Chapter 1

Kiss. A simple kiss.  What does it mean and what does it lead to.  Does it remind one of where their first one was, or perhaps where their life changed.   That’s what happened with me.  A kiss.  I woke up to a kiss from my stallion in my stable.  Safe and sound.  The lights were still off and the curtains drawn.  The perfect way to wake up was a nuzzle and kiss.  No sex, no foreplay; just cuddling with his forelegs across me and his hind leg between mine and over.

        That was so long ago I barely remember his face.  Now I wake up to a sting in my rear and the reminder of where I was.  A raider camp, somewhere.  Tied to the rusted floor with a tree stump under my belly so they can have access whenever they feel like; nails through my hooves to keep me in place.  I’m swollen, sore, beaten and about to be raped again.  I can’t even cry anymore and I don’t dare to use magic or they’ll beat me again and again until I beg like a foal for candy.

        Candy would be nice right about now.  “AH!”  It’s the second patrol guard this time.  I’m learning them by how they violate me.  Sad, really.  I don’t even know their faces or cutie marks, just how they rape me.  Violate my backside like it’s nothing to them but a quick release.  Vagina, anus, doesn’t matter.  They know it’s not safe to violate my mouth now, though.  I don’t have to taste their blood when I bite them and the beating I got was worth it.  Rape. Handle with care.

        Ha, he’s the quickest of them all.  “Done already?  Wimp,” I challenge him.  They won’t break me.  Ouch, ouch…  Pulling out slow, he’s the deviously smart one when it comes to this.  Knowing how much it hurts when he’s slow.  Even his lubrication stings me with its saltiness and stink.  I can’t help but whimper as he withdraws and I bet he thinks I enjoy it.

        “Hey, get off her, you fucking cock!” a mare shouted to the colt that was on me.

        It’s her.  Gun Powder. That isn’t her name, but it has to sound tough to survive here.  Out here in the wasteland that was supposed to be a garden of eden.  What a fool I was, all of us were, to come out here and believe the Overstallion of its safety and plenty.  I haven’t even seen anything green since I’ve been out here.

        Well, there’s the one that kisses my dock before he mounts me.  His coat is green.  Bit that’s not what I mean.  I wish I had somepony to talk to more often.

        “Are you okay, Cunt?” Powder asks me like she doesn’t know the answer.  I guess this’ how she started, too.  “I guess not.  I have some water to wash you, it’s not that clean but it’s better than nothing.”  I feel her lift my tail and grunt.  I must look awful back there.  She’s the nicest pony I’ve met out here and she’s still the one that lashes my side when I act up.

        The warm water washing over my backside hurts like always and my pipbuck is clicking, letting me know I’m being irradiated.  “Thank you,” I mumbled after the second pouring, “it’s nice to know somepony cares.”

        “A couple of us do.  It’s almost over, Cunt.  Only a little more of this and you’ll be let loose.  Remember what I told you,” she reminded me, “act broken and do what they tell you.  Eat what they offer.  Go where they point.  Okay?”  Yeah, like I’m their slave.  Give me an opening and I’ll kill every male here.  I… don’t know if I can do that.  Murder or self defense doesn’t matter.  I’ll be taking a life.

        “Yeah,” I replied weakly.  I can see my health is low in my pipbuck readout.  The golden bars are the only thing I have to look at sometimes in my HUD besides the other readouts and if they knew about the radio they’d cut off my left foreleg.  I know they would.  I can’t let them know I listen to DJ Pon3.  The music is all I have to keep me from going insane and giving in; breaking.

        “There ya go, Cunt.  You’re not looking so good, I’ll give you some Med-X to take the sting away, but the next stallion might be rough.  I’m almost out of meds for ya, Cunt.”

        “My name’s Swatter- AH!” she just slapped my fucking pussy!  Why the fuck?!

        “Your name is Cunt until you earn something better or the leader says otherwise!”

        “Yeah, whatever.”

        She was silent for almost twenty seconds before she leaned closer to my head. “I’m sorry, I had to.  I’ll try to keep you alive until they’re done with you.  Don’t use magic and take their meat, it’s almost over.  Trust me, we’re here for you.”  Then she was gone from my ear and slapped me too hard on my cutie mark with her cracked and broken hoof.  I felt blood trickling down my leg and a stallion laugh in the distance.

        I know it’s blood.  I know I bleed from my special place after they’re done with me.  I didn’t at first, but I know I’m so swollen and raw.  I haven’t even peed for two days.  What the hell does that say about me?  About my health?

        “I’m ready, you fucking pigs!” I scream in defiance, “do your worst!”

        “Don’t ask for it,” a stallion in the distance calls, “or you’ll be begging for it me to stop,” he said with a haughty laugh.  Others joined in.  Six of them.  Four males and two females, plus a couple scouts that take me for their three thrusts and then go back out into the wasteland for whatever they look for.  All I can do is pray no other pony comes here to be my replacement.  I wouldn’t wish this on anypony.

        The water felt good on my swollen backside.  I’m thankful for Powder, I think I need a talk with her later.  Maybe after I’m free I can escape and take her with me.  Wait, no.  She’s the one who nailed my hooves to the floor.  She’s as bad as them, we’re just females and we stick together… sort of.

        “Two weeks,” I mumble out loud to myself.  That’s how long I’ve been here.  I left my stable like a fool.  We were all fools to believe the Overstallion that this place was safe and full of life.  The seven of us were supposed to explore the area outside the stable and I think I’m the only one alive.  Worse yet is that the stable can hear everything happening to me.  They stopped sending me messages to hang in there and they’re praying for me to be set free days ago.

I can’t believe what they’ve heard being done to me.  It’s probably terrified them from ever leaving the stable again.  I hope we get another Overmare.  Mares are better leaders anyway.  Gosh, I hope I get released soon.  I’ve been looking at the same patch of rusted metal and old wood for over a week.  I wanna move and use a toothbrush, the small things in life I took for granted.  Even a shower of irradiated water would be nice to wash the filth from my coat.

Am I light blue or blue that’s been coated white?  I can’t even see myself anymore… this is the worst way to live, or die.  Great.  I’m getting philosophical again.  What else is there?  The same four songs on the radio?  The sound of hoofsteps around the little encampment here?  I can try to count the steps again… but no.  I guess it’s rest and sleep.

        I woke up to a hammer cracking into the tip of my hoof and my own scream of pain.  Normally hooves aren’t too sensitive on the outside, which helped when they nailed them all to the wooden floorboards… but I felt that strike up to my postern.  I lifted my head for the first time in a week and gasped at the stiffness in my neck before I screamed right in the face of the stallion with the hammer.

        “I’ll kill you, you coward!  I’ll fucking kill you!”  He looked at me as tears leaked from my eyes and down my cheeks before a quiet chuckle left the back of his throat and spread around me.  I looked around with my eyes and slowly turned my neck to see a dozen or more raiders behind me.  My tail fell and tried to cover my aching marehood.  I felt my ears fall and my heart ached at the thought of what they were going to do to me.

        “Cut her loose, Soda, we’ve got ourselves a new member,” the lead stallion said, “and let her keep her hooves.  Don’t need a hobbler to slow us down.”

        With a satisfied grunt the hammer was turned around in his mouth and placed to the head of the nail and rocked against my hoof sending cracks across the front of it.  It hurt, but I’d live.  Then he did my other forehoof and I stood.  Oh goodness did it hurt to stand and move.  My belly was formed to the log and I lost some good fur getting my belly off it, but the feeling of freedom was worth it.

        Soda freed my rear hooves and trotted to my front.  Before he could say anything I recognized his hoofsteps as the colt that loved to make my anus bleed.  I wasted no time and turned the hammer in his mouth and shoved it down his throat with my magic.  The claw end would make sure it’d stay put as I reared.  It hurt like I was being torn apart, but landing with both of my hooves on his forelegs was worth it.  The flesh tore and blood sprayed out onto my own forelimbs as he gagged on his own blood.  Cheering erupted behind me and I was ready to have my beating, after I gave him one.  Before they could get me I’d get him; I bucked back so they’d think before grabbing me and making me their toy again.  I raised my pipbuck high and brought it down onto Soda’s head with a gut wrenthcing crack.  He fell to the floor, his head bouncing twice as his body twitched.

        He was still alive and would live if he got any medical assistance, but I didn’t care.  I raised my hoof and pressed it to his cracked skull and pressed lightly.  I could’ve killed him with a twist, but I didn’t have it in me.  I spit on him as I lifted my hoof and lay back down.  I listened as the cheering entered my mind.  Some kind of coins were dropped behind me but I didn’t care.  I waited for the ropes to return.

        Instead I got a sharp stinging pain in my rump and a filling sensation… but this time it wasn’t like being raped.  I was getting a shot?  I felt a rush of energy and my backside stopped hurting, my hooves healed the oozing cracks, and my body felt fresher than it did a few seconds ago.

        “Get up, Cunt!  You’re one of us and I can’t wait to see what you have to offer,” Powder said with a rotten smile.  I never really saw her but I knew her breath and now I knew why it stank.  She only had a few teeth missing but the ones she had were rotten in a way I’d never hope to experience.

        She was purple.  Twilight Sparkle purple with a dirty yellow mane.  Gross.  The variety of ponies around me was marred by how similar they were.  The filth, uncleanliness, and harshness of this world was all over them.  I took a careful step back, then another until I stepped free of the log and turned away from it.  I hated that log.  Despised it.  I bucked it hard and sent it rolling back, over the husk of the stallion I’d nearly killed… and killed him.

        It wasn’t really me that killed him, it was the log, right?  I felt more coins hit my hooves and looked down.  There must have been twenty bottle caps at my hooves.  I was ushered away and a plate of… something was held in front of me.  I didn’t wait and gobbled it like it was the last thing I’d eat and didn’t even savor the taste of cram coated with sugar apple bombs.  I had just killed a pony and one of their own and they didn’t even care?  Raiders were crazy, psychotic!  But they made good food.  Yum.

        I wonder what they’d have me do first?  Something horrible, probably.  A stallion placed a hat on my head and whispered in my ear. “Conga.”

        “Huh?” I asked before a pony grabbed my hindquarters and I tensed up, ready to be plowed in a freshly healed hole.  But I heard a musical instrument and a steady rhythm that wasn’t sexual at all.  I felt a push behind me and stumbled as the pony shoved me to the beat.  I looked back to see either the whole gang having a sex train, or they were actually dancing.

        I couldn’t help but smile at the irony.  These horrible rapists, murderers, thieves were dancing with my as the leader?  I reared and took to my rear hooves and boxed the air with a whinney and landed, taking steps to the beat I laughed at my freedom.  My not being raped.  My life that was spared and the horrible pony I inadvertantly killed.

        The rest of the night was the biggest party I’d been a part of with alcohol, food, sex for those that wanted it, and bottlecaps were traded.  I had had several drinks and had taken my caps in a bag and fallen asleep hugging the bag to my chest.

        I woke up vomiting my last meal out onto some mare next to me.  She was out for the count and disgusting enough as it was, so I got up and moved to another spot.  The encampment was almost full of raiders and a few mostly sober guards did their job.  They actually ignored me and I didn’t care.  I noticed that my hair was pulling and stinging all over my back and sides.  The cum, damnit.  Still a reminder of what I’ve been through.  How long until I could wash it out?  Not soon enough.

        “Hey, Cunt.  You got a name?” a mare asked me from a pile of orgy exhausted ponies.  The mark of the stallions all over the area was a dead giveaway.

        “Swatter.”

        “Heh, I like it.  That’s a raiders name for sure.  Anyone fucks with you you’ll swat them with a fucking log,” she chuckled and lay her head down, nuzzling some stallion’s sheathed member before she burped.  I left her there, I wanted to leave them all, but where would I go now?  What would I do without resources or friends.  How far would I get with a bag of bottle caps and no currency.  What if caps are the currency?  It hadn’t come up, but makes some sense.  Not a lot, but some.

        I walked to where the dead raider had been butchered and what was left was just, awful.  I whispered an apology to him, only for taking his life though.  He deserved to die for everything he did to me.  I snarled and looked at what was left of his corpse and the hammer they left in his maw and turned away.  He wasn’t worth any more than that apology from me.

        I found a spot near where I was raped and violated for those weeks and lay down.  As much as I hated it, I was most comfortable there.  I hugged the bag close to me and fell back asleep.

        I woke up to a warm feeling on my back and hummed.  It was nice, like a shower.  In the wasteland?  Crap!  I rolled to my belly and looked at a stallion that was almost done peeing, his eyes closed and a dull look on his face.  He seriously was sleep peeing?!  What else was wrong with these ponies.  I didn’t know what time it was but I wasn’t tired anymore.  I’d been peed on a few times, but it’s not something one can just shake off.  At least it cleaned some of the hardened sperm from my hide.

        I sighed deeply and looked up to the clouded sky and the light that was starting to crest the horizon.  Beyond the wall of the sky was the sun and heavens we’d read about in books and seen in short videos.  I didn’t know it was clouded like this and if I’d known I wouldn’t have chosen this mission.

        I started to make my way to the edge of the encampment and stopped.  Maybe I’d be shot for crossing the line.  Maybe I needed to die.  I… was nearly broken as it was.  I crossed the imaginary line and kept walking.  “Be careful out there,” one guard said to me and cocked his rifle, “there’s beasties out at night.  Ya gotta shit, or something?”

        “...No, just walking.  Stretching my legs.”

        “Oh yeah, you’re the new member.  Better stretch them legs than your hole, right, Cunt?”

        “Swatter,” I corrected him.  Cunt wasn’t going to be my name.

        “Cunt Swatter?  I like it.  I’ll pass it on.”

        “Whatever,” I shook my head slightly and smirked at how stupid these ponies were.  I could run back to my stable in a couple days and they wouldn’t even chase me, I bet.  But as I looked at the brown sea of lifeless land before me it dawned on me that I was one of them, for the moment.  They weren’t trying to kill me and I couldn’t survive on my own with nothing but a bag of caps.  About thirty of them.  What was the cost of things?  Food, water, saddlebags or clothes?  My barding was shredded when I was being…  I need to stop thinking of what happened to me, it’s not healthy.

I need a way to get away from these ponies.  I’m not a raider, I’m a pony.  A sensible pony that…  I knew those hoofsteps.  Proud and confident, the gentle one that ploughed me gently and then one twice after I had swollen almost shut.  I turned to the right to see him, a pale blue stallion with a necklace of unicorn horns and a tattered blanket across his back covering most of his white mane and sides.

        I was slightly smitten by him, if only because he was the nicest colt I’d met out here so far, and that was based on how gently he raped me.  Something must have been wrong with me to think like that.  I didn’t smile at him, though.  I kept my neutral expression as he stopped a couple lengths away and poked at the ground.

        “H-howdy, ma’am.  Ah’m called Blue Balls, never caught your name,” he was so uncertain it was almost cute.  I couldn’t say anything though, it was awkward enough being allowed to live and become a sudden member of this group of horrible ponies.  Now I swear that this colt was flirting with me.  “Well, Ah’m rightly sorry fer what Ah did to ya before.  Never thought you’d live this long… Not that I was hopin’ you’d…” he paused and shook his head, “just, it’s nice ta see yer alive’n well.  This place changes us all, it’s nice ta know yer not gone,” he tapped his temple and the first thing I thought of was smashing his temple with the horns on his necklace.  Something might be wrong with me… Mixed feelings so far.

        “It’s nice to meet you, Balls.  I’ll see you later,” I said meekly.  I can’t let him know that I’m not broken, not yet.  I turned to face him and backed away, lowering my head as I left him.  He turned back to the encampment and disappeared in the crowd of sleeping ponies.  I didn’t know where to go or what to do.  Only that I had to survive anyway I knew how.  I could use my magic now, for all the good it got me.  First thing I did was killed one of my rapists, won’t mom be proud of me?

        I turned back the way I came and spotted the pony I’d bitten when he tried to shove it in my mouth and down my throat.  He was a guard and glaring at me.  I felt my marehood clench tight at I stared him down and approached him.  Neither one of us broke our gaze as I reached him and woke several ponies by walking over them and stepping on them.

        A few complained but stopped when they noticed the look on my face.  They know the look better than I did.  I stopped a length away and willed myself to not blink.  I wonder how many times he was behind me.  Was he the one who peed on me?  Was he the one who picked up my droppings and rubbed them into my mane?

        “Hey, Cunt.  Nice to see you’re walking normal, come for a free ride?” he grumbled at me.  And that was it.  I used my magic to tug his darn red mane down to the ground as I reared and kicked at his head with my forehooves, aiming for his eyes and cheeks.  I wasn’t new to combat, and I know what hurts the most.  Thanks to my broken hooves I managed to blind him quickly and send blood spilling from his face as he screamed and dropped his rifle.

        I picked it up and pressed the barrel into one of his eye sockets and fumbled with the firing of it.  He reared and knocked the gun to the ground and swiped blindly at me but was in no shape to fight.  All he did was started to scream profanities and bleed.  I heard the cheering again and a moment later they were all shouting ‘Cunt Swatter’ in a chant.  That wasn’t my name, damnit.  I picked up the gun and looked at it, bit onto it’s trigger like an earth pony would, then it fired.

        A chunk of his hind knee splattered and he fell to the floor as I aimed the gun at his head.  I should have ended his suffering but I wasn’t a monster, I couldn’t kill every pony that’d raped me.  I’d never know them all and some of these might be useful in keeping me alive, so I spat the gun to the ground and turned away, giving him a final treat of finally peeing for the first time in days, right onto his injured head.

        His scream was louder than the crowd and I have to admit that I was ashamed, but I kept peeing until my bladder was empty.  It was more than I’d ever let go and I think I got a lot of cred because the gang fell silent when I walked past them, through them, and around them.  It was almost eerily quiet as I made my way back to where I was nailed to the floor and looked at the dead pony again.  I pulled the hammer a bit and felt my stomach turn as I heard his jaw cracking around the tool so I pushed it in deeper and then pulled it from a meaty hole in his ribs.  It was covered in blood and meat from him.  I dropped the hammer from my inspections when I felt a pony touch my side.  I spun with a raised hoof that connected with a welding helmet, and I lost another piece of my hoof as the pony stumbled back.

        “Hey, Swatter, ya can’t kill every pony ya don’t like,” Powder said as she lifted the helmet.  I sniffled and lunged her into a tight hug.  I knew this could be the moment they saw me as weak and I didn’t care.  I’d just pissed on a pony that I’d blinded, I killed a pony a few hours before and before that I was a sex toy.  I let it all out in a series of roars, grunts, whines, and blubbering.

        The whole time I didn’t see any pony staring at me and she held me close through it all.  It was more than enough to make me feel like a pony again, but different at the same time.  I felt warm in her embrace and even though I didn’t wanna stop it, I let her go before I was done crying and moved away from her.  I thanked her and picked the hammer back up.  She lowered the helmet again and lowered herself into a combat crouch.

        I turned and brought the hammer down onto the head of the pony I’d killed again and again as I finished my bout of self-pity and sorrow.  I’d pulverized his head into chunks held together by what meat was left and moved the hammer beside me, held in my magic.  “I need saddlebags,” I said flatly.

        “I’ll get you some,” Powder said as she backed off and left me alone.  Ponies stared at me but stayed clear as I spun the hammer around in my magic and looked at it and the bits of pony that were on it.  I couldn’t believe that these ponies had skinned and taken so much meat from a barely dead pony.  It looked like a carcase that had been picked at for a couple days by buzzards.

        I felt the saddlebag hit my side and I startledly looked at it, then Powder.  “Got yer bag, Chief.  What’s the plan?”

        “Ch-chief?”  Well, it sounded better than Cunt Swatter.

        “That pony you beat up?  Former chief, Armor Sentry.  He was some soldier that took over, and you beat him, so now you’re the boss of the group.”

        My mind blanked for a second or ten. “Huhbazuhwah?”

        “The first day you’re in charge is to get you used to your position.  We’re raiders, not savages.  We have rules, rights, laws, everything a society needs.  Ours are just more bloody.  After your second day anypony can challenge you for leadership if they want to try it.  You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, so I’ll help you out.”

        “Uhm, hawah?  Uh, ahem… what?” I asked looking at the pony being hauled away with no hope of a successful life. “Well, first thing’s first, round up all the colts that raped me,” I told her as I began to slip the saddlebags onto my body.

        “Uh, shouldn’t you learn the laws and rules of our tribe before-”

        “Just do it.  I’ll learn as I go for a while.  This’ a joke, right?  Hazing the new pony?”

        “I wish.  Sentry was an asshole, but he ran a good operation.  The first thing you’re going to do is murder every rapist we have?  Bold,” she turned to begin gathering them, “stupid, but bold.”

        “Wait, I didn’t want them killed,” I said looking at her with some shock, “just, I want apologies.  No mare should have to have that happen to them in the first place, but an apology and community service has always worked.”

        “Yeah,” she turned back to me, “in the stable.  What you don’t know is that out here you’ve gotta stay strong or you’ll be eaten alive, and that’s a serious statement, CS.”

        “CS? … Oh, my name.  That’s not my name,” I started but she raised a hoof to silence me, “but it has to be…  crap.”  She nodded to me and gestured for me to conitnue. “You know, you’re a lot more civilized than I thought you’d be, no offence.”

        “Nah, not all of us were born into this.  My father,” she said taking a seat beside me as I put the hammer into the strap of my saddlebags, “was a caravaner.  He and my family went across Equestria trading whatever we had.  I was traded too; It turned out that nothing was off the market for my mother.  I was worth two hundred caps and a good quality brahmin so they could carry more stuff.

        “After a few trades and time as a slave I was skinny enough to slip out of my collar and ran away.  I joined up with a raider group near Hoofington before they melted in some stupid raid.  I was enough of a filly, so I became a Crusader for a while before getting caught by a group of slavers and was taken to the south where I was freed by a raider pack and brought into their family the same way you were.”

        “So, every mare-”

        “Is raped into the tribe?  No, just the unlucky ones.  Some fight their way in, others trade.  Still, most are born into this life and don’t know anything.  Most raiders are in gangs of just a few that have no rules and do whatever they want; even canabalism.”  She smiled when I winced at the thought of it.

        “So, we have rules?  Against canabalism?”

        She leaned and nuzzled my neck. “No, we have to survive and food can be hard to come by.  Mmm, tasty,” she said softly.  She laughed as I backed away quickly. “Just kidding, kind of.  While we’re not for it, we’re not against it.  The meat eaters don’t live off the stuff, since we’re ponies and can’t digest it right, but a bite now and then won’t kill us,” she said chomping her teeth at me.

        I was officially uncomfortable now.  I stood and kept an eye on her as she began to tell me the rules and laws of the tribe.  I found out there was a lot more to them than just raping, murdering crazies.  They actually were a small society with some aspects of civilization… but it was a lot of kill or be killed.  I could be challenged to a fight, or attacked at random.  If I lost, died, or gave up my position was theirs.

        My sparing the former chief showed that I was a violent but compassionate mare… I’d have gelded him if I’d had a little more time, but pissing on him showed that I had little mercy to give.  I was in the right spot to rule, even if I didn’t want to.  I couldn’t pass it on anypony else, and I was here for the long haul if I wanted to live.

        So, there I was.  A total mess of a mare in a half dozen ways, empty inside from what I’d done to two colts, and the leader of a tribe of raiders.  What else could happen to me today?

        Turns out a lot.  First I was a sex toy, then healed by some chemical concoction called Hydra.  Then I killed two ponies and became the leader of a tribe of civilized raiders… then I met the stallion I’d fall in love with.  His name was Falling Sun, a pegasus that was the kindest pony I’d ever been raped by.  Gosh, that sounds sick: I need a therapist, badly.

        Before I knew it he was following me and Powder around like a cat that was after some Brahmin milk.  He didn’t say anything and tried to stay hidden, but being blue didn’t help him hide in the small encampment.  I stopped and hid, giving him time to sneak close enough for me to give him a more formal introduction by slapping his side lightly enough to let him know I knew he was following me.

        “What’re you doing, following us?” Powder asked him with a sneer as she raised a hoof.  I didn’t notice she had a horseshoe with spiked on the bottom until then.  A punch would rend flesh instantly.  I really needed some barding.

        “S-sorry!  Ah, just wanted to make sure Swatter was okay… ya know, after everything.”

        “She’s fine, Cock.  Get out of here before I-”

        “No, wait,” I said to her as I looked at the blanket covering his wings move, “what’s that?”

        “My wings,” he said with some growing pride.

        “I’ll rip them off if you don’t-”

        “Wings?  So, you’re a pegasus?” I asked.

        “Are you even listening to-”

        “Yup.  Reckon I was since birth.  Born ‘n raised down here,” he stomped the floor once and stood taller with a smile.

        “Well, good for you.  I need a guard, you want it?”

        “Hey, why aren’t you listening to-”

        “Um, I-I don’t know.  You’re doing fine yourself,” he said.

        I looked to Powder and smirked. “I need a lieutenant, interested?”  That shut her up, she stammered and worked her jaw in silence. “I’m starting a militant organization, if you don’t like it you can offer some advice, but I need a leadership team and you,” I looked to powder, “are tough and kind while you,” I looked to Sun and then glanced to the sky, “can keep a lookout for dangers to me and the tribe.”

        They looked at each other then to me. “You’re crazy,” Powder said flatly, “you plan to change everything in a day?  It can’t happen, you’ll be killed first thing in the morning.”

        “She’s right, no pony wants to change the world in a day, much less a group of raiders.  We’re raiders, there’s an insanity that comes with what we do.  We can’t organize.”

        I smirked at him and turned to walk past him, keeping my tail low and covering my parts as I found a place to get everyponies attention. “Ponies, wake up and listen to your new boss,” I shouted.  They didn’t really move until I pulled the bloodied hammer from my side, “now or I’ll kill you myself!”

        That got them moving to wake up the rest and look at me with their filthy bodies and expressions.  I noticed most were so thin I could count their ribs and took note I’d become the same way over the past weeks.  All the filling I got should have-  Stop it, brain.

        “I’m the boss, so the first thing I’m doing is assigning Powder here to be my right hoof mare and Blue Balls here,” there was a chuckling through the crowd, “as my personal guard.  I need a few leaders to step forward!”  They looked amongst each other and finally a couple pushed their way to the front.

        “That’s it?  Two leaders out of all you?!  Fine, you’re my sergeants!  You’re top of the bottom,” I pointed to the two who pointed to themselves, then each other in confusion, “when you’re given a command you and your group will do it in the best way you know how,” I sneered at them and looked to Powder with a frown, “by raiding.”

        A cheer rose from the crowd.

        “Split into two groups behind your leader, ponies!” they complied and I had a platoon just like that.  If I had a way to, I’d have ribbed Powder.  Instead I stood as tall as I could and looked amongst the twenty ponies below me.  I had my own small army, and all it took was ten minutes… maybe this wasn’t such a bad thing.