-Ponyville, Fluttershy-
“Pinkie, you knew Zecora was friendly all along, why did you spread those rumors and make me sing that song?” As far as evil enchantresses go, I was a more likely culprit with how often I enchant animals.
“Mostly because it was fun, like a ghost story and nobody got hurt Fluttershy!” I sighed as Pinkie gave me a hug and then ran off, likely straight to Sugar Cube Corner.
If it wasn’t the dragon snoring smoke everywhere and threatening to blot out the sun, everyone ignored me when I tried to tell them about that, then it was superstitions about Zecora being evil or getting yelled at by Gilda.
-Canterlot, Celestia-
As time marches forward I was just happy to have my sister back, but I still had much to do and make up for.
I even had hope that Twilight was ready for the future.
-The Volcano, Ardent Survivor, Arizona-
“So why haven’t you gone after Teatime yet, didn’t he like… destroy the street and cause havoc?” It seemed like the guards here were sleeping on the job. Jacky says they’re supposedly more competent than the ones in Canterlot and Jade ran laps around those guys.
“Do you even know what the laws here are like?” It was Jacky that answered me and not Tianhuo, her crew didn’t seem too worried or focused on this. In fact, they were all lazing about the deck, even that weird dog like giant butterfly they had to guard the ship when they were away.
Velvet and Paprika were out shopping or something and I was on my own here, so… I guess I was bored and talking can be somewhat fun. To me, nothing beats a excellent fight.
Sure I could talk to Pom or Ollie, but they weren’t exactly masters of taking hits. Ollie had a knowledge demon or something to protect her and Pom is a lambkin, an awesome lambkin, but one that really needed to toughen up some.
Pom might have had Fluttershy’s shy disposition, but I was fairly sure she could be great in a fight if she actually worked on it. There’s was a lot of anger, resentment, sadness, fear and dare I think it, an incredible hidden potential to be something great. All of that was within a cowardly, frail looking lambkin and it was kind of driving me nuts to see something like that.
Pom really needed to let go of some of that stuff, I wanted to see exactly what she could do. Sure she might never have the same absurd levels of durability that my lovely family or most of our friends had, but she could still at least get out of her comfort zone and show the world that she was something special herself.
She didn’t need to be special because she had more familiars than any other being in the world, she had the potential to be special on her own merits.
Speaking of, Tinsel was playing with Big Mama’s puppies. The puppies that could fly by twirling their tails and give chase to the poor ice sprite. Pom led a ridiculously awesome life when she had helicopter puppies, yet she refused to stop sweating over every little small thing or think about all the cool stuff she could be doing instead!
Tianhuo seemed to be more my speed, she knew how to fight and take a hit. She was also one of the best guards in the city and she knew how to fight. Did I think she knew how to fight well enough already? Okay, so I really wanted to fight her. I just hoped that didn’t make Velvet jealous… better yet, I hope it actually does!
“No, but I’m getting the feeling that the guards here should be doing more.” My response was about as much thought as I had for the given subject. “Also do you even know the laws yourself?”
“Actually, yes, I do. I’m the captain of my own crew, reading up on local laws is fairly important so I can tell my crew what not to do while we’re here. That and Flotsam likes learning about different cultures.” Jacky had a smile on her beak. Flotsam just lazily waved to me from where she was laid out on the deck and went back to reading her book. “Do you want me to explain it or do you want Tianhuo to explain it? I have a better question than what Arizona asked, aren’t you leaving Paprika unwatched?”
“No, I’m thankfully off shift with watching that monstrosity. I can’t be expected to keep up with her twenty four seven, I’ve already done that for three days straight and I’m never doing that again!” Tianhuo was just about as stoic as any other longma I’ve seen, but leave her alone with Pom for a few seconds and you would always get some really cute interactions with Tianhuo trying to talk her up. She looked me in the eyes with something approaching pity. “Thank goodness for that, I don’t understand how you can be married to her when she’s sporadically somewhere between barely calm and always affectionately hugging everything into submission.”
“Eh, so Paprika comes on a bit strong when she’s trying to be really sweet and friendly. She knows how put up a good fight if you can get her going and that’s definitely one of the things I love about her.” I watched as Tianhuo rolled her eyes at me. “She also takes care of me and Velvet after we rough each other up as violently as we can, we’ve become really good at recovering from our injuries and Pap helps us get better faster. She knew to increase Velvet’s intake of food and even insisted on it before we got here, she treats Velvet and me fairly well even after we both go through a few rounds of over the top domestic abuse.”
“That’s what you call it? Huh.” Well don’t look so surprised Gene… wait is he even surprised? I can’t exactly tell. “Domestic abuse normally wouldn’t be a good thing, but I think in your case it actually works for you.”
Maybe I should practice a few rope tricks if I’m not going to be getting a fight in anytime soon, but first I still wanted to know why Tianhuo was sitting on her flanks… oh right, I never answered.
“I want Jacky to answer my question.” I pointed at her with my hoof. “Why aren’t the local guards doing anything more than watching that Clockwork guy’s ship?”
“I too want to know, why clockwork is allowed free, it is strange to me.” Sweetcakes came up to us looking fairly curious as well and she sat down on the deck to wait for an answer.
“It’s like this, who was the one that attacked first?” Those present all turned from Jacky and directed all their attentions to Sweetcakes. “Sweetcakes here launched a premeditated assault against the GODLESS agents, so technically… she should be the one who gets arrested for disturbing the peace and starting the fight. Teatime is not at fault for defending himself against being attacked first, what he is liable for is the damage he caused to the surrounding area. The reason why he is getting off so easily is because he never directly targeted a longma in his rampage. Had he done so, then they’d be treating him far differently than they currently are.”
“What about the damage he caused?" Every step that thing took definitely did damage to the streets and it wasn’t like anyone could clearly miss that. "Jacky just said he's responsible for it.”
“It’s already paid for by Teatime.” Tianhuo told us blandly and I stared at her with disbelief, she sighed and looked to me. “The metal from his machine, the high quality metals used in its construction was worth more than the damage he dealt and as such we are allowed to confiscate the scrap from him to make up the costs in what he damaged in the fight. Teatime didn’t ask for his machine’s parts back and left it to us and is not pressing charges against Sweetcakes. I even know why he won’t press charges, it’s because it might give us an opening to do some things he likely wouldn’t want us to do. Like a deeper investigation into his personal belongings...”
“So what you’re saying is… we can’t do anything about Teatime until he or those other guys do something so incredibly overt that it will make him a public enemy of The Volcano.” I was more than a little angry hearing this and I’m sure everyone could hear the tone in my voice. “So the reason you can’t do anything now, is because everything Teatime did previously was considered to be in the line of self-defense. So we can’t stop him until he actually enacts something big and by then it would already be too late when he does.”
“Exactly, I think Teatime is the most dangerous pony of the three GODLESS agents and he’s smart enough to avoid getting caught actually doing something illegal in front of the local authorities.” That sends a chill down my spine Jacky, it seriously does. “If you think you’re angry about that… anyway, we should be glad that Sweetcakes did so little damage with that fire bomb of hers, the damage was negligible enough that Teatime’s payment for the damage he caused personally covered it.”
“At least that’s how I swung it, if I hadn’t stepped in then Sweetcakes would still be in trouble. Also you taking some of the scrap was part of my reparations towards almost killing you. It’s like how I personally paid for the destruction of that fireworks shop and the two cabbage carts from my own salary for this month.” Tianhuo stated while grumpily looking away from Sweetcakes, I take it the three tailed fox owed Tianhuo a debt and yet she wasn’t asking for one. “As for Gene, Fortitude and Flamberge, they were coming to the defense of their friend and were injured. So they can’t actually be blamed for self-defense and defense of others against someone who is going a little over the top on their personal self-defense or avenging the minor injuries his friends gained. Sweetcakes, or the rest of you guys, should not take any more actions unless this Teatime outright starts something.”
“So… that’s it then, we can’t have his ship searched for weapons or anything?” Okay, I understood how things worked around here now. Everyone here is to be blamed for their own actions in any confrontation and must make up for them one way or another. So I probably shouldn’t destroy any buildings using Velvet as an icy war hammer… no matter how radical that would be.
Teatime’s actions were notable, that he already payed for them with the left behind property means that the longma could immediately seize your stuff as payment for causing enough trouble. Sweetcakes can even still be blamed for starting the fight, but that won’t happen as Teatime doesn’t want any more scrutiny in his given direction according to Jacky.
“No, but I can have the city on high alert and I believe you about him being dangerous, he’s already showed us that much and I can assure you that we’re all wary of him now. We’re also wary of your three groups... I’m in one them thanks to the orders I’ve been given.” Tianhuo frowned after making that comment. “A majority of the Huoshan Guard are going to be needed for policing the tournament, but I think it would be best to have eyes all over the city watching for strange activity. I’m still in charge while I'm here, but once I leave I’m duty bound to help the key bearers seal away the shadow horde.”
“Speaking of the tournament, where do we sign up for it!” Now that Flamberge asked that, I realized that we weren’t in the tournament yet.
“It’s simply found by turning left on the upper tier. The sign ups aren’t yet over and you still have a day or two before that closes up.” With that a pair of flaming wings flared out from Tianhuo’s back and she lifted off. “I will go ahead and wait for everyone that wants to sign up. Look for me on the streets there, you already know where the coliseum is.”
“Excuse me, but I have to go find Velvet and Paprika to make sure we don’t miss entering!” I set off to find my wives, both Paprika and Velvet definitely wanted in on this.
-Two hours later, upper tier, Jacky-
“There we go, Jacky ‘The Blackcap’ Chickadee La Perm?" The brown longma didn’t seem all too impressed. "That doesn’t sound like that great a title.”
“Trust me, it has more meaning among pirates and it’s very fitting.” I ducked a fireball and glared at a longma.
“I am sorry, my flames seemed to have gotten slightly out of my control.” The longma bowed slightly. “I apologize greatly.”
“That’s okay, because I was expecting that to happen at least once while I’m here.” Now that it did… I dove to the side out of instinct and a wyvern narrowly missed snatching me in its claws. It was soon chased off by a number of flying flame winged longma. “That too… wait, where’s Flamberge? Oh right, dragons hate wyverns with a passion…”
The wyvern hit the ground with Flamberge beating it’s skull in viciously, the longma were having quite a hard time getting him off the poor thing.
Then I was struck in the shoulder by a piece of glass from a mirror that was accidentally dropped at least fifteen feet away, I didn’t try to avoid this one. It was pretty painful all the same.
“Blackcaps are quite unlucky and I’m ‘The Blackcap’, so I think the title is pretty accurate as you can imagine.” I leaned back while crossing my arms and a kitchen knife shot by my beak where my head used to be. I didn’t flinch, the counter longma sure did. “Sorry about that, didn’t expect the kitchen knife from the street vendor.”
“Yet you expected everything else?” The longma behind the desk asked, looking both confused and relatively shocked.
“A little bit yes, but there is no preparing for everything.” I smiled and turned to Gene. “Let’s go get this out of my shoulder Gene, don’t want to get an infection. Fortitude can take care of Flamberge.”
-A minute later, Arizona-
“As usual that’s Jacky’s luck batting a thousand.” I finished my form and handed it over to the longma.
“Arizona ‘Earth Shaker’ Arid Paca La Perm? Yeah, I can see that, cows stampeding and all.” That was when the longma took the next form from Velvet. “Velvet ‘Frost Dancer’ Paca La Perm… wait, are you two actually related?”
“Married actually.” Velvet said while smiling in my direction. “Happily... and otherwise… if I fight Arizona be ready for a spectacle like you’ve never seen before.”
Then Paprika approached and the longma shivered as he took the form from her, it was covered in glitter.
“She’s going to kill us all isn’t she?” Funny… that’s exactly what a reindeer back in Rein said. “So she does have a name… Paprika ‘The Demon’ Paca La Perm. Why am I not surprised that the one who tired Tianhuo out is called that? So you guys are the Paca La Perm herd, well I hope you enjoy the competition.”