Dark Lights Shine Bright

by PandOracle

Chapter Two - New beginnings

Dark Lights Shine Bright

Chapter 2 - New Beginnings

The sky had become it’s near full brightness when we had finally arrived at Midnight’s small stash of supplies, but the light wasn’t much anyway due to the time of year. It had taken a lot longer than either of us had wanted, I knew that after the fourth time we had been attacked by something. Twice it had been some raiders, which we decided to run away instead of attempting to fight them off with our one weapon. The others where groups of infected, which we also ran from.

The wind had surprisingly picked up during the day. I took that as both a good and a bad sign. Every time it happened, a storm of some sorts usually followed. That meant rain and refreshment on our cracking skin and dirty fur. But it usually meant lots of rain, like serious amounts, and that meant very cold and wind in the time in which we were going to be leaving this place, the place that provided the best shelter and chance for warmth.

And then there was Midnight Ember. She kept her ground in front of me with our only weapon, and never went five steps without looking back on me. I knew she didn’t trust me, not in any way, but the fact that she kept on checking what I was doing felt more than a little offensive.

I felt the same question that I had already asked many times before rise to my lips. “Are we near it yet?”

“Yes.” Was the only word that I got in response.

She turned down into a small alley that was littered with broken glass, loose cobblestone and lots of rubbish. But it was out of the way, and unless somepony was purposely trying to avoid anything and everything else, then it didn’t seem like anypony would come down into it. Which meant that everypony would come down it.

Somehow, I managed to lose myself in those hollow thoughts long enough to not realise that Ember had stopped walking. It took me walking into her flank to bring me back, along with even more fear of if she would be mad. But she didn’t move.

“Why have we sto-” My voice trailed off when I saw the small pile of three ponies in raider armour on the ground in front of us. One of which had their head facing in a direction that its neck shouldn’t have allowed.

“We’re here.” She took less than a second before dragging one of the other ponies to the side. I couldn’t help but notice the large trail of blood that his body left behind, like he was some sort of paintbrush. Ember pulled off his main armour piece and passed it to me.

“Don’t bother complaining about it’s state. We aren’t gonna get anything better unless you want to go further into the middle of this place.” I shook my head and took it in my magical grasp. I was okay by now with wearing armour that had dried blood on it. But these had fresh blood, as in it was still dripping slowly from the bottom. My eyes turned to the two canisters that were strapped to the side of the chest piece. I gave them both a light shake. The sound of water splashing was like music to my ears, literally liquid gold.

I thanked her for it and began to slowly pull it on, piece by piece. While she did the same, just with a lot less hesitation.

“Where did you get these things?”

“I did say that I killed a patrol of three ponies.” She moved that last body to reveal three saddlepacks in a mess underneath him.

“No. No you didn’t. You said that you snuck past them” She smiled again. Her smile every now and then was the only piece of good emotion that I could get from her. I would’ve liked to say it was nice, but the conditions in which I saw it meant otherwise.

“oops.”

“Anyway, you also said that they had at least one gun.” She picked up one of the saddlepacks with her wing, then dropped it to pick up a second one. I didn’t know why, but she seemed satisfied with this one.

Ember extended her wing holding the saddlepacks towards me “Take this” She ordered. There was no hesitation when I heard her tone.

The saddlepack had no lock or knot of any form to keep it closed, just the flap of fabric that folded over it. That meant there was nothing stopping me from opening it up and seeing a second Leksin inside it.

I was thanking every living thing that I finally had a weapon again. Even if I had only been parted from one for a few hours, I felt naked without one. A weapon is a ponies life, you lose it, then you don’t have much of a life left to barter with.

It wasn’t unusual to find multiple of the same weapon. After the wasteland had came about, development of new weapons had stopped and more focus was put into producing more of those that already existed. It was a lot easier for things like ammunition.

I strapped the weapon into my left shoulder holster. That was how I knew that this was armour made for an earth pony, even though the previous wearer was a Unicorn. The holster for a Unicorn made armour was on the hind legs and flank, for a little extra concealment or something and we could simply use our magic to pull it out. That wasn’t an option for an earth pony, they needed easy access to the weapon with their teeth. So their holsters were placed on the shoulders so all they needed was to turn their head.

I looked back over to Ember. She seemed to be having more trouble with getting her armour on.

“You need any-”

“NO” She lowered her head and sighed. “Just….Just make sure nothing finds us.” She threw the armour back to the ground. Her wing crawled inside on of the saddlepacks and returned with a knife.

“What are you doing?” She stabbed the blade into the side of the armour and began cutting a line into its side.

“modifying it.” She expected me to believe that shoving a knife into some armour was modifying it. I wasn’t going to believe that. She seemed to have guessed what I was thinking and continued talking. “What do I have that is different to most other ponies?”

Oh

“Wings.” I answered.

“Exactly. But ponies don’t really make any armour that works for wings. So I have to do things like this, create a cut in the armour in which i can push them through. If I didn’t, then it would be very uncomfortable and my wings aren’t exactly much used when they are pushed down against my body. I’d be just like an earth pony if they were.”

She continued to drag the knife through the fabric that held the armour together. The stare that she gave me practically forced me to turn away and watch the two ends of the alley in case of anything coming in.

I laughed to myself when I heard more groans of frustration coming from behind me. Every now and then, I risked taking another look back at Ember, usually to see that she was pulling the armour piece in every direction in an effort to get her second wing through it. I had volunteered to help multiple times, I wasn’t really enthusiastic with staying in this type of place. But every time I did ask, she just stared at me and told me to go back and stand guard.

It was several minutes until she pushed past me with her protection and saddlepacks on. She didn’t seem to want to show it, but I know that I saw her dark cheeks go a little red with embarrassment.

“So we have six water canisters between us, about seventeen bullets each” She lied to me. I had counted them. We should’ve had at least twenty each, minimum. “And the amount of food depends on how well we can hunt it.”

“So are we going now?”

“You got any reason to stay here?”

Why could she never just give me a straight answer.

“No.”

“Then yes, we are leaving.” Those words were like music to me. “But, when we get out of here. You don’t do a single thing without telling me about it. I control our supplies, that means when we stop to gather things, what we take and when we eat or drink. Okay?”

I just looked at her. She cut in again before I could speak. “I know. I know you saved me before, but the way you did it was bad. You were sloppy when sneaking up on him, not to mention you wasted a bullet when you could have just snapped his neck. You also spoke before hand and gave him time to possibly shout or even knock the gun out of the way.” She stared at me. Her voice was that of one not to be denied. “You then also proceeded to run off and leave the armour and map which could’ve saved us a lot more time in this journey.” She continued to scold me.

I sat back on my haunches and looked at the ground. She was right. I had acted kind of stupidly, thinking only about getting another pony instead of saving supplies and possibly risking getting found by something else.

“So you do what, I say when I say it, and nothing else. Okay?” I was about to say no. To say that I had still saved her and that we had supplies now. Then also bring up the fact that she had saved me and probably wasn’t in a stable situation with supplies either. She noticed me thinking. “Okay!”

I surrendered, not wanting to possibly anger her. “Okay.”

Ember beckoned me to follow her out of the alley. She slowly poked her head around the corner.

She sighed. “Shit.”. She turned back towards me. “Looks like we’re gonna have to see how good you really are. We got at least five raider ponies coming up. Probably lookin’ for our three friends here.” I raise my eyebrows and trotted to look around the corner myself but she pushed me back with her wing and a more than angry expression.

“What?” I whispered.

“The fuck is wrong with you? Did I tell you to go and get your own head blown off by looking around the wall?”

“But you jus-”

“I know I did. And I was lucky that they didn’t see me. When I tell you that ponies are coming our way, you believe me. You don’t attempt to push our luck a second time by looking yourself. Now get fucking moving and out the other end of this alley.” There was no time to waste. i didn’t really feel like sticking around with five ponies who would try and kill us, and one mare that wasn’t in much of a good mood.

I was halfway to the other end when I realised Ember wasn’t next to me. She was still back at the three dead ponies, looking through the last one that we had left out. What was she doing? She knew that there were ponies just along the street and then told me leave.

She looked up from the body and directly at me, waving her hoof to try and make me leave. I didn’t need to be told a third time by her, I was already looking bad enough for not listening.

The oversized armour dug into my legs when I ran, causing me to stumble out of the alley and into the cracked cobblestone road. I turned around to see Ember run around the corner after me. Her first action afterwards was falling to her side and massaging her leg.

The side that we had come out into was not to different from the other. Rubble filling the streets with planks boarding up doors and carriages crumbling to pieces. The only real difference were the pieces of wood and metal that ran from windows in each of the buildings to another.

“What were you do-”

“You don’t ask questions.” She bluntly interrupted me. “You do what i say, I don’t do what you say.” Ember stood up, wincing with pain. “I was checking to see if he had a radio or something that could help us find our way through.” That actually made sense. It was bad enough being in a raider or slaver town, but we had no way of knowing our way aroun-wait.

She was expecting us to go through this.

“You can’t be serious. Through?”

“Well I don’t know what cage you’ve been living in all your life.” Ouch. “But this place is pretty fucking big. I would take probably about three times as long to go around then it would to go through.”

I wanted to point out that it would be about twenty times safer, but I didn’t seem to have many good points with this mare.

“Plus. if we go through this. Than we can get more supplies. Food, water, bullets, a map, a PonyPip. Just something.”

A bullet to our heads should’ve been on that list as well.

A quiet ponies voice stopped me before I could use that against her.

“Yous two are wanna be movin’ pretty soon.” Me and Ember immediately drew our guns, but we didn’t know where to point them.

“Where are you?”

“Theys comin’ down behind you. Rifles too.” I looked over at Ember, waiting for her to tell me what to do and remaining silent until then.

“Why should we trust you?” She asked, still looking around the street.

“Cos’ I gots supplies ‘nd yous want supplies. I jus’ heard yous talking it.”

I could hear the raider ponies talking between each other. They still didn’t know that we were anywhere near. But they were getting closer. I looked over at Ember again. She seemed to be in deep thought.

“Fuck.” Her lower jaw locked and she stared at me. “Fine. Where do we go?”

“Down street to the left and on the other side. Down second building gaps, be remains of metal steps. Yous’ll have to climb up a dumpster and jump for it. I’m on the roofs”

We both began running towards. What we didn’t realise was that we had ran in front of the alley we had just left, and across the view of the raider ponies. Two gunshots buried themselves into the brick wall just a few hoofs away from us. Somepony shouted ‘I’ve found them’. I guessed that he was the one who had shot.

I stumbled as Ember pushed my flank forwards in an attempt to speed me up, shouting ‘Go’ while doing it. It worked until a minute correction turn in my path caused my right fore hoof to buckle and graze my knee.

Ember didn’t stop running though. Instead she just hooked her wing around my fallen leg and continued to drag me. I was more than a little impressed that she could do this with her leg, but then her face came through and showed that there was a lot of pain going on.

She was going through a serious amount of pain just to help me. Well, I knew it was to stop her from dying as well but she was going through extra pain to help me even when it already hurt her. It made me wonder why she had saved me again in the first place, and why she had asked for us to go together. She could obviously still handle herself.

The dumpster and fire escape that we had been told about was where the pony said it was. That was good, that meant that we could trust him and that he wasn’t trying to kill us...kind of

I clambered up onto the dumpster. Ember followed me quickly, her wings batting at the wind every now and then, but she never left the ground. My first instinct took over and I knelt down slightly, in front of the fire escape. Ember gave one seconds thought before I felt her hooves dig into my back as she used me as a sort of step to hop onto the metal frame above us.

The height of the frame only appeared to me when I stood back. It was at least two and a half full grown stallions high, whereas I was about a horn shorter than the average mare. There was no way I could jump that myself without some help. Two more gunshots whipped past my tail.

I didn’t really have a choice as to whether I could jump it or not. Jumping was my only option.

So I backed up to jump. I flung my gun up onto the metal structure and next to Ember, who was looking down at the entrance to the alley with her pistol wrapped in her wing. I needed all of my concentration and strength for this.

My stomach was touching the dumpster when I sprang up, using my forelegs to set the direction and start it off, then gave all the power with my hind legs for the height.

It still wasn’t enough.

I had managed to get my hooves onto it, but my flank was still dangling underneath and there wasn’t much to get a grip onto. My hooves slowly started sliding back and I felt my body falling lower and lower. That was far from what I wanted to say the least.

Two more gunshots powered through the air, both of them coming from Embers’ pistol. My only guess was that a pony had dared to run around the corner, and had either taken the warning and hid, or was now withering in pain, or dead. I really wished it was the second one, slavers and raiders had already done enough to me.

My chin was about the slide off the edge, no matter how much my hooves slide around for something to grab onto. There was nothing.

Until Ember bit onto my fore leg and pulled.

I don’t know how I didn’t see her turn to help me. But I didn’t really care for that either. My mind was nearly all focused on pulling myself up with her, with a tiny fraction of my brain wondering how her fangs weren’t piercing my skin.

Ember gave two powerful pumps of her wings to give the extra power needed to pull me up. But my safety (kind of) came at the price of my stomach being grinded against the metal edge, and also the fact that I had no chance to rest before Ember dragged me up the shoddy, creaking stairs.

But my Leksin was let down where we had just been. Nothing was ever simple for me.

I broke free of Ember’s grasp and quickly jumped back to our previous location. I Mentally cursed myself for momentarily forgetting my ability to use magic. But that thought came back only seconds later and I surrounded the dumpster in my aura and pushed it away.

“TRY AND FOLLOW US NOW YOU FUCKERS!” I let all of my anger out on them and fired three bullets into the first pony that poked there head around the corner. His body fell to the ground.

...Fuck.

Silence fell, all apart from the light hooves of Ember trotting down next to me again.

I just killed a pony.

The first worry that came to my head was to prepare for an incoming punishment from my masters, a punishment that never came. Then it was the sense of failure. I had gone years of being ordered around, always managing to keep hold of my will to never kill another pony. Whenever I was sent on a patrol against other ponies, I just shot without aiming at the pony, always somewhere around them or ran. At least that’s what I tried to do, there was always going to be at least a few times of me killing another pony of me taking someponies life when they were just trying to survive. But it had never been done from my own choice, from my own free will.

Don’t get me wrong. I had killed ponies before, but they were always when my masters were making me. When they had beatings waiting for me, or no food for days, or a bullet for my skull. They had always made me kill them. This was the first time I had done it on my own. With my own choice and no punishment waiting for me afterwards.

I. Murdered. Him.

My eyes began to slowly release my emotion, the tears dampening my fur as the rest of my body lost all movement. An uneasy feeling crept into my stomach and I wanted to throw up every single bone of my body. As if that would let me forgive myself for taking a ponies life.

A small groan caught my ears from the centre of the street just outside the alley. An unarmoured, white mare was withering on the floor slowly as blood stained her underbelly. She looked as good as dead at first. The only signs of life were the random twitches of his hind legs and raspy breaths.

I had just killed a pony. And I would rather impale myself on an Alicorns horn before I let another pony die

The metal railings buckled a little when I climbed over them and jumped to the ground. Ember attempted to grasp my tail but failed. I wouldn’t have let her stop me anyway.

I gave one look towards Ember when I landed, half expecting her to be following me. She wasn’t, and it was stupid of me to think so. She just snorted at me and continued up the steps.

With nothing more stopping me, I carried on over to the bleeding earth mare, letting my, cracked breaths cries drown out her whimpering.

‘Click’

My hooves rooted themselves into the ground.

A stallions voice came from behind me. “You.” He let out a shaky breath. “Ya need to stand real f-f-fucking still if ya wanna live.”

I dared a quick glance to see my captor. An orange furred Unicorn, with a rifle I couldn’t identify pointed at my head. Yet somehow, that wasn’t what drew my eyes. His mane stole that, or rather, his lack of mane. His head was just covered in more fur, with a myriad of crusted, red cuts. Like a foal had played naughts and crosses on him, and then decided to try and murder him with a sharp and jagged stone.

One glance with my quivering eyes (undecided whether they were from sadness or fear) seemed to make him throw out any thought that he had before. Any look of hesitance left his body.

My horn sparked into life and lifted a wall of dust into his eyes. Not a second too late either. I had just managed to see what portion of his rifle that was still poking through the dense dust barrier lift up before it fired, most likely from reflex of the irritating particles invading his eyes..

A few bullets got very close to being lucky though, and I knew that all I had managed to do was stun him for a few short seconds. Without another thought, I dived back behind the alley of which I had came from.

Silence fell again, all apart from the light clicks that came from the reloading and recocking of his weapon.

I debated my options; pleading with him was a definite no now, the exact same it had been a few hours ago before I had even met him. I could continue with my defence of using the dust wall, but there was no chance that it would take more than a few seconds for him to just push through it or step back. And I couldn’t see him from behind around the wall, so there was no way of knowing if he had already done that.

The final, but most probable, option came to mind. But it was the one I wanted to avoid the most. I would have to fight back, and kill him. I attempted dividing my concentration between my defences and grabbing my Leksin.

...Where the fuck is my Leksin? I searched around my entire body with my aura, waiting for it to come across the pistol but it never did. That drew my full concentration. I abandoned the dust wall and looked around, sweeping my hooves across the floor around me, but I hit nothing but dirt, rubble, glass and anything else that ponies had no use for since the wasteland.

there was a single gunshot, followed by a slightly warm liquid being blasted across my back, and hitting my fur where the light armour had been ripped. I whimpered down into the ground when the silence fell, everything just faded into the back of my mind.

I couldn’t handle this. I wasn’t meant for this. I was supposed to be back home, with my masters and the other slaves being told what to do and punished when we didn’t do them. They were right. We were worthless ponies that needed them to survive, that needed them beating us until we knew not to do something. We needed them feeding us and protecting us. I cried lightly into the ground.

I continued to cry quietly into the cracked cobblestone and dirt. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry-I didn’t mean to get you all killed-I’m sorry. Please come back-I need you. Please, come back to me!”

“What are you doing?” A mare’s voice called. It was familiar, but I failed to place it. And I didn’t really care. I leapt up at the voice, front hooves open until I hit it, and then instantly wrapped myself around them. I buried my face into their fur and cried.

“I’m sorry mistress. I-I-I didn’t mean to leave you. Please take me back. Please I-I-I-I’ll do anything just please bring me back.” I continued attempting to plead to my mistress, but every word came out slurred with tears.

“Stop!”

“You were right mistress.” I recovered myself into a barely speakable state.

“Stop!

“I can’t survive out here. I need you.”

“LITTLE LIGHT. STOP!”

...That voice didn’t belong to my last master.

I opened my eyes to see the familiar two-tone purple hair, the darker shade on the inside.

Ember Night. I wasn’t calling to her, but she was the one that came.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Her face was contorted with anger and confusion, which was far better from what I expected. Until I looked down to see that I had buried my face into her tail and pressed her down onto her stomach. I stood up from her flank.

“Sorry. I-I-I… There was a mare and-and-and this stallion, I,,, I don’t know what happened. I couldn’t handle it. please, don’t leave me gain.”

I didn’t know what I expected for her to do, Comfort me? Say its okay? No. I would’ve been stupid to expect that, and so I was stupid that it even came across my mind.

“What did I tell you?” I stayed in my state of sobbing. “I said you do what I do and say! We were leaving! we would have been fine! But you had to go and fucking ignore me and jump down with you big fucking warm heart and nearly kill yourself for a mare that’s already fucking dead! Leaving me to come back and save your fucking worthless ass from yet another death.”

She was already dead…

“Next time we come across something like this, you listen or I snap your neck myself and save everypony else the trouble. Got it?” My head sunk a little before very minutely nodding. “Good.” Her voice softened a little, emphasis on little. “Now come on, we’ve got a long way to climb and there is at least one able bodied pony still around here and I don’t wanna be jumped again or have them get some friends.”

I took a look up the building that we were about to climb. It was smaller than those around us, and looked stable, but that didn’t make it any less intimidating. Ember trotted - limped, over to the fire escape again.

Great! This was gonna be exhausting.

-*- -*- -*- -*- -*-

The pair of us slumped over what remained of the stone lip of the building. I fell onto my stomach, but Ember pressed on. How did she always have the energy to keep on moving? She could run, carry me, climb up all these stairs all while having basically a fairly open hole in her leg.

My eyes had long since gotten used to the dark, it was nearly impossible for them not to in the light that enveloped Alequia. Ember stood against the night sky in my vision, her fur blended in nicely to the clouds and grey walls of the buildings.

“Get up.”

I abided, taking a few seconds to blink the dust from my eyes. I was exhausted, and hungry, and thirsty. The supplies that me and Ember had grabbed before were so tempting, but she had made it abundantly clear that we should not risk wasting them until we had more.

Ember just stood next to me, looking around for any trouble I guessed. I was so tired, but the way that she was always alert, always standing straight without shaking legs, it was like she never needed to sleep.

“I said get up. I don’t know if you have noticed, but the ponies around here aren’t exactly looking for some new playdates. Which means that we need to kinda get up and out a soon as we can.” She exhaled deeply and looked down towards the ground. “Which means we gotta find this colt quickly.”

My legs felt worse than they did in the desert a week or so, and I could at least eat my own food when I wanted to then instead of having to pass it by miss ration bitch here. But I stood up, because that’s exactly what she was being right now. A bitch. And I didn’t want to piss her off in case that what I had seen of here was the good side.

She didn’t wait for me before she started to walk off in some seemingly random direction of the roof.

“Where are you going?”

“To the local store to buy some fresh fruit and medicine!” She turned her head half back to me. “Where the fuck do you think. I’m going over to the lights” Her hoof raised towards a small, flickering light a little way away from us. “We haven’t been able to talk to that colt since he told us to come up here, so we gotta find the rest ourselves. I’m bettin’ he’ll be over in his nice and cosy warm bed with some nice food and spices waiting for us!”

“I was just asking-”

“-And I told you that you don’t ask. You listen and do.” My head sunk and I nodded. This was freedom? Freedom didn’t seem much different from captivity. The only difference was that I had to work more for less now.

“As the pony that has saved your life repeatedly, I think you could at least listen to what I’m saying.”

I exhaled deep. I don’t understand how she made me feel like that, like I was just empty and all to blame. It felt worse than when my masters got angry, and they did more than just talk to me. I had enough cuts still healing to prove that.

But she did none of that. She didn’t hurt me - or even shout at me. She was teaching me how to live without beating me into perfection. I didn’t understand how that was possible, but it worked.

She would be a amazing mistress. She already was.

I continued the silence as a way of agreeing with her. The outside of me looked like I was on the edge of tears. Inside however, I was smiling bigger than I ever had before. I had a nice mistress, after the years of tormenting owners before her.

Ember looked back to me, then back to the flickering light and sighed. “Sorry I’m….I’m just tired and...pissed off at being shot at again already. I’ve been shot many times before but it’s not exactly something that you get used to.” She looked almost sad, and some other emotion that I couldn’t make out. “You can get used to the sound, change it to make you better in a fight. But the pain of a bullet - especially into one of your legs when you continue to put pressure on it - is something that’ll always be there.”

She was sorry…

Ember was sorry…

My owner, my mistress was sorry?

“Why are you sorry. I’m the one that is disobeying you.” I hoped that she didn’t notice the question inside that, but kind of did so that I could get an answer.

She looked over at me with something not unlike confusion. “Yeah, you weren’t...’disobeying’ me. I was getting all pissy over shit that didn’t matter.” She shuffled around on her hooves. “You own me just as much as I own you.”

“What?” I instantly replied, I couldn’t have heard that right.

“I said I owe you just as much as you owe me.” My mistress didn’t want me?

No! She wasn’t my mistress. I caught myself before falling further into that net again. We were-. We are equals.

...So why does this feel wrong? Because you’ve already proven to her and yourself to be nothing, a worthless waste of food and nearly got her killed.

But I could learn. I’m new-ish out here. Everything I’ve done and been taught before has been on familiar ground with somepony telli-...beating, and ordering, me to do something. She can help me get used to doing this.

Or you could just get her and you killed before we get out of this place.

“We gotta know that I can’t order you around, but you defin-” She bit back the word. “…You can’t order me around as well.” One corner of her lip etched into a small, hopeful smile. “I can tell that we are probably gonna be around each other for a while so...Can we like...eugh. Can we just start over again...or something.”

She was offering me freedom?

she’s trying to get away from you.

She’s trying to help me.

By getting you killed? You don’t know what to do out here. You’ll die in seconds and she knows it. She doesn’t want you here, she just wants you to distract the raiders so she can save her own flank.

I wanted to continue to go against the small part of me that wanted to leave alone, but I couldn’t find the reason behind why I should’ve ignored. There was no real sense as to why I was still with her unless it was for a distraction. Yesterday, she had promised that she wouldn’t because she was injured and so was I and we couldn’t do this alone.

But now what? We had near enough found another pony, one who would be able bodied, probably had more weapons and knew this place a lot better than we did put together. But then I doubted that she even needed another pony anyway. She can handle herself fine, even after being shot.

Me?

I was useless.

“...Yeah. I’d like that, a new start.” A new beginning. A new chance to start again. Only this time, I would be a lot better.

Author's Note:

So. One mind-broken ex-slave, a bossy, short tempered mare with a worrying amount of experience with killing, and a city full of infected and other ponies that would rather see them dead than walking. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that...