we can get her some professional help. We’ll get to splinting Smolder’s spine next.”

-Sly-

If it wasn’t me keeping his parts from repairing themselves, it was Darkwing distracting him and if it wasn’t either of us distracting Clockwerk, then it was Carmelita leaping around and finding spots to fire on Clockwerk from.

She can jump really high, it’s kind of amazing she’s not considered a super hero like Pom is with that kind of leaping ability.

“Are you ignoring me, ME?!” Clockwerk Slapped his left talons at me and lifted me up and then squeezed, only to get the crunching of a standee. Of course I was ignoring him, I’d rather appreciate Carmelita than look at him, but since he’s distracting me from it. “What… agh?!”

I came down on his left wing twisting it out of its socket with my cane and a blast came from his right wing damaging joint and practically doing the same.

“He’s healing too fast, do you have any ideas, I’m down to just basic shock blasts after that!” Darkwing asked as he dodged a sweep of Clockwerk’s tail and I rolled to the side as he tried to stomp down at me and slap me away with his big floppy wings.

It was like we were fighting a giant rubber chicken, one that was slowly repairing from all the damage we’re dealing to him and I couldn’t let him get fixed up enough to tear us to shreds and we were tiring pretty quickly.

A fully charged shock pistol exploded into his back. This stunned and made Clockwerk rear up with his mouth open to the sky in a silent screech, which gives me time to tell him the plan.

“If you have a way to pry his jaw or chest open for ten seconds of uninterrupted access, then that would help me finish him for good!” I ducked back as his left corrected in his socket and nearly sliced me in half as the feathers along his burnt twisted wing recovered far too quickly to be normal.

The spray of lava he sent my way wasn’t very good for my health either, but my retreat only made me quickly ditch the horse shoe that had been covered in molten liquid. My family had a strange history with lucky objects, I wasn’t about to get that lucky again without another horse shoe.

“Give me a time to coordinate with that fox!” Darkwing turned and ran off leaving me with Clockwerk’s undivided attention in a field of flames, ash and imminent death with the ground threatening to break up underneath my feet at any moment.

I also heard the firing of the death ray, but it didn’t sound like it was hitting anywhere near here. At least that wasn’t targeting my friends, I held my cane in front of me at the ready as Clockwerk charged with his beak wide open.

-Judy Hopps-

It was days like this that I probably shouldn’t have went into law enforcement.

The robot ostrich of Team Leap Lamb and I had garnered the towers attention and drew all of Clockwerk’s clockwork flacons and the ire of the tower sized owe that was now firing it’s death ray after us.

My ride ran up the side of the mountain a slow curve that would lead towards a cliff that would if I was right the ostrich could jump out and over to the problem sinking slowly into the ground and only staying above by propping up on it’s one mechanical wing.

In the mean time I was gunning down every falcon trying to intercept us as we avoided the beam trailing after us. We curved around and up to the cliff and the ostrich leapt from it, the beam trailing up to follow us and then it stopped because we were directly above its head and falling towards it.

“Woohoo!” Holding on with my left paw, I charged my pistol and fired down into one of its eyes damaging it and then the ostrich slammed into its left shoulder with his feet full force. He pointed his beak down at the shoulder joint while looking to me and I got up on the edge of the seat in his back and took aim.

-Bentley-

“Seems Officer Hopps currently has the tower fully distracted, Murray get into that pit and ram Clockwerk before he eviscerates Sly!” I turned the gun about and glared at the owl that has been menacing our brother’s dreams for so long.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea to do what you’re about to when we have injured on board!” Nick stated from below.

“Secure them then, geeze, do I have to do all the thinking around here!” The van surged forward and over the ledge and into the put, thankfully the tires were reinforced before this to handle lava for a short amount of time because we would need to plow through some of it to reach Sly in time.

-Sly-

My cane went flying from my grip behind me and I was knocked onto my back, as Clockwork stood above me. I might have been clawed in the left hip, right shoulder, my fur was scorched and I was out of standees… should have restocked before this.

“This is the might of the Cooper Clan?” Clockwerk’s wings were almost fully repaired, he brought them up and his blade feathers extended outwards as he prepared to swing them down on my like a bunch of swords. “I am to be the world’s greatest now!”

“Incoming!” Murray plowed the plow on the van through some lava and into Clockwork’s right leg, then activated the plow to punch outwards.

“Take this you canned turkey!” Bentley unloaded the gun into his wings, damaging them as fast as he could fire. “Get you’re cane Sly!”

Didn’t need to be told twice, I was already running to pick up my father’s cane before it became a statistic of this volcano like Clockwerk’s lair.

When I turned back around I saw Bentley abandoning the seat as Clockwerk ripped it off the van with beak and tossed it into a pit of magma with a splash.

“Come on, go down already!” Murray thankfully put the van into reverse before Clockwork could tear into it with his talons, he then put it drive and slammed into Clockwerk sending him skidding back.

“If this is the best you got, then you will…” Clockwerk was continuing to be arrogant, why wouldn’t he? Most of our best sources of damage were gone and Murray damaged the van’s lava proof plow just ramming into him.

“Hey Clockwerk!” Two fully charged shock pistol blasts of electrical energy slapped him in the face and body stunning it entirely.

Both Darkwing and Carmelita followed that by leaping directly onto his head, they both planted their feet and boots respectively in his lower jaw and forced it downwards.

I was already running forward eager to finish this.

I leapt up and did a spin to land on the pointed tip of the bottom of his beak and then threw my upper body into his mouth, he started flailing around as I hooked my boots on the outer edges of the beak and then reached deep inside to get one of the things I came for.

The remaining portion of the Thievius Racoonis was hidden within his throat!

“Hurry up, I don’t know how much longer we can keep his beak open!” Carmelita shouted.

“I’ve almost got it…” I quickly my cane upwards and with a sudden thrash I was launched from Clockwerk’s mouth with a powerful cough and sent flying to slam into the nearest wall of the pit.

Both Carmelita and Darkwing hit the ground, Darkwing landed badly on his shoulder and Carmelita managed to roll and get back into a standing position to start rapidly firing as Clockwerk charged me.

“It’s over Clockwerk…” I said smugly struggling to sit up despite the back pain and possible internal bleeding from being coughed out of him like I was fired from a circus cannon. I pulled my cap from my head and tossed it onto the ground in front of me. “My hats off to you, you ‘WERE’ my worst nightmare.”

Clockwerk was almost upon me when I flicked my left hand and a small chip fell into the cap, this made Clockwerk stop completely dead, pun.

“No… NO… NOOO!” Clockwerk stated as he realized what was about to happen as I propped myself up into a sitting condition with a bit of coppery taste leaking out the corner of my lips. “I am immortal, you can’t defeat me like…”

There was a grin on my face despite the pain.

“As Shanty once mentioned a friend of hers saying a lot… ska-doosh!” I slapped the butt of my cane against the ground with my left hand as I propped myself up into a standing position with it.

Clockwerk roared in defiance, but he didn’t get very far. The ‘hate chip’ in my cap blew apart as soon as my cane hit the ground. I didn’t even care that I was caught in the blast of my own hat. I wasn’t going to let Clockwerk get a chance to hurt anyone else.

“Coop-aaaaghgggghhh!” Slowly the massive metal menace before me started rusting, his quickly repairing body just started falling apart.

He was dissolving rapidly before my eyes, the magic of his raw hatred for my family was no longer holding him together.

The nightmare was over…

Unfortunately there was a different nightmare to worry about, how were we getting off this volcano alive with so many injured people and the van trapped in a pit with no way out? I could barely walk after that explosion.

“Cooper… come on, you’re not dying here on me now ring tail!” Carmelita propped me up and started to help me towards the van, she was limping somewhat. “Merde, we’ll figure a way out of this!”

-Equus, World Summit, Amira-

“What is this?!” I thrust the paper delivered to me by a courier into Jade’s face.

She took it and started to read it.

“Yada yada, overthrown sultan, blah blah blah, infestation of Huoshan battle durians, seems someone stole my idea, Saddle Arabia shall now be henceforth known as…” Her mouth crinkled up and I could hear her snorting in disbelief, she wants to laugh, but she’s holding it in as she looked at me with what could be pure honest sympathy. “Sarasaland by the new sultan, Snickers the Incorrigible?!”

Delegate Jade started laughing wildly.

“It’s not funny, my country has been taken over by a turtle dove!” The laughter that grew even worse, this haunting laughter would continue to be my nightmare for two more minutes.

What she said next was even worse, because when she stopped laughing, she suddenly grew quite serious all of the sudden.

“No, wait… this is a bad thing! I can’t destroy Saddle Arabia if it doesn’t exist…. I have to go stop my familiar and put things back to normal!” Jade then leapt up and ran from the room, much to my growing horror that she’d bring back Saddle Arabia just for that reason alone. “So I can destroy Saddle Arabia!”

“My wife, the ever comical villain.” Fizzlepop stated somberly with an insufferable sigh before standing up and sauntering slowly out after Jade. “I’ll go stop her…”

Author's Note:

Next stop: Escaping the volcano before everyone dies.

Comments

[Herald of Opera]

For those playing at home, those spinal injuries were meant for Bentley. And yes, he spent the rest of the franchise in a wheelchair.

[Shadowshame]

You know I was thinking digimon are part of this story and a computer chip stores data which means there was probably part of Clokwerk’s consciousness in there my thought is what if he turn into a digimon? I know it’s probably not going to happen but it is an interesting thought that he could have remained immortal by unintentionally becoming a digital life form and strong emotions like hatred do have a massive influence on digimon and the digital world