• Published 1st Nov 2018
  • 1,307 Views, 221 Comments

Velvet Underground - MagnetBolt



Twilight Velvet is a mare leading a charmed life, and when she gets caught up in danger that spans centuries and continents she's going to need to rely on other ponies if she wants to survive this bizarre adventure!

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11 - Breathless

The smoke creeping in around the door was pitch black, thick enough to look more like the tendrils of some living thing than wisps of gas. Velvet backed away from the door on instinct, the fire bells outside slowly being joined by muffled cries of alarm and terrified screaming from other cabins.

“Don’t worry, I’ve had to deal with a lot of fires,” Sunset said. “I’m basically an expert.”

She trotted over to the door and gingerly touched the handle.

“It doesn’t feel hot,” Sunset reported. “That means the corridor outside isn’t hot. The fire might be nearby, though, because we saw the smoke before the alarms went off. When I open the door we’ll go to the deck. We can figure out what to do next once we get there.”

“Wait,” Velvet said. “I don’t think that’s a good idea! We should seal the door so the smoke stops coming in and--”

“You can’t hide from a fire!” Sunset snapped. “It’s not like the fire department is gonna come for us when we’re a mile above the ocean! If you’re on a ship and it’s in trouble, you need to get to the deck. It’s common knowledge and I shouldn’t have to explain this to adult ponies!”

“That’s not what I--”

Sunset yanked the door open, and a wall of black smoke rolled in like a pitch-black fog, the smoke as noxious as the plume from an old tire thrown on a pile of burning garbage. Sunset was forced back by the opaque smog, coughing, her eyes already red and burning.

“Stay low!” Night Light yelled. “Smoke rises so all the fresh air is near the floor!”

He dropped to the floor, and immediately went into a wheezing fit of his own as a carpet of smoke rolled over his face.

“Never mind,” Night Light gasped, trying to get up. “The smoke isn’t rising. I was wrong. I’m going to write a very stern letter to the author of the fire safety book I read as a foal if we survive this.”

“It’s not much better up here!” Velvet grabbed the blanket from the bed, trying to breathe through it. It didn’t help as much as she’d have liked, her eyes still burning like she’d been cutting up onions, but her throat felt less raw.

“We can probably make it to the deck if we go really fast,” Sunset said. “But also we can’t get lost, so we’ll have to go fast and accurately and not get lost or else you’ll end up in a dead end and you’ll die.”

“Of course that will only work if the smoke isn’t fighting you,” somepony pointed out.

“Who said that?” Sunset demanded.

“Tight spaces like this are just so dangerous,” the voice continued. “Not a lot of ventilation, no easy way out. Did you know ponies used to use smoke to drive rodents out of their dens? It’s, hm, its what one does with vermin. There’s nothing personal in it.”

“Get out here!” Sunset yelled, her voice rough. She fired a bolt into the black wall of smoke, hitting nothing.

“Weren’t you all planning on leaving?” The voice asked, amused. “Running and panting in these corridors like the animals you are, reduced to your base instincts and blindly trying to find a way out.”

“It’s one of the pooka,” Velvet warned, her voice muffled by the blanket. She tore a strip free and tied it around her snout like a mask before doing the same for Night Light. “How did it find us?”

“I followed you from the museum,” the creature said, stepping out of the smoke. The motion was less like it had been hiding in the cloud and more like it was part of the cloud detaching itself and becoming better defined, the line between transformation and camouflage blurred.

It was as unique as the others, somehow feminine compared to Mudhoney and Coldplay, with a long coal-black coat that waved in the air like she was floating underwater, long fetlocks obscuring her hooves and fading into invisibility at the edges, her legs not quite touching the floor. Her face was obscured by the veil of smoky hair, the only clear feature her eyes, burning like coals through the thin strands.

“I decided to… linger around in the destruction,” Smoke said. “My brother and sister went their own ways. Coldplay chased a pony he allowed to escape and my sister, well, who can predict a sibling like that?”

The pooka shrugged, its whole body wavering like it was just a projected image.

“In the name of Princess Celestia, I order you to surrender,” Sunset coughed, pushing Velvet away when the older mare tried to help. “If you give up, maybe I’ll put in a good word for you before you go to Tartarus.”

“That’s a very tempting offer, but I’ll have to pass,” the pooka said, slowly scanning the room, eyes fixing on Velvet and Night Light. “You’re the ones who killed Mudhoney. I overheard. I wanted to thank you for that.”

“To thank us?” Night Light asked. He wobbled, light-headed, when he stood. “Why would you want to thank us?”

“It would take too long to explain,” the pooka said, sounding a little sad. “I’m sorry. Unlike my siblings, I don’t like… big displays of power. While we’ve been talking, I’ve been removing the oxygen from this room. I could have waited until you were asleep but I wanted to make sure I had the right ponies. There’s no need to waste the rest of the lives on this ship.”

Velvet’s vision started to go black around the edges. The burning in her lungs was getting worse, even standing was difficult, her body aching like she’d been sprinting.

Sunset fired another blast of force, the pooka ducking around the clumsy attack, body distorting impossibly far.

“Sunset!” Velvet gasped. “Over here!”

The filly turned to look. Velvet pointed to the outside wall.

“Blast it right here!”

Sunset threw a bolt without questioning it. Her magic hit the bulkhead and broke through, tearing a hole in the hull. Air started rushing through the cabin, the fresh air from outside washing away the suffocating smoke.

“That’s a little better,” Velvet gasped.

The pooka’s body dimmed, the wind rippling through its body, veil over its face parting for a moment to reveal a skull-like grimace of mummified flesh.

“Clever,” it grumbled.

“Of course it’s clever,” Sunset said.

She immediately paused her dramatic speech to hack up black phlegm.

“I planned all of this,” Sunset continued, once she could speak. “This is an airship route over the ocean. There’s nowhere to hide if you want to follow us. You’d have to get onboard to attack us. I’ll be honest, I thought you’d have attacked sooner.”

“During the day?” the pooka shook her head. “No. It was hard enough getting on board. There was no need to risk that kind of confrontation.”

“Well you’re risking a confrontation anyway,” Sunset said. “You’ve got nowhere to run or hide now. The ice monster got away because I couldn’t track him, but you aren’t so lucky.”

“The same could be said for you,” the pooka said. “You’re cornered in your room. You might have, hm, cleared the air a little, but perhaps you’d allow me to do the same?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Velvet asked.

“I don’t have any real interest in you personally. I don’t particularly… care. You’ve done nothing to truly hurt me. We can… make a deal. Ponies like deals. Before the Sun Pony imprisoned us, your ancestors would… wish for things. Sometimes I would grant them, in return for service.”

“We’re not interested in being your slaves,” Velvet said.

The pooka nodded. “I was considering a more simple… trade. You tell me where the alicorn is, and I will leave.”

“Princess Celestia is in Saddle Arabia,” Night Light said. “It’s in all the papers. I’ll give you a bit for the Canterlot Times.”

“The new alicorn,” the pooka sighed. “I can feel her magic in the world like a… like a faint scent in the air. Too faint to find the direction. If you tell me where she is, I will leave. And I will leave without killing every pony onboard this clever little flying ship.”

“If you do that, you’ll never find her,” Sunset said.

“I disagree. At worst, it’s a delay, and I’m rather impatient after centuries spent waiting for my chance. You can either tell me where she is, or die. You simply aren’t as important as the alicorn.”

Sunset’s eye twitched.

“Not as important?!” She yelled, voice cracking. “Do you know who I am?! I’m ten times the pony she is! I worked my tail off every day and she just got everything on a silver platter!”

The pooka tilted her head. “This sounds rather like family drama. How amusing.”

Sunset ripped one of the beds free of the bolts holding it to the deck and threw it, the pooka’s body dissipating into smoke as it smashed through her, reforming in the same place a moment later, apparently undisturbed.

“You can’t punch smoke,” the pooka sighed, sounding more resigned than anything else, as if dealing with nothing more serious than the temper tantrum of a spoiled foal.

“I can punch anything I want!” Sunset yelled.

The pooka shook her head and took a deep breath. When it exhaled, a plume of yellow gas erupted from its nostrils. Where it touched the wood, the veneer clouded and started flaking almost instantly.

Sunset took a step back, surprised, and fell on her rump as another coughing fit took her, breaking her concentration.

The vapors rushed toward her, and stopped short, hitting a faint, flickering wall in the air. Sunset looked back. Night Light strained, trying to push more into the shield he was projecting.

“This is a lot easier than the bouncy balls you were throwing at me,” Night Light said, trying to sound like it was no big deal. “That’s some seriously bad breath. Didn’t they have toothbrushes a thousand years ago?”

Velvet pulled Sunset back closer to them to reduce the strain on Night Light creating such a large shield. The mustard-colored vapors eroded everything they touched as the three ponies sheltered behind the shield.

“I can’t eat your magic,” the pooka said. “That’s too bad.”

“Yeah, no free in-flight snack,” Night Light quipped, sweat running down his brow. The tiny fraction of the gas getting through the shield was enough to burn with every breath. Velvet pulled Sunset closer and wrapped cloth around her snout, patting her back as the filly descended into another coughing fit.

“I meant too bad for you.” It sighed. “I suppose since we’re making a production of this I should tell you my name. I don’t usually bother. I meet so many ponies and most of them end up dead before we even get a chance to talk.”

“Dead because you kill them?” Velvet asked.

“Well…” the pooka shrugged. “You wouldn’t bother introducing yourself to your food before every meal. But… maybe for a treat you were saving for later. Something you didn’t want to eat all at once.” It bowed slightly, mostly just a nod of the veiled head. “Breathless. It isn’t a pleasure to meet you but it is… at least interesting.”

“That’s super flattering,” Velvet said. “We’re--”

“Twilight Velvet, Night Light, and Sunset Shimmer,” the pooka said, with an exhausted tone. “I told you, I’ve been following you and listening in. I’ve had more than enough time to learn your names.”

“Good,” Sunset said. “Then you know the name of the pony that’s going to destroy you.”

Breathless shook her head. “I doubt that very much.”

“Then prepare to be surprised, because you’ve walked right into my trap.”

Author's Note:

Today's Reference: Breathless