For the first time in the last few minutes, I am glad I’m in this bubble shield.

The giant’s green light fills up the hallway for just a moment. After that moment, the light shoots out of his box in a massive column and aims for me. It hits my bubble shield and explodes in a massive green blast. Arcane energy surges all around. Everything becomes loud, white noise that blasts my eardrums a second time today!

The bubble can’t take the pressure. Luna’s magic shatters around me, showering me in blue sparkles and green electricity. Everything smells like a burning building. That’s partially because some of the hallway is on fire!

A red light blinks under where the green light came from. The box tilts back, and it makes a loud whirring sound, like a fan going off. The large armored stallion shouts in excitement, half laughing, half celebrating. “Whohoho! The nerds know how to cook up some fire power!”

I look around. Tanya, Eureka, and Luna are untouched. Luna put up her own personal shield, which blocked all the damage from the blast. Her horn is glowing a bright white from keeping up all our shields. The blast was directed at me, so I took most of the blow. The rest of the hallway, that’s a different story.

There are black marks everywhere from where the energy hit. In a bunch of places, there are holes in the walls, and those holes are partially on fire. The ceiling above me is gone, so is the floor below me. I can see sunlight pouring down from the hole in the roof and into the crater I’m sitting in. That blast blew through the second floor and beyond.

Luna drops her shield, and jumps between the crater and the giant pony. “Stop what you’re doing before you do any more damage.”

The giant inhales and starts walking for us, each step rattling the now ruined building. “Princess Luna, I don’t want to hurt you, but if you get in the way...”

Luna’s horn, somehow, glows even brighter. A blue, clear screen fills the hallway, splitting the princess and the giant apart. The giant has no time to react before bumping his nose against the screen. “Don’t worry about hurting me,” Luna says. “You won’t.”

He does.

His hoof is large, thick, and covered in metal plating. When he throws a suckerpunch, he has no trouble breaking through Luna’s screen and shattering it into millions of pieces. Luna must be out of practice, or she’s surprised, because she forgets to duck. The punch rams into her side, sending her streaking away. She makes a nice dust-filled, alicorn shaped hole in the brick wall.

With Luna gone, the magic spells surrounding Tanya and Eureka dissipate. The owl-bird plops on the ground, and the scientist-

Oh sweet mercy! The smell, that wretched smell! The bubble was the only thing keeping his rotting stench to himself. It’s as if a chemical bomb went off and the chemicals are pliers ripping out the insides of my nose! This stuff burns!

The stench is enough to distract me from the big armored elephant in the room. With the shields gone, said elephant plows into me with a steel hoof. The blow rattles all my juices and stirs all my hard bits, and I think I see ducks flying around me.

My stomach lurches as his punch swings me into the air. The wind blows past my ears, which is the last thing I hear before I’m punched into the ceiling. The concrete cracks above me as I crater into an upside-down world. Everything is pain.

The giant leaves me up here, stuck in my own hole. The little red light on his box stops beeping. It turns green, and the bright green light from before returns. “This is too easy,” the giant says. “I thought you were a fighter.”

“Gilda!”

A high pitched voice screams my name from somewhere. Something small and green comes streaking through the air, hitting the big dude in the side of the head with a loud metal clang. It’s enough to throw the giant off balance. He steps to the side just as the green light fires.

Huge amounts of heat and electricity flow past me as the blast tears through the building. The blast’s core is far enough not to vaporize me, but close enough where I can feel it. After a quick moment of destruction, the light dies out, leaving behind another gaping hole in the building.

It takes a moment for me to peel off the ceiling. I fall and flop on the floor. The hard floor. It’s not pleasant.

I push myself up and see why the big guy missed me point blank. The giants is swatting at the green twat flying around his face. Ah, this is Iffy’s doing. Thanks Iffy for the assist, but I think this baddie is outside your weight class.

Tanya seems fine. She has a claw in that blue suitcase of hers, rifling through the thing like she’s looting a body. According to Luna, there’s dark magic or something in that suitcase. Hopefully is the kind of dark magic that obliterates your enemies.

Eureka is sitting up, leaning his head on his hooves, watching Iffy harass the giant. He’s got a crazy grin on his face. The scientist is clearly enjoying the fight. Who knows what side he’s rooting for now.

Ugh, I don’t want to deal with this now. I’ve been fighting for the past day and a half, and it’s grinding my nerves down to the nubs. I think the best way to deal with this fight is to pull Tanya out of here while the giant is distracted. Iffy can get out on his own, he’s fast. It’s not like the giant has monster senses to track-

I do a double take. Eureka? He’s sitting up, fully conscious, almost giggling to himself. He was lying in a pool of his own puke just a moment ago. Now he’s acting as lively as ever!

“What the heck?!” I shout, “How are you still alive? I thought the virus liquefied your insides!”

He looks at me, and I jump back when I see his face. He still has that goofy grin of his. That’s still Eureka. Everything else is not. Half his face is melting off, sliding off his like slabs of dough. There are patches all over his face of tiny, withering tentacles, all reaching out to grab whatever they can. And his eyes, sweet mercy his eyes. His eyes are now black and red blobs barely keeping themselves in their sockets. His eyes are about to literally spill out of his head.

“Isn’t it glorious?” he says, his voice half gurgling. “I put weeks of research into the Orion project. Most of my work has only been tested in small lab experiments. But I see my boys have put everything I found to good use.” He throws his arms up towards the giant. For a moment, I think they’re about to fly off him. “This is the next step in our evolution!”

I look at the giant, who is still preoccupied with Iffy. I think I remember Arctic North saying something about a super soldier. “This is almost as stupid as drinking a Blacklight cocktail. Almost.”

The scientist shrugs. “I don’t expect a griffon to comprehend my genius. You don’t understand the significance, so you call it stupid. I expect nothing less from a lesser species.”

Oh, it’s taking everything I have to stop myself from strangling the nerd. I inhale, count to ten, and through some miracle, resist the urge to outright murder the guy. “You know what, I don’t care. Go be fuck buddies with your Orion. I’m leaving.”

Eureka stares at me, which is creepy given his melting face. He rocks back and forth on his butt, and licks his lips. “I’m hungry.”

I wave him off. “Go find a taco stand.”

I can get out of here, but I have no place to go. Maybe I can find an empty warehouse somewhere to bum out for the night. I just need someplace without any crazy in it.

Tanya is still going through the suit case, muttering to herself as she does so. When I walk up, she pulls her claw out and snaps it shut. “What do you want?” she says.

I nod down the hallway. “Come on. There’s a back entrance we can slip out of. If we’re quick, we can escape before Blackwatch runs us down.”

The owl-lion violently shakes her head. “I’m not doing anything you say. You’ve screwed me over too many times already. You can go fuck yourself.”

The giant, in his effort to swat Iffy out of the air, bangs his head in the ceiling. His metal helmet clangs against the concrete, and dust falls from the tiles. “Don’t be stupid. Mister Giant wants us both dead. Now let’s go. I need an accountant to discuss opening a store in a less racist location.”

She doesn’t budge. I go in to pull her by the shoulder, but she jumps back and swings out the suitcase. I almost body tackle her to pull her out of this warzone, but she reaches into the suitcase and pulls out a huge sword. I mean huge, like a great sword. There must be some powerful shit going on with that sword, because there is no way that thing could ever fit in anything smaller than a walk-in closet.

Tanya levels the sword at me, and I can see a green glint flash in her eye. “I’m done with you.”

Before I can say shit got real, shit gets real. There’s a green flash by Orion while I’m not looking. I brace myself for a blast attack, but that doesn’t happen. When I turn, I find a green magic beam coming from the giant’s box. At the end of this beam is Iffy, who is struggling to fly away. He can’t do it. The beam is keeping him in place in the middle of the air. That think can do telekinesis too?!

“Annoying little brat,” Orion hisses. He steps around to turn, and the beam swings around as he does so. Iffy, still caught, flies with the beam until he slams into a wall. The beam turns off, and Iffy drops to the floor, unconscious.

I hope he’s unconscious.

Orion turns to face us. And he tilts his head until it cracks. “Which of you griffons is volunteering to die first?”

At this moment, either of us would volunteer the other griffon. Neither of us has the chance to make our opinions known, as Orion wastes no time charging at us like a train high on caffeine and stuffed to the brim with rocket boosters.

Right before we can comprehend our overwhelming deaths, a blue flash comes out of nowhere and slams Orion out of the way. He still has the momentum from his run, so he annihilates the wall section next to us with his sheer mass. The building shakes as he stumbles through and falls on his face.

From where the flash came, Luna steps out of her own wall hole, covered in grey dust. Her horn is glowing bright, and she’s brandishing two swords made of pure magic on either side of her. The swords shimmer with the starry night sky. They streak like falling stars when Luna twirls them around for show. “Didn’t I say you won’t hurt me?”

The walls rumble as Orion lumbers out of his hole. His box whines as the green light glows again. “Didn’t I say to get out of my way?”

The green light flashes, and the blast rockets through the air, bearing down on Luna. The Princess of the Night doesn’t flinch. With a quick flick of her swords, she knocks the blast to the side. The green ball of energy heads for the front entrance, where it vaporizes the front doors in a spectacular flash.

After that, they charge each other, screaming. Orion has a massive scream that shakes you to the core. Luna has a more graceful, yet ferociously angry scream, and it shows on her face. They clash together in the middle of the hallway. Orion throws punches at the Princess, who dodges the blows and strikes his armor with her blades. Her swords do nothing but tink off the hardened steel. For now, they’re evenly matched.

As the ponies I don’t want to fight fight each other, I grab Tanya by her sword arm and yank her down the hall. “They’re distracted, let’s go,” I yell.

Tanya swears at me, and she tries to break free and strike me with her great sword. My grip is too strong for her to break through, so she can only run with me as I dash through the hall. “I swear I’m going to cut you, you village dumbass!”

“Save the insults for family counseling,” I yell back at her. What the heck is her problem? Is it the sword? Is whatever dark magic that runs through that sword making Tanya an angry bitch? I hope that’s the case, otherwise I’d throw her back in the middle of that fight just to spite her.

I run down the hall, aiming for where I remember the back exit to be. With the trash bags blocking the front entrance, the Daycare residents were using the alleyway to get in and out of the building. Pinkie showed me yesterday. Sure beats climbing through the windows.

After a couple turns and a whole lot of patience with the owl-lion in tow, we get to the rear exit. Cherry is already here. She’s leading the kids out the back, telling them to get to a safe place somewhere. The kids run past her in a line out the door. With the fight going on up front, this is probably the best thing to do.

She looks up when we skid around the corner. “What’s going on out there?”

“Luna’s fighting a big giant super soldier,” I say. “We’re getting out of here before they tear the place down.”

The building shakes, and I hear Orion’s box go off down the hallway. Cherry glances around us, and looks directly at me. “Where’s Iffy?”

“He’s fine.” Lies. “We got to hurry, the supersoldier has a magic cannon. He’ll bring the place down looking for me.”

Cherry nods, and motions for the kids to go faster. The kids heard me, they got the message. Now they’re picking up the pace and getting the heck out of here.

I pull Tanya to follow, but the owl-lion doesn’t budge. I yank again, but harder. She still doesn’t move. “What the heck’s your problem, Tanya?”

Her eyes are glazed over, and her body is completely stiff. She’s looking in the direction of the exit, but she’s not doing anything. I wave a claw in her face, but she doesn’t even blink.

“Uh, earth to Tanya, we got to go.”

Did her brain fry? Her beak moves, she whispers something that my monster ears have trouble hearing.

“I didn’t hear that. Use your big girl voice.”

Tanya looks at me, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone home. A green glint passes over an eye. This time, I can hear what she says. “Heads.”

Okay… I nod, smile, and push back all my questions about why Tanya decided now is a good time to go cuckoo on me. Cherry gives me an odd look. I shrug. “Yes, head. We should head out of here. Right now.”

Now she just shouts it. “Heads!”

The blue suitcase slams in my face. The blow doesn’t hurt, but between the shout and the hit to the face, Tanya shocks me enough for me to let go of her. I recover just in time to see her swinging the greatsword for my neck.

“Heads!”

I grab the blade right before it cuts through my meaty bits. The metal slices through my palm before the wrist bone stops it from splitting my arm in half. Yes, this is as unpleasant as it sounds. I think it struck a major vein.

I kick Tanya in the side, which is enough to knock her away and pull the blade out of my claw. Already, I feel the tentacles stitching my claw back up. Good to know the sword doesn’t stop regeneration. On the other claw, it’s turned Tanya crazy.

Tanya readies up for another strike, but before she charges me, something catches her eye. She glances to the side and looks at the doorway again, where a couple of kids are still running out of. Our little joust must have kicked up their motivation to get out of here.

The owl-lion turns away from me, forgetting about our fight she started. She straps the suitcase to the side of her arm like a shield, grips the greatsword with both claws, and yells a battle cry. The battle cry of any griffon is quite impressive. It’s both the mighty roar of a lion and terrifying screech of a falcon. It’s the kind of thing that’ll strike fear into any enemy combatant. And given her current combatants are a class of fillies and foals, her enemies are pretty terrified.

The kids scream for their lives as Tanya charges them with the greatsword above her head. She swings the sword down on an orange colt who hasn’t earned his cutie mark yet. Before she cleaves the kid in half, the sword strikes a pink barrier that materializes in mid air, sending sparks flying all over the place.

Cherry’s horn is glowing a dull but bright pink. Her face is curled into a snarl, and she looks like she’s going to rip someone’s throat out with her teeth. “Don’t you fucking dare touch my kids,” Cherry seethes.

Tanya immediately loses interest in the kids. Instead, she focuses on Cherry. When it comes to size, Cherry is the clear underdog here. She’s a head shorter than me, and Tanya is almost a head taller. There’s a sheer difference between the two.

The owl-lion holds nothing back as she charges and swings at the unicorn with a mighty yell. Cherry is ready, and puts the shield between her and the sword. She cringes when the shield blocks the strike. This must be taking a lot of effort for her. She pushes the sword away, and hits Tanya with a kinetic spell. The owl-bird flies back, but her wings spread open to stop her in mid air.

“Go,” Cherry says to the kids, “Get out of here, now!” She says that to empty air. The kids are all out the door now. They’re running out the alley to who knows where. I’m sure unsupervised, terrified children are a problem on their own, but we can deal with that later. For now…

Tanya is charging the unicorn once again. Cherry puts her shield back up, but before Tanya can strike, I zip behind the owl-lion and wrap my arms under her armpits. She lurches forward, but my grip yanks her back. I squeeze her, trying to control her limbs and make her let go of the sword. I’m failing in that department. She’s still swinging the damn thing around. It’s going to take a fight to get it away from her.

“Cherry, get out of here,” I yell. “I got her under control!”

When I check, Cherry is nowhere to be found. All I see is the tip of a tail weaving through the backdoor. Then a large, pink-glowing dumpster slams into the exit, blocking our only way out. You got to be kidding me. The bitch just left me and cut me off. That girl is cruising for a bruising.

This tiny moment of betrayal is enough to distract me from the raging griffon still in my arms. Maybe it wasn’t a betrayal. A betrayal needs some form a trust between us to be called a betrayal. Either way, it’s a dick move.

Anyways, betrayal, distraction, raging griffon. While I’m not looking, Tanya whips her head back and hits me in the side of the face. Griffons are known for their thick skulls, especially the owl-lions. When she hits, it’s two bowling balls smacking into each other, both making a loud thwack. It fazes me, goop drips down my beak, and Tanya lunges out of my grip, kicking me in the stomach for good measure.

By the time I recover, Tanya’s swinging at me again. This girl’s relentless. The green glint in her eye now seems brighter, and it’s flickering. It’s as if her iris is catching on fire.

I have one thing over Tanya, I’m faster. With my monster speed, I easily sidestep the owl-lion, avoiding the blade with a foot to spare. As Tanya fills the gap I was just in, I stick my foot out in between her legs. Her feet catch with mine, sending her stumbling down the floor. She doesn’t let go of the sword, but she’s not getting up for a moment.

I dash for the exit, still blocked by the dumpster. What Cherry forgot was I have super monster strength, or at least I think I do. I don’t know its limits. I grab what I can of the dumpster, digging my claws into the greasy steel. My feet dig in, and I push as hard as I can. With my body weight against the side, the dumpster screeches across the asphalt. Metal and street grind together, kicking up sparks as it moves along.

With all the strength I can muster, I give the dumpster the biggest shove possible. The push is strong enough to send the ten ton trash bin skidding a few feet away. Perfect, that’s enough space to get out. Fuck you, Cherry. Nothing’s going to stop me!

As I dash out to escape the crazed griffon warrior, a blue barrier materializes in front of me. I smack face first into it, then bounce back and fall to the floor. It dazes me for a moment, but when I regain focus, I find an angry, blue alicorn with two magic swords at her side looking down at me.

“Not escaping, are we?” she says.

I glance over to Tanya, and the owl-griffon is trapped in a blue bubble. She’s smashing as hard as she can against the barrier, but the sword isn’t enough to break through. She is screaming something about heads, I can tell you that.

I shrug, giving her a sheepish smile. “Just going for an afternoon stroll.”

Around the corner, I can hear a jackhammer going off. That’s odd, who’s doing construction work in a time like this? It isn’t until the floor starts shaking do I realize it isn’t a jackhammer, or anything construction related.

Orion, in all his hulking, steel glory, runs around the corner and skids to a halt, turning to look at us. Just comparing him to a speeding freight train isn’t enough. He’s more like an out of control freight train that’s derailed off a hill and all the cars behind it are twisting off the tracks and flinging themselves into a small rural town. He’s like that.

We’re in a smaller hallway than the front entrance, and his bulk is filling up almost all of it. He’s still bending his neck low to fit in here, and now he has no room to move left or right. There’s barely any space on either side for a full grown griffon to squeeze past him.

I don’t think Orion cares. In fact, behind that metal helmet of his, I bet he’s grinning up a storm. He’s got us all cornered now. We’re in the perfect place for his magic cannon to blast us to smithereens, and given the cannon is glowing bright green, he’s about to do that right now!

Before the world fills with green death energy, the bubble I’m in lunges forward. I smack the back of my head against the wall as the bubble speeds towards Orion. Before I know it, I’m flying in between his legs and zipping down the hallway. Just in time, too. The cannon obliterates the back entrance just as I fly past the giant’s tail.

Tanya is also in her own magic bubble ride. She hasn’t given up on trying to slice her way out. We both fly down the hallway, side by side, until we reach the main hall once again. We don’t make it all the way. The bubbles pop a couple feet before, and they don’t bother to slow down before doing so. With the bubbles gone, we’re left on our own to deal with the inertia by ourselves.

We both smack into a board filled with crude drawings of cats and dogs. There’s also a parrot by my beak, and it’s not a half bad drawing. Whatever kid drew this one has some talent.

It’s not a hard crash. I get up just fine with only a light headache. Tanya’s wobbling a bit. She’s making a bigger effort in trying to cut off my head, but the problem is she needs to stand up in order to do it. The result is her kicking the floor and moving like a slug, then swinging the sword and missing my ankles. It’s a bit desperate.

She stops swinging when I step on her claws. With her range of motion gutted, the sword clatters to the ground, unmoving. She tries to yank out from under my weight, but something tells me she won’t have any success.

With Tanya immobilized as far as I’m concerned, I look around the place just to see what mess Luna made. There’s another hole in the ceiling. If we get any more of those, the whole building will collapse. The front entrance is gone. It’s blocked off by a pile of bricks and debris. There goes that escape route. Half the walls are gone in the hallway. One of them has two scars running across it. I bet that was from Luna’s swords.

Light is coming down from the ceiling holes. They reach all the way up to the sky. I think they’re the best bet for getting out of here. Jump up a couple floors, reach the roof, and if there aren’t any airships, we can run off without any problems.

One problem, Tanya. The suitcase is still strapped to her arm, and she’s not letting go of the sword. I want to take her with me, but as long as she has that greatsword, she’s a health hazard.

I’m about to fight Tanya for the sword when something slimy taps me on the shoulder. My head snaps around to find Eureka standing there, smiling. Oh right, forgot about him. Shouldn’t the Blacklight have killed him by now?

Here’s the weird thing, it’s just Eureka. He’s not wearing his glasses right now, but his face isn’t melting to one side. He looks normal. There’s nothing rotting or dying about him. He’s as healthy as can be. Now if he’d only stop smiling. It’s getting creepy.

The silence is a bit awkward, so I break it. “Can I help you?”

“I’m hungry,” he says, keeping his smile up.

“Not my problem.” Just ignore him. My main focus is getting the owl-lion out of here. Tanya has a tight grip on the sword, but I bet I can pry-

“You look tasty.”

I freeze. That is never something you want to hear someone else say, ever. Well, maybe if you’re about to shag each other. I think there’s a whole thing about food relating to sexual desire or something like that. I’m not so sure about the whole thing, I haven’t had experience with it myself. But I’m absolutely sure when a guy who just recovered from his face melting off when he drank a killer virus says you look tasty, it’s not because he wants to make babies with you.

I look up at Eureka. There’s drool dripping from the corner of his smile. He has that intense stare predators get before attacking their prey. Yep, he has bad news written all over his face. I don’t know what’s happened to him, and I don’t want to know.

Thanks to the efforts of Orion, there’s a giant hole in the ceiling above us. I grab Tanya by the wrist and pull her up with me as I jump to the second floor. It’s a close call, too. Just as we get out of the way, Eureka’s entire front side explodes into a mass of tentacles! They fill up the space we were just in, tearing through the drawing board as if it were wet paper.

Nope! Not dealing with that. We hop onto the ledge, and I pull Tanya down the dark corridor of the second floor, and I run. I don’t let go of Tanya’s wrist. With how fast I’m running down these halls, she’s keeps tripping and skidding on the floor behind me. While this must be miserable for her, bright side is she isn’t hitting me with the sword.

I skid to a halt and jump into a classroom. Just so I have a bit of time, I throw Tanya into a shelf of plastic toys. It collapses on top of her, burying her in a pile of playtime and broken wood. It’ll be a bit before she gets up again.

Why am I in this classroom? It’s because it has windows! They’re all boarded up, but it only takes a couple kicks to break the wood planks off. Once they break away, light spills into the room, and I have a clear view outside. Small problem though.

Blackwatch is out there. Not just a couple squads, there’s an entire army sitting out there! They’re all stretched around a perimeter, huddling behind an imaginary line that’s surrounding the daycare. They have unicorns, pegasi, those armored dudes, and a few airships. They must be waiting for Orion to do his job in here. And if he fails, they’re all here to shoot me down.

I step away from the window before they see me and blow my head off. That’s not good. With that many blue-eyes standing out there, it’ll be a pain in the ass to slip by them. Hmm, I’ll need a distraction. Or maybe if Luna gets a handle on things, she’ll call things off. Nah, she’ll only have things under control once she has me in a bubble. A distraction is a better idea.

Tanya charges me, but I punch her in the gut without looking. She falls over and coughs, curling up into a ball and shivering. She’s still not letting go of the sword. Bummer.

Distraction, distraction, distraction… Hmm… Okay, I have an idea. I’m going to need to find an accordion, a unicycle, and a chimpanzee. I think Pinkie has two of those things in her office, but where am I going to find an accordion?

Down the hall, I hear someone running. It’s not the running of giant metal boots, or the graceful stride of a warrior princess, but regular feet. Those are regular pony feet. Eureka is coming after us. Better ready up.

My monster claws come out. If he’s hungry, then I’ll give him a knuckle sandwich. The footsteps get close, and a yellow pony runs around the corner. I almost pounce on him, but I realize it’s not Eureka. Eureka is a unicorn, this is an earthpony. And the earthpony is wearing a Blackwatch uniform.

Oh no, it’s-

“Gilda, my love!” Caramel shrieks. Crap, Cherry forgot to get this dweeb out of here! His voice is hitting the highest notes his vocal cords will allow, which are pretty high. “I knew you’d come back for me. No mountain or army can overcome our bond!”

I run a claw down my face. There are a lot of things I keep forgetting about today. Caramel, this bastard, is the worst out of all of them. I have never felt this much pain from someone else’s concussion.

Caramel runs at me, spewing bad poetics like the shitty romantic he is. I stretch my claw blades out, and he has enough self-preservation to stop inches away from them. “While you were gone, I toiled in my room, lamenting on your lack of presence. How could I, a humble soul, live on unable to savior your grace?”

We’ve been reunited for three seconds and I already want to gut the dweeb. “Oh, for the love of all that is good in the world, shut up!” I don’t have time for this, and I mean it. There’s a giant supersoldier, a warrior princess, and a tentacle scientist itching for my head, and I’m stuck between a Blackwatch army and this twat with no escape! “You have a concussion. You don’t love me at all. Your brain damaged noggin thinks it likes me, but it doesn’t. I don’t like you, and you don’t like me. Burn that into your brain.”

I was hoping that would kill the poet in him, but it doesn’t. His eyes are wistful as ever. “Oh, your words do sting, but I know you test my faith. Fear not, for I will never leave your side, even when the clouds between us churn into a raging storm. I will never leave you for another, for you are the air to my breath, the wind to my sails! Not even the cold embrace of death will tear our love to pieces!”

Tanya gets up behind Caramel. She has her eyes, especially the one with the green glint set on Caramel’s backside.

You know what, have him. I turn my head away, and look at the crayon drawings on the wall. Hey, that one’s cute. Someone drew stick figures of him with his family. Another drew one of the Princesses. SLICE! And that one drew herself flying with the Wonderbolts. How adorable.

“So Tanya, did you get the whole murder thing out of your system?” I turn to look at my griffon friend. She’s looking at me the same way Eureka did. Nope, she didn’t.

The eye that was glinting green is now on fire. Not just on regular fire, it’s on green fire, a fire that can only rise from the unholy depths of the underworld, or so I assume. Her regular eye and her on fire eye glare at me as she raises the sword above her. “Heads!”

I shake my head and let out a sigh. “Oh Tanya, don’t be a pain in the ass.”

It goes about the same as the last time she took a swing at me, but I’m smart about it this time. I raise up a monster claw. The sword swings into my blades. I twist my hand a bit and lock the sword up in my talons.

“Drop the sword.”

“Heads!”

“Drop it.”

“Heads!”

“Can you even hear me?”

“Heads!”

Should I leave her here? Tempting. I glance down at Caramel, who is a head shorter now. Wow, a concussion followed by decapitation. Not that I care, but this guy had had a shitty week.

I do have one question, why is he still standing? He’s obviously dead, but he hasn’t fallen over yet. This doesn’t seem right.

“Gilda, my love!”

I squawk and snap my head to the direction of the voice. There, by the pile of toy trains, is Caramel’s head, and it’s smiling at me.

“Oh no. No no no no,” I say. “You better be dead.”

His mouth moves to talk, something a bodiless head should never do. “The blades of death shall never separate us. Our souls are linked through the aether!”

No. No no. No no no no no no no no no. No. Absolutely not. I do not need a Blackwatch zombie coming to my house at night and serenading me with love songs from last decade. Giant clumps of gangsters, fine. Giant supersoldiers, I can live with those. Ripping off monster nuts, I’ll admit, it’s both gross and satisfying at the same time, so I can bare it. But lovestruck zombies, no. That is where I draw the line.

I give Caramel’s body another look. It’s still standing. With my other monster claw, I slash the thing apart. His body crumples up into a head of sliced up body parts.

There, problem solved.

Except no, the problem is still there. While his body is mince meat, it didn’t get the memo it’s beyond dead. He body parts pulsate and wiggle, and they make slurping and clicking sounds. Oh for Grover’s sake, will these infected stop fucking around and die already?!

Something nibbles at my claw. I look at the source. There, on the back of my hand, is a black beetle. It has bright green eyes, and massive pincers. It’s like the one in Pinkie’s office, only more mean looking. It’s biting hard on the monster claw, hard enough to pierce the skin. I don’t know what the monster claws are made out of, but whatever they are, they don’t feel the bite.

Meanwhile, back down at the body pile, Caramel’s flesh is bouncing like crazy. It deflates, and a swarm of black pincer beetles spills out of his guts. They spread in a big, black circle, and they make their way towards me.

Usually, little creepy crawlies don’t bug me that much. I grew up in Griffonstone. I’d find five bugs every night in my pillow, and they all made tasty midnight snacks. Hey, don’t judge me. I’m part bird. Birds eat worms and stuff.

Now, however, I’ve lost my composure, and my appetite. I won’t say how much, and the only other two witnesses are either a possessed griffon or a severed head. I’ll just say I might have screamed something that shouldn’t be said in a daycare, and I might have let go of Tanya while trying to throw off the bugs crawling up me to bite my shins.

Tanya, now free of my claw, takes the opportunity to go full out berserk mode. Fortunately for me, she doesn’t see me as her opponent. Instead, she’s fighting off the bugs. She swings the sword down, chopping through the swarm as they come after us, yelling, “Heads, heads, heads!’ each time she does so. I think she’s swinging a little faster with every strike.

I fight off the swarm, too. I’m mixing in claw strikes with stepping on them with my back leg. Despite both our attacks, the bug swarm isn’t shrinking. In fact, I think it’s growing. The rest of Caramel’s body dissolves into the bug mass, and the black and green critters surge forth in a wave of clicking and slurping.

“Hey Tanya, I think this is getting out of hand.”

“Heads! Heads!”

“Run for the door. We’ll find another way to escape.”

“Heads! Heads!”

I think she’s having too much fun. Fun’s over. I grab her by the arm and I jump over the bug swarm, gliding over to the door. Some of them jump up, trying to nibble at my toes. Only one gets me, but I smash in into the ground when I land.

I pull Tanya behind me as I run through the hallway. I think I sense a theme going on.

There’s nothing going in this hall right now. Might as well take stock before the next infected monster comes to bite my head off. Let’s see, I’m surrounded on all sides, there are at least four entities in this building that want to kill me, Tanya included, and unless my guardian angel comes down and opens up a portal out of this place, I’m pretty much screwed. Ain’t my life a joy?

At the end of this train of thought, I realize I’m running right back where we came from, to the hole I jumped through to escape Eureka. That is not a safe space! And just to confirm why running this way is a bad idea, a large tentacle mass flies out of the hole and slams into the ceiling. The tentacles droop down, and I can see Eureka in the center of the mass.

Eureka doesn’t stick to the ceiling. He peels off and falls, and as he does so, a metal giant jumps up through the hole and whams the scientist in mid air. Eureka goes flying through the hall towards us. I duck, he passes over, and he crashes somewhere behind us.

The giant, now falling after the peak of his jump, grabs the ledge and hops up onto the second floor with a loud, metallic thud. “I didn’t know you brought friends, Zero,” Orion booms.

“Hard to call them friends when everyone is trying to kill”- Tanya cuts me off. I have to knock the sword off the path to my neck. It swings over my head, and I can feel the wind brush over my feathers. “For fuck’s sake, stop it Tanya!”

“Heads!” In the dark hallway, her burning eye is the only thing I can see clearly. It’s bright enough to cast a green glow on the rest of her face. Fortunately, I have night vision, so I don’t need her flame eye to see the mass of tentacles rushing towards us!

I knock us both out of the way just as the tentacles brush by. Razor sharp blades cover the damn things, enough to tear anyone to shreds if they so much as tap you. The tentacles retract with a slimy, slithering sound, racing back to the scientist who shot them at us.

My night vision does its work, and I can see the scientist grinning. There are slits all over his body, and tentacles are waving out of them. It’s like somebody took a squid and covered it all in broken glass, then shoved the squid in Eureka and now it’s trying to get out. “You have a lot of meat on your bones,” Eureka says as he walks towards us. “Enough calories to keep my experiments going.”

Behind us, Orion takes a step forward. He slams his hoof in the ground, shaking the entire second floor. I can hear the whine of his box as its green glow returns to haunt us. “You know, it’s a little funny that I’m fighting you two,” Orion says. “I get to destroy both the one who killed me and the one who brought me back to life. That’s what I call poetic.”

“Oh no, I am done with poetics to”- I knock the sword away for the umpteenth time- “I swear I’ll murder you!”

Both Eureka and Orion come charging at me. The former is waving his tentacles in the air, ready to slice me up and eat me for lunch. The latter is aiming the cannon at me. It’s glowing bright, so it’s ready to fire yet again.

At this point it’s all instinct. I think about Tanya. How is she going to get out of this? Simple, I grab her wrist and chuck her into a classroom. She yells, “Heads!” before disappearing through the doorframe. There, she’s out of trouble.

Now me, how am I going to get out of this?

Eureka is the first to get to me. He does a running pounce, leaping into the air and aiming all those razor tentacles at me in a big cone. I cross my monster claws, and just as he reaches striking distance, I throw them apart, catching the ends of the tentacles and splitting them away from me. The frees up the space between me and Eureka of all flesh eating tentacles, but that now leaves him to crash right into me and tear at me in close combat.

Behind me, at almost the same time, Orion digs in his heels as he preps up to fire. I don’t see it, but I can hear him grinding against the floor. The feathers on the back of my neck tingle as I sense the supersoldier lining up his shot. With me currently engaging with Eureka, there’s not much I can do to stop him from firing. Did I engage the wrong guy?

The dark hallway stops being dark as it fills with the brightest green imaginable. My feathers light on fire as the cannon’s arcane energies roll over me. Sweet mercy, it feels like the bastard is ripping off all my skin!

The light dies down after what feels to be an eternity. My body is on fire, literally. There are tiny flames all over my right side. I hop around and brush the flames off like crazy. Well, at least I’m not dead. I’m on fire, but not dead.

Eureka is on fire too. Gone is that stupid smile of his, replaced by the cringing face of terror and pain. He’s howling. The tentacles are waving all over the place. The ends of half of them are on fire, and they’re shriveling up into smoldering pieces as the flames eat through them.

While I’m dancing the fire away, I turn to the side to see what happened. There’s a large hole carving its way to the outside. The cannon was pointing down at me, so the blast tore into the first floor. Come on, Orion. I want to turn this place into a haunted house. I can’t keep doing that if you keep putting holes in the place.

And right behind me is Orion. He’s not paying attention to me right now. He’s more focuses on the glowing rope that’s around his neck. He throws his head left and right in attempt to break off from the thing, but the magic rope is holding strong.

I see Luna flying behind the giant. Her horn is glowing bright enough to light her side of the hallway, and she too is fighting over the rope. The rope ends in mid air about a few feet in front of her, and she keeps pulling the opposite way Orion goes.

Well, at least I know why I’m not a pile of ash right now.

Orion has enough of this. His head snaps around, and the bottom of his helmet opens up to reveal two rows of large, bleeding teeth. He chomps down on the rope and yanks with the force of a train engine. This overwhelms the alicorn, and it throws Luna over our heads. She spins through the air with her limbs outstretched, sort of like an aerial cart wheel, before crashing into the door I threw Tanya in. Just in time, the pesky owl-bird was walking out and was about to charge me. Luna slams into her, and they both fall into a body heap.

Orion cracks his head and starts moving towards us. “Your persistence on letting these griffons live baffles me, Princess.” As he talks, those bloody teeth of his move up and down. I can see it clearly with my night vision. Blood is dripping between the gaps in his teeth, and drooling down his jaw. I don’t think I see any lips moving. Does he have lips?

The metal jawpiece of his helmet snaps shut with a clink. By now, I’ve brushed the fire off me. I’m only burnt on the outside, but my tentacles are fixing that now. The fires are out on Eureka, too. He’s stopped howling, and now he’s eyeing me as his next meal again.

Here we go again. Soldier in the front, scientist in the back. They’re in the perfect position to spit roast me. Count my blessings, at least this isn’t a porno. Again, they both come at me. And my mind is still in the gutter. Bad time for this.

Instincts are still running the show, and instinct knows better than me. As the big baddies come crashing down on me, I jump to the side, towards the hole Orion made. It cuts through the floor, so it’s a one way ticket to the ground floor. I make it through just as the other two clash together. I’m not looking at the chaos behind me, but I assume it’s messy.

I land in a pile of burnt rubble and dust. In front of me, the hole continues until it reaches the outside wall. Daylight’s pouring through the whole and brightening up this musky room, and it feels glorious. Finally, a way out!

I run for the daylight hole. This is my exit. It’s my ticket out of here.

Behind me, something explodes in a cloud of tile and concrete. Before I can register what’s going on, five thousand pounds of steel and muscle slams into my back and crushes me into the floor. It squishes me into the rubble as if I were soft clay. I cough up all the air in my lungs with a pitiful squeak.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Orion says. He puts all his weight on the massive stone column he calls a leg. I can feel the eyes bulge out of my sockets as all my innards are forcing themselves out of my body. Something liquid comes up my throat, and I can feel it dribble out of my beak. It tastes like blood, my blood.

Somewhere above us, I hear a high pitched, girly scream coming from the second floor. “Bugs!”

Was that Luna? I think it was Luna, although it sounds too high pitched to be her. Either way, there are bugs up there. Caramel has finally arrived to join the fight.

Eureka jumps down to the ground floor with us. He’s dancing around, flailing his tentacles everywhere and kicking his back legs out like he’s competing for first place in a rodeo. All the while he’s screaming, “Ewewewew.”

Oh, the screaming came from him. Of course he has a girly scream, all the nerds do. Sneak up on one and scare the crap out of him, he’ll always make that scream. On the other claw, you don’t expect a tentacle monster to freak out about bugs. It’s kind of amusing.

Orion let’s off the pressure on me, just enough to keep me living and breathing, but not enough to let me go. I think he’s a bit confused. I, however, know what’s up. Those black and green bugs are crawling all over Eureka. They keep pinching and biting him, tearing little chunks off him as they do so. His tentacles stab at the places they bite at. He impales a lot of them, but there’s so many on him it doesn’t make much of a difference.

Now there’s something you don’t see every day, an infected monster freaking out about bugs. Orion certainly hasn’t seen this. He’s too distracted watching this show to bother squishing me to death. I have a brief moment to think.

I need to get out from under his foot. I’m stuck, so I can’t wiggle my way out. I have to get his hoof off of me. That might even be harder. If he didn’t have the armor on, I could slice his leg off. Even then, I’d have to move my claw to do so, and I’m lacking in the mobility department.

Hmm… I wonder what the lifting strength of my blades is…

Alright, I have an idea, but it’s not going to be pleasant.

I can’t move my arm, but I can move my wrist. I turn my claw downward and dig a bit into the rubble. I focus the tentacles in that direction, and they shoot straight down into the ground. Good, I can still make groundspikes. I doubt they’ll be able to pierce his armor, but I bet they can lift it.

Now comes the painful part.

I feel the tentacles dig their way down a bit, and then they make a one eighty degree turn and come straight back up. I brace myself, and I try my best to make them miss me and not miss me at the same time. My confidence is fleeting.

The death bouquet shoots up out of the ground below me. I did and didn’t do both of what I wanted at the same time. The blades don’t go through my core, but they do slice through my sides. If I had room to scream, I’d do so. My tearing flesh is sending pain all through my body. I really hate this idea.

The blades clang against the bottom of Orion’s hoof, and they come up fast enough to push him off of me. Like I thought, they’re not enough to break through his steel, but they are strong enough to lift him. The sudden change of what he’s stepping on throws him off balance, and he stumbles away as he tries to regain his ground.

I gasp at the sudden relief. It stings like crazy when I breathe in and the blades slice in deeper, so the relief is short lived. The blades retract as fast as I can make them, and they cut a little deeper as they do so. When they come back all the way, I jump to the side as Orion slams his hooves on me.

As I move, the big slices in me open up to the air. They sting a lot, and I don’t know how long it’s going to take for those to heal up. Hopefully they’ll stitch together before this fight ends. I can feel the goop dripping out of them.

And then one explodes in a ball of needling agony. I keel over when it hits, screaming as I do so. I turn to see Eureka’s razor tentacle slithering its way into one of the larger slices. I can feel it biting through my goop and making a meal from the inside of me. Sweet mercy!

Eureka’s tentacles are still stabbing at the bugs, and I think it’s starting to get on his nerves. Eureka isn’t smiling anymore. His eyes twitch as he looks at me. The one tentacle that’s inside me is the one that’s sticking out of his chest, and he’s petting the damn thing! “You’ll be my food,” Eureka says. “You will do.”

Orion isn’t paying attention to this. He just has his eyes on me. He rears up to slams his hooves on me again, and I jump away before he crashes to the ground. Lucky for me, he step’s on Eureka’s tentacles, splitting them apart. Eureka screams as his tentacle whips back at him.

I grab the other part of the tentacle that’s still in me. It’s still wiggling on its own, and it’s still sucking the juices out of me. I tear it out and toss it at Orion’s face. It hits his faceplate with a watery slap. He throws his head to the side to shake it off.

The supersoldier comes at me again, only this time with a punch. Eureka comes at me, too. His front side explodes in a tentacle fury, and his attack hits the side of Orion’s punching hoof. The tentacles latch on to his armor, but it doesn’t stop Orion.

The punch continues on, only now it’s dragging Eureka with it. I jump back to avoid the hoof, but Eureka swings around, and his tentacles slam into me. Their razors dig into my skin, and the tentacles dig into my slices again. They’re eating me from the inside!

Eureka makes a half arc around the room before slamming into a wall. The tentacles stop with him, but I don’t. I fling off the tentacle ride when he stops, and my skin rips apart as the tentacles tear from my body. I hit the ground as a bloody mess. My goop flies everywhere as I roll to a stop.

The little red light on Orion’s cannon stops blinking, and the cannon part glows green once again. Ugh, if I get out of this alive, I’m finding the one bastard who gave this guy a cannon and I’ll give him the beat down of a life time.

Exploding into a million pieces is enough motivation to get off my ass and book it. Orion tracks me as I run, but he’s tracking me further than where I am. Oh shit, he knows the “shoot where I’m going to be, not where I am” strategy. He’s clever.

I turn on my heel and run back before I walk into his trap. The cannon fires as I do so. Strange, the world isn’t burning into green cinders. What gives?

It takes me a moment to realize I’m not moving. My legs are running as fast as they can, but they’re not touching the ground. There is a good foot or so of air between me and the ground. Rocks are floating next to me, and they’re all glowing green. Then it clicks. I’m floating, too.

I look at Orion to see a beam coming from the cannon. It’s not a death beam, otherwise I’d be dead. The beam diffuses around me in a glowing cloud of dust and debris. Orion has me in a levitation spell!

Orion twists his body, and the beam swings along with him. It flings me across the room, but I eject out of the glow cloud as it makes a tight arc. That’s good, he’s not going to bash me around with a stupid spell. On the other claw, I’m flying straight at a wall with no control.

I twist my body around so my back is facing the wall, then my wing blades shift out. I crash through at least a foot of concrete, rolling into another room in a dust cloud. The wing blades take most of the blunt force, and I receive no damage. Well, the wing blades are bent and dented now, but they’ll fix themselves up. I did not plan that trick. That was pure instinct.

I land on my feet, only to be assaulted by a fist full of tentacles. They slam into my side and dig into my body slices.

Not this time. With both my monster claws and my wing blades, I twist around and dig into his tentacles. The blade storm rips apart Eureka’s attack. The tentacles wiggle around as they retreat, and I can hear the scientist screaming in pain down the hall.

There are still leftover tentacles pieces sticking out of my slices, still trying to eat me. My own tentacles lash out and strike the invading tentacles, liquefying them into goop. Then they get to work sealing my slices back up, and I’m stitched back up to good as new. Well, mostly. My feathers are still a bit singed from that one cannon blast.

I eye Eureka. He’s freaking out over my counter attack, and he’s not paying attention to me what so ever. Ah, an opening. I’ll slice him up and be done with the nerd for good. One less monster in the world.

My muscles tense as I ready to pounce, but then I feel something sting me in the butt. Nope, I didn’t yelp. I didn’t do anything of the sort. I look back to see what’s got me. Did a stray tentacle nab me? Nope, it’s a bug. There’s a black and green bug hanging off my butt by its pincers.

I flick it off with a blade. It flies off to who knows where. I guess Caramel’s bugs are still running around the place. Isn’t that annoying?

Another bug falls on my face. It pinches my beak, but beaks are made of hard shell, so it doesn’t do much. I flick that one away, then another falls on my claw. I bush it off before two more fall on my back, followed by another two.

What the heck? I look up to see where these things are falling from. Orion’s blast carved through the ceiling right above me. I can see up to the second floor, and I find the source of the bugs up there. I regret looking.

The second floor ceiling is crawling with them. Every square inch of ceiling tile has bugs swarming it. It’s a night sky where the stars are all green, and they’re skittering all over the place, and a few are falling down and taking chunks out of me.

A blue glow emerges from the edge of the hole. Some of the falling bugs hit it, and they bounce off the glow. The glow continues to grow until all I see is blue and shiny above me. Through the glow, I see two figures struggling in the dark. One has a horn that’s glowing bright, and the other has a shiny stick and is swinging the stick at the other figure.

Before I put the pieces together, the glow crushes me.

I don’t know why I didn’t get out of the way. Maybe it’s because I didn’t realize how heavy a shield spell is. I can now say they are very heavy, but not as heavy as Orion’s foot. Both Tanya and Luna fall on me in one of Luna’s bubble shields. I probably made a noise dog toys make when it crushed me to the ground. Don’t worry, I’m getting used to this.

Those two are moving around a lot in their bubble. I know this because the thing is rolling all over me. It’s playing a severely disproportional game of pinball, and my back is the machine. Ow, it hits one of the bumpers. Oof, I think it just scored triple points. I pray for my sanity they don’t score a multiball.

I manage to move my head to see what’s going on up there. Tanya is swinging her sword like crazy, as per usual. She’s also using the blue suitcase on her arm to block the alicorn’s hits. Luna is blocking and parrying with her magic swords. I have a feeling Luna could easily break through Tanya’s attack and strike her where it hurts, but the princess doesn’t want to kill anyone because she thinks we’re her prisoners.

The tiny battle on my back isn’t clear to me, even with my night vision, but I do see the final strike. At some point, Tanya manages to get around Luna’s swords and hit the alicorn in the horn. Luna’s horn does a firework show before the bubble shield fizzles out and disappears.

Finally, the bubble shield isn’t crushing anymore. That was getting annoying. Downside is they were both engaged in floating combat, so they both come crashing down on me. Both of them are heavy girls, so you can imagine how much I enjoyed Tanya’s ass falling on top of my head.

I hear the two clash some more. There are clings and klangs of what I assume are the sounds of swords hitting each other. There’s also the sound of Tanya screaming “Heads!” over and over again, but I think that’s a given at this point.

“Drop the sword, griffon,” Luna yells. “It’s corrupted your mind!”

“Heads!” My impression of the Equestrian diarchy would diminish if Luna expected any other answer.

Tanya’s still sitting on me. I push myself up, and the owl-lion falls over with a squawk. Here’s some good news, all the bugs were crushed in all that commotion. Bad news, I got bug guts all over me. Gross. And now more are falling all over me again. Yay.

A blue shield appears all around us. The bugs fall on the top and skid off to the side. They’re not going to be able to get in here. I almost cheer at the small victory, until a blue, glowing magic sword appears in front of my neck.

Luna wipes some blood off her mouth with her foreleg, glaring at me as she does so. “I’m done with this farce. We are leaving now.”

Tanya lunges to strike at the princess, only to be stopped by a blue aura that lifts her into the air.

I nod. “I’m cool with leaving.” I point over to where Eureka stands, “but what are we going to do about the plague doctor over there?”

Just as I say this, a mass of tentacles hits the side of the shield. They slither all around us, scrapping the sides of the shield with their millions of razors.

Luna doesn’t seem to notice, or care. “Blackwatch will take care of him. That’s their job.”

I point behind me. “Alright, should we have the supersoldier carry our bags to the train?”

And just as I say that, the whole world outside the shield flashes a bright green light. Luna kneels over as her horn sputters out, and the shield bubble shudders before dissolving into nothingness. Once that’s all over, we’re left with a dark hallway, a new hole in a wall, and Orion’s massive bulk standing over us.

Steam comes out of the supersoldiers mouth piece as he lets out an angry huff. “Don’t forget to turn in your room keys before you leave.”

Oh great, he has superhearing, and he used it to make a crack at my luggage joke. I got to say, that’s a smooth use of monster powers. If only he wasn’t tasked to kill me, maybe we could be friends and head to the bar and drink our brains out.

“Heads!” Tails. Tanya runs past me to charge Orion head on. Luna must have dropped her when the shield went down. The owl-bird swings the sword at him, only to bounce off his leg armor with a clang. She does this several more times before Orion brushes her away and knocks her on her ass. Orion does not look impressed.

A new blue shield appears by my side. Before I fully realize it’s there, another one of Eureka’s tentacle attacks strikes it. They hit with a thud, and then they crawl all over its face, trying to get past and strike us.

I notice Luna’s really struggling with this spell. Her knees are shaking. Her teeth are grinding together. Steam is coming off her horn as the thing glows as bright as ever. It’s the biggest, and only, source of light in this entire room. She’s putting up one heck of a fight with Eureka.

I look around more to see the shield isn’t just protecting us from Eureka. There’s a shield down the hall away from the action, preventing any of us from running that way if we wanted to. The shield goes above us to block the bugs. It also swings around behind the room Orion just busted through, preventing him from backing out as well.

Luna says something, but her voice is shaky and barely audible. “Don’t you dare leave, Gilda.”

No promises.

Her magic swords pop into existence and fly around me. They intercept Orion’s hoof, who was about to crush me into a pancake. Fireworks fly when the two make contact. They struggle above me, pushing each other either way while giving no more than a few inches of ground.

While Luna has Orion’s hoof occupied, an idea grows in my mind as I wiggle around my claw blades. I stick the monster claw into the ground. The tentacles shoot down and out at Orion. When they arrive, they burst out of the floor in a blade bouquet, not straight up, but at an angle. The attack hits the side of Orion’s other fore-hoof, knocking it out from under him.

With both front hooves off the ground, Orion tilts forward and sprawls out over the ground. Being the massive guy he is, his front side sends out a moderate earthquake upon us when he hits the ground. His impact is more of a loud boom than a thud.

With Orion down at my level, I take the opportunity to pounce on his head and grab him around the neck. I try yanking off his armor, but there are no gaps to shove my claws into. It seems to be one big piece of metal. Someone wanted this to be absolutely Gilda proof.

“Heads!” If I had a bit for every time I heard that in the past five minutes, I’d be richer than the Dream Princess. Tanya runs at me and swings to cleave me in half. I jump back while staying on Orion, and the sword strikes the back of the giant’s neck. Of course it bounces back without so much as making a scratch.

As far as cursed swords go, Tanya’s is a crappy one. It possesses you, but you don’t get anything in return. I have no clue why she thought this would be her ticket out of here. I’m throwing that thing in the trash when I get the chance.

After a couple more strikes while yelling her favorite word over and over, Tanya loses interest in the giant and turns her gaze at the other nearest living thing, me. No problem. I block the sword with a claw and shove her away.

The giant underneath me grunts. I can feel his armor vibrate as he speaks. “You griffons are irritating.”

My stomach lurches as Orion pushes himself up to his feet. He squishes me against the ceiling when he stands at full height. It’s a section of the ceiling he hasn’t blown apart yet. It’s not crushing me, but he’s keeping his head low so he could try if he wanted to.

A green glow appears in the corner of my eye. I look at the source to find Orion’s cannon charging up again. It swivels down to point at the ground, and Orion turns to the side to aim it at Tanya. As he turns, my back grinds against the ceiling, but I don’t care.

I knee him in the side of his neck. It does nothing to his armor. I look at Luna, and she’s not doing too hot. She sees what’s about to happen, and I can see her readying up to stop it, but sparks are popping out of her horn when she tries to cast a spell. With Eureka bashing against the shield wall, I don’t think she can cast another bubble spell. Tanya might be toast!

Tanya’s eye fire flares up into something bigger. I don’t think I noticed it before, but I think the fire grew since she decapitated Caramel. She raises the sword above her head, as she’s done many times before, and then she charges Orion. “Heads!”

I feel the cannon spark with energy. It’s about to fire!

But before it goes off, Tanya strikes Orion. She doesn’t hit his head, or his legs, but she hits the cannon.

The sword chops into it with a solid sounding crunch. I don’t know if she meant to strike it, or if it was an accident, but she’s done it now.

Green, magic sparks arc from the barrel. I can feel heat swelling from the thing. It’s burning up Orion’s armor. The cannon makes a high pitched whine as its fans go into overdrive. The sparks wave around in a storm of arcane chaos before everything goes green.

There’s a loud ringing in my ears. I can’t hear anything but that ringing. I feel vibrations going through my body, and I feel like I should hear them, but I can’t.

My brain is going berserk, like it wants to break out of the back of my skull and splatter itself across the walls. Maybe it already did that, and these are my final thoughts before the splatter spreads out too far to be able to think.

No, that’s not it, otherwise I wouldn’t be tasting ash right now, and I wouldn’t feel all this hurt in my body. Billion of pain needles are dancing under all parts of my skin. All parts, all of them. It’s not absolute torture, but it’s big enough to make everything miserable.

My eyes flicker open, and the light stings them. Ugh, that’s not pleasant. I’m not in that dark hallway anymore. The light seems warm, so I think I’m outside.

I work my eyes open and regain focus of the world. It’s dusty. Brown and grey dust clouds are suspended over the ground. I can’t see anything other than the ground, and that’s covered by rubble. A light rain of little rock pieces keeps dropping on me. I flinch whenever a pebble lands near my eyes or on my beak. Everything smells like a fire.

The ringing in my ears is going away. To replace it, I can hear yelling and moving off in the distance. No screaming. The yelling sounds like a bunch of ponies giving out commands with the loudest voices they can manage. Wouldn’t surprise me. Blackwatch was outside the daycare last time I checked.

Am I even at the daycare? This feels like the outside, so I think I’m outside it. On the roof maybe? Then I have to ask how did I get up here? What happened? Maybe I can answer that if this head ache would go away.

I wander through the clouds, careful to look out for any Blackwatch. I see a shadow run away, but I don’t recognize who or what it is. For all I know there are more infected monsters running around in here with me. I do not want to meet any new bad nasties.

Hmm, I remember the fight. I was riding Orion, and then Tanya charged him. Green light, and now dust. Did everything explode?

Something grabs my shoulder, and I jump and turn around. By the time I have my monster claws out and ready to strike, I see who it is.

Princess Luna pulls herself up, using me as a handle. Her eyes are halfway open, her mouth is slack, and her legs are shaking. Her horn isn’t glowing anymore. I don’t think there was a point at any time during that fight when it wasn’t lit up.

The alicorn stands up half way before her eyes roll back. Her legs give out and she collapses to the ground. Her belly is moving, so she’s still breathing, and still alive. Good for her, and good for me. If she’s out cold, that means she can’t come after me.

I walk away, leaving her behind. Blackwatch can rescue her. She’s their problem. My problem is getting out of here, and possibly getting Tanya out as well. If she still has that sword, I’m knocking her unconscious. No questions asked.

A dull thud comes from deep in the dust cloud, followed by another thud, and another. Soon, a large shadow looms over me, and the supersoldier Orion steps into view, or at least what’s left of him.

Half his armor is gone, including his magic cannon. The edges of the armor that’s still attached are twisted and scorched. Touching those edges will give anyone a nasty cut. That’s evidence for an explosion. The cannon must have exploded when Tanya struck it. I think it took out the whole building with it. Sweet mercy, it’s a wonder any of us survived.

With a huge chunk of armor gone, his body underneath is exposed, and it’s not pretty. What I’m looking at isn’t a pony, but something that used to be one.

There’s no colorful coat ponies tend to have, be it pink, blue, green, or any other color. There’s no skin to talk about either. It’s all raw muscle, and it’s not even that. It’s all flesh of some sort, red and bloody. Tubes made of meat are going everywhere around him, and they all pulsate, even when he’s not moving. There’s a huge gash where the cannon used to be, and little tentacles are sticking out of that gash. They’re grabbing each other and pulling themselves together, healing up that gash to be good as new.

And his face, sweet mercy that face. Half his face is still covered in armor, but the rest… ew. It’s as raw and skinless as the rest of his body, but the face takes the cake in being the worst part to have no skin.

I was right, he has no lips. His teeth and gums are completely exposed, and blood is dripping from them. His eyes are bulging out as if they’re about to fall out of their sockets with the slightest of breeze. In place of his nose are two long nasal cavities that start at the front of his snout and end in two black holes beneath his eyes.

Orion nods. I bet he’d be smiling, or frowning, but without any lips, I can’t tell what he wants to do. “You like what you see?” Orion says. “This is what Eureka’s experiments produced, a monster. Because of his work, I get to be the same as all the other monsters I’ve been fighting for a month. But I wouldn’t have had the chance to become this thing if you didn’t kill me!”

Okay, I think he’s feeling mad. Likely he’s mad at me for killing him, whenever that happened. Eh, I shrug. “You’re a monster, big deal. So am I, and you don’t see me bitching about it.” My monster claws grow out, and I aim them at him. “Heck, I think we both got lucky in the monster department. I have cool shapeshifting powers, and you’re a badass giant that no one will mess with.”

“That’s bullshit. You ruined my life.” Orion points a hoof at his face, a hoof that is only partially armored now. “How many chicks do you think I’m going to pick up with this face?!”

“Yeah… I see your point.” I stand back, growing my monster claws and wing blades out, and level everything at the supersoldier. “I forsaken your honor, blah blah blah, you can never show your face again, yadie yadie yada, and you forgive me and we both go out for a beer, right?”

“Almost everything, except, in the end, only I go out for a beer.” And with that quip, he thunders at me with a charge.

I cock my head. “Got me there. You’re wrong, but you got me there.”

My big issue with fighting Orion is his armor. Like those armored ponies I fought yesterday, I can’t get past that steel. Beyond that, he’s slow. He hits like a train, but I can see his punches miles away. Now that half his armor is gone, Orion doesn’t have anything to use against me.

I dash towards Orion’s bad side before he throws his first punch. With a bit of monster strength, I jump up to the base of his neck and jam my blades into his flesh. Orion screams in agony. It’s a deep and guttural scream. I bet all of Manehattan can hear him.

With both my claws in him, I send out my tentacles. They tear through the insides of his guts, just like what Eureka tried to do with me. I shudder at the thought, and I kind of feel sorry for the big guy for what I’m about to do to him.

Orion realizes he’s fucked, and he thrashes around in a panic. He tries brushing me off with a hoof, but with his armor on he can’t bend his foreleg this far up his neck.

The tentacles flow across most of his body. I focus through them, and ground spikes bust out all over his flesh. They explode out with bursts of bloody goop, and sections of his armor pop off his body as blades replace his skin.

Orion lets out one last scream of agony before his throat explodes with a blade bouquet. He shudders, and then the supersoldier falls over on his armored side. He stops moving, and his meat tubes stop throbbing.

He’s dead.

Everything is still for a moment. My mind takes some time to process what I just did. I did it. I killed him. I collapse on top of his bloody flesh, unable to suppress the laughter willing its way out of me. Son of a bison, I killed him! I actually did it.

My muscles relax as the whole situation comes down to flood my senses. This is amazing! I’ve been having trouble fighting these big dudes for the past two days, and now, for once in my entire life of being a monster, I actually killed a big guy!

My mini party is short lived, as I feel my tentacles growing out. Not shrinking, growing! Tendrils jut out all over Orion’s body in the places where the blades didn’t get him. They chew through his flesh, dissolving him into red and black goop. I can feel the tentacles drinking him up.

His body pulsates and throbs as my tentacles go to work. No. No no no no no. I’m done with this nasty monster stuff! I had enough with Eureka, I don’t want to go all monster on Orion! Stop! Stop!

Liquid around me, warm liquid…

“Falling off an airship, that’s not a pleasant way to go.”

Glass wall, lab coats…

“A fine price to pay for these results. Eureka went above and beyond with his work. If our beloved head researcher is still alive, I’ll have to treat him to a fine dinner in Canterlot.”

Purple pony, unicorn…

“I thought his process required a catalyst. Where did you get one at such short notice?”

Tower, Genicorn…

“I went upstairs and grabbed a sample from Mother. She’s awfully lonely. You should go up and visit her more often.”

Blackwatch, prison…

“I’ll pass.”

I snap back to reality. It’s still dusty. I still can’t see ten feet beyond me. My claws feel heavy. Don’t know why, but they just feel heavy.

That was a flash back, I haven’t had one of those in a while. It’s still weird, haven’t gotten used to it.

I look around at where I am. Orion is gone. His body and flesh are no more. The only thing left of him this the empty husk of armor. It’s a big bowl now, with a couple spouts branching off that used to be his legs. The walls of the bowl come up to my neck. I could fill this up with milk and eat a lot of cereal from it.

As I look around, I find myself at loss for words. I don’t know what to feel right now. I just ate a massive giant. He’s inside me now. The whole thing is bringing up a swarm of questions in my head that relate to if I’m still a griffon or not. I just ate something ten times my size that was trying to kill me. If I can do that, what else can I do? If there’s a monster ten times bigger than Orion, can I eat it? What can’t I do? I can’t fly anymore, just glide. Am I still a griffon at all?

Why do my claws feel heavy?

It’s a hard pill to swallow. I think I need to lie down for a bit. Maybe find a therapist. This is getting a bit existential, so maybe a philosopher will be better.

If I’m not a griffon anymore, can I still bake scones? Will my family still love/hate me? Did I ever have a family to begin with?

Stop, stop. That’s enough. No more life crisis thoughts. Are my dreams still dreams? I said stop!

In the dust cloud beyond the spine part of Orion’s armor, a little green light bobs its way towards me. As it clears the dust, the green light turns into a flame. The flame is covering the eye of an owl-lion, who’s carrying a long greatsword on her back. The blue suitcase is still strapped to her arm, undamaged by the explosion.

I lift a claw to tell Tanya to stop where she is, but my claws barely move. It’s like they’re trapped in concrete. Alright, that’s odd, my claws aren’t moving. It’s probably the life crisis thoughts putting them in shock. I’ll deal with them in a bit.

“Tanya,” I call out, without lifting my claws, “put the sword down.”

She stops before stepping into the armor with me. The sword draws out, and it rises above her head. That green eye of hers has a stone hard glare looking at me.

“I’m warning you, put the sword down or I will make you.” It looks like I’m going to have to knock her out after all. One swift punch to the noggin will take care of it. I’ll try to go light, but I may need to hit her a couple times. Griffons have thick skulls.

Tanya doesn’t listen. “Heads!” she screams before jumping over the armor and into the bowl with me.

I roll my eyes. I have an existential crisis and a possessed griffon to deal with. I bet Blackwatch is still out there looking for us, so I’ll have to deal with them in a moment, too. I want absolutely none of these problems, but it looks like I’m the only one who’s going to deal with them.

At this moment, I would like to say the following. Fuck my life.

Tanya jumps within striking distance before swinging the sword. My claws are still heavy, so they take some effort to move. I duck under her swing, and twist my body to throw a punch at her face. Please, Tanya, please don’t take more than two punches.

She turns just enough for our eyes to lock together. I can’t see anything in the flaming eye. It’s just a portal to the underworld, nothing much to see there. But the other eye is different. I don’t know how to put it, but it looks like it’s in pain. Scared, even. Tanya might be trying to claw herself out, and she’s coming out through her eye. She looks kind of terrified.

Maybe there is a part of her that the sword hasn’t taken over. She still has some control, and she’s doing her best to show it. That’s fine and dandy, if I knock her out, I can take the sword away and she’ll-

Tanya explodes.

It’s not a fiery boom explosion, but an explosion of guts and goop. It happens when my fist connects with her face, or what should be a fist. It’s more like a large club made from the gnarled stump of a petrified tree. And it just punched clean through Tanya’s head!

The upper half of Tanya’s body becomes a smear across Orion’s armor. The lower half falls over onto that smear and gushes a pool of blood to add to the smear. The sword and suit case fall at the smear’s edge and clatter against the metal. The sword, oddly enough, disappears into a puff of smoke.

I stand still, looking at the mess. I glance down at my claw, or my not-claw now. It’s a big, dark, huge lump, about as big as Tanya’s head was. There are large bumps and dimples covering the entirety of its dark surface. It looks hard, harder than steel. It’s also covered in blood, Tanya’s blood.

An eternity passes, and I don’t leave the armor shell. Events just aren’t processing in my head, and I can’t figure out what’s going on. The remaining shreds that I call my sanity are putting the pieces together. Something inside me realizes Tanya is dead. Another part realizes I did it. Both parts are trying to come together to form a complete thought, but there’s something trying to stab those parts to death and prevent them from ever existing. The last part is failing.

The sound of voices and voice boxes buzzing breaks my shock. I look around and see shadows closing in. Those shadows have pairs of glowing blue dots where their eyes should be. Blackwatch, they’re doing a sweep. They’re coming this way. I have no time.

My brain is out of commission at the moment, so instinct takes over once again. The stumps shapeshift back into my regular claws, and I turn to book it out of here. At some point, I got the disguise of a Blackwatch pegasus, so I shapeshift into that. Blackwatch won’t recognize me if they catch me.

For some reason, a small part of me speaks up. It says to stick around for just one second. The part points me to the suitcase, and then leaves me alone. Instinct, the hero of today’s adventures, obeys the small part and runs over to grab it. It slings it over my shoulder. It's still warm.

I jump out of the armor and run through the dust just as Blackwatch yells my name.

Author's Notes:

Congratulations, you’ve acquired Hammerfists!

They’re great against armor and do heavy damage in large areas.

Use your weapon wheel to select your new power and use them at any time!