Curtain Call
Iron Will was the first to get up, using Top Dog's body as a springboard. “Graaugh! Round Two, hydrant licker! Iron Will's gonna send you chasing horse carriages in the afterlife!”
With a hiss, Top Dog batted his arms away and pounced on him. The two grappled and struggled along the front of the craft, where the exploding clouds of stone and dirt were the densest. Despite the repeated blasts of vaporized earth, the two stood tall, throwing their weights mercilessly into one another.
“You've ruined everything!” Top Dog snarled. “Everything I have worked for!”
“You tried to throw Iron Will in chains!” the minotaur retorted. His nostrils snorted. “Twice!”
“If nothing else, servanthood would have improved your miserable idiotic life!”
“Iron Will was fine with the idiocy if it meant drawing in the clouds!”
“That's it! I'm carving your horns into food bowls!”
“The mangy creep is... grrnnngh... welcome to try Iron Will on!”
While all of this continued in the background, Rainbow Dash stirred to life. “Unnngh...” The first thing she saw as she picked herself up was the flickering pulse of the glass canister behind the cockpit. “The chaos shard...” On twitching limbs, she scurried over towards where the stone legpiece sparkled in its containment. She tried grasping it with two hooves, but received a zap of energy as a reward. “Aaaugh! Luna's nipple!”
Lancie stuck his head out of her saddlebag. “You've got a vivid imagination.”
“This thing is impossible to get out!” she sputtered through a cracking voice.
“Well, maybe you're just not trying hard enough.”
“Lancie.” Rainbow Dash frowned, gesturing at the tunnel being violently carved all around them and the zig-zagging vehicle. “Take a good look around you! Where have I not tried in the least, huh?”
“No, this? This is just you being natural.” He smirked, reclining against her. “I rather like it, actually.”
“Come on... come on, girl. Think. Think.” Rainbow Dash looked all around. “There's gotta be a way to stop this crazy thing!”
“Hey, it can't be helped, Sparky.” Lancie examined the talons of his appendage. “When the wheels of chaos start rolling, it's all a delightfully downhill ride from here.”
“We're so close to the other piece of you!” She frowned at him. “Can't you—I dunno—absorb your past self and knock this vehicle out of commission?”
“It doesn't work that way. Remember?”
Rainbow Dash suffered a massive jolt. She grabbed onto a cleft of metal and held on for dear life as chunks of rocks splattered all around her. “N-no?!”
“Hmmmph. I've got to make physical contact with the thing. And until I do, I'm about as useful to you as a garden shovel.”
Rainbow Dash clenched her teeth. “You don't say?” She snatched Lancie lengthwise.
Lancie's stone eyes bulged. “What in the fuzz are you doing—ulp!”
Rainbow Dash stood on her hind quarters above the canister, gripping Lancie by the neck and stabbing him down like a jagged spade. “Using you like the tool that you are!” Whack! Cracks formed in the surface of the canister. “A foreign object! Rrrghh!” She swung again... and again and again and again. Whack! Smack! Crack!
Spiderwebbing fissures formed all along the container. The sparkling beams of chaotic energy doubled, tripled, quadrupled. A few blinks later, the tube exploded completely. Rainbow Dash clutched Lancie's dizzy body to her chest and dove to the rear of the vehicle as the energy blast erupted as high as the ceiling. The motors and servos of the craft rumbled while smoke issued out of every crevice. Still, with the reserve steam afforded by the vehicle, the B-Cubed smashed through one last wall.
Crunnnnch!
The tank treads carried it into a broad chamber... and towards a line of flinching prisoners attempting their escape.
Several shrieked and ducked away from the vessel. At the front, Autumn Rush stared with wide doe-eyes.
“OhcraphOhcrapOhcrap!” Rainbow Dash hissed and panicked. She looked down to see that the stone leg inside the canister was exposed. Reaching down with Lancie, she used the living statue's antlers as a fork and swiftly flung the glowy shard out from its hold. It rattled to a stop along the edge of the tank treads.
In the meantime, completely robbed of its fuel source, the B-Cubed screeched to a wobbly halt. It stopped just inches before it could run over Autumn Rush and the rest of the emaciated escapees.
The stalling of the vehicle's massive weight sent Iron Will and Top Dog flying forward. The two muscular creatures smashed through a wagon full of wooden boxes. The air rattled with metal-on-metal mayhem. Iron Will was the first to get up. As he did so, the world around him came back into focus, and he saw the contents of the smashed crates: oodles upon oodles of steel folding chairs. The minotaur blinked... then wickedly smiled.
Top Dog was getting up. He put his cracked shades back on, took one look at the delivery of furniture, and scowled: “Oh, you've got to be shitting me—”
WHAM! Iron Will instantly dented a chair with one swing. “That one's for the deer you captured from Whitetail Woods!” CLANG! Another chair made its way across Top Dog's forehead. “That's for the rams that you enslaved on their way to Sheersville!” WHUD! “That one's for the seaponies! Iron Will never saw any in the cages, but Iron Will has no doubt you dogs are cruddy enough to run them over with your propellers!” WHACK!
Rainbow Dash winced... and winced again... ultimately looking away from the multiple punishing impacts. “Well?!” She gulped, staring at Lancie as he grasped the giant legbone. “What are you waiting for?!”
“Just a second... uhm...” Lancie smiled awkwardly. “It's conjuring...”
“Are you gonna be imbued with your friggin' power or not?”
“One thing at a time, Sparky,” Lancie said. He then pointed over her shoulder. “Take them, for example.”
“Huh? 'Them' who?” Rainbow Dash turned and almost fainted. “Cheese and crackers!”
With the thundering of paws, a virtual battalion of canines had arrive. Not one dozen, not two dozen, not even four or five—but no less than one hundred fully-armed diamond dogs had arrived with scimitars and spears that glimmered in the lantern-light. They all formed a vicious phalanx behind where the B-Cubed has grinded to a halt. If that wasn't enough, Rainbow could already hear the howling warcry of just as large a number marching up the rear, coming up the way that the prisoners had escaped. The multiple slaves fidgeted and sobbed in utter panic. In a matter of seconds, everyone would be perfectly surrounded.
Top Dog didn't have any chance to celebrate this, seeing as he was a bruised and drooling mess in the shadow of Iron Will.
“And this—last but not least—is for Iron Will's sweetheart back home!” The minotaur's nostrils snorted as he loomed above the lead canine with a battered chair. “The lovely Eliz—” His eyes caught the glint of over two hundred spears, and he immediately slumped backwards. “Awwwwww poop.”
“Rainbow Dash...” Autumn Rush trembled, her legs quivering. “R-Rainbow Dash, what'll we d-do?!”
Rainbow Dash was sweating heavily, biting her lower lip to the bleeding point. She sensed a faint glow of light and glanced down to see the seams in the granite shard pulsing from Lancie's touch.
“Now might be a good moment to dispense indiscriminate fuzzy justice, Sparky,” Lancie said.
“Impossible,” Rainbow grunted. “I know my awesomeness measures high on the kick-flankery scale, but this is suicide!” She closed her eyes to the marching minions with a shudder, then said, “I need you to get us out of here.”
“Huh?”
“You heard me!” Rainbow Dash stared at him, frowning. “Use your rejoined chaos energies or whatever and create an escape!”
“Uhmmmm... are you sure about that—”
“And don't pretend like you can't do it!” Rainbow barked. “So help me, Celestia, I'll—”
“Pffft! Of course I can do it, Sparky! It's just that it's a one-time deal until I find another piece!”
“I know!”
“But... but...” His stone face grimaced. “What about Princcles Frecklestan—?!”
“I know. I know!” Rainbow seethed through clenched teeth. “But there are tons of creatures here and they deserve to go home!”
Lancie's brow furrowed.
Rainbow spat. “Do I have to spell it out?! Save these friggin' dudes lives, dang it!”
With a loud howl, the minions of Top Dog came charging from opposite angles.
Iron Will and the multiple prisoners crowded fearfully in the center.
Rainbow shouted, “Lancie—!”
The statue's eyes were already glowing. Sparks spat out from where he clutched the stone legpiece. Then, after glowing as bright as the Sun, he reached a stone hand out and snapped his talons.
Crkkkk!
Squinting, Rainbow Dash looked straight up.
A crack had formed in the ceiling, and it ran a serpentine pattern, winding around the location of the B-Cubed, tracing the corridor where the phalanx stormed in from, and ending somewhere above the passage that the prisoners had taken to flee there. Then, with one massive tug, the ceiling collapsed—and with it fell huge chunks of rock and earth.
Rainbow Dash found herself in the shadow of such an avalanche. With a shriek, she spread her wings, hoisted herself and Lancie off the B-Cubed, and dove towards the floor of the cavern.
The canines looked up, startled. The first line of mutts dropped their weapons and whimpered, accepting their smothering fate.
SMASSSH! A virtual column of sediment had fallen, compacted by the weight of earthen materials above it. The collapsed debris formed a perfect ring, surrounding the survivors and covering up every corridor that Top Dog's minions could have taken to overwhelm the escaped prisoners.
Autumn Rush and the others shuffled backwards, coughing from the dust and haze. As their eyes adjusted, they were shocked to see sunbeams filtering down from the sky above. Every deer, elk, and ram tilted their chins up—gawking at morning sunlight appearing in crystal clear beauty.
“It's... it's a miracle,” an elk stammered.
“Look!” A deer pointed. The collapsed earth was rough and uneven, but there was no denying that it formed a near-perfect ramp that led up to the surface in a spiraling pattern. “It's a way out!”
“Iron Will doesn't understand...” The minotaur scratched his scalp between his horns. “How could a cave-in work like this?”
“I don't know...” A ram rushed forward, breathless. “But I'm not going to wait here until another cave-in ruins a perfectly good escape route!” He motioned along with his horns. “Come on, everyone! Now's our chance to go home!”
“Quick!” An elk stammered, rushing ahead—joined shortly by a stampede of frenzied souls. “Before the dogs dig their way out!”
“Go! Go!”
“Hurry!”
“I can sm-smell dew! And flowers!”
“Freedom!”
“Wait! Wait!” Autumn Rush squeaked, shivering on thin legs as she pleaded with the galloping crowd. “Where's Rainbow Dash?!” She gulped and shouted, “Wh-what about Rainbow Dash?!”
“Iron Will doesn't see her either!” The minotaur sputtered, peering all about. With desperate grunts, he began hammering away at the earth with his fists, forming little holes as he peered below the immediate layer of compacted topsoil. “Pint Size?! Talk to Iron Will, little buddy! Don't you job on me!”
Autumn Rush fell on her haunches, sniffling as tears formed on the edges of her sparkling eyes.
Meanwhile, Iron Will growled and stomped at the earth. “Dang it! Why does this happen to all the legends?! Raaaugh!” He grabbed the remnants of a folding chair and started using it as a folding chair. “Just give Iron Will a sign! Any sign! This ain't your blasted curtain call! Ya hear me?! Say something!”
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Luna's Nipples..... Laughed so hard I cryed
Another great chapter for this book
I love that Iron Will's initial reaction to a friend being buried is to start punching the ground.
Also, this sorta derails my "Lancie is all a drug-induced hallucination" theory, but it's only a minor setback. The theory still works, it's just... stranger.
This was great can't wait for next one :)
WOO-HOO!!! And we all know Dash is still breathing somewhere one way or another. As much fun as this as been (with the added bonus of seeing my own name used for an actual character in this arc), I'm ready for her to get back home and see to it that there is some more Appledash interaction soon.
Also, I counted up to technically 26 times Lancie had some form of "harm" purposely (but still amusingly) inflicted upon him by RD up till now. Though considering she probably hit him over the glass at least few more times than what was straightforwardly written, I'm just going to round this new score up to 30, give or take a few.
When that random crate of folding chairs showed up, I'm pretty sure I grinned evilly.
I was going through some music.. Found the perfect theme song for Dash in this story. I'ts originated from a game, some will recognise it, I'm sure. The text is all the same but three lines.
Dashie really has some unusual fixation on Luna's nipples, eh? This is, like, the eighth time she's used that same curse...
A crazed wrestler's wet dream.
Did you mean to say that he started using it as a shovel, or did he just give up, sit down and start monologueing?
That is a much better catchphrase than "Luna's nipple".
6790363 agreed
6790363 Heretic!
Fuzzy Justice.
Sister ship to the Noble Jury.