Secret Lightning [REWORK IN PROGRESS]

=========================SECRET LIGHTNING=========================

Alright, so I earned a few more trackers with that last chapter, and the person who said he/she was thinking about not reading my story anymore changed their mind. I am going to try to not drag the battle out too far, yet I want to try a few things. A reader, Royal Brisk, gave me an AWESOME new idea for an ability for Matt that combines things he already has. And damn it, I really wish my friend would stop sending me crap on facebook, it’s only making the process of writing the chapter longer. Also, I found out you can make rage faces on facebook chat! Only problem is, they’re real small, but you don’t need a plugin to see them. Crashed my copter again today, but no major damage, just messed the plastic canopy up a little more. I’m not even going to worry about it, all the canopy does is make the copter look pretty. Didn’t help that that one asshole kid from my shop was there in the gym with me, criticizing my flying every step of the way. Oh, and my copter is cheap too, apparently, I wasted $140 on a “cheap crap” blade copter. By Celestia, I fucking hate that kid. I have never wanted to fly a copter into anyone's face that bad. Anyway, another shoutout to Coal Buck, his story’s starting to take an interesting turn, and he owes me a cameo (lol). Anyway, I now have to come up with an actual battle scene, the last chapter was me stalling for purchase in my mind, giving me time to think while I thought. (lol, go get xzibit). And thanks to Royal Brisk, it just might be very epic.

=========================Chapter 18: Giving ‘em Hell=========================

Matt and company plowed a large swath through the army of undead. They weren’t headed directly for the mountain anymore, it was received that a relatively small town just east of Fillydelphia  had fallen victim to the armies, just as Ponyville had. So now their objectives had changed: enter the town, and evacuate any survivors to the emergency bunker about half a mile from the town. It wouldn’t be easy. The army was advancing fast, and had already destroyed a good portion of the town, with survivors scattered around in different areas of the town, fighting back as best they could.

Matt and company made good time to the town, with the three swords…people running the front, and the other seven picking off any undead that ventured too close, or were left behind by the front three.

They finally found a break in the waves of soldiers, and all gathered inside a random cottage that had been sitting out in the middle of nowhere. It was closer to the bunker than the town was, so as they sat, eating field rations and talking, they hatched a plan. They would reinforce the house as best they could, and shuttle survivors from the town to here, as a temporary safe house.

After lunch, the group all went back outside. Strangely, the army had not advanced any further. In fact, none of the troops had really even moved since they went inside the cottage. That was interesting to Matt.

Celestia’s voice suddenly crackled in on their helmets. “The Eternal has run out of power for the time being! It looks like it used it all on creating the armies of undead, and now is tapped out. It will regenerate in time, but it will take several hours. So now you guys have time for rescue missions. I suggest you get everypony you can, though, because once it gains power again, it will be a real force to be reckoned with.” The transmission ended.

Matt nodded to Twilight. “Twilight, would you mind going and getting everypony from Ponyville? I think you’ll be fine if you teleport, and it’ll be faster.” She nodded, and disappeared in a flash of purple light once more.

About thirty or so seconds later, she reappeared, with everypony with her. Berry Punch was being carried by Twilight, with little Berry Pinch riding on top of her helmet. Everypony else was laying on the ground, looking a little worse for wear. Matt chuckled. “Don’t worry, you get used to it after the first time”

After they got everyone into the house and had barricaded the doors with heavy stuff, the team set off again, to evacuate the town.

As they were heading for the town, Paige decided to ask Matt a question. “Hey, Matt?”

“Yeah?”

“How come you dove straight into the face of danger for that little filly? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you did, but why?”

“Well, Paige, she helped me out a long time ago. When I first came to this world, before I found you, I was completely alone. I was also a lot more emotional. Also, everypony in the town feared me, they had never seen anything like me. She helped me both realize I wasn’t alone, and immediately after she did, I was no longer feared. So I guess I owe her a lot.”

Paige understood why Matt had been emotional. After she had been shunted into this world, she had lost her mind. She smiled and snapped out if her little flashback, happy that Matt had been able to cope.

“Alright, we’re here. This doesn’t look good.” Colgate interrupted.

She wasn’t kidding, the town was really messed up. Since most of the houses and buildings were brick or cement, there wasn’t a lot that had burned, but still. Everything wood had been burned, and all of the brick or cement buildings had been partially destroyed, missing walls, roofs, or entire sections. Matt wondered just what the hell had caused this. There were still a couple soldiers hanging around, grouped mostly by a building across the town, and appeared to be waiting for orders.

They were about to go get rid of them, when Matt heard a muffled scream from the building directly next to them. They turned and dashed inside.

Inside the building, there was a group of ponies cowering in the corner of what appeared to be a flower store, with a group of armed undead soldiers closing in. amongst the group of ponies, Matt recognized Vinyl Scratch, Octavia, Scootaloo, and several other ones he didn’t.

The leader of the undead group reached for Vinyl, grabbing at her with bony fingers. Octavia acted, turning around and kicking the skeleton straight in its…face. He flew back against the wall and exploded into a rain of bone pieces. One of the other soldiers, however, acted before Octavia could react, and sliced at her with his sword.

She fell back, bleeding heavily from her wound, which was in her shoulder, and Vinyl quickly dropped the item she was using as a weapon, her magic immediately cutting off as she rushed to Octavia’s side.

Matt quickly grabbed his broadsword off his back, and lunged at the other six skeletons. He didn’t care what happened to him, as long as he stopped them before they harmed any more. He caught the six by surprise, slicing them into tons of pieces before they could even raise their weapons. Within seconds, he was standing in the middle of a bunch of little bone pieces, holding his sword and panting a little.

He looked over a little, and noticed that all the ponies were looking at him, absolutely terrified. He thought for a second, and instead of his visor sliding up, the whole helmet folded back into a small box behind his head, completely uncovering his head and face (Like clu’s helmet from tron legacy). “Calm down, everypony, we were sent by Celestia to help.” He reassured. They calmed down considerably, except for one. Vinyl.

“If that’s true, then can you help me then? Octy…Octy’s hurt!”

Matt knelt down beside the grey mare. She was unconscious, her wound was bleeding heavily, and her breathing was short and labored. If he didn’t do something quickly, she wouldn’t last long.

“Twilight!” he yelled. “Can you do a field patchup with your magic?”

“Y…yeah, I guess so, it shouldn’t be that hard.” Came the response.

She came and knelt down beside Octavia as well. “The wound looks semi shallow, it shouldn’t be that hard to patch.”

“Good. Then do it, we don’t have much time.”

She placed her hands on the wound, the gloves of her suit pulling away from her hands, and concentrated. A couple of seconds later, a wave of blue sparks came rolling out of her hands and into Octavia. The sparks dove into the wound as if vacuumed in, and immediately got to work. The nicked bone immediately regenerated, the muscles and blood vessels snaking back and reattaching to each other, and finally, the skin itself stretched over the wound and met itself, sealing together without leaving so much as a scar. Any spilt blood was also regenerated inside Octavia’s body, and she almost immediately snapped into consciousness as Twilight was done.

“WHO? WHAT? WHO ARE YOU? WHAT’S GOING ON?!?!” She yelled.

“Calm down, Octavia, you are safe, and Vinyl is too. You were injured by an enemy, but my friend Twilight here fixed you up.” As he mentioned Twilight, her visor slid up, revealing her face. This calmed Octavia down considerably. But Vinyl looked confused.

“Hey, how do you know our names? We never told you.”

Shit. “Uhh, our helmets told us, they seem to know everything.”

“Okay, fair enough” Whew. Disaster averted.

“Alright, we need to get you all out of here. We have a safe house not far from here. Once we’ve gotten all the survivors out of the town, we’ll move everypony in the safe house into the emergency bunker nearby.”

His helmet unfolded and reformed around his head, sealing itself as it did so. His HUD reactivated, and he could see that there were several skeletons heading straight for the building.

“We need to get out of here, there’s trouble heading our way.”

Everypony stood and started to follow them, but Octavia couldn’t. She was still too weak from the injury. Her muscles may have reattached, but they were very weak from doing so. Vinyl was about to do something, when Matt interrupted. “Hang on, I got this. Hold on, Octavia, I’m going to pick you up. This may feel a little strange.”

Vinyl was about to protest, but Octavia nodded and spoke. “Do it, so we can get out of here.”

Matt bent down, and was about to pick her up, when the face of Scootaloo filled his front view.

She looked at him with big eyes. “I can’t move very fast, do you think…do you think maybe I could get carried as well?”

Matt chuckled. “Sure, Scoots.” He picked her up and placed her in the same place that he had put Berry Pinch before, on his back, supported by the strap for his broadsword. “Now hold on to me tight, Scoot, we are gonna have to move fast.” She nodded and put her forelegs around his midsection, hugging tightly.

He bent down once again, and picked up Octavia. She shifted in his arms momentarily, but settled after a second. He looked down, and Vinyl was directly next to him, a sharpened scrap of metal in the grip of her magic, and a look of determination on her face that would have quelled the Princess herself.

“Alright, let’s go.”

They scrambled out into the street of the small town, and started running in the direction of the safe house. A few undead soldiers occasionally would jump out at them, but Colgate Paige and Vinyl handled them almost effortlessly. Matt was pretty surprised, that white unicorn fought very bravely. But then he thought back to when he was on earth, and was a brony. She had been paired with Octavia in almost every fanfic, artwork, and anything else he could find. It just seemed natural that they would be paired up in this world. It also explains why Vinyl is so defensive of Octavia, Matt thought. The entire time they were heading back to the safe house, she never left his side, except to destroy a skeleton or two. She even twisted the head off one as it tried to attack Octavia and Matt.

They made it back to the safe house in one piece, having plowed through several skeletons. Looking back, it seemed that everypony from the group made it too, with only a couple having gotten mildly scratched or bruised.

They entered the house and were greeted by everypony there, including Berry Pinch. As soon as Matt set Octavia down, she slammed into him in a bonecrushing hug. Scootaloo jumped off his back and joined her.

As Octavia lay on the floor, Vinyl walked over and hugged her. The two shared a brief kiss, confirming Matt’s suspicions, before they both broke off, blushing intensely, now aware they were being watched.

Vinyl walked over to Matt and motioned for him to come down to her level. He folded his helmet back up, and bent down.

The second he did, he was pulled into another bonecrushing hug, rivaling that of Berry Pinch. Matt felt something wet on his shoulder, and realized that she was crying. After a few seconds, he returned the hug.

“Thank you.” She whispered. “If you hadn’t found us, I doubt that Octavia would have……”

“Ssh, don’t let yourself think about that. We did find you, and you two still have each other. That’s all that matters.”

She pulled back slightly to look at him, and for once, Matt got a look at her eyes. Red, just like the fanbase said. They were full of tears, but very happy at the same time. “You know,” She said “I never did get your name.”

Matt smiled. “My name is Matt.”

“Well, Matt, I hope you can stop whatever is causing all this, but for what you did…I can’t thank you enough.”

“It’s okay, I’m happy to help anyone in need of it.” She smiled.

“Matt?” came the voice of Octavia.

“Yes Octavia?”

“I’d like to thank you too, without you, I...I may have never gotten to see Vinyl again.”

He sat down next to her, considering she was still on the floor resting. “No need to thank me, like I said, I’m happy to help.”

Octavia was unsatisfied with this. “But you did much more than help, you kept us together.” She pulled him into as tight a hug as she could in her weakened state. Numerous “D’awwwwww”s could be heard around the room as Matt returned the hug. He was turning into a very huggy person, he noticed.

After a second, the two of them broke off, and Vinyl returned to Octavia’s side.

“Sorry to leave you so soon, but we have to go back and search for more survivors. We shall be back, however, do have no fear. Also, there is some radio equipment we found stashed up in the attic. Maybe you could open a radio channel and try to get more survivors to come here.”

Vinyl raised a hoof. “I’ll do it.” No surprise there.

“Alright, well, we best be off. Remember, we’ll be back.”

The group set off, after several hundred goodbyes, and started walking. Suddenly, the voice of Celestia crackled into their helmets. “Look at the mountain. Something is happening.”

On cue, the team all looked at the mountain as one. Sure enough, something very strange was happening. The undead soldiers were falling apart. The waves of skeletons that were streaming down the mountain were falling to pieces, ghosts dissipating, and the occasional zombie falling apart as well.

“Something is wrong,  I think the host is fighting the power of The Eternal. Get up there and see what’s going on. I will send guards to the towns to get the rest of the survivors. Go now!”

The connection ended. Matt’s team looked at each other, and started heading towards the mountain

=========================END CHAPTER 18=========================

Well, sorry for doing another rescue chapter, but I needed a little bit of a buildup, kind of like a techno or dubstep song. Anyway, I’ve been reading Coal Buck’s story still, and it is so awesome! (dashie face). Also, Coal Buck, PM me, I have an idea that we can do to both our stories, and make a very interesting outcome. Also, there are more references in there, for anyone that has read artemis fowl or seen tron legacy. Also, there’s more than that, but I only tell you a couple, you have to find the rest. (lol) anyway,  Uhh, I think that’s about it, so I’ll say goodbye for now, and thanks for reading! Look forward to chapter 19! oh, and i'll do Royal Brisk's idea next chapter. or not, Coal Buck and i are talking about a double cameo idea! stay tuned to see what happens!