Slip Gate
This was back when Slip Gate wasn't even called Slip Gate, he was barely bigger than a filly. His name was Trazh. He lived in a world far from the world of Equestria, and far worse than Equestria. This world was a dark and evil place filled with the corruption of minds and souls with hatred, carnality and greed. This world was inhabited by ponies, who lived in the many cities of their countries, and these countries were constantly at war with one another, over natural resources, land, because of competition, drugs and capital stupidity. Very often bigger countries with vast armies, led their fleets to other continents and enslaved the smaller countries in them, to settle in their land and consume every last drop of resource they can get their hands on.
The politics of these countries were abominations of the pony kind, every year they filled their army with recruits, and rarely did the recruits come home alive from the stupid wars lead by the countries, so it was counted most terrifying when a family had to give their hardly grown sons to the terrible fate of a recruit. "Fresh blood",- they called them in the barracks. But otherwise could not be done, the country's policy, where Trazh had lived(being named Trazh was not easy for Slip Gate, he always had to deal with ponies that used to punk him around because of his name, and during his entire life in the city he
hated his name), was to destroy the entire family if it disobeyed to give their offspring to the Empire. Some ponies were "lucky" enough to have been born in the families of the Elite of the Empire, so they weren't recruited, because their families had money. Otherwise every year the "harvest" took the lives of hundreds of thousands of ponies throughout all the regions of the Empire due to: abysmal sanitary conditions, a hostile environment inside the barracks, no heating, beating from the officer staff, hatred, madness and apathy-provoked suicides. The ones who survived the barracks, were mostly killed in the war. The ones who survived the war, often came home without parts of their body or mentally scarred for the rest of their lives, and when they came back they were forgotten and left, along with their broken life.
The Empire of Phisto was claimed to be the cruelest country in their world. As young fillies grew up they were constantly tested for their physical health and throughout a series of social and other doubtful pseudo-philosophical tests, depending on which, the Empire's State Acknowledgement Committee decided what job in the Empire suited the pony best, and from that moment on the pony could never change his specialty. The ponies of this world also didn't have cutie marks, so Trazh never saw a single cutie mark in his life, meaning that ponies in this world were mostly corrupt and that no pony even knew about the benefactor of love or forgiveness. The full grown work ponies had a work day of 15 full hours(a day is approx 28 hours in their world). The labor for these ponies was terribly hard and disrespectful, they had to work in heavy industrial factories, with no guarantee of pension or any healthy food and condition, pointlessly making outdated materials and commodities, that are stored in gigantic warehouses, only to never be used by anypony.
Trazh was born in a family of gun makers, he was a unicorn and his family we're gunsmiths for countless generations, countless because to the shame of this country half of it's population was illiterate, and could not read, write or count. The family of the gunsmiths where Trazh was born, was one of the fortunate ones to have enough money for books, by selling their gun-craft. So Trazh knew how to read and write, and count. Among his favorites were books about fantasy and ancient kingdoms, and he often thought of his world as an ancient and blood-lusting realm of tyrants.
When he was a filly his father always took him to work at the gun factory, that's where his father had a cabinet with a lamp, and where he taught his son the aces of making guns, bullets, sights, and maintaining them. In his spare time from work he also taught him how to shoot. "When you levitate the gun with your horn a little to the left, you can see the iron sights... You see this trigger? It accumulates the kinetic energy you concentrate, and when you let go of it, it springs backwards and hits the iron bullet. You understand? Don't let go of the trigger too early and don't hold it too long, or either your bullet will get stuck inside, or the trigger will fly out and break your skull. You got that? Okay now shoot...",- his father usually said, while they practiced at a crudely hoof made target range outside of town, Trazh would let the trigger go and the bullet would silently and rapidly flash out towards the target. He always hit the bullseye.
Trazh mostly grew up on the streets, a lot of schools had been closed by the Empire State Acknowledgement Committee during the war, and when Trazh was out on the streets, he saw a world engulfed in plunder and hate. No pony could walk safely on the streets. It didn't matter anyway if the school was open or closed because Trazh was expelled from it for bad grades, the teachers idiocy had no bounds, they would always give good grades to students who resembled more their slaves, and bad grades to all other students, no matter what discipline or subject their was. Trazh lived in the capital of the Empire - Trotsk. The capital was a scary place to be when it was plain day, let along when it was night the place resembled a mad hell more than it resembled a city. In numerous corners ponies were being mugged or shot, in the dark alleys ponies were using drugs or being sucked into lustful or gluttonous activities, or in countless pubs and bars ponies suffered from alcoholic beverages. There was no need for mafia, because all of this was counted legal in the Empire, so to take control simply over areas some ponies formed clans in their regions, and these clans made life at night impossible, they always collided on every occasion they could find, but mostly because of the territory they controlled. The city was also full of propaganda at every corner, and saying that ponies would form a revolution against the Empire is pointless, because the Empire had also police troops that constantly inspected the area. No revolution could ever be planned by a population of parasites and the ones that were planned were thouroughly sought out and eliminated.
When Trazh got older the Empire was in need of recruits, and in the first wave was Trazh's family, they took him and two of his brothers into the army. When Trazh was departing his father had given him a sniping carbine with a sharp blade on the buttstock(In the army weapons that were given to the soldiers were of the worst quality, unless the recruits bought weapons in the city and brought them upon recruitment). Trazh had witnessed life in the most terrible place in the world - the Barracks. This barfed up excuse for a training ground radiated danger and madness from everywhere: the ground was full of toxic waste that was stored in the ground under the barracks for decades, before it was built, the ponies had only one locker inside the barracks and that's it, there was no heating, the food was given to the ponies in giant containers, and sometimes Trazh even wondered how he stayed alive, when the containers arrived through the back door, everypony ran to them and fed upon the dirty disgusting belch they called food like pigs. Often Trazh had to fight with the ponies that were hogging the food to themselves,"MINE!",- those ponies would scream in stupidity, and push Trazh away with their hooves. This kind of life terrified the brown coated, black haired unicorn, and to keep at least a bit of his sanity he polished and maintained his rifle. When night comes he would open his locker and take out his rifle, and closely inspect its every detail under the light of the lamp that was blasting through the window, then before going to sleep, he would put the rifle back and put a large lock on his locker. Sometimes during training the officer staff would come up to the soldiers and beat them if they disobeyed or did something incompetently. Training was hard for Trazh but eventually he got above all of the exercises and did them flawlessly.
Twenty years ago...
The barracks Trazh was stationed in wasn't far from the border, and on one day his patience was at its very end, he couldn't stand being in the army anymore, so he decided to plan an escape to the other country over the border. The country was called Libestion and it was a country that wasn't very much different from the Empire of Phisto, the only exception was that in this country greed and social corruption with propagandistic knowledge were much more common than alcoholism and street wars, and ponies lived more in suburbs than cities. He picked just the right night to pass through the watchtowers and guards, and wouldn't you know it! A massive attack with magical bombs from gigantic airplanes took place the very moment he ran away from the barracks! one of the bombs hit the barracks and the watchtower and completely destroyed them! Trazh was very fortunate he could now run towards the border, which he did and soon he got past it and was on the territory of Libestion.
But where to go from here? he had his rifle and helmet and armor with him. He stumbled upon a suburban village and decided to hide in it for a while, he found an open motorized wagon and jumped into it. Here he slept for the night. The next day he waked up in the carriage only it was parked inside a building, a giant skyscraper, he must have overslept, because that very moment it was dark again already, and some unicorn with glasses and a tie was approaching his motorized carriage. He was carrying some paper bags with his magic and looked very tired and worried with something, he was obviously in a hurry. He got into the wagon and left the skyscraper to get to his house in the suburbs. When he reached his house and settled the wagon into the garage, he checked the back, and saw Trazh, the pony was instantly shocked at the sight of the stranger, "Shh",- said Trazh,"I'm not going to harm you", the unicorn with the glasses still didn't move, "are you the police?",- the pony asked nervously, "no, I'm a runaway from the Empire army",- said Trazh very quietly,-"can you help me hide here?", "If there was an officer here, my life would be ruined without a doubt!",- mumbled the unicorn nervously,- "You can stay here for the night, but tomorrow you should leave.",- decided the pony after a long pause.
It seems the unicorn with glasses had a reason to be nervous, because he found out the company he works in, has began suspecting him of espionage, for some reason they didn't like his foreign accent very much, even though he said multiple times that it was a dialect from the north. At night a special agent from the company had gotten into the unicorns house and started looking into multiple documents of the employee, trying to find dirt on him. He was being payed really well for this job and had a very influential and powerful boss, that knew a lot more than any pony in this world. When the agent was leaving he found Trazh in the carriage of the unicorn, and instantly photographed the evidence of treason. but as he did, he also planted a bug on Trazh's armor, and left the house, professionally, without a trace.
The next day a very terrible thing happened. A war had started between the countries! And the little suburban town was under attack since it was very close to the front. When Trazh overheard the loud banging of magical bombs, he was certain it was time to run again. He ripped through the garage door, the instant a carpet of magic bombs fell on top of the suburban houses in which his house was also on the line of the blast. He ran towards the mountains, deep inside the woods, hearing behind him the thud of bombs and screams of infantry, finally he reached the deepest recesses of the forest and to his amazement found an ancient palace with half ruined walls and towers, he didn't know how he stumbled upon this place, behind him lay a thick layer of fog, and he fell many times while running through it. but he could probably hide in the ruins for now. Trazh ran for the ruins and when he was on them he fell through the weak floor of the palace, he fell four floors before he reached the cellar. When he got up from the floor he recognized a Pegasus standing in front of him, but of course finding a Pegasus, that were thought long to have been completely extinct in the last race wars, blew his mind away,"Whoa, who are you?", asked Trazh,"I'm Soul Song, and... What is this place?",- asked Soul,"What do you mean what is this place? this is enemy territory in Libestion.",- said Trazh confused,-"Libestion? i don't know that country, I came from that portal",- said Soul pointing at the
portal behind him, "Whoa",- said Trazh looking at the giant
Gate in front of him, the dark swirling vortex inside it was lighting the room of the cellar. The next moment he heard the explosion of magical bombs right overhead, the place was shattering and about to collapse on top of them any second, "hey Soul where does that thing lead to?",- he asked loudly, trying to over-scream the loud bombs, "I think it leads to my world",- replied Soul loudly. "Well then let's get the hay out of here!",- said Trazh, and the two ponies escaped through the blinking portal. On the other side, as soon as Trazh got up he took his rifle and broke the gemstones in the portal. Now the Gate was finally broken.
Meanwhile in the cabinet of Mr.Trottingham, the agent returns with a special report: "Boss... Someponies know about the
portals" Mr.Trottingham sighed, and answered coldly with a cigar in his mouth: "Eliminate them."
Years later Trazh and Soul became close friends, Trazh told Soul all about the horrors of his world, they didn't know how to call this world properly, they just called it Hell. They were also later searching for other
Gates, and Trazh got his cutie mark when traveling with Soul, who helped him overcome the fear of the unknown, it was a gray-metallic-brownish arc with a black vortex inside it. He has been very grateful to Soul ever since, because from that moment and on he was known as Slip Gate - The ranger of the unknown worlds.
Wed Nov 08, 2017 8:13 pm by rainbowdash606
