//------------------------------// // Chapter twenty five, Hayburger Havoc: Brunch. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Blade, lunch time at Hayburger- It was the day after Jade performed her infamous Canterlot Shuffle, the royal guards that bothered Kuril this morning should have just left at her warnings. Never mess with a witch, even one as that was as friendly, good and loving as Kuril is. I have garnered an appreciation for cooking in all forms. Never thought about spatulas before, but they can be used as edged weapons themselves. We still had little clue how Jade got us these jobs, but I wasn’t knocking this opportunity now that I learned some new things about my special talent. I’m surprised that Jade wasn’t having more trouble with the register, but she wasn’t exactly the one doing the math what with Maries around to make sure she isn’t getting anything wrong. Dyscalculia was kind of bad thing to have when working a register, thankfully Jade’s mild case was only causing mild problems here and there. The food here was made quickly and can become a heart attack if too much is eaten, but every once in a while something like this wasn’t bad for one’s health. The smell of fried food was a bit intoxicating, but I’d rather stay fit and healthy. I liked my assassins figure and would keep it, even if Kuril wouldn’t let me shave my growing mane away. I was proud to put on performances for the fillies and colts, while showing my stuff as an apprentice chef via Kuril. Even then, I wasn’t getting too full of myself or my newfound skills in being a fast food cooking machine. “Flamberge is on fire again.” Fizzle commented idly, we all watched as the dragon was released out the back door by Maries. “That was another attempt to burn down the restaurant then, I think I’m getting used to the smell of burning oil.” “It was whale oil that time, where is Hard Sell even getting all these various oils from?” Quirking an ear in Jade’s direction, I made a stomping noise to get her attention and signed something I hoped she could understand. “I know what ambergris smells like, I do not need to explain in detail how I was puked on by a whale and I’m not sure you’d actually want to know.” “I don’t know about that, it sounds like it would be an interesting story to me.” Fizzle muttered out loud as she worked the fryer in an apron, she had little to no complaints about her job of making sizzling and fizzling food. She still commented about how boring register work was though and that this was much better. “Also how do we even know that it is Hard Sell doing this?” “I’d rather not tell the whale barf story, it wasn’t pretty for all involved.” Pausing to take an order from a customer which I started on, which required grilling the cheese into the lightly burnt hay which was ‘spray the raft with curdled cow fluids’ in the term of orders. “As for Hard Sell, I would like to think it has to be him as who else would try to torch the restaurant several times? Flamberge has luckily gotten in the way every single time, that dragon would make a good fire fighter if he wasn’t so flammable.” “Well it is right there in his title as a Viking warrior, he’s literally quite flammable.” Fizzle dunked the food and started an egg timer, Jade didn’t need the timer and did it by instinct and ear. It kind of showed the time Jade spent with her mother, in both learning how to cook and prepare food to know how to do that without aid. We haven’t had any complaints from the customers yet about the fried foods. “At this rate Flamberge is not getting a paycheck this week.” Marie commented dryly. “It’s not his fault that this is the fifth time in the last two or so hours that he’s been doused in oil and lit ablaze.” Sounded like Jade was defending him. I would have done so myself, but I was functionally mute and didn’t want to break my ears and all the glass within a mile radius of me. “You are right, but what can we do? He has to wear a shirt and a hat to at least stay on the job and it keeps getting burned off him. It isn’t through any fault of his own, even if he is capable of breathing fire and could feasible light himself ablaze without the help.” Responded Maria who, with Marie, was on the lookout for any more shenanigans or trouble. “It’s annoying is what it is.” “Agreed.” Mara stated sourly while letting out a predatory growl that sent shivers up the backs of every pony who heard her. “Look, as long as we can stop anything bad from happening and do one more day of good work, then we can stop working here and it’s all officially not our problem anymore.” That’s surprising, especially coming from you Jade. Jade had a kind of tendency to finish things, or at least see things to something approaching a good conclusion to events she becomes involved in, like what’s going on here for instance. “Besides we’d have to catch Sell Hard red hoofed in the act if we want to arrest him and he seems to be going with trying to stealthily take us down this time.” “Like he’s having any luck with that to begin with if all he’s managed to do hit is Flamberge or is it Flambé at this point?" Intoned Fizzle questioningly as she loaded up more fries onto a tray and wrapped up my finished hay burgers."Why hasn’t Sell tried starting a fire outside?” “The weather ponies would take care of it too quickly and the damage would be minimal, also it would prevent a dry fire attack by dampening the surroundings. Oil fires usually have mud and dirt tossed onto them to smother them out, so lots of earth ponies would easily handle that too as every earth pony learns how to deal with such fires from young ages. Besides that, it would make everyone be on the lookout for a fire bug and Sell Hard likely doesn’t want to be clearly identified by multiple ponies as trying to be an arsonist.” Which was all a very good point on Jade’s part. “He’d likely try something new… something like a… well not another manticore because… BUGBEAR!” I heard the roar of the bugbear outside and blinked and looked beyond the counter. There was a four armed, two legged, giant panda bear monster with bug antenna, massive stinger and wings hovering around outside the restaurant. It looked angry about something and it was definitively disturbing the peace. “Oh look, he’s drawn a Bugbear here this time and it’s outside causing problems. It’s actually bear enough that it can get past Sekhet’s bug barrier, that’s actually pretty smart.” Fizzle commented blandly as she continued to work at her station. “So… who wants it this time? We all have the time for a break to run it off, this is obviously to deter customers from coming in or leaving the place.” “We’ll take this one, you guys keep working.” Maries stated as they all looked at the bugbear with a hint of sharpness in their eyes, they looked like they needed this and no one else tried for it. I wanted to, but I had an important job and I didn’t want the fillies or colts to be afraid of me. I already get enough of that for just being a creepy looking bat pony. “Bugbears are quite annoying and we know how to deal with them. They are physically strong enough to rip the rest of you apart if it gets a hold of you. Aside from Flamberge, none of you should really try to deal with it in the first place.” Maries marched on past us and right on by the cowering ponies in the restaurant still eating their meals with fearful looks on their faces. Said looks of fear became less fearful when manager Maries marched out the doors towards the disturbance. “What’s going on?” Flamberge asked having returned with a new shirt and hat. “Bugbear incident, nothing to worry about. Number five fifty two, the ‘Tartarus with Love, minus all the crying’ is ready!” Jade and the rest of us just got stared at, as if we were taking the bugbear outside with a grain of salt. We in fact were. Hadn’t they lived here long enough to know that Ponyville was always this weird or insane? Jade certainly seemed to know about the insanity of this place quite well to tell us about the stuff that may occur here, incredible feats as routine as every hour or so. When enchantment runs rampant and gets wild in the streets here, from day to long radiant nights, how do these ponies continue to live here when they deal with all this on a regular basis and not have the backbone to scare off threats? They certainly had the gumption to keep living here next to a forest full of deadly, dangerous or just plain weird creatures. If Maries couldn’t handle the bugbear, then Flamberge definitely would. I didn’t think it’d get by our friend, it only had one brain to go with its multiple limbs and it would be sorely outmatched by Maries’ intelligence. -Maries- I, Mara, let loose a roar of challenge as the Bugbear was way outside of its own territory. It roared back in my face. I growled out that it should leave the area, it didn’t seem to want to listen to me and said something about our mother. We didn’t exactly speak bugbear, but we knew an insult when we heard one. Marie already mentally sent us a plan and we’d be ready to act on it and give her the opening she needs to make this go by quicker. Surprisingly even Maria wanted to fight it, usually she would want us to be on the defensive. I, Mara, sent a mental suggestion to Marie to keep us level headed and to not go into a berserk like state. Doing so around ponies would be bad for our reputation, we needed to prove that we were smart and at least relatively friendly. Which means we would have to dispose of it in a peaceful pony manner. We’d do that by dragging it into the Ever Free Forest and leaving it there. Neither Jade nor Fizzle would care if we ate it, but public perception would certainly make it harder for us to not appear like some feral beast. Ponies would always fear us, and they should as chimera are not generally safe carnivorous beings, but we would like to walk around with our loved ones out in the open without question as an intelligent and free thinking being. We would at least settle for not being immediately seen as a monster like the creature coming at us stinger first. We jumped back as it dug it’s stinger into the ground, some pony would fix the divots from that later. We moved forward while it was stuck in the ground and it swung the paws on its right arms at us. Unfortunately for it, we were aiming for its exposed legs which it couldn’t protect very well as we ducked the two swiping bear arms and clawed up its right leg violently. It ripped it’s stinger from the ground by falling forward and tried to swing out at us with its two left arms this time, it wasn’t very coordinated or clever compared to us. We hopped back and then Maria pushed our goat legs and her head forward, Mara ducked hers out the way and we head-butted the beast and cut up its face with our sharp horns. Maria’s horns dug into chest and pulled upwards nicking its neck and face before it was sent tumbling backwards. “Wait for it…” It seemed that Marie must have felt what our next plan of action was and wanted to get in her part, especially if we were taking this thing down alive and without killing it. Hunting was something we hardly did anymore, but we hadn’t lost our edge thanks to the mighty Sekhet’s training regiments. We waited and the bugbear swiftly took to the air and tried to drop on us roaring angrily. Given its weight and the size of the stinger, it would have done more than hurt us if it had any hope of hitting us with how slow it moved. It had size and strength, but wasn’t intelligent or fast enough enough to deal with us. It avoided slamming into the ground again and missed us with a sweeping upward jab of its stinger, but Marie didn’t miss it when she swung her head upwards and dug her poisonous fangs into its left leg before it could pass us by entirely. Mara and Maria worked our main body together to swing the bear around towards the ground. Marie held onto it as tightly as she could with her jaw, at least until we could physically pull it out of the air. Once it started falling to the ground Marie let it go and it roughly hit the dirt on its back roaring in pain. That was an opening for us and we pounced on it, literally and possibly metaphorically. We were immediately on it to pin its four arms with our legs, its own legs thrashing uselessly as it could not reach us on its upper torso. Marie took this opportunity to bite it again on its lower right shoulder. Our sister’s poison would take some time to filter into this creatures system to weaken it enough to capture and move it, until then we’d have to beat on it until the poison kicked in. The poison wouldn’t be nearly enough to kill it, the thing was practically part honey badger given how often bugbears come back to annoy everyone. It still managed to knock us off by overpowering us to hit to Mara’s face with its lower left limb. If it hurt one of us, it hurt all of us. We fell away from the monster with Mara taking some claw wounds to her right cheek, we shared the pain between the three of us to dull it. While we fell away, Marie managed to graze its fur and flesh with her fangs injecting more of her poison into it. The bugbear, rolled onto its six limbs and roared before leaping on top of us. We were force onto our back and used our tiger paws to occupy it’s lower two arms, it’s upper two arms random and rather rabid claw swipes were being deflected with Maria’s horns. We still took a few more injuries across our chest, heads and necks. Marie bit the bugbear in the abdomen and it noticeably started to slow down, just a few more seconds. Mara opened her mouth wide and dug her two saber teeth deeply into its upper left shoulder in a spray of blood. It’s rather unique taste erupted in our collective mental tongues, while this was happening Maria oriented and pushed with our hind legs as hard as she could. We lunged upwards and flipped the bugbear off of us with a show of strength. It landed on its belly and tried to get up, only to fall and stay down. Well... we're done here.