Author'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.