//------------------------------// // Chapter twenty nine, Convention Tension: The horseshoe drops. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Fizzle- “Jade, are you okay?” I ran up next to Jade and helped her stand up, There was something off about what I was looking at. A malicious hovering earth pony in the air, one of which I could feel the dark magic rolling off of. Is this what Jade was afraid of? She was right to be worried from what I was feeling. There was just so much power rolling off that stallion, and all of it felt very wrong. “I’m alright Fizzy, but he has mom!” Anyone, much less myself, could see that Jade. Mom was struggling against the magic. “Oh I just happened along to spy an Abyssinian that our contacts are familiar with. So here I am seeing her all alone and by herself and thought, hey this lady could use some protection so… I’m taking your mother kid and there’s nothing you can do to stop me!” This Top Snide guy is going on the top of my list of most hated ponies, there weren’t any other ponies on said unwritten list at the moment. “She can cook meals fit for someone of my grand visage! I hear she’s getting a lot of notoriety for her cooking skills, I’m going to partake in the best she can make… or else. I’m not above torture.” “So you’re part of the organization that sent those two assassins after me?” Why was Jade asking that, it wasn’t like he was going to tell us anything about…? “Oh my yes, but our organization sent three… guess you never caught wind of the third one. Not like it did that assassin any good when SMILE somehow got a hold of them, they don’t know a thing about our organization except what we hired them to do… which is to kill you. That, is proving to be much harder to do than is advertised!” Was it that easy to get information out of Snide? Oh wait, this has to be one of the side effects of the Alicorn Amulet, I think Jade is banking on his increasing stupidity to make him drop us a few bits of information. “You likely already know what the ‘glorious’ leaders end goal is, that ‘end to immortality’ thing he’s working on finding. You didn’t seem like a credible threat to me, well, at least until you took down False Gold… better known as Billion Karats. You mostly did that by accident. So really, for a sun priestess, you’re nothing special!” He sneered at us. “So what… are you going to kill me here and now?” Why are you asking that Jade? The answer should be fairly obvious if he’s part of the organization that, for whatever reason, despises your very existence as a Sun Priestess. “Why are you even part of this, so far, nameless organization anyway? Do you want immortals, gods and the like to be killed off?” “Why would I want to join such a shadowy organization? Hm… let me think… for the perks and all the power that comes with it of course! Now I clearly have that in spades kid. I couldn’t care less about the end goals the ‘glorious’ leader wants to achieve or why they are so focused on you, but no, I’m not killing you here…” The stallion started to stroke his mustached while giving us a toothy grin that chilled my spine. “No, doing it now would be way too simple… like crushing an elegantly peeled grape between my perfectly sublime impeccable teeth even!” “Why not, I’m right here!” Jade, now probably isn’t the best time to antagonize the stallion with an amulet you described as being capable of wiping out all of Manehattan! Just let him be stupid Jade and live to prepare for our inevitable fight with him. “You do realize that it’s probably the amulet messing with your head, especially when you absolutely have the power to do something now so that you can avoid a lot of pain later. I will come and rip you apart personally if you take my mother.” Targeting our mom will likely have this guy inexorably blacklisted by any true Airship Mauled citizen, basically everyone we know and love! I’m even including Velvet in that, since she practically lives with Arizona and Grace. That’s going to get awkward now that Arizona and her are dating… actually Maries and I are living with Jade so I’d be one to talk. No… focus on the problem at hoof Fizzle, there’s a dangerous stallion threatening mom and Jade! “Taking care of you right now would just take all the fun out of doing it in a more spectacular manner in front of a live audience! Not to mention it would ruin the reason why I’ve been capturing ponies for the last six hours.” What? No, seriously, why would he have spent the last six hours kidnapping ponies? What was that amulet even doing to his mind? ”Ever since I found out what hotel you’ve been staying at, I’ve been busy setting up quite a spectacular feature to beat you down with and came to deliver a message.” A shard of ice launched at Snide from behind, he turned slightly and unleashed a blast of fire so hot that that the ice immediately evaporated. Velvet’s aim was spot on, but now Snide created a larger protective barrier around himself and mom. “What are you planning to do exactly?” You’re not the only one that wanted to know that Jade. “What exactly is your end goal here?” “Why, I’m going to put on one of the biggest shows Equestria has ever seen! The finale, the piece of resistance and big bang, will be a sun priest and all her friends falling to my incredible might. I’ll be going to finish setting up as soon as I’m done here.” Snide says that like we’re letting him get away with mom, he cups mom’s chin and she bared her fangs at him and made a hissing noise. “What quite big teeth you have my dear, it’s a good thing you can’t talk now or else you’d be dripping your wonderful witticisms upon me in witchy rhyme. As for my end goal? I’ll take over the world with the greatest show anyone’s ever seen and I’ll end the tyranny of all glass!” Glass??? Is this that part where a pony is horribly paranoid about something oddly specific? Jade wasn’t kidding about that, I kind of thought she was given how absurd it sounded to be paranoid of inanimate objects or in this case a highly specific material. His goals sounded rather unrealistic, which kind of fits the fact that he was completely mental. “Glass… really… nothing like say… wheels?” That was oddly left field Jade, but you were effectively distracting the guy. “As long as they aren’t made of glass they are perfectly fine. For too long Glass has made up our windows, it’s reflective, it gets all pointy when it’s broken, it’s used to make horrid statues, it’s always getting dirty and smudging so easily. You may think I’m evil, but glass has taken over our world with its tyranny!” Well, that certainly explains why our Manehattan hotel no longer has any windows. There wasn’t even a speck of broken glass on the ground. So this is what a pony is like when that amulet sends them around the bend, it’s all pretty terrifying honestly. Yet for some reason I wasn’t reacting to this bit of insanity like I should be, it seemed muted somehow. “Our world is practically made up of such horrors, glass owns our lives and I’ll take them back! First, however, I have to deal with a small pinprick… the sun priestess.” “You said you were setting something up to that effect?” Jade was sighing audibly and crossed her arms while glaring at the floating menace, then again none of us have been able to exactly touch this guy so far. An example of this was Arizona rocketing into the shield and bouncing off of it, it even flickered a bit before returning to full force when a flash of anger filled the stallion’s eyes. “What’s that message you wanted to deliver?” “The message is this, you and all those you call friends have a VIP access pass to come see my grand show. If you don’t show up, then my captive audience will be left to my whims and mercy... including this pretty lady right here. Meaning she’ll be all mine, now doesn’t that just rankle you? You seem like heroes, so I know you’ll come and I’ll be waiting for you!” If Snide ever actually saw Jade fight, then he’d know Jade absolutely fights dirty and wasn’t exactly of the most heroic of character. In this case though, he’d be right to call us heroes. “So prepare all you want, because tonight I… Ringleader Snide will invite you to your doom at the Mystical Maiming Circus in Manehattan Park! You’ll know where to come in at.” “Before you go, sate my curiosity, how did you get the amulet? It was decently guarded.” That was only something of minor concern Jade, he got it and he is absolutely abusing it. The how doesn’t matter that much to any of us anymore. “That’s easy, I know a rather desperate thief. They didn’t even know what they had when they gave it to me, the simpleton thought it was just a work of art. Oh boo hoo, I need money for food to feed my little sister, will you pay me more? Bah, that unicorn should just grow a pair and stop trying to earn my sympathy!” The world seemed to warp around Top Snide and he laughed madly. “So long sun priestess, get in a last meal while you still can!” Maries pounced on the barrier, but couldn’t break through it with raw strength. With a blink Top Snide teleported away with mom, Jade didn’t look happy as Maries dropped to the ground. In fact, Jade looked eerily calm. “He kidnapped my mother before her birthday, I even brought the gift I got for her and everything with me to Manehattan… her birthday was going to be special. I spent hours setting up for it.” Now there’s a calm tone that belied how angry Jade was. “Full Petty Kitty, nonstop, no mercy, do not pass go and collect two hundred bits. He will not know rest until I take him down when we show up for his so called show, I will do every single horrible thing I can think of to make him absolutely miserable before the night is out. We’re also making sure that the amulet doesn’t exist or at the very least can’t work anymore when we’re through with him!” I shivered, all those words meant business. Even Maries was stepping away from Jade in a frightened manner. Jade planned a lot of things and she was a mental juggernaut when it came to coming out ahead when she did in fact have a plan running, this sounded like she was going to do something in the vein of 'complete overkill'. How were we going to deal with an amulet that gave a pony ludicrous amounts of power to almost match an alicorn though? -Snide- I was the lead of the Manehattan branch of our organization. Let me tell you, crime absolutely paid and quite lucratively at that, especially when it gives you power like this! The power to see all the horrors that glass is wreaking upon us! “Talk, it’ll amuse me.” I turned to the white robed lady that fancied herself a witch, I had left that cruddy hat of hers behind as it didn’t know whether it was a pirate hat or a witch’s hat. I had her tied up by her wrists, legs and tail, she wasn’t going to go anywhere any time soon. She couldn’t even reach the ropes with her claws. I’d make her watch as her daughter suffers, then I’d break her and make her beg to help me save our world from the oncoming fragility that will be the glass regime! -Kuril- “If I’m going to be allow to say one thing and one thing only, then it’ll be this.” You do not take a mother from her kitten, especially not the hand that feeds and cares for said kitten. I was quite sure Jade had something planned for me when she kept sneaking away from the Mystery Dumpling booth, Snide just ruined whatever she set into motion and then poked the sleeping dragon far more than was necessary. That would be a huge mistake on his part. “You’ve likely just set off my kitten, whatever my little tom cat is going to do to you… I almost pity you. You’ll live, but there are far worse things than death, my Jaded is one of them.” “She has no power, her friends won’t even make it too far into the tent. Beside… they’ll have to go through my army. If by some miracle they do somehow reach me, then they will be too exhausted to even do anything substantial.” Hundreds of red glowing eyes looked up at Snide as he smirked down at them. “You do realize how absolutely stupid and absurd all of this sounds right? If you can mind control so many ponies, then why not just cut out the middle mare? You really shouldn’t have given my daughters the time to plan your downfall.” Sure he had an army of mind controlled ponies, very terrifying, but he hasn’t ever seen what my daughter or I can do when angered. “You should take the amulet off and give yourself to the royal guards or at least the police ponies before it’s too late!” “Quiet you!” With a lash of his hoof Snide silenced me again with a flash of magic, I just glared angrily at him and hissed loudly in my displeasure. -Jade- I stood there in silence, just staring off into the distance thinking. I had been at this for five minutes, which might have been scaring all my friends since I can usually snap a plan out in less than a minute. Even Generic and Jacky had showed up and been informed and now they were all waiting on me to do or say something. “Arizona, cows, the ones that are networking… I need their help and to do a little running around the city for me. Get me Daisy Jo and any other cows that are willing to help us.” Like a flash and her tail had been lit on fire, Arizona was off with Velvet. “Fizzle, find Shining armor and deliver something I’m about to write down to him.” I took out a notepad and jotted something down, ripped out the piece of paper and gave it to her. She nodded and was off. “Maries, find Princess Cadence. I need to ask her something.” There was a blur and no longer a chimera within sight. “Jacky do as many things as you possibly can to exacerbate your horrible luck in the next few hours to a completely obscene degree… without killing yourself.” I watched as Jacky looked to a nearby mirror store and then back to me, she then turned and started walking towards it with brave look on her face. “Vibrant Vikings, prepare for war.” Generic, Flamberge and Fortitude smiled grimly. “Dr. Bones, Cheerilee, get medical supplies and find Traveling Neko.” I needed some things and Neko better have them stocked.