Ponosuba!

by 2SuriYourself

Chapter 7- A Cabbage Assault

“Darkness! I’m so, so sorry! How does a Steal spell even do that? Selena, what do I do? You’re the stealing expert!”

Selena looked at Darkness for a moment and hesitated. “Were this caused by the use of Steal, I could see your reason for worry. However, Twilight, I think you may be mistaken.”

Darkness looked between the both of us for a moment, confused. “Is something wrong, Twilight?”

“Well, I cast Steal, which took your sunglasses, but it must have some sort of magic side-effect radius, and now it looks like it may have have had some sort of crazy-disastrous side effect and made your eyes go crossed and I don’t know what to do and-”

I was cut short of my very quick and totally-not-frenzied explanation as Darkness’s confusion turned to a smile and she laughed. “Oh, that’s fine! My eyes are already like this.” She paused for a moment, before looking sullen. “Wait a second. Um, could you maybe… just give me those back?”

As I trotted closer, she used a gray wing to grab the sunglasses and put them back on her face.

“Wait a second. Blonde mane, covered in armor… Is THAT the mare you said was overqualified to join the party, Twilight?” Trixie asked behind me.

“Oh, right! I guess I haven’t actually introduced you! Trixie, this is Darkness!”

Darkness waved and said with a smile, “I hope I can help you out!”

“Twilight, a moment please,” Trixie said with a grim expression on her face.

She turned away and I followed suit.

“I’m not so sure about this so-called ‘Crusader’. I think the fact she isn’t in a party by now says something about her abilities. I say she cannot possibly be a good fit for OUR party, at that rate.”

I simply raised an eyebrow, given who was making the claims.

“I’m serious! A mare such as her may not be a match for my, and to a lesser extent, your and Celestia’s prowess in combat!”

“Uh huh,” I replied dismissively.

I turned back around to face Darkness, an expectant smile still resting on her face. “So can I join your party?”

“Having a crusader on the team would probably be quite helpful, Twilight,” added Celestia, who had still been focused on her dessert plate until a moment ago.

I took a deep breath. May as well explain SOME of the situation now, just to make sure these two really know what they’re signing up for. If it means they want to throw in the towel early, I’d understand.

“Darkness, Trixie, I haven’t mentioned this, since it’s probably a bit early to be saying it, but Celestia and I are adventuring with a specific goal in mind. We’re training to take down the Chaos Lord himself.”

For a moment both of them looked at me in a state of shock, before Darkness started stomping her hooves on the tabletop and a smile returned to her face.

“Wow! This group is even more serious than I thought! Even if you say it will be hard, I’d still love to join! Even taking down a subordinate of the Chaos Lord would be a noble goal!”

Trixie’s expression returned to her trademark smugness. Here we go again.

“As would be expected of any Crimson Alicorn mage, I do not back down so easily from a challenge. No foul creatures of the chaotic lands would stand a chance against me! To face even the most mind-flaying of all chaos would be trivial to the Unshakable and… Orderly Trixie!”

After a few moments of pindrop silence in the hall, Selena, who was still sitting near us, simply nodded her head. “A noble goal indeed. I hope you all do not mind that I excuse myself. I hope to find a party bound for a dungeon in need of my services and-”

“EMERGENCY QUEST! EMERGENCY QUEST! ALL ADVENTURERS TO THE WEST GATE AT ONCE!”

A white mare with a yellow mane was out from her usual spot at the reception desk, and was holding a megaphone. After she made her announcement, she ran off to a back room, and a few seconds later, the whole town probably heard the message as it echoed out from the top of the hall’s clocktower. I’d guess it was some sort of magic sound amplification.

We made our way to the gate with everypony else, the hoofsteps of dozens of adventurers making a serious racket in the wide street.

“Should I be worried about this?” I asked uneasily.

“Well, she DID say it was an emergency, so panic is likely an acceptable response.” Celestia replied warmly.

“What do you think it is?”

“Seriously, Twilight?” said Trixie. “It’s just cabbage season, no need to make a huge deal about it.”

“What kind of a monster is a ‘cabbage’?”

Darkness licked her lips. “The tasty kind!”

“Do you not know what a cabbage is, Twilight? I mean, I guess you can be excused for not knowing, after all, you did not receive the incredible schooling of the-”

“I KNOW what a cabbage is, Trixie. Why would that be an emergency? Do the farmers just need extra help for a day?”

“Okay, Twilight, I’m going to make this nice and simple for you. When the cabbage migration goes through a town, you DEFEAT the cabbage and EAT the cabbage. Well, you sell it, and then it gets eaten.”

By now, we had exited the town’s gate, where, once again, the reception mare, Luna, addressed the crowd once more with her megaphone. “Sorry about the short notice! The city’s western pegasi patrol only just got word from the cabbage tracking unit about the inbound cabbage swarm! Any minute now, those tasty little guys will be flying right through here! They’re moving pretty fast though, so take care not to get hurt! Standard price for cabbage this year will be 100 bits for a head!”

The crowd erupted into cheers and I looked to Celestia, confused and hoping for an explaination. However, her expression confirmed her to be in much the same state as I was.

“Uh, Trixie? Could you tell us more about the cabbage?” I asked.

“Well, if you need it, I guess I can recount the full story.” She cleared her throat. “Far off, deep within the Chaos Lands, is somepony’s old farm. When chaos overtook it, its fields became ripe with cabbage far tastier than anything grown by ponies! The cabbage see fit to venture forth across Equestria on a path of destruction, through the towns and meadows across the continent, before crossing the ocean never to be seen again!” She then dropped her dramatic tone. “Which is TOTALLY a waste, so that’s why we need to kill ‘em. They are VERY tasty, after all!”

“So, the cabbages just… roll across the continent? That doesn’t sound too bad.”

Trixie giggled to herself for a moment. “Ah, rolled. What a sight that would be! No, Twilight, they- Oh, there they are now!”

A distance away at the edge of the forest, I could make out an oddly-shaped green cloud that seemed to be getting bigger by the moment. As it got closer, I realized what Trixie was getting at. It was a flock of flying cabbages!

“Now’s a good time for me to show you my skills as a crusader!” declared Darkness, before immediately taking flight. She drew her sword from its hilt with her mouth and charged at an approaching cabbage.

She missed the cabbage by several feet.

It made enough sense for her to miss. After all, at the speed they both were going, and with her trying to intercept it, it seemed like it’d be a hard target, just from a trajectory standpoint. But as she kept swinging, blade swishing quietly compared to the crispy sound of flapping leaves, she had yet to graze a single one of the dozen cabbages that either flew around her or bounced off her.

“Uh, Darkness? Are you doing okay up there?”

“Huh?” As she turned to look at me, a cabbage hit the side of her face, once again knocking her sunglasses off. Then it hit me.

Not the sunglasses or the cabbage, mind you, just the realization as to how she had missed all her swipes.

“Er, Darkness?”

She looked at me, sword still in mouth.

“Can you… aim?”

The mare shook her head, somehow by sheer luck ending up with one particularly unlucky cabbage impaling itself on her sword while she was distracted.

Ah, maybe this was why she wasn’t in a party. Much as I hate to admit it, Trixie may have been onto something.

“Darkness of the moonlit- OW! Forces of Destruc- Ugh! How in the hay am I supposed to cast this with these stupid cabbages on me every second!” Trixie yelled, stamping a hoof at the ground before starting up yet another chant.

Celestia seemed to take notice of Trixie’s situation, and called up to Darkness. “Darkness, perhaps you could defend Trixie?”

With a nod, Darkness landed in front of Trixie with a loud clattering of armor, simply standing in front of her. Seeing all the cabbages bouncing off her and a few ponies who were getting pummeled also take shelter behind Darkness, I decided to follow suit.

In front of me, Trixie said, “Ah, that’s more like it. Now gaze in awe at the upcoming might of the Great and Powerful Trixie! This feeble crowd of dinner will be no match for I!”

Hearing this, a few of the ponies near us who had heard Trixie began to run off to a different part of the frontline with an apprehensive look back at Trixie.

“The Forces of Destruction, I call upon you!
In this chartreuse haze, let not a pony fear!
For what I wield tops sword OR spear!
Let this portal to a world of ash be a warning to you, feeble cabbages!
A warning of the Greatness and Powerfulness of the …wait, I already said Great- OF TRIXIE!
EXPLOSION!”

With that, the swirling shades of dark magic ceased its dance around Trixie, and a worryingly close distance away, an explosion rocked the battlefield. I felt its heat even from the back of the crowd! Although, it didn’t feel much like the back, with Trixie now collapsed, and Darkness… Where is Darkness, anyways?

A glance up showed her tumbling through the air, the updraft from the explosion apparently propelling her and a few other unfortunate pegasi skyward. As Darkness unwittingly returned to the ground with a loud clank, she resumed defending a different group of ponies further down the line of adventurers where she had landed. A different pegasus, however, landed near me.

“Have you gotten a chance to use your new abilities, Twilight Sparkle?” asked Selena.

“It’s still broad daylight. I don’t see how lurking in the shadows would help.”

Selena shook her head. “I had a different skill in mind.” Turning towards Celestia, she cried out to a cabbage that was approaching her, “Steal!” As she said it, two leaves appeared in her hands, and the cabbage rolled to a stop at Celestia’s hooves. Celestia was rather confused by this revelation, having been prepared to punch the cabbage as it passed, judging by her stance. As Celestia took her prize off to the cabbage cages the guild had laid out, Selena turned to look at me with a slight smile. “I trust that you can take it from here?”

“You bet!”

---

I put another forkful of cabbage into my mouth.

Who’d have thought that a cabbage stir fry could taste this good? I guess it must suit a pony’s palate more than I would have guessed.

The great taste would also explain just how much they were paying for these things! It took a bit of getting used to, but once I got into the swing of it, snatching the wings off of the cabbage was surprisingly easy.

“Well Darkness, I have to say, you did well out there earlier!” I said.

After Trixie had fired off her explosion, she had continued to defend other ponies in the crowd, and in spite of her accuracy managed to kill a couple other cabbages mostly through luck. Throughout the ordeal, however, her armor took a fair bit of damage, and Darkness now sat at the table with quite a few bits of armor dented. Her sunglasses, however, were trampled in the chaos of the fight, leaving her cross-eyed stare visible to all.

“I’m glad I could help! But I know you’re sort of, well, exaggerating it. I’m just good at defending, I wasn’t much use in taking out the cabbages myself.”

Surprisingly, Trixie said, “Not everypony can be as Great and Powerful when it comes to attacks as I am. However, I do at least have you to thank for being able to actually cast the spell in spite of what SOME things would have liked!” She punctuated the sentence with a stab at her own plate of cabbage.

Celestia smiled slightly. “Ah, yes. I’m sure you don’t forget what happened after you cast the spell, right, Trixie?”

Trixie had been carried back off the frontline by Celestia after her unceremonious collapse onto the path, with Celestia even returning to the frontline to gather her cabbages. Afterwards, she gave out refreshments to quite a few adventurers on the frontline with her Create Water spell, an exhausted Archmagician included.

“Yes, yes, thanks-very-much and all that.” Trixie said, waving her hoof. “Now, Twilight, I’ve got to say, you managed to capture a LOT of cabbages! Er, for a rookie, that is. Perhaps I should now refer to you by a new title, the Great and Thieverish Cabbage Snatcher!” she loudly declared.

“... Please don’t,” I said, feeling the stares of nearby ponies. I turned my attention back to Darkness. “So did you still want to join the party?”

“You’ll still invite me to it? Of course I’ll still join! I’ll do all I can to be your shield!”

And so we had our party. An Archmagician who had one spell a day, a Crusader who couldn’t attack and… Well, I’d hate to insult Celestia, but I’m not entirely sure what she’s done for us so far.

But it’s still twice the party we had when we got here, so we must be at least twice as good now, right?

Author's Note:

And here is another chapter! I'll be making a special effort to try and reply to any comments this week especially, and answer questions so long as it isn't in deep spoiler territory, so as always feel free to leave feedback in the comments!

Comments

[Shady Nail]

11544300
The more you know.

[Alondro]

Brussel's sprout season is far more dangerous... and don't get me started on the broccoli.... it's catatrophic.

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