Midnight Rail

by daOtterGuy

Call of the Wild III

They were surrounded on all sides. Red Coats dropped in from every direction. Swords swung amongst their ranks as bullets fired blindly into the melee, the Red Coats uncaring if one of their own might be hit. Progress had been made, but had slowed down to a near halt. Scootaloo cursed their stalled advance, as she knew they were only a quick sprint to Toy Mountain.

The cyborgs were persistent, blessed with unending stamina and a dogged determination to see them all dead. The group was keeping up, but Scootaloo knew from experience that they would eventually tire themselves out, fighting endlessly against a horde that would never thin until they could fight no more.

Bradbury sliced through the neck of a Red Coat that attempted to go for Scootaloo. Its oil splattered across both of them. Before it could recover, she stabbed it through the mechanical heart in its chest, cutting through both flesh and machine.

“Remember to cut the head and the heart!” Scootaloo shouted. “That’s the only way to take them down!”

Nearby, Shelley parried a thrust from one of the Red Coats. It stumbled forward. She took advantage of the opportunity and stabbed it through the heart with her sword.

Schluck. She pulled out the sword then quickly decapitated the Red Coat.

Another took its place, slicing down on Shelley’s head. She blocked the blow with the flat of her blade.

“Such a gory mess!” Shelley exclaimed. She shoved the Red Coat off of her, then stabbed it through the chest in one swift motion. “I cannot even imagine how long it will take me to scrub the oil out of these clothes.”

Wilde dropped another Red Coat nearby, then turned to Shelley with a smirk. “As a seamstress, I would have expected you to know that baking soda would handily deal with those stains.”

“Oh, of course, what kind of fashionista would I be if I didn’t?” Shelley tossed her hair back over one shoulder. “However, I don’t believe—”

“Are you about done with your incessant chattering ladies?!” Salinger groused as he smashed a Red Coat’s head into a brick wall, shattering the stone underneath. “If you aren’t dealing with the Red Coats, then get moving!”

“Wanker,” Shelley and Wilde retorted in unison.

“You’re both horrendous!” Salinger shouted.

He swung his hammer in an arc at the encroaching cyborgs, smashing through several of them at once. Wilde and Shelley cackled in the background.

Several more Red Coats leaped off the roof. They met the business end of Poe’s iron pipe. He smashed through their skulls as Grahame crushed their chests with her shield.

“Come and get your bashin’s in, losers!” Poe cried out.

He cackled maniacally as he swung his weapon in an arc through several more of the Red Coats’ heads.

“We need to focus on moving forward before we become overwhelmed,” Grahame remarked.

“Says you!” Poe retorted. “I could bash in these pigs’ heads forever!”

“I highly doubt that,” Grahame said.

“Don’t question my talents!” Poe shouted back.

“There’s no end to them!” Hinton shouted over the din. She shot another Red Coat twice in quick succession with her pistol. “Golding, we need a way out!”

Golding sliced off the nearest Red Coat with his whips before he addressed Scootaloo. “Is there a way forward that can get us out of this mess?”

Scootaloo scanned her surroundings and noticed a stairway leading up to the rooftops. It was an option, but meant risking the smog. However, with how many Red Coats there were, she didn’t think they really had a choice.

“We can take those stairs to the roofs.” She pointed toward the indicated escape route. “Then it’s a straight sprint to Toy Mountain, but it's 50/50 whether we pass out to the smog or not.”

Golding seemed to weigh over the options before he shouted, “everyone cover your mouths with whatever you can get your hands on! We’re making a straight dash along the rooftops. Perault, Andersen, Grahame!” He pointed toward the Red Coats blocking their escape route. “Make us an exit!”

Grahame, Andersen, and Perault quickly tore off parts of their shirts and covered their mouths. Once secured, they charged through the Red Coats, bowling over them with their weapons pins on a bowling lane.

The crew did what they could to cover their mouths, and hurried up the newly liberated stairs. Scootaloo tightened the cloth strip from her shirt around her mouth as she followed after them. She knew this wouldn't be fun.

The smog was sudden. The air was clear, then it was clogged by black sludge that tried to force its way through the cloth covering and into her mouth.

She raced forward, ignoring the smog that weighed her down, trying to drag her to the floor and envelop her. It wasn’t alive, but it felt like it was in that moment as it actively tried to end her.

It was a straight shot to Toy Mountain, thankfully, as she could barely see in front of her through the thick smoke. She’d catch the occasional glimpse of fabric from one of her colleagues, but only barely. Otherwise it was just her and Dodge Junction smoke.

Her throat burned, having inhaled some of it despite the mask. She felt heavy, and exhausted, pulled down by dense poisonous air. Her body ached, screaming for rest, but she pushed on.

It burned. It ached. It hurt. The smog wanted her dead, but she wouldn’t stop. Just a little more, just one more push …!

Then she was falling.

The world opened before her. High above ground with the wind whipping past her face. She saw the rest of the Midnight Rail in varying degrees of panic, but Scootaloo didn’t need to look down to know they were about to land on a mountain of plush toys, as planned.

Thwomp. They impacted onto a cushioned landing pad. Groans emanated from the piles as Scootaloo happily laid among the refuse, breathing heavily as she grinned ear-to-ear.

“Never again,” Salinger moaned.

“Again! Again!” Bradbury shouted. Scootaloo could just barely see Bradbury’s hands going up in excitement from the corner of her vision within the plush pile.

“I don’t think that would be—” Golding started, then continued in a panic, “Wait, are those—?!”

Red Coats leaped off the ledge they had just jumped from. Scootaloo could feel the panic from her companions as they struggled to disentangle themselves from the discarded toys.

Scootaloo just laid back, utterly unfazed by this turn of events. She raised her hand in a finger gun motion and pointed her index finger at the closest Red Coat.

“Bang,” she said.

A massive plush, felt arm smashed into the group of Red Coats. They shattered against the wall, a slew of machine parts and flesh splattering them from above. Red cotton spilled from tears along the arm, looking like red snow.

She brought herself into a seating position and followed the arm to its source.

Joy to the Children was a stitched together monstrosity of felt and cotton. It had the rough shape of an enormous teddy bear that towered over them, but was a mess of torn plaid patterned fabric. The muddled colours of its stained cloth body were stitched haphazardly together, with cotton spilling out. Its head in particular was the worst off, an exploded puff of cotton held barely together by a bow tie, with but a single crimson red button eye remaining of its facial features.

From within its depths, Scootaloo could see its Minions, the Toy Refuse, skittering inside and peering out with glossy bright-coloured eyes. She watched as toy arms began to harvest the parts of the decimated Red Coats for purposes Scootaloo had never found out.

“Thanks, Joy!” Scootaloo waved.

The Deviant screeched in return, a loud, conglomerate sound of gnashing and chittering from the Toy Refuse and Joy itself.

Scootaloo waited to see if more Red Coats would appear. When none showed up, she stood up and dusted off the fluff stuck to her clothes. She watched the rest of the team get back, wearily eyeing Joy with one notable exception.

“Is that giant teddy bear?!” Bradbury shouted.

“It’s the Deviant Joy to the Children. Level 3.” Scootaloo stretched, feeling perfectly at ease in the presence of the Deviant. “One of the nice ones… if you’re a kid.”

“Can I hug it?!” Bradbury exclaimed.

Joy turned its butchered head toward Bradbury. Angry chattering reverberated from it that slowly increased in volume before it suddenly stopped. Bradbury and the others shirked back.

“Sure, ya can… if you want it to hug ya back,” Scootaloo replied.

“...No thanks. I’m good,” Bradbury said, a slight quiver to her voice.

“Good choice,” Scootaloo said. “Anyways, we should get goin’ before Joy decides it don’t like your faces.”

“Agreed,” Golding said. “Which way do we need to go?”

Scootaloo walked to the edge of the mountain and toward the roofs of the factories below. She could see the HasGal factory, which would be the most probable place Pip would be waiting, but she knew it was going to be a long frustrating climb down with all the fluff. Well, unless they could fly, but she had no idea how many flight capable Pegasi were in the group, and she certainly wasn’t one of them with her underdeveloped wings.

“Any of you fly?” Scootaloo asked.

“... Technically, yes,” Golding replied.

“Yes, but it's not something I normally do,” Grahame added. “Keep them tied under the jumpsuit normally, so they aren’t in flight-shape.”

“Sure, but I ain’t helping any of you down.” Poe spit to one side.

“I could at one point in time,” Andersen said.

Everyone besides Hinton and Golding looked at Andersen in surprise. He just smiled the same way he always did.

“You could—” Shelley started.

“Why do you ask, London?” Andersen interrupted.

“Since then we could just glide down to the roof of the right factory, but since we don’t have the people for it, y’all should get ready for a long climb down.” She sat down on the edge, feeling around with her foot for the first ledge down. “Though if you wanna fly down, go ahead. Just watch out for the smog.”

She grinned as she found her first ledge. She started to climb down, uncaring if the others followed her down.

In the background, she heard Joy’s jubilant cries.