//------------------------------// // Chapter Seventy, A “‘Normal’” Day: Wednesday. // Story: Airship Mauled // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Near Manehatten Park, 10:15 AM, Jade- So I might have spent the last ten or so minutes doing something relatively cruel. I was fairly sneaky about it and I didn’t think I could actually sneak this small thing in, but I was now down to my third clay mask and I had to be careful about when I utilized it. I also told my friends and loved ones to start setting up for operation ‘Anvil Mania’. Now all I had to do was get there myself to orchestrate the entire event, which ended with a bang and not a clang. Still, it would be magical to watch once in motion. If I wanted the anvil to ring loud and clear, then I absolutely needed to be there to direct the efforts of Fizzy, Oleander, Fred, Fluttershy and my buddy Snickers since she wanted to be exceptionally helpful today. After it was done we’d be stopping for lunch, to discuss a few finer points of my plan. I had Paprika preparing a large picnic spread for everyone, to match her wives building and setting up tables and benches. We had enough fish jerky for the various meat eaters with plenty left over to pay off the weasels and raccoons for this part of the plot. So far the majority of my plotting was going quite well. Only one problem, I couldn’t get to where I needed to be in time to explain what I exactly needed them to do. This situation was exactly what the ballista is for. I approached the ballista and picked up a hexagonal coffin in my unicorn magic on the way. Yes, imaginary audience in my head, you heard me right. I currently had unicorn magic thanks to my current clay mask cast form. That and the excessive amount of wood we brought to this was useful for making aforementioned coffin lined with protective stuffing. I had to wonder what Fizzy would currently think of my looks. Placing the coffin on the ballista, I then got in the coffin myself and turned to the flail-tail cat and sea pony siblings with Jacky’s pet giant butterfly. “Here, this is how I want you to aim the ballista after I’m shot Ms. De Bris.” I levitated a folded piece of paper to her and she took it in her flipper hoof to scrutinize it thoroughly, she nodded to me and curiously looked at the cutie mark on my flanks. This just reminded me that we, Fizzle and Maries, haven’t exactly told anyone about my cutie mark or impending cuteceanera. I decided to wait until GODLESS wasn’t a factor in my life anymore, this was also putting a hold on several wedding plans. “Oh, can I do it big sister!” Nefer asked with a childish glee as he turned away from playing with Belfry the butterfly. “I don’t know, let me think about this Nefer.” My sister’s crewmate, Flotsam, actually looked to be thinking about this. “Oh come on, let him enjoy the whimsy of firing an Abyssinian turned Unicorn in a coffin onto the rooftops!” I gave Flotsam my big soulful cat eyes look, despite currently being a unicorn. “How are you doing that when you’re currently a unicorn?! You know what, no, I’m not going to worry about this too much.” Flotsam rubbed at her head with a loud groan. “Fine, Nefer you can shoot her. Just wait until she closes the coffin entirely first. There’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.” “Fire me boy!” I shouted out as I closed the coffin on myself and pressed my four hooves against the insides. “Yay!” Nefer shouted and I heard him pull the lever. Suddenly I felt the coffin moving and something like my stomach dropping out from under me. -Rooftops, Fizzy- Snickers was being cute by fluttering about and acting like she was a bird, she had brought me some horseshoe fries as a snack and then tossed my garbage in a can for me. Our favorite turtle dove most certainly wasn’t as innocent as she acts, especially with someone like Jade as her partner. It was just really hard to catch her in the act of doing anything wrong, there was always this subtle feeling of mischievousness about her. “We’re not going to get Jade in a dress unless she’s mind controlled. Even then I’d think we’d need staples, chains, glue, handcuffs and tape to even keep it on her. Even when she’s mind controlled, an evil clone or otherwise, I don’t think Jade would ever wear a dress and she’d resist all attempts to put one on her. I don’t think even the gods have the kind of power required to keep a dress on Jade for more than a minute.” Out of our herd, I was likely to be the only one in a dress at any conceivable wedding involving us. I had already made my intentions known in front of Maries and Jade, which they pretty much agreed to. It was pretty much official… I was clearly sanity challenged when it came to love. “Getting a single dress for Maries would also be hard unless they separate and Marie is not going to want to be separate from her sisters to even wear a dress that would fit a snake. Marie gets separation anxiety so easily, it’s really hard to watch her be on her own for more than five minutes.” “Well at least I’ll have an easier time of it, I know I’ll look good in a tuxedo.” Oleander stated with cheerful grin. “What do you say Fred, do want to wear the dress?” “Will it be frilly, I LIKE FRILLY!” There were a number of things that seemed wrong with a floating masculine demon book wanting to marry his darkness corrupted unicorn mare while in a dress. I wasn’t capable of judging as I was marrying an evil Abyssinian and the world’s smartest Chimera. “With your pretty hair, you definitely make my world Ollie… rowr… I’M OPEN TO ANY DRESS IDEA YOU CHOOSE!” Fluttershy flinched and shivered each time Fred’s voice went completely demonic, even Snickers shivered when he did that. I sometimes wondered what Ollie was like before she met Fred. “When will Jade get here Fizzle?” Honestly, it was surprising that Fluttershy wanted to be involved. The, nowadays not so shy, mare likely had a secret thing for adrenaline rushes. It was the only plausible reason she was okay with assisting us like this. “She said now was about the time we’d need to be here.” “Well…” I didn’t get to say much when something hit the far side of the roof and tumbled right for us, it skidded to a stop standing upside down and then fell over lid side up. It was a coffin, which was soon opened in a slow creaky manner. “I want to kiss my love!” A dizzy looking Jade said with a quirky accent as she flopped out of the coffin. I sighed and moved over to kiss the unicorn. Admittedly, she was quite adorable as a pony. “So do I look cute as a unicorn Fizzy? I’ve got about five more minutes on this.” “You do, but I prefer the cuddly kitty model of Jade.” I answered with a straight face, then pointed to the heavy steel anvil that was sitting nearby. “So… anvil?” “Right, Fluttershy, go tell Tippy-Toe to get the weasels and raccoons started.” Fluttershy flew off, Jade turned to Snickers and tossed her a thick pouch of illusion dust. “Snickers, spread the illusion dust thickly, there, there and there. Imaginations are about to run wild!” Snickers saluted with a flipper and flew off, I looked to Jade and she gave us a grin. “Will we finally know what the leader of GODLESS looks like now?” I asked, she just shook her head no and kept smiling as she turned to Ollie and Fred. “Get into position Fred and then turn on the wind-up toy train when I have Ollie signal you.” In response to Jade’s orders, the book bobbed once and then levitated off the side of the building into the alleyway. “Fizzle… prepare to drop the anvil and move it as I tell you to. I can’t do it because as a unicorn, I’m not exactly good at anything more than levitation with anything equivalent to ten pounds and I’m only going to be like this for a short while. One last thing to say… let this anvil ring!” -Manehatten Streets, Wheel Twist- My day had been particularly weird so far. Fighting easily destructible eldritch monsters that could grow tentacles had a taste for sandwiches, then getting hit with a sudden triple whammy by a bunch of foals taking fascination in a completely unattended horribly stinky cheese wheel left out in the sun. I sighed and wondered what could possibly happen next to ruin my day. No sooner did I think that thought, did I hear a lot of growling and several nearby ponies ears went straight up. Scientists say that ponies tend towards hive mind mentality when there is danger around, that is to say we tend to flock together in fear. I think this can be confirmed, because what happened next was definitely a sign that someone was out to get me in particular and they involved several other innocent ponies in the mix as well. A pack of raccoons, weasels and a single squirrel showed up. They had foaming mouths and caused a group of ponies, a group I now found myself in, to run away. That’s when we heard a telltale whistling noise. An anvil fell from the sky and stopped the rabid animals from getting closer. I noted that the squirrel wiped the sweet smelling foam from their face, revealing it to be milk foam from an espresso or cappuccino and started to rub their paws together maliciously. That’s when several more anvils started falling from the sky and that caused us to go into a blind panic, several of the anvils suddenly shot off from the ground where they crashed and came flying at us horizontally. A bit of stone dug itself into one of my legs, I whimpered and coughed out the dust that was being kicked up around us. This meant the anvils were very much real, also the air was tinged a bit green weirdly enough. The entire group of ponies was in a blind panic as we avoided the various anvils suddenly coming at us horizontally, only to hear more whistling noises and for several more anvils to come at us from above. We tried to turn left and cross the street, only to be cut off by more anvils and I was hit by a few more stray bits of street from several thunderous impacts. We tried to go back to moving forward and more anvils fell in front of us. One mare with a buzzed mane narrowly avoided getting hit with an anvil that sunk half way into the street and took a large chunk of stone to the shoulder. Above us waves of anvils started falling slowly inwards driving us into the alleyway, they were crisscrossing overhead and there were so many ringing noises my ears were hurting pretty badly by this point. We turned into the nearby alleyway and halfway into the alleyway the anvils stopped falling. Only for an Anvil to land next to a mare. She screamed and started running for the other end of the alleyway with every other pony following her. I quietly noted that after the cacophony of multiple anvils coming at us, something very odd was going on here. Several more anvils fell behind us and I looked to the ground and noted that the ground wasn’t being as damaged as what the last anvil that fell next to the mare did. An anvil fell and dug a hole in the ground in front of me hitting me with several chips of stone and I turned tail. Too frightened to think about the oddity of this many anvils not doing as much damage as they could be to the ground with the distances they were falling, I joined up with the group to see something odd. I came up to the group of ponies that stopped cold at the end of the alleyway, because there were a lot of plumbing tubes blocking the way and a small bit of train tracks leading to a fuse. The fuse led to a tube pointing towards us. I had this sinking suspicion as to what was about to happen. “What’s blocking our way out?” One of the ponies asked. “It looks like… a potato cannon?” Another stallion, one with an engineering cutie mark, seemed curious about that. He wasn’t the only one that was curious. We all heard the sound of a whistle, a train slowly rolled along the tracks with a lit match. Our eyes widened as the lit match soon touched the fuse, instead of slowly burning down… the fuse immediately went up like it was made of flash paper. The loud whump of the pipe ejecting something at us was heard and then everything was tinted blue, at least I wasn’t directly hit by whatever it was that was shot at us. There were some strange yellow stuff on the ground afterwards, but I was too busy running out of the alleyway with the other ponies to care. We were covered in a strange blue dust, but it was rather easy to wipe off of ourselves. The streets that were once full of falling anvils, now had none in them. -Rooftop, Jade- Yes, score! The one event I needed to happen, has happened. Now all I needed to do was add some icing to this cake of a horrible day for one pony in particular, as if it wasn’t bad enough for them that the Cutie Mark Crusaders had succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. Now I set the alarm clock for eight hours from now and will have to carry it with me. Paprika’s wad, plumbing tubes, poison joke and anvil all utilized successfully. Now I had to terrorize a local theatre and to set up a certain pony appearing at Trixie’s show as a consolation, I would now need the string, the candelabra, the bit of slow melting ice… I wanted to hit them with the manure. “What do we do with the anvil? We can’t just leave the evidence there Jade.” Narrowing her eyes at the ponies below, Fizzy soon turned to me. “Which one of them was the leader of GODLESS? Was that the concentrated poison joke you just used with Paprika’s fluff wad in that potato cannon? What exactly will that do Jade?” “Answering any of those questions would be telling, wait for this evening Fizzy. It’ll be all worth it... though it’s going to get a bit rough.” Snuggling against Fizzy, I was back to being my good old jerk-ass cat self. “For now we will give the leader two hours of reprieve to catch a break ourselves. Oleander, take the anvil to this theater and set it up where the production ponies tell you to. Get the string, the candelabra, the pepper, find a throwing knife, Blade and finally Velvet to make that melting bit of ice now. This is going to give a certain pony post-traumatic stress disorder and an intrinsic fear of anvils.” I was quite sure that this was going to eventually break a certain pony completely.