Chapter 1 - It all Begins at Some Point
The wasteland was ever farther than the eye could reach. A red pony with a brilliant golden blonde mane that flew against the wind, had stood on a rock. His cutie mark was an oven mitt, his eyes crimson and ready to fight against raider scum. Though he wished that his dear Caramelita back at home would never forget him. He eyed the expanse of dirt and grasped his crotch firmly, ready to screw up some raiders and their families.
Oh no, it wasn’t just going to be vengeance, it was to be horrific decapitation that would make your mother cry in the most horrible way possible. Because red pony had no sense of mercy against these detestable scum. His tail shook as the wind went past.
He took out his weapon from his knapsack, a triple-barreled black metallic shotgun with a short scope for easier shots. He was ready to knock some heads to the ground. With one hoof step, the stallion ran into the sunset.
Two raiders sat around a bonfire. One was a mangled ghoul that sat sharpening his knife. The other was eating out of the skull of a freshly cooked pony head.
“Dammit Rauel, I don’t wanna be around this area, I heard there were sightings of that red bucker that’s been killin raider encampments lately,” said the Ghoul.
“Oh calm it, we have mounted turrets sitting all around us, there’s no way he’d be able to kill all of us with them sittin on our plots, besides, if he does come, I’ll wake everypony up and we’ll floor em to death”.
“Whatever ya say, I just don’t want ta-” the ghoul raider watched with a surprised gaze. Blood flowed through his forehead before a little black spear went through his head and dropped to the ground.
“Ah shit, and I was just enjoying my brekfast…” A gaping hole was made through his face where his corpse then dropped into the bonfire. His body cooked with his own poorly makeshift raider suit.
From behind he came and smiled with some blood that covered his face. The turrets around him clicked and aimed their laser sights at his chest. He lifted up a trigger button from his bag and pressed on it. The turrets exploded into scrap metal in an explosive display of oil and metal flying everywhere.
“He’s here!” a raider pony screamed as she exited her plastic tent.
They all surrounded him with their shoulder-mounted machine guns. He smiled nervously as the horde came round, a few shaking in their hooves.
“He don’t look so tough, shoot’em!”
They fired all their weapons at him, but his movements were so fast that it felt like time had slowed down for him, but to the eye like a blur. All the bullets went past him and hit all the other raiders in a flurry of bullets. Somepony with a missile launcher fired at him. He leaped into the sky to where the missile exploded and severely blew off many body parts from raiders.
He saw the decimation of all the raiders with their parts found all over the place. Their organs spilled all across the earth with body fluids seeping out into puddles of blood and he scratched his head. His triple barrel shotgun sat on his shoulder ready for fire.
“Did you really have to go so overboard this time?” said the robotic weapon on his shoulder with a digital tone. “Look at the mess you’ve created, and I bet much of their stuff will not be salvageable if they’ve been blown apart”.
“Oh relax R-21, we just need to clean up this stuff and go on to the next raider rat nest and exterminate them, isn’t that what we're supposed to do?”.
“Yes, but I would be more interested in a more cleaner way of killing them, instead of being so obscene about it”.
From behind, a raider with a pistol in her hoof crawled to the duo, her legs blown off with red juice that made a trail behind her. Her hoof shook as the pistol went up at his head. Her pain shot through the entirety of her body, and her strength was slowly going away. But she did her best to not make a sound. She pressed the trigger and a clang came throughout.
The bullet went through his skull, but no debris, flesh, blood, or bone came down his head. He still stood and turned his head towards her to show a metallic red eye glowing right in front of her. Amidst the pain she felt, she could not hold back the terror that she saw and she screamed.
And her head was crushed into a pulp. He crushed it as he stepped on a basketball without air. Her head now flat with blood rushing out from all over like a squashed tangerine.
“See what she did to my face, now I have to go back for repairs because of your distracting mug!”
“Please, you can go faster than sound, and have titanium alloy to protect you from anything, how could you complain about a mere facial mishap?” said R-21.
He looked around for any living threats and groaned. They were all decimated to tears. There would be no survivors this time, not even for one interrogation.
“Well I’ll be using your parts to fix this when we get back ya know?”
“Haha that isn’t funny… at all ya know!” said R-21.
He ran off from the raider encampment as if a storm of death had passed by like nothing at all.
After several miles of running through the desert, he found exactly where he needed to be. A giant building surrounded by a wire fence. A equestria flag of the sisters sat on at the top. The red stallion came up next to the door that leads into the open area between the building. It was similar to an open court of a jail.
Identification, please
The stallion raised his hoof and a red light shined through the synthetic skin. The door screeched open with all the rust in its hinges. He went past the courtyard and went into the building through the double doors. There, he went past the foyer with the receptionist desk and the cube-shaped area with the many dilapidated chairs that sat together. The elevator screeched open and he entered inside.
It went down for several levels before you could see the deep rock from far below the earth from the sides of the two windows. The elevator stopped on the bottom floor and the door slid apart. An army of alicorns was doing work around the underground area.
Some of them looked upon the stallion before them and then went back to transporting cargo on levitating metallic transporters. They manufactured assault rifles on assembly lines, grew food in test tube rooms, and more. It was a black market for alicorns on every level. The red stallion continued forward past the many alicorns that worked before he found a clean metal door.
The door slid open with a vacuum like sound. Inside there was a circular machine with a metallic bed rest that sat under. An alicorn that sat with a lab coat and glasses, she sat near a table with red and black plastic tubes under its top frame that connected to the wall. She was green with a orange voluptuously long mane that swept down her body. The alicorn was reading a newspaper while drinking some coffee from a cup.
Then came towards him, and he sat down while she drank a cup.
“So how was the killing?” she said.
He scratched his head and leaned on the chair.
“You built me, so you should know hon”.
She placed the cup down and folded her newspaper. It was old equestrian news from before the war, but she still enjoyed reading how it would have been like.
“Well, how is the body I made you, are you used to be being a stallion and has it all been workin… out?”
The stallion’s skin broke apart into a mixture of metal and plastic connections that were fixed into a shape of a pony face. The eye was slightly dented and fixed downward from its original place.
“He’s certainly misusing the gift you’ve given him,” said R-21. “Even if it could be called a he”
The stallion pressed the button on top of the triple barrel shotgun, a beep sound started during its shutdown mechanism.
“You Diiiick…” R-21 said before shutting off.
“I can’t believe you installed such a snarky personality in this bot, Caramelita” he said. “It can be pretty weird with all the bloodshed at times”.
Caramelita, now finished with her coffee, stood up and went near the technological rotating bedrest.
“Well come on, let's fix you up then before that eye driver gets rusted”.
He went onto the bed rest and tried to stay still with his unfeeling body, though he could still move around, it was still something that he could never get used to. The rotating machine surrounded his body and a shot of energy went through his eye, it clicked into position.
The machine went off his body and his skin was recovered over his face.
“Ah, thanks hon, I feel like I’m whole again”.
Caramelita pulled out a cigarette from her pocket and lit it with an igniting spell, she sucked on it to which she puffed it out after a few seconds.
“Remember babe, don’t get distracted, you are a pretty valuable piece of hardware,” she said.
He stood up and went on his way to exit the lab.
“Yea I know, I’ll make sure to stay safe”.
The door opened and he left as swiftly as he came. It shut before her and she was alone once more.
“You’ll always be my sweet marmalade, now and always…” she said.
The Red Stallion pressed the button on top of the triple barrel shotgun and the weapon beeped on. It’s electrical voice slowly went before the machine sighed.
“Did you really have to do that?” R-21 said. “I haven’t seen Caramelita in a while and I barely got to talk to her!”.
Red stallion continued past the different colored alicorns doing different things. They watched him knowing what he was, but still a sight to see. A giant mechanical pony from head to toe, mostly.
“You shouldn’t have brought up what you said,” he said. “You should know by now I don’t like talking about the past or anything referring to it”.
R-21 turned its metal hinges.
“I didn’t mean too, I was just making small talk tis all” it said. “I didn’t want to get on your bad side”.
The Stallion went into the elevator he came from and went back up. He exited to find the same old receptionist area he saw every day. He exited the area and went outside. It was still morning time, the sun still glared down the earth. He walked his way to the wired door that sat opposite the building.
He heard a scream from somewhere, he turned his body and found some pony smacking their head against the wired fence. Each time the mare would do so, she would be shocked by hundred kilovolts of electricity across her body. A wild pony with a green mane and black body. Her mane cut to that of a raider mohawk style. She would shake like an old pony going through an epileptic seizure with each headbutt.
Red Stallion watched at this insanity while R-21 did the same. He came forward while behind the fence to the pony that literally begged for death.
“What the buck are you doing!?” said Red Stallion.
The mare screamed and slammed her head against the wiring once more. Although with a more death-defying cry. She shook once more and fell on her back against the dirt.
“You aren’t going to make any progress like this ya know?” he said.
The raider mare charged head first into the metal wall and was instantly shot back into the dirt. This time, she could not move and her whole body was stricken with electricity.
“You’ll pay…” she said. She moved against her weakness and stood up with what willpower she had. “You’ll pay for destroying everything I’ve ever cared for!”
She unveiled under her raider vest that was made out of stretched apart pony ears, pockets of C4 on her body. There, the raider cackled, ran, and head dived into the wall.
“No…!” he said.
“Stop her before-” said R-21.
CAPHLOOOOOOOOOOM!
A large blast of explosive power shot through the area. The wired fence broke open with ease and both of them flew into the other side. He slammed into the fence and felt the shock turn off his circuits. There, he could barely move, his body frozen and his gun shutdown.
From afar, a mass of raiders ran into the complex. There they entered the building and broke the door apart. As they did their business, two raiders, twins with full metal armor that were tweaked to be spiked heavily were surrounded by one raider who watched The Stallion. He had a collection of pony parts that hanged over his body. The ears of ponies sat around his head like a texas hat amalgamation and his body was covered in hooves of those he mangled.
“What shall we do with this guy boss?” one of the twins said.
The raider boss bent down his legs and showed the large black scar on his eye as he got closer. An Orange mane with light yellow streaks and a yellow body.
“Hmm, seems pretty dead to me” he touched his skin, “Tartarus sakes, his body is cold as a ice cold drink on a hot summer’s day” he said. “Just leave em, I’ll have my fill of fresh ears and hooves by tonight anyways”.
They went their way, his eye reticle red and code went down his eyesight. Then, there was a quiet nothingness, where his consciousness left him in a second. His head slammed into a piece of wall wire with a metallic ding.
Several hours had passed, the robotic systems inside the machine started to circulate into mechanical code. His eyes opened up and all he could see was red and the moon in the sky. There he groaned and lifted himself up, there he looked around and saw a puddle of blood and pieces of alicorn body parts strewn across the dirt. It all leads to the building inside that he feared wasn’t going to be pretty.
“No, Caramelita!” he screamed. He got up hastily, before running in quick hoofsteps towards the building. There he saw remains of alicorns all over the place the farther he went. The elevator was destroyed, blood seeping from decapitated heads on sticks next to it. He leaped down the elevator without regard for safety and slammed into the ground.
The mess was excruciating, so many corpses cut apart and thrown over the pavement. All the weapons and items inside the rooms were mostly taken. The overhead lights flickered on in off with many bullet holes inside them.
There was so much bloodshed that he could not comprehend it, but only walk past swiftly. Soon he found the room where his beloved Caramelita was in. The door barely opened to the side, it could not feasibly allow entrance. He had to use his incredible strength to open it apart. He got in and his fears were realized.
Caramelita’s wings were punctured to the wall. Her torso and head lost without hind legs and hooves. The machine that would have sat there was gone and violently ripped out from the connections around.
Red Stallion screamed like a hellish nightmare that would not have ever brought a tomorrow.
He carried her mangled body and walked sadly, climbed out of the elevator shaft all the way up, and went outside in the dirt. There he dropped her body into a hole he dug out and buried her the best he could. For the rest of the day, he would take all the bodies inside the place and bury them with what he had. The metal in his brow and the steel in his hooves.
The sun rose over the sky, and the makeshift plot of corpses sat alone. He watched their dug places and sat, he stared at them for hours on end. Now truly alone, there was nothing left for him to look forward to. This horrible land had taken everything from him. When things looked good, the wasteland would steal all of his progress like stairs that suddenly turned flat on his way home.
Bzzzzzt
“Huh, what, where?” said R-21, roused from its slumber. “Oh dear Celestia”
“Look at what they’ve done,” he said. “All of this is all my fault, I had the power to stop this and I was taken off guard”.
The shotgun rotated and saw the many dug in plots around.
“I… I’m sorry,” R-21 said.
“No… it’s not your fault, but now there will be hell to pay…” he stood up and stomped into the dirt. “Now I’m gonna get them all, every last one until there is nothing left of them”.
R-21 settled its barrel over its mounted metal hinges.
“Don’t tell me Caramelita is in one of those plots, just don’t tell me at all, I already know it at this point?” it said. “Now it's just us”.
Red Stallion turned away from the rows of plots. There, he stared into the sky to what awaited him next.
“If we're going to be friends, we should probably be truthful about all this,” he said. “I’ll start by giving my name, its Marmalade if you reckon”.
The robot looked at his friend and joined him at what he stared at.
“Marmalade huh… weird name for a boy” it said.
He puffed a bit of air from his snout. Marmalade walked into the blown apart metal wall that was bent to the sides and went through.
“It’s complicated”.
They went off into the direction the enemy came from, their hoof tracks spelled doom for the raiders. Nothing would get in their way now, there was nothing to be held back. Only death would be in their destiny’s path.
