Shimmy Shorts

by Ausbrony

Redheart's Zany Zombie Adventures.

A quiet hum filled the underground laboratory. Beakers of an identifiable liquid bubbled away while machines hummed and one light in particular flickered to an unheard beat.

A white earth pony stared at one particular beaker, her brow furrowing before setting it down.

“Batch Twenty Seven failed to take,” she said to herself, her voice recorded by a small crystal. “And the cultures in Batch Twenty Eight won’t be ready for a few more days.” She set the beaker aside, before looking at a third, a thick green mist rolling around inside it like an angry storm cloud.

“As for you,” she hummed. “Who’d have thought I’d find such an interesting specimen in the Everfree ruins. I wonder what you do?”

Obviously, the mist couldn’t respond. It did seem to swirl a little more though. Redheart wasn’t an idiot, she knew this thing was magical in nature. Everything that came out of the Everfree was magical in nature. But she didn’t want to move it around Ponyville.

And her lab was far too delicate to invite Sunset around to examine it. That mare had issues, and seemed to think fire and explosions solved them.

“Maybe Quickfix?” she asked herself, before snorting and shaking her head. That barbarian of a mare would likely turn her precious lab into some kind of deathtrap. “Why are all the smart unicorns in this town mentally unstable?”

---

Sunset looked up from her book and frowned.

“What’s wrong this time?” Spike asked as he stacked a few books onto a shelf.

“Nothing… just feel like setting somepony on fire,” she muttered and looked back down.

“Ah, so you feel normal then, good to know.” Spike chuckled, even as the fireball hit the back of his head.

---

Red’s ear flicked as she heard a ding and a loud voice muttering about the rickety old elevator.

“Crossbutt!” she heard her ever-so-eloquent friend Quickfix Aperture call out. “Ah thought yeh said this thing was fixed?”

“No, you said it was fixed!” Redheart facehooved. “Like the Clocktower… and the water pump… and the—”

“Och! Alright, alright, ah get it!” Quick groaned and shook her head. “Quit yeh naggin’ woman! Ah’ll get tae it what ah get tae it.”

“Mhmm, I’ve heard that before,” the earth mare muttered. “So, what brings you here?”

“Well, we’re goin’ out tanight, remember?” the unicorn responded, tapping a beaker of bubbling liquid. “Ah dinnae think yeh’d remember, so ah came tae pick you up.”

“Huh?” Oh right, there was that wasn’t there? Ever since they found out that they were the ‘Elements of Harmony’ the six mares had taken some time off to deepen their friendships. And Redheart had decided to go drinking with Quickfix, everypony else were utter lightweights.

Or they were just afraid of a drunk Sunset Shimmer. That thought made her shudder a little. Given that it was Tuesday, that could only end in nothing short than the Apocalypse.

“I think Pizzelle would be alright,” Redheart said as she wiped down her workbench. “She is part Earth Pony. I’d think she’d be used to a little alcohol.”

“Aye, but she’s got that lil foxxy kid now,” Quickfix sighed. “Foals are cute an’ all. But they really put a dampener on one’s party life.”

“Yup, I think I’ll just grow a foal instead of having one,” Redheart nodded. “I’ve seen countless mothers. No way am I going through months of that nightmare. The end result is still the same.”

“Want me to build yah a robot one?” Quickfix asked. “At least yeh don’ hafta deal with poopy diapers and vomit. Hmm, ah might be able to add those…”

“Pass,” Redheart deadpanned. The thought of her making robot foals was also terrifying. Because she’d likely weaponize them. Enough to single-hoofedly lay siege to Canterlot.

“Aww,” Quickfix sighed. “Well, as much as ah love yeh shiny lab. Let’s go already!”

“Fine fine,” Redheart sighed as Quick poked another jar. A jar of swirling green mist. Was Redheart making something weird again?

“Leave that alone!” the mare snapped, making Quick flinch and drop it, the glass shattering on the floor as the mist evaporated into the airducts.

“Whoops?” Quick shrugged as Redheart sighed and facehooved.

“Celestia damn it… let’s just go already,” she groaned and dragged the destructive unicorn away. Punching the panel of the elevator, she released Quickfix, who rubbed her neck.

“Eargh, bloody tomcolt,” she muttered. “No wonder yer single.”

“Same to you,” Redheart muttered. The elevator shuddered and moved upwards, only to stop after a few feet. “Oh, wonderful,” Redheart deadpanned and stomped her hoof.

The the metal box fell. With a sickening shriek and the nauseating feeling of the floor vanishing from under their hooves, the cables gave way and the elevator fell two floors. Redheart and Quickfix barely had time to scream before their world turned black.

---

Redheart groaned, holding her hooves to her head as she tried to get up. Her left front leg throbbed with pain, but she was still able to get to her hooves. What… had happened?

The elevator… it fell and… Quickfix! Redheart looked around to see the unicorn lying next to her. Once she used a piece of scrap metal to pry the elevator doors open, before dragging Quickfix out and into the hall.

“Urgh, lay off the noodlecups,” she grunted as she dropped the heavy unicorn. “Now… what do we have here?” The elevator had hit the bottom floor. So, that would leave them in the morgue? Wonderful. Redheart hated this place on the best of days. She check Quickfix for injuries, but all she seemed to have was a bump on the head.

“Well, I guess you’re having a nice nap,” Redheart sighed as she took her tail in her mouth and started dragging her. “You mow, you supoffed to sweep affer you get wasfed!”

She spat her tail out as her ear twitched. Something was… off. She’d heard a sound. Was somepony down here? Maybe the anthropologist, Marrow?

A clatter of a tray hitting the floor, Red had dropped enough to know what that sounds like. She looked down at Quickfix.

“Wait here,” she giggled. “Don’t go anywhere.” And headed for the nearest room. She nudged the door open and peered inside. “Doctor Marrow? Is that you?”

Well, it wasn’t Doctor Marrow. Just a corpse shuffling about the room. Ah, that explains it.

Wait a minute…

“A...A…” Redheart’s eyes widened as her irises shrank to pinpricks. “Is… is that a…?”

“Uuuurrrrgggghhhhhhhhh!!!” With a bloodcurdling moan, the zombie turned as one eye stared at the mare. The other dangled loosely from the socket and swayed with each step.

“Nope!” Redheart closed the door and walked back over to Quickfix. “Nope. Nope…” She picked up her tail and started dragging her. “Nopenopenopenopenooooooope!”

She bucked open the door to the next floor… and paused again.

Ah, so the stairwell was filled with more of the undead. They could climb stairs. Okay, good to know.

“Bucking NOPE!” Redheart dragged Quick back to another room, a small lab that was luckily free of the zombies. She closed the door and pushed a desk in front of it. She could hear them banging on the door now, hopefully that desk would hold.

“Okay Redheart. No problems. Just a room full of zombies. Nothing to worry about.” She paced in a small circle as she racked her brain on what to do. “Well, I really regret not telling Sunset now. Her fire would have come in handy… or, we’d simply have zombies that are also on fire.”

Okay. So one, there were zombies. That was a thing that happened.

Two, she didn’t know how far they spread. Either they were confined to the hospital basement, or Quickfix and Redheart were the only ponies left in Ponyville… or Equestria. How long were they unconscious,

“Just great, I slept through the apocalypse,” Redheart muttered. “And now I owe Pizzelle ten bits if she’s still alive.”

“Uuurrghhh!” A moan made her jump and lash out at the noise… which happened to be Quickfix. All she did was succeed in knocking her out again.

“Ahh… sorry,” Redheart blushed. Well now what? Quickfix had two lumps on her head, plus her horn. She kinda looked like a little Triceratops. But now she had a still-unconscious mare and a room full of zombies.

“Great… I’m going to die a virgin,” Redheart sighed. “And how are there zombies here? We have strict rules against hiring any necromancers. I’m having a serious word with Pony Resources if i survive this!”

Then she saw something out of the corner of her eye, a green mist seeping through a ventilation duct. “Oohhhh… um, my bad?” So, it was that stuff from the Everfree? Perhaps taking something from where Nightmare Moon had been wasn’t such a good idea.

“Well, hindsight is a bitch as they say,” Redheart muttered and winced as the door thumped again, the desk shifting slightly. “Okay Redheart. Pull it together and remember your Zombie Survival Guide! In the event of a Zombie outbreak. Don’t panic. Ascertain if it’s a virus, necromancy or an unknown source.” She looked at the mist and nodded. “Most likely Necromancy.”

“Now, if it’s Necromancy, just kill the caster.”

“Ahhh… buck,” Redheart sighed. “Stupid useless guidebook. Okay, so… What do I do?”

“...yeh got any bubblegum?” Quickfix mumbled.

Redheart blinked and turned her head. Quickfix was… she was awake? And, what the heck wa she holding? Some kind of metal tubing with a bottle on one end. She had a bandolier of similar bottles around her waist.

“No… I don’t have any bubblegum…” Redheart replied to the ridiculous question.

“Then we only have to kick flank!” Quick cackled as the door burst open. Several zombie went to shuffle in and Quickfix slapped the bottle. With a shudder, the other end of the pipe exploded, the chemical reaction firing the the shrapnel inside out at them, shredding them in a shower of guts and gore.

“W-What the tartarus is THAT thing!?” Redheart screamed, her stomach turning from the sight of the carnage.

“Ah dunno,” Quick shrugged. “Ah’m thinkin’ ah’ll call him… ‘Boomstick!’”

“So… pray tell, what does it do?” Redheart shuddered.

“Narrow tube, chemical rocket and a hooffull of sharp, pointy things,” Quick nodded. “The explosion of the reaction forces out th’ metal and buhbye zombies.”

“Crude,” Redheart sighed as Quickfix locked a new bottle in place.

“Yet effective,” the unicorn added. “Problem is, ah only got six shots. How many zombies are there?”

“We got a flankload of bodies when Nightmare Moon did her thing,” Redheart sighed. “So… way more than six.”

“Well… that’s jus’ bleedin’ wonderful,” Quickfix sighed. “Well, ah’m nuthin’ if not an optimist! Ready to kick flank and take names?”

“What does taking their names do?’ Redheart sighed. “It’s not like we’re going to arrest them and charge them with being a zombie.”

Quickfix groaned. “Yeh jus… yeh got no passion fer this, do yeh?”

“Should I?” the earth mare sighed. “And what am I supposed to do exactly? Did you make two of those things?”

“Pfft, no,” Quick replied with a snort. “There wasn’t enough tech in there to cannibalize. So ah... You can be the damsel in distress ah hafta rescue.”

“And now I know why you and Fiddlesticks get along so well,” Redheart muttered. Several zombies approached from behind and she let out a scream, grabbing one of the bottles and throwing it.

“Ah horseapples,” Quick’s eyes widened and she pulled Red into a room as the bottle detonated, blowing up the zombies, the whole building trembling.

“OH, that’s much more effective!” Redheart smiled.

“Aye, if yeh wanna bring the whole damned building down around us!” Quickfix snapped. “Yeh have a doctorate don’t yeh? Then why don’t yeh use that damned thing inside yeh head called a brain!”

“Oh, this coming from a mare that caused a temporal anomaly over a damned cold!” Redheart yelled back. “You can fight zombies, but you were too afraid to eat some damned soup?”

“Ah wasn’t sick,” Quick mumbled. “And time travel would a worked if somepony killed the Time Beast like ah said!”

“You’re an idiot!”

“Yer a bloody coward!”

“Lunatic!”

“Candy floss mane!”

“Degenerate tomcolt!”

“Cross-flanked harpy!”

“Stupid Northerner!!”

Quickfix stopped, her eyes wide. “You… you take that back…”

Redheart also stopped, her hooves shot to her mouth. “Quickfix I…”

“Yeh think it’s easy!” the unicorn yelled. “Yeh think somepony lahke me fits in around here? A bloody zebra would have a better chance o’it! But no matter what it’s always, ‘Oh, a Northerner wouldn’t understand’ ‘Why are Northerners so violent?’ ‘Why aren’t you a warrior like yer siblin’s Quickfix?’ ‘What good is a spanner over a bucking sword!!’”

Her tirade was cut off when Redheart put her hooves around her neck. “I’m sorry. That was insensitive of me. And believe me, i know how you feel. Do you think an earth pony has it easy in a scientific field like genetics? This is almost an all-unicorn field. I’ve been laughed out of lectures because I don’t have one of these.’ she lightly poked Quick’s horn. “But i’m sorry Quickfix. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Bah, stupid feelin’s, buck ‘em,” Quickfix snorted. No she wasn’t blushing, that was the blood of her enemies staining her coat. “Right, now ah really need that drink. Let’s get outta here.”

“Eeyup,” Redheart nodded and saw something on the wall.

‘In case of zombie outbreak, Break Glass.’

“Oohh~” she hummed and did just that, pulling out a sizeable fireaxe. “I’m gonna call you… Surgeon~”

“Right, are we goin’ or you gonna take him to dinner first?” Quickfix snorted. “Heh, at least he matches that ‘razor-sharp’ wit o’yers.”

“Oh Har har,” Red rolled her eyes as opened the door and brained the first zombie, splitting it’s head like an over-ripe apple. “Oooh~ This is rather cathartic isn’t it?”

“Now yer gettin’ it,” Quick cackled as she loaded a bottle and fired, blowing away a few as they approached the stairwell.

Together, the pair fought their way up the second floor and to the third, where Redheart’s lab was located. They stopped to collect some more ammunition for Boomstick as Redheart spied something. Culture number Twenty Seven. It had bloomed after all. HAH! She did it. She managed to genetically recreate Poison Joke!

Then a zombie lurched in and bumped the shelf. The jar containing the flower shattered and once exposed to the outside air, the flower shriveled up in seconds.

“You…” Redheart gripped her axe and Quick took a step back. That… that was not the face of a stable pony. “I worked for weeks! I finally solved it… and you ruined it!!”

What followed could not be documented. Quickfix was interviewed several times, but whenever it got this scene, she curled up into a ball and rocked back and forth, chanting Red Death over and over.

---

Outside the hospital, Redheart shouldered her axe, it and herself still coated with all kinds of viscera.

“Ahh, I feel much better,” she sighed and looped an arm around Quickfix’s neck. “So, still wanna get that drink?”

“If only tae ferget th’ last twenty minutes…” the mare shuddered. “And… no matter whut, ah’m never, ever gunna make yeh mad ever again.”

“Hmm, did something happen?” Redheart asked. She’d blacked out for a moment and when she awoke, all the zombies were dead.

It was really weird.

“Yeh know, yer alright Reddy,” Quickfix chuckled. “Ah’ve half a mind tae make yeh an obligatory Northerner.”

“Don’t you mean honorary?” Redheart sighed. “Well, thanks Quickfix. That means a lot.”

“Still gunna drink yeh under the table, Lightweightheart.”

“Bring it, you Trottish tomcolt!” Redheart smirked.

Author's Note:

Nothing brings friends closer together like a good ol' zombie apocalypse.

Comments

[Comickook]

Hey there. Thanks very much for getting this next chapter up. I really appreciate you going to the effort. Once again, excellent job on the exchanges, emotional content, action, humor and future chapter set-up in all the right places. I'll definitely be looking forward to the next one shot in this series as soon as time and inspiration will allow.

[Ausbrony]

7500864 - The next one is done. All I have to do is hit the submit button. Still, I'll wait a little first, give people something to look forward to.

[NobodieZ]

Once again you did a great job on this chapter.

[Ri2]

Why was she trying to recreate Poison Joke?