Philomena wasn’t bored per se’ it was more of a fact that she needed to get out more, especially when she got out of the palace of castle she had some fun. It had been five days now since she last saw the crazy mocking bird, otherwise called a breegull who would have to be crazy to insult a beloved princess so much. These days hadn’t exactly been entirely quiet, but they had been slow.
After being introduced to Peewee Chirpman, Philomena found the tiny phoenix to be quite adorable. Much to the chagrin of the dragon Spike, Philomena started coddling the baby almost immediately upon sight and was asked by the cutie if she was his mommy. She said no, but she didn’t mind being called auntie. Alongside Owlowiscious she had a good time teaching Peewee a few things, but she seriously felt cramped being stuck indoors and watched over by an overbearing young dragon just because she was Celestia’s personal comrade and confidant for many years.
Owlowiscious had managed to get Philomena out of the treebrary once or twice in the past few days for some excitement; she just wishes it was at an earlier time than in the evening or morning. It was hard to get out from under the watchful eyes of the overly attentive dragon who mumbled about being sent to a dungeon in the ever free forest inside of a cage or some such nonsense. They had their fun hanging around Ponyville and teasing a few ponies here and there, picking up a few animal friends as well as befriending a quite a few ponies. A lot of the ponies knew who Philomena was from her wanted posters that weren’t really in use anymore and that nice jaunt around the area she did the last time she was here.
The phoenix was really craving some action and adventure now, even being with the magical backpack carrier for the amount of time she had been really jump started her rather drab and sometimes boring existence in the high life. In fact if the gossip flying around Ponyville was correct there had been a rather interesting incident involving a zebra and a local apple farmer four days ago. Philomena didn’t need to be psychic to know who set that one up; one could only guess what that being was doing now.
Looking to Owlowiscious who had fallen asleep for the day Philomena sighed, she could play with Peewee, but Spike kept getting in the way. He was a little overprotective against a bird that already had motherly instincts and was of the same species. Philomena wasn’t about to take Peewee away, she was quite sure Peewee was happy with the dragon.
Now she had to find something to do… wasn’t there that mysterious burst of light over Ponyville’s lake the day before the farmer got put in the hospital? Seriously convoluted was the machinations of that creature, it would leave anyone curious along with the crazy things that go on around this small village in everyday life.
Now what was she going to do to distract Spike, he was busy dusting the books and every ten to twenty seconds he would look to where she was roosting on the seldom used hat and raincoat rack. He was eyeing her suspiciously, like she was about to cause him more trouble.
“Now don’t go getting any ideas, I have enough trouble with the Cutie Mark Crusaders coming over today to borrow a book on miniature catapults for fun and profit.” Other than keeping the library tidy Spike was really relaxed, but a bit more high strung when it came to watching out for Celestia’s phoenix, he thought she was even more trouble than Owlowiscious. He also didn’t appreciate her pulling the banana peel joke on him either and she looked so innocent afterwards… when he found her in the Ponyville marketplace after escaping the library. Why couldn’t she be more helpful like Angel was when Fluttershy wasn’t around to take care of the animals? That rabbit ran her cottage pretty well by himself, even if he had to deal with Opalescence, Winona and Gummy on a daily basis. He really didn’t think Tank would be all that much trouble for the rabbit.
The scene at Fluttershy’s cottage at this moment, for no discernible reason and not that it isn’t interesting.
Tank was wearing a tiny gold crown and Angel in a little maid costume begrudgingly walked in to the living room and held up a well made salad to the tortoise who smiled. All the animals bowed to the tortoise and his winning several games of pinochle. Mr. Pokeylope would be proud of this achievement of rabbit vs. tortoise.
Back with the actual plot at hoof at the library, the Cutie Mark Crusaders are about to rush into the library and do a bunch of stuff.
“Oh come on guys, I just got through putting that up and the book is right here.” Spike held up the book for the trio that had already ransacked the library while the audience was too busy reading about what was happening at Fluttershy’s cottage.
“Thank you very much Spike.” Applebloom to the book in her mouth and nosed it into her saddle bags, after a moment she realized that she was being stared at by something and it had a pleading look in its eyes. “Hey isn’t that there the princesses pet phoenix?”
“Yes, apparently Celestia needed me to watch over her while she spends some time here. Don’t honestly know why she arrived here with Owlowiscious and just as honestly I don’t care as long as she’s not up to any trouble.” The dragon glared at the phoenix that held her wings in front of herself then blew gentle halo of bright fire above her head. The very model of innocence she was posing, the minute Spike turned back to the fillies the halo turned into devil horns before quickly dissipating.
“Awe, she looks kind of bored, can she play with us?” Applebloom noticed the phoenix perked up and nodded to Spike at the idea. “Please….”
“I don’t know...” Trailing off Spike realized he was getting four sets of puppy dog eyes, three from the fillies that suddenly trashed the library and one that was standing on Scootaloo’s back being the phoenix herself. “Well I guess, but you guys better keep your eyes on her. I’ll get into a lot of trouble if she gets lost.”
Philomena sighed at that, like she could actually get lost. Spike thought that being with the crusaders might result in a little revenge on the phoenix, most likely getting covered in sap. The crusaders were just happy to have a new friend to join them on their latest escapade.
“Cutie Mark Crusaders with phoenix friend catapult makers YAY!” The three fillies shouted and Philomena gave a chirp of excitement this was going to be interesting.
It didn’t take long for them to get set up with the wood for the catapult and a few odds and ends to help make it. Philomena was the brains of the operation making sure they didn’t hurt themselves and she kept them organized instead of creating a relatively big mess like they normally would. Applebloom handled the tools the most, Scootaloo held things in place given she had a great sense of balance and Sweetie Belle was sent to find some ammunition to test the catapult.
Philomena looked up and quickly ducked into the hardhat she had on as a hammer came flying at her to bounce off of helmet. That pony from the construction site felt truly sorry for Philomena having to deal with the Cutie Mark Crusaders and lent her his hardhat for the day as he wasn’t using it. She gave an angry squawk at Scootaloo who blushed and ducked her head as she went back to holding the wood in place instead of trying to hammer things in on her own. Applebloom finally came back with the hammer and the last piece of wood. They finished the hammering the last spot of wood in the wheeled catapult in record time as Sweetie Belle came back riding Scootaloo’s scooter. She was pulling their shared wagon with a bag of stuff to launch at the lake.
Philomena had chosen the lake for one reason or another; in case they accidentally got launched at least the little crusaders wouldn’t hurt themselves upon landing. The way the small catapult was built it wouldn’t get them to far out on the lake and it was a really safe place, the only monsters around were lake krakens and they were a completely unaggressive species of kraken. The real reason they were here was so Philomena can investigate what exactly had happened to this lake, that and to have fun with the three crazy fillies. You take your beady eyes off them for a second and before you know it Scootaloo is mysteriously covered in sap despite there being no tree around that actually produces the stuff. Speaking of which she had and looking at them now, all three of the crusaders are thoroughly covered in sap; Philomena gave a slight huff at the defiance of physics.
Well she better get the catapult going before something else happens to these three, but first she had sap to help them wash off and gently preen out of Scootaloo’s feathers.
A few minutes later and several cleaned fillies preparing the catapult by stressing the mechanisms, all it needed now was to be loaded and the lever pulled.
“You know she’s almost like an adult pony, only she lets us do more dangerous stuff.” Sweetie Belle stated as she heaved with her two friends and put the first object in. It was a large rubber cannonball, not once did Sweetie bother to question how Pinkie knew they’d need something to test the catapult with. The Cake’s had a note to let the crusaders borrow it from Pinkie, so Sweetie Belle just accepted that Pinkie knew what they were doing this week.
“She’s still only twenty percent short of being as cool as Rainbow!” There was no question to how far Scootaloo’s loyalty went when in reference to Rainbow Dash. “Hey wait a minute… who gets to pull the lever first?”
“I do of course.” Applebloom said puffing out her chest and went to pull the lever. Only she didn’t get a chance to as the three of them got into a fight about who got to launch the first object, it started with her friends jumping on top of her. Philomena was not an amused phoenix, she decided to break them up the easy way and launch it herself.
Philomena whistled loudly causing all three of the struggling fillies to stop and look at her sitting on the lever. With a small smile Philomena flapped her wings and with a big enough pull the launching mechanism was set off sending the rubber ball flying out into the middle of the lake. The fillies were so excited it worked that they forgot what they were arguing about, Philomena pointed to Sweetie Belle with a wing, before motioning to Applebloom and then lastly Scootaloo. Making sure to note that they each get a turn, but making sure to point out to the best of her ability that none of them could be first since they were too busy fighting themselves to have any fun. She also kept her body lit with fire to keep their seemingly short attention spans on her.
Sufficiently cowed, the girls lowered their heads sadly and apologized to Philomena for fighting. Nodding the phoenix flew out to the lake to retrieve the rubber cannonball as soon as she was back she motioned for Sweetie to load the next object.
“Now what to pick, that test object went awfully far. Pinkie has some really cool stuff, but she still won’t let me try to bake after what happened on my first attempt.” Sweetie Belle continued to peruse the sack while Scootaloo and Applebloom looked between themselves. They knew even while Applebloom was a bit bad at cooking, Scootaloo was actually better surprisingly and Sweetie Belle… well she never made progress and even Pinkie wasn’t willing to encourage her. Despite that Sweetie Belle kept trying, it was incredible impressive to watch her burn stuff even when she wasn’t using a fire or even a heating implement.
The next object that was flung into the lake was just as simple as the heavy rubber ball, this time it was a wooden block. It had a higher arc and shorter flying distance, but it was equally interesting to watch hurtle through the air and the fillies whooped with joy. Philomena chuckled lightly feeling their joy fill her, this was an adventure even if it was a small one where the math did not matter so much as the idea of what they would launch next. Again she had to go out on the lake to retrieve the object; water didn’t exactly bother her though it was a bit of a detriment to phoenixes. Something kind of felt off about the lake, though she couldn’t quite place her beak on it.
“I kind of wish I could fly that high, I really can’t wait for my wings to grow in.” Scootaloo buzzed her wings; she really wanted her turn to come faster as Applebloom was already looking for an object to fire.
“I’m sure you’ll fly someday Scoots, didn’t Rainbow tell you it was only a matter of time?” Though she was smiling, Applebloom silently wondered if her brother was going to be alright. At least he wasn’t as badly injured as the Stirrup Street incident.
“I hate waiting; this is just something else I’m told I can’t rush.” Scootaloo looked down and Sweetie moved over to her to give her a friendly hug.
After a moment Applebloom dragged an object from the sack, just as Philomena got back from dragging the wooden block out of the water with Sweetie Belle’s help. They blinked confusedly at the object, how in the world had Sweetie Belle managed to procure a cheese wheel? Much worse was the fact that the cheese wheel had familiar shapes etched into it. It was three symbols that were familiar to Philomena and she rolled her eyes, yep ‘backpack, question egg and puzzle piece’ was still hanging around Ponyville.
Not that it was anyone’s business, but the cheese wheel came from a world filled with yarn balls and strange aliens called Woolies. Needless to say it flew quite far and even rolled along the water hydroplaning for a few feet before stopping and flopping onto its side. Sighing Philomena went to retrieve even this one, surprisingly the cheese wasn’t ruined in any way whatsoever. In a way it kind of made a bit of sense that the cheese wasn’t ruined given the being it belonged to, Applebloom aided her in getting it out of the water and rolling it back to the wagon.
Scootaloo looked around the bag, but not finding things to her liking she pulled out a rope from it and went to find the biggest rock she could and with the help of her friends she found the largest rock that would fit the catapult and dragged it using the rope back to the catapult.
It took a combined effort to get it loaded into the catapult; they even need Philomena to add her meager strength to get it in. After they did they weren’t able to untie the rope used to drag it there, it went completely unnoticed. This wouldn’t be a very bad thing as it wasn’t currently entangling anything.
Scootaloo stood up and pulled the lever, she stepped back into Applebloom who stepped back tangled one of her hind legs on the rope. As soon as the rock left the catapult, Applebloom went with it screaming through the air much to the amusement of Philomena.
Applebloom followed the rock into sinking into the lake Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle just stood there staring for a minute, while Philomena rolled her eyes. She smacked both the fillies with her wings and pointed to the water, there were still bubbles coming up from the lake where the rock landed. Really Philomena shouldn’t have let them build a working catapult to begin with if they were going to freak out about a minor accident.
The fillies jumped in without a hesitation while Philomena stuck her head under the water and inhaled, her suspicion was right. The water was entirely breathable, if Applebloom hadn’t run out of oxygen yet from screaming her head off then that was the only option left open. At a fully continuous scream underwater, a filly would have run out of oxygen more than a minute ago and this was a rather fortuitous situation. Either that or the trio suddenly became one of the following: sea ponies, merponies, river ponies and several varying species of hippocampus. The strangest type of hippocampus was the starfish type; they could grow back their own heads.
Swimming into the water Philomena wasn’t exactly the best of swimmers being she was a phoenix, but the water was oddly refreshing as she jumped in. She swam awkwardly up to the odd trio just sitting there looking around in the water breathing through their wide open mouths and checking their necks as if they had suddenly sprouted gills, for once they weren’t looking at their flanks for cutie marks at least. The girls looked at her and pointed to the rope still entangling Appleblooms leg and she looked about and saw a lake kraken. In the same moment it saw them.
Swimming over to them the lake kraken took notice of Applebloom who started panicking and the kraken simply put its beak to the rope holding her leg and bit down on it letting her free. Philomena gave the kraken a friendly wave and it waved a tentacle back before swimming about in aimless circles that was the basis of its life. Turning to the crusaders they all looked around and gathered together to scream something garbled and unintelligible given that they were still underwater. After a moment they each started to swim off in different direction to explore the lake better while they had the good fortune of being able to breathe underwater. Cutie Mark Deep Lake Divers, what a novel concept without scuba gear and here Philomena thought they’d just be firing stuff into the lake all day.
After they all finished exploring they came to the surface of the lake following Philomena as she shook her wings of the excessive amounts of water. The fillies were all wet and they had found some fun stuff to remember the day by.
Scootaloo had found treasure, but she didn’t get a cutie mark for it but the forty bits she had. All that swimming around felt like flying, albeit a bit slowly at that. The bits most likely had fallen from a pegasus flying high over the lake. She wasn’t about to spend her bits all in one place as she had an idea for them.
Sweetie Belle had made a couple of friends, the lake krakens were somewhat intelligent and friendly. She idly wondered if Fluttershy knew about them. They were peaceful, so joining the club and learning their ways wasn’t too hard, of course speaking Kraken was a bit difficult since it relies on emotionally singing your feelings. Sweetie for all intents and purposes learned how to speak Kraken by giving them a general idea of what she was feeling.
As for Apple Bloom, she found something strange, it was an innocuous ancient looking heart shaped locket and it was stuck tight. Apple Bloom wondered what was inside it and would look to a pony that could possibly get it open later. Oh she tried to get it open, but it wouldn’t and she didn’t think putting her mouth on it was safe.
Philomena pecked at the locket trying seeing if she could help, but she couldn’t get it open either and her beak was pretty sharp. She looked to Applebloom and sent a blast of fire in the air and then stared at Applebloom questioningly.
“No that’s okay; I’ll try to get it open some other way. Maybe in a way that doesn’t destroy the locket.” Applebloom giggled as Philomena looked sheepish about her suggestion. It took a moment, the filly finally realized she had a responsibility to get Philomena back to the library. “Oh right, we have to get you back to Spike don’t we girls?”
“Yeah that’s right, but um… what are we going to do with the cheese wheel? It still looks pretty good.” Scootaloo said as she hopped on her scooter after getting it hooked to the wagon.
“How about I cook something using it for tomorrow’s adventure? We’ll get our cutie marks yet.” Sweetie Belle said brightly, much to the fear of her three friends. After a few moments to think on it the two fillies actually considered it while the phoenix had seen Sweetie Belles attempts at cooking and just simply used her wings to cover her ears.
“We’ll have a Cutie Mark Crusaders Cheesy Cook-off Competition, yeah!” It was like they had one fully running brain across three separate bodies a combination of sugary apples, spicy athleticism and everything nice in a cute voice. The crusaders already had plans to move the catapult somewhere else, but they never really planned to use it for much more then maybe chucking pumpkins into the lake when they came into season. Apparently they couldn’t get their cutie marks in lake diving or catapult building.
Philomena not wanting to be a part of that sticky mess when they started playing with the cheese wheel opted to just stay indoors at the library tomorrow; in the meanwhile she considered whether or not to tell Celestia what had been done to Ponyville’s lake.
The locket that Applebloom had found would sit on her bedside table in the Apple family home to be forgotten for quite a while.