Scenario Dreams Part 4: The Gathering

I woke up right where I was before, a forest floor. I realized that I was still in shoyru form so I decided that it would be easier to become human, to avoid suspicion in case anyone saw me. I closed my eyes for a second and concentrated on my human form. My jacket appeared as I got taller as did my t-shirt and blue jeans and shoes. Now I was taller, but I felt almost half-blind because of my eyes being so much smaller. To think that I had always seen this bad before I met the Ellimist. I decided to head out and see what I could find out about this place. As I was walking a blue vortex appeared above me and a red tailed hawk flew out of it.

<Hi there Jay, long time no see. I see that you have returned to my native RP, but it seems that you created an alternate timeline by coming at sometime in the past.> It thought-spoke to me.

I snapped back in surprise until I realized that this was Tobias, an old friend of mine from when I was trapped in the Animorphs reality plane.

<I heard about your promotion to Guardian of the RPs, but shouldn’t you be off defeating the Crayak?> He asked me.

“Umm, yeah, I kinda got blasted here by his Sage of chaos, InfinityHell. Have you seen any of my companions?”

A blue mist surrounded Tobias for a second and then cleared. I was a bit startled but not too shocked, apparently the Ellimist was telling Tobias about my situation.

“Tell me about it, I have done exactly that before.” I replied to him.

With that we both started off toward the mountains in the distance, perhaps one of my partners was there. When we finally got there we decided to rest in a cave. I created some cool neggs for Tobias and I to eat for dinner. It was just too bad that Norvil wasn’t around to make a yummy dish out of one of them. Oh well, raw cool negg still improves abilities and satisfies hunger, but it just wasn’t as good as it used to be. We slept for the night in that cave near a cliff and were awakened by the sound of a boulder being crushed. My first thought was that Infinity had found me. I got up and carefully looked outside to see a desert shoyru punching boulders to dust. It looked like the partner that was here was indeed my friend Lonely, and he seemed awfully mad at loosing.

I didn’t want to scare him to bad so I transformed back into a silver shoyru and walked out to meet him.

He looked at me and screamed out, “AHHHH! TAZZALOR’S CUTLASS!” Immediately a cutlass just like mine appeared in his hand. “Who are you, I thought I was the only neopet around here. Are you a creature sent to destroy me by Visser three?”

I quickly realized whom it was that I was dealing with. This was me, or at least me when I was trapped in the Animorphs RP.

I backed off a step and said, “Now hold on a second Jay, it is only me, or you, or um, let me just show you.”

He looked really confused as could be expected. I concentrated for a minute and resumed my human form. My alternate self fainted.

<Jay?!?!> I heard from a nearby rock.

“Hey Tobias, I thought you were sleeping.” I said, approaching the red tailed hawk.

<I was until a few seconds ago when I heard you talking to me.> I heard from behind me at the cave.

My Tobias had just awakened and was flying out of the entrance of the cave while the Tobias of this timeline, who I will refer to as Tobias2, was just looking at me, wonder in his eyes.

“Man, the space-time-reality continuum thing is getting really confusing.” I said.

Before we could get into a very awkward conversation between the two Tobias’s my other self woke up.

“Man, I had a crazy dream that I met myself, and get this, Tobias, I was back in my human body. Too bad it was just a dream, I really would like to be human again.” Jay said.

<Umm, Jay, I hate to tell you but it was more than just a dream. Apparently there are two of you.> Tobias2 said.

“Actually, at this point there are about three of me.” I said.

Jay looked in my direction and looked a bit shocked again, but thankfully didn’t faint.

“Okay, I guess that it’s alright that I am talking to myself. So, why are you here?”

“I was sent here against my will by the Crayak, I am looking for one of my partners. The one here may be a shadowed shoyru, a desert shoyru, a desert aisha, or a golden chomby. Have you seen any of them?” I explained to him.

“No, I can’t say that I have, though I will help you look for them. Perhaps you could help me too. We are about to go back down to the yerk pool to try to damage it again. Perhaps you could help us out.” He offered.

I accepted, after all, someone might be down there. I spent the rest of the day flying around as a shoyru, visiting some of my old favorite scenery spots and looking for another neopet. I never found anyone and I came back and slept in my old grove in a tree next to my alternate self.

I had a very serene night, having dreams of the days I spent where my biggest problem was making a bad grade on a test, and my worst enemy was a simple, annoying individual. Later in my dream I heard a gentle voice whisper to me, “Never give up hope Jay, never give up hope.”

I woke up the next morning unusually energized. My alternate self and I had a nice meal of extremely rare and extremely delicious foods. There wasn’t a single cool negg in the course. This got my hopes up, Tobias and Tobias2 had no luck in finding any trace of any of my companions the day before, though they were going to try again today while I helped my other self out at the yerk pool. I decided not to introduce myself to the other Animorphs, seeing as that it would be long and complicated.

I called up a camouflage potion, drank it, and followed myself down a long hidden staircase into the depths of the yerk pool cavern. It wasn’t nearly as scary as I remembered, of course nothing could be scarier than that place where the Crayak resides. I hid near some boxes and both me and myself called Tazzalor's cutlasses to use. The potion wore off as it appeared in my hand and we started fighting. In the heat of the battle, hardly anyone noticed me but the enemies. I wandered off into a large room with a lot of boxes and computers. I looked around, hoping to find someone. While I was searching, a hork-bajar snuck up behind me. I turned around just as it was about to strike, and stood frozen for a second. It was not that it was that powerful or that I had no chance of getting it, it was just that it was like looking into the face of a demon, scary. I would have suffered a sufficient blow if it hadn’t suddenly fallen to the ground, unconscious. I looked around for a second and wondered what happened. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw myself enter the room.

“Hey, Jay, thanks!” I said to him.

“Thanks? For what, I didn’t do anything.”

“Then who knocked that hork-bajar out?”

I heard a small voice come out from the nearest computer console, “You are indeed Jay, right? I am glad that you survived the transport.”

I looked in the direction of the voice, seeing a desert aisha sitting near the computer and said, “Is that you, Norvil?”

“Yes, It’s me. I have been trapped down here hiding for quite a while now. Whoever these… things are they sure have some cool technology. I have been doing a little espionage to pass the time.”

“Hey, do you know where the others are?”

Norvil still sat staring blankly at the computer screen, “No, I was hoping you did.” He typed a bit on some kind of keypad and said, “There, I sabotaged all the data in their system, I am ready to leave now.”

My alternate self looked at me and said, “Leave? What do you mean by leave? Leave the yerk pool?”

I looked at him and said, “There is one thing that I forgot to mention to you earlier. I am not only you, but I am also the Guardian of the RP’s. That means that I have the ability to travel between reality planes. Here, I will show you what my true form is. It was given to me from the Master of the RPs, more commonly known as the Ellimist.”

I concentrated for a second. I grew taller, my human head appeared, and my shoyru tail shrank. I looked like a human with nice silk clothes, Elvin ears, Kokirish boots, and a silver sash around my waist. Then my wings grew to full size, glittering silver. My eyes shrank and became a brilliant green and pierced through the darkness of the cavern.

Jay stood there in shock, “W-what are you? How did this happen?”

“It’s a long story, and I don’t have time to explain now. Take care, and keep on eating cool neggs. You never know when a boost in strength is going to come in handy.”

With that I held my hand out and created a green vortex aimed at the location of Lonely. Norvil jumped in and I after him.

As I was traveling through that strange wormhole between realities, a blue mist enveloped me. I found myself face to face with the Ellimist again. He said to me, “Hello again Guardian. I have called you to inform you that Norvil will not accompany you on your quest to find your partners. Don’t worry though; I will take good care of him while you are away. After you have found a partner I will take him to the place I have set for them to wait. They will join you again when they are all together again. I recommend that you use your most familiar fighting form on the next journey, it is quite hostile.”

I was a bit irked that Norvil wasn’t going to get to come, but nevertheless I switched to my shoyru form, called my cutlass, and dove into the blue portal that had been created for me.

I emerged on a large plain. There seemed nothing dangerous about the place until a sword came down from beside me, almost cutting me badly. I turned around quickly to see a tall man wearing a completely green outfit and Kokirish boots, holding a metal shield, and wielding a large sword. I recognized him immediately. This was Link. He looked at me, seeing that I was not counter attacking, and asked, “I see that you are not a follower of Ganondorf, who and what are you?”

I didn’t really want to explain the whole six dimensional thing to him so I just bowed and said, “I am Jay, a great warrior from a land far away. I am what is know as a shoyru in this from, but I can also become something known as a human.”

He looked at me a bit funny and then said, “What exactly is a human? Is it anything like a dodongo, or perhaps like a tektite? Whatever it is, I will not let you go until you show me.”

I was a bit insulted from these remarks of him thinking that a human was a monster, but I decided to show him. I took a deep breath and became human. When I was done I saw Link rolling on the ground laughing.

“You look so funny! A human is a Hyrulian with oddly shaped ears and comical motley clothing. I have to say, it must be of some use where you are from, but here you could only pass off as a clown.”

I took these remarks lightheartedly, as he was a bit funny also, wearing that ridiculous outfit and having those excessively pointy ears. Though only slightly larger than as mine, they were still odd. I decided to become shoyru again to keep a bit of seriousness in our conversation.

“As long as you are a shoyru, would you care to join me in my journey to find princess Zelda.” He asked me, getting up from the ground.

“I can think of no better thing to do. I myself am looking for someone.”

“Then lets go, I have searched all the temples and dungeons around here, but I have one stop to make in Kakario village.”

I followed him on foot, holding my cutlass at the ready, just in case a real monster appeared. We got to the village around dark and went in. There were a few people still around, but they were mostly inside sleeping. I tried to cause as little attention as possible, but that didn’t stop me from accidentally spooking a few people still out. After we had walked for a while we came to a house that seemed old, broken down, and deserted. We walked in.

The house itself had only one room filled with boxes, crates, and cobwebs. There were five people gathered around the center of the room. They all seemed to be paying a lot of attention to something. I calmly walked up to them and tried to get in and see. Something hit me hard and I blacked out.

When I woke up I saw Link and five strangers gathered around me, trying to see if I was okay. I calmly got up and checked to make sure that I hadn’t broken anything. I was perfectly fine. All those cool neggs had helped, though with me they didn’t help much with unexpected blows they sure sped up my healing. Perhaps this reality plane had some kind of power limit on it that kept me from being too mighty here. In any case I heard a voice coming from the middle of the room apologizing for the injury. I went over to see that the one that was talking to me was, in fact, a giant spider creature. I quickly realized from my gaming experience that seemed to be from so long ago that this was the cursed rich man.

“Perhaps I could help you with that curse.” I said pulling out a jade scorchstone. It didn’t work. Next I tried giving him a yellow healthshroom, but that didn’t work either. Finally Link came up and pulled a bag out from his satchel. Out of that bag he pulled out a bunch of golden trinkets that each had a slight resemblance to a spider. When all of them had been pulled out they encircled the spider person, spinning around him rapidly until they all disappeared in a great cloud of smoke.

When the smoke cleared, there kneeling on the ground was a Hyrulian. He slowly got up, looked at his hands and started jumping up and down with joy. He calmed down after a while and said to us, “Thank you so much. The tokens from the corpses of the cursed spiders have returned me to my original form. To you, Link, I will give a large sum of money. Whenever you need more feel free to ask me, I have much more than I know what to do with.”

Link grinned. I knew that the money wasn’t as important as the fact that he saved this man to him, but it sure was nice. I felt a little disappointed that I had not been able to help.

The Hyrulian man looked at me and said, “I thank you for trying to help me so, and I apologize again for knocking you unconscious. I will give you this strange gem that materialized in my house one day. At first when I saw it I thought that it was a worthless blue rupee. When I picked it up, though, I could feel a strange power running through it. I have no need of it, and perhaps you could figure out what it does.”

He handed me a small blue crystal of some sort. Link and I said goodbye and walked out. I was looking at the crystal closely when I figured out what it was. It was the legendary water shard, one of the three shards of power. Just as I realized this fact a small blue vortex appeared and I heard a voice in my head that said “Place the shard in the vortex. I will take care of it until you have need of its power.” I did as instructed and the vortex closed.

Link and I proceeded out of the village and to a nearby walled off town. The bridge was broken so we jumped across to the other side on the pieces. I pulled out my cutlass, sensing danger. I was correct, as soon as we got into the abandoned village we saw many zombies roaming town. They were a little short sighted and didn’t notice us much. I hacked down the few that did. We cautiously made our way to a large temple of some sort. Link asked that I stay outside and make sure that no zombies followed us. I waited near the entrance. There were a few strange stones behind me. There was an energy flowing within them, like they were alive. I felt as if they were watching me. They were all gray; I was beginning to really dislike the color gray. I hit one of them with my cutlass out of frustration with my situation; I was still upset at having been defeated. My blade hit the stone and it started moving in an unnatural way. I was stunned for a second before I heard it.

“Boing, boing, its 1:53”

I remembered what this thing was. To think that I thought it was something evil that the Crayak was using against me. I sat down and waited some more. Suddenly I heard a maniacal laugh coming from the temple and ran to see what had happened. Before I could get there Link came out.

He looked at me and said, “Princess Zelda has been captured by Ganondorf!”

I heard a familiar voice coming from behind him say, “We have to save her!”

I looked at the source of the voice and saw a desert shoyru standing there. It was Lonely. I looked at him and asked, “Lonely, where have you been? What happened?”

“Jay? How did you get here? When InfinityHell blasted us with that strange orb attack I fainted and woke up inside this temple. I was hurt bad because I had emerged into this RP about 40 feet off the ground and dropped from exhaustion. When I awoke I saw Princess Zelda. She took care of me and healed my injuries. I have been by her protecting her from harm for a few days now. Then just now Ganondorf appeared and took her away. I tried to fight him but my attacks were useless.”

“Hey, Lonely, now that I found you it’s time to got to the next RP to find Kargupi.”

“No, I can’t go yet. We have to save the Princess, she is my friend.”

I could see that there was no convincing him to come with me until Zelda was safe so we all headed out for Ganondorf’s castle. When we got there I saw that it was suspended in the air above a large lava pit. I started to fly over to it but some kind of dark energy hurled me back. I couldn’t get there. Then I heard Lonely say something in a strange tone, similar to the voice that came from my mouth when I called the armor of the jeweled scarab. I couldn’t make out the words but after he was done a rainbow beam of light appeared from the sky and a bridge of rainbows and light appeared in front of us, connecting us to the castle.

“Wow, how did you do that?” I asked.

Lonely looked at me and responded, “It is a little thing that Zelda taught me how to do when all of the sages of time were free.”

I decided not to ask what he was talking about so we started across the bridge on foot. The darkness was haunting, trying to grab us, trying to destroy the bridge. I was a bit scared, though I guess I shouldn’t have been. It is a proven fact after all; darkness cannot prevail against the light. We crossed the bridge with relative ease and walked inside. I pulled out my cutlass and held it at ready. Almost as soon as we got in a beam of energy was shot at our group. I jumped up out of the way and searched out the source of the attack. It was a creature called a beamos, a monster strongly resembling a metal sculpture. I dived down and hit it full strength with my cutlass. I ended up doing no damage to it and crashing into the floor. I heard a voice call from behind me to use a bomb. “Do I have a bomb?” I thought. Then I remembered one of my trading post deals. I called out quickly, “Ummagine Bomb!” and a purple, bell pepper shaped fruit with a timer stuck on it appeared in my hand. I quickly threw it at the beamos and it exploded. I was covered in sticky purple goo from the explosion because I had been standing too close, but the beamos was gone.

“Next time try a tiki bomb, it would be a whole lot less messy.’ Lonely said to me with a smirk.

I thought about hitting him with a goo blaster to get back at him but I decided against it. We all went into the inner part of the castle to find a huge structure in front of us leading to the tower where, no doubt, the princess was being held. A powerful shell of dark energy blocked it. The energy was getting power from six different sources along the outside wall, each one above a door.

We decided to go into the door that had the green symbol above it. As we walked in, some kind of wolf creature rose out of the ground. I panicked, thinking it was Balthazar and rushed after it sword in hand. I was amazed when after I hit it once in the back it gave off an eerie howl and disappeared in a puff of blue, fiery smoke. I realized that it was simply a wolfos and proceeded to the next room. The room was almost empty with a few pillars and silver rupees on them around. Lonely and I worked together to fly Link around who grabbed the rupees. We then flew to the door on the other side of the room and put the rupees in the slots that held them, opening the door as a result. Inside the door was a small room with a risen area toward the back. In the risen area was a green energy beam that had an orb in the middle powering it. Link pulled out his bow and arrow, and set it. The arrow glowed with light and he shot it at the orb. It connected and the energy beam dissipated. Then a young girl in Kokirish clothing appeared and warped us back to the main room. One or the energy beams that was feeding the force field had disappeared. We repeated this process with the other five rooms, each one a bit different, and the field went away.

We made our way to the top of the tower, fighting a good many monsters on the way, and I started to hear music coming from somewhere. We came upon some steps covered with red carpet and I knew that we were close to the enemy. We got to the door at the top, walked in, and I saw Ganondorf. Above him was princess Zelda trapped in a crystal cage. Lonely and I hid from sight and let the other two duke it out. I would occasionally hit Ganondorf with my cutlass to distract him, giving Link a quick advantage, but then I would always head back to make sure Lonely didn’t get hit by any dark energy blasts. After a while Ganondorf fell to the ground, defeated. The tower started collapsing on all of us, including the newly freed princess, so we started running to the base of the tower to avoid being trapped in the rubble. When we finally got down there the tower collapsed, most of the rubble flying into the lava below, leaving a huge barren area floating in the air behind. We were all safe so I switched into my Guardian form, taking the others by surprise, and started to hold out my hand to create a portal to the next reality plane.

Before the vortex fully opened a deranged Ganondorf erupted from the rubble of the tower. I saw out of the corner of my eye a gray vortex open and fill him with dark energy. His body warped and grew larger. He was at least 15 feet tall. Link approached him and drew his Master sword. The new creature, known as Ganon, pulled out two swords of his own, each as long as I was, which was really impressive considering that I was in Guardian form. A battle raged and Link lost his master sword, which fell to the ground and was surrounded by a pillar of fire. I knew that I had to help him so I ran in and fought alongside him. With his help I was able to sneak behind Ganon and cut his Achilles heel, his tail. After a while the fire pillar wore out of energy and Link was able to receive his sword, and used it to defeat Ganon, with me used as a distraction.

The battle was over and we had won. I said goodbye to Link and Lonely said goodbye to Zelda. I held out my hand in the Spock form and a green vortex swirled into being in front of us. Lonely jumped in followed by me. As I was traveling across time space and reality planes I thought back on how this mode of travel was starting to seem as normal as hopping in the car and driving to the grocery store. Also that these intense battles were as usual to me now as sitting at the computer going online was to me back before I met the Ellimist.

I landed in a dark cave. There was no light anywhere, and I wondered where I was. I called up a magic torch and saw a small humanoid creature picking up a golden ring off the ground. He looked up and jumped back in shock and then exclaimed, “AHHHH, what are you?”

I realized that I had forgotten to get out of my Guardian form so I became human. Then I replied, trying to think of terms that the little hobbit could understand, saying, “I am a wizard from a far off land, who are you.”

He looked at me in my jacket still holding the torch and said, “My name is Bilbo Baggins, you wouldn’t happen to know Gandalf would you?”

I shook my head and offered to accompany him, help him get out of the caves that we were in. He seemed to accept so we started exploring. Eventually we came to a huge underground lake. There was an island in the center of it but I couldn’t make out any details with my weak human eyes. My torch went out for some odd reason, leaving the two of us in pitch black. I heard a small boat come up to us and a creature come out of it. Bilbo was a bit scared at this so he pulled out his sword. I knew how weak it was so I wasn’t scared at all. It was so dark; I had to see what was going on. I transformed into my Guardian self and saw him clearly. He was a small, slimy creature with huge eyes. He came up to us and said to himself, “I wonder who these creatures are, my preciouss.”

This was a creature known as Gollum. I held out my cutlass and said to him, “I would appreciate it if you would show us the way out of this cave system. I have an agenda to keep and this is slowing me down greatly.”

He looked at my sword and said, “Very well, but we will have a competition to decide. I will ask you a riddle and if you don’t answer it I will get to use you as my lunch, if I don’t get a riddle correct then I will show you the way out.”

Bilbo and I agreed and he started, “What has roots as nobody sees, Is taller than trees up, up, it goes, yet it never grows.”

I was stumped but Bilbo, who apparently was very good at this kind of game, said “Easy, a mountain.”

Gollum grimaced at him and I started the next riddle. I really wanted to move quickly so I hit him with something he would never understand. “I travel through time, through space, through all, when I am in trouble on the Master do I call, I have many friends, and acquaintances I hold dear, I am destined to defeat the one who is the essence of fear.”

There was a loud yell of anguish echoing through the caves. Gollum was seriously stumped for a good reason; I was the answer to my riddle. With a bit of persuasion I was able to convince Gollum to show us the way out. After Gollum was out of sight I resumed my human form and explained to Bilbo that the ring he found would give him the ability to become invisible if he put it on. I also told him to use it sparingly because of its origins, which I did not explain at the time. Apparently he believed me because he slipped it on before we went out the exit of the cave, which was guarded by goblins. I managed to slip by them by drinking a camouflage potion.

After we were out of that awful cave we walked for a while until we saw a group of thirteen dwarves and one tall wizard sitting down and lamenting the loss of Bilbo. Bilbo of course had made it out with me so he decided to play a trick on them. He slipped on his ring before I could stop him and appeared suddenly in the middle of the group. I decided that I didn’t want to scare them when I introduced myself so I became human and went over there.

“Now that you have had your fun, Bilbo, I would like to introduce myself to the others. I am known as Jay, it is a pleasure to meet you all.” I said to them.

Before I could say another word Gandalf, the wizard, got this enraged look on his face, pointed his staff at me, and said, “Who are you? I know that you are in disguise for under that human form I can see great power. Show yourself or I will be forced to destroy you.”

I was quite startled by this. Apparently my alternative forms only masked my appearance. I seriously didn’t want to be fried so I transformed into my Guardian form. Gandalf put his staff down and said to me, “Very interesting. With such an odd form I can see why you would travel in disguise, you look somewhat like an elf but much different. Those clothes are made of rare silken mithril I can see. Are those wings; does that mean you can fly?”

I had never thought about that last question. I knew I could fly as a shoyru, very well in fact, but I had never tried flying in guardian form. I tried to jump up into the air and take off. Indeed I could fly, not as well as in my shoyru form but I could do it. I landed back down in front of and amazed Gandalf and fourteen small awed faces. I bowed and said, “As I was saying, my name is Jay, I am from a far away land. I have come here to seek one who looks like this except shadowed.” I switched to my shoyru form to ask them if they had seen Kargupi. They were amazed still but said that they had not seen him. Gandalf asked me to stay in my Guardian form because it would be easier to walk around and only startle people rather than perhaps run across someone with the power to see that I was disguised who would immediately threaten us.

This seemed like a fair request so I followed them on their journey with little disturbance until we got to some dark woods. At this point Gandalf bid us goodbye and left telling us to stay on the path and look out for spiders. We were all a bit upset at losing him and having to go through the forest known as Mirkwood, but nevertheless we trudged along the path.

I knew that I could easily fly over it in a matter of hours, but then I would leave an obvious trail of sonic booms and I would leave my current companions behind. We traveled along the path for what seemed like weeks, seriously depleting our rations. I would always secretly have cool neggs to eat because I would just scare the others even more if they knew I had even more powers.

One night as we were about in the very center of Mirkwood I woke up suddenly. Something was not right; I could see no one around me despite my good vision. I walked around for a bit looking for them when I tripped over something lying on the ground. I looked down and saw nothing but I heard a groan and someone getting up. The thing I had tripped over suddenly appeared and put a ring in his pocket. It was Bilbo. I was about to get upset at him at using the ring out of fear, but I knew that there was no time for such a trivial thing at the time. The dwarves were missing. We carefully searched around for them until we came upon a lair with much web around it. There in the center of a ring of trees were thirteen cocoons. I had a suspicion that the dwarves were in there. Bilbo and I started toward there to free the others when many giant spiders started to attack us. I pulled out my cutlass and Bilbo put on his ring and attacked them from his cover of invisibility. For a long time did we fight until I figured out that I could drink a camouflage potion and free the others while Bilbo held off the attackers. I did just that and quietly transported the cocoons to another part of the woods where the dwarves were let out and walked freely. I knew that I couldn’t leave Bilbo behind so I left the others there and went back to find that Bilbo had slain all the spiders in that area and was walking back to meet us.

Luckily I was able to rig up a flying transport system for us to go the rest of the way. All the others wondered why we didn’t think of this before hand. In any case, I flew them all to the closest town where we filled up on supplies. I had to do a lot of creative explaining to the people there saying that I was a lost branch of the Elvin race. I don’t think they believed me but they tolerated my strange appearance nonetheless. After we were well rested and full of food we all headed on our way to the lonely mountain, where Smaug, a ferocious and greedy dragon resided. I could only hope that Kargupi was there, but it was kind of nice to get caught up in the dwarfs’ quest of treasure seeking. When we got there we entered a secret back door and stayed for a night in the tunnels leading to the main chamber. I managed to convince them that I should be able to look around to see if I could find the treasure. Of course my real reasons were not treasure, seeing as that I had all I needed, my real reason for going was to search for Kargupi and go to the next RP.

I crept along the cave, as quietly as possible. I went through small corridors only a shoyru could navigate, and through pitch-black caverns that could only be traveled by one who can see through deep darkness. After a long journey I came to a huge room with gold all around. It was dim but still somehow illuminated to where I could see well in my Guardian form. There was one detail about the room that stuck out from all the rest once you noticed it. There in the center of the room, lying on a bed of gold was none other that Smaug the terrible. I crept silently around to search when I heard a frightening voice come from him.

“Congratulations on finding me thief. I have never seen one such as you. Tell me, who are you?”

Smaug had seen me and wasn’t going to let me go. I had to give him an answer quick. I was about to tell him point blank who I was but I remembered Bilbo telling me earlier about how dragons like to be spoken to in riddles. I thought back to my journeys for a second and gave him the following reply, “I am the shape-shifter, the one from lands beyond reality, and the elf that is not. I am the silver dragon, the human of many theories, and the Guardian of the RPs. I am the friend of the lonely one and the enemy of the chaos sage. I have no need of fame and I have come to steal no gold.”

Smaug was well impressed by my many titles as it seemed and asked me, “If you have come to steal no gold, then why are you here. Certainly you don’t expect to slay me seeing as that you are so small and unarmed.”

I could think of no response to that so I softly said “Mega fire shield” and held it at ready in case he attacked.

Seeing this he decided that he was bored with me and shot a huge blast of dragon fire at me. The shield blocked the fire but I had forgotten one thing, dragon fire has a mixed element of fire and darkness. I was singed pretty badly by this blast and I ducked into a cave nearby. In there I healed myself with a scorchstone and tried to rest when something landed beside me. I was startled at first so I called up a magic torch to see who it was. There standing beside me was Kargupi. I was so relieved to have found him, but he somehow seemed preoccupied. In his hand was an opaque white gem of some sort.

“It is good that you have come, I have been waiting here for quite a while, examining this gem that I found. It has some strange power radiating from inside it but I cannot figure it out.” He said to me.

I said in response to that, “Come on, it is time to go. Go ahead and leave the gem here in case someone needs it in the future.”

With much hesitation he set the gem down and jumped into the vortex that I had created while we were talking.

“Just one more partner to go and then we will all be together again” I said to myself as I became a silver shoyru and jumped into the vortex, leaving the Hobbit RP behind, going on to who knows where.

I emerged in a field. There was noting too strange around and all seemed normal, as if I was actually home, in my native reality plane. I knew that I had to find Malee and then I could figure out a way to defeat the Crayak. Thinking of how familiar this place seemed, I jumped up and started flying around to see if I could see him with my binocular-like shoyru vision. I was about a mile or so in the air when a blast of fire hit the edge of my left wing. I was shaken but I managed to steady myself.

I heard a familiar voice yell out to me in an authoritative tone, “You are not allowed to be here, go back in the same way that you came or I will be forced to battle you, Shoyru.”

I turned around to see… me. There were a few things different, the me I was seeing had on a jacket with flame decorations on it and held a greater orb of the fire faerie in his hand. He was riding on some kind of flying blue board that was strapped to his feet.

After seeing him I exclaimed, “Wow, are you me? What is that cool board that you are riding?”

He looked at me strangely and slightly loosened his grip on the greater orb. The he said to me, “Who are you? You cannot be me, the only other me that I know of was taken on a quest by the Master of the RPs. Do not try to fool me.”

I knew I had to do something to convince him that I was indeed his alternate self. After thinking for a second I decided that he might realize that I was him If I became human. I realized immediately that there was one problem with that, I was about a mile above the ground and humans can’t fly. I remembered my recent journey to the Hobbit’s middle earth and realized that I could fly in Guardian mode. I concentrated for a second with my alternate self watching me with awe as I grew in size, started looking more human, acquired brilliant green eyes, and gained my neat silk mithril tunic and pants.

“Hello Jay” I said to him.

He paused for a moment, still in a bit of shock and then said to me, “Yes, hello Jay, what happened to you?”

We went down to the ground where I took up my human form and I explained to him about all of my adventures I had had since I had last saw him back when I had faced Balthazar for the first time.

“It looks like you haven’t had much lack of adventure. I myself have been trying to keep creatures from other RPs out for quite a while now, this is the first time that one has actually been nice.” He said to me.

I was a bit confused by this and I asked him, “What do you meant by creatures from other RPs?”

“Well, you see, after you were taken to be appointed the Master of the RPs came down and told me that there was a temporal leak in this area. It appeared as a result of Balthazar appearing here in an odd situation. He said something about this alternate timeline being unable to seal the gap between realities. As a result of all of this we will on occasion have a hostile enemy from another reality appear and start to attack us for no apparent reason. In order to keep us from being destroyed the Ellimist gave me some cool abilities of some sort, like the ones he gave you, and told me to protect this world. Luckily he was able to seal off the 4^th and 5^th dimensions of this RP, meaning that enemies can only come to this timeline at this time.”

“Wow, what abilities did he give you?” I said looking at his board.

“First off I can call up this blue board to help me against flying enemies and He also gave me the ability to call up food, so I can get really strong by eating cool neggs every day. Also he allowed me to keep the greater orb of the fire faerie that we got off of Balthazar. I have posts all around the globe that keep me updated on hostile activity.” He explained to me.

I still had a few questions left unanswered so I asked him, “How do you fight an enemy if it is resistant to fire.”

He gave a lighthearted chuckle and said, “I thought of that after having to take out a dodongo with a piece of wood sitting nearby. A few scientists recently found a way to place the power of thyoras tear into ordinary objects, allowing them to reflect elemental attacks.” He pulled out a strange badminton racquet that had a slightly glowing net. “This thing is made of pure titanium and has diamond edged blades around the racquet. The net was infused with one of the thyoras tears, so now I have a bit of a defensive weapon.”

After we talked for a while I took up my shoyru form and he called out his blue board and we started to fly off to my old house. When we got there I was quite amazed. The entire house was glowing a slight tint of blue and was perfectly new looking. I turned to my alternate self and asked about this.

“Remember me telling you about how they could use the tears to protect an object. They did that with my house.”

I decided that with all the recent problems people had been having with outside creatures that it would be wise to stay in human form for now. We went inside to find my brother sitting on the couch. Next to him was my best friend, Jason.

Jason looked at me and said, “Hey Flame. Were you able to take out that creature? Where is your flame jacket?”

I looked around and found that my alternate self outside putting up his blue board and weapons. Then I looked at Jason and asked, “Why are you calling me Flame, you should know better than anyone that I am Jay.”

Just then my alternate self came in and stood beside me. Jason almost fell over the back of the couch in shock but then recovered as I asked my other self what he was talking about.

“Well, you see, after a while of warding off enemies with the greater orb people started to call me Flame. It is kind of a nickname of mine.” He said to me.

“I guess I should call you Flame and myself Jay then to prevent too much confusion.” I replied to him.

Jason was still looking at us and almost shouted out at me, “Who are you? Did you just say that you are Jay, but that is Flame’s real name? Can someone explain what is going on?”

“Well, Jason, I am indeed Jay. You see, the Jay you know is one from this altered timeline. Even you exist in the main one. I came here a while back and altered a few things in the past, hopefully for the better and defeated Balthazar, the first creature to come here from another Reality Plane.” I said to him.

He stood there with seemingly even more shock on his face and asked me, “I have never seen you before, and it was the Golden Guardian that went with Flame and defeated Balthazar. You cant be the Golden Guardian because he was a shoyru.”

Seeing as that Jason was my best friend I decided to prove to him that I was Jay, of another timeline. I stepped in the middle of the floor and started to become a silver shoyru. This time Jason really did fall over the couch. Luckily the slightly weak floors didn’t give way because of the tear infusion. He got up and I hopped onto the coffee table. Just as we were about to get into a conversation about the events that had been taking place for Jason I heard a noise come from Flame.

“Sorry, There is a sighting in Hawaii, I have to go.” he said. With that he called out his blue board and pressed a button on the pager that he wore. Immediately he disappeared from sight. I guessed that scientists had found a way to improve the transporter helmet to be able to be worn as a pager. I really didn’t want to be left out on any battle so I said goodbye to Jason and stepped outside. When I was there and out of sight I Transformed into my Guardian form, held out my hand to create a vortex, and concentrated it on the location of Flame. I then jumped inside and came to my destination.

I appeared right next to Flame about 50 feet up in the air. I had to immediately start flying to keep from taking a pretty hard fall. He saw me and was shocked for a second but then went back to searching for the foreign creature.

“I didn’t expect you to be here.” He said to me.

“What? You should know me better that anyone, I wouldn’t let you get into a fight without me to tag along and fight with you.” I said back at him.

“I have been looking all around here, there must be some mistake. I see no creature.” He said, still looking around.

Apparently he had spoken just a second too soon. I saw the ground beneath us tremble. Luckily we were in an unpopulated portion of the island so there was no one around that could get hurt. I saw something green out in the ocean. I had to point it out to Flame, being as that he was a human with human eyesight. The green object was defiantly getting bigger as it slowly emerged from the ocean. It came closer and closer, step-by-step, until I knew exactly what it was.

“Flame, that is Chiazilla!” I exclaimed.

The color faded from his face. I could tell already that he had never faced an opponent so powerful and huge as Chiazilla. This was going to be a tough fight to say the least.

Chiazilla said nothing but continued on, almost ignoring us. It was headed to the nearest city. I pulled out my Tazzalor’s cutlass and Flame shot at him with his greater orb. Chiazilla flinched at the shot of fire, which seemed to make him more mad than hurt. He turned around and roared loudly at us. Seriously loudly. So loud I could hardly bear it. Out of desperation I hit him multiple times with my Cutlass, causing significant damage, but then he knocked me back a long ways with his hand. It took me a second to recover from that blow but I steadied myself before I hit the ground and flew back into ready position. Chiazilla was really steamed now. He pulled out a HUGE trident and started running at us with it pointed in our direction. It was very quick, quicker that I expected. I was ready to take the blow and slash at it again with my cutlass when two beams of sludge hit its eyes, blinding it. I looked down at a nearby hill and saw Malee standing there aiming his toxic sludge blasters at Chiazilla and firing. With Malee as a distraction Flame slashed at Chiazilla multiple times with his “attack racquet” as I will call it. I flew back for a second, put my cutlass away and called up a weapon called the Ultramax Hammertron. This thing was heavy, bulky, and just plain difficult to use, but it was one of the most powerful weapons in existence. I reared it back and hit Chiazilla a solid blow straight to its head. It wobbled a bit and then fell. Without warning a vortex of a color that I had never seen before opened up under it and it fell through, going back to it’s native RP, being revived on the way.

Needless to say I was very happy that we had defeated him. Then I realized something, I had found Malee. I had now found all of my lost companions!

“I wonder how Malee got past the watchers.” Flame said to no one in particular.

I was a bit surprised to find out that Flame recognized Malee, but then I remembered that I had been playing Neopets well before September the 9^th. I replied to him, “Perhaps it is the fact that he didn’t try to destroy anything.”

We all had a fine conversation. Flame and Malee got to know each other really well and I just sat there trying to figure out what I would do now that I had found Malee. It had taken me so long to find all of my companions, and if I just went back to the scary place where the Crayak was then I would most likely lose them all again. I couldn’t let that happen, I had to figure out a way to defeat the enemies. I decided to ask the Ellimist once I got Malee back with the others. Malee and I said goodbye to Flame and I created a vortex to the place where my companions were. Malee jumped in, and after seeing Flame teleport back to his house, I jumped in as well.

To Be Continued…