*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*...Octavia...*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*
This was the second time I had seen Vinyl’s magic turn pure black. There had been times when it had almost gotten there - turning to a deep and dark blue - but this time it had gone to a color as black as night.
It was also the first time I had seen her get, what I would call, angry. She had never truly went to a spectrum of anger with her mood, rather just the absence of the playfulness she usually had, which made her seem angry by contrast. But she furrowed her brows this time, gritted her teeth and tensed her muscles. The drunkenness might have faded from her, but if it hadn’t, her rage had pushed it aside for the moment.
A stillness built up in the room, and the idea of either side - Vinyl or the generals - attacking one another seemed impossible for some reason.
That being said, the reason I couldn’t imagine them fighting because I couldn’t comprehend it. The two sides were extremely strong, so much that it escaped my imagination how they would fight.
I jolted a little bit when one of the two sides moved.
Vinyl's horn tilted forwards.
"Watch it." Stone groveled.
All three of them tensed, jolting when a bolt of black shot out of Vinyl's horn - oddly tame despite what Care had described about how much magic she was going to be packing behind her spells.
The bolt even moved relatively slowly, maybe as fast as I could trot without sprinting if I had to compare it to something.
"I thought you said that her magic was going to be dangerously uncontrollable." I commented, eyes moving slowly across the field as I followed the bolt of magic.
"It is." Care responded curtly, not even bothering to look at the battle as he stretched out a piece of gauss for a soldier.
"So why is that bolt so tame and weak looking?" I asked, watching as all three of the generals easily step aside as the bolt drifted between them.
"It's not a magic bolt." He responded, again curtly.
Around the time he said that, the bolt jerked to the side quickly, hovering just above Flint's back before any of them could react to it. Following the sudden dash by the bolt, a dull flash came from where it had been - bright enough to make you squint, but the black hue of the magic kept it from being blinding.
When I opened my eyes fully again, I saw that Vinyl was now where the bolt had previously been, standing erect like a pillar.
She gradually began to fall as gravity took over, sending her down to straddle Flint's back - the direct anger in her face gone and replaced with more of a stern look that a mother might have when she scolds a child - stone faced if you would. She simply placed her hoof on Flint's back just as the three began to recover.
They all three widened at the sight of her, just as her horn sparked, briefly turning the pitch black color coating her horn a pristine white for a second or two.
Flint was gone after that, not a trace of where she had gone and how she had gotten there.
"W-Where-?" I began to stammer.
"I doubt even Vinyl knows where she went. She probably didn't have a set location in mind when she teleported her. Most likely because she either doesn't care, or doesn't have the space to right now." Care swiftly answered, getting up from his work on the hunter's and coming over to lean against the broken slab of stone that was serving as a wall.
I questioned whether or not to ask him what he meant by 'didn't have the space to care', but figured it would only confuse me more than it already did.
With one of the three generals already gone in an almost too simple manner, the other two began to realize that she was going to be playing around this time.
At least, not in a way that would make this fight easy for her.
In an odd way, Vinyl being serious was easier to beat than when she was playing. She was always so unpredictable and creative when she wasn't serious, but she was much more deadly and precise when she was serious.
It was like two ends of a spectrum that she could travel back and forth between.
Silver spread her wings and gave them a strong flap, sending her a few dozen yards back and kicking up a gust strong enough to make my eyes squint from here. It let both her and Stone have a chance to escape, though I guess it really didn't.
Vinyl didn't move from where she had plopped down to after teleporting Flint away, the gust more or less just kicking up her hair as she stared down where Flint had been at a moment ago. A feeling of sympathy rang out when I saw the dead look in her eyes that had appeared in her eyes when she had taken Flint out of the fight.
The look didn't last long, oddly enough, but refaced itself with the steely and stern look she had from just before.
"Well, she's at least taken a lesson in letting the three of them work together." Care said, smirking ever so slightly.
By this point, Stone and Silver had more than distanced themselves from Vinyl.
"She was the nice one..." Vinyl whispered.
What that meant, I had no idea. Vinyl said a lot of weird and seemingly nonsensical things, though if experience had taught me anything it was that Vinyl was a very weird and nonsensical person. At the same time, she was a sage.
The single flap of a pair of wings caught my attention.
Vinyl's horn blinked yet again, her body disappearing just as a silver clad hind hoof swiping horizontally through where her head had been. She reappeared once the the hoof had swiped through, her hoof arched back.
I had realized, at this point, that Vinyl only raised her hoof back as a sort of warning that she was about to punch. As 'Vinyl' of a logic as it sounded, we all knew well that if she wanted to actually hit someone that she wouldn't raise her hoof back, she'd simply do it.
Silver knew this too.
She didn't retreat from the hoof, instead following through with her kick and spinning to kick with her other one. She seemed to be as analytical as I was when it came down to looking at how Vinyl worked cognitively. She knew she wasn't fighting someone normal, both mentally and physically, so she would have to fight in way that wasn't normal.
And it worked.
Her hoof knocked right into Vinyl's face, staggering her just as Silver landed in front of her. Silver's hooves quickly slithered around Vinyl's waste, giving a strong flap to her wings and pulling them both skywards at breakneck speeds. They quickly reached the end of the roughly fifty foot high room.
This was where Silver let go, sending Vinyl crashing into the roof of the room in a tuft of dust.
"Stone! Throw!" Silver said, quickly falling down from the cloud.
Stone had already made his spikes, picked one up, aimed in on the spot where Vinyl had crashed and begun to move his hooves forward to throw by the time Silver had told him to.
"Stop!" I shouted.
The two of them paused and looked at me, almost worried.
In truth, my own eyes were wide. Why had I shouted for them to stop? Or, better yet, why was this the first time I had intervened vocally with someone trying to hurt Vinyl?
We didn't have time to answer that question, as a whirring sound suddenly came from where Vinyl had crashed. We all looked up, eyes widening as a flurry of spiked and wiggling globs of magic came hurdling down from the ceiling towards Stone.
"That-" Care began, gesturing his head towards the oncoming splotches of magic. "- is what her magic bolts look like."
I watched the "bolts" close in on Stone, he himself stunned at the appearance of them. Even more stunning was the white figure traveling in the center of the pack of bolts. Each of the bolts matched with the stone spikes Stone had made - each exploding violently and kicking up enough shrapnel to make Stone cover his eyes.
Vinyl didn't hesitate to take full advantage of that choice.
Vinyl quickly slithered around and mounted Stone's back, her hoof raised in they same way she had done just before teleporting Flint to wherever Flint had been teleported.
Silver, realizing that this was going to really cripple their chance at winning, acted.
She swiped her wing quickly, sort of like punching with it, and sent out a flurry of glittering, silver feathers that had been the plates on her wings. It was odd to just now see her make use of them, but I guess she would've preferred to save them until she needed them before revealing them to Vinyl.
But it was too late anyways.
Vinyl's hoof hit Stone's back long before Silver's feathers got near the two, a familiar flash causing all of us to squint and cover our eyes. I even heard the sound of Silver's feathers hitting the wall that must've been where Stone had been.
Opening my eyes, expecting to see the fight now evened down to a one on one, but the only thing I found was the lone Silver with an expression just as dumbfounded as my own.
"Well, I guess that's another way to even the playing field." Care said, snickering a little bit.
I looked to him, confused.
"I think we all thought she was going to duke it out with Silver alone. But it looks like she was just aiming to separate the three and then take them all down one by one in random places."
Care hadn't really been wrong up to this point, and what he said did sound like something Vinyl would do, so I believed him. Silver also seemed to begin to believe him, after looking all around her as Care explained it to me and not finding a trace of the two.
'Where did you get to Vi-' I thought to myself, only to have it cut short.
I suddenly found my vision blinded by dust as an explosion shook the ground beneath my hooves and kicked up enough rubble to have it hit my hoof as it shielded my face. I hadn’t seen anything that would’ve caused it, but as the dust slowly settled and I opened my eyes, I found that reason.
Vinyl stood tall, looking down on the downed form of Stone as he slowly struggled to get up.
The fact that he even was getting up was impressive beyond belief.
"He's the wise one..." Vinyl said just as Stone managed to get back onto all four hooves.
"Well, I gotta say lassy..." Stone said, weakly chuckling.
"...those reports didn't do you justice." He said, letting out a long and shaky breath before stilling himself. He then raised himself up to his full posture, grunts of pain coming from him as he did.
Vinyl let out a single huff from her nose, her eyes narrowing and her brows furrowing, before she jumped to Stone.
Stone was quick to readjust despite the pain he must've been in after that kind of fall, rushing towards Vinyl and quickly turning around and positioning his hooves in what was going to be buck just as he was about to get in range of Vinyl.
Vinyl, oddly, looked like she was about to trade blows with Stone, Stone’s back hooves heading towards her while she lingered in the air with her own hoof cocked back ready to strike.
But with a sudden, dark, flash she was gone.
Stone’s back hooves hit nothing but air as another flash came from the opposite end of his hulking body, next right around where his face was where Vinyl reappeared, her hoof still arched back. She looked ready to actually hit him, but her horn said otherwise. With the lighting of her horn, two things happened.
The first was that Vinyl’s raised hoof began glimmer with a hazy black shimmer that seemed to linger at the slightest movement of her hoof, lagging behind before catching back up with Vinyl’s actual hoof position.
The second was the formation of a little black ball in her free hoof. It was, well, adorable - roughly the size of a grape.
It was around the time that she raised the little black ball to her side that I noticed Silver had closed the distance between them, ready to strike at Vinyl while she struck at Stone.
But the little ball had other plans, flitting out towards Silver in a little game of chase.
Silver, however, treated it as the most serious game of tag of her life. Her eyes went wide as if someone had a knife to her neck. She used her wings to back pedal at a pace that was hard to keep up with, leaving the ball almost saddened as it slowed to a halt.
Vinyl, content with the distance between them, now lowered her hoof slowly right onto Stone's neck.
At first I wondered if she had began to playfully fight again, prodding at Stone before going for something that might actually hurt him. I guessed this because Stone showed no obvious signs of pain, only a bit of surprise that Vinyl's attack didn't hurt.
We, however, were both wrong.
As soon as the hazy shimmer that had lingered behind caught up with Vinyl's hoof, Stone's head jolted as if he had been hit by a wrecking ball.
He skidded on his hooves maybe ten or so feet before teetering to a stop, a clear crick in his neck.
"W-What the..." I gasped.
Stone had hardly been moved by anything thus far, but Vinyl laying her hoof on him seemed to send him ten feet
But Vinyl didn't stop there, moving forwards with a speed not meant to be fast, but deliberate. She arched her hoof again on Stone's raised hooves, bringing it down it would could be considered more of a punch than her last one.
It hit Stone's defense, moving him a few inches before the hazy shimmer caught up once more and seemed to hit Stone even harder than the last one. It knocked his hooves right out of the way, a strain of pain running through his face as he looked up to see Vinyl coming in again for what was going to be the last hit.
Vinyl raised both her hooves, quickly hitting both of Stone's cheeks in a clapping motion.
The lagging haze followed through again, speeding in and knocking against Stone's head with enough inherent force to make his body stiffen up before sprawling limply to the ground.
Vinyl saw this as the end for him, and the haze around her hooves slowly faded.
She turned slowly to face Silver, a look of strain in her own eyes as she let out short and ragged breaths. They were sharp, but not enough to take the edge out of her voice when she spoke.
And for the first time in the fight, she cracked a smile.
A deranged looking one ripe with insanity, stubby white fangs glinting off the light in the room and her eyes both dilated and bloodshot with insanity rippling through each vein. I felt oddly warm at this terrifying face, because, for some odd reason, this face was the one that was familiar to me.
She said nothing, her hoof raising up beside of her as the little, grape-sized ball of unstable magic flickered back to life in her hoof at the same time her body began shimmering before disappearing. The only sign of where she had gone being the slight cloud of dust that had been kicked up.
Silver didn’t look confused at Vinyl’s disappearance, but instead closed her eyes and seemed to calm herself in the longest couple of seconds time had ever seen. They only opened back up when Vinyl finally reappeared, rather predictably, behind her. Silver easily whipped around, using her hind leg to stop Vinyl’s hoof that was on route to smashing her with the black ball that had come from her horn.
You could tell that even Silver knew not to get hit by whatever it was.
The two spaced apart before coming right back together.
Vinyl was on offense logically, and Silver stuck to counter hits whenever Viny struck with her free hoof, but she made no move to counter when Vinyl swung her hoof that held the black ball.
Then, Silver suddenly seemed to freak out at something, flapping her wings rapidly and pushing herself backwards about fifteen yards before looking around frantically.
Vinyl giggled, and raised her hoof before yanking it back as if she had something attached to a piece of string.
The black ball, that I now realized had disappeared randomly during their exchange of hits, flew out of seemingly nowhere from directly behind Silver. She gave a little hop as the ball flew from under her; despite the non-intimidating look of the ball, Silver seemed to be treating it as serious as death itself.
The ball came back to rest in Vinyl’s hoof.
“Aim for the horn, Silver.” I heard Care say, his voice oddly sullen and serious.
I looked over to him, spying his eyes dull with seriousness.
“I thought-” I began, but he seemed to understand my confusion.
"I don't like it here, but what I don't like more is seeing these kind of atrocities go on. I could hardly stand it when she got rid of Flint and Stone, and it took a lot not to go out there and stop all of this.” He said, borderline angrily.
"I thought you weren't a fighter?" I asked him.
"I'm not." He said curtley, jaws clenching.
I was questioning if he was joking about "ending this". He was implying he'd be able to go out and end this whole thing without a fight, which to me looked impossible right about now.
I caught Silver as she began to swing her hooves cautiously at Vinyl's horn, which were easily dodged by Vinyl with simple side steps or feigns, but it didn't hurt.
I recalled the many times I had managed hit Vinyl's horn, and it even seemed to incapacitate her if hit hard enough; which wasn’t something that Vinyl needed to have happen to her right now.
I moved my hoof to try and stand up, finding my joints finally having feeling return to them. I stumbled when I got up, but got up nonetheless. Care seemed to acknowledge this, but chose not to comment. Perhaps he understood my stance, and understood that attempting to make me stop was pointless. Regardless of what he thought, he looked ready to burst.
And burst he did.
"Silver!" Care suddenly shouted, sounding at the end of his wits.
I looked up from my own task of getting off the ground to see that his clenched jaw had gone to gritted teeth and tensed muscles.
"Stop dragging this out!" He said, voice finally blistering with anger.
Silver's eyes seemed to darken at that.
She suddenly sent a hoof sweeping into Vinyl's hoof with the accuracy of a needle, surprising Vinyl by going directly for the black ball of magic rather than avoiding it. Stabbing right around the wrist, Vinyl's hoof stopped moving - the black ball dissipating without her hoof's guidance - and leaving her horn wide open.
SIlver's hoof was already but a few centimeters away from Vinyl's horn before the idea of hitting it had even come to my mind, catching all of us but Care off guard with its speed and accuracy.
With a single hit to the horn, Silver sent Vinyl to the ground where she was instantly straddled.
"She has this sick habit." Care began, his voice like venom.
"A habit to play out fights in a way give people the impression that they had a chance. She plays with your head; letting herself and even her companions suffer all for the sake of her own victory. It's not some sick selfishness, she cares for them and wouldn't let anything fatal come to them, but I've always hated this side of her." He said, his hoof beginning to tighten its grip on the concrete slab it held onto, gripping it to the point where it punctured the skin.
I simply stared at him for a while, my slackened jaw slowly crawling back to a close after the sudden snapping of Care's typically calm demeanor.
"It's not sick." I said simply.
He looked at me with a venomous glare.
"It's an attempt to break boredom. To feel something - I suppose." I said simply, my own head trying to wrap around my logic.
"How would you know?" He spat.
"Silver isn't the only one who does that." I said, eyes dozing off to the floor where Vinyl was lying.
Straddled underneath someone who probably knew how to paralyze any normal person for the rest of their life. That's where Vinyl thrived, and it's where most people lost her logic.
She craved danger, because it was different.
A smiled cracked like the ground during an earthquake, so similar that I swore I actually heard stone breaking when Vinyl's smile broke out.
Silver's eyes suddenly narrowed as her hoof raised quickly, the silver on her hoof gleaming as she zeroed in on where to hit. Vinyl didn't even have time to blink before her hoof found its mark and jolted forward like a flash of lightning.
A familiar black ball suddenly appeared right on the tip of Vinyl's nose, directly in front of where Silver's hoof was heading towards. Vinyl's eyes opened wide with a look in them as the ball appeared; just as Silver's own eyes also widened, but for another reason entirely opposite to Vinyl's.
A brief moment of silence took over the room.
There is a certain thing that should be said when an explosion is capable of knocking you back into a wall, knocking the air from your lungs and leaving you heaving all before you hear the "bang" it produces. Once more is knowing someone capable of creating such an explosion.
If it weren't for the fact that I had already been so close to the wall, I probably would've been knocked unconscious, but the kicking up of a grey, cement colored dirt told me that I was still awake. It was almost like being in the walls of a tornado, not that I'd know about that, but it served best as an analogy.
However, the violence of the explosion I was in was nothing compared to what I was seeing emerging from the wall of dusty wind.
The figure of a mare, a pegasus with her wings spread, tumbling through the air but gradually straightening out as her shadow grew bigger and bigger before finally breaking through the screen of debris.
Silver landed firmly on the wall I was leaned up against, the wind from the explosion being strong enough to support her planting her hooves on the wall next to my body in a way that defied gravity. I began to wonder how she was still standing, or much less seeming to be still actively doing things, but I didn't have much time to think about that before she planted her hooves firmly on my shoulders.
"Wait-" I began, but she clearly had no intention in waiting for me.
I realized what she was planning to do, and began to protest, but her natural speed combined with my already disoriented state only served to make things easier for her. She gave her wings a might flap as the two of us went hurdling towards the ceiling that had been blown wide open.
After that, the last thing saw when I looked up was a small piece of falling rubble aimed at myself.
*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*
It had been a long time since I had woke up to the feeling of warmth without a white mare snuggling up next to me. My hoof scrolled across the ground beside me, the tickling and slightly rubbery feeling of grass under my hooves actually making me relieved. I noticed, between the fading of my vision from black, the unfamiliar sight of a blue sky filled with white, fluffy clouds.
I wasn't dead, but it sure did seem like heaven.
I gently sat myself up, padding my hooves on the grass as I noticed someone sitting on their flanks in front of me. Between my fading vision, I made out their body as a light colored figure, and so I assumed it was Vinyl.
"V-Vinyl?" I called out shakily.
"Shh..." A familiar voice shushed me gently. "...rest for now."
It was around my time that, either through natural readjustment or the fact that the voice from in front of me wasn't Vinyl's, that my eyes cleared themselves.
Silver sat in front of me, sitting on her haunches with her wings tucked behind her back - the previously flawless silver shine to them now replaced with the picture of dust covered silver plates that had an occasional feather missing from the plating. She was covered in scratches and dirt, looking off somewhere.
It was around that time I noticed what it was that she was looking at.
The distant building that I made out as The Order's base now had a massive sunken and crumbled center piece where a rounded dome had previously been - a gentle billow of smoke rising out of it. It looked almost serene, reminding me of the castle before when we walked away from it.
"Did you..." I began, suddenly realizing that the two of us being the only ones out here meant that she had pulled me from out of the explosion.
"They're pretty bad, you know." She said gently.
She turned to me, revealing a gentle and genuine smile that looked like the embodiment of purity as the wind gently brushed her mane.
My eyes widened as I realized that we were now outside, and the gentle warmth covering my back meant that it was morning.
'The sun.' I inwardly gasped.
"It's day, huh." Silver said casually, looking up.
I pushed myself up further, managing to prop myself up on my front hooves before fully pushing myself up off the ground. It felt odd to be standing again, a faint numbness still lingering in my joints, but I couldn't focus on that right now.
My eyes had sunken down to the ground without my realization; I was tired. I couldn't even tell what I was doing, but I felt the grass under my hooves move.
When I reopened them I saw that my hoof had slung itself at Silver's sitting form.
She raised her wing up, my hoof hitting and stopping as if my target had been a brick wall.
"Amazing to think that even your subconscious is telling you to fight me." She said, her piercingly warm eyes looking back over her wings to me.
"Or is it? You're blood's a little thick." She said, still gentle, but also a little melancholic as she turned back to the collapsing base.
I felt as though she knew about the fading traces of whatever it was Vinyl's mother had put into me.
"Not a lot of people talk to me around here, you know. Them telling me not to mess with that white mare is probably the most they've spoken to me." She said, her wing lowering as my hoof slid back down to the ground.
'Is this mare sane?'
My body soon followed, fatigue dragging my body back down to the ground right beside her as my vision started to fade again.
"She's actually the one who talked to me the most believe it or not, she was in her cell." She said again, her voice picking back from her sad tone.
My eyes finally seemed to give out, blackness taking over as I felt my consciousness begin to slip.
"Tavi..."
My eyes whipped open, face down into the grass, but open nonetheless. My heart was racing, as I had heard the sound of that voice before. The voice that could easily send both chills down my spin and put a warmth my chest at the same time. The voice that stopped people in their tracks, and the voice that belonged to the mare that would stop them if her voice didn't.
I looked up, seeing a white figure walking towards me. She was far enough that it'd take her a good minute or two to get up to me, but it wasn't the length of the distance; it was the fact she was going the distance.
She had a gentle steam roll off of her battered and scratched skin, which I supposed was a sign that she was feeling the simmering that she said she felt whenever she went under the sun.
The sound of metal clattering together took my attention from her, my eyes lazily floating over to see Silver standing tall. Her wings stretching themselves out again, showing off the flawed silver coating over her wings like it was some kind of medal. The look on her face was one of pure awe. The wind blew against her like she was right out of a novel, something glowering about her that might make you think she was the hero in all this.
In truth, she could've been. I hadn't gotten to get a good take on her character unlike the others. She was the big unknown to me, but based solely on the conversation she had just had with me, she was in the same boat as Vinyl, sailing across the crazy, dangerous, life threatening ocean that their rare breed thrived in.
But even more eye catching than the prideful display, was the smile she had on. It wasn't an eager one like Vinyl's, but more of a modest one.
This was a happy smile.
She didn't move, instead waiting for Vinyl to make her walk up to the both of us. Perhaps she was also taking in the sight of Vinyl walking through hell with a smile, if I had to guess she also thought it an amazing feat. She had the air of respect for Vinyl for some reason.
When Vinyl finally got up to us, the two didn't exchange any words, only a brief nod.
Vinyl's horn pulsed harshly before she pointed it up, the strain in her an obvious sign that this spell was something to be feared. That, and I imagined that the sun made it even harder.
A shot of black went up into the sky, going up and up until it finally escaped sight.
Right when it escaped sight did it finally explode, a dull black blotting the blue sky. But that blot didn't stop expanding, rather than just dissipating as any explosion normally would, this blot continued to expand. It grew and grew, going - if I had to guess - at least half a mile or so in diameter.
It was about that time both me and Silver realized what Vinyl had done.
'She's using the color of her magic to block the sun by making a massive bubble.' I thought, smiling at the mare typically perceived as an idiot and her genius.
Soon enough, the bright and warmth of the sun was gradually replaced by a cool blackness as the shell finally hit the ground, leaving everything almost pitch black. Oddly enough, all three of us seemed as visible as if the bubble Vinyl had raised hadn't blocked the sun out at all; it was only the direct light and scenery that had disappeared.
The two hadn't stopped locking eyes however, both Silver and Vinyl still looking at each other with a gentle smile as Vinyl played what had to have been her checkmate.
"You really are nice." Silver said simply.
Vinyl had no response, but instead slow began stepping back as she faded into the black, her body seeming to fade before her eyes did, making them all the more piercing before they finally faded away as well.
Around the time she faded to the dark was when the bubble me and Silver were in suddenly started to thicken and ripple violently as if someone had jumped into a still body of water.
Vinyl's reappearance was like seeing a ghost appear, the white color of her coat making it even more similar as she appeared at the side of Silver, her hoof coming down in what looked to be a lethal punch.
Silver reacted, raising her wing as a shield against it, only to have Vinyl's hoof dissipate just as she closed the distance with her hoof. Silver seemed off put by the feign, but was quick to ready herself.
I found myself smiling as Vinyl reappeared, only to put Silver through the same scenario of pretending to punch, only to fade away at the last moment.
'She's finally playing again.' I thought warmly.
Vinyl faded out once again, her hoof arched in what was most likely another feign punch. Silver put up a weaker guard, finally beginning to get used to Vinyl's feigns, only to have a white hoof reached out from the darkness behind her. This detached hoof actually went through and hit Silver with enough force to make her slide back a few feet.
You could hear the wind leave her lungs, but she still stood.
The detached hoof that had faded away after hitting her reappeared right in her blind spot, clearly intent on pressing the advantage, only to be swiftly caught by Silver the second it began to move forward to hit.
Silver gripped the hoof, planting her wings and hind legs forward before giving a mighty tug and pulling on the hoof. Like being pulled out of a magician's hat, Vinyl's body emerged from the darkness as Silver pulled on her; getting tossed upwards as soon as she was out of the darkness.
Silver let go ass Vinyl went up into the air, her body beginning to fade again.
"No you don't!" Silver called playfully, her wings and hind legs pushing off the ground and aiming to tackle into Vinyl mid-air.
Vinyl grinned.
"Yes, I do." Vinyl said raggedly.
Vinyl hooves clinched up like something automatic, leaving the faintest hint at a familiar, black colored haze that had been present on her front hooves when she had, well, "dealt" with Stone. I was only able to notice it in contrast with Vinyl's white coat as she curled her legs up and let the go all in one motion.
Her hind legs hit Silver, making contact and hesitating for a second before the magic must've caught up.
And boy could you tell when the magic caught up.
Silver quickly disappeared from sight, the only tell-tale sign of where she had gone being the sudden hole in the black bubble that had been covering the field. And just like a hole in a balloon, where Silver had pierced the bubble, the bubble began to dissipate and slowly fade from existence, letting the sun slowly shine back down onto the now visible grass.
I looked up, seeing Vinyl standing just a few feet away from me, the steam slowly beginning to start flowing off of her body. Her smile looked slightly pained, but that made it all the more lovable.
I began to get up, but Vinyl held out a hoof that physically stopped me from moving despite not even touching me.
I looked confused, but she only moved her hoof off to the distance where Silver had been thrown, causing me to look.
Off in the distance where Silver had been sent flying, the air seemed to suddenly crack. As if it had been nothing but a wall, fissures of air seemed to crack across the horizon before suddenly blowing away as if a rocked had taken off.
I couldn't see anything immediately, but I felt a strange tensing in my eyes kick up just as the image of Silver came into view - flying fast enough to more than evade the normal eye. She shifted mid-flight, taking her hooves and putting them in front of her as she continued her collision course.
When the two connected, two things happened.
The first was the feeling of a migraine kicking up and my vision seeming to stop perceiving things slowly. I felt myself actually gasp at the feeling, nothing I had felt could really serve as an example to describe the physical pain. I guess pain great enough to temporarily blur vision would be the only thing I could say about it.
The second, was that as Silver appeared in sight, Vinyl disappeared. Silver's hooves were where Vinyl's body had been, and it also seemed that all the speed that Silver had went right into Vinyl in the form of a kick.
I blinked.
'Where...where did Vinyl go?' I asked myself, not quite wrapping my head around what had happened.
My perception had stopped working how it usually did so that I could actually see these types of things; movement so fast that an untrained eye like my own could see them. I didn't know if Vinyl had teleported away at the last second, if Silver had kicked her hard enough to make her disappear, or if she just pulled a "Vinyl" and disappeared without being hit.
Silver dropped heavily to the ground, landing on her hooves miraculously, but not having enough stamina to continue to flap her wings. She could barely even keep her head up, and the sweat streaking down her body and peeling away the grim further backed up that idea.
I did the only thing I thought logical, and looked in the direction where Silver had kicked Vinyl.
I managed to make out a dissipating, black dot, punctuating itself by a small sparkle before disappearing.
Typically, you'd only see someone disappear with a sparkle in some sort of cartoon show, where the hero punches the bad guy hard enough that they fly off and the only trace you see left of them was the glimmer reminiscent of a star.
Had Silver hit Vinyl hard enough to do that?
Perhaps it was due to the numbness of my joints, but I hardly noticed myself getting up off the ground and staggering towards Silver. It had been as if another force had been influencing me ever since Vinyl's mom bit me, the little voices and movements my body would do when i wasn't focusing.
It all seemed a bit out of place, but not this time. I could agree with this unconscious drive this time around.
Silver was just as surprised as I was to see my hoof arch back in anger, and it must've been from the look on my face that she didn't react accordingly.
I imagine me hitting her was the equivalent of a soft pillow being thrown at her, but evertheless it felt great to finally get back at someone.
Perhaps out of complete accident, coincidence, or purpose, I looked behind me as I followed through with the punch - in the complete opposite direction of where Vinyl had been kicked off to.
And then saw a sparkle.
My eyes slowly began to widen as a familiar black blur came into focus, devious grin punctuated by eyes widened with either anticipation or just from the sheer speed she was moving.
She closed the distance without much recognition from Silver - partially because I had managed to hit her square in the jaw hard enough to knock her head towards the ground - until she got punching distance.
Then, Silver's hind leg that had been teetering to keep her up suddenly planted down firmly, her other hind hoof suddenly whipping around about as fast as Vinyl closed the distance. It was definitely the fastest I've ever seen her move, but it didn't matter how fast she moved as she was only met by thin air and a dissipating flash as Vinyl faded away.
It was odd, usually Vinyl's teleports took her away all at once, but this time it seemed to begin at her hind legs and go up her body, as if to mock the fact that she was teleporting away right as Silver swiped her hoof through where Vinyl's face had previously been. Not only that, but there was a second, identical flash, lingering right above Silver's head.
Slowly, you could watch as Vinyl's back hooves dissipated and reappeared from the first flash and come out of the other, as if she were going through a doorway of some kind.
Even more, there was no form in Vinyl's fall - Vinyl's body wasn't poised in a way to suggest a kick or something. She was either too tired to properly align herself to make a kick, or that she realized that, moving at that kind of speed, being stiffened up was only going to hurt her more than if she was limp. Either way, she was more or less just rag dolling along the ride.
I mean, It was definitely going to hurt Silver.
'Assuming it hits.' My thoughts spoke up, my eyes going wide as I noticed Silver begin to arch her legs to move out of the way.
We were both surprised to see my hooves latching onto her, and when she looked back to me, she must've seen some kind of look on my face, because she froze up stiff.
"We've come too far to let this miss." I said simply, mulling over the fact that I was also going to feel the oncoming hit from Vinyl.
Her eyes tore away from mine and feverishly looked upwards, at first panicking, but she then shut her eyes and stopped her wriggling. I could see her lips turn up in a small grin. She knew she had lost; she could've dealt with me to get me off of her, but she would spend too much time with that to properly evade Vinyl.
But it didn't really matter, because you could tell by the look on her face that this really wasn't a defeat for her.
She really did have something in common with Vinyl, and that was that they were both completely and utterly mental when it came to how they reacted to danger.
Time finished it's slacking and began to march on as both me and Silver looked up to the oncoming meteor that was Vinyl. I could do nothing but hold still and brace punctuated with Vinyl's body hitting the ground like the explosion from a mortar, with Silver and myself being the target.
I figured that shutting my eyes might make it easier to resolve myself, but at the same time it build up the fear of not knowing when the impact would be.
But soon enough I felt it.
And it was, more or less, the same feeling I had expected; like being hit by a train. Well, probably a bit harder than that, just with a bit more cushion thanks to the fact that Vinyl wasn't an actual train, but a semi-plush unicorn. My eyes and ears were soon filled with nothing thanks to all of my feeling being focused on the pain coming from my body.
Despite how quick I knew these impacts typically were, it sure did feel like it was lasting forever. I couldn't breath thanks to all the wind being pushed out of my lungs, and I couldn't move because it felt like someone had bolted me to the ground.
When things finally settled, I couldn't feel anything but the sensation that came along right before you could vomit. My body felt lifeless, and I sincerely wondered if I had actually died. I felt as though I should've opened my eyes, but I had to remember to breath some air back into my lungs before I could do that.
Even when that was done, it felt laborious and painful to do.
'Is...is this what breaking a rib feels like?' I asked myself. I had never broken any bones before, so I guess it was a new experience if I did.
Time seemed to wait for me this time, sitting still while all the normal feelings slowly came back to me with an additional accent of pain.
I had already felt, and it was nothing but pain. I could hear again, but it was silent. I could taste the bit of blood that I must've coughed up. I began to smell the air, but it was filled with what was probably the settling dirt.
And I had even opened my eyes.
To my surprise, there wasn't any dust settling, and the crater was actually very small - being roughly twice the size of me.
I felt something else - it was still pain, but a different kind of pain. I wanted to look and see what it was, but my head felt too heavy to lift, so instead I moved my eyes down to my chest. Luckily, the crater left me at a natural tilt that made looking down at me rather easy.
To my surprise, I found another pair of eyes looking at me.
"Hey Tavi."
I tried to speak, but my lungs seemed to stab at me when I tried to.
"I missed you." She said simply.
My eyes looked back to her to see the steam beginning to roll off of her as the sun began to exact its revenge for being blocked out earlier. I wanted to move and cover her from the sun, but I couldn't even talk in my current state. And judging from the few glimpses I could get at Vinyl, she wasn't in any better position.
Despite how broken my body felt, my head could still race.
'Will Vinyl die if she stays in the sun for too long? Is this who this is going to end? With Vinyl laying on top of me while I can't even do anything to get her to safety.' I felt tears begin to well up at the morbid thoughts.
My vision suddenly faded, the feeling of something like soft, but thick, cotton covering my body and vision.
It was hard to process for some reason, but it raced through my mind that someone had covered both me and Vinyl. I assumed it was Shakes or her Sister, but if it were them, they would've said something and asked if we were okay. Nothing but silence greeted us.
Nevertheless, I felt myself beginning to calm.
"I love you Vinyl." I managed to work up, the feeling of something like a thorn bush growing in my lungs forming when I spoke, but I felt even better having said it.
I felt something that was unmistakably a smile form on my chest.
*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*~~~~*
"Jeez you two, might wanna wait 'til we get home to cuddle with each other like that." A voice said, playful in nature, but with hints of care sprinkled throughout.
My eyes opened slowly as I began to realize I had passed out. I still felt groggy and pained, but not nearly as much as it had been whenever I had first passed out. It was around this time that I noticed the flooding of sunlight coming from above me, drawing my attention upwards towards the face of Shakes.
She was smiling gently at the two of us, but I could actually make out the concern rippling through her face. She was looking at Vinyl and myself, knowing of the pain we must've been in.
"Take it easy. Where's Silver?" She asked, wary of her presence, but making it clear that we were her first priority.
I could barely muster shaking my head.
I had no idea where she was, but if Shakes couldn't see her, then I wouldn't have known either.
"Alright. Everybody back in the base is either defending the generals or fighting off the vampires running around. I'll probably take Vinyl and this...blanket, I guess, back to her mother so she's safe. We'll come back and get you on our way out so we can start to get the hell outta here." She said firmly.
I nodded weakly. I figured I must've been out for only a half an hour judging by how bright it still was.
"Alright, we've gotta get you two untang-" Shakes began, only to be cut short.
I felt my body be squeezed, the slight feeling of a dull pain surfacing on my body.
I looked down to see Vinyl with her nose scrunched up and eyes squeezed tight, her eyebrows furrowed in a way to make her look - for what may have been the first time ever - scared.
"Damn..." Shakes said, clearing her throat in an attempt to hide something. I could've sworn I saw a blush on her cheeks. "...well, I guess we can find a way to move the both of you at once. Just stay here for a bit, 'kay?" She said, dropping the blanket before I made out the sound of hooves rushing off into the distance.
The way she dropped the blanket let in just enough light to let me see Vinyl's face, but not enough to harm her.
I felt like I should've wondered what had happened to Shakes; where she had went, what kind of troubles she ran into and how she dealt with them. But in truth, I didn't. I was just too relieved to be where I was, with Vinyl lying safe with me.
I couldn't help but stare at her, it was such a rare sight. I had never seen Vinyl looking so, well, vulnerable. She looked scared for once, and it just made her look so huggable and more adorable. Much more than normal.
I felt myself wince as I lifted my hooves and wrapped them around the white mare that was nestled into my chest.
I could even feel my own smile painfully forming as the sound of hooves approaching began to reach my ears.