Wounds and Weapons

by Zytharros

What Have We Done?

What Have We Done?

We spent the next few days trying to determine who would be the most likely candidates for the remaining two positions in the Harmony Continuum. As we talked, my thoughts rolled around to the one pony I knew who was ridiculous enough and yet level-headed enough to fit the role of Cheer. She always seemed to be in the thick of parties, able to set up a DJ booth in a few minutes and have a party rockin’ by the time the sun went down that evening after arriving for dinner. She was always nodding her head to whatever tunes played in her MP3 player. Her personality was dynamic yet cool and calm, but always ready to let loose at the slightest mention of a breath of the word ‘party’. She had hair that seemed to be a deeper variation on Canuck Chuck’s… in fact, if I didn’t know any better, I’d have to say they were siblings. Her coat had the palest of yellow you could possibly put on a pony without being stark, snowy white. Her eyes were piercing red, and her cutie mark was two joined eighth-notes…

“Hey, what about Vinyl Scratch?” I suddenly blurted.

Pinkie looked at me like a pony caught in a search light. “What about her, Derpy?”

“Look at the stuff needed for Cheer,” I said. “Think about Vinyl’s personality.”

Pinkie Pie’s eyes registered thought for only the slightest fraction of a second before she chuckled and facehoofed.

“Silly me!” she said jovially. “Why didn’t I think of her? I’m such a ditzy-pants! Hey, I know where she lives, too!”

“You do?” Applejack asked.

Pinkie nodded. She stuck her hoof in her mane and began swishing around. “Hmm… that’s weird… my renters are usually in this location…”

Completely confused, Rainbow Dash said, “Okay, you have some pretty weird stuff in your hair. How can you have ponies renting living space in there, too?”

“Silly Dashie,” she said, smiling. “I’m Pinkie Pie!”

The rainbow-coifed pony groaned in exasperation. There was no arguing with Pinkie-logic… or lack thereof… ever. After a few minutes, she pulled her hoof out of her mane.

“Looks like one of you is going to have to go and find her in Pinkieville,” she said with the largest grin ever on her face. “Who wants to come into my hair!?” She hopped around in excitement.

Everyone looked at each other with nervous looks on their faces. When Rainbow Dash and I looked at each other, we grew serious and nodded. This was bigger than anypony here, and somebody needed to step to the plate.

“Derpy and I’ll go,” Dash said. “It can’t be any more random in there than it is out here.”

“Then I’ll come, too,” Scootaloo said, trying to stifle tears. “If I can’t be a Guardian, I’ll sure as hell help one out!”

Cheerilee looked at Scootaloo sternly, causing the little filly to shrink back. “Razortongue may have allowed you to use that kind of language, but I will not have those words spoken in my house!”

The ochre filly shrunk back. “Sorry, ma’am…” She slinked over to join us.

Razortongue stepped up as well. “Boomer and I’d like to help, too.”

“Now, when I lay in front of you, just step on my mane!” the party princess proffered. “It’ll do the rest! You’ll shrink to the size of an itty bitty muffin crumb and be able to see the city inside my head! You’ll have so much fun!!”
With that, Pinkie smiled as she lay down in front of us and literally slapped her face on the dirt.

“Hmm fmmm!” she exclaimed, giggling excitedly.

Without hesitation, Razoretongue and Boomdrop marched into her mane like two well-practiced army vets. They disappeared in a cloud of confetti. However, Rainbow, Scoots and I looked at each other, lacking the same amount of confidence. The lightning-flanked pegasus swallowed and set her hoof on Pinkie’s mane. In a similar poof, Rainbow was suddenly absent. Scootaloo shrunk back and bumped into me.

“It’ll be okay, Scoots,” I said, gently giving her a couple shoves forward.

She saw my smile and chuckled.

She happily observed, “You always were good for a smile, Derpy.”

I warmed up a little inside… even if I was about as nervous as she was. A coupe seconds and a poof of confetti later and I was the one stepping onto Pinkie’s mane.

I still couldn’t believe we were doing this.

I’ll admit, stepping onto Pinkie’s mane and shrinking to half the size of a muffin crumb was the weirdest experience I had ever had in my entire life. It felt like I was being swallowed by a giant pink monster smelling of candy and sweets, then slowly that monster formulated itself into thousands upon thousands of twisting, winding, corkscrewing caves, houses, tunnels, buildings, cotton candy clouds, fields… she literally had a whole world in her mane.

I walked forward slowly in awe, mouth agape. I had forgotten Rainbow and Scootaloo had entered ahead of me, so I ran into them. There were grunts all around.

“Derpy, watch where you’re going!” Rainbow snapped, looking back.

Scootaloo also glared at me angrily. I stepped back a little bit.

“Sorry…” I mumbled. “This place is just so weird.”

Scootaloo looked up at her idol. “I know. It’s like all that crazy stuff from a year ago’s come back and is now in Pinkie’s hair.”

Rainbow gulped. “She always liked the raining cotton candy clouds. They’re just creepy to me.”

The three of us gingerly walked around, exploring the wisps, whiffs and whirls of Pinkie Pie’s hair. We passed by several ponies, pegasi, and unicorns, each a little off in their ways. It was like this place held every single eccentricity of Equestria, compressed into a space roughly the size of a watermelon and an amount of ponies less than what lived in Ponyville.
For example, one was a pony with a screw and a nut for a cutie mark. She was simply flying in circles, mumbling about random topics. Another was a virtual identical copy of Apple Bloom, dressed in a black biker outfit with sunglasses and smoking something from a blue pipe. She was painting a monolith word of indiscernible origin. One was a pegasus colt, a copy of Scootaloo except entirely blue. He held a bow and arrow and fired random shots at targets as he flew. We also passed by Berry Punch, stone-drunk with a human from a different world. The human was a pale brunette with green eyes. She wore a white shirt, a purple vest, and blue jean-shorts. Her boots clicked as she swung her legs beneath the bar stool, occasionally connecting with the bar underneath. She was just as belligerent and drunk as Berry.

It was then we passed by a sign calling this town Pinkieville, and claiming to be “the nexus of all dimensions”. We stopped cold, confused looks slapping us all in the face.

“So… we now know how Pinkie breaks that fourth wall Crystal Fist mentioned…” Rainbow said. “Who knew she had a portal to every single world in existence in her mane?”

“It’s not a fuckin’ big deal,” Razortongue said. “My dad was born here. We visit relatives here all the damn time.”

Rainbow grew cross. “What did you just say? Huh!?”

The red pony stared flat at her. “What? I said nothing out of the fuckin’ ordinary.”

“It’s just how she speaks, Rainbow Dash,” Scootaloo said. “It’s not that fuckin’ bad.”

Rainbow glared at the little filly. “I don’t know about her, but I’m not going to be responsible for your language again. I remember what happened last time, and I won’t be going through that again! You stop swearing… right now!”

“Fuckin’ killjoy…” Razor said, chuckling. Scootaloo, caught in the middle of a dishonestly-sad expression, uncontrollably chuckled with her.

“Alright, that’s it!” Dash furiously exclaimed, leaping at the red filly.

A couple seconds later, there was a two-way brawl in the street. Scootaloo was cheering both parties on, caught up in the adrenaline of the moment. Boomdrop was just shaking her head. I was desperately trying to get them to stop. “Come on, you guys! Stop it! Everyone’s looking at us! Please stop…” that kind of thing. A few minutes of this went on before Boomdrop calmly stepped between them, effortlessly separated their vicious entanglement with a couple picks on specific body points and applied a wrestler’s suplex to them both in turn. Her mission completed, she stepped back as calm as she had stepped into the fray. Her mental stability always astonished me. Nothing ever seemed to shake her.

“That’s enough, you two,” she said.

Scootaloo’s jaw hit the floor. Boomdrop looked at the filly that shrunk back in terror as their eyes connected. Something about the look visibly frightened the school-pony.

In the background, Razortongue stood up and twisted her neck, popping it in a couple places. She seemed to simply let it go. I wondered if Boomdrop had done that to her before. Rainbow Dash was still lying down, visibly stunned at her sudden reorientation.

“Long history with violence, kid,” she said flatly. “Not one I’m going to recall to you, though. It would make you toss your lunch… if I were just to give you the things I did before your age. Let’s just say if I wanted anyone in this party dead I would’ve done it by now, and nopony would know it was me.”

The orange school-filly shivered, starting to tear up. How she who was once referred to as 'Purple Ghost’ so casually spoke of death unnerved me as much as it seemed to discomfort Scootaloo.

The daredevil squeaked, “Y-you won’t… h-h-hurt me… will you?”

Boomdrop laughed. “Not on your life. I like you, kid.” She spread a wing. “Want a hug?”

Scootaloo looked at me. I guess she wanted some kind of comfort, so I nodded, indicating her safety. She gingerly walked up to the dangerous pega-zebra and let herself be wrapped in the wings of a killer. Soon she found no threats in the warmth of another’s embrace as her least-favourite and most-intimidating traveling partner wrapped her up in her wings. She slowly relaxed and smiled, finally chucking in relief as the one she had feared so greatly now became one of her greatest allies. This was so plain to see in her face it practically glowed!

So we had resolved yet another minor spat. Shortly after Rainbow Dash had recovered from her stunned state, we resumed her search for… who were we looking for? I asked an audience member.

“Vinyl Scratch…” he/she said. “How’d you forget that, anyway?”

Oh yeah, Vinyl Scratch. I quickly shrugged a reply, remembering I wasn’t supposed to really be breaking this plushy fourth-wall stuff anyway. That was Pinkie Pie’s job. It’s the first time I’ve felt it, though. Kinda soft to be unbreakable material, really… I mean, I bet even I could…

A random crowd in some field somewhere suddenly shouted, “Get on with it!!”

We resumed our search for Vinyl, once again wavering through blocks of exceptionally eccentric, eclectic, and effervescent citizens. Eventually, we came to a corner of town that was very different. It was… darker, less cotton candy pink, and more… I guess rose-pink… a deeper pink, anyway. It was hard to imagine a mare as cheerful as Pinkie having a dark side, but Rainbow Dash had apparently seen it… and it wasn’t pretty, bordering on the sadistic.

Soon, however, we heard some familiar music pulsating from a club nearby. We knew there was only one pony with that kind of music, though there had been a lot of imitators since her first performance. She had been the sole survivor in the Dubstep Wars techno-mixing tournament of last summer, and to our surprise she was enormously unknown in Pinkieville, though she apparently lived there. That left a question on my mind…

“How long ago did she move here?” I thought… apparently out loud.

“She must’ve just fuckin’ moved,” Razortongue said. “Usually she makes a fuckin’ friend instantly. She made friends with that bitch Octavia when she first moved to Ponyville, like, fuckin’ overnight.”

Boomdrop got a sly smirk on her face. “Kinda makes ya wonder what she did, eh, Razor?”

“Maybe she…” Razor began, leaning into Boomdrop’s ear to whisper the rest. I provided a whistling cover for their secret conversation.

Myself, the red paint, pega-zebra, and pan-coloured pegasus all got a good chuckle at what they said. The joke went over the youngest filly’s head. Desperate to belong, she asked a question that silenced all of us.

“What do you mean, Boomdrop? Razor? What did you say?” she asked.

The four adults among us, me included, just chuckled at the question and walked on. Obviously Scootaloo wasn’t impressed, so she began pestering Rainbow Dash about what we were talking about.

Eventually, the Sonic Rainboom maker got irritated enough that she shouted at the filly, “Look, you’re just gonna have to wait ‘til you get older, okay, Scoots?”

“But I wanna know now!” she demanded. “Why the fuck do I have to be left out because of my age?”

Rainbow Dash looked about to snap, but quickly she took a deep breath and tried cooling off. We could see the stress of having to deal with Scootaloo was getting to her.

“Dash, go fly for a bit,” Boomdrop said. “I’ll take care of her.”

“Thank you, Boomdrop!” Dash said. She screamed off into the sky at a pace where she almost performed a Sonic Rainboom on takeoff. Scootaloo groaned and stomped.

“Oh, I see! Running away, are we? You yellow bastard!” she screamed.

Boomdrop glared at the little filly. “Now, that’s not nice.”

Razortongue frowned in kind. “I never call anyone a yellow bastard. Fuckin’ asshole? Yes… but never a yellow bastard.”

Scootaloo groaned. “Just tell me what you were saying and I promise I won’t ever use it again!”

Boomdrop looked helplessly at her marefriend and me. I just shrugged, unsure of what to do. Razortongue groaned.

“Geez, kid, you really are a fuckin’ piece of work. If she really wants to know that fuckin’ badly…” the red-and-white Earth paint said.

Boomdrop’s head dropped. “Okay, kid, but remember – you asked for it.”

She leaned into Scootaloo’s ear and whispered the same thing she said to Razortongue. The filly’s mouth dropped in shock.

“Okay, now I absolutely have to know what this ‘coitus’ thing is…” she said, thoughtfully putting a hoof to her chin. “Cutie Mark Crusaders… coitus discoverers?” she mumbled as she walked away. “Wonder if Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle would help me…?”

Razortongue groaned again. “What in the fuckin’ name of the Princesses have we done?”

The assassin lowered her head. “I… think its best we don’t know.”

Boomdrop tossed her head to one side, clearing her face of stray mane-hairs. I knew Rainbow Dash would be absolutely furious. As a matter of fact, so would everyone else. What did Boomdrop and Razortongue do!? I groaned, deciding I would try to stop any further stuff like that from happening.

“Boomer, Razor…” I said. “Let’s stop making those crude jokes around the kids, please, for their safety as much as ours.”

We continued walking to the club. The marefriends nodded their heads in agreement just as Rainbow Dash came back to our group, cooled off and a little better-relaxed. She landed near me, clearly intent on avoiding Razortongue. In fact, they glared at each other, sticking their tongues out in a taunt.

“Dash,” I said, whispering to my Continuum buddy.

“Yeah?” she asked.

“Just to warn you…” I mumbled before whispering, “…Razor told Scoots about coitus.”

Dash fainted.