My Little Metro

by redsquirrel456

Chapter 15

My Little Metro: Chapter 15

“He put the red dot on the head of the largest of the beasts, and pulled the trigger.”

We ran. We ran until our hearts cracked and our lungs burst, until our chests were heaving bellows, and even then we didn’t stop. We’d crossed several intersections, but we didn’t dare try to make any turns. The pipeline seemed to continue onward, ever in a straight direction, but how far exactly nopony could say. Still we ran, driven by that wild, primal fear of being hunted, except it was even worse given that nopony had their guns or armor. All I had was my saddlebag full of trinkets and Hunter’s talisman, which gave off a continuous high-pitched hum. I took that as a good sign, and grasped that single thread of hope with all my strength and prayed it didn’t fray.

We didn’t stop until a large grate barred our way, where we found a ladder led up to another section of the waterworks. Scrambling up that found ourselves in yet another confusing section of the massive building. Yawning tunnels led left and right who knew where else. Everything from the pipes to the floor was constructed from an oppressive, rusting metal or blank concrete. Stuck for another way to go we were forced to a halt.

“What the hell!” exclaimed one of the bandits, a heavy-set earth pony who panted heavily from the long run. “How big is this place?! I’ve never seen this before!”

“Neither have I,” Ruby Red answered. “But this building served the entire city of Stalliongrad. It’s bound to be huge, and without our weapons we’re fucked if we go back into the Metro.”

“But we can’t stay here either,” another bandit said. “If we do that thing the cultists called out will eat us.”

“Fuck that! I’m not going to die here!” another snapped, a panicky-eyed unicorn mare. “I’m not! It’s not getting me! I’m not gonna get fucking eaten and become something’s fucking dinner! I’m better than that!”

“All of you shut up!” Ruby barked, her horn flaring brightly. “We need a plan! You!”

She pointed at me.

“Do you actually know where to go?”

I hesitated a moment, sucking air into burning lungs; instead of relief it seemed to only fan the flames.

Ruby frowned. “I’m talking to you!”

“Y-yes!” I blurted out. “Yes, I... I do. I know how to get out of here. But with that thing chasing us-”

“It’s close,” Sidewinder added, tapping the floor with his hooves. “Can’t you feel it? Reach out, Lockbox.”

“We can all feel it!” Ruby raged. “We need to figure out how to avoid it!”

“We can’t,” Sidewinder replied. “You think they’d sic that thing on us without blocking the exits? And that monster probably has them covered anyway.”

“This way,” I said, ending the discussion. I started down another corridor, following my instincts and the ever present hum of the talisman. I didn’t question its fortuitous guidance. I didn’t have time to think about why it was working as a pathfinder instead of a radar like it had on the surface. I just ran with it on faith and a little bit of blind panic, clinging to whatever hope I could get. I did my best to ignore Ruby Red’s grumbling behind me.

The pathway I thought led to freedom came to an end at another intersection with three other tunnels leading left, right, and forward. Hunter’s talisman didn’t seem to favor any route over another, it simply hummed in my saddlebag.

In fact, if I concentrated hard enough, I almost felt some kind of tug backwards. On the edge of my hearing there was a strange rushing sound, as if a great amount of air were being forced through a narrow space, laid over the queerest rustling of something brushing over the concrete...

“Back! Get BACK!”

My shout came almost too late. Acting on instinct I leapt back the way I’d come. I saw a blur of mottled greyish-yellow, felt a whoosh of air as something huge lunged at me, heard the unmistakable snap of jaws shutting inches from my snout. I hit the ground rolling and tumbled into the wall with a loud thud, landed upside-down and looked out through spinning, unfocused eyes. A monstrous tentacle thrashed about in the tunnel as ponies panicked and ran all over, tripping over each other in their haste. Their confusion had the massive appendage stumped as well: it swayed back and forth, trying to pick a target. Then I saw the bulbous end split open into a horrid mottled mouth the color of rotting flesh, saw eyelids peel back over cold, reptilian orbs, and realized this was the monster’s head. It had already found us.

If it was a snake, it was the largest I’d ever seen. Its body nearly filled the tunnel and was covered in a smooth sheen of ugly, peeling, dark blue scales. The long body curved gracefully and brought its triangular head up until it brushed the ceiling, looming over the rest of us. Its mouth was deformed with a fearsome underbite, opening to reveal a slavering cave of a maw lined with jagged, craggy growths that I realized were its teeth. Pale green eyes flicked in their sockets between the other ponies, who squealed and screamed and ran in random directions. Those eyes were filled with the directed, focused hunger of a creature that teetered on the edge of madness, consumed by the all-powerful need to sate a primal compulsion.

The need to eat.

I fell onto my side, unable to concentrate and get my legs moving. Panic and fear and even morbid fascination clouded my mind.

Move. Get up! Go!

But my limbs wouldn’t obey. They felt sluggish and weighed down. I was a sitting duck and all I could do was hope it didn’t pick me as its first kill. But my stillness saved me; I watched it pick among the crowd of other ponies instead, saw its eyes narrowing with killer instinct at the sight of so many squirming, warm bodies. The monster’s festering jaws peeled apart and snapped down at one of the bandits, who was saved only by the timely intervention of Ruby Red as she sent a jolt of energy from her horn directly into the monster’s eye. I watched through a haze of dull curiosity as that same eye burst like a balloon, splattering vitreous humor all over its cheek. The monster let loose a debilitating shriek that stabbed my eardrums as it recoiled into the pipeline, leaving cracks in the walls and sizzling venom on the ground in its wake while it thrashed. The bandits aside from Ruby Red and Sidewinder panicked, pressing themselves against the walls and yelling incoherently. Feeling strangely calm I uncurled myself from the wall and rolled back onto my hooves, shaking the dizzy feeling from my head. Something sticky and warm was all over the side of my face, dribbling down.

The creature’s head had already retreated back into the pipeline, but we still heard its angry squealing. Before I could blink I was dragged to my hooves by Sidewinder and we were moving again; I quickly pushed the Stalker away and ran on my own four hooves. I wasn’t about to be weak in front of the others when we had a monster like that to deal with. We didn’t stop moving until we got far enough from that intersection and ended up in some kind of side room full of old pipes and gauges, panting and wheezing and in the case of one terrified pony, vomiting.

“What the fuck! What the fuck was that?!” he shouted after he was done.

“That was the Hydra,” Sidewinder replied, pushing himself into my side. It was only then I realized that I was too dizzy to stand on my own and leaned back into him. “If it wasn’t, I’ll eat my jacket.”

The other ponies were still dealing with their brush with death. I watched them slowly congregate again through the floaty, disconnected feeling that possessed me since I’d struck the wall. My head spun as I tried to deal with everything at once, from the ringing in my ears to burning questions about what Nexus had called me and why Hunter’s talisman seemed to be failing and hadn’t given me an escape route.

“How the hell are we supposed to fight that without guns?!”

“We can’t kill something that big!”

“Isn’t it supposed to have more heads?”

“Did you all see that?! I almost got eaten! Hello? Almost eaten pony here!”

“SHUT UP!” Ruby roared, silencing the panic with a stomp of her hoof. “In case you didn’t notice, that bastard is still alive and we really pissed off! And as far as I’m concerned I’m still in charge here! Brick-a-Brack, Hot Pocket! Are you still two of the toughest motherfuckers in the Metro, or is some big-ass snake gonna make you piss your pants?”

A burly unicorn and earth stallion shuffled uncomfortably under her pointing hoof and looked to each other, clearly hoping to follow the other one’s lead.

“Well,” said the unicorn, “it is pretty fucking huge.”

“With many heads,” Sidewinder pointed out.

“I didn’t ask you,” Ruby snarled, eyeing him with the intent to kill.

“We have to kill it,” I blurted out without really knowing why. I just knew that we needed a plan of action instead of more bickering, and the Hydra was the biggest obstacle out of this place.

Ruby snorted. “Oh,” she sneered, turning back to me, “big pony has a big idea! Tell me, Lockbox, what exactly is your plan for killing this thing?”

“I don’t know,” I muttered, still feeling the buzz of Hunter’s talisman. “But it’s somewhere in this facility. We’d have been led out already if it wasn’t...”

Sidewinder spoke immediately. “I’m sticking with Lockbox. I like the kid’s gumption. By the way, you’re bleeding a lot.”

I finally touched my hoof to the side of my head. It came away sticky and red.

“Huh. So I am.”

Ruby scoffed at both of us.

“That’s just perfect. You’re gonna kill it, but you don’t know how! You just are. Well, you can stay here and die for all I care. I’m going to lead what’s left of my team out of here!”

“You can’t,” I said, shaking my head. “You won’t.”

Ruby menaced me with her horn. “And who’s going to stop me?”

“The Hydra. And you don’t even know the way.”

I still felt dizzy and lackadaisical, perhaps from my head injury. It started throbbing and aching the longer I dwelt on it, instead trying to focus on a plan of action. I closed my eyes and heard Ruby Red stomp up to me, her breath hot on my face.

“And you’re saying you do?”

“Only the next step forward.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?!”

“I don’t know. But somewhere in this facility is the key to killing the Hydra.”

I gently pulled out the Guide. Ruby scoffed.

"What, is that your master plan? You gonna save us with your shitty map?"

"You trusted it before," I muttered sourly.

"That was before you led us into a trap and got my ponies killed!"

“If you have a better idea,” I hissed through gritted teeth, “I am all ears.”

She said nothing, but eyed the Guide greedily. “This is your fault anyway,” she growled, and her horn magic reached out to try and snatch the Guide from my hooves. “Give me that thing!”

The next thing anypony saw was my hoof launch into her face. Ruby Red staggered back, clutching her now bloody nose with her hoof and babbling angrily, spouting curses like a fountain. The other bandits went silent and stared with varying degrees of shock and awe. I unfolded the Guide and looked it over while Ruby regained her composure.

Sidewinder grinned like a fool.

“You... you just hit me!” Ruby wheezed, as if I’d done something unspeakable. I didn’t even look at her; my head injury had put me in a foul mood on top of everything else that was happening, and the one unicorn who was supposed to be in command was trying to goad me into a fight. I wasn’t going to let that happen. Hunter would be better than that. He’d be trying to find a way out of here, like I was. Unfortunately the Guide didn’t have an in-depth map of the building, making it almost useless to find this “Outpost Nine Seven.”

“Hunter,” I muttered to myself, “it’s up to you now. You showed me where your hiding spot was on the surface. Guide me again.”

I reached down deep, and the talisman responded immediately. I felt a jolt of energy and something like a film came over my eyes, bathing the world in a lavender glow. I had a Ranger’s sight again. I stood up and stuffed the Guide back into my saddlebag, casting my gaze about the room and the hall outside. Ruby Red still held her nose and stared at me like I’d grown two heads, while all the other bandits shuffled nervously, wondering who they were supposed to follow now.

The hum of the talisman grew stronger as I left the room, carefully checking for signs of the Hydra. Just down the hall, I spotted it: a small white arrow just above the floor, pointing right down another corridor. I touched it with my hoof, feeling the magic in that little symbol of hope.

“Ruby,” I said, turning to the murderess and staring her down. “These are your ponies. I need you on my side if we’re going to get through this. You said you’d trust me before. Please, trust me now.”

There was a deathly silence.

“At the very least, it’s all you have left.”

More silence. Ruby lowered her hoof from her nose and glared at me. Her expression was searching, calculating. I felt nervous and naked under her stare, but I braved it anyway. Trust and faith was the only real advantage we had, and I had to trust she was smart enough to do the right thing.

She seemed to ponder something very carefully, looking away from me as the gears turned in her head. At first she seemed dazed, even lost, and then she coughed out a wheezing laugh, shaking her head. At last, she turned back to me and nodded.

“Fine,” she said. “We’ll follow you, my little badass. All of us will,” she said with a pointed glance at her fellows.

Sidewinder clapped his hooves. “All right!” he said, tossing his scraggly mane. “Let’s go kill us a Hydra! I get dibs on its teeth. I always wanted a monster tooth necklace.”

I gave him a look, which he returned with a shit eating grin.

“Those are awesome.”

“Let’s go,” I said, and hurried down the closest corridor, ignoring the incredulous looks and muttering behind my back. The other bandits, six in all, would have to put aside their mistrust or suffer at the claws of the hydra. We didn’t have time to stand on ceremony and wonder who was in command. Hunter’s talisman still called to me, its call now faithful and true, leading me down a maze of halls full of decades-old machines I couldn’t even guess the purpose of, through side passages and small maintenance tunnels. Every so often I saw the marks: arrows and esoteric symbols floating in my mind’s eye. No other creatures or ponies accosted us, probably scared or killed off by Nexus’ minions, and the halls we wound through were far too small for the Hydra’s heads to fit inside. We moved quickly and quietly with no talking. Every so often we heard the bellowing of the Hydra, shaking the walls and echoing through the pipes. It knew prey was in its territory, and it was desperate to find us and slake its bloodlust. As long as we kept moving, we were able to ignore it.

I recalled little of Hydras from my books. Apparently, they were an amphibious bunch of pests that lived in and around bogs and swamps and plagued the borders of Equestria. Clearly, more than one had survived the Apocalypse and one of their descendants had creeped into our city. But this Hydra was something worse; how could it be navigating a huge maze of pipes within this facility if it was many heads attached to one body? Eventually we’d run into one of its necks blocking a passage and easily chop it away or injure it. If there was one thing I’d learned so far, it’s that things were rarely that easy.

Then we heard the voice.

“Do you know the ways of the Great Wyrm?” it asked, echoing all around us. Though we heard it clearly, it didn’t seem to have a point of origin. It came out of thin air all around us, neither close nor far. “Do you understand how His mysteries coil in on each other like His endless form? Why do you continue to fight us?”

“Don’t listen to ‘em,” Ruby spat. “Those fuckers aren’t gonna help us now.”

The voice continued unabated. “He is merciful to those who accept His ways. His will is all that is left in the world. Time curls in on itself again. One day Equestria will be reborn. You have but to join us.”

We came to an empty canal, spanned by a short catwalk bridge. Beyond it was another hallway, too small for the Hydra to attack us in, but another Ranger symbol led off the bridge... down into the pipe.

“We have to go this way,” I said, but the moment I hopped into the canal and headed for the pipe’s opening, another voice held me back. It was the earth pony Hot Pocket. He stood at the edge of the canal, shaking his head.

“No, no way! We’re not going back into those pipes, are we? The Hydra can fit in those! We’ll get attacked again!”

Ruby, to my surprise, looked at me. I shrugged.

“It’s the only way.”

Ruby looked back up at Hot Pocket.

“You heard him. We go this way.”

“Yeah, right! Straight back into the Hydra’s mouth! There’s another hall too small for it right there!”

“He’s got a point, boss,” the only other mare in our group agreed. Ruby Red growled at them both.

“Are you idiots deaf? I said we’re following Lockbox, so we’re following Lockbox! If you want to run off on your own, then fine, got it? But we got a Hydra to put in a body bag, and if this kid can lead us to that, then I’m with him.”

She and the others began to follow me into the pipe, leaving the earth stallion behind. Hot Pocket danced on his hooves, looking back and forth as he weighed his options. Behind me, I heard Ruby mutter.

“Five, four, three, two, one...”

“Hey, don’t leave me here, guys! Wait up! Shit... I can’t believe this... don’t leave me back here!” I heard the big stallion jump down into the pipe and clatter after us on his ungainly large hooves.

“Big bastard always was afraid of getting left behind,” Ruby said with a roll of her eyes. I suppressed a smile. At least we were sticking together.

"Quietly now,” said Sidewinder. "She's hungry and we're in the open-"

A loud moan echoed down the pipe behind us.

"Jinx!" Sidewinder shouted merrily, and the chase was on.

Fifty meters down the tunnel I heard the familiar rustle of scales on metal along with the loud roar of an angry serpent. A hundred meters down and still no change in the pipe, I heard the first sound of alarm.

"Shit! It's right behind us!"

No waiting, no slowing down. I charged on ahead, reaching down into the earth like I’d learned before. I felt the cold metal of the pipe. The vibrations of our passing rumbled up through my legs like thunder. And the Hydra felt so very, very close.

Fortunately, the extra sensory perception also let me feel the drop-off before I went careening right over the edge. I skidded to a halt at the end of the pipe and took a quick look around. We were halfway up the wall of what appeared to be a basin like what we started in. A mess of pips snaked every which way, leading up to a platform a mere ten hooves up, and beyond that, a catwalk! A bridge spanning the basin and leading to salvation! I saw the faint glow of a Ranger symbol on the far doorway. That was our way out.

"It’s right there!" a stallion yelled at the top of his lungs.

"Climb! Climb for your lives! Ruby, levitate them up if you can!" I shouted, pointing out the mess of smaller pipes that led to the platform. Those ten hooves might as well have been a mountain for the hurry we were in. I turned back to the tunnel to let the bandits go first, watching them scramble.

The seconds dragged by like hours as the bandits clambered over each other. The Hydra bore down on us with a bone-shaking roar. I tried not to let the I couldn’t see it too well, as down here the darkness was nearly absolute. But I felt it. I felt it in my legs, and smelled it in my nose. I knew it was coming. My magic let me gauge the distance. Sixty meters. Fifty. Forty. Damn, it was fast.

“Now! Right the fuck now!” Ruby screamed as she swung out onto the pipes. I felt the metal begin to vibrate under my hooves and turned to climb, when my hoof was grabbed by Sidewinder’s.

“Remember,” he whispered. “You’re not an earth pony. You’re a spider. A little spider with lots of little legs that grab. Now get out there and climb.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but I didn’t have time to argue. I swung out onto the nearest pipeline I could grab, taking precious seconds to assert my next hoofhold. Right behind me was Sidewinder. And then he was next to me. In front of me. Above and halfway up before I could blink, his hooves seeming to catch surfaces I couldn’t even see. It took him seven seconds to do what had taken at least a minute for the others, including Ruby’s levitation. He really did have exceptional skills. The other bandits, with some prodding from Ruby, were already on the next platform up, booking it to the bridge above. Ruby turned back and saw me lagging behind, her horn started to glow and I felt myself suddenly grow weightless...

And then the Hydra’s head poked out of the pipe next to me.

I hardly felt fear, there was no time for that. I just watched as its massive bulk twisted and turned in midair, holding itself up with the sheer power of its own muscles as I rose next to its head. There was something almost admirable in the command it had over its own body...

And then one of its putrid green eyes turned towards me, and I saw the animal instinct inside. Then I started feeling afraid.

“Shit! Pull him up faster!”

“Grab him! Grab him!”

Ten hooves. Such a short distance. It took seconds to get me up. But the Hydra was quicker. I watched its head turn towards me, and its jaws opened wide, reaching towards me. Some say that in a moment like that your life flashes before your eyes, but all I saw was the gaping hole about to become my grave.

“Hey, suka!”

An orange pony-shaped blur streaked down from on high. It crashed right into the Hydra’s head with all four hooves, driving it straight down as its jaws clacked together inches from my hide. While the Hydra groaned and shook itself out of its daze the new pony went into a straight climb as he rebounded off the Hydra’s head, snatching me in his hooves and depositing me safely on the catwalk above. My heart leapt, stinging with hope: I thought it was Sunny Side, but that poor pegasus was a world away from me.

“Theo!” I gasped instead.

He shook his earthy brown mane and smiled.

“Hey, Lockbox! I told you I’m lucky!”

Wonder worker, I thought, and I was dazed by the realization, or maybe just the blood loss. Once again, fate had thrown a pony into harm’s way to keep me going. Before I could ponder it further the rest of the bandits had arrived, and we all hoofed it across the rickety bridge and into the next hallway. Just as I passed the threshold I looked back.

Three more heads had joined the first. All of them looked hungry.

/-/-/-/

“So you’re sure this is the spot?”

“Yes,” I replied tersely, tapping the walls. My Ranger sight had led us at last to the entrance of Outpost Nine Seven. We’d all managed to catch our breath after our second close call with the Hydra, but now they were impatient with me to find the treasure trove of guns and material the Rangers were sure to have left behind. My head wound had stopped bleeding for the most part, but it still hurt like hell. I scuffed my hooves on the wall the Rangers had led me to. It was mostly featureless, and the only thing keeping me from crying out in frustration was the symbol inscribed on the wall, my gifted sight translated it as the Old Equestrian word for “safety.” There was no doorway, no secret latch. Nothing that indicated it was anything but a solid wall.

“So... how do we get in?” asked Hot Pocket.

“With a key,” I replied, and in a burst of inspiration pulled out Hunter’s talisman. I was struck by how long it had been since I’d actually looked at it. The Ranger symbol glared at me, the unknown power humming in my hooves. But it didn’t feel quite as alien as before. If I was going to open this door, the Rangers would have to guide me. The talisman glowed as if in assent, and I felt it grow warm and welcoming in my grip. It felt sacrilegious, but I pressed it to my chest and focused, turning my thoughts to all that made a Ranger a Ranger, as I’d done with the Guide when Nopony taught me how to really focus upon the words. I thought of Hunter and how brave he was, how much I’d wished to be one of them as a child. Deep within me was something that Hunter had seen, something that told Tracer I was a friend and had given me the ability to endure where others hadn’t. I could only hope that blessing now extended to providing secrets from within the Ranger artifacts. Whatever secrets the talisman still held, it would only give them up to a trusted friend.

Will you help me? I wondered.

I waited. Something seemed to brush my mind from afar, as if a breath of air from heaven came down into the earth, depleted to its final gasp and kissing my mane.

Yes, came the unspoken answer.

“Domoi.”

The wall slid up into the ceiling without even a whisper. Behind me I heard the bandits gasp and point, and I suddenly felt very self-conscious as they all piled into the room beyond, their curiosity at a pique.

“That was awesome, Lockbox,” Theo said as he went by.

“How did you know?” Ruby asked.

“Know what?” I wondered.

“The word, you idiot! The password!”

I blinked. “I...” I couldn’t remember how I knew. I just did. I’d reached into the talisman, like I reached into the earth, and I’d seen a word appear in my head. I couldn’t even remember speaking.

Ruby smacked me. “Snap out of it.”

“Um... I’m not sure... it must have been magic?” I said with a weak chuckle, unable and unwilling to ponder what I’d just done. All I knew was that it worked. I suddenly very much wished Tracer was here; he’d be able to explain it at least.

“Holy Celestia! Look at all these guns!”

I poked my head into the Ranger outpost and stopped dead. It was a fifteen by fifteen hoof space, with two desks covered in maps and diagrams and toolboxes. The walls were covered in guns. Many, many guns. This wasn’t just an outpost, it was an armory! And the weapons stored here weren’t just old scratch-made weaponry either; these were clean, shiny, and ready to kill. I didn’t recognize half of them, but the fact that those were made with actual gun parts and not cobbled together scrap metal meant they were old world weapons. Legacies of our forefathers’ Great War, still in service to help continue our petty conflicts.

“Oh, this is what I’m looking for,” Sidewinder said with a feral grin as he shoved his way past me and snatched up a Wonderbolt. It was in pristine condition, apparently a weapon favored by whatever Ranger had used this place. The Stalker cuddled it to his chest like a mare and fondled its pneumatic lever.

“Oh, sweetheart. Where have you been all my life? You’re much more attractive than my old one...”

“Looks like you hit the jackpot, Lockbox,” Ruby said with a satisfied nod. “Everypony pick up whatever you can carry and nothing more. This shit can make us rich, I know, but we can’t carry it all and we’re dead if we try.”

She levitated a shotgun off the wall and peered down the barrel, cocking it.

"Now let's bag us a monster."

The bandits grinned to each other and started picking favorites from the wall. But what drew my eye was the blueprint. It covered one of the tables and I noticed it was pinned open unlike the other papers. Upon closer inspection I saw it was an outline of the entire facility. Next to it rested a pair of walkie-talkies. Such good fortune couldn't be ignored. I felt almost dizzy with happiness—or blood loss—and fell upon the table with a happy sigh. The Rangers hadn’t let me down yet!

"You got a plan?" Ruby asked over my shoulder.

Hydra dies. Lockbox wins. That was it so far.

“Look at this,” I said, and gathered the others around me while I pointed at parts of the map that were already labeled by the Rangers for their importance. My brain worked faster than my hooves could point, so I simply slapped my hoof down on whatever related to my ideas first. That happened to be the absolute mess of pipelines worming their way through the facility and out to the Metro.

“The Hydra’s in the pipes. We need to get it out.”

“Yeah? So?”

I brought both forehooves together on the table.

“A Hydra is a single creature with many heads. It has a central body. A weak point.”

I spread my hooves out again.

“Its heads are spread through the pipes, apparently far enough that it can catch us without having to move its body.”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” Theo pointed out, his wings shaking. He’d tied them back up the first chance he got and now they quivered in their bonds with excitement. I couldn’t look at them without thinking of Sunny Side and forced my eyes back to the map. “There’s no way its necks could be that long! Just look at all that stuff! There must be miles of pipelines in here!”

“I know,” I replied. “Regardless, we need to get those heads out of the pipes. Force it into a tight space. It can only go one direction: back to its body. There has to be a central location where something that huge can fit.”

“So... what? We comb the whole damn facility until we find it?” Ruby sneered.

“No. A Hydra is amphibious.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It likes water. That’s why it’s here. So it stands to reason it’ll go where there’s still lots of water in this building. Okay, okay... this isn’t just a place where water is moved from one spot to another. It used to be a treatment plant, right?”

Sidewinder nodded. “Serviced the whole city.”

“Right. So there’s basins, like what we were in, places where water was and is again, where the Guild of Magic moved it to. We need to get this place up and running enough to do the one thing that will move the Hydra out of the pipes and into the open.”

I turned back to look them in the eyes, making sure my next point got across. “We need to flood the pipes. This thing likes the water, but it can’t breathe it. To do this, we need to get to main pump control. Which should be somewhere...”

It took an awkward minute of shuffling and scanning to find the room amidst the mess of diagrams. “Here. A little bit over from the main turbines. The Guild of Magic is sure to have kept at least some of it in working condition. Since we haven't run into too many irradiated rooms yet, we can assume they've been doing their jobs. Somepony needs to get in there and be ready to redirect the flow."

“I’ll handle that,” Sidewinder volunteered, raising his hoof. “I know more about these old machines than anypony here. I doubt most of you even know how to operate a generator correctly.”

“I do!” Theo piped up.

“Good! Then you’re with me.” Sidewinder pointed at Hot Pocket next. “And you too, big boy. You look like you can handle heavy loads. Or be a nice meat shield. We’ll probably need that in there.”

Hot Pocket glanced at Ruby Red, who looked at me. I gave a brief nod that she returned. Whether I trusted Sidewinder to do as he said was irrelevant. Our chances of survival were slim enough that I was willing to trust a Dark One at this point.

"We're going to find that big bastard," I said. "And when we do we're going to kill it. We have enough heavy weaponry to make it count if we get pushed into a corner. The rest we'll have to make up as we go along. We funnel the Hydra and all its heads into wherever it’s hiding, and take it down from there.”

“Yeah, but how do we do that?” the other unicorn asked again. “These things are just gonna be popguns to something that huge.”

“Worst comes to worst, we can figure out how to trap it,” I replied. “Look, it’s not the best. But if we don’t do this, all we can do is wait for Nexus or the Hydra to eventually come and kill us. We need to get at least one of them out of the way for a shot out of here.”

Sidewinder raised his hoof. “So basically, we’re going to try and turn on a facility that’s been out of commission for Celestia knows how long, hope that it works, flood pipelines that haven’t been maintained, hope that that flushes a giant-ass monster towards its home base, and then we’re going to find it and kill it inside its own lair?”

“That’s the idea,” I said with a firm nod.

Sidewinder grinned and picked up one of the walkie-talkies. “Lockbox, I love the way you think.”

I looked at the faces that surrounded me. Though before I’d been more than willing to lump them all into the category of “bandit” and leave them to their fate, now our lives were depending on each other. Even Ruby Red was falling in line. Sidewinder, who I’d once believed I’d gladly shoot in the back, was now going to be a key ally of mine in the upcoming battle. All of them were ponies. Whatever they’d done earlier in life, I couldn’t deny that they were all equines like me. They were all my...

Not friends. But after today, they’d be something closer to it.

“I need your names,” I stated simply, meeting their gazes one after the other. “All of you. We’re in this together now. And I can’t promise we’re all going to be coming out. I need... I want your names. I want to know who you all are. So we can do this right. I want to know you all as ponies. Not just... comrades-in-arms. I know this seems strange. But I’ll be damned if I ask another pony to risk their life for me without even knowing who they are.” It was something to remember them by. Perhaps I’d be able to add something or two to my Wall when this was through.

Hot Pocket was the first to step forward, proudly puffing out his chest.

“Well, I’m Hot Pocket. You guys all know who I am. I’m, uh, I guess I’m ready as I’ll ever be. Do or die, right? Like the time we shot those Monarchists to hell, outside Connemara.”

“I’m Juniper,” the dark green unicorn mare said, scratching her teal mane and casting her yellow eyes downward, looking anything but excited about the coming storm. “I’m... I’m just Juniper...”

“Brick-a-brack,” said the dour unicorn stallion to her. He was almost as big as Hot Pocket, and his cutie mark was... well, brick-a-brack. “And I am the toughest motherfucker Ruby’s ever known, and I am ready for this.”

The scrawnier earth stallion next to Brick-a-Brack had cyan eyes and a ragged black mane to complement the pale grey of his pelt. He huddled in on himself when everypony’s eyes turned his way.

“Uhh... my name’s Loose Nut. Just call me Nut.” He shrugged and looked at the wall, clearly not feeling the same camaraderie I’d tried to instill in the rest.

“Green Bay,” the solid, lime-green earth stallion next to him said. “Nothin’ special. I like knives.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. His cutie mark was indeed a knife... a long, sharp butcher knife.

“I’d have mine on me, but the cultists took ‘em. I’d like ta’ get ‘em back if we can.”

“Right,” I said, without any conviction, but he just shrugged and nodded regardless.

So that was it. A whole team of murderers and thieves, up against a horrifying monster and a gang of cultists with power armor. This was looking even more insane every time I thought about it.

Somehow, that thought comforted me.

“Collect every bit of ammo and weapons you can carry. Are those medical supplies in the corner? And collect those helmets.” I said. “It’s time we took to the fight to these bastards.”

/-/-/-/

“Testing. One two three? Testing.”

“I can hear you, Sidewinder.”

“I told you, it’s Sid. Or Uncle Sid. We’re pals again now, remember?”

“I’d have to leave you to die before we’re even again, Uncle Sid.”

“Ha ha! The times we have, Lockbox. Anyway, sounds like these things work. Surprised it would in this metal mess.”

“Of course they do. Rangers don’t mess around.”

We were halfway towards the turbine room, having split off from Sidewinder’s group a ways back. There, a control center waited, ready for us to restore power to the main pumps. If that didn’t work, we’d just have to try and force our way out through some of the pipes that led out of the facility. We didn’t have the firepower to punch through any blockade Nexus might have laid down for us, but at least a few of us should be able to shoot our way past the Hydra. It felt good having a weapon again at last. Not an unreliable Mule, but a semi-automatic carbine rested in my war reins now. I’d forgone the helmet it came with, letting Juniper have it.

The turbine room was large and expansive, just like the one back at the Fort. The turbines themselves sat like giant legless turtles along the northern wall, facing the two floors to the right of us, gathering dust and rust and generally being useless. Catwalks ran over our heads that used to give workers a vantage point to peer into the turbines.

“They’re in bad shape,” Ruby said as we came into the room, her voice echoing so loud she winced and lowered her voice to a whisper. “How do we know these will even work?”

“We don’t,” I replied, and stepped boldly inside. “We just need to trust that our forefathers built them to last.”

“Well,” Green Bay muttered, “whatever gets us out of here quicker. The control room’s probably on the top floor. Check that staircase.” One led up from the turbine floor up to the second level in the middle of the room. “We’ll need to-”

The rest of his words were drowned out by a sharp, resounding boom that rang through the whole room. Green Bay’s leg burst in a spray of blood, and the stallion staggered and fell to the side, clutching a hoof over the hole in his leg as Juniper cried out and dragged him into cover behind a turbine.

“Sniper!” Ruby screamed, rushing around the side of the turbine alongside Loose Nut. “Get to cover! Keep your heads down!”

I didn’t have time to blink as Brick-a-brack snatched me up in a levitation field and pulled me to Ruby’s position We were squeezed between the turbine and the north wall, scanning the ceiling for vantage points.

“The Great Wyrm moves through the earth, devouring whomever will stand in His way!” a voice boomed all around us.

“Bucking mother of fucking buck shit!” Ruby groused next to me, checking her assault rifle. “That bastard has us cornered! He’ll plug whoever makes a run for the stairs. Juniper!” she called around the corner. “How’s Green Bay?”

“There’s too much blood! I... I gave him two full shockers and wrapped it in a bandage, but... shit! I think he’s in shock!”

“Keep still! Wrap something tight above the wound! Don’t let him move!” Ruby turned back to us. “So who wants to play bait?”

I gaped at her. “Bait?”

“Yeah, bait! I didn’t see where the first shot came from, so this asshole’s either invisible or dug in good. We have to try and get him to fire again so we know where he is!”

Loose Nut shook his head. “We can’t just charge out there! He’ll blow our brains out!”

Brick-a-Brack turned to the turbine, planting his forehooves on the metal covering.

“I have an idea.” A glowing light appeared at the tip of his horn and he plunged it into the turbine’s wall, then dragged his horn across the surface. He carved out a large square of metal and let it clang to the floor, then raised it up with pride.

“I made a shield!” he declared proudly.

I did my best not to look condescending. “That’s hardly bulletproof.”

“Then I’ll just make it thicker!” The large unicorn, using his scalpel-like enchantment, sliced and diced an entire section of the turbine’s metal covering into a makeshift plate of armor, slapping several layers together into a slab half an inch thick and holding it all together in a powerful telekinetic field.

“Brick, you genius! What’d I tell you, Slice and Dice always turns out useful!” Ruby said, and went to work with her own horn. I thought it was a ridiculous name for a spell, but it worked. In less than a minute we had two large plates of metal that were supposed to defend us against a sniper’s bullets. It wasn’t the best plan, but it was all we had. Ruby picked both slabs up

“All right, stay here! I’m gonna float one out and keep behind the other. You guys hit that fucker the moment he shows his head. Bag ‘em and tag ‘em!”

Ruby leaped out into the open, holding one of the slabs over her head while keeping the other out in front of her to keep the sniper’s aim off. Another boom echoed through the large room, and the plate in front of Ruby spun and flipped in mid-air.

“I saw a flash! That room on the second floor!” Brick shouted, and we three stallions opened fire. I squeezed the trigger five times, and then waited for half a heartbeat.

“Is he dead?!”

“I saw something move! He’s relocating! Go, go, go!”

We burst out of cover and rushed the stairway. An badly aimed shot from the moving sniper snapped into the ground ahead of me as we ran, sending marble and concrete into my face. I heard Ruby’s gun roar behind us as we stumbled up the stairwell to the first floor, ducking under the floor of the second level.

Only to run right into a squad of cultists who poured out of a door to greet us. Five of them, three of us, we checked right and ran into the mess of pipes that ran up from the turbine floor and snaked their way towards the far wall. Gunfire erupted as Brick shouted insults and pinned them down with his assault rifle as Loose Nut and I scrambled under the pipes, trying to get around to their side.

“C’mon, Lockbox, keep up! We gotta flank them!”

Flank. Hunter told me about flanking. Something about demoralizing and confusing the enemy by hitting their side. That made sense. I leaped behind what appeared to be a generator just behind three bullets that blew through my meager cover right above my head. I looked back out into the turbine room. Ruby had gained the catwalks and fired into the air, screaming angrily as another loud crack sent a bullet into her shields, shearing off one of the corners.

“I’m fuckin’ sick of you!” she shouted back, magically amplifying her voice until the very air trembled.

“Lockbox, shoot! Shoot!” Loose Nut screamed in my ear, and I turned the corner and opened fire, wincing as the gunsmoke burned my eyes. I saw a pony jerk and spasm in the darkness, illuminated by the flash of their gun as they fired wildly all the way to the ground. One more murder on my list.

Loose Nut slapped my shoulder and I followed him towards the door the cultists had spilled out of, firing our weapons the whole time. My gun clicked halfway to the next winding pipe, and I ducked my head and rolled the rest of the way. I hit the pipe upside down, my buttocks against the cold metal. Loose Nut glared at me.

“The hell are you doing? Get up and keep shoot- watch it!”

Another hail of bullets tore through the air, spat out by a submachine gun very close by. I watched Loose Nut’s mane get a shave from a near miss, and he huddled shivering on the ground as I curled up as tight as I could, my butt in the air and my head on the floor. Brick’s gun roared in the tight quarters, dueling with two other staccato barks, and over the din I heard a clip fall to the floor. I rolled onto four hooves and leaped over the pipe, shouting for Loose Nut to cover me. I spotted a fallen magazine near another generator block and sprinted for it, listening to bullets kiss the air near my head as I was caught in Brick’s line of fire.

I ducked around the corner and came face to face with a pegasus mare struggling with a new magazine. She glanced up and immediately threw himself at me with a shout, but her attack was clumsy. I lashed out with my hoof and jabbed her in the throat as the barrel of her gun smacked my cheek, forcing her back as she coughed and choked. She looked up just in time to see my back hooves connect with her forehead. Her entire neck scrunched inward gruesomely, and I heard the loud, thick snap of breaking bone. The cultist was down for the count.

I heard another painful grunt, and then a loud cry as another cultist came flying at me out of the shadows... then passed right by me to crack into the far wall hard enough to smash open his skull, the levitation field around him dissipating. Brick stepped out of the smoke and tossed his mane.

“Move! Up to the second level, we gotta get that bucking sniper!”

We charged into the door and raced up another stairwell to the second level, finding ourselves in a wide open room with a walled-off section in the middle that reached to the ledge overlooking the turbines. That must have been the control room. Directly ahead of us, looking over the railing down into the turbine room, we saw the sniper lining up another shot. I saw by the shape of her flanks it was a mare, an earth pony by the look of it.

“Hey, bitch!” Brick shouted, lifting her up in a levitation field. She gasped, and turned to look at us. In the light of Brick’s magic I saw her eyes, bright and purple. Then a sheet of metal came whirling up from below and chopped into her neck, almost decapitating her, followed by Ruby’s bloodthirsty shout of triumph. I rushed for the door of the control room as she flopped to the ground.

Kicking the door open I found myself in the middle of a large room with terminals absolutely covered in... buttons. Buttons everywhere. Switches and dials and Celestia knew what else. I and the other stallions skidded to a halt and looked at the mess.

Suddenly my idea didn’t seem so smart.

“Spread out and find some technical manuals. They had to have kept some around for reference!”

Brick tore open a locker with his magic. “Great. First useful thing we do and we’re screwed because of some engineer’s wet dream...”

A minute or two of frantic searching later, Ruby came through the door to find us rifling through any drawer we could find, old papers scattered all over the floor. Juniper came behind her, holding a very pale looking Green Bay.

“What the hell are you doing?” Ruby snapped. We looked up in unison.

“Trying to figure out how to start it,” I replied. Ruby snarled and shoved me aside as she looked over the console, then rolled her eyes.

“Well maybe we should push the big red Celestia-damned button that says ‘initiate!’” she snapped, and slammed her hoof down on the console. Almost immediately the screens around us began to whine and buzz as magical energy sparkled back to life, struggling to find its way through old arcane circuit matrices and corroded mana pathways. Lights began to flicker back on, making us squint even as they struggled to stay bright. I coughed and looked away, feeling sheepish.

And then the lights died and went red once again, and there was a magical chime that sounded like glass breaking as the energy flow gave out.

“Does anypony know what the hell these mean?!” Ruby shouted as she looked over terminal after terminal, staring at the red lights and spinning alarms.

“This one is saying something about voltage?!” Loose Nut exclaimed, dragging a hoof through his mane. “Uh... looks like there’s some generators below the turbines... think those’ll do something?”

I continued rifling through the drawers until I had the prize in my hooves: a manual for the workers who once watched over this place. The pages were yellow and brittle, but I managed to turn them well enough without them crackling into dust.

“Somepony cover the doors while I look through this!” I shouted.

“Guy’s, Green Bay’s still bleeding!” Juniper cried, holding onto the lime-green stallion like a life preserver. Green Bay’s eyes wandered in their sockets, dazedly looking around the room.

“Give him another shocker,” I said over my shoulder. “It’s the best we can do right now. Change the bandages and tighten the strap above the wound. Here! Bucking finally!”

I pointed out a diagram that illustrated a complicated mess of pipes and arcane machines underneath the turbines. “These were abandoned, and probably haven’t been stripped for parts yet. Looks like there’s some kind of... generators or circuit breakers down there that need to be started up if we’re going to get this done. I’m going down there to start the backup generators; no reason the gems have been removed by the Guild or anypony else. You all stay up here and keep the control room safe, and hit the button when I give the signal.”

“I’m coming with you,” Ruby Red snapped, and we charged back out down the stairs, stumbling into the nearest trapdoor that led underneath the turbines. I reached inside, and my hooves met nothing but air. With a shout I landed on my face on metal grating, and staggered upright as a little flare from Ruby’s horn lit the way.

“Stop kissing dirt and get a move on!” she shouted, her voice echoing painfully in my ears. I looked about and realized the space under the turbines wasn’t really under them at all: the parts I’d seen was only the top of a massive column-shaped pillar that reached a good twenty feet in height. I motioned for Ruby to send out more flares, and I saw every turbine was that humongous. There was enough power in here to supply the whole Metro, if we could only get it working. But my mission and the divisive nature of the Metro itself would always prevent that.

I started casting around for another set of stairs that led down to the lowest level where the backup generators were. We rushed down to the foot of the turbines, not knowing or caring how they all worked; just that we had to turn them on. I heard the echo of gunfire from above.

“Shit! Must be more cultists. Lockbox, hurry!”

I leaped onto a panel labeled “Ancillary Generator One” and pried it open with my bare hooves. Thank earth pony strength for that. Inside was a strange little assembly with a slot for a gem next to a crank, and a large red button. Seemed simple enough, but there was no gem.

“Shit,” I sighed, and move to the next one over. This one had a barely glowing purple stone in the slot, but the crank was heavily rusted. No matter, I had to try. Since the crank was the only visible option I began twirling it about, watching the gem come to life as arcane energy was drawn from it and forced through magical circuitry. The gem flickered and pulsated. I knew enough to know these things never really degraded; they were crystals after all. It took a lot to destroy their ability to store and channel magic, I just had to hope there was enough left to-

The machine made a popping noise and died out. I slammed a hoof down in frustration. This was our only chance! If we couldn’t even get one moving...

“Ruby!” I shouted over my shoulder. “Do you think you can give this thing some power? I’m going to try and start up the others!”

“That’s asking a lot, Lockbox,” Ruby snapped as she stepped up next to me, her horn glowing as she focused magical power into the crystal itself. “Luna spit me with her horn, this feels complicated...”

“Feels?” I wondered, but she shoved me away with a hoof.

“I got it! Just try to get another one going!”

Ignoring the gunfire outside, I rushed to the last generator in line and tore open the panel. Another gem. Another crank. Another puddle of slime?

I put two and two together just in time to leap away from the Hydra’s snapping jaws. Its head dangled above the generator from the long, sinewy neck coiled around the turbine.

I fired a wild shot that struck the ceiling. The Hydra’s head recoiled before it lunged and I fell backwards, watching its jaws clamp onto the railing behind me and rip it asunder. Before I could blink its head reared up again and crashed into my chest as it turned. That glancing blow knocked me senseless as I went flying back along the catwalk. I heard Ruby’s gun chatter, and over the din I screamed through my aching chest—thank Celestia my earth pony durability kept it from shattering—and pleaded for her to stop before she hit one of the turbines. She didn’t listen. The Hydra’s flesh became pockmarked with bullet holes. It raged and screamed and lashed its head to and fro, withdrawing behind the turbine as it fell to the floor. I watched it slither away-

Wait. Slither?

The Hydra had a tail.

No Hydra had a tail except on its body. This Hydra had no body. It was a snake. A snake! The Hydra was just a snake? Or many?

“Don’t just stand there, shoot it!” Ruby yelled. My mind whirled as I watched the Hydra’s undulating coils slither around another turbine, trailing blood. This Hydra was missing the main body. Were all of its heads disconnected? How was it hunting us? And this head even looked smaller than the last... that was how it had fit in here from... there. A collapsed wall I saw lit up by Ruby’s flares she sent after the Hydra to keep track of it, leading to a tunnel. Probably dug out by thumpers or nosalises.

No time to think. Leaving Ruby to go Hydra hunting, I turned back to the generator and leaped on the crank. I began twisting with all my might, listening to the machines do their work, and then the gem flared brilliantly as if it had become white-hot, but I felt only the tingle of magic as the entire machine sparked and shook. A small monitor lit up next to the crank assembly.

Circuit interrupted. Turbine 1: 24% capacity. Turbine 2: 3% capacity.

“Circuit... Ruby!” I shouted. “Ruby, you have to complete the circuit!”

“And that means fucking what?!” she yelled over her shoulder as her gun roared.

I leaped at her and pushed her head up. Ruby sputtered and shoved my hoof away with her magic. “Stop shooting! You’re gonna destroy what we came here for!”

“I’m trying to keep us alive, you twit! Get outta the way!”

The Hydra’s head reared up behind her, and something inside me snapped like a rubber band, pushing me to act. There was only a split second before it attacked, I couldn’t shoot, would never kill it in time, its head would only keep coming and squash us, only one thing left to do-

“No you fucking don’t!” I roared, and jumped at Ruby, who gasped and ducked just in time. I rolled over her, landed just short of the railing, and pivoted on my hooves so my flanks faced the Hydra.

I braced.

It struck.

I kicked.

The Hydra could not push the earth as its nose smacked into it. The earth pushed back.

The Hydra’s head snapped backwards when my rear hooves struck, as if all its momentum were suddenly reversed, and crashed into the far wall. It writhed and moaned as it tried to get its bearing, but was cut short by the deafening chatter of Ruby’s gun. It made short work of the creature’s unprotected head, ripping open flesh and bone. She spent a full magazine on it before something gave and it stopped twitching.

My hooves stung from the force of my own blow. Disbelief and shock warred with excitement and wonder. I’d actually just kicked a giant monster in the face, and sent it flying with one blow. I shook out my hooves, wondering what other kinds of powers lay within me.

Ruby was flush with rage and adrenaline, fully aware she’d come close to dying and only a split-second decision between us had saved her. Instead of thanking me, she blew a bit of her mane out of her eyes. I couldn’t help but notice how fearsome she looked in the half-light of her floating flares.

“So. What’s this about a circuit?”

“The gems act as batteries and conductors. I’m guessing that provides the kick to start whatever the turbines run on. You don’t have the energy to start the turbine yourself, so you’ll need to use your horn to complete the circuit and let the magic flow from one to the other. They’ll feed off each other once they start spinning, right?”

“I don’t fucking know!”

“Then get to it and let’s hope it works.”

Ruby, still flushed and panting, hurried back to the generator and jammed her horn between the prongs where the gem normally went.

“Ahh... that’s what it was!” she whispered to herself. “Okay, okay... just gotta feel this out-”

Krzap.

I gaped as Ruby went flying backwards, slamming into my chest. This time, the earth wasn’t ready for the hit, and I went flying with her. We crashed into the railing and very nearly took a ten foot drop. She caught herself at the last moment, and I snatched her around the waist and hauled her back up onto the catwalk. At first I thought she was injured by the way her eyes rolled in their sockets, but she had a very strange grin on her face.

“Sweet Celestia, that was one hell of a jolt!” she exclaimed, and before I could react she wrapped a hoof around my neck and pulled me in for an open-mouthed kiss.

As first kisses went, it was hardly what I’d been looking forward to. She was rough and completely unconcerned with anything but doing the deed, and I was too surprised to do anything but feel my mind go blank as she clamped her jaws over mine. I grunted and sputtered as I felt her tongue writhing into my mouth, brushing over my gums, and then the moment was over as soon as it began. Her furious sucking caused a loud smack as our lips parted, and she chuckled at my dumbfounded expression. My eyelid twitched as I tried to adjust to the feeling of another pony’s saliva dripping from the roof of my mouth.

Then the world spun and came to rest on its side. I realized I was on the ground, and that Ruby had punched me in the face. “Don’t make me do that again,” she exclaimed, and rushed back up the stairs, levitating all of her weapons at once. I stood up and brushed off my tongue as the turbines slowly, slowly began to spin inside their great containers. I heard the quiet drone of power moving, work being done where before there had only been rust and decay and stillness.

Sweet stars above, it was a beautiful sight... and I had to leave it behind. Leave it for the greedy Guild. Did they even realize what kind of power they wielded? That if we pooled our resources, we might be able to get this whole building running, water would become free and clean for the whole Metro, and-

...And it would take less than a week for us to tear each other apart trying to figure out who owned it.

I ran back upstairs and gasped as a bullet casing dropped down next to my head. There was gunfire on the upper levels.

“Brick! Nut! Juniper!” Ruby’s voice bellowed from above. I rushed the stairs again, checking to make sure my carbine was fully loaded, and saw Ruby Red tussling with a cultist at the top. The cultist was a unicorn, though their face was concealed by a gasmask, and the two had their magic fields wrapped around one another, struggling to gain the upper hoof as they rolled around on the floor. I leaped on the back of the cultist and grabbed a knife off their belt in my mouth, but before I could swing it down into their neck a blast of magic from their horn took me off my hooves. I stumbled backwards into a pipe running along the floor, but my distraction had done its work: Ruby sprang up and gored the cultist in the neck with her horn. The unicorn gave a very mare-like gurgle as she crumpled to the ground.

We hurried towards the control room and watched Green Bay tumble out the door, furiously stabbing an earth stallion with a hoof knife on his uninjured leg. Green Bay was covered in blood, but he had the queerest smirk on his face as he stabbed down again and again, ripping into the cultist’s face even as his hooves flailed and pushed against Green Bay’s chest. Green Bay shoved the knife into the cultist’s eye socket, and with a final heaving twitch he fell still. Green Bay looked up at us with a bloodthirsty grin, his sweaty dark-green mane falling over his eyes.

“I got a knife,” he huffed.

“Yes, I can see that,” I muttered.

“We clear?” Ruby called over his shoulder.

“They got Nut,” Juniper moaned from inside. The room was a mess. A close-quarters gun battle had erupted here and only Brick-a-Brack still stood amid the carnage, eyes on the doors. Scars on the walls from bullets and magic were in abundance, and three dead cultists lay in the center of the room. They looked more bored than dead. Juniper huddled against a bank of terminals, levitating her gun and fumbling to reload. I noticed a bandaged wound in her shoulder. Loose Nut lay against a wall; half his head was all over it. Needles of guilt pricked my heart as I turned away and lifted my radio.

“Sidewinder? The power should be back on. What do you see?”

The Stalker’s voice crackled through the speaker. “We’re in the main pump room. I see a map! Another bunch of notes... oh, look at that. We have some buttons to push. That’s old world tech for you, Lockbox! Always fun to work with. I love buttons.”

“Yeah, that’s great. Listen, we have a problem. The Hydra’s heads aren’t connected to its body!”

“What! That’s cheating.”

“I know! I don’t know how many we’ll be able to flush out of the tunnels, or even if it will work at all. Just tell me you can get it working.”

“Well, it looks like Theo here made good on his promise. The kid’s cracking open panels and rewiring some things... it’s making the buttons light up, but hell if I know which to push! I’ll just take a guess.”

“Sidewinder!”

“Okay, okay. Look. If it makes you feel better, I won’t push any of the red ones. Looks like we got something involving valves and pumps... Ah, here we go. This looks like the right one.”

“What does it say?”

“Uh, I’m not sure! ‘Section A valve release.’ Releasing is good, right?”

“I don’t know!”

“Well neither do I, but I’m pushing it!”

I heard a loud grinding, followed by a deep, rumbling thud and then a low, constant rush all around us.

Juniper gulped. “Is that it? Did that do it?”

And then above the sounds came the Hydra’s roar: a deep, moaning bellow like when Nexus had first called it up. Its cry shook the ground beneath us.

“Whatever we did,” I exclaimed, “we really pissed it off.”

Sidewinder laughed. “Good! I’m ready to take the fight to this bitch. What’s next?”

I reached into my saddlebags and pulled out the map I’d taken from the Ranger outpost, quickly pointing out a large, circular area.

“The main flood basin, here. According to the plans, it was used as some kind of massive purification device for the water. There are several waste pipes that lead back out into the Metro from there. So it’s our best chance of escape, and since that’s where most of the water will go, it’s also the most likely place to find the Hydra. Or at least I thought it would be. If it’s actually some kind of- of hive creature with no real main body, or just a bunch of individual animals-”

“Then we’re boned either way,” Brick muttered, checking his gun for grime. “So let’s hunt it down and finish it off. I got some payback to deliver.”

“Sidewinder, did you get all that?”

“I have no idea,” the Stalker blurted out. At least he was being honest. “But! If you say that’s where we go, then that’s where we go! I’d much rather confront the ancient menace lurking in the shadows rather than, say, play it safe and crawl through a tunnel full of shit for a few hours. Your plan is much more fun.”

“Well if we meet any tunnels of shit that lead to a quick exit, I promise you can go first,” I shot back. “Meet us at the entrance to the flood basin, and be quick about it.”

/-/-/-/

We met up with Sidewinder’s group outside the doors leading to the flood basin. They had been torn open by brute force, and beyond that was nothing but a long, dark hallway. We hadn’t seen any dead bodies or mutants, but the air carried a thick stench that reminded me of burned mushrooms and rotting vegetables.

“It’s down there, isn’t it?” Juniper whimpered.

“What, you scared?” Brick-a-Brack grumbled.

“Tartarus yes! Is this really the only way out of here?”

I grunted and pulled out the diagrams of the facility. “The cultists want us to fight the creature. They won’t let us leave alive until I’ve killed it or otherwise proven something to them.”

“Well then I say you go in and kill it,” Green Bay rasped. “If you’re the one they want.”

“The only reason any of you are still alive is because you’re with me,” I retorted sharply. “If it was just you they caught, they’d have shot the lot of you. I don’t know why they spared you and expect me to do this, but what should be obvious is that working together is the only way we’re getting out alive, whatever we feel about each other.”

“That’s what I love about this guy,” Sidewinder exclaimed, throwing a hoof around my shoulder. “He’s always trying to be friends! Are you sure you’re not an Element of Harmony, Lock?”

“They’re all dead,” I grumped, shrugging him off. “And I’m hardly a candidate. Now come on, let’s move.”

I took a step into the tunnel, and a loud roar rushed out to meet me, rumbling through the ground and up my legs. Everypony save Ruby and Sidewinder quailed; the latter smiled grimly.

"It waits for us," he murmured. "Let's not waste time. We are not ponies today, my friends. We are the monsters monsters are afraid of.”

“Yeah, sure,” Green Bay grumbled, moving slowly on his wounded leg. “Just lemme get that thing’s face under my knife. I’m gonna give it an eye exam it’ll never forget.”

We all stuck close to each other as we moved down the tunnel. The claustrophobic darkness pressed in on us even more in these tight spaces, and I felt the palpable tension of worry that our little flashlights would suddenly land upon a horrid monster looming out of the dark. Even though we passed several side rooms full of rats and rotting boxes and irradiated fungus, only one had a pitiful little skeleton inside. It had been gnawed on by scavengers and the pony’s tattered armor was useless to us. Whoever had killed him had stripped the body of all other useful salvage.

We left it alone and moved on down the long hall, following the sound of rushing water and overworked pumps until I heard another groan from the Hydra. It was a metallic noise, almost like the groan of a mighty door straining to support its own weight, and several of the ponies shuddered upon hearing it.

“Damn, it sounds angry,” Theo whistled, and I agreed. The Hydra squealed and wailed at some unseen disturbance, and the noise was like a giant metal sheet being ripped in two. Then something struck the ground hard enough for us to feel the rumbling of the collision, followed by yet another wailing roar. It sounded much bigger than I’d thought.

“Can we go back?” Juniper whispered, lifting her hoof to turn away. I noticed she still sported a slight limp from her shoulder wound.“Please? Let’s just go back, there’s bound to be another way, we don’t have to go right into its lair, please, I don’t want to go in there!”

“You’re free to run if you want,” Ruby Red muttered, chewing a lock of her mane that dangled over her mouth, “but you won’t get help from us if you get lost.”

Juniper turned to Green Bay, as if looking for some kind of support from the pony she’d helped. He only showed her his knife, which he hadn’t bothered to wipe clean since he’d stabbed the cultist with it. “Long as I have this, I’m good.”

The mare shuddered, sighed, and turned to follow us again. The herd instinct overwhelmed her cowardice for now.

“When we kill it, we’re free,” I spoke up, knowing it was on me to bolster their morale. It was partly my fault they were in this mess, if only because I’d been attracting so much attention. Why that was I couldn’t comprehend, but it was still happening. “When we kill it, you can go home. But this is the only way forward, right here. The one thing I’ve learned in my travels so far is that when there is a path, it must be followed. Staying still or going back will only make all you’ve done worthless. So now the path is right in front of us, and at the end of it we’re probably going to die. But we deal with death every day. You all are dealers in it. But would you rather die alone and frightened without a clue of what to do, or do it with allies who will stand by you and help you reach your goal? I know I’d rather it be the latter.”

That seemed to mollify at least a few of them. Theo and Sidewinder were firmly on my side, I could tell that much. The others were in varying degrees of indifference and barely hidden anger or fear, but as long as they kept walking with me and didn’t turn hostile, I felt I could turn my back on them.

“Does anypony else smell that?” Hot Pocket asked, wrinkling his nose.

“I do,” I answered. “It’s been there since we came in.”

We came to a stairway, old and rickety. Our lights illuminated the rust and decay pitting the walls and rails, making it appear as though blood had been smeared across the metal surface. The smell grew more powerful the further down we went, raking the insides of our nostrils, and it mingled with the bloody vision on the stairs until it seemed we were descending into a tomb.

“Sweet moon above, what is that?” Brick wondered, holding his nose. I tried to power on through the stench, until my throat suddenly locked up, forcing me back up the stairs choking and heaving. There was much more than a terrible smell down here.

“Masks! Now!” I barked, not daring another step until I’d taken several deep breaths through the filter. I spared a moment to thank the Princesses for Rangers and their foresight, then staggered down the rest of the way, my head still spinning from the rotting smell lingering in my nose.

“There must have been a breach to the surface to let the poison down here!” Theo said through his mask, a tone of wonder in his voice. Shamefully, the first thing I thought of when he mentioned the surface were his bound wings, and I remembered my desperate struggle with Sunny Side up above. I kept walking before he noticed me staring.

At the bottom of the stairwell, we came out into another hall, blank and square save for a few pipings running along the ceiling and the faint glow of bioluminescent mushrooms. To our right was a large doorway, ripped apart just like the last one. The metal gates were at least an inch thick,and still they’d been torn apart by something far more powerful than I could imagine. Even the greatest unicorns would have a hard time ripping it loose from its moorings, but I had a sinking feeling I knew what was responsible. The whoosh of overworked pumps was louder than ever here.

I walked past the ruined doors and into the darkness beyond, spearing the shadows with my small headlamp.

“Must have been a flood gate of some kind,” Sidewinder surmised as he studied the door. “Put up to keep overflow contained.”

“Won’t help with that now,” Ruby snickered.

As we entered the room, a foul feeling took hold of me. Common sense said it wasn’t the air, since my filter was still fully functional, but it didn’t come from my nose. It was a vague, weightless feeling in the back of my mind and the pit of my stomach, like stepping into a hospital where a loved one lay, and they had yet to die and all I could do was watch. The feeling of perversion and tragedy, of sheer wrongness crushed in on me from all angles. It reminded me far too much of the feeling the anomalies inflicted on me to be coincidental. Some small part of the earth was dying here, corrupted by an infestation like a parasite eating its host from the inside out. Experimentally, I reached out through my hooves, and the intensity of the feeling grew tenfold until I was being actively repulsed. A healthy pony who loved the earth wasn’t welcome here.

“By whatever gods are left in heaven,” Sidewinder muttered beside me. “I don’t feel good about this place.”

I kept walking forward. There was some kind of thick, viscous fluid covering the floor, cold and sticky. I pushed my hooves out, taking small steps until I lost my footing and slipped forward until I bumped into a rusted railing that sagged under my weight. I backpedaled and glanced around; by the look of it I’d reached the edge of the flood basin. Inside was nothing but a gaping void that my light couldn’t penetrate. The very bottom was dotted with sickly red emergency lights, exposing a maze of fenced in pipes and small corridors on the bottom level. I saw a shimmering, reflective surface all over the bottom, and realized I was looking water. Brackish, thick, dirty water, but water nonetheless.

“We’re here,” I announced. I heard my echo and winced. Nothing came at us, but that only put me more on edge. When there was nothing there, I knew that was when I had to be the most afraid.

“Where is it?” Juniper whispered. We cast our lights over the walls. Here and there sputtered stubborn little emergency lights, their red glow interrupted by the shadows of tubes and pipes that snaked over the walls. The bottom of the pit rippled and shimmered, and I realized it wasn’t just water; something was moving down there.

We stumbled back to the doorway, watching as the walls came to life. The thick pipes and tubing I’d thought I’d seen began to undulate and writhe, and the thick, glooping fluid began to drip from the ceiling in pony-sized globs. I stepped away from a large blob that splashed onto the ground right next to me, showering me with wet, cold nastiness. A low rumbling growl rose up from the abyss in front of us, and then from behind. The large hallway we’d come from echoed with it. I knew then all avenues of escape were cut off before we had even thought to run.

The ominous sense of inevitability closed in, stifling our thoughts. In a daze, I looked back to the pit. One of the coils unraveled from below and exposed a barely functioning floodlight, and pale yellow light burst over the floor of the pit. It took me a moment to realize the immensity of what I saw. The shimmering water at the bottom was actually a living surface covered in glistening wet scales, bulbous, ulcerous protuberances, and ugly pustules. It covered a heaving, pulsating mass of flesh, moist and stomach-churning in its gastric propensity. There were no eyes or ears or anything else that I could see, but strange claw-like growths groped blindly at the air. The mass covered most of the floor of the pit, quivering and writhing with a mind of its own. I almost threw up in my mask, and was grateful I couldn’t smell whatever horrid stench the abomination was sure to be emanating. Tendrils covered in strange red filaments radiated out from the central mass, anchoring it to the walls. Arranged randomly around the mound of flesh were a series of holes, six in all, gaping pink wounds in the thing’s surface.

And peeking out of three of those holes were the Hydra’s heads. They slithered out of the fleshy ducts and rose up, peering at us with deadly intent, swaying back and forth as they picked their targets. Where the others were I didn’t know, but I took a stab in the dark and guessed a fourth was coming from behind, and another covering the floor directly above where we’d come from. We were trapped in here with this horrifying perversion of nature.

“Tartarus take us,” Hot Pocket whispered. I wondered if Tartarus was exactly where this creature had come from.

The heads regarded us evilly, jaws gaping open as they prepared to strike. From behind us came the snarl of a fourth head, rushing down the tunnel to herd us to its brethren.

“Um. Hide,” Sidewinder said, bolting for a nearby ladder.

“Split up! Get down to the lowest level and take cover!” I shouted, impulsively going left while everypony else went right, guns blazing wildly. Perhaps if I distracted just one Hydra, my ponies could get away more easily. The Hydra heads recoiled and doze into the shelter of the pipes jutting from the walls, twisting around them as they showed their thick side scales to us to protect their vulnerable faces. I watched them slither across the sheer surface of the walls in their dash to relocate, seemingly using the thick slime as some kind of adhesive.

“Lockbox! Where-?”

“Leave him! Concentrate your fire on the heads!”

The floor rumbled as a fourth head exploded out of the corridor we’d just come from, and some sixth sense guided it straight in my direction, its thick coils kicking up waves of sludge. I felt my stomach clench as the sensation of pure wrongness redoubled, assaulting my mind. Something about this creature wasn’t just dangerous. It was a monster born and bred of the new, tainted world, as much an anomaly as the wild magic that haunted the deep tunnels. I knew in that moment that it had to die.

My hooves skidded over the slime covered floor, wildly grabbing for every bit of traction. A deep hiss behind me sent new life into my limbs as I made a flying leap for a ladder that loomed out of the darkness, scampering up with devilish speed. The Hydra’s head collided with the rungs just under my hooves, ripping the rusty screws at the top out of their moorings. The world swung around me as I gripped the rungs for dear life, dangling from a swinging ladder right above an angry Hydra.

What had Sidewinder said? Don’t be a pony, be a little spider… Earth preserve me, I was actually taking the fool’s advice. Fighting through the fear clenching my mind I threw one hoof up and then the other, somehow staying steady enough on the swaying ladder to gain the last couple of feet before the Hydra’s head pulled back and snapped upwards. I felt another section of catwalk tear off just behind my skittering hooves with an ear-splitting screech as the enraged lizard wrenched it away.

I hurtled over the catwalk running along the perimeter of the basin, firing shots sporadically over my shoulder to discourage pursuit. The Hydra regarded me warily from their hiding spots, letting their brother do the dirty work as it squirmed along the main platform under me. Another set of stairs just ahead promised another few feet between me and the monster, and I threw myself up them without looking where I was going. I tripped at the top and fell flat on my back; out of the corner of my eye I noticed a doorway to my right and cast my hooves out, dragging myself towards it, flopping like a dying fish the whole way.

The rumble of the Hydra followed me as I collapsed into the door, latching onto the turn wheel. It squealed in protest as I struggled against decades of rust, eventually resorting to punching the spokes to force them to turn. My earth pony strength prevailed just as I heard a growling hiss behind me; I shoved the door open and fell forward into darkness. Hot breath washed over my hooves as something big clamped shut just outside the doorway. Without even looking back to see how close I’d come to death, I pushed myself up and ran down a long metal corridor in front of me, took the first turn, and collapsed against a wall to catch my breath, squeezing my eyes shut. The hall was far too small for the Hydra to give chase, but I still heard sucking, heaving breaths nearby.

Then I realized that was my breathing, and I was slowly dying of suffocation from a clogged filter. My hooves shook as I fumbled with my mask, letting the old filter clatter on the ground. I handled the new filter like it was a precious egg, reverently sliding it into place. The fresh air that followed was a wonderful perfume, a sweet nectar that I drank deep. I sat there a minute and took one full breath after the other, just enjoying the feeling of still being alive after that mad dash.

What a wonder it was just to be able to breathe in a world like this. When such small victories meant the difference between life and death, even something like a fresh air filter felt as good as slaying a Hydra.

I dared to look back outside. The Hydra’s head had left the doorway. I crept closer, listening to the rough shuffling of heavy coils further down the basin. My thin little light didn’t do anything for my vision, but I saw the pulsating mass below easily enough in the sick glow of the emergency lighting. The Hydra’s heads slithered agitatedly in long circles, constantly on the lookout. I couldn’t see my friends, and I didn’t know if that was good or bad.

Then the fleshy mass began to move.

The claw-like growths stretched and grasped at nothing, and the tendrils swaying on its back quivered and writhed at some unseen stimulus. I saw something begin to squirm and crawl inside one of the gaping holes in the mass. It mewled and squealed hoarsely, shuddering as it pushed out of the mass and into the dim light. Inch by inch, a long tentacle began to sprout outwards from the biomass like a tumor, surrounded by a thin, moist membrane. Suddenly it thrashed and bucked, ripping its way out, and then I saw the mouth, the teeth, the patchy frill behind its ears, and the muscular column of scales trailing behind.

It was a new head.

The mass wasn’t the Hydra’s home. It was its body. We didn’t kill anything by slaying the head; we just cut off a limb, destroyed nothing more than a remote-controlled hunting machine!

I backed away from the door, feeling sick.

“Lockbox?”

I jumped and flailed, thinking first that Sweet Dreams had come to haunt me again. But the voice that called my name was tinny and full of static. It was the radio on my belt.

“Lockbox, are you there? It’s Sidewinder.”

A moment of fumbling to find the receiver.

“Yes! Yes, I’m still alive. I escaped. I’m on another floor. What about you? Is everypony alive?”

“Brick almost got his head taken off, but we’re still kicking. The Hydra’s waiting just above us. Did you see it grow that new head? Gross, right? We’re stuck in the shit down below, trapped under some pipes and fencing. This stuff is almost waist deep and getting deeper, I can feel it. It’s irradiated too; it burns through my jacket!”

“It must be the water we diverted into the pipes. Can you see any way out?”

“There’s lots of little passages back here... we can see a door not far off. Any ideas?”

“Try to get out of the bottom floor. There has to be something in here that’ll help us kill this thing.”

“You’re the boss, boss! We’ll get back to you.”

I’m the boss. I almost stomped on the radio for that. I didn’t want to be the commander. I didn’t want to be the Shadow Walker, the one the cultists wanted and feared, the one who had to cut through bandits and ghosts. I didn’t want to be anything but Lockbox, the pony who could protect the ones he loved. Why couldn’t my mysterious powers just lead me straight to the button labeled ‘push to the destroy the Dark Ones?’ What could all these twisting, turning pathways in my journey mean? Could it be the world had something to hide, and it was trying to tell me where to find it? I just wanted some answers. I slumped against the wall, gathering my thoughts, but the squeal of the radio interrupted me again. Sidewinder’s voiced cackled through the speaker, over the sound of squealing feedback and garbled gunshots.

“Lockbox! Lockbox! We’re through the door! We hit a whole nest of them! Ho ho, this is nasty! I’ll get back to you!”

I paled with fright and shouted frantically into the speaker for an answer, met only with silence. If they died out there I had no idea what to do on my own, and the thought terrified me. Had I just led more ponies to their deaths?

I glared at the darkness around me.

“What do you want from me?” I hissed, the mask making my own voice sound muffled and alien. “What more do I have to give? Why are other ponies in danger while I made it up here?! I was trying to help them get to safety!”

Silence as I’d expected. I was angry at nothing. Nothing to vent my feelings on or rail at. Nothing but more shadows and more questions. Cursing loudly, I went deeper into the gloom, hoof-pumping my lamp’s meager power supply for all the light it could give. The Ranger base had been amply supplied in weapons, but I didn’t know how long the little gem that powered my only source of light was going to stick with me. A few glimmering emergency lights and glowing algae was all I had to fall back on.

The deep hiss of the Hydra gradually fell into total silence as I wandered aimlessly, looking for anything that might help. I was in a long, dark, metal hallway, and beyond that I had no idea where I was going. I came to an intersection and stopped in the middle, remembering the strange dream world where the cultists had tried to assassinate me. But I didn’t feel the strange sensation of being lost or alone here. I was only in danger of becoming ‘actually’ lost, though that was a small comfort. With no idea where to go or what to do, I closed my eyes and reached out to the earth, finding some small comfort in the total silence despite everything I’d been taught about danger and quiet spaces. Ever since I’d discovered my unique abilities, I’d never been able to be truly alone with them. They’d always been used under great duress or when other ponies were with me. All of it was distractions. But here I could have a moment to myself. My friends needed me now, and that gave me impetus on top of privacy. Both of them would let me see how deep my reach really went.

This time, I learned it reached further than I could have imagined.

My mind exploded with sensations both wonderful and sickening as a kaleidoscope of color erupted before my eyes. I gasped and stumbled backwards, trying to escape the vast, intangible landscape that stretched out before me, but as long as I touched the ground the vision continued. I felt every groan, every creak of the settling foundations, noticed every dust mote that hovered and tumbled. The gentle breeze of the tainted air was like a roaring hurricane in my ears. The grip of the poison on the blighted soil was an ice-cold claw that squeezed my heart between its talons. Every creature that scurried through the darkness around me seemed to rampage through my vision, too quick and too vibrant for me to see what they were. Most of all I felt a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, emanating from a gaping wound in the fabric of the earth around me. It wasn’t just the smothering blanket of radiation and twisted magic that covered Equestria; this was much closer, much bigger. I plunged heedlessly into the maelstrom of noise and color, as if I was the earth itself, diving into my own endless proportions, and something twisted and heaved in response.

It’s alive.

I saw a gaping maw ringed with teeth, and felt the hungry emptiness inside that mouth, the biting, gnawing need to fill a deep void. A moving mass of decay and mindless anger scarred the earth wherever it went. I saw undulating tendrils lash over my vision, leaking pus and blood, watched them detach from the main mass and slither through corrupted soil, devouring anything that stood in its way. It was then I realized I saw the Hydra as it truly was in the world: nothing but a mindless devourer born of decay and filth. Being so near the corruption, so attuned to it, made me burn inside like I’d swallowed hot coals.

And around it I felt the tiny glimmers of hope: impossibly small fragments of cleanliness in the mire. Those must have been the filtration systems, still struggling to do their job. They would clean the water. And clean water was the antithesis of something so debased and foul... if I could just give the system a jolt again, like I’d done in the turbine room, perhaps...

Yes, it made sense now. The Hydra had to die, but without our weapons the only thing left to wield was the arcane technology of our forefathers. The Hydra was a taint that could be removed; the cleansing process would surely destroy it too. But how to get the control room?

We will show you

Another presence speared into my mind, reaching up from deep within the earth.

You can See

You can Hear

Hear us

I was paralyzed, dumbstruck by the monumental power I felt invading my mind, strangling tendrils crushing any hope of resistance. My limbs wouldn’t work. My mind was locked in a vise grip and my eyes were pried open, staring straight ahead as a shadow blacker than black exploded from the swirl of colors. A pit of fear opened in my stomach, leaving me empty and alone with my terror. I’d gone too far. The Dark Ones had found me again. Their voice was a whisper that nearly blew out my eardrums, rumbling through my mind.

You feel the earth

You feel us

Drink deep

Grow strong

Cleanse this place, and we will guide you

I felt myself rushing along an invisible pathway, vaguely aware of my hooves being propelled forward against their will. The grating, sibilant whispers scraped over the walls of my sanity.

Others seek to claim your mind

Only we can free you

We will bring you to us

“No!” I shouted into the maelstrom. The words were so final, spoken with the inevitability of the death rattle of a dying convict. I felt their cold, alien probes spearing into my mind, ripping it apart from the inside out with their sheer overwhelming presence. I was a prisoner in my own head. And they had killed my friends... killed ponies that could’ve helped work for a better world! I couldn’t believe they were here to help me. I wouldn’t.

“Get out... get out!” I shouted. “I don’t want anything to do with you!”

The whispers returned, fainter and more desperate every passing moment. A multitude of voices crowded my head, each one seeking to be heard above the rest.

Even children unloved by their parents seek to understand them

Come to us

Find us

Understand us

“You killed my friends! Hunter died stopping you! You killed good ponies! I’ll never trust you!”

Tragedy blinds truth child of darkness born in darkness cannot understand the only one only one left not worthy not worthy come to us your only hope do not trust the Wyrm must see the truth must see see see SEE

I opened my eyes.

The first thing I saw was blood. Fresh blood. On the ground, all over the walls, all over me. I recoiled, frightened and confused whimpers catching in my throat. I stumbled over something large and fleshy, and realized it was a body. Bodies everywhere. All around me, twisted and broken and freshly killed, were the corpses of cerberus dogs. An entire pack, even shaggy, ferocious alphas, had been slaughtered by... something. I stood up again and looked over the scene of the massacre. The dogs were all dead beyond a doubt, but what had killed them? No bullet holes marked their bodies or the walls, but fresh bruises covered them, and broken bones jutted gruesomely from their limbs at strange angles. They’d been pummeled to death, as if somepony had taken a lead pipe to their heads... or used their hooves...

Did I do this?

I looked down at my blood covered fur and squirmed, frantically trying to wipe myself off, which of course got me nowhere. The pit in my stomach grew larger until I felt empty. Somehow all I could think of was how I was going to smell terrible once this all dried.

I hopped and skipped gingerly over the bodies, keeping my eyes forward to block out the terrible sight and the awful conclusion that I’d just torn apart an entire pack of monsters without even seeing them. The Dark Ones and their infernal magic must have been involved. I couldn’t do something like this. I wasn’t that special. I didn’t want to be...

I fell against another doorway, tearing off my gasmask without even caring if I was still in a dangerous area. I took a deep breath of the cold, empty air and felt my lungs spasm. At least the stabbing pain of oxygen deprivation got my mind off the terrible hallway behind me. I pushed my mask back on and curled into a heaving, wretched ball, closing my eyes and my mind to everything around me. I just wanted to be left alone to fulfill my mission. Was that so much to ask?

It was many minutes before I remembered why I was here, that Sidewinder and the others still needed my guidance. I couldn’t just shut myself away if ponies were still in danger.

Get up. Don’t do it for the Dark Ones, or yourself. For them. For Sunny and Father and Hunter and everypony else you care about.

I uncurled my sore limbs and stood up, knocking my head on the door in front of me. To my surprise it swung right open. A label above it read ‘Decontamination.’ I didn’t remember getting here, but I did remember the strange, rushing feeling of being pulled along against my will when the Dark Ones invaded my mind. Whatever they’d done, it seemed they wanted me to succeed against the cultists so they could bring me closer to them. Was I the only force here that honestly just wanted to help ponies?

Not that the ponies I wanted to help were any more deserving...

No. Just focus on the mission. I shook my head and stepped inside.

My light shone over a series of terminals, each of them labeled. Over them rested two large windows, both of them covered in a thick layer of grime and dust. I brushed my hoof over it and opened up a patch to see through. It was dark outside... no, there was light from below. I craned my neck and pushed my masked head against the glass. Down below rested the agitated mass of the Hydra. Three of its heads patrolled around the bottom of the pit; the others must have been trying to hunt my companions. I went straight to the one marked “Cleansing Turbine A” and saw a little light on the panel was blinking green. Without hesitation I pushed one of the buttons... nothing. I reached for my radio.

“Sidewinder?”

“Lockbox?!” Sidewinder’s voice barked back at me. “You’re still alive? You told me you’d call back in less than an hour!

“Pardon me?”

“It’s been almost two hours! We’ve been trying to contact you but we stopped when more of them came by.”

I shuddered involuntarily. “Sidewinder, I...” I stopped, unwilling or unable to go on. I didn’t want to spook them. I hadn’t called them once during my ordeal with the vision... perhaps that was the work of the Dark Ones. I felt sick and stupid, realizing they’d made me their puppet while I was fiddling with my earth pony magic.

“More of what?” I asked instead.

“Lurkers. The ratty bastards must be feeding off the Hydra’s leftovers. We stumbled into a whole nest... Green Bay’s in bad shape and Hot Pocket got chewed up. We used up most of our medical supplies just getting them back in fighting shape.”

I winced. At least none of them were dead. Yet. I pulled out the building schematics and laid them over the console. “Sidewinder, listen. I have a plan. I’m in some kind of control room for the whole basin! It seems ready to activate some kind of purification process that could kill the Hydra before it even finds us again. We don’t have to waste a single bullet on this thing.”

“Oh. Well, that would explain the large amounts of turbines and generators we’re surrounded by.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Well, that’s where your directions led us, wasn’t it? You said you had a map and you’d lead us to where we needed to go! It would’ve been nice if you told us exactly why- hey!”

I heard the sound of fumbling and a struggle before Ruby’s voice assaulted my ears.

“Lockbox, you stupid, stupid stallion! I have no idea what the hell you’re planning, but we just waded through a fucking carpet of lurkers and radioactive shit to get here! Tell us what’s going on now!”

My head spun as I tried to rein in my emotions. Anger and indignation that I’d been the Dark Ones’ marionette, impatience at Ruby, anxiety over everything I’d been through so far. I pushed a hoof against my temple and spoke as clearly as I could through the mask.

“Is there any way to turn on the generators from where you are?”

“Hell no! We’re gonna have to do it manually. What’s your plan?”

“Turn on the water purifier. The magic inside will kill the Hydra! That thing is practically bleeding poison and corruption. Purifying it will destroy it like any common puddle of grime.”

“This better fucking work. I’ll get back to you.”

I sat down against the console, listening to the distant hissing of the Hydra as I tried to control my fearful shivering. Tapping into the earth’s flow of magic was now more dangerous than ever. If it opened my mind to the Dark Ones, who knew what else lay in wait to wear me like a suit of flesh? And those dogs outside... what if they made me do that to other ponies?

“Damn you,” I whispered. “Damn all of you monsters. I’m not safe even using the magic I was born with...”

I lay in a confused huddle on the floor, hearing the Hydra occasionally wail or roar in frustration. I watched the door as the seconds dragged on into minutes, waiting for something to break in and frighten me anew. Paranoia and fear slithered around the edges of my consciousness, waiting for an opportunity to grab hold. If I could be so easily taken, I was a danger to everypony around me. I thought of Sunny Side, and how it was good that he was no longer with me if the Dark Ones turned me into a personal assassin again.

“I’ll find you all right,” I whispered to the shadowy doorway. “And when I do I’m going to destroy all of you.”

“Lockbox,” Ruby said, sounding subdued. “Lockbox, there’s a problem.”

“What now?”

“One of the arcane circuits is down. One of us is going to have to do it ourselves.”

“What’s the problem? Didn’t you do it?”

“I opened a circuit. I didn’t make myself one. I’m looking at the power this thing says it needs. It’s way more than I thought a unicorn can do, or even any other pony.”

My stomach plummeted.

“One of us probably isn’t getting out of here.”

I sat back against the console, staring off into space. The Dark Ones had used my mouth—my mouth—to lead my compatriots to that place. So they could choose a sacrifice for my grand plan. So that another pony would lie down on the altar instead of me. They’d led them down there to maximize the chances of my plan succeeding, of me going forward.

My voice sounded dull and lifeless. “There has to be another way.”

“There isn’t, short of spontaneously gaining the ability to repair arcane circuits and a working knowledge of high-magic gemcraft.”

The room spun as I stared at the far wall, feeling empty and distant from my own body. It was done. My efforts were in vain. Loose Nut was dead, most of Ruby’s other companions were, why not another? Why not another…

Because they were a pony. Because they deserved better. Every last one of us did. But it was the only way. The only way we’d ever been given a chance to take. The only way we were being given.

“Who… who is it going to be?” I whispered without even pushing the transmit button. I figured they were going to be deciding that for themselves. I wondered, for a brief moment, if I could trust them to do that. If I could trust one to decide to make the sacrifice for the many. Would they abandon me? Would my silly, sacrificial ideals be too much? They had to know the stakes. They had to know what we must do to get out of here. Listen to me, trying to rationalize and justify the deaths of ponies I claimed to want to save! Some savior I was. I’d already killed so many I might as well be a pony angel of death than some wannabe hero. I wasn’t even close to Ponyopolis yet. Hunter would figure a way out of this. But I was nothing and nopony. More and more I felt like a silly boy who’d lucked upon mysterious powers he couldn’t even control and a mission he was bound to die doing. All I could do was sit and wait while they talked it out.

“Lockbox.”

Brick-a-brack’s voice. I raised the radio and spoke dully.

“Yes?”

“I’m going in.”

I didn’t know what to say. I had no apology, no explanation that would explain why he had to die so I could keep going.

I remembered Ray Drop and began to cry.

“I…”

There was an eternal moment of silence.

“Thank you.”

“…Yeah.”

Then came nothing but total, utter silence that roared in my ears and mingled with the roar of the Hydra below.

It seemed hours had gone by before Sidewinder called again.

“Lockbox,” he said, “it’s done.”

I stood up and looked out the window, tears in my eyes as I stared down the Hydra one more time. It was a monster made of corruption that deserved, even needed death. A creature of a dying world that I was putting out of its misery from a slow death of starvation and radiation.

I felt my filter grow thick and clogged, and punched in a new once as I spoke to the monster.

“Who knows how many ponies you’ve killed?” I wondered. “You’re just a creature. An animal… made horrible by the waste of our war.”

I watched the buttons on the console light up and the distant whir of old machines echo through the walls. The Hydra’s heads perked up and began to circle the floor of the basin once again. They sensed some kind of danger, but had no way of knowing it was right above them.

“Everything about this world was made horrible by our bad choices,” I said, my hoof hovering over the button that would initiate the process and send the beast to its doom. “But why does that mean we’re the ones who still have to suffer? We didn’t drop the bombs. We didn’t start the War. We’re all living in the ashes of our forebears. Maybe one day, the Elements of Harmony will come back to us. But not while we’re being threatened by creatures like you.”

I hesitated a moment longer.

“I suppose I should say I’m sorry for lumping all the ponies I’ve shot in with you. The line is blurred now and I don’t really know who I’m protecting and who I’m gunning down. A bad pony just made a good decision, sacrificing himself to make this place safe and clear the way for his friends. If a murderer and a thief can make that kind of decision, should I have killed anypony at all? Should I be killing you? There’s never anything that will let me take back all the bad I’ve done, is there? No matter if I kill the Dark Ones, you and all the rest I’ve done away with will always be dead.”

The Hydra answered with a loud hiss of undirected rage.

“All I know is you’re in my way, and I have to get rid of you because my instincts and strong ponies told me to.”

My hoof pressed the button.

“I guess we’ll see when this is over who was the bigger monster here.”

I watched the ancient propellers begin to spin below the dirty water, draining it out with a loud whoosh. The Hydra went crazy, pieces of it being sucked down into the huge blades, chopped to pieces. The heads thrashed and wailed in unison. Along the walls, in pipes that drained water in the basin, old etchings of runes and magic spells lit up, arcane symbols painting the walls all around the vat. Gemstones I hadn’t noticed before flared to life and glowed with all the colors of the rainbows I’d read about in books.

The Hydra screeched as the water began to glow a pale pinkish color, growing and growing in brightness until I had to shield my eyes. I could only listen as the Hydra screamed and hissed, loud enough to almost crack the glass and force me back a few steps. The glow spread from the water up into the necks of the Hydra’s heads and they thrashed against the walls, tearing up the room. Veins of pulsating light spread over the fleshy mass of its body and cracked it open. Glowing embers of dead skin flaked off the heaving, twitching ulcer like snowflakes.

My hooves tingled with the feeling of powerful magic radiating through the floor. Clean magic. I closed my eyes and savored the taste of a world that, for one tiny moment in a small hole in the ground, was wiped free of taint. This machine that had once provided clean water to most of the city, now the Metro, was being used as my executioner’s axe. The Hydra didn’t necessarily deserve to die. It was just in my way, like so many others had been. I almost felt sorry for it.

Almost.

The noise and light went on for a few minutes at least, and the Hydra eventually stopped twitching. The heads were almost completely dissolved now, nothing left but snaking trails of crumbling vertebrae and a few sizzling teeth. The pulsing body was a giant hunk of melting rainbow goop. Even though most of it had melted away into the pipes below, it was still a colossal pile of garbage. And that was that. It once had been a living creature, and now it was just a puddle of waste.

Another light came on, highlighting the words “Detox complete-Begin drainage.”

I watched the gemstones suddenly sputter and die, and the clean pink glow faded abruptly. The sounds of machinery halted.

I raised the radio.

“Sidewinder? It’s done.”

“Yeah? It’s safe to go?”

“Yeah. It’s safe. The Hydra’s dead. We should be able to-”

“The monster is slain. You have survived and the test is passed. You may exit through any door, Shadow Walker. The Wyrm will be watching you with great interest from here on out.”

The announcement faded through the old PA system. I waited until the echo stopped before speaking again.

“We should be able to leave now.”

“Looks like it. We’ll meet you back where we came in.”

When we met, nopony commented on the dry blood that now crusted onto my clothing and sent up a reeking smell all around me. We all smelled like shit and felt like it too, anyway. Ruby Red didn’t have anything to say to me. She didn’t even look at me, only at the space around me. When I tried to approach, she threw something in my face: a small gemstone that wasn’t cut like the ones used for power or energy storage. It was opaque and blue, and smoothed down to a polished sheen.

“Lucky charm of his,” Ruby muttered. “Sidewinder said you’d ask for something like that.”

I pocketed it and turned back to Sidewinder, who leaned on a nearby wall, watching me with an inscrutable smile. I sniffed and turned away, following the others up more stairs. At the top we felt our breathing became easier and pulled off our masks. We sat in silence, though I couldn’t call it companionable. Nopony looked at me, and I knew they blamed me for everything that had happened so far. I wasn’t angry at them for thinking so. If it weren’t for all this, for me running out into the dark, it might be that they’d have died more on their own terms than in a strange place far from home on a mission they didn’t want to be on. Only Theo seemed halfway friendly, and he just put a hoof on my shoulder and let it stay there, offering a somewhat consoling stare.

And so we just sat, saying nothing until Green Bay stood up again and Juniper with him. The rest of us followed. I went to the front of the group again, and nopony complained.

We followed a path I outlined, tromped up stairs and came to a small side tunnel deeper into the dark, which led to a long tunnel with a small door at the end.

All around it were clustered the Cultists of the Wyrm.

We stared at one another for several tense moments. I heard Ruby’s gun click, ready to fire. The cultists did nothing. I took a step forward, and they all took a step back, parting away from me. Their blank eyes and tattooed faces watched us in serene, eerie silence as we all started trotting down the hallway. Some bowed their heads or averted their gaze. Many others stood as still and silent as the grave, with gasmasks covering their faces and heavy armor adorning their bodies. I had to admire the craftponyship that went into their weapons; none of them looked worse than what we had, with our Ranger-made gear. We walked the gauntlet in wary silence, pointing our guns in their faces. They didn’t even blink, only watched, heads slowly turning as we passed.

“You See,” said a mare in a raspy whisper whom I deduced was a so-called Prophet by the snake tattoos on her cheeks. “And he sees you. They all do.”

I ignored her and pushed open the doorway. We filed out in complete silence, and I took one last look at the crowd behind us. They all looked at me, empty eyes chilling the blood in my veins.

“They See you, Lockbox,” whispered one last voice before I shut the door.

/-/-/-/

The Metro tunnels greeted us again as we climbed a small ladder out of what appeared to be a maintenance tunnel. The familiar cold and all-encompassing dark of a two-way passage was a sight for sore eyes. All we had to do was claw our way through a nest of thumpers, which scattered at the sound of our guns.

“Shit,” muttered Hot Pocket when we finally came out to what the Guide declared was the Orange Line. It looked like a tunnel of death and decay and smelled like it too, and I’d never been happier to see it. “I never thought I’d be glad to see the fucking Metro again. How long were we in there?”

“Does it matter?” Ruby snapped. “We’re out. We can finally keep moving. Buck me sideways and drop the Sun, Lockbox, what the fuck was all that?!”

Her familiar temper was back on the flip of a coin. I was too tired and too guilty to do anything but stare back at her in complete silence until she finally scoffed and turned away.

“Got my ponies killed,” she grumbled. “Almost my whole team wiped out… delayed by Celestia knows how long… it’s your fucking fault, Lockbox. All your fucking fault!”

My ears twitched as the echoes of her voice faded down the line. I shrugged.

“Maybe. But we’re alive, aren’t we? We need to keep moving.”

Her punch was clumsy and easily dodged. I surprised even myself with how fast I moved; perhaps my reflexes were beginning to be honed. Ruby tried again and missed, then turned to her magic. I hurtled into a wall and stayed there, pinned five feet above the ground and upside down. Ruby’s snarl filled my vision.

“This isn’t over, Lockbox! I should’ve shot you the moment I saw you! I should’ve let Steel Crescent beat the shit out of you!”

She whipped out her shotgun and leveled it at me.

“Hell, I should fucking shoot you right now!”

I closed my eyes, feeling strangely at peace.

“But you won’t,” I whispered. “Because you know that won’t help.”

“Why? I can always lie to Buttercup.”

“It’s not about that.”

I opened my eyes and looked right into hers, wide and alive with confusion and inconsolable rage.

“It’s because you still believe in me. That’s why you didn’t before. It’s why you didn’t kill me after Brick jumped into the generator and why you gave me something of his. Deep down you must still think I’m right somewhere.”

Instead of buckshot, the butt of her gun cracked against my cheek. The others stood and watched, too shocked to do anything to help either way.

“You bitch!” she screamed at me. “You think you intimidate me?!”

“Maybe not,” I said, tasting the blood in my mouth. Remarkable how that was starting to become almost routine. “But you sure as hell don’t intimidate me.”

Ruby almost shot me then. She aimed for the ceiling instead, then dropped her magic field and let me tumble to the ground, ears ringing from her gun’s discharge. I stood back up, dusted my mane off and started walking, leaving Ruby to fume and stare at the wall.

Theo caught up with me.

“How did… how did you know she wouldn’t kill you?” he asked.

“I didn’t,” I replied. “I took a chance like everything else. But I must have said something right.”

I heard Sidewinder laugh.

Our next stop was the station of Zevyarsk, which had been struck hard by plague several years ago and never recovered. It was a small place, the closest to the water treatment plant in this section of the Metro and firmly under the control of the Guild of Magic. It’s only claim to fame was that it lay on the Ring, and therefore also had connections to Hoofsa. The plague had shut down trade, but it had reopened a while ago.

The mood was somber and stayed that way. Everypony was fully aware that they had left most of their friends, ponies they’d known and fought with for years, in the facility behind us. Either by the persuasive tongue of Nexus, or the jaws of the Metro itself, they were gone for good. I wondered if their ghosts would haunt Nopony’s ghost tunnel for eternity now.

Nopony… strange that I still remembered him, the one who said he was living in the background. I wondered whatever had become of him.

At the furthest checkpoint from Zevyarsk, Guild guards greeted us.

“So who in Tartarus exactly would come from that direction and still be in their right minds?” asked a thin unicorn mare in heavy plate armor that hung off her slender limbs. Her well-kept orange fur contrasted with her cool blue mane. She commanded eleven other stallions, all earth ponies save one other unicorn.

“Ruby Red,” our angry leader snarled. “And don’t fuck with me! I’m on a tight schedule to get into Republic territory further south.”

“Huh. Did you come through the treatment plant?”

“Yes, we did. Now piss off and let me through. Everypony in this section of the Metro knows my name and I don’t need some prissy-ass skank like you wasting more of my time!”

The other mare chewed on a lock of her cool blue mane.

“Uh huh,” she said airily. “Yeah. Okay, I think I know what to do. Lemme get my boss.”

Ruby Red growled and kicked the air, but in the face of a dozen Guild guards, even she was relatively powerless. I looked over the fortifications; they’d clearly expected some kind of cultist incursion given the small bunker they’d set up out of sheet metal. I found it curious how they were so ready to defend yet refused to go back in and take what was theirs. Perhaps the cultists and the Hydra was too much even for the might of the Guild? Half their guards had to have been nothing but paid thugs if they were that ineffective…

“Hey,” the mare said as she returned with another large unicorn dressed almost entirely in thick clothes and heavy armor. A smug, smiling face under a shockingly purple mane told me at once that something was wrong. That and the new squad of heavily armed and armored unicorns that had come with him. I heard the others take a step back as they tromped up to us.

“This is my boss, Captain Feather Plume.”

“So, you kiddos are the ones who made it through the reclamation center, eh?” he asked. I stepped forward before Ruby Red could shoot him in the face, which she seemed more than ready to do.

“Yes, we are. We have some vital information for the Guild as well. The Hydra infesting the facility is dead.”

The Captain raised an eyebrow, his smile still on his face as he turned to me.

“Oh. A Hydra, you say? What a strange thing! We’ve been trying to kill that little bugger for weeks now! And you say it’s dead?”

“It is.”

“And you found it in the main decontamination basin.”

“… Yes.”

“So what you’re telling me is that its dead body is now fouling up the pipes and probably overwhelmed the detox enchantments with the sheer volume of poisons now seeping into the water.”

I remembered the gems going dark, the drainage process never completing. My eye twitched.

“Yes,” I said through gritted teeth. “But it’s dead. You can fix it now.”

“Not for several months, if ever, during which time the entire eastern Metro will be suffering a severe shortage of clean water.” His smile grew thin and strained. “You and your little friends just admitted to what is essentially an act of anarchy that we will need an explanation for. Sure, the Hydra’s dead. But we always knew that killing it would cause as many problems as it would solve.”

I felt a horrible pit open up in my stomach. I managed to croak out an answer.

“You were never going to kill it yourselves. You just needed an excuse to-”

“-make ourselves look clean when the extent of the problem became clear. Yes indeed, my little friend.”

He pointed a hoof. “Immobilize them.”

Ruby and Hot Pocket’s horns flared, but they were overtaken almost immediately by seven powerful unicorns all doing their best to overpower them. I felt magic tugging at my hooves and lift me off the ground. I fired wildly into the crowd, clipping a guard on the shoulder before the telekinetic field swung me hard into a wall. My helmet took the worst of the blow, but I was still too dazed to bother fighting back as another field snatched my gun away. I heard more guns firing and ponies shouting, Juniper screaming.

I summoned my connection to the earth and pushed myself up and through the magical field surrounding me. I felt something like fibers tearing all around me as I ripped the unicorn’s magic away from me, overpowering it with earth pony grit. Locking onto the nearest guard I charged right at him, screaming obscenities. I felt apart from myself, like I was watching my own actions from somewhere in the back of my mind, peering out through the constricted viewports at the front of my head.

I saw the guard calmly level a gun in my direction. I saw a flash of light, felt searing heat as something crashed into my front left leg.

I dropped like a bag of cinder blocks, eyes so wide my lids hurt. I turned back to my fellows. Ruby Red was on the ground, bleeding from a head wound. Juniper had finally cracked and cried quietly near the body of Green Bay, who had died with bullets in his chest and a knife in his mouth. He’d managed to kill one of the guards, draped over the still twitching body. Hot Pocket stood over Ruby Red, glowering as he levitated a gun with no magazine.

Sidewinder had given up, hooves in the air. Theo was nowhere to be seen.

“Ruby Red, you and your compatriots may return to your little hideout,” Captain Feather Plume said with a little toss of his head. “We needed a body to go with the story.” He waved a hoof at Green Bay. “This one’ll do nicely. ‘Anarchists foul water plant, attempt suicide attack on Guild outpost.’ That sounds good, don’t you think?”

The shock was starting to dissipate. The pain replaced it. I hissed and drew my legs in, looking sorrowfully at the hole left by the guard’s bullet. Oh, mind-numbing agony! How I’d missed you so.

“We’ll kill you for this!” Ruby spat. “You lying scum-sucking motherbucking traitors! After what we did for you!”

“What you don’t do is attack our caravans,” Feather Plume said with a sigh. “And in exchange we stay neutral in Buttercup’s wars with Hoofsa and whoever else she irks. Killing all of you would just strain our relationship... we know how much she favors you, Ruby... so we won’t. She won’t go after us for this.”

“You killed Green Bay!”

“There are many lunatics in the Metro. He’ll be easily replaced and hardly missed. Like most of you bandits.”

I lay on the ground, curling around my wound and watching the blood seep out, pumping out of my veins in time with my racing heart. Like I was a little bottle of sauce broken on the floor. I found that thought strangely hilarious and began to chuckle. Feather Plume turned to me.

“This one is a little different.”

“Of course! Of course I am!” I sputtered in between giggles, holding my bleeding hoof and laughing at the blood that refused to stop streaming out. “I’m different! I’m special! Take me away to the special place!”

“You and Sidewinder. Somepony has a grudge against you two. Apparently you pissed somepony off in the Fort. They want you to suffer. Cut a deal with us. His terms were that you were given the most painful punishment we could imagine. And for destroying our water purifier, I think a few lifetimes in the slave pits of the Lunar Republic will do you a world of good.”

I felt an anvil drop into my stomach, but it didn’t stop my sputtering giggles. I was so different. I was so special. I suffered so much because this was how it was always going to be, wasn’t it? Lockbox, Shadow Walker, the pony who tried to be a hero and now was going to be a slave in the worst pony-made hell in the Metro.

Sidewinder, oddly, wasn’t laughing. In fact, for the first time since I’d met him, he looked like a lost, forlorn little colt like those I saw orphaned after mutant attacks or bandit raids. I found that hilarious too. It all made so much sense. My life was a giant black hole of misery and I could make even the descendant of Laughter itself stop laughing. It was all just too funny.

I laughed as they picked me up and dragged me away and led Sidewinder off at gunpoint. Ruby Red didn’t stop them. She just stared at me with the weirdest look on her face, like she wanted to say something but couldn’t. So my misery had left the greatest shouter in the world speechless. I found that funny too.

I laughed when they pulled me, still bleeding, through the docks of the sad little station. I laughed when they dragged me past a sign that read “Hoofsa Transport” and threw me into a rail car with Sidewinder, both of us stripped of all our belongings. I felt serene and happy. The world all around me was inundated with a fuzzy, warm haze. Nothing seemed important anymore. I remembered stories of the Republic slave pits with an odd, detached feeling. Ponies went there to work until they died. They were eaten by feral Diamond Dog slaves. They festered in squalor and plague. What a wonderful fate for a hero.

I chuckled and snorted as I lay back, clutching my still bleeding hoof that was bound to be useless if I didn’t get attention soon. Maybe they’d cut it off. A working earth pony with only three legs. Ha ha.

I laughed at the squeal of the rail car’s wheels, at how the gaping mouth of a tunnel seemed to be yet another monster ready to swallow me, at the funny little hole in my leg that the black-red sauce just wouldn’t stop pouring out and got all over everything, at how nothing seemed important anymore. All the lights seemed brighter, and I thought of the Dark Ones and my father, and Hunter and my promise how pointless it all seemed if I was just going to go from one torment to the next. I laughed and laughed and laughed, all the way down to hell.

Then I turned over and saw a pony I had given up hope of seeing a long, long time ago. A floppy, ratty brown mane covered dull, listless eyes. A dirty orange coat contrasted with the cold, rusty metal of the rail car. I looked at him. He looked at me. He turned away to lie on his stomach and I saw the treasure chest cutie mark on his flank.

I settled back with a happy sigh and laughed my life away.

Everything was perfect now.

Comments

[The philosopher]

Woohoo! New chapter! Also, would you mind if I put a small allusion to this story in one of my fics? Just a little Easter egg, thought I should ask first.

[Reaper1oo]

Blast, this will take me all day to finish.
Probably will be worth it though.

[Tanglemane]

I have missed my dose of bitterly lyrical PA pony goodness.

Thoroughly enjoyed.

[BlankSpaceUsername]

The only bad part about this chapter is that I have to wait for he next.

[Srake]

All of my hype.

[ImChangingmynameforreaso]

One question before I read, do I need to have played Metro 2033 to get it?

And the second question that I only now thought of: How dark does it get? We talking you may need a flashlight dark, or darker than a nun's ass? Or even darker still?

[Reaper1oo]

1373060
I was right, it was worth it!
No to wait like the lurkers we readers are.

1379053
I don't find that one needs it beyond the occasional creature.
I predict a rise in NVD purchases.

[Connelly]

1379053 Though most of the development it's being fairly original, it's mostly a retelling of the plot in the book and the game, so you shouldn't need to play or read. But if you are interested anyway, Steam is doing a sale on Metro 2033 this weekend, so you could take a look. No idea of where to find the book, though.

And yes, it's very dark, with a fair amount of violence and gore, but mostly on a character driven sense and atmosphere.

[PresentPerfect]

It's always a good day when there's more MLM to be read. :3

Whoa! What a take on the hydra!

"and we really pissed off": missing 'it'

Hot Pocket is tastiest pony. Please tell me he's the one who almost got eaten. XD

Yeah, Ruby, you fuckin' deserved it, too! >:B

Oh god, Sidewinder, you are the best. He is seriously amazing.

"I tried not to let the I couldn't see it too well": not sure what happened here

"Hey, suka!": is that supposed to be "sucker"? It should be spelled "sucka" in that case.

Crap, I don't remember who this guy is. c.c

Yay, Russian!

Best plan.

GO PACKERS

Nice to see unicorns actually improvising with real magic like that.

"the parts I'd seen was only": subject-verb agreement

YES! It's about time they did something. :D You could cut their sexual tension with a knife for at least two chapters now!

Okay, Green Bay is awesome. "I got a knife." I love this guy.

Ah, my old nemesis: a tunnel full of shit.

"thick,and": missing a space

"realized I was looking water": missing 'at'

Oh man, this hydra or whatever it is. @_@

I like that he's thinking of them as his ponies now.

"recoiled and doze": think you meant 'dove'

Whew, this is fucking intense. Thank you, Brick.

Holy shit, that was amazing.

The only thing creepier than fanatical cultists wanting to kill you is fanatical cultists who respect you. Surprised you didn't end the chapter there.

I wonder what's become of Nopony as well.

Aw, shit. D:

Dammit, I just knew Green Bay was going to die! D:

I like this commander. He's a serious dickhole.

Wow. This may be the best chapter of this story yet.

[The philosopher]

1379053You will need a flashlight at some points, but typically the dark works to your advantage(against bandits, nazis, and reds stealth is involved) or is easily remedied by the flashlight.

[Fasdaff]

Brilliant chapter as always, and torturous ending, as always.

[Damhoof]

Perfect ending. I like the fact that you didn`t go for a cliffhanger and instead allowed things to play out in a perfect hymn of misery and company. Gj redsquirrel. GJ.

[Jenetikitty]

This was fantastic! I can't wait for there to be more to read~

[The Shtebbie]

1395542 I know that this is a late reply,
But 'suka' is 'bitch' in Russian.

[The Shtebbie]

Oh. For anyone who's interested.

i.imgur.com/vgNbR.jpg

The Haunted Tunnels. Led to the Anomaly.

i.imgur.com/XmvJt.jpg

The Anomaly. Led into Cursed Station, where Artyom must blow up two tunnels that lead into the station, where Nosalises are attacking.

Just to help with imagery.

[jackbenv]

I truly loved this fanfic so far. I hope you'll keep writing this. Don't let us hanging please :)

[Dolbik]

[redsquirrel456]

2093517

AHHHHHH OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG

[Shachza]

I don't know how I feel about finding this story here after so long. It's so good. But chapter 8 put me into a month-long depression.

God that sounds so sad now.

Fuck it. This is on my favorites if for nothing else than nostalgia. I'll get around to catching up some year. I swear.

[Dolbik]

[Bluecore]

2318093
After Dead Island, I hated Deep Silver...but this, this looks promising :D

[Dolbik]

[the other sans]

I tried not to let the I couldn’t see it too well
pulled me to Ruby’s position We were squeezed
An badly aimed shot

1. Uhh, what?
2. Forgot your full stop.
3. A.