//------------------------------// // Chapter Eleven, Blueblood Bandits: Permission parade. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Jade- My job was simply to gather as many of the royal guard as possible and keep them away from the airship docks. That meant I had to make some noise and attract an egregious amount of attention. I had succeeded in getting Shining Armor angry, so that wouldn’t be too hard. If I could find Sturdy Spear, then all the better as he likely still holds a grudge against me. I wasn’t going to be involved in the theft of the airship directly, that was Jacky’s job. I was just simply the distraction. Well not so simple really, as dodging blasts of magic from the unicorns wasn’t doing me any favors. However, I would not take the blame for all the collateral damage to the surroundings they were causing. That would just be rude of them, they should really work on their aim and stop blaming the one they are chasing for the damages caused. Thinking of my pirate parrot pal, she should be firing the party cannon right about now. She had better not miss, because so help me the plan would fall apart entirely if she does! I jumped over a confused night guard who was just about to go on shift and he took a face full of magic, I would like to point out that I’m not the one that hit him. That one would be on Shining Armor. Oh look, more armored guards chasing after me. I swear someone is playing a saxophone at high speeds right now. No wait, there was a musician actually chasing us with a saxophone and was playing that music. I quickly slid under a diving thestral night guard and she slammed into Shining Armor, I started running faster because now I had more than several guards angry. I had quite a few earth ponies trying to tackle me, pegasi and thestrals trying grapple me, all that with unicorns on my ass and I was starting to run out of steam. Ponies were really fast and hard to evade when you were trying to stay out in the open streets. “Would you stop following us and playing that music already?!” Shining Armor turned to the saxophone playing pony while still giving chase, she now had a band with her riding on a pony drawn carriage. Let’s see trumpets, drums, tambourines, xylophone, a banjo player and even hoof held electronic keyboard, wow I was getting a lot of musical support for this chase scene. They’d be useful for what I planned for later, once I eventually got cornered. “It seems so appropriate though, besides we’re not even in the way!” The saxophone playing mare had a point and Shining Armor just turned back to chasing his quarry, which was me, and fired his horn. “My cabbages!” -Jacky- “My kitten is on the move and she’s attracting more guards to her by the second… oh ouch, that must have hurt. That poor winged pony... anyway she’ll be running past the airship docks soon!” That’s got to be the signal from Kuril to fire the cannon, so I went over to begin aiming the cannon while I listened to her commentary on what the Captain was doing. “Also Jade just caused the destruction of a cabbage stand, isn’t it usually fruit stands that get destroyed in frantic chases like this? No, wait… she’s actively avoiding all the late evening fruits stands and is even making sure they don’t get hit. My daughter loves fruit way too much to want to see any of it destroyed like that… that’s so adorable of her! I mean if she wasn’t being chased by guards firing spells at her, I would gush more about it.” “Knowing your luck, do you reckon you can even hit such an itty bitty target Chick?” You do know that we’re about to find that out right now Arizona. “Also, from what Jade told us, you need to bounce it up under the bombardment shield the castle has.” “I’m well aware of that thank you! Jade didn’t take the measurements of that empty window and became friends with the princess of love for nothing.” I noted that the princess didn’t seem to be part of this at all. “Well I think the princess of love thing was not part of the plot, but Captain wanted to be friends with her anyway. So we’ll treat her like our friend too… I wonder if she’s any good at O and O. I should ask Fresh Start when we get home, she knows Princess Cadence pretty well.” “Meh, who cares, I’m the best fighter in the realm at the game.” Well you better be prepared to help kick some flank Arizona the fighter, because Jade was going to do her best to get enough guards off The Gilded Buttress so we can take it with minimal effort. Whatever guards Jade doesn’t get away from here by being distracting, we’ll have to scare off or manipulate with the illusion powder once we started pouring it out over the docks. I looked over the side towards the airship docks and saw a green speck running full tilt down the streets jumping, ducking and weaving between several ponies trying to tackle her to the ground. The Captain seriously needed the exercise. I took aim at a roof short of Canterlot castle and looked at the window, Celestia was going to be there and I had better do this without hurting anyone. Missing would mean Celestia would interfere in our plans and while I knew we couldn’t keep the gold ship, it was still fun to get away with stealing it for a while. “Fire in the hole! Please don’t miss…” I offered my prayers to the shot I’m about to take, to anyone who would listen that could make this happen. I pulled the cord and the ten gallon jug of banana pudding and cake mix rocketed away and bounced off three rooves and was spinning through the air wildly for the window. -Discord- I am a draconequus my dear audience, there’s a taste of chaos in the air and it was quite sweet I’ll have you know. That it was righteous chaos was a tad bitter to me, but it would help me gain some of my strength back. At least enough to break free later after the whole Nightmare Moon thing was dealt with. Whoever it was that prayed for the help of chaos, ask and ye’ shall receive. Wow, somebody has really lousy luck. I’ll do what I can, but no promises! There’s no stopping that kind of luck after all. -Celestia- “Yes, this is the window I want the design in, did you get the measurements for this?” I asked because I didn’t remember one coming by. “Don’t worry, we got the measurements from a temp job. She came to the castle yesterday. We’ll get right to work on getting it together and installing it tonight.” After she said that I heard a curious noise and looked up at the ten gallon bottle of something balanced precariously in the window. The jug wobbled back and forth, it noticeably had a rubber nipple on it. Kind of looked like a giant version of a foal bottle really… then I felt a slight pulse of chaos. I’d have to check if Discord was still trapped after I figured out what was in this bottle that just fell into the hallway was. I lifted it, brought it over to me and scanned it thoroughly with my magic. It was filled with cake mix, banana pudding and a small amount of fresh milk? My magic detected no poison, no curdling and it was all quite fresh. I turned the jug about and found a note attached. I read the note silently. For Princess Celestia, if found, please give to her immediately. Well I was Princess Celestia, I looked to the ‘Glasses and Staches’ worker. “You may go prepare the installation now, I’ll deal with this circumspect object.” The mare nodded and ran off. I looked around to make sure nobody was watching me and that I was completely alone with the alicorn sized baby bottle. I smiled brightly and rolled on to my back. Spreading my wings wide, I clutched at the bottle with all four hooves and started suckling at the divine substance within. Whoever thought to mix the baked cake mix with the banana pudding was an absolute genius. It was even chilled to a nice temperature and quite refreshing too! -Jacky- “Phew, that was a close one. Celestia successfully pacified!” I bounced the bottle off two roofs, banking it off a third to land in the window precisely. I actually intended it to go through the window and it barely made it past the bombardment barrier. “And you thought I couldn’t do it.” With my pirate scope, I could see Celestia suckling on the bottle through the window. She’d be busy drinking it. “Yeah, yeah, you get lucky every now and then.” Arizona was already twirling the lasso and looked exceptionally excited to beat up some ponies. “Get ready to commandeer that ship, we’re going to hogtie whoever is still aboard and throw them off. This is going to be one heck of a rodeo!” -Jade- I’m glad I wasn’t bad at geometry or else I might not have gotten the measurements right, I saw the bottle flying towards the castle. I could only hope it kept Celestia busy long enough for me to escape or have already been captured by the time she shows up. Either way the plan would still be successful. I ducked under a pair of wing blades and saw a flash of golden eyes, oh it was that thestral assassin that tried to kill me! Of course now was not a really good time for her to show up to try and kill me, but I could make it work. Even while I was outrunning, let’s see… one, two, three, four, five, ten, seventeen, carry the two… just a lot of royal and night guards! I jumped over another pegasus and stomped down on the flame haired one behind them. Oh hey, it was Spitfire! “Welcome to the party hot stuff!” I don’t think Spitfire liked being called hot stuff, she got up and redoubled her efforts to grab me. “Why are you being chased this time and why are you annoyingly butting in on my night off tonight?!” Yeah, she was definitely ticked off and nearly got her wing clipped by the incoming spell fire launched by Shining Armor’s unicorn brigade. “Well then excuse me for living and having a nefarious plan in the works that involves all of the guards chasing me!” I shouted back to her. Shining was a scarily competent royal guard given how close he’s been to tagging me since I’ve started this chase, which was about to end now that I was about to corner myself… I hoped Fizzle was ready to start moving. We needed to time this perfectly and I was thankful to the ponies that gave an amusing musical accompaniment to our chase. We already had a band prepared for what I was about to do, but the extra musicians would only help add to selling this huge diversion. Even if the saxophone player hadn’t joined in with several other ponies, we already scheduled a marching band to be waiting right where I planned to corner myself. The only thing that was iffy about my portion of the plan was getting away with it. Everyone else could get out easily, because they wouldn’t be in focus. Still Fizzle had to run across the city to get to The Gilded Buttress, while lighting the fuses at the right moments. The corner point came up on me fast. I came to a stop and turned around to look at all the armored ponies glaring at me and closing in. I released the magical sustain on my pack, my flag popped up launching the two objects I sat on top of it into the air. This spooked all the royal guards into backing up a little bit. Quickly sustaining my knife I leaned out and quickly caught the ocarina in my left hand. The mask fluttered down and landed in my right. My grin was fifty thousand watts of power and pushing to overload. “Now to carry out my nefarious plan for all of you!” I stated loudly and theatrically, now wearing the griffon mask that covered my eyes and nose. I held the ocarina up to my mouth, before I started playing Shining managed to get in some comments. “Really and what are you going to do to stop all of us?” I had at least fifty or more guards here, not bad. “There’s only one of you.” I didn’t answer him, because I started marching in place and started sustaining my mask. I was so excited that this was going to work. I was sure something would have gone explosively wrong by now, at least on my end of things. I had done a cast with a copy of this mask and knew what that would do, I might add a griffon mask to my repertoire just for the self-sustaining effect alone. The sustain effect had too many requirements to be really useful, plus it kind of left me vulnerable to monsters. The ocarina itself did less useful things then you would expect as a magical alchemy ingredient. Haven’t tested the flag yet, much less a skirt or the salamander scales. Thankfully there were no monsters in the city to knock me out of my magical march, unfortunately for everyone else about to be involved in a flash parade. Lifting my thighs high into the air, I started to slowly trundle forward. The assassin came at me, the guards might have mistaken her for one of their own. She stopped and blinked owlishly as she started following me in my march. The area of effect started growing and I couldn’t keep the smirk off my face as soon as Shining Armor got pulled into the march as I played my music. The band we truly scheduled for this parade was waiting right where they needed to be and after a minute the marching music suddenly evolved when they joined. I had formed a parade where more than half the ponies wanted to throttle my ass, but couldn’t because they were stuck parading behind my slowly marching form as my tail bounced in time to the rhythm of the music. The minute I stopped the march, I’d be dogpiled by all the royal guards or killed by Miss Stabby Mcstabberson the thestral. It would have to inevitably stop, I couldn’t keep this up forever. -Fluttershy- Wow, Jade had a lot of guards following her… oh right the signal! “Sorry, but I’m getting a bit tired.” I yawned and spread my wings widely and flapped them twice, the chirping birds started tweeting sadly. I had fun feeding the birds as I waited for things to start. “I can come back to visit or you can visit me in Cloudsdale, besides it’s getting late. Shouldn’t all of you be getting to your nests?” -Fizzle- Maybe this plan wasn’t such a train wreck after all… I pulled out a torch, lit my horn and held the torch up to it. It ignited and I started lighting the fuses. The fireworks went brilliantly with the building parade, I needed to move now and fast!