“Miss Roarke!” Zetta shouted in a panic, gazing through the fresh hole that the metal mare and Zytharros had made.
“Raaaugh!” With a thrust of her horseshoes, Roarke shoved the Xonan warrior off of her and spun to deflect his next sword swing with a slash of her tail. “Go! You and Rainbow Dash find the book and a way out of here!” She flipped, dodged another swing, and slammed her hoof across the soldier’s helmet before gripping his neck from behind. “Rgghhh--There should be plenty left in the tertiary hangar compartments! Get out of here before this giant turd flies apart!”
With a shout, Zytharros shrugged his leg-joints, knocking Roarke off of him. He spun with a telekinetic slash of the sword.
She slid under it, somersaulted, and plowed into him with a burst of engine thrusters. The two barreled off a ledge and onto a lower level of the chamber, sending chunks of stone debris flying everywhere.
As they leveled out, their bodies slid apart on scraping hooves. Zytharros floated his sword high, eyes shimmering. “It wishes to graze from the fields of death, dreit?” He spat. “Searonese trentte! It knew it was hiding like a snake in the Domain of Xon!”
“Yeah, well, it really wants to get its balls chopped off.” With a twist of her neck, Roarke popped two mana-blasters free from her shoulder plates. They hummed with burning blue energy. “The holier-than-thou hot air stops here, bucko.”
“It invites its own doom!” Zytharros snarled, pacing across from her as his tattoos brimmed with chaotic mists. “It would dare to taint Nagu’n’s moment of glory with its vile effluence!”
Roarke smirked. “Best compliment I heard all day.”
“Let it echo in the depths of its grave!” Zytharros charged straight at her. “Haaaaugh!”
Roarke squatted low, firing two steady streams of concentrated mana.
Zytharros blocked the blasts with his bastard sword, not once stopping his forward momentum. When he was within a spit’s distance, he jumped, forward-flipped, and brought the magic sword down so hard that it heated the air up by twenty degrees.
Roarke rolled aside--though the concussive blast of the enchanted blade sent her flying several feet. She took advantage of the momentum by firing her rockets, gliding through the air, and coming around in a vicious arc. When she returned to Zytharros, it was with all four hooves limbs bucking repeatedly.
Zytharros crouched his entire body behind the bulk of his blade and blocked the multiple strikes. He finally shoved back against her weight and lunged high with the blade.
Roarke, in the meantime had propelled off the sword into a backflip. This caused Zytharros to miss her by a long shot, and his body stumbled forward. In mid-descent, Roarke fired her metal cables and latched them around his forward hooves. With a grunt, she anchored her body against a slab of stone, flexed her armored body, and flung him like a living mace into a wall of wooden shelves.
“Unnngh!” Zytharros grunted as his body smashed through the material. He collapsed to the ground, leaning on his sword. At the sound of several roaring thrusters, he looked up. His eyes stopped glowing long enough to reflect no less than six miniature rockets flying straight at him.
Kapoww!
His entire half of the room exploded in flame and plasma.
Roarke stood, her body slumped within her armor. She panted and panted, then closed the rocket launchers along her sides. Swallowing, she stood up straight and pistoned her lenses to see better through the settling dust--
“Raaaaaugh!” A glowing blue figure flew at her with a savage right hook.
“Ooomf!” Roarke spat blood and saliva from the heavy punch.
Zytharros, his body covered in the armored plates that were once his sword, followed the blow with a kick to her chest. As she reeled, he lifted her with telekinesis, spun, and bucked her with both rear hooves to the side.
“Unngh!” Roarke went sailing towards a wall--smashing through it and landing in a rattling lump within the center of a long hallway. Xonan servants gasped and galloped away as Zytharros marched through, his heavily armored figure steaming with chaotic energies.
“Foolish hunter of bounties.” He sneered as he stood on her body, applying his weight to her beleaguered chest. “What does it live for?” He leaned down, sneering, as the body of the Sacred Hold rumbled around them. “The rattle of gold and the smell of silver? It is worthless!”
“Nghh… kaff… oh… y-you know…” She looked up at him, mouth bleeding, and smirked. “It’s the little things that keep me going.” Then, with a hiss, she shot her prehensile tail straight into his metal-armored crotch and fired an electrical current through it.
“Gaaa-aaa-aaaugh!” Zytharros thrashed in his armor and stumbled back, legs crossed. “Thiulen thuum thuum, Xon-Nagu’n!”
“Damn straight.” Roarke snapped her tail back into place, jumped up, and lunged at him. “Round two, breeder!”
Ninety seconds ago...
“Miss Roarke!” Zetta shouted in a panic
“Go!” Roarke shouted from the chamber below. “You and Rainbow Dash find the book and a way out of here! There should be plenty left in the tertiary hangar compartments! Get out of here before this giant turd flies apart!”
Zetta glanced at the others with a gaping expression.
“Aren’t we going to help her?!” a Ledomaritan enforcer exclaimed.
“She can’t handle a Xonan warrior all on her lonesome!”
“Actually, I’m pretty sure me and my bruises think she can,” Zaid chuckled. He turned and calmly nudged Basso’s shoulder as the corridor shook all around them. “Ain’t that right, big boy? Eh… who am I talking to.” He turned and blinked in Rainbow’s direction. “Oh! Look! Awesomeness has arrived!”
“N-now’s not the time,” Rainbow Dash sputtered, dizzily trying to stand up.
“Awwwww… but it’s never been the time lately!”
“Roarke… is…” Rainbow hissed. “...b-buying us some time.” Everypony gasped in fright as the Hold shook again, but Rainbow kept straight-faced. “First thing’s first! Where’s Kera?!”
“She was with one of the Xonans the last time we saw her,” Zetta said, gulping. “She put on an act to win Straker’s--I-I mean Dalen’s trust.”
“Damn… friggin’ scamp…” Rainbow Dash seethed towards rumbling walls of the place. “What did she think she would accomplish--?” Her eyes widened. “Horseapples!” She gawked at the others. “She went for the book! She’s the one who has it!”
“Question is, what would she be doing with it?” Basso asked. The place shook again.
“Exactly how is all of this conducive to us getting out on the spare Xonan ships?” one of the enforcers muttered.
“You shut your muzzle!” Zaid said, frowning as he shuffled towards Rainbow Dash. “Can’t you see that the game has changed?” He stripped of a very familiar midnight-blue satchel and held it in Rainbow’s direction. “Here ya go, sexiness. I’ve been keeping this warm for you.”
“Jee… thanks, Zaid.”
“You could at least try to appreciate a supporting character when you see one.” He blinked aside. “Oh.” He blinked again. “Hi, Khao. ‘Sup?”
“Khao--?” Rainbow Dash turned aside, only to be savagely thrown into a vice-tight legbar from behind. “Gaah!”
“Rainbow!” Zetta jumped forward, though Basso held her back.
“You…” Khao grunted, gripping Rainbow’s dizzied body from behind as she shuffled the two of them back. “You… all of you…” A clicking sound lit the air as she produced a dart gun along her left forelimb. “None of you matter. You are just chaff in the wind of destiny.”
“Oh great…” Rainbow hissed as she felt the tip of the dart to her ear. “Come on. What are you soap boxing about now, lady?”
“Yo! Stop ridin’ her, Khaogirl!” Zaid waved his forelimbs. “I know it’s been a while since you’ve delivered a sermon, but could you calm it down a notch?”
“Do I even know you?”
“Yeah. Brother Zaid, right?”
“...” Khao squinted at him.
“The dude who showed up for your Angelic Seminars after you picked me up in the north?”
“... …”
Zaid sighed, then waved his left hoof. “The one who always wrote complaints about the lack of grilled cheese sandwiches?”
“How in the Host did you get on board this infernal death mountain?” Khao spat.
“Hey… y’know…” Zaid shrugged with a smirk. “Checks and balances.” He cleared his throat. “Ya mind not waving the death plunger at Rainbow Dash’s skull anymore? Y’know… Harbinger? ‘Destined to protect the Harbinger?’”
“I am protecting her…” Khao sneered, starting to hyperventilate as the prisoners slowly shuffled towards her across the thin hallway. She backed up, clutching Rainbow tighter and tighter. “I am protecting her from Xona! I am protecting her from Ledomare! I am protecting her from all of you!”
“Could you protect me a little less harder?” Rainbow grunted. “It’s hell on my wings.”
“Shhh! Quiet! We must make our way out of here!” Khao frowned at the group. “Someplace where there won’t be any setbacks! Any wars! Any conspiracies in the wings!”
“Yo, the only one dreamin’ up shadows is you, sister,” Zaid said. “How about sprinkling a little less rhetoric on your fries and taking sips every other bite?”
“Who are you to call yourself a Brother of the Host?!” Khao frowned at him. “She doesn’t need this heathen company! It’s only threatened her journey! What she needs is the true wind beneath her wings! She needs Eljunbyro!”
“Dude, wasn’t that ‘Innavedr?’”
“Silence! You know nothing!”
“I know that she’s got Elephant Gyro right where she wants it, until our little clan of hymn chanters stole her from it! Don’t you think we’re overreacting a little?”
“You are blind to the chaos all around us…” Khao sneered. With a flick of her shoulders, she extended two wings attached to her steamrigging. “You would let her and this whole world burn before the ring could ever reform!”
“Burn?” Basso stammered.
“Ring?” Zetta added.
“Just be like me, Khaogirl!” Zaid smiled wide. “Take a chill-pill! Relax! Y’know… like whatshername does. Madame Shadenight!” He blinked, then squinted around. “Say, where did she go, anyways?”
“Night… shade…?” Khao’s face went pale.
“Yes.” A broken horn slithered out of the shadows behind her. “We meet again.”
Khao turned--
--only to take a savage hoof to the face.
“Spkkt!” Khao spat blood as she stumbled off of Rainbow Dash.
Nightshade wasn’t done. With liquid-like grace, she side-stepped onto Khao, pressed her weight into her middle, and snapped one of her glider wings off. She used the thing like a bludgeon, uppercutting Khao across the chin, and then piercing it straight down into the zealot’s steam rigging.
The mechanism on the equine’s figure sparked to life, firing steam vents at random. As a result, Khao’s grounded body slid like an out-of-control torpedo towards the opposite wall of the corridor.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa--” Thud! Her rigging fell apart, peeling like the dry skin off a potato. The mare tumbled back and rolled to a stop, curling up in a painful little ball. “Unnnnghhh…”
Nightshade cracked her neck. “And the Board of Executives said I wasted time on the battlefield after salvaging my brother.”
“Whew! Quite the bump you took there, boss!” Zaid squatted over the zealot’s writhing figure. “You okay?”
“I… I-I think my h-hoof is broken!” Khao wheezed.
“You’re spiritual,” Nightshade muttered aside as she dragged Rainbow Dash to her hooves. “Pray about it.” She looked calmly into Rainbow’s ruby eyes. “Don’t we have a little filly to find?”
Yay Nightshade!
....What have you done? What have you done!?
static.minecraftforum.net//public/style_emoticons/default/steve_shocked.gif
arghabaga argelbargle.
Gah, so much badassness!
Go for a run, ):(. Knock it out!
Yeah motherflutter!
“You’re spiritual,” Nightshade muttered aside as she dragged Rainbow Dash to her hooves. “Pray about it.”
(You're a doctor.. deal with it!) That has to be one of the best re-purposed script lines in the entire series.
well that was pretty cool. seems like nightshade has problems with khao. wonder when shell shows up and everyone finally blows him apart?
khao seems to be losing what was left of her veneer of sanity, while nightshade seems to be getting better...
Remember back when we were disgusted at the thought of Nightshade getting the better of somepony? That was a long time ago. Ah, nostalgia.
This was way confusing until I realized that you probably meant servants.
Roarke still have ammo? I'm impressed by her systems of weaponry.
Can someone remind me who Zytharros is?
Holy crap yes!
So Nightshade is now officially awesome, and Khao finally got her ass handed to her!
Man, between the new episode and this, today is a good day.
So many things to quote in this chapter.
She just deflected a two-handed mystical, magical sword with her tail. Think about it.
Now that's badass. He made snakes grow hooves.
She's got the Voice alright.
Watching that scene was like seeing classic religion being bitch-slapped by science. By fancy, dignified science with wrinkles. It's beautiful.
And of course:
images.wikia.com/mlp/images/8/84/FANMADE_Lyra_Oh_you.png
It's not a kick, but this will suffice. For now, this will suffice.
Oh my....just...so....awesomeness...Go Roake! Go Noghtshade! Find Kerra! And Kick Shell's Ass! Oh Yeah!
3593508
He's a general in the service of Xon and Nagu'n. H's been pretty minor so far, at least, as far as the saga goes.
Finally a chance for Roarke to be badass again.
~Basso
Yeah, Nightshade's fine in my book. Or a helluva lot closer to fine, at least. Anyone who takes the mickey out of Khao has to have something going for them. Though the fact that Khao seemed to know Nightshade is intriguing.
Oh, and remind me to never get in a fight with Roarke. *crosses legs*
Oh this is really heating up. Im just wondering if Rourke has picked up and intresting little piece of information related to attacks by electrically charged prehensile tails.
The Xonans armour covers his ass.
But how much does it cover his mouth.
Heart Attack.
I like Nightshade again
...She's going to die, isn't she.
3593783
They probably met when Nightshade acquired the pegasus skeletons that the cult venerated. Remember them, the ones that the foals were sequencing with?
It continues to escalate. And Nightshade is a master of the sucker punch.
3593783 Nightshade stole the six dead pegasi from her, remember?
Heh Khao got owned...
Cult leader confirmed for best Applejack.
Funny thing, I´ve been called Khaoboy several times in the past, and I likely will be several times more. =P
3593734
I had no idea he was an insert. Thanks though.
3593508
He was one of the really big Xonans with the enchanted sword/armor that led the take over of the Lightning Bearer. I'm not sure if he is the second in command of Sacred Hold, though.
3594184 3594189
Don't mind me. I'm just over here forgetting basic concepts of the story.
I like this.
So do we have any running bets on how many named characters are going to get offed before the jurists regroup?
I'm gonna go with 4 on a lark.
(rapid intake of breath) Ooh, that's gonna sting...
3594859
Yeah, I'm not much as far as FIMFic goes. I generally fly under the radar.
...Drat. I wish there was a gif for that.
A reference to "20% cooler", Zaid spouts a 4th-wall-jumping phrase. What's next? Nightshade turns into a total bada-
That really happened, didn't it?
I suspect both Zytharros and Roarke will lose their armor by round 4.
I take offense to that. At least the way it was used here.
Then again, that was probably the point, considering who said it.
wow... Nightshade can kick some ass. o.o
Never thought I'd be cheering on Nightshade...
Wait... When did nightshade and khao meet?
3600158
Oh, you know, during that thing in that one town that one time.
Still not redeemed.
Fucking Nightshade.
IIIIIt's Dashie's Christmas Special Get-Backing Adventure!
Aw, come on. Nightshade isn't supposed to be cool. Ugh. Anyways, I found Zaid to be hilarious throughout this entire chapter for some reason as well. These are my thoughts so far.
-MASH
P.S. It is finished. See you tomorrow!
Methinks you overuse "As a result"
How long were you saving this one up for?
Also, woot! Go Nightshade! Yeah, yeah, I'm a hypocrite. There's only so many "bad guys" I can hate at a time, and my quota's just about full up, so Nighty gets a reprieve.
Onward!
3601046
I like the way you think. (To be serious, though, Nightshade stole the pegasus skeletons from Khao)
Great job, Nightshade!
-SPirit
4451414 That was Roake, not Nightshade.
Go Nightshade go Nightshade go Nightshade go! Go Nightshade go Nightshade go Nightshade go! Go... Nightshade!
Awesomeness has arrived
FINALLY the right fucking A word!!!
I guess Nightshade can be a badass when she chooses to be. Also, I never even knew that there were other Ledomaritans with them. Like, at all. I am very confused.
Woah Zaid, 2meta4me
But dang, Nightshade got four levels in badass outta nowhere! Maybe she cares for Kera a little more than we anticipated...
5896911 I know
is probably one of the best one-liners of the whole series so far
5896911 she has her own way of caring.
...is Roarke insulting his erm... stallion-ness?
"it heated the air up by twenty degrees." I am very disappointed that this did not say twenty percent.