-Jade, Hayburger Kitchen, Chaos Realm-
“Now that Sell Hard is detained by the Royal Guard, I think we should get our little meeting started before the guards bother us about why we’re huddled here together. I will of course be silencing any outside listeners to our conversation, information is key in warfare and I can prevent others from hearing what I don’t want them to know.” It seemed that Sekhet had something important to go over with us. We were in a dimension that runs on chaos, what more needs to be said? “First up, the thing that snatched the amulet was entirely deliberate and not something of random coincidence like you would think of this realm. Anyone who was stupid enough to use the amulet to get into this dimension would soon find it taken from them in the same manner, unless it is vigorously defended and I do mean with everything you have.”
“Well I could have told everyone that.” Really, I could have, it wasn’t hard to figure out Discord set that up ahead of time for anyone who brings the Sieve Precarious back to his dimensional front door. A door he didn’t even need a key to and was just using the key to bring some chaos to some unfortunate sap… or saps in this given situation.
“What you couldn’t tell everyone is that we have about twenty four hours or less to get it back or else we’re trapped here until someone finds the amulet or Celestia sets Discord free to bargain our return. The amulet will transport itself back to reality unless we get a hold of it, as its main purpose is to cause chaos.” Okay, that was something I didn’t know Sekhet. “Thankfully I can track it and know where it’s at exactly, the problem is getting there and back to here. The lord of chaos Discord has sphinx traps in place all over the place in this realm, he was quite paranoid of my sister getting into this dimension to try and marry him based on insane troll logic. Look, before you say anything Jade, yes, insane trolls do exist here and their logic is always faulty. Any questions before I move on?”
“Yeah, are we currently protected by a bubble of normality?” In answer to Fizzle’s question, I walked over to the sink took out a paper cup and poured myself a glass of water and started drinking it. “Uh, Jade how did you… oh… chaos dimension, right. The fact that the building now lacks plumbing doesn’t matter anymore does it?”
“Which is another thing, it’s safe to drink the water as long as it comes from something that previously existed in our reality. Otherwise don’t drink or eat anything offered to you when we set out to go get the amulet in question, but yes, the bubble of normalcy will protect everyone who stays here.” Clearing her throat loudly and looking off to the side at Shining who was trying to listen in. “I can get you to where it is, but I can’t actually wield or touch the Sieve Precarious myself. Like I just said, Discord, the statue that is currently up in Canterlot, was correctly paranoid that my sister Baast was out to get him. Next topic, Jade you’re going to be somewhat useless here… let me finish. I’m saying you’re magical alchemy won’t work here, so you may as well leave your pack here.”
“What would happen if I tried to use my magical alchemy here?” Even if most of my stuff was useless, I wasn’t exactly hopeless. “I mean, I could probably get by without it as I understand chaos perfectly well.”
“That you do, which is why I’m recommending you on the party that goes out and retrieves the amulet.” Well at least Sek wasn’t underestimating my intelligence or lack thereof. “As to using you’re magical alchemy here, the effects of using it would be so chaotic that it will not be beneficial to you in any given way. Given how your magical alchemy works, using a single cast here would be ultimately disastrous to the naturally occurring magical chaos in this realm.”
All the energy used in a cast eventually returns to the world. As such Sek was right, doing that in a dimension of chaos would, ironically enough, unbalance it or at the least destabilize something that is already unstable on purpose.
“I understand perfectly, so… you’ve been here before?” As I guessed correctly, that made everyone look to Sekhet when they realized what I was implying.
“Yes, but I don’t want to stay here. The last time I was here, it was to drag my sister away from prowling around Discord’s home. I’m not exactly at full power while I’m here, as I’m not a god of this realm and that’s actually a good thing for all of you. I can actually fully use my current power to assist you in any given way that I see fit without destroying everything and or breaking this realm outright. The plus side of being here for me is that there are no things of other gods to step on.” She nodded to the guards meandering around the restaurants dining area. “Spitfire or Shining will want to come with us to make sure we’re doing what we say we are in getting the amulet. If you haven’t noticed Jade, they really don’t like you or anyone associated with you. In a sense, they don’t trust you as about as far as they can throw you.”
“I think they can throw me pretty far. I mean Shining is strong enough to lift and throw me with his magic and Spitfire can gain enough momentum to at least throw me through a wall or off the side of Canterlot if she was feeling particularly vindictive.” Why was everyone sighing at me and shaking their heads? “Look, who’s going to stay here and who’s going to go after the amulet? Also how long will your trademark Beloved Badger Barrier hold?”
“Indefinitely, we’ll take care of the badgers when we’re ready to go. This place is the only safe spot of normalcy in this world, unless some other god and a bunch of people got dragged here with their own patch of normalcy.” She gave me a friendly smile. “Now tell everyone what you know of chaos Jade.”
“Chaos is not about making sense, it is about making nonsense and or disturbing the natural order of things. So I’d expect gravity to be a suggestion and for bubblegum to taste like pizza while being about as nutritional as a grape fruit is.” Nodding at my odd assessments, Sekhet held her paw out. “Also glass should taste like chocolate milk.”
“Exhibit A, Jade knows exactly what to expect from the unexpected.” Despite Sekhet saying that, I did not look even the slightest bit proud. In fact I was wondering where Sekhet was going with this. “The keyword here is ‘trouble’, we’re going to want to avoid as much of it as possible and the entire realm will conspire against us to give us just that. Which is why we’re going to need Jade to be logical about the illogical, but first I need to test something. Here Jade, do this bit of math while I discuss who we’ll be taking with us on our excursion.”
She wrote something down and handed me a sheet with a complicated looking equation on it that I couldn’t make heads or tails of, in fact the numbers on the page even seemed to be mocking me or jumping around a bit. My dyscalculia at work, I quickly concentrated and try to do the work presented to me. Why Sekhet wanted me to do math given the current situation, I wouldn’t know.
Meanwhile Blade, Flamberge, Fizzle and Maries all hashed out who would be going and who would be staying here. They made their arguments for why they should go or stay. We needed someone here to make sure the Hayburger stays in this location, we also need the restaurant undamaged and back where it belongs or we’re not getting our last paycheck.
I needed just a little bit more money, I’m kind of surprised that Shining or anyone else hasn’t mentioned my stealing of hundreds upon hundreds of bits from the nobles at the party. Maybe they didn’t know? Hopefully they never would and the nobles would simply point to each other as culprits. If that’s what happened, then I’m certainly home free on that.
“Okay, I think I finished it?” I didn’t know for sure. The math equation looked wrong to me for some reason, but I couldn’t tell why. I gave it to Sekhet and she looked it over with a critical eye and gave me a flat look, before smiling a bit.
“Good, very good. Fizzle please tell me what’s wrong with this math?” Knowing what we all know about it Sekhet, everything. Learning that my math could have world ending implications was still a bit mind boggling, but I simply accepted it now.
Fizzle took the paper from Sekhet’s paw and glanced it over for a bit, then came a sudden look of shock after a moment. She glanced at me with what appeared to be awe.
“It’s perfectly fine… that’s what you want me to say isn’t it?” Uh what? Fizzy, did I just the math? Why do you look so surprised that I did? “Jade, you just did the most complicated math problem I’ve ever seen… without any of the usual numerous errors you tend to cause when you do them. It’s also correct.”
“Really, what kind of math equation is it? I thought something was wrong with it personally, but if you say it’s done correctly then who am I to argue Fizzy.” The curious response I received was Fizzle just blinking at me in disbelief. She passed the paper off to one of Maries’ front paws. As the chimera looked it over, even they looked a little shock.
“Jade, you naturally lack the ability to do anything even close to algebra, how in the world did you solve this!?” All three of Maries heads intoned quite loudly.
“While she’s here, and only here, she’ll always seem as if she were always gifted in math. That’s even if she doesn’t understand how she got to the correct mathematical solution by accident, it’s a pretty benign side effect of just being here. Now that I’ve show an example of what the chaos realm can do with someone like Jade in a manner you can physically understand, see and feel for yourself… then don’t relax even if things seem calm here!” Like that explained why the math equation still felt so wrong Sekhet, but she was right I didn’t understand a lick of it. Our 'Goddess of Coaching' knew what she was talking about. “Jade, we’re taking Flamberge and Maries with us. I’ll discuss who else we’ll be taking among the others that are trapped here with us, I’m only bringing one more with us after I explain some things to them. The three of you better be ready to leave in thirty minutes! Use the bathroom, eat what you can scavenge, drink some water and gather supplies before we leave. Also don’t expect anything to be easy once we leave the establishment, we will have to get by the all badgers and lose them as our first challenge.”
With that, I could almost feel Sekhet dropping the magic that made our conversation impossible to eavesdrop on. The question was, what part of the conversation was the part that she didn’t want anyone hearing?
-Maries-
Spitfire was the one going with us, she kept eyeing Jade as if expecting our ‘almost’ mate to pounce and go for her throat. She wasn’t even paying attention to us, if we were one part wolf this would be more humorous to us and we’d make a reference to pack hunters or lost opportunities.
We waited by the back door.
“So how does one deal with overly affectionate death badgers!” Why was Flamberge always so loud? Did he need to be that flamboyant nearly all the time?
“Shining will attract their attention to the front, we’ll be going out the back door and hope they don’t spot us. It would be annoying to have to deal with them all the way too and back.” Being quite sure that Sekhet could have killed all the Sweet Badgers, we didn’t comment on the easier option and instead catered to the pony sense of morality on this one. “Do not ignore anything I say or do, we cannot risk failure here or else two things will occur. Also a small reminder, while I can use my full powers, I will refrain from doing so because Discord has set a lot of traps meant to slow a goddess equivalent to me in strength.”
We watched as Jade peeked out the back door and waited, after a bright flash of light, she opened the door and we started running into this wild and unruly world. Marie kept watch to our rear, Sekhet closed the door and quickly caught up with us, we wanted some distance from the restaurant before we started heading in the right direction.
-Fizzle, a short while later-
“What do you see in that cat and chimera?” Shining asked as me as Blade fed the guards that were nervous about sitting still.
“A lot of things really, it isn’t as simple as I would wish it was.” I sighed and rested my chin on my hooves at the counter. “For us, it almost looks too ludicrously simple. Jade is cuddly, crazy and brave, but she is a bit of a jerk to people she really doesn’t like. While Maries is strong, smart and quite loyal, she’s from a culture with the correct amount of stigma about chimera being incredibly dangerous. Dating both of them isn’t as hard as some would make it out to be. We do some one on one things every now and then, eventually we’ll get around to all of us going on a date at the same time. What are you really asking for here?”
“I just wanted to know more about her honestly. She’s gotten away from the royal guard more than three times now, and yes, I’m including the trial as her getting away. She’s really kind of infuriating for us, because we have yet to catch her actually doing anything illegal with a red paw and all.” Shining sighed and rubbed at his forehead. “She always makes a circus of things and I just want to understand what she’s like… from your description she almost sounds like, dare I say it, my girlfriend Cadence. It’s probably why they get along so well. So… what’s her deal exactly?”
He pointed to Blade who was hoofing over a Hayburger to a hungry guard pony.
“Blade Bright, functionally mute because her voice can destroy any glass within a mile of her, she’s one of the known assassins that was sent out to kill Jade.” I don’t honestly know why Shining looks so surprised, Jade was the one that got a chimera to be a lawyer in less than a week. “Don’t honestly know if whoever sent her is still trying, Blade checked out the gathering location where the assassination attempt was ordered after she became friendly to us and it was found to be empty of anything incriminating.”