-Mount Aris, Flamberge-
The two siblings were a bit young to be alone out here like this, we were here to make sure they weren’t getting into any trouble. Even if they didn’t have a problems previously, today was another day for something to go wrong.
To that end Skelly and Sweetcakes were keeping them entertained with the beach ball. Sweetcakes had even turned all blue, scaly and her tails fused into a single large fin. She took to the water to make things even and to not leave Silver Stream alone in the surf.
Ryu was going over something with Blade, she was making various gestures to communicate with him about something before pointing up at the back of the mountain. Ryu nodded and asked her something, but I quickly lost interest in what they were doing.
Turning to my brother, I approached him to see him wielding his new shield and seemed to be getting fairly used to it. I’m glad I managed to put a smile on Fortitude’s face and didn’t honestly know why dragons needed to hoard gold as it was useless compared to the gems and jewels we can eat.
I spent all that money I earned off the kappa without a second thought, but it was worth the effort for what was a ridiculously durable shield that reflected magic in an awesome manner. Now Fortitude had something to compare to my mighty sword that’s always on fire… when it wasn’t sleeping of course.
Thinking on it, I considered how Skelly had an axe that was possibly magical as well. My thoughts then went from that to the erstwhile brother of our trio, Gene.
Gene didn’t care for any weapon in particular, but I still wanted to find something nice for him to use. It would be a goal to work towards while we wandered around getting lost, otherwise I’d just be going through the motions of life.
Now what would Gene like? He was decent with swords, spears, throwing axes… okay it was safe to say Gene was well rounded in many skills related to being a Viking and quite average at all of them, he’s not particularly fond of armor because of the weight so that’s out.
Giving it some more thought, I eventually gave up thinking of what to get Gene for now. I’m sure I’d pick up something or would at least figure something out by the time our paths crossed once more.
“So brother, how long are we going to be here?! It does not seem like we are actually needed here at all!” Mount Aris wasn’t exactly quiet, there were signs of hippogriffs flying around so this place wasn’t empty, kind of made me wonder what the front side of the mountain looked like. What it was, was peaceful.
“I am not knowing for how long, but we could at least visit the hippogriff settlement in the mountain for a day before we leave. The sea ponies are not as easily visited as we are not capable of breathing underwater.” Fortitude rubbed his chin looking a bit thoughtful. “We should have asked the great witch Kuril for help with that, we are definitely not here for sea ponies and Blade is here to find a hippogriff. It would suggest that we are not staying here for very long and Blade doesn’t need our help very much given hippogriffs are usually friendly and are about as aggressive as our brother Generic unless pushed.”
Hippogriffs were said to be born of pure love, don’t honestly know what the Kirin were said to be born of and I could only kind of guess with Longma from what I saw of Ryu.
“Well the one thing we’re good at is fighting and hippogriffs can match griffons in battle prowess, so we’re really just here because Blade needed to be here more than anything else!” It kind felt a little upsetting to know that we personally weren’t absolutely needed for anything more important, but I thought we could at least try to find something interesting to do here. “Still, it couldn’t hurt to ask if anyone has anything we could look into!”
“Sounds like an idea brother, not that we have many of those at the moment.” At least we’re going around and doing something to keep busy Fortitude, which reminded me of something.
“Say… do you remember how Jade said to summon sea ponies, what were those words she used again?!” I wanted to sing them and see if Silver Stream recognized them or at least see if another sea pony popped up from doing so.
“I think it was something like… rope-a-dope, rope-rope-a-dope!” Fortitude belted out and a dust cloud came around the bend of the mountain and it stopped in front of us.
Once the kicked up sand cleared up slightly, we saw a cow with a rope in her mouth which she soon took into one of her hooves. She reminded me of Arizona and even looked like her, but the coloration was off given that she was entirely brightly colored and she didn’t look nearly as muscular or volatile. Also she had udders, a very distinct difference there.
“Did someone call for a roping cow? Well Nevada is here to help you!” The young cow stated. “You wouldn’t believe half the other roping cows I had to outrun just to get here first, so who or what do you need tied up? We barely get called into action at all. I mean it’s like once a year, and twice if we’re lucky, that we ever hear anyone call for us specifically.”
“We were actually trying to remember how to summon sea ponies.” My brother stated congenially, the cow threw her hooves up in the air and let out a long suffering groan.
“Darn it all, another false alarm! Okay guys pack it up, they don’t need a roping cow much less all of us to tie down some ornery monster.” We were wondering who she was talking to, when we saw the other various cows holding bundles of rope as the sand cloud cleared away further revealing twenty or more cows standing around looking upset. The young Nevada turned to us. “I’ll have you know this happens fairly often, we’re usually called to rope big beasties causing town destroying problems and we hardly ever get to have any fun since the monsters learned to stop wandering aimlessly into towns. You know what, in this case we’ll make a beach day of it ladies and the one obligatory female minotaur of our SOS group that gives us that vague hint of diversity!”
The female minotaur in question waved and smiled at being acknowledged as she shouldered her rope. The other cows perked up at the idea of spending time on the beach and started to relax and take up various activities without further prompting.
“That’s fine and all, but what was the sea pony emergency summoning song since we forgot it?!” I think this Nevada obviously knew what it was given she talked about it.
“Oh that, it’s shoo-be-doo shoo-shoo-be-doo!” Nevada sang out and a female sea pony immediately popped out of the water. “There you go, please don’t forget it and if you ever have a problem with giant monsters we, the cows of the EUP, will assist you if you are within Equestria or allied territories. Times may vary depending on the distance it takes for us to get to where you are, we also provide other rescue services and are fairly active in helping people out of tight jams. Wished they had called us in for that bug bear incident… that was an udder mess after the owl bear got involved.”
“Oh, hey mom!” Silver Stream and Terramar waved to the sea pony with the pink fin mane and yellow body who waved back.
“Silver Stream, are you having a good time with your little brother?” The sea pony asked.
“Yep! We’re making a lot of new friends too… though I don’t know how often I’ll see them, they live on land like daddy!” Silver Stream seemed a little sad about that, but she eventually went back to playing with the beach ball she held and sent it towards her little brother.
“My name is Ocean Flow, did you need anything?” This Ocean Flow addressed that to Nevada and looked around curiously. “There doesn’t seem to be an emergency, though the beach is nicely crowded this time of day.”
“Not really, it’s just that these two yahoos forgot how to do the sea pony SOS, apparently they are friends with someone who knows about it.” Nevada motioned to us. “We think you sea ponies should really make it easier to remember.”
“Sorry about that, I’m Flamberge the fiercely flammable and this is my brother Fortitude the fantastically fragrant! We have a friend that said that if you need a sea pony ‘simply signal SOS’ by singing that specific tune!” At my words the sea pony giggled joyfully.
“Let me guess, you incidentally sang the rope-a-dope cow summon instead? I don’t know how anyone could possibly get those two confused… it’s like singing ‘fly-the-sky, fly-fly-the-sky’ without knowing what it…” A pack of armored hippogriffs, three griffons and two pegasus ponies showed up.
“Hello beautiful.” The blue hippogriff in the golden looking armor with the grey and white feathery mane stated as he came in for a landing. “Calling for air support or are you just wanting to see me?”
Ocean brightened up at the hippogriff’s words and the two started smiling at one another brightly.
“Eh false alarm, let’s go guys, the hops is on me!” The pony that spoke flew off with the other pegasi and griffons, but the hippogriffs stayed behind and started greeting the cows.
“Okay… just exactly how many SOS summoning rituals are there that use that specific tune?!” I exclaimed in disbelief as the hippogriff and the sea pony were getting quite snug together.
“At least twenty, the EUP kind of caused it to become a thing and we created the first one… ahem… anyway I’m always happy to see my handsome hippogriff.” Ocean Flow was practically pulling herself out of the water for him, I would say it was fairly obvious that they hadn’t seen each other in a while. “My loving sky dancer.”
“My flowing beauty.” The two caressed one another as they took to laying in the sand together. “I still think it’s worth the effort of having to get all the sand out of my feathers later if I can be with you like this.”
“Well I’m working on making the relations better between our races and its going quite smoothly as I’m sure you know.” The two looked inseparable and quite close despite living separate lives, I noted Sweetcakes turning back into her normal three tailed fox form and she silently formed a heart with two of her tails. “Maybe I can even eventually convince my sister to let you and Terramar become sea ponies for a while.”
“My place is in the sky, but I would be delighted to visit dear.” One thing was for certain, Sky’s long distance relationship with his wife seemed to be going rather well. “Oh, apologies, I am Sky Beak.”
“It’s nice that you two are together and all, but is there anything for a pack of adventurers to do around here?!” I caused the pair to sit up and take notice of everyone around them and even their children stopped to watch their affectionate gestures. “Also what’s the news around here?!”
“Well aside from working on a way to talk with my lovely Ocean in a more private setting then on the beach like this, which might be useful as an emergency escape route come to think of it once we can figure out a way to dig it out… Anyway we do have a few odd jobs you could do around here if you’re willing for some soul crushing drudgery work.” He looked me up and down for a moment. “I know this seems a bit presumptuous of me, but do you have any skills in fry cooking?”
“I worked at a Hay Burger for a time and one my friends is technically a fry cook!” How I was given a job without an application, I didn’t even do a job interview and yet it somehow happened.
“Were they related to sponges by any chance?” Ocean asked in a bubbly tone.
“No.” Something tells me I don’t want to pursue a line of questioning related to whatever caused the current frown on Ocean’s face. That way lied madness somehow, I just instinctively knew it.
“How good are you?” Sky Beak asked me.
“Make an order and I can assure you that I know the call for it, also I’m friends with the creator of the ‘From Tartarus, with love’ Hay Burger.” The hippogriff gave me a very bright cheerful grin and made a squealing noise. “Surprisingly enough, they are putting the royalties for it towards our home of Airship Mauled. If anyone ever needs a place to go with good food, you’ll be welcomed there.”
“It’s too bad Hay Burgers don’t taste good with salt water. I want to know what Sky see’s in the place personally, it's boggling he’s managed to import enough of the food that they finally decided to build a place out here for one of their number one customers.” Running a flipper gently up and down the hippogriff’s back, Ocean Flow smiled. “Still, I sometimes just come here to share some salmon juice with my love, which is kind of my guilty pleasure.”
“I believe we have a need of adventurers of your specific ‘caliber’, provided that you don’t mind showing a hippogriff or two how it’s done!” Frowning Sky looked at the sand. “We didn’t exactly have anyone to train our guys for the branch they opened out here... though they are shipping us the supplies for the Mount Aris branch the employees here are all green recruits.”
“You’re in luck, you have two previous employees present and one of us is particularly good in any restaurant.” I pointed out Blade who twitched an ear, turned to us and shot a curious glance about at the hippogriffs now staring at her. “It’s Blade over there that you really want to teach your guys, she slings some really good Hay Burgers. Either way I’m in, for at least six hours provided I get paid a percentage of what we make.”
Blade gave me a curious smile that was thanking me for something. Oh right, I just got her an in to Mount Aris without having to do a lot of suspicious snooping and running around or getting stopped at the front door.
Huh… Travel On doesn’t kid around with these things does it?
“I’d like to be a taste tester.” We turned to Ryu who looked eager to eat something.
“It’s agreed!” Sky threw his right claw up in the air, pointing at the sky with clear enthusiasm. He soon shot Ocean Flow an embarrassed look.
“Go on and enjoy some Hay Burgers, I’ll just stick with the children for a while Beak. I hardly ever get any time with my darling little Terramar!” Ocean held hear flippers up to her heart while looking in the direction of her children.
“Right… you wouldn’t happen to know any contractors who can dig a secret tunnel leading into the ocean would you?” Sky queried curiously.