Chapter 11 - " Chains of Obsession"
Golden Age of Apocalypse
Chapter 11: Chains of Obsession
Bar brawls were not something that the Blackhoof Lodge was accustomed to. Neither was more than one pony being up at this hour of night. So when you tied the two great tastes that didn’t go well together, you ended up with the current situation...that none of the participants were very happy with.
Pvt. Amber Shine took a half-step before turning green and projectile vomiting. The blast hit a pair of werewolves, who stopped, saw what had happened and turned tail, beating a fast retreat in favor of the ocean in the distance.
“Is it bad that Amber’s still drunk,” groaned Rarity, in between bucking a werewolf right in the kisser and over the railing of the second floor, causing it to crash into a table and snapping it clean in half. “Or that she stopped two werewolves by clearing herself?!”
“Ask later!” grunted Sandalwood, after punching not a werewolf but some weird rotting zombie pony creature in the face and making it land on the werewolf on the first floor. “Beat the shit out of supernatural bastards now!”
“Ah am so sick of motherbuckin’ werewolves…” suddenly rang out Applejack’s voice, followed by what sounded like a window shattering, then grunts as multiple bodies could be heard hitting the ground outside, “...in mah motherbuckin’ life!”
Just then, a beam of dark energy blasted from the other side of the building, hitting the werewolf and zombie pony. Instantly, dark crystal growths sprung up to encase their hooves, anchoring them to the ground.
“We gotta move!” shouted Razz, barreling across the elevated floor, Coco Pommel gripping onto her back for dear life. “Where is everypony else?”
“We’re here!” Sandalwood called out as she wither-charged another werewolf, knocking it flat.
“Rainbow, can you clear us some moving room outside?” Razz called out.
“One OFC, coming up!” Rainbow said, accelerating to near-sonic rainboom speeds and punching through the roof of the building.
“OFC?” Sandalwood asked.
“Yeah,” Applejack said, “but Rarity can explain better.”
“I can?” the fashionista asked, and sighed. “Well, Sandalwood, dear, Rainbow Dash can do this thing where she flies really fast and makes a sonic rainboom.” In the distance, a loud boom erupted.
“So, OFC means…?”
“Orbital Friendship Cannon,” Rarity explained, and in the distance behind her, a massive blast of rainbow light occurred, followed by the ground erupting, throwing gouts of earth and groups of werewolves alike to the four winds. Rarity had been fortunate that the hotel’s windows had long been broken by the attack, or she might have been injured by the resulting glass storm that would’ve followed.
“Quick, out the door! Sandy, grab Amber!” Razz yelled.
“AAAAAAAAAAAND MY HEART WILL GO OOOOOOOOOOOOO-”*WHAM* sang the now clearly-still-drunk Shine, who had been knocked out by the beige earth mare.
“C’mon, Sapphire Shores, you can sing later,” Sandalwood grunted as she threw Pvt. Shine over her back and raced out the door.
The ground outside was, needless to say, a massive crater. Dozens of unconscious werewolves were littered around the crater, the tops of buildings and the few trees that had survived. “Overkill much, Rainbow?” Applejack asked.
Rainbow shrugged. “They were lucky I wasn’t wearing my flightsuit. Those are designed to remove flight friction and thus make our attacks even more intense.” She walked over to a female werewolf, picking up her unconscious head and moving it up and down like a puppet, speaking in an altered voice, “And I’m only unconscious! I’d have been killed if the Mighty Rainbow Dash had been wearing her flight gear!”
“Ugh. Rainbow, that’s just crass,” Rarity said with distaste.
“Yeah, gotta agree, sugarcube, that’s just a bit over the top,” Applejack added.
“Sorry. You get used to gallows humor when you’re in uniform,” Rainbow explained, gently setting the unconscious creature down again. “So Razz, what’s next?”
“We need to get to the train station,” Razz explained. “Then we need to make it the most defendable building in town until either our ride arrives, or the sun comes up.”
Unfortunately, just getting to the train station proved far harder than it seemed even for a town filled with werewolves and zombies and, almost unsurprisingly, the fabled vampire batpony variety—no relation to the vampire fruit bats that once terrorized Applejack’s fields (or Fluttershy’s short-lived ‘issues’ that had stemmed from that episode). While the streets of the otherwise alarmingly abandoned town of Nightshade weren’t totally crawling with freaks of the night, there were enough around to make just trying to leave Blackhoof Lodge one heck of a hairy problem indeed.
“RUN!” shouted Razz, straining herself to levitate a whole mob of goons out of the way, then pitch them far into the horizon in the opposite direction. But before she could catch her breath, she got tackled to the ground by yet more monsters.
“Razz!” cried out somepony—she couldn’t exactly tell who, not over the snarls and the hissing of the things holding her to the ground—and as much as Razz wanted to avoid having to kill what possibly were just cursed townsponies, she would do so without hesitation to protect her friends. Only…something else started to sound out, something that drew the attention of her ambushers away long enough for her to throw them into a nearby wall and free herself. But then she too looked at the source of the weird noise and her jaw promptly dropped.
“ALL I WANTED TO DO WAS BE FASHIONABLE IN A SIMPLE RESCUE!” whined Rarity at damn near the top of her lungs. Remarkably, this was having a profound effect on both the werewolves and the vamponies, who for respective reasons were trying to move away from the high pitched irritant their heightened senses of hearing were picking up. As for the undead, well, they seemed to be following the lead of the other monsters despite the shrieking being considerably less effective on them. Unfortunately, Rarity’s cries were also having an impact on her compatriots and no doubt she would eventually need to stop in order to breathe.
Thinking quickly, Applejack just decided the simple option was to dive under Rarity and then hoist her on her back. “EVERYPONY! THIS WAY!” she hollered over the psuedo-klaxon of a unicorn on her back. Opting to preserve their voices, the rest followed suit. But despite the admirable repulsion powers of Rarity’s whining, it wasn’t enough to clear a path through the monsters to make a straight shot to the train station on the outskirts of the town. Left with little choice, the group ended up holing themselves up in the safest place they could find: the bank. Luckily, while Nightshade was for the most part relatively still a few years behind the rest of the country in terms of modern technology, the Nightshade Bank was fortunately up to current code and thus its vault was more than enough to provide safe and secure protection from the cursed masses outside...for the moment.
“I think it goes without saying,” said Rainbow Dash as they ran into the vault, “but this town is seriously not right!”
“Ah think we c’n all see that!” grumbled Applejack, slamming the vault door shut.
“W-we’re all going to just stay in here until morning, right?” asked Coco. “When everypony is back to normal and we can get out of here, right?”
“Oh, they’ll probably get in here before then,” sadly surmised Sandalwood. “Werewolves can be clever sons of bitches—don’t ask how I know, but right now the only thing between us and them is a vault door and maybe Rarity’s screaming if she’s willing to sacrifice her lungs.”
The unicorn in question gave the earth pony an indignant glare, but after coming to the conclusion that she was right, opted to remain silent.
“Say, Razz,” Sandalwood continued, “if I recall correctly, lycanthropy is a product of Sombra’s magic, yes?”
“Yeah, it was,” affirmed Razz, who had now taken some of the bird food out of her bag and was feeding Heliodor with it. “But if what you’re going to propose is me using my magic to insta-cure all the werewolves, it’s not that simple. First, it’s werewolves and zombies and vamponies–”
“Oh, my!” squeaked Rarity, whose voice was not quite back from all the wailing.
“-out there,” continued Razz without missing a beat. “So, I’d only cure a third of the ponies and they’d probably still be pissed at us, but I’ll explain why in a minute. More importantly, I can’t cure them without knowing the exact specifics of the curse’s strain that’s in play here—sure, it was foal’s play to cure it last time, since my horn was buried to the base in that bitch’s heart. Vista’s strain was really the same one that Sable Loam had used and all those afflicted were maybe at most second or third generation werewolves, so there was not a chance of strain mutation. Here? It may not even have been Sable’s in the first place for the werewolves that have to have come and settled Nightshade. Even then it’s been a thousand years and a dozen or so generations of ponies since, so without knowing if the strain is all the same from just one werewolf, trying to do some kind of mass application is a shot in the dark!”
“The heck are you even talking about?” asked Thistle, confused as to the nature of what was being discussed.
“Not really much of something you need to be worried about unless you’re also a victim of Sombra screwing around with your bloodline.”
“If it’s a means to getting out of this shithole,” argued Thorn, “then I think my sister and I are deserving of that much! Other than Coco, we’re the only ponies who have survived the wreck of the Arno and we don’t want to die at the hands of some filthy freaks!”
“Yeah, little wonder anypony’s really ever heard of this place,” snorted Rainbow, “I’m wondering if anypony’s ever left this town to begin with.”
“Well, actually, I think there are some ponies who are from here,” recalled Razz, “who are currently in Ponyville…”
“WHAT?!” exclaimed all the other ponies at once.
“Yeah, some acting troupe, the ‘Four Footed PerFormers’ I think they were called, came to town just a few days ago. I know because one of their group was somepony who...well, if it wasn’t for his kindness I wouldn’t be standing here now. But two of the other ponies in his group—Versatile and Stage Fright—they told me they were bat ponies from this very town.”
“Great, so now there’s vampires back home, and you knew?” angrily retorted Sandalwood. “Well, maybe you didn’t know they were vampires, but don’t you think you might have gotten some impressions about….”
“They’re not vampires, okay?” Razz stamped the ground with her foreleg.
“How are you so sure?”
“Because as I’m sure we’re all keenly aware of at this point, I’m the Archmagus for Dark Magic. That means if a pony is cursed, I can sense it on them no matter what appearance or form they’re in! I sensed something was off as soon as we set foot in this town, but got nothing from Versatile and Stage Fright.”
“Not to question your expertise on the subject,” pointed out Sandy, “but, um, maybe vampires don’t have the same feeling in their aura as…well, werewolves?” Everypony looked angrily at the mare. “What? It’s not like Razz having dealt with them before is some big secret anymore.”
“She has a point, there,” admitted Razz, “but at the same time, even dark magic has to follow some rules. In this case, it’s that anypony with any kind of ‘curse’ on them has an aura I can sense, period. There is an aura on all of those cursed ponies out there, but there was not an aura on the two back in Ponyville when I met them.”
“But…but wouldn’t they mention that they were from a town full of cursed ponies?” asked Thistle. “Seems like something worth mentioning to ponies to make sure they never went there.”
“Unless this discussion topic can help get us out of here,” interrupted Rarity, “the fact is we’re still trapped in a bank vault in the middle of some Celestiaforsaken town near the border of the country, with no idea how to get out!”
“Well, we still need to get to the train station,” remembered Razz, “it’s looking like our only way out of this town.”
“But we don’t exactly have any offensive or defensive spells like a guardspony, do we?” Rainbow Dash pointed out. “I mean, sure I can them with another round of the OFC, but the fact is that in its full form it’s a one-trick use, and I haven’t developed anything for hoof-to-hoof combat advantage yet, plus the fact that I need range in order to pull it off and in a tighter confine like the train station it might be a bit harder to do.”
“You don’t,” said Razz with a grin. “But I do—after all, know anypony else who could freeze four alicorns at once with a single spell besides me? As long as we stick together, we should be able to get to the station in one piece.”
Of course, that plan immediately failed once the time had come to actually leave the vault, as the monsters outside the door had somehow gotten rather well coordinated. To that end, they managed to succeed in splitting the group of ponies roughly in half, with an ill-timed interruption from one feisty werewolf interfering with Razz’s attempted mass teleport outside the bank (she couldn’t do it from inside the vault itself, due to the standard anti-teleportation wards). While she, Heliodor, Coco, and Rarity were safely outside (for the moment), the greater portion of their party had been simply moved up a few floors.
“Git goin!” hollered Applejack from the third floor window she’d ended up near. “We’ll hold out best we can!”
“Yeah, just go!” added Rainbow from a second floor window.
“No, I won’t leave you to your fates like this!” Razz shouted back, but before she could try teleporting back in to save her friends, a wave of rotting flesh, fangs, and fur poured out of the bank’s front entrance after the three ponies and bird companion that had so far evaded them.
“Damnit, no!” swore Razz, throwing up a dark crystal wall in front of her to stem the tide. “Just…just hold on! I’ll be back!” was all she could say as her choice had been made—leading Coco and Rarity off to the train station. But one thing was for sure in her mind: whoever was responsible for this, she was going to make them pay for all the ponies who fell victim to this dark town’s secrets.
“Like, can’t we just have you fly us out?” asked Thorn, while Thistle and Rainbow stacked desks and chairs in front of the staircase door, already straining under the weight of the freaks trying to force it open.
“Can’t!” huffed Rainbow. “In case you didn’t notice, those vampire bat ponies can still fly, and I’m assuming any other pegasi in town that ended up as werewolves or zombies still can fly, too, and that’s not counting any unicorns among them!”
“I…I don’t think it’s going to hold!” Thistle moaned, noting that the gap in the doorframe between the actual frame and the door was gradually growing despite the mountain of woodwork now in the way.
“Quickly, we gotta-“ shouted Thorn, cut off by an explosion of woodwork as the barrier suddenly gave way, leaving nowhere to run for the four ponies inside.
But as the werewolves and zombies that tried to pile in learned, there was nowhere for them to run, either, as upon entering the door they found themselves wedged in too tightly in the door frame, having effectively defeated their own progress.
“Well, that’s convenient!” remarked Rainbow, before realizing the only way out was now blockaded by a mass of fur and fangs. “Now it’s just a question of how long we can hold out...”
“Oh, of all the places to end up!” whined Sandalwood. She, Applejack, and the unconscious Amber Shine draped on her back had ended up on the top floor of the bank where the administrative offices were. To their misfortune, it seemed the top floor had been undergoing some renovations and most of the walls, doors and even whole sections of the floor had been torn out, leaving only one real spot in the middle to stand.
Which made it all the easier for the wolves now at the door to the staircase to get them.
“This has got to be some kind of bad joke,” groaned Applejack, readying herself to do some rapid bucking.
“Yeah, too bad the ‘punch’ line is going to be one heck of a kick in their faces, right?” smarted off Sandalwood, letting Amber slip off onto the floor as she too readied to make a last stand.
Then the door broke loose and the wolves poured through, except…
“S-Sandalwood?” the lead werewolf asked, stopping dead in her tracks as she seemed to recognize the tan earth pony.
“Oh, so now you furry lot are talka–” spat Sandy, before she in turn recognized who the werewolf actually was. Of particular note was how said werewolf looked strikingly similar to Sandalwood, with an almost identical brown mane and tan coat, the only difference being the wolf pony having a cutie mark of three walnuts, as opposed to Sandy’s mark of a stick of sandalwood incense. “OhmiCelestia…Amaretto?! You’re a damn werewolf?!”
“Shit, Sandy, I didn’t…” her identity realized, the ferociousness was gone and instead there was a wolf-like pony who seemed downright rational. “I didn’t know you were with them!”
“I told you I was friends with the Element Bearers, Ammy!” The anger in Sandalwood’s voice grew. “You didn’t know your own cousin was among the ponies you’ve been trying to kill or turn into wolves or something?!”
Amaretto sighed. “Is that who these ponies are? Look, Sandy, nopony told me anything! This is probably one big misunderstanding and–”
“That’s putting it lightly, because I think we deserve some Celestiadamn answers!” Sandy slammed her hoof down to make a point, only realizing why that had been a bad move when loud cracks were heard. Before anypony could do anything, the floor beneath her, AJ, and Amber gave way and sent them tumbling down into the second floor…right on top of Rainbow, Thorn, and Thistle.
By the time Amaretto got herself through the crowded stairs to the pile of ponies, they were all knocked out cold. Then things got worse as another figure appeared. “Oh, jeez, this is bad,” was all she could say, as she turned to see the gray unicorn militiapony walk into the second floor offices while the zombies and vampires scrambled to move out of the way. “Look, I can vouch for at least one of the–”
“You know why this needs to be done,” replied the militiapony, who charged up a spell and aimed at the ponies lying unconscious before him. “And really, they’re not the ones I think any of us should be worried about…”
Apparently, most of the monster ponies had been held up at the bank, for there was little resistance to Razz charging all the way toward the train station. Having crafted a large crystal wedge, like a plow on the front of a locomotive, she effortlessly knocked anypony in her way, with Coco and Rarity following close behind. Anypony who tried to get back up and attack from the rear of the party were subsequently discouraged as Heelee blasted them in the face with emerald fire.
“This is almost insulting!” declared Razz at the top of the path, just outside the train station. She let the plow fall to the ground, disintegrating into nothing almost upon contact, before taking deep breaths to catch her breath.
“I’ll say,” agreed Rarity, “my things are still back at that accursed lodge!” She yelled in the direction of the lodge. “I’ll have you know I’m writing a negative review about this in the Ponyville Express!”
“Humor, cute,” deadpanned Razz. “I’ll remind you if we survive.”
“At least yours are still intact,” Coco pointed out. “All my baggage probably was destroyed in the airship crash!”
“Oh, that’s true, I hadn’t thought of that. My most sincere apologies, Coco.”
“Heh, you could probably give half of your bags to Coco when we come back,” said Razz with a chuckle, turning to go through the doorway leading onto the station proper. “With an entire legion of guardsponies backing us-OOF!”
Razz found herself tumbling a short distance, having been shoved from behind suddenly. “What the hay, girls, that’s not like–” she began to chide, but as she turned to face her aggressors, she froze mid-sentence in shock.
Somehow, she’d not sensed that the door had been booby-trapped, while at least Rarity had and thus shoved Razz out of the way. But now, both Rarity and the hapless Coco were suspended in mid-air by black metal chains that had erupted from the ground and the sides of the frame, wrapped around the limbs of the fashionistas within like snakes.
“Well, isn’t this a bit compromising?” huffed Rarity. Coco chose not to comment, it had been so bad here in Nightshade to the point this was almost par for the course in what she’d been subjected to ever since the Arno had gone down.
“Hold on!” said Razz, charging up her magic, “I’ll get you two down!”
“No, you’re not,” replied a mare’s voice, serious in tone, followed by Lockbox emerging from her hiding place in the shadow of the train station’s main building. This was not the bubbly blacksmith from earlier, however. For all the falseness in the attempted “seriousness” Razz could immediately sense in her voice, it was clear Lockbox meant business. The brown furred, golden maned unicorn also wore a full set of plate armor with a disconcerting “chain” motif in the detailing, with a holster for what appeared to be a large blacksmith’s hammer on her right—Razz couldn’t see if there was anything on Lockbox’s left side.
“Lockbox, please,” begged Razz, knowing what was probably going to happen. All the same, she removed her saddlebags and motioned to Heliodor to take them. “Over there on the roof, if you would, please,” she requested of her longtime companion while nuzzling him. She could tell Heelee wanted to protest being relegated to a pack mule, especially given he’d played a big part in helping Razz take down Fair Vista months ago; begrudgingly he obeyed his mistress, taking the pack in his talons and flying over to the nearby roof where he could watch and—if need be—intervene.
“No, I think we need to finally settle this matter once and for all,” replied the armored mare, whose eyes held no sign of a mare willing to discuss an alternative. Together, she and Razz began to circle each other. “I do find it odd that somepony like you who has such control over dark crystal chooses to wear nothing but a brace, even if it’s just for show and not for some injur–”
“How dare you imply that-MNNPH!” retorted Rarity, only for Razz to suddenly use her magic to keep Rarity’s muzzle shut. Razz glanced over to Rarity, the look in her eyes saying, If she knows how bad that injury of mine is, she’s going to make it worse. Nodding in understanding, Rarity gasped for air when Razz released her muzzle.
“Armor would just slow me down,” said Razz, not wanting to have her friends fight her battles. “But that’s what you would like, isn’t it? Obviously you’re somehow tied into everything that’s happened to impede our investigation. A spontaneous rain storm to keep us from going to the wreck, only to find it untouched? Only three survivors accounted for out of maybe two hundred, and the supposed guards on site also having gone AWOL? Siccing the entire town on us as cursed ponies, even? At least show me you have the decency to tell me why all that has happened!”
“Funny, I’d think you would already know, given you’re a damned witch hunter!”
Raspberry tilted her head with genuine confusion. “A what?!”
“Don’t play dumb! You’ve come for me because I can do this!” At that, Lockbox’s horn lit up with dark purple mist and at the same time, black-and-red chains burst from the ground like large, metallic snakes, before they moved as one and rapidly converged onto the shocked Raspberry. Before Raspberry could do anything, the chains coiled around her limbs and body, then squeezed together like one giant anaconda to either crush or smother the pony within to death, depending on what happened first.
Suddenly, Lockbox instinctively turned around to face Raspberry and cast a shield strong enough to block most of the powerful spells leveled onto her. What had gone through ended up encasing Lockbox’s lower half in solid dark crystal, but to Razz’s worry, Lockbox didn’t seem all too concerned.
“You’re going to have to do better than that!” she taunted, the chains that had tried to crush Razz’s magical duplicate falling to the ground—revealing the decoy having already dissipated—before coiling around the dark crystal at their own mistress’s feet. Like a blender almost, the chains rapidly raked themselves around and around, surprisingly eroding the crystal away, while the rest of the chains honed in on Razz at the same time.
Barely dodging, Razz couldn’t help but wince at the spike of pain from her crippled leg—she’d put too much of a load onto her injury and so let her drop her guard momentarily, as well as reminding her she really needed to put a new coating of the prescription salve on it as the brace was starting to rub it raw through the bandage wrapping.
But worse, Razz had finally begun to put the pieces together—her dark crystals normally were at minimum as hard as diamonds by default, requiring powers on the level of an alicorn to be behind any attempt to manipulate or destroy them. In order for Lockbox’s dark magic chains to be like belt sanders to those same dark crystals, Lockbox’s level of dark power had to be on par with Razz herself.
On par with Sombra.
And then she recalled the third stanza of the prophetic words carved into the back of Sombra’s Mirror:
The next now comes, the dark smithy, with metal strong as blades
Her vast secrets, hidden within, buried within the shades
Allays with beasts unnatural within a realm afraid
And all stand as great sentinels for mysteries deeply laid
Looking at her adversary now, and with the events of the night still fresh in her mind, Raspberry believed she knew what much of the stanza meant. But what does the fourth line mean? Razz wondered, doing her best to continuously dodge the hail of chains raining down on her.
The sound of shattering stone, however, signified Lockbox was now a free mare again. Her horn ablaze with dark magic energy and her eyes now ignited with the signature mist trails as well. There was no question that Lockbox, for better or far more evidently worse, was a Scion like Raspberry.
Raspberry knew facing her in full combat was risky for a number of reasons, so she tried once again to reach out to the furious other mare. “Lockbox, I swear to you I’m not here for you!”
“You think you can come to my town and pretend not to have sinister motives for why you’re here?!” accused Lockbox, now drawing her hammer out from its holster and personally charging at Razz. Between a series of narrow misses and quick erections of dark crystals to block the relentless chains, Razz did notice that the aura on the hammer trying to knock her block off was not black, like her own, but instead a pale brown much like the shade on the actual box on Lockbox’s cutie mark. “That you think you can just waltz in pretending to be somepony you're not?!”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” spat back Razz, who managed a lucky kick into Lockbox’s face and sent the armored mare flying, the chains suddenly scattering as if they too had been hit directly. Taking the opportunity, Razz finally let her appearance of a normal mare vanish, her normally concealed form now brought to bear. “Because ponies would be put so at ease if I looked like this all the time!”
Coco gasped at Raspberry Beryl’s reveal of her true form. “Oh my Celestia what is going on?! She…she looks like Sombra almost!”
“Yes, Coco,” replied Rarity nonchalantly, “Raspberry normally hides her true appearance behind what she says her colors used to be before…well, that’s not important.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
Rarity sighed, shifting uncomfortably in the chains holding them. “Might as well tell you, Coco, not like there’s much else to do right now…”
“Holy Luna…” gaped Lockbox, evidently not expecting Razz to expose herself to such a degree. “What...what are you?”
Razz sighed. “Clearly you don’t read the papers since this version of me was all over the news about a year ago—y’know, the whole ‘I tried to kill Blueblood’ crap involving being on trial for dark magic treason or some shit—but what you see me as? This is what a real curse is like, one you unfortunately probably share with me though in a far lesser degree, I imagine.”
“I am nothing like you!” spat back Lockbox, readying her hammer and chains again.
“No, you’re not,” replied Razz, “at least I’m not somepony who manipulates a whole town by turning them into monsters of the night and disposing of the bodies of innocents who survived that airship wreck! Or the guards who tried to help save them, not to mention my friends!”
“Ha! If you really believe that’s what happened, then you are exactly the kind of pony who truly is being done away with here! You and those Lunadamned changelings, you still come after Nightshade when the one you seek isn’t even around anymore!”
One that ‘we’ seek? Razz inwardly queried, then took a shot. “Wait, you mean Versatile?”
The look of anger on Lockbox’s face deepening seemed to confirm the subject matter. “At least you recognize he has a name, but you’re never taking him back, and nopony in town knows where he currently is eith-”
“He’s in Ponyville with his sister, Stage Fright. I met them and their acting troupe a few days before all this shit with the Arno happened!” Razz shouted. “They’re staying at my parents’ inn!”
“You’re lying!” roared Lockbox, the dark chains flaring up with magic. “I told him I’d protect him!” Her eyes filled with dark eldritch fire, it seemed Lockbox was only further angered by the leaps of logic her brain was now making. “I’m going to get him—all of them —back, and the first step is through your dead body!””
In the blink of an eye, the chains made themselves coil around Raspberry’s limbs much like they still were for Coco and Rarity. Breathing heavily, Lockbox slowly approached the hapless Razz with her hammer raised. “You’re just here…to erase anypony who knew he existed…but the only one getting erased today…is you!”
The hammer, charged with dark magic, came down onto Razz…dissipating the decoy Razz had left in her place. Lockbox screamed angrily at having been duped yet again.
“Oh, come on, you telegraph your movements horribly,” snidely commented Razz from atop the station’s roof. “But as much fun as this hasn’t been, you’re really starting to lose it and for the sake of your town, it’s time to end this!”
Lockbox simply snarled, her misty eyes and dark magic encased horn making her look every bit as possessed as she probably was by her own powers, and behind her, the number of chains doubled. “DIE!” she roared, wrapping the chains around Razz, who hadn’t dodged in time. Lockbox started squeezing the chains, choking the life out of the dark mage.
“You don’t want to do this,” Razz gasped. “I’m going to put an end to you monsters.”
“You’re the only monster here!” Lockbox shouted, and drew her closer, Razz squirming to get out of the magical grasp to no avail. As they were just about muzzle to muzzle, Lockbox admitted, “I don’t want to do this, but it’s to protect those I care about from monsters like you.”
A sudden thought came over Razz’s mind. “I’m going to give you two options. Option One is that you give up now and turn you and your rabble over to Guard custody.”
Lockbox laughed. “Yeah, right. And Option Two?”
Raspberry smiled. “I will introduce you to the fucking wrath of a Goddamn pissed-off-as-Tartarus alicorn. Your ass is going to be Discord and I’m going to be all six fucking Elements of Harmony. I’m going to rampage on you like the Princess did against the Minotaur Invasion of 957. I WILL BREAK YOU LIKE SHE BROKE THE ENTIRE CHANGELING ARMY AT SADDLEBACK RIDGE, AND I WON’T FEEL AN OUNCE OF REMORSE DOING IT, DO I MAKE MYSELF CLEAR!?”
“Oh, please—you’ll feel a lot more than remorse, you monster,” Lockbox said, unphased by the random words coming out of Razz’s mouth, while squeezing the chains harder, with the intent to kill.
Razz’s eyes erupted with power; at the same time, a small, nearly unnoticeable necklace that the dark unicorn had been wearing began to burn with sulfuric yellow power . “You want to see a monster that badly?” she intoned. “I almost feel sorry for you.” And her body began to glow. The chains grew tighter, but a cocoon of energy surrounded Razz, and her body began to thin and elongate. The glowing oval slipped out of the chains easily, and as it hit the ground, it exploded.
Lockbox stared at the now furless bipedal creature before her. “Sweet Mother of Celestia—what are you?”
The now human Razz stood on her legs, flexing her fist. “Wow, that spell did work,” she said, thinking aloud. “Gonna have to thank Sunny when I get a chance.” And with that, she swung her closed fist at Lockbox’s face. Hard.
The impact of fist against muzzle hurt Razz, just as it did when she punched the human Twilight Sparkle a few weeks back (or technically months), and it hurt no less now. But the shock of seeing a human, followed by the jarring blow, stunned the other unicorn, leaving her defenseless.
Razz took advantage of that immediately. What was that human combat spell that Sunny taught me? she thought as she put her hands together and thrust them out, just like she’d seen the then-former unicorn do back on Earth. “Oh, yeah—that’s right!”
As a blast of golden energy roared away from Razz’s palms, she shouted out, “HADŌKEN!”
Needless to say, she had no idea what that meant. Also, needless to say, it didn’t make a bit of difference. The human ki blast rocketed forward, slamming into Lockbox and crumpled the other unicorn like paper, tossing her against a nearby wall and putting her out for the count
Someday I’m going to have to ask Sunny to explain what all of this means, she thought to herself, mentally filing it away for later. Her attention was then caught as somepony screamed behind her. She turned to see a bunch of werewolves, vamponies and zomponies looking at her with fear in their eyes.
“Surrender. Now,” Razz ordered, and and they did, all laying prone on the ground in an instant. “What the fuck is wrong with this town?” the human girl groaned, trying not to facepalm with the injured hand.
Suddenly hearing two sets of hoofsteps behind her, Razz whirled around and raised a fist, filling it with more human magic for good measure. Rarity and Coco stopped in their tracks, having apparently been freed from the chains the instant Lockbox went down. The two ponies stood frozen, staring at Razz and her glowing fist with wide uncertain eyes.
For her part, Coco, already worn out by a long ordeal and being hunted down by the town’s monsters, did the only natural thing: she fainted.
“Razz, darling...I’m sure there’s an explaination for, well...this?” Rarity asked, gesturing to Razz in her entirety.
“Yeah,” Razz sighed, lowering her fist and running a hand through her hair. Once activated, her human transformation spell would last for an hour until it returned her to normal. Granted, she could cancel it early, but given the current delicate situation, it was probably for the best that the most frightening thing in the area was a human teenager.
“And as soon as I figure out what it is, I’ll let you know,” she said with a faint smile.
Stats
Page generated in 0.068 seconds
Total duration
918 users online
1,981,940 hits today, 2,073,628 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Another great one, Blue.
Can't wait for next week's installment!
What the heck did Lockbox think would happen if she 'disappeared' three Elements of harmony and an Archmagus? She'd be lucky if Twilight/Celestia wouldn't send the entire military to find out what happened to them.
Was wondering if it was going to be Hadoken or the Kamehameha, but Sunset would have used one of those wouldn't she.
Lockbox is one messed up mare, and I really hope Razz can get through to her. Might take getting her to her Changing friend though, and Cryssi isn't just going to sit back now that her plan for Lockbox to be an idiot isn't working quite right. Right?
Wait... What happened to the guards?
9294415
It's a myyyyyystery...
media.giphy.com/media/9llK6lBxEYu1a/giphy.gif
Not going to lie, but when I read Lockbox in the part where Razz decked her in the snout I read "Lunchbox"
So far I’m really enjoying the story. I like that there is a tie back to the earlier books in how the characters react.
For those who have not yet read the earlier books in the Berryverse, go do so. They are good and explain a lot of the references here.
9293769
Not to mention Discord if Fluttershy asked him
So I was wrong about that one being Sunset. Kind of glad, because it might bring Sunset as an antagonist, but kind of sad because this is my absolute favorite iteration of Sunset I've ever read.