I Guardian

My first glimpse of the outside world was brief at best before the whole yelling match yesterday. Now as we all stood on the doorstep of the house we all gazed in shock and dismay at what now existed of the town of Ponyville.

Smoke rolled up in choking billows from the surrounding buildings, the last of the flaming tongues of fire dying with the lack of fresh fuel and oxygen. All I smelt was burnt things. Wood, and a more foul smell of hair and something even worse. Dotted around what I could see of the town were bodies. Some human, others ponies, their blood and guts spilled on the ground. I would have lost my lunch, but my stomach had nothing in it to throw up. The best I could do was to turn away and dry heaved against the wall. By the sound of it, the girls weren't fairing much better. Once I hacked up anything my body decided it didn't need, I steadied my breathing and looked back to the sickening sight.

I wasn't sure what to feel. I felt sick and fear like I've never felt before, but all that rage and anger that people at home used to say you'd feel in a combat zone, or the stuff you read in books, wasn't there. I would say the biggest emotion I felt was confusion. Why did this happen? Who did this? Was it that Hunter from last night? Was he apart of a group? Or was it their pray, or something worse? As scared as I was, walking around with a huddled group behind me, I felt like this place was safe. Okay, that's weird, right? Here this town gets massacred, and now I feel safe? But I felt like the attack had already happened, so there wasn't going to be a second wave of whatever it was that slaughtered everybody...A real morbid way to bring relief really.

We made it through the town in silence. A time or two we stopped, letting the girls spend a minute or two to grieve over some lost friends, but for the most part, we kept moving. Once at the edge of town, I understood what Twilight meant about the cities and towns having walls. Running along the perimeter of the town were long slender pulls sticking up every fifty meters. A generator near the front gate sat dead, black from some sort of power surge, or perhaps the fire started from here.

“That kept the wall up.” Twilight spoke up. She still seemed to be in a slight daze over how utterly complete the destruction was of the town.

“What do you think caused it to stop?” Pinkie asked. Once again, her hair was deflated, and her eyes were constantly running.

It was then that I had a strange epiphany. An insight, if you will, to what a guardian should be. I patted her head, crouching down to her level, these ponies were about stomach high to me, and whipped away her tears.

“I'm not going to blow smoke up your ass and tell you it's going to be okay.” That statement earned me a nasty look from Rarity. “But I will tell you we've got to be strong, and something tells me that you can be the strongest, bravest pony in the group. You think you can do that for me?”

Good Lord! I freakin' sound like I'm talking to a twelve year old! But it was the only thing I could thing to say.

Pinkie sniffled again, dried her ears with a hoof and did her best to give me a smile. Patting her head again, I stood up, feeling all their eyes on me.

“Look...I might not be the bravest person in the world, but I'll do my best to keep you all in one piece. It's going to get rocky, but we've got to stick together. If you can support and trust me, I'll do the same.”

AJ, Rainbow Dash, Rarity and Fluttershy all nodded. Pinkie whipped away a few more tears, and Twilight seemed have a small, smug, smile. I could almost hear her thoughts, saying something like 'not bad, for a human.'

It's funny. When you start doing something, and responsibility is thrust upon you, you start finding that you think differently about yourself. Mind you, I have absolutely no fucking clue how to do wilderness survival. Hell, the only way I made it through boyscout camp outs was starving until someone cooked for me, or until we got drive thru on the way home. And my mom wondered how I lost weight so fast on those three day camp outs.

But as we started walking through the vast rolling plains that lead to a large jagged mountain, I fixed my eyes on the large castle that I could only guess was our destination.

“How far away is that?” I asked Twilight. I was never very good at guessing distances.

“It's about sixty-five miles.” I sighed. “Yeah. It's going to take a while.”