//------------------------------//
// 8 
// Story: Planescape: Equestria 
// by Applechaser 
//------------------------------//

You keep one hand steady on Octavia’s shoulder as you return Fleur’s gaze, searching her eyes for some indication of her purpose. Last night the depth of her eyes struck you as illusory; a fancy veil over the windows to a soul that was rather childish and shallow, though not without a certain appeal. Now, in the half-light, their lilac gleam seems different: alert, measuring, determined.

She moves differently, too. Still elegant, still poised, but her grace is transformed. Last night every movement was calculated according to the effect on an observer, every pose chosen to display her beauty to best effect; now her motion is spare and efficient, charged with the same fluid grace as a predator stalking its prey.

“…something’s wrong,” you whisper to Octavia. “Be ready to run if you get the chance.”

Octavia gives you a look of puzzlement and worry. "It’s just Fleur…” she murmurs.

“Maybe.”

Maybe-Fleur smiles as she advances slowly towards you, each hoofstep echoing down the halls. The first figure you sighted is manoeuvring into position behind you, perhaps twenty feet away; you can hear its hoof-falls as well, cautiously muted as they are. You keep half your attention on that, listening intently for any sudden movement.

“Might we talk in private?” Fleur asks softly, a knife-edge glinting somewhere beneath the velvet folds of her tone.

“Of course, Fleur. Octavia, do you mind heading back to the suite for a moment? You can have a word with Rainbow Dash.”

You give her a meaningful look with that last phrase, hoping she understands.

“Oh no,” Fleur follows up swiftly. “Octavia can come too, of course. It would be… too awfully rude of me to insist that you abandon her. And after all –" she smiles at the other pony, but her eyes remain hard – “she and I are friends. There are no secrets between friends.”

She’s maybe ten paces from you now, still advancing. The pony behind you has stopped moving.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t come any closer,” you say to Fleur.

Predictably, she ignores you, continuing until she’s standing just slightly closer to you than normal, polite interaction would dictate.

“Oh… but we’ve been a lot closer than this, haven’t we, Anon?” she coos, one hoof preening her mane.

The lemon-sweet scent you remember from yesterday evening is gone. In fact she smells of nothing at all.

Your hand tightens around the grip of your knife; you flirt with the idea of plunging it into her long, swanlike neck right now and twisting it around until she stops moving. Octavia’s presence stops you from considering that very seriously, though. There’s also the matter of whoever is lurking behind you.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you reply, your voice hard.

“Don’t you? I could… refresh your memory.”

She sidles up to you, making to nuzzle your arm with her head. You jerk away, pulling Octavia with you, keeping her close. She gives an irritated grunt at being manhandled.

“What is all this, Anonymous?” she demands. “Did you really…?”

“Oh, we did,” comes a voice from behind you. Rarity’s voice.

You give an inward groan. Octavia spins around, wild-eyed.

“R…Rarity? What are you saying?”

“Think, Octavia,” you cut in, keeping your attention split between the two impostors, ready for any aggression. “Rarity is back at the suite.”

“...yes. Then…” she sidles closer to you, real fear creeping into her tone. “Changelings.”

It seems like the time for decisive action has arrived. 

You lunge forwards, your knife seeking not-Fleur’s throat, but she melts away from the thrust with almost contemptuous ease. At your side, Octavia tenses up with a gasp and then goes limp, slumping against your legs and then to the floor as you step clear. Sparing a sidelong glance, you see a crimson-plumed throwing dart standing up proudly from her rump like a flag planted on a conquered peak. You don’t have much time to consider it; another dart is streaking through the air towards you, even as not-Fleur leaps forward to counterattack with a double forehoof strike at your solar plexus.  

You throw yourself backwards and down to the side, catching your weight on one hand and kicking upwards to correct your centre of gravity and get some momentum as the dart misses you by a scant inch. You complete your handspring and land on your feet again only to find your primary assailant barrelling straight at you. It’s all you can do to twist out of her path and use your blade to turn aside the worst of a vicious strike from her foreleg.

The skinny form it has assumed doesn’t seem to have any detrimental effect on the strength of your attacker; glancing as it is, the blow is staggeringly powerful. You reel into the opposite wall, trying to get some distance, but Fleur’s lithe form is upon you again before you can draw breath. A hoof smashes into the wall and shatters the stone where your head was just a moment before as you duck and spring forwards into her, trying to regain some initiative.

You catch her around the middle, aiming to bear her to the floor, but her hind leg arrests your forward progress with a sharp knee to the chest that straightens out into a snap kick, catching you squarely in the chin as she follows through into a tight backflip and lands poised in a crouch. You are slumped against the wall, head ringing, nausea rising in your stomach. There’s no time for that; the thing – the changeling? – in Rarity’s shape is closing in on you from the side even as her ally coils to spring at you.

With one sweep of your arm you loose a knife at each of them even as you haul your complaining body from the floorboards and roll to a defensive crouch. The assassins dodge the knives easily, but they gave you the moment’s breathing room you needed. Not-Rarity retaliates with another thrown dart, but this time you’re well prepared – your hand flashes out to snatch it from the air, leaving you off balance, giving not-Fleur a conspicuous opening.

She takes it, just as intended, and you shift your momentum into an arcing roundhouse kick that connects solidly with her shoulder and arrests her charge, sending her lurching off to the side. You fling her partner’s dart at her even as you press forwards, determined not to lose the advantage. She just barely gets a hoof up in time to deflect the projectile, and then you’re on her, your knife slicing neatly across the fetlock of her raised hoof and severing the tendon as you roll past and grab hold of a hind leg as you let your momentum carry you forwards, wrenching her knee and tugging her to the floor. 

Her form shimmers and shifts as she hits the deck, Fleur’s semblance vanishing to be replaced by a spiny, twisted form with a matt black hide almost like a reptile’s but for the lack of scales. The thing hisses and twists, kicking at you with its free hindleg and forcing you away.

The other one is coming up fast from your rear and you whip round to meet the onrushing form of Rarity, hurling herself at you with bladed hooves scything. You flow around her, grabbing one foreleg and swinging her onwards to send her crashing in a heap to the floor as you step back to get some breathing room and palm another couple of knives. Both changelings have regained their feet and are sizing you up once more.

The one that had taken Fleur’s form should be hobbled, by your reckoning, but it shows no sign of being slowed down by its injuries as it prowls slowly towards you, looking for an opening. Apparently changeling anatomy doesn’t rely on tendons: not much of a surprise, you suppose, considering the bizarre gaping holes in its legs that clearly predate any of your efforts. The two assassins come at you more cautiously now, covering each other, feinting and testing your defences, wearing you down and waiting for an opening.

You’re not sure that time is on their side; sooner or later somebody is going to happen by and fetch help.

That’s if you can hold out that long. It’s all you can do to fend off not-Rarity’s vicious hoof blades while avoiding the other changeling’s efforts to circle around you or bring you to the floor by tackling your legs or shattering a kneecap. They press on relentlessly, forcing you back away from Octavia’s limp form and the way back to the suite.

They’re learning, too. Drawing out your responses, looking for flaws in your footwork or weak spots in your guard.

You’re not sure how long it’s going to be before they find one. You try to clear your mind and focus, to let all the strange events of recent days slip away and just be, in the moment, unthinking and instinctive, moving where you need to. The adrenaline rush of combat helps, of course, up to a point – most people are at their most focused in a fight – and yet that can only get you so far.

Even in the midst of mortal peril, the average mind is cluttered and hazy, full of fear and doubt, speculation, half-formed plans and contingencies. Your own mind is no exception, especially after the manifold distractions of the last couple of days.
It’s been centuries since you drifted away from the Ciphers, never having been one to let a given philosophy tie you down for too long – but you’ve kept up with your training, more or less, and at a time like this you’re glad of it.

You focus on the movements of your own body; your blades, extensions of your will, flashing as they parry one assailant’s slicing blades and keep the other one at bay from throwing herself upon you; your feet, moving swiftly and deftly, predicting instinctively where they need to move in order to keep your balance sure; your centre of gravity shifting as you pivot and weave, twisting aside from a blow here or feinting an attack there to keep your opponents wary and draw them into committing themselves falsely. It’s an intricate dance, the steps improvised moment by moment, guided by a music that only you and your two partners can hear.

The blood pumps in your ears and the salt tang of blood is in your mouth, but all that is forgotten. As you continue to focus, falling deeper into the battle trance, your very self is forgotten along with all your aches and pains, your worries and uncertainties. You are one with the air around, one with the stone, one with these changelings who seek to end you.

Again and again the semblance of Rarity lashes out with her hoof blades, a flurry of feints and slashes intended to drive you back, but this time you give her no ground. When the opportunity comes, you don’t even notice it – you’re already doing what you need to do, slamming your dagger forwards to forcefully riposte a carelessly-aimed strike and stepping forwards as you do so, shifting all your weight on to your front foot.

The other changeling thinks she sees her chance. She launches herself at you, but you’re already throwing yourself forwards, inside the arc of the other bladed hoof that is swinging for you, pivoting on your front foot as you bury a knife in the Rarity-changeling’s white stomach. Spinning as you fall forwards on top of her, it’s an easy matter to lash out with a leg and deliver a kick in the ribs to the other changeling as her flying tackle goes wide and sends her crashing into the wall. You land on your shoulder and roll, the foe beneath you cushioning the impact. You keep your grip on the knife in her gut, giving it one final brutal twist as your forward momentum wrenches it clear.

Springing to your feet at the changeling’s head as her Rarity disguise gradually fades, you give no time for her ally to recover from her collision and come to her aid. You turn, crouch, and slam your knife up to the hilt into her faceted eyeball. She twitches, once, and lies still.

You’ve already snatched up your knife and are dashing for the remaining foe as she stumbles to her feet. In the face of her ally’s demise and your murderous onrush, she does the only thing that seems sensible and jumps out of the window with a crash of shattering glass. You follow her without a thought, making a mighty leap and managing to grab hold of one leathery hindleg, your fingers finding a handhold in one of the many gaps that riddle it.

The changeling gives a furious hiss, kicking at you with its free leg as its insectoid wings buzz desperately to keep it aloft with your added weight. After a couple of dizzying kicks to the head you manage to get a hold on the changeling’s other hindleg as well, although it means dropping your last knife; you watch it as it plummets fifty feet or more and vanishes into a patch of purple-flowering shrubbery. You are coming back to yourself, your preternatural focus lost.

You are aware, again, of the ragged breath catching in your throat, the agony in your head, the various bruises and strains throughout your body. Slowly but surely the changeling is losing altitude, the well-kept lawns of the palace gardens rising gradually like a tide coming in to swallow you up. Just your luck that there are no ponies in sight on this side of the palace. Your feet are ten feet off the ground when you decide to make your play.

You begin to swing, violently, wrenching down on the changeling’s hind legs and causing it to swerve erratically in the air and make a sudden drop of a few feet as you gather momentum. Your legs swing up to wrap around the changeling’s midsection, dragging it down further as you tug on its hind legs, aiming to wrench them at the most uncomfortable angle from its body that you can manage from this bizarre angle.

Hissing again, the changeling kicks at you with its forelegs as best it can, but the angle is obviously bad for it and the blows are weak. A moment later you feel the bone-jarring impact as the two of you hit the dirt, but you’re sure that the changeling took the worst of it. You keep your grip, scrambling immediately to get your weight on top of the creature and start applying some proper leverage to its legs.

The failed assassin squirms and screeches beneath you as you sit heavily on its flank and pull one leg up with all your might, feeling a joint dislocate, feeling the tension as bone, muscle and sinew are pushed close to breaking point. You lean back, heaving with all your might, listening for the sickening crack. It never comes.

A sudden impact knocks you sprawling, soft grass beneath your cheek, your head ringing more resoundingly than ever, your vision blurred and your stomach heaving. Almost tempting to just lay there on the fragrant earth and let the end come. With a growl you push yourself up, forcing yourself to a crouch, scanning as best you can for the new threat. Your dim vision swims and fluctuates, but there is no mistaking the brightly coloured form that hovers nearby, sneering at you. That cyan coat, that multicoloured mane.

"Time for our dance-off, Anon."

Fucking Rainbow Dash.