For The Swarm

by VanishingAct

Chapter 6: Canterlot, Ho!

So the rest of the day elapsed pretty uneventfully. We tried to read a few books of law (and failed), tried to discover more about our magic (and failed), and we even tried to find a way that we could disguise ourselves as a single pony so that everypony wouldn't freak when they saw us. Guess how that went down?!

I really hoped that this wasn't going to become a recurring theme.

The most interesting part of the day apart from the meeting with Agape came at dinner, where all three brothers were finally present for a single meal. Filio began to recount his investigation into the black powder explosion, which ultimately ended up in them working out the trajectory of the guy who set it off, which we believed to be in the general direction of the Dragon Badlands. He also showed me the guy's wanted poster, which read as follows:

WANTED

“The Dark Coat” : Real name unknown. Crimes: Not paying the Trottingham toll, assaulting guards for no apparent reason, causing vast amounts of property damage, resisting arrest, escaping from Trottingham prison, destroying property of the Trottingham guard and lollygaggin’. Worth: 16,000 Bits.

Above the text was a neat drawing of something I knew extremely well, that being a cloak of Organisation XIII. This realisation came to a shock for all of us, which resulted in all 6 of us' thoughts linking, which resulted in...

"HOLY SHIT!" we all shouted in unison.

"So you recognise it?" Filio asked tentatively.

"Well, yes, but at the same time I don't know who that is, nor what it can do. It's very definitely a Chess Piece though."

It can't be an actual member of Organisation XIII, right? No, that's silly, the Kingdom Hearts universe doesn't exist!

I must keep on remembering that until very recently I believed that Equestria didn't exist. So then what? The multiverse exists? Very probably, but I remember Agape saying that only the rift between Earth and Equestria was widened...

Then it must be someone from Earth...

Wait, what was that?!

Joseph waved a leg to me, identifying himself as the providor of this thought.

Then a god must have sent him... went Brian.

So said god was influenced by KH... Jesus added.

"And thus he made his piece in the form of one of their cloaks." I concluded audibly.

"What was that, Aniseed?" Filio enquired.

"Nothing," I responded curtly, "Just figuring about the thing."

It was strange, not only why he had assumed the form of an Organisation XIII cloak, but how we came to that conclusion. Granted it was a simple conclusion to make, but the way we each integrated our thoughts into the mix... was this hivemind? I immediately saw various ways in which we could use this to our advantage. We could be able to quickly gain information on our surroundings by spreading out as far as we could, then just as quickly make informed conclusions on what to do, given the circumstances.

We would be the ultimate scouts. We all stated in unison.

"Aren't you all going to begin eating?!" Storgia asked rather loudly, snapping us all out of our reverie.

All of the Parasprites said something in the general direction of yes and began dining on pasta with curly kale, spinach and some sort of cheese, which I made a guess at being mozzarella.

Agape then took his turn and described to us the court case he dealt with in the morning, weaving the tale of a kobold thief, running amok the streets of Trottingham, pilfering whatever he could from its upper class, whether it was jewels or just plain bits. Eventually he was apprehended by the Trottingham Guard, taken to court, long story short, 6 months and a fine for all the damages.

It was then that something far more interesting was brought up, brought to the table by Filio, in fact.

"Well, Aniseed, I hope you can wake up early for tomorrow."

Myself and the six Parasprites looked up from our plates.

"Why?"

"Oh nothing, just-"

"THE ROYAL KNIGHTING CEREMONY!!!" Storgia blurted before teleporting around the room in excitement, shortly before he was held in telekinesis by both Filio and Agape, the former with a cross look painted on his face, and the latter bore a humoured visage.

"Yes," Agape continued, "A royal knighting ceremony is being held at Canterlot which we are expected to attend. Now this would be pretty routine except for the fact that-"

"Except for the fact that there are some very important people that are going to be knighted." Filio finished.

The way he said 'people' instead of ponies sent alarms into my head.

"Chess Pieces?"

"Indeed. Knightmare, Griffin and the Lunar Legend are all going to be ordained as Knights of the Realm."

"Wait a minute there!", Jesus entered into the conversation, "The Lunar Legend and Knightmare I can understand, but the pirate? The plundering, murdering guy who never abides by the law and, may I stress, identifies himself as a pirate? Him?"

"I will admit that I am bemused too..." Filio said.

Agape spoke up, "I have a theory. Seeing as he refers to himself as a pirate, he probably doesn't want to be seen as good. I think this is my dear aunt's method of... what's the word... 'trolling' him?"

...By the gods, that is brilliant! Give the guy who is always stating that he's the bad guy status as a good guy to wider society. He'll find it harder and harder to keep up the bravado and ultimately will be very, very pissed about it.

"Parasprites, it seems 'Trollestia' is a thing, and I for one am perfectly okay with that."

"So anyway," Storgia said, "This is a perfect opportunity to catch a look at these guys and mark them, so that we can track their movements!"

"Aye, we might not know what they plan to do, but at least we'll know where they are when they do it." Filio added.

"And besides, we still need to meet with Aunt Celestia. I still have cause to believe that she is witholding information, and we need answers." Agape stated with a certain amount of vigour.

"What is this whole 'Chess Game' thing anyway?", the until now ignored voice of Clair rang out, "What's in it for all these gods? I mean, stuff like this doesn't happen every day!"

"And that, my dear niece, is what we intend to find out." Filio said.

"So remember Ani, you need to wake up early in the morning so that we can leave early, 'kay?" went Storgia.

"Yeah, that's fine." I responded.

We all looked at the table before us. We had long since finished dining and the serving ponies were coming in to clear the table. Each of the sprites hopped off their plates and began to hover in the air, while the 4 ponies left their chairs.

"Well, if we're all done here, I suppose we better retire for the night." Agape stated while wiping his mouth.

"Yes, let's. We've a long day ahead of us, so it'd do us good to get some rest." Filio agreed.

"Alrighty then!" Storgia shouted somewhat jarringly, "You guys go and sleep, I've got some flying to do!" and with that, Storgia saw fit to shoot out of the window, leaving behind an orange blur.

"Storgia finds it hard to sleep," Filio explained, "He tends to go flying to help himself get tired."

"...Right."

"So anyway, I'll be seeing you all at the morn. I trust you both shall be up bright and early." Filio said whilst glaring at Agape.

"Hehe, you have nothing to fear, brother, I'll remember this time." Agape said with a chuckle, "Aniseed, you'll be able to show yourself to your bedroom, right?"

"Yeah, I'll be fine. Parasprites, let's roll."

And with that, we flew out of the room, ready to take rest in preparation for the journey to Canterlot.

---

When I woke up, instead of feeling a soft warm quilt around me, I was feeling the bite of the cool air and an unusually strong breeze. Strange.

I opened my eyes and looked around, but instead of the bedroom I saw the open sky, a few clouds in the sky here and there, and Celestia's sun in full view. I groaned as I realised what had happened.

"I told you to wake up early, Ani!" Storgia's voice rang out in my nonexistant ears, off to the side, "How do you sleep through all this anyway?!"

I looked behind me to see what I was seated on. It turned out to be a chariot, laden with gold trimmings and pulled by two blue pegasi, one of which I recognised very well.

"Aren't you the guy that taught me to fly yesterday?"

"Yep, that's me," replied an airy voice against the wind, "Name's Crosswind, officer in the Trottingham Guard."

"And how are the colts treating you?" asked Filio, "No doubt they would have pulled a prank on you by now!"

"Poison Joke in my lower body armour, Captain Filio. You don't even want to know what that did."

"Hehe, rest assured that they only do it in jest, they'll grow on you!"

"What, the guards or the Poison Joke?"

There was a short pause before it gave way to chuckling from most of the convoy's part, which included Crosswind's cohort, the rest of my swarm, Agape, and Clair Rose. I did a short smile as I saw the two of them looking over the edge of the chariot, pointing out all the points of interest on the ground below. As I did so, I realised I had no idea how far along the journey we were.

"Hey, Filio, how close are we to Canterlot?"

"Not long now, in fact, we should see it as we go through these clouds!"

"Wait, what? Through a cloud?!"

Flying through a cloud was strange, to say the least. Since a cloud is pretty much just condensed water vapour, there was dampness everywhere. Dew settled on all of the swarm's wings, rendering us temporarily unable to fly. It also seemed like alicorns had cloud manipulation as expected, when Storgia reached out and threw a cloudball at Filio's face, which left him completely drenched.

And as we came through, the view, just wow. Shining spires rose up into the sky, daring to grasp at the heavens, draped in finest gold. Cobblestone roads paved the way for the hooves of the great and the good below us, weaving around market stalls, with fine foods and baubles everywhere. At the upper levels, the houses weren't even houses; these things were mansions, easily 10 bedrooms or more. Man, Caesar and all those other aristocrat ponies had it made. And just ahead, dwarfing even those stupendously large abodes, lay Canterlot Castle. Carved out of a harsh mountain, the grand and astute structure stood proud, the monumental feat of engineering was proof of ponykind's apparent control over their world.

And as we saw this, the swarm and I all spoke in unison; "Canterlot, here we come!"

Author's Note:

Yeah, Parasprite speech isn't going to be in italics any more, only when they are focussing the telepathy on single targets or the swarm will the speech be in italics.
W00T 500 views.
I know this is megalate, soz about that.
Too lazy to edit Agape's name atm.

Comments

[Doctor D]

Shade will be in such deep shit because of that poster that he will need six skyscrapers to keep himself alive XD

[Jane]

Does the map feature only work when the parasprites are awake? Say, if Brian went missing, he could only be found if he were conscious and had a view of the outside?

[VanishingAct]

2064184 Only when concious, view of the outside is not required.

[Viceroy]

lolz

[the monkey ninja]

"Yeah, I'll be fine. Parasprites, let's roll."

At this sentence, I honestly thought they were going to land on the ground and roll away.

[dark hope]

2063687 he has all 6