Afraid Of My Shadow

by Deyeaz

XXIV - Evacuation (Praxis)

~Afraid Of My Shadow~

Written by CraimerX and ShadowWeaver

Proofreaded by the onlyoneofmeisyou

XXIV - Evacuation (Praxis)

It was unexpected.

Nay, it was completely out of the blue, flat-out ludicrously unforeseen.

One minute, I’m attempting to rescue the one who’d been my best friend for four years and counting; the next, I can only watch as black flames, spawned mysteriously from a window overlooking the compound, began to swallow the facility, the greedy obsidian blaze licking the walls and ceilings of the factory.

Shit! Not good, not good, NOT GOOD!

The alarms screamed into the late evening sky, red lights darting around me as though I was swarmed with as the warning sirens blasted barrage after merciless barrage of noise. I whipped out Tsubaki, the black chain-katana whirling through the air before reconnecting into one piece just as the Suits spotted me. The mechanical sadist machines raised their hammers and saws high in the air, the steel tools glinting maliciously in the scarlet light of the alarm. “Jace, you idiot, what did you do?!”

I had other things to worry about than some small-fry tin cans.

I launched my magic arm at the window where the blast came from. The flames swirled around my hand, but the magic I was giving off with it was shielding me from harm. I crouched down low and leapt for the window. Once through, I looked for Jace, panic coursing through every nerve and vein in my body.

I gasped at what I saw, much to my misfortune due to the soot I had inhaled.

Jace was standing in the middle of the fires, his hand swirling with magic as he looked around the blazing fires. He turned to me, and chuckled, his eyes red with demonic energy. He jumped through the window he had blown out, and hopped on the large machine for extracting the color from ponies. “ALL PRISONERS NEED TO EVACUATE THE FACTORY!” He yelled, jumping down to a catwalk and looked around at the advancing guards.

“WHAT?! ATTACK ROMERO! STOP HIM!”

My ears perked up at the wall of Suits that were coming for Jace and the escaping prisoners. “JACE!” I hollered over the din. “GET THESE GUYS OUT! I’LL BUY YOU SOME TIME!” Jace didn’t hesitate in nodding.

“Everypony, follow me!” Jace informed the prisoners as he led them towards the exit. I held Tsubaki aloft as I faced the armada of malicious machines. There were about forty-five, maybe fifty of these guys. I gritted my teeth and gripped the sword tighter as the Suits advanced towards me. A quick slash to the neck of one – he’s dead. A hack to the legs and stab into the head of another – he’s dead. A slice down the middle of a third – he’s dead.

But they still kept coming.

I could see Jace moving for the door with a flood of prisoners following behind him. I saw him get grabbed by a large metal claw, and he hung onto a nearby pole to keep himself from getting dragged away. “Fucking piece of shit!” He yelled as he tried to kick at it. “Let go, fuckface!”

I could see the red in his eyes glow brighter, and saw his teeth get slowly sharper. I stared at it for as long as I could before going back into combat with the Suits, which were easy enough to take down. A quick press button and a hard swing ensured that a particular Suit was wrapped in the blades and chain. I spun on my hooves, using the ensnared machine as a wrecking ball against his own kind, toppling many of the offending Suits like bowling balls.

“Jace! I gotcha, bro!” I say, pulling hard and severing the still-ensnared Suit into a mess of scrap metal.

“Stay back!” Jace yelled, still focusing on the metal arm. “This is gonna get messy!” He chuckled slightly and I saw him wink at me as he let go of the pole, and was quickly dragged off the catwalk. He had managed to get ahold of a pole from the guardrail, and was being taken to the large industrial grinder where all the colorless ponies go.

I looked over the rail, and got a clear view of Jace being dangled over the large crushing wheels of the grinder. I heard a dark cold laugh, that made me freeze in my hoofsteps. I turned slowly to who was making the laughter, and bleated in surprise when I saw Insanity. But he was... Jace!

“Heads up, Fuzzybutt!” He hollered at me. I saw the remaining ten or fifteen Suits getting closer. With Tsubaki and my now-elongated finger blades, I dived in the middle of them. Once I landed, I shifted precariously onto the top of my spine and started twisting clockwise, kicking my legs fervently like helicopter propellers. My long magic arm, alongside my chain blade, whirled faster and faster with me to match my speed. I was a top twirling on my own accord, blade and arm working side by side to slice and dice the surrounding Suits. One by one, they dropped like flies underneath the sheer force of my continuous swings, metal cogs, springs, and oil spewing from every lopped-off piece of their cold hard bodies.

I stopped spinning, severely dizzy for the minutes that I had been twisting. I shake my head and clear off the dizzyness, brain slowly regaining its coordination with each jaunt. The Suits are all but broken, bits of cogs, metal limbs, and broken machinery littering the floor, oil tainting the steel floors a dark slick hue, giving the entire area the atmosphere of an abandoned junkyard. I looked over the rail again, and Jace was struggling to get a hold on the large metal arm. He kicked at it, and then looked up at me. “Get out of here, Praxis! I got this!”

“30 SECONDS UNTIL SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATES... 30 SECONDS UNTIL SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATES.”

...Sadly, the same really can’t be said for me.

The sirens blared even louder than before. Deafened was my hearing as the volume intensified. “Aw, Sugar Honey Ice Tea!” I wailed, looking for an exit out of the Rainbow Factory. Not finding one that wasn’t littered in Suit scrap and flames, I made a crude one with my own bare hands.

Rushing towards one of the adjacent walls, I slash endlessly at it with both claws and Tsubaki until I had carved a decent-sized hole in its surface. I jumped through the hole, made my way to the wall straight ahead, and roused up another hole. Wash, rinse, repeat.

“10 SECONDS UNTIL SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATES... 10 SECONDS UNTIL SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATES.”

Damn it, damn it, damn it!

I finally burst out from the confinements of the factory after drilling mercilessly through three walls without pause, trepidation of failure poisoning every iota of me as I tread over the clouds at breakneck speeds, as fast as my legs could carry me under Umbra’s parasitic curse. “THREE... TWO... ONE...” I bent my knees, and kicked off the ledge of nimbus clouds.

*KRAKABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!*

I initially saw neither the explosion nor where I was going. All I could witness was the intense speed the explosion of the factory had accelerated me to. Wind was stinging my eyes as I tumbled outrageously through the air, blitzing through several layers of clouds like a meteor comprised of flames, fur, and flesh, whizzing through the air faster than a bullet train. The blaze that had been licking and greedily devouring the fur on my legs had been extinguished by the air that blasted me endlessly, yet the pain of the actual paroxysm of the Rainbow Factory still plagued my being, indescribable and unfathomable anguish roaring inside me.

I can barely see, through wind-walloped eyes, the silhouette of a town as I speed towards it. As the town immediately arrives into a more discernable view, I can barely distinguish what town is it—Ponyville, presumably?—before smashing into the ground with a sickening thud, the sound of breaking bones and tearing flesh ringing in my ears. I barrel through several small houses and landmark buildings like a train gone rampant, the rubble of stone and the splintering of wood left behind in an unnatural trail, as they were smattered with my blood. I finally feel my decrepit body thud horrendously with the windmill before it came to a full halt.

I could only hear the sound of hooves beating frantically upon the durable earth beneath me. All sense of feeling was all but gone: I couldn’t receive a response from any of my limbs, despite how persistent I was in getting them to move. All my mind could uneasily scream, over and over as though a broken record was playing on a malfunctioning phonograph, was ‘Where was Jace?’

‘Where was my friend?’

~End of Chapter XXIV~

Author's Note:

"Guess who's back, fagets?"

huehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehuehue

Some of you guys honestly thought I cancelled this, eh? Nope.avi. I'm just slow to updating this fanfiction, because for some unfathomable explanation, I get the feeling I'm beating the crap out of a dead horse with every update.

So, to commemorate this bad chapter, and Leather-Winged Oddity somewhat tanking (9 likes, 9 dislikes from the latest update, yet still getting front page), I'm gonna go out and enjoy the current upside-down encompassment of Libya during the Islamic month of fasting known as Ramadan - Everyone's asleep in the daytime and the shops are all closed, but when it's night, everybody comes out and stays awake until dawn. :3

Ciao, suckas. c:<

Comments

[the other sans]

When a man is unable to heat for long hours at a time, it may drive them crazy. May. In this case, it seems absolute

[Lunason]

Great balls of fire! Oh and i thought it was a resonable chapter, not a bad chapter!