Diamond Run Forever
#1 of Ponyfinder
Ugh, I know, fanfic... but it is in a good friend's world. This is a little something I wrote while chatting with David Silver the other day and we were laughing about a character we had made for his Ponyfinder world ( http://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/5559/Silver... )
The stallion stands alone, almost. The ball sits before him, nearly forty feet from his target. The brave unicorn, his horn unlit with any magic by the rules of the game, awaits his kick.
Breaking into a run, he feints left, then right, then charges the ball and at the last second pivots his body, the sun glinting off his blue-tinted, crystalline hide.
Hooves flashing out, he extends one rear leg slightly more, putting spin on the ball as it curves toward the goal.
Eyes closed, Diamond Run doesn't need to look to know he scored the goal, the home-crowd's voices, their hooves, tell him.
"You did it!" One of his team mates yells, running up and thumping his chest against Diamond's shoulder. Others charge him too, their spirits raised by the big, athletic stallion's successful penalty.
His eyes open, the deep blue shine of them flashing as the light refracts through his body, leaving the grass around him rippling with light, "damn straight, and now we only have one more goal before we win!" His voice is strong, he sees the heads of his team lift a little higher.
The memory is one of his favourite, the older stallion smiles as he looks up, away from the fire in the inn. It was harder to keep away from the warmth, his shoulder got an ache in it every winter now, since the day he had wrenched it.
"Another?" A perky barmaid, used to his ways, asks if he wants a refill of the glass beside him. It was a big glass and it frequently started getting less and less alcoholic as the night wore on. Sneaky wench.
"Nah," he slurs a little. Had he really drunk that much? "But'a bottle ta go be good eh?"
Lifting his body up, his proud pale-blue form hidden now under old clothes. His mind may torment him with better days but he prefers it if ponies who might recognise him don't.
The young mare trots back, her horn aglow as she offers him only a half bottle, "Here you are, Mr Run." she tells him, giving a little bow to the not-so-old male.
It was embarrassing, being treated as an old grey-mane, but it meant ponies left him alone more.
Tucking the bottle into a pouch on his clothing, he almost stumbles to the door, his old injury playing up, making every step he takes an agony that almost washes away the slight high the strong drink had given him.
Putting one hoof in front of another, he is thankful at least that it isn't raining. It always hurt more when the rain sent extra cold into his limb.
He stumbles and very near trips, mouth opening to curse the world before he spots it. A ball. A hoof-ball.
"Hey mister, little help?" A young pony calls, a pegasai stallion, his wings tucked down tight as he was clearly 'following the rules' and not using any means but his hooves to play.
It had been a while since he had taken his last sip, the cool walk home having burnt a lot of the fiery liquid from his thoughts and, for a moment, an old spirit lights up the depressed old pony's thoughts, "Kid, you wanna see something?"
Blinking, the pegasus gives a nod.
It is a short tap with his good fore-hoof, then another from his bad one. The pain didn't flare as much as usual and so he kept the pattern going, finally planting first one fore-leg in, then the other as he pivots and slams the ball with back hooves, delivering it not just at the old goals, but the ball plows into the net.
"Wow... hey, are you okay?" He hears the kid asking as the world is suddenly full of sharp pain, his shoulder lit up with a perfect mirror of the original wound. He blacks out, the white-hot agony overwhelming his senses. Which is why it was such a shock when, waking, the shoulder barely hurts at all.
A smiling mare, her wings tucked to her sides, leans over him, pressing a wash-cloth to side, the fabric oddly warm as it eases that last ache down to something quite tolerable. "It's an old wound, some expensive magic could maybe fix it," a voice not belonging to the mare says, "but he should be fine as long as he doesn't do too much with it."
Her smiling face fades for a moment and Diamond can hear the clink of coins changing hooves.
The door opens and closes, a brief gust of cool air that the warm compress on his shoulder thankfully negates.
"Now, just who is this 'amazing pony' my son and his friends bring home?" Her voice is warm, certainly conveying none of the ridicule some have shown to him for his injury.
"D-" he begins to tell her, but something tickles in the back of his head, a memory. Does he know her?
"He is Diamond Run!" A young voice in the room exclaims, the same one that asked him for his ball back.
The mare's shock is evident on her face, but it settles into a more warm grin, "Well, Mr Run, the good doctor tells me you are going to need to take things easy for a while. That you really shouldn't be playing hoof-ball with young stallions in back alleys and that you certainly shouldn't be drinking so much." her grin turns to a frown at the last and for the first time since his alcoholism started, Diamond feels shame.
"You should have seen him mum! He kicks a ball faster than the Lightning Rail!" The enthusiastic voice brings her smile back, "I have never seen anyone who can kick that fast! And spin... you sh-"
The boy goes on for quite a while while the mare changes the cloth for another one soaked in hot water from the stove. Neither talk and, with the sort of relaxation only obtained by a warm home and someone caring for you, Diamond falls asleep. Despite the mare letting her son go on and on about amazing kicks.
Waking the next morning, unsure of both his location and his state of being, Diamond can't help but remember her face, her eyes. Why couldn't he remember where he knew the mare from? A practised turn of his neck has him reaching for the pouch where his bottle should be, finding it empty.
He needed a drink, his shoulder would start to hurt soon if he didn't...
Working slowly, turning in the bed to get his legs under him, Diamond looks around the little house for the first time. The distraction of the neat little home leaves him forgetting about his shoulder, at least until he takes his first step.
Dull pain, pain that he knows will be with him all the day, spreads through his side and he finds himself reaching to the side again, still finding that pouch empty.
A sound outside catches his attention though, the young pegasai yelling with other ponies, the sound of a ball being kicked.
The memories, the good ones, flow out and distract him from his situation in much the same way as the alcohol does and he makes his way to the door, opening it without a thought and walking outside.
A blotch of mud adorns the flanks of half the ponies, the foals from what seems like half the town kicking a ball around, their game every bit as serious and real to them as any of Diamond's were.
Watching, the son of the mare that cared for him is passed the ball and, astonishingly, dribbles the ball a few times before attempting a perfect copy of Diamond's signature 'power buck express'.
The only problem is, unlike Diamond, who spent years perfecting that amazing move, the young boy, quite by accident, loses his balance and ends up kicking out at the wrong time.
The other foals give a few laughs, but in a good-natured way. "Hey, I know I can do it right, just need to kick harder!" The comment from the pegasai is clearly heard and, despite himself, Diamond is walking out into the muddy field.
"You got it wrong, you don't need to kick harder, you already have that worked out." Diamond says, approaching.
One of the other foals, a unicorn with no mud on his flank, asks, "Hey, it's the old wine-o from me ma's bar!"
It all rushes back, Diamond's shoulder starts to ache again and he only barely stops himself from reaching for the missing bottle. But rather than be laughed off the field he finds himself a group of muddy-sided defenders.
"He is Diamond Run! The best striker in... ever!" One of the other foals exclaims, clearly the one who had recognised him while they were helping him home the previous night.
"Yeah, and he showed me how to do this!" His staunch little crew of supporters go on to explain what they had seen, a god of a stallion, lighting crackling around him as he drove the ball not only through the net but through three buildings too. Or so it would seem.
"Well, I can't quite get three, maybe two." Diamond adds a little modesty, "But I can show you how to do that kick."
The offer, aimed right back at the unicorn in particular, disarms his next barbed reply and gets a nod from him, "Show us."
His shoulder ached again, the hot towel taking most of the pain from it. He had done a little too much today. But the foals were getting better.
"They tell me you have organised an actual game for them this week." The mare's words are soft, more a question and an invitation to chat than anything.
"Feather Streak's idea. Your boy really has a thing for the game." His relaxation at her close company was more and more surprising by the day. He hadn't asked her for it, nor had she asked him. It just felt nice.
She turns the compress over. "He gets it from his father, so I hear."
Shock hits him. This was the first Radiant Wing had mentioned the foal's absent father. He wanted to ask, wanted to find out who it was so he could... What? What would he do to Feather's father?
"You really don't remember, do you?" Her voice is soft, certainly carrying no remorse or regrets about having her son. "He was amazing. I managed to find him after the game and-"
He cuts in without thinking, "Behind the stand..."
Her smile widens, "Finally remembered me huh? Well enough. I won't say it wasn't a surprise, from just one time. But it was a wonderful surprise that I would never undo."
His world was shaken, it skewed, it felt like everything that he was suddenly washed away. But there was more warmth against him now, anchoring his life, pulling it away from an abyss he didn't even know was his destination.