Immortal Smoke
Face to Face
A My Little Pony Fanfiction by Tencentfriend
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing, not even this laptop that’s on loan.
Immortal Smoke
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“…Pinkie Pie said whatever she was shuddering about was a,” Twilight Sparkle interrupted her own lecture to cough, not noticing that Applejack had vacated her spot next to her and had started slowly backing away from her. Something really, really big was rising out of the bog. “…Doozy and, cough cough, the only doozy here is how right I am!” Twilight resumed her victory monologue, only to cough a bit more from the putrid odor that had started permeating the bog.
Applejack trembled. Whatever that thing was, it wasn’t done rising out of the bog yet. That monster was so huge and had three- oh my stars, it’s got another head.
“Uh, Twi….light?” Twilight Sparkle ignored her. Applejack wandered away from Twilight and stepped next to her other less oblivious friends and huddled close to them in a fruitless bid for herd safety.
“Pinkie's made a lot of predictions today but,” Twilight stopped again with another round of coughing. “Ugh! What is that smell?” She swung her head around to formalize her attempt at identify the smell. She wasn’t actually paying very much attention to what was registering in her corneas, or anything else aside from her gloating. Otherwise she would have noticed the enormous hydra still in the process of surfacing, or the fact that her audience wasn’t listening to her or even looking anywhere that wasn’t fifty hands over, and getting higher, the top of her head.
“But what we've shown here is that there's no point in believing, cough, anything you can't see for yourself!” Twilight finished her monologue, utterly unperturbed by her lackluster audience. Twilight was very used to talking to very few individuals, and by very few it usually meant one. That one individual was often herself. The one other most acquainted with Twilights speeches and, thus, the same who would have most experience in distracting her from them, spoke.
“W-well then, see what’s b-b-behind you Twilight!”
Spike took unusual care into putting emotion into his voice. It usually only took a snappy, deadpan, almost certainly sarcastic, quip to make Twilight irritated enough to respond. Twilight turned around, linguistic armory fully cleaned, oiled, and ready to snap off any number of intelligent, witty retorts in response to a variable number of situations that Spike deemed enough to serve as a counter-point to her most excellent lecture.
By Celestia’s golden hooves, that is hideous. Twilight spoke within her own mind.
There was an inordinate amount of hideousness in front of her eyes. Of course, this wasn’t the first time actually seeing this hydra, her mind just didn’t think it was very relevant to her lecture previously, and, thus, classified it under ‘not relevant to smug lecture symphony in E minor’. Now that Spike had so helpfully highlighted the fact that there was a known ponyeater around, especially one so rare, it fully justified the belief Pinkie Pie had in her Pinkie sense. Specifically that, yes, there would be indeed a ‘doozy’ that would happen at Froggy Bottom Bog. The existence of a hydra (supposedly extinct), much less a female broodmother (females were rare, broodmothers far rarer), here (they were usually in much warmer climate), much more less it being actually awake (they only wake once for two weeks every few years to feed), broke Twilight Sparkles inner skeptic and, simultaneously, kneeled her inner statistician over and violated her many, many times.
“I see it, but I don’t believe it!” With her lecture ended prematurely; Twilight Sparkle‘s inner sarcasm burrowed back deep in her subconscious, and hid there along with her highly trained school of mind-hamster-slaves with their mind-hamster-slave wheels. The mind-hamster-slaves, so used to working eighteen hour shifts, cheered inside their shared burrow and radioed the aggressor alert. An arthritic aging hack of a mongoose reared its way out of the adjacent hole, needing to kick the door in a few times, the door being so rarely used. The venerable mongoose, in charge of Twilight Sparkle‘s inner fight or flight response, furiously waved its stick in the air very slowly, and roared with a fury that would’ve been far bested by Fluttershy during that week when she had laryngitis.
Twilight Sparkle‘s ears pressed to the sides of her head, her eyes opened wide and she fled faster than she had ever fled before, with the sole exception of that time she had failed her test in magic kindergarten. She had thought, at the time, that it had been a terrible, terrible dream, and had merely had to close herself from reality long enough for the dream to end. She was found a week later, halfway to Whinnyeapolis, in a hideout completely made of tinfoil, screaming incomprehensible gibberish at herself. She had another, less major, breakdown when it was carefully explained to her that, no, it was not a dream, but that there was a mistake and that the teacher had graded her test incorrectly, and that she had not failed her test in magic kindergarten. Nopony had the piping hot, spicy, cast iron cajones that were minimally required to tell her that she had gotten a ninety-nine and not her usual hundred. The Twilight Sparkle of today is slightly more reasonable.
“Is that a hydra?” Pinkie Pie trembled, staring at the hydra looming over everypony. This wasn’t the first time she’s seen a hydra, it also wasn’t the first time Pinkie’s been at Froggy Bottom Bog and had seen her.
My knee is really pinchy.
Demonstrating slightly more control of her own faculties, Applejack came to a fairly reasonable conclusion, and, beacon of honesty that she was, voiced her opinion.
“Who cares? Run!” Following Applejack and Twilights spoken and unspoken suggestion, Fluttershy and Spike also turned and got the heck out of dodge.
Pinkie started backing up; fully intent on following, when she’d made the mistake of looking up and making eye contact. Meeting the reptilian pupils of the third hydra head, her entire body froze.
Oh no…
“Pinkie, come on!” Twilight cried out. Twilight glanced back, shouting to the pink mare when Pinkie failed to start running. Pinkie had been entranced by the vison magic of the hydra’s third head, frozen in place against her will.
The hydra had caught her.
Pinkie was petrified, she remembered this. Being terrified, completely under the power of the hydra’s gaze, unable to move a muscle. She’d remembered the hydra opening its maw and lunging at her. The pressure on her tail, where Twilight gnashed her teeth on it and yanked, and how the hydra head grew less large and farther from her, how she was pulled away, away, away from that monster.
Oh Celestia, Twilight, I know I’ve always been a burden. I don’t even know if you even like me that much here. But please, please, please pull me away like you always do when I get caught.
Pinkie Pie struggled desperately against the gaze of the third hydra head, her own head mirroring its gentle sways, literally spellbound by its gentle seeming eyes. Her body protested against her, held her firm. She wanted to leap away, to run, to gallop and get away from here. She remembered Twilights subsequent lecture on hydra and their muscle-locking gaze after their getaway. How, while wearing head-hats, Twilight talked about how she realized that Pinkie had her movement locked by the hydra, and how she knew she had to go back to physically pull her away, the hydra‘s vision magic being impermeable to unicorn magic. How, following every instruction in the “Ancient Monsters and associated Manic Marathons Manual”, Twilight kept her eyes to the ground and ran, and ran, until she spotted her friends poofy tail, bit down on her friends tail, and slammed her hooves in the opposite direction. Away from that lunge that, ultimately, ended up with the hydras third head in the ground. Twilight talked about how it was imperative that she had physically turned Pinkies head around, away from the hydras gaze, to dispel its magic.
The third head, still swaying, still locking her into place, hissed to the second. The second reared, and started its lunge at her. Pinkie Pie couldn’t move, and couldn’t scream. She didn’t feel any of the tale tell signs of anypony running over. She heard no hooves splish splashing in bog water, neither did she feel the gnashing pressure on her tail, nor the frenzied pants of a bibliophile who rarely left the sanctity of her library, and even more rarely bothered to exercise when she wasn’t in it. Pinkie Pie didn’t remember any of this.
Twilight, where are you?
The hydras mouth was opened very wide and was very close. Pinkie Pie heard hooves in the distance, gallop, gallop, galloping away, and some panicked, frantic yells. Pinkie could see its teeth, now almost wholly encompassing her field of vision, breaking eye contact between the second head and herself, interrupting the spell binding, and freeing Pinkie. She tried running, but her body was almost immediately gripped in the fury of a very familiar, very violent, shuddering that immobilized her.
The doozy is happening… Now?
She started crying, tears escaping her ducts and starting to blaze trails down her cheeks. Still involuntarily trembling from her Pinkie sense, Pinkie realized, exactly, what the doozy that was going to happen at Froggy Bottom Bog was.
I-I don’t want to die.