Chapter 10: The Cyber Dragon

The two heroines looked down the hallway for a bolthole or a door—anything for a strategic retreat. There was one, not too far away, a very nice (and out of place for the building) oak door.

KitKat dashed down the hallway and tried the handle. It was locked.

Fortunately, she was a mare of many talents, and she had a lockpick set. By which I mean she had her axe. She hacked the door apart as Amethyst laid down covering fire in the hallway.

The two of them ducked into the room and the brief respite it offered. While Amethyst kept taking occasional shots down the hall to keep the Minions at bay, KitKat looked around the room to see what options they might have—a second door that they could escape out of, a strong desk that they could push up against the door, etc.

There was a desk, and there was a second door, but more importantly there was also a dragon. A huge dragon, a dragon which could have in no way come through either of those doors.*

The dragon was snoozing on a pile of bitcoins (and doge coins, and etherium, and a bunch of other ones you’ve never heard of. KitKat and Amethyst certainly hadn’t). There were even some Celestias in the pile (currently worth $12.19 each, down almost 15% over the last week [at time of writing]).

KitKat moved as quickly as she could, and as quietly as she could, and dragged the desk over to the door that Amethyst was covering. The two mares quickly pushed it in place; right as it was nearly blocking the doorframe, it made that really annoying screech of desk legs on floor, a noise only one step removed from fingernails on a chalkboard.

That woke the dragon. Gunfire, screams of agony from the hall, and shod hooves clopping all over the room weren’t enough to get its attention, but the moving desk did.

It didn’t yawn and stretch itself out, it didn’t snuggle with its coins like Sparkler and KitKat had been snuggling with each other; it didn’t even bother to rub the sleep out of its eyes. It snapped its head up at these invaders in its lair, and it immediately blew a gout of blue-screen breath at them.

Both KitKat and Amethyst had fast reflexes; both of them tumbled away. Both of them went in opposite directions, because they knew that presenting two targets gave them the greatest possible chance of success.

It was, however, for naught. At that range, the dragon couldn’t miss, and the blast splashed against them and briefly pinned them to the wall.

Although they didn’t know it—they hadn’t read the Monster Manual—the dragon’s feared blue-screen breath would render all electronics useless. Since KitKat and Amethyst were equipped with fully analog kit, it wasn’t very effective.

KitKat got back to her hooves and Leroy Jenkensed herself directly at the dragon, leaping for its head and bringing her axe down with shuddering finality. It passed through uselessly, and she crashed down to the coins under the dragon, her hands tingling around the shaft of her tabarzin.

She took another swipe at it as its head came down, its slavering jaw open, each of its teeth nearly as tall as she was. Once again, the axe simply passed through and she dodged just as its teeth snapped shut where she’d been standing. Non-fungible tokens skittered about on the floor under her, spoiling her footing.

The very instant that KitKat was clear, Amethyst—who had taken the opportunity to get in a good shooting stance—emptied her Ruger Redhawk into the dragon, who just chuckled.

“Your weapons cannot harm me,” he said, as he slammed his tail to the ground, knocking both adventurers to their asses.

Amethyst kept reloading as she fell, and emptied her gun into him again after she landed, even if she didn’t honestly think it would do anything. Her mind was racing—it hadn’t felt like shock that had knocked them to the ground, it had felt like something else, but she wasn’t sure what.

KitKat was slower getting herself back to combat readiness. Only marginally slower; she was back on her hooves as the hammer of the Ruger fell on an empty chamber, facing the dragon once again.

What kinds of ammo do I have? Traditional bullets worked well against normal creatures, but Amethyst lived in the magical mystical world of Equestria which was filled with magical creatures.

For her part, KitKat was considering what other options she had to attack the dragon. She had a far more limited set of weapons from which to pick—with the exception of improvised weapons, which might at least give her a sense of what the dragon was vulnerable to. She grabbed a kerosene lantern** off the wall and lobbed it at the dragon as a poor mare’s Molotov Cocktail.

•••

Over the next few minutes, the mares kept trying different weapons with little success. Amethyst occasionally had to break off her offensive on the dragon when a Minion got a little bit too brave.

“We’re not in a good position,” Amethyst shouted as she blasted another Minion with her shotgun.

“I know.” KitKat jabbed at the dragon with a ficus plant that had been decorating the room, then ducked back as it retaliated with a forearm swipe. “Hey, have you tried the musket yet?”

“Musket?”

“The one that I negotiated for at the Binary Bazaar.”

“Oh yeah.” Amethyst reached back and unslung it. “You know, I almost forgot I was carrying this thing.” She pulled back the hammer and took aim, catching the dragon right between the eyes as he turned towards her.

It didn’t have any effect that they noticed, but they were looking at the wrong thing. The bullet went through the dragon with no effect, hit the wall beyond it, and then bounced off and tumbled into the pile of NFTs, sparking against every one it touched.

They also didn’t notice that the value of the dragon’s crypto-wallet suddenly took a nosedive—but the dragon did.

It bellowed out a pained roar, and washed its blue-screen breath over them again (it still wasn’t very effective); from behind they heard the Minions suddenly surge, crashing into the desk hard enough to move it a few inches away from the door.***

“Huh, I would have thought this would do more after all the trouble we went to to get it.”

“Maybe he’s got a weak scale around his heart,” KitKat suggested. “Some dragons do, I’ve heard.”

Just then, as if in answer to a prayer, Buttercup appeared on top of the desk.

Neither KitKat nor Amethyst had seen Buttercup as an anthro before, and what a sight to behold he was! He was a full head taller than KitKat, 350 pounds (159kg [25 stone]) of muscle and blue-grey fur, standing like a barbarian out of a Boris Vallejo painting.

He was also completely nude, and hung like a horse; twenty-four inches of girthy mottled horsecock swinging down nearly to his knees. The kind of thing that would make a mare swoon.

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After a moment of swooning, Amethyst narrowed her eyes in suspicion. Something felt off, something she might notice once she tore her eyes away from his splendid stallionhood. KitKat, meanwhile, succumbed to her weaker female nature and jumped up on the desk to give him a big hug, forgetting for a moment that they were in combat.

“The dragon’s too powerful for you,” Buttercup said, his voice deep and sonorous, vibrating through him almost like a purr. “Come with me, I’ve found a way out.”

“He’s a fake,” Amethyst warned. “He has nipples. The AI didn’t know that stallions don’t have nipples.”

“And he would never tell me to give up on a fight,” KitKat said. She grinned, revealing a pair of canine teeth that the AI also didn’t know equines had, and jumped back off the desk. “We’re scaring the dragon and it’s making us see illusions.”

“I agree,” Amethyst said, and fired the musket again, this time aiming towards where a weak scale might be.

The fake Buttercup, meanwhile, tried to reformulate his strategy by making his penis even larger, and therefore more enticing. A moment later, it thumped against the surface of the desk as he went full ludicrous.

The two mares ignored him, focusing instead on the Cyber Dragon’s reaction to a second musket volley. It didn’t appear to faze him yet again, and then KitKat let out a war cry and started running around the edge of the room, distracting the dragon.

Amethyst paused in reloading long enough to lob her leftover devilfruit cocktail at KitKat, who caught it and then darted in, smashing the glass to-go bottle against the dragon’s head.

“What the fuck is that?” the dragon roared. “It smells like ass.”

“Devilfruit,” KitKat said. “It’s unbelievably toxic,” she lied.

Sparkler fired the musket again as KitKat ran around the edge of the room, trying for the dragon’s hindquarters.

Behind her, she heard the dragon bellow, then chuckle again. “Behind this façade is an idea, and ideas are bulletproof.”

“You stole that from V for Vendetta,” Amethyst chided, wagging her finger at the dragon like she might a naughty child. Not the wisest thing to do in the face of a dragon, but then she knew something that the dragon did not. ~~She wasn’t left handed.~~ KitKat had just found a curtain behind the dragon and swept it open with the butt of her tabarzin, revealing a server room.

Too late, the dragon sensed what KitKat was doing. “Hey, pay no attention to the mainframes behind the curtain!”****

Author's Note

*implying a third door that they had not yet seen.
**the room had LED lights in ceiling fixtures; the kerosene lantern was only for ambiance.
***it made that screeching sound again
****he stole that from Wizard of Oz