The Forest of the Golden Abalone

by Unwhole Hole

Chapter 7: The Hunting of the Fluttershy

Fluttershy often ran from things, but rarely were those the sort of things that actually chased her. This tendency, however, proved an advantage. She had become so accustomed to desperate fleeing that her ground-speed was nearly unmatched. Even Applejack or Rainbow Dash would have little hope of passing her, but only if something truly terrifying were in pursuit. It was simple evolution. Fluttershy’s paternal line had evolved by being faster than the ones that got eaten. Ostensibly, at least.

But what was chasing her was fast. She looked into the trees around her and saw it, a flash of white dashing with unparalleled elegance among the trunks. Easily passing her, but not closing it. Toying with her. An armored predator, apparently unencumbered by the armor she wore, her form drifting pink-violet light as she used magic to enhance her abilities. She was like Tuo. An armored wizard. A battlemage.

She stood no chance, and neither did Snails, who was not nearly as fast as Fluttershy.

“Turn left!” he cried.

“Why?!”

“Trust me! NOW!”

Fluttershy turned, her hooves nearly sliding out from beneath her—and she was shoved forward by magic, forced over a cliff.

She screamed as she fell, and then as she was scratched by branches. Branches of an oddly familiar tree, filled with oddly familiar fruit. Rainbow-colored apples.

She landed hard on the ground, the wind knocked out of her. When she sat up, she saw that she was surrounded by snails about double the size of ponies. They were blue, but their shells were rainbow-colored. They were slowly eating the fallen zap-apples. Snails was already sitting on the shell of one.

“Get on one!” he said.

Fluttershy acquiesced, although she had no idea. She assumed, with some degree of incredulousness, that she was meant to ride one.

“Snails, these are...um...snails.”

A grin crossed his face. “These aren’t snails, Fluttershy. These are snells!”

Without warning, he slapped the shell of the snail Fluttershy was sitting on—and Fluttershy immediately screamed from the incomprehensible acceleration as the snail flashed forward in a dead, slimy sprint.

The force was so great that she was nearly knocked free, and only barely managed to hang on by her front hooves, the rest of her blown back by the wind of the sheer velocity. This snail was not like Mildred. It did not have high relative speed. It had high real speed.

And the ride was terrifying. The snail drove forward at a speed that would have made even Rainbow Dash impressed, trailing a wave of rainbows as it moved. It dodged every object, dexterously shifting its path to move around every tree and rock, igniting the ground as it went. Looking over her shoulder, through her tear-filled eyes, Fluttershy could see Snails behind her, a jockey of his own super-speed snail.

She had no idea where she was going, or if Snails knew at all. All directions were lost in the speed and the blur of trees, the pressure of the roaring air threatening to rupture at any second or to blow Fluttershy clean off the slippery shell she clung to. In the distance, though, she saw a mountain—or, rather, a sheer cliff.

“Snails! CLIFF!”

“I see it! Hold on!”

“Hold on? HOLD ON!? What do you mean hold—EEEEEEK!”

The snail struck the vertical surface of the cliff—and did not even slow. Rather, it simply proceeded to rocket upward, its adherent body clinging to the rock face as well as it could the swampy forest floor. In fact, it accelerated, rushing upward with a roar as rocks were thrown free from the cliff and down below. Fluttersy, still in tears, was dragged for the ride, suddenly rising hundreds of feet into the air in a matter of seconds as her snail dodged every protruding tree or sharp rock, rolling over everything else leaving nothing but a trail of rainbow mucilage.

This seemed to pass for sometime until Fluttershy could no longer bear it. Feeling herself weakening, she did her best to hold on—but eventually, she found herself slipping. And, suddenly, she let go.

She plopped to the ground, and only then did she realize that the snail had in fact stopped. It was at the base of a zap-apple tree that grew on a small flat area high in the hills, reaching up for a dangling zap-apple.

Snails, likewise, had dismounted. “Well that was refreshing.” He was as perfectly calm as usual, even cheerful. “Nothing like a snell ride to wake you up, eh?”

Fluttershy nodded, then collapsed into a puddle of quivering pony.

Snails stepped to the edge of the cliff and looked out. “Nothing faster than that out here. No way she caught up with us out here, right?”

“Assuming I did not know how to teleport, yes,” said the armored mare, who was standing beside Snails. Before he could turn, she shoved him over the edge. Fluttershy cried out, but the mare blocked him before she could move. She stood there, shaking, facing the thin armored unicorn. Unlike Tuo, her mask bore the rudiments of a pony face carved into its surface.

“What—what do you want?”

“Everything,” she said. A mechanical device at her side clicked, and she drew a crystal sword—one that immediately ignited with pink-violet magic. “But for now, why don’t I get Tuo an Element of Harmony? You know you deserve it, Fluttershy. So hold still. It will hurt a whole lot, but only for a second.”

She raised the blade to strike, holding it aloft in her magic, but then stopped. She let out a low, annoyed sigh.

“Oh crap.”

The beam shot through her head with thunderous force, boring a hole through the side of the mountain and ionizing the air around it into a plume of devastating lighting. The mare’s body was thrust to the side, thrown by the force of the blast that entered one side of her head and emerged to the other, instantly cutting its way outward toward the horizon. It flared out, then collapsed, the implosion pulling Fluttershy inward toward it with a clap of thunder.

She pulled her self back, looking up at the mare—who did not fall. The hole in her helmet was gushing fluid. Black, viscous liquid. It was not the silver blood of a unicorn. Instead, it looked like tar.

Then it stopped flowing—and began to retract. Pulling itself back upward into her skull as the wound healed itself.

Not wanting to take any more time watching this, Fluttershy ran to the edge and looked down, hoping desperately not to see Snails at the bottom—and she screamed when she saw him only a few feet down, adhered to the wall by rainbow mucous.

“Snails! How did—”

“Don’t disrespect the mucous, Fluttershy. Never disrespect the mucous.” He looked up at her. “I heard the sound. She’s hit, isn’t she? What color is it?”

Fluttershy immediately understood. “Black.”

“Just like him. Then we don’t have much time. Unstuck me. WE need to get out of here.”

Fluttershy nodded and, shaking, pulled him free.

Head injuries took longer to regenerate from. Rebuilding brains was hard. When Lady Fear woke, Tuo was standing beside her. She looked to her left, finding a narrow hole vaporized through the cliff. She the beam had come from the far side of a mountain and still managed to penetrate both her helmet and skull.

She gurgled some choice words in Crystallic.

“They got away,” noted Tuo. “The male is an excellent tracker. He was able to obscure their trail, even from my magics.”

“One of Emmett’s grandkids is here.”

Tuo paused, tilting his head slightly. “I had thought there were none of them left. The Equestrians ought to have hunted them to extinction.”

“Who else has a five-gigawatt particle beam?”

“I do. I outbid my mother for it. I have it on a special shelf next to that one vase. The one made of bone.”

“Don’t you start bragging about having a mother that actually takes pride in you, idiot. I have to find that yellow horse and—”

“Emotion does not suit you. Our job is to accompany the client on his ill-advised retrieval mission. That is all. His insistence on eliminating witnesses is comical but ultimately fruitless.”

Fear stared at him, then sighed. “I can’t believe I’m related to you.”

“You are not. If you were, our relationship would be highly unpalatable.”

“What relationship?”

She grabbed him with her magic and threw him off the cliff. This time, she used enough force to give a moment of silence before the violent thump as he landed on the sharp rocks on the bottom. Hurting him made her feel slightly better.

But hurting Fluttershy would feel so much more pleasant.

Comments

[ponepony]

Head injuries took longer to regenerate from. Rebuilding brains was hard. When Lady Fear woke, Tuo was standing beside her. She looked to her left, finding a narrow hole vaporized through the cliff. She the beam had come from the far side of a mountain and still managed to penetrate both her helmet and skull.

Still amazing how technology has come so far that decapitations are minor injuries just part of the job.

[Thought Prism]

I love the snells, haha. Those things give Rocket-Powered Turbo Slugs a run for their money.