Check Off Your Gun
“So! Who’s butt are we gonna kick next?!” Zaid asked, his eyes brighter than the strobing lights blurring past the group.
“We’re not kicking any butts!” Rainbow shouted, carrying both Kera on her back and the weight of Roarke leaning against her. “We’re jumping off this hunk-a-junk! And in case you haven’t noticed, we haven’t exactly done a bunch of butt kicking since we friggin’ got here!”
“Yeah?” Kera leaned down to stare at Rainbow’s face upside-down. “What’s up with that?!”
“Look…” Rainbow frowned. “I didn’t expect to be bumping skulls with a continent masquerading itself as a stallion!”
“No good, sandbagging cheapscape!” Zaid spat as the two rounded a corner. “Face it, girl, you know how to work a crowd. You’re the main event! The showstopper!”
“Are you sure he’s here to help us?” Kera asked, frowning.
“He’s been good for stress relief so far.”
“Stress relief?” Zaid stammered.
“When I regain my balance…” Roarke hissed, trotting limply with a shattered helmet. “...I’m using his skull as a bidet.”
“Oh! Hey look!” Zaid sweated with a nervous smile. “An exit!” He pointed towards a distant stairwell. “Right over there!”
“Great!” Rainbow Dash picked up the pace, breaking into a swift canter. “Hopefully there’re still enough thunderclouds left to hide our jump!”
“But Rainbow!” Kera squeaked. “The book!”
“Look, screw the book!” Rainbow frowned. “If Floydien’s Nancy Jane needs fuel so badly, I’ll just get out and push us the rest of the way to the world’s end!”
“Whoah, you’re headed there!?” Zaid grinned. “They serve the best ale!”
“Kera, do me a favor.”
“What, Rainbow?”
“His left ear. Don’t hold back.”
Kera swatted him. ”Ow!” She gazed back down at the pegasus.
“But the book is the whole reason I chased after the bad guys!” the filly exclaimed. “I can’t go back to the Jury empty hoofed?!”
“Why not?” Rainbow ushered the group towards the base of the stairs. “We’re all returning empty-headed. Okay, now let’s be careful. Once we’re on the top deck--”
Just then, a dozen soldiers rushed down the steps and aimed their manarifles. “Hold it right there!”
”Oh come on!” Rainbow Dash dropped Kera, flew up, kicked a metal panel loose from the ceiling, and came back down with the slab aimed towards the phalanx. She blocked the resulting fire, scuffling back so that the group could crouch with her. “One of theses days, I’d darn well better fly into a country full of swashbucklers! I swear!”
“They’re trying to kill us!” Zaid exclaimed.
Rainbow glared his way. “No, you think?”
“Thinking?” Roarke shook her snout and rubbed her aching forehead as she stood up behind Rainbow’s shield. “That’s my job. Normally.”
“Hey, copper girl!” Rainbow smiled, wincing as fresh dents formed in the metal from the bullet pings on the other side. “Think you’re ready to… uh… start not-sucking again?”
“I’ve got a few bones to pick with these ponies,” Roarke hissed, her eye-lenses glinting icily. “And all of them are about to get shattered.”
“Just… uhm… try not to get super angry like you just did again.”
“No promises.” Roarke coiled her bodies, sprang, and fired her thrusters. “Rrrrgh!” She spun into the group, sweeping several gunponies off their hooves and pummeling the skulls of those in the second line.
“Look at her go!” Kera exclaimed, peaking around the burnt plate of metal. “The four of us can totally get that book back, Rainbow! I know it!”
Rainbow sweated as she said, “Yeah, well, so long as we don’t run into any more huge lumbering mountains with hooves--”
“There! Those are the ponies!” Basso’s voice shouted.
“Luna poop!” Rainbow Dash swiveled around.
At the end of the hallway opposite of the stairwell, Basso stood besides Straker and a contingent of armed guards. “I think the one with the pretty mane is the leader.”
Straker craned his neck. “The one with the brown streak?”
“No, the other pretty one.”
“You sure that’s our intruder, Basso?”
“Uhhh…” Basso squinted. From miles away, the burnt metal panel flew and ricocheted off his skull with a cacophonous clang! He blinked, standing stock still. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”
“Zaid!” Rainbow Dash shouted as she bolted down the hallway on furious wings. “Look after Kera!”
“Hey, when do I get my own ceiling panel to fling around?” the former cultist shouted.
“...Kera, look after Zaid!” Rainbow Dash spun in mid-air, dodged a trio of energy blasts, kicked off a wall, and landed in a fierce dive-kick. “Haaaaugh!”
Three stallions fell down in a blink. Basso turned, blinking as Rainbow somersaulted, galloped off a wall, spun off, and bucked another guard across the face.
Straker swiveled about. With an icy expression, he telekinetically unsheathed a double-sided taser from a holster at his side.
Rainbow Dash saw it. She spun from a pair of gun-toting enforcers and flew straight at him with multiple rapid kicks. “Ya! Ya! Ya! Ya!”
Straker backtrotted, carefully deflecting each buck with his sparkling bludgeons. He stabbed forward, hooked his weapon into Rainbow’s mane, and flung the thing down.
“Gaah!” Rainbow found herself being slammed into the floor by her mane. She grunted, struggling as Straker held her in place. Two guards aimed their guns at her prone figure. Snarling, she kicked her upper body up and twisted her weight on the weapon in Straker’s magical grasp.
The stallion grunted as his horn dimmed. He lost grip of the taser, for Rainbow Dash was twirling up from the ground with acrobatic finesse. The guards fired at her--missed by a hair on either side--and gasped as she ended her feat with a mane-toss in their direction. The double-sided weapon flew like a comet, uppercutting both of them to the floor.
Rainbow Dash spun around, snarling.
Straker was gritting his teeth. He reached a hoof up and snaked his forelimb into his uniform’s pocket.
“Nuh uh!” Rainbow pounced him. “I’m through with dirty tricks--”
She slammed into his body before he could pull a weapon out. Just milliseconds before they made contact, the mare spotted a flash of silver metal inside his coat. Her world instantly spun. She and Straker flew forward, tangled for a brief moment, and tumbled apart.
“Unngh… what…” Rainbow Dash struggled to her knees, shaking her head. “What the hay was that?”
“Lieutenant?” Basso trotted over on loud hooves, kneeling by Straker’s side as he helped the officer up. “I think we might need some backup.”
Straker winced, squinting at him. “And just what are you doing, enforcer?”
“Helping… you up?”
“Enforcer…” Straker sighed. “Didn’t we have a seminar on assertiveness or something?”
“We did?” Basso blinked.
”What in Spark’s name is going on here…?!” A familiar feminine voice exclaimed.
That shook Rainbow out of her spell. She looked up with a gasp, eyes quivering on a figure who had emerged from a connecting hallway with two accompanying guards.
Upon seeing the pegasus, Nightshade’s ears drooped on either side of her broken horn. “Austraeoh…” She shuddered. “Oh, Novus, if only you could see how close I was…”
Sneering, Rainbow Dash jumped onto her hooves. “You…!”
Nightshade stood firm, holding tight to a particular tome in her grasp. “How fitting that you would charge back into destiny…”
“Belle told me all about you!” Rainbow Dash shouted.
The two guards rushed forward, swinging tasers.
Rainbow smacked one upside the head and effortlessly bucked the other into a wall. She flapped her wings harder and soared like an angry missile at the mare. “I promised her I would deliver something to you!”
Kera watched breathlessly from afar. Her green eyes bounced between Rainbow’s pendant and the book.
“First class!” Rainbow shouted, flinging her best hoof towards Nightshade’s skull.
Just then, Kera gasped. “No, Rainbow! Don’t get close--”
It was too late. A bright flash of lavender emanated between the two. Rainbow’s charge ended with a harmless slide, stopping just inches before Nightshade’s hooves. “Unnngh…” She curled up, overwhelmed with nauseating dizziness.
Nightshade gazed down at her, sighing. “Will you ever cease being so misguided…?”
“Rainbow Dash!” Kera galloped over and squatted by the mare’s side. “Are you okay?”
“I… I thought…” With weak eyes, Rainbow gazed across the hall at Zaid. “You said the… the hooflet would… would protect m-me…”
“Yeah! You gotta be wearing the dang thing, Einstallion!” Zaid retorted.
Holding her bile down, Rainbow rolled to the side, vividly brandishing the mark of “Odrsjot” across her lower forelimb.
Zaid did a double-take. “Oh. You are.” His brow furrowed. “Well, what the crap?!” One of Nightshade’s guards had recovered in time to smack him across the skull. “Aaaugh!” He was forced down to his knees against the hard metal floor.
The ponies besides Straker and Basso had stood back up, wearily. At the same time, Zetta rushed in from a distant hallway with three times as many reinforcements.
Biting her lip, Kera spun about and shouted towards the stairwell. “Roarke!”
But the metal mare was dozens of feet away, headbutting the last of a thick group of armed enforcers.
“Roarke!” Kera cried.
Roarke spun about. Her eye-lenses shrank as a gasp escaped her throat.
Rainbow Dash lay in a limp heap besides Kera. Zaid was helpless to move under the guard’s grip. Nightshade pivoted about with the book, gazing coolly at the Searonese pony while Straker’s forces marched in, surrounding the pegasus on all sides.
“Bloody hell…” Roarke tried to prepare a missile, but her suit spat sparks and rattled. Her brown coat went pale.
“Rainbow! Get up! Get up!” Kera stammered, shaking the filly heavily.
Rainbow tried to move, but her face was awash with pain. She fell back, her ruby eyes rolling. At last, as the lavender light overwhelmed her, and she gave Roarke a pleading, thousand-mile stare. “R-Roarke…”
Straker followed the path of Rainbow’s sight. Upon spotting Roarke, he flew a hoof forward and shouted, “Shoot her!”
Roarke jolted in place, her augmented eyes still locked on Rainbow.
The pegasus hissed. In the throb of the moment, she mouthed one word: “Go!”
Roarke gritted her teeth. Cursing under her breath, she spun and rocketed up the stairwell--
--which promptly exploded under Ledomaritan manafire. The entire end of the hallway collapsed on top of Roarke, burying her in metal shrapnel and dust.
Kera screamed. Zaid moaned in pain. And that was when the forces of Ledo dragged Rainbow--and her friends--out of sight.
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1. Title - I saw what you did there.
2. I love how Basso is totally unperturbed by anything.
3. Zaid for the lulz.
4. So much for that symbol being useful.
5. Noooo....
6. Typo - extra 's':
Shell arrives for the party? Or am I reading it wrong and it was just the soldiers?
Beh! Thirty close-hand pushups, ):(. Knock 'em out!
Yeah, so much for Odrsjot.
~Basso
Well that happened.
So, Odrsjot doesn't protect Austraeoh, but rather others, from the book?
That's...
...very crappy.
Very crappy indeed.
Hey, I loved that movie.
I get the feeling Rainboarke is gonna be a tough sell at this rate...
Also, what the hell, Kera?! Aren't you supposed to be a badass in miniature like you were on the Heraldites' ship?! Use your fancy magic and throw things! Preferably bad guys!
I can't tell whether you're referencing the recent movie or The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...
I would love to see Rainbow Dash push the Noble Jury.
3394181 Their shipping name is Doarke... unfortunate I know, but they can't all be winners
3394160 It had to have been protecting her or she'd have been out of it before even making it on board the ship. Apparently it doesn't protect her from *that close* though.
3394277 No, it's Rainboarke.
~Basso
3394393 Well, I guess it would have been a stretch for the rune to protect her from direct exposure to the bright lavender aura of magic.
3394398 I prefer Roarbow.
3394411 But Rainboarke sounds way cooler!
~Basso
can you have rainbow just KILL HER
So...when is RD gonna get pissed off enough to lift the pendant up in the air for a second.
I'm human. I want moar explosions.
And oh "Roarke coiled her bodies"
What?
3394560
I noticed that too. Guess there are more Roarke than previously estimated.
~Basso
I love BAsso!
That backfire really slowed Roarke down, just like that band must be working, after all, Dash managed to get within feet of the book, unless that cloak is seriously good shielding, and maybe the enforcer is dangerous with carrying chaos metal.
Basso. CLANG. I think we need to have a talk about that assertiveness seminar? that takes real Iron Will.
3394708
Don't be ridiculous, there's only one Roarke but she totally has two bodies! One is made of flesh, the other is made of metal!
[/forced explanation]
3394788 Thanks =^^=
3394831 That's... possible...
~Basso
3394831 She has two bodies. One is her, the other is her last victim?
3395260 That sounds like some crappy horrorsjot concept.
...would Zaid and Basso make a good couple?
~Basso
Well, this is unfortunate. I wonder how many chapters it'll take before Rainbow can free herself.
And in other news, ponies die when they are killed.
3394444 Roarbow makes me think of an archer firing supersonic arrows.
But yeah, I guess Rainboarke is cool too.
And for the record, I think that Zaid and Basso would make a good couple.
3395752
Awesome =^^=
~Basso
3395607
th05.deviantart.net/fs71/200H/i/2013/030/e/5/exasperated_twilight_by_musepony-d5t8707.png
At the rate things have been going, it'll likely be three chapters or more until they stagger out of this clusterfuck.
We'll see.
They've got a pretty good restaurant, too.
Shell ETA: 9 chapters.
Yep, that went about as well as could be expected.
Nothing's ever easy, is it?
I have finally caught up and guess who is ready to see The Only major flank kicking, chaos wrangling, bad ass incarnate named RD!!!!!!
(seriously, what other pony can piss pure awesome?)
3394560 while you may be human, I can still agree with you. In fact, I demand more explosions!
2.bp.blogspot.com/-LD9_SW8llpk/UDKxN202XhI/AAAAAAAAIjI/GkpLFISFpow/s640/BusterKeatonCar_01.gif
Maybe this battleship can behave with more civility.
Guys, I'm trying to make some fanart, but I think I've missed the description of Shell's cutiemark, could you help me with it?
3397012 Not sure if it was ever described. ):( has a habit of leaving that part out of ponies' descriptions.
~Basso
You guys are lucky. You're actual characters.
My name was just a one-note joke about dodgy advice from a survival manual.
You can only storm so many battleships before you run into one that beats you. Unfortunately, Dash has found that battleship.
Eh, Roarke'll be fine. It'll take more than a collapsing stairwell to stop her.
3394160
Of course you did. Everyone likes Simon Pegg and Nick Frost movies.
Maybe Nightshade will not be a total chode with Dash... She's not as terrible as Shell right?
Nighty needs killing so bad...
What the hell did I have in my pocket...no, the OTHER me! He was going for something but whatever was in his pocket made RD feel off for a moment.
3397291
haha. Better then being a middle-manager who got executed by shell.
Also, I'm kinda glad roarke and dashie got beat. They were starting to feel too damn powerful lately.
"Really? Did you think I'd keep an animal like you close to me without some kind of insurance policy?"
Not the most sophisticated kind of entertainment, I know, but you'll have to admit that it fits.
3397012 Description not been given. Probably a burning Na'vi tree.
IIIIIt's Dashie's evaluation time!
This...is not good. How come the Odrsjot isn't working? It could be just that Zaid really is crazy, but I don't think that's it...These are my thoughts so far.
-MASH
Man, I was hoping Ledo was out of the picture
I'm actually glad to see that an entire ship full of military trained ponies is actually able to subdue two enemy combatants. Hurray for competent mooks.
I winced. That seems like it would be incredibly painful. Funny how hair pulling strikes me as more threatening than being besieged by a whole hallway full of rubble.
Also, as crappy as it is for Rainbow and Co. to be captured by the enemy, I'm kinda glad we're getting some serious risk back up in this fic. It feels more meaningful when there are real consequences - as fun as reading about Dash or Roarke wiping the floor with a dozen enforcers is most of the time.
Onward!
No! They were supposed to win!
-Spirit
3405558 a more simple analogy. superman suckering to kryptonite :P
Loyalty: Rainbow Dash
New Magic: Kera
New Laughter: Props
New Honesty:-Unknown
New Generosity:-Unknown
New Kindness:-Unknown
So much for that plan . . .
ONE OF THESE DAYS I AM GOING TO CUT YOU UP INTO LITTLE PIECES
GRUUUUUH
So, the fight scene's cut a little short. Looks like we're gonna be spending a lot more time on the Lightning Bearer then originally planned!
NightshAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAde
!
edit:
way with the subtle foreshadowing