//------------------------------// // Chapter Sixty Five, Pyramid Power: Laughter. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Canter Dojo, Neighpon Noodles, Head of the Tails clan- Years ago my daughter disappeared from the world, but her orb remained. So I knew she lived still, no matter the time or space it contained three of her tails. When the orb had suddenly disappeared one day, it definitely wasn’t stolen. As only a complete idiot would dare to challenge the kitsune of Neighpon Noodles. I didn’t panic and I eventually felt my daughter return to the world after years of disappearance. She was probably happier than before and she now likely bore the full nine tails, the family trademark. Only she didn’t have the knowledge of how to use them and her abilities will be limited to three tails until someone can be sent to help her out with unlocking her previous powers and those that are new. Her recovery and capacity for magic should already be a lot better though. “So we need to send someone to train her and unlock her powers fully, until then Sweetcakes can easily fend for herself.” I murmured as I turned to one of my many daughters, the one that greeted people at the entrance was always one of my favorites. “What would you suggest?” “Well father, we could send Master Coy Tails.” That… my daughter’s suggestion made me cringe, but it was definitely a good idea and he would be willing to take on a new student. “There are other things we should discuss father, Ryu-kun is getting married to Silk-chan. Also Dodgy has been acting a little off lately, especially after he got pounded into the ground by Ryu-kun. His memories might be shot, but he’s still got that battle prowess… Silk-chan is quite lucky that Ryu-kun can still rip everyone a new one if they so much as try to bother him.” “Hmm… I have something better to discuss aside from the romantic gossip you all seem to be into these days. We might have a great opportunity to help ‘The Maneki-Neko’ open a new branch elsewhere, we’ll give them money and get some benefits out of it.” I smiled. “Mayhap they’ll open it wherever Sweetcakes settles, she’ll need protection while she’s there. So some ‘procurement agents’ will be a satisfying enough presence for me. Never know when my wayward daughter might need a fresh new kanabo... with magically reinforced spikes.” “I swear father, opening black market businesses in foreign nations has gotten ridiculously tedious these days!” I’m sure I had no idea what my lovely greeting daughter was talking about as she awaited her next customer to walk in. “I’ll get the money together and I’ll have one our kin run it by Bengal and Hawker, they’ve been wanting to do this for a while. With all the contacts they have, they’ll absolutely be able to do it. So long as they keep all their competition contained to Neighpon and away from our estranged sister.” “We’ll also prepare the wedding presents to send to your sister through them.” We either had a loud mouthed sword wielding dragon in our family or Sweetcakes gave up on him. Sweetcakes doesn’t give up easily, so it was easy to assume that she had succeeded in the time she disappeared. -Southern Anugyptian Jungle Region, inside the pyramid, Kuril- I just listened to the idle banter as we followed Bastet through the pyramid. A long corridor with a lot of nice architecture, various statues dedicated to various deities, a few might have seemed somewhat familiar to me. “You still didn’t have to beat up Jacky so much.” Fluttershy was still complaining about the others going off on Jacky. Fizzle, Maries and Arizona were not going to let her live it down, I was surprised by how much Arizona cared to know that Jade was alive. On that topic, I had hugged Jacky and told her that I was happy that she was still alive when we ate last night. She hugged me back, happy to see me and she introduced me to her odd crew that stuck by her even when her curse tended to get them hurt. It was also nice to know that Jade was still around and it was a confirmation that my last daughter wasn’t dead, just very hard to help and was inconvenienced personally since no one had any idea as to what exactly is going on with her. Jacky had the closest idea having seen a sign that Jade was present when she was being beset by Scorpio with her crew. Sekhet certainly looked thoughtful about the news that Jade’s fire was still burning away somewhere in Saddle Arabia. Though the fact that Jade’s current state of existence couldn’t be seen by any gods was a bit daunting. Whatever state she was in, we definitely wanted her back and we didn’t know how to help her. After we were done here, we’d look into this further and maybe get a professional in séances to help. I still kind of wanted to hit Jacky with a ten second poison joke potion, but I’d rather hear what she’s been through after she met the Storm King first before I do anything hasty. We only got an abbreviated version of what Jacky’s crew was doing before the whole Huoshan Hotfoot tale of her crew running across Fortitude’s and Arizona’s groups, it sounded like my daughter was quite the explorer… and the reason Turtle Toga had giant pirate bees as a problem. Yes, giant pirate bees. They were fairly good at intimidating people into giving them what they wanted, which was apparently any and all sources on learning how to dance. “Well, since you already faced your first two trials, we’ll be skipping this room and heading down to the next one.” When Baast said that, my attention was brought back to her. “What do you mean?” Being fairly curious about this, I didn’t remember taking a second trial and the first one was Baast asking us riddles without penalties involved. “The first trial was Baast riddles, the second trial was speaking an honest truth despite being reluctant to do so. Saw that the other day and thought it over, I’m giving you a pass on it.” We turned to the translucent looking orange anugyptian feline with bright green eyes that came from behind the pillars of the room we stopped at. She sat down in front of us in the middle of four lit braziers. “Hey there sugar canes, I’m Grassy Snack! When I was alive I used to grow some of the sweetest tasting sugar cane by the River of Denial, now I’m echo of what I once was. It’s a nice gig with giving out trials for those who can get past Baast. I’m giving you a pass this time because of what happened to the parrot there, I feel right sorry for her.” “Eh don’t be, they definitely loosened up my muscles when they beat me moderately blue.” Jacky nodded to the trident tailed feline. “I can’t say that I didn’t deserve it either, I was fairly reluctant to get everyone’s hopes up and then kind of forgot about it.” “While the truth hurts, it can be satisfying to free some weight off your back.” Grassy bowed to us and then faded away. “That was nice of her, she kind of reminds me of someone though.” Fluttershy simply said. “Ghosts and skeletons aren’t as scary as I thought they’d be, I think I’m actually used to Skelly now… while she’s flesh and fur. My next Nightmare Night might be the best one yet!” “Generally they aren’t bad unless you meet some of the angry wronged ones or some jerk gets control of them. That was an echo of Grassy as she once was, she is something else now.” Baast looked back with a faint smile as we started down the stairs. “Anubis is doing me a favor letting me use their echoes, there are six in total. They were the priestesses of life, Truth, Joy, Empathy, Courage, Wisdom and finally Mystique. You’ve met truth, we’re about to meet…” “Hey there Baasty my old gal pal, finally coming by with some trial challengers eh? It’s nice to see all of you!” A pink and wild ghostly anugyptian popped up amongst our group spooking us. What spooked me the most, was that it actually had more of a physical presence than Grassy Snack did. “Guess what I made, some cakes! They are freshly warm and out from under the sun focusing oven! Sure, I might not be the best at baking, but I make up for it by bringing colors into the world! I still need to put the finishing touches on them!” “This… is Cheerful Dye, she really liked coloring things in life. It is said that she dyed herself pink so hard with a magically created dye, her fur never recovered from it. In fact, rumor has it that it became an entirely persistent feature in every incarnation of her ever since.” Baast shook her head sadly. “I’ve also heard all of her incarnations have similar personalities, I feel sorry for the world and like I need to apologize for something that’s not my fault to begin with.” “Oh don’t be like that Baasty! See, I say her name like that because she’s one of my besties as a term of endearment!” The pink cat was a bundle of cheerful attitude and a little hyperactive as she threw her paws in the air. “Along with everyone else that were my friends along the river. I miss being able to party with the goddess Taweret, but I’m sure that some of my incarnations have it covered. If they don’t, then they’ll get around to it eventually! I remember how I got a few jackal holdouts to become friends with me eventually, and that’s how Anugypt was made!” “She’s a bit much to deal with, even as an echo.” Baast giggled a bit as Cheerful bounced around us. “Look can we move this along?” Well Sekhet was grumpy today. “Don’t be such a sour puss, I think Baast might have the right idea to keep pressing you about your ‘underworld’ issues and I don’t exactly mean Anubis’s realm! The sun really needs to shine down there.” Cheerful grinned at Sekhet, then turned to us and scrutinized us for a few minutes. “Okay, got it. I’ll be right back!” Cheerful dived into the floor and disappeared. “I didn’t put her up to that.” Baast stated calmly. “Sure… I’ll believe that.” The glare Sekhet was sending her sister was quite scathing in its intensity. “So when you say echoes and incarnations, what do you mean exactly?” Moving up to the two, Fizzle interrupted their staring match to draw attention to herself. “Echoes are remnants or a copy of what a soul once was before it was recycled and moved on to a different life.” Sekhet pointed out the drawings on the nearby wall showing a large jackal ferrying the dead and then the dead eventually coming back to life anew. “You know how I say souls are sacred? Souls are basically immortal, with reincarnation being a thing. To tarnish ones soul is to remove it from the being cycled back into life once again at some other time and place to live once more.” “Every incarnation is a new chance to be something different, something new and exciting. Different paths to tread, to become evil, to become heroic or to become something between with a different set of rules.” Baast moved over to Nefer and patted his head, there was something somber in those words. “My Nefer Tem is just as special, he gets to experience it despite never looking all too different from how he does now. He always reincarnates to look like this with very minor changes and is always able to experience life anew with bright eyes every time and in different ways. Due to his heritage, his friendly personality sticks to him like glue throughout.” “I should introduce you to my big sister Flotsam De' Brie when we’re through going after this... what was the artifact called again?” Nefer had the book like thing that came out of Jacky attached to his back with string made of pure darkness that I didn’t like gazing at through my blindfold for some reason. “I really didn’t know that I had a mother until now, but I guess finding out she’s a goddess has been a bit of a shock for me and I’m still trying to wrap my head around that. I’m sorry, but I really don’t want to stay here. I want to continue traveling with Jacky!” “Do what makes you happy Nefer and don’t worry about me, we’ll always see each other in another age or two when you come wandering back into my waiting paws for some snuggles.” Watching Baast being motherly with her kit, it stirred a longing in my gut. It made me long for that kind of interaction with Jaded, instead I had to substitute for Fizzle who I just hugged to myself and she nuzzled against me without questioning my sudden act of affection. “If Nefer is a demi-god, then what is he a demi-god of?” Moving over to them, Jacky crouched down to cuddled the small sized goddess and her son. “Being sweet, cute and reincarnating himself in a moderately chaotic fashion along with getting himself constantly into and out of ridiculous situations. He’s a demi-god of symbolic purity.” Baast was prideful of her son. “He’s mainly the demi-god of waterlilies and his best function in life as a demi-god is to be a flotation device that can float just about any amount of weight in water and only if said object is in the water with him while making contact, otherwise he just does what he wants and has never had the need to get into the politics of being a god.” “I guess Flotsam is quite lucky to have me as a little brother then, because I’m the best flotation device in the world!” Once would think Nefer would at least be a little upset that what makes him special is floating in water, I thought it was quite underwhelming personally for a demi-god. “That… would have been helpful to know when the Ardent Survivor sank to the bottom of the ocean.” I was going to ask Jacky about that, but Cheerful Dye had returned with several floating covered trays. “Hope you’re ready for some ancient anugyptian tastes, for your trial is… to eat the colored cake that represents you the best!” A lid was removed from each tray and we saw a colorful assortment of cakes. “She’ll just pass you even if you get it wrong, there is no wrong answer with her.” Baast rolled her eyes until she saw a lilac colored cake, the only one with that color here was her. “Aw, don’t tell them that, I wanted it to be a surprise!” Whined Cheerful as looked to us with big bright eyes. “It would have simply filled them with happiness to know that they couldn’t have possibly failed my trial! Well unless the cakes tasted bad, then I will have failed myself. I'll be happy knowing I tried my best despite being incorporeal and the soul that used to be mine is out there somewhere carrying on the legacy of a lifetime filled with shenanigans!” “That’s the 'Priestess of Joy' everyone.” Stated Baast with an undeniably gigantic smile on her cake covered face.