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(I’m giving myself a challenge, to come up with a @Street-Steed fic based whatever song comes up first on my playlist. This week: Rock Lobster, by the B-52s!)
a Street-Steeds fic
by BrowncoatWhit
STREET RACING VALUE = +5 attribute points = Skunky
a Street-Steeds fic
by BrowncoatWhit
STREET RACING VALUE = +5 attribute points = Skunky
- Whit: Joanie Roanhorse & Skunky (1,300+ word count; +5 attribute points & +3 kaaring)
- Whit: Ty Hunt & Pan: (1,300+ word count; +5 attribute points & +3 kaaring )
Joanie trilled a braveheart cry as Skunky swept across the finish line, a full head-and-shoulders in front of her racing partner Ty Hunt and his tovero stallion Pan. The 14K Triad-hosted run had been through the midnight streets of downtown Athens, Georgia. It had been a fast-paced and hard-fought race, and both mare and rider were breathing hard and adrenaline-fueled. She drew Skunky to a blowing stop, and turned in the saddle to trade high-fives with Ty as Pan came plunging to a halt alongside.
Athens was a college town, home to the University of Georgia, and it was somewhere in that hour between Friday night and Saturday morning. While the 14K Triad’s race organizers were notorious for their fast and efficient race insertions and extractions, sharp-eyed college kids recognized the finish line from You-Tube vids, and as a result, noisy crowds had spilled out of drinking establishments on either side of the street to cheer for the racers as they crossed the line. Beer glasses were raised in honor and some frat girl was waving a set of poms-poms.
“Next time,” Ty growled, as other racers came thundering across the finish line behind them. Pan was blowing hard from the run and sneezing with excitement. “We’ll get you next time.”
“Yeah, good luck with that,” Joanie laughed, slapping Skunky’s black-streaked white neck, as the crowd surged up dangerously close and pom-poms were shaken virtually under Skunky’s nose. The black and white chimera mare pinned her ears and snapped, but Joanie checked any further aggressive moves from the mare. Rowdy, screaming and half-drunk college kids hoisting glasses and waving rustling cheerleader gear might spook other horses, but Joanie had no worries with Skunky. The black-and-white chimera mare had a day job as one of Joanie’s urban courier remounts, and after years of exposure to every crazy thing that banged, clanged, wiggled, flashed, rustled, whistled, flapped, roared, twisted, boomed, jostled, squeeed or crashed around down on the docks, Joanie was confident that there was nothing on God’s green earth which could rattle her bombproof mount. Skunky never spooked at things -- she just tried to kill them. Knowing that, Joanie reined the chimera mare back from the crowd, leaving Ty’s Pan to eagerly soak up the attention from squealing co-eds who wanted to pet the pretty pretty horsies..
Then the doors to 40 Watts Club on the corner opened up, and a flood of fresh celebrants came streaming out.
Joanie had been walking Skunky toward the mounted Race Master, eager to claim their first-place trophy. But Skunky’s forward movement stopped like they’d hit a brick wall. The mare gasped, planted her forelegs like she was wearing cement boots and threw her head so high that for a moment, she and Joanie were virtually eyeball-to-eyeball.
“What the frak?” Joanie cried, while Skunky threw off those cement booties and, still locked in place, began to perform the Riverdance. “Hey!” The drunken crowd roared in approval at her performance, but other riders, recognizing an equine melt-down when they saw one, cleared their own horses out of the immediate area. “Whoa!”
Skunky was too busy losing her mind to listen to her rider. She began punctuating her self-imposed piaffe with a few half-rears, head tucked against the center of her chest and her neck arched like a bow. It was in that moment, before all hell truly broke loose, that Joanie caught a glimpse of what apparently had set the chimera mare off.
It was the wigs. A pair of beehive hairdos, to be exact. They were being worn by a pair of celebrants who were doing a butt-bumping synchronized twist. The taller of the pair was worn by a man. It was a searing synthetic number, piled what might have been three feet high and made of industrial-warning neon orange nylon, with matching pigtails tied off in polka-dotted bows. His dance partner was wearing the second beehive hairdo, a cotton-candy pink number that might have only been half the towering height of the first wig, but what it lacked in altitude it made up for in bling. It was studded with plastic butterflies with motion-activated fluttering Monarch wings, while a rainbow-colored bird’s nest crowned the top of the wig. Two blue robin eggs were glued in place within that nest, and a third egg was producing a hatchling, splitting in two so that a blue-haired mini-troll doll emerged then descended again in an endless, battery-powered loop. Joanie had the impression that both of wig-wearers had equally funky costumes on of matching towels and noseguards -- but she never got a clear enough look to register any further details. One of the beehivers let loose with a piercing narwhal scream, and beneath her, Skunky totally lost it. The mare threw her head again and went ballistic in panic.
The mare began to spin in an ever-diminishing tight circle as her rider struggled to bring her under control. When Skunky hit the virtual center, she imploded. The chimera mare went straight up like a surface-to-air missile under saddle. She breached the upper layers of atmosphere and came down again like a jack-hammer. Joanie went from struggling to get her mare under control to pulling leather on the hurricane deck, clutching the horn of her saddle for dear life. Skunky sun-fished. She sky-hopped. She blew explosive rollers as she swapped ends. Joanie knew she was floating in the saddle and she would have taken an assisted dismount gladly if not for the thought that a Skunky unleashed would likely go on the offensive as soon as her brain cells reconnected, which meant a Skunky vaulting head-first into the crowd and stomping the twist-dancing wig-wearers into paste against the concrete. So Joanie hung on and prayed not to fall into the well as beneath her Skunky went back into another F4 or F5-violent spin, bucking and twisting and kicking as she rotated.
Then as abruptly as it had started, the whirlwind stopped. Skunky hit the ground with all four hooves back into their concrete booties. She stood there, legs straddled and head low, breathing hard. Joanie blinked in shock, then experimentally drew breath of her own to prove her lungs had relocated back where they belonged within her diaphragm. She looked past the horizon of Skunky’s locked ears in the direction the mare was staring. Still astride his buckskin tovero Pan, Ty Hunt had taken up a position between the beehivers and the finish line, effectively blocking them from view and using his stallion’s solid frame as a protective barrier for the crowd. Pan was staring at his stablemate, ears flat in dismay and looking as aghast as it was possible for a horse to look. Slowly reclaiming her scattershot wits, Skunky squealed and threw her head again as a spear of nylon orange fake hair periscoped into sight for a moment. Ty swung his off-hand, swiping the wig off its wearer’s head, and Skunky gave a great, shuddering sigh of relief as the danger disappeared from view once more.
“What the hell?” Ty demanded of Joanie, while Pan blew a whickering question of his own for Skunky.
“Hoka hey,” Joanie managed to croak out, finding her throat gone dry as dust. “The beehive hairdos,” she managed to cough out. “Skunky doesn’t approve.”
“I’d say,” Ty agreed dryly. He turned in the saddle and said something to the dancers Pan was practically standing on, and whatever he said, his playing fashion police did the trick. The beehives and their handlers vanished into the drunken crowd, and Skunky’s brain began its long, slow trickle back into the mare’s brainpan. She snorted and ducked her head to scratch her nose against her knee, trying to pretend she had never lost her cool in front of the other horses in the first place.
“That was some fancy riding to stick that out,” muttered the Race Master to Joanie as he cautiously rode his great huge horse up to Skunky’s side. “Your mare might have a new career calling if she ever goes roughstock rodeo.”
Joanie slapped her mare’s sweaty neck and managed a weak smile for the race official. “You know my Skunky. Always a top money horse, ain’t she?”
Athens was a college town, home to the University of Georgia, and it was somewhere in that hour between Friday night and Saturday morning. While the 14K Triad’s race organizers were notorious for their fast and efficient race insertions and extractions, sharp-eyed college kids recognized the finish line from You-Tube vids, and as a result, noisy crowds had spilled out of drinking establishments on either side of the street to cheer for the racers as they crossed the line. Beer glasses were raised in honor and some frat girl was waving a set of poms-poms.
“Next time,” Ty growled, as other racers came thundering across the finish line behind them. Pan was blowing hard from the run and sneezing with excitement. “We’ll get you next time.”
“Yeah, good luck with that,” Joanie laughed, slapping Skunky’s black-streaked white neck, as the crowd surged up dangerously close and pom-poms were shaken virtually under Skunky’s nose. The black and white chimera mare pinned her ears and snapped, but Joanie checked any further aggressive moves from the mare. Rowdy, screaming and half-drunk college kids hoisting glasses and waving rustling cheerleader gear might spook other horses, but Joanie had no worries with Skunky. The black-and-white chimera mare had a day job as one of Joanie’s urban courier remounts, and after years of exposure to every crazy thing that banged, clanged, wiggled, flashed, rustled, whistled, flapped, roared, twisted, boomed, jostled, squeeed or crashed around down on the docks, Joanie was confident that there was nothing on God’s green earth which could rattle her bombproof mount. Skunky never spooked at things -- she just tried to kill them. Knowing that, Joanie reined the chimera mare back from the crowd, leaving Ty’s Pan to eagerly soak up the attention from squealing co-eds who wanted to pet the pretty pretty horsies..
Then the doors to 40 Watts Club on the corner opened up, and a flood of fresh celebrants came streaming out.
Joanie had been walking Skunky toward the mounted Race Master, eager to claim their first-place trophy. But Skunky’s forward movement stopped like they’d hit a brick wall. The mare gasped, planted her forelegs like she was wearing cement boots and threw her head so high that for a moment, she and Joanie were virtually eyeball-to-eyeball.
“What the frak?” Joanie cried, while Skunky threw off those cement booties and, still locked in place, began to perform the Riverdance. “Hey!” The drunken crowd roared in approval at her performance, but other riders, recognizing an equine melt-down when they saw one, cleared their own horses out of the immediate area. “Whoa!”
Skunky was too busy losing her mind to listen to her rider. She began punctuating her self-imposed piaffe with a few half-rears, head tucked against the center of her chest and her neck arched like a bow. It was in that moment, before all hell truly broke loose, that Joanie caught a glimpse of what apparently had set the chimera mare off.
It was the wigs. A pair of beehive hairdos, to be exact. They were being worn by a pair of celebrants who were doing a butt-bumping synchronized twist. The taller of the pair was worn by a man. It was a searing synthetic number, piled what might have been three feet high and made of industrial-warning neon orange nylon, with matching pigtails tied off in polka-dotted bows. His dance partner was wearing the second beehive hairdo, a cotton-candy pink number that might have only been half the towering height of the first wig, but what it lacked in altitude it made up for in bling. It was studded with plastic butterflies with motion-activated fluttering Monarch wings, while a rainbow-colored bird’s nest crowned the top of the wig. Two blue robin eggs were glued in place within that nest, and a third egg was producing a hatchling, splitting in two so that a blue-haired mini-troll doll emerged then descended again in an endless, battery-powered loop. Joanie had the impression that both of wig-wearers had equally funky costumes on of matching towels and noseguards -- but she never got a clear enough look to register any further details. One of the beehivers let loose with a piercing narwhal scream, and beneath her, Skunky totally lost it. The mare threw her head again and went ballistic in panic.
The mare began to spin in an ever-diminishing tight circle as her rider struggled to bring her under control. When Skunky hit the virtual center, she imploded. The chimera mare went straight up like a surface-to-air missile under saddle. She breached the upper layers of atmosphere and came down again like a jack-hammer. Joanie went from struggling to get her mare under control to pulling leather on the hurricane deck, clutching the horn of her saddle for dear life. Skunky sun-fished. She sky-hopped. She blew explosive rollers as she swapped ends. Joanie knew she was floating in the saddle and she would have taken an assisted dismount gladly if not for the thought that a Skunky unleashed would likely go on the offensive as soon as her brain cells reconnected, which meant a Skunky vaulting head-first into the crowd and stomping the twist-dancing wig-wearers into paste against the concrete. So Joanie hung on and prayed not to fall into the well as beneath her Skunky went back into another F4 or F5-violent spin, bucking and twisting and kicking as she rotated.
Then as abruptly as it had started, the whirlwind stopped. Skunky hit the ground with all four hooves back into their concrete booties. She stood there, legs straddled and head low, breathing hard. Joanie blinked in shock, then experimentally drew breath of her own to prove her lungs had relocated back where they belonged within her diaphragm. She looked past the horizon of Skunky’s locked ears in the direction the mare was staring. Still astride his buckskin tovero Pan, Ty Hunt had taken up a position between the beehivers and the finish line, effectively blocking them from view and using his stallion’s solid frame as a protective barrier for the crowd. Pan was staring at his stablemate, ears flat in dismay and looking as aghast as it was possible for a horse to look. Slowly reclaiming her scattershot wits, Skunky squealed and threw her head again as a spear of nylon orange fake hair periscoped into sight for a moment. Ty swung his off-hand, swiping the wig off its wearer’s head, and Skunky gave a great, shuddering sigh of relief as the danger disappeared from view once more.
“What the hell?” Ty demanded of Joanie, while Pan blew a whickering question of his own for Skunky.
“Hoka hey,” Joanie managed to croak out, finding her throat gone dry as dust. “The beehive hairdos,” she managed to cough out. “Skunky doesn’t approve.”
“I’d say,” Ty agreed dryly. He turned in the saddle and said something to the dancers Pan was practically standing on, and whatever he said, his playing fashion police did the trick. The beehives and their handlers vanished into the drunken crowd, and Skunky’s brain began its long, slow trickle back into the mare’s brainpan. She snorted and ducked her head to scratch her nose against her knee, trying to pretend she had never lost her cool in front of the other horses in the first place.
“That was some fancy riding to stick that out,” muttered the Race Master to Joanie as he cautiously rode his great huge horse up to Skunky’s side. “Your mare might have a new career calling if she ever goes roughstock rodeo.”
Joanie slapped her mare’s sweaty neck and managed a weak smile for the race official. “You know my Skunky. Always a top money horse, ain’t she?”
© 2017 - 2024 BrowncoatWhit
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Skunky & Pan were entered into the Weekly Writer's Challenge class of this RNG show: Remuda Livery RNG Invitational: Week 363 Results
Pan took 1st Place!
Skunky took 2nd Place!
