Golden Boy
Do you know that feeling of laundry fresh out of the dryer? When everything is clear and clean and warm? When the fabric is so fuzzy it just reaches up and hugs your face when you bury your cheeks in towels and blankets, and you just take a big whiff and fill your nose with the smell of comfort?
Flash felt that, except all over.
Gold and green light filled his eyes, the air, his nose. He smelled the light. It smelled like lemon zest and dog breath.
No, wait, that last bit was just the screaming Fury.
Why was she screaming?
Oh, right, the magical shield he held in his hands that kept her from killing him.
Why did he have a magical shield?
He didn’t have the slightest idea.
“Impossible!” Alecto shrieked, and Flash was inclined to agree. Alecto recoiled from the painfully bright light, shielding her eyes with one arm and cradling the other against her chest. Had it hurt her, striking that deific radiance? A wounded monster might be ten times as deadly.
“How?!” the Fury shouted as the light finally faded from ‘terrible glory’ down to ‘annoying sunlight creeping around the rim of your sunglasses.’ “How can you have done this?”
“Done what?” Flash asked, not lowering the shield one inch. It frightened him to hold onto, but it had proven itself against a Fury’s claws so he wasn’t about to let go.
“Do not play coy with me,” Alecto snarled. “You wield the magic of old, the sinew of ages. The power that binds the bones of the earth.”
“Sounds like energy drinks the night before a final,” Flash muttered. “Look lady, I’m new to this whole magic thing! All I wanted was to protect my friend!” He stood up, peering over the shield’s rim as he held it over his chest. “But if that let me cast a spell like this, I’m not complaining.”
“That is no mere spell, boy,” Alecto spat. “I smell the air and it sizzles with power. This magic is a seed of Harmony itself. From high atop Canterlot has that light shone for a thousand years and more.”
The word ‘Canterlot’ stung Flash’s ears. Another match, like him and Brad, the pony that had his hair, the mark on his butt that matched the one on his car, and now that word. Connections. Ties that bound their worlds together, and more appearing every moment.
“Canterlot?” he asked. “What’s so important about Canterlot?”
“It’s the most important city in the world,” Brad said, lifting his head from the floor. His voice trembled. “The home of the Princesses. The origin of every good thing in the world. It’s amazing, Flash.”
“Okay,” Flash said, “first of all, Canterlot is my school, and it’s never been more than a cinder block of disappointment. Secondly, I have no idea what you’re talking about, but you were about to claw off my friend’s head. In my book, that’s more than a foul, that’s just wrong.”
”Your school?” Alecto said, sneering. “You are no pony, child, though you might wield magic as one.”
“He means Canterlot High School!” Jennybeans called. “It’s not far from here, near midtown!”
Alecto stepped back, tapping her chin with her claw. “Canterlot High School,” she purred. “What are the odds? Perhaps Kronos did graze upon this horrible world once before. And there, there!” She pointed at Flash’s shield. “The pony’s cutie mark! Could it be?”
Flash looked at the lightning bolt on the shield. Then the one on his shirt. Then the one on Brad’s flank.
“Cutie mark?” he whispered. The name sounded too absurd to be true, but to hear it from Alecto’s own mouth made him a believer. Too many other weird things were going to trip over syrupy-sweet terminology.
“A boy and a pony,” Alecto murmured, and started to pace across the floor, her talons clicking as she went. Her predatory gaze remained fixed on Flash, and he shivered under it. “A school and a palace. A cutie mark between worlds. Two places joined together with a thread of magic. Your Canterlot…” She pointed at Brad, and then swung her claw around to Flash. “And his.”
“Canterlot High School,” Flash whispered. The color drained from his face and the shield quivered in his grasp. He turned to Brad, eyes wide, mouth agape. “The door you came from… is in my school?”
Brad gulped. “I’m sorry Flash,” he said. “I didn’t know any of this would happen. I swear I didn’t. I was going to tell you, really I was! I-I even said so, I said I was you, and--”
“That doesn’t explain anything!” Flash snapped. “If pony magic is at my school, then--”
“Then that is where I will find my magical mark,” Alecto cooed, her expression one of keen, revelatory ecstasy.
“No,” Flash tried to say, but Alecto’s wings were already open. “No!”
He rushed to intercept her, flailing the shield madly. The Fury cackled, a noise as sharp as broken glass on his ears, and the light blazing from Flash’s shield fizzled and died in a wave of darkness that spooled out from Alecto like unfurling threads. She leapt over his clumsy attack and flew for the nearest window, and as she passed over him Flash caught a last glimpse of Alecto’s face, her teeth bared in a rictus grin, her eyes bulging with hateful glee. The sound of her leathery wings blasted through the halls with a loud whoompf as she soared into the night sky and vanished with a triumphant, wolfish howl. Jennybeans yowled and ran the moment she found an opening.
Silence fell like a blanket.
Flash stared into the vortices of dust left behind by Alecto. The shield fizzled out of existence with a slow, sputtering noise, burning away into golden embers that floated away on the breeze.
Flash didn’t even blink when the last mote disappeared.
“Flash,” Brad said, crawling from the shadows. “I am so, so sorry. I didn’t know any of this would happen.”
“You knew you’d find me here, didn’t you?” Flash asked. “You knew I would be here before you even went through that portal. You knew all of this was here. You really did come looking just for me.”
Brad hung his head.
“Didn’t you?” Flash growled.
“... Yeah,” Brad said. “Yeah, I did.”
Flash clenched his fist.
“And you wanted to help me? You wanted to make me a better person, give me advice or something?”
“... Yeah,” Brad said. “Yeah, I did.”
“Well,” Flash said, staring into the darkness where Alecto had vanished. “I got some advice for you, Brad.”
Brad gulped. “What’s that?”
“Put on your seatbelt. We’ll be skipping a few lights.”
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Normally, people don't like either of these characters. This story does them justice. They're actually cool in this!
Yeah, when you manage to conjure a divine aegis by accident, the time for skepticism has passed. Onward to possible glory!
Time to drive!
cinder block of disappointment. That does explain school pretty well.
Glorious!
Alecto's deadliest quality appears to be her brains.
I love this story, but it definitely needs a dark tag.
It's okay if it's a small update buddy! Just let us know what you're planning in the future c:
I like this. Have a cookie.
However alas. I am the type that like Equestria Girls and human Flash. Not pony Flash though.
8776221
[raises glass]
Dilly dilly!
This is done well enough I read straight to this point in one night, and now I'm tracking the story.
Still, there are things I am semi-consciously overlooking. Like how first, Fluttershy's trick poaches Flash (I say it like that because, for whatever reason, this world isn't working quite the same as EqG), and then Flash poaches Shining Armor's trick. But you seem to know how to build, so I'm looking forward to what comes next.
This has me hooked. It's almost like a superhero origin story, except I'm not sure how Flash would become a member of the cape-and-cowl crowd.
This also reminds me a whole lot of Happy! though the TV series had yet to air when the first chapter of FS:SotU went up. Did you read the comic (I didn't, FYI)? Flash isn't nearly as indestructible as Nick Sax, but Pony!Flash/Brad is a dead ringer for the titular blue horse.
Either Flash is just that dense, or he has a death wish not to take anything resembling a weapon into the lair of a literal representation of revenge.
It's pretty clear who Alecto's after, but I'm jonesin' to know who sicced Alecto on Sunset, and what Sunset did to make a pony, of all beings, so enraged as to make a contract with a being of pure fury.
Following now.