Dragons And Monsters 2

Blades gets himself back together and then goes to check and see if there are any EMERGENCIES he needs to be responding to, like flying lobsters or tiny insects teleporting everyone underground or anything like that. Finding that there is nothing unexpectedly strange going on, he wanders out the garage, yawning. Then he especies Grapple's special bundle of joy, unattended, outside the Protectobot HQ. Blades frowns sourly, and he shakes a tube-like fist and declares, "Grapple, don't make me report you to Protoform Services!"

"I came here by myself!" Snowblind announces firmly. "Grapple is busy building his thingie. It seems very important." She picks up a stick, and tries to attach a grass piece to the tip. She pokes at the bush, then her sticker face changes to >:|, and she pulls off the grass piece and throws it aside.

Blades makes a questioning expression at Snowblind's attempt to attach grass to bushes. "...uh. That's kind of weird, kiddo."

"I'm trying to make a weapon so I can stab my monster when it comes back to try to eat me," Snowblind explains with childish determination.

"Well, I do approve of stabbing monsters," and pretty much everything, Blades admits, "and I dig improvisiational combat, but you'll need a lot of skill to make a useful weapon out of grass and a bush. This isn't Pokemon. Thing is, I think you want to set a trap. All out attack isn't going to win the day, here."

Snowblind looks up at Blades and is thoughtful. "Maybe it would work," she thinks, bringing a tube-arm up to her visor. Her expression brightens. "That's a good idea. You know, you're the only one that is helping me. Everyone else wants me to hurry up and get eaten so they can kill me."

This is on the verge of getting Dangerously Sappy.

Thank goodness this is just a KREON dream.

Not that anyone is aware of that fact.

"...and they say /I/'m a jerk," which is true, by the way. "Y'wanna go see what I did with my monster? Maybe get some inspiration? I had help, though. Everyone needs help, somedays."

"Okay!" Snowblind cheerfully agrees, tossing aside her stick.

Commercial break. Buy Draino!

KREON Spinny.

We now return to...

The Transformers!

They are in a craggy sections of grey brick mountains, a stylized replica of Kazbek Mountain. Very treacherous. The wind howls. Blades transforms out of helicopter mode and lands on the mountain side. "Just a bit farther, here..."

A paper airplane floats in after Blades, getting stuck in a craig.

After some struggling, it comes apart into various bricks and reforms into Little Snowblind.

"Are we there yet?"

"Yeah, here," Blades announces.

There's an old, early war Combatikreon pinned down to the bricky mountain with a TECHNIC 'thorn' - axle rod - through his midsection, with a grey capping piece to prevent him from removing it. It looks like someone actually had to drill a hole through him to get it in place, the way that moonracer had a melted plastic leg. Little grey LEGO chains further restrain his arms and legs. Little clear pink Energon studs leak out around the TECHNIC 'thorn' impaling him.

"I know he's no dragon, but putting him down was tough, all the same," Blades explains, tube-hands on his hips, "Real tough, because he's..."

"ME," the bound KREON growls, wrath flashing in his painted optics.

Combat: Snowblind compares her Courage to 60: Success!

Snowblind is very thoughtful as she looks between the both of them. She kind of hides behind a rock block outcropping as she looks at the 'monster' and then back at Blades. She seems suddenly crestfallen.

"He looks like a nice monster," she points out. "And not very dangerous."

"Yeah, sure, little girl, I'm totally not dangerous! You had better let me go!" the Combatikreon insists, a wicked smile crossing his face.

Blades crosses his arms, "Yeah, sure, not dangerous. Like a knife to the back."

Their mannerisms are eerily similar.

"But I'm a monster too," Snowblind explains. She looks at the Deceptikreon symbol on her chest. She seems momentarily confused, and focuses her attentions on the chained evil in front of her. A few of the blocks that compose her body turn from white to gray.

There is an ominous rumble in the distance.

"He looks like... home."

"Look, if assassinations, taking the blame for attacks on civilian targets... all those dirty things that are necessary, that have to be done, but no one wants to do, make me a monster, then I'm a monster," the Combatikreon declares, grinning unpleasantly, "and I am just fine with that. That guy is the one who isn't."

"I'm just fine with keeping you locked up," Blades says evenly, painted optics still narrowed, arms still crossed.

"Are you happy with him there?" Snowblind asks, sitting on the rock, staring at the chained Combatikreon.

The rumbling's getting closer. A jagged black form is creeping up the mountainside.

"I'd be happier with Mr. Goody Two-Shoes dead," the Combatikreon declares.

"No one cares what you think," Blades says briskly, and then he asks, "...you hear that?" He starts to look down.

Snowblind seems to slump where she sits, the little points of her ear pieces drooping downwards. There are a few more gray pieces in them.

"No one wants to help me chain my monster. No one wants me. They hate me because I have a purple face instead of a red one. No one believes me," she says, graying out in self-defeat.

Snowblind's Monster is making its way up the side of the mountain.

It's a mega-set; it resembles something halfway between Snowblind and Trypticon and every bit as big as the latter; ragged specialty wing pieces jut out from its arms, pointy white Lego viking helmet horn teeth decorate its mouth in shark rows. Its sinuous serpent-like body is winding up over the landscape and it is absolutely ALIVE with dozens of gray flex tubing tentacles. It's turning everything it touches black.

"You are weak. I am strong. Everyone wants to kill you. I will kill EVERYONE!" it roars in a basso rumble that causes single block stones to fall down the mountain slope.

"That... definitely looks like an emergency," Blades says, stating the obvious. Then he tries to pick up Snowblind and tries to throw her down the mountain. Blades hollers down, "Unbrick the bottom of the mountain and knock it over on top of it!"

Snowblind is startled out of her mental decent into the abyss and yells as she's thrown down the mountain, bonking down all the way.

"OW!"

"OUCH!"

"OOF!"

"OWWWW!"

The dragon snarls at Blades. "DON'T GET IN MY WAY! I MUST EAT HER TO END HER PAIN!"

The solution to all existential angst: being thrown off a mountain.

Blades looks down at the dragon, and he pulls the blades off his back. They are one solid piece of four, but that is okay! Now armed, he dives on the dragon, looking to pry teeth off it with his four-blade-thingie. "Maybe you'll end her pain... by making her cause pain to whole lot of other people."

The tentacle dragon snarls and shakes its head violently, trying to dislodge Blades. "Then kill HER! She's WEAK!" it hisses. Ew, dragon breath.

Snowblind has finally landed at the bottom of the mountain and crashes into pieces. Like the terminator, they're all trying to find themselves and come back together into a solid whole, but as she's a bit dizzy, the pieces aren't sticking right. She's got an arm where her head should be.

Blades growls, "Being sick of killing the weak is /exactly/ why I'm an Autokreon!"

His old self, from the mountainside, heckles, "Only because killing the strong is more fun!"

In any case, Blades holds fast on the dragon, and he continues to try to pry apart pieces. He isn't trying to kill it, just reduce its mobility.

Snowblind finally reassembles herself. Seeing Blades in trouble, she begins trying to pull apart the mountain. Unfortunately this is gonna take awhile, there's a lot of pieces in this set.

The dragon tries to clamp its jaws down on Blades as several white tooth pieces fall out. "You like killing big things do you? Why don't we let you COME OUT AND PLAY!" Uh oh. Snowblind-dragon starts to scramble up the mountain, a new goal in sight - the Combatikreon!

If the dragon wants to play that way, Blades has no compunctions with trying to go down its gullet and start disassembling it from the inside!

The Combatikreon looks wearily up at the dragon and grunts, "I'm not as picky as he is. Big. Little. Doesn't matter much to me. Straxus only knows why he gives a slag, either way..."

The dragon looks kind of stunned as Blades jumps right down its throat. Its eyes (around 200) bulge into conical pieces for a moment before going back down. It shudders for a moment, its neck taking on a Blades-Kreon shape moving in a wave down to the middle of its body.

It's brightly lit inside, mostly purple, and inside its chest compartment it's full of eyes.

And tentacles.

Tentacles that are now trying to latch onto Blades by any peg they can find and infect him with the same blackness creeping up the mountain.

The dragon continues up the mountain unhindered now, coming up to the crater in which the Combatikreon is pinned. "You've been pinned up too long. Time to set you free."

Snowblind the Child watches in horror as Blades is apparently eaten. She screams  before doubling over, holding her own abdomen. "Blaaaades!"

Inside a dragon is the perfect place to stab it.

/Everything/ is valid target area. This is the approach that Blades takes, happy as a clam, just slashing away.

The Combatikreon, upon being freed, takes a moment to stretch himself. His torso wound still intermittently drips clear punk studs. He rather deliberately studies the dragon, painted optics narrowed, and he says, "It's not that I'm ungrateful. It's just that I'm going to need him back. You know why."

Little Snowblind is unable to move the mountain. She's dropped to the ground in agony, holding her abdomen, sharing the pain of her monster. "It... it hurts!" she squeaks, curling up into a protoform ball.

Dragon Snowblind grunts and opens her mouth wide. "Then get him out of me!"

The Combatikreon nods and then dives on in.

Blades knows he's coming, but the Combatikreon knows that Blades knows.

It's a coinflip, a tossup.

In a blink, an instant, universes are severed. In one universe, Blades is faster.

Not here.

With a snicker-snackt, the Combatikreon takes off Blades's head. Then he lifts off his own head and slots it onto the now headless body, leaving his old, injured body behind.

"Slag. It feels /good/ to be back."

The inside of the dragon rumbles ominously, and the walls start to close in. Pieces rattle around inside with the noise of thousands of bits of plastic being poured into a storage bin.

Snowblind Dragon rears up, throwing her head to the sky, opening her jaws wide and ERUPTS like a volcano, sending everything loose inside of her fountaining up out of her mouth and into the air.

Little Snowblind on the ground some distance away whimpers. ".... blades...?"

Blades's severed head and the Combatikreon's ruined old body go raining through the air, along with the assorted dragon pieces. The Combatikreon, while also forcibly ejected, transforms to helicopter mode and goes choppering around through the sky, even eventually lands next to little Snowblind.

Injured, the Dragon begins to bite off chunks of the landscape, chewing it into base bricks, changing it black, and feeding on it, regenerating lost parts through conversion. It eyes Combatikreon Blade warily with several dozen eyes.

Little Snowblind is trying to get to hands and knees, more parts turning from white to grey. "... Blades?" she asks, looking blearily up at the taller form.

The Combatikreon replies, "...Blades? Eh, sure. I guess that's how the name would translate, these days." He straightens his head a bit. "So here's the thing. You're going to get eaten. And it's gonna hurt like the Pit. And there's basically nothing you can do it about it. /Everyone/ has a dark side. Everyone. I wouldn't trust anyone who doesn't. Some people try to lock their dark sides away. Some people try to control them. Use them. Some people forget that their dark sides exist. But people like you and me? There's only one way this ends."

"... do we die?" the kreon kid asks.

"We let our dark sides win, or we die trying to stop it!" the Combatikreon laughs, throwing his arms back.

Muahahaahah!

Weakened, child Snowblind creeps forward on hands and knees, and then drops herself down on one of the Combatikreon's feet, pathetically hugging them. "You cared about me... for little while. I guess it's okay then, to let go."

The dragon turns, and starts to slither down the mountain, heading to its target, its completion.

"... feels like home."

ELSEWHERE

Blades's severed head rolls around and looks for a body.

ELSEWHERE ELSEWHERE

The Combatikreon's headless old body wanders around, looking for a head.

HERE

The Combatikreon says dismissively, "Autokreons are suckers. They'll stand up for any underdog."

"Not me. I don't have their face," Snowblind says. The dragon is getting closer and closer. "They hate me..." both the dragon and the child say at the same time.

ELSEWHERE meets ELSEWHERE ELSEWHERE

Blades's head collides with the abandoned body. He gets up and groans. Ugh, this old body is such junk. Hole through the chest. Bluh. He transforms and choppers off...

ELSEWHERE meets ELSEWHERE ELSEWHERE meets HERE

Blades throws the Combatikreon at the dragon's mouth.

WHUMP! The dragon goes rolling from the strike, slamming into the side of a hill and shaking lose stone pieces and single bricks. No idea about the Combatikreon. Maybe their bricks got fused.

Child Snowblind is shocked and startled out of her descent into madness. She almost believed him. Almost. "BLADES!" she shouts (doing that a lot it seems) and tries to run towards him.

Blades tries to grab Snowblind, turn into a helicopter, and fly away, back towards Protectobot HQ. "...and that, little missy, is why I keep him locked up. You get that now?"

Child Snowblind is clinging like a leech. "Yes!" she exclaims. Immediately she notices, "But you're hurt now!"

"Yeah, well, that happens," the helicopter says gruffly.

Snowblind produces a plastic bandaid-piece made of two thin two-bricks pegged together. She snaps it at the edge of one of Blades' injuries. "There. Better."

Blades enjoys his bandaid.

They chopper off into the sunset, knowing that the dragon and the Combatikreon are still out there somewhere.

Also, this mountain has been seriously destablized and might end up falling over.

Oooops.

Flawless rescue mission.