Path of Kindness and Blood

by CommanderX5

Friend or Foe - Confrontation

Minutes have passed as Applejack was jumping from tree to tree, searching the area for any sort of clues. She took a quick glance at the moon that shone among the stars, barely giving any visibility in darkness. Luckily, she was prepared for this as her goggles let her see in the dark, a fancy device they called ‘night vision’. Ah may know little about fancy magic and inventions, but Ah can tell trash from somethin’ useful, and whoever made those things did a darn good job, Applejack thought with a satisfied smile. Ah may still be at a disadvantage against those blood suckers, fighting against them in their own domain an’ all, but Ah sure ain’t scared.

Several minutes of jumping later, the farm mare frowned. Those ponies in the guild ain’t as smart as they pretend to be. Don’t they understand that spyin’ on vamponies is darn near impossible? It’s like tryin’ to beat Pinkie in a game of tag, she thought while taking a break on a tree branch. Finding a vampony in this forest was proving to be a very time consuming task, and she had to be at full strength to face one. After a few minutes of rest, she heard a noise coming from the main path next to the tree she was perched on. Curious, Applejack peeked from behind the leaves as a figure in a black cloak caught her attention. Well, Ah’ll be a silly pony, Ah found it.

Her heart started to beat faster as she licked her lips. Her eyes focused on the bypassing figure. Shootin’ it from here would be so easy. Stupid orders! There’s no way Ah can bypass them sharp senses, even with the stealth cloak. Feeling somewhat annoyed, Applejack waited patiently until her target passed by, hoping to gain some distance before climbing down the tree as quietly as she could. Once on the ground, she walked on the tips of her hooves from tree to tree, peeking at her target when it was in view. After a minute of following, she tilted her head to the side in confusion. How’s it still unaware of mah presence? Ah thought vamponies were supposed to hear a mouse from a mile away, or feel mah heart’s beatin’. Did they really send me to deal with a rookie? Ah feel offended.

More minutes passed as she was still following unnoticed, which caused the hunter to sweat nervously. Or maybe it’s a trap. Maybe it knows Ah’m following, and it’s trying to get me into a false sense of security, she thought before gritting her teeth in determination. Well, it ain’t gonna work on this huntress.

Suddenly, the target stopped moving and spoke loudly with a feminine voice, “Leave!”

Applejack blinked. While the voice seemed somewhat familiar, the vampony she followed was certainly a female.

“Please leave. I do not wish to hurt you. Leave while you still can!”

The huntress’s pupils shrank. Not hurt me, mah flank! she thought as she took out her crossbow and grabbed a bolt from her back. She peeked from behind the tree and aimed. “Say yer prayers, monster!”

The second she pulled the trigger, a silver bolt flew towards the target, swirling through the air while barely affected by wind as it was on course with vampony’s neck. A weak piercing noise reached the huntress’s exposed ear.

“Got ya!” Applejack said, satisfaction in her voice. What a rookie. It knew Ah was there and didn’t even dodge. Maybe Ah can get some info after a short interrogation. She slowly went from behind the tree and walked towards her target, one step at a time as she waited patiently for it to collapse. When a few seconds passed as it didn't happen, she stopped immediately.

While she never encountered a vampony before, much less fought one, as a huntress, Applejack was equipped with knowledge passed from generations to kill one. She immediately reloaded her crossbow and aimed, but hesitated to shoot. One bolt into target’s heart and next cut the head off, problem solved. Still, it would be a shame to kill it before gettin’ some info from its pierced throat.

Much to the huntress’s surprise, the vampony merely pulled the bolt from her neck and threw it against the ground. All the blood that wasn't covering the silver projectile quickly returned back into the wound as it healed itself. What? But that can’t be. She quickly shot another bolt, no longer bothering with sparing the vampony for interrogation as the sharp and deadly projectile flew towards the chest.

Before the heart could be pierced however, the bolt was swiftly deflected by her foe’s hoof.

Applejack growed and said, “If ya think ya can scare me, yer wrong.” She put the crossbow back into her cloak and looked at titanium bracers that hid two small silver blades. With her melee weapon on standby and ready for close confrontation and some head-cutting, Applejack took a fighting stance.

“Leave now, please!” the vampony responded. “Leave me alone!”

Part of Applejack’s brain kept telling her that she had heard this voice before, but the rest was focusing on silencing the monster once and for all. “Shut yer mouth, coward! If ya think Ah’ll back down just because ya say so, yer dead wrong.” With exposed teeth and an angered glare, Applejack charged the caped figure.

The huntress jumped while activating the blade on her right foreleg and swung against the vampony’s head. Her target didn’t remain motionless however, as it jumped to the side, letting the sharp edge of Applejack’s weapon tear off small part of the black cloak from the torso area.

Applejack’s blade retreated swiftly into the bracer while her right forehoof pressed against the ground, causing dust to spread around it. Now balanced on one foreleg, she tilted her left forehoof slightly as it activated the small switch attached to bracer, and the second blade emerged in all its glory. With a smirk and swift push, Applejack went for the kill, right into her target’s heart from point blank range.

The vampony jumped to the side once again as it tried to keep its distance, barely evading the lethal blow. “Fight me, coward!” Applejack shouted before straightening her hoof as the blade was once again hiding inside the bracer. With the distance from her target increasing, she grabbed her crossbow for long range combat instead.

One after another, the huntress’s shots were deflected with a hoof. “Don't think you can run away. Ah know how to deal with vermin like ya!”

Applejack reloaded another bolt before grabbing a scent bomb from her cloak. She threw it at her target and shot half a second before it exploded. Despite overwhelming scent of garlic, the projectile was once again swiftly deflected, though the strong scent forced the vampony to press a hoof against its muzzle. Just as planned.

Applejack quickly pressed the attack as she reloaded another shot and grabbed the crossbow with her mouth. She charged and jumped towards the target once again while grabbing a crossbow with her left hoof and activating blade on her right bracer.

With the target coughing and somewhat dizzy, Applejack’s next shot quickly pierced Vampony’s right foreleg while the blade hit its left hind leg.

The huntress threw her crossbow to the side, it bounced on the ground with a weak thump. With the blade still impaled in the vampony’s left hind leg, Applejack turned around and delivered a double buck in the belly. Blood streamed from the impaled leg as the vampony crashed onto its belly with a loud scream of pain.

Applejack wiped the blood from her mask and charged, once again going for the kill. I have ya now.

Much to Applejack’s annoyance, her left bracer was struck and shattered to pieces while the blade ended up stuck in the side of vampony’s belly, away from the heart she tried to impale. The follow-up attack didn’t come, much to Applejack’s confusion. The vampony’s blood on her cloth started to hurt her as if it was an acid, leaving a few holes in her cloak and burned marks on her fur. The distraction was all the vampony needed to return the favour and deliver a swift strike against the huntress's belly.

The vampony pulled the blade out of her leg, only for the blood to return into her wound, both from the ground and the huntress's cloak. Her foreleg recovered to its former state as if nothing happened to it.

“You cannot win. Don’t make me hurt you,” the vampony called out again, her voice filled with despair. “I don’t know who you are or why you’re here, but if you won’t leave, you’ll die!”

“Pfff…” Applejack spat onto the ground in disgust as she murmured to herself. “My first vampony to hunt, and it had to be a coward.” Her aggravation grew when she once again looked at the hood covering the vampony’s face. Some sort of spell made it impossible to see whose face hid under it. With the crossbow lying somewhere on the ground and one of her blades broken, she pointed out her bracer on right foreleg and yelled, “Stop stalling and fight already!”

Applejack took out a small bottle from under her hole-filled cloak, this one containing water enhanced with white magic, but before she could throw it, a bolt lanced her foreleg. The bottle fell to the ground and shattered while the liquid sank into the dirt. Applejack screamed in pain before gritting her teeth as she looked to the side. “Who dares?!” she shouted while barely concealing the pain in her voice, quickly noticing two more caped figures, though one of the cloaks was a mix of pink and violet as the owner was holding a crossbow in its midnight blue magical aura.

“Stay back, you ruffian! As much as I abhor violence, I will not hesitate to shoot again if you will not leave my companion alone!”

The other vampony added, “What she said.”

Applejack growled as she yanked the silver bolt from her foreleg with help of her teeth. She let out another loud painful shriek and growled. “Ya gang up and use mah own weapon, ya'll will pay for this!” She charged on her three legs towards the two new adversaries. The one with the crossbow shot another bolt, but Applejack jumped before it could hit her second foreleg. The pink caped foe dropped its weapon and walked backward, but the second one got in the way and levitated two record disks from her cloak.

Before the huntress could understand the weight of the situation, one record disk struck against her belly, leaving a slash mark, while the second one hit against the mask, cutting it in two without damaging her muzzle.

Applejack landed on her four hooves as she forgot about her pierced ankle, and immediately knelt from pain as she accumulated even more wounds. She slowly raised her head and looked at the approaching vampony from behind, who stopped in her tracks.

“A-Applejack!” The vampony said with complete shock as she took a step back, quickly losing balance on her trembling legs. “W-what… it can’t be true… You can’t be a monster hunter! You just can’t!” With forehooves pressed against part of the cloak covering her head, the vampony started shaking it. “This can't be happening, please, let it be just a dream, it has to be!” She laughed with a hint of insanity before it turned into a sobbing. She added in a somber tone, “You can’t be a hunter, Applejack, anypony but you!”

The huntress ignored her bleeding wounds and charged at her target, using its hesitation to her advantage.

“No, don’t do it!” the pink caped vampony shouted. She quickly grabbed the crossbow with her magic as it trembled in midair, but she couldn’t press the trigger.

Applejack swung her right blade towards the foe’s face in an attempt to cut the neck, but left only small slashed mark. With one swift move of her bleeding foreleg, she punched the vampony, forcing her hood back, revealing the face. Applejack’s eyes opened widely, her mouth agape and her heart skipped a bit. She couldn’t believe her eyes. “F-Fluttershy?”

The farm mare shook her head as a tear slide down her cheek, and she could see tears dripping from Fluttershy’s watered eyes. “Yer… yer one of them vamponies?” she said with mix between physical and mental pain. She quickly retreated and next swung her uninjured foreleg and slammed against the ground.

The pony she considered a friend, a weak shy pegasus with a good heart and lots of love for animals turned out to be a blood-sucking monster. How? When? Unable to look into the red pupils of her former friend, she pushed Fluttershy violently away. Feeling her blood start to boil, she yelled, “Who turned mah friend into a monster?!” She looked at other two that stared at her from a distance, crossbow aimed at her, barely able to see them without her goggles.

Now it all makes sense. She didn’t hear me and didn't know how to fight, or maybe was afraid to fight in the first place. She had to have been turned tonight. Dagnabbit. As a professional huntress, she knew that she didn't stand a chance against a pureblood, taking one down would require a good plan, the best equipment and a squad of the most elite hunters working together. How could she, someone who hadn't even fought common vamponies before, stand a chance? She didn’t care though. “Did you two do this to her? Damn you purebloods, ruining innocents lives like that. Ah’ll kill all of ya!”

Applejack’s wounded foreleg bent slightly from sudden pressure of her body, but she straightened it and took a fighting stance. Surely doing this with a large wound on one’s belly was rather unpleasant. Both the huntress and her foe started at each other speechlessly for several seconds. Suddenly, Applejack’s former-friend’s words reached her ears.

“L-leave, fast.”

Applejack turned her head to Fluttershy while pointing at other two. “Who turned ya? Did they do this?”

“Applejack, please…”

“Did they?!”

She shook her head in response.

“Then who? Tell me a name and Ah will take his insides out with mah hoof!”

Fluttershy took a step back and said with hoarse voice, “N-nopony turned me.”

“Stop lyin’!”

“I am telling the truth.”

Applejack’s mind was a mess. She looked into Fluttershy’s red eyes in search for the truth, finding nothing but confidence in her voice. It wasn’t a lie, no matter how much she wished it to be. Applejack stomped her good hoof against the ground with and grit her teeth. If Fluttershy wasn’t turned into vampony, that means...

“Dagnabbit… Ah had a monster under mah very nose and failed to notice.”

The vampony took another step back while tears started to form in her eyes. “B-but… I’m not–”

“We ate and played together, told stories next to the campfire. Ah’m such a fool.” She shot Fluttershy an enraged glare. “Ah trusted ya, and ya turned out to be a snake among the chickens, wolf among the sheep!” The vampony looked to the side and bit her lips as Applejack continued, “Ah’m goin’ ta kill ya, even if that’s the last thing Ah–” a yelp of pain left the huntress's mouth before everything slowly started to fade into darkness. Her legs trembled before giving up to the weight as the huntress slammed against the dirt with a weak thump, her head now lying sideways on the soft grass. A crying noise being the last thing Applejack heard before her mind swirled into the world of dreams.