For a few seconds, their world became white…
And then, just as quickly as the albion overload had arrived… it abated.
The pain however, still lingered, the five of them finding themselves rubbing their eyes to get some much needed relief. Or, in Cyborg’s case, technically an artificial ocular sensory input device that merely resembled an eye made of red glass and another artificial ocular sensory input device that actually resembled an actual eye because it bothered going the facsimile route.
“Ahhh! Dude! Ughhhh! Hy head right now makes me think that tofu I had for dinner is about to make a second appearance through my ears!”
“Don’t, BB. It looked bad enough the first time,” Cyborg said as his artificial eyes had completed their reboot and diagnostic and had just come back fully online. “Also, you stuff tofu in your head? That explains a bunch.”
As the pain in his eyes lowered compared to the wound Cyborg had inflicted upon his pride, Beast Boy angrily threw his hands down, pointed at Cyborg, and said, “Oh yeah!? Well, at least my brain doesn’t run on Windows 1 point--” Before Beast Boy got the chance to finish that sentence, though--and likely got either a firm verbal castigation or physical thrashing at Cyborg’s hand since he hated it whenever Beast Boy even mentioned that dreaded OS, let alone insulted him by comparing him to such dreck--he stopped. His jaw hung open and his voice trailed off. “Uhhh…”
Cyborg shared confused glances with the rest of the team, who had also recovered from the light at this point, before he walked over to Beast Boy and waved a mechanical hand in front of his face. “Hello? Earth to BB? Yoo-hoo.” He then tapped a fist against Beast Boy’s head like one might a coconut. “Anybody home?”
“Beast Boy, what is it? What’s wrong,” Robin asked, snapping his fingers in front of the green teen’s face.
“Th--th--th-th--that! That… thing over there!” Beast Boy eventually managed to stammer out before, zombie like, raising an arm and pointing ahead of himself.
The other Titans, out of occupational habit, quickly turned around and took a battle ready stance, Raven’s hands and eyes glowing with black magic, Starfire's hands and eyes alight with bright green stellar energy, Robin a staff in one hand and a birdarang in the other, and Cyborg with his right arm turned into a sonic cannon.
However, rather than finding some big, bad, beast or some supervillain or some combination of the two, the rest of the team found nothing save one of the long glass windows that ran along the side of the living room where it had always been, the skyline of Jump City just beyond.
Wait…
No…
Something was… off…
Not about the window. Like they had surmised, it was indeed where it had always been. However… it no longer seemed to show the skyline of Jump City, the very same city they had all met in and sworn to defend along with the rest of the world so many years ago.
No… instead… it seemed to show what, after a second glance, appeared to be the skyline of a completely different city they did not recognize, obscured by what appeared to be some large, dark green statue resting on a pedestal that in turn rested on an island in the middle of this other city’s harbor.
After a third glance, the other four titans realized, much to their mounting, wide-eyed-as-possible shock, that this statue wasn’t of a human woman clad in a toga with a tablet clutched in the left arm, a torch held high in the right, and seven pointed rays shooting forth from the crown upon its head, as the most famous giant dark green statue they were all aware of, was. Rather, while the statue they were looking at retained most of the features of the famed Statue of Liberty intact… there was a key, noticeable difference that only served to make it similar to, but not the same, as Ellis Island’s most famous landmark.
Namely, that the subject in the statue they now looked at was not a human woman. Rather, it looked to be some sort of… horse like creature with four hooves, a quadrupedal looking stance, ears much too large and placed much higher than on a human’s head, and eyes much too big for a human’s head. Or even a horse's head, for that matter.
The fact that the horse like creature was smiling whereas the human woman in the statue of liberty was grim faced registered only after the four had realized that they had all pressed their faces up against the window and that Beast Boy had joined them in the activity.
“Guys…” Beast Boy muttered, his mouth still hanging wide open.
“Yeah, BB?” Cyborg asked.
“I don’t think we’re in Jump City anymore.”
“Or Kansas,” Raven absentmindedly muttered.
“Or even our own Earth,” Starfire absentmindedly muttered.
“Man, we’d be lucky if the weird, bug-eyed, mutant horsey things that probably rule this crazy, topsy turvy world even call it earth… or don’t eat humans for breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, and midnight snacks only on Tuesdays!” Cyborg panicked.
“What!? That’s crazy! We don’t know that!” Beast Boy said, raising his head away from the glass and giving Cyborg a look. “We don’t even know that weird, bug-eyed, mutant horsey thingies that like to eat people are the dominant species on this planet! For all we know, the people here just have really, really, REALLY freaky taste for architecture!”
“Or a really, really, REALLY freaky taste for people cuz those horsey things have taken over the planet and eat humans like I eat my Granny Cyborg’s triple meat spaghetti!”
Beast Boy ran over to Cyborg, picked him up by his neck, looked him dead in the eyes, and said, “Don’t… even… joke... about that.”
Indeed. Beast Boy was still recovering from the horrible, carnivorous spectacle he had borne witness to the last time he had accidentally walked in on Cyborg devouring his Granny’s triple meat abomination to all things vegetarian.
The carnage…
The screams…
The mental scars…
They would never, truly leave him… even after the day he was laid into the earth.
Before Beast Boy could try and slap his cybernetic compatriot out of his new obsession with freaky horsey things that ate people, though, he noticed Robin run towards the double doors that lead back out into the hallway. He called out, “Hey, Rob! Where ya’ goin’!?”
“To the roof!” Robin said before making a sudden stop and turning towards the rest of the team. “I… I… I have to be sure.” He then got close enough that the automatic sensor recognized that he wanted to get past and opened the doors. With the same pace as before, he then ran in, his footfalls sounding as though they were hitting the floor hard before the doors slid closed and muted them to the senses of the other four.
Silence reigned in the living room for several moments before, surprisingly, Raven was the first to speak up. “I... think I’m following him,” she said before hovering towards the doors herself.
“I think much the same,” Starfire said before hovering off after Raven and Robin.
After the doors slid closed behind the daughter of Trigon and the former princess of Tamaran, Beast Boy stood there, afraid of whether he should remain within the interior of the tower by himself or follow everyone else to the rooftop. As much as he hated to admit it, Cyborg’s fantasy actually seemed all too plausible to him, and being chomped on by a bunch of mutant horsey thingies was absolutely NOT his idea of a fun way to pass the evening.
“Ahem.”
Beast Boy blanched when he realized that he was not, in fact, the only one still left in the living room, and that he was still holding Cyborg by his neck above the ground, who looked very much miffed that Beast Boy was still doing so.
“BB?”
“Yeah… Cy?” Beast Boy nervously asked.
“Have you been working out?”
“Uhhh… no… why?” Beast Boy asked, now more confused than nervous.
“Because how in the world are you carrying me when I weigh as much as I do and you can barely lift the remote to change the channel on your best day?”
Beast Boy tilted his head to the side, his lower lip covering his upper lip as he thought about the question, before he finally looked Cyborg in the eye with an even more confused expression than before. “You know… I don’t know.”
It was then that Beast Boy’s arms finally gave out and Cyborg fell forward onto him, the weight of his mechanical body causing Beast Boy’s legs to buckle under him and sending him crashing in a heap on his back on the ground.
“Uuuuggghhh…” Beast Boy groaned out in pain.
A lot of pain.
A LOT… of pain.
*****
Robin threw open the door to the roof of Titan’s Tower, and sprinted over to the edge of the building there, hoping against hope that he and his team were still in Jump City despite what he had just seen below, barely noticing Raven and Starfire’s cries to wait up as they followed close behind him.
After a few seconds of gazing at the alien skyline, however, Robin hung his head, realizing that no amount of wishful thinking was going to change the simple fact spread out clearly before him: Larry had indeed transported not only them, but the entirety of Titans Tower to that ‘beautiful, beautiful world’ he wouldn’t shut up about, specifically the harbor--or maybe A harbor--of whatever strange, new city they were all in now.
Larry’s final comment about the Titans having everything they’d need to get the job done before that white flash shocked their senses suddenly made all too much sense. It was about the only thing that did to Robin at the moment, as the tall skyscraper he was looking at, with what looked to be a giant, golden bust of a horse’s head resting atop it certainly wasn’t helping things by lending credence to both Beast Boy’s and Cyborg’s theories.
“Well… Larry certainly wasn’t kidding…” Raven said.
“No. He most certainly was not,” Starfire replied.
The three didn’t bother to turn their heads around when they heard the door swing open again and the footfalls of Beast Boy and Cyborg sounding before the two stopped next to them and took in the sights as well.
“See! What’d I tell you!?” Cyborg yelled pointing at the skyscraper with the massive, golden, horse head bust. “Those weird, bug-eyed, mutant horsey things that like to eat people have taken over the planet and have now begun building things in their image like that bust over there--” Cyborg then pointed at the green statue from before “--or that statue of liberty knock off over there!”
“Again, you don’t know that!” Beast Boy yelled back, rather forcefully. “For all we know, the dudes here are just eccentric builders with horses on the mind!”
“Oh yeah!?” Cyborg yelled before swiveling his mechanical head back and forth across the skyline before his eyes fell upon the crown area of the statue of liberty knock-off and he smirked. “Then why do I see a bunch of a weird, bug-eyed, mutant horsey things giving us looks from all the way at that statue of liberty knock-off?”
“What!? No way! You’re lying!”
“Nope,” Cyborg said, bringing up his right arm and tapping buttons until a holographic display of what his artificial eye was picking up came up, the other four Titans crowding around him to see. “I’m telling the truth.”
Much to the others’ shock… Cyborg was! Through the holographic projection, they saw a zoomed in image of the crown area of the giant green statue, an area that, much like in the Statue of Liberty, was meant to give tourists a bird's eye view of the Manhattan skyline with their own eyes or, for a modest fee of some pocket change, via one of the many tower viewers permanently mounted within the crown area.
Only, completely unlike the Statue of Liberty, rather than the crown area being filled with human visitors of all shapes, sizes, and colors… it was filled with equines of all shapes, sizes, and colors, some even with wings on their sides or a horn on their head that matched the general description of the equally equine statue they were in to a ‘T.’
Equines that were all staring in the direction of Titan's Tower with shocked, horrified looks on their faces just as bad as the looks on the other four Titans’ faces, the equines manning the tower viewers seeming to look right at the Titans with even worse expressions… except for one mint green coated equine with a horn on its head who seemed to actually be waving at them and whose face had slowly formed into a wide, creepy grin that sent shivers down even Cyborg’s artificial spine, and he had been taking his discovery rather well due to the joy he felt at proving Beast Boy wrong up till that point.
“Cyborg…” Beast Boy said, barely above a whisper, his eyes not daring to look away from the mint green, horned equine.
“Yeah, BB?” Cyborg said, gulping, his eyes also frozen in place.
“I think you might be right. I’m sorry. So, so, SO... sorry,”
“It’s okay, BB. I wish I wasn’t. After looking at that… thing... staring right into my soul, I REALLY wish I wasn’t...”
“Robin… I have… the heebie jeebies. Even more so than when the chrysalis eater revealed her true nature to me! Hold me!” Starfire said before sweeping Robin off his feet in a massive bear hug that made his spine--and himself--cry out in utter agony and despair.
“That… smile…” Raven said, also barely above a whisper. “It reminds me of those worn by some insane eldritch abominations I’ve read about in my tomes…”
“Not helping things, Raven!” Cyborg shouted as he and Beast Boy held onto each other for dear life.
“Quick, dude! Change the channel! Change the channel!” Beast Boy yelled out.
Quickly, if a bit frantically, Cyborg pressed another series of buttons and the hologram disappeared. He then looked away from the giant green statue’s crown and began shivering, holding himself like he had just gotten out of the arctic. “Man… I really hope the tower’s defenses can hold them back if these freaks decide to go all George A. Romero on us.”
“Dude! Quit it!” Beast Boy yelled out, still holding onto Cyborg for dear life. “I’m whigged out enough as it--”
Before Beast Boy could finish, however, a sound, sort of like a big ‘pop’ filled the air, coming from some distant corner of town. All five of the Titans’ heads turned towards where they had heard the ‘pop’ and it wasn’t long before a great big column of smoke arose higher than even the tallest of the strange new city’s skyscrapers. It also wasn’t long before what sounded like, however muted by distance, confused screaming reached their ears.
This unexpected occurrence pushed aside their uncertainty and fear for a moment, and Starfire asked, “What could that have been?”
Robin stared at the still rising tower of dust, the muffled screams still assailing his ears as something else he recalled Larry had said also began to make far more sense in their present situation. “I don’t know, Star. But I do know this: we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”
“Whatever do you mean, Robin?” Starfire asked.
Robin turned around and headed for the door down to the living room. “I mean, it’s time to gear up and load up into the T-Ship, team! We’re going to do a little aerial reconnaissance, and, if necessary, intervene in whatever’s going down.”
“You sure about this, Rob? For all we know, the mutant horseys could be luring us to their feeding grounds!” Cyborg said.
“I told you to stop scaring--” Beast Boy began.
“Or, for all we know, these weird horse things are the beings Larry sent us to protect and aren’t anywhere near as bad as that. T-Ship. Now,” Robin said before opening the door and letting it shut close behind him. As he walked down the steps, despite how sure he had sounded, the doubts started creeping up, the image of that mint green… thing making even he, the former apprentice of The Bat feel like his body temperature had dropped a dozen or so degrees fahrenheit.
But, that ‘pop’ sound, which was probably an explosion by the cloud of smoke that followed, and the screams? It couldn’t have been a coincidence. Larry had said he’d put them in the thick of things right before things started going down for this world, and an event like that happening not five minutes after he and the rest of the Titans realized they were no longer on their proverbial home turf? The doubts evaporated away at the notion as his feet blurred him down the stairs.
In their place, new doubts arose, primarily concerning how he and the rest of his team would be able to discern friend from foe… especially if they couldn’t speak the language of the native good guys, and how any of the native good guys would be able to tell, either way, that he and the rest of the Titans were only here to help.
He REALLY found himself hoping that Raven knew some decent telepathy spells, otherwise… he REALLY didn’t want to have to deal with the awkwardness that could arise if Starfire had to… acquire the language and then act as translator.
He really, REALLY didn’t want to have to deal with the awkwardness that would open them all up to…
*****
Fluttershy was having a bad day.
A REALLY bad day.
It was not enough for destiny's invisible hoof, it seemed, to guide her into leaving the reticent tranquility of her snug little cottage early two evenings ago for an impromptu cutiemap quest with her friends to the bombastic turbulence of the single largest, most populous, and--to her at least--most frightening city in Equestria.
It was not enough that the trip from the moment they’d arrived at the hotel in the dead of night two nights ago to them walking out of the theater today had been just as dreadfully stressful and frightening as she had envisioned on the train ride over with spit, gum, and spitted out gum finding its way to sticking on her fur more than the worst day of middle school ponies had been so careless and Applejack and Rarity going crazy over a play that, while an okay production, was not worthy of the extreme derision or extreme praise they respectively heaped upon it.
It was not even enough for destiny, it seemed, to then lead her and her friends to a sports stadium crowded with literally the single greatest concentration of cacophonous, obnoxious Manehattanites she had ever seen, 100,000 of them, literally half the city’s entire population, where she and her friends then ended up somehow rolling down a flight of stairs and being forced to stay only because Applejack found some family members she hadn’t seen in a while and wanted to hang out with them.
No.
Destiny, it seems, wanted to just keep ratcheting up the level of fray Fluttershy’s nerves were being forced to endure by literally dropping something that made Fluttershy all the more nervous, all the more scared, out from the sky, right as Applejack’s Uncle was beginning to make his speech.
Or rather, someone.
Not somepony, but someone.
A big, bipedal bovine tetrapod with big bulking biceps and other assorted upper body muscles bigger around than coconuts and no doubt capable of easily crushing them and other, far more durable or fragile things and with legs that, while not nearly as impressive as the tree trunks for arms it seemed to have were still longer, wider, and and stronger looking than the legs of anypony she had ever seen.
A minotaur.
A minotaur bull of ebon fur clad in a red toga with a wreath of golden metal leaves adorning his twin and vertically horned head and a purple cape flowing in the wind behind him as he strode with a confident and commanding gait towards the six ponies lying on the turf before him.
It was only when he put the microphone that Mayor Orange had been using moments earlier up to his lips that Fluttershy had realized that he had been holding it in his hand at all, the device’s long cable dragging behind him as he said, in an accent she could not place--so thick she could carve it out with a spoon, “As the good mayor was just about to mutter: A day where the Orange Administration pays dearly for its grave inequity!”
Fluttershy jumped out of her seat at the first word out of his mouth and hid behind it and then hid behind her mane as he continued to speak, such was the frightening power behind his booming, baritone voice amplified even further by the stadium’s extensive PA system. It was only when he had finished speaking that she conjured courage enough to dare and peak over her seat and look at him again, and even then she was clutching the headrest hard enough that it would have broken were it not made of stern stuff and she shook like a foal’s rattle.
“Oh yes, citizens of Manehattan, I do not misspeak! Doubtlessly you have not yet heard since the misdeed in question transpired but a night ago and was hushed up such that your press was made to zip their lips until such a time, undoubtedly, that the wrongfully accused were tried, sentenced, and carted off to the dungeons of distant Canterlot!”
The minotaur chuckled, and once more did Fluttershy duck to hide behind her seat and mane, for such was how much more intimidating she found the monster below to be when he laughed than merely when he spoke, which itself spoke volumes. For their part, the mood of the crowd also shifted, but away from panic and more towards uncertainty, confused murmurs sweeping through it rather than terrified screams. Even her friends now looked more unsure than scared. Oh, how Fluttershy envied them. How she wished she could say the same for herself.
“And, knowing the character of equinity as I do, you lot might not have cared!” the minotaur continued. “Likely, the bulk of you still shall not! Well, I would have you know that there are those who do! Those who will not let three innocent toms go to prison while their accuser bears all the guilt, mayor or not! Pony or not! Those who demand justice! Those who have hired me to right but one of the abounding, grievous wrongs perpetrated by ponykind against griffonkind in this city, by gifting your little mayor the exact same punishment he would see meted out to the blameless!”
By this point, the minotaur was only twenty feet away from Applejack’s family and their bodyguards, and stopped. Crossing his immense arms over his chest, he looked down from the crowd at them and said, “Mayor Tangerine Orange, I am taking you into custody and placing you under arrest till such a time as Gus Griswald, Gino Glenberg, and Garin Galip are released from their imprisonment! Now get up, dust yourself off, and say your goodbyes to your family! Resist, and I will renege this most merciful offer of the modicum of dignity you refused to give to those three toms, grab you by the neck like a rebellious foal, and grant you no last words to your family!”
Like the crowd had all around her at certain points as he talked, so too had Fluttershy gasped as the minotaur rendered the situation and his intentions clear for all to see. Such as things were, she could only look on in silence as the scene below grew even more terrifying. Jeeves, Jives, and Chives had finally recovered from being flung as far and as hard as they had and had gotten up to rush the minotaur like they were linebackers and the bull had the ball, but as they were just about to enter tackling distance, the minotaur simply threw out the flattened palm of his hand out towards them with such speed and strength that a sonic boom sounded throughout the stadium and the resulting focussed shockwave of air struck the bodyguards with enough force to stop them in their tracks, lift them up off their hooves, and send them back crashing against the stadium wall, right beneath where Fluttershy and her friends were.
A hush fell upon the stadium, in which Fluttershy, mouth agape in wordless horror, concluded from the lack of agonized groans she was hearing, that the impact had knocked Jeeves, Jives, and Chives out cold.
Then, the shrieks from the crowd came again. First at full force, then at even fuller force, only now genuine panic was present too, masses of pegasi taking themselves and as much of their family and friends as they could carry with them into the air to flee whereas the remaining hapless earthponies and unicorns and other sundry flightless races that called Manehattan home were stuck practically stampeding for the nearest exit.
Fluttershy had half a mind to join them. When she looked back over to her friends in the vain hope that they felt the same way and would give the okay, however, she noticed that they had opted to remain where they were, glued to their seats with looks ranging from horror, to more moderate yet still immense surprise, and even to curiosity if the way Rainbow Dash had her lips curled and head tilted to the side was proper indication.
Applejack, however, looked less like she was taken aback and more like she wanted to take the minotaur out back behind the barn and kick him in the face, her wrathful gaze so palpable and razor focussed that Fluttershy would have broken down crying were the farmpony not her friend and were she the object of her ire.
“HEY YOU!” Applejack yelled out, drawing the minotaur’s attention to her before continuing with, “YEAH! YOU! GIANT FELLER IN THE TACKY TOGA GETUP! Y’ALL BEST KEEP YOUR BIG GRUBBY MITTS OFF MUH KIN IF YA KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FER YA, YA HEAR!”
She then got out of her seat, leapt the protective railing keeping ponies from entering onto the field and did just that, landing with a brief thud before taking off towards her family like she was competing in this year’s running of the leaves, Rainbow Dash, fittingly enough, following after her and, soon enough, Twilight, Pinkie Pie, and Rarity.
But not Fluttershy.
Oh no.
She stayed put right where she was, not wishing to step a single foot closer to the bull than she had to. She rationalized her cowardice not as cowardice, but as merely being with her friends in spirit, which she figured was way more sensical and ultimately more useful since, really, what exactly was she supposed to do if, say, a fight broke out? Fluttershy was weak, the most milquetoast of all the elements, and everypony knew it.
The minotaur, meanwhile, was a monolith of muscle that, as her friends galloped closer towards--giving her a more proper frame of reference and sense of scale--she realized was an entire foot taller than Iron Will! Plus, he was strong and fast enough that the mere act of pushing against the air with his PALM sent three fully grown and atypically big and strong and trained stallions halfways across an entire hoofball field into a wall hard enough to render them unconscious! While she didn’t know what precisely constituted as average for minotaurkind, Fluttershy obviously just couldn’t compare. She doubted anypony, and she meant any pony, could compare. Even her friends.
Regardless, in all honesty, she was liable only to be a hindrance, to get in the way. And so, she remained, muttering prayers quieter than mouse squeaks to almighty Faust that things could be decided diplomatically, because if not, well, Flutershy didn’t know if she could stomach looking at what would happen then.
In a few moments, Applejack and the others made it to the nearly unconscious forms of the Oranges and slid to a stop, and for a few, tenser moments more, both sides stood in a silent stare off before the minotaur lifted up a brow and asked, “And who, dare I ask, are you to dare to speak to me in such a manner?” without using the microphone.
“Mayor Orange’s niece!” Applejack boldly declared. “Applejack!”
“And her friends!” Rainbow Dash proudly proclaimed.
“Including one Princess Twilight Sparkle, as in one of the rulers of this great nation, you obtuse brute!” Rarity said, pointing at Twilight.
The minotaur leaned forward in Twilight’s direction, as though appraising her truly for the first time, and his eyes widened, his tone marveling as he said, “Do mine eyes deceive me, or are they cheated by some expertly casted spell?”
“Nope!” Pinkie Pie beamed, hoof wrapping around Twilight’s barrel and pulling her in close for a one-legged hug as she said, “Your peepers are working just fine! Twilight here really is a bonafide Princess of the land! I mean can’t ya tell! She’s got the horn, the wings, the bigmongous brain! Everything! Well, except the crown and the regalia, but she never puts that stuff on when she’s just out on the town, ya know?”
“Your majesty!” the minotaur exclaimed, immediately taking a polite bow. “Forgive me for my lack of proprietary! Were I aware of your attendance, I would have brought a gift befitting someone of your station!”
“Uhmmm… thank… you?” Twilight said hesitantly, giving voice not just to her own surprise but Fluttershy's too and, unquestionably, the surprise of the rest of their friends as well. “Forgive me for asking, but, does that mean we could maybe… talk about this without you foalnapping the mayor?”
Immediately, the minotaur stood ramrod straight again and cleared his throat and said, “Regrettably, your majesty, I am afraid that is a request to which I cannot acquiesce.”
“Can’t or won’t, ya big ape?” Applejack asked with a brushfire’s worth of heat.
“Both, you apple picking peasant,” the minotaur replied comparitively cooly, sticking his nose up at her like Canterlot nobles tended to whenever she visited the city.
As the farmpony audibly fumed, sounding like she was prepping to jump at him, Twilight stepped between her and the minotaur and said, “Okay everyone, calm down now and stop with the put downs, okay? Mean words aren’t going to to get us anywhere and are only going to get everypony angry. Even me.”
“Your majesty, I beg for your pardon, yet I fret I would anger you even if my words and the words of your friends here dripped with honey instead of venom, for I cannot abide leaving this stadium without bringing the Mayor in tow back to my clientele. My respect for those of regal stature is great, but my yearning to always complete a contract with the loftiest of flying colors is greater. Please, step aside and tell your friends to follow you, Princess Twilight. I wish no ill-will, but make no mistake, if you insist, it SHALL befall you all.”
“Pfffttt! Get a load of this joker!” Rainbow Dash said, as not intimidated by that as Fluttershy was intimiated by that. In a mocking voice and tone, she said, “If you get in my way, I’m gonna beat all of you up! I mean, seriously! Was that really supposed to be like, a threat, or something? At US of all ponies?”
“Not a threat, a guarantee.”
Rainbow Dash waved his response to the side with her hoof. “Or what, our money back? Please, dude. We’ve brought down WAY bigger bad guys than you, and way tougher and meaner looking ones to! We’d have you on the ground hog-tied and crying uncle in ten seconds flat!”
“Firstly, I am not a bad guy,” the minotaur said, air quoting with his fingers. “I am merely performing a job. Though, considering the ghastliness of whom I have been hired to spirit away, today, I am also performing a public service in doing so. Secondly, in regards to your last sentence, I simply must ask: really now?”
With celerity Fluttershy could only describe as preternatural, the minotaur closed the distance between him and Rainbow and pressed his face down angrily against hers.
“Is that a fact?”
“Eeep!” Fluttershy cried out as she dipped her head save for her eyes beneath her seat and as the rest of her friends cried out similarly and jumped back in a fright.
All of her friends save for Rainbow, that was, the mare not even flinching at the display of speed or at being in such proximity to something that towered over her so greatly and looked so much more powerful than her. Pressing her face back against his, she said, calmly and clearly, without a hint of a frightened crack to her voice, “Ten. Seconds. FLAT.”
Luckily, before things could escalate any further, Twilight’s horn glowed magenta, and a field of magic the exact same color enveloped Rainbow Dash and pulled her back towards the others.
“Rainbow Dash! Are you CRAZY!?” Twilight shouted. “Don’t antagonize him! Everything was going fine before! I had things under control!”
“What!? No you didn--”
Rainbow Dash was prevented from finishing her sentence by Twilight telekinetically grabbing hold of her lips and pinching them shut.
“Rainbow, shhh!” Twilight said with her nose held high, ignoring the muffled yet still quite audible disagreement coming from Rainbow before turning back to the minotaur and saying, “We were having a civil discussion, am I right?”
“A discussion to be sure, but civil? I protest such a notion, at least where your friends here are concerned. The company you keep have proven themselves very rude, Princess Twilight.”
“Hey! What about me?” Pinkie asked, Fluttershy practically hearing her eyes go wide with hurt and start to water. “Was I rude?”
The minotaur stroked his chin in thought. “Come to think of it, I do not recall you hurling any insult at me.” He shrugged. “I suppose I was mistaken where you were concerned. The apple picker, rainbow maned, and marshmallow looking ones definitely did, however!”
“Marshmallow! Why I never!” Rarity gasped.
“Oh yeah! I’m not a big meanie pants like half my friends!” Pinkie Pie proclaimed triumphantly as she threw a triumphant hoof in the air with triumph.
“Pinkie!” Applejack, Rainbow, and Rarity exclaimed all at once.
“Sorry girls, but ya know, it is kinda, sorta true if you kinda, sorta, stop and think about it. I mean, all of you kind of did come out the gate calling him names while he didn’t, so, yeah.” Pinkie shrugged.
“What!? But he called us names too!” Applejack yelled.
“After you took the first strike, if you willl recall,” the minotaur said, pointing his index finger up as though he were schooling a particularly rambunctious child.
“You stay out of this!” Applejack said, painting a hoof at him.
“To what end? It sort of concerns me.”
“It kinda does, dontchya think, A.J.?” Pinkie Pie said.
The minotaur chucked as Applejack, Rainbow, and Rarity glared at Pinkie like they were trying to shoot magical beams at her from her eyes, and said, “Glad to see one of you aside from the princess here has a well head resting upon their shoulders.”
The irony stung so much, Fluttershy winced.
Applejack, Rarity, and Rainbow in the meanwhile looked at the minotaur like he had just told them the grass was blue, the sky green, and that Pinkie Pie, PINKIE PIE, was okie, dokie, lokie in the noggin. All three of them, including Rainbow Dash, who at that moment was filled with enough righteous indignation to finally overpower Twilight’s magic, shouted, “WHAT!?” loud enough that ponies still in flight--figuratively and literally--from the stadium stopped what they were doing for five whole seconds to look at what was happening in the field before resuming to run away.
Pinkie Pie for her part seemed practically unfazed despite being at ground zero of such a scream, which had proven powerful enough that Twilight, who was right next to her, had to brush her mane back into its usual place. So unfazed was the party pony that she put her hoof to her chest at the minotaur’s words and said, “Awww! I’m touched! Thank you, Mr. Minotaur! Here.” She put her hoof out to him. “Put her there, pal!”
“With gusto!”
The minotaur grabbed hold of her hoof and the two shook their respective appendages most amicably. Twilight and him then proceed to do the same.
“Pinkie Pie! Twilight!” Applejack exclaimed. “Please stop playing nice with my uncle’s wannabe kidnapper!”
“Yeah!” Rainbow agreed.
“I concur!” Rarity agreed.
“Why? He’s proving to be pretty cordial,” Twilight said.
“Yeah. All things considered, he’s pretty chivalrous and nice for a kidnapper.”
“You lavish me with too much praise, Princess Twilight and Pinkie,” the minotaur said with a noble bow and a warm smile.
“I’ll say!” Applejack interjected. “Cuz at the end of the day, yer willin’ to put on a big production about rippin' an innocent stallion away from his wife and daughter! And fer what!? Money!?”
“Yeah!” Rainbow Dash said.
“Hmmmph. My. How chivalrous of you, indeed!” Rarity added, sticking her nose up at him.
The minotaur placed his fists on his hips and said, “I understand you are upset. After all, who in their right mind would not upon learning their uncle, one of their own kin, was an evil trickster, let alone the evilest and trickiest in your nation going back far longer than anypony save for the two sisters could recall? But make no mistake about it: your uncle is as I say, and if the equestrian justice system will not see fit to punish him accordingly for the evil trick he attempted to perform, then my clientele will hold on to him until it does. Once I deliver him to them, of course.”
The resolve in Applejack’s voice made the fur on Fluttershy’s back stand on end as she shouted, “YOU AIN’T TAKIN’ HIM NOWHERE, YA HERE!? NOWHERE!”
“Yes, I… heard,” the minotaur said, casually clearing out the noise from his ears with his pinkies. “And before you stated it so outright, I gathered the sentiment quite clearly. Be that as it may, he is going with I whether you like it or not, and there is not anything you or your compatriots can do to even really contest this little factoid. Not even Princess Twilight or Pinkie. So, please, stand aside. I will only repeat myself once more.”
“That a threat, big guy!?” Applejack yelled, pushing her grille up against his.
“No. It is a guarantee, as I already firmly explained to your rainbow maned friend,” the minotaur said simply and fearlessly.
Twilight once more resorted to her magic and pulled Applejack back before saying, “Okay, you need to stop, okay! Just… stop!” Looking at the minotaur, she said, “Now, I understand that you’re presusambly on a very tight schedule and that there’s A BUNCH of things going on here that we’re not entirely, one-hundred percent sure of which are contributing a good chunk to the hostility some of us have for you, so--” she sighed, “could you please repeat for the class what this is all about to clear the air of any confusion? Can you extend that courtesy? To us? To me? Please?”
Things were quiet for a moment, or as quiet as they could be considering there were still a couple ten-thousand ponies trying to bail from the stadium. The minotaur alternated between scratching his chin and the side of his head and the top of his head in thought with the mic he still held, and for a moment looked so super serious to Fluttershy that she ducked down again and curled into a ball, so sure by that look alone that he was about to attack them.
Then, right at the moment she was confident he was about to strike, he said, “Very well. But only because I am so loathe of ambiguity on a contract like this, and NOT because you are royalty. Though, I suppose it does help. Anywho…” The minotaur cleared his throat with a cough and went on to say, “Last night, at around 10:00 pm, just as the mayor’s office was to close up shop for the evening, three toms--that is three full-grown, male griffons for those of your friends uncultured in words or just plain cognitively disinclined--managed to catch Mr. Orange here and meet with him. The toms were Gus Griswald, Gino Glenberg, and Garin Galip. They were the heads of an alliance of community and business organizers of griffonkind in the city known as The Griffonian League, and they made inquiry concerning the status of the licensing and permit requests for a new business they were attempting to build. Things began amicably enough, until the mayor said that the requests had been deliberately withheld from the city council and would absolutely be rejected outright if it ever did meet their eyes for consideration. That was, unless, the fine toms hoofed over a million bits to have Mayor Orange expedite the process and convince the council to approve. When they refused, he called his guards and the police to lock them away by lying through his teeth and saying they tried to bribe him.”
Fluttershy’s friends all gasped aloud at this. All of them. Even Pinkie Pie, who must have been stunned indeed to not do anything particularly, well, Pinkie Pie, the revelation was so shocking. Fluttershy herself had likewise mirrored them, curiosity annulling her fear enough to glance back over her seat to catch the minotaur shaking his head sadly from side to side.
“I know, I know. My reaction was much the same when first I did hear it. Though the nations of europony are renown for their governmental incompetence compared to equestria, in all my travels amongst them, I have never before heard of them being so outright malicious to those within their own borders. It fills a heart with great sorrow.”
“But… but… why!?” Applejack asked before turning around to look at the barely conscious forms of her uncle and his family behind her, her shaking voice devoid of her prior wrath and certainly. “That don’t make no sense! He said... he said... I’ve known my unc my whole life! He’s not the kind of pony to do what yer accusin’ him of! He just… he just ain’t. He AIN’T!” The fiery conviction in her words having returned, she turned around and looked back at the minotaur. “Plus, he’s already rich! Louded! Swimmin’ in bits! Literally! When I was young, I asked if he could fill up his swimmin’ pool with bits to see if I really could swim through coins like this one comic strip I used to read, and he did! He absolutely, one hundred percent did fill it up! To burstin’, even! A million bits is chump change compared to that! Chump change!”
“Oh it most absolutely is, darling!” Rarity agred. “I should know! My Manehattan boutique required me to scrounge up that many bits, and it is but a mere clothing shop hardly larger than my own home and workplace back in Ponyville! In the cheapest district in this city I could find it in! But Mayor Orange is as close to landed gentry as one could be being nouveau riche!”
“Yeah! This town was literally built by and named after his wife's family!” Rainbow Dash added. “If he really was asking for a bribe, why such a low payout, huh? Did you ever stop to think about that before strutting over here like you own the place?”
The minotaur shrugged. “Mayhaps he is more dastardly than you all suspect. Mayhaps his wealth and that of his wife's is not what it once was. Mayhaps, some combination thereof. Regardless, far too much time have I spent in idle, if interesting chit-chat. Step aside and do not interfere in this matter. This your final, fair warning. Justice waits for no one, after all. Not a mayor, or even a princess and her friends.”
The minotaur walked around Twilight and the others towards Mayor Orange just as the stallion had finally managed to get to his hooves, put his still reeling wife and child on his back, and attempted to limp away as fast as he could from the bull. Twilight, however, teleported in front of the minotaur and held out her hoof as though to halt him, her voice laced with all the regal authority she could muster as she said, “Stop! As princess of friendship, you have my word that whoever’s responsible for the alleged crime will be discovered and prosecuted to the full extent of equestria law regardless of and even if you and your clients are right!”
“And I shall hold you to that promise. The mayor, though, shall still reside in a prison until the toms are released from theirs,” he said, casually walking around her, eyes never leaving the retreating form of Mayor Orange and his family.
“Where do you think you are hobbling off to, mayor? There is nowhere you can hide from truth’s inexorable advan--”
Suddenly, a lasso wrapped around the minotaur’s neck, and Fluttershy’s eyes followed the length of rope back to Applejack just as she tugged with her teeth and the rest of herself hard enough that the minotaur was pulled off of his feet and fell, back first, onto the ground.
“Oh no,” Fluttershy squeaked.
“Applejack!” Twilight scolded. “What did you do!?”
Applejack spat out her rope and said, “You told him to stop, didn’t you? And ‘sides, I already told him that he ain’t touchin’ muh family!”
“But you didn’t have to outright attack him like that!”
“Attack him!? Girl, all I did was lasso him to the dirt! You’re actin’ like I kicked him in the face, though the way things were headed, you were probably fixin’ to blast him with a spell!”
“What!? No I wasn’t! I was only planning on talking him down because I had things under control!”
“No you didn’t!” Applejack and Rainbow Dash said.
As her friends continued to argue, Fluttershy caught movement at the edge of her vision and looked back at the minotaur just in time to catch him unwrapping the lasso from his neck and holding it up to his face, a stern expression plastered over it.
That was it. It had to be. The undeniable moment where things officially went south. The demarcation line betwixt failed diplomacy and all out fighting breaking out. Surely, the minotaur would be in a rage! Surely he would attack and fall upon them with a ferocity such as equestria had not seen in millenia! Surely he would--
--slowly get back up, calmly dust himself off, turn back around to regard her friend, and cooly state, “Ah. I see you have some skill in the art of the lariat.”
Fluttershy blinked. Once to make sure she still had eyes. Twice to make sure she still had eyelids. And thrice to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. Her friends also regarded the minotaur with owlicious blinks, their argument thankfully falling by the wayside in light of this development.
Looking between her friends and the minotaur, Twilight asked, her voice bearing a slight hope that things could be resolved peacably, the same hope that dared to burn in Fluttershy’s heart as well, “So… you’re not mad, then?”
The minotaur threw his head up and let out a hearty chuckle that echoed across the stadium even more than it would have were the stadium not as utterly empty as it now was. He brought his head back down and tossed Applejack back her rope with one hand while wiping aside a mirthful tear, and said, “Mad? Ha! Hardly! Your friend’s sudden display of adeptness with the lariat has handed me the perfect excuse to display my own ability on the matter and see how favorably it compares to her own!”
Fluttershy raised an eyebrow, as did her friends, wondering exactly how he was going to do that when he didn't appear to have any rope on his person and had hoofed over the only rope that could be seen back to its owner.
But then, in a motion so swift and so sudden that not even Rainbow Dash had reacted until it was gone and the damage done, they were given an answer. The bull hurled the microphone in his hand at Applejack, the device wrapping about her neck so tautly that she choked out, tugged her toward him with one arm, let go of the mic’s cable, and, when she drew near enough, clotheslined her into the turf with his other arm hard enough that she formed a crater roughly the size of her body.
“Hmmm…” the minotaur said, stroking his chin as he looked down at Applejack, her face frozen in abject shock, as if she was sleeping with her eyes open. “It would appear my ability stacks up most nicely to hers.” He looked back up at the others. “What say you?” he asked slyly.
Nopony said anything at first, for though the gravity of what had transpired pried their jaws open as far as they could, words had failed them. Even Pinkie Pie, brimming with cheery verbosity as she was during the darkest of times, was too astonished to even attempt to try and brighten up the mood.
Given how not well her friends were dealing with things, it went without saying that it was all Fluttershy could do to force herself to keep looking. Even then, she managed this not because she was brave, or even because she was so concerned about Applejack’s limp, unmoving body, though she certainly was and knew from experience from treating injured animals and Rainbow Dash when her sundry stunts went awry growing up that she’d need a trip to the hospital, stat.
Rather, she managed because of the implications. Of what it meant. The message of what the minotaur had just managed to do to one of them, one of the toughest of their number, Applejack, with such ease and blase the farmpony might as well have been made of graham crackers for all the good it had availed her.
If the minotaur could do what he had to Applejack, what chance did most of them really have?
Especially now?
Now that there was quite clearly no going back?
“I say you’re gonna pay for that, buddy! And my hooves are gonna collect!” Rainbow Dash shouted suddenly, slicing apart the cimmerian silence, rearing up, and then taking to the air with a flap of her wings.
The minotaur chuckled in disbelief and asked, “And how precisely do you plan to so avenge your apple-picking peasant of a compatriot, being as frail as you so evidently are?”
“Just watch me if you can, big guy!”
“Dash, wait!” Twilight cried out.
Fluttershy immediately dipped down behind her seat again, but this time hit the deck and became as flat as could be. Her instinctual move was justified soon after when she heard a sonic boom sound throughout the stadium followed swiftly by another one. Fluttershy heard and felt the top half of her seat screech and bend from the impact of something big and heavy and felt herself pelted by the ensuing shower of metal, fabric, cotton, and concrete fragments as the big and heavy something went on to crash into and stop at the row of seats directly behind and above her seat. It had come so close to striking her that she no longer felt the presence of a tuft of hair she was pretty sure had been on her back just prior.
If she had been just a little higher…
“Had enough!?”
Fluttershy opened her eyes and looked up to see Dash hovering above her and looking at something in front of her. Something that wasn’t Fluttershy. Something that Fluttershy realized must have been the exact same something that had almost hit her. Something that Fluttershy soon discovered the identity of when she looked where Dash was looking.
The minotaur.
“Oh… oh my…” she muttered out.
He was looking down at her, right into her eyes, half laying, half sitting in the him shaped, him sized crater where a half dozen of the seats from the row behind her had been before he had flattened or sent them flying off the bolts that grounded them with his crash. His expression, thankfully, was not one of ire, but what Fluttershy could only describe as curious indifference. An idea further evidenced when he raised one of his furrowed brows and tilted his head to the side. Fluttershy herself lay completely motionless, trying to remain as still as she possibly could on the slim chance that the minotaur’s eyesight was based on motion, her breath hitched in her throat as she then tried her best to either will herself invisible or teleport in the very, very real chance she was tragically mistaken.
It didn’t work.
At all.
Good thing was, before Fluttershy’s mental fortitude could break down to the point she burst out into tears, Rainbow Dash, fittingly enough, came to her rescue as she had done so many times--unintentionally or not, unwanted or not--before in her life, shouting to the minotaur, “Hey, I’m talkin’ to ya right now, mister! What? Did I floor ya so hard when I kicked ya in the face that you can’t even speak right!? I mean, not that you could anyways with that hokey accent of yours, but still!”
The minotaur looked up, up, and away from Fluttershy and at Dash and his brow furrowed in anger as he replied, “I heard, rainbow one. I was merely preoccupied thinking on an altogether different matter, for despite your braggadocio, you succeeded only in flooring me in so far as knocking me to the floor, but have not successfully floored me in so far as bringing me harm enough to actually keep me on the floor.”
The minotaur stood up and dusted himself off.
As he did, Fluttershy looked up at Rainbow to catch her crossing her forelegs over her chest and rolling her eyes. “Yeah, right. And I’m the Empress of Roam, pal. If you wanted to save your dignity from being shellacked by an evidently frail looking pony, then maybe you shouldn’t have messed with one of my friends, you stupid, dumb--”
Dash was silenced when the minotaur threw his palm forward again at what Fluttershy could now see, hear, and feel for certain was a hypersonic velocity being so close. When the excess wind stopped pushing her mane over and against her face, Fluttershy looked back up to find Dash gone and heard her yelling as she no doubt tumbled uncontrollably in the air.
When Fluttershy looked back down, she noticed the minotaur’s gaze was back on her and once more inadvertently locked eyes with him, only this time his visage was exceedingly serious.
Despite this, curiously, there was no malice in his voice, and neither was it raised in any threatening manner as he said to her, “Do not involve yourself, and I shall have no quarrel with thee. Your friends shall be fine. Roughed up, but fine. If you decide, however, to actually help them, you shall also be roughed up, loathe as I am to smack down such a delicate thing as you so clearly are. Understood?”
Fluttershy didn’t have the time to agree or disagree before the minotaur leapt into the air back towards the field, the resulting rush of air again blowing her mane into and over her face. As she got her hair back into position, though, she couldn’t help but imagine that if he had stayed a little longer, she would've been shaking her head up and down like Pinkie whenever she tried coffee to placate him. The thought of it, of being so cowed by the mere presence of that, well, cow, was enough to cause her no modicum of disgust and add on quite a bit to her duress.
Yet, of course, Fluttershy once more bargained with herself, trying to latch onto any excuse she could for her passive inaction and decision to remain as hidden as possible while her friends officially engaged in a brawl they would certainly have an uphill struggle in.
Again, she asked herself, 'What'? What could she, Fluttershy, possibly do against a minotaur so mighty? One that had already flattened Applejack, had shrugged off a kick from Dash--IN THE FACE--hard enough to send him careening over nearly half the hoofball field and cause a crater in the stands, and by the way things were going was probably set to give even Twilight, TWILIGHT, some serious trouble? She had no animal friends whose strength she could call upon, and even if she did, she wouldn’t sick them on him for fear that they’d get hurt because their strength wouldn’t be enough. She herself was of course, herself, and barely fit to fight a foal, unfit to fight a mare around her age and body type, and completely unfit to fight a minotaur like Iron Will, let alone one who seemed to be a super minotaur even compared to his own kind. And she doubted that the stare, lauded and loathed a technique as it was, would work here, as it depended on the confidence and will she possessed--which was meager indeed--the confidence and will a target possessed--which the minotaur had in spades---and, most crucially of all, a target’s own internal guilt--which the minotaur had none of or at least very little of since he seemed to think his cause was a noble and righteous one. Besides, the stare worked best on beasts, not sapient persons like minotaurs or ponies or what have you. Even the one dragon it had worked on was a hair's breadth away from resisting its effects and had only failed because deep down, he knew what he was doing was wrong.
So, in light of all these unfortunate, but undeniable facts, Fluttershy elected once more to sit this one out and let her friends do their best which they so clearly would be unable to if she was with them to drag them down. She made herself as flat as she could again, closed her eyes, and covered her ears with her hooves.
But then, as she was about to loudly hum a merry little tune to herself to protect her fragile conscience--and probably consciousness--from the sounds of her friends’ panicked and pained shrieks about to fly, she heard him. She just had to hear… him.
Mayor Orange.
“Somepony… anypony… help… please!”
And then, she just had to hear him grunt in severe agony, get up from where she was, and look down into the stadium just in time to see him keel over onto the turf, his unconscious wife and daughter falling from his back.
“Somepony… please…” the mayor groaned out, trying his absolute best, but unable to get up again, his attempts inevitably ending with him back at square one.
As he flipped onto his back, panting heavily from the strain, Fluttershy looked farther into the field to find Rainbow Dash held a coupe of feet above Twilight in the alicorn’s magic, the two engaged in what sounded like a very heated conversation after the latter had probably had to catch the former after the minotaur's attack. Or maybe Twilight had to restrain Rainbow from charging in again. Maybe both. What was certain, aside from all the yelling of course, was that Rarity and Pinkie didn’t look too happy as they looked on, the fashionista noticeably irritated while the party pony was desperately trying to get their attention and pointing at something in the sky. Fluttershy didn’t have to look there to know it was the minotaur about to crash down near them, the big shadow growing ever larger in front of them kind of giving it away.
Instead, she looked back at Mayor Orange, gasping for breath like so many fish out of water she had seen. So many she had tended to, no matter the personal expenditure on her part, by doing her absolute best to lead them back to safety. The mayor may not have been an animal, he may not have been blameless if what the minotaur had said was true, but just as those fish had been, he was in desperate need. Him and his family. Of someone to show them some basic equine decency. Mercy. Kindness.
And, Fluttershy, above all else, above being a caretaker of animals, above being meek and soft spoken and generally inactive and non-assertive in her ways, and above even the protests warring with her in her mind and her soul at that moment as she recalled the minotaur’s terse ultimatum, was the Element of Kindness.
If she wouldn’t go down there to help the Oranges, who would? Who could, given her friends were soon to be heavily preoccupied elsewhere?
The struggle within herself reached a boiling point where her eyes watered and she closed them.
By the time the bull landed, however, she had made up her mind.
Her eyes reopened, belying a resolve most atypical for the soft mare.
She knew what she had to do.
*****
“DUCK AND COVER!”
Busy and loud as she and Rainbow had been in their squabbling, Twilight Sparkle had not yet fully heard and/or registered what Pinkie Pie had been trying to say. That was, until the party pony’s voice had raised to such octaves that Twilight’s ears felt blistered like the three words had been blasted into her ear drums by a barn sized megaphone--something she was honestly surprised Pinkie had not pulled out of the aether to get their attention.
What she was surprised by, however, was being lifted off her hooves and sent skipping off the ground like a stone hurled into a pond or lake, only with far less grace and far more muttering of, “OW! OOH! AAH! OUCH! STOP! PLEASE! WAH!”
When her momentum was finally spent, thanks in no small part to the fact that she hit the base of the goal post in the direction she was flung--which the back of her head and the rest of her body managed to endure well enough thanks in no small part to the fact the base was padded as was standard hoofball regulation--she brought her face away from the turf and looked ahead to find the minotaur standing tall and proudly in a crater one foot deep, ten wide, and right between where she and the others had just been and where Applejack was.
Realizing what must've happened, she forwent focussing her gaze on the minotaur and instead tried to find out where Applejack had been blown away to. She found her back nearly to the wall opposite from where Twilight herself was, towards where they had been seated when this whole mess began, and let out a sigh of relief when she didn’t seem to be hurt--or at least, no more than she already was. However, after continung to look at Applejack to make absolutely sure, she noticed for the first time a far more curious sight: Fluttershy fluttering down from the stands to Mayor Orange’s side and doing her best to lift him and his family onto her back.
Twilight’s brain skipped a beat for a second prior to realizing what the normally cowardly pegasus was attempting to do, and she decided then and there that she would do her absolute best to keep the minotaur from noticing and attempt to stop him. Via force. For as much as she still searched for a diplomatic solution, as much as her heart yearned for peace in all things, what the bull had done was near tantamount to an act of war in her book, and if he sought war so badly, she was more than happy to oblige him. Applejack would think less of her if she wasn’t.
Formulating an exact plan of attack, Twilight then looked around to find out where Rarity, Pinkie, and Rainbow were at, and found the first two on the turf behind her, nearly having hit the stadium wall there, but otherwise not looking too much worse for wear, the two managing to get back on their hooves by the time she laid eyes upon them. She didn’t find out exactly where Rainbow had been sent to, but wherever it was, it certainly didn’t stop the pegasus from breaking the sound barrier as she charged at the minotaur again.
Twilight barely managed to follow her trajectory as she beelined for the bull with her forehooves extended toward him. This time, however, the minotaur would not be taken off guard so easily, and just before Dash struck true, he actually not only managed to sidestep her, but blasted her away with one of those air shoves he seemed so fond of using. Dash managed to right herself more quickly than last time and tried hitting him again, but yet again, he dodged and tagged her with an air shove. This pattern repeated itself so many times that even a self admitted nerd who loved to keep track of such things like Twilight honestly stopped caring to count as she had quickly become just as frustrated as Rainbow, which seemed to have an inverse effect on the minotaur’s jollity, as he kept smiling and laughing heartily like a foal playing keep away with his pet dog as she grew more and more annoyed.
A silver lining of Dash being so brash and never knowing when to quit, however, was that the bull was distracted, giving Twilight ample time to turn around to dash towards and converse with Pinkie and Rarity. Or rather, simply Rarity, since as Twilight made her way, she saw that Pinkie was nowhere to be seen. Naturally, this made her ask the fashionista more than a little irritably when she got to her, “Rarity, what happened to Pinkie!?”
“I… I don’t know, darling,” Rarity replied, getting some dirt and grass out of her jersey. “One moment I looked away to get something out that had been stuck in my eye, and the next she just… vanished!”
“Just vanished!? What do you mean just vanished!? She was an integral part of my--” Twilight stopped herself and slapped herself in the face. After all, it wasn’t Rarity’s fault for Pinkie’s sudden disappearance, so taking out her frustrations on her by yelling wouldn’t do anypony any good. Besides, while Pinkie would have made Twilight’s job a whole lot easier, it could still be executed well… higher up as the difficulty would now be stacked. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Just… nevermind. Look, I want you to help Fluttershy evacuate the Oranges as far away from here and get them as safe as possible! I’m gonna help Dash keep him busy and from noticing what’s going on, got it!?”
Not waiting for a reply, Twilight turned back around and flew as close to the minotaur and Dash as she dared, her mind analyzing the pattern of their movements before uncovering the most opportune moment for her to strike. Just as the bull was about to dodge another of Rainbow’s furious blows, Twilight’s horn glowed and the minotaur was enveloped in a telekinetic field that threw off his balance and sunk him a full foot into the turf. Normally this wouldn’t even be considered an inconvenience, but in this instance it kept him right in the center of Rainbow’s flight path just long enough to permit the pegasus to plant both her forehooves right on his forehead. With a sonic boom, the bull was lifted out of the turf and sent crashing back first into one of the stadium’s sidewalls, becoming embedded in it.
Twilight was about to further pile on the pain with a horn blast she was charging the moment Dash had finally hit paydirt, but then out of nowhere a cacophonous sound like thunder exploded out and a mini-deluge of what looked to be cake batter sprinkled with sprinkles rushed forwards and covered the minotaur before quickly drying and hardening like some sort of super fast acting cement.
Twilight traced back along the batter’s trajectory to then leap back in a fright, for she realized that it had been fired from a familiar party cannon belonging to a particular pink pony that now stood behind said cannon… right next to Twilight.
“Hiya, Twi!” Pinkie greeted, waving as the princess recovered her breath. “What’d I miss?”
“P-P-PINKIE!” Twilight shouted in shock. “Who--What--When--Where--Why--How--”
“In no particular order: Saturday, March 15, 2 PR This Year of our Lord; trade secret; I’m a pony, silly; I had to go back to my room at Sugar Cube Corner to grab my party cannon and the right cake mix; Starfield Stadium, P.O. Box 365626, Manehatten, New Cork Province, Equestria, Amareica, Planet Equis; Your bestest friend Pinkie Pie, of course!”
As Twilight stuttered and sputtered at Pinkie’s trademark rapid fire response, trying to make sense of it in light of the mental strain caused by her vanishing and reappearing act, her mind actually managed the amazing feat of latching onto something the party pony had said. Something that made Twilight’s crazed expression switch to one of a genuine, un-crazed, curiosity as she asked, “Wait… did you just say that you went all the way to Ponyville and back in just a couple minutes… just to grab your party cannon?”
“Yeppers!”
“But… but… why!? Why didn’t you just, you know, grab it from the aether where you usually keep and/or pull things out from! Wouldn’t that have been way more convenient than traveling hundreds of miles and having to lug around a two-ton cannon on the return trip!?”
“Uhmmm, like, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’m a pony. Ponies just can’t pull out party cannons out of thin air whenever they want to, silly Twilie,” Pinkie said, patting Twilight on the head like one might a naive child who still hadn’t quite grasped how the world really worked and why a house made out of pizza and ice cream was all sorts of impossible.
The irony was not lost on Twilight. “But… but… you pull things out of thin air all the--” Twilight continued to stammer out and jerk her head every which way she could, as if doing so would somehow unravel the mystery of, and that was, Pinkie Pie. Remembering how that line of inquiry ended up the first time and all subsequent times, however, she thought better of it and called it quits before her mind had truly spiraled into that bottomless rabbithole of insanity again. Utilizing the special technique she had jotted down in her brain for this exact circumstance, she breathed in and out. Once. Twice. Thrice. And many more times after. Careful not to hyperventilate, as that would only make her panic attack flare up again. When she had finally calmed down enough that she was certain she’d be able to speak properly again, Twilight sighed and said, “Nevermind. Whatever. It’s fine. I’m fine. Better than fine, actually, since you wound up doing exactly what I was set to ask you anyways before you ran off.”
“Really now?” Pinkie Pie said, massaging her chin with a hoof. “And here I thought you were gonna ask me to bust out a red sheet and a fancy, high class sponish aristocrat outfit.”
Twilight raised a brow and opened her mouth to ask why on equis she would think that, but shook her head at the last moment and stopped her curiosity from accidentally leading her down that foalish path of trying to figure out Pinkie again. Instead, she said, “You know what, it doesn’t matter, Pinkie, because it all worked out beautifully in the end.”
“I’ll say!” Rainbow Dash replied before flying down to the turf at Twilight’s right. “That was a three step combo and a half if I ever saw one! I mean, get a load of the big guy over there! For all his freaky super-strength, he can’t bust out no matter how hard he tries!”
As Twilight faced forward to re-regard the minotaur, she concurred. Despite doing his absolute best by all verbal and visual accounts, the bull just couldn’t break out of the cake batter no matter how hard he squirmed, and could only wiggle his hooves, hands, and his head a tiny bit since they had gotten off relatively light compared to the rest of him.
As he spoke again, Twilight found herself regretting that wasn't the case, specifically wishing that enough batter had struck his lips to keep his absurdly loud mouth shut. “Appearances can be deceptive rainbow-one! Mark my words, I shall be free, and when I am, we shall resume our little--” The minotaur suddenly stopped, sounding more than a little exhausted before resuming with, “--our little… our little--” The minotaur huffed tiredly again, before this time straining himself to the point where he yelled out in pain and sweat pooled on his brow before finally relenting in his attempts at freedom and relaxing for a bit before asking, “Alright, several questions are coming to the forefront of my mind right now. Chief among them being: what is this infernal material about me and what is it made of!? I mean, seriously! SERIOUSLY! In all my travels, never before have I encountered something so… so… uhhh!”
“Like I told Twi here just now: trade secret! Like a master magician, a boss baroness of baking never reveals her secrets!” Pinkie beamed.
“Wait… do you mean to tell me that his confounded, constraining substance has something to do with… the culinary arts of all things!?”
“Boy does it, pal,” Rainbow spoke up. “That stuff you’re covered in is cake batter!”
“Cake… batter!?”
“A huh,” Pinkie piped in. “But not just any boring old cake batter, the cake batter to an ultra super duper special awesome super top secret super prank super cake I’ve been working on and perfecting since I was a filly for a baker’s dozen years, a half a normal boring dozen months, a quarter regular dozen weeks, a quarter quarter typical dozen days, three hours, five minutes, and six seconds! Seven seconds! Eight seconds! Nine sec--”
“Okay Pinkie, I think he gets the whole time spent working on it point. Move it along now,” Twilight said, rolling her eyes in sync with Rainbow rolling her own.
“Oh, right. Sorry. Ahem!” Pinkie Pie coughed into a hoof and resumed where she left off. “Anywho, my current recipe for the cake batter calls for a heaping helping of one of many special, crazy ingredients, one of them being gak.”
The minotaur raised an eyebrow. “Gak?”
“Yeppers!”
“What is… gak?”
“Gak be whack.”
A small silence ensued, in which the minotaur looked expectantly, waiting for Pinkie to go on. Twilight honestly felt bad for the bull, for Pinkie’s total and utter non-explanation was the exact same one she had given Twilight when she had asked about it. In fact, Twilight had also been stuck to a wall after Pinkie had blindsided her with the batter fired from her canon as well.
Deciding to be exceedingly gracious and abounding in mercy in saving the poor guy the trouble she had experienced, Twilight sighed and said, “Gak is a magical meta-material known for being a super-strong, super-stretchy adhesive highly coveted for the plethora of heavy industrial and technological applications it could used in and because it is exceedingly rare since the conditions of great cold required to manufacture it in suitable quantities seldomly occur in nature and are difficult to artificially induce.”
Twilight took herself a deep breath, doing her best to forget the unpleasant memories of the sleepless nights spent scouring nearly every library, government archive, and business archive she could after Pinkie’s gak attack to finally find that teeny, tiny little blurb of a footnote of a reference to it in a scientific white paper from three decades ago that was so long windedly academic, it almost put even an intellect like her to sleep. “The point is, when it’s allowed to harden, it’s strong enough to support hundreds of thousands of tons of weight in just the amount you’re covered in, meaning that until I gather up enough power to cast a cryomancy spell powerful enough to replicate the conditions it was forged in, you’re stuck, Mister. Sorry, but you’re not going to foalnap anypony!”
“Really?” the minotaur asked, confusion departing from his face to be replaced with his typical determination. “Am I now?”
“Yes!” Twilight said, stomping a forehoof against the ground. “See, I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but while we three here have been keeping your attention, two more of my friends have taken Mayor Orange and his family out of this stadium and somewhere safe! Someplace even I don’t know!”
“Really?” The minotaur looked to his right where the Oranges had last been before Rarity and Fluttershy had managed to take them away in all the commotion. “Have they now?”
Twilight was going to respond immediately, but there was something… off. Something about the way he had said what he just had made the hair on her neck stand up and she could feel the rumblings of goose-bumps forming on her forehead. She glanced at Pinkie and Rainbow and found they looked similarly uneasy at the minotaur’s sudden change in mood.
“Y-y-yes,” Twilight began hesitantly before steeling herself and saying, with returned confidence, “By the power invested in me as a princess of equestria, I am placing you under arrest for attempted foalnapping, conspiracy to foalnap, and assault! You and your employers are just going to have to deal with the fact that you failed!”
“Really?” the minotaur said, locking his steely gaze with Twilight’s own. “Have I now?”
“Yeah, you have! And if I were you, I’d quit gabbin’, because anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law!” Rainbow said before whispering to Twilight, “Psst, that’s how it goes, right?”
Twilight rolled her eyes. “Yes, Rainbow,” she whispered back.
“Aw yeah! Something I learned in college was actually useful for a change!” Rainbow beamed, raising and bringing her hoof down in victory.
“College you say?” the minotaur raised a brow. “In my country that is something we are taught in, how do you say in equestrian parlance, elementary school. Your nation’s academic standards must be lax indeed if you learned something so basic in college of all things. That, or you are merely an oafish lummox. Personally, I prefer the latter hypothesis.”
The minotaur stuck his nose up at Dash, causing her to gnash her teeth and seethe as she said, “Hey! Talk to me that way again and this oafish lummox is gonna smack you upside your head… again!”
“Dash, please don’t let him get under your fur so easily,” Twilight pleaded, patting her friend gently on the shoulder as she could, yet still more than ready to hold onto her with said hoof as well as her magic if she attempted anything rash. “He’s just trying to antagonize you because he knows that he’s been reduced to trying to hurt us with words instead of his brawn. Just take a deep breath, let it slide, and you’ll be fine.”
“Yeah, Dashie!” Pinkie piped up. “Besides, you passed college, didn’t you? I mean, a C- across the board is still technically passing marks!”
“Pinkie!” Dash screamed. “Don’t tell him my grades!”
“Why not?” Pinkie Pie shrugged, looking honestly taken aback. “They were pretty good, all things considered. They were almost as good as mine!”
Rainbow groaned as her hoof met her face, and when the minotaur began to chuckle, Twilight joined her.
“Hahahahaha! Truly, you do have a firm head on your shoulder, Pinkie Pie. Firmer than your rainbow friend! You are a great pony indeed!” The jollity in his mein and voice gradually faded away as he then said, “Which is why it truly does pain me to do what I must. But first: a quick query for you, rainbow one, if you truly are not a dunce as you claim. Answer me this: how is it that cold air is formed when one purses their lips like so,” his lips smacked together as though he were about to blow out a candle, “and exhales?”
Twilight wondered what new angle of attack the minotaur was trying at, but wound up blanking at the possibilities.
“Ha! That’s easy! Kindergarten stuff!” Dash boasted, “Pressure!”
The minotaur gave a scholarly nod and said, “Very good, rainbow one. You are correct. Most corect.” An impish and utterly malicious grin spread across his face. “Here is your gold star for the assignment!”
He took a deep breath. Not just any deep breath, Twilight noted, but one that displaced so much air it was as though an elder dragon was gathering up as much oxygen as he could right before breathing out--
Twilight’s eyes opened up in epiphany, and as quickly as she could, she projected a barrier around her and her friends, making it as strong as she could to withstand the withering fire she thought was set to buffet it. Fortunately, it was not fire that the minotaur breathed out towards them, but simply a hypervelocity stream of compressed air. Unfortunately, this still ended up being just as bad. Worse, even, for as the minotaur had so obviously hinted at, she realized, the air-stream must have been compressed by his lungs and lips to the point it was super-chilled, air deflected from the barrier freezing the turf around them to ice in mere moments. The absolute worst part about the minotaur’s evident super-breath, though, had to have been that the kinetic energy it struck Twilight’s bubble with was immense, greater than any dragon’s fire-breath she had ever been forced to endure. It was honestly all she could do to maintain the barrier, the strain causing her to yell out in great pain. As the seconds ticked by, she realized much to her mounting horror that the fact that the minotaur’s lung capacity just would not let up was truly the worst part about this ability of his she had newly discovered. So afraid of failing to match his might with her own was she that, in tandem with the magically induced migraine she was giving herself, her brain was far too addled to come up with a way out of this situation.
That was, until her friends came to her, and their own, proverbial rescue.
“Twi! Teleport us out of here!” Rainbow freaked out.
“Yesterday!” Pinkie Pie added, easily as freaked out.
“You’re right! Why didn’t I think of--”
“Just do it!” Rainbow and Pinkie yelled in stereo.
“Okay!” Twilight’s horn glowed brightly with her magic. Blindingly bright. So bright that it honestly started to sting, the sensation almost as bad as both trying to hold the shield up long enough to keep the hyper fast, hyper cold air at bay and teleport three fully grown ponies elsewhere and far enough away. “Gahhhhh!”
No matter. For as with many a great magical feat, Twilight eventually managed to pull it off. With far more brute force, exertion, and exhaustion then she was generally accustomed to or would have willed, but in the end, the deed was done all the same. Twilight and her friends warped away from danger, warping back to the safest and nearest place she could think given the strenuous circumstances on her mind and magic. This wound up being back at the wreckage of their seats in the stands, which normally would have been alright, but wasn’t this time as she had teleported them there upside down, five feet above their seats. They were lucky that the cushions were intact enough to cushion their heads.
But in that brief moment of disorientation as they got back up, their luck had run out. Faster than they could react, the minotaur was upon them, landing before them with such force that they bounced into the air just as high as they'd been after the teleport. The bull then grabbed Rainbow and Pinkie by their heads, muttered out a quick apology that went, “Forgive me, Pinkie,” slammed their heads together like a couple coconuts, and threw Rainbow to the side roughly--enough to rip off a quintet of seats she crashed into from their hinges--whereas he gingerly placed Pinkie to the ground next to him.
After the top of her head landed on the unforgiving concrete with no cushion to cushion it this time, Twilight looked up from her spot there on the ground, laying on her back, to find the minotaur now staring down at her.
“But… but… how!? The gak in the batter! It was holding you fine! You should still be trapped! How did you manage to--”
She received her answer when the minotaur blew down at her, remembering in the brief moment before her mind, like the rest of her, was frozen solid that the minotaur’s super-breath seemed to have been cold enough to have frozen everything around her barrier.
Cold enough to forge gak in, and thusly weaken it, even.
Cold enough to turn her into a pony-cicle in a tenth of a second flat.
*****
Fluttershy couldn’t remember the last time she had galloped so swiftly. Not because she had never ran so fast before. Far from it. With the changes Twilight had ushered into her life since that fateful trip to Ponyville two odd years ago, Fluttershy had found herself running this fast far more frequently than she liked. Rather, the reason she couldn’t remember, aside from the fear and added tiredness of carrying Mayor Orange on her back, was because it was honestly such a long time ago since their adventures had required this much exercise of her exceeding lack of physicality that it kept slipping her mind no matter how hard she tried thinking about it to take her mind off the stress of the present adventure. After she tripped over from the added weight and belly flopped onto the pavement for the fourth time in the five minutes it had been since she and Rarity had left the stadium, though, she could honestly say that at the moment, she wished now more than ever that she had spent the interim time between now and the Tirek Incident having accepted Dash’s offer of training her to get into shape. It may not have made her a better fighter, but at the very least, it could have given her the strength to fly herself and the mayor to safety or AT LEAST prevented her from falling down with him on her back so frequently.
“Fluttershy are you alright, darling!?” Rarity asked from behind her, also for the fourth time in five minutes since the stadium was behind them, as she skidded to a stop next to her while carrying Auntie Orange and Babs on her back.
Fluttershy attempted to get back onto her hooves, say she was fine as certainly as she could, and resume running just as she had every time before. But she couldn’t. It wasn't that her mind didn’t desperately want her to keep on chugging along, but her body just wouldn’t, couldn’t, allow her to. No matter how hard she pushed, no matter how hard her muscles labored, the best she could do was wiggle around a little. From bitter experience, Fluttershy knew that she’d need a long trip to Aloe and Lotus’ spa later to even stand and walk again without her legs feeling like cardboard jelly.
“I… I…” Fluttershy tried once more to lift herself up, giving everything she could muster, even flapping her wings for what good that was likely to do, redoubling her efforts so hard she gave herself a headache made all the more splitting by aggravating her soreness from the tumble down the steps earlier. And for her effort, yet again, she failed, falling to the ground, the headache being her only consolation along with what felt like her wings popping out of place, the sharp, smarting pain of which made her yelp out and finally concede defeat as she cried and cried out, “No! It’s too much! He’s too heavy! I’m too tired! I’m not strong enough! I… I think my wings are out of their sockets! I need help! I--”
Fluttershy blinked and in that instant, Rarity was at her side, kneeling down next to her, a comforting hoof on her head. “It’s alright, darling,” she began as a mother would for her child that had scraped a knee, “you needn’t exert yourself into a hospital bed. You’ve gone well and above the call of duty, and I would gladly take such burden off your shoulders. Figuratively and literally.”
Fluttershy sniffled and muttered a quiet, “Thank you.”
She had such good friends. As many issues as she could take up with them at times, their track record of being there for her when it counted was near blemishless, about as perfect a thing as things could be in this world. Like a newborn puppy, or kitty, or foal. She wished she could carry the mayor and do so many other things on her own to be sure, but she wasn’t Rainbow Dash. She wasn’t one to deny her own inability and stubbornly hold out even past the point where it was rendered so obvious a kid could see.
“Are you good to walk now, Darling?” Rarity asked, the mayor now firmly resting on her back with the rest of his family.
Fluttershy tested her joints now that the only load they had to bear was herself. Slowly rising up, she said, “Yeah I think so,” and took a few tentative, yet still successful, paces forward.
“Splendid to see.” Rarity smiled, but then her smile wavered. “But being honest, by the look of things, you don't have much coal in the steam engine, so to speak.”
Fluttershy's legs at that moment decided it would be the absolute best possible time to wobble such that she both almost fell down as she took her next step and fully proved Rarity's point. “No… no. I don't. I'm… I'm sorry.”
“Hush now. There's nothing to be sorry about. We're just going to have to find the nearest possible building and hunker down till such a time as it's safe to exit.”
“Are you sure? Shouldn't we still try to put as much distance between us and him as we can?”
“Darling, have you SEEN the celerity with which that braggadocious brute moves?”
“No, I didn't see any vegetables on him. But I don't see what that has to do with--”
“Celerity, dear, not celery. It's a fancy synonym for speed.”
“Oh.”
“Oh is right, darling. There isn't a single place the two of us could reach in time that'd be far enough! So rather than play to the strength of his speediness, let's pay to however strong his perception is, which I am willing to say with utmost confidence mustn’t be all too great considering the two of us were able to give him the slip from right under his nose,” Rarity said, finishing with a wink.
Fluttershy nodded at Rarity's reasoning. It was solid and would likewise make for a solid plan. Sure, it was really the only plan they had or could conceive of that made even slight sense, but that was hardly a significant enough detraction.
And it just might have worked, too.
Had the two not been in the open still, visible enough that any pegasi in the sky could have picked them out from the crowdless, empty sidewalk they were on.
That, or a leaping super-minotaur that must have seen them during one of his giant jumps and that must have made it so that when he landed on his latest jump, it was quite close to where they were standing. Close enough to send them careening off their hooves into the side of a nearby dumpster they had been standing next to hard enough that it turned over, the two of them plus the Oranges now technically on top since it was a vertical flip the side they hit endured, along with a sizable dent from the bodies of the five ponies being flung so hard. Hard enough that Fluttershy's popped wings were actually put back in their teleological alignment, the resultant pain making her so numb that she was in even less of a position than Rarity herself--who was likewise thrown for a manehatan sized loop--to defend the fashionista once the minotaur trodded towards them, stopped, and grabbed Rarity by her throat.
“You are an annoyance, vain-one.” He promptly tossed her over his shoulder, Rarity letting out quite the shriek despite being winded before being cut-off abruptly upon her splashing down into a nearby pond. “And you,” the minotaur's hand wrapped about Fluttershy's neck, “are a disappointment.”
Fluttershy felt him lift her up, and closed her eyes, anticipating the worst, to be flung away like discarded trash like Rarity. Instead though, he just held her there for a while as her hind legs dangled and kicked and her wings flapped uselessly before, with the index and center fingers of his free hand, he opened up both her eyelids and held them open as he stared at her with a look that spake less of anger and more of melancholy, like a father would his daughter when she acted out.
“Why did you do what you did, soft-one? Hmmm? Why did you forego my forewarning and toss caution to be scattered away to the four winds so callously, hmmm? Tell me. Go ahead. I. Am. WAITING.”
Fluttershy didn't quite know what to say to that, and still wouldn't even if she weren't agony addled and her windpipe wasn't caught in the grip of a massive minotaur. Ever fretful of what he'd do if she remained silent, however, she was quick to blurt out the first thought to arrive to her mind. “I… I don't know.”
Immediate was her regret.
“You do not know!?” the minotaur blasted into her face such that her hair billowed in the not insignificant breeze his voice made. “Render pardon unto me for finding that unlikely. A sheep does not suddenly morph into a lion sans due reason. So, what is that reason? Why would you deny my clemency, something reserved for so very few and meted out to fewer still?”
“I… I...” Flutershy tried to remember, she tried so desperately to remember, doubtless as she was that he'd still be so wroth with her. Again, between the physical and mental strain, she came up empty. That was, until she heard the mayor groan out in his own world of pain he was in, and then suddenly, her memories all came flooding unstoppably back to her, along with that same quiet yet confident conviction that had started her on the path that lead to this moment. “Because… because I felt I… had to show clemency… to Mayor Orange. I'm… the element of kindness, after all. If I see someone hurting… really… truly… hurting… I can't just sit back and do… nothing. I… I had to help him. It's… it's sort of been my job for the last couple years,” she choked out.
“I… see...” The minotaur's eyes narrowed and he let go of her eyelids. “Would you further say that it would go against your nature not to help, not to show kindness to a pony in such dire need?”
“I… yes...”
“Even one that for all you honestly know could very well sit on the side of the deceiver?”
“Y-y-yes.”
The minotaur's glare intensified and he huffed visible and semi-scalding steam through his nostrils into her face, making her close her eyes and look away, once more expecting something horrible to happen to her.
Instead, much to her relief and surprise, mostly the latter, she felt the minotaur pat her comfortably on the head.
“You are indeed a dear heart with a sweet heart, soft-one, and your intentions are likewise as pure as the first snowfall of the winter season.”
Fluttershy opened her eyes and regarded the minotaur quizzically. “Do… do you meant that?”
“Of course. Every bit as much as I meant I would loath to bring harm to such a delicate creature as yourself.” His look hardened. “Which is why it pains me to say that I still have a little more harm to deliver you unto, for decent and innocent as you are, in this instance, I regret to inform you that you are in the corner that is against justice, and justice is mine to serve this day.” The minotaur raised the thumb of his free hand. “Do not fret, though. My clemency still abounds, and I shall ensure the pressure my thumb shall exert upon thine forehead shall render thee unconscious quickly with minimal pain. I am told it should only compare to a--what is the right braytish phrase--oh yes! A booster shot! It should only feel as awful as a simple booster shot.”
The minotaur's thumb drew close to Fluttershy, and her breath hitched. This was it for sure this time, she thought. The bull had said so himself. There was no way out of his. She wasn't strong, speedy, or smart enough, and the minotaur had already proven himself superior to the likes of Applejack and Rarity and must have done the same if he was standing where he was to the likes of Rainbow, Pinkie, and Twilight. She would be the last element to fall. It was all over. It ended with her. And then, the minotaur would grab the mayor and leap off with him to wherever it was his mysterious 'employers' willed him to be and be subject to their mercy, their clemency.
Or more likely, their lack thereof.
And it'd be her fault. It was all her fault. She wasn't tall enough to rise to this great of an occasion. Not even her friends were considering how quickly and effortlessly he had dispatched them. And who was? Who could possibly even contest the minotaur? Who could conceivably challenge his overwhelming might? Who in equestria or equis or elsewhere could possibly best him in battl--
“Hey! Big, bad, and ugly! Pick on somebody your own size, why dontchya!”
The new voice that had said that had done so from above Fluttershy and to her left, which is precisely where her head turned when she heard it, her eyes catching from their corners the minotaur's head turning to regard the voice at the source as well, though of course from his perspective he had to turn his head to the right. What she saw she couldn't quite make out, as given its position in the air it more than partially blotted out the noonday sun. But from what little she could identify, it was BIG. Not full grown, adult dragon sized, and not quite train-car sized, but certainly close in dimensions to the latter. And likewise as a train-car, what she saw was a thing of metal, though not riveted or bolted or welded by what she could tell, but smooth and sleek and blemish-less as a newly forged sword blade, head of an arrow, or tip of a spear. Even the paint, overwhelmingly crimson red with some lines of silver and black here and there was utterly seamless, sans an unevenly spilt splotch anywhere. She noticed movement on top of the unidentified hovering object, and noticed for the first time five black domes made of some sort of glass or some other glass-like material as they seemed to slide into and disappear into the object itself. Then, five figures leapt out of the object, one from each of the areas where each of the domes had been, and higher into the sky, so much so that Fluttershy could just barely make out their silhouettes, where with the object, she at least had been able to spot some more detail.
But that all changed soon enough once the five figures landed just a few feet away, Fluttershy's eyes soaking up so much more detail that she could only do two things in response.
Gasp and drop her jaw nearly to the floor.