Velvet stares up and Fluttertree. Not quite believing that it was her. And as she starts to climb the hill, Li'lpip thinks she hears the wind in the tree's leaves saying "Stay Away." As the other mare was enraptured by the sight in the clearing, Li'lpip looks around to try and find the rest of her group. Bringing up her EFS to see a solid wall of red everywhere she looked, the entire forest full of threats.
Calamity comes back to the clearing, asking if anypony had seen Life Bloom, the rest having been accounted for, and Reggie pointing out the rather obvious, that kind of hard to "see" the pony who was wrapped in an invisibility cloak. Xenith meanwhile was having much the same reaction to the stoned Angel as Velvet was having to Fluttertree. Cautiously reaching a hoof out to touch him before declaring that being petrified by a cockatrice while defending Fluttershy was a good end for such a warrior. Standing forever as a lone sentinel for his mistress.
As Life Bloom makes his way into the clearing, Xenith looks up from the stone rabbit and sees where Velvet was heading, leaping in front of her and kicking her hard enough to send her flying, just before the blue vines covering and surrounding the tree come to life. One of the vines touching Xenith, and her body nearly erupting in blood. Everyone of her stripes turning into an open wound. Having just enough time to moan out 'Killing joke' before passing out.
(Yeah, this is why reading her line back in Tenpony Sometimes, I feel as if I am an earth pony and that my stripes are really great wounds. is just so so damn painful now.)
Li'lpip acting out of panic and instinct wrapps the Zebra in her magic, using the hemokinesis spell the Black Book had tempted her with she turns Xeniths own blood into a full body pressure bandage/cast to stop the blood loss. Leaving only her muzzle exposed.
Okay, I really like this. (The blood magic part not the killing joke part) yet more pretty damn amazing set up of something that even if you see it coming back later, you'd never see it like this. The whole blood magic/weapons thing was already kind of awesome in a very creepy way, but Li'lpip using that exact same dark magic to help heal instead? Simply amazing. And shows, as with Rarity's use of the dark magic in the Book, that even the darkest, most seemingly evil powers and magics can be used for good. Can have a legitimate use. But even Li'lpip admits when Life Bloom asks her about the spell she had just used, it should only be as a last resort.
After securing Xenith, Li'lpip ends up freezing in panic, the initial actions having been done without thinking, simply acting. The few hints of killing joke we'd gotten so far flashing back to her mind.
She simply watches the vines creep closer to her, her body frozen, yet her mind trying to go over everything she said, trying to work out just how the plant would kill her. Paralyzed by fear over what the plant would do to her. Life Bloom grabbing her in his magic and pulling her to safety behind Velvet's shield just before she could find out. The jolt finally snapping her out of it. As Reggie moves in to use her brother's hellhound blades to try and cut a path through Li'lpip calls out for her to stop, that a single touch of the plants was deadly. Taking the weapons from her and using them with her magic to clear a path for everyone to escape through.
The group ends up running into a wall of smoke, seeing the approaching fires nearing them and stops, trying to find another way to go. Only for The Wonderbolts to appear overhead. the noise and spectacle of them making Li'lpip again comment on how bad they are at their role as assassins. Only to realize that was because they weren't, it was her that thought of them like that and her alone, realizing just why it was they were the Enclaves top hit squad.
Everything we had witnessed pointed to the Enclave operating under a single, over-riding military philosophy: shock and awe. Overwhelming displays of power and dominance, spectacular and terrifying displays of force and skill that paralyze, demoralize and rout the enemy. The Enclave may have rejected Rainbow Dash, but they were still born out of the fighting force she had molded in her own image. And the Wonderbolts were their greatest and most glorified hunters. Not because they operated with a different methodology than the rest of the Enclave, but because the Enclave revered shock and awe, and the Wonderbolts were the best at it.
And yeah, that is a perfect description for The Enclave, and also why they are just so bad at fighting once you actually stop and look at them. They are built solely on the concept of "shock and Awe." Just overwhelming their foes with massive firepower till they either crumble, or surrender. And yes it IS stupid, and it is heavily flawed when they have nothing EXCEPT that in their arsenal. Add to that the fact that their soldiers have no actual experience in warfare. Yeah as a military force, they do rather suck. They are nothing more then bullies, and like all bullies, they simply don't know how to deal with it when the people they try to bully stand their ground and aren't cowed by their show of force/threats.
But that said, yes I still like them, and I am perfectly fine with them being this way. Yes in a vacuum, looking JUST at them, they are laughably ridiculous. But within the story, they make sense. There is a logical reason behind why they act that way. Like Li'lpip said, the pegasi military was pretty much created by Rainbow Dash. She is their inspiration and the one who set down the core principles they operated on. And acting like that, yeah that is pure RD. And the reason that they haven't changed much over two centuries, learned better, is that they simply never needed to. There was only one "war" or even massive fight in that time, and they got their flanks kicked. Plus with a limited, finite amount of resources, and a leadership that is nothing more then politic bureaucrats, the whole situation is a model blueprint for stagnation.
So yeah, The Enclave may be horrible at being villains, may be nothing more then simple bullies, but for me, they still work, because while they are just bullies, they are still big enough and mean enough to be a threat, if only through their overwhelming firepower. And there is logical reasons for them being the way they are. And enough variety in the ranks to make them feel rather realistic, like something that could really happen.
Li'lpip and the group watched the Wonderbolts searching for them. Able to track Li'lpip's Pipbuck, but not well enough to get a precise fix amidst all the signals coming from the forest. Three of them sweeping the trees overhead. Then down to two when one of them gets petrified by a cockatrice. Leading to, pretty much a massive three way brawl. As both groups of ponies tried to take out and survive the cockatrices without getting stoned, while the Wonderbolts still tried to get at Li'lpip and her group, unable to get a clear enough shot at them through the tree cover and unwilling yet to enter it.
Li'lpip yells to her group to remember the plan. To stop standing around as a group and start spreading out, get the Wonderbolts isolated so Lifebloom and Velvet can do their magic on them. Velvet instead turning around and saying they had to go back, they had to save her. It takes Li'lpip a few moments to realize who she meant. That she wanted to save Fluttertree from the approaching wall of fire.
And then the battle just gets even WORSE, as hellhounds begin bursting through the ground. one just barely missing killing Life Bloom, who wraps the invisibility cloak around him and disappears. Li'lpip feeling one of the creatures underneath her, wondering why it hadn't burst up and killed her. Remembering their tactic at Maripony, the entire area around her was now littered with landmines. And to make it worse, Pyrelight gets petrified by a cockatrice that had lain in ambush, Li'lpip screaming at Reggie not to kill it, that the only way to save the phoenix was to keep the cockatrice alive and make it reverse it's spell. Velvet reacting faster then anypony and zapping it with her anesthetic spell, paralyzing it. A massive flash of light from above the trees, and Calamity comes falling down, smacking into a tree on the way, Li'lpip starting to panic. Not helped by taking a hit to her side that she knew scorched her cutie mark, unable to stop worrying about how bad it was, how much of her mark she had lost.
Though they get a little relief, as one of the hellhounds gets tagged by a strand of killing joke, being turned instantly into a pony, the other two turning on it, not realizing what happened. The Pony!hound runs off, the two remaining hellhounds giving chase, taking them out of the fight for now. Reggie takes the opportunity of the hounds running off to fly in and snatch Li'lpip and Xenith out of the mine field, just beating the explosion as she soars away. Life Bloom showing up again to cast a few healing spells, while Velvet grabs the cockatrice that had petrified Pyrelight and forces it to reverse the spell.
Yeah she may try to be Fluttershy as best she could, but lacking a "stare" I suppose telekineticly throttling the damn thing till it does what you want works too.
Calamity coming out to meet them, burned, battered, and clearly in pain, but alive. Telling Velvet to hold onto the cockatrice, though he doesn't say it, clearly it was to fix the Wonderbolt that had been stoned. (Though bit of a lucky coincidence that it just happens to be the same one the got the Wonderbolt.) Reggie does a quick fly around, saying the Wonderbolts had left, figuring they had fallen back further away from the fireline, and Redeye's forces that were sustaining it. Li'lpip agreeing that they needed to get further away from the heat and smoke.
I really wanted to walk up to them, waving a flag of truce and calling out: Hello? Look, I know we both decided to do this thing in the Everfree Forest — hoping we could use the environment against each other and all that — but we were clearly stupid. Think maybe we could call a time-out until we all get away from the pony-murdering woods?
Yeah even she admits it was a dumb idea and wouldn't work, but still a rather amusing thought. Though it leads to her wondering if maybe the Wonderbolts had pulled back simply to wait them out, to let the forest take care of them on it's own.
The group heads out further from the fire, Velvet using her shield spell to give them something to walk on without directly touching the ground. Keeping the Killing joke from sensing them. Maintaining it almost absently as she weeps for Fluttershy, Li'lpip doing the best she could to comfort her.
Velvet Remedy whimpered, holding onto me. I was fighting a strong urge to push her back, strip off my armor, and check my flank. But Velvet needed to be held, and I knew that if my cutie mark had been damaged by magical energy, no amount of looking was going to help. Velvet was more important. My friends were more important. And did I really want to know?
And there are people that wonder why I like Li'lpip so much?
Li'lpip spends the time thinking about the killing joke, how it seemed far to smart, far to evil for simple plants. And yeah, they are just.... wrong... on so many levels. Velvet saying they have to save Fluttershy from the approaching fire. Li'lpip having no clue how to do so, but telling her they'd do what they could. Life Bloom meanwhile finishes tending to Xenith, saying she was still pretty bad off, but stable and should survive, though she was in a coma and here was no telling when or if she would come out of it.
Reggie suddenly stands up, yelling that it should be Kage here, not her. And before Li'lpip could apologize again for getting her brother killed, she made clear she dodn't mean it like that. Not in a "it should have been me that died instead" sort of way. Simply that he was better at dealing with wilderness and survival then she was. And we get a little tangent about Whitetail Woods, and how it was one of the most heavily irradiated places in Equestria outside of Canterlot. Though why someplace with nothing worth attacking was so heavily hit was a mystery.
Oh and a quick little aside as Calamity loots the dead Hellhound, walking away with it's energy rifle in his mouth.
“Whuf?” he asked innocently, taking in our stares. “If worph sumechinn.”
- facepalm* but, it was good for a chuckle.
They also check out the odd helmet the thing was wearing, between that, and a broadcast that Li'lpip's Pipbuck was picking up, they figure out that the Enclave's experiments with Hellhounds in Old Ol'neigh were successful, that the Hellhounds were being controlled by the Enclave. Li'pip saying they should go back to the farm they had passed and destroy the transmitter, Calamity countering with just take their helmets off. Life Bloom pointing out how that really wouldn't help them much, since odds were they'd simply blame any pony for what the Enclave did and go right on trying to kill the group.
And all this talking and waiting was finally to much for Li'lpip, she couldn't stand not knowing any longer, quickly stripping out of her armor and turning to look at how badly she been hit. And seeing half of her cutie mark now a twisted mass of burned flesh. Screaming at Calamity not to tell her "cutie marks don't matter" even knowing as she said it how wrong it was to say that to him of all ponies. Turning to Velvet and desperately asking if there was anything she could do, anyway they could fix it. And though it's clear she doesn't really think it would work, she does suggest cutting away the scar tissue from the magical energy shot. And Li'lpip is so desperate she tries to force them to start cutting right there and then. Velvet holding her ground. Making clear that if Li'lpip is going to insist, she will at LEAST wait till they are somewhere safe and at least somewhat clean before she'll do it. Li'lpip not being placated, turning on her and nearly hitting the other mare in anger before Life Bloom hits her with an anesthetic spell, making her collapse.
Okay, her reaction to this.. her outburst at Calamity, nearly hitting Velvet. Yeah she's pretty far gone here. Given how much else she's had done to her, how many other thing have happened, to now be so angry about it, to strike out at her friends? But I do understand why she acted like this. And it's BECAUSE of everything that's already happened. Both physically and mentally. I'm not saying it was right, far from it. She was fully in the wrong here, and her friends were damn near saints for not lashing back at her, for not responding to her. But they also understand why she acted this way. Velvet in particular since she's the one who knows just how long it took Li'lpip to earn her Cutie Mark.
Okay, guess I should talk about this a bit more, cause yeah it is one of the scenes that makes Li'lpip out to be pretty bad. Littlepip isn't perfect, far from it, and this scene shows one of her more prevalent flaws. She is very very emotional, when she feels something, she goes all in. Her feelings and emotions tend to be rather strong, she isn't really able to filter them, to control them. Now simply being like that isn't a bad thing, where it crosses into a problem is when she has trouble controlling herself while feeling those intense emotions, letting them control her, doing things that she regrets almost instantly as soon as her emotions cool down. And she is aware of this, at least somewhat, but enough to really try and change it, to see something like this coming and try to calm herself down before it gets to far.
Though, even though it is something she should try to control a bit better, that trait isn't entirely a bad thing. It's one of the things that pushes her to not give up, to stand up and fight back against things that are wrong. But all to often she does let it go to far. When she simply gets overwhelmed by her emotions and acts without clearly thinking. Simply lashing out, though more often then not it's at things that deserve it, The Steel Rangers, Arbu, Deadeyes, raiders. And she is in enough control that while she might lash out at others who aren't so deserving of it, she still has limits to how far she'll go. She only kills ponies that are a threat to others, that leaving alive will result in other ponies suffering and dying, no matter how upset she is she never kills or even seriously hurts a pony JUST because she's mad, it's because of WHAT she is mad about. No matter how blind her rage is. Even in the absolute worse case of her going into an utter Unstoppable Rage, she still made sure to not kill innocent ponies. While dealing with the ponies of Arbu she made sure that every pony she killed had an Arbu Mark before doing so. (And yes we can discuss how, at the time, there wasn't solid proof that Arbu mark=murderer, even though that was the case, but that doesn't really have any baring on this. It's about what she believed and how she acted because of it, not whether she was right in believing that. At the time she believed Arbu mark=guilty and made sure not to kill any pony without one.)
She is a pony that wears her heart on her sleeve. Who despite all the pain and suffering she's seen, doesn't simply grow a thick skin and learn to ignore it. Everypony's suffering hits her as hard as the rest. And that is both a good and bad thing, good because it keeps her grounded, makes her always try to save as many ponies as she can, never becoming callous towards the loss of life. But taking in that much pain, that much suffering, not being able to block it out does eat at her, building up, hurting her over and over, and occasionally it simply gets to be to much, she lashes out, needing to vent, to release some of the pain and hurt she's let in. And as above, her being like this is both good; for being one of the things that drives her to go on, to do everything she possibly can to help as many ponies as possible no matte the cost to herself. And bad, because it causes her to lash out, to act without thinking clearly, take actions she regrets once she calms down. And her friends understand this about her, especially Velvet, she understands that about Li'lpip, and it is one of things about her that she most admires, the drive, that ability to not tune out others pain, the shear intensity in which she feels for everypony. And she also understands that lashing out like that is simply a result of that, not holding it against her, simply taking it in stride.
As to why she's suddenly acting like this, without any direct cause, well again it's understandable. She had just lost part of her cutie mark forever. Part of her. Since leaving the Stable she'd been slowly feeling like she's been losing more and more of herself, more of her essential "ponyness" (what would the pony version of Humanity be? Ponanity? that just sounds wrong.) Being forced to kill, some of the other actions she done, hating herself for doing them, and yet knowing that they were the only way to save lives of innocent ponies. Fearing that she is becoming a monster, some twisted version of a pony that only brings pain and death, even if she thinks it's for a good reason. (yeah, that line of thought is BS, but it is how she feels at times, if wrongly. But that she does feel that way, fears becoming that sort of creature is one of the reasons why she is the right pony for this.) Even her body has been changed. Scared, battered, her bones laced with Zebra alchemy to become stronger then a normal ponies, her foreleg forever fused to a piece of technology. Exposed to taint till she's mutated into being something between a pony and an alicorn. Even losing and regrowing an entire limb at one point. And now this? The single biggest visible symbol of who she is, having that ruined, taken away, after everything else? Losing one of the last ties to the pony she was? All the pain and rage and fear about what she's become, at how much she's changed all welling up at once, in a pony who already has issues controlling her emotions? Yeah she has reasons for feeling like that.
Was what she did right? Most certainly not. Was it understandable? most certainly yes. Is it excusable, something that should be held against her? Well that one is YMMV. Far as her friends are concerned, yes they can excuse it, because they understand her, understand why she's feeling this way, and they aren't mad at her, they simply hurt for her. And it shows us just how deep the bond is between them. how much they care about and relay on each other.
Thoughts-(Well other then the massive wall of text on Li'lpip) I really really liked this chapter so far, the fight against the Wonderbolts is one of the best in the story. The Everfree is just freaking terrifying, and there are times you really feel that at least somepony is going to die for real, be lost forever. That said, if there is one part I'd say could be done without it's the mind controlling the Hellhounds bit. Yeah I get it's from Fallout, but it's also one of those things that's pretty much considered to have never happen, because of how dumb it was in the game.
That said, this does work a hell of a lot better in this story the in the game, since the Hellhounds are actually intelligent, not just animals like Deathclaws. That said, it would have been nice to get a little more info on just WHY the Enclave developed this. They were working on it long before they came below, but why? There's really no information to say they DON'T have a good, at least to them, reason, but none to show they do either. So yeah it is one thing that I think could have been explored a little better, but overall it does more or less work. And the rest of the fight is just amazing, and about to get even more so.
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