Review Responses:

Pt35 - The scene was just Lin, Hidden and Luna talking with most of the other team members on the beach, but I felt ending it in Moss Town with just the three of them worked better. I didn't give Lin a more serious injury as well 'cause she needs to be better in a reasonably short amount of time, and a broken leg seems not too serious as to take her out of commission. This section of the story only takes place over about a month or so.

There is an anime/manga I really like that you might be interested in called Dr Stone. The gist is that all of humanity is turned to stone, and over 3700 years later, after all of modern civilization has practically disappeared, genius high schooler Senku Ishigami is awoken, and goes on a mission to revive everyone and bring back the modern world through the power of science. The series replaces many of the big fight scenes between two OP super dudes with battles of the mind, and much of the battle for the protagonists is going through the pain staking process of creating modern-ish technology from scratch. Don't know if you'd be into the style or over the top humor, but beyond what the show's already done, the manga has shown them making some pretty cool stuff. I could send you a PM with more spoilery details if you're interested.

ThunderbladeN - The conflict will pick up, but it will be a little while until then, as the story for now is mostly a fun romp across the multiverse. Honestly, I'm a little worried that it will feel a little abrupt once things get cookin' though I'm probably just over-stressing. I'd say more, but I don't want to spoil the surprise.

Chapter 27: The Pancake House

The Salvation

Deck 1 Halls

Early Afternoon

Being a human in a world ruled by dragons had its ups and downs; something Maple, and every other kid in her village learned early on. Don't stay out too late, or you'll get lost. Don't stray too far from the village, or you're bound to get eaten. And if you see a dragon, don't let it see you, and find someplace hide. Don't this, don't that. It was exhausting, and Maple knew she hadn't been the only youth in her small community to feel that way.

But unlike the rest of the kids her age, who had chosen to let fear consume their lives, and forever live under the stringent rules passed down from generation to generation, Maple had chosen to live life to the fullest, to let her curiosity, her vigor, drive her forward as she explored what little slice of the world was available to her. She stayed out late, strayed far from the village, and when she saw a dragon soar across the clouds, instead of cowering in fear, she gazed up in awe, wondering what it would be like to see the world from so high up.

Of course, this exciting lifestyle hadn't gelled very well with the rest of the villagers, fetching her a decent amount of criticism and scorn over the years. She didn't really care, after all, she was the only one in the village who could say that she had actually touched a dragon and lived to tell the tale. A sleeping dragon, of course, she wasn't stupid.

Still, by the time she had reached her early twenties, and still had yet to shed the "reckless" habits of her youth, she had started to get the impression that the other villagers were ready to throw her out. They probably would have too, had it not been for the horde of dragons that swooped down upon them one day, and built a massive wall around their quaint little settlement.

On the one hand, they had probably saved her from being left to fend for herself out in the wild, but on the other, her small slice of the world had been abruptly cut off, leaving her trapped in a small circle of land with a bunch of people that hated her.

But things were different now.

Now, she didn't just have the forests and foothills around her village to explore; she had the whole world, no, a whole BUNCH of worlds to explore! Not to mention the massive golden vessel she was standing within, and the bilingual human and dragons who inhabited it!

As she walked down the massive hallways of the Salvation, she couldn't help but feel excited, and maybe a tiny bit terrified too. Who knew what kinds of crazy adventures awaited her out there, amidst the limitless timelines of the multiverse?

The sounds of metal clanking could be heard resonating throughout the halls. Reggie was currently playing around with his new toy in the massive central chamber, rather clumsily at that. He'd already managed to leave a sizable dent in one of the smaller ships parked there.

Perhaps I ought to ask to give it a shot? she thought. She'd been just as excited as Reggie upon seeing the thing for the first time, but had politely decided to allow him to mess around with it first. He did seem to have a slightly better idea as to what exactly it was.

She continued pacing down the hallway, admiring the bright lights that hung from the ceiling, when she heard a strange noise echoing down the hall. It was nothing like the chaotic banging coming from the hangar; it sounded like music, but unlike any music she had ever heard before.

"The story of my life. I take her home. I fly all night to keep her warm inside."

The strange music was coming from a thick metal door a little ways further down the hall. Maple quietly walked over to it, and noticed that the door was cracked open, some sort of giant metal can about half her height having rolled in the way before it could fully close. She peeked in, noting the sterile white wall tiling and bright white lights embedded into the roof. Large dragon-sized cots lined both of the walls, with many shelves stuffed with bottles and bins of various unrecognizable items.

The sick bay, if she remembered correctly from the brief tour Reggie had given her the previous night.

On one of the cots on the right side of the room lay a black dragon covered in weird circular devices, cables draped between them. His torso and a couple of his legs were wrapped up in bandages.

Darkstalker...right? she thought. The dragon did resemble the tyrannical king they had defeated the day before, almost scarily so. He seemed too preoccupied looking at a rectangular device in his talons to notice her, a split cord running from the device to both of his ears. He lay with his eyes closed, singing quietly, and rather beautifully, in Syllabic, blissfully ignorant to the human spying on him from the other side of the door.

Maple carefully climbed over the metal can, trying her best not to make a sound as she came in for a closer look. She thought back to the time she had touched a dragon, a desert dragon that had decided to take a nap in the middle of the forest. It's pale yellow scales had shone brightly in the afternoon sunlight, so enticing that Maple couldn't resist getting a closer look.

She'd made it without alerting the sand dragon then, so naturally she'd be able to sneak up on this dragon without getting spotted.

As she drew closer, she was able to make out the rectangular device more clearly. Stuck to the back of it was a small picture of some kind of dome shaped vehicle with two wheels, a picture she thought she had seen on a similar sized device that the sky dragon Ricky had been using. She wondered for a second why this dragon would have Ricky's...whatever it was, when the singing suddenly stopped.

Maple slowly looked up to see Darkstalker staring down at her, simultaneously appearing surprised, angry, and embarrassed. She meekly waved at him, only to be met by a barrage of angry growls, roars, and other grumblings in Draconic. She quickly turned tail and ran, nearly slipping on the smooth white tiled floor as she fled the sick bay.

While she couldn't understand a word Darkstalker was shouting, it didn't take a genius to know that she wasn't wanted there.

She leapt over the metal can, her left foot accidentally kicking it loose and causing the door to slam shut behind her. She stood in the hall, hunched over with her hands on her knees, catching her breath.

Well. That was...exhilarating….

She looked around, the sounds of banging metal still resonating throughout the ship, and strode back down the hall toward one of the archways leading to the hangar. She walked past a giant rectangular pair of metal doors, a smaller pair right next to them. Pieces of paper had been stuck to the wall next to them with strips of some kind of shiny clear paper, and while she couldn't read the Draconic written on them, she remembered Reggie telling her that these were called "elevators".

She turned right and stepped into the hangar, briefly gazing up at the ceiling so high above, it almost looked like a metal sky. Even after spending the night in the ship, she still couldn't get enough of its many wonders.

"Hey, Reggie!" she shouted, turning her attention to a metal dragon standing at the center of the chamber. It stood tall on its hind legs, rearing up to kick with one of them, when it turned its head in her direction, and promptly fell over on its metal backside with a resounding thud.

Maple winced, watching the Reggie-tron slowly clamber back up onto all fours, laying down on the ground as its chest cavity opened. Reggie waved at her from inside the mech, grinning.

"Hey Maple! Wazzup?"

"Nothing really." she began, "Just wondering if I could give that thing a try."

"Oh, yeah sure! I was just practicing my mecha combat skills, you know? Like, WHAM! KAPOW!" he replied, punching at the air.

"Looked more like a kersplat to me." Maple said with a cheeky grin. Reggie chuckled, scratching the messy tuft of black hair on his head. He hopped out of the machine's cockpit, stepping aside as Maple pulled herself up into it.

"It does take a lot of getting used to." he explained. "I saw mechs on TV all the time, but it's nothing compared to actually piloting one. Still pretty friggin' awesome though!"

"It better be!" she said, feeling herself well up in anticipation as the cockpit closed in front of her. The chest sealed with a hiss, and shortly thereafter a large image of the hangar appeared before her. Its perspective was slightly higher than what she had seen from the cockpit, and Maple guessed that this is what the Reggie-tron was seeing with its "eyes".

"Hey, Maple! Can you hear me?" she heard Reggie shout, although she wasn't quite sure how, considering she was completely surrounded by metal.

"Y-Yeah. I can hear ya." she replied.

"Good. Now, there should be a blinking red button in there." Reggie shouted.

Maple looked around the cramped cockpit, and noticed a button matching Reggie's description on one of the armrests of her surprisingly comfortable seat. She pressed it, and the arm rests were abruptly retracted, two odd gauntlet looking devices popping out in their place. She stared at them curiously, and instinctively slipped her hands into them.

"Found it." she said.

"Alright, now there should be a couple glove lookin' things there. You need to carefully…."

Maple pulled her arms upward, and was immediately thrown forward in her seat as the Reggie-tron reared up onto its hind legs, nearly falling onto its back once again. She quickly swung her arms back down, and the Reggie-tron brought its front talons down upon the metal floor of the hanger with a massive bang.

"Carefully put your hands in." Reggie finished.

A sizable dent now resided in the spot where the Reggie-tron's talons had been brought down. Maple chuckled, remembering when Reggie had nearly punched a hole in the wall of the storage locker after first stepping into the thing.

"Okay." she said, "What's next?"

She spent the next hour or two listening to Reggie explain to her the different hand movements she could use to pilot the mech, and attempting to the best of her effort to replicate them. Though, it seemed that even if she executed the motions perfectly, the mech would still falter, something she attributed to her teacher barely being able to land a kick with the thing without stumbling.

At the very least, Reggie did seem quite knowledgeable in getting the Reggie-tron up off of the ground.

As she practiced, Reggie would also interject with words in draconic, sometimes even saying some of his instructions in strings of growls and grumbles. Maple tried her best to translate, though she had to admit that the multitasking was making the situation far more tedious.

Still, she eventually started to get the hang of it, even managing to walk the metal dragon across the hangar and back again on its hind legs, though their session was ended prematurely by the arrival of a blue and purple rainforest dragon.

"Oh, hey Xavier!" Reggie said, as Maple lowered the Reggie-tron into a resting position. She slipped her hands out of the gauntlets and pressed the blinking red button once again, causing the gauntlets to retract and the mech's chest to open.

"Just wanted to let you know that we'll be heading out soon, Hidden's apparently found a safe timeline to set down in." Xavier explained.

He turned to walk back to the bridge, as Maple stepped up next to Reggie. "Last chance." Reggie said, turning to her with a knowing grin.

"For what?" she asked.

"To hop off. Once we're gone, you may never see this place again."

Maple smirked. "Yeah? Well good riddance!" Maple exclaimed, "This world probably doesn't have half as much cool stuff as I've seen in here!"

Reggie smiled back, and the two watched Xavier step out of the hangar.

"Oh, one more thing!" the rainforest dragon said, sticking his head back through the archway. "How do you two feel about pancakes?"

Moss Town

The Pancake House

Early Morning

The sun had only just begun to grace the barren plains of the Pantalan continent with its warm rays, yet the Pancake house was already bustling with activity. Dragons chattered around a large counter that surrounded a corner of the building, the shiny kitchen clearly visible behind it. Music played from a large machine rimmed with neon lights near the entrance. Almost half of the tables were taken up by dragons eagerly chowing down or bantering in their guttural language.

Maple took it all in, the sights, the sounds, the smells! It was all too much for her brain to handle at once, and at the same time not nearly enough! She could already feel herself salivating at the thought of the meal to come.

She and Reggie had been seated at one of the human sized tables, secluded on a slightly raised wooden deck out of the way of the main walkways. The only other human there besides them was an old man who had been silently staring at his half eaten pancakes since they'd arrived. Maple was pretty sure that he was dead.

"So, this is the multiverse?" she asked, staring up at the pale wooden walls that were covered in incredibly detailed pictures of the owner at various fantastical locations.

Reggie shrugged. "It's the first other timeline with advanced tech I've been to. Apparently Hidden and Xavier visited another one, though."

Hidden and Xavier, as well as Ricky and Lin, were all seated together at a table not far from the platform, chatting with each other in draconic. Maple couldn't make out most of what they were saying, but she guessed that they were talking about Hidden and Lin's little adventure earlier that night, and the injury Lin had incurred in a fight against someone named "Luna".

The swamp dragon, or EarthWing as they called her, had one of her hind legs wrapped up in white cloth. Apparently, she'd been injured in a weekly fighting tournament held beneath The Pancake House, and had won by default.

The multiverse was just full of surprises.

Suddenly, a large metal ball emerged from the kitchen, a single large red eye taking up much of its front side. It glided towards them along ceiling-mounted rails that it clung to from a metal pole, swinging around to stop next to Hidden and co's table, and extending its pole to meet them at eye level.

Maple leaned back in her seat, watching apprehensively as the metal ball spoke to the four dragons in draconic, projecting images onto thin air with its eye. Something about it rubbed her the wrong way, but Reggie seemed to think it was great.

"Hey look at that! Robotic waiters!" he exclaimed, turning to face her while pointing a thumb back at the machine.
"Robotic what?" Maple asked, but before Reggie could answer, the machine finished speaking with the dragons, and to her horror glided over to their table next. It dropped down right next to them, its metal body nearly as tall as she was, its giant red eye staring at them emotionlessly.

"HELLO! WELCOME TO THE PANCAKE HOUSE! HOW MAY WE SERVE YOU TODAY!" it said in a synthetic friendly tone which only served to creep Maple out even more.

"Whadaya got?" Reggie asked casually, grinning from ear to ear.

The "waiter" projected a series of images from its eye, slightly startling Maple, and Reggie spent a moment looking between the various dining options on display. He reached out to touch one of the images, which quickly transformed into a three dimensional projection of the food item in question, a list of information about what was in it appearing to the side.

"I...think I'll have the number four." Reggie said, nodding to the machine.

"CERTAINLY." the machine said. It abruptly turned to face Maple, causing her to scoot her chair back a bit as it stared at her with its giant red eye. "AND WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE THIS MORNING?"

"I-I...I uh…." Maple stuttered, unable to think of an answer under the thing's intense stare. "Wh...what do you think?"

Maple thought she could hear Reggie sighing at her remark, though the robot didn't seem at all phased.

"WOULD YOU LIKE TO TRY THE FIGHT NIGHT SPECIAL? IT IS ONLY AVAILABLE ON FRIDAYS AND SATURDAYS!" The machine continued. Maple silently nodded, unable to think of a response.

"YOUR FOOD WILL BE READY SHORTLY!" the thing finished, and to Maple's relief it rose back up to the ceiling and glided back to the kitchen where it came from. She let out a loud sigh, Reggie looking at her with an amused grin.

"What was all that about?" he asked, "It was just a robot, like the Reggie-tron."

"That...thing was nothing like the Reggie-tron." Maple replied. "It was weird, and it seemed alive, but...not. And it's eye! It felt like it was staring into my soul!"

Reggie chuckled, and turned towards the kitchen, where the desert dragon who owned the place was busily working amongst the silvery appliances. "I guess we'll have to see what this 'Fight Night Special' is then, won't we?" he remarked.

Maple nodded, and turned to look back up at the many pictures covering the walls. The locations depicted in them were so varied and unique, from massive gorges carved into layers of brown and red rock, to jungles filled with plants unlike anything she'd ever seen, to...wait, was that the surface of one of the moons?!

"I wonder what timeline we'll be going to next?" she asked, captivated by the wondrous pictures. Everything she had seen so far since she had joined the team (minus the creepy waiter-bot) had been more and more exciting.

"You could come along on the next advanced team." Reggie offered.

Maple was about to respond, when a large platter carrying two plates of food swung out of the kitchen, dropping down right next to them. A robotic arm extended from the shaft holding it to the rails, grabbing plates, glasses, and silverware and placing them down in front of the two.

"ENJOY!" it said in the same synthetic voice as the "waiter", before rising back up to the ceiling and gliding off to the kitchen.

Atop Reggie's plate were a couple of the flat circular pieces of bread called "pancakes", as well as some fluffy yellow stuff that was supposed to be eggs that had been scrambled. A glass of clear orange juice that apparently came from apples was set next to it, though it wasn't Reggie's breakfast that had captured the two's attention.

"Holy moons Maple, that's a lotta pancake!" Reggie exclaimed.

Maple could only stare down at her food in utter silence. Atop her plate were three massive pancakes, so big they were hanging over the edges of the dish. Sticky brown syrup was drenched atop each of them, pooling over onto the table, and a massive glob of butter was heaped on top. To the side was a single glass of milk, dwarfed by the monstrous mountain of a meal.

"I...uh...don't know where to start!" Maple said, still stunned at the sheer size of her meal. She picked up a metal fork near the plate, and cut off a small chunk of one of the pancakes. She held it up to her face, briefly smelling the sweet aroma of the syrup, before slipping it into her mouth.

To put the taste of the Fight Night Special to words would be a disservice to its splendor in every way imaginable, especially for someone who had only ever dined on hastily prepared animal meat and raw fruits and vegetables. For a moment, Maple forgot the world around her, the fluffy pancake bread melting in her mouth as it melded with the sweet maple syrup. She swallowed the bite, and immediately shoveled two more down her throat.

"So, uh, what do you say?" Reggie asked, snapping Maple out of her delicious trance. She took a moment to remember what Reggie had offered earlier, about the advanced team, and nodded, too consumed with consuming her meal to give a more in depth answer.

"Yeah...sure…." she said through a full mouth.

Reggie grinned, and turned to face the four dragons sitting near them, who were still waiting for their food.

"Hey, Maple and I are coming on the next advanced team, that alright?" he shouted, attracting the attention of a few of the strangers seated nearby.

"Sure, you'll be joining me and Ricky." Xavier said, "Hidden'll stay behind on the Salvation with Lin and Dark."

"Hold on, I never agreed to this." Hidden remarked.

"Yeah, well the rest of us did, so deal with it." Xavier said with a sly grin.

Reggie turned back to Maple, and she saw his jaw drop. "M-Maple…?" he stuttered.

"Yeah, what?" Maple asked.

"Wh-where in Pyrrhia did your pancakes go?!"

Maple looked down at her plate, and sure enough all that was left was the sticky brown residue of maple syrup. "Huh." she said, "Guess I already ate 'em all."

Reggie stared at her in a shocked silence for a moment, Maple snickering at his dumbstruck expression.

"You are terrifying." he said.

"DRAGONS! THEY'RE COMING!"

Maple froze, brief flashbacks of the dragon's invasion of her village flashing before her eyes. A chortle from Reggie was enough to snap her out of it, as she turned and saw the old man looking around frantically, like he'd just been plopped down in his seat without any explanation. He eventually spotted his plate of food, and continued eating as if nothing had happened.

Maple and Reggie briefly chuckled, before transitioning into a conversation about what kind of worlds they could visit next as Reggie finished his meal.

AN:

The first half of this chapter came pretty naturally to me, and I think it contains some of the best writing in this story yet, though the second half was pretty tough to write. I decided to leave out any bits of Maple and Reggie exploring Moss Town, as it would be pretty redundant and pointless, and they'll be exploring a different town together later. Trying to find ways to put scene description in with good character dialogue and also convey all the info I need to get across (which is a lot) while also keeping good pacing and flow is really difficult, though what's new?

The Pancake House is supposed to be like an IHOP but with a futuristic table waiting service straight outta Portal 2.

This chapter was a pretty light-hearted one, and the coming ones will be as well. There probably won't be any substantial conflicts until a bit later on, but trust me when I say they are gonna be substantial.