"Who's a good boy? You are! You are!" Ty Lee baby voice praised Simba a she hugged his massive head. My eyes drifted from where we stood hidden behind a rocky plateau just a few clicks away from New Ozai.
After dealing with the Sand Shark, the trip through the Si Tong desert passed remarkably quickly. We only had to camp there for one night. Granted, the small rocky mountain we camped on turned out to be a Buzzard Wasp nest, but they weren't much of a threat unless they attacked in mass, and even though they came at us in numbers of twenty three, between myself, Ty Lee, Simba and Mong, it had been laughably easy. I even managed to tame one. They were pretty big, just a bit smaller than Mong, and with the ability to fly, so I figured one of them would be helpful. She, was not exactly Appa, but it would be possible to ride her and fly on her, even if not as comfortable as Appa.
And from there, the next morning it was a straight shoot right along the desert up to the cave of two lovers. Ty Lee was incredibly interested in the story of Oma and Shu when I told her about it and wanted to check it out. I was all for it, since I know there's a bunch of different kind of beasts within that mountain labyrinth. Most tempting of all, being the Badger Moles.
But I wasn't too keen on entering the mountain tunnels, even if I knew the secret behind navigating them without the ability to bust myself out of there should I need to.
The trip itself through the desert I admit was much shorter than I imagined it would be. But then, that was mostly because of Simba being a tamed beast. He'd become partially like me, with the body of a video game beast. While he didn't have access to skills and such like me, the game itself gave it the body of a game character, meaning like me his overall physical health restored much more rapidly than normal, as such, he very rarely needed to take any breaks and the ones he did take were incredibly short.
My eyes drifted up to the top of New Ozai, where I could see the still in construction, half finished statue of Fire Lord Crapzai. 'I wonder how they'd all react if I dropped the sand shark's body on it?' I wondered. I'd checked out its body in the hope of hopes it was still clinging to life, but no, it had been well and truly dead. So I just placed its corpse in my inventory. I'm not exactly sure if I can do anything with it, but it's the body of a two hundred foot plus shark creature. If nothing else I could use it to show off, or if I move on to a modern world I could like drop it somewhere and see the chaos it created. That would be funny as fuck.
"You ready to go?" Ty Lee asked, breaking me from my thoughts.
I turned to her to see she had disengaged from Simba and was smiling my way, while Simba lay on his folded legs watching us. "Yeah," I nodded. I made my way over to Simba and pet him on the snout, "Thanks for all the hard work buddy."
The giant cross between a moose, a saber tooth tiger and a lion snorted through his nostrils at him, but nodded lightly, and leaned lightly into my touch. He'd not been a very big fan of me when I first tamed him the other day, but he did take a liking to Ty Lee, which I couldn't blame him for. And He'd lightened up around me personally when I took care of the sand shark. I suppose while it may not be a true liking just yet, he at least seems to respect me.
I pet him for a few more moments, before returning him to his crystal within my soul. I paused as that thought hit me. 'My soul huh?' I mused. Since they were more or less tied to and living within my soul, does that mean my soul is strengthened by each new tamed beast?
I don't know. I didn't think even to ask the system anything like that before I toggled off the interfaces. I'll need to make sure and ask when I toggle it back on.
Ty Lee intertwined the fingers of one of her hands with mine and pulled me along, "C'mon, I want to get some clothes at New Ozai before we go to the port and get on the ship to the Fire Nation." she said.
I let her drag me along, I need to grab some more clothes anyway, especially shorts for swimming, and well, Ty Lee needs a swimsuit of her own if we're going to the Ember Islands.
Infiltrating New Ozai was incredibly simple. All we had to do was move around out of sight of the rock bridge that led to the front gate and then jump the gap. Sounded incredibly simple right? Well, for me and Ty Lee, it was.
The gap was a good one hundred feet wide, a gap that led down into a massive chasm that dropped thousands of feet. Ty Lee just started a few feet of a run before jumping and somersaulting through the air, easily clearing the distance. I couldn't do that. With a running leap with all my strength, I only cleared half that distance, but I had the jet propulsion technique and it was easy to propel myself along the rest of the distance. From there, we both just scaled the city walls and dropped down into it.
"What do you think?" Ty Lee asked, stepping out of the dressing room of the final clothing shop she wanted to visit, we'd hit up three of them previously.
I swallowed heavily as I took her in, posing with her hands on her hips and grinning at me. She was clad in a very familiar sling and skirt type white bikini. Her large, round breasts hung heavily in the sling cups of the bikini top, the fire nation emblem gleaming with what was sure to be smugness between the cups that connected them together, between her abundant and deep cleavage.
She was always showing off her midriff, so I thought I was used to it. But the way the white skirt clung to her perfectly proportional hips in a 'V' shape showed off just how perfectly trim her waist was. I was both happy with the fact that the skirt had tight orange shorts underneath and unhappy about that fact. A thong style swimsuit bottom would look absolutely amazing on her perky, perfectly round little bubbly ass, but at the same time wearing that one mean anyone else could get such an amazing view as well and it would already be annoying with how much guys would hound her even without that.
She was just that absolutely gorgeous, with a body that was total sex on legs. I had trouble containing the desire for her that pooled in my lower stomach.
I put that out of mind, it didn't matter anyway in the end, anyone who tried anything would get the same treatment as the sand shark. Hmm, or maybe I'll keep the sand shark corpse around and just use it to beat the crap out of anyone who tries? I don't think I'm strong enough to pick it up though. The thing is at least two hundred feet in size. And from what I remember, the Megalodon were roughly estimated to be about sixty feet, and were estimated to weigh anywhere from between thirty to sixty five tons. The sand shark is a good three times larger in size and a bit more. I'm not very knowledgeable about how mass works, but just because it was only three times larger, didn't mean its weight was only three times more. I'm not sure how to calculate it, but even if it was just a mere three times more in weight, that would mean the sand shark would be anywhere between ninety to over two hundred tons.
Yeah, I'm definitely not anywhere close to being able to lift that thing. Guess I'll need a super strength training montage in the future. But for now, I can be content with just dropping it on top of them from my inventory itself.
...Hey there's an idea. I wonder what kind of expression Ozai would make if I just dropped it on top of him with no warning. That would be hilarious.
"Hello~" Ty Lee snapped her fingers in front of my face breaking me from my very amusing, dastardly plans, "You're not doing my confidence any good here you know zoning out when I'm modelling a bikini for you."
I grabbed her by those perfectly proportioned hips of hers and pulled her into my lap, she yelped a bit at the surprise pull, but giggled a moment letter, wrapping her arms around my neck, "Sorry, you look that amazing I couldn't think of anything that would be able to describe you."
"Good enough for me!" she nodded eagerly before planting a kiss on my lips and standing up, "This will do, lemme just change out of it into my regular stuff and we can get out of here."
"Alright." I waved her off, leaning back onto the seat I was sitting on. It was lucky I had an inventory man, otherwise I'd be lugging around dozens of bags at this point. Before this bikini shop, she'd checked out two different clothing stores, a shoe store and now this store. And I'd spent twenty fire nation gold pieces so far.
Which was a lot considering that one hundred gold pieces would be enough to feed a family of four for a year easily. I'd spent a fifth of that on clothing for her, and was about to spend a little bit more to purchase this bikini for her. Not that I minded in anyway, I can always get more money. I mean, I don't even actively need most of the weapons I've got stored in my inventory, they would all be worth a pretty penny.
I'd been hoping I could pull a Gilgamesh using my inventory, because the Gate of Babylon is just that cool, but no such luck. I could bring any item out of my inventory within a ten feet radius, even mid-air as long as it was at a maximum of ten feet above me. But I couldn't accelerate them in any direction or anything like that. All they would do if I pulled them out mid-air like that around me, was drop to the ground. I suppose it could work for a hell of a distraction if I like just pulled all the heavy weapons out and let them fall on someone, but it's not exactly a viable combat technique.
That's totally alright though, because one day I'll make a fire technique to conjure flame weapons all around me and shoot them at people. Maybe I can pull out my throne and sit on it while doing it to Ozai and call him a mongrel. That would be hella satisfying man.
A minute or two later Ty Lee came back out of the dressing room fully changed and I paid for her swimsuit. It cost a whole gold coin. But, considering how well it was made compared to the standard attire most people wore around here, well I could understand.
I stored it in my inventory and we left the shop behind, walking through the streets of New Ozai. We decided to hit up a restaurant for some nice cooked food before we left. Ty Lee surprisingly was quite okay with things when it came to roughing it a bit and camping, and even when I tamed Buzzy, my Buzzard Wasp, she hadn't been grossed out at all, which was unexpected from a girl considering Buzzy was a cross between a buzzard and a wasp, not exactly a pretty creature to look at.
Ty Lee led along, since I didn't know where any places to eat were in New Ozai. She had apparently toured the city while we were stuck here for a week.
"Ooh, what's that?" Ty Lee pointed excitedly at something just as we passed a guard station and barracks. A familiar guard station and barracks, one of the ones I'd looted.
I followed her finger and my eyes widened, before a grin spread across my face, "That baby, that is our ticket to avoiding getting on a boat altogether and saving a hell of a lot of time."
Positioned in front of the guard house, was a hot air balloon, baring the emblem of the Fire Nation. One of the war balloons. I'd been hoping to pick one of these up when we got to the Fire Nation itself, but to think I'd find one here!
"Oooh!" she hummed in interest, "So what is it then?"
"It's a hot air balloon," I replied, "When you put hot air in that big red balloon, it will make it float into the air and you can travel through the air in it."
"That sounds amazing!" Ty Lee beamed at me, her excitement palpable, "I was gonna ask you to let me fly on Buzzy's back but this will be even better, that boat compartment thing its attached to will give us both plenty of room!"
There were four guards around it, all dressed in the traditional fire bender soldier armour, one positioned at each corner around it to watch all the vantage points of each direction. "We just need to take care of the guards, then I can stick it in my inventory," I mused, "Though we should probably wait until later when there aren't many pe-"
I never got to finish, "I'll take care of them then!" my girlfriend sprung forward, jumping and flipping fifty feet through the air in a single bound, coming down on the opposite side of the war balloon. A split few moments later there were a pair of pained grunts, and the two fire benders guarding on that side were limp on the ground, paralyzed.
The other two on my side heard their grunts and sprung into action, dashing around the to that side, only before they even got around, Ty Lee back flipped through the air over the war balloon, they didn't even see her she was that quick, she landed and dashed around the back of one and downed him, and when his friend gave a shout of shock, she used the cover of the one that was falling, to outright cartwheel over them both, landing behind the final guard before he could do anything and a rapid blur of quick jabs put him down as well.
It took her literal seconds to take down four fire bending guards.
"There we go!" she jumped over the war balloon to land in front of it and beam at me, holding a thumbs up.
..And the civilians on the street, seeing what was to them probably powerful soldiers on the ground, defeated effortlessly, was enough to make them cry out In fear and rush way in a panic.
Ty Lee blinked, "Ooops." she laughed sheepishly, rubbing the back of her head.
I couldn't help grinning, "It's fine!" I said, rushing over to touch my hand to the war balloon and storing it within my inventory.
"What now?" Ty Lee asked.
"Well, we need to get out of here, no matter how much fun it would be to run wild in this city," I replied, grabbing her hand and pulling her along with me as I started running towards the closest wall of the city, "Looks like we'll have to take a rain check on that restaurant date."
"Ah, and I was looking forward to it too!" she pouted, before wrapping herself lightly on the head, "Bad Ty Lee, never thinking things through."
Just as we were nearing the end of the long winding street we were on, a platoon of five soldiers came rushing skidding around. Two wielding spears, three in fire bender armour.
"There they are!" One of the spear wielders pointed.
Oooh, lovely, I was just thinking that it was disappointing I missed out on the experience points of defeating those four benders a minute ago.
The three fire benders jumped forward, each unleashing large streams of flame from their fists towards us as we ran at them. Flame ignited along my arm and I threw my own punch towards them, "Fire Fist!" I shouted, unleashing my super ultra original secret signature technique.
I keep the amount of chi I put in it minimal, but still the huge car sized fist of flame ploughed into their flame streams and absorbed them, before slamming into the ground. I didn't make the flames all that hot, but the concussive force of it exploding outwards when it made impact was enough to send all five of them sprawling.
"You've been using that a lot now," Ty Lee commented casually, not even blinking, "You even used it against the buzzard wasps despite the fact it would have been easier and more practical using something like what those guys just did."
"I mean...it's my favourite technique and I like using it." I shrugged, it was a lame explanation but it really was why I kept using it now. I looked up at the wall we were approaching rapidly as we continued passed the defeated fire nation soldiers.
Ty Lee hummed in thought before smiling and nodding, "That's a good reason, I like it!" she agreed, "I mean, what's the point of life if you aren't enjoying it?"
My thoughts exactly. She pulled her hand from my own then as we approached the wall and jumped onto my back, wrapping her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck, "Ride on my gallant steed!" she jokingly ordered.
Well, alright then. I jumped, calling flame from the soles of my feet and soaring up through the air and over the wall with flame propulsion. "Weeeee!" my energetic girlfriend cheered as we soared through the air.
Experience points, a war balloon AND getting to see my babe of a girlfriend in her iconic bikini. 'Today really has been a good day.' I smiled. It was good to be me.
Anyway, again, shameless Pa-atreon plug. I've got one, go by the same username on there, easy to find and all that jazz. Support me if you want, it'd be swell, but don't feel pressured lads and ladies, I'll be uploading my stuff outside it regardless and not keeping it all behind a paywall or anything like that.