//------------------------------// // Chapter fifty two, All in All: Fighters. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -The Volcano, Middle Tier, Arizona- “I thought I heard pirate cussing, hey Jacky how have you been and what happened here?” We heard a ruckus going on up here and frankly I knew at least Flamberge was here, mostly judging by the fact that Fortitude had safely landed on Paprika. “I am Fortitude, the fantastically fragrant!” Yep, Fortitude was introducing himself to Paprika right now as we all trotted up to the mess of metal littering the streets. “I thank you for breaking my fall, I did not want to break my back.” “She doesn’t talk, though I’m sure she could if she wanted to Fortitude. That’s our wife Paprika.” I watched as Paprika took one sniff of Fortitude and she leaned back slightly, I noticed the subtle shift in her smile and watched as she slowly slid a clothespin over her nose. “She thinks you smell horrible, but she’s trying to be polite about it.” “It is what I am, though I will only apologize if your nose falls off and grows legs.” Fortitude stated jovially, Paprika giggled. “That is only happening three times as far as I know.” Now Paprika was holding onto her nose tightly. “Arizona, Velvet… wait… did you just say that the three of you were married?!” That’s the first thing Jacky picks up on. “How did that happen?” “Can we get a little more information on something more important than our marriage? Also it’s still not complete without a ceremony.” Yeah, yeah, you keep griping about it Velvet and you’ll eventually get one, but it was going to cost a lot and we weren’t exactly rolling in cash. It was going to be a while before I lead my two girls down any aisle and we’d have a lot of things to explain to Paprika about why we’re doing it. I’m leaving that explanation up to Velvet since she wants it so badly. “So what happened here and what are those four metallic pillars that look like legs.” “Those were parts of an oversized pony golem, what happened was that ‘Sweetcakes’ here…” Jacky sent a pointed look to the nearby three tailed fox. Said fox wilted and looked away and continued to rub her glowing tails along Gene’s back. Gene Eric looks like he’s seen better days, but he looked to be getting better quickly. “Set off a GODLESS agent named Teatime Clockwork that my crew has met once or twice before. My opinion of the guy is still quite low, but his threat level just significantly jumped a few notches for me. The guy is admittedly very competent at escaping dangerous situations, he teleported away after I caused his machine to explode. Had to be on his last legs after using most of his magic to take the brunt of his machine exploding, I give him a few days to fully recover from that.” “One of the other two agents is Dispel Grace, he is wanting to completely destroy the soul of our friend Skelly! We do not know what else he does, but he is very powerful and uses holy magic for nefarious purposes!” Flamberge rubbed at his back and then grunted. “Our friend is considered living impaired, which is a nicer term for being halfway dead!” “How can someone halfway die?” Turning to Velvet’s question, I answered with a question of my own to rile her up. “How can someone fart icicles hard enough to put holes in solid steel?” It’s a similar enough question and I was just making a point that it has obviously already happened somehow. We don’t know why it’s possible, just that it is. “IT’S… A… CONDITION!” Velvet was beautiful when she was angry, especially when she was angry with me. I call that a win no matter what. I smiled at her, all she did in response was sigh and rub her face with her hooves while groaning loudly. “Also anything condensed well enough, put under a large amounts of pressure and then given a direction to go could do the same thing! Like how you… punched me through a small mountain not too long ago. I didn’t even think about how impossible that was until I actually said it... and that both you and Paprika did that as well under your own strength. Excuse me, I think the reality of things just kicked me in the skull.” Velvet just sat off to the side holding her head. “Hey you survived that Velvet and most would say that, in itself, is impossible. I used your spine as a shovel while pummeling you through that mountain. Do you really want to deny the fact that I put you through the mountain just by hitting you a whole a lot? Some might even start saying a cow my size shouldn’t be flipping elephants or chopping giant shadow monsters in half.” We lived and breathed the impossible, so I wasn’t nearly as skeptical without proof that something wasn’t feasible or possible. “So if Fortitude’s friend is living impaired, then they are simply living impaired. I’m not saying that we should take everything at face value, some things might actually be too good, or even farfetched, to be true.” Velvet just stared me in the eyes for a moment before she looked to Paprika and huffed slightly before going back to holding her head. Paprika quickly pulled our favorite reindeer into a loving hug that made her smile slightly. We’ve seen some pretty crazy things and we both know that Paprika exists, she is certainly not a wild mass hallucination that everyone experiences collectively. A world where Paprika exists makes any argument against the impossible immediately invalid, maybe even Pinkie Pie... oh goddesses, those two should never meet! You never tell a fool what they can’t do, they’ll go to greater lengths than most to prove to you how wrong you were. That’s how I think magic works. “Still don’t know about that third GODLESS member I spotted, it was a strange pegasus with a manic grin and an unruly looking mane.” So if Gene saw who I thought he just said he saw. “So Shocking Awe is here too, I think he might be a recruiter… maybe. He’s a bit too much of a jerk to be a good one, but he’s got some impressive fighting skills.” I can already tell Teatime was one of the worst people to fight, as if the remains of a giant death machine and all the damage done to the streets didn’t quite spell that out. He still took down the Vibrant Vikings with a single machine and that was rather scary. “Huh, I might actually get some payback for the Tundra Tourney.” “Erm… Arizona… Velvet… Pap-agh!” We turned to see Pom trying to address us, but was blindsided by an affectionate Paprika squeezing her frail looking body with affection. “Happy… to… see you… too... someone help… me…” Speaking of, Velvet may have looked frail, but she was definitely sturdier than most. Pom actually seemed to live up to being frail, as her face was slowly turning blue from being squeezed too hard by Paprika. It usually took a few minutes before Velvet’s face turned purple. I was surprised to see the lambkin so far from home and out of her valley, I wasn’t the only one. Velvet seemed as confused as I did to see Pom, ‘The Canine Queen’, here. Her entire pack of familiars was also in tow and they were all covered in spaghetti sauce, except for Mr. Birch who seemed to be entirely clean. I think the Timber Wolf might have absorbed whatever spaghetti sauce he might have gotten into. The only other one among them that was clean besides him was the two tailed white fox with the green tipped tails, said fox was studying the nearby three tailed fox curiously. “You may want to speak up or you might never be heard from again Pom!” The unicorn with the edgy look stated as she flipped through a few pages in her floating demonic book, she wasn’t really looking at the situation and even then she had a good read on it. Though what else would you call the aura of education that the book gave off other than a true demonic force? “That would be pretty bad, BUT SHE WILL BE LIKE AN ANGEL SOON!” Yep, calling it now, that book is evil. Pom squeaked loudly and Paprika took a long look at her blue face, she then eased up on her hug letting the lambkin breathe. “See Paprika, a less powerful hug can work just as well.” As soon as Velvet finished stating that, Paprika rolled her eyes sarcastically. Yep, our favorite alpaca just did that and now I’m worried about it for various reasons. “It’s great seeing you guys again and all, but can we move this somewhere more private instead of taking up the whole street?” Everyone turned to me, eventually Jacky nodded and decided for us where we should be. “Yeah, I can see that. To the Ardent Survivor! Say, is my pony sister here too?” At Jacky’s question, those of Airship Mauled all looked between our gathering groups. We then shook our heads no. “Darn, it would have been nice to see Fizzle too, but I can understand if she doesn’t feel like traveling like you guys did. Okay crew, everyone go grab some parts that look good to drag back home and let’s move our growing conversations to somewhere less cro… ulp…” Jacky looked a little green in the face and like she was trying to swallow some bile, she eventually did so and looked a little bit sickly until that Sweetcakes rubbed a tail up and down her back. “Yes, and while you do that, my people need to see to the cleanup of this mess and you’re all in the way of that.” Tianhuo stated sourly. “They were smart enough to stay out of the way of something so dangerous and made sure the surrounding civilians were safe from its rampage.” “See you there then?” I asked pleasantly. “I unfortunately need to be here to clean up this mess, please keep your wife under control until then!” Tianhuo turned to several Huoshan Guards that were already arriving to help her do just that. “Okay, start picking up this mess and find someone available to repair our streets. Send the spare parts that these guys don’t drag off to the smelters, we’re not about to pass up on using some free resources from this debacle. Those are your orders!” The Huoshan Guards threw Tianhuo a salute and waited for us to clear the area. -Ardent Survivor, late evening- “Huh… so your friend really is quite… uh… living impaired.” I was staring at the animate skeleton of a pony. Why was there an animated skeleton? How does that even work?! I knew this world was full of weird things, but the companion that Fortitude and Flamberge made just took the cake… and it was an awesome cake! The giant butterfly resting next to her barely even registered to me on the scale of cool. It seems that the little white fox took a liking to Sweetcakes, the three tailed kitsune friend of Fortitude and Flamberge, which lead me to asking my next question. “Uh… so is that white fox a…” I was about to say kitsune, but I was beaten to it by Sweetcakes. “It is a tenko, a friendly holy creature, a weird familiar.” Sweetcakes answered as the little white fox smiled at her. “Kyuu kyuu!” The fox’s green tipped tails wagged happily and it then curled up against Sweetcakes and started to snooze. Sweetcakes just sighed and shook her head. “Yeah, heard about Tenko while in Neighpon, they get confused for Kitsune all the time.” So Flamberge has recently been to the place where real ninjas are said to be found, I’m actually kind of jealous. “Tenko are said to be friendly, adorable and far less dangerous that actual kitsune are known to be. Though when confused for a Kitsune, they cause a lot of trouble.” “Prefer intellect, we are smarter than them, I am not so bad.” Call it my cow sense, but something was going on between Sweetcakes and our old buddy Flamberge given how hard she was staring at him. I didn’t care enough to ask about it and turned back to Pom and her dark looking unicorn friend. Velvet was busy trying to keep Paprika pinned in place with a hug. It was working so far, but Paprika couldn’t be contained forever. If we let our wife run off and cause problems, then we might be causing more problems for our other friends and not just ourselves. I don’t care if Velvet and I have a bad time because Paprika can hardly control herself snuggly self, I did care if we actually caused some issues for our friends and the locals. “So she hasn’t gotten out of control yet, I should feel relieved if not for a certain issue.” Think of the flame headed one and Tianhuo will appear, she looked upset as she came up to us on deck and her wings of pure fire disappeared. “I have been given an order to join your small group and assist in your endeavors. I also hope to not have to spend enough time around her that I actually lose all sanity and actually start hugging her back.” Tianhuo pointed at Paprika as if she were an unknown horror, I’m sure she’ll warm up to her soon enough. “I feel so sorry for you.” Wow Velvet, way to stab an icy dagger in our hearts. “I will say nothing against my wives personally, but I can definitely understand completely where you’re coming from lady Tianhuo.” “We’ll be joining your group as well, won’t we Pom? I’m Oleander, but call me Ollie.” Ollie smiled at us, she seemed to be a bit too bright and cheerful to me for her dark countenance. “This book here is my best friend Fred.” “Hello nice to meet you, OLLIE IS SO NICE SHE IS THE EPITOME OF EVIL.” I just gave the book a flat look. “Joining us on what exactly?” I just threw that out there to Tianhuo. “To assist in dealing with the shadow horde of course.” Oh… that… yeah, we needed to find the ‘key of the longma’ and maybe Tianhuo had a better idea than we did about where it is. “It seems I’m in the right place then and will be lending my mastery of the dark arts to help, go team!” Ollie was far too nice and it actually was a bit disturbing now that I paid attention to it. “I’ll definitely prove the unicorns of light wrong by helping all of you!” “Erm… yay?” Pom’s menagerie dogpiled her and nuzzled up against her. “Down guys, down!” “We’re doomed.” Velvet stated plainly. Paprika made an affirmative noise behind her. “Yep, but it’s just a matter of how long that doom takes in getting us.” I decided to ask the unspoken question that Velvet wanted to find a way broach, I was just blunter about it than she would have been. “So… do you happen to know where the longma key is?” “That’s… actually a bit of a problem.” Tianhuo muttered bitterly. “We know where it is, we just can’t get to it. It’s in the temple of black flames and...” “Can you take us there?!” How did Jacky teleport like that?