It was paradise. Sparse piney woods to the right, probably populated by all sorts of cute little animals. To her left was a lake, a huge, round pool of water that would be full of fish. Directly ahead of her, was, of course, the Cornucopia, a giant golden cone with a curved tail. In the mouth of the Cornocopia were piles and piles of supplies. Food, water, medicine; almost anything needed to survive. Strewn in a loose circle around the Cornucopia were other necessities: small knives, coils of rope, flashlights.
Fluttershy glanced over at the other tributes. The one closest to her, the stallion from the Saddle Arabian district, was eyeing a large sheathed sword, right at the mouth of the Cornucopia. Braeburn, two tributes to her left, pawed his hoof on his metal plate, ready to bolt as soon as the gong rang out. Whether he planned to run towards the supplies or into the woods was unclear, but Fluttershy didn't plan to find out. She wanted to run straight into the woods the moment the Games began.
Caramel was four tributes to her right, and he looked as scared as could be. His eyes darted back and forth between the tributes and the supplies, as if he couldn't decide whether to fight or hide.
The gong rang out, the loud, unnatural noise startling Fluttershy. She hesitated for a moment on her metal plate, losing a few precious seconds.
With the sudden realization that her life was on the line, she ran. Galloping for all she was worth, Fluttershy bounded towards the woods, and then, opening her wings, she took off, struggling to gain altitude. Many of the tributes were earth ponies, but a few were pegasi, and she chose not to take any chances as she flew high above the treetops. Below her, tributes battled to the death, using knifes, swords, any weapons they could find to take the others out. One of the other pegasus ponies had a wing hacked off by an axe. An earth pony was kicked in the head, and lay, unmoving, on the hard-packed earth. Fluttershy grimaced and flew on, unwilling to watch the carnage that played out on the ground.
Clouds were sparse above the forest, but Fluttershy preferred to perch in trees anyway. She flapped her wings harder and glided above the treetops.
Suddenly, and without warning, Fluttershy felt a sharp pain in her lower left hoof. Below her, a large knife fell away into the forest, and following it, a thin trickle of thick red blood. Fluttershy faltered, realizing that it was her own. The sky seemed to tilt sideways, and she struggled to keep her balance.
She glanced back to see a unicorn stallion standing on the ground, glaring at her. She must have been too far away, because he turned and aimed his next knife at another tribute.
Fluttershy flew on for about half an hour, ignoring the biting pain in her hoof. The cut wasn't very deep, she reasoned, and the farther she was from the Cornucopia, the better.
Finally, she landed, exhausted, in the thick branches of an oak tree. A wide hole in the trunk provided a perfect hiding place, and she laid down inside, gently setting her injured hoof down.
She didn't realize how tired she was until she woke to the boom of cannons. One... two... three... four... five. Five lives lost. Was one of them Caramel? Braeburn? Babs? She shuddered to think of the young filly, lying in a pool of her own blood.
And on the topic of blood... Fluttershy glanced down at her left hind leg. One look at her own fur, matted with gore, quickly revealed that the cut was much worse than she had originally anticipated. She tried to move her leg, and was rewarded with a fresh wave of pain. Black spots danced before her vision, and just as the world started to spin, she heard the scratching of tiny claws on the tree branch in front of her.
Hurt?
Fluttershy's eyes flew open once more at the sound of the timid animal's voice. It was a squirrel, a small, tawny squirrel with large round eyes and a curious twitching nose.
You? Hurt? The small creature asked.
"Yes," Fluttershy responded weakly. "I'm hurt. Do you think you could help?"
The squirrel tilted his head inquisitively and blinked a few times. Then he flicked his long brown tail and scampered down the tree. He returned only minutes later with a small army of woodland creatures: tiny chipmunks, twittering birds, sleepy owls, even a bat or two.
Fluttershy smiled, already feeling at home. The animals around her smiled as well, and she began to feel something blossoming inside of her, a warm feeling that she hadn't felt in a long, long time.
Hope.
***
Twilight Sparkle stood over the rest of the Gameponies, the raised platform she stood on a sign of her authority as head Gamepony. She glanced down at the 3-dimensional virtual model of the arena, complete with small blinking lights to mark each tribute. Nineteen lights left, and within the next few weeks, eighteen of those lights would go out. They didn't mean anything to Twilight, of course. Just another check on her list of things to do, right next to the groceries.
"District One and Two alliance is moving to sector 14." One of the Gameponies announced, her eyes trailing four of the lights as they moved slowly across the holographic arena. Twilight's eyes were drawn to the spot they were moving towards, where two more lights marked another pair of tributes. A conflict. Perfect. At least it would give the audience something to talk about.
"Miss Twilight!"
Twilight Sparkle groaned inwardly, hoping against hope that the voice behind her didn't belong to the pony she was thinking of. She turned around slowly, her gaze narrowed. Another Gamepony stood there, her pink mane bouncing slightly as she moved.
"Sorry to bother you." the earth pony grinned. "I just thought you'd like to see this."
"This better be important." Twilight grumbled as she followed Pinkie Pie to her station. On her computer screen, a yellow pegasus nestled in a hollow tree, surrounded by-
"Animals?" Twilight Sparkle exclaimed. "She's made an alliance with a bunch of animals?"
"I couldn't find anything about it in the rules." Pinkie Pie said quickly. "Of course, I didn't look very hard, because there are so many, and I didn't have time to do that much reading, so I asked Brush Stroke to look over them for me, and he told me to go do something that I can't repeat, so I decided to ask you because you're the smartest unicorn ever and of course you'll know what to do because-"
"Okay, okay!" Twilight interrupted. "I'll look into it. Just go back to... whatever you were doing."
Pinkie Pie nodded and skipped away, her pink tail bobbing behind her.
Twilight looked back at the computer screen, where a squirrel was wrapping the tribute's hoof with a long, wide leaf. The animals were certainly an unfair advantage for her.
Something would have to be done about that.
***
Fluttershy smiled down at her new friends. "Thank you very much.'' She said kindly. "That's so much better."
The animals tittered and chirped in response, telling her how happy they were to help.
Two of the birds flew up to her, with a small berry speared on each claw. They'd been working hard for the past hour, bringing more and more food to feed Fluttershy's growing hunger. She graciously thanked them and added the berries to her slowly growing pile of reserves. Her wounded hoof felt much better now that it was cleaned and wrapped in a thick bandage.
All of the sudden, a large boom resounded through the forest, scaring the animals. The birds took to the sky, while the others scampered down the tree and hid in the foliage, leaving Fluttershy all by herself. She watched as a hovercraft materialized out of thin air, only a few hundred yards from the tree she hid inside. It dipped down, opening a hatch in the bottom to release a claw. The claw descended to the forest floor, and when it came back up, it had a limp body clutched in it. Fluttershy squinted, trying to make out who it was.
It was a stallion, his green coat dotted with large red boils. Fluttershy watched as the claw receded into the hovercraft, taking the corpse with it. She wondered what the boils were from. Had he eaten something deadly?
And he'd been so close to her hiding place. Maybe she hadn't flown as far into the forest as she'd originally thought.
Fluttershy considered calling her animal friends back, but she decided against it. Maybe there were there others around, others that had heard the canon as well. Others that would be out for blood.
Instead, she curled into a ball and tried to go to sleep, hoping that they would be there when she awoke.
Before her eyes had fully closed, a terrible smell assaulted her nose. She heard the clacking of wood against wood, and a low growl that caused her to sit upright and look around. She only knew one animal that smelled like that.
Timberwolves.
Fluttershy looked down at the ground to see a small pack of them, circling her tree. The monsters were made completely of enchanted wood, held together by nothing but magic. They looked up at her and growled some more, the low sound sending a chill up her spine.
The timberwolves themselves didn't worry her, of course. She was up so high, in the hollow tree, that they couldn't possibly climb up to her.
No, what worried her was the desperate and barely audible cry for help.