Mortal Coil

by Reeve

LI - ...Old Rivals

“Um…” was all I managed before I felt two forces thrusting me out of the way.

I was sent slowly drifting through the air, landing several metres out of harm’s way as both mares charged towards one another and clashed. Twilight swung her sceptre, releasing a wave of magical energy slicing vertically through the air towards Pinkie Pie, who simply deflected it with one dagger before rushing forward to slash at Twilight with the other. Twilight teleported in a flash of light, reappearing a short distance from myself, Pinkie Pie quickly locating her and speeding in for the offensive.

“Wait!” I began, only to have my voice silenced as a large bubble appeared around me and I was sent rolling away.

After spinning around a few times and feeling my most recent meal rising, I finally managed to pop the bubble with a sharp jab from my horn. I smacked into the ground, seeing stars for a brief second before my vision cleared and I saw my two friends still duelling furiously. Pinkie was darting all around Twilight, attempting to poke her at every opening. Sometimes she ran around, sometimes she rolled or flipped or cartwheeled, sometimes she simply blinked out of existence and appeared behind Twilight.

Twilight however was managing to keep up with her, keeping her constantly on the move by sending a multitude of spells in every direction as well as sweeping out with her sceptre any time Pinkie tried to take her by surprise. I pulled myself up just as Twilight went on the offensive, successfully knocking Pinkie off balance after one of her errant strikes hit a force field Twilight projected. As soon as she stumbled, Twilight pushed her advantage and began showering Pinkie with magic missiles, Pinkie began backing up to avoid them, her body twisting and contorting to dodge those that got to close.

While she was busy trying to avoid the missiles, Twilight pointed her sceptre at the air just behind Pinkie and opened a singularity like the one she had used against Blueblood. Unlike Blueblood however, as Pinkie got drawn into it, she simply drove one of her hooves into it like she was taking hold of something inside and using it to spin herself around in the air before releasing her grip and flying straight for Twilight. Before her kick could connect with Twilight’s face, there was a burst of smoke which momentarily obscured her.

When the smoke faded there were five identical copies of Twilight all standing in a row, Pinkie had already been speeding towards the middle one when Twilight cast the spell, so she was too late to stop her hoof kicking right through its head. The illusion burst into a cloud of smoke which seemed to latch on to Pinkie, swirling around her until she was completely obscured from my sight. While the smoke screen might have blinded a normal pony, Pinkie Pie was no such thing and she continued to fight the clones regardless. I could see her hooves stretching out of the cloud to grab the clones one at a time and drag them in with her.

There was a lot of kicking and yelling, flashes of limbs and faces momentarily appearing before getting pulled back into the fray. The fight was so cartoony I half expected large speech bubbles with the words ‘bam’ and ‘pow’ to appear. It was clear Pinkie was winning, because with each clone she defeated the smoke cloud only grew larger until she was lost somewhere inside a massive ball of churning grey smoke.

“Huh, not here!” Pinkie uttered from within the cloud after all the fighting ceased, her voice sounded miles off.

The real Twilight manifested outside the smoke cloud and lowered her horn to it and pouring magic into the cloud causing it to solidify. Twilight let out a long breath as she started to back up from the boulder she had encased Pinkie inside; I just looked on, utterly bewildered by what had just happened. I opened my mouth to demand to know what was going on, when a loud crack echoed across the hill. Twilight’s head snapped back to the boulder in time to see it explode into dust, Pinkie standing in the centre, brushing herself down and looking no worse for wear.

“Getting tired already Twilight?” she mocked at her retreating foe with a wide grin. “I was just getting warmed up.”

Spinning both her daggers in her hooves, Pinkie lowered herself to the ground and sprinted at Twilight. Twilight also lowered her head, but rather than move from her spot, she began charging up a spell in her horn. Pinkie was closing the gap extremely fast, but the light in Twilight’s horn was also building up to extreme levels in just as little time. Pinkie pounced once she was mere metres from Twilight, her daggers pulled far back, ready to slice clean through Twilight… that was when she let her spell go.

Twilight blasted a beam of concentrated energy that ripped right through the grasslands, it had to have been several metres in diameter, so there was no way Pinkie was anything but caught in the middle of it. I couldn’t see exactly how far it travelled, but I was immensely glad the fields we were in appeared deserted. I had shielded my own eyes from the intense light of the beam, but after it was cast it faded quickly and I was able to open my eyes and see Twilight standing on her on at the end of a long, narrow scorch in the earth.

Twilight’s eyes were darting around; clearly she didn’t think Pinkie’s complete absence was a sign of her victory. I too looked around, and ended up finding her first as she popped back into existence directly behind Twilight; lazily spinning her dagger around in her hooves, making no attempt to attack her while her back was turned.

“Now really Twilight,” she began in a condescending voice. “Haven’t you learned yet that magic isn’t very effective against me?”

Twilight hadn’t turned as soon as she heard Pinkie, she had begun to raise her sceptre, but now she lowering it again as she growled to herself. Then, out of nowhere, Twilight spun around and punched Pinkie squarely in the face, that actually managed to take her by surprise. She stumbled back, clutching her nose which I imagined might still be sore after the last injury it suffered back at Brine, and stared at Twilight with a mixture of shock and admiration.

“I normally hate to get my hooves dirty,” Twilight spat as she rubbed her now sore hoof. “But for you I make an exception.”

“Aw, I’m so glad you treat me like I’m special to you,” Pinkie cooed, sounding genuine. “I really should repay the gesture and stop holding back.”

Pinkie began giggling as Twilight lashed out at her, but as her hoof connected for a second time, it past right through Pinkie as if her body turned to liquid. Twilight’s hoof swept a hole right through Pinkie’s neck, after that her whole body began to evaporate around the ‘injury’. Even as she disappeared however, her laughter continued to echo around the hill where we stood. I had stood by and watched the whole thing, too confused and shocked to do anything, but after what happened next it became even harder to bring myself to do anything other than stare.

As I continued to watch, Twilight now looking around wildly, readying her sceptre as she tried to figure out where the next attack would come from, the air began rippling before me. As I watched, the entire sky began to darken, slowly large patches began turning inky purple which grew and grew, until the entire sky was a dizzying miasma of purple and blue blotches and waves. Next the earth began to split apart beneath my hooves; I stumbled as the patch of grass I was standing on ripped itself from the ground and began floating up.

All around me the hillside had split apart and been reduced to floating platforms that were now drifting lazily across the bizarre nebulae. I held on for dear life as my platform began to turn upside down, but for some reason I remained firmly affixed to it, even my mane continued to sit properly as if gravity was now exclusive to my one floating island. I looked all around me and saw that all the platforms were either sinking or rising, rotating or outright spinning. I also saw Twilight leaping from platform to platform as they began to break anyway beneath her.

“Come out Pinkie Pie!” Twilight ordered, firing spells of unknown properties into the abyss. “Stop hiding behind your illusions and face me!”

“Here I am!” Pinkie yelled as she flew through the air, her daggers now spinning around her without the aid of her hooves.

Twilight twisted back to avoid the giggling harlequin and her shield of blades, after leaping to another platform she looked around to see where Pinkie had flown off to.

“Now I’m here!” Pinkie exclaimed, appearing behind Twilight and shredding her current platform to lumps of dirt and grass cuttings.

Twilight plummeted through the void before flashing out of existence and appearing next to me on my own platform.

“You can’t keep using the same tricks on me Pinkie Pie!” she declared. “Aren’t you the one who abhors unoriginality?”

Pinkie appeared before us, hovering in the air, both her rondel dagger floating over her shoulder, their tips aimed at Twilight.

“Well jeez Twilight,” she gave off with a disappointed frown. “Way to kill the mood, here I am using a lot of power so we can have a fun fight together, and you throw that at me? Not cool Twilight, not cool at all.”

Twilight launched her sceptre like a javelin at Pinkie who simply burst into confetti when it pierced her. As soon as she was gone, both daggers fired at Twilight just as her sceptre had. She teleported away, leaving me jump to a different platform so I wasn’t caught in the crossfire. As I latched on with my hooves and began scrabbling to pull myself up, I saw Twilight reappear on a platform just in time to catch her flying sceptre which had swung around the air like a boomerang in her absence. Pinkie appeared on the platform I was trying to pull myself onto, and reached down to offer me a hoof up.

I gratefully accepted, and soon I was standing on that same platform as Pinkie Pie while Twilight watched us from a different one.

“Sorry you had to get dragged into all this,” Pinkie said to me, sounding sincere enough.

“Don’t listen to her Rarity!” Twilight called over to me. “You can’t trust a word she says!”

“Hey, I don’t say mean things about you to your friends!” Pinkie snapped back, suddenly serious for a brief moment.

Pinkie vanished quickly, and Twilight began charging up a spell in her horn. When she released it, a wave erupted from the tip of her horn, expanding and washing over the entire area. It passed over me and I shone with a blue aura the same colour as my own magic, when it passed over a seemingly empty patch of space, it revealed a pony shaped blob of frantic purple magic.

The blob looked itself up and down before Pinkie Pie manifested around it, giving a little pout.

“Well that’s no fun,” she moped. “I can’t even turn invisible around you without you spoiling my fun.”

Then there was a soft pop, and the migraine inducing sky was filled with thousands of Pinkie Pies, all pouting down at Twilight, but all glowing with the same purple energy.

“But wait!” all the Pinkie Pies chorused, the movements of their bodies and mouths perfectly synched. “There’s nothing to be upset about, after all, the best part about being me is there’s lots of me!”

With that, all the thousands of Pinkie Pies began giggling and wiggling their rumps as they all floated randomly around in the wide open space. I was suddenly starting to feel very sick, first the purple sky and now a horde of dancing Pinkie Pie copies, my mind felt like it was going to rip itself apart. While Twilight busied herself, hopping from platform to platform, zapping all the laughing harlequins out of existence, I allowed my trembling legs a break and lay down on the platform. I reached up rubbed my aching eyes, I wanted to cry, they were hurting so badly.

As I lay there, the noise just refused to cease, even for the shortest of moments. My head was filled with the sounds of Pinkie’s laughter and Twilight’s magic; I just wanted it to stop. I didn’t know I’d started screaming in agony and frustration until all the laughter died away and Twilight’s spells came to an abrupt halt.

“I can’t take it anymore!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

My eyes snapped open just in time to see the chaotic world around me shatter like glass, the shards falling away to reveal the grassy plains and the dusk sky just as they had been before all the insanity started. Pinkie and Twilight both stood some ways off from me, Pinkie had been holding her dagger as if preparing to strike, but now they hung limply in her hooves. Twilight was pointing her sceptre at Pinkie, the orb had been glowing brightly with a spell she had been about to fire, but now the light was fading away.

“Just… stop!” I exclaimed, forcing myself to stand back up on my weak legs. “I don’t know what is going on here, or why you two are fighting, but no more! I’m putting an end to it right this second!”

With my declaration at an end, I wobbled before falling back to the ground. Twilight teleported in a flash and Pinkie simply blinked over, both caught me from either side before I hit the ground and gently lowered me.

“I’m so sorry Rarity,” Pinkie said, her eyes brimming with tears.

“I’m sorry too,” Twilight concurred. “I got carried away when I should have been helping you. But now you know what I mean, you cannot trust Pinkie Pie.”

“Hey!” Pinkie exclaimed, and I screwed up my face as I knew the fight was about to start all over again. “Don’t try to turn her against me!”

“You’re dangerous!” Twilight retorted. “Using that kind of magic on me is one thing, but if you really cared about her you wouldn’t have put her mind at risk like that!”

“I wasn’t thinking straight,” Pinkie admitted. “But I can’t believe you’re the friend she was talking about, I have no idea what she sees in a buzz kill like you!”

“Please, no more,” I moaned, at which point they both immediately shut up. “You are both my friends. I don’t know what you have against each other, but we have shared enemies, you shouldn’t be fighting each other.”

I waved them both off as I sat myself more comfortably on to the grass. As I looked back at them, they moved to stand in front of me while still leaving some distance between each other.

“Now, can somepony please explain what is going on here?” I requested in a tired voice.

“I think I shall,” Twilight said quickly. “If Pinkie tries to we’ll be here all night while she tells us about her last trip to the dentist.”

Pinkie opened her mouth as if to argue, but then shut it suddenly when she realised it was probably true.

“Okay Rarity, I don’t know how you know Pinkie Pie,” Twilight continued calmly. “But you say she’s your friend and I trust you, so I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt here. How much do you know about Pinkie exactly? More specifically, what do you know of her powers?”

“Well… I did try asking her about it once,” I admitted curiously as I noticed Pinkie shifting uncomfortably. “Maybe a few times, but she always avoided it.”

“Do you want to tell her or shall I?” Twilight asked Pinkie, her voice noticeably colder. “You say you’re her friend, yet you hid this from her.”

“Just get on with it,” Pinkie muttered. “We both know you like the sound of your own voice.”

“The reason Pinkie is able to do unusual things…” Twilight went on, ignoring the insult. “Such as the illusionary world you just saw, is because she can invoke the powers of chaos. Pinkie Pie is a follower of Discord, the spirit of chaos.”

“Ah…” I uttered weakly.

That made way too much sense; really I was shocked at how I hadn’t figured it out before. Her ability to appear in impossible places or seemingly teleporting, everything she did just screamed reality manipulation, and there was only one cause for that, chaos magic. Everypony had heard the stories of Discord, how he had used his incredible powers to torment the lives of all ponies and create suffering wherever he went. Some stories told of how Discord ruled over Equestria for many years before he was defeated by Princess Celestia, others said it was Celestia along with the other alicorns that made up the Six who defeated him. One thing all the stories had in common, was that they ended with Discord being locked away in Tartarus for his many crimes, and he remained there to this day.

“I see,” I finished pathetically, unable to quite comprehend the implications of this. “Is this true Pinkie?”

“I… I can’t argue with it,” she replied wearily before turning to Twilight. “There, you’ve just lost me a friend, are you happy?”

“Lost?” I repeated looking up in surprise. “What makes you think I’ll stop being your friend over this?”

“You… you won’t?” Pinkie asked, hope renewed in her voice.

“Pinkie Pie, I don’t care what you do or who you worship,” I told her. “I’m not going to stop being your friend over something like that.”

“Oh, thank you Rarity!” Pinkie exclaimed, rushing forward and pulling me into a bone crushing hug before turning and sticking her tongue out at Twilight. “I guess you couldn’t turn her away from me after all.”

“I’m not trying to turn Rarity away from anypony,” Twilight responded in an exasperated voice. “I just thought she deserved to know the truth if she was going to be your friend, I don’t mind if she chooses to remain as such.”

“Thank you,” I told Twilight while returning Pinkie’s hug. “So is that it? You don’t like each other because Pinkie chooses to worship Discord?”

“Well… we have a long history together,” Twilight admitted, biting her lip. “Believe me when I say we have plenty of reason not to get along.”

“Right, well I’m not going to pretend I understand your connection,” I began as I stood up once more. “But I meant what I said; we have common enemies, so you two need to put aside your differences for a while.”

“I’m more than happy to do that!” Pinkie declared, letting go of me and turning to Twilight. “What do you say my old frienemy? Shake hooves and join forces?”

Twilight hesitated as Pinkie raised her hoof.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Twilight warned, looking distrustfully at Pinkie Pie. “I trust Rarity, but I’d still like to know more about what she means by ‘common enemies’ before I go shaking your hoof… knowing you, I’d probably get an electric shock.”

“That was one time!” Pinkie stated with a roll of her eyes. “You gotta learn to let these things go Twilight. Besides, we’ve teamed up in the past when things were at their most dire. Like, do you remember that time we had to work together to escape that dragon?”

“Hmm, let me think,” Twilight began in a clearly sarcastic tone. “Would you be talking about Sunnulth by any chance? The most ancient of dragons who went to sleep over ten thousand years ago, and vowed only to wake when the end of all time came?”

“That’s the one!” Pinkie declared happily.

“The one you woke up, because you wanted to see the look on his face?!” Twilight finished angrily.

“We’ve had some good times together,” Pinkie said in a reminiscent tone.

“He set fire to my mane!” Twilight exclaimed. “Yours too if I recall.”

“Good times…” Pinkie repeated in a blissful tone, clearly ignoring Twilight’s remarks.

“Wow, you weren’t kidding,” I muttered as I watched the pair of them. “You two really do have a long history.”

“You know what? Fine!” Twilight declared, reaching out and shaking Pinkie’s hoof. “Let’s team up… not because I trust you, but because I know somepony will get hurt if I’m not there to clean up after you.”

“Admit it Twilight,” Pinkie replied with a knowing grin. “You just can’t stay mad at me, that’s the real reason.”

“Well if this isn’t the weirdest thing I’ve been a part of…” I mumbled under my breath before coughing to get their attention. “Alright, now that we’re all on the same team… it’s time to discuss what we know of our enemies.”

Comments

[ErisVenatori]

Guhbwawhaa...???

What just happened? Seriously what just happened?!...Well it is those two, should've expected that really...

[Reeve]

6668312 The problem with writing fight scenes from the first person perspective... of a character that isn't involved in the fight

[ididntthinkidlikethis]

My shipping goggles seem to be reading trace levels of PinkLight in this story... but maybe they're wrong.