//------------------------------//
// Chapter 11 
// Story: Together, They Fight Crime 
// by kudzuhaiku 
//------------------------------//

It wasn’t every day that a luchador just randomly dropped through a skylight and announced that there was about to be an epic ass beating, accompanied by mariachi music. Unable to respond, goons, mooks, thugs, (even a few desperados, burros gone bad) and heavies, all of them stood there, blinking, wondering just how and why a luchador had come to stand among their number. It was the desperados who reacted first: all of them turned tail and made a break for the exits, knowing full well what was about to go down.

Guacamelee’s cape swirled around her—yes, it was most certainly a she, as her voice was distinctly feminine—and then with a confusing pop, she vanished from view. She was just gone and the crowd began to murmur. A second later she popped back into existence with an explosion of confetti, streamers, and tiny candies wrapped in colourful, cheerful waxed paper. In an easy bipedal stance, she took the nearest mook by surprise and leveled him with a frightful, delightful roundhouse kick that made her cape whip about whilst she circled.

And then, she was gone again, leaving behind confetti, streamers, candy, and a broken jaw.

She burst back into view with more confetti, streamers, and candy, her cape flowing in some unseen, unfathomable wind. This cape was emblazoned with a cactus and a decorated, beautiful burro skull whose eyes were like two live, glowing embers. This was no mere image, the eyes moved, the flames flickered, and the skull, made of patchwork castaway scraps, seemed to be laughing.

Guacamelee attacked, throwing herself at a group of confused earth ponies and one pegasus pony. Flapping his wings, the pegasus sought to gain the height advantage, but Guacamelee wasn’t having that. With a graceful bounce, she grabbed the pegasus by his hind legs, gripping his hocks in her fetlocks, then when she landed back upon the ground, she swung him at his fellows. One earth pony dodged, rolling away with a startled cry, but the pony beside him wasn’t so lucky, and the screaming, panicked pegasus collided with the earth pony with a terrific meaty smack. Guacamelee wasn’t done though, and even as the earth pony tumbled to the concrete floor with grotesque head trauma, she readied her makeshift pegasus weapon for another swing.

Making a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree swipe, Guacamelee sent ponies tumbling all around her, and then she tossed away the pegasus into the bloodied heap of bodies that were now piled around her. She lept over them and moved to engage the group of ponies coming to intercept her. Running on her two hind hooves, she moved with the grace of a ballerina, nimble, quick, and confident.

Moving past a workbench, she snatched up a long red toolbox in her front hooves, and then swung it with all of her might as she bore down upon her would-be attackers. The toolbox slipped from her hooves and flew like a bright red missile that clanked, clunked, and clattered, soaring through the air in a way that only a long rectangular box filled with tools could.

It struck an incoming earth pony in the face, doing destructive dental demolishing on impact. A cacophony erupted, the sounds of screaming, of metal on bone, panicked shouts, and the sweet, sweet strains of mariachi music all made for a terrible soundtrack to do battle by. Just as the earth ponies were about to tackle her, she was gone, vanishing as her cape seemed to swallow her.

Guacamelee reappeared, but was only in existence long enough to pull an earth pony into a tight hug, almost swallowing him in her colourful cape, and then she vanished with the earth pony held fast in her embrace. An eyeblink later, she could be seen again up high in the rafters; she hurled the earth pony away from her and as he plummeted to the concrete below, she blinked away yet again, leaving him to his fate.





“Hit him with the chair!” a colt trapped inside of a makeshift cage made of chain link fence cried as Guacamelee advanced upon his captors. The foal seemed eager for violence, and like his fellows, his mouth was full of candy that had now littered the floor. “The chair! Hit’im with the chair!”

The masked figure picked up the steel chair as suggested and the earth pony that she stalked shook his head from side to side, a silent plea for Guacamelee to put the chair down so they could discuss this rationally, one hoofed quadruped to another. It was obvious that he had no desire to have a cage match with the luchador. Raising the chair up high over her head, Guacamelee then lunged forwards and brought the chair downward in a vicious smash. The earth pony dodged with a hair’s breadth to spare and began whimpering, pleading for mercy as he retreated.

There was no mercy to be had and this time, when Guacamelee swung the chair, it connected with the earth pony’s right front leg, which buckled and bent unnaturally from the impact. The chair too, suffered much damage, and two of its legs also bent. She tossed the chair away, it skittered and clattered over the concrete floor, and then she bent down to pick up the prone earth pony with the broken leg.

With a neat flip, she crotch-crutch suplexed him, visiting extreme harm upon his groin and his head as she drove him down onto the unyielding floor with a terrific wet splat. The mook curled up into a fetal position, clutching his groin, and the enormous lump growing from his head made him look a bit like a deformed unicorn.

A half-dozen ponies advanced, determined to take out the masked, mysterious luchador that was wrecking everything. The foals were cheering, in high spirits, somehow restored and filled with hope through unknown means. Candy wrappers blew about like autumn leaves and Guacamelee made a come-hither gesture with her hoof.

One earth pony stood in a bipedal stance and advanced with a crowbar held in his fetlock. Another did much the same, but was armed with a plank of wood. A unicorn levitated a length of iron pipe in her telekinesis. The foals booed them and Guacamelee stood waiting, her cape billowing around her in hypnotic swirls.

The one with the crowbar made the first move, and Guacamelee sidestepped the clumsy attack. The unicorn’s pipe grazed the colourful cape when she swung, but the cape snatched the iron pipe away. When the pony armed with a wooden plank took a swing, Guacamelee’s cape parried with the iron pipe, and then Guacamelee herself punched the big plank-bearing stallion right in the throat with the hard edge of her hoof.

As he staggered away, she took advantage of the shock and surprise of the pony holding the crowbar, and she delivered a devastating jackhammer kick right to his huevos. With a shrill cry, the crowbar-bearing pony collapsed into heap, squeezing his hind legs together while his eyes rolled back into his skull, all in time to brassy horn flourishes from the unseen mariachi band.

The other three ponies, seeing how their companions fared, decided to split, leaving behind the unicorn mare, who was now unarmed. A half-second later, she was clobbered with her own iron pipe, which rent open a terrific gash above her brow, and she was dumped into the pile of her squirming, throat-clutching, testicle-sheltering fellows.

“Right in the nuts!” a filly shouted, and Guacamelee gave her a silent nod before sprinting off to catch the fleeing mooks.

Just when things couldn’t possibly get more chaotic, they did. More ponies came in through the broken skylight and smashed open the enormous doors at one end of the warehouse. Wearing black jackets and sunglasses, they swarmed into the building by the dozens, many of them moving with the sort of fluid grace that could only be created by breeding ninjas with the Wonderbolts and having the offspring trained in dancing by Sapphire Shores.

“S.M.I.L.E. ON THE SCENE! THIS IS A BUST! NOPONY MOVE!”

Of course the mooks moved, they were being assaulted by a supernatural luchador that teleported willy nilly, crushing their skulls, spines, and nuts as she blinked to and fro, and now, agents of S.M.I.L.E. were flooding the building. There was only one outcome, an unavoidable, inevitable outcome to this event: the fighting went into full swing.

Hulking brutes in black suits tore into the mooks, goons, and thugs in a beautiful spree of mayhem. Punches and kicks were exchanged. Sunglasses were knocked off. Mooks were punished for sunglasses being knocked off. Foals, their mouths full of supernatural candies dropped by the mysterious luchador, cheered for their rescuers and jeered their captors as the Battle Royalle progressed.

Then, the Wardens arrived, three of them, and they too dropped in through the ruined skylight. Wearing armor, not suits, it was obvious that they had arrived to kick plot and chew gristle… but they were fresh out of gristle. Slow moving tanks, they were in no hurry as they waded into the fray and did what the Wardens do… which is to say, they restored order, as demanded by regulations.

With hypnotic spoken commands, the Wardens dominated the minds of the mooks and turned them against their fellow goons and thugs. S.M.I.L.E. agents had the building surrounded and there was nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide. There was only pain and fury, as well as plenty of gruesome full-body trauma to go around.





Cricket seemed rather calm for a pony on the verge of losing everything, including his freedom, and Yam couldn’t fathom Cricket’s seeming lack of a response. Everything was in chaos now, screams echoed through the warehouse, and the mariachi music could somehow be heard above the cheering and the sounds of violence.

“If my life could not serve a greater purpose, then perhaps my death shall accomplish what my life could not,” Cricket said in a voice of utter calm. Turning about, he faced Yam, his eyes still blazing with hope, but his face was expressionless. “For whatever it is worth, I liked you, Mister Spade. I found myself admiring your tenacity and your drive. I wish we had met under different circumstances, Mister Spade, I would have liked to have been friends with you. In friendship, there is meaningful equality.”

“Cricket, what are you doing?” Yam asked as he panicked and struggled against his bonds. His heart in his throat, he watched as Cricket lifted up a steel fence post from a nearby pile and held it in his telekinesis. The makeshift cells in this place were all constructed from chain link fence and steel posts, and Yam was seized by a dreadful apprehension. “Cricket, come on, it doesn’t need to be this way, whattaya doing?”

“I will appear to have been viciously murdered by those who oppress us, Mister Spade. My death will serve a purpose. I am a match striking a candle. I am a bell that cannot be unrung. Those devoted to the cause will be inspired—”

“NO!” Yam barked as the steel fence post moved with sudden, swift acceleration, but it was far too late. The hollow tubular post impaled Cricket right in the eye and pierced through his head with a wet splat of impact. The bloodied end of the steel tube protruded from the back of his mane and while his body crumpled down to the floor, the cell was filled with screams by all those who witnessed Cricket’s final, horrendous act.

“No,” Yam said again, repeating himself though it was far too late. He wiggled and kicked against his ropes, but it was of no use.

Cricket was already dead and his blood flowed into a spreading pool that grew with each passing second, staining the concrete scarlet. Yam’s ears perked to the sound of foals crying and screaming all around him, no doubt traumatised by Cricket’s final, terrible act. Stunned by what he had witnessed, Yam couldn’t tell if Cricket was a brave pony who had met his end, or a craven coward that had just skipped out on the consequences.

“Hey,” Yam said in what he hoped was a friendly, but commanding voice, “can one of you kids untie me? Get me out of these ropes, will ya? Help me so I can help you, okay?”

A sniffling unicorn filly approached, her nose dripping shiny, pendulous ribbons of snot and her eyes were glassy with tears. She seemed brave and determined though, and Yam felt his bonds being tugged on. The rough rope scratched him a bit, but he hardly noticed. Nearby, a fire broke out and smoke began to billow through the area. Panicking a little, he wiggled and wished that the filly could hurry up with the ropes.

The fire began to devour an almost-finished airship and the stacks of crates all around it, its hungry flames lapping at anything made of wood. Some of the foals began to spook and began screaming. The blooms of fire were growing far too fast for Yam’s comfort and he made a few futile kicks with his legs, which were still bound. Already, it was getting harder to breathe and his eyes were burning from the soon to be choking smoke.

This was about to become a bad scene, for certain.

A lone figure sauntered through the flames, seemingly immune to the savage heat. Enormous, hulking, with a brutish profile, the big, monstrous form of a fully armored Warden approached the chain link fence that formed the cell where Yam was captive, along with a bunch of little, helpless foals.

“Am I glad to see you!” Yam shouted as his heart lept up into his throat.

“I am Warden Owleye, and I need all of you to remain calm. This is a rescue…”