//------------------------------// // Infection and Contagion // Story: Grounds for the Dead: A L4D2 Story // by SCP Pinkamena //------------------------------// Grounds For The Dead: Chapter Eight Rainbow Dash groggily opened her eyes as the suns piercing rays hit them with all their might. She closed them quickly allowing her eyes to adjust and opened them slowly to find herself in Twilight's bed. She rolled over and looked at the window and judged by where the sun was in the sky, it had to be at least three o'clock in the afternoon. She sat up and look around the room for leverage. She climbed out of the bed with a shaky first step. "Damn those freaks... next time I see them..." She said before she got a violet shiver down her very being. She heard voices downstairs, lots of voices and one was one she recognized almost immediately. She shivered again. That husky voice in a butchered speech. He was down there, and that was not one place she wanted to go. She got the idea of going out the window when another voice stopped her from going out. "Wow!" Pinkie Pie... "Oh, no..." Dash said to herself. Now two of her friends and the CMC were downstairs with the freaks. She had to safe them but she felt as though she couldn't, and that she had been weak when meeting them. "My reps already ruined... what's one more?" She said to herself as she geared to go out the window a sudden scream cut her off. "Pinkie! What's wrong?" Rainbow heard Twilight say downstairs. Her eyes widened in fear, and her heart raced with anticipation. She readied her wings and flew out the window seconds before Twilight opened the door and placed Pinkie on the bed. She watched outside the window as Pinkie shivered and convulsed slightly, her mane and tail flat and her coat a greyish-pink. She sniffed loudly and began to cry again in the bed, always looking around to make sure that smile wasn't watching her. _________ "Ok... I want explanations... now!" Twilight said as she came downstairs from the bedroom. Tank and Witch remained motionless, the CMC had long since left not wanting to see what the other could to their friends, the other six infected swayed one way to the other thinking of what to tell her. Smoker coughed and looked at her. "Where we come from, if one of us does something, intentionally or otherwise, we are not interfere. It's considered 'Helping the other Team...'" He said honestly. Twilight looked him down as he began to back up. Boomer walked to her and set himself down in front of her. He cleared his throat. "Well, where we come from... we were sorta kind... not alive..." He said slowly, gauging her features. In everyone's mind who knew Twilight, if someone where to say that to her she would bust out laughing or think of a logical way to say no. But what with talking to being from another world, she was going to take EVERY possibility. She raised an eyebrow and signaled him to continue. "Well... how can I put this, we were the reason that everything in our world... went to hell..." He said noticing a more physical reaction from Twilight. They told her that in their world there was an infection that changed the inhabitants, what they hadn't said was they were the reason. She shook her head and looked at Boomer. "What do you mean 'you're the reason?'" She asked him and her started to pale alittle. Smoker coughed once before she turned her attention to the rest of the group. "What?" She asked before Smoker let his tongue loose and it fell from his mouth, Charger stood on his hind legs by himself this time, and let his right arm hang limp while his giant left arm was out in front of him. Spitter grabbed a glass plate and started to drool her acidic spit on it, while Jockey found Spike and began riding on his shoulders and moving him around. Hunter crouched low and the muscles on his hind legs grew tight, as his he was about to pounce helpless prey. Tank and Witch both growled and huffed, their strength radiating off of them. Boomer looked at them and then back to Twilight. "This... is the infection. The 'Green Flu' if you will... It changed us not most of the other infected, but us primarily," He explained to her. Her jaw dropped at the new information they were giving her, and she wanted it oh so much. Charger fell back to his hooves. "As you can see, the infection changes us so far away from what we used to look like, except Hunter, and that we had been dubbed 'Mutations'. Each Mutation is different but in every aspect the same. Spitter's spit, Smoker's tongue, Jockey's small form, Hunter's leaping, Tank's strength, Witch's crying and long wings in this case, Boomer's bile, and my arm and charging ability are all special froms of the Mutation," Charger explained even further to the point where Twilight started writing notes. She looked up from her paper. "So how are they the same?" She asked, the innocence just making it harder to say. Smoker retracted his tongue and made way towards her. He sat very quietly and looked her straight in the eye. "...What are about to tell you, you mustn't run away, or so much as scream... got that?" Smoker said still looking her in the eye. Twilight felt nervous at what he said, but nodded in response. "We used to... kill anything NOT infected," He said and she began very slowly backing away. They killed?! How could they do that to another living thing!? She started to get tears in her eyes. "How... how could do that?!" She screamed at them. Tank thumped his way next to her and sat down. He looked down at her and closed his eyes. "We didn't... want to... had no choice..." He said in the best way he could in butchered speech. She looked at the rest of them as the all looked away thinking about what they had done in the past. They never wanted to, but the did anyway. It was hard for them it was like trying to warn somebody in your mind. Tank continued, "We never liked this... we wanted... freedom. Only way? ...Being killed..." He said. Twilight looked up at him and the rest of them seeing their deformities or Mutations as they had called them. She had remembered princess Luna saying to her after they had defeated Nightmare Moon. Better to die, than live as a monster... Those words struck home and she had tears coming out of her eyes. She now realized that they had been suffering and the only way out was to make other suffer... For once in her life... she didn't know what to do about this...