Dead Cat Bounce: A Fanfiction Fanfiction

Chapter Six: Blunderstorm

When we got to Gobbler’s Knob, shit was going down.

An eerie thunderstorm raged to the north like a backdrop to the scene. The sixty-three members of the Duggle family were standing around Swap Meat in a semicircle. An aged red earth-pony stallion leaned on a pitchfork, a trio of yellow unicorn sisters had baseball bats, and most of the rest of them were armed with planks. It was a diverse crowd of all different shapes, all different sizes, and all different colors. But they all had one thing in common. All of them were furious. They eyed us and grimaced.

Swap Meat had laid most of his trailer out on the pavillion. There was that pachinko machine with the scary blue pony again. I could feel her dead eyes bore into me. She was doing something horrible to my soul. I was sure of it.

“Hey, what are you doing?” I said.

“There’s not en-nough room in my truck to fit everything like it is, I, uh, gotta unpack to pack it again more efficient like, you know? Look, kiddo, I-I kind of don’t have time for this. Um, you see I sort of wore out my welcome with the, uh, the Duggles. And I gotta go! You have fun—”

I pulled out one of the Rarity figurines. He relaxed and his eyes went wide, and just like that he was in the zone. He was enraptured by the toys.

The Duggles glared at me.

“Whatever you do, do it quickly,” Rayleigh whispered from behind.

“I have a bunch of these,” I said. “Want to trade?”

“Look, kiddo, like I said I don’t have a lot of time. I can’t haggle with you,” Swap Meat said. “Two hundred caps each, take it or leave it, okay?” All of the tension had drained from his voice.

It wasn’t Candlelight Ecstasy, but it was a deal. I started pulling the figurines out of my Gyrobowls.

“Three Raritys and an Applejack? Not bad, kiddo, not bad at all.” He caught sight of the yellow pegasus on my saddle.

“And Fl—”

“She’s not for sale.”

“Fair enough. You got good taste, kiddo. Keep her safe.”

“But I do have a Rainbow Dash, one sec, let me find it.”

I fished around for the Rainbow Dash figurine, and when I got it out it was broken! One of the wings dangled from its foundation.

“Yeah, they tend to do that,” Swap Meat said. “She breaks her wing all the time. Never seems to happen to any of the other pegasuses, even though they all share the same mold. Kinda like what happens to the Twilight Sparkles and their front legs. My guess is that color plastic’s just more brittle. Or something, dunno.”

He turned to go back to his truck. “Don’t worry, kiddo. I’ll still pay you twenty percent for it.”

He broke into paroxysmal laughter.

“Tw-twen—ha—get it?”

He fell to the ground.

“Rainb—ha—percent—Rainbow—hah—”

He rolled around taking tiny, pained, whisper-quiet gasps between heaving spasms of silent laughter.

“Because—ha-ha—co-cool—she—ha—said cooler—”

It took him about a minute to finish up. He would have gone on longer, but the sound of thunder from the storm up north knocked him out of it. The Duggles were scowling. Some of them picked up their weapons.

“You know what? On s-second thought why don’t you just keep them safe for me okay? I really, really gotta go. I trust you, you’re a good kid, okay bye!” he said.

He returned to shoving collector’s edition boxes into larger boxes, and he wouldn’t say another word to me. The Duggles started to edge towards us, and we took that as our cue to leave.

_____

As we made our way north the thunderstorm made its presence felt. I could deal with a little wind and thunder, and at least the rough weather meant we didn’t have to worry about any draculas coming out of their nests.

Heavy waves of hot air rolled through the grassland. The surging wind birthed and extinguished dust devils in cycles.

“It’s getting pretty hot and muggy, isn’t it?” I said.

"Thunderstorms are fed by warm, humid air,” Rayleigh said.

As we headed north the edges of the clouds took on a sickly green color. Green flickered across the sky with every lightning strike. The thunder grew louder each time it came.

“I hear the when the sky turns green then there’s a tornado,” Romeo said.

“That’s a myth, just like the Element of Laughter,” Rayleigh said. “The sky looks green because the heavy cloudlayer reflects the color of the ground. If we were in the desert the sky would be orange right now.”

"Wow, you sure know a lot about weather, Rayleigh,” Romeo said.

She gave an irritated sigh and shrugged her wings. A moment later she took off and flew in a low, lazy circle around us. A powerful squall made her landing messy, but I had to give credit where credit was due. It was impressive she could still get in the air at all.

About twenty minutes later, corpses of marsh birds fell from the clouds and littered the steppe.

“So… Rayleigh…” I started to say.

She interrupted. “Charlie, I have no idea,” she said. “We should turn around.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said. “I’ve read about this. I remember now. Sometimes whole flocks of birds will just drop dead in midair. All sorts of animals, really. Nopony knows why, but it’s nothing to worry about.”

The thunderclaps came in time with the lightning now, and they were deafening. The gusts of wind built to a howling roar. We had to struggle to make headway. Romeo had to put his leg around Rayleigh to hold her down and keep her from being blown away.

“Look, I was hoping you two would be smart enough to reach this on your own,” Rayleigh shouted over the suffocating, hot wind, “but I guess you need me to spell it out for you! Thunderstorm! Lightning! I’m a pegasus! This is not a problem for me! You two goons, however, are in trouble! And to top it all off….”

She smacked the radio aerial on my Actaeon box. The antenna whipped around and stung me on the flank. Rayleigh looked diabolical in the brilliant green light of the storm.

“Okay, okay!” I shouted as we made our way to the cusp of the marsh basin. “You’ve made your point. Look, we can take shelter for the night just down this valley, there’s this compound made of concrete where—”

I looked down into the marsh.

Swap Meat, you piece of shit.

_____