Romance and the Fate of Equestria

Chapter One Hundred and Thirteen

Among snow-covered pines, Skippmud dropped to the ground, folding up her black wings. Dark green magic lit up around her pale green horn, and pulled the wings out of her shoulder muscles. Her horn then popped out of her head under its own power, and she gathered the wings and horn together, wrapping them in a blanket.

She turned her eye to Vorpal Blade, who was sitting on the ground with his legs curled underneath his body, his head held upright but starting to drift off to sleep. "Vorpal Blade," she said sharply.

He slowly turned his many-horned head toward her. "Hmm?"

"You're tired," Skippmud stated. "That stuff strains on your muscles and your brain. You're always on the verge of drifting off to sleep, because even when you're sleeping, you're not sleeping—your body and mind are still working. You've gotta take all those needles out and give yourself a chance to rest."

Vorpal Blade folded his seven wings around his body defensively. "Will you just let that go, Skippmud?" he said in a strained voice. "I'm fine."

She smirked and snorted at him.

"I'm fine," he said with increased firmness, standing up.

He was surrounded by the six massive crown jewels of Equestria, arranged around him as a sort of nest. Skippmud stepped over the jewels and joined him in the circle. "You know," she said, "I think today might be Hearth's Warming Eve."

"I think you're right," he said casually. "I guess we're gonna have to miss stuff like that while we're on the run. Sure is a lot different from the days when we could go anywhere we wanted. I suppose it's my fault that's changed, but it won't last much longer. We'll only miss it this once."

"Yeah, I know," she assured him. "I'm okay with it. It's a holiday about the founding of Equestria anyway, and it's not like we're from Equestria."

Vorpal Blade nodded, but didn't respond.

"So…" Skippmud said casually, scooting closer to him. "Who's Crazyface gonna kiss on New Year's?"

Vorpal Blade raised an eyebrow. "That's an odd question. Well, unless our schedule changes drastically in the next week, his only options are you and me. Neither of us are his type, but you're substantially closer, so…"

"Oh, he's not kissing either one of us," Skippmud said seriously. "I'm kissing you."

Vorpal Blade laughed. "Is that where you were going with that? Okay, Skipp. Thank you, I'm flattered."

"It would be my genuine pleasure," said Skippmud. "Whatever I can do to get your damn mind off of Twilight."

He tensed up. "What are you talking about?"

"You know what I'm talking about. You're still obsessed with her, man. You're still holding out some hope that you'll end up with her when this thing is done." She glared at him. "No. No! That's never gonna happen! She's on the wrong side, and she hates you. You know she hates you because you orchestrated it that way. She's never going to want you again. You've got to stop thinking about her!"

"I know that," he said dully. "I know."

"You know it, but you're not feeling it," said Skippmud. "Much as I hate to say it, we've gotta take this discussion off the intellectual level and get down to the 'feels'." She pulled him toward a tree, and pointed up into its branches. "You know what that is?"

He tilted his head in surprise as his pure white eyes stared up at the growth of plant up among the tree's needles. "I do believe that's mistletoe."

"Yeah," Skippmud said lightly. "Horrible parasite, mistletoe. Sucks the life out of the plants it grows on. I'm very fond of mistletoe."

She brushed her mane out of her eyes, then flung her arms around Vorpal Blade's neck and kissed him with a wide-open mouth, her eyes glaring fiercely at him. Alarmed, he simply stared back at her, unresponsive. She snarled and pulled him closer, kissing him harder and more ravenously. Still receiving no response, she shut her eyes tightly and growled angrily into his mouth, and in response he moaned and placed a winged hoof on the back of her head, kissing her back gently, just hard enough to catch her off-guard. She ceased forcing herself on him and eased into it, letting the gentle kiss linger for a few moments before pulling away and waiting expectantly for him to say something.

"Skipp, that was amazing," he whispered.

"That's right," she said, clearly trying to sound smug but quavering slightly. "It's time for me to get your mind back on track the way only a mare can. I've waited a long time for this."

"…You have?" he muttered in surprise.

She grinned bitterly. "Oh, I can't tell you how upset I was when I learned that your grand plan for stealing the crown jewels involved going to bed with some random mare. 'Cause maybe I should have said something, but I had thought I laid a claim to your body years ago. The day you were marched into that prison… I was watching from my cell. And I knew that very second that I wanted to make you mine."

He frowned and pondered that. "…You were thirteen," he realized.

"I was," she agreed. "And if I could have, I would have put you in me right that minute. I don't care how gross it would have made you feel, I just wanted it." She swept her stringy hair back over her face, concealing her expression, and stared at the ground. "Long before we ever formed an emotional bond, I wanted you. And when that happened, when we got to know each other, I was terrified you'd start seeing me as a daughter or a little sis or something… I hated that thought, 'cause that's not what I felt for you at all. When somepony you want to bone suddenly saves your miserable life and works toward making it a whole lot less miserable… well, there's only one appropriate emotional response. You gotta fall for that pony. It's a law of nature, like gravity."

"Skipp, I had no idea," he said, still strained. "I'm s—"

"Shush," she said, rolling her eyes. "Don't apologize. Just beg for more."

"Gladly," he muttered with a slow smile.

"Yeah," she said deviously. "Maybe it's time for me to work your special talent on you, eh? Let's get you cured of your ridiculous daydreams about the enemy. It's time you started dreaming about me."

They embraced and nuzzled each other's faces. Vorpal Blade casually lit up his horn, levitating the crown jewels over from where he'd left them so that they were surrounding him once again. Skippmud chuckled and kissed him softly.

Crazyface watched them from many yards away, and pawed at the ground angrily. "Of course," he whispered to himself, stalking away. "It's not as if we were ever a team of three to begin with. We were a duo and Crazyface. All our plans are coordinated between the two of them. Never consulted me, never considered my input. And now, there's no question about why. Nopony cares about poor, sick, perverted, messed-up little Crazyface. He's just there to fulfill his baser urges!" He scoffed. "I could be a perfectly good mastermind if I wanted to."

He turned his eyes to the snowy ground and saw tiny clumps of sand sliding across the snow like snakes. "What is this?" he muttered with interest.

The ground heaved underneath their hooves. Vorpal Blade and Skippmud parted in alarm. A massive head made of sand surged out of the ground, followed by Kolassa's entire body as she heaved herself to her full height, displacing an entire hill's worth of earth, sending dozens of towering pines scattering like toothpicks. Mounds of upturned dirt tumbled on top of the trio, sending them plummeting to the ground, landing in the soft and wet soil, and Kolassa loomed over them, grinning viciously.

Vorpal Blade's magic rapidly unwrapped the blankets that held his companions' Mecha. In a flash, he jammed the needles flawlessly into place, activating Skippmud's wings and horn, and Crazyface's dark red horn and bronze earth pony pin. Jolted into action by the pain, the two of them joined Vorpal Blade in flying upward and away from Kolassa at a breakneck speed, before being halted in their tracks by the appearance of a glittering golden and silver force field blocking their path. Hundreds of feet tall and wide, it was generated by Celestia and Luna, who could faintly be seen hovering on the other side.

Song Li rose up between the two princesses, her masked face staring solemnly at the cornered trio. She pressed her rocket-propelled front hooves against the force field, and energy started expanding and growing around the two points where her hooves were touching the wall.

"For the glory of all nations," Song Li whispered, before her jets blasted clear through the force field and struck Vorpal Blade and his companions, sending them tumbling through the air.

Skippmud flapped her artificial wings madly, having no idea how to stabilize herself. With the sound of an immense screech, Okapiopteryx appeared out of the forest and rammed her, her tiny body hitting Skippmud with the force of a train.

Crazyface's artificial horn sparked with angry red lightning, and he started shooting bursts of it in random directions, some of it deflecting off the force field as he laughed wildly and shrilly.

"Luna?" Celestia said nervously.

"I'll get him," said Luna. She jumped through the hole Song Li had left in the force field—only for much of the remainder of the field, the silver portions, to start fading away as she stopped powering it.

Luna absorbed some of Crazyface's lightning attacks into her horn, and blasted him with midnight-blue lightning of her own. Scraps of Golden Thread dangled off of his body and fell to the ground, while his flesh and fur were only superficially scorched.

Vorpal Blade glared at Celestia through the steadily decaying force field, and suddenly realized there was a stinging pain between his eyes. Celestia was aiming a tiny beam of concentrated sunlight at him, using it to keep her aim true.

"Got you," she whispered. "What'll it be?"

He grinned deviously in response and folded his wings, falling backwards.

Lower down, Okapiopteryx had her bird feet around Skippmud's neck, squeezing just tightly enough that Skippmud couldn't separate herself from the goddess' clutches. Vorpal Blade's falling body, however, landed heavily on the queen's tiny body, dislodging her grip on Skippmud's neck. Vorpal Blade spun in the air, increasing the speed of his dive and pushing Okapiopteryx toward the ground.

She placed a clawed foot over his face and pushed away; they sailed off in opposite directions, parallel to the ground. "Did this one almost knock me prone?" Okapiopteryx demanded. "No mortal can do that alone." She turned to glare at Celestia. "It's right that their flesh should come apart like mesh, and yet they're tough and strong as stone!"

"Their bodies and skills are enhanced by the Golden Thread they wear, and by the blessings of Mitgaeard," Celestia said calmly. "Don't underestimate them, Okapiopteryx. Don't fight them as you'd fight an ordinary mortal. Fight them as you'd fight me."

"Hmm, an interesting notion," said Song Li, eyeing the clashing magical beams between Luna and Crazyface. Two panels opened in her shoulders, revealing a pair of nozzles which also started to absorb Crazyface's sparking energy.

The hatches closed, and both Crazyface and Luna turned to behold Song Li with confusion. She pointed an arm at Crazyface, and a tiny device, about the size and shape of a tube of lipstick, popped out of her wrist. It made a whirring sound for a brief second, before shooting a long, continuous red laser beam, blasting a tiny hole through Crazyface's wing. He plummeted, causing the laser to leave a long burn mark along the rest of his wing. He remained airborne, but the hole produced a loud whistling sound.

Song Li pointed her elbow at Crazyface, and a tiny circular hole spiraled open and produced a stream of tiny machines with buzzing wings, which started enveloping Crazyface's entire body. His horn glowed red, and covered his body with a second skin made of pure magical energy, which expanded out into a sphere, forming a tiny force field around his body and disintegrating the small automatons.

Celestia kept her eyes focused hard on Vorpal Blade as he flapped powerfully up to her level. Skippmud was making similar progress in sneaking up behind Celestia's back, but the princess casually shot her out of the sky with a golden beam without even bothering to turn her head. With a similarly casual attitude, Vorpal Blade caught her in midair with a levitation spell, righting her so she could fly on her own once again.

Kolassa merely stared at the frenetic pace of this battle, her eyes narrowed and her lips thinned. "Come on," she muttered. "Where are you?"

Song Li flew to Kolassa's face and vaulted off, holding her arms out to blast Skippmud and Crazyface simultaneously with energy from her thrusters. Crazyface was hit, and spiraled through the air, unbalanced, but Skippmud dodged, and dove toward Celestia, ready to slug her across the face. Celestia leaned into the punch, batting Skippmud's hoof away with her own clenched jaw. She shot a beam of waving sunlight at Skippmud, but Vorpal Blade jumped into the path of the beam, deflecting it with a magic shield.

Luna lunged at Vorpal Blade and Skippmud from above, brandishing a long silver stick with a scythe-like head in the shape of a crescent moon. She sliced across both of their backs at once, then suddenly went into violent convulsions, her body crackling with red electricity.

Crazyface was below her, laughing wildly as his horn flared up, intensifying the pain she was feeling. Okapiopteryx flew up to him and grabbed his face in one bird claw, screeching. The moment she touched him, her own body started crackling with the electricity as well, but she ignored the pain and curled her other bird foot into a fist, punching him with enough force to send him sailing in an arc over her head.

Kolassa lifted her head and grinned suddenly. "There you are…"

Sørmur dï Mitgaeard came flying out of the trees, her jaw gaping, and rammed mouth-first into Kolassa's neck with enough force to send both of them flying over the trees and landing over a thousand feet away from the aerial skirmish.

Kolassa rolled across the ground, felling trees, while Mitgaeard's fangs were buried in her neck, her venom corroding at the sand that made up her being. She came out of the roll and got to her hooves with Mitgaeard's expansive coils tightening around her throat, but the giant pony vanished, and reappeared just outside the great serpent's grasp. Kolassa laughed powerfully and raised both of her front hooves, bringing them down hard on the serpent's head, pounding her into the ground.

"We hoped you'd turn up," she said smugly, the wounds in her neck already healing themselves with new grains of sand. "And even if you didn't, we knew we'd get somewhere by attacking your chosen one. Either we'd take him out, or you'd show up to defend him. It was a win-win for us."

Mitgaeard glared up at her. "Your reassssoning isssss faulty," she sneered. "Sssssuch a thing doesss not enssssure your victory unlesssss you assssssume that you can defeat the combined forccccesssssss of my chosssssen one and myssssself. I weep for your idea of logic."

She turned her eyes toward the other battle, and started advancing on it. Kolassa grabbed her around the middle and pinned her to the ground again, her massive hooves crushing down on the snake's comparatively small head. Mitgaeard growled, and clouds of poison gas started seeping out of her skin, graying the bark and needles of surrounding trees.

"Poison me all you like, sister," Kolassa said with a smirk. "I'm made out of sand."

Mitgaeard growled, and her skin instead started emanating flames and beams of light. Kolassa was shaken, but managed to keep holding her down.

Back in the decimated portion of the forest, Song Li pressed her front hooves together and created a huge orb of white-blue energy, which grew and expanded before she flung it at Vorpal Blade.

From his many horns, an enormous three-fingered claw made of pure magic extended outward and caught the orb neatly, then flicked its wrist to hurl the orb back at Song Li. She caught it in her hooves and tossed it back at him. He rolled out of the way and it sailed off until it hit a group of trees, turning pieces of the towering pines into dust.

Skippmud swooped down on Okapiopteryx and stuck her hoof in the goddess's mouth, reaching down her throat. "Ha-ha!" she cackled. "You just got noodled, little girl goddess!"

Okapiopteryx snarled and bit down, the strength of her bite breaking the skin. Skippmud withdrew in surprise, staring at the bleeding bite marks on her upper arm. Okapiopteryx smirked and clacked her teeth mockingly, but in a mere moment, Crazyface came up from underneath her, spinning like a whirlwind and slicing at Okapiopteryx's face and body, leaving behind numerous cuts.

"Oooh, she does look like a young girl, doesn't she?" he said hungrily. "What a lovely goddess. Wouldn't mind adding her to my list…"

"She'd rip you to pieces first," Skippmud said wryly.

"Indeed she would!" said Celestia's voice from above them.

They barely had a chance to look up before Princess Celestia herself dropped upon Crazyface's back, and Luna upon Skippmud's. Their bodies pushed them downward until reaching the ground, kicking up a huge cloud of dust in the upturned soil, and Skippmud and Crazyface stuck face-first in depressions in the ground the exact shape of their bodies. The princesses stood atop their bodies with all four hooves.

"That's awfully brutish of you, Princesses," said Vorpal Blade, fluttering down to face them. He had a gash on his flanks and a puncture in his midsection, product of Okapiopteryx's claws and horns, which were still ripping at him. He pried her off with his single giant wing and slugged her across the jaw with a hoof, sending her tumbling into the dirt. "Why don't you let my companions go, before I make you? I've beaten both of you before all by myself."

"Yes, you have," Luna agreed solemnly.

"But not both of us together," Celestia finished.

The two sisters closed their eyes. Both of their horns glowed, and both produced a crackling bolt of energy. Celestia's golden bolt and Luna's deep blue joined together between the two of them, and when they opened their eyes, they were glowing a powerful blinding white.

The princesses rose into the air under their own power, not even opening their wings, and opened their mouths wide, producing pure white beams of magic that assaulted Vorpal Blade's body.

Mitgaeard continued struggling under Kolassa's firm grip, thrashing wildly. Finally, she managed to bring her heavy tail and around to swing at Kolassa's head like a club. Kolassa twisted out of the way, and the tail came in from another direction, its shovel-like sharp edges slicing straight through Kolassa's leg, which dissolved into loose sand, freeing Mitgaeard's head. Mitgaeard screeched with triumph, her voice rattling the trees, and started cutting through the air toward the other goddesses.

Kolassa slowly started growing her leg back, attempting to grasp at the serpent's passing coils and spikes with her remaining hoof.

Okapiopteryx was the first to spot Mitgaeard bearing down on them, and she gritted her teeth and furrowed her brow with determination, letting out a screech of her own before launching herself into the air, creating a sonic boom a split second before her tiny body collided with Mitgaeard's face with enough force to snap the giant serpent's head backwards.

Mitgaeard growled deeply and opened her mouth wide, releasing an immense cloud of poison gas over the entire battlefield. Vorpal Blade cast a quick spell that covered his mouth and nose in a shielding bubble. The thick purple-black gas spread all around, billowing out into the air. Celestia and Luna started coughing and hacking uncontrollably, barely forcing down the contents of their stomachs. Vorpal Blade zipped over to them and pulled Skippmud and Crazyface out from where the princesses had kept them pinned, gently shielding their muzzles from the poison as he had done to himself.

Kolassa, her leg almost completely regrown, tackled Mitgaeard, wrapping her front legs around the snake's thrashing midsection. Mitgaeard responded by absent-mindedly wrapping some of her coils around Kolassa's legs, middle, and throat, before breathing a stream of ice into Kolassa's face, creating a thin layer of white-blue frost over the desert sand of her body.

"Ice…" Kolassa muttered. "I've always hated ice. Damn you…"

Mitgaeard turned her head and opened her mouth yet again, this time shooting out four sticky silver filaments in four different directions, which searched through the poison cloud and latched unerringly onto Celestia, Luna, Song Li, and Okapiopteryx, and began reeling them in toward her jaws.

Celestia flapped her wings in an attempt to escape, but they got caught in the sticky strand. She lit up her horn and produced a whirling golden blade which hacked at the filament, but couldn't cut through it. Luna was making a similar attempt with a beam of energy, to no avail.

"It's impervious to magic!" Luna cried in frustration, through her coughing fit.

"To magic and to physical means of damaging it, so it would seem," Song Li said with remarkable casualness. "Fortunate, then, that I use neither." She shot a blast of energy from her hooves straight at Celestia, and with a loud snap, the thread was broken and Celestia was freed. She tumbled to the ground, flat on her back, and quickly rolled to her hooves and galloped out of the poison cloud before taking to the air. High above, Vorpal Blade and his two companions were hovering in place.

"VORPAL BLADE!" she roared, her eyes glowing yellow. "Vorpal Blade, you're mine! If nothing else is gained here today, you are still mine!"

She pursued him, shooting at him with beams of golden light, but he dodged each one, maneuvering around in swirling loops. Skippmud and Crazyface in turn chased after Celestia, but she ignored them completely, chasing after Vorpal Blade with single-minded and tooth-gritted focus.

"Song Li!" Luna shrieked in panic.

Celestia turned her head toward the screech. Luna and Okapiopteryx were hovering above the poison cloud; clearly, Song Li had freed them as she had freed Celestia. However, it appeared that in doing so, the armored empress had neglected to free herself—Mitgaeard had pulled her all the way to her gaping jaws, which snapped shut.

"No!" Celestia cried out.

Mitgaeard twitched with discomfort, and from within her mouth came the sound of jet engines. Her mouth was quite suddenly forced open from within; Song Li had her front hooves pressed against her upper jaw and her hind hooves similarly placed, pushing with all her might and with her four thrusters turned up high. When her limbs were stretched to their limit, her muscles started quivering against the assault of Mitgaeard's powerful jaws attempting to clamp down on her.

"Oh, Princess," Vorpal Blade sang. Celestia turned to him furiously. "You were saying something about me belonging to you?" He held up a hoof and waved at her coquettishly.

Celestia snarled and turned her back on him. She banked in the air, swooping down on Mitgaeard. She snatched Song Li out of the serpent's jaws and fell into a dive, hugging her fellow goddess tightly before they hit the ground.

"Ah," Song Li exclaimed in light surprise, extracting herself from Celestia's embrace. "Thank you, my friend."

"Don't thank me yet," Celestia said softly. "I think it's time we retreat. But first we have to free Kolassa."

They both flew up, one on wings and the other on jets, to join Luna and Okapiopteryx. Vorpal Blade had just joined his two cohorts in hiding behind one of the long white spikes on Mitgaeard's spine, but the goddesses' focus was on Kolassa, her face frozen and the rest of her body mostly immobilized by Mitgaeard's hundreds of feet of coils.

"Blast me," Kolassa rasped.

"What?" Celestia demanded.

"Blast me," she repeated. "Blast at the sand around my neck so she's not holding me so tight, then I can teleport away. Sear me down to the bone if you have to, just get me out of here and try not to blow my head off, that's one thing I can't quite recover from."

Celestia smiled in reply and nodded to Luna. Both of them together fired beams of energy at Mitgaeard's coils, but despite Kolassa's advice did not fire at her neck. Song Li followed with similar blasts from her front-hoof thrusters, while Okapiopteryx simply clawed viciously at Mitgaeard's skin. After barely a second of this assault, their combined efforts had broken off a line of her obsidian-black scales. Mitgaeard screeched in pain, and loosened her grip. Kolassa instantly teleported away and placed herself eye-to-eye with Mitgaeard. Bits of ice still lingered on her face, and she violently headbutted the great snake, forcing her head nearly to the ground.

"Did I hear the word 'retreat'?" Kolassa called out. "Right over here, ladies…"

The other four goddesses raced over and landed on her nose once again, and they all vanished in a swirl of sand.

They reappeared on a snow-covered mountain, and Kolassa lowered her nose to the ground to allow the others to step off.

"Sorry I wasn't more help there," she said.

"What?" Celestia laughed. "By my estimate, none of us were very much help once Mitgaeard showed up."

"I mean before," Kolassa muttered. "When it was the four of you against the three of them, and I just stood there and watched. I would have liked to have played a part in taking them down, but it's difficult. Imagine you're watching a bunch of mosquitoes fight and have to pick out which ones are on your side so you don't swat any of your allies! It's like that."

"I understand completely," said Celestia. "Not to worry, you played your part well."

"And so the battle has ended, but I doubt in the way you intended," Okapiopteryx said darkly. "She has now clearly sighted that we have united, and left our kingdoms unattended."

"I agree, but she will not be able to act on that knowledge," Celestia said firmly. "We are on her trail now. We can monitor her precise location at all times."

"Surely she'd be aware that we're on her trail?" Song Li said nervously.

"Certainly, but that doesn't change the fact that we are on her trail. We can plan while we pursue. This battle isn't over."

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Back within the huge scar in the earth, Vorpal Blade magically pulled the crown jewels out of the mounds of upturned dirt. Skippmud and Crazyface dug out their other supplies and remnants of their campsite. Mitgaeard hung motionless in the air far above them.

"Chosssssen one?" she whispered.

"Yes, Allmother?" Vorpal Blade called back to her.

"It isssss time, I think, for our missssssion to be exssssspedited. Make thissss quick."

He smirked at her. "I thought you were the one who wanted to take it slow. May I remind you that none of us are getting any older?"

Mitgaeard bristled. "Jussssst come with me before they have time to recuperate and attack again!"

He nodded. "As you wish. We just need to finish gathering our possessions."

Mitgaeard glanced at the other two ponies, sifting through the dirt with the magic from their fake horns. Skippmud levitated their large tent, and shook the dirt out of it. "Ooh, that's not gonna be easy to clean," she muttered.

The great serpent turned back to Vorpal Blade. "Tell me, your falsssssse wingsssss… why ssssseven? What led you to take for yourssssself an odd number of wingsssss?"

"Um…" he said in amusement.

"Wassss it merely to draw my ire, to play upon my averssssion to assssssymmetry?"

"That's a good question," Vorpal Blade said seriously, flapping his huge blue wing. "See, I wanted the really, really big wings, but they only had one. At first I thought, meh, that's just too bad, I'll have to skip the huge ones—but then I saw the appeal. Fashionable asymmetry to stylishly intimidate, sure, but mostly… the answer is yes. Yes, my motivator there was to piss you off."

She growled. "Do I detect ingratitude over our bargain?"

"No, no, I love our bargain," he said calmly. "But I thought a big part of the deal was that I got to do things my way."

Mitgaeard's eyes narrowed. "I could kill you with a thought."

"Sure you could," Vorpal Blade agreed. "Then you'd have all of my treasure for yourself, but who would handle it for you? Who would be savvy enough to run your kingdom? You won't kill me, because you're never going to find another 'me'."

Mitgaeard snarled, causing tufts of green smoke to puff out of the corners of her mouth. "Be ssssssilent, fool," she snapped.

She turned and started flying off into the trees. Vorpal Blade and his companions flew after her, each of the three loaded down with saddlebags and supplies.

"Chosen fool," Vorpal Blade muttered under his breath. Skippmud laughed uproariously at that remark, while Crazyface glared at the pair of them and seethed.