Luna vs. a Tiny Italian Car

by totallynotabrony


Chapter 24

September 20, 2015
We hadn’t anticipated that it would take a week to draw in Tirek. On the plus side, Justin got us more cash and a grenade launcher. On the minus, waiting sucked and Luna and Chrysalis weren’t making it any easier.

We had set up in a hotel a couple blocks from the beach, eating things out of plastic packages and drinking things out of bottles. Every day, Chrissy would go down to a remote part of the beach and hang out. In this part of the year, there were a lot fewer tourists to interfere. At night she’d stay with us and someone would keep watch.

Luna hung around. After over a month on the road, her fetlocks were shaggy. Her mane had been limp since losing her magic.

I tried to ignore them sniping at each other I’m sure they honestly tried to avoid doing it. Tried being the key word in both those sentences.

It got so bad that Maria went out for a smoke. She doesn’t even own cigarettes.

I was thinking about joining her when a semi truck crashed into the building.

Being on the second floor, that wasn’t as serious as it could have been. It still shook the TV off its stand and broke the windows. The floor sagged and cracks went up the walls.

I’d hit the deck out of instinct. One of the plastic bottles of water we’d bought rolled off the kitchenette and landed on my head.

I sat up and looked around. I absentmindedly picked up the bottle. It didn’t seem right to leave it on the floor. There was some shouting coming from down the hall and I got up to open the door. It was stuck in the frame and I yanked at it.

Something hit it from the other side and it slammed open. Maria fell into the room with some guy grabbing at her. He had a face full of glass and I booted him in the head before he could fall on her. He fell by the baseboard.

Maria jumped up, some of his blood on her clothes, but otherwise fine. She kicked him, too. “That was the truck driver. I think he did that on purpose.”

I glanced out the hole that used to be the window, shading my eyes against the setting sun. “Considering we’re two hundred yards from the parking lot and his tracks look like he swerved around a few trees, yeah, probably.”

“Also the fact that he has biker tattoos,” added Buzz Aldrin. “I theorize he got his hands on a semi because motorcycles don’t respond well to brick walls.”

Made sense. Having got my wits about me, I realized we had a problem and went for the door. “We should get going.”

The Fiat was under a large car cover in the parking lot. We’d placed a few boxes near it to help disguise the shape.

Getting the five of us into the car was even worse than usual, but it helped that we hadn't stopped to grab our luggage. For some reason, I still had the water bottle.

We hadn’t gotten the hatch shut when another semi truck roared into the parking lot.

Fortunately, the car was able to outmaneuver such a large vehicle. He kind of blocked the lot exit,though.

Much as I would have liked to, I know the Fiat wasn't low enough to slide under a trailer like some riced-up Honda. When the truck driver stepped out of the cab with a gun, I decided we needed to explore other options.

Up over the curb and through a chainlink fence we discovered a grassy embankment that led down to another street.

This being California, though, the grass was dry and brown and the car went sideways in the dirt, sliding over the curb at the bottom and fishtailing into the road.

I was fairly certain at least one wheel had been bent in the process of our escape. The tires basically had rubber bands for sidewalls. The low tire light hadn’t come onyet, though, so it wasn’t a pressing problem.

The third truck coming our way was, though.

“Can someone shoot out the tires or something?” I called towards the back seat.

“Or put a grenade through the windshield?” Maria added.

“We lost the bag of guns over the bumps,” Luna reported.

I winced. I also knew we didn’t have much else to throw out since we’d left it all at the hotel.

“I have a solution,” Luna said.

We were headed for a railroad crossing, but I glanced in the rearview mirror. As the car bumped over the tracks, Luna fell out.

At least, that’s what I thought. She landed upright, skidding to a stop on her hooves.

The truck plowed into her and stopped quite suddenly, the grille folding around Luna’s body like a clamshell. There was a faint blue glow from within the folded metal.

Then, a train plowed into the truck parked across the tracks and dragged it away. Otto leaned out the window as he went by. “Choo choo, mothertrucker!” Iron horse is best horse.

I’d brought the car to a halt as soon as I saw Luna bail out. She still stood tall in the road, hooves buried a few inches into the asphalt. The thin sheen of a force field around her flickered and dissipated, her horn glowing for a little longer.

“I knew that would be useful,” she said, extricating herself from the pavement.

“I thought you were out of magic,” I said.

“Knowing Tirek’s nature, I thought it would be wise to have a reserve,” she said. “I used the car as a storage vessel.”

“So that’s why you wouldn’t let us get rid of it.”

“In retrospect, I should have chosen something else. Fortunately, it came in handy even if I could not tell you I had stored a reserve.”

“Why did you do that?”

Luna glanced at me. “Again, knowing Tirek’s nature, should he capture you, I did not want him getting that information.”

“I meant, why did you use your last magic on crashing a truck? We could have outrun it.”

“I also used it to cast the beacon spell for the Element Bearers to locate. They should be here shortly.”

I hoped they would arrive even quicker than that, because Tirek did just then.

He flashed in with an intimidating roar. “Who here has magic?”

His eyes went to Luna, where he paused, but then looked at Chrysalis. She squeaked and hid behind Buzz Aldrin.

I probably shouldn’t have moved just then, though it did distract Tirek. He looked in my direction and raised his arm.

Because his arms were so enormous, I didn’t notice he was holding an RPG until just then.

I’d never been shot at by one of those before, so I didn’t know how to react. It smacked the pavement right next to my feet. It didn’t explode, probably because the distance was inside the warhead’s arming range, but I still got showered with little pieces of asphalt and rocket motor, burning holes in my jeans and maybe concussing me a little.

I stumbled, trying to blink the stars out of my eyes. Luna bucked Tirek in the knee, which appeared to do little more than startle him, but it bought us enough time to get to the car.

“He really takes his revenge to the next level!” I shouted as I dropped the car into gear. It left rubber on the pavement.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Luna replied.

Behind us, Tirek charged. He might have been big and powerful, but running at highway speeds was not his forte. I was more concerned with the magic blasts from between his horns.

Even in a tourist destination like Monterey, the streets were fairly empty on a Sunday evening in late September.

I made a corner and raised a hand to shield my eyes from the sun. It was too late that I realized that sun in my eyes meant we were going west - straight towards the ocean.

The parking lot ahead was open and ran straight into a dune. The car went up it pretty well, but the sand was softer on the back side and dragged the Fiat to a halt within sight of the water.

Tirek kept coming and I looked around for anything I could use. My sunglasses case was handy in the front seat, but the bottle of water looked heavier.

However, just then there were six colored flashes and we were rescued by Twilight & Co.

“Are you ready, girls?” Twilight called. They were. They blasted Tirek with friendship magic.

It was kind of anticlimatic even with the rainbow sparkles everywhere. They took back the stolen magic and left Tirek a husk of what he had been.

“Where is Celestia?” was Luna’s first question, even before regaining her magic.

“Here, sister!” Celestia galloped over the dune, sliding down the face to meet us. Luna wrapped her up in a hug. I saw them talking quietly, eyes closed and holding each other tightly.

In the distance, I could hear sirens. I sat down on the sand and took a breath. Maria checked my face and didn’t find any shrapnel in it, so I figured I was okay.

I suddenly regretted sitting down when Tirek charged at us. He was a whole lot smaller than before, but between his horns and his hooves, I wanted no part of that.

“You will pay for what you-!”

Buzz Aldrin punched him in the face. Tirek went down.

The sirens had gotten closer. “Someone should go talk to the police,” said Maria. She walked away.

I lay back in the sand. The loose water bottle had ended up under my head and I didn’t bother moving it.

Luna sat down beside me. I rolled my eyes to look up at her. She smiled. So did I.