Author's Note
Timeline Note: The events depicted in this story occur immediately before Ocalhoun's The Unfortunate Stabbing of Nurse Redheart, which I recommend you read before continuing with this story.
Last Chance
My teeth rip into another trash bag, and my eyes go to the colorful flyer sticking out of the refuse: "Fillydelphia: Equestria's Second City. The City of Pony Love!"
I'll never forget the first time I saw that catchphrase, splayed across a massive billboard next to the train station. It was the first thing I saw when I arrived here. I was fresh off the train from the middle of nowhere with a high school diploma in my saddlebags, bits on the brain, and stars in my eyes.
I still remember standing on that platform nearly two years ago, watching the train roll away to another far off city, and smiling. I smiled because I knew there was no going back after that. Even if my ticket hadn’t been one-way only, there was nothing for me to go back to except for barren, untended fields, and parents who were too drunk to care.
I used to wonder how long it would take them to notice I was gone. Maybe they thought I ran off with that cute mare who helped run the town general store. Maybe they just assumed I was dead.
Looking at the wilted lettuce and stale bread that I just pulled out of the bottom of that trash bag, I have to wonder if I’m not already dead myself.
It seemed like just yesterday I was trotting down the street, suit pressed, mane styled, and ready to tackle another day at work. It wasn’t always glamorous, but in a few short months my diploma, my knack for numbers, and my wits had taken me from the mailroom to a plum job as the personal assistant to one of the city’s best known bankers.
‘Work hard, play harder.’ That was the mantra of the city, and it soon became my personal creed as well. Long days at the office became even longer nights, all sandwiched between weekends filled with all manner of debauchery. That shady motel became a converted loft apartment in the newly gentrified upper west side. My wardrobe was designer, and my mane and tail style were every bit as expensive as they looked.
Food, drink, dancing, mares. All of them were mine for the taking, sometimes all at once. I had never lived that fast, and it was more addicting than the imported salt licks I used to buy from that boutique store in Fairmount. But as long as the bits were coming and the booze was flowing, I couldn’t have cared less.
The funny thing about a runaway train is, you never know it’s out of control until it’s too late. And by then, well… it’s never a pretty sight.
Turns out, for years my boss had been shifting clients’ money to a private account at a Neighponese bank, then cooking the books to cover his tracks. Tens of thousands of bits had been stolen, and thousands more would have followed, if that Fancy Pants fella from Canterlot hadn’t sniffed out the ruse. He roped the boss along the entire time, waiting for the perfect moment to pull the rug right out from beneath him.
I knew nothing about any of it, of course; none of us did. Like wives, the employees are always the last to know. But that didn’t help me one bucking bit when the bank collapsed overnight, setting off a domino effect that wiped out thousands of innocent ponies. We all became pariahs in an instant, blackballed from one end of town to the other. The few among us who found a new job at all were either flipping oat burgers or cleaning movie theater bathrooms for next to nothing.
I tried to turn to my so-called friends for help, but they disappeared even faster than the bits. All of a sudden, nopony had time to even talk to me, much less help me out, and in a high priced city like this one, my meager savings ran out in less than three months. I spent the last few weeks of solvency in the same rat-infested motel I had started in, rationing my food and using cheap bathroom soap to keep my last suit somewhat presentable.
I never caught him in the act, but I know the fat hotel manager laughed his flank off every time I passed his office on the way to hoof out my resume one more time. I wonder if I’m not unique, if I’m really just one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of ponies he’s seen come and go from his hotel in the same manner, as if he was the gatekeeper to the city; an intake of fresh meat, and a disposal for the refuse after it’s been chewed up.
My ears perk to the sound of a cart rumbling past on the street. I hold up a dirty, chipped hoof against the setting sun, and I can just make out the local food pantry’s logo on the side of the cart. I watch intently as the cart slows, then stops at the end of the alley. I can almost feel the blood boiling in my veins. “C’mon, I dare ya…” The cart stays put for a moment, then lurches back into motion and rolls away. “Heh, figures…” I grumble before taking a bite from the end of what used to be a fresh loaf of Prench bread.
The pantry used to be my primary source of food… until some jerk walking down the street recognized me while I was waiting in line and made sure everypony within earshot knew just who I was. After that, the food pantry always seemed to be out of everything when I’d come around.
The last time one of their goody-four-hooves volunteers showed up with promises of hot soup and a smile, I promptly sent them back with a bloody muzzle and a missing tooth.
The soup was still good, though.
How long ago was that now? Heck, how long have I been out here, for that matter? Six months? Nine? More? Day, night, entire weeks bleed together into an endless loop of scrounging for food, begging for bits, and drinking enough to mask everything else. Maybe I should get drunk enough to pass out in the street, so somepony sees me and has to call for an ambulance again. At least I’d get a hot meal and a decent bed out of it.
If I was really lucky, I’d get to see her again: long pink mane tied in a bun, a smooth tail that curls just so, and those brilliant baby blue eyes. More than once have I opened my hung over eyes to her smiling face, and dared to hope Celestia had taken pity on me and sent me to Elysium.
Most of the hospital staff want nothing to do with me. Either they know who I was, or they don’t want dirty bums like me clogging up their pristine facilities.
But she isn’t like that. She cares. I can see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice. Even her name is a perfect fit for her: Redheart. I have no clue where she’s from, but it sure as tartarus isn’t Fillydelphia. She’s too kind to have been raised by this ugly, soulless place.
Redheart does her best to patch me up every time she sees me turn up in her emergency room, and to stall her bosses as long as she can before she has to send me back out here. One time she even slipped an extra packet of medicine and a dozen bits in the pocket of my coat before she let me go. I told her thank you, and even now, part of her response echoes in the back of my drunken mind.
“Everypony deserves another chance.”
She’s right, too. We all deserve another chance to do better, to succeed, to fix our mistakes. But not in this Luna forsaken city. Here, you get one shot, and one shot only… and if you mess up, you end up here. Broke, drunk, homeless, and dead inside; stripped of wealth, clothing, shelter, even dignity. This city doesn’t change ponies, it breaks them. And it broke me wholly and completely, then went right back to its revelry as if all was still right in the world.
Buck Fillydelphia. Buck the high rises, with their gilded peaks and polished marble columns. Buck the fancy stores and boutiques, with their gaudy signs and expensive prices, all meant to sucker in ponies with more bits than sense.
But most importantly, buck the ponies who live here. Buck them straight to Tartarus. They are the rot – the cancer – that consumed this city from inside out, devouring everything in their path just to buy one more bauble, or to attend one more gala… and all to uphold a reputation that they invented out of nothing more than bluster and chutzpah, and built on the backs of every pony like me, who became so much manure under their hooves.
They look down on me like I’m not even a pony, like I’m just some heap of poor, criminal trash to be kicked back into the shadows again and again. Who would they hate more? The pony I was?
Or the monster they helped create?
I reach for another bite of the bread when an odd sound catches my attention.
Wh—what was that?
I perk my ears and catch a splashing sound, and the clip-clop of hooves. Oh, somepony trying to shortcut through my alley? At night? Probably some naive tourist, though I really hope it’s some rich plothole on their way back to their mansion. At least I know they’ll have something on them that I can pawn. As I crouch beside the dumpster, I spot what looks like a worn out kitchen knife on the ground beneath it, and grab it. Just in case they decide to fight back.
Alright, hoofsteps are closing in. Just gotta squeeze as far back behind this dumpster as possible; there, perfect. Any second now… almost there… Now!
I lunge out from the shadows and tackle the stranger against the brick wall. I don’t even try to size up my target yet, I just hit them as hard as I can.
“Gimme your money!”
The pony bounces off the wall with a yelp, then presses back against it with a pained whimper. “I… I didn’t bring my—”
A mare’s voice for sure, and one full of sheer terror and panic. Good, an even easier target.
“Gimme your bucking money!”
I’m about to yank her down and search her for bits when a dull yellow glow pierces the darkness. Buck, it’s that old mare on the third level, and she’s the type to call for the guard too! Panic and fear fill me instantly, and my mind retreats to the only thing that’s kept me alive this long.
Fight.
I spin around on my hooves, knife at the ready, and swing as hard as I can. The knife plunges into her chest with a thud, but instead of collapsing, or even screaming, she just stands there, seemingly frozen in place.
I rear back and swing again. She tries to block me, but all that does is send my knife into her side instead. The sickening squelch of blade into flesh sickens and excites me all at once. The rush consumes me now, and a desperate rage fills my every nerve with white-hot fire. I swing with wild abandon, twisting, pulling, hilting the blade every time as I rage against this avatar of everything I hate, everything I despise, everything this Luna-damned place has taken from me.
She’s staggering, and just before I land another blow, the light finally catches her eyes. They’re wide as dinner plates, filled with utter terror—
And colored in the most beautiful baby blue.
Baby blue?
I freeze. No, it– it can’t be. Please please please…
I look again and I see it. Long pink mane tied in a bun. Curled, pink tail. And those eyes… oh Celestia, it’s her.
Redheart.
I drop the knife as if it were a hot coal and run. I can’t look back. I want to, I should, but I just can’t. I know in what’s left of my soul that she’ll die out there. Redheart. I killed Redheart. The only pony who cared, the only pony who showed me real kindness.
The pony who kept giving me another chance.
And I repay her by spilling her blood for nothing.
Her wide, painful gaze fills my mind. The thud of the knife in her flesh rings in my ear like a gong, each one crushing what little is left of me into dust. As I gallop away, I swear I can hear a choked cry for help echoing around me, begging for help, for salvation.
It pleads for another chance…
A chance I denied.
Something inside of me breaks, and I make a sharp turn to the west. I gallop through the wet streets as fast as I can, barreling through intersections and around corners, leaving a spray of dirty water and tears in my wake. My right foreleg throbs, but I haven’t the stomach, or now the right, to acknowledge the pain. How can I, when I know that same hoof left a river of innocent blood flowing across a dirty street in the middle of the night?
A shrill whistle echoes down the streets as I rush up the path to the train station just outside the city center. Without pausing, I jump the row of entry gates, squeeze between two fences, and run down the tracks away from the main platform.
I feel a low rumble coming through the ground, then a loud whistle. Seconds later, a cone of bright light begins to come around the nearest bend.
“I’m sorry, Redheart.”
The rumble becomes a roar, the whistle a banshee. I can feel the ground shaking beneath me. The light is in full view now, and moving closer every second.
“You deserved another chance.”
Just before the light fills my vision, I see a familiar sight:
"Fillydelphia: Equestria's Second City. The City of Pony Love!"
I'll never forget that billboard.
It’s the last thing I’ll see before—
