The Trotting Dead : Assemble Towards Fillydelphia

by Tyler-the-Brony

Part 3: A Loner Not Alone

“Huwaghhhh…” A Trotter leaned up from its meal of a beaver, fat and blood dripping from its muzzle, only to grumble again as its head rolled off its shoulders a moment later.

A dark figure stood above the now decapitated Trotter. The mare wore a red cloak now died an even darker red from blood splatters. If the cloak were seen close up, three emblems of the same design could be made out spaced along massive stitching lines. The emblem was that of a blue shield with a filly in the center.

As the rattling of chains permeated her ears, the mare looked behind her to once again see her two Trotters reacting to the death of one of their own. Held in place by long chains that the mare pulled along behind her with her magic, each Trotter also clearly had their jaws severed and their hooves restrained by leather straps. One was an orange earth pony mare with a blonde mane and a faint trace of freckles near where its jaw once was. The other was a cyan blue Pegasus mare with a matted rainbow mane.

Looking down for a moment in disgust, the figure then pulled back the hood of its cloak to display an indigo mane that had long ago lost the degree of finesse it once possessed. As Rarity returned to facing forward, she swung her katana back behind her with her magic and removed the Trotter’s blood from it with a rag she had fashioned from her now valueless dresses. She then proceeded to sheath her blade across her back until next she needed it.

Continuing forward through the forest toward the edge of Baltimare, Rarity suddenly paused in her endless march as she heard an immensely loud noise resound forth from the train tracks a distance ahead for only a split second. Enveloping the hilt of her katana in her magic, Rarity minutely unsheathed her blade so that she could wield it either for or against the threat ahead.

Rarity continued forward all the same, but much more cautiously and slowly, now enveloping her Trotters chains entirely in her magic to muffle the sound of the rattling, knowing that hearing something different nowadays was just as dangerous as hearing a Trotters breath. Rarity heard the odd noise again and narrowed her eyes as she prepared herself to do whatever it took to survive, and to honour her promise to Sweetie Belle.

***

Vinyl unsheathed her spear at blinding speed with her magic and impaled a Trotter right through the left eye and out the back of its head as her horn’s glow died down slightly from having blown a hold through two other Trotters a few seconds earlier. Vinyl retracted the spear out of the Trotters skull, then spun it in a circle a distance ahead of her, slicing through the top portion of 3 Trotters before watching them drop.

Derpy dove down from the sky wielding both her spears, and aimed them to go clean through 2 nearby Trotter’s mouths as she began to climb into the sky again, shaking the corpses loose onto a crowd of 5 Trotters ahead. Swooping back down, Derpy spiraled and sliced down 3 more Trotter’s before backpedaling towards a clear area of space back towards the far edge of Foal Mountain. Dropping her spears, Derpy took up her bat and hatchet as 4 more Trotters approached.

Flitter stabbed a Trotter a ways ahead with her own spear, only to have it fall back before she could get her spear back out. Cursing, she drew her hatchet and cut through 2 more Trotters as she worked her way towards the corpse with her spear still lodged in its right eye. Swinging at another Trotter, she lost her hatchet as well. Cursing even louder, Flitter drew her knives and stabbed both of them through the eyes of a Trotter that Derpy had missed and that was getting too close to Dinky, bucking it back from her to dislodge the knives. A moment later, she stabbed them both through the temples of another Trotter, though she was heavily panting and could barely lift her hooves now.

Dinky sat crying towards the back of the group, though her spear was drawn and bloody. 3 Trotters lay dead a ways ahead of her, and Dinky was determined to be ready for a fourth and fifth at any moment. Looking about her, Dinky thought she saw a Trotter move just inside the forests edge near her, but it was gone not but a second later.

“How many more?!” Vinyl screamed out, blowing a third Trotter away with another blast from her horn, heaving as she did so.

Derpy bashed the temples of 2 more Trotters in, then dropped her bat and threw up. Wiping her mouth a moment later, Derpy shifted her hatchet and drew her knife too.

“I don’t know! It could be 12, it could be 40!” Flitter yelled out as she pulled her two knives out of the eyes of two separate Trotters, splattering herself with an immense amount of blood as she did.

“BUCK!” Vinyl screamed out, at last unsheathing her short blades and carving through 3 more Trotters before she swung the blades wrong and they became lodged in the abdomen of a still moving Trotter. Screaming, Vinyl backed away and tripped over the Trotter that had taken her spear. Grasping the spear hard with her mouth, she heaved it out of the corpse and into the advancing Trotters gaping mouth.

Just as Derpy prepared to launch herself at an approaching Trotter, she heard the slash of a blade and the Trotter’s head slid clean off its shoulders. Expecting Vinyl behind the Trotter, Derpy felt her eyes widen with fear as a hooded figure with two chained Trotters behind her appeared where the Trotter fell instead.

Flitter and Vinyl froze too at the appearance of the figure, and Dinky stared terrified at the Pegasus walker that was assuredly the same one she had seen in the woods minutes ago. The figure looked at each pony for a second each, then pivoted around and impaled two Trotters through their abdomens. Seconds later, the figure removed her blade from the Trotter’s abdomen and beheaded them both with a single swing before they could edge more than half an inch closer.

Flitter and Derpy continued to simply stare after the new pony in fear, but Vinyl snapped awake once she saw that this figure was helping them with the Trotters. Trotting forward, Vinyl fired off 3 more blasts from her horn, taking down the same amount of Trotter’s. Across from her, the figure put down 6 more Trotter’s, spiraling about through each slash, somehow weaving between the Trotters as though they couldn’t see her.

Once those Trotter’s had fallen to the ground, there were only two Trotters left standing. The figure looked to Vinyl, who nodded in turn. The figure galloped forward, slashing from each side, only stopping when each Trotter’s head rolled past her hooves, still trying to bite at her. The figure raised her front hooves, and smashed the skulls of these two in, splattering ever more blood on her cloak.

Once the Trotters corpses had lain still on the ground for a few minutes, everypony began to relax. Derpy flew over and hugged Dinky, crying over the shoulder of her daughter as she did. Dinky was crying too, though her tears were beginning to run dry. Flitter trotted about the corpses of the Trotters, retrieving their lost weapons and stomping on the decapitated head of any Trotter than snapped at her. Vinyl trotted over to speak to their mysterious savior.

“I should thank you. We were running out of energy and weapons. If you hadn’t come by just now, we’d probably be part of that group now. So, Thank You.” Vinyl smiled weakly at the figure, who was currently polishing the blood off her blade and pulling a pair of chains behind her.

As Vinyl looked behind the figure for the first time, she finally saw the chained Trotters and felt even amounts of fear and anger flood through her. As Vinyl flared her horn up, the figure whipped her sword over her head and pointed the tip right under Vinyl’s chin. Flitter froze as she saw this, and Dinky tapped her mom’s shoulder to get her attention to shift towards it.

Vinyl and the Figure never moved for a time, but neither did they lower their weapons. Finally, it was Vinyl who broke the silence.

“Why are TROTTERS with you?! And what did you DO to them?” Vinyl angrily asked the figure, ever aware of the blade at her throat.

In lieu of verbally answering, the figure instead slowly raised her right front hoof up over her head in clear view by Vinyl and Flitter, and then moved it towards the flap of her hood. Jerking her hoof back once she’d grasped the hood, the figure shook her mane free for a few seconds, and slowly opened her eyes to look at Vinyl head on.

Vinyl felt her magic flicker and fade away entirely as she looked into the eyes and at the face of somepony she’d very well believed to be long dead. Vinyl also felt tears begin to well up at the edges of her eyes.

“…Rarity?...” Vinyl almost whispered, somehow still unsure that it was really her cousin that stood before her now, carrying a bloody blade and chaperoning two mutilated Trotters, until she could ask it aloud.

Rarity smiled earnestly for the first time in a very long time as she saw her cousin well up with immense emotion over their odd reunion.

“Hello Vinyl dear. I’m glad to see you woke up from your coma alive.” Rarity felt tears bead in her eyes too as Vinyl began to openly cry upon hearing Rarity’s voice.

Vinyl galloped over to Rarity and instantly pulled her into a fierce hug, crying loudly into her mane as she did. Rarity stroked Vinyl’s mane as she did this, letting a few tears of her own flow off her face and onto the cracked ground below.

Rarity and Vinyl stayed like this for a few moments before Vinyl suddenly gasped and broke the hug, taking only a step or two back from where she had just been.

“…Where’s Sweetie Belle?” Vinyl sincerely asked Rarity, intent to receive an answer of some kind in regards to the location of a filly that was her little sister as much as she was Rarity’s.

Rarity closed her eyes and bit her lower lip, which continued to quiver without cease. Rarity bowed her head for a moment, bit even harder into her lip until a bead of blood appeared, then looked back up at Vinyl, pain that could never be conveyed with words apparent on the once avid dressmaker.

Vinyl felt tears in her eyes again as she saw this, and she immediately pulled Rarity back into a hug, intent to hold her as long as she needed. For a few moments, Rarity was silent. Then, she redoubled her hold of Vinyl and wailed as tears poured down her face, finally showing the depth of the mares strength to have hidden this hurt so well for so long.

Flitter and Derpy trotted around the two mares a large distance away, watching all the nearby horizons for any sign of more Trotters as Vinyl and Rarity helped each other through their respective pain.

It was well over a half an hour later that Rarity finally fell silent again and released Vinyl from her grip. Stepping back, Rarity looked drained of energy, but there was now a brightness in her eyes again that Vinyl hadn’t spied upon first looking into the eyes of her cousin.

Looking behind Rarity at the two Trotters again, now with proper information on their keeper, Vinyl finally understood why Rarity had chosen those two particular Trotter’s to follow her through this hell.

“Applejack and Rainbow Dash. I’m so sorry Rarity. How did they…” Vinyl began, only to have Rarity interrupt by whipping her chains and mush the Trotter’s a distance closer to her.

“Die? I’m not entirely certain myself. I found them like this when I broke into Golden Oaks to see if there were any survivors holed up there, maybe even Twilight herself still. Instead, I found them and the devoured corpses of Minuette and Roseluck. There were a couple odd, small skeletons off to the side too. I’d guess they were Owlowiscious, Winona, and Tank…” Rarity trailed off as her eyes suddenly grew dark again as she watched Applejack and Rainbow move loosely about at the noise.

“Why Rarity? Why do this to them? They’re not… even ‘There’anymore.” Vinyl calmly told Rarity, hoping to coax proper understanding out of the devastated mare.

“I was… angry Vinyl. Angrier than I’d ever been before. I was angry that they’d abandoned me. Left me to my own devices. Left me to protect myself and Sweetie Belle alone. As far as I know, they never even looked for us at the Boutique. The building was destroyed, but by Trotters, not by living ponies. You can tell. So… I decided they owed me protection. So I bound their legs and severed their jaws, then put chains around them so I could bring them with me.” Rarity paused as she seemed to survey the Trotters with clear eyes for the first time.

“Does…it work? Do Trotters ignore you? I saw you weave through them just now, but I thought you might just be going really fast.” Vinyl prodded Rarity to continue as she looked over the Trotters herself.

“It works as well as you’d expect. If you keep pace with them, you don’t look like you’re moving out of the ordinary to them up close. They reek too, so I don’t think a Trotter could smell me until I was already close enough to kill. They can still smell you on the wind, and they’ll still attack you once you ARE close. It’s far from perfect, but it has helped. If only…” Rarity closed her eyes and breathed deeply for a moment, steadying herself.

Vinyl looked at Rarity, pondering the smell comment especially, and saw a possible reflection of herself if she had found Octavia and Silver Spoon like Rarity had found AJ and Rainbow. Vinyl knew what she had to do.

“The living can help you fight through this a lot better than the already dead. Come with us Rarity. We could use the company and the power that you have. But… you should let them rest first.” Vinyl nodded at the Trotters, and Rarity followed her gaze, a sad expression on her face.

Rarity turned around slowly until she was directly facing both her Trotters. Rainbow’s glazed eyes drooped down to the ground, while Applejack’s eyes still seemed glued on Rarity. Their chains continued to rattle, and if one listened closely, you could even hear the slight strain against the leather around their legs.

Rarity stared at each of them in turn for a few moments, then closed her eyes and drew her sword, slashing off both Applejack and Rainbow’s heads with a single slash. Each head spun through the air and landed a distance away, still alive, though only the eyes could show it now.

Flitter nodded and flew ahead down the road to scout, while Derpy took Dinky aside so she wouldn’t have to see the next slash. Vinyl trotted up next to Rarity and put her left front hoof around her neck.

“I could end it from here. One shot from my horn to each of their heads and they can truly Rest In Peace.” Vinyl offered, feeling Rarity move forward slightly at her words.

“No. I need to end this properly myself.” Rarity trotted ahead to the closest head, Rainbow Dash’s.

“Rainbow. I’m sorry I was mad at you. I’m sure losing Scootaloo hurt you as much I hurt after lost Sweetie Belle. Please….tell them I’m sorry. I hope to not see you again for a while my cyan friend. Goodbye.” Rarity slashed down vertically on Rainbow’s head, severing it cleanly in half.

As each of Rainbow’s eyes spun about and then fluttered shut, Rarity trotted over to Applejack’s head, not bothering to clean her blade until all was done.

“Applejack. I loved you like a sister. I’m sorry I never said that while I could have. I’m sorry I couldn’t help Apple Bloom. I promised to help the Last Crusader though. I’ll save at least one Apple from all this before I come back to Sweet Apple Acres for a nice mug of cider. Until then…” Rarity left the rest of her words to be conveyed through her final slash as she severed Applejack’s skull horizontally through the eyes, at last letting them drift off of her and onto happier sights.

Rarity let silent tears fall as she wiped her blade clean and sheathed it again. Catching a slight sign of movement at the edge of her vision, Rarity turned her head towards it, and saw Vinyl Scratch a little ways ahead, a sad smile on her face and her hoof extended back towards Rarity, ready to help her take her first steps into surviving amongst the living again.

Rarity smiled again as she trotted forward, her cloak flapping about her as the wind picked up. Looking above her form, Vinyl saw that all three Cutie Mark Crusader Emblems seeming to fly alongside Rarity’s form for a moment. Vinyl smiled, knowing that the memories of those loving fillies and the friends she’d already lost could only help make Rarity stronger from here on, so long as Vinyl was there to help her see it that way.