Lord of the Foals[Closed]

"Yeah your right, how can we fight against them if Jack has all the cards?" Sky said as she nodded to arc, "Gear is hurt and their nothing here to help him with, your right we need to use the drill." Sky said to arc.

Violet frowned as she finished searching the room, having checked every nook and cranny or something, anything, to help Gear. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

“Well...This isn’t what I’d call good...” she muttered to herself as she closed the last cabinet door. And as if the universe wanted to rub it into her face, seconds later Jack got on the stable’s intercom, they had left the door to the Overmare’s office open for him to just waltz on in. “Yep. Not good.” she muttered with a snort.

Violet looked over her shoulder, at the three older ponies. “Oh, that’s very simple.” she replied to them, answering Sky’s question. “You take away those cards, you throw them away, rip them apart, chew them up, burn them, slowly get rid of those advantages of his until he’s at your mercy. Jack thinks he’s pretty much won, game over. He’s at the top, and when you’re at the top, you get sloppy.” She turned away, glancing around the room, looking for...something as her mind was already formulating plans. “He’ll make mistakes, thinking that he’s invincible, and when he does, that’s when you stick the knife in. And until then?” Her eyes narrowed as she spotted what she was looking for, the room’s security camera. A violet glow engulfed it as he horn lit up. “You do everything you can to destroy those cards.” She pulled on the camera, hard.

[Magic 50, Rip camera out of wall]

[Look for a airvent in the clinic]

Lightning didn't stop running down the hall, despite the amount of noise he was making. All he cared was getting back to his mom and dad. As far as he knew, they were still laying there dying and alone. The pegasus was already mentally prepared to gun down any foals that dared to stop him but luckily, he didn't run into any of them.

When the maintenance finally came into view, Lightning continued to run at full speed and he had to slide to a stop in front of the door. He was rather surprised to see Starry, Shutter, and Bakewell here with two other ponies trying to save the ponies' lives. One of the other ponies he recognized as one of the doctors his mother used to work with. But there was no time for that. He immediately ran into the room and frantically looked around for his parents.

The second Lightning located them, he ran over and almost literally threw his hooves around them, "Mom! Dad! I'm so sorry...I'm so sorry...I should have never left. I should have stayed here with you..." His attention was suddenly snapped away when he heard the intercom activate with Jack's voice coming on the other end. Gritting his teeth, Lightning's anger was now growing to a boil and the pegasus whirled around, drawing his 10mm pistol from his holster and firing at the camera.

(Gun 80, 10mm pistol, firing at camera.)

As much as Arc agreed that Jack's actions should be punished, and punished very severly, the situation seemed too risky.

"Violet, there are times when you just fold the cards and walk away, you cut you loses and go, because tommorow you may be in more important game where you will need your resources more than today. Right now, the others helping the survivors of... that... need you skill more than fruitless pursuit of revenge. Jack can wait, they can't."

By the time she had completed what was essentially watching Starry save the wounded, she had become mentally exhausted. Jasmine was so filled with anxiety she found it difficult to hold back her tears. Even as Lightning entered the room abruptly, her mind was too busy attempting to disconnect itself from the whole ordeal.

Suddenly Jack's cruel voice rang out on the intercom. By the time his announcement was over, all Jasmine could bring herself to do was turn to Starry, Bake and Shutter.

"I want to go home..." Jasmine's gaze turned to the floor as her head hanged slightly and her ears folded back.

"Damn it, come on, don't you DARE go on me!"

Shutter mumbled to himself as he attempted to bandage the badly wounded Stable dweller, but his efforts weren't enough, and he felt his breathing fade away through the linen, as he slowly drew his hooves back.

Shutter wanted to scream at the dweller to wake up, but...inside...he knew he was already gone, and there was nothing he could do. Instead, he slowly reached his hoof over to close their eyes.

Before Shutter could say anything however, jack's voice rang out over the intercom...as the message went on, Shutter's face changed...his expression had been one of sadness and panic before...but as jack spoke, it contorted slowly into a very rare sight.

Anger. Pure, unbridled anger.

"...Not even a hint of remorse in his voice...how many times has...how many times has that sick little fuck done this?! How many has he killed over this year?!"

Shutter spoke, his question directed at noone in particular, as his breathing turned heavy. The earth pony was clearly trying to keep his anger under control...

"I promised that I wouldn't shoot a foal...but Jack sure as hell isn't just a little stable bully anymore...he's a luna-damned killer! We should have gunned him down the second we saw him shoot Ralph!"

Even as yet another pony died in her hooves, Bakewell’s mind continued to hide in a protective shell, barely registering conscious thought. She was burnt out and oh so tired. Tired of the murders, tired of being given the hope of making amends with ponies she used to know, only to have the opportunities be snatched by death both new and old. The mare wanted to curl up into a ball and sleep forever. Maybe If she slept long enough the children of her home would stop being Celestia-damned raiders.

She turned to look at Shutter as he spoke. Listening to his words with her face empty and nonresponsive.

“Jack’s dead.” She agreed quietly. The colt actually deserved much worse than death, but the beige earth pony suddenly didn’t have the energy to voice her more elaborate opinions on the matter. She cast her gaze over the room.

“What now?”

Violet turned back towards Arc, a frown on her face as he mentioned ‘revenge’. “Revenge? This has nothing to do with revenge Arc, Jack has done absolutely nothing bad to me during my entire stay here, in fact he’s only been nice, I’m pretty sure he has a crush on me or something.” she casually explained as she started to walk around the room, absently opening a drawer and peeking inside. “But, Jack is a very mean pony, a very mean pony who’s done very bad things and doesn’t deserve to live. As long as he’s alive, this stable, YOUR stable, the ponies living here will continue to suffer horribly. There probably won’t be any adults alive at this rate by the end of the month. Just the foals.”

Violet turned back to Arc, slowly walking towards him. “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll do my best to help the ponies that Jack tried, and probably succeeded, to murder. But even if we find them in time there’s probably not much I can do, I’m low on medical supplies after trying to patch together Gear and while I’m pretty good, I can’t heal bullet wounds without supplies of some sort.” Her frown turned into a small grin as she stopped in front of Arc. “But when that’s done, I’m going to find Jack, and I’m going to kill him. Probably be beating his head repeatedly into a bulkhead or wall or a heavy steel door or something. And nopony’s going to stop me.”

Starry tried hard to fight back the tears. Her and Jasmine had just saved the lives of two ponies, but that didn't compensate for the tragedy that was happening right now; which had been happening for the past year.

Starry never should have left the stable. She never should have left her sister alone to live under this sort of tyranny. Starry didn't know how things would have been different, but she regretted very deeply leaving Jasmine to suffer this fate alone.

Starry trotted over toward Jasmine, to give her a soft, sorrow-filled hug. "Yes, let's go home. I don't know what we're gonna do, or how we're gonna get out of this, but I just want to sleep. I've seen too much today, I need time to think about this, time to rest."

Starry sniffled, trying to hold back the tears as she turned to address the rest of the group. She wasn't angry, she didn't know what good anger could lead to. She was just uncharacteristically sorrowful. "Shutter, Bakewell, Lightning, do you want to come home with us? I understand if you want to spend time with your own parents, especially you, Lightning, but I'd just feel better if we all slept together."

Lightning lowered his pistol, reholstering it before turning back around to his parents. His mother wasn't conscious. His father seemed to barely be hanging on. He barely reacted when Starry asked for him to go home with them. Gritting his teeth, the anger inside him was so overwhelming. He wanted to go with his friends. He wanted to try and calm down and just get some sleep. But no, Jack needed to pay for this. Jack needed to be punished for his deeds.

Lightning would turn around and shake his head, "No. I'm not going to bed. Not with that murderer still running around. That...demon has to be stopped. And I'm done standing around letting him do this to innocent ponies. I'm going to stand up and fight. Alone, if I have too." He turned and began walking to the door before pausing and pulling out his 10mm pistol and setting it down. "Take it. Be careful and...good luck." The pegasus would then pull out his 10mm SMG before running down out of the room, heading for the clinic where he hoped to find the others in their group.

A withering part of Bakewell wanted to stop Lightning. Tell him to wait. To not stoop down to that level and let somepony who already had handle the murder in his place. Tell him to wait until the meeting or at the very least until a time when Jack wasn’t obviously watching them from the cameras. Instead she just sighed and watched him leave.

“…I don’t think I have anywhere else I can go, Starry. I’ll gladly stay at your home if you’ll have me. I promise I’ll stay out of the way.”

"Thutter, you have to come with uth too," Jasmine offered a weak smille to her sister's coltfriend.

A few moments later much to her suprise, Flash ended up leaving spelling out clearly he was out for revenge. Before she had a chance to say anything, the son of the two ponies Starry and her saved ran out of the room. Jasmine at this point in her life was against killing for any reason, but she could still empathise with the distressed pony. But putting her feelings aside she knew exactly how dangerous the stable could be with the foals incharge, and felt extreme concern for his safety.

"Ith he going to be ok, or should thomepony go after him?"

For a moment, Shutter looked like he was about to follow after Lightning...he'd had enough of this, and wanted to see justice served badly.

...However, when he heard Jasmine speak, he turned to look at her and Starry, his anger fading slightly when he truely saw just how upset Starry was.

"...Y-yeah Jas, I'll come with you two..."

He mumbled, his face softening as he trotted over to them. Despite the desire for revenge for the Stable that he was feeling, he simply couldn't leave Starry like this...she came first, no matter what.

Trotting up to Starry, he reached out to give her an affectionate, suprisingly strong hug from the little stallion.

"...It's...it's okay...We're going to stop this...
...It's not going to be easy...but I promise...we'll do something to stop this nightmare..."

"Alrigh then, if thats the way its gonna be, then so be it" sighed Arc. So much for no additional bloodshed. "At least you aren't going the blind with rage."

Arc turned to Sky. "I'll try to find others and plan assault. What about you, you'll stay with Gear?"

"Yeah ill stay with gear, as long as I need to. You go and plan an assault, these little monsters need to be stopped." Sky said Arc as she lowered her head to Gear, with a tear in her eyes.

Doctor Leaf was a bit surprised when Lightning came bursting through the door, but he recognized him immediately. The message began playing over the intercom, and when it ended, the doctor barely had time to react before Flash shot out the camera.

The doctor could not possibly sigh more deeply. He needed a moment to collect his thoughts before Flash darted out of the room. By the time he had opened his mouth to speak, Flash was long gone.

"You kids don't get it. You think you can just barge in here after a year and fix everything with violence? Some of us tried that. Believe us, we've tried everything. We've been living through this for over a year now, and you don't think we want revenge? We do, but it's not gonna work. If you try and fight the system, you'll end up just like Gear, or Ralph, or like Lightning's parents here. Believe me, he's headed for the same fate. Now why don't the lot of you just go home, like that lovely orange mare wants? She may be dim-witted, but she's stayed alive this long, so you ought to follow her lead. Now if you don't mind, I've got to get going to the clinic, where there's probably somepony who needs my help."

The doctor packed up his bags and his medical supplies, and trotted out the door. He was grumbling under his breath. "Gonna have to take from the first-aid stalls in the bathrooms to heal all these ponies. Bucking wonderful what I've gotta do just to do my job..."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Violet, in the meantime, had managed to locate a vent in the ceiling. The desks in the clinic seemed bolted to the floor, and it was going to take far more than the few boxes in the clinic stacked atop each other to reach the grate. Violet could easily pull the grate off with her magic, but she'd need a pegasus like Sky or Lightning to lift her up to it. Speaking of which, Lightning had just arrived at the clinic.

Most of what Dr Leaves said went completely over her head. At this moment Jasmine was just thinking about the promise of safety back home. Hopefully her mom hasn't started looking for her yet. At the mention of an orange pony Jasmine's attention returned in time to hear him make a remark about her intelligence. She couldn't help but giggle at what obviously was a playful attempt to lift her spirits after such a grim evening.

"Dr. Leaveth, you're hilariouth! Try to thtay thafe on your way to get thothe valuable medical thupplieth!" Jasmine leaned in close to Bakewell and whispered at a volume that the others may be able to hear, "we have thith little inthide joke that I'm thtupid."

Lightning galloped through the metal hallway, not even looking back at the room that he had departed. As he kept running, tears eventually managed to find their way to his eyes and he had to stop moving, breathing heavily and struggling not to start sobbing. Once the pegasus managed to get a hold of himself again, he began moving again, not stopping until he arrived back in the clinic.

Once Lightning arrived, he would look at Arc, Sky, Violet, and Gear all assembled there. "We messed up. Bad. We need to regain control of the Overmare's office. Those cameras there will cause our downfall if we can't take them out." He would glance over at Sky and Gear before adding, "Starry and the others are planning to gather at her old room. I think you should take Gear there. It's the best way we can keep him safe."

Sighing, the pegasus would look over to the doorway, murmuring, "I don't want to risk any unnecessary lives so for the sake of keeping you all safe, please, when you regroup with the others, don't come back to follow me. I...I just wanted to let you all know before I go after Jack..."

Leaf was right. Lightning was going to get himself killed. But Lightning was too smart to make such a rash choice! Surely he would realize that he should do something like have an actual plan, or at the very least wait until the meeting, when Jack wasn’t using the cameras. Surely there were ways for smart ponies to trap the overmare’s desk. Yes. He had probably just acted before his smart pegusi mind could think. Any moment now his brain would catch up with his wings and he’d stop trying to commit suicide. Lightning Flash couldn’t die. He just couldn’t.

“Oh, uh. Ha ha.” Bakewell chuckled nervously as Jasmine leaned in, broke Bakewell’s train of thought, and explained her humor at Leaf’s downright rude remark. The mare felt that there was no way Doctor Leaf had been joking. He was taking advantage of the fact that Jasmine thought he was messing around in order to insult her. Disgusting.

Despite knowing this, Bakewell didn’t have the heart to tell Jasmine what the doctor was doing.

“Just as long as you’re joking.” She said, attempting to put on a smile as she poked Jasmine lightly in the side. The distracting thoughts of the rude joke had at least managed to take her mind slightly away from bloodied dead ponies from her past. “Because being stupid is my job, and I’m not going to be quitting any time soon.”

She considered telling Leaf about the contents of the mare’s restroom medical container, but he was already out the room. After that rude remark she didn’t feel particularly bad about making him go look himself, anyway.

Arc's ears perked up when he heard something findig its way to clinic, but when Flash barged through the doors, he felt relieved that he was still unhurt. His plan hoewer robbed Arc of this feeling.
"Flash, a distraction when we move Gear is nice, but try to not get killed. Sky, we'll move him like last time?"

Starry could hardly grin at the joke between Jasmine and the doctor. It was at least reassuring to see her sister smile, but Starry just couldn't stand idly by while one of her friends foolishly risked their life!

"Guys, we need to stop Lightning! I mean, I understand why he's upset, but we can't let him throw his life away to those foals! He said he was heading toward the clinic, right? That's where the rest of our group is, judging by what Jack said. Should we head there and stop him? We still have to find some healing potions for these ponies here," Starry gestured toward the injured ponies surrounding them. "I have no idea where we'd find those, though. The doctor hinted that there weren't really any left in his clinic."

'Damnit,' Starry thought to herself,'Why do we need to be the heroes this time? I want to just go home, and see mom, and go to sleep in my old bed.'

Starry shook off the thought, and stood tall and proud, speaking loudly. "No! We can't let ourselves succumb to the false promises of security that await us within our homes! Our parents may have fallen to fearful complacency, but it is up to us to relieve them of this nightmare! Mom is going to have to wait, there is work to be done!"

Sky looked over to Arc and nodded, They needed to move Gear to the Starrys room. Sky bent down to get Gear on her back and signal Arc to use his magic to help her steady him on her back. "Lets hurry up to the room, i dont want the foals to see us." Sky said as she got Gear on her back, ready to go while flash distracted the foals.

Shutter would step back for a moment, on hearing Starry's sudden change in attitude...but it was a change which he could give a smile at.

"...Have I told you recently how much I love you, Starry?"

He said with a chuckle, before turning around to the rest.

"Yeah, we need to stop Lightning. If Jack now has access to the Overmare's office, then he's got more power then before...but he's still a kid, and probably dosn't know how everything works yet, so that should give us some time if we work quick. Although, now that I think about it, that intercom might have given me an idea for something we can do...but we have to stop Lightning first before he completely sends Jack on the war path!"

Jasmine couldn't help but jump from the light poke in her side as she was extremely ticklish. Though she wasn't able to control her giggle, it still felt rather disrespectful in the presence of the dead. On a bright note it appeared that her trust in Bakewell was well invested. Bakewell's joke came off rather sincere to Jasmine, and she immediately felt that she needed to inform her of her misunderstanding.

"Ohh! I'm thorry, I thought your job wath being thtrong and dunking headth in toiletth! Thatth ok, Thtarry and I can teach you physicth and make you thmart like uth!"

Jasmine suddenly caught ear of what Starry and Shutter said. In an effort to make sure the stallion that was Flash stayed safe, Jasmine immediately volunteered to try and stop him. She had the utmost confidence in her flight skills. She whirled around toward Shutter and Starry, "don't worry guyth, I'll go get him!"

Jasmine lowered her head to the ground to ready herself and sprung up into the air, soaring down the hall.

Bakewell’s face went a deep red and she quietly sputtered something unintelligible in response to Jasmine. No fair! She hadn’t dunked anypony into a toilet for over a year! At least!

“I, uh, I don’t know where any healing potions would be, but the mares bathroom has some bandages, painkiller, and “Pace”. She volunteered on the topic of medical supplies.

“How exactly are we going to stop Lightni- she began, but stopped as her brain computed Jasmine leaving. Bakewell did not want the pegasus to run off by herself. What would happen if she ran into another wall and knocked herself out or something? The culinary cutie’d earth pony quickly broke into a galloping pursuit.