Wolfenstein: Worlds Collideby Brinstar77ChaptersWolves, Part 1Wolves, Part 2Wolves, Part 3Oblivion, Part 1Oblivion, Part 3Oblivion, Part 2Wolves, Part 1Author's Note I'd like to open this tale with a warning: this fic is rated M for swearing, graphic depictions of violence, mature themes, and nazi bastards being nazi bastards. And much like Wolfenstein: The New Order and its sequels and spinoffs, this fic does NOT shy away from some of the Nazi's more fucked-up behavior. Quite the opposite, actually. Consider yourself warned. Wolves, Part 1 In hindsight, when the Ausmerzer sunk its claws into his old house, BJ should’ve run. He should’ve dived out the window, bolted for the woods, and pumped any nazis who tried to stop him full of bullets. He’d gotten what he came here for, and there was nothing left but ghosts in this decrepit, decaying farmhouse. But he was angry. Fresh out of a ‘talk’ with his father, a ‘talk’ that had culminated in the man bragging about ratting out BJ’s Jewish mother to the nazis, holding a shotgun to his forehead, and demanding that he get down on his knees, that had ended in BJ lopping his father’s arm off with a hatchet, bringing it down onto the man’s chest for good measure, and realizing that he’d sold him out to the nazis too. Those fascist bastards had already taken so much from him; his commanding officer, his country, his family, his friends. He sure as hell wouldn’t let them take his home too. He charged through the now-sideways house like a man possessed, his arms moving almost on automatic as they turned the weapons they carried toward the trio of drones hovering just outside the crumbling wooden structure, bullets and lasers shredding the hovering machines in a matter of moments. It took him less than a minute to reach the second claw, and it took him even less time to dispatch the black-armored Nazis around it. The area clear of distractions for the moment, he whipped out his hatchet and began whaling away at the mechanical claw digging into the wooden frames of the house. One hit, two, three… and then the claw released. The house tilted wildly, but BJ barely noticed. Two claws down, one to go. Brandishing the DieselKraftWerk and an assault rifle, he climbed up toward the last claw, whizzing bullets and flaming grenades ripping apart any who tried to stop him, human or otherwise. It wasn’t long before he was in front of the final claw, his assault rifle returning to his back so he could brandish a hatchet once again… A laser bolt whizzed by his head; he responded with the DieselKraftWerk, the explosive grenade tearing the Ubersoldat’s chassis to pieces in an instant, the skeletal robot’s self-destruct function kicking in moments later and destroying whatever survived. With that, he turned his attention back to the final claw. One strike, two, three… and the claw released. Gravity took over from there, the house falling to the distant ground… and B.J. falling with it. His arms flailed in the air to no avail, the house crumbling to pieces above him. Why did I come here? He asked himself as his body hurtled towards the distant ground, getting closer and closer with each heartbeat. I should have run home. To you, Anya. He closed his eyes, bracing for the impact… The air changed, suddenly darker, cleaner, devoid of smoke and dust. BJ’s eyes snapped open to behold an abruptly orange-red sky, almost completely clear of the debris that filled it moments before. The Ausmerzer, the wreckage of the house, the nazis… all of it had vanished. What the fu… And then his free-falling body crashed through a layer of foliage and into the abruptly-not-distant ground. Hard. Nature gone wild taunted Twilight from all sides. Gusts of wind rustled the leaves, which in turn tickled her nose. Talon-like branches writhed in the breeze, curling menacingly, their shadows stretching out until their sharpened tips were set directly over her heart. All the while, the wood of the trees creaked and groaned and the howls of Timberwolves permeated the eternal scarlet-tinted night. But Twilight didn’t flinch, didn’t breathe, didn’t even blink. She merely sat still and alert, like a hawk hiding from a mouse, waiting for the wind to die down enough that she could hear clearly. The gears in her head were turning so fast that she bet smoke could have been billowing out her ears. That WHOOM she’d heard in the distance could have been any number of things; a falling tree, an avalanche of some sort, or maybe just a figment of her imagination. Or it could have been something made by the “humans”, the strange, hairless monkey-like creatures who’d conquered well over 3/4ths of Equestria. A crashed plane, a mechanical monstrosity, a grenade from a patrol sent on a mission to root out anyone who might be hiding in the Everfree forest. Anyone like her. The wind died down for a few seconds. No crackling flames, no foliage crunching beneath huge steel feet, no voices calling out to each other in that harsh-sounding language the “Nazis”, as the humans often called each other, often used. Fear and curiosity went to war with each other in the young alicorn’s mind, and for some reason Twilight couldn’t fathom, curiosity won out. Slowly, tentatively, she rose to her feet, silently making her way through the foliage. She should be heading in the opposite direction, fleeing as quickly and quietly as she could. That was her response to any sort of noises that were out of the norm—particularly sudden, loud noises, and it had probably saved her life on more than. But something about this particular noise just wouldn’t let her leave it alone. It wasn’t long before she reached the source; a small clearing in an especially thick section of the Everfree forest, not far from the cave she now called home. And in the exact center of that clearing, within a sizeable impression in the grassy earth, was a very strange-looking stallion. The stallion in the clearing was slightly larger than her brother, maybe one or two feet taller than her. Every part of his body from the neck down was covered in a gleaming set of full-body armor. It looked a little like a Unicorn Guard’s uniform… but even the most cursory glance at the hexagonal pattering on the suit, the weirdly mechanical appearance, and the way it covered every single inch of his body made it clear he wasn’t a member of the Royal Guard. From what Twilight could tell from the pony’s exposed neck and head, they were an Earth pony with light-goldish gray fur and a light-goldish brown mane. She definitely didn’t know this pony, and she was fairly certain her friends would say the same if they were here. And he certainly couldn’t tell her, on account of being unconscious. Once again, two halves of her brain went to war with each other. Leave this unusually-dressed pony where he was and hope he could recover on his own, or risk herself to save a pony who might not need rescuing. There was a pretty strong case to be made for the former; other than being out cold, this pony looked completely fine, and she was already seriously pushing her luck today. But she’d already lost so much. Her teacher, her nation, her family, her friends. She couldn’t bear to lose anything else. Not even a pony she hadn’t even met. She started to slip her wings underneath the stallion’s body in order to pick him up, but paused for a second when they made something underneath him clank . Rolling him onto his stomach revealed the source of the noise; a rather sizeable collection of mangled metal bits strapped to his back. She’d seen similar devices in the hands of passing human patrols, but the equipment the stallion was carrying was so mangled she barely even recognized it. At least this stallion will have plenty of salvageable metal and good reason to share it with me. Twilight thought to herself as she pulled out the sack and cloth she always carried with her on outings like this. With that, she began to quickly but quietly disentangle the crushed mass of metal, wrapping each individual piece into cloth padding and putting it into the sack. A distressingly high proportion of the mechanical monstrosities Equestria’s new rulers sent into the Everfree forest came out just fine, but not all of them did. As a result, Twilight had plenty of practice with extricating useable scraps out of the mangled, lifeless steel bodies she occasionally stumbled across, and that practice served her well here. In a matter of minutes, all the metal bits that had been strapped to the stallion’s back were tucked away in the sack. With said sack clutched in her mouth, she used her wings to lift the stallion’s limp form onto her back, grunting a little from exertion. And with that, she set off toward the cave she called home. The trip back was probably not the most nerve-wracking thing she’d ever experienced, but it was definitely somewhere up there in the top five. Out here, sound was Twilight’s worst enemy, and it had taken her no time at all to develop a keen awareness of how much noise she was making at any given moment. As a result, she was keenly aware of every soft clank the sack let out, of every twig she snapped as she dragged the stallion along, of every other noise she was making at the moment. Each sound ran the risk of attracting unwanted attention, whether it came from a predator hunting for a snack, a patrol looking for insurgents, or something worse. She was almost tempted to leave the sack of salvage behind, so she could move quicker and minimize the risk. And yet, somehow, whatever lucky streak she was running on held. No predators pounced at her from out of the foliage, no black-garbed humans stepped forward and leveled weapons at her, no semi-sentient machinery surged forward with weapons readied and steel teeth bared. By some miracle, she managed to make it the whole way without incident. She nearly gasped in relief as she reached an unassuming bundle of brush pressed up against a stony outcropping. To any other pony, it was just a sheet of shrubs and moss and foliage, but to her it might as well have been a door with a welcome mat in front of it. She carefully pushed the twigs and leaves and briars away for a second with one hoof, slipping into the cave hidden beneath with the still-unconscious stallion in tow. Weaving around stalagmites and ducking underneath stalactites, Twilight slowly made her way through the cave, moving slower now that she was somewhere relatively safe. The darkness greeted her return with its usual frigidness, the damp chill slipping past her fur and seeping into her bones. It wasn’t long before she was shivering, and she had to actively focus on stopping her jaw from chattering. It was the same sensation every time, like she was being hugged by a ghost. Finally, she slipped underneath a familiar curtain, setting down the stallion and the sack in a corner of the small chamber beyond it. With that, she trotted over to the other side of the chamber, her hoof finding a metal switch with practiced ease. She threw it, the action producing a spark, then a faint whirring, and then suddenly, the chamber was doused in a dim amber light. It was difficult to make a cave seem homely—especially to someone like her, someone used to the creature comforts of life in Canterlot—but that hadn’t stopped Twilight from trying. Though electronics, wiring, and technology in general were not her forte, she had been able—through trial and error, burns and scars, and no small number of frustrating setbacks—to put together a something resembling a lighting setup. She’d found some kind of generator in the wreckage of a damaged, nonfunctional robot, and had managed to extract it intact, haul it back here, and rig it up to a transplanted street lamp. The generator required fuel, but she’d been using a canister of whatever stuff powered the human-built machines for months now, and she had a half-dozen backups piled in a corner when—or rather, if —the canister she was using ran empty. While the electronics were impressive, considering what little she had or knew, the decor was… less so. A single bed rested in the corner, its musty pillows and torm sheets always ever-so-slightly damp no matter the time of year. Next to it was the only other piece of furniture she had; a small dresser that served double-duty as a desk. Damp or not, she was flirting quite aggressively with the idea of just leaping into that bed, curling up underneath the sheets, and drifting off into a deep slumber. Dragging an unconscious stallion and all the stuff he’d been carrying had taken a lot out of her, especially considering the pace she’d set for herself. But she couldn’t. Not yet. She had a few things to take care of first. She trotted over to the dresser, opening the bottom shelf. She pulled out a few spare sheets, laid them down on the ground, and then pulled the stallion’s limp body onto the improvised mattress. With that done, she dragged the sack over next to him. Normally, she’d lay out all the metal bits she managed to salvage and sort through what was worth keeping and what wasn’t, but all this was technically the stallion’s stuff, and she wasn’t going to ruffle through his personal belongings anymore than absolutely necessary. Now she could rest, at least until the stallion woke up. She trotted over to the generator, switched it off, and then carefully made her way through the darkness and too the bed. She practically pounced on the bed, burying herself in the tattered blanket, not even bothering to move her head up to the pillow. It wasn’t long before she’d slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep. Wolves, Part 2Something was deeply wrong. As someone who’d just fallen from a height so great it should have killed him, B.J. considered himself more than capable of thinking as much, given that he was thinking anything at this exact moment. He’d been awake for quite some time now, staring at the pure, unrelenting darkness before him for what felt like an eternity. He could hear water dripping in the distance, the sound echoing around him as if he were in some kind of cavern. But he couldn’t feel anything, and all he could see was pitch blackness. Is this what death feels like? The captain wondered to himself. He had just fallen to his presumed death; maybe this was the afterlife. Many mythological afterlifes were somewhere underground, after all. Honestly, though, he kinda expected death to greet him like an old friend, instead of just leaving him suspended in blackness for all eternity. His unchanging, unwitting vigil was ended by something that would have been wholly unremarkable in any other situation. He blinked. It was too dark for his eyes to register any change, but he definitely felt his eyelids close and then open back up for a second. There was no way he could’ve blinked—his body had to be little more than a big red stain after a fall from such a great height. And yet he had no other explanation for what had just happened. He thought to try and blink, and to his surprise, he could. One eye and then the other, separately, together, slow, quick… he could blink. Slowly, gradually, feeling began to return to his body… but not in the way he expected. His whole body was buzzing like when the blood came back to a leg he had been sitting on, but more than just his leg was buzzing; everything was, and then some… literally. Much of what he could feel didn't feel right , the incessant tingling spreading beyond where it should. But right or not, he was feeling something , and the dead didn't feel. And that could only mean that he wasn’t dead. None of what was happening made sense to the increasingly bewildered captain. There was no way he could have survived such a long fall, even with his body encased in Da’at Yitude power armor. Yet here he was, breathing and watching and feeling like he was (mostly) completely fine. B.J. tried to sit up and get his feet under him… but his body wasn’t responding in the ways he was expecting, and all he managed to do was make his limbs flail uselessly for a few seconds, totally failing to do what he intended. With standing up proving to be unexpectedly difficult, B.J. decided to try a different approach. Rolling proved to be significantly easier than standing, and it wasn’t long before he was on his stomach, his legs and arms lifting him up and off the cold, hard ground. Oddly enough, his back was straight as if he were on his hands and knees, yet his legs were fully extended and his knees weren’t even touching the ground. He pushed aside the sheer weirdness of his predicament for a moment; he could figure out how he got here after he figured out where “here” even was. “Hello?” He called out, half-hoping someone sympathetic to his plight was in earshot. For a few seconds, the only thing that answered him was his own voice echoing back at him. But then… there was a soft, sleepy moan. “Wh…whuh?” “Who’s there?” B.J. called out once again. “…Oh!” The voice exclaimed, speaking in plain English, all the exhaustion vanishing from it in an instant. “You’re awake!” The voice sounded feminine, young, almost childlike, and completely unfamiliar; it definitely wasn’t Anya, let alone anyone he knew. “Um… who are you?” “My name’s Twilight Sparkle.” The mystery voice responded. The ruffling of sheets reached B.J.’s ears, as if the voice’s owner was climbing out of bed. “What’s yours?” Twilight Sparkle… odd name. Definitely not a name a Nazi would have. “…Blazkowicz. Captain William J. Blazkowicz.” “Captain?” Twilight asked curiously. “Are you a member of the Wonderbolts or something?” Doesn’t she mean the Thunderbolts? “…something like that, yeah.” He said, turning toward the sound of shoes clicking softly on the stone. “Anyway, where are we?” “My hideout.” Twilight responded quickly. “Sorry it’s so dark at the moment. I’ll have the lights on in a second.” Lights? But this is a cave? How the heck did this kid manage to set up… Sparks flared to life, the darkness giving way to amber light for a fraction of a second. An instant later, and the amber light returned, persistent and steady. Glancing toward the source of the light, he noticed the top of a streetlamp, propped up against a nearby wall, the light bulb within shining brightly. A short cable linked the improvised indoor light to a generator, softly humming just a few feet away. … Lights. Now that he could actually see, it kinda felt like an insult to call this place a cave. Sure, it was technically accurate, but this stony chamber felt a lot more like a bedroom than a cavern. Sure, a spartan-yet-cluttered bedroom with a ragged, worn bed, a beaten-up dresser, and a pile of assorted metal scrap in one corner, but still, it was liveable… which was really saying something, considering that it was in an underground cave. “Yeah, I know. It’s not much to look at.” B.J. looked back at Twilight, a response rising up from his throat… but the words died on his tongue. Standing next to the generator was a small horse, its head just a foot or two lower to the ground than B.J.’s own. Its coat was a bright, vibrant shade of mulberry, its mane was a deep, dark sapphire blue with purple and violet streaks, and its eyes were a deep purple. A horn the same color as the rest of its coat jutted from its forehead, and feathery wings of a similar color were tucked in against its sides. “What?” The oddly-shaped, unnaturally colorful horse asked, speaking in Twilight Sparkle’s voice, and it took B.J. almost a full minute to realize that Twilight Sparkle and the horse were one and the same. “…You’re a horse.” B.J. murmured, almost to himself, his mind struggling to wrap his head around what he was seeing. Maybe he was hallucinating. Maybe he survived the fall (somehow) but received a severe concussion or some other head injury. This was just a very strained mind's way of coping with the damage. Never mind the fact that he had not the faintest clue why his subconscious decided to throw this particular fever dream at him. Or the fact that everything about this felt far, far too real to be a hallucination. “Of course I’m a horse,” Twilight said nonchalantly, as if being a horse and being able to speak any language—let alone perfect English—weren’t two mutually exclusive things. “Well, I’m technically a pony, but that’s beside the point.” “But… but ponies can’t talk.” That just prompted a bewildered look from the technicolor pony. “You’re a pony too, and you’re talking right now. So… not true?” “Wait… I’m not a pony, I’m human.” B.J. snapped back. Twilight didn’t answer; all the talking pony did was give him a look as if he’d just declared the sky was a neon shade of pink. “...Why are you looking at me like that?” In response, the pony whipped a silver hand mirror seemingly out of nowhere, and held it in front of B.J. And in the mirror, a pony stared back, a pony with light goldish gray fur, a light brown mane and tail, and frighteningly familiar piercing blue eyes. The Da’at Yitude armor he wore began to slowly recede, his hesitation bleeding into the mental command to make the suit come off. He stepped forward, out of the boots, tearing his eyes away from that twisted reflection to look back at himself, at his unmistakably equine form. Once, being able to walk around without the armor would’ve been the best thing that ever happened to him, but now it was just another reminder that his current body wasn’t his own. “…are you okay?” Hearing Twilight’s voice, under any other circumstances, probably wouldn’t have been such a big deal, other than the whole pony-that-could-talk factor. But now, with his mind still reeling from the realization that he was a talking pony, the reminder that there was another talking pony standing right next to him was the straw that broke the camel’s back. A scream began to rise up from his throat, and for the first time in his life, B.J. did nothing to hold it back. “Woah woah woah, calm down!” Twilight exclaimed, stowing the mirror and stepping forward, trying to calm Blazkowicz down. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t-!” A hoof flew up, trying to bat her away; Twilight just barely managed to dodge it. By the time her attention returned to the stallion who’d thrown that punch, said stallion had bolted for the wall and had begun smashing his head against the wall, the force increasing with each successive blow, his voice cracking each time. “Wake up, goddammit! Wake up, wake up, WAKE UP-!!!” “STOP! You’ll hurt yourself!” Twilight cried out, leaping forward and tackling Blazkowicz to the ground. He immediately began struggling against her hold, still shouting at the top of his walls. Dear Celestia, this stallion was strong; Twilight’s only saving grace was that he was too panicked to really fight back against her, and even then it took every last ounce of strength she had to hold him down. Twilight’s brain went into overdrive, scouring itself for some way to snap this pony out of whatever panic attack he was going through before he got out from under her and started hurting himself again. It ended up coming across something Spike had shared with her, of all things. “Try counting to ten, okay?” To her surprise, that actually worked. The stallion’s struggles subsided, the tension fleeing his limbs as he inhaled, paused for a handful of seconds, exhaled, paused again, repeating the breathing exercise a few times. And then… all the fight in the stallion seemed to leave him too. He went limp beneath Twilight, eyes closing as if he’d just lost consciousness. And… were those tears glistening at the corners of his eyes? “…you aren’t going to go slamming your head against the wall again, right?” Twilight asked slowly. “…no.” Blazkowicz’s voice was a soft, weak moan, so quiet Twilight could barely hear it. Slowly, carefully, Twilight stepped off of Blazkowicz, ready to leap forward and hold him down again if he started doing anything that might lead to him hurting himself again. For a long, long minute, the stallion just sat there, not moving an inch. Twilight was about to ask whether he needed anything when he finally decided to move. Slowly, sluggishly, he climbed to his feet, staggering toward the pile of sheets that she’d laid out for him as if he’d just stirred from a deep, deep slumber. The minute he reached the sheets, he just collapsed onto them in an undignified heap, not even bothering to get underneath the blanket on top. A long, awkward silence fell over the two of them. “…need anything?” Twilight finally asked. “Not anything you can give…” Blazkowicz said in response. Twilight didn’t know what to say about that. Up until now, she’d kinda been entertaining a fantasy of this stallion she rescued turning out to be some sort of dashing warrior who’d help her reunite with her friends, break out the elements of harmony, and send the humans who were stomping around Equestria like they owned the place packing, but this depressed, mopey wreck of a pony was a far cry from that. “…I’m gonna turn off the lights, okay?” Twilight said, trotting over to the generator. Blazkowicz didn’t even bother responding to that. B.J. only barely registered the veil of darkness that enveloped the room, buried as he was beneath a mountain of misery. This wasn’t a dream, or an injury-induced hallucination. Somehow, he ended up stranded in this strange new world, this world where ponies could talk and he wasn’t human. I’m never going to see the rest of the resistance again, am I? Seth, the resistance’s cranky resident Da’at Yitude tech expert. Wyatt, that depressed, loveable little wreck of a kid. Max Haus. Bombate. Grace. Super Spesh. Anya… His mind recoiled from that line of thought, refusing to follow it any further. He couldn’t imagine life without Anya. He just couldn’t. Time passed. B.J. just couldn’t be bothered to keep track of how much. Everything felt numb, like he was alive but not truly living. And he kinda was; how could he go on like this, stranded in an alien world and an alien body, the resistance left to fend for themselves… “Are you sure we shouldn’t split up to cover more ground?” A voice called out, speaking in German, the harsh-sounding language snapping B.J. out of his despair-induced stupor. “We’d probably have found the source of the scream you’d heard earlier by now if we’d done that earlier.” “Have you never seen a horror movie before?!” Another voice snapped back, also in German, in the language B.J. had come to associate with Nazism. “…oh shit .” Twilight’s voice reached the captain’s ears, barely higher than a whisper yet somehow conveying her panic just as well as a full-throated scream. B.J. thought back to when he’d first awakened, to the way all the furniture had looked like it had been transplanted from somewhere else, to how Twilight had called it her “hideout”. He’d been too disoriented and confused to realize it earlier, but now, in hindsight, it was obvious that she was hiding from something. And given her reaction to hearing German, that something was likely a bunch of Nazis. B.J. pushed himself to his feet, pushing aside his misery. Killing the Nazi bastards who’d set up shop here probably wouldn’t get him home, and wouldn’t do much to help the resistance, but it certainly beat just sitting in a cave and waiting to die. “Where’s my gear?” “Broken,” Twilight responded hastily, her voice barely higher than a whisper, her tone of voice rising in pitch alongside the increasing volume of the Nazi’s voices. “Your armor was fine, but everything else you were carrying was smashed. I don’t have any weapons. And when they get here-“ “Just breathe, okay?” B.J. reached out on instinct, his hoof somehow managing to settle on Twilight’s shoulder. “Inhale, count to four, exhale.” He whispered to her, sharing a little breathing exercise he did whenever things got too bad even for his trauma-inured psyche. The last thing he wanted was for his only ally to panic and do something stupid. Twilight leaned into B.J.’s hoof, sucking in a breath, pausing for four seconds, and letting it out. She took several more deep breaths, the tremors running through her body subsiding more and more with each one. “Okay.” The curtain of pitch blackness that engulfed them both suddenly lifted, driven back by a small mote of violet light that had inexplicably popped into existence atop Twilight’s horn. A part of B.J. couldn't help but wonder where the hell that light source had come from, but he could ask Twilight that after the Nazis on their doorstep were dealt with. “I put everything you were carrying in a sack over there.” Twilight lifted one hoof, gesturing toward a mound of something enveloped in a cocoon of coarse, tough fabric. “Not sure how useful any of it will be, though.” B.J. nodded, trotting over to the sack in question. His hooves—despite being… well, hooves —were somehow almost as nimble as regular hands, and thus it was remarkably easy to lift up the sack and dump out its contents. Just as Twilight had promised, said “contents” turned out to be his almost-comically large collection of rifles, shotguns, pistols, grenades, and other assorted ordinance, all of it crushed and mangled almost beyond recognition. Not even the DieselKraftWerk was spared. “So, all my guns have been reduced to impractically huge paperweights.” B.J. glanced back at Twilight. “What else do we have?” “There’s the generator, and the streetlight it’s hooked up to,” Twilight responded almost instantly, as if she’d already been running through a list of everything she had on hand that might be useful. “There’s a half-dozen canisters of fuel, that pair of boots your armor turned into, a pile of assorted scrap in the corner…” She continued, B.J. following her gaze as it darted around the chamber, landing on each item she listed off… Something caught his eye. Something in the pile of scrap that Twilight had just pointed out. B.J.’s tail reached out, the hairs curling around the rifle-like device’s handle, lifting it up and bringing it closer to him. “That’s just something I found lying in the forest,” Twilight explained, noticing B.J. studying the device. “I think it’s broken.” “Yes, it’s broken. But I happen to know how to fix it.” Reaching over with one hoof, he grabbed the ruined DieselKraftWerk. The thing mostly ran on diesel fuel—hence the name—but some of its functions required electrical power. Thus, it had a portable reactor inside of it to provide that power. And by the looks of it, the drum-like device that contained that reactor was still intact. “You’ve worked with that kind of weapon before?” “Not this exact model, no,” B.J. admitted as he extracted the reactor from the DieselKraftWerk. The thing currently grasped in his tail was far more compact and streamlined than the original LaserKraftWerk he had back in 1960, its frame far less unwieldy and a little more riflelike, and there was a gleaming nozzle-like attachment on its business end he didn’t recognize. But the chassis of it was still recognizable. B.J. slotted the portable reactor into place like it was a drum magazine, the LaserKraftWerk’s business end producing a soft, fiery orange glow as the Da’at Yitude-derived reactor brought the long-dormant weapon back to life. “...but it’s close enough.” Wolves, Part 3A dim red glow was creeping around the corner, the sound of metal clomping on concrete echoing through the cavern, and it was all Twilight could do to stop herself from curling into a ball and praying to whatever had taken Celestia’s place that the source of those frighteningly familiar lights would just pass her by. “You okay?” Blazkowicz asked, the stallion’s voice surprisingly soft. “Yeah,” Twilight nodded, following the stallion out through the thin curtain, into the cavern beyond. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, sucking in a breath, counting to four, and then letting it out. That “counting to four” trick was surprisingly soothing, almost as effective as counting to ten while taking only half as long. No wonder Blazkowicz seemed to like it. “If you say so.” Blazkowicz stepped away from her, his soft, barely audible footsteps approaching the opposite wall. “All I need is light so I can see who I’m shooting at. Can you spawn that purple light you pulled up earlier on top of them?” Twilight opened her eyes, noticing that the sources of the lights were now visible, the red lights of human-made night vision goggles visible ahead. By the looks of it, there were about 5 regular soldiers, plus one whose visor had a singular, cyclopean lens. None of them were close enough to see them yet… but in a handful of seconds, that was going to change. “I have a better idea,” Twilight responded, funneling her magic into her horn. The Equestria-wide anti-magic field the humans had managed to set up severely curtailed her magical abilities, but because she’d become an alicorn just a few days before all this madness broke loose, she could still call forth magical energy. Not a lot of it—she could only summon as much magical energy as a regular unicorn—but she didn’t need a lot for what she wanted to do. She reached out with the magical energies she’d brought forth, out toward the six humans. She didn’t have enough magical power available to actually move them with her telekinesis, not from this distance and certainly not all six of them, let alone one. But that wasn’t what she was trying to do. A soft violet glow enveloped all six soldiers, outlining them perfectly, said soldiers letting out several surprised exclamations as they glanced at each other. Twilight had to strain a bit to ‘touch’ all six of them like this, but not excessively so; she could keep this up for quite a bit if she had to. “…clever.” Blazkowicz lifted the rifle-like device held in his tail, drawing a bead, and Twilight silently braced herself. A ray of fiery orange light shot out of the device, striking the closest soldier right in his face, his entire head reduced to a smoldering stump in an instant. The remaining five let loose cries of shock and fury, and Twilight winced, the glowing telekinetic auras that enveloped the soldiers flickering as her concentration faltered for a moment. But she steeled herself, the glowing auras around the remaining soldiers quickly reasserting themselves. Blazkowicz had already leaped forward, snatching something off of the headless soldier’s still-smoking corpse as he pelted toward the others, taking a brief potshot at another soldier. The shot missed, but Blazkowicz made up for it when he leaped up at a different soldier, a choked, gurgling cry slipping from the human’s throat as the stallion sliced his neck open with the hatchet he’d just grabbed. The moments that followed quickly dissolved into a blur of gunfire and motion and orange-and-red lasers. Before all this, seeing someone get their head melted or their throat sliced open would probably have elicited a scream from Twilight, or a horrified gasp at the very least. But after Canterlot had fallen, the other Alicorn Princesses had disappeared, and her friends had been captured, she’d learned how to tune out visages of bloodshed and death with almost unsettling speed. She didn’t need to pay attention to what exactly Blazkowicz was doing to the soldiers or what they were trying to do to him, didn’t need to pay attention to the black liquid that shimmered on the cavern floor and the ways the fallen humans had been ripped apart. All she needed to focus on was maintaining her telekinesis and keeping those humans lit up. So that’s all she focused on. Unfortunately, that meant that when one of the humans—the one with the cyclopean visor—took notice of what she was doing and decided to put a stop to it, she didn’t realize he was moving in her direction until his fist was streaking toward her face. Twilight screamed, only barely managing to roll out of the way of the punch, the blow hitting hard enough to make the ground beneath her shake, the artificial earthquake intense enough to knock her off her feet. By the time she had regained her footing, her assailant had seized her neck in his metal-plated hand. A choked, strangled cry slipped from Twilight’s constricted throat as she was lifted by her neck and roughly slammed into the wall, her lungs already burning from want of air. Her assailant snarled something in that guttural language all humans seemed to speak, the scarlet glow of the singular ‘eye’ of his visor intensifying. Up until this moment, a tiny part of her had been wondering where the red lasers she’d seen earlier had come from. Somehow, over the roaring in her ears, Twilight heard Blazkowicz shout her name, heard his hoofs pounding on the stone as he sprinted toward her assailant. But she somehow knew that he wouldn’t make it in time, that the glowing red lens would unleash a crimson ray of fiery death and her head would be reduced to a smoldering stump before Blazkowicz even came within hoof’s reach, let alone before he could do anything about it. Unless she beat her assailant to the punch. Her vision blurred, an all-to-familiar burning sensation welling up in the corners of her eyes as she funneled every last drop of magical energy she could muster into her horn. Her attacker recoiled slightly as the brilliant purple glow illuminated his steel-covered face, his grip on her neck loosening ever-so-slightly as he tried to backpedal… but by the time he realized what Twilight was about to do, it was too late. Celestia… please forgive me. Twilight whispered silently to herself, and then let the energy in her horn out. A lance of concentrated magical energy shot out from the tip of her horn, right into the visor’s ‘eye’. An instant later, said visor exploded, along with the head that was wearing it. The concussive blast from the detonation slammed into Twilight’s chest, knocking what little air she’d managed to get into her lungs back out. Twilight barely noticed, however, and didn’t really care, largely on account of the fact that an instant later, the metal-plated hand fell from her throat, leaving that sweet, sweet air free to come rushing right back in. The young alicorn took in a huge lungful as she dropped back down to the cavern floor. The impact sent a shockwave of pain through her bruised, battered body, but she somehow managed to remain on her feet as she sucked in one huge, gasping breath after another, the burning pain in her oxygen-starved lungs slowly subsiding… A loud, audible CLANG reached Twilight’s ears. She glanced up, half-expecting her attacker to have somehow survived the laser-to-the-face treatment, to be charging toward her to finish the job… but all he’d done was fall to his knees. For a long, long moment, neither the purple mare nor the armored human who’d just tried to murder her moved an inch. And then, the armored human’s dead body began to tilt forward, its chest colliding with the stony floor with another metallic CLANG , the still-smoking stump that was all that remained of his head landing mere inches from her snout. All of a sudden, bile was rising up in Twilight’s throat, and from more than just the smell of cooked flesh that flooded her nose. She staggered backward, suddenly feeling like she was being choked again, the enormity of what she’d just done crashing down on her like a sledgehammer to her soul. She’d just killed him. Sure, he’d been trying to kill her, yes, but that didn’t change the fact that he had friends, family, maybe even a wife. He’d had dreams, desires, hopes and aspirations… and Twilight had just shattered them all in an instant. She’d killed him… “Twilight?! You okay?” Somehow, Blazkowicz’s voice snapped her out of her spiraling thoughts. Inhale, count to four, exhale. She reminded herself, squeezing her eyes shut and forcing herself to take a slow, deep breath as she reigned her emotions back in, gathering them up and shoving them into a box deep inside of her, a box that had been getting rather cluttered as of late. “…I’m fine.” Twilight finally said in response, her voice a flat monotone. Glancing back at the body in front of her, she noticed a familiar hexagonal pattern on the armor it wore. She flipped it over with one hoof, refusing to pay attention to its lack of a head as she reached for the triangle on the center of the armor. Sure enough, it began to retract the instant her hoof touched the triangular sigil, the damaged bits screeching and sparking as they were folded back into shape by the rest of the transforming armor. “We can’t stay here,” Twilight murmured, half to herself, snatching up the black pair of metal boots with one hoof. Her body felt like it was moving on automatic as she staggered back into the cave she’d been living in for months now, her free hoof reaching up and flipping the switch on the generator as she moved past it, toward the dresser. “There‘ll be more patrols out looking for the one we just killed, we need to find a place to lie low until-” She continued, throwing open one of the drawers and pulling out a worn, rugged saddlebag… “Twilight…” The purple alicorn froze at the sound of Blazkowicz’s voice. She’d heard that tone of voice before. Princess Celestia used a similar tone whenever she recognized that Twilight wasn’t telling the whole story but didn’t want to outright call her out on her bluff. “Are you really okay? Because you do not look-“ Flashes of memory shot through her mind, flashes of roaring flames, of glowing red eyes, of the expression she’d seen on her teacher’s face before her hastily-cast teleport spell spirited Twilight away. “I SAID I’M FINE!!!” She snarled at the top of her lungs, spinning around to face Blazkowicz, her horn emitting a crackling flash of purple light that sent the blue-eyed stallion stumbling backward. For a long, long minute, there was nothing but dead silence, neither of the ponies present saying a word as Twilight struggled to repress the memories running rampant in her mind’s eye, to clamp down on her out-of-control emotions and regain her composure. “…let’s go.” Twilight finally said, her voice once again monotone and emotionless as she gathered up what little personal belongings she had, trotted over to the generator, and switched it off for the final time. B.J. stared up at the blood-red moon looming high in the sky, squinting in the dim red light. He’d caught a glimpse of the orange-red sky earlier, but this was the first opportunity he’d had to actually take a good look at the unnaturally bright moon, at the twilight colors that moon cast. “Is the sky here normally that color?” “No.” A cold, icy voice answered him, completely devoid of all the energy it once had. B.J. glanced over at Twilight as the two of them stepped out from behind the foliage, noticing the unfocused look in the purple pony’s downturned gaze. Her expression wasn’t exactly a thousand-yard stare… but it was concerningly similar to one. For a while, neither of them spoke as they trudged through the foliage, Twilight leading the way and B.J. following close behind. “…feels like you just took a sledgehammer to your own soul, doesn’t it?” B.J. offered at last, finally breaking the long, awkward silence. Twilight flinched a little, a small shudder running through the pony’s brightly colored body. “Yeah…” Her voice was soft, barely higher than a whisper. “When I first shot someone, I felt the same,” B.J. said, thinking back to the first time he’d shot a Nazi. Just like Twilight, he hadn’t really had much of a choice, but that didn’t make the nausea any less intense, the scream of agony and horror his opponent had let out as he bled out on the floor any less gut-wrenching. “…why …why did we have to kill them? Why can’t they just leave us alone?” B.J. let out a long, drawn-out sigh. “Far as I can tell, it boils down to how they see the world around them. They’re completely certain that their worldview is the correct one, and don’t want to acknowledge anything that proves that worldview wrong. So they get rid of anything that doesn’t fit.” “Why can’t they just acknowledge that they’re wrong?” B.J. shrugged. “Not sure, honestly. Probably a combination of fear, arrogance, and narrow-mindedness, if I had to guess.” The purple mare let loose a small huff. “I… I wish I could just tell them that they didn’t have to hurt people, that they could just live and let live…” “Same here. If there was some magical phrase I could’ve said to get those six Nazi bastards back there that could’ve made them realize the error of their ways and renounce their allegiance to the Third Reich, I would’ve been shouting it at the top of my lungs.” The captain admitted, and Twilight stifled a small giggle. “But you can’t convince someone that what they’re doing is wrong when they’d rather kill you than hear what you’re saying. When they’d rather die than let you live.” B.J. glanced down at his front hoofs, at the flecks of blood scattered across them. “All you can do is try and kill them first, and hope the world will be a better place without them.” Another long silence descended over the two of them, feeling like it lasted far, far longer than it actually did This time, Twilight was the one to break it. “Do… do you ever get used to it? The killing?” “…you do, but you also don’t,” B.J. responded. “You stop feeling like you’re gonna heave every time you put a bullet through someone’s brain, but the nausea never completely fades. You get inured to the blood and the screams, but a part of you still cringes every time you hear a man cry out in pain as a bullet punctures their guts. It stops hurting as much when you slit someone’s throat… but it still hurts.” “And you know what? It’s good that it still hurts. Because that means that deep down, you’re not a monster. The day it stops hurting is the day you become a heartless killing machine, the day you start killing because you can, not because you have to. The day you become no better than the people who forced you to kill in the first place.” Twilight just nodded, one of her wings reaching forward to wipe away the tears sliding down her cheeks. “Thanks, Blazkowicz. I… didn’t realize I needed to hear that” “You can just call me B.J.” The captain said in response, a little impressed that Twilight hadn’t mangled the pronunciation. The blood-red moon that loomed high in the sky never set, never rose, never even moved, so Twilight had only the vaguest idea of how long it took for her and “B.J.” to reach their destination. If she had to guess, she’d probably say that they’d been walking for several hours. This was where Celestia’s teleport spell had dumped her goodness-only-knows how many moons ago. It was an old campsite, marked as such by the fire pit in the center of the clearing and the worn, tattered tent sitting in front of it, the latter still standing despite at least a year’s worth of neglect. She’d spent her first week in the Everfree Forest curled up in that tent, venturing out only to forage for food, too confused and terrified and miserable to do anything else. “We should be able to rest here for a day or two,” Twilight announced, pushing aside the tent flap and stepping inside. The tent’s interior was empty, save for a wooden platform that served as the tent’s floor, but that was okay; she’d brought a few sheets and blankets for bedding, enough for both her and her companion. “And after that?” Said companion asked as he followed her in. “Well, I’m not completely sure what we’ll do then. But I have a pretty good idea.” She reached into her saddlebags with one hoof, pulled out a folder, and set it down in front of her. With that done, she opened it, pulling out two maps; one pilfered from an office complex in the monument to dystopic brutalism that Canterlot had become and covered in her annotations, and another entirely of her own making. “I take it, based on what you just pulled out, that that “idea” involves breaking somebody out of a Nazi prison?” B.J. guessed, his sky-blue eyes analyzing the first map. “Yeah. Eisenberg prison, to be exact.” Twilight responded as she unfolded the second map, this one of the tunnels and caves under Canterlot. Specifically, the tunnels and caves caves they’d have to go to in order to reach the prison. With the maps out, she pulled out the last two things in the folder; a pair of sheets with Häftlings-Personal-Datei emblazoned on the top of each. Beneath those words were photos of the Häftlings—a.k.a. prisoners —in question. “The first pony we’re looking is an old friend of mine.” She tapped the first of the two “Prisoner Personal Files”, the one whose photos featured a pegasus with a yellow coat and a pink mane. In both, Fluttershy had her eyes closed, the still images somehow managing to capture the motion of her flinching away from the camera perfectly. “Her name’s Fluttershy. She’s been locked up there ever since the nazis took over. She’ll probably come off as a nervous wreck when you first meet her, but trust me when I say that she’s a lot tougher than she looks.” “And the other pony?” “Shining Armor. He’s my older brother.” Twilight said, gesturing to the other file. Unlike Fluttershy, he wasn’t shying away from the camera in any of his mugshots. Quite the opposite; he was standing straight, his posture rigid and braced for a fight. And if looks could kill, the cameraman would have died long before he’d had a chance to take the unicorn’s mugshots. “He was also at large until a few moons ago; that’s when the humans caught him and threw him in here. I’m willing to bet that he was part of a resistance movement of some sort before he got locked up, and can probably help us link up with said movement.” B.J. nodded in agreement as his attention turned from the files to the second map. “...this map’s hand-drawn. Did you scout all this out yourself?” “Yeah, I sneak into Canterlot using those tunnels every once in a while. Can’t say the same for the prison; the guards patrol the area around it really heavily, and I could never figure out how to get past them all without killing any of them.” Flashes of what she had done filled her mind’s eye, flashes of brilliant purple light and fiery conflagrations and smoldering flesh. She did her best to push them aside. “I… I don’t think that’ll be too much of an issue now.” “We can worry about that once we get there.” B.J. declared, looking over the maps and files one more time. “For now… well, I’m getting pretty damn tired, and you’re not looking much better.” “Yeah… that fight took a lot out of me...” Twilight said in response, folding the maps back up and tucking everything back into the folder, stowing it all in her saddlebags once again. With that, she pulled out the bedding material she brought, tossing half of it B.J.’s way before pulling out her own set of sheets and blankets. “Tonight, we rest. Tomorrow…” “We give those nazi bastards a very thorough object lesson on why they shouldn’t go stomping around this place like they own it.” B.J. declared as he straightened out their piles of blankets and sheets, flopping down on top of it. Twilight chuckled a little as she buried herself within her own pile of sheets. “Couldn’t have put it better.” Oblivion, Part 1B.J. stared down into the hole in the ground, squinting in the dim light. He couldn’t see anything in the darkness, but the shadows did nothing to stop sound, and he could clearly hear a soft, persistent trickling, the sound not unlike that of a shallow stream. “…you sure this is safe?” He wasn’t a geologist, but he was still pretty sure that that noise wasn’t a good sign. If he could hear the sound of water flowing meant that the flowing water making it was eroding the stone, increasing the risk of a cave-in and maybe even causing some flooding. “I’m sure it’s not safe,” Twilight declared, slipping past him and dropping down into the blackness. A moment later, and a familiar violet light had sprung to life atop the pony’s horn, revealing that she had dropped down to the cavern floor safely. “But it’s pretty sedate in comparison to sneaking into a city chock-full of Nazis and attempting to break a few rebels out of the biggest prison complex in said city.” “…fair enough,” B.J. admitted, leaping down after her. Almost immediately, he was enveloped by the cavern’s damp, chilly air. For once, he was actually glad for his new, unsettlingly equine body; after a lifetime of walking on two legs, the captain found moving around on four weird in a way that defied all description, but his fur did quite a bit to keep out the cold. Twilight was already trotting ahead, and nothing had collapsed yet, so B.J. fell into step behind her. Their footsteps echoed as they walked deeper into the rocky tunnels, the sounds bouncing and reverberating off of the damp, dark tunnels. Water dripped down from the cracks of the ceiling above, a few droplets landing on his coat and mane, punching tiny holes of moisture in his protective layer of fur; it wasn’t long before he started to shiver a little. It wasn’t anywhere near as cold as the waters of the Berlin Catacombs, but it was enough to make him wish he still had his Air Force-issued flight jacket. “You okay?” Twilight asked, the sound of the pony’s voice snapping B.J. out of his thoughts. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. I’ve been in places much colder than this.” “Good, because we still have quite a ways to go.” Twilight rounded a corner, her light suddenly reflecting off of something out of sight. “At least there’ll be plenty to see down here.” B.J. opened his mouth to ask what Twilight meant by that, but then he rounded the corner and promptly found himself staring at the answer to his question. The tunnel they’d been walking through had opened up onto a massive underground cavern positively crammed with crystals and gemstones. Shining white quartz made up the vast majority of it, shooting up in spear-like formations from the floor and ceiling, thick enough they were the ceiling or walls in some places. The trickling sound he’d heard earlier was louder here thanks to a near-constant flow of water leaking down from the ceiling, sliding off of the crystal formations and raining down in dozens of miniature waterfalls. The air here was even more humid than it was before, but the damp chill was suddenly the absolute last thing on B.J.’s mind. “...wow,” B.J. commented as Twilight led the way deeper into what was possibly the biggest and most elaborate geode in existence. The purple pony’ light refracted off and through the trickling streams and glittering gemstones, spreading it throughout the cavern in a slowly shifting display of violet light. “Yeah, wish I could say that was my reaction too when I first fell down here. Unfortunately, I was kinda distracted with saving my brother from an evil doppelganger of his betrothed.” “Wait, what?” “Long story.” Twilight offered. “Anyway, these caves were once home to a pretty big mining operation on account of all the gems down here. That was a long time ago, though; most ponies have forgotten that these caves even exist. As a result, they’re a great way to bypass all the checkpoints the humans have set up in Canterlot. All the wreckage from before Canterlot was invaded that wound up down here also makes it a good place to scavenge for supplies I can’t find in the Everfree forest.” Now that Twilight had pointed them out, B.J. could see several fragments of structures that looked like they’d been ripped right out of a fairy tale city, like bits of food caught in some unfathomably huge giant’s teeth. The front wall of a hut, propped against a spiky hill of quartz. A fragment of a building that was probably once part of a restaurant pinned between an outcropping of yellow crystals and a glittering green pillar. He could even see a piece of a library impaled upon a crystal-clear spike, decaying, waterlogged books spilling out from tilted bookshelves onto the cavern floor. Fitting. B.J. mused silently to himself. The nazis killed a city and replaced it with one of their own, blissfully unaware the old city’s corpse got buried right beneath their feet… The shifting display of refracted violet light came to an abrupt stop, freezing in place and snapping B.J. out of his thoughts. He looked up at Twilight, noticing that she’d come to an abrupt stop right in time to avoid running into her. “…what is it?” Twilight didn’t respond, at least not right away. B.J. stepped out from behind her, following her gaze to the remains of some kind of outdoor streetside stall. Based on all the pony-shaped wooden mannequins (ponnequins?) scattered around it and the tattered, decaying clothing on said mannequins, it was apparently dedicated to selling clothing at one point. Though B.J. had no clue why this particular piece of wreckage had caught her attention- “A friend of mine used to make things like this.” Twilight finally spoke up. The purple pony had trotted over to one of the life-sized dummies and was now kneeling in front of it, staring down mournfully at the pony-shaped hunk of wood. “She worked here?” “No, but she was planning to. She’d wanted to open up another boutique in Canterlot for a while, had picked out a store, even found a manager for the sister location…” Twilight trailed off into silence, a single tear splattering onto the cavern’s stony floor. For a long, long moment, the only sound was the ever-present trickling of water. “...we should probably get moving.” B.J. finally said, gently nudging Twilight’s leg with one of his hoofs. The purple pony nodded mutely, sniffling a bit as she turned away from the small collection of tattered cloth and wooden debris. B.J. stole one last glance at the scattered clothing… and promptly did a double-take so hard he could almost swear he heard his neck crack. “B.J.?” Twilight called out, but the captain barely heard her, preoccupied as he was with figuring out how the fuck that mannequin ended up wearing that suspiciously familiar sheepskin jacket. “…where the hell did that come from?” “Umm… the pony who owned this stall?” Twilight answered, the faintest hint of nervousness creeping into her voice. He couldn’t exactly blame her for being a little worried; from what he’d heard, he could come off as a little crazy at times, and that was before he got dumped into a world that looked like it had been plucked straight out of a particularly realistic acid trip. “Why’d you ask?” B.J. stepped toward the mannequin whose jacket had caught his eye, gently tilting it back into an upright position as he studied the article around its limbs. “I asked because the pony who ran this stall apparently made a jacket that looks almost exactly like a jacket I used to wear.” The color was a slightly darker brown than he recalled, the sheepskin lining was lighter in coloration, the sleeves extended all the way down the wearer’s front legs, the left half of the jacket didn’t fold over the right half quite as much, and the buckles were different, but other than all those minor details, the jacket was pretty much identical in appearance to his old GI flight jacket. “Really?” “Yes, really.” B.J. began slowly undoing the buckles and zippers on the jacket, being careful not to damage it as he stripped it off the mannequin. In all likelihood, though, he probably didn’t have to worry; for an article of clothing that had been gathering dust in this dark, damp cavern for who-knows-how-long, the jacket was free of mold, not at all torn, not fraying anywhere, and otherwise looking like it had been made yesterday. Given everything else that he’d seen so far, he wouldn’t be surprised if it had some sort of enchantment that made it supernaturally durable. And if that enchantment prevents wear and tear from damaging the jacket, then maybe it’ll prevent bullets and knives from damaging it too. And if it doesn’t… well, it’s still a pretty nice jacket. “Umm… do you need help getting that on?” Twilight offered, stepping a little closer as B.J. began trying (with mixed success) to get the jacket on. No wonder Twilight never bothered with clothes; to call getting just this jacket on a hassle was an understatement, and he didn’t have wings that might get in the way. “Just give me a minute…” B.J. responded as he finally managed to slip one hoof into a sleeve. Several tries later, and he’d managed to do the same with the other front hoof. With that, he began working on the buckles, struggling to manipulate them with just one hoof… “You do realize you can just use your tail for those, right?” B.J. froze for a moment, before glancing back at his tail, its prehensile hairs still wrapped around the LaserKraftWerk and holding the rifle-sized laser cannon aloft. “...not until this moment, no,” B.J. admitted, the faintest hint of an embarrassed blush creeping onto his face. He set the LaserKraftWerk down on the floor, freeing up his tail so that it could manipulate the buckles. Surprisingly enough, he had absolutely no trouble using his tail to secure the straps and clasps; unlike his hooves, which were roughly akin to flexible but thumbless mittens, the hairs of his tail could split apart into something approaching fingers, and were much more dexterous. As a result, it took only a few seconds to secure each strap, and only three straps before the jacket was fully on. “Mind if I keep this?” He asked, looking back at his equine body… and his heart skipped a beat. “Sure, why not?” Twilight answered, shrugging nonchalantly, but B.J. barely even noticed; all his attention had been seized by something else. Something that was, in his opinion, exponentially more alarming than a suspiciously familiar-looking jacket. “I mean, it’s not like anyone’s using it-” “Why is there a livestock brand on my flank?!” “...you got branded!? When did- Oh. Don’t worry, that’s just your Cutie Mark.” B.J. looked up at Twilight, then back at the black, winged-parachute-shaped “cutie mark” on his flank, and then back at Twilight. “…my cutie mark? What the hell is that?” “Oh, I don’t know, the mark on your flank?” The violet-eyed pony responded, lifting one hoof to cover her mouth and the tiny chuckles slipping out of it. “Y’know, the one you got when you discovered your special talent?” B.J. glanced back at the marking again, noticing how suspiciously similar it was to a USA Parachutist Badge. He was basically a natural-born supersoldier, and served as a Ranger in the army, so having that represented by a set of Jump Wings made a certain amount of sense… but then again, people didn’t just gain markings on their flanks tied to their special talents. Nothing did. And besides… “...you don’t find having a marking just appear outta nowhere on your body regardless of whether you want it or not concerning? At all?” “Yeah, because you’d have to be either crazy or afflicted with something that screws up your cutie mark to not want it.” Twilight was still trying to suppress her giggles, with rapidly dwindling success. “Sorry, it’s just… first, you claim you aren’t a pony, then you freak out on seeing your reflection, and then you mistake your cutie mark for a brand. Are you a human in disguise or something?” …she hasn’t realized I’m not just another pony, has she? Far as Twilight was concerned, B.J. was just a pony with a few screws loose, not a wayward human out of their element (and body). “Umm… yeah, actually. I wouldn’t say “in disguise”, but I was a human before I got turned into… well, this.” He admitted, gesturing with his tail to his equine form. In an instant, Twilight’s chuckles went completely silent, every fiber in her body going rigid, her eyes going wide as if B.J. had just announced that he was a serial killer. “You’re… you’re joking, right? You weren’t actually-” …oh. “Oh hell no!” B.J. exclaimed the instant he realized where Twilight’s comment was going. “I mean, I was the same species as those nazi bastards, but that’s about the only thing I had in common with them.” “...so you were a human… who wasn’t a nazi?” Twilight was looking skeptical; apparently, she’d never met another human who wasn’t a full-fledged nazi. But at least she wasn’t looking like she was going to bolt at a moment’s notice. “Who hated their friggin’ guts, too,” B.J. responded, nodding in agreement. “Let’s just say that the engagement back at your hideout wasn’t the first time I’ve gone to town on a bunch of nazis.” “...oh,” Twilight answered, the tension leaving her body as quickly as it had formed. “Honestly, it didn’t even occur to me that there were humans who weren’t Nazis.” “Kinda hard to blame you for that; if there are any humans here who aren’t Nazis, they’re probably in hiding, dead, or locked up in a prison somewhere,” B.J. responded. Twilight shuddered ever-so-slightly. “Speaking of prisons… well, like you said, we should probably get moving. My friends aren’t going to rescue themselves.” “Need any help getting that open?” “N… no…” Twilight answered between grunts. She didn’t venture onto the streets of Canterlot very often, but when she did, it was usually through this concrete drainage shaft. She’d managed to find a fissure in the wall of this shaft that linked it with the crystal-filled caverns underneath Canterlot, small enough that it had escaped notice yet large enough that she could slip through with relative ease. This wasn’t the only way to the street level that she knew of… but it was certainly the one she used the most. That didn’t make the hatch at the top of this shaft any less stubborn, though. “Almost…” She grunted, the circular slab of steel letting loose a loud, audible groan as the rusty valve holding it shut finally decided to cooperate. “Got it.” Her back hooves and wings tightened their grip on the ladder’s bars as she pushed with her front hooves, the hinges of the hatch squealing as she forced it open. Once the metal hatch opened fully, she quickly scrambled out and into the rectangular chamber beyond, B.J. following close behind. “...no guards? Or cameras?” B.J. asked as he studied the chamber that they’d entered, a large, rectangular room with concrete walls, light flowing through barred vents, and a few more ladders affixed to the walls, ladders that led to smaller hatches. “Nope,” Twilight answered him as she trotted over to one of the ladders. “When the Nazis took over, they pretty much demolished Cloudsdale when all the pegasi up there refused to submit to them. But Cloudsdale had a weather factory, and the ponies working up there kept stockpiles of rain and thunder clouds up there. And when the factory was destroyed with the rest of Cloudsdale… those stockpiles got released into the atmosphere.” “And Canterlot got slammed with one heckuva storm?” “Pretty much.” Twilight came to a stop beneath the closest ladder, pulling a small, 8-inch disk enclosed in a square plastic case out of her saddlebags with one wing as she began to climb it. “There was pouring rain, hailstones the size of soccer balls, even rainbow-colored lightning.” “Thing is, the Nazis didn’t know that the only weather here is artificially produced back then. They assumed that they’d have to deal with storms like that on a regular basis, and thus, when they rebuilt Canterlot, they built the drainage system to handle a truly absurd amount of rainfall. And when they finally realized these oversized flood-control drains were completely unnecessary, they decided to just build over top of them instead of taking the time to fill them in.” Twilight paused for a second underneath the second hatch, checking that the runes she’d inscribed onto the magnetic disk were doing what they were supposed to. They were. “Not that I’m complaining, since they make sneaking into Canterlot a piece of cake.” And with that, she undid the latch and climbed out onto the streets of Canterlot. The first time she’d emerged from one of those grates and onto the streets that stretched between the towering spires of steel and concrete, in the handful of seconds that had passed before the cameras had alerted the humans to her position and she’d found herself fleeing for her life, she’d assumed that she’d somehow ended up in Manehattan. It was only after she’d managed to lose her pursuers that she’d started to notice the distinct lack of glass, the rigid, angular construction of the buildings, the red banners and flags that were draped all over the grey walls. Those banners and flags never failed to creep Twilight out before; even if she put aside how much they reminded her of the makeover Canterlot had received at the hands of the Trixie the Nutty and Power-mad, the big white dots and black, crooked crosses in the center of each still looked entirely too much like massive, unblinking eyes, always watching and ready to call down a crushing iron fist upon anypony who dared step out of line. But now… the ‘gaze’ of the banners felt a little less intense, their presence a little less oppressive. They still left her feeling exposed, weak, and small… but not quite as much as they usually did. Probably because this time, she wasn’t alone. As B.J. emerged, Twilight saw his eyes lock on a white, rectangular device with a circular black ‘lens’, a camera that had the both of them in its viewing arc. “We need to move. That camera-” “Can’t see us, thanks to this little piece of artifice I whipped up.” Twilight cut him off, holding up the piece of artifice in question. B.J. looked at the glowing violet runes on the disk, then at the faint, sparkling aura that had enveloped the camera. “That thing you pulled out can shut down cameras?” “Better; it taps into the camera’s video feed and edits the two of us out of it,” Twilight responded as she reached into her saddlebags with her other wing, pulling out two black cloaks and putting one on. It was unlikely that any nazis would be looking close enough at her to recognize her as the Princess of Friendship, but better safe than sorry. “It can only affect a few cameras at a time, and it’ll only hide the two of us, but the guy watching the camera feeds probably won’t even know something’s wrong.” “...so, in other words, we don’t have to worry about the security cameras.” B.J. climbed the rest of the way out, taking the second cloak and putting it on. The last thing either of them wanted was for a nazi to notice the man-portable laser cannon on his back. “You know where we’re going, right.” Twilight nodded, unfurling a map of the streets of Canterlot, post-nazi redevelopment. “Next stop; Eisenberg prison.” Oblivion, Part 3Something has gone wrong. We don't seem to have an archived copy of that chapter.Oblivion, Part 2B.J. wasn’t fully sure what he’d been expecting to see in Canterlot. But the seemingly endless blood moon suspended in the sky, the acid-trip fairy tale creatures that populated the world that moon gazed down upon, and the debris he’d seen in the caverns underneath the Nazi-controlled city had given him a fairly good idea of what to expect. As a result, he was more than a little surprised when he’d stepped onto Canterelot’s streets, and that idea had been utterly shattered by how familiar his surroundings looked. Canterlot (or at least Canterlot under Nazi rule), was, at a glance, uncannily similar to Berlin, complete with towering, monolithic spires all possessing an oppressively brutalist aesthetic, a looming palace-like structure that resembled the illegitimate lovechild of Deathshead’s fortress and the Volkshalle , and even a prison complex that just-so-happened to have a suspiciously similar name to Eisenwald Prison. It wasn’t a perfect match, though; Canterlot’s layout was a lot more vertical, probably on account of the location leaving nowhere near enough room for Berlin’s usual urban sprawl. The Nazi’s absurdly advanced technology was also far more prevalent, visible in small rectangular holographic displays that replaced the usual posters at street level, the robots stomping and flying and rolling all over the streets, and the red neon lighting, their dim glow melding with the moon’s sanguine rays to the point where it was hard to tell where natural moonlight ended and artificial illumination began. And, of course, there were all the technicolor ponies. “I take it, based on the way you’re looking around, that you weren’t expecting to see so many ponies walking around in the open?” B.J. shook his head. “I also expected the ponies who were out in the open to be walking around in chains.” In a way, the Nazis letting ponykind go about their business as if nothing was wrong was even worse than if they just killed any ponies that they didn’t think would be useful and enslaved the rest. Sure, Canterlot’s pony population was much better off this way, but at least in the former scenario the Nazis couldn’t fool the natives into believing that they were actually the good guys, couldn’t indoctrinate ignorant or gullible ponies into their twisted, fucked-up worldview. “Me too, to be honest. Imagine my surprise when I found out that they only wanted to “liberate us from tyrannical rulers and subversive elements”.” Twilight muttered, the purple alicorn’s gaze falling to her front hooves. “And the worst part? Some ponies actually believe what those bastards are saying.” B.J. thought back to the streets of Roswell, to his fellow Americans singing praises to the tyrants who’d annexed their country. Most of that praise had been false, an act to fool the Nazis into thinking that they weren’t fantasizing about giving the bastards the jackboot… but at least some of it had been genuine. “...when the Nazis conquered my homeland, they pulled a similar trick. Portrayed themselves as liberators, painted the old leaders as greedy tyrants, stoked old prejudices and kept people angry at marginalized minorities instead of the totalitarian invaders who were stripping away everyone’s rights. It didn’t fool everyone. But it fooled everyone they needed it too.” Twilight let loose a soft, miserable sigh, wiping one eye with her wing. “I always thought that if somecreature tried to take power by force here, there’d be rioting in the streets, mass upheaval, and so many resistance organizations every single shop would have to be a front for at least three of them. I… I never thought that everypony would just accept this as the new normal and move on.” “Neither did I.” The rumble of an engine snapped B.J. out of his thoughts, and he looked toward the source of the sound. “The van’s coming.” Twilight nodded, reaching into her saddlebags with one wing. Right now, the two of them were standing on a narrow ledge, overlooking the street that led to the front gate of Eisenberg Prison… or rather, the crackling barrier of arcing scarlet lightning that served as the front gate. He’d seen a familiar-looking armored van pass through that barrier without anyone inside getting fried, but he was fairly certain that anyone outside the van would be in for a very painful (and possibly literal) shock… and that, as a result, the same ploy he used the last time he had to break into a nazi prison wasn’t an option. Twilight could fly using those wings of hers—somehow—but the Nazis had apparently already learned that the wings pegasi had could actually lift them off the ground, and had installed a few automated AA turrets on the roof, set to give any would-be rescuers who tried to swoop in from above a lethal case of rapid-onset lead poisoning. Fortunately, Twilight had come up with a way into the prison that bypassed both of those obstacles. All he knew about it was that it involved the vans that the Nazis used to transport prisoners; she wouldn’t actually tell him any details beyond that (presumably due to an “unspoken plan guarantee”, whatever Twilight meant by that). But it didn’t take a genius to figure out that her plan probably involved the metallic, rod-like device she’d just pulled out. “If my measurements are right, then when the armored van passes that trashcan down there…” She murmured, eyes locked on the black, rectangular vehicle as she held the rod-like device out over the street. Her hoof released the rod as the van passed said trashcan, plunging down toward the ground like a javelin… and landing right on top of the van, splitting down the center into three different rods connected at one end, like a tripod spread to the point that it was flush with the ground. “Perfect.” “That thing will shut that glowing wall down?” Twilight shook her head. “No.” Sure enough, when the van reached the barrier of red lightning, it passed through it without incident, leaving said barrier largely undisturbed. “It’ll just let us get around it.” “…how, exactly?” B.J. asked. If that device wasn’t meant to shut down the barrier, then what was it supposed to do? Instead of responding, Twilight just placed a hoof on his shoulder. A burst of violet light erupted from her horn, the magical discharge accompanied by an odd, shimmery noise that rose in pitch as a purple aura rapidly enveloped them both. There was a bright flash, a brief sense of weightlessness, and a biting chill that engulfed B.J.’s entire body… and the next thing he knew, they were somewhere entirely different, somewhere much lower to the pavement. B.J.‘s eyes went wide as they scanned his surroundings, taking in the concrete walls that surrounded them, the handful of vans parked in close proximity, the other side of the crackling red forcefield. A shocked exclamation started to rise up from his throat… but Twilight silenced it with a hoof to his mouth before it could slip free. The purple alicorn gestured with one wing at the van they were now standing on top of, the same van that she’d dropped that tripod-like device onto less than a minute ago… and the shackled, muzzled ponies being herded out of it by black-clad prison guards. B.J. didn’t need to be told that an explanation of what the fuck Twilight had just done would have to wait until those guards were out of earshot. The two of them silently dropped down onto their stomachs, pressing themselves against the roof of the van, watching in silence as the Nazis in black dragged their newest charges—literally, in the case of some of the more rambunctious captives—into the depths of the prison complex. The captain had to actively fight the urge to level the laser cannon strapped to his back and make a few heads explode; nobody in their right mind could argue that the bastards didn’t deserve it, but the last thing he wanted was for the Nazis to learn of their presence here, make the connection between Twilight Sparkle breaking into one of their prisons and her ties with two very specific prisoners, and turn a relatively simple rescue mission into a hostage situation. After a few seconds, the black-clad soldiers vanished through a door along with their charges, their commanding voices fading into the distance “Finally…” Twilight murmured, picking up the device she’d dropped onto the van’s roof and folding it back into a rod. “Now-” “Did we just teleport?!” “…oh. Sorry, I keep forgetting you’re not from around here.” Twilight admitted, a slight blush creeping onto her face as she stowed the rod in her saddlebags. “And yeah, we just teleported. Before the magic suppression field went up, I didn’t even need that Portable Teleport Pylon to do it. Now, though, I gotta store up a metric ton of magical energy in the Pylon in order to travel any reasonable distance, and even then I can only teleport to it. On the plus side, I can use it to teleport to a location that isn’t in line of sight.” Twilight Sparkle leaped forward, her wings spreading and letting her glide over to a nearby ledge; unlike Eisenwald Prison, there weren’t any convenient walkways leading off of the roof of the parked vans. That wasn’t a problem, though; according to Twilight, he was apparently an “Earth Pony”, and one of the benefits of that was an impossibly high muscle-strength to muscle-mass ratio. The leap from the van to the balcony was all too easy. And speaking of ponies’ abilities… “Next time you do that, a little warning would be appreciated.” “It’ll probably be over a week before I build up enough of a charge in that pylon to do that again, but the next time I do that, I’ll warn you.” Twilight promised as she opened up a maintenance access hatch, revealing a long, dark crawlspace, dimly lit by crimson light strips. “Shining Armor and Fluttershy are being kept in separate sections of the prison, so if we want to make this quick we’re gonna have to split up. We’ll meet back here once we’ve busted my friends out. You remember Shining Armor’s cell number, right?” B.J. nodded as he slipped inside the narrow access tunnel, following behind Twilight. “High Security Block D, cell 24.” He’d committed the cell number to memory, and wouldn’t be forgetting it until Shining Armor was out of that cell. “Okay. Let’s go cause a prison break.” Almost… almost… Twilight thought silently to herself, creeping toward the guard. All she had to do was get a few feet closer… The guard started to turn around, but by then it was too late. The alicorn pounced forward, the metal pipe she’d grabbed flying toward the helmeted human’s head. The improvised club hit home with a CLANG , and the last guard collapsed into an undignified heap, out like a light. As it turned out, she still couldn’t bring herself to kill the prison guards. Killing a creature that was seconds away from doing the same to her was one thing, but killing someone who wasn’t was quite another. Nopony in their right mind could argue that they didn’t deserve to die, not after what they did to Celestia, to Luna, to countless other innocent ponies… but for some reason, despite easily being strong enough to smash a human’s chest in with a single blow, she just couldn’t bring herself to put that much force behind her swings, at least not when her own head wasn’t on the line. Fortunately, there were plenty of ways to take somebody out without killing them. An incapacitating electrical discharge, a poisoned dart in the right spot… or, as Twilight had just demonstrated, a good, solid blow to the head. Even better for Twilight, the guards were really, really lazy, and apparently didn’t even consider loud, audible CLANGs to be out of the norm. They made the Royal Guards seem competent in comparison… and, Twilight had to admit, that was REALLY saying something. Between that, the gloomy, barely-adequate interior lighting, and the way the rotunda setup of this general population cellblock concentrated all those guards in this central tower, it was almost pathetically easy to take them all out of action, one by one. And now, with all the guards incapacitated, nothing was stopping her from opening Fluttershy’s cell and rescuing her friend. “Okay, now that the guards are dealt with…” Twilight murmured to herself, rearing up on her hind legs so she could study a nearby control panel. It took a lot of searching around to find the switch she was looking for, but once she did, it was flipped without incident. The distant sound of metal rattling against metal drew her attention toward one of the countless cells set into the walls, the 11th cell on floor “F”. With that done, she darted out onto a nearby bridge connecting the tower to the multiple walkways running along the sides of the rotunda, spreading her wings and lifting off. During her time in the Everfree forest, she’d been too preoccupied with basic survival to practice using her wings all that much, and was still pretty clumsy in the air… but she didn’t need to be graceful to reach the cell. A second later, and she touched down on the metal walkway near the open cell, stumbling a bit as she landed but still managing to stay upright. Another second, and she was standing in front of said cell, its open door looming in front of her. A third, and her eyes had adjusted enough that she could see the darkened, almost-pitch-black interior of the spartan prison cell… and the trembling, vaguely pony-like shape curled up on the mattress within the cell, huddled beneath a paper-thin blanket. “Fluttershy?” Twilight asked, taking a few tentative steps into the cell. The pony underneath the bench flinched at the sound of her voice, curling up tighter in some futile attempt to hide. “Hey, it’s okay, I’m-“ Twilight started to say, stepping into the concrete cell fully and reaching toward the blanket… The pony hidden underneath it leaped backward, a distinctly male-sounding whinny of terror slipping free of his throat as the blanket fell away from his body, revealing a snow-white coat, a golden-blonde mane, and cobalt-blue eyes. The stallion standing before her was scrawnier than she remembered, his mane was an ungroomed mess and had lost some of its color, and there were several shackle-like metal loops clamped around his hooves and neck, but he was still very recognizable… and definitely not Fluttershy. “...Prince Blueblood?!” “...Twilight?” The prince in question asked, some of the tension leaving his body. “You… you actually came to rescue me ?” “Of COURSE not, you narcissistic twit!” Twilight shouted back. The stallion winced at the insult, but Twilight barely noticed, preoccupied as she was with yanking the files she’d pilfered out of her saddlebags. “I’m looking for Fluttershy!” “...oh.” A hint of disappointment crept onto Blueblood’s face, but he didn’t seem all that surprised by that declaration. “Haven’t seen her, sorry.” “WHY NOT! It says right here that this is Fluttershy’s cell!” Twilight almost snarled, speaking half to herself as she whipped out Fluttershy’s Prisoner File and gave it a thorough look-over. “It's lights out, why isn’t she here?!” “Probably because the file’s outdated or misleading or-” “Oh, that’s it! The file has the wrong cell number!” Twilight spun around, bolting from the cell and running along the walkway, glancing at the interior of each cell she passed. Most were empty, and the few ponies she did see she didn’t recognize. “Or the wrong cellblock, or the wrong prison. She might’ve even escaped by now!” Blueblood called out, his hooves clattering against the metal as he struggled to keep up. “We don’t even know is she’s even here, and even if she is, we don’t have time to search every single cell-” “WHY NOT!?” Twilight practically screamed, whirling around and pegging the cowardly unicorn with a positively lethal glare. “Because you’re scared of all the lazy-as-all-buck guards I just effortlessly knocked out?” “Because I’m scared of the reason the guards are so lazy. The thing that actually does the guarding here.” Blueblood glanced around fearfully, his eyes darting over his surroundings. When they found nothing threatening, his gaze returned to Twilight. “And trust me when I say that we do not want to still be here by the time it finds out that I’m wandering around making a racket past light’s out and you’re the reason I’m doing that.” Twilight opened her mouth, another snarky retort on the tip of her tongue… but it promptly died there when a drop of something red, sticky, and wet landed on top of Twilight’s muzzle. Her first thought, weirdly enough, was that it had to be ketchup, or strawberry jam, or something equally innocuous. That thought didn’t even make it past the obvious question of what those sorts of substances were doing in the cellblocks instead of the mess hall before the fluid’s coppery, metallic smell flooded her nostrils, leaving her with absolutely no doubts as to its true nature. “Up past your bedtime, making some noise, breaking all the rules, manufacturing your own demise…” A disturbingly childlike voice began speaking right above Twilight’s head, its words sung to the tune not unlike an off-key nursery rhyme. Twilight slowly began to tilt her head up toward the sound of that voice, toward the source of the drop that had just splattered all over her snout, as if being hesitant could delay what was coming. For a second, all she saw above was the shadows cast by the walkway above the one she was standing on. But then, a second drop of blood dropped down from those shadows, landing right on Twilight’s snout. All of a sudden, she could just barely make out the outline of something clinging to the underside of the walkway. Something two, maybe three times her size, so large she found herself wondering how something so huge managed to sneak up on the two of them so easily, how it could hide its immense bulk in such a shallow patch of darkness. Something with a vaguely dragon-like shape. And then, the thing leaned down, its face sliding into the tepid red light. The appearance of its head called to mind somepony covered from ears to hooves in full plate armor, but Twilight could see right away that it wasn’t a pony. That much was obvious from the fact that its steel ‘helmet’ featured no eyeholes, no visor, no faceplate, just blank, unadorned metal where a pony’s face should be, from the gleaming metal mechanisms she could see in-between the gaps between the plates, from the thing’s maw of rectangular, dagger like teeth, interlocking together with manufactured precision. “You’ve all been such naughty little ponies…” The mechanical monstrosity sang, despite the fact that its maw remained closed and unmoving, its childlike voice suddenly tinged with a crackling, staticky rasp. “And here, naughty ponies are the first to ĐƗɆ!” “…we should run.” Blueblood suggested, his voice a trembling, barely-audible whisper. And for once in her life, Twilight found herself agreeing with him. Twilight’s lungs were on fire, her heart pumping at a furious pace, a burning ache forcing its way into every muscle in her body. Still, she kept running. If she stopped… The rush of sharp, steel talons ruffled her fur, descending toward her torso with intent to crush and slice; she tried to dive to the side but was only half-successful. A screech of pain erupted from her throat as the monstrosity’s steel claws buried themselves in her flank, searing pain engulfing her back leg as she was tugged backward. The blood-soaked talons slipped free of the wound, but not before she lost her balance and nearly toppled over the railing. Thinking quickly, she grabbed the metal bars and vaulted over them, actually toppling over the railing right in time to escape her mechanical pursuer’s snapping steel jaws. Blueblood was somewhere within the central tower, probably scrambling to reach the ground level and get the heck out of this horror movie setpiece while she did her level best to avoid getting mauled. Twilight couldn’t blame him; had their roles been reversed, she’d probably have done the same. Unfortunately for her, she’d gotten the bright idea of splitting up so that at least one of them would get out alive, and the mechanized dragon had chosen to go after her. Fortunately, she could fly. Her wings spread wide, the cold, slightly stale air rushing over her feathers as she began flapping as hard as she could, trying to put on speed even as she struggled to maneuver through narrow gaps and tight turns. She’d seen similar-looking robots out in the Everfree, even had the dubious honor of having to flee from them once or twice; they could fly as well, but their wings were made up of interlocking, feather-like blades, and next to useless for generating lift. Instead, they used a combination of strange, turbine-like devices that could somehow nullify gravity and slightly-less esoteric jet thrusters to achieve flight. They could easily beat her in any contest of speed, but were nowhere near, even considering the fact that she was a clumsy, inexperienced flier. All she had to do was keep weaving in between gaps it couldn’t- “Think you can flee with those wings?” Twilight glanced back at the mechanical dragon, her eyes going wide as she spotted the red glow at the back of its mouth. “Too bad they’re about to go up in flames!” She’d never seen one of these things use any sort of breath weapon before. But then again, she’d never heard them talk either. She didn’t dodge quite fast enough. A ray of glowing red energy clipped the edge of her right wing, another scream of agony tearing itself free from her already-ragged throat as the appendage was enveloped in burning, searing agony. The smell of scorched fur and cooked flesh flooded her nostrils as she plunged toward the ground, coming to a very painful stop on the cellblock’s concrete floor. Twilight didn’t let her rapidly growing agony slow her down; the instant her hooves touched the ground, they were pushing her up and driving her forward, toward the entryway to the cellblock. Behind her, she heard a ground-shaking WHOOM, felt the steel beast’s claws graze the tip of her tail as it scrambled to recover from its less-than-successful attempt at crushing her beneath its immense bulk. She hung a left as she bolted from the rotunda, glancing back just long enough to see the creature slam straight into the wall. It recovered distressingly fast; just a few moments later and it was already charging after her again, the sound of metal tearing up concrete growing in volume with every passing second… Claws raked across Twilight’s leg. She screamed in agony even as she swerved to the left, her legs crumpling beneath her as she skidded painfully across the cold, hard floor. The mechanical dragon pounced forward, its blood-soaked claws stretching toward her… With a thunderous WHOOM, a thick, heavy steel wall slammed down between Twilight and the creature that was out for her blood, quickly followed by a loud, jarring BANG as said creature collided with the barrier. Twilight tried to scramble backward… and promptly collapsed again the minute she tried to climb to her hooves, a barely stifled whine slipping from her throat as the pain proved too much to bear. “You… you can still walk, right?” Twilight glanced up at Blueblood. He was pushing some kind of tall, narrow forklift-like device underneath a second metal slab, opposite the first. Twilight shook her head. She hadn’t looked at herself yet, had been consciously fighting the urge to do so; taking the time to assess how injured she was would just increase her already-high stress levels and risk sending her into a full-blown panic. But she could feel the trickles of blood running down her back legs, could smell the smoldering plumage of her burnt wing. None of the wounds she’d received were mortal, but if that mechanical monstrosity gave her another injury, it would almost certainly be a fatal one. “That… that thing can’t get through that wall, right?” Blueblood opened his mouth to answer… but was cut off by another BANG, this one much louder than the first, the blow that produced it so forceful it left a visible dent near the bottom of the metal wall. The former prince promptly concluded that the creature’s raw strength had just spoken for itself, grabbed the device, and shoved it under the blast door. He then grabbed a lever on the back of the device with his hooves, rapidly pumping it up and down, the device slowly lifting the massive metal barrier. Another BANG rang out, the bottom of the first wall bending even more. Twilight glanced between the two barriers; Blueblood had lifted the second one to the point that a pony could slip under it, and through the gap between that barrier and the floor, Twilight could see the same hallway the maintenance access hatch she’d used to enter the prison proper was located… and the bottom of the ladder leading up to that access hatch, up to the relative safety of the maintenance crawlspace. But she’d never reach that ladder, not with her injured back legs. Not unless that mechanical dragon was stupid enough to try and completely break through the barriers rather than get its talons under them and lift them up, and given how it was attacking the bottom of it and not the center, it almost certainly wasn’t. But Blueblood… he might be able to make it. He still had a chance of getting out of here alive… but he’d have to leave her behind to do it. “C’mon! Just a little-“ Blueblood started to call out. “There’s an access shaft a couple dozen feet down that corridor, to the left.” Twilight hissed through gritted teeth. “Run for it, now. Make sure to drop the wall back down behind you.” “...surely you aren’t implying-” “I’m not implying anything.” Twilight cut him off, a third BANG punctuating the end of her response as she pushed herself up with her front hooves. “Go. I’ll… I’ll try and buy you some time.” She didn’t stand a ghost of a chance of stopping the murderous machine trying to force its way through the metal slab before her, but maybe she could slow it down, buy Blueblood a few precious seconds and make it that much more likely that at least someone would make it out of this horror movie set piece alive- “I’m not leaving you.” Twilight froze, her brain misfiring as it struggled to reconcile the conflicting natures of those four words and the pony who’d spoken them. “...what?” “I said, I’m not leaving you,” Blueblood said again, his voice trembling yet firm. One of the stallion’s hooves slipped under Twilight’s barrel, lifting her onto his back. She winced a little as the motion jostled her injuries, the groan of pain that slipped free of her throat merging with Blueblood’s grunt of exertion. “Dear Celestia, you’re a lot heavier than you look…” Twilight was too stunned to even speak, let alone respond to the former prince’s (presumably unintentionally) offensive remark. She didn’t know Blueblood very well, but she knew him well enough to know that he’d never do something like this… or, at least, she thought she did. This was the same stallion who hadn’t hesitated to push Rarity in front of him to protect himself from an incoming cake, who’d even looked surprised when Rarity took fully justifiable offense at being used as an equine shield… and yet here, now, with something infinitely more deadly than an airborne pastry coming his way, he was suddenly demonstrating far, far more bravery than Twilight even knew he had. She would have been impressed if he wasn't demonstrating that bravery in the stupidest, most suicidal way she could’ve ever imagined. Blueblood turned around, kicking the piston-like device holding the second barrier up out from under it the minute the two of them were on the other side. The first metal slab gave way less than an instant later, claws slipping underneath it and starting to lift it upright as the second slab dropped into place with another WHOOM. It wasn’t long before that WHOOM was followed by yet another BANG, the mechanical monstrosity getting through the first metal slab and beginning to break through the next. We’re never going to reach the access shaft by the time that thing gets the slab up… And yet, for a few moments, it seemed like they were going to reach it. Blueblood obviously wasn’t accustomed to strenuous activity, and Twilight could feel his malnourished muscles trembling from the strain of carrying her weight… but contrary to what she’d assumed, he was actually managing to reduce the distance between them and the ladder, despite having to carry Twilight while doing so. Progress was painfully, torturously slow, but it was being made, foot by foot by gasping, staggering, hard-won foot. For a second, Twilight let herself believe that they were going to make it. She really shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up. With a particularly loud BANG, gleaming steel claws punched through the bottom of the second barrier, their owner lifting up the only thing standing between itself and the two of them with horrifying ease. We’re gonna die here. Twilight thought to herself, distantly, glancing between the dragonlike beast and the remaining distance to the ladder. It was so close, less than a dozen feet away… but that thing would be on them long before they even began to close that gap… …wait. Twilight glanced back at the creature, an idea popping into her head. She wasn’t entirely sure how human-made devices worked, but she’d picked her way through enough mangled wreckage to realize that one of the most basic components in all the more advanced devices were electrically conductive ‘circuits’ that transmitted electronic pulses in between other, more complex parts. The same was probably true of this creature. Maybe, if she applied a strong enough pulse to the wires to drown out all the others… Twilight blinked back the tears welling in her eyes, her despair quickly giving way to desperate determination as she began scraping together every last iota of magical energy she could muster. The spell she was trying to cast had an incredibly short range, would only be able to produce a small electric discharge, and that was assuming it could even reach the circuitry that it was trying to affect through all that armor… but she was already as good as dead, so it wasn’t like it could make her predicament even worse. “Hi hi hi…” The second bulkhead dropped down as the creature holding it up surged forward, pouncing toward the two of them. Blueblood managed to find a second wind, his pace increasing slightly, but Twilight barely noticed; all her attention was on the gleaming steel monstrosity flying through the air toward her and Blueblood as she readied the spell. “Tiᵯe tø-!” All of a sudden, a portion of the ceiling collapsed, giving way beneath the force of something slamming into it from above. An instant later, and that something had forced its way through the crumbling chunks of concrete debris to slam itself down on top of the mechanical dragon, crushing it in an instant. The ray of crackling violet lightning Twilight was aiming at the now-very-dead mechanical dragon discharged harmlessly against a particularly large piece of concrete as her concentration broke, her eyes going wide as she caught a glimpse of the surprise savior’s oddly dragon-like silhouette through the smoke and dust that now filled the air. …a dragon? What’s a dragon doing here? And how- And then, the rest of the ceiling began to collapse, and the species of the being who’d just intervened on their behalf was suddenly the absolute least of Twilight’s worries. A scream of terror erupted from Blueblood’s throat as she threw herself off of his back, throwing her front hooves over her head and neck as she tumbled to the floor and squeezed her eyes shut- Something long, sinuous, and metallic slammed into her side, shoving her backward and away from the falling debris. Twilight’s eyes snapped open, and it dawned on her that Blueblood might not have been screaming at the prospect of being crushed beneath a bunch of rocks. The thing that had slammed into her side was the tail of another mechanical dragon, a segmented, blade-tipped appendage currently in the process of sweeping her and Blueblood out from under the falling debris… and into the reach of the tail’s owner. “Don’t worry, Twily. I’ve got you.” Steel claws wrapped around her and Blueblood, the mechanical horror they belonged to speaking in a synthetic, static-tinged mockery of her old assistant’s voice. A scream hadn’t even finished tearing itself free of Twilight’s throat before her kidnapper lifted off, the ground vanishing beneath her hooves as she and Blueblood were carried off into the sky.
Wolves, Part 1Author's Note I'd like to open this tale with a warning: this fic is rated M for swearing, graphic depictions of violence, mature themes, and nazi bastards being nazi bastards. And much like Wolfenstein: The New Order and its sequels and spinoffs, this fic does NOT shy away from some of the Nazi's more fucked-up behavior. Quite the opposite, actually. Consider yourself warned. Wolves, Part 1 In hindsight, when the Ausmerzer sunk its claws into his old house, BJ should’ve run. He should’ve dived out the window, bolted for the woods, and pumped any nazis who tried to stop him full of bullets. He’d gotten what he came here for, and there was nothing left but ghosts in this decrepit, decaying farmhouse. But he was angry. Fresh out of a ‘talk’ with his father, a ‘talk’ that had culminated in the man bragging about ratting out BJ’s Jewish mother to the nazis, holding a shotgun to his forehead, and demanding that he get down on his knees, that had ended in BJ lopping his father’s arm off with a hatchet, bringing it down onto the man’s chest for good measure, and realizing that he’d sold him out to the nazis too. Those fascist bastards had already taken so much from him; his commanding officer, his country, his family, his friends. He sure as hell wouldn’t let them take his home too. He charged through the now-sideways house like a man possessed, his arms moving almost on automatic as they turned the weapons they carried toward the trio of drones hovering just outside the crumbling wooden structure, bullets and lasers shredding the hovering machines in a matter of moments. It took him less than a minute to reach the second claw, and it took him even less time to dispatch the black-armored Nazis around it. The area clear of distractions for the moment, he whipped out his hatchet and began whaling away at the mechanical claw digging into the wooden frames of the house. One hit, two, three… and then the claw released. The house tilted wildly, but BJ barely noticed. Two claws down, one to go. Brandishing the DieselKraftWerk and an assault rifle, he climbed up toward the last claw, whizzing bullets and flaming grenades ripping apart any who tried to stop him, human or otherwise. It wasn’t long before he was in front of the final claw, his assault rifle returning to his back so he could brandish a hatchet once again… A laser bolt whizzed by his head; he responded with the DieselKraftWerk, the explosive grenade tearing the Ubersoldat’s chassis to pieces in an instant, the skeletal robot’s self-destruct function kicking in moments later and destroying whatever survived. With that, he turned his attention back to the final claw. One strike, two, three… and the claw released. Gravity took over from there, the house falling to the distant ground… and B.J. falling with it. His arms flailed in the air to no avail, the house crumbling to pieces above him. Why did I come here? He asked himself as his body hurtled towards the distant ground, getting closer and closer with each heartbeat. I should have run home. To you, Anya. He closed his eyes, bracing for the impact… The air changed, suddenly darker, cleaner, devoid of smoke and dust. BJ’s eyes snapped open to behold an abruptly orange-red sky, almost completely clear of the debris that filled it moments before. The Ausmerzer, the wreckage of the house, the nazis… all of it had vanished. What the fu… And then his free-falling body crashed through a layer of foliage and into the abruptly-not-distant ground. Hard. Nature gone wild taunted Twilight from all sides. Gusts of wind rustled the leaves, which in turn tickled her nose. Talon-like branches writhed in the breeze, curling menacingly, their shadows stretching out until their sharpened tips were set directly over her heart. All the while, the wood of the trees creaked and groaned and the howls of Timberwolves permeated the eternal scarlet-tinted night. But Twilight didn’t flinch, didn’t breathe, didn’t even blink. She merely sat still and alert, like a hawk hiding from a mouse, waiting for the wind to die down enough that she could hear clearly. The gears in her head were turning so fast that she bet smoke could have been billowing out her ears. That WHOOM she’d heard in the distance could have been any number of things; a falling tree, an avalanche of some sort, or maybe just a figment of her imagination. Or it could have been something made by the “humans”, the strange, hairless monkey-like creatures who’d conquered well over 3/4ths of Equestria. A crashed plane, a mechanical monstrosity, a grenade from a patrol sent on a mission to root out anyone who might be hiding in the Everfree forest. Anyone like her. The wind died down for a few seconds. No crackling flames, no foliage crunching beneath huge steel feet, no voices calling out to each other in that harsh-sounding language the “Nazis”, as the humans often called each other, often used. Fear and curiosity went to war with each other in the young alicorn’s mind, and for some reason Twilight couldn’t fathom, curiosity won out. Slowly, tentatively, she rose to her feet, silently making her way through the foliage. She should be heading in the opposite direction, fleeing as quickly and quietly as she could. That was her response to any sort of noises that were out of the norm—particularly sudden, loud noises, and it had probably saved her life on more than. But something about this particular noise just wouldn’t let her leave it alone. It wasn’t long before she reached the source; a small clearing in an especially thick section of the Everfree forest, not far from the cave she now called home. And in the exact center of that clearing, within a sizeable impression in the grassy earth, was a very strange-looking stallion. The stallion in the clearing was slightly larger than her brother, maybe one or two feet taller than her. Every part of his body from the neck down was covered in a gleaming set of full-body armor. It looked a little like a Unicorn Guard’s uniform… but even the most cursory glance at the hexagonal pattering on the suit, the weirdly mechanical appearance, and the way it covered every single inch of his body made it clear he wasn’t a member of the Royal Guard. From what Twilight could tell from the pony’s exposed neck and head, they were an Earth pony with light-goldish gray fur and a light-goldish brown mane. She definitely didn’t know this pony, and she was fairly certain her friends would say the same if they were here. And he certainly couldn’t tell her, on account of being unconscious. Once again, two halves of her brain went to war with each other. Leave this unusually-dressed pony where he was and hope he could recover on his own, or risk herself to save a pony who might not need rescuing. There was a pretty strong case to be made for the former; other than being out cold, this pony looked completely fine, and she was already seriously pushing her luck today. But she’d already lost so much. Her teacher, her nation, her family, her friends. She couldn’t bear to lose anything else. Not even a pony she hadn’t even met. She started to slip her wings underneath the stallion’s body in order to pick him up, but paused for a second when they made something underneath him clank . Rolling him onto his stomach revealed the source of the noise; a rather sizeable collection of mangled metal bits strapped to his back. She’d seen similar devices in the hands of passing human patrols, but the equipment the stallion was carrying was so mangled she barely even recognized it. At least this stallion will have plenty of salvageable metal and good reason to share it with me. Twilight thought to herself as she pulled out the sack and cloth she always carried with her on outings like this. With that, she began to quickly but quietly disentangle the crushed mass of metal, wrapping each individual piece into cloth padding and putting it into the sack. A distressingly high proportion of the mechanical monstrosities Equestria’s new rulers sent into the Everfree forest came out just fine, but not all of them did. As a result, Twilight had plenty of practice with extricating useable scraps out of the mangled, lifeless steel bodies she occasionally stumbled across, and that practice served her well here. In a matter of minutes, all the metal bits that had been strapped to the stallion’s back were tucked away in the sack. With said sack clutched in her mouth, she used her wings to lift the stallion’s limp form onto her back, grunting a little from exertion. And with that, she set off toward the cave she called home. The trip back was probably not the most nerve-wracking thing she’d ever experienced, but it was definitely somewhere up there in the top five. Out here, sound was Twilight’s worst enemy, and it had taken her no time at all to develop a keen awareness of how much noise she was making at any given moment. As a result, she was keenly aware of every soft clank the sack let out, of every twig she snapped as she dragged the stallion along, of every other noise she was making at the moment. Each sound ran the risk of attracting unwanted attention, whether it came from a predator hunting for a snack, a patrol looking for insurgents, or something worse. She was almost tempted to leave the sack of salvage behind, so she could move quicker and minimize the risk. And yet, somehow, whatever lucky streak she was running on held. No predators pounced at her from out of the foliage, no black-garbed humans stepped forward and leveled weapons at her, no semi-sentient machinery surged forward with weapons readied and steel teeth bared. By some miracle, she managed to make it the whole way without incident. She nearly gasped in relief as she reached an unassuming bundle of brush pressed up against a stony outcropping. To any other pony, it was just a sheet of shrubs and moss and foliage, but to her it might as well have been a door with a welcome mat in front of it. She carefully pushed the twigs and leaves and briars away for a second with one hoof, slipping into the cave hidden beneath with the still-unconscious stallion in tow. Weaving around stalagmites and ducking underneath stalactites, Twilight slowly made her way through the cave, moving slower now that she was somewhere relatively safe. The darkness greeted her return with its usual frigidness, the damp chill slipping past her fur and seeping into her bones. It wasn’t long before she was shivering, and she had to actively focus on stopping her jaw from chattering. It was the same sensation every time, like she was being hugged by a ghost. Finally, she slipped underneath a familiar curtain, setting down the stallion and the sack in a corner of the small chamber beyond it. With that, she trotted over to the other side of the chamber, her hoof finding a metal switch with practiced ease. She threw it, the action producing a spark, then a faint whirring, and then suddenly, the chamber was doused in a dim amber light. It was difficult to make a cave seem homely—especially to someone like her, someone used to the creature comforts of life in Canterlot—but that hadn’t stopped Twilight from trying. Though electronics, wiring, and technology in general were not her forte, she had been able—through trial and error, burns and scars, and no small number of frustrating setbacks—to put together a something resembling a lighting setup. She’d found some kind of generator in the wreckage of a damaged, nonfunctional robot, and had managed to extract it intact, haul it back here, and rig it up to a transplanted street lamp. The generator required fuel, but she’d been using a canister of whatever stuff powered the human-built machines for months now, and she had a half-dozen backups piled in a corner when—or rather, if —the canister she was using ran empty. While the electronics were impressive, considering what little she had or knew, the decor was… less so. A single bed rested in the corner, its musty pillows and torm sheets always ever-so-slightly damp no matter the time of year. Next to it was the only other piece of furniture she had; a small dresser that served double-duty as a desk. Damp or not, she was flirting quite aggressively with the idea of just leaping into that bed, curling up underneath the sheets, and drifting off into a deep slumber. Dragging an unconscious stallion and all the stuff he’d been carrying had taken a lot out of her, especially considering the pace she’d set for herself. But she couldn’t. Not yet. She had a few things to take care of first. She trotted over to the dresser, opening the bottom shelf. She pulled out a few spare sheets, laid them down on the ground, and then pulled the stallion’s limp body onto the improvised mattress. With that done, she dragged the sack over next to him. Normally, she’d lay out all the metal bits she managed to salvage and sort through what was worth keeping and what wasn’t, but all this was technically the stallion’s stuff, and she wasn’t going to ruffle through his personal belongings anymore than absolutely necessary. Now she could rest, at least until the stallion woke up. She trotted over to the generator, switched it off, and then carefully made her way through the darkness and too the bed. She practically pounced on the bed, burying herself in the tattered blanket, not even bothering to move her head up to the pillow. It wasn’t long before she’d slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Wolves, Part 2Something was deeply wrong. As someone who’d just fallen from a height so great it should have killed him, B.J. considered himself more than capable of thinking as much, given that he was thinking anything at this exact moment. He’d been awake for quite some time now, staring at the pure, unrelenting darkness before him for what felt like an eternity. He could hear water dripping in the distance, the sound echoing around him as if he were in some kind of cavern. But he couldn’t feel anything, and all he could see was pitch blackness. Is this what death feels like? The captain wondered to himself. He had just fallen to his presumed death; maybe this was the afterlife. Many mythological afterlifes were somewhere underground, after all. Honestly, though, he kinda expected death to greet him like an old friend, instead of just leaving him suspended in blackness for all eternity. His unchanging, unwitting vigil was ended by something that would have been wholly unremarkable in any other situation. He blinked. It was too dark for his eyes to register any change, but he definitely felt his eyelids close and then open back up for a second. There was no way he could’ve blinked—his body had to be little more than a big red stain after a fall from such a great height. And yet he had no other explanation for what had just happened. He thought to try and blink, and to his surprise, he could. One eye and then the other, separately, together, slow, quick… he could blink. Slowly, gradually, feeling began to return to his body… but not in the way he expected. His whole body was buzzing like when the blood came back to a leg he had been sitting on, but more than just his leg was buzzing; everything was, and then some… literally. Much of what he could feel didn't feel right , the incessant tingling spreading beyond where it should. But right or not, he was feeling something , and the dead didn't feel. And that could only mean that he wasn’t dead. None of what was happening made sense to the increasingly bewildered captain. There was no way he could have survived such a long fall, even with his body encased in Da’at Yitude power armor. Yet here he was, breathing and watching and feeling like he was (mostly) completely fine. B.J. tried to sit up and get his feet under him… but his body wasn’t responding in the ways he was expecting, and all he managed to do was make his limbs flail uselessly for a few seconds, totally failing to do what he intended. With standing up proving to be unexpectedly difficult, B.J. decided to try a different approach. Rolling proved to be significantly easier than standing, and it wasn’t long before he was on his stomach, his legs and arms lifting him up and off the cold, hard ground. Oddly enough, his back was straight as if he were on his hands and knees, yet his legs were fully extended and his knees weren’t even touching the ground. He pushed aside the sheer weirdness of his predicament for a moment; he could figure out how he got here after he figured out where “here” even was. “Hello?” He called out, half-hoping someone sympathetic to his plight was in earshot. For a few seconds, the only thing that answered him was his own voice echoing back at him. But then… there was a soft, sleepy moan. “Wh…whuh?” “Who’s there?” B.J. called out once again. “…Oh!” The voice exclaimed, speaking in plain English, all the exhaustion vanishing from it in an instant. “You’re awake!” The voice sounded feminine, young, almost childlike, and completely unfamiliar; it definitely wasn’t Anya, let alone anyone he knew. “Um… who are you?” “My name’s Twilight Sparkle.” The mystery voice responded. The ruffling of sheets reached B.J.’s ears, as if the voice’s owner was climbing out of bed. “What’s yours?” Twilight Sparkle… odd name. Definitely not a name a Nazi would have. “…Blazkowicz. Captain William J. Blazkowicz.” “Captain?” Twilight asked curiously. “Are you a member of the Wonderbolts or something?” Doesn’t she mean the Thunderbolts? “…something like that, yeah.” He said, turning toward the sound of shoes clicking softly on the stone. “Anyway, where are we?” “My hideout.” Twilight responded quickly. “Sorry it’s so dark at the moment. I’ll have the lights on in a second.” Lights? But this is a cave? How the heck did this kid manage to set up… Sparks flared to life, the darkness giving way to amber light for a fraction of a second. An instant later, and the amber light returned, persistent and steady. Glancing toward the source of the light, he noticed the top of a streetlamp, propped up against a nearby wall, the light bulb within shining brightly. A short cable linked the improvised indoor light to a generator, softly humming just a few feet away. … Lights. Now that he could actually see, it kinda felt like an insult to call this place a cave. Sure, it was technically accurate, but this stony chamber felt a lot more like a bedroom than a cavern. Sure, a spartan-yet-cluttered bedroom with a ragged, worn bed, a beaten-up dresser, and a pile of assorted metal scrap in one corner, but still, it was liveable… which was really saying something, considering that it was in an underground cave. “Yeah, I know. It’s not much to look at.” B.J. looked back at Twilight, a response rising up from his throat… but the words died on his tongue. Standing next to the generator was a small horse, its head just a foot or two lower to the ground than B.J.’s own. Its coat was a bright, vibrant shade of mulberry, its mane was a deep, dark sapphire blue with purple and violet streaks, and its eyes were a deep purple. A horn the same color as the rest of its coat jutted from its forehead, and feathery wings of a similar color were tucked in against its sides. “What?” The oddly-shaped, unnaturally colorful horse asked, speaking in Twilight Sparkle’s voice, and it took B.J. almost a full minute to realize that Twilight Sparkle and the horse were one and the same. “…You’re a horse.” B.J. murmured, almost to himself, his mind struggling to wrap his head around what he was seeing. Maybe he was hallucinating. Maybe he survived the fall (somehow) but received a severe concussion or some other head injury. This was just a very strained mind's way of coping with the damage. Never mind the fact that he had not the faintest clue why his subconscious decided to throw this particular fever dream at him. Or the fact that everything about this felt far, far too real to be a hallucination. “Of course I’m a horse,” Twilight said nonchalantly, as if being a horse and being able to speak any language—let alone perfect English—weren’t two mutually exclusive things. “Well, I’m technically a pony, but that’s beside the point.” “But… but ponies can’t talk.” That just prompted a bewildered look from the technicolor pony. “You’re a pony too, and you’re talking right now. So… not true?” “Wait… I’m not a pony, I’m human.” B.J. snapped back. Twilight didn’t answer; all the talking pony did was give him a look as if he’d just declared the sky was a neon shade of pink. “...Why are you looking at me like that?” In response, the pony whipped a silver hand mirror seemingly out of nowhere, and held it in front of B.J. And in the mirror, a pony stared back, a pony with light goldish gray fur, a light brown mane and tail, and frighteningly familiar piercing blue eyes. The Da’at Yitude armor he wore began to slowly recede, his hesitation bleeding into the mental command to make the suit come off. He stepped forward, out of the boots, tearing his eyes away from that twisted reflection to look back at himself, at his unmistakably equine form. Once, being able to walk around without the armor would’ve been the best thing that ever happened to him, but now it was just another reminder that his current body wasn’t his own. “…are you okay?” Hearing Twilight’s voice, under any other circumstances, probably wouldn’t have been such a big deal, other than the whole pony-that-could-talk factor. But now, with his mind still reeling from the realization that he was a talking pony, the reminder that there was another talking pony standing right next to him was the straw that broke the camel’s back. A scream began to rise up from his throat, and for the first time in his life, B.J. did nothing to hold it back. “Woah woah woah, calm down!” Twilight exclaimed, stowing the mirror and stepping forward, trying to calm Blazkowicz down. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t-!” A hoof flew up, trying to bat her away; Twilight just barely managed to dodge it. By the time her attention returned to the stallion who’d thrown that punch, said stallion had bolted for the wall and had begun smashing his head against the wall, the force increasing with each successive blow, his voice cracking each time. “Wake up, goddammit! Wake up, wake up, WAKE UP-!!!” “STOP! You’ll hurt yourself!” Twilight cried out, leaping forward and tackling Blazkowicz to the ground. He immediately began struggling against her hold, still shouting at the top of his walls. Dear Celestia, this stallion was strong; Twilight’s only saving grace was that he was too panicked to really fight back against her, and even then it took every last ounce of strength she had to hold him down. Twilight’s brain went into overdrive, scouring itself for some way to snap this pony out of whatever panic attack he was going through before he got out from under her and started hurting himself again. It ended up coming across something Spike had shared with her, of all things. “Try counting to ten, okay?” To her surprise, that actually worked. The stallion’s struggles subsided, the tension fleeing his limbs as he inhaled, paused for a handful of seconds, exhaled, paused again, repeating the breathing exercise a few times. And then… all the fight in the stallion seemed to leave him too. He went limp beneath Twilight, eyes closing as if he’d just lost consciousness. And… were those tears glistening at the corners of his eyes? “…you aren’t going to go slamming your head against the wall again, right?” Twilight asked slowly. “…no.” Blazkowicz’s voice was a soft, weak moan, so quiet Twilight could barely hear it. Slowly, carefully, Twilight stepped off of Blazkowicz, ready to leap forward and hold him down again if he started doing anything that might lead to him hurting himself again. For a long, long minute, the stallion just sat there, not moving an inch. Twilight was about to ask whether he needed anything when he finally decided to move. Slowly, sluggishly, he climbed to his feet, staggering toward the pile of sheets that she’d laid out for him as if he’d just stirred from a deep, deep slumber. The minute he reached the sheets, he just collapsed onto them in an undignified heap, not even bothering to get underneath the blanket on top. A long, awkward silence fell over the two of them. “…need anything?” Twilight finally asked. “Not anything you can give…” Blazkowicz said in response. Twilight didn’t know what to say about that. Up until now, she’d kinda been entertaining a fantasy of this stallion she rescued turning out to be some sort of dashing warrior who’d help her reunite with her friends, break out the elements of harmony, and send the humans who were stomping around Equestria like they owned the place packing, but this depressed, mopey wreck of a pony was a far cry from that. “…I’m gonna turn off the lights, okay?” Twilight said, trotting over to the generator. Blazkowicz didn’t even bother responding to that. B.J. only barely registered the veil of darkness that enveloped the room, buried as he was beneath a mountain of misery. This wasn’t a dream, or an injury-induced hallucination. Somehow, he ended up stranded in this strange new world, this world where ponies could talk and he wasn’t human. I’m never going to see the rest of the resistance again, am I? Seth, the resistance’s cranky resident Da’at Yitude tech expert. Wyatt, that depressed, loveable little wreck of a kid. Max Haus. Bombate. Grace. Super Spesh. Anya… His mind recoiled from that line of thought, refusing to follow it any further. He couldn’t imagine life without Anya. He just couldn’t. Time passed. B.J. just couldn’t be bothered to keep track of how much. Everything felt numb, like he was alive but not truly living. And he kinda was; how could he go on like this, stranded in an alien world and an alien body, the resistance left to fend for themselves… “Are you sure we shouldn’t split up to cover more ground?” A voice called out, speaking in German, the harsh-sounding language snapping B.J. out of his despair-induced stupor. “We’d probably have found the source of the scream you’d heard earlier by now if we’d done that earlier.” “Have you never seen a horror movie before?!” Another voice snapped back, also in German, in the language B.J. had come to associate with Nazism. “…oh shit .” Twilight’s voice reached the captain’s ears, barely higher than a whisper yet somehow conveying her panic just as well as a full-throated scream. B.J. thought back to when he’d first awakened, to the way all the furniture had looked like it had been transplanted from somewhere else, to how Twilight had called it her “hideout”. He’d been too disoriented and confused to realize it earlier, but now, in hindsight, it was obvious that she was hiding from something. And given her reaction to hearing German, that something was likely a bunch of Nazis. B.J. pushed himself to his feet, pushing aside his misery. Killing the Nazi bastards who’d set up shop here probably wouldn’t get him home, and wouldn’t do much to help the resistance, but it certainly beat just sitting in a cave and waiting to die. “Where’s my gear?” “Broken,” Twilight responded hastily, her voice barely higher than a whisper, her tone of voice rising in pitch alongside the increasing volume of the Nazi’s voices. “Your armor was fine, but everything else you were carrying was smashed. I don’t have any weapons. And when they get here-“ “Just breathe, okay?” B.J. reached out on instinct, his hoof somehow managing to settle on Twilight’s shoulder. “Inhale, count to four, exhale.” He whispered to her, sharing a little breathing exercise he did whenever things got too bad even for his trauma-inured psyche. The last thing he wanted was for his only ally to panic and do something stupid. Twilight leaned into B.J.’s hoof, sucking in a breath, pausing for four seconds, and letting it out. She took several more deep breaths, the tremors running through her body subsiding more and more with each one. “Okay.” The curtain of pitch blackness that engulfed them both suddenly lifted, driven back by a small mote of violet light that had inexplicably popped into existence atop Twilight’s horn. A part of B.J. couldn't help but wonder where the hell that light source had come from, but he could ask Twilight that after the Nazis on their doorstep were dealt with. “I put everything you were carrying in a sack over there.” Twilight lifted one hoof, gesturing toward a mound of something enveloped in a cocoon of coarse, tough fabric. “Not sure how useful any of it will be, though.” B.J. nodded, trotting over to the sack in question. His hooves—despite being… well, hooves —were somehow almost as nimble as regular hands, and thus it was remarkably easy to lift up the sack and dump out its contents. Just as Twilight had promised, said “contents” turned out to be his almost-comically large collection of rifles, shotguns, pistols, grenades, and other assorted ordinance, all of it crushed and mangled almost beyond recognition. Not even the DieselKraftWerk was spared. “So, all my guns have been reduced to impractically huge paperweights.” B.J. glanced back at Twilight. “What else do we have?” “There’s the generator, and the streetlight it’s hooked up to,” Twilight responded almost instantly, as if she’d already been running through a list of everything she had on hand that might be useful. “There’s a half-dozen canisters of fuel, that pair of boots your armor turned into, a pile of assorted scrap in the corner…” She continued, B.J. following her gaze as it darted around the chamber, landing on each item she listed off… Something caught his eye. Something in the pile of scrap that Twilight had just pointed out. B.J.’s tail reached out, the hairs curling around the rifle-like device’s handle, lifting it up and bringing it closer to him. “That’s just something I found lying in the forest,” Twilight explained, noticing B.J. studying the device. “I think it’s broken.” “Yes, it’s broken. But I happen to know how to fix it.” Reaching over with one hoof, he grabbed the ruined DieselKraftWerk. The thing mostly ran on diesel fuel—hence the name—but some of its functions required electrical power. Thus, it had a portable reactor inside of it to provide that power. And by the looks of it, the drum-like device that contained that reactor was still intact. “You’ve worked with that kind of weapon before?” “Not this exact model, no,” B.J. admitted as he extracted the reactor from the DieselKraftWerk. The thing currently grasped in his tail was far more compact and streamlined than the original LaserKraftWerk he had back in 1960, its frame far less unwieldy and a little more riflelike, and there was a gleaming nozzle-like attachment on its business end he didn’t recognize. But the chassis of it was still recognizable. B.J. slotted the portable reactor into place like it was a drum magazine, the LaserKraftWerk’s business end producing a soft, fiery orange glow as the Da’at Yitude-derived reactor brought the long-dormant weapon back to life. “...but it’s close enough.”
Wolves, Part 3A dim red glow was creeping around the corner, the sound of metal clomping on concrete echoing through the cavern, and it was all Twilight could do to stop herself from curling into a ball and praying to whatever had taken Celestia’s place that the source of those frighteningly familiar lights would just pass her by. “You okay?” Blazkowicz asked, the stallion’s voice surprisingly soft. “Yeah,” Twilight nodded, following the stallion out through the thin curtain, into the cavern beyond. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, sucking in a breath, counting to four, and then letting it out. That “counting to four” trick was surprisingly soothing, almost as effective as counting to ten while taking only half as long. No wonder Blazkowicz seemed to like it. “If you say so.” Blazkowicz stepped away from her, his soft, barely audible footsteps approaching the opposite wall. “All I need is light so I can see who I’m shooting at. Can you spawn that purple light you pulled up earlier on top of them?” Twilight opened her eyes, noticing that the sources of the lights were now visible, the red lights of human-made night vision goggles visible ahead. By the looks of it, there were about 5 regular soldiers, plus one whose visor had a singular, cyclopean lens. None of them were close enough to see them yet… but in a handful of seconds, that was going to change. “I have a better idea,” Twilight responded, funneling her magic into her horn. The Equestria-wide anti-magic field the humans had managed to set up severely curtailed her magical abilities, but because she’d become an alicorn just a few days before all this madness broke loose, she could still call forth magical energy. Not a lot of it—she could only summon as much magical energy as a regular unicorn—but she didn’t need a lot for what she wanted to do. She reached out with the magical energies she’d brought forth, out toward the six humans. She didn’t have enough magical power available to actually move them with her telekinesis, not from this distance and certainly not all six of them, let alone one. But that wasn’t what she was trying to do. A soft violet glow enveloped all six soldiers, outlining them perfectly, said soldiers letting out several surprised exclamations as they glanced at each other. Twilight had to strain a bit to ‘touch’ all six of them like this, but not excessively so; she could keep this up for quite a bit if she had to. “…clever.” Blazkowicz lifted the rifle-like device held in his tail, drawing a bead, and Twilight silently braced herself. A ray of fiery orange light shot out of the device, striking the closest soldier right in his face, his entire head reduced to a smoldering stump in an instant. The remaining five let loose cries of shock and fury, and Twilight winced, the glowing telekinetic auras that enveloped the soldiers flickering as her concentration faltered for a moment. But she steeled herself, the glowing auras around the remaining soldiers quickly reasserting themselves. Blazkowicz had already leaped forward, snatching something off of the headless soldier’s still-smoking corpse as he pelted toward the others, taking a brief potshot at another soldier. The shot missed, but Blazkowicz made up for it when he leaped up at a different soldier, a choked, gurgling cry slipping from the human’s throat as the stallion sliced his neck open with the hatchet he’d just grabbed. The moments that followed quickly dissolved into a blur of gunfire and motion and orange-and-red lasers. Before all this, seeing someone get their head melted or their throat sliced open would probably have elicited a scream from Twilight, or a horrified gasp at the very least. But after Canterlot had fallen, the other Alicorn Princesses had disappeared, and her friends had been captured, she’d learned how to tune out visages of bloodshed and death with almost unsettling speed. She didn’t need to pay attention to what exactly Blazkowicz was doing to the soldiers or what they were trying to do to him, didn’t need to pay attention to the black liquid that shimmered on the cavern floor and the ways the fallen humans had been ripped apart. All she needed to focus on was maintaining her telekinesis and keeping those humans lit up. So that’s all she focused on. Unfortunately, that meant that when one of the humans—the one with the cyclopean visor—took notice of what she was doing and decided to put a stop to it, she didn’t realize he was moving in her direction until his fist was streaking toward her face. Twilight screamed, only barely managing to roll out of the way of the punch, the blow hitting hard enough to make the ground beneath her shake, the artificial earthquake intense enough to knock her off her feet. By the time she had regained her footing, her assailant had seized her neck in his metal-plated hand. A choked, strangled cry slipped from Twilight’s constricted throat as she was lifted by her neck and roughly slammed into the wall, her lungs already burning from want of air. Her assailant snarled something in that guttural language all humans seemed to speak, the scarlet glow of the singular ‘eye’ of his visor intensifying. Up until this moment, a tiny part of her had been wondering where the red lasers she’d seen earlier had come from. Somehow, over the roaring in her ears, Twilight heard Blazkowicz shout her name, heard his hoofs pounding on the stone as he sprinted toward her assailant. But she somehow knew that he wouldn’t make it in time, that the glowing red lens would unleash a crimson ray of fiery death and her head would be reduced to a smoldering stump before Blazkowicz even came within hoof’s reach, let alone before he could do anything about it. Unless she beat her assailant to the punch. Her vision blurred, an all-to-familiar burning sensation welling up in the corners of her eyes as she funneled every last drop of magical energy she could muster into her horn. Her attacker recoiled slightly as the brilliant purple glow illuminated his steel-covered face, his grip on her neck loosening ever-so-slightly as he tried to backpedal… but by the time he realized what Twilight was about to do, it was too late. Celestia… please forgive me. Twilight whispered silently to herself, and then let the energy in her horn out. A lance of concentrated magical energy shot out from the tip of her horn, right into the visor’s ‘eye’. An instant later, said visor exploded, along with the head that was wearing it. The concussive blast from the detonation slammed into Twilight’s chest, knocking what little air she’d managed to get into her lungs back out. Twilight barely noticed, however, and didn’t really care, largely on account of the fact that an instant later, the metal-plated hand fell from her throat, leaving that sweet, sweet air free to come rushing right back in. The young alicorn took in a huge lungful as she dropped back down to the cavern floor. The impact sent a shockwave of pain through her bruised, battered body, but she somehow managed to remain on her feet as she sucked in one huge, gasping breath after another, the burning pain in her oxygen-starved lungs slowly subsiding… A loud, audible CLANG reached Twilight’s ears. She glanced up, half-expecting her attacker to have somehow survived the laser-to-the-face treatment, to be charging toward her to finish the job… but all he’d done was fall to his knees. For a long, long moment, neither the purple mare nor the armored human who’d just tried to murder her moved an inch. And then, the armored human’s dead body began to tilt forward, its chest colliding with the stony floor with another metallic CLANG , the still-smoking stump that was all that remained of his head landing mere inches from her snout. All of a sudden, bile was rising up in Twilight’s throat, and from more than just the smell of cooked flesh that flooded her nose. She staggered backward, suddenly feeling like she was being choked again, the enormity of what she’d just done crashing down on her like a sledgehammer to her soul. She’d just killed him. Sure, he’d been trying to kill her, yes, but that didn’t change the fact that he had friends, family, maybe even a wife. He’d had dreams, desires, hopes and aspirations… and Twilight had just shattered them all in an instant. She’d killed him… “Twilight?! You okay?” Somehow, Blazkowicz’s voice snapped her out of her spiraling thoughts. Inhale, count to four, exhale. She reminded herself, squeezing her eyes shut and forcing herself to take a slow, deep breath as she reigned her emotions back in, gathering them up and shoving them into a box deep inside of her, a box that had been getting rather cluttered as of late. “…I’m fine.” Twilight finally said in response, her voice a flat monotone. Glancing back at the body in front of her, she noticed a familiar hexagonal pattern on the armor it wore. She flipped it over with one hoof, refusing to pay attention to its lack of a head as she reached for the triangle on the center of the armor. Sure enough, it began to retract the instant her hoof touched the triangular sigil, the damaged bits screeching and sparking as they were folded back into shape by the rest of the transforming armor. “We can’t stay here,” Twilight murmured, half to herself, snatching up the black pair of metal boots with one hoof. Her body felt like it was moving on automatic as she staggered back into the cave she’d been living in for months now, her free hoof reaching up and flipping the switch on the generator as she moved past it, toward the dresser. “There‘ll be more patrols out looking for the one we just killed, we need to find a place to lie low until-” She continued, throwing open one of the drawers and pulling out a worn, rugged saddlebag… “Twilight…” The purple alicorn froze at the sound of Blazkowicz’s voice. She’d heard that tone of voice before. Princess Celestia used a similar tone whenever she recognized that Twilight wasn’t telling the whole story but didn’t want to outright call her out on her bluff. “Are you really okay? Because you do not look-“ Flashes of memory shot through her mind, flashes of roaring flames, of glowing red eyes, of the expression she’d seen on her teacher’s face before her hastily-cast teleport spell spirited Twilight away. “I SAID I’M FINE!!!” She snarled at the top of her lungs, spinning around to face Blazkowicz, her horn emitting a crackling flash of purple light that sent the blue-eyed stallion stumbling backward. For a long, long minute, there was nothing but dead silence, neither of the ponies present saying a word as Twilight struggled to repress the memories running rampant in her mind’s eye, to clamp down on her out-of-control emotions and regain her composure. “…let’s go.” Twilight finally said, her voice once again monotone and emotionless as she gathered up what little personal belongings she had, trotted over to the generator, and switched it off for the final time. B.J. stared up at the blood-red moon looming high in the sky, squinting in the dim red light. He’d caught a glimpse of the orange-red sky earlier, but this was the first opportunity he’d had to actually take a good look at the unnaturally bright moon, at the twilight colors that moon cast. “Is the sky here normally that color?” “No.” A cold, icy voice answered him, completely devoid of all the energy it once had. B.J. glanced over at Twilight as the two of them stepped out from behind the foliage, noticing the unfocused look in the purple pony’s downturned gaze. Her expression wasn’t exactly a thousand-yard stare… but it was concerningly similar to one. For a while, neither of them spoke as they trudged through the foliage, Twilight leading the way and B.J. following close behind. “…feels like you just took a sledgehammer to your own soul, doesn’t it?” B.J. offered at last, finally breaking the long, awkward silence. Twilight flinched a little, a small shudder running through the pony’s brightly colored body. “Yeah…” Her voice was soft, barely higher than a whisper. “When I first shot someone, I felt the same,” B.J. said, thinking back to the first time he’d shot a Nazi. Just like Twilight, he hadn’t really had much of a choice, but that didn’t make the nausea any less intense, the scream of agony and horror his opponent had let out as he bled out on the floor any less gut-wrenching. “…why …why did we have to kill them? Why can’t they just leave us alone?” B.J. let out a long, drawn-out sigh. “Far as I can tell, it boils down to how they see the world around them. They’re completely certain that their worldview is the correct one, and don’t want to acknowledge anything that proves that worldview wrong. So they get rid of anything that doesn’t fit.” “Why can’t they just acknowledge that they’re wrong?” B.J. shrugged. “Not sure, honestly. Probably a combination of fear, arrogance, and narrow-mindedness, if I had to guess.” The purple mare let loose a small huff. “I… I wish I could just tell them that they didn’t have to hurt people, that they could just live and let live…” “Same here. If there was some magical phrase I could’ve said to get those six Nazi bastards back there that could’ve made them realize the error of their ways and renounce their allegiance to the Third Reich, I would’ve been shouting it at the top of my lungs.” The captain admitted, and Twilight stifled a small giggle. “But you can’t convince someone that what they’re doing is wrong when they’d rather kill you than hear what you’re saying. When they’d rather die than let you live.” B.J. glanced down at his front hoofs, at the flecks of blood scattered across them. “All you can do is try and kill them first, and hope the world will be a better place without them.” Another long silence descended over the two of them, feeling like it lasted far, far longer than it actually did This time, Twilight was the one to break it. “Do… do you ever get used to it? The killing?” “…you do, but you also don’t,” B.J. responded. “You stop feeling like you’re gonna heave every time you put a bullet through someone’s brain, but the nausea never completely fades. You get inured to the blood and the screams, but a part of you still cringes every time you hear a man cry out in pain as a bullet punctures their guts. It stops hurting as much when you slit someone’s throat… but it still hurts.” “And you know what? It’s good that it still hurts. Because that means that deep down, you’re not a monster. The day it stops hurting is the day you become a heartless killing machine, the day you start killing because you can, not because you have to. The day you become no better than the people who forced you to kill in the first place.” Twilight just nodded, one of her wings reaching forward to wipe away the tears sliding down her cheeks. “Thanks, Blazkowicz. I… didn’t realize I needed to hear that” “You can just call me B.J.” The captain said in response, a little impressed that Twilight hadn’t mangled the pronunciation. The blood-red moon that loomed high in the sky never set, never rose, never even moved, so Twilight had only the vaguest idea of how long it took for her and “B.J.” to reach their destination. If she had to guess, she’d probably say that they’d been walking for several hours. This was where Celestia’s teleport spell had dumped her goodness-only-knows how many moons ago. It was an old campsite, marked as such by the fire pit in the center of the clearing and the worn, tattered tent sitting in front of it, the latter still standing despite at least a year’s worth of neglect. She’d spent her first week in the Everfree Forest curled up in that tent, venturing out only to forage for food, too confused and terrified and miserable to do anything else. “We should be able to rest here for a day or two,” Twilight announced, pushing aside the tent flap and stepping inside. The tent’s interior was empty, save for a wooden platform that served as the tent’s floor, but that was okay; she’d brought a few sheets and blankets for bedding, enough for both her and her companion. “And after that?” Said companion asked as he followed her in. “Well, I’m not completely sure what we’ll do then. But I have a pretty good idea.” She reached into her saddlebags with one hoof, pulled out a folder, and set it down in front of her. With that done, she opened it, pulling out two maps; one pilfered from an office complex in the monument to dystopic brutalism that Canterlot had become and covered in her annotations, and another entirely of her own making. “I take it, based on what you just pulled out, that that “idea” involves breaking somebody out of a Nazi prison?” B.J. guessed, his sky-blue eyes analyzing the first map. “Yeah. Eisenberg prison, to be exact.” Twilight responded as she unfolded the second map, this one of the tunnels and caves under Canterlot. Specifically, the tunnels and caves caves they’d have to go to in order to reach the prison. With the maps out, she pulled out the last two things in the folder; a pair of sheets with Häftlings-Personal-Datei emblazoned on the top of each. Beneath those words were photos of the Häftlings—a.k.a. prisoners —in question. “The first pony we’re looking is an old friend of mine.” She tapped the first of the two “Prisoner Personal Files”, the one whose photos featured a pegasus with a yellow coat and a pink mane. In both, Fluttershy had her eyes closed, the still images somehow managing to capture the motion of her flinching away from the camera perfectly. “Her name’s Fluttershy. She’s been locked up there ever since the nazis took over. She’ll probably come off as a nervous wreck when you first meet her, but trust me when I say that she’s a lot tougher than she looks.” “And the other pony?” “Shining Armor. He’s my older brother.” Twilight said, gesturing to the other file. Unlike Fluttershy, he wasn’t shying away from the camera in any of his mugshots. Quite the opposite; he was standing straight, his posture rigid and braced for a fight. And if looks could kill, the cameraman would have died long before he’d had a chance to take the unicorn’s mugshots. “He was also at large until a few moons ago; that’s when the humans caught him and threw him in here. I’m willing to bet that he was part of a resistance movement of some sort before he got locked up, and can probably help us link up with said movement.” B.J. nodded in agreement as his attention turned from the files to the second map. “...this map’s hand-drawn. Did you scout all this out yourself?” “Yeah, I sneak into Canterlot using those tunnels every once in a while. Can’t say the same for the prison; the guards patrol the area around it really heavily, and I could never figure out how to get past them all without killing any of them.” Flashes of what she had done filled her mind’s eye, flashes of brilliant purple light and fiery conflagrations and smoldering flesh. She did her best to push them aside. “I… I don’t think that’ll be too much of an issue now.” “We can worry about that once we get there.” B.J. declared, looking over the maps and files one more time. “For now… well, I’m getting pretty damn tired, and you’re not looking much better.” “Yeah… that fight took a lot out of me...” Twilight said in response, folding the maps back up and tucking everything back into the folder, stowing it all in her saddlebags once again. With that, she pulled out the bedding material she brought, tossing half of it B.J.’s way before pulling out her own set of sheets and blankets. “Tonight, we rest. Tomorrow…” “We give those nazi bastards a very thorough object lesson on why they shouldn’t go stomping around this place like they own it.” B.J. declared as he straightened out their piles of blankets and sheets, flopping down on top of it. Twilight chuckled a little as she buried herself within her own pile of sheets. “Couldn’t have put it better.”
Oblivion, Part 1B.J. stared down into the hole in the ground, squinting in the dim light. He couldn’t see anything in the darkness, but the shadows did nothing to stop sound, and he could clearly hear a soft, persistent trickling, the sound not unlike that of a shallow stream. “…you sure this is safe?” He wasn’t a geologist, but he was still pretty sure that that noise wasn’t a good sign. If he could hear the sound of water flowing meant that the flowing water making it was eroding the stone, increasing the risk of a cave-in and maybe even causing some flooding. “I’m sure it’s not safe,” Twilight declared, slipping past him and dropping down into the blackness. A moment later, and a familiar violet light had sprung to life atop the pony’s horn, revealing that she had dropped down to the cavern floor safely. “But it’s pretty sedate in comparison to sneaking into a city chock-full of Nazis and attempting to break a few rebels out of the biggest prison complex in said city.” “…fair enough,” B.J. admitted, leaping down after her. Almost immediately, he was enveloped by the cavern’s damp, chilly air. For once, he was actually glad for his new, unsettlingly equine body; after a lifetime of walking on two legs, the captain found moving around on four weird in a way that defied all description, but his fur did quite a bit to keep out the cold. Twilight was already trotting ahead, and nothing had collapsed yet, so B.J. fell into step behind her. Their footsteps echoed as they walked deeper into the rocky tunnels, the sounds bouncing and reverberating off of the damp, dark tunnels. Water dripped down from the cracks of the ceiling above, a few droplets landing on his coat and mane, punching tiny holes of moisture in his protective layer of fur; it wasn’t long before he started to shiver a little. It wasn’t anywhere near as cold as the waters of the Berlin Catacombs, but it was enough to make him wish he still had his Air Force-issued flight jacket. “You okay?” Twilight asked, the sound of the pony’s voice snapping B.J. out of his thoughts. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. I’ve been in places much colder than this.” “Good, because we still have quite a ways to go.” Twilight rounded a corner, her light suddenly reflecting off of something out of sight. “At least there’ll be plenty to see down here.” B.J. opened his mouth to ask what Twilight meant by that, but then he rounded the corner and promptly found himself staring at the answer to his question. The tunnel they’d been walking through had opened up onto a massive underground cavern positively crammed with crystals and gemstones. Shining white quartz made up the vast majority of it, shooting up in spear-like formations from the floor and ceiling, thick enough they were the ceiling or walls in some places. The trickling sound he’d heard earlier was louder here thanks to a near-constant flow of water leaking down from the ceiling, sliding off of the crystal formations and raining down in dozens of miniature waterfalls. The air here was even more humid than it was before, but the damp chill was suddenly the absolute last thing on B.J.’s mind. “...wow,” B.J. commented as Twilight led the way deeper into what was possibly the biggest and most elaborate geode in existence. The purple pony’ light refracted off and through the trickling streams and glittering gemstones, spreading it throughout the cavern in a slowly shifting display of violet light. “Yeah, wish I could say that was my reaction too when I first fell down here. Unfortunately, I was kinda distracted with saving my brother from an evil doppelganger of his betrothed.” “Wait, what?” “Long story.” Twilight offered. “Anyway, these caves were once home to a pretty big mining operation on account of all the gems down here. That was a long time ago, though; most ponies have forgotten that these caves even exist. As a result, they’re a great way to bypass all the checkpoints the humans have set up in Canterlot. All the wreckage from before Canterlot was invaded that wound up down here also makes it a good place to scavenge for supplies I can’t find in the Everfree forest.” Now that Twilight had pointed them out, B.J. could see several fragments of structures that looked like they’d been ripped right out of a fairy tale city, like bits of food caught in some unfathomably huge giant’s teeth. The front wall of a hut, propped against a spiky hill of quartz. A fragment of a building that was probably once part of a restaurant pinned between an outcropping of yellow crystals and a glittering green pillar. He could even see a piece of a library impaled upon a crystal-clear spike, decaying, waterlogged books spilling out from tilted bookshelves onto the cavern floor. Fitting. B.J. mused silently to himself. The nazis killed a city and replaced it with one of their own, blissfully unaware the old city’s corpse got buried right beneath their feet… The shifting display of refracted violet light came to an abrupt stop, freezing in place and snapping B.J. out of his thoughts. He looked up at Twilight, noticing that she’d come to an abrupt stop right in time to avoid running into her. “…what is it?” Twilight didn’t respond, at least not right away. B.J. stepped out from behind her, following her gaze to the remains of some kind of outdoor streetside stall. Based on all the pony-shaped wooden mannequins (ponnequins?) scattered around it and the tattered, decaying clothing on said mannequins, it was apparently dedicated to selling clothing at one point. Though B.J. had no clue why this particular piece of wreckage had caught her attention- “A friend of mine used to make things like this.” Twilight finally spoke up. The purple pony had trotted over to one of the life-sized dummies and was now kneeling in front of it, staring down mournfully at the pony-shaped hunk of wood. “She worked here?” “No, but she was planning to. She’d wanted to open up another boutique in Canterlot for a while, had picked out a store, even found a manager for the sister location…” Twilight trailed off into silence, a single tear splattering onto the cavern’s stony floor. For a long, long moment, the only sound was the ever-present trickling of water. “...we should probably get moving.” B.J. finally said, gently nudging Twilight’s leg with one of his hoofs. The purple pony nodded mutely, sniffling a bit as she turned away from the small collection of tattered cloth and wooden debris. B.J. stole one last glance at the scattered clothing… and promptly did a double-take so hard he could almost swear he heard his neck crack. “B.J.?” Twilight called out, but the captain barely heard her, preoccupied as he was with figuring out how the fuck that mannequin ended up wearing that suspiciously familiar sheepskin jacket. “…where the hell did that come from?” “Umm… the pony who owned this stall?” Twilight answered, the faintest hint of nervousness creeping into her voice. He couldn’t exactly blame her for being a little worried; from what he’d heard, he could come off as a little crazy at times, and that was before he got dumped into a world that looked like it had been plucked straight out of a particularly realistic acid trip. “Why’d you ask?” B.J. stepped toward the mannequin whose jacket had caught his eye, gently tilting it back into an upright position as he studied the article around its limbs. “I asked because the pony who ran this stall apparently made a jacket that looks almost exactly like a jacket I used to wear.” The color was a slightly darker brown than he recalled, the sheepskin lining was lighter in coloration, the sleeves extended all the way down the wearer’s front legs, the left half of the jacket didn’t fold over the right half quite as much, and the buckles were different, but other than all those minor details, the jacket was pretty much identical in appearance to his old GI flight jacket. “Really?” “Yes, really.” B.J. began slowly undoing the buckles and zippers on the jacket, being careful not to damage it as he stripped it off the mannequin. In all likelihood, though, he probably didn’t have to worry; for an article of clothing that had been gathering dust in this dark, damp cavern for who-knows-how-long, the jacket was free of mold, not at all torn, not fraying anywhere, and otherwise looking like it had been made yesterday. Given everything else that he’d seen so far, he wouldn’t be surprised if it had some sort of enchantment that made it supernaturally durable. And if that enchantment prevents wear and tear from damaging the jacket, then maybe it’ll prevent bullets and knives from damaging it too. And if it doesn’t… well, it’s still a pretty nice jacket. “Umm… do you need help getting that on?” Twilight offered, stepping a little closer as B.J. began trying (with mixed success) to get the jacket on. No wonder Twilight never bothered with clothes; to call getting just this jacket on a hassle was an understatement, and he didn’t have wings that might get in the way. “Just give me a minute…” B.J. responded as he finally managed to slip one hoof into a sleeve. Several tries later, and he’d managed to do the same with the other front hoof. With that, he began working on the buckles, struggling to manipulate them with just one hoof… “You do realize you can just use your tail for those, right?” B.J. froze for a moment, before glancing back at his tail, its prehensile hairs still wrapped around the LaserKraftWerk and holding the rifle-sized laser cannon aloft. “...not until this moment, no,” B.J. admitted, the faintest hint of an embarrassed blush creeping onto his face. He set the LaserKraftWerk down on the floor, freeing up his tail so that it could manipulate the buckles. Surprisingly enough, he had absolutely no trouble using his tail to secure the straps and clasps; unlike his hooves, which were roughly akin to flexible but thumbless mittens, the hairs of his tail could split apart into something approaching fingers, and were much more dexterous. As a result, it took only a few seconds to secure each strap, and only three straps before the jacket was fully on. “Mind if I keep this?” He asked, looking back at his equine body… and his heart skipped a beat. “Sure, why not?” Twilight answered, shrugging nonchalantly, but B.J. barely even noticed; all his attention had been seized by something else. Something that was, in his opinion, exponentially more alarming than a suspiciously familiar-looking jacket. “I mean, it’s not like anyone’s using it-” “Why is there a livestock brand on my flank?!” “...you got branded!? When did- Oh. Don’t worry, that’s just your Cutie Mark.” B.J. looked up at Twilight, then back at the black, winged-parachute-shaped “cutie mark” on his flank, and then back at Twilight. “…my cutie mark? What the hell is that?” “Oh, I don’t know, the mark on your flank?” The violet-eyed pony responded, lifting one hoof to cover her mouth and the tiny chuckles slipping out of it. “Y’know, the one you got when you discovered your special talent?” B.J. glanced back at the marking again, noticing how suspiciously similar it was to a USA Parachutist Badge. He was basically a natural-born supersoldier, and served as a Ranger in the army, so having that represented by a set of Jump Wings made a certain amount of sense… but then again, people didn’t just gain markings on their flanks tied to their special talents. Nothing did. And besides… “...you don’t find having a marking just appear outta nowhere on your body regardless of whether you want it or not concerning? At all?” “Yeah, because you’d have to be either crazy or afflicted with something that screws up your cutie mark to not want it.” Twilight was still trying to suppress her giggles, with rapidly dwindling success. “Sorry, it’s just… first, you claim you aren’t a pony, then you freak out on seeing your reflection, and then you mistake your cutie mark for a brand. Are you a human in disguise or something?” …she hasn’t realized I’m not just another pony, has she? Far as Twilight was concerned, B.J. was just a pony with a few screws loose, not a wayward human out of their element (and body). “Umm… yeah, actually. I wouldn’t say “in disguise”, but I was a human before I got turned into… well, this.” He admitted, gesturing with his tail to his equine form. In an instant, Twilight’s chuckles went completely silent, every fiber in her body going rigid, her eyes going wide as if B.J. had just announced that he was a serial killer. “You’re… you’re joking, right? You weren’t actually-” …oh. “Oh hell no!” B.J. exclaimed the instant he realized where Twilight’s comment was going. “I mean, I was the same species as those nazi bastards, but that’s about the only thing I had in common with them.” “...so you were a human… who wasn’t a nazi?” Twilight was looking skeptical; apparently, she’d never met another human who wasn’t a full-fledged nazi. But at least she wasn’t looking like she was going to bolt at a moment’s notice. “Who hated their friggin’ guts, too,” B.J. responded, nodding in agreement. “Let’s just say that the engagement back at your hideout wasn’t the first time I’ve gone to town on a bunch of nazis.” “...oh,” Twilight answered, the tension leaving her body as quickly as it had formed. “Honestly, it didn’t even occur to me that there were humans who weren’t Nazis.” “Kinda hard to blame you for that; if there are any humans here who aren’t Nazis, they’re probably in hiding, dead, or locked up in a prison somewhere,” B.J. responded. Twilight shuddered ever-so-slightly. “Speaking of prisons… well, like you said, we should probably get moving. My friends aren’t going to rescue themselves.” “Need any help getting that open?” “N… no…” Twilight answered between grunts. She didn’t venture onto the streets of Canterlot very often, but when she did, it was usually through this concrete drainage shaft. She’d managed to find a fissure in the wall of this shaft that linked it with the crystal-filled caverns underneath Canterlot, small enough that it had escaped notice yet large enough that she could slip through with relative ease. This wasn’t the only way to the street level that she knew of… but it was certainly the one she used the most. That didn’t make the hatch at the top of this shaft any less stubborn, though. “Almost…” She grunted, the circular slab of steel letting loose a loud, audible groan as the rusty valve holding it shut finally decided to cooperate. “Got it.” Her back hooves and wings tightened their grip on the ladder’s bars as she pushed with her front hooves, the hinges of the hatch squealing as she forced it open. Once the metal hatch opened fully, she quickly scrambled out and into the rectangular chamber beyond, B.J. following close behind. “...no guards? Or cameras?” B.J. asked as he studied the chamber that they’d entered, a large, rectangular room with concrete walls, light flowing through barred vents, and a few more ladders affixed to the walls, ladders that led to smaller hatches. “Nope,” Twilight answered him as she trotted over to one of the ladders. “When the Nazis took over, they pretty much demolished Cloudsdale when all the pegasi up there refused to submit to them. But Cloudsdale had a weather factory, and the ponies working up there kept stockpiles of rain and thunder clouds up there. And when the factory was destroyed with the rest of Cloudsdale… those stockpiles got released into the atmosphere.” “And Canterlot got slammed with one heckuva storm?” “Pretty much.” Twilight came to a stop beneath the closest ladder, pulling a small, 8-inch disk enclosed in a square plastic case out of her saddlebags with one wing as she began to climb it. “There was pouring rain, hailstones the size of soccer balls, even rainbow-colored lightning.” “Thing is, the Nazis didn’t know that the only weather here is artificially produced back then. They assumed that they’d have to deal with storms like that on a regular basis, and thus, when they rebuilt Canterlot, they built the drainage system to handle a truly absurd amount of rainfall. And when they finally realized these oversized flood-control drains were completely unnecessary, they decided to just build over top of them instead of taking the time to fill them in.” Twilight paused for a second underneath the second hatch, checking that the runes she’d inscribed onto the magnetic disk were doing what they were supposed to. They were. “Not that I’m complaining, since they make sneaking into Canterlot a piece of cake.” And with that, she undid the latch and climbed out onto the streets of Canterlot. The first time she’d emerged from one of those grates and onto the streets that stretched between the towering spires of steel and concrete, in the handful of seconds that had passed before the cameras had alerted the humans to her position and she’d found herself fleeing for her life, she’d assumed that she’d somehow ended up in Manehattan. It was only after she’d managed to lose her pursuers that she’d started to notice the distinct lack of glass, the rigid, angular construction of the buildings, the red banners and flags that were draped all over the grey walls. Those banners and flags never failed to creep Twilight out before; even if she put aside how much they reminded her of the makeover Canterlot had received at the hands of the Trixie the Nutty and Power-mad, the big white dots and black, crooked crosses in the center of each still looked entirely too much like massive, unblinking eyes, always watching and ready to call down a crushing iron fist upon anypony who dared step out of line. But now… the ‘gaze’ of the banners felt a little less intense, their presence a little less oppressive. They still left her feeling exposed, weak, and small… but not quite as much as they usually did. Probably because this time, she wasn’t alone. As B.J. emerged, Twilight saw his eyes lock on a white, rectangular device with a circular black ‘lens’, a camera that had the both of them in its viewing arc. “We need to move. That camera-” “Can’t see us, thanks to this little piece of artifice I whipped up.” Twilight cut him off, holding up the piece of artifice in question. B.J. looked at the glowing violet runes on the disk, then at the faint, sparkling aura that had enveloped the camera. “That thing you pulled out can shut down cameras?” “Better; it taps into the camera’s video feed and edits the two of us out of it,” Twilight responded as she reached into her saddlebags with her other wing, pulling out two black cloaks and putting one on. It was unlikely that any nazis would be looking close enough at her to recognize her as the Princess of Friendship, but better safe than sorry. “It can only affect a few cameras at a time, and it’ll only hide the two of us, but the guy watching the camera feeds probably won’t even know something’s wrong.” “...so, in other words, we don’t have to worry about the security cameras.” B.J. climbed the rest of the way out, taking the second cloak and putting it on. The last thing either of them wanted was for a nazi to notice the man-portable laser cannon on his back. “You know where we’re going, right.” Twilight nodded, unfurling a map of the streets of Canterlot, post-nazi redevelopment. “Next stop; Eisenberg prison.”
Oblivion, Part 2B.J. wasn’t fully sure what he’d been expecting to see in Canterlot. But the seemingly endless blood moon suspended in the sky, the acid-trip fairy tale creatures that populated the world that moon gazed down upon, and the debris he’d seen in the caverns underneath the Nazi-controlled city had given him a fairly good idea of what to expect. As a result, he was more than a little surprised when he’d stepped onto Canterelot’s streets, and that idea had been utterly shattered by how familiar his surroundings looked. Canterlot (or at least Canterlot under Nazi rule), was, at a glance, uncannily similar to Berlin, complete with towering, monolithic spires all possessing an oppressively brutalist aesthetic, a looming palace-like structure that resembled the illegitimate lovechild of Deathshead’s fortress and the Volkshalle , and even a prison complex that just-so-happened to have a suspiciously similar name to Eisenwald Prison. It wasn’t a perfect match, though; Canterlot’s layout was a lot more vertical, probably on account of the location leaving nowhere near enough room for Berlin’s usual urban sprawl. The Nazi’s absurdly advanced technology was also far more prevalent, visible in small rectangular holographic displays that replaced the usual posters at street level, the robots stomping and flying and rolling all over the streets, and the red neon lighting, their dim glow melding with the moon’s sanguine rays to the point where it was hard to tell where natural moonlight ended and artificial illumination began. And, of course, there were all the technicolor ponies. “I take it, based on the way you’re looking around, that you weren’t expecting to see so many ponies walking around in the open?” B.J. shook his head. “I also expected the ponies who were out in the open to be walking around in chains.” In a way, the Nazis letting ponykind go about their business as if nothing was wrong was even worse than if they just killed any ponies that they didn’t think would be useful and enslaved the rest. Sure, Canterlot’s pony population was much better off this way, but at least in the former scenario the Nazis couldn’t fool the natives into believing that they were actually the good guys, couldn’t indoctrinate ignorant or gullible ponies into their twisted, fucked-up worldview. “Me too, to be honest. Imagine my surprise when I found out that they only wanted to “liberate us from tyrannical rulers and subversive elements”.” Twilight muttered, the purple alicorn’s gaze falling to her front hooves. “And the worst part? Some ponies actually believe what those bastards are saying.” B.J. thought back to the streets of Roswell, to his fellow Americans singing praises to the tyrants who’d annexed their country. Most of that praise had been false, an act to fool the Nazis into thinking that they weren’t fantasizing about giving the bastards the jackboot… but at least some of it had been genuine. “...when the Nazis conquered my homeland, they pulled a similar trick. Portrayed themselves as liberators, painted the old leaders as greedy tyrants, stoked old prejudices and kept people angry at marginalized minorities instead of the totalitarian invaders who were stripping away everyone’s rights. It didn’t fool everyone. But it fooled everyone they needed it too.” Twilight let loose a soft, miserable sigh, wiping one eye with her wing. “I always thought that if somecreature tried to take power by force here, there’d be rioting in the streets, mass upheaval, and so many resistance organizations every single shop would have to be a front for at least three of them. I… I never thought that everypony would just accept this as the new normal and move on.” “Neither did I.” The rumble of an engine snapped B.J. out of his thoughts, and he looked toward the source of the sound. “The van’s coming.” Twilight nodded, reaching into her saddlebags with one wing. Right now, the two of them were standing on a narrow ledge, overlooking the street that led to the front gate of Eisenberg Prison… or rather, the crackling barrier of arcing scarlet lightning that served as the front gate. He’d seen a familiar-looking armored van pass through that barrier without anyone inside getting fried, but he was fairly certain that anyone outside the van would be in for a very painful (and possibly literal) shock… and that, as a result, the same ploy he used the last time he had to break into a nazi prison wasn’t an option. Twilight could fly using those wings of hers—somehow—but the Nazis had apparently already learned that the wings pegasi had could actually lift them off the ground, and had installed a few automated AA turrets on the roof, set to give any would-be rescuers who tried to swoop in from above a lethal case of rapid-onset lead poisoning. Fortunately, Twilight had come up with a way into the prison that bypassed both of those obstacles. All he knew about it was that it involved the vans that the Nazis used to transport prisoners; she wouldn’t actually tell him any details beyond that (presumably due to an “unspoken plan guarantee”, whatever Twilight meant by that). But it didn’t take a genius to figure out that her plan probably involved the metallic, rod-like device she’d just pulled out. “If my measurements are right, then when the armored van passes that trashcan down there…” She murmured, eyes locked on the black, rectangular vehicle as she held the rod-like device out over the street. Her hoof released the rod as the van passed said trashcan, plunging down toward the ground like a javelin… and landing right on top of the van, splitting down the center into three different rods connected at one end, like a tripod spread to the point that it was flush with the ground. “Perfect.” “That thing will shut that glowing wall down?” Twilight shook her head. “No.” Sure enough, when the van reached the barrier of red lightning, it passed through it without incident, leaving said barrier largely undisturbed. “It’ll just let us get around it.” “…how, exactly?” B.J. asked. If that device wasn’t meant to shut down the barrier, then what was it supposed to do? Instead of responding, Twilight just placed a hoof on his shoulder. A burst of violet light erupted from her horn, the magical discharge accompanied by an odd, shimmery noise that rose in pitch as a purple aura rapidly enveloped them both. There was a bright flash, a brief sense of weightlessness, and a biting chill that engulfed B.J.’s entire body… and the next thing he knew, they were somewhere entirely different, somewhere much lower to the pavement. B.J.‘s eyes went wide as they scanned his surroundings, taking in the concrete walls that surrounded them, the handful of vans parked in close proximity, the other side of the crackling red forcefield. A shocked exclamation started to rise up from his throat… but Twilight silenced it with a hoof to his mouth before it could slip free. The purple alicorn gestured with one wing at the van they were now standing on top of, the same van that she’d dropped that tripod-like device onto less than a minute ago… and the shackled, muzzled ponies being herded out of it by black-clad prison guards. B.J. didn’t need to be told that an explanation of what the fuck Twilight had just done would have to wait until those guards were out of earshot. The two of them silently dropped down onto their stomachs, pressing themselves against the roof of the van, watching in silence as the Nazis in black dragged their newest charges—literally, in the case of some of the more rambunctious captives—into the depths of the prison complex. The captain had to actively fight the urge to level the laser cannon strapped to his back and make a few heads explode; nobody in their right mind could argue that the bastards didn’t deserve it, but the last thing he wanted was for the Nazis to learn of their presence here, make the connection between Twilight Sparkle breaking into one of their prisons and her ties with two very specific prisoners, and turn a relatively simple rescue mission into a hostage situation. After a few seconds, the black-clad soldiers vanished through a door along with their charges, their commanding voices fading into the distance “Finally…” Twilight murmured, picking up the device she’d dropped onto the van’s roof and folding it back into a rod. “Now-” “Did we just teleport?!” “…oh. Sorry, I keep forgetting you’re not from around here.” Twilight admitted, a slight blush creeping onto her face as she stowed the rod in her saddlebags. “And yeah, we just teleported. Before the magic suppression field went up, I didn’t even need that Portable Teleport Pylon to do it. Now, though, I gotta store up a metric ton of magical energy in the Pylon in order to travel any reasonable distance, and even then I can only teleport to it. On the plus side, I can use it to teleport to a location that isn’t in line of sight.” Twilight Sparkle leaped forward, her wings spreading and letting her glide over to a nearby ledge; unlike Eisenwald Prison, there weren’t any convenient walkways leading off of the roof of the parked vans. That wasn’t a problem, though; according to Twilight, he was apparently an “Earth Pony”, and one of the benefits of that was an impossibly high muscle-strength to muscle-mass ratio. The leap from the van to the balcony was all too easy. And speaking of ponies’ abilities… “Next time you do that, a little warning would be appreciated.” “It’ll probably be over a week before I build up enough of a charge in that pylon to do that again, but the next time I do that, I’ll warn you.” Twilight promised as she opened up a maintenance access hatch, revealing a long, dark crawlspace, dimly lit by crimson light strips. “Shining Armor and Fluttershy are being kept in separate sections of the prison, so if we want to make this quick we’re gonna have to split up. We’ll meet back here once we’ve busted my friends out. You remember Shining Armor’s cell number, right?” B.J. nodded as he slipped inside the narrow access tunnel, following behind Twilight. “High Security Block D, cell 24.” He’d committed the cell number to memory, and wouldn’t be forgetting it until Shining Armor was out of that cell. “Okay. Let’s go cause a prison break.” Almost… almost… Twilight thought silently to herself, creeping toward the guard. All she had to do was get a few feet closer… The guard started to turn around, but by then it was too late. The alicorn pounced forward, the metal pipe she’d grabbed flying toward the helmeted human’s head. The improvised club hit home with a CLANG , and the last guard collapsed into an undignified heap, out like a light. As it turned out, she still couldn’t bring herself to kill the prison guards. Killing a creature that was seconds away from doing the same to her was one thing, but killing someone who wasn’t was quite another. Nopony in their right mind could argue that they didn’t deserve to die, not after what they did to Celestia, to Luna, to countless other innocent ponies… but for some reason, despite easily being strong enough to smash a human’s chest in with a single blow, she just couldn’t bring herself to put that much force behind her swings, at least not when her own head wasn’t on the line. Fortunately, there were plenty of ways to take somebody out without killing them. An incapacitating electrical discharge, a poisoned dart in the right spot… or, as Twilight had just demonstrated, a good, solid blow to the head. Even better for Twilight, the guards were really, really lazy, and apparently didn’t even consider loud, audible CLANGs to be out of the norm. They made the Royal Guards seem competent in comparison… and, Twilight had to admit, that was REALLY saying something. Between that, the gloomy, barely-adequate interior lighting, and the way the rotunda setup of this general population cellblock concentrated all those guards in this central tower, it was almost pathetically easy to take them all out of action, one by one. And now, with all the guards incapacitated, nothing was stopping her from opening Fluttershy’s cell and rescuing her friend. “Okay, now that the guards are dealt with…” Twilight murmured to herself, rearing up on her hind legs so she could study a nearby control panel. It took a lot of searching around to find the switch she was looking for, but once she did, it was flipped without incident. The distant sound of metal rattling against metal drew her attention toward one of the countless cells set into the walls, the 11th cell on floor “F”. With that done, she darted out onto a nearby bridge connecting the tower to the multiple walkways running along the sides of the rotunda, spreading her wings and lifting off. During her time in the Everfree forest, she’d been too preoccupied with basic survival to practice using her wings all that much, and was still pretty clumsy in the air… but she didn’t need to be graceful to reach the cell. A second later, and she touched down on the metal walkway near the open cell, stumbling a bit as she landed but still managing to stay upright. Another second, and she was standing in front of said cell, its open door looming in front of her. A third, and her eyes had adjusted enough that she could see the darkened, almost-pitch-black interior of the spartan prison cell… and the trembling, vaguely pony-like shape curled up on the mattress within the cell, huddled beneath a paper-thin blanket. “Fluttershy?” Twilight asked, taking a few tentative steps into the cell. The pony underneath the bench flinched at the sound of her voice, curling up tighter in some futile attempt to hide. “Hey, it’s okay, I’m-“ Twilight started to say, stepping into the concrete cell fully and reaching toward the blanket… The pony hidden underneath it leaped backward, a distinctly male-sounding whinny of terror slipping free of his throat as the blanket fell away from his body, revealing a snow-white coat, a golden-blonde mane, and cobalt-blue eyes. The stallion standing before her was scrawnier than she remembered, his mane was an ungroomed mess and had lost some of its color, and there were several shackle-like metal loops clamped around his hooves and neck, but he was still very recognizable… and definitely not Fluttershy. “...Prince Blueblood?!” “...Twilight?” The prince in question asked, some of the tension leaving his body. “You… you actually came to rescue me ?” “Of COURSE not, you narcissistic twit!” Twilight shouted back. The stallion winced at the insult, but Twilight barely noticed, preoccupied as she was with yanking the files she’d pilfered out of her saddlebags. “I’m looking for Fluttershy!” “...oh.” A hint of disappointment crept onto Blueblood’s face, but he didn’t seem all that surprised by that declaration. “Haven’t seen her, sorry.” “WHY NOT! It says right here that this is Fluttershy’s cell!” Twilight almost snarled, speaking half to herself as she whipped out Fluttershy’s Prisoner File and gave it a thorough look-over. “It's lights out, why isn’t she here?!” “Probably because the file’s outdated or misleading or-” “Oh, that’s it! The file has the wrong cell number!” Twilight spun around, bolting from the cell and running along the walkway, glancing at the interior of each cell she passed. Most were empty, and the few ponies she did see she didn’t recognize. “Or the wrong cellblock, or the wrong prison. She might’ve even escaped by now!” Blueblood called out, his hooves clattering against the metal as he struggled to keep up. “We don’t even know is she’s even here, and even if she is, we don’t have time to search every single cell-” “WHY NOT!?” Twilight practically screamed, whirling around and pegging the cowardly unicorn with a positively lethal glare. “Because you’re scared of all the lazy-as-all-buck guards I just effortlessly knocked out?” “Because I’m scared of the reason the guards are so lazy. The thing that actually does the guarding here.” Blueblood glanced around fearfully, his eyes darting over his surroundings. When they found nothing threatening, his gaze returned to Twilight. “And trust me when I say that we do not want to still be here by the time it finds out that I’m wandering around making a racket past light’s out and you’re the reason I’m doing that.” Twilight opened her mouth, another snarky retort on the tip of her tongue… but it promptly died there when a drop of something red, sticky, and wet landed on top of Twilight’s muzzle. Her first thought, weirdly enough, was that it had to be ketchup, or strawberry jam, or something equally innocuous. That thought didn’t even make it past the obvious question of what those sorts of substances were doing in the cellblocks instead of the mess hall before the fluid’s coppery, metallic smell flooded her nostrils, leaving her with absolutely no doubts as to its true nature. “Up past your bedtime, making some noise, breaking all the rules, manufacturing your own demise…” A disturbingly childlike voice began speaking right above Twilight’s head, its words sung to the tune not unlike an off-key nursery rhyme. Twilight slowly began to tilt her head up toward the sound of that voice, toward the source of the drop that had just splattered all over her snout, as if being hesitant could delay what was coming. For a second, all she saw above was the shadows cast by the walkway above the one she was standing on. But then, a second drop of blood dropped down from those shadows, landing right on Twilight’s snout. All of a sudden, she could just barely make out the outline of something clinging to the underside of the walkway. Something two, maybe three times her size, so large she found herself wondering how something so huge managed to sneak up on the two of them so easily, how it could hide its immense bulk in such a shallow patch of darkness. Something with a vaguely dragon-like shape. And then, the thing leaned down, its face sliding into the tepid red light. The appearance of its head called to mind somepony covered from ears to hooves in full plate armor, but Twilight could see right away that it wasn’t a pony. That much was obvious from the fact that its steel ‘helmet’ featured no eyeholes, no visor, no faceplate, just blank, unadorned metal where a pony’s face should be, from the gleaming metal mechanisms she could see in-between the gaps between the plates, from the thing’s maw of rectangular, dagger like teeth, interlocking together with manufactured precision. “You’ve all been such naughty little ponies…” The mechanical monstrosity sang, despite the fact that its maw remained closed and unmoving, its childlike voice suddenly tinged with a crackling, staticky rasp. “And here, naughty ponies are the first to ĐƗɆ!” “…we should run.” Blueblood suggested, his voice a trembling, barely-audible whisper. And for once in her life, Twilight found herself agreeing with him. Twilight’s lungs were on fire, her heart pumping at a furious pace, a burning ache forcing its way into every muscle in her body. Still, she kept running. If she stopped… The rush of sharp, steel talons ruffled her fur, descending toward her torso with intent to crush and slice; she tried to dive to the side but was only half-successful. A screech of pain erupted from her throat as the monstrosity’s steel claws buried themselves in her flank, searing pain engulfing her back leg as she was tugged backward. The blood-soaked talons slipped free of the wound, but not before she lost her balance and nearly toppled over the railing. Thinking quickly, she grabbed the metal bars and vaulted over them, actually toppling over the railing right in time to escape her mechanical pursuer’s snapping steel jaws. Blueblood was somewhere within the central tower, probably scrambling to reach the ground level and get the heck out of this horror movie setpiece while she did her level best to avoid getting mauled. Twilight couldn’t blame him; had their roles been reversed, she’d probably have done the same. Unfortunately for her, she’d gotten the bright idea of splitting up so that at least one of them would get out alive, and the mechanized dragon had chosen to go after her. Fortunately, she could fly. Her wings spread wide, the cold, slightly stale air rushing over her feathers as she began flapping as hard as she could, trying to put on speed even as she struggled to maneuver through narrow gaps and tight turns. She’d seen similar-looking robots out in the Everfree, even had the dubious honor of having to flee from them once or twice; they could fly as well, but their wings were made up of interlocking, feather-like blades, and next to useless for generating lift. Instead, they used a combination of strange, turbine-like devices that could somehow nullify gravity and slightly-less esoteric jet thrusters to achieve flight. They could easily beat her in any contest of speed, but were nowhere near, even considering the fact that she was a clumsy, inexperienced flier. All she had to do was keep weaving in between gaps it couldn’t- “Think you can flee with those wings?” Twilight glanced back at the mechanical dragon, her eyes going wide as she spotted the red glow at the back of its mouth. “Too bad they’re about to go up in flames!” She’d never seen one of these things use any sort of breath weapon before. But then again, she’d never heard them talk either. She didn’t dodge quite fast enough. A ray of glowing red energy clipped the edge of her right wing, another scream of agony tearing itself free from her already-ragged throat as the appendage was enveloped in burning, searing agony. The smell of scorched fur and cooked flesh flooded her nostrils as she plunged toward the ground, coming to a very painful stop on the cellblock’s concrete floor. Twilight didn’t let her rapidly growing agony slow her down; the instant her hooves touched the ground, they were pushing her up and driving her forward, toward the entryway to the cellblock. Behind her, she heard a ground-shaking WHOOM, felt the steel beast’s claws graze the tip of her tail as it scrambled to recover from its less-than-successful attempt at crushing her beneath its immense bulk. She hung a left as she bolted from the rotunda, glancing back just long enough to see the creature slam straight into the wall. It recovered distressingly fast; just a few moments later and it was already charging after her again, the sound of metal tearing up concrete growing in volume with every passing second… Claws raked across Twilight’s leg. She screamed in agony even as she swerved to the left, her legs crumpling beneath her as she skidded painfully across the cold, hard floor. The mechanical dragon pounced forward, its blood-soaked claws stretching toward her… With a thunderous WHOOM, a thick, heavy steel wall slammed down between Twilight and the creature that was out for her blood, quickly followed by a loud, jarring BANG as said creature collided with the barrier. Twilight tried to scramble backward… and promptly collapsed again the minute she tried to climb to her hooves, a barely stifled whine slipping from her throat as the pain proved too much to bear. “You… you can still walk, right?” Twilight glanced up at Blueblood. He was pushing some kind of tall, narrow forklift-like device underneath a second metal slab, opposite the first. Twilight shook her head. She hadn’t looked at herself yet, had been consciously fighting the urge to do so; taking the time to assess how injured she was would just increase her already-high stress levels and risk sending her into a full-blown panic. But she could feel the trickles of blood running down her back legs, could smell the smoldering plumage of her burnt wing. None of the wounds she’d received were mortal, but if that mechanical monstrosity gave her another injury, it would almost certainly be a fatal one. “That… that thing can’t get through that wall, right?” Blueblood opened his mouth to answer… but was cut off by another BANG, this one much louder than the first, the blow that produced it so forceful it left a visible dent near the bottom of the metal wall. The former prince promptly concluded that the creature’s raw strength had just spoken for itself, grabbed the device, and shoved it under the blast door. He then grabbed a lever on the back of the device with his hooves, rapidly pumping it up and down, the device slowly lifting the massive metal barrier. Another BANG rang out, the bottom of the first wall bending even more. Twilight glanced between the two barriers; Blueblood had lifted the second one to the point that a pony could slip under it, and through the gap between that barrier and the floor, Twilight could see the same hallway the maintenance access hatch she’d used to enter the prison proper was located… and the bottom of the ladder leading up to that access hatch, up to the relative safety of the maintenance crawlspace. But she’d never reach that ladder, not with her injured back legs. Not unless that mechanical dragon was stupid enough to try and completely break through the barriers rather than get its talons under them and lift them up, and given how it was attacking the bottom of it and not the center, it almost certainly wasn’t. But Blueblood… he might be able to make it. He still had a chance of getting out of here alive… but he’d have to leave her behind to do it. “C’mon! Just a little-“ Blueblood started to call out. “There’s an access shaft a couple dozen feet down that corridor, to the left.” Twilight hissed through gritted teeth. “Run for it, now. Make sure to drop the wall back down behind you.” “...surely you aren’t implying-” “I’m not implying anything.” Twilight cut him off, a third BANG punctuating the end of her response as she pushed herself up with her front hooves. “Go. I’ll… I’ll try and buy you some time.” She didn’t stand a ghost of a chance of stopping the murderous machine trying to force its way through the metal slab before her, but maybe she could slow it down, buy Blueblood a few precious seconds and make it that much more likely that at least someone would make it out of this horror movie set piece alive- “I’m not leaving you.” Twilight froze, her brain misfiring as it struggled to reconcile the conflicting natures of those four words and the pony who’d spoken them. “...what?” “I said, I’m not leaving you,” Blueblood said again, his voice trembling yet firm. One of the stallion’s hooves slipped under Twilight’s barrel, lifting her onto his back. She winced a little as the motion jostled her injuries, the groan of pain that slipped free of her throat merging with Blueblood’s grunt of exertion. “Dear Celestia, you’re a lot heavier than you look…” Twilight was too stunned to even speak, let alone respond to the former prince’s (presumably unintentionally) offensive remark. She didn’t know Blueblood very well, but she knew him well enough to know that he’d never do something like this… or, at least, she thought she did. This was the same stallion who hadn’t hesitated to push Rarity in front of him to protect himself from an incoming cake, who’d even looked surprised when Rarity took fully justifiable offense at being used as an equine shield… and yet here, now, with something infinitely more deadly than an airborne pastry coming his way, he was suddenly demonstrating far, far more bravery than Twilight even knew he had. She would have been impressed if he wasn't demonstrating that bravery in the stupidest, most suicidal way she could’ve ever imagined. Blueblood turned around, kicking the piston-like device holding the second barrier up out from under it the minute the two of them were on the other side. The first metal slab gave way less than an instant later, claws slipping underneath it and starting to lift it upright as the second slab dropped into place with another WHOOM. It wasn’t long before that WHOOM was followed by yet another BANG, the mechanical monstrosity getting through the first metal slab and beginning to break through the next. We’re never going to reach the access shaft by the time that thing gets the slab up… And yet, for a few moments, it seemed like they were going to reach it. Blueblood obviously wasn’t accustomed to strenuous activity, and Twilight could feel his malnourished muscles trembling from the strain of carrying her weight… but contrary to what she’d assumed, he was actually managing to reduce the distance between them and the ladder, despite having to carry Twilight while doing so. Progress was painfully, torturously slow, but it was being made, foot by foot by gasping, staggering, hard-won foot. For a second, Twilight let herself believe that they were going to make it. She really shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up. With a particularly loud BANG, gleaming steel claws punched through the bottom of the second barrier, their owner lifting up the only thing standing between itself and the two of them with horrifying ease. We’re gonna die here. Twilight thought to herself, distantly, glancing between the dragonlike beast and the remaining distance to the ladder. It was so close, less than a dozen feet away… but that thing would be on them long before they even began to close that gap… …wait. Twilight glanced back at the creature, an idea popping into her head. She wasn’t entirely sure how human-made devices worked, but she’d picked her way through enough mangled wreckage to realize that one of the most basic components in all the more advanced devices were electrically conductive ‘circuits’ that transmitted electronic pulses in between other, more complex parts. The same was probably true of this creature. Maybe, if she applied a strong enough pulse to the wires to drown out all the others… Twilight blinked back the tears welling in her eyes, her despair quickly giving way to desperate determination as she began scraping together every last iota of magical energy she could muster. The spell she was trying to cast had an incredibly short range, would only be able to produce a small electric discharge, and that was assuming it could even reach the circuitry that it was trying to affect through all that armor… but she was already as good as dead, so it wasn’t like it could make her predicament even worse. “Hi hi hi…” The second bulkhead dropped down as the creature holding it up surged forward, pouncing toward the two of them. Blueblood managed to find a second wind, his pace increasing slightly, but Twilight barely noticed; all her attention was on the gleaming steel monstrosity flying through the air toward her and Blueblood as she readied the spell. “Tiᵯe tø-!” All of a sudden, a portion of the ceiling collapsed, giving way beneath the force of something slamming into it from above. An instant later, and that something had forced its way through the crumbling chunks of concrete debris to slam itself down on top of the mechanical dragon, crushing it in an instant. The ray of crackling violet lightning Twilight was aiming at the now-very-dead mechanical dragon discharged harmlessly against a particularly large piece of concrete as her concentration broke, her eyes going wide as she caught a glimpse of the surprise savior’s oddly dragon-like silhouette through the smoke and dust that now filled the air. …a dragon? What’s a dragon doing here? And how- And then, the rest of the ceiling began to collapse, and the species of the being who’d just intervened on their behalf was suddenly the absolute least of Twilight’s worries. A scream of terror erupted from Blueblood’s throat as she threw herself off of his back, throwing her front hooves over her head and neck as she tumbled to the floor and squeezed her eyes shut- Something long, sinuous, and metallic slammed into her side, shoving her backward and away from the falling debris. Twilight’s eyes snapped open, and it dawned on her that Blueblood might not have been screaming at the prospect of being crushed beneath a bunch of rocks. The thing that had slammed into her side was the tail of another mechanical dragon, a segmented, blade-tipped appendage currently in the process of sweeping her and Blueblood out from under the falling debris… and into the reach of the tail’s owner. “Don’t worry, Twily. I’ve got you.” Steel claws wrapped around her and Blueblood, the mechanical horror they belonged to speaking in a synthetic, static-tinged mockery of her old assistant’s voice. A scream hadn’t even finished tearing itself free of Twilight’s throat before her kidnapper lifted off, the ground vanishing beneath her hooves as she and Blueblood were carried off into the sky.
