HiE Powered (a parody)

by Elric of Melnipony


Chapter 6: XP Gained, Knowledge Increased

Sergeant Major Lieutenant Commander Captain Captain Kyle Batshit – paratrooper, combat trainer, flight leader, weapons expert, Senior Thing-Doer with the Classified Command, longbowman for King Henry, charioteer, Elvis Impersonator Third Class, and so much more – was completely dumbstruck. Something that was supposed to die... hadn't. This was completely new to him. As far as shocking things went, on a scale from one to ten, magical talking ponies rated maybe pi. But one of his targets actually living? That was well on its way to territory primarily occupied by Spinal Tap custom amps.

Not knowing where the creature's vital organs were – or even if it had any – Kyle shot a quick grid pattern covering the troll's entire torso, silently giving thanks to Princess Celebrate Good Times (Come On) for a weapon that didn't run out of ammo. He stepped back to survey the results of his work.

The troll remained standing. And grinning. “Lahl”, it rumbled. Once again, he had only chipped it.

Fine. It had to have a brain, didn't it? One shot, from up close, to the middle of the forehead.

“Lahl, yurg ae.”

Oh, that's right; that didn't work the first time. Vulnerable points? Of course! That black pit that concealed (or was) the beast's eye! That looked promising.

The troll's head recoiled and seemed to vibrate briefly. It spoke one last time, in a tone that almost sounded like an accusation. “Yoom adh.” It then collapsed with a sound like a tiny rockslide.

In the tradition of all good fantasy heroes, Kyle checked the body for valuables. To his great disappointment, he found nothing. Weren't even the lowliest of monsters supposed to have some gold on them? Wasn't that in the rules or something?

He returned to the area where he had left Twilight, and the light of the rising moon showed him a large, lumpy shape that hadn't been there before. Closer inspection revealed a brand new hill. Remembering the unicorn's words, he stuck out a hand and found it passed through the surface like air. He ducked and stepped inside. “Neat trick,” he said.

Twilight blushed at the compliment. “Thanks. It's the sort of spell that's good to know when there are religious nuts in the neighborhood.”

“Religious nuts?”

“Shadowfax Witnesses, Latter-Day Secretariats, ponies like that.”

Kyle tilted his head a few degrees. Somehow those names sounded familiar, but he dismissed it.

Twilight changed the subject. “I noticed that you fired an awful lot of shots. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. It's just... well, it was a lot tougher than I thought it would be. I wouldn't admit this to any humans, but it shook me up just a little.”

“It's all right. I won't tell anypony. Or any other being.”

“Thanks, Twilight.” He finished the last of his bedtime rituals in silence, and stretched out on his side, facing away from her. Seconds later, he had two hooves draped across his ribs and the head of a sleepy pony drooping down in between them. He considered her attraction weird, but at least she was cute. And a little friendly contact was welcome after his freaky combat experience with a monster that didn't know how to properly book a ticket to the afterlife. They slept.


Kyle converted distance ahead into distance behind with a steady jog. He called out, “I know a girl who lives by the hill!”

Twilight Sparkle had trouble keeping up with him on the ground at this pace, so she was getting some flight time, above him and slightly to one side. She cheerfully sang back the line, word for word.

There were still scenes of destruction, but they seemed fresher; Kyle was sure they were catching up with the trolls. “She won't do it, but her sister will!”

Twilight repeated the new stanza. She liked these songs because they reminded her of her brother. Some of the lyrics he had learned in guard training were quite inappropriate for a schoolfilly, so they were perfect for when he had wanted to trigger a fit of the giggles in her. A bit of Kyle's material was pretty racy, too – or at least she had calculated a pretty high probability that it was. The summoning spell had made sure ponies could communicate with the human and vice versa, but that didn't necessarily mean they always understood each other.

Reminiscing about her brother soon had her remembering other topics, but one memory refused to surface completely no matter how much she dug at it. Later, when they took a break for lunch, she brought it up and hoped that talking about it would aid her recall. “You know, Kyle, I feel like I've read something about these things before. I don't think it was a text that anypony really gave much weight to, though. Nopony else had seen a troll, to the best of my knowledge, and I want to say the scholar was discredited for some reason.”

Kyle replied with a manly approximation of a thoughtful grunt.

“I just don't know for sure. If only I were back at the library! I could get some real research done.”

Kyle mostly read books about guns or booze. (Or quantum chromodynamics, but only when he was in the right mood.) “I guess education about trolls would be an okay reason to kill some trees.”

KER-SPLOOSH! An immense tree fell into and across the river a short trot downstream. The watercourse had been getting wider as they followed it, but the tree spanned it with room to spare. The pony and the human could see the natural dam starting to redirect the flow of water.

“It's... still intact,” Twilight said in a flat tone, looking at what had once been the lower end of the tree.

Kyle followed her gaze and knew immediately what she meant: the tree was still attached to an extensive root system. There were some breaks at the edges of the root ball, but the intact portion was at least three times his beefy size. “That's not normal at home. It's not normal here either, is it?”

“No, it's not.”

They cautiously made their way to the former base of the tree. Not surprisingly, they found a deep, wide pit that water was starting to trickle into. Only a little surprisingly, they found a troll standing at the bottom, staring stupidly up at the core of the root system. “Lahl, wunwunwun,” it ground out, seemingly pleased with itself.

Twilight dropped down on her haunches. “I don't believe this. It must have been digging for hours, and for what? What purpose does this serve? Why would it do this?”

Kyle put on something resembling a thoughtful expression. “I think it's like you said: tearing things down is all they're good for.”

The rocky creature turned in place and looked up at them. “Hei gise.”

The human's eyes darted over to his pony companion. “Did that mean anything?”

The disgusted princess sighed. “I don't know, and I don't care.”

Kyle dropped to one knee and spoke loudly and slowly, like an American tourist. “I... have... something... I... want... you... to... see!” The filthy silicon-based foreigner tried to pretend it didn't understand perfectly good English (or possibly Equestrian), but was fortunately looking at him anyway. He shot it in the eye.

Twilight walked around the edge of the hole until she was opposite the tree, sat down again, and closed her eyes. Her horn began to glow.

“Uh, hey, Twilight, are you okay? Don't worry, I'll figure out how to get rid of this tree. Don't want it blocking the stream, right? Maybe I can blow it up or something.” At that moment, Kyle noticed that said tree was tilting upwards and sliding back into its former place. He scrambled backwards. “The hell?” He looked around. Concentrating pony, glowing horn, tilting tree – glow of same color covering all of the uppermost limbs of the tree. This meant something; this was important. An even larger glow appeared as dirt was telekinetically bulldozed into the hole from several directions at once.

Twilight opened her eyes, inspected her work, and nodded in satisfaction. “Much better.”

Kyle was having trouble stringing words together. “How... I mean magic, yeah, but... how?”

“It's all about leverage.”

“Oh. 'Kay.”

“We need to get moving. Also, the mental focus for my spellcasting helped me remember some things.”

“Such as?” Kyle could tell that if this conversation had been a comedy routine, he would have been stuck as the straight man.

“The unicorn who wrote about trolls. It's not that he produced bad work, it's just that he was a bit odd.”

“Odd how?”

“Well, for starters, he thought he was King of the Llamas.” Twilight said this in the same manner that another might say that the weather was pleasant.

This was far from the weirdest thing Kyle had heard since his arrival. “Anything else?”

“Well, he also had a lot of his research ignored or mocked just based on his name.”

“Which was?”

Twilight took a deep breath. “Haywind the Flatulent.”