//------------------------------// // Chapter Sixty Four, Bad Bastion Battle: Tower. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Instant wall at the edge of the base, Kuril- Arizona required a healing potion and then just ran back into the fray with her side in the middle of knitting back together, she could have wait a minutes. Instead she went to help Velvet out with the centipede machine. Paprika was still out of it, but she was safe and relatively sane for the number of ‘meeps’ she sang while plucking at her banjo. Sweetcakes, the multiple tailed vixen, had turned to using healing magic on the others as the airship battered and blasted them. She still hasn’t gotten around to Paprika yet, who was continuing to make a horrendous racket. This was a problem because Sweetcakes had quickly exhausted herself on healing several nasty wounds acquired by the longma and Flamberge at incredible speeds, she had already used a lot of magic decimating a lot of mechanical wyverns by generating powerful winds from the fan one of her tails held. Daring just came in with a broken wing, but Fluttershy was already on the case. Sweetcakes was getting some rest next to us and was conserving her strength, she’d get to Daring when she was able to. Paprika would eventually, and hopefully, figure out that she didn’t have an audience aside the balloon animals she kept making between the random performances. “I really hate it when one of my wings get broken…” Daring grumbled, but I wasn’t giving her a healing potion. “Sorry, but I need to save the healing potions for severe life threatening injuries.” I would need to save those potions for some real emergencies, with the limited amount I had left it was only prudent. Paprika, unfortunately for us, didn’t have a severe life threatening injury with all the caterwauling she was doing. Fizzle, Blade, Fortitude and Skelly were cleaning up the remaining Paladins and moving them a fair distance away from the base into a heap of groaning forms. I managed to pick up a sword for Blade and she was wielding it quite efficiently, but she would always do better with lighter weapons. The Lambkin was transporting the injured out of the base and back to us when needed with her six canines and was otherwise setting up a protective perimeter near the recent set of instant walls I set up. She was staying close behind them to avoid the occasional shots from the airship cannons aiming in our direction once in a while. Does this guy ever run out of ammunition? “I guess I understand, huh… you already splinted it and everything.” Daring looked over her shoulder at Fluttershy who was shyly hiding her face behind her mane. Fluttershy had managed to splint and bandage Daring’s broken wing without the mare noticing or her feeling too much pain from it. “I don’t see why Rainbow worried so much about you when you were going on an expedition with Caballeron, you can obviously take care of yourself Fluttershy.” “I just did what I normally do when a bird has a broken wing… it was nothing special.” It was helpful to have Fluttershy around, she at least knew how to do first aid as needed and she was talented in it after so much time with working on so many animals. “Don’t sell yourself short Fluttershy, you’re pretty good at this.” Daring wasn’t rushing out from behind the walls on hoof. “At least the golems have become a trickle, so we won’t have to deal with as many injuries!” The lambkin was holding off the annoyances that was the ever present pony golems and the few beast golems remaining. The pink wolf thing was a curious sight, but I didn’t feel like idle conversation was warranted while we in the middle of what was currently a war zone. “Ruff get that one!” Daring had been slapped out of the air by one of several flailing tentacles coming from the walking airship that was built like a tank. The fact that it could even fly to get here with all that heavy armor was surprising. It certainly didn’t walk through the jungle. The tentacles were also surprisingly powerful and well armored, Flamberge, the longma and all the others were currently trying to damage them and were failing to have much of an effect. Velvet was having a hard time taking down the combined crabs which were quickly breaking down the ice statue she was controlling, but Arizona’s efforts seemed to be helping out immensely there. I wondered what Arizona was saying to make Velvet angry this time. “Why aren’t you out there doing something?” Turning to Daring, I answered with a flat tone. “Because most of my potions wouldn’t work on golems all too well, I already gave my safe explosion potions to Maggie and my instant walls are to be saved for defensive purposes.” I then added on to my answer. “Do you want to be shot by the cannons were I to run dry of instant wall potions to reinforce the one thing keeping us from being blasted, while also giving us a place to retreat to for rest and recovery?” “Can’t do much more than assist now, got it!” Daring nodded and leaned against the wall as it shuddered from another hit. “Teatime is being big pain in yak and friends behinds!” Fortitude shouted from the other side of the wall as he stood up to several cannon shots striking and bouncing off the shield he wielded, any explosive splash was handled by the wall. “At least I’m not out there with those loonies, it’s far safer back here for me and my beasties.” The lambkin said as she protected us. I had thought that all lambkin were cowards at heart. “How many golems did Teatime make this time?! He’s obviously not doing the teleport and repair thing he previously did, considering all golem parts are still scattered about!” This lambkin proved otherwise with how well she was dismantling any of the remaining number of golems coming at us around the wall that managed to get by Fortitude, Flamberge, Skelly, Blade or the longma. Not many of them were, but we were still getting a few coming from the jungle as well. This Teatime was a piece of work, considering how many golems he had at his disposal and how dangerous they were in massive numbers. “Numbers are deadly, that much I certainly know, quality helps too.” Looking over the wall, Sweetcakes ducked as a blast struck the wall. She whimpered a bit and put her paws over her ears. “My sweet dragon love, constant danger he faces, his head proudly high.” We weren’t losing the battle at this rate. Between Sweetcakes, Fluttershy and me, we had medical problems handled as long as we didn’t come under direct attack. That was being taken care of by the lambkin and her companions. -Outside the warehouse, Maggie- “Yeah, this is the good stuff, they have so much and yet it isn’t going to use.” I had a satchel full of explosives and I knew what to do with them. “Don’t worry babies, I’ll make beautiful explosions with you!” I started to carefully working my way around the base, clearly avoiding the battle with the airship currently in progress, then started setting up explosives in every building until I worked my way back around to being in the warehouse. They had a barracks, a warehouse, a watch tower and a kitchen area, everything even had plumbing all the way out here in the middle of the jungle. I had to give it to them, these guys were pretty good at building bases with comfort in mind and this was an impressive setup. It was just too bad that they had a hefty stock of unused explosives on hoof. Had to rough up a few golems while I was setting up, but they had nothing on my mass. I may not have super strength, but I was a professional one cow demolition crew. Since nobody told me I shouldn’t or that this was a completely bad idea, I was going to blow most of this base sky high now! If Calloway were here, she would probably tell me to give everyone fair warning before priming the explosives and that would be a nice thing to do for my allies. She’d also complain that explosives can’t solve everything and what did she know? It certainly solved Fœnum’s problem for a while, but do I get any credit? No, apparently my daughter, her wives and friends had a more permanent solution going and I was fairly proud of them. It even got us back to the right Equestria too. I poked my head out the door of the warehouse and saw that the airship was still currently distracted, no golems were around and I had a straight shot to the watchtower in the compound. I turned around and started to unspool a wire and started moving backwards towards the tower. I had rigged everything, except for the watchtower and the makeshift wall nearby it, all with the explosives that I wasn’t currently taking with me personally. My satchel was full of goodies now and I made my way back towards said wall at the edge of the base where everyone was taking cover. Looking over my shoulder, I watched Velvet’s ice statue fall apart out in the field between here and the jungle. That poor reindeer must have finally run out of steam, but her opponent wasn’t looking too hot either so I’d give her a win on this one. I could see Arizona and a tiny creature floating near her head as she extracted her wife from the chunks of ice on the ground surrounding the badly damage crustaceous centipede. It didn’t look like it could give chase on its broken legs, it also looked like it would run out of power before it could be destroyed too given its jerky slow movements. “Everyone might want to get a good distance away. Aside from the watchtower, this place is about to blow sky high!” I grinned at their suddenly ashen faces and they all scrambled towards the crumbling wall a fair distance away across the open field, Big Mama sure could carry a lot of weight really fast. I continued to unspool the wire as the yak went to bellow something at the dragon and Tianhuo while the axe wielding pony had his back. Once everyone had evacuated to a safe enough distance, I decided to set up on the spot. “Finally realized that you can’t take the likes of my airship or this base… wait… what in the world?” Hearing this Teatime guy’s voice made me stop and grin up at the airship. I calmly placed the plunger box down, I grinned at the airship and gripped the plunger with my hooves. I pulled the plunger upwards. “Oh, you massive…” I pushed the plunger down to cut out the sound of his voice and the series of explosions that followed made me smile brightly. This was music to my ears and some of my best work yet, but it would never beat that entire section of Moss Cow. Seriously don’t think anything would honestly beat that moment of my life. “Okay, who’s the idiot that let my mother access explosives?!” Don’t know what my little Arizona was so worried about, I’m a professional and I knew what I was doing. None of the Perun Paladins were even in the blast radius as all the building topple and crumbled into piles of rubble. I was already running towards the watchtower while the smoke and dust cloud blocked me from sight. From what little I could see, I noted the airship was completely undamaged from the explosion and that made me frown slightly. The reason I left the tower untouched was because I wanted to topple it over onto the airship if it was still operational after blowing the base. I didn’t expect the airship to be entirely undamaged. It had barely taken more than a scratch from being surrounded by some of my best blasts with what I had to work with. I started prepping the tower as all the other buildings were smoking ruins, maybe this would actually do some damage? “Darn it mom, just admit that you have a problem!” Arizona came in and her hoof shattered a beast golem coming at my back. “Hey kiddo, let me work on one last thing, hopefully this will actually damage that guys airship. It’s made of some really tough stuff.” I started placing down the charges. “It’s certainly built to the nines, but there is nothing that enough explosives and brute force won’t solve!” “Well do it fast because… ulp!” I turned around and saw that one of the airship’s tentacles had stretched out to grab for me and my daughter jumped into its path. “Just… do it!” She was busy hitting the tentacle wrapped around her waist with a hoof. She was only doing minimal damage, that metal was some good stuff to survive her slamming a hoof against it repeatedly with how strong she was. Soon the Tianhuo and the dragon were back in action trying to get her free, all the others were currently a distance away and weren’t approaching the airship. They likely had nothing to deal with the overgrown walking metal thermos. I turned back to setting the explosives, checked the distance between me and the airship as it started to move forward, the height of the tower, the amount of explosive force I’d need and the timing I’d need to topple it onto the airship correctly. I only had about thirty seconds… I quickly made some shortcuts and then lit a time delay fuse on it. My daughter could survive a building toppling on her perfectly fine, why I would say it even builds character! So my view of the world was a little distorted, I’d like to meet someone’s whose view wasn’t. -Edge of the jungle, Kuril- Another explosion sounded out as Maggie came running back in our direction, it toppled over and smashed into the airship creating another dust cloud. A few seconds later we all just stared as the metal tentacles cleared away the rubble and the airship had barely taken any damage and was still clearly active. “I hope you have something more powerful than that, because it’s going to take a lot more than that to bring my mechanical marvel down!” We had been fighting well into the evening and I watched as the pony that was with Fortitude and Flamberge suddenly lose all of her flesh. She looked at me and I looked back at her. “Huh… neat. So do we have anything that can damage that airship?” My ears wilted when no one had anything to say. “So no one has any ideas how we’re going to fight that thing?” “For once, explosions have completely failed me. So I got nothing!” Maggie stated as she ambled up to us, we all sat there thinking while Flamberge and the longma continued to attack the vessel doing nothing to it. “Yeah, those were words I’d never thought I’d ever say or admit to. I wonder if Calloway still has that bingo card… good thing she isn’t here or I’d never hear the end of it about explosives not being the solution to everything.” “Well we can’t just do nothing, I say we keep attacking it!” Daring wasn’t giving up. Eh, it's the only plan left.