Title:           Badass Survivalist Anon
Author:          Conanon
Pastebin link:   http://pastebin.com/jHR0Bd41
First Edit:      Wednesday 9th of July 2014 05:39:16 PM CDT
Last Edit:       Wednesday 9th of July 2014 05:39:16 PM CDT

>Reading 4chan you had always thought you wouldn't have had magic.
>Three years in the Everfree changed that viewpoint rather starkly.
>There had been twenty of you to begin with, and you had never understood what the hell was happening.
>Just woke up one day with all of you in some sick twisted jungle place and nothing but the clothes on your back.
>Wandering through a strange world with bizarre foliage was bad enough, but you couldn’t shake the feeling that it was… breathing, that the world was watching you somehow.
>And then the first one died.
>Some grumpy old Mexican guy, or maybe some place in South America, you had no fucking clue.
>But it was stilled burned in your brain, the manticore leaping out of nowhere and grabbing him.
>It didn’t even eat him, the smell from another world was alien, bizarre to it, it just mauled it, and in seconds, he was dead.
>It was a small guy, thin and pale and even a little sickly looking. He grabbed a rock.
>In retrospect, you realized he had no idea what the hell he was doing, just acting on pure adrenaline.
>But when he charged, the rock started to change, morphing in his hands.
>By the time he had reached the monster it was a long knife, practically a machete, still out of stone, but keened to a perfect edge.
>Humans had always evolved to use tools to perfection, and when the magic started to flow around you, that was the most convenient form for it to take.
>And he knew how to use it to. The manticore swung at him with both forepaws, striking with its tail, but with the ease and grace of a fencer, he dodged and spun around them, stabbing into the top of the beasts head.
>It raged and thrashed but it wasn’t long before it was down.
>It was the first kill, it wouldn’t be the last.
>Just like with ponies, everybody had a talent or two. Shaping tools, finding resources, inventing mechanisms for more simplistic survival.
>Other advantages of humanity showed through, too. You knew that humans used to be pursuit predators, but now it was days before you had to sleep, weeks before some of the most powerful ones had to eat.
>Someone stopped to explain to you that humans are symbiotic with a lot of different diseases, and that was the power that you got. It took a while, but it showed up.
>You couldn’t craft swords, but you somehow knew how to use one, and by focusing on it, you could at a poisonous touch to it, enough to rot whatever monster was in your way.
>If you weren’t careful you gave people colds when you got upset at them, but the endurance was enough to keep the worst at bay.
>The group, fifteen of you alive at the current moment, kept moving forward, breaking camp every day in order to move forward.
>Nobody knew what you were looking forward. All you new is that you were looking.
>And then, one day, it ended.
>The forest ended and broke into a massive plain.
>The group murmured and grumbled amongst each other, but you grinned.
>It had taken a while before you had managed to figure it out, but between manticores, the occasional hydra, cragodiles, you had finally figured out where you were.
>And now you were out of the nastiest place in the country.
>It was impossibly large from what maps you vaguely recalled put out by the show writers. You didn’t know if it was because the maps were wrong or if it was just magic being unexplainable as shit.
>But you were out of it, and that was what mattered.
>You coaxed the members of your group out, using the weird language that had formed out of the clusterfuck of languages your group had.
>But being out here, surrounded by the endless sky and hill, was still slightly nerve-wracking, especially after months and months of kill, fight, eat, survive.
>Eventually buildings peaked over the horizon. Everyone was excited at that and you hurried your pace, entering what appeared to be a quiet little burg, a quiet herd of creatures bustling around.
>You were right. They were ponies. And they were very very surprised to see haggard giants of every available human color and gender stumbling towards them with weapons and a hungry look in their eye.
>But at least one moves up to talk to you. A kindly looking, light yellow pony with bluish mane and a heart for a cutie mark.
>She looks up you and smiles.
“Hello?”
>You look at her for a moment, then shake your head.
>She doesn’t know. She doesn’t understand. But then, how could she?
>You look at your group and jerk your head. They look at each other and most of them nod in agreement.
>You all start walking. Past the pony. Through the pony, and onward.
>For a while, you thought you could have stayed. They might have let you.
>But you were a different person now. And all you wanted to do was keeping walking.