Iron Gal

For the longest time her world consisted of a single, shifting veil of darkness. She whirled through blackness and silence, through howling winds that seemed to resemble voices and gunshot fire. She couldn't care less though. Everything was pain for her. It consumed her, body, mind and soul. She wanted to scream out but no noise would come, or maybe it did, she did not know.

Her hands came shakily up to her chest, as that was where most of the pain seemed to be coming from. In her current state she barely noticed the feel of something wet, and slightly sticky on her fingertips. But notice she did. She lifted on hand uncertainly up to her swimming vision. They were stained with dirt, and grime and... something else. Something red.

Blood.

Her blood.

A lot of her blood.

Her brain processed this new information slowly, sluggishly. Like someone had filled it with lead, or foam. When it finally clicked, she gave an almost hysterical giggle of laughter at her own foolishness. Clearly she had been injured. How? She couldn't remember any more. All that existed was the red on her fingers and the pain in her chest, a pain she reasoned, that would most likely prove fatal.

She let her hand fall to her side as she stared at what she could assume was the sky, though she wasn't sure any more; so immersed was she in a world of darkness and white noise. Her eyelids suddenly felt heavy. She smiled sleepily as she allowed them to slide closed.

She awoke screaming and writhing in agony. Her eyes were sharp and alert now as they flickered around her surroundings. There were bright lights that bored holes into the backs of her retina's. There was the harsh whine of some kind of surgical device that was being prepared. Voices were yelling at each other in some language she either didn't know or care to understand.

She bucked against whatever she was resting on, only to discover her arms and legs had been bound to whatever surface she lay on. She struggled against the straps, every nerve in her body on fire, spiralling from the overpowering sensation of agony in her heart.

She had never in her life wished or prayed for death but if she could now would be a welcome time for death to take her to some form of sweat release. It was too much, too much for her to bare. She screamed so loud that she thought she might tear at her throat.

Someone moved behind her head. She barely registered the motion so fixed was she on getting loose, getting free. The figure placed a gas-mask over her face. There was a loud squeak as a nozzle was turned and she breathed in something that wasn't air. She felt suddenly sleepy once again. Her screams petered out to low murmurs, and the pain dulled in her chest, her eyelids falling heavily shut once more...

When she finally came too for a second time, she was still consumed in considerable pain. Actually, that was a lie. There was pain and then there was this. This excruciating agony the swarmed her from the inside out. It felt like her heart was going to explode in her chest. There were no words to describe the pain that corkscrewed around her body and head. She would have opened her mouth and cried in agony if she could formulate a coherent thought in her brain, but everything seemed to have shut down. Her head was filled with pain and not a lot else.

After what seemed like an eternity the notion came to her that someone was talking, though it was muted under the screaming that her brain was doing as she felt every moment of suspended pain. The words weren't important as long as she felt this pain in her heart and chest.

Her eyelids finally seemed to be operational once more as they flickered open. They presented her with nothing of immediate interest, or so her pain fogged brain seemed to think before the information her eyes were sending it finally processed properly. It was the insides of a rough, scratchy sack, some hot light on her face from beyond. Her mind sharpened slightly as she realised this. Her eyes flicked around her head, confirming what she already suspected.

There was a sack on her head. She would have bit her lip if her pain filled mind would allow such a manoeuvre. Instead she decided to focus on her hearing. She really didn't like what she heard.

"... very much alive," a voice was saying. An accented voice. Bad Land's maybe? Or maybe it was Saddle Arabian? Suddenly the sack was tugged from her head and she hissed as another level of pain was layered on top of her already agonized mind as she was nearly blinded. She screwed her eyes up, twisting her head away from the light, trying to lift a hand to shield her face. It was at this moment she realised that her hands were bound behind her back. A rough hand tugged on her chin and forced her to look straight ahead.

She opened her eyes slowly as she got her first real look at where she was.

A cave. A roughly hewn tunnel deep in some boiling hot mountainside somewhere, given by the temperature around her and the sweat on her body. The rocky walls were of some strange, yellowish rock she didn't recognise with crude light fixtures hammered into place. Wires were stapled to the walls to avoid them straggling on the floor. Pointing at her face was a battered video-camera.

Standing around her, dressed in combat fatigues and masks were soldiers of some description. There was no identifiable flag marked on any of them. They all shared a common symbol though, even if it was not a recognised flag. A snarling purple dragon's head snorting emerald green flames. IN each of their hands they held formidable weapons of warfare. She should know. She designed half, no scratch that, all of them.

How? How had they got their hands on her weapons? She racked her brain for some kind of contract or business deal with a company or organisation that bared their symbol but she cam up blank. She had never sold her weapons to anyone other than the Equestrian military anyway. How had these people go their hands on them? What were they anyway? Her rescuers? Her allies? She knew better than that. No one would bind someone like she had been and stuff a sack over their face if they were friendly. One word sprang to mind to describe these people.

Terrorists. Yes, that was certainly the word she would use to describe these people. The perfect word even.

The same voice from before spoke again.

"As you can clearly see, we would not lie about such things. Like I said before, your celebrated mass-murderer is still among the living, and will continue to be so until we see fit. She will not be freed. Ever."

Given her current state of mind, it was impressive how quickly she pieced things together. She was in the hands of some terrorist organisation in a foreign country outside of Equestria. They were attempting to validate her identity and vitality though a video which they appeared to be making for someone back in Equestria. Someone high up too. And given what had just been said, the video was not making ransom demands of any kind. It was a warning. A threat.

She gulped - a difficult manoeuvre given her current physical state - as she realised the implications of what that meant. She was about to be put to work. Forced to build more weapons like the ones that they already had. New weapons. Dangerous weapons.

The realisation hit her like a ton of bricks. She was about to help this group of fiends declare war on the country she had sought to protect. Her head swam, unable to load anything else, her chest began to throb again, her vision fading to black. As she sat there in the darkness, all she could think of was a single word.

How?