Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows

Chapter Seventy, A “‘Normal’” Day: Where everything goes wrong...

-Manehatten Park, 7:34 PM, Jade-

The mare wasn’t going to get out of Fortitude’s grip for another twenty minutes or so. So I might as well explain what I’ve done today.

“While mom is busy finishing the show with Trixie, I’ll explain some things. This morning, Fizzle and I started off the day by making a lot of noise and making sure Labor here couldn’t get any sleep, her lucky charm decided to throw mobsters at us. Ms. Labor, deprived of sleep, eventually went to Hayburger to get her common order of a breakfast sandwich on rye.” I started off, the mare froze and stared at me with apprehension. “That’s when I had the ‘stay left’ monsters released, blunt force trauma hardly has any effect on them. So an Earth Pony will logically have problems with them and damaging them slightly is a bad idea, because tentacles. Your lucky charm helped you, but it requires something to work with. You earned a few scuffs and bruises until a unicorn comes along with the ability to handle the monsters, you earned his attention easily enough and he helped you… only for you to lose the remainder of your breakfast to a rye bread loving monster.”

“Then there’s what happened at the park earlier this morning… with all those fillies and colts and that cheese wheel.” Arizona stated with a look of awe in how planned out this was. “She was one of the ponies hit with the gum, cheese and tree sap.”

“Yep, the mare needed a drastic haircut after that… I gladly obliged in giving her a nice military buzz and shortly cut tail to match while disguised as a worker at the salon she frequents. I actually got my damage in before her lucky charm activated to have another unicorn take over cleaning the smell and gunk out of her fur, a high tier professional at that. It didn’t activate much because she wasn’t in any direct danger from being within the Cutie Mark Crusader’s splash zone.” Which explains why the mare’s mane was as shortly cut as her tail was, the thrashing mare growled angrily at me for this and Fortitude kept a strong grip on her. “Following that I launched myself across the city ahead of her and used a bunch of animal friends to force her into a trap where she was the pony we terrorized with a single anvil and a lot of illusion powder duplicates, her lucky charm couldn’t prevent her from getting directly hit with a potato cannon as it did with the anvil as she was at the very front of the group. Train whistles have the unfortunate habit of making her freeze up, due in part to some possible trauma as a filly. What her lucky charm did was bunch up a bunch of ponies to take any of the flak a falling anvil might cause from hitting the pavement and any time the anvil was launched directly at her it would veer off course as much as possible. I made sure to tag every other pony involved with the potato cannon with a water balloon, for reasons I will explain soon enough.”

“Then came the incident at the theatre.” Jacky muttered.

“Yep, our mare here is a noble, has lots of money and likes theatre… she probably hates anvils after what happened. I spent quite some time setting up all that heavy stuff. If the candelabra didn’t burn through the string entirely, then Blade would have had to do it manually with throwing knives. I wasn’t leaving much to chance with the lucky charm preventing that incident from happening to her.” I had Velvet there to make sure no pony got hurt. “I might have gone a little overboard, but I had to make sure her lucky charm was pushed to its limits. If you know your history Jacky, think about the Misfortune Malachite. The anvil hit her seat, she barely got out of the way of that and the three following safes, the piano cut her off and the ice on the ceiling crashed down nearly on top of her. The sixteen ton weight was just icing on the cake, the ice shards that hit her caused minimal injuries as far as the lucky charm would allow. Said lucky charm causes a general amount of constant good fortune throughout the day to keep her anonymous and protected from just about everything, except when it’s pushed hard. It protects its user from actual direct danger better than it does indirect and that wears down its ability to function when it does, thankfully it does not protect the wielder from astral projections or else no one would be able to know she’s the leader of GODLESS.”

“Do you seriously mean to tell me that she continued to use such a dangerous thing despite the dangers involved… and we just witnessed it shattering after she got blown up by a powerful firework while getting covered in manure.” Jacky looked worried for the mare. “Does that mean her luck is as bad is mine now, or is it possibly even worse because of the magical artifact shattering? We all know what happened to the Storm King after he broke the Misfortune Malachite, died at the height of his power thinking nothing could stop him. Only everything came crashing down for him… or I should say he came crashing down.”

“It’s not going to have an immediate effect like what happened to the Storm King, but it will soon have a visible enough effect and that will be completely critical to what’s about to happen here. That’s exactly what I’m counting on too.” I said mysteriously as I pulled my pack from my back and started throwing on some skating pads. My friends looked at me oddly as I pulled out my magnetically driven lightning skates, recently repaired and improved with pegasus magic instead of thestral magic for increased stability. Less chances of injury this time. “We did push her luck into being completely functionally cursed, and for that I’m only halfway feeling sorry for her. She’s getting what’s coming to her. So Miss Labor… why did you have to come after me? I wouldn’t have done what I did today if it wasn’t for you targeting me like crazy. I mean sending more than one assassin after me, it was a little bit much wasn’t it?”

“You’re a sun priestess, the chances of you not getting involved with my plans were low!” Stochastic was a rather caustic sounding earth pony. She probably should have been more worried about the Moon Priestesses that tore up her organization after they got a hold of that list of conspirators.

“So instead of making sure to not get me involved or even attract my attention, you decided to try and kill me immediately once you knew I existed. Right out of the gates no less.” I looked to my friends. “You see, this is not a sane mare and a pretty good reason for what I’m doing. The assassins let us know something was happening and Top Snide confirmed GODLESS existed. She wasn’t even among the ponies that Celestia was initially warning us about being out to get me. Don’t worry about those other ponies, they weren’t part of GODLESS and The Squirrels were looking out for me. Stochastic could have waited for those other ponies that wanted me out of the way, or could have even joined forces with them.”

“As if I would let you walk around for that long, you took out both Karats and Snide!” Stochastic growled at me angrily.

“Karats was accidental, but Snide was completely warranted.” I stated calmly.

“So what’s her story Jade?” Fizzle was watching the mare in Fortitude’s grasp like a griffon that has just had some gold stolen from them. “You obviously know more about this than the rest of us.”

“It all starts with Stochastic Labor, a mare whose special talent is basically to run a talent agency. As you can imagine, she has a really useful special talent for starting a conspiracy. She can pull talent from just about anywhere and understand how to use it effectively, basically she can hire ponies down on their luck to be minions for her organizations and since she’s a noble mare, she has the money to pay them with through a hefty inheritance. An inheritance which is lacking nowadays due to poor management.” I ignored the harsh glare being sent at me by a pair of grey eyes. Stochastic still struggled in Fortitude’s grip. I liked the Labor’s turquoise fur, but that’s about the only things that I did like about the mare. “So imagine a mare with a special talent for finding out how talented others are, she looked upon a goddess and saw something that drove her to becoming the mad mare she is. Basically she saw that gods were people too, that they weren’t perfect, and that they can make mistakes while having the power to be and do so much more.”

“Celestia has so much power, how can she go day to day not using all of that! She could have stopped the changeling invasion cold and yet she didn’t use enough power to save any pony and even let herself be defeated! Celestia could have even stopped her sister when she came back!” Screamed Miss Labor, still trying to shake Fortitude’s grasp or more likely his horrible stench given her violent thrashing. “No, instead we have a country stagnating at the hooves of a mare that’s been in power for the last thousand years and she’s not even using the full scope of her might to protect us! Instead she just keeps throwing us mortals at her problems, when they weren’t even ours to begin with! She and Luna defeated Sombra and then suddenly they won’t lift a hoof to stop him when they could before? Tirek escaped and caused havoc, they weren’t keeping him under constant watch and he’s the most dangerous thing to their rule! How did Tirek even become pen pals with Cozy Glow, who the buck allowed him access to stationary?! Chrysalis was even right under the nose of two goddesses, plus one goddess was foal-napped! The royal guard is an absolute joke and couldn’t protect anyone from danger! While they couldn’t have fought off Chrysalis, they should have at least been able to hold off her army! We lost a fight to a bunch of completely emaciated bugs! We don’t need ineffectual gods and goddesses to rule over us, they make us mortals weak, we don’t need them at all and they need us more than we do them!”

“You incidentally created a goddess… no make that two goddesses that exist in this day and age from just trying to assassinate Jade. I’m sure that Celestia would have happened anyway, if she had managed to convince Baast to help her while she was still Bennu.” Velvet’s commentary aside, she was correct. Stochastic had failed fantastically to do what GODLESS was meant to do and even helped create at least one goddess in the process. “Icky Dress certainly wouldn’t have come into existence without you Jade.”

“Yeah, I guess after tonight, we’ll be even then.” Glancing in the direction of the tables, I knew that the alarm was about to go off. I looked up to the moon high in the sky and sighed loudly, I clapped my hands and looked to my friends. “Well now, I’m going to put on my skates and prepare for the inevitable battle. I hope you guys are ready for it.”

“Ready for what Jade?” A bland voiced Gene asked with the faintest hint of worry, he grabbed at the spear across his back.

“Well I did say I would get back to the potato cannon thing didn’t I? So now is as good a time as any and before I do, let me correct Ms. Labor on a few things first. The stagnation was not caused by Celestia, it was caused by Discord overstepping his boundaries as the one who prevents things from stagnating and having to be punished. If Celestia had used the full scope of her power in a room full of ponies against Chrysalis, then they would have all been completely incinerated. Celestia wasn’t going to risk the lives of those ponies to win a fight using the power of the sun. Though she could have possibly created a secondary barrier to protect ponies from the heat, it isn’t a good idea to split ones focus in a magic fight.” After saying that, I became a bit introspective. “You are right about the royal guards needing to toughen up. Though the changelings had numbers, I bet ten changelings during the invasion could barely match a well-trained unicorn and half the royal guard is primarily made of unicorns from noble births that don’t take the job as seriously as they should. Some master race they are… I also agree that Tirek and Tartarus could have been watched better, because my loves were thrown in there by mercenaries without a trial. Not like Celestia wasn’t super busy reintegrating her sister back into society or keeping idiotic unicorn politics from hurting ponies from all trots of life, give the mare a break because she’s been at this for a long time and that’s the reason why she’s even stepping down now. She can’t handle that constant stress of having to perform up to everyone’s expectations anymore and deserves her break, she’s not some perfect all-knowing being even if she is a goddess. Now where was I?”

“Potato cannon and water balloons Jade.” Loudly muttered Fizzle as I finished strapping my skate’s to my feet.

“Oh right, well the potato cannon was loaded with Paprika’s fluff wad covered in concentrated poison joke. I tagged every pony that was touched by the stuff with water balloons filled with the cure provided by Zecora.” My plan was still going on even now. “I did not hit Stochastic Labor with the cure and she is the only one who hasn’t had the cure applied to her over the last eight or more hours since being infected with poison joke.”

“Meaning.” Maries’ three voices spoke out at once as they nervously glanced at Stochastic and started backing away from Fortitude.

“If you know what Poison Joke does or how long it takes to actively take on a specific effect, then the only thing you need to know right now is one thing.” I looked to Stochastic Labor as she gasped and started twitching slightly in Fortitude’s grip, I heard an alarm clock going off in the distance. “What is the exact worst possible thing that poison joke could to do to someone when provided in a concentrated form? Fortitude, let her go and shield up!”

Various eyes widened and all my friend realized what was about to happen, I got up and quickly skated away.

-Edge of Manehatten Park, 8:01 PM, Stochastic Labor-

I was dropped on the ground.

Why does everything burn so much… my head agh… what… what’s this on my forehead?! What… I also have… wings… growing from my back?!

No… NO… this isn’t happening… please, any pony, make it stop!

Make it...

I screamed and a wave of power erupted off of me, blasting away everything from me in an uncontrolled manner.

My vision tinted as I slowly slid my gaze towards the cat and all I knew now…

WAS RAGE!

Author's Note:

Yep, Jade set it up so the leader of GODLESS became an alicorn… on porpoise no less.

Run Jaded, magic cheese!

Comments

[Booster Spice]

Cheeze it, cheeze it, Wee Free Men magic cheeze it.

All that power, and the ultimate kicker is when she is Still going to fail.

To a Level 1 Rattata?

Concentrated Poison Joke.

Turns them into exactly what they hate the most.

[Herald of Opera]

Oh yeah, it's final boss time. Who wants to bet that she uses her new unicorn magic to turn into a giant snake?

[WARGAMES]

oh hahahahah this gonna be gud

[Shadowshame]

Get out of the author's notes naughty dolphin

[Alchemik]

Ah, come on, of all chapters to get caught up on, it had to be this one?! I'd blame Jaded, but that would imply she was after me, so I'm not.