//------------------------------// // Chapter 8: Early Risers // Story: Monster Hunter: Equestria // by Bugsydor //------------------------------// \|/-Hooves Residence, Three Weeks Later-\|/ “Dinky! Dinky!” I shouted as I galloped up the path to our door, a silent, shaggy passenger astride my back. It had been a long, hard day of training, but some things are just worth getting excited about. Apparently my enthusiasm was infectious, because right then the heavy oak door swung open and released a filly torpedo, locked onto my position. “Oof,” I said as I started to disentangle myself from the filly wrapped around my neck. “Breezy there, Muffin. Momma still has those bruises from training.” She giggled. “Not from a fight with Mr. Minz’s shop sign?” “Not this moon, so far.” It felt good that she could joke about my accidents now, rather than their being one more layer of worry on a mind too young for it. “And next time,” I whispered to her, “I plan to win.” She let out a precious gigglesnort before finally releasing me and raising an equally precious eyebrow. “So, what’s the piñata for?” “I am glad you asked!” I said before I trotted to a clear patch of dirt in our front yard that was going to be a garden someday, plucked the aforementioned piñata nestled between my wings, and set it on the ground. “To answer your question, I seeded a victim.” After backing away several steps, I closed my eyes, and concentrated. ‘Anger: Somepony insulting my perfect daughter. Motion: Going for the gold as I race through Cloudsdale. Violence: Throwing my ex off the Canterhorn. Release!’ I opened my eyes, focusing my intent on the piñata in front of me. Actually feeling some energy bubble off was a little relaxing, really. “Uh, Mom? What are you—” I shush her with a wing gesture. “Any second now…” And then a shot put arced through the sky – and through the piñata’s neck – taking its head off in a shower of sugary gore. I looked back at my Little Muffin, who stared wide-eyed at the candy carnage in dawning comprehension. Then she looked up at me and said, “Do it again.” Concentrate. Remember. Feel. Release. The next shot put went through its barrel like a cannonball, spraying candy and paper maché shrapnel out the other side. “YOU DID IT! You controlled the magic!” And then, instead of diving into the pile of sweets like a sensible filly who only has to split a piñata two ways, she tackle-hugged me around the neck, and we both went down in a cascade of tears and laughter. “I’m so proud of you, Momma.” “Y’know –” I sniffed as the tears continued to drip down my face “– it’s supposed to be the bomb telling her daughter that.” That earned a fresh round of giggles from her. “I know,” she said, “but you deserve to hear it, too.” She let out a whoop as I swung her onto my back. “Come on, Muffin! There’s a tub of blueberry ice cream in there, and it isn’t going to demolish itself. And you’re going to tell me about how your magic lessons with Miss Heartstrings are going.” “But Mom, the piñata!” “Oh. Right.” As we were working on putting the spilled candy into bowls, I saw a set of butter-yellow hooves in the corner of an eye, accompanied by a muffled “Oh dear.” I turned my head to face her properly, even if one of my eyes had other ideas, and saw two ponies where I only expected one. “Hi Fluttershy! Hi Bulk Biceps! You want some candy?” Bulk, who had been trying to hide behind Fluttershy, noticed that that jig was up and switched to innocently whistling. Badly. “Is everypony okay?” Fluttershy said. “We were at a field so Bulk could practice his shot puts, when a shot veered off into the neighborhood.” Bulk Biceps winced. “Twice.” He winced again. “We’re sorry. We just don’t know what went wrong.” And then my perfect little filly started giggling. “We’re fine,” Dinky said between fits of giggles. “Momma was just showing me a new trick she picked up at work.” \|/-Derpy’s Dreamscape-\|/ “I’m proud of you, my host.” I roared at the biplane I’d caught in my wing, and turned my head from the gingerbread skyscraper I was wrapped around to look at the pony who’d appeared on my left shoulder. “For what? This isn’t my first kaiju dream you’ve seen.” Shadow sighed and shook his head. “While I do find it heartening to see you take joy in causing mayhem, I was not talking about your dream.” His horn glowed as he summoned a moving picture that I’d seen earlier that day:  A shot put blowing a paper maché cranium to candy kibble, the colors bright in my black and white dreamscape. “Congratulations. You have officially graduated from mobile disaster to precision instrument of destruction. Well, precise enough. And just in time, too,” he said, as the summoned scene winked out. “You are about to have a very exciting night.” I flicked away the gingerbread biplane I’d been holding and turned both eyes on Shadow. “What do you mean? I double- and triple-checked that we didn’t have any night exercises tonight so Dinky and I could celebrate.” “I mean that just a few minutes ago I felt a pulse of dark magic. A blast of necromantic energies calculated to raise the dead and fill them with hunger.” My apartment-sized eyes went wide. “Y-ya mean zombie ponies? How do ya know?” “We don’t have enough time for me to explain that properly. For now, let us just say that it is part of a suite of senses that would be directly available to you, should you ever accept one of my gifts.” I narrowed my eyes again. “Shadow, I’ll nevah accept your ‘gifts’, and you know it.” He waggled his horn in a unicorn shrug. “You haven’t yet, and will not now, but perhaps your first real hunt will change your tune. “It’s time to wake up. Good luck, my host, and happy hunting.” \|/-Hooves Residence-\|/ My eyes fluttered open. I was curled around my beautiful daughter on the couch, with a wing over her back, near a couple of empty ice cream bowls. She looked so peaceful. I let out a yawn and got up, careful not to wake her, and carried her off to her bed and tucked her in. Then I left her a note and took off towards campus, muttering a prayer to Twilight that I’d get to see my little Dinky again. \|/-H.H.H. Campus, outside the Briefing Room-\|/ “Good to see you, Derpy,” Bon Bon said as I landed. “I was just about to send Thunderhead to wake you.” “No –” *YAWN* “– need, Bon Bon. I’ve done more with less sleep,” I replied. She raised an eyebrow and popped a bonbon from her bags into one of my outstretched wings. “Eat this blitzbon. You’ll crash like a runaway train in about eight hours, but nothing will be able to put you to sleep until then.” I put the chocolate-coated candy in my mouth and bit down, and then the world exploded. Being struck by lightning was a familiar feeling. Not really fun, but familiar. My mouth freezing solid was less familiar, and I don’t think I’d had my eyes catch fire at all before. And then, suddenly, all that ended, and I was more awake and alert than I remember being in my life. I turned my head, expecting to see char on my wings, but found them clean as before. “Wow,” I said, turning both eyes back to Bon Bon. “Tingly.” She let out a wry chuckle. “They are that. It’s a shame that I can’t just tone that part down without severely diluting the rest of their effects, but what can you do?” I shook my head like a dog to try to get rid of some lingering sparkles in my vision, and she motioned to the door. “Come on in, and we’ll start with the briefing. Everypony else is already inside.” As she slid through the door behind me, she said, “How did you know to come, anyway?” “Uh, something just told me there was trouble, and I needed ta be here.” Bon Bon raised an eyebrow again, but said nothing else. \|/-The Open Sky-\|/ We armored up before we climbed into a single large chariot pulled by a team of Luna’s Chiropteran Guard (who I’d just known as batponies until Crimson Tape had tactfully corrected me one day). We didn’t want any of our fancy gear to go over the side while we changed, after all. It was late at night – maybe late enough to be early – but everypony was just as lightning-alert as I was. I wondered if any of my teammates had gotten a taste of Bon Bon’s special candies. While we’d been suiting up, Bon Bon had given us a review on zombie combat. “Your basic zombie, what we’ll be almost definitely facing here, has one goal: To feast on the living. Rather than traditional vision, they sense strong concentrations of lifeforce and magic. Since that’s less active when a pony is asleep, they’ll just be milling around aimlessly when we get there. If we were to wait for sun-up, however…” “We would have a considerably more urgent timetable to work with?” Thunderhead volunteered. Bon Bon had chuckled at that. “The main things to remember when fighting zombies are: Never get bogged down, strike with intent, and always go for the head,” she’d said. “Why is it so important ta go for the bread?” I’d asked, as Golden Gleam helped me with a strap. “Not that I doubt ya at all, but they don’t seem ta use their brains much.” “Almost like a certain three-legged earth pony I know,” Golden Gleam had said, and then I’d heard the muffled tink of a prosthetic hoof impacting synthetic-fabric-wrapped aluminum. Bon Bon had rolled her eyes with a small smile before answering me. “I can’t explain everything in detail right now, but it basically comes down to how the magic works. You see, symbols are really important in a lot of magic, especially necromancy. It’s a lot easier for dark magic to control a body if it’s concentrated in the head, the symbolic seat of consciousness and control in a body. Destroy the head, and that magic doesn’t have anything left to hold on to, so it falls apart. “And even if the magic isn’t tied up in the head, decapitation is a powerful symbol of ending, and actions made with intent have a magic all their own. “Are there any other questions?” Most of us had nodded our heads, but Thunderhead had inclined his and asked “So, what’s our plan of attack?” “I’m glad you asked, Thunderhead. Gleam?” Bon Bon had said. “I’m leaving our tactical disposition to you. Consider this a final exam.” “Understood, Captain,” she’d replied with a subtle salute, and we’d all gotten back to putting on our armor. After going through the plan again for the two-zillionth time in my head, I looked back down from the horizon to check on my weapons again. My wings were stronger than my legs, and had caused plenty of havoc on their own over the years, so wing-axes had seemed like the natural choice. Their weight had made flying more awkward at first, and more tiring, but I was getting used to them. I still couldn’t use them in the air, but they were great for hit-and-run galloping. Still, I hadn’t used them – or any other non-improvised weapon – against a “live” target yet… We landed on a dirt road surrounded by green hills. At least, I think they were green. It was slightly hard to tell through the visor. “Okay, boys,” Bon Bon said to the team driving us, “we should be done and ready for exfil in a few hours. We’ll pop a flare to signal.” As we got out of the chariot, the stallions unstrapped themselves and got out a set of heavily textured playing cards. “We’re going to be hoofing it from here, team. The zombies are a little ways out, but look alive; we don’t know that nothing along our path is looking to go bump in the night.” \|/-Posey’s Rest Cemetery-\|/ “There they are,” Bon Bon said, sliding the binoculars back up her helmet. “Zombies, dead ahead.” “More like ‘undead ahead’, am I right?” Steely said, earning a nervous chuckle from me and a swift elbow from his sister. Through the light-amplification enchantment, I could see a sea of corpses shambling directionlessly on the churned-up earth ahead, clear as slightly greenish daylight. “Alright, everypony,” Golden Gleam said. “This is what we’ve been training for. The time has come…” She flashed a winning grin. “For us to hunt some monsters. You all know the plan, but here are some addenda. “We have about a hundred zombies out there. This will be a marathon, not a sprint. I want to see efficiency out there, ponies: glides and shallow turns where you can afford them, smooth strokes instead of abrupt chops. If a harrier starts to get tired, they can signal and either Thunderhead or Bon Bon will replace them at the front. By then, there should be a lot fewer zombies to deal with, so I’ll be fine taking up extra overwatch. “And one more thing: I don’t want to see any fire or lightning directed at the horde or near friendlies. While a zombie will go up like a Hearth’s Warming fire, it will not care for several minutes. In the meantime, your allies will have to deal with either a firestorm or a blazing zombie, and nothing ruins your day quite like a blazing zombie.” “And I’ll bet it smells like a real peach, too!” Steely chimed in. His sister stifled a snort of laughter, but I didn’t bother to. “That is all,” she continued after a couple seconds. “Now get to it!” With a nod, I took to the air as Steely started a brisk walk towards the milling horde’s other flank. The cemetery ahead was a wide field dotted with rows of gravestones. In the center was a clot of swaying, muddied colors and churned earth. There was a smell on the wind like the back-alleys of a Manehattan fish-market, but a little mustier. Around me the world was silent, except for the wind in my ears and the flap of my wings. As I drifted closer, I could see the zombies in greater detail. Their coats were sparse and bleached at best, and gone at worst. Their skin was shriveled and broken, with some of them leaking a purplish miasma from wounds or places where the flesh had rotted away. Their jaws were slack, and their manes were either missing or a little too long. The worst part, though, was their eyes: Huge, milky orbs that seemed to glow in my visor’s light-amplification. With Steely almost in-position, I adjusted my glide to a dive as I focused on one zombie in particular and how I wanted bad things to happen to them. ‘Alright, Derpy. Don’t feather this up.’ ‘You won’t.’ I felt a surge of energy leave me as my forehooves connected with a zombie’s skull from the horde’s outside edge, leaving me a teensy bit dizzy as I bounced back into the sky. The zombie’s head bounced into the sky as well, before crushing another zombie’s skull when it fell to the earth. As I flapped away to earn back lost momentum, I saw several heads turn towards me as they lurched into motion. Perfect. A few seconds of leisurely flying later, I heard four “thocs”, and then four “kshhCRACKs”. I looked back, and four ex-zombies’ necks now ended in dirty ice spikes and mangled meat. Thunderhead was a good shot with the ice arrows. Notably, there were no-longer any zombies lurching after me. ‘I am so glad Dinky’s not here to see this. ‘If we do our jobs well enough, maybe nobody will have to see things like this.’ ‘It is a nice thought, I suppose.’ As I wheeled back around for another run, one eye settled on Steely and Gleam’s half of the operation. Steely was trotting along like he wasn’t being chased by monsters, like he does, while every few seconds a pellet of goldenrod light would zoom, destructively, through one of the three pursuing zombies’ skulls and it would slump to the earth. ‘I’m glad they’re on my side,’ I thought as I got ready to touch down for a ground pass. ‘Indeed. They could be quite destructive if they so chose, given their skillsets.’ I landed in a trot, twisted, and chopped through a rotting neck in an almost-smooth stroke, and leapt back into the air. And the battle wore on… \|/-A Grassy Knoll Just outside Posey’s Rest Cemetery-\|/ There were about twenty-two zombies left in a kinda-tight ball by the time Steely came up to join me on the grass. “Augh,” he said as he flopped down. “Ah’m gonna be cleanin’ mud and zombie meat outta my prosthetic fer days after tonight. I tried to stay focused on the battle below, but one eye slid over to his metal leg… which was still as shiny as ever? “Really?” I said, raising an eyebrow he could maybe see through my visor. “Nah, you caught me. The folks who put this beauty together enchanted it to repel all sorts of foreign matter. Ah haven’t had to polish it since it was installed, if you can believe it. Still one heck of a conversation starter though, right?” “Heheh. It is that.” I brought my focus back to the fight with the zombies. It was pretty easy to keep track of what Golden Gleam was doing. Between the glow at the tip of her horn – the aluminum sheathing blocked the rest of it – and the bright light her constructs were made out of, it was a little hard to look anywhere else. A pellet of light shot through another zombie’s skull, draping the zombie over the tombstone it had been clambering across. Then a needle-thin spike of goldenrod light shot out of the ground, right before a zombie’s fall after a roundhorse kick from Bon Bon took the spike right through its head. “Your sistah’s magic is kinda scary, isn’t it,” I said to the stallion next to me. “I mean, she’s quaking down things that used ta be ponies from across the cemetery.” “Heh. Speakin’ as a younger brother, Goldie’s fought dirty ever since I got too big ta keep down by main strength. She knows how to press an advantage, and right now her big one is range. “I wouldn’t call her magic ‘scary’, though,” he said, bringing a hoof up to his armored muzzle. “No scarier than anythin’ else the team can do. Less, really. “Ya know why I say that?” he asked, cocking his head so I could see his eyes through his visor. I shook my head. “Because,” he continued, “no power, no weapon, is half as important as who is behind it. And the mare behind that magic? Ah trust her more than I trust myself. “After all –” he twirled his prosthetic hoof “– it weren’t her who lost me mah leg.” “I guess that makes sense, when ya put it that way. Sorry.” “Eh, don’t be. If ah knew somepony of her talents wanted me dead, I’d be scared ta wake up in the mornin’ myself.” I looked back out at the graves, and the mare dancing around them. Bon Bon was surrounded by four zombies, each of which was rearing up to slam their forehooves into her. But then a golden dome popped over her, and that same instant a hail of arrows peppered the surrounding foes. The jagged ice that sprang from the arrows shredded what was left of the zombies’ muscles, and little clouds of purple miasma puffed out of each one as it stopped moving. Thunderhead must have used up the rest of his ice arrows in that last volley, because he stopped shooting and started flying around. Maybe he was scouting for openings? “This fight took a lot outta me. How do you all keep going?” I said as I watched Bon Bon come out of a tumble and strike another zombie in the head. “The cheap answer is ‘earth pony stamina’ or, in Goldie’s case, the mana battery gems in her armor, but that on its own will only get a pony so far.” He shook his head. “Nah. Endurance training is the biggest ‘how’. Goldie, Bon Bon, and I have been doin’ it fer years. Keep it up for a coupl’a more moons and you’ll be hangin’ in with the rest of us.” “I guess that’d probably work. It doesn’t whelp that I’ve been shunning low on my magic for maybe the first time since my cutie mark shame in. Heh. I even used a good chunk of it earlier tonight showin’ off for my daughter. Bon Bon leapt off of a collapsing zombie’s back and onto a series of hard-light steps. Maybe in preparation to jump on another skull? That drew one of my eyes up to Thunderhead, who seemed to be holding something in his hooves… “Not gonna lie, Derps: That right there sounds down-right prec—” “Oh no,” I interrupted, “Is Blundershed mooing blood I brink he’s—?!” *Krak-a-THOOM* Once the world came back from the black of my visor’s flash-guard tint, I saw about onety zombies blazing merrily. And still lurching towards my teammates. I rocketed into the air. Or I tried to, but Steely had chomped down on my tail. I saw Thunderhead hovering above them, wisps of cloud evaporating from between his hooves. Bon Bon was leaping off of Golden Gleam’s sublimating stairs and away from the shambling inferno. “Lead me go! I bleed to help them!” Fires are serious business. I’d, uh, inadvertently initiated several fires over the years. Those were always the most destructive and dangerous accidents. Our armor was fire-resistant, sure, but I didn’t want to test what would happen if the whole field was filled with blazing bodies. “And what,” Steely said through a mouthful of blonde tail hair, “do ya propose to do about it?! Yer kit ain’t set up to fight fire right now.” I stopped straining and dropped into a hover. “I could… make a rain cloud?” I gave him a strained, sheepish grin. He spit out my tail. “Ah don’t think you could do it in time, at least not without a risk of more lightnin’.” My ears drooped in defeat as I dropped to the ground, though he probably couldn’t see that through the helmet. “Don’t get too bent outta shape over it, Derps. I just paid attention to everypony’s loadouts. Now pop a bonbon and watch: They’ve got this. Trust me.” I nodded and turned my attention to the ponies below. “Gleam!” Bom Bon shouted. “Containment. Left side. I’ve got right.” As soon as she’d said that, opaque, glowing goldenrod domes sprang up around about half the zombies. The gold-capped tip of Golden Gleam’s aluminum-covered horn was blazing like a flare, and the lines connecting to some of her armor’s embedded gems were glowing too. Bon Bon vaulted over a tombstone and slung two of her signature candies into the remaining zombies, and then there was an explosion of foam that engulfed them to extinguish the flames. After a few seconds the foam must have hardened, because it stopped stirring around then. “One-by-one, drop and kick!” she said as she ran up to one of the domes. The dome flickered out of existence, letting out a ball of greasy smoke, and she lined up on the still-smoldering zombie and kicked its head off in a buck that would have made Applejack… well, at least tip her hat in respect. “See?” Steely said. “Those two have it taken care of. Just between me and you, I think they could have taken care of this li’l uprisin’ all by their lonesome, if they’d wanted to. But then we wouldn’a gotten a chance to put this shiny new gear of ours through its paces, would we.” “There is that,” I agreed, and I hummed a little to myself in thought. “But there’s also the teamwork thing, too. Thunderhead was really good about taking down the zombies chasing me. I trust him a little more to have my back, after that.” ‘But a little less, after that stunt with the lightning.’ “Yeah,” he said, “there is that, too.” “And the stuff your sistah and Bon Bon were doing togethah? With the flips and the platforms and the team attacks? That was downright magical. I wonder if we’ll get ta do any special training on that kind of thing, once this is ovah.” “That would be pretty neat. I’ve got to admit, I am a mite jealous of mah sister on that front, after tonight. Maybe the two of us could come up with some cool tricks of our own, ta make her jealous for a change?” “I think –” I let out a massive yawn. “– I think that blitzbon I had earlier is starting to wear off. I’ll have to slink about that later,” I said as my head drifted to the grass. All the free zombies were down, and Thunderhead had landed in front of Bon Bon. Judging from his lowered head and her curt, cutting gestures at the mound of hardened foam, he was getting a bit of a talking to. “So whaddaya think, Derps? About this whole monster-huntin’ business.” I took a moment to think. One of my eyes drifted back to look at my frazzled tail and my, erm, very dirty striking shoes, and the other looked into the distance to where they’d said a town was supposed to be. “Well, we’re doing good things and keeping ponies safe. And I get ta destroy things without having ponies yell at me for it, so that’s pretty crate. “Plus, it has better hours than my last job.” That got a snicker from him. “Y’know what? Yer all right, Derps.” “Teehee. Than—” A shadow flashed across my vision. “Did you see that?” I said, bolting upright. “See what?” ‘Yes, I did.’