Three Years Later

A frantic banging awoke the mare from her peaceful slumber, eliciting a great yawn as she heaved her muzzle up into the crisp, cool air. She stretched out her wings and winced until she heard them click; relief then spread through her body. She looked up to the window of her own little bedroom—made even smaller by the clutter around the unpainted cobble walls—and groaned when she saw the betraying darkness of night. She immediately rolled back over and murmured, "Wha's'matter?"

She heard no response for a few seconds and smiled as she nestled deeper under the cover. However, there was no chance of returning to sleep when the hammering soon returned, louder this time. With a squeak the mare shot up from her bed and hovered in midair for a moment, before she then fluttered back down to the floor, letting out her held breath.

A somewhat rough and scratchy voice sounded through the keyhole. It was only a whisper, but enough to be easily heard. "C'mon, Blue!"

"Yeah, yeah, okay! I'm comin'..."

She stumbled forwards, her hooves intertwining. Blue then let out a breath once she reached the door and rested her head up against the old wood, her heavy eyes drooping slightly. Yet again, however, she got only a moment's rest as the rapping made itself known for the third time.

Ears flattened, Blue pushed herself away from the door and gripped the key. She twisted it until she heard the slight click and then lowered her hoof slowly. It drew close to the handle but never quite got there as the door was slammed open from the outside; leaping backwards with a spectacularly loud yelp, she landed awkwardly and groaned. Her ankle buckled underneath her, leaving her sat on the floor with a stinging rump.

Blue groaned as she clambered back up to her hooves and winced. The pain, however, was quick to dissipate when she looked up to assess the intruder; she took a sharp intake of breath and her mouth parted very slightly while her tail suddenly flagged a little higher. Her eyes widened at the blue-maned unicorn stallion before her. He was not particularly strong, though he was fairly lean, but the sweat which glistened on his fur and mane was inexplicably intoxicating.

Or perhaps it wasn't so hard to explain; it was summer, after all.

RipEar, however, didn't seem quite so excited, his own expression being one of great urgency. After he jerked his head to his left quickly, he jumped into the room and then began to skid to a stop. He crashed into the mare and crushed her against the wall, making her groan. He caught himself almost immediately and leapt away, his eyes narrowing as he picked up on her suddenly hungry expression.

"Listen to me, Blue!" he whispered, his voice scratchy and breathless. His ears were pinned against his neck, the left ripped almost down to the base; an old wound, it had always intrigued the mare as to how he had gotten it. "There's no time to argue, but we've gotta go!"

Blue frowned and cocked her head slightly before she glanced out to the corridor, then looked up to her window where the moon shone bright in the cloudless, star-lit sky. "Why? What's wrong with—"

"Look, do you trust me?"

"Well, yeah. You know I do, Rip, but—"

"If you trust me then just shut up and follow my lead. We've gotta get out of here, right now." RipEar spun around and trotted over to the doorway, his saddlebags catching the mare’s attention for the first time.

Blue remained where she was and looked around her tiny room as the stallion's magic engulfed an old set of her horseshoes laying in the corner and carried them over to his side. Then, whilst he peeked around the corner of the doorway tentatively, Blue trod forwards slowly as a thought popped into her mind; something pretty serious had to be going down for her old friend to need saddlebags.

Nopony ever left the facility—or, perhaps more truthfully, very rarely. It was a safe haven, offering refuge from the dangers of the outside world in exchange for just a few medical research tests now and then. It was, most ponies would agree, a fair trade—so why would the unicorn before her need saddlebags?

“RipEar, I'm really not sure what's going on," she mumbled as she inched closer to his side and poked her own muzzle around the doorway, scanning the orange-lit corridors—there were no windows out there—but finding nothing out of the ordinary. Before she could receive a response from the stallion, though, she felt something chilly and unsubstantial wrap around one of the feathers of her wing. After a moment, she was then jerked from her room as RipEar broke into a rapid gallop through the corridors. She fumbled to keep up and her own hooves pounded against the floor heavily. With a large push, though, Blue soon managed to make up the distance between them so that she ran just behind him.

"RipEar!" she yelled, stumbling a little when her hoof tripped over the edge of an old carpet. The stallion, however, made no attempt to acknowledge her. "RipEar, what's wrong? Just tell me already!"

Still being dragged along by her wing, Blue groaned and tossed her head. She strained not to be left behind as she pushed her muscles into action. The burn of acid rose up the very instant she began, not too much worse than the searing frustration which coursed through her veins at being ignored. In truth, she was not altogether surprised that he hadn't yet answered her—he had a tendency of avoiding her questions sometimes, it seemed—but it was nevertheless an incredibly aggravating habit. In fact, it was an obsession that every single pony who lived in the facility seemed to have developed when in her presence; with the exception of RipEar, who at least appeared to merely have selective hearing, nearly every mare, stallion and foal would send her smouldering glares when she stepped into a room. Or, if they were feeling slightly more sympathetic, they would just blatantly ignore her until she left. Why they would act that way, Blue could not fathom, but such was life; it was all she knew, from the first day she woke up in one of the facility's operating rooms. Back then, she was a newly infected victim of the pastromorbo nostrae epidemic (or simply the Plague, as it was justifiably known), having no recollection of her life before, or even any knowledge of how to walk or talk.

The end of the corridor approached sooner than Blue had anticipated, the dreary grey walls drawing closer as she galloped towards the turning with no ability to throw on the brakes. Instead, she gave a shrill cry tilted her body to such an angle that she could nearly brush against the carpet in an attempt to make the turn. For just a few metres she felt okay and her body continued without falling any lower—and then her hooves slipped. She crashed down to the floor and screamed, her wing crushed beneath her. The other remained entwined in the unicorn magic which kept her speeding along for a few seconds before RipEar skidded to a stop, releasing the mare just before she smashed into the wall.

For a moment, the stallion's need to run seemed to dissipate and he rushed to where she lay, reaching under her belly with his muzzle and hoisting her up onto her hooves. He then trotted to her side, nuzzling her wing gently but drawing a scream from her. It was, however, only a momentary concern before he leapt into a splayed, flight-ready position, his eyes focused in the direction they had just come from.

"Cobdamnit," he whispered and looked behind himself with eyes larger than any beast Blue had ever read about, his ears pinned. "Listen, Blue, just listen. And trust me—I know what I'm doing."

"Really?"

"Shut it!" The stallion gave her rear leg a gentle buck before he continued hastily. The sweat glistening on his side had only increased and, by the looks of it, he was even more out of breath than he had been before. "We've gotta get out of here, now. They're gonna kill you, Blue, and me too for helping you. So, just do what I say?"

Blue took a jerky step backwards and raised her fore hoof quickly, a breath catching in her throat. "K-kill me?"

RipEar nodded and began to nuzzle about in his saddlebags. He paused for just a second as, seemingly out of nowhere, the heavy thudding of hoofsteps shook up the whole corridor. But Blue had barely had a chance to see them before RipEar re-emerged, a spherical device emblazoned with the facility’s logo—a broken watch held together with tape—held in his mouth. He wasted no time and immediately wrapped it in magic. He lobbed it with a well-practiced hurl towards the furthest wall.

The sphere whistled as it flew through the corridor. It then collided with the wall and exploded with such a ferocity that the brick was simply blown to pieces. Fragments hurtled in all directions, many bursting from the building through the now gaping hole in the wall, others zooming down into the exposed rooms below whose ceilings had already caved in. The remainder tore through the poisoned air directly towards the very being who had decided their fate.

It took less than a second for the screams to ring out, sleeping ponies in their bedchambers nearby awoken when debris fell atop them. Some were agonised, pain overwhelming their cries as they inevitably struggled to be free of whatever rubble had since crushed them. Others merely bellowed with more fear-induced howls, understandably hysterical.

Blue’s own cries quickly joined the rest of the victims’ as the shards, propelled at such an astounding speed, sliced through the flesh of her shoulder and flank. They cut so deep that blood poured from the wounds immediately. She gasped as she felt the hot liquid cascade down her sides and immediately felt her legs buckle underneath her. She collapsed to the ground, only able to whimper while the torrent of brick rained down upon her.

"Blue!" RipEar's shout was barely audible over the sudden chaos and his words blurred into  a stream of unintelligible nonsense; laying on the floor and whimpering, her entire body quivering as her mind swam, Blue could hear nothing but the pounding of her own heart. She didn't pick up on the stallion's aggravated snort, nor did she really recognise the way he grunted and groaned as his magic surrounded her body. He hoisted her up slowly and dumped her down on his own back, but still she did not respond. But there wasn't time to wait for her to come to her senses. And so RipEar let out a breath, his legs suddenly trembling beneath her weight, before he then looked straight ahead and sluggishly dragged his first hoof forwards. The others soon followed suit as he adjusted to the extra mass.

"Hey! You!"

From somewhere not-too-far behind, a guard's thunderous cry echoed as RipEar began to creep forwards faster. With his hooves still dragging, however, he was going almost nowhere; he threw his head about, snorted and then focused all of his strength on his hindquarters as he reared up. He pushed off with as much force as he could muster. It was, he was surprised to find, fairly successful. When he landed heavily from the leap on his forelegs, he fought not to let them buckle; instead he brought his rear hooves forwards and sprung off once again. The lunges he continued until they evolved into a pattern of sorts and his hooves hammered against the floor as he galloped onwards.

"Oi! Stop right there!"

He didn't even flinch at the guard's shouts and instead snapped Blue's wings open as he neared the gaping hole. Then, with a stolen sideways glance, he shouted back to her in as loud a voice as he could muster, "C'mon, Blue! You've gotta fly for me!"

The mare only mumbled something unintelligible, her entire body now rigid as she gasped for air, her eyes wide but unperceptive. RipEar had no time to wait, however; with a grunt he made a mighty leap and threw himself across the hole in the floor, landing on the crumbled remains of the wall unsteadily. But even then she made no noise, made no attempt to even struggle, caught up in her own little world.

"Blue! Blue, wake up!"

RipEar's cry was now more of a plea than a command as he dove from the wall. He jumped as far as possible as arrows and bullets shot overhead. But, even with Blue's wings open, he could not remain airborne; she was not using her pegasus magic properly, could not prevent their fall in the state that she was in.

Screams and shouts filled the air as the pair plummeted, soon added to by the stallion's own bellows when the ground drew closer and closer. The mare on his back, however, remained deadly quiet; pain and fear still controlled her mind. So she remained for a while, completely incapacitated—until, that was, the moment when she finally began to notice the howling of the wind, recognised that she was falling.

With a shriek of horror, Blue focused all of her strength on moving her already shredded wings. She screamed as her body roared with newfound pain. As she laced her hooves firmly underneath RipEar's stomach she then began to flap, each stroke through the air blinding and achieving very little in the way of slowing their plummet. The ground still sped towards them, though slightly less urgently, and there was no way to escape it.

Blue drifted away from RipEar at the last minute and gave a blood-curdling cry as she fell the last few metres. She reached out for the stallion forlornly in the hope that somehow, he could save her. But he could do no such thing; he barely succeeded in wrapping his magic around the both of them before they smashed into the ground. The earth shuddered when they met.

But Blue felt no pain as she collided with the rocky, unforgiving bed of dirt. All she could feel was a slight discomfort to add to her existing pain before she let her eyes drift shut and reality fell away as she slipped into a warmer and much less arduous world of nothingness.