The Human

"How many times do I have to tell you Rainbow, it's going to work!" I start to trot at a slightly faster pace in an effort to stop staring at her face to face, because she is giving me the strangest look. Of course it doesn't work, she just walks at a slightly faster speed and nearly passes me.

"Of course I believe you Black," she rolls her eyes, "It isn't like you are trying to do the near impossible."

I just keep walking forward, mentally filtering her voice out of my head to a dull drone. I sometimes wonder why I would let her follow me on my experiments, she was the poster child for being condescending, at least aimed in my general direction. I look up from my hooves a second to see what I was heading towards. The rocky edge of a mountain cliff jutted up ahead of us. I hold up my hoof in front of her.

"We're here."

I pull the saddlebags off my sides and drop them to the ground with a large clunk. Rainbow Dash shrugs her's off as well and then rubs her wings.

"If this whole awful thing didn't require so many chemicals to work, we could've flown here in at least half the time!" She looks at me again, and starts to speak.

"Well you can fly down right now if you want to," I raise an eyebrow, "Your whining isn't exactly the most helpful thing right now."

I start pulling bottles out of both our bags and laying them out in a line, while she starts speaking indignantly.

"I don't whine! What would make you think that I, one of the most hardcore ponies ever, would ever whine?"

"You just did right then," I look up at her a second with a questioning glance at the comment that she was hardcore. "And by the way, you are anything but hardcore."

I casually pop the corks off the bottles with my magic while turning my head to look at her. Silently steaming, she apparently doesn't have anything to counter that with. I roll my eyes and start pouring the contents of the bottles into an empty vat. Steam starts rising slowly from it. Rainbow Dash walks over and peers over the edge to view the event.

"See this?" I tap the vat. "Not just anypony could figure out how to make this!"

She rolls her eyes. "You think you're so smart just because you're an alicorn, just about anypony could pour things into a bowl."

I sigh and continue to pour in chemicals while looking at her for a second. "Honestly Rainbow, I only think I am smart because I actually am smart. Heritage and body parts have nothing to do with this!" I continue to pour in the liquids and a slightly purple tint is beginning to form. I cock my head quizzically.

"That's odd, it should have turned green by now..."

"So?" Rainbow Dash snorts, "You got the wrong combination. Spin the wheel and try again."

"This isn't any normal concoction Dash! This is necromancy! If anything goes wrong in necromancy, it can be disastrous! Instead of raising the dead, we could raise the un-dead, or kill everypony, or even-!"

"Or you could just get the wrong stinking potion. Seriously Blacky, relax!" She laughs.

"This could be a whole lot more then- Blacky?" I look at her, my face a mirror opposite of her's. "My name is Black Thunder, or, to be casual, Black. Blacky is just pushing the label here."

She smirks. Her simple nickname had hit home, she finally got a decent reaction. As she opens up her mouth to speak again, I hold up my hoof.

"Let me figure out what's the problem here," I start to examine the mixture. "I don't have time for cute, irksome nicknames."

I dip the stirring spoon in and grimace. It starts dissolving in my hoof. I drop it in and pull my hoof back. The sound of it's demise was a low, nearly inaudible hiss. That was pure iron. I'm glad I chose my strongest brewery pot. Trying to hide my evident distress, I turn my head and cover the pot with it's lid, slamming my shoulders down on it. I look over at her and grin

"Looks fine," I chuckle, "Just a minor mishap, shouldn't be too important."

It starts to bubble up slightly and the lid lifts up slightly. I slam my shoulders back down and wince at the pain. Rainbow Dash raises an eyebrow.

"Doesn't look fine to me," She starts to walk over, "Need my help there nerd?"

I shake my head quickly.

"No, we should be perfectly fine. You just might want to put these on and hide behind that rock right there."

I toss her some safety goggles and shoo her over to the large oblong rock by gesturing with my horn. She sighs and slips them on before disappearing behind the boulder. I look back at the vat, and it is steaming over. I have two options here, be a brave, stupid martyr hero for trying to hold back the extremely likely overflow of hazardous waste, or I could hide behind the rock with Dash and make a force field to protect us from it. I breathe out. Option two sounds pretty attractive right now. I dive away from the pot and run over behind the rock. I adjust my flight goggles I always wear and sneak a look at what is happening. The lid has already blown off and oozing black lava-like substance is slowly advancing. It's sparking and fizzing like hell. I move back to my spot and look at my comrade in probable demise.

She is pretty scared, but more composed than any other pony I know would be in this situation. I sigh and hold my face in my hoof. This shouldn't be happening to her, she had a long life to enjoy for herself. Me... well, my fate after this would be a dimly lit laboratory for the rest of my life. I sigh again and look at her.

"Well, by the way the noise that substance is making, it should be exploding into a huge ball of flame engulfing us all before we could escape."

"And how the hay would you know something like that?"

"Science."

I look over. One massive bubble has risen up from it, and it's molten hot. Highly reactive stuff, all the things I put in there.

"Well, if we don't get out of this alive..." Rainbow Dash makes the closest thing to a whimper I ever heard her make.

"Quitter's talk! I said it would engulf us, I didn't say we wouldn't survive!" I look back. "Then again, That wouldn't be too unrealistic."

I sit there for a moment and let my mind reel in the silence. I decide to stand up and look where the huge bubble was. It has flattened out to a puddle, and it makes no noise.

"Well it seems fine now-"

A large blast and ringing pulses through my ears before I fall to the ground and black out.

Slowly each of my eyes switch from a view of pitch black to red. I lazily wipe a new cut on my forehead. I look down. My hoof has a streak of dark red running down it, but it doesn't look fatal. The rest of my body is bruised and cut at worst everywhere else. The only problem is, the impact of whatever connected with my head has impeded some of my basic abilities. I struggle to sit up but can't. My horn fizzles on any attempt to use my magic, and my wings are pressed under my back. I am basically immobilized.

I glance around to see what damage was created. The general area has been stripped of any life, and any flora is burning. I see a cyan lump lying in fetal position. I gasp and muster my strength to try and move. I flip over and crawl forward towards her. Reaching her slowly, I grab her and turn her over. She's just knocked out, and I can't see a single scratch on her. She's way better off than I am, as she was behind the rock. I look up at said rock. It was battered brutally, and a chunk got knocked off it, lying by where I was. The blunt edge of it has crimson stains littering it. I grimace. This is what  hit me. I laugh quietly, then black out again.

I don't know when I woke up again, but  I did. My eyes are still closed, but I hear something. A limping figure walks towards me and then a large object slams me into the ground. Some horrible breath is beating up against my cheek, and it sniffs me. A animal-like hiss speaks slowly, and deliberate.

"I smell death on both of them, they are not worth anything to me."

It steps off me and walks away in a jagged stumble on it's back legs. I look up with my shaky vision and stare at the thing that left. It has exposed skin most everywhere, except for it's mane. It seems to walk primarily on it's back legs, which look like strange hands, like a monkey. This is some kind of primate thing, and I don't know how it got here. Not exactly sure I want it here too. It's wearing a broken straitjacket, torn at the shoulders to a sleeveless status. I groan and collapse into the ground for a third time, into the uncertain blackness of sleep.