“I can at least say on the positive side that none of the dead civilians we’ve come across have slash marks in them.” Rarity stopped at the corner of the roof and saw a few dead civilians with slash marks. “Okay I take that back, Sassy might need a good lawyer to save her.”
“Now wait a moment, I wouldn’t be too hasty Meowstress. Those cuts are jagged, in fact the slash marks on those dead people are why I have you moving along on the rooftops in the first place.“ The MAT drone took in the sight and after a moment it sent some images to Rarity’s HUD. “This is definitely the work of a Vorager, I would say three legged maw mantis but it doesn’t roll off the tongue. They specialize in eating people whole and or leaving the dead behind to feed their allies. They can shrug off a lot of damage unless it is absolutely fatal; in fact there were a few reports of them eating their own to recover in previous encounters with this type of monstrosity and thankfully unlike the Ant Heads they can’t climb buildings very well. They are a lot more dangerous than Ant Heads and Vasps, because it would take a lot of small arms fire to even bring them down. If it managed to take out the MAT drone before I could take it out, then I don’t need to tell you what would happen to you after that if it was rushing you down and you couldn’t pull yourself to a roof in time.”
The digital Vorager stabbed an equally digital pony through the torso with both arms and swept them into its vertical mouth which started to dribble fluids after it closed its mouth on them like a fly trap plant. There were also scenes of a Parascine being dissected, a human being perforated and a Minotaur barely surviving a stabbing to use their strength to break the monsters jaw and stab it with its own ripped off arms.
“Please get those highly unpleasant sights off my HUD Opal. We need to get to Sassy, make sure she’s in her right mind and if she isn’t then I need to get her to safety after possibly incapacitating her. I don’t necessarily need to make it back to the spaceport, I just need to find a place to hunker down and survive until help arrives or the monsters are wiped out.” Hopping over to the next rooftop in a dainty manner Rarity saw a few Ant Heads stalking a griffon with a broken bleeding wing. The griffon was trying to run only to be cut off by several others and they all slowly closed in on her. “In the meantime we have to keep helping out where we can until we can find her Opal.”
“I was afraid you’d say that Meowstress Rarity, you always want to stop and help everyone even if it puts you in danger. I call the three on the left you take the two on the right.” The MAT floated forward and started it’s build up to launch a volley shots. “It might be a good idea to stop being so scared of killing them, because they certainly won’t hesitate to kill you and I can only focus on so much at a time. You got those energy pistols for a reason, so please start actually aiming for kill shots and stop being generous.”
“I so do detest violence and getting my hooves dirty, but if I must then it’s a rather necessary evil here. I say we generously fill them full of holes, shall we?” Rarity flicked out both her pistols and narrowed her eyes; she started to pull both the triggers rapidly aiming at her intended targets.
The cornered griffon covered her head and curled up to make herself as small a target as possible while her damaged wing flopped uselessly against the ground as the Ant Heads went to lunge. As the three clustered Ant Head behind her were shredded under a volley of at least twenty high powered energy blasts, the two in front of her met a less messy and slightly cleaner fate.
The three shots from Rarity’s left pistol smacked the closer Ant Head from her position in the shoulder and second one went clean through its head into the ground dropping it and the third ripped through its belly from the side only to be wasted since it was already dead. The farther one received five shots directed at it from her right levitating energy pistol, both its hind legs were blown out from under it, two shots whiffed entirely hitting the ground at both sides of its body and the last shot blew open its head and splattered it’s brains all over the clearly frightened griffon.
“When this is all over I’m going to require a full spa treatment from Vera, I want it to be the best I’ve ever had to the point it makes me say… what crisis?” The accuracy of Rarity’s shots were noticeably much better this time than when she had saved the stallion a short while ago, she had actively been shooting to injure and not kill previously. Opal was however correct that she really needed to swallow her reservations and aim her guns like she meant it, the pistols were just supposed to be a deterrent and now she was actively using them to put down a few beasts. “How much time do we have before the main mass of the monsters start flooding the city?”
“Twenty three minutes or a lot sooner, that’s not a good estimate by any stretch of the imagination.” As she addressed her creator Opal noted that griffon had clambered up the side of the building they were on and was already in the process of pulling Rarity into a hug.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you, I can’t say it enough! You saved my life.” The limp winged griffon huddled against Rarity holding onto her in a tight hug. “I’m so glad a bounty hunter like you came along to save me.”
“Excuse me, but I’m not a bounty hunter. I’m a fashion designer.” The griffon was about as big as Rarity was or only slightly bigger, she just blinked at Rarity’s words and looked confused. “No seriously, I’m a fashion designer and I recently started my business less than a week ago. I’m out here looking for my friend; did you happen to see a blue furred pony in a eloquent looking black dress, a sword, wild orange eyes and reddish orange mane? She’s a samurai and I’m trying to make sure she’s okay because she ran off from one of the safer places in the city as soon as the monsters started popping up.”
“Yeah, I saw a pony by that description heading towards Heppren Square!” The griffon stated excitedly, she started to climb down from the roof and paused when she saw that Rarity wasn’t following her. “What are you waiting for, let’s go!”
“Go? You need to get that limp wing looked at immediately or at the very least put it in a sling!” Rarity had a few pegasus and griffon friends, the fact that this griffon would shrug off an injured wing like that didn’t settle well with her. “How did it even end up in such a sorry state?”
“A Vasp nailed me with a stinger; you could say it just winged me because a direct hit would have made my wing completely impossible to save. If it hurts then that means it’ll have a chance to get better.” The griffon had still yet to introduce herself and while her wing hurt she could bear with the pain for a while. “You’re actually going my way as Heppren Square has a hospital! Um, you will escort me there right? I don’t feel safe being all alone right now.”
“Well come along then darling.” Rarity had yet to introduce herself to the griffon either. In the grand scheme of things with people dying everywhere, it probably wasn’t a good idea to bring names into it or start new attachments until things settled down. “Stay behind me and try to keep your wing off the ground, it can’t be healthy with you dragging it around like that.”
-
Sassy stood at one corner of the plaza and in front of her was thirty Ant Heads and a Vorager, at least ten Vasps were hovering overhead and they were all looking towards her. The pony’s eyes stayed blank and just stared forward, her magic collecting around the hilt of her chokuto as her horn lit up. Several civilians from nearby barricaded buildings watched her stand there unmoving and looking particularly suicidal.
The Vorager pointed its left scythe forward releasing a roar from its mouth and three of the Ant Heads screeched and charged forward. A pony’s normal reaction to danger was flight, some would fight if they were trained for it, if they had something to protect or if absolutely necessary. Sassy wasn’t running and she wasn’t exactly protecting anyone as the monster barreled down on her alone, it was safe to say this fight wasn’t absolutely necessary either.
Sassy just tapped her front left hoof waiting for them to be upon her and her head started lightly bouncing up and down slowly to an unknown rhythm, her long mane bounced along to the tuneless music and her nostrils flared. Her eyes shifted slightly to the left and right aimlessly and just when the purple clawed monsters were about to reach her is when she started fighting.
Two of the Ant Heads spread out to Sassy’s left and right and lunged and the third one kept going straight, a upward flash of silver and the one of the right was missing a large portion of its body having a sword go through its head down its neck and out it’s left side. A downwards flash cleaved the neck off the one on the left and Sassy side stepped the last several times.
With three flickering silver streaks, Sassy took off the last ones front right leg, cut through the spine at the middle of its back and then it was stabbed straight through the heart from underneath. The other monsters hadn’t been idle and had started charging the second Sassy started moving.
The sword slid out of the monster and the mare started walking forward with her sword dragging along the ground and then she began to dance. It looked odd with the way her hooves moved as she twisted and twirled elegantly past the incoming Ant Heads. All while looking quite beautiful in her macabre fashion statement of being covered in blood and guts as she slashed through them and avoided getting clawed to death.
Several Ant Heads attacked her all at once and she took to standing on her rear legs as she held her forelegs above her head and twirled through their combined lunging attacks and grasping claws. She created a faint silver colored tornado with her at the eye of the storm, the sword twirled around her body at incredible speeds shredding through the nearby monsters.
What followed was all ten Vasp flying low towards her at all angles and trying to get stingers into a firing position, Sassy flinched and clutched her head with her hooves while releasing an unnatural growl at the sight of one of the large stingers that reminded her of something horrible.
Her eye became animalistic and narrowed as several stingers were loosed right at her and she pulled her blade halfway out of its sheath. Sassy proceeded to deflect the stingers into the air with a stylish twin figure eight flourish of her sheath and sword separating and then coming together once the last stinger was knocked skyward. The stingers were all caught in a telekinetic field, with a flick of her horn Sassy telekinetically kicked all the stingers in the same direction and three Vasp fell from the air with fatal injuries while four other were wounded.
Sassy swung her sword skywards three times glowing with a dark red color and suddenly the three uninjured Vasps blew apart into several sliced up chunks as if they were hit with more than one slash each. The remaining four tried to retreat and with a single swing of her sword, there were no Vasps in the air at all.
A claw slapped harshly across Sassy’s face injuring her badly and caking her left eye in blood, it brought her attention back to the Ant Heads and the offender immediately died being slice entirely in half, horizontally from chest to rear.
Being completely surrounded Sassy’s sword started glowing from hilt to tip and with one mighty swing all the remaining Ant Heads around her where cut apart in a magically enhanced circular shockwave. The sword came around and deflected the arm of the last remaining monster in the area, a completely uninjured Vorager that just tried to impale her with its right blade.
The Vorager swung its left arm at her side and Sassy deflected, it followed the deflection by trying to bring its right bladed arm on top of her making her jumped backwards. Sassy swung out only for the silver flash of her blade to stop short when the creature used its bladed arms to block the attack and slash her across the chest, earning little more than an angry grunt for the deep wound.
Sassy’s visible eye showed no intelligence as she deflected two more pinpoint stabs from the Vorager and took of its left arm at the shoulder with a vicious upward swing. The blow sent the limb flipping into the air before it stopped surrounded by an ebony glow. Sassy grasped her sword with both her hooves and stalemated the right bladed arm while she brought its amputated scythe arm down on the monster head puncturing it.
The Vorager didn’t die from that, it screeched and reeled back deflecting Sassy’s blade and managed to stab her in the side. It couldn’t dig its bladed arm any further than a few inches into her as she used the flat of her sword to push again the crook of its elbow. It tried to drag her resisting form into its open mouth and its left leg rose preparing stab her and help the process along.
Only it froze as Sassy’s body and sword flickered one last time, Sassy skidded backwards a few feet and the tip of her sword was planted in the monsters chest and everything became quiet.
The sword pulled away with the handle glowing with a soft orange color revealing a small pinprick in its chest, the Vorager staggered once the sword was removed then collapsed forward revealing a huge hole had been blown out of its back. The center of this holes diameter matched the tiny pinprick on its chest. Its innards, having been blown out its back, now hung down its still body that also had two pieces of its spine visibly bending outwards in opposite directions.
-
Sassy had just beaten a Vorager with a sword, which was rather impressive since she wasn’t entirely conscious of her actions at the time.
The blade slowly levitated back to Sassy’s side and she wavered a bit on her hooves, blinking once or twice she looked at her sword blankly. She started looking around with her visible eye in fear at nothing. Sassy slowly curled up on the ground and started crying, with her horn dimming the sword clattered to the ground.
“I don’t want to hate you daddy.” Whimpered Sassy who was clearly not alright given she was bleeding out at the moment from two bad wounds and a third one in her side being imminently fatal if she didn’t get help soon. No civilian was willing to leave their barricades to go see what’s wrong with her. The monsters from the core where about to flood out into the nearby cities and they didn’t want to be caught out in the open like the obviously distraught pony. “You weren’t the one that hurt me… why do I hate you?”
One of the Ant Heads crawled forward and widened its mandibles to bite down on the injured crying pony, a crack rang out and its head was blown in half. Several more shots rang out taking out the last of the barely living stragglers, slowly a pair of feet walked up to Sassy and the tip of a blue tail prodded her gently.
“Are you okay? Well obviously not since you’re kind of bleeding out everywhere, but I meant...” Ember stopped and scouted the surrounding area for any more surviving problems; she started sweeping her rifle around at all the unmoving bodies littering the ground and then towards the rooftops and sky. The pony didn’t respond and continue to cry. “I’m really bad at things like this. Good at bounty hunting, bad at being social. Come on; let’s go get you some help.”
“Rarity… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I never meant to hurt you.” Mumbled the pony as the dragon crouched down putting her rifle across her back and scooped up the crying mare along with her sword.
“Shush, it’s okay. You’re alright… going to be alright. You’re in good claws… hooves?” Ember tried to be comforting, but it sounded rather awkward coming from her. She decided shouting for help wouldn’t hurt at this point. “Is there a medic nearby!?”
Several shots rang out and Ember turned to and Ant Head fall down from around a corner, Rarity walked around the corner looking around, she quickly spotted Ember holding Sassy.
“Oh Luna’s snuggly stars, Sassy! What happened to her?” Rarity ran up and would have made it to them if it hadn’t been for a Vasp that jumped from the nearby roof, more monsters were coming into the area by the second and it just wasn’t safe to be outdoors right now.
The Vasp forced her to the ground with its weight and jammed it’s mandibles into her neck. The EVA suit spewed breach gel into its mouth causing it to gag and pull its head away screeching angrily. This was long enough for Rarity magically pulled both her pistols from their holsters, point them upwards and start firing blindly.
The Vasp stumbled backwards and was met with an irate AI’s intense dislike of its very existence. The MAT quickly floated into Ember’s view and swiftly moving past the smoking corpse, following it was a weary looking griffon clutching her wing.
“Meowstress Rarity are you okay, did it get to your skin, how many sub light particles am I showing you, what’s the square root of two hundred and twenty five?” The MAT was scanning the suit frantically and the questions eventually dried up when Rarity rolled onto her back and glared at the drone. “Vasps have poisonous bites; thankfully the stingers aren’t as dangerous… when they’re not perforating something important.”
“I’m okay Opal, just a little bruised darling. My suits integrity is a bit damaged, but it didn’t make it beyond the breach gel layer. Fixing the damage shouldn’t be too hard, but I so do detest having to pressurize the breach gel again, the testing phases were horrible.” They were swiftly joined by Ember and her shabby patchwork suit that was considered armor being soaked in the blood of the pony she held. “Sassy! Is she okay?”
Rarity didn’t like Ember’s armor anyway and would be happy to see her eventually get rid of it for something much nicer looking, but she did think that Ember herself was quite a beautiful lady in personality and noble intentions. Noble intentions given the way she cradled Sassy’s whimpering form tenderly.
“Define okay, because she’s is messed up in more ways than one and to think we held such a pleasant conversation the other day.” Shaking her head because of her wandering mind, Ember frantically got back to the present. Among the many things Ember was knowledgeable of, the one thing she didn’t know personally was corpse prevention training. She’s never had a friend to really worry about and her body was ridiculously hard to injure, plus being a bounty hunter she was more about capturing and killing things than keeping them alive. “I’m not a field medic and I hardly ever get injured, but even I can tell she needs serious medical help. As in she needs to be put in a med-bed right now!”
“There’s a hospital right over there.” The griffon pointed out before looking at the sky in horror as hundreds of shadows started to cover the ground and an increasingly loud buzzing noise. She started to run for the hospital. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’d want to get indoors right about now. Come on!”
They all ran towards the hospital as the streets of the city were soon flooded with monstrosities crawling on buildings, roaming the streets and flying through the air looking for their next meal. Surprisingly the doors opened for them and once they were inside, the doors locked down behind them by way of large metallic emergency shutters closing up the entrance.
“Bring you injured over here, we’ll see to them right away.” In a world where med-beds existed, nurses like the pink haired and white furred earth pony with a red cross surrounded by pink hearts would not be thought of as common. Med-beds couldn’t fix everything and sometimes you needed a more gentle touch than a cold hard machine that lacked feelings and couldn’t care less about your mental health. “We need to get that pony into a…”
“Wait, stop! Don’t mention that out loud around her.” The nurse gave Rarity a glare and she decided it was best to explain Sassy’s problem. “You’ll need to sedate her first; she’s been a victim of serious malpractice and you were about to say something clearly trigger worthy. She has been through a lot and I think she’s even currently having an episode.”
“Right, bring her over here!” The nurse quickly reached into her saddlebag and once Ember was close enough she pulled out an injector and slammed it home into the crook of Sassy’s neck making her go limp shortly after. “I’m Nurse Red Heart. I apologize for treating your friend roughly, but she likely needs to go into a med-bed and we can’t have her fighting us when we try to put her in one for her own good. She’s Luna’s problem at the moment. Get me a stretcher over here and prepare a room for three!”
“Oh, I’m not injured.” Tried Rarity and Red Heart gave her a clearly disbelieving look; two parascine came running on their tentacles with a stretcher.
“I saw that Vasp land on you and bite you; so we’re not taking any chances of anyone dying where we can!” Nurse Red Heart glared Rarity down and turned to order her people. She turned to the stretcher and several other people when they arrived. She pointed to the unicorn still in Ember’s slightly upset grasp. “Take this unicorn pony in for emergency medical treatment ASAP, there are several deep wounds and she has been bleeding out for the last five to ten minutes so make it quick. Also note that she has a mental history and med-beds are apparently a trigger for mental trauma so keep her under until she can be safely removed and put in a regular medical bed to wake up in. We definitely do not want to trigger a samurai with mental trauma, understand me? Good. We need this Griffon to be taken in for a wing assessment; otherwise the wing needs to be cleaned, medicated and bandaged to prevent further blood loss. It is not currently life threatening as her breathing is even and she can still feel pain from it so it’ll likely be usable again. Other pony undetermined status, walking and talking, recently got sat on by a Vasp and bitten and appears lucid and has a dried gel substance smeared around her neck. The dragon looks perfectly fine and I’m not a mechanic so don’t expect me to repair the drone for you.”
Sassy was quickly taken from Ember and they quickly carted her off on a stretcher. The griffon was led away to get her wing looked at and worked on and Red Heart turned to Rarity to see she was staying right where she was.
“The substance smeared on my collar is breach gel, it is a part of my EVA suits functions in case of incurring damage in space and the Vasp didn’t manage to fully puncture my suit once the gel started to spew out of it at the point of breach. I personally invented this stuff and it works quite effectively.” At this moment Rarity turned to Opal and gave her a pleading look. “You know I’m fine, right darling?”
“You’re the epitome of beauty Meowstress and look fine in that meaning, but I want you out of the suit and looked over for a second opinion and my sake of mind. Medical scanners thankfully show nothing currently wrong with you.” It was Opal’s job to worry and she watched as Rarity lowered her head and sighed. “We could get the traces of poison on your suit and give it to the hospital staff to study.”
“That would certainly be appreciated by my staff, now move!” Red Heart walked behind Rarity and started to nudge her in the direction. “I’ll have you in the same room as your friends, so you can see for yourself how they’re doing.”
“Good, everything is all taken care of so if you’ll open the front door shutters I’ll just be goi…” Ember was halted when she felt a sharp tug on her tail as she tried to make for the entrance.
“You’re not going anywhere; we’re locking down Heppren Hospital. Nothing is going to get in and we don’t want anyone to leave into that mess no matter how tough you think you are.” It was apparent who Red Heart was here, she was a stern taskmaster and she had a well oiled machine running in Heppren Square. She didn’t take kindly to people throwing themselves into the paths of danger and or especially near her hospital. “You may be a dragon, but even you can’t possibly be that crazy.”
“I’m a bounty hunter, ergo I aim to hunt and kill as many of those monsters as I can in a bountiful manner.” The nurse wasn’t being deterred in the slightest and Ember continued on in the hopes that she’d see reason. “It’s also hunting season down here so not only am I doing this for a good cause, I’m trying to make ends meet.”
“Then you can be paid for whatever extra protection and help you can personally provide to Heppren Hospital.” Not a pony to bend on the safety of her patients and or others running into a dangerous, Red Heart finished her thoughts. “You can be a temporary guardian over us, you can sit around doing nothing or you can make yourself useful in some other capacity. You’re not going back out there and we’re not dropping lockdown again unless the situation decidedly warrants it! If you try to leave anyway, then you’ll be here for completely different reasons.”
At this Ember snorted in amusement at the threat and smiled. The mare came off as pretty tough; Ember respected that and her profession as a healer. Rolling her eyes, Ember decided to take Nurse Red Heart up on her offer. Though the dragon wanted to be out there fighting, she knew for a fact that she could be just as happy protecting those around her.