Baa-Ram-Ewe!

by Darkonshadows

99. Ally Allocation.

-Equus, Ponyville, Arizona-

“Okay Paprika, I’m ready.” I narrowed my eyes and my favorite master level fluffmancer nodded in seriousness and got into a guarded stance. “Let’s do this!”

I went up onto my hind hooves and brought my front hooves in an overhead hammer blow at Paprika, who took it and began to wobble back a bit.

Taking an immediate guarded stance, I waited for the blow and upon Paprika returning my blow to me with her rather infamous counter. I started to do a makeshift weaker version of Paprika’s counter back at her, she guarded the blow and her wobbling was even worse this time.

I was ready for the incoming blow to build up another counter…

-Canterlot, five seconds afterwards, Twilight-

One second everything was fine and the next there were several holes leading straight into the throne room and a cow was embedded in the nearby wall next to where I sat.

If she had been a foot or two to the left she would have smashed into me like Rainbow Dash doing a Sonic Rainboom… which I have survived the last three times that has happened.

“Ow. Okay, so I wasn’t as ready as I thought.” The cow muttered as she pulled herself free from the wall and looked around, she then looked at me. “Sorry about all the damage. Don’t send me the bill, I’m a carpenter and I’ll fix all of this pro bono. Oh right, your Twilight Sparkle! Applejack says hello by the way, I’ll just show myself out now.”

The cow sauntered out of the room and right on by my guards that just gaped at her. My right eye might be twitching… was it twitching? I can’t tell.

I know I remember putting up a powerful, well researched and definitely implemented, magical barrier system just for this exact sort of thing happening!

How did a cow not only break the sound barrier, going backwards mind you, but also the barrier around the castle?! The cow just walked that off when she should have crippling injuries and all she said about all this was ‘ow’!?!

-Earth, flight to Scotland, The Sun Chaser, Smolder-

These pirates, aside from the harpoon guns equipped on the smaller planes than one I was currently in, weren’t very threatening. They were basically on the verge of defeat already, they weren’t trained to fight at all to the point even I took them down with relative ease and a few flicks of my combat ribbon.

Even Dewey is putting up a good showing by knocking a few pirates out of the plane and taking on Don Karnage personally.

Apparently the pirates all had parachutes and have been through this kind of thing before… without them, yet they survived it? If I were the pirates, I would have either ditched Don Karnage a long time ago or mutinied while putting someone ‘feasibly competent’ in charge. Even Shanty wouldn’t put up with Don’s ridiculousness just to be a pirate.

I looked over to Louie who wasn’t doing much, aside from staying near Ocellus.

“Hey, I’m guarding Ocellus from falling out and I stopped a guy.” More like Louie was choosing to be the laziest out of all of us. He would probably have a can of fruity soda in his grip when he dies.

I was going to need Pinkie to figure out that recipe from the ingredients listed on one of those cans… it doesn’t exactly exist in our dimension so it was definitely fair game as copyright doesn’t cross dimensional barriers all too well!

“Yeah, but you aren’t exactly helping Huey with tying them up… speaking of.” I motioned over to Huey who was just about finished with the pirates who hadn’t been knocked out of the plane.

Lena was busy pushing harpoons out with her magic and we weren’t experiencing too much of a real threat having worked together to stop the assault cold. Lena proved that she was quite adept at magic and as a magical shadow creature she ran on friendship like changelings did.

Both Scrooge with his weird bouncing cane and Webby with her martial arts took care of most of the pirates by themselves, that they beat more pirates than Huey, Dewey and me combined was amazing.

“Eh, he’s got it handled.” Louie shrugged.

“Yeah, this was less awesome than last time… they did this really cool musical number and everything while stealing all our stuff.” Glancing at Launchpad who just finished knocked a pirate out with a wrench and then proceeded to fix something that broke in the fighting, but not because of the fighting itself, I sighed loudly.

“Who is currently flying the plane if both Dewey and Launchpad are down here?” I asked blandly, as Dewey finally knocked the sword out of Don Karnage’s hand with the most ridiculous maneuver devised involving twirling the sword in a ridiculous manner that only worked because of a fluke and flicking a yoyo into the guy’s face.

If it’s mostly flashy and it still works, well… I shouldn’t talk when I have to use flourishes to actually wield my ribbon in a fight.

“You know, you really shouldn’t bring attention to something like that, because it usually makes something go wro-ahhh!” As Louie started to tell me something that sounded vaguely important, we all started falling upwards and towards the rear doors to the plane as it suddenly took a dive. “Well this is another fine mess of- OOF!”

Ocellus just landed on him and I was about to slide into him as the plane righted itself, before we fell out.

“Can someone please explain to me why I had to be the one to do this?” Violet said from the pilot’s seat while looking at a manual in her right hand, that purple hummingbird just shook her head and kept reading as she had her left hand on the controls said she was exasperated by all this. “I am neither licensed nor trained or qualified to fly a motorized aerial vehicle this large. Given that nobody here is going to talk about this and we’re over international waters… It doesn’t bother my sensibilities yet. Letting Dewey continue to be the copilot or if I’m still flying the plane by the time we get over Scotland would be pushing them to the brink. Please get your priorities in order Launchpad and take control before something drastic happens.”

“Oh, Sorry Vi, but Mr. Mc-D looked like he needed help down here.” Launchpad, thankfully, made his way to climb up the ladder towards the pilot’s seat.

Violet reminds me of Twilight Sparkle more and more with every passing moment. She had no friends to start off with and was a book loving smart sass. I think she got the sass from her older adoptive sister Lena.

Where she differed from Twilight was that she was open to the idea of friendship from the get go and was more aware of any situation mentally at least, socially was a toss-up as she was quite blunt.

“Wait, were you just learning how to fly the plane as you’re doing it… that’s actually kind of cool sis!” Lena commented as she pushed her glowing feathered hands forward and the last harpoon popped out, the smaller plane being dragged by us quickly spiraled out of sight.

“Well that wasn’t so bad now was it?” Scrooge turned me with a prideful grin.

“Eh, could be worse, we could be under attack by a giant metal octopus that could light an entire city on fire or explode to do the same thing.” I still had nightmares about Axel Gear’s fist hitting my skull hard enough to knock me out. It made me wonder if Ocellus had a hidden vindictive streak that she hit him with lightning and then made Dodo kick him at full speed. “These guys weren’t exactly trained for this, though I was expecting at least one muscle bound rough and tumble type that could take a bit of punishment.”

“That’s more John D. Rockerduck’s thing, it’s mostly the one guy though. Maybe the remnants of the eggheads after we dealt with F.O.W.L.” Scrooge had a whole rogue’s gallery didn’t he? Was I in a world that ran on comic book logic? No, I would be hearing more villainous speeches than the monologues Gizmo Duck does ‘trying’ to sound heroic. Pom doesn’t have to make speeches and mostly just acts in the interest of everyone nearby. “After we drop these yahoos off and finish our business with my parents, we’ll be on our way to… uh... where did you say your cousin was again Lena?”

“Camden Town, maybe we can ask Hunter about the dog that was last seen with Pom since he has the ability to communicate with them. He might know some things.” Lena looked a little uncertain. “He’s not exactly big on this magic stuff, but he’s open to the idea of finally having family that’s not out to off him in a horribly obvious roundabout manner. At least I’m going to try and be the best cousin I can be in all of this. Also, try to keep things tame around him, he has only recently learned that myths and monsters are an actual thing aside from being capable of understanding dogs.”

“Britain has been kind of insular to the goings on around the world. Must be the storms that were caused by Raleigh before the new Cooper Gang appeared. At least we know Scotland has mystical druid golfing realms and kelpies.” Violet stated as she joined us and Launchpad was back to flying. “Pom and that Dr. M character would be the first instance of something big happening around Camden Town, aside from several strange characters attacking Hunter and Gabby McStabberson being in the region.”

“Yeah, Gabby’s pretty cool, unless she’s being paid to attack us.” Whipping her foot backwards and without actually looking, Webby knocked out a female pirate that was going to try and bite at her ankles. “She’s not really a bad person overall, she just ends up working for bad people.”

“Aye, like Glomgold, she won’t be making that mistake twice after the Atlantis expedition.” Scrooge grunted out while rolling his eyes. “Well come on kids, you need to get Smolder ready for her first Launchpad crash. You also need to secure Ocellus so she’s the safest out of all of us. Huey and Violet figure that out, while Louie and Dewey will try to keep Smolder calm by telling her about the worst crashes we’ve been through in excruciating detail.”

“You’re an evil old man Scrooge.” I stated flatly as Dewey looked excited to tell me all about it, while Louie put an arm around my shoulder. “Also, all of you are crazy… but I guess I can’t complain too much when you’re helping me and Ocellus. On a budget of friendship and extremely convenient cheapness.”

“Don’t worry about it Smolder, I’ll try to keep 'The Dewey' to a minimum.” How much would that cost Louie and could you manage it for a whole year if I paid you enough?

-Flight from Haiti to Britain, hijacked large airliner, Shanty-

I managed to kick the gun away from the seal I had been targeting earlier until the white furred weasel proved to be a better target. A good clean bash to the skull with my forehead and horns be knocking him out after a short scuffle.

“That’s using your head Shanty!” Murray stated as he held the artic hare he was dealing upside down and started to slam his head into the floor several times in a painful looking manner. At least the guy still be breathing after that and was definitely unconscious. “And this is me using his!”

Sly was busy dealing with a snow furred wolf, he was having a little trouble until a dart entered the wolf’s neck and she slumped over. Bentley motioned for us to come back his way.

“Okay that takes care of our section of the plane, but what about the business and first class?” Sly asked as he dragged the wolf back and towards Mopsy and Bentley, I started to do the same with the seal until Murray helped me by picking him up off the floor. “What exactly are these guys after?”

“That’s what Mopsy and me are discussing Sly, we agreed that they all seem to have one thing in common…” Bentley pointed over to the ten unconscious forms. The other passengers were paying attention to us, but they weren’t exactly asking questions after we be stopping these guys. “They are all cold weather people, which may mean they have ties to the Russian Mafia. Not exactly the kind of people you’d see naturally in Haiti or even anywhere near this plane. As to their goals, that still remains to be seen. I do have a name and a person of interest before the cameras were taken down. Airline cameras are always shoddy to work with and are never used efficiently, or sufficiently enough. The profile I got is on a snow leopard by the name of Sabu Taj, which is almost on the nose as she specializes in sabotage and spying. She’s easy to recognize at least… purple shoulder length hair, white and black fur, tends to wear only dark blue jumpsuits and has pink colored eyes. What little else I have on her suggests an Olympian level physique and flexibility, but is selectively color blind given her eyes natural coloring. Don’t know how many more guys she has with her, but she’s certainly leading things here.”

“Well that’s more than we knew before, do you have any suggestions as to what their end goal could ultimately be Bentley? I mean, they are attacking a large passenger plane here, nothing really big or worthy of note for them to steal if they aren’t trying to be terrorists.” Sly be looking at the ceiling of the plane while tapping his cane against his left shoulder. “What are the chances that they are here because of us?”

“Still too inconclusive so far to make any suggestions, but we know they are willing to kill people and it’s small a possibility. It’s not going to take them long to realize that no one is reporting from the rear of the plane and then they are going to start sending people in to investigate.” Bentley gave his computer screen a worried look, then held up a clip from one of the guns they be taking off the guys we brought down. “Sly, you don’t get automatic weapons like what these guys have onto a plane this easily. Not when they are loaded with armor piercing rounds. Yes, people, those guns have armor piercing rounds in them. All of you need to stay quiet and keep down, we’ll sort this mess out one way or another.”

All the scared people around us be shrinking down in their seats, but they were thankfully being quiet. The flight attendant cleared her throat and might have said ‘thank you’ to us before she started to help the people in economy class quietly. This plane wasn’t packed, but there was being enough people on it to be worrisome that someone might be getting shot by accident.

“Shanty do you think you can scout ahead?” Sly be looking to me and I nodded, I made my way forward with him. “We need to be fast about this Shanty, business class has a lot more open space and we have no idea what happening in first class.”

We reached the door, Sly pointed upwards. I climbed up above the door and waited.

Sly held up three digits, folded one down, two… and then jabbed the third one forward and slowly opened the door.

I quickly squeezed through the barely open doorway and Sly be closing it behind me. Taking out the binoculars from my satchel, I pointed them forward. I smelled something that I’d recognize anywhere, the smell of blood and a dead or dying body is being nearby.

“I be smelling blood, someone is either being dead or they be seriously hurt.” I was quite nervous about this and being around anything that be called ‘armor piercing’.

“Okay Shanty, you are currently going unnoticed, you’re in position to act as my spotter.” Sly be speaking softly. “Climb up into the alcove there on your… yeah that’s it. Now give me a full visual on what’s on the other side of the door. Five guards, they look attentive and making sure they don’t lose control of the passengers. They must have shot someone to prove a point, at least Shanty and I are not seeing any dead bodies… yet. The sound was probably muffled by the doors between sections.”

I didn’t speak and stayed up in the alcove next to the lights, but not in the path of them as to cast a shadow on the floor. I kept the binoculars focused on the four moving about the open area ahead.

“Slipping in, tell me if they showing any signs of noticing my movements.” After he said that I scrunched myself up against the ceiling as the four guards moved about, I focused on my sights on the fifth one as the binoculars scoped the whole room. “Okay, we’re both in Business class Bentley… can you, Mopsy and Murray cover Economy class? We’ve got five more these guys, three men, two women… one guarding the door to first class the rest are keeping the business class under guard.”

I didn’t see Sly until he was crouching behind a seat, he would be being the best master thief in no time.

“We have a white furred female fox, a male tiger, a female brown bear and a male snow owl, all them biped. The one guarding the door to first class is a grey husky, male and is a cross between biped and animalistic.” Sly pointed out each one patrolling the seats around the cowering people. “Ideas anyone?”

“Where be Spot?” I know where Dodo be and he not be very helpful in this situation, in fact I didn’t be wanting him to get hurt and be wanting him to stay put. He was getting quite worried about me and I didn’t want him destroying the plane by accident trying to protect me.

“Good question… our Pullet Marlow seems to have disappeared after she kicked the gun away from that polar bear, so she must be setting something up. I think she might have learned a few tricks from my father.” Sly looked at one of the guys nearest to him and shivered violently. He be getting nightmares of a giant metal owl that could be passing for an Evil Core from Elhorn, so of course he be a bit afraid of the owl man. “I swear, that chicken definitely has a history of sneaking around and I could learn a thing or two from her. Let’s hope she can give us an opening to take down the four of them, we’ll find out if someone is bleeding once the coast is mostly clear and these guys are out of the way.”

Noticing some movement, I focused on a door sliding open slowly.

“Is that a toilet?” Whispering this into my binoculars as the grey guard entered, the door then slammed shut behind him drawing away the four guard’s attention and they started to make their way over there.

Apparently they heard something that eased their sudden nerves and they just went back to guarding the people. A few seconds later Spot poked her head out the doorway looking left and right, she gained a grin on her beak and she waved a wing at me and Sly.

She pointed to one of the four guys remaining and held up a rag covered in some strange substances. She made a gesture for firing something and pointed at Sly while moving her beak as if talking while pointing at her head with her two wings…

“Bentley, Spot has a plan, she’s taken care of the husky and wants you to take care of one of the farther targets while Sly and I take out the closer two.” I saw Spot nod while pointing at me. “She can also apparently be reading lips.”

“Duly noted, I’ll be in position at the door in a minute.” Bentley could be heard moving over the binoculars. “Which target am I aiming for?”

I gestured to Spot and made a shooting motion, then pointed to the two that were closest to her and shrugged with a questioning look. Spot tilted her head and looked to be thinking while running her left wing under her beak, she eventually pointed at the bear.

“Are you’re darts being strong enough to knock out the bear or the tiger?” In response to me correctly guessing her plan, Spot nodded and waved her rag at us. “Spot seems confident she can take one of them out.”

“I don’t think my darts can take out the bear and I can only slowly shoot one at a time. Might work on the tiger, but it could be a bit of a delayed reaction. So avoid being shot at.” Answered Bentley. “I’m at the door and I can see your feed, opening it slightly now… and… I have an angle on the tiger. We move when Spot moves.”

“If you can be reading my lips, go for the bear, Bentley’s dart gun won’t work on it as well as the tiger.” Seeing if my message was received, Spot waved the rag and nodded. “We’ll move when you jump the bear. I’ll aim for the owl… Sly move towards the fox.”

“On it…” If what happened to Sly’s parents had happened to mine, I wouldn’t want to be near owls either. “Also the owl should be easier than fox for you anyway. If you can see my mouth, then start moving Spot.”

Spot saluted and started to sneak under some seats in the bear’s direction, she was small and nimble in how she crawled around like a dog with her tail feathers in the air.

I ignored her and started to crawl along the ceiling towards the owl, who seemed to get more alert and paranoid while looking in the direction of the toilet room.

Given I was close enough to be taking the owl down, I waited to make my move. I saw Sly crawling near the fox and readying his cane and Bentley was waiting to shoot. Spot better be making that move soon or else one of them would be moving to far away.

“Bosco don't you think...” The owl started to say to the tiger, that’s when Spot be leaping onto the back of the bears head and muzzling her with the rag.

The owl turned to shoot at Spot, I launched myself from the ceiling and swung my hooves forward to hit him with a blast of water that be knocking him on his back. I brought both of my hooves above my head and brought them down on the owl’s skull, even when he was dazed he still be bringing his weapon around.

I quickly swiped it out of the owl’s claws with my right hoof swinging outward, several shots be flying into the ceiling. I flowed into hitting my left hoof across his face. Now he be unconscious.

Looking up from that I saw the tiger had taken aim at me and was about to shoot, only to limply slump over onto the floor. I looked over to see Sly hitting the fox with the butt of her weapon.

"We've cleared the section, we're fine Mops!" Sly looked to be sweating profusely. "Everyone, we're here to help! Is there
a shooting victim?"

"H-h-here!" Someone cried out in obvious pain, they be having a nasty looking wound.

Author's Note:

Life is gray at the moment, so I'm relatively content.

Could use a splash of color though.

Comments

[Herald of Opera]

Armor-piercing rounds on a civilian plane? That's a bad idea for several reasons: a) the squishier targets you want to fire at will be overpenetrated for less damage than a regular bullet and b) the airliner getting depressurized by the holes you're putting in it would be... bad.