Crippled, Beaten and Broken.

“Ah don’t like this place, Twilight, Ah don’t like it one bit.” said Applejack, looking around at the towering mountains of garbage with a flicker of nervousness dancing in her eyes.

“This would be the kind of place something like Zap would live in.” said Rarity, disgust etched into her features.

Twilight narrowed her eyes as a gust of cool air caught a small dune’s worth of grit and tossed it into the smoggy air. “It sure is foul.” she agreed, lighting her horn and using a long-practiced spell to amplify her voice.

“Zap! We’ve found you and we brought the Elements of Harmony, and I know that you know what those are and what they can do! So come out with your paws up and surrender so no-one has to get hurt!”

Silence was the only answer she received.

“Were you actually expecting that to work?” asked Rainbow Dash, raising a brow.

“Well….maybe?” said the Alicorn weakly.

Dash snorted, “As if that creep would ever listen to what any of us say. Right , Fluttershy?”

The prismatic pegasus turned and saw her friend staring with wide eyes up at a nearby mound. Dash followed her eyes and gasped when she saw the thin, shadowy figure looking at them from the very top; she could see the sunlight reflecting off of the dagger that he had clutched in his hand.

“He’s here, Twilight!” shouted Dash, drawing her friend’s eyes to Zap.

There was a short silence, and then the creature let out a low wail and charged down the mound at them with his dagger raised.

They shouldn’t be here, they shouldn’t be here, they shouldn't be here! thought Ryan as he hurled himself at the shadows, their glowing ember eyes reminding him so much of his Master’s. Would they take him back to her? If they did, then his suffering would be legendary even amongst the accursed monsters of Tartarus.

“You can’t be here!” he roared, “You didn’t get your tickets checked and this is a private party!”

He saw one of the shadow’s ghostly faces fill with purple light and the next thing that he knew his dagger was being tugged out of his hand.

He tried to hold it, to keep his sword, but the cold metal was yanked from his hand, opening up a deep gash on his grimy palm that he barely felt above the searing agony of the magic.

He yowled like a drenched cat and lashed out, his claws slicing across the shadow’s cheek. The wicked phantom hissed in pain and dropped him. Ryan’s hand was smoking, the skin bubbling and leaking acid-hot fluids.

“I won’t let you pull me back into her belly.” he hissed leaping back and landing atop an old TV, “I am the King of the Rats! You shapes cannot touch me here!”

“Oh yeah?!” asked a shadow with wings and eyes that glowed blue,”We’ll see about that!”

He met her as she dived at him with a roar and the two tumbled to the ground in a tangle of limbs.

He grasped her by the neck, but she bucked him in the stomach and flipped him over onto his back, straddling him in a way that was sickeningly familiar, even with his hazy memories.

“I’m gonna pound you for scaring Fluttershy!” bellowed the shadow, her voice ringing like Zeus’s from the heights of Olympus.

“I don’t care if you are a god, Zeus!” Ryan hissed through his sharp teeth, “I will not be taken back, not by you.”

He clawed at her face, but she simply lifted him up and threw him into a nearby cabinet.

As he lay there he fancied he heard the rats, his subjects, mocking him for his failure to down the flying shade; their betrayal made him weep softly.

“I’m trying!” he whimpered, losing focus of his opponents and rolling into his deflated belly, “Please don’t leave me! I swear I won’t eat any more of you, you’re all I have.”

He turned back and saw the Purple Shadow advancing on him. Fear gripped his heart and he turned back to the scurrying shapes.

“Knights!” he cried, “Knights! Defend me! Slay them and I-I’ll not raise the taxes anymore, just s-stop them, please?”

The only thing that he heard from his loyal subjects was the sound of their tiny, melodic laughter.

Then they were gone, leaving him to face the shadows alone.

Twilight stopped her furious advance when she heard Zap cry out for his knights.

She and the others looked around, trying to pinpoint where the incoming attack was to take place, but no-one came to his aid.

The six exchanged confused glances before turning back to Zap, who was still tearfully pleading for the assistance of the unseen rats.

Something’s wrong. thought Twilight, her muscles still tense in preparation for battle, But what is it? He looks dirtier and he’s lost a lot of weight, but maybe his species’ metabolism is different from ours. But why is he talking to the rats? Why isn’t he acting all cocky and sadistic like he did when we first met him?

Then Zap whirled around to face them and Twilight saw his eyes.

They held a mixture of desperation, rage and pure animalistic fear; they were the eyes of someone who had been swallowed by madness.

“Uhhh...guys?” said Twilight.

“He’s gone crazy, hasn’t he?” asked Pinkie, sounding sad.

Twilight nodded mutely and then turned back to Zap, who was looking around wildly, probably trying to find a suitable weapon. Then she turned back to her friends and said, “Ready the Elements.”

The instant that the word “Elements” left her mouth Zap stood up and pointed at her with a grubby talon, hissing through his fangs like an angry viper.

“No!” he shouted, “I won’t let you take me back to the Master…. I won’t be thrown back into her eyes again, I am not her whore!”

The Mane 6 stopped mid-charge and looked at him with shocked expressions.

That gave the crazed creature enough time to start running.

Ryan fled from the shadows, the voices of the rats following him, commanding him to take up arms and fight the monsters like a true king.

But Ryan was now very much certain that he wasn’t a king, he wasn’t even a pauper or a duke, but what was he if not anything resembling royalty?

Who was he?

NO! That thought was poisonous, it opened big door that led to dark places that he didn’t want to see. Not after….not after he had seen Tartarus’ burning, cold depths. He could still remember how long he had screamed and how the intensity of his wailing was so great his throat bled and he broke his teeth into shards that drew blood for days when he talked.

Of course, the Master only poured salt in his wounds and used him like she did every other day. His pain seemed to only make her abuses even more sadistic.

Leave my head, leave, leave leaveleaveleaveleaveleave!

He was so focused on clearing those vile, repulsive memories away that he didn’t see the old, dirty beartrap until it was too late.

SNAP!!!

The sound of his bone breaking pushed all thoughts of his torment from his mind and down into a blazing inferno of pain.

Ryan fell, and his painful descent seemed to take an eternity, but when his emaciated body made contact with the cold, hard earth, his consciousness darkened and a nightmare-filled sleep overtook him.

“What do we do with ‘im, Twilight?” asked Applejack, gazing at the downed Zap with curiosity, disgust and more than a little pity.

“Well, we can’t leave him here.” said Twilight, prompting a “No duh!” from Rainbow Dash.

“He looks so….frail.” said Fluttershy, her blue eyes travelling the length of Zap’s twisted form.

“Looks can be deceiving, darling.” said Rarity, contempt for the creature burning in her eyes, “Why I bet he’s just waiting to strike right now.”

Fluttershy shook her head, “No, I don’t think so. He’s gone into shock, we should get him to a hospital.”

“Are you kidding me?!” shouted Dash, “After what he did? I say we just teleport him back to the palace and throw him in the deepest, darkest cell in the dungeons!”

“But he’ll die if we don’t help him!” cried Fluttershy, turning to Twilight, “I don’t think I could live with myself if I let anyone, even a monster, die when I could have helped them. Can we please take him to a hospital?”

“I agree With ‘Shy.” said Pinkie, her mane noticeably straighter, “Even if he IS a big meanie-pants, he still doesn’t deserve to die, no-one does.”

Twilight looked at all of her friends, then back at Zap, who had begun to whimper and twitch. Finally she turned back to Fluttershy and nodded, “We’ll take him to a hospital, but I’m going to put as many entrapment spells around his room as I can AND I intend to notify the princesses of his condition every hour on the hour.”

Fluttershy nodded and went to him with Twilight and Rarity by her side. They lifted him up, being careful not to jostle his wounded leg, and teleported him out of the desolate junkyard.

After they were gone a single rat, fat and greasy, trundled out of the darkness provided by a broken chariot and sniffed at the small pool of blood where Ryan had lain.

The rat bent over the pool and lapped a tiny bit up, then it spat the tainted stuff out and crept away, leaving the blood to dry.