“Quak!”
It was how every day started now. Nopony was even phased by the weird apparition of a strange creature who dubbed himself “Duk” that had appeared in Ponyville one day. They all thought he was kind of cute, quite frankly. Ponies walking by him would always make friendly gestures and nodes his way, even patting him on the head, receiving a little jig of happiness and a friendly “Quak” in return. Somehow, even though he only communicated by quaking, they all understood what he was saying. Call it Equestrian magic if you will, still nopony knew what truly let them do this. The Duk seemed to love everypony, and everypony loved him back. There was only one pony the Duk seemed to have a severe distaste for, which was a pony named Rarity. Nopony knew why, not even her, but it was something all of them had come to accept after the first few times the Duk had seen Rarity traversing the small dirt roads around Ponyville.
Everything was well until the first week or so. The beloved Duk that all of them had come to love in that short time was quaking around, as usual, when out of nowhere, a taxi-carriage made an expected turn around a corner, and, unbeknownst to the small Duk, he was struck by it. The carriage itself didn’t even stop, but there the Duk lay, bloodied and dead upon the ground amidst ponies around him who had begun to cry, and some even chasing down the carriage to demand justice for the life that was once their cute, bouncy, feathered friend.
As they all lay next to him crying, however, a strange thing happened. The lifeless body of the Duk began to rise into the air, glowing faintly. Ponies looked up in shock and awe, not knowing what was happening. The Duk got brighter and brighter, rising higher and higher until…
POOF!
He was gone…
Confusion filled the air as ponies, still looking up for him, wondered what had happened to the poor creature. A confusion that only served to intensify when they looked down to see something to further stump the mind.
There, right where the dead Duk had been mere seconds before, was another Duk, happy as ever, and quaking away, now with a tiny numeral in black feathering on his back reading “II”. Over and over again, the ponies surrounding the newly respawned Duk kept looking at him, and then back at the sky, hoping, by some stretch of the imagination, that they were seeing things, or perhaps, would get an explanation as to what just happened.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
They never did get that explanation though. Eventually, just as when he appeared, they all accepted this newly respawned Duk as the old Duk that they came to know and love. He did not, after all, seem any different. He seemed to still know all of them as friends already, and it was like he already had lived there a good amount of time already anyways.
The apparition of the second Duk, however, made them all think that his death and re-apparition was simply a one-time thing. This was promptly proven wrong when, yet again, a terrible thing happened to Duk II, leaving him dead upon the ground. Though shocked at first, the townsponies watched yet again, as his body, glowing and rising, quickly vanished, and yet another Duk appeared, now marked with a “III”.
It seemed as if this cycle would never stop, and over the next year or so, the townsfolk all got used to it. As small and meager as the Duk was, he seemed to find himself in many situation in which to kill himself, always adding a numeral into his feathered pattern on his back. On some of the more normal occasions, he had been hit and trampled by passing carriages, just as the first one had done, or simply got thwacked by a door opening outward to the street. On some of the more gruesome occasions, there were times where, for example, on a visit to Sweet Apple Acres to watch the Apple Family make woodchips out of fallen branches, he got stuck on a rather large and leafy branch and was thrown into the wood-chipper. By the end of a single year in Ponyville, the ever-happy Duk’s numeral was all the way up to Duk LXXXIV (84).
Nopony was surprised by this anymore, nor expected the regenerations to ever end, and because of this, after the first year, the citizens of Ponyville consistently got more and more careless while around him. The following weeks after his “birthday”, which they all simply labeled as the day that the Duk first appeared, Pinkie Pie, who had thrown Duk a party, stuffed him full of so many treats and sweets, that he simply had a heart attack and died, only to have immediately respawned on the edge of a nearby staircase to be squished by a pony joining in on the festivities from the floor above. Parties like this alone soon got him up to Duk XCVIII (98); a special Duk, because as crappy as killing the small Duk made them feel, they all thought it best to prepare for the celebration/ “I’m-sorry-for-killing-you-so-much” party once Duk 100 came around.
Nopony expected what was to come… Nopony prepared for what that happy-little fluffball of feathers was about to unleash…
It all started on a day just like any other. The Duk was waddling along the dirt paths, looking up at all the happy pony faces that smiled at him as he walked by, occasionally giving him bread. He was headed to his favorite place to waddle; The Bakery. Donut Joe was a rather big fan of the little guy. He would always give him food whenever her would stop by, and the Duk would sometimes nuzzle up right next to him and quak lovingly, or even, on cold nights during winter, be invited into his shop to stay the night, where Donut Joe slept in the upstairs room of the shop. Distracted as he was, however, by all the surrounding ponies, the Duk felt a small pat on his head from a pony right behind him. Turning around to happily quak at the pony, his quak was cut short into an angry squaw as he immediately noticed that it was Rarity.
The small Duk took a deep breath in, puffing out his chest, then began to angrily peck and run into the hooves of the fashion pony. She, backing up while he did so, had never understood the amount of sheer hate the Duk had for her and only wanted to try and make friends. This attempt seemed to be failing, however. The Duk kept on advancing closer and closer as she moved backwards, and it got to the point where she was just simply annoyed by it, and tried to levitate him away.
Not knowing what she had just done, she annoyingly watched as the Duk drifted further and further away. Being in the magical field of the only pony he truly hated, though, the Duk got angrier and angrier by the second. His face burned and began to turn brick red as his beak puffed out from the amount of air that he was withholding. Slowly, as the pressure built while he was being levitated, his small features began to expand more and more; larger and larger he got until…
POP!
The onslaught of watching ponies looked at the spot in the air where a few singed feathers now began floating downward in surprise. The Duk had never just… exploded before. Rarity stood there, standing in place with her mouth open in shock. Her horn was still glowing blue and the magical aura hanging in the air from where the Duk once was. Their attention shifted to Rarity, who, by now, the whole town knew that the Duk hated. A few began to whisper, shifting their eyes back and forth. Rarity, seeing disdain in a lot of their eyes, began to nervously walk back toward the direction of her boutique.
She only got a total of five steps toward her goal, however when she felt a faint tremor in the ground. They all did. Looking around for the source of the disturbance, it took all of 5 seconds before somepony noticed the burned feathers on the ground shaking. They weren’t glowing like they normally would have in any other situation. Slowly, one by one, they began rising. Emitting a dark red tint as they did. The confused, and now scared ponies around watched as the feathers slowly began merging, becoming blacker and blacker, until suddenly, they exploded outward. The ponies nearest the mass were thrown back against the shops lining the roads, while the ones further were forced to cover their eyes from the impacting rocks and dirt. Large gusts of air could be felt emanating from the presence as the now spherically black and red mass began to rise higher and higher, noticeably beginning to sprout something out of either side that looked remarkably like wings. Clouds began to form, rapidly, enshrouding the area in even more darkness. Some ponies on the ground ran for cover inside nearby buildings, while others could only watch in horror as the ball of darkness began to unfurl. Audible screaming could be heard from the surrounding area as, once completely and undeniably reshaped, the mass opened two red, glowing eyes, and a now glowing mark on the back enumerated as XCIX (99).
Rarity, being one of the nearer ponies too shocked to move, now began moving backward. The Mary-Sue Duk, now fully awakened, slowly floated to face her. Quaking loudly, he thrust a wing forward toward the white pony. Rarity, taking a few more steps back, shakily looked directly into the red eyes. “I’m… I’m sorry!”
“Quak…”
That was the only response from the Duk, to the pony that had made him so incredibly angered. The Duk slowly put up a second wing, aiming them both directly at Rarity and clasped them together. The fashion pony’s pupils began to contract as she noticed a white aura beginning to form at the tips of his wings. It got stronger and stronger, until the Duk’s body was no longer enshrouded by darkness, but illuminating his own body. He no longer looked fluffy. His feathers were hard and rigid, pupils now slits, and flippers pointed and sharp.
Rarity began to run. Yet again, however, she only traversed a few steps before a massive amount of light from behind her elongated her shadow. She looked back, in slow motion, it seemed, to the giant ball of energy flying toward her before it began to envelope the lower part of her body, disintegrating it inch by inch. There was a scream for all of one second before silence. Silence for all but the echo of the pony who was now just that. A shadow of what had been there just a minute beforehand, now reduced to a streak of dust on the ground.
Ponies were now running in earnest, realizing that now, the one thing that had always been their saving grace, being the Elements of Harmony, were now rendered useless. Random zapping and explosions could be heard around the area as the Duk began to spread his wings and destroy the surrounding area. A few brave unicorns attempted to fight back, only to have their magic effortlessly brushed away and immediately be vaporized. Further off, ponies who had heard the commotion had begun to step outside to see what was happening. It came as a shock to them that the small Duk they loved was now floating in the air, destroying buildings and zapping, what they could only assume, were other ponies.
Other survivors from ground-zero could be heard running and shouting for others to run away.
“It’s hopeless! Take your foals and run,” they were shouting, “The Duk has gone crazy!”
It seemed as if all hope was truly lost. Insane with his newly equipped powers, the Mary-Sue Duk now began producing decoy after decoy of himself; carbon-copies to do his bidding. They ran into the buildings that ponies had hid in to avoid the massacre that was happening and dragged them out to the central crater that had now been created to be executed. The last thing that the poor ponies ever heard, was a maniacal quaking emanating in dark tri-tones from the beak of their killer.
Far off, in the distance, however, a few brave ponies who had escaped Ponyville began rallying survivors. Finish Line, an older, battle-hardened blue pony, with a red and white mane began to direct ponies left and right on where to go and what to begin doing in the current situation. Though retreated, he thought it best that they get back into the Everfree Forest for refuge for now. Finish was no stranger to leadership either. Before all this had begun to go down, he was the proud owner of a small, locally owned animation studio and noodle-shop named Noodlemation. Nopony knew how or why this idea became a thing, but it had indeed manifested itself into quite the business. When asked about why he thought of the idea during an interview a few years back, he shiftily responded embarrassedly with, “Well… I just like noodles…” No one to this day could understand this strange pony’s obsession with noodles, but they had all since given up trying to figure it out.
He did have a few good friends though that, to ponies that knew Finish Line, they knew as well. It was hard to spot Finish Line without at least one of these ponies, and that held true even now. One of them, a pegasus, and being the shy one of the lot was named Mao. At first glance, you would think him a rather radical pony. He had a wild black and blue mane, rocking glasses, and a scratchpad as a cutie mark. Ponies always automatically assumed at first glance that this pony, in some way, must be related to Vinyl Scratch. None of them could really ask him about it though, since whenever it came to talking to other ponies, he was a social lemon. There was also Blitz, who, just like Mao, was also very radically looking though he had a red coat, and a yellow and blue mane. He nearly always had sunglasses on, but was considerably less shy than Mao. Finish Line, in his line of animation work, was always in need of animation managment as well, which is how he also befriended a pony, who’s name triggered face-hoof’s everywhere. He was none other than the Bluenicorn. As the name suggests every feature of his body was… well… Blue… And just like Mao and Blitz, he also had crazy hair, which, seeing how all of his other friends tended to have crazy hair as well, may have been the reason why him and Finish Line had become such good friends.
The three friends, Mao, Blitz, and Bluenicorn, who had followed Finish Line out of the death-zone, could be seen consoling the nearby ponies and the few newly-orphaned foals around the survivors’ encampment made within the forest; Blitz and Bluenicorn, being the more social of the two were much more comforting than Mao, who, being a pony that never left home without a saddlebag full of lemons, began offering them to the grieving ponies silently and awkwardly. As strong a leader that Finish Line was, however, they couldn’t help but notice the worry in his eyes. He had yet to see all his other friends show up. Specifically, one pony in particular…
Small pops, explosions and zapping could still be heard from far away still, and more and more ponies who had fled into the forest began to stumble into the encampment. Finish Line, looking toward Ponyville over the trees to the bright flashes emanating from the ground below, let the anger of what had transpired take over his mind. The small and innocent thing that, he himself had even got the chance to meet on occasion was now destroying his home, and, even though he hated to believe it, his loved ones. He looked back toward the group of traumatized and hurt ponies, some still fit for fighting. He would not let this creature take so much away from all of them and get away with it. Today, he would let them rest and recover from the horrors of the day; but tomorrow, the true resistance would begin…