//------------------------------// // Underestimating your prey.... // Story: The (attempted) assassination and (attempted) horrendous torture of Nyx by the dastardly murderer Cruel Knife (a parody) // by onlyanorthernsong //------------------------------// Cruel Knife grimaced happily as his thoughts turned fondly to the instruments of his wicked trade. Sharp knives, maces, brutal aluminum bats, gory gelding devices. On the sling resting on his back was a large sack, upon which four spells had been placed. The first expanded the carrying capacity of the sack.. expanding it out unto a magically induced pocket dimension which made it bigger on the inside than it seemed from the outside. In fact, two large earth pony stallions could be stashed away without producing a visible bulge.The second spell artificially lightened the weight, making it easy to carry. The third one soundproofed the bag. The fourth was the most important one, for it insulated the sack by disrupting any scrying or locator spells that might be used by anyone attempting to find his victim, as well as stopping any attempts to teleport in or out of the bag. In the pockets of the cloak he wore Cruel Knife carried several items which, at first glance, appeared to be merely rings, but in reality were powerful magic suppressors that when placed upon a Unicorn’s horn, took away their ability to cast magic. Cruel Knife was a Unicorn, and he specialized in Unicorns, long viewed by the small bloody fraternity of Equestria’s hit-ponies as the most dangerous game to catch. Even the ruthlessly efficient Icepony preferred not to take hits on Unicorns. All the better then, for the long term profitability of Cruel’s business model. And indeed it was a Unicorn he hunted today, here in the elegant, crowded streets of Manehattan. A filly wearing a headband and the gleaming white coat of the ancient Unicorn aristocracy. A filly whom he would be able to recognize by her blue kite shield cutie mark with a small crescent moon etching. It was an odd assignment, given to him by what appeared to be a little filly. She had obscured her appearance with a cloak… but she was so obviously young that Cruel was sure she herself was not beyond elementary school. Discord only knew how in Equestria she had tracked him down. But her moneybag was full of real solid gold bits, and that was what mattered. How and where she had obtained it he didn't care, but based on the crown shaped cutie mark he had spotted on her flank when her cloak had momentarily slipped, she probably came from money herself. Cruel Knife loved his work. He would probably be a serial killer anyways, but he was wise enough to know that if one was good at something you never did it for free. And ending a dispute between two rich fillies –ending it permanently- was something that he could easily do. For the right price, duly paid. Though honestly, his main motivation had never been money but rather power…to hold a pony’s life in his hooves, the begging, the pleading. Cruel licked his lips in anticipation. This little spoiled unicorn would probably have grown up with nannies and servants and a plush spoiled life… oh how her world would turn today. Cruel waited… he stood on the city’s most elegant avenue,near one of Manehattan’s prime hotels,where his target and her family were staying. The hustle and bustle of the street helped hide him from hotel security or any other set of curious prying eyes. He was a professional and knew how to melt into the endless stream of activity. He awaited his quarry, keeping an eye out for the dragon servant – a dragon servant! Imagine that! Even such a jaded pony as Cruel Knife was had to marvel at such an extravagance.The information he had indicated that at present, the dragon servant and the little white unicorn were running errands together… find the dragon and the target would only be a few paces away. Suddenly….There!..the dragon..a small one, very young, walking on two feet, and next to him the gleaming white filly.They seemed absorbed in their respective activities and were barely paying attention to their surroundings. It would be easy enough, then, for Cruel Knife to position himself within striking distance. All he had to do was get his hooves on her, put her in the sack and teleport straight to his lair.Cruel moved quickly through the crowd…inching ever closer and closer.. The dragon was presently consulting a map while the filly barely listened to the dragon, utterly absorbed, as she was, in reading the book that floated in front of her. In a moment it was all over… "yel-" *CRACK*.Spike turned around just in time to see Nyx’s book hover in mid air before landing wide open pages down on the street. “Nyx! Nyx!” He called. But in the hustle and bustle of the street, among the endless stream of commerce, Nyx was nowhere to be found. Spike panicked. He had good reason to, for the cracking sound he had just heard was exactly like the sound caused by the sudden collapse of air into the vacuum left behind when a unicorn disapparates through teleportation. Spike had sadly, too much experience with these kinds of situations, since both Twllight and Nyx were frequent targets for kidnappings and attacks by mad cultists, political radicals and the like. This ever present threat was why the headband Nyx was wearing had been encoded with a special locator spell, a spell that was designed to work through a completely verbal incantation, so as to not require a horn thusly allowing any magical creature to use it. Spike de Draco muttered the incantation perfectly…. Checking first the map of Manehattan he had in his hand, and then the small map of Equestria on the map’s back for the telltale blinking sign that marked Nyx’s location …. But there was nothing. Don’t panic! He muttered to himself as he looked around and ….there! Whomever took Nyx left behind her saddlebags.He opened them and took out parchment and pen. He began to write Dear Twilight Sparkle/ Princess Celestia/ Princess Luna/ Princess Cadence/ Prince Shining Armor/ Discord/ any and all of the Elements of Harmony: Nyx has apparently been kidnapped! Yes. Again. Yours truly: Spike De Draco. “All right” he muttered to himself as he took in breath. When he breathed out, he would release his dragonfire, at which point, the scroll would make eleven copies of itself, plus the original,one of which would then go to each of his twelve addressees. Reinforcements would undoubtedly arrive within seconds. He breathed out. What arrived within seconds were twelve scrolls marked “ Return to sender”. Befuddled, Spike unfurled one of them only to find a note attached to it through a clear plastic tape of a kind that relied on polymer manufacturing technology that could not possibly exist judging from the known technological development of Equestrian industry. The note read: Dear Spike De Draco: Twilight Sparkle/Celestia/Luna/Cadence/Shining Armor/Discord and the Elements of Harmony have, through a series of bewildering coincidences much too contrived for the readers to ever believe- and thus never to be explained or described- been rendered completely unavailable for the remainder of this fanfic. For extra safety’s sake,we have also removed Cheerilee and Big Mac, since certainly at least one of the readers is currently willing you to contact them . The reason is that any of these characters are rather powerful and much too attached to Nyx . You see this is a “Nyx gets horribly tortured” story… a subgenre of fanfiction that for reasons the writer will make only too clear in an author filibuster or two is particularly reliant on plot holes, shoddy logic, and contrived circumstances. It is clear and evident that ,If, any of the above characters were in any way shape or form reachable, they would find Nyx and reduce her would-be tormentor into a bloody paste within the time it would take you to finish reading this message. This will not do. We would also have removed the CMC, but it turns out they actually are relevant to the plot. Yours Truly, Itsinthescript, Director, Department of Contrived Plots, Only A Northern Song’s Brain. P.S we just got rid of Spell Nexus as well. I cannot believe we almost forgot him! P.P.S. All your abilities both canonical and fanonical, to go on a growth spurt thus becoming large dangerous and in charge? Yeah we took that away as well. Even you are useless now. Spike reread the note in panic and confusion several times. So many questions….what in Celestia’s green Equestria was a Fanfic ?... But then suddenly one disheartening realization hit him: No help was coming. The cavalry was not going to arrive any time soon…. Before he was able to realize that in a world mainly inhabited by magical talking horses the cavalry and the infantry would logically be exactly the same thing, Spike became overwhelmed by despair… every reader’s POV became a dramatic overhead crane shot as Spike fell on his knees, raising his skinny fists like ( angry and despairing) antennas to the heavens as he screamed out : NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! The great Douglas Adams once pointed out that stress is in fact a major health problem throughout the known Universe. Thus Dear Reader I shall now take a page from Mr. Adams’ book and in the interests of reducing anxiety, inform you that Nyx survives this story in very good shape, suffering from nothing that a few brief therapy sessions won’t successfully deal with. Of course you should already know this given that Nyx is an immortal Alicorn, a resurrected form of Equestria’s Dark Queen and her special talent is explicitly tied to her near indestructibility. Basically if there is a pony you most definitely do NOT want to physically attack, it would be Nyx .But yet, on the other hand, there seems to be an entire subgenre of Nyx torture fics despite these facts so… here we are. Cruel apparated with a pop inside his underground workspace. It was cold and sterile with drains scattered throughout the floor to drain away his victim’s precious life fluids as they oozed or gushed from the grievous wounds Cruel would expertly inflict upon their tormented bodies. More importantly it was magically insulated.. unplottable, unscryable, and even if one of his Unicorn victims took off their magical suppressors it would be impossible for them to message for help, let alone teleport out. The entire place gleamed with malice… electric lights gave the place a dishearteningly sterile glow as the light coldly reflected from the omnipresent metal surfaces. The whole place rather resembled the torture room in David Fincher’s remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and not the disheveled and dirty basement of Sugarcube Corner that everyone imagines in situations like this. Muffled shouts could be heard coming from the sack. Cruel used his magic to ensure the magic suppressant was fully functioning and then, slowly, opened the sack before upending it. Out tumbled the little white Unicorn. She wasn’t scared, not yet, that would come later. Cruel knew, that at this moment, this little unicorn would be more angry and outraged than anything else, especially, if, as he believed to be the case, she turned out to be some spoiled noble brat. “ Let me go” she said in a wavering crystalline voice. “you have made a grave mistake. This kind of has happened to me before. I know this routine all too well” .She ended this proclamation by stomping her little hooves up and down in an adorable little temper tantrum. Yes, Cruel thought, he would enjoy breaking this one. He would enjoy watching the hope die inside of her long before he saw the life leave those eyes as her blood spilled out unto the floor and down one of the drains… “This is the end of the road little one” he growled. He looked at her. Despite it all, her hairband still clung to her. “Let’s take that off” Cruel snarled… his horn lit up ….and his magic utterly failed to grasp the hairband. That was strange. There seemed to be an enchantment on the headband keeping it on. He tried again. To his satisfaction the unicorn became visibly alarmed when it was clear he intended to take off her hairband. “ No ! leave that on! Leave it alone” She squealed in a Panic. One last surge of magic and… there! The enchantment broke and the hairband was off…. And then something happened Cruel did not expect… The pure white coat became mottled and then discolored, as if it were a piece of thin paper placed on top of a large puddle of black ink. The coat gradually changed from a regal white to an equally regal and quite lustrous –indeed the most beautifully lustrous coat Cruel had ever seen- pitch Black.And then quite astoundingly, wings covered in long dark black feathers sprouted from the filly's back. “You are an Alicorn”… Cruel whispered to himself. Oddly, the feisty personality his victim had displayed as a mere unicorn vanished along with her unicorn disguise.The filly now seemed scared, and was audibly sniffling. She kept her head resolutely down, staring at the floor. Normally Cruel relished when his victims fell into despair,but even his brutish brain thought it odd that a filly would , upon revealing to her captor that she was an alicorn, suddenly become scared. Alicorns were much much stronger than the other pony types combined, he would have expected his prey to use her newly revealed alicorn status in some way, perhaps in an attempt at intimidating him into releasing her. “ But where are my manners” – Cruel sneered “ what is your name?” “ Nyx” she wimpered. “ Look at me Nyx” cruel hissed. Nyx did not comply. “ I said LOOK at me .” Nyx raised her head. Cruel took an involuntary step back. Her eyes. She had dragon eyes… turquoise eyes with dragon like slits. Cruel thought he was seeing things. For a moment his brain told him –correctly– that he was looking at a filly Nightmare Moon. Everything except for the cutie mark was a perfect match. The next moment he thought –incorrectly- that that was an insane thought. Cruel had been in prison during the time when Nightmare Moon returned,took over Equestria, and declared eternal night… for a couple of weeks. The whole episode was Equestrian history by the time he got out. And Equestria, alas, was not known for the efficacy of its history teachers. Cruel Knife did not know where Nightmare Moon was, imprisoned somewhere probably. Could this be Nightmare Moon’s daughter? - He thought- the Alicorn filly looked much too old for that…but who knew… maybe alicorns aged differently?… Cruel loved to taunt his victims. To play with them.. to drag it all out. He loved the omnipotence he felt over them. But though he hated to admit it to himself, the truth was that he was becoming increasingly worried. The cloaked filly who had hired him had warned him that his target was powerful… but there were many unicorns that could be called powerful, and there were so many different ways in which such unicorns could be seen as powerful, some much less worrisome than other. But this… an alicorn, any alicorn ,would be phenomenally powerful by themselves , and what is more, would most definitively have phenomenally powerful friends.. This one did not seem to wield any great powers, or if she did she was in no hurry to display them.. but all the alicorns Cruel knew of where royalty… so the friends issue was most definitely still at play. Best to get this over with quickly. He would make sure to add extra acid to the vat to get rid of this body. He looked over towards the black alicorn filly, and noted, that she just stood there, unmoving, stock still, sniffling, yes, but still showing enough defiance to stare at him. Most of his victims ,by this point, were running all over the place frantically searching for a way out, but not the little black alicorn filly. She was either really really naïve or… “ Enough” Cruel growled in the way that one dimensional plot devices in crappy fanfics are wont to. Cruel grasped his bag of tools with his unicorn magic. He walked to a nearby table, keeping his eyes on the alicorn filly. He took out his instruments, wrapped in a cloth,and smiled as he unfurled the cloth. Upon his instruments of death the electric lights brightly gleamed. “ You, ..Nyx was it? Come here” he hissed in an ever expanding attempt to become a cartoonish cliché. “You aren’t, you are not afraid of me??” A hushed voice floated over from the alicorn,“...strangers usually are” . She had said it in the softest sweetest voice… yet Cruel could not help but interpret it as a threat. He could think of no reason anyone would be scared of some snotty little rich filly... and yet he himself could not deny that the little alicorn, not much older than a mere foal, rather unnerved him. He grabbed her in in his magic, not heeding her calls for him to put her down. She levitated her to a nearby wall… ropes came down from sockets in the corners of the room and attached themselves to her legs, surrounding them in tight loops and forcibly spreading her legs apart... No, reader, that is most definitely NOT where this is going… bad reader, bad bad reader… she was now helpless and vulnerable with arteries and veins exposed and ready to be cut. Nyx alternated between desperate squealing pleas to be let go and controlled stern demands to be let go that seemed rather imbued with authority for such a small filly. Then again, one does not spend a few weeks as God Empress of Ponykind, however reluctantly, without learning how to demand things. Cruel of course, had no knowledge of that fact. Too bad for him. “Silence! “Cruel roared, hoping to silence the little filly. But to no avail. Cruel grasped his sharpest scalpel in his magic. Death by a thousand cuts should silence her… or at least turn her whining demands into the much more pleasant gasps and moans of suffering and pain… or the delicious sound of a terrified pony pleading for her life. The scalpel moved towards one of her creepy-weepy dragon eyes. Nyx flinched at the last second but Cruel Knife's scalpel still managed to dig a good chunk out of one of her eyebrows. She wimpered in pain. Cruel was pleased to see drops of blood splatter unto the white linoleum floor. He grasped her head with his magic and moved closer to look at his handiwork. There was the wound. But then to his utter astonishment the wound closed up… as if an invisible zipper had just sealed itself up. Once again Cruel slashed, leaving a gash across Nyx’s face… but it sealed right up and within a minute the scar itself had disappeared completely. Cruel was … discomfited… though he was not about to reveal this to his victim. Cruel moved closer to Nyx. With a quick flick of Cruel's magic a throwing dagger flew towards Nyx’s head. Even for an alicorn, there simply was no time to duck or move. The blade firmly planted itself in her forehead just below her horn …she made no sound. There was no sound at all. …except for the sound of the knife clanging onto the floor. Nyx’s forehead was intact. No wound. Cruel could not believe his eyes.. it appeared the young filly’s body had pushed out the blade and closed the wound! Cruel checked the suppressor. It was still on her horn and still working. There was something in her alicorn nature that made it possible for her to still access her magic.There would be no more playing around. Cruel was done goofing off. Time to finish her off. With his magic he levitated a pair of magical forceps. With them he forced one of Nyx’s eyes open, the forceps holding the eyelids apart. He then reached with his magical grasp and found a particularly vicious serrated knife with a razor sharp point. Slowly, using the center of the Dragon-slitted iris as his target, he brought the knife to bear against Nyx’s eyeball, intending to skewer through it and onwards to her brain. The little filly strained against her restraints… finally the blade neared the eye.. its sharp cruel form reflected on the glistening eyeball.. it made contact with the cornea.. and the blade-made of reinforced steel-bent outward like a limp noodle. It caused not even the smallest dent on the eye itself. Cruel was dumbstruck. So dumbstruck that he did not notice Nyx’s eyes begin to glow white, or her eyelids crumble the metal forceps like it was made of paper. Nor did Cruel Knife notice that her mane began to ebb and flow like it was underwater, pulsating with currents of ethereal energy. What Cruel did not know (nor Nyx for that matter) was that Princess Luna had installed a “ fail safe” within the spell she had used to de-power Nyx. Knowing full well that the former Nightmare Moon would become a walking target, the spell would temporarily and partially revert itself if Nyx was in Mortal danger, thus allowing her to access her powers in order to defend herself. “ENOUGH!!!!!!!” Nyx thundered in the Royal Canterlot Voice, stunning herself, to say nothing of Cruel Knife who was staring at her with full rapt open mouthed attention. . At that precise moment her bindings decided to spontaneously catch fire… molten liquid metal dripping to the floor. Finally she floated unto the middle of the room and gently put herself on the ground. She disapparated with a *Pop*, because to Tartarus with anti-apparition wards and unscryable locations that were magically sealed… they meant nothing to a pissed off and terrified little Alicorn Demigoddess. Ten Days Later, Nyx and Spike walked the streets of Ponyville, en route to Sweet Apple Acre, where they would check on Apple Bloom. Despite the fact that all the adult relatives out to the third degree of the Elements of Harmony had mysteriously disappeared , there was no panic,nor even increased security patrols. Why? Because the writer of this story is lazy and wants to get on with it. “ It is truly strange” Nyx remarked “It has been ten days since my latest kidnapping attempt and the simultaneous dissappeareance of the elements , my school teacher, and most of the families of two of my closest friends.. and somehow it is only today that we decided we should go collect Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle and have them stay with us In the Library until... whatever this is ...is dealt with,.” “ Yeah it Is odd isn’t it” Spike concurred “ like the idea didn’t even cross our minds until this morning”. Nyx frowned before speaking. “ Come to think of it Spike, we have been acting rather oddly..I am starting to think there may have been something in those pastries you found the day after my most recent kidnapping You know, at Sugarcube Corner, when you were looking for Pinkie Pie”? “ Oh you mean the Idiot Balls, Nyx?” “ Yes Those! Precisely! They were rather delicious… but I wonder if they were laced with something” “Yeah" Spike concurred," it probably wasn’t my best idea to start eating pastries that I found in Pinkie’s bedroom immeadiately after Pinkie herself had mysteriously vanished” “ You know the other thing” Nyx continued, for as the last of the Idiot Balls were metabolized out of her system , her mental faculties, which given both her unique origin and home environment were rather prodigious, sharpened by the moment, “The other thing that strikes me as odd is that no one seems to be panicking. According to the letters you received, both Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are unable to communicate with anyone...and as far as we know no one has in fact heard from them, yet there is no panic or in fact any acknowledgement what so ever that anything is out of the ordinary.’ “I guess it is because the sun and the moon are keeping to the schedules posted in the Earth Pony Almanac which probably means that Celestia and Luna are still in control of them. Odd that they still have control of them but cannot communicate with us in any way…”Spike said. "Well I suppose that is true” Nyx said.. “ but it cannot possibly be the case that the population has failed to notice that Miss Cherilee is missing, or Rarity, or mom for that matter. 'I had a bad dream last night.I dreamt that I was a character stuck in a badly written story. The basic premise was something totally ridiculous.. I don’t remember what it was… but like nothing made sense… like the writer did not fully consider all the consequences of the main events of the story… and instead of working them out, he claimed that his story was very “ meta” and so the lack of logic was “humorous” as long as he made it clear to his readers that he was aware of the problems in his story, instead of actually doing anything to remedy…” ... “ Look we are almost there” Spike interrupted, Indeed, Exposition Lane ( for that was the name of the road that led to Sweet Apple Acres) was soon reaching its end… one final turn and the farmhouse would be in view. And there it was. Nyx’s breath caught in her throat the moment she saw the farmhouse… there were no signs of life… and what was worse the front door had been wrenched clean off of its hedges and deposited many feet away.It was a clear clean break. No earth pony could kick it off so cleanly, no this was the work of a magically powerful unicorn well versed in offensive magic. Nyx was now running ever faster and faster … frantically yelling out Apple Bloom’s name… she scrambled towards the stairs noting in passing that the kitchen was a complete shambles... the living room was sacked… even the little office where Big Macintosh kept track of the farm’s finances was a mess. Nyx rushed up the stairs. She burst into Apple Bloom’s bedroom… What Nyx saw there caused her blood to freeze in her veins. Finally she walked towards the bed… Right in the middle of Appleblooms bed, a massive and very familiar looking serrated knife was planted smack dab in the middle of the top mattress. Impaled on the knife was an envelope. Even though the hilt of the knife obscured some of the details, Nyx could make out the black spiky writing on the envelope. It was addressed to her.