Unnatural Selection

by Karkadinn

Breathe

Breathe

Spike shivered in a puddle brown as his mood and even colder, cursing his only hiding spot for dozens of yards around for having a natural dip in the ground. The rain was thick enough to be a pain, but not thick enough to blind anypony who might be nearby, so he had to stay put in this tangle of bushes. It didn't even look or feel like rain, it looked and felt like gravel, with the gray sky and the gray water only broken up by the brown of sodden dirt. It was hard to keep telling himself that this was better than a soft bed, a hot bath, a roof over his head.

He had a little trick, though. Whenever he felt bad about it, he just remembered the taste of bacon.

Things would've been a lot easier if he hadn't lost the dumb map. Of course, when you're trying to build artificial straw dummy Spikes to trick ponies into going off the wrong fork in a crossroads with all of twenty seconds to do the job, you were bound to rush and forget some things. He knew he was pretty far from the Inn, but not far enough. Trouble was still hounding his heels, and he still heard the search ponies. At least it was only once every day or so, now.

Attacking a very important businesspony had not been the smartest move, as far as working on survival went. But some things, Spike was coming to realize, were more important than survival. Like self-respect and honesty. How would ponies ever change if no one ever told them what they were doing was wrong? Still, it was easy to think of a million things he should have done before running off. A compass, NORMAL food supplies, even a poncho or something for weather like this would've been great. Still, he was just one little – brilliant, handsome – dragon, he couldn't think of everything, now could he?

So he shivered in his puddle and waited for the rain to stop. Which it didn't. He started counting the seconds, then the minutes, then added it all together and it was about three and a half hours before he decided that this was no way for a dragon to behave, cover or no cover. Spike pulled himself out of his measly shelter and into the open air and rain, though his skin couldn't feel much of a difference because it'd been wet for so long.

Without any way to know where he was going, there wasn't much point in picking a direction other than making sure he wasn't going the way he'd already come. He kept his eyes out for the vague shapes of cottages or other buildings, but all he saw were trees as he walked. Not even any ponies, which made sense, since he was way away from the roads and intended to keep it like that. They didn't want him that badly... he hoped.

For most of the day, Spike's world was just gray and wet and the endless pattering racket of raindrops on turf. When he found a particularly thick line of trees, he went to it instinctively, only noticing after he was well in them that he'd walked right under a wooden plank fence. So it wasn't public ground, unless he'd just COME from private land, which he had no way of knowing. Argh. The things he would've done to've had that map back, and light and dryness to read it by. And that whole literacy thing probably would've helped tons too. He kept on going, feeling comforted by having all those thick wooden trunks around him when he couldn't see much else, and started to notice that the trees were spaced at very regular intervals, all lined up in rows. That was a very pony thing. Cultivated.

Trees ended after a bit, replaced very bluntly with the watery gray-blue shape of a building that, even in the blurry wetness of the weather, seemed to stretch out from the left side of his field of view all the way to the end of the right and taking over the skyline above. The broadness of the shape, the lack of towers or other irregularities, probably meant it was a business building for packaging or something mundane like that. There weren't any windows, at least, none he could see from this side, but the ground level had wide sliding doors lit up by horizontal lines of weak glass-shielded lanterns. The rain covered over any sounds there might have been, but he didn't see any signs of pony life on the outside.

Spike stopped behind a tree so that only half of him was getting rained on, and thought to himself hard. Facts were facts, he could use some supplies. They might even safe his skin later. And if he were going to be a naughty little dragon and steal stuff, the cover of rain worked for it pretty well. But doing that increased his chances of being caught right now, too. It was a tradeoff of whether he wanted to risk more now for safety later or the other way around.

The sound of the rain on his back spines really was driving him crazy. Heck with it, he might as well poke around and see what there was to see. If he had to run, he'd run, just like always, but there was no point in leaving opportunities around without at least peeking at them. He found a sliding door that was only just open enough for someone like him to sneak in, and crawled inside on his belly, immediately hiding behind a stack of somethingorother that it was too dark to see right as soon as he got in. Blessed, blessed dryness! The noise was still just as loud, though; from inside it was pretty obvious the place was mostly tin-roofed, so it actually was even louder inside, if possible, than outside. His eyes must've not liked the rain much, they were still watering and no amount of blinking would get rid of it.

Something to be thankful for, though, it meant he could make noise without being heard. If there was, in fact, anypony to hear him. He wasn't sure; the place looked deserted so far. As his eyes adjusted to the lantern lights, he got an idea of how big the place really was. He could look overhead and see crank elevators and pulley systems leading up to at least four more floors, maybe even more than that. The view from the ground level was cluttered up by walls and stacks of crates and other things he couldn't make out, but just glancing down a very wide hallways he could tell that they went on for ages, maybe even miles.

Spike took a deep breath through his mouth and nose to steel himself for exploration, and gagged so painfully hard he almost threw up just by choking on his own spit. The SMELL. How had he not noticed that right away?! No wonder his eyes were watering! The rain must've kept it down from the outside, but now that he was in, he was smelling the worst stench he'd ever smelled in his entire life. It was like rotten meat and an outhouse and a bunch of industrial chemicals all mixed together, impossibly strong. Trying to breathe again and gagging again, Spike gave up and ducked his head outside into the rain, panting, trying not to be scared of the sliding door falling down and crunching his poor head off.

Man, for a business place in a nice little scenic tree-y spot, that place reeked. What could they possibly be doing in there to make a place that big smell that bad? No way did he really wanna know the answer to that question, right?

Still, none of that changed why he was here. Provided he could stand walking around in there in the first place. What the heck, it was probably some kind of trash dump or manufacturing storage place that didn't get cleaned much, so he wasn't likely to bump into anypony. This was actually perfect. He wasn't gonna let a little thing like a bad smell get him down!

Spike pulled himself back in, tried to take a whiff through his nose, gagged again, punctuated that gag with an uncontrollable shudder and then started breathing through his mouth. It was almost bearable then. His eyes were still blurry though, and starting to sting a bit. It would probably get better once he got used to it.

As he took his first few tentative steps along the closest crate wall-defined hallway, he noticed his toe claws pinging against something metallic. Spike looked down and saw that the floor, which he'd thought to be solid, really was a series of several layers of massive grates. They extended down underground into darkness, giving him a feeling of walking on top of an infinite pit, and he shuddered again. He thought that part of the odor, an ammonia-y smell, might've been wafting up from there, but the smell was so thick and so ever-present that it was hard to be sure. Okay, Spike, don't look down, those grates are clearly strong enough to hold up hundreds of pounds of stuff, no problem.

Sidling along the crates, he could see markings. Even if he couldn't read, he could at least see the stamped symbol that went with the repeated letters – an outline of a half-eaten apple. He wondered if any of the trees outside were apple trees. Stopping to peek through the gaps in the crate planks, Spike saw that they were empty. Most people wouldn't have bothered to stack empty crates so neatly; they were uniform down to the last centimeter practically. Unless, of course, you had a LOT of crates to stack.

He moved on to a four-way crossroads in the crate hallway, with an iron bar extending from the floor and holding up a sign. There were arrows pointing forward, left and right, with some useless letters. The symbols were a lot more helpful – a deer outline on the part that pointed left, and a cow outline on the one to the right.

Apparently this was some kind of... butcher shop? It didn't bode well for his finding his way around that the place was huge enough to need signs to keep employees from getting lost. But that also meant there was lots of room to hide and run. He recalled what little he knew about butcheries, the hanging meat, the sausage makers, and steeled himself to be ready for it. Probably he should just be grateful that some ponies were 'civilized' enough to like their victims dressed up instead of just chowing down raw and unskinned.

Spike recalled a little trick about finding your way through mazes: pick a wall and follow it all the way around. Lacking any better ideas, he decided to go with the left 'wall' and headed towards the deer outline place. It wasn't long before he realized how easy it would be to totally lose track of distances in here, with the lantern lighting barely any better than nighttime moon and stars, so he began to keep track of how many stacks of crates he walked past, along with taking note of forks where he had to turn left. At about three hundred stacks, he started hearing noises besides rain on tin. A regular series of soft but countless thumps, followed by a much longer series of sounds – ripping, cracking, solid whacks, wet schlurping noises. Thumpthumpthumpthump, riptearcracklecrickwonkwonkschlurrr, thumthumthumpthump....

He slowed down, grimacing after looking around and finding no cracks or gaps in the crates to hide in. Still, he kept going, because where there were ponies, there were supplies. Maybe even an air freshener; the smell of this place was really getting to him.

Three hundred and twenty-two stacks, and he saw the source as the crates broadened out into the equivalent of a large room. At first, his eyes were drawn to the platform about fifteen above, a thin metal railing extending from who knew were. On that platform was the biggest, strongest looking stallion Spike had ever seen, and it didn't help that the fur that wasn't covered with a yellow (originally white, before the stains had set in) smock was blood red, either. He had a scary black rubber mask on that covered his eyes with dark lenses and his snout with some sort of broad tube that probably helped with breathing, and his wild orange mane was kept barely under control by an extra-big manenet. That pony was the source of the thumps as he hefted a crate larger than he was out of a stack of them and tilted it over the inadequate-looking railing with not so much as a grunt of effort. Spike's eyes followed the contents of the crate – bunches of furry, feathery, scaly shapes, definitely a pony's idea of 'wild game' – as they spilled down to a series of conveyer belts powered by a drab brown-tan pony on a large-wheeled bicycle, his own mask warping his little huffs into an eerie sound. Spike made a face, but this was about what he'd expected, so the shock was gone, and at least it was mostly things fawn-sized or smaller.

As the bodies fell down onto the conveyer belts, they were separated out in different directions, each belt leading to another smocked and masked earth pony at the end with his or her own table, sacks and other implements that Spike couldn't make out too well in the dimness he was so very grateful for having to hide in. At the tables, the ponies worked to separate bones, slice meat off, yank entrails, peel skin. There were no wasted bits; even the eyes and brains were separated into their own piles to be sweeped into already-bulging sacks. Only blood and waste were left to fall down into the grates. The ponies' hooves were coated with layer after layer of dry, crusty and fresh blood from what seemed like hours of doing this work, but none of them voiced complaints. In fact, they talked and joked with each other cheerfully, not caring how muffled and weird their voices sounded through the rubber masks, and through this, Spike learned that the 'boss' up above was Big Mac, and the conveyer belt pony, a fidgety little guy, was named Caramel. Spike even recognized Big Mac's voice from the cart he'd stolen a ride on. By their reckoning, it was a busy day for Ample Acres' Wild Game Processing, but 'no rest for the wicked' even in pegasus-ordained bad weather.

Hardy har har, you heartless jerks, Spike thought to himself. It was a good thing there wasn't anything from a talking species, at least not in this batch, or he would've had to've freaked out.

Then Spike saw something that changed how he felt.

Some of the animals were still alive.

He'd thought that those little random twitches had just been the randomness of a recently-dead body still not realizing it was dead. He knew some bodies could be like that, especially with animals like chickens. But then he saw the telltale heaving side of a baby deer breathing, saw the pulsating-with-panic throat of a gasping turtle, and knew the truth of it. Most of them had taken wounds too bad to live through, but not ]i]all of them. Some of them had just been hurt badly enough that they couldn't run or fight.

And, instead of taking the time to finish the job, the hunters had just thrown them into crates and transported them back for 'processing,' buried in dozens and dozens of fellow prey living and dead. The ponies at their tables didn't treat the living ones any different from the dead ones, they broke bones, split open bellies to yank out guts, slashed off skin just the same whether the critter was wiggling or not. Any pathetic dying squeaks or other sounds that the victims might have made was drowned out by the much louder sounds of rain on the roof, cracking bones and other noises of the butchering work.

Unbelievably, one of the critters with the worst damage managed to be the only one to struggle and flop off its table. An old badger that had been wizened to a gray grayer than the weather outside, missing all its teeth from age and both its front legs from a pony's bites, huffed and wheezed and snarled and just rolled right down to the floor. Its back legs struggling futilely to gain traction, but one of them got stuck in a grate and it was left flailing about with wild, pointless desperation. The ponies thought it was hilarious.

“Now where do you think yer goin', Wheezy McGee? Get back on that table, you rascal! Look at 'im, 'e thinks 'e can make it!”

“Eeeeeyup,” Big Mac commented with a deep chuckle.

Spike could have sworn that, for just a second, the badger SAW him. Looked at him with pleading, rummy, sunken eyes, eyes that wanted him to do something, mount a daring rescue, pull off an impossible escape plan. It was hard to tell if it was for real or just Spike's guilty conscience, though, because the badger soon turned to bare pink gums at an encroaching hoof and snap, as if the poor thing could have so much as broken a baby's skin with its mouth.

Then the critter was inevitably heaved back up to the table, and Spike hid his face in a hunk of splintery crate, moistening it with tears that leaked through eyes that felt like pits of fire by now.

No, Spike.

Don't turn away.

This could be you one day.

Look.

Look.

He didn't know where that voice came from inside him, but he obeyed, and he watched helplessly as the badger finished dying while he breathed in deliberately-paced breaths, the stench of the whole place taking over his lungs and mouth and nostrils. The critter lasted longer than he would have thought possible. Only when it was over and Big Mac started pouring out more critters did Spike let himself back away, fleeing the way he'd come in the first place. So this was how the ponies got their meat when they didn't want to hunt for it themselves. This was where Rarity's fancy meals started.

He felt so much better about 'honest' hunters like Rainbow Dash, the Appleloosans and those pegasi in the desert, now that he knew what the alternative was. It was one thing to be a murderer. It was another thing to just passively be a part of murder, to accept it as the normal way of things without ever having the guts to do the fighting and the killing yourself. His resolve at rejecting the Inn hardened into iron, into steel, into diamond, whatever was harder than those things. He would not lie to a pony and say that he didn't think what they were doing was monstrous. At least the ones who caught their own meals had the respect to put themselves at risk. It was just a pity the 'prey' didn't do a better job of fighting back.

An idea came to him.

If this place was a meat factory, and the section he'd just come from was for wild prey, the cow outline section was probably for tame prey. For slaves who had no reason to live except to die for the sake of pony bellies. Spike couldn't think of a better reason for a critter to be angry at life than that! Right now, he was the only one who was fighting, who was hostile. Because this was Equestria, land of the ponies. But what if he got a band of freedom fighters with him? Comrades in arms! The wild animals didn't understand cooperation like that, but tame ones had to, a lot of them were probably penned together anyway!

Yes.

Yes.

This could be the start of a revolution to shut down easy pony meat sources and get all the squeamish ones like Rarity (stop being so pretty in my memories, Spike thought, you have no RIGHT to still be pretty) to admit that what they were doing was terrible and had to stop. That was the way to deal with civilized ponies, if they said something was wrong and did it anyway, you just made it inconvenient to do the wrong thing! And from there... who knew what could happen? Maybe something magical. Something harmonious. But first, the prey really had to fight back.

The signs told him the way. The place he wanted was over a thousand crate stacks away, but he practically flew there, the idea burning in his brain as much as his eyes stung in their sockets, giving him a fresh boost of energy. The smell itself didn't bother him as much, he accepted the nastiness of it and kept on going, resolving to fight it till there was nothing like it in the world ever again. He wanted to smell flowers. Flowers, and oranges, and the smoky tang of a cedarwood fire that was cooking a vegetable stew. Spike was so excited by his new idea that he could practically make up the recipe for the stew on the spot. Tomato-based, of course, because tomato soups were satisfying on cold days, and then you had to have something green for contrast, maybe arugula. And a big spoon of sour cream on top with little dots of chives.

When he found them, it was a lot worse than he'd expected, but then, that was the trend, wasn't it? Because they weren't in pens with each other. The cows, the chickens, the canaries and sheep and geese and pigs, they were all in their own cages. Which wouldn't have been so bad, except that the cages were, down to the last inch, only just barely big enough for the animals to fit in! And stacked on top of each other, just like the crates, with no concern for hygiene or personal space, every animal right next to every other animal, the bars too tight for them to lash out at their neighbors – though some of them had bruised and bloody paws, wings and webbed feet from trying. When they had to go, they just... went, and it fell through the other cages, on top of unlucky animals who shook it down further till it reached the grates.

Like a nasty joke, the animals had their own masks just like the ponies, but these masks were different. Each animal was hooked up to a rubber half-shell lashed tight over their mouths with a crisscross of straps, with a pair of flexible tubes that fed small amounts of water and food at regular intervals. The animals had no choice but to swallow if they didn't want to suffocate, and there didn't seem to be any way for them to control how much they got or when they got it. The same masks kept any outcry the critters might have made to a strangled minimum, although they still banged against their cages. Only very rarely, most of them didn't seem to have the energy for it, but there were hundreds, maybe even thousands of animals, so there was always something banging against its bars somewhere. A minority of them were banging very, very regularly, in what Spike took several minutes to recognize at attempts to hurt themselves or maybe even kill themselves. The ones that weren't basically big balls of feather, fur or scale-coated fat with limbs halfheartedly attached were working up to being that way, and no wonder, since their lives consisted of eating, drinking, going to the bathroom and absolutely zilch else.

None of them tried to get out. There was no hope left in them. Just a sea of eyes in the dark, choking, whimpering, fattening up, waiting to die.

Every time Spike thought he'd seen the worst a pony was capable of, he came up on something new. His heart still wasn't done pounding from the badger, and now... now this.

This is the filth you're so scared to see, Rarity.

This is the ugliness that you try so hard to cover up with your spas and your lemonades and your suit-and-tie dinners.

Could she even stand to walk in here, Spike wondered? Could she see these things, breathe this air? Would she wrinkle her noise, totter, maybe even faint from it all? And do nothing, do absolutely nothing, other than make it get out of her sight so she didn't have to deal with it anymore.

Maybe he was still running, but it was with hope of change. Change that would start right flippin' now.

Spike picked a cage at random and began to scratch it open with quick little filings of his claws. Dragon claws were good for that. The steel was quality, so it wasn't exactly breaking instantly, but he could definitely get through it. He felt all those eyes focus on him.

“I'm gonna help you guys,” he said while he worked, mostly to keep himself calm, even though he knew it was a huge risk to make noise. “I'm gonna let you all go. That's what you want, right? Freedom. You can be free to pick your own meals and walk around and do all sorts of stuff. It's awesome. But you guys might have to help, I mean, there's a lot of you... I'm not sure if I can do it all at once, you know, maybe I should do it a little at a time. Sneak in and out. What do you think?”

He chuckled nervously. “Of course, you can't say anything right now. Stupid tubes. I'll get rid of them and make everything better, promise.”

There! Spike yanked open the cage and cradled the round hen in his arms, gently sliding the mask off of her beak. He winced on seeing that the mask had left her beak and the area around it pinkened and squished-looking.

“It's okay, it'll heal,” he said as much for him as the hen. “I know it's asking for a ton, but do you think you can walk?”

He set her on the floor, and she fell over.

“Eek! Are you okay? Yeah, you look fine. Just a dustup. No problem. No problem, you just need to rest a little bit, right?” He couldn't tell anything from her beady little dark eyes. “I'm going to set you up straight again, so just stick with me....” He set her up, and she wobbled, but stayed up this time. He sighed, and then choked on instinctively taking in a normal breath of air with all its filth. “Ack! Um, okay, you just... stay there, I guess, and I'll get the others while you prepare yourself for a way cool dashing escape!”

Man, he hoped the other chickens weren't that bad. Poor little chicken legs. The birds might have to ride on some of the other animals, but birds were lightweight, it'd be alright. His ears still picked up rain, too. The rain would wash all that gunk and ooze and grit away and they could get outside and breathe the fresh air and it would be fantastic. He was almost sobbing just thinking about it himself, and he'd spent less than a day in this flesh farm.

A baby cow was next. She licked him as soon as he got the mask off, her broad tongue half-blinding him. He giggled, probably the first happy sound from a non-pony this awful place had ever heard, and totally forgave her when she immediately fell on top of him as soon as she was out of the cage. Even though she was covered in messy liquid droppings from some animal that'd been sick, and they'd gotten onto him too. He checked over her legs while she was flopped there. They didn't seem to be hurt, but the combination of too much fatty food and no exercise had left them looking more like tumor blobs than legs. But the bones were okay, and the muscles, wherever they were in there, didn't seem to be torn.

“Okay, come on, let's go,” he said, worry over getting caught making him impatient. “I can maybe carry a chicken, but a cow is a total non-starter. You gotta pull your own weight here, Bessy.” He wasn't sure why he called the cow Bessy. It just seemed like a cow name.

She tried to stand up. Really gave it her all, straining with all four legs quivering, her entire body shaking. Then, with a massive wheezing gasp, she fell on her belly, legs spread out like the points of a compass, looking very apologetic.

Spike made a face, then reminded himself it wasn't her fault and gave her a hug. She rewarded him by lick-blinding his OTHER eye, just so, you know, the spit was all evenly distributed. He checked up on the chicken again, who had somehow rolled herself over upside down to the other side of the aisle, and he set her back upright. Hm. Maybe this section was for the animals who'd been here too long. He might get better results if he 'shopped around.'

So he jogged over to a section a little ways away – but not too far away, because the little cow started mooing when she couldn't see him. His next damsel in distress was a little baby gator, a lot less little than he should have been due to the force feeding. As soon as he got the mask off it, it BIT him with a toothless mouth, hanging on to his fingers for dear life.

“Seriously?” He glared at the fellow reptile in total exasperation. “I'm tempted to put you right back in there, pal.”

The gator blinked its purple eyes, one at a time, and did absolutely nothing else. Experimentally, Spike set it on the floor. Where it stayed. Blinking.

There were not enough cuss words in the world.

He moved on to another cow, several pigs, a sheep, a ram, a rooster, three more hen chickens, a green-headed duck, a pheasant. Every single time, the results were the same: they couldn't walk, and definitely not fly in the cases of critters with wings. Some of them tried to attack him pitifully, others were glad to be out, and some didn't react at all, but none of them could move in any meaningful kind of way.

“Come onnnn,” he begged, reduced to whining with his hands held out as if to yank on invisible strings to MAKE their legs move. “I know it's hard, guys, but I can't do everything for you! Don't you want to be free? Don't you wanna go outside?” They stared with their shiny eyes in silent confusion, and something occurred to him. “You... you do know what outside is, right?” They still stared, and he licked his lips. “It... it's a wonderful place where the sun is shining... that's a great big ball of fire in the sky, but it's not scary, it's warm and nice, and the sky is like that big empty space over your heads without a roof, and there's nuts and trees and grass....”

His magnificent plan was falling to pieces and there wasn't anything he could do about it.

“I'm tired of running, guys,” he confessed. “I wanna make a stand. I wanna make a difference. Can you guys help me? We can help each other, but before any of that happens, you need to walk first. Just one little step. Just to show me you can do it. Come on, right this way, outside is over here....”

The little alligator found the strength, somewhere in its hateful little body, to slither in an S shape over the floor, working its way slowly but steadily toward the cages. Spike ran over to it, made a grab, and missed.

“Dude, don't go that way! That's the wrong way, there's no telling how many ponies are over there! Come on, man! Be a bro!”

He watched the gator's tail vanish beneath the cages. Meanwhile, all the rest of his cows and chickens and other critters wiggled and wobbled and wheezed and did not budge so much as a single inch.

This was his fault.

How could he expect them to save themselves all of a sudden when they'd been jammed in cages unable to move their whole lives? They didn't know anything about anything, and he'd expected being able to sweep in and rescue them easy-peasy, no harder than opening the darn cages. The cages were the easy part.

He wasn't good enough to pull off his end of the bargain, this was a revolution smothered in the smell of dirty flesh and blood and pee before it'd ever gotten started.

“I'm sorry,” he apologized to them tearfully, taking particular care to face the first baby cow when he did so.

Hooves. He heard hooves. With the metal flooring, that sound carried very well, and he could even pinpoint the direction. They were coming this way, and there wasn't any time to do anything about it.

With a last silently mouthed 'I'm sorry' to his would-be rescuees, Spike ran for what seemed like the millionth time. Twenty crate stacks away he heard a female voice call out, accented thick like the little filly from the cart but deeper, more mature. And, of course, muffled by rubber.

“Confound it, how did y'all manage to wriggle on outta there? Well, I s'pose it don't matter none, Granny says it's about time for another veal shipment anywho....”

Spike ran off before he could hear the rest, already upset to have heard as much as he had. This had been a bad idea. He wasn't ready. He didn't know how to get anything done, how to help the other prey species. There was so much to do, so much to learn. But he wasn't beaten yet! No way.

The rain, he realized, had stopped. In a massive insult to his depressive mood, a giant warm bright slap in the face, when he got back outside he saw that it was no longer raining, not even enough to get the mess from the cow off of him. The sun shone in a clear blue sky, huge and warm and brilliant yellow-orange. He glared squinty hatred at it. This was a horrible day, and it deserved horrible weather. He demanded a thunderstorm. The air on his face felt painfully fresh, like the slight breeze was stripping him to the bone and eating up his lungs, but he wanted gusts, he wanted hurricanes, he wanted lightning.

So, he had come out of that ordeal with nothing but wasted time and a little more knowledge about how hard things were. Intel would fill him up instead of food, and determination would keep his legs going now that they were tired. He had never in his whole life appreciated the simple act of walking more than he did right at this moment. Walking and fresh air... so, so fresh, better than any meal, better than the spa, better than anything else ever after having been in that stinky underworld of a building.

On his way out, Spike found that the trees were, in fact, apple trees, and stole half a dozen good juicy ones with a faint, raging thrill of satisfaction. He timed his bites in-between even breaths of air, contemplated all the ways he'd like to shove ponies' faces right in the middle of their own muck, wishing he could take the sunshine and breeze he breathed in and transport it to those cages, to those sacks and crates.

Comments

[Drawdex]

Well, what shall I read this fine sunda-

'Unnatural Selection updated'...

REEEEEAD UPDATE!!!!!!!

[Flutterbrave]

But...GUMMY. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-
Ahem. I mean, superb. This continues to be delightfully horrific in every way. I can't wait to read more!

[Drawdex]

QUE VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN!!!!!!

I'm preparing myself for that moment.

[MasterSpike]

Oh dear God... please update soon! This is just starting to get good!

[Registered Anonymous]

Bravo! Another fine chapter author, I look forward to the next update whenever it comes out.

[UltiXevoz]

Gummy NOOOOOOO. No no NOOOOOOO. Damn you Ponies, damn you to hell

[EoSet]

This......my Lord This! I don't know whether to curse or praise you to be honest. In the one hand, it is so brilliantly written and delivered that I can't help but keep reading it, even whilest it twists a knife further in my guts from the sheer WRONGNESS of this world. From the mind set that all other life, besides pony life, is pointless except as a sourse of nourishment is......it's just so wrong. I should hate this, part of me wants to hate it, but I just can't! I am conflicted!
I am almost afraid of what you plan to do with Fluttershy! In reality she would be the best canidate as a supporter for Spike, but......I just don't know any more.

[Karkadinn]

1529984

Good news - you won't have to wait too long, Fluttershy is next up. ;) (Not much of a spoiler, really, it's the obvious and natural progression, I think.) I try not to play favorites, but she IS one of my favorites, so I'm trying very hard to get her just right. Hopefully I'll be able to do her justice without her taking over the story.

[FashionablyHospitable]

Ok. No more Mr. Nice Spike. We have to go hardcore.

And now this is the only emoticon I am willing to use.

[Dragonskyt]

Honestly I am kind of afraid to see Fluttershy's part. I know she'll come up eventually and either she'll be one of his biggest supporters or one of his worst enemies.