Baa-Ram-Ewe!

by Darkonshadows

79. Dante’s new friend.

Author's Note:

Music- Traverse Town, Kingdom Hearts.

The clues are piled up on this page... if you still can't figure it out, then I'll toss out the two main characters names in the next page Pom is a part of.

Before you say anything, this part of the story has nothing to do with Kingdom Hearts... directly at least.

-Location: A world under attack by giant insects, Oleander-

“Well, the EDF may be wary of our presences, but at least we can help them with their giant bug problem.” I muttered as I walked along with Song Ender bouncing around my hooves.

“This is all very cool and everything, but how did I end up in this situation with you again?” Rainbow Dash, the most colorful mare of Ponyville, groused out. She was likely wondering how she got dragged into dimension hopping with a dark magic using unicorn with an entire world floating off the tip of her horn. “Like we need more people getting lost in other dimensions!”

“As humorous as it would be to leave you behind on this mostly forsaken planet… WE’VE GOT INCOMING OLLIE!” We both looked to Fred and saw giant hornets flying right at us through a broken down city. “OH DEVIL, NOT THE GIANT HORNETS, ANYTHING BUT THOSE THINGS AGAIN!”

“If you can pull off a Sonic Rain-boom and not get hit by the thousands of stingers they fire, I might actually think you useful if you can create the explosion in the center of that mass without dying.” I stated bluntly as possible, even I had problems with fighting giant, super evil, mutated hornets.

-Equus, Ponyville, School of Friendship, Silver Stream-

“Has anyone seen professor Rainbow Dash, she was going to do a lecture on how to not disappoint people… do you think that her not showing up is a part of the lecture?” I asked innocently and the crowd of various students started talking to each other about the merits of my question.

We eventually settled on not following Rainbow’s example about never showing up to class being the lesson we needed to learn. You should always keep your promises while trying not to forget prior arrangements so you don’t double book like Rainbow Dash probably did… again.

We all unanimously agreed that this was likely to be the most successful friendship class Rainbow Dash has ever had!

We did leave what Rainbow Dash taught us today for the other classes to learn from.

-Earth, Location: in the middle of a park, the next morning, Pom-

I stretched out and carefully stowed my blanket in my bag and sat up on the tree branch I slept on, the sun was shining and I was wary of my surroundings. I didn’t see any dogs nearby, but I did see a few distant ones walking around on leashes.

This brought up a number of questions when I saw a bipedal dog that wore clothing walking what would be a regular dog in the distance on a leash. This brought up a whole number of questions about how this world actually works.

My current location was a fairly large park in the middle of or next to a city, I was mostly staying out of sight to get an eye on the locals.

A lot of ducks, a lot of naturally bipedal looking beings with recognizable animal features and a few that look oddly animal and yet aren’t, then there’s the dogs that were animals as they barked and weren’t speaking the same language as everyone else that people could understand readily when two dogs interacted with one another.

Climbing down and pulling out an Elhorn apple, apparently Elhorn fruit hardly ever rots or goes bad, I quickly consumed what I could of it despite the odd flavor. I proceed to dig up a bit of ground to be rid of the apple core.

I had some concerns about an Elhorn tree growing on this world, but the plants on Elhorn hadn’t been dangerous and I was taking a gamble here that nothing would come of me burying my trash in the ground in the middle of this park.

I had thankfully lost all the dogs that had me surrounded yesterday. They did chase me for a bit, but they likely thought we were playing given they were all mostly puppies.

The few more intelligent older dogs actively noted me down as an alien and were fairly surprised I could understand them. They also stated that my arrival in this world went relatively unnoticed, except by all the dogs around here because of course they would pay more attention to me than anything else.

This was the place where a good number of dogs seem to come fairly often judging by the numerous smells in the area and I wouldn’t be able to avoid them all forever.

I was close to civilization at least, but I didn’t have a job and I didn’t have any local money. I was back to being a bum.

Relying on the kindness of strangers was a bit iffy, but at least there were no giant monstrous machines and this world seems peaceful… relatively. There were four wheeled vehicles in the distance, but they didn’t look like they had any weapons to speak of and were likely just used for transport.

My current supplies were… two Elhorn banana bunches, my winter gear the girls saved for me. The wedding bell around my neck from Tianhuo, which will only make sounds if I want it to because she was thoughtful like that. The last thing was the bag itself. Not much to work with, but I was an expert at camping.

Dodo had most of our stuff, Shanty would be fine and could take care of herself… mostly if Dodo was around. Familiars always helped massively in situations like these.

Thankfully Smolder carried Ocellus’s and her own bag at my behest so they have at least some food and an amount of time to find a place to get some help, provided this world was as peaceful as it looked. I had my doubts after the last two worlds.

My plan was to get a lay of the surrounding areas and get my bearings, try to maybe find a temporary job and then figure out a way to locate my lost charges.

I could do all that, all my girls had to do was survive without me there to take deadly hits for them… or feed them… my mind was going to slip into a full blown panic over them over the next three hours wasn’t it?

Ocellus being in a coma was the biggest worry, but if Smolder was with her then they’d mostly fine. Dodo was not as intelligent as Shanty and I had ideas about what kind of trouble those two could feasibly get into.

“Uh, excuse me…” The voice of a lightly yipping dog made me nearly leap out of my wool, instead I went straight up eight feet and clung to a low hanging branch to begin shivering. “Wow, you exist… I had a nightmare last night that you didn’t, it was like the end of the world! That you do exist and still make things feel better around you is good to know, I came here early to look for you. My family needs a balm like you and on the first day we all tried to brave the park together for the first time in weeks… you came to us from somewhere else. I’m not sure if you want to know my name, but I’m Dante.”

I looked down at the small and somewhat scrawny looking black furred dog looking up at me with reverence as he spoke in barks, I sighed and mentally put a strong block on any attempt to form a familiar bond with me.

Didn’t feel anything like that yet, but knowing I was in an area with lots of dogs… well I’d certainly die from holding my breath for that long.

-Dante-

The shivering not-sheep looked down at me and scrutinized me and my grey, white spiked, collar.

I wasn’t a loud or overly scary dog… but I did like to sneak up on people and spook them.

“Sorry I scared you… I do that sometimes.” I tried to be reassuring for the thing larger than me, this felt pretty weird. Among my brothers and sister I’m one of the older dogs, at least old enough to have my own personality and not be just a part of the wild pack. “I’m not going to bite, but you interest me more than the world possibly ending, because around you it really doesn’t!”

There was a curious quirk in her eye when I said that, she started to slowly slide down the tree and came up to me and rubbed my head.

It felt really nice and I just snuggled up against her soft wooly form. This was safe… no apocalypse could happen while she was around, or at least that’s how it felt to me.

She pulled back, but didn’t push me away and looked around. She motioned for me to follow her with a hoof.

Didn’t have much luck with a deadly cow previously, among other things, but this alien sheep might be able to actually do something for me or my family. She was rather unique after all and might even be a solution to all of our constant nightmares.

We eventually made our way to… a sandbox? My unusually bright demeanor shifted to the not-sheep questioningly.

She moved a hoof in the sand and started to draw something, then took a few steps back and pointed downwards at the sand.

It said ‘Pom’ with an arrow pointed towards herself.

“Your name is Pom?” Barking this out excitedly, I felt my tail start wagging quickly at learning this. I knew the aliens name now and she nodded that I was right, but wait… did that mean she was an animalistic that could understand animals?

Well it was rarer a biped that could understand us, but I did know of one. My whole family did as said guy caused us some grief, but he turned out for the better in the end. No clue what he is doing now, but at least he’s leaving us alone.

To think I got up earlier than the rest of my family, ate breakfast and came here by myself to make sure Pom wasn’t some sort of fever dream. She could write and I could read, this is going far better than how my days usually do.

I don’t feel any gloom or doom in her presence and my family really needed that, I… kind of needed it too.

“Why are you here?” Why were any of us here on this big dirt ball we call home and why would aliens visit said dirt ball? My question was more to the point of what she was doing here. She drew a picture of a goat, a dragon, a strange horse bug and an ostrich in the sand and what I suppose is an image of herself, she drew a circle around all of them and then line from herself to an empty circle, she slowly raised her hoof in a wide arc to our surroundings. “You were separated from your family?”

Pom rolled her hoof in a so-so gesture. So I’m right, but not exactly? The things she drew in the sand were a bit weird, but they were grouped together so they were with her before she ended up here?

“Don’t you have some kind of technology to get around or something like other aliens?” My question was met with a loud sigh and a flat stare, so she wasn’t from some high end advanced civilization. After a moment, she cleared the sand and drew an arrow pointing to me. “You… actually want to know more about me? That’s… kind of refreshing. Like I said I’m Dante, my days are usually filled with doom and gloom, I like sneaking around in the shadows and finding fun places to hide in, spooking my brothers and sisters and rather morbid stuff. I also get these rather weird feelings and visions about bad things happening, but none of it ever seems to come true or at least my family doesn’t think it’s anything really worth focusing on.”

Clearing the images in the sand, Pom then drew out something. A building with the word ‘library’ above it and a question mark.

“Yeah, there’s a library in the Camden Town area… why?” I tilted my head and looked down as she wrote out Camden and pointed out the question mark. “You’re currently in Camden Town which is a part of the United Kingdom we’re a district bit northwest of London and you can likely see Big Ben from here! So you want me to take you to the nearest library, why?”

She drew an eye, the word ‘will’ and then two arrows circling from one to the other.

“I will see? See what?” The answer I received was Pom holding her left hoof out at me. “Myself? Well I’m already probably worrying my family… that or they forgot I existed again. It’s easy to ignore the crazy dog that keeps going on about the end of the world... might as well go all in on whatever it is you want to show me. Follow me, I know how to get there from here, I go there sometimes to find horror stories to read. I dabble in true crime stories sometimes too, my family thinks that’s why I have a problem...”

-Pom-

What a strange puppy, but at least he was friendly and I did want to help him with something he needed to hear about himself. I couldn’t express everything I needed to inform him of fully if I was right about what I thought I knew about him.

-Dante-

“Here we are…” Just as we arrived I heard howling and my name being mentioned in one of my ears. “I’m at the library and I might be here for a bit with a friend. Don’t worry about me too much, I’m fine, no really, I’m okay!”

Pom tilted her head at me curiously as I howled my return message.

“Just my brother and sister worrying about me… I almost feel like just another statistic in my family, at least they cared enough to call out for me.” Motioning to me to follow her in with a hoof, I was a little reluctant to do so. “So what are we here for exactly?”

“Excuse me, but…” I cowered next to Pom and she waved at the librarian, she then motioned at her throat and mimed talking. She lifted her bag up, likely to show that she was an animalistic. She could pass for one too, if you didn’t know she was an alien. “You can’t talk, almost took you for a wild animal. Speaking of animals in the library…”

Pom picked me up and I yipped quietly a few times questioning her actions, she simply placed me on her back and looked at the biped crow that ran the library.

“Okay, as long as he stays quiet and doesn’t make a mess, your dog can stay.” The crow motioned Pom forward to the desk. “What are you looking for?”

Pom dragged her hoof in a zigzag.

“Something starting with M?” With the young librarian’s query, Pom smiled and nodded. “Okay, here, let me help you. Poor thing… being mute in this world isn’t exactly helpful for an animalistic like you now is it?”

Putting a pen and paper before Pom, Pom started writing something down and then went to hand the pen and paper back.

“No, keep it, you need the pen and paper more than I do at the moment and I have plenty to spare. Now let’s see… ah… Mythology relating to canines? I take it you’re interested in local history relating to this subject.” The crow stated conversationally. “Here let me get several cards from the catalog to the location of several books that may interest you.”

Pom took the offered cards and started down the aisles of the library quietly, what did mythology have to do with me?

Eventually we came to a shelf, Pom looked at the table of contents in several of them and frowned at each, eventually she found one she like and looked for a nearby table.

Once I got off of her and onto the table, she sat down and started leafing through the one book she picked out. After affirming something to herself, she wrote down something for me to read on the sheet of paper.

“Do I believe in magic?” Don’t know how to feel about that honestly, sometimes it felt like there was magic in the world and others it was a dull and ceaseless endless toil of agony we called life. “Why, can you do magic?”

Pom nodded seriously and wrote the word ‘some’ down, but motioned at me and the previous words on the paper insistently.

“Well I did trick my brother into believing a mythological story about Cerberus and the Ferry-dog, then I had to tell him the truth about the prank in song because things were going way too far… does that count?” What was written down next had me convinced as I read it out. “All things are real somewhere, I have a Cerberus back home, there’s also The Cerberus guarding the gates of… really?!”

She nodded, then pointed to something in the book at the page she opened it to. Looking at the page I saw something that might actually explain a few things about myself that I’ve never considered. To be sure, I read the passage below it.

“Black Dog, Ghost Dog, Gurt Dog, Shuck, Hellhound… Grimm?” How have I never heard of this before? Well I didn’t really go looking up mythological dogs too much aside from the horror stories of Greek mythology, never actually thought to before. “Dogs spiritually connected to darkness, portents of avoidable death or danger, can fore… really?! They can foretell danger… benevolently… wait…”

I looked up at Pom giving me a sad smile and a pat on the head.

“You think that I’m, at least partially, one of these?” Well… this explains the constant nightmares and visions of the end of everything as I know it. “Wait, The Cerberus actually exists where you’re from… but I thought this was all just a… so all mythological stuff is… actually real. Are you a demon?!”

Pom shook her head no.

“Awe that would have been a fun way to go out, getting tempted into some sort of devils deal. I can already see that you’re far too nice for that though, what are you then?” It took me a bit to get an answer.

Pom wrote down that she was a ‘lambkin’. Akin to sheep, but not a sheep herself. Her people are sheep farmers in her world and had a nice textile industry. I shivered at the word ‘textile’, my family would naturally have an aversion to the fashion industry after what happened to us.

“How exactly are you so sure that I’m… one of these?” I asked, this was getting really interesting for me.

Knows one already and knows what to look for when seeing another, also my constant horrible visions of the apocalypse are because I’m not actually controlling my ability? So I end up blowing things well and totally out of proportion?!

“That, actually sounds about right really.” Well if it was true and if I were to look back on my predictions and drop their lethality a number of pegs to pratfalls then… they all actually came true. “That’s… disturbing to know, but I’m not going to believe in it unless you can show me some actual proof of magic.”

Pom held up the sheet of paper covered in words with her left hoof and slashed her right across it, three claw marks ran across the paper. I looked at her right hoof and even examined it personally with both of my paws, touching it all over.

“Huh… anything else?” I asked, because making claw marks in paper with a blunt hoof was a really neat trick.

I was ready to believe and had always wanted to believe, but skepticism and all that.

She motioned for me to follow her and we went to a nearby wall with an overhanging balcony above on the second floor, what she did next was definitely impossible without magic.

She walked up the wall, across the ceiling, where she stopped for a moment to buff her chest in the utter defiance gravity completely, then sauntered straight up onto the balcony above.

I had to go up the stairs, to just stare at her blankly. There was also the fact that she can jump straight up eight feet and could have just leapt up there.

“So I might be magical and you’re definitely… heh… wow… So maybe all my occult stuff are toys compared to the real thing huh? Oh dog…” I brought my paws to my face and started to rub them around. “Can you teach me how to control it, these visions? They’ve been bothering me, and my family by association, for a really long time.”

She got out the slightly shredded piece of paper and wrote something down.

Yes, she would help me regardless of whatever I did, but she needed help until she could figure out a way to find her friends and those she’s supposed to take care of. Also she needed a place to rest until her voice comes back.

“Well it might be a bit cramped, and full of dogs, but I think I can talk my bro and sis into letting you stay with our family for a few days. Trust me… they’ll want you to help me with these visions I’ve been having so I can possibly get them under control.” On the backside of the sheet of paper that was quickly losing space for words ‘what is family like’ along with a question mark. “Well my family went through something very traumatic recently and, unlike the cow that tried to kill us all, this trauma actually stuck to us. All my brothers and sisters could use your presence to maybe feel safer or like things are getting better. Not going to lie, I feel utterly safe with you.”

‘Okay’ was written on the last bit of the paper, she put the pen and shredded the remaining bits of paper to stow them all away in her satchel. She put up the book and as we were on our way out to message my family, the crow spoke up.

“Thank you for visiting Camden Town Library, I’m surprised at how quiet you were.” Nodding to the crow, Pom turned to me and I made the call once we both went outside.

“Hey brother, is mom still home, I need to ask her something about having a friend over!” I howled out and the response I received a second later had me nodding. “Okay, follow me. Mom is willing to hear me out about having a friend over, so long as it isn’t Portia or Spencer. Right, you don’t know who those are, let’s just say they are my tolerable goth friends.”

-Ten or so minutes later, Pom-

“Okay, where is this friend of yours Dante.” The dog was old enough and motherly sounding to be Dante’s mother, but she didn’t look like the correct breed. Possibly adoptive or step-mother at best.

Also Dante wasn’t kidding about having a lot of brothers and sisters, they all took immediate notice of me and started gathering around the matriarch.

“Come on, mom! I know this is a bit weird, but… can my friend Pom stay with us, please?” Dante seemed like he desperately needed help with his Grimm visions. “She’s mute and she really needs help with getting on her hooves, also she can understand us!”

“Well…” She looked me over, the puppies started begging her to let me into their home. “Alright, but you need to stop spooking all the puppies Dante!"

Comments

[Darkonshadows]

10830526

I did Sing in Airship Mauled with Fizzy.

Also, you named a cameo I'm going to do in this world.

Also nope.

[MasterReader97]

Pom’s world is 101 Dalmatian street

[Shadowshame]

Well one search specifically about a dog named Dante that predicts the apocalypse later and I know the name of the section that Pom is in I won’t actually say it because I have never watched that show (probably because it is on Disney plus which my family doesn’t have the money for) and I feel like it would be cheating I will say a rather blatant hint that it is basically a reboot of one of Disney’s old dog based animated movies

[Darkonshadows]

10832744

I haven't watched it on Disney Plus, I don't have it either, but that's because they've been airing it sporadically on Disney XD and I have cable.

Also youtube in chunks if you know where to look...

10832738

The show is good, but it's been obscured by the greedy soulless corporation that Disney has become, I remember the days when Disney was good.

This is my way of remembering the good old days of what Disney was, instead of what it is now.

Welcome to... Disney Afternoon World/ Sly Cooper.

[prism heart]

10832702
Well, I can't think of any other animal world that fits right now. Maybe once i read the next chapter, but not likely.