Walk the Dinosaur (Danny and the Axe Knight)

"Does this place look like it has the infrastructure to maintain dinosaur rides? It has dinosaurs that just wander around, and they probably are not domesticate enough to ride." Danny brushed off the dirt around her. "At best, you'll just annoy a big lizard and get it to jump around while you sit on its back."

Yelling in the jungle probably would not cause anything good to happen for her with what she knew about. However, Danny also knew the worst things in life are typically things that you don't account or know about, so she thought about keeping her voice down. "I'm here because you went to South America, screwed some stuff up for an order of people who probably hate you, and are now being hunted down by a lizard who hates you." Some quicksand muck still remained around the edges of her shoes, but on the scale of bad things in the past ten minutes, quicksand actually was not too difficult to deal with. "I save myself all the time. Winding up tied to a chair with a bomb only makes you a damsel in distress if you need someone else to bail you out. I'm only over my head until I swim myself back to the surface."

Danny smacked the dinosaur meat out of Dabbler's hand. "You just made me a vegetarian. Now, let's go find the girl with ax and get out of here."

Danny's use of logic fizzled Dabbler's hopes, almost ignoring the discarded dino drumstick. Crushed utterly, those dreams are. Dabbler reverted to her Samantha voice, as if trying to pull at Danny's heartstrings. Figuratively of course. "I just... wanted to ride some big dinosaurs. Is that so wrong?"

Like a disappointed child she sat down right there and hugged her knees. She dropped more revelations as to her motives of attempting such an activity. "I heard there was a snake here so big, he could wrap around the world and bite his own tail. Now that would be a great ride... Oh... you didn't come alone?"

Dabbler dusted herself off and stood up. "Come on then, let's go find your friend. And what's this about some lizard king? Are you saying Bowser is here? You play too many video games, self-rescuing damsel." She started walking in a direction, though Dabbler was prone to teleporting when excited.

DABBLER'S DINNER

Rosa had come across a strange sight. Some burnt clearing, a round table, giant dead ants seated at the table. And food. Delicious food. Her powers were fueled by her bio-energy, and bio-energy meant calories. "...I must be going out of my mind..."

She approached cautiously, seeing that for a change, there were only dead giant things around. Feeling herself drained, Rosa partook in the once in a lifetime experience of roast dino. hmm. Tastes like chicken.

"...What's this? Another fit girl with an Axe?" Dabbler appeared right behind Rosa, leaving Danny some distance away.

"Witch! what have you done with Danny!" Rosa mumbled with a piece of cooked dino in her mouth, holding her axe at the ready.

"Take a chill pill, Axe Girl. I totally watched Danny save herself just now. Hey, why are you carrying an axe?" Poof, Dabbler goes back to Danny. The energy surrounding her a moment before dematerializing provoked Rosa, who swung at Dabbler but found only a dead soldier ant.

Dabbler just poofed into Danny's personal space. "Danny, why is Axe Girl? Why is not Katana girl?"

After turning down the possibly cooked meat, Danny assumed things would get weird. In all honesty, Dabbler doing something normal would exceed weirdness. "Are you talking about an ouroboros or Jurmonger, or just- you know it doesn't matter! We were doing things and we got separated because she thought 'run' meant fight a- it doesn't matter." Danny rubbed the side of her head with her right hand. "There's a lizard king, Bowser, sure whatever- we just need to..."

Dabbler vanished. Usually a good sign, but in this case, Danny actually needed the little witch. Or, maybe she did not. It was very hard to tell. "I don't want to live on this planet anymore..."

Instead of showing any sign of surprise or confusion, Danny just lifted her palm to her chin, kept her eyes fixated on where Dabbler left, and waited calmly for the witch to come back. Most likely it would only take a minute and would come back with a non-sequitur comment about- "Yep. She's not a katana girl. Now, where is she?"

DABBLER'S PLACE

"Come on then." Dabbler waved Danny over in the general direction of her clearing, but teleported there again. She rolled her eyes and went back, this time to walk Danny to her place.

"Oh I forgot you do that walking thing. Jeez, get with the program already, self-rescuing princess."

Once they arrive at the clearing, Dabbler curtsies to welcome Danny properly.

"Welcome to my humble abode! The Axe Girl has eaten my bread and my roast chicken, and is under my protection now, as is required of Guest Right. Also, choose from my offspring, you shall marry them and we shall cement the alliance between our great houses!"

Dabbler seemed to have spent time reading an awesome book series, speaking to Rosa and pointing to the burnt ants around the table. Rosa herself though, was just looking at Dabbler with immense disbelief.

Seeing a familiar face put Rosa at some ease. She asked her normal people things, though Rosa seemed quite off, covered in sweat, rips in her active wear, her eyes just a tad dilated. "Danny! Thank god you're alright. I think I'm hallucinating... I was so thirsty I drank some mushroom water and now I think I ate dinosaur and there's a dead ant court and a table. You look like crap... is the Lizard King following us? What happened.... Wait... Are you even real?" Rosa decided to check by pinching Danny on the arm.

Danny found herself in a clearing after taking a walk with the little witch. Instead of speaking to Dabbler, Danny just kept her eyes focused on where she was going, not wanting to step on anything due to the fact it could kill her. More flowers, plenty of lights, some mosquitoes, and finally a clearing full of dead ants. A full breath turned into a sigh.

Dabbler began to ramble on over medieval traditions. Danny just assumed Dabbler was either born in those times or traveled there out of some other weird ritual. "I have no idea what is going on. All I know is this is Dabbler. She's with us now. We can leave."

The ants around the table merely just confirmed Dabbler might be a serial killer. Knowing Dabbler also confirmed she might be a serial killer. "I don't know where the Lizard is. I don't know what he was doing with the raptors. All I know is we can leave now." Danny started to go through all of the check marks in her head. "I think if we leave the lizard here we might actually- oh no, time travel BS. We have to take him back with us."

Rosa nodded, the sheer headache of their situation lessening now that she was with Danny, at least. But Danny now had to be Time Cop too.
"We're taking him back... dead or alive?" Rosa asked, her tone quickly becoming exasperated when Danny mentions they had to bring Bowser with them.

"Witch. Take us home. Uh... Please?" Rosa commanded... then asked, seeing that Danny considered the witch to be the better option between her and Bowser.

Dabbler looked at the two fit girls, considering the request. Perhaps Dinosaur rides were superfluous, especially with roller coasters. "Are we going for ice cream when we go home? I could go for some B & J... chocolate chip cookie dough. Mmmhmmm!"

"...Yes, ve vill go for ice cream, little witch. Any flavor you want. And toppings." Rosa blurted out, thinking maybe perhaps appeasing the witch would move things along. For a second she looked at Danny, wondering if this was the right thing to say. She mouthed 'Ice Cream' ?

"YAY TOPPINGSssss! This way, mademoiselles." Dabbler curtsies again and opens a portal all the way back at the quicksand bog they first arrived at. But as it turns out, Bowser had been waiting at the Time Portal with his new friends the raptor pack. He saw the portal open and hissed, rushing towards the portal to go through it.

"Hello your majesty! It's an honor to finally meet the kidnapper of princesses!" Dabbler waved at the lizard king, somehow or perhaps intentionally oblivious to the danger.

"That's a fatalistic way of asking a question, but the most suitable response is probably not. The way I see it, he actually has a point about not changing the past. He seems pretty intent on not changing it himself, and he has a real conviction for protecting it." Danny looked around to the ants and other oddities surrounding them. "All things considered, he is probably not the one in the wrong here."

A portal took the trio back to where is all started- at least to the midway point of where it started. The direct feeling of leaving Dabbler in the past crossed Danny's mind. Then, the thought of going back to a present where Dabbler was left in the past crossed her mind, and that horrified her. "I'm not a princess and he didn't kidnap any of us. He just- oh, wait. The Bowser thing."

"Alright Scales, you want us out of the past. We want out of the past. You want to keep people out of the past. In all honesty, I want you to keep people out of the past. So, here's the deal. We go back to the present. You do your job better, and we go back to civilization. Deal?" Danny started to walk towards the portal.

Once he saw that the three Warm Bloods had gotten together, and that they all agreed this conflict should remain in the present, he left his newfound pack of Raptor pets behind. Like civilized, time-stream protecting heroes.

He clutched Danny's bracelet to help him speak. "This is a prudent choice. Whatever grievance between us, let it continue in our time." He hissed at the Witch, Dabbler complying. Somehow talking solved a lot of problems today.

Dabbler looked at the interaction between Bowser and the Mario sisters. "Wait that's it? No climactic final battle as a meteor crashes onto Earth? Bowser gets to make truces? EEEHH!!" The lizard king grabbed Dabbler like a misbehaving child and dragged her through the Time portal, back to the Time Chamber in the present.

Rosa for one, was not completely at ease, as Dabbler moved the Time Portal down to the ground for them to walk through. "I can't tell who's the more reasonable one, Dabbler or Bowser. Frankly I could do with neither. Plus, he promised to eat us right? Right?" She warned Danny. If the lizard king was the type who kept promises...

...Passing through the time portal involved the briefest flashes of light, before they were returned to the portal chamber. The Lizard King disengaged the Key of the Gods, and the time portal closed.

Passing through the Time Portal had restored the Lizard King's bronze armor, as well as Rosa's black Templar Plate. This also meant his Obsidian Halberd was back in his big meaty arm, not to mention that overpowered golden arm was floating through the air towards him.

He turned towards the three warm bloods, and his prosthetic was slowly repairing its connection to his arm stump. Bowser began roaring, his voice echoing through the temple complex.

"Hey what's that?" Dabbler looked at the bracelet he held, then snatched it away and teleported before he could react.

She poofed over to Danny, because she noticed things. "Hey Danny isn't this yours?!" Dabbler waved the bracelet in front of Danny, but ever the trickster, she intended an improvised game of keep away. She was not noticing that Bowser's seven foot tall super-muscled lizardmen were now making their way into the Time Chamber as reinforcements.

"...He really is still going to kill us. Then eat us." Rosa as proper Axe Knight gripped her axe again with both hands.

After a quick leap millions of years through time, Danny found herself in the familiar location surrounded by a black armored familiar face. "That's why we're going to the present. Where you have that, and I have-" Instead of indulging Dabbler by grabbing in different locations, Danny merely punched Dabbler square in her nose, then would grab the bracelet when Dabbler recoiled in shock. "This."

Danny snapped the bracelet on her wrist, then turned to the lizardman as he prepared his arms and summoned his retinue. "You can let us go, or we can see ourselves out." Danny conjured a turquoise blade on her forearm. "They are both fine choices."

The lizardmen were not backing down. Bowser had his grunts advance, to chop up and eat these human trespassers.

Dabbler did not see Danny's fist coming. "Ow! That was not nice! Fine, we are officially not best friends! I'm out! In fact, that's how you wanna do it, put up your dukes! Let's slug it out mano-a-mano!" The little witch put up her four dukes in the old John Sullivan type boxing stance, hopping around, taking weak jabs at Danny. Good thing she has no proficiency in unarmed skills.

The lizardmen army surrounding them quickly concerned Rosa. That golden arm also had powers they couldn't account for. But they had a Dabbler. At least she thought she did.

Rosa quickly resorts to making a deal with the Dabbler. "Little Witch! Before you go, I'll make a deal with you for a favor. Ice cream on me if you get us to our Templar friends. They dress like me."

Dabbler looked at Rosa, hardly believing what she had just heard. A deal? a favor? Such things were foreign to Dabbler until today. "A promise? Nobody's promised ME anything before! I can't wait to be be sorely dissappointed!" She turns to Danny, who she thought was an understanding friend. "Danny look! Someone owes me! hahahahaha!"

A portal opened right behind them opens to the Sun Courtyard, where a score of lizard bodies were laying on the ground. The four named Templar were tucked away in a corner, two down for the count. Only Witch and Priest remained standing, watching over their fallen fellows.

The portal took them completely by surprise. (Templar) Witch looked at the portal and saw their companions. "Axe!"

"Witch! er, Templar Witch, Priest." Rosa affirmed. At least these four had made it out.

"Where have you been? Did you get the relic?"

"No... And it's better if the Key stayed-" Axe Knight couldn't finish that sentence.

"Don't forget the mission!" Dabbler tosses the Key of the Gods through the portal, rolling to a stop at Witch's feet. Without hesitation she grabs it and bags it. "Mission Accomplished, time to evacuate, Templars."

"Buh-bye! BLEH!" Dabbler waves the Axe Knight goodbye, while giving Danny a raspberry. She poofs out of the jungle and out of their lives.

Rosa looked at Danny, then the Time Chamber-Courtyard portal. Which was slowly closing. She gestured Danny to go first. "VIP's first!"

She could literally see the lizardmen's teeth- the first one was already on them, and she used her axe to slice his wooden club then send him off the Key Dais.

Once Danny latched her bracelet back on her wrist, she did not care about anything Dabbler said, did, or expressed. Especially as the lizards began approaching her position. "We aren't going back through the portal, so I guess we're going through the lizards." The first lizard to advance against Danny struck a turquoise shield. She lunged forward with her left leg, swiping once with her blade to cut at his thigh.

Once the first lizard backed off, Danny began to look to see just what gap she could exploit to move through. Getting past the first line would leave her exposed from behind, and the push through the second would leave her exposed from the other side once she shifted. At that rate, she would be dead in less than two minutes. If she held back at the wall, she would need them to funnel in one by one. If the lizards did not face her on her courtesy, it would be a much different fight.

Rosa made a deal with an at least figurative devil. Once the deal was struck, the portal opened. Out popped the non mounted cavalry. Looked like Danny would not need to do all the lifting herself. The heavy sound of metallic armors and raised voices joined the chorus of the room.

Once the rest of the Templars poured out, Danny already incapacitated two lizards with quick cuts to their knees. One more cut and it took Danny's count to three. The call for a retreat came out. It made sense with a new way out being more practical than the one made by cutting through the lines of lizards. Then the plan took another turn to protect Danny. "I'm kinda doing something here!"

These templars would of course not go through first. Danny knew that. She knew it for sure. Every minute she argued, it would add a minute to the amount of danger she exposed to everyone. Taking three steps back, Danny tucked behind the wall of templars and made for the portal. "Let's go!"

The bulk of the lizardman force had converged on the Key Chamber, and with Dabbler's aid they had managed to by pass that obstacle. Rosa swung her axe wide, cleaving through primitive weapons and tough scales.

Once Danny was through, Priest patted her on the back in a formal confirmation their charge was safe, also as assurance. "VIP Secure!"

He assisted Rosa by blasting away with his automatic shotgun, though its low penetration made it a concussive weapon. Lucia the Witch hefted her sweet, sweet 50 caliber Sniper rifle with some strange glowing bits all over it. "Curve the bullet, bitches!" She said, firing through the portal. In the blink of an eye, a handful of lizardmen heads exploded, the round having flown in a curved trajectory from gun, through portal, and finally terminating into the ground.

Rosa was last to step through before the Dabbler gate closed. The Portal had bought them time, but not too much. No ground force was present in the area, but Pterodactyls were circling high above the Sun Courtyard, screeching, calling their handlers to their position. Sage was sitting away from the group, handling communications on her earpiece. She turned to the remaining survivors of their expedition. "...Chopper in bound. We need to throw smoke and clear the LZ... 1 kilometer east of here." She explained, discarding her submachine gun, which had taken a rock to the mag feed. She pulled out her Bo staff, her designated psi-weapon.

Diablo, the machine gunner, was missing an arm and his leg below the knee. Yet he was still conscious, Priest tending to him.

"...Leave... leave me behind, Padre. Time for my last rites." He said, grimacing as he cauterized his own wounds.

"No. No one is left behind! I'll carry you if I have to." Rosa assured him.

"I'll only slow you down. It's my time. Complete the mission." He said, a sad resignation in his voice. He gave Danny a weak smile, and tried to wink. "...You know I never got to tell you you're a real pretty chica for an archeologist." Diablo struggled to let out a chuckle, but it only hurt his sides.

Rosa was sad, tears welling up behind her stoic helm but she made no crying sound. She focused, and pointed to a section of the temple wall that seemed to have cracked, vegetation seeping into it. "...Witch, Danny. The two of you see to making an exit, that wall has roots growing into it, it must be pretty weak."

"Aye, on it." Witch agreed, the plan as good as any at this point. She turned to Danny, glancing at her bracelet for a second. "Your bracelet thing got a tool function?" She asked, while her powers began to manifest; Witch's telekinesis started tearing away the crumbling mosaic finish and moving loose bricks out of the way.

"Priest, Sage, stand Diablo up against that pillar. We are leaving zis jungle alive."
The Templar listened to Rosa's lead, and she moved toward the hallway. They were coming.

Once again Danny needed to go through the portal first, but this time it came at her protection. Everything these templars kept in their sights on protecting Danny, but she never wanted the paradigm to shift in a way where she would endanger them. With her powers and capabilities, Danny flicked her bracelet.

"I've got a better idea." Danny went to work, giving a nod of the head to Diablo as he complimented her appearance. "Don't worry D-Blo. Those aren't going to be your last words." A turquoise clamp appeared around Diablo's leg and arm, merely stopping the bleeding and applying some pressure.

It would be the first thing Danny constructed, but it would not be the last. The turquoise base would form up, using part of the wall to support itself. Ten foot support beams would cross up on each of the four sides to create enough stability to place another floor to the tower. She decided against stairs. They would go up another way, but first, Danny needed to add another two levels to bring the tower's height up to thirty-five feet.

"Everyone on." Danny waited for the rest of the team to stack on, then she solidified the walls of the base, keeping unwanted pests away from the landing. Once the walls came up, the base would start to rise the thirty-five feet to reach the top. The walls would lower, allowing the helicopter to land with plenty of room for the evacuation.

"Jesu Cristo... you're a total santa, chica!" Diablo breathed a massive sigh of relief, seeing Danny wasn't just their Tomb Raiding muse. The light-construct tourniquet was better than the bandages he had, and certainly less painful than him cauterizing himself with his own pyrokinesis.

"Well that does make things easier then!" Witch puts her telekinesis to good use, taking a smoke flare and popping smoke on the hard-light landing zone. Sure enough a helicopter gunship in the Templar colors finally breaks through the treeline, its rotors blowing away smoke, and its minigun blowing away flying dinosaurs into a fine red mist onto the Courtyard. The pilot lands on their light-based platform. Over the loud wooshing of his rotors, the pilot spoke with loudspeakers. "Anyone alive down there?"

"Ladies and injured dudes first." Diablo said, being helped onto the chopper by Sage and Priest. Axe and Danny, the healthiest ones, were likely last onboard, and just in time as the Courtyard was getting swamped by hungry hungry lizardmen.

Leaving was the best move now, since they had no further dealings with the Time Police lizards. Once Danny was safely onboard, Axe manned the door gun and told the pilot to go. "Mission accomplished! Go! go!"

Of course the lizards didn't feel quite the same, and hurled their obsidian tipped spears straight through the helicopter's armored plating or into the helicopter itself, seeing as the door was wide open and Axe was now on the mounted machine gun shooting back.

Witch had to catch one telekinetically midair, seeing a spear was about to skewer their Axe Knight. "I should change my callsign to Kylo Ren." she said with a grin, winking at Danny. While their job was the Key of the gods, Danny got a lizardman spear as a bonus souvenir.

"Not being eaten alive by Bowser is souvenir enough for me.... So, The late Frederick still had partners who'll pay for this, if I recall." Axe said, going to her seat once they were out of spear chucking distance.

The practical application Danny put into motion worked just as well as she would have hoped it would. The party made their way to the top with the helicopter in route for the perfect rendezvous atop a newly constructed tower. "I figure you're going to make me get on first." Danny hopped on, examining the situation around her to make some turquoise amends to whatever the situation happened to throw at them.

And, those were obsidian spears.

Most of them would have pierced the helicopter, possibly taking out the rotor and leaving them stranded, but Danny decided a few well placed turquoise shields could deflect the obsidian spears just enough to knock them off of their trajectory. One more shield covered the opening on the helicopter while Rosa put herself in the side gun to deal with the offensive maneuver of the departure.

"Nice catch." Danny put her hands on her hips, letting out a sigh of relief. "What's a Ren?"

With the flush of air pushing out of Danny's lungs she let the platform collapse into nothingness. "About that gem. Since Frederick isn't around to claim it, it most likely defaults to the Tamamoa estate. Don't worry. We keep it safe."

"You know... that Star Wars movie... with the guy in the black robe..." Witch's attempt to explain her pop culture reference seemed to fail spectacularly.

Thoughts began to race through Rosa's head now that her face was not target practice for big pointy spears.

Witch was already on a laptop, as Priest and Sage tended to Diablo's wounds properly. The passenger hold was filled with many colorful spanish swear words. "Actually miss Danny, Frederick was part of a bigger circle of collectors. Their trustees have been contacting us for the last half hour."

Rosa came over and picked up the Key of the Gods, a half-inch thick golden tablet with writings all over and a strange gem that glowed with energy. She turns towards Danny a moment and ever so subtly, away from her fellow Templar's view. She knew she could not sway them to abandon the relic, but neither could she hand over such a device to some collector. "Three brethren dead for this thing." She muttered, eliciting looks of silent grief from the Templar.

"But... if it's for the survival of the Order, they didn't die for nothing." Rosa nudged the small gem out of the tablet, and let it fall into Danny's palms; a sly wink would tell her she better get that thing out of sight.

She returns the Tablet to witch, none of them Templar all the wiser. "We'll drink to their memories, as the Valkyries see them to Valhalla." She said, with the heavy heart of a norscan warrior.

Once the helicopter had cleared the jungle, the flight was uneventful and about 3 hours long, while In-flight amenities made it feel shorter. Rosa was a big fan of San Miguel beer from her other homeland in Asia and shared. The pilot would eventually tell them they were now over the Pacific and headed to a big ship where their contacts were waiting and sail the rest of the way home.