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// This is all I've ever known 
// Story: Hunting the 6 
// by Starblazer225 
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	I closed my eyes, bracing myself. Pain seemed to linger less as the thought of it coming unexpectedly would seem to sheath the feeling. But a moment after moment passed before I realized that nothing had happened. I stood there like an idiot. I cautiously opened an eye but was bombarded by a white light and the smell of coffee. I blinked a little and came to the realization that what I had seen wasn't nor was even there at all. I rubbed my eyes with my hoof seeing that I was outside, just across a cobblestone street of pedestrians, buggies and cars that were rushing passed. I looked up to the grey blanket of clouds shielding the once blue sky. Most of the cloud cover tainted and stained by plumes and stacks of smoking breaking into and mixing with the air that was already painted grey.
I was outside the coffee shop back in Canterlot, guessing to myself that I had either dosed off or rather trying to think that's what it might have been. A vision? A warning for future events? Either way, I think this train ride I should be more cautious that I already am.



I entered the assigned cabin in a car towards the center of the train. The halls smelled of foul lemon soap and a dense musk of some unidentifiable odor that I tried to ignore. Ponies got off the train, more leaving than getting on which aroused my suspicion but where we were going wasn't a destination of travel. As I stood at the door of the cabin I was expecting a drunk Starblazer and Emerald laughing and rolling around with bottles of wine and liquor littering the floor. To my surprise, they weren't. Emerald sat with his back straight in his seat, his eyes deeply fixed into a book he was reading. Star, sitting directly across from him, was slouched over in his bench, his flat cap pulled over his eyes. I walked in and sat on the bench next to Star, he didn't even stir in his sleep as the loud creaking sounded from the old wooden seat.
"So, I take it your time in the city went well?" Emerald asked, turning a page of his book.
"More o' less," I said looking out the window to the other half of the station where royal guards were helping load soldiers onto a war caravanning train south to fight on the front lines.
"Have you ever been to our next destination, Golden?" Emerald asked, I cocked my ear towards him then shook my head. 
Our next destination was far east of here, near the border of the Crystal Kingdom, unfortunately the once beautiful city was torn apart by a war we had began fighting years previous to this.
"The city of Detrot is far from here, a long ride is ahead of us Golden." As he finished that I noticed something I hadn't before. An "AD" seemed to be branded to the back of his left hoof.
I gazed at it for a minute, then turned to the window again.
"How'd ya get that there bran'? I asked Emerald, seeing him close his book and look up to me out of the corner of my eye.
"This one?" He asked lifting up his left hoof. I looked back and nodded. He shrugged and opened his book and continued reading.
"Cooking accident." Emerald responded quickly in a slightly deceptive tone. I caught it quick and went back to the window. The train began to move along. The sound of the screeching steel wheels on the rail pinched my ears as the car lurched forward and began to move. The metal beast that was the powerful engine hissed and screeched from the front. 
With that Star in his seat rubbed his eyes before opening them wide, their red Shine flashed about and then focused one me.
"Good to see you made it Golden," He said patting my foreleg that was crossed over my other one. He turned back over to me, he light from the station ceiling metal rafters making ways of grey light pass through the car in lines.
Emerald closed the book and looked back to us both, crossing his hooves under his jaw looking at us both hard in the face. 
"Now," He said looking to the floor, the cracking his eyes back at us like whips.
"We've hit a major bump in the road here." Emerald said adjusting his glasses as he spoke.
"This next target, Star over here, knew on a personal level. So he at the moment knows more about our next target than we do." Emerald put a hoof out, giving him the gesture that he has the floor.
Star pulled a little bit of paper from a pocket in the knit vest he was wearing, along with a matchbox and a metal tin. He opened the tin and poured some of its contents into the paper and gently rolled it as he spoke.
"The data our agency has collected is very acute, and even more so, the level in which they know is only scratching the surface of what we could grasp."
Star licked the paper and rolled it between his hooves, making a slender-hoof rolled cigarette. He drew it to his lips and struck the match, light the end in a single try. As we finally pulled away from the station we were immediately greeted by the claustrophobic closing of the industrial walls, the back of buildings. Multiple pipes and panels littered and constricted the walls. Smoke venting from the train covered anything from ten feet above our vision and steam covered anything four feet below but I was willing to bet that even above that smoke we'd still find about a mile of more of those pipes and sheets of metal going straight up. I turned from the hideous sight from the window just to hear Star speak again.
"Our next target is farther east, as we've already said." He took a long drag on the cigarette. The smoke gently poured from his lips and drafted up then disappearing as he hung it from his jaw.
"I knew her back before this-" He paused to look out the window with hurt eyes. 
"Industrial Revolution" He pulled the lit stick from his mouth and looked back to me. 
"Her name was Rainbow Dash." He said leaning forward in his seat to where his forelegs crossed over his chest. He had a very stern look on his face. The smell of his cigarette burning now infatuated the cabin, I was not bothered by it. He opened his mouth but no words came from his lips. As he tried to say something he caught himself and thought, then he closed his mouth and bit his lip.
"She was a pegasus, we're close to the same age. I think she's a bit older." He took the cigarette from his mouth between the fetlock and drooped his head over, smoking lifting up from his tilted down head.
I cocked my head over to one side, he said 'was' when he mentioned her name.
"Was." I said. He looked up to me with his eyebrows raised but his eyes half closed.
"I'm sorry?" He asked.
"Ya said 'was', h' name 'was' Rainbow Dash. D'ya know what her name 's now?" I asked looking him dead in the eyes.
He shrugged nonchalantly, bringing the cigarette up to his lips, his massive hooves covering the lover half of his face and neck as he took another drag as the ash burned down the cigarette.
"She had joined the Wonderbolts after I had met her, there was a flying incident and she was to be blamed for three of the deaths during it." His eyes dropped and his vision narrowed on the floor.
"She ran and changed her name, her appearance, dyed her mane and coat to something different than the cerulean blue she once was."
He looked out the window, the massive heaps of pipes and steel gave way to an opening. Smaller apartments, all in terrible condition. All covered with grime and muck, falling apart, ponies littering the streets, ash falling from the massive smoke stacks above them. They all looked sick and poor, it was a grueling sight to see.
Star was cringing at the sight. "I owned a record store here.... seven years back it was as to the date." He burned the cigarette to the fag and dropped it into the ashtray.
"Two brothers from the east offered me five times what I had paid for it originally." He dropped his head and his shoulders bulked up. "I had a huge stretch of property here, most of it was music storage here." He smiled, a little hurt behind the grin he wore.
"Industries and factories were starting to be brought up on all sides. I wasn't making any money and my only buyers would be rich men that would come and buy one or maybe two albums in the span of a month. I could not live with that income." His eyes grew tired.
"That offer came up, I was young though, and with all that money I felt like I could do anything." The smile faded.
"Two weeks later I took the most dearest records I had and left, they tore down the building and in it's place a massive steel plant was made, twenty four hours a day smoke and smog pumping from it's stacks. The residents and the poverty and sickness came later." He sighed hard looking to Emerald.
"Where did we go so wrong?" Star asked in a weak tone. He turned back to me.
"What did you do before this all happened."Star asked. I looked down at my duster and at my gun. I felt a weight come down, I was never really affected by it. This was the life I had lived since that day so many years ago.
"I-...I have always done this" I said.
"This is all I've ever known."