Baa-Ram-Ewe!

by Darkonshadows

1. On the lamb.

Author's Note:

Music - Them's Fightin' Herds training stage music (Static). Can also be called, "One, Two Stomp".

I watched as the pony hurriedly shoved a cabbage cart into the path of my puppies as he passed by it, the three of them just plowed straight through it sending cabbages and bits of wood flying.

I think I seriously underestimated my Canis Minor puppies a bit too much at times…

My puppies followed the thief into the alleyway, they hadn’t been slowed down in the slightest. Good puppies!

“Yes, my cabbages, woo!” The cabbage selling pony shouted with glee.

I gave her a disturbed look as I safely maneuvered my way around the broken bits of cabbages and wood, while trying to think ahead of the fleeing pony.

I continued running down the street I was on thinking about this. If I’m on this street then…

If the pony was heading towards the main staircase, he would be easily caught by the many longma that patrol it as it was the main way in or out of the various cities tiers and heavily guarded.

The pony was much more likely to have a way down to the middle tier and into the residential district, I couldn’t let him escape into the myriad of alleyways down there. If I lost him there then he might be able to get away and my evaluation would definitely reflect poorly on me.

I wasn’t really all that great at field work in the Huoshan Guard. I wanted to prove that I could personally handle myself… within reason of course.

I looked to the sky and then nodded, I started sprinting down the street two blocks as fast as I could go and turned the corner.

I rushed down the alleyway and immediately leapt to launch my rear hooves in a forward flying buck like my cow friend Arizona taught me how to do.

My aim was… entirely off.

I flew over the thief’s head as he ducked and he looked after me surprised, he was so distracted that he nearly got pounced on by my chasing puppies. He managed to avoid being pinned and continued onwards towards a rolled up rope ladder.

I watched in slow motion as he grabbed it and leapt over the side of upper tier and started to rappel down the wall, my puppies leapt over the side and started flying. They began harrying him as he rapidly lowered himself down towards the middle tier.

“Oh no, no-no-no!” Unfortunately I couldn’t follow as I was already heading towards the middle tier of the city the easy way, it was just the far more painful way to do it.

I flailed my wildly legs as I started to fall. Sure I’d easily survive this, but it could still hurt if I landed wrong.

I felt something grab the scruff of my neck and my fall slowed, I saw Puff out of the corner of my right eye straining his spinning tail to slow my fall.

I let out a sharp bark and pointed towards the roof of a pagoda, Puff angled my greatly slowed fall towards the sloped roof and released me to go continue keeping an eye on the thief.

Curling up, I hit the sloped roof and rolled down it towards the edge. Quickly uncurling, I twisted my body and caught the edge of the roof with my front hooves and slammed bodily against the wall below with a grunt. I looked down and became slightly dizzy.

“Uh… are you okay?” A longma asked worriedly from a nearby balcony.

“Huoshan Guard, just a bit busy with a training exercise, nothing to worry about!” I blurted out my response hurriedly as I released my grip and caught the edge of the sloped roof below me. I really didn't like being this high up.

I was starting to breathe pretty hard, but it wasn’t from exertion. It was just that all of this was all really, really stressful!

Dropping down two more times, I looked over my shoulder and narrowed my eyes at the streets below.

My puppies were still on the thief and had already passed below me. Ruff had actually managed to get his jaws around his left hind leg to slow him down, only to be bucked off a second later when the thief’s other leg slapped into his face painfully.

I know this was a training exercise, but that action had still irked me greatly. I looked towards a few slightly shorter buildings from my position and narrowed my eyes and looked towards Puff, the thief was already out of sight and my puppy was turning to the… right, got it!

He’s heading towards the left hoof square of the residential district, he was trying to lose us in a crowd! My puppies could all get easily distracted by all the people milling around there.

I swung my rear legs forwards and kicked off the edge of the sloped roofing I was holding onto. I shot off angling towards another sloped roof and curled up.

After rolling down this slope, I sprung out of my roll and slapped both my hooves together above my head. Thankfully I didn’t miss the rope full of colorful paper lanterns and started sliding towards the residential districts left hoof square.

My gaze went back to Puff’s position as I tried not to knock any of the lanterns off and then the crowded street below, if I had this right…

I pulled back my hind legs and launched them forward as I let go of the rope.

Just as the thief ran into the square my right hind leg missed him, but that was because I had come in too early. My left hind hoof slammed home and struck him across the temple making him stumble and become staggered.

He actually dropped his bag and a second later he toppled over groaning as I bounced and rolled forward to bleed off momentum.

“Huoshan Guard, you’re under arrest for theft and resisting an official of Huoshan.” I was actually able to say this without quivering or stuttering much, then again this pony did kick one of my puppies. “Don’t resist… please?”

“Okay, so outrunning you might be a bit of problem.” The pony grunted as he stood up. “Wait where’s the… darn it!”

My puppies Ruff and Woof were already dragging his bag out of the way and Tuft just bit into his right hind leg. He went to attack my puppy with his left hind leg and I barked out an order.

“Get him!” Following my command, Puff dived to ram into his left side, around the area where his ribs were. The pony gasped in pain and his kick to remove Tuft from his leg faltered. “Bite him!”

The pony thief didn’t see Ruff running to join his brothers on taking down the perpetrator and went for his neck in attempt to do a takedown.

None of the civilians were getting in the way and I had him before he could disappear into a crowd, now I just had to capture him.

“Ugh, I’ve never had this much trouble with escaping before!” The pony shouted as he quick slapped Ruff off his neck and roughly shook off the other two puppies. He even smacked them away with several sweeping swings of his hooves, my puppies were a bit dazed from the blows. This earth pony was really strong on top of being fast, his bite wounds weren’t even slowing him down all too much. “Normally I don’t fight, but this time Beat Feet is making an exception!”

Beat Feet, if that was his name, took a stance and narrowed his eyes on me. He charged forward and I squeaked as I ducked around to the right avoiding his left hoof jab.

He swung his right hoof in a hook for my head and I crouched under it to swing my front hooves upwards for his chin. This forced him to stumble back and out of the way of my counter.

“Go get him lads!” I shouted while ringing the bell I wore around my neck wildly, then quickly backpedaled while avoiding several more swiping attacks and led him directly into position for the attack I called.

Tianhuo got this bell for me and its chimes were rather calming to my ears in this scary situation, on the other side of things it was my signal for an all-out combined attack.

My four puppies twirled their tails in unison and immediately flew at Beat while he was distracted by trying to take me down.

Beat even tried to plant his hoof and spin buck me, roundhouse bucking wasn’t an easy maneuver to pull off and he almost snapped it out faster than I could avoid. He followed up with a one-two buck for my head as I dodged to the left and right.

This was a very really realistic training exercise, I'm glad I wasn't in any actual danger or I think I would have passed out by now.

Like the tiny torpedoes that they were, my puppies all slammed into him at the same time with incredible force. The impact sent the pony flying into a nearby wall. He hit it back first and fell to the ground groaning.

“Good puppies!” I cheered, my puppies barked happily as they turned to me. “Now help me detain him… where is the examiner? He should be calling it right about now.”

My four puppies piled onto the thief and made sure he was staying down.

“We’ll take it from here Pom, someone in a nearby pagoda alerted us to the disturbance here.” It was Mr. Yoshi, the longma that was a good friend of my wife. He was a good and honorable Huoshan Guard. “You managed to stop a notorious criminal today, color me impressed. Tianhuo had it right, you really are something else when you’re focused!”

“So how did I do on my training exercise?” I asked nervously while idly scuffing my right hoof against the street and shrinking in on myself a bit.

“Er… about that…” Yoshi started to say and I saw the flames on his head flicker in a way to show embarrassment. I learned longma body language and knew when one was flustered, at least Tianhuo was easy to read.

“Sorry I was late, but the costume was a bit problematic to get on. Also it took me a while to even find you, you weren’t even in the training zone and I got worried that something might have happened to you Pom.” I turned to another male longma named Li Ju in a large goofy looking costume, it was so utterly ridiculous and hard to see as scary with the words ‘thief’ written at the barrel on both sides in bright, cheery even, colorful letters and on the chest read ‘bad guy’ in bold letter. At best the costume was a poor caricature of an actual thief with the black and white stripes, the big inflated evil grinning head really added on to the ridiculousness of it. “I’m glad to see you’re okay Mrs. Lambchop, we can start the training exercise now the examiner is… wait, what happened here?”

“Wait… what… but…?” I was confused didn’t we just do the training exercise? Was that big goofy money sack actually filled with stolen money?! Was I hyperventilating? I was hyperventilating! Why was it getting worse?!?

“You just caught an actual thief Pom, one that has been giving us a few problems lately. Beat Feet is really fast on hoof and we’ve been having a heck of a time keeping up with him even if we can fly.” Yoshi explained as he was in the middle of making sure the thief couldn’t get away by tying him up. “This wasn’t actually a part of your training or evaluation, but you still did a great job. Exemplarily done capture even, the HCD head and her hounds are both quite worthy of the Huoshan Guard and I'll put in a good word of your achievement Pom.”

“You mean… I just sent my puppies… against an actual criminal… someone who wasn’t part of the actual training exercise… heh… heh-heh..” My lower right eye lid twitched upward a little. “And he could have seriously hurt them… or me…”

Why did everything suddenly feel so-

-Yoshi-

“Well blacking out from stress afterwards wasn’t the worst reaction to have to that news… I’ve seen lambkin react far worse to only very minor problems. Not that I’ve actually seen many lambkin wandering far away from their territory alone unless they were merchants, none of them can be really compared to Pom in staying on task at least.” It could have been worse, Pom could have released a hearing piercing scream. I saw Beat trying to worm himself away and proceed to stomp a flaming hoof down on his skull to knock him out cold. “So… Li Ju… should we send up a signal that we caught a thief with a high bounty or should it be the signal that Tianhuo should come pick up her wife?”

“Tianhuo, I like the pretty pink colors of that signal and I’m a pretty big fan of summoning the Captain herself.” At Li Ju’s suggestion, I reached into my armor and pulled out a small self-standing firework. “Can you help me out of the costume? It’s clearly not getting any use today and the only reason I’m wearing it is so that Pom wouldn’t be so scared of the actual training exercise… I think we failed in that endeavor. I will try to do better next time.”

“Of course.” With a flick of my hoof the fuse was lit when a small flicker of flame and heat burst from it. I quickly planted the firework on the ground. It went up and exploded into several colorful splashes of neon pink and white.

“Does it really say something about Pom that she has her own signal as part of the Huoshan Guard?” Li Ju queried idly, I just shrugged at him.

Ten seconds later a streaking fireball shot towards our position and Tianhuo hit the ground within seconds with a worried look on her face. She stepped out of the crater she made upon landing and looked to the tied up thief, the four puppies idly nudging Pom and then to the two of us.

Tianhuo sighed loudly and slowly dragged her right hoof down her face.

-That evening, Pom-

The smell of something wonderful hit my nostrils and that was what woke me up, I sat up on a large comfy pillow.

“Where am…” My face was suddenly hit with a large tongue and I blinked away my grogginess to look up at Big Mama and then down at the four happy puppies snuggling against me.

Big Mama let out a loud bark, probably to alert Tianhuo that I was awake. She stalked off to lay down and the puppies just started running around happily after seeing I was okay.

That’s when she came in, she was balancing a frying pan on her flaming hoof and I tilted my head at it. Her green scales, her flaming mane and her bright red, or sometimes orange, eyes looked at me with affection. The smile on her face brought a small meek one to my own, her flaming wings spread out like a pegasus wings tended to do when she looked at me.

“Ah, you are awake my lovely Pom. I’ve recently taken up cooking and am making a stir fry for your success today, I wish to be the one to take care of you this time. That stallion had quite the bounty on him.” She came over to me, her flickering mane of flames seemed to be reading as content with how slowly they flowed. The snake like flow of her walking over to me was as elegant as Tianhuo herself was. “You showed quite a lot of bravery today, even when it wasn’t actually the exercise you thought you were being brave for.”

“I still blacked out afterwards like a coward Tian…” I turned my eyes away from her and she quickly gripped my chin with her free hoof to turn my eyes back to hers.

“A city cannot be built without its foundations, you are still working on yours and I am proud that you at least handled yourself well enough before you knew that you were facing an actual enemy. You are a true member of the Huoshan Guard, never forget this.” She nuzzled me and then dimmed the flames of her hoof holding the frying pan, her forked tongue slid gently along my cheek and I felt my face heat up. “Our meal will be done soon, it will be ready by the time you are done training your fluffmancer talents with Paprika.”

The sizzling vegetables made my mouth water and it seemed Tianhuo wasn’t too bad at preparing a home cooked meal. She had great control of her flames and I didn’t fear she would accidentally burn me in the slightest, she started to saunter off while gazing into the pan and increasing the flames from her hoof slightly with a curiously distrustful look at the food.

I was technically the proverbial house wife of the two of us and I practically took care of Tianhuo and my beasties more often than she did me when off duty. I was a bit upset that she saw it as a failure on her part and that she wanted to do more to take the weight off of me doing so much for her myself.

I really liked doing things for Tian though and she really didn't have to worry about me so much.

Being capable of the lower levels of fluffmancy, I wasn’t exactly gifted in it nor would I ever be able to do the insane higher end crazy stuff that an alpaca can do with their fluff. At least I was learning to do what I was capable of from a god tier grand master fluffmancer and good friend.

Hold on… did Tian just imply that…

“Does that mean that Paprika is currently beh…” I was suddenly encased in a wall of fluff from behind and the life was slowly getting squeezed out of me by a pair of recognizable hooves. “H-e-l-p… m-e…”

I was now being buried alive by a notorious snuggle happy alpaca’s exceedingly dangerous yellow blonde fluff. Well it at least explained why I wasn’t drowning in beasties at the moment, Paprika on average scared more than half of them by the very proximity of her snuggle aura.

“Paprika, I must respectfully ask that you do not stress my wife too much or break her.” After Tianhuo gave a pointed stare to the grinning face above me, I was freed from the depths of Paprika’s demonically thick fluff. “She has had quite a trying day to great success.”

“Meep.” Paprika squeaked out while waving in a friendly manner to Tianhuo, her purple eyes filled with life and joy. A little too much life and joy if someone were to ask me.

“Train well Pom, dinner will be ready shortly and tonight is a good night to snuggle with my brave little lambkin.” Tianhuo finally left me to my impending fluffy demise.

I turned to the alpaca just smiling at me and bouncing in place with a gleeful expression on her face, I sighed and tried to mentally prepare myself for this fluffmancy lesson. Paprika was always hooves on with her fluff controlling lessons, that wasn’t a good thing when this maniac of an alpaca was involved.

I think I had a good hoof on two decent defensive abilities.

One ability was puffing out the fluff at my forehead. It certainly made leaps a little bit floatier, Paprika thinks I might be lightweight enough to use my fur as a glider like a flying squirrel with a little more effort.

Maybe I could actually fly in the air with all the other longma that burst around on jets of flame and burning wings or I could even play with my tail spinning puppies.

I wasn’t exactly scared of falling, but vertigo and acrophobia were both still a thing for me even if I could handle a fall.

The other ability was tightening all of my fur to provide better protection against impacts and weaponry. This came more naturally at the point of impact as long as it was hitting fur and, if done quickly enough, can repel attacks with equal amount of force or even greater for a counter. I couldn’t do the counter reliably, much less keep up the fluff armor forever like Paprika seemingly does.

Fluffmancy was interesting to learn about from an instructor that doesn’t speak, but at least she’s showing me how to do some of these things in a easy to understand manner.

We went over a basic review of those two abilities I’ve learned. Even if I only had minimal fluffmancy talent, it certainly felt like it was worth the effort.

Paprika was also quite happy to stay for dinner and help Tian finish cooking, Tian kind of needed the help as this was her first time making a meal for me for once.

-Forty five minutes later-

“It is nice that you can come to visit Paprika, even if you are a truly demented demon of snuggles.” Tianhuo really didn’t hold back her opinion of Paprika as she ate her stir fry, but Paprika didn’t mind and even smiled as she sat with us at our dinner table.

Around us were various large bowls of food being shared by my beasties, they were quietly eating their meals and the moon was rising into the sky. Tonight was another nice night with my family.

The Canis Minor and Major were my first beasties. Afterwards I attracted a Cerberus, an Orthros, a heavenly Tenko, the wooden Timber-wolf, A dire wolf, a Grimm, a Cu Sith and I was still finding more beasties like a lion dog. Said lion dog was better known as a Foo-dog.

Foo-dogs were native to Chineigh and some were rarely found here in the dragon lands as well, they were very protective beings and were said to stop evil spirits from entering where they resided.

All of my beasties were peacefully relaxing around the dinner table and they were always here for me.

After dinner, I wondered if tomorrow will be more peaceful than today was.

I seriously hoped so as I curled into the warmth of a pair of loving scale covered hooves wrapping around me in bed.

Comments

[Shadowshame]

I have one question what happened to the shadow wolf that imprinted on Pom after being love infused by Paprika?

[NotSoDogNinja]

Ironically, I had actually written a (bad) fanfiction about Pom called On The Lamb as well. Neat stuff, this.

[AllenVth]

That ending part was adorable. Pom and Tianhou love each other

And congratulations to Pom for stopping a high-profile thief.

Shame that the story summary didn't say anything about Tianhou going into this crossover adventure.

[Nagel Navari]

I watched as the pony hurriedly shoved a cabbage cart into the path of my puppies as he passed by it, the three of them just plowed straight through it sending cabbages and bits of wood flying.

“Yes, my cabbages, woo!” The cabbage selling pony shouted with glee.

Guess it has become a right of passage for the Cabbage family.