Chapter 1 - Den of Hounds

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No one likes bringing me on scavenging missions. But when there’s no other choice and my card gets pulled, I get placed on door duty. The purpose of the position is to guard the team from the dangers of the wasteland, like they need any help with that. Our missions are either a slaughterhouse where no pony survives and we get supplies by the pound, or there’s nothing in our way and we get to paw through abandoned buildings in peace. Of course when there’s nobody living there, we don’t have to fight anything, but there’s also usually less stuff. There’s no reason to have a door guard, especially today. Yet here I am. I’m fairly certain that they made the position just for me. On active days, they don’t want me with the rest of the team because I hardly kill anything. It’s not impossible and it’s not like I haven’t done it, but damn if it isn’t hard. And when it’s quiet, I just get in the way. My idea of supplies isn’t quite the same as everyone else’s, I suppose. Finally, if some pony actually does come through the door, they get to laugh at me if I can’t kill them.

A good hour had passed since I’d last seen the others and boredom was starting to set in. I’d already gotten quite familiar with the layout of the room, the location of all the chest high walls, and the back of my hand. It was a rectangular room with an unnecessarily grand staircase that split apart at the first landing and rejoined once it reached the second floor. On the back wall, there were three doors. Two were placed on either end of the wall and the third directly underneath the staircase, just slightly out of view. The doors on each end went to the eastern and western wings (Or perhaps they were the northern and southern wings. I wasn’t really keeping track). The central door was locked and the team hadn’t returned to investigate it yet. Aside from those three, and a hallway at the top of the stairs, there were no other doors to be concerned about except the one I was guarding which was placed directly opposite to the staircase.

The floor had accumulated a thin layer of water from the rain pouring in through what remained of the roof two floors above. It dribbled onto the black marble surface under my feet. Every step I took created a ripple across its surface that lasted for a few seconds before settling back to a mirror sheen. The room appeared as a double of itself, just upside down. Every detail on my side transferred perfectly into the puddle, all the way down to the ornate yet unlit chandelier.

To pass the time, I pulled out my pistol and looked it over. This model was specifically intended to disintegrate. Many years ago, many more years than I knew, a scavenging team had found an energy weapons cache in what remained of the laboratories near our home. This had been from that collection. Like all of the interesting tech in the wasteland, it was pre-war and surprising that it simply existed at all, regardless of its state. That was not good enough, however. Just existing won’t kill something. While they were originally found in near-perfect condition, years of abuse had taken their toll on these weapons and the focusing crystals had gotten dull and sustained some serious burnout. In order to counteract this, I created a power compensation modification. It detected when power output was low and applied more power until it met the original specifications. This of course meant more power usage. Depending on how damaged the crystal had become, a ten shot canister might only fire five shots before it became depleted.

A full power blast would completely disintegrate a pony with a single mid-body shot. A lightly burned, fogged, or cracked gem would result in a pinhole burn straight through a body, but there would not be enough power to start a chain reaction. More and more damage to the crystal would cause less and less damage to your target. Those pinholes would become burns and eventually nothing at all. The worst crystal I’d ever seen would be lucky to blind anything if you pulled the trigger with it jammed into their eye socket. Given that information, it makes sense that Hunt Leader Rex would want to have every weapon in the arsenal modified with one of my power compensation units, no? Here’s where the problems occur… Once the unit is installed, one must keep their weapon clean. If dust is allowed to build up on the surface of the gem, and the static charge that builds up after each shot is quite good at attracting dust, the compensation unit will apply more power in an attempt to maintain maximum output. Normal accumulation is fine, but if it gets to be too much, POOF! The power compensation unit applies too much energy and fries the gemstone. If it takes a tumble in the mud and the trigger is pulled, get ready for a bang and shards of crystal to be embedded in just about anything nearby. That’s not a concern with an unmodified gun.

The pistol I held in front of me was in terrible condition and I hadn’t even pulled the trigger once in the past two weeks. You would think that the weapons maintenance guy would take care of his own weapon… But there just isn’t time in the day for that. I mean, look at me. It’s not like I’d be firing it any time soon, right? On top of all the other repair work I had lined up, I had just spent the last two days fixing Hunt Leader Rex’s gun.

When he had brought it to me, he said that he’d gotten into a fight just as he was sitting down to clean it. And then got stuck in a dust storm. Then got it crushed by three Mega-Ponies.

Right.

But I wasn’t about to question Rex’s tall tale. He’s slashed necks for much less than critiquing his stories. Whatever had happened, his pistol needed a new trigger, a new crystal, and for the focusing gem to be replaced which of course comes with a focusing arm realignment as well. Being the general’s prized gun, I spent the entire night popping out dents, buffing, and oiling it just to be sure my head would stay firmly attached for the foreseeable future.

The atmosphere in the room suddenly changed. No longer was my gun the most distracting thing in the room. Something was nearby. The room had been creaking continuously since we arrived. The building shifted slightly with each gust of wind and dribbles of water creeped down the walls and formed that thin reflective sheet on top of the marble floor.

There was a constant creaking noise produced by the wood paneling in the building. It is a noise one gets familiar with in the wasteland. The sound of moving water was also a familiar sound during a rainstorm. Water always seems to find holes in the ceiling and the floor above. It fell noisily into the pool below. Clunk! Slam! Crash!

...Huh?

The wind must have taken hold of the front door and slammed it against the door jam. I did see it shift a bit, but not enough for anything substantial to pass through it. A light tinkling noise came from above my head. This was not a normal wasteland sound. The chandelier hanging smack dab in the middle of the room fell on my back, knocking me off balance.

Attempting to regain my footing, I was greeted with a harsh sensation that spread across my back. It was the somewhat familiar feeling of a barrage of bullets embedding themselves in my hide. I had dropped my pistol during the impact. I took the time to pick it up and briefly inspect it to ensure that it was indeed fit for battle in such a case that I were to need it. I then placed it back into my holster.

The door that I had been fronting, the one in front of me, the front door, had simply been a front. It had not opened, despite the sounds it had made earlier. I now suspected that it had been intentionally manipulated as a distraction. This manipulator had worked its way behind me. How it got there was a mystery as the scavenging teams were usually quite thorough. Turning towards the source of the high speed projectiles, the itchy lead-filled sensation moved to my left foreleg and I was able to spot what was causing such inconvenience.

Ripples led from the center door beneath the staircase, around the side of the handrail, and up to the foot of the stairs. Wet hoofsteps trailed their way up the stepped surface until they met with the source of the problem. It happened to be a submachine gun, glowing pink, floating next to an armored pony. This pony probably shared the same color as the aura they were using to hold up their weapon of choice. The armor and the grime made it too hard to tell for sure, though.

The machine gun was the immediate issue. After I had dealt with that, the pony could prove to be just as difficult of a task. What would this pony do to cause me trouble? Scream? Cry? Swear? All three? Would it be fast or would there be an intense struggle? And the blood! There was no getting around that. Relieving the blood from a being capable of civil conversation (well… normally capable) was always a bit too much for me. But I could only take so many bullets before it became a serious problem. The rapid discharge of bullets stopped for a moment and I knew that I’d have to make a move sooner rather than later. Instead of attacking, for some stupid reason I yelled out.

“STOP!”

The pony seemed quite startled and stopped backing up the stairs. They had hardly noticed that their weapon was no longer ejecting supersonic death. However, they regained their composure and ejected the magazine from their weapon and placed it into their saddlebags. As they pulled out a new canister I decided to take a slightly more drastic action. I pulled back, readying myself for a jump, paused, then leaped onto the stairs plunging one of my claws right through its thighs and into the stone stair beneath. The gun and the magazine, not quite yet connected to each other, dropped down the stairs into the puddle below. The terrified pony, now skewered-in-place, turned its gaze from the weapon that no longer floated next to it to the massive creature that had bested it in hoof to claw combat.

“I told you to stop.” I said in a much quieter voice than before, but still quite loud for the tiny horse attached to my claw. Their green eyes stared back into mine. Damn it. Now killing it is going to be so. Much. Harder.

“I. I didn’t… You can speak?”

“Yes. You clearly don’t know your history. We’ve been able to speak since before ponies like you put us to work during the war.”

“And yoo dooon’t streetch yoor wurds or sound, um, stupid.” The pony spewed trying to imitate one of the other pack members, and failing quite hilariously, I might add.

“Ha. Ha ha. Ah hah haha! Stupid? I’d say you’re stupid for thinking you could sneak around me. Up the stairs, in the opposite direction of the exit! And again for trying to shoot me at such close range. Also, we don’t sound like that.” From behind me, a light clattering noise arose. Knowing exactly what was going on, I let the pony speak.

“I... But. Why are you talking to me? You’re a… a hellhound!”

I let out a low snarl. “Diamond Dog, thank you very much.”

“Oh, please don’t kill me. Please. Celestia. Luna. If you can hear me...” The pony whimpered to itself.

“Luna? She isn’t here.” In only a moment, the pony had reloaded, started firing and had its horn cut clean off by my free claw. The gun plummeted down the stairs once again. This time a pointy spiral bone joined it in the puddle. Slicing the pony’s horn was a gut reaction that I had regretted taking, but it had let me delay the kill for at least a little while.

“FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.” The pony screeched as they collapsed into a pile on the floor. I forgot about the screeching. Swearing and screeching. This was not a creature who prided themselves in battle, but instead participated only through the necessity for survival. It was not noble to die for them, it was terrifying. It was something I could relate to, but with the addition of the fear that the pack might turn against their nearly useless member when they screwed something up one too many times. And killing a something that had become a someone was… Ugh.

“Oh, get over it. Other ponies get along just fine without horns, not that you’ll be alive long enough even try.” That wasn’t the right response. I suppose it would be like if I were to be declawed. Removing something that makes up a large part of who you are, something you use for everyday tasks and survival, is sure to cause a substantial amount of distress.

“Fuck this job. Why the FUCK did they send me here? I wasn’t FUCKING READY. Easy, MY ASS!! This isn’t worth all the FUCKING caps in the FUCKING world!”

“Please, that’s plenty of profanity for your particular predicament. Probably.” Oooh. Nice alliteration. I didn’t expect it to be quite that pleasant.

“Oh, fuck off and just kill me.” I knew very well at this point that that wasn’t a realistic outcome. We weren’t short on food at the moment, so letting the pony escape wasn’t a big deal. But I’d have to have something to show for the battle or I wouldn’t hear the end of it until my next failed door duty. At that moment, I noticed that the pony’s bags were oddly shaped. Normally, those bags are bulging at the seams with crap, but these had hard edges. Some sort of box. Large boxes aren’t the kind of thing you waste space on unless it’s important. I slipped a free claw underneath the strap and sliced it. The bags fell off onto the stairs and flung themselves open revealing some thin, square boxes with neat pony scribble labeling each one as well as a bottle of… chariot wax? As they tumbled down towards the marble floor, attempting to make friends with the submachine gun and the severed horn, one popped open and ejected a metal reel. As it rolled down the stairs and across the room, it left a brown trail of ribbon behind it.

“NOOO!” The pony yelled. It began to struggle, opening their wound, and blood started to trail down the steps.

“You need to leave. Because of the racket you are making, the rest of the pack will surely be back soon and they won’t just let you prance on out of here.” I was really hoping this pony was in the mood to take me up on the offer. What I had said wasn’t really the truth, but the pony certainly didn’t need to know that. If the others came back and found me with a mostly dead and bleeding out pony stuck to my claw, they would almost certainly make fun of me until I finished the job. If it ran away, I can say I tried and not have to deal with the embarrassment and anxiety.

“I need the tape!”

“Your choice.” I lifted my claw out from the flank of the pony. The pressure of standing on their hind leg was too much and they tumbled into the puddle at the bottom of the stairs. The upside down room distorted from the ripples and the pool turned a shade of red. They looked at the scattered boxes and the condition of their saddlebags. The pony opened the flap on the closer half of their saddlebags, pulled out a container, clumsily smashed it open, and chowed down on the orange pellets. Appearing to regain their strength, they stood up.

A loud noise came from one of the doors behind us and I could hear voices. The pony took no more time than necessary to assess the situation. They grabbed the strap on the portion of the saddlebag that they had just pulled their snack from. Realizing that they would not be able to take both halves they immediately left through the front door with one of two bags trailing at their side. With near perfect timing, the pack entered through one of the rear doors.

“We heard commotion! You good?” Smasher called out, leading the pack. Now within full view of the aftermath, he saw the severed horn, the submachine gun, half of a saddlebag and its contents, and a mirror copy of the room tinted a deep red.

“Hey! Spike did good!” I was unable to tell if he was serious or making fun of me for letting a pony go.

“Looks like you’ve got something to add to your pony collection,” Smasher pointed at the horn lying in the puddle of diluted blood. I shuddered at the idea of having a piece of a pony lying among the artifacts that I’d collected. It’s quite morbid keeping body parts around. Plus, I’ve got no idea if there is any residual magic contained in it. Some of the pack members collect them and put them into necklaces or use them as decoration. Sometimes they can absorb some of the energy from a magical field and become charged. If you got poked with one you would get a little shock, zap, or tingle based on the energy it’s been exposed to recently.

“Your loss. Hey! Maybe give it to Luna? She love pony horns!” He shouted out, having read the quite obvious expression on my face.

First of all, no. I know what you are thinking. Not that Luna. Diamond Dogs don’t know their own history let alone pony history. Luna’s parents named her after the dying breaths of some pony, some time shortly before her birth. Her brothers and sisters weren’t so lucky to get such nice names. As for gifting her the horn, she only collects Mega-Pony horns for her necklace. I’d make a fool of myself if I were to give it to her.

My mind strayed back to the pony who hadn’t entirely left the building. Why were they so interested in the reels?

“I’m quite curious about these reels. The pony seemed very invested in them” I asked the group, hoping that they might have some info on them that they found while searching the building.

“Eh, is pony crap,” Punch blurted out, reminding me how much Diamond Dogs really think about the world around them.

“I think there might be something important on them”

“Pony recordings are never good. You say so yourself.” Smasher weighed in.

“But… I’ve only seen a few of these. It’s usually microtapes and datasettes which were invented for the war. But this is pre-war.”

“Whatever. Got something for fix,” Smasher tossed an energy rifle like I had never seen before on the ground in front of me. As it hit the floor, the barrel bent, the casing cracked open and the focusing crystal popped out sliding to my feet. I couldn’t identify what color it was. It was mostly blue, but with hints of purple. And orange? Or yellow? It really didn’t seem to be any color in particular actually… And it was too big to be used in any of our existing weapons. I picked the weapon up carefully to see it up close. There appeared to be six more crystals inside, each clearly a distinct color from one another. They were placed perfectly inside a rotating armature that had long been unbalanced (or so I told myself as to not be upset by the treatment it had just endured).

“Get that fixed up. Gruff want it for energy weapons stash.” Added to the pool? To start with, I’m not even sure I could fix it. I’d never seen one like it. And then, if I could fix it, it probably isn’t in the same class as all of our weapons. I don’t know how or what it does different, but six or seven focusing crystals seems overkill for something that just burns or disintegrates. Regardless, I kept my muzzle shut. They wouldn’t care about those details, anyway.

“Now let’s get home.” Smasher slashed open the front door, completely ignoring the handle and his namesake. The scavenging crew passed through the portal and down the front stairs. As soon as they reached the end of the granite steps, they jumped up, dove down and burrowed deep into the ground, heading home.

Pre-digitization audio recordings. Kept for so long. Wanted so badly as to prioritize them over life itself. What could they possibly be? I walked over to the half saddle bag and it’s spilled contents. As I picked them up, I read off the labels. The first few appeared to be historical and educational recordings on topics I had at least heard about in passing or from magazines and books.

Discord - This one must be about the legendary god of chaos I had read about.

Nightmare Night - The night where ponies paid penance to the then-evil monster-pony who would eventually become one of their two goddesses.

… In Equestria - Something generic about Equestria I presume.

The … Model - The Scientific Model? The Spike Model? (I wish) The middle word was scratched out.

The Gypsy … - There was a large ink spot covering the last word, but it made sense that Equestria had roaming groups of ponies.

The last one, the one that rolled it’s way across the room was completely blank. Not even a label to have had any text in the first place. Just a soggy cardboard box.

I put them back in the single saddlebag and threw it over my shoulder. I had a player back at my burrow for them. It’s not working at the moment, but where there are tapes, there's a tape player. Still curious, I went to the door that the pony came from. The crew had forgotten to check it out, so I figured that it wouldn’t hurt.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I was presented with rows and rows of shelving. All the shelves were pushed up against each other. There appeared to be large rotating handles on the front of each of the shelves. Most of the way down to the end, it opened up just wide enough for a pony. Not quite big enough for a dog like me, though. I saw other boxes like the ones in the saddle bag slung over my shoulder. Surely they weren’t as important as the ones I already held or the pony would have taken them instead.

Moving back to the first floor, it dawned on me that I should look at where the pony was going not where they came from. I traveled up the stairs, past the dribbles of blood and crested the second floor landing. At the top, an open hallway led to a few now-open rooms. Each room had been broken into earlier, so I didn’t have to worry about locked doors. It was just a bunch of offices. Nothing to see here. Except the last door. Always the last door. Inside was exactly what I had hoped for, and certainly what that pony was looking for considering the contents of the saddlebag.

Standing tall in front of me was the exact machine that I’d need to play these tapes. It was nearly identical to the one I had back home. Slapped across the front read the text “CADENZA.” An empty reel sat on the right of the machine and the left was just a spindle with a small round puck sitting on it which looked like it would fit inside of the reels the pony had left behind. It had already been modified to run off the spark battery of a terminal. I had one of those back at the den with just the right socket to fit the jury rigged cable. I carefully picked it up and started to lug it home. Although surprisingly heavy for its size it wasn’t difficult given how large I was compared to it. Not having handles made it very much a two-handed operation. Holding the strap of the saddlebag became nearly impossible at this point, so I tied it in a knot and slung it around my neck.

Unable to burrow while carrying such an awkward object, I walked back home through the streets. The walk home was quite uneventful with nothing coming to attack me. The few ponies I did see stood in fear, or amazement, before running off somewhere that I couldn’t see them. Seeing a hound carrying a large awkward object, for a pony that is, through the streets must have been an odd sight. It wasn’t the first time ponies had seen me carrying large objects through the wastes (my terminal didn’t get there on its own), but stopping and staring at a Diamond Dog usually gets ponies killed, so they don’t tend to do it very often. Adjusting my grip, I wondered how that pony planned on carrying something like this… Well that was a stupid thought. Magic. Damn pony magic. A flash of my claw swiping down and slicing off the horn of that poor pony did make me feel quite guilty. How on earth was that pony going to survive? It had spent its entire life learning how to live and defend itself in the wasteland with magic, and now that it didn’t have it… Like releasing a pet into the wild, it just can’t fend for itself. It’s not prepared for such a wild change from its previous life and is bound to get eaten or torn to shreds.

As I approached my small nook in the Burrows, something caught my nose and I came to a sudden lurching stop. I adjusted my grip, shuffling around the tape player that I held in my paws so that I could get a look at the offending object that I had almost nearly stepped into. Surprise surprise, somehound had left me a ‘present.’ Though this time it was different. They left a note. “Piece for your pony collection” was scrawled onto the thin shred of soiled paper. Thanks.

Balancing on one leg, I swiped the offending piece of shit down the ledge in front of my nook into the abyss below. I clipped a substantial chunk of granite and it followed off the edge. I watched for a moment as the refuse tumbled down through the low light of the crystals that adorned the chasm below. The sound of snickering floated out of one of the side tunnels that branched off from the main chasm, likely coming from who ever had left the shit at my doorstep.

Grumbling, I lumbered into my nook and placed the player on the floor that had not yet been covered in scrap and stone still peeked through. I placed the bag of tapes in the corner and set about cleaning out a space next to it's sister device that I had previously found and already spent so many hours trying to get working. The player I had just found was moved so that it could be reunited with its long lost sibling. From the label on the back, I could tell that they were both made in the same factory, but many years apart. One was made at least ten years before the war. The other was made after the war was well underway. That seemed very strange to me since nearly all of the technology had been updated to some form of digital data so that Stable-Tec could access and monitor all of the data that passed through Equestria. Or so I had heard from some unknown voices recorded onto microcassettes. Digital microcassettes, of course.

I dug through my piles of capacitors, motors, microdisks, and other assorted pieces of pony tech to find the screwdrivers that I would need for the project. Luckily, I had the proprietary Stable-Tec bits that the war-era machine I had just brought back required. The older one used a much more common screw type.

The new machine was quite the piece of craftsmanship. It was quite unwilling to give up its treasures without a fight. It appeared to be the same as the other player on the outside, but as I worked to open it up, it quickly revealed a few major differences. The rear plate was a single thin sheet instead of the multiple heavy gauge panels that the older machine used. The internals were much more condensed. My machine was absolutely crammed with multi-colored wires, neat rows of circuit boards, scattered capacitors and few banks of glass vacuum tubes. This new machine utilized only one circuit board which integrated the capacitors and reduced the need for so many wires. Despite being smaller, it was much more complex and seemed like it would be nearly impossible to repair even if I were able to find parts for it somehow. There were almost half the number of tubes. My receiving manual indicated that they each contained at least two, possibly three of the modules used in the old tubes. This was another mystery. A war time electronic device that still used vacuum tubes? Stable-Tec definitely didn’t have their hooves in the redesign of the player as anything that was electro-arcanic just simply wouldn’t fly.

Moving beyond the technical details, the most important part was that it had the same motors as mine. And that was what had failed. I’m pretty sure I had gotten everything else working correctly. After all this time, after all the new old stock parts I had found around the wasteland, I might finally be able to play some of my tapes. Hopefully it would be worth it. Not much else is. Just ponies talking to themselves.

After the transplant, I performed a quick test by plugging it into the terminal that sat nearby. Both players had the optional spark battery plug add-on that was “for the pony on-the-go!” Or so the advertisements told me. I don’t see how any pony but a unicorn would be able to move the unit on a regular basis or why they might want to. The player turned on and most of the functions seemed to work, at least adequately. Now it was time to see if it could play a tape! I scampered over to my bag, sifting through the reels I had picked up. They were a surprisingly hard commodity to come by in the wasteland. Microtapes and microdisks? Sure. I had stacks of them. Crystal storage? Tons. Oh, and they taste good too. Surprisingly sweet. Heck, I had even started to learn how to jerry rig them into limited use focusing crystals for the beam weapons. They don’t work very well, but that’s beyond the point. Actual honest to the goddesses reel-to-reel tape, though? Almost as rare as a peaceful day in the wastes.

Just as I located one of the stranger tapes, it was stored in a round metal container instead of the usual cardboard box, something nipped at the back of my neck and almost made me leap up into the air. Growling, I swiped at the assailant that had snuck up behind me. They leapt forward, grabbed the tin from my paw, and danced away from my grasp. I noticed the necklace of Mega-Pony horns around the perpetrator's neck and immediately knew who it was. “Luna,” I said with a half-hearted growl.

The small pale Diamond Dog practically yipped with laughter at my plight. “You still slow Spike,” she said now examining her ill-gotten gain. “So what pony junk this?” I tried to leap at her to grab the container from her grasp, but she sidestepped out of the way before I was even within a forelegs reach of her. “Is it like boom disks? Only bigger?”

“No Luna, it is not a ‘boom disk’. Those are called mines by the way,” I told her from where I had landed on the cavern floor.

She cocked her head to the side, “They are called Spikes’?”

“No,” I said picking myself up. “What you call pony boom disks, are actually called mines.”

She thought about that for a moment then shrugged as she batted aside my lunging paw. “If it no make boom, then is good for throwing? Make big dents in ponies?”

“No. Well, maybe. They are pretty hefty,” I admitted while checking to see if she had hurt my paw.

“If no blow up, and no dent pony, then why matter?” Luna asked, one ear flopped down in an adorable expression of confusion.

“It plays back sounds that were recorded on it by a someone, probably a pony.”

Luna looked at me, then back at the reel-to-reel container, her other ear flopping down as the other perked up. “Why matter?” she asked again.

I started to answer, my mouth open wide, and then realized that I didn’t have anything to say. Why did it matter? I mean it didn’t really matter what was on the reel. Hell, unless it was something important, like instructions on how to fix another piece of tech, or the location of some loot a pony had left behind in the area, I would just throw it back in the pile. I looked at the necklace of horns gently clattering around my oldest friend’s neck. “It’s sorta like hunting Mega-Ponies, I guess.”

Luna looked at me for a moment like she was about to say something, decided against it, and returned to examining the case. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to wrestle that tape away from her, so I resigned myself to digging through my pile of pony scraps to find another one. Luna had been playing this game for years, she snags one of my things, I jump around like a pup to trying to get it back, eventually I get tired she gets bored and we stop.

It didn’t take long for her to tire of the game once I had stopped my attempts to reclaim it, and soon she tossed the container to the side and went to go check on her favorite object in my nook, a petite painted ceramic pony figurine. It was a unicorn with a white body and purple hair, mounted to a base that read in pony script, ‘Be Unwavering’. Luna picked up the small figure, and used its horn to pick at the gap in her teeth as she made herself comfortable.

Leaving her to her own devices I finally found another reel-to-reel container buried under a mound of scrap Novasurge parts. I blew the dust off of the more standard cardboard container and carefully removed the contents. I gently put the reel on to the arm, and slowly picked out the strand of tape, and secured it onto the other reel. Just as I was about to press the play button, Luna suddenly shouted, “Oh, oh! Remember why I visit Spike!” I jolted at the sudden interruption and my claw casually slashed through the reel, cutting through most of the spooled tape.

I sighed and went digging for another reel case. “What is it Luna?” I asked trying desperately to keep the the ire out of my voice, as I sorted through the small mountain of scrap.

Luna scampered up to me, and shoved a laser pistol under my snout. “Need you to fix gun. No shoot anymore.” Of course she did. “This one my favorite, makes good holes in ponies, usually keeps body from poofing. If body go poof, then no horn.”

I carefully took the gun from her, gave it a once over, and sure enough one of the capacitors had blown. It was the fifth one in as many weeks. I knew she was one of our best hunters, but with the way that she went through laser pistols you’d think Luna was single-pawedly wiping out the entire pony race. “Sure, I should have a pistol or two I can salvage the part from.”

Her tail started wagging almost as soon as the words had left my muzzle. Before I realized what was going on, Luna closed the gap between us and gave me a small lick on the cheek. “I pay you back, Rover and others found new gem vein. I get you best sapphires. You the best Spike!” And with that she scampered out of my nook and down into the depths of the Burrows.

I stood there for a minute, brain sizzling and sparking like two high voltage wires just having just barely been separated. After carefully extracting myself from the years of daydreams that had just come true, I picked up the cardboard container, slid the reel out, and began to adjust it on the Cadenza. I tried hard to keep my thoughts on the task at claw, but my mind kept wandering back to Luna, and how I could rebuild her gun. The capacitor array would need a complete overhaul... And then there was the barrel… I could probably salvage one from the Mark II Novasurge rifle Rex had all but destroyed when he threw it at me a few months back.

I had wandered so far down that cavern of thought that by the time I realized it, I had sliced through the first few layers of leader tape attempting to pick it out from the reel so I could thread it. The layers seemed to be stuck together so I decided to give up on it before I did any more damage.

With a sigh, it was tossed it into the overflowing “fix me” pile. I gave a quick look around the room, and remembered that I still hadn’t picked up the tape that Luna had used in her game of ‘Keep The Pony Junk Away From Spike’. I grabbed the unmarked box from Luna’s little game of keep away and proceeded to thread it through the parts of the tape deck. This tape wasn’t stuck like the previous tape and I was able to finesse my claws into just the right places to avoid inadvertently cutting it to bits. I moved the takeup reel to get rid of the slack and carefully flicked the little metal power lever. After a satisfying *ka-chunk* the entire contraption came to life. The meters lit up and some of the buttons started to glow. Taking a look through the vents in the side revealed small dots of warm light from the heater filaments in each of the tubes. The play button stood out as the largest button on the unit and I gave it a delicate push with the tip of my claw. The machine made a small clicking sound for a second as a solenoid released the brakes and engaged the motor circuitry, resulting in the reels finally spinning. The leader tape passed by silently, moving into the light hiss of a blank tape. A click indicated the start of a recording and the sound of a pony talking lazily started to drift out of the tiny speakers nestled into the deck.

“This recording is a partypooper-class document, anypony who has been caught listening to this tape without the correct clearance will be charged for treason against the Diarchy of Equestria,” I chuckled at that line. Not a whole lot that they could do now that both of their silly pony princesses had been blown to smithereens. I let the tape continue to play as I went digging through one of my piles of parts, seeing if I had a relatively intact capacitor array that might still be salvageable.

The pony continued to drone on in a rather dull monotone, going on about permissions this, and working ponies that. I finally found a capacitor array that was in surprisingly good condition, the canister was both free of dents and the ancient writing still crisp and readable. I hooked it into one of the machines lying on its side in the back of the room. A wave form appeared on its screen for each cell contained in the array and the green indicator lit up showing it that the magical energy conduits properly dispersed the energy to the various cells. It would have been nice to have some music instead of this stuffy old pony on the recording, but I had worked rather hard to get this prize, and I wanted to bask in it for a little while longer. “This document has been created to cover the specifications of Project Joke Blue for the Ministry of Wartime Technology,” that was the last line of the tape that I heard before The Dome appeared.

It was there in a flash, a dark yet luminescent green wall that cut off the front half of my nook from the back half. I gave a small yip as it appeared. It cut me off from the pile of tools that I had been reaching for. After my initial surprise I began to examine the shimmering wall of magical force. It seemed to be the same color as the shield domes that the green Mega-Ponies made, but when I tried to pierce it with my claws I found that I was unable to tear into it. Had I been able to, I’m not sure that I’d be around to tell you this tale.

A minute later, the other side of the dome filled with a sickly green light that nearly blinded me. I howled in pain, as even the momentary glimpse that I had caught before I fully turned away from the blazing green glow was strong enough to make me feel as though my eyes had been burned from their sockets. Not seconds later, a thunderous noise filled the air. A noise so loud one could hardly call it a noise anymore. The noise was instead a compressed wall of force that shook me straight to the bone, even after passing through the impenetrable shield before me.

It felt like this force of nature would only go on, its intensity building until I would be consumed by it. Then as quickly as it came, it disappeared, leaving me sprawled on the floor of my nook, paws covering my ears. I could barely hear my own desperate whining over the ringing in my ears.

I’m not entirely sure how long I stayed crumpled on the floor like that. It wasn’t long enough though, because once I built up enough courage to try to open my eyes and survey just what had happened, I found my vision blurry, spotty, and painful. I immediately squeezed my eyes closed once more, waiting until the stinging sensation subsided.

After a small eternity, the stinging had lessened to a degree that I felt that I might try to glimpse out at the world again. I slowly cracked my eyelids open, staring down at the granite underneath my body. It looked bizarre to me, like the stone floor had been bleached by the massive blast.

Soon the last traces of spottiness cleared from my vision, and I could look around my cavern, taking note that it wasn’t just the floor that had been bleached by the blast. When I looked back towards where the strange shield wall had appeared I gasped, looking out not at the Burrow’s chasms that I had spent a good portion of my life tunneling and living in, but at the edge of a crater. The walls of my cavern hadn’t been bleached by the blast, I had just never seen them in the foggy light of the surface before.

I stood at the edge of my nook, paws now by my sides, the ringing in my ears barely even registering in my thoughts. “Where is my home?” I muttered under my breath, unable to hear my own voice or comprehend the scale of what had just taken place. As I looked around I saw the blast hadn’t completely obliterated my world. Large mounds of glowing green rubble had gathered just a few feet below my nook. The rubble formed small hills and valleys where our great network of tunnels had once been.

Every now and again I would catch a glimpse of movement in the ruins. Occasionally followed by a Diamond Dog poking their head out just taking in the destruction in the wake of the explosion. Their expressions were all the same masks of fury, shock, and disbelief. After observing for a few moments, they would tunnel their way back down below the rubble.

Time passed and I watched my fellow Diamond Dogs continue to appear from the debris, stare out upon what had become of our world, and then disappear like gophers. Eventually one of those strange gophers escaped from their mound, and scrambled across the broken world towards me. They were wildly barking something that I couldn’t make out, the ringing in my ears was still too overpowering. I soon realized that it was Luna who was rushing towards me. A small knot in my gut that I hadn’t noticed unwound itself in relief.

In the blink of an eye she stood towering over me, barking madly the entire time, though it sounded like she was trying to talk to me through a cavern wall. I looked her over, her coat was mussed and dusty. I could see tears in the corners of her eyes threatening to spill over onto her cheeks. It was only when she began to pull me to my feet that I realized that some time ago my legs had given out from under me. I slowly rose onto my hind legs, though they now felt as if they had been replaced with that filling from those pony pastries.

“Pony… bomb… tunnels… trapped… help...,” every now and again I could make out one of the words Luna was barking at me. Eventually I figured out that she needed me to come and help her save several of the Diamond Dogs that had been wounded in the aftermath of the blast. I let her pull me away from my small horde of junk, and towards the rubble of our former home.

Over the course of the next few hours I was helping to dig my fellow Diamond Dogs out of the rubble of our former home while my conscious mind dug itself out from under the weight of what had happened to us. More than a few of the corpses we found were still smoldering, others were crushed beyond recognition.

Everytime I unearthed another body I could feel a little part of my brain threatening to just shut me down, to have me curl up in a ball and start crying. It was kept in check by one of a diamond dogs’ most primal urges, to dig. Everytime I stumbled upon somedog who was trapped or injured or dead, I’d call out to my fellow diggers and then recommence digging through the remains.

It was as though I had set my mind on automatic. Thirsty? Keep digging. Hungry? Keep digging. Terrified of stumbling upon the corpse my mother, father, or any one of my litter mates and completely losing what little composure I had managed to claw back from my state of shock? Just. Keep. Digging.

I didn’t stop until Smasher came and found me. He took the lead down into what remained of the tunnels and I followed, mind still frazzled and wanting to feel the grit of the dirt against my claws. He brought me down to the freshly dug gem vein where our den mates had gathered, or at least those who had survived the blast.

I mechanically made my way through the assembled crowd of Diamond Dogs, taking in the sight of my fellow den mates, many of whom were wounded or tending to the badly injured. It wasn’t until I practically bumped into them that I realized where my paws had taken me, right to where my mother and the rest of my family had gathered. It took her a second to realize who it was practically standing on her tail, but when it clicked for her she swept me up in a near bone crushing hug. She began howling about something, how she had lost me, they couldn’t find me, how worried they were that I might have been caught in the blast. It was tough to make it out over the persistent ringing in my ears.

My litter mates were another story entirely. The few that had survived looked over at me for a second and then went back to nursing each others wounds. Even if I wasn’t in such a rattled state, I wouldn’t have expected much more from them on that count. Most of my litter mates had gone out of their way to avoid me for years, a little thing like our entire world being shattered wasn’t going to change that.

While mum continued to fuss over me, I noticed my sire was standing right behind her, his expression the usual inscrutable mask. The way he was acting, you might have thought that massive balefire explosions were nothing more than a minor nuisance interrupting his digging. I stared at him for a moment over mum’s shoulder, and he returned the stare without a word.

It wasn’t long before a sort of eerie silence fell over the pack, the only sound was the whimperings of the wounded and a few sobs from the grieving. My mother loosened her grip enough that I could pull away from her and look for what had caused everydog to grow quiet. It was then that I saw Rex making his way through the crowd, holding something that I couldn’t make out in his paws. The dogs that caught sight of it flattened their ears against their head and a few even began to whimper.

When the pack’s chief hunter got to the center of the gathering, he came to a stop. The crowd pulled away from him, giving him room. He held aloft something large, round, and fleshy. I couldn’t quite make out what it was, my eyes still not completely recovered from their momentary glimpse of the balefire blast. I only caught that the object was very light, almost pale in color. When Rex dropped the object, everydog near him stepped away from it.

Rex pointed to the object on the floor and as the other dogs around him began to whimper he shouted, “This is what pony has done to us!” A few dogs howled in response. “Alpha Rover, dead!” My ears perked up at that. I pulled away from my family and started to make my way towards the front of the crowd, which was rather easy to do given my stature.

When I got there, what I saw made my stomach drop. It was indeed the head of our Alpha, Rover, lying on the floor his eyes glassy and fur matted with dry blood. Rex continued as I stared down at our now former leader’s head. “Every time pony fights pony, we Diamond Dogs are hurt, killed, changed. But do pony care? No! Pony just walk on top of dogs, like dirt!” There were a few growls and murmurs throughout the crowd that agreed with Rex. “It time that dogs fight pony! Dogs war with pony! Kill ponies and Rex as leader!” That comment split the pack. There were growls, a few scattered cheers, and even a howl that seemed to agree with Rex. However, there were also murmurs passing around a particular phrase.

Alpha Brawl. Alpha Brawl! Alpha Brawl! The murmur turned into an overwhelming chant.

From the throng of dogs, another stepped forward. Smasher. “If Rex want to be Alpha, he must call for Brawl like all before him.”

Rex turned and growled at his fellow hunter. “Now is not time for dog fight dog! Now is time for dog fight pony!”

Smasher shook his head vigorously. “If new Alpha is Alpha because they use words, then they shame all Alphas before them. Brawl is true dog way.”

I could see Rex snarl at Smasher, but he didn’t try to deny that what he said was true. The murmuring in the crowd also seemed to agree with Smasher, and soon others stepped forward: Cooper, Duke, and Buster, each a fairly well respected fighter in their own right. Across the way I could see Luna, her hackles beginning to rise. If anydog could win in an open brawl it was her, but tradition is tradition and so she would be forced to sit this fight out.

Once everydog was sure that no more combatants would take to the field The Howl began. At first it was only the oldest of our pack that started The Howl. Soon others around them joined in, myself included. The Howl went on, echoing through what little of our home had survived, and then all at once it stopped and the fight began.

Buster and Duke rushed at Rex, claws extended. Rex just stood there on his hind legs, until at the last second when Buster’s claws had just about reached is face. In a movement that was too fast for my eyes to catch, Rex had grabbed and twisted Buster’s extended foreleg behind his back, causing him to let out a surprised yelp of pain. Duke didn’t have time to adjust to the fact that Rex had caught his partner, before Rex used Buster as a bludgeon to knock Duke off his paws.

Over on the other half of the circle Smasher had entangled himself with Cooper, the two now rolling on the cavern floor each having covered the other in fresh gouches with their claws. The two nipped and lunged and covered one another in their blood as they both tried to pin the other.

The crowd was deathly silent during all of this, letting the cacophony of the struggle ring out over the unfinished tunnel. I was a pup when Rover fought in the last Alpha Brawl, and I remember that the crowds had howled and yelped and cheered throughout it. It felt wrong somehow for this clash to take place in such a melancholy atmosphere.

It wasn’t long before Rex had dispatched both Buster and Duke, the two now lay in a heap on the edge of the arena, with deep gouges up and down their bodies. While Rex fought his battle, Smasher had pinned Cooper and slashed him across the chest, causing him to let out a great howl of pain and lie still.

At that moment the two hunters turned to face one another, both bending down on all fours and circled the ring. Ears perked up all around the ring as the tension grew palpable. No one was quite sure who would make the first move. In a blur of motion, Smasher was the first to move, leaping at Rex, his fangs and talons extended. Before he could make contact with Rex, the hunter leader clawed his way into the dirt, disappearing in a cloud of dust. Smasher landed out of his leap, practically diving into the dirt. His claws tore the ground away so quickly it almost appeared as if he simply melted into the ground.

The crowd stood as still as stone, ears turning this way and that, listening for the two combatants under the ground. Then the earth trembled and both Rex and Smasher emerged from the center of the arena, slashing and clawing at each other wildly as they ascended from the ground. Blood, flesh, and fur flew as the two hunters tried to tear each other apart.

Smasher lunged in with his maw, aiming for his fellow hunter’s neck. Rex was a hair faster than him, tilting his head into the bite so the only thing Smasher could tear at was his skull. While his opponent tried to work through his surprise, Rex dug his claws into Smasher’s sides. The younger dog tried to howl in pain, but it was muffled by the mouthful of his opponent’s hide. Rex twisted his paws and yanked them upwards. Smasher went limp in his grasp.

Rex pulled his claws out and let Smasher fall to the floor, and turned to the crowd, forpaws raised high. Everydog joined together in a Howl, though pain permeated several of the voices.

Rex then addressed his pack. “Now we hunt pony.”

Chapter 2 - Dog and Pony Show-down

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Rex wasted no time in arranging his first raid. They were to enter a known fortified pony settlement and take all of the ponies out, no survivors. I wasn’t to partake in this first raid, though, and due to Rex’s “new procedures,” only members of each raiding party would be privy to what their mission was. Nobody but Rex and the members from each individual team know where they were going or how long it would be. Rex knew ponies were clever and he wasn’t taking any chances. The chances of a pony capturing one of the pack and actually trying to interrogate them seemed pretty slim, but Rex didn’t want to come back with his tail between his legs.

My job, until I was given further orders, was weapons preparations. The first task was to pull out twelve of our finest condition energy weapons. They would be used for Rex’s double sized raid party. Rex, along with twelve other hounds made sure I knew exactly how much they would need them as they followed me to the weapons storage room where all the currently functioning guns were kept.

“No care what get, except pink pony gun,” Nico grumbled to Fifi beside her.

“Pink pony gun not bad! Shoot straight, dust ponies good,” Fifi replied extolling the virtues of the weapon.

“So long as biggest gun mine, is good day,” Strike said, weighing in on the conversation.

Rex turned around at the comment. “Bonehead! Alpha gun biggest, is always biggest!” he growled at Strike, who’s ears drooped so fast it almost seemed like they had been chopped off.

We arrived at the weapons storage room, located conveniently across from the weapons repair room. I rummaged through our stock of weapons and placed the very best on the table. As I pulled them from the racks, the entire team became visibly excited, tails wagging furiously. Rex looked like a pup who had just found their very first vein of gems. With a glance and a nod from Rex, the team formed an orderly line behind their Alpha. Despite earlier appearances, Rex had picked an obedient and loyal group of pups. This energetic team knew when order was called for.

Rex looked over the table, sizing up each of the weapons to determine who would get which one. Starting with the only non-inherent-energy weapon in this stash, he picked up the Spark Sledge, a modified super sledge. It had been created at Rex’s request, well his threat to tear out my claws. Years ago he had been looking for a weapon that could kill anything in one hit, but what he got was much more dangerous than he could have imagined. On contact, but only when both safety switches have been depressed, it consumes three entire energy canisters and simply vaporizes whatever it touches on contact. Living, dead, or inanimate. Indiscriminate vaporization. It was deemed too erratic, and as a result kept out of the arsenal for a while.

The first strike against the Spark Sledge’s usage was when it clipped the arm of a party member. In mere moments, the clipped party member dissolved into a pile of dust. Strike number two was when it took out the main structural pillar in a large stone building bringing three floors of stone and steel down onto the heads of an entire party. The weapons were recovered and repaired although Rex asked for the Spark Sledge to be shelved. Hopefully this mission wouldn’t result in strike three. Rex handed it to the next dog in line who then kept passing it until it reached Strike at the tail end. Strike is our resident simple projectiles expert and is quite fond of anything capable of delivering blunt trauma.

The next weapon off the table was a sniper rifle lovingly painted pink and customized to the original owner’s taste. It featured fluorescent pink dots on the crosshairs as well as a pink cover to disguise the energy canister under a slope that made it look sort of like a pink lightning bolt. While technologically unimpressive, it was in fantastic condition since most of the dogs left it alone. Those that took it on missions took it because of the condition and knew how to take care of it to keep it that way. All I’ve ever had to do is buff out minor scratches. It’s never needed so much as a tune up. Fifi was the most familiar with the gun and she hadn’t missed a shot with it since she was a puppy. She stood second to last in line and her eyes lit up as it was passed her way.

Next up was a tri-barreled shotgun. Initially found with the energy redistribution unit cracked in two pieces and missing components, it was modified so that each barrel fed off of its own energy canister. That made for an incredible room clearing gun. A total of 21 shots could be fired before reloading. Triple shots were devastating, although overheating was a common issue when using all three barrels that many times. It was handed down to Tank, who stood just in front of Fifi.

I gave out all but one of the remaining weapons, knowing they were to be used as simple side arms for the claw fighters. They likely wouldn’t be fired a single time between now and when they returned to the store room. Various rifles and pistols were taken from the table, passed down the line and placed in holsters or strapped onto backs.

The last gun on the table was a gargantuan thing. Rex simply pointed at it and Nico walked over and picked it up. She then took her place in line directly behind Rex. During this whole event, not a single word was spoken. I realized a few moments after Nico had gotten back in line that Rex was looking at me expectantly. He held up a single claw and I scurried into the back room.

As quickly as houndily possible, I scurried over to the weapons repair room and returned with Rex’s gun. I had meant to give it to him this afternoon before messing about with the reel to reel but I had let it slip my mind. The world exploding in front of me didn’t help the situation. Rex took it from my hands and tilted it back and forth so that he could see it from every direction. The light shined off of the perfectly flat polished surfaces. He liked it better than the matte anodized finish that most of the other guns had. Despite his incredible love for the look, he was never able to keep up the polish and it was in need of constant work.

“Good, Spike. Love shine,” Rex broke the silence that had been going on for minutes now.

“Thanks. Took a lot of work to work out the dents and get it so shiny.”

“Four mega pony. Play toss with it.” Sure, okay Rex.

Rex turned around to address the murmuring single file line.

“Heads up, pups!” The line of hounds went silent and all ears turned towards Rex.

“First mission tomorrow. We leave at sunrise. Dismissed!”

The line dissolved and the dogs started to chatter between each other. Most of them seemed quite enthusiastic with their role. Some hefted their guns around and motioned as if they were shooting at a target. Everybody eventually left but Luna. My heart started to race.

“You fix gun?” she asked.

“I haven’t had time to fix it yet. I can probably get something worked up if you sit tight for a few minutes.” She nodded and sat down on the weapons table and started to examine the unfamiliar pistol Rex had assigned to her.

I rushed off to my room through the freshly dug tunnels and nearly tripped on an exposed piece of stone a few times in my haste. All at once, the tunnels ended and I was outside climbing up the side of the blast radius until I got to my, now exposed, den. I scanned the room quickly for Luna’s gun and saw that it was sitting on top of the pile I had tossed it into. Hers was clearly marked with a very tiny horn on string. In my head, I tried to picture the horn as just a tip that got slashed off in battle, but the alternative seemed a bit more morbid than usual. After picking it up I noticed that Luna’s gun had been dented by some loose debris during the explosion. Damnit. A few other guns of the same model made it with me back to the weapons repair room so I could simply swap out the damaged parts instead of replacing each individual broken component. I made sure that at least one of them had the correct housing parts I needed in case I couldn’t bang out the dents.

At the weapons repair room, I set Luna’s gun down on the bench and started disassembly. Screw by screw, it came apart. By the end, it had become an exploded view of the insides. After identifying the bits I’d need to replace, the charging board with a blown capacitor and the focusing arm holding up the main focusing crystal, I started disassembly on a second gun to use for parts. This one was done a little bit less orderly and the parts were placed into a pile on the corner of the workbench. One of the focusing arms must have gotten bent a few weeks ago causing her repetitive capacitor failure issue. I had adjusted it after the pistol took a tumble, but I must not have caught that the arm had bent and was causing all this trouble.

The last thing to address was the newly dented casing. I just took one from the parts pile and transferred the miniature horn pendant to the new housing. Luckily, the pieces were the same variant, with some ridges and a few louvers that span the length of the receiver. Having done this in the past, I learned that she didn’t care about the housing itself, as long as it felt the same in her hands as she was using it. Finished with the repairs, I moved into the main room and handed Luna her gun.

“Thanks. Will keep both. Rex wants killing gun, I want trophy gun” she responded as I handed it back to her. And she was probably right, Rex looked like he had assembled a team that could eat super duper ultra mega ponies for breakfast. A gun that made pinholes was likely not something he wanted someone in his strike team to be carrying.

She walked out of the room and caught myself staring at the hallway where she had walked down long after she had turned the corner. I shifted my gaze to the piles of broken guns visible in the repair room across the hall. Time to get back to work…

Recently we haven’t been using all too many guns. That left a reasonably large backlog of weapons, sitting in piles beneath some ancient words scratched into the wall reading: bOrKEN, bAd WorK, FvKKEd. Most of the weapons that had been marked as “borken” or underperforming (“bad work”) were simply dirty or misaligned. Those made for quick work. Not everything in those piles were so easy to fix, however. The multi-gem weapons usually caused me significant issues to repair, and as such we never had many functional at one time. Today seemed like a fine day to try and get some operational.

Multi-gem weapons came in a few varieties. The first is a simple duplication of the normal mechanisms. The tri-barrel shotgun was a great example. Each barrel had its own trigger, power crystal, and focusing crystal, all stationary and fed from one power source. A second design I had seen for multi-gem weapons was a type that used the increased gem count to boost the rate of fire. A spinning set of barrels each containing a focusing crystal and an “excitation” crystal. Power crystals would sit behind multiple positions, usually four of them placed in cardinal locations. All but one would be set to a low power. These charged the excitation gems. Most commonly, the top was set to a higher power than the others. The calibration would be such that this higher power crystal would push the excitation gem over equilibrium and discharge all of the collected energy at once through the focusing gem and out the barrel. It would then have time to cool down and recover by the time it returned to the topmost firing position.

The final multi-gem design I had only seen once in an old bombed out building. Sat in a store room and missing numerous components, the gun was massive and I couldn’t imagine being in the way of it. Whatever it was designed to hit must have been the size of a tank. It formed a sort of tree. One long trunk down the center with precisely ground focusing crystals all lined up ready to merge the emission from a single power crystal into a single incredible beam. The details probably aren’t too terribly important, but it had hundreds of adjustment and alignment screws.

What sat on my workbench, the multi gemmed rifle that Smasher had so graciously set at my feet, didn’t resemble any of those designs in the slightest. Never had I seen this technology implemented into a rifle before. And never with six distinctly colored crystals feeding into a single focusing gem. And never were crystals placed into a rotating armature. It all seemed so strange to me. And yet it was so simple. There weren’t many points of adjustment. The focusing crystal looked like it may have been omnidirectional. I simply had no idea what its purpose would be. Not knowing if I would get a better time any time soon to figure it out, I began disassembly.

The barrel was unique, it looked like a solid stick with a line of lenses, not gems, attached to it. At the base was the focusing crystal, intact but with no hope of reattachment at the moment. The mount for the six crystals and the rotating armature looked to be shared with one of the less common models of multi-gem shotgun that sat in the part pile. Grabbing one from the pile and comparing it to the strange Hexagem Rifle, they did indeed share a mounting system. My curiosity got the best of me and in just a few moments I had the strange assembly screwed into place on the old retired shotgun. The correct focusing crystal didn’t fit neatly into the old shotgun, but it would do well enough to see what this hexagem assembly was capable of. This gun wouldn’t be doing any killing until I test fired it to find out what it actually did. Satisfied with my experimentation and having wasted enough time already, I set it aside and continued my repair work.

“Mega pony sighted at bomb site!” Yelled somedog as they rushed into the weapons room and nabbed three pistols directly off the primo condition side.

“Need guns. Important.” Another two scurried over and grabbed a set of rifles. I didn’t argue. Who was I to get in the way of Rex’s grand plan? I’d be dead, probably. What’s that pony saying? “Best to let angry dogs be” I think it was...

I watched as the three ran down the hallway joining a group of three other dogs. Patriot, Scooter and Sky were each handed a pistol which they placed into their holsters. Ruby and Precious examined their rifles before throwing them over their shoulders. Huck readied his claws and ran them against a strop. He proceeded to slice a clean chunk out of the wall and toss it at Sky. She caught it and tossed it back, shattering on impact. Huck’s pride resided in his claws. Instead of a gun, his holster held a knife sharpener that he found as a pup. His claws were kept longer than most and most notably, he polished them. The claim was that it helped reduce sliding resistance, but it also didn’t hurt whenever he was showing off to find a mate. They turned the corner and moved out of sight.

I looked back to admire my work and noticed that the Hexagem Shotgun made from the odd rifle handed to me earlier was missing off the table. Running away from me down the tunnel was Lucky, the hexagem weapon in hand. I slipped a shotgun under my arm and ran after her.

“Wait!” I yelled as I started to chase her down the hall.

“Late to mega pony fight. Can’t talk”

“No! That gun isn’t…” Lucky had already reached the end of the hallway and started burrowing her way to battle. She wasn’t leaving an open tunnel, just a trail of broken rubble and softened dirt. I dug in right where her burrow began. It had already started collapsing and I was practically digging an entirely new path. The bomb that the ponies detonated had really done a number on the structural integrity of the rock around us. Fractures and cracks ran throughout the walls. There were numerous pockets simply filled with loose rubble. Normally, it was easy to follow another’s tunnel trail but determining the difference between a freshly collapsed burrow and the freshly shattered rock made it incredibly difficult to follow Lucky’s trail. Giving up on following her path, I decided to surface and see if I was close enough to the fight to call Lucky over and exchange weapons.

Upon surfacing, I couldn’t see any Mega Ponies floating around. In the distance, there appeared to be a flying pony glowing bright green and pulling a cart behind it. It looked terribly emaciated. I stared at it a bit longer. No, it wasn’t just skinny, it was also missing fur. Maybe it had mange. Could ponies get mange? Come to think of it, it looked pretty dead. I took a few moments to… oh, yuck. It definitely smelled like a pony ghoul! Flying ponies were pretty rare to see and I was not sure if I had ever seen a flying pony ghoul before.

I climbed up onto a mound and looked around to see if I could spot the recon team. The bomb had transformed the surface into a completely alien world. The ground didn’t even resemble what I had come to expect due to the ponies’ world killer bomb detonation. Instead of flattening everything around it, trees, buildings, and anything not made of solid stone, the damage stopped abruptly forming almost a perfect sphere embedded into the ground. Small holes could be seen lining the outer walls. Some pack members could be seen sealing off these exposed tunnels from the surface.

Reports of the mega pony likely came from this reconstruction team. They noticed me with the shotgun under my arm and pointed in the direction of the flying green ghoul pony. Jumping back into the dirt on the surface, I made my way closer. Following a flying target was much more difficult than one walking on the surface. With one on the surface, it’s quite easy to detect footsteps and surface close to it. I had to peek above the surface a few times to make sure I was still following the pony. The dead flyer stuck pretty low to the ground and occasionally went out of sight behind bits of building and stone that had been flung out by the blast. Eventually, we started to approach the forest. Ponies normally feared the Everfree so it seemed strange for one to be moving towards it. Maybe the dead pony was a few packages short of a shipment. Death isn’t very kind to the mind and the dead ponies are usually aggressive.

As I kept following, I started feeling some notable vibrations permeate through the ground. The pack was certainly somewhere nearby. Some heavy stomping followed. Even a pack of inexperienced hounds wouldn’t make a vibration like that. This had to be the mega pony that had spurred the pilfering of my completely untested and unknown weapon. Really, for all I knew it could have originally been designed to apply makeup to soldiers from afar. The ponies had created much stranger things than that, I wouldn’t be surprised if the hexagem weapon was entirely non-lethal.

I decided that it was probably in my best interest to stay away from the threatening stomping until I could identify what was going on. My task was to ensure that functional weapons made it to the dogs going out to battle. I wasn’t quite ready to get myself killed over a fancy pony concoction. Swap the shotgun with the known good one and get out. I poked my head out and through sheer luck I picked a clear lookout onto the source of the stomping. It was not a mega pony at all, but instead a mechanical one. The feeling of hounds digging furiously through rock and soil was still present. My pack mates were quickly burrowing towards the mechanical creature.

The dead flyer approached a reasonably well made cover. The camouflaged shelter would not have been seen if the glowing green pony hadn’t flown directly to it. The steel pony was walking around and removing the disguise. Underneath was a passenger wagon, intended for carrying ponies. It was surprisingly large and I questioned how it had even gotten there.

Three more ponies emerged from the wagon. A grey and white pony was followed by a striped pony, a zebra? It’s kind of hard to not know about them, even if you don’t pay attention. The ponies put up tons of posters about how much they hated each other. The hatred made its way into books, magazines and audio recordings. Up to that point, I had not encountered a zebra before. Today was filled with quite a few firsts.

Next out was a second flyer wearing a hat, this one looked to be living. At this point, I realized that there was a pony sitting in the back of the dead flyer’s wagon. The grey pony, a much lighter grey than the one on the ground, looked pretty helpless and just laid on the floor. Maybe it was dead or severely injured. I couldn’t tell at my distance from the group.

Vibrations in the ground around me kept consistent with a group of tunneling hounds. I noticed Patriot poke his head out far off in the distance. I waved at him, but he didn’t see me. Observing the group of ponies took his full attention. Just like that, he ducked back down beneath the dirt to relay the information to the rest of the team. I was too late. I wasn’t going to be able to get Lucky a gun that she could rely on. Claws were crossed that the hexagem modified shotgun would do something.

Six of the seven recon team members emerged from the ground, ready for combat. I cautiously watched Lucky ready her shotgun. Ruby aimed her rifle at the group and took a couple shots. She didn’t seem to hit anything though. Lucky didn’t fire any shots. Scooter rushed in, making a swipe at the zebra. By the time his claws had reached where the zebra had been, it had moved and let loose a kick that knocked Scooter flat on his back.

By this point, it seemed odd to me that Lucky had taken no shots. Looking a bit more carefully, I saw her fumbling with the trigger and the safety. She popped the energy cartridge in and out again. No shots.

Crap. Crap. Crap!

The steel pony let out a burst of grenades. Enough of them connected to make Lucky drop the multi gemmed shotgun. Her fur looked quite bloody and she grasped one of her arms with the other as she lay in pain on the ground. This was not good.

It looked like the ponies on the ground were retreating to the now-uncovered pony carrier, Sky clawed his way up the side of the wagon. The hat-wearing flyer hit Sky with a very close range shotgun blast and Sky fell off the wagon.

Just when it looked like all was hopeless and the ponies were going to get away after mopping the floor with a team of attack dogs, a gleaming set of claws pushed up from the ground. In a single motion, Huck emerged beneath the steel pony and elegantly swiped his claws right through the metal beast. His perfectly sharpened and polished claws cut through the pony’s armor like it was clay.

The metal head dropped to the ground and rolled a small distance away from the now dead pony’s body. Having had their strongest party member killed, they fled. Both of the carts moved away in tow behind the flyers. One pulled by the living, the other pulled by the dead.

Huck, partially in celebration for killing the steel pony and partially in anger because they were going to get away, skewered the armored head, spun around, and tossed it at the green glowing dead flyer. The throw was good, but the ghoul pony moved just enough out of the way to dodge the hit. It smashed against the side of the wagon, splintering wood everywhere. Behind the cloud of splinters, I noticed that Huck looked pretty happy with the shot even if he didn’t kill any more ponies.

Not a moment later a glow emanated from the wagon that Huck had hit. The pony laying in the wagon shifted. It wasn’t dead after all and now it was clearly looking at Huck. The glow, now clearly originating from the nearly dead pony, became brighter and brighter. Seven layers formed in the light, one for each member of the recon team below. Huck, Sky, Ruby, Patriot, Scooter, Precious and Lucky all became surrounded by the same glow. The expression on their faces grew concerned and they wildly waved about. Claws scraped at the ground, but there was no traction to be found as they had been lifted off of the ground. Initially their ascent was slow but my heart nearly stopped as they suddenly shot into the sky. They flew higher and higher until I couldn’t see them anymore. Panic set in. I was next if I didn’t leave. I burrowed underground as soon as I lost sight of my fellow dogs.

THUD!!

The ground shook as something hit the ground. Just don’t think about it. They would be alright. Right?

THUD!! THUD!! THUD!!

I couldn’t feel any more movement in the ground. No ponies. No dogs. I sat trembling in my cramped little hole.

I don’t know how long I was there, but it was long enough that another team had been sent out to see what had happened. They found me a few feet under the ground, still shaking and bawling my eyes out.

“What happen?” A member of the recovery team spoke up after simply staring for a few seconds.

“P-p-pony threw them into the air,” I managed to squeak out.

“Impossible. They mangled. Crushed. Look like they fell from moon.”

“Looked like it was dead, but after we killed their metal pony, it…” The rest of the words got stuck in my throat before I could say them. The group standing along the open ridge of the hole all burst out into laughter.

“Must got hit. Spike crazy talk. Dead pony can’t-”

“It wasn’t dead!” I interrupted him.

“Biggest baddest pony we seen, even mega pony, can’t do that.” A set of paws grabbed me and lifted me out of the hole. They faced me towards the carnage but I closed my eyes and turned away. “Why you out here anyway?”

Before I could answer, a voice called from the drop site,

“Lucky still breathing! She live!” I took a look over, a supreme mistake. My lunch would have been laid in front of me if it weren’t for the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything since the previous evening. Interesting electronics and mechanical devices swirled around my head and had replaced the desire to eat. Now I was sick and hungry.

Lucky lay in a heap on top of three dogs. All but Lucky had landed directly on the ground. The limp hound was lifted by her forelegs and hindlegs and carried away, upside down. Patch, who had determined that Lucky was still alive, walked around to the others and took a closer look. No more shouts were made and as he walked away, three dogs moved over and started to drag the bodies back to the caverns, two at a time. Boomer walked around and picked up the gun scraps, tossing them into a canvas bag. Moxie, who had helped un-dig my hidey hole, spoke up.

“Get shit together Spike. We need fixed guns. Claws not good enough for what Rex wants,” she started walking back with the others. “And if Lucky say super power pony did this, like you say, we got big problem.”

Boomer dropped the bag of guns at my feet.

“Don’t look too good. All broke.” I pawed through the bag. Broken pieces rattled around among the guns. The best looking one was the Hexagem Shotgun, the barrel warped and bent from the grenade explosions, but receiver and all six gems intact. I grabbed the bag and joined Boomer in the dejected walk back to base.

First things first, when I got back to the caves I asked about Lucky and was told that she wasn’t conscious yet. They had diagnosed uncountable broken bones. Patch suggested that she had lost enough blood from the grenade blasts that, combined with the shock from breaking her foreleg, it must have caused her to pass out when she was lifted into the air so quickly. Somedog rushed by with a container of clinking glass bottles, filled with purple liquid.

Usually pony healing potions weren’t something regularly used by hounds. Raids didn’t procure enough to be frequently used throughout the pack and many refused to use them even when offered, either due to pride or a phobia of what pony magic might do to them. Guns were easy to comprehend: point, shoot, observe the damage. Pony chemicals were unpredictable and sometimes caused disturbing or undesired effects. Some ponies also had the nasty habit of mixing their chemicals which changed what each of them did in strange ways. We had decided a long time ago it was best to just do without. But this was war and that meant going further and taking more risks than we had in the past two hundred years since the bombs.

Letting them tend to Lucky with the pilfered pony potions, I returned to the repair room and dumped the guns out on the table. Six guns spread out to an impressive degree when disassembled and placed onto a table, especially when bits became bent and parts were broken into numerous pieces. The thin facades that served the purpose of keeping curious claws from getting disintegrated and dirt from contaminating the beam path, didn’t stand a chance against gravity. Some of the guns looked like they had been landed on and were crushed nearly flat.

Surprisingly, the best condition gun seemed to be the Hexagem Shotgun. Immediately, I was filled with guilt and disappointment. I shouldn’t have made the strange modification to an already strange gun. Maybe if I hadn’t have done it, Lucky would have been able to make the shot and Huck could have taken on a different target.

The failure was now crystal clear. Two little tabs stuck out blocking the left and rightmost gems in the ring from getting charged. Pulling out the original rifle stock, it didn’t have these little tabs. Shutdown must have been enabled when the feedback circuits determined that two of the six gems weren’t powering up. I looked around for compatible parts. Many of them I found on one of the fully repaired rifles that I had worked on earlier. Any of them would have fit, but I had to transfer numerous wires and sensors over from the hexagem’s original base. That required option holes that most models didn’t have. Maybe it was an early variant that they phased out or maybe it was a new development that the new parts supported for cost reasons. Our guns had been taken apart and reassembled so many times that there wasn’t a single gun that contained all original parts. Every single one was an amalgam of other guns. It was a remarkable feat of engineering that over whatever production period, the parts stayed almost completely interchangeable.

Holding a fully optioned gun with every hole stuffed with some feature or another, it looked complete. And this time, the correct focusing gem fit, polished to perfection! None of its facets looked damaged either. The parts that I had to screw into place looked mostly pawmade, er hoof made? Ponies... Imperfectly wound coils, carefully wrapped wires, and a lovely design carved into the housing that carefully disguised the cooling vents and also acted as a form of weight reduction. I banged out the dents in the original, all metal housings, and restored the brushed appearance that surrounded the wonderful carvings. Lighter, more durable, and more attractive, the rifle looked and felt fantastic. With the original housings transferred, it looked as it must have the day it was made, or maybe the day after when the casings had been engraved.

Having finished repairing this incredible feat of engineering, I just had to find out what it did. That meant giving it a test fire. I made my way down to the target range, located much deeper in the caverns. The range was a long hallway with drawings of ponies on the wall at the far end. I pulled out the once rifle, then shotgun, but now a born-again Hexagem Rifle and rested it on the barrier. After inserting an energy cartridge, I pointed at what was left of the pony drawing, turned the safety off, and pulled the trigger. It was locked. No movement at all. I flipped the safety on, same thing. Remembering one of the features that I wasn’t able to transfer to the shotgun was the dial on the back. Tiny little colored icons filled the dial. There was no dial to select any of them. I tapped the little panel in the center with the tip of my claw, nothing. I tried it with one of the pads of my paw and all six icons lit up. Nice! A touch powered on switch!

This time when I pulled the trigger, all of the crystals lit up and it looked like it was starting the charging process. A beam formed consisting of six colors, orange, blue, white, purple, yellow and pink. Nothing seemed to happen. The six continuous beams spiraled around each other and hit the target. They just sank into the stone and remained as long as I held the trigger. All this work for a gun that doesn’t do a damn thing!

As I was about to give up, the beam lost all but one color, blue. I could feel the beam in front of me heating the air. The target began to glow a dull orange wherever the beam touched. Then it exploded. Recoiling in fear, but with my claw still on the trigger the beam turned yellow and again it didn’t seem to do anything.

Thinking about what had just happened, I began to get giddy. A heat gun! How fantastic is that? Absentmindedly, I had kept my finger on the trigger while thinking of the possibilities. The beam had turned a bright pink in the meantime, still looking like it wasn’t going to affect the stone target. Lifting off the trigger, the beam disappeared and the target looked as it did before, minus the bits that blew out during the explosion. It looked practically ecstatic to be used as target practice. I chuckled at the thought of how useful a heat gun could be and returned to the storage room to drop the Hexagem Heat Rifle off. On my way out, I noticed that somebody had graffitied a smiley face on the target, how cute.

Enough time had been spent playing around with the strange rifle, I decided to check back up on Lucky. As I approached, I was told she was awake but that she was spurting the same nonsense that I had been about the mostly dead pony that single handedly lifted an entire scouting party above the clouds. Her version of the story mentioned a city in the clouds with ponies flying about. Flyers were not a common sight around the wasteland and it seemed highly unlikely that there would just be a city of them hanging out and not helping their fellow ponies down on the ground. Ponies always spouted about friendship and comradery, unless you were a zebra, or a diamond dog, or really anything but a pony…

I stopped by her bed and looked down at her mangled body. She looked over at me.

“Spike”

“I... I’m-”

“No. You tried to stop me. My fault” The accusatory thoughts still continued, it would continue to be at least partially my fault, but I didn’t bring it back up. Her limbs had been strapped to sticks and attempts had been made to straighten them, but they simply didn’t look right. The bleeding, however, had stopped.

“Are you-” I tried to get all of the words out but some just got stuck. She turned her head to look at me to make sure I could see the expression on her face.

“No. No good. I like this forever, what Patch say. No more fight Rex’s war. Can’t move, but will try help,” I really had nothing to add, but I felt compelled to say something.

“Let me know if you need anything, okay?” What the hell could I provide to help with this? The offer was there, anyway.

“Want rest now.” I hoped I hadn’t overstayed my welcome. Was she actually angry at me? I wished that I had the friendship experience of a pony. Maybe that would make this all a little bit easier to parse.

On my way out, I bumped into Luna. She had returned from Rex’s first strike team mission. Looks like she was wearing some new gear that they must have found on the trip.

“You made it back! Glad you are okay!” Her expression didn’t change.

“New helmet?” Nothing. She walked closer.

In a swift motion, Luna lifted me off the ground and slung me over her shoulder like I was a fresh kill. “Um, Luna, are you feeling alright?” I asked as I tried to wiggle free of her grasp, but her grip was like a vice keeping me firmly attached to her shoulder. Which I sort of didn’t mind, but something felt wrong about this. Luna still hadn’t said anything as she continued to descend down to the main cavern. I had given up trying to break out of her grasp a few tunnels ago, and when we got to the main cavern I saw several other dogs all bound up in rope. Luna stopped and unceremoniously dropped me to the ground, and set about tying me up as well, and dragging me over to the others.

The unbound hounds paced around as new packmates were brought in and tied up. Blood covered some of the newly arrived. Wimpers filled the cavern and there were some yells demanding that we all be told what was going on. None of the helmeted hounds responded. They didn’t say anything at all, not even to each other. Quickly, everyone’s attention shifted to the Long Hall, one of the main hallways that had been opened to the sky by the blast. From the dark emerged a flock of flying ponies in strange bug-like armor.

Growls, howls, and threats to kill arose from the tied up crowd. The head flyer, wearing a different outfit than the others, yet still resembling an oversized bug, sat down in front of an angry dog. What she was yelling was nearly indecipherable to me, the pony certainly wasn’t going to understand it. The pony stuck its face into the angry hound’s and sneered. She shifted her weight and tried to bite the pony’s nose off. She missed. The black shelled flyer pulled back without a scratch, turned around effortlessly and bucked the angry dog. Knocked backwards, she fell limp onto the ground. Silence filled the room. All anydog could do was stare at what had just happened. The head pony made a motion to the others and they all produced helmets like Luna’s. Simultaneously, every dog not wearing a helmet frantically struggled to remove the fetters that held them in place.

A commotion broke out behind me.

“Shit. One of them broke free,” one of the ponies spoke. The head pony responded,

“Cap it or kill it, I don’t care.” Three shots were fired. The first was followed by a yelp, the second by a thump, and the third by the distinctive sizzle of a target disintegrating into a pile of dust.

“Damn hellhounds. I hate these damned things.”

“Just get the helmets on and we can get back on track.”

The capped pack members grabbed handfuls of helmets from the ponies and moved through the crowd, placing them on all of our heads. Half of the pack had been capped by the time Luna made her way to me. I sort of hoped that she’d bend down and give me a wink to say that she wasn’t in on this, that she wasn’t really listening to the flying ponies and that at the last second we would turn on them and take them all out. Approaching exactly as I’d hoped, she leaned down but there was no wink. Producing a helmet from behind her back, she unceremoniously slipped it onto my head. It became hard to think. Unsure of what really happened, I felt like I had entered a dream.

I bashed down a door. Another hound pushed around me and slashed the pony standing in the room. I pulled out a gun and aimed at another pony. Mentally, I couldn’t pull the trigger. The gun went off. Pony fell.

My claw was wet with blood. A pony lay in the corner, shredded and splayed open. I pulled a dull carving knife out of my hide. Looking at the door entryway, a flying pony stood watching me. The damn thing grinned. I did nothing. I turned around and proceeded deeper into the building.

Mines were strewn on the ground around us. We placed more. Someone tripped. One went off. We dragged the body away and gave it to the flying ponies to dispose of. They took the claws off and dropped the body into the forest. We continued laying mines.

One of the attack pack had been downed. A flying pony had shot him numerous times. We burst out of the ground and started a synchronized charge. They hadn’t yet detonated any of our mines. Somedog felt the need to change that and planted one right beneath one of the ponies. The pony noticed and called out, alerting the rest of their herd. Its body lifted ever so slightly off of the ground. The mine did not go off. We stopped the charge and hid behind some trees, pulled the rifles off our backs, loaded them and turned the safeties off. One of our shots hit the pony who noticed the mine placement. It looked upset, but not too terribly hurt. Fire continued for a few moments.

The two hounds next to me motioned that they were going to move in closer. They wanted me to stay back to provide covering fire. I aimed at the gryphon in the pony party as it was the only one still paying attention to us. The others had turned to observe the phoenix that had just been turned to stone. The two others completed their advance and reestablished themselves behind a new group of trees. As soon as they opened fire, I moved out to join them.

For a moment, I was more lucid. I could finally think clearly, as if the dream had ended. While my own thoughts had come back to me and the terrible dreams I had of my packmates being dismembered had passed, I found that I was still standing in the same place where I was at the end of my least dream. The rifle I had used in the dream sat in front of me with the forcibly applied helmet placed next to it. Something felt off. The rifle and helmet seemed much larger than they had been in the dream. All of the ponies, as well as the one gryphon, were staring at me.

The two hounds in front of me were reloading. Looking down, instead of seeing paws and claws in front of me, there stood a set of pearl white hooves. I tried to slash at them, but they mirrored my movements and I couldn’t hit them. I must have still been dreaming. My two pack mates had turned to see where I had gone. They didn’t seem too happy with what they saw. Angrily, they started moving towards me. Panicking and unsure of what to do, I froze. I looked back up and saw that the lighter grey pony’s horn had started to glow. Unable to do anything myself, it pushed me backwards. The two hounds, now charging at me like they were out to kill me, collided with each other exactly where I had been standing.

It really seemed like they were trying to kill me! Taking advantage of the confusion, I quickly turned around and I ran into the forest behind me. In the panic, I found myself yelling. No. This wasn’t a yell. This was a screech. The shrill scream didn’t hurt my ears nearly as bad as I had expected, though… I ran as fast as I could, but that simply wasn’t as fast as I wanted. The distinct crunching of heavy paws crushing twigs and leaves came closer and closer.

Brush covered the path in front of me. As I approached, I motioned to swipe through it. Instead of my claws, a dull hoof simply pushed the branches out of the way. The heavy footsteps became louder. With no time to find another way, I dove into the brush and did my best to push through it. Twigs, thorns, and thistles scraped at my face and body. I could feel them cutting at my coat, very unusual for such shrubberies on hard Diamond Dog skin. Without time to think about the pain, I powered through it, eventually reaching a clearing. In the clearing stood a lizard chicken. It very closely resembled the one that had turned the pony’s accompanying phoenix to stone. Having seen what kind of damage they could do, I closed my eyes and continued running. Maybe I could make it past safely. From the sounds of it, the two hounds had also gotten to the clearing. I was done for.

One of the hounds let out a yelp. There was a soft impact on the ground far behind me. Then there was a much more painful impact to my face. I had run headlong into a tree, one of the primary risks of running through the forest with one's eyes closed, I’d suppose. Having to open my eyes to find a way around the tree that had rudely interrupted my escape, I decided to take a peek at the commotion behind me. A hound lay on the ground, the bottom half of their body turned to stone. The other was trying to help them up. Now was my chance. I found a relatively clear path and ran down it. The scream of a dying chicken echoed through the trees.

Progress was fast, but not fast enough. Knowing how fast a dog can run was not a comforting piece of information at this time. Rumbling beneath my feet made me realize that I was not nearly as sensitive to vibration as I had previously been. Also, I was standing in a very bad position. Sidestepping out of the way, claws burst from the ground where my body had just been. The oddly gigantic hound looked down at me and approached slowly, ready to lunge at me if I made any sudden movement. All this time, due to the fog in my mind, I hadn’t really noticed who I’d been with. Now that he was staring me down and I was thinking just a bit more clearly, I could clearly see who it was.

“Brutus, it’s me!” I tried to speak to him. He didn’t respond. It was just like Luna back in the burrows. “Brutus, it’s me! Spike!” At the mention of my name, he seemed to pause. It wasn’t for long, though and he raised his paw and readied his claws. Sharp, shimmering claws descended towards my face. I flinched and closed my eyes. Moments later I opened them, surprised that my body was still intact. Brutus had been grabbed by a great black moss-covered hound. There were no claws on this creature, but its immense size towered over Brutus. It flung him backwards as if he were no more than a puppy. Brutus came to a sudden stop as he collided with a tree.

The impact had smashed his helmet. He took a moment or two to look around and then he set his eyes on me. It felt like he had just rediscovered my existence. He scrambled to his feet, but he had ignored the great moss creature that sort of blended into the surroundings. The large beast moved a paw down towards Brutus. By the time he noticed, it was much too late. The paw hit his body and kept moving until it pinched him against the tree he had hit. Brutus let out a yelp of pain. The great arm gave a second shove. The tree cracked under the pressure and Brutus was pushed further into the woody pulp. He let out a squeal and fell limp.

Having seen enough, I knew I had to run. I just hoped that this creature was as slow as it appeared. Moving quickly through the forest, the trees around me seemed to all be covered in a black moss. It appeared to be the same black moss that covered the great hound that killed Brutus. Maybe there was no hound, but it couldn’t have just been moss…. Tendrils of moss reached out and tried to touch me. One managed to skim my… Flank? I picked up the pace losing my orientation and in the process, losing track of where I was. Everything just looked the same. The moss seemed to have dispersed for the most part, though I kept moving just to be sure. Moments before I was able to collect my thoughts, I found myself running, then tumbling down a slippery slope. The slight grade was covered in muck and there wasn’t a part of me that didn’t get immersed in it. I was now a wet, dark brown mess. When I hit the bottom, I just laid there. I had been running for a very long time and I simply couldn’t keep it up. The trees were absent of any black moss patches, just the regular blue and green stuff.

The sun had set some time between when I started running and when I stopped running and now it was getting cold. The wind picked up and I moved to try and find some shelter. After a short search I found a tree with a small hollow, maybe big enough for a pony but certainly not for a Diamond Dog. Despite this fact, the opening was somehow big enough for me to slide inside. Blocked from the wind inside the cozy little hole, I started to warm up. A brief inspection showed that the hollow was actually pretty well hidden from passersby and unfriendly creatures looking for a snack. There also appeared to be no signs that the tree might come to life and kill me. Or so I hoped...

_{Footnote: New Character!
New Perk: Science! Rank 1 -- Take advantage of pony technology with access to base level and Rank 1 high-tech mods.}

Chapter 3 - To Change a Hellhound

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For an hour or so, I sat under that tree, running the events of the last day over and over again in my head. Or had it been days? Everything after I had been capped by those flying ponies was all just a big blur of brutality. Then the clouds of rage parted and suddenly I was being chased by two of my den mates.

What had caused my cap to become dislodged from my head? Was it that grey pony who had used her magic to push me away? But why would she have taken the cap off of my head? Did she know that if she removed it, it would cause my den mates to chase me, giving her and her companions a chance to flee? But then why did Brutus attack me when I lost the cap?

Every time I came up with a good answer to one of the questions, two more questions sprung up and took its place. I slammed my paw down on a nearby stone, expecting to crush it in my frustration. Instead I felt a sharp pain shoot up my right foreleg. I looked down at it and instead of a paw, I saw a hoof attached to a very equine looking limb. I carefully examined the pale white fur that covered both of my now claw-free forelegs. I tapped them together and heard the soft clop as the hooves touched.

“What the fuck,” came a quiet whinny from my mouth. My eyes widened and my hooves then went up to my throat. I misjudged the motion and slapped myself in the neck. “Ugh that hurt,” and there it came again, a bunch of mouth sounds that sounded nothing like my voice.

“Okay, okay. There is no need to panic. Sure, you look like a pony instead of a diamond dog. And sure, you sound like a girl.”
A thought occurred.
I carefully reached around and gingerly inspected myself. “Okay you are a girl. That’s fine. That is fine. I’m stuck in the middle of the single most dangerous location in all of Equestria with no weapons, no armor, and in the body of a soft, squishy, female pony! Did I miss anything?” I shrieked.

I heard twigs rustling and snapping outside of my hiding spot, followed by a low woody growl. Knowing what horrors existed in these woods and having much too recently witnessed them dispose of two of my - not so small - packmates, I decided that I did not want whatever it was to find me, pre-cornered, in this tiny little hollow. Sincerely hoping that I was headed in a safer direction, I bolted out from under the tree. A howl bellowed out from behind me and two more howls answered it.

I galloped as fast as I could with my stubby new legs, trying to get away from whatever monster or monsters were chasing me. I frantically started looking around for something that I could use as a weapon: a large branch, a sharp piece of shrapnel, anything. Instead, all I caught was a glimpse of the beast chasing me. It looked like a shambling pile of twigs and logs, covered in moss and ivy, and it seemed to take the form of a three headed wolf.

I tried to gallop faster to get away from whatever that pile of logs was and nearly ran smack into a low branch. ‘That damn thing could have taken my head off,’ I thought, looking back at the offending limb as the wood wolf tried to dodge under it. In doing so, it bashed one of it’s heads straight into the branch, letting out a yip of pain.

That gave me an idea. “Okay Twiggy, lets see how you like these moves,” I shouted as I veered off the semi-clear path that I had been following and leapt into the wilder part of the brush. The log wolf… thing followed me into the brush, its heavy paws snapping and crushing anything that had the misfortune to fall underneath them.

I wasn’t used to being the smaller, more agile participant of a hunt. However, over the years I had overheard from the more experienced hunters that it was hard to keep up with prey that could scamper around tight spaces. So that’s what I did. I dodged through tight gaps in trees, around rocky outcroppings, under vines, and more low tree limbs. Anything to put a physical barrier between me and old splinter paws.

Unfortunately, it seemed that the wood wolf just didn’t care what stood in its way. It crashed through the trees, stomped over the rocks, tore through the vines, leapt over the branches, all the while shortening the gap between me and it. At least it looked a bit more ragged as it continued the chase but it may very well have been that it had always looked that shabby and it became more noticeable as it got closer.

It was then that the forest dropped away and a massive river raged before me. My choices had suddenly dwindled down to two. I could try to swim across this swiftly flowing body of water and probably get dashed across some rapids, or even eaten by some giant fish thing. Or I could face an absolutely certain death at the jaws of my twigged pursuer.

“Well, as that adventure pony I keep reading about always said, ‘Certain peril is better than certain death’, ” I muttered under my breath.
“Oh, but I really don’t like certain peril.” Looking behind me, the wooden wolf still was not visible, but the brush it was throwing up as it dashed towards me certainly was.
“Certain peril it is!” And with that, I leapt into the water. Within moments I was swept up by the current, and sent speeding on down the river to who-knew-were. I did my best to doggy paddle toward the opposite bank, but it’s really hard to doggy paddle with hooves. I kept getting pushed under the surface by the waves and pulled off course by eddies in the flow. Soon, it was all I could do to not drown.

As the chill of the water began to seep into my bones, I caught sight of my ticket out of this situation: a fallen tree half submerged in the river. Redoubling my efforts to break from the current, I threw limb after weary limb against the flow. As the tree grew steadily nearer, my flailing grew more and more frantic until I was close enough to brush against the branches.
“How am I supposed to grab this damn thing without thumbs!” I cursed my lack of digits as I struggled to find purchase among the damp twigs. Just as the river nearly pulled me away, I found a hold in a small tangle of vines. I used what little stability it granted me to pull against the current and curl my other foreleg around a thicker patch of branches.

Slowly, I worked my way around the fallen tree until the current was pushing me into the decaying log. From there, I began to shimmy my way towards dry land, careful not to let the current pull me under and away from my woody salvation. Once my hind leg touched solid ground, I all but flung myself towards the land. I flopped down upon it, gasping and wheezing on the sweet sweet solid ground.

I looked further up the river and couldn’t see the three headed thicket thing that had been pursuing me. Either it had been smart enough to not jump into the river or had continued the chase and was dragged away by the torrent of water. Or perhaps it was about to walk out of the river and gobble up my soft and presumably tasty pony flesh. With the way the rest of my day had been going, it wouldn’t have surprised me.

As I tried to get up to drag myself a bit further away from the river, my muscles decided against that course of action and I just flopped on back down to the ground. I suppose I wouldn’t really be any safer a few feet away from the river since this entire fucking forest was just as likely to kill me anyway but it certainly made me feel better. So I lay there, looking out at the soft glow that emanated from deep within the forest thinking of what it could possibly be. Maybe it was something magical and friendly, or maybe it was something magical and furious. Neither would surprise me.

Taking time to let my muscles drain away their aches, I found myself staring at the opposite bank. Warming up, the aches had been replaced by weariness and I could begin to feel my eyes droop. Sleepiness took over and as I started to drift off from consciousness, a black form slowly moved down the river’s edge inching towards me. The black equine thing continued approaching until it was just a few feet away. Somewhat unaware that I hadn't been dreaming it, a quick shot of adrenaline surged through me, just enough to get me to my feet, er hooves, and realize that it was very real. Whatever it was jolted and in a bright green flash it was replaced with Rover.

All at once a wave of conflicting emotions hit me and I locked up. On the one paw, it was Rover, the Alpha of our den since before I could remember. He was the first Diamond Dog to praise my repair work. He took me on my first hunt! I mean he takes everyone on their first hunt because he’s the Alpha, but it still mattered. On the other paw, Rover was dead. I had seen the severed head that Rex brought back. There was no way that he could be standing here. On the third paw there was some weird black thing that was standing there just a second ago. One of the more reasonable voices in my head pointed out that this had to be a trick of some kind. A much less composed, much higher pitched voice screamed out that, on the fourth hoof, I was quite the tasty pony sitting beneath a big scary Diamond Dog towering over me, not even a foot away.

My brain sputtered and seized for a moment and did the only reasonable thing it could think to do, emotionally breakdown. I burst into tears and collapsed into the Rover lookalike, wrapping my hooves around it in something that could only be described as a hug. Long, soaking wet purple hair squished between us.

The doppelganger that had taken the form of my former Alpha tensed up. Now it was their turn to try to figure out just what the hell they were supposed to do. “Uhh, this is not the usual reaction that a pony has when faced with a hellhound,” the impostor said in a deep rumbling voice. I just wailed a bit louder and tried to form words that sounded vaguely like, “Diamond Dog!” Peeling off strands of wet purple mane, it pushed me away, breaking the hug.

After a minute of both of us awkwardly standing there, a second flash of green fire engulfed not-Rover and he was replaced with the same strange black creature that had approached me on the riverside. “Okay, I’ve been a part of what you ponies might call a society for a fair few years now and I agree with the crying bit there. The crying is definitely the right response when faced with inevitable death. The hugging part... much less so. Were you raised by hellhounds or something?”

I clumsily started to wipe away my tears with the fetlocks on my hooves, which were still fairly soaked from my impromptu swim, so it more or less just re-wetted my face. “I’m not a pony, I’m a Diamond Dog” I muttered, sniffling and trying to get myself back in order.

“Oh really? Let me see here. Purple mane and tail? Check. Hoofed legs? Check. Butt mark- oh,” the creature stopped. “Now that’s something you don’t see everyday. A pony your age without a cutie mark.”

“I told you I’m not a pony, I am a Diamond Dog,” I insisted.

The creature laughed, “Ya, and I’m an Enclave Raptor.”

I wanted to retort but I wasn’t quite sure what the creature was or for that matter, what an Enclave Raptor was. The creature was in the shape of a pony, but it seemed to be covered in black chitin. Though there were holes in its legs that appeared to be natural, there were cracks in its shell that oozed some dark green fluid. It also had transparent wings that were twitching on its back which appeared to be torn. No pony that I had ever run across looked like this creature.

“Well, you don’t look like any kind of pony I’ve ever seen, so what exactly are you?” I asked.

“Why, that is quite simple. I am leaving,” the creature replied as it limped around me, favoring its front right leg. “I have enough problems as it is, I don’t need to add some delusional mare to that list.”

I stared at the bug-pony thing for a moment and then lightly trotted after it. “I wonder. What kind of problems could a creature that can look like a Diamond Dog at a moment’s notice have.”

The creature squinted at me in what I believe was annoyance. “At first the Red Eye kind of problem, and now the general Everfree kind.” Off in the distance emanated a great bellowing roar, a sound that I had only heard once or twice in my entire life. It was the cry of a full grown dragon. “Never mind, it’s still the Red Eye kind. Out of the way!” The creature tried to limp faster down the river bank but ended up just tripping over his own legs after only a few strides.

I offered a hoof down to help it up, which it stared at for a moment, but soon took a hold of to steady itself as they stood up. “I don’t think you're going to be able to run away from that. Besides what makes you so sure that it’s going to come this way, or that it's even looking for you?”

“I’m not a hundred percent certain, but let's just say I got a bit too up in Red Eye’s business, and now all of his goons have orders to kill me on sight,” he replied, as he got back up and continued to hobble along the riverside.

“Then why not turn into something else? If you can turn into a Diamond Dog, you must be able to just turn into another pony,” I reasoned aloud.

“I did. That’s how I got this far. But as I have learned, a bunch of those marauding maniacs have all sorts of augments, and one of them can see through me like glass. With how kitted out that reptilian behemoth is, it must have a full suite of optical sensors: heat, x-ray, magical, you name it. The only thing that could hide me from that dragon is a few inches of lead shielding.”

For a moment I watched the strange creature hobble away, mulling that last comment over. It was then that an idea struck. I ran in front of the chitinous equinenoid. “You are really inconducive to me fleeing, you know that?” the creature grumped.

“I can’t get you a few inches of lead,” I started, ignoring his comment. “But what about a few dozen feet of dirt? All you need to do is turn into a Diamond Dog and you can just bury yourself. That should be more than enough material to get in the way of whatever detection augments that beast has.”

The creature stood there for a moment as if contemplating what the hell I was up to. “There is one problem with that,” he said. “I’m injured.”

“So?”

“So there is no way that I will be able to dig through that much dirt before Mr. Tall, Chrome, and Scaly finds us.”

“What are you talking about?” I replied arching an eyebrow at him. “Us Diamond Dogs can practically swim through this kind of soft soil, even on a bad day.”

“I suppose if you grew up in a bunch of caverns sure, it’s probably as natural as sucking love, but I’m a changeling. The most I know about digging is that you scrape at the ground and try not to get any of it in your mouth.”

“I’ll show you how, you should be able to pick up the basics fast enough to get us buried away nice and safe.”

“If you consider being trapped under a ton of dirt and rocks safe,” he muttered under his breath. He stood there for a few moments, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to look at the silhouette in the sky that was slowly drawing closer. “Alright, last thing then. Why are you being so insistent on helping me out?”

“That’s an easy one, if I get you out of this hard spot then you are going to help me get out of this forest,” I said.

He took a moment and let out a small sigh. “Fine you have yourself a deal,” he then held out a hoof in front of me. For a few seconds I just stared at the hoof unsure as to what I should do with it.

“Um, why are you holding your hoof out?”

The changeling then slowly and awkwardly retracted it. “It’s a hoof bump. You know, to show good faith in a deal.” I gave him a blank stare and he muttered under his breath, “Damn wastelanders, no manners whatsoever. Alright,” in a flash of green, the changeling was gone and in his place stood Rover. I was ready this time, so all I felt was a mild pang of jealousy. “So show me how to do this digging thing Ms. Hellhound” he growled at me.

“Diamond Dog,” I said, trying to correct him once more. I’ll worry about being called ‘Ms’ later. “For starters, move your paws in front of you, with the tips of your claws pointed straight down,” I mimed the motions so that he knew what I meant.

Pony senses were the worst possible thing for trying to figure out if a massive cybernetically enhanced dragon had flown over you, in a tunnel, twenty feet under the ground, hastily constructed by a complete and utter novice.

“Are they gone yet?” I asked, unable to make out the slightest sound or vibration coming through the earth above us.

“Shhh! I’ve told you like seven times, I don’t know. I’m not used to this body yet. Everything sounds off, kinda echoey,” came the reply from the pitch blackness just a foot or so to my left.

I pawed at the ground, moving a little stone around that I had found when the changeling had dug out our hidey hole. The air was already starting to get warm, which was a sure sign that the air was getting stale. Just as my thoughts started to turn to the fact that I was trapped under about twenty feet of dirt with no way to dig myself out, my companion muttered something to himself.

“What? Did it pass by?”

“Maybe? I can’t quite tell,” he replied, his tone thick with concentration.

I held my breath in anticipation, the tension rising in our little pocket as I could almost hear him straining to listen through the dirt. “Ya, I think that was it, I think it’s flown straight on past.”

I let my breath out in a massive sigh. “That’s great, now dig us out of here.”

After a few more lessons on how to properly dig upwards, as well as a healthy coating of dirt covering every square inch of me, the changeling had dug us out of the pit. Off in the distance we could just make out the silhouette of the dragon as it slowly dipped below the tree line.

“Well, that turned out better than expected,” the changeling rumbled and in a green flash turned back into his battered equinenoid form. “To be honest I thought that ol’ metal scales would still see us through all that dirt.”

“I told you my plan was going to work out,” I cleared my throat. “Now then, I expect that you’ll be able to hold up your end of our deal?”

“Of course, of course. After all, a changeling such as myself would never go back on a promise that I had made to some random mentally distraught pony that I met all of fifteen minutes ago.”

I gave the creature a flat look, and attempted to bear my teeth at him. “I’m sorry, is that look supposed to be scary, or adorable?” he asked, looking quizzically at me.

I hated this pony body so much.

“It was a joke Ms. Prissy hooves, I have no plans on going back on our little bargain. Besides, having a second set of eyes to watch your back is always handy. Now then, we didn’t quite get off on the right hoof, the name’s Hallux,” he extended his hoof out to me once more.

This time, I rose my own hoof up, extended it out, and placed it right on top of his. “The name is Spike, it’ll be a pleasure escaping this death trap with you.”

Hallux gave my hoof another odd look and sighed. “Okay Spike, level with me, you weren’t joking when you said you thought you were a hellhound, were you?”

“Diama-” I tried to correct him but he cut me off mid-word.

“Diamond Dog. Right... whatever,” he mumbled.

“Yes, as I am sure I have made it abundantly clear by now that I am in fact, a Diamond Dog.”

Hallux gave me a look over, glancing at my mane, my tail, and my fetlocks - which had surprisingly sprung back into shape the moment they had dried off. “Alright, this is going to be one hell of a ride. Walk and talk hun, I don’t want to be here when the Enclave decides to go from surgical strikes to carpet bombing.” He carefully started to limp down along the river’s edge, making it easy to keep pace with him.

So as we kept an eye out for any more ugly surprises, I recounted the events of the last forty-eight or so hours.

“Then the pony I was chasing, or maybe one of her friends, must have used some kind of spell on me, because all of a sudden I was a pony. A pony, I might add, who was caught between two of my former companions that had flying pony mind control devices clamped to their skulls and set to ‘rip and tear’.”

“So how did you get away?” Hallux asked as he looked over his shoulder, making sure that nothing and nobody was trying to get the jump on us.

“I hightailed it out of there as fast as these stubs would let me and it was a huge misfortune that this death trap of a forest provided some horrors that probably...” I hadn’t really thought about what had happened to Brutus and my other pack mate. They hadn't been bad dogs and it wasn’t like they had been in control of themselves when they attacked me. Now they were probably eaten, killed, or whatever it was that the things in this forest did to their prey.

Not wanting to dwell on the idea of what had happened to my pack mates, I tried to change the subject. “What about you? It sounded like you must have given this Red Eye pony a hunk of zircon and called it diamond.”

“A hunk of what?” Hallux asked.

“It’s a mineral that looks a lot like diamond. It’s another way to say that you had him chasing his own tail.”

Hallux just looked at me for a minute, though I couldn’t really read his expression. It didn’t help that his face was basically blank all of the time since his eyes didn’t have any pupils. If he wasn’t frowning or smiling, I couldn’t make heads or tails of what he was thinking.

Just as the silence was starting to get oppressive, Hallux broke it, “I guess you could say that. To make a long story short, I learned something I wasn’t supposed to. His buddies took offense to my existence and I lead them on a merry chase that nearly ended with me being turned into a pile of soot.”

“What could you have learned that would have had a bunch of his buddies chasing after you?” I asked.

“Does it really matter? A wasteland pony will slit your throat if they think you know where they stashed a daisy sandwich, let alone something as big as I learned,” Hallux muttered. He kicked a small rock into a large granite outcropping that jutted out into the river. The sound of the impact caused something to move out from behind the pile of stone. A large wooden head came into view, then another, and then stump where a head used to be. The creature looked to be in pain as it limped into the open to inspect the noise. Dripping with water, it looked up and noticed the two of us. Growling, it stared us down.

Before either of us could move or make a sound, it leapt at Hallux, pinning him to the ground. He tried to shape shift but when the green flames started to climb up his ankle, they seemed to get caught part way up his leg. The wolf had managed to stick one of its talons into the holes that existed in Hallux’s legs. He tried several times to push past this but each time the flames would get stuck and burn out.

Both of the wooden beast’s heads were so focused on the prey that it had caught that they paid me no mind. Every fiber in my body was screaming to run. Screw the bug pony thing and just get out of there as fast as my four tiny little pony legs could carry me! I started to turn to do just that when a different sensation overtook me. Not fear, or anger, but some kind of deep aching loathing feeling for this creature and the hell that it and this entire forest had put me through.

Instead of running with my tail tucked between my legs, I planted my front hooves, coiled my hind legs, and bucked with as much force as my exhausted body could muster. When my back hooves hit it, there was a deep, wet, satisfying crunch that rang out around us, which was soon followed by a high yipping sound.

My front legs gave out and my entire body awkwardly flopped to the ground. I now had the twig wolf’s full and undivided attention. I tried to push myself up but as soon as I got a half inch off the ground my legs started to shake like there was an earthquake and I fell right back down on my barrel.

On the third try to heave myself to a standing position, I felt the surprisingly cold weight of one of the creature’s stubby paws on my back, forcing me down into the dirt. A deep growl rose up from the two remaining heads’ throats and I could smell the overpowering scent of its breath as they began to lean in towards me.

I scrunched my eyes shut, waiting for the thing to bite my head clean off, when all of a sudden the weight was lifted off of me. I slowly opened my eyes and saw what could only be Hallux, in the form of a manticore, fighting the wood wolf.

Every time that the wood wolf tried to use its claws, Hallux would swat it aside with a flick of his tail. When one of the heads tried to bite at him, he would smack it aside with a paw. No matter what the wolf thing tried to do, Hallux would turn the motion to his advantage with precision and ease. It wasn’t long before he had backed the creature up right to the bank of the river. Knowing that it had nowhere left to go, the wolf tried to use what little room it had to leap at Hallux. He responded by simply ducking under the creature and slammed into its chest, sending it flying into the river.

I watched as the current swept the wolf away from us. Now would be a good time to take a break. Hopefully it wouldn’t be able to find some way back to us...

“Hey. Hey! No. You are not allowed to fall asleep here,” my eyes shot open, I hadn’t even noticed that they had begun to close. “You fall asleep here, you're dead. End of story,” Hallux said, now in what I assumed to be his normal form.

“Sorry,” I mumbled half under my breath. It had been a long day what with all the mind control and the frantic running for my life.

Hallux tried to lift me into a standing position. It took a few tries to get my legs to cooperate but we eventually got me standing up again. “We can take it easy once we’re out of here, but those fire brigades are only going to drive whatever isn’t actively trying to kill them towards us,” Hallux said, as he began to pull me forward.

It was slow going but we pressed on following the river for another few hours until our trail ended in a waterfall. Hallux gave a deep sigh and looked at me for a moment. “Alright, let me try something,” he said and unslung my leg from his back. He then tried shapeshifting into a menagerie of creatures from manticores to some giant winged beetle thing. Every time he would try to fly, the damage to his wings wouldn’t let him get even a foot off the ground.

Eventually he dropped the form he was in and collapsed, panting on the ground. “Well,” he said between gasps, “we’re not getting down that way.” We both just sat there looking out over the cliff at the edge of the forest, just a mile or two away. We both leapt to our feet when we heard a shrill screeching sound not too far from where we were standing.

“I say we put as much distance between us and whatever it is that made that noise, agreed?” I asked Hallux.

“Agreed.”
Just as he replied, a large red thing lunged from over the edge of the waterfall at Hallux. It wrapped itself around his midsection and began to drag him towards the waterfall.

I stood there, stunned for a moment, not quite sure what had just happened. Then some part of my brain gave the rest of me some percussive maintenance and I lurched into action, running after my traveling companion as he was pulled over the waterfall. I ran as close to the edge as I dared and peered over. Below me was a mass of tentacles that seemed to have sprouted from out of the cliff face behind the waterfall.

In that tentically grasp sat what I assumed was Hallux. He was in the shape of some giant half-bear half-bug creature, thrashing away at the appendages that were trying to get a better grasp on him.

I looked around for something that I could use to hurt the monstrosity, a rock or a large stick, or a conveniently dropped laser rifle. While I was hunting for a potential solution to our many armed problem, one of said arms shot up at me. Apparently a giant bug monster wasn’t enough for the greedy bastard, and so it was looking for a pony sized snack. I tried to dodge out of its grasp but it was on me like grease on a worm gear. Next thing I knew, I had been lifted off my paws - Hooves! They’re hooves now - and pulled over next to Hallux who was still thrashing wildly about, wings buzzing in frustration.

I looked over towards the waterfall. Just behind the rushing curtain of water, the mass of writhing tentacles met at a giant red and yellow beak. The tentacle that was holding me began slowly moving me towards the creature's pointy maw. After the evening I had just survived, I refused to let it all end by being an oversized fish’s midnight snack. So I took a page out of Hallux’s book and started to flail in the creature’s grasp.

Unlike Hallux however, I was not a giant half-bug half-bear creature and all my flailing did was have the creature tighten it’s grasp on me. I soon gave up on trying to force my way out of the creature's grasp and started to look around for something, really anything, that might help me loosen the grip of this giant squid thing. I noticed that it had several items lodged in its suckers: some branches and a bunch of rocks.

Slowly, the creature pulled closer towards its waiting beak. In doing so, it had also pulled me closer to a fairly sizable and slightly cracked rock. I waited a few seconds as the tentacles brought the rock, it’s beak, and myself closer together. Then when I was close enough, I lunged for the rock. I tried to wrap my legs around it but I could only get the flats of my hooves on it.

As I tried to pull away from the rock, my hooves stayed attached to it. I blinked and tried to yank my hooves away from it but instead, I somehow pulled the rock clean out of the squid’s suction cup.

I stared at the rock for a moment, having both answered and raised several questions on how ponies could survive without fingers. Once I regathered my wits, I did the only thing I could think to do and started to pound at the tentacle with the rock. The only response I got from the behemoth was it tightening its grip on me further, popping a good few ribs in the process.

As I drew closer to the creature's brightly colored beak, I went over my few remaining options. I could keep flailing once the creature had started to eat me so that I could get it to spit me up. I could start screaming at the top of my petite pony lungs in the hopes that I could draw the attention of something bigger and hungrier so that it would eat the octopus thing. Or I could just give up and accept that this death forest had won and that I was going to die a pony. I thought it over for a moment and came to a decision.

“Damn this deadly fucking forest!” I shouted and hurled the stone at the creature’s beak with all the strength and leverage I could muster. Unfortunately, the shot went wide and the rock flew a few feet above the creature’s beak.

I took a deep breath and began to close my eyes in resignation but was cut short when the creature let out a terrifying shriek. Before I could process what was happening, the octopus’s grasp on me loosened. I immediately took the opening it had presented me, yanked myself loose of its grasp, and promptly began to plummet to the river below.

I tried my best to right myself in the air so that I could dive into the water but before I could get my new limbs to cooperate with me, I splashed right into the river. For a second time that night I tried to learn how to swim with hooves though I did a fair bit better this time around. It helped that the water was calmer here and it didn’t feel like it was actively trying to drown me.

After a few very wet minutes, I had paddled myself close enough to walk to the shore. Once I had dry land under my hooves, I promptly collapsed onto the ground and panted my lungs out. After what must have been a few minutes I heard something else start to splash its way out of the river. I tried to get to my hooves in case whatever was making its way over to me was also looking for a midnight pony snack. When I saw that it was just Hallux I collapsed back onto the ground and resumed panting.

He made his way over to me and collapsed right by my side, taking large heaving breaths as well. “I can’t believe you threw me at that monster,” he said after a while between breaths.

I turned to look at him. “What are you talking about?” I replied breathlessly.

“You threw me right at that thing. Just chucked me, like I was some sort of grenade,” he tried to sound indignant but it mostly just sounded a bit squeaky, like if you were to crush a pony just a bit.

My brain, with a critical lack of resources, could only reply with, “I threw a rock.”

“Yes you numskull, I was the rock,” he tried to yell but it just came out as a wheeze. “I tried to get small enough that it would drop me so that I could transform into something else, but instead I find myself getting chucked like an artillery shell at that monstrosity’s beak!”

It took a few seconds for me to process that. “So that giant bug bear thing wasn’t you?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Then...” I started and was interrupted by the sound of buzzing wings. Without pause we scrambled to our hooves and half-trotted, half-stumbled our way into the underbrush.

Whatever force that was toying with me must have finally decided that I had suffered enough. We had a few close calls as we carefully made our way through the last stretch of forest. We almost stumbled into some giant stone reptile and despite the fact that it had six eyes, it didn’t see us. Or maybe it had already had its fill for the evening and just didn’t want to bother with us.

Hallux nearly stumbled into a hole filled with sharp thorns around its edges. At least we thought they were thorns. As we skirted around them we then noticed that they were covered in small chunks of flesh and splattered with blood. From that point forward, we were more mindful of our pawsteps.

Before long we finally trotted into a clearing that was mostly covered in vines. As I began to trot out into the field, Hallux stopped me with a hoof. “Are you crazy? We can’t just wander out into a patch of Killing Joke.”

“Oh,” I immediately took three steps back. “Are they going to spring to life and try to choke us or something?”

“Worse,” Hallux replied.

“Okay. Do they wriggle inside of you and use your body like some kind of puppet,” I asked waving my hooves around a bit.

“Worse.”

“I’m not sure it can get worse than that.”

“From what HQ has told us it’s a plant that can change you into...” Hallux stopped and just stared out at the vines. “I guess, it turns you into a joke,” he finally finished.

“A joke? So it turns you into something stupid?”

“Well, not exactly. They gave us this example: A few decades ago, a squad was sent to rescue a stranded Volunteer Corps member. One of the ponies from the squad encountered the plant and was found with his entrails completely removed from his body. No heart, no stomach. Hell, no spleen. Nothing. His squad mates said that the last words he had said to them were ‘No guts, no glory’.”

I looked back out at the plants and the gears started to turn in my head. “So lets say, hypothetically, that someone had spent a lot of time around pony technology.” Out in the field of vines there was some movement and a faint noise. “This someone had spent years listening to their songs and reading their files.” The movement seemed to grow more violent and the noise became more pronounced, like some kind of high pitched, reedy laughter. “And they very recently thought about how life could be a bit easier if he could think like one of the ponies he had studied for years. Even if it was just for a moment.”

“Spike! Get away from there!” Hallux shouted at me. I blinked and looked up from the rustling vines that had made their way towards me and looked back at Hallux, who must have stumbled his way there while I had been putting the pieces together.

“What? I’m not...” Just as I said that vines burst out from the patch at me and Hallux. I didn’t have time to blink, let alone move away from the explosion of tendrils as they wrapped around me. The laughter was nearly deafening. Hallux had been a bit more prepared and leapt away from the torrent of creepers, just able to stumble out of their grasp.

The vines tried to stretch out and touch him but every time they would find a way to crawl an inch closer, Hallux would scramble three inches back. Before long, the laughter had started to grow more quiet and the vines slowly receded back into their patch. They lingered on me for a bit longer and then unwound from around my legs and barrel. I took a moment to examine myself and I couldn’t see or feel any additional changes.

Hallux looked at me with disbelief. For a while we just stood there staring at each other. Eventually I broke the silence, “Well.. I guess I’m already a joke...”

After we skirted around the edges of the Killing Joke patch, it wasn’t long before the dense forest started to give way to more and more of the dead vegetation I had known all my life.

“So, one more time. Just so I have it straight,” Hallux started for the sixth - maybe seventh? - time now. It was getting hard to keep track.

“Yes, I really am a Diamond Dog. A few of my den mates, who were being controlled by those armored flying ponies, tried to kill me after I had been transformed. Then some small, grey, horned pony saved my life by pushing me back with her magic. After learning about and encountering the Killing Joke, I am now very certain of what happened to me tonight,” I snapped, cutting him off, answering the same few questions he seemed to ask me every time he opened his mouth.

We continued to walk in silence for another few minutes, passing by a bunch of what I assumed to be long-dead apple trees in some pony’s orchard. After another minute, I spoke up again, “Sorry about that, I’m just exhausted. Today has been anything but a dig through the clay.”

“It’s fine,” Hallux said. “I guess what I should be asking is: what do you plan on doing now? My guess is that your pack isn’t exactly going to welcome you back with open hooves. Uh, claws... Paws?”

I tried to think about that. “I’ll be honest, the only thing I am concerned with right now is finding the softest patch of dirt I can and sleeping for the next year.”

Hallux nodded as he nearly tripped over his own hooves and we trudged forward in silence for another few minutes. It wasn’t long before we spotted an old sagging barn, and slowly aimed our stumbling towards it. The wind and near constant rain hadn’t been kind to the building. It looked like it could crumble around us at any moment. That did little to deter us from flopping down on the ground in unison. Both of us were unconscious long before our bodies hit the mildly damp earth.

_{Footnote: Level Up!
New Perk: Iron Hoof Rank 1 -- Channel your earth pony magic to unleash devastating fury! Unarmed attacks do 20% more damage to your opponent.}

Fallout Equestria: Dogs of War

by Elden andel

Chapter 1 - Den of Hounds

Chapter 2 - Dog and Pony Show-down

Chapter 3 - To Change a Hellhound