Fallout Equestria: Dogs of War

For an hour or so, I sat under that tree, running the events of the last day over and over again in my head. Or had it been days? Everything after I had been capped by those flying ponies was all just a big blur of brutality. Then the clouds of rage parted and suddenly I was being chased by two of my den mates.

What had caused my cap to become dislodged from my head? Was it that grey pony who had used her magic to push me away? But why would she have taken the cap off of my head? Did she know that if she removed it, it would cause my den mates to chase me, giving her and her companions a chance to flee? But then why did Brutus attack me when I lost the cap?

Every time I came up with a good answer to one of the questions, two more questions sprung up and took its place. I slammed my paw down on a nearby stone, expecting to crush it in my frustration. Instead I felt a sharp pain shoot up my right foreleg. I looked down at it and instead of a paw, I saw a hoof attached to a very equine looking limb. I carefully examined the pale white fur that covered both of my now claw-free forelegs. I tapped them together and heard the soft clop as the hooves touched.

“What the fuck,” came a quiet whinny from my mouth. My eyes widened and my hooves then went up to my throat. I misjudged the motion and slapped myself in the neck. “Ugh that hurt,” and there it came again, a bunch of mouth sounds that sounded nothing like my voice.

“Okay, okay. There is no need to panic. Sure, you look like a pony instead of a diamond dog. And sure, you sound like a girl.”
A thought occurred.
I carefully reached around and gingerly inspected myself. “Okay you are a girl. That’s fine. That is fine. I’m stuck in the middle of the single most dangerous location in all of Equestria with no weapons, no armor, and in the body of a soft, squishy, female pony! Did I miss anything?” I shrieked.

I heard twigs rustling and snapping outside of my hiding spot, followed by a low woody growl. Knowing what horrors existed in these woods and having much too recently witnessed them dispose of two of my - not so small - packmates, I decided that I did not want whatever it was to find me, pre-cornered, in this tiny little hollow. Sincerely hoping that I was headed in a safer direction, I bolted out from under the tree. A howl bellowed out from behind me and two more howls answered it.

I galloped as fast as I could with my stubby new legs, trying to get away from whatever monster or monsters were chasing me. I frantically started looking around for something that I could use as a weapon: a large branch, a sharp piece of shrapnel, anything. Instead, all I caught was a glimpse of the beast chasing me. It looked like a shambling pile of twigs and logs, covered in moss and ivy, and it seemed to take the form of a three headed wolf.

I tried to gallop faster to get away from whatever that pile of logs was and nearly ran smack into a low branch. ‘That damn thing could have taken my head off,’ I thought, looking back at the offending limb as the wood wolf tried to dodge under it. In doing so, it bashed one of it’s heads straight into the branch, letting out a yip of pain.

That gave me an idea. “Okay Twiggy, lets see how you like these moves,” I shouted as I veered off the semi-clear path that I had been following and leapt into the wilder part of the brush. The log wolf… thing followed me into the brush, its heavy paws snapping and crushing anything that had the misfortune to fall underneath them.

I wasn’t used to being the smaller, more agile participant of a hunt. However, over the years I had overheard from the more experienced hunters that it was hard to keep up with prey that could scamper around tight spaces. So that’s what I did. I dodged through tight gaps in trees, around rocky outcroppings, under vines, and more low tree limbs. Anything to put a physical barrier between me and old splinter paws.

Unfortunately, it seemed that the wood wolf just didn’t care what stood in its way. It crashed through the trees, stomped over the rocks, tore through the vines, leapt over the branches, all the while shortening the gap between me and it. At least it looked a bit more ragged as it continued the chase but it may very well have been that it had always looked that shabby and it became more noticeable as it got closer.

It was then that the forest dropped away and a massive river raged before me. My choices had suddenly dwindled down to two. I could try to swim across this swiftly flowing body of water and probably get dashed across some rapids, or even eaten by some giant fish thing. Or I could face an absolutely certain death at the jaws of my twigged pursuer.

“Well, as that adventure pony I keep reading about always said, ‘Certain peril is better than certain death’, ” I muttered under my breath.
“Oh, but I really don’t like certain peril.” Looking behind me, the wooden wolf still was not visible, but the brush it was throwing up as it dashed towards me certainly was.
“Certain peril it is!” And with that, I leapt into the water. Within moments I was swept up by the current, and sent speeding on down the river to who-knew-were. I did my best to doggy paddle toward the opposite bank, but it’s really hard to doggy paddle with hooves. I kept getting pushed under the surface by the waves and pulled off course by eddies in the flow. Soon, it was all I could do to not drown.

As the chill of the water began to seep into my bones, I caught sight of my ticket out of this situation: a fallen tree half submerged in the river. Redoubling my efforts to break from the current, I threw limb after weary limb against the flow. As the tree grew steadily nearer, my flailing grew more and more frantic until I was close enough to brush against the branches.
“How am I supposed to grab this damn thing without thumbs!” I cursed my lack of digits as I struggled to find purchase among the damp twigs. Just as the river nearly pulled me away, I found a hold in a small tangle of vines. I used what little stability it granted me to pull against the current and curl my other foreleg around a thicker patch of branches.

Slowly, I worked my way around the fallen tree until the current was pushing me into the decaying log. From there, I began to shimmy my way towards dry land, careful not to let the current pull me under and away from my woody salvation. Once my hind leg touched solid ground, I all but flung myself towards the land. I flopped down upon it, gasping and wheezing on the sweet sweet solid ground.

I looked further up the river and couldn’t see the three headed thicket thing that had been pursuing me. Either it had been smart enough to not jump into the river or had continued the chase and was dragged away by the torrent of water. Or perhaps it was about to walk out of the river and gobble up my soft and presumably tasty pony flesh. With the way the rest of my day had been going, it wouldn’t have surprised me.

As I tried to get up to drag myself a bit further away from the river, my muscles decided against that course of action and I just flopped on back down to the ground. I suppose I wouldn’t really be any safer a few feet away from the river since this entire fucking forest was just as likely to kill me anyway but it certainly made me feel better. So I lay there, looking out at the soft glow that emanated from deep within the forest thinking of what it could possibly be. Maybe it was something magical and friendly, or maybe it was something magical and furious. Neither would surprise me.

Taking time to let my muscles drain away their aches, I found myself staring at the opposite bank. Warming up, the aches had been replaced by weariness and I could begin to feel my eyes droop. Sleepiness took over and as I started to drift off from consciousness, a black form slowly moved down the river’s edge inching towards me. The black equine thing continued approaching until it was just a few feet away. Somewhat unaware that I hadn't been dreaming it, a quick shot of adrenaline surged through me, just enough to get me to my feet, er hooves, and realize that it was very real. Whatever it was jolted and in a bright green flash it was replaced with Rover.

All at once a wave of conflicting emotions hit me and I locked up. On the one paw, it was Rover, the Alpha of our den since before I could remember. He was the first Diamond Dog to praise my repair work. He took me on my first hunt! I mean he takes everyone on their first hunt because he’s the Alpha, but it still mattered. On the other paw, Rover was dead. I had seen the severed head that Rex brought back. There was no way that he could be standing here. On the third paw there was some weird black thing that was standing there just a second ago. One of the more reasonable voices in my head pointed out that this had to be a trick of some kind. A much less composed, much higher pitched voice screamed out that, on the fourth hoof, I was quite the tasty pony sitting beneath a big scary Diamond Dog towering over me, not even a foot away.

My brain sputtered and seized for a moment and did the only reasonable thing it could think to do, emotionally breakdown. I burst into tears and collapsed into the Rover lookalike, wrapping my hooves around it in something that could only be described as a hug. Long, soaking wet purple hair squished between us.

The doppelganger that had taken the form of my former Alpha tensed up. Now it was their turn to try to figure out just what the hell they were supposed to do. “Uhh, this is not the usual reaction that a pony has when faced with a hellhound,” the impostor said in a deep rumbling voice. I just wailed a bit louder and tried to form words that sounded vaguely like, “Diamond Dog!” Peeling off strands of wet purple mane, it pushed me away, breaking the hug.

After a minute of both of us awkwardly standing there, a second flash of green fire engulfed not-Rover and he was replaced with the same strange black creature that had approached me on the riverside. “Okay, I’ve been a part of what you ponies might call a society for a fair few years now and I agree with the crying bit there. The crying is definitely the right response when faced with inevitable death. The hugging part... much less so. Were you raised by hellhounds or something?”

I clumsily started to wipe away my tears with the fetlocks on my hooves, which were still fairly soaked from my impromptu swim, so it more or less just re-wetted my face. “I’m not a pony, I’m a Diamond Dog” I muttered, sniffling and trying to get myself back in order.

“Oh really? Let me see here. Purple mane and tail? Check. Hoofed legs? Check. Butt mark- oh,” the creature stopped. “Now that’s something you don’t see everyday. A pony your age without a cutie mark.”

“I told you I’m not a pony, I am a Diamond Dog,” I insisted.

The creature laughed, “Ya, and I’m an Enclave Raptor.”

I wanted to retort but I wasn’t quite sure what the creature was or for that matter, what an Enclave Raptor was. The creature was in the shape of a pony, but it seemed to be covered in black chitin. Though there were holes in its legs that appeared to be natural, there were cracks in its shell that oozed some dark green fluid. It also had transparent wings that were twitching on its back which appeared to be torn. No pony that I had ever run across looked like this creature.

“Well, you don’t look like any kind of pony I’ve ever seen, so what exactly are you?” I asked.

“Why, that is quite simple. I am leaving,” the creature replied as it limped around me, favoring its front right leg. “I have enough problems as it is, I don’t need to add some delusional mare to that list.”

I stared at the bug-pony thing for a moment and then lightly trotted after it. “I wonder. What kind of problems could a creature that can look like a Diamond Dog at a moment’s notice have.”

The creature squinted at me in what I believe was annoyance. “At first the Red Eye kind of problem, and now the general Everfree kind.” Off in the distance emanated a great bellowing roar, a sound that I had only heard once or twice in my entire life. It was the cry of a full grown dragon. “Never mind, it’s still the Red Eye kind. Out of the way!” The creature tried to limp faster down the river bank but ended up just tripping over his own legs after only a few strides.

I offered a hoof down to help it up, which it stared at for a moment, but soon took a hold of to steady itself as they stood up. “I don’t think you're going to be able to run away from that. Besides what makes you so sure that it’s going to come this way, or that it's even looking for you?”

“I’m not a hundred percent certain, but let's just say I got a bit too up in Red Eye’s business, and now all of his goons have orders to kill me on sight,” he replied, as he got back up and continued to hobble along the riverside.

“Then why not turn into something else? If you can turn into a Diamond Dog, you must be able to just turn into another pony,” I reasoned aloud.

“I did. That’s how I got this far. But as I have learned, a bunch of those marauding maniacs have all sorts of augments, and one of them can see through me like glass. With how kitted out that reptilian behemoth is, it must have a full suite of optical sensors: heat, x-ray, magical, you name it. The only thing that could hide me from that dragon is a few inches of lead shielding.”

For a moment I watched the strange creature hobble away, mulling that last comment over. It was then that an idea struck. I ran in front of the chitinous equinenoid. “You are really inconducive to me fleeing, you know that?” the creature grumped.

“I can’t get you a few inches of lead,” I started, ignoring his comment. “But what about a few dozen feet of dirt? All you need to do is turn into a Diamond Dog and you can just bury yourself. That should be more than enough material to get in the way of whatever detection augments that beast has.”

The creature stood there for a moment as if contemplating what the hell I was up to. “There is one problem with that,” he said. “I’m injured.”

“So?”

“So there is no way that I will be able to dig through that much dirt before Mr. Tall, Chrome, and Scaly finds us.”

“What are you talking about?” I replied arching an eyebrow at him. “Us Diamond Dogs can practically swim through this kind of soft soil, even on a bad day.”

“I suppose if you grew up in a bunch of caverns sure, it’s probably as natural as sucking love, but I’m a changeling. The most I know about digging is that you scrape at the ground and try not to get any of it in your mouth.”

“I’ll show you how, you should be able to pick up the basics fast enough to get us buried away nice and safe.”

“If you consider being trapped under a ton of dirt and rocks safe,” he muttered under his breath. He stood there for a few moments, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to look at the silhouette in the sky that was slowly drawing closer. “Alright, last thing then. Why are you being so insistent on helping me out?”

“That’s an easy one, if I get you out of this hard spot then you are going to help me get out of this forest,” I said.

He took a moment and let out a small sigh. “Fine you have yourself a deal,” he then held out a hoof in front of me. For a few seconds I just stared at the hoof unsure as to what I should do with it.

“Um, why are you holding your hoof out?”

The changeling then slowly and awkwardly retracted it. “It’s a hoof bump. You know, to show good faith in a deal.” I gave him a blank stare and he muttered under his breath, “Damn wastelanders, no manners whatsoever. Alright,” in a flash of green, the changeling was gone and in his place stood Rover. I was ready this time, so all I felt was a mild pang of jealousy. “So show me how to do this digging thing Ms. Hellhound” he growled at me.

“Diamond Dog,” I said, trying to correct him once more. I’ll worry about being called ‘Ms’ later. “For starters, move your paws in front of you, with the tips of your claws pointed straight down,” I mimed the motions so that he knew what I meant.

Pony senses were the worst possible thing for trying to figure out if a massive cybernetically enhanced dragon had flown over you, in a tunnel, twenty feet under the ground, hastily constructed by a complete and utter novice.

“Are they gone yet?” I asked, unable to make out the slightest sound or vibration coming through the earth above us.

“Shhh! I’ve told you like seven times, I don’t know. I’m not used to this body yet. Everything sounds off, kinda echoey,” came the reply from the pitch blackness just a foot or so to my left.

I pawed at the ground, moving a little stone around that I had found when the changeling had dug out our hidey hole. The air was already starting to get warm, which was a sure sign that the air was getting stale. Just as my thoughts started to turn to the fact that I was trapped under about twenty feet of dirt with no way to dig myself out, my companion muttered something to himself.

“What? Did it pass by?”

“Maybe? I can’t quite tell,” he replied, his tone thick with concentration.

I held my breath in anticipation, the tension rising in our little pocket as I could almost hear him straining to listen through the dirt. “Ya, I think that was it, I think it’s flown straight on past.”

I let my breath out in a massive sigh. “That’s great, now dig us out of here.”

After a few more lessons on how to properly dig upwards, as well as a healthy coating of dirt covering every square inch of me, the changeling had dug us out of the pit. Off in the distance we could just make out the silhouette of the dragon as it slowly dipped below the tree line.

“Well, that turned out better than expected,” the changeling rumbled and in a green flash turned back into his battered equinenoid form. “To be honest I thought that ol’ metal scales would still see us through all that dirt.”

“I told you my plan was going to work out,” I cleared my throat. “Now then, I expect that you’ll be able to hold up your end of our deal?”

“Of course, of course. After all, a changeling such as myself would never go back on a promise that I had made to some random mentally distraught pony that I met all of fifteen minutes ago.”

I gave the creature a flat look, and attempted to bear my teeth at him. “I’m sorry, is that look supposed to be scary, or adorable?” he asked, looking quizzically at me.

I hated this pony body so much.

“It was a joke Ms. Prissy hooves, I have no plans on going back on our little bargain. Besides, having a second set of eyes to watch your back is always handy. Now then, we didn’t quite get off on the right hoof, the name’s Hallux,” he extended his hoof out to me once more.

This time, I rose my own hoof up, extended it out, and placed it right on top of his. “The name is Spike, it’ll be a pleasure escaping this death trap with you.”

Hallux gave my hoof another odd look and sighed. “Okay Spike, level with me, you weren’t joking when you said you thought you were a hellhound, were you?”

“Diama-” I tried to correct him but he cut me off mid-word.

“Diamond Dog. Right... whatever,” he mumbled.

“Yes, as I am sure I have made it abundantly clear by now that I am in fact, a Diamond Dog.”

Hallux gave me a look over, glancing at my mane, my tail, and my fetlocks - which had surprisingly sprung back into shape the moment they had dried off. “Alright, this is going to be one hell of a ride. Walk and talk hun, I don’t want to be here when the Enclave decides to go from surgical strikes to carpet bombing.” He carefully started to limp down along the river’s edge, making it easy to keep pace with him.

So as we kept an eye out for any more ugly surprises, I recounted the events of the last forty-eight or so hours.

“Then the pony I was chasing, or maybe one of her friends, must have used some kind of spell on me, because all of a sudden I was a pony. A pony, I might add, who was caught between two of my former companions that had flying pony mind control devices clamped to their skulls and set to ‘rip and tear’.”

“So how did you get away?” Hallux asked as he looked over his shoulder, making sure that nothing and nobody was trying to get the jump on us.

“I hightailed it out of there as fast as these stubs would let me and it was a huge misfortune that this death trap of a forest provided some horrors that probably...” I hadn’t really thought about what had happened to Brutus and my other pack mate. They hadn't been bad dogs and it wasn’t like they had been in control of themselves when they attacked me. Now they were probably eaten, killed, or whatever it was that the things in this forest did to their prey.

Not wanting to dwell on the idea of what had happened to my pack mates, I tried to change the subject. “What about you? It sounded like you must have given this Red Eye pony a hunk of zircon and called it diamond.”

“A hunk of what?” Hallux asked.

“It’s a mineral that looks a lot like diamond. It’s another way to say that you had him chasing his own tail.”

Hallux just looked at me for a minute, though I couldn’t really read his expression. It didn’t help that his face was basically blank all of the time since his eyes didn’t have any pupils. If he wasn’t frowning or smiling, I couldn’t make heads or tails of what he was thinking.

Just as the silence was starting to get oppressive, Hallux broke it, “I guess you could say that. To make a long story short, I learned something I wasn’t supposed to. His buddies took offense to my existence and I lead them on a merry chase that nearly ended with me being turned into a pile of soot.”

“What could you have learned that would have had a bunch of his buddies chasing after you?” I asked.

“Does it really matter? A wasteland pony will slit your throat if they think you know where they stashed a daisy sandwich, let alone something as big as I learned,” Hallux muttered. He kicked a small rock into a large granite outcropping that jutted out into the river. The sound of the impact caused something to move out from behind the pile of stone. A large wooden head came into view, then another, and then stump where a head used to be. The creature looked to be in pain as it limped into the open to inspect the noise. Dripping with water, it looked up and noticed the two of us. Growling, it stared us down.

Before either of us could move or make a sound, it leapt at Hallux, pinning him to the ground. He tried to shape shift but when the green flames started to climb up his ankle, they seemed to get caught part way up his leg. The wolf had managed to stick one of its talons into the holes that existed in Hallux’s legs. He tried several times to push past this but each time the flames would get stuck and burn out.

Both of the wooden beast’s heads were so focused on the prey that it had caught that they paid me no mind. Every fiber in my body was screaming to run. Screw the bug pony thing and just get out of there as fast as my four tiny little pony legs could carry me! I started to turn to do just that when a different sensation overtook me. Not fear, or anger, but some kind of deep aching loathing feeling for this creature and the hell that it and this entire forest had put me through.

Instead of running with my tail tucked between my legs, I planted my front hooves, coiled my hind legs, and bucked with as much force as my exhausted body could muster. When my back hooves hit it, there was a deep, wet, satisfying crunch that rang out around us, which was soon followed by a high yipping sound.

My front legs gave out and my entire body awkwardly flopped to the ground. I now had the twig wolf’s full and undivided attention. I tried to push myself up but as soon as I got a half inch off the ground my legs started to shake like there was an earthquake and I fell right back down on my barrel.

On the third try to heave myself to a standing position, I felt the surprisingly cold weight of one of the creature’s stubby paws on my back, forcing me down into the dirt. A deep growl rose up from the two remaining heads’ throats and I could smell the overpowering scent of its breath as they began to lean in towards me.

I scrunched my eyes shut, waiting for the thing to bite my head clean off, when all of a sudden the weight was lifted off of me. I slowly opened my eyes and saw what could only be Hallux, in the form of a manticore, fighting the wood wolf.

Every time that the wood wolf tried to use its claws, Hallux would swat it aside with a flick of his tail. When one of the heads tried to bite at him, he would smack it aside with a paw. No matter what the wolf thing tried to do, Hallux would turn the motion to his advantage with precision and ease. It wasn’t long before he had backed the creature up right to the bank of the river. Knowing that it had nowhere left to go, the wolf tried to use what little room it had to leap at Hallux. He responded by simply ducking under the creature and slammed into its chest, sending it flying into the river.

I watched as the current swept the wolf away from us. Now would be a good time to take a break. Hopefully it wouldn’t be able to find some way back to us...

“Hey. Hey! No. You are not allowed to fall asleep here,” my eyes shot open, I hadn’t even noticed that they had begun to close. “You fall asleep here, you're dead. End of story,” Hallux said, now in what I assumed to be his normal form.

“Sorry,” I mumbled half under my breath. It had been a long day what with all the mind control and the frantic running for my life.

Hallux tried to lift me into a standing position. It took a few tries to get my legs to cooperate but we eventually got me standing up again. “We can take it easy once we’re out of here, but those fire brigades are only going to drive whatever isn’t actively trying to kill them towards us,” Hallux said, as he began to pull me forward.

It was slow going but we pressed on following the river for another few hours until our trail ended in a waterfall. Hallux gave a deep sigh and looked at me for a moment. “Alright, let me try something,” he said and unslung my leg from his back. He then tried shapeshifting into a menagerie of creatures from manticores to some giant winged beetle thing. Every time he would try to fly, the damage to his wings wouldn’t let him get even a foot off the ground.

Eventually he dropped the form he was in and collapsed, panting on the ground. “Well,” he said between gasps, “we’re not getting down that way.” We both just sat there looking out over the cliff at the edge of the forest, just a mile or two away. We both leapt to our feet when we heard a shrill screeching sound not too far from where we were standing.

“I say we put as much distance between us and whatever it is that made that noise, agreed?” I asked Hallux.

“Agreed.”
Just as he replied, a large red thing lunged from over the edge of the waterfall at Hallux. It wrapped itself around his midsection and began to drag him towards the waterfall.

I stood there, stunned for a moment, not quite sure what had just happened. Then some part of my brain gave the rest of me some percussive maintenance and I lurched into action, running after my traveling companion as he was pulled over the waterfall. I ran as close to the edge as I dared and peered over. Below me was a mass of tentacles that seemed to have sprouted from out of the cliff face behind the waterfall.

In that tentically grasp sat what I assumed was Hallux. He was in the shape of some giant half-bear half-bug creature, thrashing away at the appendages that were trying to get a better grasp on him.

I looked around for something that I could use to hurt the monstrosity, a rock or a large stick, or a conveniently dropped laser rifle. While I was hunting for a potential solution to our many armed problem, one of said arms shot up at me. Apparently a giant bug monster wasn’t enough for the greedy bastard, and so it was looking for a pony sized snack. I tried to dodge out of its grasp but it was on me like grease on a worm gear. Next thing I knew, I had been lifted off my paws - Hooves! They’re hooves now - and pulled over next to Hallux who was still thrashing wildly about, wings buzzing in frustration.

I looked over towards the waterfall. Just behind the rushing curtain of water, the mass of writhing tentacles met at a giant red and yellow beak. The tentacle that was holding me began slowly moving me towards the creature's pointy maw. After the evening I had just survived, I refused to let it all end by being an oversized fish’s midnight snack. So I took a page out of Hallux’s book and started to flail in the creature’s grasp.

Unlike Hallux however, I was not a giant half-bug half-bear creature and all my flailing did was have the creature tighten it’s grasp on me. I soon gave up on trying to force my way out of the creature's grasp and started to look around for something, really anything, that might help me loosen the grip of this giant squid thing. I noticed that it had several items lodged in its suckers: some branches and a bunch of rocks.

Slowly, the creature pulled closer towards its waiting beak. In doing so, it had also pulled me closer to a fairly sizable and slightly cracked rock. I waited a few seconds as the tentacles brought the rock, it’s beak, and myself closer together. Then when I was close enough, I lunged for the rock. I tried to wrap my legs around it but I could only get the flats of my hooves on it.

As I tried to pull away from the rock, my hooves stayed attached to it. I blinked and tried to yank my hooves away from it but instead, I somehow pulled the rock clean out of the squid’s suction cup.

I stared at the rock for a moment, having both answered and raised several questions on how ponies could survive without fingers. Once I regathered my wits, I did the only thing I could think to do and started to pound at the tentacle with the rock. The only response I got from the behemoth was it tightening its grip on me further, popping a good few ribs in the process.

As I drew closer to the creature's brightly colored beak, I went over my few remaining options. I could keep flailing once the creature had started to eat me so that I could get it to spit me up. I could start screaming at the top of my petite pony lungs in the hopes that I could draw the attention of something bigger and hungrier so that it would eat the octopus thing. Or I could just give up and accept that this death forest had won and that I was going to die a pony. I thought it over for a moment and came to a decision.

“Damn this deadly fucking forest!” I shouted and hurled the stone at the creature’s beak with all the strength and leverage I could muster. Unfortunately, the shot went wide and the rock flew a few feet above the creature’s beak.

I took a deep breath and began to close my eyes in resignation but was cut short when the creature let out a terrifying shriek. Before I could process what was happening, the octopus’s grasp on me loosened. I immediately took the opening it had presented me, yanked myself loose of its grasp, and promptly began to plummet to the river below.

I tried my best to right myself in the air so that I could dive into the water but before I could get my new limbs to cooperate with me, I splashed right into the river. For a second time that night I tried to learn how to swim with hooves though I did a fair bit better this time around. It helped that the water was calmer here and it didn’t feel like it was actively trying to drown me.

After a few very wet minutes, I had paddled myself close enough to walk to the shore. Once I had dry land under my hooves, I promptly collapsed onto the ground and panted my lungs out. After what must have been a few minutes I heard something else start to splash its way out of the river. I tried to get to my hooves in case whatever was making its way over to me was also looking for a midnight pony snack. When I saw that it was just Hallux I collapsed back onto the ground and resumed panting.

He made his way over to me and collapsed right by my side, taking large heaving breaths as well. “I can’t believe you threw me at that monster,” he said after a while between breaths.

I turned to look at him. “What are you talking about?” I replied breathlessly.

“You threw me right at that thing. Just chucked me, like I was some sort of grenade,” he tried to sound indignant but it mostly just sounded a bit squeaky, like if you were to crush a pony just a bit.

My brain, with a critical lack of resources, could only reply with, “I threw a rock.”

“Yes you numskull, I was the rock,” he tried to yell but it just came out as a wheeze. “I tried to get small enough that it would drop me so that I could transform into something else, but instead I find myself getting chucked like an artillery shell at that monstrosity’s beak!”

It took a few seconds for me to process that. “So that giant bug bear thing wasn’t you?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Then...” I started and was interrupted by the sound of buzzing wings. Without pause we scrambled to our hooves and half-trotted, half-stumbled our way into the underbrush.

Whatever force that was toying with me must have finally decided that I had suffered enough. We had a few close calls as we carefully made our way through the last stretch of forest. We almost stumbled into some giant stone reptile and despite the fact that it had six eyes, it didn’t see us. Or maybe it had already had its fill for the evening and just didn’t want to bother with us.

Hallux nearly stumbled into a hole filled with sharp thorns around its edges. At least we thought they were thorns. As we skirted around them we then noticed that they were covered in small chunks of flesh and splattered with blood. From that point forward, we were more mindful of our pawsteps.

Before long we finally trotted into a clearing that was mostly covered in vines. As I began to trot out into the field, Hallux stopped me with a hoof. “Are you crazy? We can’t just wander out into a patch of Killing Joke.”

“Oh,” I immediately took three steps back. “Are they going to spring to life and try to choke us or something?”

“Worse,” Hallux replied.

“Okay. Do they wriggle inside of you and use your body like some kind of puppet,” I asked waving my hooves around a bit.

“Worse.”

“I’m not sure it can get worse than that.”

“From what HQ has told us it’s a plant that can change you into...” Hallux stopped and just stared out at the vines. “I guess, it turns you into a joke,” he finally finished.

“A joke? So it turns you into something stupid?”

“Well, not exactly. They gave us this example: A few decades ago, a squad was sent to rescue a stranded Volunteer Corps member. One of the ponies from the squad encountered the plant and was found with his entrails completely removed from his body. No heart, no stomach. Hell, no spleen. Nothing. His squad mates said that the last words he had said to them were ‘No guts, no glory’.”

I looked back out at the plants and the gears started to turn in my head. “So lets say, hypothetically, that someone had spent a lot of time around pony technology.” Out in the field of vines there was some movement and a faint noise. “This someone had spent years listening to their songs and reading their files.” The movement seemed to grow more violent and the noise became more pronounced, like some kind of high pitched, reedy laughter. “And they very recently thought about how life could be a bit easier if he could think like one of the ponies he had studied for years. Even if it was just for a moment.”

“Spike! Get away from there!” Hallux shouted at me. I blinked and looked up from the rustling vines that had made their way towards me and looked back at Hallux, who must have stumbled his way there while I had been putting the pieces together.

“What? I’m not...” Just as I said that vines burst out from the patch at me and Hallux. I didn’t have time to blink, let alone move away from the explosion of tendrils as they wrapped around me. The laughter was nearly deafening. Hallux had been a bit more prepared and leapt away from the torrent of creepers, just able to stumble out of their grasp.

The vines tried to stretch out and touch him but every time they would find a way to crawl an inch closer, Hallux would scramble three inches back. Before long, the laughter had started to grow more quiet and the vines slowly receded back into their patch. They lingered on me for a bit longer and then unwound from around my legs and barrel. I took a moment to examine myself and I couldn’t see or feel any additional changes.

Hallux looked at me with disbelief. For a while we just stood there staring at each other. Eventually I broke the silence, “Well.. I guess I’m already a joke...”

After we skirted around the edges of the Killing Joke patch, it wasn’t long before the dense forest started to give way to more and more of the dead vegetation I had known all my life.

“So, one more time. Just so I have it straight,” Hallux started for the sixth - maybe seventh? - time now. It was getting hard to keep track.

“Yes, I really am a Diamond Dog. A few of my den mates, who were being controlled by those armored flying ponies, tried to kill me after I had been transformed. Then some small, grey, horned pony saved my life by pushing me back with her magic. After learning about and encountering the Killing Joke, I am now very certain of what happened to me tonight,” I snapped, cutting him off, answering the same few questions he seemed to ask me every time he opened his mouth.

We continued to walk in silence for another few minutes, passing by a bunch of what I assumed to be long-dead apple trees in some pony’s orchard. After another minute, I spoke up again, “Sorry about that, I’m just exhausted. Today has been anything but a dig through the clay.”

“It’s fine,” Hallux said. “I guess what I should be asking is: what do you plan on doing now? My guess is that your pack isn’t exactly going to welcome you back with open hooves. Uh, claws... Paws?”

I tried to think about that. “I’ll be honest, the only thing I am concerned with right now is finding the softest patch of dirt I can and sleeping for the next year.”

Hallux nodded as he nearly tripped over his own hooves and we trudged forward in silence for another few minutes. It wasn’t long before we spotted an old sagging barn, and slowly aimed our stumbling towards it. The wind and near constant rain hadn’t been kind to the building. It looked like it could crumble around us at any moment. That did little to deter us from flopping down on the ground in unison. Both of us were unconscious long before our bodies hit the mildly damp earth.

Footnote: Level Up!
New Perk: Iron Hoof Rank 1 -- Channel your earth pony magic to unleash devastating fury! Unarmed attacks do 20% more damage to your opponent.