Passion
Yeshua stepped through the doorway. Dash started to yell a warning, but was already a second too late.
Lobo swooped down from the ceiling, swinging the pipe as hard as he could down onto the back of his head. It connected with a sickening whack. Yeshua staggered, and his glasses fell off onto the floor. Lobo had expected to topple him with the one blow, but he stood up straight, and Lobo was suddenly confronted with his intense and unfiltered gaze.
The grey Pegasus backed up. "Shit! Somebody help me, he's gonna—" He cringed, as if he expected to be vaporized.
Yeshua looked at Dash, and then looked straight ahead, silent.
After a suspenseful pause, it was Dr. Atmosphere who spoke. "It is possible for a unicorn with a concussion to be unable to use their magic, sometimes for hours, or days."
Lobo watched for a moment, then flashed a grin. "Ha! I got him. Look, he can't use his magic."
"Then let's get him!" one of the guards yelled, and they all rushed forward. They knocked him down, surrounded him, and started kicking him. He didn't resist.
"Kick him in the head again! Again! Don't let him snap out of it!" One of them kicked him in the balls. Another two started stomping on him.
Dash flew directly over the scene and yelled, "Stop! Cut it out already! I SAID STOP!"
The mob stepped back and examined their work. He lay bruised and bloodied, but breathing. He groaned, but didn't rise.
"Yes, quite," Dr. Atmosphere said from the sidelines. "Let's not waste any more of his blood, it's too valuable."
"It's a good thing we stopped…" one of the guards said sarcastically. "Because this is a nice jacket! Gimme that." He grabbed Yeshua's jacket and started tugging it off of him.
Another pony said, "Hey, I had my hoof on it first." And so they argued, "My idea, my jacket."
"No, I think it will fit me better."
"Fine, we'll flip a coin."
He seemed to grow as they pulled it off of him. They gasped and gawked as his wings were revealed. Nevertheless, the two ponies continued to claim the jacket for themselves.
"Whoa, look! We got ourselves a big one!"
"It's a good thing we hit him when he was small."
Gauze Wrap puzzled at him. "Alicorns are supposed to be royalty. How come I've never heard of your kingdom?" Getting no response, he announced, "Everyone hail the King of Nothing!"
Four of them held him down while the others tied his legs. Normally they would hog-tie a filly, but a larger body would fit better stretched out. They tied his back legs together out behind him, and bound his front hoofs tightly. Gauze Wrap also fastened a rope around his neck and lashed it to his front legs to prevent him from thrashing around. But he lay still.
Lobo yanked the rope tighter around his throat. He winced and coughed.
"Easy, easy!" Dash ordered, flying over the two of them. She pushed Lobo back when he was slow to respond.
"Come on, Lobo," Gauze Wrap chided. "It helps if they're alive when they go in."
"The beast likes it fresh," one of the engineers said as he tapped his wrench twice on the housing at the mouth of the machine. That was his signal that all was ready.
The enclosure of soundproof glass had already been unbolted and set aside as ordered. As they brought their oversized sacrifice to the platform, Dash realized that he wouldn't have fit unless it was removed. They shifted their grip on his legs, and hoisted him up onto the conveyor belt. They positioned him the same way they carried him, facing away from the machine's teeth.
"Turn him around," Dash said. It was a hell of a thing to go into head first, but she figured it would shorten his suffering.
Lobo smiled and shrugged. "I don't think so boss. This way he'll be extra fresh."
Dash hated that smile, but what he said kind of made sense. She looked into Yeshua's eyes. He gave a slight nod. None of the others saw it. She nodded also.
Most of the ponies who had carried him left and returned to their stations.
There was a lump in Dash's throat as she looked around and realized everything was ready. She took a deep breath. "Start it up."
Switches were flipped, and with a deep thud, the pipes and pistons came to life. There was an angry whir as the rotating blades spun up to speed. They turned in such a way as to pull the victim further in, but they cut better than they pulled, so the conveyor belt helped them finish the job. A "pusher" usually stood behind and made sure all the gruesome fuel went in.
Gauze Wrap and Lobo both stood ready as pushers this time. Dash stepped onto the platform next to Gauze Wrap and tapped him out. "I'll do it."
"As you wish," he said, standing aside. "But I'm right here if you need me."
She stood right by Yeshua and put her hoof on his. "I'm here for you," she whispered.
"I'm doing this for you," he answered quietly. She knew now it was the love in his eyes that had bothered her. A tear came into hers.
Lobo brushed up beside her. "Are we having a moment here?"
"Ugh, step off," said, pulling away from him. "You don't understand."
"Well I don't like the way he's looking at you," Lobo prodded.
Yeshua's eyes turned to him compassionately, much the same way he looked at Dash.
"Forget it, puppy dog eyes never work on me," Lobo said, moving away to the lever that starts the conveyor belt. "Let's get started, shall we?"
Dash paused reluctantly. Lobo repeated, "Should I do it?" and put his hoof on the handle.
"No," she said softly, but it was lost in the rumbling echoes.
"You gotta give the order, boss," he insisted. "Should I do it?"
"Yes," she said, frustrated. He pulled the handle and rubbed his hooves together as if washing them. They lurched forward, and began inching slowly toward the gaping maw. She winced as they got closer and closer.
The iron teeth met his rear hooves with a crunch. Yeshua let out a cry. His legs jerked involuntarily as if to get away from the source of the pain, but the grinder had already grabbed hold and held them firm. His ankles disappeared. Blood began to splatter and they could hear bones crack. It continued to chew through his calves. He yelled out his agony. The machine yanked on the end of his tail, as if it would pull it out, but mostly cut it. Dash's guts twisted as she watched. Why did it have to be so slow.
His nerves were briefly overloaded, and his yells turned into gasps. The respite was short lived. The pain and the blood redoubled as the teeth reached his flanks. As it dug into the full width of his body, it slowed further.
The huge pony cried out in pain as his spine began to shatter. The exhalation blew Dash's mane and tail about as if she was flying against the wind. She had heard Luna's royal voice, and more rarely, Celestia's, but this was louder. The bellows and screams of agony drowned out the infernal noise of the machine and inflicted a throbbing sting on the ears of all present.
"I'm sorry!" Dash wailed, as the beast continued to slowly chew inch by inch.
He fought through the pain to say, "HELP ME!" Dash wanted to, she desperately wanted to, but she didn't know how. He gritted his teeth. "HELP ME IN!"
Dash gathered herself do to what needed to be done. She and Lobo grabbed around his chest and heaved, pushing him further in. The jaws of the machine surged again, as if unjammed. Dash dug her hooves in to the floor and pushed harder.
The red-purple spray began to speckle her face as the iron teeth drew nearer. He was halfway through. A moment more and it would dig into his rib cage. While there was still time, he drew air back into his lungs. He was very weak now, and it was all he could do not to yell it back out, and some escaped in a groan as he mustered the control to speak. His words came, this time in a low voice, that only Dash and Lobo could hear. "I forgive you. Both of you."
Dash was amazed, and could say nothing in reply. Past the shock and fear on her face came a conflicted sadness. How could he say that?
"Don't say that," Lobo said in the same moment. "We're bastards, you're supposed to hate us."
"Don't be afraid—" he was cut off by painful spasms, but again fought for words, "-to come home."
"No way, I can't." Lobo stopped pushing and backed away. "I can't! You don't know."
The machine stuttered for a moment as it crunched on his lower rib and spine simultaneously. Overwhelmed to the point of numbness, he gave a last weak breath. Dash read his lips as much as she heard the words, "It's done." The processing head finally compressed the bones together with a snap and began to consume his chest.
Dash and felt that she was now pushing truly dead weight. She sobbed and pressed against him harder. She knew that he wanted to give everything, but really she was clinging on to him for comfort.
The grinder finally pulled that stubborn wing in by the joint, resulting in an explosion of golden feathers. His shoulders threatened to again clog the machine, and Dash flung herself against his chest, almost hugging him. She squinted through the blood which dripped and splattered profusely onto her.
She barely registered as Lobo shouted, "Stop!" He hastily clubbed his hoof at her legs to knock them away from the stallion's remains. She gave him an offended glance as she continued to strain against the load. Lobo grabbed her around the waist and dragged her backwards. He pinned her to the ground and yelled in her ringing ear, "Do you want to go in too?"
She was suddenly conscious of a roaring, malicious wall of knives scarcely a foot away. She had almost gone headlong into the Pegasus Device. As it finished the thickest area of bone, it sped up, and would have caught her hoof before she knew it. She was light as a filly next to the alicorn, and would have been sucked in effortlessly.
She gave Lobo an acknowledging nod and looked down. She couldn't watch as that long, graceful neck disappeared, save for a pained glance. Those eyes. The light had left them, but she couldn't shake the feeling that they still meant something.
The gruff worker pulled her to the back of the platform. "Go on," he told her. "You're done here, boss." He stood and stared at the macabre process, as if deep in thought.
As the mighty alicorn's horn met the steel, bright sparks of magic, as well as slivers of bone and metal, shot out in all directions. Lobo sheltered both of them with his with a wing, but still flinched from the shrapnel. "Dammit!" he cursed, and gritted his teeth until the bright flare passed. When he and Dash looked up, all they saw was the last inches of a foreleg vanishing into the machine.
Once Lobo shut off the loud grinders, they heard the wailing siren. Their fixation with the gruesome progression had kept them from noticing the activity around them. The other ponies had begun to give cries of alarm. The floor under them was trembling.
"Is the machine doing that?" Dash asked a Gauze Wrap, who was nearby. He shook his head.
"Earthquake procedures!" forepony Dash barked. "Everypony find a doorway or something and stay there!"
For a second, the others gave her a strange look, but as the shaking intensified, they began to scramble for cover. She and Lobo wedged themselves in a doorframe. She immediately wished she wasn't still so close to him. Fortunately, he was too concerned with his own skin to do anything inappropriate.
"This is ridiculous!" he protested, "Earthquakes don't affect clouds!" Rainbow Dash remembered that, of course, the whole city was far above any shifting tectonic plates. Everything must have been shaking.
Some cracks formed in the cement, and debris fell from the ceiling. A pipe burst, releasing a column of steam. "Shit, we're so gonna die! This whole place is coming down!" Gauze Wrap yelped. He instinctively started sputtering, "Praise Magic, power of the Elements together. Praise Honesty..."
After a while, the building gave up its convulsions, and some measure of quiet returned to the factory floor. Finally the technicians could give heed to the various warning signals on the control stations for the Device. Some of them began to push buttons in a panic.
Dash gave Gauze Wrap a shake, interrupting his rote incantations. He snapped out of it and flew to the handle of a valve, and strained against it until the violent leak was stopped.
Dash was about to head up to the control deck, but there was a light from the main hall and two more ponies rushed in. It was—gulp—Princess Celestia, gleaming, panting, and wide-eyed. Beside her was a very confused brown pegasus, wearing thick-rimmed glasses and fumbling a clipboard.
Lobo glanced from his bloodstains to Celestia and scrambled to get out of her sight. Dash felt like disappearing too, but met her as she headed onto the factory floor and said, "Princess, I—"
"Where is he? What did he do?" the Princess interrupted, striding past and looking around.
"The inspector?" Dash asked, following. "He made us… we…" she choked on the confession.
Celestia spun around, sending her ethereal mane into a flurry. "No, of course not! This is the inspector," she said with exasperation, pointing to the bookish brown pegasus.
"I'm inspector Ironshoe," she whimpered. This was the domineering Miss Ironshoe? Suddenly, Dash could picture her with an arch in her brow, giving terrified workers a deathly stare. Now she seemed small, weak, and irrelevant. She excused herself to the Princess, "I've been trying to get in for over an hour, but the compound was sealed."
"Harmony came here!" Celestia explained hurriedly. "He hasn't been to Equestria in centuries! By the time I found out, he was already inside. I came to stop him. He must be furious. I'm here to stop him from destroying the factory. Where is he?
Dash's jaw hung open, her tongue seemingly glued to the bottom of her mouth.
"Where is he?!" the panicked ruler demanded.
The rainbow pegasus pointed a faltering hoof toward the mouth of the Device. The Princess gave a gasp and raced towards the ghastly spectacle. A pond of blood covered the floor around the processing head. More blood glued horsehair and feathers all around the serrated hole. She came to scrambling halt at the scene, almost tripping. She picked a long, glistening feather off the wet concrete. She was stiff for a few seconds, but her eyes were wild. Dash noticed her mane was frazzled and limp, devoid of both its usual motion and sparkle.
Gauze Wrap approached her. "It's alright your majesty. By your wisdom, we have saved the world!"
In an uncharacteristic outburst, she screamed, "YOU IDIOT! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"
Gauze Wrap was taken aback and speechless, leaving Dash to handle her. She wailed again, this time more plaintively, "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" Celestia trembled, and her dignified airs evaporated. "Oh shit, we're so screwed! I screwed up so much!"
"I… uh, he told us to do it," Dash explained. "The energy inside him… is just what we needed."
"WHAT?" Celestia reacted. "WHY, HARMONY, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!" she screamed to the air, as if he might answer. She panted harder. Her light waned, and she began to gasp, this time for air and not from shock. "Shit Dash, if he told you to kill yourself…ungh," she started to scold, but her voice was mournful and afraid. "Don't you understand, our world doesn't go on without him. Oh, shit." She began to hyperventilate. "Dash, the sun—I can feel it! There isn't any light inside." With that she leaned against the machinery and began sinking down as her strength left her.
It was true. It was darker outside the factory than inside the dim structure. Inside, red emergency lights were enough to cast crooked shadows behind all of the pipes and angles. Outside, the sun was dark, and the moon as well; no city lights were on either, since it was supposed to be daylight. With the earthquake and now the blackness, Equestria panicked.
In the midst of the confusion and hopelessness, one pony found clarity. Rainbow Dash echoed her own words back to herself. "He told us to do it… And he didn't want to destroy the world. I know it." How did she know? His eyes—that's what was in his eyes. It was pure and selfless compassion.