“Rrrrrgh!” Seclorum swung his braced forelimb. The blade at the end of it whizzed through the air, cutting cold swaths out of the canvas material of the tent surrounding him and his opponent.
Josho constantly backtrotted, having to duck his bleeding face as the half-metal stallion swung at him over and over again. At last, Josho kicked a table over, tripping Seclorum. Pulled forward by the weight of his metal parts, the Prime Enforcer slumped to the ground with a grunt.
The obese stallion was instantly on top of him, using his shotgun as a brace to hold the old soldier down. “What do you gain from any of this?! You always had the hard-on for glory, Seclorum, but you never did anything as crazy and mindless as this!”
“You… wouldn’t understand…” Seclorum hissed.
“Understand what, Secchy?!” Josho spat. “That you’re a million miles flipped off your rocker?!”
“I know what my destiny is… my purpose!” Seclorum snarled. “You… you fat, oafish pile of broken dreams and jaded excuses! What do you have to live for?!”
“The funny thing is that I found it on my own!” Josho cocked the shotgun and charged mana into it. “And I can at least name the ponies who I’m trying to save! What about you, manurebag?!”
“Rrrrr-Haaaaaugh!” Seclorum suddenly flexed his metal-laced limbs with a wild show of strength. Carving chasms into the muddy floor below, he slid his hooves together and propped his body up, lifting Josho towards the top of the tent. Gasping, Josho fiddled with the shotgun, trying to get it disentangled from the metal beams of Seclorum’s suit that had now criss-crossed.
With a grunt, Seclorum spun and knocked Josho off of him.
The fat pony went flying. He landed through a table full of military reports, sending chips of wood and shredded bits of paper fluttering everywhere. Coughing, wiping blood from his cheek, Josho weakly stood up. “Okay, remind me never to call you ‘manure bag’ again.”
“This war… this entire conflict...” Seclorum slowly pivoted about on steaming joints. “It was all just a catalyst for something greater than all we’ve ever known or seen with our mortal eyes.” He gritted his teeth. “Ledo doesn’t understand it! Nigthshade doesn’t understand! How can I expect a lard of fat like you to even breach reality?”
“Then just explain it to me!” Josho hollered, panting and bleeding. “Tell me what’s going on here, Secchy! Cuz I really don’t want to fight you, ya old fart!” He hissed in pain, rubbing his neck. “Cuz I’m feeling really old and fartish here myself. Spark alive, my skull…”
“Everything is already in motion,” Seclorum said, his eyes glimmering once again from the flash of shells bursting beyond the shredded tent’s fabric. “It matters little what we say or do. All we have to do is wait.”
“For what?!” Josho ground his hooves against the floor. “Dammit, Seclorum, who did this to you?! Was it Ledomaritan inquisitors?! Xonan torture?” He leaned forward. “The Herald?! Cuz boy do I have a bone to pick with those fanatical poopjobs!”
“She… she is nebulous…” Seclorum suddenly stammered, wheezing. His pupils shrank as he stared off into a blank piece of space several million miles away. “And yet, I feel her breath on my muzzle at every sunrise.” He gulped and tried running a hoof across his face, but couldn’t on account of the cumbersome metal brace surrounding his upper body. “She speaks to me between each blink. Even now, I can hear her… like some age old song.” He gulped. “She… sh-she is near…”
“Who, Secchy?” Josho exhaled. “Who is near?”
Slowly, Seclorum’s muzzle hardened back into a frown. “You will soon know.” He snarled and flung a chunk of wooden debris Josho’s way. “You will all know!”
Josho’s horn was already spitting sparks of mana by the time the rubble could impale him. He disappeared with an inhale and rematerialized with an exhale… into Seclorum’s ears.
The Prime Enforcer gasped, his eyes darting back.
“Let’s go for a trip, buddy,” Josho snarled, propped on Seclorum’s metal-laced backside. Sparks flew from the fat stallion’s horn. “Just like old--”
Both ponies disappeared in a flash of orange lightning.
They reappeared in mid-air, a hundred feet above the rippling tent, bodies twirling together amidst flak and artillery explosions.
“--times!” Josho snarled as the two plummeted.
Seclorum thrashed and thrashed, trying to clasp a hoof around Josho’s body.
The teleporter stubbornly held tight to Seclorum’s shoulder braces, using the pair’s combined weight to swing them both so that Seclorum fell towards the earth first. They dropped past streaking mana blasts, shrieking serpents, and burning managliders. At last, they crashed through a supply tent. Seclorum took the brunt of the impact, but it barely showed. Less than half a second later, he was bucking Josho off him.
The obese stallion flew twenty feet, landed, and came to a sliding stop across twenty feet of mud. He looked up in time to see Seclorum bursting out of the canvas mess like an enraged automaton. The old soldier picked up a metal tent pole and bounded through the muck and debris, dodging two fleeing nurses and bursts of rifle fire as he roared his way across the lofty camp and swung the heavy bludgeon at Josho’s frame.
As Josho teleported in tiny bursts to avoid Seclorum’s violent swings, a Ledomaritan managlider flew overhead. Two Xonans piloted it, lining their deadly craft up with the trenches in order to get a good shot of the base’s remaining M*A*S*H unit.
Before they had the chance to fire, an adoracute pegasus rose up in their sights, smiling from fuzzy ear to fuzzy ear.
“Hey, guys! How’s it hoofin’?!”
The Xonans gasped, jerking at their controls in a startled fashion. The manacraft pulled sharply up, and Rainbow Dash found herself clasping onto the front of it and dangling wildly.
“Whoah! Talk about a skiff-hanger!” Her eyes sparkled. “Hah! Get it?!”
“Vessuul menna trennte! Oss Tray Oh drenna dendar!”
One of the stallions slammed his hoof over the weapon controls. Manablasts fired into Rainbow’s belly--only she had forward flipped at the last second to avoid the point blank attack.
“Y’know… I’ve been meaning to say this for a long time…” Rainbow Dash spoke as she casually glided over the pair’s craniums. “But gesundheit, ya snotty melon fudges.” She reached down with her hooves and flicked both stallion’s horns at once.
“Gaaaah!” Furious, the Xonans turned their aircraft about, sliced through the air in rapid twirl, and chased right after Rainbow’s tail.
“Yeah! Yeah!” Rainbow grinned as she darted up and down, avoiding their weapon blasts as she coasted east through the carnage of battle. “That’s it! Ask not for whom the Rainbow Dashes! She Dashes for you!” Sticking her tongue out, she avoided a heated stream of mana by a hair’s width and dove down past the plateau’s edge. “Last one in is an infected tattoo!”
“Heranna kell thriel!” one pilote shouted to the other as they both plunged the vessel deep into the ravine after her. Blinded by their rage, they barely made out the walls of the trench turning increasingly glossy and metallic on either side of them. The howling of their engines filled the metal world with a mind-numbing echo, confusing them as they squinted to see their foe.
At last, Rainbow appeared--this time as a bearer of a bright ruby lantern. She spun around and hovered to a stop besides a platform full of flinching mares and stallions.
“Hey! I brought a piece of the action!” Rainbow exclaimed breathlessly. “Say, do you guys have telekinesis?”
The stupefied ponies nodded.
Rainbow flinched in the headlights of the oncoming managlider. “Then now’s a friggin’ good time to use it!”
Snapping to the occasion, the majority of the stranded Ledomaritans and Xonans focused with their horns. A strong field of their combined magic formed translucently in front of Rainbow Dash… just in time for the managlider’s arrival. When the small craft hit the pocket of telekinesis, it stopped on a dime.
The pilots’ bodies did not.
“Aaaaaaaaah!” Both flew forward from their seats, flailing. They slammed simultaneously into a large, dormant pendulum. The object swung back from the impact as the two fell like ragdolls, only to be grasped in Rainbow’s dangling hooves.
“Hey! You survived near death!” Rainbow chirped. Her teeth glinted demonically. “Now kiss!” And she slammed their skulls together.
“Unnngh…” Both Xonans were out like a light.
“Hah!” Rainbow dropped their limp bodies to the platform directly beneath her. She dusted her hooves off and planted them on her hips. “Now that’s how you catch a ship!”
And then the heavy pendulum swung back, clonking Rainbow across the back of her skull.
”Owch!”