//------------------------------// // Chapter forty-seven, Neighpon Nitwits: Shi. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Neighpon River Dock, Flamberge- The boats fine, but I wonder what my brother got up to. This place was so boring, hope Fortitude’s having fun at least. I mean the training field full of those guys is cool, but they weren’t exactly that great in a fight compared to Blur. He was insanely good with a sword and is ridiculously fast, but he’s drunk right now and I don’t want to be around a crazy pony while their drunk. I just hope Fortitude doesn’t expect me to get into trouble, I mean I’m not that horrible am I? “Excuse me…” Sitting up in the boat and taking a glance at the mare wearing a conical shaped hat and a pink robe, there was no one other than me around so she had to be addressing me. “You seem like a strong young lad with nothing to do, I’ll give you a bucket and a fishing rod if you help me fill at least two buckets with fish.” I quirked my head at her, she had two fishing rods and five buckets she had balance on a pole across her back. “Why do you need fish?!” I sat up and got out of the boat as the pony with the blonde hair took up a seat next to the river and started preparing her fishing pole. Her brown fur seemed rather plain for what I was about to suggest. “Do you have pegasus ancestry?!” “No my absurdly loud acquaintance, but there are various reasons one would want a fish. You can use a fish to grow crops, you can feed a cat or a dog, there’s catch and release for fun or research, you can fish up things that aren’t fish and you can even offer a fish up to a spirit that likes them as a means of friendship. Who actually knows what I’m going to do with them, there’s so many reasons for me to fish. All I want to know is, will you keep me company while I fish?” The mare chuckled as she patted a spot next to where she was setting up. “Word of warning, watch out for the Kappa, green turtle duck creatures with dishes that hold water on their heads. You should never ever let one come up from behind you, it will never end well. If a Kappa manages to reach under your tail, fart fire, clench as hard as you can or knock them over to spill their water quickly. Otherwise, I’m offering because you look bored, that part is not so mysterious.” “Sure, I’ll join you, but do you know of the rock circle method of fishing?!” That was a mistake I made the second I mentioned it, I felt horrible about not knowing what to do to help Jade. “Why yes I do… but why did you regret mentioning it almost immediately?” The mare was getting to the root of the problem immediately. “Well… a friend from the town my brothers and I came to love kind of got displaced! We’re not exactly sure how, but quite frankly it’s generally believed that she’s still alive.” Even I would refuse to believe such a daunting figure as Jade would go down so easily, but there lies the rub. It’s constantly at the back of my mind and I don’t feel like anyone will be doing enough to bring her back to her mother. “The plan one of my brothers and I are following is getting lost in the places we need to be until we come up with a solution!” “So you got lost and ended up in Neighpon? I guess we were destined to meet then, but I am not using the circle of rocks fishing method.” The mare was pretty contradictory. She wanted to fill her buckets, but she didn’t want to do it the quick way? “I would rather lay back and relax, sometimes it’s better to take your time than to rush things. I am not needing to rush into getting fish today.” “I guess I could use some time to relax!” I sat down next to the mare and took up a fishing rod, I pulled it back and then cast it forward into the river. “So do we talk about anything interesting while we wait?!” “What kind of town did you and your brothers find that you loved?” Well at first Airship Mauled was just an oddity to us, but the mare needed to hear what we saw in the town. “Tell me about it.” “Well you could say things started when several Viking airships crash landed on the local goddess and a visiting god... there god that was on one of our ships that fell off under the ships as they crashed. So our three airships kind of crushed every higher being present. We’d learned that it was a fairly common occurrence around Airship Mauled.” I might not know the end result of this meeting, but I knew I’d feel better afterwards. “Said goddess eventually became a patron goddess of my brother. The god that was with us is now the post master for the town and the other god eventually went home after being harassed by Vikings for a few days. I don’t think anyone was truly apologetic about it.” “Let me guess, the god was snake like and benevolent?” The mare giggled a bit. “Otherwise you’d be completely destroyed by it and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” “Oh they’d still have fought or teased the god anyway, Vikings were never said to have a good sense of self-preservation!” I smiled as the mare started laughing and I shared in that mirth as we waited for a fish to bite. “I’ve got a few stories for you if you want to listen!” “Let me tell you a few anecdotes about Neighpon personally in return.” Even if I didn’t know her name, this mare was a nice pony. “Oh and tail fishing around here is a bad idea thanks to the kappa in the waters. Never have your backside pointing towards a river in Neighpon for too long!” -Neighpon Streets, Fortitude- I am never seeing Skelly in pain before, but it was fairly obvious that she was hurting. “Skelly, what is wrong!” I ran up to her and held hoof as she started crying while her other hoof clutched at her ribs. She was not bleeding, but she was in deep pain. “Is she hurt? I do not see any bleeding, but if she needs a hospital...” Ryu offered with a steely looking gaze, he was being quite nice for a crime family prince. “A hospital cannot help what is wrong with her state of existence, but I wish to know what is causing her pain now when before she wasn’t hurt by being pierced by the sword.” My answer came when the shadows of the sun setting, I looked at Skelly’s ribs when they became visible and saw a cut in her bones. We had arrived at Neighpon in the early evening and skipped breakfast in Ponyville to get our supplies ready. So it was inevitable that the truth got out. “Nani?!” Ryu backed up with fright and an open mouth. Blade was also looking quite shocked to see Skelly’s appearance as well. Sweetcake’s reaction was the calmest one, she just simply stared and then moved closer. “You are damaging her bones when removing the sword, it is why she’s feeling immense pain!” I believe Skelly would be whimpering right now if she could. “Very strange this sight. I am sorry I hurt her. May I heal her bones?” The fox looked quite apologetic as she came over to us. I looked to Skelly who nodded frantically while clutching at her ribcage. “I made a mistake, a debt needs to be repaid, heal your wounds I will.” A tail glowed softly and reached up under Skelly’s ribcage and rubbed over the injuries from the sword, Skelly shivered and started to smile and her jaw clattered. I think she was laughing. The bones grew back together and were fixed and Skelly stopped looking so pained. “I did what I could. I mended her sundered bones. She will be fine now.” Turning to Sweetcakes I offered her a smile. “Thank you for helping Skelly the Superbly Spirited!” I had to say it because Skelly couldn’t, Skelly gave as friendly a smile as her skeletal face could manage. “I did her a wrong, in taking the sword with haste, my new was friend was hurt.” The six tailed vixen bowed her head shamefully. “All is forgiven, I’m sure Skelly doesn’t hold a grudge against you.” Hugging the skeletal mare to myself, I was both glad and horrified to find out that she could feel pain. “I have a lot of questions, who are you people?” We turned to the Ryu whose eyes glowed slightly with suspicion as he looked upon us. “I am Fortitude the Fantastically Fragrant! This is Skelly the Superbly Spirited! These are Blade Bright and…” Before I could continue Ryu cut me off. “I know of the vixen, she is a renowned trouble maker around these parts despite how sweet she is.” At Ryu’s word, the vixen blushed and pawed at her head. “What is the story behind this Skelly, did she run afoul of Neighpon’s spirits?” Spirits around here must be far more active than ancestral Viking spirits, said spirits were always half drunk and fought in an endless battles for fun in the afterlife. “No, she ran afoul of unicorn doing horrible things with the souls of warriors, we are fixing that problem not too long ago and she is my trusted traveling companion. Skelly has been like this for a long time before I am meeting her and sending the cruel unicorn’s spirit away.” My hoof pointed to Blade. “Blade Bright is a friend of mine and she has only been recently introduced to Skelly, so I am not surprised she is shocked to see Skelly’s appearance at night. She is wanting to do business with you!” “I am only vaguely disturbed by the skeleton at best, where do the green orbs that look like eyes come from?” Ryu at least seemed willing to listen to Blade, He even seemed barely put off by what Skelly was. -Blade- I always thought that made up skeleton character Jade kept trying to shoehorn into our Ogres and Oubliettes games wasn’t a real thing. Now that I know unicorns can do something like this, I was far more wary of any unicorn that could use dark magic. Dark is not necessarily evil, but in this situation the evil was real. To think it befell that poor pony of the likes I can’t even fathom. It was nice to know that she could still feel pain, but it would require being able to damage her tough bones and I wasn’t willing to do that. Mostly because she had been friendly the entire time… wait… where does all the food she eats go to? -Ryu- It was turning out to be another average day in the Canter Dojo sector of Neighpon. There were random thugs to beat the living daylights out of every day, legitimate businesses to run, not so legitimate businesses to run, territories to keep under control, conspiracies to help or foil and just mostly beating up ponies stealing their money for trying to steal mine from me first. If I was attacked first, I was well within my rights to protect myself however I saw fit. If they were thugs trying to kill me, I considered crippling blows more acceptable. If someone were trying to take money from me, I would be less inclined to try for crippling blow, but I wasn’t going to make it easy on the aggressors. Suffice it to say I could never go hungry in Canter Dojo with all the hot blooded individuals I beat up on a regular basis. I also did some ‘good’ work by helping stop all forms of slave trafficking, because at least I have more morals than the other yakuza clans. There was also helping the weak if they were being accosted unjustly and in general making sure that the Canter Dojo sector could not be contested by anyone. I stopped to help people because it was the right thing to do, plus doing the right thing was quite lucrative at times. I was not an easy mark as many had found out quickly enough. Just because I walked around without back up, it did not mean I was helpless to numbers or those of great strength. In fact I always welcome a challenge to brawl. I am Ryu the Blazing Hoof, the yakuza prince and Canter Dojo’s Dragon. As for today? It turned weird quite quickly on me, Separate Cloth was trying to off me again in my territory. Almost got the drop on me if it wasn’t for that stranger, who turned out to be a living skeleton. Canter Dojo had always been home to spirits, oni and demons, but the one time it isn’t one of those and I didn’t know what to think. Longma fire could deal with most of those monstrous problem and all I needed to do was heat myself up, but the skeleton pony was something else entirely. She wasn’t a ghost and she clearly wasn’t those other things, she was just a living skeleton. One that could still feel pain after having a sharp blade rip open her bones. The fact that the yak said this Blade Bright wanted to do business with me had my attention. “I’m listening.” Placing my attention squarely on the thestral, I waited for a response. Nothing was forthcoming. I eventually did have to get back to the orphanage I ran, but I’m sure after this lesson no one would try anything for at least a week. Anybody that so much as touched my kids wouldn’t get away with it without being in traction for months for daring to try. “Blade is mute because her vocal chords are too strong and could possibly destroy all glass within a mile radius. Skelly is the same way because she obviously no long has vocal chords to speak with.” Judging by Fortitude’s current demeanor, I could already tell it was going to be one of those days. I let a long drawn out insufferable sigh from my lips. This was probably going to be weirder than any of the previous things I have done. It’ll likely just add on to my legend as the Canter Dojo Dragon, which already has enough weird stuff as it is. Having a skeleton pony for a friend would be right up there in weirdness department, right next to me accidentally gaining a Jorogumo for a girlfriend. Sure she may have a large spider body for her lower torso, but my girlfriend was really nice and our dates never went sour, plus she made sure no one attacked the orphanage I legitimately ran. Almost no one was dumb enough to attack a Jorogumo that has had plenty of time to set up in an area. “Let us find a place where we can write down exactly what Blade-san wants of me, in fact I’ll bring my girlfriend along to show that I’m alright with… Skelly-chan was it?” I grunted with a small smile on my face. “I’m quite fairly tolerable of most strange circumstances, Skelly-chan is not exactly the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.”