//------------------------------// // Highway to Hell, Part One // Story: Sweetie Bot X: Cutie Mark Crusaders Maverick Hunters! // by Zytharros //------------------------------// Highway to Hell, Part One Ready… The Cutie Mark Crusaders had just acquired their powerful new weapons in a world that originally had scared them beyond belief. They took a brief second to examine their new toys, each foal giggling like ones their age would every Hearth’s Warming Eve. Apple Bloom withdrew her sabre using her mouth, but soon realized it would be difficult to use as it was without giving her major whiplash. Scootaloo pulled a gun out with her forehoof, but again it proved to be a daunting task for her to balance properly. Only Sweetie Belle seemed to have little trouble with her weapon because the fusion had allowed X’s weapon to translate from her foreleg to her horn, granting her weapon-based magic. She could now blast things with large magic yellow corn bullets, as she called them. She spent time practicing what X was teaching her, like how to aim her gun and how to charge and release energy. This changed her blast from yellow pellets to a green lazer and finally to a large blue ball. He even taught her how to make use of the solar energy cells running along her back to keep her reserves charged, Zero and Axl were busy trying to piece together how to get Apple Bloom and Scootaloo’s weapons to work… No, Apple Bloom… not like… ooh, that’s gonna leave a mark… Scootaloo! Hold onto them like… well, your hooves can’t hold on like my hands can. Drat! Maybe it would be best if… oh, damn it. Shoot! No! Not there!! The last comment was made in response to Scootaloo nearly loading Apple Bloom with eleven fully-automatic blue energy bullets, and the farm filly barely dodging eight of them while deflecting three away from herself and her friends. Finally Scootaloo just lost it. “Horse apples!” she screeched, throwing a pistol to the pavement. “These guns are useless!” Immediately, the gun set off four bullets, one of which connected with Scootaloo’s fetlock and just dissolved. Apple Bloom simply collapsed. She dropped her blade to the ground. “This is hopeless,” she whined. “Looks like Sweetie Belle’s gonna have to save us on her own.” Look, girls, just give us a sec. We’re trying to come up with a solution! Zero said, slightly irritated that what had been expected to be an easy transition was not. Axl agreed. Yeah. We’ll get this right. You’ll see! X sighed. This was a lot harder for you two than I thought… Well, for now, until we can think of something better, let’s try and get through this area. Sweetie Belle smiled at her friends. “We’ll get it. Just give our friends some time.” The orange pegasus groaned. “I hate not being the leader…” “Well, we ain’t got much choice if’n we can’t get our weapons goin’,” the youngest Apple said. “‘Sides, it’ll give us some good strategies for when we get to fightin’ ourselves.” “Oh, thanks,” Sweetie Belle deadpanned. "Now I'm your guinea pig." All six had a good chuckle as they advanced on their first enemy – one tall, blue, bipedal turret. Sweetie Belle dispatched this one with a charge blast and a couple corn balls, plus a couple simple jumps between his well-spaced blasts. Shortly after him, they encountered a gap in the road, followed by a platform a couple feet higher than the one they were on. They surmounted this with ease, but Apple Bloom stopped and looked down into the hole. She gasped as she realized the depth of the hole stretched far down into the city’s lower streets. “Uh, Zero, sir… how high up are we, ‘zactly?” she asked. Her traveling compatriot replied, About five hundred feet. The Earth pony swallowed and took a couple steps back as she heard a second explosion behind her. She turned her attention to the field and saw Sweetie Belle firing her horn at an airborne road-crushing machine, the green bubbles carrying large spiked balls beneath them. A shower of shrapnel falling around her friend told Apple Bloom the explosion from before was her friend destroying another of them earlier. A spiked ball dropped from this second one and destroyed a part of the road. Scootaloo grimaced. “So, we don’t let those spikes hit the ground.” Axl replied, Nope. Enough of them hit, the road breaks, and you’ll fall to your death. The road can only take between one and three of those types of blows. Your wings don’t look large enough to fly, so you won’t be able to rely on them to carry you if you do fall. “Gee, thanks…” Scootaloo retorted, hurt that Axl would point out her very obvious flaw. “Like I didn’t know that.” Oh, sorry… Axl weakly apologized, then chuckled. A few more of these turrets, a couple pits, and a whole lot of spiked balls later, two of which actually managed to hit their party before Sweetie Belle was able to deal with them, Scootaloo stopped them at the next turret. “I bet I can use those cannons to fire my weapons!” she declared. “Cutie Mark Crusaders and Maverick Hunters huddle!” As they huddled, though, a couple missiles popped Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle. “Ouch!” they exclaimed. Apple Bloom rubbed her side. “Okay, Scoots, before we keep goin’, let’s move a little further from that bot.” So, when they had cleared a large area they had just been from enemies once again, they stopped to discuss their plan. “Okay, so what’s your big idea, Scoots?” Apple Bloom asked. Yeah. I’d like to see how she thinks she can take those cannons from that robot. Zero skeptically replied. Scootaloo smirked. “Okay, here’s what we do. We’ll need to act fast so we don’t get popped by that jerk again…” After a few minutes of hashing out a plan, Scootaloo, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle returned their attention to the pathway ahead. They lined up in a wall formation and stared their opponent down. As the Crusaders prepared for battle, Zero was genuinely impressed by the orange filly’s plan. He truly hoped it would succeed. X, of course, was nervous about his charge and her place in the plot. Axl, on the other hand, was giving hoots, hollers and cheers, hoping to spur them on to victory, fully-supportive of this techno-thievery. Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom looked at each other and gave an affirmative nod. The trio of fillies snorted simultaneously as they turned their attention to their stationary victim. The blue turret waited silently. The fillies eyed it down. The girls crouched, pawing at the steel beneath them. Their guardians held their words… Until the battle command came. “CHARGE!!” Scootaloo cried as she reared up. Sweetie Belle flooded the turret with bullets. Scootaloo slowed a little to allow Apple Bloom time to get into position. She knelt down and “cupped” her hooves together. Scootaloo ran partway bipedal, stepping squarely on Apple Bloom’s hooves, whereupon the butter-toned filly promptly thrust her friend up into the air with a loud grunt. Scootaloo, high enough to do a small stunt, calmly directed herself into a slow-rotating backflip. Apple Bloom quickly leapt out of the way as the turret dropped on its haunches and fired two small, fast-moving electrical bursts. Sweetie Belle was struck by the rolling pink balls, slightly dazed but not very fazed. Scootaloo landed atop the turret and began tearing at its’ circuitry with her bare hooves. “Give me your cannons, you overgrown hunk of scrap!” she screeched as she tore at the turret’s outer casing with the ravenous fury of a hundred feeding coyotes. The turret didn’t understand what was going on. It kept on firing missiles and energy balls at its’ normal intervals, continuing even as Scootaloo successfully removed one of its’ missile silos from its body with a forceful, howling grunt. An internal error caused the turret to cease firing missiles lest it damage itself, so it squatted down and began firing pink balls at twice the rate it had before. As Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle began playing jump-rope with electricity, Scootaloo tore out the other cannon and tossed it with the first, towards a long, unbroken expanse of roadway. “Sweetie Belle!” Scootaloo shouted. “Finish the sucker off!” Her alabaster friend leapt in the air over a wave of rose-coloured energy and fired a large, blue blast. Just before it connected, Scootaloo leapt off to an expanse behind the robot, once again high enough to perform a quick backflip. As the ball connected with the robot, however, the turret exploded, sending a shockwave that threw Scootaloo backwards a few feet. She landed awkwardly on a single hoof, yet still maintained her balance enough to catch the two cannons she had just stolen, if just barely. The little horse did it, X said, his eyes wide. Colour me impressed. Zero hummed an agreement as Axl cheered, leapt and jumped around in his ecstasy, complimenting Scootaloo endlessly. Scootaloo stood slowly, her head appearing beyond the wreckage of the obliterated robot and her friends darting towards her, relief mixed with surprise and peppered with astonishment at their success. After a brief leap over the dead mech, they embraced joyously and revelled in their well-coordinated victory, the first time in their eyes that their plans had worked so well to an end goal. Zero thought for a second, then asked, So, what’re you going to do with the cannons? Scootaloo frowned, the mood killed by the one question. She hadn’t really thought that far. She knew she needed the guns, but what for? It was Apple Bloom that provided the answer to that question. “Well, I think what she was goin’ to try to do was attach these here barrels to the top of her wings and runnin’ these rods” indicating the long rods at the base of the missile barrels “to her energy packs in her armor so she can fire Axl’s guns from her wings instead of her hooves.” Scootaloo’s eyes brightened. “Y-yeah! That’s what I needed them for! That was exactly the plan.” Zero smirked sarcastically and thought to himself, Sure, my little mini-Axl pony… He connected eyes with the youngest member of the squad, who returned his look with a questioning one of his own. What? Axl asked his compatriot quizzically. Meanwhile, Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, and Apple Bloom were busy trying to figure out a way to attach the cannons to her wings. A sound of whirling blades joined the cacophony of Crusader conversation as Scootaloo's wings were mercilessly manipulated by her friends. Tossed-around ideas and pleas for help peppered the chat. Steadily, the wind kicked up. X gasped. Girls! The fillies paid no mind. They were still wrestling Scootaloo into her new wing cannons, protests from the young pegasus ringing loud and clear over the helicopter blades a short distance away. Axl began panicking. Girls! Watch out! Three bullets were fired. The danger the girls were in would soon mark an early end to their journey. Zero commandingly shouted, Crusaders! Roll over! Now! Without a second thought, Apple Bloom and Scootaloo rolled one way and Sweetie Belle rolled the other as three bullets created pock marks on the earth below. Quickly, the girls looked up. “Is that… a honey bee?” Sweetie Belle asked. Apple Bloom gasped. Scootaloo bit her lip. “Buck me…” There, hovering thirty feet in front of them was a giant mechaniloid. Greatly reminiscent of the insect the unicorn had mentioned previously, its eyes were replaced with a giant green screen. Above the screen, two tiny tubes with matching green bulbs projected from its face. The bee-bot’s mandibles concealed a high-calibre rapid fire machine gun, and on the sides of its cheeks there were tubes with launch holes for decent-sized blast missiles. Its body was striped blue and yellow. It had no wings, nor legs. Instead, it had a single large, rotating helicopter blade quartet attached to the upper portion of the thorax. The lower part of its abdomen held a door that could open up and drop a large object down upon its enemies. The size… well, the beast was such that it could easily hold nearly two dozen Crusaders. Sweetie Belle began pelting it with blasts. “Come on, girls! You can use your weapons as they are for now! We’ll have to find a better way after!” Apple Bloom was quick to evade three shots before pulling out her sword and leaping into the air at the eyes of her opponent. She tore into the buzzard with all the strength her form could muster, quietly taking rapid-fire instruction from her guardian. Scootaloo pulled out a single automatic energy pistol, aimed using the ground, and bit hard on the trigger with a loud grunt. A spray of nearly fifteen bullets strong erupted from the gun before the first connected with the bee. Her instructor leapt and taunted the insect mercilessly. Sweetie Belle noticed a presence appear at the back of the mech – a large, round ball. After rolling for a second, it stood on two highly curved legs and began approaching them. Sweetie Belle began charging a shot while Scootaloo and Apple Bloom worked on the giant one. Slowly, the ball stepped forward as its’ mother unloaded two more of the orbs. Sweetie Belle dodged another hail of bullets as the walking sphere nearest to Scootaloo dropped back into a ball and began rolling towards her at high speed. Catching her hoof on a loose pebble, Sweetie Belle used that tiny speck of leverage to swing herself around and unleash hell upon that which dared to get close to her friend; the giant blue energy ball easily obliterated the metal one charging straight for Scootaloo. The long hail of bullets still stopped, however, as Scootaloo came into contact with a series of shots and finally another metal ball in quick succession. These blasts knocked her back quite a ways, and caused her to lose grip on one of her guns. It clattered against the side of the highway. “Scootaloo!” Apple Bloom shrieked. She leapt from her high point, blade held to her left. She bore down hard on the ball with a strong growl, slicing it clean in half. She whirled around, throwing her blade at the other one approaching Sweetie Belle at high speed. The unicorn leapt into the air and released a second blast of energy straight down. Sword and energy blast connected at the same time, causing an explosion that launched Sweetie Belle several hooves into the air and flung the sword off to one side, impaling itself two feet deep in the roadway, blade at a steep angle. Quickly now, spin and fire! Subconsciously, she took the opportunity to charge another blast and managed to aim for the connection between the helicopter blade and the body of the beast with a really awkward twist. Upon release, she was immediately impacted by two missiles fired from the creature’s face. She was knocked back and nearly cleared the side of the highway. All that stopped her were two barricades that were designed to prevent something much faster than a small, pony-sized projectile. The blades were cleaved clean from the creature’s back, which sent the bot crashing hard into the roadway in a burst of multiple explosions seconds after Sweetie Belle herself slid back down to the surface with a grunt of pain. The Crusaders, breathing heavily, slowly came to a standing position one at a time and looked at the downed mech. Slowly smiles crept onto their faces as they realized they had survived what had been their greatest challenge in this world to this point. They had taken something down that was easily a dozen times their size. They felt safe. They felt invincible. They felt they could actually survive. And then the highway gave way, sending the trio of victorious ponies and the flying bee they just eliminated plummeting to the city below, screaming as they fell to their inevitable end.