2)8,626 words
Epilogue [Extended]4,568 words

02 - Rolling Into Ponyville

Ch. 02 - Rolling Into Ponyville

“I'm telling you there was a monster just outside of town!” the mare mother yelled at the cafe owner. She held her equally distraught son to her chest.

“And I'm telling you you're seeing things, lady,” the owner stated flatly. “A squatting ape-like thing that looks like a corpse and has a mask? With a metal cross on its back? That sounds like a scarecrow.” He shook his head, stroking his bushy mustache.

“It wasn't a scarecrow!” she yelled, growing hysterical. “It grunted at us. It moved! It was alive! Isn't that right honey?” She looked down to her boy, who nodded fearfully.

The owner sighed, sidling over to the two disturbed patrons. “Look ma'am, I can tell you and the boy are scared witless. Why don't you head on home? Maybe settle in for a nice nap.” He flashed a warm smile. “And if there's really a monster, the proper authorities can handle it. Like Princess Twilight and her group. What do you say?”

The mare fidgeted uneasily, then nodded. “Okay,” she stated, “okay we'll do that. Come along dear, we're going home.” She nudged her child towards the door.

“Okay mommy,” said the boy, seeming in the mood to agree.

The cafe owner stared out the window, watching the two walk deeper into town. Of course he knew there was no way it was a monster. Couldn't be. Monsters didn't appear this far from the Everfree Forest. Any critter that would head to the North of Ponyville would be going long out of its way just to do it.

No, the mother and child were just skittish. Too many monster attacks over the last few years, and those only happened every other month on average. Ponyville wasn't as dangerous as ponies seemed to think. The cafe owner blamed the media blowing the events out of proportion.

He chuckled. There wasn't a creature like the lady described. Well, maybe except the one shuffling in from the same direction those two came in from. The one perfectly matching their description and was horrifying to boot.

The cafe owner's blood suddenly ran cold.

“Holy smokes!” he gasped, pressing his snout against the glass window.

Painwheel eyed the cafe patrons seated outside. One by one they began to notice her, freezing in place to complete the effect. But Painwheel didn't care about them.

So long as they kept away, they weren't her concern. The food was.

Her red eyes settled on the nearest table, with a single occupant that sat facing away from her. He failed to see or hear her shamble up beside him. She looked down, and saw the prize: a bun of some kind, with tomatoes and lettuce poking out.

A hamburger. Or something. Another thing that made sense.

Without warning, Painwheel reached out and snatched the foodstuff in her fist. This startled the sandwich's owner. “Hey! What do you think you're...?” he began, before he got a good look at the arm in front of him, and the body it was attached to. The pony recoiled, sputtering. “you're...you're do...doing...oh Celestia...”

The girl stared at him menacingly. She issued a light growl (or at least light by her standards). The stallion yelped, falling out of his chair.

Painwheel brought the burger to her mouth. With great effort, she pushed her mouth open against the leather binding cords that normally held the sections of the mask over her upper face and her jaw closed. The effort usually resulted in her jaw cramping something fierce if used excessively. She often theorized that Valentine – or Brain Drain – implemented certain mechanical design choices in her transition to Anti-Skullgirl weapon for the sole purpose of causing her unnecessary suffering. If they had said that specifically, she would be in no way surprised. She would just be further infuriated.

Didn't matter. Food time. Painwheel's mouth grew moist as she slid her prize into it, using another hand to widen the gap in the cords. With immense gusto, she sank her jagged teeth into the bread, chewing wildly in anticipation of delicious sustenance.

In seconds she realized she couldn't chew through the “meatiest” parts of the sandwich. Painwheel stopped chewing, then examined the parts in her hand. Hay comprised the bulk of the burger.

Burgers contained hay now. Suddenly nothing made sense. Maybe nothing ever would again.

Hacking and sputtering and spitting ensued as Painwheel ejected the hay-filled mess. She leaned forward in her angry expectoration, grunting and growling. It was horrible. No matter how hard she coughed, there seemed to be little bits of hay that refused to come out. In desperation, she searched the table and spied a glass of ice water.

Grasping it in her hand, Painwheel eschewed the use of the straw in favor of just chugging the drink with abandon. She used it to spit out the remaining hay, then sucked down the water gratefully. It was only then that Painwheel realized she was abominably thirsty.

Then she doubled over, clutching her head. It was then that she realized her thirst left her with a dehydration hangover. In all the excitement and her usual discomfort it almost escaped her notice. But the ice water brought the headache to the fore, and she howled wildly.

One thing after another. One damnable thing after another. Painwheel in her frustration brought her fist down on the table, breaking it in two.

The assembled ponies, petrified and confused, erupted in alarmed hooting and hollering. Painwheel looked up to them, clutching her head more. She already had a headache, and the idiots made it worse with their noisome caterwauling. “Ah! Sh-shut up! SHUT UP!” she bellowed, knocking a mangled section of the ruined table aside. But that only caused more panicked noise, as ponies began weeping or screaming or bleating. One pony finally decided to flee, and their example emboldened the others to scramble for egress.

Huffing and puffing, Painwheel watched as the whole lot vacated. Fuming, agitated, she looked at the now empty selection of tables. Spying several abandoned meals, she trudged about, picking through the dishes to find the actually edible victuals.

All told there wasn't a lot there. Similar hay sandwich's were common, and most half eaten. Painwheel needed to pick them apart to salvage the precious tomatoes and lettuce and bread. Angrily she tried to blow off bits of hay from the choice bits. When that didn't work, she grunted, then began trying to brush the hay off. Finally she scarfed what she had away, downing iced teas and water to wash away what she couldn't excise. A bittersweet experience, half bright with the consumption of food, half soul-blackening in the pointless effort needed to obtain so little return.

Then she spotted a lone sandwich she missed, mostly whole. Casual inspection revealed it to be a daisy sandwich. Bread housing actual flowers. Painwheel eyed the product hesitantly, then decided she wasn't full enough to begrudge it. She reached towards the plate.

“Eek!” came a screech from under the table.

Painwheel dipped down to investigate. Cowering under the table was a lone mare, who yelped when the aberration against humanity came into view. Had this one failed to run, and just hid?

Painwheel growled, eliciting a scream from the mare. Yet despite her menace, Painwheel couldn't get the pony to just take off running and leave her in peace. Everyone would win if she just did that. Why were bystanders so stupid? Why were they always so stupid? Painwheel barked, hoping to get her to move.

“Hey! Get away from her!”

Painwheel looked up at the voice, only to be audibly assaulted by a clanging. A pony in an apron and a thick mustache came walking out the front door of the cafe, banging a metal cooking implement of some kind against a soup pot. The banging – it was just awful. She could feel her headache getting worse again. Loud noises. She hated loud noises, even without a headache.

“Come on! Move along! Git!” the cafe proprietor yelled, advancing deliberately.

Instead of immediately retreating, Painwheel decided those instruments of foul cacophony needed to die. Bending forward, she sent the Buar blades shooting over her back. The loud, mechanical sound of the internal motors signaled the Buar's activation. The blades spun, turning Painwheel into some kind of scorpion with a buzzsaw for a stinger.

Luckily for the owner, he managed to jump back in alarm, leaving his kitchenware to suffer the blades. They were cut into pieces, leaving the owner screaming.

“No, you git!” Painwheel shouted, retracting her blades and letting them settle behind her. She stamped her foot, sending a terrified mare hiding beneath to finally remember her sense of self-preservation and crawl away. “Go!”

The owner, absolutely terrified, nearly tripped over a fallen chair on his way out. Trotting away, he issued a primal shriek. Painwheel couldn't be sure, but she thought he left a faint yellow trail behind him.

Painwheel huffed and puffed. She was finally truly alone again. Then she grasped her head. Suddenly using the Buar Drive wasn't such a sharp idea. It was usually loud when engaged in spinning, and even on a good day the sound was uncomfortable.

Suddenly her appetite was ruined. Painwheel stumbled away from the cafe and, knowing not what else to do, shuffled on her run-raw feet towards the center of town. Were she in her right mind, she would have considered that leaving town now that she was fed would be better. And quieter. But she wasn't a forest type person in the end; she felt better in more urban, developed environments.

And really, how much louder could things get in such a small town?

“CUTIE MARK CRUSADER INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINEERS!”

The three cutie mark-less fillies pushed forward into town from the west, hauling their latest project.

“Hey Scoots, ya really think this'll work?” asked Apple Bloom, looking up at their modified cart. It had a heavy (very heavy) machine set inside it, constructed of spare parts and pieces of wood, rock, and metal they hammered into form.

“Relax,” said Scootaloo, supplying the power from her itty bitty wings to hauling their creation. “We followed all the designs in that book exactly. I bet it'll work just as well as the prototype mentioned.”

“Yeah, but that book didn't really say what happened to the pony what designed the thing, did it?” retorted Apple Bloom. “And if this thing is so hot, why don't we see more of them running around?”

“Beats me,” said Scootaloo, shrugging.

“Oh it'll be fine, girls,” said Sweetie Belle, checking around to see that the cart was fully out on the street. “This is going to be the best...the best...” She grimaced, trying to recall the name. “Auto-mo-bile that's ever been seen! And then we'll get cutie marks in mechanics! You'll see!”

“Well, I guess...” said Apple Bloom. The three had, in their long tenure as Crusaders, done a lot of risky stuff in pursuit of their special talents. A lot of stuff. Sometimes, laying home at night and nursing her bruises or trying to remove whatever sticky stuff she'd gotten into that week, Apple Bloom would wonder whether they were going about the whole process the wrong way.

But then she'd shake her head and stop being foolish. After all, Applejack always said fortune favors the bold. She who dares, wins.

Or was it that slow and steady harvests the apples? No, it was probably the former.

“So did we remember everything?” asked Scootaloo. “Axles?”

“Check!” said Sweetie Belle, examining the wheel axles rigged to their engine.

“Fuel?”

Apple Bloom looked in the back, and found the grade A cider sitting pretty in a big jug. It was the special stuff that Granny Smith kept in the cellar where she thought Apple Bloom couldn't find it. “Check!” she shouted as she began pouring the heavy jug out into the fuel pipe.

“And...goggles for protecting our eyes from the extreme speeds no doubt to come,” said Scootaloo, fishing through the cart. She pulled out three pairs of flight goggles. “Check!”

The three hopped into their contraption, giddy with excitement. “And last but not least...the accelerator!” said Scootaloo, placing a hoof on the shiny lever. She spent half an hour painting it bright red for just the occasion. Time well spent. “Check!” She threw the lever, sending the engine rumbling and spitting. “I hereby declare the inaugural first test of the Crusader Mobile Mark 1...a go!”

Nothing could possibly go wrong.

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