//------------------------------// // Chapter fifty seven, Where we’re going: To the tundra. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Moss Cow, Arcanum Archives Association Branch, Sunburst- I woke up to another cold morning in Moss Cow, not many ponies here. My mother didn’t like cold places and that was one of the very reasons why I came here. I would have preferred somewhere closer in Equestria, but beggars can’t be choosers. Sighing out, I thought about the area as I looked out the window seeing snow again. The cattle here were stocky and built tough to survive this cold climate. The place was like a frozen wasteland, the majority of the meals here were potatoes and cheese, aside from several untoward things happening among their own people the cattle weren’t doing anything much of interest besides beating each other black and blue. This place was basically the dairy treat capital of the world, but that wasn’t exactly why I was here. Turning away from the window I went to go take care of the things I had to do this morning, bathroom and hygiene first. I looked at myself in the mirror and cleaned my glasses with some magic. I checked my red hair and beard, followed by checking my tail and considered whether a shower was worth the money it'd cost to take one. Hot water was a commodity around here. I sighed and used some magic to warm the cold water before it hit me, you learn all kinds of spells in unique places such as this. My magic wasn’t exactly the strongest, but I was good enough to get by as an archivist here and my horn was at least rated for most minor cantrips and some moderate level spells. Still didn’t have the heart to tell my mother I had dropped out of Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, I really didn’t know what I was doing with my life aside from archiving knowledge and learning interesting easy to use spells. My job out here was basically to be a minor troubleshooter for the archives, I really wished a transfer to Canterlot or somewhere else would come in. Getting out the shower and taking minimal care of my scraggly red mane, beard and tail, I threw my enchanted cloak of warmth around my neck. I looked into the mirror at my tired blue eyes, I really didn’t get much sleep last night. My orange fur, white tipped hooves and a white streak on my nose made me a little more unique than an average pony, but at most I thought I looked like an orange cream dessert with cherry sauce for hair and blueberry sauce for a cloak. This was just another day to sit down and read many interesting stories, local culture and of course expand my knowledge of many things. I wanted to tell someone something important that happened to me a while ago, it’s been more than a year at least and it was still quite fresh in my mind. I had thought about sending Starlight Glimmer a letter once more, but I was too much of a coward to tell her of my failures and I still am. Plus, I didn’t really know where Starlight was anymore, because I seriously doubt that she’d stay in Sire’s Hollow with her overbearing father for too long. Sire’s Hollow seemed a bit too quiet for her and I never exactly wanted to go back there either with my busybody mother trying to run my life for me, I wondered where Starlight was now. I haven’t really thought about her in years. Oh well, on to business and ignoring the strangling guilt, because I’ve told absolutely nobody about what happened. I sat down and had my nose in a book, I was trying to ignore that gnawing dread and the thing that was still sitting in my room given to me by the Arcanum Archivist Association for my stay here. After a few hours of good reading, something interrupted my day completely and it all started with a single word. I didn’t know it yet, but this day was going to go south. Anywhere south of Moss Cow was far warmer at least, even if I was getting starting to get used to the bone chilling cold. “Meep.” Blinking and looking up with a startled yelp, I fell backwards and tumbled painfully to the floor. The thing that startled me was a brightly smiling alpaca face and large friendly purple eyes that were asking me a question I’m not sure I wanted to answer. She was covered in a thick amount of blonde or yellow fluff. There was something about that smile that made my instincts scream to run, mostly before she did whatever it was she was asking me with her eyes. The other part of my instincts were telling me to paradoxically stand still, since running might set her off and standing still might be safer than getting run down by her. There was something about this alpaca that screamed pure evil despite how friendly she appeared, as if the gods themselves were trying to warn me about her. “Can I… help you?” The alpaca nodded at me and then opened her mouth to speak. “Meep?” She asked proudly in question with her head held high and putting a hoof to her chest. “Your name is Paprika and you want to hug me? Wait… how did you even fit an entire sentence and all those hyperactive emotions into a single word?!” Run, stay still, curl up in a corner and cry, my instincts were all over the place. It was a good thing I was able to rely on my ability to think clearly, instead of my incredibly ridiculous instinctual reaction to fear this cuddly looking being. “Meep.” I understood that bizarrely enough, that was several sentences instead of just the one this time and she didn’t even change the inflection at all I’ve just noticed… well aside from the previous noise being more questioning than it. “Uh… I don’t know why you want to hug me, we’re meeting for the first time after all. If I said yes, what would you…” My world was pain, she was squeezing the life out me and I was choking for air. My instincts said I should have chosen the run option, but then it turned around and told itself that running might have made her even more aggressive. Eventually the iron hard pressure eased up on my entire body and… I felt oddly fine about everything that’s happened to me in life. Did she just hug all those depressing thoughts out me? -Love god corner of the universe- “Oh other gods and goddesses, she’s starting to gain enough power to come close to ascending just by existing!” The goddess Aphrodite started to curl up in a corner and cry into her hooves. Various other male and female gods of love gathered around and comforted her. Nothing would stop Paprika from possibly becoming a love god, should she hug enough people, monsters and or things with pure unconditional love to the point that it will inevitably happen. There was nothing they could actually do about it. Unless they could find her a different position other than love goddess, they were absolutely screwed… and not in the good way that usually comes with the position. “Could she become a different kind of goddess?” Eros suggested, he was as horrified as all the others by the power that Paprika just showed. She was able to defeat angst by simply hugging it out of people now. “I mean there are many aspects that other gods won’t touch with a ten foot pole, maybe we can foist her off on one of those titles as to not be near us or hope she somehow gets lost before she can ascend to meet us?” “Not likely Eros, Anteros says that she’s becoming quite unstoppable. The best we can do is pray to a higher power… well higher than us that is. We’re not even sure there is one, because Paprika would be the cruelest joke it could play on us.” Parvati stated while shivering. “For if she becomes a goddess then she might rule over us soon enough. Can you imagine the horror of being under her commanding hooves… the horror… that is so much more horrifying than my mother becoming a part of Pinkie Pie!” “Get a hold of yourself and think Parvati!” Serpent Goddess Xochiquetzal slapped the goddess with a wing as hard as she could. “We do not need her becoming a goddess of love above us all or even dare I say it…. the goddess of hugging! She would hug us and everything for an eternity all at once! Eros’s idea has some merit to it, think of something for the love of all that is love in the universe!” “I’ve got it!” The longma goddess of love, Jiutian, suddenly shouted and lit up with pink flames. “However… I won’t tell you how to avoid such a horrible fate, unless you all help me with my project.” “You mean that weird pet project of yours where keep you trying to get a lambkin and a longma to breed to make fluffy longma?” Oshun, the goddess of love for sea ponies, didn’t seem too excited about that idea. “Yeah, because that’s going so~ well. Newsflash, your current targets are both female! You’ve tried this over fifty thousand times since the longma were first created by Huoshan and you were born not too long after. It’s never going to happen at this rate even if it would be highly adorable!” “It’s nothing a little… ‘safe’… dark magic accident can’t eventually cure.” Jiutian grinned at all the other gods looking towards her. “Help me and I help you, we all know the rules here… we love to love... except where Paprika is concerned. I’m willing to accept Paprika as our lord love god just to spite you all, even if I’m fated to be her first target!” The other gods were silent and pondered on whether making a deal with Jiutian was a good idea. If she could solve their little problem with her idea, then it would be worth the cost of doing business. A god of love looked to the sign that said the goddess of love for the lambkins was still out to pasture, probably still avoiding Jiutian’s aggressive affectionate tendencies. -Moss Cow, AAA Branch, Sunburst- “Uh… thank you?” Nodding to me, Paprika pointed at me and intoned one thing. “Meep?” Well she had hugged me before I even introduced myself. “My name is Sunburst and…” I started out. “Meep!” She exclaimed loudly with excitement and came at me, I cringed and waited for another near bone breaking hug. It never came, I opened one eye and saw that she was plastered against a pillar of ice with her legs splayed out. Some rather powerful magic went into that pillar, I turned to see a reindeer that looked to be of noble birth and a rather scruffy and small looking cow… in more ways than one given her udders weren’t visible. The cow was the only one wearing a sweater and hat, they seemed to be made of alpaca fleece. “Sorry about our wife, she’s a bit… excitable… so you're Sunburst. We need to ask you a few things and I am hoping you could answer several questions for our family.” Standing next to the reindeer was a cow who was giving me a thousand yard hard stare, I shivered. “I’m Velvet by the way.” “I’ll answer whatever you want, just don’t let her hug me again!” I had no idea why I was so terrified of her. Sure the hug hurt a bit, but I had felt much better afterwards. “I have no idea why I’m afraid of her, all I know is that I just am!” “Eh, that’s usually the response Paprika gets from everyone, but we stayed married to her anyway.” The cow said in a lazy tone. “Still don’t understand how anyone can fear her, she’s just a little hug happy.” She and Velvet seemed less threatening for some reason and they looked like they were more violent than the alpaca considering the number of fresh and highly visible bruises they were both covered in. “I’m still rather disturbed by her, it’s like a gut instinct is telling me to avoid her.” I sighed as the alpaca pouted slightly and wiggled her butt aimlessly. “... I’m Sunburst, what did you need to know?” “Do you know a cow by the name of Minnesota Magnolia Arid?” Velvet asked. There were a lot of cows in Moss Cow, I couldn’t remember every name I’ve ever heard and wasn’t a networking master like cows tended to be. Why were they coming to me about this? Shouldn’t they ask the local police about missing person cases? “No, can’t say that I have.” I answered honestly. “Do you know a cow named 'Maggie' that came to you about a key?” After the cow said that, my eyes widened. Now that was a name I recognized immediately. “Yes, and I still have the key from that particular… incident.” The small cow narrowed her eyes at me and all her muscles flexed, something tells me I did not want to be hit by her. The nearby thermostat told me the rooms temperature dropped thirty degrees. With a scan of my horn, said temperature drop centered on the cow and not the reindeer. That was scary. “What happened to her?” The cow seemed quite intent on finding out about what happened, given she was now holding me up to a bookcase by the throat. “What happened to my mother?!” “Arizona.” The reindeer intoned calmly. Her… her mother? I sighed, I didn’t know whether Maggie was alive or not, but she certainly seemed like too much of a wild cow to simply perish. This cow, Arizona, slowly let me down. Her eyes continued to gaze into mine fiercely, she was certainly distraught and as strong as a ten foot tall gorilla. That was not a good combination in this situation. “Your mother, Maggie, she came to Moss Cow looking to find a unicorn willing to do something for her. I, unfortunately, volunteered to aid her. Don’t honestly know why she didn’t try Canterlot or somewhere else, she probably didn’t want to lose the key and thus came somewhere more discreet. I didn’t think much of it at the time as this wasn’t illegal up to a certain point, but well… your mother was rather insistent… on top of being crass, belching a lot and making rude jokes.” I coughed into my hoof when the cow glared at me harder. “She wanted me to research the key to see how it worked, so I did that. I’m not very good with magic, but I did learn some things…” “Get to the point!” Velvet grew quite stern as she place herself in Arizona’s path. “That and you have the key of the lambkin, which we’re going to need to save the world.” “She's stuck in another dimension and I can't open another portal to wherever she went because the key is used up!” The shockwave that ripped through the room, knocked me and everything away. Only one hoof struck the floor, Arizona slowly approached me. “Please... I know what it’s like to be missing a parent!” I closed my eyes sobbing, and then... I heard her sobbing. I opened my eyes and saw that Paprika was holding a crying Arizona’s face against her shoulder.