FALLOUT EQUESTRIA: RISING DAWN

Chapter 4

Bad Pony

"If that's what it took, why not? You said you were looking for a Water Talisman. Wouldn't you do anything to bring one back so everypony in your stable would live?"

Even in the distance, I could still see their village burning. Behind me, it was a dimly glowing ember in a sea of shifting snow. Their screams permeated my thoughts. Night Sky's words blackened my conscience. It wasn't right. They'd murdered the zebras, and they'd do it again if they could. At the end of the day, they'd get their caps for whatever atrocities they promised to commit.

I trudged through the perpetual twilight that haunted these ashen plains, and at the end of the day, my hooves would still be empty. They'd done what I could not and could never have. They were doers. They were survivors. And I was still a victim. I made the choice of walking away from my only safe means of travel to Poneva.

I chose to be a good pony – at the cost of my stable's rations. Every hour, every day spent out here was another day sheared off my stable's lifespan. I wasted my time – I wasted their time! The time I spent accompanying those mercs was thrown out the window, all because I chose to have a conscience. All because I chose to not be a monster.

A darker part of my soul reasoned with me. I should have stayed with those mercs; I'd probably be in Poneva by now. I'd have a water talisman in my hooves and I'd be able to return to my stable and close those doors and forget about everything outside.

I threw my head back and screamed in frustration, stamping my hooves into the snow. I would have sacrificed those zebra a hundred times over if it meant my stable lived! These surface dwelling vermin shouldn't mean anything to me! There's nothing left on the surface to save. There was a reason why we never opened our doors … and this … this place was it.

My stable … my stable was my world, and my world was my stable. I didn't belong here. I looked around me, the chilling breeze blowing powder over the pale dunes that rose up from the dead earth. I was in the middle of nowhere.

Again.

All because I chose to be a good pony. The first ponies I met slaughtered my friends. The next group slaughtered an entire village of zebras. Was there anything that made those two groups different? What use was there being good if everypony I saw, everypony I met was bad? It would be a disadvantage. It would make me naïve and vulnerable in the face of opportunity. Opportunity. I chuckled at that word, shaking my head as I crunched through the powder.

For a moment, at Dusktown, I had hope. Hope that the darkness that enshrouded this land hadn't blackened the hearts of everypony. I knew now, as I plodded through the snow, that there was a monster in everypony and in everyone.

There was one in me too.

For hours, I made my way through the snow, kicking through the powder in a direction my pipbuck told me was north. I stopped for a moment to catch my breath, and, in the distance, I saw several black silhouettes stalking me in the darkness.

Bloodletters.

I tried counting them, but the snow swirls that danced across the drifts distorted their shapes. My EFS unhelpfully marked them as a large amorphous red blob. For all I knew there could've been 30 of them. I didn't know what to expect – I didn't want to know what those creatures could do. I gulped. I needed to find shelter, or someplace I could wall off or hide in. The pace of my hoofsteps quickened.

I looked behind me once more. They were getting closer.

I slid carefully down a massive hill of snow and felt my hooves sink into the powder to clop dully onto solid stone. My pipbuck alerted me that I'd entered a different zone. The Crystal Highway. Thank the Goddesses, at least I was making some progress. I glanced over my shoulder and was relieved that the silhouettes were following me no longer.

Oh fuck. My eyes darted across the snow and I realized that I was standing in a wide crack in the earth. Glancing to the left and right, it was evident that the land had been split asunder in the jagged teeth that jutted out of the ridgelines around me. I glared at the hill behind me; it was too steep to climb back up. There was no way out of here, and no way to go but forward and back.

With only two directions possible, I figured that forward was a good idea. I trotted along the winding path, passing under the shadows of the broken rock formations that reached over me. Turning a corner, I saw, half buried in the snow, what looked like a wagon. I approached its charred, shattered remains, and poked through the mound of snow that buried it. From its half melted surface and the direction it was pointed, I surmised that it had been fleeing from the balefire. I looked up, and my expression darkened.

All around me, straddling the ridge walls to my left and right, or just buried in the snow in mass graves were wagons. Hundreds of them. I gulped; this was the Crystal Highway after all. I squinted through the darkness; they had been fleeing the blast zone. Lightning Twirl was right: follow the highway, and you'll get somewhere.

That somewhere, I hoped, was Poneva. I trudged onward, stepping over hunks of scrap metal that would have clipped and cut into my flesh had I not been wearing my barding. Taking in my surroundings, I noticed that two rows had been cleared through the wreckage on either side of the valley. Wagon lines ran along their midsections. The 2 century-old wreckage had been simply bulldozed aside to make room for a road going north and south.

By chance I came across a wagon that had been flipped over so that one set of its blackened wheel spokes was pointing skywards. It didn't look like the others; its frame was built more for practicality than vanity. The remarkably sturdy looking rhombohedron of metal hadn't been blasted apart by the balefire like the rest. It was fairly large, and it looked capable of holding half a dozen or more ponies within its hull.

I lowered myself to my chest and peeked underneath it through a slit that hadn't been buried under with snow. Something caught my eye inside and piqued my interest.

I dredged the hole further with my hooves, pushing the freezing powder away until I could see inside the pitch black interior of the overturned wagon. I flicked on my pipbuck's flashlight and flashed it into the darkness. Skeletons. Almost a dozen of them, and two more partially buried lower halves that belonged to the wagon pullers, I assumed.

Some of the bones were too small to belong to that of a full grown mare or stallion.

My eyes hardened as I stared into the wagon's contents. Among them I found, littering the dirt beneath and around their fractured skeletons, cases of charred belongings and disintegrating satchel bags. It was clear to me now that these ponies were fleeing the balefire.

Some of the skulls wore visored helmets that were still tied snugly to their frozen craniums; emblazoned onto the metal cuirasses that encased their chests were emblems depicting two alicorns mirroring each other as the sun and moon rose and fell behind them. These ponies were soldiers of the Goddesses armies.

Outside, there were hundreds, maybe even thousands of wagons. This wasn't just a desperate flight; it was an evacuation – a mass exodus. I thought back to Spring Fresh's memory orb; her husband, a military pony, had apparently known of what was coming. Even with foreknowledge, they were not able to escape.

I gulped down a heavy lump in my throat and noticed a frost-encrusted shape clutched within somepony's skeletal hooves. It was a foal. And under its hooves was the frayed, disintegrating coat of an ancient foal's toy. I found myself lost in the pink doll's buttoned eyes.

The touch of cold, cold death slithered against my coat.

"Mommy, please don't go!"

I stood to my hooves and banged my head against the wagon bed, my mind reeling and my body trembling. I looked around me and all I saw were ponies - dead and gone.

Mommy …Spring Song's voice whimpered for her mother, her voice emanating from the screaming, hanging maw of the small skeleton that lay before me.

"NOOO!" Spring Song wailed.

I shrieked, squeezed my eyes shut, and scrambled out of the darkness, my pipbuck's beam flashing against their forsaken remains, painting their wretched, anguished shadows against the wagon's charred insides. I wrenched myself out from under the wagon and fell on my bottom, gasping frantically for my breath as I kicked my hind legs away from the dark hole.

My heart drummed against my chest. I stared with wide eyes as the screams of Spring Fresh's foals faded away into the haunting breeze. I sat there as the wind blew a solemn tune, my heavy breaths hissing through my lips in wisps of white vapor. I made my way back to the wagon and, with my forehooves, swept them over the hole, filling it with snow.

I left the wagon behind me and did not look back, walking along the lonely highway into the darkness as the snowfall thickened. I stopped every now and then to pan my pipbuck's yellow beam across the frigid snow swirls. Even inside the thick fabrics of my barding, I was cold – but inside, I was even colder. Desperation was all that was keeping me going at this point; this road would take me to whatever end awaited me. I just knew it.

If Poneva held not the salvation my Stable needed, I didn't know if a life out here was worth living. The dead were calling me to join them. The memories of Spring Fresh and her foals were still haunting me even after I buried them. I knew they weren't real. They were long dead. But I couldn't stop shaking.

I was soft, and the wasteland was leaving its marks.

As I trudged onward, the night became darker and it felt like I'd been trotting for hours when a yellow light shown upon my flank. It seethed around me, painting my shadow against the snow as it came closer.

I turned slowly, my right foreleg held over my muzzle against the glare. My pupils contracted as a large black mass with a beam of light training upon me approached. I gulped a heavy lump down my throat as I stood my ground, unsure what to expect. As they closed in, I could see several equine shapes following closely by its flanks.

The black mass stopped. For seconds that felt like hours, I waited for their maniacal cackles, for a hail of bullets, hell, maybe even a rocket propelled grenade. Instead, there came four equine silhouettes as they disembarked from the dark mass, the vehicle's light still trained on me.

All six illuminated the night with their flashlights, panning them across my face. I held out a trembling foreleg and flashed them with my pipbuck's beam. Six hooded ponies in thick snow barding approached, and held in their mouths or floating in their magical fields, were an assortment of carbines and other automatic weapons. To my grim relief, they were not furies. But their poise changed nothing.

A stallion with a machine pistol trotted up to me, my apprehensive face reflecting dully in his battered black goggles. I dared not make any sudden movements. "Look at what we got here." He said as I shielded my eyes with a foreleg.

"Where're you headed, colt?" The unicorn stallion asked, jadedly.

I gulped, taking a step back, narrowing my eyes at them.

"What does it matter?"

The sound of somepony racking his weapon's charging handle pushed me another step back.

"Jus' wondering. Not that many ponies go this way on hoof. 'N not that many ponies go up ta Poneva alone."

I snorted. So this road did lead to Poneva after all. "Well, no shit." I murmured. "If you knew already, why'd you ask?"

The stallion glanced over at the others.

"Thought that since we headin' the same way, you could hitch a ride with us." He said, reaching out with a foreleg. He grinned under his hood.

I shook my head, trotting back carefully. "I won't be going anywhere with anypony …" Every hoofstep I took back, they took another forward. "I can make it there myself."

"Come on, colt. It's dangerous out here, bloodletters and haunters and such. It ain't safe out here on your own."

"No." I said, firmly. I survived out here by myself this far, and I was intending on keeping it that way. Alive, alone, and away from these ponies, whoever they were. "Leave me alone."

His grin widened as he shook his head.

"Hold on, wait a sec!" He said, trotting up to me, so close, that I could see the scratches in his goggles.

"Stay the fuck back!" I growled, shoving him away from me.

"Hey, hey, hey!" He said, standing on his hind legs and holding his forelegs in the air. "I was just gonna say that you remind me of somepony."

Huh? I craned my neck and cocked my head. These ponies were testing my patience. I didn't know any of these ponies, and I didn't have time for this bullshit!

I glared at him, "Do you, now?"

He bobbed his head with a nicker. "Yeah, yeah, you guys know this pony too, right?" He fell on all fours and turned to the others.

They nodded, trotting towards me. Who the hell were these ponies?

"Listen, I don't know who the fuck you are –"

"Mhm, I've seen him around," Said a mare as she unslung a battle rifle from her back.

"Yeah, he's that one slave," Grated another as the ponies leveled their weapons at me.

My eyes widened. "W-what? I don't even know you ponies." I stammered, trembling. "I'm no slave." I croaked, my eyes darting to each pony and back at my holster.

They all laughed at me, the other stallion approaching me with a long metal chain. I drew my pistol reflexively.

"You are now." He said, with a wide grin.

I froze. My mouth opened and closed with words I couldn't find. No, not like this. My eyes locked onto the holster slung across my chest.

"No." I said, backing away. "I don't want to hurt anypony …" I pleaded with them; I didn't want any more blood on my hooves. "Nopony needs to die."

"Die?" The mare guffawed. "You're surrounded, colt."

Please, Goddesses, don't make me kill anypony else. Goddesses, somepony, something – make them turn around and leave!

The unicorn pony chuckled, taking a menacing hoofstep towards me. "Don't even think about it." The stallion said forcefully, levitating his machine pistol to my head. "You're coming with us whether you like it or not, colt."

My lungs ached as I realized that I'd been holding my breath.

I closed my eyes for a moment, and when they fluttered open, I exhaled, slowly. Nopony's going to stop me now. Not when I'm so close. Not with so many ponies waiting for me to come back home.

"Fuck. You." I said, under my breath, and slipped into SATS.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

The stallion's goggles exploded inward as a bullet speared through his lenses and out the back of his head. A heartbeat later, the pony with the shackles dropped dead before he could even scream as I blew a hole out the back of his hood. My third, aimed at the mare with the battle rifle, went wide as she dived towards me, forelegs outstretched.

"You son of a bitch!" she howled. I gazed at them with shock as they slung their weapons and launched themselves into the fray. They wanted me alive.

I tongued my mouth bit, my pistol discharging the last of its magazine as they wrenched it out of my teeth, blowing one pony's left ear off in the process. In a whinnying frenzy, he spun around and bucked me in the chest, knocking the air from my lungs before the mare slammed into me from the side, tackling me to the powder in a plume of snow.

I shrieked, ramming a hoof into her throat. She threw her head back for a moment, choking for air before another hoof connected with her nose, peppering my muzzle with splotches of her crimson. Not this close, not this close to Poneva was I going to go down to scum like these!

"Get. Off!" I cried out hoarsely, bucking her off me with a grunt and kicked up snow beneath me as I scrambled for my fallen pistol. Won't – be – a – victim -

I was a breath away from it before a stallion kicked it away from my hooves.

He wrestled me to the snow in a tangle of limbs, slamming a hoof into me before violently flinging me over onto my stomach. I thrashed and screamed as he and the rifle mare pinned me to the snow as I kicked a crater out of the ground in my desperate struggle.

I looked up and a younger looking mare with blue goggles rushed towards me, a carbine floating in front of her. She looked down at me with conflicted eyes, and hesitated.

"Sugar Rum, do it!" The stallion screamed, hoofing me in the ribcage. She blinked, and slammed the buttstock of her carbine into the base of my skull, ramming my face into the snow.

My sight blurred out and I tasted the irony taste of blood that I'd learned to become familiar with, lately. That lull in consciousness was all the time they needed. With an audible metallic clank, I felt the cold touch of frozen metal clamp around my hooves.

I lay there in a heap, beaten and overpowered. There was nothing I could do now.

"No …" I whimpered, as they rolled me over on my back, a chain tugging against my forelegs. This can't be happening! A rivulet of blood ran down my forehead and over my brow as they dragged me back to their wagon.

In that moment, I lost everything. Dew Drops' scarf, my family pictures – everything in my bags - my holster and my gun. I lost the only thing worth living for in this wasteland. I lost what Night Sky and her mercs washed their hands with blood to preserve.

I lost my freedom. I took it for granted, chose what was right over what needed to be done, chose to be a good pony, and chose to walk away from my only chance at making it to Poneva in safety. Everypony in Stable 91 was going to die, and it was all my fault.

I was Red Dawn. I was a victim.

Now I was a slave.

"You did us a favor." The mare with the carbine said into my ear as she chained me to the back of their wagon. I looked up into the wagon bed and half a dozen weary eyes peered back down at me between the metal bars of a steel cage. "Now the cut's split between the four of us."

---

I trotted sullenly, my forelegs chained to the back of the wagon as it rolled due north. I was getting to Poneva after all.

In shackles, of course.

This, sadly, was yet another thing that Night Sky was right about. Slavers. I should've stayed with Night Sky; the weak and naïve don't survive too long out here, I came to realize.

There was no way out of this, I concluded abysmally as I clanked my biting chains together. I looked up and Sugar Rum, the mare that had beaten my skull in with her carbine, was watching me through her blue goggles. I shot her a deathly look and she kept my burning gaze for a few heartbeats. With a snort of icy air, she turned away, panning her flashlight across the road.

I wasn't dead yet. As bleak as my situation looked, the only thing running circles around my mind was – how the hell was I going to get out of this? I'd lived to see my friends die, and walked away from certain death three times now. This was not how it was supposed to end. The wasteland can take anything but my freedom if I could help it.

It was my choice to pick up where my friends had left off when they died; if even that choice was taken away from me, life was no longer worth living. Night Sky told me I didn't get to choose the easy way out; but, ultimately, I had the right to choose how I'd die. And I wouldn't let these bastards take that away from me.

I grinded my teeth together and eyeballed the back of the wagon where they had thrown my bags. I narrowed them at the black shape of my holster. If I could just get to them …

I shot the slavers with a look that promised murder. One of them saw me and laughed. They didn't give two shits about what I thought of them as they pulled the wagon through the debris-littered highway.

I followed my clanking metal chains to the steel bars of a cage sitting on the wagon's bed. I stared through its dirty, rime encrusted bars and saw them – 6 poor ponies in all, as they sat together in somber quietude.

What I saw made my blood boil. The ponies were battered and bruised. Some had black eyes; others had bumps on their heads or patches of coat missing. One of the mares had a bloody, blackened flank. She lay on the wagon floor with glassy eyes, not staring at anything in particular. Each pony inside had a collar wrapped around their necks – wired collars that blinked every now and then with a red light. My expression darkened as one of the ponies met my eyes.

"What are those things around your necks?" I asked.

A mare with bandages around her chest replied, "Bomb collars."

Goddesses have mercy. How can anypony do that to somepony? Bomb collars? What the fucking fuck? They chained me to the back of the wagon because there wasn't enough room inside the cage. My lack of a collar supported the notion that they weren't prepared to capture more than six. But they'd made accommodations just for me.

"What did they do to you all?" I whispered, my voice trembling.

For several heartbeats, nopony answered. An earth pony in tattered snow barding limped to the cage's bars and peered down at me. "Took me while my daughter and I were scavenging for food." He answered, faintly.

My jaw clenched. His filly was nowhere to be seen. "Your daughter … what happened to her?"

He looked at his hooves, and back at me with eyes that burned with balefire. He blinked furiously, shaking his head as they welled with tears. "They took me … and left her behind."

These slavers were vermin. "Why …" I murmured.

"East Eden ca' never have 'nuff slaves." A stallion missing several patches of coat where curved lines lacerated his bare flesh, croaked.

I looked at him with gloomy curiosity. "East Eden?"

The mare with bandages wrapped around her chest crawled to the metal bars. "They're a plantation in Poneva. They need slaves to plow and harvest their fields."

"They're going to put us to work and work us to death," Growled the earth pony.

The mangy stallion shook his head. "That ain't true. I heard they feed you and put a roof over your head."

I couldn't believe that.

"Bullshit." The pony hissed. "They don't give a shit about any of us! Look at what they did to her!" He pointed a forehoof at the mare with the bloody flank. "They left my filly for dead!"

"S'better than being dead." The mangy pony replied. I almost stopped in my tracks, but the chain dragged me along with it. Nothing can be better than this.

"Three meals a day, and a bed t'sleep in. Ain't nuthin wrong with that."

To my shock, the mare nodded, slowly. "I scavenged everyday for something to eat before these slavers found me. Sometimes I'd go a day or two without something in my stomach."

A pony leaning against the bars in the back of the cage, turned his eyes low. "I'd do anything … anything for a bite. Just … something to eat," Added a unicorn with a broken horn. "I'm so hungry."

The mare and the patchy pony nodded together, shamelessly.

"No!" I snapped, raising my voice. These ponies – how could they be so accepting of this – this abomination of a fate? They looked at me with bleak, desperate eyes. "How can anypony be okay with this?!" I demanded.

None of the ponies said anything. Not even the earth pony. They were as beaten and hopeless as this frozen wasteland.

"You're a stable pony," The hornless unicorn began, eying my pipbuck. "You don't know what it's like out here … you're lucky if you eat once a day. You're a king if you eat twice."

"No. No. No." I hissed, glaring at him, "This and this?" I said, pointing a forehoof at the daughterless earth pony and the mare with the bloodied flank, "This isn't right. And nopony should be fine about it."

"It doesn't matter." I whirled my baleful gaze to its source and Sugar Rum's blue goggles were facing me. "East Eden's better than out here."

"Nowhere. Is better. Than here." I stated, scorning the very snow that crunched beneath my hooves. "But you ponies, you slaver pieces of shits make this world worse than it already is." I was going to tear this mare apart! "How the fuck do you live with yourself? Huh?" These ponies – no, these vermin - were worse than Night Sky's mercs.

Her goggles gave away nothing of the pony beneath.

Seconds passed, and Sugar Rum finally replied, "It's a business. You get paid. And when you get paid, you can put food on the table. If I don't do this, my family'll starve." Her voice was trembling and tinged with self-reproach.

"It's not worth it!" I screamed, venting out all the anger that I had stored for Night Sky. "You fuckers, y-you sick, calculating fucks - that's all it is to you, isn't it!?" Sugar Rum turned her head away from me and stared off into the distance. My voice lowered as I craned my neck towards her.

"It's just for the caps, isn't it?" I intoned, mockingly. I glanced at the poor mare with the ruined flank. "Look at me." I said to the slaver, hoarsely. She didn't turn. "I SAID, LOOK AT ME!"

Her goggles pivoted shakily towards me like an unoiled machine. "Now look at her." I said, pointing at the glassy eyed mare. "You see that? Is that what you do? Is that … that work … worth it? How'd you like it if somepony did that to you?"

The slaves were as speechless as the slaver. I don't think they've seen anypony mouth off to a slaver like that before. Sugar Rum looked at her hooves, and muttered something incomprehensible. "What?" I demanded. "What the fuck did you just say?"

"I … I …" She stammered, choking on her own words. Sugar Rum sniffed, bowing her head for a dark moment. Her blue goggles turned to face me, and I saw my own reflection. "I… don't care. I-I don't fucking care."

I trotted behind the wagon in silence as the wind howled around me. No hope. There was no hope for these ponies.

"Hey …" Somepony whispered. I looked up to the cage and the ponies huddled within parted aside. The ravaged mare was looking straight … through me. "Thank you … you're right, this isn't okay." She stated, faintly. "But there's nothing. Nothing we can do now."

I looked down at my hooves. Maybe she was right. My chains were cold, cold steel. No amount of pulling, yanking, or bitching was going to save me now. My body was chained, but my spirit wanted to be free. My stable was calling out to me. My mother was praying to the Goddeses to spirit me back home.

I made a promise to Dew Drops. I wasn't going to give up now.

In the darkness, several octaves higher than the sorrowful songs that the wind moaned, howled a creature that sounded nothing like anything I'd ever heard. Sugar Rum straightened out, levitating her carbine over the wagon's sideboard, her ears perked.

I heard it again, the haunting, unnatural howl that rattled my resolve. I trotted as close to the wagon as I could, the slaves inside the cage huddling together in fear. Fear. I thought I knew what it felt like to fear.

I swung my head around in every direction, trying to find the source of the devilish cries. Or sources. I nearly jumped when dozens of the terrifying howls pierced the night. I saw them. Goddesses. There were so many of them.

Rising from under the ridgeline's broken fingers, on either side of highway, were a dozen black shapes in all. Each was about as big as a third of the wagon's frame.

"Bloodletters!" One of the slavers scrambled onboard the wagon, a machine pistol in his mouth.

"Faster, we need to get away from those things!" The mare with the battle rifle ordered, tapping her hoof rapidly on the wagon's sideboard. The wagon puller nodded and entered a gallop. That resistance – that unwillingness to sit there and become prey, set the creatures off. The prey was escaping.

And they needed to feed.

With a rallying screech, a bloodletter leaped off the ridgeline and landed in a burst of powder. It blew through the snow shower at a full sprint, snarling as it bounded towards us.

"Put 'em down! Don't let 'em get close!" The rifle mare shouted, lighting up the night with flashes of muzzle flare. Sugar Rum panned her flashlight at the creature and I saw that it was a wolf as white as the snow itself. Its mindless, soulless eyes hungered for flesh and its slobbering mouth was wet with frothing saliva.

Chunks of its flesh blew off as the battle rifle's large caliber rounds tore into it. It yelped, faltered for a moment, but carried on as its kin joined the fray. A dozen of the creatures leaped into the highway from both sides. I screamed as one of the bloodletters flung itself in front of the wagon and ripped into the wagon puller.

His gurgling screams ceased as the wagon ran both of them over with a sickening crunch, flipping the wagon's frame end over end to crash into the snow in pieces. The impact catapulted me violently into the air as the wagon smashed into a snow drift, throwing up showers of ashen powder. I was thrashing my limbs midair, screaming for my life when the chain brutally yanked me back down to the earth in a blur of flailing limbs.

I crunched into fresh debris, my forehead smashing through a ruined plank of wood. I got to my hooves, blood running down my face, and all around me, ponies screamed. Only this time, it wasn't a village burning.

Littering the snow was the remains of the slavers' wagons, and underneath them, they clawed to the surface. One of the stallions burst through the debris, stumbling out into the open. I shrieked as a blurred form rammed into him, claws ripping through his barding as a bloodletter struck him down. I scrambled away, turning from the feasting creature even as the pony's screams died away to the snarling and howling of the mutant wolves.

"Goddesses – oh my Celestia – Luna's fucking grace!" I murmured as several more of the wolves fought for the slaver's meaty limbs. One of the bloodletters cocked its head at me and found the smell of my fear tantalizing.

My eyes widened as it bounded towards me, baring its wickedly sharp teeth. I galloped away and – the chain yanked me back to the ground. The bloodletter pounced. It tackled me to the snow, its claws digging into my barding as it snapped at my exposed throat.

I held out a foreleg in terror and watched with wide eyes as it, instead of chomping through my flesh, ripped through the chains that bound my legs. Unshackled, I threw out my forelegs and shoved it back with all the strength I had left, pouring into my forelegs all the hope and desperation the wasteland hadn't taken from me yet. It roared into my muzzle, spraying my face with ropes of disgusting spittle. The smell of its breath was that of a hundred rotting corpses. I could still see chunks of meat poking out from between its teeth.

The dead were calling me. Calling me to join them.

With a nightmarish, unnatural screech, the bloodletter threw its head back and bellowed a throaty, deafening roar that made my ears ring. Its head began to writhe and twitch from the inside out. Its lower jaw parted, and widened, and widened – and Goddesses, its head fucking ripped open!

It split apart, blooming outward like a budding flower – only its head didn't come apart. With a disgusting fetid gurgle, a long, writhing proboscis erupted out from the fleshy hole that was its throat between its four dripping mandibles.

"Holy shit – what the fuck is this thing!?" I cried out, as thick globs of digestive fluid dripped onto my quivering muzzle. I bared my teeth and screamed into its flapping mandibles, trying to wrestle the beast off me.

The bloodletter hissed, its fleshy, pink proboscis widening to reveal row upon row of serrated teeth. It, about as long as my outstretched foreleg, snaked into the air as I held back the rest of its body with faltering strength.

My muscles were burning. It was too strong, any moment now I'd let go.

I faltered.

My forelegs slackened. In a heartbeat, it was upon me. I shrieked as blood splashed onto my face and onto my chest. It tore into me, ripped open my chest cavity. I lay there screaming, bleeding out.

But the blood wasn't mine. The mutant abomination let out a dying hiss and slumped on top of me with a dozen ragged holes pouring crimson out of its throat. I wrestled it off me with a faint groan, and saw Sugar Rum's carbine smoking.

She lowered her carbine and flung my belongings at me with a magical field. I looked at her, covered in thick scarlet. Sugar Rum nodded once, levitated her gun, and continued firing. Two of the remaining slavers galloped towards her, opening up with their automatic weapons as the bloodletters plodded towards us.

I slipped on my holster, threw on my satchel bags, and wrapped Dew Drops' scarf around my neck. Somepony screamed behind me, and I whirled on my hooves. No!

Three bloodletters circled the cage as the ponies huddled together inside, only inches away from the mutant canines.

"HELP! Somepony, please!" The mare screamed.

"Get us out of here!" Shouted the earth pony stallion.

"The slaves!" I cried, pointing a forehoof at the cagefull of ponies.

The two other slavers ignored me, firing their guns like their lives depended on it.

"We need to help them!" I galloped toward Sugar Rum, gnawing my pistol's mouth bit.

"The key, find the key!" she hollered at me.

I panned my pipbuck's flashlight across the snow and spotted something shiny. I kicked my legs towards it - and a bloodletter landed in front of me. Son of a bitch – it thrashed through the powder, bounding towards me… and the key disappeared beneath the shifting snow.

I lost it. I lost.

"NOOO!" I cried, my face red as SATS aimed my entire magazine's worth of 10mm rounds down its gaping maw. The bullets lost their velocity, and blew apart its neck in chunks of ruined gore. It tumbled to the snow, its thrashing death rattle painting the drifts crimson with a fountain of blood. It slid to my hooves in a trail of gore, dead.

I spun my head to the wagon's wreckage just in time to see the bad go to worse. The slaves screamed as one of the bloodletters wrapped its jaws around one of the metal bars and yanked. The cage fell over on its side, pinning the creature beneath – the ponies landing on top of it in a shrieking heap. Its head split open and it snaked its writhing proboscis through the cage and ripped into the mangy pony's throat.

It sheared off a huge chunk of flesh and he fell back against the metal bars at the other end of the cage. Within seconds, the bloodletters outside devoured his flesh through the bars in a gory frenzy of snapping proboscides. He screamed in silence, his throat shredded to the bone as they broke his legs at stomach churning angles and ripped them clean off through the bars.

I shook my head vigorously, unloading a tirade of bullets their way. Several plunged deep, but the beasts were unfazed in their enraged, mindless state.

"Dear Celestia, somepony help them!" I pleaded in desperation.

"Fuck 'em," The slaver mare with the battle rifle shouted back. "Let's get the fuck outta here!"

"You mother fuckers!" I roared, swinging my pistol to the slavers. I heard the mare inside the cage scream and I swung it back at the wolves to see her lose her forelegs.

The slavers turned and galloped – except Sugar Rum. She glanced over her shoulder once, and levitated her carbine to gun down a bloodletter that got too close. Behind me the slaves howled in agony as the mutant abominations snaked their writhing proboscides through the bars to pick apart the hapless souls within.

It was a feast.

I watched helplessly while they tore into the defenseless morsels, devouring them alive, their shrieks dying beneath the beasts' nightmarish howling. Ponies pleaded to die as limbs tore, bones broke, and entrails spilled. The earth pony fell to the bottom of the cage, clutching his eviscerated innards as proboscides fought with his gory forelegs in an effort to yank away his intestines.

I started towards them, and paused – it was no use. They were already dead. I turned and darted my eyes to the fleeing slavers. I glanced back at the feeding frenzy, the voracious cacophony echoing thousands of times over in my thoughts, clawing at the white walls of my conscience, staining them red, cracking them with every vicious snap.

I stood there and watched both, my heart threatening to burst from my chest. I stood on my hinds and cradled my head in my hooves, screaming for Luna's grace.

Everypony I tried to help slipped away from my hooves.

With a whooping screech, one of the beasts pounced on Sugar Rum, clawing through her throat with its razor sharp talons. She stumbled backwards on her hinds, her forelegs wrapped around her neck, blood spurting through her hooves.

I roared, SATS guiding rounds through its head until my magazine clicked empty. I galloped towards Sugar Rum as she fell back into the snow, her lifeblood melting through the powder around her.

I held out my hooves but she swatted them away, shaking her head.

"Sorry - I'm sorry... the things I've done... the ponies I've killed... not worth it." She choked, blood running down her lips. She hoofed one of her breast pockets, and pulled out a frayed slip of paper, holding it out to me with a bloody hoof. It was an aged photograph of a golden yellow pony, a mare with blonde locks, and two pale coated twins. "Take it … please …" She said with an anguished sigh. I slipped it into one of my vest pockets, nodding gravely. Sugar Rum lifted her blue goggles and pulled down her hood, revealing the amber coated pony underneath. Her watery, blue eyes gazed up at me as the light began to fade from them.

"The slaves …" I began.

"I'll take – c- care of them." Sugar Rum croaked. She levitated a small tube, and flipped open its top. A detonator. "Go. If you find my daughters … my sister … tell them I-I … I went out … a good pony."

I nodded, somberly. "Thank you." I whispered, touching her cheek with a forehoof as tears welled in my eyes.

I glanced over at her once, and saw Sugar Rum sit up, her carbine blazing into the night. I galloped away from her and after the other two slavers. They hadn't gotten far. I saw, splattered across the snow, a stallion, his chest cavity opened and viscera spilled across the melting pale. Around him were two dead bloodletters, their heads blown apart by large caliber rifle rounds.

The mare was on the ground, wrestling with one of the beasts.

"Help!" She cried out, as the proboscis clamped down on her shoulder and tore out a haunch of meat.

A part of me just wanted to keep running. I watched as she struggled, entranced by my conflicting conscience. I felt it again. The darkest corners of my mind whispering to me. Telling me to run.

The night lit up for a brief moment with a resonating crack, my ears ringing as my eyes fluttered closed. A single gunshot followed, and the screams behind me ceased. Only the bloodletters remained. I exhaled a shaky breath.

Tonguing my mouth bit, I chanced a trio of unguided rounds that struck the beast in its center of mass. They plunged through its coat, tumbling through its chest and exploding out the other side. It paused to scream, and the mare bucked it off her.

She scrambled to her hooves and broke into a full on gallop, blood trailing behind her. "C'mon, c'mon!" She shouted. And I followed.

The ridgeline disappeared behind us and we scrambled up a steep hill of broken asphalt and metal beams half buried beneath century-old snow. We approached a lone building, with an aged, blackened sign that vaguely read 'Mane 7-Eleven' as the bloodletters closed in on us, the hunger of the roaring beasts not yet sated.

Rifle mare bucked down the door to the building and we charged in, not caring what may be inside. I shut the door behind us and we scrambled inside. The mare pushed in front of the door a half-disintegrated shelf, bits of blackened miscellanea spilling from its as we heaved it into place.

For good measure, we heaved two more – but even then, we were only forestalling the inevitable. Outside, our horrible deaths awaited us. The door rattled and shook, the wooden barrier threatening to snap. A crack opened up in the door's frame, and the enraged, bloodshot eye of a snarling beast glared back at us.

"Shit! These things are fucking strong!" The mare hissed, backing away from the barricades. She looked at me. The door slammed once more, and one of the shelves fell over in a heap of shattered wood and metal, kicking up plumes of ash that hung above the charred floor.

The slaver turned to look at me, levitating her sidearm from a leg holster and said, "If we make it out of this, I'll let you go."

My expression darkened. We were going to die, and that was what she was thinking. To her, I was still just another slave. She left the slaves behind for dead – for bait - so she could escape, and didn't give a single shit. Even Sugar Rum had a change of heart.

This one … this one cared only about herself. I stared at her with a disturbing calmness that would have frightened me had I looked in a mirror. I shivered beneath my barding; in that moment, the bestial roars outside, my heaving chest, my pounding temples – they all faded away into a grim silence.

Cold black paint trickled down the pock marked walls of my conscie ce. I let the floodgates part.

I decided that only one of us was going to make it out of this alive.

I learn from my mistakes. I don't make the same mistakes twice. And you know what?

Good things happen to bad ponies.

"W-why are you looking at me like that?" She asked, turning to face me.

I slipped into SATS.

Her knees snapped beneath her like wooden planks with a satisfying, wet crack.

She let out a horrifying scream as her pistol discharged, two of the rounds pancaking against my barding and one grazing my neck. I watched with an icy stare as she crumbled to the floor, blood running down my throat.

"You son of a bitch!" She wailed, as I spun around and ran the other way. One of the shelves went down in a crunch of splintered wood. She crawled across the floor with her useless limbs and leaned against the final barricade holding it against the door for her dear life. Outside, the monsters rammed their bodies against the door behind her. "NO! Don't leave me, here! Please!"
I galloped away from her, knocking over shelves in my wake.

"PLEASE!"

I didn't look back. The doors smashed open in a cloud of ash and splintered parts as their carnal, bestial roars echoed behind me. They tore into her, the sounds of flesh tearing and bones breaking piercing my ears as the bloodletters ripped her apart, limb from limb.

I bucked down the backdoor and galloped out into the snow, the mare's frantic, gurgling screams dying away behind me. My legs pounded beneath me, kicking up showers of powder as I ran for my life. My life.

I ran until the Mane 7-Eleven disappeared behind me in a veil of thick snowfall. For what seemed like hours, I galloped on until my legs gave out beneath me and I crunched into the snow. Out of breath, I wheezed for air, filling my lungs with biting cold oxygen that reminded me that I … I was still alive.

I struggled to my hooves and looked up. A sign. I beamed it with my pipbuck's flashlight.

Welcome to the City of Poneva.

Population 185,538.

I stared up at the sign in disbelief, my breaths coming out as coughs. I held out my forelegs and hugged the sign's metal posts, gasping for breath. I wheezed, fell on all fours, and threw up acid, for I had nothing left to heave. I lay there in the drifts, curled up into a ball, writhing as my stomach churned and my head spun.

I took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly, my breath dissipating into the darkness. A wide grin slowly stretched across my face.

"Hah … hah …" I breathed. "Haha ... Hahaha ..." I closed my eyes, threw my head back and laughed. I whooped with maddening hilarity until my cackles turned to chuckles, and my chuckles turned into cries.

I choked on trembling sobs as warm, fresh tears welled out of my weary eyes. I wept into my hooves, my tears mingling with the dried crimson that splattered my face, turning black, and seething down my cheeks in dark rivulets. It was as if I was crying blood.

I sat on my rump in the snow, staring off into the distance, my heart throbbing, my lungs heaving, my body shivering. The huge, towering skyscrapers of Poneva rose to the clouds, lights and distant signs twinkling as far as the eye could see.

I made it, Dew Drops, I made it.

I was alive. I won.

That was all that mattered.

Footnote: Level Up.

New Perk: Mare Killer - 10% damage to the opposite sex and unique dialogue options with certain characters.