Gilded Vengeance

by DenyTheWitch

Chapter 1

I woke up half expecting to be back in be warm bed, and that everything that had happened so far had been some freaky dream, upon opening my eyes I was greeted with a very dark room, and a metal mesh style roof. I sat up slowly with closed eyes and rubbing my pounding head, it felt like someone had punched me out, before opening my eyes again to see metal bars. A feeling of dread settled in my stomach as I again twisted my head left and right and even looked behind me, yup metal bars, I was in a cage, if this whole thing had been a dream, now it had turned into a nightmare.

Again I began hyperventilating as I crawled up to the cage bars, the roof being far too low for me to stand, and grabbed them in my hands, yep, cold steel, cold and unyielding. I checked every last bar, and all the same, cold hard steel, I was in a cage of cold steel, I once again went into full panic mode, and began rattling what I assumed to be the door. I tried to shout out but all that came out was an animalistic shriek, still, I kept shrieking.

Because of my the shrieking I didn't hear the footfalls of my captors as they came near, nor did I hear their shouting as they tried to get me to stop shrieking. However I did feel the results of when they got tired of this, as I was shaking the bars, screaming like a madman, suddenly I felt like I had been holding an electric fence. I screamed in pain and fell back from the bars clutching my chest as it filled with pain that came hand in hand with an electric shock, then I heard some footfalls as it seemed whoever had zapped me was approaching my cage, with a few friends. Then I heard a voice "Well look who's finally awake," I groaned as I sat up to get a good look at my captors.

I have to say of all the crazy images my brain had come up with as to had locked me up here, from some animal patrol, to mutant aliens, none of them came anywhere near close to the reality. They were horses, midget technicolour horses, three of them at the moment, the middle one with a cruel sneer on its face, which seemed rather disturbing on such an otherwise adorably cute thing. They had huge eyes, taking up about a third of their faces, and somewhat stylized manes and tails, although they didn't seem to have any mane in the middle of their bodies. Overall they also seemed a lot more stocky than normal horses, and rounder, the middle and left ones more so than the right one. Their colours from left to right were pale red with pink mane, a dark blue with purple mane, and brown with a deep red mane, all things considered, they looked like something you would put in a little girls show.

The middle one leaned inwards, "Now you be quiet and stop yapping unless you want another zap," at that I crawled to the back of my cage wanting to put as much distance between me and the psychotic electrocuting pony as possible. "Good boy," she said, and I knew it was a she from the voice, as she leaned back and turned to the red one, "If any of them get noisy again, just use the prod on the bars, that'll quiet them." The other two then turned right and walked away while the red one walked a bit off to the left, presumably to stand guard, while I was left alone with my thoughts.

"OK, so I've been kidnapped by tiny horses, all things considered it could be worse, at least I know they aren't going to eat me, these horses aren't carnivores, right?" As I sat there contemplating the possibility of carnivorous horses something the blue one said suddenly struck me, "Wait, any of them?" For the first time since waking up I looked around and saw numerous other cages alongside mine, and along the other side of the room, and nearly all of them were filled with other humans, all of them stark naked. At this I looked down at myself and, yep, they took my pyjamas. So to summarise, I'm locked in a cage, naked, surrounded by other cages filled with other humans, also naked, and locked in those cages by tine talking ponies, could this possibly get any worse, with the exception of dying.

So after contemplating just how screwed I am, I decided to take a look at the other humans in their cages. I looked to the cage left of me to find another human, also locked in a cage, staring vacantly in the distance, I looked to the cage to the right and OK, human female in there, not looking that way. So I turned back to the cage to the left and decided to try and get his attention. Since my voice still seemed to be mysteriously missing, I was left to grunt at his direction, it took a few try's but eventually I got him to look at me, and I almost wish I didn't, that guy was hideous, seriously, I don't take myself as a handsome guy, but god, he was ugly. But most unsettling were his eyes, they were blank, empty, no sign of any intelligence whatsoever, creepy as hell. He stared at me for a few moments before going back to blankly staring at something.

Deciding that the humans were getting me nowhere, seriously, they all looked quite similar and I did not want to look at those kind of eyes again, I decided to just settle for staring at the cage bars instead, it was then that I finally noticed the rocking movement. I looked around and saw the whole room was gently rocking just a little bit, before I listened as closely as possible and heard it, a chugging, much like a train, wait train, that would explain the shape of this room. OK, so I'm on a train, going somewhere, stuck in a cage with a bunch of other humans, well, lets see where this goes shall we.

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A few hours later, I wasn't counting, it was meal time, the brown pony walked up to each of the cages, with a bunch of bowls floating around him, you know, I'm starting to wonder if I should start keeping count of the amount of times this world can fuck with me. The bowls were all covered in a glowing light brown aurora, while there also appeared to be another aurora coming from a horn on his head, yup so its a unicorn now is it?

Anyway he came over to each cage, opened a slot before shoving a bowl into said cage, then the human would begin scarfing down on whatever it was in the bowl. When it came to me he shoved it in, and seeing the other humans reactions to the bowls, I can't really say what I was expecting, but green gruel certainly wasn't it. Despite this though, my stomach was quick to remind me that I hadn't eaten since I got here, so I reluctantly began gobbling up the gruel. It was disgusting, but to give it a little credit, it did fill my stomach. So after that degrading meal I sat and waited as the brown pony came back and collected all the plates, but after doing that the blue one came back with the brown one and another midget horse, this one a silvery white male from the looks of it, and they both stopped by my cage to study me, it seemed.

After a bit of this, the blue one spoke up, "so Sight, how much do you think this ones worth?" At this point I noticed that the blue one had a horn as well, so that made two unicorns, but from what I could see the silver one, called 'Sight' apparently, didn't answer immediately, just seemed to study me some more, a bit like someone would study which like the way someone would study two pairs of shorts before deciding which one to buy, unless they were like me and just grabbed the first one they saw. "Well he definitely looks stronger than the others, a bit scrawny given his height, but then again he is taller than most other humans I've seen, could probably sell well to one of the richer ponies in Canterlot." The Blue pony seemed to contemplate this, while thought about what 'Sight' had said, what a strange sentence. For one while I was no longer a little short guy I most certainty wasn't all that tall either, and as for strength, god I have to say I'm not some little scrawny weakling, but I'm definitely not strong, and what kind of a name is 'Canterlot' anyway.

They stood there for a little while, the blue one with a very thoughtful expression on its face, at least I think it was a thoughtful expression, who knows, maybe their expressions mean different things, but those big eyes and moving ears make for quite the expressive faces. Then The blue unicorn, God I have to find out its name sometime soon, asked another question. "How about intelligence?" Sight seemed surprised at this, before he began to contemplate for a bit,
"Well, I'd have to run a test on him, but from what I can see, he is smarter than most humans, you can tell he's studying us right now." Oh, so they weren't completely ignoring my face, that's good, or is it bad I wonder? The red one, who I could now see had wings, again, sure, why not? Chimed in here "and it only took one shock to get him to learn the rules." Blue seemed to like this answer as a small smile spread across her face, "Smart enough for that special order?" Sight looked at me again, I wish he'd have a face other than studying and lecturing. "Probably, again I'd have to run a test to make sure but I think it would work." Blue brightened up at this, with a smile I definitely did not like. "Perfect, run those little tests then, this should fetch us a whole load of bits." With this blue turned around and trotted off while the Pegasus went back to her post, and brown picked up a very nasty looking prod with his glowing telekinesis thingy. "Alright be a good little human and you wont get another shock," oh, so that's the shock prod OK, well behaved human it is.

The cage door was then pulled open by more of the brown glowing magic, sure, I'll call it magic, nothing else seems to fit, before I was covered in said glowing magic thingy and pulled right out of my cage. Despite myself I attempted to struggle against it as I was lifted right out of the cage, but struggling prove useless and only seemed to amuse the unicorn as he began shaking me slightly in the air, and that was most definitely deliberately. We went into another train carriage getting me a brief glimpse of the country side, which we were moving by at an alarmingly fast rate, and I was plonked down in the middle of a mostly empty room with a few boxes along the sides. Browny walked back a bit still holding the shock prod in his magic, which seemed a bit of overkill to me since he could pretty much just pick me up and throw me around whenever he wanted to, whatever, I was just glad I wasn't being held in his magic stuff anymore.

Sight then walked over to me a small box and a clipboard, before setting the clipboard down and opening the box, pulling out a medium sized tube too small for my hand, but only a little bit, two bags, a jug of water and what looked like a nut of some kind, all somehow managing it with hooves. Then he half filled the tube with water, before placing the nut in it, the nut ending up floating on top of the water, he then emptied the two bags revealing some smooth stones and, some plastic looking little balls, before dropping one of both in the tube, I feel I need to point out he was doing this slowly so as not to 'confuse me' I would guess.

Anyway by this point I already new what this test was, I'd seen in in documentaries, so I wasn't surprised when the stone sank to the bottom and the little piece of plastic floated on top. Perhaps I should point out where I'd seen this test, it was used on little children who just started walking, and orangutan's, they were doing monkey testing on me. Sight then pushed it all towards me before backing off a bit, now I knew the answer, and I didn't need that documentary to tell me, you just drop in all the stones and eventually the nut will float up into grabbing distance, but something told me that showing just how smart I was would be a bad idea. So I decided to play it a bit dumb, my ego wouldn't let me deliberately fail this, so I slowly crawled forward and attempted to grab the nut first, then I picked up one of both and dropped them in, then dropped one of both one at a time, then took the stones and dropped them in one by one until the nut floated up to easy grabbing distance.

All the while Sight was quietly watching while writing down some notes on the clipboard, how he did that with his mouth, I have no clue. After getting the nut I bit into it, finding it was one of those shelled nuts, fortunately the shell was weak and cracked in my mouth, then I studied the now revealed nut for a moment, before shrugging and chomping it up in one bite, not bad, could use a bit of salt. Then I noticed Sight was still taking notes on me, probably reading my small expressions, damm, I need to be more careful around him.

After this Crowny took me back to the cage, where I just lay there for a while before I had to do my business, and no, they didn't provide a bucket, I had to do it in the corner, although looking around I saw that none of the other humans bothered with this though, they just did it wherever. So I was almost glad when they sprayed us all with a blast of icy water, I say almost because I was nearly asleep at that point, and that icy water kept me up for another hour. But eventually I did manage to get to sleep, so ending my first day on this hellish train ride.

<-------------------------------->

This train ride went on for, I don't know, a few more weeks, long enough for me to grow a beard, and throughout this train ride the same pattern as the first day tended to happen, get fed, take tests, do shit, get wet, so on. But some days the train would stop and the ponies would unload some humans while loading some new ones on. The new humans would often bang against their cages even after their first shock and it often only be by the third or forth zap that they'd finally shut up. I also happened to bear witness to some particularly nasty events such as branding an neutering. The branding involved taking an often struggling human, they seemed to somehow know what was going to happen to them, tie them down, and take a very hot piece of shaped metal, then burning it into the humans skin, twice, those shrieks were nightmarish. As four neutering, I really don't wanna go over that, although I will say that it was done with a pair of what looked like garden shears, oh, and they always did it in the centre of the carriage, which happened to be nearly right in front of me, that was nice.

The tests, meanwhile, gradually got harder and harder, sometimes accompanied by vocal commands, usually involving some kind of puzzle to get to some snack, the nut wasn't very tasty, but it was food, and they only fed us twice a day with that gruel. I was more careful, now though, I kept my expressions to mostly blank, like the other humans, who seemed limited to blank face, angry face, and scared face. And for the tests that required me to seriously think for a bit, I managed to swallow my pride and fail them on purpose, every time Sight would sit there taking notes, sometimes I would see him talking the Blue, and those conversations would almost always involve them gesturing at me somewhat.

So with that the trip pretty much went in a kind of routine, with a few exceptions such as the occasional new pony would take an inspection us humans, picking a few out to take home. There was one instance where a griffin wandered the train a bit picking its humans out, and all the feral humans, as I had taken to calling them, cowered at the back of their cages in fear, though I can hardly blame them, between the obviously predatory features and the way it hungrily licked its lips as it watched the cages, I assumed this thing ate humans, hell I cowered at the back of my cage, how did I know it was a griffon, well it was half eagle, half lion, and I played Warcraft 3. Sometimes these guests would point at me, only for Blue to shake her head every time, much mine and the guests disappointment, except for that time with the griffin, I was glad she said no to that thing.

Eventually though, it seemed that Blue made her decision, they had just washed us all out when blue and the whole gang met up in front of my cage, when Blue started talking, "OK, so Silver Sight's ran his tests, and this human should fit the bill for Mr Star Shine's order, its smart, its strong and its docile and so now, its sold, agreed?" The other ponies murmured amongst themselves for a while, but they all nodded in the end, good, this meant I was getting off this train. Blue then put on her more scary smile, sending alarm bells ringing in my head. "OK, good, Sandstorm, get the brand," the Brown one, who shall now be known as Sandstorm walked off to get the... wait, did she just say brand? FUCK!

I began crawling too the back to the cage wanting to get as much distance between me and those ponies as possible, Blue seemed to enjoy this as she chuckled rather evilly if I do say so myself, and began making mock clicking noises with her tongue, "come here boy, I wont hurt you, much." Needless to say this did not improve my mood as I began scrambling even more desperately, Blue just laughed at this before opening the cage with her freaky blue magic, and then grabbing me in said magic. I tried to hold on to the bars, I tried really hard, but I was eventually pulled off to my despair and ever rising panic, I began clawing at the cage bars, but still nothing. I was pulled out to the centre of the carriage by what must definitely say was a psychotic blue unicorn, before roped began to bind me to the small metal loops in the middle of the room, I struggled as hard as I could, but that only seemed to make blue laugh even more as I was tied to the floor. Sandstorm came back holding a long metal pole with a five pointed star with little lines coming out from it on the end in his magic, oh, and that star and lines, were all red hot.

I was in screaming already casting longing glances at my cage, never before had that cage seemed so good, then something hard was shoved in my mouth, something hard, but chewy. As Sandstorm came to a stop and brought the brand to my thigh the only logical thought I could think was bite hard as I braced myself. You know, whenever I read about this sort of thing in books, I always imagined it be a bit like the time I accidentally burned my thumb on the metal of the frying pan, well, I can safely say its much worse. I could feel my skin sizzling for a moment, before it was replaced with just agonising burning pain. I managed to not scream, biting down on, whatever it was in my mouth as hard as I could, but God, that was painful. As I lay there breathing hard, and congratulating myself on my willpower that allowed me to not scream, (ironic, considering the fact that I had been screaming before they branded me) when Blue said something that made my heart stop, "Now the other side." I once again tried to struggle as sandstorm heated the brand up once again, and again I found my struggles were useless and so far succeeding only in rubbing my wrists and ankles raw, and then the brand came down again. I bit down hard again, but this time, I screamed, the sizzling sound reaching my ears, pain was all I could think of, pain, pain and more pain...

<-------------------------------->

I woke up to a throbbing sensation in my thighs, I groaned and sat up, or at least tried to, before a fierce lance of pain struck both my legs and I grunted in pain as I fell back down. After breathing for a bit longer I sat up just using my arms and looked at my legs, oh right, that. Well the branding worked, I now had two dark brown marks on my thighs, both five pointed stars with about ten lines shooting off from it. I groaned to myself, at least they didn't neuter me, I don't want to know how that would have felt like. "Well, at least it doesn't hurt when I'm not moving them, if I just sit like this I should be fine," sadly I had woken up just in time for the bath, so even as I finished that thought, I was blasted with ice cold water, sending spikes of pain from my new markings, I instinctively placed my hands over the marks, but that just resulted in more pain, so I screamed again.

"Awww, did somepony get the ouchies?" I turned my gaze up from my scarred legs to see, yup, Blue again, I so badly wanted to tell her to fuck off, but as my voice wasn't working, I settled for growling at her. "Ha ha, it looks like you still have something left in you, good, we'll be there tomorrow, hopefully your legs will be better by then." I just glowered at her, imagining her skin nailed to a wall, her insides splayed out, she just sneered back at me. "I just wanted to give this to you personally, I know you've been through a lot lately, so I thought I might cheer you up." I looked down to see another bowl of gruel floating in her magic grasp, I almost didn't take it, but I was starving, so I settled for a moments hesitation before snatching the bowl and scarfing down its contents. Blue just smiled at this, "well well, aren't you a hungry animal, no 'thank you' either," then she fake harrumphed and walked away, that creepy smile on her face, but what she said got to me, I looked down at myself, covered in green gruel, naked, cold, filthy, I certainly looked like an animal, had she reduced me to one?

So with that thought in my head, I cradled up to sleep, repeating to myself "I'm Human, I'm human, I'm not an animal, I'm Human," but as I looked around myself at the other cages, filled with huddling up feral animals, I started to wonder to myself, was there really a difference?

Comments

[lordofmyth]

so its planet of the apes........... except with ponies.............. my thought processes haves stopped.

[The Well Dressed Ninja]

3839183

Isn't that what basically every Your Human and You story amounts to?

[lordofmyth]

3839425 first one that seems ot outright take those characteristics outright in my experience. most of them has the human being the only human ever seen.
of course the norm is that human of interest dies and some how ends up in equistrai someway.

whatever your opinion of Equistrai girls, at the very fucking least it gave a better idea than death equals a trip to equistria.

[Cheerileeapplebloom]

Cant wait for the next chapter my man. This is great.

[DenyTheWitch]

3842027 Thanks, fixing now