Balanced Diet

The Autumnal Feast of Eris was upon us, and the looming threat of U-Hell was enough to keep many pilots at bay this otherwise beautiful evening. Dreadflint, Excess, and Sprocket were at the fort early for MRC, but departed shortly before launch, leaving us with a nimble crew of just five pilots. Our mission tonight was to traverse the local starsystems visiting pieces of public art representing the various food groups. Deadblow arrived in a fantastic Sriracha outfit complete with tiny green cap, for which Wombat awarded her a preemptive Medal of Chic.

We set out from the launch pad and immediately performed a fly-by of the local Market Basket, whose denizens had just declared victory in their battle to reinstate their beloved leader. We looped up through the Powderhouse black hole and took the back way down to the Davis Constellation, where we located a large boviform creature perched atop a weather vane. Our lean numbers allowed us to fly down Mass. Ave. to the Harvard Constellation at an impressive clip, where Wombat dared lead us across the Charles into the treacherous planets of the Allston System. Our crack squad of ace pilots were consummate professionals, and no casualties were suffered despite high volumes of transport traffic.

Back into the Cambridge System by way of Comm. Ave. and the BU Bridge, we passed through the Central and Kendall Constellations and attempted to visit the wooden roller coaster at MIT, but were disappointed to find students hard at work taking the whole thing apart. While we were stopped, Deadblow noticed War's outer plasma casing was not properly seated in its rim, so Threespeed proactively fixed it before we pressed on.

After zigzagging back and forth a couple more times between Boston and Cambridge, we ended up on Charles Street, where Wombat spotted a fresh pile of pizza at the Upper Crust (which covered the meat, dairy, vegetable, and grain portions of our balanced diet... or maybe just the junk food allowance, depending on who you ask). We strapped a couple boxes to the front of Schadenfreude for later and continued to the Public Garden, where Leotard and Dr.Claw noshed on bronze duckling brains. A little further down in the other corner of the Garden we reached a peculiar statue of a winged being casting bread into a fountain, adorned with grotesque goat head cornucopias, which Leotard and Deadblow proceeded to kiss and climb.

Back in flight we ducked down a public alley, where we passed many bewildered civilians, and Leotard found a perfectly good set of shields sitting on top of a pile of trash. As we reemerged on Mass. Ave. and entered the South End, the Curse of Skylab struck again: Iridium's blue plasma casing, which had been scavenged from Skylab's remains and was riddled with sketchy bulges where the tread was worn through, finally exposed too much of its inner plasma casing to the atmosphere and sprung a leak. Luckily the issue had been noticed during pre-flight and Wombat packed an extra supply of boots, which Threespeed used to repair the flat while Dr.Claw entertained the locals with Shockwave's sound system.

With Iridium back in order, we continued down Mass. Ave. until we reached the crown jewel of Boston public art and the destination of many missions of yore: the Dorchester Pear. Upon arrival we discovered several ancillary sculptures of various foodstuffs, including cake, corn, and fish. We pushed on, originally intending to buzz the JFK Library, but we missed a turn and instead ended up at Castle Island, where we decided to knight Deadblow in a nebulaside ceremony on a tiny ledge overlooking the vast abyss using War's battering ram.

In the industrial section of the Seaport district we got a little lost, but eventually found our bearings when we passed an immense amount of earth beer at the Harpoon molecule production facility. We stopped on the back patio of the ICA and had a picnic, where we ate all five food groups in the form of cantaloupe, mango, beef jerky, Cheerios, Dr.Claw's carrot horns, string cheese, and Little Debbie Cocoa Cremes. Threespeed took the opportunity to balance three Cocoa Cremes in Bieber Fever's navigational thruster, while Wombat briefly balanced on a railing. As we were about to leave, we discovered there was an entire sofa we could have been using instead of sitting on the ground. Oh well.

We followed a brutally turbulent cobblestone portion of the Harborwalk around the bend and ended up by the giant Hood milk bottle — technically not public art, but impressive nonetheless. Cutting through the Financial District and Post Office Constellation, we stopped one last time at Haymarket, but couldn't find the slice of pizza Leotard heard was among the bronze trash sculptures embedded in the street. With all our ambitious mission objectives completed and over 30 light years covered, we made a beeline back to the landing pad, where the mission was declared a success shortly before 0430.

Fun fact: over the course of this mission, we crossed the Charles four times on four different bridges (Anderson Memorial Bridge, BU Bridge, Longfellow Bridge, Craigie Drawbridge).