Shining Armor Saves Everyone

by 42Zombies

Nonesuch and Ballyhoo

It hadn't taken Blueblood long to get his airship ready for departure. The prince was evidently in as much of a rush as Shining Armor. In a little less than an hour, the fancy sky-yacht was ready to set sail. Once the balloons were prepped and the engine revved, Blueblood took the roof off his hangar and they were ready to go.

Shining followed Thorax and Flash Sentry aboard Blueblood's ship, where the other prince was waiting at the wheel. Like most things, the airship was bigger on the inside than the outside. It was loaded with all sorts of maps and charts to help with setting a course to any destination. There was even a compass. No expense had been spared on this flying abomination.

It was all very impressive. It was no wonder that this ship was Blueblood's pride and joy. A lot of love had clearly gone into the ship. As Blueblood untethered the airship from its mooring, he told them that he had even named the airship after his mother.

The HMS Blueblood's Old Mom lifted off into the sky, because that's what airships do. Soon, the ground was a distant memory, and the only sound was the whistling of the wind and the thwump of countless birds intentionally flying into the propellers. Eventually, though, even that quieted down once they were above the clouds, flying at a steady pace towards Seaweedattle.

It was so majestic and awe-inspiring to be so high up. Shining Armor loved it.

He had already thrown up sixteen times.

“Uh-oh!” Blueblood said teasingly as Shining Armor puked into one of the airship's complimentary restrooms. “Looks like someone best be careful whence he upchucks!”

Shining didn't say anything. He glared irritably at Blueblood, who had gone back to steering the airship. Flying with Blueblood was just as terrible as Shining had thought it would be. They'd been in the air for a little over ten minutes, and Shining Armor already wanted to jump overboard and get eaten by a big bird.

Shining looked away from Blueblood and turned his attention to Thorax and Flash Sentry. They were both standing at a table, looking over maps and pretending they were doing something important. There wasn't really a lot else to do.

“How are you guys holding up?” Shining asked as he took a seat at the table Thorax and Flash were standing over. He felt confident that he wouldn't need to throw up again for at least another half hour.

“Nervous,” Thorax answered. “I've never been on an airship before. Is this really safe?”

“There's nothing to worry about.” Flash Sentry didn't look up from the map he was studying. It was a map of a hat store. “Airships are incredibly safe. Even if they crash, they move so slowly that it's unlikely anyone would get hurt. That's why airships are called 'the Zambonis of the sky' by me and no one else.”

Thorax didn't look like that had put his fears to rest. If anything, he looked even more anxious. Shining Armor knew this was because Thorax hated Zambonis, but didn't say anything to Flash about it. There was no need to let the pegasus know what an incredibly stupid faux pas he'd made.

As Flash and Thorax continued to pretend to be interested in maps, Shining settled into his seat and got as comfortable as he could. Now that he was no longer vomiting, he was starting to feel a little on-edge. He felt like he was in the calm before the storm. What would happen once they reached Seaweedattle?

Shining shook his head. He needed to calm down. Maybe a little bit of reading would calm his nerves. Thankfully, Shining was always prepared for such an occasion.

Shining reached into his secret pouch and pulled out a large, leather-bound tome. On the cover, printed in gold leaf, was the title and author: 'The Equestrian Monster Manual, by Equestrian Monster Manuel'. As a colossal nerd, Shining always had a copy of this book on him at all times. It was an encyclopedia of various monsters and creatures that inhabited Equestria, written by the most confusingly-named monster expert in the world.

Shining flipped the book open to the page he had bookmarked earlier in the day. It was an entry in the chapter on monsters that had been created by Grogar. This chapter had entries on such terrifying creatures as chimeras, basilisks, ducks, and, most horrifically, the legendary House That Ate Things.

None of those monsters were what interested Shining, however. Instead, his focus was on an entry that had been illustrated by a drawing of a giant, centaur-like monster that resembled a pony with an ape's body growing from its back: the nuckelavee.

The entry read as follows:

The Nuckelavee

Created in the last days of Grogar's reign, the nuckelavee can be considered the youngest of the Father of Monsters' children. It is also the rarest, as very few of these ocean-dwelling monstrosities were created before Grogar's downfall. Due to this scarcity, the nuckelavee has never been able to achieve the same level of infamy as its more noteworthy siblings. Regardless, over the centuries, there have been enough encounters with these strange creatures for us to piece together a fairly accurate profile.

Resembling a bizarre cross between a pony and a centaur, the nuckelavee is composed of two conjoined entities working in tandem. Its pony half is a one-eyed, slippery monster with webbed hooves, while its centaur half has arms that stretch down to the ground and a head that is too large for its neck to support. This mismatched appearance, in addition to the fact that Grogar apparently forgot to give the thing skin, can lead us to surmise that the Father of Monsters did not put very much effort into making this stupid freak.

In addition to being just the worst, the nuckelavee's most notable trait is the means it uses to torment the ponies of Equestria. The nuckelavee, despite being horrible, is able to spread a mystical plague called the mortasheen among ponies and other hooved creatures. In its early stages, the mortasheen can easily be mistaken for any number of Vague Illnesses. Over time, however, ponies can develop more dire symptoms, such as vomiting, mouth-hoof, wet ears, and dying.

Thankfully, the nuckelavee is such a huge waste of space that no outbreak of the mortasheen has ever been able to infect ponies at a rate where it becomes unmanageable. This is because, even though it has two heads, the nuckelavee is just a huge idiot. A real moron. The major king of the dumb-dumbs.

Another terrible thing about the nuckelavee is how it smells. It smells awful. And it's bad at math. If you ever get into a fight with one, you can beat it super easy because its whole body is a weak spot. The dumb idiots don't even have skin. They make me sick. Where do they get off not having skin? What, is skin not good enough for them?

In short, no nuckelavee will ever pose a threat to Equestria, because they're just horrible. The worst. They should all throw themselves into the trash. They should live in a toilet. They should be forced to wear t-shirts that let everypony know just how much better the universe would be without them. They are, quite simply, terrible.

The entry kept going on like that for a couple more pages. This was accompanied by some very mean and unflattering caricatures of the nuckelavee, including a series of doodles depicting the book's author flattening the nuckelavee with a steam-roller over and over again.

It was, to put it bluntly, not very helpful. Shining read the whole thing twice anyway. When he was finally done, he was no more prepared to face the nuckelavee than he had been before.

“What a wonderful waste of my dang time,” Shining happily sighed.

When Shining finally put the Monster Manuel by Monster Manual away, he saw that Thorax and Flash Sentry were no longer standing over the table, pretending to look at naps. They had both left the room while he'd been reading.

How much time had passed? Shining couldn't tell. There were no clocks on the airship, because when you're on a boat you're automatically on Island Time.

Shining looked out one of the airship windows. It was looking darker outside, but they were still only in the late-afternoon, most-likely. The sun bobbed up and down in the sky, so it was impossible to tell exactly how late it was. None of the birds were carrying clocks, either, which was pretty inconsiderate of them.

As he looked out at the endless expanse of sky that surrounded the airship, Shining Armor felt something in his stomach begin to churn. He should have known that looking out the window was a mistake. Shining never got airsick, of course; he just got sick whenever he was on an airship or some other high-flying vehicle that was moving through the sky. That wasn't getting airsick at all.

Shining Armor kept telling himself that as he sprinted back into airship's restroom. He ignored the complimentary mints and the bathroom attendant; Shining didn't have time to waste. He made a mad dash for one of the stalls and quickly barged in, shutting the door behind him.

Shining made it just in time to fall to his knees and start loudly groaning into the porcelain throne. His face felt hot, and he could already feel himself starting to gag.

This was going to be a long flight.

---

Twelve hours of puking later, Shining Armor felt much better. He strutted out of the bathroom with a winning smile. Once he was back in the cabin, he took a deep breath and sighed contentedly. The air smelled like not-barfing.

Shining didn't have very long to enjoy the fact that he was no longer throwing up, though. Almost as soon as he was done taking that breath, the HMS Blueblood's Old Mom began to shake violently. Shining stumbled as the floor shook beneath his hooves, and a thick rumbling reverberated through the ship. The maps and pictures hanging on the walls were jostled as if they were caught in an earthquake.

Once the shaking started to die down, Shining sprinted for the wheelhouse. Thorax and Flash Sentry were already there. They were standing beside Blueblood, who was sitting in a big office chair that was ONLY for the captain to sit in. His horn was aglow with golden magic as he tried to keep the wheel steady. Every now and then the boat shook, and Blueblood had to hurry to maintain his control of the wheel.

Ahead of them, through the captain's window, Shining saw what the problem was: Huge, dark storm clouds surrounded the airship. Monstrous winds blew against her hull, nearly sending them spiraling off-course. Albatrosses kept flying into the window and dying for literally no reason.

“What's going on?!” Shining yelled, even though he could clearly see that there was a storm.

“It's that storm!” Blueblood answered, trying to yell over the wind and thunder outside. “The bad weather you wanted me to fly us through! It's a little worse than I expected!”

The wheel began to jerk to the right. Thorax and Flash Sentry both grabbed onto it and helped Blueblood steady the course. They did a good job.

“I never should have come agreed to get on an airship!” Thorax panicked. “I knew it was a bad idea! If we were meant to fly, we'd have wings!”

The airship shook violently once again. Everycreature struggled to stay on their hooves as the ship lurched to the side for a moment.

Shining looked out the window again. It was getting hard to see past all the dead albatrosses stuck to the glass, but what Shining saw looked bad. Even bigger, meaner-looking storm clouds were coming towards them. One of the clouds looked like a big knife, and that probably wasn't good.

As turbulence once again shook the airship, Shining tried to think quickly. He told his brain to make an idea happen. His brain, recognizing the trouble he was in, agreed to help with no delay.

“Flash! Can you go out there and try to clear those clouds for us?”

Flash Sentry shook his head as he continued to help Thorax and Blueblood keep the wheel steady.

“It's too intense for one pegasus, sir. I'd need a whole team to even make a dent in it. Whoever whipped this storm up really doesn't want anycreature getting into Seaweedattle.”

Shining had been thinking that exact same thing. This wasn't just some freak storm. It was an obstacle; one that had been put in place deliberately to keep outsiders from getting into the city. Had the nuckelavee done this? Shining couldn't think of who else would benefit from a storm like this. Had this weather been whipped up using the stolen magic of the princesses?

A flash of lightning filled the sky, and deafening thunder reverberated all through the airship. The lights in the wheelhouse flickered and blacked out. Soon, though, the backup generator kicked in and they were no longer in the dark. So far, it looked like they were avoiding serious damage, but Shining didn't know how long that would last.

“We need to get out of this storm!” Shining said, once again saying the obvious. “Blueblood, can we go any higher? Elevate above the storm clouds?”

Blueblood kept staring ahead, trying to maintain vision through all the dead albatrosses and storm clouds blocking his view.

“Not without more balloons,” he said. “We can't lighten the load, either. There's nothing heavy enough to make a difference that we can throw overboard!”

“Dang it!” Shining angrily slammed a hoof against the grand piano that Blueblood kept in his airship's wheelhouse. He was running out of ideas, which wasn't very difficult since he hadn't had all that many ideas in the first place. His brain had really let him down on this one.

“What happens if we crash?” Thorax asked worriedly. “Flash, didn't you say that no one gets hurt in airship crashes?”

Flash looked puzzled. “I think so. Did I say that? I think I remember reading about it in a magazine once.”

“That's actually a common misconception!” Blueblood yelled over the raging storm. “A lot of ponies think that no one gets hurt in an airship crash, but they're actually getting their facts mixed up! In an airship crash, everyone gets hurt!”

“Oh, right!” Flash Sentry chuckled and shook his head. “I'm always getting those two things mixed up.”

Everyone had a good laugh about Flash's goof-up.

The ship lurched again. There was a terrible, crackling roar, followed by a loud snap as something heavy struck the hull. The windshield was now completely covered in dead albatrosses, and also one dead pelican that Shining hadn't noticed before. It was completely impossible to see what was ahead of them.

This wasn't good. In fact, Shining would go as far as to say that the situation was problematic.

But things were about to get worse.

Slowly, the HMS Blueblood's Old Mom started to tilt to the side.

“What's happening?!” Shining asked as the floor beneath them started to shift.

Flash Sentry and Thorax both used their wings to begin hovering in the air. The grand piano slid to the other side of the room and fell against the opposite wall. Blueblood's mane fell from his face as the wheelhouse's center of gravity slowly started to shift. A bunch of other stuff happened, too.

“One of the tethers connecting us to the balloons must have snapped!” Blueblood said. “This isn't good! At this rate, it's only a matter of time until we--”

Blueblood stopped, his eyes widening with a sort of manic realization. Shining recognized that look. He'd seen that look on his own face several times. Blueblood had just had an idea.

“I've got an idea!” Blueblood said once he had gotten an idea. “There might be a way to get out of this storm and get us back on course!”

Shining Armor was terrified of crashing, but he was almost as terrified of encouraging Blueblood's idiocy. But it wasn't like they had a lot of options.

“What's your idea?” Shining asked hesitantly.

Blueblood turned to him with a triumphant smile on his face.

“We just need to get out and push!”

Shining stared at Blueblood with all of his eyes, momentarily stunned. Flash Sentry and Thorax looked surprised, too. Even the storm outside seemed to stop for a moment out of sheer disbelief at what Blueblood had said.

“Blueblood... You...” Shining tried to make sense of the stupid words that had tied his brain into a knot. “That is the single dumbest idea I've ever heard in my life!”

“Nuh-uh,” Blueblood countered. It was hard to argue with such detailed reasoning.

The entire airship shook again as fierce storm winds blew against the hull. The cabin swayed, causing everyone who couldn't fly to stumble around as they lost their footing. Lightning flashed just outside the portside windows, dangerous close to striking the ship. Slowly, though, the ship stopped its violent swaying.

“It's getting worse!” Thorax yelled. “We need to do something!”

“Quick!” Shining said. “Someone think of a better idea than Blueblood's!”

Blueblood turned away from the wheel and glared at Shining Armor.

“There are no better ideas!” He snapped angrily. “I know what I'm talking about! We just need to get out and push the airship up above the storm clouds!”

The idea made even less sense now that Blueblood had explained it. There was something incredible about that.

“How would we even do that?!” He asked. “You and I can't fly, and even the four of us together wouldn't be strong enough to lift this whole airship! This is the dumbest idea you've ever come up with!”

“It definitely isn't!” Blueblood looked at Shining, a determined expression on his face. He stepped away from the wheel in order to better face the former captain. This really wasn't a good idea considering they were in the middle of a storm and Blueblood was the one piloting them.

“Now, listen; either we get out and push the ship to safety, or we crash and die. There's no time to come up with another plan. Now, you asked for my help because you know I'm good at piloting airships. So are you going to actually listen to what I have to say, or you going to stand around and wait for all of us to die?”

Shining was taken aback by how serious Blueblood looked. But he wasn't taken aback enough to forget how dumb this idea was.

“But we'll fall!” He pointed out. “How are we supposed to defy gravity?!”

Blueblood shrugged.

“We'll figure something out,” he said. He sounded so sincere and determined that Shining almost forgot how stupid this was.

Shining looked at Thorax and Flash in disbelief. His two sidekicks were just as stunned as he was. They were almost certainly going to die, and Blueblood was proposing an idea that would only get them killed even faster.

But with the storm raging outside, they were quickly running out of options. Shining needed to convince Blueblood that this plan was ridiculous.

“Blueblood,” Shining said pleadingly. “Please. Think about how dumb this is. Your plan makes absolutely no sense. We can't go out and push this thing up above the storm clouds. There's no way this idea will work.”

After a moment of contemplation, Blueblood just smiled.

“Oh, it'll work,” he said in a way that did nothing to boost Shining's confidence. “Trust me... it'll work.”

---

It worked and they were fine.

After Blueblood's plan managed to get the airship clear of the storm, it was pretty much smooth sailing all the way to Seaweedattle. They arrived in the early morning hours of the next day. The sun was only just starting to rise in the horizon and bother everyone with its stupid light. Blueblood landed the airship on top of a falafel stand, and all four passengers soon stepped out into the misty city streets.

Even though they were on serious business, Shining and company took a moment to look around at the sights of Seaweedattle. It was just like Canterlot, except different. The architecture was much more varied and experimental, and every store doubled as a coffee shop. A pack of wild dogs roamed the streets, eating everything they encountered. It was beautiful.

But despite how wonderful all of this infrastructure was, something was very wrong. The streets of the city were empty, just like they had been in Canterlot. Shining guessed he should have expected that; after all, Seaweedattle was under quarantine. But even in Canterlot, there had been a few ponies out in the street going about their various businesses.

But here? Seaweedattle's streets were completely devoid of ponies. Everything was eerily quiet and still, like a skeleton in a library. The city was like a ghost town. It almost felt... unnatural.

Shining shuddered. He didn't want to stick around in these empty streets for longer than normal. He turned to look at Blueblood and the others, who were all incredibly bored.

“Let's get going,” he said. “There's no time to lose. We need to find the nuckelavee and get things back to normal.”

“Where do we even start looking?” Thorax gestured vaguely with his hooves in a way that held little meaning to Shining. “This city is huge! The nuckelavee could be in any building!”

“Draft mentioned that the nuckelavee's lair was off the coast of Seaweedattle in his needlessly detailed story,” Shining screamed. “We need to make our way to the Seaweedattle Waterfront.”

Shining began walking in the direction of the city's waterfront, which, as everyone knows, was towards the west. The others quickly followed after him down the long, deserted streets of Seaweedattle.

As the group made their way towards the city's wharf, they saw more signs of how bad things were for Seaweedattle. Most of the shops were closed for business, with signs hung up saying that they didn't know when they'd be open. Every water fountain and public restroom was wrapped up in sanitary plastic wrap. The whole thing was bizarre.

And it was only going to get even more bizarrerer.

The Seaweedattle Waterfront wasn't abandoned like the rest of the city. When Shining's group reached the wharf district, it became evident where everypony had gone. Dozens of white medical tents had been set up in the downtown area. The streets and sidewalks were positively cluttered with them. Those dozens of tents had dozens of ponies coming and going through them. The air was filled with the sounds of nasty illness.

“Wow,” Shining said as he took in the scope of it. “This is... I mean, I thought things would be bad, but seeing all of this is pretty...”

“Pretty annoying, yeah,” Blueblood interrupted. “Look at all of these stupid tents. I have a much nicer duplex tent. Also, I don't like that they're sick. They shouldn't be.”

Shining gave Blueblood an annoyed glance. Even though he'd somehow managed to sail them through the storm, that didn't change the fact that Blueblood was awful. His sheer lack of empathy for the sick was almost impressive. Shining had no clue how the sight of all these tents and all of these sick ponies didn't evoke at least a little sympathy from Blueblood.

But then again, maybe it had something to do with how the ponies coming out of the tents were dressed. They all wore heavy black cloaks, wide-brimmed hats, and beaked plague masks that covered their entire faces. It was very creepy, but also practical and sensible clothing to be worn by somepony tending to the sick.

These ponies must be doctors, Shining thought.

“These ponies must be doctors,” he said out loud.

The second Shining said that wonderful sentence, all of the masked ponies out on the street froze and turned to look at him. It was only then that Shining remembered that doctors possess an incredible sense of hearing so that they can hear germs. In any case, the group had gotten the doctors' attention. That probably wasn't a good thing, since technically nopony was supposed to enter the city.

The masked doctors kept staring at Shining's group, like a bunch of weird squirrels looking at a noisy tree. Shining could feel their medical eyes scrutinizing them, trying to determine if they were a threat. If the group made one wrong move, he knew that those doctors would tear them limb from limb.

“What should we do?” Thorax asked, terrified.

“Just... stay still,” Shining whispered. “No sudden moves. Once they see we're not dangerous, they'll leave us alone.”

The two groups continued to stare each other down for what felt like seconds. Eventually, one of the masked ponies stepped forward from the crowd and began to approach Shining and company. As he did so, the other doctors all went back to tending to the ill ponies inside of the tents.

“Excuse me!” The pony approaching them called out, his voice muffled by his medical plague mask. “You can't be here! This is where we're making all of the sick ponies live so that the hospitals don't get clogged up!”

As the pony drew closer, Shining saw that he was dressed differently from all of the other masked ponies in the streets. In addition to his heavy plague doctor's garb, he also wore a silk sash over his black cloak. The words 'DOCTOR MAYOR' were emblazoned on the sash in bright-red print.

This was insane. A doctor who was also a mayor? What else would today throw at them?

The doctor mayor stopped in front of Shining and the others. He smelled like health and politics. It was a good smell.

“How did you even get into the city?” The mayor asked, bewildered. “There are checkpoints all around the town! Nothing nonessential is supposed to get in or out! You're putting yourselves in danger by being here!”

The mayor sounded fairly distressed. Shining had no idea why. But in any case, they needed to try and calm him down. Who knew what a mayor with all the powers of a doctor was capable of when he was this upset?

“We have a good reason to be here,” Shining explained. “We're here to help.”

Shining proceeded to tell the mayor everything. He told him about the princesses disappearing. He told him about the nuckelavee and the mortasheen. He told them about Garth, about the sun and moon, about Blueblood's airship. He told the mayor every little detail he could think of that was relevant to the situation.

He wasn't alone, either. Flash, Thorax, and even Blueblood all contributed. As they told their story, Shining found himself almost unable to believe that all of this had happened in such a short period of time.

Finally, when they were done, the four travelers looked at the mayor expectantly.

“So that's what's going on,” Shining sighed. “And that's why we need to get to the shore.”

The mayor tilted his masked head.

“I'm sorry, I didn't catch all of that,” he said. “It's a little hard to hear with this mask on. What did you say?”

They proceeded to tell the story again, but louder.

“Oh, okay,” the mayor said several minutes later. “Wow. That's a pretty crazy story. But do you have any proof? If you don't, I'm going to have to ask you to leave. I can't let you through unless we're certain that this nuckelavee thing really is responsible for all of this 'disease' malarkey.”

Shining frowned. In his haste to leave Canterlot, he'd left what little evidence he'd had behind. He hadn't thought he'd need any, since ponies will usually just believe almost anything they hear. What were the chances that one of the few ponies in Equestria who wasn't a gullible sap would be in a position to stop them?

Just when it looked like Shining Armor was going to have to do a cool judo throw to get the mayor out of their way, Blueblood chimed in to help.

“You can't stop us,” he said. “I'm royalty. We can go wherever we want.”

“Well, I can't argue with that!” The mayor said cheerfully. “Okay, then! Follow me and I'll take you to the shore. Try not to bump into any sick ponies on the way!”

“Thank you so much,” Shining said as they began to follow the mayor through the tent-filled streets of the waterfront. “We really appreciate this, Mayor... uh...”

Shining chuckled sheepishly. “Sorry, what was your name again?”

“Oh, me?” The mayor glanced over his shoulder and gave Shining a brief glance. “My name's Craig! Nice to meet you!”

The group came to a dead stop in the middle of the tent filled streets. Dr. Mayor Craig went on a bit further before he realized they were no longer following him and turned to see what was the matter. Because of the mask on his face, it was impossible to tell if the stallion was annoyed or confused.

If he was confused, though, there was no way he was as confused as Shining and the others.

“I'm sorry, what?” Shining asked. “What did you say?”

“Craig,” the Dr. Mayor said. From the tone of his voice, he clearly wasn't seeing the problem with the nonsense word he'd just said.

Flash squinted at the so-called 'Craig' with a hint of disgust on his face.

“Is that... short for anything?” He asked hopefully.

“Nope.” The Dr. Mayor shook his head, causing the beak on his mask to wobble around. “Not that I know of.”

Shining exchanged a look with the others. They were all in agreement over how weird this was. Even Blueblood was smart enough to look uncomfortable about the name the mayor had given them. Not a single one of them knew what to make of a name like that.

“Well... do you have a last name?” Thorax ventured. “Or a family name.”

“No,” the mayor said. “Just Craig.”

Without another word, Dr. Mayor Craig turned around and continued leading Shining's group further towards the shore. Hesitantly, the four followed after him, still a bit thrown off.

The sooner they got out of Seaweedattle, the better.

---

As Dr. Mayor Craig led the Four Guys Without a Group Name to the shore of Seaweedattle, he also took them on a fun, educational tour of the makeshift hospital zone that had been set up in the Waterfront. He didn't really have a choice; the streets were completely filled with tents, and those tents were full of sick ponies who were full of illness. And although the shoreline was visible on the horizon, the streets were so cluttered that the trip was taking much longer than it should have.

The situation looked much worse now that Shining could see things up close. There were a lot more tents and a lot less doctors than Shining had initially thought. The only sound was the voices of ponies loudly complaining about how bad it is to be sick. The doctors were running low on important medical supplies like stethoscopes and those little rubber reflex hammers. They were forced to substitute the stethoscopes and rubber hammers with tin cans they'd hold up to the pony's chest and real, actual hammers.

It was a desperate situation. Shining felt sleepy.

“This all started around the time the princesses went missing,” Craig explained as they went on. “We thought that was just a coincidence. But since then, the disease has spread like wildfire if wildfire made ponies vomit. It only took a week for half the city to start showing symptoms. Now, though? Most of the population's got whatever this is.”

“Yeah,” Shining agreed. He wasn't really listening.

“We barely have enough doctors to get by,” Craig continued. “It's gotten to the point where we've started giving out free doctorates to anypony who's not infected. That's helped a little, but now for some reason it seems like a lot of the city's doctors don't have any medical training. No one can explain that.”

“Uh-huh.” Shining wondered how much it would cost to buy one of those beaked masks.

Dr. Mayor Craig stopped and turned to Shining's group.

“Say, any of you boys want a doctorate?” He asked. “Or two, maybe? We've got a bunch of diplomas lying around.”

Before he could start handing out any diplomas, Dr. Mayor Craig was interrupted by a creature emerging from one of the nearby tents and running up to him. It didn't take Shining very long to recognize the creature as a Diamond Dog. He could tell because the creature was a dog.

“Hello, spaceboy!” The Diamond Dog said to Dr. Mayor Craig, grabbing him by his cloaked shoulders. “I saw something in the air! It was a real space oddity! I don't know how they got here when the wind blows, because wild is the wind! Magic dance!”

“Calm down, Ziggy!” Dr. Mayor Craig gently pushed the Diamond Dog's paws off of him. “It wasn't anything dangerous; just some royals breaking quarantine so they can fight a monster. Don't freak out.”

Ziggy the Diamond Dog looked at Shining's group in surprise, seemingly only just realizing they were even there.

“Oh! You pretty things?” He asked. “What in the world? You guys don't look like the supermen. Sorry, I somehow have a sense of doubt that they can handle themselves under pressure.”

Shining was somewhat taken aback by that uncalled for sizing-up from Ziggy the Diamond Dog. So were the others, especially Thorax, who was sensitive. Shining glared at the big ol' dog irritably.

“Hey, we're gonna try our best!” He said defensively. “Who even are you, Ziggy? What gives you the right to judge us, Ziggy? Answer me that.”

Ziggy opened up his word hole to make an answer happen to Shining Armor. Before his voice could crawl out of him, however, somepony else's mouth-sounds entered Shining Armor's ears.

“I wouldn't take anything Ziggy says too seriously. He means well.”

One of the tents opened its flaps, and out stepped the one-horned mare who used to cause problems. It was Tempest Shadow, and she was definitely there. Since she wasn't a doctor, she wasn't wearing the full cloak, mask, and hat ensemble most of the other ponies had on. Instead, she just had an old-timey diving helmet on for protection.

Tempest nodded her helmeted head at the surprised Shining Armor by way of a greeting.

“Prince Armor,” she said curtly. She cast a momentarily glance at the others, who were all still there. “It's been some time. How goes the search for your sister?”

“Uh... It's winding down.” Shining took a moment to get over his surprise and confusion, which were his two primary emotions lately “What are you doing here, Tempest? Do you know about the nuckelavee, too?”

“I'm Tempest Shadow,” she said.

“She was on an airship that crashed here a few weeks ago,” Craig explained. He gestured to the Diamond Dog. “Ziggy here was making a delivery, but that was around the time the storm started up. He, Tempest, and that little goblin crashed in the middle of town and still haven't apologized for it.”

“We've been stuck here ever since,” Tempest added.

Shining Armor frowned thoughtfully once Tempest finished telling her wonderful story. What were the odds of her being here? They probably weren't very high. This was what some might call 'a coincidence'. Yes, these were all important facts.

“We came here on the trail of the princessnapper,” Thorax said, startling everyone who'd forgotten he was there. “We have reason to suspect that they're hiding out somewhere off the shore of Seaweedattle.”

“Really?!” Tempest's diving helmet looked surprised. “The whole reason Grubber and I rode along with Ziggy was because I wanted to look into Princess Twilight's disappearance. This kidnapper is really hiding somewhere off the coast?”

Shining Armor nodded. “That's what the evidence says.”

“And by 'evidence', we mean 'unreliable account from a senile old man,'” Flash Sentry added.

Tempest Shadow looked like she understood. She nodded her helmeted head slowly. The Mayor, however, was not so convinced.

“I'm the Mayor, and I'm not so convinced.” Dr. Mayor Craig shook his head. “There haven't been any reports of anything unusual in the city. I've yet to see any magical plague-spreaders menacing our city, and I'm particularly observant. Even if this monster is hiding off the coast of our city, where is he? How would you even find him in the big, wet ocean?”

The Mayor had a point. Shining Armor hadn't even thought of where to start looking when they got to the shoreline. He'd kind of hoped some locals could point them in the right direction, but most of the citizens were busy being incredibly sick.

“Do you have any idea of where the nuckelavee might be?” Shining asked the Mayor. “Any landmarks, or unusual spots on the beach?”

Once again, Mayor Dr. Craig shook his mayoral head.

“No,” he said with a shrug. “I can only wonder where he might be.”

“Yeah, we can only wonder.” Blueblood said in a flat, unamused tone. Everypony turned to the prince, who had his eyelids half-lowered in exasperation. “I mean, it's not like he could be hiding in that ominous cliff jutting out of the ocean like some sort of sinister talon, is it? There's no way he could be hiding there.”

Blueblood raised his hoof and pointed towards ocean on the horizon. Sure enough, there it was; a terrible, rocky spire rising out of the ocean. It was a good distance from the shore, but its mountainous size made it plain to see even to those who were still in the city. It was craggy and unnatural, curving to a sharp point. It was like the tip of the claw of some gigantic beast lurking below the waves, poking its claw out into the surface. Irregular caves covered its surface, and a strange, red miasma poured forth from within. The fog fell down to the water's surface, where it spread out and dispersed into invisibility.

Everycreature looked at the terrible spire for a moment before turning back to the conversation. It was very uninteresting.

“Huh. Always wondered about that thing,” Craig mused.

“... How long has that thing been there?” Shining asked. He was a little irritated at the Dr. Mayor. Mostly, though, Shining just felt like he wanted some chips. He was in the mood to snack.

“I dunno. A couple of decades.” Craig shrugged his cloaked shoulders. “I guess we probably should have noticed something weird about it, but, y'know, hindsight is 20-20. Now that I think about it, though, it's almost definitely an evil lair.”

Flash Sentry stepped forward and grabbed Dr. Mayor Craig by his collar. He glared into the lenses of the mayor's mask, clearly not happy with the mayor's nonesuch and ballyhoo. Shining couldn't really blame him; they'd been through a lot lately.

“We don't have time for this gobbeldygook,” he snarled politely. “Please continue to take us to the coast so we can make a boat take us to that bad mountain.”

“'Kay,” the mayor squeaked.

Dr. Mayor Craig turned and resumed leading the group towards the shoreline. Blueblood, Flash, and Thorax followed after him. Ziggy the Diamond Dog went back into the tent he'd emerged from, thus exiting the story.

Shining set out to follow them, but was stopped. The mare who was called 'Tempest Shadow' reached out and grabbed him with her mighty hoof. Shining turned to face her, looking her right in the diving helmet.

“Oh, right.” Shining said. He'd momentarily forgotten that Tempest mentioned she'd come here looking for the princesses' kidnapper. “Tempest, do you want to come along? We could use somepony with your military training, and I know you want to save my sister as much as I do. Will you help us?”

“No.” Tempest said. She promptly returned to the tent, following after Ziggy.

Shining Armor shrugged and walked away.

It was time to meet the nuckelavee.

Author's Note:

I've been holding in this 'craig' joke for so long. So many years. And now you have to deal with it.

Comments

[Deergenerate]

This story is the best thing ever XD

Craig... what a weird name amiright?

[42Zombies]

10353813
He was named after himself.

[Gray Ghost]

I see you've done your research on nuckelavees.