Diary of the Dead

by AppleTank

April Omake: Bloody Revolution

Author's Note:
The below is mostly non-Canon, just for fun.

I never asked for this.

I opened my bleary eyes at the white ceiling above me. With a heavy sigh, I pulled myself up into a sitting position, rubbing at my eyes. Bits of dried blood flaked off, to my annoyance. Need to ask Gladas to check for leaks again.

I glanced to my side, zeroing in onto the bedside table.

---

The Darkest Night

Miss Cher worriedly herded the foals into the safe room below the school-room. She glanced worriedly at the darkened sky, screams and fires dotting the spires of Canterlot

---

I took a sip of beer, tiredly feeling the stinging liquid burn in the furnace installed in me. It wasn’t comfortable, despite assurances that it was reasonably safe. Grass is greener, perhaps, if the other option was to rely completely on blood. I looked out the window of my old apartment, swirling the fractured glass as the sun slowly sank.

---

Cher gasped as the massive, reinforced door (both magically and physically) just crumbled. Though, on reflection, it was more like it shattered.

“Come on, boys,” a haughty voice called. “Fresh meat. Bats, too. Nopony is gonna care after this night.

Cher snarled, stepping protectively over her charges.

---

If you want to make enemies, try to change the world.

---

Cher stamped her hooves, causing a bookcase hidden near a side wall to fall over. The back piece exploded, spilling countless blades between the her and the intruders. The pale stallion looked down, his red mane briefly obscuring his eyes. Cher labeled him Red in her mind. After a moment. He looked up.

“Really?” Red reached for one of the axes. With a snort, Cher’s hooves briefly pulsed with light. The stone floor rumbled, and a polearm jumped into the air, slicing into the stallion’s ribs. “Gah!”

He snapped furious red irises back at her, but she was already moving. Her tail snatched up a dagger as she sprinted by. Red gasped, and managed to block most of Cher’s furious buck, but couldn’t stop the dagger from scraping his skull, nicking an ear.

“Look, filly, you don’t need to die,” he pleaded. “Too many questions if a pony mare got killed.”

“I didn’t spend eight years of my life trying to help these poor foals just so you numbskulls can trample all over them again!” Cher shouted, leaping forwards once more. Red tried to sidestep, but winced when he realized a few swords had jumped into the back of his forelegs. They didn’t do much, but it distracted him long enough for Cher to deliver a jaw cracking uppercut.

With a quick step and a spear in hoof, she impaled the falling Red with a reverse thrust.

There was a moment of silence, and then the sarosian foals behind her cheered. With a heavy sigh, she dropped the spear, and looked with annoyance towards the destroyed door. How did he break down ...!

Her vision was suddenly filled with stars. Dimly, she heard screaming. Trying to peer through the tunnel that was her vision, she caught the glimpse of a hard eyed mare, a leaf green mane framing her sky blue coat. Cher struggled weakly, but Green had pinned her hooves down.

To her shock, she heard a wet cough, followed by a wet voice growling, “That cost me a lot of blood, ya mudhoof.”

A sea of red mane moved fuzzily into her vision. “I was going to play nice with you, but you just had to be feisty,” he continued. Behind him, a stallion with a grey coat and a mass of spiky blue mane snapped the pole arm in half, and carefully pulled the ends out of him. As her vision slowly cleared, she gasped at the sight of his wounds sealing shut. “Thank you for your ... donation, miss.”

Then his jaw leaned down, biting into her neck. Her vision turned red with pain.

”NOOOO!”

And then Cher heard no more.

---

I never had a choice. The mare I was then, and the mare I was now. I still can’t.

---

Fire. Blood. Hunger.

The urge to Feed dominated her thoughts, but her body was too weak. Nothing responded to her will. Her fluid-filled lungs gargled quietly, yet strangely, she never felt the urge to breathe. Then again, it probably wouldn’t matter soon, anyways.

A feeling of peace slowly crept through her brain as bits of her body started crumbling into dust, the hunger dying with it. In an hour or two, she wouldn’t have to feel anymore. She slowly closed her eyes ...

... then snapped them open when a plum purple earth pony mare barely burdened by heavy armor and weapons walked over to her, glancing down at her through cold, grape colored eyes.

“Lot of blood here,” she said quietly, her eyes slowly roving across the ruined room. “You have anything to do with it?”

A surge of familiar anger brought flames to her numb limbs. “Never!” Cher screamed. “I spent half of my life trying to bring those poor foals out of the darkness, I wouldn’t repay them like -- hrk!”

A cloud of red stained dust billowed out of her chapped mouth. Cher collapsed, spent. “H--help them. Please.”

The strange mare sat next to her, looking around blankly. After a moment of flicking her purple, stringy tail, she whispered, “How about I make you a counteroffer?” She turned and looked into Cher’s eyes. “Do you wish to avenge your fallen?”

---

I sighed as the communicator on the table started buzzing. I set the glass besides it, and clipped the communicator to my neck. I tapped a hidden button, dimming the blue glow. “Is it? ... Yeah, I’m ready. Give me a moment.”

I picked up a placard that was sitting on the bed, silently mouthing the name that would be set in front of the school-foals. I never lost the joy of teaching. Countess Lily de la Cher died that day, but in her place was born Cheerilee. I walked out of the apartment, past small piles of papers to grade. I had a week before Winter Break ended, plenty of time to finish preparing for the next semester.

I slid into the coat I hung near the doorway, and stepped outside.

---

A heart and a bundle of nerves floated in a blood-plasma bath. Besides it, the empty body of Lily Cher floated in its own tank, its chest a gaping hole. The plum coated mare, Berry Punch, Cher later learned, leaned against the tank with the heart. “You sure you want to go with this? This is still a prototype, to be honest a rush job. The body may heal, but the curse may object. I do not know if your mind will hold.”

---

I stood in the light, but freezing breeze. Flakes of snow floated gently around me. None of them melted upon contact with my coat; I didn’t produce any body heat unless I wanted to, and whatever dark sorcery that had reanimated me seems to not care for rigor mortis nor ruptured frozen cells, able to “heal” away those minor issues nearly instantaneously.

---

A unicorn stallion nervously squinted at the back of books through the flickering light of a dusty lamp. His ears flicked at the slightest whisper of wind.

He spun frantically, catching a mulberry mare wearing a black jacket step out of the shadows. “Save me,” he whimpered, a glint of a geas flashing in his eye. The lamp tumbles from his grip and shatters, setting the dead-eyed pony aflame.

“No!” Cheerilee shouted, darting forwards framed in a wave of blood.

---

“Miss Cheerilee?”

“Hmm?” The mare in question looked up from sorting out the graded assignments she was going to hand out at the beginning of class.

The filly pointed at the teacher’s cheek. “What’s with that black mark on your cheek?”

Cheerilee blinked, then rubbed at it. “Oh right, sorry. Mishap with some eyeshadow my friend bought. Forgot to wash it off, thanks for reminding me. I’ll be right back.” Smiling at the filly, careful not to show her teeth, she walked out and into a bathroom. With a bit of water, the charred blood disappeared into the drain.

---

“Hrrrk!” The guardspony coughed up blood as he slid off Cheerilee’s sudden blade. His blood mixed with the blade, becoming part of the blood formed weapon.

“AAHH!” A unicorn charged her, swinging a baton. Cheerilee raised the blade, and sliced it cleanly in half. Her blade retracted into her arm as Cheerilee turned and calmly stepped forward. The guard stared dumbly at his baton, then looked up at a flying hoof. It wrapped around the pony’s neck, connected to Cheerilee’s torso by ropes of blood.

“AHHHGGGH!” With a swing, his body smashed into the hallway around then. With a shake, Cheerilee dropped the broken neck onto the floor.

“Hmph.”

“Who’s been breaking into the meeting area?” A heavy set stallion strolled into view, teeth and fangs bared.

“Simply looking for my lost foals, I’m sure you can understand,” Cheerilee replied with a grin.

The stallion burst into Cheerilee’s face, punching her across the room. He squinted curiously as Cheerilee stood up, somehow reacting in time to pull off a imprecise block. She licked up some of the blood that dribbled from her mouth, eyes flashing red. “Don’t mistake me for a pushover, Red Bloods.” With a click from her hoof, blood rushed out and solidified into a blade.

The two vampires roared, and blurred into a destructive, red-tinted duel between monsters.

---

“I’m a dead mare walking anyways. If I must become a weapon to save them, then so be it.”

“You do realize this will take years, and it is unlikely many of them will have survived.”

---

A cloud front rolled in in front of me, throwing snow and blistering cold winds across its path. It vaguely resembled a horizontal tornado. It was soon followed by a thundering chug-chug-chug, rattling my bones as it rumbled pass. The chugs slowed briefly, bringing along a candle-like blur of speeding windows.

---

”Then I’ll never stop looking.

---

crrk-”Hop on, Red Wine. Welcome aboard.

I nodded, sprinting along and leaping into the whirling snow. A series of ports opened up along the bottom edge of my hoof. I channeled my blood through, forming claws that clung to the edge of a train carriage. With a flip, I dropped into the railing, and stepped inside.

Within a matter of seconds, the storm was gone, and the city was quiet again. A long valley dotted with the path of treads would be buried soon by the falling snow.

”This is Hydra Oh-Oh-Four. Leaving Trottingham at oh-fifteen. Weapons free in fifty.

I would have accepted a peaceful life eagerly, but they have angered this furious swarm of bees. They will soon come to fear the anger of those who have let go, and embraced the monsters we’ve become.

Shattered spirit, forged anew,
Body broken, cursed askew,
Magic tendrils chain my heart so cold...

Valkyrie to the new Red Gold
There’s no heartbeat under my skin,

Search my vampiric soul
For the drowning mare within.

Author's Note:

I lied.
Only the last half is 100% non-canon, the rest is partial canon.

Comments

[AppleTank]

7138538
1) Oh that. That wasn't actually the path the question was going down.
For the record, cutie marks in this universe works somewhat similarly to what was described in the video, but it also has a side effect of boosting that talent. Go from, say, likes building legos, gets really good at it, on top of a few engineering classes, plus mark, you get really bloody good at building shit, along with an intrinsic understanding (or better) of what you've learned/experienced. Sure, you can learn more, but you can learn that specific talent faster than anyone else would.
The question being asked is how cutie marks can supercharge that, though first off they want to figure out how Cycle "recycles" stuff in the first place, and Cycle doesn't actually know because it happens instinctively. Trying to think about it too hard actually breaks his concentration. Partly inspired by one evil overlord from the fic "Retired to Equestria," (said overlord never actually gets to test it. fic is awesome, but dead)

If I can remember this, it may get used somewhere.
2) Re:Bradley
Yup. Fun little note, that actually came later when I decided I should make a reference to FM:A partway through (the longer a fic gets, the more time I have to find excuses to reference shit. This fic is going to be really long, and therefore there's going to be a lot more of this shit)
The origin of his name was originally military hardware. I really suck at names, so I either rip something off or modify something.
Ex: Glados -> Gladas, WALL-E -> Wally, Focke-wulf -> Falcowolf, M18-Hellcat -> Hellcat, etc
Bradley was referencing the stealth bomber B2 Spirit/M2 Bradley (Bradley Spirit) And then, well, yeah. I'm not exactly sure which personality to lock down in the future yet, cause you know, Greed is totes-awesome.
3) Glad you're enjoying my personal romp into rule of cool and immortal-wank.