Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows

Chapter Sixty Two, The Hail Maries: Pass.

-School of Friendship, head mare’s office, Gallus-

“Hey Gallus, how did your holiday trip go?” Looking towards the principal, with the emphasis on pal, I had one answer.

“They were a bunch of weirdoes, but it was nice given they reminded me a lot of Ponyville and why I like it here. Also Grubber seems to be doing very well and I met a bunch of really weird reindeer that actually kind of fit in there.” Even that local head of the guard, Bracing Knight, talked with me about possibly getting into guard work and said it wasn’t as boring as the royal guard made it look. Also the royal guard seriously needed more competent people, because they could barely handle a parasprite swarm and her guys could take on Myrmekes without problems. I saw one of the myrmekes they captured and was a little surprised at how big it was, they were trying to figure out how to make them docile enough to ride. “I got a box load of random comic books from Grubber. There was a plush toy of myself to give to someone special to me from Mayor Kuril, I think it actually might be a voodoo doll with an alarming amount of ever increasing certainty. I got a hundred bits in a really nice holiday themed bag from Fizzle, or Tempest if you still prefer that alias, money is always a nice present to get for a griffon. Got a paw written book of exercise tips from the physical education master of the school there, she said the regimen could improve my strength and flying speed almost two fold if I keep to it. I think the best present that I got throughout all of it… was a candy cane.”

“A candy cane?” Twilight seemed a little perplexed.

“Yeah, because I’d never met a generous griffon in Griffonstone. At least until Gilda or Gabby started trying to change things. A little griffon cub gave me that candy cane and it was the sweetest most touching thing I’ve ever gotten for Hearth’s Warming. Pretty good for my first actual one huh?” I shook my head with what was probably a silly smile on my beak. “Griffonstone made me wonder if love was a business transaction at times, glad to see the griffons there are the odd ones that are missing out.”

“I think I’ve learned all I wanted to hear.” Twilight smiled at me brightly. “I’m glad that you had an absolutely great time Gallus.”

-Some time later,???, Jade-

“So… you’re avatar is a treehouse now… way to go Harmony.” I clapped blankly and felt the entity just smile at me. “Don’t see how that’s going to help. Also Discord’s plan is likely going to blow up in his face in such a spectacular fashion that only a chaos lord could manage.”

“Don’t worry about that, I’ve already set things up and they’ll come to ‘pass’ very soon~.” Harmony sang sweetly to me. “You won’t be unbalanced forever Jaded, as you’ll finally get your long awaited boon~.”

“Wait, how did you even know about that?!” I was shocked that she knew about it. “I never told you or ever hinted at it.”

“How indeed… be patient and just watch things unfold~.” Harmony’s words were ominous. “For the end of all this is 'might' go splendidly as foretold~.”

“You do realize how long I’ve actually been like this watching life pass me by?” I groused out while grumpily crossing my arms. “Do I need to remind you that I’m older than you are and the reason why my patience is always at an all-time low here?”

“Of course not grandmother.” I just glared in the direction of the voice.

-Several months later, Airship Mauled, The Witch’s Fare, Maries-

“Still can’t find the mercenaries who got us, but we at least nailed that pony that put us in Tartarus. It was a noble, our friend Pace Set helped us get her for a misuse of funds and incorrectly declaring us as a dangerous animal. Sued the bits out of her for various other infractions that are still being discovered and that’s why our bank account has jumped quite a bit recently. We still suspect indirect GODLESS connections, even if Celestia has a list.” Maria explained to Kuril as Mara calmly dug into the baked and seasoned fish before us. Marie spoke airily. “I wonder when Fizzle will come around again? She’s been doing it fairly often despite how tired it makes her to always get around without Grubber’s help while he’s too busy, at least she’s in Equestria and can walk back to us. Just so long as she doesn’t cut through Barely Bearable Woods coming back, then we have nothing to worry about.”

“Did you hear about Daring Do?” We all turned to Savannah who came in and spoke to us, she was wearing a waitress’s outfit.

The outfit definitely left much to the imagination given how much more revealing it was compared to Fresh Start’s maid uniform, apparently Savannah’s fur color today was zebra stripes. We’re beginning to think the dark blue and white spots was her default or at least favorite fur coloration with the Amulet of Savannah.

Kuril perked up in interest, we did too as we’re reminded that our matriarch was holding a gift for Daring Do and it’s been sitting in storage for quite a while now.

“No, but I am interested to hear what she’s been up to.” Kuril had been trying to get into contact with Daring Do, but she was really busy. Like nonstop temple diving and or AK Yearling needing to stay out of the spotlight busy.

Thus far too busy to invite her to come and visit us really, but we’ve been a bit busy ourselves trying to play catch up with our own personal law firm and Kuril has both a town and a restaurant to run even if Sekhet could do an excellent job otherwise.

Blade came over to our table and perked her ears up in interest. Still didn’t have much of her past, but her skills were still definitely there.

That brings up the amnesiac Pegasus, he had apparently been from the northwestern coast of Equestria, his named was Shell Hunker and he was recently sent back to be with his family again. He was a coast guard that took a few weeks leave for a time before Nightmare Moon emerged.

Thankfully all the amnesiacs were now dealt with at least, even if we didn’t know what happened to them aside from becoming stars that aided in Luna’s escape.

“Apparently, Ahuizotl was a temple guardian just trying to do his job.” Savannah stated blandly and a little bit flatly as if she didn’t like the excuse at all. Considering all the stuff he put Daring Do through without talking to her about it… yeah Ahuizotl had little room to make excuses for some of his worst actions.

“Yeah, but that still doesn’t excuse the Rings of Scorchero thing that would have had heat sweltering in the region for eight hundred years and possibly harming the entire world’s ecosystem.” Kuril groused out, she knew magical artifacts were dangerous and that some of them should absolutely be destroyed. It almost seemed liked Ahuizotl was in the same predicament that Sekhet got out of. Except with the amount of freedom he had, it didn’t excuse any of his actions in the slightest the way he tried recovering some of the artifacts in question. “Seriously, is everyone going to forget that and all the death traps and the over the top attempts to kill Daring Do or anyone remotely near her by proximity? People that didn’t even have anything to do with Daring in the first place?”

“Ponies might, they can be a bit dumb about literally forgiving and forgetting.” Mara stopped eating for us to talk. “I can easily forgive, but forgetting is one of the things you should never do. As a temple guardian he's acted like a complete lunatic at times, also wasn’t it outside his jurisdiction to guard temples that he was not originally stationed at? He’s only one guy, so the gods behind him aren’t exactly blameless in this either. Why does he care for his job so much when it’s that stressful? We would quit the first chance we got and do what Sekhet did, find something better to do.”

Astral the hippogriff and Ryu-kun the longma were doing well too, we all knew how Blade was doing given the silent mare was happily spending every moment she could with Kuril as an assistant chef.

Grace was being courted by Veles, don’t honestly want to know what’s going on there as it was confusing enough as it is when Veles was always different every single time he showed up. Once he was a pony with eight legs, didn’t honestly want to know or care about why he was concerned about being in the wrong pantheon at the time.

Grace seemed to be taking the confusing things that Veles was doing fairly well, while sorely missing Arizona. While Grace still had us to talk to, our town was still missing a lot of people that once set out into the wild world and hadn’t come back.

Airship Mauled was still getting visitors from Flamberge and Fortitude’s adventures. Including a friendly Selkie that confused us at first, because we didn’t understand why a normal seal would be visiting the restaurant.

“I heard Fluttershy was with… Caballeron... on this recent adventure.” Fizzle looked tired as she stumbled in and came over to lick our cheeks, a traditional chimera greeting today. We appreciated Fizzle’s efforts. “Heard Daring Do has been trying to… do right by a lot of people, I asked around for you mom. She’s still trying to… do right by us by getting The End of Immortality before… GODLESS does.”

We’ve recently learned that the chimera with at least one pony in their make were more welcome outside of Flame Geyser Swamp, nobody bothers to ask how we have a few chimera with pony mixed in. We don’t actually hunt ponies or intelligent creatures often unless desperation is setting in, we preferred far dumber targets for predation.

“Yeah, I had some books brought in about that.” Savannah was sweet, but we were never going to touch her no matter how much she tries to entice us. It was just unfortunate that she knows our medical records were quite clean despite being born and raised in a swamp. “Caballeron is still a greedy and somewhat mean git, but he’s apparently trying to work on turning things around thanks to meeting Fluttershy. Sweet girl, she could charm the pants off of just about anyone just be being friendly. She could also have a stronger taste for cats, because she is beautiful like Me-ow!”

Caballeron was obviously greedy, the guy could be nicer in those books he wrote and not so obviously outright malicious given the stuff we’ve heard he’s done. We at least know Dr. Caballeron was hired by GODLESS to find ‘The End of Immortality’ and Daring was also on the hunt as well, we didn’t know what their current statuses were with this recent bit of news. Were they working together or what?

Kuril was still searching for any hints about a certain parrot pirate’s whereabouts when the Abyssinians started up their trade industry once more. The Abyssinians have finally made a full recovery thanks in part to Palicoast sending supplies and aid towards the destroyed capital once they themselves got back on their paws.

“What are the chances that Daring doesn’t have an adventure lined up right now?” Kuril asked all of the sudden, things had been quiet.

“Pretty good, considering… the latest news on the whole amulet of truth speaking… thing… coming from Fluttershy’s… mouth…” Fizzle yawned loudly and her head flopped into Maria’s fluff, we soon heard snoring and she was out like a light. We just held her and looked to Kuril.

“Ratatoskr?” Maria asked.

“Rata.” Kuril confirmed. “RATA, today is the day, literal gods speed needed!”

Rata came in at a breakneck pace and stopped, Kuril slapped the letter into his paws and he saluted. The squirrel was suddenly off to find Daring Do, hopefully before she could get sucked into another adventure.

We were all kinds of curious about the present that the centaur named Evoker left behind, if Daring Do didn’t have an adventure lined up then we’d soon find out what was in that box just to sate all our curiosities.

“With that done, Maries, please get Fizzle up to bed and stay with her.” Oh you don’t need to teach us how to cuddle our love matriarch Kuril, we would have done that anyway. “She still has some problems sleeping without a cuddle toy.”

-Kuril-

Maries carried my sleeping daughter upstairs and I sat down and turned to Fresh Start who was smiling at me.

“We’re doing pretty slow today huh?” Well we weren’t technically open, I had been busy cleaning the kitchen after the cheese chowder incident the other day. The chowder was still extremely good at least and has been quite popular lately, the only problem is that the recipe requires pressure cooking.

There was Monterey Jack all over the place, some of which required to me to chip it off the walls and the kitchen somewhat resembled a dale made of cheese. If only I had a better gadget for cleaning the mess, at least the zipper locked garbage bags were helpful.

“You’ve been a lot happier lately Kuril… also have you heard? Mango and Wary are actually interested in dating each other.” Flicking an ear towards Fresh to go on, it sounded like she had some interesting gossip to tell. “You’d think they wouldn’t be with Wary’s absolute hatred of fruit, but it seems to be working out for them. To be fair, Dr. Permanganate has really been kind of sweet on me too. I wonder if our Hearts and Hooves attempts will go better this year.”

“Do you ever miss working for Celestia?” I don’t know why I suddenly blurted that out.

“Nope, still believe I’m right where I need to be Kuril and I think I’m living the life I’m supposed to.” Fresh Start snuggled into my side and hugged me, I smiled at her until Blade got a little jealous. “Sorry, I’m just being friendly. I’m interested in stallions and you have nothing to worry about there. Mayor Kuril is definitely all yours!”

Blade still sat down and snuggled into my side and hugged me tightly, she was jealous I was hugging a friend and now she wanted a hug too. She really shouldn’t be jealous, given that she knew I loved her.

“All we can do now is wait for Rata to get back with a response.” I know Daring has dealt with various gods before, so Rata shouldn’t be that much of a big deal for her. “Anything else of interest anyone? I mean aside from me needing to restock my foxglove.”

“Well if no one else has anything, then does someone want to listen to some epic saxophone played by yours truly?” Speedy Sax was a beloved musician of the community, now if only she’d stop playing yak-chasing-kitty sax whenever there was a chase going on.

It got tiresome after the first fifty times, but it was funny again when she actually brought Ponyacci in to be chased around by a yak.

Author's Note:

Hail Mary- a plan or project with little chance of success.

How meta.

Comments

[Herald of Opera]

Okay, we already knew that Jade was an old soul, but this is a slightly alarming confirmation of just how old with the local equivalent of God Himself jokingly referring to her as "grandmother" (or at least I assume it's a joke, just from the level of shenanigans Jade makes a habit of causing)...

[Booster Spice]

Chi,chi, chi, chip and Dale, Rescue Rangers.

And Foxglove the bat.

Though I forgot Tammy the Squirrel from Adventures in Squirrel Sitting, though who can forget the baby squirrel swallowing an Apple whole effectively?