Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows

Chapter thirty one, All Good Things: Experiences.

-Many months later, Jade?-

Fluttershy hasn’t been around, she was probably way too busy with her own life. At least she took Angel bunny and Jackass the jackalope with her when she went to set up her new home, I might barely even actually miss the jackalope. I had so much fun chasing him around for some painful, trap laden, violent fun.

Sugar was much nicer to spend time around, when I wasn’t hanging out with my little buddy Snickers.

Fizzle had her cast removed after a week or two and by now our injuries were much better.

Things in Airship Mauled have been pretty quiet for a while.

I mean aside from the random highland pukwudgie attacks.

There was also that weird sand shark invasion, one that didn’t last long as the sand sharks had trouble swimming through stuff that wasn’t sand. We dealt with them easily.

Fortitude and Flamberge actually got seriously injured for once by a highly confused, out of place and possibly time, magical triceratops. I noted it as endangered species and we had to let it get away.

Accidentally incurring the wrath of and getting hunted by giant stymphalian birds while on a date with Maries.

Found a nest of Myrmekes while exploring with Fizzle and Sugar in Barely Bearable Woods. Thus proving that nobody would want to go in there for too long or else you might get a bear sized ant to the face, if the Drop Bears didn’t get you first. The place was aptly named for its numerous bear sized problems.

There must have been a rich source of gold nearby or the Myrmekes wouldn’t even be present around here, Myrmeke nests are always built around areas rich with gold. It was a good thing Myrmekes had a limit to where they could thrive or otherwise this world would be covered in them, Maulwurfs also helped keep Myrmeke populations down.

Maulwurf, giant mole with highly armored skin and fur. Said armored skin is resilient to both magic and physical damage to be about on par with a dragon's scales. I wouldn’t be stupid enough to attract one with the kinds of plants or bugs they are known to eat, since they were usually much bigger than bears.

We currently had nothing aside from Sugar that could even hurt a Maulwurf enough to make it leave us alone, which is if one were to actually attack us.

Yep things were really quite quiet… even the temporary and completely unwarranted Taraxippus haunting, which scared all the local ponies by just existing. It only had an effect on ponies or horse like beings. It learned that it couldn’t scare me and had certainly earned my ire by being more annoying than I was.

I had to protect my job security as one of the most annoying things around Airship Mauled, as such the Taraxippus should have learned ahead of time that it was in for an awful beating.

Might have even seen a rather beautiful golden Teumessian, otherwise known as a Canis Minor or Cadmean Vixen, in the area. Basically it was giant, usually female, fox. One that, thanks to its abilities, could never be caught by any means whatsoever. Well it is better to say that you couldn’t ever trap one permanently and you could still certainly hurt them or knock them around, but you’d never actually contain them.

Even Shining armor couldn’t just put a barrier around a Teumessian without it warping space around itself to easily escape.

Jacky still hadn’t found out what you called a ten foot pole eating monster. No surprise there, but I was still afraid to pull out my collapsible ten foot pole out of paranoia that it would get eaten.

I even found out last week that Parasprites tasted pretty good when skewered and roasted rotisserie style. The bugs had a lot of meaty flavor for being rapidly reproducing famine causers and didn’t even have any crunch to them at all.

Okay… in general it was really quiet for our usual weirdness and troubles. Haven’t exactly heard of anything about GODLESS, but Shining was looking into it and was trying to take care of it without needing my... ‘civilian’.. interference.

School was going well and the town was flourishing even more after that airship crash a many months back that gave us a small apartment complex. Not that we would ever thank Veles for giving his spine to the cause, especially after he had resurrected nearby to complain about how it wasn’t nearly as painful as it should have been.

To put it in perspective Veles had the entire front end of a pretty large airship slam its fully focused weight down on top of him. He thankfully didn’t stick around for more than two days or bother to kidnap Grace.

Celestia finally introduced me to a moon priest and she was uptight as all get out, her name was Bracing Knight and had dark brown fur, leaf green hair and orange eyes. She was pretty good at hiding in forests with her coloration.

Thankfully nobody warned her about my ability to temporarily clone myself, so I could still get away from her when I needed to. I would have honestly preferred Blade to be my protector.

At least Blade didn’t bother me nearly as much as Bracing did. If I were to look, I’d see Bracing waiting in the shadows of the trees outside right this instant.

I was told by the Celestia that the recently discovered GODLESS wasn’t the only organization that would wanted my hide on a pike, but I have yet to actually meet or see any other ‘major’ threat to my life these past few months.

Apparently I’ve been lucky so far to not meet any other faction that wanted me out of the way badly enough to hunt me down.

So the times marched on and no one could guess how interesting they were about to become.

-Jade-

We were all currently in a game of Ogres and Oubliettes, one of the biggest we’ve had yet. This campaign has been going on for several days. We had lost a number of characters to the Blanks, but Fizzle’s character was in a prime position to end it all. My character was running interference and was slowly being mashed into a fine paste.

“I roll to cast my armored sword spell and, because I have enough initiative points for this, I then swing it for the nondescript pony statue.” Fizzle was on a roll today with her spell sword character. She tossed some dice and everyone cheered when the roll came up good.

“Well Fizzle, your Spell Sword's armor breaks apart and reconstitutes itself around the sword and then you stab the sword into what will now be revealed to be the Blank’s horde sculpture, their source of power. It is destroyed and all the Blanks around everyone screech and start fading away into oblivion.” Mom was running this campaign and she effortlessly led us through a whole slew of troublesome things to reach this point, even throughout it all she had trouble stopping my room stabber rogue from going through everything like a hot knife through already melted butter. The Blanks were notably dangerous because they were immune to stealth attacks. “Congratulations Fizzle, you’ve helped to save the day from Dark Omen and the horde of Blanks. All your defeated party members are revived at your location and you find a chest with special lower goddess tier gear.”

“I’ll take the comically cursed items!” Joke items were a favorite of my character and there’s a backstory behind it.

The cursed spring boots that both can’t be worn without them constantly activating my favorite one, it was a big boost to evasion on my character and I had to constantly roll saving throws whenever I took an action or whenever an action was taken against me.

“Of course you would, let’s hold this thought. It’s getting late everyone, time to prepare for bed all of you! Of course I also mean separate beds for Fizzle, Maries and Jade.” We just whined loudly at mom for cruelly separating us like that. “You’ve been getting a little too physical in your affection lately, so I’m putting my paw down before you go a little too far. You’re still a bit young to be doing anything too physical anyway, not to mention you have graduation exams soon. So you need to get up early and start studying over the weekend.”

“Fine.” Grumbled Fizzle, she was the initiator of the most sleep related snuggles.

“I know it seems cruel, but I hope you know that I care about all of you and would even be willing to act as a second mother to Maries.” Mom wasn’t kidding, she would likely adopt every one of my friends as her own children if she could. Having Kuril for a mother was an experience.

“She’s right. Velvet, Arizona, it’s time to start preparing for bed.” It wasn’t hard for Grace to take cues from mom, she was technically their caretaker. Nobody saw any problem with this as long as her nature didn’t get in the way of taking care of both of them, especially after they got done ‘playing’ with one another. ‘Playing’ was Grace’s term for their arguments and constant violent fighting. “If you want to maintain those healthy bodies and minds of yours, then getting in a proper amount of sleep will help.”

The Vibrant Vikings were capable of taking care of themselves, it kind of came with the nature of Viking culture.

“Jade, stay, we need to talk about your scholastic issues.” Turning to Cheerilee I gave her my rather attentive ears.

“Yes?” I sat back down. When Maries and Fizzle looked to me, I motioned for them to go.

“It’s sadly very easy for me to say this Jade, but you’re not going to pass in math. Though you can still certainly graduate if you do something for me.” Yeah that figures Cheerilee, everyone was well aware I was failing in that. “I’ve actually decided that I will give you a pass in math, but only if you score high in everything else. It’s something I know you can do, so please don’t disappoint me by writing another frog potion apocalypse equation.”

“Wait, what!? Do you still have it?” Nope, mom still hadn’t managed to turn a single thing into a frog. Mom even tried whittling a frog out of wood and instead somehow ended up making a whale, I think frogs weren’t ever going to be in her future as a witch.

“Knowing what the equation would do and the interest you would have in it, I burned it in Jade’s fire when Jade was making her…” Cheerilee shivered, looked a little grossed out and even gagged slightly. “Parasprite kabobs.”

“I still think they tasted good.” I muttered, the fact that they tasted like chicken when cooked was wonderful. Maybe I should get mom to make some dipping sauce for them when I next get an urge to snack on parasprites.

“I would have eventually found the cure for a worldwide frog plague!” Mom whined while slapping her paws over her face and made a keening sound of disappointment. “Why can’t I ever get a single frog?”

“I’m sorry to interrupt this… whatever it is, but I was wondering if I could talk to Jade for a minute.” It seems Daring Do making a stop in our town again, wonder what she wanted me for.

“Who are you, what are you doing here, why are you trying to get close to the sun priestess?” Lazily glancing at Bracing, I stood up and moved over to Daring and took a sniff of the air around her.

Nope, not a changeling, they have a rather distinct smell when they were trying to impersonate ponies. I’m surprised we haven’t been invaded by changelings, Kevin must have really not said anything about this place to Chrysalis.

I’m also a little surprised that ponies couldn’t smell when changelings were around, they didn’t tend to bathe between transformations and sometimes had a sitting in the hot sun brimstone or limestone smell to them sometimes.

“Sure, I got some time before I prepare for bed, also she’s a friend. Seriously Bracing, I’ve gone the last few years without you around to protect me and I’ve only been grievously injured about four times, most which were my fault.” I gestured at myself. “I’m not completely defenseless you know, and I can absolutely take care of myself just fine. Besides, she’s an artifact hunter that’s keeping the world safe from destruction.”

“You’re letting one of your assassins live here.” Yeah, Bracing was always so suspicious of Blade.

I think Blade has long since earned our trust.

“So she’s an expert in using sharp objects and once tried to kill me. There’s nothing suspicious about her being around me nowadays.” After saying this I watched as Blade approached me to pat me on the head and then continue on back into the kitchen to clean things up for the day.

Bracing narrowed her eyes at the other thestral and was currently focusing on her way too much.

“Come on Daring, tell me what you need while she’s distracted with the thoughts that Blade might stab me in the back at an inopportune time.” I started to drag the adventurous pony away from my bodyguard.

I didn’t know about much about Bracing, but Celestia had vetted her personally as being a safe option after finally getting the moon priests to lend someone for my protection.

Like I needed protection.

If Bracing actually brought up me getting swallowed by a Tatzlwurm five minutes after seeing me for the first time, then I would have to point out that it was a fluke and that I wasn’t even hurt on that occasion. Another thing I would point out is that Bracing let that happen to me in the first place as she was technically on the job at that point.

The Tatzlwurm eventually coughed me up, after having spent about an hour with me lodged in its throat with its many horrible waggling tongues.

Upon walking outside and close to the eternal fire that I had going at the center of our town, Daring and I sat down next to each other.

“You know when you offered to destroy some really dangerous artifacts a some years back? Well I’ve come across quite a lot of them while hunting down this ‘End of Immortality’ thing.” She started labeling locations where she found the objects, how dangerous they were, what they did and why they absolutely needed to be destroyed. I told her about GODLESS and what they wanted the ‘End of Immortality’ thing to do. It was as their organizations name suggested. "It’s beginning to look like I’m going to be running into a series of increasingly dangerous things then, at least the royalties on my books will keep me fed until I’m old and gray. Can you really actually destroy these artifacts?”

“I can do it, but you do realize that all that energy has to go somewhere right?” I made that clear when it comes to casting. To destroy an object entirely you have to use up all the energy, magical or otherwise, contained within said object in some given way.

“Which is why we’ll move a safe distance outside of town when I bring them here, duh!” Daring smirked and it was settled.

Author's Note:

Note: This was a huge time skip while glossing over all the crazy things that have happened.

After another minor time skip in the next 'page', things will turn rather... grim.

I hope that anyone who likes this story will be willing to continue reading after that point.

I've been warning and or hinting that this was going to happen for a long time now, all I need to do is make it happen.

Hopefully I can do this without completely ruining the comedy tag entirely.

Comments

[Booster Spice]

Season 1 of Airship Mauled comes to a close, Season 2 promises Cirkus Irkus 25 ring runaround?

[Sigmacipher]

Wild shot in the dark...bracing is in fact a Godless agent since we know Celestia can't think ahead to save her life and she ends up killing blade instead of jade and the reason fizzle becomes Tempest Shadow is because she blames Celestia for the destruction of her family and home.

[The Scarlett Mare]

“Who are you, what are you doing here, why are you trying to get close to the sun priestess?” Lazily glancing at Bracing, I stood up and moved over to Daring and took a sniff of the air around her.

*Rolls my eyes repeatedly*