• Published 27th May 2012
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Fallout Equestria : New Roam - Delvius



The city of Roam is tortured by ambient and open hostility. Finally, a Praetorian arises to protect the city like the Legionnaires of old, and nothing will stop him. Nothing but himself, that is.

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Chapter 14 - Monsters

Chapter 14
Monsters
"They say that people should die before they become monsters. If that's true, then I'm unlucky beyond compare."





"So, let me get this, they EXPLODED? And spikes blasted off in all directions? Wow, that's disgusting..." Skyfire said as she (or at least her glowstick) moved along with the rest of us as we went down cloud filled corridor after cloud filled corridor. It was good that we all had something to talk about. It distracted us from all of our personal problems, like me from my increased paranoia, and Skyfire from her emotional distress.

I myself couldn't really believe it. What kind of sick bastard creates a weapon like that? And according to Predator's occasional chiming in, there were more of these 'cloud' terror weapons. Seriously, what would anyone use a Pink Cloud that melts people for? That was just absolutely sickening...

"Ew," Doodle muttered sourly as she rode on Skyfire's back. "That's gross."

"Believe it," Myst replied to all our disgusted muttering. "Kira was absolutely traumatized. I couldn't really believe it either." Her glowstick stopped moving in the smoke. She sighed, "Like I said, I wouldn't even be alive if her parents hadn't given up their gasmasks for us." She murmured shakily, "But if I just hadn't gotten one of their masks broken... then maybe... I don't know, maybe one of them would have lived..."

"It wasn't your fault," Predator called out from ahead of us. The fact that he, of all people, was trying to comfort someone a mere few hours after he had pissed off said person was a little surprising.

'Well, I was going to say it, anyway,' I thought. Though, obviously, Myst would have liked it better had I said it.

She scowled, "And what makes you say that?" Then her tone became a little softer. "If I hadn't fallen down that tunnel... panicked in that train... then maybe..."

"You aren't to blame," Predator insisted plainly. "The mere fact that they just so happened to give you their gasmask and that you just so happened to be attacked by those ghouls does not put you at fault."

"No! It was m-..." She started, but I silenced her with a hoof.

"I agree with him, Myst. Much as wouldn't like to sympathize with him, he's right. You're not to blame," I said sternly. I could handle nonsensically blaming myself for things (If Tom's insistence that that was 'my nature' was correct), but I couldn't handle them blaming themselves. Not while our emotional bonds were still fragile and healing, or just plain awkward.

Skyfire voiced her approval. "Yeah. Just because they sent you ahead doesn't mean it was your fault. At least you managed to save Kira. I bet they would have appreciated that."

Myst babbled and stammered for a bit, trying to insist that she was to blame. Finally, though, she conceded defeat. "Okay..." She murmured softly.

There was no more conversation for almost half an hour. We passed several more empty maintenance tunnels and a few metro rails. In one corner of a room, where a light bulb was glowing forlornly in the darkness, I saw a corpse. Just as Myst had described Kira's parents after exposure to the cloud, this zebra mare's chest was split wide open, spikes perforating her bones and internal organs. One spike had shot out of her eye and lodged itself in the ceiling. Next to her was a gasmask with the tiniest crack I ever saw snaking along the glass. I mentally thanked the Goddesses that the ones Predator had lent us were built into an armored helmet with a thick visor.

All the while that we were not talking I could feel them. They seemed to be all around us, yet completely out of sight. I checked my E.F.S and saw nothing, and that only worried me more. The feeling of terror at being followed by a large number of powerful-feeling entities which not even Predator could directly sense was unsettling. He insisted that we move faster, and for almost an hour we moved at half-galloping speed. Eventually, we left them behind. Yet I was sure that they wouldn't be gone for long.

Amidst all my paranoia-filled cantering, Predator finally broke the silence. "Doodle. Because I cannot tolerate your very odd acceptance of my presence, I will instead turn that into a venue to distract myself from my personal problems. Why are you not scared of me?"

"Hm?" Doodle murmured sleepily. The long amount of time without conversation must have lulled her to near sleep. "Oh, right! That!" She giggled, "Well, why would I be scared of you, silly?"

I heard Skyfire facehoof. Myst 'uhhh...'d in confusion along with me. What did she mean 'why should I be scared of you'? He had nearly killed her, for Celestia's sake! And not to mention the fact that her parents burned by his hooves! And the fact that he showed no regard for her back at Verge... and slaughtered in her presence in the transport...

Even Predator seemed profoundly dumbfounded. "What?" He asked in astonished disbelief. "Well, one thing I do know is that when someone kills someone else's parents, the victim becomes fearful. My question is why you are not as fearful or as uncomfortable around me as you should be. That and how you recovered from the surprisingly small amount you had of both so quickly." Clearly, he was hoping his direct to the point statements would get the answer out of her immediately. I was glad he had asked, though. Amidst all the drama recently, I had completely forgotten about asking her that.

"Oh!" Doodle giggled and laughed happily, "My parents weren't with me, silly! No, they're ALL the way back in Equestria!"

I stopped trotting immediately and stared forward blankly. They were? Then... so... so she wasn't terrified of the most dangerous person I had met out here so far because she didn't lose anyone she loved when he shot the transport down? Well... that explained a lot.

"But then why did you seem scared of him when I rescued you? And... Equestria?" I asked, feeling the need to get more answers.

"Oh..." Doodle's tone dropped to a far quieter one. "Well... it was just kind of the moment. He did try to kill me, after all. And I'm actually still a little scared of him, but just not so much. Plus, I did get to talk to miss Myst over here about it, and now I'm not so worried anymore." Then her tone cheered up as she said, "As for my family, they're all the way in some city called Fillydelphia. They work for mister Redeye over there. We were poor before he came along and took me with him. In exchange for taking care of me and teaching me along with some other kids, he asked my parents to work for him! Isn't that nice? They got jobs, and I get to visit them! Though I don't know why they seemed so sad about it. Reason why I'm down here is because mister Redeye needed somepony to help his troops. My parents tried to keep me there, but I wanted to go!"

"And why is that?" Predator asked, sounding genuinely confused. I shared in his confusion, and I was pretty sure the other two did, as well.

"Well, not like it was bad there or anything. The soldiers there were real nice to my parents! Why, in fact, they went to my parents' hut every night to help my mom with something! Then in the morning, when I visited her, she was so happy she didn't want to talk about it! Dad kept trying to tell them 'no', but what's wrong with helping my mom relax?" She sighed. "My dad never did like them. Kept trying to tell me they were slavers or something. Anyway, reason I wanted to go was because I wanted to help mister Redeye spread his love and care to all the wasteland!"

Oh, wow. Doodle was this oblivious? "Doodle... how do I say this..." I started.

Skyfire took over. "You do know that Redeye controls an army of slaves and slavers, right? And that each night they came by they actually raped your mo-..."

"That is a lie," Predator said, turning around and fixing her with his blazing stare. Skyfire's illuminated form immediately froze. "What's wrong with helping her mother relax, huh? Clearly, if they did that, then they couldn't have been slavers. Slavers are cruel, evil. Those ponies sounded good." He dimmed his eyes down and looked over at Doodle on Skyfire's back. "Whatever they say, Doodle, believe in the goodness that... 'mister Redeye' showed you. Understand?"

I stared at him in disbelief. Did Predator just... lie? He had blatantly pointed out the truth, even when it seriously hurt my friends' feelings, made it clear to me that he was no liar, and literally every instruction and warning he had given us down here was a hundred percent correct. And yet here he was lying. Well... maybe he didn't know Redeye was a slaver? That's what Skyfire told me he was, anyway. Maybe Predator just honestly didn't know? He did say he found Doodle the hardest to discern, was he having trouble right here?

Before Skyfire or Myst or I could say anything, Doodle piped, "Well, duh! Of course he's good! I learned lots of things from the books that he let me read, you know. And one of the things I learned from them is that I should ALWAYS trust Redeye!"

Skyfire gasped as Predator took his gaze off of her. She looked around warily, then shook her head. "Wow..." Skyfire muttered. "Alright, I think Doodle needs to know the truth. Doodle, the truth is that-..." Then Predator looked to her and made his eyes glow bright again. Once more she froze, not continuing her statement.

"Those ponies were good, and there is no doubt about it. Understand, Skyfire?" He growled and looked upon Myst, and she froze with a soft whimper. "Understand, Myst?" And finally he turned to me. I tried to resist the strange and rather scary sensation of being frozen; who knew, maybe it was some kind of placebo effect. It wasn't, and despite my efforts I froze as well.

Skyfire barely suppressed her growl and Myst just managed to stop herself before she shot him with her rifle. Begrudgingly, I nodded. I just had to ask myself why the fuck he was doing this. I couldn't believe that Predator was actually stupid enough to believe Doodle when it came to Redeye; he was far more capable of detecting lies and extracting the truth than we were, and so it just didn't seem possible.

*** Magnus et Potens Roamanus ***

Almost another hour of trotting and we emerged from the metro maintenance tunnels and onto the actual metro tracks. We were in a wide area, with two sets of tracks on either side of a concrete platform, on the center of which was a flight of stairs leading up. This was perhaps the tenth station we had been to in our time down there; the other nine were all mostly intact and allowed us quick and unimpeded (except for the occasional ghoul and centaurpeed in the few areas where there was no cloud) progress through Roam's underground. The cloud was as thick here as it was everywhere else, and only Predator's certainty of our whereabouts convinced me of our location. He told us to stay put for a moment as he went over to a partially lowered metro security gate and lowered it completely, the metal clang shaking the ground. When he came back and Doodle asked him why he did that, he responded with something about not letting the cloud escape onto the surface.

We started up a flight of stairs, which was actually a dormant escalator. The glow of two light bulbs along a wall at the top of the steps illuminated the foggy forms of the escalator's railings.

I moved up next to him. "Why'd you do that?" I asked quietly. It was a question I had been pondering in my head, and I wanted it answered.

"I assume you're talking about what I told Doodle. I did that because her innocence must be preserved," He responded simply. He didn't even try keep it quiet or dance around it, despite Doodle's fairly close proximity. She didn't even hear it; she was far too busy trying to get the other two to talk to notice.

"Uh... what?" I asked incredulously. "What the hell do you mean? Protect her innocence... what? And I thought you said you'd never 'be a deceiver' again."

"I can make exceptions to my own rules, Praetorian. I may not have made such an exception in a very long time, but I still can. Today was the first time in many years," He responded, looking to the ground as though his own words had brought to him an uncomfortable memory.

That may have been true, but I needed a better answer than that. "But why did you make the exception, for her of all people? Now of all times?"

He kept trotting until we cleared the stairs and were on the second floor of the train station. Once we were all there, he stopped and turned to us. "Five minutes," He said, gesturing at a set of old seats next to a wall. Yeah, in our three days down here, he would occasionally let us take a break or two.

The others got the message and went over to the illuminated seats, with Doodle hopping and skipping as she circled Skyfire and trying to get her to talk. Predator gestured towards me, then turned and trotted into the un-illuminated Black Cloud on the other side of the floor. I followed him, and soon only the dim glow of the bulbs and the echoing voices of my friends remained.

He looked at me from the darkness of the cloud shrouding him, his eyes just dim enough to not freeze me in place. "Doodle is... an... extraordinary individual," He started with a very uncharacteristic amount of slowness. "You saw her back there. In the past week, she's been shot out of the sky, burned, thrust into the company of complete strangers, witnessed horrible carnage at my hooves, and seen horrifying monstrosities." He nodded his shadowy head in their direction. "Do you see where I am getting at?" Just then Doodle giggled in delight as she got Myst to tell her about Kira.

I thought about it for a moment; this was one of the few times Predator had been even slightly vague. Still, I knew what he was talking about. "Yeah... she's too happy. Too positive, to optimistic, despite what she's been through." Wait, what was I saying? Shouldn't I have been glad she was? It was definitely better than... than...

Then there was a quick but immensely strong screech in my ears. No, not in my ears... in my head. Tod was doing something in there! "It's... unnatural," I said, my voice lowering threateningly as I looked behind me at their positions with a look of disgust.

Then I thought about what I had just said, and the callousness with which I had said it. Seriously, what the fuck was I thinking? It wasn't 'unnatural'! It was good! Tod... Tod was doing something! It wasn't my fault!

I looked back and saw Predator looking at me, staring. I was about to try to defend myself and justify what I had said, when his eyes glowed brighter and I froze. The activity in my head suddenly stopped, and he stepped out of the darkness and approached me, then looked me right in the eye. Rather than smacking me across the face like I deserved, he instead slowly reached a hoof up to touch the side of my head.

And when he did, there was a shock like lightning that spread across my head and into my brain. For just a moment, everything in there was quiet. Slowly, I felt Tod and Tom move again, and it felt as though Predator now had their full attention.

"It isn't unnatural, you creature," He said firmly. Strangely, it felt like he wasn't talking to me. "It's remarkable. Never before have I seen a pony or zebra with such extraordinary resilience to the dark and horrid realities of the world. That resilience is born of innocence rather than knowledge, and it must be preserved. This world has enough lost souls." He leaned in very close, locking me in a gaze as strong as steel. Then there was the blood-freezing sensation of numerous... tendrils... entering my head through my ears and my eyes. It wasn't of either Tod or Tom. It was from Predator. "And you would do well to remember that, 'Tod'."

Then he dimmed down his eyes and just like that the feeling of the invisible tendrils was gone. He back-stepped into the shadows as I panted for breath, disturbed at what had just occurred. What had just happened? What did Predator just do? And why was Tod now as quiet as Tom, even if that silence was out of spiteful recognition? And... how did Predator know of them?

"You feel them too, I see," Predator said quietly. "Your head is festering with that one's influence. Luckily, you have the other one openly assisting you."

"What... what was that about?" I asked as I panted. I murmured,"And... how do you know of them? I thought I was just crazy or something..."

"I don't know what they are, Praetorian. Just that they have been the driving forces behind many events in post-apocalyptic Roaman history." Then he suddenly reached up a hoof to his own head and grunted in pain. There was a faint, high-pitched ringing in the air all around us now, pulsating as though a beating heart deep beneath the earth was pumping the air around us. The signal reignited my headache, and Tod began moving about in my mind more actively. "As for your second question..." He said with grit teeth, then reached up another hoof to his head and growled fiercely.

Tom finally did something. His gentle, monotonous hum filled the air and blocked out the high-pitched signal (though at this point I was beginning to doubt it was just a signal. If it was Tod's manifestation, I supposed it was more of an energy.) Over at their seats, I heard the others sigh in relief as Tod's energy fell away. Both Predator and I slowly regained control of our breathing.

He sighed and looked back up at me. "You aren't the only one that deals with them. Your friends do, though they think that they're just products of stress. Doodle should get as little exposure to it as possible, lest he find some way to break her naive joy." Then he took in a shaky breath and said, "And so do I."

I had gotten into the conversation hoping to merely understand why Predator had done what he did. While now I understood, and actually sympathized with him on that matter (Though a part of me did feel that Doodle should have been exposed freely to the horrors of the wasteland. I mentally beat the crap out of that part of my head, which strangely resulted in my headache getting a little better. I assumed that part of me was Tod.), I really wanted to figure out JUST that. Now I had more information about Tod and Tom and my friends and Predator to process than I would have thought my sluggish brain could handle. Ah well, I'd just think about it later. Trotting underground in tunnels while a war's going on above you and having two entities fighting inside your head doesn't really provide the best environment for thinking.

I looked at him curiously and saw him looking at the ground in apparent contemplation. "And how DO you deal with them?" I asked, getting a startled growl from him.

He lifted his head slowly and looked at me as though I had asked a stupid question."What?"

I explained, "Well, in the two or so weeks I've known you, you've been more or less the same. Unless I'm wrong in my observation, Tod makes people... different from who they are; tries to make a person act differently than they normally would. Tom, though, seems to do the exact opposite. So how do you seem to stay the same, even though you'e been exposed to them longer than I have?"

He thought about that for a moment. "Hmph. You think I handle it well? Well I don't. Not by a long shot."

"That warrants some explanation, and I want to hear it," I prodded. After all, he certainly seemed to have handled it well.

He thought for another moment, shifting uneasily in the darkness. Clearly, this was a topic he didn't talk about much. "Remember the bridge?" He asked, and though a little anger sparked in my head at the memory of my first encounter with him, I nodded. "You want to know why I was actually there? Definitely not because Madran told me to look for you. Really, there were two reasons: the first is that I believed it was time to confront you directly instead of just observing you from afar. The second-..."

"You were 'observing me from afar'?" I asked, a little bit confused as to what he meant.

"Of course I was! How do you think I know that you spared that slaver near Roam's walls? Or that your initial encounter with Myst ended up with getting gunbutted in the face? Or how you reacted to Skyfire killing that neutralized Legionnaire? How else would I know your type of character, and how to piss you off and get on your nerves when I inevitably attacked you on the bridge?" Uh... he actually planned all that? And he actually WANTED to piss me off? Fucking asshole...

"Uh... yeah... wait, you mean to tell me you said all that; all that crap about death and pain and time and whatnot, specifically to annoy and depress me?" I asked with great annoyance. Great annoyance and an anger spike, that is. I mean, what he said to me on that bridge... and at the crash site... all that really got to me. For fuck's sake, his words had nearly made me give up!

"Yes," He replied, as though the memory of what he himself had done and said sparked no emotions whatsoever.

Ugh... ok, nevermind that. It happened and it was over, there was no point lingering on it. "Just get to the point already," I said, feeling a little unnerved that literally all of my activities since leaving the stable had been monitored. Thank Celestia I had resisted the urge to jack off back in Myst's outpost...

"Finally. Honestly, you're desire for conversation brings about many unnecessary sub-conversations. Anyway, the second reason is because I..." He looked around a bit, seeming uneasy. Then he leaned close and whispered, "Because I was under the influence of... 'Tod.'"

Wait, what?

"The hell do you mean by that? You mean you did all that because you were getting nagged at by some annoying signal that seems hell bent on pissing me off with his non-stop and extremely annoying presence in my head? Care to explain that?" I honestly couldn't believe that. I mean, had you been in my place; having your friend nearly killed by someone, then having that someone come to you and say 'it wasn't actually me', would you?

"No, I don't care to explain. But I will, and thanks for asking." He cleared his throat and said, "Well, look at me. Between me now and me during the bridge and when I shot Doodle out of the sky, which would you say you would rather be around?"

Hmm... that made sense. And I could see where he was headed; his character back at the bridge and at the crash site were both extremely cold and brutal, and tried to make me believe that killing was the only answer to suffering. As he was right now, he was definitely less cynical and tons more sociable, though he still pissed me off immensely from time to time, not to mention being just as straight to the point and as calculating as ever. "Well... I guess I'd rather be around you right now."

"Exactly," He said, then sighed. "I'm not going to defend myself. I know the things I did back there were wrong. It's just that 'Tod', as you call him, has a tendency to bring out the worst in people. He manipulates, he deceives, he destroys. He exploits a person's weaknesses and brings that person's dark side to light and projects them in such a way that that is all we see of them." His eyes turned apologetic; more apologetic than I had ever seen on one of even Myst's expressions. "I'm not hopeless and I do know there are other ways of ending suffering. What I did and said back in the transport were the after effects of almost a full week of being under him. I'm not really like that, I hate being like that. I know you may not believe the words coming out of my mouth, but what can I say? It's the truth."

So, that was his explanation for all of what he did, huh? That he was under Tod's influence the whole time? Strange as it may sound, I actually believed him. I had seen what Tod was capable of, and if he was able to directly control a mech, then surely he could somehow physically take hold of someone. I had been under but a mere fraction of Tod's power, thanks to Tom. Predator had no such fortune; I could only imagine what Tod could have made me do by now had I not had been lucky enough to have friends who were concerned for me. Did Predator have friends who cared for him, who tried to help him in times of distress and weakness? I doubted it.

But that didn't mean I was without suspicion, or that what he did would no longer entice some anger out of me. "Then what was all that you said to us our time in these tunnels? Lots of the stuff you said were almost as cold and dark as when you were supposedly under him. How do you explain that?" After all, what if he was trying to trick me? What if this was all some unnecessarily convoluted plan to get me to trust him so that he could analyze and exploit my weaknesses for his own goals? Balaclava had warned me about him, about how he got into people's heads. Sanddune himself had told me I was too trusting; was I showing that supposed flaw right now?

He hung his head and said quietly, "Because while I may hate being under him... I see some truth in his influence. He claims that all efforts to improve the wasteland through peace and diplomacy and caring will end in vain. I denied him for years, but in my travels... I've discovered there's more truth in his statements than I would believe possible. I've seen things, experienced things. Been deceived, been used, betrayed and altogether abandoned. I've seen the wasteland at it's worst and never at it's best."

He looked back up at me. "I hate to admit it, but it's made me... different. I used to try to do better, but I no longer do. I used to care, but not any more. I've thought of killing myself more times than you'd think, but that won't change a damn thing, and it'll just take away my meager chance of atonement. He'll still be here, and he'll just keep on tricking. That's why I try to find distractions when I'm under him, so that the damage I do can be minimized. Had I not found you when I did, and used you as a distraction like I did... who knows who I would have attacked, what settlement I would have slaughtered. That's why I stay down here unless I'm needed up there; at least down here I can keep myself away from the world so I don't hurt it any more than I already have."

Then he looked to both sides, as though he was worried someone else was listening in. Then he leaned in close and whispered hoarsely, "And the worst part is that if I don't kill, then the monster in me gets out. Much as I hate myself for what I've done... the being I become is a nightmare no one should witness. And so... so, as much as I don't want to, I have to kill. Gods damn me, I have to."

"Oh..." I murmured quietly. Well, I guess I didn't really have the right to judge him anymore, did I? He'd lived out here, he knew just how bad things could get. I didn't, and I'd only seen a fraction of the evil of the wasteland. He'd killed and slaughtered and burned and destroyed... but had I been in his position, caught between giving up to a sadistic entity, becoming a nightmarish creature of destruction, and giving up hope completely, would I have handled it any better? Could I force myself to manage my emotions like files and fight for my identity at the same time? Could I find the strength to seclude myself for the sake of others while still maintaining my sanity? Could I force myself to kill one group of people so that others may be spared? I didn't think so.

'Very... regrettable...' Tom said tiredly in my head. 'He's not tricking you, by the way. I can see in his mind. And I did try to help him, actually. But his influence over him is... strong. It's rooted in his mind, and cannot be removed. I may stop him from doing one thing, but that would only make him try harder to push this poor soul past the point of redemption. The truth is that the less attention I give to things, the less my counterpart tries to bend that thing to his means.'

Really? Well, that just sucked. I wondered how much of his attention Tom was giving me. "That's why you said you killed those Legionnaires to satisfy your daily dose of death-..." I started.

"And you and your friends must have thought it some kind if figure of speech I uttered out of wild vigor at the act of killing," Predator finished.

I took that in as I looked Predator's shadowy form over. I was wrong about him. He wasn't bad, at least not intentionally. I could understand. He was caught between a rock and a hard place with no means of escape. Suicide was out of the question; that would snuff out his already tiny chance of redemption completely. He wasn't actually a predator; he was prey, constantly being harassed by a being of malicious intent and a creature within himself, and resorting to secluding himself in order to reduce the destruction he wreaked.

I took in all I had heard and learned. All-in-all, it was far more than I had intended to l to learn (that tended to happen a lot when I tried to talk to people, much to my chagrin), but the knowledge I had obtained was of great significance. I had gained a lot more context on the two entities in my head, (which was useful, let me to tell you) and I had gained some insight on the enigmatic workings of Predator's mind. And needless to say, I viewed him very differently now than I had the past two weeks.

I was also scared to death of Tod at that point. I had the very sudden urge to smack my head against the ground for the small chance of getting him out of me, but the logical part of my head knew it wouldn't work and stopped me. So I just settled for begging Tom to do more to keep him from screwing with me.

Finally, his eyes hardened. "Alright, enough indulging in the kindness and patience of others. I won't be able to redeem myself just standing here. Let's go," He said, then paused for a short moment as he counted to himself. "Besides, we've been talking for seven and a half minutes now. That's two and a half minutes the assault on the surface could be wavering."

At once all of my thoughts of the recent conversation disappeared. He was right, there were people up there who were depending on us. Once the dam was taken and we weren't in imminent danger from inhaling explosive spores, then I could think clearly.

As we trotted back to the others, I approached him and said quietly, "You should tell them. I don't think they can continue hating you if they knew your situation." I paused, wondering if my next words would make sense to him, or even to myself. "All I know is that I can't hate you any more, or at least not too much."

"No," He responded. "I deserve their hate. At the end of the day, Tod only influenced me to do the things that I did, he did not force me. I am still at fault, and so I deserve every ounce of loathing I get. My weakness is my own, and I must be punished for them." He stopped for a moment, as if in thought. "And besides, even if I did they would not believe me. They wouldn't care."

"Oh, I think I could make them care," I said evenly. "They'll listen to me. I think I could help them understand."

For a long moment he just stood there, staring at me. "Maybe. I wouldn't ask you to. I don't deserve your second chance, it is wasted upon me."

"We'll see about that," I murmured, feeling a fierce determination to get the others to understand Predator's predicament forming in my head. Funny, if I had even thought of sympathizing with him four days ago, I would have shot myself for the mere thought of it. Now here I was openly admitting to wanting to help him. Strange how one's mindset can change so quickly, huh?

Once more he stared at me for a long moment. His eyes weren't of the brightness necessary to freeze me, but I stayed still anyway. His gaze was calculating and cold, as if he were digging through my head to determine the intentions with which I was making my offer. I could feel the invisible tendrils moving around inside my head.

Then his eyes softened. In fact, they looked almost... exhausted. "I've never had anyone try to help me before. I never even thought I deserved to be spoken with." He looked away from me, and I heard the faintest sniff. "You are truly a good pony to show me such kindness. I pray that I may prove deserving of even your spit."

I stared back at him with pity. He truly, truly hated himself. In comparison, my self-imposed justice for my weaknesses and faults were utterly miniscule.

Then I thought of all my companions in general, even those not officially with me yet at that point. Skyfire needed help with her emotional distress regarding her dead loved one, Myst was more or less stable except for her near rape, thank the Goddesses. Doodle was damned puzzling, to the point that even an experienced individual such as Predator couldn't quite comprehend her startling resilience to the terrors of the wasteland. Predator himself was a mental battlefield, constantly looking for ways to cause as little suffering while still keeping his monster away.

And then I thought of myself, and compared my problems with theirs. I had it fairly easy, to be honest. Sure, for the first few days I had thought that I had it really bad, but that changed dramatically. What was the worst and most traumatizing thing that had happened to me since I was out here so far? Oh yeah: I killed. So what? I could deal with the guilt and terror of that, but what my friends were going through was much more significant. And, much as I didn't want to forget it, my promise to Lighthouse just had to be changed to the least important priority I had. There was just too much to do.

So what exactly did it mean when the most untroubled of us was a hovering, talking vehicle who had been lying still in a garage for two centuries? I think it meant to say that we were fucking insane.

Just then there was a terrified scream followed by a thump. Myst and Doodle called out frantically for me (with Doodle calling 'Mr. Predator' more than once). I galloped through the smoke towards the light of the bulbs, hoping and praying that whatever had happened wasn't too serious. Predator's remarkable speed brought him there in less than a second, leaving me lagging pathetically behind.

I stormed through the cloud and saw Skyfire lying on the ground, shaking and stretched out on the ground as though she were possessed. Myst was trying to hold her still, but Skyfire was shaking too hard. Doodle was running around in panic, screaming and blabbering all sorts of useless words.

Predator wasted no time, pushing Myst away and forcing Skyfire's shaking form still with his forehooves as he pinned her down. He let his immense backpack fall down to his side, and at once a dozen or so small, silvery boxes with small, red glowing crystals on their sides poured out and scattered onto the floor.

I arrived a moment later and assisted him in keeping her still. Myst was too shocked and being roughly pushed away and was still recovering. Doodle was running around in circles, and her yelling was definitely wasn't helping me concentrate and determine the cause of all this. Was it something she saw? Something we ate? We had come across some interesting wildlife that Predator claimed were safe (including some surprisingly tangy glowing berries), but maybe he was mistaken?

As I kept her trembling body from shaking uncontrollably, Predator picked at the dozen or so small boxes, tossing some of them away at random. I didn't know what the hell he was searching for; all of them looked exactly the same.

Then suddenly he picked one up. "Aha!" He said in triumph. Then he opened the silvery box and turned it upside down, and at once dozens of small syringes clattered onto the floor, each filled with the same drug mix Doomtune had given Myst. He picked one of them up and was about to inject Skyfire with them, when I stopped him.

"What are you doing?" I asked, concerned for my friend and a little angry that Predator was about to utilize drugs. "I am not letting you pump my friend full of potentially addictive drugs!"

"There's no point arguing," He said calmly. "This is severe tetanus. We keep her like this long enough and she dies. You don't want that, do you?" Then, without another word from either of us, he jammed the needle into her chest and emptied the syringe. Immediately afterwards he coated the needle's entry point with a purplish salve he brought of his vest.

We watched in tense anticipation as Skyfire slowly relaxed, the occasional spasming quickly reducing and then altogether disappearing. Doodle slowly brought her head close to Skyfire's, then fell forward from the weight of the helmet and let out a little 'oof'. Myst just sat nearby, waiting to see if Skyfire was indeed alright. Predator was utterly still, staring down at her as her breathing became more calm. I didn't like what he did, but at least she wasn't shaking any more. Still, I didn't like that I was letting my friends get drugged just for temporary relief.

She breathed in shakily for a moment, then slowly rolled towards the closest of us, and the closest just so happened to be Predator. If he appeared still before, now he was as frozen as though he had looked at himself with his own eyes. His breathing became tense and altogether bewildered as Skyfire let out a few relieved sobs into his legs (technically into her helmet, but still.) Even I was surprised by the motion.

"Th-thank you..." She muttered in between a set of hiccups. "I... I felt like I was going to die. I couldn't even scream or gasp. Just shake."

"Don't thank me," Predator replied. "Thanking me would imply that I have done something worthy of admiration or reciprocation. As it is, I have taken a tiny step on a thousand year journey to redemption." I looked to him, making sure my surprise reached my eyes as I gave him a look. Then to me he said, "Redemption which I will never reach."

"What are you talking about?" Skyfire questioned as she calmed herself down. "You mean when you did those things we hated you for?" Predator looked down at her, but didn't do anything else. "Because if it is..." She glanced to me, then back at him. "...well, you did save me just now. I think I can cut you some slack."

Predator just stared down at her for a moment, growling low and soft. Myst seemed to take that as a sign of aggression, as she kept her rifle pointed on the head of our mysterious guide. Doodle just sat down and watched us with relaxed curiosity. And me? I knew enough of Predator's growling to know that it didn't always mean he was going to kill something. Nevertheless, I kept Tankbuster close.

Then he helped her up and shoved her towards me. The action made Skyfire uncomfortable for two reasons: that she didn't like being shoved, and because she was still trying to avoid physical contact with me out of the only slightly reduced awkwardness we both felt. "We should keep moving. No more delays. The sooner we take that dam the sooner you can continue on your little quest," Predator said as he stuffed all the mysterious boxes back into his pack, then he trotted ahead of us and into the thick of the un-illuminated cloud.

We were about to trudge after him once more, our hooves sore and chafed, when suddenly there was a tremendous ring all throughout the tunnels. Tom's gentle hum faltered and gave way to it, and the force of the burning pain it singed into our heads floored all of us completely. I couldn't tell if Predator was floored, though; I couldn't see him through the cloud, except for the faintest glow of his red eyes. All of us, especially me, screamed in agony as the energy cooked our brains like a piece of meat in boiling oil. The rest of my body itself felt as though acid was flowing through my veins. Worse, my many wounds and scars that I had accumulated over the course of three weeks were reopening. As in, bleeding and throbbing opening. Hell, even those of the others were coming back up. All our blood piled up around us and began cooling rapidly as it bubbled. Yes, bubbled. I didn't know what the fuck was happening to us, but it was so not good.

Tom's energy acted up and intervened on our behalf. For about a minute, his humming struggled against the piercing energy of Tod, and the whole time all we could do was thrash and scream. Ahead of us, in the cloud, I could hear Predator wail and scream and growl and roar. His eyes turned green and became bright enough to pierce clearly through the Black Cloud, and his gaze fell upon me. Despite all the pain, I froze. He began slowly approaching me, growling low and threateningly. And all I could do was stare at him in horror as he pulled out a blade and held it in his hooves.

Tom prevailed, and when the sonic battle going on around us subsided, Tod's was gone. Tom's was weak now, though. Almost as if another attack like that and he'd fail altogether. Really, a part of my brain suddenly felt very tired.

Predator eyes turned red again. He shook himself hard, then grabbed the hoof that had the blade and held it close. He glanced at me with a look in his eyes I couldn't quite fathom, and then looked over to the others. Then he cast his eyes to the ground and sighed, taking a few steps back into the darkness.

When all that subsided we took a moment to recover from the attack. Tom was utilizing whatever strength he had left in his signal to help our bodies regenerate. The others expressed great discomfort and confusion as to how it was happening again (except Doodle, who instead watched with glee as her few wounds quickly closed up). Predator and I kept quiet in the matter as we looked at each other; he and I both knew what was happening, him more so than I. Our trip down here had taught me to trust his instructions and his lead, and I had learned that well. So if he, who had far greater knowledge and experience with Tod and Tom, was keeping quiet about it, then I would keep quiet as well.

My head, and for some reason my body (even the parts of me that weren't bleeding or stinging), was aching terribly, and from the groans and moans from the others, so were theirs. My head wasn't silent, though; quite the opposite, Tod was laughing madly as each beat of my heart spread throbbing pain all throughout my body. Tom was nowhere to be felt or heard, or maybe he was there, but that his strength was so little I couldn't detect him. Perhaps all of his efforts on our behalf had drained him? Either way, he was gone, at least for that moment.

Then there was an echoing, low growl that reverberated all over the station. It sounded like Predator's growl, except this one was much more... savage; less repressed and more primal. On my E.F.S, a single red bar appeared. I really wished my E.F.S had the zebra version's ability of determining the potential danger level of each red bar, because right now, in my head, this one bar felt immensely powerful.

Predator listened to the growl carefully as it sounded again. His glowing eyes widened and looked up from the floor and down the tunnel the growling was coming from. "It can't be..." He murmured. He shook his head in apparent disbelief, and when the sound came again he closed his eyes and focused. When he opened them again, he nearly screamed in rage and disbelief, "It can't be!"

"Mister Predator, what's going on?" Doodle asked worriedly, glancing back and forth as she sat on a pool of her dried up blood (her blood, as I saw, bubbled significantly less than ours did). Myst was doing the same, and Skyfire herself readied her plasma rifles.

He ignored her question and turned to us, barely keeping his breathing calm. "Run. This is a foe none of you are capable of fighting. Move down this path as fast as you can, don't turn back. No matter what you hear. If... if this turns out in my favor, I will rejoin you. If not... keep moving," He said as he gestured down a cloud-obscured hallway.

The others showed only a bit of hesitation before galloping through the cloud, with Doodle riding on Skyfire's back. But I didn't want to leave Predator alone to face whatever this thing was, no matter how ridiculously strong and fast he may have been.

When he noticed me standing beside him, shotgun ready and in a battle stance, he shoved me away roughly and said, "Go, Praetorian. This is not something you should face."

"I'm not leaving you behind! Either you come with us, or we face it together. Bad things happen when I separate from my companions," I said obstinately.

"Yes, I know. I saw what happened when you told Myst to leave you that one time, but this is entirely different. You will be too slow to escape it. Only I can buy you time. Besides, if this thing really is what it feels like it is, then I'll need to see it for myself to believe it. You can feel it, can't you? If you can, then you know how powerful it feels," He responded quickly, hints of worry and stress creeping into his voice.

There was the sound of a metal metro gate (the gate which Predator had lowered after our arrival here, if you remember) being smashed open from the tunnel the growling, now constant and continuous, was coming from. I felt my head begin to ache from the power of the signal radiating off of this being, and Predator seemed to feel it, too.

"Goldwreath!" Skyfire yelled, popping out from the doorway, with Doodle no longer on her back. "Let's go, let's go!" Then she galloped towards me and began pushing me towards the door. I wanted to tell her to go, to leave me behind to face this thing, but I didn't. Predator was right about this thing, as I would learn just a few moments from that point. I just wished I had listened to him while I still had time.

The being felt like it was very close now, and it's presence sent horrified chills up my spine. It felt so powerful and so altogether terrifying that it took all my effort to not cower on the floor like a lost foal. Even merely standing up was a challenge, as every second the painful pumping of my heart caused my already overtaxed brain to throb in pain. Skyfire herself seemed to be nearly petrified, though she was still better off than I was.

Then there was the feeling of a field of energy, spreading out around the area. It made it's way to the four corners of the station, like a sheet getting draped over a bed. With one quick jerk, the energy pulled inwards towards the center of the station.

The cloud swirled towards the center of area, forming a spinning ball of Black Cloud in the air and revealing the ground floor of the metro station. There, standing in the tunnel which we had used to arrive here, was a large, shadowy form standing on two legs, with shadow-shrouded wings extending sideways. It was a large being, standing perhaps ten feet in height and had a width of perhaps a meter, shoulder-to-shoulder. It's long, talon-tipped arms hung down from it's immense torso, and the shape of it's head seemed to show it had horns of a sort. A long, slender tail swished around behind it. Tod's energy emanated from it with immense strength, the likes of which quite nearly floored me again.

But, as with many things, my initial observations weren't what got my attention. And the next discovery I made chilled me to the bone.

It's eyes blazed with a blood red coloration, brighter than even Predator's. It's horrible glance landed upon me, and as I froze so did Skyfire. It growled in satisfaction as it took several steps out from the tunnel and towards the staircase, it's steps tauntingly slow and heavy enough to shake the earth slightly with each dark foot it placed forward. All we could do was stand still and watch in horror, while Myst and Doodle were galloping to safety.

Then Predator trotted forward, towards the end of the staircase. He growled as he went the short distance, and the area became significantly darker than before as he neared the creature. He brought his HMG-assault rifle hybrid up, readying the mechanism with one swift pull of the lever. Skyfire and I only watched with frozen terror as the creature's large, mysterious form got halfway up the stairs.

"You shall not pass," Predator said, his own voice a terrible mix of a growl and a snarl.

The creature looked up at him with the exact same red eyes that Predator possessed. It spread it's wings out to full length and stood up to it's full height, then said in a sinister, rough, and bestial voice, "Ah, the Arsonist. I have looked forward to this meeting with you. Surely, as brothers of the same blood, you and I could-..."

Predator cut it off without any hesitation and said with disgust, "Silence, fool. I don't know what kind of gutter you were fished out of, or how you or whom you serve managed to reopen that gods-forsaken project, but that doesn't matter." He dared take a step forward. "What I want answered is 'why'. Why in the name of all things would you turn yourself into this monstrosity?! Why would you be so foolish as to let yourself become what you are?! And why would you get yourself involved in this? Did you even know what you got into when you did this to yourself?"

The creature laughed; apparently, it had expected as much from Predator. "Ah, but I do know what I have gotten into. I am on the verge of rising, brother. I'm sure you know what that means," It said with a low chuckle that pulsated through the air.

"That's... not possible," Predator replied, taking a step back. "I shut down the facilities years ago. There's no way you could have recovered it. In fact you shouldn't even have access to the biological half of this project."

"Yes, I don't. Nor my other brethren, near-ascendance and rising alike. Only the Father knows how. Him... and you," The creature replied with a step forward, raising one of it's talon-tipped arms forward and clenching it's fist tight. At once, a faint green light flowed out from it's fist, growing brighter and stronger. When it opened it again, there was a brightly glowing orb of swirling sickly green light in it's claws. Tod's energy pulsated from it, causing all of us but Predator and the creature pain. Predator stared it with wide eyes, taking several more steps back.

"Shatter your mortal bounds, Arsonist. Become the god you and all of us are meant to be. Show us your true form, your true power. Cease running from your destiny and join us once more, and together with our brethren we will cleanse this world of the unworthy and the weak. We will bask in the Gift, and ascend to the next stage of existence," It said as it took another step up, spreading it's shadowed wings even wider and raising it's non orb-wielding arm up.

Predator looked at the orb first, then looked up with a growl at the creature before him, it's features still not revealed even by the glow of the orb. "You imbecile! Not only are you losing yourself every second you bask in this... this... curse, but you actually brought it to OTHERS?! Do you realize what you've done?!" Predator screamed, dropping his weapon and backpack onto the ground and galloping forward, tackling the creature and sending them both down the stairs. The orb immediately vanished in a green flash. They rolled and slammed into the railings until they landed at the bottom with a loud thud, with Predator on top.

"Yes, I did. And yes, I do. In fact... they should be here right now," The creature said with a low chuckle.

And then I felt them. Dozens of entities with a similar presence in my head that Predator and the creature shared. The exact same ones that I had been feeling for a large portion of the trip down here. How had I not felt them in the last hour? They were so close now, too close to have been undetected by Predator's very acute senses. Perhaps Tod had been shielding them the whole time?

"No... no, no!" Predator screamed, also feeling the presence of our ambushers. He punched the creature in the face repeatedly, each blow sending a sickening crack through the air. "What have you done?!" He screamed as he continued beating the creature with his ultra-powerful hoof strikes. In fact, his punching had shattered the concrete and sunk them both into the earth, about two feet down.

While Predator was continuing beating the shit out of the creature, Skyfire and I finally managed to gather enough wits to move. She was shaking and breathing in hurriedly; clearly, that whole conversation had disturbed her greatly. I was disturbed as well, mind you. I just manifested that shock and horror in a different manner which was, to put it lightly, partially soiling myself. Luckily I managed to regain bladder control right after I lost it.

Just then there was a terrified scream from down the hallway Myst and Doodle had gone down. The scream, of course, was Myst's. Doodle was much too enigmatic to get frightened at nearly anything. Strange how I can look back at these moments from where I am now and feel only accomplished joy, despite how horrible it all was...

Anyway, my terror was much more real back then. For just a moment upon hearing said scream, Skyfire and I balked and hesitated. Then we both shouted in unison, "Myst, Doodle!" And then, with my heart thundering in my ears and chest and with my wounds still stinging and Predator still pounding, we galloped down the hall after them. I would only look at my E.F.S later, and for several days after I would wish I had looked sooner.

Good thing we moved through the doorway when we did, though. It was just at that moment that Predator crashed into the wall right behind us and blasted through it, to a room or chamber of some sort on the other side. The hole his impact made in the wall was big enough for Zaita to fit through. We only stopped long enough to see him get up, groan, shake his head, and charge back down the hall to the creature before we continued galloping.

With the sounds and vibrations of roaring and growling and concrete-smashing, steel-shattering melee combat between Predator and the creature erupting again and again behind us, we continued galloping for a mere ten seconds before we saw Myst galloping through the severely reduced cloud towards us. Her helmet was severely scratched and beaten, yet thankfully had no cracks that would have exposed her to the cloud. Doodle rode on her back, clinging to Myst's neck like a parasite as Doodle herself waved her hoof behind her and said something along the lines of 'go away, you meanie monsters!' again and again.

"Myst! What the fuck's going on?" Skyfire asked as the earth pony and accompanying filly galloped past us. She didn't even stop for breath or to tell us. Really, the only thing that she said that was evenly partially fathomable through her erratic breathing was 'run!'.

"Run from what?" I yelled after her. Skyfire instead galloped after her, intent on dragging getting a better explanation.

Of course, now I was alone in the long hallway, with Predator fighting a being of indeterminate origins and abilities and my friends getting further away with every second. My head was in severe panic, ruining any organized thoughts the moment they entered my head. I couldn't do anything but dart my eyes to and fro and breath, trying to think of something, anything, that could help. It was at that point that I finally took the time to look at my E.F.S and try to detect where these other beings were.

On my E.F.S was a paltry five bars, a part of the oncoming horde of the dozens of entities I sensed all around us in the tunnels. I had a hunch that I could only see and sense them on my E.F.S now because these were the closest, and that whatever magic or power hiding them was temporarily abolished or weakened. That power was still at least partially active over the others, as my detection of them was blurry, and at times some of them would disappear from my mental radar for a few seconds before appearing again.

While I stood there blankly trying to detect them and to conceive some kind of plan, a dark form with red glowing eyes lunged out of the darkness and tackled me, sending us both rolling along until it flung me away and I smacked against a wall. I had been so focused on my mental radar that I didn't even pay attention to my E.F.S.

I recovered and drew out Tankbuster, then fired all the shells as quickly as I could as the form prepared itself to lunge once again. The muzzle flashes from my shotgun illuminated the creature, and what I saw of it were truly horrifying.

It was perhaps a little larger than I was, maybe three inches taller and a little wider. It was vaguely equine-shaped, at least in the sense that it had a tail and four legs. However, it's tail was some kind of slimy, black carapace-clad length tipped with a barbed stinger. It's coat, or what was supposed to be it's coat, consisted of thousands of scales, ranging in color from red to gray, which formed a suit of armor akin to that a dragon possessed. It's shoulders were protected by some kind of biological shoulder plate consisting of the chitinous black carapace, and it's chest was plated with the same biological armor in addition to the scales. It's legs were no longer quite equine-shaped, as the muscles bulged out of the yellow, leathery, scaled hide that coated it's limbs, like the legs of a manticore studded with the scales of a dragon. It's mane was non-existent, and was replaced instead by a razor sharp, black, bony, blade-like growth that extended back to front, like the plumes of my helmet. And to make matters even worse, it had properly-proportioned, bat-like leathery wings protruding from it's back.

It's head was what truly caught my attention, though. The red glowing eyes aside, there were even more monstrous things consisting it's face. A grayish reptilian snout jutted out from where my muzzle should have been, with a small stream of smoke rising up from it's nostrils. Around it's dragon-like maw were three fleshy protrusions, linked together by slimy skin. The protrusions looked as though they were supposed to be some kind of second, external mouth; mandibles, basically. It had gills on the side of it's head, slime seeping out from the slits.

Long story short, this was some kind unnatural hybrid that had to be destroyed.

Of course, that was easier said than done. Even after Tankbuster was out the creature was only partially bleeding, and whatever scales I had shot off or damage I had done to it were quickly regenerating. Damn it, Tankbuster was powerful enough to punch through power armor, yet couldn't kill a purely biological creature? That meant this beast was damned strong.

I pulled out my gladius and attempted to stab the creature's eye, but it jumped to the side and sent me flying down the hall with it's immensely strong hindlegs. It was much stronger than Predator's buck, but then again he had held back (or if he didn't, he got a lot stronger over the course of a few weeks). Pain exploded in my ribs as my armor bent to the force, and as I flew I found that it was harder to breathe. I had probably not heard the sounds of my bones being broken over the noise of the destruction going on behind me.

I crashed against the railings of the metro station's second floor, and the concrete cracked at the impact. Myst immediately got over to me, helping me up as Skyfire stared down the dark hall where all of these creatures were coming from. Doodle was running around in circles, screaming in panic and fright.

I helped Myst get me up by pulling myself up using the railings. Then I saw Predator's comparatively small form lifted up the gigantic creature, who then flung him across the area and at us. I ducked just in time to not have my head broken, and Predator smashed against the walls once again. It was just then that the creature I fought earlier emerged from the darkness and lunged at Skyfire, whose plasma bolts seemed to be doing actual, non-regenerating damage to it. She ducked, and the creature instead landed on the still recovering Predator.

Despite obviously having been on the losing end between his fight with the monstrosity, he was far more capable of combatting something more his size. Even as the creature backed away, seemingly scared of my mysterious guide, Predator tackled it and with two powerful punches to it's head, caved it's skull in. He then ripped it in half and threw the creature's corpse away with a growl of disgust.

The monstrosity on the first floor was coming up the stairs, seemingly intent on finishing us off. "Arsonist, show me your true form! Your true GLORY!" It yelled in an earthshaking voice as it cleared the stairs.

Predator roared and threw himself at it again, smacking into it's head and sending it tripping backwards and falling to the ground just as it reached our floor. Leaving him to that, I called for the others to join me in defending the doorway. My E.F.S showed one solid wall of red, as all the entities comprising that wall were all coming from that direction.

It was not the first time we were in an impossibly hopeless situation. After I had finished reloading my shotgun, I joined them in pouring down as much fire as possible down the hall as more of the creatures sprang towards us, some of them even crawling on the walls and ceiling like the monsters they were. For a moment after our enemy's numbers were revealed to them, the other two momentarily paused their shooting and balked at the hopelessness of our situation. I'll admit, I was so sure of death at that point I thought of running for it and leaving them behind. Even they seemed to be contemplating it, looking behind them and to each other and to me with a look of terror in their eyes.

But retreat was out of the question. My stubbornness towards the act of retreating and getting cut down like animals would later on save our lives, yet hurt the people I cared for.

I stomped hard. "Hold your ground!" I bellowed, getting such a startled look from both of them that I thought I had to smack them up their heads. I did, and despite looking even more startled they got back to shooting, occasionally casting me a glance that suggested they hoped I knew what I was doing.

And if 'knew what I was doing' meant charging forward into the horde of monstrosities in a fit of suicidal courage was what my plan was, then for the sake of all things stupid, that's what I'd do.

I galloped forward, gladius in one forehoof and Tankbuster in the other, and unleashed all of my fury upon them. The first I crashed into was no different than the first one of the things I saw; the same appearance, almost an exact clone, save for different battle marks on it's carapace and scales. The force of my impact sent us rolling, toppling several others in our wake. Unfortunately, it seemed to have anticipated my ludicrously stupid move, as it absorbed my impact better than I would have expected and recovered quickly, in the process throwing me away and sending me against another of it's kin.

It and several of it's many comrades (some of which looked different from one another in one minor detail. For example, one of them had a strangely small left wing, while another's scales were for some reason peeling off) were about to come down on me and stomp me to paste, or worse, when one of the creature's eye sockets exploded in a shower of gooey emerald blood. The bullet pierced through it's other eye and ripped away a portion of the creature's snout, and it's dead body then slumped against the creature next to it.

"Goldwreath!" Myst called, "Aim for the eyes!"

Yeah, I had already gotten that. Nevertheless, her reminder got me off the ground and filled me with enough bravery to start killing these SoB's. Skyfire poured on the fire as I jumped on one of them and stuck my blade into it's eye, and it let out a reptilian hiss before it died. Her plasma bolts kept them from simply tearing me to shreds, as they seemed to know that energy-based wounds wouldn't heal.

Of course, these creatures weren't just going to let us pick them off now that we knew their weaknesses. Even as Myst and Skyfire did all they could to help me out, their eyes were still damned small targets. I slashed and stabbed and swirled and kicked, but they seemed to be letting me strike only their less vulnerable extremities. Hell, even one of the wings of the creatures that I had cut off were already regrowing.

One of them reared and kicked me into a wall, and one of the jagged shards from a ruined pipe pierced me through my side. I screamed as I struggled for breath and to keep my eyes from wincing, feeling my blood pour out of me in great volumes. Good thing I didn't close my eyes, lest I wouldn't have seen the rear legs that were about to smash me into the wall. I dodged to the side just in time to not become part of the explosion of concrete and steel, tearing the piece of metal away in the process. Of course, now it was stuck inside me, too. That really didn't feel good, let me tell you.

And the worst part was the Black Cloud. Not only were these creatures not affected, but if so much as a small crack appeared on my helmet, then I was done for. Even worse than that was the fact that, according to one of Predator's earlier remarks about one of the dead bodies we came across, the cloud could get into one's lungs through the bloodstream. I may not have felt them, but I had the nagging worry that every second I breathed may have been the last I lived before I exploded.

And even as I rolled, another of them sank it's jagged fangs into my armor, piercing through the metal easily as it's teeth plunged further and further into my back. I couldn't get at it, no matter how I struggled to get free. It lifted me up with it's mouth, and more of the creatures then reared up and lifted their paw-hoof hybrid legs up. Then long claws erupted from each of them, and they then began tearing away at me.

It hurt a damned fucking lot, to say the least. I'm not even going to describe the pain that comes with having your body horribly mutilated. They tore at me like a cat with it's play toy, rending my flesh and armor alike. I saw my muscle fly off in all directions as they sadistically ripped me apart. And I say sadistic because these creatures seemed to be sentient enough to laugh, and I took that as a sign that they very much enjoyed my pain. I yelled and kicked with whatever strength I had left, which wasn't much. Already I could feel my insides growing cold from blood loss, my eyes heavy and tired, my heart weak and frail. Tod's energy all around me seemed to be laughing along with them, and with all my mental consciousness I cursed him. I cursed them all, every last one of them. Myst and Skyfire cried out for me, both of them audibly LITERALLY crying, despite everything. They poured on the fire and advanced forward, gaining the attention of those of the creatures less focused on me.

The creature let me fall out of it's mouth and I fell to the ground. I saw the bloody shreds of my organs slosh onto the floor and onto my shredded armor, bile erupting from my stomach and strange, pea-sized black spores pouring out with the blood coming from my lungs. Then they turned all their attention to my friends, who were already being attacked and hopelessly surrounded by them. I was sorry for that; leading them down here, I mean. For allowing us to take this dangerous path. For not preparing for the attack when I had already detected them beforehoof. For being so stupid as to attack instead of retreating, and for making them do the same.

I felt numb now. No more pain, in fact I didn't feel anything. It was a strange sensation, being able to watch all of my irreversibly torn and maimed body, yet not feeling a single thing. It made me feel like a spectator to my own body, just watching and not feeling; just like in Veltrio's memory. The only thing I could feel was everything inside me shutting down, like the switches of the things keeping me alive were being flicked one by one. First my lungs; I wasn't breathing anymore, actually. Then my limbs; those were all horribly disfigured. Then my lungs; good thing too, as in my last moments of feeling I felt things growing in them. Then my heart.

I lay there for a few moments, looking up at the ceiling. I glanced back down for a moment, at my horribly pulverized internal organs. The sight of them would have made me void my stomach of all it's contents, if that weren't torn open and already emptied. In all honesty I don't even know how I survived all that.

The coldness of doom wrapped itself around me like a blanket of snow. I saw the Reaper's scythe being held by his bony, tall, hooded form. About him was a fiery inferno, and through the haze I saw the vague form of a throne, a dark figure sitting upon it. The Reaper raised his tool in preparation to strike me. I could feel his malice, growing with his skeletal smile as he anticipated my soul in his prison.

I didn't want to see the blade cut through me. Slowly, I closed my eyes. I heard the blade slash through the air, milliseconds away from taking my soul. I wondered if Veltrio saw the same thing I did.

And then, just like in Veltrio's memory, my mind shut down. I was done for.

I was dead.

And yet... and yet right at the point when everything was supposed to end, when all sight and hearing and taste and feeling and smell was supposed to be no more, when the blade was supposed to strike me and send me to oblivion, I heard it.

Tod's signal was ringing through the tunnels like a thousand dog whistles, gripping my attention immediately, despite everything else I should have noticed with my quickly reawakening senses, like the burning of my muscles touching the floor and the sickening cracks my bones gave off as they reshaped, and the general pain of feeling every single organ in my body being forcibly regenerated in a matter of seconds.

The noise felt and sounded like Tod's energy... but it also felt different. I don't know how to describe it; it was him, yet... yet the signal felt manipulated. Controlled, monopolized, whatever you want to call it. Really, as the creatures backed away from me in almost drone-like unison, and as my bleeding stopped, I could almost feel Tod screaming in my head, yelling out of shock and demanding to be 'let go'.

With my surprisingly quickly recovering strength, and with a whole slew of questions in mind, I turned around. I didn't bother to watch my regenerating organs, lest I get images of myself that would never go away. I already had enough nightmare fuel, thank you very much.

Any remaining creatures were backing away slowly, even abandoning their assault on my friends. Skyfire got up and screamed, then opened fire without restraint. Myst was still trying to get up, and I saw Doodle poking her head in to look at us from where she stood at the hall's entrance.

When they had all stepped behind me, I saw him. Predator stood at the hall's entrance, his vest battered and helmet crushed and scratched; he'd probably need a whole new suit. Doodle was looking up at him curiously. Skyfire and Myst did the same, except they were looking at him with fright and horror instead of curiosity. His eyes shone with a sickly greenish light, like floodlights were within his helmet. Even the rest of his body glowed a faint green. He blankly gave both Skyfire and Myst a syringe, and despite looking horrified and worried, with Myst cringing at his approach, the two promptly injected themselves. I didn't know what it was for, though.

He stepped closer, and I saw the very air around him ripple with energy as he manipulated Tod's energy. In a sense, he was an avatar of the energy, just like Veltrio and his compatriots were. It was at that point that I came to realize one thing (although I suspect you already picked up on it. You weren't in my place after all, and if you were I doubt you could have spared the brainpower to realize it sooner) : whoever Predator was, he was from back then. Maybe he was a ghoul? Predator himself had told me that there were such things as sentient ghouls; ponies and zebras who were exposed to enough radiation to mutate, yet maintain their sanity. Or maybe he was something different? His eyes' resemblance to the creatures gave me a few stomach-churning thoughts about what he might have looked like beneath his armor. As for his true appearance, I would find out only later on.

He approached me and kneeled, the energy around him forming little wisps of green and encircling me. At once my already quickly regenerating body went into overdrive; healing at about thrice the speed it was before. I couldn't hear anything through the extremely loud signal, though. Still, if it were any other circumstance I suppose in addition to having it in my ears I would have been getting a nasty headache to boot. As it was, there was nothing in my head except for Tod screaming and yelling like he was experiencing as much pain as I was.

He pulled out a syringe from one of his pockets, similar to the ones he had given my friends. Before I could ask him what was in it, or really before I could do anything else, he plunged it onto my still healing ripped-open chest. At once I felt the spores in my lungs grow smaller, some of them even disappearing altogether. It eased my pain a bit, and just a bit. My body still stung like I was bathing in a tub filled with live jellyfish, and my bones snapped and cracked disgustingly as they reshaped, but at least I was going to live, even if it felt like I wasn't.

After a few moments of watching me he got back up and trotted towards the creatures. In my head I could feel them; they were... obeying, yet begrudgingly. As if Predator's control of the signal was also controlling them. And yet I also felt blind respect and adoration festering in their heads; clearly, whatever Predator was, he was some kind of objective being for them.

"Leave and be yourselves once more. Do not get yourselves involved in this any further than you have. This is no gift, it is a curse, and do not ever think otherwise," Predator said, his voice similar to the time three days ago when he was struggling to keep himself from turning into... whatever he was scared of turning into.

There was a great disturbance in the field of energy I had come to know as Tod's. I could sense the creature's hesitation and anger, and several of them in fact snarled and snapped their maws at my guide. Predator didn't move, in fact he stepped forward even more. That increased whatever emotion was in each individual creature's mind, ranging from anger and betrayal to eagerness.

Then Predator raised his forehooves and drew them back with a jerk. At once, hundreds of wisps of green light emerged from their minds and began flowing around Predator. The creatures yipped and barked and roared as they tried backing away disapprovingly. I was especially surprised and quite unsettled when I saw a wisp emerge from my head and the heads of my friends, an especially large one coming from Myst's.

They swirled around him like a tornado, until all the wisps slowly made their way to Predator's head. They disappeared into his helmet, and with each one he absorbed he shook and flinched. Obviously, whatever he was doing he was doing out of necessity rather than desire.

When at least they were all absorbed, I felt much more... whole. More myself, less awkward. Like I had felt before leaving the stable, minus all the horror I had witnessed. I just felt more... me. The energy was completely gone, in the air and in my mind.

And even more strange was how each creature now felt in my mind. They were no longer angry, or at least the great majority of them weren't. Now they were all for the most part confused. They didn't feel like blights on my mental radar anymore, despite their appearance. Now they felt like... regular ponies and zebras.

"Go," Predator said with a small wave of his hoof. "Be free. Don't get caught up in all this again. Leave Roam, this place is just a damned deathtrap... and worse."

Like a crowd of confused rioters, they left. Some of them, those who still felt angry and furious, stayed behind and stomped hard and roared aggressively at the Specter. He didn't budge in the slightest, but looked on them with pitiful eyes.

Eventually they too left. One by one, their presences in my mind winked out. We stared at him in disbelief and shock (except for Doodle, who was hopping around happily) as he turned and began trotting back to us. Then he collapsed on the ground, weakly supporting himself with his forehooves as he panted heavily, the green glow fading slightly.

I got up and limped towards the others, whimpering from the soreness of my body. Every muscle felt odd and awkward, like I was learning how to use them all over again. My heart was fine, thankfully, as were my lungs. Without the presence of either Tod or Tom in my head, I felt much more at home in my mind. A little... sluggish, for some reason, but more at home.

In addition to the physical hell I was in, I also felt a pang of loss as I glanced back at my absolutely destroyed armor and vest. My Praetorian helmet was still fine, thankfully, as was my current helmet (luckily none of them had thought of just tearing out my brains through my Specter helmet, and the helmet for that reason was unscathed and not punctured). It was a strange and impractical thing to feel at the loss of some garments, but I felt much less confident without it on. So, now I had to look for something new to wear.

Skyfire and Myst galloped up to me, Doodle skipping after them. Skyfire reached me first and flung herself at me, wrapping her forehooves around my neck as she struggled to get her breathing under control. A moment later Myst reached me, looking on with an expression both concerned and... wistful.

"A-are you okay?" Skyfire stammered, drawing me in close and nearly suffocating me from the strength of her grip. I heard her sniff and choke on her half-formed sobs.

Was I? Yes... that was certainly up to debate. On the one hoof, I was alive and myself, and in fact my mind felt much more my own now. All that mattered on a practical realm of thought was that I wasn't dead, and for that I was grateful. On the other hoof, I felt unnatural. What kind of phenomenon could be so malevolent as to tear one away from death, and to wrap itself around the minds of people? Worse still, that phenomenon had been utilized to bring me from the brink of death by forcing my body to do... something. It wasn't logical or practical, but I just really felt so filthy at that moment.

Of course, she didn't need to know that. Nor Myst or Doodle. I could handle it, they didn't need to be bothered.

"Yeah," I breathed. "Just... startled. That was some weird shit that just happened back there."

"You're sure?" Myst asked softly as Skyfire hugged me tighter. Obviously, while both of them were scared to lose me, Skyfire feared losing me more. I had the vaguest suspicion it was because of my highly uncalled-for connection to her former love life.

I suddenly felt the urge to retort at her with some snide remark. Of course I wasn't okay! What kind of fucking question was that? In the past three weeks I'd been shot, stabbed, pummeled, tortured, skinned, burned, mutilated horribly, had my wings and bones broken more than once, fallen hundreds of feet, knocked out many times, drugged, harassed by some kind of sadistic piece if shit energy slash entity, been exposed to some of the terrors of the wasteland, nearly had my lungs blown up by spores, crashed out of the sky, nearly died THRICE, and she asked THAT of all questions? Was she seriously that stupid?

"Maybe... maybe when we're done with this dam business we can look for a doctor or something... to check up on you, I don't know..." Skyfire said softly, burying her head in my shoulder. It was good she said that when she did, as it immediately wrested my attention away from snapping some sarcastic remark at Myst.

She pulled away a little and looked at me through her visor. "You nearly died. And I... all I could do was watch. I couldn't do anything, I hate not being able to do anything! I hate not being able to protect you like you do us!" She began shaking.

"It's okay, Skyfire," I said soothingly, though in reality I was fighting just to breathe. My 'new lungs', like the rest of my regenerated organs, felt really awkward and foreign, like they still had to be integrated into my body. "It's my job. I wouldn't be the Praetorian if I didn't do shit like this everyday. I go through this sort of thing so people like you don't have to, understand?"

She must have smiled, as I saw her eyes perk up. "Heh, yeah, I guess. But that doesn't mean you have to suffer all of it alone." She stepped forward a little, puffing her chest out. "We're here for you, you know. And as your friends, then we personally tie you down until you agree to let us do things with you."

"Yeah," Myst chimed in softly. I stopped myself before I lost control of my words and snarled at her. "I promised to go with you no matter what, and that's what I intend to do." Skyfire and I both gave her a look, and she glanced away and scratched at the back of her neck. "Well, I did, didn't I?" She tried to sound fierce, though she actually sounded even more nervous. Ah well, at least my anger at her stupidity was fading.

I smiled. "Thanks. But really, relax, you two. I'm fine. Really." That was what I said. That was how my mind felt, too. But it wasn't how my body felt, not by a long shot. It almost felt as though something in me was changing, slowly and surely. It made me want to bathe in acid just for the small chance that whatever was happening to me would stop.

Skyfire smirked and shook her head, then turned away. Right before I lost sight of them, I saw her eyes turn from uneasy confidence to terrified and hurt. Clearly, she didn't like me keeping it all to myself, but wasn't going to say anything about it. At least for the moment. Myst looked between her and me, took a few tentative steps to me, choked on whatever words she was trying to say, then awkwardly turned around and went after Skyfire. Doodle skipped after her, absolutely unfazed by what had happened.

"Let's... let's go," Predator stammered weakly as he finally reached us, the green glow of his body gone. He picked up his backpack and weapon off of the floor where he dropped it, then leaned forward against the railings.

"What was all that?" Myst asked in a soft, unsettled, yet slightly demanding tone as she cradled her head. Skyfire was shaking hers hard as she sniffed, obviously trying to wrap her mind around what had happened, in addition to trying to get her emotions under control.

Predator didn't answer, instead standing where he was, still as stone. He seemed to be staring at something down on the first floor. I got up next to him and saw the dark form of the creature, it's head crushed underneath a train cart, it's wings torn off and industrial steel bars stabbed into it's chest. Clearly these things could only regenerate from damage that didn't outright kill them. All about it was the ruined mess of what had been a simple metro track; impact craters several feet deep in the concrete, holes in the wall where metal pipes had been ripped, and various train parts scattered about the floor.

"Predator?" I asked as I nudged him softly.

He still stared at the creature, not paying us any attention. "The 'Father'..." He murmured. "No, it can't be him. He's dead, remember that," He muttered to himself, then shook his head. "But how else could they have reopened it? Who else could have strengthened this plague and spread it over the minds of the populace? Who else could have done all this..."

"Predator?" I asked again, giving him a light shove.

Again, he didn't seem to notice. "How far has the curse spread? How many people have been brought to it? Could it... no, it couldn't..." He continued murmuring.

Then Doodle approached him. "Mister Predator, what's wrong?" She asked, scratching his foreleg softly with her own.

He stirred, looking down at her with a surprised gasp. Despite initially having a murderous look in his eyes, a look which nearly made me shoot him, but did absolutely nothing to Doodle, he relaxed. He sighed, "Everything."

He ignored our further inquiries as he trotted down the stairs. We followed after him, still too puzzled and too shocked at what had happened just a while ago to gather up enough sense to know that he wasn't going to answer. That was either because he simply didn't want to or because he didn't hear us, which was unlikely, considering how many times we asked.

He trotted over to the creature's bleeding corpse and kneeled, seeming to inspect it. "Hmm... stage four already? That can't be. I destroyed those facilities years ago," He murmured, shaking his head.

"Alright, that's it," I said, feeling both incredibly curious about Predator's connection to these creatures and incredibly annoyed that he had not shared this... whatever all this was... with me before. "What the fuck's going on? What happened back there? What did you do to me? I demand answers!"

He only turned his head around to look at me. "And you will get your answers. But not now. I must divert all of my mental capacity to... contemplating about what has just happened." He inspected it a little more, then got up and lifted the creature's still unlit corpse. He looked at where he had ripped it's wings away, scratching at the flesh beneath it's skin. He seemed to take great interest in that one area of it's back.

He turned to me, still lifting the corpse. "Tell me, when you severed their limbs, did they regenerate?" He asked curiously.

"Well... yeah," I responded, shaking as the thought of regenerating body parts made me think of what had happened to me just now. "That was some freaky shit. I hope I don't have to fight those things again."

He looked at me for a long moment, then slowly turned to look at where the severed appendages were supposed to be. "Hmm... interesting," He murmured. "That means their biological process is flawed, imperfect. Perhaps they had to make another out of scrap..."

What the hell did he mean? What, were they... were those creatures, or whatever they were before that, voluntarily turning themselves into those things? Did they even have a special process for it? Oh, what the fuck! Just when my life couldn't get more messed up.

"I really want to know just what the hell happened just now," Skyfire said. "In fact, I want to know as much as possible. What were those things? What was with that faint ringing I heard, the one that made us collapse? That light around you? I need to know." Beside her, Myst nodded once in agreement. Doodle was trotting around idly, seeming to not have a care in the world.

I looked at my fellow pegasus and raised an eyebrow skeptically. Not that her asking wasn't good, on the contrary it was VERY good, but since when did Skyfire ever try to think and plan and gather information before doing things? Definitely not when Thanus went to Verge, and definitely not back at Home Base, that was for sure. She caught me looking at her and flushed, looking away awkwardly.

"And to that I say to you the exact same thing I told the Praetorian just now," Predator replied, gaining an annoyed groan from Skyfire and an exasperated huff from Myst. Doodle just 'aww'd in disappointment.

A minute later he finished inspecting the corpse and gathered the bodies of all the creatures we had killed; around five of them, minus the especially big one Predator eliminated. He set them on fire on the tracks, the burning corpses of the smaller creatures obscuring view of the bigger one. I wondered where he had gotten the source of the flame. Of course, he was nicknamed the 'Arsonist', so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that he was able to light them up. He didn't wait to see them turn to ash, and soon we were finally moving again. Before we began our journey again, Predator called me and quietly told me to keep my mind up in search of any of those creatures, lest we be attacked again. When I asked why, he told me some cryptic message about needing to think, and to not concern myself or my friends with the occurrence.

Then I put a thought that had been bothering me into words. "And what happened to me just now? I... regenerated? How is that... I mean, you know..." I stammered.

"I told you not to concern yourself," He snapped back at me, sounding annoyed. "I will tell you in due time. Not now. Just leave me to it, alright? Don't worry about it, this is my problem."

'Yeah,' I thought, 'Because getting attacked by chimera monsters is obviously something I shouldn't be worried about.'

*** Magnus et Potens Roamanus ***

Another hour of tense, awkward, unbearably silent, thought-filled trotting later and we emerged into a vast, spherical chamber that opened up before us without any warning, and I nearly fell in due to the cloud's obscuring of it. The chamber was an almost perfect in shape, with the ground depressing as much as the roof rose, and the sides pressing into the thick concrete in equal measure. The walls and floor of the place looked as though they had been made of polished black stone, or maybe they had been singed black, I can't say. The ground depressed into the ground maybe fifty feet, at the center. I wouldn't be able to climb up the slope to get to the tunnel on the other side, but perhaps Predator could toss me up. By then I had used my organs enough that they no longer felt foreign, and my muscles no longer felt sore and underused.

"What is this place?" I asked, looking over the entire area. I understood that zebra architects LOVED building large and grand things, but what the hell would something like this be doing right in the middle of a metro tunnel?

"A little place I like to call 'Blast Zone 236'," He replied distantly, as if in thought. He then got over to the edge of the spherical chamber and jumped down into the depression.

"The zebra government made hundreds of places like these?" Skyfire asked, sounding baffled. I jumped into the depression, sliding downwards slowly towards the center after Predator.

"No," Predator replied. "I said I call this place that. After all, this was the 236th area I exploded in. That's why this chamber exists in the first place."

"Wow!" Doodle gasped, looking over the area as Myst helped her into the depression while Skyfire slid down after me. She began pumping out questions, "So you exploded? And your explosion made this place? How many other places like this exist? Can you explode more than once? Does anypony else know about these places? Why'd you explode?"

"Yes, yes, there are 354 places like this, yes, no one else knows, and for your last question, I don't want to tell you," Predator replied evenly, getting a disappointed 'awww' from Doodle. Predator seemed to panic a little, turning around to try and say something to, I presumed, assuage her disappointment. However, he stopped himself at the last moment, shaking his head and muttering something underneath his breath as he turned away.

Skyfire and Myst gave him a long stare, then, "You WHAT?!" Skyfire yelled aloud; loud enough that her question echoed for a few seconds off the walls of the chamber. I was about to ask the exact same thing, but she beat me to it. Seriously, he exploded? Yeah, right. He had probably just gotten some explosive and set it off here or something; much more palpable and less insane.

"I exploded," He replied blankly. "If you weren't able to discern that from my original statement, then you have a mental problem. Or curiosity which, you think, should be projected very loudly through shouting. Probably both, considering what I know you've done and been through."

"How the hell did THAT happen?" I asked. "What, did someone strap explosives to you and tie you down in more than two-hundred different sections of the metro track?" Whoever did that must have really wanted this guy dead.

"Energy release. Remember what happened back there? All that energy I absorbed? Yeah, I explode to release it all," Was his simple response. Predator and I finally reached the center of the depression, the others just a little bit behind.

"You still haven't explained what happened back there," Skyfire muttered. "All this talk of energy and weird chimeras, and all that faint ringing I heard... I just want to know about it all."

Predator sighed. "Like I said, you will get your answers. Not now, maybe not even soon, but you will get them eventually." He thought for a moment, then said, "That is if I am still around, which is not likely, considering that your 'quest' will take you down a different path than I will take. Besides, Myst really wants me to leave because she believes I am going to endanger all of you, right Myst?" He asked, turning around to see Myst just reach the bottom of the spherical chamber. Doodle and Skyfire were already down here with us, with Doodle ruffling Skyfire's feathers playfully, getting a blank stare from my friend.

"You have no idea," Myst replied in a soft yet startlingly threatening tone. I turned to see the dark, hateful look in her eyes. "I don't care for your problems, or you exploding or anything about you. You being near us nearly killed me and my friends. The sooner we leave you behind, the better."

'Wow,' I thought, 'When did she become so critical?' Skyfire gave her a look both surprised and concerned, then glanced over at Predator with a slightly suspicious glare.

Predator, as usual, didn't have any emotion in his voice as he responded, "I know."

After that there was the predicament of getting up the slope to the other side. Predator had some rope that he gave to Skyfire, who then flew up to the tunnel entrance. He then pulled out a nail from his pockets and punched the other end of the rope down into the blackened concrete. He tugged at it a little, testing Skyfire's wing strength and at the same time whether or not the rope would stay put on our end. Both ended up having the necessary strength, and so Doodle started climbing up the fairly steep slope.

I glanced behind me, at Predator watching Doodle ascend, and then at Myst glaring at him hard. I approached him. "You really should tell them," I said softly. "I hated you, I'll admit, but things have changed. You can't blame yourself for what Tod makes you do."

He didn't respond as he watched Doodle reach the top. After that, Myst got over to the rope, pointing her snout in the air as she huffed and swished her tail insultingly at our guide. He didn't seem to care. When she was a little less than half way up, he responded quietly, "Like I said, if I succumb to his influence then it is because of my own weakness. Besides, it won't mater to them. They won't care."

At that I once again found myself saying, "I could make them care." He glanced over at me, growling softly in a contemplative manner. Then he turned his head away without a word.

I saw Myst's obscured form finally clear the edge. Now it was my turn. I got up on my hindlegs like a zebra and used my forehooves to pull myself up. It wasn't easy, but then neither was biting down on the rope. That would have just hurt my jaw in addition to being hard.

I had made it maybe halfway, when suddenly a green light lit up from behind me, illuminating my friends through the cloud. The ringing came along with it, loud and clear (at least for me. From what I heard from them, the other three seemed to hear the intense sound as a faint ring). I heard all three of them gasp, and at once Skyfire powered up her rifles and Myst cleared her gun's chamber.

I glanced behind me just in time to see Predator's brightly glowing green eyes less than a foot from me. Out of the cloud came one of his hooves, which grabbed me and flung me back down to the bottom. The two of them opened fire as I fell through the cloud, the plasma bolts and rifle rounds flashing through the darkness and hitting Predator to no effect.

I landed with a thud, groaning as my spine sent shocks through my body at the impact. For a moment my breathing became harder after my lungs blasted out the air in them. Predator let go of the rope and fell down after me, and I barely scrambled away just in time to not have his forehooves stomp my head in. I wouldn't have believed his impact would have killed me, though, if his landing hadn't shattered the blackened concrete in a ring around him.

I stammered as I staggered away, "P-predator? What the hell are you doing? Why are you-..." He didn't let me finish. With his speed he lunged forward, landing a hoof against the front of my helmet. There was a hiss of pressurized air and the crack of metal, and at once I smelled smoke. I flew backwards from the strike, my muzzle bleeding as I involuntarily took in breaths of air contaminated with Black Cloud. I could already feel the spores getting larger in my lungs.

Myst and Skyfire landed as Predator approached me, murderous green eyes shining like emergency lights. He didn't pay any attention to the rifle rounds that struck the back of his helmet, or the plasma bolts that turned small portions of his vest to goo. I could hear Doodle screaming in panic; she was probably running around in circles again.

He picked me up and was about to smash my face in, when Skyfire flung herself at him and threw him to the ground. He recovered far too quickly, and despite the fight she put up he managed to get on top of her easily. He raised a shadowed hoof up to turn her head to bloody pulp.

Not on my watch. Screw the fucking Black Cloud. I got up as fast as I could and apple-bucked his helmet. The action sent me tripping forward, but it did at least knock him off of her. The three of us recovered and formed a line opposite of him.

"What the hell's gotten into you?!" Skyfire yelled as Predator growled and got up, then turned his murderous gaze on us; me specifically.

"I knew we couldn't trust you, bastard!" Myst yelled.

Predator didn't respond to either of their statements. He just jumped up into the air and disappeared after perhaps a dozen feet up. While the other two kept their eyes on the ceiling, I had the great misfortune of feeling my lungs swell up from the amount of spores growing in them. I began to panic; the sensation of my breathing getting more difficult each second was quite frightening. I may have nearly died before, but I would really die now unless... was there even a permanent cure to Black Cloud? Predator had informed me that the injection he gave us earlier only temporarily stopped the spores.

Instead of just standing there, panicking, I should have told them to move. I knew what was about to happen, I knew damned well. Maybe the other two were too caught up in their own personal feelings to think straight, and honestly so was I, but at least I knew what was about to happen. "Move, move!" I shouted, but it was much too late.

Predator slammed into the ground in front of Skyfire, shattering the concrete all around us and sending us flying in all directions. Myst landed somewhere a little further from the two of us, as we landed in the same section of the slope. We had only just recovered when Predator approached us quickly and was now just a foot away.

Myst tackled him from behind, but he didn't budge. At most, she was just annoying him as she clung to his back. Skyfire's additional weight knocked him down, though. They scuffled on the ground as I tried to get into the fray, but couldn't do to their flailing limbs. I was not stupid; one hit from any of those very quickly flopping limbs, and I could have had one of my own broken. Then I wouldn't be able to do anything at all, and that was worse.

When Myst was tossed away, she managed to bring his backpack along with her. The contents of it spilled out all over the ground, dozens of items ranging from secondary firearms to medical supplies, to ammo to miscellaneous items, and even to his large supply of syringes scattering all over.

My attention was wrested immediately by the syringes. I scrambled to search for the one he had used on me earlier; no way I was going to die due to internal explosion! The other two kept him busy as I searched, and eventually I came upon the right ones.

Skyfire landed hard next to me, unconscious, helmet shattered and left foreleg seemingly broken. At least, I knew the forelegs couldn't bend that angle. A moment later I saw Myst smack into the slope on the opposite end, and she began rolling limply down towards the center again.

I grabbed another syringe and injected Skyfire immediately. Predator was still focused on Myst, much to my chagrin and relief. I didn't want her to get hurt, but she was at least buying us time. I plunged two more needles into her chest, just to be sure. Then I finally paid attention to myself and injected two needles fast as I could into my chest. At once, the swelling in my lungs reduced, and I could breath easily again.

I was about to inject a third time, when Myst's limp body crashed into me. Her helmet wasn't broken, thankfully. Still, she wasn't moving, and she had a bleeding bruise on her hindleg. I reached to pickup another syringe, when I was kicked away savagely and landed hard on my side. A sickening set of cracks accompanied an explosion of excruciating pain, and I looked to my side to see one of my ribs had punctured through my skin.

I barely got to take that sight in for three seconds before Predator turned me onto my back and pressed his hindleg down on my throat. I struggled to breathe, even though I knew that was what I shouldn't have been doing. I felt the cartilage in my neck begin to snap, and any attempts to gasp for air later on would bring only pain, no relief.

He wasn't pressing down hard enough to kill me, though. Just enough to knock me out, if he kept it up long enough. Normally, I would have fought, struggled. I actually was, but... I was too weak. I was still sore from earlier, and my many broken bones and swollen lungs now definitely weren't helping me. I couldn't do anything. And this time I didn't have Tom to help us out.

Just before I did, I managed to choke out, "Don't... let him... control you..."

"You think you are speaking to Predator?" He asked, his voice not his own. In fact, it sounded disturbingly like Tod's voice in my dreams... "Well you're not. 'Predator', as you know him, is much too boring to be me. You are speaking to the bringer of your salvation, 'Praetorian'." Then he twisted his hindleg into my throat, and I passed out to the snapping of a bone in my neck.





Footnote: Level Up

New perk gained: Altered -- You don't know it, but something is happening within you. Something that you cannot stop. Nevertheless, when your hit points drop below 20%, you regenerate health at a rate of 3hp per second. This lasts until you are at half health. This effect is improved to 5hp per second when certain individuals are nearby.