Another long one. Enjoy!
Chapter 8
Sound waves of the nearly inaudible sort reverberated throughout the Everfree Forest, disturbing many a slumber, but, unfortunately, not yet having the desired affect.
Raymond Schaffer removed the small, steel whistle from his mouth and scanned the dark thicket ahead of him. The forest was eerily quiet. Not the "wilderness" sort of quiet where there was the occasional birdcall or chirp of some small bug, but the kind of quiet you get used to when you visit a morgue: not a sound. There was only the wind that rocked the canopy and Ray's whistle.
Somepony shifted behind him. Ray glanced over his shoulder at the huge red stallion who had accompanied him down the southern half of the forest's edge: Applejack's brother. The quiet colt came up to Ray's shoulder, but could probably stare Gerald right in the face at his height. Raymond had been surprised at first when he'd met the behemoth of a quadruped: he looked almost like a regular draft horse due to his size, large enough to ride off into the sunset… not that he'd do that, of course.
Despite his size, the scarred human knew he would like the stallion moments after he'd met him. It seemed he too knew the value of silence. He hadn't gotten much more than two words out of the aptly-named Big Macintosh since their meeting and subsequent partnership in the search for the Apple Family dog. Luckily, Applebloom talked for the both of them.
"Why do ya keep stoppin' and puttin' that thing in yer mouth?" the little yellow filly questioned, a little put off by both of her companions' silence at a time like this. "We need ta keep movin' if we're gonna find Winona!"
Ray simply grunted and tried the whistle again. He questioned Applejack's reasoning behind pairing him with the filly. Macintosh he could understand: they had several common traits and Raymond found himself genuinely enjoying his company. Applebloom, however…
"I think she just sees me as a bed…"
They had been searching for well over an hour. Applejack and her friends (those other locals he'd met at the party including Sparky and Pinkie Pie) were searching the northern edge of the forest past Sweet Apple Acres, while Raymond, Mac, and Applebloom scoured to the south, closer to Ponyville. Still no sign of the Apple mutt. Ray hated to admit it, but if the Forest was half as dangerous as these ponies made it out to be then he doubted they would see the canine alive, if at all. An uncomfortable grimace crossed his usually neutral features whenever he caught sight of the little Apple filly's desperately hopeful expression.
If they found it dead he had no idea what he'd do. Gerald told him he was good with civvies, but children? It didn't help that the inhabitants of this damn planet were thrice as cute as anything he'd ever seen. Oh God, if the filly cried…
Ray dispelled all thoughts of that very likely tragedy from his mind and kept walking, stopping intermittently to blow the whistle. Applebloom called for her dog constantly from her perch atop her big brother's huge wooden yoke, and every once in a while Mac would do the same. His deep, booming voice pounded through the trees, reverberating and echoing back into the small group. Ray had been under the impression that forests didn't produce an echo, but hey: he had also believed in the basic laws of nature before he'd met Pinkie Pie, so… yeah.
The quiet human now thought he understood why the equally quiet work-horse rarely said more than two words to anyone: he could feel that yell in his chest! Ray repressed an involuntary shudder at the thought of being chewed out by the red colt. He would take a dozen pissy staff sergeants on rather than face Mac in a shouting match.
The search went on like this for an unknown interval of time: Apples, young and old, shouting, while Ray occasionally stopped to blow his whistle. They were getting uncomfortably close to the town, much to the dismay of the scarred soldier, and the sun was closing on the horizon. Despite everything Jer told him about himself and civilians, Raymond was still uncomfortable around anyone without a uniform. Even though he was technically no longer affiliated with the Armada, or any branch of Weyland-Yutani's private military for that matter, he still considered himself a soldier of the Company, and as such, apart from civilian life.
Even though Weyland's "Exterminators" were mainly comprised of former members of the military, they were labeled as a privatized civilian outfit: therefore paid through a separate pool of Company shares meant for loan to "entrepreneurs of the future" as Director Yutani reportedly called them. Knowing this, citizens of even the most backwater colonies treated them as if they were Internal Affairs Officers, door-to-door salesman, or some other bullshit like that. They didn't hold onto that image for long, however. Not many door-to-door salesmen tote nukes.
Now, Ray hated having to deal with them, but Jer was right: on the off chance that he did speak, civvies listened to him. Maybe it was the eye. The deep scarring sort of drew attention to his face. The former sergeant didn't care. Whatever it was, it worked.
As the sun descended below the tree line, Ray couldn't help but think about what a waste of time this was for him. He missed Earth dearly, but getting off this obscenely colorful planet wasn't really urgent business in itself for the tall human. Earth wasn't going anywhere, and this place was pleasant enough, despite certain disturbing qualities. Even so, he didn't feel right being there. He wasn't accustomed to so much... decency? These creatures threw them, two possibly dangerous aliens, a fucking party for Christ's-sake! If they had been on leave on Cyra, or even Earth, someone would've tried to break into their ship at dry-dock, or mug the two humans on their way to one of those loud clubs Jer liked. Maybe this decency was a result of Ponyville being a small rural township with only a single bar (and zero brothels from the looks of it), but Ray didn't care. He didn't want to give himself enough time to see any more of the fair planet at the risk of accidentally tainting its innocence. If their reaction to the failed robbery only a few days ago was any clear sign of these ponies resistance to malice, then the scarred human was certain that keeping himself and his eternally trigger-happy companion planetside too long was a horrible idea.
"And you let him leave. Nice going, Sergeant. Shouldn't you be panicking right now?" Raymond's conscience hissed. Suddenly feeling rather distressed by his friend's absence, the scarred soldier almost didn't hear it: the sound for which the three-member search party had been hoping (or in Ray's case, dreading) for several hours.
Somewhere further inside the darkening forest, a dog was barking.
Everything froze. Ray looked to his two pony compatriots and immediately all thoughts of Gerald's whereabouts left his mind.
The filly was going to make a break for the forest. Ray could see it in her eyes. She was going to bolt, and he was too far away to stop her.
Shit.
"WINONA!" Applebloom screeched, likely distressed at the hoarseness of the barking creature. The little country filly dove from Mac's yoke, narrowly avoiding his grabbing hooves, and darted straight into Everfree Forest.
Trying his best not to think too hard about it, Raymond sprinted in after her. Mac called ineffectually from behind and attempted to give chase as well, but his exceptionally broad build slowed him down to the point where he had no hope of catching them. As Ray pursued the yellow filly ever deeper, even the red stallion's most earth shattering yells of "COME BACK!" and "AY-BEE SO HELP ME I'LL WHUP YER FLANK!" began to fade. Still, the little Apple filly galloped toward the ever-growing sounds of a canine in distress.
"WINONA! Oh, Celestia, please be okay! Please!"
"Motherfucking dog! Are you running away from us? Because that's the only reason I can think of that explains us not being able to hear Mac as we go deeper!" Ray ducked under a low overhanging branch and wove his way around several closely packed willow and spruce trees, trying to keep up with Applebloom. The damn kid had quite the advantage over Raymond at the moment: her size. While she could simply breeze under and around the thickets and berry bushes that hugged the ground wherever it wasn't occupied by a tree, Ray was forced to vault over them, or try to trample through the dense foliage. "Crazy girl! Fucking slow down and think for a sec—Oomph!"
The exterminator's right boot became entangled in the thin, springy branches of a choke-cherry tree, twisting his ankle and wrenching him downward halfway through his short flight over said tree: making it all the shorter. As his upper body began its descent to the forest floor, Ray instinctively threw his arms out in front of him to try and cushion the blow.
*CRAC-CK*
"SON OF A—AAUGH!" Ray bleated in anguish, clutching his re-fractured left arm and holding back tears of agony. Through the haze of pain that threatened to take his consciousness away from him, Ray was aware of frantic cries and the incessant barking of the damn dog that had gotten him into this mess.
He chanced a look at his damaged arm, remembering at the last second that looking at an injury made it hurt even more.
Oh, the regrets.
Splintered bone poked out of a small tear in his service jacket: stark white clashing with the dark leather of his unadorned clothing. In the three seconds it took for the agonizing human to take in the damage, blood began to seep through, marring the pristine white bone with bright rivulets of maroon fluid. Profanities born of pain and a sudden onrush of light-headedness danced through Ray's consciousness like roiling flame. One thought stood out above all the others, however:
"I fucking hate dogs!"
Did he hit his head? Each urgent bark seared his senses, causing a deep, throbbing pressure in the back of the human's skull, like a blood pressure cuff to the spinal cord. The sounds of a canine in distress were fading, and Applebloom was fading along with them. Thoughts of losing the country filly in such a compromising environment immediately snapped the injured human out of his pained stupor. He swung himself forward onto the balls of his feet and stumbled forward, ignoring the jolting pain in his arm and throbbing ache in his ankle. Turning in the direction of his prey, the hunter half ran, half stumbled his way after them, each step threatening him with collapse.
As he came nearer to the source of the frenetic noise, Ray checked his hip to make sure he still had his sidearm.
"This had better be the most amazing dog on the planet, or I'm going to shoot it and make it into a hat."
The few moments that Winona couldn't breathe were by far the longest in her life. Unlike the breathlessness she felt when the giant yellow spider was violating her face, this suffocation felt complete. It was as if her lungs, as if her entire body, were wiped from existence: torn apart effortlessly into millions of tiny pieces and flung across a vast distance. When the Goat-pony snapped its claws, for an instant, Winona saw everything. The vastness of the universe. The futility of life. Past, present, and future colliding at speeds greater than light itself. She was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. All was seen, and all was comprehended. Winona, for the first time in her privileged existence, wished for death. Anything to make the visions stop.
Oh, Great Lights, the pain! Winona couldn't remember when she'd last felt this way. The closest she came was the birthing of her last litter. Last. That word, no, that feeling had new meaning for her now. She knew she would never create life naturally again, somehow. The understanding forced its way into her through the pain and darkness, just as the visions of all that was, is, and could be did the same. Something was going to happen to her. Something grand…
The vision was marred with pain, but she knew it was a grand thing she would do. She had to live! Get away from this place! Away from the Goat-pony and his giant baddog spiders!
All of this happened within the span of seconds, but for Winona the pain and suffocation lasted a thousand years. She came to be once more exactly as she left: without warning. Her everything snapped together with a loud pop, atoms rearranging to form tissue, blood, and bone instantaneously. The frightened dog would have gone into shock if not for her resolve to live and the meddling of some outside force.
Winona came into being once more five feet above the turf of the Everfree Forest. The weight of her own body came crashing back to her, and, never having traversed between levels of gravitational pull, she was wholly unprepared. Her stomach tied itself in knots and her intestines jostled within her. She spent a full seven seconds preparing to hit the ground before she realized the full weight of her predicament: she was floating… like no canine ever should.
The airborne animal's stomach settled just long enough for her to vomit. Very little came out besides bile, but the action itself was therapeutic, and her nausea passed quickly afterward.
As her body began to calm, despite the fact that she was hovering, Winona felt an extra weight settle in her chest. It was a heavy, ominous feeling, but Winona had little time to dwell on it before more pressing matters pushed her to change focus.
Winona was flying. She had no control over her flight path, but that did little to change the fact that she was now weaving among the leafy trees of Everfree with the ease and grace of a rather well practiced feather-pony. The distressed canine struggled to move, straining against her inert muscles and whatever strange force that was holding her aloft.
Eventually, having floated aimlessly for several minutes, Winona gave up. Panting from her exertion, she decided to revert to her tried and true fallback plan. It had yet to actually fail her in practice, so Winona decided to go for broke.
"BARK! BARK! YIP! SNARL! BARK! BARK! SNARL…"
"Man's best friend my ass," Raymond sneered to himself as he tried desperately to close the distance between himself and the increasingly audible dog and pony show ahead of him.
The pain in his arm had lessened to a dull ache as endorphins flooded his system, inundating his pain receptors and cutting off communication of grief to his brain. Unfortunately, due to its extended use while chasing Applebloom, Ray received no such reprieve from his ankle. Every step ground into him like a pestle on unsuspecting kernels of corn. It was all Raymond could do not to cry out with every step.
Schaffer had no idea how deep inside Everfree they'd ran, but he could've sworn the sun was still above the horizon only a few moments ago. A premature twilight had fallen around him, and the underbrush was getting thicker. Ray was forced to rely on the scarce sunbeams filtering through the canopy and that insufferable barking for direction. Due to his many years of experience as a soldier for the Company, the stumbling human was able to split his concentration effortlessly between pursuit of his two charges and thinking up creative ways to kill Applejack's beloved dog.
"I'll drown it in energy waste from the jeep. Then I'll skin it for a rug to put in the cockpit of the Duckling… yeah… that'll work." Ray tripped on a downed tree branch, cracking his broken arm against a gnarled oak. An angry hiss escaped his lips. "No. Not painful enough."
Raymond was halfway through a rather colorful scheme involving Jer's stash of caustic chemicals, several wooden stakes, and a canister of plasti-seal he had been using to patch up the front console of the ship when he noticed that the barking had stopped. The momentary relief at being rid of the irritating din was quickly pushed aside by a surge of gut-wrenching fear: he couldn't hear Applebloom either.
He was again struck by the absolute silence of the forest around him. He wanted to throw up. He'd lost them… in this hostile place. Ray began to pray for a sound, barking, anything! He was startled by a shuddering sigh, but quickly realized it had been him letting out a breath. He was unaware he'd been holding it.
The scarred human checked his hip, but found no relief in the WY-3.4 Standard-Issue .45 Sidearm nestled there.
"This isn't a weapon. I might as well throw rocks at whatever mythical monster comes crashing through these trees for me. Why didn't I bring my fucking pulse rifle?" Ray wiped nervous sweat from his brow and broke into a quick, loping jog, hoping against hope that the two Apples were still among the living. He didn't have to go far before he had his answer.
Winona's inevitable re-acquaintance with the ground came suddenly, and the loudly protesting canine had no time to react as her body, once again subject to the law of gravity, fell six feet to the forest floor. Her furious barking was cut off with a surprised yelp.
Something jostled painfully in her chest and her head pounded sickeningly, but other than the continued paralysis of her legs, Winona was relatively unharmed by the fall.
The downed canine checked her surroundings, having been too distracted by her own frenzied yapping to get a good look around.
She was in a small clearing, though very little light shone inside. The trees surrounding the clearing leaned oppressively inward, as if preparing to rain punishment upon her. (baddog!) Their lush, yet strangely threatening branches overlapped above the clearing, serving as an effective barrier against the Golden Ball.
Using whatever dim light that managed to pierce her leafy umbrella, Winona was able to make out several large mounds of clay and what looked to be dead twigs clustered near the center of the clearing, just a few feet to her left. Several white feathers lay shed upon the loamy earth near the mounds, some drifting lazily in response to Winona's haggard panting. One drifted by so closely that it brushed off her snout.
Fresh chills swept down Winona's body. She didn't smell anything on the feather. That wasn't right. Not right at all.
A prickly, tickling feeling settled into her legs, and when Winona tried to shift them, and was rewarded with a stuttering twitch in her haunches and lower legs. Unfortunately, there was no time to celebrate her victory, small though it was.
"WINONA!"
Bow Pony. The frightened canine had heard her following and had tried to warn her away, but she kept coming. The little pony was disregarding her barking as a cry for help, maybe? Winona didn't know, and she didn't care: all she wanted was for Bow Pony to be as far away from the clearing as possible. Her maternal instincts kicked in, and she tried desperately to get her legs to move more than an inch. She needed to get up. Now.
Those feathers…
They nagged at Winona even as Bow Pony came crashing into the dim clearing, shouting her sweet little head off.
No smell. What did that mean? She knew it was important. The only things she wasn't able to smell were those see-through things on the side of the farmhouse and that dark fire-lizard that followed Talky Pony aroun—wait. Lizard.
She couldn't smell Crazy Pony's water-lizard either. Feathers. Somewhere deep within Winona's conscious, something clicked.
A yellow, red-maned filly wearing a large, pink bow suddenly dominated Winona's vision.
"Winona! Thank Luna yer okay!" the bleary-eyed filly cried, trying to gather Winona up in her hooves. Winona growled at her and snapped, trying desperately to get her to leave: to warn her off somehow. Bow Pony backed off slightly, clearly frightened and a little indignant at Winona's actions.
"What's gotten inta you!" She yelled, tears replaced by a fierce glare. "Why'd ya run like that! Ah'm tryin' ta help y—" A loud, angry hiss cut her off.
Ray stumbled into the clearing, eyes immediately locking onto Applebloom and a brown-and-white dog that was growling menacingly. The usually quiet human felt anger swell within him, and, concern for their safety completely forgotten, prepared to tear into the stupid filly. Maybe he would get to use that plexi-seal on the mutt after all.
"Applebloom, you scared the living hell out of me! Get away from that dog so I… I can…" Raymond had limped his way around to face the little filly, who stood stock-still, wide eyes fixed on some distant point in space. He was trying to put himself between her and the snarling dog when he fully noticed the filly's total lack of response. She just stood there, staring at nothing. The kid didn't even seem to be breathing.
Ray's impromptu rant died in his throat. Applebloom wasn't yellow anymore. Her dark red mane lay frozen against her neck, now the color of Jer's eyes. In fact, her whole body had turned a dark shade of gray. Not even her oversized, formerly pink bow was spared.
"What. The. Fuck," Ray murmured. He knelt down and reached forward slowly, hoping to evoke a response. Applebloom didn't even blink. Spurred onward by his growing fear, Ray poked her in the nose, nearly jamming his finger in the process. Her once furry snout was as unyielding as a steel wall.
Sergeant Raymond Schaffer, a seven-year veteran of the War of Extinction and survivor of the Earth Hive, barely suppressed the urge to scream like a little girl.
Applebloom was a statue.
Either that, or she was kidnapped by a very meticulous sculptor and this was his calling card: a perfect replica of the victim. To a man who had a hard time grasping the concept of magic, both scenarios were equally likely, though the former was much more distressing. A kidnapper he could deal with. Crazy Medusa shit? Nu-uh.
The dog quit barking; instead letting slip a long, low whine. Raymond was descending into a mild hysteria when the hissing started.
It was a brisk, ominous sound: ululating in pitch, yet strangely calming like waves lapping upon a beachhead. Fatigue washed over the former soldier. He wanted to sleep. Needed to sleep… but he couldn't: not until he'd turned around and found the source of that godly sound.
A brief nagging feeling stopped the now relaxed human from standing. This was wrong. He needed to get Applebloom and himself out of there now. That instant, in fact, or something horrible was going to happen. The feeling needled him from the back of his mind, but soon vanished under a tide of euphoric sleepiness.
Ray stood up straight and began to turn, not really paying attention to the action itself, but the way the foliage blurred and spun around him. The sharp pain in his arm dissipated into a dull throb, and his ankle felt like a million bucks. Everything was going to be all right: he was sure of it. Never mind the dog, or the filly. They would be fine, just like he was. Fine. Wonderful.
The illusion of peace left as quickly as it came.
Ray found himself again in the blood red eyes of a giant chicken… attached to a dragon. If he hadn't been so enthralled by the creature's eyes, the exterminator would have done a double take.
The reptilian poultry flapped a pair of leathery, green wings, tipped with ruby-red claws, and croaked. It stood nearly as tall as Raymond, and as it flapped, several white feathers detached from its downy chicken head. It even had the red crest of a barnyard hen. All this was perceived out of the corner of Ray's good eye, which was still fixed to one of the pupil-less red orbs of the croaking beast.
A stinging sensation spread downward across the surface of the human's wide blue eye, much like the feeling of sweat flowing into them during a particularly taxing activity. Dull pressure began to mount behind the same eye, mounting into a throbbing headache that threatened to split his consciousness in two. His right eye saw nothing but the usual blur of color, spared the pain of looking into the fiery eyes of the poultry hybrid. That small relief felt inconsequential to Ray, however, as his feet began to freeze solid.
Or, at least, he thought that was what was happening.
He almost didn't notice it at first: those terrifying eyes kept him rooted in place, as if time had frozen and all that mattered was gazing deeper into his own damnation. Ray couldn't move, not even an inch. Every muscle in his body was tensed to the point of near exhaution. He was dimly aware of trying to reach for his gun, but couldn't recall if he'd succeeded in that endeavor. All of Ray's senses seemed to fade away until he felt nothing, heard nothing, smelt nothing, saw nothing… nothing but the eyes. Then the soles of his feet were unbearably cold.
The pain was instantaneous and beyond intense. If he could describe the feeling, Ray would have said that it resembled having the atoms in his feet torn away and immersed in liquid nitrogen, one at a time, from the soles of his feet up to his ankles, slowly creeping onward and upward.
As the biting cold spread to his lower calves, Ray tried to scream. Failing that, bitter helplessness settled deep in his heart.
"I'm finished. I'll never see Earth again. No more walking under the electric glow of Budapest. No more searching for parking, and losing my goddamn car in twenty stories of cement and transparisteel. No more haggling with clerks. No more Eastern food. I haven't had nearly as much sex as I would've liked…" The freezing sensation crept halfway up his shins. "I survive this long just to be killed by a fucking chicken. Great."
Ray's self-pity soon dried up, and his increasingly muddled thoughts took on a more somber note:
"Goodbye Jer. I'm sorry I left you on this fucked-up planet. Goodbye Duckling… Wrath. You served me well. Goodbye Applebloom. Sorry I couldn't save you, or your damn dog. Applejack. Macintosh. I failed you. Goodbye." The beast hissed, glare intensifying. Ray glared right back, his face becoming a mask of embittered resolve.
"Mom and Dad. Gloria. I'm coming."
The painful cold had almost reached his kneecaps, and the tired soldier had finished his last, never to be heard, goodbyes. He stared straight into the chicken creature's eyes, face twisted in grim defiance to the very end. Ray knew he was done, but he wouldn't give the beast the satisfaction of knowing that it had broken him. He must've made a rather imposing site, because, in that moment, the clucking dragon's stare diminished and an expression of unease flitted across its downy features, but only for a fraction of a second. Ray would've smirked if he weren't so goddamn terrified.
Then, the unthinkable happened: a petite ball of snarling brown and white fur barreled straight into the monster's groin.
The beast let loose a startled warble and immediately broke eye contact with the feigningly defiant human, turning its attention to a more poignant threat: the little whelp attempting to tear off its testicles.
As soon as those blazing ruby eyes broke contact with his functioning blue one, Ray felt as if the force of gravity had suddenly doubled. He felt unbearably heavy, like having buckets of water hanging from his clothing, sloshing and shifting as he moved. His broken arm screamed in pain, no longer diminished by whatever restraining power resided within the monster's gaze. Pain associated with the beast's stare itself, however, vanished. The thudding pressure in his skull had dissipated, and his lower legs no longer stung from bitter cold. Now they were just numb from the knees down.
Almost toppling sideways from the feeling of extra weight, Ray scrabbled for his gun, trying desperately to detach it from the holster at his right hip. He felt a rush of air and was dimly aware of a yelping fur ball breezing past his left ear. Something crashed and skidded behind him.
The dazed human finally managed to rip the handgun from his hip, and looked up just far enough to see the lower half of the creature's body, hoping to God that he wouldn't meet its eyes again and that he would be able to get off at least one shot before it barreled into him.
One of his prayers was answered.
Ray looked up into a sea of jagged, green scales. They glinted lustrously despite the darkness of the clearing, and the ex-soldier could make out the finest details of every iridescent keratin plate.
Time seemed to slow down. Raymond's arm swung lazily through the tight space between the two beings, as if the air was laced with molasses. Before he could bring his sidearm to bear, he found himself on the ground, his last breathe pushed violently from his lungs. Afraid of being trapped by the monster's intense glower, Ray screwed his left eye shut and relied entirely on his gravely cataract right.
The sprawled man aimed at the shifting blur of green and white towering above him. He was suddenly struck by the notion that he'd forgotten to switch the safety on the well-worn weapon to "off," nearly forgoing pulling the trigger to check. The blur hissed and descended towards him.
"Fuck it."
*CRACK*
…
*CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK…*
Ray emptied an entire clip of explosive rounds in the beast's general direction, aiming on instinct, hoping the monster's proximity would diminish any chances of missing his target. A warbling screech pierced the clearing, nearly deafening the still firing human, until it was abruptly silenced with one final crack of Ray's pistol.
The blur slumped to the forest floor… right on top of the downed soldier, gun now empty.
Raymond's broken arm ground into the turf under the added weight, causing the protruding bone to leave a shallow furrow in the loamy soil and bringing on fresh waves of pain. Ray clenched his teeth in agony, biting his tongue in the process. He tasted blood (hopefully his own) and spat, trying to get the raw, metallic taste out of his mouth.
Ray opened his good eye.
There was no hope of escaping the smell: spent gunpowder and spilt blood. Ray could feel the thick, crimson liquid of life seeping into his fatigues. He was slippery with the substance. Slick. Jer would have been reveling in this…
Grimacing in disgust, Sergeant Schaffer heaved the dead chicken creature off of himself and sat up. He stayed there, gasping for breath, and admired his handiwork.
Ray had no idea how many of his shots met their intended target and how many just whizzed past the strange hybrid, embedding themselves in the surrounding greenery. However many actually met their mark didn't matter to Ray in the slightest. All that mattered was that the damn thing was dead.
The beast was lying on its back; leathery wings splayed outward after having settled there when Ray rolled it off of himself. Oozing blood soaked into the soil from several tennis-ball sized holes in the creature's scaly abdomen, propelled by gravity acting on the already stiffening body rather than a beating heart. The shaken soldier noticed two holes in its left wing… and one rather large hole where the upper half of the monster's feathery cranium should've been. There was nothing more to fear from the beast's deadly gaze: both of its ruby eyes had been vaporized by an explosive-tipped round. Raymond took note of the ragged, torn scales between the creature's legs, and felt a twinge in his own set of family jewels.
"The dog…"
A few crimson-stained feathers floated lazily in the still air.
Ray twisted at the waist, looking behind him, past the Applebloom statue, for the canine that had saved his life. The straining warrior caught site of a small mound of bloody, nappy fur curled at the base of a gnarled oak. He couldn't tell if it was breathing.
Abruptly, an angry, yet disturbingly familiar screech sounded to Ray's right.
Raymond started at the sound and staggered to his still numbed feet, wobbling at a sudden, painful shifting weight in his knees. Something was wrong with them.
Another furious cry reverberated across his eardrums. No time.
The grim human tossed his weapon to the side. It was of no use to him now. He glanced around the clearing for anything he could use as a makeshift weapon. Immediately, the sturdy hillock of mud and branches in the clearing's center caught his eye: a nest.
Lumbering footsteps crashed through the underbrush. Momma's home.
Ray stumbled clumsily toward the nest, surprised at how difficult it had become to lift his legs. He felt (and heard) the skin below his left knee tear sickeningly as he raised his leg to take another step toward the clearing's center. Another screech: this time much closer. No time to rest, check his torn leg, or look back.
The ex-soldier's vision tunneled, darkness creeping at the edge of his vision until all he could see was the nest… so far… star systems away from him. Ray's clumsy stumble became a faster, yet equally clumsy, shambling run. The skin below his knees stretched painfully with every stride. Pain seared the back of his upper calf. No time.
No time.
"No time."
None.
And suddenly he was there; staring down at three mottled eggs nestled in a bed of soft feathers, damp mud, and small clumps of dead, earthen brown grass. The sight gave him pause, despite the rather dire situation.
One would think he was contemplating the observed tranquility of the nest: the sense of peace conveyed by the three unmoving orbs below him. Or perhaps one would assume it to be wonder: awe at the beauty of the developing life he had stumbled upon. Nature's beautiful gift.
His thoughts addled by pain and desperation, Ray gave pause for less romantic reasons:
"Dear Lord, think of the omelet's…"
A worthy thought indeed.
Ray came to his senses shortly afterward: spurred to action by the agitated flapping, stomping, and screeching at the edge of the clearing, approximately six yards behind his right shoulder.
The human stooped down… and almost fainted from the shift in equilibrium. Somehow, after several seconds of frantic scrabbling, he managed to latch onto one of the eggs with his blood-slicked fingers. Ray jumped upwards in victory, reveling in his perceived achievement.
"YEAH! I got you, you damned egg! Now I'm gonna… uhh… gonna…"
*CLUCK-SCRREEECH*
"Oh… yeah…"
Schaffer twisted around, closing his good eye and holding his prize aloft. A blur twice the size of its counterpart was bearing down on him from the edge of the clearing.
"Why are the female monsters always so fucking huge?"
It seemed that mere possession of Momma's unborn child was not enough to stave off the coming attack, so Ray made a split-second decision: chuck the egg.
The throw went wide, sailing the mottled orb to the creature's far left. Ray saw the humongous green blur dive for it, but stooped to quickly grab another egg before he saw if the egg was saved from shattering against the ground. Apparently, the beast's attempt at saving its progeny failed, because when Raymond straightened up, it was once again advancing on his position at the center of the nest.
*CRUNCH-SPLAT*
"Two down; one to go." When Momma Lizard turned back to him from its second rescue attempt Ray was ready for it. He held the egg above his head, motioning as if to smash it on the ground at his feet. Momma tensed visibly, despite being but a blur, and took a lumbering step forward. Her wings were spread wide in agitation, but she didn't attack. It was a Praetorian Standoff: Raymond in the center of the clearing, the giant, angry hybrid in between him and where he originally came in.
"Okay… o-okay... plan. What's the plan? Circle around, toss the egg as far as possible, then make a break back from where I came. Perfe—wait no shit no! I can't leave Applebloom… o-or the dog… DAMN IT ALL! I SHOULD NEVER HAVE AGREED TO THIS!" Schaffer, still toting the egg, began to slowly circle to the right of the creature. Every step was painful and labored, and his feet made an unusually heavy thudding noise. It took every ounce of Raymond's self control not to take his eye off the gigantic blur several yards away and look down at his legs. The increasingly concerned exterminator told himself that he just needed to hold onto his wits long enough to escape, and then he could panic to his discretion.
Whenever Momma Lizard took a step too close, or in the wrong direction, Raymond swung the egg downward a bit, reinforcing his threat: come near me and Jr. gets it. Slowly, Ray forced the beast to sidle away from the statuesque farm filly, her most likely dead dog, and freedom.
"That filly's going to be too heavy for me to carry in this condition, but I can't just leave her," Ray worried to himself, watching the blur from his cataract eye as he took another small step to the right. He winced as pain seared in a circle around his upper calf, just below the kneecap. Fabric tore. Momma and Ray had almost completely switched places. She stood just in front of the mud nest, and the injured human stood opposite her, freedom to his back. Raymond tensed and prepared to make his move. "Oh this is going to hurt…"
Ray reared back, and then pitched the egg as hard as he could. Without looking, the ex-soldier put his back to Big Momma, opened his good eye, and made a break for Applebloom. Reaching the stone filly, Ray hooked his right arm under her torso and heaved her onto his shoulder. Glancing frantically back and forth, Ray finally spotted the Apple mutt again at the base of a tree not far from where he entered the clearing. The exterminator quickly winced his way over and dug the fingers of his left hand deep into the scruff at the base of the canine's neck. Pain lanced through his fractured limb, but Ray ignored his body's protest and tugged the unconscious dog along behind him as he attempted escape.
"You're lucky you saved my life, Mutt, or I'd have left you to rot."
Raymond tore through the forest, ignoring everything that didn't have to do with getting as far away from Mother Hen as possible. Brush crackled and clothing tore, and Ray tried to forget how far away he was from the edge of the forest.
Every step felt like an amputation. The tissue under his knees tore with every footfall, and Ray thought he heard the creak of straining bone but dismissed it as imagination. It felt like he was carrying concrete cinderblocks in his boots. The strain on his upper thighs was immense, but he still couldn't feel anything below the torn skin under his knees. Deeply disturbing as that was, Ray didn't have the luxury of complete panic… yet.
The rage-filled shrieking slowly grew fainter, but Ray wouldn't slow down. Hell no. Not until he'd gotten out of that God-forsaken forest. The trees were thinning, and the bushes and other such low-lying shrubs that had caused him so much annoyance and pain earlier were becoming sparse. He was almost there. The orange-tinged light of the setting sun shone openly through the canopy. It was almost over!
*SNAP-RIIIIIP*
Abruptly, Ray's right leg caved under him. His body twisted sideways and he landed on his back, right shoulder jarring against one of Applebloom's granite hooves.
The sergeant's scream stuck in his throat and his eyes bulged from his sockets. His mouth stretched open, no sound escaping but the erratic ebb and flow of his breathing. Gravity fought his every movement, and Ray almost didn't manage to lift his head far enough from the ground to look down his prone form. He finally had time to see what was wrong with him, and what he saw finally released the scream trapped within his chest.
His right leg had been torn from his body. The limb lay at an impossible angle, rent from the knee down and just barely attached to the rest of him by a thin strip of cloth from his fatigue pants. Oh… and it was made of stone now.
Raymond's lower legs, from the tips of his combat boots to just below his knees, were coated flawlessly with granite. No. Not coated. Ray looked down to where his leg had been torn off. Stone. All of it. Every molecule of tissue in his legs had been replaced with grey rock. Raggedy chunks of flesh and cloth clung to the snapped end of his right leg, giving texture to the smooth, polished cross section of stone that had once been muscle, blood, and bone. Splintered, white bones jutted from the center, calcium slowly becoming granite the closer it was to stone shin. Blood spurted from Ray's still living section of leg and marred the pristine white tibia. The cloth clinging around the edge of the stone leg was similarly stained.
Ray's left leg was much the same, except it remained attached to his body, stone almost seamlessly coinciding with living tissue. Blood seeped in a ring below his left knee, flowing through rips and tears in his fatigue pants and running in thick rivulets down the rumpled granite pants that covered an equally stony pair of shins and calves.
Voice hoarse from screaming in agony and disbelief, Ray let his head fall back to the forest floor. He willed himself to black out, but relief would not come so easily for the soldier. After what felt like an eternity of screaming into the twilight sky, darkness began to close in around him. A huge red shape suddenly loomed above him, and Ray thought he heard shouting.
His last thought before falling into the inky black of unconsciousness was not of Earth, the home he lost long ago, or how much sex he was going to miss out on, but of something more practical:
"Lost… my fucking gun…"
The sun finally set on Schaffer's troubled mind.
As Celestia's sun drifted below the horizon, the wind at the edge of Sweet Apple Acres picked up, and the orchard became a roiling sea of leaves interspersed with the occasional shiny, red apple. Orange rays of sunlight painted the green treetops, giving the well-groomed fields of trees the impression of early autumn. It was beautiful, but Scootaloo was too excited to properly enjoy it.
The little orange pegasus trembled with anticipation as she followed the ambling giant she had become so attached to. He was walking so slowly! Taking forever to tease her with his promised surprise. "Something awesome," he had said. Scootaloo's thoughts drifted to the awkward conversation that took place several minutes ago. The human had been extremely perceptive: surprisingly so.
Jer stopped and looked out over the orchard beyond, head cocked slightly to the side, eyes distant. Scootaloo knew what that meant. Applebloom had told her about it yesterday. She'd learned about Jer's "condition" after eavesdropping on her siblings while they were getting into the hard cider barrel in the cellar. Voices. He heard imaginary voices in his head. Applebloom had said her sister thought that the human's condition made him dangerous. Looking at him now, after what he'd said, Scootaloo knew that couldn't be true.
"Why are you here?" Jer asked, tone soft and… sad?
"W-Well Fluttershy told us that when a mare and a stallion love each other very much—"
"No. I mean why are you here? In this clubhouse? Alone?" he specified.
"I… because… u-uhm… I like being l-left alone sometimes," Scootaloo floundered, "Is that so wrong?" She tried to sound indignant but failed miserably.
Jer looked at her a long time, slate grey eyes locked on her own violet pair. Scootaloo looked away first, unable to make eye contact any longer. She could still feel his gaze boring into the back of her head. Eventually, he spoke again:
"Y'know when I was younger I used to try and find time to be alone too," he whispered, raspy voice calm and collected, yet rife with emotion, "But… looking back on my old home, at everyone I'm never going to see again in this life, I wish I'd spent more time with the ones I loved. It was never a conventional place to live, and I never had a normal family, but now, all these years later, I realize that I don't care. It was MY home out in that horrifying desert, and they were MY family, if not in blood then in spirit. They're gone. Dead. My home was destroyed. I miss them every day…" Jer trailed off.
Scootaloo turned to try and meet his eyes again. She tried to read what emotion, exactly, he was conveying… but he was looking out the window again, eyes focused on distant thoughts. The orange pegasus didn't know what to make of the human's emotional rambling. He lived in a desert? Normal family? Th-They died?
"Ray is my family now," Jer rasped, startling Scootaloo a bit. The contemplative human met her eyes again and gave her a meaningful look. "If you need a place to stay, you'll always be welcome… while we're still here." The man stood up (which wasn't very dignified: the clubhouse ceiling being meant for fillies and all) and hunch-walked, helmet in hand, to the doorway. After he squeezed through, he turned back and gave her another compassionate look. "Talk to your friends about it. Being strong is nice, but there's a fine line between wanting help… and needing it. Besides," Jer turned and gingerly stepped down the ramp, "they may not be around forever."
Scootaloo sat, dumbfounded and a little frightened, and watched the alien walk away. He knew. She didn't know how, but he knew exactly what was wrong. He didn't blatantly say it, but he told her all the same.
Jer had done something nopony had ever done for her before: offer her a place to stay… care enough to really notice that she had no one.
"No… not no one." Scootaloo looked at a small photograph stapled above the window. It depicted two small fillies in a wagon, both wearing helmets. The helmet on the pure white filly sat skewed upon her head because of her horn, while the one protecting the yellow earth pony was adorned with a bright pink bow. They were being pulled down the orchard rows of Sweet Apple Acres by a little orange pegasus on a scooter, also topped with a helmet.
Scootaloo raced out of the clubhouse and down the ramp.
"Wait! Jer!"
The slowly walking human turned to face her once again, waiting expectantly.
"C-Can I stay with you and Ray? F-For a little while?"
Jer smiled.
The agreement had been made… and then Jer tempted her with the surprise.
The uncharacteristically silent human was still looking out over the orchard… or was it past the orchard? Onwards and upwards toward Canterlot, maybe? The capitol city was still encased in a giant purple bubble, making it look like the biggest snow-globe ever. Right now, however, Scootaloo could care less about the Equestrian capitol.
She snuck up behind Jer and pounced, lightly head butting him behind his weird, backward knee.
"Terra to Jer! Come in, Jer!" she needled playfully. "Where's the surprise?"
Jer jumped a bit, then looked down at her and smirked.
"Impatient are we?" he teased. Scootaloo stuck her tongue out and gave him a raspberry. Jer returned fire and chuckled. "All right. This way you little orange pain-in-the-butt."
"Umm… butt?"
"Never mind."
Jer walked over to the edge of the orchard, stopping when he reached one of the Cutie Mark Crusader's landscaping piles. That particular piece of work had vaguely resembled a big rabbit, but must have fallen down in the recent storm. Now it just looked like a rumpled pile of branches.
The human crouched down near the pile and reached his arms under several of the large supporting branches. He lifted them up and flipped the whole mess of branches over to reveal a strange red contraption. Jer lifted it up for her to get a better look.
It was big, but longer than it was wide, and it stood on two, black wheels: one in the front and one in the back. The front wheel appeared to be attached to a two-pronged steering device, much like the one Scootaloo had on her old scooter. Shiny metal tubing and a couple of ridged metal boxes twisted around or just sat in the center of the narrow contraption. Two saddlebag-like packs sat on either side of the strange device, just below a black saddle that adorned the bright red chassis. Jer was rifling through the right-hand pack on the side, muttering something to himself.
Scootaloo trotted closer to the two wheeled cart, which was only standing up on two wheels with the help of a small metal bar that protruded from its side and wedged into the ground. If this was a cart, it looked pretty useless to her. It couldn't even stay on its own two wheels! How was this supposed to be a surprise for HER?
"Um… Jer?"
"AHA!" the rummaging human shouted, jumping up and raising a shiny metal object into the air with a rather effeminate flourish. A key. Jer leaned forward over the impractical cart and stuck the narrow end of the key into a small slot just behind the steering column. There was a soft, whirring noise and suddenly bright light came streaming from a glass box attached to the front of the handlebars. Wondering what kind of magic powered the strange beacon, Scootaloo didn't notice Jer standing next to her until he began whispering conspiratorially into her ear:
"I leave the keys in it," he winked at her, "Don't tell anyone, okay?"
"Any-PONY."
"Sigh… whatever."
Moments later, Scoots found herself seated on the two-wheeled cart's handlebars, staring down at a colored display just beneath the machine's keyhole while Jer straddled the vehicle's saddle across from her. A bright green bar spanned the circular, lighted panel, three-quarters of the way between the Equestrian words for "empty" and "full." Jer tapped the small display twice and a soft, artificial-sounding mare's voice emanated from a perforated section of red chassis surrounding the lighted screen.
"Fuel levels optimal. Engine temperature optimal. Coolant levels at fifty percent: suggest replenishment before extende—"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Jer interrupted airily as he tapped a flashing icon on the display. The mare's voice faded out of existence, still spouting some sort of warning.
"Jer… what's a 'coolant'?"
"Nothing you need to worry about, Scoots," Jer reassured her. He grinned and looked at her like he knew something that she didn't. "Ready for a wild ride?" Scootaloo immediately brightened and went back to studying the impractical cart, not noticing the human replace his helmet with a faint click.
"YEAH! But how are you gonna make it a wild ride? You don't seem like a fa-a-a-AAAAAAH!" Scootaloo's statement devolved into a terrified scream as the odd cart tore forward, spewing dirt and blades of grass behind them.
The sudden lurch forward caused the surprised pegasus to smack face-first into Jer's chest, to which she clung frantically. She squeezed her eyes shut and prayed to Celestia that Jer's grey jumpsuit didn't tear.
Not having spontaneously combusted, been thrown off, or died for any other inexplicable reason, Scootaloo chanced opening her eyes. Best. Decision. Ever.
Apple trees whipped by at blinding speeds, and mud spattered off to either side of the magic cart, painting the air in odd brown muck. Scoots slowly twisted her body around to face forward, gripping Jer's clothing as best she could from her position. Cautiously, she inched forward on the chassis, pointedly avoiding the lighted display and protruding key in order to grip the steering column: right where the handlebars attached to the column itself. She looked out ahead of her, her smile threatening to split her head in two.
The wind whipped her mane wildly and pushed against the skin of her muzzle, stretching her already wide smile comically. This was a million times better than her stupid scooter! How fast were they going?
"This is so AWESOME!"
Struck by a sudden idea, Scootaloo spread her wings as wide as she could. The air flowing through her feathers felt unbelievable! It was like she was flying. Really flying! The elated filly wondered briefly if this was how Rainbow Dash felt, but quickly dismissed the question; of COURSE this was how she felt! Scootaloo whooped with joy as the Apple Family orchard sped by, soon to be left behind.
The cart burst out of the orchard and raced past the Apple farmhouse, kicking up dust on the extensive front walk. Jer gently steered the vehicle away from Apple property, toward the edge of the Everfree Forest. The human leaned back sharply, popping the front wheel into the air. Raised higher by the maneuver, Scootaloo squealed in excitement. The air caught her wings for a second and she nearly left the machine for a short flight. Luckily, Jer stayed her ascent with a gentle hand on her withers.
Gerald turned the bike southward, toward Ponyville, staying close to the forest's edge in the fading light. The magic light in front of the vehicle cut a swathe through the descending darkness, suddenly illuminating five very startled mares. Jer passed them with ease, and Scootaloo couldn't help but wave excitedly as they went by. She looked back just before cresting a small hill and was surprised to see them being pursued by all five of them: one in particular gaining fast.
"RAINBOW DASH!" Scootaloo squealed, waving at the cyan blur that appeared alongside of Jer's speeding cart. Her idol glanced at her and grinned cockily before speeding ahead. An obvious challenge.
Scoots looked back at Jer. She couldn't see his face behind the darkened visor, but she imagined he wore much the same expression as her idol. The human twisted his hand downward on the right handlebar and the "Super Scooter" immediately leapt forward.
They had been slowly gaining on Rainbow when the fun suddenly ended.
Out of the forest ahead, a huge, red stallion stumbled into their path, carrying a bulky-looking bundle of sorts. The headlights shone on his impassive green eyes for a split second before Jer swerved out of the way, flipping the cart on its side and sending it into a skid. Before Scootaloo could be thrown from the wreck, Jer grabbed her and wrapped her in a protective embrace.
Mistress Gravity then threw Jer and Scootaloo unceremoniously from the vehicle. Scoots felt a sharp jolt, and her wings pressed painfully against Jer's chest. A few short seconds later it was over.
"…krrkrtztkr… –y girl, my girl. Don' lie to me. Tell me where didja sleep last night? In the pines; in the pines: where the sun don' ever shine. I will shive-er… the whol—bzztstkrrrrr…"
An unpleasant ringing sounded all throughout Jer's head. He opened his eyes to a twilight sky. The stars were just coming out, but there was still just barely enough light to see by. Pretty.
Something stirred against his chest. Jer looked down and was met by a swatch of violet hair and orange fur. A little pegasus was nestled up against his chest, eyes screwed shut, and mouth twisted into a frightened grimace. He would've been struck by how adorable the filly was if it weren't for the situation at hand.
His bike lay several yards away, headlight still activated and rear wheel spinning lazily. If not for the torn grass and skid marks along the ground it looked like it had just fallen down in the absence of a kickstand: no worse for wear.
"You all right, Scoots?"
The filly nodded and he released his hold on her. She stood up on his chest and wobbled a bit, but there didn't appear to be anything broken, and there were no leaking fluids as far as he could tell.
"Too bad. Poultry is delicious…"
"She's not poultry you prick!"
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…"
Gerald suppressed his anger. Time for a self check-up.
Scootaloo hopped off Jer's chest, allowing him to sit up. He swung himself forward, spine popping back into place with a loud, wet click.
Judging from the shallow scrape that marred the ground at his feet and continued several feet onward, the two joy riders had skid for several feet on Jer's back before coming to a rest. The sitting human took a look at himself. He looked fine. He FELT fine…
The sound of frantically flapping wings briefly postponed his self-examination, as a rainbow-streaked pegasus came barreling in.
"Omygoshomygoshomygosh, SCOOTALOO! Are you okay?" a frenetic, raspy voice cried from behind Jer.
"I-I'm fine," came a shaky reply. "Jer kept me safe."
"SAFE?" Rainbow cried. "His recklessness almost got you… you…" she trailed off. "Y-Your back…"
Jer tensed and attempted to bite back his anger.
"Recklesness? RECKLESSNESS? She challenged me to a fucking race!"
"The gun. Where is it?"
"The cycle."
"Get it."
"NO! SHUT U—" Jer paused, having looked past the downed bike toward where he'd swerved to miss… miss…
"FUCK! Oh God, please no!"
Rainbow was yelling, but Jer didn't hear. He jumped to his feet and, tearing of his helmet in the process, sprinted towards the large maroon stallion standing above a profusely bleeding bundle of clothing: Colonial Armada fatigues.
"C'mon girls! Move yer flanks!"
Applejack crested the hill, Twilight, Pinkie, and Fluttershy trailing behind her, and took in the scene below.
After one of the humans (Applejack was sure it was Jer because Ray was off searching with her siblings) sped by on a two-wheeled doohickey with Scootaloo aboard, Rainbow had been off like a shot. Unsure of what was going on, and in need of Rainbow to help in the search, Applejack immediately raced after them.
Now, as she looked down on the drama unfolding at the base of the hill, she was extremely grateful for that decision.
"WHAT HAPPENED?" A stallion's voice, screaming in a mixture of anguish, sorrow, and unfathomable anger. Applejack could see her brother, standing resolutely with what looked like Applebloom on his back, between his two saddlebags. "YOU ARE NOT FUCKING DYING ON ME YOU HEAR!" Jer. He was down there, several yards away from the vehicle he'd been driving, fretting over a bundle. No… a body. A very tall body.
Raymond.
Applejack's breathe caught in her throat. She turned back to her trailing friends and screamed:
"For the love of the Goddesses, MOVE YER BUCKING FLANKS!"
Three loping mares nearly had heart attacks and were looking at her like she'd just bucked each of them in the head, but Applejack didn't see, nor did she care. She was already halfway down the hill, running full-out and praying she wouldn't be too late.
"TALK TO ME, DAMMIT!" Jer's shouting found her again, sounding increasingly desperate. Rainbow was darting back and forth above the two humans, Scootaloo in hoof, sporting an expression Applejack didn't often see on her face: fear.
"OMYGOSHOHMYGOSH! WHAT HAPPENED?" the flying mare yelled, covering Scootaloo's eyes with a free hoof.
"SHUT UP AND DO WHAT I TOLD YOU!" Jer howled, still focused on the man lying under him. The ground around the two humans had taken on a considerably darker hue; the color slowly spreading outward towards Big Mac, who had removed a muddy Applebloom from his back and was prodding her cautiously.
"B-But…"
"MOVE!" the raging human screamed, glaring at the Rainbow mare with his fiery gray eyes that spoke of a violent, messy death. He looked back down on his friend, and immediately those eyes changed. No longer hard and cold, but sorrowful and very, very afraid.
A rocket of prismatic colors shot from the scene, blowing past Applejack and knocking off her hat as she sprinted to the bottom of the hill. She was immediately met by the broad, red chest of her brother, blocking her view of the two humans and her entrance to the scene.
"Mac! You let me by now ya hea—uh! Wh-Whoa!
The farm mare attempted to push past her brother, but slipped on the slick grass at the edge of the hill. She landed in a heap, and when she attempted to pick herself up again she couldn't, landing on her back and sliding into Mac's forelegs. She looked down at her hooves and found them coated in thick, crimson blood. The red liquid practically covered the ground, no doubt soaking into the orange fur of her back that very moment.
Applejack's jade eyes widened, and her pupils receded to mere pinpricks. She slowly looked up to her brother, whose mask of neutrality had been cast aside to make room for the fear she could see welling in his eyes.
"W-What… *squelch* … Oh dear Celestia! *hur-hurk-k*" Applejack vomited into her lap, just barely hearing her older brother try and explain.
"Applebloom ran inta the forest cuz she heard Winona barkin'," Mac started, deep voice barely wavering despite the situation. "Raymond ran in after her, but I couldn't keep up with 'im. I lost 'em, and searched fer almost an hour afore he went runnin' right past me toward Everfree edge. I caught up tah them, but Raymond's leg was broken an' he was blacked out an'… an' Applebloom…" A single tear ran down his massive muzzle. "They musta ran inta a cockatrice…"
"I-Is Applebloom—"
"She's fine: just turned to stone."
"Fine!" the country mare yelled, furious. "Don't ya dare lie ta me! Our sister's a paperweight an' all ya can say is she's fine?" Applejack scrambled to get up, terrified panic gripping her more firmly with every failed attempt to stand. Her sister was a rock! She was never going to get her cutie mark. She was never going to finish school, get married, or have fillies of her own. Applebloom was nothing more than a fancy lawn ornament.
After a few seconds of struggling, she was brought back to the present by her brother's not-so-gentle hoof.
*SMACK*
"Ah don't lie!" He boomed, jarring Applejack even further than the slap. "Miss Twilight survived being turned to stone and so will our sister! She probably knows a spell or somethin' like that ta help… but Raymond…" Big Mac hesitated, then stepped to the side, revealing a crumpled bundle of bleeding tissue that once was a proud, tall alien being.
"His leg… its… Oh my Luna."
Gerald crouched over his friend, breathing heavily while he frantically tried to stem the bleeding. He had fashioned a crude tourniquet from strips of Raymond's campaign jacket that he had cut with a cruel looking blade that was currently stuck tip-first in the ground. The cloth strip was twisted around Raymond's lower right thigh, just above the knee. It was above the knee because nothing lay below it but ragged, torn muscle and a single protruding vein. The blood highway had been filled in with stone, the red and white cells flowing through it having congealed into gray rock before the outer membrane had a chance to follow suit. The rest of his leg sat a few feet away, completely sealed in stone.
There was a slick popping noise as Jer forced the bone sticking out of Ray's left arm back beneath the unconscious man's skin.
Several things happened simultaneously:
Three out of breath mares stumbled down from the small hill, slipping in the carpet of blood and getting a good look at the grievously injured human.
Hysteria ensued.
Applejack threw up again.
"EEEEP! What… h-h-h—"
"There's blood everywhere!"
"WHEEEE! It's like a slip 'n slide!"
"PINKIE!"
"Is he alive? Please tell me he's not dead!"
"Tear me some more cloth for a new tourniquet."
"But, Jerry! His leg! It—"
"I know about the leg damn it! Get the damned cloth!"
"This… a cockatrice…"
"He's not breathing!"
"FUCK!" … *Thump, Thump, Pound, Thump* "Someone do the breaths!"
"Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh dear…"
"Ah got it." *Puff… Puff* *Pound, Thump, Pound, Pound…Puff… Pu—*
"GASP!"
"He's breathing! He's breathing!"
"Jesus! Where the fuck is Rainbow Dash!" *CRASH*
"HERE! I GOT IT!"
"Give it here!"
"Fluttershy, what're you doing with tha— OH!"
"Uhm… you don't think that was a bit too forceful, do you?"
"Y-Ya stabbed 'im in the throat! That can't be right!"
"I'm… I th-thought…"
"No. She did it right. Twilight, can you reattach this?"
"WHAT! I… I don't—"
"Do it, Egghead!"
"Somepony press it back in place."
"Slippery!"
"PINKIE! Hold it still!"
"There's blood in my feathers!"
"Urr-Grre-AH!" *Zap*
"Is it on straight?"
"How am I supposed to know? He's nothing like a pony!"
"Mac, are there any bandages in those bags? No?"
"Here!"
"Where… how?"
"I keep bandages stashed all over the forest, in case of—"
"Twilight! His arm is broken in the same fucking place!"
"I… huff… told him not *gasp* to strain it!"
"Um… everypony…"
"Fucking fix it!"
"Girls…"
"I can't *gasp* just 'fucking fix it'! I've used up too much magic getting *wheeze* it reattached!"
"GIRLS! Aren't we forgettin' somethin'?"
"…"
"'Yay, You Got Your Hoof Back' Party?"
"They're still made outta stone! An' so's mah sister!"
"T-Twilight…"
"I know, Fluttershy…"
"What?"
"…"
"What aren't you telling me?"
"Speak up, Twi!"
"Well… we kind of need the *wheeze* cockatrice to undo the spell…"
"You can't be bucking serious."
"Th-That's how I f-fixed Twilight…"
"Stop the bleeding."
"Jerry… where are you going…"
"There has to be some other way! We can't just go looking through the forest in the dead of night for a giant chicken!"
"I don't know!"
"Jerry! Where are you going?"
"You haven't got anything in that purple head of yours that'll help!"
"Even if I did *huff*, I can't cast anything without my *pant* Starswirls rupturing!"
"Jerry!"
"What is he carrying? Where… WHOA! HOLD IT BUDDY! You aren't going in there!"
"If yer goin' Ah'm comin' with."
"Eeenope."
"Jus' try an' stop me, Mac!" *THWACK*
"JER!"
"Y-You can't just do that!"
"Eeyup. Thank ya, human."
"U-Ug-g-ghh… mah head…"
"There has to be SOMETHING!"
"Jerry, NO!" *grunt* "You are staying right here! No! You will COOPERATE!"
"Ow… Ow… Ow…"
"Wh-What about Zecora? Couldn't she do something?"
"Fluttershy! You're a *wheeze* genius!"
*Grunt* "Well then what're y'all waitin' for! Mac, you grab Applebloom. Ah'll take Raymond. We're burnin' moonlight, ponies! Twilight, grab mah hat will ya?"
"Jerry! Stop! Zecora can fix it! Listen! You don't need to go! Please, listen!"
"Blood."
"No, Jerry." *Grrr* "No murdering! Look at me when I'm talking to you, Mister!"
"…"
"If you die in there you'll miss Fussy's 'I'm Not A Statue' Party."
"…"
"OHMYGOSH! Jerry… what happened to your back? Why are you bleeding!"
"I tried to tell him…"
"Dashie! What did he do!"
*THUMP*
"JERRY!"
Canterlot was beautiful. Rarity Belle was beautiful. They were the perfect match for each other.
The Equestrian Capitol City glowed like a beacon of light in a sea of darkness. A lighthouse sitting on the mount, beckoning to weary travelers and warning away Equestria's enemies: lest they dash themselves upon the shoreline of Celestia and Luna's resolve.
Ponies of every shape, size, and color (mostly unicorns), trotted the well-lit streets. Conversing under the luminaries, eating hay d'oeuvres, enjoying the night, or hocking their wares from rows upon rows of open shops. These last citizens of Canterlot were first and foremost on Rarity's mind as she trotted along, her younger sister following closely while eating some ice cream. Rarity was a mare on a mission.
Giant towers of ivory stone rose above the market district, tearing at the night sky above like giant teeth. Why comparisons such as that dared to enter Rarity's mind she would never know: but it was true. They looked like the jagged teeth of a bull manticore, gnashing and gouging at Luna's nighttime canvas… and the dome. It was unfortunate that Princess Luna's masterpiece was marred in such a garish fashion, but, Rarity assumed, there must be good reason for such a heinous crime against nature.
The alabaster unicorn grimaced, reminded of another manticore she'd had the displeasure to become intimately acquainted with several days ago. Maniacal cackling invaded her memory.
Yes. The dome was definitely necessary.
"Finally! Some peace and quiet… wait… what am I saying?"
The caverns below Everfree were deadly silent. Not even the sound of dripping water or hushed breathing could be heard. Neither occupant was required to draw breath… and dormant children rarely cry.
The dog had been an experiment. Nothing more. He had much bigger plans beyond a single drone growing inside some loud, filthy mutt. Just a precaution: a test of his Mistress' fertility. Viable offspring were a must, after all. It wouldn't be a problem to check up on the dirty little canine after birth, just to make sure. If his Queen's first child proved itself capable, the 3,024th would practically conceive itself!
The Eternal Spirit of Chaos cackled quietly to himself, and fluttered around the cavern, weaving in and out of clumps of leathery eggs. He mentally patted himself on the back for the dangerous little prank he'd played on Honesty's family and the tall, muscular chimp. Discord couldn't let such a perfect opportunity to spread a little anonymous chaos go to waste. Doing nothing was really burning him up on the inside; he didn't want to lose his touch, and leading them on a merry chase through the forest had been so fun! The cockatrice's nest had been a nice touch, in his humble opinion.
The fact that 'Winona' would birth in the presence of an Element of Harmony didn't distress the spirit all that much. Maybe it would kill her! That would definitely complicate things for Celestia, and tear Sparkle's little friends to pieces! Delightful!
Even if those chimps, Misters Schaffer and Hanes, found out, it would be of little consequence. If Discord played his cards right, they wouldn't be able to do a thing about it. Soon, Equestria would be his. But until then he would wait. Wait until all his ducks, ponies, and turtles were in a row…
Discord had seen the castle: his old haunts, encased in a transparent, violet dome. How he wanted to turn it upside down. Literally.
Celestia must've found his empty pedestal. That was the only explanation for the shield. It was a wonder the Good Captain's wedding hadn't been cancelled. Though, judging that nopony was panicking in the streets, Celestia must've thought it prudent to keep a lid on his absence, and canceling the wedding would only raise suspicion. Discord's cackling increased in volume. This was just too perfect!
He had taken the liberty of providing a blushing bride for Magic's older brother: one much more experienced than that young ditz, Cadenza. The ancient draconequus's laughter reached its crescendo… then he remembered where he was.
Silence descended once more. Discord hated quiet as much as the next Insane God of Chaos, but she loved it. Discord couldn't fathom why, but he facilitated her wishes nonetheless. That was the reason he'd gotten rid of the dog, if nothing else. Leading the monkey into the cockatrices' nest was a bonus.
Seconds ticked by, and Discord sighed, beating his frustration back to the farthest reaches of his mind. Patience: Tartarus' Virtue. Waiting is eternity, but the payoff will truly be something to witness.
In the meantime, Discord would have to occupy himself in some other way.
A lecherous smile tugged at the newly occupied chimera's muzzle. He floated slowly toward the deepest, darkest corner of the cavern, eager to caress the smooth, ebony carapace of the creature that made his plans possible. His Mistress. His Queen.
"Time for a little chaos."
"Wyrm Flesh." It was there, rubbing again, awakening her from her slumber. This was the third time that star-cycle… but she wouldn't complain. The Wyrm was annoying, but she needed it. It was useful, and, until her children were born, would continue to be so. She could wait. Patience was a virtue, after all. "It will be sufficient to nourish my children, when the time comes."
"Sis? I-Is he gonna be all right?"
"He'll be fine, Applebloom… go on now. Get some shuteye."
Applejack sat back on her haunches and sighed forlornly. The dirt floor of Zecora's oddly decorated hut was cold and unyielding, but comfortable nonetheless for the exhausted mare. Yesterday had been tiring to say the least, and it was looking to be another grueling haul today: the witching hour had long passed, and the moon would soon no longer be visible as it sunk below the treeline.
The room was small and sparsely furnished: speaking to the zebra mare's ascetic lifestyle. Zecora's hut was the interior of a hollowed out willow tree, and the only light inside was that of flickering wax candles and moonlight streaming through the small windows bored through the tree's knobby trunk. Despite the gloom, Applejack could make out a small willow table that jutted from the floor and a bookshelf brimming with musty parchment and bark scrolls that was similarly structured. The only furniture that wasn't one with the home itself was a thin reed mat, Ray's cot, and a decorative mask that hung by the window.
She glanced at Jer. The snoozing human shifted constantly upon the threadbare mat, occasionally bumping into the table. He'd fallen asleep about an hour ago after observing his friend's treatment and watching over him deep into the night. When it became clear Raymond wouldn't wake up for a long while, Pinkie and Rainbow had forced Gerald to take a rest. He'd been out like a light two minutes later, and now he moved in his sleep. It looked like he was fighting somepony, perhaps in a dream.
Or a nightmare…
A shuffling noise sounded behind her. In the doorway next to a retracted partition of bamboo and bulrushes Applejack heard somepony sniffle.
"Ah didn't mean tah run off like that!" a small yellow filly sobbed, distraught and nearly heartbroken after being reanimated nearly an hour ago to find Raymond once again in a coma: this time from shock and extreme blood loss. "Ah… Winona… Ah just couldn' h-help…"
Applejack stood and went to comfort her crying sibling, stopping just short of the partition and spreading her hooves. Applebloom leapt into her big sister, spilling hot tears on the blonde cowpony's fur. Applejack hugged the sobbing filly tight and stroked her withers, whispering soothing words.
"Hush, Sugarcube. It wasn't yer fault. What's happened is happened. There ain't no use cryin' ya hear? Now you need ta get some sleep."
"C-Can I stay here?" the filly pleaded, "P-Please?" Applejack didn't answer. She merely took Applebloom in her muzzle and trotted her to Ray's cot: a makeshift bamboo rig with a tarpaulin stretched across its thick, pliable shoots. The older mare carefully lay her sister in the crook of the injured human's arm, next to the snoring ball of fur who started this whole mess in the first place. Applebloom dropped off to sleep almost immediately. Jer's raspy voice echoed briefly in the orange mare's head:
"… the most comfortable bed in the land…"
Applejack briefly imagined herself switching places with her young sister: sleeping soundly against the tall, stoic human. Watching his chest rise and fall as he drew breath…
The farmer snorted and stifled the strange thought, slightly annoyed with herself. It was a silly notion. But still…
Applejack looked down on the human. His odd clothing had been removed, all except for a stained pair of white undershorts. When they'd taken his clothes off, the six mares had been surprised to find several more burn-marks splotched against his strange (but not unattractive) muscle structure. Looking on those scars in the moonlight, both on his face and chest, Applejack tried not to think of all the pain Raymond had suffered: both in the distant past and more recently…
The farm mare couldn't help but feel that she was partially to blame.
Winona and Applebloom snored contentedly at his side, the dog having jumped up on the bed shortly after Ray was treated for his injuries. Raymond must've done something rather impressive to gain the loyal canine's trust so quickly. Applejack smiled sadly at the sight. They all looked so peaceful together. She wished it were under better circumstances: preferably with herself thrown in somewhere.
"Stop that!"
Raymond's legs dangled off the end of the small, jury-rigged cot, bending in that inverted way of theirs. They were submerged up to the knee in a mid-sized cauldron of bubbling yellow gook. His left arm lay across his chest, a tight bandage of gigantic, waxy leaves soaked in a sweet-smelling salve wrapped around the break. Fading moonlight shone through a small window in Zecora's tree, illuminating glistening drops of sweat that drenched the comatose human's brow. Applejack went to the table, stepping over Jer to grab a small rag. She then proceeded to gently wipe the sweat away, keeping it from flowing into his eye sockets, possibly seeping beneath his eyelids.
This alien... this MAN had gotten her sister out of that Celestia forsaken forest along with her oldest friend. Without him they may have stayed lost, maybe forever. He almost DIED for her family: ponies he didn't even know. If half of what Big Mac said was true, then staying here for him while he recovered was the least Applejack could do. As she continued to look down on Raymond, however, she felt like it wasn't nearly enough.
The cauldron at the foot of the bed spat and sputtered. A few drops of yellow potion flecked Applejack's matted, orange coat. The substance smelled like wet dog, bananas, and crabapples, but had reverted Applebloom back to her original tissue density in a matter of minutes. The same potion was being applied to (well, more like soaked into) Raymond's legs. It was taking quite a bit longer, however. Not knowing anything about the ailing exterminator's physiology, Zecora decided to give him a much less potent dosage of the sticky brew.
Applejack chuckled to herself, remembering the look on the Forest Enchantress' face when she'd burst through her door, covered in blood, a big, two-legged monster on her back, yelling her Pappy's hat off about cockatrices and broken bones. Looking down at her hooves, the farm mare noticed she was still covered in Raymond's (and probably some of Jer's) blood.
The zebra's expression had been even more memorable when the others arrived, Applebloom and another passed-out alien in tow. Somehow she stayed calm long enough to treat everyone.
While she'd been mixing her brew, Zecora had instructed Rainbow, Mac, And Pinkie how to treat for shock, which, apparently, Jer had slipped into due to a combination of serious friction burns, stress, and… well… shock. Raymond's glee-ridden friend had mangled his back pretty badly when he crashed on that cart of his. His gray jumpsuit had a huge hole torn through the back, and most of the skin below had been rubbed off. Several lacerations ran down his spine where he'd encountered small rocks or fallen branches during his trip across the ground.
Jer's treatment had been simple enough. Rainbow and Pinkie had applied several creams and ointments of Zecora's devisal along with a swathe of tan, opiate-cured bandages, while Mac had crushed up a red flower (something Zecora called "Mind Fuck." Applejack was pretty sure it was obscene, but refrained from commenting on the name) and forced it up the human's nose. His eyes snapped open almost immediately, screaming something about the "porticos being on fire," whatever that meant.
Meanwhile, Twilight, Fluttershy, and herself had done their best to keep Raymond from losing any more blood. His breathing and pulse rate were erratic, but they avoided performing CPR again that night. Applejack frowned, disturbingly disappointed.
The orange mare looked out the window. She couldn't see the moon anymore, but the sun had yet to rise, and in the silent hours before dawn millions of stars twinkled across the heavens. Applejack's eyes began to droop, but a wave of pain rocketed through her skull before she could fall completely asleep.
The throbbing ache radiated from an upraised bump on the back of her head, mostly hidden by her silky, blonde mane. She rubbed at it and winced as the ache became more violent. It was where Jer had hit her.
Applejack shifted her gaze over to the shorter human, watching him as he tossed and turned. She couldn't bring herself to be all that angry with him. He had been looking out for her best interests, if not his own. He'd told her why a few hours ago:
"When I get angry, I forget myself. If you had come with me your safety would've been the last thing on my mind. Lucky for you, it was the ONLY thing on your brother's mind."
"Ah can handle mahself!"
"That may be true, but your opinion doesn't matter. Your family needed you. What's done is done, and I'm not sorry for what I did."
Applejack wasn't sorry either, or angry, or whatever… just sad. Sad that Jer felt the need to keep everypony else safe: not from monster's like what Ray and Applebloom had encountered in the forest, or those "zee-no's" Ray talked about at the party, but from himself. He was honest with himself and everypony else. Applejack respected that. What she didn't respect, however, was the fact that he'd tried to go rushing into Everfree anyway, right after he'd brained her for trying to endanger herself by following.
She didn't respect that at all, and she'd let him know. He took her grief with an unsettling grin.
"Deep down we're all hypocrites, My Dear."
Applejack could hear hushed whispers coming from the next room. The other mares had decided to stay the night, and AJ was surprised they hadn't fallen asleep yet.
Rainbow went to the human's clearing to check on Scootaloo several hours ago, after dressing Jer's back. She'd left the little orange filly there temporarily when she was getting morphine from their ship. Applejack didn't know if the rainbow mare was back yet, but she suspected she was, most likely having taken Scootaloo home and put her to bed.
A rustling. Applejack looked down on Raymond once again. His eyes flickered beneath their lids and the tall human let out a long sigh, followed shortly by a frightened whimper: something that seemed totally uncharacteristic for the stoic creature.
Applejack leaned closer, studying his deeply scarred face and wondering.
Wondering.
"Ah wonder what he's dreamin' about?"
Ray was dreaming about Hell on Earth.
Seattle burned, and the dark, early morning sky was choked with the thick smoke of flaming high-rises.
Ray was crouched behind a crashed compact, the turquoise Model Six having wrapped its front bumper around a COM landline, which now leaned drunkenly against the Company Pharmacy Depot. The rusted metal column was one of many that lined the streets of lower east side Seattle, Washington.
Shattered glass lay upon the asphalt at his feet, and Ray tried to avoid cutting himself on the sharp fragments. As he looked at the car, an adolescent Raymond couldn't help but hear the "Weyland Motors" slogan tease his thoughts.
"We-eyland Motors. Building better cars~"
The jingle in Ray's head was punctuated by terrified screams, crackling flames, the occasional squeal of skidding tires, and the unearthly screeching of skeletal, ebony nightmares.
Raymond crawled to the back bumper of his hiding place and peeked around the edge, past a bumper that gaudily proclaimed the message: "shit happens."
Judging how Raymond's morning had gone, the sticker was most definitely correct in that statement.
Down the street, a group of several men, women, and children were retreating into a flaming hotel, disregarding the flames due to the hissing monstrosities hot on their tails. A black woman, wearing a faded pair of blue jeans and an orange tank top, didn't make it. She was pounced in the street, just off the curb. She had been limping: bleeding from her right calf. Falling behind.
A man's voice rose above the chaos:
"DETTA!"
There was a bright flash, followed by a sharp crack. The hissing black monster, a "Xeno" it said on the news, jerked backwards off of the struggling woman, tearing off a swatch of her dark hair. It twinged and spat sizzling yellow blood onto the sidewalk before levering itself upright with it's wicked tail. Another flash seared the air, and a huge, muscular man stepped from the safety of the hotel, 12-guage scatter-rifle leveled at his hip. The hotel doors slammed behind him.
Despite being shot twice by the angry bull of a man, the xeno just got back up. It bared it's shiny silver teeth at him, seeping yellow blood from several holes in its thin torso. The lone monster was soon joined by its brothers. The woman named Detta and her husband were surrounded.
While her husband fired his gun indiscriminately into the closing ring of creatures, Detta blindly scrambled backward, but was halted with a shriek as the scythe-like tail of "Twice-Shot" thudded into the pavement… straight through her already injured right leg. The bleeding xeno screeched in triumph, before having its banana-shaped head blown to pieces by another flash of gunfire. One of "Twice-Shot's" brothers quickly took its place, ready to finish the job.
The huge man was holding off several of the beasts, but was looking increasingly desperate. Several xenos had gotten between him and his wife, and Raymond could see the feral energy draining from his body with every shot. How much ammunition did he have left? Ray heard a loud *pop*and the tinkle of falling glass. He whipped around, half expecting to see a long, snake-like tongue shooting towards him, sharp little teeth glistening madly in the firelight, but it was only an exploding streetlight. The heat and pressure from the fire in a nearby fast food shop must've been too much for it.
Raymond turned back to the bloody siege at the Marriot.
A car swerved around the corner, an old station wagon, coming from the south. It skid and slipped on the charred blacktop, avoiding stalled vehicles and corpses. It was heading straight for the hotel, and, unfortunately, the steadily growing swarm of xenos and two defending humans in front of it.
Detta screamed, and frantically pulled on the sharp, black tail that was pinning her to the street. Another xeno, ignoring his fallen counterpart, leapt forward, pinning her back to the ground.
The car hit both of them, plowing through two other monstrosities before crushing Detta's ribcage with one screeching tire. Raymond stared on in horror as blood exploded from her mouth in one huge stream, gushing like the sprinklers Ray had played in as a boy when he visited his grandmother in Tucson. The bug that'd tackled her was thrown a few feet forward, smashed by the vehicle's grille.
The station wagon kept going, crushing the downed xeno with its left front wheel. Acid ate through the thick, metal-laced tire, popping it and sending the car careening to port. It sped past Ray's hiding place, forcing him to duck backwards farther in fear of being hit.
An ear-splitting crash soon followed, punctuated by a bright explosion of fire where leaking gas met the flaming fast food joint several hundred feet to Raymond's right.
Ray felt the skin on his arms flare with the increased heat, and scrambled under the car, hoping to shield himself from the rising flames. He couldn't see the hotel from his position, but he didn't need to see. Not anymore…
Several more shotgun blasts shattered the morning air, but soon the squeals and hisses of skittering, scuttling monsters drowned it out. Ray could hear the unmistakable snapping sound of xeno tongues against flesh and bone. They weren't even bothering to take the bodies.
The bastards.
Glass shattered, and more shots were fired: this time something smaller, like a pistol or small caliber rifle.
Soon that too was drowned out, and all that was left were the screams.
Those gut-wrenching screams.
Raymond wanted his mother, but he knew that was impossible now. Everyone was dead. He was dead. Earth was dead. It was OVER!
Ray closed his eyes and cried. Another explosion rocked the car above him. Ray jumped, cracking his head on the small Weyland-Yutani reactor on the underside of the Model Six.
Darkness took him.
Thanks for reading! Obligatory citation: Where Did You Sleep Last Night by Nirvana
