Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows

Chapter fifty two, All in All: Villains.

-The Volcano, Middle Tier, Airship Dock, The Grand Time, Teatime-

I took a sip of tea as I sat there pondering one of the most troubling things I’ve ever come across, a treasure who’s trap I couldn’t honestly bypass. Well ‘honest’ was such a strong word for what I did, I would like think it’s mostly just cutting the knot of having to do something so outrageously dangerous as to put myself in the path of imminent death.

In this case… I couldn’t just send golems in, something happened to their crystal matrixes when I tried.

The follow up golems I sent to retrieve the lost golems barely made it out with a quarter of their power remaining. I had quite a dilemma on my hooves here.

I couldn’t just dig into the volcano, I didn’t exactly have anything that was strong enough to survive lava or magma. I could just send autonomous equipment to drain the lava, but there was no guarantee I’d be able to get the treasure without destroying it in the process.

While I could just send those two Neanderthals who joined GODLESS for inane reasons, it would hurt my current position and I wanted to remain near the top of the slowly dwindling organization.

Plus, despite my constant complaints, they were very useful rooks. They could take a beating and I was not about to throw them away on anything less than something that was completely unavoidable.

I’d loathe to say that we were friends though, we had little in common.

Celestia has been catching a lot of the other agents over the last year. With the so called ‘Princess Luna’ returning, it heralded a death knell for a majority of the organization as thestrals were becoming more active with the night princess back in the fold of things.

With the organization slowly being whittled away, I had to stay on top of things to keep my money, accrued power and most importantly my infamy as one of the most brilliant engineers in the world.

Thinking of engineers made me wonder how Flim and Flam were doing, I appreciated giving those two shysters a decent start even if I already knew they would never amount to much.

I wanted to be remembered and I was going to do that by doing as many horrible things as I could without crossing a specific line, nobody would be able to forget my downfall when someone eventually defeats me in a permanent fashion.

I was not one to go down quietly after all, a villain was far more memorable depending on how much of an impression they left on the world with what they did at their last stand.

Of course most heroes could just move on with their lives and forget the villain once they achieve a lasting victory, but I wanted to be remembered long after I was dealt with and I knew I would eventually get that comeuppance someday. There was always someone better, faster or stronger, being smarter was not a necessarily needed part of the equation as far as heroes are concerned.

I was well enough aware that while the royal guard was a humorous attempt at policing idiocy, they still had at least some competent members in their number or else they wouldn’t exist with the EUP providing far more capable ponies.

Back to here and now. My rival, whatever that parrot’s name was, was interested in the treasure of the Dark Flame Temple and I wanted to know why. She was even going to take part in the next Fiery Fights the longma run like the reindeer do their Tundra Tournaments.

It wasn’t just curiosities sake that I was looking into this, no, it was the idea that I can get one over on that vexing bipedal bird. Whatever it was she was after, I wanted it for myself. Nothing was a greater challenge than getting a treasure out from under someone else’s nose before they could reach it.

That parrot was quite an intellectual match for me and I made a good call back in the day that she would be my eternal rival, even when she was working right next to Daring Do herself!

Daring Do had Dr. Caballeron, Ahuizotl and plenty of other rivals to deal with already, I was just a dangerous periphery for her and didn’t want to be focused on by a mare whose luck always seems to exceed her brains.

Though there was some skill there, I did not want to lose a fight as pitifully as to tripping over her helmet or her suddenly having a lucky coincidence to save her flank from some danger that should be impossible to escape. Most importantly, I did not want to be defeated by the walking embodiment of a living fairy tale character that was Daring Do!

Given she’s a storybook character that’s an actual pony. I’m sure that Daring just sends the stories of her adventures to her writer and that just makes it all the more obvious that AK Yearling knows exactly what Daring Do is actually getting up to.

Daring must not get paid well as an archaeologists if she has to resort to selling books to get by, I’m so glad I went the black market route with my own thirst for adventure.

I find Daring’s altruism as a bit sickening, she hardly gets paid enough money for the stuff that her job puts her through and she needs someone to give her the royalties on a bunch of storybooks to even get by. Though admittedly Daring Do has actually managed to immortalize herself, I can’t exactly do the same without a number of places coming down on me for my more notable actions.

I still had plenty of funds due to the illicit and legal means in which I made them, most of them had yet to be stopped because I can take care of the tracks my hooves leave. Also my earnings could not be directly tied to GODLESS.

Celestia or Luna would have a problem finding a way to shut me down or take me out personally, given that if they do then they’d be disturbing all of Equestria’s economy greatly. I’ve made myself indispensable by clearly becoming too important to the stability of things, it’ll become one of the most remembered things about my eventual glorious downfall.

Unless they had Daring Do focus all her efforts on me, and I seriously doubt they would, I have never done anything absolutely illegal in front of anyone important. Though I have clearly stretched the law to the brink sometimes, there has never been any clear evidence for someone to charge me with.

Does Daring actually enjoy the rush of putting herself constantly in danger? She obviously loves putting herself into traumatic situations that would leave plenty of other ponies with a post-traumatic stress disorder a mile wide. She wasn’t a professional escape artist and yet she could give Hoofdini a run for his money with all the traps she is said to have narrowly escaped.

That parrot in comparison is a bit of an unknown to me, but there is one thing I know about her… she’s quite unlucky. I don’t feel threatened enough that she could suddenly get these random acts of incredible serendipity from some unnamed god that wants her to succeed at life and all she has to do is put in some modicum of effort into things like Daring does.

The parrot’s struggles were actually fairly realistic compared to Daring’s random bouts of extreme luck that solves the situation for her. Despite the fact that I can’t, for the life of me, remember her name, the parrot was a far sight more impressive.

I will silently admit this one thing, the parrot is a surprisingly sturdy and makes a much better hero than Daring Do to thwart or surpass. She’s an underdog and she hardly cares about recognition, put something dangerous in front of her and she’ll think her way around it. Her successes don’t come from luck, but from a respectable amount of hard work and I had to appreciate that much about the pirate wench.

That parrot obviously knows there is no god or goddess out there to help her and yet she continues to live a carefree life with the world actually out to get her. She was probably one of the few females that I can see as an actual challenge, Daring Do wasn’t a challenge so much as she was an effort in frustration that inevitably leads to failure for those who try to beat her thanks to those so called ‘coincidences’ she enjoyed.

Speaking of increasingly frustrating problems with no solution, one was my attempts to try and investigate this Dark Flame Temple of the longma. Apparently the magic of the place made golems impossible to use and apparently there was a precedent for something biological having to walk into an obvious and highly dangerous trap themselves to get at the treasure.

From what I predict, any amount of digging would make the treasure room in the mountain break off and be filled with lava. It was ingenious way to prevent the treasure from being stolen really and it was fairly obvious that the dragons who made this treasure room had some form of magical help.

I was the reason why Caballeron actually had a decent victory under his belt during the ‘Caves of Intrigue’ escapade, the payoff from that was exemplary. The parrot still managed to survive the whole cave collapsing in on her and that was after she managed to get Daring out.

Before that I don’t think Daring has ever suffered an incredibly significant loss as the parrot and her whole crew almost dying. If something as simple as that almost broke her spirit… then Daring wasn’t as great as her stories depict her as and were obviously highly embellished.

It took months for Daring Do to actually get back into the spirit of things from what my sources tell me. She almost failed to stop Caballeron the next few times she met him, still didn’t stop Caballeron from finding more clues to that whole ‘End of Immortality’ nonsense that the leader of GODLESS wanted to find. It’s a wild geese chase, as the clues kept bouncing the seekers all over the place trying to find the actual location of the thing in question. I think the treasures near where you could find said clues were more worthwhile than the clues themselves.

I really needed to stop losing my train of thought, I had to focus on Huoshan. Whatever was protecting this temple, my golems were useless and I’ve heard the rumors that living beings get driven insane by going in there.

So what to do? Thinking of it, I was curious as to what both Shocking and Dispel were getting up to. Those two were getting along rather well, it would boost their productivity at the very least. Dispel’s eyesight had taken a day to clear up and the burns Shocking had taken in the fire blast didn’t last half that time.

Getting up from my seat, I planned to give my compatriots some orders.

Entering them in the Fiery Fights was my best course of action now, given my parrot nemesis was going to enter herself. While they distracted the many problems in the area, I’ll set up some surveillance, place my golems in many key positions around the city and I will lay in wait to begin my burgeoning plan.

I was outside of Equestria’s jurisdiction, therefore starting a small war was not out of the question for me. That I could cause pressure between our races was a bonus, there would certainly be a lot of diplomatic headaches from this and that wasn’t my problem.

The real reason I wanted to do this? I wanted to test out my Airship’s special functions in combat with the parrot’s friends and the forces of Huoshan. I also haven’t gotten the chance to test my newer toys yet and I considered the testing grounds here to be a worthwhile endeavor.

Many birds and a stone as they say.

-Shocking-

I wondered what the brains of our three pony group was doing, he has actually impressed me a little.

Teatime may be a weakling, but he more than made up for that with that machine he made. Too bad it was blown up by several sticks of gum and beanpole parrot, but it had been awesome watching it wreck face before it was blown up.

Unlike Dispel, I hadn’t lost my eyesight and took the time to watch the destruction Teatime caused. It was an art form all its own and Teatime even got out of that mess without needing help.

Aside from sipping tea, it seems Teatime had been thinking a lot stuff through, which was entirely too boring for me to do and I was just relaxing until my next dust up. I had a feeling that Teatime was planning just that.

I was open for whatever kind of situation Teatime wanted to stuff me into though. I’ll show him that I’d excel at whatever he gave me to do, for I was Shocking Awe and I wouldn’t back down from a challenge!

I may not be the brightest stallion around, seriously wanted to punch my flighty pegasus nature itself sometimes for that, but I was still smarter than Dispel Grace was!

I sat up from my positon on the floor and actually gave Teatime my undivided attention when he came up to us.

“Excuse me my fine gentle stallions, but I have need of you.” Oh, what could Teatime possible want from us… also would it be exceedingly dangerous? Give me a challenge here, I’m practically dying for one Teatime and you were smart enough to know some of the better places to find one!

“Okay, I’m listening Clock, don’t know about holier than thou Mr. Tin Can here though.” I guess I surprised brain boy, he didn’t think I could talk to him without insulting him.

Eh, I’m just giving him the credit where it is belongs, he could put up a fight against several warriors and sent a number of longma running. He’s earned some credit with me.

-Dispel Grace-

I was truly the only real zealot among this number that actually wanted to tear down the gods, but these stallions were honorable… to a certain extent and definition of it.

They would probably believe me nothing but dead weight in the mental department, I shall just prove myself to them that I wasn’t a one trick pony!

We might not all be working towards the same goals, but we were united under the same banner at the very least.

“What is it you need of us comrade Clockwork?” I noted Shocking had been impressed by Teatime, I might as well make a token effort to show that I myself saw him worthy of the leadership role. Teatime was like a king in his own right at least, a king of a lifeless army with a wherewithal and knowhow to use it. “I will see to your task personally, just give the orders.”

“You two are entering the Fiery Fights, you need to keep certain people distracted from my efforts around Huoshan.” He took a seat, sipped some tea, then he glared at us. “Don't do anything illegal, you won’t know of my plan until after the competition is over.”

Author's Note:

Could Clockwork really have the capacity to start a small war?

Yes.

Could he actually tank the economy of Equestria if taken down in the wrong manner?

No.

This is not as easily achievable, but Clockwork might have something that could still do some damage to plenty of infrastructure in a way that nobles will wish that they had thought of.

See 'Vetinari, Discworld', for a magnificently indispensable person. Clockwork is not 'Thrawn' though.

Comments

[Booster Spice]

I wonder how long it would take Teatime, on being invited to play a game with Vetinari, entering the room to see a chessboard on the desk, to realise that Vetinari isnt playing chess.

[Herald of Opera]

9823372
Somewhere around the third dark clerk, I reckon.

[Shadowshame]

I'm just thinking that where ever teatime and the two other godless grunts are is a distance from their airship and I'm thinking just how easily a tiny pebble can completely jam a system by blocking a single gear...that makes it ridiculously easy to sabotage whatever teatime has planned as he has performed actions against the longma that gives them the right to search his ship for any other dangers and destroy them.

[talontitanbane]

Thinking of engineers made me wonder how Flim and Flam were doing, I appreciated giving those two shysters a decent start even if I already knew they would never amount to much.

You son of a bitch! So you're the one responsible for those two useless pieces of dung!