'Ugh, why does my head hurt?' Allen, thought, staggering to her feet. He rested against a tree barely able to stand on his own as he held his head.

"What the hell?! Why am I a girl?!" He er... she screamed as she looked herself over.

Last thing Allen remembered was buying an ECHO communicator from some shady merchant at the convention and now he was stumbling about in a forest with his manly bits missing. He groaned as his yelling brought about more pain as he held his head. 'Well ain't this some shiz.'

The man turned woman slid to the ground and waited for the pain to die out before he tried to think out his next move. 'Ok, I'm in some kind of forest as Gaige, powers and all if this big blue menu is anything to go bye, and I have no idea where I am. Great, just what I needed in my life.'

She groaned as she stood grabbing a shotgun that was laying where she had been when she arrived here and looked around trying to decide what to do. A sudden yell decided for her as what looked like a bearded pony ran out of of bush halting in its tracks when it caught sight of her.

"Um... Hi?" Allen said nervously. She never was one for conversation.

The bearded pony garbed in a wizard hat and cape stared at her with great intrigue as it watched her before a yell jolted him back to the present.

“HE WENT THIS WAY! COME ON, WE CAN’T LET’EM ESCAPE!”

“Oh no!” the pony spoke before frantically looking this way and that. He darted off into a seemingly random direction, stopping before he got more than a few feet from the nearest bush to look at the human. “Quickly, we must escape these blasted gryphons before they find us!”

‘Us? I have no part in all this! This ain't even my fight damn it!’ she thought as she ran after him. Allen could barely keep up with the pony as they made their way. Well, keeping up was a strong word, more like going fast enough that he didn’t completely outrun her but he was still slowly getting further and further ahead. She managed to quicken her step as she heard more shouting from their pursuers, this time sounding much closer. ‘Ugh, knew I should have never stopped running track.’

“Gocha now pony!” yelled a gryphon form over head as it tried to swoop down on him. Allen took one moment to hesitate before pure instinct and fear took over. In the span of half a second, Allen took a chance and blew the gryphon out of the sky with one shot. The gryphon’s limp, headless body fell to ground tumbling, missing a large portion of the top of its chest as well as its head in a bloody spray in the wind.

“You bastard! I’ll kill-”Looking up, Allen barely had a enough time to shoot down a second gryphon that had turned its attention to her after seeing his comrade get iced. ‘Alright, two down, probably like 10 more to-Oh fuck!’ Not paying full attention to where she was going Allen tripped on a large root and went tumbling right into a tree. She groaned in pure pain as she shakily stood before two more gryphons landed in front of her, both looking totally pissed off and glaring at her in pure rage.

One gryphon, a female by the looks of it, stepped forward drawing her sword. She tightened her grip and the obsidian blade burst into green flames as she eyed the human before her.

“I don’t know who you are nor what you are, but those were some of my best men, my best friends...” her expression softened as a single tear fell down her feathered face before her gaze suddenly turned even more fierce than before, “ and you just killed them like it was the most simple thing in the world!”

Allen shivered, the rage the gryphon felt was so strong even a human could sense it. if looks could kill, Allen was sure she’d be dead a thousand times over.

‘Awe fuck nuggets, what the hell did I get myself into this time?!’

“Jus tell me one thing before you die...,” the gryphon said snapping Allen out of his thoughts, “Why?”

Her question, rather than being filled with rage and promise of death, was saturated in sadness... with a hint of a promise of death to anyone who watched enough drama T.V. shows like Dare Devil to catch it.

Len was honestly caught off guard by the question, but didn’t make the mistake of taking to long to answer. “Well, in all honesty, I just got transported into the everfree forest from another world, First guy I meet urged me to run because your guys would probably kill me if I didn’t go with him, saw them try to end him and the rest from there was more like just fear and instinct driven.”

She looked more thoughtful than angry like Allen had been expecting, but still held a glare. before she could speak Allen decided to ask a question of her own while she still had a chance. “So, why re you guys after that pony in the first place?”

The gryphon looked at her like she was crazy before remembering what she had said. “You really are from another world if you don’t know who Starswirl the bearded is. Long story short, the gryphon kingdom of Gryphonia wants to conquer Equestria. him being a pony and close to the pony Princesses, capturing him could help us to make a big impact in the war. If anything we’d be taking out a very powerful piece in this game.”

Allen nodded seeing the reasoning behind it all to be pretty sound, ya know, except for the whole “Conquer Equestria because we can” part. Allen looked around not really sure she would get far at all if she tried to run now, so, she resigned herself to her fate, not that she would go down without at least trying to go down fighting. With a heavy sigh she looked back to the gryphon, gun in hand, and steeled herself for whatever came next.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about killing your friends. I’m sure they were great people. Don’t know which of us is gonna come out of this alive, but you seem like a pretty great person as well. Guess it’ll be an honor to either be killed by you, assuming I don’t end up putting you down first.”

“Still going to fight for the damn ponies?” she questioned taking a fighting stance. her wings flared out like a bird trying to make itself seem more intimidating.

“Let’s be honest, you’re not about to just let me go and leave me alone, not after all this, so what choice do I have.” Allen asked with a raised brow.

“If you walk away now, I may consider not ripping you to shreds.”

“Considering that you’re the big bad guys moving in and beating down the little guys, yeah, no, I kind of need to be able to live with myself and look at myself in the mirror when I wake up the next day. looks like I’m gonna have to play the hero today.”

The gryphon sighed, obviously now hoping to avoid killing the human. The two began to circle each other slowly, the other gryphons giving them space knowing full well what would happen if they interfered. “Shame, I had honestly hoped you would have taken me up on ym rare show of mercy. You have my respect brave warrior.”

“Actually, I've never really fought before today. Good Start though, right?”

“Yeah, not bad, just don’t lose. don’t die here. I need you to go off and become an amazing warrior now so that we can at least rest easy knowing we were taken out by someone who was truly a natural born war machine.”

‘Honor and pride, gotta respect that.’ She sighed before the gryphon suddenly lunged forward. Allen tried to get a shot off but her the gryphon was not only more prepared than the first two, she was faster, much faster. Allen barely managed to duck under a blade swipe before she bashed the gryphon in the gut with but of her gun and knock her away.

“Names, Gilda by the way. Gilda Stormheart.” Gilda quickly recovered and moved out of the way expecting another blast from her opponents strange weapon.

Allen paled as he pulled the trigger only to see it needed to be reloaded. With this fact being made clear she had to roll out of the way of yet another strike from the flaming sword before quickly reloading. Gilda never let up the whole time she was reloading and it was sheer luck that she managed it with nothing less than a few direct hits on her metal arm.

“Len, call me, Len! Len Heartworthy!” Len fired off another shot at the gryphon, and unfortunate new recruit to Gilda’s squad being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In flurry of feathers and blood, the others got the message and decided watching from behind the trees would hopefully prove far more safe. “Sorry!”

Gilda grinned as she charged again, this time managing to actually cut her non metal arm messing up her opponent and causing Len to drop her gun. No way Gilda was about to let her get it back either. Len barely managed to pull off a trick and get behind the fierce war bird, dropping to a roll and coming up ready to fight. As strange as it was, she was actually loving every second of it, even the pain only made the fight that much more enjoyable.

Len waited, a plan in mind for the gryphon that would hopefully get her off the defensive. Things weren't exactly looking good for her at the moment and everyone watching, including Starswirl, knew the fight was almost over, pretty quickly to. Gilda prepared to finish this, dashing forward knowing this would be the deciding blow. She was right, in a way, just not the way she expected.

Len grinned as Gilda got in range, ready to pull off her plan, assuming she was fast enough. Mid swing, len shot forward with a solid punch to the gryphon’s face strong enough to send the gryphon flying a good 6 feet. ‘Man this arm totally rocks!’

Gilda stood uneasily as she got up disoriented from the attack. Len made a quick call, grabbing the sword and rushing forward while her opponent was left wide open. Gilda tried to sober up and get out of the way, but she snapped back into focus just a second too late dodge the attack, a searing pain shooting through her chest and out her back. Looking down slowly with wide eyes, she could see her own flaming sword plunged into her chest. She coughed up blood before the world around her started to spin. She managed to focus her vision just barely enough to make out a slightly saddened and remorseful Len standing above her. ‘So, this is how it ends hugh, well, at least I went out fighting.’

The world slowly faded to black and she happily drifted off into a deep sleep, one she would never awake from. She was actually happy to die, at least she was dying honorably and not attacking dying at the hands of a pony, a race that her people were wronging simply because of the will of some greedy bastard of a king. “Thank you... Len.”

Author's Notes:

Thanks for reading! Heck, thanks for even giving this story a look. Seriously hope you guys enjoyed the story and will come back to read any future chapters. Seriously, I do what i do because I love to do it, and I admittedly love the feeling of praise. Anyways, do leave a comment. Oh, and before i forget, a shout out to the story that inspired me to right this in the first place, And Then There Were 10...Er...67 by shagohad12. You guys should seriously give his story a read, totally awesome.
~Vortex out~