Baa-Ram-Ewe!

by Darkonshadows

195. The Firm-ian Response.

-Earth, Near Power Station, Dolly-

“Dude, are you’re hooves okay?” I had to ask because Manny seemed to be holding a drill tank still with raw muscle, it was kind of awesome really. I can’t stop something’s momentum dead like that unless it’s on the ground and then it would take more effort the more it tries to move.

“I can hold this drill tank all day, but I can’t grab the other one while I’m stuck like this.” The bat winged demon horse guy was a cool dude and his help was warranted right now, but how were we going to deal with Yo-Me-Hearty’s tank?

“So you have some extra assistance, no matter I have about two and half minutes left before I have to evacuate the area.” Moliarty’s voice came from the other tank.

“Ms. Shuttle will only need to fire one shot, but she’s starting to run out trying to suppress the moles.” Dormarch announced as Pom took up a position with us. “Can you hold the tank until then?”

“Yes, but you’ll have to cover me. I’m not infinitely strong, but I can hold it here.” Manny stated while his muscles bulged as he held the tank in place as it tried to reverse out of his grip, the tank Moliarty was in was going to be the only one left we’ll have to deal with.

I liked those odds, because I never know much about the odds to begin with before I do something.

“We can handle that.” Pom wasn’t tired of evading or running around, but she did look tired of dealing with Moliarty’s guys, I was right there with her on that.

“I told Ocellus to tell Ms. Shuttle to save the rest of her chemicals shots for an emergencies after her next one, it’ll destroy the drill tank Manny has got a hold of.” I hear Dormarch hum thoughtfully. “We’ll have to take Moliarty’s tank on foot… not exactly good prospects.”

“We can deal with one tank, we can even lure it to the pillar so Moliarty can destroy it for us.” Wasn’t he a bit too smart for that Pom? I mean the guy called reinforcements twice without us noticing, he still has that bazooka and we haven’t exactly been getting any chance to rest today. “We just need to insult his intelligence.”

“Insult his intelligence eh? I can do that.” Smolder sounded off from Dormarch. “Hey eight eyes, was your mother a cave spider?”

“Like such a juvenile insult would make me forget there’s a shot incoming, dive!” Moliarty’s current drill tank started digging into the street and the ground beneath.

“I need something better to work with… do you guys have anything on him that could get under his skin?” Muttered Smolder.

“You’re the ones with access to his information Smolder.” Yeah and we weren’t doing too horribly Pom.

“Boss, what about us?!” Vocalized a voice from the drill tank Manny was holding in place with his size and bulging muscles, while not as big as the tank he certainly was proving himself as dangerous as he looks when he was not being a nurse for Pom.

“What about you? You’ve just become useless in this game of chess, be good soldiers and don’t go down so easily when the tank is destroyed.” That’s when Moliarty’s tank disappeared and all the moles on foot followed it into the ground. “I might even give you a raise if you can get away cleanly enough!”

“I’m not good at insulting people… I really don’t like doing that, but in this situation it’s warranted.” Ocellus stated soon after. “Reporting in that Lena and Violet have started their offensive on the Jambalaya gang. Morgana Macawber is being treated. Hospital is holding steady. Launchpad and Stegmutt are handling the Tanya Trunk problem. Maui has gone after Hotshot and Flygirl alone… near an anvil store? Why would there be a novelty anvil store in Saint Canard and why would Hotshot and Flygirl go anywhere near one of their reported weaknesses? Huh… footnote… cannot see anvil or Duck Smasher related incidents with future sight and said incidents usually occur with alarming frequency. World counterbalance maybe? Anyway, Darkwing, Quiverwing and Arrow Assistant are good enough to head for the suspected location of Gizmo Duck… they think you’ve got this situation under control Pom. Bentina Beakley is in the city, she’s starting to deal with the FOWL agents looting places and looks to be on the hunt for either Steel Beak or Bianca Beakley her family member. Aside from that Negaduck’s plan so far seems like a bunch of massive distractions. We still have no idea what he’s got going on during all this, but I can assume Negaduck needs all this time for something huge.”

“Incoming!” Dormarch shouted as an orb of chemicals was coming it to strike the drill tank that Manny had pinned down directly.

I quickly skated up the side of a building on my board. Didn’t know if the chemicals would effect it, but I wasn’t exactly taking any chances with it. Pom followed me up and we left Manny holding the tank.

“Wait, what about…” The chemicals struck and blasted a small area, Manny got covered in pink dust when his muscles flexed after the chemicals did their thing and he destroyed the tank.

“Dormarch assured me that the chemicals are not dangerous to living things, but I still wouldn’t want to inhale in the resulting dust.” Pom said after a moment from next to me on the rooftop. “So moving battle?”

“I’d be great at that, you know speed is my thing!” I grinned cheerfully in Pom’s direction my tail twitching for more of a fight. These guys have been annoyingly hard to stop from going underground and we weren’t about to follow them down into their home turf where they could collapse a tunnel on us.

My brother Diesel could probably dig better than all of them, but he knew better to pick fights with things bigger than him. Probably would find a kindred spirit among the moles.

“I’m going to need to eat something after this.” Pom muttered before jumping off the rooftop, I followed and landed on her back to slow her momentum down before we hit the street without prompting. “You okay there Manny?”

“I’m fine friend.” He rumbled flatly despite looking quite colorful as he smacked some moles trying to escape on the head with his hooves before he leapt after two remaining with runners with incredibly monstrous force and speed. Guy was plain awesome to see in action. “Thankfully once my summoning ends this dust won’t stay on me, I can only be summoned for one thing in particular until payment or else I won’t do anything else. My current goal is to help you with the moles. Outside of summoning I would do more since we’re friends, but this was a slapdash job. As soon as the moles are dealt with, I’m gone.”

“Understood.” Pom looked about at the torn up streets and parts of the buildings the mole tanks had ripped open. We both nodded to Manny. “Dolly, listen with me and tell me if you can feel where it’s coming from.”

I concentrated, listening to the rumble of the ground and Pom was doing the same.

“Our left, moving up right towards us.” A second later my words got Pom to make a rolling leap to the left as the drill tank erupted from the ground and tried to flatten us.

It thankfully missed as its treads slammed down into the street cracking it to our right.

“Got any better insults yet?” Asked Pom, she then gained a look and I could read her mind on what she was about to ask next. “Also how did he target us if there was no one up here to tell him where we were? All his remaining moles are currently underground.”

“Nope, Ocellus is not really one for insults either.” Smolder didn’t know how to insult moles apparently. “Does he have anything he cares about other than himself?”

“I’ve got one, but you’re going to have to say it for me.” I figure this guy prided himself on being smart right? If this guy was anything at all like my brothers… then this was going to be an easy sore spot. “So you’re going to tell him…”

“Hey, Moliarty!” Pom repeated my words verbatim as the tank turned in place towards us. “If you were as smart as you say you are, then you’re army certainly reflects your intelligence… or complete lack thereof considering how you hide behind them!”

“Why you, I am smarter than all of my simpletons!” What surprised me was what Moliarty got in response from Pom without any further help. “I’m using fairly good tactics I’d think!”

“Ah, so by that comparison, you’re just an average mole when everyone else you surround yourself is below average… you’re nothing special and are just using your mole army to feel important.” Pom said nodding her head sagely. “I mean if you can’t figure out a way to beat me in less than ten minutes with more than sixty or so moles and multiple drill tanks at your disposal, then you’re barely better than your army in the muscle department. By that I’m talking about the large gapingly empty cavities between your hearing receptacles, considering you had far more at the start of all this… and I’m still doing better than you are. It’s kind of sad that you are someone of ‘special needs’.”

“Why you, I’ll show you personally that…!” Moliarty popped up from the tank’s lid with his bazooka, to take aim. Pom beat him to the punch with a quick bark blast to the face and he dropped back into the tank. “Agh, you’ll pay for that, run that pair of moderately intelligent heroes down!”

We darted off to the side as the tank trundled forward with its spinning drill and past us, then it started to turn towards us.

“Well he’s decently tough at least. I hit him in the back with a fully loaded dumpster, you just bark blasted his face in and he still has enough sense in him to be insufferable.” We turned and started to run with the tank about to come chasing after us, I stayed a bit ahead of Pom on my board as we made our way down the street. ”It took me a lot of effort to even get that thing moving!”

I didn’t have to do more than one push off to keep my board going with my momentum control and add some of my flow motion to it and I was riding smooth.

Looking back I saw the tank dive into the ground and then the ground started cracking and lifting upwards coming at us in a straight line.

“Pom…” I said quietly.

“I know…” We didn’t make it too much further before Pom crouched down as the breaking portions of the street caught up with us. I kicked off the ground swung my skateboard to my back and clung to Pom once again and focused on boosting her movements.

When Pom leapt she did so far enough away to avoid being impaled on the drill as it erupted from the street and from being crushed like the poor car that just basically got turned into a tin can. The pillar was the next street over, the tank tried to move towards us only to be hit from the side by a charging Manny.

Manny couldn’t really lift the drill tank, but he could push it a little and the drill wouldn’t be too effective against him considering what happened with the other tank. Moliarty popped up and blasted Manny away from the side of the tank and it continued towards us. Manny looked alright and was getting his bearings, Pom leapt again and I felt a slight drain as she pushed towards the pillar.

“You know something I can’t understand, why exactly are you working for Negaduck like a pawn?! Doesn’t that prove you’re lack of intelligence as a genius?!” Shouted Pom as the tank turned the corner for us with a good seventy or so moles, barely any of them had weapons.

“Yes there is some level of issue there, but I won’t be bothered with that once I make finally my escape! Even then, I know at this point that you are goading me in the hopes of weakening his hold on the city by losing us through the pillars destruction and we don’t have a great chance of beating you.” Moliarty was actually admitting that? Wow he actually was smart. “That doesn’t mean that I can’t feasibly cripple you tactically in some way before then. Charge, she can’t possibly stop all of you coming at her at once!”

The sixty plus moles came at us, I was about to hop off when Pom put a hoof on me.

“Caper Canine, stay… Manny attack the pillar! Once it goes down the moles won’t be able to stay on the surface.” I looked at Pom and wondered what she was thinking.

“Ocellus and I are receiving some strange seismographic data.” Turning Dormarch in the clothe wrapping, I gave him a querying look. “We don’t think it’s the moles doing it.”

“Then it may be too late for Moliarty to retreat anyway. That might be a sign of the Terra-Firmians arriving… Caper Canine watch my back and chip in where you can.” Pom went from quadruped to her biped stance and she held her hooves up waiting for the approaching moles to come to us as Manny started attacking the pillar with his fists.

She’s making me literally watch her back? Huh, did she think that assassin would try again?

The first mole came in screaming, he was swiftly dropped by a hard right hoof across the face. Pom had a lot more muscle than she looked like she did, she then started forward into the crowd and started to swing left and right and every now and then kicked moles back and away from us.

“This is kind of sad, I’m beating up a lot of guys that are weaker than me… it’s not a good a feeling.” Muttered Pom as she continued to send moles flying with swinging kicks and blows with her hooves. “Prepare to swing out now!”

Pom slashed her two hooves rapidly in a quick circle to back the moles off and started to go into a spin after making some moles back off from the various claw shaped injuries.

I took my right paw off Pom’s shoulder and launched my skateboard as Pom spun, she had knocked out a number of moles getting into the middle of them all.

I smiled, as I finally saw where this was going now.

“Bow-whacka-woohoo, whipping it!” I lashed out with my right paw, keeping a tight grip on the strap as Pom went into a full twirl, boosting the momentum behind my board through the strap… every mole we hit went flying into the nearest building or down the street half conscious.

Some windows were broken as they were beaten on impact as we swirled in an outward spiral with Pom continuing our spin until there were barely any left standing.

Until she stopped and went on all fours and started huffing, there were about ten guys left and they were shivering… because we just took a good number of them out and these guys didn’t have guns.

The last guy I hit with my board was a bit fried by hitting a nearby power lines and flopped to the ground groaning.

Well one of them did have a gun, but instead of hitting Pom or me with his shot he hit a lamppost… across the street from us. The guy whimpered, threw his gun down and started running when Pom just gave him a flat look.

“You okay Pom?” Pulling my skateboard back I caught it and got it back around my body.

“A bit dizzy.” Stated Pom woozily as she stumbled back and forth slightly, then she darted forward and rammed a cautiously approaching mole in the stomach with her head, making him drop his weapon.

I lashed out with my board taking a guy out on the right and Pom bucked the one on the left in the chin.

Six guys left, they really weren’t up for or even ready for dealing with us even when we were a bit tired. I was getting pretty hungry too.

“I guess she actually can take you all on at once…” Moliarty said in shock, likely with more concern than he meant to show. “What… what do you mean I can’t get any more reinforcements? Wait, patrols are going quiet? There aren’t enough heroes in the city to have hit so many at once.”

Pom had been right, the moles were not really much of a threat without weapons or their vehicles. They had numbers and a somewhat smart leader, but no real power to back it all up when we had all the quality that their quantity just couldn’t handle.

“Uh can we talk about this?” One of the remaining moles stated with his hands raised.

“Start Running.” Growled out Pom in a show of intimidation, they immediately did so.

“You just can’t get good help these days… attack them!” The drill tank trundled forward, but the ground started rumbling.

The streets started buckling and then we saw the most ridiculous sight ever, colorful boulders of varying sizes started spewing out of the street into the side of the drill tank pummeling it with hundreds of dents.

“What?!” Moliarty. “Oh no…”

It was around this time that Manny finally managed to break the last pillar and the past noon day’s sun shined on through on the city as the canopy was destroyed. The surrounding moles we pummeled all started screaming and covering their eyes, yelling about how the sun burns and I could even see their skin boiling a bit… that was quite gross.

“Good job Manny!” The first good amount of cheer I’ve heard from Pom in a long while as the sun started lighting up the city as the canopy shredded apart above us no longer have anything holding it up.

“All remaining teams retreat, the Terra-firmians are…!” Something hit by the large colorful boulders made the drills top spinning and the drill tank went inert, several more colorful boulders popped up from the ground and started to beat the drill into a crumpled mess. “No, no, no, this can’t be happening! Do something you fools, we can’t be here! Don’t let them take me Leap Lamb, please, mercy!”

“Those are Terra-Firmians?” Asked Pom with a hoof on her mouth as one of the colorful boulders came near us, it was actually covered in yellow fur… it uncurled to reveal that the boulder had a head and arms, he was wearing a nifty looking tie along with a helmet and was wielding a spear.

“You wouldn’t happen to be Leap Lamb right?” The Terra-Firmian said as he planted the butt of his spear and stayed sitting tall in front of us.

“Yeah, if you’re wondering where Moliarty is, he’s in that tank.” Stated Pom with curiosity to the boulder person of the colorful people… my family would have had a field day chasing these guys around. “So you’re Terra-Firmians… I can now see why Lena said we’d be seeing a lot of balls.”

I even felt the urge to chase after them myself Pom, but I was resisting that with every bit of my being. They looked like a lot of fun.

“Rip that tank open and pull Moliarty out, we’re here to capture him and his moles for their crimes against the Terra-Firmian race, make sure to capture every militant mole that you can! We are going after all the stragglers too!” The yellow furred boulder guy stated after bouncing and turning in place to point at the tank with his spear. All the other colorful balls unrolled revealing themselves to be equally armed with spears, helmets and shields. “We’ll be keeping them locked up for a long time to come, attack!”

Some of the Terra-Firmians rolled up and started battering the tank by ramming it, others hopped up onto it and started ramming their spears into it to start prying open holes. Others started rolling about and pinning down and tying up moles.

The lead guy hopped and turned back to us.

“We are so sorry about Moliarty invading this city, we’ll try to deal with them in a timely manner before they can do any further damage.” He held out a hand and Pom shook it with a hoof.

“Thank you for coming to help us.” Responded Pom with sincerity that the situation was now being handled by the colorful spherical people, she even bowed to him slightly. “You guys seem to be as tough as boulders.”

“Our bodies are tougher than stone ma’am, no need to worry about us! We’ll clean this city out of Moliarty’s forces in no time.” Replied the Terra-Firmian focusing on us. “Would you need any help with anything else while we’re here? We have been looking for Moliarty for quite a while.”

“Oh no, you are already doing more than enough Mister…” Pom rolled a hoof at the guy.

“Feldspar.” He said with a nod and a friendly smile.

“My job is done, may you live long enough to pay me back Gandra Dee!” Manny bellowed to the sky. “Mostly because you’re my coworker and friend too, I hope to meet you again eventually Leap Lamb and Caper Canine. It’s alright if we don’t, but it would be nice. I hope you all live good lives if we don’t meet again my friends!”

Manny crossed his muscular legs and then disappeared in a flash of flames similar to what Ocellus does when she transforms, he left behind a pile of pink dust shaped like him for a second before it collapsed to the ground.

“The sun is shining once more and… sorry, but we need to go into the power station, can you take care of the rest of the moles in the city Mr. Feldspar?” Finally deciding to hop off as Pom’s back as she addressed the Terra-Firmian, I moved up to the guy and sniffed him a bit. Earthy smells… Diesel would have loved this guy. “We need to investigate the facility to see if our friends are alright.”

“Of course, we Terra-Firmians, when riled, are pretty hard to stop. Besides, their guns can’t do anything to pierce our tough skins… we still wear helmets and wield shields to protect our faces when we’re not rolling around at the speed of sound. We’ll be fine taking things from here.” Feldspar turned his head and watched as Moliarty was forced out of the tank by two Terra-Firmians, he weakly struggled to get out of their grasps. The dude wasn’t going to succeed if he was barely any stronger than all the slightly larger moles also being captured and being dragged kicking and screaming into the hole the Terra-Firmians came out of. “Sorry about the mess, we’ll try to even out all the streets on our way out.”

“No… no… it can’t end like this, NO!” Moliarty was dragged underground with his wrists tied behind his back. "I'm too smart to be imprisoned so easily!"

"Quiet you!" We watched as Moliarty was smacked across the back of his head by a blue Terra-Firmian and forcefully pushed into the hole.

“Come on.” With Pom’s words we rushed through the power station to eventually see Neptunia, Shanty and Fawn rushing about. On the floor was Gandra rapidly dishing out orders and next to her was a charred black guy that was breathing oddly.

Comments

[Booster Spice]

Hmm.. I mustve missed that episode tat origionally described these guys, if they are not story specific? Still, They took out a pile of trash and hopefully helped things along.

[Darkonshadows]

11209799

Terra-Firmians appear in the ducktales cartoons, both old and new. They also appear in the ducktales comics.

They are generally friendly creatures that resemble living boulders when curled up and don't care about money, but one thing of importance is that they live directly under Duckberg and incidentally cause the contents of Scrooge McDuck's bin to collapse into a vast underground cavernous network where they live by playing their games of causing earthquakes.

Their unique bodies and living conditions give them ability to act as biological radio's and they have contests to hear who makes the most noise topside.

They gave all of Scrooge's money back, on top of whatever other treasure they had down there lying around already that they didn't want or even need. They found all of it to be completel useless to them compared to their needs for wide open spaces that the valuable junk was taking up. They had no need for all the gold, jewels and treasure which they gladly gave away to Scrooge McDuck.