Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows

Chapter thirty one, All Good Things: Home.

-Jade-

“Glad you like your new robes mom.” Having gotten mom an entire set of new robes and a witch hat that perfectly sat on her head, ears and all, she smiled at me and gave me a strong hug.

She must have liked her knew hat and robes a little too much, the hug was threatening to choke the life out of me.

“Mom, I think you’re choking her.” Jacky intoned blandly and then mom let go of me.

“I can breathe again, I’ve survive my mom’s snuggle of death!” I gasped out.

“Stop being overdramatic my little tom cat.” Still mom nuzzled her face against mine and I smiled.

“…” Cadence just watched us like an outsider, as we sat down to eat cheesecake. I looked to her and tilted my head and looked to the cheesecake and then back to her. Eventually she joined us in getting a slice of her own.

Jacky was fine, Fizzle would be fine and I was okay myself, we all wanted mom to smile and seeing her so cheerful on her birthday this morning was nice.

Velvet wouldn’t be able to have any cheesecake, but she was awake even with her fever being as high as it was. She was at least smiling at the small celebration we were trying to have. She needed fluids, nutrients and plenty of rest to start cooling down.

Arizona wasn’t in any better condition, she’s torn every muscle in her body between her head and tail, what she didn’t tear she had pulled quite badly. Surprisingly her heart was one of the few muscles unaffected by the damage throughout her body.

The comment the cow made was that if Velvet couldn’t break her heart while trying, then nothing would. All the muscles in her head were also fine, I didn’t think she’d ever fight an elephant again for a while though. Unlike Velvet, she could actually enjoy some cheesecake and would require a little help to eat it.

Having been up all night we were going to sleep today and catch the evening train back to Ponyville. Moving Velvet and Arizona back to Airship Mauled in their conditions would be a bit tricky, but we’d either manage it with Fortitude or we’d fly the Ardent Survivor to Ponyville and would pick them up.

We really needed to get the train station in Airship Mauled up and running.

Until then we were going to sleep through this morning after throwing a small birthday party for mom.

“It’s a good thing we’ll never have to go through that again.” Turning to Fizzle, I couldn’t hold back the statement playing upon my tongue.

“There’s actually a possibility of it…” Everyone froze and turned to stare at me. “There’s more than one Alicorn Amulet in existence. Don’t ask how I know, I just do.”

There was a long silence when I said that.

“At least there’s one less amulet like that in existence though!” Flamberge had managed to brighten the mood as he took to his apple cider heartily.

“Yeah, I don’t think there’s that many of them around or else you would constantly hear about a lot of incidents with red eyed mentally messed up super ponies running around everywhere.” Please only let there be two alicorn amulets, I silently begged. Hopefully there would be no more than three, I didn’t think we were that lucky though. “We took care of it, end of story. Let’s celebrate my mother’s birthday and forget that I mentioned it!”

We were all at home and at heart with one another, though we weren’t home where we physically belonged.

-???-

“It’s so good that we can procure your services once more Mr. Obelus.” I stated with a sense of finality, it took us quite a bit of time to get him out without anyone noticing that he was missing. “Succeed, you get double the offer. Fail and whatever happens to you, well… we’ll find a way to make it that much worse.”

The Sun Priestess was not long for this world if I had any say in it and money was quite a good motivator. I had plenty to throw at the problem, especially a massive thorn in the side of my organizations earnings.

“I’m not coming back until I succeed this time.” He said with an air of swagger, he knew what he was dealing with now.

“See that you don’t, setting up this meeting without getting noticed has been… problematic.” The royal guard were on high alert, I take it something big had happened in Manehattan and that the Sun Priest attending the cultural festival led to something strange happening.

Had Top Snide actually acquired the amulet?

If so, then I dearly hoped that he didn’t use it as that would be a folly of the highest sorts. One of the likes that our organization couldn’t feasibly recover from easily.

If he were smart, he’d study such a horribly cursed object thoroughly before putting it on. The power to match the strength of a goddess might have been too tantalizing to him.

I’d soon hear news about what went down. If I don’t, then I’ll soon know what happened either way. Sometimes receiving no news was just as telling as getting all the information in the world, it’s sometimes the stuff you don’t hear that is the most important.

Knowledge was power, power was pain. If you had to ask, then I would certainly win this game. For when I find 'the end of immortality’, this world will change for the better!

-Sekhet, Airship Mauled-

“A chill wind blows, telling all of a future that scares me so… but to whom does it go?” I asked curiously as I left my lovely pyramid, shrunk down and headed for Kurilian’s establishment.

Various beings were sitting and talking amongst themselves while Blade and Fresh were taking care of them, I waited to be seated.

“Hello~.” The greeting was long and drawn out in a familiar chirpy tone of voice and I looked at the pony that no other being was paying attention to in the room. He was odd in that he had a ghostly set of wings and horn on his dark yellow earth pony body. His mane and tail were a kaleidoscope of random colors, I knew it could only be one being.

“Veles.” I blandly stated.

“Well don’t look so excited to see me!” He said while turning one of his legs into a snake as he stretched it for me to attempt to wrap it around my back, only he stopped when I snapped my teeth at the offending limb. He swiftly pulled it back and it turned back into hoof. “I was invited to come visit after all.”

“I didn’t think you’d be coming so soon.” Again, my tone as bland and dry as a desert. “Also I don’t like you, I may even eventually come to harbor an intense hatred for you.”

“Why that sounds quite nice of you, but I think you’re only doing it just because I want the Sun Priestess for myself.” I glared at Veles and he just smiled, I sighed and sat down with him. “You should hate me for me, not because of outside influences!”

“Hey Sekhet, hey god I don’t know the name of, will you be having anything?” Fresh Start was always so chipper. It was quite refreshing to see her take on every day by starting with a smile.

“Wait… you can see my godhood?” Veles looked at the mare with confusion.

“All who live here are ‘technically’ under my protection since I have built a residence nearby, said protection includes from crazy gods like you.” If my voice could get any dryer, then this room would turn into a volcano. “Don’t make a scene and none of the visitors will notice.”

“He’s not actually a pony is he? The way his mane and tail shift colors is kind of distracting and a little bit sickening to look at to be honest.” To think Fresh Start used to be so easy to get riled up with all the craziness, now she just took everything with a kind of grace that some gods wished they had.

“No I am not a pony, but I can take on the form of one. I came here wondering if I can get the gods version of an Airship Mauled tour so to speak.” He smiled at me cheerfully. Sure I could stand to get him crushed by some random errant crashing airship, it’s how we get most of our visitors anyway. Every airship that crashes either becomes housing if it can’t be fixed or it is repaired. The airships that can be fixed usually had a well fed and rested crew by the time they were ready to move on. “Also I was wondering if that nice air headed cow in the inn is seeing anyone, I want to kidnap her and was wondering if anyone would notice if she was gone.”

“Touch Grace and you’ll be hurting a lot of commoners, which wouldn’t be like you at all.” Watching the other god grimace, I smirked. “She’s basically the communities rock to lean on, one that can’t be washed away no matter how long a river flows over her. She may be air headed in nature, but she’s not dumb and everyone knows what to expect of her when they talk to her.”

“So much for taking that cow and getting some milk from her.” He flicked his hoof and it made a snapping sound of disappointment. I also now knew what chartreuse tastes like, but that’s a really common harmless side effect of spending time around chaos gods.

“You know you could ask her for milk, she always gives it away freely to anyone who wants some.” When I looked at Grace, I saw a mortal who was always polite and helpful. An optimistic peacemaker that happened to be tone deaf to a degree that her singing can actually stop heart songs, one of the reasons Jade really likes having her around when she’s about to start singing uncontrollably.

“Did you say someone wants my milk, how much do they need Sekhet?” Grace, Arizona’s caretaker, sat down with us and asked innocently.

“That wouldn’t be any fun though!” One could see that Veles was upset at the prospect of getting milk from a cow so easily, which just made me smile at him for being so upset. “Look, do you know a tougher cow to kidnap and deal with?”

“You could always try and find Maggie… I really don’t know where she is, but there’s always her daughter Arizona. Poor dear misses her mother and I don’t know what happened to Maggie after she went after some world snake thing for one of the keys to close off that realm of predatory shadow monsters from getting into this one. Come to think of it, it’s kind of like what Daring Do does.” Here Grace sighs audibly. “I just really don’t know if I’m doing a good job with Arizona sometimes. She seems a lot like her mother, so I must be doing something right. It’s just that she's just a little too excitable at times.”

“Excitable, that’s your word for it?” One could hear my tone dripping with disbelief if they looked hard enough.

Arizona is without a doubt one of the most aggressive and violent mortals I’ve ever seen, despite that she was courageous and relatively good natured. I’d even say that Arizona had the heart of a true hero, she just needed to be tempered by life and experiences to become someone worthy of legend like Somnambula was.

“My dear, I think you are a fine specimen of living bovine artistry and that you are in fact taking good care of Arizona. Unfortunately Arizona needs to be a bit bigger in the udder department, she looks more like a horned dog than a cow and kidnapping her would just hurt my pride… so tiny...” Which was Veles’s way of saying he liked Grace in general. “It’s just unfortunate for me that I’d also feel bad for kidnapping you, you’d be absolutely way too nice about it. So I’m just going to pass on taking you from here.”

“Well thank you! You know, you are a lot nicer than those cow traffickers that tried to traffic me and my friends into slavery. Those guys didn’t seem very kind at all like you are.” Grace said airily with a smile making Veles’s pony form blush. “Hey Fresh, I’m a bit hungry and feel like eating something extravagant today. Can I get some fresh chopped vegetables please? Like usual, I want it thoroughly washed, very little boiling and surprise me with the vegetables I’ll be getting.”

“Of course Grace, one Fresh Garden order coming up. Do you two want anything Sekhet… and company?” Thinking about Fresh’s offer I eventually nodded.

“Yeah, coffee, as roasted as you can get it without having a dragon to do it.” Nodding at me, Fresh Start turned to the visiting nuisance.

“Simply a glass of room temperature water for me. Now back to the subject, what cow traffickers and where are they?” Veles’s eyes narrowed. He might kidnap cows, but he didn’t hurt them or do anything bad to them… aside from stealing their milk.

“Oh don’t worry about it, Maggie and our other friend had a really friendly talk with them.” Like usual, Grace lived in her own little world. “They were all so loud and a bit rambunctious, but I think everything worked out.”

“Still… where was this taking place?” Veles obviously was going to go after anyone that was still trying to traffic cows.

“Well… those places don’t exactly exist anymore.” Looking at the table, Grace seemed a little upset. She eventually looked up faintly returning to her usual demeanor. “Maggie got a little… expressive… with the number of explosives she used to take down those buildings. Thankfully no one was hurt in the explosions, they were really loud. I still think things turned out for the best afterwards.”

“Not the buildings it was taking place in, I just want the location said place was. You know, for a… field trip… if you will.” Reading between the lines, Veles was going to find a reason to interfere in mortal lives by finding at least a single mortal to give him the ability to act openly.

Veles could do whatever he wanted in the chaos dimension, but here, he followed the rules just like every other god. Ignore those rules and bad things will happen to the perpetrator that broke them, Discord learned that the hard way when he started taking things way too far. He had an entire playground in the chaos dimension, but the mortals here were apparently better.

“Oh, well… it was happening in Moss Cow.” The second she finished saying that Veles disappeared. I rolled my eyes as Grace turned to me. “Where do you suppose he went in such a hurry?”

I slapped my face with a paw and slowly dragged it downwards. Only you could miss something so obvious Grace, he was likely in Moss Cow this very second.

“Sorry I left so abruptly." It certainly didn’t take Veles long, either that or he was doing the whole 'in two places at once' bit that some gods are so very fond of. "I just had to see to a few things.”

“That's alright.” Grace said cheerfully.

Author's Note:

Grace is very easy going.

Comments

[Fireeaters]

lol

[Booster Spice]

Veles A River dirty rolling stone?

[The Scarlett Mare]

I'm starting to love Grace