((Takes place right after Surefire woke up.))
A young unicorn stirred beneath a pile of corpses. The stallion pushed aside the rotten limbs and heads and climbed himself out of the pile. “Luna Christ...” He said as he stared across the vast field of littered bodies. He shook himself together. “Come on, you gotta pull yourself together, Clay didn’t want me losing it in the end...” The stallion quickly shuffled into the bushes nearby to shield himself from any enemies left alive. He saw another unicorn get up and steady himself. The stallion backed off slowly and found himself staring at a pegasus atop another pile of corpses, looting the bodies for anything of use. The stallion knew who that was, and he thought that pony was long gone by now. Hiding his identity, he hastily threw a dark gray balaclava over his head. On accident he snapped a twig while disguising himself.
The pony stood over a pile of dead bodies, each one pin-cushioned with bolts. His ear twitched at the sound of hooves behind him, before he quickly put on a helmet. “YO JACKASS! TELL ME WHO YOU WORK FOR AND YOUR NAME!” The pony was in a hodgepodge of looted pieces of armor, each insignia was scratched off save for a huge cog and dagger carved into the chestplate. “Don’t bucking move either...” he raised his loaded crossbow at the ski mask wearing unicorn.
Isn’t that bucking wonderful... “My name’s not important, and I was drafted into Celestia’s Grand Bucking Imperial Army... is that enough information?” He said, his words stuffed with sarcasm.
The pony lowered his crossbow. “okay then... if you try any funny business I’ll put a sizable bolt through your freakin skull.” He then turned his back on the pony behind him and started to try to pry a dagger from the cold dead hands of dead human. “Anyway, what do you want with me?”
“Well considering we’re in a bucking warzone, I’d figured we should team up and find someplace safe to stay. Also, there was another soldier over there in that field that we should probably go talk to...” He said. No bucking way it’s going to be this easy... and hopefully nopony finds out about my little secret...
“... If the guy looked broken then I’d leave him for dead. Also, I wouldn’t call this a warzone seeing how everything within a ten mile radius is probably dead.” The pony then pried the dagger away from the corpse, along with a few fingers. “And take this, if you don’t have any weapons then you're useless.” Said the marks pony as she waved the dagger around.
A magical field pulled the dagger away and the unicorn sheathed it somewhere inside his coat. “What makes you think I’m not armed with weapons? Anyway, the dude was up and walking, let’s go pay him a visit, shall we?” He asked.
“Sure, but i’m shooting him down if he goes berserk or something.” Jaxler then sighed and put the crossbow over his back. “Seriously, who the hell are you anyway?”
“If I told you that, you’d be in for a surprise. So no, I won’t tell you; and this mask stays on. Understood?” He says.
“Fine... The name’s Jaxler by the way.”
Jaxler? Really? That’s the best you’d come up with? “Okay then Jaxler... I guess you could call me Mud.” Mud says, momentarily dusting some grime from his jacket. “Let’s go find this guy.”
Jaxler nods and starts to move off his pile.
Mud leads Jaxler over to the wandering unicorn. Mud bluntly shouts out, “Hey dude, who are you?!”
“I’m bucking Jaxler! If you got a problem with it, talk with my PR guy.” Says Jaxler as he points to his crossbow.
Surefire drops his loot bag, squints his golden eyes and raises his crossbow in kind.
“You know, pointing weapons around could make a pony nervous. Let me hazard a guess by the balvacada. Raiders, right?”
“And what if we were? Why would we tell you?” Jaxler then took note of the blood caked on the new pony’s head. “Mud, is this hornless jackass the guy you told me about?”
“More or less...” Mud says. He turns to face the hornless jackass. “Don’t worry, we’re not raiders, and you and I served in the same company.” He paused. “The balaclava is for personal reasons...”
His looked at the two, distrustful, then cracked a wide smile “I remember you! Mud, wasn’t it? Engineering?” He looked at the other one “who’s this jackass callin’ jackass over here?”
Mud slowly calms Jaxler. “He isn’t affiliated with anyone and came from the mountains...” He has a phony smile underneath his mask.
Jaxler raises his crossbow at the pony. “How da’ buq do you know that?”
Shit... “J-just a lucky guess. I mean savages usually live in the hills...” Mud says, his fears crafted into an insult.
“Buck you...” Jaxler’s wasn’t only mad at Mud, seeing how he just made it so he couldn’t deny him being from the mountains. “ANYWAY” Jaxler pointed to the other pony in front of him. “should I just start calling you Mr. Hornless, or do you have a name?”
“It’s Surefire. Captain Surefire. I’m glad you draft dodgers decided to join the party. Glad you realized if we all don’t contribute some blood, Nightmare Moon has already won.”
Jaxler laughed aloud. “Sorry, but I won’t be referring to you as captain, and Nightmare moon has already won.” Jaxler then pointed his hoof toward a mutilated body of what one would assume was a pony. “Your just sunfire. There is no more army, so your rank is irrelevant.”
“Wait. Nightmare Moon won? What happened to Princess Celestia, or what about Princess Luna?” Mud asked, his eyes showed some concern.
Surefire shrugged “Fine. Call me the only friend you’re going to find in this hellhole then. Look, you can point that crossbow at me and tell me how the end is nigh all day, but me? I’m kind of busy-” he holds up his bag of loot “Trying to scavenge enough to survive the week. So help me or try to kill me. pick one. Just don’t waste my time, It’s the one thing I can’t salvage.”
Mud quickly uses his foreleg to lower Jaxler’s crossbow. “I’m all for helping, but we would need a pretty sturdy settlement to survive long-term, and three ponies alone couldn’t build a safe haven... so my vote is we move out and look for more survivors to help with building our little shelter and...” He looks to Surefire. “They can help us find supplies-” He looks to Jaxler. “-And they can help us fight off any foes.” He looks between the two. “How’s that sound?”
“See? Now that’s an attitude that’s going to get us places! ‘Speaking of supplies...’ Surefire thought as he eyes a mostly intact cart ‘I bet that cart’s full of ‘em.’
“Yeah that seems smart, but if we find anypony we should proceed with caution. Given how bad the current situation is, I wouldn’t be surprised if somepony snapped and has gone berserk and, we could run into so surviving enemies.”
Surefire shudders and looks at an old scar around his left front leg. “Let’s hope we don’t run into any Sergals. The scum play dirty...”
“Yeah. I just wanna say we all lucked out of this one by coming out of the bloodiest battle in history almost unscathed...” Mud looks at Surefire. “D-does it still hurt?” He rubs his own horn just to make sure it’s still there.
“Have to be honest, the fact I simply can’t ‘pickup’ this bag with magic is a little scary. I had to fumble around figuring out how to do it the old fashioned way for quite a while. But really-” He looks around “It could be worse.”
“Huh... thank Luna I used my mouth more than my horn... I swear mom thought I was an earth pony...” Mud whispered. He sighed and spoke at a normal volume. “Anyway... I’m slightly surprised that your game with this Jaxler, you seem like the ‘lone wolf’ type...”
“Well, yeah I am, but I’m not dumb enough to try to survive out here alone also...” He then removed his helmet, revealing his red mane and black fur along with a predatory gaze. “Never, thank luna for anything. The only thing you can thank her for, is for making it so that we have to rummage through the corpses of our brethren.”
“Sorry, I just always had this belief as a kid that Luna was forced into Nightmare moon by Celestia as some sort of a conspiracy. No matter how stupid or illogical that sounds, I always believed it...” Mud said, his voice lowering near the end of his speech, remembering his foal hood.
“Regardless, if those two damned alicorns didn’t try to play god, we wouldn’t be on the verge of extinction.”
“I’ve heard the tale twisted so many different ways...” Surefire glowered “Luna, she had a heart once, but she’s not looking out for us anymore. that’s for damn sure...”
Surefire walks over to the cart and took a peek in the back. Journals. Boxes and boxes of empty journals. He holds one up. “You see this is why we’re losing. I can’t eat this!”
Mud takes three journals and hides them in his coat. “What?” He looks back and forth between Surefire and Jaxler. “I like writing...”
“Yeah... anyway, if you're really hungry, we boil the leather armor on some of the corpses and eat that, or we could kill mud here and eat him.” said Jaxler half jokingly.
Mud chuckles at that comment. “I think I might be too tough for you to chew, Jaxler.”
“Meh, not if you're dead!” said jaxler cheerfully.
“Heh, your parents must have been proud of you... talking trash to this garbage around you...” Mud says, laughing still.
“Heh, Ponies are off the menu, but I heard goblins are good eating...” Surefire smiles.
He sees a pony is still attached to the cart. He tries to detach her. Her body is fused with the metal brace.
Jaxler sees the pony and grimaces . “I’m not sure if she’s alive... and if she is i’d do the kind thing and put her put her out of her misery.”
Mud looks at Jaxler. “Sissy.” He teases. He casually pulls out the dagger Jaxler gave him earlier from his coat and decapitates the pony stuck in the brace. He goes to work detaching her body from the metal harness. “We’re gonna use this right?”
Surefire frowns “You know, We don’t have to act like savages, we’re not that far gone yet.”
He Pulls out a skinning knife and helps him.
“Look, you call it mutilation, I call it mercy killing, as a ‘just in case she was still alive and I was accidentally prying a living pony off of a metal brace’ type thing...” Mud says. “Sorry if that offended you.”
“It doesn’t matter, what I’m really concerned about is the fact that we’re going to be in a huge wagon, move around. It’s basically asking any pissed off enemy to kill us. I’d honestly prefer if we just looked for other survivors, got our numbers up and in the process figure out how many enemies survived before we took the risk.”
Surefire laughs “Alright, let’s leave it and take only we can carry. Then what? What If whoever we find Is injured, or starving? They aren’t much use, are they? We need to take everything we can out here, Tradeoffs, Jax-”
“I’m saying that we leave this, and come back later once we know we are safe, or we can defend this cart. Also regardless of the cart, we leave an injured pony for dead and move on, or in the case with our friend here-” he points to the headless body. “We end them painlessly.”
“I’m fine with Jaxler’s plan, but we should probably start doing something soon,” Mud pauses. “Because who the buck know’s what’s around the corner...”
Surefire nodded “you’re right, no point standing around. We’ll fan out and look for survivors. And we’re not just going to coup de grace everypony with a broken leg we come across.” He growled at Jaxler. “We’re going to try and save everypony we can with what we have.”
“Really? You really aren’t smart are you?” Jaxler’s cold gaze returned to Surefire. “We may not even be able to save ourselves and Mr. Hornless-hero wants to go save every-”
“Jaxler, drop it. Didn't your mother raise you better?” Mud said with a harsh tone.
“Shut the buck up. You do realize that if somepony can’t help us, then they are dead weight, and why would we waste supplies on a crippled pony when we don’t even have enough for ourselves!”
“I’m sorry still I believe we’re not animals yet!” Surefire shouted “It’s an antiquated concept, I know, But it gives me something to fight for!”
“We’re scavenging corpses like vultures and running around like rats, so I’d say we are animals, and if you need something to fight for, fight for your bucking life and anypony who can help you do so!”
“Well you do that.” Surefire snarled “And I’ll Help everypony I can with an open hoof, and we’ll see who has more friends when he needs them most.”
“Guys, it’s the end of the world right now, and you know what’s funny? You two are having a bucking bitch-fest when we should be working on surviving for a long while. Or is bitching just in your nature, Jaxler?” Mud says, his voice bearing no anger.
“This isn’t bitching. It’s trying to talk Surefire here out of picking up every crippled pony we find and wasting what little we have on them, when we might not even be able to feed ourselves for a week.”
Surefire sighs. “ Maybe you and Mud are right. We need to stop Bitching. Baby steps. If you find anypony who can’t walk, leave them be for now. Take a mental note of where they are. We might be able to help them down the road..” He looks at jaxler “But we take priority. Can’t help them if we can’t help ourselves...” he said with a little churn in his gut.
“One thing though, I think one of us should watch the wagon, and two of us should go out there together, just in case something is actually alive that wants us dead. You know? Because we may have better odds if somepony watches the others back and not us wandering around by ourselves and getting lost... or killed...” Mud says. “And considering you two don’t seem to get along very well, which one of you wants to watch the wagon?”
Jaxler sighs “I’ll stay back... but you two best be ready to mercy kill any mortally wounded ponies you see.”
Surefire Puts his desert shawl over his head and fastens his red goggles. “Let’s go, Mud...”
“Right...” Mud sighs. “Stay safe J-Jaxler” His voice cracked slightly.
“I’ll try my best.” Jaxler then flew to the top of the wagon and sat there.
“Jaxler, for some odd reason , I don’t know why, maybe the fact you're a turncoat, maybe the fact you seem so eager to act on your own interest, I have a feeling you want us to leave so you can make off with the cart. Prove me wrong, alright?”
“Buck you, jackass I won’t run off and I can’t be a turncoat if I never was on anypony’s side.” growled Jaxler.
“That’s what I like to hear.” He grinned
“That’s a good thing, seeing how I’m probably going to be calling you jackass a lot.”
“If we’re not back in twelve hours, well, Do what you do best.”
Jaxler sighed and placed his helmet back over his head and waited for the others to leave, before looking up from the blood and gore encrusted earth to the ever bright sky. “Seems our gods have damned us to hell...”
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Topic: My Little Descent into Madness [Succession List Open] (Read 8999 times)