//------------------------------// // Chapter 13 // Story: The Mask Makes the Pony // by kudzuhaiku //------------------------------// Two sticks should do it. Flicker worked with fantastic calm for a pony carrying old, somewhat sweaty dynamite. Old dynamite sweated droplets of pure nitroglycerine, or so Flicker had heard. But like with almost everything he did, Flicker was fearless in his endeavours. He hadn’t been blown up yet, so why worry now? If he did get blown up, he wouldn’t feel very much anyway. Plus, he had life insurance. It cost him a fair bit because of his profession, but he had glorious life insurance. If he died, his family would get one million bits, and that was after taxes, due to the arrangement made with the insurance company. So sweaty dynamite wasn’t something to fear, it was a wonderful opportunity waiting to happen. Having borrowed Flicker’s wand once more, Doctor Sterling was freezing the water around the den, closing up the entryways down in the water. Skilled with water magics, the doctor found them useful for his trade, as a doctor could always use a source of clean, purified water. At a safe distance, the doctor worked with a quiet sense of calm as he prepared for the detonation. “Mister Nicker, relevant facts about the Beggar's Plague, if you please.” “A plague with a high infection rate and a prolonged dormancy. Ponies could go for months after having been infected and show no signs or symptoms of being sick. When the plague did manifest, it was swift and brutal. Survivors would flee to other cities and beg for sustenance, bringing with them the pestilence that would soon infect that city. There seems to be only one instance of it in history and nothing quite like it has appeared since.” “Very good, Mister Nicker,” Doctor Sterling replied. “We are a society that has been shaped by plague. For all of its awfulness, it has brought us enlightenment. It has given us science, reasoning, it has given us motivation to become learned ponies, and not ignorant louts that mewl and whine with superstition. Mister Nicker, get to a safe distance, if you will.” Making a grim expression behind his mask, Doctor Sterling teleported the two sticks of dynamite inside of the old rabbit warren, sending them into the very seething red heart, the central mass of rats. He too, began to back away, mindful of where he put his stilts. “Fire in the hole!” Doctor Sterling shouted as he touched the fuses with his magic and set them alight. Nothing happened at first, the world continued as it was, with relative quiet in a state of non-explodiness that ponies found ideal and conducive to life. But this ended with an abrupt suddenness when the den exploded. The dirt rose up, carried by smoke and fire, and it came back down like rain. A deafening bang could be heard, one muffled by earth and made just tolerable. One by one, most of the red splotches were snuffed out. The few survivors could be dealt with. The doctor knew how to cure them. “Mister Nicker, one heavy gas grenade should suffice. Right into the center of the crater, if you please.” The long brass and steel cylinder was pulled out of a pocket hidden beneath Flicker’s long, heavy cloak. Along the steel portion, the words, “Wick Chandler’s Patented Formula,” could be read, engraved into the steel. This was heavy gas, which displaced the air around it, it sunk into holes in the ground like magic, bringing with it suffocation and flesh melting fun for all ages. Flicker pulled the pin out of the brass end and using his magic, he sent it flying for the smoking heap of debris that had once been home to rats. It landed in the center of the crater with a metallic clatter against bits of stone, and then some rather cheerful looking bright and sunny yellow gas began pouring out, which did not rise into the air, but settled over the ground. The group did not have to wait very long. The gas crept down into the depths of the borrow, slithering through the surviving passages like an unwanted serpent. The surviving rats, little red spots in the vision and nothing more, were extinguished one by one. The fleas were dying too, the bright orange pinpricks in the ground faded into nothingness. The gas was very thorough. Satisfied, the doctor returned Flicker’s wand to him and then watched as the last of the lights went out. There was something satisfying about watching the little lights die one by one. One less pocket of disease in the world, and for this, the doctor was thankful. One had to be mindful, vigilant, one had to remain on constant guard or these pockets of disease, if left unchecked, might very well mean the end of their beloved society. For Doctor Sterling, the mask represented hope. Each time he put it on, he was doing his part to ensure the survival of civilisation as a whole. Not just ponies, but everyone and everything. The doctor had chosen to be a front line soldier in the war against disease. Sterling Shoe was a doer. He might have had a fantastic career in academia discussing theories about disease, safe, secure, and locked away in a sterile classroom, but he had chosen to go to the front lines. He was a plague doctor through and though. There was just too much at stake. After the destruction of the rat burrow, Piper and Hennessy seemed a bit subdued, or maybe they were just tired. Perhaps they weren’t used to working a full day. Flicker regarded his companions in stony silence as they moved along, trying to guess what they might be thinking. The afternoon was warm, perhaps too warm, and the spring was starting to feel more like summer. Flicker was hot and sweaty inside of his suit, but so was everypony else. Things squished and rubbed in all the wrong places, but there was nothing he could do about it. All that could be done was to endure. When the day was over, he would be able to stand in the cool evening breeze and enjoy it, but for now, he would be miserable. All around him, he saw evidence of a shrunken community. There were old houses out here along the canals, but they had been abandoned. The ponies now lived together in the village for safety and no doubt, the needed sense of togetherness. Most of the fields out this far were fallow and were now returning to prairie. There was a hillock out this way, a pile of boulders and earth, perhaps left over from some ice age. Somepony had built a shelter with a ramshackle silhouette up near the top, and Flicker assumed that it would be the the place to go if this area flooded, because it could flood. This whole region was part of a vast floodplain. But with dams and ponies controlling nature, this place had not flooded in a long, long time. Now, instead of floods bringing nutrients to the soil, ponies had to apply fertiliser to the ground to get things to grow. Flicker thought of his father, a farmer and an earth pony. He had learned much from his father and everything his father had taught him still rattled around inside of his head someplace. Flicker could pull it out at will, should it be needed. His thoughts were distracted by Hennessy, who shouted something that sounded very much like, “BAR!” Again, Hennessy shouted, “BAR!” Turning about, Flicker tried to see what the big deal was and his eyes focused upon what had to be at least one thousand pounds of bear lumbering right for them. As he looked at the charging super predator, Hennessy shouted again, “BAR!” The colt’s southern drawl turned the word ‘bear’ into ‘bar.’ The doctor wasted no time, he lifted up both Piper and Hennessy in his telekinesis and took off at a run, extending his stilts to full length as he went. Flicker ran with them, his slow but steady brain analysing the situation. The bear had red, weepy eyes, was foaming at the mouth, and was no doubt, rabid. A bear at full run could hit forty miles an hour, which was pretty damn fast by Flicker’s accounting. The doctor was struggling, trying to carry two ponies, and running over rough, uneven, stony ground with loose soil. Flicker ran the algebra of survival through his head and didn’t like the end sum. “Please forgive me, Doctor Sterling, but survival necessitates my actions.” As Flicker spoke, he drew the doctor’s sword from its scabbard. “Tell my parents and my sister that I love them—” “Damn you! Run! That’s an order!” Doctor Sterling bellowed. Flicker obeyed the doctor’s orders. Pulling out his own sword, he turned and ran at the charging bear, his stilts making long, effortless strides. A disgusting foamy lather covered the bear’s muzzle and dribbled down in long, yellowish ribbons. The bear was massive, huge, and blackish-brown. Flicker didn’t know what kind of bear it was, nor did he care. The bear had to be slowed down, if not stopped. As he and the bear drew nearer, Flicker undid the latches on his stilts and lept free, launching himself through the air, his heavy cloak fluttering out behind him. Almost twenty feet up into the air, he soared, a figure in black with a macabre mask—he was flying like a bird. Thinking of his mother, a pegasus pony, a pretty, patient, wonderful pegasus pony, he tucked his legs in and he flew. He flew over the bear, which had reared up to meet him. Landing, he tucked and rolled, spreading out the energy of his impact over a wide area and saving himself from injury. Every last bit of his training mattered now. Before he was even on his hooves again, he used both swords to slash at the bear’s hind legs. Much to his disappointment, the swords were woefully inadequate and had trouble piercing the thick hide of the rabid ursine monster. The bear lunged, now on all fours again, and Flicker dodged away, all too aware that if he made a mistake, he was dead. As he moved, he stabbed his sword and the doctor’s sword into the bear’s shoulder, drawing blood, but doing very little harm to the monster. Flicker, who wasn’t stupid when it came to combat, saw that there was a very real problem. His sword and the doctor’s sword were long, thin, narrow blades meant for stabbing or slashing a target with no real protection—a rat. The thin, rapier-like swords weren’t very good at stabbing enraged bears. Flicker moved laterally, forcing the bear to turn, which it was slow to do. The two blades scissored and swiped, and Flicker wished that he had spent more time learning the dimachaerus fighting style. The colt had a very grim thought. He didn’t need to fight long, just long enough. Right now, the doctor was still sprinting away with Hennessy and Piper, getting them to safety. Again, he slashed and stabbed, drawing ribbons of blood from the bear, but not doing much in the way of real hurt. In desperation, he thought of the emergency incendiary grenade he carried, but with the bear in such close quarters, it would mean setting himself on fire, and that would suck. Flicker didn’t quite move fast enough and the bear’s claws raked his sides, tearing through leather, rubber, canvas, flesh, and right down into his ribs. He staggered away and in a moment of desperate creativity, he caused a bright flash of light to appear in front of the bear’s eyes, blinding it for a few precious seconds. It was difficult to breathe now, it hurt a lot, but he had no choice but to keep moving. He continued to circle, forcing the bear to turn with him, and Flicker’s own blood now stained the grass beneath his hooves. Risking his own hide again, he went for the eyes, the left eye in particular, since he was heading left, it would make it harder for the bear to track him. He stabbed and slashed with cruel, vicious cuts. The bear’s heavy skull was very resistant to his blades, which inflicted superficial wounds. But when he had a chance, he took it. He slipped his own sword blade into the bear’s left eye, and tried to jab it into the monster’s brain. In his telekinetic grip, he felt the blade strike bone as the monster roared with pain and fury. As the bear whipped his head around, Flicker’s blade broke off in its eye socket. Now, Flicker had one sword and a hilt. The bear was down one eye, but such was its fury that it hardly seemed to notice. Flicker kept his hooves moving, always going to the bear’s left, dodging, leaping, and forcing the bear to keep turning. Stabbing the bear wasn’t working. He needed a way to cause an immense amount of harm so that the bear could be dropped. When faced with such a dreadful task, his brain offered him a solution. A terrible solution. Flicker worked to make it happen. Ignoring his own wounds, he began to leap around, expending more energy than might be wise, and he kept stabbing at the bear’s legs, hoping to cut a tendon. With the doctor’s sword, when he had just the right opportunity, he stabbed it deep into the bear’s side, making a tiny hole just behind the bear’s ribs. The giant bear howled with murderous fury as it tried to catch the much smaller creature tormenting it with painful pinpricks. Flicker, focused upon his task, hadn’t stabbed the bear to cause harm, but to create an opening. He was overheating now, he was dizzy, losing blood, and in pain. He pulled out two sticks of dynamite and the bear’s claws almost connected with his fragile body once more. Flicker let his heavy cloak fly free to distract the bear and buy him precious time. The bear swiped at the cloak and Flicker jammed a stick of dynamite into the hole in the bear’s left side, and then while the bear was trying to maul the cloak, he jammed the second stick of dynamite into the bear’s ruined eye socket, getting it in just deep enough to make it stay. Using his magic, he lit the fuses, and then ran away like there was an angry bear armed to explode just behind him…