7 - Coldplay
The wind howled around the cafe. The building was two hundred years old and had never been intended for anything colder than the light winters they got here, where the closest snow was in the mountains just visible on the horizon. Now, though, hail was coming down on the building like a million tiny fists, the canals outside frozen unevenly, waves frozen in place like time had stopped.
“This is amazing,” Night Light said, peering carefully through a cracked window. “How many pegasi would it take to make a weather system like this?”
“That’s wild weather,” Clearwater said. “Nopony is controlling it.”
“I don’t think it extends very far,” Night Light said, stretching his neck to look. “It only goes a block or two, then the ice just stops!”
“Be careful!” Velvet warned. “We don’t know where it is!”
“I don’t see it anywmmmph!” Night Light stumbled back from the window.
“What’s wrong?” Velvet asked, running over.
“He’s not breathing,” Clearwater said, from across the room.
Velvet knelt down next to the struggling stallion. Ice had formed across his snout and sealed his mouth shut. He looked at her, panicking and turning blue. Bluer, anyway.
“Get the, um--” Velvet closed her eyes for a heartbeat, thinking. “Coffeepot!”
Clearwater grabbed the tin pot, still bubbling behind the bar, and ran over with it. Velvet grabbed it with her magic and tried to carefully pour the steaming coffee on Night Light’s face.
The ice melted away, and Night Light gasped as his jaw was suddenly freed.
“The moisture in my breath froze!” Night Light said, between big breaths. “I didn’t think that was possible!”
“If it’s freezing right on your face it means the temperature must be negative seventy or eighty!” Velvet said. “That could kill a pony in minutes!”
“Even a pegasus,” Clearwater said, motioning to the pony that had died on their doorstep. “If the hail is focused around us, then he was right about being followed. We need to figure out how to get out of here without being seen.”
“If it wasn’t a death sentence I’d say we figure out some way to swim to safety,” Night Light said. “From what I read, a lot of the foundations are connected here and we could get to another building.”
“If we could swim through underground water-filled tunnels,” Velvet muttered. “Even if it wasn’t this cold that would be a bad idea. If we get caught exposed and dripping wet in this weather we’ll be dead before we can realize how stupid the idea was to begin with.”
“Velvet, try doing your trick and figure out how to get out of this,” Clearwater said. “If you can’t figure anything out at least tell me what definitely won’t work and we’ll go from there.”
Velvet nodded and closed her eyes, trying to focus.
Almost immediately she gasped and stumbled back, looking horrified.
“Somepony’s going to die,” she said. “I don’t know who, but--”
“Keep that kind of good news to yourself,” Night Light said. “It’s me, isn’t it?”
“I just said I wasn’t sure who!”
“You and Miss Clearwater are more important. I’m just here because I got excited about being able to show off my research and ponies respecting me… I can’t fight monsters!”
Clearwater slapped him with her wing.
“Knock it off! You can’t lose it now! We need to get everypony here to safety, and if you weren’t so self-centered you’d remember we aren’t the only ones in here. The staff here are just ponies doing their jobs. We have a responsibility to get either help them escape or lure the monster away.”
“She’s right,” Velvet said.
“Don’t worry about us,” one of the waiters said. “You were right about the basements, but ours is sealed. We use it for storage. We can shelter down there until this is over.”
He pulled open a door, revealing steps down.
“As you can see, we’ll be quite comfortable while…” he looked down and gasped. “The basement!”
Water filled the dark space, lights flickering where they hadn’t already gone out. Boxes of food and produce floated in the murky slush, the whole room already colder than a commercial freezer.
“What happened?” Velvet asked.
Night Light looked past the distraught stallion moaning about the loss of thousands of bits worth of food. “Look! You can see cracks in the stone of the foundation! That’s how the water must have gotten in!”
“Cracks in the stone?” Velvet frowned. “But we would have heard if there was something hitting the building that hard.”
“It’s ice erosion. Water seeps into tight spaces, then freezes to ice and forces cracks open. More water gets in, and then when that freezes the stone gets pushed open wider and wider. It should take hundreds of cycles to get this bad! This is impossible!”
The building trembled like it was shivering in the cold.
“What was that?” Velvet asked.
“Something’s happening below us!” Clearwater said, “Be careful!”
There was a crack as loud as thunder but with the wet sound of branches snapping. The building lurched to one side, and the waiter at the top of the steps fell, landing hard on the steps before sliding into the slush pouring into the building.
“No!” Night Light grabbed for him and missed, and the pony vanished under the frigid water.
“The cracks in the foundation are making the whole building unstable,” Velvet said. “We can’t wait any longer or we’ll just end up at the bottom of the canal trapped in rubble!”
Clearwater tapped a hoof, thinking. “There has to be a way out of this,” she mumbled.
Almost in time with her tapping, there were three hard knocks on the door.
Velvet took a step towards it.
“Don’t,” Clearwater said. “I’ll get it.”
The batpony walked to the front door and pulled it open in one motion. Frost flowed in just ahead of the tall, pale creature that stepped inside. It was as tall as Princess Celestia, colored like an ice sculpture covered in a dusting of snow, icicles dripping from its lizard-like chin, the creature looking more like a deer than a pony, the air distorting around it like a mirage.
It looked around the room, cold eyes fixing on each of the ponies there in turn.
“I thought there would be more of you,” it said, eventually. “Such a grand city, yet you can’t raise an army against me?”
“I apologize. If you’d like, we can go get an army and come back,” Clearwater offered.
The pooka chuckled. “At least you have a sense of humor in the face of death.”
Clearwater’s wing twitched, and a steel star appeared in the pooka’s neck. It reacted slowly, tilting its head and letting it pop free.
“Was that supposed to hurt?” it asked.
“I was hoping,” Clearwater admitted.
“You need to try harder. Like this.”
The air shimmered around the pooka, the distortion whirling around six points like rocks in a stream, ice forming around tiny nuclei of dust and turning into crystalline spears in the blink of an eye as the water in the air froze.
Clearwater threw herself to the side, beating her wings hard, creating enough wind to deflect the icicles before they could connect, sending them slamming down into the floorboards. They smashed through the wood like they were made of iron, the ice barely even getting scratched by the ancient oak.
“Not bad,” the pooka said. “But how will you handle this?”
The air shimmered around the pooka, and Clearwater’s ears twitched. She threw herself to one side, then the other, hitting the wall and running halfway up it before backflipping away. Along her trail, the floorboards shuddered.
“What’s going on?” Velvet asked.
Clearwater recoiled and rolled, then got to her hooves with a slim cut along her cheek, blood dripping free.
A drop fell and hit something invisible in midair, revealing a razor-thin sheet of ice that had sliced into the floorboards.
“I’ve never seen a pony avoid that attack,” the pooka said. It waved a cloven hoof, and frost caught on the edges of a hidden field of razors that Clearwater had managed to avoid. “I admit I’m impressed with your fighting spirit, pony. Tell me your name. I want to remember it after you’re cold.”
“Agent Clearwater, of the Night Guard, division six. I’m a professional monster hunter. Since you’re a monster, that means you’re my responsibility.”
“My name is Coldplay. It was a pleasure to meet you before you died. Tell me, though - how did you dodge that? I’ve never met a pony who could see through that attack.”
Clearwater raised her sunglasses, revealing that her eyes were milky-white. “I didn’t need to see it at all. I used sonar.”
“Very good!” Coldplay laughed. “It’s really too bad. I haven’t had a good fight in hundreds of years. I hope there will be more ponies like you.”
“One is more than enough,” Clearwater said. She tugged at the scarf around her neck, pulling a long silver chain free, the end capped with a mace-like weight. She wrapped one end of the long chain around a hoof and jumped into the air, swinging the weight around in a circle before letting it go, swinging it in a wide arc.
Coldplay stepped away from the seemingly clumsy attack, and Clearwater grabbed the chain in her teeth, abruptly changing the sweep. The pooka cried out in surprise as the chain-whip slammed into its shoulder, cracking its hide like it was made of glass.
Clearwater yanked the chain back, twirling it overhead again.
“Pure lunar titanium,” she explained. “Almost unbreakable.”
“That hurt,” the pooka hissed.
“This is going to hurt a lot more!” Clearwater yelled, before swinging the chain whip again, taking to the air to strike from above.
Coldplay tossed its head, long spines of moving ice catching the chain and tangling up with it. Clearwater saw the danger too late, frost creeping along the chain faster than she could react, the metal biting into her skin and instantly freezing. She cried out in pain, falling to the floor and shattering a few of the sharp-edged ice sheets still lodged into the floor, opening up cuts along her back that didn’t bleed, the blood already frozen inside the wound.
“Oh no!” Velvet gasped.
Clearwater looked back at them, glaring. “Why are you two still here?! Run!”
“We can’t leave you!” Night Light protested.
Velvet grabbed him, dragging him toward a window.
“She’s doing this to buy us time,” Velvet said. “We have to go now!”
“But--”
“It’s the only way,” Velvet whispered. “If we stay here we’re going to die. She knows it too.”
“You kids stay safe,” Clearwater said. “Try and get some adult supervision, or, well, you’ll find out when you meet her.”
Velvet nodded, then grabbed a chair and broke the frost-covered window, pulling Night Light out with her.
“Right,” Clearwater said, smiling at the pooka. “Now let’s get serious.”
“I can’t believe we left her,” Night Light said, his breath clouding the air. Along the edges of the canal, ponies had come out of the businesses and homes to look at the spectacle.
“We didn’t have a choice!” Velvet pulled him along the walkway, running through the crowd and managing not to actually run into anypony thanks to her gift. “I don’t know how much time she actually bought us, either.”
“You think it’s still going to come after us?”
“Of course it will! Because she had to tell us to leave, it knows we’re important! If we’d been smart enough to just sneak out…” Velvet shook her head.
The street rumbled under their hooves. Behind them, the cafe crumbled into the canal, the ice cracking and sending a surge through the flooded streets.
“I’ve got an idea!” Velvet said. “Come on!”
She jumped over the edge of the walkway, landing in one of the stranded gondolas locked in the ice.
“Are you sure--”
“Just jump!” Velvet yelled.
Night Light swallowed and jumped next to her. The shock from their impacts cracked the ice around the small boat.
“So now what?” Night Light asked.
“Hang on,” Velvet said, as the wave hit them, picking the gondola up and sending it skittering across the surface of the ice-covered canal like a bobsled.
Behind them, Coldplay pulled itself out of the rubble and spotted them, smirking.
“Run as fast as you can, little ones,” It said. “I enjoy a good chase.”
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Oh no! Clearwater
There was a Creedence that Clearwater lived and died by, but I doubt she will be getting a Revival.
She wasn't a... Fortunate Son.
I had to make the reference! its Jojo!
Oh dammit I liked Clearwater and I was hoping she hadn't been introduced to be killed
Unless Coldplay is REALLY smart and decided not to waste time killing her to go for the obviously important targets. Which seems to be in character. We'll see.
I do quite like seeing well used elemental powers. I bet Coldplay had good parties with the Windigos back in the day.
So elements, we need fire and lots of it. That failing, dunk Coldplay into the river and hope it can't break it's own ice. If it can't phase through ice and needs to move to cast, it might have a chance. Mudhoney was also badly hurt by knocking it's constituent elements out of balance. It'd be ironic if we killed the ice elemental by drowning.
That said, still holding out for Dresden as a combat wizard. Fire and all.
...Though you know, if the other Pookas are here (and we've been told they are) one is probably magma. So lets see if we can get them to fight. It would be fitting if the forces of Discord destroyed each other by infighting.
We also know it CAN be physically hurt, it just doesn't have organs or blood so it needs to be smashed. Though I'd bet money it would reconstitute like the T2.
Why isn't there a crossover tag?
9281121
A crossover with what?
9281207
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. The Pooka are clearly the Pillar Men and Twilight's power is Harmon.
9280963
Clearwater might get a Revival in a future chapter
I'm thinking that the predicted dead pony was the poor employee who fell into the basement slush, so I'm going to believe that Clearwater is alive until we see a body.
In any case, the action's heating up, even if nothing else is. Great use of real-world science. Looking forward to more.
I guess they just had their Adventure of a Lifetime as they gotta escape at the Speed of Sound.
Okay someone smack me right now, I gotta stop this tomfoolery.
Aw, you skipped the actual awakening scene? No matter...