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Trixie1,054 words
Luna1,249 words
ShiningHill1,951 words
Hollow Shades Part 11,990 words
Hollow Shades Part 21,541 words
Hollow Shades Part 3: The Adventure Returns!1,344 words
Hollow Shades Part 4: The Adventure Re-returns!2,485 words
Hollow Shades Part 5: The Machine!2,342 words
Hollow Shades Part 6: Destroy the Machine!2,661 words
Hollow Shades Part 7: Level Up2,041 words
Battle of Hollow Shades Part 11,452 words
Battle of Hollow Shades Part 21,153 words
Battle of Hollow Shades Part 31,150 words
Battle of Hollow Shades Part 41,461 words
Battle of Hollow Shades Part 51,222 words
Battle of Hollow Shades Part 61,977 words
The Finality of Things2,295 words
The End2,071 words
Epilogue2,080 words

Hollow Shades Part 5: The Machine!

Hollow Shades Grand Finale Part 2.9
Speech Increased To 2.5

Juniper Fields closed the door behind her and sighed deeply. This was it. If she really was going to do this, then there was no backing out after this point. Biting her lip, she toyed with the key to the Mayor's secret vault, where she knew he kept... it. The secret, the key to his wealth and the reason he was still mayor of Hollow Shades after all these years. She'd helped him for so long... but something in the way that creature had spoken moved her. She wanted to be a better pony.

Juniper was afraid, standing there in the lobby of the town hall, staring ahead at the one door she knew led to the cellar, and then to the secret vault hidden deep underground. If she did this, then she knew too that her life as the mayor's assistant was over. Heck, her life may be over, period. She knew what the Mayor was capable of, and it really frightened her. But she wanted to be better, and so she took her first step towards that dreadful door.

She never saw the gooey punch coming.

It came out of nowhere, fast and furious like a bald man in a car, and it smacked her straight in her vampire jaw. It also immediately exploded into a spray of goop and slime, because you know, solids vs liquids. But the damage had been done! Juniper sputtered and gagged as sweet, raspberry-flavored goo-pony goop got in her mouth and eyes.

"It got in my nostrils, too!" she shouted, and slipped on the slimy, rosy trail the goo pony mare had left in her wake, as she infiltrated the town hall unseen!

"Where is my friend's friend, Juniper?!" the goo pony mare shouted and landed a second hit. This one got aaaall up in Juniper's earholes. It was very uncomfortable.

Reeling, Juniper stumbled backwards and landed on her rump with an audible squeak! Almost immediately the goo pony was on top of her, around her, and trying to force her way inside her throat to choke her. It was a most terrifying scene, like watching someone spit out their strawberry smoothie in reverse. But more violent, and if the smoothie was screaming.

"GIVE HIM BACK!"

"No! Waitpleasenotagai-!" With a mouthful of goo-pony firmly wedged between her jaws, Juniper's words turned into stifled mumbling. All around her, the skeleton ponies tried their best to help, but the gooey mare simply slipped and melted between their hooves.

"Tell me! Tell me now!" the goo-pony mare said, forcing herself down Juniper's windpipe more and more, not quite realizing that she needed it to speak, and breath. Not just yet.

"Wait," she said at last, as said realization finally hit her. Juniper was hitting her too, but each pony punch got a little weaker than the last one, until they felt more like little taps. "Ooooh... Right. Air."

With one fluid motion, the goo-pony dislodged herself from Juniper's throat and slid away a few paces. She reformed into her trademarked battle-pony fighting stance, and glared at the sputtering vampire mare.

"Okay, that was a... uh... a warning! Yes, and there's more of that if you don't give him back, like, right now, Juniper!"

Juniper Fields coughed out a chunk of goo the size of an orange and fell flat on her back, staring at the ceiling—with a fierce blush spread across her cheeks—and waited for the ache in her throat to subside enough to be able to speak.

"I am... trying to... help him!" she wheezed out at last, fanning herself with a hoof. "The Mayor... is trying to... kill him!"

The goo-pony gasped. But that could not be! She had to do something. Her toad friend counted on her, and she would not let him down. So, with her newfound resolve newly restrengthened, she stepped forward and planted a hoof firmly down in front of the vampire pony. The look in her eyes screamed 'spill the beans!'. It was a funny look.

"Jelly Squish what the hay!" Juniper spat out another load of goo and struggled to her pony knees. "You could have killed me!"

Jelly Squish squinted her eyes at her. Oh, but she could have! That and more, and Luna knew the vampire pony maybe-kinda-sorta deserved it, too, for all the evil stuff she'd done for the Mayor. But Jelly needed her to upend the kettle. Also, pony jail was a thing, sooo maybe flat-out murder wasn't a very good idea either.

The goo-pony glare intensified—a little something she'd picked up from her friend—and Jelly asked one more time.

"Where is he, Juniper?"

Juniper suddenly felt terribly exposed, like somepony had dropped her in the middle of an archery contest with a great, big target painted on her rump. She wanted to avert her eyes, but found that she couldn't. The way the jelly eyes fixed on hers was almost hypnotic. Cold sweat built up on her forehead and ran down her neck, but when she reached to tug on her bow-tie, she remembered she no longer had it on.

"In there?" she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She raised her shaky hoof and pointed to a broom closet just off to the side. "He's really good at staying still. Like, insanely good."

Jelly Squish opened the closet door, and squee'd with happiness. For there, standing before her in all his might and glory, with a mop leaned against his head, was the Guard! In his vast wisdom, he'd remained perfectly still and silent, and only now broke his silence.

"We need to do something about these vampire attacks," he said, and from the back Juniper cried out in agreement.

"Yes! Let's stop attacking the vampire! Thank you!"

The guard's gaze settled on the goo pony—so potent and full of silent intellect far surpassing that which the common pony could ever hope to comprehend—and Jelly Squish smiled. With him on their side, they couldn't lose. It was on!

***

They were all squished together inside the broom closet, trying against hope to find a semi-comfortable position that didn't involve stepping on anypony's face. They were failing. With her face tightly compressed between the Guard's helmet and the Jelly Squish-coated wall, Juniper groaned.

"Sorry everypony, but my office is literally the only place the Mayor won't suspect," she said.

"Your office is a broom closet?" Jelly Squish's voice echoed all around her. The goo-pony was basically smeared all over the two of them, and the entire room smelled of strawberry.

"Yeh! It's pretty cozy, I know," Juniper wiggled around a bit, just enough to free her hooves and reach for a green crayon. "Alright, so here's the problem..."

The Mayor had a machine. A terrible, powerful machine beyond ponykind's understanding, and he'd been using it to summon gold from other dimensions. Obscene, ridiculous amounts of gold, that could easily flood and ruin Equestria's economy ten times over, and then he world!

"...and he's going to use it to summon a monster to hunt you down," Juniper finished, gesturing with the crayon at the Guard. The entirety of the wall before them was also covered in green scribbles and stick figure drawings, showing all three of them—and a toad, at Jelly's insistence—eating ice-cream.

"By the Gods! What manner of power is that?" the Guard asked, and Juniper shook her head.

"I have no idea," she said, and shuddered. "One day he simply left his office and headed into the woods, and when he came back a few days later, he was changed, like he'd been gone a lot longer. He'd been having a lot of money problems before that, too. But when he came back, he was just loaded up with gold. Nopony knew how, but Pierre just became the richest pony in Hollow Shades overnight."

The great Guard quietly contemplated this for a few moments. Then, without warning, he stepped out of the closet—pushing the two ponies out ahead of him, and startling the skeletons standing guard outside.

"Wait, where are you going?!" Jelly asked, stumbling over herself and Juniper to get to her hooves.

"You can't leave! There might be a huge monster outside trying to eat you!" The vampire pony clung to the guard's boot, desperately trying to hold him back. "Where would you even go?! It's the middle of the day!"

"I mostly deal with petty thievery and drunken brawls. Been too long since we've had a good bandit raid," he said, still advancing with the little pony stuck to his leg.

"You can't be serious! You're going after him?!" the two ponies shouted, perfectly synchronized, eyes as wide as dinner plates. That made our great hero pause and turn to face them, and the sheer power radiating from him was enough to make their pony jaws drop.

"Stormcloaks, Imperials, dragons. Ain't no matter to me what I kill." The guard fixed the two ponies with a penetrating look that dripped determination. "Let them come."

And so, with his trusty sword firmly secured at his waist, and all the courage and bravery of a true son of Skyrim, the guard of myth and legend stepped out the door into the bright morning light, ready to fight!

But Juniper started to sizzle under the sun, so they had to go back for a parasol.

***

The depths of the marsh were usually alive with sounds and noises as varied as there were stars in the night sky, but not today. Around the brave Toad the reeds and foliage barely moved under the weakest breeze, and not a cricket or frog sang its courtly chant at his approach. There were no fish who dared break the surface of the Holy Pond of Froggus III—and all birds and insects had declared an unspoken truce—for today was a solemn day, a day of supplication. Today it was deathly quiet as our valiant Toad parted the tall grass and leapt out onto the Lily Pad of Subjugation, to beg of the Holy Council their mercy.

*Ribbit* he called out to them, careful of the intricate nuances of speech employed in courtly speech. One misstep was all it would take for the Great Toady Ones to take offense.

Silence, for the longest time it reigned, until at last a great figure broke through the thickest part of the underbrush—carried on a massive banana leaf, held aloft on the backs of a small army of opossums—and the massive girth of The Great Grandmaster of the Knights of Toad entered the scene, voluptuous and glorious in all his slimy glory.

*Ribbit* the great toad of eternal corpulence croaked under the weight of his silver crown, and a great choir of voices rose up in an angelic echo of toad voices. *Ribbit! Ribbit!* they chanted, and even one so great as our Toad hero felt shivers run down his toady skin.

*Ribbit* our Toad of legend then ventured, bold as ever, but rash. For his was the way of the Outer Toads, the wild ones, whose power derived from the freedom of the distant and forbidden ponds. He was not skilled in the ways of toad court, and alas, now he must pay for it dearly.

The Great Grandmaster's tongue lashed out in anger and struck our hero across his unblinking eye. It was a mighty blow, powerful enough to make our Toad of humbled pride quiver in his toadiness. But he held his ground, the memory of his fair and gooey maiden, and his tall and mighty friend firmly held in the forefront of his heart.

*Ribbit* he said again, and the Great Grandmaster now heeded his words, though he did so with growing ire. For he was as his ancestors, and the Great Toad Empire had been built on fire and slime. The Grandmaster was not one to be trifled with, and even if our hero had invoked the ancient traditions that now shielded him from The Grandmaster's rage, he still tread on thin lily pads.

*Ribbit* The Grandmaster said, and our Toad hurried to explain his plight with great and poetic eloquence the likes of which had never before, and would never again, grace the great Halls of Toad.

*Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit. Ribbit. Ribbit! Ribbit?* he said, and the entirety of the court went wild with praise and calls for mercy. Toads of all sizes and species rose on their legs and let their great weight strike the ground in unison, to cause such a storm of sound that the entirety of the swamp trembled. As one they cried out *Ribbit!* and our Toad of magnificence and unchallenged eloquence felt his heart rise with emotion.

But alas! The Great Grandmaster was an old and wizened toad of many years. He would not be so easily moved. And so, with a stern and unreadable look in his eyes, The Great Grandmaster groaned, and the rumbling of his toady throat silenced every voice around him instantly. Even the wind ceased at his command.

*Ribbit?* The Great Grandmaster asked, and our Toad of might replied without hesitation.

*Ribbit!*

*Ribbit?* the mighty leader of Toadkind stressed, and his words cut through to our hero's heart like a burning blade. The question stung. It stung his heart, to know that things had come to such a point, and to realize that there could only be one way forward if he truly wished to save his friends.

But could he do it?

A silence befell the entirety of the court. No toad had ever been asked to give up so much, and for such an alien concept as friendship? Truly, what could this be and what value might it hold, to drive a toad of such stature as our Toad of legend to make such a painful sacrifice? But in his heart he already knew the answer to The Grandmaster's question.

Without a doubt, our Toad stood up on all fours, straight and proud.

*Ribbit* he said, and his fate was forever sealed.

Author's Note:

This one's been in the oven for a while now. Monster ponies are tricky, because they're cute, weird, and sticky. But there it is, friends. The ugly truth!

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