In Soviet Ponyssia...

It's cold this morning.... it's cold every morning, but you're always able to sleep through the freezing bitterness. Due to the extreme poverty your close friend Fluttershy lives and shares a bed with you. It's really more of massive burlap sack stuffed with sheep coats, but it serves it's purpose. She has always been a great friend and she's always been there to take care of you. From when you took a job in the factory, about 3 years ago, to right now while she's keeping you warm before your 4 A.M. shift. No one... nopony seemed to care about the fact that Fluttershy was friends with a human, namely you.

You remember your first injury you got on the job and how serious it was. One of the cauldrons had broken it's hook, fell 30 ft. and exploded on the factory floor. A railroad spike sized piece of shrapnel was lucky enough to tear a massive gash up your forearm, but the the fact that it was glowing a darker orange from the heat caused it to cauterize immediately. Even though the wound healed itself you couldn't work for almost a month. And now you have a thick scar that runs up the length of your right forearm and it's about as wide as your pinkie finger.

Just as you were about to get up for the daily grind the distant sound of a door being kicked in startles you. The sound is shortly followed by screaming and rapid gunfire."That's the second one this week." you think to yourself as you listen to two sets of footsteps make their way down the hall and down the stairs. Now sitting up, you look over your shoulder to see your friend shaking like a leaf with fear in her watering eyes.

"It's ok Shy." you say quietly. "I have to leave for work now." you say while tucking the covers around her.

"Thanks." you hear in a sad whisper.

"I'll be back with dinner around 9-ish. Get some rest." you try to comfort her.

Walking out the door you check the bread box and see some of last night's dinner, mutton and some stale bread, and decide to leave it for her. She hasn't had a breakfast in a couple days, neither have you but you rarely eat anything, and it's taking it's toll on her. Hopefully you can bring home a real dinner like some sturgeon or sauerkraut soup, but you have to take what you can get. You swear you could hear a faint whimper as you closed to the door and thought about stopping to ask, but if you were late on your shift you wouldn't be payed as much and that meant less food to survive the night. While you're at work she finds whatever work she can on local farms whether it be tilling the soil or tending the livestock and she knows she's knows she's helping you a great deal when she brings home an extra blanket made from the furs that weren't sold.

Walking down the street in the early morning darkness, you enjoy the smells you're so familiar to. The smell of fermenting mash by the distillery, rotting flesh where they make leather boots and gloves, the pile of ashen bodies outside the hospital, the textile factory that makes the dense coats of wool you're wearing, and the smell of molten metal being cooled right outside your mill.

You walk through the double doors and on to the factory floor to begin your next miserable 18 hours. As you toil away, prodding and poking at the cooling steel in the cauldrons, you can't help letting your mind drift back to that cute little pony sleeping in your bed. You work your constant grind, brainlessly going about your shift, while your mind drifts off to happier places that you wished existed. They all partially exist, after all Fluttershy's in all of them. Hopefully things won't always be this way, but your hope is a dwindling ideal. As soon as that thought leaves your mind you're brought back to the real world by the sound of violent sizzling and the blood curdling screams of an injured child.

Immediately leaving your post, you quickly spot the kid lying next to a puddle of molten steel that had a darkend spot beacause his arm, now seared completely off, was simmering in the slag. As he lie there screaming you hear the angry shouts of the owner to remove the hold up and it was quickly responded to with two ponies dragging him by his feet off the factory floor and into the street. Nobody bothered to shovel the slag off to the side as they all went back to work. He'll be replaced with some new kid, just trying to support his family, within the hour and it all just keep moving like clockwork.

Every day for the past 3 years it's always the same thing. Work as hard as you possibly can, but everybody gets paid essentially the same. If you hold up production or become injured you're quickly killed or replaced, but in the case of the child it's both. He'll probably die out there in the cold and not a single person or pony will care. You might not care, but it still makes you sick. You wish you could help him, but what is most important right now is staying fed.

As the day drags on you can feel your stomach growling at you and causing a dull ache from the emptiness. You almost don't even hear the steam whistle that signaled the end of the day's work over the excessively loud clatter of metal on metal scraping. After you stand in line, for about 20 mintues, to collect your pay you realize that you almost never see the sun, pitty.And now it's time to get dinner. In the darkness, while you jog to the nearest grocery, you hear a glass bottle shattering. You quickly look over to the side of the street and see an officer brutally beating a drunkard with his knuckle duster and it was easy to see the blood spraying out of his face while the drunk was being held off the ground by his shirt collar.

Upon seeing this something inside of you breaks. You pick up the nearest brick and begin running towards the officer. Right before you collide with him you swing with all of your strength and plant the brick into his head. It cracks his skull with the sound of a pumpkin being dropped on the asphault. Just as he lands on his back from the blow, you are sitting on top of him bashing his face in with the hard, red, clay. *Krack!..krack!..krack!..* Is the sound of you beating his head back and forth while a pool of blood, teeth, and face meat begins to collect around you. The drunkard, seeing this as his opprotunity, takes off running into the alley.

After a good 5 minutes of devolving into the animal you've held back all these years you sit back on your knees and try to catch your breath. You pull the knuckle duster from his cold, dead, hands and discover that he has a whole pound of fish in his jacket. Without wiping the blood off you grab the fishwrap and sprint down the street to bring home a full sized dinner to your pony. You're coming up to your building and you're almost out of breath when you reach the freely swinging door, you charge through it with your shoulder and rush up the stairs. When you come to your floor you see a stray beam of light coming from an opening in your doorway.

Fitting on the knuckle duster you took you creep up to the opening and peek inside. On the wall to the right of you there is a pony in police uniform, holding Fluttershy up against it by her forehooves. His chuckling shows he's drunk and he's going in to force a kiss on the quivering pony. Thoughts race through your head and the sound of your heart begins pounding in your head. You can't watch it anymore because the sheer anger is making you sick.

In that instant you kick the door open, toss your fish, and dash towards him while grabbing by the throat with your left hand and slamming him into the wall. You had wound up your right hand in that rush and now you're planting it into his jaw over and over again. Before you do enough damage to draw blood, you start choking him with both hands. Digging your fingers into his neck, you fight him up and down the wall then watch his eyes turn bloodshot and a shade of purple wash over his cheeks while he chokes and makes a sickening "gk..gaack.." sound. His hooves, that were desperately fighting at your wrists, now hang low at his sides and the shifting of his eyes is slowing.

You slide down the wall towards the window, which was just a square hole in the wall with a small curtain, and shove him through it. His body quickly falls the 60 ft. to the ground and he lands with a hollow 'PFFT...' Now, completely exhausted, you put your back to the wall and slide down to sit and catch your breath. You notice Fluttershy hiding behind the corner-wall that led into the kitchen with fear in her eyes because of the horror she had just witnessed.

"Shy?" you say while panting. "Are... are you okay?"