//------------------------------//
// Kicking Things Off 
// Story: Wild Card: Two of A Kind 
// by Barrel-of-fun 
//------------------------------//

As a veritable storm of crossbow bolts impacted his cover, Ace, satyr, magician and wanted thief, couldn’t help but feel that things had gone a little bit wrong somewhere down the line.

“Ace! Any sign of Gale?” A voice called out from over to his left. He looked over to where Tumbler, his unicorn security expert, was cowering.

The satyr considered this query for a moment, trying to remember when he had last seen the pegasus mare. When the bolts had started flying she had shot up into the air, desperately trying to avoid the death dealing projectiles.

“I think she might be dead.” He eventually replied with a grimace, the blunt statement causing the unicorn’s face to drop. 

Ace could see anger beginning to stir in the gangly stallion’s eyes, magic slowly coalescing around his horn, when a form leapt over the satyr’s rudimentary barricade. After a short tumble to arrest her momentum, several near-lethal bolts passing harmlessly through her tail as she did so, the pegasus Gale Force, infiltration specialist and, thankfully, not a pony pincushion, joined Ace behind his cover.

“Belay that! She lives still!” He called over to Tumbler, who visibly sighed with relief. “Hey Gale, you wouldn’t happen to know where Melissa’s got to would you?”

Gale opened her mouth to reply, only to be rudely cut off by a sharp, bloodcurdling scream that cut over the constant whoosh of crossbow fire. As if to reply to his question, a stallion’s corpse went flying over the cover, notably lacking in a jugular.

“Nevermind. I think I found her.”

“Well at least she’s having fun.” Gale said wryly from next to him.

“Aye,” He remarked, taking advantage of a slight lull in the combat to throw one of his magical cards at the enemies, ducking back into cover before he could see the results of his attack. Judging by the fleshy thud and the strangled scream though, he could guess that it had been a Clubs card, and an effective one at that. “And, at the end of the day,” he continued as if nothing had happened, “Isn’t having fun what really matters?”

The ponies both shrugged in response, unable to defeat the superior logic. It was at that very moment that the barricade he was hiding behind blew apart, sending Gale and himself tumbling through the air. A furious minotaur, his form heaving with barely contained rage, bellowed his challenge to the stunned defenders.

‘Yup,’ Ace thought miserably, ‘Something definitely went wrong with this plan.”