//------------------------------// // Chapter twenty six, Chaos Curriculum: P.E. Matters. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Jade- I held the wooden mallet tightly in my hands and pulled it back from my seated position and brought it down on the teapot, it shattered into pieces and little bits that went everywhere. Thankfully none of us was hit by the shrapnel and I smiled at the wanton destruction of the little teapot. “Thanks for at least letting me get one, also it looks like you had fun there Maries.” The chimera looked at their pile of shredded bits of wood, ceramics and shredded table cloth. Spitfire was still smashing the other half of that table. “This is rather cathartic.” Spitfire idly state as she smashed a chair against the table, breaking a large portion of it. “This reminds me of all the Yak holidays I’ve ever heard of.” All three of Maries heads turned to me and smiled. “Well you wanted to enjoy the angry tea party, but can’t due to the leg injury.” Great, remind me how useless I feel right now Mara… I’m keeping the wooden mallet as a souvenir though. Mara nuzzled me gently and my frown turned into a small smile. “We did all this destruction for you in your stead.” Maria was looking at me protectively. “I hope we did a good job of it. It’s been a while since we really cut loose like that. You still look a little upset.” “Which is why we saved you that pot to destroy personally for yourself from your seated position.” This was the statement from the Marie, because she’s seems to be the tail end of quite a few conversations between these three and anyone else. “It must not be fun to have a badly injured leg, the less said about injuries in chimera culture the better. Were you not someone we loved, we’d be taking more advantage of this situation.” “Duly noted, I love you guys too.” I nuzzled my face between Mara and Maria’s necks affectionately and then I reached out and pulled Marie into a hug. After letting go, I glanced over at the other three tables. Flamberge’s table was on fire as was Flamberge… again. For a dragon that’s immune to fire, he certainly lights up easily enough. Quintin's table was almost rendered to toothpicks, he was crazily smashing his head against the ground to turn said toothpicks into sawdust because he was that angry the wood was trying be durable. Nitniuq or ‘Nitwit’ as I’ve been calling him, calmly sawed portions of his table apart with a butter knife and fork ate some of the bits of wood with a dainty mannerism. He may seem more sophisticated, but normal he wasn’t and he even chewed his food thoroughly with his mouth closed. Only every once in the while does he glare angrily at the table for not tasting good and then continues to eat it with a hint of a scowl on his face. Aside from the weirdness there’s also the recent realization why Sekhet chose who she did to come with us. The one thing we all had in common was that we were capable of eating meat, surprisingly Spitfire didn’t seem as on edge around us about this. Spitfire was probably a closeted fish eater, maybe that’s why she wasn’t bothered by all four of us being omnivores. I wasn’t about to assume, so I’d better ask before the race. “Excuse me Split Fryer, I have a question.” While it was interesting to me to watch Spitfire wield another chair, this one was swiftly broken over Quintin’s head and he didn’t react to it at all, she paused and flew over to me. Quintin just continued to make sawdust out of his chosen table. “Do you eat fish?” “Fish… why would you be asking about… oh because you’re all… yeah… I haven’t really been paying attention to the company I’ve been keeping like Shining asked me to. Kind of been distracted by this dimension and everything.” Sheepishly rubbing the back of her head with a hoof, Spitfire looked away in embarrassment. “Yeah, I eat fish, I assume you all do too?” “I’m a cat that was raised in a coastal town where fishing is a way of life.” Stating this in the most deadpan and blunt tone I could muster. “We may be a chimera, but we’re actually omnivorous. Sure our carnivorous leanings are more two to one, but we’re not going to eat anyone that’s obviously intelligent.” Which was a good point to get across Maries, especially to our lone pony in the group. “Eh I guess meat tastes good, but I prefer the richest gems I can find. I know the quality of a gem just by taste alone, any dragon worthy of being mentioned does. Vegetables are also rich in minerals, but it’s not quite the same to a dragon.” That actually sounded like an impressive talent Flamberge, not that I’d say that out loud to him. “Excuse me while I go put myself out.” “Hunting is fun, I like to eat, but I don’t need to.” Oh look our goddess is joining the discussion, Sekhet is such a big sweetheart. “I believe you’d see that as somewhat cruel, but I make sure to bury anything I leave behind for the worms so that more plants can grow. I prefer working with nature instead of against it like ponies tend to do sometimes.” “Like when do we ever go against nature?” Well Spitfire let me educate you, first I have to clear my throat. “Ahem…” I opened my mouth and started a long winded lecture. -One hour later- “Which is how ponies in general are actually spending a lot of their time usurping nature to their own personal ends, it’s gotten to a point where naturally occurring weather is seen as chaotic when it’s just normal. One last point to bring up, anytime a unicorn brings something to life or creates a new lifeform it messes up nature terribly by adding something that doesn’t naturally belong to a normal ecosystem. It’s worse if said thing can eventually breed.” Everyone was staring at me. Sure my lecture went on for a while, but it couldn’t have been that bad could it? Time to wrap it up. “So you can’t say that you have the high ground by saying all other intelligent or sapient species exploit nature more than you do, because all thinking beings do at some level in one way or another and you’re no different trying to play it off as being morally better. Unicorns warp the fabric of nature with magic and Pegasus force the weather to do what they want it to do, even Earths aren’t blameless given they till and shape the land to suit their needs even if they do commune with nature better.” “Yikes, sorry I asked.” Give her some more years and Spitfire would become the serious drill sergeant that Rainbow Dash comes to know her as. “Chaos is needed to prevent stagnation. If nothing strange ever happens to change the status quo that ponies have currently set up, then things would be far too boring and lethargic.” I leaned back in the wagon and looked at my bandaged and splinted leg. “It’s that kind of atmosphere that makes ponies snap and go evil. Have you ever heard of a unicorn that didn’t go crazy at least once in their lives?” “While this is all fascinating and I do agree that chaos is a very wonderful thing, I believe we have a race to get to?” Nitwit interrupted us with a friendly smile and tip of his hat. “Pacing is fun, especially with others who want again to see the sun.” Quintin stated in a dark tone. “Night is always relatively indigo to me, but I see it as a fine red painted tree. For the blood of those who were slow cover it so, to the point they always say ‘what a way to go’! Master were these trolls in their art, especially when I lift a leg to lean over and fart.” Nitwit’s friendly demeanor hadn’t changed at all, but he never said he wasn’t going to cook and eat us with Quintin if our runners lost the race. Sekhet, was probably well aware of his demeanor being relatively affable if still evil in a more polite upper class manner. “So where do we start and where do we finish?” Crossing her hooves as she hovered in front of the two trolls, Spitfire looked ready to go at a moment’s notice. “We start by going through this gate.” Nitwit pointed to the one and went to open it. There were four exits to this space, one was into the house to the left of the way we came in, one was the way we came and the last was the other gate that Nitwit moved towards which was right of our entrance to this angry tea party. “Then we will make our way over to this one and the first pair of bodies to pass through this gate wins! We of course will be doing our best, won’t we Quintin?” “Your mind is mangling the peanut it has left, a kick to the nuts might make you smarter or bereft.” Was it me or was Quintin slowly becoming more coherent as things went along? “Pop a trip to the cauldron for the tarts we have to face, they will not beat our court case. No objection will be had, because we’ll say…” “Are you mad?” Quintin and Nitwit intoned at the same time in the same voice. “Though a frog up a cavity is always worth a hop or two.” That was one of the things Quintin said that I wish I couldn’t translate into something feasible in meaning. “Don’t bother with the hammer and the nails, we’ll use your nails as toothpicks and a box would take too long to turn into a coat rack. There’ll be nothing left anyway, like during the heat death of everything. Hope to get a front row seat to that I do, it should be interesting.” Well, given how they worded things, this was going to end poorly for the trolls if they kept up their line of thinking in self-punishment for failing to fool us with their trickery. “Guys, don’t follow the trolls when they start running. Just go through the gate, turn around and come back.” I whispered to both Spitfire and Maries, they gave me a curious look. “Trust me, they are trying to lead you into a bunch of traps with the intention of getting you killed on them as they know the course they’re going to take. The answer is always simpler than it seems with these guys.” Spitfire took one hard look at me and then looked at the gate they were supposed to go through to finish the race, her eyes widened in surprise. “There’s no way it’s that simple.” She glanced at me. I nodded that, yes, it was in fact that simple. “Huh… do you think they realize that?” “Okay, get ready…” At Nitwit’s words, Maries and Spitfire lined up with the two trolls. “And we… go!” The two trolls blurred out the gate at impossible speeds. Maries might have been able to keep up and Spitfire would have given it a decent try, but it was fairly obvious that the two have never skipped leg day in their lives. Maries and Spitfire leapt through the gate, then they simply turned around and then calmly walked towards the other gate talking about the weather. “So what kind of weather do you think a place like this gets if it can remain this green looking?” Spitfire did in fact ask that and Maries had a lucid response. “Given the dimension we’re in? The plants probably grow at night and watering them would make them wilt.” That was a likely conclusion Mara, but I wouldn’t apply that to all plants. “Some plants would grow by spawning green monstrous creatures that make pig noises and explode spores everywhere in a violent manner.” Has Marie been reading my comic books? “While we’re on the topic, you should ask if you can continue to read Jade’s comic books instead of making us sneak a look into her collection.” That had certainly earned Maries a sharp glare from me and Maria tried to placate me with an innocent look in her eyes. “Sorry Jade, but Marie was curious and has taken up reading them without asking you first.” “It’s fine, as long as she hasn’t ripped up any of them.” There was a certain edge in my tone I hoped they could pick up on and, given how they shivered, they did. “You did put them back where you found them right?” “Of course Jade, I made sure of it.” Mara turned her head to glare at her sisters as they passed through the gate alongside Spitfire and then turned around and came back to sit with us. “You know, while they’re busy racing around their death course… we could just head straight for the place where the Sieve Precarious is. Otherwise they’re just making us waste time by waiting for them.” We sat there for a long thirty seconds contemplating that. “Do we leave a note?” Sekhet queried, not sure if we should do so. “Don’t make it a riddle Sek, I think we should leave a note that Maries and Spitfire won.” The only reason why I was suggesting this is so that I didn’t have to watch the trolls stuff each other into the cauldron and boil themselves alive. “I agree, we write a note and just get going.” Looking around Spitfire turned to Sekhet. “Now that I think of it, those two were being rather distracting and not overly aggressive to us. Sure one says they want to kill us, but it just doesn’t seem like something he’d do.” “Let’s move onwards comrades, glory awaits in the volcano!” Pulling his sword and holding it out, Flamberge somehow managed to catch fire again. “Once I stop, drop and roll these flames off...” -Later, Sekhet- I’ve seen many things, but the abrupt change from forest to the insides of a volcano is a little jarring. Even if I’m immortal and have seen many things, with one step out of the forest we were already inside of a volcano, no tunnel whatsoever. We walked along the cracked and ash covered ground, towards where the means to end our quest sat. It was across a narrow bridge made of stone sitting on a large hemisphere shaped platform on a thin pillar that was unstable looking. The being that took the amulet was nearby, it was possibly waiting for us to touch it before it decided to play with us. I didn’t know where it was, but I could feel its amusement. “Be ready, it’s watching and waiting for us to play a game with it.” Being quite sure of this statement, I made my way forward dragging Jade along with me. “Dangerous game… also this is fairly cold for a volcano!” He’s right… there should be more heat than this. Something had to be blocking my senses or is at least masking them from realizing something is wrong here. Only another god could do that. -Quintin- “Tubbing like it’s hot…” Roast is always in a flavor of its own cheese. “Our stink is overtly visible.” “Do you suppose we should have told them about Veles?” Nitniuq seemed to be well grated today.