Muselpferde

"Hey, hey, they're rounding up the useless scum;
I’m on the winning team, the winning team, the winning team."

-Royal Downfall, "Lightning Strikes Twice"

Applebloom administered several injections to Rarity, mostly pain killers, potassium, and calcium. The Unicorn's muscles continued to tremble, and up close she reeked like a barely cooked hunk of meat.

The Head of Practical Neurosciences sighed. Her temper had gotten the best of her again. She stared into the blank eye, trying to deduce if there was some will at work there or if dropping Sweetie Belle had simply been an accident. Had she tried to spare her sister the fate that she had suffered? It was a futile gesture. Nothing can defeat the will of the ponies embodied in the Republic.

Although, it was possible to embarrass individuals by dying on stage. Applebloom looked around backstage for her assistant, but the drunkard was nowhere to be found. As usual.

She stepped outside. "Gallus? Gallus?" The alias of her other former friend.

Pegasi weren't allowed to rest on the ground, and had metal inserts placed in their knees at an early age. The inserts made standing excruciatingly painful, giving Pegasi the option of either flying or laying on their side. It drove them to fulfill their purpose, weather control. Nothing else. It was a sin to deny one's purpose in pursuit of the Republic's good, and the sin of laziness came particularly easy to winged ponies.

"Gallus?" Applebloom moved along the outside wall. It was dark tonight. Despite what she had said earlier about the Reformed Comrades managing the sun and moon, the best efforts of the Party, exercised through Luna and Twilight, were barely capable of keeping Daylight hours regular. There had been no stars above Equestria for seven years.

Stars were useless anyway.

Applebloom found the former Pegasus crouched amid the bushes outside the school. She had jabbed a metal rod under the scar tissue that had once been her wings, directly stimulating the nerves with an electric current. One orange hoof was between her legs, and on the ground before her was a picture of Rainbow Dash. An old propaganda shot, all haunches and sultry smiles.

"What the hoof do you think you're doing?" Applebloom struck the creature that had once been Scootaloo on the back of her head.

"I'm jess … I was … Iss not like you need me in there …" she pulled the rod out of her scar tissue, leaving a trickle of blood to run down her body. She swayed on her hooves, and her breath reeked of cheap liquor.

"What if somepony saw you? Do you have any idea how much work it took to remove your wings and forge papers saying you were an Earth Pony? You're going to throw all that away just so you can masturbate in the bushes?"

"I … no pony saw …"

She was always drunk and constantly reopening the scars from where her wings had been removed. Applebloom had given up on fighting it. Instead, she just allowed Scootaloo to disappear in the back of the room or outside the building, wrapped in a cloak or shadows. The orange pony preferred it that way. She never had to deal with being looked at, with other ponies thinking she was just an Earth Pony.

"You've got to help me with Rarity. I think …" Applebloom paused, "I think I might have shocked her a bit to hard during the demonstration."

They reentered the back of the auditorium. Rarity was still standing, but barely conscious. Periodically, the Unicorn would attempt to lift one hoof from the ground to favor it, but the braces in her knees kept her from doing so. It wouldn't have helped anyway, every limb was equally mutilated.

Scootaloo sobered by the sight. The creature should be dead. The only thing keeping her alive was the metal preventing her from lying down. Bloody urine dripped from between the Unicorn's legs and spread across the floor like a liquid shadow.

The former pegasus rested her head against the animal's chest and listened.

"Heart beat erratic, palpitations, she could go into cardiac arrest at any moment." Though Scootaloo was protected from the surgically installed blinders that were mandated for all registered Pegasi, she had found her own blinders. Focus on the job at hand until the rest of the world loses focus and disappears.

"I know that."

"How much voltage did you," Scootaloo burped and cleared her throat, "excuse me, how much voltage did you use?"

"All of it," Applebloom was ashamed of having her rash reprisal revealed to her assistant, "I turned the knob all the way to the right."

Scootaloo stared at her friend. The orange Pegasus swayed as much as the Unicorn, both caught in things they could never have hoped to control.

"Okay, so, okay..." she tossed her head, twitching her ears and struggling her mind into sense. Once more, she was pulling her friend out of trouble she'd made for herself. "Firs," she slammed her eyes shut and drooped her ears, releasing her hold on the world to spin freely in the dark for a few moments before returning, "she's got no bowel or bladder control left."

Applebloom was already grabbing the hot glue gun. Stitching would be better, but there was no time. While Scootaloo gripped the Unicorn's tail, Applebloom rubbed a rough towel between the subject's legs. She barely twitched as the hot glue slid the gun in and filled the offending orifice with molten plastic. Filling it out until the white liquid dripped down the her legs, scalding her flesh.

Rarity tossed her head as Applebloom repeated the process on her vagina, searing the edges and sealing them shut. After less than a minute the liquid had set, smeared with streaks of crimson life.

"She might make it another hour," vomit rose in Scootaloo's throat, bitter and forceful as an iron bit under her tongue, "but you'll need a replacement."

"And where am I going to get that?"

"Gimme a second," Scootaloo replied as she pressed her hooves against the side of her head, "Gimme a second," Scootaloo replied as she racked her brain once more, digging for the answer, "Gimme a ..." she paused, "Trixie!"

"I'm not about to use that-"

"She's the only post-op Unicorn anywhere near here. You keep … keep the operation going, and I'll run out to Filthy's and borrow her."

"She's barely a sex toy!" Trixie had been one of the first operations, and an ugly one. Part of why, instead of doing anything productive, she now served as the conversational piece for Filthy Rich, one of the Party's early supporters.

"Maybe, but she can still perform simple operations. You don't … you don't have a choice now. Ra- This one is done for," Scootaloo darted from the room, heading for the Rich's plantation home. Hopefully, somepony there was still awake. It wasn't about saving Applebloom, it was about saving herself. Or maybe, Scootaloo thought, she wanted to think of it the other way. Which of them was worth saving?

As Applebloom made her way back to the stage of the amphitheater she was greeted by a figure dressed in Ministry Purple. A hat with a wide-brim concealed her head, her face was vanished in a mask with only two reflective lenses marking the eyes. A cape hung from her neck and over her body. The official uniform of the Ministry for Defense and Wellness. It could be anypony under there, even a Unicorn or Pegasus who had bartered their species away to the Republic in return for the freedom to move freely.

"Comrade Applebloom," the figure's voice, like the voices of all members of the Ministry of Defense and Wellness, was flat and genderless, "We need to speak for a moment."

"About what?" Applebloom was already late to reappear on stage, she didn't need some MDW-idiot's lecture.

"You have made several comments, surely off-the-cuff and unintended, that may be seen as critical of the Revolution."

"I'm trusted to operate on Reformed Comrade Luna, the force that allows the sun to continue moving in the sky, but I'm not allowed to speak freely?"

"Correct," the being before her was utterly immune to irony, "If you make any further editorial comments … Your brother and sister have protected you so far, but their political reach only extends so far. Do you understand?"

"And what will you do without me?" Applebloom stomped her hooves petulantly.

"No cog is irreplaceable. Your assistant," the figure was interrupted by Applebloom's giggle, but it continued, "or a student will take your position just as easily."

"I get it," Applebloom couldn't resist being disrespectful, "keep my mouth shut and science. Can I get back to my lecture now?"

"Of course, we would not stand in the path of this glorious day for the Republic. But know that we can always wait. All hours are ours to decide."

With that, the pony vanished into the shadows.

"I hate it when they do that," Applebloom said to Rarity.

The Unicorn only drooled in response.