Fallout Equestria: Killing with Kindness

If you took all the pain that plagued every creature in Equestria and bottled it up, it would not even come close to the years of anguish that Fluttershy had suffered. Hearing her story told through her eyes, listening to all her thoughts and emotions through those years, was hard on Syntax. It broke her heart and it made her feel sick, but she wasn't going to complain. Fluttershy needed to talk this out, needed to finally share her deepest pain, needed a sympathetic ear to confess her deepest guilt to, and Syntax was willing to listen, no matter how horrific the topic.

The last surviving Ministry Mare needed to spend her last days in as much peace as possible. She deserved that. She deserved peace after decades of nothing but agony. And Syntax was not going to take that from her just to spare her own mind from the brutal images her story produced.

Leaning her head into her friend's chest, Fluttershy sighed. Her body was no longer shaking, and her breathing had evened out. She lightly rubbed her head against Syntax's soft coat, adjusting it so the earth pony's heartbeat could be heard clearly in her ear. It seemed to soothe her somewhat, as she relaxed even further in her grasp.

The silence was nearly deafening, and broken only by an occasional soft sigh from Fluttershy. Syntax didn't ask questions or push her to continue her tale, knowing she would speak when she was ready.

"I remember the day Littlepip and her friends came. I was sure they were all going to die."

Syntax tightened her grip just slightly, this time also letting her hoof stroke gently between the pegasus's wings in a soothing motion. Fluttershy remained relaxed, eyes closing as the images replayed in her mind.

It was hard watching the group that approached her. It was harder than usual because for some reason they all seemed so different from the other victims the killing joke lured there. They seemed special. She frantically tried to warn them of impending doom.

Keep Away! Keep away!!

A mare with a songbird cutie mark was the one who tried to approach first, despite the warning.

"It's...it's you, isn't it?"

Fluttershy's mind was frantic. This pony knew what she was...or rather who she was. And that made her desperate to protect her, and her companions, from whatever cruel torture the plants around her base would put them through. It was easier somehow when the victims didn't know her, didn't know what she truly was. But on the rare occasions they did, the pain of watching their bloody demise was ten times worse. She redoubled her efforts to warn them.

Keep away! Keep away!

Her warning was echoed by the zebra of the group, throwing the pony out of the way just as the tendrils lashed out. And then they were all fighting for their lives against the brutal plants, desperately trying to stay out of their clutches. She internally screamed in horror as the zebra went down, several of her stripes flayed horrifically off of her body as scarlet streams of her blood sprayed from the wounds, coating the earth. A unicorn with a Pipbuck on her foreleg rapidly formed a gruesome cast around the zebra's body with her own blood, and Fluttershy hoped desperately that the creature would survive her injuries.

The pony who had tried to approach, who she heard one of the others call "Velvet", looked up from where she sat gasping to gaze upon the bloodstained tree with eyes full of sorrow. The group had managed to back out of the killing joke's range, and it wrapped it's blood soaked tendrils tightly around her trunk. She was inwardly crying, but full of relief that they had survived. They headed away from her, to Zecora's old hut, with Velvet casting back a final glance of sadness, tears spilling from her eyes.

Fluttershy was grateful that the killing joke had lost this round. It would have been far too much to bear to watch an entire group of Innocents being slaughtered in the same way countless others had throughout the years. She would catch glimpses of them off and on for several days, before eventually not seeing them, and she hoped they were all ok and would make it to wherever they were going in one piece.

The killing joke was a vengeful plant, and in retaliation for having been denied the success of slaughtering the group of intruders, it instead lured in the next unlucky pony to pass and systematically ripped his hide from his body, blood spraying from broken vessels and arteries as it skinned him alive and gutted him, brutally ripping out his internal organs from the least vital to the most vital, leaving him fully alive to feel every shred of pain as he screamed in raw, desperate agony unlike any creature could imagine. His blood thoroughly soaked the base of her trunk, sprayed some of her lower hanging leaves, and saturated the darkened earth.

Fluttershy could only weep inside her prison, silently praying for forgiveness that her actions had contributed to this. Not even trying to slip into her memories of her friends was enough to drown out the screams of the dying pony. All she could do was just hope that it would soon end for him.

It did.

Before long the screams stopped, replaced with the cracking of bone and the wet sounds of the bloody remains being greedily consumed by the plants. She would never be able to understand or explain how they managed to actually eat the bodies, and she really didn't want to dwell on it. It was too much just to know that they did it.

Her vision was once more on the surrounding wasteland, watching the fog of the still remaining radiation sweep across the barren ground, well, barren except for dead trees poking up out of the cracked earth. Even after two hundred years the sight of it always hurt on a level nopony would ever fully grasp. And even after two hundred years she felt as though she had not even come close to atoning for a tiny fraction of her past choice. No. This would never be atoned for. It could never be. It was impossible.

It was a lonely and exrutiatingly painful existence, yet still all the praying for death went unheeded. She was doomed to remain this way for as long as Equestria existed.