-Scorpio’s Lair, Jacky-
“If you’re here Captain… Jade… thank you for letting me know you’re here for me sister.” Am I feeling blue? Aren’t these tears in my eyes telling everyone I’m happy? The only way Jade’s fire could exist is if she were still alive!
Wait… if she was alive then why couldn’t the genie bring her here fully? What was currently going on that made him incapable of fully fulfilling my wish? What kind of state of existence is Jade experiencing where I can’t see her, but she could still find the time to help us?
Maybe she’s not dead, but she’s not alive either? She’s still technically qualifying as a Humdinger’s Cat Paradox even now, but she has at least proved somewhat without a shadow of a doubt that she still existed in some form.
I don’t care, I’ll continue to believe my sister was still alive and needed help in some way!
“Captain, I solemnly promise you this, I will not stop living until I can bring you back home to mom someday!” Just wait for me and everyone else to figure out how to help you Jade… it might take a while if even this genie can’t help you. “Or at least I’ll try to bring mom to you once I figure out how.”
-Scorpio’s Lair, J…A…D…E…?-
That would have been a really nice sentiment Jacky. If I wasn’t currently in unenvious amounts of pain, screaming my head off and my soul felt like it was being shredded to pieces.
Sure, you can thank me for telling you I was still around my loveable disaster of a sister.
I was quite hopeful everything eventually falls into place and Harmony would actually provide the right set of circumstances to actually help me out of this.
There would come a day when I could slap Jacky, and I will do so while telling her exactly what she put me through here for her sake. Oh I didn’t regret saving my sister, but this is not an experience I ever wished to go through more than once.
I was not going through this again, nope, nobody could pay me anything to ignite my soul like this ever again! The only way I would ever want to do this again is if either Fizzle or Maries were in danger… or mom for that matter.
Okay Family and friends is where I draw the line, not doing this again for complete strangers!
My slightly battered and damaged soul was spent and fell into the sand smoking and unmoving, it was just a good thing that my tolerance for pain somehow managed to transfer over to my soul. If I had a body right now, I’d probably have been catatonic for the rest of my life from the nerve damage that would have incurred from this.
You know, I was actually kind of thankful that I currently didn’t have a physical existence at the moment or that my physical existence never had to go through something like this.
I think either my willpower or the magic of friendship and love was what has been holding me together for so long, but I wouldn’t mind a roll of duct tape right about now.
My soul felt like it was in tatters and a single roll of duct tape would certainly go a long way to answering many of my current problems.
The current state of my existence was really messed up to say the least, but at least my sun given power provided Jacky the time to think about her and her friend’s wishes. They had better not waste any of those wishes on me!
They had five, make that six if you included the giant butterfly, people to make wishes with and three wishes per person is… darn you math! Even like this, you still taunt me!
The situation was at least tenable and there was a way to get me back sooner rather than later, if only Harmony would hurry up with nudging all those things into position!
I was basically the best spy in the world, the undetectable kind, but I couldn’t use what I knew. It was so aggravatingly frustrating when you knew a lot about what was going on and what will happen, yet could do absolutely nothing about it.
-Airship Mauled, Snickers-
“Coo?” Felt something. Great bond? Still broken, but something was there for a second.
Cuddly fanged bunny friend nudged me to eat, says I need strength.
Bond might not be gone forever, need to be stronger for lost great bond partner. May bond again!
“You’re looking a little more colorful today Snickers.” Fresh Start is smart pony. “I don’t know how Kuril gets out of bed these mornings and keeps going, I’d have shut down by now if it was my entire family running off into danger.”
-Scorpio’s Lair, Jacky-
Three tails slammed into the barrier as harshly as they could, but the fire did not weaken and it stayed strong under the onslaught. Scorpio managed to break all the tips of its stingers, I’m sure they would grow back with time as the monster continued to hammer at the barrier with its claws.
“I always thought being on fire would be more painful.” Nefer kept poking the fire with a paw and I still continued to stare at it. We were standing here with a giant scorpion wailing away at us and I couldn’t do anything more than stare and cry.
“Jacky, please snap out of it.” Gene started to roughly shake me, bringing my attention to him and away from the fire that could have only been made by one person. “I know that’s her fire, but we’re still kind of in a situation here and can talk about it later.”
“Yes, please do, I would like to know how you created this everlasting fire on the sand without a fuel source, one that also generates such a powerful barrier.” Evoker stated calmly, so we had at least fourteen jerk genie wishes between us. “So do you have an actual wish to use or can I go back into the lamp now?”
It would be fifteen, if I weren’t wishing us safely out of here. Since Belfry can’t talk and wishes had to be understood… make that seventeen wishes given that the genie probably knows all languages. I’m sure he could understand the intent of a large bug quite clearly.
“I wish that, with the exception of Scorpio, all of us will ‘safely’ appear next to where the airship we know as The Ardent Survivor happens to be in this current second of time.” We immediately appeared right next to the airship with the fire in tow.
I snorted about the fire actually coming with us, but I wasn’t about to leave Jade behind to be stuck in that realm.
-Jade-
“At least she made a decent wish so I wouldn’t be stuck in that scorpion’s realm.” I’m heading back to where Fizzle is, hopefully she’ll still be there when I arrived.
I’m just going to leave my fire here and start crawling...
-The Ardent Survivor, Jacky-
“You know, you are the most annoying master that I have ever had, who taught you how to make wishes that specific? Wish granted by the way, but seriously you’re batting a thousand with your first wish master!” Evoker seemed upset that we had brains in our skulls. “If you hadn’t excluded Scorpio, said the word ‘safely’ or said ‘this current second’, I could have done any number of horrible things to you like time travel. Still though, it’s nice to know you’re taking my power seriously at least.”
“Okay guys, we have a jerk genie and he’s actively taunting us with the fact that he’ll twist whatever we ask for. Let’s write down a list of things we could wish for and go over it, carefully!” Since wishing for my sister wouldn’t obviously work at this rate, this gave me a reason to continue searching for powerful artifacts at the very least. One of them might even be capable of helping Jade. “I know what my remaining two wishes are going to be like and why. Each of you think of a wish for someone else, for yourself and something that could help the ship. We’ll write them all down and then discuss it and vote on them, then we’ll get the wording down… until then nobody is allowed to even say the word ‘wish’ while in possession of the lamp. I already made my wish for everyone else to get us there.”
“Oh great… even smarter than I previously thought you were, couldn’t someone more greedy have found me? I love getting those types into all kinds of trouble.” We were going to have to deal with Evoker’s griping the entire time weren’t we? “Can we just burn through all the wishes in one go and put me back in the Caves of Intrigue? If you need wealth, power or fame, all you need to do is take the lamp and ask me.”
“Nobody listen to any of his suggestions either without thinking really hard about it.” Everyone agreed with that, nobody even had a hint of greed in their eyes. “If he starts trying to pit us against each other, remember that that is basically his job in a nutshell as a jerk genie.”
We calmly entered the ship and I wrote down my next three wishes, two of them were dependent on how my second wish went. My friends were a little surprised, but they agreed I would be making those wishes last.
First to make three wishes was Belfry, he was going to test if he could even make a wish. He was going to selflessly give up his wishes for me and all I had to do is tell him what to say in as specific a manner as I can.
We were most certainly not going for extravagant world changing wishes, we’re not stupid and I already know the problems with wishing for the things that first jumped to mind as being a bad idea.
“The butterfly, are you absolutely kidding me!?” Evoker snorted at the idea that the one that would be making the next few wishes would be Belfry.
In the meantime, we were already getting up in the air and I was plotting our next course. I looked over the side of the ship at the fire we were leaving behind, Belfry liked me more than that fire and I would like to say that was flattering in some ways.
We’ll succeed someday Jade. Don’t worry, not even my bad luck would stop me forever.
The next treasure to look for was an ancient magical book in an ancient library in the middle of a jungle. We could just wish the book into our grasps, but where would the fun be in that? I also didn’t trust Evoker to have our best interests at heart and would rather adventure without any shortcuts. We were only going to be asking for small things with our wishes.
Belfry currently had control of the lamp and he would certainly at least make his first wish on my behalf.
We were all watching Belfry as he cleared what passed for his vocal chords and started to chirp something out, he seemed to go into great detail about what his wish entailed.
“What… really? Are you serious? Fine… your wish is granted, though I think you could be doing so much better than that!” Evoker really didn’t like us and he did understand what Belfry was asking for. “Just for the record, giant butterflies like you shouldn’t be so aggressively smart like this!”
The first wish Belfry made was surprisingly not turning me into a giant butterfly like him. That would have wasted someone else’s wish to change me back, color me impressed that the wish only entailed something simple and yet profound. While Belfry and the others wouldn’t tell me the wish, I would certainly know of its effects.
Belfry’s first wish was basically this, ‘I wish that Gene could fully express all his feelings to Jacky for the next five minutes’. He kept it simple and put a time limit on it as to not change Gene forever.
It was quite the wish, because Gene came over to me and his beak was immediately in my face. We were soon passionately kissing and snuggling up against one another. He whispered such sweet words into my ears and I listened to every single one of them.
There were some things he didn’t like about me, there were even some trivial things he worried about that he would have never stated otherwise, but most of all what he said last before the time ran out was most pertinent.
“Just remember that I love you Jacky, even if I don’t show it very well!” After Gene said that in a heartfelt tone instead of his normal blandness, the five minutes were up and he went back to normal.
I turned to Belfry and just looked at him, he tilted his head at me curiously. I moved over to him and patted him on the head gently with my left hand.
“Good butterfly.” The giant butterfly squealed with happiness and rubbed up against me, I was going to give up on trying to get rid of him after that. “I trust you to make a personal wish without causing too many problems.”
Belfry turned to the genie and looked thoughtful.
“I still think you wasted that wish.” Evoker stated grumpily to Belfry, but our pet butterfly thought it was a worthwhile wish. “Anything else?”
Belfry made his second wish, this one we went over with fine toothed comb with him. Once he was ready to make it, he went on for a solid minute chittering about what he wanted. It was an exceedingly specific desire that could not be twisted in any given way.
“Complicated and yet so simple… also very well defined parameters. Wish granted!” He zapped the space before Belfry and a mug sized barrel appeared, our butterfly opened the top and dipped his proboscis into the fluids inside it and started to cheerfully drink it. “Where in the world did you find a creature this smart, but is still below the line enough to possibly be a familiar?”
“Does it matter?” That made me receive a loathing look from Evoker.
“Yes, because it won’t make a selfish wish, even its second wish is more so to the point that you have to spend less resources on taking care of him and he can even share it!” Evoker seemed rather stressed out. “What is wrong with you people, you should be selfishly fighting over the lamp!”
“Say Belfry, was that second wish more for you or for the ship?” Turning to me, Belfry lifted a leg and pointed downwards. “Okay, can we work on your final wish then?”
Once we did eventually figure out what his last wish was, I denied it and tried to have it vetoed. He wanted a familiar bond with one of us, me specifically. He really liked me that much and we didn’t actually have that kind of bond yet despite his many attempts to make one.
“I have no idea what you see in me, but I think that is a bad idea.” I think I might have hurt Belfry’s feelings by denying him. “That said, I might have a better one.”