“Buck!”
Coco Pommel plowed her personal monster truck, I Don’t Give A Truck, through the streets of Seaddle, crushing zombies like oversized, flesh-eating bugs.
The cream-colored Earth pony’s cutie mark, a pink spiked helmet, sparkled for a second. Without thinking, Coco spun the wheel just in time to avoid a falling lamp post.
“Thank you, Coco sense” Coco said as a group of unfortunate zombie bellhops were turned to hamburger by Truck’s pony-sized tires. Blood, flesh, and bits of bone splattered against the vehicle’s body
Every time! Coco groaned as she popped zombies beneath Truck’s wheels. Every bucking time she had Truck washed and waxed, the manure hit the fan.
Seaddle was filled with zombies. The rotting corpses, animated by forbidden magics, crawled through the streets of the coastal city. Zombies dressed in business suits shambled out of the city’s famous skyscrapers, willing to make the living a generous offer for their flesh. Revenant merchants crawled from the city’s famous farmers market, smeared with homemade jellies and locally-grown fruit. Undead hipsters poured from the city’s countless coffee shops, still dressed in this months’ brand of nonconformist clothing. All relentless in their quest for living flesh.
Coco shifted into reverse, flattening any zombies her first pass had missed. As the City’s Royal Guard garrison had found out, the zombies were tough bastards. Only vulnerable to a blow to the head. Many of them were covered in slash wounds from swords and daggers, some of which were still lodged in their bodies. They needed no air or water, and were poisonproof, fireproof, and even magic proof.
But, as Coco’s driving was proving, they were not truckproof.
Coco spun the wheel and drifted into a street filled with unmangled zombies, sending up a rooster tail of gore. In the back, a timid pink Earth pony raised her head. “Um, Ms. Coco, don’t you think we should...?”
Shaddup, Suri!” Coco backhoofed her assistant. She chomped the cigar in her mouth, brushing a little ash off her dragonscale coat. “Once, just once, I’d like a peaceful weekend. She groaned as she turned zombies into undead pancakes.
-
One weekend. That’s all she’d wanted. One weekend at the annual Seaddle Monster Truck Rally turning junked carts into splinters. No Griffon terrorists to kill, no Nightmare cults to break up. Just her, her truck, and the adulation of the crowd. But, of course, some psychotic wizard had to try a Rise up spell and turn everypony around them into a brainless undead cannibal.
If she’d wanted to deal with shuffling brainless monsters, she would have taken up politics.
-
Suddenly, Truck’s magically-fueled V-8 engine coughed and wheezed, as if an eighty year-old chain smoker had gotten stuck in the air intake . Thick black smoke poured out from the engine compartment, and Truck came to a halt.
“Horseapples!” Coco slammed a hoof against the steering wheel. Another blown gasket. I am so firing my mechanic. She turned to Suri, “Suri, this is coming out of your pay!”
“Yes Ms. Coco.” Suri sighed.
Sensing an opportunity, the undead hordes began to close in like Princess Celestia on a slice of devil’s food cake.
“Horseapples!” Coco clambered on top of Truck. A zombie leapt onto the roof of the cab, rancid drool dripping from its mouth. Thinking quickly, Coco yanked her trademark ninja star out of her mane and flicked it into the Zombies’ eyes. She yanked it out, then sent the blinded monster flying with a solid buck.
As the zombies closed in, Coco’s Royal Guard training kicked in. She looked around, her razor-sharp mind quickly assessing the situation, and boy was it bleak. All escape routes were choked with zombies. She was Hopelessly outnumbered. And the likelihood reinforcements arriving in time was slim.
Coco grinned. Just the way she liked it.
Coco reared up on her hind legs,slipped her forelegs into her dragon scale jacket, and whipped out her two modified MAC-10 submachine guns, Love and Tolerance. She kissed the weapons, said a silent thank you to the human gunsmith she’d bought them from, then drew a bead on a zombie’s head.
“Y’all hungry?” Coco smirked. “How ‘bout some piping hot lead?!”
With that quip, Coco squeezed the triggers and unloaded on the horde. Zombie heads exploded like pinatas stuffed with gore. Reports echoed off the buildings like thunder. Hot brass piled up around her hooves.
clickclickclickclick…
Coco ejected the empty magazines. “Suri, rounds, now!”
Suri reached into Truck and pulled out a duffel bag filled with magazines. Coco reached in, slapped some fresh mags into Love and Tolerance, and yanked the charging handle.
“Lead! Get’cher lead here!” Coco yelled as she sprayed the horde with .45 ACP rounds. “Fresh from the barrel!”
For who knows how long Professor Coco gave the zombies impromptu lessons on ballistics and kinetic energy. Whenever her guns ran dry, Coco dumped the empty magazines and Suri would dutifully pass her a fresh one from the duffel bag. The street was painted with a slippery, disgusting slurry of blood and liquified brains.
Clickclickclickclickclick...
Coco dumped the empty mags. “Suri, rounds!”
“There aren’t anymore!” Suri wailed, tossing away the duffel bag. “We’re out!”
“Damnit!” Coco tucked Love and Tolerance back under her jacket. “This is all your fault, Suri!”
“I know, ms. Coco.” Suri said, downcast.
Ok, options, I need options… Coco looked around. There! There, in a nearby pawn shop, was an electric guitar.A grin slowly spread across her face. It was risky as Tartarus, and there was a very slim chance of it succeeding.
In short, it was Coco’s favorite kind of plan.
“Suri, get over here!”
Yes, ms-”
Before the mare could finish, Coco grabbed her hapless assistant by the tail and started swinging her around like a club. Like an explorer through a living jungle, Coco beat and bludgeoned her way through the horde, keeping the hungry hordes at bay with her hapless assistant. Once she reached the shop, Coco broke the window with Suri’s body, then jumped in.
Coco yanked the V-shaped guitar off of its display stand and plugged it into a convenient amplifier. She quickly strummed it a little, adjusting the machine heads until it was in tune.
“Hello Seaddle!” Coco yelled into a convenient microphone. “Are you ready to ROCK?!”
The zombies groaned. Coco rolled her eyes. “Everypony’s a critic” She took a deep breath, raised a fore leg, and started shredding like nopony in the history of shredding had ever shredded before. It was the guitar solo of the gods: Its riffs were like thunder, its frets like the roar of an ancient God. Shockwaves of pure rock rippled throughout the city, smashing windows and cracking asphalt.
All over Equestria, ponies could hear the solo. The Song echoed over the desert plains of Appleloosa, disrupting the Buffalo tribes’ morning stampede. Chief Thunderhooves was later quoted as saying: “That was the most bitching performance I have ever heard!”
On the Equestrian border, an army of invading griffons heard the Song. The raw power of its notes interacted with the molecular structure of the soldiers, turning the entire army into a pile of chicken nuggets...
In downtown Canterlot, Prince Blueblood was insulting a lowly beggar when he heard the Song. The next thing he knew, he was standing atop a flagpole, dressed in a frilly tutu and wearing a sign that said “I Like Ike”...
In Canterlot Castle, during a session of Day Court, Princess Celestia rose from her seat, let her mane down, and started headbanging like a lunatic, playing air guitar as she did...
Of course, the sheer awesomeness of Coco’s Song could not be constrained by the limits of spacetime. The tune to end all tunes crossed the barriers between worlds.
In a far away galaxy, the Song overloaded the reactor of a moon-sized space station mere seconds before it could destroy a band of freedom fighters. Not knowing any better, the rebels gave all the credit to a young farmboy...
In an alien-ridden lab in New Mexico, a timid young scientist clutchinng crowbar heard the Song. In an instant, Coco’s combat prowess was bestowed on him, turning him into a one man army...
In 1920’s New York, the song ripped through the New York Stock Exchange. For some reason, the sheer awesomeness of the song caused stock prices to freefall, and sent the economy into a meltdown...
And, during a concert for the god of war himself, Joakim Broden and the other members of Sabaton stopped and wept, for they knew that, no matter how hard they tried, they could never rock as hard as Coco.
The sheer amount of awesomeness Coco produced was too much for the undead legion. All over Seaddle, Zombie heads burst like disgusting popcorn kernels. Bodies rained down from the tops of skyscrapers like hail. The streets were painted with blood, gore, and other, less mentionable things.
Above it all stood Coco, holding her guitar up in triumph. “Peace out, Seaddle!”
-
“...And then what happened, Ms. Pommel?”
Coco took another swig of Applejack Daniels, relishing the way it burned down her throat.
“Well, a little while afterwards, the Guard finally decided to show up.” She put the glass down. “‘When the commander asked if I needed help”, I just said that the only thing that needed help was his sense of timing.”
The bar patrons “ooh”’d and we'd.
“Ms. Pommel?”
Coco spun to see a biker built like an iron outhouse standing behind her. He held out a pen and paper. “Can I have your autograph!”
“No prob.” Coco, took the pen in her mouth and scribbled her signature on it The biker squeed with excitement and ran back to his buddies, showing off the autograph.
Something beeped within Coco’s jacket. She pulled out her pager.
“Damn it, another monster’s broken out of Tartarus!” Coco whipped out her bit purse.
“Buck.” Coco looked around. “Suri, where are you?”
“Right...here...Ms. Coco…” Suri hobbled over to her employers’ side, half of her body covered in bandages.
“I’m out of bits. I need you to wash dishes for me to pay off my tab.”
“But ms...”
Coco hoisted the Earth pony up and hurled her into the kitchen. Her landing was marked by the sound of crashing plates.
” Later.” She trotted out to her custom motorcycle and gunned the engine.
Another day, another bit.
Author's Note
I regret nothing
