Underground Illegal

Sore muscles and stiff joints greet my waking mind. Weak sunlight filters through the trees surrounding the cave and warms the stone beneath me. Birds chirp and the leaves rustle gently in a soft wind.

I raise my head only to drop it back down against the stone from dizziness. I try again even slower and manage to get into an upright position while still laying down.

A black circle of ashes and burnt wood sits a meter in front of me. A few coals still emit a soft orange glow and smoke gently rises off the glowing pieces. A long, sharp stick lays to the side of the ring. The end is charred.

I swing slightly back in preparation to get my hooves under me. An involuntary yelp echoes around the cave as I jump, feeling a hoof on my back.

Turning my head, I see a blue body standing behind me. As the blob of blue moves out of my peripheral vision, wings and a rainbow mane come into focus. I blink my bleary eyes trying to figure out if I’m in danger.

“Just stay down. Honestly you look like you got hit by a herd of stampeding cows!” The voice is raspy and I can hear a smile in it.

The speaker walks all the way in front of me and I finally remember yesterday. The dragon, Rainbow Dash, the fight, escaping. It all rushes back.

“Rainbow Dash! Please tell me the explosion was a dream! Please.” I watch her hopefully, waiting for her expression to go from cheerful to confused. It doesn’t. Her smile turns into a frown and her ears droop.

“Uhhnn…” I drop my head. The hot feeling of tears prickles behind my eyes. She drops down next to me.

“Twilight, its- er…” Rainbow Dash drops her eyes as she fails to comfort me. “I’m sorry.”

Sadness washes over me, but a thought pops into my head. “Don’t be. If you hadn’t argued with me on the roof I would be dead to. And you got me out of there, too. Thank you.”

Rainbow Dash looks at me and nods. She rises back to her hooves. As she does I notice a scar on her neck. I can see the evidence of stitches that were there and then ripped out violently. All that remains is an angry red line about a centimeter wide and ten centimeters long.

I continue staring at it as Rainbow Dash walks to the charred circle of wood and attempts to breathe life back into the dead fire. “Hey, how did the cut you got yesterday heal so fast?”

This time Rainbow Dash does look at me with confusion. “Wha…” The understanding dawns on her face and she chuckles embarrassedly “Well, hehe, I kinda forgot to tell you. You’ve been ‘out’-” She flicks the tips of her feathers in air quotes. “- for a week…” She trails off meekly.

Seeing I’m not about to get angry at her for not telling me Rainbow Dash continues with renewed vigor. “And I say ‘out’-” She flicks her wings again. “- ’cause you were in and out of sleep. And you probably don’t remember it ’cause you were sick. And you had a really bad fever and you even puked a couple of times.”

My mouth drops open. A week!

At that moment a loud THUD sounds outside the cave entrance and I jump yet again. A great purple and green figure enters the cave and I recognize the dragon. A large bundle of sticks is nestled in between his wings and a makeshift net full of small, dead animals hags from his mouth.

Rainbow Dash bounds forward and lift the sticks of his back via a small vine I now see tied around them. She brings the sticks over to a pile I am also just noticing.

The dragon drops his net of animals and walks over to the coals as Rainbow Dash brings over a few sticks. After she places them carefully on the pile of ashes, the dragon breathes a plume a green fire at the sticks and they burst into flame.

Rainbow Dash turns to our companion “I was just telling Twilight how sick she was.”

“How was I sick? I was fine when we escaped.” I blurt out.

The dragon responds while skewering a rabbit on the charred stick I had seen earlier. “Grief sickness. Seen it before. I’m sorry about your parents Miss Sparkle.”

I sigh and nod my understanding and thanks. “What are you doing to that rabbit?”

“Cooking it, why?” Rainbow Dash answers back for the dragon.

“Ponies are vegetarians. You haven’t been eating that have you?” I exclaim.

“Yes, I have, and it’s quite good.” She looks at the ground, embarrassed. “To be perfectly truthful, Spike and I have no idea what plants are safe and he decided it’d be better if I just ate meat instead of poisoning myself on a some stupid beery.” She sticks her tongue out and frowns. I glance outside the cave and see only bare stone and undergrowth lacking grass until the trees bar my view.

Currently the dragon is burning the fur off the rabbit. The reek of burning hair hits my nose and I retch, turning to the side and leaning away from myself as my already empty stomach tries to empty itself some more. Yellow foam dribbles out of my mouth into a small puddle on the floor.

“You’ll get used to the smell, eventually.” Rainbow Dash says as she backs away from the flaming hare.

“I’m not eating that!” I say with enthusiasm I didn’t know I had.

“You have to, Miss Sparkle, unless you’d rather risk eating Deadly Nightshade.” The dragon turns the hare on a stick slowly, juices dripping from the now hairless skin.

I’m about to reply with a snippet about how I read a book on safe wild plants, once, years ago, when Rainbow Dash suddenly barks out.

“Spike, I told you, we’re friends here! First names only! None of this Miss this and Miss that.” And then realizing I had not been fully conscious for earlier introductions she waves her hoof between us. “Spike, Twilight, Twilight, Spike. And next one of you to call either us by anything formal again, gets booted from the camp!” I feel the punishment is much unneeded and calling our cave a camp is a major overstatement.

The rabbit seems to be done now as Spike gets up and slides the steaming carcass off the stick. He then slices it open with his knife sharp claws and removes certain pieces of meat setting them aside from the rest of the cooked animal.

He picks up a third of the new pile and hands it to Rainbow, who proceeds to dip her head and gobble down the meat at her hooves, flinching slightly as the searing pieces burn her mouth.

Spike grabs another third and walks over to me. He lays the steaming meat in between my front hooves and goes back to his third, wolfing it down in one gulp.

I stare at the pile of reeking ‘food’ and my friends stare at me.

“Twi, ya gotta eat. I felt the same when Spike first wanted me to try it, but it’s actually really good.” Rainbow has no remorse, I think.

Taking a small piece in my front teeth I warily lift my head and let the piece drop into my mouth. The taste is like nothing I’ve ever had before and I struggle to swallow the meat. I slowly continue to eat my small pile of rabbit, gagging the entire time.

Finally finished with the disgusting nutrition, I pull myself to my hooves, swaying slightly from dizziness. I trot outside with Rainbow by my flank and examine our surroundings.

The forest ends mere meters before the cave entrance and trees crowd each other, coming right up to the transition from stone to dirt. The trees that surround us are tall but rather thin and branches start a few meters off the ground. The undergrowth consists of small plants that can survive with little sunlight and underneath those is a layer of sticks and rotting leaves.

A path has been forced through the undergrowth and to the side strange, unnatural contraptions of vine hang from lower branches every once in a while.

Turning my attention to the cave, I see it is about three meters in height and the same in width. The cave is relatively shallow and the farthest back of the cave is still faintly illuminated by the noon sunlight. Our shelter is carved from a tall shale cliff, reaching past the tallest trees. I can see trees peeking over the top of the cliff. About halfway up the cliff a ledge slightly larger than anything else on the ledge is home to a small tree. The pathetic sight is one of roots clinging to the rock and pushing into any small crack, desperate for water. Somehow the tree has managed to make it.

~ * ~

Night is cold and the fire is a welcome source of heat. We all bask in the warmth of the flames, absorbing the hot energy.

This is my third night awake, tenth night since escaping. The same day I fully recovered from my illness, we spotted a patrol. Three pegasi gliding above the forest, heads bent down, eyes scouring the forest below. Strangely they flew far to high to actually spot any of us, soaring hundreds of meters above the towering trees. From below we could barley make them out against the overcast sky, but Rainbow spotted them with her superior pegasus vision.

Immediately shooting into the sky, she flew low and fast. She headed behind the patrols and pulled up into the cloud cover. Above the clouds she double-backed until she was above our followers. Then she carefully peeked her head through the clouds to watch them.

Coming back down she relayed everything she saw to us. The pegasi were wearing light blue in an effort to blend in with the clear sky. Unfortunately for them the weather must have turned over after they left, leaving them just slightly more exposed. They did however have vision enhancing goggles, high quality flying goggles enchanted by a unicorn to improve a pegasus’ eyesight for searching at high altitudes, something I had never heard of before.

The only thing that connected them to ring Dragon Fire was easily overlooked as normal at first glance. Their manes and tails were dyed purple with orange and red accents. The colors of the ring Dragon Fire.

Only the most dedicated of the larger Underground Illegal rings’ workers had their hair dyed. It showed true unwavering loyalty, copied from territorial roaming groups of ponies common these days. Dying all hair of the group to form bonds and create a sense of unity.

Henchponies of UI rings that follow this tradition never leave for personal reasons, their life is the ring. If prey is scarce on the streets and no random drunk can be found for a fight, they will stand in for battle. The unwavering alliance of these ponies makes them some of the most dangerous around.

Over the next two days the patrol circled over four more times. Each time they were spotted in the sky we took shelter in our cave. Now, after hiding for the third time today, they haven’t returned for hours. They seemed to be gone.

Spike had been in the forest most of yesterday and managed to catch a couple fish from a stream nearby our cave. I have to admit the taste of meat was starting to grow on me, but I preferred fish over rabbit.

Now, sitting next to the fire with full stomachs, we try to figure out what to do next.

“So, we’re all free from UI, but that leaves us with no home, no family, nowhere to go, and no bits.” I say.

“Wrong on that second account.” An upside-down Rainbow says waving her hoof in the air. “I still have a home. It’s a cloud house, floating somewhere over the Southern Plains right now, no more than a day’s flight away. Why’d you assume I didn’t have one?” She finishes, rolling over.

“Oh, sorry. Wasn’t really thinking, I guess.” I fumble for a reason.

“Nah. I get it, your house got blown up so you thought maybe mine did to.” She flicks an ear and covers her mouth for a moment worried she’d offended me. “Er, hehe, I mean- um. Well anyways I always keep my house away from any large settlements, and try to keep it secret-ish.”

“And yet it’s a gaint cloud house floating around?” Rainbow Dash grins sheepishly at me.

“And you were correct in assuming I have no place to call home, Twilight, as I was hatched at the ring.” Spike adds. “And to continue the discussion you started, what do we do now?”

“I wanna go to my home and grab the few supplies I need and then bust the place to pieces. Might as well leave no trail and I don’t want any creep getting my house.” Rainbow frowns a bit, but then smiles at the chance to start anew.

“That’s a bad idea.” Spike butts in. “Dragon Fire has got to be searching for it and is probably now there, waiting for you. You go back and it’s the end.”

“I don’t care if they’re waiting for me, and anyway nopony knows where it is but me!” Rainbow Dash bursts out. “I wanna say goodbye and grab the, like three, things I need.”

“I’m not going then!” I watch quietly as the argument grows. “I want to go to the dragon lands and finally see my homeland. And I’m not gonna risk my neck so you can grab a coffee mug and your favorite pillow!”

“Fine. I’ll go alone!”

“Fi-”

“Guys!” It’s time to stop this before it gets out of hoof. “We can do both, and together. I think it’s a bad idea to split. We just met and right now we could use each other’s support. None of us have really been ‘on our own’ and I- to be honest- like the company!” I pause taking deep breaths to calm my now racing heart.

“We should go to Rainbow’s house first and once she has her stuff head to the dragon lands and then figure it out from there. I have no ties anymore. I can go anywhere. And I like having… company. I’m staying with you guys!” I’ve never had other ponies before, outside my parents, and I like the feeling.

Spike and Rainbow Dash stare at me. Spike’s mouth hangs open slightly.

“I gotta say, Twi, that’s like the most you’ve said at once the whole time I’ve known ya.” Rainbow laughs. “And also, I agree with your plan. I like having friends.”

Friends? Company.

Spike considers our inputs for a moment, his emerald eyes flicking between us. “Okay. I’ll go with you two. But if we get caught…”

“Don’t worry! We won’t, we’re too good for that!” Rainbow Dash is on her hooves, a big smile spread across her face. “I’m glad we’re all doing this together, friends.”

“Yeah. But were not-”

I get no further as a deafening roar fills the forest. The three of us spin around to face the cave entrance.

“What?” I mumble, my voice quivering.

“That might be the source rumbles we heard when we first got here.” The dread in Spike’s words chills me to my core.

The sound comes again, closer this time.

“I-I- think it’s time to go!” Rainbow Dash stutters, her wings flutter open.

Spike nods and spreads his wings and they both lift off, grabbing me around the barrel and pulling out of the cave.

As we clear the cave mouth and begin to pull up, a massive, clawed paw smashes the ground in front of us, the resulting air wash throwing us back. We slam into the ground.