//------------------------------// // Chapter Fourteen, Oh Goddess Why: Thoughtful times. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Another day, Jade- “I think Zecora has gotten closer than anyone else, but she couldn’t make something that can restore Fizzle’s horn from the ingredients I found.” As far as I know she was the closest, I started to move my hand towards the cake batter only to get it swatted away by mom’s tail. “I left her some spare ingredients to study for now, I need to find more ingredients with regenerative properties. The more ingredient like that, the better. Eventually we’ll get to the point that we can heal the magic and damage of horns, wings and hooves. I can think of at least one pegasus filly that would benefit from having the magic in her wings fixed.” I tried again for the cake batter only for mom to turn and glare at me. “Kitten… birthday cake… for Fizzle… do you really seriously want to ruin the batter and her day?” Point, you have a very good one mom. I still gave her a pouting face, she smiled at me and turned around to go back to her morning preparations. “So you still got her a present right?” “Of course I did mom, it’s not like I’d forget to get her one!” Speaking of which, I should probably go get it out of my room. The horn restoring potion idea was on the shelf for the time being and I promised Zecora to try and find more ingredients to see if she could actually pull it off. Making Fizzle’s birthday a memorable and happy one was what I had to focus on now. I just had to go retrieve the present from the secret compartment of my cardboard box. I wondered if anyone thought my obsession with my cardboard box was a bit absurd. Mom didn’t seem to think it was absurd, then again she now had an adult sized cardboard box in her own room. -Fluttershy- I knew today wasn’t the best day to cash in the favor from Jade and her friends, but it was coming up soon and I wanted their help with this. It was nice to hear that Jade committed no crimes… I mean no obvious crimes aside from legally keeping most of the gold they stole and only Jade had to answer for her actions in a court of law, nobody even knew who the others were who took part in the theft. At least a bad pony was caught, but I still worried that I didn’t do the right thing. Mostly since Jade and the rest of us got away with a lot of gold that every pony, for reasons I didn’t entirely understand, stopped caring about once they had a real criminal to lambast. Still though, these people were my friends and they were far friendlier than most ponies in Cloudsdale from school. I didn’t get along with many other fillies my age aside from Rainbow Dash and the less said about all the mean colts the better. I was a bit jealous of Rainbow Dash right now, but I couldn’t really complain just because Gilda was attracted to her and not me. I could completely understand why Gilda was attracted to Rainbow too, she was far more interesting than I was. It wasn’t my low self-esteem talking, Rainbow just did a lot of exciting things while I stayed quiet and off to the side a lot of the time. It’s too bad Gilda was going back home soon and that we couldn’t be closer to one another. I was having trouble working up the courage to even talk to her. Shaking my head and sending my longer mane flowing about to get my concentration back, having long hair felt nice to me and Jade’s advice to grow it out was a good idea, I started descending towards Airship Mauled. I came in for a landing and saw Jacky waving me over to her, I fluttered slightly and dropped in front of the parrot holding my wrapped present. “Hey Fluttershy, nice to see you’re doing okay. Captain is busy making trouble for her mom, maybe she is even being helpful every once in a while. Follow me, I’ll show you where to put your present.” Following Ms. Chickadee inside, I was happy to note the party supplies were already put up. Did that mean Pinkie was here? “Fizzle is currently sleeping in with Jade’s decoy, she’ll be slightly upset when she wakes up and find out she’s snuggling Maries’ birthday gift. Also Maries has some more questions about animal behavior to discuss with you.” “Sounds like a nice discussion to have over tea. Did Pinkie spend the night?” It looked like the party was set up by her. “Nope, this party was set up by me. I read my party cannon instruction manual in full and figured out how to load an entire party into it. It’s really useful, just aim, fire and instant decoration!” A cannon set all this up Jacky? That’s really amazing! “Pinkie’s invited though, how have things with Rainbow been going?” “She’s still my best friend and we spend a lot of time together.” I went to a nearby chair and sat down, I looked at the table and started drawing invisible circles with my right hoof. “She’ll be able to spend a lot more time with me soon, because Gilda will be going back home.” “Want to talk about it?” Looking up at Jacky, I bit my lower lip and considered it. Would she understand how I’m feeling? At least I knew she wouldn’t laugh at me or think little of me, everyone here was so kind and I liked that. “Gilda’s really intimidating, but I really like her. She’s so fierce and like Rainbow, I know she has a heart of gold in her somewhere while being so active and strong all the time.” My brightness at talking about her was taken down by the sadness that she was going away. “I’m just too… meek. I want to talk to her, but she probably wouldn’t like me on the principle of me being me. She gets pretty rowdy and is aggressively territorial about Rainbow.” “There are plenty of nicer sounding people out there you could possibly have a crush on. I’m sure you will find someone more suited to you eventually, or maybe you might eventually get Gilda to notice you as you are.” Thanks for the vote of confidence Jacky, I’m not exactly confident in myself about that. “You’re a sweet, caring and kind pony Fluttershy, don’t pine away on missed opportunities. Keep pushing forward and find a suitable dream for yourself to pursue, make finding a special someone secondary until you’re ready for that to become a primary focus.” “That’s a pretty sound idea, I’m already working towards learning all kinds of things about animals and I eventually want to run an animal sanctuary!” It would be my dream job, well on top of being an animal caretaker that is. I really loved my special talent, talking to animals is always so fun. “I need some time to think about this. Could you get Jade for me? I need to ask her something important.” Jacky was right. Once I finally got my dream going, then I can actively focus on finding someone special to share it with. Rainbow wouldn’t be interested, she’s only focused on weather managing and the Wonder Bolts almost exclusively. She’d be so busy training, traveling and practicing, she wouldn’t be around to help me very much and I wouldn’t want to get in the way of her pursuing her dreams. Rainbow was a very pretty pegasus though, I could watch her exercise all day despite her having a very colt like nature. Pinkie Pie is mostly interested in sugar, food and making ponies happy, she’s far too excitable and not exactly what I’d call an animal loving pony. She’s more likely to spook dangerous reactions from animals. Still, she looked quite cuddly like a fluffy tiny ewe and even seemed to be happiness personified, but again she was a bit too much for me. At least I’m friends with someone who is cute with a nice flank to match. Jade would be nice, but she’s already got two partners and I wouldn’t want to intrude on their relationships. She’s cunning and cute like a fluffy fox and knows a lot about myths, monsters, legends and various other strange things in this world, but she was far too adventurous for my tastes. Plus there’s the thing about Jade being mentally challenging, I don’t know if she’s insanely intelligent or just chronically crazy. She is, beyond my own disbelief, going to start dating the very chimera that attacked her not long after we first met. Not to mention she’s already been on a really odd sounding date with Fizzle, dealing with assassins and salamanders did not sound like a very pleasant time to me. Maries was nice, but very confusing when they almost always have three opinions to give on anything. Usually following the order of aggressive, defensive and inquisitive. I don’t think I’d ever want or even have the courage to date a chimera, especially not one that seriously threatened to eat me once upon a time. Fizzle, the mare I was here for today, was very unusual. She tended to brood, was quiet and sometimes sarcastic, but I can tell she was a really great friend, very intelligent and even compassionate about things. Nothing puts a smile on her face faster than Jade’s antics or the mentioned Abyssinian getting affectionate with her. I was not about to ruin what made Fizzle happy, but maybe we could talk about our shared feelings towards mares or other being of a feminine persuasion. If we were to discuss something like that, well I would say that I tended to like slightly masculine girls personally. Don’t know how Fizzle can handle the crazy Jade brings to the table like making Maries become lawyers despite their age with some rather obscure and possibly inane laws. Rainbow, Gilda and Jade all shared a trait of being aggressive, masculine and still beautiful in their own unique ways. Just because I had a taste for masculine ladies, doesn’t mean I don’t like those of a beautiful or prettier persuasion. I would hardly say no to thinking about a beautiful ageless mare like Celestia when I’m older. Speaking of ageless beings that were majestic, there was also Sekhet. Sekhet was seemingly friendly and kind, I honestly didn’t understand how she could be considered a goddess of war after getting to know her through my various visits. Jade confirmed that Sekhet could and has beaten entire armies into the ground by herself without help and I’d believe it, but it was so hard to compare that to her smiling face while she watches everyone else go about their day from the shadows. She seems really lonely sometimes, I wondered if there was ever someone out there for her? “Hey, are you there Cutie? Hello!” My vision was suddenly taken up by Jade, once I realized I was being called out to and having a claw snapped above my ears. I yelped and fell backwards hitting the floor with a squeak. My wings were spread wide in embarrassment as I looked up at the smiling cat through my hair. “Jacky said you needed something?” “Yes, I wanted to call in that favor you owe me Jade.” After helping me up and back into my seat, Jade sat down next to me and rested her head lazily on the table. “Sorry about bringing this to you today when it’s Fizzlepop’s birthday.” “What did you need Fluttershy? I’ve got nothing to do until Fizzle wakes up, she’s busy cuddling the gift Maries got for her.” She started laughing about something and I gave her a confused look. “Don’t mind me Cutie. I just think it’s funny that Maries got her a body pillow with fake cat ears. Apparently we’re okay for mail ordering things around here without question, despite not actually having a post office yet. I don’t honestly know how that works or how they did it, but I’m curious to find out their mailing methods. Unless Maries just walked into Ponyville, but I haven’t heard of a riot happening.” “Well the favor I need is actually you helping me with a pretty big thing… also it’s really dangerous.” I wondered why that made her perk up in interest. It’s only now that I remember that Jade might have an adrenaline problem, at least she’s smart about the danger she gets into and prepares accordingly. “Um…” “Go on, I’m listening.” Well Jade was offering her help, how much trouble could she cause? “A few days from now, I need your help getting a relatively large colony of lemmings to a forest in the south eastern portion of equestria.” Please don’t ask too many questions about how difficult this will be. “It would be nice if you and several other people here could help with driving them in that given direction.” “How smart exactly are these lemmings?” Not the worst question you could ask Jade, but it was up there and it made me wince. “You can talk with them right?” “Yes, I understand what they say, but… well they’re not quite smart.” Which is not something I’d normally say about any animal, but these particular lemmings were definitely intelligence challenged compared to all the other furry critters I loved and was becoming friends with. “Rephrasing my previous question, how dumb are they?” Why are you so focused on their intelligence Jade? Okay yes, there was an absolutely good reason for you to focus on that, but you picked this up far faster than most ponies would have and was actively expecting something to be wrong with them. “They’re complete idiots in the fact that they beat out Rainbow Dash for the definition of densest things alive.” Makes me wonder when Rainbow will eventually figure out why I watch her so much, I checked out her flanks quite frequently and she doesn’t think much of it. I think she may have missed the week that pony sexuality education was taught in school for growing ponies about to enter their teenage years. “They’re so dumb they run towards predators and try to jump into their mouths! It got to the point that they nearly choked a poor wolf to death. They are so stupid that they hug porcupines and after they get hurt, they just hug the porcupine again! I admit I love little, cute and cuddly creatures, but there’s a certain level of intellect that I expect from animals before even I can’t tolerate them any longer. I have my limits!” “Well that sounds like fun and of course I’ll help you with it, but you’re going to need to convince at least two other people other than Fizzle to help you.” Well that was a relief to hear Jade, I was actually understating how dumb the lemmings really were. “I am coming on this adventure, so you only need to convince one more to come.” Sekhet surprised us both when she said that, we didn’t expect her to even want to join in on an adventure. Guess she wanted to get out more and stretch her legs. “What the buck… Jade!” Wow, that was really loud and Fizzle sounds kind of upset. We turned to ask Jade what she was going to do, only she had quickly disappeared.