//------------------------------// // Ponyville vs. Squirrel Jensen(Part 1) // Story: Gods and Fishing Lines // by Dancing Question //------------------------------// “HOLD IT!” The yellow pegasus shouted. Surprisingly, the squirrel listened and stopped in the middle of the marketplace. Her rabbit rushed in front of me before I could get too close to the wreckage that comprised the area. It pointed to the squirrel, and then made a throat slitting motion. A white rabbit is telling me to kill things. I imagine that’s the type of thing you say when you’re trying to make an insanity plea. Maybe I should dispel the javelin I’ve got pointed at the ground. “Now, I don’t know who made you into a giant, or replaced your arms and legs with those fake ones, and they’re going to get a piece of my mind if I ever find them. But that is no excuse to be running around town trying to trample everypony!” She said, chewing out the squirrel in a surprisingly maternal fashion. The rabbit was pointing from my javelin, to the squirrel, and was getting what I can only imagine was an exasperated look on its face. “Now, why don’t you stay still for a moment while I go get Twilight, and I’ll go see if she can find you a giant acorn.” the yellow pegasus continued as she flew up to nuzzle the squirrel. Amazingly, the squirrel didn’t kill her. I dispelled my javelin and moved in to get a closer look after she flew away, despite the rabbit facepalming. It was really quite fascinating, with the gems, and the runes, and the gluelike musculature despite the claws that deterred me from getting too close. The pegasus said she knew Twilight. Was this Fluttershy? I saw a sudden flare of orange light and quickly managed to hide behind some of the wreckage with a new conjured javelin. I couldn’t see whoever just teleported in, but they might not be able to see me either. I heard voices distorted by an unnatural buzzing. “That was… unexpected,” I heard one of them say. ”What should we do? We don’t have enough data, and he’ll have our heads if we let this be reverse engineered.” “Before we discuss that, we still have a test subject lurking about,” one of the voices said. Oh crap. “Somepony with the will to create a weapon,” another voice said. “But not the will to use it,” the other voice said with a hint of contempt. Please tell me they can’t see me? “Come out or we start using fire magic!” One of the voices called out in that same distorted buzzing. I’ll come out and fire on 3. 1… 2… 3… When I rushed out to fire/throw a javelin, it turned out to be the two ponies in the bee masks. Unfortunately, one of them deflected my attempt at an arcane suckerpunch with an orange bubble shield. “Maybe this subject will actually give us some real data?” The shielded pony asked rhetorically. ”Yes, I suppose he’ll have to do,” the pony’s partner responded. “You know, you actually had several opportunities to end the experiment,” The shielded pony addressed me. “W-what experiment?” I asked shakily. “You actually could have ended it at any time during this conversation even. It wasn’t even in berserker mode. All you had to do was fire at the squirrel,” the formerly shielded pony responded. As he said that, his partner fired a beam of green energy through its mask at the squirrel. The squirrel had just been standing there the whole time, waiting for Fluttershy to come back with Twilight. When the beam hit it, the runes on its limbs started glowing bright orange as it started screaming, and I started running like hell, because I wanted to get as many buildings and alleyways between me and that thing as possible. “Too late now though,” I thought I heard one of them say as I heard the crashing of augmented limbs behind me. By the time I found myself at the gingerbread house again, I realized I had forgotten to take one thing into account. Squirrels can climb. I learned this the hard way, when it jumped over me and landed in my path. Given how open the space was around the gingerbread house, I had no chance of outrunning it. My only chance now was to fire, and if that didn’t work, the only plan B I had involved more dakka. Just as I fired my javelin at the squirrel’s center of mass, I heard a cannon go off on one of the rooftops and the squirrel was knocked out of my javelin’s path by… party supplies? As it started getting up, I noticed there was still a hint of an orange bubble shield like what one of the ponies in the bee masks was using. Oh frak oh frak oh frak oh frak oh frak oh frak oh frak. “Don’t just stand there, EVERYPONY RUN!!!” I heard Pinkie Pie shout from one of the rooftops. The squirrel took to the rooftops again in an attempt to pursue her. I’d ask her why she has cannons loaded with party supplies, but I needed to keep up with her and the squirrel, they were rooftop hopping like it was an anime, and I had to keep myself from running into any panicking ponies. As I was running after them and the trail of damaged roofs they left in their wake, a rainbow colored blur slammed into the squirrel from the side, sending it off the rooftops and out of my line of sight before I managed to find an opportunity to start firing again. While it afforded me an opportunity to slow down a bit, I still didn’t waste much time getting to where they were. Rainbow Dash managed to take to the air again by the time I got there. “Who puts a shield on a giant squirrel?!” She shouted as she was dodging around the squirrel’s strikes and occasional jump attack. Well, if she’s tanking… “I know dashie, bubble shields? What about bubble gum? I like bubble gum it’s just so chewy but then I get a tummyache if I chew it too long and then I can’t have any cupcakes which is bad because cupcakes, hey Binary, does that squirrel’s shield look like bubble gum?” she asked me as she came out of the bushes with another cannon, despite being on the roof a few seconds ago and the fact that neither her nor the cannon could have possibly hidden in there. “Hey, if you aren’t going to help us stop this thing, you need to get outta here,” Rainbow Dash shouted at me exasperatedly as she dodged one of the squirrel’s attempts at attacking her by flying above the squirrel’s reach. The squirrel started climbing again while Rainbow Dash flew up to shout that at me, and I had a sneaking suspicion that if the squirrel did a jump attack off that building, the results wouldn’t be pretty. Plan D for dakka is a go. Unfortunately, by the time my incredibly tired self couldn’t take the mental exertion any further, I only had a 2 by 2 array of them floating in front of me, and my mind felt like it could barely take that. So I fired one of them off, and despite the fact the squirrel was looking at Rainbow Dash (IE paying no attention to the javelins), it hit the squirrel’s shield before I dispelled it and some of the pressure in my mind let up. As I tried firing my other javelins in quick succession (Note to self: learn simultaneous javelin firing if you live through this), it became clear that the squirrel’s shield was operating on some kind of automated system, because it never noticed them until they disrupted its climbing. When Pinkie Pie joined in with her cannon full of party supplies, the shield started to change color. Unfortunately, we had the squirrel’s aggro again by that time, so we had to vacate the extremely festive premises. "Thanks, I'm going to go find a stormcloud!" Rainbow Dash shouted as she flew above us. So Pinkie Pie and I were running away from the squirrel that would be our inevitable deaths, but somehow she was able to scream continuously the whole time, and I would probably get hit if I slowed down enough to be able to ask why. So we kept running, and by some surreal miracle the squirrel didn’t gain on us enough to trample us. As the squirrel building hopped in front of us yet again, we heard another crash indicative of rooftop damage. As that happened, we heard a particularly high pitched scream that may be weaponizable in the right circumstances. “That's probably Rarity, and she is not happy about the spa's roof being destroyed,” Pinkie Pie said in an aside to me. I felt a jolt in my gut and suddenly found myself near the edge of the street, with Pinkie Pie on the other side of it. “Hey, look what I’ve got,” Twilight Sparkle said teasingly as she teleported into where Pinkie Pie and I were going with Fluttershy and an orange earth pony in a cowboy hat. Finally, a moment to catch my breath. I could only briefly see them though, because a giant acorn quickly blocked the view. As the squirrel charged over and began devouring the acorn, Twilight, Fluttershy, and who I can only presume is Applejack due to the apple cutie mark I could now see teleported over to us. “Can anypony tell me why there’s a giant squirrel rampaging through Ponyville?! Or why it’s got such dangerous looking fake arms and legs? ” Twilight asked as she looked at the squirrel more closely. As she did, her expression turned to horror. “I… I’m not sure what would be worse, if the squirrel is weak against fire or if it isn’t.” “Why would the squirrel being weak against fire be a bad thing?” I asked Twilight. “If the squirrel is weak against fire that means somepony figured out how to adapt the butterfly wings spell to produce artificial muscles. That’s one of the most advanced spells I know. If it’s true, whoever enchanted the squirrel’s arms and legs is very good at it. I didn’t even know this was possible. If they weren’t using such original research to attack a town full of innocent ponies,” She shuddered a bit, “Then I’d be asking them a lot of questions. When whoever’s responsible is brought to justice, I might ask them those questions anyway. The research is that groundbreaking,” she nerdgasmed. “Sugarcube, are you telling us that somepony used the spell that almost killed Rarity to mess with squirrels?” The orange earth pony asked her. “Applejack, if the muscles on its arms and legs melt easily; that’s exactly what I’m saying,” she said as the yellow pegasus started looking incredibly disturbed. Nailed it. “I really don’t want to test that theory,” Twilight said as she fired what looked like a glowing purple sparkler out of her horn at the squirrel. The squirrel’s shield blocked it, along with the color shifting one she fired afterwards. “That squirrel’s shield blocked both my sleep spells, so if anypony has anything to share that might let us deal with the squirrel without setting Ponyville on fire and making a lot of ponies throw up, now’s the time.” she said. “Well, I was there when, look, I may be able to guess your name,” I looked at the yellow pegasus as I said this, “but it’ll be pretty embarrassing if I get it wrong. For now, call me Binary. I’ve already met Twilight and Pinkie Pie. You are…” “My name’s Fluttershy,” she said in that barely audible voice she used earlier. “Alright, so I was there when Fluttershy calmed the squirrel down and got it to stop trampling things. Then a pair of ponies in cloaks and bee masks showed up and mentioned that apparently this is some kind of twisted experiment and that they’d be punished if they let the squirrel be reverse engineered, before they insulted me for not killing the squirrel with an ice javelin. Then one of them fired a beam of green energy at the squirrel after they mentioned a berserker mode. Then the squirrel started screaming before it came after me. It's extremely susceptible to knockback from attacks with physical components, in spite of its shielding. The shield also changed color briefly when it was exposed to sufficient physical force. At the very least, we may have enough firepower to put a dent in its shielding. ” Applejack gave me a weird look. “So, ‘Binary’, where in tarnation would you get an ice javelin?” “I can make them appear out of nowhere. They're actually pretty useful, they helped me keep the squirrel from jump attacking Rainbow Dash.” “Never mind that, if they’re using the enchantment I think they’re using, this is very bad.” Twilight said to us as she seemed on the verge of panicking. “If I was going to use magic to make somepony go berserk, I don’t think I could do it without accelerating their metabolism as a side effect. The squirrel would have rampaged itself out eventually and fallen unconscious. We just gave it enough fuel to continue. The food managed to go deeper into the squirrels brain than the enchantments and override them temporarily, but as soon as that squirrel finishes eating, it’s going to start rampaging again.” ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author's Note: I am currently operating without any editors or prereaders. If anyone wants to help me make this more coherent/point out any blatant errors, I might delay publishing my chapters when I finish writing them so they can be preread. Like I said, I'd appreciate hearing about any errors I may have made in writing this. Also, if I haven't made you go WHAT at least once during this story, I'm not trying hard enough.