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Spyro the Dragon, both the game and all related characters (c) Insomniac. They own the Spyro that's in this story, so nyeh.
Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon, as well as all related characters (c) blah-blah, same copyright.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: Byrds on the Battlefield

"Moneybags, let him go."

"No."

"Moneybags."

"Sorry!"

"Seriously, let him go."

Spyro was some mix of frustrated and horrified when he saw another cage being carted into Midday Gardens; by Moneybags, no surprise. The cage contained a small bird, tied up at the beak, with small metal attachments on its shoulders, adding to the military look of his helmet.

"I'm sorry, Spyro, but this little jail-bird just has to stay put!" Moneybags insisted. "The Sorceress caught this troublemaker setting off rockets in her fireworks factory! He's a total nuisance that'll blow us all to smithereens if I let him loose!"

Still, Spyro's heart sank a bit at the sight of the creature struggling to escape its bindings. "Oh, come on, Moneybags, you can't even give him to me? What if I promise not to let him go off and cause trouble? The Sorceress will never know he's gone!"

Moneybags pondered the idea for a bit. (His goal in the whole argument was to lure Spyro into this moment of weakness.) "Well...I suppose I could negotiate something with the Sorceress...if someone were to pay for his...outstanding fines and damages..."

Spyro sighed. He should've just handed Moneybags a sack of gems in the first place. "Name your price."

"Seven-hundred."

"Done."

The posh bear couldn't help but crack an unsettling chuckle as Sparx handed him the bag of shimmering dragon treasure. "Oh, Spyro, you're such a sucker...erhm, for the weak and defenseless! Right, your generosity knows no bounds! It is a far better thing you do today, Spyro, then you have ever done, and...ehr, you know, et cetera, so on and so forth."

Moneybags opened the cage and freed the bird inside, allowing the penguin to rush out, jumping into the air to stretch its wings before coming to a landing in front of Spyro. He gave a stern salute; standard protocol to address someone of higher authority, at least by the rules of Peacekeepers militia. "The name is Byrd, Sergeant Byrd, 90068. Awaiting orders, sir!"

Spyro almost laughed, suddenly reminded of the stern Peacekeeper elders like Titan in Byrd's attitude. "At ease, soldier. You'll need to find your commanding officer for any orders."

Finally, it was the dragon's turn to look upon a foreigner with curious eyes. "Hey, so what're those things?" he asked, pointing towards the metal attachments on the penguin's shoulders.

Byrd looked down at his own equipment. "THESE are the latest in military hotware; DVX-9 rocket launchers, state of the art."

"So...why didn't you use them to escape?"

"Because I have limited ammo! I expended most of it fighting off the Sorceress before I was captured, and I needed to save a shot..." The bird spun around, facing Moneybags, who was too busy counting his gems. "For this!"

A brief second of silence, followed by an earth-shaking explosion as both of Byrd's rocket-launchers fired, spitting out a fireball that shot straight for Moneybags, blowing the bear back for miles in the blink of an eye.

The penguin spun back towards Spyro. "Permission to question requested. Where did you come from? I thought dragons had been dead for a thousand years or something."

"Yeah, and I thought penguins couldn't fly, so we were both wrong. To answer your question, we're fine - the dragons just wanted some peace and quiet."

"And to answer yours, a few years of training can power any set of wings to flight. Though I'm sure a dragon as yourself has no problems with the subject." (Spyro calmly bit his tongue.) "Anyway, if it's peace and quiet you're after, you'd be best off avoiding my homeworld for a touch. The Sorceress will have taken advantage of my absence by now, so the hummingbirds will be swarmed with those bloody rhynocs. But know that a soldier never forgets a favor, dragon; if you should require my services, summon me at your earliest convenience."

The bird gave a salute, which Spyro returned. "Can do, soldier. Ago phasmatis draconis." It was a slip of the tongue, really, a force of habit when presenting a dragon salute.

Byrd, though, gave an understanding nod. "The creed by which I live my life, dragon. I'll do it proud."

oo00oo00oo

Byrd ducked and dodged through the glass-rattling explosions as he fluttered back into the base, eventually catching up to his best corporal. "By the blazes, Gabrielle, what's gone on here while I was gone?!" He expected there to be fallout from his disappearance, certainly - especially at a time like this, where the Sorceress seemed to be on some kind of resistance-smashing crime spree and/or random nest-building frenzy. (Though after meeting the purple dragon in the Gardens, he deduced the explanation for the dragon eggs suddenly turning up.) But rhynocs seemed to be tucked into every nook and cranny of the training base, running about with explosives, hummingbird nets, and those dastardly gold cages like the one that did him in at the Towers.

Gabrielle fluttered over to her superior, both of them ducked into a relatively-safe part of the base, surrounded by bulletproof glass that allowed them to watch the destruction of their base. "I'z war, Sergeant," she answered softly. "A war we were not prepared to fight."

"Give me the situation, quickly."

"The rhynocs began their invasion at 1845 hours," Gabrielle explained. "We defended the base as well as we could, but...well, without ze proper leadership, we could not put up a proper resistance. By 1900 hours, the rhynocs had taken over the base an' captured ze rest of ze hummingbird squad."

"Well, then we'll just have to throw all of the rhynocs out. I'll need to teach you hummingbirds a thing or two about base defending."

Gabrielle gave a gasp, her wings fluttering extra-hard for a beat at her surprise. "Sergeant, do you really intend to take out all of ze rhynocs by yourself?"

Byrd spun around on his flipper, quickly aiming and firing at a rhynoc protecting one of the tunnels deeper into the base. The blast disintegrated the invader into a shiny dragon gem, and its wake loosened the door on a nearby cage, allowing Private Claire to flutter free.

"Naturally, Gabrielle."

oo00oo00oo

Yes, the rhynoc invasion of the base meant there was lots of cleaning up to be done, but a true soldier's battles are never over. Yes, there were rhynocs to gun down and hummingbirds to rescue, but on top of the base chaos, there was one more dastardly fiend that needed to be disposed of.

"Sergeant Byrd, permission to question requested."

"Granted."

"I'z jus' a gopher, sir. Aren't there more important matters to attend to?"

"More important matters?!" Byrd looked horrified at the thought. "Bite your tongue, Gabrielle!"

The young corporal rolled her eyes. "Yes, sir. Sorry I brought it up."

"As you should be." Byrd's brow narrowed as he went back to his target, the scampering gopher at the bottom of the briefing room. His war with the burrowing devils went back years, when he first arrived at the hummingbird camp, a spry young penguin from the Frozen Altars with nothing but a dream to soar in the skies. The gophers did everything in their power to make his boot camp as miserable as possible - stealing his rockets, hiding his ammunition underground, making pitfalls to worsen his clumsy falls in flight training...and to make all of it worse, they were fast. If he ever tried to chase them down, natural selection saved the day. They could disappear underground before his stumbling flippers even had a chance to catch up.

When he became sergeant of the local militia, he had the bloody things chased out for good. Now that the rhynocs ran the base, they came back.

So he'd just have to chase them out again.

The penguin lined up his shot, fluttering high above the briefing room to avoid the gopher's notice. The rodent, enjoying its newfound freedom a bit TOO much, was rolling in casual circles in the war-stained grass, making a mess of his precious briefing room.

He'd only have one shot, so he took the time to make it perfect. Once he had it, Byrd launched the bomb clamped between his flippers, sending the projectile spiraling down, where it made perfect contact with the gopher hole. The explosion rocked the base, though no more than anything else as of late, and when the smoke cleared, there was no sign of the gopher or his infernal mole-hill.

...Though, there was also no floor. Instead, the loose rock dropped into a cavern, and both Byrd and Gabrielle stalled when they heard the frightened squawk of a hummingbird within its depths: "Nikita!"

In a panic, Sergeant and Corporal both rushed to the rescue, and after fighting through the choking heat of the lava-filled tunnels and blowing past the rhynocs standing guard, they freed young Private Nikita from her elaborate cage.

Yes, the time of war is serious business...but even one as serious as Byrd couldn't help but crack a smirk. "What was that about tending to important matters, Corporal?"

oo00oo00oo

With the hummingbirds free, the rhynocs pushed back, and a trio of dragon eggs rescued from their grubby hands, Sergeant Byrd thought it the perfect time to revisit with the purple dragon and discuss their next strike against the sorceress. Ideally, over shaken volcano-drinks at the Tiki Lodge in Molten Crater.

Quite a disappointment to hear that the Sorceress had sealed it up. For all of ten seconds until he blasted the door to smithereens with his newly-restocked shoulder-launchers.

Dragon and penguin both made their way into the Lodge, but upon realizing its odd build, Spyro opted to stay behind. The Lodge was barely a lodge at all. It was a dome, roughly speaking, with the walls made of a shining obsidian and the floor covered with a pulsing orange lava. Heads that spewed fire lined every hallway, and apart from the central platform, everything seemed out of reach. All of the halls and outcrops were high above their heads, and with the precarious lava below, it seemed an impossible lodge to manipulate.

"How do the tikis get around this place?" Spyro couldn't help but ask, looking for ANYTHING that might help him get around.

"Dodo feathers," Byrd explained, pointing up to the circling birds of paradise above. "It's a strange sort of magic that I couldn't explain in a hundred years, but having one lets you pop from place to place. Makes for quite a wild time at the parties, I must say."

"Okay, but why did they have to cover it in lava and fire?"

"Trying to keep out non-members, of course! Any REAL tiki doesn't mind a little heat now and again!" One of the "trapped" tikis, Shale, eventually met them at the door. "Did you finally get the door open? We thought the lodge would have to be shut down for good when that nasty sorceress came in!"

"No door of the Sorceress' was going to keep us out, soldier," Byrd responded promptly. "Is everyone alright?"

"Uhm..." Shale looked around to the half-finished tiki statues scattered around the lodge. "Mostly."

"Mostly isn't good enough," Spyro pointed out. "What happened?"

"Well, now that you've opened the door, we can get out and start helping with the rebuild," Shale started. "But, uh...we started a game of hide and seek while we were stuck in here." He motioned to the "statues", which - upon closer inspection - turned out to be tikis in disguise. "The rest of the guys have hidden their heads, and I don't know where. Would you two be willing to help me out?"

"Nothing a pair of class-A flyers like us can't handle," Byrd answered confidently. "Right, Spyro?"

The normally-brazen dragon had a moment of hesistation. True, in a speedway such a task would be a breeze (literally), but with the lodge air as thick and stagnant as it was, his wings were going nowhere fast. "Uhm...how about you go on ahead, and I'll stay down here in case any rhynocs try to sneak in?"

"Fair enough. I'll try to complete the mission with haste."

Spyro nudged Sparx to go follow and help Byrd if he needed it, then watched the penguin and dragonfly begin ducking in and out of the various halls and crevices. How comical was it, a flightless dragon paired with a flying penguin? ...Maybe a bit ironic for the audience, but it was only a sour truth for the young Artisan.

Squawk! "Bloody birds!" Bam! Fifteen years old, halfway to his second dragon-age, and he was still only at a dragonlet's level of basic gliding without help from a whirlwind or a superfly enchantment. And because of what? His size? His smaller frame was the secret to his legendary speed, even off of the supercharge ramps - depending on who told the story, it was the sole factor that allowed him to take out Gnasty Gnorc and start his adventures in the first place. But at the same time, his greatest weapon was also hindering him from his dreams of taking to the skies whenever he wanted.

Bambambam! Squawk! "By the gods, why is everything on fire?!" Was it funny that the first-hatched of the pack also happened to be the runt of the Artisan litter? Or whatever litter he actually came from? Again, maybe not funny - just an irony that hurt to swallow.

What WAS funny was the look of Sergeant Byrd when the military penguin returned from his task, dropping off the five missing heads in front of Shale, which all bounced to life and congratulated the soldier on his accomplishment (and booed their lodge brother for asking for help). The penguin was covered in all kinds of discomforting burns and scratches, not to mention a beakful of dodo feathers. "What, hide and seek a little too rough for ya, sarge?"

"Hardly," the penguin spat, dusting off his feathers. "If anything, I feel I need to bring my hummingbirds here and make them train in these fire-halls. Might I suggest we return to Midday Gardens and continue our mission?"

"Affirmative."

Shale waved off the heroes as they left the lodge, then looked down at the heads at his feet. "Guys, wait, come back! I can't reassemble these things by myself!"

Stupid dodos. As always, make sure to tune in next week, and while you're waiting, make sure to check out my profile, my other stories, and maybe pitch into my multiverse collaboration. :D (Poll's not there anymore; thanks for the outstanding turnout, guys. [/sarcasm]) Anyway, thanks for reading, guys, hope you enjoyed!

§ Tucker's Mayflower, signing off! §