Between Life and Death

“Yo-ho mattes! Set sail-*hic*-to the land of birds!” Clockwork shouted as he stumbled drunk around the ship. “First mate Twifight parkle, where be-*hic*-us!?”

“…What?” Twilight took his hand off her shoulder.

“Fef…Applecrap my love-*hic*- where are you!?”

“Did you just call me Applecrap-?”

“The hell do you-*hic*- look fishmisthbrup min…” Clockwork started saying random things until eventually his face puffed up and he ran to the railing on the side of the boat and started vomiting.

“Why is it that whenever we’re on an important voyage, you get drunk?” Red scolded him.

“Because-*hic*-it makes that Ugly ass of your look better-“ he paused and started vomiting again.

“I’m disappointed to even know you. Captain, how much longer until we reach land?” Red shouted to the upper deck.

“Not much longer, one hour and we shall be within sight of Eagleland.” The captain replied.

“Great, another hour of watching you vomit-“

“Hey, blame the captain for not hiding the-*hic*-rum.” Red sighed with disappointment. An hour later the fog started clearing away and a large cliff face appeared.

“Land ho!” The captain yelled out, everyone started gathering their stuff together. Half an hour later they arrived at a cave with a wooden dock leading into it. Once the boat was docked everyone except Red got off.

“So captain, I have a question for you.” Red asked as he put his pack on. “How do I outrank Red Tear? If he’s your leader-“

“To be honest, you don’t, I just wanted to annoy your friend.” The captain laughed as well did Red before he stepped onto the dock. “We must part ways now, we have heard rumors of this land, and we do not want to stay long enough to know if they are true-“ and just then, there was a gunshot coming from the main land. “Apparently, we are not the only one’s here, someone waits for you, along with the spirits of the dammed.” The anchor on the boat started rising out of the water. “We wish to you all the best of luck, but farewell.” A second later two of the Pegasus crew members flew up to the sail and started flapping their wings in front of it to start a breeze, another few seconds later the ship started moving away from the cliff. The others didn’t feel like moving through the cave, so instead, they flew up to the top of the cliff. Once they made it to the top they were immediately surprised, horde after horde of undead, they couldn’t even see the town.

“I knew the captain said that the virus was already here but, wow.” Red said to himself. They started moving towards the horde cautiously, and somehow, they started dying. Enough of them died that a path opened up leading to the edge of the town, at the end of it, a man, blue skin, black jeans, and some sort of vest, and he was killing everything with no effort.

“Who the hell is that?” Clockwork asked as he began to sober up.

“Don’t know, but I think we should stay away from him.” Red started guiding them around the horde, and each time they stopped and hid, more of the infected died. “How the hell is that one guy doing all this?”

“Probably because he’s better than you-“ Clockwork smiled.

“There is no way he could be better than me, I work for royalty, he’s just a messed up freak-“

“What did you call me!?” the man yelled. They looked out from their hiding place and all the zombies were dead.

“…Oh yeah, he’s defiantly better then you.” Clockwork laughed as he went back to hiding.

“What. Did you. Call me?” he asked again as he started moving towards them. Red puffed out his chest and moved out from behind his cover to face him.

“I called you a messed up freak-“ and before he could say anything else, the man pulled out a gun and put it right under his chin and hesitated to pull the trigger.

“Do you have any idea, who I am?” he growled at him.

“Does it look like I give a shit-“ Red replied, and when he did, he lifted his gun and hit him over the head with the handle of it. When he was on the ground he put his hoof on his back and pointed the gun at him again.

“My name is Dance Party, Code name; orange hoove, rank; General.”

“Why should I care-“ he started pressing the gun closer towards his head.

“I was sent here to contain virus and assist the people here, unfortunately I was to late, so, I had to resort to my next tactic.”

“And that would be?”

“Neutralization, I have to kill it off before it can spread.” The others looked out from around the corner of the building they were behind and managed to get a better look of the man, he was wearing sunglasses, some sort of vest with weaponry and ammunition on it, a white T-shirt, and orange fingerless gloves.

“So, Dance Party is it?” he drew out his second gun and pointed it a Clockwork. “You call that a gun?” Clockwork pulled out his gun and pointed it at him. The two of them held out their weapons and attempted to stare each other down, and eventually, the man’s arm grew weak and he put his guns away.

“Why are you people here? This zone is supposed to be under quarantine which means no one is supposed to enter.”

“Yeah, well we had an escort from a few Japanese guys, took a boat here-“

“Don’t care, leave-”

“Hold on, we came here since we thought it would be safe here!” Twilight interrupted as she stepped out from behind the corner. “And since you killed all the infected-“

“Are you arguing with a superior?” the man reached for his gun and Red quickly got up knocking him off his hooves, he summoned his swords as he started getting back up.

“Stand down.”

“You think you can just give me an order like that? I’m a superior, you can’t tell me what to do-“

“Actually, I can tell you to do whatever I want, since I’m ranks ahead of you.” Red replied as he pulled a medal out of his pocket, it had several stars connected by their points and it had pentagon formed between them. Dance Party saluted to him as soon as he saw his medal. “What gives you the right to attack me and my friends?”

“Sir, I had no idea, I thought you were normal civilians sir.”

“Some of us some of us aren’t, did you even take notice that those 3 have horns and wings?”

“Sir, I um, I had no idea sir.”

“Shut up and stop saluting me.” Dance Party dropped his hand but continued standing straight. “How did the virus reach this far off the coast line?”

“No idea, all I know is that some of these things were lead here.”

“Lead here? By what?” Nyx asked.

“Per me.” A familiar voice answered. They turned around and saw him, Monochrome; he looked just like he did after he was infected.

“Crap, not this again-“ Clockwork sighed.

“You know him?” Dance Party asked.

“He used to be our friend, until he turned into that.” Twilight answered with sadness.

“Stulti rebus meis non licet, sine me, et ego vivere arbitror relaxaret” Monochrome tried telling them with the same gurgling voice he had earlier.

“What he say?” Red asked

“Who cares, just kill him!” Clockwork replied as he pulled out his war hammer and started charging at him, Monochrome stepped back after his first swing and summoned his scythe and started attacking him back. Hit jabbed Clockwork with the dull end of his weapon and he stumbled back, then Dance Party ran to the side of them and started shooting at Monochrome, but every shot was unsuccessful, they just bounced off his iron hard skin. He took his scythe with one hand and swung it, creating a wave of magic, Dance Party jumped out of the way and it kept going until it crashed into a building and caused it to collapse.

“Superbia cimex: state, et contra mortem.” Monochrome growled at him as he continued swinging his scythe. Dance Party got sick of what he was doing, he dodged his last attack and leveled his gun, he pulled the trigger and the bullet flew from the barrel right into his eye.

“Nice shot, think you can hit the other one?” Clockwork asked, he rushed over to Monochrome and swung his war hammer at him again, and upon contact it sent him flying, but while in mid air, he cloned himself, the one Clockwork hit continued flying and crashed somewhere in the city along with his scythe, while the other one flew in the air, getting ready to attack. “Come at me bitch! I’m ready!” Monochrome swung his arms and they turned into blades, and he started flying towards him. He crashed into the ground and created a cloud of dust preventing Clockwork from seeing him, he stepped closer and Monochrome rushed at and slashed him across his chest. “Son of a bitch, what’s with you and my ribcage!?” Clockwork kept swinging his hammer aimlessly, he managed to hit him once, but after that, he missed every time. “Stand still damn it!” he swung the hammer again, and just like back in the cave, Monochrome caught it right when it was an inch from his head. He took the hammer from his hands. He took the handle and swung it at him, shattering almost all his bones and sent him flying and crashing into an already collapsing building at an invisible speed. He turned towards the others. He slowly walked towards them, giving them a chance to run so he could hunt them down. He lifted the war hammer and got ready to kill them, but suddenly out of nowhere, a white blur appeared and cut the head of the hammer off its handle, Monochrome looked up at it and noticed that it was just a black rod, he turned to the left and the blur appeared again and cut the top of his head off, it went by another few times and cut him every time it passed until he was nothing more than a pair of hooves. When it stopped the others were surprised by who it was, the one who killed Monochrome, was himself.

“Monochrome!” Twilight yelled as she started rushing towards him with open arms.

“Twilight.” He dropped his scythe and opened his arms and hugged her. “How are you?”

“Monochrome, I thought you were, or you…how!?” Twilight became confused, she kept looking at him and the pile of blood bones and flesh scattered along the ground.

“It’s pretty funny actually, remember how I said I was immune to all magic diseases?”

“…Yeah?”

“Well, still am. You see, when I got infected, the disease only affected the outside of me, my body, for normal people, it infects their minds but for me, anyway, since it didn’t infect my mind, my emotions remained the same, Sadness remained a blubbering cry baby, Anger remained a pain in the ass, Love remained gay-“

“Joy remained obnoxious and annoying?”

“Exactly…wait.” Twilight giggled as she let go of him. “Anyway, when that infected me made a duplicate, joy, a.k.a. me, this form, took over that copy since diseases can’t be transferred between duplicates so, I’m back.” Monochrome smiled.

“It’s nice to have you back Monochrome.”

“It’s nice to be back…Wait…where’s jet?”

“Oh, she left.”

“Awww, I like her, she was funny…Where’s Clockwork?”

“Over there.” Twilight lifted her hand and pointed to the ruined building. Monochrome gasped, he grabbed his scythe and rushed over to him as the other followed him. When he got to the building her threw the rocks away until he eventually found him.

“Clockwork, buddy, wake up!”

“…Monochrome?” Clockwork asked as he opened his eyes. “I thought…I thought you were dead…”

“WAS, dead, not anymore. Hold on, I’ll fix you up.” Monochrome placed his scythe down, he clapped his hands together and they started glowing and he placed them on Clockworks chest.

“…Am I going to die?”

“I hope not.” Monochrome smiled at him, he smiled back but fell unconscious.

“Monochrome-!” Twilight began to panic along with the others.

“It’s alright, he’ll be fine, he’s just in pain, poor guy.” Twilight sighed with relief after hearing that.

“I tried to tell you that this place was dangerous, I suggest you all leave before anymore of you get hurt.” Dance Party said with a demanding voice. Twilight turned to him.

“You, you said your name was Dance Party?”

“…Yes?” he replied with suspicion.

“Well I just wanted you to know, me, and those two over there, we’re princesses, so by order of royalty, I order you to SHUT UP! Listen, we know what we’re doing, most of us at least.” She turned to Monochrome and Clockwork. “We’re strong enough to take care of ourselves, so we don’t need you telling us that it’s dangerous here, we could already tell.” Twilight walked away from him and aided Monochrome in Healing Clockwork. Dance Party side loudly.

“Fine, you can all stay”

“Excuse me?” Twilight replied as she turned away from Clockwork.

“You can stay, but I’m coming with you. I was sent here to execute the infected, and that’s what I’m going to do. So from now on where ever any of you go, I go-“

“Whatever you say general pain in the ass.” Monochrome chuckled. Dance Party took out one of his guns and pointed it at the back of his head.

“You insult me again I Will kill you-“

“3 things pall, first of all, I’m a prince, second, my bones are made of diamond, third- get the bucking gun away from me before I shove it up your ass!”  Dance Party grew scared and Quickly drew the gun away from him.

“Damn, I wake up just in time to hear you re-use a threat.” Clockwork said smugly.

“At least I didn’t get my flank kicked by a zombie.” Monochrome replied with a laugh as he helped him up. “Nice to see your still with us Clockwork.”

“Nice to know your back to.” The two of the shook hands, when they let go Applejack ran up and hugged Clockwork. “Didn’t you think of me as disgusting earlier?”

“I did, until I realized how kind of a guy you are.” She smiled at him, and he groaned loudly.