//------------------------------//
// Weakest and Strongest 
// Story: Innavedr 
// by Imploding Colon 
//------------------------------//

	"Unggh... Look..."  Josho frowned and rolled over across the metal floor.  "Will you stop shivering?"

Eagle Eye grimaced, clutching his forelimbs to himself as he lay besides the heavyset stallion in the middle of the rusted prison hold full of exhausted ponies.  "I c-can't help it..."

"It's not even cold in here!" Josho hissed.

"It's not the cold..."  Eagle Eye whimpered.

Josho's gaze narrowed.  "You started doing this crud right before they shoved us back into this thing."

"Shhh!" hissed one of the many miserable equines of the place.

"Yeah!  Keep blowing!" Josho grumbled at him.  "If you like, I can come over there and carve you a new trachea!"

The other prisoners said nothing.

With a sigh, Josho layed his head back down.  His bleary eyes stared into the rusted floor.  "Spark alive, what I wouldn't give for a drink right about now..."

"The cr-crystals..."  Eagle Eye stammered.

"Yeah?  What about them?" Josho grumbled.

"They must be doing something to m-me..." He said amidst his quivers.  "To all of us..."

"Well, you the most, obviously."

"I think that's why the Diamond Dogs don't want to get too close.  They know there's something toxic or d-dangerous..."

"Jee, you're just now figuring that out?"

"So sue me!" Eagle Eye grunted back, wincing as he felt the metal loop of the manacle around his forelimb.  "I was always the dexterous one... not so much the clever pony."  He sighed.  "That was always Zenith's department.  And Crimson..."  He bit his lip and covered his sad face with a pair of limbs.  "Ohhhhh Crimson..."

"Give it a rest, will ya?" Josho grumbled.  "It's not like you were gonna marry him..." He then squinted and glanced over his shoulder.  "Were you?"

"It wasn't like that..."

"Seems that way to me."

"It wasn't!" Eagle Eye frowned, then sighed yet again.  "I knew he had his own life to live, his own family to return home to, his own future to care about..."

"Then why do you make such a big deal about him?"

Eagle Eye exhaled long and hard, ultimately murmuring into the rusted shadows of the room, "B-because I loved him anyways..."

"Heh.  Figured—"

"Enough that, once we got back home..."  Eagle Eye gulped.  "I was thinking of hiking back north and g-getting captured."

Josho raised an eyebrow.  He tilted back.  "Say what?"

"Crimson is brave and all, and I'm glad for all he did to keep us safe."  Eagle Eye shuddered.  "But the fact is... the Ledomaritans don't stop for nothing."

"You got that right—er...."  Josho winced.

"They would march their way into Franzington to find the four of us, even if we did make it," Eagle Eye said in a soft breath.  "So, I had this idea that... maybe... just maybe I could sneak out and get myself captured, so that I could concoct this story about how every member of the Blades Guild died but me.  Then... p-perhaps they'd believe it, and they would have left Franzington alone."

Josho shook his head.  "Not a chance.  They would have tortured you for the truth first."

"I wouldn't have given it to them."

"How could you possibly believe that?"

Eagle Eye opened his mouth.  He lingered, but ultimately squeaked forth, "Because it's h-happened to me before..."

Josho blinked.  He turned to look at him.

The young unicorn's eyes were moistening, but he sucked it in with a frowning breath.

Josho squinted.  "Now you're just pulling my leg."  Silence.  "Aren't you?"

"When I went into battle in the northern Xonan heights..."  Eagle Eye muttered, "I was ready to die.  There was... more than one reason for that."

Josho's face was awash with confusion.  Just then, a beam of light shone on them.  He sat up and squinted towards the bright, outside world as the bodies of diamond dogs shuffled inward.

"Wakey wakey, poniesssssss!"  An alpha canine slapped his whip against the nearest wall.  "Back to the quarry!"

"Nnngh..." Eagle Eye tried getting up, but stumbled.

Josho glanced at him, then at the captors.  "You gotta be drinking from toilets!  You just had us retired less than three hours ago!"

"You want to dig?!"  The diamond dog pointed at him, frowning.  "Or you want to die?"

Josho glared.  As ponies lurched up on all fours around him, he stood up and nudged Eagle Eye.  "Come on, squirt.  Up and at 'em."

"I... I-I can't do it," Eagle muttered.

"You think I give a crap?"  Josho hissed.  "If you don't get up, they're gonna rip your head off and I'll be bound to a slightly crappier smelling pony!"

"All the b-better... for you..."  Eagle Eye wheezed, his body limp.

Josho's brow furrowed.  He looked at the crowd surging out, then at the bright world beyond.  With a groan, he glowed his horn and forcibly lifted Eagle Eye to his hooves.

Eagle groaned.  "Where... why?"

"Just friggin' move," Josho grumbled, trying his best to make Eagle Eye look animated as the two lurched out of the prison cell and into the dust of the sun-lit crystal quarry.  "I really, really don't want to spend the afternoon burying you."

"Why n-not?  It h-has to be loads easier than hammering rock."

"Shut it."