INTERMISSION
Poking Around
INTERMISSION
Poking Around
The two ponies ran as fast as they could, spurred on by the raging roar of the angry pony behind them. And if that hadn't been sufficient, the bullets impacting around them were also doing a pretty good job. Misty glanced behind them.
"They're gaining on us!" she yelled.
"This is ridiculous!" Lemon yelled back. "Why do you get us into these situations?"
"Oh, like last time was my fault! Remember the bloodwings?" Misty threw back.
"Shut up," Lemon Frisk grumbled. "That was an accident!"
"So was this!"
"You call that an accident? You bloody walked up to their boss, and—"
"All right, all right. So it wasn't an accident. I was just curious."
"There!" Lemon said, nodding towards what looked like a bomb crater from the war. "We may hold out in there!"
Misty Cloud followed his lead, and together they took cover.
The old ghoul looked at his travelling companion, who seemed thoroughly out of breath. "But, really, Misty? Was that absolutely necessary?" he asked.
"I'm sorry, okay?" Misty replied. "I didn't know he'd react like that!"
"It's not because I don't mind you doing that, that you gotta go poking other ghouls!"
Misty sat upright and stared at him. "Wait, you don't mind?"
Lemon Frisk swiftly pulled the stable pony back down. Bullets whizzed over their heads, and impacted in the dirt at the other side of the crater. "Are you insane? He'll shoot your head off!"
"Sorry!"
She turned towards him. "But, you really don't mind?"
"There's a time and a place for discussing these things, Misty," Lemon Frisk said, shooting her an angry glare. "This is decidedly not it."
"Well, what else can we do?" Misty said, shrugging. "We're kinda pinned down."
"...are you bucking serious? How about, trying to find a way out of this mess?"
Misty sighed. "Yeah, okay." A quick peek over the edge revealed that, thankfully, it was just the leader of the ghoul gang firing at them. The rest seemed content just letting him vent his rage.
"Why'd he react like that, though?" she wondered aloud.
Lemon groaned. "You need to ask? He's a bucking gang leader! Those guys have a reputation to uphold. You just showed, in front of his whole gang, that he's ticklish!"
"Well, yeah, but... most ponies are."
Lemon rolled his eyes. "That is so completely beside the point."
"Still. You're okay with me poking you, then, but not other ghouls?"
Lemon looked at her, dumbfounded. "What? You can't be serious. You saw what happened!"
Misty produced a sly smile. "Sounds to me like you're jealous!"
"No!" Lemon yelled. "Agh! Come on! The point is, you don't go around poking ponies, in general!"
"Ponies that aren't you, you mean."
Lemon slumped down. "I give up. You're impossible."
Bullets kept spraying over them, accompanied by the raging shouts of the gang leader.
Lemon Frisk looked at the mare lying in cover beside him. "Why do you do it, though?" he asked.
"To see how they react, duh," she replied.
Lemon blinked. "You seriously wouldn't be alive if I hadn't met you first."
Misty laughed. "Probably, yes. Though in your case, I may have ulterior motives."
Lemon tilted his head slightly. "Do I want to know?"
"Probably not, but, when did that ever stop me?" Misty said, grinning.
"Ugh. Let's hear it then."
Misty gave him the most seductive look she could manage, and nuzzled his neck. "Maybe, just maybe... I keep hoping, that one day..." She moved her mouth closer to his ear, and started whispering. "...you'll return the favour."
Lemon Frisk could've sworn that for a moment, he could feel blood pumping through his old undead veins. Towards all the wrong places. "Buh... wah... you..."
Misty burst out laughing. "You are so easy to tease, you know that?"
Suddenly, she noticed the shooting had stopped. "You know, that guy may be advancing on us." she said. "We might want to start shooting back."
"Do you ever run out of bad ideas?" Lemon asked. "If we shoot back we get the whole gang on our tail."
"Kinda too late," a gruff voice said from right above them. The ghoul gang leader was looking at them, a grenade hanging from the side of his mouth with the pin. "Any last words?"
Misty glanced over the edge of the crater, and saw the rest of the gang had stayed quite a bit behind.
She smiled at Lemon Frisk. Her ghoulish companion gave her a mad grin of his own.
The next moment, the grenade, minus the pin, was flung straight up out of the crater in an aura of orange magic. The gang leader looked at the two madly grinning ponies with an utterly baffled look on his face, the grenade pin still hanging from his mouth where the rest of his grenade had been. The explosion in the air thoroughly muffled the two words the entrenched ponies yelled as they pulled their attacker down.
"Tickle fight!"
* * *
Two ghouls looked at the huge crater in the distance. The howling wind blowing through the ruined skyscrapers around them prevented them from hearing any sounds that might’ve been coming from the crater.
"You think they got him or something?" one of them, whose face was nearly completely bare skull, asked.
The other, who seemed to only have one eye, shook his head. "Got Marsh Land? Come on. There's just no way."
"He doesn't seem to be coming out, though." Skull pondered.
One-Eye grinned. "My guess, he's returning the favour, if ya know what I mean. Hur hur."
"With a smoothcoat?" Skull seemed like he would've frowned, if there had been any tissue left on his face to do that with. "I dunno. Didn't seem like his type, really. And you know he's had his eyes on Meadow for ages."
His companion rolled his single eye. "Yeah... literal ages. Really, you'd think that after more than a century, he'd get the hint."
"I dunno. She's not seeing anyone else either." Skull said, his face as expressionless as ever. "I think she's just playing hard to get. After all, they got all the time in the world."
"All the time in the world with no nookie?" One-eye grinned. "Yeah, screw that. Better have fun while you still got the tools. I swear, another decade, and I'm making a move on her. Boss or not." He peered in the direction of the crater. "That is, if they didn't really get him."
"Think we should go take a look?"
One-eye nodded. "Let's."
* * *
"Oh, come on, mister Marsh. I'm sure she likes you." Misty said. "From our encounter, though, I think you have problems properly expressing your feelings."
"Ya think so?" the ghoul gang leader asked.
"Oh yes. Suppressed emotions can cause unexpected bouts of violence. No mare likes a wife beater, you know."
"Huh. Ah never looked at it like that. So ya think I gotta change mah attitude? Dunno how the rest of the gang's gonna take that."
"How long have they known you?"
Marsh Land shrugged. "About a century an' a half, most of 'em."
Misty nodded. "I don't think ponies that stick together for that long would suddenly break up just because you get a little gentler around a pony you care for."
"Ah dunno. Ah think Dasher's got 'is eye on 'er as well, y'know?"
The two ghouls stared in amazement at their boss, who was sitting calmly between the two ponies they'd been chasing, and was apparently getting dating advice. Or counseling. They weren't quite sure.
"Well if you keep beating around the bush for a zebradamned century, who could blame me?" One-Eye, who was apparently called 'Dasher', yelled into the crater. "Hay, it's about bloody time you swept her off her hooves instead of acting all tough around her."
* * *
As they walked back to Stable 69, Misty Cloud was looking smug. Insufferably smug.
"You can stop it already," Lemon Frisk said. "Seriously."
"It all worked out in the end, didn't it?" Misty said, grinning.
"I said, stop it," Lemon Frisk said. "Just... stop it. Completely. Different subject."
"All right," Misty said, still grinning. "Hey, Lemon Frisk... we never did finish that conversation we had in the crater. Soo... you don't mind me poking you, then?"
Lemon Frisk just sighed. This was going to be a long trip.
*** THE END ***