Destination: Thataway!

by Hawattie

Muffins Are a Girl's Best Friend

As I fell, (an action ponies who are released from great height are wont to do), I thought to myself, 'what is the appropriate action to take when falling from great height?'

Well, screaming is a given. You can rest assured that the shrillest, girliest, most terrifiedest scream you can imagine issued forth from my mouth. But screaming wasn't enough, I felt the need to take physical action during my freefall. 'I could always try flailing my legs around like a headless chicken,' I thought. And, since I had no better idea, that's exactly what I did. I flailed my legs wildly while screaming at the top of my lungs.

Between my flailing limbs, I spied Superguy falling alongside me. He seemed very relaxed, striking a pose as if he was reclining on a sofa while we plummeted towards the ground. For a moment I thought he was insanely calm about the situation, but then I remembered that he had wings. Filthy OP pegasususes and their cheaty-haxx flying.

"You know," Superguy shouted, just barely audible over the rushing wind, "you seem very distressed about something. But I can't quite fathom why that is." Since the guy wanted to talk, I figured I might as well humor him. Who am I to deny a conversation just because I'm falling to my death?

He brought a hoof to his chin and "humm'd" thoughtfully. "Oh! I've got it!" he exclaimed. "You left your oven on when you left to go play adventurer, didn't you?" He shook his head and clucked his tongue disapprovingly. Or at least I thought he clucked his tongue; I couldn't quite make it out over the rushing wind. "Nasty business, that. You could burn your house down, and then you'd be homeless and dead!"

"I hate to disappoint," I shouted. "Actually, no, that's a lie. I'd love to disappoint you. Irregardless, I don't have an oven or a home!" I cackled madly, flailing my hooves in a dramatic -as opposed to panicked- manner. "I'm already a homeless wanna-be adventurer and no amount of condescending sarcasm will change that!" If I had a mustache I would totally be twirling it evilly while stroking a fluffy white kitty. For some reason the image of myself as a mustache-twirling villain made me think of James Bond.

No idea why, though.

For the most part, Superguy watched my Bond-esque maniacal rant with no small amount of confusion. "Most ponies wouldn't be so..." Superguy struggled to find the right word while I enacted my *cough* very well thought-out and complicated plan to both defeat him and survive the fall and look badass while doing so. "Casual," was the word Superguy eventually went with, "when talking about their lack of residence."

"Yeah, well, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm not most ponies." I glanced down to see how much time I had left. The ground was about eh... three or four random units of measure away. Maybe five. Plenty of time to enact my daring plan to survive this fall.

Superguy followed my gaze with his own. "We're getting kind of close to the ground," he stated. "If you've got some sort of daring plan to survi-" I struck while his attention was no longer focused on me.

"Pocket sand!" I shouted. Quick as a snake, I threw the hoofful of sand I'd managed to acquire from somewhere straight into Superguy's face. Of course, since I'd chosen to strike when his attention was on the ground, all I managed to accomplish was getting some sand in Superguy's hair.

Superguy reached a hoof up to brush my attack off his head. "That was a truly pathetic attempt," he said. "I can't think of a way that could have possibly gone any worse than it did."

"I thought it went rather well," I countered. "I mean, I was aiming for your ear but hey, you win some, you lose some, am I right?" I checked phase one of my plan off the imaginary checklist. "I was more worried that you'd see through my ruse."

"Well I..." Superguy blinked. Judging from his expression I'd say he thought me incapable of deception. "Wait, what?"

I consulted my imaginary checklist, ah yes, there was 'explain the ruse to Superguy' right after 'phase one' and just before 'phase thirteen'. "Oh you know, the ruse where I throw sand in your hair and then hope you don't realized I've got friends swooping in to attack you from behind."

Superguy's eyes widened. He whirled around before I could blink, looking around wildly for his imaginary assailants. With my distraction in full effect, I had all the time in the world to line up the perfect attack.

My opponent's frantic searching began to slow. "I don't see any frie-" he started to turn his attention back to me, but by then it was far too late. My left hoof latched itself around his neck, closing off his windpipe while my hindlegs wrapped around his barrel. In a different setting our position could be considered intimate, as it was our position gave me the leverage required to actually punch effectively.

Oh, and punch him I did. Right in the back of the head. Blow after blow I railed onto him, firing lasers as I withdrew my hoof for another blow.

For a moment Superguy scrabbled at the hoof holding his throat, but soon enough his struggling ceased as he lost consciousness. I hit him one more time just to make sure he was out cold.

"Whew, I didn't expect that to work!" I exclaimed. Everything after phase thirteen, 'do stuff until you win', on my imaginary checklist was blank. "Now about that whole falling to my death thing..." I'd seen heroes in movies survive falls by landing on the bad guy, but I don't think that would work when falling from terminal velocity.

Maybe I could use Superguy's wings? I grabbed the two feathery appendages and roughly opened them up. As soon as they caught the wind they whipped straight up, acting as nothing more than a couple of fancy trailing things. No matter how hard I pushed, I couldn't get them to lower down back into a flying position.

I glanced at the ground. It was getting awfully close, probably less than half a random unit of measuring. Time was running out.

meanwhile, in the bedroom of an amateur author

"How the hell is he gonna survive this?"

"I could... no, that'd be too cliche."

"Maybe, I could... no, he'd be too OP if he could survive that."

"Pfft, yeah, that's not gonna happen."

"Ah, screw it. I'm just gonna let him die."

back in the story

Less than a hundred meters from the ground I felt a sudden sense of betrayal. As if some great force that had, until now, been guiding me to victory was giving up on me. I was understandably confused and a little bit angry though I had no idea why.

It was with this mixed feeling of confusion that I impacted the ground.

~~~

"Ooh, that looked like it hurt," Fphant said, approaching the meters-wide impact crater the two battling ponies had created. "Do you think they're alright?"

The sorceress shrugged. "I have no idea if my spells could keep him alive through that."

"Superguy's never actually hit the ground when he did that before," Aquapony, the only member of the Justice Ponies who wasn't a racist jerk who irrationally hates everything, said. Really, Aquapony was a nice guy, he and the Courier had had a nice conversation about flowers and the wasteland's lack thereof when the fight took to the skies.

"I can assure you that neither combatant survived that fall," a new arrival stated. Several gasps rang throughout the clearing as the assembled ponies recognized Ner'Ghalad, the very necromancer they were all there to defeat. Several vicious attacks and one hastily thrown fish courtesy of Aquapony bounced off of the magical barrier surrounding the necromancer.

Ner'Ghalad rolled his eyes at the attacks before stepping towards the crater, in the process trodding on the wriggling fish. "You monster!" Aquapony exclaimed.

"If you'll excuse me," Ner'Ghalad said once he reached the edge of the crater, "I have some business to attend to." Using his magic, the necromancer lifted the crushed remains of two ponies out of the crater.

"Where are you taking them?" the Sorceress asked.

Ner'Ghalad gave the Sorceress a "you're a moron look". "Where do you think?" he asked before pointing in the direction of his castle. "Thataway."

Author's Note:

Yes, he is dead. No, the story is not over. Like in chapters 33/34 of Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons I'm gonna pull some shenanigans to bring him back. They say mimicry is the most sincere form of flattery, right? Granted, my shenanigans are just a tiny bit more obvious, but hey, it's the thought that counts, right?

If you think the aside to my bedroom was out of the blue, I'd like to point out that I've done something like it before. And yes, I do write this in my bedroom.

If you're upset by the almost month-long wait between chapters, I blame family, laziness, and this one story here that got kinda popular. Wow, three links in one author's note, two of them to my own stories. I feel like such a sellout.

The two internet muffins from last chapter went unclaimed. I'll leave the 'contest' running until next chapter, at which point I'm telling y'all the answer.

Stay awesome. Try not to die.