“Vinyl do you know how to resonate your magic with another unicorn? I also need to know if you can create a wavelength undulation beam.” Twilight looked at the length of the train exposed to the boulders; she had a lot of area to cover with a barrier spell.
“Say what?” Vinyl said flatly as she didn’t know what Twilight was asking of her.
“Can you create a high frequency magical pulse that can explode rocks?” Twilight thought that was hopefully a bit blunter for Vinyl.
“Oh, you want me to create WUBs! Why didn’t you just say so Sparky? I can certainly do that. You’re currently looking at the inventor of the dub trot blaster spell. Octaves always said my music was offensive, I guess she was right after all!” Smiling to herself, Vinyl watched as Twilight face hoofed.
“Can you do it without affecting the barrier spell I’m going to be using, I need you to hit as many of the biggest rocks as you can. I’m going to be diverting whatever you miss and everything else away from the train.” Twilight grit her teeth and started to focus her magic.
“Yeah, just let me get warmed up first.” Vinyl started trotting in place and made a beat with her hooves as her horn lit up. She just started revving up her dub trot blaster spell and prepared it to be let loose.
“I don’t think we exactly have that much time.” Twilight cast her spell and created a sloping barrier above the train in the hope of diverting the boulders with it.
Within a few minutes the minotaur’s started ramming into the boulders to shove them into falling off the cliff and towards the train far below.
“Don’t worry about it, I got this!” Bobbing her head left and right Vinyl suddenly created three tiny beams the arced outwards from her horn and came together to create an orb that exploded into a beam and pulsed straight at one of the falling boulders. Her horn was creating music as it sent fraying pulses of energy along the beam, when it connected with the boulders they shattered into little pieces of shrapnel.
Twilight kept her concentration as a large amount of stones pelted her sloped barrier and slid off to the side of the train. One of the boulders got through Vinyl's blasting and slammed home into her barrier, causing her to gasp out slightly as it bounced off to the side.
“Vinyl, that one seriously stung and I don’t know how many of those I can actually take.” Twilight held the barrier in place, but magical feedback from the weight of the blows was still very much felt. It was one massive blow to her barrier among the raining stones pelting it and sliding off to the side.
“Well you try hitting a bunch of things coming at you all at once and see how you do! Nice barrier you got there by the way.” Vinyl was shouting over the awesome musical blasts she was generating from her horn that turned into powerful rock exploding beats while Twilight made sure none of the smaller pieces hit them.
Rocks were falling and every pony was going to live, even if one or two got past Twilight’s barrier and Vinyl’s musical blasting magic. The caboose was damaged worse than the rest of the still mostly intact train. After a minute of constantly blazing noisy beats from her horn, Vinyl cut the magic flowing to it and started to rub it before quickly flinching and pulling her hoof away.
“My horn is a tad beat here, did we win this thing?” Vinyl said trying to blow on her hot horn, causing a bit of smoke to float off of it.
“No, they are still up there and they are obviously angry that we stopped them. I don’t think that was the end of it.” Twilight figured things were currently easier said than actually done, looking towards the front of the train the path was blocked by some huge boulders that would take some time to move off the tracks. “Tress, I need you to go talk to the conductors about how long it will take them to move the rocks if they can at all and help them if they need anything. It’s either we move forward or we go back to Ponyville. Fluttershy stay with Barb and Octavia. Rainbow I need you follow me, we’re going to figure out why they are attacking ponies. Vinyl you stay here and watch out for anymore trouble, they might try to attack the train from the rear.”
All the ponies confirmed Twilight’s demands and set out in three directions. Vinyl towards the back of the train, Tress towards the front and Twilight herself climbed down the side of the train and started focusing on casting the gravity spell.
“Do you need me to carry… never mind then.” Rainbow watched as Twilight galloped up the side of the mountain to the cliffs above. She followed after her making sure to stay near her friend instead of going ahead on her own.
Twilight slowed down near the top and crawled forward, to look over the edge to see the minotaur’s of all sizes and shapes bellowing at each other. Twilight turned to Rainbow as she hovered nearby before landing on a ledge, she went back to watching as they snorted and growled at one another.
“They’ve already spotted us. There was a pegasus on the train and they have two powerful unicorns.” The large yellow male cow of a minotaur bellowed. “The pegasus could already be going for help!”
Minotaur’s in general had two large horns coming from their heads, two arms ending in five fingered hands and two hooves that they walked upright on. They were a race that was always physically endowed with muscles, only few were ever truly bright and they all hated mazes with a passion. This might explain why they hated red tape and all forms of politics. As such, talking them out of their current course of action wasn’t a good solution. It was just faster than politics to the minotaur nation to listen to the strongest and the smartest of them all, they were practical experts at shotgun diplomacy.
“Fool, we just have to get down there and make sure the train can’t escape or receive aid in time, by the time any help gets here it’ll already be too late for them to do anything.” The large purple minotaur looked to be the leader of the group. He was exceptionally bulky twelve to fourteen feet tall beast and as such his might makes him right. This particular minotaur screamed raider and was dead set on continuing to press the attack, but his motives as to why he was attacking a passenger train were still a mystery.
“Iron Will still thinks this is a very bad idea. If things are going to go down, I don’t want to be around.” Well at least the blue one seemed to be a reluctant part of this assault; he was less bulkier then the rest of them and was a bit smaller compared to the giants around him.
Twilight backed away from looking over the edge as they all started to set off, she turned tail and started back down the wall while thinking. She really didn’t want this to devolve into a hopelessly one sided fight. This reminded her that her parents were always fighting to protect her and her brother, well at least until they moved out that is. Now her parents were probably just fighting to protect each other from the inane weird things that happen around them.
“We still don’t know why they’re doing this, isn’t this breaking a treaty or something?” Asked a gliding Rainbow to Twilight as she walked down the wall with a concerned look on her face. “You look really awesome doing that wall walking thing by the way. A pegasus can do the same thing by back flapping their wings you know.”
“I know, this is a bit frustrating to me too. Go ask Tress about getting the train moving then get back to me.” Twilight had to think of something. She wasn’t about to fight them, doubly so if there were more than just that one who was reluctantly pushed into this situation. All she wanted to do was spend time with her friends and meet Fleur to go to her wedding. Did she seriously have to have all of life’s little problems dropping down on her skull?
Twilight stopped her magic from altering her gravity as she set a hoof on the ground and walked up to the train, she wasn’t about to abandon all the other passengers. There were probably little foals onboard too and possibly just as many mothers and fathers as well. She really didn’t like the way this situation was going towards, some pony was going to inevitably get hurt.
“Well Radiance we got horrible news, bad news and some good news.” Tress had acquired Twilight’s attention immediately as she came up with two stallions that were obviously the train operator and engineer. Rainbow flew down and landed with them. “Well to give it to you straight going backwards is a no go, forward is going to take some time to get the rocks out of the way and the minotaur’s are going to take a good forty minutes to get down here so we’ve got some time. Apparently this engineer here mountain climbs on the weekend and knows the area pretty well.”
“What’s the good news in all that again?” Twilight sardonically asked in the face of all this awful news.
“If we can get the blockage out of the way of the tracks we can get out of here without having to put up a fight. There are not many ponies onboard that look like fighters and I’m willing for a scrap, but against raw muscle like that we’re not exactly in a winning situation here.” Well if Tress had her full Mane-iac powers she could just treat any minotaur like she did the Saddle Rager, keep them at a distance where their muscles would prove ineffective in a fight. “The blockage apparently can’t be safely blasted out of the way or else some of the mountain side might collapse on us, so Vinyl is out on performing another musical number.”
“Well we can protect the rear of the train, every able bodied pony would need to pitch in and fend them off. That course of action will result in casualties or injuries. We could focus on the debris in the way and again get every pony to assist, but then when the minotaur’s arrive we won’t be prepared for them.” Twilight continued to muse over this, things were somewhat dire if they had to face those massive muscles and if said muscles were armed. They had no weapons except unicorn magic. “We could always send Rainbow for help, but she might not be back in time. The one option that we could all do is run away, but then they might give chase to us and could catch up with us. There are ponies that wouldn’t be able to run as fast as others and we’d be leaving them behind to be picked off and I don’t like that idea.”
“We’ll stand our ground and fight, if there are bully bulls attacking innocent ponies then we got to take them by the horns.” The engineer sounded particularly brave for a stallion that was just well toned in general. “In the meantime we have to start clearing the tracks as much as we can. You’re Twilight from the Trouble Takers right? We saw you put up a barrier field and had that unicorn blasting the rocks before they hit the train, can’t you think of something to give us more time?”
“I’ll see what I can do. Come on guys we’re going to tell Fluttershy and Octavia what’s going on.” Twilight wanted to let her friends know about the situation first. She and her friends spent the next thirty two minutes informing all the other ponies onboard of the things going on so far. It was decided that Rainbow would be sent out for help, even if she was incredibly reluctant to leave them behind.
They were gathering ponies for holding the back end of the train which Vinyl was still watching. They had managed to gain some support among the other ponies on the train that were willing to help move the debris out of the way and a few earth pony stallions were more than willing to fight to protect others.
“Sparky, we got trouble and they look like they are preparing to charge us horn first.” Vinyl pointed off at the minotaur’s taking up axes, maces, swords, spears and shields. “I can rev myself up again, just give me the word and I’ll start firing all my WUBs in their direction.”
“Not yet, wait until my barrier goes down before you even start up.” Twilight noted the Minotaur’s were quickly starting to march towards them and looked to be preparing to charge upon the small patch of hapless defenders. Twilight set up a barrier wall between them and the intelligent train raiders with unknown motives. “I don’t want anyone to die here, even those who are attacking us.”
“How long do you think you’ll be able to hold them off on your own?” None of the ponies here were particularly armed for combat or even combatants, not that it would stop Tress from putting up a huge fight personally.
“As long as it takes, I’ll keep it up until my horn goes out. We’re just lucky they didn’t have any projectile weapons when they were up on the cliffs.” Twilight watched as each minotaur lowered their heads and then charged forward to ram into her barrier. It held but Twilight felt a little shaky as they started to lash out with their weapons, she was going to make it hard for them to get to the train.