Olive Pit raced blindly through a burning street of Ponyville behind Skate Grind and B-Sharp. One seriously huge buffalo was chasing them from behind, a wall of fire was reaching out to grab them from the left and all around them, smoke was trying to blind and suffocate them.
None of this was supposed to be happening!
Olive Pit and his friends had been sleeping peacefully when the door slammed open, and Skate Grind’s brother charged in, shouting that they needed to get up now! Olive Pit was surprised that Skate Grind’s older brother seemed so angry when they hadn’t done anything wrong. Usually he was really nice, like taking Olive Pit and his friends to Youtherd and booking a venue so tomorrow so they could put on the rock concert of the century and get their cutie-marks for-
He must have overslept and be late for his own concert!
Olive Pit jumped out of bed and ran to the living room to get his daddy’s guitar, but when he opened the door there was burst of heat. The living room was on fire! All the instruments he had borrowed from his daddy were in there! Olive Pit took a breath and had dashed into the room, but he only made it two steps before Skate Grind’s brother bit down on his tail and yanked him out of the room, slamming the door behind him with all of his daddy’s instruments; then pushed Olive Pit and his friends outside.
Why were the other buildings on fire? Skate Grind’s older brother yelled for Olive Pit and his friends to follow him so they did, like, what else could they do? They made it about three streets down and then a buffalo jumped out from behind a building; Skate Grind's older brother jumped on it and then shouted for them to run.
Run?
Run where?
Olive Pit didn’t know where to go, he didn’t even know where he was; if they were in Manehatten he and his friends knew any number of neat hiding places; but they’d only arrive in Ponyville that morning. B-Sharp and Skate Grind started running, leaving white and gray streaks behind them, and so Olive Pit followed.
Everywhere Olive Pit looked he saw burning buildings, angry buffalo, and ponies being dragged around in nets; then the seriously huge buffalo saw Olive Pit and his friends, and began chasing them. Skate Grind was trying to fly but he couldn’t get more than a few feet off the ground; and then B-Sharp shouted something about casting an invisibility spell. Did B-Sharp know an invisibility spell? Olive Pit never found out.
B-Sharp started focusing to cast the spell, but then bumped into Skate Grind which knocked B-Sharp's sunglasses off his face. He turned around to get them, then didn’t look where he was going and slipped in a puddle of ketchup that someone had left on the road. Skate Grind and Olive Pit turned back to catch him, but by the time they reached him the huge buffalo was already almost on top of them.
Olive Pit tried to scream, but before he could get a sound out, somepony’s arm wrapped around him and then suddenly he was flying really fast. Olive Pit held on as hard as he could; in hind sight, holding on by biting the arm of whoever was holding him, probably hadn’t been the best idea, but it was the only one he had, and whoever was holding him didn’t let go.
After a few seconds they were outside of Ponyville, and suddenly they were falling way, way, way too fast. Just when Olive Pit was certain they were going to die, the pegasus swooped, slowed down and landed on a grassy hill at the edge of a big apple orchard. A hoof grabbed Olive Pit’s chin and pried him off the arm he was holding and Olive Pit tumbled a few feet to the ground; landing on top of Skate Grind and next to B-Sharp. He looked up to see the awesome looking red pegasus colt who’d saved them, with a frizzy, rainbow colored mane drifting in the breeze.
“Run into the Apple Orchard and hide until the buffalo are gone.” He commanded, checking each foal quickly, before spreading his wings and pivoting back towards Ponyville leaving a trail of rainbow and loose grass in his wake.
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Sky Fire sacrificed several seconds to make sure the colts weren’t hurt; and then launched back towards Ponyville; gaining enough altitude to gain a, pegas-eye view of the town. Most of the other pegasi were hightailing it out of there; a few carried earth ponies or unicorns with them, but most were just scampering off to save their own skins. The town was surrounded; each exit blocked by a small force of buffalo marauders, while the rest of the army raided the town, herding everyone towards the main plaza. Ponies that got past the perimeter weren’t pursued.
Sky Fire chose his first target and plummeted towards a squad of buffalo guarding one escape route, two ponies bound in nets, and one pony corpse. There would be eight of them against him, but that was OK because he was awesome and they weren’t.
Sky Fire slammed into a nearby statue, raining shrapnels of vandalism onto the buffalo which would have knocked a pony unconscious. From the way the stones bounced feebly off the buffalo’s thick hides, Sky Fire concluded that these guys were tough. From the way the buffalo scattered from his attack, even though it wasn’t dangerous to them, and then fell back in a disorganized mess, Sky Fire knew they were not combat trained.
The statue snapped at the base and fell; missing the buffalo but still creating some uneven terrain which would be hard for the buffalo to gallop over. Sky Fire lunged towards one of the buffalo; narrowly avoiding the pointy end of a horn, and launched a roundhouse kick which would have broken most ponies’ necks, that only made a dissatisfying ‘clunk’ against the buffalo’s jaw.
This was the first time Sky Fire had fought buffalo, he didn’t know their weak points and their long fur made it difficult to guess; but after a minute of intensive research, he’d concluded they held their heads too low for their throats to make easy targets, their necks were too wide for him to get his hooves around to break, blows that would have cracked a pony’s skull just bounced off their thickheads, and getting close enough to try any of these involved getting a lot closer to those horns than Sky Fire felt comfortable with.
He needed leverage, and settled on a wooden flag pole, claiming Ponyville as Snare Blade territory. Slamming the flag onto the pavement, he snapped the tip to make a spear which added an extra yard to his attack range; just in time to answer the next buffalo with a solid rebuke which won him a pained grunt.
The rest hesitated, no one wanting to be the first to charge, and Sky Fire waited; twirling the spear around himself in a rapid succession of feints. Sky Fire advanced on the guy in front of him, who fell back, howling and flailing his horns wildly. The guy seemed like a wimp, but on the other hoof, he might have just been trying to distract Sky Fire from his three buddies who were charging him from behind.
Sky Fire waited until their forward momentum was too much to stop suddenly, then pivoted and dropped to one knee, leveling spear with the throat of the centre buffalo. Rather than impale himself, the buffalo took a hard right, and crashed horn-first into the guy beside him. The left buffalo kept coming however, causing Sky Fire to roll to the right; allowing the buffalo’s horn to pass through the feathers on his left wing.
Sky Fire let out a shriek of pain, dropping his left wing and dragging it limply on the ground. Two more buffalo were quick to to monopolize on his ‘weakness’ and came charging. Sky Fire again waited until they were too close to turn and then his left wing shot up in unison with the right, and he sailed over them. One buffalo kept going, stumbled over the wreckage of the statue and smashed into the stone pedestal; the other swerved and slowed down, making himself an easy target for Sky Fire to impale with his spear which he drove between the buffalo’s shoulder blades. There wasn’t even a cry from pain from this one, he just took two more steps and then slumped over, dead.
Of the five buffalo that remained standing; one was thrown through the support beam of a burning balcony which collapsed on top of him, the second left his throat exposed, the third ran off howling into the night after Sky Fire snatched out his eye, and the fourth scampered off when Sky Fire stared him in the eye. This left Sky Fire with one last enemy, a grey bearded elder; who Sky Fire assumed had been the leader of this group.
The elder was standing over the half-living corpse of the buffalo whose trachea Sky Fire had broken; three minutes on and he was still sputtering for air, but his lips were turning blue, and he grew weaker with each gasp. The elder glanced rapidly between the dying youth and Sky Fire; each glance into the face of the youth confirmed the elder’s realization that he was beyond saving, and each glance at the face of the elder made Sky Fire more certain that he saw a family resemblance. The blood on the elder’s horns didn’t testify to innocence; “Why are you doing this!?”
A phantom of an emaciated squeak became the last breath of the suffocated buffalo; and a bellowing roar of grief and hatred came from his father; who lowered his horns at Sky Fire, and began to charge.
Sky Fire charged him in return.
If Sky Fire leaped upwards he could attack the elder from above, but didn’t. They got closer. If Sky Fire jumped to the side he could dodge him, but didn’t. Now it was too late, the elder’s horns were ready to gore in whichever way Sky Fire dodged; he was at least three times heavier then Sky Fire and had a skull that could crush his like a walnut.
When Sky Fire could see the flaring hatred of the elder’s eyes, he dropped and twisted; landing flat on his back with his wings outstretched. Sky Fire skidded on the wet grass and raised one hoof; letting the elder’s own weight drive the sharpened point into his flesh. Sky Fire passed unscathed from under the buffalo elder that stumbled haphazardly forwards; then gained about twenty feet of altitude which he then turned into a plunge, channeling fifteen years of training through his hind hooves and onto the back of the buffalo’s skull, smashing him into the earth.
Sky Fire observed his carnage; he wasn’t sure which buffalo were dead or unconscious, but none of them would be an obstacle to any escaping ponies. He dashed towards the two ponies that were trapped in nets tied to a lamp post; reached under his mane, removed a concealed hairclip, and unfolded a blade that was too small to make a useful weapon, but made short work of the thick, coarse rope.
The first of the prisoners was free in seconds; helped Sky Fire get the lock off his horn and then, after admitting he had no idea how to fight, followed Sky Fire’s advice and ran for the orchard. Sky Fire turned to the other prisoner, a unicorn filly who was unhurt, but trembling uncontrollably at the bottom of her net, whose eyes never left him.
Where the colt had at least had the sense to help untie himself, this girl was trembling too much to even do that. Sky Fire cut her bonds and pulled the net off her; but the filly remained immobile. Sky Fire replaced his concealed blade, grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her up after which she finally came alive, wrapping her hooves around his neck; clinging to him for protection.
“You need to run to the orchard.” He whispered. The filly, couldn’t manage to speak, let alone run, and so Sky Fire hoisted her onto his back, carried her a few hundred yards from the town perimeter, and dropped her onto a pile of hay where she could get over the shock at her own pace.
With an escape route cleared, Sky Fire took back to the sky, searching out ponies that hadn’t been captured and directing them to the safe exit. Beneath him, a buffalo bull and cow were charging side by side, chasing, and quickly gaining on a unicorn mare. Sky Fire fell between them; placed his hind hooves on the cow, his front hooves on the bull and pushed. The bull stumbled, tripping over himself several times before steadying himself, but the cow went crashing through the wall of a burning building.
The bull spun around to see where his partner had gone; glared with murderous hate at Sky Fire, then let out a cry of grief and then stampeded into the raging inferno. Moments later, the building collapsed over the both of them, and any ponies that might have been trapped inside.
Sky Fire shouted directions to the escaping mare and then moved on.
Rising over the pyre of the town hall; Sky Fire saw a comet streak towards ground level, trailing an array of primordial colors. Without thinking, Sky Fire flew to meet Sky Blaze and found her diving in from the opposite end of a wide street containing a score of buffalo. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second, in silent instantaneous agreement and then both angled their attacks towards another elder who stood half way between them. Reaching him in the same instant with their hind hooves, there was a sharp crack as the buffalo went down, and both pegasi pushed skywards.
Three seconds later they were after their next target, who raised his horns to gore Sky Blaze, but she simply flew past, a few safe inches out of harm’s reach. The buffalo strained to reach her anyways, leaving himself totally unprepared for Sky Fire to swoop in low and hard, breaking one of his knees out from under him.
They switched places and struck again, this time Sky Fire provided the decoy while Sky Blaze snapped a kneecap. Now however, a heifer, not much older than Sky Blaze who’d seen what they did last time, predicted their movement, and hurled a hooked bolas at Sky Blaze before she had time to regain momentum.
Sky Fire instantly double-backed, snatched the bolas out of midair and swung one end down the throat of a buffalo that had chosen a fatal moment to inhale, and then twirled the other around the horn of another bull who was charging past. The hook split the first buffalo from the thorax to the jaw where it snagged; sweeping the second buffalo off his hooves with its sudden resistance, leaving him helpless as Sky Fire’s bucked his trachea.
A weighted net appeared above Sky Fire from out of the starless sky, but before it had the chance to ground him, Sky Blaze caught it from above, hoisted it into the face of another buffalo, and then fell like an ax through the temple of the heifer who’d thrown the bolas.
When Sky Blaze called, Sky Fire answered, and the same was true for him. They fought with one purpose, shared one mind, and became one power. In half the time it had taken Sky Fire to take out the eight, twenty buffalo were either dead, unconscious or had fled from the winged menaces which harried them.
They spiraled victorious through the smoke, looking for their next targets when on the other side of town, jets of white flame erupted into the atmosphere. Both pegasi shielded their eyes, but were already racing towards the source of the impact; seeing at the same instant that the hospital was on fire, which they both found equally disconcerting, given that the hospital was made of stone.
In front of the hospital, eight buffalo, draped in intricate gold and azure cloth, stood like statues; carrying an enormous blue palanquin. Inside the palanquin the twins could see the silhouette of a unicorn, its horn glowing like the sun as a ring of shining runes was wrapped around the hospital. Being one of the largest buildings in Ponyville and solid construction, the hospital made like a natural fortress, and through the shattered front doors Sky Fire could see a claustrophobic mess of civilians who’d crammed themselves inside for protection.
In front of the hospital gates a pseudo defense force, mostly of unicorns, was trying to hold the chokepoint. Among them, Sky Fire thought he saw Winnow Hoof; around them, the broken bodies of at least a dozen buffalo that testified to their temporary effectiveness.
Five unicorns concentrated fire on the palanquin and all five beams were deflected by a shield which then released a shockwave, knocking the defenders unconscious. The glowing ring of runes finished encircling the hospital and then exploded, transforming into a ring of blue fire, and then the entire hospital began crumpling; not splintering or breaking like stone should, but crumpling, as if the entire building was made of paper and a pair of giant hooves was rolling it into a ball. Screams of a hundred ponies echoed from inside, and the squished herd began scrambling into the open air, only to be trapped by the flames.
That was all Sky Fire needed to see, and it was all the opportunity Sky Blaze needed. They soared and dove as one, then split half way to attack the unicorn inside the palanquin from opposite directions. They were fast, fearless, deadly, and dove directly into twin beams of brilliant blue light.
Chapter Sixteen >>> Hope From Ashes