Equestria Jinxed
Chapter One
Uuuuuughhh... So... BORED! How long have I been in here, anyway? There's nothing to do here!
Hmm? Oh, hey! People! Yay! Something less boring than sitting in this stupid cell all day!
...
...
Aaaaaand... Now I'm bored again. Jeez, you people really don't have much to say, do you? Yes, you. You, just sitting there, staring at your screen, reading what I'm saying. I see you.
...
Ugh, fine. If you're just going to keep being boring, then I guess it's up to me to come up with something exciting to do. Let's see... Ooh! I'll blow something up! That's always fun!
...
Oh, yeah. They 'confiscated' Fishbones. And my Flame Chompers. They even took my Super Mega Death Rockets! How mean! I can't shoot anything, either. They took Pow Pow and Zap.
Humph.
Hey, I know! I'll tell you a story! I'll tell you all about the fun that lead up to all of this un-fun! What do you say?
...
I'll take your lack of response as a yes. Seriously, what is wrong with you?
It was a pretty normal afternoon in the city-state of Piltover. Skyscrapers towered high above the little people on the streets and sidewalks. Yordles, short humanoids with funny high-pitched voices, mixed freely with humans, racism practically nonexistant in the City of Progress. Some moved with purpose, destinations in mind as they hurried about. Others moved at a more liesurely pace, looking at the sights or chatting with friends. Not a single one was panicking or running in terror.
Yet.
From my perch atop one of the skyscrapers, I saw all of this. My electric-blue hair was tied back in its usual twin braids as my pink eyes scanned the streets below me. I held my minigun Pow-Pow in one hand as I lifted the other to block out the Sun's glare. Strapped to my back was Fishbones, my trusty rocket launcher, and my electric stun gun Zap was holstered at my side. My pink short shorts were almost completely covered by a large ammo belt around my waist, holding the small, pre-activation versions of my special Flame Chompers; think grenades with Snap-Traps on them, and you're pretty close. Another belt around my torso held my signiature Super Mega Death Rockets, also in a compact form.
Still scanning the streets below me, I came up with a quick summary of what I saw. Boring. Having gained a good feel for what the city was like at the moment, I formulated a brilliant plan. I should blow something up.
And so I did. Loading up Fishbones and strapping Pow-Pow to my back in its place, I took aim at the building across the street, at the wall one floor down from me. I fired, then watched as the explosion sent chunks of wall in every direction. People down on the streets looked up to watch, too, then started running and screaming in panic as the chunks rained down on them.
Stepping back several paces for a running headstart, I jumped off the roof of the skyscraper and through the hole I had made in the wall. I really loved how Piltover's streets were narrow enough to be able to do that. Getting back to my feet, I took a look around. It was a fairly simple office building, though it was quickly becoming deserted as its denizens fled, but that was not what really interested me. Rune Alarm on the wall, already set off. Looks like my friends are coming to play.
I only had a short while longer to look around before Piltover's robotic police came clambering up the stairs. They were fun to play with, but tended to get boring pretty fast. No, I was waiting for the real fun: Vi and Caitlyn, Piltover's finest police officers. In the meantime, I'd have to see if I could beat my old record.
From my ammo belt, I produced three Flame Chompers, and tossed them in front of me. As they automatically set themselves up, I readied Pow-Pow. The robots locked onto me, and charged right for me. The first one stepped on a Flame Chomper, and the trap snapped shut on its leg as the grenade exploded. One down. The others were smarter, and either went around the Chompers or jumped over them. It didn't matter, though, since they all ended up tasting lead as Pow-Pow tore through them.
Bits of metal and sparking wires covered the ground in front of me when I stopped shooting. "No more?" I asked aloud, disappointment sinking in. "But I was just starting to have fun!" Twenty-six. Just two more and I woulda had a new record...
The voice that sounded next took all of my disappointment, wrapped it up in fancy paper, and mailed it off to the Ruins of Icathia. "Playtime's over, Jinx," called out the pink-haired woman who had dropped in through the new window behind me. She wore light armor over her whole body and a pair of goggles on her head, but her most distinctive feature was the pair of Hextech gauntlets encasing her hands and forearms. The giant metal hands were of her own creation, and had earned her a place on the Piltover Police Force as their primary enforcer. Anyone who didn't already know her name only had to look at her face to see the two letters tatooed on her left cheek. It was Vi.
She was a dangerous foe, striking fear into the hearts of criminals even outside of Piltover. So, of course, I gave a fitting response. "Heya, FATHANDS!" I shouted, jumping up and down and waving my arms over my head. She may have been less than ten feet away, but shouting was very necessary. "Ready to try your luck again?"
Reaching up with a giant metal finger, she flicked her goggles down over her eyes. "This time, Jinx, I'm gonna take you down. Then, I'm gonna take you in. We've got a special cell ready just for you."
"Aww, that's so nice! Too bad you'll never get me in it!"
Vi shot a confident grin. "We'll just see about that." With that, she brought her gauntlets up and crouched down a bit, ready to act.
Aww, how nice of her to let me go first! I thought. Letting go of Pow-Pow with one hand, I drew Zap with the other. Vi tensed when she saw it pointed at her, and barely managed to leap out of the way of the electric blast. As she rolled back to her feet, I holstered Zap and brought Fishbones over my shoulder. By the time she had turned back to me, a rocket was already flying at her.
Right as the rocket was about to hit her, she cocked a fist back, then punched the rocket with such excessive force that it created a shockwave, knocking me off my feet. I scrambled back to my feet to see Vi brushing a bit of dust off her shoulder, completely unharmed. A faint distortion in front of her gave away the explanation: she had used her gauntlets' kinetic Blast Shield to protect her from the explosion.
Well, I thought, that certainly wasn't an ideal beginning to this fight...
For the record, what I did next was not running. Not in the slightest. I was just... Relocating. At high speed. I mean, who wants to fight in a stupid old office building when you can fight out on the streets, or in an alley? Nobody, that's who.
Anyway, I chucked a Flame Chomper at Vi to cover my relocation, then relocated down the stairs and out the building's back door. I ended up in a dark, grimy alley; the kind you always see in those movies about street gangs.
No, this wasn't right. Too dirty; I might end up getting muck clogging one of my weapons, and that wouldn't end well. So, I kept relocating, Vi just a short ways behind me.
A good ten or so minutes of relocating later, I came across something peculiar. Vi wasn't nearly as fast of a relocator as I was, so she was pretty far behind me at this point. Anyways, I found this big, rainbow-y oval thingy standing in the middle of a small park, in a clearing in a small grove of trees. I had no idea what it was, but it sure looked cool. Not as cool as explosions or fire, but still cool. It was a little bit taller and wider than I was, and barely touched the ground.
My first thought was to walk through it and see what happened, but my second thought was Here comes Vi!, since I could hear her running through the park. At about the same time, I noticed that the shiny oval thingy was starting to get all see-through. I realized that it was probably fading away, so if I wanted to walk through it, I had to do it right then. I took a second to make up my mind, and Vi came crashing through the trees behind me right as I stepped through the oval, and the world turned white...
When the whiteness faded after a few moments, I found myself...
In a park.
In a small clearing in the middle of a grove of trees.
Which meant that Vi was still right behind me.
I dove to the right, spinning around as I came to a stop on one knee. Bullets riddled the trees in front of me as Pow-Pow fired into them, tearing leaves and branches to shreds and leaving holes in everything.
There was no one there.
Slowly, I stood, looking around me warily. She's... Gone? Maybe the weird glowing thingy had done something, after all.
Speaking of which, I soon noticed that it had disappeared, too. What a mystery...
After looking around for a little while longer, I decided that I might as well leave the clearing, and see if anything else had changed in Piltover.
Picking a direction at random, I set out, leaving the clearing behind. It wasn't long before I left the grove of trees and reentered the open area of the park. Paths meandered through the grass, lined at random with bushes, flowers, and benches. Now, I had never really taken the time to memorize the layout of any of Piltover's nature parks, but something seemed off to me. Putting that thought aside for the moment, I again picked a path at random, hoping to find my way back to the city proper.
As I walked, I couldn't help mentally turning over the various strange things about my situation. Vi had just vanished, for one. Vi never gave up the chase that easily. And for two, I had never seen a nature park in Piltover that was this big. I had to have been walking for a good half-hour when I reached the edge of the park.
That was also when I was able to add another oddity to my list. Sure, I knew that I'd never payed the most attention to the goings-on of normal Runeterrans, but I was pretty sure that the citizens of Piltover weren't small, multicolored horses.
Author's Note
And so it begins.
Yes, I took some creative liberties with where Jinx's Chompers and SMDRs come from. So sue me.
Let me know what you think of the story so far!
Read on,
Legion
Equestria Jinxed
Chapter Two
Yep, you heard me right. Short, multicolored horses. Well, I guess the proper term would be ponies, then. Ponies walking down the street, ponies shopping at stores, ponies running stores. Ponies in tuxes and ponies in dresses, ponies in nothing at all! Old ones, young ones, and everything in between. The weirdest part was that a lot of them had horns on their foreheads, some had a pair of wings on their backs, and some were just regular horses. Except, you know, short and colorful.
I freely admit to being rooted in place for several seconds due to shock alone. Finally, a coherent thought ran through my head: I don't think I'm in Piltover anymore...
Once my brain finally managed to reboot itself, I realized that some of the ponies were staring at me. With no other options occuring to me at the moment, I stepped out onto the street. Somehow, this action seemed to attract the attention of every single pony in the vicinity. All of them stopped what they had been doing to stare right at me. I hesitated, unsure of what to do. Finally, I went with the first thing that came to me. Clearing my throat, I gave a little wave to the crowd as a whole. "Umm... Hi?"
Suddenly, they all turned back to what they had been doing. Traffic went from a standstill to a steady flow just as quickly as it had stopped, and shoppers and storeowners alike went back to business. It was so methodical; only one word occurred to me that adequately described it. Creepy...
With nothing better to do, and seeing that the ponies seemed to have little to no interest in me, I decided to walk around for a bit and see more of this strange new place.
Stepping out into the flow of foot-er, hoof?-traffic, I followed along with the current, which carried me off to the right from where I had been. It was certainly odd, walking along with creatures around half as tall as I, but I had been around enough Yordles to not be too unnerved. Before too long, I had passed by the park and was now surrounded on both sides by stores. They were typically two or three stories tall, though there were the occasional standouts.
As interesting as it was to see what kinds of things ponies bought-I honestly had no idea what use a buch of probably sentient horses would get out of saddles, but there you have it- I really wanted to get to an open area where I would be able to get a better look around.
Finally, my wish was answered. I reached a large, open area with a fountain in the middle. It almost looked like a town sqaure that you might find in a smaller village back on Runeterra. The fountain had a large marble statue of one of the ponies, this one with, strangely enough, both wings and a horn. The statue-pony also bore royal-looking regalia, including a crown. Maybe there's some kind of link between these additional body parts and their status? I breifly mused. The pony was just standing there, so I couldn't really get any other clues.
After a moment of wondering, I continued looking around. As interesting as this whole place was, it was quickly starting to get a bit boring, now that the initial shock had worn off. Besides, I was staring to miss not being the only human in the city.
Finally, my gaze alighted on something that could serve to make this day more interesting. Namely, I found a nice, low-hanging sign. Glancing around to make sure I had enough room, I took off at a sprint. When I was close enough, I jumped and grabbed on to the sign, then used my momentum to swing myself into the air.
After a full two seconds of air time, I landed on the roof of the building next to the one from which the sign hung. Now with a one-story vantage point, I was able to see much more of the city. But that wasn't enough.
The wall next to me had a nice big window on it. Thankfully, I had plenty of experience with getting around a city, and recognized a handhold when I saw one. I climbed onto the windowsill, then on top of the window, giving me easy access to the second-story roof.
Finally, I was able to see over most of the buildings around me. I turned slowly in a circle, taking in the sights. Most of my immediate area looked pretty simmilar to what I had already seen, and I spotted the park where I had started a ways away, off to my right. To my left was what looked like a residential area, with more space between the buildings. It was when I turned around to look behind me, however, that I saw something really interesting.
A huge, white castle rose up above everything else in the city, topped only by the mountain behind it. Huh, I wondered. How'd I miss that?
I studied it for a while longer, but then my mind started to wander. Huh, the designs on that part of the castle kind of remind me of the Sun. Speaking of the Sun, how long have I been here? It's pretty low in the sky, now. You know, I bet this is the longest I've ever gone without blowing something up. Ooh, I wonder what this city would look like on fire?
Ever heard that old Demacian saying about idle hands? Well, mine had been idle for a while now, and I was ready to do something with them.
Crouching down, I readied Fishbones. While I was doing so, I wondered where I should start. Standing up, I once again noticed the statue in the middle of the fountain below me. That'll do.
With Fishbones over one shoulder, I took a good long look at the statue, trying to guage where to hit it to cause maximum destruction. Blowing stuff up is like a kind of art form, when you do it right; it takes a lot of effort to perfect destroying things in the most spectacular way possible, after all. Eventually, I settled on hitting its side, hopefully sending peices out in all directions. Luckily, I was already perfectly positioned to do just that.
After lining up the shot carefully, I pulled the trigger. There was a bit of kick as the rocket launched, flying straight towards its intended target. I saw a couple of the ponies look up just before the rocket collided with the statue, confusion evident on their faces. That confusion quickly turned to shock and fear as an explosion rocked the square, sending bits and pieces of marble everywhere. The lower portions of the statue's legs remained affixed to the stone below, but the rest was blown apart. The entire middle of the main body was transformed into nothing but pebbles and dust, while the rear end broke into several pieces that smashed through walls and windows, and one that nearly smashed into a winged pony, who barely flew out of the way in time. The front portion broke into many small chunks, a couple of which actually did hit unwary ponies. The statue's head, however, landed completely whole a few feet in front of where the statue had stood.
After the dust had settled a bit and I got a really good look at the destruction below me, I couldn't stop the laughter that burst out of me. I dropped to my back on the roof I stood on, and rolled back and forth, laughing aloud. That was great! Now, what's next?
Once my laughter had faded to giggles, I stood up and wiped a tear of joy from my eye, looking around for another good target. Below me, the little ponies were running around in a mass panic, all trying to get as far away as possible while screaming their heads off.
Before I could decide on a good next target, I was distracted by a number of ponies pushing through the crowd towards me. Each had a coat of pure white, and was covered head to hoof in golden armor. Several seconds passed before the regular ponies had all dispersed and only the armored ones remained, standing at the base of the building I was on, staring up at me with identical scowls.
One of them stepped forward and shouted up at me. Unfortunately, I don't speak horse, so whatever it was saying was completely pointless. It didn't take me long to get bored of its voice and the strange language it spoke. By that time, it seemed to be rather annoyed at my lack of response. I hadn't noticed before, but it seemed that all three types of pony were present among the armored group. I realized this at last when the winged ones spread their wings as if to take off.
At that point, I made a snap decision. Aiming quickly, I fired another rocket from Fishbones into the midst of the group. Of course, those closest to the point of impact lept out of the line of fire, but it did little good. The rocket hit the ground and exploded, the shockwave sending the entire tight-knit group flying. Even those who had already taken to the air had their flight messed up by the wave of heat and air, and went crashing down.
Leaping down from my perch, I stood amongst the groaning armored ponies. It didn't look like any of them would be getting up any time soon: all of them had been thrown around pretty badly, and many of those closest to the explosion looked pretty singed. I surveyed the destruction I had wrought with pride. Two rockets had turned the area from a nice square with a fountain into a mess of rubble and pain. Not my best work, but pretty good, all things considered.
After taking some time to admire the destruction, I decided to move on. That big palace would look great blown up, I thought. So, turning towards the direction I remembered it being in, I headed out.
Having seen how much better a part of this city looked after being blown up, I decided to improve the rest of the city on my way to the castle. Fishbones fired left and right as I travelled through the streets. Occasionally, I chucked a Flame Chomper or two at something that looked flammable. I was leaving a beautiful field of fire and destruction in my wake.
I must have lost track of time during my little stroll, because it seemed like too short a time later that I stood before the castle. It was even grander in person, and had the effect of making me feel way small. However, the most important thing at the moment was the huge crowd of armored ponies in front of the castle.
Those without wings were lined up in neat little rows on the ground, while the winged ones had, predictably, taken to the air. They carried a variety of weapons, from bows and arrows to pikes to shortswords and even a greatsword strapped to the back of one in particular. Almost all of them were arrayed in full armor, with the exception of the greatsword pony. He alone stood without a helmet, and his armor was more decorated. He was obviously some kind of leader. Since he wore no helmet, it was easy to see his blue mane blowing in the wind.
As I drew near, he took a couple of steps forward, and began what was probably some huge rant about "bringing me to justice" or whatever. A rant which I was spared from hearing due to my inability to understand their language. Anyway, I can confirm that yawning really is the universal sign for boredom, because Blue-hair got the message real fast. He growled something at me, then shouted something else to his troops.
I didn't give them long to react. Fishbones was strapped back on my back in short order as Pow-Pow revved up. The ponies had just stared marching forward when the bullets started tearing into their ranks. Evidentally, Runeterra is not the only world to have the technology of magical armor, as attested to by the lack of blood as the ponies dropped. It seemed like the armor was protecting them from actual injury, but I was still knocking them out from the force alone.
It didn't take me long to wipe out their front lines entirely. In fact, it was rather underwhelming. Well, I guess it wasn't entirely, since Blue-hair was still up. He shouted some more, and the remaining ponies on the ground started to fall back. A one-on-one, eh? I couldn't help grinning evilly. Bring it on, Blue-hair.
He made the first move, his horn glowing pink as his sword was enveloped in a pink aura and slid from its sheath to float by his side. Then, he lowered his head to point his horn right at me as he advanced. He kept up a moderate pace, closing the gap but not charging at me. He was clearly trying to keep my attention, but it wasn't going to work. I had already noticed that his airborne troops hadn't fallen back with the rest, and were all aiming bows at me.
Many people would have panicked in my situation. I didn't. I did, however, take the time to stick my tongue out at Blue-hair before tuning both my attention and Pow-Pow's barrels skyward. The fliers weren't expecting an attack, and the first few dropped like rocks as they were knocked out. Before long, they were all scrambling through the air in a very disorganized manner, trying to get out of the line of fire. I shot down at least a dozen more, and that's not counting the few that ended up colliding with eachother midair.
I was too busy reveling in my outsmarting of the ponies to realize that I had forgotten about Blue-hair before it was too late. One second, I was shooting at flying ponies, the next, I was stuck in a pink bubble. I knew a magical force field when I saw one, there was no point in trying to break out.
Blue-hair gave me a smug grin as the bubble I was in lifted into the air. I was hit with a startling realization: the whole thing had been a double-distraction! He had planned on me seeing the archers all along! He turned around and started walking towards the castle, my cage trailing behind him.
