//------------------------------// // Chapter Five: New Manehatten // Story: Bioshock: Equestria // by BroSteve //------------------------------// Chapter Five: New Manehatten I can't.. I can't do this.. By: BroSteve (Steven Rodriquez) Iron Sights swung open the door and light poured in from the opening. He stepped out; Twilight was quick to follow behind him. They were on top of the tallest building in the whole city. Twilight's eyes grew wide as she was in awe by the beautiful sight before her. The city was huge and she had the best view you could get of it. The giant dome around them held back the murky water infested with tons of sea life. She turned to look where they had just came from, seeing that it was an air conditioning unit atop the building. "This place is incredible.. a city this big completely under water.. it sounds like a paradise." Twilight said quietly as she drunk in all there was to see. "That's what it was supposed to be.. The Stable. Who would have thought it would turn out to be a death trap." As the last few words left his mouth, Twilight remembered the hell she went through even to get where she is now. "John Colt promised us an escape, a safe haven from the rest of the world. He believed that we were all equal. Nopony was better than the next. It was a beautiful idea but that's about all." He walked over towards the edge of the building, sitting back on his haunches. "It lasted for a few months. Then everything went downhill, fast. The same system they had tried to escape overtook once more. Living conditions for any other than the highest of class were absolutely dreadful. People started dying on a regular basis and not a hoof was raised to do anything." Twilight slowly walked over towards the brown stallion and sat down beside him, carefully listening. If she was going to learn anything she felt it might be from Iron. "The Stable Civil War broke out, upper versus lower class. It was a blood bath. Upper class having more resources, but lower having more infantry. I was one of the lower." He looked over toward Twilight, then back to the ground below. "I saw my friends and family die, Twilight. I want to wrap my hooves around that bastard John Colt's neck and not let go until I see the life drain from his eyes.." Twilight looked over as the shocking words escaped him, she could swear tears were forming in his eyes. "I-I'm sorry.. Iron.." Twilight said in a low, soft tone attempting to ease the stallions grief. "It's fine. I've dedicated my life to helping any poor pony that is unfortunate enough to have either lived through the war," he turned toward her "or find their way down here." He smiled at the last part. "Are there.. more ponies that aren't crazy?" Twilight asked, intrigued as the last couple words Iron said hung in her mind. If there was more ponies.. maybe.. we could fight back.. and escape! Iron Sights smiled and with a deep laugh, "Of course there are! I'm a patrol stallion. I keep the splicers at bay and away from our home. I only ended up here because I saw your Bathysphere descend toward our home. I had to make sure you were safe." Twilight's ears perked up as the brown stallion spoke. There were more! She couldn't believe it. "If there are more of you.. why don't you just leave.. or better yet. Fight back." Her voice sounded way too innocent to be suggesting such a guerrilla act against another pony. Iron laughed once more, "You're a funny one, yah know that?" He leaned back, now laying down on the rooftop. "Truth is there aren't to0 many of us left. Not near enough to fight the Splicers, not to mention John Colt himself. We managed to lock down The Gardens completely. Nothing gets in, or out without us knowing and letting it." Twilight's eyes grew a little wider now staring at her new friend. The Gardens! That was what Blue was talking about. It was the one place he couldn't reach or have any access to. Twilight, now had a determined look in her eyes. She was plotting her next moves in her head. "Iron.. I need to help my friend Blue. He's stuck in the engineering sector. Right before he got cut off and I lost contact with him he said something that sounded like delphia. The only thing that makes sense is New Fillydelphia. I need to go there. There has to be something I can do to save him. He saved my life, and now I have to save his. After that, we need to go back to The Gardens. Like you said, it's the only safe place really. I can help us find a way out of here and so can Blue." Her smile was way too confident. She didn't like this new world, but she had to admit: it was something new. Something she had never experienced before, she figured she might as well at least try to enjoy it a little bit. Iron laughed at the random burst of confidence the young mare now had. "You are a crazy little mare aren't yah? There is no way. You need to go to The Gardens, and be safe. How can you stick out your neck for some random stranger?" Twilight quickly responded in a harsh, angry tone. "Didn't you do that for me? I'm not going to The Gardens without rescuing my friend, whether you are coming or not." Twilight suddenly developed an attitude. Something reminiscent of what her friend Rarity used to have. Iron focused on the mare's eyes and let out sigh "Fine, but I'm coming with you. There is no way in hell I'm letting you go alone!" Twilight simply smiled, "Good.. I was hoping you'd say that. Now, first things first." She looked at the saddle bags on resting on his flank. "I need you to teach me how to fight." Iron grinned at the purple mare's request. After some training with Iron, she knew how to use the newly discovered weapon called a gun. She was still unsure about using it, and wouldn't unless she really needed to. As soon as the finished going over the basics she spoke up, "Well, thank you Iron. I'll probably only use it when my, uh.. what was it called? Oh yeah! When the MANA I took runs out." She said with a slight smile, trying to suppress the awful memories she had of jabbing the glowing liquid into her leg. Iron seemed shocked as he stopped in his tracks "You.. you've taken MANA..?" His instant concern frightened her. "Yeah.. I had to.. it was a life or death situation. I ended up frying one of those.. splicers." Her voice became slightly softer as she spoke, unsure if she should really be proud of her actions, despite feeling proud. There must be something wrong with me now. He stared her over and said "You know, not everypony can use MANA effectively. You're really lucky it didn't kill you. At first, MANA was completely safe, but over the years it was illegally recreated, and then even the official stuff decreased in quality until it wasn't being produced anymore. You must be one special pony, or just really lucky." Twilight gave him a such a forced smile. "Well.. considering my plane crashed into the middle of the ocean and now I'm stuck in a place like this.. I don't think luck is really on my side." Iron could tell she was holding back from letting the dark memories flood back into her head. "I guess I must be pretty special too." The two of them finally reached the bottom floor of the building and made their way into the streets. It was barren, desolate and a disaster. She wondered how such a brilliant city could really fall to pieces like this. They made towards the sector of New Fillydelphia. From where they were, it was a good day and a half walk. After hearing that from Iron, Twilight was impressed how large these underwater cities really were. As time went by the city's artificial sunlight system began to fade as nighttime was quickly approaching. "We should really find somewhere to stay right now. You do NOT want to be caught out here at night." Iron told Twilight sending a chill down her spine. "The splicers go nuts at night, and sometimes it's pretty damn hard to even see them coming." Twilight simply nodded her head in agreement. "That sounds like a go-" Twilight was quickly cut short by an explosion in a nearby window sending glass shards flying through the air. The blast knocked Twilight over onto her side as she grabbed her head in pain. The sound hurt even more than the aircraft exploding. The aircraft. She though, as her mind now raced to the horrors that happened that night. Her thoughts were interrupted by an even worse thought, splicers. Two of them jumped out from the blown out window, one holding onto a circular metal ball and the other a gun, a gun the size of Iron's "magnum" or at least that's what she thought he said. Iron quickly spun, lifting the gun in his mouth and aimed at the one with a gun. Seconds went by as he aimed down the sights and pulled the trigger. The splicer pony tried to avoid the gunshot, but it quickly tore off his right hind leg as it fell to the ground and within seconds bled out. The other pulled a small piece of metal out of the ball and threw it at them. "Twilight! Run!" He grabbed her by the mane and pulled her up and pushed her as hard as he could towards an open building. They both barely made it into the abandoned building as the metal ball exploded, sending razor sharp pieces of shrapnel everywhere. The blast blew them through the door, landing on the hard floor. Suddenly, Iron screamed as a couple pieces of shrapnel buried their way deep into the stallions back and left hind leg. As the smoke cleared the splicer popped out once again. This time his face held a satisfied look of disgust. He slowly made his way over to the two, picking up his fallen comrade's gun along the way. Twilight had just now noticed it was a unicorn splicer, the first she had seen. The gun levitated up in front of him and aimed directly at Iron. "Listen you son of a bitch," the splicer began to twitch "I'm gonna kill you. I'm gonna let you slowly bleed out while I have a little fun with your little mare friend here!" His voice was so sick and twisted, a shiver went through Twilight's entire body. "Goodbye, fucker!" Before the unicorn could manage to pull the trigger, Twilight screamed "No!" Her horn began to glow bright. It wasn't the normal purple glow that came over her horn when she was casting regular spells, this time it was an electric blue. "Don't touch him!" She closed her eyes tightly as the words left her mouth. Another white hot bolt of electricity shot out of her horn toward the splicer. The splicer cried out in pain as electricity surged through it's body slowly popping every blood vessel. The unicorn began to bleed from it's eyes, ears, nose and mouth as it was cooked alive. Finally it fell to the ground, twitching and bloody. Twilight fell backward next to Iron, breathing heavily and a little light headed. She turned to see the unconscious stallion next to her. A look of pure fear came across her face. The words began to tear through her every thought. You do NOT want to be caught out here at night. It was already late, and they had already fought two splicers. She quickly began to call his name. "Iron.. Iron please wake up." "Iron please!" She began shaking him slightly, then harder. Finally the earth pony woke up very groggily. "Wh-what happened?" He shot up from where he lay, only to fall back as the pain from the shrapnel shot through his back and leg. "Gahh!" he yelled out as he closed his eyes tightly at the pain. "That thing exploded and hit you! I managed to.." she froze in her words. "..kill.. the other one." She shook it off, she had to. There was no compassion in this place. She had to be strong. "It's getting late though, and you're badly hurt. We have to find someplace to stay." Iron shook his head, and tried to stand on his feet. He let the hurt leg limp as he tried to steady himself on only three legs. Twilight quickly stood beside him. "Put your hoof around me. I'll help you." As the stallion put his hoof around her, she couldn't help but let a small blush appear on her purple cheeks. Come on, this is NOT the time for this. It is kinda nice though. She let a small smile escape her lips. "Let's go up a couple levels and find a room to hide out in for the night." Iron quickly agreed. The two ponies slowly made their way up the staircase and found themselves about four stories up. The building appeared to be a storage building. Each floor was filled with giant metal containers filled with lots of various items from the old inhabitants of The Stable. The inside of the building hadn't been taken care of or cleaned in, it had to be ages. Cobwebs and dust coated everything in sight. They finally reached a container close to a window and Twilight set Iron down. She turned her attention to the box and tried to open. It wouldn't budge. "Oh Celestia, please don't do this!" She kept trying to open it, forcing it, but it was to no avail. The lock wouldn't budge. She looked down toward Iron, who was half awake at this point. I need to think of something.. come on think girl, think! She closed her eyes focusing her thoughts. She quickly opened them and surveyed the room. Along with the coating of dust and giant metal containers, she found an office. There has to be a key in there! She started to trot away as she called back to Iron "I'll be right back!" She made it over and pushed the door open. Instantly the smell of rotting flesh invaded her nostrils making her fall backward. The room was inhabited by a floor worker here in the storage facility, now a half rotten corpse. Twilight instantly felt sick, wanting to vomit. She held it back and held her nose. She carefully avoided the corpse while looking through the room. She couldn't find it. Damn Celestia this cannot be ha-. Her own thought were cut off by another, more gruesome one. She looked down toward the corpse, and of course, it was wrapped around his neck. She shuddered by just looking at the atrocity before her. She carefully reached down and grabbed the key off of the dead pony. She quickly pulled it off, but as she did the ponies jaw fell off and onto the floor with a light thud. As it did, maggots began to crawl from the ponies gaping mouth. She finally couldn't hold it back. She threw up again and fell backward out of the room. She slammed the door and sat there as tears began to well up in her eyes. What the buck am I doing here.. I can't.. I can't do this. She sat there for a while as the tears just rolled down her face. Please.. please let me get through this.. I just want to go home. After a while, she was able to stand herself up again, and hold back the tears. Her new friend needed her, this wasn't any time to break down. She trotted back over toward her friend. She opened the door and helped him inside. Luckily the container had been empty. She set him down on the floor and wandered back outside. She began rummaging through other crates until she found some paper and a blanket. She gathered the paper in a small pile, and with her magic lit it to start a fire. Then before wrapping his wounds in the blanket, she used her magic to carefully pull the shrapnel out of his body.. She laid down on the other side of the fire, and quickly drifted off into a deep sleep.