The first agent suddenly swung sideways, knocking into the one next to them. That forced the middle one into the one next to them, and in a split second, the firing line was disrupted. For a brief second, there was confusion as the agents tried to recover. Even before they could get up, their weapons levitated out of their hands, gripped by swirling magical power, and hit each one in the head respectively. The three agents were violently beaten, smacked and bashed by their own weapons until the guns had broken to pieces.
The Doctor was a bit more perplexed than Dan, but the human allowed a grin to plaster his face as his arms lowered. It was just something Dan was happy to see.
"What's going on?"
"Our day is getting easier. That's what's going on."
"But wha-"
"Shh-shh-shh-shh-shh-shh," Dan shushed him. "Let karma happen when you see it. It's the autopilot of revenge."
The other GenoHaradan aimed their guns at the floating guns. One of the levitated guns spun and flew into the closest agent. The other two flew at another pair approaching from the side. There was still no sign of any assailant. Until one of the GenoHaradan flew over the others and slammed face-first into the snow. Before he could get up, hooves landed on him from above, hammering him down. Hooves that Dan immediately recognized.
"Open fire! Fire!"
Tattering bullets sprayed from the agents' weapons at the mysterious figure. But none would find their mark. The Mare Do Well's horn produced a shield powerful enough to deflect every shot.
As the first one's clip ran empty, the Mare of Mysteries disappeared. She reappeared in front of the fist agent, or rather, her hoof appeared across his face. The mare followed this up with a swipe from her hoof in the opposite direction, then another and another, back and forth, before finally grabbing his shoulders, vaulting over him and grabbing him simultaneously, using the motion to flip the agent himself over her own head as she landed and into the snow. The agent's back hit the ground like the cracking of a whip, then lay there motionless like an old rug.
Bullets whizzed past her, flew through the space she had a fraction of a second earlier occupied but the Mare Do Well was already gone. In an instant after the vault-flip-smash move, she had already teleported.
"Aah-Aah-Aaah!" But she reappeared just as quickly. Spinning like a top, she appeared over another agent and delivered blow after blow with her hooves as her legs spun. Another flash and she was gone, leaving the agent to collapse to the ground.
She teleported to another GenoHaradan, uppercut his jaw with her hoof and then delivered a straight jab straight to the stomach. Still, there were many agents; time and energy were in limited supply. She grabbed him by the arm and judo-flipped him over her back, crashing him to the snow on his back. A final quick smack to the side of the head was enough to render him unconscious before she had to teleport again.
Flashing to another, a quadruped this time, she grabbed him by the right foreleg and bent it hard enough to snap.
"Yaaaaaaahhh!!" Screaming in pain, it alerted the other agents who had lost track of Mare Do Well. As she had planned. The agents opened fire on their own comrade, riddling him with bullets. No surprise the bullets didn't penetrate much of the armored suits they wore, but something might have hit as she used the helpless pony as a shield. Quickly, she grabbed a knife from his belt with her magic and threw it at one of the firing agents.
"Auugh!"
"Wait!" Before the pony agent hit the ground, she teleported to the one impaled with the knife. Still firing with his gun, she pushed his weapon from the side, changing the direction of his fire into his comrade. Bullets caught another pony in the chest and mask, sending them tumbling over into the snow.
Drew another knife from the second fallen pony and teleported to another agent to slash at their legs, then impale them. Drew a knife from that agent and shot it like an arrow using levitation magic into the neck of a charging agent. Both agents hit the ground at exactly the same time.
In the space of less than a minute, the entire team of assassins had been dealt with in every essence of the word. Finally, one of them got smart. Or at least tried to.
"Don't move!" A final GenoHaradan agent, possibly the leader or at least the leader now that everyone else was incapacitated, appeared behind Dan. He grabbed the human and clutched him to his chest, aiming his gun at Dan's own head, looking around frantically. "Show yourself! Surrender or the captain dies!"
And Dan simply grabbed him by the arm and punched him in the face. Over. And over. And over. "Oh, did you think you could be smart? Holding me as a hostage? Does that seem like a smart idea?"
"Ollgh-!"
"I'm sorry, I can't hear you very well over the sound of my fist hitting what I think is your jaw. Is this your jaw? I think it's your jaw. Pretty sure those are teeth I feel dislodging. Hope you like eating through tubes." Finally, Dan picked the beaten agent up and headbutted his head, knocking him out cold. The face of the GenoHaradan agent looked like a bruised and worn gym bag, neither of the lighted eyes worked.
The Doctor was mid-recoiling from shock. "That... they... they're all..." He looked around. "They're all dead. They're ALL dead."
"That does tend to happen around me," Dan admitted.
"They're ALL dead!"
"Well, not all of them. In fact, most of them will probably be fine, even the stabbed and shot ones. Usually how things work out," Dan said.
"Oh, well how fantastic! Good to know the people trying to murder us will be right as rain!"
"I'm sorry. Did you want to kill one?" Dan asked. "I'm sure we could find more evil henchmen and pony cronies around here somewhere. They're not exactly uncommon."
And that was when the Mare Do Well approached them. "Speaking of uncommon," Dan said. "What kept you?"
The Mysterious Mare Do Well took off her hat and removed her mask. Yes, it was Rarity. "Well, it's nice to see you too, Dan," she said, sounding somewhat genuine, exhausted and just slightly chastising all at the same time. "Hello, Doctor."
The Doctor grabbed her hoof, kissed it and then shook it rapidly. "Miss Rarity, how good to see you again! And while we're on the subject, if you don't mind me asking, WHAT IN BLAZES KEPT YOU?!?!"
Dan folded his arms. "Were you wanting to make an entrance or just fashionably late, dahling?" he asked in an exaggerated fancy voice.
Rarity frowned at him. "Don't start. Please."
"Fair enough. Better late than us getting shot." Dan, the Doctor and Rarity shared a group hug.
"It's... it's good to have you back, Rarity," Dan said, clear that he meant it. The last of Twilight's missing friends, who were now missing again, they were finally all reunited. Or they would have been if they weren't all again. Somehow, though, there was great relief in having found Rarity. Dan hugged the purple-maned dressmaker tightly, sparing none of it.
"I missed you, too... darling."
"She said 'darling.' She actually said it," Dan remarked.
"Is that a good thing?" Whooves asked.
Dan nodded. "It is. It's going to make people so happy or slightly irritated. Probably both."
"Probably both indeed," Rarity agreed.
"I have no idea what either of you are talking about," a grinning Doctor said. "And I'm fine with that."
So, they took some time to take all of the GenoHaradan, all of which turned out to be unconscious but alive, and put them in the Pone Depot as per the Doctor's request. Dan would have been very happy letting them get slowly buried in the snow but the TimeLord was having none of it. As they tied up the rest of the aggressors up with Boba Fett, Dan and Rarity exchanged information, getting each other up to date as to what had happened since they last saw each other.
Dan's retelling of events was a bit exaggerated and since Phoenix Wright wasn't around, the Doctor had to clarify things. Often. But bit by bit, she was able to piece together a good picture of what had happened in her absence.
"So Vice is really dead and Rice has been... pretending... to be his son this entire time?" Dan asked.
Rarity nodded, propping up another body on the shelf next to a big Toblerpone. "It does make some amount of sense."
"No it doesn't. None of this makes sense at all," Dan said. But then, he noticed two sets of eyes staring at him and said, "Fine, continue."
"Well, his own name and likeness would be easily recognized. And a fake identity, well, it has its own drawbacks. But masquerading as his own... tragically deceased offspring is, well, a bit easier. Especially one completely forgotten about," Rarity explained. "From what I read of his notes, it was also a way for him to deal with the pain of loss, a way of keeping his son alive to him."
Dan shivered a bit. "Whatever. It's still creepy."
Rarity sighed. "The pain he feels... it's something no one in Equestria fully understands. Perhaps on Earth, someone, but not here, not Equestria. Not even the princesses could fully comprehend what the chancellor has gone through."
Dan shoved another body onto the shelf. "I understand I'm going to reunite him with his son. I don't need to fully comprehend a damn thing about him- I'll end his pain. He kidnapped my friends and tried to murder us all, tried to destroy everything I care about and even the things I didn't care about. He MADE me care about them. Because even THEY don't deserve to die. But him?" Dan looked away for a long moment. "He doesn't get sympathy from me."
"You're a lot like him," the Doctor said.
"I know."
"You even sound like him."
"I KNOW!!" Dan roared.
"But that's the problem," Rarity interjected. "You're too much like him."
"Okay, marshmallows? I know you just got back, but you really-"
"No," Rarity said, approaching him directly, "This is a problem. In more ways than one. I had to sneak away from the Ore Hounds three times, I've been fighting this fight as much as you have, Dan. You cannot hope to beat this pony by simply using his own strategy against him."
"Yes I can."
She sighed frustratedly. "It's NOT practical, sweetheart."
"You knew, you ALL knew exactly who I was when you took me in. I had no options; it was you- you, Twilight, the princesses, everypony, you all accepted me for who I was, not who I could be," Dan said.
"I recall you swearing an oath, captain," Rarity countered. She tossed her mane to the side, looking at him with one eye. She was still Rarity, even after all this time. "You swore to protect Equestria and its citizens. Because we took you in as we did."
"And how many times have I LITERALLY saved the world now? Like, at lest four or five times, right? There's the first Magic Gear, the second one at Christmas, all the ones in the Crystal Empire we blew up, the underground factory that was building another universe under our own FEET. And all the other crap I've done since then," Dan fumed.
"What if it came between your friends and revenge?" Rarity asked.
Dan batted it away. "We've answered that before."
"No, what if it REALLY came between revenge and your friends? What if we needed you to stop?"
The human looked at her right in the eyes. He did not blink. "I don't stop. But I can do both, Rarity. We can save our friends and get revenge."
She shook her head slowly. "You are impossibly... selfish."
He grabbed her by the shoulder. "You're saying I don't see things from your perspective. But you're not looking at things from mine."
"Only you could do that and you know it!"
"I DO know it!" Dan said, surprising her a bit. "I know how this is. I KNOW how it looks. I KNOW how I am! And I CHOOSE to be this way. This is MY decision!!" he said, grabbing his shirt, showing to her the word emblazoned on the front in bold. "I'm not asking for blind faith. I'm not asking for faith of any kind- you gave that to me on your own. I'm asking you to trust me."
Rarity thought about his words for a few long moments. "I... I believe I understand you."
"Fantastic! That makes one of us," the Doctor declared. "Because honestly, all this obsession with you and YOUR problems is not healthy. Literally. For anyone. For the whole planet!!"
"Doc, this is how we do things."
"AND THE WORLD HAS ENDED." The Doctor let the statement hang in the air, breathing deeply as it did. "It is absolutely bloody MADDENING how DAFT you people have to be to just keep going on like this when you know, you KNOW that HALF of these problems are your own fault!!"
Dan and Rarity exchanged a glance. "Well... hey. Half is a lot. Give us some credit; it's more like, uh... a third."
"YOU DESTROYED PONYVILLE," the Doctor declared. "And EVERYTHING you've done has only made Rice stronger. He STUDIED you and you KNEW he STUDIED you."
"So..." they exchanged another look.
"I'm sorry, Doctor, but what is it you're saying?"
"What am I saying?!" the Doctor rubbed his mane. "I'm saying you could've used that to your advantage! Just give the poor bastard what he wants, collaborate with him and sabotage him from within! Honestly, he offered to work with you how many times?"
"Oooohhhhhhhhh..." Dan said, nodding. "Yeahhh... oh. Actually... yeah, that's a pretty good plan. We probably could've helped Rice build one of his crappy Sword Spells and found a way to sabotage his operations from inside."
"And rescued the princesses and everypony else at the same time..." Rarity admitted.
"Heck, if I'd just agreed to that when he first offered, we could've probably stopped the princesses from even being kidnapped in the first place," Dan remarked. "We could've prevented this whole crisis."
"AHHHHHHHHH!!!" Doctor Whooves yelled. He ran outside, very nearly yanking his own mane out as he did so.
"I do believe he seems a tad troubled," Rarity said.
"He'll get over it. He's a TimeLard. Or whatever. He's got time," Dan declared. They followed him outside.
They found Doctor Whooves in the snow with his back towards them. He quickly spun around. "Sorry about all that."
"No... problem?" Dan said, a little confused.
"Are you alright, deary? Do you need to take a break?"
"Oh no, I'm fine. Just fine, really. Shall we allons-y?"
"Sure..." Dan and Rarity both uttered, now a mixture of concerned and confused. "So, where are we going now?"
"Well, if our plan is to reach Donquestria, we need to get to Appleloosa first. That means we need to find a train."
"Weather's not going to make that easy," Doctor Whooves said.
"The railroads are about the only thing Rice wouldn't demolish," Dan said. "He basically invented trains on Equestria, right? He'd never get rid of the train tracks."
"Right. So we just have to find the railroad tracks in the middle of a blizzard," Doctor Whooves said. "But maybe..."
"What?"
"There's the switching station at Ford Junction north of Ponyville. It's part of the railroad tracks, so if the tracks are there, it should still be there," Whooves said.
"I thought everything south of Canterlot was destroyed," Rarity said.
Dan shrugged. "Can't hurt to look. Lead the way, Doctor!"
"Right!" The snow continued to fall, but there were three of them now. They braved the winter weather, headed north in search of a train.
Holy Crow I'm actually first this week?! My Sunday Yays have been doubled! So without further ado: a new chapter means it's ~Sunday~ now lemme see n'ere *dons reading glasses*
... Aww hell! Does Dan actually "owe one" to bucking Mare-Do-Well?! Sorry but I hated that episode and I can't stand the character either so-oh it's Rarity! And she kicked ass this Lioness approves! Moving on;
Oh Rarity dah-ling don't you know know that's the way Dan works by now? Doctor Whooves is new to the Main Cast but you've (mostly) been around since Episode 1! ... Again though, I'll excuse this cos of your ass-kicking fight scene!
Uhhh think you broke Doc Whooves maybe just leave him with Missus Clucky back at the Library?
Nope, I don't but it either! Maybe vengeance against the one who actually killed his son, but everyone else didn't deserve it! Plus he bucked with friends so he pretty much has to be killed after this!
Now, train ward ho!
Now for my favourite quotes:
(BRB Pinkie Promise, there were some awesome ones this week!)
Phew that it everything I love (most) about this week's chapter and I'll be eagerly awaiting the next!
Like always: thanks for making my weekend and giving me my weekly reset so I can keep trucking till the next one!
Awesome as always and I'll see you ~next time~
Your Eternal Fan =^_^=
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Thank you for reading, I'm happy you enjoy it
Never change Dan, never change.
hahaha, revenge is always the answer! Fight the system!
Good show, Barro, good show!
I want to know if Rarity can apply enough crystal magic to water ice, that it becomes that material that remains solid when dropped in the sun. Its solar temperature, but, its water, violates so many normal material rules? Whats another like not even melting, never mind ionising at plasma inducing 6000 K.
At the very least, make a nice little icesled, igloo and sail, instead of all that Tom left Rarity the hand crank cart?
No hero is perfect, even Dan. Faking surrender to undermine from within is just not in his wheelhouse.
Damnit Barro, you and your subliminal message ridden broadcasts. I just bought a Toblerone for the first time in years... I was clean for so long!! *sobs*
~Dollars
I always knew you were in bed with the candy lobbyists...
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You're very welcome, haha. Thanks for reading, happy you enjoyed it.
9502869
Dan's more of an anti-... everything else rather than a hero. He's basically everything negative you can yank out of yourself with the only positive things remaining being things you vaguely liked during your childhood, in Dan's case, mostly Harold Ramis films, AC/DC, cable t.v and Christmas decorations. But you're absolutely right; every hero has their flaws. Dan is weak against bureaucracy, mild annoyances/inconveniences and things happening to his hair, toes or fingers.
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9504158
NONE of you liked the fact that Rarity's back and is somehow a freaking badass ninja? No one is enjoying that part? She's the ONLY ONE who didn't wear the Mare Do Well costume originally, having made it and she's the only one of Twilight's friends that Dan didn't rescue before Plan X. THIS. MAKES. SENSE.
Fine, fine, that's fine. I'm fine. We're going to focus on the Doctor's story more anyway and there will be more friends returning soon. Thank you as always for reading, please note that my outbursts are directed at my circumstances, not you for your opinions and views. Thanks again and see you soon! Hope I cleared some about Rarity up at least.
Addendum to previous~ by Luna's beard! Tinfoil, tinfoil everywhere!!
~Dollars
9504334
# I liked rarity before it was cool.
~$
That's how the kids today say it right...?
9504334
OBJECTION!!! Your Author-ness! I freaking loved Rarity’s fight scene! She kicked ass, took names and looked fabulous while doing it! (I just hate that she was dressed as MDW cos I hate that episode!)
So in summation: love Rarity, super glad she’s back but hate the costume
9504334
lol, I like that Rarity's back, I was just tired when I read this, so my comments are a bit eh
9504396
Dan: The kids can say what they want, just not to me. I'll rip out their vocal chords if they do. They will not be alright. The kids, I mean. So... maybe?
9504397
It's a cool costume! I think, anyway. And we didn't have much else to work with, what with Carousel Boutique being destroyed so, Rarity was making do. But I'm happy you liked her kicking ass- that part was written for you . We had to have her kick at least as much ass as Dan when he fought Boba Fett.
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Your comments are fine, man. I'm just happy you take the time to say a couple nice words at all and get a chuckle from what I write every week. I've been incredibly busy myself but I'm hoping to continue with your stories at some point. You're a very talented author. Me, well, I'm at least a persistent one.
9504869
>'You're a very talented author.'
>Referring to me
>wheeze.exe
I wouldn't say that, hahaha, I just write... strange things I suppose.
But thankies <3 You're a talented one as well, lol
You had me going into the Rarity reveal. The marshmallow being any good in a fight? C'mon...
Dunno, I'd say they cause over half on their own problems.