Chapter 8

Ricco

Buckshot and I walked along the street towards the flight show, the townsfolk were much nicer than the mares and stallions in Canterlot, there weren’t any griffons like me, but I had gotten used to that in the past week. Being surrounded by ponies wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be in the beginning.

It seemed that all of the ponies here were smiling, no matter what, we had even seen a pony who had just spilled his coffee on himself laughing.

Buckshot was greeting everyone, I would reply to most of the ponies we conversed with. I was actually getting confused with the amount of smiles around us, I noticed the few ponies that stared.

“Bucky, is there something wrong with this place?” I asked.

Buckshot looked over with a confused look on his face. “Are you kidding? Everypony here is like family!” He said, waving at a pony I hadn’t seen.

I looked over where Buckshot was waving, one single pony wore a frown, a dark, creature-like frown.

I first noticed his single tooth extending from his jaw, then his eyes, a butter yellow surrounded a deep, blood red. Next came his horn, a jagged, bent, light blue bone protruding from his head.

As I found myself staring, he grinned like some kind of criminal.

A carriage passed in the rode between the pony and I, when it passed, the unicorn had vanished. I sped up my pace, pushing Buckshot quickly along, no matter if he hadn’t noticed or not.

I looked around, ponies were staring with bright, friendly smiles. I had not yet seen one blink, I looked in the other direction, seeing more ponies closing in around us, getting closer as we looked away, then abruptly stopping when we looked back.

I bumped into somepony, he kept walking past, turning his head only to smile at us.

Staring.

Watching.

I reached to my side, then cursed, I had left my knife in the hotel when Firefly was rushing us out.

I thought of the two ponies there, alone. Would they be okay? Were they okay?

A line of ponies were in the way, not letting us pass, their smiles mocking our increasing sense of suspicion.

I extended my claws, swiping across the face of one of the ponies, who didn’t even flinch as I cut across his face, keeping his smile on his face. Letting the blood run down into his teeth and drip onto the ground.

I grabbed Buckshot and leaped into the air, spreading my wings and flying upwards, for the first time in a long time, I was actually frightened. Something was very wrong with this town.

I slapped myself in the face, Buckshot had said he’d never seen the town before the night before, and they should have just steered clear of it then, but hadn’t.

My wings flexed and I shot off through the sky, feeling the wind rush past me as I flew. When I looked down, the mocking faces of the townsfolk stared into the sky, watching us. I spotted the hotel out of the corner of my eye, around it there were ponies everywhere, crowding inside of the lobby.

I heard a shout, and shot down towards it. Just as I prepared to land on the roof of the hotel, an intense crushing pain rocketed down my side. I felt Buckshot leave my claws and go soaring through the air as I spiraled downwards, eventually hitting the ground with bone-breaking force.

I let out a low, pained moan as I laid on my back, I looked around slowly and saw Buckshot to my left about twenty yards away, struggling to get up.

Another painful amount of pressure shot through my chest, when I directed my attention there again, a cyan pony stood on my chest, stamping her hoof into my chest. Her mane had a certain flair that immediately made me recognize her. The seven colors of the rainbow made connections in my brain and made me try to talk, but immediately had a hoof on my throat.

“Not smiling now, are you?!” She shouted, her gravelly voice attracting some of the smiling ponies, who started a slow walk towards us.

I shot up and threw the rainbow pony over my back, keeping her there. I sprinted over to Buckshot and grabbed him too, bursting upwards with the help of my wings and landing on the balcony of our apartment.

The volume of the world around me intensified when two hooves hit me on both of my temples and sent my face into the brick balcony floor.

“Alright, motherfucker...” I said, swinging a wild uppercut and catching Rainbow Dash under the chin, sending her into the air and then crashing back down.

I looked up just in time for Cloud Skipper and Firefly to come tearing out of the apartment, taking flight immediately. I grabbed Rainbow Dash and checked for Buckshot, who was still on my back and took off after the two pegasi.

I quickly caught up with them, talking quickly as we flew at high speeds towards the desert.

“Can someone please tell me what the fuck is going on?!” I shouted.

Firefly looked over with fear in her eyes. “How the hell should we know?!”

Cloud Skipper looked over just as a shadow cast over the world around us, cutting off vision for a few seconds before an intense pressure slammed us all into the ground.

Only sound told me that we were all getting up, I had lost feeling of Rainbow Dash and Buckshot, I felt a claw out for them, but found only sand.

Suddenly, the sun blinded me, making me cover my eyes.

When I looked around, a giant, slender figure stood above us. I couldn’t place exactly what animal it was because it was so many. Two yellow and red eyes seemed to mock my thoughts as I looked into them.

Something clicked in my brain, this was exactly who we were looking for.

Discord.

The draconequus cleared his throat and smiled, a single jagged tooth stuck from his jaw.

“Well, fancy seeing you three here,” he said, shrinking in size and leaning down to look at Firefly, who glared into his multicolored eyes with her cloudy ones. Even though she was blind, she could seemingly see him.

“Especially you, Firefly,” he said, tapping her nose.

Firefly’s aggressive look shrank into that of fear, and sadness.

She gripped the sides of her head and fell down, tears streaming from her eyes.

“Stop it!” she screamed.

Cloud Skipper swung at Discord and the hybrid creature disappeared. Then reappeared above me upside down.

“Just having some fun, jeez,” he said, floating upwards out of my grasping range.

Cloud tried to console Firefly, who stared at the ground with a shattered self-esteem.

“Discord!” Rainbow Dash shouted from a few body-lengths away, “Where are my friends?!”

“Safe place, unlike here, where you shouldn’t be.” Discord said, mocking the mare.

“I swear to Celestia, when we get the Elements of Harmo-”

“But you won’t get the Elements of Harmony!” Discord chuckled.

“We’ll kill you if we have to.” Cloud Skipper said.

Discord looked at the group we had, then burst out laughing.

As he rolled on the ground, he spoke, “This broken group? You three barely know each other! You three can’t work as a team!”

“We-” I tried.

“We?” Discord laughed again. “The little one would be a better challenge!”

Cloud Skipper, Firefly and I all looked over at each other.

“Little one?” Cloud Skipper asked.

Discord grinned, “Oh, you three don’t know.”

Firefly floated upwards in Discord’s telekinetic gripped and was poked on the belly by the one who held her.

“This little one.”

Firefly looked at Discord, then down at Cloud Skipper.

“Aww, congratulations.” Discord said with a grin, magically making her belly bloat out, her face contorted into that of pain and surprise.

Before anyone could speak, a loud popping noise echoed throughout the air and Firefly’s bloated stomach disappeared into her normal slender body.

“But you don’t need something like that on a mission, so I’ll take that.” Discord said, dropping the mare to the ground.

A broken look was on the mare’s face, she looked shocked but somehow sad.

“You-” She choked on her words.

“Yes I did.” Discord grinned, “Anyways, good luck.”

Discord disappeared again, and one of the civilians from the town stood on the spot where he disappeared from, grinning widely.

I looked over at Firefly then at the Smiler, and charged straight at it, if it was anything like they were in town, they could do virtually nothing.

I reared back and slashed my claws downwards at the Smiler and hit only air. Before I could contemplate that it had disappeared, something smashed into the back of my head, making me fall face first into the ground for the second time today.

I tried to do the same thing I had done to Rainbow Dash, but was hit into the side of the head again, making my vision blur and ears start ringing.

This one I was fighting acted like he was supercharged or something, he moved faster than anyone I had ever fought. The only one who came close was...

Firefly.

I looked over at the mare, “Fire-”

I was kicked in the throat, then sucker-punched me in the jaw. Then it jumped into the air and tucked his two front hooves together, bringing them down on my head.

The last thing I saw was sand. Next Chapter: Chapter 9 Estimated time remaining: 21 Minutes