//------------------------------// // 92 // Story: Twilights Mane Passion // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// Ten minutes of constant battling, three destroyed pillars, some others partially damaged and a few minor scrapes and bruises later. The Mane-iac had finally gotten in a good hit by swinging half a fallen pillar across the jinn’s face with her tail. Dazed by her first hit she pinned it to the wall by stabbing it with said pillar on the second swing around. Pulling herself on top of the pillar Mane-iac ran along its length and lashed out with her mane at the jinn’s face in rapid successive hits that had some effect on the jinn. It soon phased off the pillar and once it solidified it created a large blast of wind that launching her into the air to catch her within its belly button that opened up like a mouth to engulf her. Daring had gotten in a few good strikes herself when it was pinned and was sent into spiraling to the floor by the same blast of wind. Mane-iac did not like the sanitary issued of having half her body being crushed in its belly button and spiked her coat and tail outwards causing quite a bit of pain to the jinn before it phased and let her fall to the floor. “Sorry, but I don’t like your version of blow drying!” The Mane-iac had been acting like a highly caffeinated grasshopper the entire fight and shot away towards one of the still standing if slightly damaged pillars avoiding fireballs as she went. “Hey Do-gooder, how are we supposed to deal with big, bad and ugly if we can’t even hurt him?” “Well whatever you did with the pillar actually made him solid for a bit. Those flames dimmed when he took that blow.” The flames Daring pointed out were the one’s protecting the jinn’s lamp; the jinn couldn’t hurt them while phasing. Uniquely enough, it didn’t do anything to lower the flames protecting the room with the lamp as the hit Tress got in on it caused them to dim slightly. The jinn was wary of bringing the pillars down since his lamp would be crushed if the entire underground area decided to collapse on it. It wanted to deal with these gnats but it couldn’t so long as the energy absorbing one wasn’t dealt with permanently. The last ten minutes for Twilight, Chrysalis and Velvet was pretty much the same thing with the vizier as it was for Daring’s group. The stallion and his jinn’s manifested powers in the form of a scepter was incredible, his barrier was hard to break and he was putting out a lot of attacks that was making cheese of the palace. Rarity and Trixie were busy dealing with the irate sandworm the vizier summoned, they had lured it away and were having a bit of time trying force it to leave. It wasn’t under the vizier’s control, but it certainly was restless, angry and attracted towards the nearest source of aggression it could find. “Mom, do you have any idea what we can do?” Twilight ducked as blast of energy shot by the upturned chunk of debris they were using as cover. They definitively had the vizier pinned, though the same could be said about them. “Well destroying the manifestation of power seems prudent at this point sweetie, now if only we could do something about that nasty barrier in the way.” Velvet had stowed her three sectioned staff as it had taken too much damage deflecting magical attacks; she really needed to get it repaired. “We need to hit it with plenty of force to bring it down. I kind of wish your brother was here, this is the most entertaining family outing I’ve had since the both of you moved out and left us, your loving parents, all alone.” “You’re family is nuts and I’m surprised I’m only mildly injured at this point.” Chrysalis was counting blessings to not be halfway mauled to death and while putting up a good fight. She raised her head over the debris and let off two quick green blasts of magic before ducking down. “It must be the queen side of me finally showing, I’m also starting to feel kind of lethargic with my cocooning period coming up. Ah to be young a young maggot again, happily feasting off both my parents emotion storing glandular sacks.” “Yeah, we get that a lot Chrysalis. Also I did not need to know that.” Even if it was similar to breast feeding in ponies, Twilight really didn’t want to get into it while they were still fighting a vizier that was practically leveling the entire palace around them. It was a good thing there wasn’t anyone else inside to get hurt except for the ones currently in pitched battle. “Captain Sparkle, they aren’t looking to good down there.” Pinkie pulled the telescope away from her eye that left a black ring of ink on it, she giggled about pulling a prank on herself without realizing it. Up in the air The Indistinguishable Plot hovered a good distance away from the palace and Nightlight had Pinkie keeping him up to date on the situation ground side once Chrysalis took off to aid his wife, daughter and friends. “I’m sure they can handle it, a Sparkle will always shine in the dark times. I’m more interested in how well my daughter’s mercenary business is doing. Does she do thing like capturing pirate ships like her dear old dad?” Nightlight stood there at the wheel as Pinkie hopped on up to him and started to regale him with some of the smaller things Twilight and Tress has handled since moving to Ponyville. Off to the side a particular griffon watched as another hole was blasted into the palace and she clenched her beak, sitting still and being helpless were two things a griffon was not known for. She couldn’t fly until her feathers grew back and she wouldn’t be able to tear out the vizier’s throat until her talons grew back. Hearing that this was a commandeered pirate vessel did give her an idea though. Gilda turned and went below deck and started searching storage. A few of the healthier Saddle Arabian mares noticed what she was doing when they saw her struggling to heft the cannon alone by herself up some stairs. The mares and a camel cautiously came over to her and they each lent her a hoof in lifting it to a higher deck where the portholes were. Situating the cannon Gilda went down to storage followed by her pack of curious helpers. The griffon, after getting a box of cannonballs and a several bags of gunpowder, looked into the cannon having opened the back she let out a huge whistle from her beak. Gilda wondered how ponies could have gotten hold of one of these babies. She had always thought ponies too soft for something like this and this was a supposedly stolen pony pirate airship. A wicked smirk crossed her beak, aiming this thing was going to be so easy. The mares were watching the griffon check the insides of the cannon; she looked over the scope and pulled out a spiral grooved cannonball. Noticing the mares watching her with interesting in how she loaded the cannon, Gilda pointed to the closed hatch and they swiftly figured out how to open it for her. She slid the cannon out and scoped one of the gaping holes in the palace and to the very victim of her ire. “Who says the dish served cold is the only form of revenge?” Gilda chuckled humorlessly to herself as she armed the cannon and immediately fired it. She wasn’t a military griffon but she recognized high end warfare material and she knew how to work the cannon easily enough. Her avian heritage gave her eyes as good as or much better than a pegasus, her shot wasn’t going to miss. Hearing an explosion from the sky caused the vizier halt in his constant barrage and the three mares he was firing upon jumped slightly. Jabber looked up and then the cannonball rammed directly into his shield. The shield bulged for a second at the spiraling cannonball’s pressure; he had barely enough time to lunge out of the path of the cannonball before it created a huge cratered hole in the floor after shattering his protective barrier. This left him open to attack and Twilight opened up by firing as many magic missiles as her horn could feasible conjure at once, a shotgun blast of seven magic missiles all struck the vizier in seven different places with varying degrees of strength. She had failed to hit or damage the scepter, but her mother and Chrysalis hadn’t. A minor explosion spell knocked the scepter out of hoof and a large splash of viscous looking green fire had the vizier rolling around on the floor in agony covered in flames. Velvet stared at Chrysalis considering the spell she used. “Napalm spell, nobody upsets my friends and causes so many negative emotions around me without repercussions.” That quick explanation was all she gave for her actions as she leapt forward and tried to magically levitate the scepter to her, failing to do so she blasted it away from the vizier’s grasping hoof. The battle had turned completely around and the vizier was down for the count flailing while covered in nasty clinging flames that wouldn’t kill him, but they’d definitely leave him hairless and stuck in a burn ward for quite some time. Chrysalis wasn’t a pony and was a lot more willing to use violence if it was completely justified, even if Twilight didn’t like her overkill she thought it was necessary in the long run. Things in the catacombs hadn’t changed as much. Ballad was pinned and about to be fried until the hand holding him down lifted and the jinn screamed in agony gripping at its silver eyes with all its arms while it went intangible. The flames to the room with the lamp went down halfway before the jinn recovered and concentrated on getting the flames back up to full strength. “Hmm… now that is interesting. By all that is quality shampoo, I’ve got it!” Mane-iac smiled having realized something; she quickly hair crawled her way over to Ballad where he had been dropped on the floor and hefted him into the air. He had a worried look on his face at the teeth the crazy mare was showing him while being held by the rather silky green tentacle around his barrel. “Do-gooder pass you’re satchel off to me, I need to comb through your things for a second.” The jinn tried to attack them when Daring went flying for Mane-iac; it stopped momentarily screaming in pain again. Daring reached them and passed off the satchel while looking back at the jinn gathering its bearings. Mane-iac took out the knife and fastened it to the tip of Daring’s whip while quickly forcing the satchel around a confused looking Ballad. “Go for its eyes, I just noticed that it can’t phase them entirely like it can the rest of its body. We need to gouge them.” With a whinny Mane-iac leapt up to a pillar and Daring followed her lead as they advanced on the jinn. “I’m going for the left one, you take the right and Ballad will get the lamp while we take the hair from the chinny jinn’s chin.” Fighting off the pain of the destroyed connection of its power made manifest as the scepter the vizier wielded, the jinn raised all six of its arms. It couldn’t leave to help its master or its lamp would be destroyed. It started to actually fear these three mortals and unleashed a volatile barrage; it was even firing bolts of electricity even though it knew that the green haired creature would absorb them as they approached. Daring reached the jinn first and managed to create a slash halfway across the jinn’s eye and it reacted in pain trying to swat Daring away as she continued to batter its right eye. It made the unfortunate mistake of ignoring Mane-iac who swung in to ram home one of the jinn’s own forgotten swords through its left eye. A fountain of dark black blood to spew liberally from the silver colored orb and the flames protecting the lamp went down with its roar of utter suffering. Mane-iac quickly dropped to the floor fluffing out her hair to create a huge puffball out of herself. With a roll upon landing she launched Ballad spinning head over hooves into the room with the lamp, before the jinn could raise the flames again. The jinn didn’t even bother to remove the sword from its eye, it was now dead set on killing the two…. wait, two? Looking back towards the lamp the jinn’s eye with the still healing knife wounds watched its imminent defeat in slow motion. Even as it was still under attack from the mares, it was left too stunned to react to pain anymore. Ballad Din hastily pulled out and stuffed a cork in the open spout of the lamp. He pulled off the lid, using the torch he lit the two bombs and promptly dropped them into the lamp. Quickly putting the lid back on the lamp, Ballad pulled out the sports taped and started to wrap it around the lid as fast as he could before biting the tape apart and hastily tossing the lamp away from himself. The explosion was violent and messy sending shards of lamp everywhere. It scorched Ballad badly and filled him with shrapnel, even so he fell to the ground with a smile that he had finally ended the evils plaguing his home among the dunes. He blearily noticed Mane-iac and Daring making their way too him. “He needs medical attention… um, how the hair are we going to get out of here?” Mane-iac looked towards the sealed way into the two rooms they were stuck in. “I’ll chock this one up to being buried alive again; hopefully they won’t forget we’re down here and will send help.” Daring sighed lifting her helmet from her head and ran a hoof through her sweat ridden mane, currently trying to think of a way to help out Ballad who was bleeding out. She turned to her other companion with a thoughtful look. “How much can you grow out?” Meanwhile on the surface things were just about wrapped up, with Twilight scaring away the sandworm. The Indistinguishable Plot was docked with the walls of the palace and the princess owed them all a big favor for saving her country. One could only guess Twilight wanted to work with the princess’s pretty purple mane. “Well we got the vizier and if the jinn doesn’t show up soon, then the others succeeded in destroying the lamp. It looks like everything is going to be just fine!” Twilight’s cheerful announcement at the defeat of the vizier was punctuated with an explosion. In the distance as four pirate airships could be seen approaching Neighgraba. Twilight face hoofed. “Right, for a moment I forgot the Sparkle family tradition.”