The leader of the band of raiders and slavers was a very unhappy unicorn. Muttering darkly, he strode through the crude camp of his raiders. The dust from the camp darkened the pale green of his coat, the short cut style of his maroon colored mane and tail, and the stylized image of a gavel and a pony’s skull that adorned his rump. A tattered bowler hat rested over his ears behind his splintered horn. He had lost two of his foraging teams; the second being led by one of his best lieutenants, Leroy. As he fumed he made is way towards one of the tents near the center of his rough encampment. Flicking one of the flaps aside, he entered into the darkness of the cloth dwelling. Chains rattled as a figure stirred within, taking just a simple kick with his fore hoof into its side to force it to respond properly.

“Ohhhh Mister President~” a seductive female voice came out from the shadows, “It’s always soo good when you are my first of the day. “ Despite the sexually alluring tone of the filly’s voice, there seemed to be an element of emptiness in them; as if the words had been repeated so many times they had lost meaning. This did not worry “Mister President”, he simply cared that he would be able to vent his frustrations, and that he would have some pleasure as well. He levitated his hat from his head to a crude table, and then went to select a pizzle from the rack of implements near where the whore was as she moved to present herself for her current owner’s pleasure.

Nopony outside battered an eye at the screams coming from within the tent. They knew they would get to have their fun when their President was finished.

Three ponies, well, two ponies and a changeling. Actually one pony, one changeling, and one former pony, walked down one of the paths leading to where Misty’s pipbuck had indicated St Gallop was. Tidbit had decided he was going to join the group, even though Misty was adamant that he wasn’t needed and Hero was still wary of the ghoul. But he had packed his saddlebags, slipped into his haphazard armor (after having retrieved the helmet and decided that the missing eyepiece looked kind of cool) and donned the battle saddle, hooking its connector to a jerry-rigged trigger mechanism in the helmets muzzle, and left with them; with each side of the battle saddle a belt fed machine gun clanking softly with every step he made.

“Are you ever going to speak properly,” Misty groused at Hero

“We do speak,” Hero replied, sounding quite aggrieved with her buzzy voice

Misty sighed but smiled at her friend, and Hero felt herself feel quite full of positive feelings that she had been receiving.
“One day I will hear you say ‘I’.” Misty smirked at Hero, and wrapped a forelimb around Hero’s body.
There was a flash of green flame around where she touched the changeling, and Misty felt... fur? She removed her limb and gasped at the sight of light blue fur on one small patch of the changeling’s carapace. Then with a second flash of green flame the black chitin returned.

“What the,” Misty spluttered, “Do that again!”

Hero blinked slowly, confused, but sensing surprise but delight from her friend wasn’t too worried.
“Do what?”

“That thing you just did!”

Hero just looked at Misty with a look of bafflement. “We just walked with you”

Misty stopped walking and turned to Hero and picked up her foreleg and placed her own foreleg over it. Hero watched; and a green flash of flame wrapped around where the legs touched. Misty removed her own leg, leaving a blue furred stripe contrasting against shiny (but still slightly dusty) black chitin. Hero looked at the blue fur before pressing her face to it, feeling its softness just before the green flames enveloped them and returned her leg to its natural state.
Feeling a bit emboldened, Hero stared at Misty and concentrated. Her tongue stuck out between her lips as she pressed the magic energy she had been collecting into a strange new use deliberately. Her body was wreathed briefly in green flames; and there in Hero’s place, was a mess. Blue fur and black chitin coated the legs and body of the changeling. one eye was a pony’s eye and one fang had faded away while blue fur coated large patches of the face. The horn started as a unicorn’s twisted horn before then giving way to the black spike of a changeling.

Misty recoiled a bit at what she saw, and a further wave of green fire wrapped around Hero returning her to her natural state. Hero shook her head as if slightly disorientated, then looking at the shocked Misty once more she furrowed her brows and concentrated harder. The flames overran her body, this time leading to blue fur and mane. Her tail grew out longer, and her mane styled itself in a familiar fashion. The flame finally marched up the horn, leaving an elegantly twisted unicorn horn in its wake. Misty’s jaw dropped as she looked at herself.

Behind them Tidbit whinnied quietly and surreptitiously lined up his weapons on the new Misty.
Misty however was delighted at what her friend had just done. She pranced around looking over Hero/Misty making comments about the mane, the tail even how the cutie mark had been duplicated. Misty gleefully exclaimed, “I didn’t know you could do this!”

“Neither did I,” the disguised Hero said in Misty’s voice

Misty stopped and looked at her doppelganger “You said ‘I’.”

“Of course I did, why wouldn’t I?” Misty’s voice responded back to Misty

“Okay this is just getting confusing.” Tidbit’s voice cut through the girls talking. He blanched a bit when two Mistys looked disdainfully at him. “Um... From an outsiders view, I mean.”

Green flames flared around Misty/Hero again and she returned to her normal appearance, none the worse for wear for her unusual transformation. “We enjoyed that” Hero chirped in her normal buzzy voice
“Yes we did,” Misty responded then paused, “Wait... Was that a ‘we’ as in ‘us’, or ‘we’ as in ‘you’?”

“Yes.”

“Ugh.” Misty gave up at this point.

One pony, one changeling, and one former pony continued down the path.

Dust rose from the hooves of the trio as they trotted along the shattered remains of a paved road, passing a collapsed building that the pipbucks had noted as being a “Port of Entry”. Misty had no idea what it was, and Hero didn’t care. Tidbit thought he might know what it meant, but he wasn’t sure about his memories of Equestria before it burned. He also had neglected to tell his travel companions exactly how old he was. Further north, the road was blocked by a collapsed span of a road bridge. Dirty red paint peeled off the burned and bullet scarred masonry, and tendrils of climbing weeds crisscrossed the fractured stone. Misty’s pipbuck bleeped, signifying that it had led its owner to her destination. To Misty, however, it seemed that her destination wasn’t the haven where her fellow stablemates had hoped for, but a fractured, destroyed, and poisonous waste full of dark ruins. Brass bullet cases and dark brown splatter stains told the world of previous battles, or executions. Crushed pony bones littered the ground, each fragment a testament to the violence that ended the hard life of the ponies. Graffiti scrawled across some of the broken stones promised death, or worse, in the most explicit and depraved possible ways. Hero kicked at some of the bones, watching them rattle and roll across the heavily decayed road.

“This is where your friends went,” Tidbit asked.

“This is where I was told any survivors would have gone,” Misty replied with a sigh, “But I don’t know if there was any... Or if any who may have made it here are safe like we thought they might be.”

Hero climbed up the ruins of the bridge and looked over the edge. Her nose twitching as she took in the local scents and her ears swiveled as she listened. There was a scuttling sound nearby that made her turn her head towards it’s source. A few smaller chunks of concrete moved and a radroach stuck its head out. It wiggled its body out from the stones and looked up at the changeling, it’s wings opening and buzzing as it made a chattering noise. Hero watched the display of aggression from the bug... Then with a sudden movement snapped it up in her jaws and chewed it before swallowing. She made her way back down to the pair with a bug leg hanging from her mouth.

“Did you, er, eat a bug?” Misty’s nose wrinkled.

Hero shrugged, then sucked the remaining leg like spaghetti.

“Ewwww.” Misty grimaced in disgust.

Tidbit looked at Misty, one milky eye visible thought the damaged helmet. “From what you told me, your friend here eats pony flesh and you are ok with that... But a bug and you go eww?”

Misty spluttered trying to think of a response and finally settled on “Shut up!”

Hero watched the bickering pair with detached interest, her changeling sense letting her know there was no aggression between the pair of them. However, she had to tell them something now rather than waiting for them to finish their little argument. “Ponies, lots of them, ” she interrupted, the news bringing the pair out of their small squabble.
Misty’s eyes gleamed and her ears perked up “Where? Do you know where?” The words rushed out of her mouth.

“Follow Hero.” Hero gestured towards the rubble and trotted off. Misty followed her, Tidbit bringing up the rear. His eyes scanned the skies and the rubble around them, occasionally walking backwards as he scanned behind them. Once or twice, his eyes rested on the rump of the camo wearing blue unicorn medic. A longing briefly took him, though he quickly dismissed it. The dead do not with the living.

Now don’t you all go eww at me, I am just telling you what happened. Besides, bugs are full of good protein. Oh? You don’t mean the bug thing? Well never mind. But if you have all finished acting like foals, we can get back to the story.

Small radroaches scuttled in the ruins of homes and shops as Hero and her companions carefully made their way through the ravaged streets of St Gallop. Every now and again, the pipbuck rad meters clicked as ancient fallout from mega spell tests remained buried in the soil. Hero and her companions looked around, Hero with curiosity, Misty with hopeful nervousness, and Tidbit with his usual dead gaze. Hero’s ears swiveled as the sounds of pony activity drifted in the slight breeze. She looked back to the small group with her and chirped, then started trotting faster towards the sound. Misty smiled a brief nervous smile and followed her, Tidbit’s armor clanking a bit as he also picked up the pace.

The smell of rotting refuse, raw sewage, sweat, and smoke hit them like a steel covered hoof to the face. Three figures peeked over a small hill overlooking a field that had been turned to a rude and filthy encampment. Scores of earth ponies and unicorns, all armed and crudely armored hustled around doing various jobs or lazed in the shade of canvas shades, drinking heavily from the fruits of several copper stills. Sharpened logs formed a palisade surrounding the large camp, dirty tents and ramshackle huts crowded together to one end, and a gateway on the other opened into an empty area where the red dirt had been trampled down by hard use. Disconcerting dark red splotches in the dirt showed where things had died under the occupants’ tender care. Possibly once the former inhabitants of the cages near the edge of the camp where dark shadows in some of the cages showed that there were still in use. Hero and Tidbit scooted back down the hill while Misty remained in place.

Misty scanned her pipbuck noting the extreme amount of red blips. The techno magic of the pipbuck had wisely decided that the ponies down the hill were not of a friendly nature. But in that mass of red she could not see any signals of any pipbucks worn by her stablemates.
Misty slid down the far side of the hill to where the armor clad ghoul called Tidbit and the changeling called Hero were waiting for her. “I can’t detect any of my stablemates there with my pipbuck, but I want to go in and have a look for myself.”
Tidbit’s visible eye narrowed as he looked at her. “You wouldn’t get near the gates before they captured or filled you with lead.”

“I don’t care,” Misty hissed, “I have to be sure!”

The pair argued their points, Tidbit being aggravatingly calm and rational, and Misty’s vocabulary becoming as profane as anypony with military training could be. Unseen by them Hero slipped back up the hill, and peeked over the crest. Near one of the fences she saw a dirty brown stallion, who was sleeping; oblivious to the open air rutting of a trio just meters from him. A copper still he was sleeping beside hinted as to the reason of his current snoozing. Hero concentrated on the stallion and forced her energy through her body until she felt the green fire race over her form. A quick look at her foreleg showed black chitin. She looked back at the snoozing stallion, concentrated harder, sticking her tongue out the corner of her muzzle, and let the magic flow through her.

A trickle of dust and small stones followed Hero as she slipped down the hill to her friend, and that ghoul. Hero still had her own misgivings about the ghoul, after all he did hurt her a lot, but Misty seemed to tolerate him. However at the moment the argument between Misty and Tidbit had been going on since she left, and Hero’s own thoughts were that they seemed to be arguing more than what would be natural. As if they wanted to argue, or something. Hero could sense feelings that were flowing between them, frustration, anger, and something else she couldn’t quite place. Hero sat down and waited for a pause in the flow of words between them. It never came. Hero chirped to try and get their attention. But that didn’t work either. Hero rolled her eyes and flicked the unicorn’s horn.
“OW!” A furious unicorn looked at Hero. “What was that for?”

“We wanted to speak.” Hero’s face showed traces of aggravation. “But you and Tidbit were too busy repeating things at each other.”

“Well?”

“You cannot get into the camp, “Hero stated plainly. Tidbit nodded his armor covered head and Misty bristled at the changeling’s statement.

“I can do whate-“

“You can’t get into the camp alone” Hero continued, “But we can”

Misty narrowed her eyes. “Is that ‘we’ as in you, or ‘we’ as in ‘us’,” she demanded.

The green fire ran over Hero’s form again, and standing in her place, a dirty brown powerful looking stallion stood before the pair. Bloodshot eyes looked at Misty and Tidbit.
“I can get into the camp.” Hero’s voice had become deep and masculine with the texture of someone who had been eating gravel for most of their life. “I just need some armor, something to cover this,” the disguised changeling lifted his/her front leg showing the pipbuck, “and you tied up.”

“Oh no… No way.” Misty growled at the brown stallion. “And since when did you start having ideas.”

Green fire raced over the stallion leaving Hero back in her natural state. A bead of sweat running down her brow from effort. “We are not stupid.” Hero’s voice buzzed louder than usual with her face twisted in annoyance “We have survived in this world all our life and run into many of these types before.”

Misty hung her head, the realization that she had been thinking of her friend as a simple minded drone, rather than somepony that was experienced and intelligent being deserving of her respect.
Hero ignored Misty’s discomfort and started laying out her idea with Tidbit adding a few suggestions of his own. Misty, with her years of living in a military stable, and two battles under her belt could offer nothing. She was out of her depth in this world, and now she was starting to realize it. She watched the pair in awe as they hemmed and hawed over a diagram that Tidbit drew in the ground. Finally they seemed to be satisfied. Supplies were sorted and all the saddlebags were loaded onto Tidbit. Hero turned to Misty and gave a toothy grin.

“We think she would make an excellent slave.”

A plank with a green glow around it smashed in the back of the unicorns head.

Jezebel and Moonshine were very bored. The two mares had only just replaced the gate guards an hour ago, and had another 7 hours of nothingness before the end of their shift. Jezebel decided to pass the time with thoughts of how she would be having her way with Moonshine when they got off duty, no matter if the other filly was sober enough to remember or even willing. She snickered as she eyed the flank of her fellow guard.

A large, leather clad brown stallion made his way down the path towards the gates as he carryied a blue unicorn mare across his back. Blood was matted in the mare’s mane from a nasty looking cut on the back of her head while one of the fore legs seemed to be in a crude sling.

“HEY ROCKSTEADY,” Jezebel called out to the advancing stallion, “I didn’t know you were out!”

The stallion grunted as he drew up level to the pair of guards.

“Ohhh and you have a new toy! Gonna have some fun with her?” Jezebel leered at the burden he was carrying.

“Eyup,” the stallion grunted with a crude grin.

“Well save some for me. I might need it if Moonshine here passes out on me again”

The mare known as Moonshine flicked her tail at Jezebel. “You want somma this you gotta earn it girl.”

Jezebel laughed as the stallion known as Rocksteady passed them into the camp.

Misty kept her eyes closed as she was carried. In her ear the pipbuck’s earpiece chirped quietly as it noted the abundance of enemies. The pipbuck itself safely hidden in the sling holding the foreleg, as well as two side arms. Just in case things went wrong.

Misty wasn’t very happy with the blow to the head, but when Tidbit explained that she had agreed to it with her nodding as he and Hero worked out the plan, there wasn’t much she could do about it. She knew that it did help with the illusion of slaver and captive, but her head was still ringing from the blow that Hero had given her.

Between two tents, Hero in her ‘Rocksteady’ disguise let Misty slip off her back, and the pair of them began walking around the perimeter of the camp. Misty limped on three legs keeping the pipbuck and guns safe, while listening to the earbud for the telltale ding of a friendly pipbuck. She kept her head down and let Hero lead her in what seemed to be a random pattern. After an hour of wandering, dodging the occasional slap on the flanks from passing raiders and slavers Misty shook her head softly. There was no sign of her stablemates. She looked up at Hero and saw that the changelings disguise was shimmering slightly and the grimace of pain on the faux stallion’s lips.

“Are you alright,” she whispered to her friend.

Hero shook her head. The effort to maintain the form for so long was sapping her strength and abilities. In this form she couldn’t feed on the friendship love of her friend, despite being able to feel the emotions from the ponies around her.
Sweat ran down the brown brow of Hero as she tried to find a place she could drop her facade and rest. But she couldn’t find anywhere that she could not sense any emotional presence near the fence line. She and slave-Misty made their way towards some of the inner tents, keeping her senses out for somewhere private, while trying to make sure she looked inconspicuous. Her ears perked a bit at the sound of Misty whimpering beside her, but Hero did her best to ignore it. Passing by one of the more ragged tents, she felt an emotional void. Safety at last. She slipped into the tent half dragging a limping misty behind her.

Misty gwared softly as she moved her leg out of the sling, careful not to drop the guns. A sudden sound made both freeze as a shadow near the back of the tent moved.

“Ohhhh Mister Rocksteady~, sir. I didn’t expect you back so soon.”

Both Misty in her slave rags and Hero in her Stallion disguise froze. The shadow opened a single eye, its pupil a vertical slit of blackness against bright orange. A fanged muzzle opened as it spoke in a sultry feminine voice. “And you brought somepony with you this time. You want us to put on a show?” Her lips moved into a humorless smile “I promise not to break this one”. Chains rattled as the dark furred pony slowly rose to her feet, one chain wrapped around the neck, another linking a hind leg to a peg in the ground while others crossed her body to hold down a pair of leathery wings. Her light green mane and tail, ragged and matted, showed the results of abusive use and lack of hygiene. Her hips were bare of fur but the grey skin showed a mass of angry red scars, many old, and some fresh and weeping blood.
Misty and Hero glanced at each other, then back at the bat pony.

“So…” the batpony purred “how about we start with your favorite”. The dark furred chained pony knelt down on her forelegs, ducking her hooves under her belly, lifting her head so that her muzzle was lined up with her throat “Give it to me hard, please?”

Green fire raced over the brown fur of hero as her disguise collapsed. The batpony gave a high pitched shriek, her eyes bulging in terror as the known male abuser burned away to reveal the black form of death herself. Hero panted as she recovered from the strain of her disguise, Misty dashing forward with one of the guns in her magical field. She clamped the jaws of the freighted pony and pressed the muzzle into a fluffy, batty ear. “Shut up if you don’t want your brains splattered over the ground,” Misty growled.

The batpony remained still as Hero walked up and started sniffing and nuzzling against the batpony’s matted fur, until she found the chain tightly wrapped around the hind leg. She bit at the metal trying to break it, but to no avail. Misty looked at where the chain joined together around the raw skin, and then with a hoof gestured to it “It’s a magic weld,” she muttered, as she saw the slight glow. Hero looked up at Misty. Misty remembered the enchanted ring she had on her horn. “Spit,” She hissed. Hero left fly a green glop right into Misty’s face.
The bat pony watched in confusion, but stayed still. Misty looked disgustedly at Hero. “Not at me! At the chain” she hissed.
Hero’s second shot struck the metal. There was a slight sound of hissing, and the link came apart, freeing the leg from the restraints.

“Hurry up in there, there’s others wanting their turn,” a course male voice from outside rang clear, “Come on..” The tent flap was thrown open as Mr President strode in. “The whore has to-” He stopped upon seeing Misty and Hero standing with his batpony. “Who the hell are you,” He yelled, “GUARDS! GUAR-“

There was unearthly howl as the batpony snapped and leapt upon her owner, her jaws wide as she screeched while her body slammed against his to knock him to the ground. Misty turned her gun to the unicorn stallion but it was too late, Blood fountained as the batpony’s teeth ripped out this throat, making him gurgle and flop around before going still. She turned to the unicorn mare and the strange black armored looking pony, glaring at them as if daring them to do anything.
Shouts from outside came closer as the alerted camp came to find out what happened. Suddenly the sounds of several explosions and heavy weapons fire filled the air. Screams from wounded and confused raiders and slavers as they tried to find the source of the attack. A single female earth pony raider dashed into the tent, only to collapse on the ground when the back of her head was blown out from a single shot of the medic.

“Let’s go,” Misty rasped.

Hero levitated the other gun that was hidden in Misty’s sling, and slipped into disguise as a clone of Misty.
The batpony nuzzled into her sleep rags, digging out a plastic bag. She dropped it into the dirty and now blood splattered bowler hat before slapping it on her head. She grinned and made a keening sound. Nothing was going to stop her getting out of here. A brief pause in the automatic fire and Misty burst out of the tent, the bodies of ponies ripped apart from the bullets and rockets littering the area around the tent as other raiders ran towards the fence line. On the hill, a lone armored ghoul rained down fire and death.

Hero came out with the batpony and looked around trying to find a safer exit that was away from the enemy. A bright purple flash distracted all three as a purple bubble expanded around them and the sudden and random large purple pony that was with them. There was a flash and the world twisted in on itself and with a *pop* the four of them were on the hill with Tidbit who gasped in shock. The artificial alicorn looked down at Tidbit and growled slightly. The world flashed for them all, and a changeling, a batpony, a unicorn, a ghoul and an alicorn found themselves in a cave.

Hero’s mind seized up and her body became stiff, bleating like a goat before she fell onto her back. Green fire raced along her body and she was back looking natural again.

Misty’s mouth gaped at the alicorn and Tidbit shied away but turned his weapons towards her. The batpony seemed to have lost interest in the world and was looking down at the dirt, kicking at it as if she wasn’t sure it was there. The hat fell from her head before her and she stared at it. She sniffed it as trying to make sure it was truly there. As if what had happened had indeed happened and the taste of flesh and blood in her mouth was real.

“Oh crap” the alicorn said, “I shouldn’t have done this”

Author's Note

Taken a while... I know.. but here it is.
For those wondering a Pizzle is a whip that is made using the dried penis of a bull or a stallion. I will let you guess what species they got that one from
My eyes are really sore right now, so if there's any glaring formatting problems I will fix them later... In the meantime.. enjoy the chapter