Baa-Ram-Ewe!

by Darkonshadows

40. The Pain Train.

Author's Note:

-Music, Turtles in Time Sewer Surfing (Rock/Metal Remix) Zirco and Sixto Sounds-

Finish reading then look at the last authors note and add the statement below in the quotations to that last sentence...

"And Pom has just met one of them."

-???, sky around noon, Pom-

After the speed bled off, I had problems keeping my gliding straight, it was mostly momentum from that odd sudden explosive updraft that got me this far. As I dipped down below the cloud layer, I saw that I was almost above the train.

I tried to flap my front legs downward and immediately nosedived to drop really far and fast before I managed to spread them out again.

Okay… not doing that again, I absolutely felt my heart literally stop for a minute there.

I would probably need to turn my wool into a more feathery shape to attain true flight, right now I was just safe with gliding and I tried to steer left and right. My hind legs were like a boat rudder in this respect.

The wool around my head had thickened and the puff at the top of my head took the shape of rings around my eyes with strands of white crisscrossing over my vision. The strands were barely noticeable and I couldn’t feel any air hitting my eyes.

The wool along my front legs stretched back to my flanks and was spread thinly out over a wide area slightly beyond my hooves, it almost looked like I had wings. Between my stretched out hind legs was more of this wool webbing.

I bet if someone were to look up at me now, they might see the silhouette of a bird.

If I wasn’t heading into a dangerous situation, I would try to enjoy the fact that I’m flying through the air and am not being carried by Tianhuo for once. Though I liked being carried by her, I wanted to be next to her in the air to experience it as she does one day.

Looking below I saw the lizard forces I was going to be dealing with.

The four wheeled vehicle had with two mace like arms on each side made of multiple increasingly larger spheres on it ending in two large black spheres with a few spikes, like the other destroyed ones back at the raccoon village. There were also four weird looking walking cannon things with two long spindly legs, really small wings and a lizard motif to match their pilots. That evil skull symbol was prevalent on all them in some form or another.

Each machine I saw other than the trundling train from up here only had one lizard on it.

They wouldn’t dare damage the train right? Do I take them on or aim for a landing… did I even know how to land like this? How do I turn off this gliding form?

There were some things that I clearly didn’t think through when I did this… but I couldn’t panic now, I really didn’t want to hit the train at this speed or any of the surrounding mobile machines. I tried to gently steer myself and dove slightly for the train.

Aside from the obvious threats of the driven machines were the strange large floating spiked orbs around the train that seemed designed to hover along with it.

As I angled myself downwards, I aimed to land in the middle of the last car of the train.

…

As I came in I found out I had a large problem… my aim was off… and I still didn’t know how I was going to land.

I guess I wasn’t used to gliding at these speeds yet because I was about to crash into the trailing mace swinging machine with the two of the two legged cannon things in front of it.

If I survive what was about to happen, without getting captured, Ocellus and Smolder would be teaching me how to glide correctly.

I slammed into the four wheeled vehicle’s pilot, shoving his face and helmet straight into his controls. As I did I got a better view of the vehicles odd design, why was it covered in so many spikes? I sat there for a moment scrutinizing the vehicle.

The tires had spikes, it look like it had tusks on both sides, the front top portion of it in front of the pilot had smaller wider spikes and the two flail limbs made of spheres attached to the back with heavily spiked maces at their ends and did this machine looked like it had spikes for teeth as part of a demented grin for a face on the front of the vehicle?

Who designed this horribly unsafe thing?!

Apparently I just damaged something important, for within the next few seconds the controls sparked and the mace arms on both sides of the vehicle swung upwards and then slammed forward and down in front of the machine at the same time.

Suddenly the entire world spinning as we were flung into the air, the pilot flew out of the vehicle as it flipped. I on the other hoof clung to it like a limpet.

-Third Person Perspective-

The wildly tumbling vehicle had suddenly spooked the four cannon shaped land striders walking near the back of the train as escort. The two rear most of these had been close together at the back of the last train car. The other two land striders were at the left and right side of the last train car and well out of the way of the incoming vehicle.

All four pilot’s turned to see what the noise was. The four wheeled spiked menace machine with the swinging mace arms tumbled and bounce into the air out of control and then came down to explode violently taking out both the rear most walking machines.

The shrapnel from the explosion pierces the defensive spheres hovering next to the train and cause them to explode violently.

-View changes to top of the last train car, in the middle facing backwards-

A flailing figure fell behind the train car, reaching out for it out of both instinct and panic. They fell out of sight behind the train.

The world, ever so slowly, shifts to the side and back of the train car to show that Pom had managed get her left hoof onto the very edge of the last train car.

Pom hoof was in death grip on the edge of the last train car and her wool was starting to distort the metal as if trying to outright fuse with it. She was breathing roughly with wide eyes and had a look of absolute horror on her face.

As Pom had gotten a grip on the train car at the last second, her body pivoted right into it. Upon slamming bodily into it, her wool had snapped out instantly as if splattering all over and gluing her to the back of the train car that had no obvious entrance.

Looking behind herself, Pom sighed slightly with relief, even if her heart was going a mile a minute and she was having a hard time trying to figure out everything that just happened over the last few seconds that could have ended with her dying.

The three lizard machine pilots had somehow survived the explosion and ensuing conflagration, confusingly enough without too much of a scratch to show for it.

Notably their purple armor was completely gone and they were all weakly trying to pick themselves up off the ground, those three were out of the fight.

-Pom-

Thank goodness I didn’t kill anyone… I may be at war with them, but I didn’t want to kill them even if by accident. I was a little thankful that they have magical armor that allowed them to even survive that, but I was also a bit angry that they would get away to terrorize people again.

I heard a noise from my left and right.

Blinking, I returned my eyes to the present situation.

The two lizards piloting the other ridiculous looking bipedal machines had turned around and after keeping pace going backwards for a bit, they came to a slow complete stop.

Why were the pilots scanning the skies for a threat? They looked incredibly nervous about something and shouldn’t they be looking along the ground for me after that?

Ignoring that for the moment I climbed up and onto the train car, my wool covering my hooves clamped down to the top of the train car with every touch thanks to my completely shot nerves.

I started moving along the top of the last train car at a brisk walk, mentally telling myself that this was all only going to get worse… far worse. I was both traumatized and experiencing shock, so it was understandable that my entire body was shaking violently like a piece of paper in a hurricane.

Taking stock of my situation, I flopped onto my face and pressed my face against the train car to hopefully get my shivering under control.

I soon wished I hadn’t put my head down, I could hear the murmuring of people packed together like cabbages in an indestructible cabbage cart. There were also crying children, sounds of pained moaning and broken spirits.

I lifted my head up and took stock of what was ahead of me on this train heading… presumably east to south east towards Empire territory. We were currently approaching a forest and there were about twelve cars ahead of me from the caboose, this was not counting the coal car and the locomotive.

Why did the number thirteen sound so daunting, in this situation?

A shadow fell over me, I looked up and saw a metal airship that was green in color with lizard motif in the sky flying above the train. It started to fly well ahead of the train and I saw several figures plummet from it and then parachutes popped open.

Oh… that’s why.

They were getting reinforcements already?! I looked back to all the cars ahead of me in a panic, they were all the same, nothing but cargo containers up until the coal car. I started moving forwards and hopped onto the next train car.

The lizards had launched an assault on the raccoon village with just war machines, the train had lost its defenses thanks to me and now they were dropping their soldiers from the air to stop me. I think this train didn’t just have captured people on it, but also stolen supplies from the surrounding regions.

I started darting forward and hopped onto the next train car, I managed to get over three more cars before the soldier lizards landed on the train. I was stopped at the start of the eighth cars from the coal car by five soldiers in front of me, three had landed behind me and two missed the train.

I stood my ground and waited for them to come at me, they mostly looked confused and some of them didn’t seem to see me as a viable threat. They were underestimating me a bit too much considering I took out the train’s escort, they were wearing odd cylinders on their back and they were all armed with swords.

The four of the soldiers leapt and were assisted by what I now identified as rocket packs to land in front of me at the other end of the eighth train car.

Reminder, remember how to counter Jackie Blackcap Chickadee’s frenetic high speed fighting style, it may help later.

They were approaching me two at a time and one of them was staying behind on the seventh car. I glanced back and the three soldiers behind me, still two cars behind.

I charged towards the four in front of me, they readied their swords, I stopped short of the front two and opened my mouth. I let out two sharp barks sending two of them flying off the train car when my bark bursts collided with them.

The two behind the ones froze up in fear and watched as the ones that fell off the train lost all their armor upon striking the ground with lethal force, but they lived because it seems their armor absorbed the lethal damage they would have taken.

That just confirmed that they had magic armor and exactly what it does to me.

Taking advantage of the two in front of me hesitating I charged forward raised my left leg and lashed it into the face of the soldier on my right with a rising jab that launched them forward and off the train. I then lashed out with my right hoof taking out the one on my left in the same manner.

I looked back and quickly bucked out both my rear hooves outwards after looking behind me slightly to knock off two of the three soldiers trying to ambush me from behind.

These guys were all rather lightweight and easy to knock around physically, it’s either that or I was just that strong and I didn’t believe that I was. Their armor, aside being able to prevent them from dying by the armor being absolutely destroyed, I would think it was lighter and magically durable against lighter forms of attack. I’d have to check on that with Ocellus.

Turning to look forward I took a blade across the top of my muzzle moving from left to right from the leaping lizard soldier coming from the seventh car. As soon as their blade got close to my wool of my right cheek from the swing, my wool glowed and the sword shattered and sent the soldier flying off the train to my left.

This made the one solder coming up from behind me back off a bit, looking a bit spooked I turned around with droplets of blood dripping from my from wound and I bark blasted that one off of the train too.

Hope Ocellus, Smolder and Shanty got here soon. I needed to bandage this cut I just took and they have all of our personal supplies. I stretched a bit of wool from my right cheek over the wound, pressed it down tightly and sealed it off with a mental flex of my fluffmancer talent.

I had to keep going, I got three more cars before another pack of troops landed on the train, fortunately it was towards the back end and I got two more cars forward before they caught up to me. I was four cars from the front of the train now.

I was in the middle of the fourth car only to stop as I saw that one of those wonky looking bipedal cannon machines running alongside the train, it seems to have caught up with train.

It leapt up from the ground and used those ridiculous tiny wings to flutter slightly in the air to twist around and land facing me, I heard a thump behind me and saw a second one had leapt onto the train behind me.

They wouldn’t actually fire on me would they? I mean they wanted the supplies right?

The one standing behind me blasted out a black sphere with the empire’s skull symbol on it, but thankfully they weren’t cannons. It was still pretty bad because a second later I turned around backed up and narrowly managed to avoid being blasted by the bouncing bomb.

That’s when the one behind me fire and I dove forward pressing my body flat as the next explosion exploded directly above me, I could feel bits of metal bits bounced off my wool when I flexed it to protect myself. I noted that the train was barely damaged by this sudden use of explosives.

I covered my head as another explosion went off in front of me, I couldn’t move as the two machine had me pinned down and I had to keep my defenses up to not be hurt by the explosions or the noise they were making. The shockwaves were still hurting me enough as it was and I took two more explosions while trying to think of a way to deal with them, my body was starting to become a giant bruise if I take any more of this and I didn’t want to be kicked by these gangly legged machines.

Wait… where were the soldiers the train behind me? I was facing the back of the train and yet I could no longer s-…!

A familiar ring shaped blast of energy ripped into the hip and left leg of the machine in front of me as it was about to fire another bouncing explosive device. The lizard looked panicked as his machine started falling off the right side of the train and looking over the left side to my right as I stood up, I saw Dodo and the girls moving up alongside the train.

Hearing a noise I turned to face the machine that was falling off the train and instinctively reach out with my hooves and caught the vibrating black metal sphere, said sphere was now in my hooves and about to…

I instinctively threw it backwards over my head in a sudden and heard a clinking noise. I blinked and looked behind me to see a rapidly paling lizard as his jaw opened. The sphere l I just threw got lodged in the cannon shaped barrel awkwardly with the other sphere.

It stopped his next explosive from firing out of the hole at the front of his gangly legged machine and now both the spheres were vibrating violently.

I ducked covered my head and I bunkered myself on the spot, a second later the two sphere’s exploded and I felt something large hit me and bounce off to my right. Slowly unfurling from my protective mass of wool I saw the lizard soldier falling out of the seat of his destroyed machine that was now stuck up in a tree.

The train was now traveling through the edge of the forest. I looked up and saw five more troops coming down only several blasts of energy fire up and ripped into their parachutes and made them fall well away from reaching the train.

I idly wondered if Dodo could eat anything, because he and the girls were doing a good job keeping the soldiers off of me.

I turned sprinted for the third car from the coal car, I leapt to the next car and it wasn’t long before I was leaping onto the car leading right up to the coal car.

Something was off about the coal car once I got close to the end of the car I was on now. I didn’t see a conductor or anyone shoveling coal into the train’s engine.

Before I could even contemplate jumping down to the coal car the train somehow decoupled from the care I was standing on and powered forward as the rest of the train was left behind to slow down.

“What?” My confusion came from the fact that I hadn’t see any method to decouple the cars previously and that it had decoupled on its left me feeling like we had just succeeded.

“Woohoo, we be doing it Pom!” Shanty yelled from Dodo’s seat with Smolder and Ocellus on the edges of the bucket of the running metal ostrich.

“I don’t think that we did!” I said as I stared at the train ahead of us suspiciously. The thirteen train cars, without the train to pull it, slowed down to a crawl and it looked like it would be stopping in a large open plains area next to the forest.

“What do you mean, the conductor obviously got scared and…” Smolder started, but then I had to interrupt her in what seemed like a moment of victory.

“It didn’t have a conductor and I think I know why!” I said while wondering about the damage the eight machines that were used to attack the village, swinging maces and bouncing bombs.

They didn’t seem to be the main cause of the mountain village damage… the train ahead of us immediately put on the breaks and once again I noted that the train didn’t have a conductor or anyone driving it.

There’s the sinking feeling in my gut as the train car I was standing on slowed to a complete stop. Dodo strode right up next to my position on the train car and made a warbling mechanical noise of confusion.

“What do you mean Pom?” Ocellus asked, I looked about and noticed that the floating orbs that had been alongside the most of the train cars weren’t there.

“Did you take care of those strange floating orbs with the spikes?” I asked slowly, as I looked at the ground surrounding the tracks and saw shadows moving.

“We be getting most of them on the left side… why?” Shanty asked.

“Move!” I leapt from the train car as a number of floating spiked orbs came down converging on my position and I’m glad that I jumped when I did.

The explosion’s rocked the train car behind me and sent me flying, I bounced a few times and rolled to bleed off the sudden momentum, I was now standing in the grassy plain with a lake to my left and the slightly smoking train car to my right and Dodo came over to look down at me.

Dodo, despite being unintelligent enough to be a familiar, was smart enough to immediately dart away from the unmoving train car as the combined explosions just blew a large hold in the front train car. Luckily there weren’t any people in that train car and just supplies.

“Are you okay Pom?” Ocellus asked with a bit of worry as she leaned over Dodo's side to look down at me.

“No… and this isn’t over yet.” The three gave me a questioning look and I just pointed with my right hoof to the train engine and coal car stopping in the distance.

My attack on the train went pretty well, at least up until now, when the train was revealing something I had only figure out after seeing that it had no conductor and thinking about it long enough.

They all turned to see what I was seeing and pointing at.

The locomotive, sitting in place and not moving, reared up so that its front end and cowcatcher were pointed at the sky. The smokestack spun to its underside and rotated to point towards the sky, a portion of the locomotive seem to split and then move upwards, the entire front end of the train resettled in place revealing a large rounded oval shaped red jewel reeking of evil magic.

I didn’t even have the ability to sense magic and even I could feel it from here. Dodo, Smolder and Shanty froze, Ocellus looked horrified and like she was feeling something much worse.

“That… it’s… pure concentrated malice?!” Ocellus screamed as she started cowering and whimpering while clutching at her head.

The wheels and pipes alongside the locomotive shifted and then pulled away into two long limbs with pipes for muscles using the wheels as joints, the end of the limbs looked to be two short stretchy tentacles ending in five bladed claws.

The cowcatcher rotated downwards into place and split in half to cover the top and lower portion of the exposed red jewel, that was acting as a giant eye, with the bars.

The coal car split in half and outwards, dumping the coal to either side, pulled up to the engine and somehow connected to it and the large wheels of the locomotive that were not part of the arms. Both split parts twisted oddly to lock in place.

That’s when the machine with what looked like a flames belching from its waist slowly stood up on the coal car legs and gave off a powerful mechanical whine that sounded like a roar.

The four of us gulped, Dodo slowly started backing away in the opposite direction of that thing.

That... is what actually destroyed the village.

Comments

[Pretty Feathers]

I feel like this evil train is a good clue, but my attempts to search using this just pull up Monster Train

[Herald of Opera]

10663434
I'd recommend surfing relevant TvTropes pages instead of trying to Google it directly.

[Pretty Feathers]

10663847
Was a good idea that gave me way more potentials, but sadly still no dice. Still can't seem to pin this one down. Maybe we'll get a better clue next chapter.