Twang-
THUNK!
“And that’s about it.”
“Oooh.”
An hour or so after the Great Ponyville Nausea Crisis, Fluttershy had given Archer a delayed clean bill of health, pending some rest and another round of indigestion tablets. In the mean time, Archer was trying to make amends with the not-very-evil-at-all mare he had at first taken for an villainous enchantress. As it so happened, she had somehow found an interest in what humans did for sport. So here she was, watching him shoot trees.
And nothing else, sadly.
“It’s really not that hard to nail a stationary target, but seeing as how we don’t have any pigeons...”
“Archer, no!”
“Kidding, just kidding. Sheesh.”
What he had said in jest, Fluttershy had taken literally, and she’d reacted with all the positivity and cheerfulness of a recently petless child. He spent the next fifteen or so minutes assuring her he wasn’t intending to kill anything she knew personally. Which apparently meant everything, because she ostensibly communed with nature and all its creatures.
He wasn’t going to be eating meat any time in the foreseeable future.
He hated Fae realms.
“Um.... so, ah, just hypothetically speaking...”
“Yeeees?”
“...What, exactly, could you, uh... ‘bring down’ with a bow like that?”
“Oh, this thing?”
He examined his namesake, as if eyeing it for the first time. It was once the standard scout’s compound bow, built from only the sturdiest Vorlan oak. Its pulleys were also wooden, once upon a time, and the bowstrings were the most banal form of woven catgut imaginable.
Now, though, the wood limbs were run through with tempered iron, the pulleys had been supplanted by precisely-calibrated brass gearwork, and it was strung with Canis-hair cord, as tight as Archer could weave it.
He knew each and every modification made to it, because he’d made them all himself.
“It’s, ah... it’s quite nice.”
“Really? I thought a bleeding heart like you would shun anything of this sort.”
“Well, I’d never plan on using it, of course... I just think the wooden and metal parts go nice together.”
“I see. Well, to answer your question.... The biggest thing I’ve ever faced would definitely be a Canis Major. A little one,” he added, seeing the look on her face. “Not one the size of a house, like I know they can get to.”
“Wow... How did you do it?”
“You’re serious?”
Fluttershy nodded.
“You really want me to tell about the time I hunted and killed a Canis Major.”
She nodded again.
“Well, alright. It was out near the borders between my kingdom and the territory of the Hurpa Ogres. It was the dead of winter, and I suppose you, of all people, would know how Canis packs tend to be in winter...”
***
thumpthumpthumpthump
“Twilight!”
thumpthumpthumpthump
“Twilight, open up!”
The library door cracked open.
“Yes, Pinkie Pie. What is it?”
“Well I really need to ask Archer some things and I can’t ask him if he’s dead so I thought I’d come here and see if he was here and if he wasn’t here I’d ask you were he was so-”
“He’s fine,” Twilight interjected. “Fluttershy’s looking after him.”
“Oh. Thanks! Bye!”
She disappeared in a cloud of kicked-up dust and unbelievably high sugar content. Twilight sighed and returned to doing whatever it was that royal proteges did on their off-hours.
***
“...but then, three more just like it appeared from the shadows!”
Fluttershy’s reaction so far was somewhere between horror and wonderment, by way of absolute fascination.
“I had to think fast, of course. After a few seconds, I remembered how the first Canis had chased me though the tree’s branches, right?” Fluttershy nodded. “I looked up, and sure enough, one of the limbs, a really big, bulky one, was just barely hanging on by a few inches of wood. So, instead of trying and failing to fight them three-to-one, I took aim at the limb above, and...” Fluttershy’s eyes went wide as he pantomimed drawing a bow. “Zap!”
Gasp!
“The branch came down on them like a dropped millstone. Scratch three more Canes Minor.”
Fluttershy was becoming increasingly hard to gauge. She was either scared out of her wits, about to yell at him for admitting to killing a living being, or he was just that good at telling exciting stories.
It was probably one of the first two, come to think of it.
Thankfully, there was another individual very close by with a much clearer opinion on the tale.
“Whoa. That was totally awesome!”
A tiny bundle of orange fur came galumphing up to the log they were seated on.
“Ohmygosh, that was so cool, mister! Hey, Miss Fluttershy, who’s your friend?”
“Well, he’s-”
“That story was awesome, and that bow looks sooo cool!”
“Um-”
“-You gotta tell me more, I wanna know how you beat the Canis Major, did you ever-”
As the diminutive puffball kept rambling on, Archer tried to make sense of what, exactly, it was. Its constant motion made this endeavor harder than it should have been. Before it could disorient him enough to pounce on him and tear out his organs (“Be Prepared,” kids), he lunged for it and hoisted it up by the forelimbs. It squeaked like a chew toy.
It was a tiny Equestrian. Probably no bigger than a housecat. That was the first thing that confused him. The grown ones were the size of... well, horses. Not very big ones, but they looked saddle-worthy, at least. This thing didn’t look like it could carry a rhesus monkey. And then there was-
“Hiya, mister.”
“Hi. What’s that buzzing?”
“What?”
“That buzzing noise. Is there a beehive around here?”
“Oh, no. That’s me.”
The buzzing stopped. A pair of wings, which had been beating too fast for Archer to notice until now, appeared on the young Equestrian’s back. Archer noticed the tyke seemed to weigh more without them flapping incessantly.
“So... tan fur, purple mane... your name is... ‘Peanut Butter’?”
The foal snorted.
“Noooo. I’m Scootaloo! What’s your name?”
“Archer. What are you doing here? Are you Fluttershy’s...?”
“NO!” was the immediate response from them both.
“I see. So whose is he?”
“He? I’m a girl!”
Archer set Scootaloo down with a huff. “You and everyone else, apparently. I don’t think I’ve met a single male Equestrian since I came here. Tell me, have I fallen into the girl’s club?”
“No!” shouted Scootaloo a second time. “There’s Spike!”
“He’s a dragon.”
“Oh. Umm...” The filly thought for a minute. “Oh! There’s Mr. Cake!”
“Never met him.”
“Big Mac?”
“I don’t even know who that is.”
“Oh, how about Doctor.... um... Fluttershy, what was his name? Doctor...?”
Fluttershy gave it some thought. “Hooves?”
“No, that wasn’t it. It was Doctor Something.”
“Actually, I think I have heard of that one.”
“Really? You’ve met him?”
“Yeah, but that’s a story for later. Much, much, later-” But at the word “story,” Scootaloo was off again.
“Oh! Right! The story! Come on, tell me how you beat the Canis Major!”
“Well, first-”
“Pleeeeeaaaaase?” That one word was punctuated by a pair of eyes swelling to diabetes-inducing size.
“Does she do this all the time?” Archer ask Fluttershy, still seated unperturbed on the log.
“Only when she’s really excited about something.”
“Alright,” Archer sighed, seating himself. “But I expect you to tell me where you were hiding until five minutes ago.”
“Oh, that’s nothing. I was in the chicken coop.”
Fluttershy gasped. “Scootaloo! I told you-”
“Calm down, Miss Shy. She was just fooling around.”
“Come on, come ooooon, tell me the rest of the story!”
“Fine, fine. Where was I? Oh, right." Archer reseated himself. "So, the Canes were all out for the count. And who should show up after all that commotion, but the den mother herself - the Canis Major! Monstrous, star-spangled, tall as I am and half again, and with teeth the size of tent stakes!”
“Ooooh,” was the reply, this time from two spellbound Equestrians instead of one.
***
A year ago, a brave and daring scout, who would one day be called “Archer” by a herd of talking horses, was having one of the worst days of his life so far. He was returning from a failed spying attempt on the Hurpa Ogres. Every so-called “partner” sent with him had either abandoned him or died, leaving him to return home alone, cold, and empty-handed.
And that, of course, was when then the wolves attacked.
Canes Minor, judging from the sparkling coats. Hopefully, there was no Major leading the pack, or his mission was about to get much shorter.
Odd. Earlier, from his vantage point in a nearby evergreen, he had counted four, but now there were only... Three.
With a crack and a hissing snarl, the unaccounted Canis made its position known.
He hadn’t known Canes could climb trees before that day. And to be perfectly honest, from that point on, he wasn’t liable to forget.
His compound bow was worse than useless in such a cramped space. All he had was a knife imbued with a dud charm and a stubborn unwillingness to die that the Canes unfortunately shared.
The fight was messy, brutal, and short. It ended with the two falling from the tree into the soft snow twenty feet below. He made it out with a broken rib and no feeling in the fist he’d punched the Canis in the face with. The Canis made it out with a knife so deep in its chest cavity that it technically counted as a heart implant.
Which unfortunately left our hero with no short-ranged weapon and three of his victim’s packmates to contend with.
They surrounded him. The tree’s trunk was at his back, and three angry, starry-coated dog monsters were at his front. If there was any time to pray, this was it...
...And as if in immediate answer, a branch, broken from the earlier scuffle, snapped its last bonds to the tree proper and came plummeting down like a dropped millstone. It landed sharp-end-down on the foremost Canis’s back, and stuck the landing with the resounding snap of a broken spine.
Their leader crumpled. Archer stood a little taller, making a noise he hoped would made him sound imposing.
The remaining two slunk away, their eyes never leaving him. He kept growling at them, desperately trying to keep the facade up before he succumbed to the blinding pain in his side. Eventually, he realized that he was no longer growling, but the noise had not stopped.
Behind him, beyond the tree’s cover, stood a Canis.
But this was no ordinary Canis. It stood half again as tall as he did. Its teeth were the size of tent stakes, if not bigger. Its fur was deep black, dappled with twinkling red stars.
It was a Canis Major, and our hero had exactly no time for it.
Before it could come within range of pouncing, he drilled it between the eyes with a single, expertly-placed arrow.
If only the Monster-Slayers' Guild could see him now.
***
“...And then I fletched arrowheads from its teeth and wove this from its hackles.”
Archer plucked at his bowstring, producing a mellow twang.
Somewhere along the line, Fluttershy had stopped finding the story fascinating and had started to find it frightening. Scootaloo, on the other hand, was enraptured the whole way through.
“Whoa.... Fluttershy, this guy is awesome!”
“You’ve already said that once today.”
“Yeah, but you’re almost, like, half as cool as Rainbow Dash, and she tells those kinds of stories all the time!”
Well, that’s a spirit-breaker.
“Does she now.”
“Yeah! There was this one time, she fought and beat a dragon-”
“Unlikely.”
“-And there was this other time when she did a Sonic Rainboom-”
“A sonic what?”
“-TWICE!”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The excitable young Equestrian looked up at him with a grin almost too wide for her head.
“Y’know, Mister Archer, I think it’s time for me to tell you a few stories.”
In the midst of all this impending literary suspense, Fluttershy had quickly and quietly fled the scene. Neither participant in the imminent Rainbow Dash Tall-Taleathon paid her any attention.
***
thumpthumpthumpthump
“Fluttershy!”
thumpthumpthumpthump
“Fluttershyyyyy!”
squeak
“Um, hello, Pinkie Pie. Do you need something?”
“Hey, there you are! Where’s Archer? I really need to ask him something!”
“Oh, he and Scootaloo are out back. I think they’re arguing about the Wonderbolts.”
“...What.”
***
“It’s Spitfire! It’s totally Spitfire! How can you not see that?”
“And how can you not see that Fleetfoot is, and will always be, the best Wonderbolt? I mean, look!”
Somehow, over the course of a few hours, Scootaloo had run out of amazing anecdotes of awesomeness from Rainbow Dash. Instead, she had begun telling him about her hero’s heroes, and hers by extension, the Equestrian Royal Air Force. They also went by “The Wonderbolts”.
Archer shoved one of the trading cards Scootaloo had so thoughtfully provided back in her face.
“See? ‘Top Speed: Mach Four’! Spitfire can barely pull one and a half!”
“It’s not just about speed, you know! Look at Fleetfoot’s agility! A turn of three g's is almost too much for her. Spitfire can go up to twelve!”
“Guys?”
“Well, I don’t see how a load of twisting and turning helps so much if you can fly more than twice as fast as the other guy, at heights where the only thing you have to look out for is the occasional mountain.”
“There’s more to it than that!”
“Guys...”
“Oh really? Care to share with the rest of the class?”
“Yeah! The Wonderbolts aren’t just about flying fast, even though they do that a lot. Being a Wonderbolt is about flying with style! Fearlessly! Something old Fleetfoot still can’t manage, after ten years on the team.”
“You little-!”
“Guys!”
“What!?” came the reply from them both.
“I have something for the both of you~!” Pinkie Pie sang, cheerful beyond reason.
She handed them both slips of paper the size of index cards. On them were sketched crude likenesses a group of Equestrians, surrounding one of Archer, dressed in gaudy colors and smiling (both worth noting for how rarely he did either). On the opposite side were words printed in Equestrian:
“DON’T BE SHY! WELCOME OUR NEWEST FRIEND TO PONYVILLE!”
It detailed a time, location, and where to go for details.
“Pinkie... what is this?”
“It’s why I’ve been looking for you all day, silly! Now,” her face suddenly turned dead serious, “I need you to tell me, in excruciating detail...”
“...Yes?”
“...How, exactly, humans throw parties.”