NO MORE PONIES

by Brony_Fife

Shinobu Fights A Princess Or Something!

“It’s been nearly two years,” the pony began as she drew near to Shinobu, “since your insipid friend came here. The deaths that followed have been gruesome and many.” She stopped just in front of the elevator. Her eyes, blue and mysterious and full of anger, scanned the piles of body parts and the pools of blood that covered the elevator. They fixate on Shinobu—Shinobu, who caused this; Shinobu, who slaughtered her subjects; Shinobu, who is soaked head to toe in their blood.

“And now another rat follows,” she said, the words slithering slowly from her mouth.

“I’m just here to rescue Master,” Shinobu said.

There was pause. Then the pony-unicorn-princess-thing threw her head back and the entire chamber was suddenly filled with wicked cackling that changed pitch with every guffaw. Suddenly, the black cloak exploded into a swarm of shrieking bats, their wings carrying them up and away into the elevator shaft above.

Shinobu shielded her eyes out of reflex, putting her hand down slowly, looking into the intense, hateful blue eyes of the nocturnal demon before her. Wings of a pegasus fluttered angrily at her sides. Horn of a unicorn glimmered ominously, painting her scowling crumple of a face in its light. Her mane flowed dreamily, rolling and licking like an oceanic wave of midnight.

Suddenly, Shinobu wanted a plushie of her.

“Rescue?” the pony princess spat. She nickered. “Your Master requires no rescue. He appeared to us, sudden as the breaking sound of thunder, swinging blades of light and howling words of rage. He brought, and still does bring, grief and misery and horror to my land.”

Her horn glowed more intensely than it did before, and a screen sprang up from the nothingness around them. On it played scenes of Travis’ previous battles. How he’d sliced Rarity in half. How he’d blown Rainbow Dash to smithereens. How he’d ended Applejack. The screen then displayed graveyards becoming fuller, houses becoming emptier.

Throughout this showing, Shinobu said nothing.

Finally, the screen changed again, this time showing the moon. And on the moon was a castle that looked like a garden of glowing mushrooms. And in this castle was a cannon, loaded and glowing.

Shinobu’s eyes widened. “You’re going to blow up your own planet?!”

The pony shook her head. “Nay,” she said, “if your idiot Master had only listened to the stealth part of your story, you and the readers would all know that this cannon is zeroing in on his unique signature. I aim to scorch him off this earth. ”

Shinobu waved her hand. “Whoa, wait,” she said, “I’ve seen this show before, and I remember you. You’re supposed to be some kind of powerful magic Princess or something. Why can’t you just go down there and try to defeat Master face to face?”

The screen vanished, leaving the two of them in the almost-darkness. “Doing so would be suicide, even for a Princess of my power and standing,” said the pony. “He has survived several situations that would have disintegrated anyone else. He is obviously a foe we must approach with tact and guile.” She blinked. “Plus I’ve always wanted to blow something up with a giant laser. It’s been my dream since I was a filly.”

“…What?” Shinobu asked with some concern.

Luna shrugged. Her horn glowed once more, this time coupled with an ominous rumble shaking the whole castle like it owed the rumble money. “The countdown has initiated,” she said to Shinobu’s horror. “In five minutes, your Master will be just a memory.”

An anger fueled by terror was injected into Shinobu’s mind, drawing her lips back, clenching her teeth down, tightening the already titanic grip she had on her katana. She snorted fiercely.

Just as the word memory had finished slipping from Luna’s lips, other words escaped Shinobu’s. They weren’t words she often used, and besides her Master, she didn’t really like hearing them out of other people, but for the situation, it felt appropriate. I’d actually write them, but it’d take up at least a thousand words and I don’t have that kind of time to waste these days, as you’ve no doubt noticed.

In either case, Luna’s face had gone ash-white at how crass and tasteless Shinobu’s outburst was. The white quickly turned to an angry red. “HOW DARE YOU SPEAK TO A PRINCESS IN SUCH A TONGUE!!!” she bellowed in a voice that left a ringing in Shinobu’s ears. “THE TIME HAS COME TO TEACH THEE, NAÏVE ROGUE, THE IMPORTANCE OF MANNERS AND CLEAN LANGUAGE!!!”

Before Shinobu had any time to react, Luna was in her face, along with a hoof. One punch was all it took to knock the tired, beaten-up Shinobu out.

---

Light flashed, scrubbing away the darkness. What replaced the darkness was like something off a black metal album cover: mysterious bags dangled from the ceiling on hooks, along with black birdcages and elaborate coffins. Twisting brambles wormed through most everything, save for the statues of tall, spindly things with indistinct conical faces, with tiny hands holding pitchforks, with long crooked tails.

Shinobu gulped uneasily. “Wh-What is this place?”

“Let’s call it the Horizon,” came a voice.

Shinobu turned her head behind her, where the voice had come from. The voice had sounded much like Princess Luna from before, but there standing behind her, was instead her Master. He was clad, head to foot, with black leather duds, much of it spike-studded, as if he had joined a biker gang. Perhaps most frightening about his appearance, besides the menacing length and sound of the Peony he held at his side, was the black void he wore for his face. No eyes, no nose, no mouth, no glasses—merely a suckling darkness that belched a noise like a neverending scream.

The scream dulled as Not Master looked to his knuckles, dusting them against his jacket. He looked back up to Shinobu, and a giant eye that looked like something out of one of those silent films from the thirties peeked from inside the hole. It blinked, then went away.

“This is where dreams die,” Not Master explained in what was clearly Princess Luna’s voice, tinny and faraway as it was. “They are brought here, kicking and screaming, and dropped off to starve. Gradually, they pervert into horrid shapes, then die and become something like a zombie that never leaves you.” He stopped talking and the screaming resumed.

“L-Like night terrors?” Shinobu asked. She hadn’t realized how scared she was until she spoke. She was too busy shivering from that fucking eye peering at her.

The screaming quieted before Not Master gave his reply, motioning towards himself. “This is the Tantabus, Mark II. Like its predecessor, it is a device meant to embody someone’s worst nightmares. In this case, yours. ”

Shinobu’s fingers snaked around her katana, shaking and shivering like leaves in the wind. She said nothing, her lungs pumping air in and out in torrents, her eyes widening and her nostrils flaring. She cleared her throat, then suddenly wondered how her body could keep working even though she was asleep. Was this just her imagination? What was anything?

Not Master walked around Shinobu, lazily spinning the Peony. The baritone of its hum groaned lazily as it formed arc after arc. “I want to put forth an experiment, if you will. Have you ever heard of bed death? It occurs unexpectedly when one is asleep. To cut a long story short, many assume this phenomenon occurs while the victim is dreaming. They think that dying in a dream results in dying in the waking world.”

He stopped. The screaming intensified. He turned, and inside the hole in his head was a mouth with jagged teeth, opening and closing and flicking a forked tongue, in the same strange silent film colors as the eye. He raised the Peony, pointing it at Shinobu. It might have only been four inches from her, but she could feel the heat rolling off of it—which again made her wonder how and why everything felt so intense if it’s all really just a dream.

“The first Tantabus didn’t become powerful enough to achieve bed death. Let’s see if this one can remedy that.”

Tantabus II thrust the Peony forward, its tip nearly impaling Shinobu’s face if she hadn’t nimbly dodged it. The Peony went up, the hole in Tantabus II’s face screaming the whole while as he swung it left, right, up, down. The arcs it left behind reminded Shinobu of wide, clownlike grins.

How could a katana withstand the heat of the Peony without warping? As Shinobu discovered, quite well, actually: when she stood her ground and countered an incoming blow from above, the Peony bounced off with a surprised shriek, the entirety of the Horizon shuddering at the impact, a sensation that lasted for perhaps two seconds.

The two seconds were all Shinobu needed. With a bounding leap, she closed the gap between herself and Tantabus II, and her katana formed an arc, another silver smile that flashed for a single moment before colliding with her target. What escaped him was the color of nightmares, and was ejected in a flock like flies.

Something spun in the air, and as the flies began to part the something fell to what passed for ground here. The arm convulsed for a bit, dropping the Peony to the floor, where it rolled to a stop, and, with a whimpering hiss, the twelve feet of red melted away.

Tantabus II clutched his arm as more flies flew from where the elbow had been. Shinobu stood, lifting her katana and pointing it at him. Both stared each other down. Or at least, Shinobu knew she was—who the hell knew if Tantabus II could stare thanks to that blank hole of his.

He leaned forward, convulsing. Shinobu heard a chuckle fluttering from lungs a million miles away. Suddenly, Tantabus II lurched as if vomiting, his whole body deflating like a balloon and falling flat to the ground. From that hole in his head was launched a headless horse that, against everything Shinobu believed in, still released an angered whinnying that echoed for miles and miles. Its hooves thundered across the Horizon as it sped right for Shinobu.

She swung. It exploded into more black flies.

An angry whinny from behind. Shinobu turned and swung again, at another headless horse. More flies.

Again, from the left. Again, she swung, and again, more flies erupted.

This continued for some time, with Shinobu striking down each and every headless horse, bursting them into flies. As the flies fled from the bodies of the horses, they flew upward and became a pitch black thundercloud. Shinobu looked up at the cloud, and like the clouds she used to gaze up at in Santa Destroy, this thundercloud took a shape.

It was a horse. Or rather, a nightmare in the shape of one. At least this one had a head—and a billowing nighttime mane to go with it. She was similar in appearance to Princess Luna, save for the obvious black instead of dark blue, not to mention the garish silver armor she wore.

She threw her head back and released a sound halfway between a horse’s whinny and a dentist’s drill. Almost as if following a command, the demon statues nearby groaned loudly as their parts moved and came to life. They lifted themselves up on strange, spindly legs, their conical faces wiggling as they snuffled the cold air.

Then those conical faces looked, eyelessly, right at Shinobu, and their tiny hands—each one probably the size of a nickel with fingers the length of teeth—clasped harder around their pitchforks. The spider legs that stuck from their backs began to spin, and Shinobu realized then that those things were supposed to be wings. They lifted off and lunged right for her as the cloud-Luna laughed.

---

She changed the boss fight mid-battle? You’re shitting me. Just shitting me.

I’m not kidding, Master! She really pulled that. I wasn’t pleased either, especially since those two statues really had nothing to do with ponies or assassins. They were just kinda there. I honestly wonder what the author was thinking when they got included.

Eh, he was probably cranking some Rob Zombie or some shit and just thought the idea was cool.

Probably. Either way, the rest of the fight went like this…

---

The conical-faced demons leapt down, the ground and the brambles all shuddering upon their impact. Only when one was close did Shinobu realize how big they were. It was like a child facing Godzilla—if Godzilla were a Lovecraftian monstrosity and the child was highly skilled in samurai arts.

The demon thrusted its spear down at Shinobu, only for its target to vanish and its spear to impale the ground with a crash. It glanced closer, its three tiny eyes blinking one after the other as it saw a diminutive figure running up its spear handle, sword in hand, before she leapt up into its face.

It was like a hyperactive spider biting the ear of a wolf, its poison spreading throughout its victim’s body. One swing cleaved the tip of the demons’ cone-face, the second shearing off another section, the third doing much the same, and so on. By the time Shinobu got to the arched, brontosaurus-like neck of the creature, it was completely headless.

With a quick and careful step, Shinobu held fast to her katana as she leapt for the second demon, who at this time leapt into the air to bring its spear down on its fellow to skewer Shinobu. Unfortunately, its mission to make a Shinobu-ka-bob was a total bust: all it did was give her a quicker way to travel up its spear.

Second verse, same as the first.

The thundercloud creature shrieked in anger as Shinobu killed its servants. As the last demon fell to the ground, Shinobu wondered how on earth she was going to defeat the thundercloud creature. Then she looked at the demon’s bodies and found an answer.

Shinobu used her sword to carve one of the demons like a turkey, and put the piece in her mouth, chewed it, and swallowed. It tasted like chicken.

---

….That’s seriously some fucked-up Hellraiser shit right there.

I know it sounds weird, Master, but you have to remember, this was a dream. It made sense at the time.

I know, I know, but holy fuck.

---

Shinobu ate the demons, tearing the meat off their bones and swallowed them with greedy gulps. When she finished, she realized the demons were dead and she was fifty feet tall. Now that Shinobu was a giant, she could cleave that cloud in two. She drew her sword and threw it at the cloud. It became a silver serpent and slithered through the roaring sounds of the Horizon, penetrating the black cloud easily.

The black cloud parted and welcomed the silver serpent with a song that ended abruptly, with a sound like an elephant stomping on a sousaphone. The black cloud reformed as the same nightmarish armored unicorn from before—only now did Shinobu realize it was Princess Luna’s less-amicable form of Nightmare Moon—and she charged Shinobu with the force of a million trains.

Without a weapon, Shinobu attempted to wrestle Nightmare Moon, like her Master would have done. But Nightmare Moon was crafty and ducked her head when Shinobu reached for her, stuck the horn between Shinobu’s legs, lifted her up, and tossed her over.

She fell for a second. She fell for a year. She fell for hours. But the important part is, she landed, and the dreams she’d crushed weren’t happy about it. One of them had been dreaming he was BATMAN, for Christ’s sake, and when he clambered onto the invasive giant’s ear, he made sure she wouldn’t forget it.

Nightmare Moon chased Shinobu into the web of countless dreams, where she lied in a state between subconsciouses, dazed as fuck. Then Nightmare Moon opened her mouth and vomited a giant wasp.

Shinobu saw the wasp as it lumbered for her. She shook her head to remove the obnoxious creature complaining in her ear (saying something about Batman) and reached out to grab the wasp. It broke in her hand like glass. The pieces formed an army and rebelled against Nightmare Moon. They latched onto her legs and buried their heads inside them like ticks.

Then they exploded.

Shinobu reached into a nearby dream where someone was dreaming she was a samurai, and pulled the katana from her hands. She probably shouldn’t have done so—the dreamer was surrounded by armed villains. But, hey, c’est la vie and all that shit.

Nightmare Moon stumbled about on legs that were going to yogurt as more of the soldiers exploded. She began to breath fire as her horn grew miles long. She swung her horn in a desperate attempt to stop Shinobu’s swing.

---

…

…

…And?

…And, that’s it, Master. I won. I beat her in the dream, and when I came to, I found her crown on the ground. She wasn’t anywhere else. Here it is, in fact.

Ooh, shiny. Fucking sweet. I needed to hock something to the pawn shops.

But, let’s continue. So I found an escape pod and shot for earth…

---

And the ride there was bumpy. Shinobu felt like she’d been put in a blender set on chaos, and as the pod hit the atmosphere, it only got worse. She was thankful that she hadn’t eaten any lunch before this, and thankful more that she left her katana sheathed for this trip.

When the pod hit the ground, Shinobu was pretty sure she was either dead or shaken into a jelly—which would still render her dead. Hours passed in darkness. Her eyelids fluttered, threatening to open, then relenting and letting her sleep since sleep was so much nicer. It was nicer because, Shinobu suspected, her dreams were not anywhere near the Horizon.

She dreamed she was with Master, sitting on a log in a meadow. They were talking about the future.

Comments

[Fluffy-Boi]

[ZeroChill]

Lulz.

Shinobu eating the servants like chicken. Love how you put that in.

[Shadowblade019]

Why the ponies and not the fat ass brownies? There's a fault of everything. Murder them then the ponies specially the Royal horses.

[hyperblaster]

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! ITS BEEN SEVEN YEARS?! HOW?! i knew this was old but... not THAT old... hooooly fuck...

okey, now that is good, there is just soooo much new no more heroe content.

to think about how are you gonna work with that? (also i create this acount just for this)

[hyperblaster]

gonna continue? lets be honest it will be hilarous for travis when he realize that seven years have pass and now he have a wife and two children, plus two new games.

i really want to see a new chapter honest, this history has become one of my favorites after visiting the tv tropes fanfiction of no more heroes, this is some good stuff.

out of all the no more heroes fanfic, there are some shining pebbles but this one is a dare say, a fucking diamond! cant wait for more of this