Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows

Chapter Seventy, A “‘Normal’” Day: Friday.

-Manehatten, Alleyway, 2:30 PM, Jade-

“So no, the injuries are minimal, the damage was localized to a small area and the leader of GODLESS actually took a few hits.” I finished explaining what happened in the theatre.

“What is the leader going to do next Jade?” It took a moment to answer Celestia, because I had to think about what I was going to tell her.

“Search for help from nearby sources over the next few hours before Trixie’s show, they’ll fail to find any help of course. Nobody wants to mess with Queen Petty when she’s on a rampage, the target of her rampage even less so.” My tail flicked as I leaned against the wall. “They’ll either show up or will try to do a runner. Either way, they cannot escape me Benny.”

“After everything you did to Saddle Arabia, I can believe you when you say they won’t get away with everything they put you through. Last I heard before I stepped down, we’ve been getting better trade deals from them lately. Something to do with wild magic running in the streets and them needing help because of Mirage’s curse coming back to haunt them.” It’s odd that someone I killed was still my friend and held no resentment towards me whatsoever, she was more resentful of the fact that she had finally fully ascended and couldn’t prevent it from happening this time. “What are their defenses like?”

“Do you know the history of the Misfortune Malachite and Good Fortune Garnet?” Asking a question to answer a question, I was getting fairly good at this.

“… okay, let me rephrase the question, how close are you to completely and utterly breaking it or reversing its effects entirely?” Celestia knows her history, as does every Abyssinian in existence since it’s commonly taught in Abyssinia’s schools.

Messing with luck or karma using magic tends to end poorly, I’m currently enacting a proof of concept to that exact effect.

“The leader of GODLESS actually got hit in the theatre. Do the math Benny, because everyone knows that I sure as Tartarus can’t.” Smirking, I added on to my statement to Celestia. “I also know for a fact that you can’t possibly get senile from old age… unlike Star Swirl the Bearded when it came to that scam school. Before you ask, I’ve been astral projecting myself for a long time.”

“So they have abused the artifact in question to the point that it’s about to make their luck go permanently negative already. You’re counting on that and you’ve been really quite busy today.” She gave me such a soft and inviting smile, now if only ponies knew how much Celestia was adrenaline starved for some excitement and had a small thing for pranks too. “Sekhet, Luna, Baast and I will be prepared to evacuate every pony. You said the signal would be colorful and vibrant?”

“Yes, anything else?” Wouldn’t have been able to do all this without the help of several people, couldn’t have possibly set all of this up by myself. Got to remember to thank Scootaloo’s parents for helping me gather those eldritch ‘stay left’ monsters.

“How much damage will be done to the city?” Ah, Celestia always asked some hard questions, she’s one of the kindest beings in existence. If she wasn’t, then Day Breaker would be a reality.

“We’ll try to keep it to a minimum, but I can’t guarantee anything when the leader of GODLESS is finally driven to madness.” It was only a matter of time and the alarm clock I set up would signal the exact moment it should happen.

“We’ll make the preparations Jaded.” Celestia nodded and then exited the alleyway. This left me to think about things. Like the fact that Celestia already had an inkling as to what I was doing, I don’t mean the fishy ambulatory squid kind either.

Was I going too overboard? Admittedly the sixteen ton weight slamming into that much ice might have been a bit much.

My friends made today’s events possible and I wasn’t going to forget that any time soon, hoped they didn’t get hurt too badly by what happens this evening.

-Manehatten Park, 5:56 PM, Fortitude-

“I am Fortitude, the fantastically fragrant!” My friend Jaded was relying on me for something important and I would not fail her. For I was good at waiting and I have a lot of patience. “So I am needing to stand here for the next two hours starting at six?”

“Yeah, you need to be here until around eight. Anyone that comes at you, get a good hold of them and don’t knock them out with your smell.” Jade turned and started to walk off. She was like the god Loki today, only not as magical and not as unendingly devious. “I need them awake and unharmed.”

I nodded in understanding as I watched her drop off the banana peel her sister touched for five seconds a moderate distance away from me.

-5:58 PM, Wheel Twist-

This show better be good.

-6:00 PM, Trixie-

“Showtime…” I cleared my throat and my stage unfolded, my wagon opened up and I set off the spirals and sparklers. This show needed to razzle and dazzle like nothing else, I was going to work hard to get a job at Twilight’s school after this. I just wanted to spend a lot more time around Starlight. “I welcome every creature, to The Great and Powerful Trixie’s greatest performance! Today I’m joined by my lovely assistant Starlight Glimmer!”

The mare blushed and looked away, she was actually wearing an assistant’s uniform for me. My best friend ever in all of the cosmos that is Trixie!

“We also have our very own special guest star tonight. A particularly friendly Abyssinian known for her tasty food, she will be performing some magic herself tonight…” I paused for dramatic effect. “Eh, I’ll introduce her when she becomes relevant.”

The entire crowd face planted, I snickered into my hoof.

“Trixie…” Out onto the stage walked the grayish and white furred Abyssinian in her purple robes and pointy hat, she seemed slightly annoyed with the greatness that was me. I’m always great by the way. “Come on, introduce me so I can wow the crowd. Like this for instance…”

Kuril took out a box and pulled out a deck of cards to show it to the crowd, it looked like an ordinary deck of cards to me and she launched them one by one into her other hand and started to shuffle them. She held out the cards to me.

I took one and showed it to the crowd, it’s the queen of hearts. I shoved it back into the deck, she moved over to Starlight and she magically shuffled the cards for our guest. Once she was done, Starlight then gave the deck back to Kuril.

Kuril pulled the top card off the deck and showed it to the crowd, a queen of hearts. She proceeded to carelessly flick it away and then pulled the next card which was… also the queen of hearts? She then tossed that one away too.

Picking up the next card before she could, I showed the crowd that it was the queen of spades and gave it back to her with the back of it facing the crowd. Kuril flipped that card around revealing… the queen of hearts!? Even Starlight and I were surprised, I just gave her a queen of spades… didn’t I?

Quite a few ponies started stomping their hooves and Kuril smiled impishly at the crowd, there were one or two ponies that didn’t seem as excited.

I grabbed the entire deck and fanned it out for the crowd, none of the cards I was showing was the queen of hearts I quickly shuffled the remainder of the deck and passed it to Starlight who did the same.

Once she had the cards back, she pulled another queen of hearts from the top of the deck showing it to me and the audience.

“Is this your card?” She said sweetly as she fanned herself with the rest of the cards and then showed them all off to the audience. The fanned out deck was now filled entirely with queens of hearts.

The crowd went wild, I sighed loudly and rolled my eyes. Starlight looked rather impressed and I was impressed as well, but I wasn’t about to show it. Kuril gathered up the cards and put them back in the box.

“Oh fine… introducing the whimsical witch of good taste, Kurilian La Perm!” I held out a hoof as the Abyssinian swept the hat from her head and bowed to the crowd while flicking her ears, she listened to the applause of the ponies as she soon stood up and turned to me with her hat once more proudly adorning her head.

Our show was now moving forward and we had two magicians on stage. With a flick of her hands Kuril was soon wielding a ping pong ball and a paddle, after showing off the ball she started idly bouncing it on the paddle as I performed a knot tying trick on Starlight.

The crowd was distracted by her somewhat, but she wasn’t doing anything as interesting as I… The Great and Powerful Trixie.

Our knot tying trick went off without a hitch and then Kuril walked over to us bouncing the ball on the paddle and tilted it so the ball would fall, only to show it was now dangling by a string when there had been none there before.

The crowd look mystified as Kuril smiled at them and bounced the ball off the paddle once and the ball dropped to the stage without a string. Starlight showed the ball to a filly in the audience and they looked it over to see that there had been no string, when there was obviously one there a second ago.

“It seems that I, Trixie, have a challenger in the ways of prestidigitation folks!” The audience chuckled as I pulled my hat from my head, showed everyone there was nothing in it and then reached into it with a hoof. I quickly pulled a rabbit out of my hat and sat it on the stage.

“A classic, but let me do one that’s even harder!” Holding up her claw to the audience, she showed that there was nothing in her hat and even passed it into the crowd to look it over. After a minute of letting the crowd test the hat, she held out her paw and it was hoofed back to her by an earth pony. “Thank you.”

She forced her entire right arm into the hat, then much to the audience’s surprise she pushed the upper half of her body deeper into the hat and eventually disappeared inside of it. The hat eventually started to jerk about on stage until it flipped upright, then the hat lifted up and a grinning fox crawled out from under that hat and chased the rabbit off.

A minute later, the hat rose straight up with Kuril underneath looking vaguely disappointed.

“Sorry folks, I don’t know where the fox could have possibly gotten to. It would have been a pretty great trick to pull a fox out of a hat.” Kuril shrugged to the audience that was still staring at her with wonder.

A second later the rabbit, riding the fox, went by behind them on the stage and waved at the audience. The fox also stopped and waved, they took a bow, then darted off. Both Starlight and I looked to one another and then to the audience in disbelief.

“On to our next trick, it is the inescapable box of doom! I will now attempt to get rid of the magician that has been attempting to upstage me since she showed up. If any unicorn in the audience would like to come up here to make sure the box doesn’t have any magic on it, you may do so.” Quite a few unicorns took her up on the offer, they wouldn’t find anything though. The box in question was made of solid wood and was sitting on stilts. “Okay, now that the unicorns in the audience confirms that there is no unusual magic going on here, I will now ask that Kuril get into the box.”

“Hum Dinger would like a word with you about this.” It seemed like Kuril wasn’t too worried as to what was about to happen as she hopped into the box.

Closing the top of the box I nailed it down with a hammer, then pointed to my assistant who had a box of swords. She drove one into the box and we both heard a moan as something red dripped from the box.

“Are you okay in there?” I asked loudly.

“I’m fine, but could you make the next one a little higher please?” Kuril’s voice could be heard clearly. Starlight does so and another moan came from the box. More fluids dripped from the box onto the stage. “Oh yeah, that’s the spot… keep going!”

Several swords later, a few spears and one would think we’ve made cheese of the cat.

“Now to set the box on fire!” I did so much to the crowd's shock.

“It’s kind of nice and toasty in here, thanks for the hospitality Trixie!” Kuril said from inside the burning box in a completely lazy conversational tone.

Eventually the box burned away enough the weapons fell out and revealed… that there was nothing left.

A whistling noise was heard and that drew every pony’s attention to a firework exploding outwards into a smiling cat face in a shower of sparkles.

“So… how does the trick end?” Kuril asked from the back of the surprised crowd while idly munching on some popcorn.

-Kuril-

I snuck around the crowd as the fox and left my mirror clone to continue performing on stage, hooked the distracted leader of GODLESS up to the firework and then launched them.

As soon as I spoke up, a black and red pony freaked out and backed away from me.

I’d soon learn he was allergic to cats… including Abyssinians.

-Picnic tables, 7:23 PM Manehatten Park, Jade-

“Three, two… one.” The pony that had been suddenly launched skyward slammed down right on the chalk mark, they were completely covered in manure. “Hello there~.”

The mare sat up groaning in pain, then looked to me.

“You… you’re supposed to be dead!” The mare screamed as she backed away from me.

“The news of my demise was greatly exaggerated.” I had always wanted to say that. “Also, you’re surrounded.”

Her eyes went wide, as Flamberge studied his flaming sword, Velvet idly played with a floating bit of ice and Maries just grinned at her toothily.

She got up and tried to run off and stepped on one of the paperclip traps injuring her frog, I calmly followed after her small trail of blood with my friends.

We all witnessed her step on the banana peel and went skidding directly into Fortitude’s waiting hooves, the necklace she wore proceeded to shatter a second later and I smiled. That would be checkmate and the leader of GODLESS would soon be living her worst nightmare.

“Everything that’s happened to you today has been my fault.” I walked towards the struggling earth pony. “I would like to say that it’s finally nice to meet you face to face, but that would be lying… Miss Stochastic Labor!”

Author's Note:

Well that wasn't a Wheel Twist at all...

Still healthy in the middle of a quarantine zone, sorry for taking so long.

Now the leader of GODLESS has been revealed.

Comments

[Booster Spice]

Finally, Jades actions break the effect. Is the last piece of good luck going to be that the history of probability displacement doesnt suddenly all return, with overshoot, all at once?

[WARGAMES]

Who is stochastic labour?
Have we seen this pony before?
Sorry I am trying to remember

[Meylin Messor]

Jaded? I have two things to say to you. That. Was. AWESOME! And: Give Them Hell!