The first thing I heard was the rain. It was slow, like pebbles shaken from a cliff landing in the valley below, but quickly escalated to a downpour. Soft droplets splashed against the damp surface of the earth in an ever-increasing tempo, echoing through the air like rolling percussion until its volume penetrated the haze of my unconsciousness.

I didn’t remember having blacked out, nor could I recall at what point the chaos had blurred from reality to mirage, but the burning pain I felt racking my entire body was no illusion. I stared through half-open eyes, vision hazy and swimming, at the dark and rocky roof of the cave I now found myself in. The pair of great steel doors had admitted me to a much larger and voluminous extension of the cave I had emerged from, expanding in diameter all the way to it’s mouth where the rain flowed freely.

I rolled my head to the side, hoping-praying-to see Splint beside me with his medicine, eager to check us for wounds and treat us like he always had -- or Yield beaming down at me with that precious, smug grin of hers. But the only thing I had to greet me was the dark, crimson-smeared form of the abomination lying in a pile of it’s own necrotic flesh. My hope was snuffed out by the perpetual sound of the rain, each falling drop repainting the memory of my failure. My squadmates, my best friends, were gone. I had abandoned the very ponies I'd sworn to safeguard at the first sign of trouble. All because I remembered the very emotion I chose to forget all too long ago.

Fear.

I was a coward. All of my training and knowledge, all of the time I had dedicated to this one simple purpose, all of my high-tech gadgets and electronics--it all amounted to cowardice and shame. I was more worthless than the dirt smeared across my chestpiece. Why did they have to make me the one in charge? Why not someone smart like Splint, or gung-ho like Yield? At least they wouldn’t have turned tail when their buddies were in trouble! Why did it have to be me?! My place was back in that hellhole with my team -- I should have died with honor standing shoulder to shoulder with my brothers-in-arms, not writhing here in unbearable disgrace like some disgusting worm!

Maybe they were still alive. Maybe through all of the madness, they had found a way to escape those wretched creatures. It wouldn’t have been the first time those two had pulled out of a tight spot. Maybe they were just behind those doors -- sitting patiently, waiting for me to part the steel walls that separated us and be reunited once again. I rolled over and had begun to right myself onto my hooves until the sight of the two massive barriers froze me solid. Those things were still in there. I could feel it -- the stare of those monsters boring right through the rock and straight into my head. The only thing I would have to greet me on the other side of those doors was hell itself, and that epiphany had me paralyzed.

I cursed my own weakness and tried to cry again, but my eyes had long since run dry and refused me any tears. I suppose that was as much justice as could be done. I didn’t deserve to mourn them. My actions were abhorrently deliberate; festering in self-pity would be an insult to their memory.

I carefully backed away from both the door and the rotting corpse of the monster I had slain, tiptoeing away as if the slightest noise would startle the horde I knew laid waiting just beyond the doors, and as I did so I remembered the mission. Oh Celestia the mission...it was all lost. There was no way I could survive on my own out here if those creatures were just the tip of the iceberg, let alone attempt a tour of the entire eastern coast. I didn’t have the supplies to...oh fuck!

As I glanced back at my beaten armor, I noticed that the saddlebags had been ripped open and emptied, their contents spewed and strewn over the cave floor like confetti. Food rations were torn open, water poured out in puddles from shredded canteen bottles, bedding destroyed, batteries leaking, ammunition dented and scattered--it was all fucking ruined! I wanted to sit down and scream; this was all just icing on the crap-cake of my failure. Friends, failed. Mission, failed. Stable, failed. Equestria, failed. Was there anything, anything I hadn’t completely fucked up today?!

All at once, the rain outside stopped, leaving a silence that quickly drew my attention to the anger and frustration I was filling it with. None of this was helping.

I’d been trained better than this. I couldn’t afford to sit here any longer and cry over spilt milk. This was war. What’s done is done; all there was left to do was to pick up the pieces and keep moving...wherever that would take me. Maybe the only place left to go was just the next hoofstep forward. If that was the case, then that’s exactly what I would do.

Time stood still as I salvaged the equipment I had spilled. My shadow and the eerie silence were the only companions I had now, and both stood inextricably at my side.

All I could manage to recover from the mess were a few small rations of food, two intact canteens of water, a couple dozen rounds of chain ammunition and my helmet. Seeing it from the outside made me realize just how much damage it had sustained. The left eye visor was cracked, some of the reactive plating was stuck upright instead of flush with the helmet’s frame, and the entire chassis had more scratches on it than a cutting board. The inside wasn’t much better; after I had donned the helmet, I saw that the video throughput was barely working and the audio from the external earpieces was staticky and garbled. But it was all working. Barely.

It was a fraction of what it all was before, but everything that could be saved had been, and all of my gear accounted for. Now the only thing to do was get myself out of…

My thoughts froze as I approached the mouth of the cave and looked down. Down along the cliff I stood upon all the way down into the darkness below. It was as if someone had torn a hole in the crust of the earth itself and sucked out all of the color, leaving nothing but an empty, black scar. The abyss deadlocked my gaze and I found myself staring down into the depths for what seemed like hours before my vision was drawn towards the cliff directly opposite the one I stood on. I scaled it’s face with my gaze until it was met with the grey, cloudy skies several hundred feet above. So this was Ghastly Gorge. It was every bit as deserving of its namesake now as it was back before the war, and I had to crawl out of it.

I’d done it before in the sims. They’d made it a tough climb, sections of rock as sharp and jagged as knife serrations, chunks of cliff cut out in craters, the distance of the climb themselves exaggerated to ridiculous factors...but all of that seemed to pale in comparison to the genuine artifact. The rocks were drenched. The ensuing erosion had caused the entire gorge to destabilize -- even now bits of rocks were clunking and clattering their way down the slope and being swallowed up by the darkness below. If I dug my cleats into the rock and it decided it didn’t like my weight, I had a one way ticket to the bottom of the deepest pit in Equestria. Dear Celestia, couldn’t they have just made some fucking stairs?

I nearly slid right over the edge of the precipice as the sound of screeching metal tore the silence right down the middle. Something behind me was clawing at the doors. I turned back and again saw the mass of the slain creature in it’s heap, it’s claw outstretched toward me as if beckoning me closer as the sound rang out again. And again. Rhythmically and relentlessly it persisted, growing steadily louder every second. My heart pounded faster and harder every moment I kept staring back at the great metal barrier that separated me from hell, all too recent memories rushing back into focus and the horrors I had witnessed replaying themselves before my eyes. Whining time was over. I had to move.

Without hesitation, I swung myself out around the mouth of the cave and slammed my cleated hoof against the slippery cliff. I held my breath and waited for the cliff to give way and hop back over to the mouth of the cave, but several seconds later and my grip hadn’t even budged a pebble loose. I sighed out deeply and cautiously edged myself out completely over the cliff, clinging all four of my limbs tightly onto the sheer cliff and hastily began calculating my route. Everything was so eroded and waterlogged. The face of the cliff was either too smooth or too jagged to safely traverse in any direction I scouted but one. I’d have to cross over more gaps and zigzag around bad surface than I ever thought would be necessary, but it was the only way.

Each hoof I slammed into the gorge was a deadly gamble, balanced delicately between the limits of my strength and the integrity of the cliff itself. I could feel the surface starting to give way the further up I ascended, forcing me to abandon my predetermined route in favor of an even longer and riskier one. My muscles and vision strained with every inch I moved, staring intensely through my cracked and distorted visor to check and double check the next foothold I reached to cling onto was where I perceived it to be and not two or three inches above. The cave I had emerged from was now very much out of reach, lingering several hundred feet below me, and the top of the gorge, several hundred more.

Doubts and concerns crept into my mind like a swarm of spiders, stealing away my concentration from the life-threatening task I had undertaken and driving it to perhaps equally pressing matters. What the hell were those things in the cave; those miserable fucking monsters that took the lives of my best friends and squadmates? The zebras couldn’t have possibly birthed those atrocities. They were completely feral -- they wouldn’t have discriminated against them in their bloodlust. Could it have really been the radiation? Could that be some innocent animal, morphed and perverted by the balefire into a snarling, bloodthirsty beast? It seemed impossible...but it was the only thing that made sense short of discovering an entirely new animal. Damn it all...I could practically see Yield’s snicker at the realization that one of her crazy theories actually had some traction. Splint would have been so shocked. He’d never once been wrong about--

My eyes shot open and I nearly screamed as the cliff beneath my feet crumbled like tinfoil and gave way under me, crashing down loudly in a puff of dirt and disheveled stone. My forelegs strained and quivered in searing pain as they struggled to support the entire weight of my body and suit alone, and my mind was instantly thrown back into the present. I grunted and pulled myself up with every fiber of adrenaline-enhanced muscle I could muster, scrambling and clawing myself up until my hind legs once again had stone to dig themselves into. The steam from my panting fogged quickly fogged my visor and before long the entire face of the gorge was one long, brown smear.

Calm down, Iron, calm. You’re okay. You’ve got this.

I pressed myself flush against the cliff and slowed my breathing, allowing myself to rest. There was no way I could go on without seeing where I was going. I had to clean my visor, and that meant taking off my helmet. Right there.

No problem. I’ve trained for this. This was nothing -- just a little pit stop.

Like a cat stalking closer to its prey, I carefully raised my right hoof off of the wall and started unlatching my helmet, click after click, until I felt the detached headpiece hanging limply against the side of my face. With every bit of the same caution, I delicately edged the helmet inch by inch off of my head until I could feel the tip of my mane brushing against it’s lip. Every atom of my focus was directed at clutching the cliff, dispersing my weight evenly between my three remaining limbs and balancing the raised helmet against my hoof and the rocks. One twitch, one small flicker of movement and either I or my armor would be the next thing to come tumbling down into the pit of darkness.

I leaned to the left and gently began sliding the helmet down against my cheek, down my neck and almost to my waist when I realized all too late that I’d miscalculated. The rocks supporting my left leg crumbled, the new weight and strain on my corresponding foreleg pried away it’s grip and left me dangling from the cliff by a single limb. Adrenaline surged through me like lightning -- all other senses reduced to dull impulses as that balance tilted ominously towards failure. I scrambled my hoof along the cliff, desperate to find purchase in something, anything. In another two seconds, I would be too angled and too far gone to recover, my body reduced to a metallic heap of debris to be pulverized against the jagged rocks as I tumbled down into the nothingness below. Just as I could feel my heart raising itself into my throat, be it by luck or the will of the Sisters, my hoof snagged and caught against a new cluster of rocks. My tilt halted abruptly and I wasted no time finding another foothold for my leg, my heart still racing and beating like a bass drum in my ears. As the reality of my temporary safety set in, I choked out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding and steadied myself once again. At that precise moment, my grip on my helmet slipped and decided to fall in the exact opposite direction. The drums in my ears thundered back to life as I stretched myself out to the right and just barely caught the tip of the helmet’s rim milliseconds before it fell out of reach. My heart was tearing right through my chest and my breathing was all but a stuttering wreck, my body completely contorted and splayed out along the gorge in a way I never thought the equine form could possibly bend. Through the haze of chaos swimming through my synapses, I focused once again and slid the helmet along the cliff towards me until I had it tucked snugly between the rocks and my bosom, carefully pulling each of my remaining limbs back in towards my torso.

I rested my head against the cliff and prayed frantically to the Princesses, thanking them for not seeing fit to hurl me to my doom just yet, and simply remained as I was until my limbs stopped shaking. When -- if, I come back here, I’m going to bring some Celestia-damned rope and a really big stake. This was utter suicide.

I eventually mustered the determination to take a spit inside of my visor and clean it out with a hoof, wiping the fog clear. With my immediate ordeal at an end, I raised my helmet back up and slid it back over my head, latched it into place, and continued climbing upwards...for approximately ten feet.

The rain didn’t even bother with a drizzle. No, instead it felt the need to announce itself with a sudden, unrelenting deluge of the thickest raindrops I had ever felt. It pounded and pressed against every part of my armor and flooded my visor with an impenetrable screen of turbid, murky water that blinded me completely. I couldn't see, and there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t look up at my path, I couldn’t see where the next foothold was -- much less the top of the gorge. I had to remember the exact route I planned out, step by step, and go entirely by feel. If I veered even slightly off course, I was as good as dead.

I slowly inched my way up, feeling out each foothold individually over the course of what had to be half an hour. My muscles screamed for rest and my head was pounding from the incessant noise of the rain against the bucket of a helmet I wore, but I couldn’t give it any rest. I needed to get off of this cliff and I needed to get off of it now. At last when my determination had finally cracked and I had convinced myself I would never reach the summit in this condition, my hoof slid over the edge of the gorge. My eyes shot wide open and hope surged through my body like lightning. This was it --I made it to the top! Holy Celestia I might actually live!

With sheer willpower, I pulled my entire body up over the edge of the gorge with that one hoof, rolling over the edge and laying back down against the muddy soil beneath me. The rain poured down harder and harder, and all but fused my body to the sludge I laid on, but I couldn’t care less. I had done it. I wiped away the pools of water that had accumulated on my cracked visor, which had just begun to leak through to my face, and laughed out victoriously through muddled panting. The thundering percussion, however, had rendered any trace of my joy mute.

The mud sloshed and splattered liberally against my armor as I sunk my hooves down into the slippery mess and carefully erected myself. My backside was already coated in an uneven layer of dripping brown goo, tracing streaks of soggy dirt down the battered metal and leaving a cold chill that sunk even through the insulated chassis. Visibility had been reduced to only a few dozen feet within a dense curtain of water and clouds that choked out the landscape beyond. Though if the last several hours of my life had been any indication, perhaps the scenery was even less attractive than the image the sims had perpetuated. Maybe it’s better like this. Blindness could be my bliss for a while, sparing me from harsher horrors; although I doubted that anything could match the tragedy back in the cave.

I hoped more than anything that I was right, but deep down, I knew the worst was yet to come.

* * * *

I had trudged through the thick sludge for what had to have been several miles without so much as a hint of any change in landscape, much less any enemy activity. Scaling the cliffside had left me with barely enough strength to get myself comfortable on my hooves, but now it just felt like I was running on empty. Behind me -- mud. Ahead of me -- mud. All around me was nothing but sticky, gooey mud. It felt like the filth was seeping through the cracks in my armor, leeching away my strength and once again putting my endurance to the test as every step I took became a concentrated effort. Echoes of my labored panting rang through every inch of my helmet’s interior, becoming almost louder than the downpour itself. Meanwhile, the suit’s failing electronics provided no aid whatsoever. My Pipbuck’s HUD interface had completely shorted out, leaving me without so much as a compass. I could have been walking in circles for minutes on end and I never would have known. Maybe I was just treading old ground -- I could see indentations like hoofprints in the soil, twisting like a snake and oscillating left and right.

This was pointless. I gave in to my exhaustion and sat with a sticky sploosh in the mud, head drooped downward both to avoid my lenses becoming any more waterlogged than they already were and to catch my breath. The rain was too heavy and the visibility too poor. If I tried to go on like this, I could end up wasting precious energy wandering around in circles until I was totally drained. No way to defend myself, no way to keep myself from freezing of hypothermia. Then again, if I stayed here, I’d probably freeze all the same. I took a moment to feel if the environmental controls on the suit were still active and it wasn’t just my body heat keeping me warm. Seconds turned to minutes and the only thing I felt was the cold crawling down into my skin like a parasite. Of course, why should I have expected any differently.

But just as I reluctantly decided to take my chances with pressing on, something on my lenses flickered. It was a line, tiny and green, stretching out into the center of my view gradually. Followed by another underneath it, and then another. Once my eyes had refocused onto the anomaly, I could just barely make out the text that they displayed:

Ares Power Armor BIOS v4.13

Copyright © Year: -REDACTED-, Ministry of Warfare Technology

Main Processor: Platinum III 7987MHz

Memory Test: 500000M OK + 12000M Shared Memory

POST unsuccessful

12 Primary Systems Unresponsive

75 Secondary Systems Unresponsive

Reinitializing…

Before I could read the rest, my entire suit spasmed sharply and I could hear electrical humming coursing throughout the chassis. I held my breath in anticipation and hoped to the Princesses above that I would be granted this small stroke of luck.

C’mon, baby, c’mon -- give me good news…

Score!

The entire display flashed green for a moment and then slowly lit up, my compass, vitals display and SATS linkage rebooting and crawling back over the cracked glass of my visor. I could feel a few puffs of heat breathing their way down through my torso, but they quickly ceased. It was enough though; a lot of the suit functions still seemed to be disabled, but I had what I needed to continue. Everything except a proper map.

Okay. If I was at the Gorge, I would just have to head north and I would eventually come across Ponyville. If anything was still left there at all, I could take refuge in one of the houses or build my own shelter from the rubble. Should be enough to keep me concealed and alive until this Celestia-forsaken rain stopped. Maybe I could scout around for some food and water as well. I wouldn’t need too much...now that I only had one mouth to feed.

My thoughts drifted back to the cave, my mind otherwise unoccupied by the situation at hoof. I could feel the familiar choke in the back of my throat returning as flashbacks played before me like a slideshow. I slammed my hoof down into the mud as hard as I could and pressed with everything I had. The armor took most of the edge off of the impact, but the pain was enough to snap me out of the spiral I was just about to be flushed down. I can’t stop -- I can’t start feeling sorry for myself again or I’m going to freeze both emotionally and physically, and their deaths will have been for nothing.

I picked myself up and had just oriented myself northwards when static began to crackle inside of my earpieces. A small notification slid across my screen informing me that my radio was intercepting short-range communication. I stood firmly in place and waited for the tuner to adjust to the correct frequency. Who the hell was I intercepting comms from? A zebra convoy? Survivors? I waited with bated breath and quickly rechecked the weapons on my side for functionality. This could be my first contact.

My heart rose steadily up my chest into my ears in proportion with my growing anticipation until finally the radio isolated the frequency.

“......and then she stood up and smacked him so hard, his helmet flew off and nailed Peanut here right in the face!”

“Would you stop fucking calling me that? And no, for the record, it hit my neck...still bruised like a bitch though.”

“In your dreams, Peanut, everyone saw that shiner on your eye for days.”

“Cut the fucking chatter, both of you! That’s the third time today you’ve told that same Luna-damned story and if I hear it one more time, I’ll nail you in the head and leave you out here to rot in this shitstorm.”

Three voices. Not a chance they were zebras, they all had Equestrian accents and were using an Equestrian radio frequency...an MWT frequency. Could these guys seriously be remnants? If MWT personnel were out on patrols this close to key locations, that would mean the zebras had nowhere near the amount of control over the land as we thought they had! Holy shit, this was almost too good to be true!

I wanted nothing more than to stampede over to these guys, go back to their base and see real pony faces on the surface fighting the good fight. I’d be with my brothers again and everything would be alright. We’d link up with 70 and get them all the food and weapons they would ever need to wipe the zebras from the face of the earth. It was such an alluring fantasy, but I had to take caution. Open up comms, Iron, make the dream real.

“Unidentified personnel, this is Sergeant Iron Sights of MWT Surface Recon, Echo Squad. To whom am I speaking, over?”

The channel instantly went quiet. All that could be heard was the rain pummeling the increasingly slushy mud, but even through the noise I could practically feel the surprise palpating in the pause, and for a moment I thought I might not ever hear a reply.

“...Bad copy, who did you say you were again?”

“Sergeant Iron Sights, MWT, Echo Squad -- to whom am I speaking over?”

Another pause, longer this time. I looked around for any hint of an equine silhouette, but the rain was far too thick.

“Sergeant, the Steel Rangers haven’t worked in squads since before I was born.” The Rangers?! The MWT hasn’t had operating Steel Rangers since before I was born -- the ministry dissolved them in favor of the SuRec Team almost a hundred years ago. “Which base do you belong to?”

I wasn’t entirely sure what was going on here, but i certainly was not feeling enough trust between the two of us to comfortably give away that species-threatening bit of information.

“I’m afraid that’s classified, Ranger. Pass your coordinates and we can talk this out face to face, over.”

“And I’m afraid I must insist, Sergeant.” He spat out that rank with enough contempt that if I hadn’t known better, I might’ve thought he was implying I was a fraud. “What is your base and detachment?”

“Frankly, Ranger,” I replied with the same disgusted intonation, “that’s above your pay grade. Send me your coordinates now -- I want to speak to your commanding officer.”

“You’re talking to him, smartass. Now I’m going to ask you this only once: are you from a Stable?”

Why in the world would he ask me a question like that? Were they looking for someone from a Stable? This was starting to get pretty fishy and I didn’t care for it one bit. These guys were definitely not acting like Equestrian military, that much was obvious. I couldn’t assume they were on my side any more. I needed to offer a gambit -- get them where I wanted and assess them up close.

“That’s affirmative, over.”

Radio silence once again. Another notification appeared on my visor alerting me that it was in the process of intercepting and decrypting a second frequency.

“You all heard him, he’s from a Stable! This could be exactly what HQ is looking for!”

“He didn’t say he was from 70, moron! For all we know he could just be some raider fuck who got lucky and found a radio.”

My heart almost skipped a beat when I heard him give that number. If they knew about 70 and they were looking for me, they were either a rescue party or a hunting party, and if today’s luck was any indication, I needed to lock and load.

“Did you fucking hear him? Only the grunts from the vids talk like that motherfucker! This is it, this is exactly what we need! We haul this guy back to base and we’ll be set for life! Just think: you’ll be sipping martinis and banging mares in Tenpony Tower 'til you die of old age!”

“I hate to admit it, but he’s right. We’ve gotta jump on this, even if he isn’t the one they’re after. Worst case scenario he’s just a scavenger and we can toss his corpse down the gorge. The brass never has to know.”

Yup. Definitely a hunting party. What an idiot -- and here I actually expected some sort of reprieve. Why were they even looking for someone from Stable 70 anyways? My weapons were loaded with what little ammunition I had left, but who knows. Maybe if these ponies were actually who they say they are, I could talk them down. It’s what Splint would have wanted, and besides, the last thing ponies needed were to be fighting amongst themselves in the middle of a war.

“...alright fine, but if this goes bad, it’s on your head.”

The unseen ponies quickly shifted back to their former frequency and resumed their communication.

“Sergeant, please relay your position to us, we’d like to continue this conversation in person.”

Perfect. Without hesitation, I gave them the coordinates to an area about twenty meters north of my current position; far enough to stay out of sight but close enough to get a visual. I dug myself down into the mud, half burying myself in the cold sludge, and waited for their arrival. After only a few minutes, I could see the vague outline of silhouettes moving in from beyond the rain. No spread, no tactical advance -- hell, their weapons were hardly raised. They walked as a loose group ,casually, to the baited coordinates; hook, line and sinker. These ponies were clearly not military by any stretch of the imagination. By the time they had reached my supposed position, I could see that they were actually wearing some form of power armor. It was very old, like the models they had at the cusp of the war. The paint was chipped and scratched and the metal was rusting at the joints, but I wagered it still functioned with the endurance of genuine Equestrian armor.

“Sergeant?” The radio buzzed again, the group beginning to look around in all directions, “We’ve reached the coordinates, what’s your location?”

“Close enough to see that you’ve stolen some very high quality hardware, ‘Ranger’. You have fifteen seconds to disarm yourselves and lie flat on the ground. I am authorized to use lethal force if you do not comply.”

Two of the ponies began looking around frantically, scanning all around through the rain-soaked terrain to identify the pony threatening them, heedless of my instructions. The remaining pony though, he held his head up high and bobbed it up and down softly but rhythmically. The bastard was laughing.

“You think you can scare us, raider?! You’ve got another thing coming if you think you can fool us with all of that old military lingo! What, did you watch too many war vids in the Stable as a foal? Thought you could go around fooling other ponies into giving you their shit by talking like a badass? Not the Rangers, kid! Come out and face us like a stallion if you think you’ve got the balls to--”

The slew of pure shit spewing from that pony’s mouth significantly loosened my trigger reflexes, and before I’d even registered what I had done, I’d sent an armor piercing round hurdling downrange straight into his hoof. It tore straight through the antiquated armor like paper mache, splattering the mud liberally with his blood. His two cohorts turned at once to their leader in horror as screams of the highest intensity flooded through the radio channel, the injured ‘ranger’ falling to the ground, cradling his wound like a baby -- but they fell on deaf ears. I felt nothing for this imposter.

“YOU FUCKING MOTHERFUCKER! I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!! FIND THIS ASSHOLE, NOW!!”

“This is your final warning. Disarm now, or the next one’s going through your head.”

The ponies ignored my instructions once again, calling my bluff until finally one of them did a double take in my direction. He took a long, hard look over at me until he finally realized what he was looking at. He’d seen me.

“Peanut! There, right over there! Holy shit, he’s wearing that armor! He’s from 70, light him up!”

Fuck! The two ponies took their stances and sent a hail of lead soaring and cracking all around me. These assholes might be imposters, but fucked if I’m actually going to kill my own kind when we should be shooting zebras! I shot up from my cover in the mud and sprinted down out of sight into the rain until the bullets stopped following me. I quickly found another place to sink myself down and watched out in the direction I had come from for their advance, trying the radio once again.

“Stand the hell down! There’s no need for any of this! Lay down your weapons and we can talk this out!”

“Fat chance, fucktard! No one crosses the Rangers and lives, especially not some froo-froo, Stable-fed prick!”

Still nothing through the rain.

“Drop the act! You’re not Rangers and you sure as shit don’t know how to act like ‘em. Disarm yourselves -- military or not, we still share a common enemy!

“You’re the enemy now, bitch! If you come out now, I promise we won’t kill you too slowly!”

I could just make out their outlines coming through the rain, guns raised. There was no reasoning with them. Nothing I could say would change their minds. Holy Celestia, I’m going to have to kill these ponies or they’re going to kill me. It was as simple as that, yet every fiber of my being was resisting lining these ponies up. I had a clear visual, all it would take is a few squeezes on the trigger and they would both be dead. No, not dead -- neutralized. That was it. I had to neutralize them. I could just shoot their limbs and keep them alive; make them see reason and calm them down. Yeah, that’s what I would do.

I activated the SATS module on my heads-up display and the world went into slow motion. Rain drops fell like feathers, coasting closer and closer inevitably to their point of impact on the muddy ground. It was a stunning sight to behold in and of itself, and had almost completely erased the reality that I was about to be in mortal danger, but luckily my survival instincts were gnawing at me, reminding me that I had work to do. I targeted each of the ponies’ front legs and confirmed my decision, speeding the world back up to it’s normal pace and letting my guns rip. Spent casings flew from my sides as the bullets they once held met their mark and punched straight through metal and bone. They face planted into the mud, crying out and screaming with such combined volume that I had to shut off my radio to keep myself from mistaking them for the wails of my own fallen comrades.

That was it. Now I had a few seconds to get over there and disarm them before they recovered.

I once again burst out from my muddy cover and ran over to them, keeping my weapons raised. They rolled around in the sludge, clinging desperately to their wounds and crying out through their helmets in sheer agony. They hardly even reacted as I tore their guns clean off of their saddles and unloaded them, flinging their bullets off into the distance behind me. One of the ponies, however, seemed to be a little tougher than the others and had soon reduced his screaming down to pained pants and moaning.

“Who. Are. You.” I asked solemnly, kneeling down to the pony and planting my hooves down firmly on his chest, pinning him.

“R-Rangers.” He squeaked out, twisting his head away from me.

Unbelievable. I have these assholes on a fucking platter and they still have the audacity to lie to my face.

I leaned down and ripped his helmet straight off, grabbing his head tightly between my hooves and practically pressing my helmet to him as I continued,

“BULL SHIT! WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?!” I screamed with every ounce of energy I could muster. The stallion’s pale eyes turned to pinpricks and if it hadn’t been for the rain, I could’ve sworn he was crying. His entire body shook fiercely, terror coursing through him like blood.

“RANGERS! HOLY CELESTIA, WE’RE RANGERS!” He screamed, voice cracking and trembling like an adolescent colt. Like a whiny, disrespectful, piece of shit foal lying straight to the face of someone who knew better. What a complete waste of skin.

I drew out my knife from it’s holster and pressed it down hard against his throat until it just bit through the first layer of skin, letting the warm blood trickle down into his armor.

“I won’t ask you again.” I hissed through gritted teeth. My patience had run as thin as the edge of my blade, this pathetic stallion’s life balancing on it’s point. It didn’t seem to phase him in the least though, in fact, I could almost see his lips curling into a smile.

Before I could react, I heard several loud snaps and the sharp impact of something plinking against my armor in quick repetition. My heart raced and I snapped my head over in the direction of the disturbance to see the leader pony hobbling towards me with bitter determination through the rain, guns raised and smoking at the tips. Guess I needed to knock the fight out of that one a little harder.

I aimed my weapons at his shoulders and had almost fired when I felt a larger and much more painful impact smash against my ribs, the full impact crushing through the armor and letting my bones take every ounce of the blow. The pony that I had once held within an inch of his life kicked me so hard with his rear legs that it knocked me straight off my feet. And then they were on top of me. Both of them, clamoring on top of me like wildcats on a fresh kill and smothering everything except my head under the tremendous weight of two full-grown stallions and their armor. My knife had been knocked just out of my grasp in front of me, but as I reached out desperately to snatch it back, I felt the unmistakable pressure of the leader’s gun pressing firmly against my head.

“Checkmate, motherfucker!”

No. Not like this. Not here, not now, not after everything I’ve been through and absolutely, absolutely not to my own Celestia-damned race! Pony hooves will not be my demise!

All other noise fell to a distant whisper as I channelled all of my strength upwards. I pressed as hard as a minotaur twice my size, with the ravenous hatred of defeat and the bloodlust for victory.

I snapped to my hooves like a released spring, the two imposters clinging to my back frantically as disbelief flushed over their faces. My downward gaze pierced straight through the helmet of the leader and into his skull, his weapons now aimed at the empty indentation of mud my head had once occupied. With a guttural roar, I bucked the straggling ponies from my back and pounced onto my attacker, the one who dared to try and put me down like a rabid dog. His choked screams flavored the rainfall as I squeezed the life from him like an over ripened lemon. His hooves clamored feebly against my helmet while my own pressed like anvils against his throat, pouring every ounce of my hatred for these undeserving, pretentious cowards into the fire that raged inside me. Unrelentingly, I shattered the armor around his neck, caving it in further and further until the only thing besides the jagged, bloodstained metal slicing into his throat and the spasms of what fleeting strength he had left remained. His forelegs fell in a twitching heap by his side as his whimpers drowned themselves in a pool of fresh crimson. With a twist and a generous spray of blood, I snapped his helmet clean off it’s mount, and his neck along with it. One target eliminated; two remaining.

I rose and turned with deadly intent towards my next kills. The one whom I had almost finished interrogating stared back at me with dread, his eyes pinpricks and his mouth agape in horror as he laid on his back and kicked desperately with his hind legs to back away. His terrified wheezing only intensified as I approached him, step by step, never breaking my deadlock gaze.

How to end this one. Bullets would be too generous for this scum, he deserved something far more severe.

“GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM HIM!” the other straggler cried as he swung my own blade down upon me, or rather, as he tried.

The pony that once stood on two legs, helmet abandoned and blade clenched in his mouth, now hovered several inches above the ground -- my hooves wrapped wrapped around his neck as my height towered over his own. The blade fell to the mud below with a sonorous thud as my victim gasped for air, flailing and clawing at my forelegs.

“Y-you..” He choked out, his windpipe quickly collapsing in my grasp, “...you...MONSTER!”

I released one of my hooves from his neck and brought it down on his jaw with unhinged ferocity. How dare he. How dare this lying, sack of shit, miserable excuse for the shadow of a Ministry soldier accuse me, ME, of being anything resembling the terror that took the lives of my squadmates -- ponies worth a hundred times as much as the three of them combined!

Teeth splattered against the ground amidst the countless raindrops. His mouth hung slackjawed as he coughed and drooled out the bones I had just pulverized. He craned his head back to me with eyes that glimmered with the knowledge of his impending death; the gaze of someone who was at the end and had only one thing left to say.

“‘OOOONSHHEEEEEEEER!” He squealed with every ounce of breath he had left before my hoof struck again, spinning his broken face back over his shoulder with a decisive crack. I flung his body to the side like a spent tissue, scooping up my knife and looking back to my original victim, who had resorted to attempting to use his wounded forehooves to crawl out of sight. The pathetic little worm.

He glanced frantically over his shoulder as I started walking towards him, gasping and instantly rolling onto his back -- pedalling his legs as fast as they could.

“Dear Celestia no! No, no, no, no, no! PLEASE!” A meter closer between my blade and his flesh. “We’ll rescind the bounty on you! I’ll walk away from here and you’ll never see me again! PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF CELESTI--” Almost on him. Just a few more feet. “PLEASE! I DON’T WANNA DIE! I DON’T WANNA DIE!!”

His incessant sobbing streaked saline and mucus through every strand of fur on his face, his heart practically bursting through his chest as I pressed my hoof down on his leg and held him in place as I moved over him.

“NOOO!! CELESTIA HELP ME, CELESTIA PLEASE HE--” His crying turned to gasps of unbridled agony as I sunk my blade deep into his stomach, the warmth of his chest leaking out in droves.

“Help...me…..please…” Again. Once more still I retracted and sliced down into his stomach, splaying his innards and watching with grim fascination as blood poured from his mouth like a waterfall. It splashed up in bubbly torrents and stained every inch of his armor as the dying worm coughed up more and more, endlessly. I watched the life leave his eyes and his soul bleed out through his eviscerated carcass. No more pretenders.

And then the rain trickled to a stop.

Silence hung in the air like three fresh corpses. The haze that had enraptured me before faded with the raindrops and the only thing I could feel was the slow, methodical beating of my own heart. I looked to my left and saw the remnants of something nearly beheaded, splayed out in the mud like putty, it’s neck choked tighter than a mousehole. I looked to my right and saw the crushed skull of a heap of grey laying face down, it’s extensions contorted in an amalgamation of twisted metal. I looked down below me and saw myself straddling the crimson flooded effigy of a fresh kill. It was familiar though -- it had a snout, a face-arms and legs -- it almost looked…

Equine. At once I realized these broken forms used to be ponies; and as I stared with shallow breath at the different shades of red smeared across my armor like rain from above, I remembered what I had done.

I recoiled back with a gasp and stared at the horror I had created, the ponies I had brutalized and the lives that I had snuffed out. This wasn’t real. I couldn’t have done this, this wasn’t happening. It’s a dream -- a nightmare, I’d wake up from it any second now.

Shattered bones splayed out beneath the flesh and armor.

Close your eyes and count to three, Iron, get out of this!

Heads twisted and contorted, staring into me no matter where I looked -- death lingering in their gaze.

“Luna alive, please, wake me up! One!”

Pools of blood running wider and wider, reaching out towards me.

“T-t-two!”

A groan, a whimper. One that I recognized. One that I had heard all too recently, and then the echo of a scream ringing out from below me. The drained pony I stood over wore High Yield’s face and she was staring right at me, right at the bloodstained hands of the cave atrocities where my hooves should have been.

My world stood still and I reeled, scrambling away from the corpse as fast as a pony could, and running. Screams echoing in my head, flashbacks blinding me, I ran as fast as I could.

Author's Note

HOLY CRAP THIS TOOK WAY TOO LONG TO WRITE.
I will endeavor not to repeat that mistake in the future, but as they say, life can be a bitch sometimes.

In other news, check out this artist's rendition of the Ares Power Armor! http://rattlesire.deviantart.com/art/Commission-Power-Armor-450840187

Hope you guys enjoy the new installment of the series, and as always, critique and feedback are much appreciated.