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Rising From the Ashes · FiM Short Story ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 2000–8000
Show rules for this event
Doughnut Steel: Origins - The Yeast Knight Rises
Lyra Heartstrings sat on a bench, staring into the clear blue sky. There were foals laughing in the park behind her, happy ponies trotting along in front of her, and a generally peaceful feeling seemed to seep from the very air. She took out a pocket watch, glancing at it as she pulled up a bag of popcorn with her other hoof. It was a few seconds to noon.

"Lyra? What are you doing?"

Lyra looked up to see Bon-Bon walking towards her with a confused expression.

"Oh, just waiting." Lyra replied. "Popcorn?"

Bon-Bon gently pushed the offered bag back. "What exactly are you waiting for?"

Lyra shrugged. "Dunno. Something big, loud, and possibly explode-y."

Bon-Bon looked around incredulously. "Here? In the park?"

Lyra pulled Bon-Bon into a side hug, gesturing grandly with her bag of popcorn. "Bon-Bon, where are we?"

"Ponyville?" Bon-Bon answered bemusedly.

"And how would you describe this day?"

"Uh, perfect for a nice stroll or a picnic."

Lyra nodded quickly. "Exactly! It's a perfect, peaceful, quiet, unassuming Ponyville day, and we're approaching high noon! It's almost impossible for there not to be a world-ending threat about to strike!"

Bon-Bon blinked a few times, processing this. "If that's what you think, why haven't you gotten Princess Twilight?"

Lyra scrunched up her muzzle in disapproval. "And sacrifice my seat? No way."

Any remark Bon-Bon would have made was cut off by the sudden ringing of the clock tower. The two mares counted out the twelve tolls, Lyra looking more and more excited with every one. Finally, they stopped, ringing out into silence.

Lyra and Bon-Bon waited for one second. Then another second. Then another second...

"I knew this was nonsense." Bon-Bon sighed in annoyance. "Come on, Lyra, nothing's gonna hap-"

A screaming portal tore open the sky with an unearthly ripping sound, unnatural storm clouds violently swirling out to cover the whole sky. A dark comet blitzed down through the portal, shattering a building and causing ponies to flee in random directions with cries of despair.

Bon-Bon stared straight forward blankly. Lyra stared right at the side of Bon-Bon's head, the shit-eatingest of grins on her face. Bon-Bon's left eye twitched dangerously. Lyra either didn't notice or didn't care.

"Soooooooooooooooooooo what was that you were saying?" Lyra asked, her voice saturated with smugness.

A dark figure pulled itself out of the crater, spreading bat-like wings and baring glistening fangs. Its red mane cascaded down its neck like flowing blood, accentuating the figure's slitted red eyes.

[b]"Hear me now, citizens of Ponyville!"[/b] The figure roared in a deafening voice. [b]"I am DarkStorm, the very spirit of death, born of the Nightmare to exact vengeance on this world! Your powers of Harmony will do nothing against me! I will cover this land in shadow and ash, and there's nothing that can stop me!"[/b]

DarkStorm looked around, and his eyes locked onto two ponies sitting on a bench. He saw the green one's eyes go wide as the pink one stood up from the bench, and he grinned evilly.

[b]"Yes, come, accept your fate!"[/b] He cackled. "Quake in the face of certain hrk"

Bon-Bon slapped DarkStorm across the face with Lyra's entire body. DarkStorm was flung backwards from the hit, leaving him reeling in the middle of the crater he'd made. His face contorted with rage, and he lept back to his hooves with a roar.

Bon-Bon stone-facedly crushed his head with a wooden support beam. A plume of dust exploded upwards from the impact, obscuring the crater from the view of a thoroughly disheveled Lyra lying nearby. Lyra rubbed her ribs, groaning.

"I have a face-shaped bruise on my chest, don't I?" Lyra asked nopony in particular. Upon receiving no response, she just nodded to herself. "Of course I do." She pushed herself into a sitting position as the dust settled, revealing two figures in the center of the crater.

Bon-Bon leaned against the beam, glaring down at the twitching black body beneath it. The body melted into a black vapor, swirling upwards towards the portal. At the last moment, two glaring red eyes formed that stared down at Bon-Bon.

"This isn't over." A voice growled from all around her. She simply returned the glare with an unimpressed stare. The black vapor vanished into the portal, the sky clearing rapidly with its absence. Bon-Bon continued to stare into the sky, lost in thought as she grumbled to herself. She almost jumped when Lyra rested a hoof across her shoulders.

"Bon-Bon." Lyra said, her tone flat. "You saw an otherworldly abomination break a house in front of you, and your first reaction was to use my body as a bludgeon and beat the shit out of it."

Bon-Bon winced, but stood her ground against Lyra's blank look. "In all fairness, you were completely asking to get slapped, I just got a bit creative with it."

Lyra took a deep breath, extending a hoof in emphasis. "That was awesome."

Bon-Bon's​ entire train of thought spectacularly derailed. She stared dumbly back at Lyra for a full second before she could formulate a reply.

"What."

"I've never been used as a makeshift bat before, that was so cool!" Lyra grinned wildly. "And then you just wham crushed him with a pole! How did you even lift that? That was so awesome, it's like you're a superhero!"

Bon-Bon rubbed her temples, sighing deeply. "Lyra?"

"Oh oh, we should make you a superhero name! You could be like the next Mare-Do-Well!"

"Lyra." Bon-Bon droned.

"I'm totally gonna be your sidekick by the way. I mean you gotta have a sidekick, that's like a rule of being a superhero probably." Lyra stomped a hoof in realization, her eyes glimmering with excitement. "Oh, I just thought of the perfect name for you! How about The Steely Taffy!"

Bon-Bon just facehooved. Lyra tapped her chin in thought, nodding to herself. "It's a work in progress, we'll figure that out later. Hey, we should get Rarity to design us superhero outfits!"

"I don't actually have a say in this, do I?" Bon-Bon asked blandly.

"What about a catchy tagline that we can yell as we charge into battle? Like, uh, never fear, the, uhhh. Wait maybe I should finish making the names first."

Bon-Bon stared blankly at Lyra, then shook her head. "I'm gonna head home before I get roped into cleaning this mess up." She said, turning and walking down the semi-exploded street.

"Okay, the Steely Taffy doesn't work, how about, uh, the Tart of Steel! No that's worse. Steel Meal? Pastry Steel?" Lyra racked her brain. "This is gonna bother me now, I swear I had a perfect superhero name thought up for you just in case. What was it..."




At 3 am, Lyra sat up in bed with a jolt. "DOUGHNUT STEEL!" She bellowed. Bon-Bon fell out of the bed with a shriek of surprise that morphed quickly into anger.

"Lyra, shut up!"




Lyra and Bon-Bon walked through the market a few weeks later, examining the vegetable stalls. Bon-Bon hummed to herself as she went along, checking off produce from her shopping list. She noticed Lyra had stopped in the middle of the road, and turned around with a questioning expression.

"Lyra? You alright?"

Lyra was looking up over the rooftops, towards the center of town. When she looked back down to Bon-Bon, her eyes had an excited glint to them.

"Hey Bon-Bon, how would you describe today?" Lyra asked smoothly.

Bon-Bon looked around. "Well, it's not too crowded despite the good weather, so I'd say it's a nice day to get my shopping done."

Lyra nodded. "Yeah, it's a perfect, peaceful, quiet, unassuming Ponyville day, isn't it?"

Bon-Bon's​ face fell, and she suddenly looked incredibly tired. "Lyra, come on. I'm not going to be a superhero, and nothing's going to happen. We've talked about this."

Lyra pouted. "Please? It could be so cool!"

Bon-Bon shook her head. "Look, you know about my... Side job."

"You mean the secret agent thing?" Lyra asked.

Bon-Bon shot Lyra a glare. "You have no idea what subtlety is, do you?"

"What does that have to do with you being a-"

Bon-Bon clapped a hoof over Lyra's mouth. "My [i]side job[/i ] is already to protect ponies and stop criminals to the best of my ability. I'm not a superhero though, I'm... a public service agent. End of story."

Lyra frowned. "But superhero sounds so much cooler." She unsuccessfully attempted to say through the hoof on her mouth.

"I'm going to assume that was you agreeing to drop it. Now help me find Carrot Top's stall." Bon-Bon said, finally removing her hoof.

Both ponies had only taken a few steps down the road when the clock tower tolled. Twelve long rings dissipated into the chatter of the market. Bon-Bon found herself staring up at the clock tower warily, and in the corner of her eye saw Lyra doing the same thing. Nothing happened. Satisfied, Bon-Bon resumed her walk.

Tendrils of black magic tore their way out of the ground, ripping stone like it was paper. Thick black smoke boiled out from the tendrils and spread across the ground. Ponies fled in every direction as a dark figure formed in the center of the tendrils, evil laughter echoing from all around.

"I swear to the gods, if you're giving me that stupid grin I'm going to throw you clear into the next county." Bon-Bon growled. Next to her she saw Lyra lean back out of Bon-Bon's space, muttering disappointedly.

[b]"Citizens of Ponyville!"[/b] DarkStorm yelled, his booming voice echoing off the buildings. [b]"I have returned to exact my vengeance upon those who kept me from exacting my vengeance upon this town!"[/b]

"Oh jeeze." Bon-Bon said quietly, reaching out for Lyra. "Come on, let's-"

Lyra wasn't there. In fact, Bon-Bon couldn't see Lyra anywhere through the ever-thickening dark smoke. Bon-Bon groaned, and at that moment DarkStorm noticed her.

[b]"Aha! You cannot hide from me, foolish pony!"[/b] He cackled.

"I wasn't hiding." Bon-Bon replied blithely. "I was standing right here. In the middle of the square. Not moving."

[b]"You've already accepted your fate then?"[/b] DarkStorm grinned evilly. [b]"Good, good. Now then, tell me your name, worthless pony, so that I may curse it for all eternity!"[/b]

"That sounds incredibly inviting, but I'll have to pass." Bon-Bon deadpanned. DarkStorm growled, the dark tendrils rearing up and facing Bon-Bon.

[b]"Then I'll pry that information from your tortured-"[/b]

"Her name is Doughnut Steel, defender of Ponyville!" Lyra yelled from a nearby rooftop. Bon-Bon's​ head whipped around towards the voice, and her jaw dropped.

Lyra was standing on a roof, a mask over her face and a cape billowing out behind her. She grinned widely, pointing to herself. "And I am her sidekick, Heart Harp! Together, we fight for justice!"

There was a long, awkward silence as Lyra and DarkStorm stared each-other down, Bon-Bon facehoofing between them. Lyra's smile faded, and she kicked at the roof nervously.

"Uh, shoot, was I too early?"

"Actually you were a good ten seconds too late." Bon-Bon said, her voice heavy with resigned frustration. "Also you look like an idiot."

"Well, uh, justice makes its own time. Justice also doesn't care about the opinions of jealous ponies." Lyra huffed.

"Jealous? Oh, you... We'll talk about this later." Bon-Bon grumbled. "Though I'm not sure if there's a point to doing so since you're obviously not going to listen."

Before Lyra could respond, DarkStorm cleared his throat in annoyance.

[b]"Excuse me, world-ending threat here?"[/b] He pointed a tendril at himself. [b]"Maybe save the pointless bickering until after I've killed you."[/b]

"That's dumb." Bon-Bon droned. "You're dumb."

[b]"Right then."[/b] DarkStorm grumbled, and five tendrils all slammed into the ground on top of Bon-Bon. He turned his glare up to Lyra. [b]"And now to send you straight to Tartarus as well, foolish-"[/b]

Bon-Bon slammed a metal light pole onto DarkStorm's head so hard it made her teeth chatter. DarkStorm crumpled like wet paper trying to hold up a brick, the tendrils vanishing in poofs of smoke. Bon-Bon gave the unconscious pony a somewhat disappointed look.

"World-ending threat, huh?" She scoffed.

"Yeah!" Lyra chimed in from the roof. "You really skulled that guy!"

Bon-Bon stood in silence. Lyra's smile didn't waver.

"Get it? It's a pun on schooled." Lyra helpfully explained. "It's funny because you hit him in the head."

"Thank you, Lyra." Bon-Bon said snarkily. "Both the pun and the subsequent explanation were absolutely essential in defeating this threat. I'm glad you were so helpful today."

Lyra blew off a hoof, shining it on her chest fur. "All in a day's work."

DarkStorm's body melted into dark mist once again, seeping down into the earth. "I'll get you next time, Doughnut Steel." He growled, his voice echoing ominously as he faded away. Bon-Bon stared at the spot where he'd been, and a long sigh escaped her lips.

"This is going to be a regular thing, isn't it?" She resignedly asked nopony in particular. Upon receiving no response, she nodded to herself. "Of course it is."

A mask and cape flopped down onto the ground next to Bon-Bon. She glanced at them, then looked up to see Lyra standing beside her and grinning, her superhero gear still on. Bon-Bon looked from the clothes to Lyra and then back to the clothes.

"If you agree to never make a terrible pun ever again, I'll wear the stupid gear." Bon-Bon eventually said. Lyra grinned giddily, shaking Bon-Bon's hoof.

"You'll see, this is gonna be the start of something awesome! Doughnut Steel and Heart Harp, superheroes extrodinare!"

Bon-Bon rolled her eyes. "I suppose that sounds catchier than public service agent."

Lyra patted her shoulder. "I'm glad you agree."

Both ponies stared at the ruined road for a few moments.

"Wanna go get some ice cream?" Lyra offered. Bon-Bon sighed, but she was smiling slightly.

"Sure, why not."




Fluttershy was helping to organize an animal road repair team when Discord popped into existence beside her.

"Fluttershy, there you are! I went to your house for tea time, but you weren't there." Discord pouted. "I thought you'd forgotten about me."

"I'm sorry, Discord, but tea time will have to wait." Fluttershy gently explained, shaking her head. "If you don't want to have to wait, maybe you shouldn't destroy so many things next time you prank the town with that fake evil pony of yours."

Discord looked confused. "Fake evil pony? Prank? What are you going on about?" His eyes narrowed. "Somepony's playing pranks and didn't invite me?"

Fluttershy paused. "Wait. That cheesy evil pony... Wasn't you?"

Discord shook his head. "I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about, so no, it wasn't."

Fluttershy stared at the ruined road for a moment. "Oh dear." She said quietly.
Pics
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#1 · 1
· · >>shinygiratinaz
I'm surprised to see that someone came up with the story for this art. And I'm even more surprised to see that the story was a good one too.

A nice comedy with funny interactions between one of our favorite couple best friends. Their personnality remind me a lot of what you could find in the webcomic Silly Lyra.

The ending is a bit jarring though, mainly because Fluttershy and Discord pop up in the story for apparently no reason than giving an ending to the story. Also, careful with the code.
#2 · 1
· · >>shinygiratinaz
The banter between the two and the development towards the super hero name was well done. I also liked that you used Donut Steel... although I had the artwork almost right next to it, it was a fun surprise to unperceptive old me.

As far as criticism goes, I want to agree with Fenton on the ending: Introducing both Fluttershy and Discord to the story just to highlight that Discord was not the cheesy and incompetent super villain felt unnecessary.

Another thing I'd watch out for if I were you besides the code (you can check how your entries appear on the site once you have submitted them, so there's really littel excuse), is the use of adverbs. You are using them far too frequently, especially during dialogue attributions. So much so that at one time I thought you were not only making fun of the Shadow Ashes batwing alicorn OC, but also of the quality of writing that usually plagues stories revolving around such OC's on a meta level, but the rest of the writing is far too good for that hypothesis to hold up, so I don't think it was intentional.

If I were to name one thing to improve the quality of your prose, it'd be cutting the number of adverbs down to 1/4, or even 1/5. As little as you can manage. It's really dragging your writing down IMO.
#3 · 3
· · >>shinygiratinaz
All right kids, I guess my reviews are back by Posh-pular demand!

---------

Genre: Slice of Crack

Thoughts: How could I not start with this one, given its title? There are a lot of near misses with greatness in this one. Now I know that's kind of awful to say, but Author, please take this as encouragement that this should polish up nicely. The dings should largely buff out.

IMO the biggest strength of the piece is its portrayal and balance of LyraBon's cozy best-friendship with the stone cold brutal buttkicking that Bon Bon can dish out. I mean she's grabbing support beams and knocking the living crap out of that alicorn, and then they turn around and get ice cream, and both things feel 100% authentic and emotionally resonant. I don't know how you do that, but I want some, please. The feel and imagery of the OTT alicorn attack bits are also good.

So yeah, the less good stuff is formatting, and some general... call it sub-optimization of the prose. I'm being squirrelly there, but the gist is that I feel like a lot of sentences could be tightened up. Probably the biggest issue is that ending, though; it's trying for a joke that doesn't quite land, and that's a bummer of a note to end on.

Overall though, this is entertaining and I think it will do well.

Tier: Almost There
#4 · 1
· · >>CoffeeMinion >>shinygiratinaz
[b]Nice job with the del[i]berate fuck ups. That [ /i]s, if they were intentional... [ /b]

The comedy at some places were more a of a miss than a hit. That mostly being where the duo would quip sarcastic lines back and forth between another. Some jokes not made to last long would go on for a little bit longer than what I would welcome them for, like the whole sidekick biz. Though, I'm not saying that a joke that stays is always bad. Other jokes like the ace-detective secret job thing moved smoothly through the fic. The difference between the two for me is how the sidekick stuff is them just dreaming and discussing of what could be, while the secret job bit would be of them actually acting out as if they were just that. The sheer insanity of the entire fic and the short length of it, however, helped pull through those somewhat unfunny moments. The puns also never get old by how dumb they are.

But hey, everyone has their own sense of humor.
#5 · 3
· · >>shinygiratinaz
Err
I have nothing to say but that will make for a fifth message and all the people will be so jealous. :P
#6 · 1
· · >>Posh
>>Kritten
You know what, I honestly thought the first missed tag was part of the joke, and I laughed. It was only when it became so recurring that I realized it had to be a situation where the story got submitted without the Author checking back to make sure it rendered as intended.
#7 · 2
· · >>shinygiratinaz
>>CoffeeMinion This was the conclusion I came to as well. Something about the bold tags being inside the italics tags. I don't get it. Computers, man, they frighten and confuse and infuriate me.

I dunno; it's a crackfic. It's one of the better crackfics I've read this round, but it's still not something I think I can effectively critique. At least, there's nothing I can bring to the table that hasn't already been bringed... brought...

...what's Discord doing in the story...?
#8 · 1
· · >>shinygiratinaz
I was fairly amused. I didn't see the actual character coming, so win for you there. It was amusing, it was silly and it was exactly what the picture called for. However, I felt somewhat cheated for not getting an in-depth description of their costumes. That's par for the course for this kind of thing! Come on!

Entertaining and cracked.

The ending though? Too out of left field. Fluttershy didn't appear once. I don't mind there being a Discord scene, but there needs to be a bit more to make that work. Like him going back to his house and calling up the villain to yell at him or something.
#9 · 2
· · >>shinygiratinaz
There's not a medal for "most unexpected sentence ever read," but if there was I'd give it to you this round.
Bon-Bon slapped DarkStorm across the face with Lyra's entire body.

Just, what the hell. I actually lol'd. Flutters was a bit of a surprise, but she didn't kill the overall mood too much.
#10 · 1
· · >>shinygiratinaz
[b]Bold italics![/b]

If the above works, then the formatting issues were probably deliberate. If it fails, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the author was using Scrivener (possibly for the first time?) on a PC, and using the broken BBCode export function. (I've several times complained on their forums about it. It puts the tags out of order -- i b /i /b rather than i b /b /i -- and that lack of nesting breaks some BBCode parsers, apparently including the Writeoff site's.)

Otherwise, little to add to above commenters; I appreciated the humor here on the whole. More of the individual jokes landed than missed for me, and some of them (Bon Bon's use of Lyra, the first screaming portal) were great. Structurally, it felt a little meandery even though there was strong plot progression; "Bon Bon accepts her powers" isn't a great ultimate punchline, nor does it serve as a satisfying anticlimax, so it just sort of trails off. And then the last scene has no joke because there's nothing to suggest anywhere else in the story that this was Discord's fault, so there's nothing to subvert with that.

... I just realized, perhaps part of the reason it feels incomplete is that I was expecting the Rule of Three to get invoked. There are two encounters with DarkStorm, which are basically identical. That really, really wants to set up a third encounter which either resolves or subverts what you're setting up. A third DarkStorm scene could also let you properly end Bon Bon's narrative arc one way or another.

Tier: Flawed but Fun
#11 · 3
·
>>Fenton
>>wYvern
>>CoffeeMinion
>>Kritten
>>Monokeras
>>Posh
>>Novel_Idea
>>Rao
>>horizon

So I was the author to this... Thing. To get the elephant in the room out of the way, no the fuck-ups were not deliberate, unfortunately. I have not really used multiple text commands at once before, and wasn't aware that the order had to be specific or else it would break. On top of that, I'm going to get a stupid question out of the way and ask how you can view your story as another person would see it before submitting. I didn't know that was a thing you could do. :facehoof:

The next big problem with this is the "epilogue," which I just completely deleted in the currently ongoing rewrite. The first one and a half thousand words of this story were written about eight hours before the cutoff at 8pm while I was on a plane, after I had spent the rest of the writing time really trying to write a serious idea and utterly failing. At about 3am I saw horizon's post about submitting anyways, and it inspired me to finish the last bit of what I could and get it out there anyways. For some reason, my brain linked nonsense in Ponyville to Discord and thought "oh I should explain that." Unfortunately it was 3am and I was not fully awake enough to not be stupid, so I wrote it in. I wasn't able to finish the idea and that hurts this story a lot, but I'll go into that a little later.

Lastly, my complete overuse of adverbs. Is it sad that I trimmed them down a lot while editing and still left enough to be a problem? In my speech I have the same problem of inserting adverbs or qualifiers where they are not quite needed. I developed that habit originally as a way to soften my speech and make declarative statements less confrontational. Over time, it's seeped into me just adding -ly words willy-nilly to my speech and writing. I'm working on fixing that, and I think next time I write I'll do so without any such adverbs at all. When I edit it, if it feels like an adverb is actually needed, I can add it there. Hopefully that'll help me fix this.

I think I am going to continue writing this story to the original ending I had thought of. This story started off with enough planned plot points that I probably would've hit 5~6k words with it. Due to the fact that I got this idea so late, I wasn't able to write everything I wanted to. horizon got it right, I had planned for there to be three confrontations and for the second one to have gone very differently. The second confrontation was supposed to introduce the idea that DarkStorm was not actually a creature of Nightmare, but of another force called Nonsense. The third scene would have been Bon-Bon, uh, I mean Doughnut Steel and Heart Harp, venturing into the heart of Nonsense and putting a stop to it once and for all. Now that I have the time, I'm going to finish it like I meant to in the beginning.

Thank you to everybody who pointed out things to fix, or who said what they liked. While it was flawed pretty badly, I'm glad this story could provide some fun! I'll try to get Doughnut Steel up on fimfic as soon as I stop re-writing and nitpicking it. So in about three years.