-Several days later, Jade-
This place was like a personalized lemming sanctuary, only it seems to have been in place for quite a while and it was quite a bit south of Manehatten. This sanctuary was meant to cater to many different animals, it has only had the recent problem of having to house thousands of lemmings. The place cramped full of the little annoying things, I’m actually surprised that the lemmings actually stayed within the fenced area.
Oh sure, this couldn’t turn out that horribly. Lemmings are fluffy little rodents that attracted predators, all kinds of monsters and many other things. That happens when they are being herded, Just like what we’re about to do.
I ignored my urge to eat a lemming to see what it tasted like, even if no one would miss one.
“When you said help you needed help with lemmings, I didn’t think you meant this many Fluttershy.” One would have assumed a few loads of caged up furry creatures to transport in The Ardent Survivor, that’s what I thought we would be doing. No… we had to apparently do this the hard way and on foot by herding thousands of lemmings to a far off southeastern forest. “Are we really going to do this?”
“I’m right there with you Jade, this does not seem like it is not going to end well.” Fizzle was being aggravated by the lemmings currently crawling all over her. She was constantly shaking them off of herself. “This is going to take a miracle to pull off, especially if they’re as dumb as you say they all are Fluttershy.”
“How many did you exactly say you wanted us to keep alive by the end of all this?” Intoned Sekhet watching as a lemming leapt from the tree and was saved from injury by the fourth member of our party diving to catch it. The alicorn sized Sekhet lazily flicked a lemming off of her nose. “I swear mortal maiden, this is a grand task that sounds incredibly difficult from the start. Even for someone of my lofty prowess.”
“Why did I agree to this again?” Don’t whine about this so much Cheerilee, you wanted to come here with us to this… what exactly was this place called anyway? Teach lowered the lemming she caught to the ground and watched it scamper off in an exuberant aimless manner.
“Well Fluttershy asked you nicely, you thought you could help me with my minor dyscalculia problem while we do this and you wanted to get an idea of what a field trip with a class would be like.” Now to just jab the knife in a little further, because I’m odd like that. “Plus you wanted to involve yourself on an adventure with me, which is a pretty bad idea all around considering the stuff I get myself and others up to.”
“I want all the lemmings to survive by the end of this Sekhet, yes we are going to do this Jade and I still want to help them Fizzle. I don’t care that they’re not really all that bright like all the other animals I can talk to.” Well look at you Fluttershy, only a few more years before you became your canon self and you were already this brave… mostly only for your friends though. Any random stranger that walks up will still make you fall over and squeak like a fainting goat. “I know it might be trying, but I think things will turn out okay if we all work together!”
“Can you be a little more realistic here Fluttershy? I mean, did you even check the names of the places we’re going into before you ask us to do this?” With places like ‘Raging Reptile Ridge’ and ‘Serpent Strath Path’, one could only guess the number of monster’s we’d have to fight on the way to the south eastern forest we needed to ditch all the lemmings at. I was already guessing at several different kinds of trouble mentally at this moment. “It is very unlikely that all of these cute little critters are going to survive the trip. Despite the fact that I come off as a miracle worker, I am in fact not. I am also not perfect. Is anyone else going to be involved in this or is it just us for all of this?”
“Not really no, I didn’t check the locations we need to go through. I volunteered to help with the lemming moving effort. I just didn’t think it would be this problematic, I was hoping that at least some pony aside from all of you would want to help with this. They are all already writing this off as a lost cause.” So you were having us do this out of the kindness of your heart, which was typical and highly sweet of Fluttershy. Now if only that didn’t drastically endanger our lives. “I don’t really care much for being realistic if it means that all these poor little lemmings have help getting to where they need to be. You were my first choice to turn to for doing very difficult things Jade, you’re very good at that. Sadly it is up to the just the five of us to handle these lemmings, the owners of this sanctuary need all the help they can get to repair all the damage the lemmings caused. ”
“Why thank you for thinking highly of me, so are you going to be the leader of expedition Fluttershy?” Plucking a climbing lemming off my leg and chucking it back into the sea of rodents, I turned to Fluttershy who gave me a sheepish grin that just made me sigh audibly. “You don’t actually want to be the leader of this expedition do you?”
“No, but I still want to be a large part of it and I think I can at least direct the lemmings. I can lead in that respect.” Fluttershy started staring at me with her big quivering soulful eyes. “Please Jade, will you still help me despite how horrible this is all starting to sound?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t going to help. This is a really tall order Fluttershy and I’m more likely to prioritize our lives over that of the many numerous lemmings, just so you’re aware.” I turned from her to my best friend and potential life partner Fizzle, we needed a few more dates to see if we could even keep what we had going. “That said, Fizzle you’re the expedition leader and are the acting commander here. Think of what we need for this aside from antivenin for at least five different species of snake, seven medical kits and a wagon loaded with food and camping supplies.”
“I er… what?” Blinking at me in disbelief for putting her in charge, I moved over to her and patted her on the back gently while explaining her need to take a leadership role to show some independence.
-Three hours later, Raging Reptile Ridge, Fizzle-
I was surprised Jade put me in charge, but I guess she trusted me with this and I wouldn’t let her down. I was at the rear with Sekhet. To our left was a coast, to our right was the ridge and forward was the road southeast leading towards ‘Serpent Strath Path’.
I had Sekhet pulling the supply wagon and watching the back of the lemming swarm, she didn’t seem upset to be given the most menial job out of the lot of us. In fact, she seemed oddly happy to be watching the supplies.
Jade was worried about our route, but it’s the best one we could get from the sanctuary owners who were asking for help with moving this ridiculous number of lemmings. She was at the far right of the herd making sure that none of the lemmings ran off in an unusual direction.
On the far left of the herd and interested in the ramifications of moving this many lemmings all at once was Cheerilee. She had given us all several logical reasons why we should have made several trips with The Ardent Survivor.
I for one had figured out the ramifications, we were removing the lemming population from the area because they were attracting predators to the nearby city of Manehatten. The number of lemmings we were dealing with were just as much a problem as was the monsters we might run into, plus there was the fact that Fluttershy wanted to help them all when it wasn’t very feasible to do so.
Fluttershy was at the front of the lemming herd and was trying to direct them, keyword being ‘trying’. Apparently the lemmings were like caffeinated fillies and colts, their attentions spans were shorter than goldfish and they kept trying to go everywhere. As such we couldn’t go in a straight line and we had a large snaking line of lemmings moving across the dusty trail. We really should have brought Arizona along for her expertise.
I’m surprised we even made it to ‘Raging Reptile Ridge’ without any really big… thought to soon. What are those snakes and what are they doing? Trouble just found us, but it didn’t seem very big or threatening. They were coming from up on the ridge to our right.
“Jade, what are snakes that roll by grabbing onto own their tails?!” I turned to Jade because she was the resident monster expert, despite Fluttershy studying animals and slowly becoming as much an expert as she was.
“Hoop snakes, a snake that gets around by rolling its entire body like a giant wheel!” Yes, that is currently what Jade was describing as a number of them started rolling down the ridge towards our lemming convoy. “If they are coming right at you, then watch for their tail and move to the side! They’ll leap out of their rolling and try to spear you with their tails in a lightning fast manner and if they can’t spear you, then they’ll at least try to whip you. Keep your wits about you, because both their tails and their fangs are quite poisonous. They don’t need strong poisons when they usually kill their victims by stabbing them to death with their tails by turning their bodies into living spears.”
“Keep the herd moving Fluttershy, we’ll head them all off!” I got up from my seat and joined Jade on the right side. “Is there anything else we need to know about them?”
“Only that if you see a fat rolling snake, then it’s something much worse than a hoop snake and far more poisonous.” That didn’t inform me of what the creature you were talking about was Jade, but it did tell me I should avoid it all the same. “Also if it happens to be capable of talking, then don’t listen to anything it has to say and take it down quickly!”
Right, don’t let the talking snake talk, got it.
We turned to the numerous rolling snakes and Jade started to blast water at them knocking them out of their rolling. She only stopped seven before the others started to dodge her water blasts and were getting close to us, I tensed up next to Jade and readied a buck while looking over my left shoulder.
A green hoop snake suddenly launched itself out of its rolling and went ramrod straight while spinning around to point its sharp tipped tail straight for Jade’s heart. I bucked out and sent the stiffened snaked spinning into the air. When it came down, its tail actually sunk into the dirt like it was a freshly thrown spear.
Two more launched themselves at us and we dove to the side, I charged my horn and fired a zigzagging blast of magic that randomly bursts powerful at short intervals. I was a bit drained, but I had taken down ten of the hoops snakes that weren’t moving very well after getting electrically fried by my magic when it stopped and blasted outwards nailing quite a few of them. The wet hoop snakes were among those ten having attracted an amount of the energy to themselves.
The three snakes closest to us were loosening up and started to flail their tails at us, we back away from them carefully trying not to be lashed by them.
“Jade, provide some water so that I can fry the rest of them!” She did as I asked, maybe leadership isn’t so hard after all. Unfortunately we only got four snakes when I touched my horn to the puddle of water near my hooves.
Still they kept coming at us and one managed to nick one of my legs before I managed to knock it out. I ducked a spear shaped snake as it flew over my head and bucked at a wheel trying to get by us and towards the lemmings.
Rolling to my right, I narrowly avoided taking two arcing snake tails in my side. I wondered what it would take to get these snakes to leave us alone. Why was my vision going all blurry? Oh great, I’ve been poisoned. Judging by the yelping sound, so has Jade.
I moved to the side and grabbed the by the neck and swung it around to start whipping at the other snakes making them back off of Jade and me. I was using a snake as a whip... this was something I would have expected of Jade. I guess she was rubbing off on me in more ways than one.
I swung the snake outward snapping its tail to wrap around another hoop snake. I then swung it around twice and let go of the snake I was holding sending them both flying.
Several rolling hoop snakes gathered together. They launched high up in the air and flicked their tails around to come down on us.
“I think it’s time to go Jade, the convoy has moved far enough that we don’t need to stick around!” I stumbled a bit as I dodged a falling spear, after that I turned and started running. We needed some antivenin from the supply wagon, as a snake managed to bite me in my right hind leg, I kicked it off and kept going.
“Well excuse me if I’m a little busy avoiding being skewered to run!” Jade dodged around another hoop snakes attempt to spear her and she started following after me. “Did you get scratched? We’re going to need that antivenin and soon.”
Jade ducked under a hoop snake that launched itself into a high arc and tried to come down on her spine tail first. I had to dodge one that almost rammed its sharp tail into my butt due to my inattention.
“Yeah, no kidding!” I witnessed Jade trip and saw one of the hoop snakes slithering for her neck, it reared up opened its mouth and lunged forward.
It stopped a centimeter from her neck, now standing on its tail I slammed my right hoof into the back of its head. I took a glance at all the cuts and scrapes Jade was covered in and quickly got her on my back and continued for the convoy.
I stopped for a second to fire a shower of sparks from my horn that made the rolling snakes back off. I soon got to the convoy where Cheerilee was waiting to apply the antivenin to us.
This was a pretty bad start for our journey... and it only got worse.