//------------------------------//
// Episode 10: Pone Tag Tournament 
// Story: Horse La Horse Season 2: Desperate Struggle 
// by Stegtorn 
//------------------------------//

	The three of you leaned over a small circular table, a map of Canterlot Castle before you. Felt like planning a damned heist. Twenty minutes of scribbling on this little map like kids drawing on a restaurant menu, lots of red and green crayon and the best intentions.

"Shall we go over the plan again?" Sunset asked, that furious confidence in her eye that you once despised.

"Sure!" Will piped up, falling back into a plastic chair far too small for him. The plastic was warped and white from his weight, about to snap. Shimmer nods and begins.

"Assuming the best case scenario the three of us will make it to the finals. This is where we will be matched against a member of the Mega Forces. It doesn't matter who the fourth finalist is but our jobs are to discover the ins-and-outs of each members fighting style, if possibly we will injure them and perhaps even defeat them, but this is not needed."

"And, someone will be declared a winner," you add, "but all the finalists are pretty much shoe-ins for high level henchmen."

"This is our way into Canterlot castle!" Iron Will finishes, "from here we really take them on! We locate the Princess and free her!"

Sunset lets out a huff and sits, "its not the best plan I've ever come up with."

"I don't normally plan things," you and Iron Will both say in unison. Quickly realizing what you've done and exchanging a high five.

"We'll have to wing it, and hope the Mane 6 collect the Elements of Harmony quick enough," Sunset adds.

There is a pause, and Iron Will taps his chin, "if we're being fair, Anonymous really has the biggest chance for success."

You immediately look to Shimmer for her reaction, and she looks as sour as a lime, she scrunches up her face in a cutie way, and eventually gives in with a nod.

"Anonymous, you're likely to be the one they accept into the Mega Forces. Even if Discord doesn't like you, they'll accept you if you win."

"If I win," you clarify, none of you were certain to win at all. 

"You'll get cozy with them, figure out where Celestia is, we'll either free her or get the Mane 6 in there," Will says again, mulling it over himself.

"I feel nervous," you say.

"You know what'll help that?" he declares, standing suddenly

"Another round of training?"

"Naturally my boy."





You set Sunnie down on the bed, arms and legs feeling sore from your several sets of pony-squats.

"What now?" you ask, panting and looking to your physical Instructor Iron Will. The hotel room is a far cry from the spacious outdoors around the Iron Farm, but you've managed to keep up your work-out routine. . .mostly.

"Now we leave," he announces, "we'll skip out on the second round of cardio for today. We've got to register as a tag team for the fights!"

"Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Speaking of which, who are you pairing with, Shimmer?"

She looks up from the book she's reading, replying in an offhand tone, as if were no big deal, "I was speaking with Gilda about potentially fighting together, if you know who that is. I'm not concerned either way, I'll likely have to carry whichever fool I end up with."

"I think we both know who would carry who if we paired," you say smugly, showing off your pumped biceps."

"Ah! I get it! Because you've lifted her several times just now as an impromptu weight," Iron Will interjects, face alight.

I nod along with him, looking down at my hands, half-expecting them to be stained with the blood of a dead joke.


“Next up, we have Eye Ron We El, and Anon Ee Muss,” the crowd is a mix of cheers and boos. Iron Will works the crowd without pause though, pumping his muscles and calling for more cheering, raising a hand to his ear with much flourish. The cheers quickly outweigh the jeers. You take cue from him, scrolling up a sleeve and showing off a python of your own. Mares swoon and blush at your glances and winks. You blow a kiss to a fluttering pegasus, who promptly collapses back into the stands.

“VERSUS,” the announcer continues, “The Die Mound Dougs!”

“AWOOOOOOOO!” The gates rattle up, a wave of dust rolls out onto the arena, and the crowd goes quiet for the reveal. Then suddenly, no less than five Diamond Dogs, clad in much gems and spikes. They aren’t sportsmen, and spit and holler at you and Will, the crowd jeers and goes wild at their grizzly appearance.

“Due to the judge’s decision to count each Diamond Dog as less than 1 villain each, they’re allowed to group in a pack like this!” Will explains.

You feel kinda good knowing the crowd knows you’re a face and not a heel. Or, a face turned heel turned face again. This is becoming confusion for even you.

“Who let the dogs out, am I right?” he asks, elbowing you. You squint at him, partially to express disgust, but also because of the grains of sand being blown in your eyes. The gates lower again, and the bell is struck. The match begins!

It’s utter chaos! All five charge at you, kicking up dust like madmen, rushing the two of you down. But you’ve got a dirty trick, you reach into your pocket while everyone else is distracted, and out pops a bright neon green tennis ball. They halt immediately, which shocks the crowd and Will, now all eyes are on you!

“I call this one, NEON GREEN RACKET LAUNCHED DISTRACTION,” you explain, whipping out a racket that was strapped to your back, you serve that shit like a 5-star gourmet meal, launching it up into the air over their head. The five stooges run off in search of it, giving you and Will time to prepare. “Alright, what’s the game plan?”

“Back-to-back, it’s a classic and always works," Will suggests.

"And if things heat up too much, we can pull out that secret weapon," you wink at him.

"Heck yes, brother."

You smile widely, giving him a sick fist pump. Getting back to back with Iron Will, you two allow them to envelop you. With much superfluous action you charge forward, priming a sick uppercut. The diamond dog with a big garnet on his chest runs to meet you, your uppercut being blocked by his two paws, coming together like a catcher's mitt. The force from the blowback stumbles you backward, and he takes this time to swipe at you, clawing a button off your suit!

Anger swells in you, and you toss off your suit jacket and scroll up the sleeves on your button up. You bark at the diamond pup just as his boy comes up to your left, this one is marked with an amethyst. He thinks he’s got the upper hand but you crouch quick and swipe his feet from underneath him. The tall ass doggo goes flying right over you into his friend on your right. Beside that one you see Iron Will deliver a radical power bomb to the lapis lazuli dog. 

“Wow Will, great moves, keep it up!” you say, giving him one monster of a thumps up. He smiles back, but you don’t get to enjoy it long, Garnet is back for more buttons. He tries to give you an emergency tooth removal with a devastating right hook.

You take that shit to the bank, no selling the hell out of the punch, and retorting with one straight to his dumb face, just as planned! Your steely reaction shocked him, and his guard was down. The poor dog goes flying, and once you’re sure he’s not looking, you try to rub the pain from your now out-of-place jaw.

Thank god amethyst is looking out for you, he sees your plight and socks you a good one from the left, knocking your chin back on straight! The strength of that punch was killer, and slaps you flat on your back. The pain in your head was quite unique, jarring, like your brain just sloshed around in your skull.

“Thanks brah,” you say, looking up at the sky. That cloud kinda looks like Twilight. A tear formulates in your ducts, but it’s just the dust though. No for real, you got some seriously dirty shit in your eye.

A big blue hairy arm washes over you and picks you up, setting you straight and dusting you off roughly, “come on let’s hit it, boy!” Will says, patting your back roughly.

You’re feeling way better with some encouragement, at least your head doesn’t feel all jostled around anymore. Two pups were drooling in the dirt. Garnet and Lapis, both ass up face down, tongues lolling out.

The last three, Amethyst, Quartz and Peridot, were pacing around, looking tough. Shaking your head, you turn to Iron Will.

“You thinkin’ what I am?” you ask, not thinking much.

“Hell yeah,” he puts up his hand as if he was getting ready to arm wrestle you. You meet his hand likewise, slapping into his calloused palm with yours. With a tight handshake and a nod the two of you activate your secret weapon. 

Iron Will faces forward and stands next to you, you do likewise. He then piddles about 3 paces left, and you got 3 right, the two of you with outstretched arms. Time for the return now, quarter turn! You bend in, pointed fingers just grazing each other! 

Then, a flash! The crowd draws in enough breath to suck all the dirt out of the ring. The smoke clears, and the diamond dogs recover from their flashbang, and what remains? 

Theme of FE Anon: 
(Shin Megami Tensei OST: Boss Battle)

“Iron Anon is my name, beating pups is my game!” you growl, slapping your chest hard. You feel about nine feet off the ground, head heavy with two hard iron tipped horns like a demon straight out The Pit. Your skin, blue in hue and covered in hair, is only partially covered by your now open button shirt, hairy chest exposed to the elements.

The diamond dogs back off, mewl at your presence. You put hoof to dirt, bringing both fists down hard onto poor amythest, the slowest of his litter, his face gets buried about six inches into the ground.

“Treat me like a pushover and you’ll get the TWICE over!” you roar, batting your chest like an ape. The last two are quivering now, paws shaking and barks coming out all crackly.

You charge over, feeling animalistic and seeing red, with your horns pointed down you scooping up Quartz between your built-in bident. Swinging up, you feel him kick at your chest and paw at your head, throat stuck between your horns. You charge for the wall in the stadium, slamming him hard into the concrete.

The audience screams, and runs from the area as the force of your blow creates a huge crack in the wall! You shake your head harshly when you feel him go limp, and he collapses into a pile on the floor. You flex like an iron god, letting out a huff of hot steam from your nostrils.

Your blazing red eyes turn to the last thing in the ring, a quivering peridot dog. 

“Please,” he grovels, “I submit, abloo bloo,” he cries into his paws.

“Pathetic display!” the announcer calls, ending the match with another ding of the bell. 

Just before you unmerge and the lights go out, you look to the skybox on the other side of the ring, peering at the Mega Forces. They quickly close the shutter on you. Uh-oh, feeling woozy.

Creak, shake! About 600 pounds of muscle and metal staggers around the ring, squeaking like the tinman from Oz. You feel yourself tilting, horns going down first. Blackout time. 

“Wakey, wakey, eggs,” you hear the announcer say.

Your eyes flutter open, you’re in a tent, coolish air flutters in from the open. Standing above you, a greasy maned, slick smiled announcer stallion. Beside you, Iron Will, bandaged at the waist and arm, sitting up on his cot. Across the room, in the other cots lined up, your opponents, all of them wrapped up in casts or bandages. And some other things you don’t recognize, is that a goat?

“No bacon?”

“No, but I do have news,” the doctor said in his naturally booming voice. Iron Will did not look happy.

“Lay it on me, pal,” you say, leaning back on your bed.

“The judges have declared you the winner. HOWEVER, your use of unqualified items and your combination form were illegal in their eyes.”

“What does this mean for us? Are we disqualified?” you ask, voice going serious as all hell.

“In a way,” Will pitches in, his tone likewise grim.

You give him a conspiring glance, trying to gauge if he was also thinking how this would affect your plans.

“The judges voted 1 1/1000 to 2, in favor of keeping you.”

“Wait a second, whose vote was only worth 1/1000?”

“Why Queen Chrysalis of course, she makes all her decisions with the backing of her 999 Changelings, however to save time they weren’t polled for this vote.”

“Sick, we’re in this still,” you say, beaming, hand raised for an almighty high five. You’re left hangin’.

“Not quite, see, there was so much bickering that the Mega Forces instead came to the compromise of letting one of you loose. So someone is still disqualified. Iron Will has elected to call it quits to allow you to stay.”

“Will, you sure?”

He nods solemnly, "I'm a big boy, you go on ahead. I'll see you later." 

You hold your pounding head and swing your legs out of the bed, pushing past the announcer and over to your boy. 

“You gonna be okay here? I need to see someone at the hotel.”

Will nods and the announcer begins pacing out. You’re not happy about it, but you need time to think, and a sweaty medical tent is not the place to get your brain fluids working. Sunset might have some ideas to brainstorm with you. 





"Anonymous! Over here," Sunset calls, waving you over poolside. Surprisingly, once again the area is devoid of contestants or anyone really (barring Sunset of course).

"Hey, I was just looking for you," you reply, walking over to her.

"Great. I need you as my partner, will you be willing to do an extra match with me?"

"What happened to Gilda or whoever?"

She looks down at the floor sullenly, "avian flu."

You express your empathy with a contorted face, "I came to tell you that our plan is fucked."

Shimmer gets simmered, back peddling a step, "did they sniff us out already?"

"No, but Iron Will is out of commission and disqualified."

She snorts, thinks about the situation for a moment, and recollects herself, "we'll be alright, the pair of us. Iron Will can still support us when we make the final move."

You look around to make sure no one is around still, and motion that the two of you should walk back to the hotel, "he's recovering right now. He should be alright but—"

"But you don't think he will be able to stand up to the Mega Forces?"

You furrow your brow, "I don't know. I saw him go toe-to-toe with Discord before, but I'm worrying about him for some reason."

"Well, friends do feel empathy and concern for each other, don't they?" she asks, to which you promptly nod.

"I can feel the icy recesses of my heart warming with our three-way bonding."


IN THE NEXT EPISODE:
Will Anonymous be able to handle another twosome?
Will Sunset be able to carry her weight or will throw?
Can Iron Will recover from his injuries?
FIND OUT NEXT TIME ON, HORSE LA HORSE SEASON 2