“We will be whole again,” says Honey Creme.

And then with one swift flick the saw blade rips through Fluttershy's throat, slicing clean through her skin, flesh and esophagus. Blood gushes out and Honey Creme drops Fluttershy, giggling as she watches Fluttershy clutch her neck, coughing blood with more pouring past the hoof she is pressing against her wound. Honey Creme then pats Fluttershy on the head and skips away with the saw bloody blade still in her grip.

Fluttershy's vision dims and she whimpers as she watches Honey Creme slip past the blue barrier leading to the communications chamber. There are no words for Fluttershy's thoughts when Honey Creme is out of sight, only a drive to survive. She came this far and Zephyr still needs her. She will not die.

Fluttershy presses her hoof harder against her wound, coughing a glob of blood that soaks her maw as her other hoof shakily grabs her cutter.

'I will not die.'

Fluttershy shakily aims the cutter at the wall.

Her hoof trembles to where she can barely hold the weapon, and a coldness is spreading through her veins while she is pulled deeper into the darkness.

'I will not die!'

Fluttershy shoots the wall. The three little red lasers puncture the wall with ease, leaving a thin red line, but she does not stop there. She shoots the wall again, and again and again and again and again! Soon a section of the wall is glowing red with chunks falling off, and Fluttershy keeps shooting until her energy cutter clicks, leaving a gaping hole in the wall with sparking wires and now destroyed support beams exposed. Heat radiates from the cutter's red hot prongs with the center glowing a particularly bright red, and with the heat comes a red haze.

But Fluttershy does not hesitate to press the prongs of the cutter against her wound.

Blood sizzles, skin and flesh cook, and fiery pain rushes from her throat to her head, chest and shoulders. Her hoof goes numb and Fluttershy turns on her back, clutching her neck with the cutter by her side, her coughs scratchy and her eye squeezed shut as a thick tears flow down her cheek, cleaning the blood from her face. Her hing legs kick against the wall, making loud bangs with every hit and bringing flashes of pain to her hoofs as her wheezing cries are barely able to leave her lips.

Then she goes still and like a puppet without a string her hoofs flop and her wet and bloodshot eye stares at the weak light in the ceiling. Her heart barely pumps, her body is cold, and her chest barely moves with her raspy breaths.

To breathe hurts her throat.

To cough hurts her throat.

Just trying to move hurts her back and legs.

Even the little shivers hurt her whole body.

All there is, is pain.

And she lays there, near motionless, unable to think about anything. She really wants to move, but her body has decided that it would rather lay in her blood in the open of a hostile environment rather than move somewhere safe. Hell, even crawling into a closet would be preferable to laying in the middle of the hallway. And not only that, but she has to get back to Rainbow Dash and treat Thunderlane on top of saving Zephyr and getting to the bridge.

She has to move, but she can't.

Fluttershy's eyes drift shut, closing the darkness in around her, and when she is completely encased in the void her eyes snap open again to a room full of color and life, with her laying on a wooden floor. The walls are wood, the light above is from a chandelier with leafy patterns on its branches. Birds are chirping outside and the green curtains are pulled aside to show a world outside a clean window. A world of rolling hills, the orange light of a rising sun and dark orange clouds parting ways. Though, they look like someone took a picture and put it behind a fake window with a light behind the picture to give it a glow.

Fluttershy rolls to her hoofs and takes a step towards the window, feeling no pain at all. Even both of her wings flap and Fluttershy brushes her hoof along her face, feeling no scabs or bandages. Her hoof drops and she looks around the room, spotting the perfectly made bed, the bookcase full of books with a few double helix figurines, and on the wall next to a wooden door is a golden framed picture of a unicorn mare. She has a white mane, brown coat and is wearing a dark purple robe with gold bands that have an intricate pattern of circles and lines, also dark purple. The mare's stature is regal, and below the picture is: Our Prophet. Our Martyr. Sovia Be Praise!

Fluttershy stares at the picture, her heart stopping and her chest freezing at the picture. Then the door clicks and opens, revealing that the wood is just an outer layer, for past the wood is a thick slab of metal with three rods that have slid inside. Outside the room is a black mass of a figure, a griffin judging by their structure, and behind them is a message on a metal wall that is lit up by a single bright light in a dark hallway.

The Marker Will Set You Free!

“It is time to cleanse your soul,” says the black mass, the voice being male. The mass holds out its talons. “Salvation awaits.”

Fluttershy wants to say no, but her legs move on their own and her tongue refuses to move. Once she is outside she feels all her weight disappear, and she begins floating up, seeing more of the same messages under the same lights outside of more doors. Then her head taps the ceiling and she finds herself floating in the hallway of the Bon Voyage, the pain back in full force, garbage floating around her, and flickering lights with the communications pillar in the chamber just barely in her sights.

The pillar's lights blink out of sync with the swirling red lights swirl, and the buzzing alarms hurt Fluttershy's ears. She pedals her hoofs in the zero gravity, wincing as each move feels like a tear in her muscles and a crack in her bones, but when she is almost at the hallway entrance the loud sliding and clanging of metal brings her to stop.

Then a thick jet of fire surges across the room and crashes against the pillar, circling in orange and red hellish fire. The lights and monitors crackle and pop and flicker, and the fire moves up the pillar's length eating it away as it climbs towards the ceiling.

Fluttershy's jaw drops and her eye trails the fire, filling with tears as sparks pop out and pieces of the metal peel off. The holographic projector of the Peace System disappears and the ring of computer monitors snap off at once, and large cracks appear on the observation window as the fire touches it.

The room's lights switch to bright red with yellow warning lights spinning against the walls, and with the cracking of glass comes a louder screech from the alarm and a voice speaking over the intercom.

“WARNING! INTEGRITY FAILURE! ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY!”

Fluttershy turns around and pedals as fast as she can towards the blue barrier, her teeth grinding against each other and tears fogging her vision. When she passes the barrier she crashes on the floor and limps towards the next section of the hallway, heart racing as she sees the warning lights swirl above it. A door begins sliding out of cover, and Fluttershy makes a raspy scream and jumps into the next section, rolling across the floor upon landing and looking over her shoulder to watch as the door closes off the chamber, sealing the pillar to be consumed by the inferno. Once the door closes with a loud bang there is a loud pop on the other side with shattering glass and a brief howl of rushing wind...

And then silence.

The door flashes red and a holographic display appears with the oxygen symbol inside a crossed out circle. Seeing that, Fluttershy's lips tremble and she pushes herself against the wall, covering her mouth with her hoof as tears pour down her cheek. Her chest heaves painfully and her shoulders buckle as raspy whimpers leave her throat. Then she collapses to the ground, curls up and buries her face in her bloody hoofs with her tail curled against her, her destroyed mane covering her mauled face, and her limp wings unable to shield her.

Her weak whimpers turn to quiet weeping, and soon her weeping to a scratchy wail and she bangs her hoof on the floor. She bangs her hoof on the floor again and then presses her hoofs against her skull, her one eye wide and staring ahead at the broken display she hit and the puddle of her blood below it, and she screams again, tasting iron on her tongue.

Her throat feels like it is tearing open as she cries, and she pushes herself against the wall, rocking herself back and forth. The lights around her flicker and dim, and across the hallway, a shadow spreads on the wall. The shadow's blood stretches, forming curving appendages from its back and a long head, and when the source rounds the corner it turns out to be a Slasher.

Fluttershy's crying drops to sniffles, and the Slasher looks at her, its lower jaw missing and its long tongue hanging down, and its scythe limbs swing madly as it rushes towards Fluttershy.

Fluttershy grabs her cutter and fumbles with her pack to grab a new battery, and right as the Slasher is about to reach her she extends her hoof to use her Stasis Module, but nothing happens. The band is completely dim and her bloodshot eye widens.

Then a loud bang echoes down the hall and one of the scythes of the Slasher flies off. This is followed by another bang and the other scythe flies off, spraying the wall and floor with squirting blood, and as the Slasher staggers around another shot blows off a piece of its face, and another pulverizes its leg. The Slasher collapses with bits of bone and shredded flesh around it, and it begins crawling towards the shooter, who quickly finishes it off with two more shots directed to its head and chest, leaving it as a twitching husk of torn rotten meat on the ground, swimming in a puddle of rust covered blood, broken bone and flesh.

Fluttershy stares at the dead Slasher, her hoof barely able to hold her cutter as she puts a new battery in it, and she lifts her eyes to the shooter when they approach her with careful steps.

The two stare at each other in silence, and the shooter levels his shotgun at her.

“Are you real?” asks Slingshot.

Fluttershy nods. “I am...” She lowers her cutter and extends her shaky hoof to him, sniffling and blinking tears away. “Help me... Please...”

Slingshot keeps his shotgun trained on her for a few seconds before he sighs, puts his shotgun in his saddle and approaches her. Fluttershy watches him warily, and he looks down at her, silently inspecting her before he gently grabs her, puts her on his back and carries her away from the door.

Author's Notes:

I will not die~ (I will not die~)
I will survive!
I will not die, I'll wait here for you
I feel alive when you're beside me
I will not die, I'll wait here for you!
In my time of dying!

So, this was a small chapter. Very small. Very short. The shortest actually (by 14 words), and I was originally going to have this longer, but I liked how it ended and decided to put what was going to happen next in the following chapter. So the next chapter will be longer and have a lot of stuff going on, and it will have something fantastic that will in no way be painful to Fluttershy or Slingshot. It'll be a happy chapter that y'all can read with a nice cup of hot cocoa and not get nightmares over.

That said, Chapter 16 will be a while since it will be long, but I'll be working on it first thing tomorrow morning. Until next time!