Linkin Pony - Recharge: Revamped

by Kaciekk

Chapter 5

Bright blue swarmed all around CharmingRhythm. His heart was pounding much the same as his hooves against the cold ground. The cavern was alive with crossfire from his teammates and from Hybrids. The Hybrids had been in the cavern attempting to steal the energy inside. Rhythm’s team just happened to stumble upon them. A Hybrid ran into Rhythm’s path. He lifted up his right leg, but nothing happened. Where’s my EPD? He had no time to think, so he just swirled around.

Rhythm’s brain worked hard. Something wasn’t right. Why did this feel familiar? Why did everything feel off? He looked around for his teammates but could not pinpoint where they were, despite being able to hear their voices yelling. He was distracted, not concentrating on where he was running. The ground sloped downward as Rhythm attempted to slow his descent with scrambling blue hooves. Bright cyan exploded his vision. Everything was hazy, his head spinning as he tried to find which direction was up. Suddenly the vision of blinding blue turned into red. So much red, with the smell of blood.

CharmingRhythm awoke with a start. His heart was hammering and his body shaking. It had been two days since team Xero moved into their new base. Rhythm had slept soundly the first night, but the second night he awoke from a horrible nightmare. He lay still in his bed for a few minutes, waiting for his heartbeat to slow down. He picked up his forelegs. They were just as he had known them for the past couple years; normal and prosthetic.

Rhythm sat up, trying to shake off his nightmare. This was not the first time he had the nightmare, or similar dreams. He remembered a time when he used to get them almost weekly. Now it had been a few months since the last dream. Returning to this place must have resurged memories deep inside Rhythm’s brain. He hoped that the dreams would not become a regular occurrence again.

Stepping into the hallway, Rhythm felt out of place. He turned to the right and headed into the main room. There BlazingFlair and SpinningNote were talking. Blazing’s green eyes caught Rhythm as he came forward.

“Good morning!” Blazing acknowledged. He studied Rhythm for a moment. “You alright?”

“Yeah, just… didn’t sleep too well. Guess it’s anxiety,” Rhythm lied a bit and tried to change the topic. “Whatcha guys talking about?”

“Why isn’t there a computer? We need a computer!” SpinningNote turned to Rhythm. “Do you think we can get one?”

“I don’t feel like traveling back to Headquarters just yet, it’s too soon. But maybe there’s an old computer somewhere in the village you can try to restore,” Rhythm suggested.

“Hmm, sounds promising! Let’s go explore,” Spinning said and headed for the door.

“Shouldn’t we include the others?” Blazing wondered. “We could wake them up.”

“Sure,” Rhythm shrugged.

Once all of the stallions were awake, they set off to explore the small village. The paint on the buildings was peeling. Many of the windows had broken glass. The team members popped in and out of the old homes to find anything interesting. Rhythm entered a house near the base building. The furniture was damaged and decaying. There were old picture frames cracked and books scattered across the floor with ripped out pages. Heartfelt wouldn’t like this, Rhythm thought of his wife who had a love of reading. The thought of her stabbed his heart again, but he continued to distract himself by exploring.

Outside the home there were some old generators. Rhythm wondered if Spinning could spruce them up. Looking up, Rhythm saw lamp posts with broken bulbs. Studying the old village, an odd feeling filled him. Ponies used to live here, but it was a ghost town now. He knew many towns and villages were like this now, but he couldn’t shake the feeling. Did Hybrids force the old residents out of their homes, or was there another reason?

EchoBeat was looking up with awe at a wall where ivy grew. It wrapped almost all the way around the house he stood by. “It’s really pretty,” the red Earth Pony commented.

“We’re going to have to cut it down, Echo,” Rhythm reminded him. “But don’t worry; we’ll grow plenty of more plants in more useful spots.” He patted his friend on the back with a hoof.

Out of nowhere there was a loud “Eek!” from a few houses down. HyperBlitz was just a blur of yellow as he shot out of the doorway. “Spiders! So many spiders! Kill them!”

“No!” Echo protested. “Don’t kill them. Spiders are very useful for the ecosystem. They eat other bugs and pests.”

“Well, then put them somewhere else! Not inside of a house!” Hyper snapped.

“Spiders are useful for homes too…” Echo muttered softly but Hyper did not reply.

The three of them continue to walk down the pathway. In the middle of the village was a small center where ancient rusted benches sat. A sculpture of two Alicorns stood in the middle of a stone fountain where murky water collected at the bottom. Just then they heard a door open and turned to see Blazing close it. His eyes were wide, and strange squeaking came from the other side of the door.

“Uh, there’s a family of racoons in there. Mama wasn't very happy when I disturbed her babies,” Blazing told them.

Rhythm laughed a little, and then noted calmly “We’ll have to relocate them.”

With a quick fluttering of wings, FeatherTune landed on top of one of the roofs. “I found this old Equestria flag,” He said as he threw down the cloth. It floated down gently and hit the earth. While it was faded and tattered, the image of Celestia and Luna was still visible. Rhythm did not think it would be very useful, but he lifted it up with his magic and folded it anyway.

SpinningNote poked his head out of a door at the end of the row. “Hey guys, I found a computer!”

Rhythm and Hyper galloped over the building and peered inside. The computer he referred to was extremely dusty, with wires swirling around it. The monitor had a slight dent in it. Rhythm wondered if it would still work, but knowing Spinning, he could fix almost anything. The purple Unicorn gathered it together in his periwinkle magic and brought it outside.

While they walked back to the other end of the row, there was a frightened shout. EchoBeat raced out of a small apparent and stopped in shock. He pushed his brown and maroon mane out of his eyes as he tried to recompose himself.

“What’s wrong?” Hyper bounded to his side.

“Th- there’s a skeleton!”

Placing the computer down, SpinningNote checked inside of the building Echo was just in. “Yep, that’s a skeleton! Looks like a Pegasus.” He exited and looked at Echo. “Yeah, it’s definitely going to come back to life and start chasing you.”

Echo shot him a peeved glance as Hyper said, “Hey, he has every right to be freaked out.” Echo gave Hyper a grateful expression.

Blazing trotted up behind him. “I found a Hybrid skeleton too.”

“A Hybrid?” Rhythm mused aloud.

“Yeah, it had Hybrid armor around it and a bionic leg. Wonder what it’s doing here,” Blazing said.

“Perhaps ponies killed it when it tried attacking the village,” Hyper guessed.

“It’s a lot of stuff we’re going to have to clear out,” Rhythm came to a conclusion. Just as Echo’s face turned dreadful, Rhythm addressed to him, “You don’t have to clear out anything dead. If you want to deal with any of the animals, bugs or plants, you can.” He pivoted to Blazing and Spinning. “Can you two clear out any skeletons?”

Spinning responded “Sure,” while Blazing mumbled “I guess,” in a somewhat annoyed tone.

“What about me?” FeatherTune asked from one of the roofs.

“You can help Spinning gather any tech he wants to bring back to the base,” Rhythm assigned.

“We can all take turns clearing out any plants or wildlife. I don’t want Echo to have his hooves full there.” Rhythm twisted his vision to Hyper. “How ‘bout you and I look through the furniture. We can see what we can salvage and what we can scrap.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” HyperBlitz nodded.

At the end of the day, all of the stallions were exhausted from clearing out the village. There was still much more work to be done, but CharmingRhythm was satisfied with how much his team had completed that day. They called it quits and headed back to the base building to wind down.

Once in his room, a fear crawled into Rhythm. He wondered if his sleep would be disturbed yet again by a horrible nightmare. He tried to shake the feeling off and curled in bed. Luckily he found sleeping that night easy after the hard day of work. There would be no dreaming tonight.