-Hayburger Supreme, 7:29 AM, Toasty-
“Hey, can someone watch the register, I need to tinkle like really bad here!” I receive an immediate reply from Maria.
“Sure thing Toasty!” My goodness was Maria adorable as her own separate being.
I went to the employee’s bathroom as Maria took up my station. Once I had the door closed behind me firmly, I knocked on the locked stall among the few open ones there.
If anyone else came in here in the last thirty minutes, they would be smelling fresh toast and butter.
“Hey Toasty, I’m finished here.” I said as my form started to warp and Toasty opened up the door.
He saw me change back into who I really was.
-Jade-
I made sure my friends went to the bathroom earlier and made sure they wouldn’t enter within the last thirty minutes.
“Thanks for letting me take your place for a stick of butter Toasty.” I grinned as he came out of the stall with a toaster while chewing on a bit of buttered toast.
“Don’t mention it dude girl, I’m always willing to help an old part-time employee of Hayburger with anything as long as you are true to the Hayburger name!” The pony said as he nodded to me, the true Toasty Brain. “Your plans are really wicked, but I can see why you’re doing it. Rock on Jaded, oh and thanks for the stick of butter!”
“Coo!” Jumping we turned to Snickers as she had a sack with some shoestring hay fries and horseshoe hay fries with her. She was just agreeing with Toasty who could actually ready minds and it was really hard pretending to be him for the last thirty minutes.
“You knew all along, didn’t you?” Grinning at my little buddy, she nodded back with an equally friendly grin. There was no way she could have ignored or missed the bond between us. The turtle reached into the paper sack she dragged in with her and held up the shoestring fries to me. “For me, oh you shouldn’t have… though I do guess transforming does take some energy and I could use a snack. Thank you Snickers!”
I started munching on the excessive amount of fries in the box, I always did prefer shoestring over horseshoe or curly fries. I wouldn’t even touch curly fries without some kind of sauce, I really loved ribbon fries and those were usually only seen at various fairs.
“Coo.” Snickers stated happily, she took the remaining box of horseshoe fries in the sack and hovered above Toasty. She was likely going to give them to Fizzy, my familiar really does love almost everyone like Paprika does. Don’t know where she gets the money from, I’m not questioning the world’s most intelligent turtle dove.
I moved to the stall Toasty came out of and closed the toilet seat, went back to wash my hands, then I leapt onto the toilet’s seat and clambered up into the ceiling to make a stealthy exit from the establishment.
First clay mask successfully used. Operation ‘Left Behind’ was now done, it was far more ineffective than I thought it would be.
Now to set up operation ‘Anvil Mania’, but first a quick trip to the park to make sure the Cutie Mark Crusaders are doing exactly what I think they will.
Trixie’s show was this evening and I can’t wait to get a front row seat for that bit of madness.
-Random Manehatten Alleyway-
The ‘Stay Left’ monster poked its head out of the alleyway and saw a loaf of rye bread sitting on a plate, it started to make its way forward and missed the flash of glowing eyes coming down on it with an axe.
Skeletal Noria, AKA Skelly, quickly destroyed the quirky looking eldritch monster before it could reach the plate and multiply itself.
Afterwards Skelly went on to become a vigilante for a while, there would be talks of real Power Pony having escaped the comic books.
Her job was to make sure nobody could accidentally trot into Jade’s various plans and to limit the damage said plans would do if things went too far.
-Manehatten Park, Arizona-
I brought the hammer down again gently and wiped the sweat from my forehead. There was sweating because I was trying not to hit this very fragile wood too hard, it turns out I’m so ridiculously strong that I could accidentally break a wooden board by just breathing on it. So this was a little awkward.
“So when you asked Jaded for something you could do to earn money, I didn’t exactly expect carpentry or construction of you.” Well what can Velvet expect of me?
I wasn’t exactly all fight all the time, I also liked being playful with rope and I was now taking an active interest in building things with my hooves. It helped that Velvet’s cabin up in Reign was hoof made by the deer herself, it certainly made these park benches and tables easier to construct with someone who knew exactly what they were doing.
“Yeah, well, we do enough destroying things between us fluff butt. It would actually be nice of us if we could repair the damage we do to our surroundings just by being our natural selves.” I wasn’t looking for a fight at the moment and neither was Velvet, but when we did go looking for one… I would certainly find it within a manner of minutes. It was easy as asking someone I loved if she would like a hoof sandwich for lunch. She hasn’t said no to that yet, and the makeup cuddles afterwards were really worth it. “Also, you and I both know we can’t leave Paprika to be the major money maker in the family. Sure you have your perfect snow cone business, but it’s mostly for earning loose change. We can’t rely on tournaments to keep all three of us fed you know.”
“Why do you suppose Jade needed a wad of Paprika’s fluff?” Couldn’t tell you Velvet, because I wasn’t sure what she was going to do with it either and Paprika’s fluff was rather uniquely specific of her.
“Whatever she has planned, it’s going to be something big or a series of smaller things culminating in something.” I placed the table and noted that there were enough for all of our friends to view Trixie’s show from a distance. “Jade isn’t exactly easy to figure out when she’s got something going on.”
I wonder how Jade convinces so many people to get in on things like this, but then I realize that I was probably better off not knowing given she’s convinced me to do a few weird things before too.
“Oh good, you’re setting up the tables in the right position. Now if you’ll excuse me…” Jade suddenly rushed up to use from out of nowhere holding some chalk and a bag. She looked to the sky while sticking her tongue out of the right corner of her mouth in concentrated thought. “Should be about right…”
She drew a line and then put another line through it marking an X on the ground in the middle of all the tables we were setting up.
“What are you doing?” I was curious.
“Nope, can’t tell you, nobody is ruining this by talking about it!” She pulled out a bunch of caltrops on chunks of wood that looked to be made of paper clips and started to lay them around the chalk markings in a seemingly random way that made them relatively easy to avoid stepping on.
She paused to look at one of the paperclip mousetrap caltrops things, and then she turned it ever so slightly to the left. Whatever her reasoning behind that was, it was a rather exact bit of placement from the looks of it as she scrutinized it for a full minute.
“Nobody is to touch those, they are precisely placed there for a reason!” Jade told us and then turned to watched something, Velvet and I did the same thing. “If anyone is going to disturb those, have Paprika hug them to warn them off… hopefully Paprika is not too far away from you two.”
“She isn’t.” Velvet confirmed.
“Okay, that’s a good thing.” Why was Jade currently watching several fillies and colts with a critical eye? “Tinsel can you keep them away if they wander over here?”
Tinsel popped up from behind Velvet’s head and waved at Jade.
“Thank you, this will all make sense in due time!” Jade said as she took out a clay mask. “I’m going to leave in a bit, but first are the tables you already set up varnished? I need to sustain the wood. I also wanted to see if they will do what I think they will.”
“What are they going to do?” I asked. When Jade once said Ogres and Oubliettes taught things that will be useful in real life, she certainly wasn’t kidding in the slightest. “Wait a minute… isn’t that...”
“Now that’s the question Zone, isn’t it fascinating?” Jade said pleasantly in a different voice. She had disguised her appearance with am alchemy sustain instead of a cast, the clay mask sustain was a bit more limited than its cast that Jade can munchkin like crazy and she now didn’t look like her pack toting self. “Even I don’t know what’s going to happen and hopefully at least one of three things will occur, because I set them up to happen that way.”
“Is it weird that I’m scared of Jade when I’m at least physically stronger than her by at least hundred times or more and can beat her in a straight fight without a problem?” I asked Paprika as she trotted up to me.
“Meep.” Paprika shook her head no, it wasn’t weird in the slightest… she was slightly scared too.
-Wheel Twist-
I finished my food in the park and tossed the trash away in the receptacle, I blinked when I saw a strange Abyssinian talking with a cow. I shivered a bit at the sight of the female queen looking in my direction with amusement.
Decided to stay well away from the tables being set up in an apparently new picnic area, I think I actually have ailurophobia now.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea Scootaloo!” I looked to the side and saw a gaggle of fillies and colts near a tree standing around a stinky, slightly melting, wheel of cheese precariously balanced on the end of a seesaw.
“Oh come on Apple Bloom, just look at it!” The orange filly with a chicken style comb for a mane was pointing at the cheese wheel, she was talking to a filly with a similar cutie mark that sported a red bow. “We usually cause trouble by accident, but this looks like it’s meant for causing trouble on purpose. How often do we do ever things on purpose?”
“I don’t know Scootaloo… the trees here look suspiciously like they are full of sap and if we do it then we’ll get in a lot of trouble.” The unicorn filly among the many fillies and colts seemed like the voice of reason.
“I don’t know about you three, but shouldn’t we Cutie Mark Crusader groups put it to a vote?” The fourth was another filly that had an accent and a pair of scissors on her flank, she was obviously local to Manehatten. “Okay Manehatten Cutie Make Crusaders, what should we do here?”
I looked around and noticed that quite a few ponies stopping to watch the fillies and colts, I wasn’t the only one that sensed something in the air. It was like there was a train wreck in slow motion that hasn’t happened yet and every pony in the vicinity was now staring at all of them.
“Okay, it’s decided, we’re doing this!” Several ponies followed the orange filly with the chicken comb in climbing the nearby tree. Every pony heard creaking noise.
I felt like running, but I couldn’t look or move away from what was happening for some reason.
-8:13 AM, Jade-
“Come on, no whammies, no whammies…” Why was I getting concerned looks from my cousin family? My eyes widened in awe as I watched everything happen in crystal clear clarity.
“Agh!” A colt screamed
“What the...” A certain chicken filly slipped.
“I knew this was a bad idea, why does this stuff keep happening to us?!” Apple Bloom screamed.
“No, no, no, please no sap, not again!” Sweetie Belle’s voice certainly went shrill as the sound of a tree falling could be heard from off screen. A second later there was a high pitched scream. “Why?!”
“No, my mane!” A mare cried out pitifully .
It all happened in quite a beautiful culmination all at once, a shower of chewing gum, then cheese everywhere and just about every pony in the splash zone was now covered in tree sap. The fillies and colts thankfully didn’t get any gum on them, so I didn’t feel too bad about what just happened here.
Having bought out half a gum ball machine, entirely on a whim, was now to be considered a stroke of pure genius on my part.
I burst out laughing, Velvet snickered into a hoof, Arizona was guffawing and Paprika had the brightest smile of the four of us.
“Oh my goodness all three at once, I wish I had a camera to see the look on their…!” There were tears in my eyes as I curled up on the ground busting a gut about what happened. I was stopped by Paprika holding up a camera and smiling to me, I quickly took it and got several pictures of all of this before it was too late. “We are going to sell so many copies of this to the newspapers! Can I keep the camera for a while Paprika?”
“Meep.” Paprika held up a second camera and nodded to me, she took a few extra pictures too. Apparently the wife of my lovely doe sister was a notorious tourist and always brought backup cameras.
“Remind me to ask you about your photo album later.” After the alpaca nodded, I looked at one of the pictures I took and smiled nastily. I nailed the target I was after without being directly responsible for what happened.
It seemed bad luck was out in the streets today and I don’t think Discord was anywhere near this spectacle of a crime scene.
“That… was... amazing!” Arizona continued laugh harshly while trying to catch her breath. “Jade, you are without a doubt one of the best friends that I’ve ever had next to my wives!”
“Now to go set up the anvil to threaten a certain ‘someone’ with after they clean themselves up.” I had finished sustaining the wood of the benches and tables Arizona and Velvet had set up. “I hope you liked the show, see you later this evening for some more fun guys!”
“We wouldn’t miss it for the world sister.” Velvet called out. “We’ll be ready to catch them Jade, just give us the word!”
The leader of GODLESS definitely didn’t escape this day unscathed after that. I rubbed my paws together as I started to walk off.
Now to meet up with Fizzy, as she is likely waiting at the pulley system.
I seriously hadn’t expected this to turn out so well. You’d think with the many protections the leader has, that they would have avoided the Chaos Marked Crusaders.