FALLEN

Scattered clouds glowed red as the sun peeked over the distant mountains. A helmetless Tidbit tossed another log onto the glowing embers as the first of the mares started to stir. Misty yawned and wobbled to her hooves, then stretched her back. The popping of her spine filled the still morning air.

“Only the dead should make those sorts of sounds” Tidbit remarked dryly.

“Until I have coffee, I am the dead” snarked the bleary eyed unicorn, “And since I have not had any coffee since I first left my stable... just call me the undead”.

There was a loud snore from the changeling as she rolled over on her back, her legs flailing slightly in her dreams and distracting Misty and Tidbit from their current conversation.

“Let them sleep, You worked your friend hard, teaching her how to use the rifle, I am surprised the amount of times you had her unloading and reloading it, she’s not trying to do it in her sleep” Tidbit smiled.

“Too cheerful, no coffee… still undead”, Misty groused groggily

Tidbit grunted as he poked at the fire. Sparks flew into the air and drifted in the breeze before disappearing. “Being undead has its benefits, but I do miss the taste of a good cup of coffee,” Tidbit admitted, “not to mention dreaming, eating a fresh daisy sandwich, drinking a frosty apple cider, and…” he stopped speaking with a sigh.

Misty trotted closer to the fire and looked up at the grin faced ghoul. “I’ve never even seen a daisy sandwich or ever drank a cider”, she pondered, “Our school said they were popular before the war.” She looked back at him with suspicion all over her face. “How old are you?”
Tidbit sighed and turned his gaze to the sunrise. “I remember when Luna returned from her thousand-year exile, I remember before the war started. I remember my wife and my son and daughter.” His dead eye gaze returned to the blue unicorn. “I remember the day Equestria burned.”

Without thinking about it, Misty levitated a food bar out of her pack, unwrapped it and started eating, not even noticing its lack of taste as she waited for Tidbit to continue. Tidbit’s eyes focused on the flames that were eating their way through the wood in the small campfire.

“So what happened,” Misty asked, “I mean I know that the zebras are our enemies, that they are cruel and evil, and that they attacked our cities with balefire bombs, but what happened to you?”

“Were our enemies,” Tidbit corrected, “but now the greatest enemy here is each other, as you may have noticed”. The ghoul poked at the fire with his armored hoof again, “I don’t know if any zebras survived the war, but in the end they won. Equestria is dead”. His eyes turned back to Misty as she swallowed the last of her breakfast bar. “I should have died that day. I guess I did, but, I should have stayed dead. I lived outside of Salt Lick City. We always thought that it would be safe. No real industry, no real military value, just a city of hard working folks. It was a long way from the front lines. So other than our young stallions being drafted, and our industry helping in the war effort, our lives were pretty much the same as they always were.” The mummified pony eyes seemed to focus away again. “My wife and children were visiting her parents in the city and I stayed home working. It was a beautiful day. We had no warning. Three balefire bombs hit the city. I saw the flashes of light and the mushroom clouds bloom before I was hit by the shock waves. I was outside the main blast area, so the intense heat didn’t get me. But the magic did. I woke up dead.” Tidbit snorted “I used to think that was a joke ‘wake up dead’ but I never thought that it would be something so literal.”

Misty could see old pain in the dead eyes of the ghoul. “Your wife? Your foals?”

“I made my way into what remained of Salt Lick, the outer suburbs were badly damaged but not destroyed. But there were so many ghouls. None of the ones I saw were rational, just mindless violent things. I saw a family of survivors emerge from a damaged building, I guess they had hidden in the basement. The ghouls just leapt upon them and tore them apart.” Tidbit grimaced at the memory. “But I had to get into the city center. That’s where my wife’s parents had an apartment. But when I got there, there was nothing, the entire center of the city was gone. All that was left was a crater. I had nothing I could bury, nothing I could say goodbye to. It was like they had never existed.” Tidbit sighed “I left there, and never returned. I became a scavenger. I watched the skies turn grey as the clouds covered everything, and saw ponies go from harmony into warring tribes and gangs.”

Misty sniffed as a tear ran down her cheek. “I’m so sorry”

Tidbit looked at her. “Don’t be”.

There was a muttering snort as a grey fluffy ball of hate started to wake up. She moved slowly and blinked in the morning sunlight. Leathery wings fluttered by her side as she stretched her muscles before her fanged maw opened in a vast yawn. Emjay looked around before noticing the sleeping Hero near her. She poked the changeling with her hoof who gave out a loud snore, rolled over onto her belly and continued her sleep. Seemingly without noticing the now silent and curiously watching unicorn and earth pony ghoul, she laid her head down on the changelings back, closed her eyes and returned to sleep.

“I did not expect that,” Tidbit remarked dryly.

Misty sniffed and rubbed her snout off on her hoof, “I’ll get them up.”

The soft breeze fluttered the ripped canvas dangling from the shattered remains of a tent pole. Torn saddle bags had their contents spilled onto the dusty ground around the cold remains of a small campfire. Scattered in the carnage were the bodies of three ponies. Tattered and stained cloth and leather did little to cover the fatal wounds. Large scraping tracks in the dust were the only sign of what had visited so much violence. The camp had been pitched up alongside a cracked and potholed paved road that stretched both ways into the distance. Heat haze shimmered off the shattered tarmac as a group of figures appeared over a low hill. The lead figure was a stallion that seemed to be clad in damaged power armor, followed by a camouflage patterned shirt wearing blue unicorn mare, and a tan shirt wearing black changeling. Flapping above them a grey bat pony with claw blades on one fore hoof and retractable blade on the other. All of them sported bulging saddle packs.

“So I said to her, That’s not a diamond dog, that’s my mother,” Misty chortled.

Tidbit turned to the unicorn, his visible eyebrow raised. Hero chirped in her own confusion, and the batpony ignored her completely.
“I guess you had to be there,” Misty muttered to herself.

“Looks like there is an abandoned campsite ahead. We can take a rest there.” Tidbit’s voice came through the vocalizer speakers of his helmet.

Hero stopped her walking and started looking around, her ears twitching. Sitting down she started to rub at her ears with her hooves. “Buzzing buzzing, “ she muttered

Misty noticed her friend was no longer beside her. She looked back to where Hero was sitting and fidgeting. “Are you coming?”
“We hear buzzing,” Hero replied, “Buzzing buzzing buzzing”

The unicorn trotted back to the changeling “I can’t hear anything,” she told her friend, “Come on.” She gently buttered Hero back to her hooves and directed her to where Tidbit and Emjay were waiting. Hero limped along on three legs, her right fore-hoof rubbing at her ear as the small group continued to the abandoned encampment down the road.

“Something’s wrong,” Tidbit said suddenly as they drew closer, “I’ll have a look around, sometimes raiders will hit a small camp, then rig it with booby traps”, Tidbit told the group. Turning his back on them, he trotted over to the edge of the camp. Emjay’s leathery wings flapped as she followed. Blades on wings and hooves flashed in the sunlight as she circled around the camp looking down at the destruction. Tidbit looked over one of the bodies, his steel covered hoof moving the corpse’s limb as he tried to work out what had slaughtered it. Deep gashes in its throat and barrel, and spilled intestines showed that whomever this was, they did not die quickly. Dried blood darkened the already red earth and showed how the pony had tried to crawl away from its attacker.

Emjay landed next to a second corpse. She looked into the face of the dead pony she saw it frozen in a rictus of fear and agony, something that she had seen many times before, and had been the cause of for the amusement of others. She also saw something that she had only seen once in the dead. The flesh of the face and neck was withered and dry as if its very soul had been ripped from its body. The batpony was instantly reminded of the face of the Ranger that she had watched Hero drain. She cast her gaze at where Hero and Misty were sitting, Hero’s eyes unsettlingly wide and glittery while her ears continue to twitch spastically, as the unicorn fussed over her.

“Feed hunger, pain pain painpainpainpain PAIN!” The last word Hero screeched loudly, the vibrating timbre of her voice shaking, “PAIN FEAST FEAST KILL!” Sharp fang flashed as the changeling thrashed her head around, her eyes flashing blue and white as her wings buzzed under the shirt. Gritting her teeth with effort Misty used her own magic to restrain the frantic bug pony.

Hero’s eyes fixed on Misty’s. “PAIN FEED FEED!” her voice screeched as her horn glowed and her teeth bared, snapping at the unicorn. Misty reared back, her own horn flaring as she struggled to keep the struggling changeling restrained. She drew her hoof back, then swung it forward, back hoofing Hero across the snout. Stunned, the changeling’s ears crossed then she fell to the ground like a stringless puppet.
Emjay’s eyes widened as She saw Hero felled by Misty’s blow. She felt her body tense ready to gallop over to do – whatever, as a low growl rose in her throat. She stopped herself when she saw the dazed Hero get back onto her hooves, shaking her head, as if clearing her brain of cobwebs.

“Uh, what?” Hero ran her hoof over her cheek where Misty had smacked her. “Why are we sore?”.

Misty quietly slipped her sidearm back from where she was sliding it out of her saddleback.

“Oh, er, you tripped,” Misty lied through her teeth. Grey fluffy ears swiveled towards Misty, and a grey fluffy throat kept growling quietly. Hero’s own senses felt a confusing mixture of friendship and fear directed at her from the battle-medic pony, and something strange coming from the former slave. The buzzing in her ears almost seemed to whisper to the changeling’s mind. An indistinct whisper coming from a thousand mouths.

“This.. this is wrong..” Hero looked over at where the ghoul and the batpony had returned to poking around the camp. She slipped the rifle out from her pack in a haze of her own green magics.

Looking somewhat askew at her black shelled companion, Misty drew her own weapon back out. “I remember when you had no idea what to do with these, chewing like mad on the trigger.”

Hero’s eyes gleamed as she smirked. “We have a good teacher”

Misty couldn’t help but preen but she still kept a wary eye on Hero, not sure what she was trying to do, and ready to fight with, or against, her.
The center of the camp exploded outwards. Dirt and debris flew outwards from a huge bulk that rose from the earth. Segmented legs heaved the heavy shell covered body out from the earth. A pair of huge armored claws snapped viciously at the air while an armored tail swung itself up and over the back of the beast. On the tip of the tail a vicious stinger dripped with venom. It turned to the nearest pony, Tidbit, and grabbed his hind leg before he had a chance to react.

Tidbit whinnied loudly as he was dragged by his leg across the sand. With a sickening crunch, the claw crushed the bone, as the stinger darted forward and imbedded itself into the back of the power armor. Servos whined as the ghoul fought to pull himself away. A burst of automatic fire slammed into the tail making it recoil. The giant rad-scorpion swung the stallion towards Hero. Tidbit’s body detached from the trapped leg, flew through the air till it landed with a sickening crunching sound on the damaged roadway. Sparks flashed as the metal armor scrapped on the tarmac, as ammo and health kits sprayed out from the road shredded saddle packs. Misty galloped to the fallen ghoul grabbed him by his sparse tail and dragged in further out of the way while Hero buzzed towards the creature and poured more lead into its hard shell.

Emjay screeched as she leapt upon the rad-scorpion’s back, her wings stretched out as the blades lashed at the flailing tail. Steel scratched along the rough armor shell, and bit into the flesh in the joints. The scorpion let go of the leg and tried to reach with its huge claws at the annoyance on its back. The leg tumbled through the air landing yards away from where Misty was treating Tidbit. “My leg” Tidbit groaned, “get my leg!”

Misty turned and saw the limb, and cast her telekinesis around it, and pulled it over to her. The white bone joint jutted crudely from the torn flesh. She dry heaved as she saw the ripped muscle fibers writhing around like a mass of dried undead maggots.

“Force it into the hole”, Tidbit told the heaving medic. Holding back her gorge she rammed the joint into the socket of Tidbits hip, trying not to look as the flesh tendrils wrapped around each other and pulled the leg into place.

A bullet pocked claw grabbed hold of the saddle pack on Emjay’s flank. The bat-pony felt the world spin as her body was flung from the scorpion until the pack ripped, scattering its contents across the ground; soon joined by a squawking winged grey ball of fluff and fury. The stuttering of fully automatic fire burst again as Hero emptied the rest of her magazine into the front of the scorpion; shell and gore splattering outwards. Mentally thanking Misty for her drilling over the past day, Hero’s magic flicked the magazine release, dropped the empty, pulled a fresh one from her pack, rammed it in, pulled back on the charging handle then releasing it ramming the first round into the chamber.
Emjay got back onto all four hooves and shook her own head as she snarled. Free from the weight of the pack, the batpony leapt into the air. Her wings thrust her body forward straight towards the two carapace covered combatants. The thrashing stinger tail lashed at her as she raked at the shell and flesh with the claw like blades on her hoof, as wing blades cut into the joints, spraying bug blood. She turned in the air, wobbled slightly then dived down aiming for the back joints. Steel biting deeply into the soft flesh, before getting stuck in the edge of the shell. The stinger lashed down and plunged deeply into the soft flesh of the batpony’s back. Venom pumped into her body as she screamed in pain.

A blood curdling vibrato yell came from the throat of Hero. Ignoring the slashing claws, she darted forward on her buzzing wings until the muzzle of her rifle was jammed into the maw of the monster. The screaming from both batpony and changeling filled the air as the rifle fired shot after shot deep into the rad-scorpion, shredding its brain and gut in fire and metal. The scorpion thrashed, its legs and tail flailing through the air, throwing the wounded batpony aside. Then suddenly it fell still. Hero dropped the gun from her magical field, with it still jammed into the shattered remains of the scorpion’s head. She darted over to the bat pony grabbing her around her shoulders and carried her to where Misty was preparing for them. Tidbit got onto 3 legs, his fourth crushed leg still healing.

“Carry her, we have to get out of here, where there is one, there is often more.” Tidbit nosed the wounded Emjay onto Hero’s back, resting her legs along the packs that Hero carried, and urged them forward. Misty pulled out a potion from her own pack, and trotted alongside Hero and started trying to treat the now silent and deathly still batpony.

The camp was silent as a slight breeze ruffled the tattered canvas tents. Near the center of the camp the rad-scorpion shuddered once more then green flame flashed over it. Its body disappeared leaving a much smaller badly damaged black carapace covered horned and insect winged figure. A second wave of green fire washed over the corpse, leaving nothing but ash.

Author's Note

Well.. that might explain the buzzing in Hero's mind eh
and as for Emjay.. She has been so much fun to write.

If you go through the archives you will see I am slowly re-doing/fixing the chapter arts to fit the current style. wish me luck
On other things, I am now in a holding pattern regarding my moving to the USA. My paperwork is in, just got to wait for the NVC to check it though, and they said it could take 30 days. hope I have everything they need.