8 - Napalm Sticks to Foals
A gondola is a flat-bottomed boat, well-suited to the calm warm waters they’re usually found in. They offer a slow and scenic way to view Veneighs for the tourists that travel there and were never intended for something like, as a random yet poignant example, sliding across ice at high speed.
“He’s gaining on us!” Night Light yelled, looking back. The pooka’s cloven, clawed hooves beat against the ice, kicking up spikes of frost with every heavy stride, as steady on the slippery surface as a pony striding across a well-trodden road.
“Thanks, I didn’t notice that myself!” Velvet snapped, grabbing the oar and trying to adjust their path, narrowly avoiding another gondola frozen in place with three ponies working to free it with hammers and chisels.
Coldplay ran past them, and the ponies froze in place, streams of energy streaming from their mouths and snouts like a final puff of frosty breath before the ice claimed them, the magic swirling around the pooka.
“We need to lead it away from ponies!” Velvet shouted.
Night Light looked around them at the walkways still lined with ponies, most of them thankfully outside of the pooka’s aura of killing cold but none of them really aware of the danger they were in. Most of them were watching the spectacle with interest. Horrifyingly, there were dozens of foals even just along this one canal. “How are we supposed to do that? We’re in the middle of the city!”
“You’re just going to have to trust me,” Velvet said. “Do exactly what I say, okay?”
Night Light nodded.
“Good. Lean right, hard!” Velvet threw herself to the side and Night Light followed without question. The gondola jumped, sliding to the side, skipping over the waves frozen into the canal’s surface. A spire of ice larger than Night Light’s entire body slammed into the space where they’d been, spraying them with sleet.
They shot under a bridge, the pooka jumping over it, ponies fleeing away from the creature.
“Velvet, I don’t like to be negative, but--” Night Light pointed. Ahead of them, the canal crossed with another waterway and then abruptly ended in a complex of docks and stranded boats.
“I see it,” Velvet said. “We’ve got to, um…” She paused. “Just hang on!”
The air around the pooka swirled, and Coldplay launched another spike.
Velvet braced the oar against one of the benches in the boat, holding it in place with the whole weight of her body, the blade sticking out from the narrow boat like an arm and catching the giant icicle as it hit the ice next to the boat. Like a lever, it swung the whole boat around before snapping in two, the gondola skidding sideways into the crossway before momentum straightened it out again.
“You turned us! I can’t believe that worked!” Night Light grinned at Velvet, who looked at the broken end of the oar and tossed it out of the boat.
“We can’t do that twice, so we better hope we can figure something else out,” Velvet said.
“I can see open water that way,” Night Light pointed. There was a wide beam of sunlight ahead of them, a break in the clouds above. “If we get to the sun it can’t follow us, right?”
“I don’t think we’re going to get that far,” Velvet said. She swallowed nervously. “Even if we do, once we hit the water we’re going to lose all our momentum. We’ll be sitting ducks and it’ll be able to pick us off by throwing ice at us.”
“Do you have any better ideas?”
Velvet hesitated. “One. It’s not a good chance but it’s the best we’ve got.”
“How bad is it?”
“If it works we’ll go to Las Pegasus when this is all over, because we’ll be experts at beating the odds.”
“At least I’ve got great buffets in my future,” Night Light joked.
Behind them, Coldplay jumped up out of the canal, freezing footholds into the buildings along the waterway and running ahead of them.
Night Light watched in horror as the monster overtook them. “He’s going to cut us off!”
“When I say, hold onto me, okay?” Velvet looked back at the stallion. “It’s going to be easier keeping both of us safe if we stay close.”
The pooka stopped, clinging to the side of a building, and the air wavered around it like a heat haze, the building cracking as ice cracked the foundations from below.
“Now!” Velvet yelled. Night Light grabbed her around the barrel and she jumped free, using her magic to make herself as light as possible.
The ruined building crashed down into the canal, forming a wall of rubble. The gondola sailed into it at speed, crashing against the stone and exploding into splinters and broken spars.
Velvet helped Night Light to his hooves.
“You okay?” she asked.
“I think so,” Night Light said. “I’m so cold I can’t feel my hooves.”
“Don’t speak so quickly,” Coldplay said, as it picked its way down the rubble wall with the sure steps of a goat. “Neither of you are going to be ‘okay’.”
“What do we do next?” Night Light whispered.
“It’s rude to speak in front of your betters without including them!” Coldplay launched itself between them, knocking Velvet aside with its lizard-like tail and grabbing Night Light with a clawed hoof, pulling him up to look him in the eyes.
Night Light squeaked in fear, unable to make any noise more coherent or threatening than the kind of small toy one might buy for a puppy. His magic started to tear out of him like a frosty breath, but the moment Coldplay tasted it, the pooka recoiled and threw Night Light away, coughing and gasping.
“You taste like Mudhoney!” It spat out what it had been chewing on, the magic drifting back to Night Light. “That’s disgusting! Don’t tell me he’s been nibbling on you!”
“He had a big bite,” Night Light groaned. “It really wasn’t a fun time.”
“Nothing my sibling does is pleasant,” Coldplay agreed. “He’s a mess. No hygiene at all. That’s why I’m superior. Cold has a purity to it. Ponies struggling against the chill, justifying doing awful things to each other because of a late harvest. Quiet, soft deaths for those who succumb.”
“Your brother is dead,” Velvet said.
Coldplay spun to face her, whirling around like an ice skater.
“They sent him to a different museum before you woke up,” Velvet explained. “He escaped and I had to kill him.”
“Is that so?” Coldplay asked. “You know, I never did like him.”
Night Light’s ears perked up. “Does that mean you’ll let us go for doing you a favor?”
“No, of course not. As much as I hated him, he was family.” Coldplay smiled, showing crystalline teeth. “I’m sure you understand. Ponies do care so much for family, don’t they?”
“Come and get me, then,” Velvet said. “I took one of you down. Do you think I can’t handle it again?”
“I think if you could, you wouldn’t have been running,” Coldplay replied. The air whirled around it.
Velvet edged an inch to the left, in front of an otherwise nondescript wall.
The pooka launched a half-dozen spears of ice at her, and she moved, following her magic’s guidance and twisting into a pose that nearly threw out her back. The spears moved around her, sliding around her in a perfect outline.
“What?” Coldplay asked, shocked. “Don’t tell me, you’re just like your batpony friend?”
“No, I can just read you like a book,” Velvet panted. “And you did exactly what I wanted. I saw this coming.”
“You dodged one attack. That doesn’t matter much in the long run.”
“And you’re going to lose because you think that.” Velvet raised her chin. “Ponies have advanced a lot in the last few hundred years. Back when you were frozen in stone we didn’t have nice things like the printing press, indoor plumbing, or…”
“Or what?” Coldplay asked, sounding bored.
“Oil heating,” Velvet said, throwing herself to the side.
Behind her, the wall collapsed as the massive oil tank Coldplay had punctured with his spears failed, a flood of heating oil washing over the pooka and the icy surface of the canal, Velvet running just ahead of it.
“This smells uncomfortably like my late brother,” Coldplay said. “Wonderful. You ponies have managed to find a way to make disgusting ooze all on your own. I don’t see the point of it, unless you thought it would sicken me.”
As Coldplay spoke, the oil thickened on its hide to a waxy consistency, not quite solid but too thick to flow.
“Maybe you’ll understand when you see this!” Velvet yelled. She shot a spark from her horn, and it died in the cold and wind.
Coldplay raised an eyebrow.
Velvet tried again, and the fire spell failed almost before it began, her magic too weak to create heat in the overwhelming aura of cold the pooka was putting out.
“I’m not impressed,” Coldplay said. “It’s time to bring this little farce to an end. I apologize for not learning your name, but you simply aren’t that interesting.”
Coldplay started charging up an attack and Velvet looked into the future. No matter how hard she looked, there didn’t seem to be a place to dodge. She needed a miracle, because no action she took was going to change anything.
A bolt of red fire slammed into the pooka from above. The attack it had been preparing shattered, ice falling at its hooves as the gelled oil ignited, flames spreading over the chaos spirit.
“What?!” it gasped and stumbled back, burning drops igniting the oil around it, creating a sea of flames with Coldplay at its center.
Velvet looked up. On the roof of the building above them, a pony in a black cloak launched another fireball at the monster, slamming it into the ground with concussive force.
“What is this?!” Coldplay demanded. “What have you done?!”
“The combat magic expert,” Velvet breathed. “She found us.”
“Well of course I found you!” The expert sorceress had a much higher, squeaker voice than Velvet had expected. She tossed her hood back, revealing a wavy red and yellow mane, bright cyan eyes, and a pony a decade Velvet’s junior. “Do you know how much of a mess you imbeciles made?!”
“A filly?” Velvet asked, blinking.
“You were supposed to wait at the cafe and when I got there, the whole building was missing!” She vanished in a flash of teleportation and appeared next to Twilight Velvet, a full head shorter than the young mare, though her ego and force of will more than made up for it.
“Sorry?” Velvet offered, stunned. “Who are you?”
The filly snorted, rolling her eyes. “I’m the pony that’s getting you out of this mess, duh! You can kiss my hooves after I finish dealing with this stupid monster.”
Coldplay roared, jumping over the wall of rubble.
“I’ll be back!” It yelled. “You tricked me!”
“Say that to my face!” The filly yelled. “Do you know who I am?!”
Coldplay jumped, splashing into the water on the other side of the barrier, burning oil leaving a long trail as it swam away to lick its wounds.
“Is it gone?” Night Light asked. “Am I dead? I don’t feel dead but I keep coming close and I don’t want to miss it when it happens.”
“Hmph. It’s gone,” the filly said, annoyed. “I hate it when monsters run. I take time out of my busy schedule teaching that total bumpkin imbecile how to use her horn and I don’t even get to finish the fight cleanly.”
“I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” Velvet said. “Are you really the pony Clearwater wanted us to meet?”
“You’re talking to the greatest combat sorceress in Equestria,” the filly boasted. “I’m Princess Celestia’s personal student, Sunset Shimmer, and now I’m the one in charge!”
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How are hooves cloven and clawed? The same way that The Disemvoweled One is both Batrachian and Tentacular. (The tentacles are shaped like frogs)
Not enough fire. "If you're leaving scorch marks, you need a bigger gun.
" I think Filly Sunset qualifies.
Oh ye gods, this is Filly Sunset. She's going to be INSUFFERABLE. I can't wait.
I STILL think sibling rivalry is the way out here.
Thank goodness Mudhoney was so disgusting.
Also, tiny Sunset! She promises to be adorably insufferable. Just the thing against a cryomancer.
There's no way this is an authorized trip for Sunset. Someone is going to be in a lot of trouble once she gets back to Canterlot.
Holy crap I actually called it. Either that or Magnetbolt had no idea who it was going to be in advance and he thought using Sunset was a great idea. Regardless, I am most pleased.
Velvet: *poses*
Me: It begins
9283644
Where, what part?
Wait a minute, if Sunset's a filly and Velvet and Night Light are still young adult and not yet married... Sunset's older than Shining Armor!?
9307980
So's Cadance, judging by the whole "teaching the bumpkin to use her horn" thing.
Recognized her as soon as the chapter described her.
Sunny
gasp! its the Witch!
And the Twilight family technique: run awaaayy
It's unfortunate that Coldplay is still alive but I have impression that the Pooka's dislike eachother enough that they are unable to cooperate. Sadly this means dealing with all of them will take longer and they are still a huge threat.