Rainbow Dash stared at the remains of the once great city. The bones of thousands of buildings lined the street, with its remains scatted along the footpaths along with various scrap that had been collected over the years, what remained of roads shot off in thousands of directions, each coated with trucks and cars and busses, either toppled over or buried deep in the destroyed road. A bridge ran just over her and collapsed in the distance. What astounded Rainbow most though, was the destruction. That something turned these once magnificent stone and metal structures into nothing but ash. That in one swift action, it wiped out an entire civilisation; that must have been some pretty powerful magic.

As she walked through the city, absorbing the depressive wonder, she came across a marble building bigger than Canterlot castle. It stretched far along the street, and the huge tower that sat in the middle of the building was so high, she had to crane her head back to look at it. Two huge staircases ran up along the sides of the building to the entrance and the walls of the building were significantly damaged, missing huge chunks. Behind her laid a trench, running through a large square surrounded by roads.

The world was deafeningly silent. It made the place eerier; having no noise other than the occasional gust of wind and the sounds of Rainbow's runners against the ground. It made her feel so alone; so isolated. Just as Rainbow thought that, a loud BANG cut through her thought and suddenly a sharp pain stuck her in the thigh. She looked down and on her cyan track pants there was a growing dark red circle with a hole that went straight through her leg. She had been shot and the bullet had torn through the muscle, narrowly missing the bone. Rainbow turned around to where the source of the sound came from and saw a large, muscular chartreuse yellow man.

He was bald with a taught face, giving him a constant anger look about him. His blue veins popped out of his arms and legs. He wore rags as a set of shorts held together with a large belt, donning bits of scrap metal around it as armour. A chest plate poorly covered his torso, only his abdomen, held by large strips of leather and a shoulder piece made of a tyre with spikes sticking out sat in its appropriate place. In his hands was a metal rod attached to a clump of wood which was tucked between his elbow. He pulled back a component before sliding it back in and took aim at Rainbow again. He missed however, as Rainbow ducked away behind an oddly shaped metal carriage. Other of these great beasts heard the gunshots and began joining in. Bullets were pelting against the cover and Rainbow Dash was pinned down and her current condition wasn't making things better. A couple metres ahead, she noticed a bus stop.

'If I could just make it to there,' she thought, 'I could get away from them.'

The gunfire seemed to have died down a little, the giants were reloading. In possibly the only window of opportunity she was to be given before being gunned down, Rainbow made a dash for it, though it was more of a hobble. Her leg was already half-soaked in blood and she was becoming weak. She managed her way around the corner and continued limping away as fast as she could. The thundering footsteps of the creatures were right behind her. She dove into a crater just out of their view, her cyan jumper, were covered in soot. She was breathing deeply, as she tried to cling onto life and to regain her breath but soon feel silent as the giants approached.

"Which way did she go?" One of them boomed.

"Dunno." Said another, rather loudly.

'Do these guys have an inside voice?' Rainbow thought, in her delirious state.

"It doesn't matter though. I got her pretty good in the leg, She'll be dead soon enough."

The mutants sauntered off but Rainbow Dash had another problem to worry about; her leg. She was bleeding out heavily and what the brute said scared her. She looked down at the leg. Her entire thigh was covered in blood. She unzipped her jumper revealing a skin-tight rainbow singlet.

'Celestia, I stand out like a sore hoof.'

She wrapped the jumper tightly around her wound to keep pressure on it. But it didn't stop the bleeding. The blood still soaked through to her jumper, but only lightly. She was getting even more light-headed. Everything went fuzzy, her ears went numb, and she felt her body becoming weak and tired. She felt herself fading away.

'If this hole in my leg isn't going to kill me, those giants sure will.' She softly chuckled as she faded away.

Spike crept through the foreign city, moving as silently as possible. He was alone and scared. He had spent his entire life with Twilight and she always comforted him and made him feel safe. But now, she was nowhere to be seen and this world was terrifying to him, filled with shadows and strange noises. It was much harder for him to sneak around thanks to his new height. He wasn't used to having to duck so low to hide behind something now that he was a teenage boy, which was far taller than he used to be.

He never managed to eat the cupcake he ordered at sugar cube corner before Trixie whisked him away, and because of that he was famished, and rather frustrated. A sharp pain struck as his stomach rumbled, causing him to groan and clutch at it.

'Ugh, I need to find something to eat,' He looked across the desolated road, 'If there even isanything.'

Spike anxiously made his to the nearest intact building to scavenge for food and squeezed through the doorframe and door itself, tearing the cuff of his light purple long sleeve shirt that was underneath his pistachio green t-shirt. The door wasn't budging but it wasn't as if he wanted to move it. If anything did exist in this deceased world, he did not want to alert it of his presence. The entrance of the building was dark and gloomy. The florescent light flickered onto the bubbled, scorched wallpaper that was in patches on the wall. The tiles were cracked, shattered and in pieces, coated with skeletons covered in soot. On tip-toe, Spike made his way down the hallway, stepping over the dead bodies. He passed several rooms, looking fairly similar to each other, the same wallpaper and tiles as the hall, filled with desks and filing cabinets.

'There's gotta be a kitchen around somewhere…'

Suddenly, as if Celestia answered his prayers, the next room he came across was a staff kitchen. Inside was a refrigerator in the corner. A small cork table, suited for four, sat in the middle of the room, with various crockery set on it. A counter sat just in the entrance, coated with knives, spatulas and a box of BlamCo Mac & Cheese.

"Oh boy, finally a break!" Spike grinned at himself.

As he ran to greet the 200 year old macaroni, he heard two sets of booming footsteps from the adjoining room, growing louder and louder. He ducked down behind the bench top at the last second.

"No! Please! No, no no no!" He heard a voice scream.

"Quiet!" A much deeper, gruffer voice replied to him.

One of the footsteps seemed to be dragging a person behind them, a young man. The man screamed and grunted, obviously trying to break free of his captives grasp. There was a loud thud as the man was thrown up onto the table.

"No! Stop! STO-!" was all the man could say before a loud pop and the sound of wet tearing. Spike's breath became erratic, silent, but erratic. Whatever these things were, they were not friendly. He just wanted to grab his food and get out.

While the two voices were stuffing their faces with the corpse, Spike pressed his back against the bench and slowly reached up above him to the bench top. He patted around, trying to orientate himself, until finally he felt the box in his hand. Spike gleamed in joy to himself as he wrapped his fleshy claw around it, hoping he could grab it and sneak out, unbeknownst to the lumbering beasts.

As Spike inched the packet closer to himself, he caught it on an empty glass soda bottle, sweeping it off the counter and onto the ground, the high pitch sound ringing through the room. In the sudden shock, he jolted his arm down and hugged the Mac & Cheese. The sounds of devouring ceased and one of the creatures began to investigate, slowly moving towards the bench. Spike could hear the footsteps come closer and then, suddenly, a silence fell over the room that seemed last an eternity. And in that silence, Spike's heart stopped. In such a moment when it was so silent you could hear a pin drop, there was not even a 'Thump'. It was as though his entire body stopped to keep him from being heard. Just when he felt like the voice had brushed him off, Spike saw a giant green hand lash out and grab his shoulder.

"There you are!" The mutant bellowed.

Before he knew it, Spike was up against the now cracked wall sitting next to the entrance. The mutant had flung him into it, leaving a crater in the drywall and a flaring pain throughout Spike's back. The giant then pulled out a twisted lump of wood with nails sticking out at every angle, with his friend at the table removing a rifle from his back. Almost instinctually, Spike hurriedly crawled out the door frame and picked himself up, before darting down the hall. The giant, green mutants quickly followed suit, smashing through the door. Spike came to the end of the hall and turned right at the intersection. He jumped over a fallen filing cabinet and slid over the corner of a rotted wooden desk.

Spike could see a door opposite the right turn at the end of the hallway. He rushed to it and wiggled the handle, but it was locked. Spike shoulder barged the door, but all that accomplished was sending another flash of pain up his back. Suddenly he heard a loud crack to his left and a whizzing past his head. When he looked up he saw the mutant's again, the one with the rifle had it drawn and was aiming at him, while the other was pushing the desk out of the way. The bullet had missed but lodged into the wall behind him. He ran off again, wasting no time to put as much distance between him and the giants. Looking behind him, Spike took an almost immediate left into a doorway and down stairwell. The sudden, unexpected drop caused Spike to trip and he began tumbling down, putting his body through even more torment. He let out a long groan, rolling over once he hit the ground and wrapped his arms around his chest. Puffs of dust trailed along the roof, scattering out into the air as the mutant above stepped with heavy feet. The dust stopped at the stairwell, causing Spike's heart to skip a beat. He frantically crawled along the ground trying to move out of the monster's sight before he reached him, his ribs aching at every breath. He was unsuccessful in his attempt however, as the giant quickly caught sight of him and came bounding up. Spike glanced over his shoulder to see the mutant only a few feet away, towering over him; and Spike's weight gave out from underneath him causing him to drop down on his back, and froze in place.

"Now I have you!" The mutant said grabbing the club from his back.

"Mam-ma"

The mutant stopped with his club half drawn and looked at the pram next to him. That was the last thing he saw. An ear shattering blast rang through the hall as his head and majority of his torso blew out across the wall, covering it in blood and gore. His lower legs were the only thing still intact, left standing for only half a second before collapsing down onto the ground. Spike simply laid there, stunned from the explosion and what he just saw. Had he been standing there, been only a few feet closer, that would be his entrails scattered across the room and he would of joined the unfortunate souls that laid in the remnants of this workplace. His mind wanted to put as much space between him and the gore splattered along the hallway, either because it did not want to spend another second exposed to the scene to contemplate it, or because it knew that the blast would attract the other creature's attention. The young drake (or whatever he was now) picked himself up off the ground and continued his escape, making for the distant door.

'Here's hoping this one's actually opened.'

As it turned out, the door was not even completely shut. It couldn't be; the wood that held the door's catch had rotted away, so it pushed open with a breeze. That is until it was stopped by the segments of roof that had crumbled off from the giant section occupying the room. The roof had collapsed under the weight caused by water seeping into the wood, or perhaps even the harsh magic that had devastated the rest of the world, crushing the work stations that resided below. Regardless, it provided an exit for Spike and, with steady footing, he crawled up the steep incline and back onto the top floor. The room was almost completely empty with most of its contents shifting to the lower level as the floor had given away. The only piece of furniture that was not piled up at the bottom of the slant was a desk that was teetering on the edge. Spike made sure to stay as far away from it as possible, the last thing he needed was to send it crashing down and giving away his location. A more recent addition was a crude sleeping bag stuffed in the corner, covered in fresh blood.

The entrance to the room was wide open, the door had been torn from his hinges as though it had been hit by a train, no doubt the work of Spike's pursuers. Opposite the room was the remnants of a wall and beyond that another doorway leading to a familiar room. Spike slipped through the wooden skeleton, the rotten timber peeling away and clenching to his clothes, and entered the kitchen where the mutants had dragged the former wastelander to his demise. He still laid on the table with his lower half completely torn from his torso and his remaining entrails stretched between. Blood dripped onto the ground as the puddle beneath the casualty grew too large for the table it oozed onto. His face still bore the scream he'd made in a plea for help. It was the survivor's sleeping bag Spike had seen, the man was just finding shelter from the mutants. That was what the trap was for, the obscure hiding spot; for a place to rest, a respite from the deceased world. Twilight's words echoed through Spike's mind, 'a smart pony learns from their mistakes, a smarter one learns from the mistakes of others.' He certainly learnt from this; that sanctuary is an illusion, nowhere is safe. The drake grabbed his box of macaroni and left back into the city of rubble.

For the third time now Rainbow slipped back into consciousness, feeling even weaker than before. Her bleeding seemed to have slowed down, but her right pant leg was now a deep red. The pain had become a throbbing ache that she'd come accustomed to, only causing her to occasionally groan. The realisation suddenly hit the former Pegasus, her heart sank and her eyes began to fill with tears.

'I'm not gonna make it…' Rainbow Dash thought, 'This is it.'

As Rainbow's life slipped away through the puncture in her leg, her mind filled with regret. There was so much more for her to do, so much more for her to be. She wanted to go places; places that would make Daring Do's adventures look like a trip to the market. She wanted to be a legend, not a nonentity found dead in a hole she scurried into like a rat with her only injury caused by an idiotic act. Suddenly, Rainbow hear soft footsteps echoing through the street. With the last of her strength, the multi-coloured hair girl pulled herself up the crater to ground level, attempting to gain the attention of whoever the source of the noise was coming from. In the distance, Rainbow could make out a vibrant purple and green shirt.

"Hey," Rainbow wheezed waving her hands, "over here."

The figure began to run towards her, and it seemed to be another hostile inhabitant coming to finish her off. Dash wanted to fight, but she couldn't; she felt lightheaded and her body stayed to go numb as the blood loss took its toll. It was only until the figure answer her that she realised who it was.

"Rainbow? What in Equestria happened to you?" Spike asked as he slumped her arm over his shoulder.

"G-gian… Beasts… right through, leg…" She mumbled as her eyelids began to droop.

The young dragon picked the tomboy off the ground, "Come on, we need to get you out of here."