"That Sky Will Be Clear in No Time."
A thunderous roar screeched across the sky from which all the ponies below were forbidden to see. Still, the glow from the orange sky pierced through the smoke clouds in the form of multiple pinpricks, shining its light through these holes onto the dust covered land which the which the aforementioned ponies stood upon. At the center of the mass that all those ponies formed, Applejack stood her tallest at its center and spoke her orders as loud as her vocal cords would allow.
"Unicorns!" She commanded the attention all those whom she called out. "I'm not goin' to pretend to know all of the spells you are capable of, so it doesn't make no sense for me to give orders that y'all could easily think of something that could better. All I can ask is that you take heed to your two primary priorities, which are to deflect that dragon's flames should they come, and to use any excess energy to enchant whatever weapons you can.
"If ya can heed those two priorities, then use whatever you got left to take down that dragon."
The silence stretched on after the mare's words as they were comprehended by those they were meant for, who then sought in their own ways, the best possible practice to put forth. Another roar tore through the sky above and displayed a cloud of smoke with the force imbued within it, allowing for those below to see the orange sky through the circle of hope.
"Earth ponies!" Applejack began again as she felt the warmth of the orange glow descended upon her coat. "Y'all are gonna pay your instincts no mind, keeping to your stances no matter what. When I say the attack in a certain direction, you attack in that direction, or else our independent impacts will do nothing to harm or even sway the dragon off his course.
"That's why we're all formed together like this, no longer just an individual small ponies to his dragon eyes, but a mass forming into a single body that stand an equal chance against him."
Applejack was not a mind reader though her brain pretended to be one. Despite not a voice being raised in objection against her plan, she imaged the internal voices of the guard either laughing or crying at the stupidity of her idea, though those same voices probably had nothing better to add. "I know hearing that may sound a little silly, but I assure you I've seen the unicorns magic able to defeat his flames, and the earth pony swords slice through scales. If we are to survive this, then I need everyone to push that little voice deeper inside of themselves, and only listen to what direction I say the dragon is coming from."
Another roar almost deafened all those who heard it. The beast's shadow grew darker to such a shade, that it phased through the clouds of smoke to blanket those underneath the sky. Yet, despite being enshrouded again in the beast darkness, the leader of this amassed group looked up to the lone circle in the cloudy sky that saw the faint glimpse of the sun.
The other members of the amassed group followed their leader's eyes, until they too, saw through the circle of hope to the sun that instilled within them a goal they equally desired.
"I don't care what happens next," Applejack said with her eyes still focused the sun, "just as long as all stand by me. If we work together as a body as one, then that sky will be clear in no time."
The last roar reverberated off of the mountain's sides and swept through the alleys comprising the shopping district which the ponies guarding for their lives resided on. Fear still slithered around some of their hearts as it struck their hearts with fangs of hysteria, but this snake didn't garner the same response like had from its previous response, as those ponies used the numbing agent instead to fully place their lives in the hooves of someone else.
Even if they couldn't lead themselves, they would keep what they would of their wills and use the power of their wills to dedicate all that they could into someone's hooves. Cowards are doomed to exist, but it is the result of their cowardice that defines them.
The world seemed to slow down for Applejack as her eyes slipped close, steadying her breathing so the desperate beats of her heart could be quelled and interfere not with her hearing. Once calm and conscious of herself, she felt every vibrating from the roar coursing through the ground begin to possess the bottom of her hooves.
"Everypony." The word left the orange lips in a whisper, yet was still heard by those who trained and dedicated their ears to those lips. "Now's the time to fight. Heed my call and only my call alone."
The guards nodded, their metal clanking as they turned away from their leader, and took their position.
For an eerily moment, everything remained silent. The order of keeping their faces expressionless was disobeyed by the comprised rookies, all of who had not seen a battle so fearsome that would place the mask of composure over their faces, and not yet exuding the confidence inside them all that would seal the mask into place. Though they all carried faces of worry, fear, agony and more, all of them held the belief that winning this battle would see the creation of all of their independent masks.
Applejack's hooves were vibrated up in down that slid the rest of her body inch by inch. Instead of tensing her muscles to stop the effect, she loosens them even more to allow the current full reign over her body. She felt the different forces behind every pulse and how much they varied from one another, imaging in the space of her mind the origins of these current and how they traveled the way she did.
The current stopped. Applejack's body stopped shaking. And her hooves tingled from the subtle tickle.
"He's coming from the north!" Applejack felt her head lower even more in concentration, summoning her earthpony magic to advance her five sense into their prime. The sounds of the world around her slowed, perking up her ears as they heard a gust of wind in the distance, followed by quiet flap struggling to hide the weight behind it. "Earthponies. Attack. NOW!"
Applejack's eyes flew open in time to look up into the palms of the dragon, their owner emerging from clouds of smoke with his maw agape with a roar reverberating from his throat and his purple eyes lit aflame. The dragon's trajectory shot him at the mass of the ponies with the sharpness that was the tips of its claws, ready to impale their prey with their lengths and claim a snack with every digit it had available.
The two opposing forces collided. A sound like glass shattering boomed throughout the surrounding area. And a cry belonging to a beast preceded it.
A second before the digits of the claws was supposed to pierce through metal and claim the flesh underneath, an encirclement of horns summoned their magical auroras into a concentrated beam just above their head; all of these beams shooting out to connect with one another, before combing their magical ability to cast a thin, multi-colored barrier that boxed in the mass that was its owners.
The digits of the claws smashed into an immovable object for but a mere second, the barrier-shattering a second later, though it gave time for the sword, axes, and spears underneath to cock themselves backward. Some of these weapons glowed special color as they launched into the talons that were supposed to take their lives, instead now being hacked away in that split second.
Scales are resilient to most blunt attacks due to their flexibility, though deliver enough force in a concentrated area and the impact will be far too great to be just distributed. The following combined attack struck collectively at the digits of the claw, stripping away scales due to its impact while other instruments hacked further to reveal the red flesh hidden underneath. Glowing weapons came to join in on the attack as well, though their charge sparked blindly when nearing the scales that dispelled the magic into nothingness.
Though in the patches where there were no longer any scales, those magical weapons dug deep into the red flesh and dispelled their magical charge deep within the beast being, bearing a current of agony that coursed through his bones as the digits of his left claw went limp.
The dragon, knocked off his course by the sudden attack and carrying a mind dulled by agony, gave still a mighty flap of the wings whose currents collided against the next, upper platform so that its owner's body didn't have to.
He clutched at his broken claw as his body soared into the clouds of smoke, but not before hissing at his foe and swearing his revenge.
The ponies were not quick to celebrate their success as they went back to their stances yet again. Some of the spears had bent when impaling themselves against the hard scales, so their owners used the moment to use all of their might to bend the metal back into place.
Applejack smiled at seeing the guards work in synchronization, not even needing to look to that circle of hope to give her the courage for the next attack. Instead, she closed her eyes and cleansed her mind of the endorphins triggered by the victory, trying to hear past her own heartbeats to learn the location of the dragon.
There weren't any roars. No screech declaring the dragon's position. The gust of winds spurred by the wings were too sporadically scattered in the sky, making it impossible to ascertain what direction they were originating from. Applejack bit her lip at being unable to properly detect the location of the dragon, trying to quell her mind of the arising doubts that interfered with her clear hearing.
Only, the voice that spoke in her head was less malice than she expected, to the point where it sounded nerous at having to explain itself. 'Well, I'm re-reading some books on triangulations, if you really want to know. Uhm, ha, would that be something that would, I don't know, maybe interest you at all?'
Applejack heard the echo of her own voice within the confines of her mind. 'Is that the one where you study the different sizes of triangles?'
'What? No!' The nervous voice came to squeak louder as perspiration raced along its owners face. 'It's the tracing and measurement of a series of triangles in order to determine the distances and relative position of points spread over a territory!'
'...I beg your pardon?'
The nervous voice huffed. 'I guess you could say it's trying to find the center of a bunch of scattered triangles. A lot of math and surveying go into it, really as—'
"That's it!" Applejack exclaimed in reality that dispelled the voices in her head; a fact she would have examined by a doctor should she survive the coming encounter. "That dragon is trying to scatter the places where he flaps his wings to try and hide the direction he's coming from. But the way in which those jumps are made could be used to find the dragon in of themselves!"
The surrounding guards finished the mending of their weapons and kept their bodies loose, allowing themselves to snap in whatever direction call as they eyes glanced to their leader. "What direction is he coming from?!"
Applejack allowed her eyes to slip closed, summoning a graph to the forefront of her mind, and tried her best to accurately place where she heard each of the dragon's scattered flaps. She felt her mind naturally narrow on a patch of lines the more she added to the graph, unable to properly predicate the answer due to her lack in math, relying solely on the expelling pulses of her instincts.
Her body began to sway north, then inch to the right. The orange eyelids split apart to reveal eyes already focused on a certain patch in the air, and in summoning her hoof to her side, Applejack then struck it up at the area of her fixation. "North-East in my hoof's direction!"
The guards snapped to their positions, waiting the agonizing moment to see if a dragon would appear before the guarded front, or if they would feel its talons inside their expose backs. At the corner of all their eyes, they caught sight of the dragon with his maw agape, yet with no sounds emitting from its depths.
Applejack smiled as her hoof winded back, and shot forth in the direction of the oncoming dragon. The guards snapped to attention as a familiar barrier enshrouded them, causing for the silent, scaly mouth to give a small cry as its owner's wings tired flapped in an attempt to prevent its descent. 'Tried' being the keyword of the aforementioned tactic.
The gust from the flap assaulted the barrier, but did nothing to prevent the dragon from reaching it as well. The unicorns decided to play a risky game, summoning all the magic from their defenses and transferring it fully into the offensive power of earth ponies weaponry. Those glowing swords and shining spears phased out of existence to their owners' eyes comprehension, phasing past the momentum the dragon carried with him that could easily snap all of their arms, and phased back into existence collectively to bash upon exposed dermis of the dragon's wrist.
With the accelerated speed in which the weapons traveled, combined with magical induced collective attack, the weapons shattered the wrist's radius and pierced further into the flesh, painfully serving all the veins that allowed blood to course into the claw. The guards felt their arms reach their full extent, yanking back their weapons as fast as they could, lest they are whipped into being carried by the dragon.
The impact from the sole attack manipulated on his wrist sent the dragon's flight into a whirl. His body came to shake the ground that it collided against, sliding along the marble until the railings of the platform's edge restrained the mass of his body. Its purple eyes were concealed behind a pair of eyelids as it looked to not being getting up anytime soon.
Applejack found herself panting after the exchange, despite not aiding the physical attack. A voice called her name in the distance, causing her heaving form to look for their owner until her eyes settled on the entrance to the Style Vista bar. Twilight Sparkle stared at her from its entrance, a smile carving itself on her lips at being seen by her friend, and waving her hoof in the air.
Any traces of exhaustion were wiped from the farm pony's system as a smile blessed her lips as well, waving to her friend as many more of them began to fill out from the door. Pinkie, Rarity, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. It felt like years since she last saw them, and wanted nothing more than to cut the distance between them and wrap them up in a big ol' hug.
Her green eyes trailed over to the dragon, who's eyes had been sealed from the agony induced in his claws, and his mouth only opened to nicker. Applejack summoned her command of the surrounding guards with a raise of a hoof, encircling it in the air, before directing its course at the fallen dragon. The guards nodded and did as they were instructed, filling out into lines the enclosed the dragon in the space he currently occupied.
At the rise of the hoof, the last of the guards stopped from joining their brothers and sisters, focusing their attention on the turned face of their leader. "Y'all are gonna escort me to the other Elements. Afterward, all of ya go back to heeding the princesses' commands, kapeesh?"
The guards were bemused at the strange way their news orders had been issued to them, but understood the meaning and logical behind it, as they followed the orange mare when she began to trot back to her friends. Just like her, they kept a constant eye on the dragon that the others were beginning to near with their weapons, though they couldn't help but ponder the thought that plagued them all.
Would they miss their impromptu leader?
Such answers could only be answered by time.
A roar snapped them from their thoughts; a heavyweight smashed against the ground for which they stood, and a tidal waves of flying bodies flew all over thier heads. Immediately, the horns belonging to the squad lit up in their innate color, capturing those who were deemed to fall into the bottomless circle and assure that wouldn't become the case.
Those not with horns rushed immediately in front of Applejack, bringing her to a halt, as they formed a wall of armor prepared to take any fist or flame. But the claw that had smacked away the line of guards was not directed to the foe that caused its other so much agony, rather, the recently opened eyes focused on the alabaster princess who'd just stepped out from the bar.
The dragon invested the energy in his reservoirs into the muscles in his legs, lunging after the group of special ponies with a claw still big enough to wrap around a fair number of then, and they hadn't the reaction time to retaliate or even jump out of the way. Its mighty blue wings were already extended, ready to give a flap that would see him to the safety of the sky with his new snacks in tow.
Before fear could even cross the faces of the ponies whose lives were now in risk, a stallion bearing an afro jumped into the dragon's collision course. He carried no weapon besides the muscles hidden underneath his armor, throwing himself into the exposed palm of the claw.
All of the nerve damage scattered throughout the beast's body caused for his claw to wrap around thing forcing against its palm pushing into it, not knowing the things it held in its grasp before his wings gave the flap needed to escape. There is no weight great enough for a dragon to be unable to carry, but the objects in his claw were quite heavy, giving him the impression he caught the foes he wanted the most.
Afro-Stallion saw the land and its ponies shrink in a matter of seconds, all their faces dawning at the realization of his sacrifice. Although he was taut in the dragon's grasp, and surely would meet his end inside the stomach of the best, Afro couldn't help but feel euphoria. He fulfilled his duty as a member of the Royal Gaurd: protecting the princesses no matter the cause.
And to those whom he swore his life too, he shouted at them with the last of the air inside his lungs.
"Forget about me!"