Walk the Dinosaur (Danny and the Axe Knight)

"The moment we started fighting lizardmen I was already beginning to doubt this was the earth I knew." Rosa watched seconds later as they were caught between the witch and the lizard king. Danny deigned to blast him with the energy bracelet, but he simply flexed that giant lizard arm and took it in the biceps. He stood there blinking, observing the bracelet, and let out a hiss and a snarl, though without his gauntlet his meaning could only be guessed at.

"Trouble. That much I can see." A pause, as she glanced at the lizard septuamillenian amputee, still hot on their heels but having this deep, intelligent thinking going on behind those big sharp teeth. He kept a short distance between them and wasn't trying to eat them at the moment. "You don't suppose the big reptile believes in the enemy of my enemy, does he?"

The witch scampered off into the portal without much care for her pursuers. The intense action and excitement soon came to an abrupt pause once they crossed the rainbow bridge... and quickly fell into a quick sand bog.

Rosa had no ability to change her trajectory, and passing through a doorway in time somehow relieved her of most of her armor, leaving her in her metallic gray active wear, that thing millenial girls wear all the time. Her wooden axe though made it through just fine.

SPLAT.

Rosa struggled to right herself, just managing to landing in waist deep and free her arms and axe. The bog was pretty wide, and it was easily fifty feet to the nearest dry bank. "Uuuuugh. UUGH! Danny? Danny!" She called out, wiping quicksand from her eyes.

Sunlit pillars slowly faded away just as any light would under the growth of such an under canopy. It did not make it any easier for Danny, but it did give her some understanding of the changes around her. The rainbow under her feet began turning soft brown, then a heavier grout, then it mushed under her feet. The first pounce of her sneaker let her know the danger of the bog, the second she dragged, touching her toe just on the outer rim of the solid dirt. She lunged forward, landing both hands on a fallen tree half submerged in the quicksand. Vaulting herself with a quick hand spring, Danny tucked, spun, and made it to safety.

"Good. Good." Her wrist felt lighter though. A lot lighter. "Bad. Bad." Her bracelet did not make the trip with them, rendering her unable to construct whatever she wanted to take control of this situation. She could only rely on rudimentary kick boxing and cheerleading stunts. Neither would help against anything around this place- except for vaulting over a bog.

"Woah! What happened to all your stuff?!" Danny began roaming the side of the pit, dragging the fallen log with her- or at least trying. "Hold on. I think I can move this and get you out!" Try as Danny did, it did little to budge the log. Her breathing intensified. Her hands felt sweaty. The heat was rising all around her neck.

"Don't move around too much." Danny looked to see if she could see any trees, then remembered her backpack. She tossed it down and pulled out some pink and black nylon climbing rope. She tied a knot and prepared to toss it over to Rosa. "This should help. Sorry I can't just build a crane to pull you out, but no bracelet." Danny slapped her wrist to indicate the truth of her words.

"I... I don't know... something about that portal we passed through..." Rosa said, with audible panic in her voice. A slow drowning death was not something her powers could protect her from. Rosa took the rope and wrapped it around herself. With this, they should be safe. She even tossed Danny her axe, a fine hybrid tool and weapon, balanced for utility and battle.

Moments later, another splat followed that got mud and quicksand all over Rosa and Danny's fine girly hair. The super persistent Lizard Leader had joined them, and his greater mass meant he sank deeper into the mud, mostly his eyes and nostrils above the quicksand. But his strength nature meant even in this he could move slowly as opposed to sink. His eyes were affixed on the two warm bloods.

Rosa saw their one armed adversary and began to feel fear without the security afforded by her armor. Or her axe, which was now near Danny on the dry bank. "...Uh... Uhhh! Let's hurry this up!"

The splash of sand in her eyes caused Danny to recoil, stepping back, and losing grip of the rope holding Rosa. "Ow! Ow! My eye!" Danny yelled out as she tried fishing for the grip of the rope. Her frantic squint led her to take a poorly prepared step forward, losing balance and slipping into the bog feet first. "God! Shoot!"

In spite of everything bad going on, Danny gripped the rope. "I got you now. Let me just pull and-" Enough light entered Danny's eye for her to fully take in her predicament. "Oh. I don't. Um. At least the lizard is stuck to- and he looks way worse than we do."

Danny started to looked around for tree branches. If she could swing the rope around a branch, she would try to pull herself out. If she had a bracelet, she would not be in this mess, but Dabbler ruined her plans again. Without even knowing it. Again. "This plan is going to work. Don't worry!"

By some power of flopping around and wiggling through the quicksand alot, the Lizard King manages to... get into a backstroke and slowly float across the sand. Coupled with brute strength, he was doing pretty fine.

"No... no! Danny go save yourself!" Rosa however, was panicking and pulling, worsening the situation for herself and Danny. The more she struggled the more she got sucked in, not realizing she was pulling in her ally more than Danny pulled on her... until she could hear the reptile upon her. She turned around and defiantly faced him.

"BY ODIN'S BEARD YOU'LL NOT HAVE ME, MONSTER! I'LL... I'll..." Rosa started swinging her fists and pummeled away at thick reptile skin. However, she found herself flailing at the air as she was lying on the dry bank covered in mud and silt, the Lizard King also shaking it off like a wet dog. While his one good arm pulled Rosa to safety, the King assisted Danny with his jaws, if needed.

"What... what's going on? What are you trying to pull, reptile?" Rosa was still defiant, though there wasn't much point taking on the lizard king without armor or weapons.

But, instead of continuing their fight, the one armed boss battle spoke. "The treachery of the skin changer knows no bounds. This sacrilege must be undone. Even if it means I must ask the aid of Warm Bloods. Truce, do I offer. The skin changer is the common enemy. Your death I offer after we return to the present." The boss said, trying to figure out this diplomacy thing. Symbolic of his offer, he showed the glowing bracelet Danny previously held now firmly in his hand... claw. It seemed more like a small ring in the lizard's grasp.

"I'm in the process of that, Rosa." Danny knew what her plan should do, but she was not in the middle of getting herself out. The rope hung around the tree, but the much less skilled super heroine turned normal girl would not get out of this muck merely by pulling on a rope. "I'm in the process of trial and error. Right now it looks like this entire thing has been a major error, but at least the lizard isn't doing any better."

Sand washed up against her forehead again. Never again would Danny feel sand and think anything other than 'that stupid lizard is trying to kill me'. "How did he-" Knowing how he did it would not save Danny. Knowing he did not have weapons with him would save her. Then she remembered his teeth, and claws, and tail. Pretty much his entire body was a weapon. Not a weapon of mass destruction, but definitely of two girls stuck in quicksand.

He unleashed his prowess, but it did not injure or maim either girl, but instead rescued them. "I know you think this is sacrilege and everything, but in reality, I think Dabbler just wants to ride a dinosaur. If you let the little witch do that, she might just leave with no problems." Danny pulled her rope from the tree and began to wind it around her arm.

Rosa wiped the muck off her active wear. She was tired, sweaty, and had quicksand in places she didn't want it to be. "I hate portals..."

Now she had the chance to listen to what the Lizard had to say, and caught up to the story. So... this Dabbler character had gone through all this trouble of dragging her Templar brethren and Danny to an inhospitable jungle, where they were ambushed by aztec lizardmen. And now, by the corgi-sized mosquitos flying around them, and the giant trees and ferns, they were in Dino land.

"NO!" He snarled viciously, almost snapping his jaws and baring his fangs, trying to cow the Warm bloods. Rosa visibly stepped back at the aggressive display, trying to get to the axe.

"She has used the forbidden relic, the bridge of gods! She possesses forbidden knowledge! The sorcerer's presence defiles this time of the ancestors. Every second spent here could spell disaster for the present!" The lizard king explained, apparently aside from a museum guard he was also Time Cop.

Rosa was now fifty-fifty on who was friend or foe. She always admired someone who enforced rules and order. She investigated further.
"Danny... that witch called you by your name. Can you tell us more about her? Is she really a villain? And... Dinosaur rides? for real? Time travel, ancient temples... my Templar companions' lives... for a dinosaur ride?" A giant mosquito tried getting near Danny again, serving as a not-so-mild distraction.

Thinking over this incident required more time than the lizard king seemed capable of lending to them without flying into anger. "I don't remember her being a full villain. I think we stopped some kind of crime in South America once, then she helped keep a woman from mind controlling with baked goods. I think she helped at least." The recourse of the moment began to weigh on Danny. "Also, if we look at this, we don't exactly have the same definition of disaster as this guy does when it comes to the present. I mean, what if she changes something that keeps those templars from dying? That would be a disaster to him, but not- that is a massive mosquito. We need to find shelter or something."

The mosquitos buzzing through the immediate area did pose a threat, but Danny brought repellent. She sprayed a line down her arm and splashed a little under her neck. "If we find Dabbler, she won't come with us until she rides a dinosaur. And, in all honesty, she'll probably come over here once she is done. Where are the dinosaurs someone could ride?"

Rosa took a moment to think about it, and another moment to pick up a fallen branch and smack a mosquito out of the air, splattering the bug on a tree. It was a subtle ruse to get close to her weapon. "Well, if I have to be honest... wanting to ride a dinosaur makes a tad bit more sense than protecting the laws of time travel and ze space time continuum... But, we need to find your witch friend." All in all, Rosa decided she did not want to be friends with someone who tried to eat them five minutes ago... or was it 'eat them 79 million years in the future?'

The lizard king tried, really tried this diplomacy thing. But talking to your food was just not part of the upbringing of lizard kings, and Danny using some modern chemicals to ward off monster mosquitos just seemed to rub him the wrong way. "You warm bloods can never be trusted. It is little wonder you are destroying earth, crawling over it like vermin. RAAAARGH!"

The king roared, but his roar was met by others echoing through the jungle. He may have been top reptile back home, but here in the Cretaceous, it was another ball game.

His roar was challenged by a pack of newcomers from the jungle... Velociraptors. Not like in that movie, but giant, white feathered half-reptile half-avian predators, probably the distant ancestors of modern fried chicken. They heard the lizard king's challenge, and they would brook no challengers in their 'hood.

"HSSSSSssss...." The Lizard King bared his fangs and hissed at the newcomers, as the pack circled the challenger. The biggest of the pack came in like a bad mother, taking a good look at this so called 'king'. Neither backed down, and a fight was all but certain.

Rosa looked on at the pack of lethal killers, like two deadly predators meeting. But, most of them were focused on the king... only a couple of smaller stragglers were eyeing the girls, and Rosa felt her foot against the shaft of her axe.

"I think this is my karma for loving chicken barbeque, mein freund..." Rosa looked around for an exit, knowing she may have to fight to protect herself and Danny. A narrow trail into the primordial woods proved their best chance.

"Danny... get ready to run..." She gripped her axe and stared them down. "...Come here so I can turn you into rotisserie, you damn birds!" Rosa's presence and tone did indeed get the raptors' attentions.

No one needed to tell Danny to run to get her to take off on the next part of her mission. She knew the only way she would be able to fend off the lizard king involved Dabbler. The wooden ax Rosa liked swinging around might be cute, but it would not be practical in a drag out fight. "Split up! We'll cover more ground and hopefully find Dabbler!"

No bracelet. No fighting skills. Nothing at all to stake her name as a superhero, but Danny could still prove very physically fit. Not outrun a raptor or a lizard king physically fit, but definitely enough to be agile enough to dart between trees, and keep her balance when bouncing from rock to rock. If she could just find Dabbler she could- Run straight into the side of a cliff.

Danny picked herself up off the ground, brushing herself off and looking to see if anyone- or creature- followed her. She dug into her bag. Nothing would help her in this situation. The fact she needed Dabbler to bail her out made it even worse. Sure, the little witch looked like she kept a friendly demeanor towards Danny, but she also did insane things. Currently this entire failed expedition happened merely because she wanted to ride a dinosaur. "She couldn't just magically make one? She had to come down here and look through the forest where-"

A thought came to Danny. We're in the forest. Dinosaurs big enough to ride would be out in the plains. "I just need to get out of these woods before that one armed lizard kills every dinosaur he comes into contact with."

AXE KNIGHT

The Axe Knight cried havoc, and howled for Valhalla once more, slicing open the neck the first giant chicken with an axe swing as it came to peck Rosa, making the second one more wary. The blood and the raptor made Rosa smile with delight. No guilt in hurting dinosaurs for this Axe Knight.

"Come on then! Show me what you are made of!" The second beast bit down on Rosa's shoulder but, with her psionic power the bird's teeth only slightly dig in and finds it hard to tear out a chunk of her. For this she drives the 'hook' bit of her axe deep into the thing's spine, letting her drag it to the ground and hack at its neck a few times.

While Rosa struggled to catch her breath from offing two pack runts, the Lizard King was being a mean son of a lizard and tossing the Alpha Raptor around. And one armed no less. "Mein Gott, he's winning. Time to leave..." Rosa made off into the trail to try and find Danny... or the witch.

DANNY THE SPHINX

For some length of time, the chirping of giant bugs, giant birds, dinosaurs, trees, rivers and other wonderful nature things would be all Danny could hear. Mosquitoes were still flying about, but, there were bigger sources of food around than some skinny little hairless primate.

Another threat would soon be upon Danny, though it was a more subtle and sinister sort- the Cretaceous sun had been hanging low since their arrival, and now the orange sunset soon gave way to blue and purple twilight, and finally night. Where the jungle had only a few natural sounds, now the world truly came alive with the nocturnal creatures now up and about. In every corner, under every brush there seemed to be yet another giant insect looking for food.

Bio luminescent creatures filled the air, and noctural plants began to bloom, filling Danny's sight with many an attractive flora. Said flora however, proved to be as deadly as anything that walked or crawled, as a giant firefly wandered too close to an innocuous plant, only to be devoured by some yet unknown flytrap that towered over Danny. The jungle now seemed only to close further on her, with no landscape and no signs of friendly life...

...except for the faint smell of... roasted chicken downwind, a faint pillar of smoke just outside the forest's edge.

Nothing in the environment gave her a direct reason to know the sun descended, but the sudden lowering of light started to remind her forests got dangerous when they got dark. But, they also got more beautiful. Unfortunately, Danny thought the things most beautiful also could kill you fairly- yep it just ate one of those giant mosquitoes. "So, we're just chucking this whole place up to being a walk through Hell."

Danny tucked her arms in, making sure to avoid any interaction with anything not made of dirt. Slowly she paced through any opening she could until she got closer to the source of the smell of chicken. The only person she could think of capable of making a fire would be Rosa, and if Rosa had an open fire at this juncture, there is no way it would end well for them.

With her attention diverted, Danny took a well placed step just happening to be in terrible proximity to a vine that quickly wrapped around her leg. Out of instinct she tried to conjure a blade to sever it, but found her arm merely swinging at the air. Another vine grappled her off hand, keeping her under wraps. Turning her head, Danny noticed petals beginning to shift and move as a gaping maw within a giant flower made its self clearly presented.

If Danny screamed for help, it could bring on the lizard king, but if she did nothing, this flower would definitely eat her. "Help!"

THE D's

A pleasant hum emanated from Dabbler as she had set a nice roast raptor dinner on a crudely assembled log table. Using shaped stone tools, she carved a large fillet of choice meat and placed it on a leaf improvised as a plate. She brought it from the rotisserie to the table, complete with chef's attire to complement her work.

"For you, your highness!" Dabbler said with a mocking courtesy, serving the fillet to the smoldering remains of a giant ant queen head. Around the table Dabbler had ant soldiers as her guests, and the clearing where she cooked and dined was scorched earth, piles of giant ant bodies strewn about, reduced to ash.

"...perfect. Perfect. Now, continuing our discussion, your highness. I believe we can come to an accord with the treaty... that we can appease the dinosaur nobility to let me ride them!" she said to the severed head of the queen ant, who did not dignify Dabbler with a response.

As the royal supper wound down into Dabbler chowing down on raptor leg, she eventually hears Danny's cry for help across the jungle. "Hark! A cry for help? this looks like a job for... Dabbalah!"

"No it's not! We are here for dinosaur rides! We must appease the king... and queen... of Dino land!"

"No no, there is no king and queen of Dino land. We have to go find some ride tickets!"

"No. Those are both wrong. We opened a portal through time into the Cretaceous and encounter them in their natural habitat! we need a magical dinosaur speaking stone."

Of course, this being Dabbler, she'd been speaking for a good minute or so after teleporting to Danny's location, talking to herself, waving around the giant chicken leg.

Dabbler eventually.... no, no, there's no such time she'd ever come to her senses. She turns to look at Danny. "Ho ho! Do mine eyes deceive me? Is this some damsel in distress..."

Dabbler reappeared upside down on a branch to come face to face with Danny, her voice a barely contained giggle as she delivered the lamest pun. "...hanging around?"

AXE KNIGHT

Rosa meanwhile, was getting a ton of cardio in after escaping the raptor pack. She ran down the trail Danny did, then took a few wrong turns, interacted with the wildlife with her axe, ran some more, Axed some more, until night fell and she was tired, thirsty and lost.

"...Should've... packed... rations..." Her survival instinct winding down, the luxury of hunger and thirst finally managed to catch up to her.

Sadly, Rosa was in no mood to head near the rivers, where giant crocodiles lurked. She was lucky to see one jump out of the river and take down an innocent dinosaur, and that croc made the lizard king look positively puny.

Rosa looked around, trying to "remember your training" out of here but training never covered time travel to a place with giant everything. She eventually spots some kind of mushroom on the ground with a small pool of water collecting on its concave head.

"...I'll either die, get high, or quench my thirst. Not bad choices." She thought to herself. She concentrated and channeled her physiokinetic powers to her gut, hoping this would mitigate whatever effect the primordial fungus would have on her.

Rosa stood there a few minutes. She wasn't thirsty anymore, that was good. But the night was coming alive with strange lights among the plants, and strange smells that shouldn't be here."...Barbecue?" Lost and alone, Rosa followed what she thought was the first signs of her tripping out.

Danny could feel the grip of the vine tightening around her arm. A numbness began to set at the tip of her fingers, yet she pulled. "You gotta...work for your food!" A minor lack of taut gave around her elbow. With the briefest of reprieves, Danny slid her arm out of the grip, feeling a rush of blood press through her arm. Dirt parted ways as her nails dug as deep as they could, trying to create a lip to take hold.

The vines around her ankle continued to strengthen. Sudden bursts of strength began trying to pull her away from the safety of the world outside of its gullet. She kept her free leg as mobile as she could, trying to keep herself from a second snare. Muscles began to constrict in her shoulder, followed by her upper torso, then down to her lower obliques. Her fingers gripped a branch, trying to pull herself away from the plant, but the branch could not hold on.

Feeling the branch in her hands, but without the extension of strength brought on by the conjoining tree, Danny knew she still had an option. While the vines tried tightening around her lower leg, Danny tried wedging the branch into the mix. As the vines continued to wrap, Danny felt herself nearing the end of the grip and the beginning of her freedom.

All of this without a bracelet. Although the bracelet would have help so much more and hurt a lot less.

Rolling to a more safe location, Danny could feel her ankles and arm throbbing in pain. She looked up to see a familiar face she never wanted to see again- except this time, but only because she needed to stop her. "No more...dinosaur rides!"

It didn't dawn on Dabbler that Danny was not of the demeanor of danger dialogue. She simply stood by and monologue'd as Danny rescued herself, and applauded the cheerleader's efforts.

Dabbler naturally objected to the objection to her objective. "What? There aren't any dinosaur rides here? What brings you to Dino Land, oh progressive damsel who rescues herself?"

"You hungry, by the way?" For some unrelated reason, Dabbler offered Danny some of her giant drumstick roast.

"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."