Panting heavily, Steve reached the edge of the village. Good, he looked around and saw that there was a bustle of movement in the streets. They’re on the defensive. He took a moment to calm his breathing, and moved to the central part of town. With a gaze upward, he determined that it was some time around midnight. None of the zombies were currently in sight, and the inhabitants of town were shoring up their doors.
Which building is most defensible… Steve scanned the immediate surroundings of the town square, and, sure enough, he spotted a few promising locations. Too many windows, he thought dismissing the candy-looking building. Too flammable, he dismissed the library. Finally, his sights set on a circular tower-ish building. Optimal. He stood up and made a short jaunt over to the potential impromptu fortress.
He gave the door three knocks and called upward, “Hello?” After a few moments, the door made the sounds of latches coming undone, and it opened a crack. A blue eye stared at Steve from within the small opening, then the door opened wider to reveal the most feminine unicorn he had met yet (though the hair curlers were the biggest giveaway). “Hi, sorry to impose, but-“
“What in equestria is all that racket,” the mare demanded.
“That would be everyw-,” Steve began, and corrected himself, “everypony getting ready for an attack. Could this village use this building as a shelter to centralize the defense?” As soon as the words left his mouth, the door swung open.
“Preposterous,” the mare replied as she lit up her horn and fixed her mane to a frilly curl, “Ponyville hasn’t been attacked since the parasprite invasion, and they’re long gone. Go on, off to bed with you.” She began to lift a hoof to shoo him away, when a gurgling noise from behind Steve (combined with a wild look of disgust, confusion, and horror on the mare’s face) sent his and her hairs on end.
With a whirl, Steve lashed out at the spontaneously appearing zombie with his axe, the force knocking it down. With a press of the advantage, he swung downward to finish the creature off in a puff of smoke. He turned back around to the unicorn and gave as best a smile as any normal person who just beat down a zombie horse with a stone axe could give. “I don’t know what those are, but these probably want to eat more than parasprites do,” he said calmly, “so, I ask again… can your fellow villagers utilize your residence as a temporary consolidation point so that the defense of everypony can be made simpler?”
The mare gulped and nodded with a nervous smile. “N-naturally! Let it never be said that Rarity never turned her back to her friends in dire times,” she responded.
“Great. I’ll start spreading the word and-“
“On it!” a familiar voice called from above. Rainbow Dash…?
---
“Single file!” Twilight called out to the crowd that was being ushered into the boutique.
“Move more quicklier!” Steve shouted as he felled another encroaching zombie. “The sooner you get in, the sooner you get safe!”
“Slow is smooth, smooth is fast, everypony!” Twilight called in an attempt to keep control. She hovered overhead with one of her friends, identified as Fluttershy, to facilitate the preparations for the oncoming siege. Rarity’s home was filling up quite quickly.
“Uhm… please don’t panic,” the pegasus barely called out, more akin to a loud whisper.
Steve finished another zombie with a downward swing, the event starting to get to him. He looked to the sky and determined that two hours had passed. Two in the morning, he thought as he scanned the scene for more threats. Two constant combat hours and a day of labor; I’m going to feel this come dawn. The last villager made it indoors, and outside stood Steve and a few volunteers… Twilight, Rainbow, Applejack, and a large, red Stallion that Applejack had introduced as Big Macintosh.
“That’s the last of them,” Rainbow announced. “Now we can help kick some flank too!”
“Eeyup,” Big Mac confirmed.
“Just remember,” Steve held up a warning finger and counted off, “None get in, and don’t get bitten. We just need to last until dawn.”
“Well, then, Ah say we put these cretins back where they came from,” Applejack called, then grimaced “An’ speak o’ the nightmare, ‘ere they are!”
The first to step into the light emitted by the building was blasted by a violet ray, without any kind of warning. The group looked back to a readied Twilight, standing sentinel on the doorstep. “What,” she asked, “why the sta- incoming!”
The first true wave stumbled into the light, and surrounded the group in an enclosing green wall…
---
With axe, hoof, storm cloud, and spell, the group weathered the first wave of the invasion; Steve, Applejack, and Macintosh fought in a flurry of melee, preferring the use of hard swings and bucks to knock the tide away while Twilight sniped at groups to soften up the assault. Rainbow gathered stray clouds and hammered lightning out of them to the point of smoking her hooves; the results were ridiculously effective.
But the living can tire, and the siege had numbers on its side. The battle of attrition hit a lull, and allowed the defenders a moment’s respite. “Just…how many… are there,” Twilight gasped out as her horn smoked from the last blast.
“The heck should I know,” Steve called up as he smoked another zombie.
“They keep comin’, we keep fightin’. I ain’t lettin’ no rotten varmint hurt nopony!” Applejack called out, barely breaking a sweat.
“Nnnope.” Macintosh nodded with a steely gaze.
They all recovered their vigor while the horde gathered at the edge of their light. Rainbow Dash bucked another cloud here and there to extend their time before the next surge. Note to self, do not enrage the blue one. Steve looked around some and took stock of their situation. Or the apple ones… or the purple one… in fact, just don’t get on any of their bad sides…
The wave started to advance again; the defenders readied themselves. Twilight was about to blast the first target, when a destructive blue ray pierced the horde and left a bare patch of smoky ground in its wake. All eyes looked up to a shadowy figure descending on the clearing, a figure Steve recognized. “Let battle be joined,” called Luna in a voice that rivaled any dance club’s subwoofers.
---
“Huzzah! The wretches recede,” the lunar princess shouted triumphantly. During the ensuing waves, her aid had drastically improved morale for the defenders (to the point where they were now keeping score), but Steve felt something was off. Time seemed to stand still, according to his glances at the moon in the sky. It’s been four for three hours now! He was growing tired, and his own defenses were starting to weaken; several times he’d been saved from a nasty bite or seven by a well-timed series of arcane blasts.
“How long is a night here, anyway,” he shouted in frustration as axe met zombie face once more.
“Until We lower the moon and Sister raises the sun,” Luna called in response with another series of blasts and waves. “One hundred and seventy four!”
“Come on, AJ, Princess Luna’s kicking your flank and she just got here!” Rainbow called.
“Yer’s too, Rainbow!”
Wait… THAT’S manually controlled too!? Steve’s mind screeched to halt. “Turn on the sun! Turn it on and this mess stops!”
“But We are winning the contest, with double the points!”
“What good is winning if nopony gets to share in the revels,” Steve beseeched whatever reason and sanity remained in the situation.
“Spike! Take a letter,” Twilight shouted into a window. “Zombies. Need sunlight now, please!” After a moment, there was a flash of green light from indoors.
“Take heart,” Luna jubilantly cried as she readied another spell. “The wretches gather once more!” She was a heartbeat away from unleashing another wave of destruction upon them…
---Canterlot Castle: Celestia’s Quarters---
Princess Celestia hovered her morning tea groggily in front of her as the letter spontaneously appeared before her. With an incredulous stare at the scroll, she levitated that as well and unfurled it. Her eyebrow raised slowly in response to the need for the day.
…she put the letter down and finished her tea before cantering out to the balcony and proceeding with the task at hand. “…I think I may need to visit sometime soon.”
---Ponyville---
The wave turned to an endless tide as the horde descended relentlessly upon the defenders; Steve, Applejack, and Big Macintosh closed upon each other by the doorway, while Twilight and Luna provided suppressive fire and Rainbow with storm cloud crowd control. This is insane, Steve swung his heavy arms with his exhausted strength. There’s no way that we’ll- His thoughts were interrupted by a rising red horizon. With a grin and parry, he silently cheered the coming dawn.
“Sunrise,” Twilight shouted, “Now what!?”
“Now,” Steve answered with a tired chuckle, “watch the fireworks.”
As the sun’s rays crept over the buildings, a number of zombie heads turned to look upon the blazing ball. The first beams cut a swath of fiery righteous wrath upon a section of the legion. Instead of hesitation, the horde’s numbers broke, the flames spreading and clearing the town (albeit Rainbow had to get clear of the skies due to the smoke and convection). Within minutes, the gentle warmth of the sun cleared the town.
While the ponies watched in awe, and some started to leave the boutique, Steve gave a relieved laugh and waded through the cleared streets. It’s over… Luna gave a stomp of frustration. “Sister, those were our points,” she cried in frustration before giving an embarrassed smile as the pony defenders gave her a deadpanned glare, followed by merry laughter.
Steve turned about and dropped his axe in relief. “We did it,” he declared and threw a fist in the air. “We survived!” The ponies cheered in response, and he began to speak with a smile as he began a speech. “And we couldn’t have done it alone. Together, we are a unified, unpara-“
“Wha’s that thang,” Applejack pointed toward Steve, or, rather, behind him. He started to turn, when the telltale hiss of a familiar threat permeated his hearing. No…
Time seemed to slow. Steve lurched down to grab his axe, his motions seeming mired in adrenaline. His vision, upon seeing the creature, beheld that it was already volatile and swollen, with a face frozen in a perpetual, tortured scream. C’mon… don’t… He swung his axe with all the momentum that he could muster, but it was all for naught as the creeper detonated, blowing a crater in the road and sending the human hurtling through the air and tumbling along the path.
His pulse and a ringing were all Steve could hear, and his vision started to black out as his tumbling stopped. He couldn’t think through the concussive pain. He blinked, and saw a blur of colors growing. He blinked a second time, and they were upon him, faces barely registering through the dark fog; the faces were talking, but he couldn’t make out the words. He blinked again, and saw a blue tint around his sight, and felt weightless. Steve finally closed his eyes, and slipped out of the waking world.
---
“He’s going to be okay, right?” Twilight paced around nervously as ponies gathered around. Luna had levitated Steve’s body and stared at him intently. “Is he…?”
“He draws breath,” Luna said calmly before starting to work a second spell. “Any being that aids the citizens of equestria shall not fall to such a cowardly strike.” With a bright flash, she and her cargo vanished from sight.
The denizens of ponyville set off to return to their homes, planning on getting some needed rest after their harrowing night. The defenders couldn’t find such solace.
---
“Well, that was an explosive ending,” Discord noted as he checked off a square on a notepad. He looked down from his cotton-candy cloud cover and tapped his chin. “A win’s a win, though. All foes beaten and not a scratch on anypony…” he faded away before Rainbow Dash could investigate the odd sight.