//------------------------------// // Chapter 16: Increased, Excessive Aggression // Story: The Forest of the Golden Abalone // by Unwhole Hole //------------------------------// The changeling pursued, her enormous legs thundering through the brush. “I’m going to suck out every drop of your love, Fluttershy,” she said, still in the voice of a calm, even-tempered foal. “As well as each and every drop of your precious bodily fluids.” “Don’t suck me! DON’T SUCK ME!” A thin, high giggle escaped the giant tickspider—and Fluttershy continued to flee. She tried to rationalize the desire to turn around; as large as it was, it was just an animal—except it was not. It was a changeling. A living, sentient species—and therefore not running would be directly confronting social interaction. That would more than likely involve her being sucked dry into a wheezing pastel husk. This time, though, she had a plan—and the slugs led her to where she needed to go. Some of them were far smarter than she would have expected—and had eyes that were disturbingly alert. She skidded, nearly slipping across a wet depression in the ground, and then fell on herself trying to accelerate. The changeling did not have the problem, being reinforced with so many legs. By this time, Fluttershy’s lungs were once again burning—but she persisted. A slug fell from the trees, landing on her back—but it did not intend to hurt her. Instead, it had come to help. Fluttershy slid to a stop, grabbing the slug in both hooves and brandishing it like a weapon. The changeling came around a large tree, jumping down from the trunk, her faceless head somehow still smiling. “Don’t make me do it!” “Slugs won’t save you now Flutter—” Fluttershy squeezed the slug and, with a deafening boom, a torrent of crystalline mucous pellets shot out of its end. The changeling screamed as she was struck, more in rage than in pain. She was stronger than most. Her form was not an illusion; she had fully assumed the form of a monster and was maintaining for far longer than a drone could manage. She had not, however, expected Fluttershy to know how to use a shotgun slug. Fluttershy took the opportunity, namely because she had no idea how to reload a slug. She ran again, dashing into a deepening swamp. It came up to her knees, but she pressed on, noting that the watery, treeless area was filled with peculiar objects. They were orange, tall, and cone shaped. To her great surprise, she found Snails standing chest-deep in the water, taking notes on his notebook where it was held aloft in his magic. He was staring at an especially large specimen of the orange objects. He looked up and smiled. “Hey Fluttershy. What brings you here?” “We need to get moving, now—” She heard a splash around her. She looked up and saw them emerging, their crystalline armor ceasing to diffract the colors of their surroundings. A small contingent of crystal ponies approached, spears strapped their sides—spears, and other weapons that had no name in modern Equestrian. Weapons that had been purged from Sombra’s empire centuries prior. “Oop,” said Snails. “We got surrounded.” The changeling lumbered into the mud, barely sinking, her presence washing the cones in every direction—but not once did one tip or fall. Instead, they simply dispersed—and Fluttershy never took her eyes off them. Snails looked up. “Oh. You found the changeling.” “That she did,” laughed the changeling. “And now you’re captured.” Both Snails and Fluttershy smiled. “No,” said Fluttershy. “I don’t think we are.” “You are surrounded,” insisted the leader of the crystal ponies. “In accordance with our workplace policies on being threatening, frightening mercenaries, we are officially capturing you. You will be brought abourd our ship and be given guest rooms and cookies, then released to your homes at the conclusion of our missions.” The changeling stared at him. “You’ve got to be kidding.” He smiled. “We’re mercenaries. We’re not the bad guys here.” He blushed slightly. “Also, I’m a huge fan of Fluttershy. She’s my favorite Element—but don’t tell Rarity!” “What makes you think I would know—never mind.” She kicked him out of the way. “I’m going to capture both of you by much more violent means.” Fluttershy shook her head. “Look around you.” She pointed at the cones. “Do you know what those are?” The crystal ponies looked around at them, confused. One reached down into the mud and pulled one up—revealing that the visible portion was, in fact, the pointed shell of a snail. He did not seem to understand the implications—but one did, her eyes suddenly widening with abject fear. “C...c...CONE SNAILS!” she cried—and the rest of the ponies suddenly understood, freezing in fear at the realization that they were, in fact, the ones surrounded. “I had been looking for their breeding water for months,” said Snails, proudly—and still taking notes. “Who’d have thought it was out here? But the pH is just perfect for it.” He pointed at the pony still holding a snail, now frozen in fear as it crawled toward his head. “You probably shouldn’t touch them, though. They’re one of the most venomous creatures in all of Equestria, don’tchaknow.” “V...venomous?” “I’m—I’m not a pony,” protested the changeling, suddenly reverting to her normal voice. “My biology is fundamentally different, my resistance to poisons—” “You can take the chance if you want,” shrugged Snails. “But I wouldn’t.” “One sting,” said Fluttershy. “That’s all it takes. So actually listen. And be nice.” “I—I have a family!” cried a pony with a snail now crawling up his face. “I have two daughters! Don’t venom me, I’m not ready, I can’t—” “Stop blubbering,” demanded the changeling. “You’re a generic bad-guy, you don’t even have a name!” “It’s not hard,” said Fluttershy. “These snails are very friendly. We can ask them to let you leave. IF you leave us alone.” “I’m not leaving because of some snails.” The changeling sighed. “But then again, I do have to weigh the risk.” She took a breath. “I’m not really after you. I don’t care that much, and you can’t really stop us. You can slow us down, sure. And we don’t have much time at all. There’s only two of you. And a lot more of us.” She nodded her lack of a head. “Sure. We’ll retreat. I’ll even let you leave. Just don’t get in our way.” “We can’t let you hurt the Abalone.” She gestured with an oversized leg. “Can you let this pony get venomed? Is the Element of Kindness really in the business of manufacturing orphans?” Fluttershy sighed. “No.” “It’s touching my head! It’s TOUCHING MY HEAD I’M GOING TO GET VENOMED!” The pony began attempting to wave the snail off, and the others started to panic. This, in turn, caused the cone snails to become increasingly agitated. “Wait, wait, you’re agitating the snails!” “You hear that?! They’re agitated, ACK! I’M GOING TO GET THE TOXIC POKE!” Too late, Fluttershy saw the snail next to his head extend the end of its barb—and she could not stop it. In a panic, the snail fired its lethal barbed stinger. The needle struck him in the neck—and rebounded off his body, his surface suddenly rendered crystalline and impervious to damage. “Huh who what how why?” he said, looking down—and as surprised as he was, Fluttershy did not have time to feel relieved. She felt the familiar force of a peculiar and exotic form of magic. Every hair on her neck stood on end, and the air grew cold. She looked past the crystal ponies, their bodies shifted to crystal by the thin tendrils of a thick pink-violet fog—and saw the leaves of the trees freezing, encrusted by crystals of ice as she approached. A tall unicorn clad in white and blue-violet armor, her progress slow and terrifyingly graceful. She did not sink into the mud, because where her hooves touched the mud became ice, separating outward into beautiful crystals. Everything she touched became beautiful—as it froze and died. She paused, looking up—and Fluttershy felt eyes upon her. The finally-tuned reflexes of a paranoid coward served her well; she dodged in time to have the bottom portion of her mane severed by the hissing chill of a crystal blade. The unicorn was suddenly on top of her, having passed through the intervening space in an instant—with a rush so fast that crystal ponies and cone snails alike were sent flying. Fluttershy jumped, avoiding a second blade—and as a cone snail fired toward her, its barb was suddenly plucked by the air by Snails’s magic. With one oddly smooth motion and a dull smile on his face, he flipped over Fluttershy and used the armored unicorn’s body as a springboard, pushing her face into the mud as he leapt toward the raging changeling. The changeling responded by shapeshifting again, assuming the form of a giant land-crab—and one of her vast claws closed around Snails. There was a sickening crunch as it closed, but it gained no purchase. Snails had already covered himself in mucous, either from snails or by his own secretion, a knowledge that could only be gained by one truly aligned with the most shelled of all gastropods. Slipping out of her grasp, he suddenly accelerated, and using the barb targeted a weak point in her carapace. With barely any apparent effort, he brought the barb down—and gave her the poke. She took a step back, crying out, and shifted again, assuming her original form—and then suddenly shifting again, assuming the form of a pale green earth-pony—then a griffon, then a white Pegasus, then a blue unicorn, then a different changeling, a random stallion, a gopher, a legged eel—and more. She cried out as she flashed from form to form, so fast that they were indistinguishable—and so fast that sometimes they fused, organs and limbs appearing out of the wrong places or sliding into the wrong places as multiple ponies and forms became one. “I can’t—I can’t control my shifting!” she cried. She fell to her knees, still changing—and Snails turned, barely in time to dodge a blast of magic that encased the changeling in a block of ice, freezing her in place and stopping the changes. He then jumped to avoid a passing cutting spell, but the spell shifted, instead grabbing him by the tail and swinging him like a weapon. He hit Fluttershy hard, knocking the wind out of her and sending her reeling, skipping over the top of the water like a smooth stone until she landed in a bush. The unicorn discarded Snails. She seemed to have little interest in him. “They always said you were the prettiest Element,” she growled. She brandished her sword. “Let’s change that.” Fluttershy had no idea what to do in this circumstance. Of her friends, she was generally the most apt to surrender, and generally did not come under direct attack, let alone with potentially murderous intent. Likewise, she had no idea who this pony was, but felt it would be much too rude to ask. She did not need to wonder for especially long. Something undulated beneath her in the mud and, with sudden and violent force, she was accelerated out of the mire by a pony-sized slug. It was not as fast as the snails before, but significantly more adhesive. It managed to carry her to the far bank, an area overburdened by undergrowth, before it was struck hard with a blast of magic that overturned it. Fluttershy fell to the ground, seeing the slug sceaming from a scorch mark on its side, and she felt suddenly moved to tears—but the slug motioned for her to run, and as it did, a veritable horde of bowling-ball sized snails dropped from the trees above, blocking the path. “Thank you!” she called, running—if only to draw the unicorn’s attention away. She seemed largely ambivalent to the creatures of the forest. For some reason, she was only fixated on Fluttershy. Her actions, though, were reprehensible—and Fluttershy took them to be confirmation this pony was indeed villainous. Simply running was no longer an option. Instead, she needed to act. It was just a question of how. She slid to a stop in the forest, looking up at the trees and rocks that surrounded her—and took several deep breaths. “Come on Fluttershy, you can do this. You can do this!” She closed her eyes and tried to focus. “Think chaotic thoughts...chaotic...thoughts…” There was no response within her, at first—but then the barest spark of strange magic. A familiar spark that brought her to the verge of tears because of how similar it felt to the one who had taught her to find that particular brand of magic within herself. With her eyes closed and her mind wholly focused on itself, she did not see the unicorn drift silently into her presence. Until it was too late. Fluttershy opened her eyes and squeaked at the sound of crunching crystal, and at the electrical whine of her magically-charged blade—and as she jumped back in fright, one of her hooves caught a rock. The rock dislodged from the mud, pinging against the unicorn’s armor—and lodging directly in the elbow joint. The pony cried out, suddenly unable to move her front leg forward, and she fell sideways from the force of her sword. Although it was linked by magic, she was unable to brace it properly—and she overshot, missing Fluttershy and instead striking a tree. Several snails were knocked free as her blade cut through it. Ones of the same type as before, but far larger—and the unicorn cried out with fury in a hail of snails. The tree, though, was unfortunately injured beyond repair, and bent suddenly due to being overburdened with snails feeding off the leaves of its canopy. It fell. Fluttershy could not dodge, but instead of crushing her, she found that it simply pressed her deeper into a soft spot in the boggy soil. The unicorn was faster and dodged, leaping back from it—just as the farthest tip of the tree fell on a heavily rotted log at just such an angle as to send it flying directly toward the unicorn, spinning like a tomahawk. She summoned her magic and sliced it in half—only to reveal that this particular log was not only hollow but filled with hundreds of sub-adult fire slugs. The use of magic caused their premature ignition, and she was coated in burning but totally unharmed slugs that stuck to her like living, adorable napalm. “GAH!” she cried, jumping back. “Fire HOT!” Fluttershy, by this point, had extricated herself beneath the tree—as the trunk exploded into a plume of splinters that harmlessly traced her outline on a tree behind her. Despite being on fire and most likely boiled within her armor, the unicorn seemed to care very little for her own apparent health. “Do you need to be extinguished?” asked Fluttershy, trying to find water—although she doubted it would help. The fire slugs seemed oddly amphibious. “No,” she gurgled. She raised a now flaming sword. “But how about I snuff you out instead?” She took a step forward—only to be stopped, something pulling at her rear hoof. She looked down, confused. “What manner of sorcery be this?” Fluttershy shook her head. “It’s not me.” The unicorn cast a spell on herself, enhancing her strength, and gave a pull—and a pair of bony, skeletal hooves came out of the ground. Fluttershy screamed, but then stopped when she realized that it—and the numerous other undead rising from the boggy turf—were in fact slug-powered revenants. Consequently, not scary at all. She had apparently decided to stop in what amounted to an ancient cemetery—or, from the looks of it, a burial pit. “What in the—no fair!” cried the unicorn. “How come YOU get to be a necromancer?! I can’t even get one dead guy up, and you’ve got a whole army?!” “Um...you should consider your phrasing?” “I know what I said.” The pony shook her hoof free. More of the slug-dead confronted her, although many of them were distorted, either made from the fused remains of many ponies, remains of other creatures, or from the remnants that did not form whole bodies. Vast, hulking piles of bones, claws and limbs animated by dripping masses of black slugs. The unicorn regarded these creatures with almost no fear. Rather, a kind of impressed curiosity—and then her horn charged, letting out a devastating shockwave spell. The sonic blast shattered everything in its path, turning trees to splinters and utterly obliterating the bones of the revenants. The slugs, left without their support structures, plopped to the ground and looked terribly confused before rather quickly sliding off in every direction. Fluttershy was slightly knocked back and immediately afflicted by vertigo as well as a severe case of nausea. The unicorn, however, seemed even more surprised at this than at the presence of slug-animated dead. “Huh? How’d you survive that?” “Survive what?” “That should have pulverized every bone in your body.” “Oh.” Fluttershy blinked. She was now developing a headache. “I don’t actually have...you know...bones. In a technical sense.” The unicorn stared at her. “Seriously?” Fluttershy blushed. “Well, it’s a trait from my biological mother...um…” “So you’re telling me you’re literally a spineless coward? Or have you just been boned that much?” “Well...um...that’s really mean?” “Forget the mean, you’re about to get moded—” Interrupted halfway through her bizarrely Twilight-esque math pun, the ground suddenly started to shake. “What are you doing now?!” demanded the unicorn. “You’re the magic one here!” “Don’t give me those road-apples, you just Chaos-stormed me! That’s magic you shouldn’t even have, you can't just cast when you're a Pegasus—what, have you been licking Discord or something?” Fluttershy blushed very deeply. “Well...um…” She did not managed to formulate an answer. The shaking intensified—and then Fluttershy’s finely-tuned Pegasus instincts indicated a rapid change in altitude. Namely, she was moving in an upward direction. All around her, the forest slid away, crumbling, the ground splitting and dividing in vast chunks. The vibration continued, but was compounded by a deep and terrifying roar—and only then did Fluttershy realize why Tuo had refused to bring his expensive ship in proximity. Rising several hundred feet into the air and continuing to move upward, she found herself on the back of a slug. A slug of indomitable scale. A Jörslugandr. It had been sleeping beneath the surface, perhaps for centuries, or even millenia, curled around the unnatural warmth of the ruins beneath. The trees had grown upon it and, as the land faded away, Fluttershy saw that they were rooted to its rough and wet surface. It was the source of moisture in this region, and the source of the forest, symbiotically linked to in an impossibly amplified version of the algae which clung to the backs of nudibranchs. This proved to be a challenge as Fluttershy was pulled away, losing traction in the landslide as the slug rose. Had the ship been in its way, it would have been destroyed by the upwelling, or perhaps eaten. It might even have awoken the giant slug with the magical noise of its reactors. Fluttershy, though, was faced with an entirely different problem. She was falling off. And she did, falling over the edge and finding herself unable to open her wings. The unicorn lept after her, charging into the void and her literal downfall—apparently quite confident that her unique biology could withstand the inevitable spat. Fluttershy screamed—but then squeaked as she was bolstered from below, rebounding off the back of a large Pegasnail—and grabbing hold of another as it passed, the flock holding her aloft as they fled the rising slug. The snails did not support the unicorn. She fell past them, missing the flock entirely. “You’re not getting away from me, Fluttershy!” she screamed as she descended—and, although Fluttershy was witnessing something severely unpleasant, she still smiled, knowing that she had escaped. Then she heard a burst of sound as the explosive bolts holding on the back of the unicorn’s armor detonated, firing the plate that had been mounted over her back—and exposing a pair of mutilated stumps that it had held in place, compressing fragments of iron-like bone and a few pale feathers. Black fluid flowed outward from the wounded remnants and, in seconds, had regenerated a pair of enormous, fluffy wings—and, despite their seemingly impracticable size, the pony accelerated, shooting upward with disturbing speed. This was an unexpected turn of events, but Fluttershy had little time to react. The pony reached her, and in a flash of pink-violet light—a color that Fluttershy now clearly recognized in its familiarity—she found herself flopping to the ground, transported instantly by a teleportation spell. She stood up, woozy from the teleportation among several other compounding factors. In the distance, she saw the vast bulk of the greenish snail slowly moving across the forest—and, across from her, she saw a pony folding her long white wings behind her. Fluttershy stood and stared, still somewhat in disbelief. “Flurry?” The helmet of her armor split, retracting by some complex and delicate mechanism into a collar that she wore around her neck. Although apparently going through her goth phase—a phase to which Fluttershy could relate to, and deeply—it was still quite obvious who she was. Flurry grinned. “Hello, Fluttershy.” “What—what are you doing?!” She shrugged, a defiant smile still on her face. “My job. Daddy said I needed to get one to ‘learn responsibility’.” She made air quotes and rolled her eyes. “So my choices were either bagging groceries at Crystal Corner Market, shelving books for Auntie Twilight, or starting my own multi-national mercenary company.” She shrugged. “Guess I’m responsible now.” “Isn’t that...morally dubious?” She shrugged again, rolling her eyes. “Morality is for losers, grandma. I'm literally a god.” “But then why are you...you know...trying to give me the poke?” The smile faded. Her eyes narrowed. “You know exactly what you did.” “Um...no?” She let out an exasperated sigh. “Two years ago? Just after Hearthswarming? Daddy walking in on you, mom, and the Great and Powerful Trixie? All in the same bed?” Fluttershy squeaked, turning red. “That—that was—there was cider involved! And um—um—Trixie was just out of a breakup and—and—” “Daddy was so traumatized he locked himself in the bathroom for two weeks straight. And do you know what he did while he was in there?” “Um...a lot of crying?” “Sure. But more importantly, he ate my soap. Do you know how much fancy soap COSTS? I could overthrow governments for less!” She paused, then sneered. “I have overthrown governments for less.” “I—I apologized, and Cadence and Shining went to marriage counseling—” “Do I look like I care? I had to use regular soap. Do you know how hard it is to lather wings this big? Of course you don’t, yours are tiny, no idea why Mom wanted them in her mouth so much—” “Preening is not necessarily sexual—” “Shudup. You made Daddy cry. He’s mortal and not very bright, and I can’t really forgive that, can I?” Her sword slowly slid out of its mechanical scabbard, drawn by her magic. “But since you’re Auntie Twilight’s friend, I’m only going to do a little damage. How about I take those tiny, useless wings? Being an earth-pony won’t be so bad. And you know you don’t deserve them.” “And what if—what if I tell your mother what you’ve been up to?” Flurry laughed. “Do you think Mom even cares? She spends all her time in the lab with the crow-wizard and that freaky white cyborg. And Emmett. Friggin Emmett.” “I’m not your mother. Or your aunt. But I’ve foalsitted you enough that I think I can say…” Fluttershy took a deep breath. “You’re out of line.” Flurry laughed. “Are you going to put me in time out?” “If that’s what it takes.” Flurry’s smile persisted—but only on her mouth. With a cry, she charged. Fluttershy did not retreat. She did what she had to do—and leveled the full force the Stare directly at the advancing alicorn.