//------------------------------// // Chapter Twenty, The Whimsical Witch of Even worse: Tanking nothing. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Kuril- Okay, that’s a very big tank in front of us as soon as we left the building. Don’t panic Kuril, the girls are relying on you to get them home alive. Jade’s fine with whatever she’s doing, unless she’s eating tacos again. She knows that eating tacos all the time is not healthy and yet my kitten still does it anyway. She’s not eating potato stew this month. -Jade- “I’m completely horrified of him, but he makes great tacos.” My new friend stated while tentatively biting into her vegetarian taco, she had her eyes squarely on Bahamut and was quivering in fright. “It’s kind of sad this might be my last meal.” “Coo!” It’s been a while since Snickers got some really good food, she was enjoying her own taco. “Well of course you’re not worried about all the guards with crossbows waiting for us to finish eating.” The feminine form Snickers dragged all this way stated dryly in a sarcastic tone. “So… why exactly are you hanging around Bahamut, are you going to attack us later when we least expect it? I know you’re whole deal with breathing down on heroes and having them stand up to your mighty breath, but do we have to go through that process as well?” The large dragon just smiled creepily at me, I’ll take that as a yes. Better warn the others about a random dragon attack when we meet up again. “You might be quite intimidating to most beings, but you’re still going on my top five list of favorite taco stand owners. It’s still a little ridiculous that you’d even be running one.” The dragon’s response to my words was just to shift his head to the side and smirk at the scared guards who weren’t brave enough to approach him for a taco. He returned his gaze to me without so much as a word and I just returned his large gaze with a smile. “Why aren’t we attacking them?” One of the nearby thestral guards asked. “Look do you seriously want to upset that dragon?” The apparent lead thestral asked. “Hollow Heart gave us clear orders to not bother him or anyone that happens to be near him, he was quite explicit in his words that we are not to do anything aggressive around him. You know its bad news when even Screaming won’t talk about stabbing it in the back multiple times.” “Why does Hollow even keep Screaming around?” The previous thestral stated. “It’s terrifying that Hollow is not worried about dying despite Screaming taking every opportunity to take him down.” “That’s probably why he keeps him around, to scare anyone else away from trying and to keep him on the tips of his hooves.” I commented idly while sitting next to the small taco cart with my two friends enjoying a nice meal before I got back to running for my life. “Better to know someone who will absolutely stab you in the back in a moment of weakness, then someone you don’t.” “Eh, makes sense.” The lead thestral commented blandly. “When you get far enough away from… whatever his name is. You do realize that we’re going to get payback for the whole water thing.” “So I might have slightly clogged the plumbing with some loose fur in a less than harmful manner, rearranged a couple of pipes by mere coincidence and might have incidentally blown up a few toilets… while some thestrals were still sitting on them. It was just a happy accident that Screaming Star happened to be one of the thestrals involved.” I turned to my new friend and decided to ask her a very pertinent question, Snickers would be perfectly fine as she likely wouldn’t read as a viable target in the thestrals minds. “Quick question, just how fast are you at running? Also thank you for helping me with the crossbow bolt, it would have been hard to get out with one hand.” -Kuril- “Say Fizzle, what do you think our chances of surviving that tank?” Looking at my filly I could see her already looking through the periscope at our opponent. “Do you want that in negative percentages close to a hundred percent or a cheery lie?” Oh, ouch, right in the heart of the matter Fizzle. “Okay, you were definitely the wrong pony to ask about our chances.” She frowned at me as I turned my head upwards. “Jacky, what are our chances of surviving that tank?” “If it misses its first two shots, then we have a pretty decent chance of survival. As I can determine the amount time it’ll take them to reload that cannon based on how heavy the ammunition is and how much damage it does to our surroundings, we’re likely to be more maneuverable than that behemoth is unless they have access to magic that can fudge the square cube law about as well as Sugar can.” I then hear her mumble something from above us, I couldn’t hear it over the puttering noise coming from the back. “If you are asking if we can defeat that tank, then no. We have nothing that will pierce that armor and all I have are party supplies to load and fire. Basically we only have streamers, confetti bombs, colorful glitter powder packets and a few bottle rocket clusters which will, at their best, light something on fire when they explode. Whatever they’re capable of firing is most likely guaranteed to puncture the armor on this tank with a direct hit if it’s anything like a cannon ball or even makeshift grape shot.” “Not true Jacky, we also have my potions that can be used as backup ammunition as you so thankfully showed us. Though I only have two halves of one mix of delayed ‘safe’ explosion potion, I have a few ideas of how we can survive that tank no problem. Fizzle watch our backs.” I turned to look out the front, the large tank was sitting to our right… I decided to answer Hollow Heart in the only way I knew how. I pushed the right control forward full blast, then I pushed the left forward once we pulled out onto the streets to straighten it out. I leaned towards the speaking tube. “Well if you’re so sure you can stop us, then come and get us!” “I do like a challenge, try not to die when I inevitably destroy that piece of junk.” I could only hear his response as my eyes were on the street. “I want to personally see you squirm beneath my hooves.” I heard the sound of an explosion and veered our PATTYCAKE to the left, the whistling sound of something scraping against the right side of the tank could be heard before a large hole erupted in the buildings near us, but thankfully there was no explosion. Hopefully there weren’t any thestrals in there, even some of Hollow’s ODD forces. That wouldn’t a very pretty way to go for anyone. “I believe a direct hit, any direct hit at all, will immediately kill all of us!” Despite Fizzle’s noted commentary on our continued survival chances, the first shot had missed. Technically it was a miss, despite scraping our right side. “Fizzle’s right mom, that grazed us and I think it ripped off half the thickness of the additional armor from doing that alone.” Jacky could be heard the turning the turret around to aim back at the tank behind us. “They fired something solid and high speed, it was definitely faster than a cannonball. Dead meat would be the most of what was left of us if we’re hit. At least our tank is moderately faster, so there’s no chance of us being crushed alive by the larger tank unless they hit one of our treads. He seems like the kind of guy that likes to grind his enemies into dust in a literal manner.” “No pressure then.” I muttered as I kept my eyes on the street, I didn’t want to run over an innocent thestral or any thestral at all. I’m not like a violent witch, I would hardly ever hold any ill will towards anyone. “You incompetent idiots, load the cannon faster!” I wonder if Hollow knew that we could still hear him. “Fine, I’ve already planned for this situation anyway. Thestral squads swoop, swarm and strike out!” “Are you telling them to lose at baseball? Wow, you’d make for a horrible coach, no wonder Screaming is the second in command.” After a fifteen seconds of driving forward, it didn’t seem like he was going to rise to my taunt and I could hear a lot of screeching. “It’s so sad when the evil sounding faction leader doesn’t want to banter with the unpaid F Team mercenaries of his enemies.” “Incoming thestrals, lots of them behind and to the right.” Fizzle called out. “Do I even need to say from above?” “Thanks for the warning, I got this handled Fizzle. I’m already loading one of my confetti bombs.” I’d leave Jacky to it, Fizzle would give her targets and all I had to do was give the other tank the run around without getting us blown up. Oh, I have an idea! “With this feather I’ll make this tank lighter, hopefully this doesn’t turn us into an uncontrollable glider!” I pulled out a griffon feather and cast it into my surroundings, it didn’t seem to have much of an effect. “I don’t see what that’s going to do mom, this thing must weigh a…” Fizzle was cut off as her body slammed against the engine casing and I heard a scream of pain from above, also lots of screeching sounds. Jacky chose that exact moment to fire our cannon. I was also pressed into my seat for a few seconds and couldn’t control the tank for a bit, after we stopped moving forward at an accelerated speed the tank angled upwards and climbed over a dirt mound that had suddenly appeared in front of us. I pulled us to a stop on the mound of dirt. “Oh my goodness, are you girls alright?” It left me wondering what had just happened, maybe I shouldn’t have used that feather. “Slightly bruised, but I’m fine. Jacky you okay up there?” Making her way back to the periscope, Fizzle stumbled a bit and hissed before getting her hooves over the bars to look into it. “…. Mom… it’s supposed to just be a feather falling effect right? I mean it can’t possible have made us light enough to seriously do what I’m seeing.” “Why, what happened?” I was afraid to find out what kind of trouble my idea had caused. “I’m okay, though the tip of my beak is a bit sore…” Groaned out Jacky before Fizzle could answer, that girl and her bad luck were glued at the hips at worst of times. “Woah, did I do that?” “If you’re talking about the trench we just dug, then no. That was mom using a feather to make us move faster.” While listening to Fizzle, I turned back to what was in front of me and pushed us forward again. I chose to go to the left around the next corner at the T junction. The mound of dirt we left behind exploded sending bits of dirt and rock flying every. “If you’re talking about all the thestrals that are now on fire, blinded and deafened by the blast of colorful flaming confetti. Then yes, you did in fact do that and send them all into disarray. I kind of feel sorry for all those thestrals now.” “Incredible, this will be more interesting than I previously thought.” It sounded like Hollow was excited to see what we could do. “You have my attention now!” “Are you saying we didn’t clearly have it before that?” Okay I felt like going petty kitty mode right now, I wondered if he was even driving that tank or was he just commanding his thestrals? We had about thirty seconds left and firing again would cause us more trouble than it was worth. We trundled forward for a bit. “I’ll have you know that I’m Kurilian, the witch of good taste. I should have everyone’s attention when I step out of the kitchen, especially when I’m cooking up you’re imminent defeat!” “Mega galvanizer has turned the corner and the cannon is angling for us.” Thanks for the report Fizzle, nothing was in our way so… “Jacky aim down directly behind us and fire a blank into the ground when it shoots!” We still had about ten seconds, I heard the blast from the other tank and then ours went off as well. There was a light scraping sound of something crossing the belly of the tank before a stone building ahead of us in the distance gained a huge hole, I felt heavier a second and then lighter before we slammed back down into the ground and continued rolling forward. “Impossible!” No, it was quite possible Hollow, we just did it after all. Thankfully the magic wore off before we got too high off the ground and ended up damaging our current mode of transportation beyond repair, Jacky had an unerring sense of timing. Not casting another feather anytime soon. Those maneuvers really put a lot of stress on us personally, but at least we weren’t dead. “Can you fire the colorful powder packets into their view ports Jacky or at least disable their gunner that way?” Nobody liked clouds of glitter to the eyes. Speaking of eyes, I blinked mine and watched as the streets of Fright Night Grotto were quickly clearing of thestrals flying to the ceiling to avoid getting caught in our cross fire. “You know, looking at it in a different light, party cannon supplies are actually diabolic when you start thinking about using them in creative ways.” It sounded like Blackcap was already loading the cannon. If they were blinded, then their shots would become wildly inaccurate. They were still just as likely to hit us given the size of the rounds they were firing. “About twenty five seconds between their reloads, I can load anything you need in ten after firing. Just give me a heads up if you want me to do something unusual.” “Right… does anyone even remember the way back to EVEN?” How does Jade even navigate this city, the streets and buildings all looked so similar. I guess I’m a bit turned around, because I don’t know where we came out at. “Oh, this is will end well.” Thank you for the obvious sarcasm Fizzle. “All in sunshine and rainbows, with clouds of cotton candy that rain chocolate milk.” “You know I will turn this thing around and ram it into the larger tank if you feel like that would go better for us.” Given that Fizzle remained silent, I think she was actually considering it. -Daring- Okay, I had the information Caballeron bartered for and now I even knew where to find Zephyr’s fan. I heard a loud noise. What the hay was going on out there? It sounded like something was ripping through entire buildings. I better find those guys I brought with me, I’d feel quite awful with myself if I left them behind a second time. Klugetown turned out well enough, except one of them being bed ridden for spinal injuries. Of course I’d go after the fan first, not leaving without the magical artifact.