Baa-Ram-Ewe!

by Darkonshadows

44. White Knights and Shooting Shrimp.

-Cladinhold, outside the guild, Ocellus-

Given that I was the interpreter for this group, I was going to have to learn more about both Colleen and Jean. I only had my suspicions that they were spies from other militaries, but it wasn’t a certain thing, they could just be genuinely nice people.

Of course the way our group was formed leaves much to be desired, ex-soldier of a different faction, frog with aristocratic leanings and we still haven’t met the pig yet.

Colleen shouldn’t be too much of a problem, given she was already becoming somewhat enamored with Pom’s very presence as we made our way down the street. Pom’s supernatural friendship effect with canines was unreal to watch in real time, I had ignored it previously with Fox from The Valley.

She looked like a species of Rough Collie, she had brown and white fur, long brown hair, blue eyes and short floppy ears on top of her head. She was slightly above five feet in height which was taller than most beings in the general surroundings and I was eyeballing my estimates here, which wasn’t hard to do with compound eyes really.

She was armored from neck down in a silver metal covering everything except her elbows, knees, the sides of her hips and tail. Her knees, elbows and the sides of her hips were covered by some kind of thick protective underclothing. Her armor was possibly magically enchanted. She looked to be standoffish with her arms crossed and her lack of weapon had me curious, she was an ex-soldier so I could see that she had muscles.

What I wanted to know is, with the information of the world that I currently have at my disposal, what was the reason she left the Yellow Dog army and under what circumstances?

I turned to look at Jean as he continued to wax poetic in a barely understandable manner, at least his emotions were quite plain to see. He wore them on his sleeves with how excited he was to be with us. I had worries that the excitement might be hiding something more sinister, but I couldn’t feel anything like that from him as he was truly feeling jolly.

For a frog that was four feet and some change in height, a little bit larger than the general surrounding populace, Jean was fairly strange for a bipedal frog. He were blue and white boots, with matching shorts and armor that covered his upper torso with bits of shirt coming out from under it. From what I could see, he was ridiculously skill with the rapier he was holding as he could jab it at speeds I could barely keep up with.

Jean was particularly bulky looking, but overall he didn’t come off as threatening aside from swinging his rapier around in incredible intricate arcs that Shanty was studying. He seemed to hold himself to some form of high standard and was friendly.

Pom told me to tell them we were heading to check on the wagon, Colleen immediately took up a protective position next to her when I did. I could see the dog wagging her tail from just being near my friend.

We reached the blacksmith to see a pig that was a little below four feet in height, small yellow shirt, green pants, brown boots and gloves, tiny shoulder pads with spikes on them and his belly was grossly sticking out from underneath his shirt. He was leaning against his broadsword which was fairly big for him as the tip of the handle to the tip of the blade made it reach up to his cheek.

The pig was currently talking to the blacksmith, a two foot tall grey squirrel wearing a red headband, about the wagon wheel that was currently being worked on.

The nearby wagon was… more than a fixer upper and I’m quite sure that were definitely being intentionally stuck together in what is known as an ISUS with the dangerous implications that something like that brings. It was a little concerning that Smolder had an idea as to what an ISUS was, if not the full scope of what it meant psychologically. Hopefully strong friendships will be formed from this.

“Excuse me, but you wouldn’t happen to be the other member of our courier unit would you?” The pig turned to me and blinked as he was confused by my normal appearance, eventually he collected himself and raised his sword to the sky with a broad grin.

“Yeah, I’m Bruno, I was once a happy soldier of Devotindos who stopped an invading wolf occupation force by myself about a few years back… it was around the time Yellow Dog started a ruckus with Eginasem if you know anything about that debacle. It wasn’t long after that those Gedol Gits had to push us pigs out of our capital city.” Bruno seemed proud of his accomplishment against the wolves, Colleen regarded him coolly and scoffed. “Oh sure you may scoff, we pigs know the technology we were using was exceedingly dangerous and tried to eat our souls. Most of us were quite lucky to be saved, especially from being the ones to doom the planet. I actually helped in the fight against Emperor Devligus and my own people. Didn’t even know he was a machine from the beginning though, that he was an intelligent evil core that wanted to wipe out all life on the planet was horrifying news to just about anyone with half a brain. You must also realize that Generalissimo Lioness actually lost his soul to technology and tried to do the same thing as Devligus. So you don’t have much of a leg to stand on mutt, especially if you were going to deride the people of Devotindos for letting an intelligent evil core become our leader.”

Colleen just glared at Bruno who just confirmed some information on the history of this world for me to talk with Pom about later. Still the new information about machines being able to eat souls had me cringing and nervous and I was getting the hang of names. It was also surprising that Bruno was fairly open with information.

“Everyone knows that nothing worth having isn’t gained without a little bit of risk. It’s just unfortunate the smarter the machine in this world, the more likely it will try to replace parts of us flesh and blood beings with machinery up until nothing is left.” Bruno seemed quite brusque and boisterous guy, he was currently eyeing Dodo with suspicion. I can already tell he and Colleen were going to be at each other’s throats given the animosity of the emotions flying between them. Bruno soon turned to me. “Just know that I personally prefer to deal with my problems with raw muscle and a little bit of baked or fried perfection that are doughnuts! I don’t mind machines, but I’m quite leery of ones that can think and communicate in a language that I understand for fairly obvious reasons. So… what’s our group called?”

“We’re going to be called the White Knight Couriers.” I answered while wondering why they named our group that.

“Yes, we will be the greatest of heroes, our valorous deeds will be spoken of throughout history and I Jean will be here for it!” Jean proclaimed while holding his rapier in a vertical defensive position in front of himself. The rapier was actually quite small for his webbed digits now that I looked at it.

“Fat chance of that, we’re just the delivery guys to the real heroes who are going to be on the front lines facing evil cores and deadly machines.” Bruno grumbled out as he leaned against the sword that was almost as long as he was tall. “At least there’s a high chance of action.”

“While I hate to say this, and understand that I won’t say this a lot, but I actually agree with the pig.” Colleen was being rather frigid with how cold her emotions felt. “We aren’t going to be doing anything even remotely heroic, what we are doing is just a job that will likely keep us fed and nothing more.”

“Non Non, we can still be great heroes, delivering supplies or information could be key to victory and we would be bringing that victory on a quite a silver platter! Heroes come in all forms my friends.” Jean received a flat look from Bruno and Colleen. “It will be a glorious and wonderful as a warm bug stew and a nice and fruity soufflé.”

“You’re definitely fruity at the very least.” Colleen stated out loud in a derogatory tone and Bruno snorted. “At least I’m alright with someone in this circus that’s supposed to be a courier group.”

I noted that Colleen had been looking towards Pom when she spoke.

If there was anyone here I trusted… it would have to be Jean because of his positive attitude and his earnestness. While Colleen wouldn’t do anything to harm Pom because of her weird canine factor, that didn’t mean the rest of us were safe and Colleen was rather cold emotionally. I didn’t trust Bruno much because I just met him, but I’m sure I could work up something approaching a rapport with him too and he was fairly blunt about things.

I was going to have to translate everything these three say for the foreseeable future.

-An hour later, local Cladinhold tavern, Pom-

We were intentionally put together for a reason to either fail, succeed or do otherwise in some kind of spectacular manner, sometimes all at the same time depending on the situation. Ocellus relayed to us the information about our companions Bruno, Jean and Colleen.

Bruno was the least armored, but was quite physically strong for his stature compared to the other two. Jean was fairly agile for his bulky appearance and was skilled with his weapon. Colleen, we didn’t know what her deal was, but it was readily apparent that my effects on canines was working its unusual magic on her.

Of the three, pigs and dogs like Bruno and Colleen existed on Equus, Jean was the odd one out of the group as there weren’t large bipedal frogs walking around back home. I’ve seen weirder things caused by unicorn magic, tea cup poodles, an orange with frog legs and those exceedingly annoying flying spaghetti monsters that get everywhere.

One would think Jean would be the one wielding the broadsword and Bruno the rapier, but no, they each had a weapon that seemed fairly odd for them personally. Which brought up a particular thought.

“Ocellus, can you ask Colleen something for me?” After I got her attention, Ocellus nodded to me to go ahead. “I want you to ask if she’ll be okay in a fight.”

Ocellus turned to speak to Colleen and they both started conversing, her ears perked up when Ocellus likely mentioning my worries about her. She responded in rather lengthy manner as I sat here eating something that was this worlds approximation of peanuts which came in these odd clusters like green beans and took a few sips of banana juice.

“She says she understands your worries, but she wants to assure you personally that she is ready for just about anything.” As soon as Ocellus finished saying that she started to clutch at her head. “Pom… an evil core is nearby and I th…”

With a crash the ceiling broke apart in several places as multiple round objects pierced the taverns roof, people started running out of the tavern and away from the metallic spherical shapes that just embedded themselves into the floor of the tavern. Some others like my group actually prepared to fight off whatever these things were.

“I think that the town is about to come under attack.” Ocellus finished saying dully.

They looked like curled up armadillos or at the very least a large pill bugs and there were about fifteen of them around the insides of the tavern. Several of the patrons were grabbing wooden chairs, Jean had his rapier at the ready and Bruno lifted his sword up in both his hands while putting his back to the nearest wall. Colleen moved in front of me protectively and flexed the digits of her gauntlets while crouching slightly.

One of the spheres uncurled and revealed what it was.

“A shrimp? We’re nowhere near an ocean though!” It was mechanical shrimp half the size of an average pony. The head was round and had a single glowing red eye that rotated left and right along its head. It sported two backwards facing antenna that shifted about like small tentacles, it had a small row of spikes for a mouth that were almost flush with the floor, the tail end had two short rectangular blades sticking upwards and barely half a knife’s length in size. The tail blades look like they could close together like scissors.

As for the limbs it had six limbs. Four were small pointy legs like that of a spider. Its left arm looked like a small spear and looked like it was used for stabbing. The last limb, and the decidedly most notable feature, was the rather large right side pincer that was currently opening up.

Inside the large pincer with arcs of energy flowing between the two inner halves of the claw and it pointed the claw towards the nearest being. That would be Jean who was narrowing his eyes on the metal shrimp’s actions.

The claw snapped shut with incredible force and sent a spherical bolt of raw energy ripping towards Jean, thankfully he was already in the process of leaping out of the way and narrowly escaped getting hit directly.

We all watched as the energy hit the nearby wall and scorched a small hole in it that we could visibly see through.

After that first shot the fourteen other metal shrimp in the room began to uncurl, I didn’t need to guess all too hard to know that an evil core machine was responsible for them.

“Ocellus... are you okay?” I asked slowly as multiple shrimp started to open their claws.

“I don’t think it’s in the town, not that it makes what it sent any less of a threat.” Stated Ocellus with worry.

I sharply inhaled and focused on everything as my eyes quickly swept the room as everything start to move at half speed, I noted where they were all aiming and what I could do. There were actually eighteen of them scattered around the tavern and exactly half of them were aiming in the direction of… Ocellus?

Exhaling sharply, I burst into motion to grab Ocellus and with my front two hooves and kicked with my rear hooves as hard as I could. Several things happened at once and I’m glad I chose to go with Dancing Flame instead of Fleet Cunning Doe, as I dove behind the table with a distracted Ocellus and out of the sight of at least eight of the shrimps firing on our position.

That was half the machines that fell into the tavern, we had been at a table close to the entrance and quite a few of them had been aiming directly in our direction intentionally. The other nine had chosen random targets that could have been close enough to help us.

“Ocellus… I think… I think that the evil core knows you can detect it…” I said through a few heavy breaths and propped a hoof up on the knocked over table to look over it.

I ignored the fact that Ocellus had a look of absolute horror on her face after having successfully made the dive out of the path of the nine shots directed at my changeling friend, but I don’t know how many times I would be able to do that. I started inhaling again.

The others in the room hadn’t been sitting still, not by a long shot. The taverns owner, a red squirrel, took up a bottle and quickly smashed it against one of the machines that had climbed onto the counter. This caused it to collapse into a sparking mess of lightning.

Shanty launched herself across the room, having jumped for a nearby wall as soon as the attack started and she kicked off to Goat Fly towards the wall opposite of the entrance. She kicked off that wall and flipped backwards to stomp down on the spine of one of the metal shrimp with all four hooves and bounced off after taking it out.

Jean charged towards the nearest shrimp with a slow lumbering and he was shouting something in a jolly tone as he rapidly jabbed at the shrimp machine nearest the middle of the tavern. He had created at least eighteen holes in the thing, the tip of his rapier was notably glowing with heat and something else, probably magic. That he could focus his magic down to as fine a point as the tip of his rapier made him incredibly dangerous to face in combat, provided he was quick enough to get up close and personal.

Bruno had already slashed his way through two shrimp machine with reckless abandon, with two quick swings. He efficiently and brutally landed powerful clean cuts through the metal plated shrimps. He was already charging a third with reckless abandon.

Dodo poked his head into the tavern and fired a blast of energy at one of the shrimp in the far corner of the tavern.

Smolder had blasted one with her fire destroying it, grappled another with her ribbon by the base of its tail and slammed it into a third destroying all three of those dangerous mechanical shrimp.

Colleen was the one with the oddest move of all of us, she leapt over the shot that a shrimp fired at her and then grappled it by wrapping her left arm around its torso and lifting it off the ground. The shrimp machines have to weigh at least fifty or more pounds.

The shrimp, once it was in Colleen grip, stabbed her forearm with the left spear arm and its sharpened tip just blunted itself quite badly against her armor.

Colleen quickly grappled its right claw arm and pulled, the metal was strained for a second before ripping apart in a shower of metal, sparks, wires and arcs of energy as it was torn off the struggling machine.

A glow emanated from Colleens right hand as she pointed the claw at another shrimp, the claw opened and then snapped shut sending a bolt that blew the head off of the shrimp she was aiming at. How did she make the weapon fire when it was no longer connected to the rest of the machine?

All of this only happened within thirty seconds and already eleven, make that twelve shrimp as Bruno cleaved through another one. Fourteen, Jean managed a series of rapid fire jabs that took two of the machines down before they could fire again. Sixteen Shanty and Colleen just took out another two with a slash of a hoof and another shot from the stolen claw arm.

Where were the last… I threw Ocellus off to the side and exhaled, I shot forward and slammed my left hoof home in the belly of a metal shrimp that had snuck up on us from the right. I knocked the machine on its back as its claw snapped shut firing a shot up into the ceiling.

I brought both my hooves together above my head and slammed them down on the center of its mass, breaking it in half with raw force. The light in its singular eye died out and it stopped moving.

There was one left. I turned to see Ocellus already blowing it apart with a magic blast from her horn, she was shivering and breathing with obvious fright. I slowly made my way up to her and gently hugged her close to me, she whimpered and clutched at me.

“It’s nearby, but I don’t think it’s in town Pom.” She was crying as she pressed her face into my chest, I patted her on the back gently. “My head is getting painful.”

“Can you turn off your ability to sense emotions?” I really hadn’t bothered to ask this before.

“It’d be like asking me to cut off my own leg, with a rusty sharpened spoon.” Ocellus mumbled as she tried to press herself deeper into my wool as I continued to comfort her. “I… I-I don’t think I c-c-can do it.”

“Breathe Ocellus, come on and breathe in and out slowly. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Calm down, your safe and I’ve got you.” I was snuggling her to help her calm down, Smolder made her way over to us as Dodo warbled something near the entrance earning Shanty’s attention. There were quite a number of panicked people running around outside and the sounds of more energy bolts being shot throughout the town of Cladinhold. “You really don’t need the ability to sense emotions at the moment. If you honestly can’t bear to shut off that ability, then can you at the very least give us an idea of where that feeling is coming from?”

“It’s… that way?” Ocellus seemed confused, as did I when she pointed in a direction. If anything we’d be expecting an attack from the east or northeast. “Isn’t that to the south though?”

“Doesn’t matter, the town is under attack and we need to protect the people from the machines, but more importantly protect you from them.” If they were going to target Ocellus, then we needed to move her out of here. A shrimp crawled in through the doorway to the tavern, only to be crushed by one of Dodo’s legs, Shanty was currently straddling his neck as he poked his head into the tavern.

“It be a mess out there and those one eyed machines are everywhere.” Shanty said with a large frown marring her face. “There being a lot of trouble coming this way.”

“We need to protect Ocellus, there’s a nearby evil core machine and it can somehow sense Ocellus.” When I said that Smolder’s eyes sharpened, she flicked her ribbon and growled.

“We can’t take Ocellus anywhere near that thing then!” Then Smolder calmed down as she understood the logic of what was going on. “Except… we can’t stay here as they are sending machines after her, which is putting everyone in town in danger. Okay, where is it!”

“To the south.” Ocellus muttered, I carried her over to the doorway and poked my head out to see several spheres raining down towards the town. Dodo pulled back and blasted two of them out of the air and warbled angrily. I put Ocellus down just inside the doorway “It’s not close, but that’s likely the direction these metal shrimp are coming from.”

In the distance I can see Biggs and Wedge fighting back to back against several shrimp and their shields were taking a beating as they slashed apart several machines.

“Ocellus, relay to the others I’m heading out to get an eye on the problem.” Hopefully we could actually deal with this one, I seriously doubt we were going to be lucky enough to see that blue armored hero again so soon to destroy whatever machine was behind the metal shrimp running rampant in Cladinhold.

When Ocellus started relaying my words to our three new acquaintances, I turned to Smolder and Shanty.

“Keep Ocellus with Dodo and be safe.” I peeked out the door and pulled back as a splash of energy destroyed a small portion of the doorway.

Centering my nerves with a breath, I charged out the doorway narrowly avoiding getting shot in the head. Their shots have a cooldown, which was actually good to know as I smashed the shrimp.

Author's Note:

Inspiration of Colleen, taken from Road Rovers.

Inspiration of Jean, taken from Breath of Fire 2.

Inspiration of Bruno, look up Power Piggs, a somewhat bad game for the SNES.

Inspiration for the metal shrimp, take the Pokémon Clauncher and make it have the mono-eye of a Zaku from Gundam and increase it's size by about a half. You get a Large Mechanical Pistol Shrimp.

-World Lore-

The machines of the Rocket Knight Adventures series of games ranged from "What lunatic designed this thing?" to "Slightly bizarre aesthetic choices with some logic thrown in."

One such boss fight is a giant mechanical fish in a volcano, said machine didn't actually protect it's pilot from heat and wasn't air conditioned. This is why the pilot pops out of the fish machine periodically enough that you might start feeling slightly sorry for the guy who got stuck with wielding it against Sparkster. What makes this worse for the pilot is that one of the fish machines main sources of attack was gulping up lava and spitting it back out.

The pilot of the machine did have magical armor, but it didn't protect from the heat nearly as much as it protected the pilot from simply being injured.

Sparkster at least had an excuse for surviving being in the volcano, his magic armor was enchanted to protect him from the heat, among many other things. What Sparktser's armor can't actually handle is actually touching the lava as that is beyond it's enchantments.

The time period of the world is beyond the first Rocket Knight game on the Sega Genesis so this really doesn't spoil anything. Sparkster's armor is one of the reasons why he still has his tail despite blasting about constantly on a rocket pack.

The animal theming of the machines wasn't absolute, or even absolutely necessary, but it was fairly common and fun thing seen throughout all the games.

Comments

[Herald of Opera]

The taverns owner, a red squirrel, took up a bottle and quickly smashed it against one of the machines that had climbed onto the counter.

Worth mentioning: the extra weight from the liquid in a full bottle is more useful than the slightly sharp edges of a broken one.