Caverns & Cutie Marks: High School, High Stakes

by TheColtTrio

Chapter 32: Where Were We Again?

“Thirty-eight.” Sunset picked up a small pebble and held it between her thumb and forefinger. After shifting it slightly in her grasp, she flicked the stone, sending it skittering into the darkness. She drew a breath through her teeth and pick up another pebble, aimed, and fired. This stone bounced once off the cave floor before hitting the unconscious Wits End’s nose with a dull thud. “Thirty-nine.”

Suddenly, Wits’ eyes snapped open, and he jerked up into a sitting position. “What year is it?!” he shouted.

“I miss the mountaintop already,” Rarity muttered, dusting off her jacket.

“Are we the first ones back?” Fluttershy asked.

Sunset, who was recovering from the sudden burst of activity, picked herself up off the ground. “It’s only been a couple of minutes, and yes you are. What happened in there?”

“Long story,” Wits said as he stood. “We can share when the world isn’t in imminent peril.” He paused, his nose twitching. “Were you-”

“No,” Sunset replied. Before she could bolster her argument, the sounds of retching came from the next three to wake up.

“If I ever smell something like that again, I’m burning my nose off,” Light Patch gasped after the wave of nausea had passed.

“Ah don’t even wanna know if ye’ve ever smelled something that bad, or if yer mind is just that good, or ask for an explanation,” Applejack said before she took a drink from an on hand water bottle.

“I’ve smelled smelling salts and they weren’t ever that bad,” Pinkie gasped. rubbing her nose. The recently awakened trio looked around. “Aww. We weren’t the first to wake up.”

“Weren’t the last to either,” Applejack said, reseating her hat only to have a few pebbles pour out of it. “Wut the...” she muttered

“Welcome back,” Sunset greeted. She looked over to where Purple Heart sat between Twilight and Rainbow. “Now to wait for-”

Purple Heart’s eyes snapped open and he jerked, rocking onto his feet. While the purple teen fought to keep his balance, Twilight and Rainbow both inhaled deeply and awoke. Purple Heart lost his battle with gravity and collapsed onto his back, gasping for breath.

“That wasn’t fun,” Twilight choked.

“All in favor of not doing that again, say ‘aye’,” Rainbow called. Weak ‘aye’s echoed down the tunnel.

Purple Heart groaned, stretching his tingling limbs. “Gosh dangit,” he panted, “I have eternal injuries.”

The girls stared blankly at the prone purple teen. “Um,” Fluttershy said, “don’t you mean ‘internal’?”

“No, ‘Eternal’,” he stated. “I’m always getting hurt. Owch! Case and point!” Rarity rubbed her smarting fist and sniffed at Purple Heart in disdain.

“You utter moron,” Sunset groaned.

“On another note, I was not expecting that to work,” the purple teen continued.

“What to work?” Applejack asked.

“Hail Hydra.”

Wits End made a face of disgust towards his purple companion. “Thanks, Grant Warden.” He turned to face the group as a whole. “That’s everyone, right? Let’s get going.”

“Let me close the connection first,” Sunset said, focusing her power.

“No time,” Wits replied quickly. “We’ve spent enough time laying around, and there’s a giant lizard waiting for a delivery of justice.”

“Are you completely insane?!” Sunset shouted. “It’s bad enough you three convinced me to use this kind of magic in the first place, but now you want to leave it open?! Anything could happen with that connection! You could end up falling into each other's mindscapes! Or even worse, something else could get in!”

“I’d hate to agree with Wits when it comes to leaving a back door to my mind, but we are lucky that the Hydra hadn’t noticed it’s trap worked and sent some goons to finish us off or whatever while we were down,” Light Patch added.

“But with this spell still active, if another trap hits us again, it could hit us all this time. Not just the ones it was targeted for,” Sunset replied heatedly.

Twilight cleared her throat. “Actually, if this is really working off of the rules of the game, then whatever hit was was only so effective because we were unaware.” She waited a beat for someone to back her up, only to get looks of confusion in response. “Remember back when we fought the bandit chief? The seven of us are far high leveled than the boys are.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” Wits muttered.

“So,” Twilight continued regardless, “it stands to reason that our stats are higher as well. The only reason that spell works on us is because it got us by surprise, which gives us a penalty to everything. Now that we know that can happen, we should be safe.”

“And the three of us have resistance,” Wits added. “Thanks to having the Outsider subtype and all.”

Sunset was stunned, mainly from Twilight agreeing with them. In a last ditch effort, she turned to Purple Heart. “Please tell me you think this is as crazy as I do.”

The purple teen groaned and got to his feet. “I say the link stays,” he said. “If the Hydra tries to Jedi Mind Trick us again, we’ll be ready. And besides, having a private channel to talk on will make strategizing a helluva lot easier without the Hydra listening.”

“What if it decides to channel surf?” Pinkie asked.

“Don’t think then,” Purple suggested. “Just be.”

“So, your existence in a nutshell?” Sunset sniped.

Purple Heart hung his head and gazed with feigned petulance at the other girls. “I say again,” he said, “she speaks poniards. And every word stabs.”

“Sparring aside,” Twilight interjected, “we should get moving. The quicker we deal with the Hydra, the quicker we can get things back to normal. And you three home.” She pointed at the three boys.

Sunset stared at them in silence for a moment. “Fine. Fine!” She tossed her hands in the air and started walking. “But if you all turn into brain-dead radishes, I’m not coming to visit you in the hospital!”

Applejack blinked. “Radishes?”

“I think she means like vegetables,” Pinkie explained. “But the whole anger thing is making her very specific, so she had to choose a specific vegetable.”

“Thanks for explaining the joke, Pinkie Pie,” Rainbow Dash groaned.

“Yooooooou’re welcome!”

“Start walking, y’all,” Applejack ordered. “We ain’t got a clue how long this tunnel is.”

“If it’s just a few more steps til we get to the Hydra, can we still blame Discord for ruining the immersion?” Rainbow asked.

“I don’t think that’s fair,” Fluttershy said. “He isn’t really responsible for what’s happening… Uhm...”

“You might want to reconsider that, dear,” Rarity suggested.

“Just a bit,” Twilight added. Fluttershy bowed her head slightly in agreement.

“Finally!” Light Patch shouted, startling the whole group. “Finally my friends and I don’t get the blame for Discord’s poor decision making!” He pats his chest. “I just... I feel so good right now… hugs?” He held his arms out, only to find no takers. “Right. No hugs. Which way were we going? That way? Okay.” The grey teen set off down one of the ends of the tunnel.

“Hold up the-” Sunset said as she tried to stop the teen. She reached out to grab Light Patch, only to miss when he tripped and face planted into a hidden switch on a wall. A section of the tunnel slide away, revealing an offshooting tunnel.

Rainbow Dash stared at the new passageway. “How did he even do that?”

“You don’t know him the way we do,” Wits replied. “It’s a skill that he’s honed for years.”

“I’m okay!” the grey boy wheezed, cradling his bruised nose.

“Uh, fellas?” Applejack had peered through the gap. “It’s a little more complicated than bein’ ‘okay’.”

Twilight groaned and stomped over to the gap. “What could be more complicated than face planting into a hidden switch that opens a door that leads to a cavern that has… a… Hydra… in it...”

The rest of the party filed carefully through the opening and into the cavern, painfully aware of the slumbering Hydra that dominated an entire third of the available space.

“Wooee,” Pinkie breathed, quiet for once. “Looks like luck’s on our side.”

“In my experience,” Purple Heart snorted softly, “there’s no such thing as luck.”

“We do not have time for movie references,” Twilight hissed. “Fan out and surround it.”

“Why are we whispering?” Rainbow asked.

“What?” Wits asked.

“Why are we whispering?”

“Oh… the link… forgot that...”

“Alright, what’s the plan?” Rarity asked.

“Focus fire one head at a time,” Purple Heart suggested.

“No, each of us will take one head and we take them all out at the same time,” Twilight ordered. “I’ll take the one with the lavender horn, Rarity will take the head with violet fins, Pinkie will take the one with blue tusks, Rainbow’ll take the one with orange crest, Shy will take the pink scales, and AJ will take the last one.”

“Two questions,” Light piped up. “How’d you come up with that set up?”

“Do we really have time for an in-depth conversation about who gets to hit which head?” Twilight snapped.

“Talking is a free action though,” Light said. “Anyways, second question: what about us guys?”

“You’re the cheer team,” Sunset decided.

“Really? We’re relegated to the sidelines?” Wits groaned. “All this amazing OPness and we can’t put it to use?”

One of the Hydra’s heads shifted and red eyes snapped open.

“Well, well, well,” the Hydra murmured, its voice echoing around the cavern. “What do we have here.”

“Why couldn’t you have just stayed quiet?!” Twilight snapped. “You just had to tempt fate, didn’t you?”

“No, please,” the Hydra said, “continue your little secret conversation. It gives me time to summon my pawns to the board.” The wall to the Hydra’s left crumbled to reveal Officer Just Duty standing guard over Holdfast and Bael, the latter pair being bound together with magical restraints. “Well, ‘pawn’. One. Singular. But powerful.” Magic danced across Just Duty’s body, like sparks of a power surge.

“Remember complaining about not having anything to do?” Twilight said, looking at Wits. “There you go.”

“Okay... So, we try to hold off Magically-Super-Powered Just Duty while you six deal with the Hydra?” Light Patch asked, hefting his warhammer as Just Duty turned his attention from the prisoners to the group.

“That was my general plan. Thank you for stating it outloud for the enemy to hear,” Twilight replied with a look of disappointment at Light Patch.

“To be fair,” Wits said, “I think they would have figured it out around the time we started,” he raised his voice, “punching him in the face!” He turned back to the group, dropping his voice again. “See? Clever ploy. They’ll expect us to punch him in the face, when really I’m gonna punch him in the bal-”

“Language!” Fluttershy squeaked. Before Wits could formulate a response, a yelp from Light Patch drew everyone’s focus back onto the coming battle and the fact that both Just Duty and the Hydra ignored the free action of talking that the group was making liberal use of.

“Looks like they ascribe to the ‘less conversation, more action’ table top,” Light Patch grunted as he blocked and dodged the flurry of blows from the possessed Just Duty.

Wits swiped at Just Duty with his blade, forcing him back for a moment. “Go figure, huh?” He jerked his head towards the Hydra. “That’s your cue, girls. We’ll-” He was cut off by a spear flying at his face, forcing him to disappear and reappear a few feet away. “Good thing I have Hunter’s Step,” he muttered. “He’s a bit dangerous.” The girls took Wits’ suggestion at face value, and promptly engaged the Hydra while the boys contained Just Duty.

“Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more!” Purple Heart swore, dashing at Just Duty. “Fury.” Purple sparks erupted across the teen’s body as he leapt at the possessed officer, legs cocking to deliver his attack. “Nail Kick!” The shotgun pattern attack sped towards Just Duty, leaving him little room to escape. Blank faced, the officer took two hits and remained standing.

Purple Heart’s eyes widened, as he was still sailing towards the newly minted miniboss. With a casual flick of his wrist, Just Duty flung the purple teen back the way he’d come, sending him skidding across the cavern floor.

“I’m getting a sinking feeling that for us three,” Light Patch said as he hoisted Purple Heart off the floor with a healing spell-charged hand, “the boss rush ain’t exactly done yet.”

Wits blinked as Just Duty turned back to face him. “Ah,” he said softly. “Shi-” Another magic spear forced him to dodge away, coming to a stop next to the other two boys. “Okay, so a head-on fight is probably out of the question. Any ideas?”

“Hit and Run?” Purple Heart suggested. “One of us could keep up the pressure with ranged attacks while the other two take attacks of opportunity.” He ducked a light spear. “I don’t want to use the gauntlet. It’d blow away everything. I’m not up for collateral damage.”

Light Patch swung his hammer in a wide arc in an attempt to try to force Just Duty to dodge away or at least parry the blow. Instead, the possessed officer simply took the blow and continued his own attacks without batting an eyelash. “I think we’re gonna need a lot of beat picks for that to work. We might wanna tack on ‘watch for the weak point’ to that plan!” Light Patch shouted, trying hard to keep the super powered Just Duty’s hits from landing on him.

Sunset Shimmer grit her teeth as she overheard that the boys were having just as hard of a time as the girls were. They didn’t quite have the same kind of numbers advantage thanks to the Hydra’s multiple heads, but at the very least they should have managed to do something to the massive beast by now. Instead, their every attack was blocked or shrugged off by it.

“How have we not even damaged it yet?!” Rainbow Dash shouted, echoing Sunsets thoughts.

“It would seem that it’s magic is extremely well practiced. A frustrating, but not terribly surprising truth,” Rarity returned, throwing a shower of needles at the Hydra in an attempt at distraction. Every one bounced off the shield it quickly erected.

“Rarity can you do that again?” Twilight suddenly asked.

“I can try, but it’s a little tiring for how ineffective it is right now.”

“I know, but I thought I saw something about the shield. I think it’s got some kind of connection to something,” Twilight replied, falling back from the battle to watch carefully as Rarity threw another hail of needles at the Hydra. The piercing ring of two warhammers colliding didn’t even breaking her concentration. The flash of grey as a teen flew past her vision was admittedly a small hindrance.

“I’m okay,” Light Patch said, peeling himself off the floor. “I arrested the momentum with my face.” He wobbly got back to his feet before healing himself, and charged back to help his friends engaged with Just Duty. Once close enough, the teen stopped and put all of his magic effort into his next spell. “If three versus one isn’t enough, lets try three hundred versus one!” he said just as his spell finished casting. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then several skeletal hands wrapped with vines brust from the ground and a number of Blooming Skeletons emerged from the ground, turning to face Just Duty. The officer in question simply blew away a large chunk of them in a single blow.

“Uh, next!” Light screamed, finding himself once again the focus of Just Duty who was busy bashing his way through the Blooming Skeletons towards him.

Just as the possessed officer raised his hammer, a bolt of lightning forced him to move back or be struck in the chest. Wits summoned another bolt, holding it in his off hand like a javelin. “Those knights were right; this is pretty great without the nerfs,” he quipped, hurling the second bolt at Just Duty. “We can’t let him get focused on any one of us,” he called, readying more lightning as the officer bashed a vine-covered skeleton out of his way. “Heart, can you get on the other side of him? We might need to go all Bloat-Herder on this guy.”

The purple teen nodded. “Aye aye, sah~” He dashed at Just Duty’s side. “Sailing broadside to a battleship? Now that’s a paddlin’.” He punched the possessed officer in the hip just hard enough for the man to fold over his hand. The teen continued past, hurling insults over his shoulder. Just Duty straightened silently and turned to face the new threat, flinging light spears at Purple Heart.

“I should have put more points into dexterity,” Purple Heart wheezed. “Another thing: a battleship sailing in a straight line is a stupidly dead battleship.”

“Don’t worry, Jingles. I’ve got an idea.” Wits turned to Light Patch. “You remember how we beat the Bandit Chief back in Roads Crossed? Let’s try that with your boney friends here.”

“Right! Guess I’m on summoner duty,” Light Patch replied before falling back and focusing his efforts on trying to summon as many of his vine covered skeletons as he could. More clawed their way up from the ground or pick themselves back up from where they’d been bashed away. Eventually, a large pile of them began to form as they dragged themselves together. “I don’t know how many more I can summon without exhausting all of my magic,” Light Patch shouted to Wits End. “I hope this is enough,” he finished quietly to himself, as he ordered the skeletons to prepare.

“That’ll have to do it, then,” Wits called back. “Hey Heart!” The mint-colored teen waited until the purple barbarian had time to look over, then jerked his head towards the growing bone pile. “Herd the Bloat to the objective, then get out of the way. Got it?”

“Gotcha, Cap’n!” Purple Heart rolled under a slew of spears and rushed Just Duty. A light spear erupted from the officer’s hand just as the teen reached him, scorching Purple’s shoulder as it flew by. Gritting his teeth, Purple set about shoving the older male back towards the bone pile, avoiding erratic spears as best he could. Several nicked him, eliciting hisses of pain from the purple youth. Purple Heart grabbed Just Duty around the chest. He ignored his adversary’s sparking hands that grabbed his shoulders, sending jolts of pain through his body. In retaliation, Purple Heart squeezed as hard as he could, taking one step after another towards the bone pile.

“Gotosleepgotosleepgotosleepgotosleepgotosleep,” he swore, his grip tightening with each step.

Suddenly, the clattering of the bones as they worked to keep from falling over early stopped and Purple Heart looked up to find himself closer to the pile than he thought he’d been. His gaze was drawn to the rapidly closing in top of the pile where a single skeleton stood saluting as the pile folded over on itself to crash down like a wave onto Just Duty. With a yelp of surprise, he released his grasp on the old man and bolted away from the slightly dazed super powered officer. The clattering returned tenfold as the pile lost cohesion and crashed down, burying Just Duty beneath a mound of repurposed bones.

“Well, at least you didn’t suffer from Battleship accuracy that time, Light,” Purple Heart said, looking towards the pile.

“Yeah. I didn’t miss, but was it a citadel or just a blow he can shake off?” the grey teen replied, helping his purple skinned friend back to his feet.

Wits crossed over to his friends. “Hopefully Lazarus stays down a bit longer this time.”

Light Patch lightly Gibbs-smacked Wits. “That should probably be my line. I think I’ve listened to them more than you,” the teen said, not noticing the slight shimmering tendril extending from the pile of bones for just a moment.

Twilight, however, hadn’t missed the tendril. She’d been refining a spell to let her see the Hydra’s shield as it took hits to try and trace its power, so when the other end of of that shield took a hit large enough to effect the barrier, it lit up like a light bulb for her.

“Of course! Why didn’t we think of that sooner?!” Twilight shouted in frustration as she bolted back to join her six friends in their fight with the Hydra. “It’s pulling an Endor with its shields!” she shouted excitedly when she drew even with Sunset.

“It’s doing whut?” Applejack shouted as she tangled with the head she’d chosen to focus on.

“The source of its shield doesn’t come from the Hydra! It’s coming from an outside source!”

“What source?”

“I think it's anchored a lot of its power to Just Duty and maybe the other two,” Twilight said, pointing over to where the boys were taking a moment to get themselves back into fighting shape.

“What do we have to do?” Fluttershy asked as she summoned vines to try to entangle the Hydra’s heads.

“If we can disrupt its hold on the two locals, that might disrupt all of the power it’s gaining as it changes this world. Maybe they could even turn that power against it. They could at least drop its shield for us,” Twilight explained quickly before turning to rush over to the guys.

Wits looked up from watching the bone pile for any signs of movement. His eyes widened slightly as he saw Twilight approaching. “Don’t you have a Hydra to fight? We were just taking ten while the world’s greatest detective works his way out of the graveyard shift.”

“Not the time, Wits!” Twilight reprimanded, coming to a stop in front of the three boys. “The Hydra’s got a shield up, and we can’t get through it. Somehow, Just Duty and your two extradimensional pals are the source of it.”

“I’m not saying that’s the craziest thing I’ve heard today,” Wits said, “but you’re probably right anyway. How do we-” He paused when the bone pile clattered ominously. “How do we stop it when we can’t even keep Patchy’s love interest at bay?”

Twilight raised an eyebrow, but carried on regardless. “There must be some sort of connection between Bael, Holdfast, and Just Duty that’s powering all of this. If you can interrupt that connection, you might be able to take down Just Duty and disconnect the Hydra for us.”

“How do we do-”

“Do I look like a video game tutorial?! We’ll keep the Hydra busy so it doesn’t see you guys! Figure it out!” With her task finished, Twilight ran back to the fight in progress, moving to each of the girls in turn to spread the word.

Wits turned back to Light Patch and Purple Heart. “So, who’s gonna stay here with the most powerful beat cop in the world, and who’s gonna try to shut down the shield generator for the fully armed and op-” He was cut off by another clatter from the bone pile. The teen frowned and jabbed the shaft of his extended sword at it. “We are having a conversation!”

“I’ll stay on the beat; what's left of my magic will keep me alive. But I don’t know if what I’ve got left will support two people for long. So unless if it’s only you, make it quick,” Light Patch said, using his hammer to support himself.

“I nominate Wits for sabotaging,” Purple decided. “I can watch Light’s back and make sure he doesn’t fizzle. Quick question though: how we gonna disconnect the Hydra from them?” He jerked a thumb at the still unconscious Holdfast and Bael. The bones rattled and Purple Heart stomped on them. “Oh yeh, and him too. We gonna brute force it or use the telepathy link to Legilimens the poor buggers?”

“Blunt force trauma applied directly to the face?” Light Patch half-heartedly suggested. “I don’t know. I blew most of my magic on the skeletons thing. What have you got in your bag of tricks, Wits?”

“I’ve got a plan,” Wits replied. “I definitely have a plan. It’s the best plan.” He glanced over where Holdfast and Bael were. “I just have to think of it before I get over there.” With a weak smile, Wits gave the other two teens a thumbs up. “Yay~?”