-Ten hours later, Canterlot Castle Dungeon, Jade-
I yawned, opened my eyes and found myself in a cell, I just stayed where I was. Unless the cell door was special in how it was magically protected, I could escape at any time. I won’t do that, I was in fact going to stay in place.
“I’m awake, so who’s going to interrogate me?” Idle curiosity on my part, but spoken loudly enough to attract attention to me being awake.
If I ever had to fight him again, I would have to find a way neutralize Shining Armor’s barriers. He could render me helpless by slowing me down and then eventually trapping me. I barely managed a hit on him, though I had been pretty tired and tossing ponies around isn’t very easy.
Shining Armor was kind of powerful just using barriers alone and his only weakness was his magical stamina, which if I remember correctly is completely absurd beyond belief. Without magic, Shining Armor would be pretty much vulnerable to anything.
Learning how to use magic missiles last night was one the most amazing moments in my life, unfortunately I learned the downside to casting air a little too late. It is quite draining, every shot I fired felt like the world turned to molasses for me and that wasn’t because I was moving slower. It was because I lost quite a bit of energy firing them and I was already tired as it was, even if I had been pacing myself during the parade.
I couldn’t increase the power or alter it, it was a very cut and dry cast given it would do the same thing every single time. The only way I could think to change that is to find a magical alchemy sustain that can alter the magic missiles properties. I was still weaker than a unicorn pony in terms of versatility, and they can do beam fights.
I heard the door opening and in walked an upset Celestia, she closed the door behind her.
“Were you involved in the missing airship?” These were the first words out of Celestia’s mouth to me.
“Yes, did it happen to belong to Prince Blueblood?” I brightened up and asked.
“No, the ship belongs to someone else.” Why do you look so disappointed with me, you’ll be thanking me for this later.
“Well that’s a pity. If it was Blueblood’s ship, then that would have been just perfect once you figure out why I wanted to steal it.” At my words her disappointed look shifted to a curious one. “Remember when I asked about evidence, we got the evidence. It’s just a little bit… big.”
“Why did you want to steal it?” She was now more curious and less disappointed in me.
“Go to Airship Mauled and talk to my lawyer, I assume you’ll be my judge for the trial?” Now I got a confused look.
“Trial? I came here to ascertain why a sun priest would take down twenty percent of the royal guard currently stationed here in Canterlot.” The condescending look she received from me was warranted.
“Talk to my lawyer, she’ll lay it all out for you. The theft of the airship, the impromptu parade and the thing with the rubber chicken.” Let’s just say if I’m correct, the rubber chicken will be very interesting when it comes up. “In any case the royal guard attacked me first and I was just defending myself… quite vigorously at that."
“I heard about the parade and the theft of the airship, but what rubber chicken are you talking?” Well Celestia the thing about the rubber chicken is why I was currently grinning like a loon. Nobody saw it? Oh my goodness! I started laughing into my hands. “What’s so funny?”
“Again just go to Airship Mauled and talk to my lawyer, I’m sure everyone will explain the rubber chicken thing to you if you ask. It’s why I’m laughing.” Oh it worked, it so totally worked! I didn’t think we’d get away with the rubber chicken thing and it was kind of a shot in the dark, but now I know that it was going to cause some interesting things to happen. To legally use of a rubber chicken like that, it was going to be fun to find out when the it was discovered. That is, if it was ever discovered. “Let me assure you Celestia, you will want to be the judge for my trial.”
“I could just pardon you right now if your reason for stealing the airship was good enough…” Looking at Celestia I sat up in a panic.
“No, don’t do that!” That would ruin all that work I had Maries do to get ready for this possibility, besides I wanted to see if my chimera could court a room. Did I just seriously think of them as mine? Oh great, Fizzle is not the only one with chimera affection syndrome. “I absolutely need to be put to trial for my actions!”
“Okay, whatever you say, but your trial will take a week to set up and until then you’ll be stuck here. Since I have some free time right now, I’ll go to Airship Mauled and find out what this is all about.” Celestia stepped outside the cell, went down the hall and said some words to the guards and then teleported away.
Oh thank goodness, I will get to see how well a chimera would handle courtroom politics. Lawyers are supposed to be predatory, so we took it to the next logical conclusion by making a predator a lawyer.
The clacking of horseshoes against the floor came down the hallway.
“She’s in here, are you sure you want to be left alone with her?” That was nondescript Guard A, the unsung hero of the dungeon.
“Yes, I don’t think she’s dangerous. A bit weird, but not dangerous.” The door opened and in walked Cadence, balancing something on her back. She was giving me an odd look as she shut the door behind her. “Hello, Jade… was all that talk about your mare friend a lie just to get to know me?”
“Nope, I really do have a mare friend and she’s a beautiful mare." Looking at me for a second. Cadence lit her horn and blinked twice, before narrowing her eyes. "Quite strong too, I’m sure you’ll meet her eventually.”
“Well you aren’t faking the love." Again it seems I have attracted the attention of a princess. "Why did you make Shining chase and attack you?”
“I needed to stall the royal guards so that a particularly dangerous airship could be stolen, we thought it might belong to Prince Blueblood.” Sighing I leaned back and looked to the stony ceiling. “I wished it did, at least I know whoever it belongs to is going to get one really big surprise in the way of an angry alicorn.”
“Why?” That’s a question that is often asked, that causes more question and leads to a joke loop where all one person has to say is that word. For you Cadence, I’ll condense it down to an easy to understand manner for you.
“Imagine if someone made a solid gold toilet, now imagine the maintenance of said toilet taking up half of the taxes ponies pay every year when it would be cheaper to use better lower maintenance materials for a toilet.” The Gilded Buttress was said flying gold toilet, I knew it was wasting money. I just couldn’t do the math to tell you how much, but knowing gold like I do… it was a lot. “I just told your adoptive aunt about this toilet flushing down millions of bits into itself and the embezzlement someone has going on involving it. I just pointed her at a noble who’s going to be quite screwed when Celestia gets a hold of whoever they are.”
“… do you know how to play Ogre’s and Oubliettes?” Cadence took the thing off her back and revealed it to be O and O.
“Does charming Skellinore into being my characters best friend mean anything to you?” I’d be friends with a skeleton, as long as they ate spaghetti and had a cute personality. Cadence shook her head no at my question. “Yes, I do know how to play O and O, I just can’t do the math accurately. What kind of character do you use? I base mine on me, a proud and noble rogue. Did you know the game can have real life applications?”
“How can it have real life applications, it’s just a game isn’t it?” Oh you’d think so Cadence, but I and mom got living the game down to an art form. “Also my character is priest.”
Oh the irony.
“Yeah, priest sounds like it fits you. As for real life applications, the game can teach you math and how to think outside the box just to name the two most notable examples.” I started setting up for a game with my visitor. “So despite hitting your stallion friend in the face, are we still friends?”
“Oh me and Shining, we’re not… um… maybe I am a little upset with you.” Cadence quickly changed her tune when I quirked an eye at her. “He’s really quite handsome and sweet, but our dates are less romantic than I want them to be. Also, yes, we are still friends Jade.”
“As long as you love spending time with him, does it really matter if he’s not into classy things? My special some pony doesn’t mind how we spend our time together, just as long as we are near one another.” I picked up the rogue figurine and smiled at Cadence, who smiled back at me and picked up a priest figurine. “Let’s talk about our romantic interests while we play, I’ll try to see what you’re doing wrong and why Shining might not like how you play.”
“Sounds fun.” With that Cadence settled on the dingy floor of the cell with me. “The décor kind of matches the game we’re about to play.”
-Fizzle-
“It’s official, Jade’s captured and I didn’t sleep well last night because of it.” I looked into the mirror this morning to see that my eyes were slightly bloodshot. I was okay with Jade being jailed, but what I wasn’t okay with was that she wasn’t here cuddling me. She made sleeping so much easier and I’ve become addicted nuzzling her when we slept together. We were like sisters, truthfully we knew that we were far closer than that.
“You kind of look like a mess Fizzle, has Captain become that important to you?” Of course she has Jacky! I can’t rest knowing my dumb cat might be danger, also I now know for certain that I’m attracted to mares and or any female equivalent in other species. I slumped at the table. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Excuse me, but can anyone tell me why there’s a stolen airship crashed here?” Celestia came into The Witch’s Fare and saw us seated at the table. Sekhet was the one to respond.
“We can tell you, or you can take a closer look at what’s wrong with the ship yourself. Scratch the paint off with some magic.” No we didn’t crash land into Sekhet, but it was a close thing and we had spooked the goddess with the crater we left in the ground with the now mauled airship. “I think you will be quite surprised Sunburn.”
Ten thousand tons of gold left quite an impression, one large enough to create a swimming pond once Celestia took care of moving the gold out of here. Good thing we were all on the Ardent Survivor before The Gilded Buttress crashed.
“I’ll do that Quizzer, also who here is Jade’s lawyer?” You were about to be shocked Celestia, because even I was a little unnerved by how quickly Maries managed to earn her law degree.
Surprisingly our school counted as a university well enough that our favorite chimera could take her bar exam and get a license to be a lawyer in equestria thanks to various loopholes. There were no laws against a chimera taking a bar exam, much less against her being a licensed lawyer thanks to the fact that she was certainly born on equestrian soil.
“We are.” Maries spoke and smiled as they turned to Celestia.
Celestia just gave them a dumbfounded look.
“You’re her lawyer?!” Well don’t looked so surprised, Cheerilee was also shocked when she found out that it was possible for Maries to earn her law degree less than two days ago.
They have three heads worth of knowledge retention going on, Maries was quite gifted in that department. I was kind of surprised chimeras weren’t more profound, smarter or civilized with that kind of ability and were still somewhat tribal.
Cheerilee was now quite proud to have a student like Maries.
-Celestia-
After checking to make sure Maries was telling me the truth, that she did in fact have a license to be a lawyer in Equestria, I was a little stunned how easy it was for them to become esquires. Then I walked up to the crashed ship and sighed, they had five other crashed ships around here doing nothing.
I guess they were trying to figure out what to do with them all, but I knew what I was going to do when I got back to Canterlot. I was going to make Airship Mauled a warning zone for airships.
I walk up to The Gilded Buttress and saw something unusual immediately. The crashed ships crack and chipped paint had flecks of gold underneath, I stripped some of the paint away.
I can now see why Jade wanted to ask me about writing down a list of how to present evidence, this was evidence enough. The ship was made of gold, but just to be sure it wasn’t gold plated I lit my horn and scanned the entire vessel. It was almost made entirely of gold!
I’m quite sorry that I thought ill of a sun priest, because she has shined a light on this illicitly built airship. One that, if it were to crash in a populated area, it would have killed a lot of my little ponies. Jade has done me a favor by removing it from the city… I owe her a debt of gratitude.
I’ll be the judge for her trial and we’ll see what kind of shenanigans she gets up to, Twilight could learn a thing or two about thinking outside of her books every once in a while. Twilight has ponies that want to be her friends and they are practically throwing themselves at her, yet she ignores them on a day to day basis. They are ponies that don’t even care that she’s my star pupil, which is quite literal with that star on her flank.
My dear Twilight was becoming a horrible shut in and I was having problems with getting her nose out of those books. At least she wasn’t power hungry like my previous perturbed pernicious powerful personal pony pupil... I’m still good at alliteration it seems.
After all the failures and successes that life has dropped on me these last thousand years, it was only a few more years now… it was time to ask myself again. Would I be willing to hurt her? No, I still don’t think I can actually harm my sister Luna with my own hooves or magic.