"Nnnngh—No!" Rainbow Dash shouted, slapping the pendant pack on and flapping her one good wing.
Several enforcers stumbled back. Captain Filta and his fellow officers gasped. Shell leaned against the sarcophagus and blinked down at the pegasus.
Rainbow Dash glared up at him, braving the pain of her shredded wing to stand up on wobbly legs. "You! It was you in Aridstone!" She hissed and lurched forward, spitting. "It wasn't me who killed those villagers... or the dragon... or anything else with a heart! It was you! You and only you! Why?!"
Shell narrowed his gaze on her and spoke in a low voice, "You are the Confederacy's greatest secret. Such a weapon cannot be shared with ponies unworthy of the courage and tenacity to wield you."
Rainbow Dash hissed into her forelimbs, quivering from head to toe.
Shell continued, "Your acquistion and usage would be made all the easier if there just wasn't—"
"What?!" Rainbow Dash snarled. "Bodies in the way?! More living flesh for you to tear asunder?! What did you really do with my friends, you big pile of murderous jerk?! Huh?! Where is Belle and Pilate really?!"
Shell's nostrils flared. "Step inside the sarcophagus..."
"No!" Rainbow Dash growled, dizziness overwhelming her as she fell again to her belly. In spite of her spasms, she struggled to crawl away from the container. "I w-won't give you what you want!"
"I'm warning you—"
"Will... keep fighting..." She hissed. "K-keep flying. Will not... g-give in... won't... lose... never lose..."
With a flash of light, Shell raised the taser to the nape of her throat. "My little pony, you lost long before you even flew out this far from home and you know it." In a hissing voice, he raised the taser and said, "You've always been a great deal more useful in death. I'll be happy to restore unto Ledo the Confederacy's most valuable corpse."
Rainbow Dash twitched, writhed, and fainted.
With a breath of finality, Shell brought the sparkling blade down—
—only to have it slice harmlessly into the wooden deck—off target—from the sudden rocking of the entire Steel Wing.
"Unngh!" Shell grunted, stumbling to his side.
Filta and the other enforcers braced themselves as a second explosion roared off the bow of the ship. "Report!" Filta hollered.
"Captain! Prime Enforcer!" A frazzled crew member ran and leapt over the debris, skidding to a stop before them. "An unidentified ship has broken through the armada and is heading straight for us!"
"Ship?!" Filta spat. "What ship?!" He was anwered with a rocket-propelled explosive embedding into the mast above him and exploding violently. He and several other ponies fell under a burning splash of splinters.
"Searonese!" A pony shouted from several meters away across the deck. "Searonese vessel off the starboard side!"
Shell spun about, his eye flaring. The air above them split apart with a crack of mana-induced thunder. He and several ponies looked to see a slender black craft roaring through the heavens. With twin sparks of energy, two black cables fired down. In an instant, they wrapped loops around Rainbow Dash's limp body.
"No..." Shell galloped towards it.
The cables drew slack, yanking Rainbow's bloodied body off the deck and after the fleeing vessel.
"No!" Shell skidded to a stop, flashing his horn.
In a fitful effort, he held Rainbow's body in place, level with the shattered masts. Before he could so much as fling the red-hot taser to sever the cords, he became aware of several flickering explosives that had been attached to the Steel Wing's hull during its flyby. Holding his breath, he relinquished his telekinetic grip of Rainbow Dash and dove backwards.
The resulting explosion almost ripped the Steel Wing in half. Cannons, chunks of wood, and flailing stallions flew—screaming—into the burning lengths of Foxtaur below. Filta and several other ponies clung onto the shattered railings of the careening battlecruiser as it began a lurching descent towards the forest canopy.
Shell...
Shell was getting back up on shivering hooves. He looked up in time to see the Searonese vessel becoming a lone dot on the horizon. Sneering so hard that he nearly foamed at the mouth, the enraged unicorn ran up to the launchpad, hopped into the only available managlider that wasn't falling off the edge, and roared its engines to life.
The interceptor threw Shell forward with a burst of energy. Powering the thrusters to the breaking point, Shell pursued the bounty hunter's vessel as it sped south along the Sapphire Ravine and beyond range of the armada's cannon fire. Shell pumped magic from his horn into the core of the aircraft, watching fitfully as he inched closer and closer to the rear of the slender manaship. He armed the wings of the interceptor and prepared to fire—
Just then, a turret popped loose along the rear of the Searonese vessel. It swiveled about, trained itself on Shell, and fired a thick stream of blue energy.
Shell yanked hard at the controls, struggling to veer the managlider out of harm's way. However, the blasts lopped off his aircraft's wing. He flew into a death spun, growling as he attempted to regain control. He had no choice but to yank the ship down and dive towards a stretch of cliffface untouched by the burning lengths of Foxtaur.
His ship grinded, slid, and shattered upon impact. He leapt off and—with the aid of telekinesis—landed himself safely—albeit roughly—on a patch of loose grass hanging precariously upon the edge of the deep ravine.
There, hyperventilating, the Ledomaritan Prime Enforcer watched as the rogue ship made off with his target... along with his entire plans.
It came out of him at first as a whining noise, but soon he was screaming at the top of his lungs, tossing his hooves to the heavens in unbridled rage as the morning sun burned him to his core.
... Damn.
):(, you're gonna be sore for the content updates while I'm at work...
Also, I may have slightly misjudged Shell, but on advice from ):( himself, I'll withhold final judgement until the final chapter.
And at the last minute--Roarke to the rescue!
...Belle...?
Why? Why won't he fucking die? Please, I don't even care HOW anymore, just kill that fucker! Only one other character in this entire bloody series has shown comparable ability to survive things that should destroy them utterly, and he really needs to stop acting like he's even half as badass as she is.
JUST DIE, DAMMIT.
Well she sure does know how to make an entrance.
Can't say that I didn't see that coming.
2233846
2233985
I guess we need to add him in here
ROARKE!!!
Freaking darn it, Shell. Stop living for once.
DUES EX ROARKE!!(But its not like we didnt see it coming.)
HA HA! The old Han Solo gambit, coming in just in the nick of time to save Rainbow's skin and give old Shell the treatment he deserves. Yee-haw!
IIIIIt's Dashie's Tenth Marathon Evaluation Time!
And here comes Roarke! It looks like Dash got through that metal Seraonese skull of her. Perhaps they'll be friends in the future...Also, Shell, I don't want to hear it. There is NO justification. He truly is insane in this chapter...also, what about Belle? These are my thoughts so far.
-MASH
P.S. So this chapter makes eleven in one day! I think I'll go for thirteen and beat my record of twelve..
Roarke! Thank goodness. I was beginning to have flashbacks to Austraeoh and its lovely little conclusion. But as to Belle and Pilate, not to mention Josho and EE... Will the third installment be split into different sections for the disbanded members, I wonder? Also, Shell needs to die. He can slip on a banana peel or choke on a macadamia nut for all I care, but the bugger needs to bite the bullet. Literally, would be preferable. Well, almost there. Onward!
Thank God my workplace is tucked away in such a solitary corner of the building. Would've been really hard to explain my cheering like that if anybody'd heard it.
1. Fuck you Shell.
2. Where's everyone else?
3. Die, Shell.
4. Yay Roarke!
5. Take an acid bath, Shell.
Heeyyy! Roarke! We've missed you!
Here, you can have these grenades. I don't need them right now.
That's it. I don't know anything anymore. Not whom I like, not who anyone really is, not what anything is all about. I'm so done with the entire universe and then some. I am so done. I'll be in a corner with my favourite teddy and crying my eyes out of anyone should come looking for me.
2281619
You mind if I sit with you a while? I have graham crackers and milk...
This arc has me so fucking frustrated, it isn't even remotely close to humorous.
2253881 That's awesome!
Roarke! Yay! I knew it. Just knew it. Unfortunately, there was no Rainboom. Also, what about Belle and Pilate and Crimson and Josho and Eagle Eye?
-Spirit
It's a good day to die indeed.
YEEEEEEEEEEESSSSS!!!!!!! RRRRROOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRKEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!
TO THE FUCKING RESCUE!!!!!!!!!!111
my god i actually swung my fists in the air...
That's not all the sun will be doing to him
Get my drift?
Shell truly reminded me of Vader here, jumping into a TIE-Fighter and slicing off after his enemy, only to be shot down
Shell: NOOOOOOOO
Big damn heroes indeed
Shell is many things. Unfortunately, tenacious is one of them.
Roarke is back with some thrilling heroics! Hell. Yeah.
Well, assuming these are actually heroics and not just her reacquiring her bounty. But either way it works for short-term.
Haha! Defiance!
But I can see how Innavedr will be about reuniting the broken party:
You got Dash and presumably Roarke in one place, Eagle Eye and Josho in another, and Belle in Pilate in yet ANOTHER.
There's a lot of work left to be done.
7404695
No... Let the fool suffer.
Roarke! I've never been so happy to see a murderous little psychopath before.
(Although it's probably too much to hope she's on RD's side this time. Just on her own, which conveniently opposes Shell's.)
https://media.giphy.com/media/oT0a4Cr3P3xRK/giphy.gif
FINALLY! Return of Roarke!
hahahahaha! Finally broke that bastard!
I've got to wonder why the council wanted him to retrieve Dash quickly, while simultaneously posting a huge bounty on her that would make everyone get in the way. They seem super inept right about now.
Between these two descriptions, I am kind of reminded of this movie sequence for some reason(start around 1:09)
Someone needs to explain to Shell the concept of a Pyrrhic victory, wherein winning costs the very thing being fought for in the first place. He's so willing to sacrifice soldiers and civilians alike in the name of Queen and country that there won't even be a Ledomare left at the end when he's done.
Also, I was quite enjoying all the comments up to this point about Roarke, ranging from "come on, where are you??" to "she flew the coop, she's gone." When you think about it, if the salvation you're hoping for is the return of a character who tried to murder the protagonist not twenty-four hours prior, the word "dire" ceases to adequately describe the situation.
9603907
Might as well try explaining water to a fish.
I guess from this he has never known defeat, or even real setbacks, setbacks he has no plan for, until now. One would expect him to reevaluate things, but I think he is too far into the sunk costs fallacy to turn back, and this will only make him worse.
08/31/2019
16:47 UTC
ROARKE!
See, the main principle behind Chekov’s Gun isn’t actually ‘some things might happen late in the story that are mentioned earlier in the story’. In fact, the overarching idea of Chekov’s Gun is a quote from the guy himself,”If a camera focuses on a wall with a gun on it in the first act, that gun better go off by the second or third.” (To the best of my knowledge) Now, Roarke here is embodying the idea of Chekov’s Gun, she was mentioned in the third or fourth act, I don’t keep track, but finally figuratively ‘went off’ in the 5th (or whatever act we’re on).
So, Roarke had a logical conclusion to come back here, and finally put Shell in a state of foiled plans right now. Unfortunately, this ending is bittersweet, namely, we don’t know if Pilate, 2E, Josho, or Belle are ever coming back, but I would be lying if I didn’t say that Rainbow Dash would try her darndest to find them eventually.
10047422
No Chekov's gun is exactly that. If it was mentioned it should be worth mentioning. That is all
He grinds ponies to snort for pleasure.
He can fly like Starlight now. Nice.
It takes, what, two more books for this fucker to die? If I'm remembering correctly. Can't wait.
GET FUUUUUUCKED!!!!