Re:Harmony

by starcross7

116 - The Ultimate Cloud Bomber

Surprise barely flinched as her clouds shattered and ignited the entirety of the mini mall around her. She did not just look away from the explosions. She literally walked through explosions unfazed and ignoring the Sky Castle's alarms of oxygen levels rapidly depleting and several breaches opening. It was not like she cared to understand them anyway. They spoke a weird-sounding archaic language the Empress translated on her spare time.

The emergency lights blared red and the sprinklers rained down. Surprise saved at least one oxygen tank and mask for herself, and then huffed in all the necessary gases into her lungs. She floated to the ground level as the columns and walls fell around her to reveal a large open area filled with smoldering debris. Nothing was left standing, and nopony would have survived. She figured that the Sky Castle would handle internal explosions because its seemingly fragile glass and steel walls would buffer against external debris. She wished she would be more destructive, but she was not dumb. She felt a little ashamed for holding back a little, but she needed to preserve this wonderful mall of death, and maybe the Empress would allow her to turn it into her personal arena of death if she succeeded in defeating the rebels.

"B-b-breach repair i-in p-progress. E-equalizing--bzzt--pressure. Oxygen levels r-r-r-bzzt."

Surprise pulled off her mask and smelled the wonderful aroma of ash mixed in with breathable air returning into the ruined mini-mall. Her breath ended in a sigh. She liked that pink earth pony. If only she was a pegasus, she would be a wonderful addition to Pegasopolis. Whelp. Time to take out the rest of the rebels.

The white pegasus felt her wings tingle. She never considered herself the villain, but after reading all those earthian comics she sometimes found in the enemy’s barracks, Surprise knew what was going to happen. Instead of challenging fate, she embraced it with gusto.

She turned around. In her peripheral vision, the rubble in the department store slightly stirred. She saw the smoke and dust vapor parting the middle, and low whirring sound entered her ears.

Surprise did not flinch when a pink blur flew right past her, and then zig-zagged up and down at the other side. She did not hear the wheels of a set of magical inline skates grind against a hard surface. Sounds of miniature jet engines whooshed past her erect ears, and she felt the presence of a warm body reach her heart.

The white pegasus colored herself surprised. Half-surprised, to be exact. Her opponent had one of the Elements of Creation on her hooves. It evolved. Instead of skates, Pinkie Pie now had blazing rocket shoes that zipped her past and around Surprise several times. While normal villains would frown, pout, throw a tantrum, and randomly shoot dead one of their subordinates out of anger, Surprise giggled with glee. She could not contain her excitement when all four of her hooves danced in place.

“I knew it!” Surprise cried happily. “I knew you were able to pull through! I knew you had an additional trick up your sleeve!”

Surprise, without hesitation, erected her wings and gathered a ball of clouds that she hurled at Pinkie Pie’s path. She adjusted the Atmos particle formulation so that her explosive clouds would propel faster after each small explosion, kind of like the earth ponies’ combustion engine or multi-stage rocket technology. It seemed that her clouds caught up to the Pink Wonder, but instead the Element Bearer zipped and zoomed in midair, making instant hairpin turns that would be deemed impossible to almost all pegasi warriors.

The pink blur ascended back up towards the ceiling and dove back down at Surprise, who then hoisted herself up to her hind legs and held up her front legs to block the intended attack. However, she was the one surprised. The Pink Wonder had zipped past the white pegasus and nearly spiraled into the wall before recovering.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Pinkie grinned. “I’m not used to ‘Pinkie Gear Type 2’.”

“Oh, but I’m sure that you’ll get used to it the more we fight,” smiled Surprise. “I’ll admit, I was holding back a teensy bit, hoping that you would pull off something like that. And it all paid off.”

The alarms stopped blaring. The red lights stopped spinning, and the fire sprinklers shut off. The Sky Castle spoke again, proclaiming that oxygen levels were now at normal levels, at least that was what Surprise could gather. She flew towards the other side of the ruined mini mall and opposite of Pinkie Pie whose Pinkie Gear Type 2 comically suspended her upside down. She still had that joyous smile on her face. That’s good. Surprise was happy as well.

“Seems like everything is back to normally normal,” said Surprise, “and now I wanna test your evolved Pinkie Gear with my ultimate technique!”

In pegasi culture, it was expected of warriors to have names of their preferred fighting techniques. Internally, Surprise questioned the reasoning behind this. Some of the most destructive fighting techniques were often kept as a secret, only to be told to the opponent on the verge of death, and very few would survive to tell the tales of such battles. Some names were silly, while others evoked dread.

Surprise never had to name her attacks since most of them killed the ponies she fought, but right on the spot, she initiated Atmos Armageddon. This may be in a smaller scale, but destructive potential was still the same. Already, the Sky Castle wailed and spun its red emergency lights when she formed the clouds all about the enclosed mini mall. Pinkie Pie was fast, and she was likely to dodge every explosive cloud very easily. Pegasi like to fight in open spaces, and Surprise had to treat the pink earth pony as such.

The first explosion started their “race”. Surprise took the air to give chase at the Pink Wonder, using the explosive clouds behind her to propel her faster, though she knew she could not catch up to her opponent. Surprise was faster than most ponies, but she was never known to be a speed demon. She chased Pinkie Pie, lobbing one explosive cloud after another, hoping to direct her somewhere. By now, the Sky Castle moaned once more. The glass ceiling started cracking. The metal walls started warping. Fire sprinklers wept, and the mini mall filled with smoky dust. It was when the Sky Castle started crying louder that Surprise made her attempt to run away.

One of the basic Pegasopolis tenets that running away or retreating were tantamount to death, but Surprise thought of it as tactical redirections. Before she entered the mini-mall, she had seen a long and narrow hallway going to another part of the Sky Castle, and one of its heavy metal doors stared closing down once more due to the imminent damage to this section. The white pegasus used her Atmos Arts to explode her way to very far down that hallway while she lobbed a few more cloud bombs to slow Pinkie down. Surprise eventually made it into the end of the hallway, and when she turned around to land, she became pleasantly surprised that her enemy chased after her. Good.

With a stiff stroke of her wings, Surprise filled the extremely long hallway with layers upon layers of explosive clouds. Immediately, the first one exploded. Then the second. And then the third. And then the fourth. To beat a bad pun to death, Surprise was, once again, surprised. Usually after the second explosion, her opponent would have fallen for good, but this one continued to trigger the explosive clouds. This did not appear to be accidental. It was deliberate, and a quick glance she could see Pinkie Pie flying headfirst towards Surprise with gritted teeth.

Did the clouds have no effect on her? No. Pinkie Pie was going so fast that the “damage” simply rubbed off her, like high speed bullets could pass through a wall of flames like they were nothing. In her many years on the battlefield, she had prayed to the heavens to encounter such an opponent. For a time, she thought it would be the Empress. Even though Pinkie Pie was an earth pony, Surprise was just as ecstatic. She could not contain her euphoria right as she laughed madly from the bottom of her heart. Pulling the Atmos Particles from the next section, she fashioned a thick layer of explosive cloud on her right front hoof, which was way more than usual. Who cares if she lost her entire front leg and shoulder in this punch? This was the greatest battle high she’s having!

“BRING IT ON, PINKIE PIE!” Surprise yelled. “GIMME EVERYTHING YOU GOT!”

Covered with soot and dust, Pinkie Pie finally exploded through the last few barriers of the cloud bombs, and Surprise, at the last minute threw out her new technique, the Ultimate Cloud Bomber.

She missed. In a span of a few seconds, Pinkie Pie had slid underneath her, grabbed her hind legs, and spun her around in one giant swing. The Pinkie Gear Type 2 spun Surprise faster than the Dizzitron’s highest theoretical setting, and then she was let go. Surprise flew involuntarily through an expansive space until she hit what looked like to be an odd circular arrangement of Saddle Arabian mannequins with a pole striking through their torsos. This round and ornate contraption attempted to come to life, before it fizzled and died, leaving only blinking lights and a pleasant tune crackling through its speakers.

Ow. Internal bleeding everywhere it seems. Can’t move. Everything is in pain. That’s a whole lotta broken bones, and despite it all, Surprise was happy, and even with all her muscles burning, she could not resist smiling. Surprise resisted passing out in the hopes of seeing her opponent at least one more time. Pinkie Pie rolled up to her with a sad look on her face as her Pinkie Gear reverted to its golden necklace form.

Please don’t look at me that way, Surprise lamented. That was not how warriors should down upon their defeated opponents. If she had any honor, or at least some knowledge of pegasi culture, Pinkie should finish her off.

“Hey!” said Pinkie. “I found cotton candy! Want some?”

Cotton. Candy. In spite being near death so many times, this pink pony somehow found cotton candy here in the Sky Castle. The utter ridiculous of this situation should be insulting to pegasi warrior culture, and yet Surprise gave up resisting her cracked smile. Instead of laughing out of unbridled euphoria, the white pegasus laughed with joyous innocence. She laughed and laughed, and eventually her opponent started laughing alongside her as tears of joy streamed from Surprise’s eyes. For all her life, she thought that only fighting made her feel good, but after fighting this pink earth pony, she found another way.

The laughter between the two suddenly stopped. Pinkie Pie’s tail twitched, and despite broken wings, Surprise felt a rapid imbalance of Atmos Particles in the air. The heat in this area rose suddenly.

“Pinkie, you gotta run!” cried Surprise. “Now!”

Too late. The flames of hell surrounded Pinkie Pie and Surprise, and fiery rope twisted around Pinkie’s neck. The pink pony gagged and fought to release herself from the biding fire rope. She quickly collapsed unconscious right as the angry dragon-armored Empress emerged from behind the flames.

Comments

[moonlit scribe]

No! You can't! Not ANOTHER cliffhanger! Nooooooooooooo!

[Chyre]

7787789

This story's geography has many cliffs. Cliffs on top of cliffs on top of cliffs!

[moonlit scribe]

7788250 There'll probably be more to come...

[Dlaf rferg]

Damn, that was an epic fight.

[FiredragonX]

That was epic!

-then reads the ending-

Oh boy...

[GMZ_Casper]

C&Cs:
...so that it her explosive clouds would propel faster after each small explosion...
> Remove ‘it’.
...though she knew she knew she could not catch up to her opponent.
> Remove one of the ‘she knew’, unless you did it on purpose, which you should then put a comma after the first and second ‘knew’.
“BRING IT ON PINKIE PIE!” Surprise yelled. “GIMMIE EVERYTHING YOU GOT!”
> Comma after ‘ON’. As for ‘GIMMIE’, you probably did that on purpose, but just in case you didn’t, ‘GIMME’.