Daring Do and the Griffon's Goblet

Chapter 2

*WE NOW RETURN YOU TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED EVENTFUL CHAPTER*

  Etienne Julies was plotting.  No, to correct a preious mistake for the second time, he was planning.  He wasn't the sort of pony- or griffon, in this case- that you would see planning in his position.  In fact, he was a king, and normally a king's royal advisors did all of the planning for him.  Currently, though, he was in no position to have advisors plan for him, or you could say that the advisors were in no position to plan for him; that's because there were none.  So Etienne had to plan for himself, and was rather good at it, too, unlike most other kings (this being the reason they needed advisors), as he had gone a long time without advisors, and had gotten accustomed to doing things on his own, including making plans.  He also was very desperate, and had his entire (four-griffon) kingdom at stake.  This was his plan.

  First things first, sabotage the zeppelin he was on and make sure that two specific ponies did not reach their destination.  The rest of the zeppelin was of no concern to him, of course, only Daring Do and her companion, Doctor Whooves*, as they could easily wreck everything Etienne and his wife, Daring (I'm just kidding!) Adele Julies, had planned for and set up.  Secondly, jump out of zeppelin with the parachute that he had bought for just this purpose, and then open the inflatable raft he had ALSO bought at the same store (it sold products for surviving post-apocalyptic settings) in mid-air and land on it, then row back to Prance to enact the rest of the plan, which would be getting back the Griffon's Goblet and melting down the 4 gems encrusted in the sides and mixing them up to create an elixer that grants the drinker invincibility, strength beyond any imaginable measure, and a very, VERY long life, and then forcing everypony to bow before him and his wife by holding the long-lost Dawn Princess for ransom.  What, too fast?

  Well, let me back up a bit; the four gems in the Goblet?  Turns out that three of them were the last of it's kind, and the last one has only two of it's kind left, and they were both held in top-security vaults in museums in Equestria, and visitors that go there are allowed to see the gems through video moniters.  They're only this rare because of dragon overpopulation some two thousand years ago.  Well, some pony historians had recently found evidence of some old neanderthal ponies that had supposedly mixed such a potion and had grown wings and a horn and lived for a good thousand years and reproduced before dying, eventually.  So, that's where alicorns came from, and then that's what the gems on the cup are for.  BACK TO THE EVENTFULNESS!

  While you were reading, Etienne Julies had snuck into the cargo hold with the classic excuse of having to use the bathroom, and then had snuck his way to the door that leads to a small balcony that was still inside the zeppelin, though it was right next to the outer skin, and it surrounded the first of a set of rungs leading to the very top of the outside of the zeppelin.  Etienne made his way to the back of the top of the zeppelin (this is beginning to sound like that hole in the ocean song now, isn't it?) and found a hatch about fifteen yards away from the end of it, with the main propellers turning in an attempt to blow him off the side.  Too late, as it took about thirty seconds to open the hatch with a blowtorch and a pair of wire cutters, enter, and close again.  Now the setting was a catwalk that was hanging high above the cargo hold Etienne was just in.  He would have flown up there, but due to a massive amount of wing neglect because Etienne did things the old-fashioned way all the time, he didn't know how to fly.

  Etienne followed the one main catwalk, which seemed to be the only one up there because there was really only one destination up there, to the one main destination that was the power box for the entire zeppelin** mounted to the wall.  Using the same pair of wire cutters that he had used before, Etienne easily relieved the power maintenece box of it's lock and chain easily, and opened the box.

  There were many labeled switches in the box that were set up in rows instead of columns like we're used to.  Next to each switch was a little red light, indicating that the section of the zeppelin the switch controlled was either on or off.  At the top, there was one switch that was bigger than all the others that had a large green button next to it instead of a small red one like th others.  It was labeled "Main Power", and so was obviously the switch that was in control of the entire zeppelin.  Etienne flipped the switch.