Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows

Chapter Sixty, Separation Anxiety: Split.

-Jade-

“That’s your plan, really Harmony?” I just slapped my left paw into my face and grumbled loudly. “That’s going to seriously mess them up!”

“If they are as strong as you say they are, then they will inevitably come back together in the end.” Harmony answered in a sing song tone of voice. “Friendship is a powerful force in this world, but so is sisterhood and love, I think those three will do just fine.”

“Like those six kids were fine after you forced them to face their own fears and showed them that friendship can be in anyone’s nature?” I grumbled with my arms crossed. “You almost crushed the griffon alive and gave a known villain access to the root system under the school of friendship.”

“Oh those six will turn out great Jaded La Perm, and things will be okay.” Harmony wasn’t exactly the best judge of ‘greatness’.

The world needed evil as much as it needed good and Harmony obviously knew that. She was the balancing act of everything, the more good there was in the world the better the chances for stronger evil to rear up and vice versa. Her actions were fairly limited overall, but exceedingly powerful when she did get the chance to act.

I was a terribly unbalanced negative space wedgie in the world. As such, Harmony set things in motion to get me back to where I should be at the right time, but who knows how long that will take. I’m patient, but all this waiting was agonizing.

At least Harmony wasn’t leaving me to be all alone and completely miserable, I’ll give her that much credit.

Goodness knows what Discord would do if he found out that Harmony was using him to balance the whole world. He might actually have a heart attack, wouldn’t that be something for an immortal being?

-Some time later, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Kuril-

The restaurant has become a lot livelier, especially with my grandson running around to the best of his ability.

I’m surprised that I’m a grandmother, now if only Jacky were still around to dote on as well.

Blade was still not the same, but at least she was almost acting as if she remembered the night she left me behind. The other three that I brought home were settled in and were trying to find themselves again like Blade was starting to do when she began to instinctively chop vegetables for me.

Savannah brought me stories of fantastical and weird places that Jacky had been to and seen before she decided to throw herself and her ship at the Storm King’s army.

Being the hero that she was, Jacky delayed them the entirety of the Storm King’s forces for twenty four hours and saved many lives by dropping a number of the Storm King’s airships into the sea.

The Storm King was said to have supply issues thanks to this, given that he had to actually stop and get a large portion of his army out of sea and force them into cramped conditions on the ships that could still fly.

Most of said airships couldn’t be repaired after Jacky was done with them. So the number of invading airships was cut down drastically before hitting the capital of Panthera, but it didn’t stop the end results of the invasion.

Jacky was an unexpected force of nature all her own and the Storm King’s raiding fleets second major loss after his forces failed to get anything from the dragon lands.

One ship, with a small crew of pirates caused the Storm King to suffer a major loss. I was proud that Jacky gave the shattered bits of obsidian that used to be a tyrant king more than a simple black eye before she disappeared from the map.

“Ganma, foo!” Smiling at the delightful little fluffy ball of feathers named Gavin that was greedy for a taste of whatever I was making now, I just continued to stir what was currently in the frying pan and hummed a small tune.

Gavin was quite interested in my cooking and I had to keep a careful eye on him to make sure he didn’t hurt himself in the kitchen.

I looked down at the hot metal of the pan in my hand. Frying pans had nice sustain effects, but the magical alchemy cast was both horrifying and disgusting. I smiled at my excited little griffon grandson, the food was almost done and he was a hungry and eager beak to feed.

“Hold on little Gavin, I’m just about done!” I had some fish soup for him that was almost done and would see how he liked it. I was also making pan fried cinnamon apples as it was quickly becoming his favorite food. To no one’s surprise, Gavin liked a lot of the things that I made for him. “Here you go Savannah, get this to the table and get ready to feed our hungry little griffon cub. We’ll make sure he gets big and strong by being well fed.”

It was so nice of Fizzle to drop by with these two, now if only she had stuck around long enough to hear that she’s Gavin’s aunt. I understand why Fizzle wouldn’t stay the night or stick around for too long, it actually didn’t hurt my feelings that she left so quickly. She had things to do, but I knew she’d be back one day when she ran out of important things to do.

“Sure thing Kuril!” Savannah stated as she took up the bowl of pan fried cinnamon apples. Gavin was soon following her, and the smell, to a table. The cute little guy was barely able to walk on his own, but my food was definitely all the motivation he needed to learn how to.

The cheerful atmosphere around here was pretty good for Savannah after going through such a devastating loss, something we shared considering Jacky was my cute adoptive daughter that left a grandchild for me to care for.

I wasn’t too sure that Jacky was actually dead. After all, Blade left the map and eventually came back to me, if in a slightly mentally broken state. The map I made wasn’t infallible, my unluckiest daughter could very well come back as well. I missed both Jade and Jacky, but at least I knew Fizzle was going to be alright and she was giving me some hopes for the bright future I’ve heard about.

I finished making the fish soup and made my way over to the table to ruffle Gavin’s head feathers. He chirped up at me happily as I put down the soup for Savannah to feed to him. I hoped Gavin liked it, he was such a little sweetheart and he was even waiting patiently for Savannah to start feeding him.

That little griffon had us wrapped around his tiny talons, thankfully he didn’t understand how to abuse that yet.

There were a few things that would make life better than it currently was, but what were the chances that they’d all come back? Long shot odds says that it could happen, rare or strange occurrences were known to be the norm here in Equestria.

I glanced at a unicorn and saw them rubbing at their horn, the unicorns around here certainly seemed badly drained as of late. I’m sure I’d hear about some news related to that and Ponyville soon enough.

-Tartarus, Mara of Maries-

“How long have we been in here again?” Muttered Marie quietly from behind us, our tail was depressing as was our given situation.

Some of the other creatures here might actually belong here, but we certainly didn’t and we had already cottoned on to why the other creatures were put here.

All the other wild animals in cages were put in here to hide us being smuggled into Tartarus, this cave like place was a depressing pit of literal despair. Hopefully someone found our case file in our office up in Canterlot and solved things for the given case we were on.

“Quite a while, it’s too bad we can’t warn anyone about Tirek’s plan.” Maria whined, she let out a huff of flames next to my head.

Maria has already tried melting the bars, we apparently rated a dragon proof cage. Those mercenaries were really quite well prepared for us.

“I’m still thinking about how we could have handled the fight that put us here better.” I didn’t see how we could have done any better against them, we were here because we failed to escape an ambush set up by some highly talented unicorns.

It was quite telling that some nobles, or at least some close enough Canterlot Elite, were behind our illegal incarceration in Tartarus. I was going over it in my section of our three minds constantly, there were just too many of them. They were very well paid for the job to silence us as lawyers, especially without asking too many questions.

That pie we got from Applejack in the days before this was entirely worth the effort. Applejack certainly knew how to deal with us fairly and spooking her sister wasn’t too hard.

My part of the act to intentionally bite down on a folding chair went particularly well and Marie getting her neck stuck between a branching tree was a phenomenal bit of acting on her part.

Said act is that Applejack asked us to do something for her as her sister, a filly named Applebloom, was getting too ahead herself when it came to growing up. She certainly remembered us working at Hayburger and we weren’t too hard to find or get into contact with.

We were asked to scare Applebloom and then Applejack would come in and seem to save the day. Everything went well and we got a nice tasty apple pie out of the deal.

I’m pretty sure Applebloom should have noticed the cottage cheese thing was very unusual to the situation of being attacked by an intelligent predator like us. Maria just had to get in her cottage cheese every chance she can and she almost ruined the whole evil act we had going by getting tossed a mouthful, especially after telling Applebloom we didn’t care about foods other than wanting to eat her specifically.

We eventually passed through that area again several days later looking to visit our old clan. That’s when the trap snapped around us, then we woke up here in Tartarus after a short lived violent struggle.

The only thing we could do here was listen to the drips of water from the ceiling, some nearby caged creatures growling and grumbling or Tirek ranting about his plans with some pony named Cozy Glow out loud.

We think that Tirek liked to talk to himself a lot, because we were the only other intelligent beings here that the centaur could possibly converse with. ‘The Cerberus’ wasn’t exactly eloquent or helpful for a three headed mutt whose job was to keep us here in Tartarus, not exactly hard to do when you have nearly indestructible cages.

What was keeping us alive was the limited amount of magic that was sustaining everything currently here in Tartarus. Of course when Tirek’s pen pal drains all the magic out of the world… we would start suffering immensely given our metabolism.

I’m personally certain that Tirek doesn’t understand the concept that we’ll all start to starve if all the magic in Equestria is drained out of this given place. This would include him starving as well if the world wasn’t outright destroyed by all that stolen magic being gathered in one spot.

Thank goodness we currently weren’t starving to death in here yet.

Tartarus should be checked more often for illegal incarcerations. We’ll write up an informative document to that effect for Celestia to look over, if she ever finds out about this and provided that the world isn’t destroyed by Cozy Glow.

We heard the doors to Tartarus grind open and we could have warned the six ponies coming in what was about to happen, but it was far too late as the doors swiftly slammed shut behind them. Here come some colorful ponies including Applejack, Pinkie and Fluttershy.

We didn’t know the other three on a more personal level and they were likely here for Tirek, thus they fell for the trap set up by a filly.

They probably should have done some critical thinking before coming into Tartarus, because if what we knew to be true…then the doors were locked shut permanently thanks to all the magic being drained from the world.

The six looked around at all the cages here. Eventually Pinkie came over to us and held up a marshmallow on a stick to Maria while smiling.

“Seriously Pinkie?” Maria grumbled.

“If you want it, I would be open to sharing. I have a bag full of marshmallows.” Pinkie immediately offered, but then turned away to say something to her friends.

Maria blasted the marshmallow with fire and quickly ate it and the wooden stick it was on. The stick tasted horrible in our shared perspectives, but the flavor of marshmallow was a godsend of fats and sugar to us.

While the other ponies wandered forward Fluttershy approached the cage and we gave her a look.

“Maries… what are you doing in here?!” We looked at Fluttershy sadly. “Fizzle is so worried about you!”

“While that’s nice to hear, what do you think we’re doing in here Fluttershy? Take a look around at all the other creatures here, I’m pretty sure you’d recognize some of them.” I muttered sadly as I lifted my head from the floor of the cage. “We were smuggled in illegally and labeled as a wild animal. Now you’re trapped in here too…”

“What do you mean?” It didn’t take long for Fluttershy and the other ponies to figure out what was going on, because Tirek told them everything. The centaur had practiced his gloating speech for quite a while.

The doors of Tartarus couldn’t be open without a large amount of magic and they currently didn’t have the magic necessary to leave now. Also all those present were going to start starving in a little while if things didn’t change soon.

-Minutes later-

“I don’t know, Tartarus isn’t so bad. I can hang out here for a while!” As Pinkie said that, Maria was angling to spit fire at the marshmallow on a new stick. After a quick blasts of flames, Maria snapped out and grabbed another mouthful. We didn’t care if we were digesting two sticks, oh glorious sweet tasting sustenance that was roasted marshmallows! “Eh, maybe not forever though.”

While the six ponies did their thing, we were soon let out of the cage by Fluttershy and told the plan. The magic that binds and makes up our very being was going to be used to open those doors.

“Is this going to hurt?” I asked warily and looked to my sisters.

“Don’t worry Maries, I’m sure Twilight will make this entirely painless… I hope.” Fluttershy, you weren’t exactly selling us on this.

“If it gets us out of here!” Maria told me.

“This might not go as well as you think it will.” What did Marie mean exactly?

“Well… let’s do this.” I muttered as we reared up and closed our eyes, we felt a mass of magic flow out of us.

When I opened my eyes, I was completely separated from my sisters.

Author's Note:

(New Magical Alchemy Ingredient!)

39. Frying Pan.

Comments

[Shadowshame]

Well hopefully maries doesn't get left behind in this version

[jimerjam]

YES THINGS ARE FINALLY LOOKING UP!

[Booster Spice]

Views from the other side of the bars.

Hope Maries were careful with that cockatrice. Last thing they wanted was to get the snakes confused?

[jimerjam]

9978156
They are all completely comatose, the make 6 have no choice but to leave them