I remember a slim unicorn mare calling out for me. Her brown mane was waving in the golden of the morning with the sun shining over its yellow streaks.
“Oh, here you are!” the mare growled, making me dunk my head between my shoulders. “You know I hate it when you run outside.”
“Mooooom,” I complained as she lifted me off the grass.
“Tut-tut,” she countered, dragging me back home. “We aren’t in Canterlot here. It’s dangerous.”
“But mooooom,” I muttered. “Father told me sun chase baddies!”
The sun would keep harm at bay, my father had told me. I didn’t know at that time what ‘at bay’ meant but I was okay with it. Pouting, I looked up at the warm orb hanging in the sky. The sun was there every day and always on time.
“And what will you do when the blazing sun is gone?” she huffed.
I didn’t know. The sun couldn’t disappear, right?
* * *
Lying on my back in a narrow and inundated tunnel, I woke up to a foul smell clogging my lungs. Cold water soaked me to the bone, creeping into my ears and over my eyes; muddling my senses with its intense and unending bubbling.
I cried for help in the air duct and jumped to my hooves. My head smashed against the low ceiling and sent me tumbling. Dizzied, I sank back into the water and was quickly dragged away.
Bleeding and twitching, I tried to hook myself on anything sticking out of the walls while I slid through the vent for Celestia knew how long.
A wave of relief finally washed over me only when the torrent started to ebb, letting me stand back up. As the widening air duct took a sudden turn to the right, I peered over the corner and set my hoof on a small metal embankment spared from the freezing water. With a grunt, I climbed over the slab.
I hadn’t sat yet that a fit of wracking coughs forced me to lay paralysed on the floor. A strange feeling was gnawing at my crawling skin, like ants scurrying beneath it. Blood rammed through my temples while my chest begged for air.
Curled into a ball, hushing my body’s cry for space, I took in the shape of my surroundings at the tip of my shaking hooves. Metal shards covered the ceiling, cutting deep clumps into my mane as I crouched below it.
A violent rumble tore through the wall, a breeze blew over my face, and a wave of mud blasted through the vent. The tidal force submerged me whole and swept me away.
Prey to the raging water, my head hit a torn up sheet of metal and a white-hot pain shot through my eyes. Murk rolled down my throat and silenced me.
Coughing icy mud, I sunk deeper into the pitch-black throat of an underground giant. While a coppery taste filled my mouth, weakness set in and my eyes rolled.
* * *
I remember.
“Dad? You okay,” I whimpered as I grimaced at his weirdly bent leg.
“Hey, Listen,” Father rasped, forcing me closer with a sweep of his shaky hoof. “We’re going to play a game, okay?”
“Oh, I love playing!” I answered.
He gave a short and huffed laugh and sponged the heavy drops of sweat that rolled off his forehead with the back of his hoof.
“Okay, sweetie. You listen very clearly,” he insisted between two breaths.
“You okay?” I mumbled.
“Yes, yes… don’t interrupt me. Where was I?” he trailed on, letting silence set in. “Ah, yes… There is just one rule. You stick up with Mom. You don’t leave her… You don’t walk away. You never lose… her. Understand?”
I nodded but quickly stopped. I couldn’t bear his glassy eyes locked on me. They were big and black, empty… like the well in the garden. We had only one well though.
“But why?” I sniffed. “Mom can’t get lost… She can?”
He closed his eyes and sighed. I was impatient to go back to Mom, and he was very slow. So slow. Daddy was never slow. It was always annoying when he walked fast… So why was he slow!?
“Yes,” he told me. “You have to make sure she doesn’t get lost. You follow her and watch she doesn’t make mistakes.”
I pouted.
“What do I get if I win?” I asked.
Thunder boomed above our head and I hid between my father’s strong legs. He looked up and stared hard at something. Rain started to fall while the menacing clouds that filled the sky grew blacker.
“Son?” Father warned.
“Yes?”
“Run,” he ordered.
I didn’t move at first.
“Please, run,” he growled at me.
Again, I didn’t move and he kicked me.
“RUN!” he shouted. “FIND MOM! OR I’ll WHOOP YOUR ASS!”
I remember I ran. And I remember I cried.
* * *
I flailed as I couldn’t anchor myself on a grip in the vent. Shivers crawled down my neck. My mouth wanted to open. My brain tried to force me to breathe... but I wanted to live. Mud was rolling at the back of my throat. My screams? Nothing but bubbles out of my lungs.
I was shaking, throwing my hooves around me as my vision grew darker. I met a sudden lack of water resistance. Instincts kicked in and I pierced in an air pocket.
I drew one rasped breath that went down my throat like sand paper. A scream died in me and I swerved, fighting to escape the sucking current. My shoulder banged against the frame of a small diversion in the air duct built right above my head. I grabbed the edge, crawled into the narrow bypass, and collapsed.
Curled up and sobbing with the cold air biting through my wet fur, shivers wracked through me. I was exhausted and bleeding, and the darkness around me cut me off from any potential landmarks. But I was out of the water. I was safe. So finally safe.
“… V-…!” a syllable clicked out.
A white noise spurred in the tight vent, triggering a short but disheartening shudder along my back. I looked down and saw a red eye glaring straight into my soul. A trickle of sweat rolled against my cheek and I gulped.
“VOX!” a voice barked, shaking me out of shock.
As the voice died with static, I lay my eyes on a tiny metal box strapped to my belt along with some tools and a monkey wrench. A few seconds spanned before I scrambled to the device. Trying to unclip the contraption, my hoof slipped and smashed the diode into dust.
“Vox, answ-er …e!”
I had the com-link at the tip of my hoof. Careful as I prodded its contours, I found the side button. My heart beating wildly, I switched it on and spoke.
“Vox reporting,” I croaked, trying to spit away the taste of spoiled mud on my tongue. “I’m… here.”
“Vox, where were… Wh-… are you?” the same female voice cried, barely audible. “It’s been… five hou... I can’t reach... well.”
“Five hours…?” I gargled out worried laugh, nearly punched myself to wash away the fog that shrouded my memories. “I’m at… I… around…”
I hesitated and looked around. I contemplated darkness, bathing me in quasi-silence. Only the discordant song of the nearby water churned in the vent.
“I’m lost,” I said to whoever was listening. “Do you copy?”
I switched the item on and off, hoping it was a joke. The joyful ‘gotcha!’ I dreamed about never came. As I hung my head low, static noise was my only confident. The voice never came back.
I screamed and threw the device away.
With my head between my hooves, my long sigh was only covered by the soft rustling dust crawling on the outside of the vent. A fine stream of murk dripped on my muzzle from a slit in the ceiling.
“Somebody’s there?” I whispered.
The walls crisped with a loud metal screech. Choking on the dust cloud that quickly rolled in my section of the vent, I pushed myself back to my hooves and hurtled deeper in the tunnel.
Biting on whatever could help me move faster, I got tripped up by the methane stench that spoiled my claustrophobic world. Bile churned in my stomach and my chest burned all the same.
Thunder roared… Thunder roared…
That faint and distorted rumble echoed to my ears. A few seconds passed before I was convinced it was real. Relief washed over me as it had never done before. I had a direction.
I dug my way forward with my monkey wrench held tight in my mouth. With nothing, nor a lighter or a horn to light my path, I just kept running and ploughing through spider cobwebs, hoping that I wouldn’t race head-first into a wall.
I never met the wall; a hidden pit though…
I smashed against the sides of the vent. I barrelled through a rusty and patched-up fence barring the way, rolled down, and crashed against a dead-end as the vent became horizontal again.
Breathless, I shuddered in pain mere seconds before the sound of breaking screws rang in my ears. Weightlessness took hold of me and my fall ended when my right side crashing against something wet and squishy.
* * *
I remember the screams of the fathers and mothers. I remember the cries of the fillies and colts like I was once.
“Mom? Why do they push the ponies away?” I asked, tugging at my mother’s very rough wool cape under which I hid.
Nothing.
“Mom? Why are they crying?” I insisted, tugging harder.
Nothing.
“Mom? Why are you crying?” I mumbled, letting the cape fall over my muzzle.
Nothing…
“Mom…?” I whispered. “Where is daddy?”
Again, nothing. Nothing. Just nothing…
“Next!” a guard in a dull armour shouted.
Mother nudged forward with her foreleg and we stood in front of a desk; three planks nailed together.
“We request an access to the stronghold,” Mother urged.
The guard stood over the improvised desk and looked down hard at me as I lifted Mother’s cape. With a low growl and biting his lower lip, he went back to her.
“M’am, you ca… You’ve got nothing to pay for one entry. Let’s not speak about… two,” he muttered. “Understand, it does me as much pain as you but…”
“Bullshit!” Mom spat, making me scuttle back under her cape.
“Mom,” I whispered, pulling on the bandage wrapped around her leg. “Don’t tell bad words.”
“You’ll need engineers to run the shit down there,” she continued. “You’ll need ponies like me. I. Am. One. Fucking. Engineer.”
The guard stepped back with his mouth slightly hung open. With dread, he looked up at his superior standing over two wooden pallets. After a long pause, the old, grey stallion nodded.
“Welcome, Madam,” the guard said, stepping aside after he had hoofed out a stamped paper to Mother.
“Thank you,” she said while tears wet the cape above my head.
* * *
Thunder cracked above my head, its rumble carried aloft by the breeze brushing over my face.
“My head…,” I growled.
Freezing rain battered my hide and its massive din filled my ears. Growling painful breaths, I rolled over my back and spent a long moment quasi-paralysed. Heaving, I gather my strengths and opened my eyes.
Blinding light plunged through them and jabbed in my brain. Shutting them close instantly, I yelped and curled into a ball as I held my head between my hooves.
Blind and half-deaf, I quickly crawled towards the nearest place where the storm was less intense. There, I slowly accommodated my eyes to the light, opening them to a slit over the course of ten minutes.
I had found refuge under a decrepit concrete slab sticking out of a sandstone cliff. The ground was covered in patches of wet grass where it hadn’t turned into deep, sloshing mud. It felt wrong under my legs. My hooves knew concrete and metal better.
With fear, I glanced up at a dark grey sky looming over the world like a lid. A streak of thunderbolts flashed across the clouds and forced my eyes closed. I breathed in and heard nature’s roar boom for the first time in years.
Sunlight was more of a concept after all and living underground had deteriorated my eyesight.
I sucked in the fact that I was far away from my city-state’s safety and, as I looked up at the smashed open vent I had fallen from, I saw that my way to safety was out of reach.
The vent was sticking out of a sandstone cliff twenty hooves above my head, and the cliff had no practical grip on which I could climb.
As I abandoned the idea of climbing back in the vent, I turned around and faced endless rows of dead white trees. As they hid the horizon, the stood beneath a thick fog that obstructed my sight past a hundred yards. The world itself was a grim patchwork of melted sky and earth.
White blasted through the air and I went deaf.
When I opened my eyes again, a nearby tree had exploded to smithereens. Flames were devouring the bleached-white trunk, giving out steam in the rain while the flames threw shadows crawling onto my world.
I hadn’t been outside for years yet nothing had really changed. It was a raining day, maybe a perfect day if you had asked somepony a long time ago. But for me though, that rain hadn’t stopped for twenty long and deadly years.
The rain had washed away Equestria, washed away the diarchy, carried away any semblance of civilisation, and eroded any trace of what ponykind life was prior to the Deluge. We had been pushed back into our strongholds where we survived behind prison bars we had set for our own good.
I was only four years old when the deluge started. To this day, I kept no real recollection from that time apart from some wild, colourful dreams and snapshots. Of course, the city’s elders loved repeating themselves like broken records about nostalgic stories of the glorious past. If those stories bored fillies to death, it was better not to ask about the aftermaths of reading the history books my city had printed for the school.
My city was named Raven-Flank and it was one of the last equine strongholds that still survived the murky land that was once called Equestria.
A roar shattered the relative calmness of the clearing and stopped. Then a growl grew louder, massive. My bones vibrated in unison as the complaint stretched into a heart sickening and unequine litany till it boomed into a grave scream that ripped through the sky.
I hide under my improvised cover while the beastly hum travelled back and forth above my head. A predator of an otherworldly size was lurking nearby, invisible, and I could only hear its heartbeat.
The fog throbbed and billowed. Clumps of clouds rolled over themselves and a skeletal and crooked shadow crawled below its surface. With widened eyes, I watched a hint slip through the fog. It was a bony fin; black, sharp, and polished.
The shadow sunk and never returned; only its growl remained. The hum rumbled louder, building up into one glass-shattering shriek before it shattered. An abrupt silence filled my ears; an ominous silence that only the thunder dared to break.
I was petrified, scanning the fog for any evidence of the being coming back. I knew the rain had not been alone into the initiative of bringing down our world. I knew monsters had joined the feast. I knew that so well. I just wanted not to believe in those things.
The school memories where a remorseful old buck had lectured us on the outside’s deadly reality rushed back to me. I remembered when we had been told the tale of the filly who got blocked outside. Ponies said the pipes of Raven-Flank had carried the scream. With those moments knocking up in my mind in larger numbers, I tried to squeeze myself deeper in the mud.
I listened to the rain hitting the ground and washing it away. What had once been a forest had become a dead, rotten swamp. And I knew I wasn’t alone. Nopony was alone outside. Ever.
A bird hopped on the branches of a nearby dead tree. After a pause it sang, startling me out.
Small and rachitic, the animal had lost its colours. As grey as the swamp itself, the nightingale – I think that was the name – chirped and tweeted weakly as I watched in silence, fascinated to see that life still existed up above.
Sharp obsidians stumbled out of the fog and snapped over the filthy bird. A maw went into full view as it shook right and left and gulped down the bird with much noise.
High as a tree, a reptilian rock stepped forward, emerging from the fog. The creature’s back ran with sprouting plates of granite and the joints of its stone scales glowed a dull green.
A rockodile.
The monster sniffed the air, breathed steam, and turned its head in my direction. Our eyes locked together and I felt my heart fall to the bottom of my hooves.
The rockodile’s massive legs shook the ground as it furrowed its way to me and its roar echoed in my bones.
I leaped aside with a scream and hardly dodged the attack. The rockodile’s large legs cut through the mudd as it tried to turn away and catch me under its canines. A weak patch of grass gave way under the beast’s weight and sent it bite the murk. The beast rolled over in its momentum and crashed against the cliff under which I had took refuge moments ago. The rock shattered and hurtled down over the monster in a cloud of dust.
The monster’s clumsiness had bought me seconds and I scrambled forward, swimming my way through the swamp. Algae had grown in the puddle barring the way. They wrapped around my legs and hindered my run. I had no time left to buy though. The rockodile howled behind me as it stood up. I heard it swivel and plough the ground in my wake. The beast jumped and crashed right behind me.
I bounced away when something caught me by the belt and lifted me off. Flailing and screaming, I looked back and saw my belt stuck around one of the rockodile’s teeth. The beast lifted me up and shook me up. My belt ripped apart with one violent nudge of the rockodile’s gargantuan muzzle. Sent flying over, I hit a tree in a murky splosh.
I slid off the tree’s whitish bark and ended lying on a bed of pebbles. Staggering to stand up, I saw my belt land in a close pond where it promptly sank. I had lost my tools, my wrench, everything. I had even threw away my radio away in the vent.
Glancing back, I saw the rockodile digging its way between the trees. I swooped through the dead forest, jumping from slippery stone to another.
I found my way to a large clearing. Straight and stretching far beyond the fog, it looked like a river that had spilled over. Hearing the beast creeping closer in my back, I jumped with a cry. Ready to swim as fast as I could, I stretched my hooves and braced for the dive.
I hit a bedrock hiding right beneath the river’s unbroken and brown surface. My right foreleg cracked and I fell to my side, sputtering the water that kept covering half of my face. Stunned and bawling in pain, I kept trying to force myself back up. Similar rectangle rocks lay aligned a couple of inches below the surface.
I was standing on a flooded road; an old, paved boulevard long swallowed by water. I looked all around me and fear struck my heart. I had nowhere to hide when the rockodile came into view. It stood above me with its maw drooling murky green sludge with grey feathers stuck between its teeth. Its revolting breath crawled over my nose as its head drew closer. My heart came to a halt when I saw myself in the monster’s glassy eyes; my face was colourless, bleached. I was dead.
A monster of alloy and steel fenced through the billowing fog, leaving a wide hole behind. Like a gigantic bullet, it flew over my head without a whistle to hear and ripped through the beast.
Air, water, and gore leeched away from me, ripped away from me in the trail of the steel cannonball. My ears buzzed with the sudden, overwhelming silence and my head snapped back as if somepony had bitten in my mane. Clawed away in the wake of the flying machine, water blasted off from the ground. Puddles flew away in thousands of twinkling droplets, eerie and silent. The machine’s shockwave finally hooked me in its trail and sent me flying.
Roaring fire exploded and heat washed over me. The world screeched as the landscape snapped past my eyes in a blur. I landed in a loud thump and rolled over.
I bounced on the hard paved road and the water that had cowered away from it rained back to it in one liquid wall. My whole body slapped against the ground and my ribcage squeezed like under a vice.
“You okay over there?” a mare said over the din of rolling steam and zooming machinery.
I turned my head and lay my eyes on a mat grey elongated full metal vehicle. Hovering at a couple of hooves above the ground, the passive machine wubbed as its bent jet engine sent ripples on the bed of water below.
Steam dissipated in the cold rain, rising from the fuming hood of the flying cart. Two long red stripes traversed the cast body of the vehicle, running from bumper to spoiler and circling around a tainted glass cockpit. The speaker the mare had used hid somewhere under the coal-coloured frame.
The whole thing looked like an arrow tip: thin and sharp, able to fence through anything from air to granite and concrete. The black sludge that marred the metal body and dripped over its edge was a testimony of it. Gashes and holes too big to have been caused by the recent impact covered the vehicle.
“You’re okay…?” the voice repeated. “It’s not that but I’ve got a problem a bit further back, you know. I don’t wanna have a skunk catching me anytime soon. Neither do you, I think.”
Febrile, I stood up on my still valid hooves and climbed over the burning hood of the vehicle. I heard the mare smirk through her speaker.
“Don’t worry, lad,” the mare boomed over her interphone. “The city’s door ain’t that far.”
As I clung onto the bolide, misty air brushed in my mane. I was flying. Soon enough, the vault door of Raven-Flank was already in sight. That door… it was always something to see; a one-meter thick piece of steel that stood for over five storeys.
“Transporter matriculate number one-two-one ‘o nine, request access,” the mare said. “Do you have a M.I.A.? I’ve just found a pone outside.”
That mare was a transporter, one of the ponies that dared face the outside and link the surviving cities together like business-ponies and unequalled logisticians. Meeting one was an occurrence, but owing your life to one? That was more than luck.
I shivered and couldn’t stop my hooves from drumming over the metal hood. I was so cold. My mind reeled and my eyes rolled over as exhaustion wracked my sore muscles. Knowing that I was going to leave the outside behind rejoiced me. I was safe, safe… so finally safe.
The massive vault’s door creaked and started to roll on its two-decade old pony-sized hinges. Though the cockpit of the transporter’s ride was thick, I heard a voice traverse a speaker and the glass.
“Access granted. Opening of Raven-Flank’s northern door engaged,” said a city operator. “Welcome home, Transporter.”
With the whine of the door hinges accompanying us, we entered the city’s hangar and were swallowed by the penumbra that reigned inside.
The place buzzed with agitation, covering the rusty whine of its massive vault as it closed behind us. I heard gasps and whistles as the poor state of the transporter’s vehicle came into view. Its steel alloy sizzled, turning the thin layer of water that covered it into steam. As the saucer slowly came to a halt, an ever-growing crowd gathered around it.
I was lying on the vehicle’s hood. Smoke rolled off my face, cooking the mud cast over it into dried, cracked patches that pulled on my fur in a painful fashion. I tried to tear myself away from the cart’s burning vents but cringed in pain; my right foreleg was definitely wrong.
A cry pierced the ambient noise and a pair of hooves rushed through the smoke. A firm grip closed on my haunches and dragged me off the fuming cart.
I fell and hit the hard concrete floor of the hangar in a muddy splosh. As I raised my head and begged for help, I stared into the disgusted looks of two dozen ponies. While my skin crawled with my glued fur, I lifted my dirty and shivering hoof. They stepped away even further.
Somepony called out for help over the din of the hangar and a mare flew to me. She pushed me on the side and dutifully prodded my neck, legs and hooves for hidden wounds. She scurried over my back and forelegs and sent me into a sobbing ball of muck. I gargled and arched when she reached for my left hindleg. I screamed when she bit down and I watched her pull out a long ivory spike from my leg.
“My alicorn!” the mare chuckled and spat a curved rockodile’s canine. “Where have you been?!”
That voice tasted of home. The mare bounced away and reached over for a bystander of the same sex and slit a long piece of fabric off her robe, earning an outraged shout. The nurse ran back to me and roped my bleeding leg with the improvised bandage. She called it a victory with a little yay.
Wearing a thin and strict white blouse, the pony doctress was of the cleanest white. A patch of rose mane fell behind her left ear in a long pony tail and only a few flakes of mud spoiled the side of her mouth where she had bit on the rockodile fang. She was a big smile; a snow-flake that slowly drew closer to my face. Her head turned slightly on the side and her pony tail softly brushed over my shoulder. I smiled and broke into a short and blissful giggle. She was so beautiful.
“Your shoulder and kneecap are dislocated,” she noted, arching a brow with a large smile.
“Uh?” I blabbered before a hellish pain shot through my right foreleg.
A slow shudder trickled over the top of my head and didn’t stop before it had reached my hindlegs. Pain dripped out of my shoulder without an end and I lay petrified on the ground with my eyes probably bulging out of their sockets.
While I wallowed in pain, the mare trotted to a nearby pond formed by a constant stream of droplets coming from the ceiling. She glanced at her reflection and dusted the mud off her cheek with concern in her eyes.
Looking back at me with her marvellous purple eyes, she softly bit in her lips and let them go with a pop. She opened her mouth but said no word. She scrunched up, filled her cheeks with air, and let it go again in little puffs.
“You’re okay?” she finally chortled. “I didn’t break you I hope…?”
I stared in silence at the ceiling, cursing the invisible monster gnawing my shoulder. The nurse grimaced and poked me in the side. Before she could break the relative silence, a loud hiss cut her off and startled the whole crowd.
I managed to focus on that transporter’s saucer. The vehicle was covered with scraps, nips, and gashes. Only claws could have done that; claws as big as my head, bigger than a rockodile’s.
The vehicle’s bottom had opened hidden hatches and landing gears clicked as they touched the ground. Its single jet engine singed at its far end vomited glowing jet fuel onto the ground in one large and fuming puddle. The white-hot liquid devoured the bare concrete like paper and fireponies struggled to contain the damage with their extinguishers. The vehicle rolled forward to a landing spot and gave a final breath of steam.
“Transporter, docking arms are descending, please disengage,” a speaker boomed above my head as the vehicle lowered on its landing gears.
The wrecked hood slit in two trapdoors that slid sideways, revealing a monstrous engine beneath. Massive air intakes were evenly distributed on the motor’s sides. A sheet of metal had been ripped off its top and I could see dozens of glowing thin fans still rolling inside.
From the dark ceiling emerged a massive mechanic arm that locked onto the front of the saucer and a second one came over the vehicle’s exhaust. Rolling orange warning light lit up and both arms blasted a foaming bluish coolant on the vehicle. A bluish and irritating steam that smelt of ozone covered the place like fog. Intakes screwed to the two robotic limbs switched to life and vacuumed the smog.
“Docking locked and engaged,” the voice continued. “Pilot, you can evacuate the cockpit.”
Everypony’s eyes narrowed, eager to take a first look at the transporter. Transporters weren’t an oddity in Raven-Flank. However, that saucer was in such a bad state that it had gathered every curious pony’s attention. What had happened on that transporter’s way to our city would be the subject of every conversation tonight. The reason of her coming could only be bad though and the mayor would undoubtedly be the first mare to talk to the mare. I was surprised she wasn’t there already.
The cockpit’s locks shattered and blasted ten hooves above the metal carcass. Ripped from the top of the cart and ploughing through the air, the remains of the rounded glass whirled and embedded itself in the middle of the crowd. It nearly cleaned off an onlooker’s leg.
A hoof pierced through the bubbling steam that filled the cockpit and an orange mare staggered out. She fell head-first on the concrete, absorbing most of the shock with her shoulder blades where small wings were quivered.
“Oh, Celestia!” a stallion cried out. “It’s Scootaloo!”
That mare, Scootaloo, was wet with steam and sweat. Her skin had moulded over her bones, her lips sleeved up above her teeth, and her long dishevelled mane trickled like a towel taken out of a pool. Even her landing spot fumed. Wires and cables jabbed in her legs still linked her to her flying cart and a headset was firmly strapped to her face, covering her eyes.
Past the moment of stupor, a hoof full of ponies rushed to the transporter’s side and instantly carried her away towards the hospital.
Looking back at the place where the orange mare had fallen, I saw blood – a lot of it. Each cable had a needle at its end.
“What the…,” the nurse mumbled while she stared intensely at the elevator door where Scootaloo had been evacuated. She turned towards a grease pony and shouted, “Was that flight scheduled?”
The earth pony lowered the notepad on which he was listing the damages covering the vehicle and locked his dark-ringed eyes on the snow-white mare. He gravely shook his head. With a sigh and avoiding the puddle of blood that covered the concrete, he went back to work.
The nurse pinched her lips and scrapped the top of her neck. She then glanced at me with a broad smile, showing me her perfect set of white teeth. She poked my shoulder and sent me into a crushing state of pain.
“Eh…,” she giggled. “Can you walk to the hospital by yourself or do I have to walk a big, meany crybaby?”
I grumbled and weakly rolled over. Standing up with a great effort, I hopped on three legs and fell. The nurse caught me up before I broke myself on the floor.
“Take it easy, boy,” she laughed.
Dragging me away from the landing site and away from the crowd, she called for two ponies to help me stand up while she left. She came back a minute later with a wheelchair and an armed guard at her side. He was asking questions and even glanced at me quite a few time with a surprised look.
The guard quickly motioned to the nurse to move on with the chair and went back to his patrol around the transporter jet. With the butt of his spear, he shoved away half a dozen ponies that had crept too close to the vehicle. Better be safe as they always said.
“Thanks,” I muttered at the nurse as she hauled me in the wheelchair.
I felt like I hadn’t spoken in years. Curious, I studied the contours of the jet. My jaw dropped a little when a firepony extracted a long flat plate from the cast of the vehicle’s body. Blood dripped from it. It was a reptilian scale. I shook my head and looked away back at the nurse’s face.
“Who was she, the transporter?” I asked.
The white mare didn’t answer me at first. She granted a condescending glare that hurt a little.
“You don’t know? It’s Scootaloo! She drives one of the most powerful Jetstream of Equestria! The Scoot I think it’s called! She… She is the fastest transporter alive!” she explained like it was such an obvious answer. “Well… the fastest after Rainbow Dash of course. Dash is a cheater though! She doesn’t even use a Jetstream.”
The saucers were called jetstreams, I had forgotten that. Big beasts they were, really.
“How do you know that?” I coughed, holding my hoof over my chest.
Something snapped behind my head and I squeaked. Turning over, I saw the nurse’s wings fully stretched. I hadn’t even caught up the fact she was a pegasus. I crooked over my chair, downhearted.
“I listen to the news,” the nurse mocked. “That’s the only thing to do here, anyway. Ponies are so tame there is usually nothing to do in the hospital.”
Well, I was going to give her work apparently… I just nodded though, afraid she would knock my head with her wing again. She bent down and talked in my ear.
“If you’re lucky, we organise stretcher races sometimes.”
“What?!” I sputtered.
With a big smile, she pushed me in an empty elevator and actioned some buttons that shook the machine alive. The rusty mechanism of the elevator cranked up and began its slow descent towards the deeper levels of Raven-Flank.
Raven-Flank had been built in a former mine, one of the largest in Equestria to be fair. Ten thousands ponies lived now in the city. Early on, the mayor had it divided in twenty levels – each one with its own purpose. The first level, the hangar, was the only one that wasn’t built underground. Transporters came and go from there and all our trade with other cities circulated through that hub. The hangar had become a pretty tensed place over the years. It was heavily guarded though we never had an attack in seven years. There, ponies always watched you, often through the scope of their rifles.
The city had grown over the years and the second to sixth levels had become the largest. Devoted to hydroponic farming and the meagre industry of Raven-Flank, this area was the workplace of more than two-third of the city’s inhabitants. It required horsepower, time, and resources to take care of our only source of food: indoor apples and daisy flowers. The oldest ponies always said it tasted like nothing compared to the food from before the deluge.
The next ten levels had been allocated to everything that was anyhow related to social activities: schools, atriums, a cinema, a theatre, and all sort of places had sprawled in those levels in twenty years. It was also where we had dug the most to expand our living space.
We had abandoned the seventeenth level though, filled it up in most parts and reinforced the structure with steel to sustain the weight of the levels above.
An underground river spanned through the eighteenth level. In the early days of Raven-Flank’s inception, the most savant earth ponies had set up turbines inside the flooded cave. Light was something most ponies thought granted and we often didn’t give much credit to how hard the maintenance team worked day and night. They deserved it though. Mother was one of them.
At that point, ponies had to change from elevators. The next six levels had been built far away from the city’s main body to avoid structural hazard. Believe me, if there was a problem coming from that decision, it was a traffic one. When night time rang in the city’s speakers, everypony always overcrowded and jammed through the elevator area and the emergency stairs. At least we had increased the number of staircases over the years.
Thinking about that recurring problem, I found myself pretty lucky that the hangar had an elevator available when the nurse had needed it. It was even more surprising that we were alone.
The remaining floors were accessible through a long alleyway built far beneath the earth. The rooms and dormitories had been set up there and everypony hated them. It was crammed, smelly, and noisy. Family quarters were rare and only given to families with young kids, the crying kind. It was why the mayor had lately began an expansion program that would grant personal quarters to everypony. The snarkiest ponies affirmed it had granted her re-election.
“My name is Socha,” the nurse broke in.
“Vox,” I mumbled.
“How was it?” she whispered right into my ear.
I shuddered and backed away slightly.
“How was it what?” I mumbled, keeping my wounded hoof against my chest.
The elevator pinged and its large door slid open to the eleventh level, letting a low light pour in. Socha pushed my wheelchair in an alleyway. The walls of the place, once been painted white, had degraded to a pale green. The obsessive cleanliness of the level contrasted with my filthiness; I was still buried beneath a layer of dry mud that flacked away on the way.
“The outside, silly,” she chortled. “You went outside, don’t you?”
I didn’t answer. My hindlegs shook as I stared into Socha’s purple irises. Standing high on her slender legs, her wings tightly locked on her sides, she looked at me with devouring curiosity. Her head cast a large shadow on mine and I couldn’t get to mimic the nascent smile growing on her face.
“You ain’t talkish today. I see,” she said with a note of disappointment in her speech.
I nodded as she pushed me through the level’s corridors. Ponies stopped their conversation when we passed by, lowering their eyes to avoid to look at me and pinching their muzzles. As we turned a corner, I caught a mare cleaning small stains of blood on the floor. As we rapidly approached the hospital, those became increasingly more common.
We finally saw the swinging doors of the hospital. The second we crossed them, mayhem broke lose.
“Bring me the pliers!”
“IVs en route!” another voice blared.
“We’re losing her!” a mare spat at her nearest assistant and missed touching him with the defibrillator she had in her hooves. “Bring me a zebra brew.”
“Are you crazy?” a nearby surgeon castigated.
“Fuck off!” the head-mare boomed. “Do what I said!”
The emergency room had moved to the front desk. Blood was spilled on the floor, fitting closely to the joints that linked the marble tilling together. It was a waltz of white blouses and faint turquoise outfits. Discarded tools had been unprofessionally thrown in a corner and the smell of cleansing alcohol and blood swamped the place. An E.R. pony had even taken a hoofstep back to gather his wit.
Among the havoc, I saw an orange hoof dangling off the edge of the front desk, a true chopping block at the moment.
That’s when I caught a glimpse of one pony out of place. A white mare was sitting on the farthest bench, resting her muzzle on her joined up hooves. Her large purple with streaks of grey mane curled over her face and nearly fell to her haunches.
“Mayor Rarity,” Socha gasped.
The mayor was overlooking the room in silence, not flinching or blinking, just starting intensely at the scene. She didn’t even threw us a glare to acknowledge our presence.
The head-surgeon flared her defibrillator on the orange mess lying on the counter and a flash caught my eyes off-guard.
“Reload!” the mare warned.
Socha bounced over me and landed like a featherweight next to my flank, blocking the view. With a forced smile, she motioned me away from the scene and dragged my chair and me out in an adjoining corridor.
“Sorry you had to see that?” she apologised.
“Is she going to survive?” I asked.
A flash slithered below the swing door that separated us from the reception desk. Socha grimaced.
“I trust the doctors,” she said. “Let’s go to the care room, shall we?”
With a nip from her left hoof, she knocked off my hide a patch of dried mud and exposed my cutie mark, plus or minus a few clumps of fur. I cringed at the sharp and located pain and backed away from the intrusive mare.
“Oh,” she pouted. “I expected something else.”
We both looked down at my cutie mark then shared the same distraught look. I wasn’t thrilled either. Such was the life of a pony with a stallion with a little bell and a coin stamped on his ass. Socha arched a brow. She was really unconvinced.
“So, what’s your talent?” she cracked as we passed through another door.
We stopped in a large room entirely tiled with white stones. She walked in front of me and took a closer look to my shoulder and leg.
“I dunno,” I shrugged. “When I was a colt, my class used to go play hide and seek in the hangar. We used a coin to choose who the seeker was. And the bell…”
Socha looked at me and gave a little nod and a chuckle before she circled around me and busied herself where I couldn’t see her.
“Well…” I continued. “If the seeker found anypony, he would throw the bell on him or her. It’s a mean kind of tag now that I think about it. Got a milk tooth broken once.”
I turned on my haunches, my sore muscles throwing a tantrum around my chest, and sought for Socha.
“And what are you doing behind me?” I asked.
“Well, cleaning you, of course!”
I faced the tip of a hose, held by the snarling nurse. My world became water as I received the shower treatment.
A minute passed, two minutes… maybe three before she shut off the hose. Panting and still seated on my now soaked wheelchair, I watched the last bit of diluted murk roll down the syphon built in the middle of the room.
I looked down at my right foreleg. The cold water had tamed the pain a bit but it still hurt.
“Come on, crybaby,” Socha teased. “It ain’t broken.”
“You could have told me,” I grumbled.
Socha rolled her eyes and tut-tuted me all the way to the patient yard. I was the only one here that day.
Socha helped me on a new chair where she dried me up with a towel. Shortly after she settled my forehoof in a splinter and helped me lie in a bed. The place where the rockodile tooth had bitten was not as damaged as I thought. It had scrapped a long but superficial gash and had stayed there, entangled in my fur.
Putting back a bandage, I finally felt like my ordeal was over. My head dropped on the pillow and I aimlessly stared at the ceiling. As seconds passed and the room became more silent, my eyelids became heavier.
The door slammed open, jolting Socha and me out of our growing numbness. Two doctors were pushing a stretcher to a bed set at the opposite side of the room. They counted to three and transferred the transporter to her new bed.
Covered in bandages, the mare’s chest heaved loudly, stretching on her bloody bandages. Her right foreleg was stung with five different tubes that reached out for bags of different colours and a gauze was wrapped around her head. At least she looked better than when she had exited the Jetstream.
Then I saw the mayor stroll in the yard. Keeping a fair distance from the doctors, she waited for them to walk away after twenty or so minutes before making a move. She crept to Scootaloo’s bedside, barely hiding her discomfort at looking at her long-time friend’s poor state.
“Scootaloo…” mayor Rarity sighed, brushing her hoof through the sparse deep purple mane of the transporter.
She turned around and looked at the two surgeons. She sighed, forcing both of them to slowly crawl back.
“Thanks for your inestimable help, both of you. I couldn’t be any more rejoiced by the incredible work you’ve made here. Would you kindly leave while I have business with our invitee?” She smiled. “I need calm and… anonymity.
The two doctors shared a short and febrile look.
“Please,” Mayor Rarity grew menacing.
“Excuse our boldness, Mayor,” one apologised before they ran through the nearest swinging door.
Hearing the mayor’s voice unfiltered by a speaker was a spectacle. Her voice was slow, like she was choosing each of her words with a grand care. It carried the weight of her wisdom and experience as our mayor of twenty years.
She was old and her face was marked by many sleepless nights. Wrinkles marred the sides of her blue eyes while small, black bags hanged below them. But overall, she had kept nearly all of her youthful beauty. I guessed the make-up help.
“Scootaloo?” Mayor Rarity whispered, bringing her hoof to the orange mare’s cheek.
The transporter burst on her haunches and took a long, distressed breath. Coughing, she extracted the tube going down her throat and spat peps of blood on her white bed sheets.
“Rarity,” Scootaloo rasped. “Rarity, are you there?”
The orange mare swept her valid hoof around, trying to find her startled friend. Mayor Rarity swept the sweat off her brow and trotted to scootaloo’s side. She caught the shaky orange hoof and secured it against her own cheek.
“I am here, Sweetheart,” the mayor answered.
The imperious tone of before had vanished, replaced by a gentleness that she had left to dust on a shelves for year.
“Rarity,” Scootaloo repeated with tears streaming under the gauze covering her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
The mayor gulped on her shivering hindlegs. Her lips quivered and her breath grew louder.
“Tell me,” Mayor Rarity prayed her to do, forgetting her formality. “I know I don’t want to hear that, but, please, tell me.”
With a grimace, mayor Rarity went to hug the wounded pegasus who lay her chin on the unicorn’s shoulder.
“Applejack,” the pegasus bawled, “she’s dead.”
Mayor Rarity’s hoof fell behind Scootaloo’s back and her head sagged.
“She’s been assassinated.”
A heavy silence fell upon the patient yard. It lasted until I heard a drip drop hitting the floor, a cry rise from the couple of mares. But it wasn’t Scootaloo’s cry. Socha and I didn’t move. We were hearing the mayor’s tears. The first one, I think, that she shed in ages.
“I think we shouldn’t be here,” Socha muttered.
I couldn’t look away though, it was like witnessing an old and worn-out emotionless mask of clay shatter on the cold, hard floor.