The First Steps of the Rest of Your Life

by Rhino

Chapter 40: Pursuit

***Sunday, Day 29, night***

As I exit Silver Tongue’s house I see the others halfway down the street, hopefully chasing the watcher from the roof. I Blink a few times in quick succession to catch up to the group and start Res skating once I get close to them. As I join the group, I can barely see a dark blur turn a corner ahead of us, running full speed and maintaining a respectable distance. The next few corners all follow the same pattern, we move as fast as we can but we only ever seem to be able to catch the merest glimpse of our newest quarry.

Hydro, having more stamina than the rest of us, remarks as we run, “So why aren’t any of you flying or magicking your way closer to this guy?”

Blue answers for the flyers of the group, “Narrow streets don’t exactly make for easy flight path changes, this guy makes one quick turn into an alley and we would lose him.”

I answer for myself since I have no idea how Volt would “magic” his way closer, “We barely have an eye on this guy now, if I try Blinking closer and I’ll have a hard time keeping track of him to know where to Blink next. Probably end up just coming back to you guys asking where he went.”

Hydro grunts in acknowledgement, “Just making sure there wasn’t an easy way we were overlooking.”

We continue the pursuit for a few more minutes before the street straightens out and we see the silhouette of our target enter an open door to a warehouse before closing it behind him. A slight roaring can be heard as we approach the building, revealing itself to be the Canterlot waterfall just beyond the warehouse.

As we continue running, or Resing in my case, I notice an open window just under to roof above the door and remark to the others, “There’s a window up there. Atom, you and I will go in that way, the rest of you find a side entrance.”

“Hey, I’ll come with you,” Volt interjects.

I sigh mentally, “Fine, I’ll Blink you up or something once I get to the window.”

Hydro, Blue, and Navy break off at a slant from Atom, Volt, and I, who are still heading straight for the door. I see Atom spread his wings out of the corner of my eye as I make the adjustments to Res and start running up the side of the building as we reach the wall. A rhythmic tapping reaches my ears as I look to my side curiously and see Volt mimicking my wall running.

He smiles cheekily at me and whispers, “Magnet hooves.”

I smile back at him as we reach the window and jump inside. A long pole leaning up against the wall near the window provides a narrow ramp for me to switch Res back to skating mode and glide down, listening to the slight grinding of hooves on metal of Volt following me in our little impromptu parkour session.

Atom alights next to us as we reach the bottom, when I turn to Volt and say quietly, “Magnet hooves? Last I checked you were having control issues with your magic thanks to that whole Fluffers thing, did that clear up?”

“I’ve been working on it. I’ve really got the hang of this now!” He sticks a hoof to the pipe again to emphasize his point.

The hoof however, doesn’t seem to want to come off as Volt continues to tug at it. He then plants his other forehoof on the pipe to gain more leverage, but it still won’t come off… and now his other hoof is stuck. He then for some reason decides to plant both his rear hooves near his front ones and attempts to push off the pipe with all his strength… only to sag and gasp for air as he now hangs under the bottom of the pipe as if somepony had tied his hooves together around it.

I facehoof at the electric unicorn as I lean the pipe down from against the wall onto the floor. I hear the dark pegasus muttering to himself and ask, “What was that Atom?”

He speaks up as I try to dislodge Volt, “I said I wish I had my sword, as much as I did in that incident we had at your house… I do better with a weapon in hoof than just punching and kicking, and that sword was special to me, it was the first thing they took from me when I was arrested.”

I get an idea as I sit there making no progress on dislodging Volt, “Well, we need to get moving and it’s dangerous to go alone… take this,” I levitate a section of the pole I had unscrewed with Volt still attached to it over to Atom, “You said you prefer weapons, I call it the Staff of Shock and Ow.”

Atom grabs the end of the pole and swings it once, “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Well, I can’t get him off and we need to bring him with us anyway. Think of it as a legendary weapon with… +3 shock damage or something.”

The source of said shock damage remarks from his perch, “Pssh, I’m at least a +4.”

Atom, Volt, and I start making our way through the dark warehouse trying to find either our friends or the guy we chased in here. We don’t have to be super stealthy due to the waterfall, but we still make sure to stay behind the boxes and pipes until we can see the coast is clear.

As we reach an area where the boxes had been moved out of, Atom stops and turns to me, gesturing with the Staff around us, “I don’t like this… we should have seen somepony by now, it feels like a trap.”

*Flash!* I cover my eyes with a hoof as lights come on above us illuminating about 25 ponies of various races and genders with varying slapdash sets of equipment, some pieces looking like royal guard armor, surrounding us with smirks on their faces.

I remark to the pegasus next to me, “For the record, in the future, feel free to enlighten me as to any instinctual feelings you have at a slightly earlier point in the mission.”

What follows is a fast paced blur for me. The ponies converge on us, Atom assuming a combat stance, using his wings to balance himself so that he doesn’t fall onto his face when he swings Volt using both forehooves. I Blink to a spot outside of the main melee to get some breathing room and focus on doing what I can to keep them from swarming Atom and myself, sticking some to the floor, making others slip, and in some cases delivering a few levitation punches to the unicorns I see charging spells.

I have no idea how long this goes before I feel myself held down by multiple telekinetic fields, an enemy pegasus taking the opportunity to charge me and landing a good hit to my chest. I yell from the pain as he rears back for another, and just as he is about the strike I see a blue blur ram into him and toss him into one of the unicorns holding me. I feel the other unicorn get distracted as her field weakens slightly, allowing me to focus a downward telekinetic punch to the top of her head, causing her head to crack against the ground, knocking her unconscious.

I look up to see Atom attempting to fend off our numerous assailants with the help of Navy and the blur from the before, identified as Blue Breeze. Seeing them get slowly backed into the far wall, I blink over to help them try to push back, but it is no use. There are too many of them and they overwhelm us, causing us to back further and further until we are against the wall. As they close in, my thoughts turn to our missing earth pony friend.

“Sneak sneak.”

My pupils shrink as everypony hears those words echo through the warehouse, the words striking memories in my mind and causing a reflex response.

I shout to the others as a roaring begins, “HIT THE DECK!”

I grab the nearest pony to me, which happened to be Blue, and force him and myself down below the sill of the window we are up against; bracing for what I know is coming. Before Blue has a chance to respond, a roar like that of the waterfall outside grows evermore and I look up to see our opponents frozen in fear of the oncoming wave from the other side of the warehouse, washing away everything in its path. The last thing I see before shutting my eyes and bracing myself again, are boxes swatted away like flies as the roaring overtakes everything else just as the wave hits with an incredible force like I’ve never felt before. My body feels as though it is being compressed against the wall as the water flows into and over me, the window we were under having shattered instantly.

I don’t know how long it lasts, but eventually the force starts to abide and I feel air on the top of my mane. As the water drains away I open my eyes slowly as my body groans from the abuse, thankful that I had a wall to brace against. I turn to Blue to see him in a similar state, shaken but otherwise okay. Beyond him I see our other two pegasi groaning under another window, their coats soaked to the bone along with those of the two thugs remaining in the warehouse, the rest probably having been washed outside. I hear a clang as a familiar pipe falls from the window above Atom and Navy, having lain perpendicular to the window and thus having not been swept out. Its unicorn passenger had been dislodged and was starting to stand. I pop a few joints as I stand to see a solitary red earth pony walking towards us, his hoofsteps splashing water up with every step.

The red hoof of my best friend appears in front of my face to help me stand, its owner speaking to me, “Glad you remembered what to do. You okay?”

I groan a second before the pain starts to fade, “I’m fine, thanks for that. Extreme as it was, it was definitely preferable to what they would have done to us.”

Blue looks at Hydro, still slightly in shock at what happened, “How did you even do that?”

“I saw you guys were in trouble so I kicked a few key pipes I found.”

The others make their ways over to us, Volt hearing Hydro’s statement, “Did you see them in a dream?”

Hydro raises a hoof warningly, “If you make a wet dream joke…”

The unicorn chuckles, “Nah, sounds more like a pipe dream to me.”

Hydro groans as the rest of us laugh and look around. Atom, noticing something about one of the few guards remaining, speaks up, “Volt, could you levitate that guy over here?”

Volt shakes his head, “Sorry, I’m shorted out right now because of the water, so no magic for a bit. On the bright side though, I’m not stuck to the pole anymore.”

Atom goes to bring the guard over to us as I address this new development, “I didn’t know your magic could short out, Volt.”

He shrugs, “Electricity magic. It’ll come back here in a bit once I dry off, no worries.”

Atom drops the thug in front of us and starts messing with something on the guy’s front hoof, “I think once this guy wakes up we can see more of what’s going on.”

Navy raises an eyebrow, “What makes you think this guy knows anything?”

Atom leans back up with what looks like a sword hilt and attaches it to his hoof with practiced ease and a genuine smile on his face, “Because this guy had my sword, and you could only get this from the armory where they confiscated it.”

Blue starts messing with the unconscious stallion’s armor as well, “Well, as long as we are looting all the drops from our enemies,” he comes back up with what look like metal guards for the front part of pegasi wings, “I think I’ll take these, don’t want to pass up some free protection to keep my wings from getting injured with all the fighting we’ve been doing… that and they look really cool.”

I shake my head slightly while smiling, “Don’t see those often, gotta be uncommon rarity at least.”

Volt puts on a fake hurt face, “What no loot for the rest of us?”

Navy flinches as he starts splashing some of the water on the floor into the thug’s face, “Information seems like a good reward for now.”

The stallion groans as he starts coming to, but as he opens his eyes to see us standing over him, we can see that he’s really only half there, still dazed from being slammed into a wall by the wave.

He coughs out some water as he laughs softly, “*cough* Heheh, you think you’ve won? *cough* You boys don’t know who you’re dealing with. You think you’re untouchable, but we’ve already won, soon, our guards will be sent to replace you and that other one we got sent to the dungeon. *cough* With him already so high up, there won’t be any way for you to stop us… Hail, Tor- *cough*” The stallion coughs one last time before falling back into unconsciousness.

Atom snorts at this news, “Looks like this is bigger than we thought, but we have our new place to go now, and what sounds like a friend.” He looks around at the ruined warehouse, “Let’s go.”

“Umm, yeah about that.”

We look to see Navy who had spoken, one wing hanging to a side and a back hoof held up as if in pain.

He speaks again, his voice strained, “Sorry, I don’t think I’ll be much help to you guys now, my wing got either sprained or dislocated from hitting the wall, and I think my leg might be cracked.”

I grab a splint and gauze strips from my saddle bag as I approach Navy, “Mind if I take a look?”

I determine that his wing is sprained pretty badly and that his leg is indeed cracked. I strap his wing to keep it as his side and get a nice splint on his leg to keep it from getting worse along with some nice antibiotic cream on it.

Navy looks up at us, “I should be able to get to a hospital fine, you guys go on ahead while they don’t know how much we’re onto them.” Without waiting for an answer he starts his way out the door and towards the main part of Canterlot.

As we realize we are now down another one, we five remaining ponies look at each other before looking out the window towards our new destination: the castle, and its dungeons.

Comments

[(I*R) Surge]

"Shock and Ow" is quite the Schtick this chapter and adventures in a warehouse are always a good time

[Lucky Alchemist]

Id say + 5 shock the negitive, make contact with water it loses its +5 damage until 3 turns of dry out

[Hydro]

Reason #129013 why you don't mess with Hydro Pump's friends when he has access to water!!! lol. Awesome chapter yet again keep em coming man!

[RLYoshi]

"...and that other one we got sent to the dungeon..."

Ooh, new characters!

Y U END ON CLIFFHANGER!

[Atomic Vortex]

Haha! Breeze back in the house! I'm feeling more like myself now. Got my sword and my shades!dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_Lyra_dealwithit.png

[Desert Storm]

Hey Rhino, YOUR STILL A MAJOR COCK TEASE

[darkironpony]

Hm. So there is another! Interesting.

[Navy Shadow]

Aaaaand my wing is damaged and my leg is cracked. DAMN YOU HYDRO

[Snowstreak]

Volt is best staff weapon.