The Little Monster

by Razor Flake

The Little Monster

The forest smells different… It smells… Angry…

These were the monster’s first thoughts. It wasn’t sure what had happened. The abomination still had the deer fawn in its mouth, but its appetite subsided as it realized it wasn’t in the same forest.

The creature is like no other. A one of a kind created by foul magics, though it didn’t know that. It was slightly larger than an Alaskan Malamute and was indeed canine. But that’s where the similarities ended. It was covered in a bone carapace, had a smooth head with only a large mouth that sported three rows of carnivorous teeth, and a meter long vertebrae-esque tail with a broad double-edged blade on the end. Its foreclaws articulated like hands, but the longest of them was a good six inches. Its hind legs were large and powerful, suited for the ambush predator’s leaping from the brush at its prey. It had a rudimentary intelligence on par with that of a toddler, but it knew it needed to eat. It quickly scarfed down the fawn, bones and all.

After that, it began to explore its new surroundings, the blind monster hearing and smelling its surroundings. As it was scrambling up a tree, it heard the strangest animal. Like a giant cat, but with wings! It was frightened because even though it could probably win the fight it was scared beyond belief of unnecessary fighting. If it just ran away, maybe it would leave the winged cat’s territory. And so it ran.

As it ran it realized the trees were thinning out. Chances are the treeline would mark a border it should cross, so it picked up the pace, and it began to tear up the ground as it went. It began to hear something… No, someone speaking in a language it had never heard before. Not to say it had a solid grasp on the concepts of language in general, but it understood that certain noises meant certain things and that they were generally more refined than the noises animals made to communicate. It beelined for the voice.

It could hear the outline of a small building of some sort, and many, many animals. It narrowed on the sapient one, the winged pony giving out a muffled shout of fear at the charging monster, which quickly died as it cowered behind her. It whimpered in a very doglike fashion, its head pointed out from behind the pony, looking towards the sound of the manticore. The pony picked up on the sound as well. She said something to it which the monster did not understand. It sat up and cocked its head, then scarfed down the rabbit The manticore had ceased its charge, growling from the treeline. The winged pony patted the monster on the head with her hoof. This, the monster understood, and its tail wagged, eliciting a smile from the winged pony. Though she was unable to communicate with this strange monster like other creatures, she would not force it back into the forest which it seemed to fear.

The monstrosity yawned in the middle of the pony’s cottage. She was taken aback by all its teeth, letting out a sharp gasp. No molars, she noticed. It really did just scarf down food. The pony left to her room, trying to sleep. The monster felt lonely and followed, curling up in the doorway. The pony said something to it and she went to sleep.

"O-Oh dear... I guess it wanted to go home...", Mumbled Fluttershy. It was the next morning, and the monster had left, which Fluttershy was secretly glad about. It was quite scary and she didn't think the animals particularly liked it, even the predators. So the day went on. Thankfully, Fluttershy had little to do since the animals were generally doing ok. Not two hours before she was going to go to bed, Fluttershy heard a shout of fear. Startled, the timid pegasus turned to look towards the Everfree forest where she had heard the sound come from.

Barreling out of the forest was the little monster, once again being chased by a manticore. This second time around it had certainly learned its lesson and was unlikely to return to the forest anytime soon. Anytime soon, that is, under its own volition. Of course, this time Fluttershy saw the danger and ran to the creature standing between it and the manticore, who once again ceased its charge at the forest's edge.

"Oh, you poor thing! Is that mean manticore bullying you again?", Fluttershy 'shouted'. In truth, it was only slightly louder than speaking volume. Nevertheless, it elicited a wince from the monster. While it hadn't actually understood the words, it gleaned that it was being chastised for doing something bad. Fluttershy noticed the effect immediately.

"Oh dear... I'm not upset, just worried.", She said with a genuine smile. The monster figured from the tone that it wasn't going to be punished, despite its obliviousness to the words. But then Fluttershy pat it on the head. Now, this... This the little monster understood. It yipped and jumped around the pony with glee.

~

The monster had followed Fluttershy around and was now watching her teaching birds to sing. The filly thought birds could sing by themselves, but maybe someone had to teach them? Did the parent birds teach the offspring? Was Fluttershy a stand-in because these birds didn't have a family? These are the kinds of thoughts that rolled through its young mind. She liked that idea. That someone would be family for someone without it. It could relate to those birds. It had spent so long looking for its parents after observing a wolf pack with cubs but had since abandoned the search. It had gotten a feeling she didn't have any parents at all. It was then that some loud with a horn frightened the birds away. The sudden noise also scared the monster into hiding behind Fluttershy. Of course, Fluttershy wasn't much better off, basically paralyzed.

~

She had followed Fluttershy to see the princess raise the sun. She had never seen someone raise the sun before and was curious as to how it would be done. But she didn't see the princess. Instead, there was... No one. A pretty looking pony had pulled up the curtain but no one stepped forward. Then a cloud appeared, followed by a big, scary-looking pony. The filly ran away immediately, all the way back to Fluttershy's cottage. She had little interest in big scary monsters. Ponies didn't have sharp teeth, after all.

It had cowered for a while under a table. It had noticed that the sun hadn't risen yet. That scared her a lot. The sun was supposed to be up. It was supposed to be warm. That was when she heard the loud pony and even Fluttershy going into the Everfree forest. She didn't like that. There was a scary manticore in there! She had to save Fluttershy!

~

She was frozen. She only saw two options, both of which terrified it. On one hand… Or hoof… Maybe claw? She could stay safe in the cottage, protected from the dangers of the forest by the woods’ edge. However, on the other appendage, she could go in and protect her new friend. No… She had to. She knew she was more durable than Fluttershy. The little monster took a moment to steel herself, then bolted out the door and into the forest. She ran and ran, following the familiar scent of Fluttershy, as well as the less familiar scents of what the monster presumed to be her friends. She followed and began to transform, skidding to a halt as her pony skin either calcified or ruptured to make way for a bony carapace. Teeth sharpen and push through gums, eyes sink and dissolve and claws push through hooves and flesh. It resumes its sprint, much faster though it had lost time. That’s when it heard the roar.

The manticore roared at the ponies, who mostly shrink back. Fluttershy makes a stand, though, approaching the creature. She was taking a total gamble here, but recognized that the manticore was well out of its territory. It was being abnormally aggressive, so something must have been wrong. As she was about to ask the manticore to show her its paw, her face was suddenly smattered with flecks of blood as a familiar little monster launched itself at the manticore’s throat, its powerful jaws locking on. The powerful inertia from its speed and weight did the work of ripping the beast’s throat open. As the manticore gurgled, pawing at the mortal wound in its throat, a sort of blood haze took over the little monster and it jumped at the dying manticore again. This time it used its tail to help anchor itself in the manticore’s back, claws tearing into its back to reveal its spine, which it began to pull out of the manticore with its mouth slowly and with great strain. This was the natural method of killing for the monster, a sight too gruesome for many of the ponies. The purple, blue and white ones threw up. The orange one looked away and the pink one was frozen, unable to tear her blue eyes from the horrendous scene. They simply hadn't seen this kind of violence before. Except for Fluttershy. Fluttershy recognized this creature and knew it feared manticores. Knowing this she figured why it may have disregarded that fear. So she approached it as it messily scarfed down chunks of the twitching, whining manticore. She had a determined but kind face.

“Hey, thank you for saving us, but you really didn’t need to go this far,'' She says with an almost uncharacteristic straight-forwardness. The monster stopped and “looked” at Fluttershy, cocking its head to the side like a confused dog. It jumps down in front of her. Applejack rushes forward but is blocked by a yellow wing. "No, don't hurt them. They only wanted to help”, She explained, “Besides, they’re obviously a predator. They eat meat and there’s nothing wrong with that.”. The monster’s tail wagged at this, not understanding the language as much as the tone. It sort of hugged. Fluttershy, also curling its tail around her protectively Fluttershy patted it on the head and it pulled back, as if now ready to be the guard of the party. Seeing that it wasn’t really that bad, the others went to it, taking turns patting it on the head and saying nice things that it didn’t understand. But Twilight stood stunned.

“How did you know it wasn’t going to eat you?!”, She exclaims.

“I didn’t.”, Fluttershy says cooly, “I knew that it was scared of manticores, but it came anyway. It probably thought we’d be upset with it, but sometimes you just need to show a little bit of kindness.”

~

Indeed, the monster followed the party, all the way to the old castle. It was there that it recognized the scary thing by scent. It started barking at Nightmare Moon. It didn't sound like a dog; it was too deep and rich of a sound. Nightmare Moon, however, simply tilted her head, raising an eyebrow. That changed when it lept at her, claws outstretched for a killing strike. Nightmare Moon was momentarily caught off guard by the predator. She quickly blasted it in the head with magic.

The six gasp as the monster’s head caves in and bursts, shards of bone and bits of viscera spattering the ground. The blast had knocked to Fluttershy’s hooves. She looked down at it horrified. She was no stranger to gruesome injury or death. It wasn’t commonplace but it happened. A lost fight with a bear or manticore, usually. But this… This is wanton murder. But before she could raise her head to let out an inner vicious hate, a stunned Twilight had since regained a modicum of composure. She was fiddling with some weird rocks and Nightmare Moon was monologuing. It was then that Fluttershy heard something from the little monster. She looked down and her eyes widened. The thing's head had started to regrow, the skeleton, tendons, tissues and finally the carapace. Fluttershy was both relieved and revolted at the process. To her bewilderment, it nips a bit of her hair. On the way out it catches a bit of Rarity’s as well. On the way out, because it was frightened of the initially nice voice of Twilight becoming loud and harsh as she and the other ponies slowly floated into the air. That was enough to send the monster running.

As it fled deeper into the forest, it found itself near the manticore corpse, which it began to eat. It had lost a lot of mass and calories repairing itself. Regeneration was terribly inefficient, so it had to scarf down the entire body piece by piece. As it sat licking its claws, it wondered just how it would fit into this society. This was another mystery to it, this innate ability to form infiltration plans to blend into a group. But it never gave much thought to it and this time was no different. It began to read the bits of hair it had nabbed from the two ponies and read what a scientist would call nucleotides. It, of course, had no higher understanding of genetics than a toddler would about sentence structure. It could extrapolate meaning, and understand how to put things together for a desired result, but not actually understand the fine details. It never worried much, though, as it had never encountered a genome it couldn’t sequence given enough time. Indeed, it had immense raw mental power. So it sat, using itself as a testing ground for different combinations of genes before it finally stopped. As of now, it… She was a solid white pegasus filly with stark blue eyes. Her mane wasn’t very long, and she wasn’t happy about needing to use eyes. She would normally induce glaucoma but it had no idea where to even begin with that since that wasn’t in the cards for either pony as far as she could tell. She would need someone with the condition to cross-reference. However, it was then that a brilliant idea struck her. She closed her eyes in intense concentration as she forced accelerated mitosis on her mane until the wild curls covered her eyes. She wobbles around for a bit, getting used to a lack of stabilizing claws. She falls a few times but eventually figures out how to trot and even canter. She soon began to practice a gallop and was pleased when she got the hang of it, at least, after she ran into a few trees and fell. As she ran again, she winced. She realized that, when she looked down, her chest was bleeding. It must have been when she ran into that last tree. She quickly regenerated it, but the damage was done. She heard the familiar howl of hungry wolves. So she ran and ran, all the way to Fluttershy’s cottage.

Comments

[link4]

good start i think

[Razor Flake]

9850595
Thanks!

[Toriandthehorse]

Spike belched out a scroll in a gout of fire. Instantly the filly jumped up, crying and hiding behind Fluttershy. It was clearly terrified of the fire, shaking and inconsolable. It began to calm down as the two ponies consoled it, still hiccuping and breathing hard. Fluttershy attempts to pick it up but is unable. It is immensely heavy for some reason. It sniffles, realizing no one is in danger. It slowly saunters out back to the cottage with Fluttershy.

This is a real nice story. Cute, with the appropriate amounts of seriousness when needed. It's a good read, one I'll definitely read again soon.
I did notice a few sections where the passages were a bit... off. Like up in the quote, it says the creature was 'shaking and inconsolable.' But then, right after, it says, 'as the two ponies consoled it.' If you could replace one of the 'consoles,' it would flow much better, and would make more sense.
Overall, though, great story you have here! Nice work

[Razor Flake]

9890020
Thanks! I'm co-writing this with my girlfriend who's not a native English speaker. She appreciates the feedback on the stuff I miss!

-C