Survivor walks through the town, Apple Bloom at his side. She jumps along, “This is the marketplace, so you can get some good food.” She then looks ahead, “And there’s the schoolhouse. That’s where we’re going.”
He looks at the red building, and nods, “Quaint and rustic, like something from the past. Looks like the type of place I would expect my great grandparents to go to.”
Apple Bloom looks over at him, “Well, what’re your schools like?”
He looks over at her, “Bigger, more uniform. If you wanted to get the size of a single building at my school, you’d have to place at least three of that house side by side, and there are ten buildings. Buildings one hundred to nine hundred, because our school only measured by hundreds. Than the tenth, the Kendrick building.”
Apple Bloom tilts her head, “Kendrick building?”
He nods, “Yes, it is... my brother’s memorial. There was a bad guy, and he stopped the bad guy.”
Apple Bloom smiles, “Hey, that sounds a lot like what Applejack does! She and her friends go out and defeat bad ponies all the time! She don’t have a building named after her, though.”
Survivor looks away, collecting himself. He looks back, nothing but his piercing green eyes peering out at Apple Bloom, “Applejack came back from her fights, Bloom. Kendrick did not. He left the world doing something so... uniquely human. I feel it is the truest destiny of humans, the purest goal, to reach that point. To show such great compassion, whilst also pummeling in somebody else’s face. Tell me, Bloom, do ponies have that?”
Apple Bloom thinks for a quick second, “Compassion, nah. Violence ain’t well liked by ponies, I mean, we haven’t had a war in a thousand years.”
Survivor nods, “A thousand years of peace, an impossible goal for humans. The longest we lasted was two hundred. We aren’t exactly united like you, though. Well, considering I’m the only one left, I suppose we are.”
Apple Bloom loses her smile, “Wait, you’re the only one left?”
He looks up, “Yeah, at least, I think. The one who brought me here said so, Spirit of Disharmony or something like that. Told me I was the only one, that he chose me to survive. I am the Survivor for a reason. Seven billion or so, and, well, it’s now one.”
Apple Bloom pauses, “...How?”
He points at the mountain in the distance, a great city hanging off the edge, “Bombs, explosions so big. That entire city could be gone, like that.” He snaps.
It’s then that he feels a rat climb onto his shoulder. He looks over at the creature.
Apple Bloom notices it as well, “Whoa, how’d you do that?”
He reaches over with his finger, and slightly scratches the thing under it’s chin. As his finger connects, a sickly green light begins to travel out of his finger and into the rat.
The rat leans back, squealing slightly. But, it stops all of a sudden. The rat looks at Survivor, it’s eyes now glowing the same sickly green. It jumps from his shoulder to the ground, green aura surrounding itself as it rushes into a nearby building.
Another rat runs out of an alleyway, it’s form and eyes glowing a similar green. It passes right under Apple Bloom, taking a nip out the back of her leg before scampering away.
Apple Bloom jumps in pain, and looks at her leg, “That rat bit me!”
Survivor gets on his knee, and begins to examine the wound. It isn’t deep, only just barely far enough to draw blood. Yet, something seems to be off about the bite.
The mask changes lenses suddenly, filling his vision with a sterile white color. It focuses in on the wound, one lens zooming in to a scale as to be able to see the cells themselves.
Something seems off, yet it isn’t able to be identified. The mask pops a warning up in Survivor’s vision, telling him on how to garner further information.
He looks at Apple Bloom, “Bloom, it looks like that rat was carrying something. I’m going to have to cure it, but I need to cut a bit of the skin off. I need you to say if you want me to or not. You saved my life, I’m planning on potentially saving yours.”
She nods, “You saved me first. I trust you, just do it quickly.”
He draws his knife, and cuts a chunk out of Bloom’s leg, getting all of the bite. She yells, but it is stopped as the mask takes out a syringe. It injects her with the liquid inside, and she instantly calms down.
She looks at it, “Huh, it doesn’t even hurt.”
His mask exchanges the syringe with a petri dish, and he puts the bit of skin in there. He smiles, “There you go, you should be all good. Now, don’t you have school?”
The bell goes off right after he says this, and Bloom sighs.