CoCoBA Episode 19: Horse Latitudes

Coco’s Bizarre Adventure, Episode 19: Horse Latitudes

Coco woke up to nighttime, and bustling movement. Above her, the moon sat in a squat corner of the sky, merely a crescent, and she sighed in relief.

A stretcher of some kind had been laid underneath of her, and she had to check to make sure that it wasn’t something she’d made herself. To the left and right of her there were identical ones, and more past each of them, stretching her into a row being endlessly patrolled by vaguely doctorish volunteers.

She tried to sit up, and found that she could without any worry. A few inches further, on the road to actually standing, her leg squealed at her in pain. She looked at it disapprovingly, like a mother, and then felt around it with ｢Something for Nothing｣. A reapplication of her makeshift splint, and the pain dulled into a background hum.

It was then that she noticed the others in the stretchers. Some she’d seen, in the last minutes of the battle, hiding or running this and way and that, and they slept now with a kind of complete stillness. Beside them were others, though, including many pegasi, who twitched and moved as restlessly as their injuries would allow, breathing heavily or making noises that were the prelude to screams.

Besides the nurses, there were pegasi flitting this way and that. It took her a moment to notice one against the night sky, but in the next minute she made out dozens dashing overhead, blocking swathes of stars out for seconds at a time. Some clutched large blocks of material to their stomachs, while others moved unimpeded, zipping off towards the furthest corners of the city.

News was spreading. She realized that however lively the city seemed around her now, it would be a lot worse once everyone was healed and awake to ask what had happened. Which meant, in turn, that if she wanted to get something done, there was no better time than the present.

She felt out her leg a second time, then a third, making sure everything stayed secure. It was easier to hold the splint in place now, when her power wasn’t being thrown in all directions. She’d never tried to see how many different things she could pull off at the same time, back when she’d been experimenting, or if it got worse when she became tired, but now it was clear that ｢Something for Nothing｣ wouldn’t go on fighting after she did.

The pony next to her, a lime-green pegasus, juddered against her bed as she swung her hooves wildly in the air, smacking at the emptiness. Her mouth was working at something baser than words, a choked sob whose sound just wouldn’t escape into the air.

By the time Coco was on her hooves again, there was a voice calling her name in the distance. It wasn’t panicked or high-pitched, so she knew it wasn’t either of the fillies...

Wait.

She turned in the direction of the voice - Moondancer! - and then galloped towards her. The mare was still in her sweater and glasses, her hair put up in its usual bun again, with the whole ensemble as prim as when they’d first met each other. If she was tired, she did an excellent job at masking it, and probably an even better one alleviating the symptoms with magic.

After Coco had been running for a few seconds, Moondancer controlled her panic and stood still, figuring it was no use running into her, or coaching her about the clear and present damage to her leg she’d been able to scan for with some basic medicinal scrying. The unicorn was nothing close to a doctor, but she could still recognize the physiologically impossible and choose not to question it.

“Where’s Scootaloo?” Coco asked as she stopped.

"The last time I saw her she was talking with Cheerilee, or she might be sleeping. I think she-"

"Zesty?"

Moondancer smiled, thinly. "She couldn't be happier right now."

"Cheese Sandwich?" Coco asked next, with exactly the same urgency.

"Around somewhere."

"Button?"

"On his way back to Ponyville, I think."

"And Diamond?"

Moondancer opened her mouth, and then was silent for a moment. Coco drew closer, her hooves on the mare's sweater, shaking her.

"Did he drop her?!" She knew that she wasn't a professional, but she might be able to save a life with ｢Something for Nothing｣ if she could keep within range of the wounded pony for long enough...

"No, he and the orange unicorn got onto the dragon, and... escaped with her."

Coco reeled back. "Where were they going? How long ago?"

"Towards the Amulet, as far as I can tell. They have a few hours head start right now, but the eyewitnesses say they were being careful not to hurt her. I think they want to use her as a hostage, but we're close to figuring out exactly what route they're taking. I just need to get the info from Cheese-" Moondancer said, and then peered over Coco's shoulder.

Coco turned her head, and saw a makeshift hospital bed lifting up - the mattress came away from the rest, although the pony sleeping on top of it didn't move, and Cheese extracted himself from underneath one hoof at a time, lowering it back down gingerly. All this completed, he noticed that the two mares were looking at him, and waved at them good-naturedly before fishing something out of his hair.

Moondancer was about to teleport them closer when a sheet twice the size of a pony appeared behind Coco. She fell backwards into it, the corners humming with cyan magic, and then the whole thing went taut. Like a trampoline, it launched her into the air, and she vaulted the complete distance just as Cheese produced the scroll.

"Coco! The Sense has been pinching my knees since the sun came back!" he said, grinning like a fool.

She almost stopped to congratulate him, and then shook her head. "Have you figured out where they took Diamond?"

The sparkle in his eyes guttered a little, but his smile didn't fade completely. "Yeah, Mash says other ponies figured out how to use Sweetie Belle's Stand, so they've been looking at every part of Equestria they've been to. She put all the notes together to go with what the Map gave you." He hoofed the scroll over.

Coco unfurled it, and read it over.

The Crystal Empire was in a real state, apparently. Sweetie's hoofwriting was very neat, if it was hers, but somepony else had made jagged sketches of black towers and stormclouds. Each was a landscape devoid of ponies, until the last one, where dozens and dozens stood in ranks, their faces masked by some kind of metal helmet with glowing eyes. There were only thirty or forty in the picture, but they filled up the available space completely.

Beneath it, the Hollow Shades, as forested and dark as ever, but almost completely empty. There was a note made that Twilight Sparkle's cutie mark had moved on the Map down there, which Coco started at - but it hadn't stayed. It had moved over to Manehattan half a day after that, where it was staying now.

Manehattan looked like a city somepony had left to rot for half a century. Buildings were defaced, shops were closed, alleys had become darker, and something was definitely keeping the ponies afraid. Most of them stayed indoors, but they weren't being made to work, and those that walked the streets could have been homunculi or clones or some other thing that nopony in Ponyville knew much about.

That was yesterday. A few hours later, ｢Private Eyes｣ stopped being able to see it.

Moondancer was reading over Coco's shoulder, and wasn't surprised to hear that somepony with the Alicorn Amulet was messing around with the closest available city, or that they could sense it was being watched somehow. The place where Magic had been on the Map hadn't actually been laid out somewhere - and nopony had visited it. Had it just been lost in the wilderness north of the Shades?

Cheese, who hadn't thought to read the notes on his rush over, read over Coco's other shoulder through a pair of smart bifocals that neither of the mares were noticing. Tartarus was still the location of the last two cutie marks, and nopony had been very close to it, but nothing seemed any different there.

Getting from Magic to Loyalty and Kindness meant hitting the mountains head-on, but it was a route that would only take a fortnight or so to travel up to then. It was possible for them to take a detour around, if necessary - unless something else happened on the way there, or they had to spend a couple of weeks inside of Tartarus.

Shudder.

With no warning, Coco let go of the scroll and turned on her hooves, running in the opposite direction. Moondancer gasped, and her magic just barely saved it from hitting the dewy grass below - but by the time she'd retrieved it and rolled it back up, the mare was already flying out of the courtyard on one of her magic carpets.

* * *

Button Mash looked up at the siding of the house, and then looked away again. It wasn’t right to think that way - this was a living house, with a personality, and his mom would worry sick over him if he couldn’t show it some consideration.

“So,” he coughed into a hoof, “Cheese told me you wouldn’t mind heading to Ponyville for a little while?” The question mark came on its own, a squeak in his voice.

It didn’t respond. Cheese’s advice hadn’t been very detailed or helpful, actually. He wondered, briefly, whether ｢Electric Funeral｣ would rouse it for better or worse, and then kicked himself mentally. This was a potential friend, and he was like the ambassador for Ponyville right now.

“We’ve got a lot of ponies there who could, y’know, use some help,” he said, not making eye contact. “I’ve got to go down there, anyway, and it would be an easier place to lay low if Sombra’s going to send ponies to take back the fake Princess Luna.”

It shifted a little bit in its foundations, moving a few inches to either side, like someone deciding whether or not to get out of bed. He took it as a positive sign.

“There’s a lot of ponies who could have parties inside you, as long as you give them back afterward! And there are others who could stay inside you to help the food shortage! The best party pony in all of Equestria used to hang with us!” He tried to think of anything else to throw at the wall, but the words hung in the air as he wracked his mind further and further.

Then, altogether, the house creaked and lifted itself from the ground. At first it seemed just to hover, but then he could see the shadow underneath of it resolve into a tangle of thick squiggly noodles with rounded points like misshapen hooves. They smacked into the ground one by one, and then it was towering an extra story.

It hadn’t been a perfect sweep. There had been a lot of hurrying, and not a lot of time to secure Rarity. Sweetie wouldn’t be happy that they were keeping her sister here, hiding her inside of some kind of secret safeguard of a Stand. It was best for the Elements to be spread out, in case Sombra had some kind of plan for gathering them together.

But he’d been able to help out the city, and he had some very frantic assurances from Cheese that the city was going to expand and send some pegasi back down to Ponyville when they had an opportunity, maybe with food! That was good news to bear, at least, not to mention that he’d helped overthrow a fake tyrant Princess Luna!

Not that it would stop his mother having nightmares tonight. If she could sleep, right now.

Coco had been so whirlwinded from the second he woke her up that there was no time for them to talk, not really. He didn’t mind that, since he got all the information he could through a few minutes ago anyway. Seeing her again so soon was like bumping into somepony after you promised to meet them ten years in the future, it was hampering the road for them.

And it was the only chance he’d get to do that, he was sure. Unless Coco broke off Princess Celestia’s bedchamber and carried it with her, and Spike’s firebreathing stayed completely accurate, all the fancy tricks in Twilight’s Castle wouldn’t bring in any reinforcements. They had to hunker down and hold the fort, and wait for a siege that wouldn’t end or a final moment of triumph.

One of the black trunks - legs - reached out toward him gently, as if it was trying to sniff him. He leaned over towards it, curious, and then it was curling underneath his chin and spiraling around his barrel. A single moment of tightening and his hooves left the ground.

He didn’t dare breathe as the ground flew further and further from him, until he was finally above the second story of the building - and from there he could really get an eyeful of the ground stretching far beneath them.

For a moment, he thought that he’d simply raised his voice too loudly and annoyed the big sentient house, and that it was about to lob him like a hoofball down the side of the mountain.

Then, it set him down, gently, on the rooftop. It was slanted, so he had to dig in with two of his hooves on the tiles, but they held for him after a moment. Then, as a whole, it lurched backwards, and started rocking like a boat on the waves as the ground moved by underneath of it.

It took a moment for him to realize that they were already heading back downwards, and he clutched tighter as he concentrated on his breathing.

* * *

The restaurant was much better than it had any right to be in these circumstances - one of the few that hadn’t been used as a base of operations yet. The two of them sat across from each other in a relatively clean booth, with bowls of ice cream still left in the freezer.

Everypony was celebrating right now, although most of them were doing it by sleeping. It was like having a welcome party, and just like everything else, Scootaloo seemed pleased but aloof over it. The filly was eating just fine, having resuscitated shortly after she got off the battlefield, and it was like there was nothing short of death that would stop her moving.

Of course, since Coco was still reportedly asleep, she wasn’t in a grand hurry to go anywhere. Which was odd at first, considering how strong of a leader she’d been, but the last few hours had given them enough time to refresh the basics of this… quest.

“There’s nothing I can say, is there.” Cheerilee said, smiling sadly. Beneath the table, ｢Love is the Seventh Wave｣ drew small impressions in the air of purple and orange outlines chasing each other in circles.

The filly shook her head and put her spoon down. “Coco needs me, or it won’t just be her leg next time.”

“And what if it’s your leg?”

The reply was automatic. “Better than everypony else’s.”

Cheerilee couldn’t keep up the smile much longer. “You’ve grown up when I wasn’t looking.”

There was a small, proud smile. “Thanks.”

“No, I’m… I’m sorry. If I’d stayed in Ponyville, then-”

“Then you wouldn’t have been here to save my flank when I needed you.” Scootaloo leaned back and stretched, cracking the sore joints in her wings. “Everything’s on a schedule. If we don’t mess it up, it’ll work out.”

The silence stretched on, as the dessert ran in rivulets down the sides of the glass bowls.

“I can’t go with you,” Cheerilee murmured.

“Yeah...” Scootaloo didn’t make eye contact. “Ponyville could use the help.”

“No, here. Sombra could send another wave any day, and most of the teachers are gone.”

“Bring Ponyville up the mountain, then.”

“Miss Gourmand’s going to try.”

Scootaloo chuckled. “Are you gonna keep calling her that?”

Cheerilee’s smile widened an inch, and then retracted. “I hope you do alright.”

Scootaloo thought of Tartarus, the few depictions she’d seen in foals’ books, most of them read by the mare sitting across from her. “I will.”

“How long until you’re back up?” Cheerilee nodded to the slowly flexing, bruised wings.

“Whenever she needs me.”

Suddenly, her vision darkened. She put her hooves out, making sure that she hadn’t just gone blind, when the whole thing finished spinning itself. It was pitch-black, a string replica of a pair of chunky sunglasses.

Scootaloo lifted them from her head and turned them around in her hooves. They kept their shape.

“I guess my Stand doesn’t do transparency,” Cheerilee shrugged.

“Keep at it. You’ll find out all kinds of crazy stuff you can do.” Scootaloo said, putting them back on like goggles acoss her forehead.

“I don’t think it’s all that, really.” Cheerilee concentrated for a moment, and her Stand drew an image of her in the air over the table, floating neutrally. She focused a little harder, and the outline filled itself in, turning the hollow air into fine surfaces.

After a moment, it was filled in just like her, with negative space around the face. The ears took a little more work, and there was no cutie mark, but it looked like someone had colored her in very clumsily through a glass window.

“This is about it, really.” Cheerilee said, waving a hoof at it.

Then she felt the same kind of energy, across the table. Scootaloo’s appeared, orange and black and about the same size as her, and then it drifted closer to ｢Love is the Seventh Wave｣. The two floated next to each other for a moment before Cheerilee noticed that the Stand had the same sunglasses on it as Scootaloo.

｢Go Zone｣ pressed itself into the string creation, which flexed underneath the pressure as the smaller Stand sunk into it. After a moment, ｢Love is the Seventh Wave｣ raised its limbs up in response, and hugged back.

Cheerilee wiped her eye.

Scootaloo leaned forward and kept her eyes on the rest of the ice cream. “Keep at it.”

* * *

Violet Blurr stood in the alcove above the doorway, holding her breath, as the two mares came trotting through. Both were close to colorless, and seemed older than the rest of the ponies, although she wasn’t an expert.

“It can’t be easy knowing she’s in Ponyville,” the taller of the two said. She was bundled in a thick coat of some kind, and she followed behind as the white-and-violet-maned mare stopped at a window.

“It’s easier than not knowing,” she said, staring through at the wreckage of the courtyard. The whole building had been gouged out except for the lowest floors, and there was still some room for things to go south.

“She’ll make it,” the taller mare sniffed. “Even if the rest of us don’t. Not even Sombra could get rid of the Elements.”

“I don’t think he’s really tried up to now.”

“Don’t give yourself wrinkles. Harmony’s part of the world. If you kept cutting it out until it stopped coming back, you’d run out of world first.”

“Sounds like somepony’s gotten to you, Zesty.”

Zesty coughed politely. “Well. It wasn’t possible for anypony to take on that brute alone. I’m not stubborn enough to deny that teamwork won the day, with the lion’s share of luck on our side.”

The older mare shook her head. “Magic isn’t luck. It’s more... audacity. I’m where she got that from, probably.”

“Not your husband?”

A brief laugh. “Night Light would get the vapors knowing half of what I’ve done this week!”

“You don’t tell him?”

Quickly, the laughter seeped out of the air. “He doesn’t ask. Doesn’t think it’s proper to worry about the Princess who stopped Nightmare Moon, either.”

“We’re going to need somepony to help relocate the Ponyvillians here, you know. You could help escort her specifically, if you wanted.”

The mare paused and considered it, having her little meditative look-see through the window. Violet took her chance and leapt forward.

“｢Purple Rain｣!” she called out, and the fog started to rise off of the ground, choking the air with magenta.

“There you are,” Zesty said, turning around, and then Violet hit the wall. No, the wall hit her!

She didn’t have any wings, so she took the brunt of it and pushed off, falling to the floor. They’d known she was around, which meant that she wouldn’t be able to distract or panic them.

As she focused on forcing the mist further upwards, filling the room with it, another Stand bore down on her, an indistinct mass of clear spheres. It threw a hoof out at her and missed as she scurried backwards, hitting another wall. Another dive, and it hit the wall instead of her, hard enough to leave a pony-sized hole in it.

She panted. Neither of the mares were looking at her.

“My Stand’s inescapable! The more you move inside of it, the more you lose yourself and revert to the ponies you used to be! In a few seconds you won’t even have Stands to fight with!” she said, and she wasn’t lying. It was better to tell them now, before they started getting reverse-senile.

But they didn’t turn around. They just trotted away through the red mist, toward the boundary she’d drawn. They wouldn’t be able to cross it, and she fought the urge to shout that at them.

“That was the last Jovian?” the older mare asked.

“So it seems,” Zesty said, crisply.

There was a great creaking in the building, and Violet looked around herself. The Stands didn’t appear again, but there was dust falling around the holes they’d made. In fact, the section that popped out while she fell had half a dozen siblings, swiss cheese holes reaching up to the ceiling.

All of the bricks floating in the air fell at once, and Violet backed up until she was against the wall again. They plonked loudly to the ground, some of them bouncing, and then she felt the wall groan against her.

She jerked forward on instinct, but it was too late. The architectural yawn rose through the building, and her eyes followed it as the last of the bricks echoed against the ground.

Then the wall collapsed on top of her.

* * *

Coco dropped off of the carpet once the hit the outskirts of the city. This wasn’t where she’d helped knock out the Princess Luna from Jupiter - she knew what direction she’d come in, and she was never going to get there in her state before they made off with Diamond and the Amulet.

She tried to distract herself as she galloped towards the edge of the cliff.

The Amulet was moving, so somepony already had it, and they were powerful enough that nopony had taken it from them, or maybe ponies kept stealing it from each other. Either way, it wasn’t buried or hidden away somewhere. If that pegasus had really been reading her mind when she touched him, he wouldn’t know that - so it might be possible to beat him to the city and then save Diamond afterwards…

Moondancer popped into existence next to her. “Coco! Stop!”

“Can’t!” Coco yelled back.

“Everypony’s still in Canterlot! I want to come with you!”

“Good!” Coco huffed. “Get them together and meet me in Manehattan!”

“You can’t beat them over there on your own!”

“I can try!” Coco said, and then she ran out of mountain.

As she fell and her legs paddled against the air, she concentrated on the air between herself and the jagged rocks below. ｢Something for Nothing｣ rushed ahead of her, working out the angle for the maximum trajectory, and spun the sheet as tightly as possible.

Now she just had to not go through it.

Beneath her, ｢Something for Nothing｣ darted back and forth, this way and that, trying to add as many layers of thickness as possible. At this speed, it would be two or three - but from there she could probably travel the length of the city in a few seconds. If she could contrive to keep that momentum up without getting airsick...

“Coco!” Moondancer shouted, a few hooves above her. She startled and looked up - yes, the unicorn was floating just above her! “You don’t have the stamina to do this all the way to Manehattan! You need all of us!”

“I need to help Diamond!” Coco said.

“But we’ll get there ahead of you!”

What?

Moondancer’s horn glowed, trickling sparks into the rushing air, and then the sheet beneath them glowed with her magic. Coco pushed against it, but she was no unicorn - and the ends curled up towards them as they fell.

Then she felt something tighten around her barrel as she was looking down, another white sheet! The other end was in Moondancer’s teeth, and Coco felt herself being pulled upwards as the two spun and switched positions!

“We’ve got a faster way to get in the vicinity, all of us! I was about to tell you-” Moondancer started, and then she crashed into the fabric.

Coco’s mouth was open when Moondancer came back up. ｢Tragic But Magic｣ made a sheet between them, breaking her fall a little, but the the unicorn was moving back along her trajectory, and grabbed her around the middle like she was a giant hoofball. All of the air left her, and her eyes rattled as they divebombed in the wrong direction.

“Parachute!” Moondancer shouted as they passed the top of the mountain again.

Coco fumbled for a moment, and then there was one between the two of them. Her whole body had been tucked under two of the unicorn’s legs, but now they shared the straps and anchors roughly equally, and both of them felt another kick to the chest as they slowed down again.

After she’d breathed for a couple more moments, Coco asked, “How?” If this was just an attempt to keep her safe, or to tempt her to stay in Canterlot a little longer...

“Train,” Moondancer breathed. “We’ve got - one in the station. Just about the same speed, but no need to rest.”

“What about the - spikes on the tracks?” They were drifting lazily now, and both had to orient their bodies close to the edge of the cliff to make sure they wouldn’t slip off.

“That’s where the fun comes in,” Moondancer deadpanned.

｢To Be Continued｣

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78yioWJhUJA
[Rush - Something for Nothing]

Stand Name: ｢Purple Rain｣
User: Violet Blurr
Stats
Power: N/A
Speed: N/A
Range: C
Durability: N/A
Precision: N/A
Potential: E
Abilities: Fills a moderately sized area with a dark smoke. Anyone caught inside of the smoke cannot leave while the ability is active, and quickly reverts in spiritual and mental age, losing their Stand in the first few seconds of being affected.

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/328442/19/