//------------------------------// // Burst Damage // Story: A Battleground of Kindness // by StormDancer //------------------------------// Pain pain pain pain pain. The not-assassin is a bringer of pain. In retrospect, the Master thinking of her as her friend makes a little bit of sense. She's messed up like that, and given how durable she is, she probably really likes it when that skeleton-powdering backstabber kicks. Did I mention the Master is insane? Yheah. It's kind of like that. Makes more and more sense the longer I'm here. So, after I dug myself out of the mountain of murdered tree corpses, I found a very strange sight. The Master was crying, which, according to the mental checklist: * Wake the Master. * Make tea. * Prepare the next plot to destroy the Master. * Realize that the plot is doomed to fail. * Shelve books until the Master has more need of me. * Avoid the infernal spawn of Genocidal Tendencies and the Infinite Dragon Flight that is her slave/butler/pet. * Keep the Master happy at all costs. violates rule number 7, and indirectly, number 5! Nononononononononono! The Master will be unhappy! Thinkthinkthinkthinkthink! The Master is upset, the Master MUST be happy at all costs, The smelly-interloper is being 'corrected' - ergo the smelly-interloper has brought about the condition that has caused the Master to be unhappy. The Master CANNOT be unhappy.... therefore the smelly-interloper must be removed. It is foul and vile and has caused the MASTER TO BE UNHAPPY. It must be destroyed. Yheah.... in hindsight, it wasn't my best reasoning, but with all due consideration, I was under a bit of stress, very confused, concerned that the Master was vulnerable while a very real threat (if my condition was any indicator) was standing only feet away, and I may have been suffering from severe cranial trauma from the high speed impact of a set of titanically muscled and absurdly hard hooves.... to say nothing of the rather abrupt application of my body to the bookcase. Don't worry, it wasn't so bad. My face broke my fall. So, yheah.... I took the most obvious answer and ran with it. The Master was being mind controlled and the assassin was playing it up so she could get in enough damage to take the Master out before the Master could come to her senses. Firebolt. More accurately: Firebolts. Lots and lots of firebolts. Have I mentioned how fast that orange one is? By the time the Master figured out what was going on and put a stop to us, well, quite a few more books were knocked down. On the upside, we did manage to find almost all of my teeth in the following hour. Should have figured it out when the Master was talking to it earlier... this Applejack is another minion. She's got the Spawn-of-Doom fetching spell components and this orange Fel-Cannon fetching groceries. Whatever happened to the simple application of terror and senseless violence as a means of subjugation? "So, lemme see if I got this right..." Applejack began, eying the imp shelving books as it kept nervously glancing back at her friend. "You 'found' a book.... which given that it's you I actually kinda doubt, but movin' on... thought Spike might like the day off, and just 'happened' to notice that yer book 'happened' to be 'bout summonin'?" Applejack gave a deadpan look as Twilight offered up a weak smile. "Something like that?" "Sugarcube, yer a lota things but a good liar taint onev'um." Twilight fidgeted for a moment before throwing her front hooves in the air and groaning in frustration. "Fine! I borrowed a book from the archives and might, possibly, have sent Spike out to fetch some rather difficult to obtain gems as a pretense to safely try out a few new spells." Twilight smiled uncertainly, "But that's beside the point! I think I might have done something very, very bad." "Like summonin' up a little monster 'et wants to burn down the town as soon as say 'hi?'" "It's not like that! He's an imp! He's a ... well... I'm not exactly certain, but he's an obscure arcane species capable of magic and independent thought that has an inborn need to serve others!" Twilight hopped to her hooves and gestured quickly towards the imp currently shelving books. "He LIKES doing work! He's MADE for it! His entire species is!" "That ain't what I mean an' you know it!" Applejack snapped before biting back another shout as she saw Twilight flinch. Taking a moment to calm down, she rubbed her face with a hoof before looking up. "Look Twi, I know you didn't mean anything by it, but that little thing's a monster... and a dangerous one at that. An' even if he weren't, what yer doin' pretty much amounts to slavery! I can't believe you'd do that.... this... " she gestured towards the imp herself who was now... apparently building a pile of debris from their earlier scuffle. Shaking her head, Applejack looked back over to her friend who was likewise watching the imp curiously. "Look Twilight, I get that you're curious an' all, I do... I really, really do... but this just ain't right on so many levels. What would Fluttershy thinka' this? Heck, what would Celestia think of this?" Twilight's eyes widened as her pupils began to shrink in fear, but before she could truly start to panic, Applejack touched her shoulder, illiciting a startled squawk. "All I'm sayin' is that yer not thinking things through again Sugar. You, of all ponies, know yah have to step back every once in a while and make sure yah ain't getting too caught up in new stuff to realize what you oughtten'ta do." Twilight blinked a few times before taking a deep breath and slowly letting it out. When she looked up again, she seemed a bit more composed as she took a moment to light her horn, lifting the majority of the remaining books up into the air. Tumbling in her magical field, the imp grasped a nearby tome and clung to it as he watched the two talking. "You're right Applejack.... like usual," she sighed. "I got excited about learning something new and maaaay have taken a few shortcuts to try it out." "A few?" "Yes! Only a few. It's not like I didn't read the entire book four times, notate all the relevant sections, cross reference all the sources, update and modify spell components for modern equivalents and lexicographical similarities before attempting the spell itself! What do you think I do on my days off?" "That's not what I meant. I know you like your magic an' all, but I meant you didn't think to warn anypony, let your friends know, contact us when something went wrong, and I think we can both say that HE is not what you were expecting so don't you try to argue that nothing went wrong, or send for help when things got weird. Girl, haven't we had enough adventures to know when to ask for help by now?" Twilight immediately jumped back in, "But it's not an adventure and it's not weird and nothing went wrong!" She flinched as the imp squealed as he was inadvertently shelved with the book he had been clutching. Glancing over, she floated the book out, the imp taking a moment to scuttle down the bookcase and peer over a nearby cushion. "I have everything completely under control and he's learning to behave better every day!" The soft *pomft* of a cushion detonating into a cloud of feathers and velvet caused both mares to glance at where the imp had been. He was presently jumping up and down, apparently trying to collect the feathers as they floated down, but instantly froze when he noticed their gazes. "And I'm positive there's a very good reason why he just destroyed one of my pillows." Twilight's attention sped back to Applejack. "He's not evil. He's just very, very, twitchy and easily startled. Heck, " she threw a glance upwards, "he's caused less damage than Rainbow Dash when she crashes into the library... and she does that at least 3 times a week!" Applejack frowned for a moment, glancing down. Twilight had a point, their pegasus friend did have a propensity for property damage, but those were just accidents... this.... 'imp' didn't seem like the accident type. He seemed like an accident waiting to happen... the kind of accident that involved one of Pinkie's waxed mustaches, a black cape and a top hat. "Now, I know you think I'm being too hard on him Twilight, but you gotta see that throwing fireballs, making explosions, and trying to kill a pony ain't the same as crashing into the library. If it were, most'a Ponyville'd be behind bars by now. Heck.... YOU'D likely as not be in jail somewhere." She took her Stetson off and used it to point at where the imp had been.... which was now distressingly vacant... before continuing. "It ain't the same thing on account of them being accidents while he's trying to hurt ponies and cause trouble and where did that little monster get off to?" The two mares paused to glance around, finally getting to their hooves as they started quickly searching the room. While Applejack started checking behind desks, Twilight instead scrutinized the bookcases, peering between volumes and in the gaps for the remarkably flexible little imp. "But it's not his fault Applejack!" She called back. "Wherever he's from, he's lived a hard, violent life, and it's all he knows. You heard him; Stitchface was his master before I summoned him, and she ended up with a sword in her head! It doesn't sound like that was even uncommon to him. He was upset because he couldn't HEAL her before I-" she faltered, letting her head hang, "-before I summoned him away and killed her." Applejack paused, taking a moment to really think about what Twilight had said. She didn't know what kind of place he came from, and she certainly didn't know what kind of life he'd led, but she couldn't even imagine what she'd be feeling like if something happened to Granny or Mac or little Applebloom. To even imagine one of them being hurt took a lot out of her, but to think about having a sword in one of them.... and being suddenly whisked away with no way to help... she suddenly couldn't really be angry at him. Applejack sat down and ran a hoof over her face as she glared at the insides of her eyelids. She couldn't imagine what it would be like for the little guy, she wouldn't imagine what it would be like, but she still had to look out for her friend who happened to be one of the most brilliant, and yet gullible, mares she'd ever met. "Look, Twi, I ain't gonna' say what you did was right, or safe, or even smart, but what's done is done. If you're determined to keep that little mons... him... we gotta do somethin' about making him more civil. He simply ain't safe to have around like he is. Can you imagine somepony else in here? What about the Crusaders?" Rising to her hooves, she paced over to Twilight, where she sat, head against a bookcase, and placed a hoof on her shoulder. "'Tain't your fault, what happened to Stitchface... she took that sword before anything you did... but that don't mean you get ta baby him just because he's hurtin' and scared. He's dangerous, but we can't do much to help him if he keeps lashin' out at everypony." The two stayed there for a few moments, until a slight movement brought Twilight's head up. Not far away, ears down and clearly nervous, Gakham rocked on his little feet, a steaming cup of tea balanced on a (slightly overstuffed and singed) pillow, clutched before him. Forcing a smile, Twilight lifted the cushion and floated it over, noting that the imp watched with a mix of emotions on his face. Applejack, likewise, watched while Twilight carefully took a sip, apparently confused. "Twi it's no-" "It's fine Applejack. He'd trying to apologize for waking me up. He's got a list he doesn't think I know about, and he's afraid that I'm unhappy with him since 'wake the Master' is number one and 'keep the Master happy at all costs' tends to be broken when I wake up cranky... he's just trying to start again with number two: "make tea" and hoping that I brush this all under the rug." Twilight's smile became a bit less forced yet, somehow, tinged with a bit of sadness. "In his own way, he is trying his very best to be good..... he just doesn't know how." Applejack looked between her friend and the little flaming creature that shifted uncertainly a number of feet away. Somewhere there was a whole world of them... somewhere there was a place where everything he'd done was not wrong.... somewhere... he fit in like a normal everyday critter. She didn't want to find where that somewhere was. Straightening up, Applejack flipped her hat firmly back on her head before placing a hoof on Twilight's shoulder. She turned to look straight at the imp, who suddenly dropped into a half crouch as she smiled. "Yet."