Escape

I suddenly feel something fluffy and warm squeezing me. While my rational self says that a stranger hugging me is a no go, my emotional standpoint and the comfort are overturning any decision I would make.

After an uncomfortable amount of time, draining my tear ducts into its fur and cloth, I gain enough composure to look up her. A pony. I notice then, I´m smaller than a pony.

“Do you have parents?” I guess she, she asks in an even tone.

“I- “for how old does she hold me? In fact, how old am I? Wait, am I young? Apparently, judging by my height and her behaviour towards me. After all I appear to be of the same specie as her. Then where are my parents? Do I even have parents? I mean of course I have parents, but are they still alive or dead? “don´t know.”

I have -probably- caused the deaths of multiple living beings in a short amount of time and now I´m getting hugged. I´m distressed to say the least, but I´m comfortable, physically speaking

After some more silence and looking at each other, she hesitantly starts stroking my hair. “My name is Ideal Idea. What is yours.”

At this I would have cried if I still could. Isn´t the personhood bound to a name? What makes me different from an animal if I don´t have a name? How could I even operate in a society if I don´t have name. I must have one, but “I don´t know.” Maybe I´m thinking too much into it.

“You don´t have anywhere to go, do you?” She asks it like it is normal question.

“No”. It´s the same story. There are no explanations to give.

“Do you want to go with me. We will go out of this place.”

That was my original plan, but my mood of today has been destroyed. So, I just nod. At least I´m not forced to anything or getting shot at. That´s a step up.

Ideal is happy the plan worked out, frightened by the child in her hooves and sympathetic to her sadness. Of course, she doesn´t show it.

But she still is happy, no, satisfied that the gamble of settling the alicorn worked out.

Even satisfied to -if she played her cards right- gain an asset for the revolution. She knows thinking of a child as an asset isn´t very healthy, but theoretically this child could triumph over the strongest unicorn and defeat an entire army. Not only in theory, but the child also very obviously killed what amounts to a whole legion on purpose or not.

This could be a problem later on. The filly could throw a temper tantrum and burn down entire villages, cities, military bases or … country sides or… entire countries- She should stop that line of thought.

She must guide her.

That sounds more religious than it should have.

Now to more pressing concerns “,listen. I have some colleagues over there. We will get everything we can from this place and go, OK?”. She didn´t even know how many were in the group, maybe a dozen. It´s still a mystery to her how this group even formed and then started to follow her. They just gathered, she went over to them, and they listened to her.

Does she have some kind of aura? Or are they really that planless.

It´s always nice to be de-facto leader.

The child nods further thinking of her situation.

“Come over here!” She yells to the group behind the corner. They reluctantly come, watching the spectacle that is the alicorn child. Meanwhile the small child looks at the snowy floor pretending not to notice them. Ideal removed herself from the alicorn.

“We will have to gain rations. We need cooperate if we want to survive the tundra,” They focused back to her, she says not in a commanding tone, still in the tone she is always using which sounds rather bored. “You will loot the corpses.” she points at the half of the group with fruity. “Gather all the clothing, money, weapons, and ammunition you can carry.” She then points to the other half of the group. “You will gather rations with me inside the building and quick. The army won´t take their time when they notice.” She wants to assume the position of their leader.

Thanks to their –the military- “no mercy” approach to “deserters” and “cowards”, Ideal and her group don´t have to worry about those that fled. They won´t inform the army in fear.

One more brutal and ultimately stupid decisions of theirs which will lead to their downfalls.

The group slowly avert their attention back at the alicorn. “Now,” she says with the same tone. They react and do as they are told.

Perfect.

She looks to the child “Do you want to go with me?” After a short amount of time the grey filly nods stand up and slowly walks too Ideal. Too slowly. She lets out a sigh. “Let me carry you.”

The group now walks in the forest. Night is already setting. But for a change they don´t feel like freezing. It is still cold, for sure. They still can see their breaths. But with the extra clothes, even if some of them have frozen blood on them, things are better.

The clothing is uncomfortable, not made for ponies. They unsurprisingly didn´t have clothing in filly size, so Ideal had to wrap her up.

They could have used the vehicles, trucks, and the like to escape. But sadly, all the vehicles have been taken. Ideal assumes from guards as well as fugitives that have fled.

Fruity Loops asks Ideal “, why are we even carrying the weapons? It isn´t like we even stand a chance.”

“Why don´t you kill yourself if we are all destined to die at some points, then why don’t you do it now. You see this is the same logic. We should always put up a fight no matter.” Answers Ideal with the alicorn tied tight to her back with a soldier’s uniform. “You know we have a chance. We could even resort to the child.”

The alicorn is currently staring into the distance troubled by her own thoughts. He says back “Do you expect a child to protect us from a modern army? She isn´t like, even six years old.”

This wakes up her interest

“She?” I ask myself, the two look at me. Out of all the thing going wrong this is something I won´t accept. “Did you just call me a girl?!”.

“Ugh, what?” He looks befuddled at me.

“Did you just call me a “she”. You know, third person singular FEMALE.”

He still looks a little confused “Yes I did. What about it?”, he says unsure. I struggle out of the confine of cloth and fall off Ideals back. Immediately regretting my decision when the cold creeps into my fur, I continue my rant.

“I´m not female!” The other ponies of the group start to look, which makes me a little nervous, but the conversation continues.

“I haven´t looked what you are, but you look pretty female to me,” he says in the same confused tone.

His statement does the opposite of calming down. Out of the few things I know, I KNOW for sure is that I am male. Why do I know I it? I´m not sure, but it is still a fact.

At the very least my fucking gender is or should be an unchanging fact about me and what I am, that I know is me. And I won´t accept any idiot defining what I am.

All these things happening and revelations of not knowing jack shit, most likely made me angrier than I should have been. I ignored the fact that he was just a normal confused pony.

“I don´t care what I look like to you, I am a man. You will accept it.”

“Ok, I don´t know what a man is, but you are factually a female. You have the flank of a mare, the jaw of a mare and the body of a mare. You are a mare.” He says in an exasperated tone then his face contorts in regret.

“No, I am NOT. If I rip of your dick off and bend your bones to the likes of a mare, are you mare then?” I say in a tone befitting of an angry little child “Because you will find out if you call me a mare one more ti- “

Something hits me in the back of the head. And rather hard at that. The colourful pony looks fearful at me with his ears folded against his head. I look behind to see what hit me.

Ideal.

“Behave yourself.” She says in her usual bored tone.

“What the fuck! You are not my mom! You can´t tell me what to do.”

“You aren´t thinking straight.”

“I´m thinking as straight as I ever will. He called me a mare even though I told him I am not.”

Her face still unchanged “And how does his opinion matter if you´re a stallion or not?”

“Well,” I don´t know the answer to that one, but there is one on my tongue. Wait, let me guess it´s-

“It doesn´t matter. It is what his thoughts are, there is no reason to threaten him with violence over it. He isn´t going to hurt you, so you won´t hurt him. His opinion is as much worth as what you think, they are. Just pick the gender you’re happy with and get it over with.” She explains. Her lecture and tone calming me down a bit. I mean what am I to say to that? Yeah, why should I care, he isn’t going to stop me.

“But I am a stallion.” I say, getting slowly ashamed of my temper.

“Then you are male. Good for you. Now get back on my back you are slowing us down.”

A precious, precious cigarette. That is what she needs right now. Luckily, she has gotten a lighter and some packages from the dead at the camp. She takes one out and lights it. The child has gotten silent again.

Talking this demigod child down from her temper tantrum is her second most frightening experience she ever faced. Especially smacking some sense into he- him. Her first most frightening experience is getting her base raided and herself and fellow comrades imprisoned. That´s hard to topple.

But still, he is a child and in need of someone to correct his behaviour, and that someone is going to be Ideal.

She is currently siting at camp with no fire, with the purpose of not getting tracked, that is what she explained to the group. They understood it but still complained. They all will huddle together into a pile to preserve energy, when sleeping. It may be a little awkward, especially as Fruity tries to avoid the child. But survival is more important than comfort.

She had to convince every single one of them to do it, by giving them one of her little monotone lectures. And then talking to some, those who still relucted, individually. It was annoying but she succeeded.

But for now, they are eating their MREs. And questioning their meals at the same time. Because it had meat. Only in little amounts, but still they had to nourish griffon soldiers with that. So, they all asked if they could even digest it, with no real answer, as no one is an expert in biology.

Of course, no one really refused cooked food, pre-cooked, at that point it would be ridiculous. It wasn´t like they had a wide variety of choice.

But they still complained.

It is their right after all.

The child didn´t even think twice and went straight at it.

While they were eating Ideal Idea opened a map, that she too of course got from the dead. Sadly, she was only partially good at reading maps. So, it took her awhile with the few sunshine she is getting to figure out where to go. And the next stop to go is Dark Nights.

A thestral township. Now, she remembers the name for a particular reason. It was a pain in the flank to find anyone to talk to, through proxy. Of course, she is an earth pony and therefore not allowed in the townships of other races.

She ultimately got into contact with one thestral, but even he stopped working for her a while ago. Hopefully she can use his space as a safe house. He is still friendly towards her. But to do that she has to go near the town undetected.