//------------------------------// // Chapter twenty, The Whimsical Witch of Even worse: Tanking out. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Kuril- The tank shook with a hit before we reached the square. “Everyone okay?” I called out, I was preparing myself for fight by putting my shield on my right arm. “I got a small piece of metal in my leg from that last hit!” Screamed out Jacky in obvious pain, then she calmed down almost immediately and asked in an interested tone. “Do you think I’ll have to get a peg leg?” Upon entering the square I pulled the PATTYCAKE Seventy Seven to the side and then reversed it backwards until I parked it, we were sitting next to the street we came in on. I hoped I put enough distance to the left between us and the Mega Galvanizer coming up the street. “Fizzle take the controls, Jacky turn the turret so that it’s pointing directly to the right of the tank and raise the cannon a bit. Also no peg leg Jacky, I’m sure you can last long enough until with can give you some medical attention!” I was already on the ladder climbing up, we didn’t have much time. I tossed the vial to Jacky and watched her fumble with it for a moment before she got a good tight grip on it. “Girls I hope you don’t ever have to do anything as dangerous as this, but knowing our lives… it’ll be an inevitably. Fizzle stay close to the Mega Galvanizer, don’t give the other cannon the chance to aim at this tank.” “As dangerous as what?” Jacky asked as I continued up the ladder and through the hatch, before I closed it behind me. I had to answer her question and quickly, because I can already hear Hollow’s bigger tank coming up and I wouldn’t want to miss my cue. “Jumping off the cannon of one tank onto another one while it’s in motion of course. I’m going to plant my vial around the top and center of the tank somewhere underneath their cannons range of movement.” I slowly started to close the hatch. “If I have a reason I can’t get clear, then shoot anyway. I might use a griffon feather to get off the tank safely.” “Where did you even get all those extra griffon feathers from anyway?” I had time for one last question, the tank was coming into view. “Have you ever seen Jade do a cast with a griffon mask? It wasn’t like she was going to use all those feathers for anything after the transformation wore off.” My kitten really liked flying, but I put my paw down on how long between flights she could do another cast, I did not want my daughter to permanently become a griffon. I believe Jade always had two of Celestia’s feathers on her now, completely for emergency use of course and it would take some time for Sekhet to win more loose feathers off of Celestia. Those feathers made for excellent dream catchers and stopped nightmares from bothering us. “Now time to go get revenge for them for hurting one of my babies, they don’t know what this angry mother is capable of!” I closed the hatch and ran up the barrel of our cannon, I leapt and using my hands I pushed off the end of it with a vault. This ended with me flailing my arms until I landed with something approaching grace on the edge of the armoring covering their left side treads. -Fizzle- Mom just hit petty kitty levels of anger, we should all be worried as she sounds angrier than she was in Klugetown. Jade could get pretty bad, but now we were about to see mom do her worst. I pushed at the controls gently and we started moving at the same speed as the other tank, if we stayed right up next to them they couldn’t shoot us. -Hollow- “Sir, someone just jumped onto the tank and we can’t get a bead on them.” We couldn’t aim our cannon at the other tank as it was too close to us. “Then someone get out there and deal with the pest!” I didn’t care how we did it, we were going to destroy that other tank. I couldn’t let it survive this confrontation I set up, it’ll make me look weak and I was anything but. -Kuril- I started climbing up onto the tread of the tank when several quick objects came at me out of the corner of my vision, I could vaguely see the hatch on this tank closing. I immediately brought my shield up and sustained it. The four shuriken deflected off the colorful barrier, which with a thrust of my arm, spiked outward in the shape of a fist. I didn’t even see where the thestral could have possibly pulled those from, but the thestrals here did have ninja training. The thestral they sent out to deal with me dodged my attack and came screaming at me, he swung at me with his right wing and the blades on the edge of it. I grabbed and flicked out my waffle mallet and blocked it even as I was knocked onto my back. I momentarily noticed the tanks were now moving a lazily slowly circle around the square and was currently on my back at the edge of the tread armor. I struggled with the thestral trying to stab me with the blades on his left wing, I caught that with my foot as my shield was dealing with his hooves trying to strike out at me. Those blades on his wings were designed to be segmented for full range of movement. Kind of like the ones Blade wore when Jade told me about her adorable first date with Fizzle. I wished I could have faced salamanders on my first date, my kitten was always doing so many exciting things that I never got to do at that age. These wings blades were definitely assassin type weapons. I had to get this guy off me and complete my mission, but how? Oh right… he currently didn’t have my tail occupied, silly of him to miss that. I flicked my tail up and straight into his left eye, causing him to screech in pain and that took pressure off my mallet which swiftly collided with his right temple a second later. The thestral staggered dizzily, flopped and then rolled off the tank. He tumbled along the ground and came to a rest, thankfully he was still breathing. I got up and started to climb the side of the tank so I could find a good spot to plant the vial. In the dim lighting glow moss of this dark cave settlement, I noticed an unnatural shadow falling against the tank in the light. I leapt to the left, struggling to find purchase as several thestrals came down at me and with flicks of their wings they sent quite a number of shuriken flying at me. The shuriken harmlessly bounced off the tanks armor and with another swoop and more wing flicks more shuriken were being thrown at me. Clinging to the tank with my left hand and finding purchase with both of my feet, I held my shield out and scrunched up behind the barrier it formed. Once all the shuriken bounced off my shield I retaliated with a magic missile. The orb of energy that erupted from my right hand struck one of the thestrals bothering my ascent solidly in a wing, they spiraling towards the ground screeching in pain as the two other thestrals came at me. I was thinking of what to do when one of them was clotheslined in the face by the barrel of the PATTYCAKE Seventy Seven, the other one seemed to stumble in the air at the sudden change in our combat environment. Within a moment of catching himself, the thestral received a fist shaped barrier to the face that dazed him and caused him to fall behind the two tanks. I took this opportunity to scramble up onto the top of the tank. The thestral I dazed glared at me and flew up high towards the distant ceiling. I backed up a bit, I could still vaguely see the glint of his wings in the darkness as they swerved for a sharp dive and swoop. He was going to try to cut me down while going at full speed. I holstered my hammer, stopped sustaining my shield and then quickly pulled out a vial. I created this particular potion for things I couldn’t handle with the shield, like strong impacts which directly translated to me while using the shield's magical alchemy sustain. “With this vial I will break, a strong wall it will make!” I smashed the vial facing the thestral swooping down at me. He faltered a bit when I smashed the vial and then continued towards me returning to full speed. I just crossed my arms and looked completely unconcerned with his dangerous high speed approach, I took no effort to protect myself further. The full weight of a thestral hitting my arm at full speed would injure or even possibly break my arm, this was an excellent alternative to the problem. The thestral was about twenty feet from me and moving fast when the seemingly inert liquid on the tank took on a rectangular shape while absorbing all the broken glass. Five feet before the thestral would have hit me, a five inch thick wall of solid stone that was one foot wide and four feet high suddenly sprung up and the thestral slammed into it with a meaty thwack. I leaned slightly to the left and looked around the thoroughly cracked wall to watch as the splayed out thestral slowly peeled off of the thoroughly cracked wall, I smiled and watched him fall onto the tanks tread armor. Curiously tapping the cracked portion of the wall with a finger, the time delayed stone wall potion toppled over onto the thestral below. I winced slightly at the accidental cruelty, but I’m sure he’d live. Now I just have to plant the vial and hope that Jacky’s aim isn’t thrown off by a numerous amount of things happening. Like her luck throwing off her aim completely, she was pretty good about hitting targets when it wasn’t normal arrows being knocked to her bow. I heard a boom, but it wasn’t from the cannon I was climbing my way up towards. I looked behind me and saw that Jacky was dealing with more thestrals with streamer fire. I don’t think she had that many streamers or confetti bombs left, so I better make this quick. Hollow had reinforcements, we didn’t since we knew Jade was busy. Whatever Prime was doing had to be much simpler than this whole mess we’re slowly working our way through. I’d say this was all in fun, but it was really quite dangerous and we’ve almost been killed numerous times. There’s also Jacky’s leg injury to think about and deal with before it became a large problem. I started crawling, my tail flicking back and forth as I looked for a place to wedge the vial. Scrutinizing each spot on the tank for the perfect place to put the vial in. I saw one spot, that’d work! I started to move toward the spot and nearly avoided having my head taken off by another thestral, there was a clang noise and I blinked. The male thestral looked quite surprised that his right wing was being held off by the knife wielded in Blade’s hooves. Blade gave me a calm smile, before she tilted backwards and flapped her wings in reverse sending both her rear hooves up into the stallions sheathe. Ooh, that had to have hurt quite a bit. Ignoring them, I quickly placed the vial in a crook a little ways in front of the turret near the front of the tank, made sure it wasn’t going anywhere and then made for the edge of the tank. “Shoot it!” Yelling this at the top of my lungs as I lunged off the side of the tank and grabbed the barrel of the PATTYCAKE slid down it a bit and and dropped back aboard. -Jacky- “Mom’s planted the vial, full speed ahead Fizzle!” Now all I had to do was load the other vial, right amount of blasting powder and turn the turret to face our back. “Right, going to full speed!” Fizzle hadn’t been so bad at driving the tank, she had managed to keep it more or less stuck at the Mega Galvanizer’s side. We pulled ahead and the Mega Galvanizer slowed down to start taking aim at us, I only had one shot. “One part safe explosion potion coming up.” I turned the turret to start taking aim as mom opened the hatch and started to climb down, before she could close the hatch Blade dropped in and then mom slammed it shut. I fired the vial and it slammed into the other one, but they only seemed to crack and a bit of liquid from both vials spilled out onto the tank. Was it my luck that the vials didn’t completely shatter? “Mom, the vials didn’t shatter!” That was worrying since mom said that the fluids needed to mix on the point of impact with broken glass. “The Mega Galvanizer is targeting us.” “Let me take a look before you start the panicking.” Mom came up to me and looked over my shoulder through my view of the other tank. “That should do it actually, it’ll just take a little longer for the explosion to go off… Fizzle hard right! Let me see your leg Jacky.” I would have shown mom the piece of shrapnel aggravating me, but the tank jerked and shifted when something hit it hard. Had that been a direct hit? “Mom, I think we’re on fire. That shot was a direct hit and it just passed straight through the tank!” Okay Fizzle was panicking and mom was already climbing down the ladder as smoke started wafting up from below. “I don’t know what it hit, but the tank is beginning to fill with smoke.” Blade came up to me and gave me a worried look. We both looked at the other tank and wish we hadn’t, for the delayed chemical explosion finally went off. We blinked the spots out of our eyes and saw a hole between the treads of the other tank that was filled with highly singed thestrals. Mom wasn’t kidding, it was a particularly safe explosion that really wouldn’t kill anyone. “Blade the hatch, open the hatch!” I screamed out while coughing. The sound of fluids being sprayed on something could be heard from below, at least mom was taking care of the fire with her fish scale necklace. Blade climbed up and opened the hatch, she looked at the other tank we blew up with a magical explosion. She came back down to me and pointed at something in a panic, she even started to mime that something was horribly wrong. “What, what is it Blade?” We both heard some rumbling and the ground throughout the whole square started rippling and cracking. “Uh… mom… we have a problem!” “I know, and I’m currently dealing with it!” Mom shouted back up at me. “Not that, the ground throughout the square is collapsing!” I didn’t get to say much more as the cracking ground reached us, there was a rather sudden weightless sensation before everything went black.