The Arising Cartoon Pony

by Darkonshadows

We'll Met Again

“I swear, we should put a tracking device on that girl or at least a leash… cartoon characters may always be trouble, but she’s our little Screwball and we probably wouldn’t have her any other way right?” Khronozooie lamented as Banjo was groaning with his right paw over his face.

Chaos just sloshed something about how funny he found the situation and performed a form of chuckling, that pony lived up to his namesake.

(Rocket Knight Adventure’s stage 1-2 music; I like to call it ‘Across the Waters’ for reference.)

There I sat wandering how I ended up in this situation looking at the city on the horizon. I was sitting on a missile flying across the sky and I had to wonder what Banjo, Chaos and even Khronozooie are thinking right now. Well that’ll teach them to let me near buttons and not letting me touch them without watching me carefully to make sure I didn’t as my curiosity got the better of me near the parked Cerberus Alpha. While the more mature members of our party made a plan of approach, being Banjo and Khronozooie. I think Khronozooie was slowly winning the argument of just rush in and blow lots of stuff up, something I’d suspect my mom would exactly do were she not the one needing a rescue.

The next thing I remember is the rest of my body snapping and catching up with my limb that clung to the missile. When my body caught up we were both suddenly spinning in mid-air wildly shaking both of us up a lot and the thing expanded to the size it was now. I guess it’s just part of my cartoon heritage I think that I managed to straighten out in mid-air and latch onto the missile for dear life.

So here I sat with a grin on my face as the wind was whipping my mane back and wondering how this was going to turn out… my mother was in that vast cityscape and most likely the very large ominous building in the center in the distance. I’m also guaranteed a long fall and or to get caught in an explosion when this missile I’m on finally goes up. I wasn’t really all too worried about all this, even if I didn’t survive the fall or if my propeller hat stopped working in mid-air which wasn’t likely as it had a one pony capacity and I was only one pony. I really did hope that the other’s would catch up with me quickly, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen given I saw more of those Clancer things in goofy machines marching through the arctic zone place when I passed over.

Meanwhile in Clancer Empire City preparing for the approaching missile, a Met with the odd model number of six-zero-zero-W-P-V sat at the radar station looking at the missile and got a visual of something sitting on top of it.

The creature known as a Metool or Met was a small dark grey or black colored two footed walking head robot that had a semi-impenetrable hard hat that almost always comes in yellow with a small black cross on the front of it. This one was especially abnormal for a common garden variety Megaman staple character. It set off an alert like it should have and then rushed off to parts unknown as the anti-air defenses came online.

Back to the missile that Screwball was riding on, it was slowly approaching the city as things started to light up below her.

Screwball felt a left ear twitch, right ear twitch and it ended with a full body shudder… something unexpected and unusual was about to happen! She honestly started understanding that her twitches meant something important and was not just her chaos magic acting up, it didn’t scare her that she understood them or that they came at random. It was just Screwball being herself and she accepted that fact quite well.

What Screwball didn’t accept was that a unicorn would appear right in front of her; she really wondered how a unicorn could time such a feat as to appear in front of her thousands of feet above the ground on a fast moving missile which she was promptly knocked off of? Yeah she didn’t think it was coincidence and somebody with cosmic powers was probably smiling at her considering this moment in time, well she didn’t know how else she was going to get off the missile as it felt like her legs were glued to it anyway.

It was a good thing she was knocked off the missile too as seconds later hundreds of lasers and other missiles were angling at the now pilotless pony lacking missile.

I was disoriented and had to think fast, the unicorn that had suddenly flashed into my face had been knocked out by a collision with my skull to hers; thankfully I avoided being speared by her horn. Wait the unicorn was female? Well yes, but now wasn’t the time to focus on the unicorn as she would die if they hit the ground at the speeds they were going, Screwball had extra lives so it wasn’t her problem but very much so for the pony she collided with. She reached out with her hooves and wrapped them around the unicorn’s torso and started up her hats propeller which barely slowed their fall at all, but at least it was progress.

Screwball understood if she could barely get any lift with banjo a heavy honey bear even if temporarily, she would get better lift with a much lighter pony. They were slowing down; nowhere near enough to be less then fatal should they finally hit the ground. Screwball really didn’t like the idea of a life ending in her hooves and was quickly trying to think of a way to save the pony in question that probably would have died from the fall normally had she not hit Screwball in the first place which is why she didn’t think this was a coincidence.

Okay Screwball, think you’re a cartoon character, you’re a chaos born pony… what could you possibly… wait chaos born? That’s it! But did she or it have enough power to work? Even if it didn’t she had to think of something silly to do like hit the brakes five feet above the ground or something, cartoon characters could do that right? Not that looking down helped the fact that they were still rather rapidly approaching the city at an angle and its defenses had finally turned to fire missiles and lasers up at her.

Screwball was exceedingly lucky that both the Clancer and Reploid forces weren’t good shots with lasers and were aiming at her instead of where she was going to be. The anti-air defenses running on ancient ‘missile command’ protocols fortunately couldn’t get any missiles locked onto her, but this was because someone had recently sabotaged it. All attempts to nail the pony with fast flying explosives failed because the one that performed the sabotage knew the laser defensive grid was a joke against small quick moving targets.

Speaking of which, the Met known as 600WPV watched the sky in honest horror through binoculars, ignoring the very fact that Met’s don’t have arms to even hold them to its eyes. There were now two ponies falling from the sky. It certainly hadn’t seen that on the monitors a minute ago and it seemed the pony with the propeller hat was having a hard time steering their fall. Taking in their velocity alongside incoming vector, they were set to land in the highly protected ride armor spawning factory area which used to be just a Clancer mechanized weapons spawn point.

The Met quickly ducked down into its hat and when it stood up it had determined eyes and the binoculars disappeared to parts unknown. 600WPV quickly charged off to hopefully help them should they survive the harsh landing and what was waiting for them there when they did.

Screwball quickly reached under her hat and pulled out a yellow emerald. Closing her eyes tight, she hoped it had enough juice to stop their fall. With a blink in three bright blinding flashes that engulfed the two ponies, soon they were somewhere else.

(Music end)

Screwball slowly opened her eyes when she felt that they both dropped onto something that had immediately softened upon impact… looking down she and the other pony were sitting in a pile of dust. Blinking to herself, Screwball had seen the Clancers turning to dust multiple times so the fact that she and the unicorn were sitting in a pile meant that… well they killed one and landed safely but where were they?

Looking around they were in the city proper and on one of the seemingly vast empty streets and in front of her and the unconscious pony were two Clancers wearing cowboy hats that were staring blankly at her. They both held up their arms which were promptly morphed into laser cannons, pointing them directly at the unconscious pony causing Screwball’s eyes to narrow. They’d seriously shoot at an innocent pony or what she thought might be innocent pony that was out cold?

A slow flying blast of energy and one quick grab and roll meant yes they’d shoot first as they certainly weren’t asking questions. She had dodge five more shots while quickly lifting the unicorn’s weight onto her back which wasn’t easy as she was grazed by at least two of them, the weight wasn’t the problem so much as the space the unicorn took up. Their arms morphed back to normal and they slowly charged forward while their arm cannon transformations recharged.

Screwball couldn’t fight like this and watch out for the pony on her back; she also couldn’t very well escape either. The best she could do was projectile vomiting in this situation, she inhaled through her nose and a sphere slid up her throat, her cheeks bulged and she spat a green baseball into the face of one of the Clancer’s blowing it into a pile of dust. The other one continued to charge her and she didn’t have any more time for another baseball grenade, instead it was shattered to dust by a circular blast of yellow energy.

“Well that went much better than I was expecting.” The mechanical synthesized feminine voice said causing Screwball to turn to Met 600WPV.

Screwball tilted her head and asked the question of what the thing was expecting.

“Well we’re right near the ride armor factory; I’m just surprised security isn’t already… Screwball, start running…” The eyes that widened in fear under the helmet caused Screwball to not look behind her, instead she immediately chose to start into a cartoon enhanced speedy gallop leaving behind a small smiling dust cloud shaped like herself. That dust cloud was suddenly dissipated by the sudden five fingered fist of a chimera model ride armor punching straight through it, no extra jump jets like in the rabbit model and was the most basic of the ride armors. Its primary function was as a cargo loading robot and it had quite a bit of functionality with its grasping hands to crush things in its grip as much as pulp anything it punches.

The pilot of the ride armor sent its machine forward ignoring the Met with the label 600WPV as it turned and ran down a different street in the hopes of cutting off the pony before she got too lost or killed. This was a good time to get its vehicle, think of a way to drag two ponies out of harm’s way and call in for backup it now needed. Oh developers this was going to be a huge headache.

Screwball was pretty fast in avoiding the fist by quite a large margin but she wasn’t going to outrun that machine for long as it was starting to catch up her even now after she had turned a street corner. She almost thought she heard familiarity in that helmet robots voice when it said her name, but she had never met anything like it or had she? That wasn’t something to focus on when you had an endangered pony draped across your back.

The ride armor slid around the corner and started walking until it could get its skate ability off cool down. The ponies down the street were doomed when it went to slide in for a deadly punch.

Screwball continued running, but she wasn’t about to outpace the thing forever knowing how fast they could go from the canyon ambush. The pony on her back wasn’t as heavy as she could be but that had to be a side effect of this realm boosting her physical strength. She could only do good sprints in small bursts and she was too low on chaotic energy to perform another Chaos Control or as she called it the Chaos Blink with the emerald. She didn’t believe this was the only walker that was going to give chase to her. When all else fails quick wits, crazy acrobatic stunts and wild card ploys!

Screwball immediately stopped running at an intersection and waited as the chimera ride armor charged at her from behind. Looking behind herself she waited and dived forward out of the way of two, three spiked spinning cylinders as they both demolished the ride armor before retracting. The pony was immediately up and quickly galloping as she now had two ride armors on her flank, there were more on the way by the familiar sounds of incoming hawk ride armors.

Screwball took a right at the next street and was wanting to get far away from that noise as she didn’t have any means to combat heavily armored rocket firing vehicles and her throat was not an on demand projectile spamming machine gun. She had to find a way to quickly lose those spinning drill launching ride armors which were known to be the kangaroo models.

“Over here, this way!” Screwballs attention was turned to the waving foot of the Met in an alleyway on her left and she immediately turned into the alleyway.

The two kangaroo ride armors decided to stop at the entrance to the alley and had back up moving to cut the pony off.

“Look we don’t have much time Screwball, put this HUD device on the side of your head and follow the waypoints I set up for you on the mini-map in the lower right corner. Pay special attention to the FOF system. The red dots are foes and the others can be explained later.” The Met lifted a strange device to Screwball who took it in her left hoof. “I’ve already called for help; make sure you lose any foe labeled pursuers before you reach that final beacon. Hold on while I give you an opening!”

It was strange looking but as soon as I placed it at the side of my head, a strange rectangular image soon slid across my eyesight and I was suddenly seeing everything differently. I believe this would be considered First Pony Shooter mode, given I have a targeting reticule wherever my eyes were focused, In the lower left corner was a health bar representing my current state of health which was relatively good and below it was a strange black bar that read three percent and was slowly climbing. In the lower right corner I saw the blue dot running out of the alleyway and the red dot with an arrow turned to the thing currently identifying itself as Met 600MPV whose arrow was pointing towards it. Soon the Met’s arrow spun around in place and then the red dot soon moved along and then the arrow turned back and came to the purple dot; looking in front of me I realized I was that dot.

“Go now; I don’t know how long that will keep them distracted.” The Met ran out of the alleyway from where I entered and stopped to twirl again before moving past the two ride armor. I now knew they were called ‘kangaroo’ or that’s what they identified as. I really didn’t think they looked like kangaroos given they were large walking metal contraptions with painful looking pointy things on them that spun and launched off of them connected to chains.

I carefully moved out of the alleyway that the Met just gave me an opening to escape from and I watched the bottom right corner of the screen. I quickly started moving to the right and down the street and made a left down another street watching as the red dots were moving around everywhere on the circle in comparison to my purple dot.

I was staying on course for the first waypoint when I started to notice an interesting trend; every waypoint I went to the red dots would quickly be drawn away by two other dots that were green. By the time I reached the fifth waypoint I felt something stirring on my back as explosions sounded in the distance. This wasn’t good, if the pony panicked then that would draw attention to us.

“Uh… where am… mph…” The pony’s eyes opened widely as Screwball quickly threw a hoof over her mouth and looked around the next corner, three of those things were slowly moving down the street.

They hadn’t spotted Screwball peaking around the corner yet; two identified as chimera and the last was something new and looked dangerously sleek called an eagle. All the other things looked bulky in comparison to this thing and she didn’t want to be shot by whatever came from that cannon that was one of its arms.

I turned back to the pony that I quickly slid off my back, held a hoof up to my mouth shushing her and pointed to an alleyway a few feet back the pony looked at me confusedly as I went back to the corner and peered around. They were definitely closer and had stopped at the cross roads down the street; I turned back to the pony and asked her to wait there.

“How are you…?” Screwball quickly shushed the pony telling her that they were currently in danger and could talk later about how she can talk without vocalizing.

Slowly I let a bulge slide up my throat and with a cough I had a pink baseball in my right hoof, well it’s about time I started using my Rebound Strikers. I switched it over to my left hoof and took a few steps back. I turned a hard look to the unicorn making sure she stayed there.

Soon I was charging forward to dive sideways and with a flick of my hoof I sent the baseball sailing in a corkscrew. It elongated as it flew and caught fire just before it hit the right chimera and rebounded into the eagle’s back and then struck the other chimera bouncing off of that. Both the chimeras exploded yet the eagle only seemed to have taken minimal damage; it was definitely an upgrade to the rest of these bulky walking machines.

I stayed laying there on my side for second as the eagle’s energy cannon charged up and my HUD started blaring warning signals to my eyes. I quickly got to my hooves and dove around the corner as it released a blast of three energy spheres at me. My left front left leg jerked slightly and her right knee started itching… imminent pain! I immediately put my back to the wall of the nearby structure I had leapt out from behind. The spheres sharply turned the corner barely missing me by the tip of my now slightly singed mane; I gave a toothy grin and felt a sweat drop appear on the side of my head.

Huh… so the twitches didn’t just mean it was going to always happen exclusively, well that was good to know.

Screwball backed up towards the alleyway where she told the unicorn to stay put as the roar of the engines from the flying machine was heard flying towards her position. Screwball didn’t relish the thought of fighting that thing in close combat nor did she like her bean dogs without vegetarian chili spices on top of the relish. Her mind could go to such strange places at times.

The unicorn poked her head out as she watched Screwball pull a baseball bat out from under her hat and took it in a strong grip with her front hooves in a standing position. She wondered what was going on and was curious about their predicament, and then a strange machine quickly flew around the corner to hover in front of them.

Screwball had no time to charge her bat up for a swing to knock back the energy blast the eagle rider armor launched, it landed short of directly hitting her. She was still blown clear off her hooves by the resulting shockwave. She also lost grip of her homerun bat, she really didn’t feel like abusing her throat with any more projectiles today or even had the chaos energy to use one.

The unicorn didn’t know what that thing was or where she happened to be, but it was decidedly not a good thing to be in front of like the strange earth pony. She had to help her, but before the unicorn could even think of a way to lend aid a shout was heard coming down the street.

“Incoming!” Screwball rolled out of the way of a blazing red object as it blurred past and shot into the air to slam into the flying machine causing it to explode. A small one wheeled vehicle fell from the quickly disappearing shattered remains of the enemy machine; it looked like a red armor plated wheel with eyes.

“Come on Screwball; grab your friend we have to keep moving! I’ll guide in you from here; I just hope my cover wasn’t blown when I did that. Come Wheelie!” The small one wheeled machine quickly rolled over to the Met as it leapt into the air and onto the vehicle snuggly wrapping its feet around the armored top portion.

“Hold on, what’s going on here?” The unicorn didn’t get any response other then Screwball running to get her bat back under her hat. She was roughly grabbed and shouldered by the earth pony as she ran by on her two legs following the Met.

“It seems Screwball understands we have no time to talk right now, we’ll be safer once we reach my base of operations.” The Met steered the wheel machine for home base and hopefully an explanation for what two cartoon ponies were doing in such a dangerous place. If the Met were compromised then quite a few of the other Mets it made friends with were going to be in trouble and likely scrapped.

Two shadows in the central building of the city stood there watching the screen. They were currently talking about the failed operations to slow down Banjo and his team, it didn’t seem like that would work as there was more than Banjo apparently breaching Clancer Empire City.

“It’s impossible they can’t be here already.” The posh shadow said, but apparently a missile had flown over the city and then reports of heroes launching random attacks on their patrols came about.

A third figure came sliding into the room, the short stumpy one.

“They aren’t, my arctic combat squads were just totaled by them. They’ll be here soon and there’s no stopping them.” The short figure was quickly getting panicky.

“I’ll prepare the fleet they can’t possibly take down everything. If I’m right, we’re about to come under attack if that probe into the city earlier wasn’t a clue.” The posh shadow stalked out of the room followed by its compatriots. “We just need to throw everything we have at the heroes and make sure to secure our prisoner until ‘they’ arrive for the pickup. We have to hunt down the intruders already in the city and take them out!”

“We’re not going to survive this I just know it and when they do get here and let Kazooie loose we’re all going to fry, not that I’m a quitter or anything. I’ll search the city for those intruders.” The tall lisping shadow said before dashing off.

“We’re fighting a losing battle and you know it. It’ll be like Megaman X all over again, especially when that other Kazooie launches an assault on our base and releases the first one.” The short shadow said before slipping off to prepare the base defenses personally.

“Hmm...” The posh shadow started to slowly meander towards the hangar. They didn’t get any visuals or identifications on the heroes in the city, but they were definitely army killer level to have caused so much damage in so little time. They had punctured a few holes in defenses of the city without being caught on camera by any of their Reploid forces or they destroyed them too fast to even send back visuals. The evil Clancers were just willing cannon fodder for their goals and were of no mind to him as long as they put up something of a struggle. If the shields on Kazooie’s cell fell for even a second she’d instantly escape and there would be no stopping that bloody crow or catching her off guard again.

“All forces on high alert! Double... no... triple the defenses around the lower levels.”

Author's Note:

The unicorn is not an OC and the Met has met Screwball before.