Airship Mauled

by Darkonshadows

Chapter Thirteen, Salve Searching: Wrong ingredients.

-Celestia-

I sighed as I teleported to Airship Mauled. I had forgotten about the golden airship they stole as evidence, I hadn’t even thought of what to do with it. As soon as I arrived at Airship Mauled, I didn’t see a single sign of it.

I can only guess as to what happened with it, I didn’t even know how I was going to get all that gold back anyway. Teleporting that much material would cause a bit of a strain. I made my way for the pyramid on a hunch.

I entered the small pyramid and saw Sekhet Sphinx just relaxing on her stone throne in a lazy manner, one of her ears flicked and she suddenly sat up and turned to me. It was probably the sound of my hooves that alerted her to my presence.

“Excuse me for intruding, but do you know what happened to the airship made of painted over gold?” This was her home and I was intruding, I shouldn’t be too rude.

“Yes, I do know what happened to it. I filled my treasury with it after breaking the ship up into pieces.” Despite giving the war goddess a flat stare, Sekhet just smiled at me. “What, did you need it for evidence? We already took pictures of it and we now have a small outdoors swimming pool.”

“I would at least like most of it returned so that I can reimburse a few ponies for what that horrible pony Billion Karats managed to get away with. It was embezzled from my treasury so would you mind if I took it back?” The annoying Sphinx goddess rubbed at her chin thoughtfully as she took in my words and considered them. “There is no way anyone can spend an entire ship load of gold that fast.”

“You’d be correct sun bum, but why should it be returned?” It would be the right thing to do, but then what would you know about right things to do Sekhet. You hoard cake away from the innocent world and my mouth you evil pony faced cat! “It was gold already spent and turned into an airship and used illegally by unscrupulous sorts before it was rightfully brought to light by the Airship Maulers of the Airship Mauled Adventurers Guild, I think they could still have a better name for themselves and the guild. Wouldn’t the gold belong to Airship Mauled now? We’re not going to use it as an airship and we’re holding it as currency.”

“Look, can’t I just get some of that gold back?” I really wasn’t asking for much here, I wanted to get this over with quickly so I could get back to playing with… er…. teaching Twilight. Yes I was teaching Twilight Sparkle and most certainly not secretly using her to get time off from my princess duties.

“Fine… but only the front quarter of the ship, our Airship Maulers went through a lot of trouble to steal it and successfully pulled off a bunch of convoluted things to expose that criminal element.” Stop looking so smug Sekhet, you riddle loving monstrosity against cake going down my throat and instead making it go down yours you greedy Sphinx! “Besides your coffers should fill much faster without that drain on them. So really, you don’t need that much back. The real reason why you want all that gold is for cake money.”

“Nonsense, I can honestly say that’s not the only reason I want the gold.” Though it’s the major reason why I was here, I wanted to talk to Jade about her habit of causing chaos around Canterlot. It was starting to give Discord some power back and I’m afraid he’ll break free if he gets enough strength from all of her shenanigans. “I’ll be taking thirty percent of the ship from the front.”

“Twenty seven percent.” Oh it was going to be like that was it Sekhet? It... is... on!

-Jacky-

I watched as Jade and ‘cat mom of the year’ Kuril fired what they called magic missiles from their hands. It was a natural thing that all unicorns could do, build up magic and fire from their horn. It was so simple, yet there was a huge difference between unicorns and what Kuril and Jade were doing.

Jade called it an abnormality among casting, the cast drained energy from the user and didn’t destruct the object being using. The object in question was air itself and it seems like something that Jade nor Kuril can actually destroy in a cast.

Unicorns could fire magic missiles while changing the power, strength and speed of said magic blasts. They could even feasibly change the direction of a magic blast mid-flight and could even make it homing. Jade and Kuril could only fire in one direction at a set specific size and power, but the force behind it was pretty powerful.

I personally was working on shooting my arrows. Remove one from the quiver hanging above my tail, pull, breath and… release!

The arrows goes shooting straight backwards and in the complete opposite direction. I decided now was one of those times to break out my list of pirate expletives, how does my bad luck effect a perfectly nocked arrow like that? By all rights my arrows should just fly straight and in a mostly forward arc!

Whenever I release an arrow from this bow, it can go spinning, it goes left, it goes right, it sometimes veers straight up at a ninety degree angle upon being fired and that’s not even physically possible! Is it something to do with the magical alchemy on the bow or is it my luck that’s causing this, I’d seriously like to know.

“Excuse me… but is this your arrow?” Turning to Arizona, I squeaked a bit and stared at the impaled cow bell. The tail end of my arrow had impaled its way through the cow bell and the arrowhead was left sticking out of it.

“Yeah, sorry, I don’t know what it is about this bow, but the arrows do really bizarre and strange things when I fire them.” I really didn’t want any trouble with Arizona, she was really strong for both her size and her age. It sometimes made me wonder how she ended up here with Grace. “That arrow for instance fired backwards out of my bow despite the string moving it forwards!”

“Yeah, I kind of figured when the rear of an arrow impaled itself on my cow bell. It’s a good thing I have so many spares.” That was the one thing no one understood about you Arizona, why do you have so many cow bells when you don’t even wear or use them? Why did Jade even ask if you had a cow bell and what was the point of having one during The Gilded Buttress heist? “Where do you keep getting them from and why do you keep getting them? You never really use them for anything.”

“Hey! I’ll have you know that I do too use the cow bells and so does Grace, we just don’t do use them in public.” Okay, that just brings up so many more questions Arizona. What other uses could there be for cow bells aside from making noise. I felt it was the better part of valor to never ask. “Well now that I’m here anyway, I want to see you fire that bow.”

“Get back here you evil antlered rabbit!” Jade ran on by chasing after the rather elusive jackalope firing blasts of energy from her hand at it. It was swiftly evading her attempts to do whatever Jade thought shooting it with a magical ovals of energy would do. “Drop fire wasps on me will you!”

Jade disappeared off into the distance and Kuril calmly came over to us. Arizona pulled the rear of the arrow out of her cow bell and held it out for me to take it from her hoof.

“While my kitten is distracted, I guess I can find out what are you girls up to. Oh my goodness, is your cow bell alright Arizona!” Okay seriously, what was up with the cow bells and why were they important!

Even Kuril seems to know the answer and nobodies bothering to tell me, we never had cows on Turtle Toga so I would not understand the significance of a cow bell. All they do is make noise, yet Arizona treats them like they’re special when they aren’t very special at all.

“It’s a little impaled, but its fine Mayor Kuril. I’ve got plenty more where this came from.” Mumbled Arizona flatly as she moved the cow bell out of sight and it seemed to disappear into thin air. “I was going to figure out how Jacky managed to fire an arrow straight backwards.”

“Her arrow shooting issues are always a must to watch in action, something silly always happens.” Well that didn’t sound mean at all Kuril, sure go ahead and get amusement from my bad luck. “I can’t tell if it’s her bad luck or a random magical property of the bow Jade made.”

“It’s more than likely my luck.” I nock the arrow took aim at the target and judged the distance needed to hit it. I pulled and released the arrow, the string sprung forward with arrow and the arrow started flying straight for the target. It then hit the target without veering off course much to my amazement, it also landed in the center.

“You’re not a bad shot my cute parrot, I guess it’s just your bad that luck causes all kinds of weird things to happen with those arrows.” Well Kuril wasn’t wrong and I took the compliment and the pats to the head. “Just keep working on it Jacky.”

I was getting pretty good at hitting the targets, when my arrows didn’t do a whole slew of wonky and absurd things. I nock another arrow and fired it, in the same way as I fired the previous one and it left the bow on a completely different and higher trajectory. It’s like I just hit a lob in tennis, the arrow came down below the previous one at an angle.

“Yeah, that’s really weird. You were aiming it in the exact same way and it flew higher. I certainly didn’t feel any wind when that happened.” Of course you didn’t Arizona, I don’t think wind would have quite that effect on my shot.

“Oh, aim an arrow straight down at the ground and fire it!” Turning to Kuril who was bouncing up and down excitedly, with a groan I decided to do just that.

Arrow to bow, aim straight at the ground and… the arrow should just go into the ground. Instead, when released, it flies as if I fired it normally. I was pretty sure I was aiming absolutely straight down and the arrow just goes and strikes the target just next to the first arrow.

“Yeah, I’m getting the feeling that you should personally stick to cannons. Something like that should be impossible without magic, but knowing you and the bow possibly being magical… I can say without a doubt that I have no clue how that even works.” Arizona shrugged and went for The Helping Hooves Inn. “I’ll see everyone later for evening vittles, I’m going to hang with Grace for a while. I don’t want her to get lonely by herself.”

“Later Zone! You know I’ve been meaning to ask Kuril, what exactly was that obscure law involving Chancellor Pudding Head about exactly?” I hadn’t thought to ask about that until now. “You know the one I mean, it’s the one Jade and Maries used while they were up in Canterlot.”

“Well the law just makes it legal to stuff rubber chickens in unusual places without repercussion or that’s the basic gist of it anyway.” That still didn’t explain why there was a law making it a legal action Kuril. “I’m pretty sure Pudding Head was a distant ancestor of Pinkie Pie.”

Okay, that was something I could certainly believe. It would certainly go a long way to explaining a whole lot about the obscure law that allows you to force a normal duck to wear pants. Why would any pony need to use that law anyway? Why bother with putting pants on ducks? How did Pudding Head get so many crazy obscure laws that haven’t been repealed and were still valid one thousand years after the fact? I should stop thinking on this, it’s making my head hurt.

“It’s just Pinkie’s ancestor being Pinkie’s ancestor, got it.” That’s what I was going with and I was going to stick with it.

“Sounds fair to me.” Kuril shrugs and turned towards the sound of a limping figure. Jade had a smile on her face, she was battered and bruised beyond belief and in her left hand she was clutching two antlers. “You didn’t kill it did you?”

“Of course not mom, but the little monster really didn’t like me stealing his antlers. Did you know jackalopes become stupidly fast when they lose their antlers? I sure didn’t.” The battered and beaten, but relatively triumphant, Jade continue to limp on past us and towards The Witch’s Fare. “I’m just going to go lay down for a while, so if you’ll excuse me. Oh and could someone collect some yarrow and plantain leaves. That would be helpful, thank you.”

I would have to remind myself to not get into a fight with a jackalope if it could rough up Jade that badly.

“You know, now that I think of it… didn’t that jackalope Jade was chasing have wings?” Yes Kuril, I saw the wings too. The jackalope a few hours ago didn’t have those. “No… wait… jackalopes never get wings unless… that wasn’t a jackalope, it was wolpertinger! I should probably go tell Jade about that.”

The grey wingless jackalope went hopping right on by us, antlers intact and the same as they were hours ago, while seemingly laughing out loud at Jade’s misfortune.

“Yeah, I should definitely go tell Jade that she just met and fought a wolpertinger.” She chuckled dryly as she walked away. “They are far more violent than jackalopes and you can easily confuse the two for each other.”

-Kuril-

“Kitten are you okay?” I opened the door to her room and looked in on her.

“Yeah, I’m fine, but who knew a jackalope could fight so hard? At least I got some jackalope antlers out of it.” Oh my poor Jaded, I’m sorry to tell you this but…

“Jade, that wasn’t a jackalope, we saw the jackalope and it still has its antlers. You just took the antlers off a wolpertinger.” That earned me a stare as my kitten immediately sat up.

“Are you kidding me?!” She shouted in horribly annoyed manner.

“No I’m not kidding, we in fact saw the jackalope and it still has its antlers. Those are the wolpertinger's antlers.” My daughter forced her face into a pillow and let lose muffled scream of frustration. “Well look at it this way Jaded, at least it wasn’t an al-mi’raj.”

“Yes, because one of those would have actually killed and eaten me. They’ve been known to eat Ursas despite their small statures.” Jade sounded very frustrated and tired, firing so many magic missiles takes a lot out of her. “I wouldn’t put it past the jackass jackalope, that I declared war on, to be responsible for it appearing.”

Comments

[bonberjean]

My theory about the bow is that it have a riven mod that reduce Multi-shot chance...

sorry, warframe joke, if you are experienced in the game, you know what it does to the weapon's accuracy.

[FridayPie]

Aren't volpentingers invisible for sober people?

[HF Fury]

Is this a reference to the time Deadpool was cursed not to by hit what he wanted so he shot at everything else on purpose with all shots hitting his intended targets?