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"I thought killer mushrooms were just a myth!" Blazing Fang
yelped, as he watched the line of red eyed mushrooms patrol the edge of the omelette
filled lake. "An old tale... a, a joke!"
"And we all thought a dinosaur laid the eggs
for the Tyrannian omelette too, and that sort of thinking got the Tyrannians
smooshed, if you remember," Zebhead332 told him smugly.
"What can we do? We can't beat them to the other
side of the lake if we turn around," shot back Blazing Fang.
"Then fight them!"
"I don't have a sword!"
"Well, thump them over the head!"
"That many? Those teeth? Are you mad?"
"Are you a wimp?!"
As the small splashes of red and blue that made
up Blazing Fang and Zebhead332 argued on in the omelette, Chia shivered overhead
on the mountain ridges. He looked fearfully around, and with a soft moan continued
climbing, knowing that the smell and trail of the omelette clinging to him would
lead the giant Tonu ever nearer. But he was safe, as long as he kept on the
mountain face where the Tonu could not venture, and his slippery, omelette covered
feet never lost their hold...
Below him, the row of carnivorous mushrooms
advanced toward the lake. One by one they gnashed their rather large teeth,
jumped into the omelette, and... disappeared. Just like Zebhead had fearfully
predicted, they were merging with the omelette.
As the last mushroom was absorbed, the voices
of Blazing Fang and Zebhead332 petered out. The omelette, previously sitting
there peaceably and going about the business of being an inanimate pool, now
rose up from the valley and began to advance towards the two with what certainly
looked like evil intentions on the mind... or whatever it is that omelettes
think with. Seeing this, Blazing Fang pulled Zeb from the still inactive omelette
around them and pitched him into the air as far as he could.
"Fly for it!" he yelled to the little Zebba,
and obeying for once, Zebhead struggled to unstick his wings. With a loud pop
they came apart and began to whirl furiously to regain height. The tidal wave
of omelette stalled, and began to climb upwards, a huge mass determined to swallow
Zebhead. With a high pitched girlish scream, Zebhead dived to the side and avoided
the omelette, zigzagging frantically and forcing the mass to divide in several
long tentacles to try and catch him.
Blazing Fang, meanwhile, was making use of the
time to swim to the edge, while cursing himself for throwing Zeb so close to
the omelette. The little Zebba was slowing down, too sticky, too full of omelette,
and too worn to evade the carnivorous wave so deftly. Blazing Fang too, was
tiring from the hard slog to shore, so much that when his back paws hit ground
he could no longer swim the last few metres to safety. He slumped over, and
unable to hold up his heavy body any longer, Blazing Fang's head was dragged
under.
Images flashed through his tired mind, several
regrets, and a lot of fighting and losing and winning which all jumbled up and
meant nothing to him as all thoughts faded. Exhausted muscles relaxed as his
air supply ran out. His mind emptied of everything. Even hope.
It was a sore and sorry Blazing Fang that was
dragged from the omelette by two of his friends. Chet Flash looked down at the
peaceful face for only a moment, before he poured the healing potion down into
Blazing Fang's throat. With a ragged cough, Blazing Fang looked up as the mysterious
Chet Flash disappeared off into the snow.
"Wa-a-it..." he gasped, then began coughing
again.
"Take it easy there, my friend. You almost drowned,"
the second figure told him.
"Sabre-X," Blazing Fang managed to say, before
collapsing again. Sabre-X nodded, and smiled.
"Good to see your mind's still here. Rest, recover,"
he told Blazing Fang firmly. "And recuperate."
"Listen," persisted Blazing Fang anyway, "Does
Chet Flash know any Tyrannian Chias?"
The omelette supervisor gave him a weird look.
"No idea. Do you think he does?"
"No," came the reply.
Zebhead ducked under one arm of the omelette,
puffing with the effort of staying in the air. It was no use just avoiding the
omelette, he was going to have to out pace it. Turning from the omelette, Zeb
whizzed off towards the mountains around the valley. The omelette turned around
in a roaring wave of edible mass and splashed after Zeb, tearing up the sides
of the valley as easily as it had streamed down them. It followed Zeb deeper
into the mountains, crashing around the sides of them and always just behind
the frustrating little blue creature. Then just below him. Then reaching up
for the worn Zebba, who was struggling to twitch his wings up and down and keep
going, who had reached the freezing cold ice caves and was losing height...
But Zebhead332 was not the only thing losing
speed. The omelette, moving along the icy ground, was becoming more sluggish
as it began to lose its mostly liquid state. The cold of the ice caves floor
began to break the mass up into icicles of omelette, until finally the omelette
was a huge ice block of frozen food, and the little Zebba tumbled down onto
the Negg faeries' roof, completely exhausted.
The Negg Faerie looked up from the Christmas
Lupe, who was trying to trade in neggs she was sure she'd seen in the Snowagers'
hoard just a few days ago, to listen to the thump of something hitting her roof.
Excusing herself, she ran out into the snow and was greeted with a mass of icicle
omelette, right in the coldest part of the ice caves. Poor thing, she
thought. Probably used to the warm climates of Tyrannia.
Something else used to warmer climates rolled
off her roof at that point, and a ball of blue fur landed shivering at her feet.
Gathering it up, she examined the little petpet as she took him inside.
"And where are you from?" she asked the shivering
thing.
"Nuh-nuh-nowhere," he sneezed. "I'm su-supposed
to be Bluh-bluh- ACHOO! Blazing Fang's sidekick."
"Well, where is he?" queried the Negg Faerie
tenderly, so much so that the Zebba began to sniffle, though to give him the
benefit of the doubt, that may have just been the cold.
"I don't know," he admitted.
"You know Blazing Fang?" piped up the voice
of the Christmas Lupe. "Protector of creatures everywhere, champion of the defenseless,
helper of little old ladies across the street?"
"Yeah, I do," replied the sniffling Zebba.
"Have a negg," said the Lupe. Zebhead gratefully
took the negg and demolished it without thinking.
"OOOOW!" he yelled.
The Lupe grinned at him. "It's a fire negg.
Warmed you up?"
"You bet," a disgruntled Zebhead snapped. The
Negg Faerie smiled fondly and set Zeb down on the ground. His cold had completely
disappeared.
"Here," she said, offering Zebhead a second
negg. "For energy."
Zeb gratefully scoffed it down, and remembering
to thank the Faerie, and a little more grudgingly the Lupe, left again to brave
the cold of the ice caves.
"Zebhead!"
Blazing Fang's face split into a grin at the
sight of Zeb. Zeb dived down to stand next to the two Lupes with a look of triumph
on his face.
"The omelette..." he paused dramatically. "Is
no more but a statue in the ice caves. Zebhead332 has prevailed again."
Blazing Fang smirked. "I wish I could say the
same for the Tonu, but she is still at large."
"Then we'll split up and find her," Sabre-X
suggested. "There's a lot of ground to cover."
"And a small amount of time to cover it."
Chia whimpered under the glare of the Tonu.
He had just mounted the top of the mountain, only to find the giant Tonu staring
down on him from the sunlit peak. After a few failed attempts at trying to climb
back down, Chia discovered just how much harder getting down something is, compared
to going up. The Tonu grinned at the Chia and reached down to hook his tunic
with her mouth and pull him up. After this, the Chia decided that what with
such slim options of escape, most of them involving a very long fall, it would
be better just to cower and whimper quietly.
"Tonu ho!" the voice of Zebhead332 cried, and
Blazing Fang appeared on the mountain top just behind Chia. Chia gulped with
relief at the sight of him.
The Tonu didn't look quite so happy.
"Blast you all! Jank to everything!" she cried.
"I was so close to revenge! The hero always interrupts it!"
"Too bad Tonu," Blazing Fang replied. The Tonu
snarled in answer, and lowering her head, thundered towards Blazing Fang and
Chia. Acting immediately, Blazing Fang grabbed Chia and leapt out of the way.
He and the Tonu tottered at different edges of the mountain, the Tonu trying
to stop all her weight from pulling her over. Blazing Fang and Chia fell backwards
from the edge, Chia scrambling away the instant Blazing Fang released him.
With a growl, the Tonu pulled back and turned
towards Blazing Fang again. The red Lupe sat up, and seeing the Tonu, shuffled
his paws frantically through the snow in search of a weapon. All he came up
with was a fragment of his sword, which had fallen from his pouch. As he turned
it over, it caught the sunlight and glinted with all the beauty of steel. Another
small fragment, this time of memory, danced around in his brain, and he remembered
the Tonu's flinches as Zebhead's war cries had reached its ears.
"Tonu," he whispered, causing the Tonu to pause,
and prick up its ears to hear him. Blazing Fang smiled. Filling his lungs with
air, he brought the sword fragment up and reflected the sunlight directly onto
one of the Tonu's ears, then began to scream at the top of his voice. The Tonu
reared, howled from the pain, and tumbled from the peak of the mountain onto
a platform of rock below. Dazed and injured, the Tonu got to its feet and tried
to limp back up, only to slide down again.
"Foiled by the sensitive ears," Blazing Fang
chuckled.
"Nyah nyah nyah-nyah nyah," jeered Zebhead.
Behind them, Chia let his breath out and began
to calm down. "Oh good," he said. "I'm not going to be squashed."
"No," said Blazing Fang, as Sabre-X dragged
himself up onto the peak from the other side of the mountain. "But you are going
to be arrested."
"What for?" burbled the Chia. "Being victimized?"
"Theft," Blazing Fang told him.
"My eggs!" moaned the giant Tonu from below.
"I was laying them in advance. They can last for a while in cold temperatures.
Then I could have taken a holiday, somewhere tropical. I needed a break - just
a little one at least."
"You stole them all," Blazing Fang accused the
Chia. "Transferred the eggs to another cave and stored them as omelette."
"No-o-o, I just wandered into that cave trying
to hide..."
"And left Tyrannia before the Tonu attacked?"
"To s-see a friend..."
"Chet Flash. Who you don't know. So you weren't
going to see him."
Sabre-X leaned down to whisper to Zebhead. "I'm
afraid Blazing Fang doesn't have much proof."
"Ah, wait for it," Zeb replied confidently.
Blazing Fang kneeled by Chia, looked directly
into his eyes, and grinned a wide, toothy grin. Chia held his resolve in the
face of this for about two seconds.
"I'msorryitwasmeIshouldn'thavedoneitbutIwantedenoughomelettetolast..."
blurted out the Chia.
"Could you understand any of that?" Blazing
Fang asked, ignoring the still blabbering Chia and looking at Sabre-X.
"Enough," he replied.
With a quick shake of his hand, Sabre-X thanked
Blazing Fang before heading back to help with the rebuilding of Tyrannia.
"Should be back up by next week!" he called.
"And the first thing we're building is a jail!"
The woeful little Chia now serving time, and
the Giant Tonu on an all expenses paid trip to Mystery Island where she could
cheerfully wander around squashing palms trees and causing tidal waves, the
Tyrannians were now getting down to the hard work of sorting everything else
out with the money the elders had won on scratch cards. And for that, they didn't
need Blazing Fang anymore. He sighed happily, and looked down at himself.
"Ugh. I'm still covered in omelette," Blazing
Fang complained loudly. Then he stiffened as a licking sound came from the end
of his tail.
"Mmm, sausage flavour," Zebhead happily proclaimed
around a mouth full of omelette.
"Ah!! Get off of me!!"
The End
Author's Note: "Blast you all! Jank to everything!" is a phrase of Bludragn3.
Thanks for letting me use it! If anyone has a comment on the story, feel free
to mail
me..
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