The Valhalla Cascade: The Arrival

Chapter 3I

"Sorry who are we meeting again?" Sighed Ironhide exasperatedly

"We told you. A blind Griffon called Dogfish Rising." Claymore replied.

"That...That's what I thought you said..."

The group; consisting of Claymore, Feather Duster, Starstream and very reluctant Ironhide, were wending their way along a country path outside Ponyville. The township was quickly being rebuilt now that most of the rift rubble had...evaporated. The group began to hear the most bizarre sound from down the path, trotting over small hillock they saw Dogfish Rising standing about 100 meters along the path leaning against a tree.

"So we walked all the way down here to see a blind......rocker chick... fisherman?" Ironhide whispered. The bizarre sound had resolved itself into heavy metal music being being played from a portable record player at Dogfish Risings feet, and she indeed had what appeared to be a fishing rod holstered on her side.

Despite being a good distance from the group the Griffon suddenly switched off the music and turned to face the group. "That's blind-rocker-tracker-hunter to you punk!" she yelled running over to the group, stopping in front of Statstream with pin-point accuracy. The others where shocked by her incredibly precise movements. "Starstream! What's this about Luna I've been  hearing about?" the griffon continued gripping Starstream in a ferocious hug.

"I thought she was blind." Ironhide mumbled to himself, confused at the lack of ....non-blind activity shown by Dogfish Rising.

"I am blind," Dogfish grinned hearing Ironhide's barely whispered thought, "Don't mean I can't see!" the griffon approached the other Ponies, spreading her wings out as she did so.

Dogfishes eyes were almost pure white, the irises a light cream and the pupils non-existent. They would have been spooky if it weren't for the unearthly contraption attached to her body. Woven through out her jet-black feathers were bands of metal. Impossibly thin filaments were woven into her feathers running down her spine from the back of her head to the base of her wings, at which point they followed the wing bones branching and splitting to follow every single feather. Every time  a feather twitched the filament resting on it moved in perfect sync, but they were definitively not attached to the feathers themselves. There were also filaments woven into her dreadlocks that glowed and flickered ever so slightly

"What the hell is going on with your wings!" Feather Duster gasped, totally ignoring any tact by flying up to the griffon to start poking at her wings and back.

"Echolocation." Dogfish explained." I was always able to feels shifts in the air using my wings, to tell where other people where, nothing like bat or dolphins but fundamentally the same. Starstream built this device to amp up that sensitivity in my body and turned me into one big sonar dish."

After a few minutes of awed inspection the group remembered why they had come down here.

"Right guys," Dogfish started, "I've been drifting around Equestria for a few weeks now, just the normal stuff looking for work. now I know things have been pretty shook up lately what with Ponyville blowin' up and everything, but things have been just.... off all over."

"Meaning?" Ironhide questioned, still annoyed at being dragged out to this field in the middle of nowhere. "define 'off'?"

"Well, its like you ponies are being messed with. Things you just can't remember. I notice things others don't, I can sit back and listen to the world.  Superficially they're nothing, just normal little accidents, but there just a few to many to be a coincidence. The other day I heard about a pair of Pegasi who found themselves up on a cloud without any memory of how they got there. How would someone even do that?"

"I head about that." Feather Duster said "One of them was Rainbow Dash, one of Princess Twilight's friends. It was In Canterlot just the other day, I saw them landing."

"Really?" Dogfish said raising an eyebrow "Cause' I heard the exact same thing happened to a pair of snobby types in Manehatten, and a few days before that in Las Pegasus. coincidence?"

The skeptical Ironhide suddenly shook his head, eyes wide. "You know...some of the equipment in  the Canterlot armory have been moved around. I thought it was the rookies being lazy, but a set of armor went missing the other day, you don't just lose a heavy Calvary get-up like that."

Claymore suddenly perked up "Some of the unicorns elemental staffs went missing the other day as well. How did I forget about that? Those could do some serious damage..............hey Starstream, what exactly caused the explosion in you lab?"

Dogfish cocked her head slightly, like she was straining to hear something. "I would of come into the City to tell you this but I felt something waiting on the road there. It was weird, I couldn't get a fix on it. Like it was a hole in space...like...like THAT! DOWN!"

The group flattened to the ground, saving them by a gnats whisker. The unknown projectiles only glanced off their heads instead of shearing them off. The ponies were knocked out immediately but Dogfish managed to hurl herself a fraction of a centimeter further and pulled it into a commando roll.

Without pausing she upholstered her Battle-Line and leaped into battle.

II

Dogfish couldn't actually see the attacking creature but she could see the imprint on the ground where it standing. She could understand how camouflage worked even if it didn't apply to her methods at tracking animals, but how in Celestia's name was it masking any sort of sound vibration from the air currents and wind?

The imprint vanished and Dogfish swore as the pole lanced the empty ground. Maniacal laughter erupted somewhere above her head. Dogfish pushed the gain on her echo-wings as far as they could go, trying to get a fix as the creature started talking.

"Well miss Dogfish, (oh man that name), I have to say I'm impressed. "

"Aren't you going to to introduce yourself to a lady?" Dogfish grimaced whilst sticking the harpoon end of her Battle-Rod into a log on the ground. "Since you seem to know who I am."

"Well of course!" Dogfish yelped as something punctured her flank. for a second there was an image of syringes in her side before it was gone again. "My name is Jack. Now this is gonna hurt more the more you struggle, so feel free to go crazy!"

Top of the tree.

Dogfish swung her rod whilst firing the pneumatic harpoon launcher, firing the log attached outwards. The improvised mace sped round and smashed against the top of the tree. Dogfish was gratified to hear  yelp from the hidden Jack. There was a series of crashes as the startled assailant tumbled from his perch and smashed into several branches on the way down.

"Got you." Dogfish grimaced. aiming at the moving branches she fired the two remaining harpoons from her Battle-Line. The two spikes impacted on the trunk around the Jack trailing a the mono filament fiber. With the third line now wrapped around the top of the tree the web was set.  Expertly swinging the rod around her head  Dogfish sent loop after loop of the wire at Jack. Jack was trying to leap away but was hopeless tangled on the micro-barbs in the wires. Ironhide and Claymore had woken up, Dogfish couldn't imagine what they were seeing but they they were reacting brilliantly. the two soldiers didn't have their weapons but where hurling rocks into the writhing mass of wires.  "You may be hidden but you can't fight worth a damn!" Dogfish cackled as she went into a death roll, twisting the wires taunt around Jack digging into his body (whatever that looked like).

"ENOUGH!" Jack yelled, for an instant his true form resolved itself to Dogfish. she gasped as every cell in his body violently vibrated and he suddenly burst through the wires. Within seconds savage blows had swept aside the two soldiers, Dogfish tried to run but a hammer like strike swept down before she could react. The world went dark as the strike crushed her wing joints, severing the connection to her echolocation rig. Crippled and blind Dogfish was helpless as Jack lifted her up by her throat, tears streaming as his hot breath pushed against her face. "I said i was impressed," he laughed, "Didn't mean you stood a chance against me."

Before she blacked out Dogfish heard a massive "GET YOU GODDAMN PAWS OFF HER YOU BASTARD!"  from Starstream and the world erupting around her.

III

The mane six stood in front off small crater in the ground. The area was warped and twisted like someone smudged up a painting.

"Jeez, Starstream did this?" Rainbow Dash  gasped at the warped landscape, "I knew he specialized in spacial magic, but I seriously didn't think he had it in him!"

Twilight walked into the middle of the crater to face her friends. She looked at them long and hard, remembering every dangerous or frighting situation they had been in together. They'd been through a lot together; from Nightmare Moon to Discord, the Changling invasion to Sombra, and all the other incidents in-between. This Jack monster was like nothing they had ever faced before, but then again, who else could be trusted to sort this out before more ponies got hurt?

"OK girls our mission is simple," Twilight started" This Jack has proved himself to be an extremely dangerous entity but the testimony's and evidence provided by Starstream and Dogfish Rising show that he is responsible for a the host of injuries to the inhabitants of Equestria, includeing the near fatal attack on Derpy Hooves. Our job is hunt him down and stop him from hurting anypony else. We will have the Elements of Harmony but the Princesses have told me that if lethal force is required then we should not hesitant. He certainly won't"

"Erm Twilight?" Applejack asked, voice struggling to remain calm, "Ah know were normally the ones who sort out this kinda thing but...surely the Princesses should handle this? Or the Army? Or Discord? This is more their league. "

"L...L..........Lethal force?" Fluttershy quaked.

"How are we supposed to fight somthin' we can't even see." Rainbow Dash angrily demended

Twilight let out an utterly forlorn sigh."I know...I know. Thing is, the...the rift above Ponyville is nowhere near sorted, Its taking everything the Princeses and Discord have to try and fix it. We didn't even realize it was getting worse till Luna started using the moon as an amplified scanner, and, that is how we're going to get him..." Twilight Indicated to the sky, where despite it being the middle of the day the moon was palely present. "Both Starstream and Dogfish Rising got impression of Jack's true form from their fight with him. Luna using the moon to broadcast a field that'll shut down his cloaking powers and give us a rough idea of his location."

Twilight bit her lip turning away from the group, tears welling in her eyes. "I'm so sorry, we shouldn't have to do this..... I should take him on alone....I"

Twilight felt a hoof on her shoulder. Rarity stood there with a wicked grin.

"Go alone my dear? Please, I think I speak for all of us when I say that we don't care if this Jack fellow is the most evil creature in all the universe, he has the same chance against us as a whelk in a supernova. Lets go kick some tail!"