Heavy breathing was heard from outside of the barn of Sweet Apple acres. Most would thing that the breathing belonged to nothing smaller than a mid-sized dragon. Fortunately, they would be incorrect. The being that was owner of the breathing, however, could most likely hold his own against a dragon if the fight was primarily on land. The deep rumbles belonged to a gigantic pony known simply as ‘Tank’.
It had been a long time since Tank had slept that deeply and for that long. Usually he was interrupted by Witch or Smoker saying that it was time to move on. It was interesting really, Smoker being able to tell a muscular being such as Tank what to do. After all, Tank could easily snap Smoker in half without any trouble if he wanted. Despite both knowing full well what Tank was capable of, Tank allowed Smoker to tell him to get moving.
Tank had known Smoker for only three weeks, but for him and the other infected if felt like an entire lifetime of pain and suffering. Every breath they took there was pain. Every time they moved there was pain. Every time they did anything there was pain. Yet, despite all of the suffering, those three weeks weren’t all bad.
About five days Smoker and Hunter had wandered across himself, Witch and Boomer, there was a rather large group of non-infected people. They rampaged down the streets of the small town they were temporally camped in. One of them had foolishly tried to attack Witch, causing Tank to try and defend her from harm, whatever the cost to himself it may be.
The battle was long and bloody, finally, it was just Tank and the leader of her group. The two stared at each other, the non-infected gripping her katana tightly as Tank’s hellishly black eyes bore into her very soul. The woman yelled and struck Tank multiple times with the sharp Japanese sword. Tank tried to hit the woman with one of his gigantic fists but she was too fast. Just as the red haze of death began to fill Tank’s vision, there was a loud cough and the sounds of someone being strangled.
Tank fell unconscious after that and awoke some hours later, with Witch, Boomer and Hunter crowded around him. Smoker was nowhere to be seen, but the odd cough could be heard every so often. Tank knew Smoker was the one who saved him, for whatever reason he had. Thinking back on it now, Tank never truly realised how thankful he was for Smoker showing up at that exact moment.
A loud thump, then the sound of gears turning snapped Tank out of his thoughts as he rose silently from his resting place under a pile of hay. The light pattering of rain on the roof of the barn caused Tank to sigh slightly, bad things happened to him in the rain. Why should today be an exception?
Tank walked over to the barn doors and opened them as quietly as he could and stepped out into the rain. He heard something sloshing around in the mud and growled out of instinct. Faint whispers surrounded him as he slowly moved away from the barn and towards the path that led back into town.
“Now!”
The high pitch voice caused Tank’s ears to flatten slightly as a large beam of wood came swinging out of nowhere and impaled him in the chest.
Tank’s eyes widened in surprise and noticed three young ponies hiding amongst the tree tops. Sighing to himself, Tank slowly removed the beam out of his chest and threw it onto the ground. Where a large amount of blood should have been pouring out, only a dark red patch of fur was on his chest where he was injured.
Tank chuckled slightly, “Little ponies, if you wanted to see what I could endure, you should have told Witch that I was made of cotton candy.”
The three ponies’ faces were pale as they realised that Tank was, in fact, a pony and not some monster like they had first assumed. Tank recognised one of them to be Applejack’s little sister, Applebloom If he recalled correctly, who he had briefly met last night. They kept on trying to say they were sorry, but couldn’t manage to create proper sentences.
Tank smiled slightly, “Don’t worry, Tank is fine. No need to worry.”
One of the three young ponies, Applejack’s little sister, looked up at Tank, “But, we could have seriously hurt you.”
Tank chuckled again, “A puny wooden beam is nothing compared to a propane tank exploding beside you.”
The three ponies gave Tank a confused look.
“What’s a Pro Pain tank?” asked the little orange one.
Tank shrugged, “Little metal container that explodes. I have had first hand,” Tank frowned, “err, hoof experiencing it.”
The three nodded as Tank began to walk way again. Applebloom called out for him to stop. Sighing, Tank turned around and faced them again.
“What is it?”
“Well, Mr. Tank, we were wondering what your cutie mark was. We are trying to find our own and we’ve been trying everything.”
Tank stared at them for a solid minute before saying, “What is this ‘cutie mark’ you speak of?”
The three young ponies stared at him in utter disbelief. Tank returned the stare for a moment before resuming down the path. After a moment of walking, a something crossed his mind.
“Who came up with a puny name like cutie mark?”
*************************************************************************************
A thin cloud of smoke was being emitted lazily out of Smoker’s dark grey horn as he awoke in a darkened room. Groaning to himself, he looked around for Boomer, who should be nearby.
“Boomer, you in here?”
There was no response. Instead, Smoker heard someone speaking above him. Wandering around blindly, Smoker eventually came across a small set of stairs and walked up them. Grumbling to himself, Smoker ascended up the stairs and saw Boomer casually sitting on a chair drinking some coffee. He glanced over to Smoker.
“Hello,” Boomer said as he continued drinking the coffee.
“Hi,” Smoker said gruffly as he held back some light coughs in his throat.
The light patter of rain had become a full on downpour, making looking out a window near useless. Still, Smoker looked out of the window, and to his surprise, he saw the tell-tale glow of Spitter goo illuminating the owner of the glowing acid running across the street.
There was a loud banging on the door. Boomer raised his eyebrow and Smoker shrugged. Twilight’s voice echoed down the stairs that led to the upper floor.
“Hey Boomer, could you get that? I’m a little busy with something up here.”
Boomer sighed and walked over to the door. He opened it and stared at Spitter and saw her panting heavy and trying to saw something, but couldn’t manage to say it.
“Boomer, Smoker, Screamer *pant* gone crazy *pant* drawing again *pant* need you to see it,” Spitter panted.
Smoker glanced at boomer, who nodded. Usually Smoker could care less about what Screamer did, except when he was drawing.
In the past, when they first saw Screamer start drawing something with the blood of a corpse, they dismissed it as something unimportant. It was only until Boomer saw the completed piece of art when they realised what it meant.
The drawing depicted all nine of the infected, each a little distorted but they just assumed that’s how Screamer saw them. Under the nine infected were eight figures, they seemed to be non-infected. They seemed to be un-killable, as a horde of infected was being slaughtered around them. Beside that there was a strange swirling pattern, and beside the swirling pattern there were horses.
It wasn’t until they saw eight, now seven, non-infected with their own eyes when they realised that Screamer may have been predicting something in that crazed mind of his. And when they saw the swirling pattern in the ruins of New Orleans six days ago, needless to say they were wary as hell.
Unfortunately, a bomb exploding knocked them all into the portal, and very well may have saved their lives. That portal led them here. And Screamer predicted it somehow. Whatever he was drawing now may also be a prediction of the near future.
So Smoker and Boomer left with Spitter to find Screamer, and darted through the heavy rain.
“Wasn’t there a heat wave two days ago?” grumbled Smoker.
“Twilight says that the pegasi move the clouds and control the weather,” said Boomer as he took another one of his bile preventing pills.
The three continued through the rain until they arrived at Sugarcube corner, where all of the windows had been boarded up due to them all shattering last night. Spitter opened the door and walked inside with Smoker and Boomer not far behind.
Spitter spotted Pinkie pie looking at the door that led to the room Screamer was in curiously. She turned around and greeted them.
“Hi Spitter, Boomer and Smoker!”
“Hey, how’s Screamer doing?” asked Spitter.
Pinkie pie frowned slightly, “Well, he stopped laughing if that helps.
Spitter nodded, “That means he’s getting better. Thanks, Pinkie.”
“Heahehyehae,” Screamer cackled from inside of the room he was in.
Smoker could faintly hear the sound of a marker cap being closed with a snap and slowly walked towards the door.
There was a thump as Screamer apparently rammed himself at the door as Smoker approached it. Spitter turned to Pinkie pie, who looked slightly worried.
“It’s fine, Screamer won’t hurt you. The worst thing he’ll do is be loud.”
Pinkie pie nodded and saw Smoker walk into Screamer’s temporary confinement.
There was a long pause, occasionally interrupted by some coughs and strange raspy sounds made my Smoker and Screamer respectively before Smoker called the all to see what Screamer had drawn.
The four entered the room to find that every inch of it was covered in drawings. They noticed Screamer hovering in the center of the room, his eyes entirely black except for a small yellow dot in the center of each eye.
Smoker stared at where the drawings seemed to start: depicting all of the infected as non-infected humans.
“Sweet Jesus,” breathed Spitter.
Pinkie pie stared at a drawing that seemed to depict her and her friends, with a menacing circle of darkness surrounding them. In nine different places around the circle there was a figure representing each of the individual infected.
“My god,” said Boomer, getting everyone’s attention besides Screamer, “It’s telling a story.”
Smoker looked at Boomer then back at the drawings. “How can you tell?”
“There,” he pointed at the highest picture, the one representing him and the others as humans, “That’s the start of it. Follow it clockwise until you get to here,” he pointed at what looked like fire falling from the sky and fourteen unidentifiable figures surrounding a fifteenth figure, which was lying down in what seemed to be a pool of blood.
“Running will get you nowhere, but staying will not help your cause,” Screamer rambled.
The three infected dismissed it as just another one of Screamer’s ramblings but Pinkie pie turned and faced the hovering infected.
“What do you mean by that?” she asked curiously.
“Pain is in the form of the sixed limbed biped,” said Screamer ominously, “Listen to the Blue Eyed Moron.”
Pinkie pie frowned, she had blue eyes and some ponies didn’t think she was very smart.
“Everything is what it seems to be, except when it isn’t.”
Pinkie pie looked at Screamer one last time before turning away and looking at the pictures again. It wasn’t every day when somepony managed to confuse her this much.
*********************************************************************************
Hunter jumped joyfully around in the rain. Although rain messed up his echolocation slightly, he still liked jumping around in puddles.
“What are you doing, Hunter?” asked someone from up ahead.
Hunter shrieked in the rain, startling Fluttershy who was following him, and got a mental picture of Charger standing ahead with Jockey and Rarity by her.
“Looking for you guys,” said Hunter as he skidded to a halt. He sniffed the air and turned with his head towards the sky. Hunter took a deep breath and shrieked as loud as he could into the sky, yet again, startling Fluttershy.
Fluttershy and Rarity noticed Hunter’s ears swivelling around on his head, apparently trying to hear something.
Another screech, noticeably higher in pitch and coming from the sky caused Hunter to grin. He screeched again in response.
After a moment Witch flew into view and landed lightly on the muddy ground as Rainbow dash skidded to a halt when she landed, stopping just inches before Fluttershy.
Witch blinked and walked over to Hunter, who was sniffing the air.
“Where’s Tank?” Witch asked quietly, the rasp in her voice from yesterday fading.
Hunter sniffed the air again, “He’s in town somewhere, but for some reason I can also smell blood in his direction.”
Witch frowned; Tank wouldn’t normally kill something for no reason, especially now that he, like Spitter, Jockey, Boomer and Screamer, was herbivorous. Hunter, Smoker, Charger and herself were omnivorous, for whatever reason.
Suddenly Witch got another, more plausible idea, “Is he hurt?”
Hunter shrugged, “I’m not sure, if he is though, what could anything really do to him? He’s a walking brick wall.”
Witch nodded slightly. Hunter had a point; Tank has survived nearly everything that could be thrown at him on Earth. What could hurt him here?
A loud roar echoed through the rain. Witch’s ears twitched slightly as she tried to find the direction where the roar came from.
The Jockey and Charger noticed that Hunter and Witch had begun to move east and followed not far behind. Rarity, Fluttershy and Rainbow dash, however, was confused at why the infected suddenly began to move east.
“I’m sorry but, why are you all going that way?” Rarity asked.
“’Cause Tank’s that way,” said Jockey, imitating Applejack.
Witch blinked and saw Jockey giggling to himself at her confusion and Hunter sighing, he’s going to have a field day with Jockey once he remembers that Hunter relies on sound and smell to get around. Fluttershy and Rainbow dash looked around for their friend until Rarity explained to them that Jockey could mimic anyone perfectly.
A few minutes past until they saw the gigantic figure of Tank standing motionless under a tree with his head down. The three ponies found it odd that somepony that huge could be entirely motionless like that. As they got closer they noticed a large red spot on Tank’s fur around where his stomach was.
Witch ran over to Tank and stared at him. Tank, having known Witch longer that he other infected (besides Boomer) shrugged.
“Tiny baby ponies mistook Tank for something he wasn’t,” he said as he moved from under the tree, “One of them looked like you,” he said, gesturing to Rarity.
Rarity’s pupils shrunk, “Sweetie bell did that!?”
Tank shrugged, “Don’t worry; I have little blood in system anyway. The worst they could have done is fracture a secondary rib. Nothing bad.”
Rainbow dash frowned, “What do you mean by ‘little blood in system’?”
Tank shrugged again, “Boomer would be able to explain it better.”
There was a small flicker of lightning and the roll of thunder in the distance, both of which caused Hunter to jump nearly a foot in the air and bolt up the tree Tank was in. very quietly, Hunter could hear something not unlike Jockey’s laugh in the distance. Very slowly, the laugh became louder until it became fully audible.
“Heahehyehae.”
Everyone froze. It sounded eerily like Jockey’s laugh, except a little more maniacal, if that was possible. There was a silence when the laugh stopped, somehow made even worse for the infected because Jockey’s laugh stopped too.
“Screamer?” said Jockey, in an unrecognisable younger voice, presumably his own.
The laugh was heard again and Jockey’s eyes widened as he ran off towards it. The infected, knowing what Jockey could do if unsupervised, ran off after him with the three ponies trailing behind them.
************************************************************************************
“Holy shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit!” Screamer muttered as he lightly put his head against the wall.
After about an entire half hour of staring at Screamer’s crazed drawings, Smoker had finished it and come to the realisation of what would ultimately be the fate of one of them. The last picture, probably the most important according to Boomer, depicted someone dying.
Although they couldn’t tell who it was, it was relatively easy to guess that it was one of the infected or some of the six ponies they met yesterday. How could he tell? Multiple of the drawings had figures with distinct features that the six ponies had. For instance, one of them had a hat; another one’s mane was curly.
The only one that he couldn’t figure out who it was the one with a horn and wings at the same time. He hadn’t met anyone with both, though according to Boomer, who had spoken with Twilight before he had gotten up this morning, claimed that the four princesses had both horns and wings. She had mentioned three but was interrupted by her dragon assistant, Spike, before saying who the fourth one was.
Boomer also said that the princesses were effectively immortal, with all the side effects of that along with it. Still, Smoker found it odd how Twilight’s assistant showed up at that exact time. Smoker paused and shook his head, ‘It’s just my paranoia thinking. Why would they not want to reveal the name of the fourth princess? It was just an inconvenient coincidence.’
Spitter walked up to Smoker and saw down beside of him.
“So, that was something, huh?” she asked.
“By something you mean a batshit crazy lunatic predicting one of our deaths with a no failure history, right?”
Spitter sighed, “Yeah, I do.”
Smoker moved his head way from the wall and looked at Spitter, “The main problem with this is I don’t know who it is who’s going to die.”
“Wouldn’t that make it worse?” asked Spitter.
Smoker shrugged, “At least if it was one of us we could try to make their last few weeks’ worth it. Without knowing, why bother do anything at all?”
Spitter looked at Smoker, then at the floor, “Because we’re a family. A crazy, sick and probably better off left alone family,” she said quietly.
Smoker stared at her for a moment, and then turned his head towards Boomer writing notes on a table. Pinkie pie had left, she didn’t explain why but Smoker and Boomer could tell that the pictures had disturbed her most, especially the crossed out one where she seemed to be wielding a knife of some sort and attacking Rainbow dash. She started to hyperventilate at that until Boomer tried to calm her down by saying that if it’s crossed out, it’s not going to happen. Never the less, she was much quieter after that and Smoker swore that her mane literally deflated and her coat colour became darker.
Flash of lightning streaked across the sky followed by a roll of thunder. Whatever was in store for him and the other infected, it wasn’t going to be pretty. And the worst part about it besides someone dying was that they had somehow managed to drag six innocent ponies into this.
Smoker held down another cough and sighed, bad things always happened to them in the rain.
Always.