Half-Hoof

by Alfoals Trottenbauer

IV - Pit

Ace crawled for a seemingly endless time, finally meeting an end to the duct. He jumped out, landing on a concrete floor. A loud, alien moaning boomed through the walls. He trotted down a hall into a room behind a broken glass screen. It seemed a rocket silo. A science team pony stood towards the back of the room. Suddenly a giant green spiked tentacle broke through a window, stabbing into the mare's torso, dragging her into the silo. She clawed at the ground, trying to get away.

"Help!! Please!!" She screamed at the top of her lungs. She was pulled out of the room. Ace jumped out the window after her, stumbling into the hole in which the tentacles protruded. He yelled as he fell into it. He rolled down several bends in the tunnel, the tentacles thrashing about. He landed into water, the monster the tentacles were from looked him in the eyes. Ace jumped out of the water, trying to get away. He came across a revolver. He picked it up, dropping the rifle. He fired into the giant eye of the monster. The recoil made Ace almost hit his snout on it. The monster screamed in pain as the muzzle flash lit the room, the sound of .357 caliber bullets firing echoed.

Ace stowed the revolver and picked up the assault rifle. He jumped into the water, swimming past the now blind monster. He started losing his breath, sucking in water as he started to drown. He finally surfaced, gasping for air while at the same time rejecting water from his lungs. It occurred to him that he hadn't said anything since he came to work.

"Why is everything trying to kill me!" He shouted to nopony.

What he was really asking was why were they trying to kill him, instead of succeeding. He dived back down into the water, looking for a way out. He looked up, seeing a clearing where the wall in the room stopped, leading to an opening. He swam up there, gasping for air yet again.
He got out of the water, finding he was in what seemed a radioactive waste processing plant. He looked over the concrete platform he was on. A literal river of toxic waste was flowing, yellow barrels with universal signs on them drifted by. To his right was a tall ladder. Without thinking, he trotted over to the ladder and started climbing. As he went higher, the river of waste came to a glowing green waterfall. The Geiger counter in his suit went wild. He finally got to the top of the ladder. A pipe dangled just next to the catwalk Ace was on. There was no way but up, so he jumped on top of the pipe. He cantered along the pipe carefully. He made sure not to slip, or he may have just become another horror in this world.

Eventually the ceiling came to a decline to where Ace was crawling across the pipe. A hole in the rusted pipe was just big enough for him to fit. Without hesitation, he jumped in. The pipe was large enough in diameter that he could trot through. He rounded a turn and was a little ways away from the end when the segment he was on started creaking. Screeching metal started collapsing, it came crashing through the ceiling of another room. The segment dumped Ace over a table, breaking it. He got up so as not to have the pipe, suspended only by the already broken ceiling, fall on him. He rounded a corner to hear assault rifle fire. He quickly readied his rifle.