No Pedigree Save Chaos Chapter 3 [R/MLP]

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No Pedigree Save Chaos Chapter 3 [R/MLP]

Postby LawOhki » Sat Jan 26, 2019 12:57 pm

Previous Chapters
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/429543 ... save-chaos
---

Gaitlend, Edge of Everfree Forest

Celestia listened attentively to the mayor, matching his slower pace as they headed towards the fields outside the village. He was recounting recent attacks on several farmers by strange new monsters. Normally that wasn’t something to bat an eye as dangerous creatures were a fact of life living in and around Everfree, but she had believed all the beasts had been catalogued by now. So even if it hadn’t been a safety risk, she would have been positively giddy to study a new type of creature.

Trailing behind her was Shadow Haze, her earth pony guard in full armor while high overhead a pegasus named Snow Drift was keeping an eye on Ranma as she played amongst the clouds. Occasionally appearing as a red blur bouncing through the openings in the overcast sky. Magic might still make the newest alicorn leery after the accident but she had no qualms about flight.

‘I’m so happy that she’s having fun again, moping about the castle alone is no way for a pony to live,’ Celestia smiled before she realized what an inopportune time it was to do so seeing the ruined field before her.

“They really seemed ta like the rutabaga,” (mayor name) sadly summarized.

“Or they were very angry with them,” she joked, impressed by the scale of damage that this new species had accomplished in a day. (describe damage a bit)

“Not much else fared any better. Nothings going ta grow before Cloudsdale starts throwin’ snow at us.”

‘And now we reach the heart of the matter,’ she mentally sighed, wishing that he would have been more direct in asking for assistance. “We are happy to lend you aid.”

“With no whay ta pay ya back? We can’t accept,” he answered

‘Just take the offer you bullheaded stallion,’ she thought in annoyance, hiding it with a regal smile. “Your village has done so much for us in the past, we insist.”

“I guess if ya insist, then we’ll have ta accept. Thank ya, Steward.”

“If that is settled, then would you please point me in the direction that the creatures were last seen, I would like to investigate this further on my own,” she inquired, hearing the metallic clinking of her lone guards armor as he stiffened, realizing that she wanted to actively go towards the danger.

A strong gust of wind ruffled her feathers as Ranma flew past at high speed back towards the town. Bouncing excitedly between the shops in the market, she quickly moved out of sight further into the village. Celestia demurely laughed to herself as the mayor muttered complaints about irresponsible children.

[hr]

Coming in for a landing atop a light grey cloud with a happy sigh, Ranma decided to relax for a few minutes, and enjoy the warmth of the direct sunlight. Loungin on a lone cloud looking down tended to give her a bad case of vertigo from what should have been an impossible viewpoint. With the sky particularly overcast today, she forgot the great height and imagined the sky to be an entire landscape made out of bouncy cotton balls.

In twelve days she would be going home and nobody would believe her if she told them she had been walking on clouds. ‘I guess if I’m still a pony I could show them. Would the magic work the same or would I just fly through?’ she idly mused, failing to ignore the daunting prospect of being a lone pony among the crazies back in Japan searching for a way to become a human again.

‘Well if I’m stuck on all fours, I’ll just need to use that to my advantage,’ she smirked, gathering up a head sized ball of cloud fluff between her hooves she pulled it up and away to let hover in front of her. “Alright now this is what I’m talking about, magic that’s tactile.”

Using her hooves she squeezed and compressed the tiny cloud until it was half the size, its color darkening, and she began to sense just how close it was to releasing the water contained in it. ‘Oh! So it’s like a sponge. Squeeze and it takes in even more water from the air around it.’

Casting a mischievous glance sideways at the guard who had been tailing her, she bounced the small rain cloud in one hoof testing its weight.

[hr]

‘Come on Snow Drift, keep your breathing steady. Don’t let her see how out of shape you are.’

Fluffing up his white wings tipped with sky blue primary feathers and settling them against his armored sides, he took the opportunity to catch his breath while Ranma seemed to be doing the same. He had never been the strongest flier and he was still getting used to the weight of his armor so keeping up with the youngest alicorn was a struggle.

‘Maybe I should have listened to mom and stayed in the Crystal Empire,’ he sighed, missing the crystal city and all its gleaming splendor over the dark and rustic castle hidden in the Everfree Woods. ‘And that hall of hooves thing always creeps me out,’ he shivered, remembering his first time seeing the sisters oddly morbid sense of humor on display.

Captain Lockheed himself had given him this assignment and what had felt like a great honor now hinted at being a little more than yet another round of hazing.

‘Bet they’re all having a great big laugh, ha ha let’s all laugh at the BNP. Stick him with the duty of flying nonstop all day to keep track of the hyperactive cute new alicorn.’

“YEOWCH!” he cried out, feeling a sharp crack of electricity and wetness hit him in his flank. Launching himself up into the air, he spun around searching for his attacker.

Ranma’s riotous laughter is the only thing he finds, the alicorn laughing so hard that she was rolling around on her cloud.

“Bwa-- what?” he rubbed at the spot, initially unsure of what had hit him as he slowly floated back down to land on the cloud.

The mare shot back up into a sitting position and started to gather up a wad of cloud between her forehooves, rapidly turning it into a miniature thundercloud.

“Are you five?” he asked, rolling his eyes and giving a disgusted snort. ”Not that you understand me, but I’ll have you know that I was on the Crystal Empire’s Storm Dodge team, and we went undefeated even against Cloudsdale.”

With a light flap of his wings, he sidestepped Ranma’s next amateurish throw, and redirected the small stormcloud with a hoof right back at her. A disturbingly wide grin spread across the alicorns face as she attempted to copy his feat and ended up catching only a zap of electricity as the impact jostled the cloud enough to release its energy.

‘Oh no! What did I just do?!’ he panicked and leapt over to Ranma’s side to find the mare giggling uncontrollably. “Are you alright? I didn’t hurt you did I?” he asked quickly.

Blue eyes locked onto him and Ranma stopped giggling. “Again,” she demanded with deadly seriousness.

[hr]

“Industrious little diggers,” Celestia calmly noted, inspecting the sizable mound of dirt displaced by the creatures to make a tunnel. A young child might be able to traverse the tunnel but she was far too large to even fit into the hole. “Hello?!” she called down into it. “Any creature in there?”

Other than some angry chittering echoing from deep in the tunnel, she received no response.

“Unacceptably rude,” she huffed and an aura sprung up around her horn. Finishing her spell, a pulse of golden light shot out into the hole. Waiting patiently, yellow lines began to wind and weave over the fields surface, tracing the network of tunnels. She didn’t need to wait long before the ground ripped upwards like she had pulled up the roots of a giant tree, exposing the entirety of the network, along with a trio of angry brightly colored creatures.

“Luna would just love you,” she gushed upon seeing them roll up into spine covered balls and bounce towards her and her guard.

They came to a stop with a loud snarl and unrolled themselves to screech at her. Tiny beady eyes buried in a squished in face set above a giant mouth filled with triangular teeth. Its body shape vaguely reminded her of porcupine with thick quills covering its back and stubby tail. Waving stubby little arms tipped with sharp digging claws, they slowly began to advance on her.

“Now I don’t know what you are but you have not been very nice. You’ve torn up these poor farmers land and now they won’t have any food for winter,’ she chastised. They grew even more agitated when she didn’t show any fear at their display and turned around to advanced towards her back first.

Celestia’s eyes narrowed as some of the spines on their backs quivered out of sync with the rest. Summoning up a large shield to cover herself and her guard, dozens of sharp quills shot out from their backs to bounce harmlessly off of it. She didn’t need to give a command, Shadow Haze immediately launching himself forward to crash down on the nearest with both front hooves. Having dispatched it, he lashed out with a powerful buck that sent the other two bouncing across the ground.

“Have you heard of any creature like these before?” She asked her guard, enveloping the two far away beasts in a stasis spell.

“No, Steward,” Shadow answered, grinding his hooves vindictively into the creature trapped beneath him. No doubt upset that he had not acted quicker.

“Mayor (name) said there were twelve of them,” she frowned, her ears swiveling backwards, hearing a soft rumble come from the skies above. Turning back towards the village, she gave the increasingly dark patch of clouds directly overhead a cross look. Her horn glowed and all three of the animals were levitated up to squish together, and then become enveloped in a stasis spell shaped like a bubble. “Shadow, would you mind bringing these creatures back to Gaitlend? It seems I am needed elsewhere.”

“Of course, Steward.”

“Thank you,” she responded graciously and opened up her wings to launch herself up into the air.

Rising up through a cloud that was still a light grey and benign, she settled on top of it, and the cause of the disturbance immediately became obvious. Ranma and Snow Drift were having an exciting bout of Storm Dodge, happily forming and tossing small storm clouds at each other. Everytime they missed and hit the clouds beneath them they imparted that energy into them, rapidly creating the conditions for a large thunderstorm beneath their hooves.

“Ahem,” she coughed into the back of a hoof. Neither noticed as her voice was swallowed up by the repeated cracks of tiny bursts of thunder.

“Ahem!” she repeated more forcefully.

Snow Drift realized her presence finally and stopped what he was doing long enough to get caught and zapped by Ranma’s last throw. He grit his teeth as the electrical shock passed through him before asking her sheepishly. “I’m sorry Steward, did you need anything?”

Celestia casually gestured downward with a hoof. “First, would you kindly stop bouncing on those clouds before you are both electrocuted.”

Snow Drift drew in a sharp breath, the cloud beneath his hooves was a dark black and so charged up that his metal armor made the situation quite dangerous. “Right away, Steward,” he carefully took to the air.

“Aww,” Ranma whined and swatted at the cloud beneath her in frustration.

Celestia was blinded by the immediate flash of light, an image of lightning arcing through the clouds hanging in her vision. The thunderous crack of lightning then deafened her. When her vision cleared, she saw Ranma still in her position, body covered in a sparse covering of black singe marks while her wings were disheveled. The only actual damage appeared to be Ranma’s mane and tail that were sticking out at odd angles and missing chunks.

Ranma rose to a standing position, muzzle scrunched up in some unreadable expression of pain. She let out a pained groan in her language, a small puff of black smoke being expelled from her mouth.

----

Really not sold on the 'storm dodge' name.
Monsters are the puckwudgies.
https://mlp.fandom.com/wiki/Creatures#Puckwudgie
LawOhki
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Re: No Pedigree Save Chaos Chapter 3 [R/MLP]

Postby LawOhki » Mon Jan 28, 2019 6:43 am

Next Day

Perusing through the empty stands, Ranma was very curious about what was going to be sold at the market being setup. Starting late in the morning, a large caravan had started to stream into the castle grounds. The general vibe of the the castle had become very lively with a lot of conversations seeming to be about it.

None of the goods were put out yet, being kept on the big carts that were hauled into the large courtyard inside the castle’s main entrance. But she could guess some of them by the crude billboard drawings. She lingered for an especially long time near the ones that carried the strong scent of familiar and unfamiliar spices.

Hearing yet another pony laugh in her direction, she stopped to narrow her eyes dangerously in his direction. He was a dark grey earth pony who was hauling in a long cart, hooked up to a harness along with another stallion. Seeing her dark look made him elbow his counterpart and say something, the other stallion quickly joining in to laugh even harder.

She wanted to go over and demand to know what it was that they found so funny but she didn’t know the words for that and worried she’d look like some air headed moron if she did with her limited vocabulary.

Of course she knew what the visiting ponies found so amusing. The lightning bolt she had created hadn’t actually hurt her, all the voltage had arced around her body and not through it like her fur coat was a built in faraday cage. But it had still burnt off much of her mane and tail along with more than a few feathers. Better than being a cooked equine but she still looked ridiculous.

She had expected some comments but not how much it would bother her. Her monstrous ego, which had gotten her into so much trouble in the past was not happy to be mocked by a bunch of barnyard animals. With only a small amount of time left before the portal to her world would open up, she wasn’t going to make a scene like an idiot over a couple of ponies laughing at her. They were just a temporary distraction and didn’t matter to her in the slightest.

And she totally wasn’t memorizing which stand she would be knocking down tonight when they were asleep.

Exploring some more didn’t yield anything further to hold her interest. She would need to come back when the market was finally going to see if she could find anything to bring home. Kasumi would definitely need to have some of those spices to work with, those smelt too good.

‘Recipes! I’ll need to see about getting some of those from the cooks too,’ she realized. As the date crept closer to going back to earth she kept figuring out things that she should probably bring along if she wanted to be as prepared as possible. ‘I should make a list.’

Flying up up to Celestia’s balcony to avoid the long walk and any distractions, she gave the guard keeping watch a quick wave as she passed. With all the new visitors to the castle there came an increased visible presence of the armored ponies.

Leaving the doors open, she settled down in the sunlight, and opened her notebook to a fresh page. First she started by listing off all the foods that must be safe. It took up more space than she had wanted as her characters were still three times the size she normally would write with hands. But with practice they all turned out legible. Unlike the previous pages filled with childish scrawl that made her father’s writing look good.

Moving onto a completely new page and leaving the backside empty on the previous, she started to list thing that were probably not safe to eat. Meat sat right at the top of that list and she didn’t feel much need to be specific. Almost felt redundant to even include it. But she didn’t really have much to put down. It wasn’t like any of the ponies here were going to keep food around they couldn’t eat. She’d need to somehow find out more.

Which brought her to a new page. What kind of illness do ponies get? Would a doctor be able to figure out what’s going on? Or did she have to think about the indignity of seeing a vet? Did she need to worry about carrying over some super disease? This was a different reality and she might have only been spared by the change of body. Or maybe something from Earth that would only cause humans a runny nose might instead make her drop dead without any warning.

‘Nope! Not going to think about that,’ Healthcare was probably a bit beyond what she would be able to figure out with the language barrier. Will just need to hope for the best.

Yawning, she moved on to less extreme things. She would need to figure out some sort of clothing to wear. Her sense of modesty had always been lacking and being without clothing while she lived with other naked creatures never struck her as something to be concerned about. But no sense showing off her gross pony parts around Nerima and encouraging the locals to treat her like an animal. An image of her wearing an ill fitting Furinkan High School uniform almost made her drop the quill.

“Ya, that’ll be the day,” she scoffed, losing her train of thought to stare unfocused at the page, idly correcting a missed stroke. “What am I so worried about? Half the people in my life turn into normal animals,” she yawned again.

[hr]

Ranma sat down on her haunches next to the low table, a big smile on her muzzle, her life back on Earth finally seemed to be getting back on track. Neither of her parents and none of the Tendos were happy about her being stuck as an alicorn but Jusenkyo was still flooded so she was stuck without an opportunity to fix that.

The familiar traditional family home of the Tendos hadn’t changed at all in her brief absence. She wallowed in the familiarity of being once again in the living room, seated at a table with her parents and the Tendo family.

Only her fiance, Akane forcefully slamming a plate of something that smelled utterly repulsive on the table in front of her could put a dent in her good mood.

“Eat up, I made it just for you,” Akane beamed brightly.

“Oh no!” Ranma gasped dramatically, leaning back to pose with her front hooves going to her forehead as though she might faint. Horn glowing as faintly as she filled up a bowl of edible food behind Akane’s back. “I’m sorry Akane, but the smell of all this meat has stolen my appetite, I guess I’ll see you at school,” she gracefully bounded around the table, pulling the meal she had secretly taken with her as she took off out outside towards the koi pond.

“Ranma! Don’t you dare fly off! Get back here and eat the food I made!” Akane chased after her, carrying her toxic sludge with her.

She looked up long enough from shoving her mouth full of sustenance to reply. “Why would I want to be sick for the rest of the day?”

Akane skidded to a stop, face turning a bright shade of red. “I followed the recipe,” she snarled. “It’s perfect, I just added in some beef broth for extra flavor,” she explained in a voice that grew higher in pitch with every word.

“How’d you follow it when you can’t even read the recipe?” she asked curiously.

“It has pictures you stupid horse!” Akane’s temper snapped as she charged forward clearly intending to force feed her the concoction.

“That doesn’t make it better!” She gave up any pretense of looking majestic and flapped her wings in a panic to take off.

Making her way to school, she landed some distance from the door hidden behind a tree. Peeking just her head out, she carefully scanned the grounds, and the few students arriving early. No crazy principal with a pineapple growing out of his head waiting to ambush her and neither of his equally insane children so that was good. Stepping out from behind the tree, she flared her wings, and pawed at the ground preparing to go the entire distance in one momentous leap.

‘If I can make it in the door, I’m safe,’ she thought, feeling like today was the day.

And then she felt a sharp tug on her tail and realized it was over before it even began. Relaxing her stance, she turned to face her homeroom teacher, Hinako Ninomiya. Having the form of a eight year old child due to learning a ki draining technique at a young age to restore her health, she still acted very childish even though she was really in her twenties.

“You got me,” she announced with a nervous chuckle.

“I did!” Hinako beamed childishly, dark brown pony ears peeking up from the girl’s hair. She then switched to a tone that was more mature than her young form should have had. “And as per the conditions of our agreement, I get pony time.”

‘Why did I have to come back to Earth through her mirror?,’ she grimaced.

Hinako under normal conditions, pulled out a ten yen coin, and drained a person’s ki to grow to her full adult human body. The age changing teacher had used her ki draining technique after being spooked when she and Celestia had suddenly appeared in her room. So now a different reaction happened, and some of the repeated changes appeared to now be permanent.

‘I guess if she likes being a unicorn that much,’ she sighed and felt the ki draining technique hit her. ‘Would be nice to have another pony around.’

[hr]

“Ranma, wake up,” Pine Berry’s expectant voice urged.

Blinking and smacking her lips together, Ranma rolled over on her side, and stretched out her legs. “Stupid weird daydreams,” she mumbled, checking Celestia’s ornamental clock revealed that she had been out for only an hour.

The baby blue unicorn took a moment to inspect the damage to her mane like it was a big deal before motion to the doorway with her head. “Come,” she instructed softly.

Nodding, she rose up to her hooves, and gave a quick stretch of her back and wings. It was a little early for a call for dinner and Pine Berry had bigger responsibilities than to chase her down for that.
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