Mitchell

8th November 2037
“No! I'm not going!” I protested, I was not going, I would never go. Ever. I knew what that Potion did to people, messing with their heads and all. Stan was clenching his fists so hard his knuckles were turning white, glowering at mum and dad in silent fury.

“Don't be difficult, Mitchell,” my Dad sighed, “don't make me drag you into the car,”

“You know you wouldn't,” I fired back. Glaring at him.

“He’s right,” Stan agreed with me, “Mitch and I are staying human, we’re not going to the Bureau with you, ‘kay?”

“No,” Mum replied, “this was a family decision.”

“No it fucking wasn't, you two decided that this would be a bloody good idea last night.” I yelled at her.

She slapped me. Rings and all. It stung like a bitch, a sharp noise resounding when it happened.

I was stunned, Stan looked horrified, it was the first time Mum had slapped any of us.

I ran. Out the door, swiping the car keys from the windowsill, where Dad had put them as we were about to go out. Stan ran after me.

“Mitch, where are you going?” He called out to me as I unlocked the car,

“Away from them,” I grunted,

“Mitch, you barely know how to drive,” Stan sighed, “I'm coming too, I'm not letting them turn me into a horse.”

“But where are we going to go?” I asked as he clambered into the driver's seat and I rode shotgun.

“Where do you think?” He replied, “the HLF.”

“Why there?” I questioned,

“Because we have nowhere else to go. Wake up, Mitchell. It's your watch again. WAKE UP!”

Unknown date. October-December, 2048.

“GAH!” I jolted out of the hard prison mattress and bumped my head against the top bunk, “ow, damn,” I muttered, rubbing my head.

“Mitchell, it's been 4 hours.” Trey said.

“What? Already?” I grunted, he nodded as conformation.

“Yippie,” I groaned, “c’mon man, it's 3am. It's when creatures are at their weakest. When most deaths occur in hospitals. Can't we just skip watch tonight?”

“Fine with me. I wanted to check out the armory.” He said, as he had his flashlight on pointing to the ground. “We might find something useful.”

“Fair enough,” I replied, rubbing my eyes. Thoughts drifting to my dream as I donned my trench-coat and got my flashlight out of my bag. Why did mum and dad do that to us? Why couldn't they have just left us alone?

We began walking by the hall in the middle of the night. I could see Trey had his portable hacking station with him as he illuminated the way with his flashlight.
“Kinda creepy...” He said. “Like, imagine one of those horses suddenly appears… right by the corner...”

“Why can't more places have solar panels? At least then there’d be power for lighting,” I commented, “this place, it's eerie enough as a prison in the first place.” if one of those fuckers did pop up, I’d put a bullet into its skull I wanted to add but refrained from saying it.

We kept walking for a few minutes, while crickets were heard outside. Trey’s flashlight illuminating the way as we walked. That was, until we found a metal door without handle, with the word “Armory” on top. It had a keypad on the wall. Trey could surely hack its password, but there was no power.

“Let’s see here...” Trey said to himself as he gave me the flashlight and forced the plastic keypad open, revealing cables and other components. Trey disconnected one of the cables while he took his portable terminal cable, connecting it to the keypad. The small screen illuminated. “I’ll just make it share it’s battery to work...”

“Hey, when we’re done in here, can we go to the communications room? I want to take a look at the radios here, maybe I can talk to Stan. Haven't talked to him since before we arrived here in the past.” I said.

I haven't seen his face in years. We parted ways one week before England was destroyed by the Barrier. Whilst Trey never saw much action in the HLF, I saw almost too much of it. People literally vaporised by Purity Patrols, others shown no mercy and ponified by force. A child and a mother, the child couldn't have been older than seven. Probably too young to understand what was happening, the potion forced down her throat as her mother watched in grief. Then the child turned on her own mother. I had to shoot it and the pony that ponified him before they got her mother. There isn't a day that goes by without my thoughts dwelling on that child in shame. Still, it had to happen. It was the enemy and would've ponified it's own mother without a second thought.

“Sure, just give me a second aaand...” Trey said, as lots of code moved through the screen while he typed on the small keyboard. Suddenly, the thick metal door made a loud “click”, making both of us jump for a moment. The door to the armory was now open.
“There we go, heh.”

I walked into that room like a kid on Christmas Day. Pouring over the weapons and ammunition and marvelling at it all when a slight problem popped into my head.

“Hey, Trey, where are we going to store all our stuff? We can't carry everything around in backpacks.” I asked my companion.

“We’ll just take what is necessary, so choose wisely...” Trey responded as he walked in, placing his hacking station back to his backpack. He began to search inside the metallic drawers.

“Whatever’s necessary, got it,” I replied and took a closer look around. I'm not a big fan of automatic rifles, I prefer just hand cannons. They're easier to use but it won't be much use in a proper shoot-out situation, which we might very well end up in.

My eyes felt drawn towards a rather magnificent looking, old but still looked like it fired true, BMCR Combat rifle. I walked over to it and picked it up, getting a feel for its weight. Not too shabby I thought to myself.

I picked up my Glock, which I placed onto a table to pick up the rifle. I put the Glock into the holster that I had for it which I looted from the dead body of a HLF member.

“Perfect.” Trey said. “Thermal imploders. Best. Explosives. Ever.”

“Grenades?” I asked as I turned to face him.

“Oh yes, but not just a regular grenade.” He said as he took one from the open drawer.

“I'm not that keen on grenades; too messy,” I commented, rummaging around for ammunition.

“I’m taking some with me.” Trey said as he took about 5, placing them into his backpack. Trey then kept looking around, as I did the same.

“Better safe than sorry, I suppose,” I said, “you taking a new gun?”

“Yeah, I’m still looking” Trey said back, as be opened other drawers. “Oh, there we go.” He said as he dropped a stun-gun, a couple of batteries and some extra ammunition into his backpack.

“Why the stun gun? Best to just end them where they stand. You know they don't want to be ponies, whatever that Potion does to them it kills them, they just don't know it yet. The human part of them wants to die.” I said.

“Well... I guess it could come in handy if we need to capture somepony alive and we need information like I tried last time.” Trey said back. “And yeah, I’m still not completely comfortable with killing them. But I will if necessary, I’m sure of it.”

“Fair enough,” I shrugged, “is this all we need from here?”

“I guess...” Trey said, looking at the fair amount of guns and ammo still left. “So, you wanted to check out the prison’s radio?” Trey said as he put his backpack on and held his flashlight.

“Yeah, it seems like a good time to try and make contact with Stan. To make myself clear, I am telling Stan about how he can avoid his death and I will explain the time travel business,” I stated.

“Wait, so you’re telling him about the time machine? We weren’t allowed that, remember?”

“Clark is dead, his rules died with him. This is my brother and you’re not going to stop me from telling him,” I coldly replied.

“Mitchell, think on what you’re doing” Trey said, avoiding raising his voice too much. “Telling him about the machine could screw everything up! You can warn him without giving him an explanation on how you know!” He responded, still lowering his voice.

“He’s my older brother, I’ve thought about this long and hard. I am telling him. I’d trust him with my life. You would if it was a relative of yours, would you not?” I asked.

“I… it’s complicated. You’re putting the life of BILLIONS of people at risk.” Trey said back.

“This whole mission could be a waste anyway, who’s to say the Mortuum C actually works? bloody hell the thing’s never been tested! I'm telling him, I don't care how risky it is,” I argued, slowly getting more and more angry.

“It’s the best shot we got! And IF it works, your brother will get transformed back to normal, remember?”

“And if it doesn't, he’ll be stuck as one forever! I'm not willing to take that risk!” I clenched my fists. Trey doesn't know, he doesn't understand what it was like to receive that news that your brother is now your enemy and will be killed on sight.

“You said it yourself: if it doesn’t work, he’ll be stuck as one forever. If it doesn’t work, he WILL get converted at some point. If it does work, he’ll be saved.” Trey said back. “I’m not stopping you from warning him and saving him, but I don’t think it’s necessary that he knows about the time machine. And by the way, Clark is technically still alive, so...” Trey said, as he shrugged with his shoulders.

“Not our Clark. That Clark has no idea whether his crazy plan worked or not. You don't know my brother, he’ll just think I'm joking around if I don't tell him how I know. You have that book with all the key events from now until the time travel day, Trey, the best course of action would be to tell every piece of resistance we can about it them, it’ll give us the edge on Celestia, she’ll never expect it.”

“And all it takes is for ONE single newfoal to be made of them and it all goes to waste. I trust Clark’s intended plan. I know it sounds wrong at first, but all of those HLF bases will have to be sacrificed TEMPORARILY until we kill the tyrant. If she dies, everyone gets changed back. If the Mortuum C doesn’t work and we warned them as you say, they’d get converted sooner or later, as their only chance of keeping their humanity, the Mortuum C, would of have failed. Warning those bases not only will it change the timeline and make our safe traveling to California harder, but it would risk everything if just ONE of them gets converted. Everyone you know: Stan, your parents, the whole goddamn human race! Would stay forever converted as those smiling fucks. Our buildings demolished, our history erased, our inventions eradicated! It would only take one person with the knowledge of the time machine to get converted, and it would all end right then and there. The less people know this, the better. So I don’t care what it takes, but if you warn your brother, you’ll have to either convince him without giving him an explanation, or ask him to keep the time-travel stuff secret… and kill himself if he’s about to get converted.” Trey finally said as he walked out the armory and began to search for the radio room.

I aimed my rifle at his back. It was so tempting, just one shot, one squeeze of the trigger. I could pull this off alone, my way. My trigger finger was itching me to press down, my mind was extremely conflicted. Could I do it though? Could I kill him in cold blood?

I've seen so much wrong, done so much wrong myself, surely one more bit of blood spilled onto my hands wouldn't make that much difference, but… He’s my only companion, he’s the one with all the fancy technology, he’s the one who knows how to use it and where to find everything; the E.D Mark One, the Mortuum C. As much as I hate to admit it, I need him alive. Killing him, no matter how much I want to, would be suicide. The end of the human race perhaps. But that doesn't mean I'm going to let him boss me around and just do what he says. I lowered my gaze from the rifle’s sight and followed after Trey, knowing full well what I am going to do.

Author's Note

A/N
MichaelTheBoss: Well that just happened. I can't say I really have a comment for this so yeah. Sorry about the late upload, stuff happened at there wasn't much time to write this. Anything to say, hourglass?
hourglass24: Less talking and more action planned for the next chapters, so stay tuned!
MichaelTheBoss: And as always, have a good day/night,

MichaelTheBoss.