Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here

by Blank!

Clean, Pretty, Reliable (Revival)

A Unicorn can resist a piano or an anvil being dropped on their head from a few meters high. Pegasi are quite a bit tougher than that-- it takes quite hit to knock one unconscious, even for a while (as long as you don’t hit them on the jaw: sensitive spot there). I was hit so hard, I was knocked unconscious for a while. Then I started regaining consciousness. First, the hearing. My AirWave was still playing the final measures of that song, like nothing had happened. I thought it into silence. A male voice burst out:

"Dang it, I killed Pony!"

You bastard! Wait, who's Pony?

"Just as I had found her, I had to screw it up and kill her! Pegasi are such fragile things! Now Pony is dead, and I'll have to start looking all over again! Why oh why did I have to kill Pony? Now she's dead! Destroyed! Bereft of a future! Irremediably boring! She has flatlined! She is an ex-Pony! Oh what to do, what to do..."

My name is not Pony, you murderer, and I'm not dead. But I can't move. Or breathe.

I'm dying.

"Let's try slapping her."

I'm in pain. And I'm dying.

"Bucket of water!"

I'm wet. And I'm in pain. And I'm still dying. And where did you get that bucket?

"Okay, screw this. Time for intervention! Clean. Pretty. Reliable. It’s CPR time!”

What the…

It was then that I understood that I was truly doomed. He took a deep breath and...

“Let’s kick the beat!”

He “massaged" my heart, so vigorously he might as well have been punching me, again and again. It was quite painful, but it practically jolted me awake. And then,

"Smooooch!"

What do you mean, smooch?

There’s two word for breathing stuff unto someone: ‘to inspire’ and ‘to animate’. That strange assailant inspired me. Then I was dying, and he brought me to life-- painfully and selfishly and without a thought for how I felt or what I wanted.

That instant set the tone, the theme, and the mood for our entire relationship.

And it worked.

I took a breath. No, I claimed a breath. Deep. Hard. I wanted to live, with a desperation that I never knew I was capable of. I opened my eyes, wide, and it was like seeing the world for the first time. Not the time for contemplation, though: the first thing I saw was the panther leaping at me, face unmasked, aiming a sweeping blow of his guitar to my forehead. So he was equipped with cloudwalker charms. Just my luck.

There was no time to evade or block, no time to move a single muscle before his blow connected--but there was no need to. All the hours I spent training at Flight School kicked in. I did not even need to think. Lesson 1: Clouds are impermeable to Pegasi--unless we don't want them to.

I allowed myself to fall into the cloud. He missed my head by a fraction, his green, slit-pupil eyes wide, his expression seamlessly flowing from glee to shock to indignant frustration. He had probably lost his balance, and it would take him precious instants to recover it, in mind as well as body. I didn't wait to find out: I kept freefalling, as fast as I could.

Without making a sound, I kept building distance between me and the predator.

My black coat was a natural camouflage, in the night, against the dark ground, under the cloudy skies that blocked the lights of Luna. But I knew better than to count on it. He might have other ways of sensing me: he jumped me through the cloud cover, after all.

I had to decide what to do next. Before he could get into his glider and catch up with me. He got the drop on me while I was by myself, in the dark. For a second, I struggled to make sense of his actions.

A bandit, a hunter, or an assassin wouldn't have tried to reanimate me. Yet as soon as I was reanimated, he tried to strike me. He was no ally. What, then? The next thought was weird. A foreign operative? Was he going to torture me for information? But those were supposed to be grim, serious types. He was so... goofy? I'd have needed to know more before I could tell for sure.

But I couldn’t afford to. If he was an interrogator, there was no telling what he could do to me if he managed to catch me. I wanted to get away, where he would not follow. I don't think he would dare attack me before witnesses. This early in the night, there were still a few lights on the land. The closest was almost right under me. That looked like one, lonely cottage: unsafe. I could see a bigger cluster--some distance away. It looked a barn or hangar of some sort: not much safer. Finally, there shone a much larger cluster of lights--probably the town of Ponyville: a fair distance away.

“So,” I thought as I looked up to check the clouds once again, “the closest looks the least safe, the furthest seems safest: convenient. Which direction would he expect me to take? I don’t think I’ll have trouble out-flying his glider, but better safe tha-- “

Then I saw what came through the cloud cover, descending upon me like a flying ton of bricks. It might as well have been one; the glider was nowhere to be seen, and the tiger was instead wearing... some sort of suit... a full plate armour? In the sky? That makes no sense... Why is there a glow coming out from his claws and feet? Why were his eyes blazing like that? Why is he moving so damn fast without any wings?

And that’s when I understood how he had sung that last verse so precisely before he hit me. I knew he had hacked my AirWave, because a song that I’d never had heard before started playing:

Wha--how? Psychological warfare? What’s a “gun”? What’s a “woman”? Is this in code?!

There was no escape. Not if I didn’t fight for it. I would crash him, or he would crush me. Thinking time was over--time for reflex and rule of thumb instead. Cloud cover is low. Mountains are close. Get him there, before-

Useless. He was upon me. I could almost see the white of his eyes. As in, they shone from his helmet, all-white, no pupils, like a unicorn overcharged on magic. Just how much power did he have?

He was surely going to get me, we were almost face-to-face, his speed was overwhelming--and then he did something strange. He took out his massive guitar, the same he had tried to hit me with before, took it in his metal paws, and seemed to prepare to swing it at me. Again?

Why? Why not just ram me again?


If I had allowed myself to be perplexed by that, he’d have gotten that hit in, no problem. But the gesture unbalanced him, and, with a quick beat of my wings, I managed to dodge his blow. I tried to get strike him myself, but he was too fast, and I missed his torso, hitting his feet instead. I thought my hooves would have been burned to a crisp. They were not, to my surprise.

Even though he had a lot of momentum, the fact that his hands were full meant that he’d have trouble balancing his flight with his feet alone. I didn’t know that, then, but the comical way in which, despite his tremendous forward momentum, he started spinning out of control, made me feel reassured if not downright cocky.

Never get cocky. Especially not after you’ve been injured.


There was a pink, sparkling light (a barrier spell), that sprung at his feet, mid air. He landed on it. It accomodated him like rubber--no, more intelligently, like some platform. In an instant, his spin was nullified, his course was corrected--pointing right at me. With a shout of wild joy, he flung himself at me, spinning anew, guitar in hand. I was facing him. I waited for him to close. I beat my wings forward, pushing myself backward and down in the same movement--right in time to buck him in the side as he tried to bring his guitar down, which harmlessly grazed my mane; I used the power of the kick to proportionally push myself faster downward. I accelerated quite a bit; looked like that cat had quite the mass, armour and all!

As he spun away, I could hear him laugh.

The mouser was having fun?

Screw that, no matter. I fell. Gather speed, head for the Foggy Hills, crash the kitten. I was facing the ground, falling like a black cannonball, facing the ground. Then an orange hole opened mid-air right in front of me. There he was, standing like a bullfighter, inviting me with mock courtesy. By the time the impossibility registered, there was no time to dodge. He took a step to the side, and lightly lifted the edge of his guitar. It hit me square in the forehead, its chords making a dull sound.


That didn’t hurt nearly as much as it should have.

It still hurt a lot. I turned around and screamed, “What did you do that for? What do you want?”

He regarded me with a bemused expression. He raised his head, looking down on me as if I was some insect. “Usless,” he stated. He turned his back on me, and flew away.

For some reason, that made me feel terribly offended. “I’m not done here!” I screamed.

“I am,” he said. It was amazing, how much boredom he could pour into those two words. It was amazing, how his armour changed, it was like he’d become one single, wide, triangular wing. Then there was a burst of light and sound-- and by the time my eyes had readjusted to the darkness he was gone.

I hated to admit it, but the bastard was kind of a bad ass.

Well, that was anticlimactic, I thought to myself...

As the adrenaline washed away, I began to notice how hurt I was. I had no strength to fly back home. I would need to land in that cottage. Which, upon closer inspection, wasn’t very far from a black mass I recognized as the Everfree Forest. I knew where I was. Fluttershy’s cottage. I’d be safe. If I could make it there. Everything hurt. Ribs, where he rammed me. Hooves, with which I struck him. But not the head--strange. Still, breathing was hurting more and more, and all my muscles were sore from the effort, which came at the end of a long day of training.

I attempted to crash-land at her door. Instead I simply crashed, through her glass window, to my great shame and pain. There was a fracas. There was a terrified squeak. There was a silence. There was a voice. And what a voice it was.

“Uhm-oh-who’s th-” She gasped. “Poor thing! What happened to you? What’s your name?”

Somehow my malfunctioning SoundWave answered... in my head? In my stead?

“Miss Fluttershy, I--” didn’t introduce myself properly, falling into blissful unconsciousness instead. That night, blissfully unaware of the fate that was in store for me, I dreamed of butteflies.