Suddenly, a large figure came crashing down upon them. Wazp reflexively flitted backwards. There was a thunderous THUMP; Kobre and Vezpar were squashed beneath the new arrival. It had grabbed their heads and slammed them to the ground on the way down, creating craters in the pavement with deep cracks surrounding them. Snareel growled, stepping back rapidly while Raknae dashed in front to protect him. Tim snuck a peek; the saviour turned its head to gaze at him, its face now visible.

Finally! thought Tim. It was Terranis, his partner.

He was a large chrome mountain-type dragon-Blood and almost stood as tall as F’nrir. He sported a fearsome-looking prosthetic mandible made of dark granite. As he bared his teeth, it could be seen that his lower teeth were made of the same precious stone. His back was covered by brown bear fur and he wore yellow all-terrain vehicle parts throughout his body. The handles formed a horned helmet. The shield guards protected either side of his head. Two large wheels covered by the collision guard protected his chest. The other wheels covered the side of his hips, connected by the bumper from the front. Yellow side fenders guarded his shoulders and knees while black grip plates shielded his clawed feet.

Terranis’ radiant gold eyes were half-closed, giving Tim a ‘that was so lame’ look before blocking Hyssss’ assault and a few of Raknae’s long fuzzy arms. Wazp fired a few needles at the dragon-Blood.

“From the right, Terry!” shouted Tim. Terranis barely dodged them as he charged at Hyssss, lifted him off the ground and sent him flying into Wazp. Tim took this opportunity to quickly crawl to his gun.

“Get-z off-z, oozpad-z!” Wazp spat, shoving his partner off as he made a quick recovery and flew towards Tim. “Oh-z no-z you-z don’t-z!”

Got it! Tim yanked his gun out of its holster and spun around in time to partially freeze Wazp a hand’s width away from him. Wazp crashed into the wall as Tim ducked away, leaving a huge dent in the building. He hoped there weren’t any surveillance cameras in there. Those were harder to deal with.

Tim shot two rounds consecutively to freeze Hyssss, who was still trying to recover from Terranis’ attack. As Wazp sluggishly scrambled to get up, Tim froze him too.

ROOOAAR!

Tim whipped around. Terranis was having trouble keeping up with Raknae’s arms and suffered multiple hits. Tim aimed his last two shots at Raknae, but the Blood was too fast for him, climbing onto the wall to dodge the rounds while picking up Snareel.

“Sorry, Boss, we have to retreat for now,” Raknae apologized as he jumped further down the alleyway and scurried out of sight. Terranis wanted to pursue them, but a large metallic web blocked his path.

Tim cursed at the fact that he had missed as he snatched his cuffs from the ground. He debated who to use them on; there were only two. Terranis carried Kobre and Vezpar over and dropped them in front of Tim, their eyes still spinning. Tim decided it would be better to cuff them — and he did — because they had not been frozen.

“Heh,” Terranis glanced at Tim before looking away with a subtle smirk.

“I get it!” Tim’s face was slightly flushed from embarrassment. “I look awful!” Why did he have to look so uncool in front of him? Tim’s coat was in shambles, and he was covered in dirt and grime, not to mention his swollen lips.

After refastening his holster and reloading his LRP65, he began searching around for his Creed Crest, finding it against the wall. He picked it up, dusting it off before hastily putting it back on.