//------------------------------// // Between A Rock and A Hard Place // Story: Tales of the Battle Foals // by Sirdubya //------------------------------// “Ms. Quantum Tech, get behind me!” Kickback whispered as he drew his guns. Quantum Tech complied without question. She hid behind him as she observed the pair of eyes. The foals readied themselves for whatever it was. What finally emerged was a giant floating crystalline golem. It had a large cluster of crystals forming its body, and didn’t have legs. It had thin arms with crystalline ‘gauntlets’ about its forearms and five fingers on each hand. Its head had much more of a shape to it; the edge of the crystal forming its head almost acting like a nose despite not actually having one with either of the adjacent faces holding either of its two eyes. The eyes were multicolored, and were in the likes of the light spectrum. It had a few large crystals growing out of its spinal area. It let out a roar that sounded as though it was emitted from a speaker rather than actually screamed. The foals stood still locked in a staring contest with the prismatic being. “Is….Is it dangerous?” Fire Fight asked. His question was quickly answered when the creature slammed its fists onto the ground, causing a wave of crystals to travel towards them. They jumped out of the way just in time before an even bigger crystal erupted from the ground, nearly impaling them. “Guess so!!” “YOU’RE LATE FOR THE MEETING, SIR!! YOU’RE FIIIIIIIIIRRRREEED!!!” Crazylocks bellowed. She flew towards the monster, and reassumed her earth pony form as she landed on its shoulder. She wailed on it with her locks. She managed to make some cracks, but it barely did a thing to stagger the beast. It picked her off of its shoulder, and flung her into rocky wall where the foals were. “CRAZYLOCKS!” Spiral Galaxy exclaimed. She seemed okay, but she was definitely gonna feel that in the morning. “Oh, you’ve done it now!” Spiral began charging her magic. Her new hornband amplified her magic considerably. She was sure to obliterate a monster made of stone with a well-placed star beam. The other hung back. Turf War got in front of Crazylocks to defend her as she staggered to her hooves. “Nrgh….I…..I didn’t order that!!” she said. Quantum Tech was eager to see Spiral’s magic at its finest as the others awaited her cosmic wrath to be inflicted upon this being. However, when she thought more about the circumstances, a startling revelation had hit her. “WAIT!! DON’T!!” She ran over to Spiral to try and stop her, but it was too late. Spiral fired her nova beam, and the beast took it full on. However, instead of being shattered into countless pieces…..it seemed to absorb the beam of light! The golem glowed bright as the ground around it seemed to rumble, and it let out another roar. The foals’ eyes all widened in horror. “Uh oh….” Spiral muttered. Her head started hurting from focusing the blast. “I should have expected this….” Quantum muttered. The golem was now glowing bright enough to pretty light the entire huge cavern. It aimed its hands at the foals as energy began collecting in its palms… “RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN!!!!!!!!!!!” Fire Fight screamed his lungs out as he called out to his comrades. Turf War grabbed Crazylocks as he booked it. The golem fired the light energy that it had absorbed as its own concentrated beams at the foals. The foals ran in opposite directions trying to avoid certain death. The destructive beams violently shook the ground that they didn’t obliterate, and the foals struggled to keep their balance as they ran from them. The golem stopped firing its beams, and charged the foals. “I AM AN IDIOT!!” Spiral screamed. “N-N-Now, now. E-E-Everything will be fine. We just need to…..um, um, umm!!!” Quantum Tech was thinking frantically. The situation had unexpectedly become direr, and she had to come up with a solution pronto. “O-Ok! I think can agree that attacking it with magic is a bad idea! Just attack with brute force until I can think of something” she shouted. “Thought you’d never ask, homegirl!” Turf War shouted. Crazylocks suddenly sprang up, and was sobbing in anger. “I..….I WILL AVENGE CRAZYLOCKS! SHE WAS SO PRETTY, AND YOU KILLED HER!!” she shouted. Turf War rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Dis b**** is stupid….” He muttered to himself. The golem flew towards, and threw a punch. He blocked it with his shield, and then smacked its fist with his hammer. It did little to stagger the beast, but it left some cracks. He then pushed it away with his shield. The golem floated back, and pointed its finger towards him and Crazylocks. It must have had some leftover magic from absorbing Spiral’s nova beam, because its finger lit up, and fired a series of light blasts at them. “OH S***!!!” Turf War put up his shield in an attempt to block it, but a few of the light blasts that hit him blew him back into the wall behind him. The other shots flew towards Crazylocks, but instead of striking her, she….managed to catch them in her mouth and swallow them. She held her mouth as though she was trying to hold back vomiting for a few seconds, but then let loose. “BEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLCH!!!!!” Crazylocks loudly burped the magic blasts back at the golem as waves of energy. While the crystalline beast didn’t seem to take any damage, it was greatly staggered by the…..counterattack, and struggled to stay afloat in the air. It roared in some kind of agony. Crazylocks stopped after a few seconds. “THAT WASN’T MY FAVORITE FLAVOR!! I DEMAND A REFUND!!” she shouted. The other foals just looked at her in….somewhat appalled astonishment. “Er…Undignified…..but effective.” Quantum Tech said. “Attack it while it’s down!” Fire Fight shouted. “Fire Fight, don’t attack it with any surges of heat if you can help it! Crystals are formed when carbon is superheated deep underground! You’ll only harden it!” Quantum Tech said to him. “Shoot. Ok! Thanks the heads up!” Fire Fight replied. He charged the creature along with Air Slash, Shadow Shroud and Crazylocks. Kickback and Spiral stayed in the back while Quantum went to check on Turf War. Kickback drew his guns. “Time to make some noise, you two.” He fired them a few times at the golem, but as expected, the little pellets of metal did little to a huge mass of crystal. “Shucks!” “You’d have to get closer, darling! Projectiles such as bullets lose momentum in the air as they travel, and thus wouldn’t as much damage from a greater distance!” Quantum shouted to him. Kickback tipped his hat at her. “Ah understand!” he said. He rushed over to the others to aid in their all-out assault. “If I can’t hit it with magic directly, then I’ll try to keep it down!” Spiral exclaimed. She formed a small but powerful gravity field over the golem that wasn’t big enough to disrupt the other attacking foals. Quantum reached Turf War as he staggered to his hooves. “ Damn! Dat was whack….” he mumbled. “Are you quite alright?” Quantum asked him. Turf War wiped his nose. “Yeah. Dat wasn’t s***. I’m good. Thanks d’ho.” He said. “Just…be careful. And stop swearing for goodness sakes!” Quantum said. “Er…my bad.” Turf War rushed into the fray. Upon looking more closely at him, Quantum noticed that he seemed to by limping a little. Spiral’s gravity field held the golem down fairly well, but its floating ability seemed to push away gravity, and it rose with relative ease. Meanwhile, the assaulting foals wailed heavily on the staggered crystal creature. Kickback fired at its thin arms nearly point blank in an attempt to sever them, but it still did little; the other were amazed that he could even hit such small targets. Air Slash sliced away at it, but even his swords left only little gashes in its crystalline flesh. Shadow Shroud wasn’t having much better luck; she was chopping away with her kamas, but they of course did little. It was then that she pulled out a thick little string that was roughly 4-5 inches long, folded the blades of her kamas, and connected them with the string into nunchucks. She expertly spun them before wailing on the golem, but she could only leave little cracks. Fire Fight punched and kicked away, but he left only bigger cracks than the other could leave; having to restrict himself access to his fire magic made things all the more difficult. Turf War was having about the same luck with his hammer-axe; the axe end seemed to do more damaged as it chopped into the golem’s body. Crazylocks was the only one who could deal significant damage to the golem due to her earth pony mane being so ridiculously strong; she chipped off whole pieces of its body little by little, but the golem seemed to be taking even those blows like flea bites. Finally, the golem braved through Spiral’s gravity field completely. It spun around flailing its fists, and knocked the foals away in all directions. Air Slash and Shadow Shroud managed to keep their balance and get back to their hooves quickly, but they had taken a nasty blow. The others weren’t so lucky. Fire Fight and Crazylocks flew into the rocky wall, and fell to the floor with a thud. “Nrgh! ARGH!!” Fire Fight really felt that. Turf War was knocked towards the dark void where the golem appeared from, but there was thankfully no wall; however, the damage he’d sustained earlier was only added to greatly, and he could barely stand. “Argh….H-Hell!” Kickback was knocked into the wall right where Quantum Tech was. She watched in horror as he crumbled to the ground like a ragdoll. “KICKBACK!!” she screamed. The gunslinger greatly struggled to his hooves. “T-T-Tarnation!” The golem locked eyes with Spiral, who was trying to intensify her gravity field to hold it down, but to no avail. It fired one last little shot of prismatic light at her. She could do nothing to dodge it as she was concentrating on her magic, and took the blast of light to the chest. “AIIEE!!” Thankfully, her armor blocked all of the damage from the light blast, but she was thrust into the wall behind her with incredible force, and flopped to the ground “Unnnnngghhhh……” She struggled to her hooves. Quantum Tech frantically looked around in horror. She was the only one left standing, and she was helpless to do anything. She helped up Kickback and Spiral as the other from afar got up themselves. The situation was grim. She scanned it with her glasses for any sign of a weak point, but to no avail. The places where it had been previously damaged were as vulnerable as they were before. “Oh my! Oh my, oh my, oh my!!” she was panicking. The golem let out another roar as it raised its arms, and summoned a wave of crystal from outwards. It pulled the crystal towards itself as the wave itself scooped the foals up towards it. They could do little to resist in their injured states. They all looked up at the golem in despair. Its eyes expressed great hostility as it rose upward, and curled into ball. The spikes protruding from its back gleamed viciously as it began rolling forward quickly. The shocked that the foals exhibited essentially forced them to recover quickly. Being trapped within walls of crystal, they had nowhere to run. Just as the golem rocketed downward towards them, Fire Fight and Spiral Galaxy combined their magic to create a huge force field above them and the others. The golem abraded against the force field as it tried to shred through it, but the two unicorns mustered their mental strength well since they were compromised physically. It was relatively close enough for Kickback to fire his guns, so he fired them in hopes of pushing it back. It did naught but cut some hoof-sized splinters to fall to them. “Sorry, y’all! Ah’m almost outta bullets! Ah can’t afford to waste anymore!” he said as he stopped shooting. The situation now seemed hopeless. The unicorns surely didn’t have the strength to hold their force field forever. “Is this……Is this it?” Air Slash muttered. “How fitting that I would perish in the place where my order began….” Shadow Shroud muttered. “Don’t y’all start sayin’ s*** like dat now! We can get through dis! We just gotta……..gotta…….” Even Turf War was beginning to lose hope. Spiral and Fire Fight were battling with all of their psychic endurance against the golem. “Quantum Tech!......Nrgh!......NRRRGHHH!.......Please!..........Think of something!....Anything!!” Spiral shouted. It was astonishing that she and Fire Fight were holding out as much as they were. Quantum’s hornbands must have been making a huge difference. Quantum heard her, but she was consumed with terror upon gazing at the crystalline reaper above them eager to maul them. Had her passion for science brought her to an untimely demise? Were her parents right to condemn her for it? She had to push such thoughts away as she looked around frantically. There was nothing but the pieces of its body that Kickback managed to shoot off, but that was but a reminder of how helpless they were against the golem……..”Wait a minute.” Quantum curiously levitated one the pieces towards her, and forced some of her magic into it. As expected, it glowed like it did before, meaning that it was charged with the power she had fed to it. She thought back to when it turned Spiral’s nova laser against them…… “Air Slash, come here a moment.” She said. Air Slash crawled towards her. “What is it?” “Would you kindly hand me one of your swords? I might have an idea….” Quantum said. Air Slash looked at her with hesitation, but gave in. “Very well….Please be careful with it.” “Certainly.” Quantum Tech held her charged crystal against the blade of Air Slash’s sword. She then used a spell that let her transfer charged magic to another object, being the blade; the blade itself couldn’t already conduct magic. The sword began shimmering brightly with the same kind of glow that she got from the crystal. She charged more magic into, and it was becoming blinding. “Hand me your other sword.” Air Slash, amazed at she was doing did so without hesitation. She charged the other sword with equal power, and handed them back to him. “Now try that.” Pushing some hesitation aside, Air Slash poised his glistening swords, and sliced them at the golem. What he didn’t expect to see was that it launched a massive sword beam at it that definitely hit home. The golem screeched in agony when it was hit, and stopped spinning. The crystal walls around the foals suddenly lowered, and they fell back. “Well! I’d say that worked!” Air Slash declared victoriously. The golem was clutching itself as though it had sustained massive damage, probably because it did. It glared viciously back at the foals as it let out a furious growl. Air Slash could see that he still had some energy left in his swords, so he poised them towards the crystalline titan. “Our time together is over, monster! Fall to my blades!” he shouted. Just before he was about to charge at it, He suddenly felt his swords vibrate. He looked back to see Quantum charging them once more. “Perhaps a little recharge would do nicely?” she said. Air Slash nodded. “Thank you, friend.” He soared towards his foe. The others were too roughed up to put up a sufficient fight, so they hung back. Spiral and Fire Fight had splitting headaches from forcing their magic like that. Just as Air Slash reached the golem, it thrust its fist toward him. He actually managed to parry it away with his charged sword as the golem screeched again. Seizing the opportunity, Air Slash went for its head, but it strafed away before he could hit it. He did however manage to reach one of its thin arms as it moved to the side. Without thinking, he slashed at it, and sure enough, he sliced it clean off! “Yes!!” he shouted. The golem shrieked in utter agony. “It’s working!! We’ve managed to turn its own strength against it! It’s sure to fall!” Quantum said jubilantly. “You’re amazing, Quantum Tech!” Spiral said. Quantum blushed at her new friend’s comment. It was in that moment that Spiral’s headache had subsided enough to where she’d feel comfortable using her magic. This hornband was really a blessing. “Time for you to settle down, you overgrown engagement ring!” She conjured a gravity field that managed to slow it down just in time for Air Slash to fly over, and sever its other arm. The golem shrieked once more as Air Slash held his swords skyward. They seemed to charge each other as they began to glow more brilliantly. “THIS IS THE END FOR YOU!!!” Air Slash shouted. He crossed his swords into an ‘X’ shape, and sliced them forward. An ‘X’ shaped sword beam flew towards the golem as it could only watch its demise unfold. It hit the beast, and sliced its body into quarters. The four large pieces of its head and torso fell to the ground completely lifeless.