28 First Flame 6

"Who's a good boy? You are! You are!" Ty Lee baby voice praised Simba a she hugged his massive head. My eyes drifted from where we stood hidden behind a rocky plateau just a few clicks away from New Ozai.

After dealing with the Sand Shark, the trip through the Si Tong desert passed remarkably quickly. We only had to camp there for one night. Granted, the small rocky mountain we camped on turned out to be a Buzzard Wasp nest, but they weren't much of a threat unless they attacked in mass, and even though they came at us in numbers of twenty three, between myself, Ty Lee, Simba and Mong, it had been laughably easy. I even managed to tame one. They were pretty big, just a bit smaller than Mong, and with the ability to fly, so I figured one of them would be helpful. She, was not exactly Appa, but it would be possible to ride her and fly on her, even if not as comfortable as Appa.

And from there, the next morning it was a straight shoot right along the desert up to the cave of two lovers. Ty Lee was incredibly interested in the story of Oma and Shu when I told her about it and wanted to check it out. I was all for it, since I know there's a bunch of different kind of beasts within that mountain labyrinth. Most tempting of all, being the Badger Moles.

But I wasn't too keen on entering the mountain tunnels, even if I knew the secret behind navigating them without the ability to bust myself out of there should I need to.

The trip itself through the desert I admit was much shorter than I imagined it would be. But then, that was mostly because of Simba being a tamed beast. He'd become partially like me, with the body of a video game beast. While he didn't have access to skills and such like me, the game itself gave it the body of a game character, meaning like me his overall physical health restored much more rapidly than normal, as such, he very rarely needed to take any breaks and the ones he did take were incredibly short.

My eyes drifted up to the top of New Ozai, where I could see the still in construction, half finished statue of Fire Lord Crapzai. 'I wonder how they'd all react if I dropped the sand shark's body on it?' I wondered. I'd checked out its body in the hope of hopes it was still clinging to life, but no, it had been well and truly dead. So I just placed its corpse in my inventory. I'm not exactly sure if I can do anything with it, but it's the body of a two hundred foot plus shark creature. If nothing else I could use it to show off, or if I move on to a modern world I could like drop it somewhere and see the chaos it created. That would be funny as fuck.

"You ready to go?" Ty Lee asked, breaking me from my thoughts.

I turned to her to see she had disengaged from Simba and was smiling my way, while Simba lay on his folded legs watching us. "Yeah," I nodded. I made my way over to Simba and pet him on the snout, "Thanks for all the hard work buddy."

The giant cross between a moose, a saber tooth tiger and a lion snorted through his nostrils at him, but nodded lightly, and leaned lightly into my touch. He'd not been a very big fan of me when I first tamed him the other day, but he did take a liking to Ty Lee, which I couldn't blame him for. And He'd lightened up around me personally when I took care of the sand shark. I suppose while it may not be a true liking just yet, he at least seems to respect me.

I pet him for a few more moments, before returning him to his crystal within my soul. I paused as that thought hit me. 'My soul huh?' I mused. Since they were more or less tied to and living within my soul, does that mean my soul is strengthened by each new tamed beast?

I don't know. I didn't think even to ask the system anything like that before I toggled off the interfaces. I'll need to make sure and ask when I toggle it back on.

Ty Lee intertwined the fingers of one of her hands with mine and pulled me along, "C'mon, I want to get some clothes at New Ozai before we go to the port and get on the ship to the Fire Nation." she said.

I let her drag me along, I need to grab some more clothes anyway, especially shorts for swimming, and well, Ty Lee needs a swimsuit of her own if we're going to the Ember Islands.