#chocco gives them voices

[shadows-over-the-wastes]

Shadows Over the Wastes: Chapter Two

Staring at the edge of an axe head, running a whetstone over it for the final touches of sharpening. I could see my reflection. Minty green coat, reflected in iron, with a messy, unkempt, far-too long, white mane. It hung in my face, hiding the brown freckles dotting my cheeks, and the fudge colored eyes that peered from between the strands. My irises were so dark they nearly blended in with my pupils, giving me a beady-eyed, lightless look. I almost always had a miserable expression painted across my face. That is, when blood wasn’t smeared across it first. My father is Cripps Crackle, the strongest of the Rusteaters. I’m his son, Chocolate Pennyroyal. Most just call me “Chocco”. It's stupid. It's childish. I hate it.

Cripps is single-hoofedly the strongest earth pony I know. Somehow he ended up getting with a unicorn. Well, not somehow. She didn’t have a choice. Which is why I ended up with the best of both worlds. Genetic lottery, I guess. Physical strength and magical prowess, lucky me. Unfortunately, that made me the de facto choice to take over his iron throne. Which I did not want. Even despite how feral my clan-mates were whenever we ransacked a town or exterminated a small village, simply for the fun of it; I can’t help but feel horrible. Some sympathy for the ponies I kill. The ponies I slaughter. At least, the ones undeserving. Other Clans? Steel Rangers? Hell, The Enclave? I reveled in it. And that’s what made it worse. I’m the best at what I do.

Today I was leading a scavenging group to an old robotics factory. Supposedly there were Flamescars taking hold there, using it to manufacture machines of mass-waste. Bots made to raze cities. We couldn’t know for sure, but we had to see if the rumors were true.

Slinging my axe over my back, I continued my lead, snorting. I could hear the rest of my intelligence-destitute clan-mates bantering behind me. I wore pre-war armor covered in rusted spikes, with large, extendable claws on the front plates of my forelegs. Looking back, I whistled through my teeth. “Shut it, maggots!” I snarled, using my leader tone. It almost immediately got them to quiet down, snapping their attention to me. “Now listen. If we flap our lips without a lick of consideration for how loud we might be, what do you think is going to happen? Hmm?” I watched a small male pegasus raise his hoof. “You don’t need to raise your fucking hoof, Longswipe.”

“Right, sorry. Uh… eh. They’ll hear us coming, and sick the bots on us.” He answers weakly. A coy front for his underlying sociopathy.

“Great fucking job, you can rub two pieces of brain meat together. Now you two.” I extended a foreleg, pointing at them, and baring my teeth. I had very pronounced canines, a trait common to wasteland ponies, but none quite as big as mine. “Quit your joking, or the only joke here will be how I’ll be using your intestine-strewn corpse to play tetherball! Am I understood?”

They backed up, nodding and rearing a hoof. High Hall spoke up, an earth pony sniper. “Y-yes! Of course!”

Letting out a hot puff through my nose, I turned back around, flicking my tail. “Good. Keep those lips shut, before I sew them closed with fucking barbed wire.” I continued making tracks, soon setting my eye on an old dusty facility, the outside surrounded by degraded old vehicles, and scrapped bots.

I felt a prick run up my spine. No outside defenses. That wasn’t right. Going to the front door, I withdrew my axe from my back, holding it up with bright green magic. My squad members backed me up, waiting for the door to be kicked in. High Hall sat with his semi-auto sniper at the ready, in a low position. “Ready for your signal.” He muttered, keeping his voice low.

Bucking the door, the chains and locks snap, the metal entryway careening open. However, the inside was dark, and empty. Starting to move in, I clicked on the flashlight attached to my chestpiece. “Lights on…voices down.” I whispered, motioning with a hoof. The rest followed me inside, and we made our way to the center of the warehouse. All of the bots were gone, completely cleaned out. No protectron or assaultron left to operate. All crates were emptied, all spare parts taken. It was completely destitute.

“Ah… if it isn’t the Redcolts.” A voice echoed from the catwalks. My whole squad and I flashed our lights up to the origin, finding a single stallion. He had a pale blue coat, and bright yellow eyes. A green, stylishly messy undercut mane, swept to one side. He had bits of metal stuck in his face, accentuating his sharp features. And he had a false leg. One of his back legs, the right one, from the mid-haunch down was replaced with a clawed contraption. “And the biggest boy of all of ‘em no less. Chocolate Pennyroyal…” He smiled, showing off gold and silver teeth mixed with natural yellow teeth. His smile was uneven, like it was mixed with another emotion.

“Do I know you, asshole?” I barked up to him, readying my axe to be thrown.

He chuckles, “No. But your daddy might.” He leans on the catwalk railing, continuing to smirk. “Oh where are my manners? The name’s Cold Crank. Most of my boys call me ‘Cranky’. Though…I consider myself anything but.”

“What’s your game, Cranky?” I asked, glancing at my squad members, before looking back at him.

He shrugged slightly, unfolding a wing from the darkness to reveal himself a pegasus. It held a cigarette between the feathers, which he placed on his lips. Then, raising a forehoof, a device strapped around it sparked, and created a small, controlled flame, lighting the end. “My ‘game’ is that I’m one of the best robotics engineers around. And your daddy pissed me off recently.” He takes a long drag, before puffing smoke out of his nose like a dragon. “I was gonna kill you as soon as you stepped hoof in here. But…I can tell you’re different.“

“Different?” I squinted.

“Mmhmm!” He nods, puffing again, “Even from your clan members. Even the weakest one there has this psychopathic look in his eyes, if you look deep enough. I’m good at reading ponies, and I can tell they all loooooove killing. Take pride in it. Joy, even. But you, Chocco? Not the same way they do.”

I felt my heart pound in my chest, baring my teeth. Even if it was true, the clan couldn’t know. Weakness, especially weakness like that, was justification for execution. There was no tolerance for empathy amongst the clan. It was kill or be killed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh?” He snickers, “I don’t? Well then I won’t do the talking. These will.” Cranky stands on his hind legs, opening up his long, dark coat. Dozens of little glowing lenses all focused lights onto the walls, playing the same video all at the same time. A video from one of our recent raids. From the perspective of somepony that was in their home.

A father and daughter, sitting with their Assaultron. The pony-shaped robot pointing its guns at the door as screams can be heard outside. Then, my eyes peer in through their doorway. “INTRUDER-” The assaultron roars, but I put a hoof over my mouth, gesturing for it to be quiet. Its laser ceases its charging, and it looks over to its owners.

“Go out the back, their attention is drawn from that angle.” My voice echoed through their home. “Leave now, please. While you can.”

The video pauses, and Cranky snickers. “Those three came and found me. Told me about their… unlikely savior.”

High Hall aims his rifle at me, and I can hear the safety click. “What the fuck was that?! You saved those ponies? What the hell is wrong with you?!”

“Hall. Put your fucking gun down before I shove it so far up your ass, I give it a brand new burial wrap just in time for your fucking funeral.” I slowly turned my head, narrowing my eyes on him.

Longswipe shook his head. “This is… unbelievable. How…?”

“Cripps ain’t gonna be happy when he hears about this.” Springload, the other unicorn of the group adds, using his yellow magic to withdraw a chainsword. “Longswipe, make for camp, now. Leave. We’ll subdue him.”

“You’ll betray me?? Just like that?!” I shouted, backing into a combat position. “How dare you?!”

Longswipe made a break for the exit, Hall and Spring both training their weapons on me. However, as soon as he gets to the door, I watch as he stops in place. He looks around for a moment, then attempts to go through the open double doors. Something cuts through the air. A tail, or a whip, with a bladed edge, from seemingly nowhere in the darkness of the warehouse. And it cuts his head clean off. So cleanly, he stands stone still for a few seconds, before blood begins to spill down his neck, and he collapses. His head rolled away from his corpse.

My face twisted into an expression of horror. Springload glanced over at Hall, not daring to take his eyes off me for more than a second. “What happened?”

“I dunno! I wasn’t watching!” Hall snaps.

Cranky laughs, shaking his head. “Oh you poor, savage morons.” All three of us snap our attention to him. “Only Chocco saw it, because he was the only one who cared to pay attention to anything. We all stand in a room with a highly experimental robot from the war.” He smiles, “Something they liked to call the ‘Apex’, or the ‘Stealth Assaultron’. It has cloaking technology, thermal vision, in-built electromagnetic pulse ampules, blades sharp enough to cut through 4-hoof thick steel doors, and worst of all? High-tuned rotors. Meaning it can move faster than anypony can aim. I put a surprise in there. Only one of you is walking out of this room, and I already know who it is. Prove me right, Chocco.”

“Prove you right how?? What do you want from me?!” I snap, but I don’t get an answer. The roboticist raises his wings, and with a single flap, disappears in a gust of wind.

Hall keeps his gun trained on me, Springload keeps me from moving anywhere. “You ain’t going fuckin’ anywhere. Move and you’re dead.”

I shook my head, scowling disapprovingly at the two of them. “You two make me fucking sick. So quick to believe the words of a strange pony, just so you can kill me! Sounds like the actions of a jealous worm. Sounds like you simply wish to take my place, no matter what it costs you. Longswipe is already dead. Are you really gonna keep playing this stupid game? Or are you gonna grow up and realize we don’t have time for this?”

The sound of metal skittering against metal can be heard through the warehouse, moving over the three of us. “Springload?? What are we gonna do?” Hall asks, looking up at the rafters while he keeps the barrel angled on my head.

“We’ll kill him and then take our leave, Hall. Chill the fuck out.” His chainsword hovers just under my chin, but I don’t move an inch. I don’t flinch. I don’t shake. I don’t even look away. He revs the sword, smiling. “I always thought you were soft anyway.”

I hear the stealth assaultron clamber on the rafters above me. Then, shaking my head, I make my decision. “I always wanted to fucking kill you from the second I laid eyes on you, Springload.” I throw my axe using my magic, nailing Hall in the haunch. He screams and fires wildly up at the rafters, hitting the assaultron. As a consequence, it swoops down, nearly slashing through Springload, who ducks. His break of concentration is enough for me to take control of the chainsword. Feeling my magic overtake his, I jump forwards, grabbing and swinging the blade. It buries itself right in the thick of his neck, spraying blood everywhere as it begins to saw right through.

Tackling him as vitae spurts all over the ground, I roll onto my back, bucking him into the air. The assaultron comes back around, its tail-blade whirring through the air as it slices right through his abdomen like a hot knife through butter. As his two halves fall to the floor, Hall stands up on his hind legs, aiming his rifle at me. Reflexively, my magic grips the axe handle, and yanks. It’s stuck in his leg, half-cut through the bone. But it works in my favor. The jolt of pain offsets his aim, firing just past my head. My ears ring, and I roll up, springing off my back legs. The recovery causes me to leap forwards, knocking our shoulders together, and destroying his proper grip around the rifle. I flop against the floor, pulling the axe out of his leg. As soon as I do so, I hear a sickening snap, the weakened haunch snapping under his weight.

He screams, but uses his rifle to catch himself before he falls. As I rear the axe back for another attack, and he tries to raise the rifle for a moment, something stops him. The tail blade, right through his chest, lifting him into the air. He gasped, dropping the rifle as his rear legs kicked, spitting blood out of his mouth. Then, he was thrown aside, crumpled onto the ground like trash. I immediately scramble to my hooves, panting as I look around the room, feeling my heart slam against my chest. I could hear it moving around, its metal hooves clicking against the floor. Huffing nervously, I backed away slowly, before I heard it rush me. I raised my axe, ready to defend myself.

It appeared right in front of me, its faux snout nearly touching mine. The robot’s eyes darted around before they locked onto me, the tail blade pressed under my chin. But it did not attack. We stood there, locked in a self-defensive stalemate. Then, it spoke. “You do not try to attack me. Why?”

“Because I know I’d lose. I’m not stupid.” I lied.

“Valid answer.” Its tail blade retracts, and it spits something out from its chest. A small disc-like device. “Three days and the beacon will activate. Follow it.” Its voice suddenly shifts to Cranky’s. “Nice job, Chopper. Eheheheh.” Then, it sprints out of the warehouse in a blur, leaving me be. “Chopper”. I kinda liked that.

Making my way over to High Hall, I stare down at him as he slowly bleeds out on the floor. His leaking crimson gets on my hooves, leaving a slick puddle on the cold concrete. “Cripps… is gonna kill you when he finds out.” He coughs, blood leaking from his nose and mouth.

“Not if I kill him first.” I retort, snorting.

He lets out a wheezy laugh. “You…don’t have the balls.”

Raising my right forehoof, the blades on my leg extend into three jagged claws, gleaming in the low light. “Don’t worry. You’ll find out once you meet him in the depths of hell. Don’t wait for me.” Then, I bring the claws down on his head, impaling them straight through his skull. He lets out one last pathetic gurgle as I strike his brain, freezing up, before falling limp. The claws retract, dripping with blood and brain matter. “You were never of any real use to me anyway.”

[wethuzz-and-friends]

proof that farqua’s voice is basically poofessure’s but with a robot effect 

source:  trying to get 3099 skill level in wii sports baseball but beef boss keeps giving up triples

[storylocke]

Honey GLITched: First Sign of Trouble

[Things had been strange all morning. Honey felt she was floating through things; a strange boy telling her he was going to take her home; running down the street to receive her starter, a Pikachu in a red scarf holding her parents hostage… Wait, what?]

???:

Hey you! Did you see a Pikachu around here with a scarf?

Honey:

Yeah, I already scared it off... Why, was it yours?

???:

[softly] Damn… [aloud] Nah, I just wanted to catch it. It seemed pretty special. Had a weird cry and everything! But if it’s gone, guess we’ll just have to look around later. By the way, what’s your name?

Honey:

[Odd kid, but she had the feeling he must have just started out too. Bright eyed and eager to prove himself. She kind of smiles at him.] Ahuni, but everyone calls me Honey.

Percy:

Well, my name’s Percy, [nods down to the Pokemon at his feet] and this my partner Cyndaquil! Since we missed out on that Pikachu, how about we fight you instead? What do you say, Foe C?

Honey:

I only have the one right now. I just got a Turtwig this morning.

Percy:

Newbie, huh? I guess we’re just a couple of late bloomers then. I’ll take it easy on you~ Get us both some experience.

Honey:

Sounds like fun~!

=+=

[Honey may have lost the battle, but she awoke in her bed almost like it had been another dream. The battle felt so real she couldn’t stop thinking about it as she made her way downstairs. Again, it felt like. She could have sworn it actually happened. Her parents greeting her, going to the lab… she HAD gone to the lab, because she had her a brand new starter Pokemon! So when did she come back home? Leaving again, she wandered town for a bit to collect her thoughts. As Professor Willow’s new errand girl, he gave her a starter and asked her to… to… Oh! Pick up some new Pokedexes from the INVENTOR! She’d been to Chocco Town plenty of times to know exactly where to find him.]

Percy:

Hey! Did you see a Pikachu around here with a scarf?

Honey:

I did…?

[Even if this wasn’t a dream, as the boy called for the challenge again, Honey hardly paid attention to the battle she went on to lose. Again, she woke up at home. Her mind instead wandered back to a different boy, possibly the one she was thinking of when she thought she was seeing things. Taking a moment to sit on the bed and thinking the “dream” over she vaguely remembered the odd teen telling her she would be dizzy all day. A headache was one thing, but these blackouts and persistent whisperings were something quite worrisome. Wandering the room revealed that everything was exactly as she had left it before: Starter Poke Ball, running shoes, so it had happened to some extent. This was almost getting eerie.]

Mom:

[Attending to the hedges outside their house when she notices her come down the stairs… again.] Honey! What are you doing back here? I thought you left for Chocco Town.

Honey:

[Just stares at her a moment, her mind swimming as the hundreds of tiny voices were shouting “Hi, Mom!” while a handful were telling her to make a break for it. She runs a hand under her bangs, feeling her forehead as she pretended to shade her eyes from the sun.] Just lost like always. Say, did you guys run into a Pikachu this morning?

Mom:

[In good humor] This morning? That was a less than an hour ago.

Honey:

[Sure felt a lot longer.] Just making sure. I don’t think I’m awake yet.

Mom:

[Honey’s attempt to check herself doesn’t go unnoticed, and her mother quickly removes a glove to run a hand under her bangs as if to check for herself if she had a fever then. Seems fine, and moves her hand to the girl’s cheek. Just gives her a bit of a smile and a nod.] Maybe you should have eaten instead of running right out of bed. You sure you don’t want to take something for the road?

Honey:

Nah, I just need to get moving and see if I can shake off this sluggishness. I’ll see you sometime tonight~!

=+=

[As her mother waves her off, Honey goes again down the grassy trail, her Turtwig trotting beside her as she was ready for them.]

Percy:

Hey! Did you see a Pikachu around here?

[Right on cue, the exact same curve in the Forest Pass. As the battle commences, she can’t help but glare daggers at this pair after bothering her so much. What did they want from her? Percy didn’t even seem to realize she’d met them before, and by now she was certain she had. Of all the strange things that had been bothering her since that morning though, what happened then was the most startling. The Cyndaquil glared back at them with a Leer when… everything stopped. Just for a moment, she swore, but definitely stopped. She glances over at Percy to be certain that it wasn’t part of the attack. He stands there, frozen in his smugness as he clenches his fists in anticipation of victory. Unaware of what would happen if he did. Her mind could only scream “FREEZE! FREEZE! FREEZE!” over and over again as she waited for some surprise build up to his attack. She had to make sure he couldn’t win this time, and swiftly had Turtwig Tackle the Cyndaquil to the ground. The world moved again, though it seemed to flicker and flash and suddenly everything turned blue! It was over though, and when she could see again, she was relieved to find herself still on the route with Percy.]

Honey:

What… [gazing around at everything; the trees, the sky, the ground, and finally looks back to Percy in bewilderment.] Wh-what was that about?!

Percy:

Holy smokes! [For a moment she thought he was going to comment about the lighting, but instead he kneels down beside his partner.] You really are strong! Foe C, you okay?

Honey:

Eh….. y-yeah. I guess we are. [If he didn’t think twice about that odd light show, then she could only assume it was intentional.] Foe C sure um… those were some moves they used back there, huh? I didn’t think we hit him that hard, did we?

Percy:

Nah, we’re cool. Right, buddy? [the Cyndaquil happily agrees] But even with the type advantage, your little guy didn’t even flinch! Definitely worthy to be my rival. [Stops himself a moment] You are planning to do the gym challenge too, aren’t you? I mean, who doesn’t? Of course, if we’re going to be competing, I better get going to Oceanview City! Anyway, it was nice meeting you, Honey~!

Honey:

[She hesitates in trying to find a good place to interrupt him, hoping to ask if he saw ANY of that during the battle, battles, whatever. Instead, she never gets in a word before the odd boy had already run off.] …. I don’t think he knew…. [glances down at the Turtwig] Did you?