Fellowship is Madness

by Imperator Chiashi Zane

Poison Joke

“Hey, where is everypony? Aren’t the weather teams supposed to be clearing this storm up?” Kajiik looked at his newspaper. The weather was usually consistently slightly cloudy, but today was scheduled for completely sunny, and that meant Pegasi were supposed to be zipping around busting up any clouds that strayed into town.

Iron Hoof nodded, and glanced around the empty streets. Vendor stalls were all set up, but unstaffed, left alone. And he was certain that it wasn’t supposed to be a holiday of any sort today. He would have been informed, as Officer in Residence of the local Guard. “I don’t know. There’s no holiday I know of, and we would have been informed if everypony came down with something.”

Kajiik started tracing a circle on the dirt, a simple tracking spell that would tell him where every warm body within five hundred meters was. He didn’t quite have time to finish it before a wing grabbed his tunic and yanked him through the door of Sugarcube Corner.
“Get in here, quick. Hide!”

Kajiik broke free of her grasp and rolled across the floor, coming up to see that what looked like half the town were packed into the building, “What’s going on? Who are we hiding from?”

Hammer sighed, “You haven’t been here very long. Of course somepony would have forgotten to tell you about the Enchantress.”
Iron rolled his eyes, “What enchantress?”

Fleethoof popped up, “An Eeevil Enchantress. Capital E. That’s important. Just look at those robes she’s wearing. She’s obviously trying to hide a warty muzzle.” Kajiik glanced out the window, and spotted a lone figure wearing a robe that looked like it had been rolled around in weeds and dirt for years, but underneath it seemed to have been originally grey. He didn’t have the chance to see any more, because he was yanked away.

“Plus, the last time she was in town she cursed some ponies. Gave ‘em all these weird potions that made them act silly. They were all like ‘Dude, check this plant out. It’s soo far out!’, but they were holding the carrot in their hooves.”

Kajiik sighed, “Really? Did you ever bother to have an alchemist check out those potions?”

“No. He was one of the ponies she poisoned.”

“And she hasn’t been lynched because?” Iron was already pressing glyphs on his armor, preparing it for a magic fight.

“She’s an Evil Enchantress. She’ll poison all of us.”

“Really? How frequently is she in town? I haven’t seen her in town before and I’ve been here almost three weeks.”

“She comes into town about once a month, picks some of those tumbleweeds and locoweed from the alleys, and leaves. Sometimes she lurks at the stalls.”

Kajiik sighed. He was getting a fair idea of what this pony was like, “Does anypony even know her name?”

“The ponies she poisoned call her Zecora.”

Kajiik’s brain stalled out for a moment, “What species is she?” He was almost certain he knew this Enchantress.

“Zebra, like you, but why does that have anything to do with anything? She’s clearly Evil,” Fleethoof was shaking nervously, “She’ll poison all of us if we give her the chance.”

Kajiik sighed, “I’ll go talk to her,” he was halfway to the door when he heard one of the mares in the building shout.

“Apple Bloom’s missing!” He groaned and pressed his muzzle against the glass, looking through it. The little yellow filly with a giant pink bow was doing a horrible impression of a ninja across the street, towards the enchantress, who was already leaving town.

“Iron, I’m going after her. You get Apple Bloom, I’ll go talk to Zecora about scaring folks.”

“You sure?”

“I’m a Zebra, she’s a Zebra. If anypony has a chance of talking to her, it’ll be me.”

“We’re going with you. No sense in letting you get cursed alone,” Hammer was hefting her magic hammer onto her back. Even if it couldn’t magically harm a pony, if push came to shove, it was still a heavy block of metal on a pole.

The six of them filed out the door and started off after the filly. Hammer intercepted the filly, flying low and fast, and turned her around, “Get back to town, Apple Bloom. We’ll handle this. I promise.”

The filly smiled, but she seemed to want to join the adventure, “No, Apple Bloom. Go back to your family. We’ll let you know when it’s safe to come back out.”
__
The edge of the forest came into view, and Kajiik tapped his bracers together, activating a deflection spell. It would block any magic that the Zebra sent their way, but if she was who he thought she was, she wouldn’t throw anything at them. Or at least, at him. He skidded to a stop as the retreating figure paused and turned to them. Her striped muzzle came into view, but he couldn’t see enough of it in the shadows to identify the pattern, which was unique between families. The others stopped around him, ready to fight. He heard the clicking of Hammer’s talons around her hammer’s grip, Iron’s armor clicking as the plates shifted over his rippling muscles. Fleethoof was flapping overhead, wings kicking up a small amount of dust and flower petals. Blueberry and Barkskin stood to either side, horns glowing with power.

“Beware, Beware, Pony folk. Those blue flowers are not a joke!”

Hammer giggled, “Lame. C’mon, if you’re gonna curse us, use a better one than Beware!” her talons flicked through the air, miming a stage actor, hooked over the air dramatically.

Kajiik sighed, realizing he knew exactly who this mare was, “Zecora Aures Dejjar, do not toss curses around lightly.”

She froze, then fled into the forest. He blinked away the after-image of utilizing name magic. If he had genuinely made her flee, he was right in his guess. Which meant she hadn’t been cursing them. Or, she had, and he was wrong in his guess.

But as far as he knew, curses took a lot more time than one sentence, “We’re fine. She didn’t curse us.”

“Really? Then what was all that?” Barkskin mimed the rhyming that the Zebra had used.

Kajiik nodded, “Just smoke and mirrors, meant to distract us, to scare us away. You know, like at a circus. Let’s go home. I need to do some research anyway. There’s no way for even Barkskin to track a pony into the Everfree, no matter how fresh the trail is. We’ll need to use a map and find out the most likely places for her to be living.
__
Kajiik looked at his roof, then at the floor. Back to the roof. Why was his bed on the roof? He carefully stepped off the side, expecting to fall to the floor. Instead he fell to the roof. Everything was blurry. He dragged a hoof across his eyes, trying to wipe the sleep out of them, but nothing happened. He could see well enough to tell that his room was actually right way up, he was just mixed up. And everything was blurry still. He tried to draw a spell to bring up his reading glasses, but his hoof wouldn’t stay stable enough to draw the lines.

“IRON! WHERE ARE YOU!”

A clanking sound echoed around the room as his bodyguard and friend trotted in. He got a blurry look at the armor, “Oh, good. You’re already armored up. We need to find Zecora. I think she actually cursed me.”

“Us. I woke up like this,” Kajiik watched through blurred eyes as his friend removed his helmet, and apparently his head.

“Dude, put your head back on, that’s gross.”

“My head isn’t there. I can’t find any of my actual body. Just my armor. We need to find the others.”

A crashing sound told them where at least one was. Fleethoof flapped into the building upside down, crashing into the ground, “My wings are upside down. How am I supposed to cook like this?” Another crash brought her upside down onto the couch.

“What about the others. It looks like the curse is playing with our fears and pride…Iron?”

“I’m fine. Fearless, you know.”

“But then, what about Hammer, Barkskin, and Blueberry?” Fleethoof stared over the arm of the couch, waiting for the door to open.
She didn’t expect it to open to a Griffon with flaming wings, flanked by the brown Unicorn and a purple Alicorn with an iridescent sheen to her fur.

“Hammer? Blueberry?” The Griffon and Alicorn nodded as they came in, Hammer being careful to not touch anything flammable with her wings, which Kajiik saw were gleaming bronze underneath the flames.

Blueberry sat, wings ruffling the air, “I don’t like having wings. How do you Pegasi deal with them falling underhoof? I’ve stepped on mine a dozen times since I woke up.”

Fleethoof flapped her upside down wings, “Keep them folded up. Feathers to your flanks. ‘Cept mine are on upside down, so they keep tickling my nose.”

Hammer tucked her flaming wings close to her back, muscled tail whipping around nervously.

“What about you Barkskin? You don’t look any diff…” Iron was cut off as the Weather manager raised her hoof, revealing roots burrowing into the carpet, “…Er…So probably don’t hug Hammer right now.”

“I always wondered what it was like to be a tree. Now I guess I’ll get to find out. Unless we get going right now so I don’t get stuck to the floor here.”

Kajiik scooped her up and tore the roots from the carpet, “Ok, let’s go. We’ll trot and talk. Can’t let Barkskin grow into the dirt until we’ve solved this.”
__
The forest loomed ahead, and Kajiik could feel Barkskin trying to get off his back, where he had her currently attached by a series of small roots that had woven themselves into his tunic, “No, stay on my back. We don’t want you to get stuck somewhere in the forest.”

Navigation wasn’t hard, but they had lost the map because of a not particularly well thought out grab by Hammer that burned it to ash. Fortunately, Barkskin hadn’t lost her tracking abilities, and from her perch was able to follow something that Kajiik couldn’t identify to Zecora’s hut. And what a hut it was. The structure stood above a pool of water, balancing on nine tree-trunk poles jammed into the mud. It was held together with rope and vines, with a carefully hoof-made rope bridge leading out to the front porch. The roof was a combination of leaves and tarred hay, and the hut appeared to have two floors. The upper window was glowing with candle-light, and Kajiik pointed, “Fleethoof, go check the door.”

The Pegasus flapped over, hanging upside down and pushed gently on the door handle. The door swept open, and she flapped inside, before landing in an ungraceful crash.

The flickering light in the upper window dimmed for a moment, the sign of a candle being lit. Kajiik darted across the bridge, sliding to a stop inside the hut, “Fleet, you ok?”

She nodded, “Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve crashed harder than this”

He looked up the stairs as a striped hoof came down gently on the thin plank, “Zecora, I need to speak to you.”

The other forehoof stopped halfway to the step, then began to retreat, “Zecora Aures Dejjar, I DEMAND that you come down here and speak to me.”

The hoof was clearly shaking as it continued down the stairs, but it travelled down anyway. Three more steps, and her bare torso came into view, not even wrapped in the typical yellow-grey fabric of the tribe. Her face came into view, frowning, and she looked like she was going to scream something, but as soon as her eyes locked on Kajiik’s, she stopped. Her legs carried her right up to him, “Kajiik?”

“Oh, good. I was right. Uh, what curse did you use on us? We need to reverse it.”

Iron commented from outside, “Not permanently though, I could make use of this one.”

“It’s not a curse, Brother Dope. You stepped in Poison Joke,” her hoof rose, colliding with Kajiik’s ear, “<And what in Tartarus were you thinking using Name magic on me! We agreed not to do that!>”

“I had to be sure it was you. Can you fix this?”

“Yes, I can. The cure is in this pan. A bath you must take, normal again, it will make.”

“Must you rhyme. It’s really a pain to try and understand you.”

“My Equestrian is better, when I speak rhyme to the letter.”

“Fine. Is the cure ready?”

Zecora nodded, and poured the simmering liquid into a bottle, “Use this as Shampoo, and once more you will be You.”

“Thank you.”
__
The spa had been more than happy to lend the six of them one of the larger baths to reverse the Poison Joke effects, and they scrubbed themselves until everything reverted to normal with a flash of light.

Iron Hoof looked at the bottle, “Hey, Kajiik, do you think you could get some vials of this stuff. Just in case, you know.”

“I can ask Zecora.”