Chapter 9: Bandit Country

Applejack was furious. They had found Fluttershy, but Dash's extended absence had worried them so much they were almost ready to leave the rooftop and search for other places. Rainbow Dash sat through a lecture, and when Applejack was finished yelling (out of worry and relief), she finally noticed Soarin.

"Well, how do 'ya do?" she asked, faking cheerfulness.

"Fine. I didn't risk my life for a train to take me to a lecture, so will you two just cut your shit out?" he snapped in response. Rainbow Dash's jaw dropped in shock. "What are you looking at?" he said angrily to Dash.

"What's gotten into you?" Rainbow Dash yelled. "You aren't the Soarin I knew!"

"No, I'm not. Are you satisfied?"

"No!"

"Well, that's just a bit too bad. We need to focus on survival, not your personal feelings." As much as Rainbow Dash was hating him right now, he still had a good point.

"Whatever. What should we do?"

"Well... um..." Fluttershy squeaked, too quiet for anypony to hear. She wasn't the kind of pony to interfere in arguments.

"Canterlot."

"No! That would take too long. How 'bout we find another train and go back to the Crystal Empire?"

"Yeah, cuz we're just gonna find a train, in perfect condition, just lying around for the taking."

"Shut up! We don't need sarcasm right now, Soarin!"

"Ah don't think we need arguing either!"

"Ladies..." Fluttershy had an idea.

"Shut up, you orange country scum!" Soarin yelled out aggressively. Dash wouldn't stand for him detesting her best friend, be him her idol or not. She tackled him to the ground and beat him with her right forehoof until his face was bleeding. He roared and kicked her stomach, launching her into the air and off the rooftop. If she wasn't a pegasus, Dash would've died. Rage took over her body and her mind. She no longer thought rationally. Dash flew up and delivered a buck to Soarin's face. He fell back, his nose broken, his face soaked with his own blood. Dash picked up a knife and put it against Soarin's throat.

"Give me one good reason not to kill you. You are nothing more than a burden to this group, and you're just generating problems and hostility. You threatened our survival. GIVE ME A REASON NOT TO KILL YOU!" she screamed in rage.

"I'm so sorry," Soarin sobbed. "This apocalypse is getting to my head! That day, when I saved your life in the library, I was mentally scarred. I'm not who I was."

Dash tossed the knife. "I understand." Soarin stood up. Dash thought she saw him shoot Applejack a smug look, but she wasn't sure. Twilight was just sitting there, wide-eyed with shock at what Rainbow Dash just did.

"Um... hey..." Fluttershy was cowering in a corner, but she still had that idea.

"Yes, Fluttershy?" Twilight asked.

"I heard Fillydelphia was safe... from those poor, sick ponies. The Royal Guard is leaving that place alone. W-we could try there!" It really wasn't a bad idea.

"Ah think it's worth a shot! It'll be one heck of a trot, but not as bad as Canterlot or the Chrystal Empire. I vote yes!" Applejack stomped her hoof down with fresh enthusiasm.

"My wings are sore as hell from flying across Equestria and back this week... but ok!" Rainbow Dash agreed. Soarin remained silent. Twilight just nodded.

"Then its settled! We're movin' ta Fillydelphia!" Applejack was trying to cheer up the situation with false enthusiasm, and it worked.

After leaving the rooftop, the Elements (minus Rarity, to everypony's despair) got on their way. Soarin flew ahead, just barely staying in sight, but Rainbow Dash chose to catch up with her friends.

"Anything interesting happen while I was out being awesome?" Dash said, to break the silence.

"Well, Ah found Fluttershy. Pinkie here seems to be pretty darn good at fightin' those things, with knives mostly," Applejack replied. Pinkamena was completely silent, which was very unusual for her. The collapse took a lot from everypony, it must have taken the Pinkie out of her. Now all that remained was a dangerously depressed pink psycho badass who could snap any minute.

"How many of the dead did you have to deal with?"

"Not much, considerin'. They seem to have moved on."

"Yeah, there wasn't any at all when I got here, which is pretty cool, since last time I was here, this town had gone to hell. Just wondering, how did you survive? The invasion, I mean. There was more than enough to break through the doors, even the walls if they had to."

"We all kept our heads down and our mouths shut."

"Ah... Soarin saved my life."

"What? That two-bit psycho?"

"He wasn't always like this. Times have been hard on him lately."

"Times have been hard on us all, Rainbow."

Rainbow Dash had nothing to say to that. Despite recent hostilities, Rainbow Dash still loved Soarin, and she felt the need to defend him, but she couldn't argue with logic. Applejack had a point.

"He threw me out the library window and tried to hold them off... there was hundreds of them bombarding that tree! Soarin must have had a hard time escaping, but he pulled it off," Dash informed her friend. "I'm gonna talk to Twilight. See ya." Rainbow Dash trotted to Twilight. "Sup egghead. Any idea what's going on?"

"No idea at all. I've never seen anything like it, except that it happened a while ago. It must've been contained somehow... or was it?" Twilight was now deep in thought.

"What?" Dash inquired.

"Maybe the disease wasn't defeated at all. Maybe it was just contained, the infected quarantined successfully... and somehow broke out again."

"Makes sense. I can't imagine a disease being wiped from the face of Equestria and then suddenly coming back, out of nowhere. But how would they have kept it hidden so long?"

"I'm not sure. What does Celestia think of this?"

"Beats me. She seemed like she was holding back a lot of emotion, though. Emotions too powerful for even the Goddess of the Sun... she mentioned Princess Luna being infected."

"How is that possible? The divine shouldn't be affected by this!"

"Celestia told me it took a week for the first symptom to show, whereas normal ponies get it in less than an hour. I guess it just slows it down."

"Interesting. This needs more study, more research."

"Celestia has her top scientists working on it. They're using an actual zombie for their studies." Twilight looked shocked.

"But that's dangerous!" she screamed in outrage.

"They're taking tons of safety procedures, don't worry. There's no better way to find out more about this thing."

"I guess..."

Suddenly, a pony jumped from a tree. Dash saw that it was a yellow pegasus with a black mane and tail. He was caked with dirt and blood, and was pointing a 9mm sub machine gun at the group.

"Don't move!" he screamed. This new stallion had a gruff, deep voice, and was very big and threatening. "Poison, we got 'erselves some tresspassers!" This stallion was cackling maniacally. A new, green unicorn pony walked around from behind the group. He had a bottle of black fluid with a skull label as a cutie mark.

What a terrible thing, to have something so violent as your special talent, Dash thought. Her friends were starting to panic, especially as Poison drew a very large knife from his belt. Where the fuck is Soarin?

Poison was like an ant compared to the other bandit. He was so buff, he looked like he could blow a pony to pieces with a single punch.

"Ye wan' know wha' we do ter' tresspashers? Y'all gon' find out," Poison cackled, laughing insanely. These two meant business. All Dash had was a standard kitchen knife; even if the first bandit didn't have a gun, she was no match for that long knife.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Soarin dive bombed the buff pony's head, with enough force to knock the giant down. Poison looked up in surprise, and Dash took her chance. She rushed forward and thrust the knife deep into Poison's throat. He gurgled blood for about thirty seconds once the knife was out, gave one last weak cough, and died on the spot, in a pool of his own blood. Dash looked over and saw the overly-buff bandit regain control. He sent his right forehoof right into Soarin's chest, and he went flying.

Dash remembered seeing one Wonderbolt training exercise; spinning them really fast and sending them flying, then having the trainee regain balance in midair and land as gracefully as possible. Soarin obviously remembered the trick and performed a perfect landing, sending dust flying as he made impact with the ground. Determination and rage clouded his eyes, and the grey pegasus rushed the bandit head-on. Clearly the bandit hadn't seen this coming; he probably expected Soarin to have died upon impact with the punch. Soarin wrapped his hindlegs around the brute's neck, and with all the force he could muster, slammed both his forehooves into the bandit's nose. The attack was very successful, and blood sprayed everywhere as the bandit's nose shattered. The giant fell on his back, then stood up. He had crimson blood squirting from his face, and his once yellow coat was now stained a dark red, but the thing just refused to die.

The bandit no longer saw fun in this, he wanted to avenge his horribly disfigured snout by ripping Soarin to pieces. Dash wasn't gonna sit back and watch. She threw herself at the bandit as hard as she could, with the knife pointed at his shoulder. The blade sunk in down to the handle. The bandit screamed in agony and swatted Rainbow Dash away. She slammed into the ground and could just barely get back to her hooves. She turned and saw Soarin drawing his own knife and throwing it at the muscular bandit. The knife hit the dead center of his chest, with enough force to cut through the muscle and snap the bone beneath. Unfortunately, the knife was slowed down too much by all the mass it just penetrated, but luck was on Soarin's side. The bandit fell on his face in pain, and that knocked the knife deep into the soft, now unprotected organs of the bandit. He jumped up and pulled the weapon out, and with it came a spurt of blood. The vital fluid was pouring out; the bandit was beyond saving now. He tried to get to his hooves, but collapsed into the pool of blood, which sent up a splash of it. The bandit sat there choking and coughing for what felt like forever, but eventually slipped away. Soarin collapsed as the adrenalin left his body.

Dash galloped over to Soarin. He went into a coughing fit, and coughed up a mouthful of his own blood.

"Fluttershy! Get over here!" Dash screamed. The yellow pegasus obliged. "Can you help him?"

"No need. Nothing seems fatal. I felt his ribs, they aren't cracked, so no organs were punctured. I think the impact of the punch just knocked some stuff around in him, but with some rest, he should be fine," Fluttershy said. Dash felt extremely relieved. Soarin grinned.

"You can't kill me. Nopony can."

Author's Note

I felt the story was slowing down a little too much with all the dialogue, so I put this in. A somewhat epic battle.
And just so you can understand why the bandit was so hard to kill, picture this: you know that Wonderbolt trainee, the really buff one with tiny wings? The white one? Imagine a pony twice his size almost, with a little steroids on top. A little unrealistic, but I still love how it turned out. Also, I'm very sorry this story took so long to update. I've got a lot on my plate right now; I have 4 stories that I'm working on, one being a collab with a friend of mine. So yeah, expect updates to all my current stories to be a little slow, since I'm trying to focus on all the stories instead of just one.

Anyways, thanks for reading, and please comment below telling me what you think of this chapter!