Ch: 10: Rebirth (Part 1)
Cogshine trudged through the gardens dejectedly. Young Darkus, who was learning to fly and had gotten himself trapped on the roof, spotted him and called out for help. "Hey! Silver feathers! Can you help me?"
Cogshine, roused from his stupor by an annoying whine in his sensitive, feline ears, looked around for the source of the whine and spotted Darkus on the roof, cute little silver wings waving around to gather attention. "Help!"
Cogshine, annoyed at being distracted from his thoughts by that little kid, conveniently forgetting that he was still a kid himself, shook his head in annoyance, extended his wings to their full eighteen feet and took off towards Darkus.
Grabbing the younger dragonoid by the loose little flap of skin at the base of every dragon's neck, the hybrid carried the youngster down to the ground.
Darkus shook himself like a dog for no apparent reason. "Thanks. What's got you down?"
Normally, Cogshine would have yelled at him to back off and stalked away, but he wasn't feeling himself that day. So he told him.
"It's just, I feel like I'm not strong enough. Shadeblazer has power over both Fire and Undead, Insidae can create and control all types of plants, even Burn can forge fire and shape it however he wants. The only thing I can do is build stuff. How useful is that in battle?"
"Good point. Wanna hug it out?" Darkus asked, a childish, excited smile coming over his face as he raised his forelegs and wings and balanced there for a few seconds before collapsing on his face.
Cogshine couldn't help but chuckle. "No. I just wish there was something that could give me new abilities, make me stronger, you know?"
Darkus' childish smile turned into a sinister one. "I think I might know something,"
Cogshine instantly turned back to him. "What? Tell me!"
"For a cookie," Darkus told him, smirking up at him.
"A-a cookie? What?" Cogshine stuttered in shock.
"I'll show you where the power thingy is if you give me a cookie," Darkus explained, in the tone of someone explaining to someone his age that one plus one made two, or for Darkus, that an enemy can't kick you if you bite through his leg. Which had been the fate of a rather unfortunate Wilikin butler some months earlier.
"Fine, I'll get you a cookie after you show me the power enhancer thing," Cogshine suggested. Darkus shook his cute little head. "Nope. Cookie first, then power thingy,"
Cogshine shook his silver-furred head in exasperation. "Fine, I'll go to the kitchen and get you a cookie, then you show me the power enhancer,"
"Make sure it's a sheep-fat-coated sugar-free unicorn horn! Mum makes them specially for me," Darkus added enthusiastically as the two dragonoids moved towards the kitchen.
Shadeblazer muttered something inarticulate, but no doubt offensive and directed at Cogshine as she, Insidae and Burn reclined in an airship Linagarnix had instructed a Wilikin to pilot to take them to the site in the Outlands of the power crystal thing. Cogshine had been supposed to accompany them, but he was nowhere to be seen. So it was just the three of them.
"Well, he doesn't know what he's missing. These Wilikin are giving us spa sessions!" Shadeblazer muttered to herself, drawing contentment from that fact.
According to the map, they were a third of the way there. Of course, Linagarnix hadn't told Shadeblazer that Drobot, Whirlwind and Polarus were going after it too, so they figured it would be easy. They had no idea that Arkeyan Copters were faster than airships, or that the other three had a head start on them.
Or that the other three in question were currently under attack by ghost pirates.
"Whoa!" Polarus gasped as a cannonball soared right over his head. Him and Whirlwind were standing on top of the copter, which was in Jet Mode so they weren't worried about getting injured by the rotors, and using their limited powers over storm clouds to defend from the onslaught of ghost pirates. Drobot was inside the cockpit, trying to escape and using the copter's in-built lasers and rockets to help defend them.
Whirlwind and Polarus had a massive spherical shell of electric storm-clouds around the copter, which was thin enough for Drobot to see through relatively well and deflected most of the projectiles, but it didn't do anything to repel boarders. That, along with maintaining the storm-shield, was Whirlwind and Polarus' job.
Polarus twisted to the side as a flaming arrow narrowly grazed his left wing, leaving a slightly smouldering burn on his primary feathers. Whirlwind spotted this and launched a short barrage of rainbow light at him, as another arrow skidded between his forelegs and narrowly missed his tail.
In retaliation, Polarus launched a supercharged singularity of blinding light from his own solitary, gold-and-mahogany horn straight at the ghostly Drow Archer that had been shooting him. It knocked him backwards, straight off the turbine on which he had been perched.
Of course, he was immediately replaced by a massive, gold-plated Goliath Drow.
Whirlwind cursed. "Dragon feathers!"
It was a curious thing that the body of the Goliath Drow was ethereal, but his gold-plated steel weaponry was solid. Polarus disregarded the thought as he extended his wings to their full fourteen feet and leapt onto the back of the Goliath Drow. Strangely, the claws on his hind legs and his right foreleg found purchase on the metaphysical elf's waist and Polarus took advantage of that to use his left foreleg to prise one of the ghost's wrist armaments away from it's hand.
It fell into the abyss below, as the Goliath finally realised what was happening and charged. Which was completely ineffective as the dragon hybrid was on his back.
Goliaths were generally known for their ability to smash stuff, not their intelligence. Indeed, a couple of Spell Punks had once done a test to see if a Goliath or a Chompy was smarter. The result had determined that the average Chompy had ten IQ points - and the average Goliath had fifteen.
And without his left wrist-plate, his force-field failed to kick in, so he was completely vulnerable to the Rainbow Singularity that Whirlwind launched straight into his path seconds after Polarus abandoned his tenuous perch. Blinded, the monster collapsed over the blue-tinted glass that made up a large part of the copter's cockpit and slid down it, trailing drool down the reinforced clear plastic.
Drobot's mechanical voice came over the intercom. "Please undertake consideration of the preservation of the pristinity of the technological unit we are currently travelling upon. I possess great pride in it,"
"That Drow was about to crush us!" Whirlwind pointed out testily.
"And for your information, there are multiple organisms that give the appearance of being ex-biotic factors incoming. It is continuum-points such as this singularity that this unit would suggest the limitations of science apply to the Undead element as an all-inclusive rule. It would allow for increased simplicity levels at time-periods during the course of operations such as this one,"
"Cut the techno-gibberish and get back to shooting those ghost ships before Stormee gets out!" Whirlwind shouted, getting really annoyed with the Tech dragon.
Polarus looked over at the word 'Stormee'. "Yeah, sis, keep Stormee in. If she takes control now, odds are she'll kill you both,"
To put it simply, Stormee was to Whirlwind what Dark Spyro was to Spyro. She was an alternate personality within Whirlwind's mind that was released when Whirlwind got really angry. Stormee was actually quite similar to Whirlwind, but she had a centimetre-short temper and would fly into a destructive rage at the slightest provocation. And that meant the SLIGHTEST provocation. Stormee's violent anger could be triggered by so little as a mildly irritating bird call, or someone sticking their tongue out at her, or even so little as someone accidentally brushing up against her wing's secondary feathers. The fact that Whirlwind was usually already quite angry when Stormee took over usually meant that it would be prudent to put either a kilometre or a good twenty-cm-thick wall of pure rock or steel between you and the dragon in question when she took control.
On such limited ground as the top of the Arkeyan Copter, Stormee would probably accidentally - or maybe even on purpose, in order to finish destroying an enemy that she had already thrown off the roof - throw herself off the roof, and as Stormee had been known to become so anger-consumed that she had forgotten to fly, that would be lethal.
Then another Goliath, which had somehow snuck up behind her, rammed her off the copter. Whirlwind, shocked, spread her wings and steadied herself, as she got really angry.
The dragonoid flew at the Goliath in a frenzy of claws, horns, clouds and light. "Go Whirlwind!" Polarus cheered, then remembered the last time he had seen his sister fight like that. "Wait. That's not Whirlwind . . . . Aww, dragon feathers!"
Stormee was loose.
Darkus took a bite out of a conical-shaped cookie as he slammed the vat lid down on Cogshine, absurdly whistling the tune to 'I've been working on the railroad'. The hybrid in the tank filled with growth serum had a chunk of Petrified Darkness in each of his ivory-taloned paws. Darkus had instructed him not to let go of them, no matter what.
A thought crossed Cogshine's mind. Darkus was still only three years old . . . . and unlike Cogshine, he was no technical genius. Meaning Cogshine had just put his life in the hands of a toddler! "What was I thinking when I did this?!" Cogshine thought, panicking, knocking on the capsule lid. Darkus took this as a sign to hurry up, so he began flicking levers and adjusting dials with increased speed.
And with speed comes mistakes.
Darkus slammed his petite little paw down on the big red button that started the growth procedure.
Cogshine screamed in agony.
Ya gotta love a couple of good cliffhangers, right? I know self-promoting stinks, but I gotta give myself props for what I did with what's just a nickname to everyone else. And Cogshine, yes, you are an idiot.
"I heard that! You'd better watch your back, because I'm coming!"
Great, now I'm going to have to get Tails to lend me one or two, or maybe all of the Maxus Chaos pieces to protect myself. What are the Maxus Chaos pieces? You'll find out in Dragon Chronicles. Eventually. Mu-hu-wa-ha-ha-hack-hack-cough!
Blasted cough! That is why I don't like going to school. I always catch whatever bug is going around. Good thing the holidays start for me in a week or so.
Oh, and I think I forgot to mention this before. Because of the reboot, (I'm still not talking to you, Connie boy) if you followed/favourited Technical Tail before October 30, 2013, you're going to have to do that again.
"I'm still coming here!"
And I've got a flashlight.
"Aaargh! But your love-heart projecting flashlight will only hold me back so long!"
Long enough for me to get one of the Maxus Chaos pieces and their power is infinite. Why does that thing project a love-heart, anyway? It doesn't look at all girly at first glance. It's green.
No offence, I know how many people on here are girls. Peace!