Cantering Death

by Scriber

Interlude: Lyra & Bon-Bon

"On your left!" the mint green unicorn cried sharply as she dodged a lumbering mass barreling towards her. Her friend, a white-coated earth pony with a flowing purple and pink mane, cursed loudly and pivoted on point, delivering a perfectly executed sweeping kick with her front legs which knocked the infected to the ground. Lyra and Bon-Bon had to shout to hear each other’s directions to be heard over the din: unicorns, pegasi and earth ponies scattered in every direction around them, many screaming in terror as they fled the onslaught. Joining the cacophony were the grunts and groans of the infected, some spouting clipped, guttural gibberish as they lumbered after the fleeing townsponies. Outside of the occasional friendly spar between the two, tonight was the first night in years that they had actually fought with the intention of harming another pony, infected or otherwise.

The unicorn and the earth pony had met one another roughly a decade ago while overseas in Yokeyo. They studied under the same sensei at Yokeyo’s prestigious - and exclusive - Filly’s Dojo for Maretial Arts. As the weeks and months wore on, the two quickly realized through the intense regimen that they were without question the most gifted students at the Dojo; their skills remained unmatched by any of their peers, and the more often they sparred one another, the faster they became accustomed to each pony’s style and technique. They learned from each other, Lyra mimicking and eventually mastering Bon-Bon’s unique style of fancy hoof-work while Bon-Bon learned from Lyra how to efficiently strike at pressure points and weak spots on a pony’s body. The two friends had both graduated at the top of their class, a rather unusual occurrence given the simple fact that the Dojo never had two valedictorians before. They went on to become masters of hoof-to-hoof combat, living legends in their own rites as they traveled exotic, foreign lands together to compete and showcase their talents.

The fluid motions of physical combat quickly returned to the two ponies as they fought; though it had been a good few months since their last spar together, the long and rigorous hours of their extensive training had ingrained a muscle memory deep within the cores of their very beings that was nearly impossible to lose. Lyra brought a tremendous chop down on the horn of a charging infected unicorn, snapping the enamel in half with ease. The infected unicorn’s horn clattered to the cobble, jagged and broken. With a high-pitched cry that came more from within the pit of her stomach than the top of her lungs, she followed up with a dizzying flurry of punches to the midsection and neck of the infected, dazing it temporarily. Without missing a beat, she tucked her extremities into herself and rolled to the side, scooping up the severed horn in one continuous motion. Before the infected had a chance to recover, she sprang back to her hooves and drove the tapered tip of the horn through the top of her assailant’s agape mouth, warm blood spurting from the oral would and washing over her front hoof as it punctured the brain sac with a barely audible snap! that was felt more than actually heard. Sealing the deal, Lyra withdrew her front hoof from the teetering infected unicorn’s mouth and did a backflip, striking the bottom half of the jaw once with each hoof, driving the horn through the top of the skull. Tiny clumps of grey matter stuck around the base of the devastating wound, the blood-covered enamel protrusion now a few inches back from where it had originally sat just seconds before.

“Lyra! Behind you!” Bon-Bon shouted as the infected Pegasus she had previously engaged tackled the off-kilter Lyra, sending the two toppling to the ground. The earth pony dashed over to the two now struggling on the cobble and slid on her side, not entirely unlike a baseball player sliding home; back legs first, her back left hoof connected with the side of the Pegasus’ face. The force of the blow sent the infected reeling, tumbling several times end over end as Lyra kicked her hind legs into the air and righted herself in an impressive display of athleticism.

Had they not been fleeing for their very lives, anypony who had come upon the scene would have surely stopped to gawk at the seemingly innocuous pony friends, masterfully taking on and taking down any infected that crossed their paths as they shrieked and cried wavering kung-fu howls. The sounds of hoof-strikes and snapping bones joined the swirling sounds which traveled freely through the cool night air as the infected continued their assault on the two maretial artists, drawn to and enraged by the sounds of their efforts to defeat all who had the audacity to oppose them. As the virus and violence spread throughout Ponyville, the infected amassed in the market square as they grew in numbers. Where there were initially only roughly a half dozen that had been the source of the terror in the normally sleepy town, as more and more ponies fell, so too did the infected grow in numbers. Lyra and Bon-Bon were entirely focused on the two or so combatants that they each engaged simultaneously; as such, they only barely noticed the increasing volume of the groans and grunts which surrounded them.

“Heee-YAHH!!!” A roundhouse kick snapped the neck of an infected earth pony, its head swiveling nearly three hundred and sixty degrees from the impact.

“Hoooahhh!!!” A well-placed uppercut unhinged a Pegasus’ jaw, the lower half flapping uselessly as its owner staggered backward.

“Take that, you fucking monster!” Lyra cursed as a downward blow absolutely shattered the skull of one of her combatants, squishy brain matter punctured by sharp shards of bone. The infected collapsed to the cobble, unmoving.

“Lyra!” Bon-Bon chided, “Watch your language!”

“For Celestia’s sake, Bon-Bon, now’s not the-” she paused briefly to dodge another charging infected, “-time to reprimand a pony on her foul mouth!” Bon-Bon shot her a coy sideways glance, grinning as she stiff-armed the same infected that had turned and tried to charge the earth pony. She didn’t even wait for the infected to crash to the ground before she drove her two front hooves into its neck, crushing the windpipe.

“There, that takes care of that,” Bon-Bon said with an air of finality. The two friends, no longer seeing any infected ponies in their immediate field of vision, turned to look at one another and smiled briefly. They were back in their element: it had been far, far too long since they had been in any real danger, and the adrenalin junkies relished in the waves of raw energy that cascaded through them. Their smiles, however, were short lived as each pony saw what lurked behind the other’s back. The two ponies spoke two words simultaneously:

“Oh, shit.”

Comments

[Big-Mac-115]

I saw the word "zombies" and immediately started reading. And I'm glad I did. A very good story, well done! Keep it comin'!

[Papillon Rose]

I want to see this animated. In comic form. Something. That was AWESOME. And it broke up the tension of the story, which is honestly starting to scare the shit out of me. >_<

[zoop]

Zombie ponies.
Kung-fu ponies.

Good Christ, you've thought of everything.

Good story, but I believe I've spotted a couple typos. "believe you me" in chapter 1 and "heard" instead of "head" in chapter 2.

[Scriber]

4108
Gah! Thanks for pointing those out, I've gone and fixed them.

These are all the emotions I've felt so far during this series, please make more.

When I read that interlude, all I could think about was the movie "Tokyo Zombie" . . .
If you had said anything about Judo . . . it HAD to been a reference, if that were the case.

Yokeyo
-Good world-building. Also, Lyra and Bon-Bon as elite martial artists... awesome! But sadly I can't see it for one simple reason; that level of skill requires an intense amount of dedication, it must be the driving passion of an individual's life... and Ponies wear their passions on their flanks. So unless you can explain how their cutie marks somehow actually represent something related to physical excellence...

4571 ooo i know i know they can do it because there lyra and bon bon ( you try to object) I HAVE SPOKEN

WWZ Equestria, eh?

4188 it made you feel like and AND ? wow...