The Last of My Kind

'How long have I been here?' I asked myself for what felt like the thousandth time.

Ever since I made my new home I rarely ventured outwards in order to gather new info and some minor pleasantries that I couldn't make myself. The last time I went out was well over a month ago. Yet I always found myself right back here in my humble home in a cave, in the middle of the Everfree Forest in what was once the center of the long forgotten U.S of A which is now known as Equestria by the new populace.

It had been a few centuries since the end of the world which left me as the last of human kind on the planet. My name is Nicolas Dallen, born and raised in a small town in PA that I can't for the life of me remember. I stood at a solid six foot with a decently muscular build, light tanned skin dark brown eyes with matching hair. Not that any of that means anything to me anymore. Now I only went by the name Hellhound. It was the codename I was given while in the military and was the only name I went by for so long that it sort of replaced my old name.

How did the world end you may ask? Well that's easy to answer, we did it. Humanity I mean, but not because we wanted to.

It all started when humanity hit the twenty third century. A big boom in technology happened, and like most break through's in the tech department, most of the idea's came from movies and/or videogames. Sort of how Star Trek inspired the one guy to make the self sliding doors.

Naturally the military had new weaponry made before letting the public as a whole get in on all of the new tech. I was a grunt at the time who had newly enlisted and was offered for a project along with four others. Naturally I was both worried and curious about what the project entailed but in the end decided to throw caution to the wind and just go with it.

Turns out they actually started up some kind of pseudo super soldier program. Nothing on the scale of those old twenty first century Halo games though. Instead of the insane augmentations that those Spartan guys got our enhancements were pretty minimal. We healed from wounds quicker, got a slight boost in speed and strength, and were able to process information quicker but that was it.

The only major perk was the new combat armors we were made to wear called MYTHOS. Someone in the development department was a myth junky and decided to mold our suits in the image of some popular mythological creatures. I was given an armor nicknamed 'Hellhound.' I tell ya it was love at first sight when I first saw my armor. It was midnight black all around save for the helmet visor which was a deep crimson. The helm itself was styled like a snarling wolfs head with the visor being in it's snarling maw. It also had clawed gauntlets and boots with orange fire decals around the arms, legs, and around the visor.

My new armor came with some perks as well. For one the thing could take a dozen tank rounds at point blank range and barely get a scratch, increased my already enhanced abilities, came with an awesome HUD, and its personal perk, two longswords that hide in the armors forearms and allow me to call the out with a mental command. Not only that but the things lit up with blue flames that allowed them to even cut through tank armor.

In the three years following my new lot in life and introducing the public to the wondrous new technology humanity was almost ready to move on to space travel! Then they came. They never gave themselves a name but we called them the Plague. They were humanoids that stood roughly eight to eleven feet tall and were covered in boils and warts like a plague victim, had deathly pale skin and were deformed as hell. They were severely stronger than us and had much better tech. They never said their intentions out loud but when they leveled Cleveland Ohio upon their arrival it was made painstakingly clear.

Naturally humanity united and fought back and even with our obvious disadvantage we put up a good fight. Yet it wasn't enough. For each win we achieved we lost five more. When it came down to it humanity would rather risk their own extinction than surrender themselves to a foreign race. A bomb was then devised with enough destructive power to wipe the planet and even the rest of the solar system clean of the Plague. It took eight attempts before it was finally made with an experimental power source.

Naturally we tried to be smart and stow as many people away in bunkers as possible so as to hopefully not kill ourselves in the process. Lot of good it did. When the bomb finally went off it did its job and cleansed everything of not only the Plague but also of humanity. How did I survive? Well when it went off there was a lot of earthquakes and shit and I ended up getting trapped under a ton of rubble that along with my armor managed to save me.

It took over three days before I managed to find my way out of my impromptu tomb. When I finally got out though it most certainly wasn't for the better. Everything was just gone. There was hardly enough left to be called rubble! It took me a whole year to finally come to terms on being the last of my kind and when I did I tried to ring them back with some notes that I had found that somehow managed to survive. Sadly it was doomed to failure as not even a month after I began I blew up the entire lab and ended up sealing my fate. Apparently I had messed up my cells to a degree that they regenerated almost faster than they died. This meant that I basically stopped aging yet didn't increase my healing factor. Stupid I know but what are ya gonna do huh?

From there I gathered up everything human related and locked it away in what is now my home. It is basically a very large bunker that I built in a very large cave system. First I had to carve out the numerous gemstones that even now filled up the cave and now used them as currency whenever I went out which leads me to now.

As time went on I saw life basically start again but his time ape's weren't the ones who evolved to take the lead. I learned in time that the bombs energy had seeped in and mutated the planet that not only knocked it off of it's axis considerably but also made the planet capable of producing this same energy. In time creatures that humanity once called nothing more than myth began to inhabit the world. Yet the species that ended up taking over most of the planet was ponies. I shit you not ponies took over the planet only these weren't ponies like how I knew them. These ponies came in different varieties that included unicorns, pegasi, earth ponies and the rarest of them all, alicorns. If that wasn't weird enough that creatures were also Anthromorphic! They stood on two hooves and had hand and in the female's case breasts while still maintaining their fur, tails and even came in ridiculous colors. Most of the planets new inhabitants managed to harness the worlds new energy and called it 'magic.'

While these new inhabitants started to develop I secluded myself yet also managed to help their civilizations along with a few nudges here and their. I saw a chance to prevent the mistakes humans had made in the beginning and took the opportunity to try and do some good. Managed to prevent a few wars in fact so I am pretty proud of myself. Yet after all of that I now find myself with my only form of entertainment in my home aside from training and tinkering which was watching life progress in the Everfree from the various camera's I had placed throughout the large expanse of woodland.

Cycling though another channel I finally came across something mildly interesting. It appears three of the local populations resident's decided to venture in. The closest settlement was a quaint town called Ponyville so it was likely they came from there. The three ponies stood roughly at four foot eight making them preteen's at the most. The average adult mare only came up to at most five foot eight with the 'Princesses' of the land stood at an even height to myself.

These three particular ponies were an odd sort. One was a unicorn, another a Pegasus and the last one was an earth pony. The unicorn had a pearl white coat with a light purple mane with an even lighter streak through it that was rather 'poufy' if I had to say and had bright green eyes. She was a little more developed than most her age and wore a white button up shirt with a knee length purple skirt.

The Pegasus was in a word a tomboy. She wasn't as developed as the other two but had lean muscle's that even I could see. Her wings were pathetically small looking also I should note. She had a gamboge coat with a ragged dark purple mane and matching eyes. What she wore was a simple white t-shirt under a worn looking jean jacket, a pair of athletic shorts with a few rainbow stickers on them. Least she has some femininity.

The last member of the trio was a yellow earth pony who was by far the most developed of the three yet she also showed some muscle on her. She had bright amber eyes and an apple red mane in a 'ponytail' of all things with a large red bow on her head. Her apparel was far more suited for a trek through the Everfree in comparison to the other two. She wore a slightly dirtied white t-shirt under a pair of faded blue overalls.

"Now what might you three be up to I wonder?" I said to myself as I start to track their movements through the forest.

"Scootaloo are you sure it's a good idea to be out here? I still remember the last time you brought me and Applebloom out here and we ended up getting chased by a pack of Timberwolves." Spoke the unicorn to the tomboy now know as Scootaloo which meant that the farm girl was named Applebloom.

"Oh quit whining like a foal Sweetie Belle. How do you expect us to get our Cutie Marks without a little risk?" Responded Scootaloo while waving aside her friends worries.

I smile a little at the banter between the three as they start to debate going back to Ponyville. Oh the innocence of children. The Cutie Mark thing though made me roll my eyes. I mean seriously a random mark shows up just to tell you what to do with your life? A pretty stupid addition to biology if there ever was one.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught movement on another one of my camera's and turned away from the 'three stooget's' as I had dubbed them to see what was on another screen. What I found was a larger than average manticore lurking around. While a usual manticore was about the size of a rhino this was nearly double that and had various scars over it's form. Checking it's heading it was without a doubt heading straight for those three fillies.

Knowing what would happen if I didn't do something I quickly turn away from the monitor and run to my personal armory down the hall. Stepping inside I quickly grab my preferred weapon which was an automatic rifle named the ASL- Ravager. This particular rifle worked sort of like a mini railgun and fired superheated armor piecing rounds with enough force to punch through standard tank armor in a mere seven rounds from the forty round magazine. I was confident it could punch through the manitcore's thick hide. Since the world change the more primal creatures of the world had gotten a lot tougher and were much harder to take down. Hell a single Timberwolf's body despite being made of would could take a rocket and still be standing even if it would probably be missing at least on leg. The 'magic' in the world had really done a number on making the world a more dangerous place that was for sure.

Taking a quick note of all of my gear I have my helmet assemble on my head and it instantly displays a trail for me to follow on my HUD to lead me where I needed to go. Thank god I managed to modify my armor so that the helmet was collapsible. I would have hated carting that thing around.

"Time to go hunting." I say to myself as I set off into the Everfree to try and save the lives of three fillies. And here I was thinking that today was going to be boring.