//------------------------------// // 86 // Story: Twilights Mane Passion // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// Late in the evening back at The Indistinguishable Plot, AKA the stolen pirate airship repurposed by the Sparkle family for fun and travel purposes. “Okay something’s up, that went too well for us. What did you say the projected reactions were my little sparkle butt? I know we got the Grand Vizier Giraffe Fellatio’s attention and distracted him and a lot of other prying eyes away from the actions of our friends in the city, but I didn’t see the lamp with him.” Nightlight enjoyed being the barker for their little all unicorn circus act. He thought Rarity made a particular good showing with her flamboyantly dressed appearance and elegant dancing with feathered fans. His daughter had some weird friends, but he always liked the strange personalities they had. “Dad, please don’t call me that. Not while I’m planning to overthrow Daft Lard’s current reign and rescue Jasmine’s father from wherever he’s been put.” Twilight faced hoof at what she had just said. She was trying to ignore her father’s name for the vizier and had just blushed at it. “Oh great, now even you got me pronouncing his name wrong and turning it into a joke.” “Just don’t follow you’re fathers example of dirty humor dear. It’s not like our family doesn’t have enough bad habits as it is at times.” Velvet sighed at her husband’s rather cheery smile at the mention of bad habits. “Anyway, we were talking about Gyp Bard’s reaction to us? I’m sorry for that, but it’s kind of hard not to try and find a way to mess his name up.” “Don’t worry, she won’t. Not that we don’t get enough of Pinkie doing it by complete accident. If she was doing it on purpose it wouldn’t be funny anymore.” Tress took stock of the ponies and changeling sitting around the table. She narrowed her eyes at the changeling who didn’t come back with Fluttershy. “Okay I just noticed Fluttershy isn’t here, where is she Chrysalis and what is she doing?” The mood turned serious as Chrysalis clenched her mouth and her eyes shifted about at all the attention she was receiving. “Well it’s like this...” Chrysalis started off into a flashback while looking to everyone knowing this was going to be a hard bit of news to swallow. Fluttershy had finished following the disguised Chrysalis and the scary zombie guards to where the enslaved mares were being kept. The area leading to this place was heavily patrolled and she was currently standing at the top of steps, it had been hard to keep up with the guards forcing Chrysalis along without being discovered. It was at the back of the palace across a bridge that reached out halfway to a small butte, the halfway point had an outpost building that had more of those grey eyed guards inside. The guards inside raised a bridge the rest of the way to the butte where the enslaved were being kept. It was a small area with a smattering of dry brittle ugly brown grass; there were seven mounds of turned dirt on the uncomfortable looking butte. From the window Fluttershy was looking through, she could already guess what the seven mounds meant and tears dropped from her eyes as she brought her hooves to her mouth. She steeled her resolve to reach out and help those who were still being enslaved by the tyrant. She could tell that she didn’t have nearly enough supplies considering the numbers, but she would make use of what she currently had to the best of her ability. Fluttershy watched as the guards shoved Chrysalis to the ground and quickly made their way back to the outpost where the bridge was lowered. From what she could see of the state of the poor slaves, they’ve been beaten up, whipped, left out in the hot sun without a coating to protect their skin, they looked to be showing signs of malnourishment and she didn’t even need a pair of binoculars to even diagnose that a few of them might be currently slowly dying from heatstroke. If it wasn’t heat stroke then it was hypothermia from going through the freezing cold nights unprotected. She didn’t even want to consider what the Vizier was doing to them when they weren’t out there. The strongest looking slaves on the butte were the Saddle Arabian camels; they could hold their water and could take the oppressive temperatures changes easily. The Saddle Arabian mares were not quite as lucky in that regard. Fluttershy even spotted a single griffon that was plucked of all her feathers, with blunted talons and lots of scarring. The griffon was notably staring off the side of the butte at the ground with a contemplative look on her face; it truly looked as if she would jump at a moment's notice. She looked to have put up more of a struggle than any other slave there. “Needless to say, you should have seen the looks of depression on their faces when they saw that I could fly away. However that quickly turned around when I came back helping Fluttershy fly the supplies to the butte and translated for her what we were doing. We made sure to fly well clear of that outpost though, we don’t entirely know what kind of visual range those guards have aside from very little peripheral vision.” Chrysalis turned to Tress with a frown. “As you can imagine Fluttershy refused to leave as some of the slaves were in critical condition and we all know she wouldn’t stand by while other beings were hurting like that. Heck, even I had trouble coming here and leaving them all behind. Fluttershy even told me to tell you specifically to get to work on some pain relieving temperature sustaining gel and to find some medicine specifically made for heatstroke cases. She needs that stuff like yesterday.” Tress was immediately out of her seat rushing from the room, Fluttershy needed help and that was all she needed to know to get onto her hooves. Twilight was oddly silent, but her mane and tail seemed to be igniting and her jaw was set firmly in a grim frown. Nightlight held Velvet’s hoof, this was some disturbing information to take in. Rarity was silently passed a bucket by a straight haired Pinkie Pie for her to throw up in. There wasn’t even a silly deflation sound from the pink pony. Rough Heed stayed stoic though there was a shine of water in his eyes, the people were hurting and as such he was hurting. Jasmine was already breaking down into Ballad Din’s chest at the treatment of the people, the stallion simply held the mare in silence. “If Trixie had a genie right now, the first two wishes would be to make sure the vizier got a fate worse than death. The last wish would be to set the genie free and maybe if it was feeling nice then it will continue helping with the first two wishes of its own volition.” If Trixie remembered her history, she’d even wish for whatever cruel twisted thing Discord could think of to do to him. “Oh trust me; I would love to arrange something like that personally. We may not have seen it or drawn it out with our performance, but the jinn’s presence is very clear considering all the corruption.” Twilight’s mane and tail were practically made of magical fire at this point, but her voice stayed calm despite the state of her appearance. “It at least stands to reason that’s why its lamp has been reportedly placed so deeply in the catacombs by the vizier. A genie changes their master depending on who holds their lamp; it’s not the same thing with jinn.” “I’ve already got a good plan already if all of you are willing to hear it.” Daring noted the mood was quite down and she wasn’t a pony to be a down for long. Time to kick the charisma she had up a notch. “If it helps, I’ve seen a lot of stuff like this and it never gets any easier. The best thing we can do is to keep pushing forward and try to save who we can. We’ll be sad later; at least we know the merchants are trying to help the people of the city even if they fear doing too much visibly.” “Well that’s nice darling, but we still don’t know what tricks that vicious stallion has up his sleeves. We still need the location of Jasmine’s father, unless you saw something Chrysalis.” Even Rarity couldn’t be proud of her cloth work for the show she helped put on earlier. “I also think it pertinent that we find out what exactly that jinn is doing. The air in Neighgraba smells horrid and it could only be the work of that monster.” “He’s not in the dungeon because I ran a quick check by there before I came here, it’s completely empty. I didn’t do too thorough a search though. I think it was much more prudent that I got this information to all of you then stick around creepy grey eyed central. If I hadn’t kept a close eye on Fluttershy going in she’d be forced into sporting a new daring do. It seems to be the popular style amongst the vizier’s slaves; at least the one thing he hasn’t done thus far is rape them and Fluttershy thankfully confirmed it.” Chrysalis really wanted to lighten the mood; the negative emotions were almost overwhelming just about everywhere she went now. The vizier still did horrible things, but at least that was one piece of good news. “I do have one other interesting bit of information, the scepter the vizier has is magical in nature. Don’t know what it exactly does, but it’s a very good idea to be wary of it.” “Daring, this is your show. What do we do?” Twilight was deferring to the well traveled mare as she said she had a plan. Daring’s plans were always quite brilliant in her books and this was the real Daring Do, she was a mare that could walk into dangerous places as if she were shopping for groceries. “We have enough information to bring the vizier down. The only thing we really lack is enough skilled fighters.” Daring suddenly jolted upright when a three-sectioned staff twirled into the air and then slammed down next to Velvet. “As your friend I will respectfully ask you to acknowledge that what we have right now is actually overkill.” Velvet received a bunch of stares. “It’s not like we need to kill the guards, we only need incapacitate them. Nighty and I aren’t exactly spring chickens when it comes to a fight. Also do you even know what I went through raising my son and little sparkle here to where they are now? That seems much harder then what I think we’re about to do.” “I believe she's right, then again I always do. We’re all certainly more than capable enough. We just need to divide our talents to where they’re needed most.” Nightlight leaned over and kissed Velvet on the cheek. “A good plan would be really useful though.” “Right, we’ll use The Indistinguishable Plot to rescue the slaves, I’ll personally enter the catacombs and caves beneath Neighgraba in an effort to destroy the lamp and we need ponies to attack the vizier head on and keep his attention until we can deal with his jinn and rescue the slaves. Maybe we can even get some assistance from the nearby friendly merchants.” As Daring set about making the plan this time, they would quickly set it off as fast as they feasibly could. The most worrying thing about all this was the Jinn, as they’ve yet to encounter it. “Rarity can you get some blankets? We’ll have Chrysalis levitate them up to the butte. Those mares must be nearly freezing to death every night and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but an airship is not exactly discreet. We don’t want to give away the fact that we can rescue them right now. We don't need the vizier preparing for us by doing anything too hastily.” After watching the fashion pony go to carry out her request, Twilight turned to Pinkie Pie. “There’s going to be a lot of hungry mouths to feed Pinkie so you might want to get some sleep and be ready for it tomorrow when the ship picks them up.” Pinkie slowly gritted her teeth and her hair immediately puffed up when she started smiling again. She would not stay a grumpy sad pony forever, not if she was to continue being in this story. If there were bellies that needed to be filled, then she would get started with shaking and baking after a nice nap. She hopped off humming an old upbeat pegasus war tune to herself, one popularized by a pony named Pit who crawled out of the depths of Tartarus to save Cloudsdale. At the butte, Fluttershy had managed to organize every female there through the use of body language. The very first thing she did was help the sick and the injured based on who was worse off. She had thus far stabilized the worst cases, but without medication what she did already wouldn’t last very long. As it was getting dark she started to organize them all into a group at the center of the butte hoping that they could survive through shared body heat. Sighing, Fluttershy knew she had some troubling work ahead of her and would only rest when she was assured that all of them were safe. She looked to the only one she hadn’t touched the entire time she’s been here. She trotted up to the griffon in a meek and not very threatening manner. She carefully wrapped a hoof around the griffons arm and gave her a gentle tug; she wanted her to join the group. The griffon turned to look at Fluttershy fiercely. For a moment both the griffon and the pony stared at each other, they each became wide eyed in recognition. “Gilda is that you!?”