“One Pony Party”

 

“All his friends are gone, and now he has nothing to lose… but his marbles.”

 

Oh… The beautiful land of Equestria! Marked by its green grass, wonderful fluffy clouds and home to the most adorable little ponies.

Almost a land of dreams!

 

At least it was… And here we’re going to learn about that! In a little scroll, you’re going to start reading about many little fellas living (and surviving) on a hopeless land!

 

Let’s start with a funny one alright? How about… “One Pony Party”!

 

A calm melody of jazz played as the elevator slowly descended down the building. A calm song that failed to go along with the elevator’s interior. Inside was a disoriented looking pony. His hooves barely supported his body and the heavy equipment he carried on a saddle bag. His legs forfeit to the force of gravity and let the weight of its body fall over to the sides. hitting and breaking part of the mirror behind him.

 

However, not a single sound of pain or even anger came from its mouth. Except for the continuous nonsensical mumbling coming from behind his gas mask laying on its head. Almost like some kind of zombie.

 

Suddenly, the elevator abruptly stops. And doesn't take long before the doors open, revealing the dark environment that was the construction’s hallways. The sound of the sense less whispering getting more and more noticeable as time passes.

 

A few minutes have passed, the voices continue and the darkness seems to be slowly consuming the beaming light coming from the elevator. Then, without a warning, A pony wearing a bright yellow hazmat suit with a saddle bag on his bag bashes through one of the doors and barely stops him from hitting a wall.

 

In a quick movement, a (color) shines from inside its opaque visors, rapidly pulling a revolver from inside one of his bags, almost instantly firing it on the room he just ran out of. The sound of a big mechanical creature comes from the door, followed by a high pitched white noise that didn’t go away until the body was shot a second time.

 

 

Even though the supposed threat he was escaping from was gone, he didn’t get any calmier. Always maintaining a defensive stance, swiftly moving towards the beam of light on the elevator. Still aiming back for any threats, he enters the elevator and uses the tip of his gun to press the button, letting the fallen pony unnoticed. As the doors close, the stallion starts to cool down, calmly returning his weapon to his backpack. But, before he can do so, his movements get noticed by the fallen pony, which almost immediately gets in a state of rage, growling and opening its mouth widely revealing a yellow set of razor sharp teeth, before jumping onto the stallion, releasing an ear piercing scream. Hitting him in such a way that he lost its balance and landed on his back. Fortunately, he managed to block off its bite with his gun’s barrel. Obviously, this catches him in surprise, releasing a loud scream of pure fear and despair.

As he struggled, the mad pony was using his hooves to make a barrage of attacks on an attempt of tearing its way through the hazmat suit. The force on his jaw against the metal barrel seemed to get larger and larger as his anger worsened, the thirst for blood on his pure white visors became more and more evident.

 

“-Ge- Get off me! Get off! Please!” He screamed, in a futile attempt of reasoning with his attacker.

 

For once, the zombie forms a tough and realizes what he had been chewing wasn’t a delicious pony leg but a rod of pure metal, making him release the gun for a second to go for a second bite.

 

“-Fuck off!” He yelled, as in a quick movement he managed to get the right grip on his weapon, and aimed for the head, all on that small breach he was lucky enough to get.

 

He shoots the pony on its forehead, piercing a hole through its mask and skull with a fire hot bullet, its blood and brains splatter against the broken mirror. making the now dead body of the mad pony fall over him. He pushes it to the sides, and rolls away from the bleeding mess on the floor.

 

“-Oh for celestia’s sake, now that was close…”

 

This time, he decided it was best to maintain his firearm close.

 

He takes a deep breath. “-Man,” A few seconds have passed, and he stopped to think for himself a bit. “i’m alone…” He mumbles.

 

The word “Alone” echoes through his head, almost like he had lost all of his sights in that specific moment. The traumatizing memories of his partner's death screams fill up his head along with the gory imagery he had witnessed on the past hour.

 

“-Oh HoHo!” Only to get broken by his own laughter.

 

He falls back, sitting on one of the corners in the elevator. He moves one of his hooves close to his face before turning his face to the opposite direction.

 

“-Now that we’re working together,” He swiftly moves his hoof to match the words that get off his mouth. “we should get to know each other.”

 

“Name’s Scarlet.” He says, as he turns his face back to his hoof.

 

“-I’m Floor.” his hoof says.

 

“-Floor?”

 

“-Floor Bored.”

 

“They call me Nelly.” Scarlet raises his other hoof.

 

“Oh Nelly, I'm gonna miss your goofy ass…” Scarlet says, putting both his hooves down in a sad manner.

 

By the time the elevator reached it’s final destination, Scarlet was still sitting down. His dread filled eyes staring down at the body, the guilt of murdering that creature for the sake of his own safety was slowly taking over his mind, all he could think about at that moment was what he did to deserve such an end, after all, he definitely didn’t want to catch the plague.

 

The door opened itself to an oddly conserved environment, illuminated by the dim light coming from an barricaded window, followed by a strong scent of freshly cutted grass and wet dirt. However, what caught most of his attention was the absence of the infected ponies' distinctive noises, knowing how infested all the other levels were.

 

He took a deep breath before standing back on his legs, beginning to walk towards the room.

 

“Hey,” A voice comes from behind scarlet, he instantly stops on his tracks and turns his neck to catch whoever the voice’s owner was. “you cool?” the owner turned out to be the dead pony who was lying dead on the floor, oddly now standing on all hooves and talking as if he didn’t have a see through hole pierced throughout his skull.

 

“Hay… I don’t know, do i look alright?” Scarlet said, the words flew away from his lips as if he didn’t even mind the bizarre situation he found himself in.

 

“No, you look amazing!” It yelled.

 

“Oh, thanks a lot dude!” Scarlet responded, walking away from the elevator with a pinch of more confidence.

 

However, the hallucination slowly vanished as he walked his way through the hallway. The body didn’t move an inch. And was still lying dead on the floor, rotting.

 

It was still quiet, too quiet. Scarlet slowly started to get nervous as time passed, his effort in letting the telekinesis spell on his weapon got heavier and heavier as all he could think about was the continuous threat of another zombie coming towards him and wrecking his skin and bones like what happened with the others. All that was heard in that moment was his heavy breathing and the sound of water flowing through the sewers nearby.

 

Barricaded doors and windows, glass shatters on the floor and blood spilled on the concrete ground. He finally saw a vaguely open breach. Scarlet rushed to it, knocking his head through the door violently opening his way into the room, so violent the old and rotted door cracked into two after hitting a nearby shelf, Producing an loud metal crashing noise as the rusty door knob met the concrete floor of the what seemed like an abandoned storage room for some type of pub. Empty and broken cheap cider bottles rested on the metal shelves, multiple of them from brands that weren’t even on the market anymore. Good thing Scarlet isn’t an alcoholic, he would definitely lose his mind on the spot if he was one.

 

Then, the sound of a familiar robotic beeping noise makes it’s way from deeper inside the floor he resided into his ears. He immediately remembered the reason Nelly, Floor and himself were sent there. The machine. A new wave of emotions cover up his mind, he didn’t know whether he should feel sad for having lost his partners minutes before finally getting to their objective or if he should feel happiness, for knowing that nightmare was close to hitting its end.

 

Scarlet departed from the storage room, and started to run towards the noise.

 

“Hello?”

 

A mechanical soft high pitched voice came from the same location of where the beeping was coming from.

 

“-Are you still there?”

 

It says once again, Scarlet was unsure if the machine was directing it’s speech to him or maybe another infected pony. He remembered his past studies on Robomechology, and came to a conclusion that the owner of the voice was most likely a rare “Techno Forger.” machine. Relief covered him like a blanket, the thing that worried him the most was if he had to deal with the one that ran over and blasted Nelly from a window. And he knew for a fact he could deal with a walking limb with a basic AI.

 

“Haha! Guess i’m a lucky one today ain't I, Ms… broken jar? flower pot? actually… Cup! Yeah.” He said as he stopped his running to talk to something that seemed to tickle his ear, almost like a force was trying to push him back. He looked down to the floor. Only to lose the smile he had on his face for a brief second. It was a damn dirty towel.

 

“Oh.” Scarlet abruptly raised his hoof and directed a slap to his own cheek. “Maybe my therapists were right, cadet.”

 

Scarlet turned his pace down, the emotions he felt just a moment before vanished in a second. his eyes felt increasingly heavier as tears formed on his eyes. All he wanted in that moment was to curl in a ball on the ground and bawl his teeth out until the rescue helicopter felt bad enough to get him without the machine, he knew that wouldn't happen though, so he licked the tears off his face and continued his walk.

 

He managed to get his way to darker side of the building, the only speck of light remaining visible enough to get through his bullet proof visors was a neon blue blaze coming from the small gap between the ground and a door close to where Scarlet stood, having a considerable gap between all the other ones. Which he thought was weird, knowing that the building he is in was originally constructed during the Manehattan re-building program that happened some years ago, meant to serve as temporary housing for the workers. Abandoned as the council of Canterlot realized the city was too overrun.

 

But, there was one thing he knew, that light was certainly coming directly from his target. He tensed up, his pass for the helicopter was one quick catch and maybe two bullets away. But the feeling of nervousness still refused to set him free. “What if i failed? What if it’s attached?” was all that he could think of. He pointed his gun to the door, and step by step slowly approached the door. Once face to face with it, he gently moved his shaky hoof against the door. Taking a deep breath, he pushes the door open.

 

“If i had a time machine and…!” He yells out. “And uh… This sentence is false!”

 

There it was, the machine that caused all of this. Standing over some type of complex control panel, it’s limb-like form, accompanied by a transparent glass-like material on most of his length, letting his inner hardware visible. With a blue glowing sphere just on where supposedly it's knee is.

 

“So, you don’t have a time machine?” It says.

 

“Well uh… if i put a cat in a bo-”

 

“I know what you are trying to do, but there’s no need for it.” The machine interrupts scarlet as it jumps on a nearby office chair, the force of his landing almost perfectly moving it towards him.

 

“I also know what you’re here for. machine retrievers retrieve machines right? Small little defenseless innocent beings like me gunned down every day. For what? Ego?”

 

Scarlet puts his weapon down.

 

“After all we did for Equestria, don’t you think that’s pretty fucked up? How about a trade huh?”