//------------------------------// // Merry Weather vs. Tidy Till - Winner: Tidy Till (by Default) // Story: OC SlamJam - Round Two // by OC Slamjam //------------------------------// Battle at Bibidi's - by Tidy Till's Author Autumn colors danced in the wind as Celestia's sun met the horizon. The White Tallow trees swayed their twisted branches in time to the chiming of another twilight. The crickets played their heckling lullaby for all the denizens of the Whitetail Woods; it was one of their finest. Yet, deep within, and out of sight, the creeping night was not so silent. Somewhere between the Birches and the Crape Myrtles, a mare fell flat on her face. “Oohff!” At the snickering of her traveling companion, the mare, a goldenrod coated unicorn, hoisted herself back up onto her hooves. “Oh, was I Spellsight Walking again?” The fully amused mare beside her found it within herself to respond through her revelry. “Hee-yep! Almost tripped over some Cyprus Knees...three times. Figured I'd do the job myself just to snap you out of it.” Her coat was seafoam green, but the fading, reddened light of the sunset tinted it a fair, brownish hue, her normally bright yellow eyes, mane and tail turning a sparkling amber in the passing evening. “Oh...” The unicorn's muzzle scrunched up, as she tried to regain her sense of direction. “C'mon, Dawn, relax! I was just jestin' with ya'!” “Oh. Ha-ha. Satisfied then are you, Merry Weather?” After half a beat, Merry shrugged. “Eh, I'll take it. So, what'cha see that's so interesting, anyway?” “Do you want to see it for yourself?” “What, you mean that 'magic sharing' thing you showed me back in Hollow Shades?” Dawn nodded. “Sure, I'll bite. Lay it on me!” Dawn's horn flared to life with a deep blue aura, and she touched it to Merry's forehead, bestowing the Spellsight spell upon her. When Merry Weather opened her eyes, her irises became a rotating, glowing kaleidoscope of colors to Dawn's satisfaction as she ended the spell. “Now, tell me what you see.” “I see some geometricky, orangey stuff around the edges of my vision...some wavey, purpley stuff in the sky...some dancey, greeny stuff in the ground, and...wait. Okay, that big, black castle was not there two seconds ago!” “That, my friend, is what Dark Magic looks like, and that castle you now see? That is what we're after. I've spent the last 80 moons following leads of missing magical relics and grasping at any straws I could find, and do you see all those black spirals going in and out?” Merry nodded. “Each and every one of them is a Dark Teleportation Signature, and each one of them connects that castle to the ancient sites where each of the enchanted items were originally found. All of them...gone, and each one conveniently disappeared the night before they could be sent off to Canterlot to be cataloged and studied.” “So...a serial arcane-ological burglar?” Dawn Gleam rolled her eyes. “'Thaumatological', and yes.” “So what're we we waiting for?! "Wha-? But what about-?" "C'mon, Dawn! You remember what Ol' Miss Val used to say, don'cha?! Take chances!” “M-Make...mistakes.” “GET MESSY!!” The stallion fell to the floor with a thump. Bibidi Boo pranced over to his prone form and gave it a poke. Out cold. She'd outdone herself. In that last fraction of a second he'd exuded Paranoia, Panic, and Shock in such large quantities that she wasn't exactly sure what she'd do with it all. Among it all, however, was something bigger. She'd hit upon something irrational in that last scare. She'd uncovered a Phobia. Everypony has one, she figured, and once she found out what a pony's Phobia was, she could use it to her fullest extent to generate and harvest the rarest and most potent variety of fear of them all! Primal Fear. Why, the half second's worth she'd just collected from that stallion would be enough to cover her needs for a fortnight! Now she just needed to figure out how to do it again! She was two seconds into trying to decipher what exactly set him off when her thoughts were interrupted by the untimely buzzing of something under her hat. After fumbling around for a moment, she pulled out a crystal ball in her magic, and with a small surge from her horn, she viewed its bewaring message. She chuckled. “Two little mice begin to play, while the cat is gone away. And they will, as all mice, learn, what happens when the cat returns.” Orange light, tinged with black, filled the room, and when it faded, the lowly apartment was empty. The first thing Tidy Till noticed while he returned to consciousness was tightness around his hocks. All of them. The implications fired through his head and hit their marks, waking him up with a bolt. His eyes snapped open revealing to him that he was most certainly not in his apartment anymore. He was laid out on his back on a black. plush upholstered couch, and with the other eye... ...he saw her. Chalk was flying around her, carving up designs on the floor beyond his vision. It reminded him of movies he'd seen about haunted houses, rituals, and spellwork gone wrong. He gasped, but shortly he realized that there was a gag on his muzzle, so the only sound to escape his lips was a constricted whine. “Oh! You're up! Good timing, there. I've had just enough time to prepare! You've been a great help to me, more than you know, so since I've had my dinner...” A speck of orange magic shot from her horn onto a spot on the floor Tidy couldn't see, but its effect was instantaneous. The floor burst to life with a bright, eerie glow, and a swirling column of blackness erupted forth, stretching to the ceiling. After five seconds, it receded, but as it did so, it left behind two mares. One was a pegasus, and the other was another unicorn. The dark mare spun around to face them. She reared up and spread her forelegs wide, as mane fluttered behind her like a cape. “...IT'S TIME FOR THE SHOW!” “Waitaminute-waitaminute! Wait! A! Minute!” The newly arrived unicorn quickly produced a trio of silvery daggeers from beneath her reddish brown cloak. They shot from her magic and into the floor around the dark mare, Bobbidee-or-something, and light lines appeared between them and fired from their hilts, meeting at a point in the air above the mare, and solidifying into a blue, glowing pyramid. That was when they charged forward. The imprisoned mare looked amused for once, but when the pegasus dived forward for a flying hoof to her face, and the barrier started to stretch around her hoof as she flew, the dark mare flinched. She then immediately melted into a shadow and escaped her cage, only for the unicorn mage to cast a powerful Illumination spell, forcing the dark mare to reemerge. And all the while, poor Tidy Till, with nothing else to do, laid on the couch, stewing. Where am I? How will I get home? Am I gonna be late in tomorrow? Am I even gonna be able to make it back at all? Tight Shift is gonna kill me if I miss a day! I'm gonna lose my job. I'm gonna lose the lease on my apartment. I'm gonna have to live on the street like those ponies I saw in Manehattan. My life is over. My life is over. My life is over. Bibidi Boo dodged another blast from the mage, undeniably on the defensive, whereas she'd expected to be stomping these two thieves to the curb. A sniff of the air told her why. She'd been counting on a near constant flow of Fear from the cashier to fuel her spells, but ever since he woke up, he'd only been feeding her one thing. No fear, no shock, no panic. Just pure, undiluted Despair. And while Fear and its other related emotions empowered her magic. Despair, on the other hoof, she could only serve to her pets! On top of that, the fight with the two intruders had her too distracted to even consume all of the excessive Despair. She'd have to find a way to finish up quickly, and then snap him out of his stupor to stop him from producing more, and then suck it all down before her pets got a whiff of it and tore him to shreds to get at it. But how in the myriad lands was he producing so much of it in the first place?! It just didn't make any sense! The only things there when she saw his first cloud of Fear were himself, herself and her pumpkins. If she wasn't the one to set him off, then... Bibidi froze. He... He wasn't afraid of her. She then recalled everything she'd put him through up to that very moment. She'd pulled out all the stops with him in his line at the store in order to get as much Fear out of him as possible, but...none of it was for her in the first place. She'd tormented and abducted him, all under the mistaken assumption that he was just like all the rest. But he wasn't...and now she'd put him in danger. "STOP!!" The witch had just dodged another hard magic round when she suddenly stopped moving. Merry Weather was just about to launch into another charging tackle when the witch let out a yell. Dawn almost lost control of her next spell while Merry herself nearly tripped out of her gallop. Merry picked herself up and readied for another charge. The witch removed her hat. "I don't know who you two are, but I need your help!" Merry Weather just scoffed. "You steal a bunch of magical relics, squirrel them away in your invisible castle of dark magic, warp us into your arena, provoke us into battle with you -which you were clearly outclassed for, by the way- and now you stop the fight -which you were losing- to ask us for help?!" "Look, I don't have enough time to explain, but yes!" Dawn Gleam's horn shone for a second while she activated her Spellsight Spell again. She focused her attention solely on the witch to make sure she wasn't trying anything. The witch continued, pointing to a couch behind her. "That stallion is caught in the throes of a self-perpetuating despair! I have pets here in my 'Invisible castle of dark magic' that feed on despair, and I'm the only one who can handle them when they're hungry. I need you, Little Miss Mage, to seal off the door to this room with your fancy little knives to keep them from coming in." The ground began to shake. Dawn looked down the hall with her Spellsight, only to see the silhouettes of a horde of creatures within the dark magic saturated environment. "Yeah, you might want to get on that. Now, Little Miss Blitzy, I need you to snap this stallion out of his trance while I sop up all the extra despair in the air." "Yeah...no. Why should we help you at all?! You're a cheating, evil witch!" The witch almost looked like she was going to throw a fit, but then she just sighed and hung her head. "Because he's going to die...and he doesn't deserve that." Silence reigned for a moment before Dawn pulled her daggers out of the floor with her magic. "Dawn, what are you doing?!" "Merry, she's telling the truth, there's a whole snarl of Darkling Beasts heading this way, far too many for me to handle, and according to my research they do, indeed, feed on despair, sadness and other negative emotions. We need to go with her plan for now!" The witch nodded, then she sat back, closed her eyes, and opened her mouth. "RRRRGH! FINE! I'll do it, but I won't like it!" Merry turned to face the stallion on the couch. With a snort, she broke into a gallop. "C'MON, YOU WEASELY WIMP! WAKE! UUUPP!" Merry stopped just short of colliding with him, opting to smack him violently across the cheek, knocking him off the couch. My life is o- WHAAGH! Tidy Till suddenly became aware of a highly distracting amount of pain. While he was still reeling, he felt someone undoing his gag and restraints, and he flopped to the floor, finally able to relax. "Hey! Dude! Get up." His face was sore, but he found his way to his hooves with some doing. He then, gawked at the sight before him. With a mighty crash, a storm of black monsters broke through some sort of magical barrier, sending its obvious caster flying across the room. Then, he saw that same dark mare from his line smile, leap into the throng and open her mouth. He cringed, anticipating to witness her demise, but then the monsters all started...licking her. "So, guy, what's your name?" Tidy looked back and forth from the sight before him to the pegasus who asked him the question. Eventually he spoke. "My name is Tidy Till, and I am in over my head."