The Forest of the Golden Abalone

by Unwhole Hole

Chapter 19: Beware the Janitor

A pair of hooves clapped onto her shoulders, the lump of pony turning around sharply, his luminescent eyes cutting through the darkness and dampness of the hole.

“Wait wait WAIT WAIT—!”

“THIS IS MY HOLE! IT WAS MADE FOR MEEEEEEE!”

And with that she was violently thrown out of the hole and back to the surface. Out of breath and nearly passing out, Fluttershy looked back to see a pony poke his head out of his own grave and glare at her.

“Stay out of my hole! Pervert!”

Fluttershy stared, not understanding—but then realized that she actually knew this pony.

“Wait...didn’t you fall into a propeller?”

His glare intensified. “What kind of pilot hasn’t gotten sucked in a propeller or a jet engine at least, like, five times? The planes, they hunger for flesh. And how am I supposed to tell if it’s on?”

“Because it’s...spinning?”

His eyes widened for a moment, then went back to glaring over the wall of his hole. “Stop outthinking me! What are you, some kind of philosoaper? I don’t even use soap...it tastes real bad…except when it doesn't...”

He produced from his hole a brilliant, multicolored slug—and promptly licked it. The slime caused him to immediately derp, his eyes flashing various colors from the slime.

“Um...I think that’s poisonous?”

“Your mom is poisonous. Hail Satin.”

Fluttershy stiffened. “What did you just—”

She heard a rumble through the forest—and the barest rustle of leaves as the two mercenaries charged forward, intending to give her the poke.

“We have to hide!”

“Not in my hole you’re not! It’s where I keep an absence of soil! And you can’t not have any!”

The air beside Fluttershy hissed as Tuo emerged from a teleport. She felt the claw around her tighten, then reach out and merge back to his body. He had grabbed her—and she was about to get stole. Again.

“You again?” snapped the pilot, suddenly standing beside Tuo, still licking a slug—or rather, the absence of a slug; he was instead licking his own hallucination and tasting the sound it made. “I don’t remember you at all. What happened to the weird pyramid? You trying to not compensate for something or what?"

Tuo looked at him, disinterested. “Go away.”

He fired a blast of red magic, a paralysation spell—and it rebounded off the pony’s body, repelled by the sudden appearance of glowing runes implanted under his skin.

Tuo’s eyes widened. “Wait, what—”

The pony was fast. He pulled his head back as far as it went—and then headbutted Tuo. Directly in the horn. With such force that the horn dislocated and was fully pushed into Tuo’s skull—and his head was dislocated as well, forced between his shoulders so that he was barely peeking out.

Fluttershy was dropped, and managed to break free—as a plume of magic swallowed the pony, encasing him in cursed fire. Tuo stood, rapidly regenerating—but the pony just seemed to contemplate the invisible non-slug he held in his hoof, fully on fire but his body apparently quite incombustible.

“I’m not a witch,” he snapped. “I can’t be burned. I am not subject to inflammation."

A thin thread reached out from Tuo’s horn, grasping at the pony’s mind—but found no purchase.

“You can’t do that either.” He tapped his head. “That’s the first thing they do. Out through the nose. Like soup in reverse. Mind control don’t work if you ain’t got no brain. And how can you be loyal if you stop to think about stuff? Daybreaker doesn’t like questions.”

Tuo’s eyes widened, and he jumped back. “You’re—”

The pony smiled. “A janitor.”

Flurry appeared behind him, and with a cry slashed at his neck with her magic sword—only to have it be repelled by the magic that constituted his body. He turned, slowly, squinting in two different directions at once. Then a smile spread across his face.

“AHA! There you are!” he screamed, his voice rising several octaves—and before Flurry could react, he punched her in the chest, imploding her armor. Her eyes widened as she was thrown back, but he was already on top of her, administering a savage beating.

“You can’t sneak up on me, Nightmare Moon! I know who you are! They made me know who you are!”

“I’m not Nightmare Moon you—”

“Of course you are! You’re WHITE, just like she is!”

“Nightmare Moon is black—and I'm pink, you—ACK! My organs!”

“THOSE TWO THINGS ARE THE SAME COLOR!”

Tuo struck from the side, sending an arcing spell that tried to cut through the pony, only to have the temporary effect of knocking him off Flurry. It could not penetrate his body, nor stop him—or even slow him for very long.

“A Solarian Custodian!" He turned to Fluttershy in horror. "What have you done?!”

He dodged suddenly, reacting to a force almost too fast to be seen, his magic charging around one of his hooves before he punched the pilot in the chest—and as the pilot returned, Tuo rolled, performing an acrobatic maneuver and putting the full force of his motion into a pair of spells that struck the pony asymmetrically, causing him to spin—which again, did not slow him in the slightest.

“Flurry! SWORDS!”

Flurry, standing up and regenerating, threw him the blades—and Tuo caught them in his magic. Taking a stance, the ground around him ignited with light in the image of a flower, and every plant in his vicinity died, their life-force absorbed into him. Then he charged forward, striking with his hooves as his swords harried his opponent—but as powerful as they were, nothing could touch the pony, who seemed largely to be ignoring Tuo and focusing on his mission.

His face had gone blank, his eyes no longer filled with life and color. Only the single-minded desire to destroy the False Goddess.

Flurry raised her horn and cast an ice-spell. The pony was encased in ice, only to break through it without effort.

“You can’t freeze me, Nightmare Moon! I’ve been drinking my own cosmoline!”

"Then how about I melt it out of you!"

Flurry shifted position, taking an offensive stance. The air sparked around her and the sky darkened. The slight mist began to shift into a more potent rain—and lightning descended from above, summoned by her magic and through her. She forced the spell forward, overwhelming the pony in a blast of sustained electrical energy.

She almost laughed as it conducted through him to ground—but then she gasped and dropped to her knees.

"What's wrong?" demanded Tuo. "Is he resisting?"

"No he's...he's not resisting enough...there's too much...too much current..."

"Disengage at once!"

"I...I can't...why isn't he vaporizing?!"

The pony was not only not vaporizing, but began to approach, moving through the wave of ever-increasing voltage that was pouring through his body. Flurry was still forced to her knees, unable to stand, as the pony grew closer and closer—and as he raised one hoof, sparking with her own massive voltage, toward her nose.

"Don't you dare," she groaned through the exertion of keeping her own current from cooking her alive.

He reached out, slowly. And then he made the very gentles of contact. "Boop."

The short circuit was instantaneous, the entirety of the current redirected through both their bodies. Flurry cried out as she was accelerated backward by the Lorenz force of her own actions, her smoking body pushed through the trunk of several trees, her body overwhelmed both by the full force of her spell as well as the feedback wave it had generated. The other pony, though, stood unharmed and sparking. As if he had barely even noticed.

He stared at his hoof. "Ew. Nightmare snoot."

With a flash, a smoldering Flurry Heart reappeared beside Tuo. She was gasping for air, but managed to stand.

She and Tuo responded to each other, and without words focused a pair of magic beams on the pony, firing with their combined force of magic. The effect was so great that Fluttershy, who was attempting to hide in the hole, was fully knocked into it.

The pony was pushed back—but caught himself, his body withstanding the energy of their combined force.

Over the whine of ionization and the roar of magic, he spoke.

“It sure would be nice if I could feel this. It doesn’t feel like anything, you know. Being like this. But I can end the war...I can finally end the war…”

“The war is over!” cried Tuo.

“I don’t trust you, Specter, I can’t.” The pony took a step forward, even as the beams grew in power. Although the ground around him was quickly being reduced to liquid, he seemed totally ignorant of it. “You don’t get to decide that. I don't either. Nopony does.”

Flurry suddenly disengaged. She cast several spells on Tuo, his body writhing with sudden energy. He cast a complex cube-seal around the pony, who immediately sat down in the center of it.

“Geometry,” he hissed. “My one true weakness...now which one was the sine again?”

“You have to go,” said Tuo. “It won’t hold him for long.”

“Go where?!”

“Grab the soft one and teleport back to the support station. I will distract the Solarian.”

“My own wings, if we work together—”

“We’ll just make him angry!”

“Angry?” the pony stood up. “Oh yeah. I forgot. Who are you all?” He looked through the translucent cube, then gasped. “NIGHTMARE MOON! I’m gonna get you!”

He then walked through the first layer of the shield spell. The magic used to immortalize his body was far beyond Tuo’s ability to contain; he was a monstrosity created purposefully for the sole purpose of terminating alicorns. One so dangerous that Celestia had supposedly purged her former personal guard from existence.

Where the Agency had found one, Tuo had no idea. Or why they had ever let it out.

In his distraction, he did not notice the pony breaking the final seal—and the gray earth-pony stood before him, smiling.

“I have found the sine! Now I'm about to inverse your tangent. They did that one to me too, it hurts. Real bad."

Tuo dodged to the side, attacking on the alternate as he moved, the Solarian ignoring him utterly. Flurry, her eyes wide, did as Tuo had suggested—and jumped, grabbing Fluttershy.

“Wait wait WAIT WAIT—”

And then, with a pop, they were gone.

Comments

[Thought Prism]

Ok, I knew he was basically unkillable, but damn.

[FanOfMostEverything]

I'm not sure what I expected, but that wasn't it. Hexproof and indestructible are a lot more disturbing to see in practice, especially when coupled with changeling-cuddle insanity.

[Brony4Lyfe]

“THIS IS MY HOLE! IT WAS MADE FOR MEEEEEEE!”

Junji Ito my beloved <3