Once the children had been assured that the kerfuffle over the boorish dunderhead had been dealt with, and that the military wouldn't give them heart attacks anymore, Natalie led them and Katie to one of the hangars. Unlike most hangars, between airships and drones were some lifts heading down, big enough to fit Blue Crow's plane or the Scylla if they could position it properly. The first lift they saw was the one they boarded, going down, down, down into the mountain through a tunnel that was lit with magitek crystals.
"So Anna's good with swords?" Sweetie Belle asked, tilting her head. "But isn't archery her special talent?"
"Well… that and making plants grow, but yes. Matt and I had to train her on fighting with various weapons as part of her initiation program, before she settled on archery; most of her other skills were taught to her by her parents, which she has honed over the years. Some are impractical, yes, but those she keeps as hobbies on the side," Natalie answered, her wings ruffling. "Better to have some skill in a myriad of weapons, than to be really good at a certain weapon and be unable to use anything else once you're disarmed." She rolled her eyes and added, "Also, we taught her some pretty obvious tells that enemies can and will do if they're stupid enough so she could counter them, and that tell by Duke Aegis was as obvious as he could get."
"He telegraphed that attack so hard he launched himself to the moon without aid," Katie translated, a trifle smug as her orbs gleamed wickedly. "Even I could have dodged that strike, and that's if I were blindfolded."
"Well, you have working wings. What would he have done, float the sword to the ceiling to get to you?" Sweetie asked, shaking her head ruefully. "He looked like he didn't have a single bit of combat experience."
"Or spellcasting experience, for that matter. Not that it is a concern for him anymore, since he lost his horn privileges," Natalie said drolly, with the air of somepony who might have severed more than a few horns in her wake. "And while we're speaking of experience, we need to broaden Sarah's combative horizons a fair bit; sure, she has her special talent, but from what I've seen, she hardly knows how to use it effectively."
"What about Lazarus?" Scootaloo asked, wings buzzing as she felt the lift begin to slow down.
"He might need some sprucing up of his combat skills too, but considering he held his own pretty well, it might not take much for him to catch up," Natalie replied with a shrug. "Plus, Matt and I rekindled our frenemyship with him, so at least he'll have some sparring sessions to look forward to."
"Frenemyship?" Apple Bloom asked, frowning at the word. "Sounds like a bunch of old ponish to me."
"Well, that's just what we called it when we were kids," Natalie replied with a grin. "Sometimes we were friends, sometimes we were enemies, but always sticking together until we decided to split. Honestly, it's good to know he's still alive and kicking."
"So, are there any other alicorns on Fantasia?" Scootaloo asked, tilting her head.
Natalie's smile fell. "Well… there are. Mostly holed up in Redpine, upon whom we're strongly considering initiating the Catastrophe Protocol on, which… involves us basically murdering them all before they can murder us in turn," she said, a tinge of sadness to her voice. "They've… been up to no good. There was also one in Greenwood, and… we've found corpses of potential others in that area."
"What happened to the living one in Greenwood?" Sweetie Belle asked. Natalie did not answer with words; rather, she closed her eyes and shook her head as if to say 'they were a lost cause.' Sweetie frowned. "Oh… that's unfortunate…"
"Are… are all the alicorns on Fantasia like that?" Scootaloo asked. "Like… crazy?"
Natalie sadly nodded. "The craziness has affected even us, to an extent. But we at the military seem to be the only ones who see it for what it is, as far as native-born Fantasians go. We don't want to perpetuate it anymore," she replied, looking up as the lift shook and stopped, revealing a tall glass door before her and her charges that opened to admit them into the cargo bay. She took point and trotted out, content to let the others fall into step behind her.
On either side stretched a massive hall with a gentle curve to it, and on their left were a few more lifts that were empty for the time being. The ceiling was high, about as high as the factory in fact, which was probably a necessity given how much the army was raking in scavenged goods. Besides the lifts, there weren't any doors here, but there were the shapeshifting holes that the changeling soldiers used to punch in and punch out of their shifts.
Immediately, a few soldiers turned to them, with one to the left of the collection of lifts waving Natalie over with a hoof. She turned and approached him, a brow raised. "Yes?" she asked.
"Ma'am, are you sure you should be flashing your wings?" the soldier asked, frowning. He jerked his head towards the kids behind her and added, "Because, well… kids are notorious tattletales, and I don't think they should be in the know."
Natalie sighed. "Well, a pair in one of the guard posts shot their mouths off with these three in earshot, so Matt had to tell them to avoid sinking airships," she said with a frown. "I trust them not to tattle."
The soldier slowly nodded, as though a part of him wasn't buying it. Still, he knew better than to call his superior's judgment into question, and potentially sink another airship in the process. Better to have that talk behind closed doors. "Alright… just… I hope…"
Natalie shushed him with a hoof to his lips. "I know. They're kids, albeit… not anywhere as ignorant as the Fantasian standard. Don't be so harsh on them, okay?" she asked. The soldier nodded, and she parted her hoof from his lips.
The Crusaders traded looks. "Fantasian kids are ignorant?" Sweetie asked.
Katie nodded. "Oh yeah; I heard from Twilight that a lack of functioning schools on this planet tends to have that effect. Most ponies in other provinces would claim to come from the School of Hard Knocks, but couldn't tell you their frog from their ribcage," she answered. "Trust me… there's a lot of stupidity abound on this planet, and most of it is concentrated in villages that would rather pass down what little they know, than to expand that knowledge by leaving their communities once in a while. Part of why Maria is the way she is—and also why she's not allowed any playdates at the moment."
"The School of Hard Knocks is quite unforgiving with its methods of so-called teaching," Natalie said as an aside, watching as the soldier who had confronted her meandered away to continue on with his duties. With him returning to his work, the group was now free to meander through the cargo bay as they saw fit, and Natalie trotted ahead towards the immediate area on the right to the lift she had disembarked from, seeming to aim for something that was stomping about in the distance.
As they followed her, the Crusaders looked to the door of the lift they had left; it was as tall as an airship, probably by necessity since the lift itself was that size. But they wondered: whatever needed to be that size just to fit through? Their attention was torn away from that question as they heard Natalie spring a leak and start swearing.
"Okay, whose idea was it to put the Godcat-damned Mighty Oak here?!" Natalie howled, wings flared and flapping as she regarded the thing that managed to light her fuse. The Crusaders and Katie approached, the latter looking on in amusement and the former in confusion as they turned to beheld a massive golem made of wood and metal, twice as tall as Big Mac, and roughly the width of an airship's gangplank. It stood upright, with a metal jaw, a stubby body with a flat top on stubby legs, a drill for one hand and a clawed shield for the other. The face was beset with hollow, ovular eyes, and right now said eyes regarded Natalie with some measure of bemusement of its own.
A changeling soldier approached, sighing. "Lieutenant-General Starcovert, this… is the only place we could put the Mighty Oak for the time being," he said, eyes half-lidded and fully expectant of the firing of the cannon that turned to him in a heartbeat.
"Elaborate," Natalie said tersely, a glare on her face that radiated the air of somepony about to bust some skulls.
"We do not have much forests at this time here at the Aerie, and we'd have to grow some more in the sparse plains before we can put him in them." The soldier gestured to the still-perplexed Mighty Oak and added, "Furthermore, we were… distinctly under the impression that if the former villagers of Greenwood saw him, they'd try something funny, so this is more of a safety matter for the villagers than anything. Also, you seem to have forgotten his size, which is another factor that put him here to begin with. At the very least, we have his consent, so… as long as he's okay with it, I don't think we should mind."
The Mighty Oak waved a drill-arm to conjure runes with a power that pulsed across the limb, forming that strange alphabet which hovered in front of him. Natalie turned, read the runes, and sighed, her wings drawing closed. "Fine… just… let me know next time, okay?"
"Will do, ma'am," the soldier replied, and with that, he turned to trot away.
Scootaloo trotted up to the Mighty Oak, and while he had some difficulty angling his body to look at her, he did extend his shield-arm to let her know he knew she was there. She squeed, extended a hoof to touch the shield, and got a nod from the golem. "He's so cool! It's like he's magitek and nature all rolled into one package!" she said with a grin. She turned to Natalie. "Did you build him?"
Natalie shook her head and allowed herself to relax. "Nope, he was constructed before any of us were even born," she answered. "Most we have is that an alicorn crafted him and brought him to life, with full sapience and everything." She turned to the Oak and added, "Of course, he… communicates exclusively in ancient alicorn as a result. He… was in Greenwood when everything went south over there, so he had to be extracted too."
"Is he part of the military?" Sweetie questioned.
Again, Natalie's head shook. "Truth be told… I'm not sure we can recruit him without him punching one of us into the nearest wall," she said with a shrug. "Or that he'd be exactly willing after what happened."
"What'd he do, fight you?" Apple Bloom asked.
Natalie nodded. "When we visited him for the first time, during the Godcat fiasco, and after Anna had lost her mind regarding three sacred jewels keeping Godcat sealed," she said. "We were flying over Greenwood, just checking on them, keeping out of sight with cloaking spells and spying on the villagers with telescopes. Because her eyes are sharper than ours, she could see that the jewel Greenwood had was missing without a telescope, and would not stop bugging us until we agreed to help her find it. She thought the Mighty Oak must've known where the jewel went, and challenged us for the right to know that information. He's a lot tougher than he looks, especially if you're like me and holding back all your power just to avoid dropping burning meteors everywhere."
"You hold back?" Scootaloo asked.
Natalie nodded once more. "We kinda had to do that during the visit to Equestria as well, just to keep ponies from asking us too many questions. Celestia would have roasted us on a spit if she found out what we actually were," she said simply.
"Again, arson-themed cutie marks," Katie piped up. "Kept under tight wraps." She pointed at her superior. "Technically walking, talking arson right there." That earned her a smack upside the head from a partially-amputated wing, albeit not hard enough to even jerk her muzzle downwards.
"Oh hush," Natalie ordered, rolling her eyes.
"And if I don't?" Katie challenged, her tone smug.
"You won't get any purple wasp tonight," Natalie said simply. She grinned as Katie recoiled, wings snapping open and orbs dilating.
"You wouldn't," Katie hissed.
"I definitely would," Natalie answered. "Behave." Katie wilted, and her superior relented with wings ruffling. She began trotting once more, going around the Mighty Oak. He waved at them, and tromped off to head elsewhere in the cargo bay. The Crusaders waved back, and trotted after their taller companion, with Katie sulking behind them and grumbling about how Natalie was fibbing.
It wasn't long before they came upon the crane they had seen in the photographs, and the Crusaders paused to look at it. "What's that for?" Sweetie asked, causing Natalie to turn to her as she pointed at the crane.
Natalie followed the filly's raised hoof and looked at the crane. "Oh, that. Sometimes we get to use crates so huge, it'd otherwise take a lot of magic from a lot of soldiers just to lift. It helps us sort really big, important boxes," she said. "We don't use it a lot, considering we're self-sufficient, but when we do it's kinda like opening a big present. And for such a thing, one of us has to be on standby, in case we get… weird items."
"Weird items? Like what?" Scootaloo asked, ears twitching as she heard the sound of something wooden sliding across the floor, followed by the floor itself shaking. She turned to Natalie, then poked her head around her to find quite possibly the strangest treasure chest she had seen yet, with an open, flexible top revealing fleshy flaps and teeth lining its edges, tentacles, and a pony-shaped figure in it all. In turn, the weird box was being followed by the biggest, hairiest, tuskiest elephant the Crusaders had seen, easily half the height of an airship and trumpeting as it wrapped its trunk around the base of the weird box.
Natalie turned to the pair who approached, and sighed. She turned to the hairy elephant. "Thank you, Mr. Tusks. I don't know what I'd do if Grabs McFlaps over there managed to snag my dress again," she said, smiling warmly at Mr. Tusks, who nodded with eyes beaming.
The weird box she had addressed as 'Grabs McFlaps' crossed her fleshy forelegs together, pouting. "You hardly make any time for me anymore! It's always work, work, work with you," she complained, frowning and giving Natalie some puppy dog eyes. The fact she had functioning eyes and a mouth weirded the Crusaders out somewhat.
"... why do you have a talking box and a hairy elephant?" Sweetie asked.
"Wooly mammoth, actually," Natalie corrected. "Mr. Tusks is the last of his kind, so we took pity on him and brought him here for protection. As for the box… she's actually a sentient mimic, a type of being that eats travelers who really should double-check their treasure chests every so often." She gestured to said mimic. "She's… flirty with me for some reason, so we took her in too…"
The Crusaders flinched and went "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeew!" in unison.
The mimic tried to slide up to Natalie, but Mr. Tusks had a firm grip on the bottom of her chest. It wasn't for a lack of trying, though, thanks to her tentacles. She turned to the mammoth and continued to gripe, "You're no fun, hairball! You're such a buzzkill!" She turned to Natalie. "Please tell him to let me go~" she pleaded in a husky voice, which Natalie was unfazed by.
"Can't; got children to wrangle," Natalie said curtly. She spread a wing and nudged the trio forward. "She won't bite," she said.
Scootaloo stepped forward, looking at her first flesh-and-blood mimic. The feeling in her gut could best be described as weird, but then again, she hadn't expected said mimic to pitch a hissyfit just because she couldn't actually get to her intended target. "Hello, do you have a name?" she asked.
The mimic turned to her, lifted her hooves to her face, and began fawning. "Aaaaaw, Natalie, I didn't know you were such a big softy~" she cooed, eyes sparkling. "Yes I do have a name; it's Pyrite," she answered, moving to scoop Scootaloo up in her forelegs, only to be pulled back by Mr. Tusks, who trumpeted disapprovingly.
Scootaloo turned to Natalie. "So… why do you have a mimic?" she asked.
"Long story, but—" Natalie began, only to glower a little when Pyrite cut her off.
"Oh, I was in a volcano, and confronted after Akron was slain," Pyrite said, a twinkle in her eyes as she clasped her hooves next to her cheek and swooned. "Of course, I did fight them, but I was just one mimic up against the big, bad world of Fantasia. And also against my darling Natz—" Natalie rolled her eyes at this, "—and against two stallions who tried to rob me as opposed to the other way around!" A hoof went to her forehead, indicating a faint, "And my heroine pulled the brutes back and ordered them to stop before she gelded them, and they listened, and they took me in afterwards as an apology~"
Sweetie Belle rolled her eyes. Pyrite was as dramatic as her sister already, and she felt as though she could only handle so much in one day. "Rarity in duplicate," she thought to herself, shaking her head.
"Oh, this is rich," Katie commented, watching with glee. She pranced in place and added, "What next, you gonna attract skeleton hydras with your glossy ass?"
Natalie growled and bapped the wraithling with her wing again before turning to address her. "Shut up," she growled between clenched teeth.
"Not my fault your shiny crystalline ass has its own magnetic field, attracting all the perverts for miles and miles around," Katie replied, only to get bapped once again. Some of the soldiers watching the altercation were snickering at this, grinning at the seemingly suicidal wraithling and her antics.
"You little—" Natalie groaned, lifted her wings, and shook them in the air like a pair of incomplete fists. "I'm surrounded by horndogs!" she complained.
"What's a horndog?" Apple Bloom asked, only to be shushed by a wing.
"You don't need to know," Natalie said quickly, before turning her attention back to Pyrite, only to find her glaring at the wraithling.
"Who brought that ugly thing here?" Pyrite asked, trying to reach Katie to no avail. "I'll crack her skull open for you, my darling!"
Katie didn't even flinch as the tentacles came to within an inch of her snout. The most she did was light her stub-horn, building a crackling aura of crimson that began to form a mask of ice over her face. "Watch it, primadonna," she said in warning, "or else you're gonna have icicles on your teeth."
Pyrite hissed and recoiled at the crackling magic, eyes warily watching the wraithling as she dimmed her broken horn. She noticed something weird, and decided to pipe up, "Wait, aren't changelings supposed to… y'know, die in the cold?"
"She's packing glycerin in her veins. You could put her into an ice cube, and she wouldn't give a damn," Natalie answered with a roll of her eyes. "Unless you thaw her out with fire, and then she might care."
"Like you did," Katie chirped, only to get bapped upside the head by a wing again.
"That situation was partly your fault, if I remember correctly," Natalie said, frowning and shaking her head.
"Hey, it wasn't like I asked to have that chunk of hail hit me upside the head on that balcony! I just wanted to do some sightseeing!" Katie argued, wings buzzing with a hum that somehow sounded indignant.
"Which is pointless, since you're half-blind," Natalie countered, shaking her head as she heard more passing soldiers snickering like schoolchildren. She turned to Pyrite and added, "Anyway, gotta wrangle the children, finish their nickel tour, yadda yadda catchuptoyoulater," she said hurriedly, lighting her horn and lifting the children and wraithling off the ground before speeding around Pyrite and Mr. Tusks with her wings half-flared.
"Wait! I didn't even get the chance to hold you in my tentacles! Where are you going?" Pyrite called after Natalie to no avail, her voice diminishing with distance until it faded. Natalie waited until she had rounded some more of the curvature before slowing down, then stopping to put the children and wraithling back onto their hooves. She looked around, seeing soldiers looking at her funny, and upon registering the lack of a persistent mimic, allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief.
"It's like everywhere I go, everyone wants a piece of my cutie mark… first the asswipes who ran that stadium, then Lance, then Beholders, then mimics, and now shady business fronts and petulant mare-children pretending to be nobles…" Natalie grumbled, shaking her head at the indignity of it all. "What the hell did I do to deserve this? How many puppies did I kick in a previous life to warrant this?"
"Is it because you're beautiful?" Sweetie asked, causing Natalie to choke on the air, flare her wings, and blush at the same time.
"Like I said, her ass has its own magnetic field," Katie unhelpfully answered, causing her superior to sputter. "I'm calling it now: wraiths will want a piece of the action one day, and she'll have to punt them to Mythos or the moon to get them off her case." That got some of the soldiers nearby to double over laughing, only adding to the poor Lieutenant-General's growing embarrassment.
"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew!!" the Crusaders howled in unison, flinching away from their undead chaperone as they got the unfortunate mental image of an undead creature trying to hit on a beautiful mare, and failing in spectacular fashion.
"I—who—why—" was all Natalie could manage to get out, her face beet red from mortification as she turned to her mouthy subordinate with widened eyes.
If Katie could grin slyly, she would have done so in that moment. As it was, she was eating up the schadenfreude with the same glee that social-ladder-climbing-nobles used when witnessing one of their betters take a prideful fall. "You know, on the way to the hangar, I saw some soldiers playing charades," she added, orbs twinkling in amusement. "One leaned on a sword, another on a staff, and the third made a hat like Lance's before putting tree twigs in the holes in their holey legs."
"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!" Natalie croaked, now red to the ears and the tip of her horn.
"Oh yeah, and they were talking about the burst of love they felt last night, too. If they didn't have slimes handy, they'd have ate it up like dessert," Katie said, her tone turning positively crap-eating. "You know…" She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.
Sweetie regarded Katie with a flat expression. "... what are you on about?" she asked.
"Youdon'twannaknow!" Natalie squealed in one breath, using her magic to conjure noise mufflers to plop on the Crusaders' heads. At the same time, she used her wings to cover her face, muttering obscenities into her feathers to the tune of another round of laughter from the lower ranks surrounding her. With her ears pinned back, she waited until the laughter died down before peeking her head out from beneath her feathers, and then spreading her wings and bapping the wraithling upside the head with both limbs in question. That time, she did this hard enough to jerk Katie's snout downwards, but other than that she was fine.
Once she was certain the jeering had hushed completely, she removed the noise mufflers from the Crusaders' ears and sighed. She looked around to see where she had dragged the foals off to, and smiled upon seeing shapeshifting holes yawning wide enough to reveal crates beyond them. She trotted that way, her embarrassment slowly receding as she made a mental note to keep her promise for the night. The children and mouthy wraithling followed her, the former wondering what had gotten Natalie so flustered and the latter snickering to herself over the whole ordeal.
"Do you sort the cargo boxes by contents?" Sweetie Belle asked.
"We do; makes it easier to get something we need instead of having piles of clutter to sort through," Natalie answered, wings ruffling. She peered inside the shapeshifting hole, lighting her horn to better see the labeling on the boxes. "... this is ammunition for blasters, gunblades, and the machine guns on the planes," she reported. She turned to the children. "We have two types of ammunition: smaller, metal bullets, used mainly for gunblades like what Lance has, and larger, sturdy crystal shards for anything mounted onto something."
The Crusaders traded looks. "Why do you use crystals for ammo?" Apple Bloom asked, tilting her head. "'Cause if you charge 'em with mana, they might just explode before firing."
Natalie grinned. "Excellent point; for that reason, we use crystals that have already died and can't collect any charges anymore," she answered. "Of course, we sort by grades: Grade S is for the machine guns on the airborne magitek, like what Blue Crow and his squadron uses. Grade A is for ground-bound machine guns, typically found scattered around the guard posts and monitored by the soldiers therein. Grades B and C are used for the portable blasters, mainly in conjunction with other spells that are cast through said weapons, with the crystals acting as shrapnel." She watched as the children wrote that down.
"How many Grades do you got for the crystals?" Scootaloo asked, wings buzzing.
"We stop at D, then skip to F and halt completely," Natalie answered. "Grade F crystals… well, you might as well use them for chandeliers; they're cracked, but can be cut into other forms provided they're big enough. D is slightly better, if you want something fancier… like, say, a necklace or hairpin." She gestured to the necklaces on her neck, which showed an eight-point silver star, a golden pentagram, and a golden five-point star. "Obviously, though, D and F Grade crystals are useless for combat, and generally are cheap to replace, so I wouldn't tout them on armor or uniforms like good ol' enchanted metal." She shrugged. "Of course, gryphons and changelings don't particularly fancy non-enchanted jewelry around here for pretty much that reason, barring whatever special occasions we even bother to have around here."
She trotted along the wall, towards another hole in it containing more boxes. Once she stopped, the children stopped as well, and she poked her head in to glimpse the label. These crates were far bigger than even the Mighty Oak, so it didn't take long for her to spot the label. "Ah, fresh crystals." She pulled her head back before she could set any off with her brief illumination spell. She turned to the foals again. "We collect them from various abandoned mines around Fantasia, the biggest of which we have yet to delve into proper being the Crystal Caverns that separates Greenwood's former location from Whitefall Town. That place is loaded with crystals, but also ice and lava, so we'll have to map that one carefully after getting Whitefall's permission to mine it."
"And what about the other caverns you mine?" Sweetie pressed, tilting her head.
"Well, we've got those caverns to ourselves, barring the few ponies who have already worked and lived there for their trades. So long as we don't interfere with those few, we're fine." Natalie sighed, feathers ruffling for a moment. "Oftentimes, said caverns also have wraiths and other assorted nasties in there that need clearing out on occasion, so every soldier that goes to get fresh batches is armed to the teeth."
She let her eyes gravitate upwards again as she did numbers in her head. "And these crystals last us for a good year and a half, so we really only take what we need and no more. They come in big chunks, too, which we break into fragments by hoof and determine by grade. Same grading system as the dead crystals, with S being the best and F being next to useless." She brought her gaze back down to the children once more. "Of course, fresh crystals are volatile, so we have to handle them carefully or else there's going to be accidents." She lifted a hoof and gestured to a sign on the other side of the hall, reading 121 days accident-free! with adjustable numbers on spinning dials.
"So, about the cuisine here…" Sweetie went on, grinning as the last bits of information were jotted down. "I couldn't help but notice in the mess hall that you guys really like your meat. Not the gryphons and changelings—you and the other higher-ups specifically. Is there a reason for that?"
Natalie wilted a bit. "Well… Alexander ran tests on us; Anna, Lance, and Sarah have to have it in their diets due to their mixed heritage, or else they risk losing out on vital nutrients. Lance in particular has a condition called Diomedis Defectus, where if he eats too many greens, he runs the risk of getting sick. Me, Matt, and Lazarus have it as… acquired taste, during our little 'sticky hooves' period when we were busy trying to survive after the Catastrophe," she answered. "Not a whole lot of room to grow your own things when half the world's after you."
"And what dishes do you cook up, using those meats?" Sweetie pressed.
"Well…" Natalie curled a wing and held a feather to her chin as she contemplated. "Tortoise shell soup, using mostly obsidian tortoises because the forest, glacier, and lava variants are inedible, roasted black bird with tortoise bacon stuffing, crab shell parfaits, which are savory…" As she rattled off the cuisines of the Aerie, she lit her horn to procure pictures of the dishes in question. A massive black shell, hewn of obsidian and three times as big as a pony, was sat on the table, with crescent-shape protrusions sawn off and used to hold it up. Inside was a meaty stew, attended to by changelings with massive metal ladles and sprinkled with bits of cheese.
Another showed the bird in question, before butchering and after. The beast was raven-like, with an uncanny and wicked stare, glaring at whoever took the photo. After, it looked like roast chicken with standard stuffing. The crab shell parfaits were interesting; as tall as a pony, sharp on one end and held up in what looked like an oversized chip cone, with a warm and bubbly pastry capping the opening of the shells. The jellyfish dishes were noodly, lathered up in sauce and accompanied by what looked like chopped up squid tentacles. The fish dishes were standard, and otherwise of little note.
"So, what else do you cook? Besides the Burning Frost Specials?" Sweetie asked, hoping to get the discussion back on track.
Natalie brightened considerably. "Well, we also make various desserts and savory dishes. Hot potato pie, which has our spiciest peppers in it as well as other vegetables, rice stir-fry, and squid rings," she said, providing pictures of the dishes in question. The potato pie had bits of corn and beans, mixed with potatoes and weird, heart-shaped chilis lathered in a rich gravy and encased in a firm, buttery crust sprinkled with bits of cheese and garlic. The stir-fry was standard, but the squid rings were weird: fried bread, about the size of a standard cylinder-shaped loaf, cut into slices with pieces of squid mixed in, arranged in a ring formation.
"You have squids?" Sweetie asked, regarding the photographs of the squid rings.
Natalie nodded. "Though, they're three times as tall as a pony, and really grabby and hostile. We farm those elsewhere," she answered. "Unless it's the kind that's toxic, which we just kill on sight." She also averted her eyes briefly. "And they really, really like to get under mares' skirts for some reason…" she muttered under her breath.
"Lemme guess: swimming accident," Katie proffered, causing Natalie to choke on the air again.
Natalie turned her head to the wraithling. "H-how—" she stammered.
Katie wore the schadenfreude on her nonexistent sleeve. "Well, I couldn't help but overhear some soldiers saying something earlier, and they were the same ones playing charades. They said something about some scandalous photographs that circulate in places like Whitefall, Goldenbrick, and a nameless town near a place called Vegetable Forest. Supposedly…" The edges of her split mouth somehow curled into themselves. "They were taken by somepony you're very close with, if you catch my drift. And they show you, in a one piece swimsuit, being fondled by squids at Rock Lake."
Natalie lit her horn to shut the wraithling's mouth with her magic. Alas, she seemed to forget about the split grin, which Katie was all too happy to remind her about. "Oh yeah, and those who were playing charades flashed me such a photo," she said unhelpfully, to much groaning from the Crusaders complete with a roll of the eyes. That got her a crimson shield conjured around her skull, which muffled whatever else came out of her face.
"You're in time-out until you tell me what the soldiers who came upon the photographs look like!" Natalie barked, flustered once again. Katie just tipped her chin smugly, content that she had managed to rankle her superior's feathers in such a way.
"It seems like Fantasian stallions don't have any manners," Sweetie remarked, to much nodding from her friends. "Well, except for the ones here, at least."
Natalie groaned, spread a wing, and slammed it into her face. "Tell me about it," she grumbled into her feathers. "I oughta have a talk with Matt and Lance about this later…"
"Have you had a chance to expand your cuisine, perhaps?" Scootaloo asked.
Natalie shook her head. "Not a lot of edible things on Fantasia, and every other plant we've tried has got us wondering where the damn ground is sometimes. I swear, if Anna hadn't made that list of what plants were and weren't edible, based on what she knew, we'd have probably taken more trips to the medical wing than necessary…" she replied, sighing. Then she smiled. "But, if relations with Equestria go well, we might be able to expand on our cuisine."
Well, there was some hope, at least. The Crusaders jotted the information down, and made sure to add the tidbit of not many things being edible on Fantasia. At least the slime ranch had a lot of the edible plants for the Aerie to use, as well as the gardens of the guard posts. Hopefully, they would benefit from imported food, and not kill themselves by failing to consult the list of inedibles that Natalie had mentioned.
And speaking of inedibles, they might consult Anna for that list later, solely to compare the nasties with the goodies. Although… the endeavor that night would be a difficult one to pull off, they would find, for reasons that they would have naturally disagreed with.