Fellowship is Madness

by Imperator Chiashi Zane

Overwork Day, Part 1

“Trust me, I can get it all done in time Master Bruin,” Hammer Soot looked at her boss. The Griffon was lying outside the forge, in the yard, both talons wrapped securely in a good six or seven kilos of bandages soaked through with burn cream, “You just lay here and get those talons healed up.”

She stepped back inside the forge and looked at the glowing furnace and the pile of metal beside it. She needed to get at least five of the swords done today, and that normally meant the two of them would tag-team the blades. She would hammer at them, he would sharpen them on the grinder and stack them for the tempering oven. Not today. And that meant she had to take longer on each blade, since she couldn’t stick the next one in until she was grinding the previous one sharp, or it would get too hot. And the fine detail work on the anvil, and the grinder required talons. It had been one of the reasons her prosthetic hooves were shaped more like talons than actual hooves.
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She was interrupted halfway through grinding the first blade down by Iron Hoof stepping into the workshop. Quietly, she raised one hoof, and pointed to the wall where the sign-board was located. Without her hearing crystals in, she couldn’t hear anything he said anyway. The sword ground out smooth enough, and she set it on the rack where the other four would be joining it as Iron Hoof came back inside with the sign-board covered in letters.

By the glow of the hot steel bar on the anvil, she read out the words he had pieced together.

[Do you need any help with this? Your Boss looks hurt.]

She shook her head, and pointed with her wing at the other three bars of steel on the table, waiting to go into the forge, then leaned over the glowing steel on the anvil, “He got burned. I can handle it though.”

He started shuffling the letters around again, running out to grab more letters in the middle, [Don’t forget you promised to help Fleethoof later today.]

She shrugged, “Busy. After I finish.”

He sighed, and rearranged the letters again, [I don’t know if she’ll be as alright missing out on baking with you as I will about missing a training day.]

She flinched at that. She had promised to let him train her to fight better, less like an untrained blender and more like a Griffon. But missing that was surely not that huge of a deal, and she could always bake with Fleethoof some other day. But the pointed look he was giving her…

“Fine. Let me finish this one, and I’ll get the other three later today. I just need to be back by dinner, or I’ll never get done before nightfall.”

He smiled and went back outside to wait as she finished grinding the second blade smooth. The forge would take a couple of hours to warm up again, so she would have to stop back around three to start it back up, and make sure her master was resting where he could keep an eye on the flames.
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Iron Hoof greeted her out on the field, training stave already in a guard position. “Now, I know you’ve already been working hard today, but this is going to be using different muscle groups than hammering at hot steel. You have four hours before you have to be at Fleethoof’s, so that’s four hours to get one hit on me with the staff. If you can do that, then we can move on to the more Griffon specific stuff next week.”

She smirked at him, only stumbling a little as she took the stave in her talon. Her forelimbs might be mechanical, but they suffered fatigue the same way real limbs did. Probably something to do with the magic. She tried to make a mental note to ask Kajiik, but was interrupted by the unmistakable sensation of a pine stave colliding with her ear. She spun, moving her head and body with the impact, knowing that if that were a real attack, her neck would probably be broken, if not removed along with her ear. Her return sweep was nowhere near the mark, but she tried again.

Iron Hoof struck twice more, thumping her ribs with pinpoint precision as her staff merely stopped him from breaking them. How was he moving so fast? She waited for him to lunge, to give her an opening, and leapt into the air, wings spread as she brought her staff down on…Dirt. She didn’t even have time to react before his instinctive twist drove his stave into her jaw hard enough to clack her teeth together.

“OWW!” She moaned, then stopped, letting out whimpers because it hurt too much to move her jaw even enough to cry out in pain. He rolled her onto her back and poked at the spot on her jaw where a welt was rising. She flinched and nearly put a talon through his throat. His reaction time was amazing, she wanted to think. She wanted to admire the way his muscles gleamed with sweat under his tunic. She wanted to make some sound other than whimpers of pain.

*Clonk* Maybe not ANY other sound. Her head lolled to the side as his knee-jerk reaction to being stabbed was a matched strike to the side of her head with his staff. She faded out for a moment before coming back to his holding up his hoof? Hooves? She counted at least two.

Her ears didn’t seem to be working right either. He sounded like he was gargling water. She held up a hoof to pause both of him? All three of him? Her ear felt unusually slick when she pulled her hearing crystal out and stared at it. The tiny crystal was covered in blood.

Shaking it off, she tilted her head sideways to keep her bleeding ear away from the crystal, “Say what?”

“Ha ha. How many hooves am I holding up?”

She stared, trying to focus. Her eye was working, mostly, but it was all blurry, and she was seeing multiples. She slid her hoof over her eye-patch and pressed down on the socket hard enough that stars appeared in her vision, along with tears. No more blood though, “Ah, two.”

He nodded. Ok, now look at my hoof,” he waved a hoof back and forth across her vision. Her eye focused on it, but she couldn’t help but stare past it, at the dotted line of blood on the grass. She must have rolled after the hit.

“Ok, I think you should probably go see the doctor. I think you might have a concussion. I can let Fleethoof know you were hospitalized for a possible brain injury so you can’t help her cook.”

“No, I’ll…I’ll do it on my own. I’ll be fine. I promise. I’ll just head over there, and then go to the hospital. They’ll give me a clean bill of health, and I’ll get back to the forge.”

He stared at the mare as she trotted off. His training never actually covered what to do if a pony with a head injury got up and just, well, left.
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Hammer wrapped her ear in some gauze she found in the first aid kit on the wall of Sugarcube Corner’s kitchen, checking that it sat right. Her vision wasn’t all that blurry anymore, and she wasn’t even tired. And Fleethoof sounded so happy behind her.

“We’re gonna bake some muffins today, Hammer. But, you know, the Cakes don’t trust me with the oven, so you’ll have to do that part.”

No problem. It was just like the tempering oven back at the forge. Electric, temperature controlled and timed. And mixing up the ingredients was easy, right?

“Ok, so to make these mufflers, first we…” She thumped her hoof against the side of her head, below her bandaged ear, resetting the crystal.
“Can you hear me now?” The party pony had a smile on her face, “Ok, good. So first, we need three bags of chocolate shits.”

“Huh?”

“The brown bags in the top left cabinet. Grab the bag of flowers while you’re up there.”

She was pretty sure she was hearing what Fleethoof was saying correctly. Maybe… Three of the brown bags. Ok. And the flowers. "Dried and pressed, or ground up?" she asked.

“Ground, of course. Pressed flower would make a terrible muffin.”

She grabbed the bag and set in on the counter. “Ok, so mix two heaping scoots of flower into the mixing bowl, and pour in the chocolates.”

Scoots? Like that little Pegasus filly at the orphanage? Strange measuring system, but she could eyeball it. That was, oh, half the bag. All of it if the filly was laying on her face after a crash. “What kind of heap?”

“Tall one.”

Ok. Whole bag it was then. She dumped the bag into the mixing bowl, then sliced the three brown bags open, dumping them in. “What’s next?”

“Baking Soda. One cup from the blue can under the counter. Then five cups of water. Stir it really well.”

She looked. There were three different blue cans. Only one felt like it had any kind of soda in it, and her vision was beginning to blur again. Probably too much moving around. At least she could rest her eye while stirring. She poured it into one of the plastic cups sitting on the counter that looked about right. It was just the plastic version of what she used to measure out the water and clay for tempering blades, or molds. Perfect. She poured that in, then added the five cups of water and began to stir the mixture as Fleethoof came over with another bowl, “Ok. Keep stirring. I’m going to pour in the thickening pasta.”

Didn’t look much like noodles to Hammer, but she knew that even the long stringy noodles she liked started as goo, so if that was what Fleethoof needed to use, ok. She kept stirring until she was told to stop.

“Now we use these scoops to fill the muffin molds.” This was a part she was very good at. Hammer Soot took the scoop and filled up her half of the pans quickly before checking the oven. It had the same dials and buttons as her tempering oven at home.

“What temperature do we set the oven to?”

“Three hundred and seventy five degrees.”

She stared at the numbers. There was a silly little F on the dial, but there was also the familiar C. Perfect. She ignored the F and turned the dial until the number 375 was lined up with the tab on the oven front. As it started to heat up, she looked at the muffins, “Ok, so how long do we cook them for?”

“About fifteen minutes. The oven should be heated up in about three, then you can stick them in and start the timer.”
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The timer went off, not that either pony heard it over the screeching smoke alarm. Fleethoof yanked the oven door open, then backed off, her feathers practically curling in the flames blasting from the commercial oven.

Hammer Soot reached in with her metal talons and grabbed the first of the trays, sliding it down the counter where a spray of water from the sink put the flames out. Hammer smiled. It was just like dipping metal in the oil bucket to rapidly cool it, then. She sent the next tray down, then the next, glad the oven was finally calming down as she finished pulling the last tray out and reached up to turn the oven off with her wing, since her talon was still glowing with gathered heat.

“I see why they don’t want you using the oven, Fleet. Your feathers would curl like little raisins if you did,” she smiled as she trotted over and grabbed one of the still cooling muffins, “How long until they’re ready to eat?”

Comments

[Hatty_Hattington]

[Imperator Chiashi Zane]

5454372 So were the cupcakes. Your point?