Appledashery

by Just Essay

I Once Caught a Lancie "THIS" Big!

"Okay, Lancie..." Rainbow whispered as she shuffled down the long, stone corridor, leading the infiltration. "...game plan time."

"What, now?" Lancie blinked.

"Pffft... you wanna wait until after the credits or what?"

"Eh..." Lancie shrugged, leaning back on her flank. "I figured we'd just distract the bad guys... go after the boss... and—y'know..." He shrugged. "Throw stuff at him."

"Throw stuff at him..."

"Right! Awesome, isn't it?"

"Ahem... sure. But..." Rainbow narrowed her eyes on him. "About the shards."

"They're awesome too."

"No doubt. When we get close enough to them... like..." She shrugged. "What do we do, exactly?"

"Well, presumably, direct contact with them would land us the smoking gun."

"But I tried to make that happen last time," Rainbow grumbled, trudging around the corner with Romulus and Sunset Shimmer in tow. "I bounced off like a blue ferret, remember?"

"Well, Sparky, that's only because you let your mane get so scruffy."

"Lancie," the pegasus hissed. "For real. What's with the shield on Aatxe's lame 'Flame Staff?'"

"It's my guess that he's used the chaos power within the shards to summon a protective energy field around it."

"He can do that?"

"Evidently."

"But... I figured he had to... I dunno..." Rainbow shrugged in mid-trot. "Channel it through you or something."

"That's how it's worked for everybody's favorite petite pegasus, Sparky, but not for Top Dog... not for Photo Finish... not for the Sons of Shindig... and not for Betty Miss Baconhead back there."

"I heard that," Sunset grumbled.

"Okay." Rainbow nodded. "Good point."

"If I were to venture to guess..." Lancie examined his granite talons. "Aatxe has so much of his ego riding on this Flame Staff thingy. Perhaps if he was to lose his focus, then the beam would dissipate. You could smash it apart. I could reconnect with my lesser selves. Something something something bad guys..." He grinned wide. "Profit!"

"Works for me," Rainbow said, wincing slightly. "Well... most of it."

"I'm not the one writing it, sweetcheeks."

"I'm hoping that our double distraction is enough to make the little peewee lose his focus."

"Oh yeah!" Lancie formed fists and boxed the stuffy castle air. "The good one-two squirrel-and-thug combination! It always leaves them reeling!"

"Of course, Blood Fire is going to be the biggest obstacle," Rainbow muttered. "We can't even get to the Flame Staff—shield or no shield—if that punk is in the way."

"Shhhhh!" Romulus hissed.

Rainbow scuffled to a stop, looking over her shoulder. "What? It's a solid observation—"

"No! Idiots!" Romulus rushed forward and shoved Rainbow and Lancie to the cold stone floor. "Keep your heads down!"

"Gah! Dude! What gives—"

Romulus pointed silently to the right.

Rainbow looked to see that a low-arched grate had formed in the wall, complete with rusted iron bars. Bright amber firelight flickered directly through the spaces, accompanied with grunting breaths, blazing heat, and the pungent scent of sulfur.

Curious, Rainbow Dash crawled on her belly. Romulus joined her, and soon the two were gazing out onto a wide-open courtyard full of dragon broodlings. The place was large, open, and occupied the bulk of the castle's area. What's more, it was absolutely crawling with dozens upon dozens of Aatxe's older brothers. The draconian figures slithered around, breathing fire to stoke the flames while wrestling with each other for tender morsels of hydra meat. Piles of bones littered the corner, belonging to all manner of crazy wasteland beast. In the midst of their roughhousing, a few dragons body-slammed each other into the courtyard's surface, sending chunks of brick and mortar flying everywhere amidst a cavalcade of wild laughter.

"Is... is that all of them?" Sunset whispered from behind.

"Hrmmm..." Romulus' eye narrowed. "Seems to be what the scaly bastards do to 'retire' at night. I'm betting this is most of them. Only a few stragglers are on patrol."

"Not like these guys are suspecting anything," Rainbow said.

"And let's hope it continues to be that way." Romulus gestured. "Come." He scurried ahead. "We should go back down a few more levels to set up the transportation circle."

"Right," Sunset said, nodding.

"If we materialize our allies far enough away, we can set up a proper ambush. Maybe climb up to the top levels and attack the broodlings while they're in the courtyard."

"Like shooting fish in a barrel!" Sunset said.

"Exactly."

"Ugh..." Lancie groaned, pulling at his stone features as the group descended a staircase. "I loathe barrels."

"Really?" Rainbow breathed. "Well, I hate fish."

"See? I knew we made such goor friends for a reason, Sparky."

Comments

[RoboRed]

"See? I knew we made such goor friends for a reason, Sparky."

typo

[MidnightReflection]

"Eh..." Lancie shrugged, leaning back on her flank. "I figured we'd just distract the bad guys... go after the boss... and—y'know..." He shrugged. "Throw stuff at him."

"Throw stuff at him..."

"Right! Awesome, isn't it?"

Uh, yeah. Does anybody really like those kind of boss fights? Slow and drawn-out; minuscule amounts of damage every 30 seconds... ugh.

[Sharp Quill]

the pungent scent of methane

Gotta nitpick here. Methane is odorless. The reason you think it isn't is because an odorant is mixed in so that you know when you have a gas leak, so you don't do something like turn on the stove and cause a big explosion.

[Sam the Anti-Ninja]

6507523 Isn't that propane?

[Fishberry]

6507523
Acrid stench of smouldering dragon snot.

[Sharp Quill]

6507574 Don't know about propane, but what I said about methane is correct. See this wikipedia entry.

[Phoenix Kitten]

6507505 Still better than a boss with backup.
A concept I despise with every fiber of my being.
It's fine in a turn based RPG, cause the backup is usually there to add a mechanic to the boss that makes it interesting, and in Tactics games it's fine because the bosses would be pretty boring if you just piled all your units on the boss cause they're the only enemy unit on the field, but in anything that happens realtime where they serve as a distraction at worst...*grumbles*
If the boss isn't strong enough to warrant a solid threat on it's own, it's not a boss. It's a mini boss at best.

I'd rather spend the 2-6 minutes it takes to beat a boss in Binding of Isaac with the weakest tears and no power ups, than be a super powerful demi-god who could actually have a fairly interesting and even fight with the final boss of a game, if it weren't for the mass amounts of mooks that I can kill in one hit who keep knocking me out of a combo cause I'm trying to focus on the guy with the health bar on steriods!

tl;dr: I like bosses to be able to be a interesting and challenging without needing to rely on an endless parade of lesser enemies to limit my damage output, or D.O as I like to call it.

[Aatxe360]

6507750

Hopefully with as small as I am, I can fight longer. Because any way you put it, I might be all mini-boss.

[Leftover of Saikano]

The castle is a frat house.

[Bulbajer]

Let's fly to the castle!

[zaponator]

Fish don't come in barrels...

[BabySkittleMonster]

It always makes me laugh reading this because I have the most irritating habit of reading the dialogue aloud. Just so you know, I am appalling at accents. So here I am trying to alternate between Dashie's cracking voice and Lancie's roller coaster of intonation, then throwing in Russian and French and all manners of other accents. Then I realise I still sound like me, only with varying levels of pitch. That leads to me just staring blankly at the screen for a few minutes. Needless to say, the majority of my family and friends are very concerned by this point.

[LucyHorseThing]

"Ugh..." Lancie groaned, pulling at his stone features as the group descended a staircase. "I loathe barrels."

s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/85/3b/5f/853b5f9866d2ca98a6476c844a798929.jpg

[Dash32]

I only have one question. WHAT THE FLYING SHIT IS A BLUE FERRET?!

[Seraphimus]

6945016 ferret50.com/graphics/photos/murry_ferret.jpg