What We've Lost

by Holy

Rating: mature
Tags: Dark, Alternate Universe, Human, Sad, Romance
Length: 47283

After a war tears through Equestria, your travels through what remains bring you to Ponyville

[2nd person perspective][All characters humanized]

After a war between the Griffin Empire and Equestria rips apart both countries, you attempt to find a place to call home in the wasteland left behind.

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2013-04-16 05:20:09 UTC

%i%: Prologue

1: Prologue

        A bullet pinged off of the rusted off car you were hiding behind. The wind picked up and threw the desert sand everywhere.

        “Get out here boy! We’ll make ‘ur death quick,” a bandit said in a thick southern accent.

        Like that ever actually works, you popped up and let off a couple shots into the direction they were coming from, but with the sand everywhere, you couldn't see too well. You were sure you didn't actually hit anything.

        “All we want is ‘ur stuff, we don't need none of ‘ur hassle,” he tried to haggle with you. This was the third time this week you’ve woken up to bandits trying to rob your sleeping figure. You’d think they'd be smart enough to see if you were actually dead or just asleep. You think you’d be smart enough to stop sleeping where they could find you.

        You pop up, let out a couple more shots and yell out, “I ain't givin you shit.” Sure, you could actually give it to them, but knowing the bandits, they'd just kill you afterwards anyway. It was too late for negotiating anyway, you put three bullets in the guy frisking you out of your slumber before running off.

        A barrage of pings and whizzes around you forced you back to the cover of the old car. Its not like you were going to hit anything in this pseudo sand storm anyway.

        You think there were three of them, not counting the dead one, at least, that's what you judged by the number of shots coming in your direction.

        “Get out here and fight us like a man!” the bandit yelled at you. Judging by the volume of his voice, he was getting closer.

        You popped up again and let out a couple of shots at the silhouette making its way through the sand. “Fuck off!” you told them.

        You got out another magazine to replace the one you just emptied when a series of erratic giggles erupted from your left. A dirty looking bandit without a shirt and a maniacal grin popped up and lunged at you with a rusty knife as soon as you noticed him.

        You caught his knife wielding hand just before it entered you, flipping him over your shoulder. With him on his back you attempted to fight him for the knife, but his erratic movements made grabbing it difficult. You sat there struggling for a moment before the rest of the bandits decided to join the party.

        “I'm gonna’ rip you apart!” one said as he rounded the corner of the car. You heard his voice from behind you and snapped the bandit underneath you to ontop of you. The other one proceeded to unload the magazine on his beat up smg into his buddy. Luckily none of it got through to you.

        You pulled out your 1911 and put three shots in his chest, watching him grip the wounds before falling to the ground.

        The wind was really picking up now, turning a bit of sandy haze into a full blown sand storm. You pushed the bloody bandit away from you before running off into the cover of the storm away from the bandits.

        “George? Did you get ‘em?” You heard as you ran, you didn't want to stick around for them finding the two bodies with you between them.

        You ran in the general direction you thought might be the Everfree forest. It was only just now morning. You had plenty of time to get to your next destination if you didn't run into any more touchy bandits.

                ___________________________________________________________

        The wind blew through your hair as you walked out of the damp everfree forest into another clearing. You looked up and gave your surroundings a thought for the first time in hours.

        Just another windy day in the wasteland.

        Every clearing you walked through was unnecessarily windy now, from the dusty flatland of the deserts, to the outer regions of the forgotten cities, with the dark creep of decay they all shared the same thing, and this place was no different.

        It was just another windy day.

        You stepped over a corpse that was charred and rotted beyond recognition, paying no mind to it, after all, the clearing was covered with them. Rusted machines of war and bodies of their operators and support littered the clearing. A small skirmishes like this were found in random places just about all over the country, for now, you'd just rather not think about it.

        Stepping over dead of all kinds you couldn't help it though. Bodies lay half rotted, some with bullet holes littering their appearance, others with the black smear of an explosion covering a portion of their tattered body, and some didn't even lay fully in one piece. Shriveled limbs and entrails covered certain portions of the ground as you continued your path through the clearing. Poor kids didn't even know what they were getting into when they signed up. Yet here they are anyway, in this forgotten battlefield, all these souls who died painfully and full of anguish in the seemingly peaceful forest clearing.

        Focusing out of your thoughts and back into the world before you, the smell of ash and rusted metal filled the air you walked through, and you take a larger step to make your way over a large piece of shrapnel. Doing so causes the rifle on your back to clank against your canteen, reminding you of your dry mouth. You didn't really care at the moment. You'd find water, you always did. Dying of dehydration would be the last thing that would get you out here. Though it was still high on the list, you decided to ignore it until you reached your current destination.

        You had been to many different cities and settlements, ranging from the massive war torn city of fillydelphia, to the smallest village that didn't even have a name. Every one of them succumbed to the curse of the wasteland, little supplies and plentiful armaments drove a seemingly peaceful people to become bandits and thieves, with the rest struggling to simply exist. All you wanted now was a place to call home, and maybe even someone you could actually call a friend.

        Maybe this place will be different, you thought. Your newest destination was the town of Ponyville. All of the people you've talked to who have been from there have said good things about it, hopefully that lasted through the war. You knew that was a far cry from the more likely truth, but without a purpose, you didn't even see the point of living anymore.

        In your thoughtful stupor, you forgot to carefully inspect the ground for debri. Catching your foot into something that didn't quite want to let go, you fall forward. Trying to catch yourself you put your hand out to the lump of metal that used to be a jeep of some kind. You find grip on a latch that betrays you by opening the door and spinning you around to fall on your back, but something seems to have fallen out of the vehicle with you. Opening your eyes you find the smiling face of the decayed driver, seemingly holding you down with its decayed limbs.

        You make a mad scramble to get the corpse off of you and let out a less than manly scream at the situation. After you get rid of the sudden deathly embrace you sit up and attempt to catch your breath. As desensitized as you were, that didn't stop you from having a bit of a panic attack. From an outside source that may have looked hilarious, but you weren't laughing. You looked up to the sky to find Celestia’s sun hanging low in the sky, signifying the coming night, and your growing need for shelter.

        The realization was met by a distant howl, followed by sinister replies from what may be lurking in the forest. You hop to your feet and quickly search for any viable shelter. Fowl things lurk this forest at night, searching for any food they may find, or so the campfire stories from vagabonds and passersby tell you. You've met man made monstrosities, you didn't want to meet the natural ones, not this night anyway.

        Skimming across the landscape you find a tank that only looks to have lost its tread, the hatch is even open, seemingly inviting you. You decided to take it as a blessing and stride towards the metal behemoth, careful of the trip hazards this time.

        Climbing up the tank you find that one of its occupants was not so lucky, and seems to have been at the wrong end of a .45, you're thankful its been long enough that the smell of death has mostly disappeared. You drag the would be room mate out of the cabin of the tank and crawl into it, closing the hatch behind you. You find the most comfortable spot you can, the drivers chair, which still leaves much to be desired and attempt to drift off to sleep with the hopes of a bright new town in your future. You pull the piece of canvas you use as a duster over you and hope for a restful nights sleep.

        But things are never that simple, are they?

        No matter how you evade your past in your conscious mind, the memories always flood back in your sleep. Forcing you to relive events that you'd rather repress. It’s always about the war. You can never escape your past, no matter how hard you try.

        You pray that Luna will be your salvation this night, but wishful thinking hasn't gotten you very far before, so you hunker down and attempt to rest through it anyway.

        You stare out of the drivers peep-hole into the darkening sky, you clear your mind to attempt to sleep through the dangerous night.

                (..................................................................................................)

        You get off the train and stride into the Baltimare train station. You adjust the package of masterfully crafted rifle parts that your father crafted to be more comfortable in your backpack.

        You lived an easy life in Dodge Junction as a gunsmiths apprentice, hoping to follow one day in your fathers footsteps as the best damn gunsmith in equestria, or at least as far as you were concerned. You were happy with the life in Dodge, you had a lot of good people you could consider friends, even a crush that everyone said was way too old for you, but that didn't stop you from volunteering at her cherry farm from time to time, just to be able to see her. You still couldn't figure out for the life of you why Mrs. Jubilee didn't have a husband, though you planned to fill that void if you got your way.

        You were always your Dad’s delivery boy, you always insisted to just send it in the mail, but he always said,“That ain’t how we do things son, the best product deserves the best service, and I'll be damned if some second rate mail service loses my pride and joy.” Your father was a hard man, but you knew he cared for you every step of the way. Your mother died giving birth to you, but your father loved you the all the same, and never remarried either, so you two were as close as you could be.

        You stride up to the ticket booth, only having an address, and never being to the city before, had to ask for directions, as much as you resented the Idea. The boy in the ticket booth gave you a map with the street and apartment circled, you gave him a couple of dollars for his trouble and tipped your stetson to him, like a true southern gentleman.

        You've been to a lot of different cities, each of them was as awe-inspiring as the last. The marvelous architecture and massive buildings always caught your eye, and it was interesting to see all the new technology that was being pumped out of the nearby factories that Dodge didn't have the good grace to see yet. Equestria was being industrialized in your time and you loved it, the machinery and intricacy of all the new gadgets always caught your eye. You knew that a lot of countries were following Equestria in suit for this. All of the more advanced civilizations wanted to get in on the new technology. Zebras, Griffins, and Diamond dogs all wanted in on the newfound technology. The only problem was, while the humans of Equestria lacked the useful physical traits that blessed the other races, they more than made up for it in magic, which ran all of the machinery, which became a problem for the other races who didn't have these abilities, except for the zebras, the had some weird alchemy that worked wonders. You remember something about a bunch of unsatisfactory trade attempts with the Griffins for gems, the only thing that already had stored magic in it upon creation, with them being the closest to Equestria. You also remember all the nonsense they tried to use in its place, like natural gas and nuclear energy, what a load of bad ideas, using something that can explode for energy. It didn't really matter to you, last you heard, the Griffins had ceased contact, so it wasn't really a problem any more.

        After flipping the map around a couple of times, and doubling back a couple of blocks, you finally arrived at the correct apartment, and delivered the package to the correct door number. You didn't get much more than an “Oh, thank you...” and the right payment, which is different from the way your town would do it, but everything was always weird in these big cities, so you didn't pay it much mind.

        Leaving the apartment, you checked the time. It was only around noon, and your train didn't leave to go back home until tomorrow morning. You didn't really feel like finding a hotel right now, so you looked to your map for the nearest bar. You weren't of age yet, but that isn't what your five o’clock shadow said. You've gotten by most of the time, and you were just trying to pass the time anyway. Maybe you could even find a couple of city girls to charm, they always liked cowboy demeanor.

        You push the door open to find the entirety of the bar staring at the television screen mounted over the bar, it was the news, but you didn't really pay attention, you just kind of tuned it out as you walked up to the bar and took a place on the stool in front of the bartender who had his eyes glued to the screen with an incredulous look.

        “Howdy barkeep, you mind sendin’ somethin’ my way?” You let out in your southern drawl. It was always there to keep up appearances, but you never really stuck to it that much.

        “Have you...seen the news kid?” Shit, you thought you were busted on your age, but look up to the T.V. anyway.

        You see the title BREAKING NEWS above a woman who looked dead serious and a little bit trussed up. You listen in to what shes saying.

        ....The nation watches in shock, as the town of Dodge junction lays in ashes today from an assault by the Griffin Empire. The army came through the cover of night and attacked around mid-morning, leaving no survivors and burning the entire town to the ground.  Aerial reconnaissance has discovered all the citizens to either by dead or being executed by the unexpected military force. There has been no word from the Princesses on the state of affairs, whether this is a singled out terrorist attack or not, but after seeing the size of the force and the armaments, I believe this is nothing short than an act of war...

You sit there in shock and denial. You had just left this morning, there was no Griffin army, no impromptu massacre. The television panned to shots of the burned town from a helicopters view. There was almost nothing left, the people who you knew and loved lay dead in the streets, Griffins walking over them. You could even make out your house, or what was left of it, nothing lay standing. You didn't know why they would do something like this, why they would go to such an extreme. You knew the were warriors, but they hadn't been at war for many decades. Why now, why dodge?

        You didn't know what to do. You were filled with rage that you couldn't take out on anything. A sadness came over you that you couldn't share with anyone. You just stare at the table, as the bartender gave you a bottle with pitying eyes.

        You spent the next couple of days in a haze, waking up anywhere from an alley to a jail cell, getting drunk and starting fights, passing out, rinse and repeat. You didn't know what else to do except drown your sorrows, hoping it killed you. You didn't have a home to go back to, no one even knew your name anymore. Everybody you cared for was dead.

        Walking through the city in your matted clothes and alcohol on your breath, you look up to find a building you hadn't seen before. You read the big bold leaders adorned with the Equestrian flag.

RECRUITMENT OFFCE

        You dropped the bottle you were holding like a bum and march into the building with a newfound purpose, after signing some papers you demanded a spot on the frontlines to be the first to get at those Griffins. The recruiter promised he’d give you just that. After a short bus ride to another city, you went through two weeks of monotonous basic training that taught you everything they thought you would need to know on the battlefield. You go through most of it in a determined haze, just ready to get your revenge.

        On the last day of training, they give you a rifle, a backpack, and put you on a plane headed for the frontlines.

                (..............................................................................................................)

        You wake up with the sun cascading onto you from the peep hole on the tank, pushing you to open your eyes. You wake up with full recollection of the dream you just had. You've had it before, it was the most mild one, the beginning, you hated having to relive hearing the news, but it'd been so long that now it really didn't matter.

        You knew what happened next all too well. The memories after that just got darker and more disturbing. Covered in the screams of the dying and the blood soaked moments of sin. You couldn't hide from it, you couldn't run away. Death would be no escape from what you've seen, from what you've done. Every time a memory comes to you, you just push it away, not wanting to suffer through it again, but knowing it will come in a dream to you anyway.

        You gave a shudder to the thought, shifting around in the uncomfortable seat. You remember the first time you saw a griffin. With her beautiful brown and white wings, and white feathers adorning parts of her body, you thought she was an angel. Not so much anymore.

        Eventually, the Princesses declared total war on the Empire, each side giving every resource at their disposal towards the war effort. With new technology being used every battle, and new monstrosities being created from experiments to make super soldiers, the battles just got longer, more deadly, and exponentially more brutal. The tools of war new no retribution to their sin. Chemical and biological warfare, espionage, and terrorism were common from both ends of the war. You don't know how or why the Princesses could condone such a thing. It didn't matter now though, you didn't even know if they were even still alive, let alone making any big decisions like that.

        The disease and destruction wiped both countries almost clean of their forms of life, eventually the plague got into settlements from the battlefields and turned the population from both countries, as far as you know, to more dead than living. You don't know which side started the plague, but you know that eventually both sides were attempting to use it, with dire consequences.

        There was no treaty made, no one surrendered, yet the war ended. Both sides had exhausted all means to fight, there was almost no one left from the plague and destruction that swept through the lands, none who wanted to continue the fight anyway. Any progress made by the two countries was halted and lost to time. Besides the remnants, socially and technologically the population was thrown back almost 100 years. Some towns were wiped off the map, while others were reduced to torn down buildings filled with thieves and beggars who made it through the plague, but were barely making it through the present. The people of a once proud country reduced to murderers who would kill you over a spoiled can of beans. You know from experience, you've had to kill more of your own fellow countrymen than you'd like to count.

        It had been three years since the war “ended”. Now you've spent the last year or so looking for a place to call home. A place you might be able to rebuild a decent life. Or at least a place where someone won't try to stab you for a pair of torn work gloves.

        You just wanted a life like it was, even though you knew you could never go back, body or mind. Just some Peace that you may never find.

        The tank groans ominously with the low sound of shifting metal under its own weight. You take this as a signal to begin your journey for the day. You climb out of the tank and stand on the turret, stretching for a moment in the morning sun. You idly rub a spot on your back where the drivers seat just didn't want to conform to you and then jump off of the tank.

        With a quick reorientation against the direction of the rising sun, and the direction you know that ponyville is, you stride off back into the dark everfree forest to get to your destination.

        You hated traveling through the pseudo jungle, vines and thorns of all sizes obstructed your path, only to be interrupted by the occasional spot of dead leaves. The sun is all but absorbed by the canopy of trees above, leaving the ground level dark as night and filled with shadows.

        While walking, your stomach interrupts you with a loud growl. Forget the perfect home, I’d settle for a pack of five year old crackers and a dirty water bottle from some post-apocalyptic shack store-wannabe, you thought as you brought a hand up to your stomach to attempt to reassure it sustenance is not far off. After a couple hours of walking through the dank jungle, you see a break in the treeline and promptly pick up your pace, wanting to leave your current wretched surroundings behind. It seemed almost like the light at the end of the tunnel, the single bastion of hope in the dark unforgiving forest environment.

        You pushed onwards into the fields, excited and terrified of what you might find over the tallest hill obscuring the valley. Walking through the peaceful meadow, you make your way up the hill, with one last powerful step you reach the crest of the hilltop and gaze out into the valley below.

%i%: Untouched

2: Untouched

        The valley that contained Ponyville looked as if it had been a garrison at one point. Rotting tents and unkempt vehicles lay out neatly ordered in places along the green grass, clearly not having seen use in a while. All signs showed the military presence here to be completely abandoned, with the husks of what was left behind out in the sun to be taken back into nature. Hastily poured concrete bunkers lie in wait for an attack that would never come, and barb wire lay untouched around the would be defenses.

        The sight of the base almost made you miss what was beyond it, Ponyville. In the middle of the valley sat the town that clashed with the military instalment all around it.

        It was almost surreal, the town looked alive. People moved around the well kept streets and walked in and out of fully intact brick houses and stores. Its almost as if the war and industrialization forgot them. The old time houses shined with an eerie glow that you haven't seen in years. Ponyville gave the valley around it color, striking hope into you that it actually was different after all.

        You began into the valley towards Ponyville, seeing that even nature around the town seemed to be more alive.

        ____________________________________________________________________________

        You stood in awe. After walking through the dead military base and not being shot at, you didn't know what to think. Even as you entered the town the change was almost palpable. The air seemed fresher, the colors were more vibrant, and everything just seemed to actually be alive.

        Your eyes hadn't deceived you when you had first gazed onto the city at the top of the valley. There were people everywhere. They were all clean and well groomed, and actually attractive. You felt like you stuck out in the crowd like a sore thumb, with your grizzled appearance and equipment strapped all over you.

        You almost didn't want to make eye contact at first, but when you did, the people smiled and waved at you, as if you had been here your whole life. You began walking through the pristine streets with a heavily confused look with questions racing through your mind on just about everything.

        You didn't know if you should talk to anyone, avoid them and look badass, or just leave. You usually didn't initiate conversations, and the ones you did were usually involving violence, so needless to say, you were really out of your element.

        Walking through the Ponyville streets, you soak in all of the different sights and sounds that felt so foreign to you. Birds were singing, people were talking to each other and one sound stood out to you in particular, music. The soft sound of something stringed caught your attention, you didn't know what it was, but you liked it. You followed the sound to its source, not really knowing where else to go from at the moment.

        You follow the sound to a little clearing between the buildings, where a fountain rose above a couple of benches on its exterior. The music originated from one of the benches, but you were more concerned with the fresh water flowing from that fountain.

        Dragging your gaze away from the water for a moment, you notice the sound radiating from an attractive girl with light green and white hair playing what looks to you to be a mini harp, not that you could remember the name of it. Not wanting to scare any bystanders by sprinting for the fountain, you walk up to the girl to initiate a conversation. You figure she would be a good a place to start here as any.

        “Excuse me, ma’am?” The words seem to float right over her head. She seems to be in a trance with her eyes closed, completely focused on her music.

        “Ma’am,” you say a bit louder this time. You think about how your accent has evaporated a lot over the years with lack of use, but still had a mild twang to it.

        She jolts out of her reverie and looks at you, “Oh, uh... Hi,” she says to you cheerily. She gives you a once over and raises an eyebrow at your grizzled appearance.

        Wanting to steer away from possible accusations you ask her, “What is that you're playing?”

        “Oh, this is a lyre, its my special talent,” she says proudly. “My names Lyra by the way, Lyra Heartstrings. Kinda makes sense if you think about it.”

        “Well, its a pleasure to meet you, Miss Heartstrings.” You give her your name.

        “It’s nice to meet you too! So, do you... need something?” She asked, making you realize you were standing there awkwardly staring at her. You couldn't help it, you haven't seen anyone this attractive, let alone clean, in a while. You wanted to tell her how beautiful she was, but you figured that was jumping the gun a bit.

        Snapping out of your reverie you answer her, “Oh, I’m a bit new here, I was just wondering where I might find a market, or a place to sleep, or something.”

        “Well, Ponyville doesn't have a motel or anything,but I can take you to the market.” She says happily as she stands up and puts her lyre into a mint green bag thrown over her shoulder.

        “That would be mighty kind of you, Miss Heartstrings,” you said with the accentuated tip of an absent hat. An old habit from constantly wearing one before the war.

        “Hehe, just Lyra is fine. You don't have to be so formal around friends.” That giggle was almost too sweet. It almost seemed like a chirp from an extinct songbird as far as you were concerned, not having heard something like that in such a long time.

        “Come on! Before we get caught in the lunch rush,” she said, striding forward and grabbing your hand to pull you to the right direction. Her hand was the softest thing you’d felt in a long while. You were surprised she even wanted to touch you. You were a harsh contrast to her clean and perfect figure, plastered with dirt and grime, weapons hanging off of you.

        She didn't seem to notice as she led you along.

_____________________________________________________________________________

        She stopped in front of what seemed to be the market. Shops and vendors littered the ground in front of you, each of them talking with ponies and tending to their shops. It was something else that seemed quite odd to you, so many people haggling with each other and not one of them was holding the other at gunpoint. Instead the various tents and shops were happily working away.

        Lyra opened her arms to give the market a proper introduction, “Here it is, the Ponyville market. Your best source for just about anything you could ask for! So, what do feel like getting?” She turned to you expectantly.

        “I... uh.” There were so many different ones. Just at a glance you saw a bakery, a vegetable stand, an apple stand, a butcher shop, and a quill and sofa store? Who uses quills anymore? “There’s so many of them... “ you admit.

        Lyra raises an eyebrow at you, then perks up, “Oh, I know! There’s a restaurant on the other side that makes the best sandwiches, lets go,” she said as she takes your hand yet again and moves you forward.

        You look around as she drags you. The more you look into it, the more you notice, this town is almost exclusively populated by girls. You might have seen one other guy throughout your entire journey through the town. As amazing as that is for your future sexual prospects, it still nags at you what could've happened to them. Your suspiciousness is only quelled by your overbearing, sudden hunger.

        Your thoughts are interrupted as you see a vendor with an assortment of canned goods that look almost pristine. Your stomach growls as you lock into them with a vicious longing. You change direction and inadvertently drag Lyra with you towards the shop.

        “H-Hey, what are you doing?” she said as she let go of your arm and begins to follow you.

        “Food.” Is all you managed to get out before striding up to the counter.

        “That’s where we were going, what are you-” she said, but you weren't particularly listening to her.

        A girl with blue hair turned to you, “Hi! What can I get you? Todays special is lemon tarts,” she said with a smile, it looked like she sold an assortment of fruit as well, with lemons being favored, but you weren't too sure how to eat anything that wasn't out of a can at this point so your eyes darted around the various cans.

        “Uh, the can of peaches and that can of beans... oh, that can of corn, and the canned pork too,” you managed to say in your excitement. she floated your items down to the counter with her magic, which you eyed vigorously all of the way down. You reached into your pack to trade for them.

        You cut her off as you pull out what you were reaching for, “You're gonna love this, a pristine silver lighter, as far as I can tell it still has at least half the fluid in it,” you said as you presented the object.

        Lyra began giggling to herself behind you for some reason, you ignored her.

        “Sir, we only take-”

“Ain't that enough? here.” You take out a pair of marvelously crafted work gloves that you had been saving for a trade of this magnitude, and put them on the counter with the lighter. “These are almost new, not a tear or stitch loose on them.”

“Sir, I need-”

“Alright, you're lucky I really want these,” you say almost in a pout as you put a worn, but sturdy pocket knife on the table. “That is as much as I can go. That is a fair trade, dontcha think?”

She looked at you incredulously, then turned to the still giggling Lyra. “Lyra, what is he doing?”

“Hehe, I think he’s trying to trade you for them.”

You looked back and forth at them with confusion. “How else am I supposed to pay for them?”

The shopkeeper looked at you, clearly frustrated, “Like I've been trying to say, I only take bits sir.”

“B-Bits?” Thats something you haven't dealt with in quite a long time either.

“You know, money? What am I supposed to do with all of this?” she motioned towards the items you put on the table.

“Well, I don't know, I don't have any bits though.” Lyra was cracking up at this point.

“Don't worry Lemon Hearts, I'll take care of it.” She put ten gold coins on the counter and scooped the contents of the counter and emptied all of them into your bag, “Let’s go big guy, we can still get dessert at sugarcube corner.”

She grabbed your hand and pulled you away from the stand. You were still too perplexed from the experience to resist. Nobody has used bits since before the war. This place was different, really different.

______________________________________________________________________________

You sat in a booth with Lyra at sugarcube corner, an empty can of peaches and a cupcake in front of you, which Lyra paid for as well.

        “So, what's with the whole getup, you some kind of adventurer?” she says as she motions toward you.

        You look at her, “Heh, something like that. I'm just looking for a place where the people won't try to kill me over a can of beans.”

        “Haha, what? Thats crazy,”

        “You'd be surprised,”

        “So, uh, where are you from anyway?” she said as she started messing with her straw while looking at you.

        “Dodge...” This was never a subject you liked to talk about. She looked a bit surprised when you said that.

        “I thought... you know... nobody got out,” she said, trying to step around an emotional minefield.

        “Well, I was in Baltimare when it happened.”

        “Oh...” The conversation became instantly awkward, but you were determined not to let that happen. It was a long time ago anyway.

        “Well, don't worry about it. It was a while back anyway. I hate to point out the obvious, but why is this place so ...normal?”

        “Well, Ponyville never got directly involved in the war. There were some close calls, so the base got set up outside of town. When Canterlot got attacked most of the troops were re-deployed there or somewhere else they were actually needed. Before we knew it, Luna showed up and took over the town. She never really told us what happened, but nothing seems to have really changed since before the war to be honest,” she told you nonchalantly using her hands to accentuate her speech.

        “And no one here has ever seen anything outside of Ponyville?”

        She looked at the ceiling for a second to think, “Well, I think Braeburn and Big Mac were soldiers, and Luna was in Canterlot. Otherwise, no. Why? What's so special about everything else?”

        She really must not have any idea, you thought it would be best to keep it that way. “Nothing. So, do you live in town?” you said, resorting to your fallback weapon, small talk.

        “Sure do. I live with my roommate, Bon Bon.”

        “What’s she like?”

        “Well, she’s really sweet most of the time, and she loves to cook, which is always nice.”

        And just as fast as you used your secret weapon, it was gone.

        “So, you said you needed a place to stay, huh?” she said with a wry smile.

        “I think you know the answer to that question.”

        “Well, I may be able to convince Bon Bon to let you stay in the guest room, if you'd like.”

        You were genuinely surprised by her hospitality. “I would love that. I couldn't thank you enough Lyra.”

        “Don't thank me just yet, Bon Bon still might make you sleep in the backyard or something.”

        “Well it'd be better than nothing.”

        Lyra finishes her cup of whatever she got and got up, prompting you to follow. “Huh, I wonder where Pinkie Pie is, she would've already talked your ear off and arranged a party by now.”

        “Pinkie Pie?” You asked as the two of you made your way out of the pastry shop.

        “Oh don't worry, you'll find out,” Lyra said ominously. She then dragged you yet again to what you presumed to be her house.

______________________________________________________________________________

        Her house was in a row of many of the exact same house on the same street. They all had the same cottage look and wooden and stone exteriors, which must've been a pain to build.

        She walked up the steps to the wooden door and stopped you. “A word of warning, Bon Bon can be a bit of a neat freak, so forgive her if she is a bit hostile to your... appearance at first.”

        You nod and follow her in as she enters her home.

        Bon Bon walks out of the kitchen and sees Lyra, seemingly oblivious to your presence at first.

        “Oh hey Lyra, how was your da- WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?” Well now you know she saw you.

        Lyra walks forward to try to calm her down, “I might him at the fountain, hes just looking for a place to st-”

        “HES GOING TO GET DIRT EVERYWHERE. I JUST CLEANED THE ENTIRE-”

        Lyra turned to you in the middle of Bon Bons rant “Maybe you should step outside real quick,” she said as she nudged you out the door and closed it behind you.

        You leaned up against the wall. You could hear the muffled argument of the two from the other side, but it seemed to be calming down.

        This town was the best thing you could've asked for. It hadn't even been touched by the war. You were unsure why Princess Luna chose this place though. Even though everything was just about perfect, you couldn't help but think that there had to be a catch here somewhere. For now you just wanted to enjoy everything while it was here, and worry later.

        The door opened, and Lyras head popped out with it. “I think it'll be safe to come in now, just need to take the boots off,” She said, pointing to the dirt encrusted hunks of leather that used to be a pair of combat boots.

        “Yes Ma’am,” you said as you took them off and made your way inside.

        As you stepped into the house, Bon Bon addressed you. “I’m sorry about my outburst, but you are simply filthy.”

        “Sorry ‘bout that, ain't much I can do about it.”

        “Well, if you'll be staying here, you need to change that. The shower’s upstairs in the first room. You’re welcome to use it, just please, don't touch anything on your way up.”

        “Thank you kindly.” You begin to make your way up, but realise there was one problem.

        “Uh, I don't have any other clothes,’ you bring up.

        Bon Bon sighs, “We'll get you something, just leave the dirty ones in the basket in the bathroom.”

        “Thank you so much for everything miss.”

        She smiled at you, “Think nothing of it. We'll talk more tomorrow. The guest room is over there whenever you feel like sleeping.”

        You nodded and made your way upstairs to the bathroom and shut the door behind you.

        It looked like this was a perfectly working bathroom. You stripped off your dirt covered clothes and laid them in the basket as ordered, putting your weapons and equipment beside it.

        You turn on the knobs to find that theres actually running water, and they have a hot water heater. Which just seemed amazing to you, since you usually only used bathrooms to find still standing water in the toilets to drink. You step into the water and revel in the feeling of it cascading down onto you. You're almost embarrassed to see how much dirt is running down with the water.

        You step out feeling considerably lighter and much better. On the knob of the door there’s a set f clean clothes that are actually your size. You wonder why they had those, but dismiss the thought since you were lost in the feeling of actually being clean.

        Making your way downstairs, you finally hit the bed in the guest room like a sack of bricks. Not really caring about anything else. The feeling of a clean, made bed feels marvelous after so many years of sleeping on dirt and broken concrete. The feeling is so wonderful, you fall asleep almost instantly, forgetting what your dreams may bring up.

%i%: For The Glory Of...

3: For The Glory Of...

(..............................................................................................)

Station Echo 12. The first line of desert defense. The first place you were stationed.

The first thing you saw when you got off the bus was the emptiness. You were the first batch of soldiers in the camp. You didn't know what that would entail, but you knew you'd probably end up having to dig.

"Alright men! Your First assignment is to dig a trench out around the south perimeter! I want it 5 feet deep and 100 feet across the camp, hop to it! You never know when those griffin bastards are going to come!", a voice barked behind you.

You looked behind you to see the source of the dreaded order, you hated having to dig. It was a member of the royal guard, no big surprise there. Even the drill instructor in boot camp was a royal guard. You assumed most of the CO's out here are going to be since no one has had time to rank up yet.

Without you realizing it, the other recruits have left you behind and gone off to do their orders, leaving you accidentally staring down the royal officer.

"Since you decided to ignore your first standing orders, you can help the engineers set out the tank traps!", he says, pointing you to an assortment of metal bars welded together in trios.

"Yes sir!", you blurt out, quickly racing over to the contraptions, trying not to mess it up again. Well at least you didn't have to dig anymore.

"Hey there kid, since you got stuck with us you get to load up the tank traps on the trailer and push them off when we tell you.", a greasy engineer said to you, happy that he no longer was tasked alone with that particular job. Those things looked heavy as all hell.

After loading up the heavy metal chunks with the help of the other men there, you climb up on the back of the trailer, ready to drop off the things onto the would be battlefield. as you ride out into the desert, you can see guys a few yards in front of the trenches setting up barb wire, and in the opposite direction you can see two more APC's with trailers doing much of the same thing you're about to.

"Alright boys, drop the first one.", a man sitting at the front of the trailer instructs you.

You heave the first one out onto the ground with the same engineer from earlier across from you.

"So whats your name kid?", the dirty mechanic asks.

"Its (your name), what 'bout you mister?", you ask in return.

"The names Caramel, bud." he tells you.

"Alright boys, drop the next one.", you hear from the front of the trailer.

As you heave the next one into the sand, you decide to start up this time.

"So where ya from Caramel?", you ask him, just to relieve the silence.

"Ponyville, actually, its a nice place, a lot different from the desert out here.", You haven't been too many places outside of the desert, maybe you should look it up after the war.

"So why are we out here doing this? Shouldn't we be taking the fight to those bastards?", you inquire.

"Don't worry about that kid, they're coming.", he says to you ominously.

Besides some idle chat and getting to know each other, you dont really talk too much through the rest of your task. You like Caramel, he seems like a cool guy, must mean you guys are friends by now. Hopefully hes the first of many out here. Things seem like they could get boring quick.

The sun was hanging low in the sky when you got back to the camp with the empty trailer. getting off, you go to join the new recruits over by the newly created trench.

"Alright men, these trenches will be your new home, so get comfy, cause this is where you'll be sleeping tonight!",

You didn't like the sound of that at all, but it sorta made sense. If they were going to come in the night, you might as well be in position and ready to fight.

You attempt to settle into a spot in the trench and set down some of your belongings. A rifle, a canteen, and a sleeping pad are laid out underneath you with two others right beside it and so on down the line of that trench, better get to know the guys next to you, maybe in the morning though, the moon is starting to rise, and you sure want to get some sleep after heaving tank traps all day.

With one last look out into the desert, you see some mountains in the distance and barb wire obscuring the desert floor. You start to daze off into the sleeping pad.

....

An odd sound snaps you out of your slumber. Perking up from your prone position, you attempt to listen to it more closely.

whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrr...What the hell is tha-BOOOOOM

Twenty feet down the trench, an entire area is blown to hell, landing you on your ass with your ears ringing. Pieces of the soldiers who resided in that area rain down on you in a blood red mist, you can taste the blood and dirt.

Attempting to get up, you see the entire camp light up with gunfire towards the south. Every soldier is racing up to the front and raising their gun. Returning to your feet, you look over the side of the trench.

There were hundreds of them, all marching towards the camp. Tanks and technicals in tow. And they were all firing back too.

With a swift hand, you grab your gun and begin firing into the army on the other side of the borderlands. When your hearing returns, you hear most of the camp doing the same. Canons roar out against the onslaught, and AA guns chatter, attempting to keep the griffins out of the air. You do your best to keep your wits, but its hard, seeing the people around you fall and not get back up, and the bullets buzzing past you.

The battle continues with the griffins making headway, the camps firepower doing nothing to stop them. Eventually the creep up on the trench and cut through the barb wire separating the two sides. You don't think much of it, and keep firing until you see one fly into the air and land somewhere behind you.

Very close behind you. Right behind you.

The griffin pulls out his side arm, but you were faster. You take out your knife and quickly grab his hand and twist it out of the way so the two shots he fires end up in the dirt behind you, after hitting him with your left hand, you embed the knife into his shoulder and scramble out of the trench. Around you the griffins are engaging the other soldiers in the trenches, through your scrambling you can see the griffins getting the upper hand over a soldier, and shoot him in the stomach. You high tail it to the nearest spot you can think as good cover, a nearby APC.

Sliding to the ground behind it, you hear the hatch open, in it is Caramel.

"Hey kid, get in and man the gun. We got a battle to win.", he yells at you triumphantly.

You oblige and crawl up into the gunners position in the APC, attaching the ammo box, you unload it into the now griffin occupied trench while caramel directs the APC to a better position.

"Your doing great kid, keep at em!", he yells from the driver seat.

The AA guns have turned their attention to the ground, with most of the griffins to close to care about becoming airborne. As two of the enemy tanks roll over the trench, one of them gets obliterated by explosive flack rounds, with the other soon to follow. You continue to barrage the front line with fire from the turret.

After what seems like hours, the griffins who aren't dead, take to the retreat, leaving the camp full of broken equipment and dismembered bodies.

Covered in blood, dirt and gunpowder, you fall back into the APC absolutely drained.

Caramel pats you on the shoulder while parking the APC in what he thinks is a safe place

"Good job today kid, looks like we won this one." he congratulates you.

"Thanks, couldn't have done it without ya.", you say to your new found friend.

He smiles at you and lowers the back hatch. Stepping out into the new morning light.

Only to be met by a volley of shoots emanating from a lone griffin that didn't think to retreat with his comrades and was huddled beside a building shakily clutching his rifle.

"NOOO!", you yell as you catch Caramel when he falls backward into you. You look into his eyes and see that hes already dead, not even spared long enough for a last word.

You lay down his bullet ridden body and darkly stride towards the young griffin. He backs away from you with fear in his eyes and raises his rifle to you and aims, but...

Click...click...click

"No, please, I'm sorry,", he squeaks out in a cracking voice. trying to crawl away from your enraged figure.

But it falls on deaf ears, you no longer care for mercy as you pull out your sidearm and take aim at his head. This was much more personal, it wasn't like being behind the gun on that APC, you were going to look into this kids eyes when you kill him. He looked younger than you, he had tears in his eyes, pleading for you to spare him. You hesitated for a moment. You almost didn't do it.

With hate in your eyes you squeeze the trigger and then...

(.................................................................................................)

BANG

The sudden interruption loudly jolts you out of bed.

"LYRA WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT TOUCHING THOSE!", you can hear Bon Bon yell on the other side of the house.

"Sorry, they just looked so cool.", you hear Lyra retort.

"Lyra, you could've killed somebody, who knows what the neighbors are thinking right now. And on top of all that there's a hole in the floor now." Bon Bon gripes.

"I'm sorry Bon Bon, Ill fix it, I promise." Lyra replies.

"Alright, well go get our guest and see if he wants to help with breakfast.", with the thought of food, you rise out of bed and head towards the rooms door.

The door opens before you reach the knob. Revealing Lyra on the other side.

"Hehe, sorry did I wake you?", she says as she gives you an innocent smile.

"I reckon you just woke half of Ponyville with that .45.", you joke.

"I'm sorry! I wont mess with it any more! We washed your clothes for you by the way.",

"Well that's mighty kind of you, I hear you need some help making breakfast." you tell her.

"Well you heard right!", she smiles at you.

Bringing you into the kitchen, she begins to make some pancakes and eggs, with your assistance of course. By the end of your task Bon Bon walks into the kitchen and sits down at the table as you put out their dishes.

"I apologize for my behavior yesterday. But you were quite filthy.", Bon Bon tells you.

"Don't you fret none, I completely understand, thank y'all for your hospitality again.", you tell her.

"You are quite welcome to our home, you may stay as long as you like. However if you decide on a more permanent residency here, don't be insulted if we ask you to help with the rent a bit.", Coming from Bon Bon, that sounded like the nicest thing any one could do for you. You liked Bon Bon as well, she seemed more refined than Lyra, but just as polite.

"We wouldn't mind you staying one bit.", Lyra pipes in as she smiles at you coyly. Bon Bon just rolls her eyes at her playfully.

"Well, I certainly cant be staying here if i ain't got a job. Y'all know anywhere 'round town?", you tell them.

"I'm sure the princess has something for you, shes always has something new shes trying to do to build this town up and keep it safer.", Lyra tells you.

"Ill take you to the library to see her if you'd like!" she continues.

"That sounds like a plan.", you tell her.

After breakfast you help Lyra put away all the dishes. Then you put on your other clothes. A pair of combat boots, Your old uniform pants, a shirt padded with Kevlar across the chest, abdomen, back and shoulders, and finally the cape you wear over it to keep the dust out. Suiting up, you head out the door with Lyra leading you to the library.

"So what do you think Luna'll have in mind?", you ask Lyra.

"I don't know, she has a lot of random things she orders of the people that usually come to her. Bon Bon cooks for a restaurant, and I make music and play in shows we have in town sometimes, so we don't really need to see Luna much, so you'll just have to find out."

After a short walk, you end up at what Lyra says is the library, it looks more like a giant tree with a door and windows. She knocks on it.

A girl with purple hair with a pink streak down the center and with her bangs cut across opens the door.

"Oh hey Lyra, what do you need?", the girl says.

"I met this guy yesterday, his name's (your name). Hes looking for a job and me and Bon Bon thought that the princess could use him. What do you think Twilight?", Lyra tells her.

"Actually, the princess has been looking for someone for something special she really needs done, come on in.", Twilight says, as she leads the two of you into the library.

Wow. you're actually going to meet Princess Luna, one of the royal sisters. You always thought she was the more beautiful one ever since she returned from her banishment, and would always hope she'd come to you in a dream one day.

Twilight enters a separate room in the library, and peeking over her shoulder you see the majestic princess, sitting at a desk, looking over files with a bored look on her face.

"Princess? There's a man here that wishes to help you with those things you told me you needed.", Twilight tells her.

"Marvelous, send him in immediately.", her voice is just as amazing as she is.

Twilight motions you to come talk with her and you oblige, leaving Twilight and Lyra outside of the room. The door shuts behind you. You bow to her majesty.

"Rise soldier, I had sensed you last night, you seem quite troubled by your past which we must address later, however, I remark thee on your past duty and humbly thank thee for thy sacrifice.", she oh so beautifully tells you.

"Thank you ma'am, and let me just say what an honor it is to finally meet you.", you say, trying not to mess up the encounter.

"Likewise, but to the point. I require your particular skill set for a task this town greatly needs. Last week, the town generator overheated, and in the process severely damaged the gem, conversion core. Repairs have been made but the core must be replaced. The second thing we need are the basic components to a water enchanting talisman, so that we may reuse water, since our demand is much higher with the addition of the second farm. I will require of you to go to the city of Manehattan to retrieve these objects. I have the general location of the manufacturing facility that created them, all i need from you is to retrieve them, I do not know of the state of the city, so i will be sending with you two capable escorts. What do you say soldier." she says as she looks at you in an expectant manner, but almost as if shes very afraid you'd say no.

Normally, being forced out of this paradise into the dark, war torn country-side will elicit a very violent counter-reaction of refusal from you. But this is the Princess of the Night, how in Equestria could you possibly say no?

"It would be my pleasure to help you with this your majesty." you say as enthusiastically as you can manage.

"Marvelous, I will have your supplies and team assembled by the evening, you shall leave on the morrow! Thank you again dear soldier, I know not how I will repay you.", she says to you genuinely.

"Think nothing of it, Princess.", you say as you tip the hat you don't have yet again and turn around to leave the room.

Seems like there ain't no rest for the wicked, you thought.

%i%: They Always Come Back

4: They Always Come Back

After a much appreciated dreamless nights sleep, You gather what little supplies you have into your pack. Which include two cans of food, bullets, a blanket, and a pair of gloves that should've been traded, and some extra tools and two flashlights (you never know). You pick up your weapons, strap on your boots, say goodbye too Lyra and Bon Bon, and promptly report to the library.

As you arrive you spot Luna on the grass in front if the library with two other girls. One of them was shorter with rainbow dyed hair, oddly enough, with a black leather jacket on. Upon further inspection, you see a pair of cyan wings adorning her back. The other was the stereotypical cowgirl, blond hair, lasso on her belt, and a good old cowboy hat on her head, you liked her already.

"These two will be traveling with you on your journey to Manehatten, should any problems arise I assure you these two will be quite reliable to help you." Luna tells you.

"Yes sir! Me an' RD here got your back sure as shootin'! My names Applejack by the way." She says as she extends a gloved hand toward you.

Getting the feeling that she wasn't one for the overly chivalrous type, you decide just to give her hand a good shake instead.

"Pleasure to meet you miss Applejack, my names (your name)." you tell her.

"Likewise" she says, then the one with the rainbow hair starts "I'm Rainbow Dash. I can tell I'm going to be distracted on this trip." her arms are crossed but she looks you up and down like she just saw a new car she wanted, or something. You guess some girls are taking the lack of male situation better than others.

"Nice to meet you too, miss." you tell her.

"Don't you start with that miss shit, Rainbow, or Dash, or whatever will be fine for you." she corrects you with a dastardly smile.

"Alright Whatever." you joke at her, eliciting a small smile that's more competitive than happy.

"Now that we have introductions out of the way, let us begin with the things you will need." Luna says while walking over to a crate by the library.

"Dearest Applejack, I have for you a m1014, 12 gauge, semi automatic, since you said you had experience with shotguns." Luna says as she pulls a dark green combat shotgun out of the crate and hands it to Applejack.

"Rainbow Dash, to accentuate your speed and finesse in combat i will give you this mp-7, it has a high fire rate but a smaller cartridge size, so use it accordingly." she gives the sub-machine gun to rainbow.

"Sweet! I only ever got to shoot that crappy rifle in basic, this is a step up." she was in the military? Looking over her you could almost understand. She seemed quite fit, and had that gruff sort of attitude that would fit in perfectly in the forces. You'll have to ask her about that when shes not flirting with you.

"And would you like an upgrade? Or are you happy with your current armaments?" Luna asks.

You look to your rifle. The old girl had seen some shit, and cleaning and oiling it with animal fat and second hand tools only got you so far. The thought of having to put it away made you sad, but you thought better of it when you realized your combat effectiveness could be hindered.

"I s'pose i should change out to the next best thing." you say, still unsure. you had this rifle for a long time, you knew everything about it. The M4A1, standard issue to ground troops at the beginning of the war. Standard 30 round mag, 4 position safety, 5.56 mm round.

"How good of a shot are you?" Luna pointedly asks you.

Considering you spent most of your life working with rifles, two years in the military, then three years out in the new war torn world, where a missed shot could mean starving to death that night, or having a bandit embed a blade into your neck, you knew you had developed quite a pinpoint accuracy, all inside of an iron sight platform as well.

"I'd say I'm better than most." you say, trying to be modest.

"In that case I have here this m24 long range rifle, chambered in the 7.62 round, with a x12 magnification scope." she says as she hands you the firearm, which is rather foreign to you.

"Oh....uh...Thanks." you say as you stare at the rifle.

"And to compensate for the lack of a closer ranged weapon, here is this fully automatic m93." she then hands you what looks like a heavily modified m9, the words fully automatic confused you. Usually pistols didn't do that. But you didn't question it. However, you were not getting rid of your 1911, that thing was closer to you than most anything, the only time you went without it for as long as you could remember was the couple of hours after you had showered and slept at Lyra and Bon Bon's house the night before. You took it back to bed with you last night to prevent another hole being accidentally made within the house.

"As for you two, these two glock 17's should due for sidearms, they are a bit older, but they will work for the task at hand." Luna says as she pulls two pistols out of the crate and hands them to the two girls.

"Now that the necessary precautions have been taken care of, your mode of transportation to Manehatten will be via the railways leading out of Ponyville. I am sure of the tracks stability to at least 8 miles out from the other city. Manehatten was hit quite deliberately during the war so I suspect most of it to be in ruins, I have also set up a train cart on the tracks on the east side of town to be your mode of travel. It runs on gemstones, so take these." She hands you two gems, a bright red ruby and a sparkling sapphire, you take them and put them into your bag.

"Now the train has three days supplies on it, it will take around 6 hours travel by the tracks to reach your destination, so it should be quite enough. You will also find a map with the factories location on it as well"  Hopefully your orders will end there, you thought.

"I bid you all a safe journey, you have my blessings." Figuratively and literally, you thought.

Everyone exchanges farewells and you make your way to the train cart at the end of town. Arriving there, the cart looks almost normal. Painted red, with windows and a decorated roof. It must've been taken off of the train quite recently, judging by the pristine condition of it of it.

You climb into the train after the girls and inspect the layout. Four rooms, two split bedrooms with two beds in them and not much else besides a nightstand, located in the rear most area of it, a hallway containing the supplies you were told about earlier, and the engine compartment at th other end with a forward facing door. The engine had a very fancy looking computer attached to it, you weren't about to mess with it just yet. You also wondered about the sleeping arrangements, but with the trip only being around six hours, you figured you wouldn't have to worry about that until the return trip for the most part.

Applejack walks up to you inspecting the engines computer and tells you "Well lets start 'er up, don't want to keep the princess and the town waitin'." she stands behind you and pats you on the shoulder, which surprises you, you haven't been touched by someone else in a way other than violently in a very long time. You savor the feeling, imagining an intimate moment with the cowgirl, but keep your composure about you, not wanting to seem desperate for that sort of thing, even though you knew you needed release pretty soon, having been staying in a town with the majority being the opposite sex.

"I s'pose your right" you say as you open up the interface on the engine computer

POWER SOURCE NEEDED. the computer read out as you tried to initiate the start command. A compartment opened and three little mechanical arms were exposed, requesting sustenance. You placed the sapphire into the clutches of the machine, which took it into the machine and closed the compartment.

INITIALIZING...

POWER SOURCE ACCEPTED.

DESTINATION?

It showed a list of cities from Las pegasus to Baltimare, you scroll through it and select Manehattan.

ERROR. OBSTRUCTION IN TRACK DETECTED. FIND ALTERNATE ROUTE? Y/N?

You click yes, figuring you want to get as close to the city as possible.

NO ALTERNATE ROUTE DETECTED. CONTINUE? Y/N?

"What the hell?" you say in frustration.

"These things are always way to complicated for what you want to get done." Applejack pipes in from behind you.

"Your telling me." You answer her.

You go through the next couple of commands, trying to go back to the start so you can try to get the right path.

"Sorry if RD comes onto you a little strong, all the girls in Ponyville are getting a little stir crazy down there, With only three guys in the town, if you know what I mean." Applejack says to you.

"Don't you fret none, I completely understand. I cant say that I don't feel the same way from time to time." you say, more trying to relate than implying an interaction.

"Just don't let her do nothing with you that you don't wanna do." she says with an almost jealous look on her face as you look up from the screen at her.

"What about yourself miss? You're just the same down there as she is." you say. You could honestly see yourself with the farm girl, she reminds you of home, and you couldn't say she didn't catch your eye.

"Er...Just get us movin'." she grumbles as she looks away with a blush across her face. With a smile you turn back to the computer.

You go through the menus again and get back to the alternate route question and click no.

ROUTE ACCEPTED. ENGINE WILL STOP WHEN OBSTRUCTION IS REACHED.

Close enough, you think. The engine comes to life with a low roar, jolting the cart into motion. Soon enough, you all are slowly on your way to the destroyed city. You all sit down in the supply hall way, leaning against the boxes.

Rainbow Dash breaks the silence, which you cant say you object to, it would've been a long ride otherwise. "So why do you think the princess insisted on giving us guns?" she asks.

Applejack just looks up, not really knowing. But you know all to well of what monstrosities crawl through those forgotten, uninhabited cities, although you weren't sure if Manehatten was one of them, never having been there yourself.

"I don't think you wanna know Rainbow." you answer her, trying to be as ominous as possible.

"'Course I wanna know, otherwise I wouldn't have asked hot stuff." Rainbow counters to you.

"Lets just say that some experiments went wrong and the end product may still be roaming around. But Im sure she just wanted to make sure we could defend ourselves from bandits or something." you try to reassure her when she gets a scared look on her face for a split second, but quickly realizes what she was doing and tries to cover it up.

"Ha, its nothing we cant handle." you guess shes just trying to compensate.

"So, you were in the military? Where'd you get stationed?" you try to steer the conversation elsewhere.

"I wanted in since the beginning, seeing everybody fighting inspired me to take up arms, but those dumb ass recruiters wouldn't take me at first." she says angrily

"Why not?" you ask.

"Cause they thought I would be just too good for them, they thought my talents shouldn't be wasted on their lowly form of military, they probably thought I should've been in some special division or something." she says proudly.

"I recall pretty clearly that they didn't accept you for something along the lines of bad attitude and doesn't play well with others." she shoots down Rainbow with a smirk.

Rainbow gives Applejack a death glare and tries to steer off of it."Well anyway, they didn't accept me until a couple weeks before the war ended, by the time I got out of basic, the troop recall orders already went into effect, so that didn't really last long."

"It was for the best, the war wouldn't've stopped till everybody was dead, and that almost happened. And the last thing I wanna see is one of my best friends come home in a body bag, Celestia knows how much it affected my family." Applejack tries to ensure RD it was for the best, but she really wasn't listening.

"Hmph, So what about you? How did your military career go?" Rainbow asks, without the bedroom eyes this time, surprisingly enough.

"I lived in Dodge when it started, I was one of the first on the front lines." you realize suddenly you really don't want to talk about it.

"Oh my, I'm so sorry. How did you...make it out?" Applejack asks sadly.

"I was in Baltimare when it happened on a delivery." you really wanted to change the subject, but you thought Applejack wanted you to let it out more.

"I lived in Dodge once, it was a nice town, I'm sorry." you just look away from her.

"Come on AJ, cant you see he didn't want to talk about it?" thank you Rainbow. You thought you just might end up satisfying her after all.

"Well sometimes its better to talk about it RD." she shoots back at her friend.

"Now's not one of those times." your accent almost evaporated in your seriousness.

After that it was mostly silent for what seemed like days, but was probably only thirty minutes. AJ decided it was best not to make eye contact with you, and RD kept undressing you with her eyes when she thought you werent looking, at a moment her thoughts were elsewhere, you did the same. She had a very nice body, perfectly fit, and her jeans showed her lower regions off quite nicely. Maybe after your mission was completed, youd inquire into that, but you had more important things to deal with at the moment, like this awkward silence that was really starting to annoy you.

"So AJ, what do you do around Ponyville?" you already thought you knew the answer, the work gloves, hat, lasso, and worn clothes were mostly a dead giveaway for manual labor, most likely the farm variety. You had experienced the sort quite well yourself so you could relate.

"Well me and my brother run sweet apple acres on the east end of Ponyville, we help feed most of the town." AJ replies.

"Huh, I'm no stranger to farm work myself, In my younger days I helped out on a local cherry farm from time to time." you try to relate with her.

"I think AJ has done the exact same thing." Rainbow says with a look that reminded AJ never to do something again.

"How about we not bring that up, I said I was sorry." AJ counters back at her.

"What about you Rainbow? What do you do in town?" you say, trying to nip this would be fight in the bud.

"Im the weather coordinator, I tell the pegasi around town what needs to happen and when it needs to happen." she must be more responsible than she lets on, if she coordinates the weather around Ponyville. Judging by the two marvelous days you stayed there, she does a good job.

The three of you start on idle small talk to pass the time, in one of the silent spells between conversations, you start to look through the supplies. There were four crates. On had food rations in it, another one was filled with munitions, the third one with some basic medical supplies, and the last one you got to had some random tools in it, and also, strangely enough, a radio. There was a CD in it, and being the hero you are, liberated the three of you from the silence by turning it on. The music that poured out of it was a combination of music that sounded to be some 50 years old, but was welcome anyway. A couple of hours in the three of you began digging into the food rations, getting what you could out of the military MRE's. The girls seemed to be not quite so used to the sub-par taste. You on the other hand knew these things like the back of your hand.

"Be sure to chew the gum at the bottom of the pack." you told them.

"Why?" they said in unison, which was quite adorable.

"Trust me, you'll thank me later."

After another hour or so, the engine dies and you come to a halt, looking out the window you see it.

Manehatten. True to the princesses word, the city was in shambles. Rubble adorned the street, buildings were missing large portions of them, and forgotten machines of war littered the streets.

You gather enough supplies and armaments between yourselves for up to a day and a half, although you doubt you'll be there that long, better safe than sorry.

"I guess we should get moving." you say, stepping onto the charred soil from the front door of the cart. Looking down you see that the track is pretty mangled, but you only seem to be two or three miles out form the city, so that's a plus.

"Should we lock it or something?" Rainbow asks.

"It don't have a lock, but i have a better idea." you get back into the cart and grab something out of the munitions box. The girls look at you quizzically from behind you as strap a grenade under the latch on the train door, then pull the pin and put it in your pocket.

"That ought'a do the trick." you turn around and begin walking towards the city with the two girls in tow, weapons drawn.

You begin through the demolished city. The girls follow you closely, the sight of this post apocalyptic city must be quite frightening, you wouldn't know, you've become so desensitized to this sort of thing. it was the norm to you, much like the safe life in Ponyville was to them. You all walk through the war torn streets, the take note of everything, eyes darting from the tanks and jeeps, both of the destroyed and intact variety, littering the streets, the rotted away bodies of the soldiers who fought and died here. They keep a careful eye on the darkness that resides within the buildings with the larger cavities torn into them, as if something is going to jump out of them, for all you know, that might not be far from the truth.

You look back at Rainbow, just as you did a building groans in the distance. She responds by jumping from the sound, backing up to AJ and pointing her SMG in the direction. You laugh at her scared stature, but AJ looks a bit upset, Dash's actions putting her on edge as well.

"Dammit Rainbow, get a hold of yourself, you're makin' me nervous." AJ chastises.

"Just stay as close to me as you can." you tell the girls.

Its quiet in the city. Too quiet for it to be filled with bandits, so that narrows the possible danger lurking in the city down pretty close. For the sake of hopeful thinking, you think to yourself, its probably just empty, but you knew better.

After making it into the city a few blocks, you check the map from your pack. The factory is 8 blocks in the direction you are going and three blocks after a right turn. Simple enough. Then you arrive at a giant pile of collapsed building blocking your path. Being a repeating square layout, you adjust to this, taking another route, but then the process repeats. After getting as close to where the map says the factory is you all climb over the rubble to get to your destination.

Sliding down the cement chunks and avoiding the protruding re-bar, you find the factory.

Or at least the pile of broken machinery and rubble where it used to be.

"Well now what?" RD asks.

"Ponyville really needs the water and the power from those supplies, they cant just be gone!" AJ says, trying to reason with herself.

Thinking, you know that the supplies you would've found in the factory were going to be finished at the end of an assembly line, ready to ship off. Shit, they could've been shipped off to any city in Equestria, how the hell were you going to find it now, you thought. Wait, after they get made they have to be stored before they can be shipped.

You looked around the adjacent buildings and....

Bingo. A Warehouse.

"I'm willin' to bet my last bullet that the things were looking for are in there." you say, pointing at the warehouse next to your group.

AJ leans back, from her vantage point a bit higher and farther back on the rubble she says, "That'd be fine usually, but from where I see it, there are at least ten warehouses down this street."

"Well I guess we better start looking." you begin to stride towards the closest warehouse.

You arrive at the door of the warehouse, the girls behind you. There's a large padlock separating you from the inside of the warehouse. With a swift strike from the synthetic stock on your rifle, you snap the lock off the door, then proceed to kick the door in with your boot. You enter the dusty darkness of the warehouse with the girls.

"Its a little dark in here." AJ says trying to waft the kicked up dust away from her face.

You take a flashlight out of your pack and toss it to the farm girl. "Rainbow stick by my left side, AJ cover our six, keep your eyes and the flashlight pointed directly behind us." after you say it Rainbow scoots up much closer to you, shes almost rubbing on you with each step you take.

"Heh, whatever you say." Rainbow lets out with a coy smile.

"Got it." AJ says as she turns to face the rear.

You turn on the other flashlight in your bag and shine it across the warehouse, there had to be at least thirty rows of shelves with boxes on them all the way across the hundred yard wide warehouse.

"How in the hell are we ever going to find two specific boxes in all this, hell, all of these warehouses?" Rainbow asks with a worried look.

"We aren't. In that office over there should be a shipment order. That should tell us where to find what we need." Rainbow is physically relieved by your statement.

"I think the princess put the item codes on the map." you didn't remember if she did for sure, but you sincerely hoped so, otherwise you would be here for quite a while.

Looking at the map, you see scrawled at the bottom, much to your relief, the item codes.

"RH-184 power core, and XN-336 water rejuvenation apparatus. Sounds easy enough." you say, more to yourself than to the girls.

You cross reference the item codes with the shipment order in the first warehouse. No dice. Rinse and repeat for the second, same thing. Finally, the third has both the items you are looking for, on the second row to.

Picking through the massive boxes, you find the power core, a glowing blue mechanical sphere. It weighs almost 40 pounds. You give it to Rainbow, worst comes to worst, she can fly it out of here, since Ponyville will most likely need it the most. Digging through another box, you find the other apparatus, but it takes up most of the box. You split the tubing and metal parts among you and AJ but it is still quite cumbersome.

Walking out of the warehouse you start on the path back to the train cart.

"Alright lets get out of here before anything goes wrong." as if on cue, a menacing, inhuman howl erupts in the distance, then its greeted by several others.

"Fuck..." this is the last thing you wanted, and night was quickly falling. You've always been smart enough to stay out of these cities when you could help it. You've been attacked in the woods by outliers looking for food, but never this close. If you weren't careful, you were going to get these girls killed. You looked at them and just the howls rattled them to the bone.

"AJ, same drill, stay behind me watch my back and keep moving, this is going to be at a jog, so we conserve energy, but move fast enough. And Rainbow..." you knew this was going to scare the shit out of both of them, but you knew you had to do it.

"I need you to take to the skies and cover us with the SMG. If me and AJ...go down, I need you to fly as fast as you can back to the cart, put this pin back in the grenade I strapped to the door and get back to Ponyville, Ponyville needs that core more than it needs our bodies." you hand the pin to Rainbow, much as you expected, both of them were so scared at the aspect, they started shaking, Rainbow looked like she was about to cry at the thought of having to leave you two to your fate, but was too speechless to object.

"Lets get a move on, we need to get out of here as soon as possible." you started jogging forward up into the rubble pile to go back the way you came. AJ followed wordlessly after you and Rainbow then took to the skies.

You jogged through the streets with a slow but steady pace, hoping those things wouldn't catch up to you. You didn't think they would stray far from the city, so youd be able the slow up the pace once you got out of the city limits, but you've been surprised before. The best thing to do would be to stay on the alert and hope they didn't see you.

Then 50 yards in front of you, a dark figure dropped down onto a car in front of your group. It was one of them, a mutant, a failed lab experiment to keep the common man off of the battlefield. Killing machines with only one thought process, seek and destroy. Each facility created different breads, the Manehatten facility looked like they cross bred with wolves.

Pack hunters.

It was an overly muscled, hairy monstrosity. Hunched over onto its front legs it was a foot taller than you, re-bar and chunks of steel protruded from its coat, not phasing the beast in the slightest. The Head of a dog was placed on its shoulders and it looked of a werewolf from a cheap sci-fi horror movie. But this was all too real.

The beast spotted you, and immediately took in a deep breath to alert its pack. Without thinking you brought your M24 rifle up to stop that. A shot rang out in the night, separating the beasts head from his body. You heard the thunderous shot echo across the city.

You had just done his job for him.

Without a second thought, at least thirty of the beasts barreled out of the cityscape, galloping toward you at a rapid pace, cutting off the path back to the cart.

"OPEN FIRE, FALL BACK AROUND THAT BUILDING, MOVE!" you scream at the girls. AJ's shotgun makes a resounding boom with a rhythm as the action brings the next shot up to bear, and Rainbow's SMG makes a constant cracking sound, only stopping to change the magazine. you all run (and fly) as fast as you can around the next block, trying to circle around to get a path back to the cart.

You slow up occasionally and let your rifle release a thunderclap and drop one of the lumbering behemoths. Turning around you see AJ has stopped moving, you Are about to yell at her until you see what shes looking at.

There's another pack coming up on you from the opposite side of the street.

Refusing to be a part of their next meal you yell "COME ON." at AJ and drag her into a nearby building. Seeing the third floor blown out and open a bit. you aim for that, seeing a good path onto an adjacent roof, with a bit of a drop, but a leap of faith is better than dying on the streets.

"RAINBOW HOLD THEM OFF FROM THE AIR AND TRY TO GET INTO THE THIRD FLOOR." you scream up at her as you point to the cavity, then quickly enter the building through the front entrance.

With AJ in tow, the two of you make a b-line for the nearest stairs you could see. You think it was a hotel, it looks to have quite the lobby, with a massive chandelier, statue of Celestia, receptionists desk and everything. You dont take too much time to think about it as you turn around and see the mutants crash through the front entrance and fill the lobby. You and AJ fire on them, but its no use, ever one that falls just has two more that step over it. You two make a mad dash up the stairs to the third floor. What do you know, it is a hotel, the third floor has a row of doors that go down the hallway.While thinking which one could be the one with the hole in it AJ interrupts.

"They're coming up the stairs! What do we do?!" she yells at you in desperation and fear.

Getting a really bad idea, you feel your belt for a grenade. You have two attached to the belt. Taking one in one hand you grab your rifle and bust out the wall on one side of the stairwell.

"GET BEHIND ONE OF THOSE DOORS." you order AJ, and she quickly obeys.

Seeing the shadow of the beasts rapidly making progress in the corner of the stairway, you pull the pin of the grenade and set it up against a supporting beam in the wall. Then you dive around the corner, trying to find some cover.

You count, 1...2...3...

Then one makes it up around the stairwell and lunges at your prone figure.

4....

BOOOM

The stairwell collapses, trapping the beasts on the other side. The splintered boards fall from the ceiling and quickly impale the mutant that lunged at you. Its massive body lands at your feet and you scurry away from it. Just in case. You back up against a wall and try to catch your breath.

The door beside you opens and AJ drags you into the room.

"That was a horrible idea." AJ says to you.

"I know, but it worked at least." the two of you share a quick laugh, then you hear Rainbow outside, still firing.

Luckily, this was the room that was open to the outside.

"Get in here Rainbow!" you yell at her.

She gains altitude while still firing and tries to safely back into the room, you see around her, one of the werewolves climb up an adjacent building, and completely ignore Rainbows shots and gets footing at the top of it and makes a jump.

Right onto Rainbow.

They both come barreling into the room. The mutant on top of Rainbow, snarling, trying to go in for the kill. The beast raises its razor sharp claws into the air for the killing blow to her neck.

"NOOOOOO." you don't even have time to think, you dive at the beast and land between its raised shoulder and its head. You take out your M93, grab the beasts neck and stck the barrel into its mouth and unload the entire magazine.

But it wasn't quite fast enough. The beast still had time to bring its claws down into your back. It falls off of the two of you and rips out a deep gash into your back.

But it was worth it. Rainbow is still alive. You look down at her, she is the most shaken up you've ever seen someone. She curls up and starts crying, staring off at what seems like nothing. Shes starting to go into shock, you doubt shes ever had to experience something like that before. You look over the edge and see a pack attempting to climb up the building again, but cant seem to find the footing their friend did, with your last grenade you scatter the group and blow out part of the building to ensure it doesn't happen again.

With some time to spare now, you go up to Rainbow and help the only way you know how. You bring her into an embrace and start stroking her hair, ensuring her of her safety, trying to calm her down. AJ looks at you and discovers the state of your back.

"Partner, that gash is pretty bad, you're losing a lot of blood." AJ says, it wouldn't be the first time, probably wont be the last.

"You still have the medical supplies from the cart?" she nods. "Then start sewing it up. We cant leave until I can help Rainbow out of this."

You continue to stroke Rainbows hair and hold her while AJ cleans and dresses your wound. After a while of Rainbow crying into your shoulder and everybody sitting there in the room, she goes silent. Looking up to the sky you see the start of the sun to raise over the horizon. Its time to go home.

"Are you okay Rainbow?" you say down to her.

Shes gripping you tightly and squeaks out "Yea, I think so."

"Lets get out of here then." you say to them.

You all three climb down to ground level and begin the trek back to the cart. AJ looks like she just wants to go home. Rainbow looks like a scared child, never straying too far away from you. You feel sorry for her. She shouldn't have had to go through that.

Exiting the streets and returning to the train tracks you walk up to the cart and prepare for the journey home.

Rainbow has rediscovered her confidence and strides up to the door and puts a hand on the latch.

"STOP." you say as you drag her off the door, you reach into her pocket and retrieve the pin.

"Forgetting something?" you wave the pin in front of her, she just gives you a sheepish smile.

You open the cart and everyone crawls into it.

AJ yawns and tells the two of you "Well Im gonna get some shuteye. You two can fight over the other bed."

She walks off as you lean over the computer on the engine and start it up.

POWER SOURCE DEPLETED. POWER SOURCE NEEDED

You stick the ruby into the arms that jut out of the compartment to start the engine.

INITIALIZING...

POWER SOURCE ACCEPTED.

DESTINATION?

You go through the process again, this time selecting Ponyville. You stand up to realize Rainbow is still standing behind you, holding her arm and sticking to you like a lost puppy.

"You can have the other bed, Ill sleep in the hallway." you say, trying to be a gentlemen, she probably needs her space anyway.

"No! Er...I mean we could always share it." Rainbow blurts out. Maybe not.

"If you insist." you say, not objecting to the comfortable looking bed.

You make your way to the back room opposite of AJ's. She didn't bother to close the door, so you can see her haphazardly splayed across the bed, seemingly falling asleep right before she hit the bed. They probably arent used to this sort of action, let alone not getting any sleep. Your being used to this helps you stay awake, but something else is keeping Rainbow up.

You walk into the small room you and Rainbow will share, and close the door behind you. Turning around you see Rainbow staring at you, biting her lip, with new found confidence in her eyes.

She comes up to you and slams you against the wall, pinning you there playfully. "You saved my life twice today. How am I ever going to repay you?" she asks, almost sarcastically.

"I'm sure you already have something in mind." you smile down at her, completely okay with what you know she wants to do.

She pushes her lips into yours, and before even getting to savor it she pushes her tongue into your mouth, but you aren't complaining, you return the action happily.

She has one leg hiked up around you, and that does it. The years of neglect have finally exposed themselves in your manhood, fully erect, it almost busts itself out of your pants. Your primal urges take control of you and you pick Rainbow up and put her on the bed. She breaks the kiss for a moment to make a cat growl.

You love it when girls do that.

The power struggle starts as you and rainbow flip around the bed for the top position, never breaking the kiss. You move your hands up under her jacket and feel her soft skin. You break the kiss and bring her shirt up over her head and out of her wings, revealing her upper body to you. You look down and see the body of a goddess albeit the smaller breasts, but it is the most glorious thing you've seen in a long, long time. You didn't even think the princesses themselves could've been as attractive as Rainbow is now, and she still has her pants on. You go to fix that and she takes your shirt and cape off, everything getting thrown on the ground.

You go to drag your hand across her skin, but she flips you onto the bed again. Which is ten times hotter now that she is fully undressed. She goes for the belt, and rips it open with reckless abandon. she swiftly removes your pants all the way off with a harsh tug, revealing the entirety of your member.

"All I wanted was any dick. But I come across one like this? I'm not sure how this could get better." she says as she marvels at the size of the piece in front of her. Oh you intend to make it better alright.

Any open thought process you had is immediately erased as Rainbow strokes your shaft with her tongue, and cups your balls with a free hand. You almost release right there, with it being neglected for so long, but you dont want to end the fun just yet.

She doesn't have the same idea. She then moves her mouth over the head. Just breathing on it. Her hot breath on your manhood almost sends you over the edge, but you resist yet again. Then she puts it in her mouth and goes as far down as she could go, which is about halfway, but you weren't complaining. The pleasure is almost blinding as you let out a low groan and squirm under her. Seeing this advantage, she puts her other free hand on the base and starts to bob her head up and down, her hand following suit. You are almost pass out right there from sensory overload, as she continues. You try to get back in the fight by beginning to gently massage her wings, which elicits a moan from her still full mouth. As you go across the wings, you suddenly feel her go deeper, and her hair gently strokes your skin. That makes you fucking lose it. You stop stroking her wings to tense up and release your load right into her mouth. She happily accepts every drop and looks up into your eyes. She doesn't let up until every drop is gone, then she releases you from her grip, looks directly at you, and swallows all of it with a smile

Now its your turn.

With madness in your eyes you flip rainbow over and kiss her. You dont even care what she just did. With passion most wont ever see from you, you kiss down her neck, making her moan every step of the way. You get to one breast and attack it with your tongue, getting another moan for your work. You move your hands to the other breast and a wing and start massaging, you repeat the process on the other side. She lets out a moan that sounds like shes going to cum already. But you aren't finished with her yet. You kiss down her beautifully sculpted abdomen to the sweet spot. Its so wet down there she made a puddle on the bed, and you know just how to clean it up. With your tongue you race circles into her slit which elicits a moan that you're pretty sure woke up the animals in the woods beside the tracks. She doesn't give in though, shes got the stamina of a race horse. So with purpose, your fingers join the fight, penetrating her while your tongue works the clit. It isn't long before she has to give in, or her voice might just go out. Finally she erupts with pleasure, her pussy gripping your hand so hard you think it could break the bones in your fingers.

You look up to her with a seductive look, and she does the same. with her exposed to you, you position your dick above her entrance. She starts to grind against it with a deep yearning, which you happily enter into. She starts to lose her faculties almost immediately. Her eyes roll into the back of her head as she rocks back and yells of pleasure escape her lips. You position one hand on the top of her slit and another on her breast and rub, before long she gives in yet again, attempting to milk you for all your worth, but you hold out.

She soon recovers and rolls you onto the bed and begins riding you like a bull. With her features beautifully illuminated against the rising sun through the window, you come closer to the edge. Seeing her beautiful body move with elegance and purposefulness against you is too much. You grab her hips and back and bend her over and begin thrusting into her with all you've got. She moans right into your ear which only encourages you. She goes over the edge again and her body arches into an orgasm. This causes you to explode as well, pulling out of her you release in between your two bodies, her beautifully soft skin feeling like silk against you.

This is all both of you could take. She rolls off of you and cleans you up before snuggling up against you. You do the same, rolling under the blanket and bring her close to you. No words need to be said in this beautiful moment.

Soon the two of you drift off to sleep together.

%i%: Burning Bridges

5: Burning Bridges

(………………………………………………………………………………………………………….)

You looked out into the dark desert. The arid climate sucked the moisture right out of your mouth; no amount of water lasts long enough to keep it away. You just leaned over and stared out into the desert, looking only at the occasional cactus and rocks. The low roar of the truck that carried you filled your ears, aside from the occasional bump on the sandy road that jarred the rusted axel, it was the only sound out here. You looked away from your spot on the back of the old truck and spared a thought for the other soldiers residing with you. There were about 12 of them, all soaked with sand and battle hardened. They had no identity, same as you. No one wanted to speak, no one wanted to have anything to do with anyone after what had just happened, yet they were the lives closest to you.  There was no other life out there, none worth saving anymore anyway. Not since the battle for Appleoosa.

That’s where you had just come from, along with the others. After the griffins 5th attack on echo, the base was given up for lost, and you were redeployed on the next closest bastion of civilization, Appleoosa.

When you arrived it was a ghost town, the people had been evacuated. You and around 1000 men were stationed there to protect the town. With close air and ground support guarding the perimeter.

You don’t remember how it started, or even most of the fight. You know it lasted two whole days. You know that all your heavy support was destroyed. You know that you got a severe concussion from something, and you know that you and the other 12 men were the only ones left. You're surprised that somebody bothered to send an extract, with the zone being so hot, in more ways than one.

You didn’t know where you were going. Right now you really didn’t care. You knew almost for certain you were going to die in this war, the only question was when and how painfully. Where ever you ended up next wasn’t going to any better, but you weren’t going to stop fighting until you were dead, you owed your family and comrades that much.

You look past the dust on the horizon in front of the truck and see the lights in the distance.  It wasn’t big enough to be a town, so you guessed that was your next station. The truck confirmed your assumption by halting at the entrance to the camp with a squeak. You all jumped out of the back end of the truck and made your way to the center of the collections of tents and crates that made up the camp for orders. You looked over to what used to be a sign, it had been scratched off multiple times, hiding the name, only a number etched into the bottom right corner remained. 13.

When your group reaches the center of the camp, one of the soldiers that was sitting by the campfire gets up and runs over to a tent, soon a man emerges. You look to his shoulder and see that he’s a captain, he certainly doesn’t look the part, he isn’t a royal guard and hes just as torn up as the rest of you.

“I commend you men on your valiance in Appleoosa, even though the city fell, you all fought bravely.” None of you really cared for his greeting, you all just wanted to go to sleep.

“Now I know all of you are eagerly awaiting rest, so Ive set up the third tent with adequate sleeping quarters. You are dismissed.” Now that is what you wanted to hear.

“Except you. Private (your name). I need something from you.” Goddamn it couldn’t this fucking wait till morning?

“Yes sir?” You stand at attention any way, even though you just wanted to snap and run into the desert to get away from whatever he wanted.

“I've read about what you did in echo, which was quite brave of you. You are now promoted to Sergeant.” This definitely could’ve fucking waited till morning, you thought.

“Thank you sir.” You say as politely as you can muster. In the last fight at echo the griffins had manage to take over most of the camp. With a skilled hand you silently took out many of them with a knife, and slowly led the majority of them to a stockpile of explosives, which you detonated in their face, effectively saving the camp.

“I also need something else from you. I need someone to infiltrate back into Appleoosa, and I need it done now. A troop stationing dossier was left in the captains quarters in the saloon in a safe. It was concealed so they may not have found it. If they do find it, it will compromise the locations and troop counts of all the stations in Equestria. You and one other man in this camp have shown the skills necessary to accomplish this task, the truck will take you back and we have air support ready to wipe the town off of the map should you fail. We need that defense point soldier, so I don’t want to do that, and the defenses they’ve set up around the town deter another direct attack. You leave in two hours.”

You are beyond pissed off at what you just heard. You are so upset that you aren’t even upset. You just go back to the truck, walk past the driver whose refilling and just crawl into the back and go to sleep.

A tap on the shoulder jolts you back to the realm of the living.

“So he lives?” You look up to find the man who disturbed your slumber. This guy looked like a professional, full black suit, NV goggles, two knives on his belt and a specialist SMG on his back.

“Fuck off.” You roll back over and fall asleep.

“Nice to meet you too. The names Pokey Pierce by the way, guess I’ll just wake you up when we get there.” You ignore him and just go back to sleep, savoring what little you can get.

…

After a horrible attempt to stay asleep through the bumpy ride you arrive on the outside of town, you crawl from your prone position and follow Pokey out of the truck.

“Just follow me. I’ll get us to the safe, you just do what I tell you.” You didn’t care to argue with that. Just less you have to do.

You walk through the alley ways in the town and can see griffins walking through the town on patrol. They were smart enough to use the buddy system, unfortunately. Pokey motions you to hide behind a dumpster. Just then a pair walks right by you. He then motions for you to take them out.

You stand up and embed your knife in the closest griffins throat and keep a hand over his mouth. Pokey does the same and the two of you put the bodies in a pile behind the dumpster.

The two of you move up to the street to the saloon. Unfortunately it is quite occupied with soldiers enjoying the last of the liquor still inside.

With intricate hand motions that you only half way understand, Pokey tells you to get on the nearby roof with him to get into the captains quarters. Doing so you get to the upstairs window on the saloon. Pokey lifts it open and steps inside.

“Alright, cover the door, I'm going to incinerate the safe contents.” Pokey motions as he pulls out some tools from his belt.

You lean against the frame to the side of the door and wait while Pokey goes to work. You hear the griffins on the bottom floor attempting to play piano and laughing to each other. Then you hear footsteps against the stairs outside.

“You might want to hurry it up.” You whisper across the room.

“Got it!” He opens the safe and then drops a pellet inside. With a fwoosh, the contents go up in flames, and it was a little louder than you would’ve liked

“Did you hear that? Get to the office!” the boot steps grow louder and faster and you speed towards the window with Pokey.

Only to be met by a rifle sticking into the window at your face

“Looks like two of them forgot who owns this town now.” The griffin at the window yells down at his comrades.

You turn to face your rear and see three griffins kick the door in and hit Pokey with the butt of their rifle, and doing the same to you, knocking you out.

…

You wake up on your knees on the ground floor of the saloon with Pokey to your right, and two griffins flanking the both of you. You look up and see a griffin officer standing over the two of you, loading a pistol. Around him must be 8 other griffins. This was probably going to be your last moment.

“So you think you can walk into OUR camp and trifle with us?” He speaks in his thick griffin accent.

“Well, I don’t think we’re going to send a message back that this is a bad idea.” He laughs and points his gun at Pokeys head.

In a last ditch effort for his life Pokey yells, “You do that and this whole place is going go up, there wont be any sur-“ A shot rings out and Pokeys face turns into a red mash of brain matter and blood.

“You Equestrians talk too much.” He walks over to you and points the pistol at your face, you lok right down the barrel.

“Any last words, dog?” Something inside you snaps. No, not like this. Not by him. You jerk up and let out a yell that could’ve woke the dead in echo. Then you black out as you lunge forward.

…

You wake up. Around you the saloon is covered in a coat of red, the floor is soaked in entrails, and so are you, your uniforms normal drab green is coated, boot to helmet in dripping blood and gore is hanging off you in places. In your left hand is your knife, the right had holds the griffin commander, by his throat.

“Any last words, you feathered fuck?” he spits blood from his broken mouth into your face.

You rear your arm back for the killing blow.

(……………………………………………………………………………………………………………)

You awaken in the train cart. Drifting out of the doze you find yourself standing up, in the same position as your dream, just before you woke.

You look to your right hand and see what you had done.

Rainbow Dash is in your clutches, bloody nose and a gash across her cheek begging for mercy.

“Please…urk….I'm not a griffin…..please….” her feet are dangling off of the ground and she can’t breathe,  you look back to your other hand and see the knife poised, ready to strike.

“No… I'm so sorry.” You release her and she curls up and puts her hands over her head to try to protect herself.

“Just don’t kill me…I'm not a griffin…please…” she manages to choke out between sobs. You are both still naked from your last interaction. You just stand there and stare at your hands, contemplating what you were about to do.

Just then AJ bursts into the door and attempts to take in the scene in front of her, most likely hearing the screams from next door. “WHAT DID YOU DO?!” Her face turns from terror to rage as she looks from Rainbow to you. She comes at you and throws a straight punch at you. Your training kicks in and you spin backwards, grab her hand and her belt at the back and flip her over her unbalanced weight from the punch.

You spin to meet her downed figure and pin her and put the knife to her throat. She looks up at you with anger and disgust, unable to fight back from the position you put her in.

“I'm so sorry.” You try to reconcile, but you know it’s no use. You get off of her and grab your clothes. Looking to the window you see that you’ve arrived back in Ponyville. Exiting the room you see AJ still staring at you angrily, but not getting up, whether from fear or injury, you don’t know. You put your clothes on and exit the train. You run as far away from the train as you can. Fearing your own actions, and what you might do to any of these poor people.

Your lungs are set ablaze after a couple of minutes and you stop and sit down at a tree, you put your head and your hands and try to chastise yourself as best you can.

You almost killed her! All because you can’t fucking control your own dreams, you think to yourself. All I wanted was to find somewhere nice to settle down away from the horrors out there, I spent so long out there I've become one myself. I've effectively banished myself from this town, I can’t stay here anymore, I'm putting all of their lives in danger just by being here, you rationalize.

I've just got to tell Princess Luna about the supplies, then I've got to get as far away from here as possible, you think, more wanting a final interaction with this sweet town than wanting to let Luna know.

You get up and solemnly make your way towards the library, to make your last goodbye.

You walk up to the library, you don’t know what to do at first. If Twilight answers the door, she could be in danger from me, I cant just knock, I don’t even kn-, your thought process is interrupted as Luna opens the door to great you.

“Ah…You have returned, I trust your journey was successful?” she asks.

“Yes your majesty. We retrieved the components you asked for.” You say in a somber tone.

“Wonderful, I will have them installed at once, I do not currently have anything else for you now. Here is your payment, you may use it in the shops around town,” She holds out a bag of coins for you. “Enjoy the city soldier, you have earned it.”

“No Princess I cant, I…I have to leave here.” You start backing away from her.

“Why in Equestria would you have to do that dear soldier?” she asks, confused.

“I'm a danger to your subjects, they aren’t safe with me around, I almost killed…” you choke up, not even being able to talk about it. “I just…I can’t stay here!”

You turn and run off as fast as you can towards the city limits, it’s a couple miles off, but you have to get out of the city as fast as you can before you're able to hurt anyone else.

“Nay soldier, wait!” She yells after you, but you ignore it.

You race as fast as you can to the edge of town, it took you almost 30 minutes of solid sprinting, but you had to get out, before anything else can happen. You reach the edge of town and move into the broken battlefield surrounding Ponyville, the war torn earth and demolished machinery. This is where you belonged. You were too polluted to be in that town with those innocent people. You had to leave them, so that they will never have to face the cruel outside world, So that they could make a better life from the ashes of the old civilization. Without you.

You reach the top of the hill where you had first seen Ponyville. You look back at the pristine town and collapse to your knees. You were exhausted, you had pushed all of the energy you had into getting out of the town. You no longer even have the energy to get up.

With Ponyville fading in your vision, you collapse onto the grass and pass out.

%i%: Nights Embrace

6: Nights Embrace

     You wake up on the grassy knoll and it doesn't come to you how you got there for a moment. You sit up in the middle of the highest spot in the grassy plain and look down into the valley. Oh yeah, Ponyville. It all rushes back to you in an instant. Almost killing Rainbow, running around town, leaving the princess in the doorway at the library. You honestly think you could've handled all that better. After the shock of your actions wore off, you had more time to properly think about it.

   You really could've handled that better. After running around the town for an hour, you handled that interaction with Luna like a junior high school girl. You laugh at your foolishness while you sit there staring at the town. You could've just walked out of the town, in a calm peaceful manner, but you suppose your emotions got the better of you. You weren't going to hurt any of those people while you had your wits about you. But you have had episodes of imitating your dreams right down to the tee. Usually it wouldn't matter, being as you slept alone most of the time, with no one nearby, but in the heat of the moment you forgot you couldn't trust your sleeping body.

   You then reason with the situation calmly. This isn't something that can really be helped, so you're just going to have to learn to live with it from now on. Needless to say, you knew you were pretty much banished from Ponyville, but so long as you were still alive you'd keep pushing on. Live and learn, you suppose.

   You turn around, and take stride towards the forest, you dreaded the thought of the journey ahead of you, but going through that is a hundred times better than killing those who didn't deserve it, especially ones so innocent.

   You take a step into the treeline, then the area behind you is illuminated with a bright white light.

   As it vanishes, a booming sound takes its place. "AND WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING, SIR?"

   Who else could that be, but the Princess of the night her self. Now you were in for it. "Uhh...Just going to be on my way. I don't want any trouble, I just want to leave before anyone else gets hurt." You try to help your case. Who knows what she has in store for you for attempting to murder one of her subjects. Since she has obviously dispelled your attempt at self banishment, you assume she wants immediate execution. Hopefully its quick.

   As you try to back away from her into the forest, a light blue light surrounds your figure. You are suddenly jerked out of your footing and come hovering to the princess upside down.

   "AAH! I said I was sorry, It won’t happen again, I swear on my life! Just don't execute me and I’ll leave the town in peace!" Fear overtakes you as you know what kind of power the Princesses have. She could end you right there, or make it slow. Very slow. For all your training and expertise, she had you under her will, with not a thing you could do about it. You close your eyes and accept your fate.

   "Execute you? Dearest soldier, no. We...I do not wished to have you killed. This town desperately needs you. I need you." Looking out of your grimace you look the princess in the eye.

   "You do?" Usually attempted murder was met with a much harsher punishment, but it seems it wasn’t coming to you quite yet.

   "Yes. This town is on the brink of collapse, you walking into our town was the perfect gift. We need someone like you who knows how to handle himself. Our supplies are running low and I don't know of anyone else who has the ability you have. None of these girls know how to fight, and there are only three other men in the town. And only one of them has any experience with combat, and he is needed elsewhere. This town was going to fall out from under me if I wasn't able to create an envoy to the wastes. I know I'm asking a lot of you soldier, but I simply have no other choice." you think most of that was just to get you to believe her, you have a hard time believing the Princess of the night herself couldn't handle one town. Her and her sister ruled the country.

   "I s'pose when you put it that way. But I do have a problem Princess, and I don't want to hurt anybody else." she still didn't want to release you from her magical grip, which wouldn't be a problem, if you weren't upside down.

   "I can most certainly help you with that. And please, call me Luna." She looks up to you with a smile.

   "Alright Luna, would you mind letting me down?" You're starting to get disoriented and would really like to walk on your own.

   "Nonsense! We can't have you run off again. How about a nice stroll back to Ponyville?" She is quite enjoying this moment, unlike her company. How would you say no though? It wasn't like you had much of a choice.

   "I went down to the train after you left to find out the state of things." Luna's tone suddenly goes in a more somber direction.

   "What'd they tell you?" You honestly don't remember half of it yourself, though you didn't feel like you really wanted to.

   "Upon further inspection of the cart, I discovered Applejack consoling Rainbow Dash, the pair sitting on the bed. The poor girl seemed to be quite skittish and was almost frightened to move away from Applejack. She even jumped when I entered. I asked Applejack for an explanation for all this." You really didn't want to hear the rest of it now. Feelings of guilt were returning to you in massive waves. You weren't about to interrupt the Princess though, considering your current disoriented position, so you just let her continue.

   "She told me that Rainbow Dash wouldn't talk to her, at all. Applejack continued that she found the two of you in a quite one sided altercation. When you let Rainbow down and lowered your weapon, Applejack said she attempted to "calm you down", which she said was met by you putting her into a dangerous submission. She said you got off of her and she didn't want to get up for fear of you doing something worse to her." Oh good. You didn't break anything on her. That would've only have made you feel so much worse.

   "Then you just ran off. I assume that was when you came to me?" Luna asks you expectantly.

   "That'd be correct."

   "Well, I assume that your emotions got the better of you, I did say before you had left that I would be able to help you with your predicament." She did say that she would help you deal with it didn't she? Now you feel REALLY stupid.

   "I am the Princess of the Night after all. I can help you alter your nightly subconscious." Luna says.

   "I'm sorry Luna, I should've come to you about it the next night and asked you for help, none of this should've happened." You attempt to apologize.

   "No, dearest soldier, the blame is mine. I had sensed your troubled dreams and in my haste to maintain the town I procrastinated helping you as such. But we shall this remedy this situation back in Ponyville!" She says as she tries to take some of the heat off of you.

   "Luna, no, you don't have to take the blame. You aren't the one with the problem that almost ki-"

   "Ah, silence! I require complete concentration if I am to help you with this endeavor." She told you, snapping her fingers, you felt your lips tingle. Upon further inspection the once flesh entrance to your mouth was covered in a seemingly jagged metal, then promptly zipped shut. The princess seemed to have just silenced you with the oldest cartoon trick you could think of.

Floating through the air in the forgotten battlefield path to Ponyville, upside down and mouth replaced with a zipper, you thought, on the list of things that is not okay, this is really not okay.

    The two of you arrive at the library finally, Luna refused to let you down the entire way. Luna opens the passage way and enters the library with you hanging upside down right behind her.

    “Twilight Sparkle! Are you home?” she used that booming voice again. You thought that would be all it would take to kill you the first time. The fact that you were now in an enclosed space only made the situation that much more hard on your eardrums.

    You hear a crashing sound come from the upstairs room and Twilight comes out soon after fixing herself from something.

    “Uhh...Yes Princess I'm home.” She gives a funny look to you floating upside down behind her.

    “Dearest Twilight, I require of you to go to sweet apple acres and the adjacent farm, and check with them about the projected growth and current supply. Then check with the corresponding sections of the market to see if we shall meet quota, or if we will have to find another alternative.” Luna told Twilight in an authoritative manner.

    “But Princess, didn't we just do that last week?” Twilight says, looking confused.

    “Do you question my need for this information Miss Sparkle?” Luna’s gaze on the poor girl does not relent.

    “No Princess! I'm sorry, I'll get right on it and get back to you as fast as possible.” She begins to scramble around and gather books and quills to accomplish her task.

    “Please, take your time Twilight, I wouldn't want you gathering false information in your haste.” Now you know Luna is just trying to get rid of Twilight, instead of actually having to need this done. This derives a bit of fear in you. Why would she need Twilight gone? You figured this is probably going to hurt.

    “Of course Princess, I'll get back to you as soon as possible.” She says as she walks out the door with a scrambled collection of paper.

    “Marvelous.” She looks back at the door, waiting for it to shut. After it does, she looks back to you playfully.

    “Now, to help you... Let us go to my quarters it will be easier to enact my methods.” Now you knew something wasn’t right. Luna still wouldn't let you down and now she was giving you a weird smile.

    She walked into the basement of the library, which seemed much more spacious than the rest. It seems Princess Luna had set up her sleeping quarters down here. It looked like a lecture hall almost. There were two levels to the room, with stairs going down to the bottom. She had an enormous bed with the most beautiful blue blankets adorning it, the fabric seemed to sparkle in the light in the bottom layer with two nightstands on each side and a dresser at the other end of the bottom level. The next level had many shelves and tables around the circular layout and was covered in shelves and tables. On top of all of them were notes, plans, models, and blueprints. While walking down the stairs to the bottom level, Luna noticed you looking at all of them.

    “I have many plans for this town. Some, I know, I shall just be biding time with creating. Others I believe will make this town a much safer, grander place. I desire this town to be a breakthrough in new technology in this side of Equestria. Being known as the safe haven of the new world.” She seemed quite proud of this, she should be. Some of those plans looked of technology far beyond your comprehension. Who knows what how she could help the town.

    “Seems like a lot of work.” You didn't really know what else to say.

    “It will be much less with your assistance, but all in due time. Now we must deal with your predicament.” With that she threw you on the bed, in a not so gentle manner. After recovering you felt the fabric under your hand. It was the most glorious thing you had ever touched. It felt as if the fabric was woven of the softest material Equestria could ever hope to come across, it was truly fit for a goddess. Even having taking a shower and cleaning your clothes a couple of days before, you felt way too dirty to even be 30 feet away from this bed. But you didn't think Luna wanted you to go anywhere.

    “So how does this work? I ain’t really up to sleeping right now.” Maybe she had some magic or something that would make you fall asleep.

    “Oh, we can most certainly remedy you of your energy...” With a coy smile she snapped her fingers. With a flash her clothing was gone, revealing her heavenly form, that not meant for your simple mortal eyes. Rainbow Dash had a nice body, very nice, Luna had a body that sculptors only wish they could imagine in their wildest, most imaginative dream. Her curves and figure were what any thing on earth saw as utmost perfection. Breasts, hips, legs, they were all the definition of perfection that any male, and most women would seek to find. Nothing else you will see in your life will be this attractive, not by a long shot.

    Speaking of shoot, after three seconds of gazing at her godly figure, you fill the groin of your pants up with your ejaculate. With a groan you lay back, already spent.

    “Already? we are nowhere close to finished.” With another snap your clothes disappear. Luna crawls onto the bed with you, and canters towards you on all fours in the most seductive manner possible.

    “Do you think you have what is needed to be worthy of a Princess?” Her tone changes towards seductive as she positions herself between your legs. You can't really speak at the moment, her motions towards you brought you close to the brink again, and you wanted to hold out to find out how far she really planned to go.

    “Dearest soldier, we will most certainly find out.” arching her back, Luna leans down between your legs and goes to grasp your manhood. She slowly wraps one hand around the base, and that does it. The softest part of the bed was nowhere even close to the pure pleasure that was Lunas skin against yours. With a groan you let loose yet again.

    “Again? I know I am a goddess but this is ridiculous. We are going to have to do something about this.” She snaps her fingers again and a blue ring appears around the base, not seemingly constricting, but you knew it did something.

    “Now, where were we?” She wraps her hand around your member yet again, but you hold out, barely. Then she goes to lick from base to head, slowly. On the way up you cum, yet again, twice, yet this time all it yields is a slight convulsion and a groan of pleasure from you. Whatever spell she put on you certainly restricted the fluid flow, but definitely not the pleasure.

    She then sensually puts her mouth around your head. You never would've even imagined a princess doing this to you, you still can't. The inside of her mouth is the perfect combination of warmth, wetness and gentleness. She only begins her first passage down when you release around three times. All the sensory neurons in your body are overloading your brain with pleasure, making a normally simple task, such as producing a simple thought, a task that requires the utmost concentration to even begin to attempt.

    All you could do to not pass out while watching the Princess serve you in such a way, was count how many separate times she made you cum. Watching her beautiful pale face and gorgeous glowing hair bob at your waist you thought, 38...39...40...

    At one point she begins to move her hand in opposite synchronization with her mouth. This causes you to convulse throughout your body in a sort of pleasure seizure.

    “Hmm... I suppose we should have a change of pace then. You seem to be enjoying this too much.” She smiles at you with her beautiful face, and crawls up onto you with her beautiful...everything.

    “Habaza arcandal isbanakanabas sa.” That was your attempt to put together a coherent sentence after the pleasure overload overtook you.

    She giggles adorably at that. ...41... “How about you just get me warmed up as well.” She says as she positions herself over you with her royal vagina at  a prime licking level. You look up at her across her beautifully molded stomach and breasts ...42... then you happily obliged. She tastes like the stars themselves, which you didn't even know had a taste, you couldn't even describe it if you wanted too, you just know that it was better than any food you've ever tasted.

As you attempt to send an onslaught of your own at the majestic Princess of the night, she moans softly, ...43... signifying you were doing something right. You continue to pleasure the princess in the best way you can possibly achieve, which still seems lackluster compared to her ability.    After her moans slowly get louder and her royal fluids flow down your chin and neck, with a couple more ejaculations on your part. She lowers herself off of you and comes down to meet you face to face.

    “Thank you.” Then she gives you a long kiss on the lips ...52... and positions herself above you, probing her entrance with your manhood, slowly making her way down.  She begins to ride you, doing all the work. You wouldn't even begin to try to take up the responsibility of trying to fuck her, you didn't think you could hardly move at this point. She will probably enjoy it better this way any way.

    Looking up at her graceful movements on your figure, you feel the inside of her, and it feels as if you had truly died and found the absolute best afterlife any soul could ever hope for. At this rate you really would pass out underneath her.

    As she continued to sway her hips and moan on top of you, she closed her eyes and turned her head to the side to try to subside her pleasure. The act only made you lose count ...143...144...145...shit. All of the sudden the princess tilts her head back and arches onto you, letting out a loud moan and convulsing on top of you. The act sent so much pleasure through your body, that something definitely broke. You couldn't move anything. Your eyes wouldn't even change direction, and your eyelids were too weak to close on them. Yup..the princess just broke you. You couldn't think of a better way to die.

    The princess climbs off of you and releases her spell. Your member then explodes in a barrage of fluid and doesn't stop for a couple of minutes. Luna catches it in a magical orb and it fills up to what looks as if it could fill up a gallon jug, but haw would you know, you couldn't even see straight anymore.

    The Princess leaves a moment to dispose of your fluids, and then quickly returns back with her figure clothed again. She picks you up with her magic and sets you under the sheets. She kisses you on the cheek and sits down beside you on the bed.

    “Ahh...I needed that. Now sleep dearest soldier, the matter of your mind i shall deal with in your slumber.” You certainly couldn't argue with her.

    You then drift off to sleep with her watchful eye over you at the bedside

    (................................................................................................................................)

    You were sitting in what used to be an outdoor theater, surrounded by hundreds of other soldiers. You were in fillydelphia, you had just gotten transferred from the desert frontier to this more populated area. You got promoted to Master Sergeant after you and a squad assigned to you flanked a griffin hotspot in appleoosa and effectively broke their ranks and arguably won back the city. Your squad didn't make it back, poor kids got chewed up in small arms fire, but you did, and the military thought they could use you on this new city front. The griffins decided to split their assault into two fronts, the desert to the south, and the more populated eastern area. They were currently invading Manehattan, you assumed you were going to be thrown into the thick of it there. Them wanting your leadership experience there.

    But you've been wrong before. The hundreds of soldiers around you were also higher ranked soldiers, staff sergeants, first sergeants, corporals, and other manner of higher ranking foot soldiers made up the crown you sat in currently, all being told to watch the stage in front of you, by some higher ranking royal guards. Those smug bastards hardly do any fighting, but always get a higher rank than any enlisted man, it did not make any sense to you.

    You looked up, a womanly figure exiting the curtains and walking up on the stage. It was the Princess of the night herself. Anybody (besides Celestia) else would've been hooted and hollered at with most of these soldiers not having seen any action in months, but with the Princess you all knew better and to have some respect. You wondered what she was doing out here so close to the new front, you knew she was immortal, but it just didn't feel right. You just assumed she was about to tell you why you were here, so you gave her your attention.

    “Hello enlisted officers of the great Equestria’s army, I have gathered you all here today to inform you of our enemy’s new resources, and ways that you may combat against them. I brought you all here instead of sending out a briefing packet because the supplies and information I must give you is very important and must be kept very dear to you, for the fate of this war may lie in the balance.” Well that answered why you were here. Now what was so important that it had you all dragged out to this city instead of just getting orders.

    “First I would like to go over new griffin weapons and battle tactics they are using on the new front.” And so she did. She presented you all with a plethora of slides containing images of the new griffin equipment. The griffins had developed new weapons, including an assault rifle with better short range capability and a higher fire rate, a version of the an-94 is all you really got out of it. They also were training new snipers with a previously unused semi-automatic rifle, the Dragunov, they had overproduced it in years prior to the war and are putting it to effect now, with snipers being rather resourceful, you’d have to keep a close eye on that. They also have come up with their own airplanes to combat the helicopters and jets that Equestria has put into production, with theirs being much slower, but not lacking in the firepower department. New versions of their tanks and armor were revealed as well. With the princess ending off the slides with new tactics.

    “The griffins are now employing five man squads, similar to our new four man line up, with each having their own specialty,” engineer, short range explosive specialist, assault and resupply specialist, medic...what else would they need? “The deviant from our line up being that they now have a sniper to cover the squads advance, plan your actions accordingly.” That might present some problems, but you spared your thoughts to listen to the princess.

    “Now, that all is not the reason I had you come out. THe griffins have begun to employ tactics that are much more evil. We must take extreme caution with these new weapons which i will now explain.” So now we get to the good stuff. What could be better than snipers around every squad and tanks with three times the ordinance?

    “Biological weapons. The griffins have been equipped with two new types of poisonous grenades to use against you. The first we have named x-14, this is a deadly neurotoxin released in the form of smoke grenade, upon inhalation, it will send the victim into painful spasms which will be followed by death.” Well, that is much worse than snipers. “The second we have named y-3, it is a much slower acting poison, but it is administered via grenade as well. The explosion will yield a blast radius of a sticky green liquid, if this is to get onto you, you must remove all affected clothing at once, and attempt to wash off any that has been transferred to skin. The liquid will begin to cause the skin to rot into a black mold which is untreatable by any means beyond one day, if symptoms are caught in the first few hours after exposure, amputation may save the victim, but this only has a 50% success rate within the first hour of skin molding.” This is getting to be brutal, why the griffins would go to such an extreme is beyond you, this war is barely out of a stalemate, and you dont know whos winning.

    “I have prepared a syringe to be given to each of you, the serum will halt the exposure of both substances, it only takes a drop of it to take effect, so use it with the affected accordingly. It will be worn in conjunction to your dog tag. It is small, so do not waste a drop of it, that is all we are currently able to manufacture.” Luna says in a professional mannerism. You didn't think this could get much worse.

    “In addition to this, a new strand of virus has been discovered in some bullet wounds. This virus is a plague level threat. It spreads through the infected victim through the air. Anyone infected will succumb to normal flu symptoms until they have reached a temperature of 106. At this threshold death is soon to follow. There is no cure, but there is a vaccination. This is also in scarce quantity currently, you all will be administered, but your lower level comrades will have to wait, if we are able to manufacture any more.” Now shit is getting serious. The griffins don't seem to want to let up until everyone’s dead.

“And finally, we have intercepted reports of mutant experiments, not  much is known at this point, other than the experiments are a success but they are not able to control them at this time. Be on the lookout for any such thing.” Well, you've got some fighting ahead of you, and now its going to get brutal.

“You are all dismissed, return to the the main tent to receive your supplies and vaccination, you will also be given the location of your new assignment, chosen according to your experience and abilities. May you all live to fight to the end of this war. Farewell” With that, she turned and exited the stage, and all the soldiers got up to walk down to the tent as instructed.

    You always longed for a chance to see Luna in person, but now you are just filled with a sense of anxiety of the disaster that you know is to come with all this new deadly arsenal. The troops around you must share your sentiment, the group of hundreds of officers is dead silent. You all make your way to the main tent for the things you will need.

    You stop by a station and they attach a syringe to your dogtags and give you a shot, along with a briefing envelope. You open yours to find what lies within. It tells you your destination; Las pegasus. Back to the desert it is. It gives you the number and you head out into the freeway turned airstrip. You read the number of the plane you need to get on. You look up into the rows of planes and buses to find the correct one. After cross referencing the numbers with three different planes you find the correct one and board it with a couple of other troops.

    After a couple of hours of the plane refueling and being loaded with some crates with supplies for the front, it takes off into the night. The low roar of the dual propeller engines lull you to sleep. making you weary for your next assignment.

        (....................................................................................................)

    You awaken. Looking around, you don't know where you are, the room seems entirely foreign to you. Then the events of the...previous day? come back to you. What the princess and you did on this wonderful feeling bed. That was enough to wake up another part of you as well. You were also fully clothed. The princess must've clothed you in your sleep.

    “Ah, you're awake. I have good news.” Luna says from the door behind you, fully clothed as well, making a part of you very disappointed. With a swift motion you ignore it and tuck it away into your waistband as you stand up to greet her.

    “So, were you able to stop the dreams?” You asked hopefully.

    “Alas, no. Those dreams are deeply rooted in your subconscious, I was only able to disconnect your bodies ability to react with the dreams. So from the worst nightmare you will sleep soundly and motionlessly through it, as long as my spell holds strong.” Luna says. As long as you didn't hurt anyone else.

    You look out the door, seeing sunlight, but not sure what to make of it. “How long was I out?”

    “About three days. Twas required to make the necessary changes to your brain.” She says as if it weren't a big deal.

    “THREE DAYS?!” You immediately thought that it didn't really matter, its not like you had anything important to do, wait, yes you did. Reconciling with Applejack and Rainbow Dash were to be handled as swiftly as possible.

    “Soldier! Volume! If you do not calm yourself I shall send you back into the land of slumber with a simple snap of my fingers.” Luna says, attempting to calm you.

    “Sorry Luna I- ...A simple snap of your fingers? Then why did you-”

    She interrupts you with a smile. “I may be a Princess, but I do have urges the same as most girls in this town. I was simply lucky enough to find an excuse to get you alone.”

    “Well I can't say I didn't enjoy it, but we may have to limit interactions like that, ‘less you want me to die of pleasure overload.” You give her a smile in return.

    “Good to hear, I shall keep that in mind. I do need another task completed from you however. One that requires another cross-country journey. I will give you instructions when you are ready.” Luna goes to leader mode with the new sentence.

    “Alright, but there are a couple things I must take care of in town first.” You tell her, making your way out of the room.

    “Understandable, take these bits for your last job if you wish to purchase anything in town.” she holds out the bag to you, you take it this time.

    “Thank you kindly.”

    “No, thank you.” She says with a wink.

    With a happy stride you make your way out of the library.

    “Morning sleepy head.” Twilight says while sitting at a desk reading a book.

    “Morning to you too, miss.” With the old habit of tipping a hat that isn't there you make your way out of the library into that Ponyville sun.

    For once, things are finally looking up.

%i%: Amendment

7: Amendment

     You walked out into the world outside of the library, the sun and the bright colors of the town greeted you as you closed the door behind you. Had it really been as long as the Princess had said? You had a lot to take care of, well not really. You thought that making amends with Rainbow was the first priority, the poor girl went through a lot because of you, the least you could do is try to make amends, as long as she would actually talk to you at all, maybe if you got one of her friends to come with you to calm her down so she didn't freak out at the sight of you, or something.You strode out to begin with this daunting task when it hit you.

    You don't know where anyone in this town even lives, save for Lyra and Bon Bon, and the Princess. That was definitely going to be a problem, considering you need to find Rainbow before you can talk to her.

    The man inside of you refused to ask for directions from any of the girls around town, wanting to look like you knew what you were doing. But you thought that wandering around town just guessing wasn't going to get you anywhere. You decided to seek your previous chauffeur, Lyra.

    Come to think of it, you haven't seen her since you got back and technically you were her roommate so its only right to tell her you aren't dead. She was also the first one in the town, hell the first one in a couple months, who would call you a friend, you planned to honor her as your friend, so a little interaction was always favorable.

    Only partially remembering the way back to Lyra and Bon Bons apartment, you walk around a couple of streets, having to backtrack a couple of times to find the correct building, since you couldn't be bothered for any of that direction asking nonsense.

    Finally, after only like thirty minutes or so, you find the right house. You walk up to the white painted wooden door and go to knock on it.

    Knock...Knock....

    No answer. Well you did live here, so it shouldn't be rude to just walk in. You try the knob, and it yields to you, revealing the dark living room of the apartment. You doubt they would just leave the door unlocked if they left, but then again, this is quite a nice neighborhood. You try around a couple rooms downstairs, calling their names occasionally. After not being able to discover their whereabouts, you travel upstairs, figuring they may be in their rooms or something. You walk down the hallway listening for any signs of life, it was about mid morning, so they had to be awake by now. Passing the door to the bathroom you hear fabric rustling in one of the rooms in front of you followed by Lyra’s voice saying something you couldn't quite understand in a low whisper.. Finding a possible source of the girls location, you forget all of your manners in your confidence and open the door to the room the sound emanated from.

    To find that you had disturbed a quite intimate moment between the two. Lyra is leaned up against the headboard naked, with Bon Bon between her legs going to work on Lyra, with a look of pleasure plastered across Lyras face. Bon Bon still had a pair of jeans on, which you noticed with wide eyes as Lyra opened her eyes to discover the source of the noise coming from the rooms door.

    She looks at you and Immediately screams and attempts to throw the blanket over herself, Bon Bon looks up to see what Lyras panic is about and sees you as well.

    Covering herself she yells out, “Oh Celestia. What the hell?! GETOUTGETOUTGETOUT.” She waves you off with one arm, with a frightened expression and a strong blush crossing her face.

    “Shit! Sorry!” You attempt to slam the door shut to give them some privacy, but you did it so hard that the door didn't want to catch, so it just swung back open again, awkwardly revealing you to them again, Bon Bon looks at you with a flustered expression. “Gah! Sorry!” You shut the door a bit more gently and it closes this time and it actually closes.

    Backing away from the door, your senses return to you. For some reason, now you really had to go to the bathroom, being asleep for three days will probably do that to you.

    You make your way to the hallway bathroom to relieve yourself, and to hide from the girls. That was embarrassing as fuck, but on the flipside, that was hot as hell. You begin to think about getting into it with them at the same time, two girls at the same time is a fantasy for any sane straight male in the whole universe. The thought begins to bring your member to attention. The act then reveals to you how painfully sore you are down there from your last sexual experience. It may take a couple of days before you can actually get into anyone else.

Finishing your business, you wash your hands in the sink and make your way out of the bathroom. Opening the door you find the hallway to be undisturbed, meaning that they probably hadn't made it out of the room yet. You made your way downstairs and then decide to just wait outside a while, you needed Lyra to show you around town, and you kinda wanted to spend some more time with her.

You sit down against the wall on the outside of the apartment, and begin the long process of waiting. You didn't know when it'd be okay to go back in and talk to them, so you just decided to wait until it felt right to do so. Bad part about it is you don't know when that'll be, or even if they want to talk to you. Which sucks since you really need Lyras help right now. You suppose you could think about that moment instead.

Lyras near perfect body arched in pleasure, with Bon Bon steering her into it. That smooth naval down to Bon Bons purple and blue hair waving at her sweet spot. Bon Bons back arched down into it. Damn did those jeans make her ass look perfect. You just wanted to tear them off an-

“Uhh, heh, hey,” Lyra jolts you out of your thought as she closes the door behind her. You didn't even hear the door open. Lyra leans down against the wall beside you, to your disappointment, fully clothed. A mint green T-shirt and a pair of shorts that were very revealing almost made up for it though.

“Oh, howdy,” Great now things are awkward, you figure you better apologize, or something. “Im real sorry ‘bout that, I should’a knocked at least.” She just smiles at you, maybe she wasn't mad.

“Hehe, don't worry about it, If you're gonna live here, that probably won't be the last time that happens,” Awesome. “I'm sure Bon Bon’s more upset than I am though. I don't think she's mad at you, she just doesn't like people knowing about us.” That statement didn't seem to come with enough sadness, you thought. That usually isn't a very healthy relationship.

“Whys that? If you don't mind me asking.” You were more trying to work the awkward out of the relationship than make small talk, but you were curious anyway.

“Well, Bon Bon’s mom still lives in town and she is a more, uhh, refined type of lady.”

“So she’s a snob who disapproves of all the decisions her daughter makes that she don't like?” You never were much for subtlety.

“Hehe, yeah something like that,” You missed that giggle. “I’m glad you're back, we were starting to worry about you. The princess told me that she sent you back out there, then when the train came back, you never came back here.”

“Well, nobody died on that trip, but some bad things did happen. So now I need your help with something.” You turn to her, your look suddenly solemn.

“Well, How can I help you sir?” She stands up and bows to you as she says it. That makes you laugh.

“Heh, I just need you to show me where some of the girls I need to talk to live.” You stand up with her.

“Looking for a date? I can hook you up!” she says enthusiastically.

“No, it ain't nothin’ like that. I...need to apologize.”

“Oh...okay. So where to?” She looks up at you with the question.

“I need to talk to Applejack first.” She was probably your best bet to help keep  Rainbow calm if she didn't take well to your presence, or so you assumed.

“Hmm, the farms a ways out, but I can get you there! Onward!” She points in the right direction and begins to march. You just follow along behind her. She is adorable, you're glad to have her as a friend.

    About halfway there, or so you're told, you decide to strike up a conversation. “So you and Bon Bon huh? I didn't figure you two to be like that.” That sounded a little more derogatory than you intended, but you doubt she was the type to take offense.

    “Are you kidding me? Half the girls in Ponyville are...well, do that.” She seemed to almost recoil at the thought of calling herself gay. “I mean, its not like we have many other options. The only two guys in town that are available aren't really available. Its kinda hard to explain.” The two of you just passed the fence into an apple orchard, so you guessed you were about on there.

    “I ‘spose it makes sense.” Well that was kind of a let down, since it means most of the girls are off limits now.

    “But don't think that means we wont warm up to you! I mean...uh...hehe...I just...” She managed to quickly blurt out. Maybe it wasn't a lost cause after all. You decided to steer off that topic for now.

    “This is a mighty big farm, I can't even see the barn or farm house or nothin’ yet.”  Lyra broke away from her blush at the statement.

    “Yeah, it has to feed most of ponyville, so its going to be pretty big. We actually just started another farm to the north of this one.” Lyra says to you.

    “That must be a lot of upkeepin’, half of ponyvilles gotta be helpin out here.” You look around to find anyone tending the fields, but find them bare at the moment.

    “Actually, flut-” Just then you hear a heavy footstep behind the two of you. Upon turning to it, a fully grown grizzly bear had somehow snuck up behind the two of you and was much closer than you would like.

    Out of pure reflex you take your .45 out of its holster and bring it up to level with the beast, the bear reacts by continuing its path towards you and raising itself to its hind legs fro a swipe of its paw.

    Lyra jumps at you and yells “NO!” and grabs your arms and pulls them down.

    BANG

    The shot rings out and embeds itself into the trail below the bear. It was too late to bring another shot up to the bear, let alone think why in Equestria Lyra would do that, Since the bears paw is on its way down to strike the both of you.

“STOOOOOOOOP,” A voice echos a short ways away and the bear halts its assault and drops to its front legs again. You were too dumbfounded to even realize what had just happened, with Lyra still holding your hands back.

A girl with long flowing pink hair and a pair of yellow wings flies down in between you and the beast.

“What is going on here?!” It sounded like she wanted to yell, but she had a volume restriction on her voice. You didn't pay much mind to it, this girl looked absolutely adorable in her yellow turtleneck and pink skirt.

“Sorry fluttershy, he didn't know about the animals here.” Do what? Why is there a grizzly bear in the middle of an apple orchard?

    “I'm a might sorry miss, but this bear here was coming at us with malicious intent, I had to do something.” You pull your finger off of the trigger but don't pu the gun away, because there was a freaking bear in front of you.

    The girl looks back at the bear, and it gives her a couple of low growls.

    “He told me you threatened him first.” She looks at you angrily. You did bring the gun up to him right as you saw him, but in your defense, an 800 pound grizzly bear standing twenty feet from you is almost never a good thing.

    “I...uh...” You aren't really sure what to say, so Lyra just fills it in for you, finally letting go of you, “Sorry Fluttershy, I hadn't told him yet, but I promise I'll keep him in line from now on.” She gives you a stern look.

    “My sincerest apologies, if theres anything I can do to make up for it, let me know.”  Finally, you put the pistol back in its holster.

    “Oh, its okay, I'm just glad we've got this misunderstanding taken care of.” She turns to leave with the bear in tow, talking to it like a mother would scolding a child, “You should know better than to charge at people like that,” the bear growls at her a couple times, “I can understand that, but he wouldn't have done that if you didn't try to attack him,” the bear growls apologetically a couple of times before their voices fade off into the distance.

    “Like I was saying,” Lyra gives you a look that says, “you're an idiot”, “Fluttershy and the animals help out on the farm, so we have more jobs in ponyville rather than on the farm.”

    “Hey, in my defense Grizzly Bears aren't usually so controllable.” You tilt your head towards her and give her an incredulous look.

    “Hehe, I know, I know. Fluttershy isn't usually that direct with people. She's usually pretty shy,” She ponders to herself.

    “Threatening someone with a firearm can have that effect on people.” Your walk finally brings the two of you within sight of the farmhouse. You both walk up to the porch and stand in front of the door, you take the liberty of knocking, which suddenly feels like a bad idea when give it some thought.

    The door opens and Applejack greets you with a battle ready face and gives Lyra a look that says you might want to stay back. Her gloved hand is leaning over to the right side of the door frame, reaching for an object that you could only make out the wooden tip of, and which you could only guess was an old 12 gauge shotgun.

    “Uh, hey Applejack, I just came to say I'm sorry about what happened on the train. I wasn't fully control of my faculties, and I would've never done that to either of you in my right mind. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.” You fiddle your hands together with a hat you don't have, out of habit from your days of youth, when you were never seen without the accessory.

    “Partner, I don't think I'm the one you really should be apologizin’ to. But Princess Luna told me ‘bout your situation, so I ‘spose I can let you off. This time.” Applejack eases the almost visible tension in her stature and puts the object she was about to bring to bear on you back into its position.

    “That’s kinda why I came to you first. I know Rainbow’s gonna be pretty shook up, I don't want her to freak out or nothing, I just need you to reassure her ‘fore I can talk to her.” You try to say as humbly as you can.

    She looks hesitant for a moment before speaking. “Er... Alright fine. But you owe me one mister.” She walks out of the house, presumably on her way to Rainbow’s. You let out a breath of relief you didn't know you were holding in.

    “Yes ma’am, you ever need anything at all, just let me know.” You walk in tow right behind her, with Lyra following.

    “First thing cowboy, Next time you want to throw down with me, put some clothes on.” She says, not even looking back at you. Somehow that was more embarrassing than you felt it should've been.

    After a couple of minutes of walking silently, the three of you reach the fence line of the farm. Then Lyra pipes up.

    “I'm gonna go back to the apartment and check on Bon Bon, you don't need me anymore anyway.” She tells you.

    “Thats probably a good idea,” Both for Bon Bons sake, and yours.

    She runs off in another direction as you and Applejack walk through town silently, with you behind her. After awhile, you realize you're way to the library, and decide to inquire to Applejack about it. You walk up beside her and she acknowledges your presence briefly.

    “Hey AJ, where is Rainbow’s house anyway?” You look at her, but she doesn't look back.

    “Up in the clouds,” she says nonchalantly, you knew some pegasi could do that, but it still seemed like an extremely foreign concept to you. You also knew it was something those without wings could not do, or even stand on the clouds for that matter.

    “How the hell are we supposed to get up there?” Things seemed to get more complicated every time you spoke.

    “Twi can help us, shes got a spell she can cast and teleport us up there.” Well that was much easier than you thought it'd be.

    The two of you walked silently until you got to the library. Even though AJ said she forgave you, you couldn't help but think she still didn't really trust you to be around her. You hoped someday you could be friends again, but you knew you'd have to work towards it. It'd have to wait anyway, the Princess needed you for another task again as soon as you were ready.

    “Well, here we are,” the two of you walk up on the tree house library. AJ opens the door up without hesitation, which was something you'd no longer be doing. You walk into the place that smelled of books and looked like it had been carved out like a canoe, you never really got the chance to look at it before, but now that you thought about it, this place must've taken so much sanding to be livable somebodies arms could have fallen off.

    “Hey Twi! you in here?” AJ yelled up into the rooms upstairs.

    “I'll be down in a second!” a voice rang down.

    In a moment, the librarian made her way down the stairs, her dorky sweater vest covered in what could only be the dust of books long forgotten. “What do you guys need?” she looks to you and back to AJ.

    “We need you to cast that spell so that we can walk on clouds, then teleport us to Rainbow's house, if yall wouldn't mind.” AJ must need Twilight's magic quite often, considering the boldness of her statement, almost knowing it wouldn't be a problem.

    “Sure. I actually made a serum that works just as well for that, just let me find it real quick.” She went over to a drawer on the far side of the room, searching into its depths you could almost see what the contours of her skirt were hiding, then caught yourself. Either your sexuality has been reinvigorated tenfold, or Luna did something to you to make you think about sex every thirty seconds. It was never this bad while you were out in the woods, or in a demolished city, then again you were never surrounded by girls that cared for their appearance and hygiene daily, not to mention them being much easier on the eyes. You dashed the thought away as Twilight rose out of the drawer with a vial in hand.

    “This should do the trick, both of you take about half of it and you'll be good to go.” She handed it to AJ, who wordlessly knocked back her half, then handed it to you.

    “Try anything once I ‘spose,” you drank the rest of it and immediately felt a tingling sensation envelope you and lingers.

    “Alright, now just stand still, and you'll be at Rainbow Dash’s house in no time.” Her hands began to glow as she brought them up to the two of you. She swirled them in the air for a moment, covering you and Applejack in a purple veil.

    “I'll come up there in say... twenty minutes to take you back, have fun!” It occurred to you that nobody could have told her what actually happened, which was surprising, since you were asleep in her house for three days. You didn't pay it much mind for now, you had other things to address.

    With a sharp tensing of her hands, Twilight sent the two of you into a bright swirling vortex of magic, you almost had a panic attack, but managed to contain yourself. You had never really been around that much magic, so it would take some getting used to.

    Snapping out of the spell, AJ landed on her feet into the soft clouds with a bounce. You on the other hand, were spilled out of the spell on your face to find out the clouds werent quite as soft as they looked.

    “Hehe, you okay there partner?” She giggled at you and put out a hand for you. You take it to try and save what little pride you can.

    “Yeah, yeah, I'm fine.” You look up to see Rainbow’s house, its not a cloud house, its a cloud mansion. It spirals up into the sky with waterfalls of rainbow cascading down to the earth. Wisps of cloud decorate the outside of the white walls like a painting. It had to be at least three stories tall in regular building standards.

    “Woah...” You let out, marvelling the architecture.

    “Yeah, it is pretty fancy, she built it herself.” AJ lets you know. You have a newfound respect for the Rainbow haired girl, outside of her brash attitude, she was pretty talented.

    You walk with AJ to the off white door and she turns around to face you before she enters. “Now, Rainbow is one of my best friends in the whole world, ya hear? I’m still antsy about what I walked in on, I know it wasn't your fault or nothin’, but if you ever try somethin’ like that again I'll...” she stopped, with one hand on her hip and another pointed at you, she scrunched her mouth, not wanting to imply an attempted attack on you, since she already found out she doesn't stand a ghost of a chance against your experience in hand-to-hand- combat, “...just don't try anything like that again...please.”

    “I wouldn't dream of it, I am so sorry about what happened last time, I know I wont ever be able to make up for it.” You concede to her, you just wanted to make amends.

    “We'll see about that. Now, to deal with this here ordeal.” She smiled at you for half a second before turning to the door and raising a hand to knock on it.

    “Rainbow! You home! Its AJ!” she knocks loudly a couple of times then waits. After a couple of seconds the door cracks open and Rainbow looks out to AJ.

    “Hey, AJ...uh...wha-” She looks behind her friend and finds you standing there. Her eyes go wide and she slams the door in AJ’s face. You didn't even think a cloud door could make that loud of a sound.

    “Consarn it. Just give me a second. Rainbow, open up! He just wants to apologize!” Her pleadings come without a response.

    “She was shook up real bad when Luna came to us, she wouldn't listen to either of us, Luna finally had to carry her home.” Like you didn't feel bad enough as it is.

    AJ curses under her breath and begins to climb up the house into a window. You decide not to follow, waiting might be the better approach. After a couple of minutes of whispering behind the door that you couldn't make out, the door opens and AJ motions for you to come in. You abide, walking into the cloud home into the strange aura of its living room.

    “She said she'll take to you, she's upstairs, just don't make any sudden movements or nothing, i'll be right behind you.” You nod and head up the stairs at the end of the room, you open the door at the top into Rainbows well lit bedroom, her bed was massive, and it looked almost as comfortable as Luna’s. Rainbow was curled up in a chair on the right side of the room, near what you guessed was a closet. There were a couple of pictures set around the room, you could only guess that some of them were her parents, while a couple you could make out as her friends, and a lot with just her and AJ.

    Rainbow knew you came in, but clutched her knees to her chest and looked everywhere but at you. AJ just stood by the door and took her hat off. You sat down on the edge of her bed so you wouldn't be too close to her but could still talk to her. You looked up to her after sitting down, she looked like she had a rough couple of days. Her hair was matted and all over her face, she wore a worn out band shirt you couldn't make out with a faded pair of pants covering it up. She fidgeted at your stare and tried to tuck her bare feet under the cushion beside her.

    “Rainbow, I just came to say that I’m so sorry. I have a problem, I have nightmares from the war I can't control, about everything I went through, everyone who died, everyone I killed. I can't control them, but they haven't ever affected me to the point that I went that day. I almost had to leave this town behind forever out of fear of it happening again. Luna said that she broke the connection between my body and sleeping mind, so it won't happen again. I'm sorry about putting you through that, I can't take it back and I know i'll never be able to make up for it, but if someday you can find it in your heart to forgive a man who doesn't deserve it, I’d be honored to have someone like you as a friend again.” You look to her, she doesn't really change her demeanor. She looks at you with sad , tear stained eyes for a moment before darting off again. You figured this was all you could do so you got up and began out of the room, before you made things any worse.

    You looked to AJ and she just looked back at you, almost pitying you. You didn't want that so you just opened the door to leave.

    “Wait.” That wasn't Applejacks voice. It was crackly voice that sounded like she hadn't spoken much recently. You look back and see that Rainbow has moved from her seat and is standing towards you.

    “Come back...” She says softly to you. You walk back to her slowly, not knowing what she is going to do.

    As soon as you get within arms reach of her she tenses up and brings her right fist into your jaw. You want to say you deserved it so you just took it without reacting, but she was fast and it took you by surprise.It was a hard it too, you fall to your knee feeling a chip of a tooth swimming around your mouth, blood spills from the split flesh inside your mouth. Before you can do anything, Rainbow pushes you to your back and jumps on top of you, seemingly ready to strike again. Instead she leans down to kiss you. Bring you into an embrace she kisses you with newfound passion, and holds it for a little while. She breaks it and sits up on top of you with her hands on your chest, blood covering her mouth, which you found extremely hot for some reason.

    “You saved my life twice and then almost killed me, so I guess we're about even. I like you too much not to be your friend.” She gets a cocky smile and looks down to you. You suppose she just had to bring you down to size before she could stop being afraid of you, or something. You just wish she could do it some other way.

    “So you forgive me?” You attempt to say through the blood pouring into your mouth.

    “Hehe, yeah dude, we're cool. Just promise me it won't happen again.” She looked almost relieved as she got off of you, she didn't seem as tense.

    “You have my word.” You got up and looked at Rainbow with a bloody smile, which she returned.

    “Good, cause if you don't i'm going to kick your ass.” She says with a playful push. “Now get out of here, I've got some things I gotta take care of.”

    “Yes ma’am.” You tip your nonexistant hat to her.

    “What did I tell you about that shit?” she reprimands playfully.

    “Right, yes whatever.” You tease her.

    “Haha, get the fuck out of here.” She smiles and pushes the two of you out of her room to do whatever she needed to do.

    You make your way to the front door with AJ walking behind you. “Hey, I don't think I said it before, but thank you.” she says as you put your hand on the knob.

    “For what?” Thanks is something you didn't really think you needed right now.

    “The Princess had asked us to get those things for her a couple of days before you came. Me and Rainbow volunteered for it, and she told us we’d leave in about a week. But then you came, so she sent us off a couple days early. I just want to say thank you for coming with us. If you hadn't, we'd both be dead right now, there's know way we could've handled that on our own. So you didn't just save Rainbow’s life, so thank you.”

    You weren't expecting that, AJ was right, the girls would've been dead by nightfall, you were glad you showed up when you did.

    “Don't mention it, thats what I'm here for.” You open the door up and look out onto the...cloud porch? to see Twilight there waiting for you. She looks at the two of you and starts, “Well it took you two long enough, Ive been waiting here a w- What happened to you?!” Twilight rushed up and brought a hand to your face not sure what to do with it yet.

    “Its nothin’, it'll heal up in a couple days.” you've had much worse and lived, this won't be too much of a hassle, of course, Twilight thinks otherwise. “No it isn't! Let me help you.”

    Her hands light up with a purple glow and the same glow surrounds your swelling cheek. With a snap and a bright flash, Twilight puts her hands back down. “Alright feel it now,” she tells you, you push your tongue around what was once the wound to find it now closed and stopped bleeding.

    “Wow, thank you kindly.” you wish you knew that kind of magic during the war.

    “Don't mention it, that one took me awhile to master.Now I believe Luna has something she wishes to speak with you about.” Twilight says, AJ has lost interest and looks like she just wants to go home.

    “Thats about ri-” Twilight didn't even wait for you to finish before teleporting the lot of you to the library.

    Coming out of the bright magical vortex you see Twilight and Applejack land back down to the library, and you land a bit more gracefully on your face this time. “Hehe, whoops, I guess that takes some getting used to,” Twilight laughs at you.

    “You're telling me,” after you return to your feet, you look around the library for Luna.

    “Well I oughta be heading back to the farm bout now. Later Twilight, and you owe me one.” You nod and Twilight waves as you look back at her for the next question.

    “She should be in her room,” she shoots off and heads upstairs as you ponder if she can read minds. “See you later!” she shuts the door to her room, leaving you in the big empty library.

    You head over to Luna's door, and remembering this morning, knock to where you know she could hear you.

    “Come in.” You hear Luna say from the other side. You open the door and find Luna on the second level of the basement, hunched over a desk drawing up blueprints for something. You walk over to her, careful not to knock over any instruments or tools on your way. Luna stands up away from her task and faces you, you make your way down to the level and bow to her.

    “Rise soldier. Have you completed your desired ventures?” She asks you, standing at attention prompting you to feel a bit inadequate, and lustful at the same time, you begin to think she did something more than what she said to your mind. You ignore it and continue on with the conversation.

    “Everything I really needed is done. What did you need me to do next?” You ask.

    “Your enthusiasm is appreciated, For the next task I need you to travel to the city of Hoofington.” She paused after that, for reasons you don't understand.

    “For what your highness?” You remembered she wanted you to just call her Luna but it didn't seem appropriate right now.

    “My sister, Celestia has taken care to rebuild that city, and If she has rebuilt the industrial centers, then Ponyville could most certainly due with the supplies for further fortification. We have yet to be attacked, but I believe the phrase is better safe than sorry, I would like you to act as a courier to Hoofington, bringing the message that we are in need of certain supplies, and can trade with fresh food if need be, since I have projected a surplus from the new farm that will flourish from the new water source.” Seems easy enough, but that is a long way, if not by train that'll be maybe a week or so journey by foot. “The tracks have been almost demolished, so that is something we may need help with as well for the supplies to have a safe journey..” Son of a bitch, you thought.

“And...just ask her how she's doing, and if she would like to...visit sometime, oh I miss her at times.” Luna looked almost sad as she said that, which only made you want to help her more.

“Er, just come to the library tomorrow morning and I will give you the things you may need on your journey. You are dismissed.”

“Yes your majesty.” you bow to her again, she goes back to her blueprint, which looks like a beefed up watchtower at first glance, but you don't think much of it as you leave her room.

Going back to the main room in the library you see Twilight waiting there, suspiciously close to the door. “Uh, hey...” she jumps back. You just keep on walking, she tries to catch up to you like she wanted to say something, and she does.

“I overheard what Luna asked you to do, and I was just wondering...If I could go with you?” She says with a sheepish smile.

“No,” You doubt she's ever even been out there before, you doubt she even leaves the library much, you didn't want to be so curt with her, but the last thing you wanted was her to get killed if she came with you.

“What? I can defend myself you know, I wouldn't slow you down any either, in fact I could teleport you a couple miles at a time if I had a map!” she seems to get a little frustrated.

“I said no, Twilight.” As nice as the teleporting sounded, you just couldn't risk it, Rainbow was about as battle hardened as it came in this town, and you say what happened to her, you doubt Twilight would fare much better.

“But...I just want to see Celestia, its been forever since we've even been able to talk. I was her protege..and she just decides to take a whole other town. Its just not fair.” she pouts at you, but it wont work.

“Is it worth dying over Twilight?” You turn to her in a sudden seriousness.

“My magic is just as good as your guns, I can make a force-field that can be twice as good as any armor! Besides, you're going, what makes you possibly dying over it any better?” She almost yells at you.

“Because this town needs you Twilight. You aren’t expendable.” You tell her.

“And you are?!” Now she is upset.

“Someone has to be. You aren't going Twilight.” You close the door behind you and leave for Lyra and Bon Bon’s apartment. You think over your own realization on the way.

Expendable. That’s what you were. Just a pawn in a game, a mean to an end. These poor girls aren't. They need to be here in this town, even Rainbow Dash and Applejack, they weren't expendable, they weren't soldiers for a cause they didn't fully understand. But you were, as soon as you signed the enlistment papers you became expendable. You could've died on any one of the battlefields that you were sent out to, no one would've thought anything of it. Another soldier, killed in action, just another day, just another death. There was no escaping it, its what you had to be. You couldn't have came into this town and become a pastry chef or some shit, it would've been horrible. You were a soldier, a killer, a machine, its something you can't just turn off, no matter how you run from it. You can't change it now, you can't live a quiet life out in Dodge as a master gunsmith anymore, this was your life now. As much as you hated to admit it, you wouldn't have it any other way.

Your thoughts took you all the way up to the right apartment. You opened the door and headed inside, leaving your boots at the door.

You stride up to the dining room, but hear voices, so you slow down and hide behind the wall, feeling dastardly you listen in. They really need to get a louder door or something.

“So would you do it? You know you want to Bon.” You hear Lyra's voice.

“I don't know Lyra, I mean how would you even approach him about it, and what if he doesn't want to? It'll make things awkward.” You really hoped they were talking about what you think they were talking about.

“I know he's polite and all, but c'mon Bon Bon, all guys want sex,” Lyra says.

“I still don't know.”

“Oh, come on. You know those toys are getting old, don't you want the real thing, its not like we won't still be friends. He isn't like that.” Oh my. “You know what? I'm just going to ask next time I see him, like it or not.” Lyra says, as it sounds like she got up out of her chair. Fuck! Position about to be compromised! No escape route available! Bail out, Bail out!

“Wait, don't do that Lyra, I'll...I'll ask him when I'm ready.” Thank you Bon Bon, her distraction has given you some time to think of a plan, you sneak back over to the door and pretend like you are just coming in. Its the perfect crime.

Lyra walks around the corner just in time to see you swing the door open and come in. “Hey! We were just talking about you. How did your talk with Rainbow go?” Lyra says, barely hiding the fact that she was just talking about wanting the dick.

“It went fine, Rainbows alright. I just had a talk with the Princess, just got back.” Goddamn were you smooth as fuck.

Lyra looks down by the door frame, “Uh...Then why are your boots still here?”

“Huh?” you look down to where she was and there they were, the dastardly traitors, you would hang them for their mutiny against you, if they weren't inanimate objects.

“Fuck...I mean...I’mprettytiredsoI’mjustgonnatakeanapnowkthanksbye.” You dart into the guest room before any further shame is brought upon you. You crash down onto the bed, actually feeling tired, it was only around five, but you decided to take a nap anyway. Besides the shame of the failure of your sneaking attempt just now, today was a pretty good day. Hopefully the coming journey follows suit. You slowly drift off into a nap on the bed to get some rest.

Because Celestia knows you'll need it.

%i%: Into The Breach

8: Into The Breach

                 (..........................................................................................................)

        Las Pegasus. It used to be the city of lights, where people would go to throw away their money on the hopes to strike the jackpot. Now... its visitors gambled with their very lives. This was the largest frontline, the warhead of the griffin forces, slamming right down on the city. This wasn't the frontal assault that was Appleoosa, this wasn't a desert battle, this was urban combat, and you definitely were new to it. But you had to adapt, since the alternative was a violent death.

        You were in an old dusty building at the moment, you looked out of the broken glass pane in front of you cautiously. The world shook with the occasional far off explosion, which knocked some dust off of the ceiling and caused rocks to shake across the war torn streets. It was mid-morning, yet the streets were covered in shadow by the tall buildings. The city looked dead from the view you had, all the street corners were filled with broken into stores and shops, with nothing but dark abyss inside. You kneel down to feel the ground while keeping an eye on the streets. The low rumble that continued outside of the explosions let you know what you were waiting for.

        “Cover me,” You said to your squad mates behind you, who you told to hold their ground, but when asked why you just silenced them.

        You had just been issued this squad a week before, right when you were sent into the city, the battle plan called for large scale seek and destroy, but the close quarters reduced it down drastically, now, mostly, squads were fighting for blocks or simply waited in ambush of any griffin squads passing by. You were the commanding officer, and considering you went through a couple of squads a month, you didn't bother trying too hard remembering their names. You had a sniper, who was a pegasus, which turned out to be quite handy whenever your squad was pinned down or ambushed themselves, you think his name was Thunder Lane, or something. Then you were issued a medic, along with his medical supplies they gave him a Light machine gun, so the poor kid was weighed down quite a bit, but you knew what he was doing, you think he might have had the word tailor in his name. The last guy was a stereotypical gruff engie guy, a breach loaded rocket launcher on his back and mp5 at his hip, he was good with explosives, or making them at least, you usually handled the administering part of it. You didn't bother remembering his name, but you knew that under his armor he was a Zebra, which weren't all that different from Equestrians besides having tearing stripes across their body and a weird religion and even weirder alchemical powers.

        You leaned down the wall against the window and slowly snuck your way across the bottom of the frame to the doorway. Your squadmates took cover behind the wall and took aim to the streets. You waited for the the distinct roar.

        You take a peek out of the door frame and find your target, a Griffin tank. You pull your head back in, hoping it didn't spot you. You take the lack of a painful death and the grumble of the treads on the asphalt past the building you were in as a good indicator. As soon as the tank was past the shop you dart out from the building and run up to the back of it. You plant the jury-rigged charge you had in your hand onto the back of the tank and dive out of the way, signalling back to the building to blow it. The medic relays the signal and then...

BOOM

The explosion adds to the ones coming from other parts of the city. You look out to see if the blast had the desired effect. No dice. The tank’s engine is still sputtering, but it seems to have lost a tread anyway. You take the opportunity to run up the side of the tank before it can swing the turret around and before someone pops out to man the machine gun and tear you apart.

Making your way up the side of the tank, the hatch suddenly bursts open, presenting a potential threat. The Griffin puts a hand on the machine gun before you surprise him with a .45 bullet to the head from the side. He falls back into the tank, leaving the hatch open. Two other crew members spot you and pull out their sidearms to take aim at you. You jump behind the open hatch as three shots ring off of the metal covering. As the turret begins to move to shake you off, you pull a grenade from your vest and drop the explosive into the hatch without the pin. You rise and kick down the hatch and jump off the tank.

In the background you hear a muffled blast, and you make your way back to the building that contained your squad.

“You know we could’ve helped you, right Sarge?” The medic says to you. You sit against the wall and replace the magazine in your pistol with a fresh one. You never know.

“It was only one,” Tanks were small time, especially just one. You only needed your squad if you were outnumbered maybe 8 to 1. Maybe.

“It was one TANK. We have a demolitions expert for a reason. You're going to get yourself killed!” This kid had a mouth on him, you didn't particularly like it, but you didn't have a choice either. He was new, he'd learn sooner or later to let people who knew what they were doing do what they do.

“Just do what you're told private.” He looked a bit pissed at that, but didn't do anything. “S, anything new on the radio?” You’d grown accustomed to either calling them by rank or position, since you didn't know too many of them for long.

“Let me check sarge.” The sniper pegasus turned the dial on the radio hooked to his belt and listened in to the station from hq.

...Any squads in district A-6 report in...

...Griffin activity shown to be sweeping through area...

...At least twenty foot soldiers spotted...

What do you know, you were in A-6 at the moment. You looked at the sniper expectantly, when he just stood there you snapped at him.

        “Shit, private, answer him.” The pegasus jumped at your scolding and fumbled the radio up to his mouth and answered the operator.

        “This is squad delta 6, reporting from district A-6, any word on how to proceed, over.” You hoped to just let them pass this time, you needed some more ammo and didn't feel like wasting any right now.

        ...Intercept the patrol at all costs...

...medivac is operating in the district on their path...

...stop the advance and give them at least 15...

Well, might as well get started. “Alright, S, get top of the building on the west side of this building and try to pin them down, You, get to the second story of the same building and fire down into the street as best you can.” You pointed at the zebra which complied silently and made his way out, eliciting the pegasus to follow.

“Alright kid, you're with me, get to that pile of rubble over there and provide suppressive fire on my mark.”You pointed out to his destination. He just kind of stood there as if waiting for more. “Uhh...Get movin’,” He jumps and moves into position, you move to the adjacent side of the street and point your rifle down range.

For a moment everything comes to a silence. The distant echoes of shells going off in the town cease and the air seems to hold still for a moment. Focusing out onto the street ahead of you, a thick fog of dust covers any visibility past two hundred yards, so all you could really do is sit and wait. You knew the snipers were doing their job, mostly. That meant that the Griffins were going to be out of the air and walking down the street ahead of you, or so you hoped.

After a what seems like an eternity of tense silence,  you see movement outside of the fog moving towards you. HQ wasn't lying, there seemed to be about twenty of them coming out of the smoke. That was your mark, but you wanted the element of surprise. The medic looked over at you, impatiently waiting for an order to fire, you just wave him the order to wait. You stare at the Griffins directly in the eye, and they look back, taking your stillness as merely part of the rubble, you only expose your head, and diligently wait for the right opportunity to enact the ambush.

When the closest one is nearly fifty feet from you, you turn the dial on the radio on your shirt and whisper into it. “Fire,” you give the order to mainly your sniper and engineer, but the medic follows in suit.

It starts out with a rocket, the projectile whirls into view above you and then impacts into the center of the group, it hits one directly, turning the Griffin into a thick red mist swirling with the kicked up dirt from the blast. The Griffins scatter and take cover behind any available cover. They begin firing back blindly into your direction, a few bullets whizzing past you. Any dumb enough to leave their head unattended quickly lost it between the accurate rifle shots and the barrage of bullets the medic’s Machine gun was laying down. You take aim at any unfortunate enough to hide behind things with thin sheet metal, like cars and fallen roofing, and put a few bullets through the lackluster covering, being rewarded with cries of agony, with some realizing the err of their ways before attempting to make their way to better cover. You keep them pinned down for a good five minutes before one of them yells, “FALL BACK,”.

The Griffins don't fall back as you would expect, but instead make their way into the adjacent alley, bottlenecking themselves into a would be cage of rubble. You smile at the opportunity and motion for the medic to make his way behind you so you can mow them down if they get trapped. As soon as the kid gets to you, you get up and slowly walk toward the alley with your gun at the ready. As you get closer to the opposite side of the ambush site, the smell of the kicked up dust and blood fill your nose. The air seems to move around more rapidly as you walk up to the corner of the concrete building. You give the hand motion to the medic for the countdown to round the corner. Three...Two...One...

You both round the corner to see a single Griffin waiting for you at thirty feet away, you begin to open fire as he throws something at you. You ignore the object that lands at your feet as you see him round the next corner limping from what you expected to be a fresh bullet wound. Taking one step to chase him you immediately realize your mistake. The object at your feet erupts and billows a thick haze of smoke. You pray to celestia it isn't what you think it is as you turn to the medic. As soon as it reaches your mouth, your arms cramp to your sides and you fall to the ground in a violent spasm, to which the medic soon follows suit. You muster all the strength at your disposal to bring your arm up to your neck. After a grueling battle with your own muscles, you jab the syringe attached to your dog tags into your chest. At once the spasms stop, but your world is left in a thick haze. You guess around the ground to find the medic and attempt to give him the rest of the syringe. You're growing weaker by the second and are about to pass out.

With a final swipe of your hand, you find the poor kid rocking in an induced, seizure like state. With the last scrap of energy you could pull forth you yank the chain around your neck and with a fluid motion stab downwards with the needle into the medic. You couldn’t ven tell if you hit your mark or not, as you pass out on top of him.

 (..........................................................................................................)

You open your eyes and find yourself in a familiar bed. You realize that you're back at the apartment and fell asleep early as to get some rest. You look out of the window to the right of the bed and find the sun hasn't come up with you, in fact, the moon still looks to be high in the sky. You figure you         have a couple of hours to do things before you have to go to hoofington in the morning, so you sit up in bed to begin the long day.

Then it rushes back to you, the events just before you fell asleep. You got busted, and it was a bad one too. Now you felt too embarrassed to even leave the room. You wondered if Lyra caught on or not, or if she told Bon Bon, or any number of possible scenarios of what could have possibly happened after you escaped. Lost in ashamed thought, you hear the door click open and Lyra walk in. She is just wearing a T-shirt and a pair of underwear when she walks up to the side of your bed.

“Hey, I guess you aren't asleep.” She says.

“You’d guess right,” You knew this conversation was going to be awkward, but then again, Lyra was always good about remedying that.

“You mind if I...?” She motions toward the bed, wanting to join you.

“Oh, sure thing.” You scoot over a bit as to give her some room to sit down beside you. She crawls into the bed beside you and brings the blanket around her.

“This bed always seemed so much more comfortable...” Lyra says as she leans back into the bed a little more. You know where this conversation was going, but you didn't want to initiate it.

“I ‘spose it is, thank ya’ll for lettin’ me use it.” You say as you stare at the other wall.

“Alright, I guess I’ll just cut to the chase, how much of that did you hear?” She looks to you from her position beside you, not quite looking upset.

“Enough I guess.” You aren't sure where she wants to take it. You feel like a kid who had to admit he did something wrong, but it wasn't like they actually had much control over you though.

“Well...What do you, uh... Think about it?” That certainly wasn't the direction you pictured this conversation going, but you weren't about to complain.

“Well, I ‘spose, all things considered, my loyalties don't really lie anywhere else.” That didn't come out right.

“I..uh...so you would?” She says as she comes out of the blankets a little with a confused look.

“I would love to.” At that she perks up but still looks a bit conflicted.

“Well..It would be...If we did...” She looks down, almost embarrassed.

“Your first time with a guy?” You fill in for her. She just nods and looks away. You put your hand on her cheek and bring her eyes to you.

“You don't have to do anything until you're ready.” You try and reassure her.

“Thats kinda why I wanted Bon Bon to join in, I know shes done it before. I just need a little guidance I guess.” You look at her with confliction. On the one hand you could reassure her and build her up to be confident about her first time, on the other hand, two girls at the same time.

“Well, I'm going to leave tomorrow and be gone for a while. I'm sure youll have enough time to convince her.” You crawl back into the bed like you're going to sleep. You kinda feel like a dick for that one, but you aren't sure what else to say.

“Tonight, would you mind if i...slept with you?” She says in a shaky voice.

“Did Bon Bon kick you out or something?” You roll over to her to speak.

“No, I just...” You cut her off by putting an arm around her and pulling her close to you. The movement produces a surprised yelp and then a shaky sigh of relief as she settles into you. The smell of her hair fills your nose. It smelled as sweet as she looks.

After a couple of minutes you can tell she has passed out hard up next to you. You start to think about any random thing that crosses your mind, since you know you won't be going back to sleep this night.

You thought a lot about the girls in this town. They were extremely quick to except you, even intimately in some cases. It was a sharp contrast from what it was like outside of the town. Even one relationship with the opposite gender like you had here would've taken years to attempt to build up enough trust to just make sure rape was out of the question, even longer to build up a semblance of friendship. Of course most of the women you came across out there were either bandits or whores. The good ones never stayed in one place and never trusted anyone, but you haven't met enough of them to know. But you've only been here for a few days, and you've already made two friends that wanted to sleep with you, not counting the princess, you weren't quite sure if you could have a normal relationship like that with her, since she could kill you with a snap of her fingers. Each day you're more thankful for being able to find this town, it was a blessing from the highest deity to find a place so perfect in this wasteland. Even if you did have to leave the town every couple of days from now one, but you figured that was for the best.

You stare out the dark window and wait for morning, thoughts flying around the room about what your next task may hold and the life you will have here.

.....................

After a couple of hours you watch the sun inch over the horizon, you get out of the bed and leave Lyra there, a lazy grin plastered over her sleeping face. You smile at her as you shut the door behind you and gather your belongings and head out of the front door to the library.

You figure it might be a little early, but you didn't have anything else to do and if you were going to have to walk all that way you might as well get a head start.

You look around the town to find it mostly empty. Ponyville hasn't quite woken up yet while you stride through the streets. A gentle breeze edges you along your path while you continue to gaze through the empty pathway. As the library enters your vision, you finally see someone who isn't still asleep. It was a man, to your surprise. Upon further inspection of the figure sitting on a bench on the other side of the street, you see a leather vest and the hat to make up a stereotypical cowboy, you figure you might strike up a conversation, you could use as many friends as you could get. You rethink your decision as the guy looks up to you, well, not really, he looked through you. You knew that thousand yard stare and the dead expression. It adorned the faces of those who got the worst of the war and didn't make it out with their sanity. That wasn't something you could stand to deal with right now, so you just headed for the library instead, the thought of that look lingering in your mind.

You walk up to the door and think about knocking on it. The sun was barely peeking out above the mountains, and you doubted Twilight was up. You didn't even know if the princess actually slept or not. You just decide to knock on it anyway.

Knock...knock...

You hear it echo through the library, then the door opens for you. Rather than someone standing there to greet you, a blue aura of magic dissipates from the door knob instead, giving you a good indication of who let you in. You walk into the library to greet the Princess. She opens the door to her room and strides toward you.

She gives a majestic yawn and a bit of a stretch before greeting you. “You are most certainly here earlier than expected.” She lets you know.

“My apologies. I didn't wake you did I?” You reply.

“Do not worry dearest soldier, you disturbed no slumber of mine.” She says, shaking herself to alertness.

“Do you...even need to sleep?” You realize too late that was not something that really needed to be discussed right now.

“It is merely a luxury, I may survive without it, but prolonged lack of such can prove to be unpleasant. But no matter, to the task at hand. For the beginning of your journey I have prepared the train again, I know that the tracks to the city of Hoofington have been all but destroyed, but I do not know how far from the Ponyville the obstructions begin, so be aware that you may need to leave the train at a moments notice.” Well, that was better than you having to walk all the way. “I trust the supplies you need will be on the train already. Take this.” She hands you a cylindrical container which you could only guess contained a scroll, which seemed a bit old fashioned. “Give that to Celestia when you find her, she will know what will be necessary.” She said with another yawn following. By the looks of all of the projects and plans in her room, and keeping track of most of Ponyville, you doubt she gets much sleep.

“I'll leave right away. Maybe you should get some sleep Pri...Luna, you look a bit tired.” Any other time of your life and you would never dream of being so forward with the Princess, but you feel like you can get away with it now, you didn't want her to get overworked.

“Perhaps you are right. I shall see thee once thou has returned.” With that she turns to go back to her room to continue whatever she was doing. Leaving you alone in the library. You take that as a cue to leave.

You're about to close the door behind you when you see through the crack, Twilight, standing in her door looking at you solemnly. You close the door and hope she doesn't make any decisions she will soon regret as you make your way to the train.

.......................................

You climb on the same train car that took you on your last mission. It almost felt wrong to be here, like the scene of a crime. You peek into the room you and Rainbow shared, its mostly cleaned up, but you can still see a couple of specks of blood on the sheets. You close the door in distaste as you make your way to the engine room. The hallway between the rooms was adorned with more crates this time, which you'd have to go through for the supplies you'll no doubt need, but save it for later as you walk up to the familiar engine interface.

You punch the power button and the screen boots to life.

POWER SOURCE NEEDED...

Fuck. You completely forgot about that, now how were you supposed to get anywhere? You did not want to go all the way back to the library to get another gem, but you didn't know what else to do. You get up from your crouched position and almost walk out of the door when you spot a small box in the corner. You walk over to it and open it to find a couple of gems ready and waiting. “Convenient,” you say to yourself. You pop one into the extended arms of the engine, and they hungirly take it into the breach.

INITIALIZING...

POWER SOURCE ACCEPTED.

DESTINATION?

You go through the whole drill with selecting a city and ignoring obstructions until the engine roars to life. The cart jerks into action and slowly speeds up to a good pace down the correct track. You had no idea how long you were going to ride like this so you decided to break open those crates.

Sifting through the crates yields more of the same as last time. Food and water, assorted tools, ammunition, the works, but a new one contained some survival gear that you thought was very thoughtful. You pack your bag up with enough food to last you a couple of days, then you throw in some paracord, duct tape, firestarters, a map, it was almost like Hearths Warming Eve with all the nonsense you had at your disposal. You fill your bag with as much as you're comfortable with and then sit with your own thoughts for a while.

The dream you had last night, you hardly remember what comes next.You remember all of it happening, but what follows... gets a little fuzzy. You don't even remembered if that poor kid made it or not, or what happened to your other two squad members. You do remember the taste of that gas though. It was like breathing in a hornets nest. The stinging started with your throat and lungs then almost instantly spread to your muscles, locking them in place. You knew you barely made it out of that one alive. It wouldn't have been the last close call either. Once the Griffins started getting lazy, you started getting cocky, and when the Griffins wised up to it, you didn't change much. You should've died on multiple occasions, but somehow you're here now, might as well make the most of it.

With your reinvigorated attitude, you spent the rest of your time cleaning and polishing your guns, and sharpening your knife. Just giving everything a little touch up while you had the time.

.........................

The train jerks to a stop, jolting you from your stupor. It seems you fell asleep for a moment, or a lot. It was dark outside, you must've been going all day. You push the wonder of why your dreams didn't continue to the side as you look out the window. It was snowing, hard, you could feel the chill through the glass. It wasn't supposed to be like this, it was only early fall. You did not prepare for this, the warmest thing on you is your piece of canvas you use as a duster, and you don't think its going to get you far. But you had a job to do, and you've been up against worse than some snow.

        Throwing caution to the wind, you strode out of the train cart into the almost blizzard, leaving the door with your homemade lock. You bring the duster over your head and use it as a hood as you wrap a thin bandana around your mouth and nose. Clipping the canvas together in the middle you make a wannabe jacket. It keeps the snow off of you, so it'll have to due for now. You take a heavy step into the climbing snow level and try to stay with the tracks in the valley.

        With nothing better to do while walking, and with the harsh wind biting at your bare eyes, you scan the scenery around you. THe tracks are almost concealed by the white powder, so soon you may just have to guess your way through the valley. Its dark, the snow doesn't allow you to see very far ahead of you, which gives you a bit of worry. You would check to the see the position of canterlot to equate your approximate location, and about how far you had to go to the city, but again, it was pretty fucking dark. Not even Luna’s moon cared to illuminate you now.

        You shake off snow as it accumulates on you, the tracks have all but disappeared in your eyesight from the thick blanket of snow covering it, you resort to following the highway instead. One of the few built, mainly to transport raw materials to the war front, it was almost a straight shot to Hoofington, being one of the most industrious cities during the war. You always remember the newest gadget would come out of hoofington. All of the technological resources and researching abilities were in the heart of that city. You had never been to it, but you know how bad the Griffins wanted it. They tore through the countryside to get a supply route to a front at Hoofington. The outer city was likely in ruin, but it was vast. Much larger than the likes of Ponyville, and even more fortified. The concrete buildings and fresh off the line fortifications likely created a gruesome battle. You'd be surprised if half of Hoofington was even standing now.

        You zone out into your thoughts for a while as you walked, getting your mind on something else helped subtract the loss of feeling in your less than protected extremities.

.......................................

        As you walk, the sun begins to seep through the thick cloud layer that has not let up its barrage of snow. There has to be around a foot and a half on the ground right now, making identifying any landmarks necessary to your travel near impossible. You identify the occasional buried truck and car to help you along your path. Traversing the snowy wasteland is leaving you weary, with every step requiring you to barrel either above or through the snow. Sooner or later you might have to improvise some snow shoes.

        You look behind you to find canterlot in halfway piercing the clouds in the distance to the south. Good, that meant you were getting somewhere. Maybe youll find a road sign that hasn't been knocked over to tell you an exact number.

        After another hour or two, you come across a large supermarket looking building, which didn't concern you much. But you might need some rest if Hoofington wasn't close by. You'd also need a fire, which, if that was one of those massive supercenters where you could literally buy anything, it shouldn't be much of a problem. It certainly looked big enough to be, but any indication had fallen off of it long ago. You decide to make your way towards it for shelter for now anyway.

        Getting into the parking lot you notice a brown dot moving amongst the snow covered treeline in the mountains a bit higher above the back of the store. You stop to look for it for a moment, but when no other sign of it shows, you decide to chalk it off as an animal. As if recognizing the thought, your stomach growls, making you clutch it and look off to the right for a moment. In your peripherals, you spot something green and half covered in snow. Its a sign! Literally. You get excited as you pull the bandana down and bring up the rifle scope to read what it says, since its a bit of a ways off.

Hoofington....28

Well, that gave you a good distance indicator, you might be able to make it there within around two days time. Bringing the rifle down you smile to yourself as you see your breath in front of you. Now you could make a plan. You start to think about what you could do when you're suddenly interrupted.

BaCRACK...

The distinct sound of a rifle rings out in the distance, cracking like thunder against the sky. You instinctively jump forward a bit out of reflex wondering for a split second if you accidently pulled your trigger. That question is answered for you when the duster behind your head tears open and the hair on the back of your head gets cut off mere millimeters from the skin. You jump to the nearest car in the parking lot and take cover. The full sprint to get across the parking lot to the car has taken the breath out of you. Your gasping is creating quite a bit of vapor, and you need to think of something quick.

        You put some snow in your mouth to hide the vapors and your exact position. The thin sheet metal of the car would be easy to punch through. You calculate your last position in relation to the new tear in your duster to approximate the location of the shot. The tear is going down, starting from the left, so you were on the right side for cover. You remember the brown spec against the treeline and berate yourself for not checking it out more closely. Of course there would be bandits out here. You needed to get out of the mental security of Ponyville and back into survival mode. It almost just cost you your life.

        Now to deal with this new threat. Whoever it was, they were a good shot. If you didn't jerk forward out of reflex it would've been a clean shot. Dead instantly. You needed to be careful about this. You approximate the appropriate position of the shooter, and ready your rifle. You Prepare to pull a stupid war movie trick, you take your duster off, the tan color being clearly visible against the snow, and put your pack in it, preparing to throw it. You look down to see the black bulletproof material adorning your shirt. This was going to be risky, and you had better get it done fast. You take the shirt off, exposing you almost completely to the harsh elements, and put it around your bag. You lay down into the snow, eliciting a cringe from you, to bring the rifle to bear sideways at your target. You prepare to kick the psuedo you to one side while you look over the tire to your target on the other. You find your target while trying to conceal yourself as best you could. It was almost all white body, with a bit of brown feathers coming out of the back end of the white shroud. The rifle was aimed at the car but not at you.

        You cease the opportunity and forcefully kick your bag to the other side of the car. Your target jerks and fires at the bag. You line up the shot, trying to adjust for bullet drop sideways, and fire. You rack another round and look through the scope. The you misjudged the shot. Instead of a headshot, the bullet fell more than you expected and embedded into the rifle, as you could tell by the erratic hand motions of trying to shake off pain. Instead of taking another shot. You get up and run into the treeline leading up to the position, in case there are other bandits who'll be coming down to you in the meantime.

        Shirtless, you run up the side of the mountain. The foliage beside the store is concealment enough to prevent another shot. You hurry up, since every breath is stinging your lungs and you are losing body heat at a fast rate, you had to make this quick and get into the store as fast as you could, unless you wanted the cold tyo take you the same as any bullet.

        A couple of minutes of uphill running get you to the correct altitude and position. You look to the spot that used to contain the sniper, the snow is disturbed but does not contain a body. That isn't good. You look around to no avail until you hear something in front of you a bit further into the treeline.

“Fuck...Come on...Fucking piece of shit.” A whisper rings through the snowy air. Tracing it back, you see the source, a white bundle wildly trying to cycle the action of its rifle through warped metal and splintered wood. You slid your knife out of its sheath as you slowly make your way to the white mass leaning up against the tree. It doesn't see you as you approach. Painful nipping in your fingers and the off blue color being produced by them told you to hurry it up. You hold the knife with the blade pointing down from your upright fist, as to get the deepest stabbing force possible

Directly behind the tree, you grab the shoulder of the cloak and drag it towards you, bringing the knife down towards its chest. The figure realizes this and jerks out of the way, your knife cutting through the hood of the the cloak. The figure gets up, and you can see the beginnings of white hair out from under the barely clinging hood. You charge it with a swipe of the knife, to which they dodge out under you. Seeing a potential counter you bring a knee up to the figures head, which throws it back, but doesn't knock it down. You bring the knife in again for a lateral stab to the neck, but the figure moves forward into it, the knife goes into the hood again. The figure goes for a hook to your midsection with its right fist but is too slow. You grab the hand with your left and bring your elbow to its neck, and your foot behind its legs, and perform one of the simplest takedowns in the book. You force its weight forward over your leg and bring it to the ground. You pounce immediately, jumping onto the prone figure for the killing blow. The hood falls back and you can see that its a girl. You raise the knife up and grab her by the throat. Her wings attempt to flare out under the cloak, but only get halfway. You look right into her eyes before you bring the knife down.

Shes a Griffin. You can tell by the natural purple eye shadow and the white feathers covering her neck. That only pushed you to a further strength in this battle. You grip the knife harder and tense your body before the strike.Those eyes are filled with fear and regret, she doesn't want to die, you've seen them before, just before you killed another a lot like this.

“No, please, I'm sorry,” the kids cracking voice says out of pure terror as you prepare to take his life from him.

You killed so many of them during the war, you knew what you were doing, it's what you wanted to do. You wanted to kill every last one of them for what they did to Dodge, and by Celestia thats what you were going to do.

But the war ended a long time ago.

You brought the knife down into the figure further away than you initially intended, you embed the blade directly into her wing. She yelps in pain and looks to you hatefully and confused not knowing what to do. You look back down at her with malice, but with less than you would. With a confused mind, you bring your elbow down on her forehead, knocking her out cold.

What you were going to do with her, you didn't know. You should kill her, but for some reason you can't bring yourself to do it. You look down into her face, she didn't look like a bandit, but here she was trying to kill you on the side of the road. You still kneeled over her just looking at her. The wind nipped at your bare skin and you decided to avert your gaze from her.

You tear of her cloak and wrap it around yourself. Theres a couple of gashes in it, but its better than what you had. The Griffin had another jacket on underneath it anyway. An old leather bomber jacket, which didn't fit if she used to be a sniper. You walked over to the broken rifle to take the bullets out of so you might use them later. You really messed the rifle up. half of the action was hit first and it warped the bolt shut, the bullet eventually embedding into the wood. You pry it open as hard as you can to get the action to bend open and release the magazine. There were only two more bullets in the magazine. How did she think she was going to survive off of that? You look over to her still body, perplexed at what she might have been through.

Dropping the rifle you search her clothing. You pat around her body for anymore weapons or anything you may find of use. She only has an old wallet in her back pocket and an empty chain necklace around her neck. You put the wallet in your own pocket. You take a look at your fingers, they're almost freezing over, you needed to get inside now. You begin down the cliffside, but look back to the Griffin. If you leave her here she'll die, but she's only going to slow you down and possibly attempt to kill you again.

You give a grunt of frustration and go to pick her up. She still had your knife anyway. You make your way down to the store and push into the metal door at the back entrance loading dock.

You sift past the stock room with her across your shoulder in search of something you could use to start a fire. You walk through a pair of doors into the showroom. You guessed right. It is one of those massive stores that you could buy almost everything in. Tvs, electronics, food, even furniture. Many of the shelves were stripped clean, but none of that was anything you really needed.

You make your way to the furniture section. Sure enough, in the middle of the platform there was a wood lawn chair set that would due just fine. But you needed a way to start it first. What little light the skylights above provided a show of dark empty shelves, barren of any way to start the wood, so you were going to have to go out to get your pack. You walk up onto the showroom platform where lawn chairs, grills, and quick do-it-yourself gazebos scattered the area and set the unconscious griffin into a chair. Hopefully she wouldn't wake up too soon.

        Tripping around the trashed store, you finally make your way to the front entrance. and push open the would be sliding door to go out into the icy parking lot. The snow has picked up its pace again, and the sun looks darker in the thicker cloud cover, even though you knew it couldn't be any later than noon. Shivering through the snowy parking lot, you find your bag and clothing already collecting a heap of snow. You pick it up and shake it off to find a fresh hole in the top of it. Taking a bag out of the bundle, you find one of the straps has been cut clean through, which was going to make the rest of the journey a bit more annoying. You decided to not think about it at the moment as you turn around and make your way back inside. Walking through the door provides an almost sharp cut off from the cold into a little less chilly building, but its almost bearable.

        You walk back up on the furniture platform and find the Griffin still out thankfully. You begin breaking apart the table and the wooden chairs to make wood for a fire, wadding some cushion cotton up as kindle, and creating a pit with a couple of metal chunks and plates. You pull a magnesium fire starter out of your pack and strike up the fire to its full potential. Now that the issue of warmth was taken care of, now to see to the Griffin.

        You lay her down onto the floor to be able to move her around better. You didn't notice it earlier, but shes extremely light. Most pegasi were light anyway, but this wasn't even that heavy. You pull the knife out of her and put it in your sheath. You clean and dress the wound with some bandages and gauze from the supplies you decided to take. You bit right through the wing, but it didn't hit any bone. She won't be flying for a while, but she'll live. You lift up her shirt under her jacket to check for anything else that might need attention and what you find surprises you. Her ribs are plainly visible and she looked quite emaciated. Now you know why she was trying to kill you. She was starving. She had a bigger frame that most girls, but looked small with the lack of anything to fill it in.

You give a shred of concern for a second, but decide to deal with things when she wakes up. You put her back into the chair and duct tape her arms to the arm rests and her legs to the legs of the chair and bring her up to the fire.

You take up residence in a metal chair on the other side of the fire and warm yourself up. You didn't bother to put any clothes back on, since you'll warm up faster without them, you simply sit up against the chair, with hands outstretched to get some heat.

Bored, you get out the girls wallet and begin to look through it. It was bare, except for some scraps of paper with some poorly written notes you can't make out, and a picture. It was a picture of the Griffin in front of you, but a little younger and muscles filling up her form with her arm around a girl smiling at the camera. A rainbow haired girl.

It was Rainbow Dash.

How the hell did this Griffin now Rainbow Dash? Griffins hardly ever came to Equestria before the war. Yet here they were, right next to each other like the best of friends. You flip the image over to read the words transcribed on the back.

Best buds forever. Never stop being awesome G!

-RD

You look up to the unconscious girl, looking at her incredulously. Small world. Now you want to wake her up to question her. If she was best friends with Rainbow, maybe she wasn't half bad.

“Hey,” You say to the still body. Maybe you accidently killed her. No, her chest is still rising at a steady rate. You throw a wood chip at her and she stirs a bit when it hits her.

“Hey,” You repeat, she looks up lazily and focuses on you. At the sight of you she grimaces and tries to tense out of the chair. Realizing its no use she just looks at you with a frown.

“What's your name?” You say across the fire.

“Fuck off,” She tries to tense out of the chair again. She just gives you another hateful look when shes done.

“Let’s try that again. How do you know Rainbow Dash?” The intensity in her face breaks and she seems perplexed at the name, before looking away from you down to the floor.

“Why didn't you kill me?” she spits out with malice.

“That’s a good question. I don't know. So what's your name?”

“The fuck’s it matter to you asshole?” She was feisty.

“I think I liked you better unconscious.” You tell her with a laugh.

“And i'll like you better dead.” She lets out in anger.

“Whens the last time you've eaten anything?” You try to steer her off her hostility.

“A couple of weeks. I don't know, what's it to you prick?” You get out of your chair and grab a can of beans out of your bag and the paracord and cut off an appropriately long piece. You walk over to her and and take out your knife again. Walking up to her, you cut the duct tape holding her arms. She jumps at you as soon as shes free to grab at the knife, but shes slow. You grab her throat and slam her in the chair to the ground, disorientating her. you put a knee over her throat and tie her hands together tightly. She grunts with lack of air and exertion under you, trying to free herself, but its no use. You pick her back up and set the chair by the fire. Raising the knife up elicits a cringe from her at  the expected blow, but dissipates when you tear the lid off the can of beans instead. You set the open can in her lap and return to your own seat.

“Wh-Why?” She looks at you incredulously, as if you just slapped her.

“Maybe this wasteland would do well to hand out a couple more second chances.” Celestia knows you could have needed them in the past couple of years. Even though you never got any, maybe you could do better for someone.

She tears into the jar like a ravenous dog, you give a small laugh, but she doesn't notice.

This might be the first time you've ever had a positive interaction with a Griffin, ever. You've killed a lot of Griffins, men and women. Not just a lot, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands. Your bloodthirst during the war was unquenchable. If it looked like a Griffin you wanted it dead, you hardly stopped at anything. But its been a long time. You've learned what its like in the wasteland. It takes everything from you. Even your identity, it doesn't matter who you are in this horrible new world, only how fast you were going to die. Two weeks ago you wouldn't have hesitated to put your knife right through her throat. Ponyville had changed you. Time will only tell if it will help you or end up killing you.

You hear the can drop to the ground and look up to see her wiping the residue off of her face. You just open up a can of peaches and throw it to her over the fire. You go back to your thoughts for a moment.

“Gilda.” She says with you half phased out.

“Pardon?” You say.

“Gilda, my name’s Gilda.” Her face has lost some of its anger as she says that.

“Nice to meet you...I guess. The names (your name).” She just goes back to tearing into the can.

You wait until she finishes. Dropping the second can, she looks satiated enough, but you ask her anyway. “Want another?” She just shakes her head, you pull your hand out of your bag.

“What are you doing here?” You question her. You mostly wanted something to pass the time. You also needed to know if you could trust her.

“Enjoying the sights.” Well, she wasn't all that boring.

“Why is a Griffin this far in Equestria? Even still alive for that matter.”  You shoot back at her.

“I got deployed on the Hoofington front just as we stopped getting orders. I'm the only one in my squad who survived the plague in the camp.” She sounded like she just wanted to get that out as fast as she could.

“You were the sniper?”

“No I was the fucking emperor. Of course I was the sniper dipshit. Did the rifle not give it away?” You hoped this hostility didn't transfer to physicality yet again. You just ignored it and continued.

“Well, I carry a rifle and I wasn't a sniper. So you've been here since the war ended? How have you survived this long?”

“Scraps from the old camp, things from this store, unlucky travelers. You are the first one I've tried to rob in a couple months. I tried the city, but its a fucking deathtrap.” That wasn't good news.

“Being a bandit was going to get you killed, you're lucky it was me how came by.”

“No, Lucky would've been a caravan or something. Nobody has been good enough to dodge my shots.” she says smugly.

“Until now. Two weeks ago I would've killed you without a second thought.” You try to bring her ego down.

“If not you, I would've starved anyway.” She says as if she didn't care if you spared her or not.

“Just remember, I didn't miss that shot on purpose.” You give her a stern look and imply you could still kill her if you wanted to.

“Heh, i'll keep it in mind.” She still doesn't seem to care. You go silent for a while in your own thoughts.

You should just plain not like her. Shes rude, brash, and almost killed you. But for some reason, you kinda like the way she talks to you. Treating you more as an opponent than a threat. Its almost a welcome change.

“So what are you doing out here anyway?” She tries to start a conversation, maybe there's hope here yet.

“I'm delivering a message to Princess Celestia in Hoofington.” You say matter of factually.

“Shit, the Princess is in Hoofington? No wonder we tried to hit it so hard. Good luck getting into the city, as I said, it’s a fucking deathtrap.” She says it as she has no faith in reaching the city center.

“I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.” You tell her. The conversation all but ends there.

The two of you stare off into different directions. Each collecting your own thoughts. You put another couple of pieces of furniture into the fire pit and sit back down. Gilda leans over and seems to fall asleep as comfortably as she can strapped to a chair. You make sure your .45 is loaded before you let your guard down. For a while you just watch her, making sure she doesn't try anything.  You relent after a while and doze off a bit yourself. After the harsh journey of the day and almost getting frostbite. Your body finally catches up to you and gives you the intense tiredness that should've hit you hours ago.

Thoughts of what the city may hold and what you are going to do with Gilda fill your drifting mind as you fall into a slumber in the metal lawn chair inside the superstore.

%i%: The Mighty

9: The Mighty

                (.........................................................................................................)

You awoke to a barrage of foreign feelings. The first thing you could notice, is that your vest and shirt were gone. The cool air was very apparent to your form, since you had nothing on your upper body, but your pants and boots remained. Second, you noticed that, upon trying to move, you were all but closed off from escape by thick chains strapping you to what you could only assume was a chair bolted to the ground, since it wouldn't move either. Last, it was dark, very dark. You thought you just had your eyes closed, but once your disorientation left you, you knew better. You tried to tug again what was chaining your hands to the back of the chair.

This isn’t good, you thought. You try to recollect what led up to where you were now.

...

There was the tank, then HQ radioed in, then you ambushed the Griffin patrol, then... you couldn't quite put your finger on it. It seemed like you were winning that battle, but here you are anyway. It was almost like you just collapsed on the spot.

That was it, that neurotoxin grenade. You remember now, it hit you like a swarm of wasps, grounding you. You can hardly remember anything about it, but you know the medic from your team was with you. You don't have your dog tags, so theres no way of knowing now what could’ve possibly happened to him. You hope you gave him the serum. You know you took it, otherwise you’d be dead, but remembering the feeling, you didn’t know if you’d actually be able to move through that one.

A light glared into your retinas, for a moment, you were blinded. Shaking your head away from it, you look up to see the room illuminated. It was a small concrete room, with a big metal door with a lot of bolts in it and a slot to slide open and look into. Great, this was probably a torture chamber or something, but judging by the knocked out toilet and the place where a bed obviously used to be bolted down, this was probably an old insane asylum or prison. By the state of the city you were currently in, you doubted the realization helped your situation much.

The lock on the door groaned, and then clanked open violently, resonating through the room. The door swung open, and revealed what you just knew was going to show up anyway, a Griffin officer, flanked by two soldiers. Well, you guess that you are about to add torture to the list of shit you had to deal with. They went over this in training, so you knew how to deal with it, but easier said than done.

“Good, he is awake. You, bring the table in.” He waved off the soldier to his right, to which he hurried off down the hall you could see outside. Maybe he was going to feed you? Your hopeful stomach forced the thought into your head. No, this was going to suck.

“Alright cowboy, if you simply tell me what I want to know, I won't have to get my gloves all dirty again. And save the martyr bullshit for your gods, I have plenty of others to try and get information out of.” He said to you with a smug grin, but it felt like he had already been through this enough times today anyway.

“How about you give me a knife, and you an’ me get to settlin’ this.” you sneered back at him.

“I am afraid not you dog. I must get you to talk. Killing you like that won’t help either of us.”

“More like you’re a pussy who’s afraid of actually getting into a fight.” With that you spit at him. He stepped back in disgust, but stepped forward again to deliver a right hook to your jaw, throwing you to the side, and making you jerk on the chains.

        “Silence you Equestrian filth! I will make your death as slow and painful as possible.” He said with a frown.

        “Good luck, ‘cause you hit like a bitch, chicken shit.” You looked back up at him and spit out your mouthful of blood, you think he chipped a tooth.

        “You...!” He visibly started up in anger, but then took a deep breath and regained his composure. Just then, the soldier rolled the table into the small room, which didn’t have food on it, but an assortment of pins, needles, rusty scalpels, screwdrivers, saws, and a car battery on the bottom. All the makings of a cheap horror movie, but this time it was real. “All right, now we may get started.”

        He looked thoughtful for a moment as he stared down at the table. You looked at him, from his captains hat, to his pressed uniform, and flared out pants, he just looked like a jackass. You knew these uniforms were old, but you didn’t know that a whole lot of them actually used them. It didn’t matter though, you had to think of something fast.

        “Ahh, this will do for the first.” He said as he picked up a drill with a boring bit on it. He tested it out a couple times, and some fresh blood dripped off it from its apparent last use. He walked from his position at the table to you. He pressed the tip of the bit to your bare chest.

“First things first, I want you to point to the major resupply locations and medical centers that are not already circled on this map.” He pulled out a map that already had a couple of locations that actually were at the right places. Like hell you were going to give up the lives of the people there for your own.

“How about you take that drill and stick it up your ass.” With that, he didn’t even respond. He pulled the trigger of the drill and pushed it into your chest. The pain spread instantly, you could feel the bit spinning into your flesh, and only go deeper and deeper until it seemed to push through the rib trying to stop it. He halted at the lung and took the bit out of the drill, leaving it inside of you. Breathing hurt, pushing your lung up against the protruding bit threatened to puncture it. But you were out of breath, and the pain only made you weak and delirious. Panting and hardly able to see, you look up to the officer again. He was putting another bit on the drill.

“Alright, lets try this again. You don't even have to point, just tell me the street names.” he said, trying to sound reasonable.

“F...Fuck...You...” You barely let out, you were in so much pain just from that, you thought you might just pass out.

“Only the first round and you have already lost your wit? For shame...” He put the second bit to you in the same place on the opposite side of your chest. Without a second word, he started up the drill again, and dug the bit in the same way. This time you screamed, and gritted your teeth so hard you fear they may break, if this didn't make you pass out, nothing would.

He stopped to admire his work, leaving you panting yet again, but with the stabbing pain in both lungs this time. You didn't think you were going to make it through this one. Barely a couple minutes in and you were already wishing he would just end it.

“Oh, this is just the beginning.” He grabbed the cables attached to the car battery. He hooked the negative one to your left side causing immense pain with the weight of it bearing down on the rib it was lodged into. Then he drew the positive one close to the right. “Last chance, cowboy.”

“N...No...F-fuck.” You could barely let out through the haze of pain, you couldn't move your legs anymore you were so worn out, but you weren’t about to give in. “If you say so.” he touched the cable to the protruding bit, and your world became nothing but sparks and pain. You lost your sense of self and could focus on nothing else but the current contracting every muscle in you, and frying your skin.

He stopped for a moment. Taking the cable off he simply looked at you expectantly. You drew up some strength, and spit the blood in your mouth onto his shoe.You mustered up a bloody smile, but you didn’t know if he could see it since you couldn't lift your head. “You will pay for that!” He said in a rage as he put the cable back in place. Your vision flashed to white and you were enveloped in pain again. This time you were going to do something about it. You blindly forced yourself forward to try to touch the officers hand, in the process, you forced on of the bits into a lung, which certainly felt like it punctured it. But the end result was you meeting your forehead with the officers arm, resulting in him getting shocked as well and pulling away from you.

“Agh, you fuck!” He said as he rubbed his arm in pain. “You are of no use to me, now you die.” He said with rage as he pulled out his pistol and put it to your forehead. This was it, you had a good run, killed a lot of Griffins, you just wish you could see the end of this damn war. You waited for a shot, then an eternal blackness to take you to the next world...

Instead, an explosion shook the room, and you could see pieces of debri fly down the hall. The officer turned his attention away from you to see what all of that was about. Instead of taking cover and peaking out of the hallway, he looked directly out into the hallway without a second thought. What a dumbass. He barely had time to raise his gun before he was littered with holes. You just wish you could’ve done that yourself.

Bullets rang out in the hallway from both sides. It didn't matter much to you at this point, you were slipping in and out of consciousness. After what seemed like a couple of days, the shots stopped. You looked up to see someone coming into your room, it was a familiar uniform, thank Celestia. In fact, that was really familiar. It was the zebra engie from your squad.

“Well a-ain't that something?” you manage to get out, or try to at least.

He meets your gaze and sees what has happened. “Sergeant... What evils have they done to you? Tin, he is here!” He yells back into the hallway. Then walks in the medic from your squad. He did make it, you gave a sigh of relief, but only blood came out. He rushed over to you and began taking out medical stuff. You didn't really know any of that nonsense.

“Get him out of this chair! We need to stabilize him!” The zebra got to work on the chains holding you to the chair. He cut around them with a torch, which you could feel the heat from. The medic started to stop the bleeding around the bits.

Then your arms were free. The two of them lifted you off the chair and set you on the ground. This was much more comfortable.

“‘Bout time you guys showed up.” you tried to say through a layer of blood.

“Well we couldn't just leave you here, could we?” The kid said as he smiled down at you. Tin, that was his name, you were going to have to remember that. He shoved a needle into you and all the pain seemed to fade away. Now you were so comfortable, you could just go to sleep. In fact, you were doing just that.

“No, Sarge, stay with me! Just hold on for a little longer!” You weren't listening, you just wanted to rest. Just for a little bit. Everything was turning white. The medic seemed to be yelling at you.

“Don't you die on me! Damn it! His heart is stopping! Hold him down!” Everything he said was just drifting off. You wanted to tell him you were fine. You just needed a nap, and you’d be on the frontlines tomorrow. But for now, just sleep.

        (............................................................................................................)

You woke up to a pit of smoldering ashes, and light shining on you through a skylight. You didn’t remember that happening. That dream seemed almost new. But you knew it wasn't, it was just repressed. You had died, in that little concrete room. But you knew that you were still here now, so what had happened? Well, you can't deal with that right now. You had bigger things to do. You looked across from where you were planted in the old lawn chair, only to see a Griffin strapped to a chair in front of you.

She was still asleep. But the light coming through the skylight above you told you that you needed to make a decision about her fast, before you waste any more hours getting to the princess.

“Hey,” she stirred a bit, but otherwise remained dormant.

“Wake up,” yet again, nothing. Instead you decide to throw something at her. Ah, a splinter of burnt wood will do the trick. A quick toss landed it right on her cheek, which most definitely got her attention.

“Ugh, what...” She looked around for a moment, almost as if she forgot about last night. “Oh, damnit.” Realizing her predicament, she seems to have lost the fire that was so hostile last night. “So what now?” she looks at you dully, as if bored.

“I don't know, If I could trust you I would take you with me. But I can't, so its either kill you or let you back out into the snow.” You really didn’t see another way. If she came with you, she would just stab you in the back and rob you blind. But you didn't want to outright kill her either.

She sighed and looked like she knew what she wanted. She looked up to you with dead eyes and said “Just make it quick,”.

“You really want me to just kill you?” you were genuinely surprised by her attitude towards her own demise, but you still knew why you had to do it.

“I can't tell you how long I've been out here. If I had the guts, I would've done it a long time ago. I just want it to end already. So yeah, just go ahead.” She said without a scrap of emotion to spare.

“Alright I guess,” You gather all of your things up in your bag, then put on all of your clothes again, including her white covering. After gathering everything, you take your knife out of its sheath and slowly approach her. She has her eyes closed, just waiting for it.

You raise the knife to her throat to finish her off. One cut, that's all it'll take. Just put her out of her misery, she's already dying, she wants this.

But you gave her food, fixed her wing, and showed her mercy then, why not know? Your conscious nipped at you.

You can't take her with you, she'll only be trouble.

She's also unarmed, and doesn't have anything to live for anymore.

If you let her go, she'll just starve out there like she was going to anyway. You press the knife deeper into her throat, drawing a bit of blood. Now to just slide it across.

Luna gave you a second chance when you almost killed somebody...

        With a heavy heart and a frustrated grunt, you move the knife to her hands and cut the rope out, freeing her. She looks up to you shocked, as if somebody would if you actually killed them. You angrily turned and began to walk out of the store, yelling back at her, “Just try to keep up!”

        You make it out of the store, and hear her coming up behind you. She doesnt say anything, but you guess she doesn't need to. The two of you trudge through the snow, it had let up since last you were out here, but the snow still continues to pile up. You begin to violently scorn yourself internally, looking back at her occasionally, to which she just looks away.

Why couldn't I just kill her? She wanted it, I needed to do it. This is only going to come back to haunt me. What the fuck... What's changed? Just cause she wants it now you can't do it? If I can't kill somebody who already tried to kill me, I'm going to shorten my lifespan considerably. Ugh...

You decide to drop it for now, you had a long ways to go until you got to hoofington, and trying to justify not killing her wasn't going to get you anywhere right now. You look back at her one last time, she was looking at you, but averted her gaze when you turned. You open your mouth to say something, but realized you didn't have anything to say, so you just turned around. You would have to ask her about Hoofington, maybe she knew the layout a little better. Maybe this wasn't such a bad decision after all, she could be used for something.

        You pass the sign you saw in your scope and read it again.

Hoofington...........28

It was going to be a long boring day of walking silently.

        Fun.

____________________________________________________

        You made your way over a small hill to see a horizon filled with destroyed suburbs, with the background adorned with technological marvels of buildings that tore into the cloud cover and seemed to ooze dangerous from their pointy outer surfaces. This couldn't be right, you only traveled maybe seventeen miles, not twenty eight. From the looks of it, the violently constructed core seemed to be around ten miles out, so this suburb may not technically be a part of hoofington. You haven't seen a sign since the one at the supercenter, so you had no idea what to judge this by. You decided to just soldier it out and walk into the suburbs to Hoofington. You Get about two steps down the road before a hand tugs you back.

        You turn around to face Gilda. She has a look like you were just about to commit suicide. “What the fuck are you doing? You can't just walk into the outskirts!” she said with genuine shock of your actions.

        You turn around to continue as planned. “Watch me,” you said, still not really wanting to talk to her.

        She starts with an exasperated tone.“Have you ever even seen the shit that crawls around this damn city?” she stands still, refusing to follow you.

        “I’m sure I've seen worse.” you make no signs of slowing into the city.

She walks up to you quickly and grabs you again, this time much more forcefully. She gets much closer to you and her tone sharpens drastically. You disregard your first impulse to take her down and put a knife in her chest for coming at you like that, and instead decide to hear her out, mostly because you just wanted to get this out of the way.

“If we’re going in there, I'm going to need something to protect myself with. I'm not getting killed out here without a fighting chance.” she says, determined.

“Twenty four hours ago, you would’a shot me without a second though. Why should I trust you now?” you jerk your arm out of her grasp.

“Because I can assume I’m much more valuable to you if I'm not fucking dead.” and here you thought she lost that smartass tone.

You considered for a moment. She did know this place better than you, and if she is that concerned over something crawling around the city, maybe you should just humor her. You were faster than her at the moment after all, any sudden movements and you wouldn't have to think twice about putting her down. Fuck it, what's the worst that can happen?

You pull your 1911 out of its holster and two magazines, you flip it around to where the handle is facing her. “Here, take it. Any sudden movements towards me and I won't think twice. Understand?”

She takes the pistol out of your hand and takes the two magazines in her jacket pocket. “Yeah, I got it.” she looks at you expectantly.

You grab her by her arm and force her in front of you, then push her to get her to start walking. She gives you a hateful stare for a moment before giving in. “You’re also taking lead. Not only do I not want you behind me with that, you know this city better than I do. Get us to Hoofington. Walk.” you give her another “gentle” push before she starts walking towards the city.

“I’ve never been as close as Hoofington. Besides, we'll probably die before we even get close anyway.” you didn't think the snide smartass tone was going anywhere anytime soon.

“You’ve been closer than I have. You just let me worry about whatever is out there.” With that you unholster your rifle and began down the road behind her. She seemed apprehensive, with the gun always at the ready. She held it like she knew what she was doing too, both hands on it with a proper position.

With that, you started your innercity journey. It was still snowing. The suburbs were blanketed in a white veil that failed at hiding the scars on all of the houses and buildings. It seemed to be mostly just neighborhoods as you walked, but occasionally you'd run into a strip mall or a grocery store along the road. Everything was so tightly packed, there was no room for any of the buildings to have any semblance of creativity in their architecture. The houses traded brick or wood and old styled shuttered windows with a shingled roof for what seemed to be stone in some places with a metal roof and doors. All of the houses looked the same. A futuristic “resource saving” outlook gave all of the houses the exact same size and shape. The only differences in them were the gashes and holes blown into them from the war that must’ve torn through the streets.

Blackened stone and torn metal gave the buildings almost a serene independance, like some sort of morbid work of art. You hated to even think it, but maybe they were better this way. None of the buildings sparked you as inspired or cared for, but the ravaged debri filled craters where half the house laid gave it a sort of violent charm. Maybe it was growing up out west where every house was hand built and designed independently for its own uses. Every city was always different though, so it wasn't surprising that the technological center of Equestria would be as efficient as this.

You had made it a ways into the city, but it was obviously going to get dark before you had a chance to make it all the way to the Hoofington center to find Celestia. You figured it'll come time to set up camp somewhere sooner or later, though there weren't many appealing places around.

“It’s getting dark Gilda. You know anywhere around here we could hole up for tonight?” you asked her.

“That’s really not a good idea, dude.” she told you.

“And why not? It’s going to be ten times more dangerous out here if we try to fight something we can't see,” you shoot back at her.

“Theyll be able to find us if we stay in one place.” she said as she brought her voice down to a whisper.

        “Machines still in the city, built to keep the griffins out, the-” She continued talking about the robots, but your attention was elsewhere. The sun was drawing down as best you could tell against the cloud cover, so light was growing dimmer. A whirring sound accompanied by a light flickered to life behind you. You turned around to see what it could be.

        You were met by a tiny flying robot. Is this what she was talking about? This couldn't have been that big of a threat. It looked like a maintenance robot. Two metal wings covered what seemed to be a propulsion system that shot out hot air and made the whirring sound and kept the machine afloat. The body was small and boxy, with two eyes on top of each other looking at you, as well as a small flashlight illuminating your face. Gilda was still talking when she noticed the machine start to make another noise.

        “...and then the seekers send the signal out to sentinels to...intercept...” She looked back at what seemed to be a moment too late.

bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz..........click.......

“NO!” Gilda screamed and pulled her gun out and put three rounds into the tiny machine. The tiny robot flew in a circle towards the ground before impacting in a ball of flame while the lights on it died out.

        “RUN! They're coming!” She tugged on your arm as she bolted down the street. You caught up to her and tried to talk to her as she ran for her life.

        “What's coming? Slow down, we can deal with this.” You grabbed her and attempted to slow her down, she turned to you with a hard look of fear.

        “Deal with this! I'm trying to deal with this! We need to get the fuck out of here before they-”  she stopped mid sentence and all of the color drained from her face as her mouth stood agape. She looked above you at something as she slowly started to back away.

        That was never good.

        You turned around to discover just what she was running from in the first place. It was a robot, that was for sure, but it was nothing like you had ever seen before. It had a long armored body beginning in a twelve eyed metal face and ending in a short tail curved in with a spike on it. One the sides it had eight legs like a spider, and they worked well, considering it was hanging off a vertical surface and staring right at you. Below its metal face plate were two tiny arms and two large miniguns that were revving up at the sight of you.

        You decided to take Gildas advice and run for it.

        You got a shot off at the spider thing and turned to run towards where gilda was already halfway around the street. Hopefully the bullet had some effect. It certainly didn't put it down as you heard the metal ligs scurry down the wall and the miniguns roar out and a thunderous wall of bullets tore into the ground beside you, taking pieces of your clothing with it.

        Gilda waited for you behind a car as she let a couple of shots off at the beast. As you sprinted down the street you looked back to see that the spider thing was gaining on you fast. You got to the car and slid into position beside Gilda. You pulled out your automatic pistol and let the magazine loose into the monster’s faceplate. To your surprise all of the bullets merely bounced off, which was a problem.

        The continuous clicking of the spiders legs sounded out in fast succession between bouts of it filling the air with minigun fire.You attempt to slow it down with your more high powered rifle, but much to your dismay it has much the same effect as your last attempt. Gilda fled into an adjacent house as you slowly backed away from the car and tried to place a shot where you think the weak points would be.

        A clear shot to the eye didn't even affect it as it stormed up to the car between the two of you and used its front legs to stab into the sheet metal and forcibly throw the car out of the way to get to you. the car slammed into the house Gilda was in, breaking the windows and falling into the driveway. The miniguns rang out again as it strided toward you. The shots  felt like a sewing machine had just been grated across your chest. Thankfully the kevlar in your shirt saved you, but it wouldn't hold up to another volley like that.

        With an act of sheer stupidity and desperation, you charged the spider moving towards you to try and get out of the path of the minigun bursts roaring out at you. The spider moved towards you as well, meeting you in the middle. You pulled your shoulder up to the beasts pointy face plate, but it gave no ground to your assault. You halted in place as a half second stalemate occurred. You stared into the spiders red eyes that were right above eye level on you, not really knowing where to go from there. The robot took the initiative, jerking its head forward, knocking you backwards, and trying to fill you with bullets that just roared past you as it landed you on your ass. It came up on you and pinned you to the ground as it started trying to stab you with its sharp front appendages. You managed to get one embeded in the stock of your gun, but the other continued to puncture your clothing and leave you bleeding under them.

        Desperate for any sort advantage you could think of, you pull out your knife and try to fight with the little arm for leverage. The miniguns roared out beside your ears, attempting to get at you, but only filling the ground beside you with holes, and leaving your ears with a severe ringing. You look up at the monster for anything at all. The body was connected armor plates as links with a small opening in between the links, where you could almost see wires poking through from the many years of neglect. You take the opportunity, and thrust into the openings over and over, hoping to severe something important. The beast screeches as its back legs give out. Its front have still works as you keep thrusting though. The miniguns are now on full fire, not even stopping in controlled bursts, you wonder how much ammo this thing actually carries.

        As the arm continues to litter you with holes, you start to desperately thrust into the cavity right below the face plate. If this didn't work you'd be dead before you could get out of here. You close your eyes and thrust one last time as hard as you can. You arm splits into the crevice and your hand embeds itself into the head of the beast, cutting your hand apart relentlessly as the gears and wires around it go awry. You hear a satisfying pop and fizzle as the machine above you twitches and the goes limp on top of you.

        You push the massive hunk of now useless metal off of you. You have to put a boot on the body to pull your hand out of the cavity it embedded itself in. Yanking out of the machine, you fell backwards onto the pavement, but your hand was still attached, no knife though. You had a lot of minor cuts and stabs all over your hand, but it wasn't serious. Your entire body was covered in cuts and bruises from that fight, but at least you won.

        You call out to the house behind you that Gilda was in.

        “Hey, that wasn't so bad!” You said as you see her walk out of the doorway.

        She started at you with a very pissed tone, “Want so bad? We almost died! If you would've just listened to me in the first place we could’ve avoided all of this! But you had to be a dipshit and stare at the robot for it to record you for the sentinels, didn't you? I’ve dealt with these things before, If you would've just-”

        “Oh, can it. We’re alive ain't we?” You get up and look around the street, everything seemed to be empty now. You made your way towards the house Gilda was at, hoping to sleep this off. Hopefully none of your wounds were very serious. You didn't feel like you were going to bleed out, but that may have just been adrenaline.

        “Just barely alive. I guess now we're staying here for the night.” she crossed her arms and said to you.

        “You'd guess right.” Just then, over the dull ringing still in your ears, you heard the familiar clicking of the spider legs against the concrete. You looked over to find two more of the sentinels coming down the street straight at you. Great, that’s just what you needed.

        “Get back in the house! Go!” you yell at her and she listens, you try to run into the house but your body just wants to stop where it is.

        You limp towards the door as the sentinels charge toward you. Making it close to the doorway, one of them stops for a moment. You make the mistake of trying to discern what it was doing for a moment.

        Part of a plate on the back of the machine opened up to reveal two short spikes. At first you couldn't really tell what the point of them was, until they fired out into the air with a burst of smoke, swirling towards you at great speed.

        “Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit,” You let out as you try to get in as fast as you could. The rockets were faster though. The swirling projectiles hit the car in the driveway instead of nailing you directly. The sheer force of the blast sends you flying into the room and right into the wall flipped upside down. You slide to the floor on your head and look up into the room.

        Gilda is in a corner on her ass looking incredulously at the door way, seemingly knocked back from the blast as well. You look out the doorway and see one of the sentinels has reached it. Man, this is going to suck.

        It attempts to tear into the room with its miniguns, but only succedes in tearing into the wall beside the door. Scuttering back for a moment, it decides to try to enter the room instead. The beast rears back and rams into the wall with all the force it could muster. It was rewarded with entrance to the room, but the damage to the house caused something else as the added weight of the machine on the floor caused something to groan.

        Everything seemed to stand still for a moment before something cracked in the floor and it bounced once, startling all parties within for a moment. Then, without warning, the whole house seemed to collapse on itself, causing beams and sheets of wood, metal, and stone to rain down as the floor collapsed into the basement below.

        As the dust settled, you couldn't move, and everything in your vision was darkness. The only thing you could do now was pass out. Which you did.