//------------------------------// // Oh Brave New World That Has Such Zombie Gerbils In It // Story: The Late Afternoon of the Zombie Gerbil Horde // by Eakin //------------------------------// OH BRAVE NEW WORLD THAT HAS SUCH ZOMBIE GERBILS IN IT "Uggggggh!" groaned Pincer as Argent gathered up the cards and began to shuffle them, "Why are they taking soooooo looooong?" "They obviously have a lot on their plate right now," replied Argent, "would you prefer they had rushed right out into the middle of an invasion with us in tow and no plan?" "Of course not, but still! You can't do that! You can't announce 'a horde of zombie gerbils rises again' and then just disappear for... how long has it been?" "A quarter hour longer than when thou posed the same question a quarter hour ago," said Spear Shaker. Finally, the long wait ended as Xenus and Luna returned from the other room where they’d been discussing how best to handle the upcoming problem. The Princess had a large rolled up sheet of paper tucked under her wing. “Guards, to us,” she commanded. The two stallions stood sharply at attention. While Spear Shaker didn’t bother to stand, he did at least look over at the assembled group and nodded when the Princess looked at him. “We have constructed a method by which the undead rodent masses might be herded and contained, but all of us must work together in order to bring it to fruition. First, we will need to gather up as many toads as possible.” Argent looked to Pincer, and vice versa, neither of them having any reasonable explanation for the request. “Uh, a thousand pardons Princess Luna, but that sounds just a little, um, mad?” said Pincer. “Though this be madness, there may yet be method in it,” said Spear Shaker. “Prithee, continue milady.” “Many thanks, Spear,” said Luna. “It is not just any toad which we seek. Xenus?” “Yesss, thank you, Princess. The glade behind my home is home to a colony of the Mareabian Flesh-Eating Toad, the natural predator of the zombie gerbil.” Despite his training, Pincer felt his knees begin to shake. Argent held himself together more effectively, but he too grew worried. “Mareabian... Flesh-Eating... Toads?” he asked, carefully concealing his fear. “Oh, do not look at us in such a fashion,” chided Luna, “it is merely a name, and not an accurate description. We must collect as many of them as we can in the next hour.” A spark of hope lit up in Pincer’s eyes. “I’m still a bit lost on the whole ‘royal we’ thing, Princess. Do you mean that you’re going to collect the toads?” “We do not, Pincer Strike. This is a very special form of ‘we.’ A very special form that actually means ‘you.’ The two of you will use the cages provided by Xenus to hold them until we are ready to deploy them,” said Luna. “Heh heh, indeed. My very sturdy cages. Cages which surely couldn’t possibly break open at the worst possible second, dooming you all to be overrun by undead rodents as I laugh at your screams from atop a throne of skulls and declare Fillydelphia to belong, once and for the rest of time, to Xenus the Dark Lord of Evil and Necromancy,” said Xenus. “No, really, they won’t do that. They’re actually quite secure.” Xenus left to retrieve the cages from his laboratory, and Spear Shaker raised a skeptical eyebrow. “That is the long and short of thy plan? Cry havoc and let slip the frogs of war?” “Toads, but neigh. We must first herd the gerbils into a single place so that the toads might most effectively subdue them. The four of us came of age elsewhere, but you are a resident of Fillydelphia, are you not? We hoped that you might be able to suggest a central location.” Luna unfurled the paper she carried and spread it over the table the three stallions had been using for their card game. It was a map of the city, covered in numerous arcane designs and symbols written in what Spear Shaker dearly hoped was red ink. “Ignore the pentagrams. Xenus informs me they simply mark pizza places that will deliver after one in the morning.” “Hmm...” Spear Shaker examined the map, muttering to himself, as Argent and Pincer returned from the back room each carrying a reinforced terrarium. “Alright Princess, Xenus told us where to find the toads. But... you’re sure that the name’s wrong, right?” asked Pincer. “Pincer, trust thy Princess. If I tell you that these creatures are not flesh-eating toads from Mareabia, then they are not flesh eating toads from Mareabia. Now hurry, time grows short.” The two guards walked out the front door as Luna shook her head. “Honestly, should we ever lay our hooves upon the biologist that discovered those creatures  there shall be a reckoning for her choice of names. Based upon their habitat they are clearly Pensacoltan Flesh-Eating Toads.” ------------------------ Argent and Pincer returned after the agreed hour, the terrariums full of pustulant green toads and their armor considerably more gnawed-upon than it had been when they’d gone back into the boggy forest. They had no trouble finding Princess Luna; she was standing next to a glowing orange semi-transparent sphere in front of Xenus’ home. “Aha! Thy mission was a success, we see, and thou hath collected a bounty as boundless as the sea.” She paused. “Well, perhaps a very small sea.” Argent and Pincer pointedly decided not to point out the somewhat misleading nature of the information they’d been given about their quarries. “What’s this thing for?” asked Pincer. “We would be delighted to explain,” said Luna. “This is out giant magic zombie gerbil containment ball. We simply drop them in through unidirectional force field, or even just roll it over them, and they are unable to leave. “Whoa whoa whoa. Whoa. Whoa,” said Argent waving a foreleg with numerous toad-sized bite marks covering it. “I thought we were just dealing with zombie gerbils. Now there’s giant magic zombie gerbils? Are the toads going to be big enough?” “Wha- nay, it is the sphere which is giant and magical, not the gerbils,” answered Luna, casting a glance back at the gerbil ball. “We thought that would be clear.” Spear Shaker and Xenus emerged, carrying crates full of other equipment. “What wholesome, natural sorcery is this?” asked Xenus, looking at the sphere with revulsion. “It’s a sphere for magically containing giant zombie gerbils,” said Pincer before Luna could answer. “Thy council is a falsehood, Pincer,” said Luna. “The sphere is giant and magical, the gerbils are just zombies.” Spear Shaker raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Is the undeath visited upon the gerbils not also magical in nature? Or are there naturally occurring zombie gerbils?” “Verily, that is magic as well, but of another nature.” Luna pressed a hoof to her forehead. She felt they were becoming rather sidetracked, and the horde would descend upon the city before much longer. "Know what? We will simply call it the 'Happy Shiny Gerbil Trap.'" "Uh, Princess? asked Pincer, raising a foreleg into the air like he expected to be called upon. "Pincer, we swear upon our throne and our power that if thy question pertains in any way to 'happy shiny gerbils,' we will end thee." Pincer froze in place for several seconds, then slowly lowered his foreleg. "Question withdrawn." Argent spoke up to fill the ensuing silence. "What's in those crates?" "A few devices, made for mischief but today turned to a yet nobler purpose," replied Spear Shaker. "Zombies dislike fire, as it is one of the few things that will destroy them utterly," explained Xenus. "These smoke bombs Spear Shaker put together will cut off their avenues of retreat while the toads' venom does its work. As long as we set them up ahead of time, everything should go smoothly." "Then let us make haste! There is no time to stand around here explaining everything," declared Luna. Her horn glimmered and the Happy Shiny Gerbil Trap began to roll through the streets. Just then, the ponies' ears perked up as they heard a high pitched scream. "No! We may already be too late!" She galloped ahead of the others towards the source of the noise. “Dusty! Don’t touch that, you don’t know where its been!” “But Momma, he wants to be my friend!” whined the young voice. Luna and her companions rounded a corner to see a young mare tugging her son’s ear with her teeth while the colt tried to pick something up off the ground. “He looks just like Mister Nibbles did before he had to go to the farm upstate!” He took a few whiffs of the air around him and wrinkled up his nose. “I think he needs a bath, though.” “Stand aside, foal,” said Luna, dragging the trap behind her. “This creature is dangerous, despite its diminutive stature.” “Princess Luna! Come on, Dusty. Let’s leave the Princess alone.” “But... but..." he sputtered. He looked down at the necrotizing gerbil at his hooves, which was in the process of trying to bite through his foreleg. It would have been more effective had its teeth not long ago rotted into twisted, blackened stumps. “He missed me so much while he was on the farm that he’s trying to give me kisses!” “No, he is not,” said Luna, letting her starry mane cascade through the air as she shook her head, "for you see, there is no such farm.” “Uh, Princess?” said Argent. He was ignored. “Your gerbil did not go to a farm. Or an island. Or to another family that would love him more. It died. Its vital functions failed and the spark of life within it was extinguished. Had nopony accidentally given one of your classmates a tome on necromancy, it would have remained that way.” Behind her, Xenus coughed into his hoof. “Yes. Accidentally.” “Mister Nibbles... died?” asked Dusty, looking up at the Princess with wide, innocent eyes. “He did. As will you, someday. And your friends, and everypony that you love. Your brief, inconsequential time in this world will sputter out like a lit match beneath a hurricane. Your mortal body will be interred within a hole in the earth for the rest of time, the flesh rotting away from your frame and even your bones splintering and cracking over centuries. Meanwhile, all that you take pride in having accomplished will waste away or be forgotten, until even your name is lost to the gaping abyss of time.” Dusty stared up at her in quiet contemplation for a moment, then tears welled up in his eyes. He burst out into bawling sobs and turned to flee, his mother chasing behind him and calling out for him to stop. Luna sighed. “Poor colt. Zombies are indeed a very troubling thing for such a young mind to encounter. No wonder they upset him so badly.” She plucked up the zombie gerbil in her magic and threw it into the side of the ball. It passed through the barrier and struck the inner wall of the other side before sliding down into the depression at its center. “Time marches on, and so must we,” said Spear Shaker, “we can set out ambush at the crossroads ahead.” He gestured to the end of the street on their left, where the thoroughfare abruptly stopped and a park began. “Yeeeeeeeessssss, yeeeeeeeessssss,” hissed Xenus, grinning and rubbing his hooves together, “this will do nicely. Herd the zombies into the park, and the toads will do the rest. I’ll prepare them now. Then I’ll bait the trap with a little dark magic of my own, and the pitter-patter of their shuffling little paws will herald their doom. Their DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!” He took the stuffed terrariums from Argent and Pincer and disappeared into the trees. “Where do you want us with the smoke bombs, Princess?” asked Argent. “Spear Shaker, you best know the area. Where should we place our defenses to funnel the enemy into place?” “Hmm...” Spear Shaker looked back and forth between both sides of the street with an appraising eye. “Methinks upon the rooftops.” “Which one, though?” asked Pincer. “From here, it looks like we could take up position above Monty Goo’s Gak, Slime, and Ooze Emporium on the east corner, or the Cap-U-Late Twenty Four Hour Hat Store to the west.” “Why choose? Are there not two of you? A box on both their houses.” A surge of dark magic erupted upwards from the depths of the park, and the ground beneath their hooves began to tremble. “Make haste!” Luna took off into the air, wielding the trap ball as a magical cudgel. The sole zombie gerbil rattled around inside of it as she gave it a few experimental swings through the air. At some point one of its legs had detached from the rest of it, and it watched its former limb fly past it with a befuddled look on its face. Plumes of smoke went up on either side of Spear Shaker as Argent and Pincer threw their blasting charges to the streets below. He bolted for the nearest store, tearing open the door and locking it behind him as the crest of the oncoming wave loomed at the end of the street. The surge of the living dead grew from a pack, to a swarm, to an honest-to-goodness horde stretching as far as Luna’s magic-enhanced eyes could see. In the face of such an affront to the very nature of life and death, Luna had just one thought. That’s really a very improbable number of gerbils to have died recently enough to be eligible for zombification. Perhaps an investigation of the local pet shops is in order. And then the horde reached the edge of the park, the first of the Marebian Flesh Eating Toads leapt from its hiding place, and pandemonium reigned. -------------------- Raven Nightshade wiped the sweaty, matted strands of her ebony black mane with dark purple highlights away from her face. Slaving away over the stove all afternoon had left her disheveled and at loose ends, but both of the pots bubbling away were nearly finished with their tasks. “Sharp Quill?” she called up the stairs. Her son had been quiet all evening, which probably didn’t bode well. Then again, he had been sick that morning. She was just about to go up to check on him when there was a loud knock at the door. “Now who could that be?” she wondered aloud. Wiping her hooves on the embroidered skull motif that decorated her apron, she trotted over and opened it. “...didn’t think that ‘eat until you explode’ was anything more than a figure of speech. Boy is my face red,” said one of the pegasi in the armor of the Royal Guard. He was standing behind the imposing figure of Princess Luna, doing her best to salvage her royal dignity despite being covered by an impressive variety of different colored, viscous fluids. “Verily, it is. Perhaps a little rubbing alcohol will get that out of your coat,” said the younger stallion next to him. Luna ignored them. “Thy son Sharp Quill is in possession of a book. We would like it back now.” “SHARP QUILL! GET YOUR FLANK DOWN HERE RIGHT THIS SECOND, YOUNG COLT!” Raven shouted back up the stairs, the veins in her forehead straining out from beneath her black coat. She took a deep, calming breath and struggled to regain her composure. “What happened to you, Princess?” “Tomorrow morning’s newspaper headline will tell of a large encounter between a zombified horde of gerbils and flesh-eating toads. We assure you it will not do the event itself justice,” said Luna. “Everything was going well, until the Dire Vultures showed up,” the other guard chimed in. “Indeed. We did not anticipate having to deal with those in addition to the Mareabian Flesh Eating Toads and the gerbils. Nor did we realize they were capable of projectile vomiting.” Raven furrowed her brow. “Wait, you’ve lost me. Were the vultures, the toads, or the zombies vomiting?” Luna regarded her flatly for a long moment. “Yes.” With a loud series of thumps heralding his presence, Sharp Quill appeared beside her. When he saw the ponies standing in the doorway, his ears went flat against his head and he looked away. “I’m in trouble, huh?” “We sssssshall ssssssee,” said Xenus. “Did you cassssst from the book you borrowed earlier?” “Sharp Quill, what did you do?” asked Raven, glaring down at him. “I... kinda... sorta... maybe triedtobringSnowballback,” he replied. The words fell out as he studied the floor with great intensity. “You raised the zombie gerbils? What is the rule about using Dark Magic in this house?” “Only to summon incorporeal spirits unless you’re there to supervise,” he grumbled. “But Mom, it was an accident!” “That’s right, and accidents like that are why the rule is there in the first place. Where’s this book now?” With a sigh, Sharp Quill pulled the tome in question from the hanging saddlebags beside the door and passed it to Raven with his magic. Her horn glowed as she took it from him, and when she looked up again to give it to the Princess she took a good look at the final member of their party for the first time. The stallion’s dark, beady eyes set deep into pale, almost ash white skin met her gaze, boring into her. “Oh, badness,” she said, tossing her mane with a coy little smile. “And who might you be?” “I am the Dark Lord Xenus, Harbinger of Shadows and school librarian.” “So it’s your book, I suppose.” She held it out to him and their fields mingled as he gripped it, but Raven was in no hurry to release her hold. “I apologize for my son. I’m doing my best to teach him wrong from other forms of wrong, but ever since his father left it’s been difficult.” “Isssss that so?” asked Xenus. “I must say, you have some of the most striking eyes I’ve ever seen.” Raven giggled, and the faintest hints of a blush appeared through her coat. “Why thank you. You should see the ones I keep in jars. Perhaps I could show you now? And if you’d like to stay for dinner, there’s vegetable stew on the stove.” “That sounds delicious,” said Xenus, stepping past Luna and into the house. He tucked the book into his own bag, then grinned down at Sharp Quill. “Don’t worry. Someday you’ll show them, you’ll show them all.” Sharp Quill perked up noticeably. “Really? Do you think so?” “Yes. Specifically this Friday when you give a ten minute presentation to your class about what you’ve learned from all of this.” “Aww....” “Sharp Quill, don’t argue. I think Lord Xenus and the Princess’ punishment is very fair.” “We have not signed off on that, actually,” said Luna. Neither of the ponies inside seemed to hear her. “Help yourself to the stew. Just make sure you take it from the pot on the left and not the one on the right. I’m skeletonizing a cat in that one.” Then she closed her front door right in the face of four rather befuddled ponies. Luna’s eye twitched, but rather than saying anything she just sighed and turned to walk away from the home in the early evening light. “We are beginning to hate this town.” ------------------- The stars above twisted and shifted under Luna’s ministrations as she tweaked a few of them, moving them just a few degrees on their course. “And to think, I had always heard that the Princess of the Night could set the moon and the stars on their way in just a few minutes when it suited her to do so,” said Spear Shaker’s voice from behind her. “You have been at the endeavor for nearly an hour now, and your guards grow restless.” Luna shrugged. “We merely want this constellation to be perfect, but such perfection eludes us.” Spear Shaker took a seat on the grassy slope beside her with a knowing smile. “Methinks the fault lies not with thy stars, but with thyself. Thou art of a troubled mind.” “Merely very tired. ‘Twas a longer day than we had anticipated. The showers were most welcome, though.” She looked back up at her sky, and Spear Shaker kept silent watch along with her for several minutes more. “We suppose we are also... troubled.” “Troubled? In what way?” he asked. “We came here expecting to battle against darkness, and assuming the worst about somepony just for the form of magic he specialized in. Us, the Princess who is supposed to be the champion of darkness and an example of it working together with our sister’s light as an equal partner. An ideal that we sometimes wonder if we will always be able to uphold.” She smiled at him. “We have been most impressed with your resourcefulness on our visit, Spear. If you’d like, we are certain there could be a place for you in our court in Canterlot once your schooling is complete.” But Spear Shaker just shook his head. “I appreciate that, Princess Luna. But I have a goal of my own and must follow my heart in the matter.” “And what might be so important you would turn down our offer, hmm?” He grinned. “Someday, I shall write books and plays. Dozens of them, for stallions, mares, colts, and fillies alike. Of such quality that they’re taught in every classroom even after I’m gone. And when I have, no students will ever have to suffer through reading material written in a dated, archaic fashion. They shall have works that speak the tongue they are familiar with rather than struggling through a collection of out-of-date slang and meaningless cultural references.” Luna chuckled. “A noble goal. We very much hope to see thee succeed at it. Do save us a first edition for our collection; it will be well worth holding onto, methinks.” Spear Shaker stood up and dusted himself off before bowing. “You flatter me, Your Highness. I am all the better a pony now for having met you, and for that you have my thanks.” Before she could answer, Argent approached from the base of the hill. It seemed her quiet contemplation time was drawing to a close, but it was just as well. Her bed back in Canterlot called to her, and if they left soon she could wrap up court by midnight and retreat to her study for some well-deserved recovery time. “Princess Luna, Pincer just returned from his patrol. We can confirm that none of the zombie gerbils escaped to the east, west, or south of the city. As soon as he’s recovered enough to fly north we’ll be all finished here.” She frowned at the report. Waiting for another patrol to be completed, or even doing it herself, would mean wasting at least another hour or two, which meant delaying her sweet, sweet solitude with a book, a box of chocolates, and a bottle of red wine. “Sergeant, what precisely is to the north of here?” “Umm...” Argent rummaged through his bag and pulled out a map, which he unfurled between them. Just above the nexus of interconnected lines that represented major routes into and out of Fillydelphia there was a swath of green. “It looks like the Everfree Rodent and Small Mammal Preserve, Princess.” Luna grinned. “Prepare our chariot, we are leaving for Canterlot in ten minutes.” “Is that wise? Don’t you want us to finish the patrols first? What if some of the gerbils are still out there?” She shrugged. “We’re sure there won’t be any serious consequences to skipping one patrol, Argent. After all, what is the worst that a few gerbils can do to an entire forest?”