Picking up a gun from the arsenal Nate and Meathead were amassing aboard the USS Constitution, Thunderstruck's hooves felt tight, like her ankles were hot to the touch, but it was really because of the laser rifle she was holding.

Suddenly her mouth felt dry and hocks felt scratchy, but her wings shudder-fluttered out and settled by her sides. Shaking off the cold, Thunderstruck feels the weight of the gun and the energy cells.

This was the first time in over a year she held a weapon like this. All the memories that'd been just under the surface of hard-slavery were breaching through, emerging upwards as it felt safe to relive a better time of her life. There were hundreds of ponies, and humans all living along side each other in Nuka-World and the surrounding areas, all up until a year ago when the raider gangs banded together and stormed the amusement park.

Taking the laser rifle, Thunderstruck felt the weight of the weapon in her hooves, eyes watering for reasons unknown to her.

Looking around, her hosts were content to let her come and go as she pleased, but they weren't clear on the whole weapon situation. For how many guns laying around, and boxes of ammo being stockpiled, taking one didn't diminish the growing armory.

Taking a leather satchel and 20 energy cells, she knew what came next.

Retuning above deck, eyes to the coast, she saw a cargo ship terminal landing across the Charles Bay, where a mess of boats and structures were all clustered around a dock protruding out into the water. This dock was battered and worn, wooden pilings that were fractured and dented from centuries of neglect, the concrete on top crumbling into the sea, leaving gaping potholes along the dock.

Breath increasing pace, Thunderstruck left the patrolling robots behind her and flung herself over the rail of the U.S.S. Constitution, and took flight. The wind bent her wings upwards, but thrusting them down she gained lift. Again and again, like a rolling stone to keep from gathering moss, Thunderstruck flew.

\111/

The open-air cage holding the ponies Flatbush, Cherry Fizz, and Rotary were made from a mesh grating, with rust crawling over most unpainted surface, enough was punched out to create gaping holes, but their small yard of mud, the size of a 40 foot cargo shipping container. To sleep, they stayed standing, letting their heads drop, locking their legs, otherwise the cold mud would sap the heat from their legs, as painful as it was to their hooves to live in standing water that would reach biting-cold temperatures during the night.

They didn't talk much, they hadn't looked in each others eyes for more than a few moments for the last three months.

A raider stood over them, quietly watching them sleep. Lowering a noose, he swung the loop around Flatbush's neck.

Signaling to more men, they figured out the best way to keep the other ponies quiet when butchering one was to drag one out, after snapping it's neck.

Jerking hard, four men ripped back on the rope, yanking Flatbush to the side of the pen with a loud crash and bang. Unable to scream, the torque broke something, but Cherry Fizz and Rotary we forced awake, screaming at the sight of a pony they knew being limply dragged up and out of their pen. Cherry Fizz was screaming, Rotary banging and thrashing against the sides of the pen, but if they took one step outside, they'd be shot, but Rotary didn't care.

Better to die fast, full of adrenalin and terror, it makes the meat taste terrible.

Bashing through the mesh, Rotary sprung from the cage, leaving Cherry behind as her voice broke, sobbing, shreiking, she tried to form words to call out after Rotary, but he made it thirty feet before a torrent of gunfire perforated holes across his flanks and barrel.

Cherry Fizz broke, throwing herself into the wall and curling in on herself as she cried. Monsters.

Shaking, Cherry Fizz was so cold, that scenarios of freezing to death brought more joy and warmth to her heart than dying by monster. She could control that. She could decide how she died, and that was the only thing left granted to her while she was awake. She needed to stay awake now, always. Never sleep.

There was a sound she knew, one she didn't want to hear. The moment she heard the first noise, the sound of a knife being sharpened, she shoved the cold mud in her ears, but not even deafening herself would stop her mind from playing out the noises in her head.

They were butchering Flatbush.

There was a thud that felt like an earthquake to Cherry Fizz, but that was just the cleaver striking the neck, trying to remove the head.

She could scream, but that's all Cherry had done for the last few months since being sold. Scream in terror as ponies she knew were killed indiscriminately.

Her hooves and legs were moving, digging down, scraping away dirt and rock, she didn't know why, but she needed to dig. Dig a tunnel to escape, dig a hole and crawl out.

She dug a depression deep enough to curl herself in, dragged the frozen mud over her, then as she closed her eyes to the world, she prayed the hypothermia would come and take her away from this awful place.

\111/

Rage, an unexpected emotion to come bubbling up, but after recooperating outside of the Changeling pod, Thunderstruck felt more in touch with her feelings, and right now, it was rage.

Flatbush was being spitroasted and grilled, pieces of him being hacked or pulled off, to cook closer to a flame.

No tears, just the thought of melting holes in everybody's skulls from where she stood.

Thunderstruck arrived at Libertalia half an hour after Flatbush and Rotary were killed. Rotary was just left there in the dirt, body bleeding out until one of the raiders got around to hauling the corpse back in.

The indifference. She wanted to say, there were thousands of things that needed to be said, but there wasn't a friendly ear to listen.

Thunderstruck flew up three hundred feet, then dropped into a freefall. Her target was a raider standing on the back deck of a boat at the dock. Plowing into him, hooves first, she landed on his head, cracking his skull and neck, busting the collar bone as she jumped up, heaving the raider into the water with a splash.

Thunderstruck went inside the boat and found two raiders sleeping in their bunks, so she killed both of them in their sleep.

There were dozens of boats, and the main cargo ship all the raiders were clustered around tied to the dock was impossible to reach without taking a winding route over back decks of ships, or swimming a straight line across.

Thunderstruck flew overhead, seeing the cages, seeing more ponies, ones that were in stronger cages, and actually fed. These ones were the ponies who were utilized by the raiders for carrying scrap, junk, and whatever else they could think of. Cherry Fizz, Flatbush, and Rotary, were picked out as ponies who would be used for food.

It didn't matter to these human raiders if they begged for their lives, or stayed silent. They were abused and neglected all the same, one raider even sneaking in to their cage to rape Cherry less than twenty-four hours ago. The raider got as far as sticking his dick inside of her, since she was asleep, legs locked, exhausted, she woke up after a minute, and bucked as hard as she could.
The raider's ribs were broken, but the bastard still managed to haul himself up and out of their pen before the ponies stomped him to death.

The main ship, the Libertalia, was a 320 ft cargo container vessel that was now half-sunk at the dock, with it's bow underwater and the stern raised high into the air. Built around the listing ship were planks nailed together to form bridges and supports to expand outwards on, but Thunderstruck still couldn't find the person she was looking for.

The next person Thunderstruck killed wandered far enough away from the roaring fire where three other raiders were gathered around, quietly landing behind her, Thunderstruck lifted her laser rifle to the backside of the raider's neck and fired.

Taking the raider's knives, Thunderstruck gripped a blade in her teeth, breathing heavily as the her next thoughts were 'I need to kill more.' The three raiders were all staring into the fire, watching blood and oil his and drip down into the flames, speaking softly.

Getting close enough to fire, she fired as fast as she could, as many rounds as she could until it was empty. Gunning down three raiders, only one died in the first volley, the other two survived with holes melted in their flesh and muscle, but Thunderstruck was on them like a demon in the night.

Gouging the neck and punching her hooves against the legs of the first surviving raider to make them trip and stumble, she shoved hard, knocking the raider into the fire. Tackling the other one, the raider shouted for help, but Thunderstruck bit down on the raider's face and bit his nose off. Then she bit down on the man's neck, a hard vice like clamp that shut off his airway and made him painfully choke.

He was still alive, but Thunderstruck was alone with him. Biting his coat, she dragged him. "You wanna eat?" She asked, taking the cleaver from a metal table. Hacking off a hand, she took the appendage and shoved it into the raider's mouth. Choking him. He tried pulling it out, but Thunderstruck bit down on his hand, shattering the fingers.

Ripping a finger off the raider's hand, she tasted blood in her mouth, and felt the fingers there. Chewing on them, she chewed and chewed, rough raw pieces of meat still on the bone with fingernails attached.

Instead of spitting them out, she chewed them for another minute, the taste and feeling of them in her mouth was completely removed from her mind as she sought out the next victim. When she finally spat them out, she didn't even remember why she was chewing them in the first place.

Of the raiders left, four came to investigate, and they fired some rounds into the air with their rifles to alert others that they were under attack.

Thunderstruck was already back in the air, watching as all the raiders around Libertalia came crawling out of their hidey-holes, to see what was going on.

That's when she saw the brown lump in the pen, the form of a pony body laying on its side, mud dragged and pulled up on top, but parts of the body were still visible.

Dropping down into the pen, Thunderstruck wiped the dirt away, "Pony? Wake up."

There was a shaking, a feverish, chill type of shaking, a refusal.

"You need to wake up." She couldn't tell if this was a mare or a stallion, but the more mud she cleared, she was able to glint at the idea it was a mare, and only two names came to mind.

"Vanilla Rum? Cherry? Can you hear me?"

Cherry was breathing, but she was in such a fugue state, she could open her eyes, but wouldn't.

"I'm dead." Cherry said.

"No, that's not true. Cherry, it's me. I need you to wake up."

"It's not you. You're dead. I'm dead. Everyone I know is dead. I'm dead."

"Cherry," Thunderstruck pulled Cherry's head up out of the mud impression in the ground. But she shook her head and refused, pulling away.

"No, I'm dead. Go away."

One hoof went to a soft pile of mud, and scooped some up. Smashing the mud clod into her mane, Cherry let her limbs relax as she tried slipping away again. She didn't want to give this life any more energy than what was already given. Cherry wanted to die.

On the verge of tears herself, one raider suddenly hopped up to a container, looking down into the pen for all of two seconds, not even enough time to realize it was an entirely different colored pony with wings and a gun, only seeing the mare standing upright, before looking elsewhere for their unknown attacker.

As the minutes ticked by, the raiders grew increasingly impatient, and were quickly thinking that whoever did this, was already gone.

"Cherry." Digging her friend out of the hole she dug for herself, Thunderstruck reached one hoof around the backside of Cherry's barrel, lifting, when the mare erupted.

"NO! I'M DEAD! I'M DEAD! Let me go! Leave me alone! I'M DEAD!" She wailed, eyes cracking open and wildly looking around. Unable to feel or see Thunderstruck, Cherry knocked her head into Thunderstruck, and she didn't catch herself from being hurt as she fell.

"Cherry!" Cherry fought Thunderstruck as the mare wrapped both hooves around her, lifting her up out of the muck, even though she resisted.

She kept whimpering no, and bit Thunderstruck on the foreleg, but Thunderstruck refused to let go. Sharing her body heat, extending one free wing out and around the frozen mare, Cherry tensed, but the second she felt warm, she stopped making any noise whatsoever.

Like a flick of the switch, Cherry made so little noise, that Thunderstruck could barely hear the mare breathe through her nose. "Cherry, I'm going to fly us out of here. Some place safe. Some place warm."

Thunderstruck would have more luck talking to a tree than getting a message to Cherry's mind now. It was under lock and key, under the furthest mental wards to protect that last little shred of soul Cherry still clinged to, but wouldn't stop itself from being snuffed out.

Cherry was so light, that Thunderstruck only then realized how much the changeling pod restored and strengthened her. "Cherry. Just rest."

Picking her up, plucking her off the ground, she used all four hooves to wrap around the poor abused mare, then lifted off with her wings. Flying fast and low over the water, she was halfway across the Charles Bay before rapidly gaining altitude, aiming straight for the U.S.S. Constitution.

Well, it only took two years and 300k+ words for a pony to have their own chapter.