The Battle For Val Roa Begins
“Boss, they're just hovering there!” one goblin exclaimed.
“Hmmmm...” Haman rubbed his greasy chins with gnarled fingers. “They came here to stall us, and yet they're not making the first move.” His yellow teeth showed. “I do believe that means they have next to nothing to bring to the table.”
“Boss...?”
“Flag our sister ship,” Haman sound firmly. “Tell them to fire a low volley, about five hundred feet short of the target.” As the imp started signaling the next vessel, Haman pivoted in his mech suit and pointed at a line of goblins. “Aim at the actual vessel! Prepare to fire on my mark!”
“Aye!”
Goblins rushed back and forth between their stations, arming the cannons and channeling mana from the skystone engines deep within the battleship's hull.
“Uhhhhhhh...” Zaid gulped and looked over his shoulder. “I think one of them is about to fire on us! You see how those cannons are glowing?”
“Props!” Belle shouted into a sound stone. “Ready a burst of skystone energy! We're going to make a mad dash forward!”
“Scrkkk! Okie dokie lokie!”
“Just say the word, Cap'n,” Zaid said, gripping the controls.
P-Pow! A burning volley soared in from the lead ship, hurling their way.
“Consider it said!” Belle hollered, then leaned back towards Pilate. “Hang on—”
Fwoooosh! The Noble Jury soared straight forward, diving low to outfly the descending energy projectiles.
Pilate and Belle clung to their cannons on opposite ends of the windblown top deck.
“Zaid!” Belle hollered, her mane billowing in the turbulent air. “Once we've passed both vessels, prepare for a sharp ascent! We'll come around and bombard them from up top—”
POW! The second ship fired a volley. The air whistled as the second shot sailed directly at them.
Pilate gnashed his teeth. “Sounds like it's coming close—”
“They anticipated our move!” Belle immediately yelled to the cockpit. “Zaid! Spin us top side!”
“Awwwwwwwww snap.” Zaid yanked the controls aside.
Just as the Noble Jury began to twirl, Belle shouted into her soundstone. “Props! We need a mana overcharge! Pronto—”
The second blast made contact with the Noble Jury, striking the skystone shard above the gondola. The air ahead and below the two goblin vessels filled with flame and shrapnel, followed by a resounding explosion. The sky rolled with vaporous ripples and shockwaves.
Several of the goblins on both ships jumped and cheered. Others spat into the air below the battleship and chuckled in bloodlust.
“Direct hit, boss!” one imp said, grinning back at Haman. “They didn't even stand a chance!”
“Hrmmm...” Haman nodded with a drooling grin. “So much for the self-righteous Noble Jury.” He sipped from a steamy tube inside his suit, then wheezed, “Ready the skystone engine and resume course to Val Roa!” His eyes narrowed. “Nobody stops the deer apocalypse on my watch...”
“We will establish a cabinet of executive stewards, whose purpose will be to maintain peace and order while the search for the Prince continues,” Fishberry said. “And, in the event that the worst case scenario has indeed transpired, and Val Roa has lost its future king...”
The entire High Council chamber hung on the edge of their seats, voiceless and breathless.
Fishberry took a deep breath and spoke: “Then I suggest we elect a prime executive representative to act as the leader of Val Roa for the next foreseeable future. Personally, I would like to recommend Secretary Sharp Quill, whose experience is second to none. He has been dedicated and loyal to the Royal Family for his entire life. Who better than him to usher Val Roa into the future? For, whether we desire it or not, the fallacies of ancient tradition have finally consumed the heart of this great kingdom. A monarchical dynasty has always been far too fragile and tenuous to rely on with full faith. If the Royal Line didn't end today, it would certainly perish the next generation or the generation after that. I do believe it is time we put the future of Val Roa ahead of our own insecurities and move towards a complete democracy, with Sharp Quill as our primary steward.”
The second half of Fishberry's latest dialogue was impossible to hear over the tumultuous reaction of the crowd. Elks and reindeer were standing in their seats, loudly voicing their mixed shock and disapproval. Entire clusters of representatives bickered and argued with one another, with barely anyone paying sole attention to Fishberry.
She didn't appear to mind. Quietly, she tilted her head up, glancing at a clock above her balcony, then waited patiently for the most recent round of squabbling to end.
“Any minute now,” she murmured to herself, away from the sound stones. “This will all turn to dust...”
“Prostate!” Constable Jake spat, teeth clenched. As he and Saikano pulled the carriage towards the front steps of the High Council Building, he nervously eyed the thick crowd filling the courtyard. “I don't think the Tarkington has even arrived yet!”
Midnite Bastion stuck her head out of the window of the stagecoach. “Kera and Eine have to be here by now. Maybe if we contacted the Duchess?”
“It's a damn shame to have to drag our hooves and delay the inevitable!” Jake said.
“Then let's not.” Saikano motioned with his antlers. “There is a side entrance to the High Council. Rainbow Dash doesn't want us announcing our presence early, anyway. So perhaps we should enter from the side and meet up with Arcanista stealthily.”
“Good idea! I'm on board!” Midnite exclaimed. “Constable?”
“Hell, so long as antlers get to fly at the end of all this!” Jake pulled to the left and Saikano matched his movements. “I can totally do the sneaky deer thang, but only for so long!”
“Just a little bit longer, Jake.” Midnite gave Saikano one last glance. Shuddering, she slipped back inside the stagecoach to check on Sharp Quill's unconscious form. Meanwhile, the Soul Sentries galloping around the wagon followed as they took an abrupt detour, circumventing the thick crowd.
“Skystone engines primed and ready, Boss!” an imp shouted across the Gamma battleship's top deck.
“Very well.” Haman shuffled slowly towards the bow, pointing a grimy finger at the haze of urbanity beyond the nearest ridge of arid mountains. “Full speed! Let's snuff out the sun for these foppish fawns once and for all—”
Kapowww! A stream of mana flew into a propeller, causing it to explode with chunks of hot burning metal.
“Gaaaugh!” Several imps fell across the deck, some clutching at their bleeding limbs.
Haman spun, gawking as a stream of mana-blasts ricocheted across the deck, flew through the air, and bounced off the bulkheads of the battleship flanking them. Another explosion caused a cluster of imps to fly in opposite directions.
Milliseconds later—
FWOOOSH! The shadow of the Noble Jury glided overhead. The smaller, swifter vessel tore its way westward, bending back for a return strafe.
“How in the Hell...?!” An imp spun towards Haman and spoke above the sounds of pained moaning. “Boss, the Noble Jury wasn't blown up!”
“I can see that...” Haman snarled. “And I see you being impaled on one of my legs if you don't take the appropriate countermeasures!”
Paling, the subordinate spun and hollered at the recovering crew members. “Aim high! Fire anything and everything!” He pointed a clawed finger. “Bring those pony bastards down!”
“That barely scratched them!” Zaid shouted, struggling against the g-forces as he climbed the Noble Jury high, high up. “If anything, it made them mad!”
“That's the whole point!” Belle said, hooking one forelimb around Pilate as she gripped the starboard side turret with her other hoof. “We can't very well blow them out of the skies! Not without some help from Rainbow and the others!” She tilted her head aside. “You okay, Beloved?”
“For the m-most part!”
As the Noble Jury briefly evened out, Belle spoke into her sound stone: “Good job, Props! That mana overload shielded the skystone impeccably!”
“Scrkkk! Not sure Nancy Jane's got another pulse like that in her! The book nearly shorted out from that one!”
Echoing blasts filled the air.
“Incoming!” Zaid shouted as the atmosphere heated up.
“Just give us fuel for now, Props!” Belle shouted, already pivoting her cannon to intercept the incoming projectiles. “We've got speed and dexterity on our side! Let's all become a gnat they can't swat!”
“Right! Make us analogous to a fragile little bug!” Zaid gulped. “Quite the motivation—”
“Just loopty-loop, Mr. Zaid!” Pilate growled.
“Alrighty!” Zaid swiveled the controls, pulling the ship into a ferocious dive. “Loopty-looping!”
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Thirty squats, ):(. Knock 'em out!
This is going to be one heck of a fight.
hmmm
is... what is chryssi planning? the democracy bit threw me off
is it a distraction, or something more?
and the Tarkington best hurry its ass up
5500289
It's everyone's guess as to what her real plan is, at this point.
I wouldn't past IC to reveal that Chrissy just wanted to destroy ValRoa to access a dormant beast that had been sleeping under the city for millenia or something equally insane.
ah jeez the next hour of in story time is going to span like 30 chapters isn't it?
Curse you, ):(!
Chrissy is setting up the fastest way to get total chaos and destruction. Fishberry is speaking ar Nuremberg, and the Goblins are about to Pearl Harbour.
The difference being here is that the Jury is taking action as the radar station on top of the hill, and the Tarkington is coming in as the Missouri.
Rourke and The Lounge?
Oh, Theyre The Final Countdown.
DNS attacks, cant post links. 8(
The whole Fishberry speech seems pointless. Even the Chancellor herself considered it irrelevant what the attendees thought, because they were all about to be slaughtered by goblins anyway.
Which again begs the question: what's so important about coronating Prince Eine? The Big Three kept harping on it as being crucial to their plans, but given what we know that makes no sense.
5500535
Crush moral, perhaps?
5500535 I think he was supposed to die publically, at the coronation, to maximize the despair of the populace?
5500332
Now that you mention it, we have yet to meet Verlax...
And this is just the beginning? My God, this is gonna be badass.
5500586
5500548
Plausible, but they could have killed him when they got his parents or anytime after that. The end of the royal bloodline would crush moral, regardless of when it occurred.
No reason was stated, as far as I can remember, for why he had to be coronated on that day—only that it was necessary. Before the Big Three were revealed to be drones and/or evil, the assumption was that it was important for cultural reasons or equivalent.
Hold tight in there guys. Hit 'em where it hurts!
...Well, that's rather poetic. Rainbow Dash is literally protecting them from afar via that book.
With Roarke being MIA for as long as she has, I'm just assuming she'll pull a Han Solo at some point and save the day (probably for the Jury, and probably riding on the hood of a Lounge vessel). That'd be sweet.
If Rainbow's plan doesn't work, then we're all gonna look like burnt out toaster ovens.
Nyoooooom!
They're hovering there, menacingly
5500289
"Communism was just a red herring!"
5501750
HA!
but in all seriousness, none of the political subterfuge stuff makes any sense at this point
hopefully it'll all be cleared up in the future
sooner rather than later would be preferable, albeit unlikely
Rocket's red glare, motherfuckers!
5501557 legendariummedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/1407163179133.png
Well, my guess is that they are trying to blow the whole conspiracy wide open by revealing that the prince is fine, his parents are alive, and the big three are connected to Chryssi. That doesn't explain how they plan to deal with the goblins, or how they plan to flush out Chrysalis.
As far as Chrissi's plans, it was probably something along the lines of coronate and replace Eine, double cross the lounge and goblins by using the soul sentries congregated in the capital to crush them both and consolidate King Eine's reign while using the whole debacle to encourage militant expansion. Then create a police state similar to Ledomare, except with Chrysalis in direct control of the entire country. From there, she can wage war against neighboring kingdoms and create a state of suffering that will feed a new changeling brood.
More concerning than that though, is how Chrysalis plans on killing the Jurists. She is no fool, and most likely knows what Rainbow and the others are up to. For all we know, she intends for them to find her and is using the whole situation as bait to gather all her enemies in one place and crush them. She's a former alicorn; she's had centuries to perfect her art.
Zaid is turning into a damn good pilot. Forget all those fancy Lounge airships. All Val Roa needs is the Jury's sleek red glow to deal with these goblin bogies. We have yet to see Props' hard fuel rockets in action.
5501557
Were they also doing it in very much the same way that bricks don't?
fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/260/b/f/it_begins____by_mrfugums-d4a42vj.gif
So it begins.
Said every enemy of the Jury, before getting blown up themselves.
5500289 It's a great plan, create major confusion and chaos then reluctantly take charge. Everyone loves you as you restore control, they don't mind losing a few freedoms if it means being safe till the danger has passed. Then something else comes up and you need new powers to deal with it, next thing you know they've given you near absolute control of everything and they love you for it.
I considered the battle for Val Roa started several chapters ago.
5502742 What a devious little plan... I love it.
The explosions have begun. This is where the fun starts.
Here it comes!
5500398 It wouldn't be an Austraeoh story without cliffhangers and DBZ length fight scenes
where is Chrysalis
we should probably find out before she shows up and reveals that this was actually the whole plan
Come on, Lounge, what's taking so long?!
-Spirit
Wow, Belle is taking on the captain role rather well. The future with this kind of thing is interesting, but I doubt it will amount to anything. In the mean time, let's get ready for a fight.
Haman finally get's to see the full force of the noble jury face to face. time for him to eat his own words.
6084352 that's hardly the full force. Most of the jurists are elsewhere, and RIP Whizzball .
6084352
There missing Roarke, Dashie, and Floydien. With those three then they'd be facing full force of the Noble Jury.
This... this has to be a trick
That would be way too anticlimactic...
Also, Fishberry trying to abolish the monarchy while the crowd is already angry about the Prince's disappearance. Yeah, that'll go over well.
Now the sparks start flying.
10/14/2019
20:57 UTC
MENACINGLY!
Sorry Fishberry, your plan to put Sharp Quill on the throne ain't gonna work.