Theo gasped hard as he thudded into the ground. Sucking in a breath, he strained his ears, turning his head back and forth as he listened. He couldn’t hear Ironknot, but something told him the bounty hunter wasn’t too far behind him. He wanted to sleep more than he’d wanted anything else since he fled Fillydelphia, but unless he could ditch the angry stallion, the only rest he’d get would include an explosive collar for pajamas.
He tensed his legs to throw himself back into the air, preparing for another short flight deeper into the forest, but froze as his tired mind caught up to what was before his eyes. Holding perfectly still, he watched the full blue blossom dip slowly towards his foreclaw, not even daring to breathe as it stopped a feather-width above his talons.
Shifting back ever so slowly, he watched the flower bobble with even that faint movement. Duly warned, he risked a better look around. He had landed on the edge of a clearing. The space between the trees filled to the brim with the blue flowers hanging on their vines. Ironknot’s swearing echoed up the hill behind him, and Theo risked another look back.
Okay. I’m not dead yet, I’m not dead yet, I didn’t touch the Killing Joke. He huffed, making the blossom dance back and forth, and tamped down his back paws again. With a grunt, he launched back into the air, pumping his wings as he aimed for a tree on the far side. Every sweep of his wings launched blue petals into the air as he fought for enough altitude to avoid them. Blood dripped from one pinion with every flap, and he gasped for breath again as he slammed into the tree, talons and paws clinging to the rough bark.
“Theo, you mangy birdbrain!” Ironknot shouted into the forest. “Just because I’m getting paid more to bring you back alive doesn’t mean I won’t shoot you again!”
Unbidden, Theo’s father’s voice ran through his mind. “It is a noble thing to be a griffon, a grand familial tradition stretching back to the first griffon satrapy. No matter the circumstances, you must never lose that inner iron core, and blah blah blah why aren’t you listening to me?” Cripes, even dead the old man was boring.
Ignoring both shouting voices, he edged his way around the tree until the sizable rock behind it was in range. Pulling his wings in tight, he threw himself backwards, twisting his body around to land paws-down on the rock. The forest on the other side was also thick with Killing Joke vines, though beneath the trees there were places thin enough he could leap and glide between clear spots. Probably. If his wing wasn’t bleeding from Ironknot’s last attempt to corral him and bring him back to Fillydelphia.
The weariness and the fear caught up to him all at once, and he slumped on the rock. What was the point anymore? A whole forest of Killing Joke wouldn’t stop the bounty hunter. With that flamethrower he carried, it probably wouldn’t even slow him down very much. Theo might manage to get away, but realistically, his choices were pretty limited between going back as a slave or dying here.
Wiping away a tear, he flicked it down, watching one of the blue flowers bounce up and down from the force of the droplet. His only lousy choices since he strangled a guard with his dead father’s chains and fled in the first place. He had no weapons but his claws, his wits (neither of which were terribly sharp after an eighteen-hour chase), and a field full of plants that would make his death more painful that a bullet to the gut.
The straw-colored earth pony made his appearance at the other side of the clearing, the flamethrower’s nozzle sticking out past his nose. “There you are, boy. Get over here now. We are going back to Fillydelphia, and I swear to Luna that if you do one more damnfoal stunt I will personally rip your feathers out one at a time.”
Theo glared, not that he could do much more. “What’s the difference? I’ll die slowly there, or I’ll die quickly here.”
“Boy, I will set this forest alight if I have to.” Ironknot stepped up to the edge of the vines, stopping a few inches away from the same flower Theo almost put his face into. “Do not test me.”
Rage welled up inside of Theo, and he sat up on his hind legs. “You want to burn this place down that badly, why don’t you start!” He pumped his wings, ignoring the jagged spike of the bullet hole and the harsh burning from muscle strains and overuse. The wind picked up, launching dark blue petals across the clearing in a cascade.
The bounty hunter gripped the trigger of his weapon, spraying wave after wave of flame in front of him, spraying it side to side as he incinerated everything headed his way. What he did not do was retreat, even in the face of what was probably the most deadly flora in all Equestria. The griffon’s wings managed to keep up the aerial onslaught for thirty seconds at most before he collapsed, too tired to move. He stared as the flames died down. The jelly-like fuel still burned fitfully in a wide cone, the flowers and vines within reduced to ash.
Ironknot stepped forward into the dead area, steps sure as he closed the distance towards his prey. He’d have to burn across the other half of the damn vines, but the reward he’d get for bringing the griffon back to Red Eye mostly unharmed would more than pay for the fuel and bullets he’d wasted so far.
Theo watched the bounty hunter come through half-closed eyes when something bright caught his gaze. He started chuckling, too weak to make it into a full-throated laugh, and the earth pony immediately scowled. “What’s so damned funny, birdbrain?”
Still snickering, the griffon pointed a talon. “Joke’s on you, you old gelding.”
Scowling, Ironknot took another step forward, and sneezed. A solitary blue petal slid down his face, past his eyes and over his nose. Realization followed a moment later, and he stepped back instinctively. “No!” One rear ankle twinged in pain, and his next step was greeted with a shooting flare from his hip. As Theo watched, the bounty hunter’s pelt faded away to gray, sagging in wrinkles as he tried to fight his fate.
In less than a minute, the bounty hunter had slumped to the forest floor. Ironknot attempted to stutter out something to his prey, unable to see Theo thanks to cataract-blinded eyes. A breath later he was dead, his body still withering with age. With his tormenter dead, Theo sat up straight, staring down at the sagging collection of hair and bones. “That’s right, you old phony. I’m no stinking parrot, I’m a griffon! And we rule!”
His leonine tail swished back and forth in triumph, and smacked something soft. He glanced over his shoulder to see what it was, freezing in place when he saw the scatter of dark blue petals across the back of the rock. Panicking, he looked back at his wings. Instead of the familiar, dappled ash-and-white feathers, his gaze was filled with a rainbow riot. Even the feline coat over his hindquarters was not immune, having changed to a dazzling tortoiseshell pattern in green and yellow.
Moaning, he slumped back down on the rock, and cast his gaze up to the overcast heavens, knowing there was only one appropriate response to such a fate. “Oh, come on!” he screamed. Behind him, the aged, rusted flamethrower collapsed with a clanking, dismissive noise.
Author's Note
So, my first ever MLP fic is FOE. Appropriate, since that's what convinced me to watch the show in the first place.