Fizzlepop
Fizzlepop was in pain as she awoke, her vision blurry and her skull pulsating. She came to her senses quickly enough, though, and saw herself in locked in a cage. Said cage seemed to be within the remnants of an exercise room, filled with twisted, broken equipment meant to build muscle and lose weight. She was only wearing her cloak; her guitar was nowhere near her or on her, likely confiscated from the Wretched Hive. She growled at the theft; she would crush these ghouls like their namesakes when the time came. And that time would come soon, once she escaped from this cage.
"Ah, you're awake."
The scarred Unicorn turned her head to see another in the cage with her- a Griffon, with a long, thick beak, a feathered half with ebony-black feathers, a leonine half with ash-grey skin, and scarlet-red eyes. He had his wings bound to his body with what seemed to be some giant metal cuff, ensuring that he wouldn't fly away(assumedly in a situation where he would have to be moved from one place to another). The tips of his feathers seemed to be graying, and he certainly looked old.
"Where are we?"
"Deep within the Roaches' camp here. This place is set up around an old motel that they decided to repurpose."
"Overnight?"
"Working together can do wonders, I'll give it that."
She turned away, grunting. "Hardly. I've always been better off on my own. I've been like that ever since I was a foal."
"So, you're saying you've survived on your own for one-hundred seventy-five years?"
She snapped her head back towards him. "I never told you that I was a ghoul or alive for that long."
"Yes, you did." the old Griffon chuckled, smirking mischievously.
She was about to object- and she stopped.
She had told him that, just now, by saying that. She buried her face in her hooves, groaning in defeat.
"Oldest trick in the book." the stranger stated, maintaining his triumphant grin. "In all seriousness, you've just wandered and lived on your own all this time? I mean, it's nice just having time to yourself and all, but I don't actively seek out solitude; I accept help whenever it presents itself."
"It's the only way to survive. I learned long ago that you can't trust anypony, and that's even more true now that everyone is either a social Darwinist, in some aspect, or a corpse."
"So that other fella you were brought in with... that wasn't a partnership?"
"Well, alright, it was. But I wasn't naively placing my trust in him, and we were both working toward the common goal of getting out of the area. He had suggested going into the city to evade them- a folly concealed in the plaster mask of a well-thought plan. If anything, this further cements my reasoning for not trusting anyone."
"A 'folly concealed in the plaster mask of a well-thought plan', eh? One that it seems you agreed with, since you are clearly here with the lad- if not in the same place, at least. Riddle me this, stranger- who's the bigger fool, the fool, or the individual who listens to them?"
"I wasn't exactly plenty of ideas myself, and as I had said before, we were working together towards a common goal. Nothing more, nothing less."
"Even if you weren't placing full trust in him, you still trusted his plan enough to go along with it- not to mention trust him enough to believe he'll keep his end of the deal and not leave you to die with these Roaches. A tad contradictory for somepony who's worldview is, 'don't trust anyone'."
Struggling to come up with a reprisal, she merely said, "I do what I must to survive," before turning away from the Griffon again.
A few minutes of silence between them. "So," Fizzlepop asked him, "how did you end up here?"
"I was an on-the-go prisoner; they tried to drag off an unfortunate stallion on their way over here, and when I tried to stop them, well... all I did was get us both captured."
Another few instances of silence. Not even turning to face the Griffon this time, she asked him, "So... now that they have us, what do they do to us?"
"They hold gladiatorial matches with the prisoners they have. They'll be throwing either me, you, or both of us in the pool not too far from here and pit us against one of the drones, who's typically drugged up with something random before the fights even begin. The sucker apparently gets to keep the gear confiscated from the respective prisoner or prisoners if they win."
"And what happens if we win?"
"We don't. If you succeed in killing the first bastard they send your way, they continue to throw fighters at you, each competitor stronger than the last, until you die. How do I know, you may ask?"
He chuckled morosely, until continuing.
"Remember that stallion I mentioned earlier? The one I tried to save? They sent him in. He held his own against as much as a soldier high on Stampede before he died; his last opponent was the force's Twisted, Radroach. The poor kid was too weak to even run at that point... at least one punch was all it took to finally end his suffering."
Fizzlepop's ears perked up. "What's a Twisted, I may ask?"
"Big sons-of-a-guns, warped and transformed by excessive amounts of balefire radiation. From what little I've heard around here, Wretched Hive members who consume too much love from the radiation-afflicted ponies around them become these... though it may be wrong. To be honest, I care less about how they came to be, and I care more about how we could make them cease to be. Preferably involving high-powered weaponry."
Fizzlepop actually knew rudimentary little about the Wretched Hive; all she really cared was that they were easily the most powerful faction in the wastelands and that merely surviving a squadron of one took a combination of copious amounts of firepower, intelligence, and luck- and as such preferred to avoid them at all costs. Perhaps knowing how what little government they had worked would be useful in future encounters- provided she ever escaped from here, which was unlikely, at least as of now.
She heard the clopping of hooves, and the cage was approached by multiple drones, armed and ready to kill if the hostages within tried anything. They unlocked the gate, crowding around the gate and discouraging escape.
"C'mon, you two. Let's go."