I awoke to a clap of thunder overhead, rain pelted my face, I opened my eyes and sat up, what once was a small lake was barely a pond, the ground around was scorched and most of the trees surounding were lightly charred, the clothing I made had dissapeared, and my backpack was sitting in burned pieces nearby, my visor flickered to life and displayed a simple message.

[Minor damage repaired, toxin purged.] [WARNING: power levels low, recharge in progress]

My brain shook itself from sleep and I stumbled to my hooves...then immediately forgot that I had hooves instead of feet and flopped over, I tried again with more success and stumbled from the water to what remained of my pack. I grabbed the knife and what cloth I could salvage from the burned remains, I was too drained to make myself any kind of tools or clothing, So I walked to the nearest tree and collapsed, I fell back asleep and slept for a few hours before finally waking up with enough energy to do anything meaningful.

"Uhhhhhhhhggghhhhhh, my fucking brain...."

"Join us"

"Who the fuck!?"

"The hive urges you"

"Fucking Great! Just what I needed! My mind to ne even more fucked up!....dammit." I decided to ignore the weird nagging in the back of my head and just try to get somewhere useful. I was In a forest....honestly more of a jungle, at least my landing had scared off most of the animals. Further out I could see a couple more small ponds and streams. I grabbed my knife and hacked off a hefty tree branch to use as a rudimentary club to increase my range a bit. I flew up a bit and looked around, many miles out I could see civilization, and the seething blob writhing around it, my heart sunk and I realised that I was too far away to stop the little bastards, saving anyone would be impossible and the the odds were stacked too high to save anyone,I would have no chance of winning short of nuking the whole town. was still doing pretty bad on energy for my mechanical bits, enough so that even getting there would take too long to help at all so, I had no choice but to let it happen and trudge on.
***
I walked for a few hours before I saw the black and green mass, dissipate from around the town, immediately after the mass was far enough out, I took off. Flying as fast as I was, it was a bit of a struggle, forcing me to fly slow and close to the ground to take effect of the ground effect to save what precious energy I still had while it recharged.
*****
The town was in ruins...houses flattened, mutilated bodies strewn in the streets, changeling goo,and signs of a bloody firefight. The town was named Horseshoe prairie, and was probably in the mining industry based on the large number of rusted out diggers and equipment on the far side of town. My brain failed to comprehend how many had died, the expirience seemed almost surreal. Many of the bodies looked like the remnants of mortal kombat brutality moves, bodies bisected or ripped apart in some cases, others were piles of gore or just limbless torsos, several looked like they had been bitten in half, and a few had been reduced to puddles of goo with the odd bone or hair sticking out. Even though I had enough tolerance to survive the lab incident without puking, this was too much, I dry heaved several times before coming to my senses and continuing to trudge on.

After a hour of scrounging I had found and taken anything worth keeping or bringing along in memoriam to the town, I set the rest ablaze and left an anvil engraved as a tombstone at the entrance. I had seen too much, chrysalis needed to be ended, O felt a smoldering anger kindling inside me, whoever she thought she was, I was gonna rip her a new one, I checked up the things I gathered and set out to put a 30mm bullet through her head. I had gathered a few old guns from the houses...more for sentimental reasons, as I lacked any ammo, an old knapsack enchanted with something luna called the "bag of holding spell" which I found on the body of a unicorn wearing a doctor's labcoat it was filled with a few medical supplies and nothing else, a few photos, and some other things I would need or want to use later. It scared me how effective she was, not a sign of life, no survivors anywhere, all of the animals and pets were butchered with only bloody bones remaining, and any trace of food had been taken.
****
During my training luna had said at pne point that I have the second strangest dreams she had ever witnessed, only rivaled by discord, she had asked me why they were so radically different than most ponies, to which I responded with a simple "i dont know". This dream was different, it was calm, serene even, ahead of me was the monolith, silently sitting atop a small hill in what looked like somewhere in the great plains of the United States. It spoke with it's usual intensity to me and then fell silent.

"Find me. You will need it" after that It dissapeared, leaving only a set of coordinates floating where it once was. They matched the first set in my visor. I looked around for what felt like only a brief instant before I awoke.
*****
The coordinates were out of the way, I was desperate to try and help the situation with chrysalis, I hoped that visiting the physical presence of the mysterious talking brick would he worth it. I thought back to when I had first spoken to it, it basically said "here's some powers to not die, dont panic too much" and left it at that. I was grateful that it had done that..but I still had questions...maybe another time, I had a changeling ass to boot to pluto.
*****
As I came upon the alien slab I immediately felt rejuvinated? I walked up to it and waited, within a few seconds It woke and the lettering on its surface glowed a soft blue.

"I see you have made it, much has changed..."

"Completely true..."

"I see now that I was right in helping you, Traveler. I have watched your life in this world on occasion, and I realise that you do not know how to take full advantage of your abilities, you have done well thus far, but to have a fighting chance against the insects plaguing this world, you need more." I felt knowledge rush into my head, and the monolith continued. "There... I wish that we could stay and discuss, but I know you have much to do, so I will not impede you, I hope you return. Goodbye Traveler" the block also seemed less robotic, the first time it spoke it was robotic and distant, but now it spoke like a person...almost.
*****
I had one hell of an arsenal, my abilities were still very squed to attack and my defense was still crap (comparatively) but now I had one hell of a way to punt chrysalis 6 feet under. Apparently I had been using my abilities wrong, and I needed to change reactor modes to effectively make weapons and armor....would have been useful earlier....at least the monolith isn't a cold calculating logic machine, but sometimes personality is less important than ability to fufill a task properly.

I took to the air and dumped plasma out my wings until I was screaming along fast enough to get a similar effect to reentry.

"Woooooo!, Get some!" I yelled...or at least tried to, the wind noise and the fact that I was traveling faster than sound made sure to stop that, but even without the yelling I was still excited to give chrysalis one hell of a fight.

I stopped briefly in the everfree forest to stash my bag of not so useful stuff and mark it, and then continued on at ludicrous speed towards canterlot.

Author's Note

Again...rough.