Advent of Victory

He continued to quake in fear as I stood over him trying to determine what to do. Eventually, I settled on the honorable thing, and decided to let him go. “Hey kid, are you okay?” I asked as I started to let him out of the net.

He shrank away from my hooves, and began to stutter. “s-s-s-s-s-s”

“What.” I stopped untying him.

“Stay back!” he screamed, making my ears pin back. That was a really strange feeling. “Stay away from me!” Oh great, now he was crying.

“Calm down, kid. I’m not gonna hurt you.” I probably looked like I was about to hurt him though, I would really need to clean up soon. I face palmed at the obviousness of it all, if I were in his situation there is no way I would trust me either.

“P-p-please don’t eat me,” he cried as he continued to shrink away. The guy looked to be no older than seventeen, but he should really grow a backbone. Crybabies really piss me off.

“I’m not going to eat you,” I said as soothingly possible as I finished freeing him. “I only eat assholes, and you don’t seem like one to me.”

I left him and walked back to the fire that was still burning. The diamond dogs had left all their stuff here when they ran, which from the looks of it seemed to be a lot. A couple of hours in Equestria and I had already accumulated a nice amount of loot. I was going to take this world by storm.

I started sifting through the things that the yappy dog had in his pack, but wasn’t able to find anything particularly useful. There was a dagger that was made out of emeralds with a ruby jeweled handle, and the rest of the pack was filled with gems. I tossed the bag aside as I walked over to Raq and started to loot him. The awkward shuffling of hooves behind me drew my attention.

“Um… miss?” being addressed as a woman was probably going to get annoying quickly.

“What?” I said as I flipped over the dead dog to get at the sword that was still strapped to his back. This thing might come in handy down the road.

“T-Thank you for saving me.” He hesitantly walked over to the fire and sat down near it while he continued to look at me.

“Don’t worry about it, kid,” I replied as I finally freed the sword and began to inspect it. I looked up at him and saw him glaring at me.

“I’m not a kid.” Oh god not this.

“Fine then what’s your name.” I looked back down at the sword. Damn this thing practicality hummed when you touched it.

“Deciduous,” he replied simply causing me to look back up at him.

“Seriously?” that was such a dumb name. My disbelief only caused his leer to increase in intensity.

“Oh yea. Well what’s your name miss ‘I am too good pony names’” That’s what he thought I was questioning?

“Umm…” Shit! I was actually really good at coming up with Equestrian names, but being put on the spot like this always screwed with me. My mind raced with all of the possibilities for a new name since I didn’t want to actually give my own. Something in the back of my head shouted a name at me and I just decided the go with it. “Vixen.”

I mentally slapped whatever part of my mind had come up with that name immediately. It was far too girly for my tastes, but it looked like I was just going to have to get used to things being that way. “Vixen,” he pondered for a moment, “yea that’s a lot better than my name.” What the hell he actually looked depressed that my made up on the spot name was better than his.

“Don’t worry about it, kid. My parents were geniuses.” Me calling him a kid again snapped him out of his melancholy and he glared at me once more. “Go look though that fat one’s things, Deci.” I ordered pointing to the sack that was lying a couple of feet to my right. What the hell did he actually blush at me calling him by a nickname?

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Tell me if you find anything useful.” I said as he made his way over to the bag.

I continued to fiddle with the sword for a little bit. The blade was curved like a scimitar, but I couldn’t figure out why since it didn’t look like the dogs rode anything into a fight. Seeing as how there was only one way to actually test its sharpness, I grabbed the handle in my mouth and swung it above my head. I brought it down on Raq’s arm and it cut deeply into it, but I didn’t have enough power to make it go through the bone.

The sickening crunch of flesh seemed to pull Deciduous away from his scavenging and he looked up to me with an ill look on his face. I wiped away a few drops of blood that had spattered my face as I let go of the sword and turned to him.

“What?” I asked innocently.

Nothing…” as he turned back to looking through the sack I could see disgust clear in his face. Ponies probably didn’t mutilate corpses too often.

I looked back to the sword that was sticking out of Raq’s arm at a weird angle for a moment. I grabbed a hold of it with my front paws as I sat on the ground and was eventually able to wrench it free. This time I swung it through the air with my paws instead of teeth and was able to lob off his head with an easy motion. I was elated that it was so easy to do I allowed myself a small smile before I turned and watched Deciduous follow the head with his eyes as it rolled across the desert floor. The fear had once again returned to his eyes.

I had forgotten once again that he was a pony, and would probably not be able to handle me mutilating a corpse to test a new weapon. “Sorry kid, you shouldn’t have seen that.”

“It’s… okay.” That was honestly a surprise. “He was going to put us in slavery, and was probably going to do some pretty bad things to you.” A shiver ran up my spine at his mention of Raq’s plans, but I was able to stop the mental image before it formed.

“Let’s not worry about that. We are free now, and I doubt those little pissants will be coming back. Did you find anything good in there?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

He looked into the bag for a moment and shuffled some things around. “Looks like all my stuff is in here, and a couple of pieces of wood.” He pulled out a pair of saddlebags from the bag, and slung them over his back.

“Got anything useful in there?” I asked as I got up from my seat and walked over. As I stopped in front of Deciduous I picked up a few errant pieces of firewood and tossed them on the fire to keep it going strong.

“Just some bits and food. You want any?”

“No thanks,” I laughed, “I am stuffed.” He looked like he was going to be sick for a moment. “By the way, do you know where we are?”

My question seemed to shock him so he reached back and pulled out a map that he had tucked away in his bags. “We are in the Badlands,” he said pointing to the spot on the map. “We aren’t actually that far from the border, and if we start walking we can make it back to Equestria before tomorrow.”

“We?” I hadn’t actually thought about it, but it looked like I had already acquired a companion. Wouldn’t The Doctor be proud of me.

“Well I mean…” He looked down at his hooves and began to shuffle around awkwardly. “Could you help me get home?” He tried to hide a small tear that found its way out of his eye.

“What are you even doing way out here?”

“It’s personal,” he spat. Looked like Raq wasn’t the only one with bi-polar tendencies.

“If you want me to take you home then you better answer the question.” I brought myself to my full height, which actually a little taller than he was. Whatever kind of fox creature I was it seemed that I was at least as big as a pony.

“I ran away.”

“I’m sorry what was that?”

“I ran away.”

“Still can’t hear you.”

“I RAN AWAY!!!” he screamed, almost knocking me off my feet. My ears rang for a moment before I regained my hearing. It seemed that foxes had heightened hearing, which was really a pain in the ass with how much this kid liked to scream.

“Fuck kid, take it down a notch.”

“I am not a kid!” At least that scream was a little softer.

“Fine, fine, Deciduous. Why did you run away?” I have actually dealt with friends doing this before.

“Because.”

I rolled my eyes, and walked back over to where Raq was lying. At least he didn’t scream at me anymore. “You know if you want to stop being called a kid you might want to stop acting like one. How old are you anyway?” I started to loot Raq’s bag, which had a lot more valuables in it than the others had on them.

“Sixteen,” he answered immediately. “I’m old enough to be on my own.” I resisted the urge to roll my eyes again as I looked back at him.

“Fine. I don’t really care why you ran away I just don’t want to show up at your house, and be arrested for foalnapping.” Yea I could slip into the Equestrian dialect seamlessly. You jelly?”

“I left them a note,” he replied in a huff.

“Alright. Since you will probably just get grabbed again by more dogs if you try to go alone, and since I have no fucking idea where we are you can tag along. But you need to do what I say when I say it. Got it.”

“No,” he rolled his eyes at me. This kid has an attitude problem.

“I will eat you, you little shit.” That got his attention.

“O-O-Okay,” he stuttered.

“Good. Now pack up everything we will need while I finish looting this guy.” I kicked Raq’s body in the ribs hard, and was delighted to hear one of them break. “Also, you might want to take this sword.” I removed said blade from the ground and tossed it to his feet.

He eyed the sword that still had a bit of blood dripping from the end of it like it was a snake about to bite him. Tentatively, he reached out a hoof and touched the handle before pulling away again. “Why are you giving this to me?” he asked after a moment.

“Because the only way I will be able to use it is if I stand on my back paws, and that isn’t going to happen. No, it will probably be better for you to use.” I shrugged and went back to my work.

I pulled off the scabbard that was still attached to Raq’s back and tossed it over my shoulder to the same general area I had the sword. I didn’t hear Deciduous move for a long time, but eventually I made out the sound of hooves scraping against the ground to retrieve the sword and scabbard. He quickly took them both and strapped them on under his saddlebags.

Deciduous then scrambled between all the equipment the dogs had been carrying and started stuffing anything he could into his saddlebags. I stopped him as he started to grab the scrappy dog’s bag and emptied it of gems and knife before I gave it back to him. I tossed them into Raq’s bag before I slung it over my back.

I took a closer look at the bottles that Raq had been carrying, but couldn’t make heads or tails of them. These chemicals might come in handy down the road, but they had no labels on them so I had absolutely no idea what they did. Careful not to break any, I unstrapped them from around Raq and started to tie them around myself. It was hard to do with my paws, but eventually I managed to get them all in place.

The bottles seemed to come in two distinct types, and I figured it would be better to test them now than before we got into an actual fight. I removed one of the bottles, which seemed to have a green liquid sloshing around and chucked it far across the sand away from us. To my surprise I was able to actually put some good distance on it before it crashed down to earth and split open.

A sickly green gas started to rise into the air before dissipating. This was probably the knockout gas that the dogs had used on me and Deciduous to capture us in the first place. The thought made me angry, but I suppressed the urge to destroy all the bottles since we were likely to need them. I removed the other kind of bottle from the straps, which was filled with a clear liquid this time and tossed it close to where I had the first.

The bottle crashed to the ground and split open sending the clear liquid flying in all directions. The second it hit the air the liquid ignited in a brilliant display of fire before it started to burn itself out. All right then, the clear bottles are the dangerous ones and I should probably not be carrying them around.

As I looked over myself with the bottles strapped to me I realized that I still had no idea what my face looked like. I dug around in Raq’s bag for a while until I finally found a mirror. What that ugly dog had a mirror for I will probably never know. I turned until my back was against the fire and held up the mirror in front of myself to get my first good look at my body.

I had known what most of my body had looked like before, but when I saw the whole thing in profile I had to admit that it was very slim and feminine. I hated admitting it, but it was definitely something I couldn’t deny. I was probably very sexy, and some part of me loved it.

My coat was sticking up in odd angles at places so I ran a paw over it in order to smooth it out before finally turning back to the mirror to study my face in detail. I had been unable to wipe all of the blood from my muzzle earlier and my fur was stained pink where the crimson liquid had settled. Besides that my face resembled that of an average white fox except for a small black patch of diamond shaped fur in the middle of my forehead that seemed to glow a faint blue color.

I put the mirror back in the bag and turned back to Deciduous who was happily munching away on an apple as he waited for me. God dammit! I had made a man wait while I prettied myself up! I was never going to live down this shame.

I motioned for him to lead the way, which he did gladly. We began to trek through the wilds of the badlands with our destination set, but as I looked around at the barren wasteland around me I realized I had no idea what direction we were going.

“Do you even know where we are going?” I asked.

“To Equestria,” he deadpanned.

“Well no shit. What I mean is do you know which direction we are going.”

“You like to swear a lot lady,” he replied, ignoring my question.

“When you get to be my age you can swear as much as you want. Now answer the damn question.”

“How old are you anyway,” he asked just before he slapped a hoof over his lips. That was a major faux pas.

“You aren’t supposed to ask a girl how old they are.” Hell, even I knew that.

“Sorry.”

“Whatever, I am three hundred and twenty-one if you must know.” It was only off by about three centuries. I had no idea how long my new species lived so fudging the number a little bit probably wouldn’t hurt anything. Probably.

“Wow.” He was completely awed by my bullshit.

“Yes, amazing I know. Now how do you know we are going the right direction.”

He stopped for a moment and pointed to the sky behind us. I looked up to where he was pointing to see a bright star sparkling in the darkness. “That’s the north star. Since we want to go south we just go the opposite direction of it.” He turned back around and continued to trudge through the dirt.

“Know it all,” I muttered under my breath, but I think he heard it since he started chuckling lightly.

I continued to trudge along behind him, and started to really study him. The lowlight didn’t seem to be a problem, and I was able to actually get a good look at the kid for the first time.

He was a dark green, which was somehow accented perfectly by the various fall colors that made up his scraggly mane. He had a couple of scrapes along the left side, but nothing that seemed too serious. His cutie mark was of several trees covered in winter snow.

I decided to ignore the irony that was the pony walking in front of me, and continued to trudge along behind my new green friend who was obliviously walking ahead of me. We continued on for several hours until the first signs of light started to creep over the horizon.

I looked to the east and watched the sun crest the horizon with interest, and as soon as the first rays of light touched me I felt different. It was hard to explain, but suddenly the bundle that I was carrying felt three times lighter, and I was able to heft it with ease. When I looked back to Deciduous who had ignored the rising sun he seemed to be moving a lot slower, almost as if in slow motion.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I had been holding and the world returned to its usual self. I quickly raced to catch up to the pony that had left me behind in the dust, and was walking beside him after a few seconds. We glanced at each other a moment before continuing on ahead in silence. I am somebody that appreciates the quiet, but this was just starting to become unbearable.

“So what is Las Pegasus like?” I asked after a moment to break the tension. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like my question did that at all.

“I don’t really want to talk about home,” he replied.

I rolled my eyes and sighed as we continued to walk. Eventually I heard him ask a very similar question from his spot to my left. “What is your home like?”

I didn’t exactly want to explain to him that I was a human and probably from a different dimension. Hell, I still didn’t wholly believe that this world even existed and was still holding out that I was in some strange coma dream. “I don’t really want to talk about home either,” I replied.

He seemed to take my answer in stride, and we kept our forward march at a steady pace. It was probably going to take a while before either of us decided to open up to the other, and that was okay with me. The sun started to climb into the sky and give the desert its trademark heat as we walked across its harsh environ.