The First Steps of the Rest of Your Life

by Rhino

Chapter 35: A Thump in the Night

***Sunday, Day 29, 12:02 AM***

I groggily open my eyes, only to question why I bothered considering it’s the middle of the night and there’s not much to see. I lie in my bed not moving while I puzzle out my current situation.

Wha…? Why am I awake? Did I hear something?

I perk my ears up to try and see if I hear anything, but all that greets me is the usual nighttime sounds: crickets, the rhythmic breathing of Specter against my chest, and of course, silence.

Huh… odd… I usually don’t wake up randomly like this…

I mentally shrug before closing my eyes and starting to tone down my mental activity so I can go back to sleep.

Guess it was nothi-

*thump*

My eyes shoot open as I hear a noise I know shouldn’t be heard in my home at night. Specter jolts up as well, instantly directing his head towards the door, body tensed. Alarm bells form a low buzz in my head as I get out of bed as quietly as possible so as not to alert whatever is making the noise to my presence. When Specter tries to follow me I gesture for him to stay as I make my way out into the hall.

As my eyes adjust to the gloom of the darkened house I see Hydro coming out of his room as well, the confused look on his face telling me he wasn’t the source of the noise; a fact that only heightens my worry. We meet each other’s eyes and make our way quietly downstairs where the noise had originated from. We reach the bottom of the stairs at perk our ears up to try and find the source of the noise as we quietly go around the house, Hydro checking the living room and kitchen while I check all the windows to see if they were open or broken, as well as double checking that the doors were still locked.

As I head back to the bottom of the stairs to meet up with Hydro, I see him coming back from the laundry room. I raise an eyebrow at him but he simply shakes his head. A slight shuffling noise causes the both of us to turn towards the one place we haven’t checked yet.

Atom’s room.

We both head towards the door to the guest room, not sure what to expect. As Hydro goes to grab the chain on the door to start undoing it, I tap him on the shoulder and mouth for him to do it slowly so as not to make any noise.

Although our silence soon becomes a moot point as the shuffling noises start fresh, this time louder, and punctuated at the end by another thump, followed by a low voice that definitely wasn’t Atom’s.

The voice has that tone of victory as it speaks, “…can’t believe they didn’t just convict you, they had to have a trial… at least they told me where to find you…” a chuckle follows, and not a pleasant one, “Well, it won’t matter soon, will it? Oh stop struggling. Goodbye, Mr. Vortex.”

The tone is his voice sends chills down my spine as Hydro finishes undoing the chains, locking eyes with me to see if I was thinking what he was thinking.

I was.

We bust through the door making as much noise as possible, startling what we now see to be a pegasus with a whole body cloak and hood crouched over Atom, who is lying face down with a rope tightening around his neck. The momentary distraction allows Hydro to tackle the hooded pony off of Atom, while I get the rope off Atom’s neck. As I help Atom up, an exclamation from Hydro makes me jerk my head up to see him back off from the intruder, who is now sporting knives attached to the insides of his sleeves and is swinging them to get Hydro to back off.

“Who are you?!” I demand of the hooded pony.

He turns enough in my direction for me to see a smile under his hood and answers, “Somepony you should have never seen; now you will die, the same as that pathetic excuse for a guard.”

With that statement he launches himself off his back hooves and uses his wings to propel himself towards Hydro, the nearest target, knives outstretched for a quick end. I quickly grab his hooves with magic and point them to the side, Hydro taking the opening and punching the hooded pony is his so far unseen nose. As the assassin backs off a moment a dark blur next to me tackles him, revealing itself to be Atom, probably a little sore from his near death experience because of this pony, and proceeds to grapple with the pony close range. As Hydro and I approach to subdue the intruder, he manages to push Atom off him, spin to slash a shallow cut on Atom’s chest, the continue the rotation to deliver a literally flying roundhouse kick to Atom, sending him flying into me and both of us out into the hallway, crashing through one of Hydro’s spare glass panes that was leaning against the wall in the hall.

All I see is black after being tossed into glass and smashed into a wall by the body of another pony. As I slowly beg my ears to stop ringing from the up-close sound of glass shattering and my vision to come back to me, I try to get to my hooves one leg at a time. As the muffled sounds work themselves into the telltale sounds of an ongoing scuffle, my vision clears up enough for me to find myself lying down on my side with my back against the wall and a shard of glass embedded in the floor an inch from my face.

I stare at the shard a moment while my mind catches up, it’s shape strangely fascinating for me. It looks as though it came from the corner of the pane, the end up in the air showing the still intact corner and one edge, while the other side of the shard has a chunk out of the top while below that is a steep curved line down causing the entire shard to come to a point currently sticking in the floor. I contemplate its shape that reminds me almost of a dagger, but that thought causes me to remember the knives of the assassin, and with that the rushing thoughts that we were still fighting for our lives.

The thoughts send an adrenalin surge through my body as I force myself to my hooves looking up to see Hydro dodge a knife lunge and buck the knife causing it to snap off and fly into the wall, sticking there much like the shard. This distracts the assassin long enough for me to get the idea to try and simply levitate and hold him with my magic. My eyes widen in shock though as when I try to cover him in my magical grip, it just slides off of his cloak and hood like a pony on a frozen lake. As Atom tackles the pony to grapple him on the ground again I think we’ve got him, until a groan from Atom reveals the assassin on his hind legs with a chokehold on the green-maned pegasus and his free hoof pointing the one knife he has left at Hydro.

All four of us breathe heavily, Atom with more difficulty than the rest, while we look on in the forced stalemate, even the assassin not looking quite so cocky. None of us move, the assassin’s stance telling us his intentions should we attempt it. Of course, his earlier proclamation that he was going to kill us all makes it not a matter of if, but of when, one of us shall move. As my eyes gaze around trying to find something we can use, the moon reflects off the glass shard still embedded in the floor.

I keep my magic low to keep my horn’s glow dim to avoid drawing attention to what I am doing. Slowly sensing to find the shard behind me and getting ready to act. I play it over in my head a few times to make sure there won’t be any mistakes.

When the hooded pony’s eyes flick back towards Hydro, I act. I grab the end of the shard where the corner used to be in my magic and pull it out of the floor. Without letting its momentum die, I swing it around me lying parallel to the floor and just above it. I rotate it as I bring it around, to where the curved edge was facing our attacker.

I slash it across his right hind leg’s pastern.

The combined weight of his whole body along with Atom’s put onto his now injured hind leg causes his leg to give out. He falls forward with a pained shout, his hold on Atom meaning he thrust out his other hoof to catch himself, the hoof with the knife. The still extended knife blade sinks in the floor while Atom, still in the assassin’s grip, turns his fortune around by now holding on to the attacker’s fore leg and effectively keeping him pinned from beneath.

Hydro and I use the intruder’s temporary immobilization to jump in and restrain him while letting atom out of his grip. A moment later and we have Atom holding the attacker’s hooves behind him.

All of us try and get our breathing back to normal as I talk to the attacker, “Who sent you?”

He simply looks back at me, smirking, “Heheheh, you really think you’ve won don’t you?”

Atom remarks from behind him, “Sure looks that way to me.”

“Heheh, then you might want to take off the glasses-argh!”

Atom puts him back down after pulling the assassin’s leg at an angle, “They’re shades.”

The attacker stops smiling for a moment before just smirking again, “You’re all dead ponies you know that? Every one of you, and all those you care about. You interfered with us, and we know who you are. You’re dead!”

Hydro looks at the assassin coldly, “Seems to me you’re the only one who knows we did anything, and I don’t see you escaping anytime soon.”

“Then perhaps you’re as blind as your shades wearing friend there.” He shifts slightly.

*click*

A small click from his belt makes us all look at it.

*POOF*

A cloud of smoke erupts from the belt causing us all to back off, coughing and rubbing our eyes. Atom’s grip loosens and I hear the attacker limp over to the broken window where he had entered had. I open my eyes long enough to see a dark outline looking back at us before jumping out the window and starting to fly off. Still coughing, I run to the window to see the blurry shape winging its way back towards Canterlot.

Hydro, Atom, and I make our way to the smoke-free living room to clear our lungs and eyes. As our coughing dies down, we each take a look at each other, Hydro and I settling on looking at Atom.

I grimly smile at him, “Thanks for the help Atom.”

He returns the smile, “Hey, you guys helped me first. That guy had would have had me if you hadn’t busted in.”

Hydro looks at me, “Well, I think I’ve heard enough to make my decision on this whole situation with Atom’s arrest, you Rhino?”

The assassin's threat to us and those we care about echoes in my mind as I answer, “Oh yeah, get some sleep boys. In a few hours, we’re heading to Canterlot.”

Comments

[Orion S]

SUSPENSE

[(I*R) Surge]

Assassin's these days with their utility belts.

[Navy Shadow]

I WANNA COME TO CANTERLOT WIF YOU

[darkironpony]

Darn assassain ninja ponies. Me thinks Atom may not be warmly welcomed to Canterlot. Its just a thought though.

[Desert Storm]

1271195 hey, im an assassin, and as far as i know, i have no tac.belt, anyways rhino i want to see where you take this. and at forst i saw you say assassin. i thought immedatly of my OC. hoping you had the idea of placing me into this fic, i got excited and read even faster. realising that there was no picture i realised that the assassin was most likley NOT my oc.

[Rhino]

1271636 Considering I knew nothing of your OC, yeah not likely it was you.

[Desert Storm]

really, all you gotta do is check out my page here, and you will know everything. and everything about your assassin was almost identacle to my oc, i mean come on pegasus, quick, nooses, come on rhino, what a tease man, what a tease

[Rhino]

1271766 Hmmm, tell you what, I have a crazy idea, next time you and i are on xbox, we should talk... in the mean time, I now have some ideas to evolve and pitch...

[Desert Storm]

Okay, at first you where being a tease, and now you are confusing my small freshman brain...

[Rhino]

1271798 All in good time my friend, some ways I decided to do this may make for interesting things... let's just see where this goes.

[(I*R) Surge]

1271809 I was hoping the assassin was ShadowStep.

[Desert Storm]

I told you your confusing my small freshman brain hoping you would stop, and you didn't, so please be more strait forward

[Rhino]

1271862 Don't worry your freshman brain, I am simply being vague and mysterious completely and perhaps infuriatingly on purpose. I shall contact you if we require your services.

[Desert Storm]

Meh, not to infuriated, mostly just confused. And okay to the contacting thing, so long as it is most likely a PM those attract my attention the most.

[Atomic Vortex]

HOLY DQJABENZDVJLFBN QJLABNZ JLXBN NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE!!!dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_Redheart_gasp.png dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_Redheart_gasp.png dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_Redheart_gasp.png

[Hydro]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnndddddddddddd.......................................

[Hydro]

THIRD PAGE OF COMMENTS!!!!!!!!!!!!