Preamble:
This is my final entry for @Motowhed 's collab offer Open collab offer
I felt it was time to finally wrap the story up and not leave it unfinished
I decided to run with it with my steam punk fluffy setting, which is the only setting I have that was robust enough anyway.
But it is set in an alternate time line, you will see why as the story goes along
Heads up though, there is fluffy on human violence.
Humans die because of fluffies, if you object to that, now is the time to turn away.
Stil with me ?
Good
This is also a Steam fluffy story and you know what that means
Cameo’s !
New Orleans Stands Part 3
Things however go from bad to worse, the moment Frosty precariously perches on the lamp post, where she tentatively touches the interposer.
She isn’t immediately fried, so that’s good.
What’s less good is that the lamp post is starting to buckle under the never ending stream of the mindless herd.
Dead bodies are piling up against the lamp post, and more and more are coming. Flying this low, her wing fluffies practically graze the the tops of the herd, when things go awry.
One of Appolo’s wings gets stuck behind something, it decapitates three fluffies.
Slicing right through their heads as Appollo loses control, crashing head first in to the milling herd.
He breaks his neck and spine in 3 places.
He has enough time to scream, before it is cut off as he goes under, to be crushed by the moving of bodies.
Ace curses and Memphis screams in righteous indignation.
Both of them drop two rounds of grenades, more as retaliatory action then to be usefull.
The grenades rock Frosty on her precarious perch.
She tries to ignore the panic in her chest.
The heart hurties at losing a dear friend, while she tells her self that the water stinging in her eyes, is just water.
She fumbles with the interposer and manages to yank it off with her teeth.
It goes flying and is heavy enough to cave a skull or two in.
Robin, Dr Turbine and Dr Carp are following the proceedings via binoculars. Hoping against hope, that this single fluffy can do what is expected of it.
Even Robin doubts Frosty can do it.
Frosty fumbles with her task. She got the interposer out of the bag and managed to not drop it, but she can’t quite get it to slot in to place, and then there are four cables, she has to plug in as well.
“ou dummeh huwwy up !” Ace grouses as she continues to criss cross across the sky, getting annoyed at how much Frosty is mucking about.
She doesn’t want to show it, but she is getting close to panic. Her fluff is soaked and she is flying on fumes. Soon she will either crash or have to go back to the Mr Owl.
And she isn’t sure if she can take off again, she might just collapse.
Frosty managed to flick the interposer in to place. The four cables are a whole lot harder to plug in though.
She understands the concept, it’s not that hard, it’s like pushing shaped blockies in to the right shapes.
But the cables were not meant to be handled by hooves, and Frosty has to twist herself in all sorts of shapes, to use her mouth and click the cables in to place.
Frosty yelps as the mindless herd pushes against the lamp post, she scrabbles for purchase, as she can feel herself slipping away.
Ace and Memphis perform another interference run, their last, they are all out of ammunition.
As the grenades explode around Frosty and tears the fluffies apart, spraying her with body parts and gore, she has just enough time to click the last cable in to place.
Nothing happens for a moment, just an ominous hum.
The air fills with the smell of ozone and then the tesla fence kicks back in to life again, as several things happen at once.
An electric discharge hits Frosty, as she kicks off tearing through her wings and singing her fluff.
It wrecks her flight controls and all she can do is limply sputter through the air.
Ace is caught by the fence. One of her legs is sliced clean off, the tesla fire cauterizes the wound.
But despite the searing pain, Ace is lucky, she is stil alive.
Memphis is not so lucky, he was flying in between the lamp posts and got cut clean in half, along with the titanic herd, just as the walls activate again.
As the two halves of a fluffy, that once was Memphis get swallowed by a roiling mass of fluffies.
The sharp bas relief figure are etched back, in the jet black sky.
They are poised in pitched battle, one lashes out at the other.
Serrated lighting blades hit, bathing the night sky in photographic flash of light.
Briefly turning the world in to a negative of themselves and then.
Then they are gone.
And not just them, the titanic herd of mindless fluffies is gone too.
Leaving behind only the corpses.
The heavens part, the clouds disperse and the rain starts to go from a torrent of freezing rain, to nothing but a sputter of water in the blink of an eye.
Before that dissipates too.
Before the rays of the rising sun that set the clouds alight.
Somehow New Orleans survived the night.
But not unscathed.
As it turns out, the French Quarter is not the only enclave.
There are more which managed to withstand the mega herd, trampling through the city.
Many residents managed to find shelter at the top of high rise buildings,
but the cost was high.
Lots of building have been irreparably damaged, while many people are either injured, or just plain trampled by millions of fluffies.
Many thousands of pet fluffies, are also dead injured or traumatized.
Though some seem to have had the time of their life attacking or devouring other fluffies.
Ace is perpetually three legged now.
Frosty managed to crash land somewhere relatively safely.
She is found several hours later, unconscious.
She has broken three legs and a couple of ribs, but she will get better.
After all she and Ace are some of the lucky ones.
They are still alive.
Unlike poor Apollo, Concord and Memphis, when Belle hears about her brothers fate she is inconsolable.
New Orleans is a mess.
Rebuilding it wil cost millions, possibly billions.
News reports are starting to come in that this phenomenon happened all across the country, and they all ended at the exact same moment.
But nobody knows exactly what it was, or more worryingly.
If this phenomenon might return.
And that is how it ends
In tears and bloodshed
Not many cameo’s in part 3
Cameo’s
@infraredturbine
@Carpdime
@Mr_Owl
Cover art by the always excellent @PeppermintParchment
I was supposed to draw the cover for part 3 myself but never got round to it
Ace in between bombing runs.
You can find part 1 here New Orleans Stands Part 1 ( AMDk7)
and part 2 here New Orleans Stands Part 2 ( AMDk7)
And that’s it for New Orleans
