//------------------------------// // Ch. 14 The Most Dangerous Game // Story: Dash of Humanity 3: Live, Fly, Reboot. // by Kaidan //------------------------------// Come on everypony smile, smile, smile Fill my heart up with sunshine, sunshine I sat up in bed, clutching my chest. There was a deep crushing pain that had me immediately imagining the flattening EKG as my heart stopped, and how there’d be nopony here to get me to a hospital. It took me a few minutes to calm down and get my breathing back to normal. I wasn’t having a heart attack. I’d just been killed by some unicorn, the same one that killed Lyra and Minuette. The only bright side was the loop had reset, and none of us were going to stay dead. However, the phantom pains did seem to linger a bit longer than most of the other times I’d recklessly abused the temporal mechanics of time loops for ‘get out of death’ free cards. “Minuette!” I left the alarm playing, hurrying over to my balcony, then flying over to her house. The door was unlocked and I let myself in, slamming it behind me and fumbling the lock closed. Minuette was taking a sip of coffee, setting it down when she saw me burst in. I quickly pulled the curtains over the front windows. “Uh, Dawn, right?” Minuette asked. I turned and stared at her. “I found the idiot who broke time!” “You’ve lost me, also, you’re freaking me out and you just broke into my home so…” Minuette gestured to the door. “What? No you don’t understand, I’ve seen the future! Well, a day’s worth of it, and we’re stuck in a loop and the villain just bucking killed you!” “This is all very dramatic, and did I mention the part where you didn’t knock? So—” I calmed down enough to remember that for her, this was the first time I’d done more than say hello to her from across the street. After collecting my thoughts, I repeated what she’d told me yesterday. “Time’s a fourth dimensional tesseract thing and we can see the shadow in three dimensions, and manipulate it, to control time!” Minuette stared at me for a few seconds while she put the pieces together, realizing I was a time traveler. “Shit, I’m the only one who could have told you that. How bad is it?” I quickly explained the time loop to Minuette, and how we’d made a breakthrough of sorts yesterday when the reclusive pony responsible for it all had decided to commit some light first-degree murder. “So, how do we stop her?” I asked. She had taken a seat on her sofa as I stood near the door. “Well I guess we need to find her, and the sooner in a loop the easier it’ll be. She has to start the day in the same spot just like both of us. Then we need to convince her to end the spell.” “Do you think she will? I mean, she did just kill three ponies.” “How many months has the loop been going on? Is this the first time she’s killed anypony?” Minuette inquired. “If I had to guess, she’s getting desperate. Maybe she can’t fix the spell, but we should at least find her and ask. I’m certain I’ve told you this in a past loop, but the best way to fix this is to find the pony who broke it.” “Yeah, you did.” I sighed. “Great, now I’ve got another thing to add to my list of things to fix in Ponyville when we fix the loop.” “What kind of things have you been fixing?” “Oh, a pony gets injured and dies on a construction site. Vinyl and Lyra are both having relationship issues with their marefriends, plus the Cutie Mark Crusaders are building a railgun.” “You should focus on fixing the spell, not trying to use knowledge from the loops to fix everypony’s personal problems. I’m sure Vinyl and Lyra’s relationships will be just fine without your meddling.” “Huh?” I looked over at her. “I mean, I’ve basically seen the future, I can make everypony’s lives better when we fix the loop. Wouldn’t it be selfish not to?” “Just consider it,” Minuette answered. “Maybe things were going to work themselves out all along. A lot fewer paradoxes when we don’t go poking time with a pointy stick.” “And the stallion who gets crushed at the construction site?” I retorted. “Changing the future is playing with fire. I’m not saying to just let him die, it sounds like he is in clear and present danger. However, each choice you make irrevocably alters the future, and you have no idea how. For all you know he goes on to start a war, or maybe he retires and fishes for thirty years. Even if it seems like a tiny harmless change, nopony should risk altering the future. Promise me you’ll be careful in these time loops, don’t take it too far and make things worse.” I groaned. “Fine, I Pinkie Promise I won’t take the hero routine too far and try to fix all the problems. I’ll fix like, eighty percent tops. Now, I think I should be out there looking for this mysterious moron who broke time.” Minuette nodded and got up from her sofa, walking towards her kitchen. “I’ve got a back door so we can go out. I have a plan on how we can find this pony.” I followed her out the back of her house, watching as she used her magic to lock it behind her. “Ok, what’s the plan?” “I’m going to get Lyra and Rarity, and send Lyra to fetch some books from the library. You said we spent most loops studying? Well I’m counting on our adversary knowing this. They’ll show up to interrupt our study session again. When they do, you’ll be waiting on a cloud. Watch what direction they come from. Once we have a better idea who they are and what they want, you can use that knowledge to capture them.” I opened my mouth in surprise, no words coming to me for several seconds. “You want to be bait and let the mad mare kill you?” She shrugged. “I’ll be fine next loop. If she’s killed me once she likely suspects I’m the one working against her. You’re the one who will remember what happens. It’s imperative that we don’t let your mystery villain figure that out. As long as she is fixated on me, and my knowledge of time magic, you’ll be free to act. Once she figures out you are the one she needs to worry about, no amount of magic facts you memorized will save you from a pissed off unicorn who is feeling cornered.” “Fine.” I sighed and took a moment to try and settle down. My heart was still racing from earlier. “I don’t like it, but you’re right.” “Good, now get to a good vantage point and don’t do anything stupid.” I laughed, “Me, do something stupid? Have you not met me before?” From high above Ponyville, perched in a cloud, I watched over the entire town. I was a silent protector, maybe not the hero that Ponyville wanted, but I was the one it was stuck with. Somepony was hurting my friends, and I was going to find them and make them pay. Unfortunately, I hadn’t seen any pinkish-purple unicorns or mysterious cloaked figures moving around yet. Rarity’s home had not had any visitors yet and it was just past noon. I scanned over the town again and again, like I was trying to find Waldo. So far, all I’d found was the same ponies I saw every day. Lyra and Minuette had already gone inside to have their fake study session. I figured by now, the unicorn must have had plenty of time to show up and attack them for information. In fact, I was certain of it. And being a unicorn, they could probably use their magic to teleport behind buildings and into cover, making it very easy to hide. I smirked as a very stupid idea came to me. They might be down there hiding in a bush, but I knew just the way to startle them and get them to reveal themselves. The cloud began to turn gray as I spread out my wings, letting them tingle as I gathered energy to me. Controlling the weather was still a pretty weird concept to me, though thanks to my recent study it was no longer a great unknown. Pegasi had an innate connection to several elements, and at a subconscious level could manipulate them. Water in its several forms, electricity, and in some cases things like flame or rainbow. Even the wind could be at the beck and call of a pegasus. So as I focused on brewing a nice juicy thundercloud, I could feel the growing tension in the air. My fur stood on end and the exhilarating feeling of the building voltage coursed through my veins. I remembered the sigil for lightning, the one unicorns had to use to do consciously what a pegasi could do subconsciously. As I pictured it, the lightning around me and in the cloud seemed to get a little less chaotic and more organized. I found it curious, but didn’t have time to ponder how this combination of innate pegasi and focused unicorn magic had affected the cloud. I looked down at the boutique, feeling the storm cloud as if it had a personality all its own. It was impatient and full of tension, begging to be released. The black cloud had swollen to almost ten meters across, the only thing holding it back was my concentration. Aiming was the hardest part. For a pegasi it was risky to get hit by lightning in the air, but luckily our innate magic would help direct it around us. When hit, it’d at least mostly be focused on the wings: painful but survivable. However, for the earth ponies and unicorns on the ground, if my lightning bolt hit them, they’d have no protection from the energy. It would pass through their back to their hooves, likely taking a shortcut through the heart, and disrupting its electrical rhythm. That would be bad. Part of the reason so few unicorns learned evocation spells was that they were very hard to aim. A unicorn might aim at the broadside of the barn and hit the barn, the house to its side, and the chicken coop all at the same time. Plus, even the tiniest bit too much power in the spell could seriously harm somepony. Without a horn I wasn’t sure my aim, or control, would be much better. So I focused on where I wanted the lightning to go, reaching out to the anxious lightning cloud. I tried to think loudly at the cloud, instructing it on how I wanted it to strike. An instant later I felt the discharge from the cloud, and heard an ear splitting roll of thunder that probably carried all the way to Canterlot. A massive bolt split the sky, forking as it neared the boutique. Half the bolt discharged into a small flagpole atop the building. The other half forked down and charred a patch of earth beside the boutique. I could see several ponies looking up in shock, and a few weather ponies flying as fast as they could up here to disperse the cloud. I also saw who I was looking for. A very startled lilac unicorn in a cloak, just outside the boutique peering inside a window. “Jackpot.” The unicorn teleported and I saw a flash of light inside the boutique. I gathered up the remaining energy in the cloud, returning it to a fluffy white state, and dropped through the cloud. I plummeted down towards the ground, pulling up at the last second and flying straight towards the door of Carousel Boutique. Both wings flared to slow me down and I still nearly collided with the front door. I landed and shoved it open, finding overturned tables and a broken chalkboard inside. Lyra lay on the ground, unmoving. The other unicorns were nowhere in sight. I heard crashing in the kitchen, hurrying in there to find the back door open and Rarity gasping as she leaned against her oven. “Rarity, are you okay?” I asked. “Starlight,” she muttered. “She’s back. It’s too dangerous, Dawn, you can’t stop her.” I ran over and looked at her closely. She’d taken a glancing blow and her foreleg looked broken. As I touched her shoulder some static electricity jumped between us. “Oh, I’m damn well going to try to stop her, though. You’ll be fine.” “Be careful,” she said. After hurrying outside I could see Starlight and Minuette firing spells. Minuette was doing her best to play defensive, as Starlight threw spell after spell at her. The magic charging the air was making my hair stand on end. Minuette’s form seemed hazy and blurred as she moved more quickly than I thought possible just an instant before each hostile spell would collide with her. Somehow she was dodging them, but each time she got closer and closer to getting hit. A stray bolt hit the ground, throwing up enough dirt to give both unicorns a pause to catch their breath. I flew over and landed next to Minuette, spreading my wings and letting the lightning dance between them so I’d look menacing. “You. Shall not. Pass!” I shouted. Starlight smirked. “Let me guess, you’re the coltfriend? You’re out of your league, pal.” I heard Minuette whispering behind me. “Buy me a little time to recover, then run and hide. She’s using illusions or something, if she lets either of us live it’ll only be to track us and gain intel for the next loop.” I gave a slight nod, glad to have such an insightful friend on my side. “There’s just one thing I want to say first, before you start blasting again.” “Oh?” Starlight raised an eyebrow. I took a deep breath and began to belt out. “Welcome to the Hotel California!” “What?” she tilted her head. I smirked and added a little vibrato to my voice. “What a lovely place!” Pinkie echoed from the bushes, “what a lovely place.” Starlight spun and fired a bolt at the pink pony who had suddenly appeared behind her, but Pinkie had sensed it and dodged to the side. “Gah! What in tartarus?” I shrugged. “I like to sing it to distract people, sue m—” Before I could finish, something hit me in the chest and threw me backward down an alleyway, slamming through a small door built into a fence. I tumbled into the street and hit a cabbage stand, breaking the cheap plywood and spilling the produce into the street. “My cabbages!” a pony called out. “Ugh, and here I was trying to take this fight seriously and she sucker punches me.” I stood up and looked down the alleyway, seeing Starlight firing wildly around her. That was probably Pinkie Pie, and I nearly rushed back in to resume the fighting. One of the stray bolts flew over my shoulder, hitting the cabbage merchant behind me. I flew up into the air to come at Starlight from above, instead of fleeing like Minuette had asked. Pinkie was gone, and Starlight seemed to be asking Minuette some questions. My friend was pinned to a wall in a field of Starlight’s magic. With her distracted, this was probably my best chance to do something heroic. I swooped down at her, beckoning weather magic into my wings, prepared to knock what I’m sure was a very smug look off Starlight’s face. Before I could connect, I heard something snap, and then Starlight’s telekinesis spell grabbed my wings. I lost control, feeling the spell struggle to keep a hold on me. I stopped focusing, letting the electricity ground itself as I hit the ground, and rolled into the second hard wooden object I’d hit in the last few minutes. “Now I think I have some questions for you, too,” Starlight said. Suddenly, running and hiding seems like it would have been a very good decision. “Buck.” I could already feel a sharp pain in both wings and I hadn’t spread them yet, so I took off running down the road towards Sugar Cube Corner. I heard cursing behind me but didn’t stop to look back until I’d reached Pinkie’s home, hoping I’d find her around to help me out. Instead I found a small sign in a bush, and looked up to see some moving ponies getting furniture into a house. “Heh, if I pull this off it’ll be epic!” I drew a little X on the ground about where the piano had fallen on me earlier on in the time loop, and leaned against the nearest wall of a house and tried to look pitiful and defeated. “There you are.” Starlight’s horn was glowing but she didn’t fire when she saw me faking some labored breathing, and making no attempt to run. Once her horn stopped glowing, she slowly approached. When she got to the marked spot on the ground I finally sputtered. “W-wait… I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, just stop!” She stopped walking. “Alright. Where does Minuette live?” “In a house,” I answered. I could hear her teeth grinding from where I lay. “Don’t be a smartass, nopony likes a smartass.” “S-sorry! Just nervous. It’s, uh…” “Where does she live, now or I’ll end you!” Starlight shouted. I needed to buy a little more time, or a lot more, I couldn’t remember exactly when the piano fell. “Is…” I smiled weakly. “Is it bad that you’re kinda turning me on right now?” My bluff worked, Starlight opened and closed her mouth a few times without speaking. “I don’t have the patience for this. Why couldn’t I get trapped at a beach resort for eternity? Instead I’m stuck with Twilight’s friends and perverts.” “Hey!” I objected. “I always ask for consent from every pony, donkey, goat, and marsupial in the room.” Her horn began to glow and I could feel magic tingling in my fur as she got ready to strike. I heard shouting from up above us. “Wait! I’ll tell you where she lives!” I pulled out the sign from behind the bush. “Meep meep?” Starlight read out loud. I grinned. She looked up, and the piano crashed on her making a deafening sound as wood splintered. As the dust cleared I saw the clear outline of a magical shield around Starlight. “I knew the cartoons were unrealistic.” Before she could recover and carry out her threat, I bolted down the street towards the nearest pony I knew would hide me for the rest of the day. It only took me a minute to reach and slam through the door to Bon Bon’s home. I spun her sign to closed, locked the door, and hurried into the kitchen where I was sure I’d find the earth pony baking. “Dawn?” Bon Bon sputtered as I barged in. My mane and tail were a singed mess, one or both of my wings were injured, and my fur was half dirt and half melted. “Bon Bon! You’ve gotta help me, there’s some villain named Starlight, she killed Lyra and Minuette, and she’s coming for me!” I heard a screeching noise, and noticed she was holding a cast iron pan with some sort of dessert she was cooking in it. The handle was beant nearly ninety degrees by her passive earth pony strength. “She killed Lyra?” Bon Bon had a fury in her eyes far more frightening than the rage I’d seen in Starlight’s eyes. “We’re in a time loop! She’ll be fine, technically!” I blurted out. “I just, I don’t know how to fight her! She’s strong. What if she keeps winning, loop after loop, until she does fix it and we don’t get any extra lives?” Bon Bon calmed down considerably. “Well, then I guess it’s time to come out of retirement.” She walked over to one of the ovens and turned a few knobs, before going to open the pantry. “Yeah so we—wait what? Retirement?” I asked. I could hear something that sounded like a heavy latch and some wood moving, and the door to the pantry opened. There was a set of stairs to a basement inside. “I was formerly an agent of S.M.I.L.E. The Secret Monster Intelligence League of Equestria,” Bon Bon explained. “Hurry, she could be here any minute.” “Does everypony have a basement? It better not be another sex dungeon,” I complained, before hurrying inside and down the stairs. Bon Bon followed me down and I heard the door closing behind me. Inside her basement I saw some advanced electronics, the kind I’d only ever seen before in the largest pony cities. There were also maps on the walls showing Ponyville in great detail. Shelving units contained food and water, and I realized this probably was Bon Bon’s panic room and base of operations. “Wow, at least spies believe in being prepared,” I observed. Bon Bon began digging through a filing cabinet before she pulled out some dossiers and brought them over, setting them out for me to read. “You’ll need some training to fight a unicorn and not get obliterated. Luckily for you, unicorns are the least dangerous thing we used to fight.” “Wow.” I picked up one of the folders titled So You’re Stuck in a Time Loop. The next one was Insane Unicorns and You. The third folder was titled Best Places to Hide a Body. “Hey, Bon Bon, why do I need this last one about hiding a body?” She smirked. “I wanted you to know you’ll never be found if this time loop ends and anything happens to Lyra.” I gulped. “Loud and clear.” “Now, hurry up and read those. I don’t have a sparring mat so this is gonna hurt, but I need to teach you some mixed martial arts after you’re done reading.” “Don’t worry about it, if I die I’ll wake up fine in the next loop.” “Good, I won’t have to go easy.” The next several hours included some of my favorite things: mares, sweaty bodies, and creative poses. They also included some things I liked a lot less: intense exercise, hitting hard surfaces, and pulling muscles I didn’t know I had. Bon Bon wasn’t kidding about her martial arts skills, slamming me into the brick wall of the basement hard enough to make me see the room spinning. She offered me a hoof to help me up, taking me to a nearby chair to sit while she opened a bottle of water for me. I took it and drank the whole bottle. My fur was drenched in sweat, and I already felt like I’d been working out for days. “While you catch your breath, where do you want to hit a unicorn to disrupt a spell?” Bon Bon asked. “Nerve cluster at the base of the horn. Don’t aim for the horn directly unless you’ve got a weapon, they’re harder than a hoof,” I replied. “Good, best places to disrupt their focus?” “Eyes, throat, groin.” “Best way to avoid a spell?” “Keep moving.” “Correct.” Bon Bon smiled. “Earth ponies have the strength advantage, and resilience, if we get close enough and are so inclined we could snap most ponies like twigs. Luckily, Equestria is a peaceful place so ponies who have to get their hooves dirty are few and far between. You’ve become one of those ponies now, Dawn. You may need to get your hooves dirty to fix this, but as a pegasus you don’t have my strength. Speed, weather magic, and the element of surprise are your strengths.” I got out of the chair and tried to stretch, but by now every muscle was equally sore. “Okay. Can you help me sneak around unnoticed? Starlight’s using illusions and I’m not sure how to see her before she sees me. I can’t just keep shooting lightning blindly.” Bon Bon rubbed a hoof to her chin. “Hmm, why didn’t you say so?” She went back to the filing cabinet and pulled out some more reading materials. “Mental exercises to help you see through lesser illusions. If she’s determined, you won’t see through a powerful enough invisibility spell. The problem is, the less ponies can see her, the less she can see.” “Huh?” I asked. I pulled over one of the dossiers and opened it. “Invisibility has a catch. If you make it so all the light passes around or through you, then how can you see?” Bon Bon explained. “The light is no longer hitting your eyes. This Starlight of yours could be truly invisible, but then she would be blind, and very cold, as no light or warmth reached her.” She came over and tapped on the dossier. “So ponies take shortcuts. They don’t go invisible, they make themselves less interesting, or quieter, or look like somepony else.” I nodded as I read through some of the tips and tricks for bypassing illusion magic. “Makes sense. I did see her after the first time she killed Lyra, I was really angry and determined and it was like I looked right at her.” “First time? How many times has she killed Lyra?” Bon Bon asked, the tone of her voice icy. “Uh, twice so far?” I smiled. “Look, it’s not that bad…” “You’re going to come back here tomorrow for more training, and you’re going to let me help next time you confront her.” I shook my head. “You’ve done plenty, I couldn’t ask you to put yourself in harm's way.” “That wasn’t a request. If you can win this next round of sparring, I’ll let you face Starlight without me.” I got into a fighting stance as we prepared for another practice round. “Fair enough.” What I didn’t tell her, was that I could just not tell her about the time loop and face Starlight on my own anyway. Bon Bon made the first move, and I countered it like she had shown me. I tried to grapple her and spin, getting behind her where her strength would help her less. Unfortunately she expected it, reversing the hold and slamming me into the ground too hard. I never felt myself lose consciousness.