Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows


Chapter twenty five, Hayburger Havoc: Dinner.

-Hayburger, Jade-

It was around the middle of lunch time when the restaurant was attacked… again. It was as if the fire tornado at breakfast and the minotaur attack between that and now wasn’t enough. Seriously, none of this stuff could be connected back to Sell Hard and he likely had nothing to do with them too.

“Everyone stay where you are, this is a robbery!” This group of seven griffons that rushed in kind of surprised me, they were led by a completely dark grey griffon. “You will all give me everything you have and no one will get hurt. Let’s start with you, open the register!”

This is the second attempt today to rob the Hayburger and not the bank down the road. What is up with the idiots we had to deal with today?

I was currently witnessing first hoof what drove Fizzle to madness by working the cash register myself.

The minotaurs were such a weak and wimpy bunch, the fact that they were trying to bully a fast food restaurant made it absolutely seem that way. What kind of marauding group would go after a target that was so easy to attack as this one seemingly was? I thought minotaurs were all about testosterone and big challenges, apparently I was proven very wrong on that one.

It was a pretty bad idea for the minotaurs to attack the Hayburger while me and my friends were protecting it, but we weren’t entirely the reason why the minotaurs failed to do anything.

It was kind of ridiculous that this restaurant could be the one targeted more than once in the same day. I didn’t know the odds of a place like this being threatened more than once by a number of random incidents in a given day, but I would have to at least assume there was a very low chance of all this happening on the very same day.

Nobody paid attention to the lead griffon, ponies were in general okay with him screaming his beak off and they didn’t react. That’s because the ponies knew that we were here and would handle the situation in exactly the way it should be, lacking any kind of enthusiasm.

“Oh gee, a scary griffon, you and what army are going to make me do that?” I put my elbows on the counter, my chin in my paws and I leaned forward to look the griffon in the eyes. “By the way… welcome to Hayburger, home of the hayburger, may I take your order sir?”

He blinked at my flat delivery and seemed a little put off.

“Aren’t you the least bit worried that we’re going to rough you up?” I could tell him what the problem is with his currently invading the restaurant in such a brazen fashion, but I was going to let him dig himself deeper before telling him why I wasn’t worried about this.

We had a dragon, an assassin, a chimera, an agile glass cannon unicorn and a cat with a variety of magical alchemy. We didn’t have much to worry about.

“Do you have so little pride as a griffon as to attack a fast food restaurant? I mean this seems kind of subpar choice of places to invade and ask for money in my opinion.” No seriously, what was up with this restaurant? It was like the rest of Ponyville’s weirdness was all concentrated on this restaurant today. How did the seven griffons even miss what was currently in the restaurant? “Where exactly is the challenge in this for you? You’re here to scare and coerce a bunch of ponies into given you money, said ponies more often than not would rather befriend you to death instead of fighting back. There’s also the fact that fast food restaurants are not exactly the best places to acquire cash through brute force. So why of all days did you decide to specifically attack this notable social establishment like this, when everyone and their grandmother knows there is a bank just down the road from here that would have been more fitting in this situation?”

“Yep, I know about the Ponyville Bank young un’, why it’s down the road like you said. You can’t miss it really, big sign and everything.” After that the old green mare known as Granny Smith bit into her highly spicy Hayburger, she smiled after thoroughly chewing and swallowing the chunk of food. “My compliments to the chef, this has some mild kick to it. As for a griffon like you, I think you picked a really bad day to come into this here establishment. Ah to be as young as you… with nothing between the ears except hot air.”

The hayburger that the chuckling old mare was eating would have probably set my tongue on fire, what exactly was Granny Smith made of when a Hayburger with liquid rainbow sauce doesn’t even faze her in slightest? It’s one of the spiciest things we can offer on a hayburger and she just acts like it’s nothing! She was quite a tough old lady and I completely respected her as an elder.

“Look, it would be easier for us to attack this place because it’s been doing a lot of good business and attacking a bank is bound to get the royal guards hunting our asses. They don’t care about what happens to smaller business like this place, at best they’d take questions and set up patrols around here for a bit. They are kind of known for being ineffectual like that. They like to be seen as doing something, but they only really do something if you do big things and this right here? It isn’t a big thing that they are even going to notice and they will probably just send one guard down here.” Are you seriously implying that committing a crime in front of Shining Armor, the Wonder Bolts rising star Spitfire and various other members of Equestrian military currently sitting all around the room eating lunch in a bored manner wouldn’t be attention attracting enough? I giggled a bit. “If we were to rob a bank that would be far more noticeable and like kicking over an anthill, so much more trouble than it’s worth. So we can get away with coming into any place of business like this and just plain rob them with pure muscle, then we leave to lay low for a while and then come back when there are no guards to stop us once more. So in essence, you are going to open the register and start forking over the money, do you understand? Otherwise we’ll do a lot of things you and everyone else will regret.”

I would also like to point out that the griffon in front of me missed a spot check, a few checks really. Aside from the Guard and Wonder Bolts currently patronizing the establishment, there were also the containment wagons outside. Heck the guy didn’t even catch what Granny Smith was implying, like the fact that he should have flown the coop immediately upon taking a glance around himself upon arriving outside the establishment.

Said wagons were loaded with a large kleptomaniacal elephant, three aforementioned minotaur that tried to rob this place only an hour or so ago and the very weather pony who caused the whole flaming tornado incident. The winged pony was being arrested for negligence on the job and causing a nearly lethal weather disaster, a lot of ponies were hospitalized with serious injuries. Thankfully there were no permanent injuries or any casualties.

It might be somewhat understandable as the griffons came in from the air, but really now? Missing all that, these guys certainly needed glasses and didn’t have the eagle eyes they were supposedly known for.

“If it were me, I would have at least scoped out this place before making my intent to rob it known. Get a lay of the land and the atmosphere around it and have a plan beyond brute forcing the situation to go my way.” I lazily laid my head upon the counter. “Besides, I would like to reiterate… you and what army?”

“Don’t you see? This… army…?” He turned around to gesture with his claw to his six compatriots.

Three of them had chattering beaks as their legs, wings and most of the back half of their bodies were frozen solid by Velvet. Said deer was lazily making a fantastically buff ice sculpture of herself flexing. Two other griffons were beaten black, blue and unconscious. The last of the six was on his back pressed up against the wall by his neck with mortal terror etched into his eyes, before Arizona’s right hoof connected with his head to make a sickening noise.

Those two had taken them all out rather silently up until that skull cracking smack.

The cow turned around and stepped off of the griffon and came to stand next to a bored looking Velvet who, after a moment, dispersed her statue and gave the lone griffon a long sardonic glance.

She held out her right hoof and swept it out in a gesture as if to tell the griffon to look around himself, which was when the griffon noticed all the ponies around him wearing armor and glaring at him. The griffon slowly turned back to me.

“Uh… my name is Garish… can we talk about this?” Giving him a slow and quite smug growing smirk, I watched as his tail slid between his hind legs as Maries stepped out from behind me along with Flamberge. His next word was whimpered in a loud squeaky tone. “Please…?”

“Well he did say please, what do you think Captain Shining Armor?” After having fought off so many pukwudgies from yesterday and this morning, I figured Shining Armor needed to work off some frustration. “Should you give him a chance to plead his case?”

“Nope.” Shining Armor and the rest of the royal guards got up and approached the griffon to beat the stuffing out of him, I just sat there and watched. I would call it guard brutality, but I know what they’ve been through and they kind of needed this.

The griffon was of course quickly detained, every pony would say they saw him resisting arrest if asked and that the guards were just doing their completely ‘honorable’ duty. Garish did ‘technically’ resist arrest, it just depends on how you defined the word ‘resist’ and whether he did it well enough.

It was really boring working the cash register today. Sure stuff was happening, but I didn’t need to get up from my seat for it.

I almost feel like beating up a manticore myself, where did all laziness go? I wanted it back.

-Fry Hard-

What we learned was quite interesting, my brother’s plans for Hayburger were insane. Did he seriously think he could get away with this? Not on my or Inspector Closure’s watch he wouldn’t, I had to go and warn Ms. Jaded and the others before it was too late!

Which is why we were almost upon the restaurant and saw some griffons being shoved into some containment wagons by the Royal Guard. I went inside and moved up to the counter.

“Were the griffons my brothers doing?” I had to ask as the griffons didn’t look like paid mercenaries.

“No, they were just a random incident of people trying to rob the Hayburger. They couldn’t have possibly done that at a worst time.” Having seen that look in Jaded’s eye before, I believed she was showing signs of falling into Register Madness. It was where it seems like everything was so boring even when something beyond exciting happens, it usually happened to most register workers at fast food counters around the world and I could see Jaded was no different. “The minotaurs that tried to rob us earlier, put up more of a fight than they did.”

“They only caused minor bruising to us and we waylaid them quite swiftly!” Mr. Flamberge put his fists to his hips and smiled proudly, there was just something wrong with that dragon and I just couldn’t put my hoof on it. Maybe it was that he was too friendly?

“So what’s the verdict Fry? I could use some interesting news from you and Forward.” If anyone wasn’t sure about Jaded having Register Madness before, her words just confirmed it now. She could hardly find anything interesting and I had seen the damage the fire whirl had done to the nearby surroundings.

“Well my brother hasn’t been the cause of any incident today. In fact, I haven’t seen him since the day before yesterday really. Which is part of what we have to tell you.” Okay what was it called again? Oh right, while I didn’t know what it will do, I just knew it’d be a huge problem. “My brother, possible after the fireworks wagon thing, left to go buy some strange artifact called ‘the Sieve Precarious’. He’s apparently going to attack the restaurant and wipe it from existence using the power of the magical tool.”

“Did you just say the Siege Perilous!?” Why did Jaded look so panicked?

“No, the Sieve Precarious, S-I-E-V-E P-R-E-C-A-R-I-O-U-S.” It wasn’t reassuring to me when she didn’t calm down.

-Jade-

“That still sounds too close to Siege Perilous for my liking.” It was something that appeared in the Power Pony comics, this sounded like a multidimensional artifact and those were always dangerous to deal with. “Hopefully it doesn’t actually exist…”

“Surprisingly, I’ve found out why he’s going to all this effort to bring down the Hayburger… it appears you were right Ms. Jaded, I do have a special talent for detective skills.” Clearing his throat, Inspector Closure continued. “The main reason Sell Hard is doing all of this is quite sad really. He thinks that by getting rid of the Hayburger, it will allow him to spend more time with his brother among several other reasons that are weaker than that particular one alone. It’s really quite interesting what you can learn from someone’s garbage.”

“Okay magical artifact of incredible power, asinine reasons to use it… we’re doomed. I mean it this time guys!” Holding up a finger to stall any complaints from my friends, I heard Snickers making noise. I pointed it at Sell Hard as soon as he appeared. “Cue entrance by the idiot who would use a magical item that sounds as dangerous as the Sieve Precarious does.”

“You know what I’m going to do, so I might as well get on with it. So much for needing a monologue!” Sell pulled out a circular amulet made of stone and in the center of said stone was a bright multicolored crystal of chaotic colors. “Now bear witness as I summon beings from a chaotic dimension!”

The fact that it was glowing pretty much set off every fear response in my instincts that I didn’t even know I had. I watched as a rip opened up in the air above Sell Hard leading into a world with a sky of random swirling purple, black, white, blue and pink with no sense of order.

He just opened a hole into Discord’s chaos dimension, something saw the hole and started flying towards it.

It wasn’t just the one either, but multiple winged creatures started to gather together.

They were flying badgers?! Well... this was not going to end well for anyone.

“Everyone… prepare for a fight!” I muttered in utter horror.