“Why don’t you watch where you’re walking, dumbass?”
The stallion’s logic was obviously flawed. I was walking at a slower pace than other ponies normally do, and if our paths were to have intersected at some point, he should have moved if I wasn’t paying attention. And to top it off, I was obviously not an ass. I got ready for an earful of unnecessary profanity and harsh insults.
“Whatcha got in that bag of yours, kid?” I heard another stallion in the group ask. I hadn’t even realized my teeth were clamped the lunch bag I didn’t eat at the mill until now.
The same stallion proceeded to snatch the bag from my mouth and dump over its contents on the ground. Wasn’t much just an expensive, polluted apple slice. An apple that I paid eight bits for.
“Haha, whaddya know, another fucking apple slice from that good for nothing mother of yours!” I was shuddering from what I was hearing, not only from the language but what he was saying about the only parent I had left. “Does that bitch know how to make anything else?”
The group erupted in laughter.
There’s been a time in us all in which we can only take so much in one day. Or, in a week, or even a month. Once that line is crossed, then your stress level increases dramatically, and 'bad stuff' happens. Stress is like ice in a glass. If you put water in a glass in the freezer and keep sucking the heat out of it, it will eventually turn to ice and push outward on the glass as the ice expands. There will then be a point in which the glass cracks under the pressure, and then it will just shatter. And that is exactly what I did.
I cracked a long time ago. So it was about time I shattered.
Pulling the bat out of my saddle strap, I flipped it around in my hoof and gave the pathetic excuse of a pony an uppercut of which he will never forget. Teeth and blood propelled out of his mouth, trailing my bat as it reached towards the sky. He went down with a meaty thud.
I immediately regretted doing that.
It all happened so quickly. After the other gang members watched him fall, their heads all turned toward me once again. This time, with an angrier, determined look in their eyes. They began pinning me down to the ground and bludgeoned me using my own weapon. There was nothing I could do. The stallion I bumped into was using my bat, while four of his cohorts pinned me down. The last was stomping me with a forehoof.
The stomping stallion delivered a powerful blow on my hind leg, and I heard it crack, sending a sharp, jolting pain up my leg. I began seeing blood run down my chest after two blows to the face with the bat and I was almost certain my leg was broken.
A significantly louder crack rang through the air and a split second later, the lead stallion’s head was no more, spattering the cobblestone behind him with gore. The other ponies dropped me and began to flee, further increasing the pain I was in as my limbs unexpectedly hit the cobblestone beneath me. I was too disoriented to tell what was going on, but I think one pony decided to pull out a gun and fire back.
Another crack rang, followed by a gaping hole in the head of another gang member. The aftermath was me being showered in blood.
I just wanted to get on my legs and start galloping, as far away from this horrible part of town as possible. It wasn't possible to even move. The sniper—I've decided they were gunshots—mowed down about half of them before the other half scurried away.
I noticed I began to have a slight, offbeat twitch in my leg and eye, and I started losing consciousness. I also realized my hind legs were swimming in a pool of blood, and I couldn’t tell who the blood originally belonged to. I began to hear a faint running of hooves on concrete, and as the clopping sound they made became closer, I felt like I was getting closer towards death.
A white stallion with red eyes—or at least I thought they were red, everything seemed like it was at this point—and a crimson red, spiky mane poked his head into view.
“C’mon, girl! If we’re going to survive The Mayor’s goons, we have to get out of here, now.” It was a very determined and smooth voice, like that of a secret agent from of a film, but not so obvious or profound.
He slung what looked like a sniper rifle behind his back, and then proceeded to pick me up and sling my foreleg around him. He turned around and began slowly trotting towards an alleyway I didn’t think I had been through before. The sudden movement interfered with my vision even further.
“W-where are we going...?” I asked, spitting out blood and attempting to raise my forehoof in the opposite direction. “The clinic is that way...”
“Oh, we’re not going to the clinic,” replied the mysterious aid.
----------
I woke up as a disoriented mess. I tried to get up to get a synopsis of my surroundings, when the stallion swiftly stepped towards me.
“Woah woah woah, don’t move so fast, take it easy!”
He made it sound like I was freaking out, and I just may have been. The stallion slumped away, and made his way over to what looked like a laptop in the corner of the room.
I slowly sat up and rested my head against the headboard behind me, trying to reorient myself with the world. As my vision gradually got better, I noticed that this was an actual bed, not just a cot. The room I was in had a slate-colored drywall and linoleum, and was about half the size of a child’s room. To my right was a desk with a laptop and a record player resting on top of it, with the stallion—who I just realized was wearing a red vest—sitting in front of it, appearing to be monitoring something. Above his desk were multiple drawings and sketches in a two-dimensional, almost cartoony form of art.
On the wall in front of me were a few posters here and there. One depicted a white pony with a cerulean blue mane and purple glasses that looked like she was having fun. It read: “Equestrian 7 Music Festival: Vinyl Scratch performing LIVE!” Another poster featured a large red circle in the corner with rays protruding out in all directions, extending to the edge of the poster. It featured the silhouettes of six ponies in front of the rays of what I thought to be the sun.
While I tried to relax and get a grip on my surroundings, the stallion cut through the silence.
“Hey, ya like music?”
The question caught me off guard, especially after what had happened.
“Sure, bu—“
Before I could finish my sentence, the stallion eagerly withdrew a record out of a nearby bag, flipped it around between his hooves, and stuffed it into the record player.
A nice electronic melody played, backed by steady consistent beats. At first, I was confused by the nature of the song, for I have never heard music like this before. Here in Industead, the only music anyone listened to were classics, even so on rare occasion. Or, if you were a thug, you most likely listened to death metal. But this, this made you feel good. This wasn’t just a sound to keep you occupied or fill your ears with.
For the first time in Celestia-knows-how-long, I felt... good. Even though I was brutally beaten nearly to death, this music felt like it connected with me. Every beat, every wave of the music dug deeper and deeper, and I eventually felt like I was part of the music. I just resonated with every sound wave, every beat. My hind leg—the right one, the left was broken—even began to moved to the music, and I hadn’t realized it.
“What’s this kind of music called?” I asked the stallion whose name was still unbeknownst to me. It took me a second to realize his head was bobbing slightly behind the setup, but he was still monitoring something on his laptop.
“My friend, this is trance. The melodic, uplifting electronic music that IS trance. You could go all night listening to this, it won’t get old, it’ll only make you feel good and put pep in your step and a roll in your soul, if you know what I mean. It’s like magic in a sound wave!”
I shot the eccentric stallion a funny look mixed with a smile, and he shot one back. And then I became aware of all the things that he just said.
Friend. Feeling good. Magic. He used it all in one sentence.
Obviously I know he didn’t actually mean I was his close friend. I mean, we just met. But, there was that sense of friendliness and happiness when he used it. He wasn’t like the other ponies in Industead.
Then the song ended.
“Play another!” I said, shooting him a grin composed of a mixture of support and gratitude. And he did just that.
----------
For once in my life, I felt like all was right with the world. That is, if the whole world was just this tiny room with two ponies and great music playing. The stallion played record after record after record of various artists such as Bagpipe Brony and Vinyl Scratch. I was starting to feel the one thing I’ve been longing for. Friendship. And it felt good.
After one of the tracks ended, the red stallion put away the record in one of his many saddlebags and looked at the wall with the array of drawings, and it seemed he was looking at one in specific. It was a silhouette of a DJ in front of some flashing lights, with a crowd of ponies cheering for the DJ.
“Did you draw those?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“Sure did.” The stallion’s cheery smile then turned into a bit of a frown as he looked down. His eyes then panned to the other side of the room and then to the poster with six ponies and the rising sun. “Do you know what the rising sun symbolizes?”
“Uh, well...” I replied, not sure how to respond to his odd question. “I don’t.”
“The rising sun symbolizes rising up from nothing and, in a word, spreading your wings. Expand your horizons.”
He took off his red vest, revealing his pegasus wings and spreading them to his full wingspan.
I was dumbfounded. I had never really seen a pegasus before, only heard stories about how they would occasionally soar over the town. The Mayor banned them from the town when the town was founded, and everyone blindly followed suit, discriminating against anyone that was different from earth ponies. If any pegasi were found, they were publicly executed. It was the same way if a unicorn used magic, but you were given a harsh warning first. I told him all of this. However, this pegasus is living in Industead. And from the looks of his little hideout, he’s been here for quite a while. But why haven’t I seen him in town before?
“H-how are you...?” My train of thought was derailing, and I couldn’t think of a way to finish the sentence.
“Well, you see, it was really easy. Industeadians only have their eyes and noses to the ground, and not to the sky, where they should be.” He explained, and gave me a hinting wink.”I simply flew over the fence behind a building, put my vest on, and lived mostly on the rooftops.”
I was a little insulted by his crack about my native town, but I pushed the thought aside. “But why do you have a hideout in an old, vacant room?”
“Well for one thing, it has cleaner air. And from the way those smokestacks cough up smoke, I’d need a gasmask to stay alive up there.”
I was still thinking about this. We had a murderous fugitive living in Industead. Living in our alleys and on our rooftops. He had the skill of an expert marksman, it seemed like, and he was a pegasus. Of somepony of his caliber, what was he doing in the tiny, oppressive and povertous town of Industead? Just passing through would pose multiple health code violations, and living here would be a daily struggle. He also knew they wouldn’t let him out willingly, so why was he here?
“What is somepony like you doing in Industead?” I asked, replicating my thoughts.
He seemed to ignore my question and began shuffling his now balled-up red vest around in his hooves. After a small fit of shuffling, he seemed to have found what he wanted, and pulled off a pin the front of the balled-up vest, and showed it to me.
“See this?” He shoved the pin in my direction. It was of rather simple design, taking the shape of two, large white capital R’s. “This is why, but at the same time it’s the exact opposite.”
The eccentric stallion managed to confuse me for approximately the fifth time in one day.
“You see,” he began, “This is a standard issue Red Remnant pin, all members are required to wear one. Ever heard of us?”
“Err. Well, yes. The only thing I know know about them is that The Mayor doesn’t allow anything of the sort in Industead, and he calls them squabbling, traitorous tribe-folk.”
“Traitorous? That’s horse manure!” Red was steamed at this point and stomped a forehoof on the ground. “We arise from corrupt towns like these to put Equestria back in the times of the Old Days, where friendship and peace was the everyday norm! We rise from nothing and spread out and take what rightfully belonged to Celestia—“ The stallion stopped himself in the middle of his rant.
The stallion took a breath before continuing this time, in a more controlled manner. “Basically, what we do is that we scout out a town for a little while, you know; keep it under watch. If something catches the scout’s attention, he or she reports it back to HQ through our secure network. When the time is right, we gather elite soldiers and forces together and resist against the leader, along with any townsfolk who want to join us. After we do that, we appoint one of our high-ranking members to be leader of the city.”
“Do a lot of ponies get hurt?” I couldn’t help but ask, pathetically.
“I don’t know,” he said, somewhat sarcastically as his eyes rolled and shifted towards his sniper rifle, of which was leaning against the wall. “Do they?”
He got his message across as I shuddered at my memory being bathed in blood, which I barely remember. Just the small bit I seemed to retain will still haunt me for the rest of my life.
Out of context, I glanced back over at his sniper rifle, which was truly a work of art. The gun’s base color was red, and lots of little buttons and pieces on it were a nice, bright white. This included, but was not limited to, the trigger, magazine releases, the barrel protruding out of the front, and the rail on top. But that wasn’t the thing that caught my eye.
The one thing that made this gun stand out was the white decal of the rising sun that sprawled itself out on one side of the rifle, in all directions, only stopping where the boundaries of the firearm’s shell did.
I then peered over at his cutie mark and noticed he was looking at the balled up vest glumly. He had the rising sun for a cutie mark, but it had a circular, hollowed out space in the center, filled in by what I imagined to be crosshairs. He was obviously a sniper, and a very skilled one at that. His skills saved my life.
“So, where’d you get that rifle?” I couldn’t help but to ask.
He sat back down at his setup, in the original position that I first saw him. Then I could see his head sink in the glow of the laptop he was at. “Somepony made it for me.”
“Oh. Who?”
“Somepony...” His voice trailed off and I could see that he was in deep thought.
“Well, who?” I was starting to poke and prod in places I shouldn’t have, and a moment later I would regret it.
“Luna-dammit!” He yelled, reverberating off the stone walls. He slammed his hoof into the wall, quaking the room and making my heart sink like a rock. He spun around a full one-eighty degrees before shouting: “Somepony, okay?!”
I let out a yelp I didn’t know I could make when he shot me the darkest glare I will ever witness.
I sank back in the bed as much as a pony could, and let out a few tears. I didn’t know it was such a sensitive spot, I just wanted to know more about him... I was just curious. I had never met another pony that would actually want to talk to me, and here he was, shouting at me...
“I’m sorry, I...” It was hard to continue without letting out more tears. “It’s just that nopony ever wanted to talk to me, and I’m not a very social butterfly, and I just wanted to know more about you... and...”
“No, don’t be...” He said, changing his dark, angry tone to a more sorrowful one as he stared at the linoleum. “It’s just kind of a personal thing.”
I rolled over at the cot, shuddering and still quaking on the inside. I didn’t know who that somepony is and now I really don’t want to know.
The sky was swapping out its twilight colors in place for the dark, dreary night. The silence between us lingered. I couldn’t get the mental image of the stallion snapping at me out of my head. It haunted, it lingered like the silence. I have to placate the mental replay back into its cage with good thoughts of Old Equestria. But even that didn’t work.
The stallion got up and sighed again. “Looks like you had better get some sleep."
The question pierced the silence, and I wasn’t quite sure how to answer. Especially after what happened. I slowly turned over, and to my surprise, I could see the stallion pointing his nose towards the floor, hiding his face from view with his mane.
“Where will you sleep?” I asked, finally, after an elongated silence.
He took his rifle off the wall and a mask laying on a desk and began walking towards the door. “I’ll be on the roof.” Before I could say anything, the door closed with a click!
I couldn’t help but think about it. And by 'it' I mean everything that happened within the past day or two. My beat-down, and his rescuing of me. Being here in this hideout. The Red Remnants. The way the stallion snapped at me. There was obviously a side to him that he doesn’t show the world. But that’s his life, and poking and prodding where it isn’t my business forces bad things to happen, especially since I just met him. I don’t even know his name yet! After all, curiosity killed the pony. Still...
After my string of thoughts, I attempted to get out of the bed. I couldn’t walk at all, and I staggered multiple times before I was able to get from point A to point B without failing. I walked around the room a few times, and discovered that the main source of my inability to walk was from the splint on my leg. I can deal with it, of course. Then my curiosity got the best of me.
I looked over at his laptop, and I could see that he was monitoring multiple cameras throughout Equestria. One involved this old town in ruins I couldn’t seem to identify. Another was of this old, rather large factory with crude letters written on the front of it, reading: “Canon”. I skimmed over them until there was a place I could recognize.
Industead. He managed to rig up a sort of camera in Industead.
It viewed the main plaza, as well as the balcony of The Mayor’s office. I saw there was another camera view, and it was of the place I had my beat-down.
So this is how he found me. The question was, why did he help me?
I walked out of the door of his hideout into the smog-covered night, propping the door open as to be weary of it locking automatically. I spotted a ladder next to the door, and took my shot at traveling up.
It proved difficult, but I managed a system in which my two forehooves would pull me up and only one hind leg would push me up the ladder.
I reached the top, feeling triumphant but was also cautious as not to fall. I looked around. On the rooftop was a bedroll leaned against an inactive smokestack with various cans of food stacked next to it. My eyes panned across the rooftop, and I could see a silhouette of a stallion in the light of the moon, who I presumed to be the same one that saved my life.
He was sitting down, his mane blowing in the wind, accompanied by his Rising Sun rifle, which was propped up against him. I could see a kind of cloth—bandage, maybe—tied to the barrel of the gun, flapping in the wind, and his mane followed suit. I watched his majestic nature for a minute or two, when I could see his head fall between his shoulders, and I could hear a faint, soft, controlled sob, which lasted for what seemed like several minutes.
I headed back down the ladder. I had already seen too much.
----------
The next morning, the stallion was leaning against a wall on a stool in the hideout, subtly bobbing his head up and down with two white cords stuck into his ears.
I sat up and stretched, and attempted to apologize, but he seemed to know and beat me to it. “Hey, listen, uh...” I began.
“No worries.” He stated, abnormally loud. I began to wonder if those white cords were blocking his hearing, forcing him to speak louder. He removed one of the cords with his hoof, and leaned backwards, putting his hooves behind his head and crossing his hind legs. His voiced dropped to a natural level volume. “I know what you’re about to say. And I’m going to stop you, because the only one that should be apologizing is me. I acted like a little colt last night, and I’m sorry. Just because it was personal, that doesn’t mean I need to yell and punch things.”
He doesn’t know how glad I am to hear that. Still, I won’t ever be able to live down the way he snapped at me, but I shouldn’t have been so nosy. So I see it as a fair tradeoff.
“I’m also sorry for something else.” The stallion’s statement kind of threw me off, and he leaned forward, taking out the other cord. “I had never properly introduced myself.”
I looked at the stallion with a blank stare, and after a few seconds I stuttered: “M-my name is Rain.”
“Red.” He said, reaching his hoof out to me.
After a brief moment of social awkwardness, I looked at his hoof and realized what it was I was supposed to do. I reached my own hoof out, causing our hooves to make contact, producing a byproduct that rose from absolutely nothing. Over time, I knew, it would spread its wings and it would develop. I then began to understand the true meaning of the rising sun and how it fits into our lives.
That byproduct? Friendship.
----------
Over the course of the next week or so, life was pretty dim for me, with the exception of the time that Red was in the hideout. When he was, he was constantly checking over at what he was monitoring, but when he wasn’t, he took the time out to show me some things.
Firstly, he showed me how to fire a gun called a sawed-off shotgun. All I do is snap the gun in half using a release, put two shells in, and snap the barrel back into position. It was then ready to give off a deadly spray of flaks, shredding apart anything near. All I had to do was pull the trigger. It was a gift from him to me.
I really hoped I would never have to use it though.
Afterwards, he gave me what was called a Spitfire Strap. It went around my neck and fastened at my left. From there, it was designed to hold smaller, compact weapons like the one I just received. Protruding from the strap were two cables that extended out in front of my muzzle, and conjoined to form a sort of cylindrical piece divided into two sections. One section was colored a light grey and was larger than the other, and centered itself in front of my muzzle. Red explained that, by biting on this, it would fire the weapon. The other division, however, was somewhat smaller and off to the left. By biting on this, it would knock the release, ejecting the used shells. I could then put new ones in, and repeat the process. It was difficult to use at first, but after a while I got the hang of it. It seemed easier than using it manually.
Then I told him about the journal I had. Twilight Sparkle’s journal from one-hundred and fifty years ago.
“You have WHAT?!” he exclaimed in disbelief.
“Twilight’s journal. If you’re interested in reading it, you can. It’s in my saddlebags over there.”
“That’s impossible, though... Nobody we know has seen it in well... Ever.” Red materialized himself in front of the saddlebags and began plundering their contents. He found what he was looking for, and carefully picked up the journal in triumph and awe.
“Do you know how long we’ve been looking for this?” He began looking at each page.
“By we, do you mean the Red Remnants?” I asked.
“Sure do, we’re trying to learn what really happened way back when.” His eyes focused on the book. “And we think Twi’s journal can tell us.”
“But all we know of is that mysterious ice-age incident in Canterlot.”
“Yes, but there has to be a reason why. There has to be a reason why it happened. Everything happens for a reason. There’s more, I know of it..." His voice trailed off as his eyes flew across page after page.
“Well, yes, but I don’t think we’ll ever know what really happened.” I’ve heard rumors that that whole place is a hellhole. The cloud is still there, swirling and blanketing the whole town in feet of snow and rendering the city uninhabitable. I’ve also heard of stories in which ponies would freeze as instantly as they did when the disaster first hit.
When I could see that he had finished the last page, his head drooped towards the floor in dismay. “There are too many pages missing...” he admitted, glumly. “Where are they?”
“No clue, it was like that when I got it.” I had always wondered why that was the case.
“How did you manage to get it?”
“It was passed down my family.”
Red currently seemed in thought, and eventually leaned down to put Twilight’s journal back in the saddlebags, where it was before. Upon coming back up, his eyes stayed on my bags for a while, until he finally shot me a determined look. “We’ll figure it out eventually.”
----------
Over the week, Red was in and out of the hideout, like clockwork, as if he worked in Industead. He said they were “Reconnaissance Duties” or in other words, the scouting thing he does. He would be gone for hours at a time, and I would be left in solitude. Out of boredom, I would occasionally see Red darting across the camera’s view on the video feed he was receiving. I was really hoping that The Mayor didn’t have access to his cameras.
One day, I asked if Red could take me on one of his recon ‘missions’. He smiled and said “Maybe when you can keep up with me, or for that matter, walk.” Yeah, he was right. I could barely get up a ladder. I couldn’t even walk.
To kill the time and give me some kind of entertainment, I carefully pulled out a record out of Red’s collection. I put it in the record player.
----------
It was day six, and Red was on another reconnaissance mission. After a while, I began to feel like Red himself. I was sitting at his setup, monitoring his cameras—which he approved, probably knowing that nothing happens on those cameras anyways—and listening to trance music. It was easier to move, and I could pretty much do it without fail. I even managed to climb up a ladder last night.
I had listened to all the trance the Red had on record. Realizing this, I remembered his words: “It won’t get old”, and repeated his whole playlist.
Upon snooping through the directories on his computer, I managed to find a folder labeled “Music”. I clicked on it.
A list of different tracks I don’t think I’ve heard before outstretched itself down the screen. These were of different types, I realized when I began playing them. Not what I’m attuned to being in Red’s hideout, but good nonetheless.
Sitting back and watching the cameras, I saw what looked to be a gunfight unfold on one of them. It was in a ghost town, and rotted-away buildings lined themselves parallel to each other and extended out of the cameras view. Dirt-sand—this confusing sediment seemed to be everywhere—covered all the places that the buildings did not. The camera appeared to be secured tightly on top of a building.
It played out like a cheesy western movie. Good guys vs. bad guys, I thought. At first, it looked like a drug deal at first, and I frowned upon realizing this. They were divided into two ‘sides’, lining themselves up, facing each other like the buildings did. Then one of them pulled out a gun, and it got ugly at that point.
It was a stallion in a cowboy hat and brown vest. I could see a gold shiny pistol float out of his holster—Apparently he was a magic-user—and shot two other ponies. The color of his coat was extremely hard to tell, and he striked me as particularly mysterious.
BLAM!
BLAM!
I was appalled at what I was seeing, and very frightened by what was going on. Luckily, however, the building that the camera resided on blocked out most of the blood and gore, so I was intrigued for a little while longer. Both sides trotted backwards from their original standpoints to take cover in the building wreckage. Nopony else was shot that I could see, as they exchanged fire at each other through the empty space in the aisle of buildings. They exchanged gunfire for a little bit, and it seemed to seize. I don’t know whether they killed each other or one side got away. I wondered if Red needed to know about this.
I watched the cameras and all the inactivity they presented. In Industead, ponies walked around with their noses towards the ground, as usual. Various parts of the wasteland were... Empty. And uneventful.
Industead is pathetic. I knew I was part of Industead, and that it was my home. Even though it was the only civilization on the camera list Red had, I knew that other places had to be different. There was more to my life than Industead, and dying in it. I wanted to rise up, and spread my wings.
All of a sudden, the two Industead cameras turned to static for a brief second, and went black.
What the hell?
I sat forward, examining the screen and assuming that they would be back momentarily.
But they weren’t.
Okay, Red needed to know about this.
At that same moment, I could hear the intercom sound off outside in the plaza. It was rarely used, usually only for emergencies or announcements. The Mayor’s voice broadcasted through the intercom.
“Rain, come to the The Mayor’s office for a discussion. Repeat: Rain, come to The Mayor’s office for a discussion.”
My heart seemed to stop for several seconds and it felt like my brain shut down for several minutes. I froze there, paralyzed, not knowing what to do, when Red barged in, breaking the eternal stalemate with myself.
“Did you hear that?” He said, exasperated and panting. He must have been running across rooftops again.
I turned stiffly. “I sure did.”
----------
I approached the ominous entrance to The Mayor’s estate. I looked up at it, and I saw his famous balcony from which he hosts ‘events’ or makes personal announcements from on rare occasion. I could feel my knees quaking in fear of what could happen. They wanted to give out and let my pathetic body crash to the ground, even though Red and I formulated a plan in case something went wrong. The ominous mansion looked back down at me, insisting that I enter, when the guards agreed with the entrancing building.
“Rain?” One asked, monotonously.
“Y-yes?” I replied. I was still quaking and couldn’t seem to take my eyes off of the manor house. I had no clue what he wanted with me, and I really hope he doesn’t know about Red. I found it strange how he called for me personally right after the cameras gave out, and I was almost certain that’s what it was about.
“We’ll escort you to his office.”
When I got out of my trance—not the good kind you get from good music or a good story—my heart sank and swelled with anger as I found myself moving through corridors of utmost beauty.
Masterpieces of various artists from all over Equestria lined the walls. Most were stately paintings of Old Equestrian landscapes and other portraits of various stallions and mares. The flooring was composed of black and pale blue tiling, stretching out in front of me as I moved toward the end of the hallway. Various sculptures took form as we neared them. One, I could make out, was of a worker pony with a pickaxe, mining something. Another was of a cogwheel suspended by what looked like rickety scaffolding.
As we rounded a corner, a poster came into view. It featured what looked like Princess Celestia, the first poster I’ve ever seen of her. She was wearing steampunk-style clothing, including goggles and a leather cap. Behind her, I could see worker ponies carrying some kind of resource up a hill to a factory. The top of the poster read: “INDUSTRY”, and the bottom read: “It’s what CELESTIA wants.”
I was infuriated.
I almost broke away from the duo of guards to go rip the poster off the wall and banish it. Or, maybe lock it up in a dungeon somewhere. Or banish it and lock it up in the place it was banished. This was a disgrace. Celestia didn’t ask for ponies to be enslaved for the rest of their lives, working them to the bone by their slave-drivers just to stay alive. She never wanted this.
“Hey, calm down, filly!”
I snapped out of my contemplation and anger, to see one of the guards restraining one of my forehooves. I hadn’t realized I actually showed I was livid.
We approached a pompously designed stairwell. The rail was trimmed with gold, and the scarlet carpet was also trimmed with a string of gold that descended down the staircase on either side, cutting off only when it hit the linoleum. The stairwell looked like it only contained ten or twelve steps. I assumed this was his office.
One of the guards accompanying me walked up the steps and carefully opened the door to his quarters while the other guard to my left escorted me up the stairs. I could see the left side of a desk beyond the doorframe to his quarters, as well as a bookshelf lining the wall. In front of the desk, lay a comfortable-looking seat, where I presumed I would be while “discussing” with the Mayor.
“The Mayor will see you now.” The guard said flatly, before leaving me in the room with the stallion I had dreaded all my life, the stallion that made Industead into what it is today. The doors shut behind me.
“Hello, Rain.” The Mayor said, spinning around in his chair to face me. “How good it is see you. You may sit down, now.”
My stomach lurched. Behind me were the windows and balcony to his office, just as Red and I presumed in our plan. I, of course, had no choice but to see and speak with The Mayor, one on one.
You see, Red offered to stay on a nearby rooftop placed conveniently in front of The Mayor’s office, so he had a good, clear view of the balcony and the inside of the office through his windows. He was positioned, out of sight, with his trusty Rising Sun sniper rifle. If anything went wrong, he would know, and put an end to it. But if something did go wrong, it would probably mean that we would have to leave Industead immediately. His guards were loyal, we knew, and would surely attack us if The Mayor was shot, or if even a shot was fired. In the case that there was a mishap, I had my sawed-off shotgun with me in my saddlebags for good measure. That was something the guards neglected to do: search me.
“You’ve been gone for quite a while, ever since that incident at your workplace.” The Mayor’s desk was now facing me, and I could see a desktop monitor blocking the bottom end of his face. In front of the monitor was a nameplate reading “Sand Gorman”. Huh. So that was his name.
He had a dusty, tan coat and a masculine, jar-head kind of mane cut almost down to his scalp. He had a map with red and blue lines drawn all over it as a cutie mark, which I guess symbolized trade. Overall, he looked like a pretty generic pony, except for his age. Faint wrinkles could be seen here and there on his face and neck, but nothing too extreme. The glow from the CPU he was at seemed to make the wrinkles more evident, though.
His head poked around the monitor to divert all of his attention to me. “You remember, don’t you?”
I was still frozen by his presence. “T-the incident?” At first, my thoughts were slurred as well as my speech, but then I managed to recall. “Oh! That...” I was almost ashamed to speak about what happened to me.
“The way you saved that stallion was unacceptable. You saved me only one of my workers, at the cost of two very expensive machines,”he explained. “Not only that, you used magic to save him, and that’s against the ways of the earth ponies.”
Okay, I knew this guy was a ass, but seriously? Sure, at first I thought he was talking about my near-death incident, but he’s complaining I ruined some machinery to save a life?! I used a lever to gunk up a machine to prevent him from being flattened into a coin! I told him this
“Yes, dear Rain, I know.” He spun around in his chair and kicked his hind legs up, facing the bookshelf. “But the damage was so severe I will have to revoke your pay for five months to pay it off.”
Bastard! He had it all worked out already, because it was so important to him... Hell, the gold trimming on the stairs was probably worth enough to force all of Industead into prosperity! Why not do that instead of force my whole family, or what’s left of it, to go homeless?!
“Oh, also, I’ll need you to relinquish your saddlebags for the time being, while you’re in my office.”
Argh! I levitated my saddlebags and placed them next to his desk. He better not confiscate anything that doesn’t belong to him.
After relinquishing my belongings over, my ominous, nervous feeling turned into hatred. “Look, Gorman, I had to save his life! It was the right thing to do-"
“Well the right thing doesn’t make us money! And that’s what Equestria is dependent on nowadays: money.”
I swear, if I still had my shotgun with me, he wouldn’t have a head.
He turned to look at the screen yet again. “But that’s not why you’re here.”
He got up, picking up my saddlebags, and sifted through one of them, out of sight of the window. Thank the goddesses it wasn't the one with my shotgun in it. He walked behind his desk again, leaning behind it and began working at something behind his desk.
I was assured it was a safe when I heard a metal door open and shut, sealing away my saddlebags. He got up, and sat down in his swivel chair. He put his hooves behind his head, and kicked his feet up, looking at the screen for the third time... as if he was monitoring something.
So, I was scolded for saving a life and had all of my stuff taken from me. My weapon, my bat, Twilight’s journal... Everything. And the worst hadn’t even started.
“No no, that’s not why you’re here at all.” He seemed to have a smug look on his face. “It’s regarding where you’ve been for the past week or so.” He turned his monitor around to face me.
On the monitor, were the views of cameras all over Industead. Two of them were the same ones I looked at in Red’s place before they went to static. Another one, was focused on the steel door of Red’s hideout.
“And yes, I know you’ve been scheming with a Red Remnant.”
My heart skipped a beat. Or a couple. Maybe enough to the point that I should have died.
He trotted over towards the window, and closed the blinds, sealing about fifty percent of the light out of the room. He looked at me with a grin. Red now had no idea what was going on in here and wouldn’t be able to get a clean shot, since something was clearly wrong.
I gulped.
From behind him, he pulled out and flashed a dirty, gold gun from behind his flank, which looked very similar to that one stallion’s pistol in the gunfight that I watched on camera earlier today.
He was going to shoot me. My life would end here, because I saved somepony’s life, and got along with a member of a group of revolutionaries.
Oh, merciful Celestia! Red, please do something!
BLAM!
To my surprise, I was still living, and the shot didn’t come from The Mayor’s golden gun. It came from outside, and it sounded like a sniper rifle. The shot didn’t strike anything in the room. It was just a loud gunshot from where I thought Red to be.
Red. He fired off a round.
The mayor staggered at the sound of the gunshot and therefore, took his attention off of me. He foalishly dashed off onto the balcony to investigate the shot from his estate.
BLAM!
Another shot rang off through the air, and a bullet made its way through the window, showering the room in glass.
When the glass shards finally settled into the office, I could clearly see that the bullet didn’t just penetrate the window. From the opening of the window to The Mayor’s desk remained a side winding trail of blood.
The Mayor had been assassinated by Red.