*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*...Flint...*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*
"Do you two think you're doing something good through this?" A deep, lumbering voice asked from the cloud of dust.
The whole room seemed to chill by a few degrees.
Whitey seemed unphased by the question, but judging from what Care had said she drank, she probably wasn't hearing much of anything right about now. Octavia, on the other hoof, seemed to waver at the comment.
Stone got up quietly, his beard starting to look mangled and dirty from where he had landed.
"Do you think that we're the bad guys in all of this?" He continued, his sentiment causing Octavia to take a few steps back and hold a hoof to her head.
"We do what we can to make everyone feel safe at night, and most of 'em do because they don't know what's out there looking for them. We've tried before - to leave the ones that didn't do much exempt from us - and I still do, but it doesn't work as well as you'd think." Stone's voice was sad sounding at this point, and I knew why too.
He was pretty much right about all that he was saying. I wasn't around when they had been doing the selective hunting, but I had heard that plenty of vampires just started acting innocent and moving to a different city to prey on. Spread the words to others, and just made finding the actually bad ones near impossible. It ended up leaving a bunch of bad vampires out on the street that were doing some borderline murderous acts.
Whitey, from what the board had told us, was one of the deciding cases of the evaluating vampires for capture. Stone said she'd been argued as an innocent, by himself no less, but the report that came back from attempting to get her said otherwise.
Three hunters missing, three others that made it back and had to spend a few months in the psychology ward.
Shakes had been one of the missing, but I had known she was alive. The other two, I had no idea.
As a result, we stopped doing that and went after all of them. Vinyl proved that they could be vicious, and that going in without the permission to use potentially lethal force was not an option. The results were positive, reports started coming in less and less because we got rid of all the chances. We didn't kill them, but we did jail them.
We only give permission to kill when the threat is unable to be subdued - and the punishments for using it willy nilly were some of the worst out there, most of them were made by Stone himself. He never liked the permission to use lethal force, so he never did.
That's why he was a general.
Over the years though, we was made less and less involved with jailing vampires, and I personally think it just kind of broke him down over the years. His personality was the same, but he began to protest less and less after he realized he couldn't do much to stop it without directly going against The Order.
Most people thought we were harsh, but even Stone knew we were doing right somewhere. And we were.
Stone was back at his full posture, and he looked prideful with his chest stuck up as he looked down on the two.
Octavia had noticeably shrunk, which made Vinyl break from her drunken smile and stumble onto her haunches to try and console Octavia. She looked confused at what was wrong with her.
"You don't know what the bad ones do. I've tried to keep the innocent ones out of this place, but you can never tell who's a liar and who's not." Stone said, head lowering.
"I'm standing against you not because I think you're bad, but because of what you've done here. You've blown holes in the walls, more than hurt some of the people here, and more than anything, indirectly let some of the bad ones we keep here escape."
"And don't think that I will let you ruin other people's safety for your selfishness." He said, his voice raising up in defiance just before he smashed his hooves down into the earth, kicking up yet another cloud of dirt.
I raised a brow, having never seen him do something like this before. The two mares seemed equally cautious about approaching it.
A hole parted from the cloud, something blurry shooting out and towards the two.
A drunken stumble from Whitey resulted in her driving her hoof up into the underside of what I now saw was a chunk of earth carved out into a massive spike. One that had been heading towards Octavia.
We all seemed to take a moment to realize that the spike had been delivered with intention to kill just before numerous other holes split from the cloud.
The two seemed ready this time though.
Octavia dodged them easily and elegantly, almost turning it into a dance as she weaved through the spikes all while keeping her hoof to her head as if she were in a moral crisis. Whitey took an opposite approach, sporadically choosing to either leapfrog over some, duck under others, or just simply punch and break them.
Some of the spikes began hitting the ground, kicking up even more dust as the sound of heavy hooves stampeding could've been heard from miles away.
A glimmer from out of the corner of my eye caught my attention, causing me to look up to see something that could be related to getting a royal flush in poker.
Where the observation deck usually sat, inside a hole that had been blown out from an explosion, stood a pegasus with her wings plated in silver. On her hooves were small makeshift claws, that also looked to be made of silver. Her coat was the color of a thunderstorm, and the force she carried was stronger than even that.
"Silver..." I whispered.
She waited patiently, watching the carnage Stone made as the stone spikes continued to pour out of the dust cloud like a machine with a passion.
The mares picked up the pace in response, Octavia even going to the point of slightly nudging the stone spikes just enough out of the way in combination with her normal dodging. Vinyl did something more similar, and simply started doing what she had been, but even faster - becoming more of a white blur with a mix of stone shards as she continued to break them with a single hoof hit.
I looked back up to Silver, and saw something glint off of her silver plated wings just before she coiled up into a sprinter’s stance.
And then she just disappeared. A small shockwave followed her disappearance, leaving a trail heading down to the floor I was on.
The next thing I heard was an explosion as all of the dust was pushed to the edges of the room and the sight of Silver pinning Whitey to the ground was revealed.
She had plunged in like a spear, somehow managing to hit Whitey even though she had been nothing but a blur to my eyes.
I also noticed Stone had stopped moving, revealing a dozen plus of the stone spikes he had been throwing at his side. He was breathing heavily for once, thanks to how fast he had been throwing them.
Octavia's eyes widened as she realized what had happened, quickly moving and trying to help Whitey.
"Big mistake." Care said, almost sadly.
Silver didn't move until the last moment before suddenly moving towards Octavia, pressing one of her back hooves into the back of Vinyl’s head and closing the distance between her and Octavia, effectively stopping any chance she had at attacking. Silver's hooves jabbed quickly, gently and precisely into a number of various places on Octavia's body and neck.
The next result was the kind that gives you goosebumps, seeing someone just drop limply to the ground as if they were unconscious. And Octavia could've very well have been.
She collapsed into Silver's arms.
Stone closed the gap between the two slowly, leaving his arsenal of stone spikes behind, and taking Octavia from Silver’s arms.
He then turned my way, walking over to me and handing her off to Care, who set to work rubbing her in places in what I assumed was to attempt an undo what Silver had done.
Stone seemed to hesitate, but spoke up after a while with his head held low.
“You know what comes now, don’t yah...” He said solemnly.
I nodded to him, hoisting myself up off the ground and following him out of the makeshift shelter and onto the broken and shattered battlefield. It felt odd, as if I shouldn’t be doing it, but I knew that if we wanted to succeed, we were going to have to gang up on Whitey.
Me and Stone walked slowly and solemnly, regret weighing heavy in each step.
As big a rumor as it was that when all us generals got together we were unstoppable, we really didn’t like to do it. All four of us took different stances on a lot of things, but we could all agree that overkill was, well, overkill. We liked to make a name for ourselves around the base, not as a group.
We only all got together when it was a crisis, and this could be considered one such. No one had ever gotten this far into the base before, not to mention actually “freeing” a prisoner.
Silver looked up and gave us both a nod, her hooves having since adjusted to keep Vinyl face down in the ground.
She slowly let up and eased off of Whitey, stepping back cautiously and joining me and Stone.
It took a few seconds, but Vinyl’s head slowly began to raise up, getting to the point where her eyes finally came into view.
The second that the red was visible, they were suddenly gone again as a heavy hoof slammed it back into the ground with a crunch. Stone didn’t hesitate to use his other hoof and grip Whitey by the nap of her neck, whipping her up into the air.
Silver flapped her wings, which I took as my cue to charge up my magic more sparingly. I didn’t have to do any real damage to Whitey, I just had to continue synergizing with Stone and Silver.
Silver flapped her way around and below Vinyl, cocking her hooves just as Whitey began to fall from the air.
She let out a buck that sent Whitey hurdling towards me, right at my horn as I strained, and right into a bellow of fire that sent her back towards Stone.
It was the cruel cycle, not that different from how a schoolyard bully might got about picking on a kid with his friends -- just push them around to your other friends.
Harmful and efficient.
Stone had popped another stone spike out of the ground, hoisting it over his shoulders and wielding it like a hoofball bat. I noticed the flaring of his nostrils and the steam that her let out just before letting out a shout and swinging it on Whitey so that she was smashed back into the ground.
Back to square one.
Silver landed beside me, hoisting herself on her back hooves with her wings arched for balance.
I nodded to her and began charging up my horn again, planning to let loose just enough ember to become a natural flame that could be easily fanned to life.
While we did that, Stone tossed aside the crumbling remains of his makeshift bat and went to pick Whitey out from the settling dust cloud.
I heard his breath catch.
“Watch it!” He said, looking up to me.
I blinked only for a second, concentration wavering as I looked up to see the world beginning to fade to black as a white hoof began to block out all the night, with a grin behind it.
Though the hoof disappeared just as quick as it had came. I looked down a little and saw a silver clad hind leg, connected to Silver who had used her wings alone to hold her entire body up. She had apparently snaked her way over to block the hoof, and to punch Whitey away.
Judging by the sound of Stone grunting a little from catching her, and the white figure he was holding in a full nelson, I had a pretty good idea who’s hoof it was she had blocked
As if there were a ever a doubt.
I had already build up all the magic needed, and sighed in relief as I let the ember go into the air beside me. It floated in front of the resituated Silver, whose eyes locked on it with the same awe I had when I looked at them.
She flapped her wings.
The magical ember burst into a wild fire at the feeling of air, sending torrents of flames over to Stone as he held Vinyl in place.
I felt my leg buckle, sending me down onto a single hoof as the fire raged on.
When it finally stopped, Stone opened his arms and let Whitey fall limply to the ground before walking slowly around her and back over to me and Silver.
I felt Silver’s hoof begin helping me up, remaining silent as she assisted me, but the look in her eyes conveyed her concern with how I was fairing.
In truth I still had quite a bit magic left to use - on a relative scale. But it was the fatigue I built up trying to separate what I had from what I was going to use. I was so used to just going all out on most attacks.
Stone made his way back over just as the sound of rubble churning caught all of our attentions.
A ragged breath left her mouth when she rose back up, heavy panting making the scratches and dirt covering her body all the more fitting.
“She ain’t givin’ up that easy.” I said, breaths almost as ragged as her own.
“Aye.” Stone said solemnly, teeth audibly gritting.
We were quiet for a moment, simply staring at Vinyl as she stared at us. It was honestly surprising how much could be said without words.
“You two hang back for a minute.” Silver said flatly.
“Huh?” Me and Stone said in unison, looking to her with confusion for two entirely different reasons.
“I’d like to test the waters some here.” Silver said, giving us both a small and honest smile before letting go of me and standing up, her white eyes glimmering.
She walked towards Whitey as if she could beat her on her own.
And, judging from how she defused both her and Octavia in a few seconds, I wouldn’t put it far past her.
*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*...Shakes...*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*
"So, just to be clear, this is what you wanted right?!" I heard my sister ask, rather rhetorically, to me in an attempt to make herself audible past the numerous mixing sounds of spells and explosions.
I paused for a moment, hanging my hoof in the air, and took stock of the situation.
We had released the vampires and, as was expected, they pretty much went crazy. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately however you look at it, we only managed to release a small portion of them. As it turns out, the place has security on most cells holding vampires save for the really old and low profile cells.
But hey, better some than none.
Only a rough a dozen, or five, vampires had been let out by the button press, most of them running rampant looking for blood to suck to try and revitalize, but some of them went fleeing from the base as quick as the doors opened.
I turned back to the vampire I held in my hoof.
The other part was that these guys really weren't with anyone. Some of them attacked other vampires, some of them - like I wanted - attacked the hunters. And finally, some of them, like the poor lass I had straddled and on the receiving end of my hoof, decided to attack us.
Luckily they were pretty weak, but the only real goal they were meant to achieve was causing as much trouble as possible.
And boy did they.
They flew through the halls, swooping close to other's heads and occasionally tackling ponies, while some were shooting spells in random directions after having gotten their rings off, and others fighting with the hunters sent to subdue them with their bare hooves. It really was just one big clusterbuck.
"Yeah, this is pretty much what I wanted!" I shouted, giving the vampire another light knock to the head. The punches were hardly deemed hard, but at this point she was whimpering in submission, so they really didn't need to hurt.
"Oh, dearies!" I heard a familiar, maternal voice call.
I turned to see that Vinyl's mother calmly striding through the chaotic hallway and walk up to me, her voice forcibly loud to raise it past all of the explosions and shouting.
"I think I've found a path that might lead us, well, anywhere else!" She shouted.
To her, this must've been like watching a bunch of foals fighting, so it made sense that she was able to just walk around and do as she pleased - anyone with a speck of common sense would know not to touch or go near her.
"Fine by me!" I said, giving the mare a gentle pat on the head for change, watching her flinch a little before getting off of her.
The three of us got close together just before Vinyl's mother, who led us down the hall for a few feet. She walked casually as if it were a stroll in the park while me and sis ducked and braced for any stray shots. That being said, the few that came at us were batted aside by a quick white hoof as if they were a toy ball.
We turned into a room, plainly decorated and honestly looked more like an unfurnished room with a rug and a few recliners sat in the corner. The rug, however, had been moved aside to reveal a panel of the flooring had been ripped up to reveal a narrow stairway leading down.
"How...how did you find this?" Sweeps asked, trotting over and looking down the dark staircase.
"I'll only tell if you let me show you, and use you as an example." She said.
Sweeps looked like she was ready to agree, but the quick lick of Vinyl's mother's lips and the look of hunger in her eyes as she scanned up and down Sweeps body immediately seemed to make Sweeps sheepishly reverse her 'ready to argue' stance.
"Ah, you know, it really doesn't matter how you found it so much as it does that you did find it." She said, hoof rapidly scratching the back of her head.
Vinyl's mother giggled a little before trotting over to the start of the stairs. She didn't seem the slightest bit intimidated at the dark and ominous feeling the stairs gave off, but then again she was probably used to being in dark and ominous places.
Me and Sweeps immediately locked eyes, both of us silently debating who'd be the first to go down the stairs.
"Heads or tails?"
"We don't have a bit Shakes."
"Rock, paper, scissors?"
"We have hooves Shakes."
"Got any straws?"
Sweeps looked ready to shoot down another one of my ideas, when a sudden red tinge lit up her horn and slowly picked her off the ground, levitating her towards the dark staircase by force.
"No! No, no, no, no, no!" She began shouting, flailing her limbs back and forth in a vain attempt to break free.
I smiled happily, almost skipping behind her as she floated down the staircase, closing the panel on the floor behind us.
*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*
It was pitch black heading down the stairs, save for the red glow of Vinyl's mom's horn and the glow around Sweeps' tail. I could tell wherever we were was in an old part of the building based on the feeling of the cobblestone beneath my hooves - the occasional feeling of a patch of moss further proved the point.
We did finally find a source of light coming from a doorway when we got to the bottom of the stairs.
"Jeez, how old is this place." Sweeps whispered as we walked through the doorway and into a long, cobbled hallway that was dimly lit by torches. The walls had grown to be an almost brownish color, complete with vines and mosses dominating them.
"Roughly one hundred and thirty judging by the accents around the sconces." Vinyl's mother chimed from ahead.
Both me and Sweeps went silent at an actual answer for a rhetorical expression, but figured that Vinyl's mom maybe didn't get the whole "rhetorical" thing. If we asked, she'd probably tell us when that was made too.
As we kept walking, the mosses on the walls slowly began to fade away and replace the old and unexplored look with one that was more of just a neglect to clean it. The moss faded and the let the brown cobble from before give the whole tunnel a more dungeon-like appearance.
Almost ironically, the dungeon impression that the place gave off turned into an actual dungeon. The torches became more and more spaced apart and caused the already dimmed light dim even more. Black iron glinted as you passed it by, and a wild guess said that we were in one of the holding cells.
For some reason though, this place felt oddly familiar.
The cells all seemed oddly empty, at least in the darkness.
"Ah!" I heard Sweeps yip, suddenly falling onto the ground from her previously suspended state.
I went to help her get up, but the sight of Vinyl's mother caught my attention.
She was stiff, not necessarily tense, but the relaxed posture she usually had when she walked and talked was gone and replaced with one that looked much more on edge. There wasn't fear, but there was caution.
I leaned out to the side a bit to try and see what had cause her to freeze up.
Another pony stood across from her, maybe thirty or so feet away. She looked fairly plain all things considered, the only things that stood out was the dirt and grime matting her coat. Their build made them out to be a mare, but I could've been wrong in this type of lighting. They wore a small frown on their face, pretty fair considering they had been in this place for Celestia knows how long.
The only other thing to note was the pipe they held in their hoof.
*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*...Octavia...*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*
I couldn’t remember when I had gone to sleep, or what had happened before that for that matter, but it definitely didn’t feel like sleep. When you slept you felt comfortable, but here I felt indifferent -- weightless even.
A dull prod came through the darkness of it all, something that would’ve almost made me jolt if I could.
I couldn’t see what it was, but it was persistent in both its second and third times.
“Come on....” A voice murmured, on the verge of frustration.
I felt my eyes make the motion of looking around, but the same consistent darkness kept flooding my vision.
“Maybe...” The voice said again, followed quickly by another dull prodding sensation in my lower neck that seemed to send a feeling of a cool breeze across my body.
“Ah...there we are.” They finally said, one final pinch hitting my lower back before I both felt and saw the darkness that had been surrounding me begin to fade into light.
It was blinding at first, but my vision refocused to reveal the sight of a stallion’s face a mere inch or so from my face, eyes staring at me with a scientific curiosity. As I awoke, said eyes were filled with an equally scientific satisfaction.
“Ah, knew it was the lower back. She always hits that one in a pinch.” The familiar voice of Care said, backing away from my face and prying his hooves behind my back and lifting me up before setting me back down onto something rough.
Struggling to move my hoof around for feeling, I barely realized he had propped me up on a stone slab.
“W...What...” I said, even the back of my throat and lips feeling numbed.
“Well, you got the ‘Silver’ treatment is what happened. A dedicated study of pressure points, nerve endings, and anatomy combined with a seeming mastery of one’s body and pressure application will do that to you.” He said rather nerdily, but the impression of sage was also there.
My eyes, dull as they were, widened at the mention of the name Silver.
It was around this time, coincidentally, that I began to recognize the sound of flesh hitting flesh from somewhere near by.
I felt my body begin to lurch on its own, scrambling towards what my blurred and double-vision plagued eyes saw as an edge in front of me.
I stumbled a bit. Well, a lot actually. It felt as though I didn’t have any feeling in my legs and joints, leading to a bit of struggle on knowing when and how exactly to walk.
But I did reach the carved out piece of stone that I assumed had the fight going on behind it, using my numbed front hooves to grab onto and pull up on it so that I could lay on it.
I looked up, just in time to see Vinyl’s hoof being caught in Silver’s own, followed by the quick motion of Silver’s wing into Vinyl’s side.
Silver took full advantage of Vinyl staggering backwards, jumping up and using her wings to keep her in the air as she began to punch at Vinyl with all four limbs.
But it wasn't the typical types of punches I had seen in the fighting thus far, it was different in a rather insidious way. Each hoof held a purpose in them - a lethal one that made itself known every time it connected with Vinyl's shrinking body.
While she used both her front and hind legs to punch with, and used her wings to begin and turn and spin her body in mid-air in order to build up momentum and make each punch hit even harder and faster.
Dull as my bones and muscles were, my eyes felt sharper than ever. The blur of Silver’s hooves slowed down into what it might look if she were to punch regularly.
But for now, I was focused on something else.
Counting.
"One...three...seven...twelve...twenty...thirty five..." I began murmuring under my breath, counting each hoof.
I could practically feel my pupils narrowing and straining as I struggled to keep up with the blur of hooves. Usually most things moved at slow motion when my eyes did what they did. Silver was moving as if nothing was slowed down at all.
Then, she went faster.
Her wings began to flap quickly, and I noticed her take a deep breath as she did it, just before her hooves began reaching the point where they became a slight blur to even my eyes.
But I managed to keep count of the hooves making impact nonetheless.
"...seventy two...ninety seven..." I continued.
I noticed Flint and Stone out of the corner of my eyes as well, resolving themselves to not try and assist for the moment. It was understandable, considering with just how quick Silver was punching; they probably wouldn’t know who’d they be hitting.
And probably actually get hit as well.
Flint looked a bit pained at the sight, but seemed to relax herself despite the sounds of flesh hitting flesh coming from in front of me.
I suppose these would be to her as the sound of an orchestra would be to me. She's used to this, and has perhaps found a silver lining in this rugged violence.
"...one hundred and twenty three...one hundred and seventy one..." I continued, making my words more deliberate as I felt a certain emotion building within me. I couldn't tell what it was, but it was something.
Silver seemed to be a rather clouded personality, in terms of readability atleast. She had very simple reactions to events, but the problem was that those simple reactions seemed to be to the events you might expect to get a different reaction. Like how she would smile at a difficult task, laugh at the serious -- things like that.
I suppose Vinyl's influence on me was probably apart of this thought, but I figured somewhere below those dull eyes was something that kept her going.
Not to mention her apparent knowledge of how to diffuse people, the dull feeling in all of my hooves a testament to that.
"...three hundred and forty six..." I continued, letting peripheral vision fade and my thoughts keep going even while counting.
The punches suddenly stopped, the sound of them stopping maybe a second after, and I watched as Vinyl was tossed into the air and plopped onto the ground with a thud.
"...four hundred and seven." I said, voice no more than a whisper.
Silver suddenly collapsed, her hoof running to her mouth as a cough followed by a little blood stained her light grey mouth with a deeply contrasting red.
She was obviously in bad shape from that lack of breathing she did, but she was still standing and at least moving a little.
Vinyl wasn't.
"Do you think that white mare ever stood a chance against the general." The wounded unicorn beside me asked, breaking the silence.
I looked to find him looking at the sight with an almost cocky look to him.
Idiot.
"Why is that?" Care asked, giving him a raised brow.
"Well I know I'm not the only one who heard the grey girl over their; Silver just landed, like, five hundred hits on her within a minute. The white mare didn't even land one on General Silver." He said, now not as cocky but more logical. They're really one in the same at a certain point.
I felt my own cocky grin form.
"I wasn't counting for the General."
"Well..." Silver began, a quirky smile appearing, catchin all of our attentions.
"...guess it's my fault for being brash the second time around." She said, her legs all collapsing at once and barely managing to not fall down completely.
Vinyl decided to stay as an unresponsive white lump, but I played it off in my mind as one of her classical games.
That assumption quickly faded when I noticed the lack of a smile on her face.
There is a certain feeling that comes from thinking something and then said something not being correct. Not the feeling of being wrong, such as with something more trivial like a math problem, but a feeling of your hopes being dashed away.
I felt a knot swell up in my chest, making breathing an active chore, as well as the sudden feeling of butterflies in my stomach. A headache also began to swell as I was filled with something that regret and sorrow couldn’t quite do justice.
All when I saw that lack of a smile.
Care sighed in disappointment.
"Don't count Silver as the type to not come with a backup plan. She prepares for contingencies." Care said solemnly as he joined by my side, raising his hoof to point to Silver's wings and hooves.
I noticed, on the tips of the silvery platings of her wings, was a substance dripping slowly to the ground.
"W-What is it? Poison?" I stammered, feeling my heart begin to literally wither in my chest followed by a feeling of my skin running pale and a wave of dizziness.
"Not quite. Her liver is too strong for standard poisons, but right now those might work with how drunk she is. But what Silver is using a sort of toxin that attacks the nerves in order to subdue rather than kill." He began.
He took silence as incomprehension.
"Imagine that feeling you get when your leg falls asleep - pain that isn't quite pain. Now imagine it roughly ten times more powerful, and over your entire body." He said.
I shivered at the thought as I turned back to Vinyl, my previous feeling of almost cocky knowledge having withered down to deep concern.
"Even breathing right now must be excruciating for her." He said finally.
Silver trotted over to Vinyl, recovering a little from how many times she had been hit.
"I'd say something, but it won't mean anything to you - not like you'd hear it anyways." She said, kneeling a little until she got down to Vinyl's ear. “Guess it wouldn’t hurt though...”
She murmured something to her, but I couldn't quite make it out. I craned my neck up a little in an attempt to see Vinyl's face past Silver’s body, and to try and hear a bit better - but she was done speaking when I finally got situated.
Thought I did catch something else when I was looking. Something that both renewed and frightened my spirit when I saw it.
"What the hell is she talkin-" Flint said, beginning to advance on the two, but she was interrupted.
A white hoof lifted up just before a sickening crackle of an ominously familiar tar color sparked around it. It suddenly fell back to the ground, making a small explosion that left the crater it formed sparking with magic.
“V-Vinyl...” I said, voice nothing but a whisper.
The same color seemed to spark around her body as she got off the ground, finally standing up straight as she raised her head to look at Silver.
There was no smile. There was no giggling. There was no playfulness.
Vinyl was mad.
"Amazing." I heard Care whisper in awe, his jaw slacked and his eyes wide like a foal's.
“She’s going to hurt someone.” I said, voice quiet as a ghost as I took in the sight.
"It will be more than that." Care chimed in solemnly, eyes still wide and voice still awe stricken, pointing to her horn.
The band around her horn was bright as ever, and almost seemed to whine with stress until it suddenly broke anticlimactically.
"That band had been stopping her magic, but I now see how she broke it." Care began. "She had been sending a steady stream of magic to the band ever since it was put onto her. Think of it like a water balloon - only one way out and one way in - but when you seal it up and water keeps on wanting to escape, it builds pressure until it pops and it all comes out. In Vinyl's case, this is with magic.
I scrunched my nose as I tried to make sense of his words.
Care sighed.
"Her magic is going to come out harder than she intends it to, thanks to the massive amount of magic she had been putting into the band since it was put on her horn. At the same time, she doesn't have any control over how hard she wants her magic to come out. Right now, it's the perfect storm for her." Care said.
The sound of crackling caught my attention, and when I turned back to her, I gasped at her appearance.
Her body was tensed up with bolts of the tar black magic shooting from her body to the ground around her. Her eyes were furrowed in anger as she stared holes in Silver, Flint and Stone - who impressively managed to keep their cool despite what they were facing.
*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*