Twilight slowly awakened. She could feel sleep caking her eyes shut and her throat burning from thirst. She felt like she just ran a marathon with how her hind legs felt, and her wings felt stiff and tense. She was currently stomach-down on something hard and slightly cold. With a groan, she rolled over, but when she almost did a full rotation, she had a sudden feeling of weightlessness before feeling a stabbing pain shoot through her back, causing her to let out a deep pained gasp.
She heard the sound of something moving, but was too concerned about her back to really pay much attention. She was going to look down at her back but was stopped when she felt a small prick on her rump then suddenly everything went numb and she let out a small sigh, no longer caring about anything other than her own relaxation.
“I thought you’d wake up soon,” she heard a familiar voice from out of her line of sight.
She looked to where the voice came from, and immediately remembered everything that happened in the past day come flooding back to her.
Crouched next to her prone form, was one of the bipedal monsters she saw kill each other, and later try and kill her. This one seemed different from the others though.
It had a long, dirty off white mane, which was tied into a bun behind its head. It had soft blue eyes that seemed to twinkle in the orange glow coming from somewhere around the shack. As she was looking at its eyes she saw a slight red and tender scar above one of its eyes. Its face was a light cream color and was thinner that the other monsters she saw. It wore something different from the others she saw: it was wearing a thick black body suit, but with the numerous silver metal plates it had over parts of its body, it was more likely under padding for the strange armor. It had more plates on its hind legs than anywhere else on its body, but still had quite a lot. One of its forelegs also had the metal plates, while the other had a larger covering that was larger and had a faint green coloration with a large black pane of glass with something glowing from behind it. Above the large hind leg armor was some more metal plates around its hips and higher up there was what looked like a large metal necklace which had tubes going around the neck and was nestled between small two lumps on its chest that the other monsters didn’t have.
She realized that as she was staring monster, the monster was staring back to her as it was fiddling around with some bandages that were on her lower half. Twilight tried to shy away from its gaze but it was rather futile due to the fact she was laying down.
“So how ya feeling?” It asked her with a comforting smile.
Twilight felt like she was thrown onto the spot, she didn’t know what to do.
“It’s okay; I'd feel like shit as well if I had to go through what you had to go through,” it said standing up and walking to a bag, leaning up against the shoddy wooden wall.
It reached into the bag and searched around in it for a few moments before pulling out a dirt covered bottle of water, and an old looking box with the words ‘INSTA-MASH’ written one the front. It walked back over to Twilight and held out the bottle and box to her.
“I’d offer you something better, but I’m not in the position to do so,” it said with a faint chuckle.
Twilight reached out to grab the items but hesitated slightly, feeling more scared than she’d like to admit. But the rumble in her stomach and her dry throat convinced her otherwise.
“I feel hurt, don’t you trust me?” the monster said with mock shock and placed one of its forelegs onto its chest.
Twilight felt bad now, here this thing was giving her food and water and she was being rather rude in turn.
“I’m sorry,” she said faintly with a dry throat, sitting up.
“Ay, no problem, I was in your position not even three days ago; I wouldn’t trust me either,” it said with a dismissive wave of its foreleg.
Twilight turned her attention to the two items in her grip, and twisted the cap off the old bottle of water and brought it to her dry mouth. and started to gulp down the water. She almost instantly spit it back out when what she drank didn’t taste anything like she’s had before. It tasted like dirt and something metal had mixed together then liquefied before being put in a bottle.
Twilight looked up to see her companion covered in the water. She immediately had a blush shoot across her face.
“I take it you didn’t like the water?” It asked, seeming to not notice the water on its front.
“I’m sorry,” Twilight like said weakly.
“Stop apologizing, the water tastes like shit, I don’t blame you for your reaction,” it said, causing Twilight to wince at its swearing.
“What is it?” Twilight asked.
“I think it’s meant to be a mixture of Hydrogen and Oxygen in a liquid form put in a bottle, but I think that’s only what about half of it is, the rest is radiation and plain old dirt,” she said, making Twilight gag.
“You gave me muddy water?” Twilight said, using her hooves to try and rub the taste off her tongue.
“Yeah, the purified stuff cost too much for my taste,” it said, with a shake of its head.
They sat there in an awkward silence, neither one saying anything the other, that is until the biped decided to speak up.
“The name’s Anne, I’m a courier,” Anne said, her hand shooting out in front of her, holding it out to Twilight.
“I’m Twilight Sparkle, and I’m a pony,” Twilight said, slowly reaching her hoof out to Anne’s hand.
When Twilight’s hoof reached Anne’s, she gripped her hoof and started to roughly shake it. “Nice to meet cha’ miss Sparkle,” Anne said, letting go of Twilight’s hoof.
Twilight’s hoof still shook even after Anne let go, but Twilight managed to get it under control. “Please, just Twilight.”
“Well, just Twilight, welcome to the Mojave,” Anne said, using her arms in a duel sweeping motion.
Twilight looked around the dirty run down shack and put on a forced smile. “It looks….nice,” she said, trying to find the right words to use.
“Then you must be as blind as a bat, the Mojave is utterly shit,” Anne said flatly.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Twilight tried to reason.
“Kid, it’s shit, simple as that,” Anne said.
“If you don’t mind could you please stop cursing?” Twilight said, sounding a lot like her friend Fluttershy.
“Oh and why’s that?” Anne said.
Twilight felt the blush return full force, feeling like she said something wrong. “Well, um, isn’t it rude to swear?” Twilight tried to reason.
“Kid, no one gives a fuck. You could have your junk hanging out and no one would care.”
Twilight only blushed more, trying to think of something to change the subject from the currently awkward one. “So, um, h-how old are you, you keep calling me kid.”
“Well I’m-” Anne paused, not know how old she was. “To be honest, I have no clue how old I am, but I wouldn’t be a day over nineteen. What about you?”
“I’m twenty-two.” Twilight said.
“Well then, fancy that, you’re the old fart here,” Anne joked, chuckling a bit.
Twilight didn’t find it as funny, but still let out a half hearted laugh to try and not offended her host.
Anne sat down into a more comfortable position as she knew what was about to happen would take a while. “So, Miss Twilight, tell me a little about yourself; why are ya in our little slice of hell?” Anne asked.
“Well, I’m one of the four Princesses of Equestria-” before Twilight could continue she was cut off by Anne.
“So your sayin your royalty?” Anne asked.
“Ummm, yes?” Twilight said uncertainly.
Anne did an over blown mock bow from her sitting position. “Your highness.”
Twilight blushed again. “I don’t really like being referred as a princess, I don’t feel like I can live up to that type of responsibility,” Twilight sighed.
Anne was still in her deep mock bow, head close to the ground with one arm behind her while the other was across her chest.
“C-could you please stop that? You’re making me feel uncomfortable,” Twilight said, shifting around.
Anne got out of her bow and had a cheesy grin on her face. “As you wish, your Highness.”
“Please stop calling me that.”
“As her majesty commands.”
“Please, just call me Twilight.”
“As you wish, Princess Twilight.”
Twilight let out a frustrated sigh as she decided to continue her story.
“Anyway, as I said I’m one of the four Princesses of Equestria, a land where everypony is treated as an equal. There’s Princess Celestia, she is the oldest of the princesses, and raises and lowers the sun, she also picked me to become her personal student. Princess Luna who’s Celestia’s sister and raises and lowers the moon, she was imprisoned in the moon for a thousand years, but has recently come back. Princess Cadence, she was my foal sitter when I was younger and is the Princess of love.”
“Well, isn’t that… ‘Love’ly.” Anne tried to joke, but all it did was make the pony in the shack face hoof.
Twilight let out a groan, bringing her hoof away from her face. “Can I continue without your bad puns?”
“No promises,” Anne said.
“There was also Spike. He’s a baby dragon I hatched when I was just a filly, and is one of my closest friends, and number one assistant. He’s like a little brother to me.”
Twilight let out a sigh, but continued. “One of my assignments from Princess Celestia, was to under see the preparations for the Summer Sun Celebration. During that day, I met my best friends: Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, Fluttershy and Rarity. We later found out we were the Elements of Harmony. They were powerful artifacts that have been use to protect Equestria from evil in the past.”
“We went on a bunch of adventures together, and we’re the best of friends,” she said, her mind wandering off to her friends. “I bet they’re all worried sick about me,” Twilight lowered her head, feeling tears building up in her eyes.
“Hey,” Anne said, placing a hand on Twilight’s shoulder. “You’ll get home, I know you will.”
“I hope your right,” Twilight said solemnly.
“Now, get on with the story,” Anne said, ushering on Twilight.
With a sigh, Twilight continued yet again.
“After about two years of living in Ponyville-” Anne let out a giggle and Twilight let out a sigh. “Princess Celestia sent me a spell to work on. It was a long range teleport that would help transport goods from nation to nation without the need for locomotion or pegasi.”
“I worked on it for ages, sometimes skipping meals and sleep so I could work on the spell. But once I thought it was ready, I tried to do the spell, but it messed up and I was transported here,” Twilight finished.
Anne lifted up her hand, “I have a question,” Anne stated.
“What is it?” Twilight asked.
“What you be smokin? Cause I want some.”