Trix and the City
Three days, right? Something like that, yeah.
It had been about three days since Trixie had eaten anything, much longer since she’d had a hot meal. You’d be surprised by how much one incident could damage your reputation, especially if that reputation wasn’t exactly stellar to begin with. And further, you’d be surprised by how much it sucks to lose literally everything you own in said incident. Actually, you probably wouldn’t be surprised, but suffice it to say: it sucks.
She had spent a few months panhandling her way from town to town, begging on street corners and turning tricks behind the local deli shops. No, not those kinds of tricks, you pervert, magic tricks. She may have lost her stage, and her home, and that brush, oh, and that mirror too, but at least she still had her flair for the dramatic, and, as it turns out, kids these days have a lot of money. She found that out when she started performing in alleyways and on street corners, garnering the attention of a bunch of pre-pubescent kids with full pockets and nothing to do. She tried not to let their heckling bother her at first, but you can only be called a trick-ass hoe so many times before your life starts to lose meaning.
Older ponies, especially unicorns, were less enthralled, but the impressionable youth were more than willing to part with their parent’s bits if meant they got to see her show off her “dope ass magic tricks, yo”—and occasionally pelt her with rocks. Trixie had found it increasingly difficult to communicate with these kids as time went on, though. She had attempted to learn their jargon, but ended up punching the kid teaching her in the face and stealing his money when she got frustrated with him. Whatever, she had needed that egg sandwich and three bits more than he did. That snot-nosed little brat probably ate like a king at home anyway, what with his fresh salads and diet cherry soda that could last a starving pony her lifetime.
Her mouth watered at the very thought. These little punks didn’t know how good they had it, but it didn’t really matter. One day, one day soon, she’d be back on top. Touring the country in a wagon three-times the size of the one she had before, and with an assistant she could slap around and give orders too and whatnot. Oh yes, then she’d be living the highlife that the tabloids preached about at the newsstand she robbed every Wednesday when that greasy stallion wasn’t paying attention.
That was the good thing about being a bum in a big city: lots of crap to steal and lots of people to not give a crap when you do. Despite its obvious advantages though, she still hated Manehattan with every fiber of her being, even her intestines, which, coincidentally enough, were actually the most hateful part of her. So, that’s why she was here now, standing on this corner, not looking to rob the nearest elderly mare of her coin purse. No, she was actually here waiting for the ten-fifteen bus to Los Pegasus that would finally take her away from this filthy place and take her too a different, but warmer, filthy place. A place where she’d have her chance to shine. To get up in front of a huge crowd of screaming ponies and dazzle them with that act she’d been working on. Well, at least that’s what the tabloids told her anyway.
She checked her non-existent watch and presumed that it must be close to ten-fifteen given that there were a dozen or so other ponies all crowded around the bus stop, looking down the street expectantly. She glanced around at her compatriots in utter disgust, crinkling her nose at the sight, and smell, of some of them. Rather than deal with the revolting individuals surrounding her, she left her mind drift off to her happy place.
She reclined in her luxurious velvet sofa, sipping a hay smoothie and berating those two foals from Ponyville for the hundredth time. Ah, how she loved her happy place. Here she had an entire room to herself, and a closet stacked to the ceiling with all the egg sandwiches she could ever hope to eat. She licked her lips in anticipation, eliciting awkward stares from the ignorant fools closest to her. She ignored them and went about stuffing her face with as many sandwiches as she could cram down her throat, and then did her best to not choke to death while attempting to swallow them.
Her stomach growled in protest and she silently told it to shut the hell up and let her live out her fantasy in peace.
“Snips, Snails,” she called. “Fetch me more food. The Great and Powerful Trixie can’t perform on an empty stomach and I seem to have run out of egg sandwiches.”
The two foals pranced in, though the fat one more waddled than anything. They bowed, and without saying a word, just like she liked it, gaily skipped away to find more sandwiches for her just as she requested. She let out a contented sigh.
“Hey lady, you gettin’ on or what?”
The bus driver’s voice snapped her out of her self-induced trance and brought the horrible reality of the world crashing down around her in a thunderous roar that sounded a lot like a faulty muffler on a double-decker Grey Stallion bus.
She did a double-take as the driver shook his head in annoyance and went to close the doors, cutting her off from her only escape—until the eleven forty-five bus anyway.
Reaching out a hoof and jamming it in the door frame, halting the folding door’s progress, she forced it back open with a grunt and threw herself into the stairwell with a graceful thud. Wearing a triumphant smirk, she pulled herself up and dusted herself off. The bus driver was unimpressed.
He frowned, cocked his head to the side, and asked, “Ticket?”
Trixie’s smirk only grew. She had prepared for this eventuality. Putting on her best showmare’s face, she said, with all the grandeur she could muster, “Watch, and be amazed, as I, the Great and Powerful Trixie, convince you to allow me to ride without a ticket.”
He remained unimpressed, his frown deepening.
Acting quickly, Trixie began tracing lines in the air with her hoof, drawing intricate pictures with blue and purple lights, depicting a smiling bus driver waving a blue unicorn, who was incredibly beautiful, onto the bus and then driving off into the setting sun, which was also blue. She only had so many colors in her repertoire.
The shimmering lights danced across the driver’s increasingly saggy frown. He reached for a lever near his seat and pulled the door open again. With a rough shove, he pushed a startled Trixie off the bus and into a heap on the sidewalk. As he closed the door he said, “I don’t do charity,” and then drove off into, well, traffic.
Trixie hiked up her big-girl pants and chased after the bus, since it had only made it a few dozen feet to the nearest stoplight. But as she was running, she caught something out of the corner of her eye that halted her in her tracks.
In an alleyway, behind a dumpster overflowing with garbage, a light had appeared. It shined brightly, illuminating the dank alley in an eerie glow that made her somewhat nervous. She had sworn never to follow bright lights into alleyways, especially not after that bum had used a mirror to reflect light in her eyes and lure her into a trap where she lost the egg sandwich she had so recently stolen. But, something in her gut told her that this light was different.
Throwing caution to the wind, and all reason with it, she decided that chasing the bus was a lost cause, mostly because it had already made one block down and that was way too far to run, and made her way past the piles of banana peels and yesterday’s pizza towards the glowing object.
Her eyes grew wide, and her mouth hung open as she saw what appeared to be a solid column of light about seven or eight feet tall, tapered at both ends, growing in front of her. As it grew larger, she had to move a hoof to shield her eyes from the blinding light. This was far better than that homeless stallion already, and much less smelly.
She took a few steps back, careful to avoid touching the light as it stretched even wider. She didn’t know what this could possibly be, but something told it her it was going to be wild, whatever it was. With any luck, it’d start spewing out egg sandwiches any second and then she’d be fed for life. She licked her lips hungrily.
The air around her crackled with electricity, but she kept her hooves firmly planted, waiting for whatever may come. In a sudden flash, the light expanded four-times its original size and then vanished in the blink of an eye, leaving the smell of ozone and tall, dark, something in its place. Unfortunately for her, that something was not a pile of sandwiches.
She eyed the snarling, sweaty mess of flesh and sharp teeth with a shrewd eye and determined that it was most definitely not a pony. In fact, it was like nothing she had ever seen. Standing on two limbs and over seven-feet tall, this thing was the farthest thing from a pony she had ever seen.
Its beady little yellow eyes were sunken into its enormous skull which was ringed with bulges and long, black tentacle-like objects which hung down across its shoulders in a way not dissimilar from her mane. Of course, Trixie didn’t have a big, metal thing mounted on her shoulder, nor did she wear mesh body-plating across her chest. At the end of its front-right, err, “hoof” were two long and jagged blades which stuck out like claws, sharp, cruel-looking claws attached to a gauntlet that was strapped to its leg. .
Although, that wasn’t the oddest thing about the creature. No, that honor belonged to its mouth which, when it snarled at Trixie, opened to reveal four tusks that jutted out fiercely, and formed a sort of square around its “inner mouth” which was lined with a number of much smaller, and much sharper, teeth.
She saw that it had a hoof placed over its chest, pressing down a piece of cloth soaked with blood that was tied down with another piece of cloth.
Releasing a low growl, its breath came out in wisps of fog. Trixie cocked an eyebrow.
“Well... that’s interesting.”
Rain poured through the canopy of leaves, creating a symphony of drums that roared through the jungle like a wave. He relished times like this, times when it was just him, his quarry, and his blades. He breathed in deeply, letting the humid jungle air, along with the rain, permeate his senses.
From his position, nestled between two thick branches about twenty meters above the ground, he could see his quarry approaching from the south. With all the humidity, he was easily able to catch their scent, and he would’ve been worried about them doing the same, but from his previous hunts he knew that their sense of smell was particularly weak. Besides, he would’ve preferred if they knew he was near, just so he could taste their fear.
He scanned the jungle, checking for any other members of their pack, but found nothing. He considered for a moment donning his infrared helmet so he could be sure that those three were the only ones in the area, but decided against it, choosing to trust his own eyes and instincts over a machine’s.
They were getting close now.
Perched amongst the foliage like a hawk, he waited for them to cross over the ridge just a few dozen meters in front of him. Once they crossed he’d be in the perfect position to take them all out at once. However, that would’ve been too easy. Even without camouflage masking him, he was more than a match for all three at once. He knew he was faster and stronger than the three of them put together, but he was also smarter, and it was because of that that he wanted to take his time. He would take them out one by one, silently, quickly.
Moving like some bizarre monkey, he scrambled along the tree branch to where it was close enough to the next tree that he would be able to leap across the second he needed to. If he had been worried about the possibility of them hearing him when he made his move, the rain took care of that. It pounded like so many drums, drowning out all other sounds. On top of that, thunder rolled over the jungle at regular intervals, making it even easier to mask his movement. It was almost too easy.
He relaxed his muscles as they crested the hill, now just a mere couple of meters away. He had learned long ago to not tense right before an attack, but rather to let himself flow freely, and in this way make himself more agile and difficult to spot. They were in his line of sight now, and he could hear them arguing.
“I’m telling you, sir. I don’t like this shit one bit, not a goddamn bit, sir. Something’s going on here. “
“Stow it, private. If I hear you bitch one more time I’ll kill you myself. Clear?”
“...Yes, sir.”
“Sarge, I don’t like hearing Mendez bitch anymore than you, but he’s got a point, sir.”
“Goddammit, not you too, Cooper.”
“I’m just saying, sir. Maybe there is something going on? I mean, the way we found Anderson like that? Those two big holes in his chest?”
“Bullets make holes, Cooper. That’s what they do.”
“With all due respect, sir, those weren’t bullet holes. Besides, who in the hell could’ve shot him way out here in the jungle? Shit, sarge, we ain’t even near the PMCs yet.”
“All right, Coop, you wanna look for something that ain’t even there, be my guest. But make sure you do your goddamn job first and watch our six.”
He could smell their sweat as they got closer, almost taste the anxiety. The leader was a few feet ahead of the other two, and strode confidently through the undergrowth, stepping over roots and in puddles, making so much noise he would’ve been able to hear them a mile away. He wondered if they realized how loud they were. How easy it was to hunt them. Probably not.
He was about to leap to the next tree, his knife at the ready, when he heard the crackle of a radio coming to life. Static ripped through the air for a moment before a voice took over, panicked and screaming.
“Oh shit! Shit! We need backup, someone send somebody! Fireteam Charlie is under attack!”
There was a momentary pause, then:
“Something just got Forsythe, took his goddamn head off! Oh jesus! Hollander, no! We need backup! Our location is—”
The radio cut off suddenly, replacing the panicked voice with static once again.
“Sarge, I—”
“Yeah, I heard it too. All right, move out, people. We’re gonna find Charlie and figure out what the hell’s going on here.”
His brothers must’ve found the others. He would have to hurry if he didn’t want to fall behind. Unfortunately this would mean he wouldn’t be able to take his time like he hoped to. Readying the shoulder-mounted turret on his left side, he pulled the collapsable spear from his back and hefted it in his right hand.
Just as the three he was hunting turned around to head back the way they came, he fired a shot from his shoulder-launcher, taking out the one in the back with ruthless efficiency. His head exploded in a fountain of blood and before the other two could even voice their surprise, his spear hit the middle one right in his chest, immediately dropping him to the ground, screaming and waving his arms around wildly.
The last one, the leader, wasn’t so quick to lose himself. He brought his gun to bear against the tree where the spear had come from. Unfortunately for him, he had already moved to the next tree and was leaping from the branch, his wrist-blades poised to strike.
The leader didn’t even have time to realize what was happening before he was on top of him, knocking him to the ground and impaling him right through his left ventricle, killing him almost instantly.
He stood up slowly, pulling his blade out and wiping it off on the man’s fatigues. He had just turned around to retrieve his spear when he suddenly felt an intense pain in his lower abdomen. He looked down and saw blood leaking out of a bullet hole, streaming down his chest and dripping onto the ground.
“Take that, you son of a bitch,” said the man with a spear through his chest, right before he coughed up blood and dropped the pistol in his hand, letting out his final breath.
He cupped a hand over his stomach, pressing down to stem the flow of blood. It wasn’t the worst wound he had ever received, but it got him right in his gut. He’d need to pull the bullet out and patch himself up as soon as possible. His brothers would be able to help him, but they were too far away. No, for now he’d have to deal with this himself.
Squatting down, he took his hand away from his stomach and quickly replaced it with a piece of cloth torn from the soldier’s fatigues. He held it tight against his chest, watching it soak with his blood.
He began to feel light-headed, his eyes fluttering, but he shook his head to clear the haze and stood back up. Knowing that to keep moving was the only way to keep himself from fainting, he used another bit of cloth to tie the wad around his stomach tight before hurrying off into the jungle.
He mentally berated himself for his carelessness. Even if his quarry had left the area, he still could’ve hunted them down easily. It was only because he knew his brothers had already found their prey that he abandoned his plan and attacked recklessly. Look where that had gotten him. Shot in the chest, injured by his prey like some kind of fresh yearling on his first hunt. Now he’d be finished the same time as his brothers, but with the added shame of being wounded by one he had already thought dead.
If only that spear had finished him off as he intended. He was sure he had hit him right where their hearts were. A blow like that should’ve killed him almost instantly. Perhaps the spear was blunted, or—
The spear!
In his hurriedness, he had left his spear stuck inside the man. How could he have been so foolish. A hunter must never leave his weapons behind. If there was one thing that had been drilled into their heads during all their training, it was that. He cursed himself a second time.
Turning around, he headed back to the kill site. As he approached, he felt that it was somehow different. There was something strange happening, and it was happening right where his spear should’ve been.
As he crested the hill, he came upon not three dead bodies, but only two, with the third one being replaced by a column of light, about two meters tall and tapered at either end.
The light burned brighter than anything he’d ever seen. His hand moved instinctively to cover his eyes from the blinding glow, shielding him also from seeing the root he was about to trip over.
Tripping over the root with all the grace befitting a skilled hunter, he stumbled forward, falling right into the light. For a moment, all he saw was white, and all he felt was warmth, then, the whiteness disappeared and he was standing in small puddle of water, only an inch or so deep, behind a dumpster down a dark alley. In front of him, staring up with a wide-eyed gaze, was a pony. A pony wearing a matching purple hat and cape.
He snarled.
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Colour me intrigued.
ha that title image
*Snerk* I could see it working. I just had to comment on every single one since I know how much you love getting a stack of comments when you log in n__n