When I could finally see again, I was slimy, coated in… something… and couldn’t see an inch in front of my muzzle. Lighting my Pip-Buck, I instantly regret it. I wasn’t alone. Snarling at me from across the… place… was something that looked like an ancient Timber Wolf. Rather than sticks and leaves, it was made of flesh and bone, but it was all wrong. Far too many bones, far too much flesh. No hair. And it was all in the wrong place. My Pip-Buck immediately knew it. Death Hound. I didn’t know anything about it, and neither did my Pip-Buck.

Scanning through my inventory, I saw that I had the timer. I’d managed to stuff it into my inventory before getting eaten. Great. Now when someone found the pile of shit containing my Pip-Buck and went through my inventory, they’d have the Timer. By then, Granite, Aqua and Frost will have collected the last few pieces, made the bomb, and saved the world. They’d find a different timer.

An explosion rocked my prison, but instead of tearing a hole open for me to escape, all it did was piss off the thing that had eaten me. Scared the Hound to hell and back though. I threw my hooves over my head as it started scrambling around the small space. It stepped on me a couple of times before it twisted its leg and tumbled over, howling in pain. As the both of us came to a stop, I held out my hoof to it, showing that I was unarmed and not dangerous. I just wanted to help. It snarled out me but let me approach. It didn’t even snap at me until I touched its leg. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t jerk back. I’d had a baby molerat when I was little and I knew how to handle injured animals.

The Hound kept snarling even as my horn lit. Its snarl soon died down as I applied the healing spell I’d taught myself from a note that Pip had given me. “There… all better.” I said, my voice hoarse from a lack of oxygen. The Hound stared at me as I backed away from it, climbing up onto a slightly less acid covered section of stomach. Laying down, I smiled at it as I closed my eyes. If I was gonna die and become food for a giant dragon, I was at least gonna do something nice before I went. Darkness took me again as I felt myself drifting.

~~~~~~~~

Pain on my chest jerked me awake, but I kept my eyes closed. I just wanted to sleep. Everything hurt, and this pressure was just making it worse. A pair of lips on mine were a pleasant surprise. Then it happened. Life giving air was forced into my lungs. I could hear my heart thundering in my chest. Then the pain again. It felt like someone was trying to crush my ribs. Then the kiss and life giving air. This time my lungs couldn’t hold anymore. There was too much liquid. As soon as the lips left mine, I jerked upright and retched. I may have puked on the pony who had just kissed me, but it wasn’t coming from my stomach.

“What… where…” I asked, my eyes still blurry. Suddenly I was wrapped in bandages and limbs and the air I had just been given was crushed out of me again.

“We thought we’d lost you kid.” Granite said as he squeezed the life out of me. Granite Ash. The raider who had come to destroy my home and kidnap me not very long ago. Was worried about me.

“Granny, let her breath.” A voice I thought I wouldn’t hear again, ever, said. I looked up and tears came to my eyes. I would have stood up but I couldn’t feel my legs. Any of them. Seeing me turning my head towards my body, Frost touched my cheek. “Ruby, I want you to know we tried to get to you as fast as we could…” She said as she set my Pipbuck down next to me. It was burned badly. The leather would need replaced, the metal needed polishing, and the screen needed a very hefty cleaning. But it wasn’t on me.

Swallowing, I turned my head slowly. Where my left foreleg should have been, there was nothing. My Pipbuck was where my right foreleg would have been, with me laying on my side. Ok… so I lost my front legs… no big deal… The thought died in my mind as I continued down. My hind legs were gone. Where they were supposed to be were burned stumps. “We… we had to burn the wounds closed…” Frost says somewhere far, far away. All I can see is my fleshy tube of a body. I’m thinner, much thinner than I was before going to get the timer. I can see my ribs. My tail is missing patches and much shorter than before. My mane is completely gone, and patches of fur are missing all over my body. Especially around where my legs used to be. Staring at me, ugly and red, were the stumps at the ends of my shoulders and haunches. My legs… were gone.

I could feel my breath coming in rapid gasps and spasms. I can feel the heart attack coming on. Seconds before it does, I’m greeted by darkness again.

~~~~~~~~~

I’m not out long this time. I groan as I awake, my voice finally coming back. Sitting at a table, discussing our… their next move are Granite and Artemis. “Guess I’m out of the game, huh…?” I croak and they look over at me. Artemis doesn’t move but he levitates over a glass of the purest, cleanest, clearest water I’d ever seen. My eyes widen as I look at him and he just nods, pressing the glass to my lips. I drink greedily. Soon the water is gone. Tears come to my eyes at that fact.

“Ruby… you have to understand, we didn’t expect the dragon.” He says and I look over at him. “We got the timer out of your Pip-Buck, but it’s broken. Artemis says he can still use the bomb… but…”

“The yield will be too dangerous. With the timer, we’d have time to get everyone in the closer towns and settlements to safety. Without it, we’d never know how quick we had to be. Maximum risk for minimal reward.” Artemis said and I looked over at him, wincing at the pain it caused. He levitated over another glass of water and Frost took it in her wing, holding it gently to my lips. The cold glass felt amazing. I was more careful this time.

“What… happened…?” I asked, looking up at him.

“Your Pip-Buck went dark. Artemis could follow your location for around an hour after the dragon…”

“There was a dragon?” I ask, looking at Frost as she stops, my question interrupting her.

“Guarding the trigger. We didn’t know.” Artemis answers for her and she nods.

“It… it ate you. And the trigger. Your Pip-Buck pulled the trigger into its storage matrix but… the dragon was long gone. Artemis followed it for three days. We’d assumed we’d lost you when he stopped seeing your Pip-Buck readout on his. He found the dragon though.”

“I aimed for the head. It kept moving and got half of its side blown out. I followed its body down and found you. Frost was right behind me. I had to rapidly use a cleaning spell on you to clean you of dragon guts and acids or she’d have risked losing a limb.”

“Like… I did.” I say, staring down at my hotdog of a body. “I’m out then… I guess.”

“Not… exactly.” Frost says as she picks up my Pip-Buck. “I have a contact that owes me a favor. I’m calling it in. He’s going to get us in touch with the Institute based beneath what used to be Manehatten Technical Institute. They’re the most advanced scientific community in the Wasteland.” She says and he looks over at her. “In exchange… I’m giving them her Pip-Buck. Minus everything inside it. They can study its workings and how it functions, but we keep the things she has stored away.”

Granite steps up and walks towards her but I clear my throat at him. I would have raised a hoof, but I didn’t have one. “If they make me some prosthetic limbs… they can build a storage matrix into one of the legs.”

“I have the blueprints for every robotic pony my company built. One of them does have a Pip-Buck storage matrix built in. It was going to be called the Pip Pony 4000. I’m sure we can use the benches and materials here to build them for you. If Spike is willing to light up a forge for me.” Artemis says and Frost looks at him as if remembering what he used to do before the bombs. “I’m going to warn you now, attaching them is going to hurt like hell. I’ll be using my magic at the near microscopic level to merge the wires and servos with your spinal cord so you can move them like they were your own limbs.”

I stare at him then look at Frost then back at him. “Do it.”

Twelve minutes later, I regret my decision immensely. The pain was unbearable. It was probably lucky I didn’t have limbs or I’d have clocked Frost or Artemis at least twice each. He was not joking when he said it would hurt. I could feel him inside me. Not in the sexual way. His magic was flowing through my body, pulling parts of me open I didn’t know could open as very thin, very cold, almost snake or worm like things were woven through my stumps and up into my body.

I could feel the wires from the prosthetics he’d made in record time merging with my spinal cord. Every sensation was like hell had frozen over, entered my blood stream and flash thawed to leave me with the burning fires of hatred tearing away at my soul. Poetic right? I don’t know how long it took or how many of the wires entered my body. All I knew was it hurt and I was very glad Frost seemed to like me a lot because I could taste blood from her leg in my mouth. My head was on her lap, so I hoped it was her leg I was biting. That, at least, could be healed easily.

Time seemed to be moving at a third its usual pace. I could hear Spike and Twilight giving instructions, Artemis shouting back that he knew what he was doing, Granite singing (I didn’t know he could do that. I’ll have to get him to sing for me) and Aqua snoring. Thank Celestia for small blessings. She didn’t need to see or hear this. I would’ve tuned in to Granite singing for some escape from what was going on, but every time I tried, a wire sank into my spine and a fresh wave of agony ripped through my body.

What felt like an eternity later, I slowly awoke. My head was on Frost’s legs, Spike was looming overhead, Artemis was somewhere, Twilight was watching from the screens, and Granite and Aqua were nearby. “So… how do I look?” I joked and Frost smiled.

“You look fine.” She said and I felt my face heat. She wasn’t yelling. She wasn’t mean. She was… loving.

“How do they feel?” Twilight asked and I looked up at her then down at myself. There they were, as red as my coat. Metal limbs, one of which had a Pipbuck screen built into it. “We tried to match your coat color as closely as we could.” Looking at the screen, I saw everything I’d ever owned, plus a few gifts to maintain these new legs of mine. Everything except the trigger.

“A little heavy…” I say as I roll over onto my side, my leg falling with a metallic thud. One of my ears twitched. A thud wasn’t the right descriptor. A thunk? No… lighter than that. “Why…?”

“They’re a special metal. It was going to be used to make new necklaces for the Elements of Harmony, but I should have enough left.” Twilight says as I lift one of my legs. It feels natural. I had to put almost no effort into it. “They shouldn’t feel heavy…”

“No, they don’t. I mean I feel heavy.”

“That’ll be the internal components. We had to merge the wires with your spine rather than link them to your magic. Those limbs are invariably your limbs. Other than being made of metal, they function and work just like your original legs. With some minor additions.” She says and I look up at her then at my Pip-Buck screen.

“I have a blade?” I ask, my Pip-Buck automatically scrolling to it and equipping it. No pinching, no straining, just a slight whirring sound and a blade as long as the leg itself sang out of my foreleg just below the screen of the Pip-Buck. It sank back a second later as I scrolled to another thing on the list. “Scepter Burst?”

“It’s Harbinger.” Artemis says as he walks back into the cave. “Harbinger had the most powerful internal source of power remaining to Equestria. Rather than waste it… I made it part of your leg. Effectively, should you need to run away from something, you can fall asleep and your legs will keep going. They stop when you want them to stop. I renamed it to Scepter Burst and you can spin it up simply by raising any of your hooves and focusing on the center of it. Imagine it’s a barrel of a gun and you’ll be able to use it.”

“Does it affect me at all?” I ask and he shakes his head.

“No. Harbinger was self-replenishing. Even if I’d used every single shot in it, over time it would simply refresh its ammunition and be able to go again. That’s why your legs will just keep going if you need to sleep on the run. It never runs out of energy unless you happen to use it to blow up the planet.” I blink and stare at him. “I had to merge the key matrix for Endgame into your leg. You are now the only thing standing between Equestria and complete planetary destruction. Shy of the Elements being found and restoring everything to the way it should be.”

“No pressure.” I monotone then sigh, staring at my leg. The ultimate weapon in all of Equestria, powerful enough to disintegrate Mount Canterhorn in one shot. I was that weapon. I had become Harbinger.

Author's Note

Holy hell was this one a good one. I haven't decided what happened to the Hell Hound that was with Ruby, but I'm thinking it survived after she was saved and ran off. Might come back later, not sure. Lemme know what you guys think about that "twist" there at the end. I've been planning that for some time now.