Ch. 12: I Hope I'm Wrong About This Place
"There's something about this place that's messing with my servers," Drobot told Sunburn, using three paws for walking, and one for fiddling with his suit.
"Dude, what are servers?" Sunburn replied, a curious look on his face.
Sunburn had been complimented on his handsomeness several hundred times, mainly by crushing female dragons. It was why he had been sleeping in the hollow hull of the Dread-Yacht - so that they wouldn't find him. Jade, Sonic Boom, Whirlwind, they all wanted him to be theirs. And he couldn't blame them. Look at the natural golden highlights in his feathers! Plus his personality. If there was one word to describe Sunburn, it was 'flashy'. He rather enjoyed showing off, and used to do so to anyone who would watch. Socially, he was nice enough, if a bit self-centred, kind of like Flynn with manners.
But after Jet-Vac recruited Scratch the SPHINX a couple of months ago, and she started chasing him just like the rest, he realised that things were getting a little out of hand. Sunburn hadn't even known sphinxes existed until he met her. There was some crazy love-life-action going on in the Skylander ranks. Spyro was crushing on Cynder, which was mutual between the two dragons, then there were the practically inseparable duo of Bash and Flashwing. They perfectly evened each other out. But every other quadruped girl was chasing him. Sunburn was literally the only thing that could pull Sonic Boom away from her tower-top nest, where she spent most of her time with her hatchlings for the few minutes they could stay out of their cursed shells.
Sunburn spent a lot of time keeping a chart of who was with who. Everybody, including Sunburn, knew he wasn't the brightest, so he made himself socially useful by being the 'Skylander Dating God'. He was the only Skylander who hadn't been gasping in amazement when Smoulderdash had started dating Grim Creeper, or when Sprocket went out with Zook. That particular pairing prediction had made him famous among the Skylanders, and from then on, whenever anyone wanted to know who was likely to be with who, they asked him.
"Ouch!" Sunburn had been so deep in thought he walked right into a tree. Drobot couldn't help but laugh as the hybrid realised the big spine on his head was embedded in the tree. Sunburn furiously tugged at his head. "Y'now, you could help me get out of here," the phoenix dragon told the cyber dragon irritably. Drobot was still giggling like a little girl, which sounded very strange with his vocal synthesisers. He popped a bladegear out of it's housing in his tail and used it to cut away at the bark until Sunburn was free.
Sunburn looked quite put out - literally. His wings were smoking like a candle that had just been extinguished.
Then a twig snapped nearby. The two dragonoids were instantly alert. "Did you hear that?" Sunburn whispered.
"Does it look like I heard it?" Drobot replied.
Then a large group of - things - came out of the trees around the area and attacked the two Skylanders. No two were alike. They were elven in base body structure, but everything else varied. Some had thick, bushy tails while others had long, sinuous reptilian tails, and yet more had no tail at all but four or six insectoid legs. Fur covered some's bodies, feathers or scales adorned yet more and some had insectoid plating. Some had feathered bird wings, others had scaly dragon wings and some had translucent insectoid wings. Some had no wings at all, usually the furred and some of the scaled ones. Colour varied most of all, everything from the brightest red to the darkest black could be seen on these beasts.
The two dragons were too surprised to even resist as the things bound them in a net and four carried them upon their backs, two dropping to all fours to bear their weight better. Drobot and Sunburn exchanged a worried glance. Or as worried as Drobot could look wearing the helmet. They tried to call out, but there seemed to be some kind of enchantment on the net that prevented them from making any noise at all. Even Drobot's suit's occasional squeak was muffled.
"Trigger Happy! Stop talking about things you've shot in your life!" Stealth Elf cried in exasperation, throwing her hands up to heaven.
The orange gremlin pouted. "Wish Spring were here. He loves talking about things we've shot," Spring was Trigger Happy's lesser-known purple-furred brother who had recently joined the Skylanders and used weaponry identical to Trigger Happy's, but his was silver.
Trigger Happy, Spring, Pop Fizz, Punche (Pop Fizz's red-furred laboratory partner, not genetically related to Pop Fizz but had worked with Pop Fizz so much that the two were like brothers, given his name due to his fur color), Wrecking Ball, Hot Dog and Moltey were basically their own little group. Rare was the occasion when one of them did something without another to back them up. All seven were thought of as either weird or, in Pop Fizz and Punche's case, somewhat insane by the other Skylanders, and so naturally stuck together in their own little cliche.
And they worked well together. Trigger Happy and Spring were slow with their little stumpy legs, but when they piggybacked on Hot Dog and Molta respectively, they moved amazingly fast. And you did not want to be anywhere near Wrecking Ball when he had drunk one of Pop Fizz or Punche's potions.
The orange gremlin pulled a cloth out of nowhere (the same nowhere he got the camera and the popcorn the day before) and started polishing one of his guns, putting the other wherever he had gotten the cloth from. Guncare was very important to Trigger Happy.
Trigger Happy wasn't as dumb as everyone generally thought. Sure, he wasn't a genius like many of the other Tech Skylanders, but he wasn't as dumb as, say, a Slobbering Mutticus, or a Chompy, or Kaos. Socially, he was rather abrupt, and rarely cared what people thought of him for saying what he thought.
"Uh, Trigg, what do you think of this?"
Trigger Happy was jolted out of his reverie by Stealth Elf asking him a question. Her nervous tone scared him. Stealth Elf had once single-handedly broken into the Arkeyan Armoury to retrieve the Eternal Magic Source without breaking a sweat. She had walked out of that place with a new pair of golden daggers and riding an Arkeyan Ultron like Zoo Lou rode his warthog. So if she was scared, what did that say about what they were facing now?
Trigger Happy opened his eyes, which had been closed out of fear, and took a look. It was nothing but an abandoned town.
"What's the big deal, Stealth?"
Trigger Happy knew something was wrong when Stealth Elf didn't respond to his use of her nickname 'Stealth'. Normally,that would have made her throw him straight through the nearest abandoned building like a furry bowling ball.
"Can't you see it?" (Stealth Elf)
"See what?" (Trigger Happy)
"The tendrils of evil all over this place. Twisted through every building like Camo's vines on April Fool's Day,"
Stealth Elf carefully moved into the town. "Huh. They all seem to go in that direction," She indicated an alley to their left. The two Skylanders moved along the alley, Stealth Elf warning Trigger Happy whenever he was about to come into contact with a tendril of darkness.
Then, as soon as they were out of the alley and into another street, they were ambushed by the same things that had attacked Drobot and Sunburn. Stealth Elf was easily incapacitated, but Trigger Happy put up more of a fight, his gun barrels rotating and firing at 120 RPM. Until he came into contact with an invisible cord of darkness, then he suddenly fell forwards, unconscious. The things seemed unaffected by the tendrils, and they stuffed the two Skylanders in a burlap sack and started carrying them to an unknown destination.
Cynder and Tails casually walked down the path. "Am I the only person who thinks this place is kinda creepy?" Tails asked the other dragon, Jade's feminine lilt doing nothing to disguise his fear.
Cynder chuckled. "You should have seen the Crawling Catacombs, back when we needed to get the Skull Mask for the new Core of Light. That was creepy,"
"I did see them. Video game, remember? And yeah, I was ten when I first played that level. I had nightmares for days. The fact that I had arachnophobia at the time really didn't help. But it did help me use Chop Chop's figure to tear them to shreds," Tails reminisced wistfully.
"Remind me to take you there for real someday, when this is all over and we can relax," Cynder smiled, wondering how Tails would react to the place.
"And remind me to show you the video game sometime so you can see just how realistic it seems,"
Cynder couldn't explain it, there was just something about Tails that made her feel like letting loose and relaxing. Tails definitely didn't have this effect on everyone, she had never seen Drobot so tense before. But she had never met anyone else with the same effect on her. Even Spyro, the love of her life, didn't make her feel, well, as relaxed as Tails did. It was just so easy to strike up a conversation with him about, anything. Cynder got the feeling that it would be possible for her to chat with Tails about everything from the possible things he could bring into Skylands with that video game portal of his to the origin of Chompies.
"What? No witty comeback? No reply at all? Cynder, you'd better not be going all sentimental just as I was getting to know you,"
Cynder realised that while she had been thinking, Tails had switched forms into . . . . . . something she didn't recognise. She must have been so deep in thought she had missed him saying the catchphrase. In shape, it was identical to Cynder, but everything else was different. Its scales were golden where Cynder's were a dark purple, its underbelly and wings were grass-green, and its horns, tail and the spurs on its wings were jet-black. And there was no Mark of the Undead on its forehead.
"What's that?" Cynder asked the other dragon.
"I had a spare S2 Cynder figurine lying around after I purchased the Skylanders Battlegrounds Starter Pack. So I gave it my own paint design. Then I hacked into it's RFID chip, modified it's in-game appearance to match the figurine's new paint job and installed a self-installing game programming addition that automatically added 'Supergold Cynder' to the in-game collection roster. This is the result," Tails explained.
"I lost you at around the part where you said 'Skylanders Battlegrounds'," Cynder told the different version of her, frowning. "Can you change to a different Skylander? That's, kinda creepy,"
Tails nodded and disappeared in a flash of light.
Then the same things that had attacked Drobot, Sunburn, Stealth Elf and Trigger Happy attacked her. This time, one that looked somewhat like a black-and-white version of Stink Bomb gave off a massive fart and rendered her inable to focus, then they threw a net over her like the one they did with Drobot and Sunburn and carried her away.
Tails reappeared a few seconds later, now as Drobot. "Blink and Destroy!" he couldn't help yelling, then said "I've been meaning to try out this one, but I thought it would be awkward with - uh, Cynder, where are you?"
Spring Big Bang Trigger Happy is a genuine Swap Force variant. Look it up online if you don't believe me. Seraph of Enigma, the Disney Infinity thing was a one-off and probably won't happen again, but it does provide Magic Items - of a fashion. I can't be bothered going into detail, look it up for yourself. Plus, I never said the bringing things from video game to Skylands was limited to Disney Infinity.
Bladedninja, the only OCs I am having in this story are Tails, Darkus, Ajay and Maya. At least for the first two seasons. And as far as this story goes, Flashwing and Jade aren't part of their own species, they're hybrids like Whirlwind, or Sunburn, or Camo. Who are Ajay and Maya? You'll find out. Eventually.
Oh, and one more thing: I've got a plan for a really awesome way to have the figha with Kaos' mother and Darkus at the end - but I'm not going to tell you. I'll just give you this clue: First Half of New Vestroia.
Term starts again for me today, so my writing time and thus my update rate is going to be cut back. Peace!