Chaos was abound at the cargo harbor. Swarms of the ice zombies marched towards the ship with their first line of defense being Tidal Wave.
“I DON’T THINK SO!!” Tidal Wave raised his lance high, his brooch glowing brightly, summoning a massive waterspout that he directed towards the horde. Most of them were swept into the raging torrent. He then burst the storm apart and shot down the large drops like sharp comets unto the crowd, severely crippling a few. The Bladerunners and Royal Guards on standby watched in awe at the little lancer’s ability until said lancer got their attention. “YOU GUYS GONNA HELP!?” he shouted
“Oh!” said Obsidian Needle. He drew his sword and posed flamboyantly. “And now!... LA FIESTA COMIENZA, AMIGOS!!!” He led the charge towards the leftover zombies with the other warriors. His sword was a little thinner than most of his kin, so his motions were swift and more precise. He engaged with a much larger stallion wielding an ice hammer. The large stallion swung his hammer down, but Obsidian rolled out of the way and used his momentum to flip over his opponent, swiping the stallion’s ice helm as he did. The helm cracked as Obsidian landed on the stallion’s back, and he bucked it, shattering it and exposing the stallion’s head. Obsidian slashed across his face several times with calculated precision before flipping back off and swiftly jabbing each front knee. The stallion fell to his knees, allowing Obsidian to body slam his skull, knocking him out. He wasted no time moving on to the next.
All of the other Bladerunners displayed varying skills that all got the job done, but the sheer number of enemies and their resilience made the battle a trial by cold fire. A few unicorns summoned ice pillars from the ground that threatened to impale them; they only dodged by mere inches. Tidal Wave blasted them apart with pressurized water blasts.
“KEEP THE PRESSURE GOING!” Another Bladerunner shouted as she slashed across a zombie’s muzzle, drawing blood.
Tidal Wave was suddenly confronted by a large Pegasus who flapped his wings strong enough to create a small blizzard. He put up a water shield to block it, but something suddenly crashed in front of him and took the brunt of the attack. When Tidal Wave looked up he saw that it was Frostbite, frozen solid in a block of ice. “Frostbite!?”
Before he could say anything else, the ice quickly cracked and shattered with Frostbite bursting out, bellowing a commanding roar as if he was unbothered by the ice. The icy drake body slammed the Pegasus and pinned him to the ground with some ice breath. “Hey, squirt!” he said as he landed next to Tidal Wave.
“What’s up, dude?” Tidal Wave asked.
“Listen! Don’t smack around these freaks too hard. They’re still people; they just don’t feel pain. They can still die!” Frostbite said.
“Whoa! Seriously!?” Tidal Wave asked. He noticed that a mare was trying to walk with a clearing broken leg, and there was a young colt with his cheek caved in, both whose faces were completely blank as they continued their onslaught. “Oh, crap…”
Obsidian Needle was still combatting the behemoth stallion, who had generated ice gauntlets around his hooves. He punched away with Obsidian parrying and dodging, knowing his comparatively lesser strength wouldn’t be able to contend with his large foe. AT one point he rolled under the stallion’s punch and deeply jabbed his thigh, causing the stallion to fall in agony. Obsidian then poised his sword towards the chest. “Now we end this!!”
“WAIT! STOP!!” Tidal Wave hurriedly launched a blast of water that threw Obsidian’s sword off-balance and thrust into the stallion’s other thigh.
“‘Ay! What gives!?” Obsidian shouted, but he then removed his sword and saw blood from the open wound ooze out like a sprung leak. “Oh, mierda… EVERYPONY! LIGHTEN UP! They’re still alive!” All the Bladerunners and guards understood once they saw what happened.
“Just hold them back until we can figure out how to stop them!” Frostbite shouted. He vomited a mass of ice fire that created a huge wall of ice between them and the zombies. The frozen unicorns tried to use their magic to move the ice, but it was unaffected. “Yeah, dragon ice is its own beast. Ice magic can’t move it an inch; I know that much.”
“Wow! Thanks, Frostbite!” Tidal Wave said.
Frostbite nodded. “I gotta get back to the others; Quantum might’ve figured something out.” Tidal Wave dismissed him with a nod, and Frostbite soared back to the others, but he was startled upon seeing a flaming meteor plummeting towards the city.
*****
Twilight and Luna mustered all the strength they could put together to maintain a force field to hold back the frightening persistence of the ice zombie horde. They ferociously banged and clawed at the shield despite their expressionless faces. The only fear that held back the Battle Foals and co. was the fear of using lethal force on their possessed kin.
“Quantum, PLEASE tell me you got something!” Fire Fight said.
“Hmm…” The little scientist read the analyses provided by her scanners carefully, but still the same reading. “Nothing appears to have changed, but the anomalous reading has overtaken my sensors! Whatever’s happening must be hiding in plain sight!”
“Plain sight, huh?” Spiral Galaxy said. She noticed that the glacial protrusions from the buildings were still glowing, and focusing on them more closely, she could tell that they were vibrating. “EVERYPONY! WATCH YOUR HEAD!”
“What for!?” Twilight asked. She panicked when she saw cracks forming around their force field, but then noticed the glaciers. “Wait… do you mean-?”
“Sure do!” Spiral gathered her focus and welled up her cosmic power. The air around her quaked violently as her horn and eyes began shining like stars, and she levitated into the air. “RRRAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!” Her cry echoed throughout, and seconds later, a meteor pierced the sky and slammed into a large glacier, shattering it into dust. Spiral landed back on the ground with a minor headache, but she shook it off quickly. “Well?”
Just before a large mare could slam into the cracks in the shield, the entire horde momentarily staggered, as if their muscles suddenly glitched out and caused them to spasm or become sluggish. Surrounding glaciers suddenly started glowing more brightly and humming more loudly, bringing the horde back to their controlled senses. “I think we found our ticket!” Luna said.
“We have!” Quantum said. “The ponies’ vital tried to regulate when that ice column was destroyed! The signature is the same!”
“Then our objective is clear: meet new ponies; break the ice.” Shadow Shroud said.
“Let us take care not to destroy the building however, even if they’ve already been ravaged by ice!” Knight’s Soul said, noticing that the building hit by Spiral Galaxy’s meteor was now smoldering and half-demolished.
“Yeeaahh… Just the leave the crowd control to me!” Spiral said. “I hope that wasn’t an apartment building or something…” she muttered. Twilight and Lune lifted the shield, and Spiral wasted no time sending a gravity wave outward that knocked the hoard up into the air held them in place while everyone else got to work.
“YEEE-HAAW!!!” Kickback fiercely twirled his whip until it was charged to the brim with kinetic energy. He cracked it at a zombie glacier at the foot of an office building and shattered it into dust. He tipped his hat. “There goes one.” He then noticed that a small horde had broken free from Spiral’s gravity hold, and they fired ice shards at him; he shot some of them out of the air, but had to quickly bob and weave around whatever he couldn’t hit. “Whoooaaa, Nelly!”
Suddenly a blast of icy fire rained from above and created an ice wall in front of them, followed by a familiar face swooping down in front of him. “S’up?”
“Hoo-wee! Much obliged, Frostbite.” Kickback said. “Ya see them giant glowin’ ice crystals around?” He pointed around to them. “That’s what’s controllin’ everypony. We gotta destroy ‘em, partner.”
Frostbite heartily laughed. “Is that it?” He soared in the air and full-on body slammed another glacier, shattering it as well. He then noticed the effect it had on the zombie horde. “Huh… Guess I’m playing messenger again.” He said before rocketing off towards the harbor.
Bullseye fired blast arrows one by one at smaller glaciers higher up, hitting each one dead center seconds before each blast obliterated the nuisances. “Gotta watch my stock this time…” She was suddenly ambushed by aerial zombies. One managed to grab and fling her by the mane, slamming her into a nearby wall. The memory of her own parents doing this to her dulled the pain and sparked her rage. “AAARRRGGGHHHH!!!!!” She bolted towards the assailant and punched him in the chest with her bladed bow while he was spazzing out from the destroyed ice, sending him plummeting. Quickly realizing the gravity if her actions, she took a deep breath and calmed down. “Gentle, Bullseye. Gentle.” And she went back to work, but this time dodging icicle spears and frost breaths.
Air Slash and his father decided to go on the defensive and hold back the horde’s advances. Knight’s Soul stayed on the ground while his son went skyward; the clan master used both his sword and his unicorn magic to block both physical and ranged strikes, while the young samurai made use of his aerial mobility to distract them while scattering them with his sword beams, careful not to do it too hard.
Knight’s Soul casted a magic shield in front of him that blocked ice shots, and he contended with a mare his size who wielded an ice katana. She swung overhead, which Knight’s Soul easily parried away, but he countered with a rough buck to the chest rather than a lethal slash. She was knocked into other approaching zombies, but they just so happened to land right underneath a glacier, which commanded them right back to their hooves with an eerie pulse.
Just as Knight’s Soul braced his sword, a flurry blade beams slammed into the glacier, concussively dicing it into pieces. He looked up and saw his son confidently wink at him, which he returned. However, he then noticed a stray larger piece falling towards the spasming zombies. He galloped towards it and jumped straight up and fiercely twirled around with his sword poised, repeatedly slicing the huge fragment like a rising tornado.
The much smaller fragments then safely fell to the ground, but Knight’s Soul was suddenly overrun by the horde. He tossed and bucked with all his might until Turf War came and suddenly shield-bashed one and causing it to roughly tumble into others, allowing the clan master to shake off the lucky few that didn’t get hit. “You have my thanks.”
“It ain’t over, my boy!” Turf War said. He threw his shield like a frisbee, and it bounced off the heads of multiple zombies before bounced back right into his hoof.
“SCREEEE!!!” Above him was Valkyrie, the golden light of the Valhalla blazing from her like fireworks as she soared like comet smashing the glaciers while dodging the zombies. She then noticed Turf War below her, and a lightbulb went off in her head. “Hey, hammerhead?” She chopped off a big chunk of glacier and wrapped her shield chain around before flinging it at him. “BATTER UP!!”
Turf War put on a cocky smile as he reared his hammer like a baseball bat. “AND HE SWINGS!!” He struck the large chunk with such force that it flew and crashed into another glacier, destroying it. “HOME RUN!!”
Sky Strike did what he could to block the ice shot from the aerial zombies while keeping an eye on Crazylocks, who was fluttering about with him. “Nrgh! You gonna do something, sweetheart!?”
“I’M A LITTLE BUTTERFLY, GENTLE AND FREE! NYAH, NYAH-NYAH, NYAH-NYAH, NYAH! YOU CAN’T HIT ME!” Crazylocks sang as she dodged the horde. She then flew above a glacier and retracted her wings, and she used her downward momentum to break the ice cluster off of its building. She then landed on the roof and quickly sprouted her horn, grabbing the large cluster telekinetically and flinging it into another, shattering the two. “Hooray for vandalism!”
“Uhh… Sure, kid.” Sky Strike said. He then noticed a row of small glaciers lining the edge of a rooftop. “Looks like I can have a little fun!” He rocketed forward while fiercely twirling his lance in a figure-eight, and he shredded the glaciers. “Nice!”
Quantum Tech, now with her sights set and weapons locked onto the glaciers, blasted away at every one in sight. Her mech was slowed down in the sheer cold, even with her heating systems fully functional, but she had Twilight at her side protecting her from the horde with a magic force field cast around them.
“Firing two o’clock at thirty degrees” Quantum said.
“Okay!” Twilight replied. She soared high above the mech, and Quantum fired her railgun at a glacier protruded from a low window to their right, destroying it. From then Quantum called out varying shot angle which Twilight would have to get out of the way of.
“Taking aim…” Quantum said as she was locking onto a target, but a swarm of pegasi swooped in front of her line of fire. “<Gasp!>” Quantum quickly threw her railgun off target just before it could fire, and the blast blew a clipped a streetlight, taking its top off.
“Looks like they’ve wised up!” Twilight said.
“I’d say so.” Quantum said. “Can you scatter them, Your Highness?”
“I’d have to lower our force field to do so.” Twilight said.
“Then do so.” Quantum said.
With some hesitation, Twilight dropped their shield and turned the magic into a force wave, but the Pegasus horde collectively blasted a wave of frigid air that muddled out the force wave. The icy winds were strong enough to rage forth and envelop Twilight and Quantum. Twilight could feel her body numbing at a startling rate while Quantum’s mech blared warning sirens. “OH DEAR, OH DEAR, OH DEAR!!!” Quantum said. She gulped. “This will be risky… Twilight!”
Twilight was struggling against the blizzard with she could, even as her wings were frosting. “Nrgh!! Wh…What!?”
“I need to be ready to collect a vast amount of energy! Can you focus!?” Quantum said.
Twilight took a deep breath and looked at her. “Ok.”
“Very well!” Quantum said. After taking a deep breath of her own, she pressed all the right buttons that activated her death ray. She could see the prongs collecting its energy starting to freeze, so she desperately tried to focus her heaters onto them, even if it meant freezing inside her cockpit. “Oh, please let this work…”
Miraculously, the ray fully charged, erupting from the collection point like a stream of destruction. Twilight then quickly cast an absorption field that safely collected the death ray’s blast in a single point. “TAKE THIS!!” Twilight unleashed the energy skyward where it was fragmented into smaller concentrations that she then guided down into many surrounding glaciers, and one into the center of the horde of pegasi where detonated it, scattering without causing significant harm. She caught them as they fell, but she herself had to land to take a breath, exacerbated and panting. “Good call, Quantum Tech!”
Quantum proudly fixed her glasses. “Thank you, Your Highness.” Her moment of pride was short-lived when she noticed a message on her screen saying, ‘Overdrive Laser Beam System: Offline.’ The energy collection progs were charred and smoking due to the sheer amount of effort it had to endure. “Oh, Mechy… I’m so sorry.”
Zebota and Shrapnel had somehow teamed up with Princess Luna. The lunar sovereign was easily able to hold back the onslaught of ice attacks on her own, but Zebota relied on his beast to protect him. He was centered in an intersection that was overrun by glaciers and swarming with ice zombies, and yet he sat so serenely in a meditative posture amidst the chaos.
While Shrapnel smashed through ground glaciers and ice zombies, Luna tried using her dream magic to influence the collective consciousness of the horde in order to hold them back, but their psychic resistance proved well-fortified. “Young zebra, I hope you plan on acting soon!”
Zebota’s only response was tensing his posture as his brooch glowed brightly. An archaic glyph appeared underneath him that covered that entire intersection. He stood up and held his boomerang out in front of him. “Vimelea! Dhalimu! Mkandamizaji! Ninakuomba! Utawala wako hapa ni uwongo. Wakati wako wa baridi utayeyuka kwa amri yangu! Ondoka, umetengwa kwa nguvu niliyopewa! Mifupa ya dunia, damu ya bahari, pumzi ya angani, jibu mwito wangu!”
The geoglyph burst with fierce green light that was drawn into Zebota’s boomerang. Once it was glowing as bright as the sun, he flung it. It flew around him like a supersonic firefly, crashing into every glacier around him and shattering them as it flew unbothered. It then halted its flight above the building while still spinning rapidly. Ferocious lightning bolts shot from it in all directions, obliterating every glacier it could reach. Zebota, with the glyph still shining beneath him, motioned his hooves, commanding his boomerang to descend and whistled. Shrapnel jumped below the shining weapon and absorbed much of its power. The wooden titan faced a group of oncoming ice zombies surrounded by glaciers and took a deep breath.
“HOOOOOOOWWWWWWLLLLLL!!!!!”
An earth-shattering howl erupted from his jaws, sending forth a tsunami of energy that blew back the horde and obliterated every glacier running down the street. Zebota’s glyph then dissipated, as did the boomerang’s energy.
The mystic duo regrouped with an awestruck Princess Luna. “What power!”
Zebota humbly smiled. “Please forgiving me for keeping you waiting, O Royal One.” He said. Shrapnel gently grunted.
Luna regained her composure and smiled back. “The wait was worth it.” She then remembered the zombies. They were rendered vulnerable from having so many glaciers destroyed at once, so she seized the opportunity to try and influence their minds again. As Luna’s dream magic delved her into the minds of the horde, she was baffled to find that while they’re minds were indeed collectively influenced by an outside force, the force itself was not what she expected. It felt… sad. Longing. Frustrated. Angry. Hateful.
“Lu…na…?”
“Gasp!” Luna quickly followed the voice, trying to pinpoint its source. “Declare yourself, fiend!” An ominous calm followed right after she spoke. All was still, to still, like the silence of a forest.
“FIEND!?” The voice was more aggressive, and the lingering emotions became more profound, overtaking the entire conscious realm.
Luna couldn’t identify the force behind it all, but she could feel its conscious presence rushing to her like an antibody to a germ. It was so aggressive that she exited the realm of sheer horror; she snapped awake in a cold sweat.
“What is wrong?” Zebota asked.
Luna just looked at him with uncertainty. “It’s been obvious since this began, but… who or whatever this being is… it’s not to be trifled with.”
Fire Fight and Shadow Shroud were at each other’s side against a horde of ice zombies. The little ninja had combined her kama sticks into nunchucks that used to parry away ice shots while the fiery colt got as close as he could to lob fireballs at the surrounding glaciers.
“Is this what’s called a block party?” Shadow Shroud asked as she whacked away a big shot of ice.
Fire Fight spun a flame around him and launched it full force at a glacier, blasting it apart. “Sure. We’ll go with that.” He was suddenly ambushed by a large stallion who tried to slam his hooves into him, but Fire Fight flame jumped out of the way just in time. Just as he reared his fists to strike, he suddenly stopped to get a good look at him. “You…!” He snarled like a timberwolf, and flames burned more fiercely. “HYYYYAH!!!” Fire Fight uppercut the stallion with explosive force and then blew him away with a rocketing side kick. “JUST AS EASY AS LAST TIME!!”
“What’s gotten into you?” Shroud asked.
“That was the same stallion that yelled at my dad, the one I beat up to get my Cutie Mark!” Fire Fight said.
Shroud nearly hit herself wit her nunchucks. “Really?”
Looking out at the horde, Fire Fight saw a number of familiar faces, none of whom he was happy to see. A sweetshop owner who’d banned him after hearing rumors about him, a snooty classmate who always dismissed him as a ‘savage’, and a police officer who’d labeled him a delinquent, just to name a few. He felt a primal rage burning ferociously inside him. “You take care of the ice! These freaks are MINE!!!”
“What? But-” Shadow Shroud’s plea fell on deaf ears as Fire Fight attacked the horde.
His flames seemed out of control as he blasted waves of fire and draconic flares at them and went into ferocious melee combos that no doubt broke some bones, all he while blocking or braving every hit being thrown at him. “YEAH! HOW’S THAT FOR A PROBLEM FOAL, HUH!?!?”
Just before he could launch a huge dragon flame at them, a kunai flung at his feet caught him off guard just before Shadow Shroud grappled him to the ground with her nunchucks. “A perfect example, I’d say.” She asserted.
Fire Fight was startled out of his rage when Shroud put her kunai to his throat. “Whoa!”
“Were they right to shun you? Are you really the Firestarter they feared so much?” Shroud asked.
Fire Fight took a good look at the horde. They were thoroughly singed and staggering, yet still being forced fight to their dying breath by whatever force was controlling them. He let out a frustrated sigh. “You’re right…”
Shroud helped him up. “I know this is hard for you… but you wanted to change perception. I know you’re a better pony than what others made you out to be. Show them that Fire Fight, the one I fell in love with.”
Fire Fight blushed, and then gathered his focus. “With pleasure!” he said. Igniting his armor, Fire Fight ran and jumped off a wall like a rocket. When he was above the horde, he launched all his pent-up heat as a single, huge fireball that blasted a cluster of glaciers behind their foes. He then fell towards the zombies, but a sudden cloud of smoke followed by a flurry of quick strike distracted them enough that he could safely retreat, Shadow Shroud following close behind and leaving no pony seriously injured.
“Thanks.” Fire Fight said.
Shroud shot him a flirtatious wink, but then glanced up at something that startled her. “WHAT THE-”
“TIDAL WAVE!?” Greensprout shouted as she was healing Twilight.
Above them was a humongous wave with a familiar glowing blue light atop it, anchoring it to the sky.
“HAHAHA! I’M A TSUNAMI, BABY!!!” Tidal Wave shouted. Before the massive wave could crash and flood the city, he sucked all the water up and around him before bursting it apart into countless drops.
Frostbite swooped in and caught him on his back. “Let ‘er rip, twerp!” he said.
“YAHOO!!!” Tidal Wave twirled his lance, firing every droplet of seawater like a bolt that pierced every glacier in sight, and soon the whole city as he rode on Frostbite, who walled the hordes of ice zombies in with his own ice.
As all the control glaciers dissipated, the ice zombies all jerked and spasmed like overloaded robots before passing out. Slowly but surely, the oppressive winds chilling the streets of Manehatten died down.