“Boss...what are you doing?” Corkscrew mumbled to me in a voice that was barely audible, “This wasn’t in the plan!”
I shot him a breathless smile. Even though it felt like my eyes would drift upwards and into my head, I had to remain calm. The crystal that was used to empower my weapon was charged via motion. It fused with my constantly beating heart which allowed me to gain the extra strength needed to defeat this crazed, empowered version of Mane-iac that we previously had no chance against.
I shut my eyes as weightlessness overtook me…
The last thing I heard was Quick Draw’s vocal concern for me. “...Pale?”
As much as I loved that thing and how much it meant to me, I knew that Miranda Rights would have chastised me from beyond her grave if I knew I had the ability to overcome a problem yet refused to do so. Sacrificing the last thing she offered me before her departure pained me to my soul. But I knew it would be worth it in the end.
With a violent surge of magic, I felt life return to all the areas of my body. The shard disappeared into my body, though the wound would need to be addressed at a later time.
“What is the point of this?” I heard Mane-iac question as I regained consciousness, “Do you think you’ll actually be able to compete with--”
ZIP!
In a flash, I felt my body act on its own. I raced forward, and grabbed one of her hair-like appendages. With precision unlike anything I had accomplished before, I tied her hair into a knot.
“What--? Grrr...so you’ve realized my weakness haven’t you?” she asked in a rather calm tone for someone that had her abilities disabled. “I guess you’ve beaten me…”
I knew this wasn’t the case.
“LOOK OUT!” I yelled, and ran to my crewmates. As soon as I got over there, I tackled them both out of the way of two hair tendrils that had burrowed through the rocky ground beneath us.
“Woah! That was a close one boss,” Corkscrew commented as he recovered from the fall, “But just how did…”
Quick got up, and groaned. “Blech...I know how. Earth pony magic.”
“Haha! That’s right!” Mane-iac called out to us with her hair now untied, “As an earth pony myself, I could already predict what your friend was going to do. So I sent my hair beneath the ground to buy myself some time. Though I suppose he predicted my prediction, given that he saved you both…” she glared at us. She must have come to the realization that this battle would not be an easy victory like last time.
And it wouldn’t be. Jamming the crystal into my heart--and my veins by proxy--enhanced all of my natural earth pony abilities from my flexibility to my sensory capabilities. It wasn’t going to guarantee us an easy win either since she too, could make similar predictions.
So we just had to be smarter.
“Alright, here’s the deal,” I commanded as my crew and I grouped up in a circle with our hooves around each other’s necks--like a buckball team’s huddle. “I can’t maintain this state of enhanced power forever. And there’s a fifty-fifty chance that I’ll either collapse or enter a state of cardiac arrest.”
Initially, I could feel Corkscrew’s panic from the way he flapped his wings. “Wh-what? How….okay...no, we gotta focus.” But he was able to stow his fear in order to remain vigilant. I respected that. “What’s the plan boss?”
“Yeah, here’s the thing...I don’t actually have one,” I admitted, and shot a glance to Quick Draw. “Think you can help me out there, sis?”
The yellow mare playfully rolled her eyes. “Ah, so it’s up to me, huh? But sure. I think I know what to do. Follow my lead…”
Mane-iac shouted to catch our attention. “If this takes too long, I might be forced to escape. Unless you’re willing to let me go, that is…”
We broke our huddle. The plan was set.
First off, we knew full well that she could sense our movements with her hair through the ground. That’s why she was able to counter my advance so reliably not only in my last attack, but our previous encounter altogether. One has to ask themselves: Just how can you fight off an enemy who can predict most, if not all of your strategies? There were two answers:
1. Simply do nothing, and force a stalemate.
2. Predict their predictions until a paradox occurs--or until their brain is overloaded from processing too much information at once.
Neither were particularly ideal, but we had to do whatever we could to put an end to the actions of this comic book hairlot.
So we attacked together. With every movement, she could foresee us. But we could foresee her. Every lunge of her hairy appendages resulted in a dodge from one of us. Every attempt to attack her was evaded, and nullified. Overall, it really did seem rather pointless, right? Wrong.
The more we pressed the attack, the less confident she became. While she didn’t exactly lose staying power for this battle, I could see the frustration grow in her eyes with every time we avoided her attacks. In tandem with the fact that we came closer and closer to shortening the gap between her mistakes so that we could strike her, needless to say, she was about to snap.
“How….how?! HOW?! How are you dodging everything I throw at you?!” she roared with a heavy sense of hatred in her voice.
Essentially, we were now at an impasse. I stood on one side of Mane-iac and faced her to the front. Meanwhile while Corkscrew had another side--my right, and Quick Draw had the other--my left. It was a triangular formation that we tended to set up for group maneuvers. Something that she couldn’t possibly be able to predict. I just had to buy some time, though I only had so much. I could feel the weight of the magic crystal that had infused with my heart as it bore down on me. It took everything I had to avoid vomiting violently on the spot. Just a little longer...
So I humored Mane-iac with a reply. “You’re not the only one who has mastered the art of earth pony magic,” I shot back with a low tone to hide the feeling of sickness I had. “Everything you can do, we can do better.”
“I...no….there is no way!” she snapped back. Her hair tentacles were primed to attack yet again.
I allowed her no reprieve. I charged forward with enough force to crack the rocky tower floor with each thunderous stomp of my hooves. At the last possible moment, I pulled a complete fake out and slid beneath her body--something she tried to counter when she forced her hair behind her--and in between her legs.
That was our moment. Or rather, Corkscrew’s moment. With a blur of orange, he flew at her, hooves outstretched. With a swift tackle, he put his hooves around her neck, flew straight up into the air, and crashed back down into the ground to essentially incapacitate her. Then, he flew backwards to allow Quick Draw to accomplish her piece of the task.
She did try to resist--her hair wiggled as it threatened to rise again. However, she was far too damaged from Cork’s attack to fully rise off of the floor. “GAH! You…”
This enabled Quick to finish the job.
“HYAH!” With a devilishly forceful buck, she kicked a massive boulder into the air. She then leapt after it, and spiked it with her hoof like a volleyball downwards, “HA!” The result was a quake after the giant rock landed on the sea of tangly hair.
“AAAYE!” the hairy mare let out a shrill cry of pain. She was now rendered completely helpless.
I trotted up to her, and glared down. “...You’re finished. You don’t belong in this world, foul beast. Now, we’re going to take back the power that you don’t deserve, and send you back where you belong. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
“Dammit...I...so he betrayed me…” she mumbled under her breath.
But when I reached out to her to siphon off that magic, I heard a voice in my head.
“Kill her...kill her now before it’s too late! She has to die! There’s no other way!”
I didn’t understand. Was it from the corrupted magic? Whatever it was, it caused me to stop dead in my tracks, much to the concern of my crewmates.
“Pale, you alright?” Quick asked.
“Boss?” Cork tapped my shoulder.
Meanwhile...
“It’s as that stallion himself said a while back. If you want to test somepony’s character, give them power…”