Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows


Chapter Sixty Nine, Wounds and Time: Scratch.

-Canterlot Castle, the next morning, Celestia-

“So tomorrow will be the day we…” As we approached the balcony something shot by us in a blur, I was spooked for a second and then I saw a familiar Abyssinian smiling back at me as she stuffed some of Luna’s loose feathers and our crowns into a bag.

“What, our crowns, that Abyssinian stole our crowns! We need those to symbolically turn things over to Twilight!” Luna suddenly became quite angry, she’s never met Jade before. “Guards catch that thief!”

“Top of the morning to you!” Jade leapt off the balcony and towards the city, she spun towards me while throwing a smile and a salute. She kicked out with the strange skates on her feet to spin around and land on the ground moving straight for the city.

Roller skates that give off bursts of lightning with each push? It seems that today is a training day for the Royal Guard, they better catch her before she gets out of the city.

I had a goofy grin on my face that my sister just couldn’t quite understand.

-Jade-

I shifted my hips left and right with each push of my feet, while thrusting my arms forward, I left lightning sparks in my wake as each push forward boosted me.

“Well I wake up in the morning each and every day~.” I sang as I skated down the streets slowly, ponies’ ears were suddenly going ramrod straight as they could hear the music I was singing to. “I send a salutation to the sun until I hear my mother say~. Life is nothing, it’s a nothing, life is nothing like a slap to the face~! Life is nothing, it’s like nothing, life is nothing like another crazy cat chase~!”

I checked my green knee pads, elbow pads, helmet and my magnetically driven lightning skates sending sparks out with each push. I should really thank Jacky and Blade for helping me make these.

Seeing my target I pulled out my yo-yo and prepped it to get my favorite pegasus to annoy.

“Why do I have a chill down my spine and hear upbeat music all of the…” My yo-yo met the back of Spitfire’s head and it slammed into a pie that Soarin’ was about to start digging into.

“Every night I have a dream of you wiping pie off your face~.” I skid to a stop next to the table and leaned on it while wagging my tail. “There’s nothing like making you give me another really good chase~.”

“Please tell me that’s not scheming, that I’m dreaming, please someone give me a slap in the face~!” Spitfire said as she pulled her face out the pie and looked towards my canary eating grin. “Please lie like nothing, please tell me nothing, please don’t tell me this isn’t another crazy cat chase~!”

I immediately turned and darted down the street while juking left and right while rhythmically tapping dancing with my skates to the music as I avoided several blasts of magic from the unicorns that finally caught up to me.

I started to head towards the aqueduct as an angry looking stallion started flying behind me.

“Anybody who messes up a pie really doesn’t belong~!” Soarin sang as I turned down and alleyway and started to jump off the walls until I was up on the roof, he came around the corner and didn’t see me I whistled at him.

“So you can’t take a good joke, is it really so wrong~?” I sang as I skated up the roof and then jumped onto the angular portion of the roof with my skates sideways to start grinding the roofs ridge and my speed increased exponentially.

Soarin appeared at the roof and blinked when he looked around for me and saw me launching off to a wire leading to the square and came after me. He was held back by Spitfire.

“You’ll never really catch the cat at this rate~. She’s always enjoys our suffering when it comes to the chase~.” A rainbow pony sped by them. The singing Spitfire didn’t have time to try and warn Rainbow Dash about the bane of the royal guard. “There’s just no point, really, that I can think of going after that crazy felon feline and she seems to have been pumping some weights and can live, she’s going to be beating us to aching throbs so come on let’s just give~.”

I turned back to looking forward and was almost at the aqueduct, now to test out these puppies on something that wasn’t solid ground. With quasi-pegasus magic in use, technically thestral weather control, this should work the way I expected it would.

I ducked, nearly taking a blue hoof to the skull.

“You won’t escaped me you crazy crook, this is just the fastest path to jail you just took~!” Rainbow was definitely faster than every other Royal Guard or Wonder Bolts. Didn’t expect her to be here or get on top of me that fast, but I guess she was working on the show for Twilight’s coronation.

“You know I always enjoy the race, because nothing is like a crazy cat chase~.” I said calmly beginning a skid and Rainbow sped over the aqueduct as I turned and angled so I was skating alongside the river of water to my right. “There’s nothing in life that’s truly a waste, I always make for a fun crazy cat to chase~!”

“You think I’m nothing~?!” Rainbow swung at me and I ducked and she slammed into a blacksmithing sign, a second later she was on me again. “Your worth head-butting~. I’ll give you quite a few slaps to the face~! I’m not nothing, you’ve got nothing, you’re not really too hard TO CHASE~!”

I turned my head and watched an upcoming corner and skidded ready to take it and then I jumped backwards and turned to start skating down the aqueduct while Rainbow turned left and then realized what I just did.

“What it’s like for me, as you can see, I’m enjoying being free… it’s a cat chase, a crazy cat chase~!” I sang as I started skiing over the water and tap dancing on it in a fun manner.

Rainbow flew up behind me, but I jumped and stomped down sending a huge spray into her face and she went spiraling off to the side where she went tumbling across the ground in mass of fluffy cloud.

Air bagged, five points, ten because it was Rainbow Dash! Next time I should bring a spray can and tag at least five royal guard’s with my cutie mark.

I skid to the right and left on the water and leapt off of it over several unicorns that had been firing at me. They turned their heads after me as I shot down the street behind them towards the train station.

Rainbow wasn’t giving up, she came at me trying to tackle me and launched a hurricane of kicks at me with some flashy acrobatics. She definitely earned her black belt, but she had to slow down to attack me and I’m excellent at evasion.

“I think I’ve really got it going on~.” I had checked the train schedule before this and I was clear to get back to Airship Mauled with how I got to Canterlot today. “Since I’m the one who puts this crazy and the cat in this chase~.”

Jumping I rode the nearby wall as a surprised Rainbow passed under me and slammed into a cabbage cart, surprisingly it wasn’t destroyed. Rainbow fell away from the cart leaving it completely intact and undamaged, I was confused.

My confusion would soon be answered by a voice that I’d soon be putting behind me, as I skidded along the wall over him.

“Hahaha, bucking reinforced it this time! You’re not getting one over Cabbage Patch, not again, no sir, not now, never!” The cabbage selling earth pony shouted with glee, as he wasn’t shouting about the destruction of his cabbages in anguish. He was hopping around with pure glee written on his face. “All those extra expenses were completely worth it, to think they called me insane for going overboard with steel armored plating made to look like wood, well whose laughing now! I am, MUAHWHAHAHA!”

I leapt from the wall and aimed for the tracks at the train station and started pushing forward as hard as I could. If I escaped, that would be Jade fifteen and royal guard two, because facing Shining Armor sucks.

I looked over my shoulder and was curious as to why Rainbow wasn’t on me, I looked up to the sky to see a speck diving. I just had to get to the train tracks before she could do it.

Oh dang… I jumped for the tracks and angle my skates just so…

Rainbow came down and created a Sonic Rainboom as she shot towards me, I was already an inch from hitting the train tracks.

“Now come on and hover there while watching as this cat busts out with something~!” Rainbow hooves closed over empty air as my skates hit the tracks first and she went flying from the sudden shockwave that launched her clear across the city as a green streak of lightning shot down the tracks towards the south. “… As a certain dream traveler with wind elemental powers is prone to yelling, WAHOO!”

I was crouched down and smiling as the wind whipped at my face, green goggles over my eyes to protect them from air pressure as the world sped by.

I was grinding along the tracks at an insane speed and I hoped the emergency ‘off’ function slowed me down like Jacky said it would, it activated after hitting a certain threshold and would then eventually limit the skates to a specific speed.

Hopefully the emergency function speeds were much easier to work with by the time I reached Airship Mauled. I sure hoped that Celestia dropped by, because she was going to need these crowns back if she wanted Twilight to run the nation.

I should have thought of asking for these a long time ago when Jacky fixed that party tank for Prime’s group, nothing in Equestria was impossible after all. It would take me twenty minutes to get back to Airship Mauled at the speed I was going, still morning too.

I could do doughnut deliveries from Pony Joes for the food cult that mom doesn’t know about, being a muffin cultist was somewhat difficult to keep hidden.

-Celestia-

“What in the… how did she… she got out of canterlot, she escaped the guard, she even evaded the element of loyalty, one of the purported fastest pegasi in the world!” Luna seemed a little shocked, then again she has never met Jaded ‘Free Queen’ La Perm.

I prefer ‘Free Queen’ to what some other ponies use when in reference to her, I don’t know how or why she’s back. I’m just happy that she’s not holding a grudge against me for my failures. She looks relatively healthy for someone that was assassinated and that escape was definitely her, whether it’s jumping off the side of canterlot, unicycling onto an airship or pole-vaulting into a cabbage cart to quietly leave the city, Jade was quite clever with her escapes.

I’ll mark this one down as escaped on roller skate, goodness knows what she’ll do when she gets around to using a pogo stick.

“Do not worry, I have had previous interactions with her. Given that we’re friends, it’s perfectly fine… because I know where she lives.” That, and I knew that bureaucratic nightmare Sekhet was there too. “We’ll get our crowns back before the ceremony.”

“Then we’ll toss her in a cage in the darkest dungeon within another cage that’s also in a deep dungeon in a cardboard box that we’ll smash with a war hammer?” My sister was oddly livid, I should probably tell her that Jaded means no harm most of the time. Though I can understand the resentment as Jade stole her feathers, like we ever really run out of those.

-In an alternate plane of existence, Maries-

Jade was hugging the root of the biggest tree we have ever seen, the root itself was literally the size of a large mountain. We were at the base of one said mountain of hundreds. Her tail was wagging up a storm as she snuggled against the wood while purring.

Skelly looked up at the tree in awe and then pointed at Jade in apparent disbelief, a living skeleton disbelieved that Jade was responsible for a tree that grew entire worlds and universes?

Yggdrasil was an impossibly enormous, magical, fully ascended goddess tree.

Didn’t take Jade very long to get back from her trip to Canterlot, though she did have a bit of a problem dislodging herself from the rail. Jacky needs to fix a few minor things and then she’ll give the magnetically driven lightning skates back to jade.

Following this there was weird stuff with Jade and flying a giant peach around, with all the craziness that insanity brought, like fighting Captain Gash and his pirates off, eating the peach we were riding around on and etcetera. We’d rather not get into everything that happened, but we were at back in Airship Mauled before dinner.

Jade always brought a special brand of fun insanity into our lives.

-Airship Mauled, that evening, Jade-

“I still thought the pirates could do better than a collection of pink tricornes.” Arizona muttered as she jauntily angled the pirate hat on her head.

“Oh they weren’t pink before we got there, I just got to them first.” I grinned as Arizona dropped a bag of bits into Paprika’s waiting hooves, as did Velvet a second later. “Seriously, you lost the bet to her?”

“Meep.” Said a cheerful Paprika counting her bits, she was far smarter than her wives give her credit for.

“Why would you bet against me?" I let my ears and tail droop as I gave both Velvet and Arizona a sad look. Pom and Tianhuo were long gone for Huoshan, but Oleander and Fred were sticking around. "That makes me a sad kitty.”

I needed their help and they still had Dispel Grace in a jar, with requisite air holes, in the nether realm.

Fizzy was going to the ceremony tomorrow to watch Twilight be crowned leader of Equestria, while Celestia and Luna run off leaving Miss Sparkle holding the bag.

“It’s not that we bet against you... but it’s more the fact that we were betting on what you’d actually do, instead of whether or not you would succeed.” Velvet explained after a moment and I let up on my sad kitty looks. “We’re not that dumb sister… you know, it’s still odd for me to call you that.”

Velvet was my sister as long as she kept giving me free snow cones, I was relatively easy to please when it came to family.

“Excuse me, but what did you need me for Jade?” Celestia tilted her head and quirked a brow at me. “Also, what’s with the twenty gallon keg of… peach juice?”

“Eh, it involved a six hour adventure with a giant peach after what I did this morning, I went to visit my daughter who is quite humongous. My granddaughter Harmony better not drink that much Cosmic Kool-Aid or she might get too big for Equestria.” I answered flatly. “Talking... we need it.”