//------------------------------//
// Doesn't Take Changelings to Change 
// Story: Urohringr 
// by Imploding Colon 
//------------------------------//

	Cl-Clank!  The blade lopped off a few of Pilate's tail hairs.

Hissing beneath his breath, the zebra spun about.  His blind eyes rolled, and yet he sensed a distorted field of red lines intersecting in front of him.  The crimson pattern coalesced, denoting a figure charging straight towards the stallion, leaping, and swinging a blade attached to his left arm.

Pilate ducked again, jumped to the side, and strafed awkwardly.  Only then did he notice a solid pattern about the lines.  He saw parallel horizontal planes and several vertical pillars.  Beyond such geometry was a chaotic miss-mash of pattering red dots.  A room, he concluded, with the rainy maelstrom of Stratopolis beyond...

"Hresssssh!"  A reptilian hiss crackled to his left.

Pilate whimpered and jumped back, tripping on his hooves.  He fell on his haunches with a grunt.  The world distorted in a flash of crimson.  When it reformed, he saw the figure of the Lounge's engineer directly in front of him, his body crouched low in a predatory stance.

"Please.  I did not augment you to be so damnably anticlimactic, you stupid horse!"  The figure stalked towards him, slinking sideways with cat-like grace.  "That's what you are, you realize.  A ridiculously silly creature that stands out in the gray rain.  I wonder if you even know how garish your stripes are."  The attacker's blade dragged threateningly across the ground.  "Would you like me to describe what your entrails look like?  Hresssssh!"  He pounced.

"Guhh!"  Pilate rolled to the side and sprang forward as soon as his four hooves had leverage.  The assailant's blade came down swiftly, and it grazed the zebra bloodily across his flank.  "Aaaaaugh!"  Pilate stumbled and collapsed against a pillar, wincing for breath.  "Mmmmmmgnnnh... Sp-Spark!"

"Yes... call to your pagan deities..."  With cold-blooded footsteps, the reptile inched his way towards Pilate's rear.  "I'll devour the fire of their myths from your still-beating heart."  The masked cretin's speaker crackled, "And I'll make a shrine to them out of your bones."

Thunder rolled.  Pilate's vision went blood red, then faded—a result of flashing lightning.  When everything came back into focus, he heard the rushing air from the attacker's leap.

Breathless, Pilate juked to the left.  The lizard landed to his right, then hooked an arm out, grabbing Pilate by the back of his neck.

With a cry, Pilate swiveled and bucked both rear hooves into the figure's rib cage.

The attacker barely budged.  "Hrshhhhh!  You call that an attack?"  The flat of its blade slammed across Pilate's skull.

"Aaaugh!"  Pilate stumbled sideways through a mess of wildly jagged red lines.  Barely two seconds later, he received an elbow to the chest, followed by a violent uppercut to his chin.

"You are pathetic!"  The engineer shouted, constantly kicking and pummeling Pilate like he was a sack of meat.  "You are weak!  Even with the gift of sight, you are a frail shadow of a stallion!  Why should I even bother to hunt you?!  Your meat couldn't fill one plate... much less the table for Razzar and his brothers!"

Pilate fell to his knees, spitting up blood and shuddering from head to tail.  He doubled over in pain, clutching himself as the figure paced across the tiny enclosure.

Lightning flashed, clearing in time for Pilate to spot the lizard's pacing figure.  It was then that Pilate realized something.  The footsteps of the figure were sounding off behind him, and yet—through the crimson field of jagged lines—he could still see his attacker with perfect clarity.  The zebra suddenly felt as though he was sitting in the center of a spherical room with his skull as the center of gravity.  He panted in even breaths, mesmerized and horrified all at once.

And that's when the creature said, "No, you pathetic little cur!  The hunt does not end with you.  I will find your friends... your mate.  And I will eat of their bones too."

Pilate's teeth clenched.  He fumed and fumed harder...

"Let's just hope they at least put up a fight."  The blade raised overhead.  "I'd hate for them to disappoint me as much as you..."

Suddenly, Pilate knew when and where to fling his hooves.  He twisted to his side and swung both forelimbs high, positioning them where the back of his head was a second ago.  Cl-Clank!  With perfect ease, he clasped onto opposite sides of the blade's hilt and wrenched it from the figure's grasp.

The reptile stumbled backwards, surprised.

"Rrrrrrrrrrghhhh—"  Pilate bolted onto his hooves and galloped towards the mesh of crimson circles.  The figure tried dodging to the left, but Pilate could already sense the movement from the coiling of the cretin's lower legs.  "—raaaaaaaugh!"  He jumped where the red lines led him, plowing the cloaked figure's body to the granite.

Struggling, the Lounge member wrapped his arms around Pilate's neck.

Without hesitation, the zebra slammed his knees into the creature's chest, knocking the wind from his lungs.  He then swung hard, slamming one hoof viciously across his opponent's silver mask.  The metal surface dented, and the reptile finally reciprocated with a blow to Pilate's chin, allowing him the space to scurry away and escape.

But Pilate wasn't having any of it.  "Grrgghhh!"  He leapt again, slamming his weight down onto the figure's back.  He repeatedly smacked and pummeled the creature's shoulders.  "Do not... threaten... my beloved!"  He lunged forward, biting for flesh—ripping through cloak and fabric instead.  "Rggghhh!  You want meat?!  Let's find out what naga tastes like—"

With extraordinary calm, the figure uttered, "I'm afraid neither of us will enjoy the sentiment."  Something whipped hard into Pilate's chest.

Startled by the blow, Pilate stumbled backwards on uneven hooves.

The figure flipped up, landed in a slide on all fours, and produced a manarifle—training it directly at Pilate's figure.

"Come onnnnn!"  Pilate hollered, his nostrils flaring as adrenaline coursed through his whole body.  "You've had enough, you brutish coward?!"

"Charming vocabulary as always, but the battle is over, Pilate."

"Like blazes it is!"  Pilate dragged a hoof against the floor and charged the crimson figure.  "Let's see how easily your tail comes off—"

Kapow!  A manablast blew up a piece of floor in front of Pilate, forcing the zebra to stop.  "I said it's over!" the engineer growled, suddenly panting through his crackling mask.  "And as much as I hate to admit, it's for my own safety as well as yours."

"Wh-what...?!"  Pilate panted and panted.  He found himself squinting, as if that would somehow make the anomalous shape before him clearer.  "I... I don't understand..."

"It's quite simple, really.  I had to make sure the O.A. works, so I needed a reason for you to try murdering me as bloodily as possible."

Pilate gulped.  "O.A.?"

"Ocular Array.  A Searonese invention.  Leave it to the Lounge to steal anything they can get their scales on.  Of course..."  The figure reached up and stripped its mask off.  Pilate sensed several fibrous strands peeling out from the creature's cloak, rattling together with tiny metallic clinks.  "...if I had known a breeder like you packed such a punch, I would have lowered the neurological frequency so that I could have had more of a chance in close quarters."  Two dense circles hovered in the center of a face made out of cold, rigid lines.

Of course, Pilate's jaw had long dropped by now.  "Roarke...?"