A Far Cry From Equestria

Her hooves were enveloped in the bountiful cloth and feathers that comprised her heavy blankets. She threw them forward and assessed her surroundings, she was sitting on a bed in the middle of a eerily calm ocean, the dark waters rippled around her raft. The cloudless sky was so serene, she let out a resounding sigh as she felt the bliss flow through her very being. Suddenly, the water to her right began to stir, breaking the calm that surrounded her, an obscured figure rose out if the depths and spoke,

"Did I ever tell you the deffiniton of insanity?"

          Twilights eyes flew open, a diamond dog to her right who had been working on some tattoos on her left foreleg stood up slowly as she glanced around. Her hoof hovered over the hilt of a rusty dagger, she turned to face her captor as she stared into a large and shiny blade of a machete that was held in the dark brown paw of said captor.

          "Stabbing your savior isn't a great way of thanking him, names Blunt-tooth, what's yours?" He asked, while flipping the weapon around, handing it to Twilight,

          "Twilight, Twilight Sparkle..." She trailed off at the end as her left foreleg just failed to respond her constant commands of movement,

          "Your foreleg has been tranquilized for the application of the Tattau, an ancient and sacred blessing of the warrior. Follow, you must have some curiosity of where you are..." Twilight slowly recuperated feeling in her foreleg, allowing for simple navigation, but a pronounced stinging sensation was hovering in a ring around the tip of her foreleg to the crook of its joint. She limped after blunt, hoping for some explanation of her current situation,

          "Twilight, I welcome you to Slick-Paw, the last free sanctuary for those who oppose Vaas's pirates," he explained, "Here Twilight, the one who met Vaas and lived!!" It seemed she now had quite some popularity among the villagers, their cheers gave her a little boost to her current demeanor. The small village seemed oddly raucous and in the party mood, Twilight expected them to be hiding from the pirates that were crawling over the island.

          "They look nice, don't they?" Twilight gave him an odd look, "Oh I get it, not in to our kind, there aren't many ponies on this island, except for your friends."

          "And how do you know that?" She demanded,

          "You talk in your sleep." Twilight cursed herself, but continued on with the tour, as Blunt-Tooth came to a stop, "Here's some bits for a gun." He said, while handing her a paw-full of little dirty coins, as the word gun was recited by her ears, many images and memories flashed through her mind like when guns were outlawed in Equestria, and the countless books she read on them. Her knowledge was frighteningly extensive, even reaching to some sexual things she would rather keep secret.

          "But I've never shot anypony," she replied with an undertone of fear,

          "Well there aren't any bad ponies on this island, so either arm yourself or die at the hands of some cruel pirates." The small collection of bits began to glow a deep purple as it floated out of his paw, she then trotted into the old shack to find a disgruntled, old mare pointing a sizable twelve gauge shotgun at her face,

          "What's yer business here youngin?" She gulped down her fear as best she could, levitating the small pile of bits, the old mares face curled into what one may interpret as a smile, "Well ya coulda said ya wanted ta buy somethin, this oughta get ya this wit some extra ammo..." The grizzled mare slid a decently clean semi-automatic pistol towards Twilight, during her long stay at Celestia's library, she stumbled across a few books on these kind of weapons. They seemed so alien and vicious, the books had taught her basics of operation and maintenance, but the books paled in comparison to real life experience. Her magical aura enveloped the silver pistol and the three magazines, stuffing them into her saddlebags, they began to feel increasingly full. She would deal with that later, now she had to deal with a red vested psycho who could be anywhere on this accursed island. She trotted out to blunt who looked up to her,

          "You should get some practice with that before going on any kind of crusadin', see that radio tower? They are used to jam any communication signals, so deactivating the jammer in them allows for our weapon dealers to deliver new products, and you get a few for free as a reward. So make it a habit." All of a sudden, the whole situation seemed to brighten a little, the happiness in the community around her was intoxicating,  but she couldn't stay, her friends were somewhere on this godless island, calling for help.

          She trotted off to the radio tower to see why exactly sompony else hadn't done it already, the twisty hill wasn't foreboding at all. She sighed her sigh and trotted on, the moon gave a very clear light, almost as if it was day. When she arrived at the base of the tower, there was a green snake resting at the bottom. 'Where is fluttershy when you need her...' She thought, 'well hopefully she can forgive me for this...' Twilight unsheathed her machete and quickly swung it down on the helpless scaled creature, it's head fell into the grass, still wiggling. Twilight breathed in and out as anything resembling what she had just done, made her feel sick, she began to trot up the metal stairs. Once she reached the top, her slight fear of heights kicked in, a very slight sheen of liquid was beginning to show on her lavender form. She immediately looked up to the control box, the lock vaporized with a single thought and the box flipped open, the small circuit that lay inside was relatively cheap and there were many flaws with the design but she needed to focus. The piece of plastic was cast off the side of the tower, a few switches were flipped, and the light on top of the tower turned green. Twilight gazed over the treetops, past the bright lights of slick-paw, beyond the horizon to where Equestria was. She thought if she had simply refused to go then her brother wouldn't have gone, suddenly she went pale as the mental barrier that was blocking out the knowledge of her brothers passing was broken. She burst into tears as she curled up on the rough metal grating, the salty liquid soaking her fur, she kept saying to herself that this was her fault, that if she had only done this or that. The little burst had burned through the small amount of energy she had reclaimed from her short but sweet rest as the welcoming abyss enveloped her, drifting off to sleep. Her final thought was that of her brothers face: how comforting it was, that face had guided her as a foal, that face had helped her in hard times, that face had given her hope, inspiration, and most of all, it had given her love, and it was gone.