//------------------------------// // Chapter Two: The One Where a Sexy Siren Shows Up... Also Apples // Story: I Met a Pony In Hell (And We Kicked Ass Together) // by shortskirtsandexplosions //------------------------------//         “Just how do they expect to make Tartarus a worse place from all of these violent combat exercises?” Lyra remarked as we marched onwards.  “I mean, if they were simply torturing us in one of their dungeons, perhaps such repetitious experimentation would make sense.  But do they actually plan to abduct souls from the two worlds every millennium and turn them into dying warriors for eternity?  Just how does that accomplish the will of Sisyphus' Dark Lord?”         I groaned, my body slumping as I trudged a few steps ahead of her.  “For the last time, Lyra, I haven't got a clue.  Maybe this is the Comic-Con of Hell.  I mean, we’re already dressed stupidly for it.”         Her face scrunched in thought as she trotted behind me.  “Tartarus was a dimension forged to contain the most detestable monsters in Equestria.  What they want with humans like you is beyond me, unless of course your realm somehow dabbled with this place as well.  Does human civilization have records of the existence and purpose of Tartarus?”         “Kind of.  It’s a place in the Greek Mythological Underworld, a lame boss at the end of Halo 2, and probably the name of several sex clubs in Germany.”         “Huh?”         “Nnnngh... Look, I really can't help you with your questions, Lyra.”         “Is it because you don't know, or because you've never practiced magic?”         “How many times do I have to tell you?”  I groaned and frowned back at her.  “There ain't no magic where I come from.”         “I find that hard to believe.”         I sighed and walked a little faster.         She galloped until she was at an even pace with me.  Her soft face smiled from beneath her silver helmet.  “Humans are such remarkable creatures, and you've got an amazing range of emotions!  No race is ever born so vastly different and unique by total accident!”         “Just because I was born with webbed toes doesn't mean that fairies live next door to me, Lyra.”         “You have fairies in your world?!”         “No—I... Nngh...”  I ran a hand over my face, sighed, and glanced down at her.  “I was being sarcastic.  Look—Lyra—can we just be quiet for a little while?  I really, really need to think.”         Lyra blinked.  She gazed at the vast, barren, unblemished platform stretching before us.  She looked at me again.  “Think about what?”         “Just can it for a little while!”         She bit her lip and hung her head in a lethargic trot beside me.         I took a deep breath and painfully drank in the sights above and before us.  This was the largest chamber we had entered by far.  For the past hour, we had been marching across the subterranean immensity of the place.  To me, it looked like some impossibly huge furnace that had burnt out years ago.  A dim glow permeated the rusted landscape.  I couldn't even begin to guess the nature of the light source.  Then again, everything was ass-backwards about that place.  Lyra was right about a few things: Tartarus existed only to make people fucking miserable.  I had no doubt that something hideous somewhere was watching every move we made.  That was kind of the reason why I wanted absolute silence, besides the fact that I was this close to ripping Lyra's tongue out.         I couldn't be too harsh on the pony, really.  After all, she did save my lousy butt on several occasions.  For the record, I saved her mint green keister a whole hell of a lot more, but that wasn't the point.  The point was: we were both in a really shitty situation.  The entire time, she was curious about the reason for why we were being forced into these death games by Sisyphus.  Me?  I couldn't possibly give a fuck.  I knew that we had to get out of there, either by bashing holes in the wall or ripping our way through the waves of meatbags that were constantly launched our way.  I was concerned with making it out alive.  Lyra, it would seem, was preparing to write a book report on the whole fiasco.  I wondered if all horned ponies like her were so brainy.  Hell, no wonder unicorns became extinct in my world.  Ew, God, what was I thinking?         “Nnnngh!” Lyra's voice strained.  “Nnnnngh... Hnnng!.”         I sighed.  I looked down at her with a bored expression.  “Really?  Must you do this again?”         “I'm sorry, Shawn, but I g-gotta try!” she exclaimed, her face tensing as her horn flickered on and off with bright pulses of green light.  “After all... nnngh... we very rarely get quiet, peaceful moments like th-this... Hcnnnkt...”         “Just give it a rest, will ya?” I sighed as we marched towards a steep wall of soot-stained metal stretching high above us.  “You're never going to teleport anywhere.  There's no point in trying.”         “I was halfway through material translocation lessons just days before I was abducted,” Lyra said, once again tensing.  Her cheeks ballooned as if she was swimming deep underwater.  I suppose it would have been a cute thing, if I wasn't so damn pissed off at the time.  “Twilight Sparkle said that I had the potential to relocate myself grand distances if I just concentrated!”         “Looks like you're passing a kidney stone.  Stop before you burst a muscle that you may need to endure a troll attack later.”         “But if I could teleport somewhere, I'd surely lose the collar strapped to my neck!” she exclaimed breathily, her lips curved.  “Wouldn't that be great?  Imagine if we didn't have to stay within thirty feet of each other during our fights with the enemy!”         “Please.  We're in Hell; don't tempt me with fanciful dreams-come-true.”  I stopped.  We had both come upon the solid wall of metal.  Before us, a wrought-iron ladder stretched up, up, up along the face of the obstruction.  It had to have been no less than an eighty foot climb.  “Whewwwww Jesus.  Do they make things any less epic in this shithole?”         “Who's this 'Jesus' you keep speaking of?  Is he an important person where you come from?”         “Lyra...”         “Or is it some sort of healing incantation?  You always shout it along with 'Christ' whenever you get hurt—”         “Hey!” I snapped, forcing her to jolt in her place.  I pointed up the metal wall.  “Listen, we've got bigass ladder to climb.  Tell me, are those hooves of yours good for anything beyond mashing carrots?”         “Uhm...” Her green cheeks blushed slightly as she lifted a pair of dainty forelimbs in front of her.  “You tell me,” she said with a nervous smile.         I sighed.  I scratched my chin as I gazed up at the tall, tall ladder.  “I don't suppose you're magical-floaty tricks could get us both up there?”         “I'm sorry, Shawn.  Only a telekinetic unicorn like Twilight Sparkle could do something like that,” Lyra said in a low voice.  “I'm afraid you're stuck with a pony who was merely a musician before she was brought to this awful place.”         I took a deep breath, then cracked my limbs.  “Okay then.  Get on my back.”         She blinked awkwardly.  “Huh?”         “You dumb or something?  Isn't it obvious?  I've gotta carry you.  So... uhm... hop on board, or something.”         “Ahem.  Y-your scabbard's in the way.”         I glanced at myself.  Grumbling, I repositioned the sword so that it hung against my front and not from my back.  I already didn't like the feel of it, but I wasn't about to waste time complaining.  “There.  Better?”         “I... I hope I'm not too heavy,” she murmured as she trotted towards me.         I squatted down, facing away from her.  “Don't worry.  I'm sure you're no worse than a green Labrador or—Snkkkt—Holy shit!”         “Wh-what?!” She gasped as she hung massively from my spine, her limbs wrapped around my shoulders and ribs.  “Is it too much for you to—?!”         “No.”  I wheezed, hissing through my teeth.  “It's all good!  Lemme just...”  I grasped onto the ladder, one iron-wrought rung at a time, and steadily pulled the two of us upwards with white-knuckled grips.  “Ohhhhh-kay.  Yeah.  We're doing this.  We're doing this...”         “You sure you can handle it, Shawn—?”         “I said we're doing this!” I grunted, getting used to the strain on my back as I pulled us higher and higher.  “Don't make me change my mind!  I'm sure gravity wouldn't agree with us.”         “Oh.  Uhm.  Okay.”         She was trembling slightly.  Lyra steeled herself and clutched to me tighter.  I felt her heartbeat pulsing quick and steady through our separate sets of armor.  I knew that I had a slow climb ahead of us, but it didn't matter.  I learned long ago—even before being whisked away to that godawful place—that the harshest things in life were best confronted impulsively.  Tenacity doesn't come to a person through careful thought as it does through intestinal fortitude... or something.  I'm sure I read that somewhere...         “You're so dependable Shawn,” I heard her exclaim beyond the heated strain of my climb.  “I can't say that enough.  I'd be slain by orcs if it weren't for you—or even worse.  I shudder to think.”         “Then don't think,” I grunted.  Every time I glanced above us, the ladder seemed to stretch on further and further.  So, with a sigh, I stared straight into the metal surface beyond the rungs.  “As a matter of fact, don't talk.  I need some silence right now.”         “But you never let me talk!” Her body shook slightly from where she hung off me.  “When will you at least let me thank you like you deserve to be thanked?”         “You can express your gratitude by putting a sock in it.”         “Sock?  What's a sock?”         “Unngh...” I sighed, trying to keep my arms from popping out their sockets. “Is that anything like a Jesus?” “Do all ponies ask these many questions where you come from?”         She giggled.  “We can't help it.  It's in our blood.  We love to socialize.  Don't humans desire the same?”         “Where I come from, I desire my paycheck a few days early to pay the utilities.”         “Yes—this 'Detroit of Michigan' you hail from—it sounds absolutely fascinating!”         “Nnngh... not really, no...”         “And all of the humans we met: you knew them?”         “Yes, Lyra.  I knew them.  Now can we please—?”         “You went to a learning institution together, right?  Or were you working companions?”         “We went to a place called a 'community college.'  If they had those in Ponyland, then I'm sure you'd be well aware of tobacco products.”         “It must have been absolutely dreadful for you,” Lyra said.  “To... To have seen Blake suffer in the end like he did.”         “Blake only got what was coming to him.”         “Shawn!” I felt her entire body shake with a heavy gasp.  “How... How could you say such a thing?  He was your friend!”         “He was an idiot,” I grunted, pulling us higher and higher with straining arms.  “He made stupid mistakes in the real—er—in the human world.  Only he didn't have a motherload of mutant freaks chasing his ass down then.  Believe me: if none of us were ever brought to this nasty place, he would have bought the farm from one thing or another.”         “But he was an associate of yours,” Lyra's voice said in a wavering pitch.  “Surely you feel some sense of loss at his terrible demise.”         I exhaled a heavy sigh.  “I'm just glad it wasn't you or me.  We're alive, Lyra.  It's best that we take advantage of it.”         “Being alive means that we have to remember how our friends perished,” she said in a low whimper.  I felt her chin resting on my flexing shoulders as a cold shudder ran through her limbs.  “Thunderlane was one of the most handsome stallions in Ponyville.  Every filly had a crush on him in secondary school.  He had dreams of flying away to Stratopolis and becoming captain of the northern border guard.  At last year's Hearth's Warming, he and Blossomforth were crowned king and queen of the annual Snow Festival.  They... They looked so happy together.”  She sniffled, and I felt a warm drop of moisture bathing the side of my neck.  “I... I just don't know how to break it t-to her that he's gone.  On top of that, Cloud Kicker died s-so horribly...”  She choked on a breath and whimpered, “Both of Blossomforth's closest acquaintances have been claimed by this terrible place.  It's just so... so wrong...”         “Lyra...”         “I'm sorry, Shawn.”  She sniffled and gripped me harder as her breaths evened out.  “I... I will compose myself.  I just wish we weren't on the run so much.  So many horrible things have happened.  It's so easy to forget.”         “So forget them,” I said.  “Focus on the path ahead.”         “I... I wish that I could, Shawn.  I guess I'm... I-I'm just not as strong as humans.”         I clenched my jaw.  I looked ahead at the wall of metal passing beyond the black rungs we were ascending.  I imagined the cafeteria where so many of us were sitting when the abduction took place.  Blake was fiddling with his new Playstation Vita, as if it was the most important thing in his pathetic life.  Barbara was talking on the cell phone with her mom, complaining about her latest car payment.  Little did she know that she was going to end up disemboweled—screaming—just hours later besides the corpse of a pony named Carrot Top.  Kyle was pouring over several mountainous pages of homework, working to get his transfer to that snobbish liberal arts college in north Michigan.  All of his nerdy knowledge of Shakespeare couldn't make him dodge trollish arrows quickly enough. And then there was Kelly, her shapely legs kicked up on the edge of a dining table as she poured through some book of boring German philosophy.  The cold electric light of the commissary shone across her mahogany skin, as if illuminating the sexiest picture imaginable just seconds before she too would be carted off to the proverbial rectum of the universe.  Somewhere, someplace, that sexy siren could only have become a worthless, smelly pile of guts like Blake and the rest.         “Humans are just as meaty beneath the skin as everyone else,” I heard myself say.  “Being sentimental about everything only lasts as long as we have a head on our shoulders to make up sentiment to begin with.  The way I see it, we should be concerned with saving our own asses, so that we can indulge in our feelings later.”         “Do you really believe you have that, Shawn?”         “What, an ass?”         “No.  Feelings.”         I was silent for a while in our climb.         “I'm... I'm sorry.”  Lyra's grip of me shook slightly.  “That wasn't right of me to say.  Please forgive me, Shawn.”         “Whatever,” I muttered.  I glanced up at the ladder.  The top of the wall was suddenly within reach.  I couldn't imagine how I was able to carry both myself and a talking horse up such a crazy-ass height.  In the last dozen hours or so, I had been transformed into a veritable superhuman by Sisyphus' magical whatchamacallits.  It would have been really friggin' cool if things didn't suck so bad.  “If you gotta feel your emotions so bad, that's fine.  Just lemme do the ass-kicking and be sure to help me out when I call for it.”         “That's how we've worked this entire time, Shawn.  I think I'm more than capable of helping you there...”         “Good,” I said.         “But I wish I could help you more.”         “You can't,” I said as I finally reached the top.  “All that matters is that we survive.”  I gripped the side of the ladder just beneath the edge of the metal platform and braced my body against the wall.  “Okay.  Now climb up.”         “Climb up?”         “I'll come up after you.  Now move it!”         “Okay...”  She pulled herself up over my shoulders.  I felt her rear legs planting down on either side of my neck.  With a light jump, she landed on the top of the ledge above me.  A tiny squeak came from her lips, followed by a shaky murmur:  “Uhhhh... Shawn?”         “Gimme a minute,” I hissed, pulling my aching body up over the side.  “I'm right behind you.”         “Sh-Shawn?!”         “I said hold on!” I grunted, thrusting myself onto the platform and rolling over until I was lying beside her.  With a few panting breaths, I sat up and groaned, “Now what's so damn important?”         She wasn't looking at me.  Her wide, amber eyes were aimed towards the surface of the platform beyond me.  I turned and followed her gaze.         “Oh for fuck's sake...”         Several monsters turned to look at us, their soulless eyes blinking like a sea of pale pinpricks.  We had stumbled upon a huge fucking camp on the side of the platform.  No less than fifty trolls and orcs had their buttholes planted around a flickering campfire.  At the sight of us, they dropped several cooked morsels of raw flesh and stood up with a flurrying array of unsheathed blades.         “Shawn—!”         “On it!”  I reached to my back.  My fingers clasped nothing.  I blinked, then remembered I had my scabbard hanging in front of me.  “Sonuva—Lyra!  Shield!”         “Right!”  She planted her limbs apart, meditated, and pulsed her horn brightly before us.         Several monsters were already charging, flinging spears and axes our way.  I could smell their rusted metal as the weapons spun towards our unguarded craniums.         At the last second, the projectiles sparked in mid-air and fell ineffectually to the ground.  Lyra had summoned her emerald shield in the nick of time.  I took the opportunity to unholster both of my crossbows, reach around the edge of the shield, and fire a return volley.         Three creatures fell—shrieking—as my metal bolts rendered their rancid bodies to pincushions.  As they collapsed into bloody piles, their cohorts jumped over their corpses and charged us from afar, screaming bloody fucking murder.         “There're so many of them!” Lyra frightfully shrieked.  “Shawn, what'll we do?!”         “Make less of them!” I snarled, holstering my crossbows and repositioning my scabbard to my back.  I unsheathed my sword with a glint of metal in the labryinth's air.  “Stay behind me and give me cover!”         “Don't go too far away!” she said as she lowered the shield.         “I wouldn't dream of it!”  I charged into the fray, spinning my body and my sword with it.  I felt the programming of Sisyphus clicking through my brain, and my body was bathed in troll blood as a reward.  I sliced through two shrieking gladiators, parried the scimitars of three more, and waited for Lyra to deliver.         She did.  Green bolts of energy soared past me, melting the flesh of several monsters' necks and throats.  As they faltered, I tore through them with my blade, rendering their limbs to ribbons as the putrid smell of hellish entrails filled the platform before us.         Then the second wave came, twice as thick and pissed-off as the first assault.  I had to step backwards, swishing my sword from side to side in a desperate attempt to fend off their relentless charge.  My vision was filled with gnarled faces and snapping fangs.  It was like these pieces of shit were born to bite my dick off.  I wasn't about to give them the satisfaction.  I ducked low, dodging an axe swing, and stabbed my sword deep into the thigh of one troll.  He shrieked loudly as I tipped him over into his comrades, knocking them into a quivering pile while Lyra viciously bombarded the group with burning green magic.         I didn't have any time to celebrate.  With a vicious kick to my ribs, I was knocked onto my back.  I looked up to see a tall orc leering above me.  Behind him, the third wave of monsters was advancing.  I kicked him in the groin before he could impale me with his spear.  Using my sword as a pole-vault, I pushed myself into a back-flip.  I landed in a slide next to Lyra, during which I pulled out one of my crossbows and one-handed a volley of bolts into the charging phalanx of death.         “This is absolutely crazy!” she said through the migraine her magical assault was forcing her to endure.  “Can we run from this?”         “Uhhhh...”  I fired a few more bolts, looked directly behind us, and saw the mad drop of the platform's edge looming below.  “I don't think so...”         “Shawn, I'm scared!” Lyra squeaked as the orcs and trolls converged on our location.  We could smell their breaths and taste their spit.         “Fuck that!” I stood behind her and raised my sword high.  “Shield!”         “But I'm so weak!  I don’t think I can—”         “Just high enough so that I can still swing through!”  I gripped the hilt tightly as she erected a flimsy emerald barrier at waist's level.  “If I have to make a last stand next to a pastel-colored pony, I wanna do it spilling blood!”         “Shawn—”         “Just hold it!”  I snarled and swung my blade for all it was worth.         Before I could lop a single skull off those godawful torsos, Lyra and I were graced with the bizarre sight of our immediate attackers being yanked backwards, one by one.  The two of us gasped in disbelief.  We watched as the confused group floundered, then disappeared even further as orc after orc was being pierced through the chest by the same arrow—over and over—before being pulled bloodily to the ground.         “What in the tap-dancing Hell?!”  I exclaimed.  There was a loud shout.  I looked towards the far right.  A woman was perched atop a pillar adjacent to the campsite.  She was clad in tight red-and-black armor, and she looked sexy as shit.         “Don't worry, guys!  We got your backs!” she shouted in a very familiar voice.  She held a ridiculously large bow crafted out of shiny titanium.  The vixen notched an arrow attached to a length of metal wire.  With amazing dexterity, she fired the projectile from several yards away.  The arrow skewered the neck of one of the orcs.  With a flick of her wrist, she retracted the projectile along its wire, yanking the orc's body so that he plowed through several screaming trolls.  Bloodily, the arrow broke loose and flew back into the bow's notch.  With a proud smirk, the woman cupped a gauntleted hand over her lips and shouted into the air.  “Alright, AJ!  Now!  Do your worst”         There was a thunder of hooves.  From around the same pillar, an orange pony charged in full gallop.  “Alright, y'all!” the freckled thing shouted and flicked her neck.  As if on command, several plates of brown armor expanded from a length of metal on her spine until her entire muscular body was covered in tank-like shielding.  “High time we cleaned house!”  What followed was the most ridiculously southern warcry, as if God just crapped out a Confederate warhorse made from dynamite and awesome.  “Yeeeeeee-haaaaa!”  She barreled through several bodies, her armored flanks impervious to the creatures' sword-strikes as she stomped-stomped-stomped her way through the entire hideous company.         In the meantime, the woman jumped down from the pillar before her and her partners' collars could stretch too far apart.  She shook the arrow and somehow collapsed it into a serrated disc.  She fired it with no less skill, and the thing spun on a deadly arc straight through the crowd, decapitating most of the orcs and trolls as they got up from her armored partner's violent charge.  When the wired disc returned to the woman's bow, she pulled one of several daggers from her belt, twirled it, and tossed the blade into the throat of an orc dashing towards her side.         “Shawn!  We gotta help them!” Lyra's voice shouted.         I snapped out of it, not realizing until then that I was frozen in place.  “Sure thing!”  I leapt over her shield and swung my way into a group of trolls before they could fire arrows at the armored pony's blindside.  Blood and limbs beautifully filled the air.  I slid to my knees, swung my sword low, and rendered several ankles to bloody stubs.  As a pair of orcs came at my side, Lyra's magic beams knocked them off-kilter.  I stood up and prepared to stab them when the orange pony arrived to do an even bloodier job.         “This is for Dr. Whooves!” she growled as she knocked one orc onto his back and rendered his gasping face to mush with her hooves.  “And this one's for Ace!” she snarled as she head-butted into the other creature, knocking him—screaming—clear off the platform.  Two trolls came at her rear with a pair of spears.         “Behind you!” I shouted.         She pivoted her armored body, absorbing the spears' ineffectual strikes with her armor.  “Not so fast, y'all!” she roared and bucked them low in the gut.         As the trolls stumbled, I rushed in with a twirl of my sword.  I sliced the arms off one while Lyra's energy blasts neutralized the second.  Suddenly, an arrow flew through both creature's necks, retracted along its bloody wire, and popped both craniums off like zits.         “And that!” the pony spat on what was left of the twitching corpses.  “Was for Fluttershy, ya lousy, no good creeps!”  At that last utterance, a great deal of the furious anger left her face, replaced instead by a retching expression as she sat in a slump, panting steadily in her sweat and armor.         “The Hell are you doing?!” I shouted, spinning with my sword held high.  “We can't stop now—!”         “At ease, Shawn,” the woman said as she retracted her bow behind her curved backside.  “Show's over, for now at least.”         “Wait, how did you know my—?”  I stopped before I could finish that thought, blinking.  Breathless, I glanced down the far length of the platform.  Twenty-five survivors were running away, shrieking and no doubt pissing themselves.  Everything was a sea of bloody carnage between us and the retreating enemy.  “Well...”  I shuddered and sheathed my sword as my adrenaline slowly wore down.  “Sisyphus is gonna carve them into dildos for sure.”         “They can count themselves lucky,” the woman said.  Suddenly, she was kneeling down beside the armored pony's side.  “Applejack.”  She placed a gentle hand on her partner's shoulder.  “Applejack, honey, look at me...”         The pony shuddered, her moist eyes clenched shut.  “It's like they don't feel a single thang.  We were cuttin' into them like there was no tomorrow, just like loppin' heads of corn.  I wanna get them back so badly for what they did to my friends, and yet nothin' feels right...”         “I know, Applejack,” she said, smiling warmly as she tilted the pony's face up to meet hers.  “You're a pony.  You weren't made to do violent things like this.  It's only natural to feel so much hurt inside.  But I give you my word: one way or another, we're going to avenge your friends, as well as mine.  And then we're gonna get you home to your family.  I just need you to hold out for me a little bit longer.”         Applejack gulped, and her next breath came in an anguished shudder.  “I'm just... I'm just so plum angry, I don't know what to do with myself...”         “Stay close to me,” the lady said, gently stroking Applejack's cheek above the collar.  “I'll make sure you don't lose your focus.  We're in this together, AJ.  Don't forget that.”         “I know...”  Applejack shuddered.  “It's just that—”         “Applejack?” Lyra's voice mewled like a kitten's.         Applejack blinked.  She looked over, and her mouth hung agape.  “Well, I'll be...”  Her armor retracted one panel at a time, exposing her orange coat as she stood up and marched over to my mint-green partner.  “Lyra!  Well smack my bottom and call me a mule!  You're alive, sugarcube!”         “Oh Applejack, it is you!”  She galloped over—giggling—and nuzzled the blond pony dearly.  It was a little too damn sweet to look at.  “I'm so glad to see that you're safe!”         “Same here, darlin',” Applejack nuzzled her back, smiling warmly.  All of the sorrow and uncertainty in her expression vanished the very instant she talked to Lyra, as if she was innately programmed to be the stronger pony in the room.  She placed a pair of hooves on the unicorn's shoulders.  “Praise Celestia, this whole mess is worth it so long as I can see another one of my friends in one piece!”         “Heehee... Look at you!” Lyra grinned wide.  “You look like Captain of the Guard!”         “Yeah.  Ain't these some fancy duds?  I woke up and suddenly I knew how to use 'em like I was foaled in this here armor.  Never thought I'd see the day when I became a one-mare army!”         “Neither have I used so much magic before and—” Lyra stopped in mid-speech.  She gulped hard, and her lips quivered as a pale expression blanched across her face.  “Applejack... Carrot Top.  She and Cloud Kicker and Thunderlane.”  Tears welled up in her eyes.  “They're... th-they're gone, Applejack.  And now... and now I hear that Fluttershy...?”         Applejack clenched her jaw; she said nothing.  That was the answer Lyra needed, though it was hardly something she wanted.  With a soft whimper, she collapsed in Applejack's grip, her tears blanketing the bloody platform below them.  Applejack closed her eyes and held Lyra close, nuzzling the unicorn's neck beneath her chin. “There there, sugarcube.  It's horrible, I know.  But we gotta keep pressin' on.  What matters now is that we're together.  For our friends' sake, if not our own, we need to get out of this here nightmare.  We need to get back to our families...”         “It's all so terrible!”  Lyra sniffed and hiccuped between sobs.  “We didn't ask for this!  We didn't want to come here!  Why does Tartarus have to exist?!  Why can't this Sisyphus jerk leave us alone?”         “Shhhhh... I dunno, darlin'.  But t'ain't no matter.  Just let it out.  It's okay to be sad about it.”         Lyra quietly released several of her tears.  In the meantime, Applejack gazed curiously my way with glossy eyes.  I turned from the sight and shuffled towards the only other human in the chamber.         “So... uhm...”  I scratched my neck, sighed, and looked at her.  “You know me, huh?”         “Well of course I do, Shawn,” she said while she was cleaning the blood off her bow.  Her dark skin resembled polished mahogany in the dim glow of that abysmal hellscape, and an unmistakable streak of violet hair wrestled my memory back with a kiss of color.  “I'd recognize that cold, boring tone in the back of any classroom.”         I squinted at her, my senses coming together as if for the first time in my life.  “Kelly?”         “The hell's gotten into you?”  Kelly smiled at me, shook the last bit of blood off her weaponry, and stood tall.  “Don't tell me you've not waited all your life to kick this much ass.”         I blinked at her.  I glanced at the river of dead bodies and limbs beside us.  “Yeah,” I said.  “But I figured I'd have moved to Indianapolis before decapitating anything.”         “Heheh...”  She chuckled and started rummaging through the debris for salvageable weapons.  “You always had a dry sense of humor.  Only fitting you'd be a total asshole in this place as well.”         “How can you be so nonchalant about all this shit?”         “Simple,” Kelly said, lifting a curved scimitar from a dead hand.  She studied it, disapproved of its dullness, and tossed it into the grime and rust behind her.  “I've got an awesome pony to look after.  Little girl’s dream come true, and I'm not about to fuck it up.”         “But—”         “But nothing.  Those freaks are gonna come back.  And when they do, I'm willing to bet they'll have twice the numbers.”  She picked up a spear and tested its weight in her grasp.  “Now, will I be able to count on your assistance, Shawn?  Or is your cynicism gonna be another load of dead weight?”         I blinked at her, glanced at the two nuzzling equines, and sighed.  “Whatever you say, captain, my captain.”         “Good.  First order of business.”  She brushed past me, purposefully bumping my shoulder.  “Stop staring at my ass.”         “H-hey!  I wasn't—!”         She gave a flighty laugh, and continued rummaging through the debris.         I groaned and started picking at the dead trolls on my side of the platform.  “I was better off with just the prissy unicorn...”