Bare Hooves

by Redric Carrun

Rating: teen
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Rainbow Dash, Adventure, Violence
Length: 3942

Rainbow Dash wakes up in an arena where death is cheap, and the warriors of old step out of the pages of history to fight again. Now, she must fight as well – not for her life, but for her freedom.

Rainbow Dash wakes up alone, imprisoned in a sadistic cycle of death and violence for the amusement of a faceless crowd. In the arena, her opponents are the heroes and villains of all history, with fighting styles and strange abilities that are thousands of years old, and no less deadly for the wait. Outside, she must seek allies and teachers who can help her escape, and find out just what's going on in this wacked-out place.

But which is worse: that she's been trapped here without her friends to rely on? Or that they might very well be trapped here too, and she isn't there to help them?

Published 2014-03-30 22:20:04 UTC
Last updated 2014-04-01 16:53:53 UTC

Chapter 1: Waking Up

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Ptosi Ferto

“The Falling Feather”

A traditional pegasus fighting style which uses solid, flowing strikes and a pegasus' natural flying ability to out-maneuver ground based opponents with unconventional movements. The main advantage of this style is its complete dissimilarity to any solely ground-based style, and its utilization of a full three-dimensional zone of combat.

This style was historically used as the basis for all other pegasi martial arts, and, as such, was disdained by experts of the time as being too generic. Its effectiveness was also hampered by its own widespread nature, as familiarity with certain tricks and weakness of the style spread rapidly due to the fact that any pegasus fighter was likely to know and employ it. Because of this, the Falling Feather was, for a long time, out of vogue with the martial arts world.

However, that all changed when a practitioner named Butterfly Sting revitalized the sport. By introducing a detailed analytical approach to the choice of moves in combat, Sting was able to effortlessly achieve the “flow” of battle that had been the goal of the technique since the beginning, and had previously required years of training to master. By providing a guideline on which moves to use in which situation, the Falling Feather was opened to a much wider audience. It has since been enjoying a resurgence of favor among younger pegasi worldwide, who enjoy it as much for its history as for its deadly grace.

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The first thing Rainbow Dash felt was a splitting headache. The pulsing from her scalp reminded her of the morning after her only experience of getting completely, totally wasted. It was not something she had ever wanted to feel again.

She groaned. The sound had a hollow ring to it, an empty un-noise which rattled around inside her skull and made the aching worse. She tried to clutch her head between her fore-hooves, but they stopped half way up. There was a clinking noise, and she felt a band of pinching cold wrapped around both pasterns. Rainbow's eyes snapped open.

She wasn't in her cloud house.

She didn't seem to be anywhere at all. There was the ground, where she was lying – a hard floor, made of smooth stone tiles – and then it just dropped off. There was nothing in front of her; no wall, only blackness. There were chains shackled to all four of her legs.

Dash jumped to her hooves. The chains rattled, but there was enough length in them for her to move around. Not that there was anywhere to go; she was standing on a square pillar, in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but empty space to all sides. Her wings flared in irritation.

“Hey,” she called out. “What gives?”

There was no echo. It was subtle, the way it worked, but there was no wall for the sound to bounce off of; her voice and the noise from the chains sounded ever so slightly off. Everything sounded... hollow.

Her ear twitched involuntarily.

“... Hello?”

It was very cold, Rainbow realized. The stone and the metal of the chains sapped away at her body heat, and although she could still see, the sourceless light did not warm her. A chill ran down her spine.

She shivered.

'Where am I?' Dash wondered. 'Who did this? This is so weird... How did I get here? I was –'

Her brain felt muddled.

'I can't remember anything about this place...'

Images flashed in her mind. Aching joints. A cloud. Twilight's grand-kid – stupid, stubborn brat. Couldn't fly. Panic-falling-chase. The ground. Old. Pain. Old-old-old-pain-slow-black.

'... Am... am I dead?'

There was a lurch, and Rainbow almost fell to her knees as the platform began to rise. The sound was deafening, a grating of stone on stone that was transmitted through the ground into her bones and teeth. It was almost painful. In an effort to escape the noise, Dash lifted herself in the air the meter or two that the chains would allow, straining her wings to keep ahead of the pillar as it accelerated.

The light changed. It grew brighter, and Dash glanced up at where it was coming from. Above her, there was – something – a hole in the darkness. A square of light, a square that she was rapidly approaching. Rainbow Dash felt the tug of the chains as the platform slowed down, and her speed began to drag her away from her bonds. The noise of the stones began to die down, and she landed again. There was a new noise coming from above the light. It was a sound she recognized: the roar of a crowd. The voice of an announcer came into focus.

“... a big round of applause for our four-round winner! What a guy, to have come all the way to the end, struggling through so many opponents and coming out on top despite all odds, just for a chance to go up against our newcomer today. He's been a great sport about this, and he's put on one heck of a show for us. But can he face certain death one more time? Let's all give a warm welcome to our newest contender! For the first time ever on the big screen: the Element of Loyalty, Savior of Equestria, the one and only, Rainbow Dash!”

The crowd cheered. There was the stomping of hooves, and whistling, and the sound of a dragon roar. When the pillar entered the light, it was blinding. Rainbow had to shield her eyes with a wing. With no warning, the cuffs of the chains snapped off from her legs, and Rainbow was free. She squinted to see what was happening.

The first thing she saw was a pony body, lying lifeless on the sand.

The next thing she saw was the manticore lying just beyond that, just as still as the pony was, and with a hole in its side that showed it was just as dead.

She was in a stadium, the likes of which she had never seen. The floor was huge, with enough space to fit four derby tracks, and covered entirely with loose sand. Bodies littered the ground, bunched up into little groups or left to lie alone. Beyond them were the stands – boxy things with slanting roofs, made of shining silver metal that shielded the audience from harm and view. Overhead were racks upon racks of flood-lights, and hanging from the massive domed roof was a large, rectangular panel showing images of a red earth pony driving a forehoof into the scaly underbelly of a hydra. The image repeated, showing the scene from different angles, and once even slowing down the action in a surreal manner that made the impact seem all the more violent. Rainbow Dash would probably have appreciated the effect more in other circumstances.

Just across the field, next to a prone hydra, was the earth pony from the images. He was battered, bruised, and his left ear was completely missing, but as he turned to face her, a cold steel came into his eyes that left her chilled. He leaned back on his hind legs like it was second nature to him, and held a hoof out in her direction. Just like he had been standing before he struck the hydra.

“Ponies and Minotaurs, Dragons and Diamond Dogs, get ready to watch two titans of history as they tear each other apart! The final round of today's Death Battles is about to begin!”

Chapter 2: Non-verbal Introductions

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Isen Canon

“The Iron Cannon”

A foreleg-centric fighting style named after its creator and sole practitioner.

As there is only one recorded user of this style of martial arts, it is classified under “earth pony,” although it has its roots in traditional minotaur bare-knuckle boxing. The Iron Cannon was historically used in combat, with heavy iron gauntlets strapped to the user's forehooves, and requires an upright posture which reflects its minotaur heritage, but is difficult for most ponies to adopt. Practitioners of the style were known to use special harnesses to help maintain their balance.

Developed by the legendary fighter Iron Cannon, this style is notably simple in its design. It reduces the complexity of other boxing styles of the time to only a few core official moves; notable among these were a straight jab, and a devastating roundhouse. Practitioners would often improvise attacks during combat to make up for the style's own limited moveset. Unlike modern, gloved boxing, the Iron Cannon style has an extended guard, designed to keep opponents at a distance. Speed and precision are emphasized, as well as perfecting each strike in order to take advantage of the practitioner's own skeletal structure.

The style differentiates itself from other forms of boxing through its hoofful (or 'handful,' as the minotaurs say) of aggressive, fantastic techniques, which mostly rely on hitting things harder and faster than any ordinary equine would be able to. Descriptions of these techniques are varied. Known examples include a long-range "sniper straight," which involves punching the air hard enough that it hits the practitioner's opponent from a distance of dozens of paces, and what was called a "wall of fury," which took the transferred shock of a sniper straight and spread it out as a shield to knock enemy projectiles from the sky.

The Iron Cannon was utilized to great effect in warfare, with practitioners rumored to be capable of taking out entire battalions by themselves. However, the physical strength required to achieve these results was absurd, and the style was completely impractical. It is theorized that Iron Cannon was only able to use his own technique because it was his unique special talent. No one else was able to achieve this feat, nor did he pass on his teachings, and the style died with him.

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“And... they're off!”

A bell rang out throughout the stadium, and the earth pony instantly began to close the distance between Rainbow Dash and himself, using short, gliding steps of his hind-legs to advance without ever lowering his guard.

“Wait a minute,” Rainbow frowned. “What's going on here? 'Death battle?' As in, to the death? I am so not okay with –”

When the earth pony came to within four steps, he suddenly accelerated. He lunged, and Rainbow cut off with a squawk as she was forced to duck to avoid a blow from his hoof. A second blow came right behind the first, with lightning speed. Dash slid to the left just in time; she could feel the breeze that followed the strike as it rustled the fur on her shoulder. She scrambled backwards.

“Rainbow Dash takes to the air! Is she trying to keep from fighting her opponent? She doesn't seem to be getting into the spirit of things. How will Iron Cannon react? One minute to go before we have an uninvited guest!”

“Whoa!” Rainbow scowled, looking down on the stranger from a safe distance. “What do you think you're doing?! You could have ripped my head off with that punch.”

The stallion stood there, panting. He said something, but his words were slurred and stuffy, and they didn't sound like any sort of Equestrian Dash was familiar with.

“What?” Rainbow asked. “I didn't quite catch that.”

As Rainbow Dash hovered at a distance of about six meters, the earth pony cocked back a foreleg and threw a punch. There was a shock, a crack of sound, a ripple through the air. His hoof never came anywhere near her.

And yet, somehow, she still felt the impact.

The wind from the strike ripped past her, and it felt like somepony had bucked her straight in the chest. Not Applejack, perhaps; it wasn't quite that bad. Twilight, maybe, or one of the ponies from the weather team.

It still hurt, though.

She fell to the ground with a thud. That hurt too. Before she could get up, the earth pony was there. She tried to block his first punch with a foreleg, but the angle was awkward lying down. As she flipped over from the impact, there was a sickening pop from inside her shoulder. Then another hit, another sound, this time from her wing. Then a crack from her ribs. Lights flashed before her eyes, and she tasted metal as she was struck again, and again, and again. Her mouth was open, but she didn't have the breath to scream.

“Oh! And a brutal beat-down in the first match for our new competitor! Iron Cannon isn't giving the newbie any kind of sympathy, as he shows her how this game is meant to be played, putting her down with a whole thirty seconds left on the clock.”

As the announcer's voice rang out, the blows stopped falling. Rainbow twitched and convulsed as her entire body was racked with pain. The movement just made it hurt worse. She couldn't see anything, her eyes were watering so much. Couldn't hear anything. Ears ringing. Nothing. Noise. Blood, pulsing in veins, trickling tiny rivers down her sides. Noise and pain.

“I... apologize,” a voice whispered.

The stallion?

“All here must fight,” he said. “If you fight, then live, or mayhap die. If you fight not... then death, and never waking.”

There was the sound of dragging hoofsteps in the sand, as the stallion limped away behind Rainbow's back. She gulped back her tears of pain as they mixed with tears of rage, and she tried to struggle to her hooves. This pain was nothing! She could still fight. She could still win! But her shaking limbs refused to cooperate, and she only flopped around on her side.

“That was kind of short for an introductory round, wouldn't you think, Bill?”

“I agree, Pike. I think our newest hero was just a little out of her zone. Things might have gone very differently if she had been just a little more prepared. What say we give her one more chance?”

A glow surrounded Rainbow Dash, and she felt her bones and flesh being nit back together. Joints popped back into place. The pain receded. With a thought, her unbroken wings lifted her into the air once more, just in time to see the stallion's head whip round in shock.

“Hey, buddy,” Rainbow snapped. “Where do you get off just attacking people out of nowhere? Let's try that again, chump, and see how well that goes for you!”

As the stallion stumbled to get back into his ungainly fighting stance, Rainbow Dash gave a flap of her wings and leapt towards him in a soaring arc. He struck out again with that shockwave-punch thing of his. But this time Rainbow knew it was coming, and that made it simple to dodge. A tilt of the left wing, a tuck of the right, in an instinctual movement her experienced mind only interpreted as “move here,” and she ducked around the blast in an almost casual roll. As she drew closer, the stallion tried to step out of the way.

She rammed into him with all the speed of a freight train, lifting him up into the air with a rainbow path trailing behind.

He slammed both forelegs down on her unprotected back, forcing her to let him go. She recovered quickly; her wings had not been injured, and while her back would bruise, it was nothing for her to worry about. The stallion, on the other hoof, kept flying in the direction Rainbow Dash had been carrying him, and with the same speed, soaring up about four stories into the air before crashing down on the reflective glass of the stands. He rolled down the gentle slope, and fell off the edge to land in a heap on the edge of the arena.

Dash felt a twinge of worry when he didn't get up right away. But the stallion was still breathing.

“And Rainbow Dash scores a major hit against Iron Cannon. What an upset! Not bad for a first timer, wouldn't you say, Pike?”

“She's certainly putting on a more impressive performance the second time around, Bill. But if I'm reading this clock right, then her time alone with him has just run out.”

There was a screech from the far corner of the stadium. Rainbow Dash flicked an eye in the direction of the sound, and saw that the whole wall was being lifted. There was a low growl that reverberated throughout the air, and the ground shook as something behind the massive grate stepped forwards.

“Ladies and Gentlethings, let's all give a big hello to a returning fan favorite: Rapthnir, the Dragon King! How will Rainbow Dash react to an opponent like this so soon in her fighting career?”

With a roar and a burst of flame, a giant of a dragon stormed out onto the field of battle, his golden scales stained to rusty orange around his jaws and talons, and his wings spreading out to reach from one side of the stadium to the other.

“... Ponyfeathers,” Rainbow muttered.

Below her, the stallion stood once more. He wavered, and his breaths were heavy as he turned to face the Dragon King. Rainbow Dash found her attention split between the two, wary of another ranged attack from the hoof-fighter.

Then the dragon charged, and she suddenly found her focus much more centered.

“Can't we just talk this out?” Rainbow shouted, as she dropped low to avoid the sweep of a dragon wing. “Dragons can talk, right? I mean, I know that's not normally how I prefer to do things, but I think in your case, I'm willing to make an exception.”

The dragon roared at her, and loosed a curtain of flame. Dash bolted out of range, looping around the arena. A small part of her mind took the time to note how amusing the fire looked; while it was taller than five ponies and wider than it was tall, it was still absurdly small compared to the massive form of creature which breathed it.

The rest of her mind realized that the place where the stallion had been standing was now engulfed in flames.

“No!”

Rainbow Dash had lived a long time, and said goodbye to many of her friends, but she had never seen somepony die like that. In that instant, she decided it wasn't a feeling she particularly enjoyed.

That's when the thunder started.

It began with a single crack. Before the first sound had been given time to die away, it was followed by a second. Then a third. Crack after crack, boom after boom rang out, even over the roar of the flames. The flames themselves were beaten back, and behind them, Rainbow Dash could see the earth pony, keeping himself alive with nothing but the shielding breeze from his punches, which were like clockwork. Bang bang, bang bang-bangbang!

Rainbow breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay,” she laughed, “You got me. I have to admit, that's kinda cool. You know, for somepony who can't fly, and all.”

Seeing that it's breath had been thwarted, the dragon switched tactics. It swept in a talon to do away with the puny fighter. As the earth pony was standing with his back to the stadium wall, he had to step sideways as he tried to evade the incoming claw.

Even as he stepped, Dash could see it was too late.

The stallion held up his forelegs in a hopeless attempt to block, and was flung a full twenty meters by the bone-shattering blow. His battered body rolled as it hit the ground, legs hanging loose at odd angles.

Then the dragon pounced and ate him.

Its massive head and sharp teeth smashed deep into the ground, carving furrows in the arena floor. When it pulled back there was no sign of the fallen warrior.

'... Oh.' Rainbow's stomach hollowed. 'Oh. That's not fair. He just died twice. You can't do that. Can't kill somepony twice.'

With lumbering steps, the dragon turned to face Rainbow Dash. She thought she caught a hint of smug satisfaction in its face.

The dragon roared as it lunged for her. She yelled back. It was a yell of rage, of defiance and rejection.

“RRAAAHHHH!!!”

Without the need for thought, she soared over the dragon's clumsy dive. As it glided to a stop, it turned to look back up into the arena's spotlights, where Rainbow Dash's hooves clicked on the metal ceiling as she crouched there, upside-down.

Then she dove, broke the sound barrier, and crashed into the monster in a blaze of rainbow destruction.

“And there it is, a real-life, bonafide Sonic Rainboom to finish off today's match! History played out before you, folks, for your viewing pleasure. What a way to go!”

When the dust settled, Rainbow Dash was pacing frantically on top of the dragon's corpse.

“Oh no oh no oh no... Come on, guy!” She shouted, leaning down the dragon's throat. “You've gotta be alive. You're tougher than this! Oh shoot, what do I do? How do I get somepony out of a dragon's stomach? Come on, Dash, think!”

“The life readings say it all, folks. Rainbow Dash overcomes Iron Cannon and the Dragon King to become the newest winner of Death Battles!”

She leaned back, ignoring the cheers of the crowd. “Oh shoot, I just killed a dragon! Shoot, shoot, shoot, Spike's gonna kill me.”

Thinking about the tall, friendly library assistant made everything feel worse. When Rainbow had been fighting for her life against a giant, snarling, fire-breathing monster, it had been easy to forget that dragons were just as smart as ponies. Looking at the corpse – the one she was responsible for – and imagining that chubby purple and green face over it... it just didn't add up in her head. It couldn't. She couldn't have...

A spotlight shone in her eye, and she glanced up to see herself prominently displayed on the weird rectangle thing. She scowled. A fanfare of trumpets blared from behind her, and she turned to see a golden gateway opening up at the far end of the stadium. Some ponies of various kinds and a griffon or two filed out on either side, all encased in sterilized rubber suits. They began picking up the scattered bodies of the fighters and beasts which had fallen before she showed up.

“Hey!” Dash cried out. She flew over to the worker closest to her. “Hey, you! There's a pony trapped in that dragon. We need to get him out before he suffocates!”

“Move along, victor,” the worker grunted, pointing towards the open door. “Your reward awaits.”

The spotlight moved back and forth to the exit, seeming to beckon her towards it.

Rainbow growled. “I don't have time for this. Somepony's dying here!”

She reached out to grab the worker. Before she could even touch him, a powerful shock ran through her body, arching her back as her muscles strained uselessly against each other. Unable to fly, she fell the short distance to the ground, and collapsed into a writhing ball of limbs.

Overhead, the image had stopped showing the real-time footage, and was now playing back the devastating Sonic Rainboom which had been the highlight of the match.

“And that's a wrap! Tune in tomorrow for more historic entertainment. Thank you all for watching, and good night!”

“This is Bill and Pike, signing off. Good night, Selucia!”