As mentioned, we’re flashing back before the roleplay to show Dash and Cyber Sunset’s return to their home dimension.

I’m very fond of this co-write for a number of reasons.

 
Note, this story also takes place before the Rollover.

A blinding blue flash awoke Sebastian Dash from his state of painful unconsciousness but it was the rush of wind in his ears which brought him fully awake.

He was falling. He felt his body bounce off the side of a hard rock before his eyes could fully open. For a normal man, waking up mid-fall might have been a death sentence. Thankfully for Sebastian, his reflexes, honed by training since childhood, kicked in, forcing his body to twist as he fell, grasping for any surface to hold onto and break his fall.

Dash's ribs ached from bouncing off the side of... it took him a second to realize he was hanging off the side of a cliff. A quick glance around revealed it would be a long fall if he slipped. Probably not a fatal fall, but Dash wasn't especially eager to put the theory to the test.

Dash put the events together in his mind even as he pulled himself up, resting on the side of the cliff. He looked over to reaffirm the initial feeling and, thankfully, immediately spotted several familiar locations. The last thing he remembered was agony. He, Konall and Aleena were attacking Kwadlin, or Philler, when Kwadlin redirected Kadlin's lightning attack at all three of them. Dash wasn't quite sure what happened then.

Now he was home. Not just his home dimension, but his home kingdom. Which would mean he was in the mountain ranges, which would mean... Ahh, damn. Bad news.

Dash heard an angry puff, and hooves in motion. He quickly found his footing, just in time to avoid being rammed off of a cliff by an upset looking goat. Dash again rolled to the side to avoid its buddy, a dairy goat. Dash looked around, spotting his sword in the distance, and nearly paid for his inattention as the goat again charged him. Dash shoved off the side of it, but stumbled, rolling to his feet, but crashing into the side of the mountain. On the upside, they were obviously on one of the many walkways leading down the mountains.

On the downside, the effects of the lightning were playing havoc with Dash's mind and body. The angry goat charged Dash, who reached for a piece of flash paper, only to remember he had used his last few scraps during the last desperate fight.

Ahhhh, not good.

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Meanwhile...

It was very, very cold.

Cyber Sunset opened his eyes and felt an incredible amount of pain. He couldn’t remember much from the fight, apart from the fact that he’d been hit, hard, and there was some sort of strange source of light...

After a few moments his vision cleared and he stared into the side of a rock, much like the several he was lying upon. Cyber Sunset shook his head and moved just enough to see the shape he had left on the ground... a light dusting of snow was all around him.

Cyber Sunset took a few moments to observe his surroundings. He could detect some traces of civilization nearer to the bottom of the mountains... but nothing that looked familiar.

He knew from when he chased Professor Verdigris to the Occidental Pole that blood loss combined with incredible cold would make for a bad combination. He might have lost enough nanites that they would be incapable of combating hypothermia or frostbite. Movement, rather than rest, was required.

Cyber Sunset stared down the side of the mountain at a reasonable looking rock onto which he could teleport. He felt an expected resistance as fewer nanites than normal could be put to the task. He felt the confirmation of dozens of nanites getting into place, but waited for even more to arrive.

The sound of crunching snow gave him the impression that he might not have time to teleport. The heavy wheezing sound of some large animal confirmed it. He attempted to override the safety measures and teleport before everything was ready, but there weren’t even enough nanites available for that.

A massive, fur-covered paw slammed into his side and sent him rolling a short distance down the mountain. He looked up and saw a large creature, not unlike a bizarre marriage of a polar bear with a gorilla, and winced as it raised its arms in gleeful triumph before leaping down and landing near him with a grace that should not have been possible for something of its size.

"Yetis," said Cyber Sunset, drawing his thorn blade from its sheath. "I hate yetis..."

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Without fully realizing what he was doing, Dash reached into another pouch. That's right! Still had another trick up his sleeve.

Steel ballings. Each pair was tied to another by a foot and a half long thick rubber wire. Dash hurled a pair of bolas, catching each goat's leg with one. It wasn't quite enough to tangle them, but it gave Dash time to plot and execute an escape.

He wasn't hunting goat cheese or milk today, so there was no reason to continue the fight. Moreso, there was a sign of a fight in the distance. It might just be a scuffle between the hunters and the local beasts, but if Dash was teleported here, the others might be.

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Cyber Sunset barely ducked under the swipe of another paw, not sure how long he could keep up the fight in his current condition. He pulled one of the tazer darts out of his belt pocket and tossed it at the Yeti and watched the massive beast shudder as a controlled electric shock moved through its system.

Cyber Sunset took advantage of the brief lull in attacks to hop away as quickly as he was able, slow though that might have been. He knew he didn’t have long to increase the distance as he moved down the slope, incrementally closer to the city that was still so far away.

The Yeti roared when the sensation of the electric shock passed and lumbered down the mountain toward the hero. Cyber Sunset turned to see his pursuer and took little note of the rocks and tiny clumps of snow that began falling down behind him. Within a few moments, however, the sound of falling snow built and built, turning into a deafening thunder behind him. He would have turned to look, but was too busy raising his sword to block the flurry of blows from the monstrous man of the snow.

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Dash flinched as an avalanche of snow tumbled down not a dozen feet from Dash's nose.

Dash shivered under the cold, and every step ached, thanks to Kwadlin's electrical attack. Nevertheless, he got the feeling someone might be in trouble. If the cascade of falling snow wasn't enough of a tip.

Dash went to see if he could lend a hand.

 
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Cyber Sunset had, of course, dealt with Yetis before. In fact, there were four different types of Yeti that he had dealt with, and half a dozen others that he had been told of, ranging from the basic "gorilla haunting the mountain tops," to the golems that were made of the snow itself, to the gripping ghost stories of The Gray Man who lived on more hospitable mountains but generated such primal fear and terror that it caused its victims to run off the nearest cliff just in the hope that they could get away.

This creature was closer to the first type, and fortunately didn’t have the martial arts skills of some of the intelligent variations that he had encountered, but it was still very capable. Cyber Sunset had been able to avoid its advances and its swiping paws, but the few blows he had landed didn’t cut very deep and had seemingly gone unnoticed by his white-furred foe.

The beast suddenly howled in pain. Something had attacked it from behind. It swung around to face a new adversary. The familiar figure glanced towards Cyber Sunset.

Sebastian Dash! "You know you're not supposed to be hunting yeti without the proper gear and permit, right?"

Cyber Sunset grinned and took advantage of the Yeti's focus on Dash to aim a precise and powerful stab to its back. "Hey, it was hunting me! And I'm never in season."

Dash rammed his shoulder into the beast, then glanced at Sunset. They had worked together enough in the past that Sunset realized what Dash wanted; shove the thing off the edge and let gravity take care of it.

Cyber Sunset was happier to comply. He stabbed at the tendons near its ankle, unbalancing the creature enough that Dash was able to finish it off, leaping in the air dramatically and bringing the broadside of his broadsword Bad Beats down on the yeti, sending it tumbling off the cliff for a fall of several feet.

"Good thing, you're all skin and bones, anyway," Dash teased. "You don't look good. How far can you teleport us at a time? I can guide us down."

Cyber Sunset took a few deep breaths. "Teleport us down? Well...a little bit. I think I...I think I need some rest, though not too much. Let's just walk for a bit, then I think I'll...I'll be able to teleport a little ways soon."

Dash cursed under his breath, and looked Sunset over. "That bad, huh? I'm not surprised. I wasn't sure if you'd even make it after.. well.. you know."

Cyber Sunset narrowed his eyes, turned, and began walking unsteadily down the rocky slope. "You should know it takes more than a little injury like that to finish me off, Dash. Heck, you've seen me take worse. I've seen YOU take worse, which is the surprising thing. Don't tell me that this kingdom you've moved to is making you soft?"

"I wish I had a mirror so you could see how much of a corpse you look like right now," Dash said, impressed by his determination, but not his stubbornness. "The last I saw you before the flash, you were being hung in midair off the end of Kwadlin's blade. In your stomach, I believe."

Cyber Sunset waved his hand dismissively. "Well, of course it was in my stomach, have you tried positioning a body elsewhere? Too many bones in the way, I would've fallen off. Give Kwadlin some credit."

Dash chuckled. "Okay, tough guy, here's our plan. We make our way down the mountain. I'll lead. Then we head to either the Kingdom of KOL's headquarters or my campsite, so we can get some real food into you, and work on getting you healed. Then you take some time to rest. No arguing. In exchange, I won't challenge your 'flesh wound' defense. Deal?"

"Like you could hit me with a sword anyway," he responded. "But it's a deal."

CS’s handler said Sunset and Dash could be counted as adventure heroes, and I think this story had a brilliant mix of that super hero touch and the vulnerability for our wounded, injured heroes that made it clear they were in real danger. The bickering and teamwork between the two was nice as well.

As I said at the beginning, I’m very fond of this one. Next up, we’ll jump to a story set just after the Rollover.