Tuffle Quest Fanfic Commission for Valentines PART 1, by PandoraJail

I (PandoraJail) own what I own.


A commission by 13arabba, parts also co-written by 13arabba

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Amor of Mom II: Operation Eagle - Valentines

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On Mt. Paozu, in a hole in the ground beneath a hill-shaped house, there lived a space halfling. This space halfling lived well, she lived tough, once she even died well, and today she lives comfortably in her hole in the ground… yet she couldn’t help but feel the empty hole inside her heart.
It was Valentine's Day. A day filled with joy and love. Where people would show their significant other the proof of their love, their devotion. It was a joyous day meant to be filled with happiness.

And yet, sitting alone in an empty home, wearing a too-big blue shirt that went down past her toes, Maple could only feel loneliness. With everyone having plans for their own significant other, be it her friends or even her own children, Maple was left alone in her home, built atop a mountain at the edge of the world, just as much a hermit as Roshi.

“It's almost a whole year by this point you know.” She whispered, hoping that her voice could be heard across the vast cosmos as she caressed the photo of her beloved husband who still had not returned. “Come back home already, you… you dum… my dear.”

To ward off the oncoming moisture in her eyes, she took another handful of bugles and shoved it into her mouth, crunching the spikes into a mush of salt and carbs. A food that matched her mood. She put more bugles onto her fingers, and ate them one by one, careful not to bite down too hard.

…

On the last one, she bites down to feel something.

“Hm.” Her thumb is sore, but so is her mouth, her scar, and her everything.

The silence of the empty house was only filled with the white noise of the television that Maple had left on, a news channel that somehow reached her burrow in the boonies, forever alternating between static and wibbly-wobbly. She simply ignored it, despite what looked to be breaking news of giant silhouettes on a rampage, for her eyes remained glued to the happy picture of herself and her beloved, locked in time.

Between the white noise of the television, a small sniffle could be heard. Which was then immediately followed by a slap as the martial artist slapped herself with both of her hands.

“No, no! This isn’t the time to be sad!” She spoke out to herself as she stood up from the couch that she sat on, and swept off some crumbs from her shirt. “It's Valentine's Day! And Goku wouldn’t want me to spend it feeling bad. I can't just sit in the house moping around!”

Nodding her head, the cook who would cook for four half-saiyans placed a hand on her chin as she began to think. “Hmm, but what to do, what to do. I mean usually at this time of year I would be making chocolate but…”

A brief glance to the empty rooms of her own home and quickly decided that no, she might have to skip that yearly tradition. “Not like I have anyone to give it to anyway.” The tough luck tuffle said with a sad smile before she shook her head again.

“Alright, so maybe no chocolate. Gosh I didn’t even get the ingredients to try and make them this year!” The repeat savior of the world giggled to herself. With how busy she had been dealing with her two children going through highschool, the occasional villain and world ending threats and her husband going missing, she had completely forgotten to even buy the material to make handmade chocolate.

The thought made her think of her own children, Gohan and Peppa. “I wonder, they both do have their girlfriends… and God and I both know what their father’s appetite definitely passed on to them…” The god of this world was also busy this day, having to deal with the prayers for love fortune that bombarded the Lookout, so also too busy to hang out.

Adding to the pile by offering a short prayer to her childrens’ significant others, Maple then turned her head towards the window. “Hm?” She muttered as she walked close to see outside, vaguely making out a speck in the sky that was getting closer. “What is that? Is it a bird? A plane? …a robot!?”

Having identified the UFO, Maple immediately drew the curtains closed, threw off his shirt, and turned the portrait of Goku the other way.

Half a minute later, the space halfling leaves the home with her hair straightened in the front and curled in the back, her makeup accentuating her red eyes which are now vibrant, and with a jacket left open to display a tank top and her abs, and short-shorts that showed off her gleaming legs, atypical of the space halfling norm. And a cute little blue beret to top it off!

“Lia!” She shouts, waving towards the alien aircraft as it touches down along an empty field that needed tilling anyway. And as soon as the silver and red aircraft landed safely onto the ground below, its form then shifted from the sleek fighter jet that it was into a more humanoid form, making the strangest sounds as she did.

Sky Captain Eagalia stands tall and snaps her hand up to pay her good friend a crisp salute. “Mrs. Maple! I see that you are looking shining today,” said the triple changer of bird, airplane and giant robot, nodding her head with a small smile on her metallic face. Then, she tilts her head. “Hold on, do organics wax their exteriors too?”

“Yup!” Maple responds, eyes still shining with tears. She wipes them away under the cover of a reciprocated salute, adding a victory sign along with it. “And I’d say the day’s only gotten brighter with you in it!”

This was, of course, her good friend Eagalia. The flight commander of the resistance of a world that she and her friends had recently helped liberate. And Maple could imagine that the official reason she was now visiting Earth was to better the relations between the two worlds, but picking here of all places on the planet told otherwise. Regardless, she’d do just as much as Eagalia did to better their relations today, that’s how equivalent exchange works!

Noticing something however, the orange haired warrior pouted as she placed both of her arms at her hips. “And what did I say about calling me Mrs. Maple?” She said with a humm, raising an eyebrow towards her metal made friend.

The transformer chuckled, holding her sleek and slender metallic arm to hide her smile as she chuckled. “Yes. My apologies Maple.” Her friend corrected, calling her in a more appropriate and familiar term.

The pout on her face immediately faded as it was replaced by a beaming smile, Maple then flew right into her friend's chest, giving the jet’s dome the biggest hug that she could with her tiny wingspan. “No need to apologize! Sheesh, all the forms you can take and you’re still so formal, hehe. Just miss me with that missus junk, you hear!”

The unexpected hug made the giant robot take a step back, lotta payload in that small package, but Eagalia quickly rightens herself and gently pats Maple’s back with her giant hands, the feeling of it much less awkward than the hugs Maple got from her brobro. “I will be sure to remember that Miss- Maple.” Her friend said with a sheepish smile, almost falling back to her habit.

With that said and done, Maple gives the giant robot one big final squeeze that creaks the canopy a smidge before she lets herself go from the hug. Still letting herself float as she asked her friend a question. “So not that I'm complaining or anything, but what brought you here to these parts?”

“Right, I came here to ask something from you Maple.” The feminine mechanical giant said, nodding her head as she met her red eyes with her giant shining light blue ones. “I am here to learn more about Earth's culture. I believe that there is some sort of event occurring today if I am correct?”

“Oh, yeah. That.” The orange haired Tuffle says as a cold breeze drifts over her, the smile that she had turning smaller before she shook her head to regain her composure. “I mean, yeah! Sure is one today! That’s why the house is empty! Well, apart from me of course.” Maple said as she pointed to herself.

Drawing herself out of her visual rendering of the organic’s hair aloft in the wind, Eagalia replies, “I see! Yes. Then if you don’t mind me asking, what does this… day of valentine, I believe it is called? What does it entail exactly?” The alien transforming robot asked as she tilted her head ever so slightly. The incredibly cute action from her metal friend almost made her want to give her another huge hug again.

But she kept to herself this time, instead she met her friend’s pure enthusiasm of learning as if she was one of her own children. “Why of course! You can ask me anything!” She beamed. “But to start, yes, it's called Valentine’s Day. It's named after the Saint Valentine, of the Ophiuchus Cloth.”

“You have saints here too!? Okay, so, you would think my fave would be one of the Aquila saints, but I really get the most inspiration from Pax of the Orion and Big Dipper Cloths! His words on leadership and what they managed to record of his legendary deeds really struck me so I (chirp chirp chirp chiree) he’s such a hero and I only hope I can be half as (tweetily deet deet deet boop)!” Lia’s beautiful and perfect metal face was split wide by the grin of a fangirl.

Cute… Gah! She’s getting distracted! Focus! “I’d love to hear more about him- seriously, you say he had two cloths? Well, you can tell me more while we ride to the city, cuz the city is where you can get a clearer image of Earth’s people and how they act on Valentines!” It certainly wasn’t her marriage bed at the moment, not that Maple would mind Eagalia there- whoa girl, cool your jet engines!

…how hot do hers run?

Having to fan away some heat from her own face, Maple held up her other hand, index finger extended, to explain, “Always remember, Valentine's Day is a day about love! Romance! It's a day where you show the people that you love that you love them by giving them gifts!”

“So it is a day to celebrate love and romance… How novel!” Lia spoke in awe as she nodded her chrome dome. “But I fear I’m a little short of gifts for you. I do apologize. How do you like your Energon? Or, I could get you a Mini-Con! Do you prefer a go-kart or jet ski?”

“Whoa, hahaha, at ease soldier! You just learned of it, you don’t have to get me something right this instant,” Maple chides in good nature as she nears Eagalia, then leans against the robot’s chest, and huskily whispers, “But if you are a little short, well, if someone as big, and tall, as you, manages to spot anything that happens to be brown, sweet, and gooey enough to melt in your mouth… and comes in a package, shaped, like, this…” Her breath fogs onto the canopy’s glass, and she draws a heart in it with her dainty finger. “Then that’s a high value target!” she says with a wink.

Eagalia nods, her once glistening silver steel face now more crimson than her armor, and stammers, “Ah, affirmative.” After holding a hand in front of her head to cough… actually, holding up a hand to deflect from Maple’s airspace to shield her as she vented steam from her body, the red hue on her face slowly fading but for a hint of lingering pink. “So that’s the customary gift for earthling couples then.”

“Yup. Though, not just earthlings. My husband and I enjoy it. …well, we did, hahaha, hah…”

Son Goku was someone who Eagalia had never met, and had not had the opportunity to, so she didn’t know him personally. What she did know of him was from what Maple said, and what Maple said of him made Maple sad after the fact. The sheer absence of Goku from her life had been more devastating than a cluster bomb. It gave Eagalia cause enough to resent the man.

She gives Maple a metallic grin. “Why don’t we get a move on then? Sounds like there’s plenty for us to enjoy on our own!” Eagalia moves a hand over to pop open her cockpit.

“Alrighty!” Maple said as she took her friend’s seemingly offered hand in her own. “Yes, on our own, we can be a couple- uh. Oh.” Maple pauses her attempt at towing an aircraft as realization hits her.

Eagalia regains her balance, then tilts her head quizzically. “What’s wrong?”

“No, it’s just, “Maple looks down at her hand, and the wedding ring on it. “A couple of friends, I mean. Good friends. We’ll be going to city as a couple of good friends on a culture viewing trip. Social studying, historically good friends!” She hurriedly explained. Repeatedly repeating the word to drown her own embarrassment.

Sure, she had fun with Eagalia before, but she couldn’t ground the pilot when Lia had her own commitments to look to. And that’s not even getting into her own ties! She was married for goodness sake! With a pair of children that she absolutely loves!

But it has been getting a bit lonely lately. And just earlier, with her two darling children out of the house, she couldn’t help but feel incredibly alone… until Lia suddenly came out of the sky, and Maple wouldn’t have even cared if she crashed through the wall to see her.

“I’m happy to hear that, though… I would prefer to call you my wingman.” Eagalia responds, winking one of her LED lens off and on again.

Maple bites her lip, before replying, “Yup yup! I can be anything you want me to be, uh, I’ll be anything for you, er, I’ll do my best to meet your expectations, Lia.” She hurriedly nods her head, then realizes something, and lets the military woman’s hand go. “Sorry, can’t be much of a wingman if you can’t fly with me, eheh! I’ll-let-you-transform-now.”

“Alright then.” Her good friend salutes her, taking a step back as her form shifts to another with mechanical noises.

Maple gives Eagalia some space, and privately notes the lingering feeling of smooth metal that remained in her lax grip, the sensation cool at first but warmer with contact. She turns away to hide the blush that was spreading along her half-bare body, and groans, “God, I’m such a mess right now.”

From the edge of the Lookout, the god of this world (on an almond break) peers down at Maple, and notes that this is a damn sight better than she had been doing 5 minutes before.

Back to Maple, she figures this must be her karma. She did try playing matchmaker for a lot of her friends, and even a few acquaintances. But when it came to her, oof. Lucky for her, she found Goku, and they were each other’s, and she never considered life could be different… and then it was.

Sighing, and putting on a cheery face, she turns back to Eagalia, who has morphed into a fighter jet, the cockpit open and waiting.

“Best way to travel: the bird way!” Maple shouted with glee as she leapt onto Eagalia’s open cockpit, making herself comfortable as the cockpit’s hatch closed, and with a snap of her fingers, a sleek red and white skin tight flight suit materialized on her hands, one that she put on. Allowing the materialized clothes to cling onto her skin.

And with a swipe of her hand, the Magical Maple materialized a helmet she could fit her scouter into. Before donning her helmet, she of course braided her long waist length hair into a bun first before placing it on top of her head.

“We fly!” Maple said with a grin as the communicator of her helmet connected to the transforming living aircraft. “Take me to the sky again commander!” And several of the cockpit's switches flipped up on themselves, and a handful of lights turned on as Eagalia prepared herself to take off.

“As you wish, little lady.” Her friend's mechanical voice resounded throughout the cockpit, and the aircraft's engine let out the screech of an eagle as she then took off from the runway. And before she knew it, Maple was flying among the clouds in the large blue sky.

-

The two of them spent their time on the flight, which would be over a distance of 1000 kilometers, by listening to another album Maple had gifted to Eagalia: Iron Maiden’s “Somewhere in Time.” Only, there were some issues with some of the songs on the album.

There was the first track, “Caught Somewhere in Time,” where the singer sang a song featuring a lyric that went “Caught somewhere in time, caught somewhere in time, caught somewhere in time, oh oh,” and it put a slight damper on Maple’s mood. And it didn’t help matters when Maple pointed out how the song was about a demon offering a man the ability to time travel in exchange for the man’s soul, her explanation of the fun fact unmistakably tinged with bitterness.

Then there was “Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner,” which was about a track star running away from all his problems and his determination to keep doing it, and then changing his mind during the last stretch of a race, as finishing the race wouldn’t give him anything he wanted. After explaining this, Maple got real quiet for the next few songs.

Finally they listened to “Stranger in a Strange Land” which even Eagalia could tell was about a guy exploring a new unfamiliar land, freezing to death, and never returning from his icy tomb. Maple started to explain,

When suddenly, Maple’s scouter rings with an incoming call!

“Oh thank Primus,” Eagalia coos, switching the music off. For now, that is.

Maple answers the call, and the voice of her son, Gohan, calls out, “Mom! There’s problems, we’ve got big problems!”

“Gohan? What’s wrong?”

Gohan said through her communicator.  “My money’s gone, got nabbed by-KSSSHT!”

Maple recoils from the static and near rips the scouter out of her helmet. “Sorry, Momma Bird couldn’t make that out, there was interference-” She pauses at that, then glances around, not a cloud in the sky. And even if there was, scouters can take calls from across the universe. “Anyway, repeat what you said, over!”

“Mom, you’re not in the- nevermind, there’s some big stupid r-BLEEP-s going around on a smash and grab spree!”

That made her raise an eyebrow. “Gohan, what did we say about using the fan translations’ vernacular?”

He groans. “Nooo, that’s not what I- I said a bunch of rob-DIALUPNOISE- just swooped in and sucked the money right out of my -weeoOOWEEooo- they took off.”

Maple blinks in surprise. Her son could fight good, and yet, “You got robbed!?”

“Yes, by -VOIIIP-! They came crashing into the diner and ruined my date.”

“...Got it. Tell me, where are you right now? Are you okay?” she said, planning to turn this flight to the ends of the Earth if need be.

But she wasn’t the only one having difficulties with the connection…

“What? Am I able to pay? Well, P-SSSH-a comes from money, so I figured she could-”

Maple squints. “No, that’s not- who’s Patricia? Anyway, the only thing that matters is that you’re out of harm’s way, don’t worry, just tell me where you are and we’ll have this sorted out when I get there.”

And so Gohan heard “No, that’s not -fffffsh- to P-TchTch-a, -garbled-pay, the only thing that matters is you’re -garbledtoo- pay, don’t w-WHINE- just -Elephant Trumpet- and -Slot Machine- have this sorted out when I get there!.”

Told by his mother that he can’t bum off his date and needs to work off his debt, Gohan acquiesces, “Okay, I’ll see if the diner needs a new busboy, I guess.”

A confused Maple repeats, “I told you ‘What Diner?’”

“I’m not whining! Jeez!” And he hung up.

Maple nearly breaks the scouter in her hand at her son’s nerve, but does a calming mantra and reminds herself that even if she could materialize a new one, she’ll have to install an OS, install the OS update, and then search for all her apps again. And, oh yes, no internet connection, that was the main reason the call went bad. “Sure better be. A few inches taller is still in the strike zone for a spanking, mister, razzlefrazzle…”

Briefly wondering how many of these “inches” she has on Maple, Eagalia then asks a more relevant question, “So we don’t have a location?”

Maple equips the scouter, and pings for the location of all her contacts. “Scouting… Scouting… Don’t Count On It?! Grrrrr!” She shakes her head. “Nope, this thing’s jammed. Let me try sensing his energy…” She detaches from herself, from the world, all that the world is is wind, and all she is is a lit candle, flame flickering with the wind, that is itself put in motion by all the other flames from the other candles.

…
……
………

Dread seeps through her body like so much oil. “I can’t sense anything!” She opens her eyes to look around at the horizon, and is relieved that it’s all still there. Still, greatly disturbing.

Eagalia chirps to catch Maple’s attention, “By the way, we’re nearing Orange City now.”

Maple nods, and looks down at the city. “Oh right, our date- our day trip. Yeah, uh, sorry, right now I feel like someone dumped a bucket of mop-water on me.” She frowns, then shakes her head. “No, no. I can deal. We’re here, and we can still go sight-seeing.”

“We don’t have to if you’re not-hm?” Eagalia cut herself off.

Knowing that it was rare for a being like Eagalia to pause in the middle of talking, Maple asked, “What’s wrong Lia?”

“I see something. Down there.” The aircraft morphed into a Raidraptor, slowing down as it came into a glide over the city. The screen at the center of the cockpit then began to show an image that her camera took, from the image of the city from a birds eye view it zoomed until Maple could see the street and the people that walked on them.

And the pilot saw what her eagle-eyed friend saw as strange. “Are those… robots?” Because right there, shown on Eagalia's screen, was a handful of long limbed large metal robots roaming around the street.

She saw the mechanical robots extending their clawed hands towards people, grabbing them by their legs and shaking them as if they were piggy banks as they dropped any and all of their valuable possessions. Wallets, bills, and even pocket change along with the occasional electronics, the robots’ torso opened up to reveal a compartment that it filled with those things that it vacuumed up from their victims, who they simply let go running and screaming after they were done with them.

Some that didn't target the people who were running away from them targeted buildings, shops and the like as they took anything and everything valuable that wasn't bolted into the ground. And even the occasional some as with their robotic strength, they could simply rip it off and place it inside their empty torso.

And some were literally vacuuming the ill-gotten valuables right off of the floor. Opening their metallic torsos as money and coins seemed to fly right into the machine’s “tummy.”

She saw military people coming to arms against these metal monstrosities. Opening fire on the ones who weren’t currently shaking down innocent civilians. But the military weaponry bounced off harmlessly against them, not even leaving so much as a scratch.

Maple grit her teeth. “So those are what Gohan was- That’s it! We have to help them!”

“Right! Hold on!” Eagalia said as she swooped low, an eagle's screech heralding her arrival as she opened fire on the robots with her null-rays, a far more effective weapon of choice as they aim to disrupt the energy flow in any machinery. And leave a burning black splotch and throwing them back several feet with each hit, because that’s how lasers work!

“What the-!?”

“Reinforcements!?”

“Ha, they smoked their own!”

As soon as they were close enough, Maple ejected from the cockpit to somersault downward, righting herself mid-air to launch into her signature technique: pulling back a fist that she charges a burst of ki into so she can hit something really, really hard. “Hallowed…”

A robot swivels its head towards the sound, monoeye red.

“RUSH!” She shouted as fist met metal, and the machine’s chassis caved in from her strike. But that didn't deter the robot however, the fist striking no circuitry within the hollowed cache, and with her hand firmly inside of its body, she was left in close proximity to it, close enough to see a valve open right under it's rectangular head… before it spurted out out fire right at her!

“Gah!” She hissed through her helmet as the flames enveloped her. She had her fist caught in the robot’s chest, but opened her hand to slide it out, and kicked off from the robot before it could grab her with its pincers. Tumbling on the ground away from it, then rolling the other way to put out the fires, she stands up and peels the blackened helmet off. After a moment of consideration, she throws the helmet at the flame-spewing robot’s head.

The helmet bounces off the robot’s head, not deterring it from its mission in the slightest. It peers down at some of its stolen valuables that had fallen onto the ground from the hole in its chest, which encouraged it to stop its flame thrower so it could suck back up what looked to be jewelry and baseball cards. The loud whirring of an internal fan comes to life, and it sucks up the ill-gotten goods once more. And then they fall out, again.

The robot looks down at this development, and computes.

Maple laughs and points, “Ha, what a digital- ah!” Regretful now, her hand is still pretty raw from when she punched through metal with it earlier.

The robot bends down to grab the valuables manually, crumpling up the baseball cards and rendering them worthless, then just grabs all the jewelry with its claws.

Having cooled down from being doused with flames, Maple prepared another attack-

Down the street, a little girl’s voice cries out, “Help! It’s got my grandma’s locket!”

Maple runs off to go help the endangered child, who was holding onto the chain of a locket and hoisted up by another robot’s claws. This left the robot she was fighting on its own, free to collect all the shiny baubles on the ground, including a stray ring.

-

In her Angeloid form, Eagalia has two of her rifles out, reverse gripped and set to short range and active, forming Laser Tonfas. She uses them on a robot that was busy hitting a bank’s safe on the ground to open it, and causes power failures in its arms and legs. It topples over, but sprays Eagalia with flames in a last ditch effort! But Eagalia had descended through Earth’s atmosphere earlier that day, so the flames didn’t have much of an effect that wasn’t cosmetic.

She closes the robot’s “mouth” to cut off the flames, then scans the robot’s hardware by putting her hand on it and letting out a pulse to see if that really was all it was capable of.

“!” She backs away from it in shock, looks around at the other machines on the rampage.

On the ground, once it’s made the calculations that its limbs are useless and its weapon is useless, the machine’s computer deems that continuing on like this is useless.

Eagalia’s eye picks up a change below, in the machine’s monoeye, once red but now flaring bright white. That eye then shoots a ray of light out at her, actually doing some damage!

Though pained, Eagalia stabs her Null tonfa into the robot’s head to put a stop to this, but though the machine dies, what it just put into motion can’t be disrupted! Thinking fast, she morphs into a bird and grabs the robot in her talons. Once she flies up out of the street, she turns into a jet and blasts off!

Once she’s on the outskirts of the city, she drops the overloading hunk of junk, and-

“PICHUUUN!” The nuclear explosion beneath her hits Eagalia with its shockwave, sending her into a spiral. Though dizzy, she morphs from a jet into a bird, and manages to slow her descent through the air. But it is a descent that still ends with her crashing into some trees.

-

“Spooky Spark!” Maple flings an electric lemon of energy towards her foe. The towering robot gets struck with the ball-lightning right in the antennae, sending it stumbling away as it tries to remember its purpose.

The little girl jumps for joy, cheering, “Thanks a bunch!”

“No worries, here you go!” Maple hands the locket back to her.

She hugs the locket close to her chest. “Phew, now I can go pawn this and get Grandma the money for her gacha!” The girl runs off.

Maple shares a look with the reader, then shrugs and grins sheepishly.

Seeing more of the robo-robbers loading up with goods, Maple prepares to fire some more ki blasts at them, and aims a finger-gun- Pain, pain in her fingers. “Ow, what the?”

She inspects her hand. She has a bad scrape on it, must’ve gotten it during the run-in with the first robot. Left a nasty bruise on her ring-finger, even an indent where the ring should be.

Oh well, she’s suffered worse- She double takes. “What.”

Maple blinks. Then flexes her fingers. Pain from doing so, it’s real.

She blinks many times, then looks down every which way, head darting to and fro more frantically.

A block away, the robot she had zapped earlier finally does a system restore, and swivels its head around to scope out its surroundings.

A moment later, the robot’s cubic head goes spinning in the air, hitting the ground at an angle where it can still make out what looks to be a red honey badger in the middle of tearing through the insides of its former body.

Maple rifles through the useless crap in the mechanical casket. Nope. She mouths the name of a technique and her aura burns red, which does turn the pile of bearer bonds and blackmail photos around her to ash. and she zooms over to another one.

She picks up the machine from behind, then flies it over to the side of the City State Building, impacting it into the wall. Then, she flies up. The sound of metal scraping along the bricks as they make their ascent is mute to her. Once they clear the height of the city’s tallest building, the front half of the robot is completely sanded off, and Maple drops it and flies down many times faster than gravity to see if she can spot it in the air among wads and wads of zenny. Not there either.

Maple thinks about when she last had it while in the middle of dismantling a robot with its own arm, and snaps her fingers to detonate the tank of its flame-thrower prematurely. As the machine burns, realization hits her, and she snaps her fingers again. She picks up a jewel bigger than her fist, and caves in the robot’s monoeye with it before flying off.

She touches down by army police people who were firing on the robots, and started Doing Her Part by firing ki blast after ki blast from her finger-guns at the other robots.

An officer asked her, “Who are you?”

Normally she would do a whole pose and introduction. For now she settled with just using the Clothes Beam to disperse her flight suit and give herself the popular image of her blue cape, witch hat, and some boots and gloves. …ugh, the gloves, of course the gloves! She grinds her teeth and fires another Geist Magnum.

One of the Orange City locals shouts out, “Ey, dat’s Maple Mahogany, world champ and spooky space alien!”

“Son-Mahogany,” Maple reflexively declares, as she materializes some cables to trip up the advancing robots with.

But though her Geist Magnums would hit the robots, she notes with distaste that the damage each one deals seems to have a diminishing return. Even with her using Kaio-ken, which is straining her body about the same as being engulfed in flames. Well, she can always double it if it means wrecking them.

“Darned robots! Die already!” An officer shouted as he kept firing his gun, to no avail.

“Wasn’t there another robot that came flying around here too? Were those things the same?” A soldier asks.

“Dang it, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were!” One of them said, as he then pointed up towards the sky. “They even transform the same!”

And looking up in the sky, Maple saw some of the robots which were now retreating. Propellers had sprouted from their necks. Their antennae sparked up tesla coils around them which allowed them to zoom through the air with magnetic force. And their arms spread out and flattened to form wings which kept their balance, and locked their bodies rigid, now in the form of planes. Once transformed, they flew away.

Not fast enough.

She flies beneath the robots to spot the telltale hole one should have, and spots it. She tears it open wider, looking into its cavity. Nothing there- “Oof!”

The mechanical morpher adjusts its flight, throwing Maple off balance and into the coffin of metal. Then it activates its tesla coil function, shocking the tuffle within.

“Aaaaaaah!” Her voice echoes in the metal box, no one around to hear her other than machines.

On the outside, the robot sees the others fly away, and its monoeye goes from red to white. Then, it zooms its way down to the Earth.

Though being hit with volts of electricity, Maple still saw red, and climbed out of the chest to aim an attack at its head. Then, she gets a glimpse into the future, a vision of the robot vaporizing her with a powerful laser, only gloves and boots left to fall from the sky.

She swings her body to the side as the robot unleashes a blast of radiation out at her, and struggles to maintain her grip as the current running down the robot’s body zaps her own. But then, at the end of a wing, she spots a glint on the robot’s clawed finger. She leaps out to grab it!

Maple is yanked out of the air by the metal beak of an eagle, the sudden diversion whipping her gloves and boots off. She dangles from her cape as she watches the robot getting further away, scratch that it’s hit the ground, now she can-

“PICHUUUN!” The brilliance of detonation below is enough to make Maple avert her eyes, and then her world goes fast once more when Eagalia turns her head flip Maple to the air behind her.

The shockwaves hit Eagalia and her outstretched wings, blowing her back and stunning her, but shielding Maple at least. Maple only ends up getting hit with a jet-bird instead of a nuclear blast, lucky for her.

The two of them recover from the shock, and Eagalia turns back to Orange City in a glide.

It took Maple a bit longer to regain her wits, having just had the proof of her bond snatched from her fingers and blown to kingdom come.

But wait! It’s not like the robot was carrying anything, whatever it had looted had either fallen out of the hole, and it couldn’t fly holding whatever in its hands. So it’s probably around the city somewhere… maybe even down a sewer drain. Or, or! One of the other robots has it, the original offloaded what it was carrying to another one!

With that faint hope in mind, Maple crawls over to the eagle’s head, and points at the fleeing robots. “Turn the other way, we have to go after them.”

Eagalia shakes her head. “That’s a negative.”

“What!?” Maple catches herself before she hits the metal below. “Why? We have to follow them before they can get away with it!”

“I scanned one earlier, each of them has a fusion core installed. When one is disabled past the point of effectiveness, it will overload the battery and self-destruct.”

Maple stares pleadingly into Eagalia’s lens, then down at the crater, and then up at the sky. She bites her lip hard, but finally nods, and flies down to Orange City.

By the front of the City State building, that little girl from before busies herself with gathering money into her arms, but a wad of bills will keep falling from her bundle, and when she bends down to get it two more fall down. “Ooh!”

Once it determines it cannot claw its way out from under the pile of bricks it landed in, the nearby robot’s eye switches from red to white.

The little girl finally finishes gathering the cash up, and shouts out “OK!”

The robot calculates the value of the cash, and focuses its glowing monoeye on her.

Coming down from the sky like a tungsten rod, Maple dive-kicks the robot further into the ground. Then, she zips back to the surface and over to the little girl, pulling her away and causing her to drop all the cash.

The explosion beneath shakes the ground and light flares out of the hole to fry anything left nearby, but only that. Nothing that causes the tallest building to topple over, and the girl she saved is safe and sound… though all that money is done-zo.

Despite the day she’s been having, Maple sports her best apologetic grin, for the kids. “Sorry ‘bout that, looks like all your hard-earned cash got burnt to a crisp! But if it makes you feel any better, your Grandma would have done the same.”

The girl sniffs, and starts crying.

Maple hugs her, “There there, it’s gonna be okay.”

The girl blows her nose into a hanky Maple materialized for her, and pulls away from the hug when she’s calmed down. “Thanks for saving me again, lady!”

Maple gives a peace sign. “You can thank Maple Son-Mahogany, mother of two kids and protector of two billion!”

Then, she gets an idea. She tosses her primed scouter up into the air, poses for a selfie with the girl (“Macaroniiii!”), then materializes a photo of it. Once she’s signed it, she hands it to the girl. “This should pawn good. Seeya!”

Once she flies off, the girl stares at the gift. “I will treasure this for the rest of my life.” She starts to walk home, but feels something in her other pants pocket. She reaches in and pulls out a wad of bills. Counting them all, she realizes, “I don’t have to do chores for Grandma anymore! @#$% Yeah!”

-

With a fly-by and her rifles on rapid-fire, Eagalia disables some more downed robots before they wind up exploding. Then, she spots Maple flying her way over the Big Orange’s centrally-located public park, and morphs into an Angeloid to greet her.

“Took care of my- Eagalia, you’re hurt!” The injuries more obvious to her in this form, Maple worries over where Eagalia was hit by the ray. “Your cockpit is ruined, and that compartment-”

“Is where I keep my cluster bombs stored. Good thing I opted out of bringing them on a sightseeing trip!” Eagalia laughs. “Do not worry, with some Energon to power my nanites, in no time at all I will be 50% operational and 50% up to no good!”

“Pfft, what a dork!” said Maple, half-lidded eyes and a dreamy smile on her face. “Alrighty then. So was that the last of the robots?”

Eagalia taps the side of her head. “Check your scouter!”

“But it’s-” Maple’s eyes widen at the sight of pings on her scouter. “It’s working!”

Eagalia explains, “They were emitting waves that messed with it, and your ki.”

Maple nods. “Huh, they can do that now? Technology’s crazy.” Then, she admits, “I didn’t want to say anything earlier, but I am spent. Everything was much harder than usual. A device like that really can make it to where power levels are bull… sh…” She trails off as she begins to fall from the sky.

Of course, Eagalia caught her in a hand bigger than her. “Maple, you’re tired. The robbers have retreated. Do we call this mission failed?”

A groggy, grumpy Maple pouts. “Well, we can’t sense where the robots are, they blackout communications, and fighting them will tire me out…” She looks up at Eagalia's face. “Do they tire you out?”

Eagalia smirks, and points a thumb at herself. “Nope. Perks of being mechanical and fueled by Energon, with two scoops of circuit speeder.”

Maple giggles, but suddenly looks to Eagalia with much concern! “Ah, if you point your thumb at yourself like that, something bad’s gonna-”

A rock bounces off of Eagalia’s chassis. They look down to see where it had come from, and see a mob of ticked off civilians. More objects get thrown at the flying robot, and Maple’s hat gets knocked off by a half-full soda can.

Maple shouts at them, “What are you doing?!”

One of them shouts, “Let go of Maple Mahogany, you freak!”

“Yeah, you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us!”

“I think they did mess with all of us!”

“Throw more stuff at it!”

Maple responds, “It’s Son Mahogan-Eep!” She ducks behind Lia’s hand as more things get thrown at them, including a newspaper!

Maple takes a moment to marvel at just how anachronistic this is, almost as much as that blue telephone booth she had seen earlier, but unfurls it and reads the headline.

“Maple Mahogany Smashes the MECHANICAL MONSTERS!” And below that was pictures of her tearing some machines apart. And then there was another article to the side titled “Newspaper Sales Boom in Blackout” (“ah.”) And then a thrown brick tears through the paper.

Eagalia hovers away from the crowd, shielding herself and Maple with her wings. They arrive in Clockwork Square, where a bunch of screens come back into motion with breaking news, and show more recorded footage of Maple smashing robots, and also some footage of Eagalia swooping in and airlifting robots, and even dropping nuclear bombs. Then it cuts to live footage of Maple and Eagalia floating where they are. And then portraits of them come onto the screen and collide with each other and produce sparks. “FIGHT!”

“Well that ain’t good.” “Copy that.”

Maple pops a senzu bean, and regains her stamina. Then she flies up and starts to explain to all the cameras, “Let me explain, Eagalia here is my good friend-”

Someone shouts from below, “She’s being pressured!”

“No I’m not! Now look, she’s come here from space to sightsee-”

“They’re scouting us out to prepare for the invasion!”

“There’s no invasion! And she saved you all from getting bombed earlier!”

On the surrounding screens, footage plays of Maple “trying to defuse a bomb” on that falling robot earlier, only for her to be “interrupted” by Eagalia snapping her up by the cape and letting the warhead hit its target.

Frustrated, Maple goes red in the face. “That’s not what happened, she saved my bacon there!”

A headline on one of the news channels reads “Do Alien Robots dream of Earthling Pork?” influencing her to flip the bird to that one news channel in particular.

Eagalia floats up to her, “Maple, I think we have done enough here, and I think I have seen all I-” she gets cut off by the impacts of high caliber rounds of anti-aircraft guns. The weaponry tears through her wings and internals, the pain of which causes an eagle’s cry.

Seeing her friend falling, and the color red, Maple catches her, then scouts around for a building. Seeing some empty floors in one, she brings her wounded friend inside, crashing through the building and covering Lia from whatever hit her.

She flies out of the building, slowly. The military vehicles below now aim their guns at her, and an officer below gets out a megaphone to communicate-

Maple uses telekinesis to rip the megaphone out of the human’s hand, and into hers. “People of Orange City- no. People of Earth. There’s something that may have gotten swept under the rug since I’m known as two-time champion of Earth. Probably written off as one of those eccentric boasts of a child.

“I, Maple Son-Mahogany, am ‘a spooky space alien.’ It doesn’t mean I’m an occult otaku with delusions of grandeur, nor that I have my head in the clouds and weird people out. No, what that means is that I am one of the last of a dead people from a lost planet. How this came to be is that we had welcomed a new people to our planet, just as our people had been welcomed to it by the natives before. And that new people wiped us all out to the last.”

She discards the megaphone, and telekinetically grabs all the new cameras around her, giving them a close up view.

She gives them a bright smile with closed eyes. “I have been welcomed to this planet by you, and I am grateful. I have welcomed my friend to this planet, and y’all have been mad ungrateful to her, and what she’s done for you today.”

Her eyes open, glaring red. “This goes out to all of Earth: I will only be as kind as me and my kind are treated, and that does mean I will be as unkind as we are treated. So before we have to see what that looks like, stop what you’re doing now, after she had saved you, and go back to whatever you were doing before then, y’know, before she fought to give you another chance at it. Which she did.”

She backs up from the cameras, and tilts her head to give a polite smile. “Or, I will have to show y’all what I mean, when I say I fight for Truth,” She brings her hands back, and charges a ball of energy. “Justice,” The ball of energy gets bigger, and high speed winds flow around the square. “And…” She hits all the cameras with the kamehameha wave, vaporizing them.

The screens in the square go dark, and the streetlights below shatter all at once. The sun has set. Before anything can be said in the crowd below, a whisper is heard by all:

“And the Planet Plant Way.”

The earthlings below panic and flee from the red eyes above, and eyewitness accounts would go on to say that they felt Maple personally tap on their shoulder, or saw her peeking out from an alleyway as they fled. Some also said they felt a cold and chilly presence among them, which could have just been the wind, or it could have been something otherworldly.

But the terrified earthling and what they have to say are of no interest to Maple any longer, her friend is wounded. “Eagalia, I’m so sorry for that. Where does it hurt most, I can clothes beam something metal, I can heal injuries-”

“No, I let my guard down,” Eagalia says in a monotone, systems devoted to life support at the moment. “Maple. Thank you.”

Maple gives her a glare. “Don’t say stuff that means you’re dying!”

“No really, your words before, that you welcomed me to your world. And I had welcomed you to mine, and you saved us all.”

Maple waves that off, “My daughter did a lot of the heavy lifting-”

“As did you. And you lifted me up when I was at my lowest, when I doubted our cause and saw each of my comrades as a potential defector, stuck fighting an endless fight and becoming more like the hordes of mechanical beasts I slaughtered by the day. A killing machine, bred for war and nothing but war.”

Maple gulps down some moisture, face heated and body trembling, but lets her good friend continue.

“You brought me hope for the future, that we could exist alongside an alien people and both benefit from working together, much better than our past of exploiting any other we came across to come out on top.” One of Eagalia’s hands moves up to point at her, the redirected power making her dim eyes flicker. “No, what you brought with you, when you descended from the heavens alongside those you inspired, was the promise of a better tomorrow.”

Tears pouring from her eyes Ghibli-style, Maple hugs Eagalia’s pointer finger, and asks through trembling lips, “What do you need from me, Lia? What can I do to help you, my… my good… my frien… my angel.”

Eagalia gazes into Maple’s eyes. And says, “Energon.”

“...Huh?”

“Please get me some Energon. I need it to repair myself.”

Tears no longer leaking from her face, but feeling like she just got slapped, Maple asks, “You mean you’re not gonna die?!”

Eagalia wags her finger, “You ordered me not to say anything with that intent.”

“Then what was with that tearjerker!?”

Eagalia’s face slowly forms into a smirk. “You gave me the promise of a better tomorrow. And I want to live to see it.”

“Why you! You…” She walks over to Eagalia’s head, and smacks it. (“ow.”) “You stupid, sexy jerkface!” Then she presses her lips on where she struck the metal. (“o wow.”)

“Now tell me where I can find Energon before I change how I feel about you not dying.”

Eagalia’s mind takes a bit longer to recall that since her systems got an influx of heat, but she responds, “Energon can be mined from ore, crystals, gas, but it also takes the form of raw energy, sometimes in a liquid form-” Her robotic droning is cut off when Maple presses her lips against hers, the cold metal mouth getting warmer and buzzing back to life.

The kiss, or le baiser, glows with Maple’s given energy. And the further it goes, the more Eagalia’s body reforms it to how it should be. Maple pants for air, and Eagalia sits up.

“Anything still hurt?” Maple asks.

“A little, the hole in my chest could do with some more TLC.”

“It’s called a cockpit, birdbrain!” She glances down at Eagalia’s wrecked cockpit. “But I do like it comfy in there…”

Lia draws Maple up for another kiss, taking the lead this time. Rubbing and massaging the small woman’s tough yet soft body in her hand, and laying pecks of her own along it with her humming lips. And even flicks out a silver tongue, coated in oil lubricant to lick along the exposed flesh.

“Ah! Mmph,” Maple puts a hand over her mouth, but Eagalia pulls that arm away in the pincer of two fingers, and smirks at her. Getting a pout in return, Eagalia slides her thumb down Maple to undress her, and goes in for another attack run on the tuffle’s muffin button.

Soon, the wail of a banshee rings out through the night air, spooking all who hear it. “Lia~!”

Plenty spooked, Eagalia stands up straight, wrecking the ceiling of the floor she’s in, and licks the energon from around her lips. “So sweet!”

“Does it hurt anywhere still?” Maple asks from behind Eagalia.

“Not at all! I am up and ready for anything, little lady!” Eagalia declares, pointing a thumb at herself.

“That’s good,” Maple replies, ever so sweet. She draws a hand back.

The sound of metal getting spanked, and an eagle’s cries sound out through the night air, confusing the heck out of all who hear it. “I’m sorryyy~!”

Once they float out of the hole in the side of the building, Maple looks out at the night sky. “Ha, a full moon! Reminds me of that time I went out here for New Years with Goku, we had to hide from people at the very top of the City State Building.”

Eagalia rubs her lower dorsal exterior, and asks, “But is the moon usually this red?”

Maple gives her an adoring smile. “No, this night is special, just for us.”

“It’s going to take me a few Malton Units till I can walk straight.”

“That’s fine, I just need that sweet ass of yours to fly me places.”

Lia rolls her eyes, and gripes, “This is exploitation, abloobloobloo...”

Maple grins, and holds up a finger. “Equivalent Exploitation~!”

(to be continued)