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The Protogen of Equis | Cold Sweet | (45 minutes later)
Tapping on my wrist computer I looked up at Krystal who was going through the few clothes that she had with her and placed them into the closet that was in my quarters. Since I didn't really need clothes the closet was pretty empty giving her more space for her stuff while the few pieces of clothing were just a few casual stuff that had to be gathering dust.
Now that I think about it.
I haven't worn a single piece of clothing since I woke up.
Looking down at my wrist computer with all systems going green I push myself off the bed before walking over to my repaired visor.
Krystal placed her head on my shoulder while she looked into the blank black mirrored visor.
"I... I'm happy that I was the first you were willing to show your face to me," She then turned tilted her head to rest on my neck. "You trusted me enough and... loved me enough to show your face to me,"
I smiled at her through our reflection.
"I trust you more than my face and heart Krystal," I moved around holding her hand. "I trust you with my very life,"
She smiled before gently grabbing my visor before taking it in her hand and lifting it to my face.
The familiar blue HUD light up while I could see the reflection of my visor's blue smile on her eyes.
"Come on... Spike must be wondering where we are," I brought her close and 'kissed' her forehead with my visor-covered face.
(Training room)
Holding a training blade in his hand Spike fought against one of the training droids with weights on his wrists, ankles, and the heavy vest he wore.
After what happened back on Dinosaur Planet Spike felt off...
This Fox guy got a solid hit on Zero which broke the protogen's visor!
Spike has spent the last few months training and sparing to fight against the cyber-canine and at least get a solid hit on him.
Yet Fox got a hit in hard enough to piss off Zero.
The dragon has never really seen the captain of the Reach ever lose his temper.
Sure he would sigh every now and then but going all 'rage mode', he was kinda glad Krystal was there to stop Zero from giving in to his hate and rage.
Rage though...
Sometimes told him a certain purple pony was Raging outback on Equis.
Spike would deal with that later but-
*WACK!*
The droid hit him on the back of the head with the patted training weapon before Spike turned to the machine.
"That's it come here you!" Spike ran at the training droid before dropping his training shield and blade pulling back his fist.
"BZZZZZ! TIMEOUT! TIMEOUT! TIMEOUT!!!"
"Hey, Spike go easy on the training droid... we don't need to keep spending salvage on repairing all the droids you break down," Spike turned his head to see a certain synthetic standing with his visor uncracked.
"Zero? Um... hey," Spike let go of the droid. "Stand by mode,"
By his word, the training droid powered down before Spike walked over to Zero who stood with a smile on his visor.
"How are you? You seem better than you were yesterday after... well you know," Spike referenced what happened the day before.
"Krystal told you?" Zero asked.
"Yes sir," Spike answered while bowing his head expecting a lecture but got a chuckle.
"Don't worry about it Spike your fine hold up your head," Zero stated before Spike looked up to see his commander whose visor smiled down at him.
Spike and Zero looked at one another for a few moments before the dragon spoke.
"So how are you feeling?"
"Better actually," Zero stated.
"Oh... really? How come?" Spike asked.
"He has his reason," Krystal's voice spoke through the training hall, causing the two to turn their heads to see the vixen smiling at the two while walking in.
Spike noticed Zero's tail wagging back and forth at the sight of Krystal even which caused him to blink.
The young drake did notice that Zero's did wag slightly when he would see Krystal but it would be very subtle and quick, a kinda blink and you miss it kind of moment. Now his tail was like...
"Hey Zero~," Krystal moved to Zero before standing right next to him... closer than usual.
Spike looked at the two who looked at one another.
*Spark*
"*GASP!*" Spike smiled. "OH, MY GODDESS! FINALLY!"
The two look at Spike after his reaction.
"I thought you two would never get together," Spike shouted with a smile on his face.
"Um... what?" Zero's visor turned into a set of question marks: ?_?
"Nothing... it's just HAHA! I was really looking forward to seeing you two finally get together! For Celestia's sake, it took you long enough!" Spike shouted with a smile.
Krystal blushed and Zero's visor began to heat up red slightly.
"Hahaha, the looks!" Spike held his gut from how hard he was laughing. "I'm so proud of the two of you,"
"Spike that's enough," Zero said while Krystal blushed held her face in her hands.
"Alright alright fair enough!" Spike calmed down. "Hey, so I gotta ask you think we can make a visit to ponyville?"
This surprised the two.
"Um... why?" Zero asked.
"Well there might be a new comic issue that came out this month," Spike informed his captain.
Zero held.
"Really?"
"Yeah... I know but this is a limited edition that I've been waiting before you first showed up Boss," ...
Krystal looked at Zero while the protogen looked back at the blue vixen.
She moved her eyes forward before looking back with a smile.
Zero held out his finger.
"Just this once,"
(On the dropship)
"I gotta ask," Krystal spoke up causing Spike to look up from his seat on the other side of the two lovers.
"Shoot," The drake spoke not opening his eyes.
"Your world has many different races correct?" Krystal asked while Spike nodded, though this caused Zero to lift his head up to turn to Krystal.
"Right,"
"Does your world have any foxes like me?" The vixen asked.
"Well... Krystal, we have Foxes in this little country called Japony but none of them are like you. I never heard of any foxes with blue fur like yours," Spike stated.
"Alright, I was just... curious," Krystal felt a hand snake around her arm before locking with her fingers while she tighten her grip at the touch of her new boyfriend. "I just thought maybe-"
Zero 'kissed' her before touching his head to hers.
"I know,"
Spike opened his eyes seeing the two newly made lovers before him but an empty feeling washed over him.
He wished that was him... with Rarity.
But he knew that Rarity didn't want to do anything with him but to use him as an errand boy.
Ironically it was Mr. Bones that help him see that his efforts for her to get the two to finally join together were fruitless.
A literal psychopath of killing a machine told him what he saw.
The logic was overbearing.
Who knows... there is other fish in the ocean.
An ocean he just found out was bigger than he thought.
The dropship landed with a slight thud as the group got up, remembering from the last time they visited pilot droid landed outside Ponyville.
Getting up the three walked out of the shuttle but were meeting with a chilling breeze and a white covering of mass.
"Snow?" Krystal smiled seeing the familiar site that she couldn't recall the last time she saw it.
"Spike..." Zero turned to him with a smile.
"I might have said half the truth why I was down here" Spike stated. "It's Hearth's Warming Eve and I've not gotten you two anything yet,"
Krystal and Zero: "Hearth's Warming Eve?"
"Yeah you know that one time of year was you come together with family and friends," Spike stated.
"OH! It's like Donum Dom!" Krystal spoke up with a smile.
"Donum Dom?" This time it was both Spike and Zero looking at the blue vixen.
"It's a system-wide holiday! Sure every world celebrates it differently but in the end, it's the same concept!" Krystal smiled. "And... I'm actually going to spend it with others this year and not alone again,"
"Boss does the Protogens have a Hearth's warming day or 'Donum Dom' similar holiday," Spike asked the protogen captain.
"No... we don't but the precursors who created our creators celebrated a holiday but the name has been lost to time but it was a joyous holiday with red winter clothes and gifts,"
The three looked at one another before spike smiled.
"Well, we are celebrating a three-style holiday!" Spike announced with his chest puffed.
"So what then?"
"Well I was going to get that comic but maybe you two should stop by sugar cube corner for some holiday-themed treats," Spike pointed out. "The reach can create decorations right?"
Zero thought for a moment.
"Well I wouldn't normally do it because we could use the materials for something else but if this calls for a celebration I will have Mr. Bone ready the printers for your directions Spike," This caused Spike to smile with a mouth full of dragon teeth.
"Awesome! Now let's get going! Also might want to avoid seeing Twilight or the others... well Pinkie might... you know what skip the sugar cube corner we can try and make the sweets ourselves,"
"So what should we do?"
"Wanna check out some of the comics with me?"
"Might as well let us see what made us come all the way down here in the first place," Krystal joked.
"I do like the physical copy of any book," Zero played along. |
The Protogen of Equis | Hearth's warming eve/Donum Dom special (Christmas 2021-canon) | "Be careful Krystal a fall from that height will result in major injury," Mr. Bones warned the blue vixen who was hanging up some red ribbons in the mess hall while Spike and Zero worked on the sweets.
Krystal looked down at the droid who held the latter she was on before smiling at the said android.
"Don't worry Bones just hold it still I'm almost... There! Done!" Krystal moved back finishing the last of the directions. "Not too shabby huh?"
"The ribbon on your right is 2.1 cms off-center," Mr. Bones stated but moved slightly when Krystal glared at him. "Apologizes my optics might need to be adjusted,"
The Amazon began to climb down the latter before the sound of a fire alarm caused the two to turn and see Zero and Spike accidentally burning the cookies.
"I thought you said you found the perfect temperature!" Spike shouted.
"I did! You didn't put enough butter in!"
"What does that have to do with burning the cookies!"
"EVERYTHING!"
Krystal smiled while the two bickered over baked goods.
It's been almost two years since she celebrated Donum Dom with anyone sure it was only three others if you counted Mr. Bones but she wasn't alone again.
*POOOF!*
Zero used a fire foam sprayer on some pancakes that Spike tried to make but ended up leaving unattended when pulling out the burnt cookies
"NO! MY GEM CAKES!" Spike shouted dread filled his voice while Zero stopped the flames. "Why did you do that!? You ruined them!"
"What? Spike the pancakes were on fire!" Zero pointed out to the young drake.
"That was supposed to happen!" Spike yelled at the Protogen. "It was to crystalize the gems to bring out the sweetness! But I had to put out these things you call cookies!"
Zero: -_-
Lifting up the foam sprayer he fired at Spike covering him in the white mass of foam.
"Oh, it is ON!" Spike grabbed another foam sprayer and fired it at Zero.
"Guys!"
"THIS MEANS WAR!" Zero shouted at Spike while shooting back.
Krystal tried to stop the two before they could ruin the surviving sweets.
"GUYS STOP!"
Spike ducked while Zero fired his sprayer at him but ended up hitting Krystal who was given a face full of fire foam which caused the two to freeze. Not moving from her spot Zero's other half slowly reached up and whipped the foam off her face which caused her to look up at the protogen.
"Um... In retrospect this is Spike's fault Krystal," Zero pointed to Spike who then turned to the cyber-canine.
"WHAT THE FUCK! YOU SHOT AT ME WITH THAT SPRAYER!" Spike shouted before Krystal slowly began to shake. "Oh, shit,"
Krystal gave a war cry before running at Zero and pouncing on him, before shouting at him in Cerinian before grabbing his sprayer and beginning to spray him in the faceplate.
"AGH! SPIKE! HELP ME!"
"Sorry boss you on your own!" Spike dropped his sprayer rushed away but the doors to the mess hall closed in front of him before pushing the release button but he was locked out. "OH DAMN IT! BONES OPEN THE DOOR!"
Spike pounded on the metal doors before Mr. Bones spoke up from the other side.
"I'm sorry Spike I'm afraid I cannot do that," Bones stated before Spike turned to see Krystal slowly walking over to Spike with both sprayers.
"Krystal... please..." Spike slowly began to sink down. "Have mercy on me!"
Krystal still covered in the foam pointed both her sprayer fire systems at Spike.
"No,"
She then fired both without mercy as Spike screamed for help.
(later)
After the little fight, the three had calmed down and sat in front of the little heat lantern that they used for a fireplace.
All changed into less soaked clothes from the foam, using the replicator to make some festive clothes along with that Spike decided to make something that wouldn't take too much time and effort.
Plus they kinda ruined all the supplies.
Hot chocolate.
"All right here you guys go," Spike held out two of the drinks to Zero and Krystal.
"Thanks, Spike," Krystal smiled.
Zero's visor: THX
Spike then sat down while looking at Zero who didn't wear much unlike the two of them since he was always wearing his combat apparel but he did add on a nice-looking scarf and a red hat similar to the one Krystal wore.
'Wait how is Zero going to drink with his visor on?'
It didn't take long for Spike's question to be answered.
"What the-"
Krystal turned to Spike with a smile.
"After his last visor broke he made a few adjustments to his new one," Krystal told the drake before Spike just went back to sipping his hot chocolate.
Zero then placed his chocolate drink down before reaching next to him and pulling out two gift boxes both colored to match Spike and Krystal's patterns.
"Happy Holiday you two,"
"Boss? You shouldn't have," Spike exclaimed while being handed his gift. "I didn't get you two anything,"
Krystal looked at the gift box that matched her fur.
"Neither did I,"
The protogen chuckled.
"Hey as captain I have to make sure my entire crew is looked after," Zero playfully stated while drinking his chocolate.
Spike was the first to open his and looked down in it.
"Whoa!" Spike pulled out a pair of black boots specially made for his clawed feet and a pair of matching black fingerless gloves. "Thanks Zero these look amazing,"
"I specially made those for you with a nano weave so they can grow with you," Zero told Spike who smiled at his gift.
"Thanks boss,"
The vixen then opened hers before pulling out a long jewelry box then opened it and she was met with a bracelet with three familiar-looking colored crystals.
"Zero are these?"
"The crystals from the cave? Yeah, I pulled those out of my Visor after Fox broke it with that huge chunk of the stuff," Krystal then placed her hand on two black pieces. "And I put a few pieces of my old Visor... do you like it,"
Krystal turned to him with a smile on her face.
"I love it," Kissing the side of his now red visor. "Can you help me put it on?"
Zero nodded holding her hand before helping her snap on the bracelet and looking at the glowing gems on the piece of jewelry.
"Thanks, Luv," Krystal then laid down her head onto Zero's chest fluff. "Happy Donum Dum,"
Zero then rested his head on top of her own while looking at the lantern.
"Happy Holidays Krystal," |
The Protogen of Equis | Fire in the sky Arch (part 1) | (Three weeks after Hearth's warming day)
"Alright, supplies... oh no," Zero groaned slightly seeing the numbers on the datapad.
They weren't good.
Sure the salvage from the pirates did tie them over for a while but with all the experiments and prototypes Zero has created during his time aboard the Reach he has created many different machines and such.
Now it was biting him in the tail.
If he was being honest this wasn't bad but his constant tinkering and improving on the Reach and her crew had cost him a good chunk of the supplies. The best way to describe how the supply level was pretty simple, a solid yellow.
Along with that, if anything were to break he could use more supplies to fix stuff on the Reach, but he needs to be careful not to damage parts of the ship too much. That also brings him to his crew, if any of his droids get 'totaled' best strip that bot to parts which Zero didn't like to think about even though most of the droids on this ship had 'dumb AIs'.
It didn't make the feeling any better.
Zero gave a deep sigh before putting the Datapad on his desk and leaning back in his chair.
'Just like Fallout 1... we have the resources but we need something to pull from to get more... it's only a matter of time before we run out of resources,'
Slapping his visor the Protogen groaned at his stupidity.
'Way to go Zero... just like in RTS you kept building and now you barely got anything to spend,'
Pulling himself from the seat he got up.
"I do scanners pick up something we can salvage for supplies," Walking out of his office area into his room he plopped down right next to Krystal who was in VERY comfortable clothes.
Looking from her book she looked at the Protogen.
"Mirco-Credit for your thoughts?" Krystal asked closing her book before going cross-legged on the bed.
"mmm silll pmmmph," Zero spoke his faceplate in a pillow.
"Sorry I don't speak mmlpppphhh," The blue vixen joked causing Zero to turn with his faceplate give a not very assumed look.
Zero: -_-
"Seriously what's wrong?" Krystal asked.
"We're about to run low on supplies that's what's wrong Krystal," Zero told the telepath.
"Oh... well... wait what kind of supplies? Food? Water? Fuel?"
"You be surprised how well stocked we are in rations as for Water? Well we could recycle our waste if it was absolutely necessary but seeing how Equis's water just needs to be shock filtered were good there," Lifting his head to look at her he turned on his side to her. "The Reach runs on a type-7 reactor that is self-sustaining so were good there too,"
Krystal then placed her book on her nightstand before crawling down to him.
"Then what are we about to run low on?" She asked looking at his digital eye patterns.
"Development and repair supplies mostly," Zero stated. "Though that's mostly my fault in trying to improve the ship and her crew... like a id-"
"Don't finish that sentence," Krystal placed a finger on the mouth area of his visor. "We all make mistakes... just learn from it and move on. We can get more supplies to restock for that kinda of thing, no harm done,"
Zero smiled as she moved her hand but the protogen gently grabbed it bringing it to his faceplate and 'kissed' it before holding it gently.
"Yeah your right... it's only materials... but were we going to get more to restock?"
Krystal began to rub her thumb on his hand.
"Well... I know this guy. His name is Bill, he's a what you would call a 'supplier' and he kinda owes me a favor," Krystal told Zero. "Sure he wouldn't fully restock the Reach from how big this beast is... but it should be enough to tie us over,"
"He's someone you know in the Lylat system?" The protogen asked to which the Cerinian nodded.
"He's on Corneria,"
Zero smiled.
"Well... from what you tell me Corneria seems like a nice place to visit... knowing Spike he defiantly wants to go,"
"Spike has been wanting to see more than what's on this ship," Krystal agreed.
Zero got up slightly.
"Alright sounds like a little road trip to me," Zero got up. "Though I hope that your 'Ex' doesn't try to kidnap you or anything,"
Krystal took a breathe.
"He better not... otherwise it would be you stopping me from hurting him if he tried to pull a stunt like last time that again,"
Zero: X)
"Alright, I'm going to set a course to Corneria and-"
Before Zero could finish the entire cabin rocked.
"What the hell?" Speaking at the same time, the two got off the bed while Zero accessed the ship though his HUD before calling up the bridge, causing a image to apear on his visor.
"Bones? What just happened are we under attack?"
"Negative master. Well not yet anyway," Mr. Bones answered his creator.
"What you mean?"
"Boss I think you come to see this for yourself on the bridge," Spike said pushing Bones slightly out of the view.
"What is it, Spike?"
"The sky... boss the sky is literally on fire!"
(The great fox's command deck)
"Slippy what's going on?!" Fox shouted.
"I don't know Fox it... looks like the planet's star has reached out and engulfed the planet!" Slippy told the vulpine who took a step back in dread.
His blood ran cold at the thought of losing two of his team in a single solar anomaly.
Both Krystal and Miyu...
Fox sent the Lynx to keep an eye on Zero's ship ever since they arrived here after following them from Dinosaur planet.
His actions as a leader cost him dearly this time.
Dropping on his chair Fox held his head his heart sinking deeper the moment he sat down.
Slamming his fist down on the armrest he growled at himself for being so arrogant as a leader and as a friend-
"Boss Miyu's alive!" Fox got up before rushing over to Falco's terminal seeing the lynx's 'skyslicer' still active.
"Falco can we re-established contact with her?" To this Falco shook his head.
"I don't think so... whatever is happening with this star, the solar radiation around the planet is preventing radio contact," The Falcon told Fox.
Fox closed his eyes for a moment before speaking.
"ROB..."
The android turn its head to Fox.
"Reach General Pepper time I cash one of my debts,"
(The Reach)
Zero was on the bridge with the rest of the crew looking at the holographic displays of the strange event that was happening. Looking at a digital map layout of Equis and Celestia's star Zero began to wonder what was going on...
'Equis is literally covered by the sun but there is no change in temperature or harmful solar radiation this is impossible. Then again the impossible is this entire planet's thing... Celestia, did you do this?'
Looking to another holo-monitor Zero was looking at the live feed of the ground below of a small town Equestrian town below, leaning in Zero narrowed his eyes before zooming in on the live feed.
There were no ponies running around like scared children...
From first-hand experience, if something like strange or alien happens ponies panic, but there is literally nothing going on down there, the houses themselves held no heat signature.
Looked up at Spike who was desperately looking into the scout drone around Ponyville trying to find out if his friends were alright or not. From his expression, the dragon looked worried and scared which made Zero feel uneasy, getting off his chair he walked over to the youngest of the crew.
Placing his hand on Spike's shoulder the drake flinched before looking up at Zero.
"You alright?" Zero asked to which Spike shook his head.
"No... I... I don't... Zero... sir... what's going on?"
"I was hoping you would have some idea," To which Spike shook his head, Zero turned his head to Spike's station monitor. "I'm sure your friends and everyone at Ponyville is alright Spike... deep breathes,"
Nodding at the captain's words Zero patted his shoulder before walking back over to his command chair, Zero flashed him a slight smile but then came a warning alert.
"INCOMING ATTACK!" Mr. Bones shouted before the entire Reach was pushed by an unknown attacking forcing it down out of high altitude.
"Mr. Bones report," Zero gathered himself after the attack stopped.
"Tracing... sir that blast came from the solar anomaly!" Mr. Bone turned to Zero from his station while the Protogen walked over to Mr. Bones.
"Any damage?" Mr. Bone luckily shook his head.
"Negative sir that solar blast was successfully blocked by our shield but our shields are at 77%," Zero looked at the results before another alert sounded.
"Incoming multiple solar blasts!"
"Evade Mr. Bones!"
Three more solar beams were fired from the sky, luckily the light dreadnought was fast enough to dodge two of the three attacks but one of them only gazed across the Reach.
"Shields at 65%" Zero got up rushing to his command chair before pulling up his monitors.
Zero's eyes widen behind his visor at the sight before him.
The two and part of the third attack that missed the Reach had hit the village below leaving three large smoking craters where the town once was.
Any buildings that were not hit directly were ablaze.
"Zero! The town!" Spike shouted.
"I know! I know! Bones?!"
Mr. Bone was already on it.
"Do not worry young reptilian the town was completely empty there are no civilian casualties," Mr. Bones informed the dragon, allowing Spike to give a sigh of relief.
"Thank Faust...
The warning alarm rang up again.
"Mr. Bone divert weapon power to the shields and the engines! Get us moving!"
"Roger Roger,"
The Reach shot forward dodging three more solar beams then another three beams and another!
"Shit shit shit!" Zero moved trying to think of something before Zero's mind clicked. "Bones what is the closest settlement with Equine lifeforms?!"
"Manehatten master why?" Zero pointed to him.
"Get us there as fast as you can!"
"What? Zero these things will destroy Manehatten!" Spike shot out.
"I doubt they are attacking any major populated city Spike... I think we are being targeted," Zero told the young dragon.
"Wha-? By who!"
"Who controls the sun spike?!"
"You don't think-"
"Who else!"
Krystal held Zero's shoulder as the Reach rocked.
"What if you're wrong?"
The Protogen looked at her placing his hand on her own.
"Trust me," Krystal looked at him before nodding and the two looked forward out of the command deck's main view port.
Dodging more attacks, the light dreadnought's sub-light engines were easy enough to dodge the incoming attacks before too long Manehatten appeared in view.
"Mr. Bones get us close... Celestia wouldn't dare to fire at us over a highly-populated area!"
"What? But Zero!"
"Spike I hate this as much as you do! But the Reach can only take so much punishment from literal sun-gun!"
Spike looked at Zero before back to his monitor.
Soon as the Reach made its way over Manehatten the beams of attack stopped causing the three organics (/techno-organic) to give a sigh all at once. That was until the system's radar buzzed.
"Mulitple displacement anomalies deceted! Master, they are wormholes!"
Zero sat up looking at the many portals dotting the sky around the Reach.
"Are those... Pegesi!?" Spike went wide-eyed at the wall of winged ponies and airships exiting the portals.
"Mr.Bones re-establish the weapon system,"
"WHAT!" Spike turned to Zero. "Boss you can't be serious,"
"Spike I highly doubt they are here to throw us a welcome party after what just happened," Zero told the dragon.
"But-"
Alright right away the airships fired a volley of canons at the Reach but the shielding system was able to protect the dreadnought from the metal projectiles which harmlessly bounced off the shields. The Dragon and the protogen held eye contact for a moment before the young drake nodded to which Zero spoke out.
"Mr. Bone open fire. Target their airship's balloon at 5% power,"
"Roger Roger,"
Firing beams of light at the airship alright right away did the balloon engulf into blazing fireballs sending them plummeting to the city below in a blazing ball of fire.
"Incoming aerial infantry on all sides," Mr. Bone warmed.
"Activate air units 1-3 knock them out of the sky! have units 4-5 on the ship's hall for any that get too close!" Zero ordered, on his word the 'vulture droids' jetted out of the hangars some going into the air and firing at the winged Equines while others remained in the reach for defense.
Spike closed his eyes at the sight of a air ship going down but looking down at his monitor the cold blood that ran through his veins almost became ice at the sight of what was on his screen.
"Boss! They have-"
The Reach was hit yet again this time from a solar beam but this time, it came from the ground?
"Damage report!" Holding his head as the sirens blared Zero looked at Mr. Bones.
"Shields are at 41%, hangar bays 1, 2, and 3 are completely melted! Repair units are on their way!" Mr. Bones reported. "Master that solar beam..."
"Get eyes on the ground!"
As a holo screen appeared on the front for all to see Spike looked at it in horror.
"That's a solar cannon!" Zero turned to spike who spoke. "It amplifies any solar magic before redirecting it at a target! These were used during the unification war and haven't been used sense how did-"
"Mr. Bones move us down so we can use the buildings as cover and prepare ground force! We need to take out that cannon!"
"Boss?" Spike looked at Zero.
"I'm sorry Spike but this little temper tantrum of Celestia has to stop before it can even begin!" Zero shouted. "Mr. Bones ready my war plate!"
(Ground level, a few moments later)
"Sir the enemy is moving down as the princess predicted! They are going to try and destroy the solar cannon!" A lieutenant reported to the captain of the solar guard.
"HA! MEN! The enemy approaches within the hour that the flying fortress will be brought down and those responsible for the kidnapping of Spike the dragon will be brought to justice!" Moving his purple cape for effect he pointed down the road ready for the enemy. "Now ready the-"
"RUNAWAY!" Baffled the captain lowered his arm upon seeing the scouts running over one another scared out of their minds trying to get away.
"Hey stop them! What's-"
"Sir... what's that noise?"
The captain went quiet as the only noise was the scouts running away before all went silent except for one sound that echoed through the city's buildings...
It almost sounded like... hoofsteps?
The sound grew closer as the ground shook from every step.
That was when a metal shape almost like a head past a building into view.
turning in their direction the captain froze in fear as a massive metal body followed the head and there it was before the defense force.
"What in Celestia's name-"
From the 'mouth' of the metal creature fired two red beams that hit the ground where the front lines sat, bodies flung into the air. If the sight of the giant metal walker wasn't freighting enough then it was the power it had in only one attack, the moral of the soft inexperienced soldier was shattered sending them into a panic.
Like the scouts, they tried to get away but the guns on the side of the head began to mow them down with ease.
The captain tried to bark orders but his men were so afraid that they didn't hear him or didn't care.
Looking back up at the metal behemoth the 'mouth tubes' aim down right at him, going wide eye two red beams were fired hitting the captain killing him instantly.
(Inside the AT-AT styled walker)
"Sir the enemy force is pulling back," The pilot droid told the command droid behind him and the gunner. "Should we give chase,"
"Negative, it is only a matter of time before they are all eliminated," The third finger droid moved his hand to the holopad as an image of Zero appeared.
"How's your progress TK-21?" Zero asked.
"You were correct there was an equestrian force waiting here for an ambush they are now falling back most likely regrouping at sector B. There is an 87.349% chance that they were regrouped reinforcing sector B by 12.7%. Their chances of victory have been raised by 0.031% compared to our 99.997%," TK-21 told the protogen who looked at the droid.
"Don't underestimate them TK... they have the ability to use magic which can be unpredictable at times... numbers can only get you so far," The droid nodded.
"Agreed. The enemy force should be pushed to the sector F once you have made your landing,"
"Good... but remember TK don't waste a single resource. Only spend what you need,"
"Roger Roger,"
While the hologram faded away the droid commander looked at the battle below holdings his hands behind his back, he could smile if he would, now that he was finally doing what he was programmed to do.
"Prepare attack groups A and B we teach these Equines a lesson they will not forget," |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | pre | I sighed, flicked my lamplight on, and rested a hoof on my blanket, about ready to go to bed.
Slinking into my mattress, I laid out my legs with extra care to not graze my hind left against something hard. I sunk my head into a pillow and stared blankly at the ceiling. I was actually glad Dew Drops stopped me before I could make my way to engineering again, because as I lay on my mattress, I realized that I was exhausted.
My room was pretty bland. I had a bed, a couch, a fridge, a closet, a bathroom, and a study table topped by stacks of books by the door.
I threw a passing glance at the swear jar sitting on my desk.
It was almost full.
Dew Drops thought it'd help cure my potty mouth. It didn't helped much.
I sighed, and tried to close my eyes. But a nagging feeling in the back of my mind forced them back open.
I couldn't help but stare at the shelf at the far corner of my room. It was my handy pony queue. I levitated a radio towards me from the pile and set it down at the edge of my bed, giving it a thorough look over. I needed to splice in some new wires. Looked like someone's foal tried cutting it with scissors. I hoped they didn't do that while it was plugged in.
I levitated it across the room back to its shelf and stretched out my legs, yawning. I scrutinized my hind leg and unraveled the bandages. The flesh under my coat was a very light shade of brown and the itching had subsided a while ago. I let out a sigh of relief.
Rolling over towards the bedside table next to me, I glanced at a picture frame of a foal, my mom, and a unicorn stallion I hardly knew. I didn't know my dad too well.
'You look just like him,' my mom always told me. I had his brown coat and his red eyes. 'We did look alike,' I thought. My mom's red mane and white coat were a polar contrast to my dad's. I ran a hoof absent mindedly through my short, cropped, dark red mane. I did have her hair though.
My father died in an accident when I was just a baby.
Red Roan. That was his name.
I looked at the unicorn stallion in the picture. He looked happy, and I bet he enjoyed his job every day of his life until that pipe blew up in his face. Or so I was told. Funny, I had pipes blowing up in mine too earlier that day and nearly died myself. When I got my cutie mark and filled the horseshoes my father left behind, I never once thought that I'd ever die from doing it. I sighed, staring at the photograph. The white-coated pegasus mare - my mother - hugged me as I smiled a wide, toothless grin.
Only then did it really sink in that I could have died down there at engineering. 'I could have died.' I turned to the picture frame next to it and I saw a photo of myself, Dew Drops, Amber Fields, Star Glint, Lightning Twirl, and Box Cutter posing in front of a camera while holding the results of our Cutie Mark Aptitude Tests. Dew Drops was hugging me as I bumped hooves with my best friend. Amber Fields, Lightning Twirl, and Star Glint were jumping for joy behind the three of us as the camera pony snapped the picture.
My eyes focused on Dew Drops. I remembered what she was like back then. She was still the same smart, helpful, and humble pony she always was. I always admired her ... and how fast she learned things. She'd glance at a manual, disassemble a radio once, put it back together, and reassemble it without looking back at the instructions. She was amazing in almost every way.
No. She was amazing in every way.
Me? It took me twenty radios before I finally memorized what piece went where and why. She taught me everything I knew. Actually, most of what I knew was a result of my apprenticeship under the younger, fully-fledged mare. I owed my specialization in electrical engineering to her.
I sighed. My mom loved her. I questioned if she loved Dew Drops more than I - 'hah! Nah.' But really ... who wouldn't?
Looking back now, I don't think I would've gotten my cutie mark without her help either. My crusade to earn my cutie mark was one of trial and error. I spent a few years trying everything, but I didn't enjoy any of those other 'talents' one bit. Drawing? I got good at it, but there wasn't much to draw in an underground bunker. Cooking? Awful. I even tried working at the orchards, but bucking apples all day bored the hell out of me.
My mother never wanted me to work down at engineering ever since ... Dad ... but the satisfaction of watching a broken terminal come back to life was, to me, almost as intoxicating as the hard cider from the stable's orchards.
One day, when I was just a colt, and she, a filly, Dew Drops was replacing a light bulb in her bedside lamp. She was nice enough to show me what end went where and how I had to screw it in.
Not long after, my Mom watched me with uncertainty as I replaced a flickering lightbulb in our bathroom. From then on, I realized that fixing things was just exactly what I wanted to do. The CAT was a redundant reminder that I was going to be an engineer just like my late father.
I fixed Star Glint's alarm clock. I fixed the sound system in Amber Fields's quarters. I even fixed Peach Petals' faulty terminal. All that mattered to me was being able to fix things that broke.
I'm Red Dawn, and I fix things.
If I were younger, I would've thought that I could fix anything.
My only regret was that I should have been there to lend Dew Drops a helping hoof. I was too busy wondering why the chamber's water level was receding until it was too late. Maybe if I had gotten there in time ... no. That day was been a reminder that some things were beyond fixing. That water talisman was beyond anybody's expertise - invented by minds long dead and manufactured with arcane technology long lost.
And the rest of engineering and I had to focus on finding a solution to our stable's freshwater problem before everybody died from disease or dehydration - or both.
You couldn't really fix dead.
I rolled over in my bed and sighed as I levitated the picture closer to see the newly-formed cutie mark on young-me's flank. It brought the slightest of smiles to my face as I laid my head back down on my pillow.
That day was probably the happiest day of my life. Well, finding out my mom didn't have cancer was probably the happiest, actually, but that photo had to be the second happiest. My eyes stared longingly at the blue filly who hugged the brown-coated colt in the photo, and I closed my eyes.
If I died, I would've left all that. My mom. My friends. I thought about my mom crying as they fed my body into a cremator. I thought about my friends - Dew Drops - mourning for the pony that pushed them away every time he tried to get work done.
I could have died. * |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 1 - Cradle - Pt III | *
A hoof banged loudly against my door, yanking me from my slumber.
"Red!" I heard Dew Drops shout, "You're going to be late!"
"Well fuck," I hissed, throwing on my jumpsuit, dragging a comb through my mane, and rushing out the door. I ran into her and we tumbled to the floor in a tangle of limbs.
I looked into her cool gray eyes, and turned red at the warmness of her coat. I scrambled off of her, apologizing as I helped the mare to her hooves.
She just smiled at me and we hurried off to the assembly room one floor above engineering. When we got there, everyone was waiting for us. The Overmare regarded us with unnatural patience, tapping her hooves together as she stood on her hind legs against the podium.
Amber Fields lifted an eyebrow.
"You two are late," she smirked.
"Late from a good night I hope," Lightning Twirl grinned, giggling with her boyfriend.
My cheeks turned red once more and we took our seats before the Overmare.
About fifty other ponies - many of whom were engineers like me - were seated around us. Box Cutter, among many others of Shift C who sustained more severe injuries, were out for the count.
"I'm glad you ponies are here," she began, eyeing Dew Drops and I with a look that said 'Get here on time next time'. I looked away, pretending I didn't know what she was implying. "But our water talisman is broken - you all know this. I managed to keep everybody from panicking ... for now. And I am thankful you ponies didn't spread the word." The Overmare smiled thoughtfully, and added, "Very smart of you all."
Dew Drops glared at me and I sighed, shaking my head.
"But we can't keep the rest of the stable uninformed forever. Sooner or later ponies are going to notice the taste in their water. Our reserves have been sitting in aluminum tanks underneath the stable for centuries, and, while they may be clean, I'm sure the taste is going to get to them. But never mind that - what matters now is that we're working on time borrowed from the ponies that lived before us."
The ponies around me exchanged worried looks, murmuring among themselves.
"To be frank," Peach Petals began, "No - we don't have a replacement. That water talisman, the one we've had for 200 years, was the only one we had. The only one we've ever had."
The murmuring died away to panicked chatter.
"So we're going to die here?"
"What about my filly? We can't live without fresh water!"
"How are we going to fix this?"
"Poop water," I said, loudly. Dew Drops smacked me on the back of the head.
"Everybody please settle down. I said we would get this resolved, and with your help, we will. We must, because the lives of almost three hundred people are counting on us." Overmare Peach Petals punched a button on the podium with her hoof, and a projector flickered at the back of the room. An anthill view of the stable's infrastructure painted the white screen behind her.
She trotted up to the projection and tapped her hoof on the roll down screen. The picture rippled slightly at the touch of her hoof.
"Beneath the engineering level, we have a six thousand gallon water tank. Stable-Tec was far too confident in their stables' abilities to sustain their populations. But they at least installed a contingency for us to fall back upon." She rested her hooves upon the podium, scanning the apprehension flickered across our faces. I took shallow breaths, squirming restlessly in my seat. There was no way we could survive with that much water. Not for long.
Not for long.
"Six thousand gallons ..."
I stopped squirming. Six. Thousand. Nervous murmuring whispered among us. Dew Drops and I exchanged troubled looks.
'Impossible,' I thought, 'It couldn't be. Stable-Tec couldn't have been that incompetent to not give us a proper contingency, could they?'
Six thousand was hardly enough for all three hundred of us. It just didn't make sense.
'Those bastards. Those fucking bastards.'
Peach Petals' voice echoed through my ears. "It's not a lot."
'No shit.'
"But it will suffice - and I will gladly take what I can get. With our water usage reduced to maximum efficiency, and drinking water rationed properly, we should be able to last up to ninety days at the bare minimum."
I grit my teeth.
"THREE MONTHS?" a pegasus mare hollered in disbelief, flapping her wings into the air. A hoof curled around her tail and yanked her back down to her seat.
Three months.
That was ninety days. Ninety days. Put it that way, and it didn't seem so bad. But any number that told you how long you had left to live was still a difficult number to swallow. We had three months. Three months.
I wondered how much worse it would've sounded if she just said that. I gulped a lump of dread down my throat. I could already feel the months ticking by like seconds on a clock.
Our days were numbered.
"Now, now, my little ponies. Ninety days should be enough time to fix this, I believe," she said evenly, trotting back up to the podium. She pressed another button and the projector flicked to a picture of Equestria. Names of cities and foreign nations, Ponyville, Canterlot, Manehattan, Roan, the Crystal Empire - some of them I knew, but all of them meant nothing to me. She pointed to one of the regions on the map.
"We are here, south of the Crystal Empire. Stable 91 was built not too far from a city named Poneva, which is near the Crystal Borderlands. One of my great grandmares down the line was from there. She worked for Stable-Tec."
Stable-Tec. Stable-Tec built our stable. Everything we used daily, everything around us was built by Stable-Tec. They were the reason we had survived all those years.
And those idiots were the reason why we were done for.
"Now, my great grandmare worked at a Stable-Tec facility in Poneva. There, they manufactured and distributed talismans of all sorts. The water talisman was one of many of these."
This time, we all went silent.
"There is only one thing between us and Poneva, my little ponies," Overmare Peach Petals said gravely, leaving the podium and stepping to the edge of the stage to meet eyes with everyone in the room.
"The Stable Door."
It was quiet for a moment as everyone struggled to connect the dots. Me? I was struggling to figure out if that was even possible.
"You ... you want to open the door?" I heard Lightning Twirl squawk, reading my mind. Everybody looked at her, and then at the Overmare.
"We'll die if we step out that door!" one pony said.
"There's nothing left out there!" said another.
"The balefire burned everything away!"
The history books told us that the world outside was gone. That we were the last vestige of civilization on the planet. That we were the last of ponykind.
"It is our only hope. If we open those doors, we may die. But if we remain here, we will die." Peach Petals paused to let her words sink into our shaking heads.
Everyone fell silent once more. I didn't know what to think - what to do. I had never seen the world outside in my life, and I wasn't sure I wanted to. The only other pony in my family who had ever been outside the stable was 200 years dead. The only life I knew was a life inside the stable.
And I couldn't stop shaking.
Dew Drops wrapped a hoof around my trembling foreleg.
"I want to send out an expedition to Poneva. I want to know if we still have a chance." Her expression turned grim. "I won't force anybody to go. All I ask is that six ponies volunteer."
My ears perked up at her words.
"I'll go," someone said next to me. That someone was Dew Drops. My jaw dropped as I whirled to face her with wide eyes. "I couldn't fix the Talisman and it blew up in my hooves when I tried. I'll go. I can help fix this mess."
"Are you crazy?!" I hissed, loud enough for only her to hear, "You really want to go out there?" She ignored me as she stood to her hooves. Gasps filled the air.
"You said it yourself earlier, Red ... I know more about arcane devices more than anybody else in our shift. If worst comes to worst, I might be able to repair any talismans we find if they're damaged."
I held her hoof. "DD, please don't do this ... you don't know what's out there!" I begged.
She looked at me and said nothing.
"Thank you, Dew Drops. I need five other ponies."
The room went silent. Nobody had the guts. I didn't have the guts. My own guts churned as a rivulet of sweat trickled over my brow.
"I'll go too!" Star Glint declared, jumping to his hooves. "I'm not letting my friends walk out that door alone!"
Lightning Twirl shot up into the air with a pomf. "You eggheads aren't going anywhere without me."
Amber Fields stood to her four hooves.
"Me too. If they go, I go."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "Amber, think about your colt! Your husband!" I blurted out. "You have a family to come back to!"
She looked hurt. "Red Dawn, you have a family too. Morning Dawn. Me. DD, Star, Twirl, and Box. If I don't go, there won't be any family left alive to think about."
I turned my eyes low as shame and fear swept over me. Dizziness overcame me, and I clenched a shaking hoof around the back of somebody's seat.
I could feel Dew Drops' eyes upon me ... boring into my hide, tearing me apart ... I shook my head furiously. What was she thinking? What the fuck was she thinking? There mere thought of leaving my home - my only home was insane. But the weight of my friends' stares threatened to crush me beneath. I couldn't accept that Amber Fields' was right. My home would be my grave if we couldn't save it.
I weighed my options: stand up with my friends and die at the moment we step out that door - or wait there and die for sure.
Either way I'd be dead. Either way, they'd be dead.
My heart raced faster than I could breathe. I clenched my eyes shut so hard I felt like they were going to recede into their sockets. I couldn't let my friends die out there. I couldn't let Dew Drops die out there. I'd never be able to live with myself if I let her go and she never came back.
I trembled beneath their heavy stares.
My eyes clenched shut once more as I hung my head. I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry for us all.
I gave up a trembling sigh and stood to my hooves.
"I'll go," I said, standing beside her.
"Red-" Dew Drops began.
"You go, I go. We never. Work. Alone," I told her, my voice trembling.
The auditorium doors flew open, and a bed-headed Box Cutter stumbled inside.
"Don't you ponies go do anything without me!" he shouted, his head still wrapped in bandages. Box Cutter tripped on his own hooves, falling flat on his face as everybody watched. Lightning Twirl fluttered towards him and helped him back up.
The Overmare's expression flickered with both pride and sadness. Tears welled up in her eyes.
"Thank you ... all of you - thank you. You will be stepping out into a world none of us here have ever seen. You will be stepping out into the unknown," her voice trembled.
"You may not return."
An unnerving silence fell upon us all. I turned and saw Dew Drops, her jaw clenched and her eyes fixed upon the floor. I wrapped my hooves around her and squeezed her tight as I felt her head rest against mine.
"My little ponies ... I would gladly come with you myself, but the stable needs me here. The stable needs you too, and you and you and you," she said, pointing her hoof at the ponies seated around us. "Until they return, I will need all of you who remain to monitor everybody's water usage and make sure nobody exceeds the contingent five gallon limit.
"Should the worst come ... should they not return, I will impose stricter limits and weigh other ... options. But for now, I want you all to encourage everybody to not max out their daily rations - so please spread the word." Peach Petals stared into the crowd, watching the fear and apprehension that wavered upon our faces in the heavy silence.
"You are all dismissed. Goddesses help us all."
Everybody got up from their seats. Their movements were sluggish. Some were too stunned to even stand. The six of us made our way to the door, but a leg hooked around one of mine.
A teary eyed unicorn, Sea Shammy, a mare I barely knew from another shift, approached me.
"Thank you ..." she whispered.
A winged security pony named Beryl came to us. "I'm sorry nobody else had the guts to do that," she looked ashamed.
"Someone had to do it," Dew Drops stated softly. "I ... I'm about as scared as you are."
I chewed my lower lip, staring down at my hooves. "I don't want to go," I murmured, "But it's not about that." I looked at Dew Drops, curling a hoof around her shoulder. "It's ... it's about what needs to be done ..."
We stood at the door as ponies walked past, thanking us as they left. The Overmare was the last to approach.
"Thank you," she said again, meeting our eyes. "We're on a very tight schedule, so you all will have to leave for Poneva tomorrow morning. Prep your gear and pack rations to last at least a week or longer. You'll be armed, and you'll be ready." Peach Petals tapped her PipBuck. "I'll have the security ponies clear you all for armory access."
I gulped.
"Ma'am, are you sure we'll need them?" I asked with uncertainty. Everyone got weapons training when they were younger. We learned how to disassemble them and put them back together. We even learned how to shoot them. But if what everyone believed was true ... that there was nothing left to find up there ...
'Then we wouldn't need them, right?'I asked myself, hoping I wouldn't have to find my answer.
I just hoped to the Goddesses that we were going to be right. I wasn't sure if I could ...
Lightning Twirl caught my apprehensive gaze and read my mind. "It's easy, just point, flip on SATS, and shoot! Besides, I'll be here to protect you. Lightning Twirl: your local security pegasus - reporting for duty," she said, saluting.
She cocked her head at Star Glint, smirking. "He knows how to shoot too."
"Yep."
Peach Petals gave us an encouraging smile. "I know some of you haven't held a gun since you were younger, but I'm sure Twirl can teach you. Get a lot of rest, and help yourselves to another dinner if you like. The armory and range will be open for you."
She held out her hooves. We all hugged the Overmare.
"I believe in you ponies. You'll come back ... you have to." *
I sighted my carbine down range. Well, it was more of caved in tunnel with targets mounted on rails that ran down its length. The target was about twenty yards away from me, I estimated - well below the weapon's maximum effective distance.
I know, I know. Laaaaame. But I needed to start somewhere, right? It had been awhile since I last used a gun, after all.
I braced the carbine against my shoulder with my magic, eyed down the iron sights, and pulled the trigger. In a flash of light and a puff of smoke, it rattled off a burst of lead that kicked up plumes of dust in the distance.
'Balls.'
Narrowing my eyes at it, I threw on my training wheels. I watched as SATS plotted a firing solution, angles, numbers, and lines arcing across my line of sight to the target like twinkling, teal footlights. 'Great.' I couldn't possibly miss this time. A teal marker materialized before me - and I lined it up with my sights.
All that in less than a second. Next to me, Dew Drops' carbine flashed once, ejecting a shell casing that sailed through the air as I pulled the trigger faster than it could fall.
The rounds perforated the center of the target, blowing a hole out the other side.
"Nice shot!" Amber Fields said through her mouth bit as she aimed her shotgun down range. She tongued the trigger and the weapon's recoil nearly threw her off her legs. She spat it out, laughing.
"Wasn't expecting that much kick!"
"Just plant your back legs back firmly and let your body do the moving, not your neck," Star Glint said, trotting up to her and fixing her posture.
Box Cutter shouted wildly as he bit down his battle saddle's mouth bit. He unloaded with both of his submachine guns and into a target not too far from the railing.
"T-h-i-sh i-sh fu-u-u-un!" he cried against the saddle's rattling recoil.
And to my right, Dew Drops was punching holes in targets much, much farther than twenty yards out.
Ratatatat - Dew Drops cheered, pumping her hoof as the paper target fluttered to the floor in halves. I glanced at her dim PipBuck, and knew instantly that she didn't even used SATS.
'I'm terrible.'
Sighing, I slipped into SATS once more, sighted down range, and pulled the trigger. With short bursts, I grouped my rounds in and a few inches around the bullseye. I wasn't that bad ... with SATS, at least.
I felt Lightning Twirl land next to me.
"Good, you can shoot a piece of paper." She interfaced with her PipBuck and the round target sunk below the range and a new one appeared. This one was in the shape of a pony. "Try now."
I figured, this time, I'd try without SATS. But my eyes traced the target's equine silhouette nervously. I gulped.
Ratatatat - and I missed every shot. I realized that I was breathing heavily and the strength of my magical grip was waning.
Lightning Twirl gave me a strange look as I grinned weakly and tried again, this time with SATS.
This time, I peppered the pony's chest with burst of 10mm bullets. A gout of blood spurted into the air and the pony crumbled to the dust in a heap. 'Wait.'
The blood drained from my face.
I ejected the magazine and leaned against the railing. The others were still firing down range. Twirl and Star were landing hits at the maximum effective distance. The rest of us were mediocre in comparison.
'What the hell is wrong with me?' I screamed inside my head. I slammed a fresh magazine home and yanked the charging handle back.
I focused this time, entering SATS and aiming for the pony's - no, the target's head. The burst tore the damn thing off in a fountain of -
"SHIT! Goddesses DAMNIT!"
Everyone froze and looked at me as if I just lost my mind.
"You okay?" Star Glint asked. He looked at Lightning Twirl and she just shrugged, eyeing me strangely.
I was hyperventilating and shaking all over. It was just a paper target. Just a target. Not a pony. I blinked several times, and all I saw was its white, flat surface.
Box Cutter trotted over and bumped my shoulder with a hoof.
"Hey brony, you're shaking ..."
Star Glint bit down on the carbine that floated in front of me and pulled it away from my magical grip.
"You should sit down for a bit and rest," he said, patting me on the shoulder. Star Glint spat the gun out onto a table. "Really, I think that's enough. Besides, Twirl and I'll protect you guys," Star Glint beamed.
I didn't say anything. I just sat on my rump in front of the railing and stared at the pony shaped target.
"What the fuck ..." I muttered, scratching my mane.
I heard hooves clop behind me. I looked up and saw Dew Drops and her muzzle nuzzling my mane.
"Is my apprentice okay?" she asked softly.
I looked at my hooves, shaking my head. I peered up at her and shrugged.
"What's up?" Amber Fields asked, trotting towards us.
"I think he's just had enough for today," Dew Drops said as a matter of factly, pulling me to my shaking hooves.
"You should get some rest, bud. We're leaving pretty early tomorrow," Amber Fields said, resting a hoof on my shoulder. I smiled at her sheepishly, nodding.
I started towards the exit but stumbled on my own hooves. Dew Drops kept me upright with a hoof as I exhaled softly.
"I'll take him to his room. You guys have a good night, okay?" she said, hooking a leg around mine and leading me out the door.
"Take it easy, Red," Box Cutter said as I bumped hooves with him weakly.
"Night!" Star Glint and Lightning Twirl said simultaneously.
I was silent for the rest of the walk. I didn't know what came over me. My mind was blank and I didn't even realized that we arrived at my door. I reached out with a hoof and missed the panel by an inch.
"I'll do it ... what's your passcode?"
"E-G-P-R-2-9," I said shakily.
The door opened and closed behind us as she helped me to my bed. She sat beside me as I stared at my hooves. Dew Drops glanced at my bedside table and levitated to herself the picture frames of us and my family with a warm smile.
But her smile faded away when she saw the uncertainty that haunted my expression.
"Red Dawn, what happened? Why were you shaking?" she asked, setting the frames back down on the table.
I sighed, shaking my head.
"I was shooting just fine - then Twirl had to put up that pony target. I just couldn't do it. I got scared, and I imagined it was ... another pony that I was shooting at," I muttered, staring at the floor.
She said nothing for a few seconds as she rubbed my leg with her hoof. She always knew what to say, even when she didn't say anything at all.
"I'm just scared," I confessed, "I don't think I can do it. I don't think I can shoot anybody ..." I rubbed my forehead with a hoof, furrowing my brow. "I shouldn't have volunteered, I'll just get you all killed."
She touched my chin and tipped my head to face her. "Don't say that. I'd rather get stuck in Tartarus with you than anybody else."
I smiled timidly. "Really?"
"Really," she said. I could feel her breath on my muzzle. She was really close. "I'm glad you came with us." Her eyes fluttered away nervously. "I was really hoping you would. And you did. I honestly was having second thought until you stepped up."
"Why would you?" I asked. "You're smarter than me and you can shoot a gun - you're better than me at everything," I whinnied.
"You know that's not true," she glared, scolding me. "You've always been able to fix anything you've put your mind to. We always have. I told you we can do anything ... anything is possible when you have your friends with you, Red. Remember that," she said, holding one of my hooves as her soft gray eyes gazed deeply into mine. "I can't do anything without you."
We looked at each other in the dim light for what seemed like an eternity.
"Dew Drops ..." I began, until I felt her lips press against mine. I blushed and pulled away, wide-eyed and shaking. She looked about as surprised as I did.
"I-I'm sorry, I thought ..." she began, her nervous eyes darting away from me. My brows furrowed as I hesitated, biting my lower lip as she turned her head away. But my heart hurled me onward. I leaned in close and gave her my flustered reprise.
As our lips met, she sat there in bliss, relishing in our kiss. A kiss I knew we'd both been working up the courage to do for too many years.
I gave in. I finally gave in. The floodgates parted, and my brain couldn't contain my heart any longer.
Suddenly, the purifier, my queue, my cutie mark, the water talisman - none of it mattered to me more than the mare that sat next to me.
Slowly but surely, she returned to clarity and wrapped her legs around me, pulling me close.
"I wish we had more time," she crooned, her lips leaving mine for the briefest of moments before returning to fill the void between us. In a few hours we'd leave. Leave the warmth and safety of our stable to venture out and into the unknown, possibly never to return again. We didn't have much time left.
Dew Drops leaned against me and I felt her warm breaths upon the nape of my neck. "I wish you'd done that sooner," Dew Drops whispered into my ear before pressing her lips against mine. My entire body went stiff as I felt her tongue slip inside my mouth.
'Goddesses ...'
My eyes fluttered closed. My heart throbbed faster than I could breathe. The taste of her tongue ... it was intoxicating. I felt like I was going to melt into her hooves and become a steaming puddle of Red Dawn fondue.
"I'm ... I'm sorry ... I'm just trying to be good at what my cutie mark says I'm supposed to be good at. I'm just so damn busy all the time ..." I trailed off, glancing at my handy pony queue.
She touched my cheek with a hoof, turning me away from that momentary distraction before she kissed me once more. I tried to do that tongue thing. 'Ugh.' Dew Drops nipped playfully at my lower lip before pulling away. She smirked. "You need to practice more often."
"Is this training day? I-I seem to be getting a lot of that right now," I chuckled nervously, holding her close with my trembling hooves. But really, it was her holding me.
Dew Drops pursed her lips, eyeing me worriedly as she noticed the palpable trembling in my forelegs. "How's your leg, by the way?"
"Fine, it healed pretty fa -"
She rolled on top of me and laid me out on the bed.
"U-um ... DD?" I said as I trembled at the warmness of her coat. Now her breaths were really close. "Wait -" but she silenced me with a wet smooch before I could say more.
I just closed my eyes and took her tongue lashing.
I pulled away, gasping for precious air as she waited, gazing down at me patiently with her half-lidded eyes. I paused for a moment, and that moment became seconds. Lying there, I thought to myself quietly as my heart pounded inside my chest - faster than I could breathe.
It felt like my heart was going to explode. I couldn't move. I couldn't speak. I could do nothing but lay there ...
Frozen. Petrified.
As her muzzle hung inches away from mine, I found myself peering apprehensively into her gentle, gray eyes. They were the same familiar eyes I'd known and seen my entire life, but only until then had I ever looked into them and found myself so lost ... and yet so found.
My whole life I had all the time in the world to look into those eyes ... but only at that moment was I able to see. And I should've seen it a long time ago.
Realization dawned upon my face.
Goddesses. Dew Drops ... she was so beautiful ... and I was so afraid. Afraid that that was the only night we were going to have.
I blinked myself back into reality when I felt her hot breaths panting against me.
I knew what she wanted. I could see it in her flushed cheeks and her longing stare.
But Goddesses ... I wanted more than that. At that moment, I wanted a future that I realized I should've wanted a long ago.
Our heartbeats slowed as the seconds ticked by.
"Red?" she said softly.
"DD ..." I murmured. She cocked her head as I brought a trembling hoof to touch her soft, velvety cheek. "Could we ... slow down?"
Several long heartbeats passed as I searched her eyes, afraid of what she'd say next.
I felt her body loosen up as a tender smile slowly stretched across her lips.
"Oh, Red ..." she sighed gently, nuzzling me.
I closed my eyes and kissed her.
"I love you so much, DD," I whispered, "I ... I don't want to make this night seem like it'll be our last."
She lowered herself onto my chest and snuggled up against me, and I squeezed her tight. Dew Drops cupped my cheek in her hoof and turned my head so that we could see eye to eye.
"I'll love you, Red. Always ..." ]*
I ran a gentle hoof through her soft, bed-headed mane. A thin smile stretched across my lips as I watched her chest rise and fall, listening to the cadence of her soft breaths. I couldn't believe it. I found it difficult not to stare. Lying there beside me, she was as beautiful as ever.
There was something about sleeping - vulnerable and helpless next to the mare I loved that made me love her even more.
Dew Drops squirmed, murmuring to herself in her slumber, before wrapping her forelegs around one of mine and hugging it close to her chest.
I sighed softly as I watched her sleep. I thought I loved her. No - I loved her. And I didn't want to let her go. I didn't want to let her leave the stable without me.
Tomorrow we would embark upon a journey into an alien world.
With her lying beside me, I pondered my life thus far.
For much of my teenaged and adult life, and until very recently, I scoffed at the thought of even finding a mate. Because if a stallion or a mare couldn't find love in our stable and have a child, a stallion would donate, and a mare would be inseminated to bear a foal in order to maintain our stable's population. It was dystopian, I know, but it was also rare ....
Still I always imagined I'd be alone for the rest of my life and become a nameless sperm donor for our stable, and that some mare would bear a child who would never know who its father was.
But as I lay next to her, I imagined ... I dreamed ... I longed for a life with her, and a family of our own. I lay there in silence, fighting the tears that threatened to well out of my eyes, trying to come to terms with the fact that there wasn't any time left for us. For Dew Drops and I.
But Goddesses ... I wanted more ... I wanted a life with her ... and I never wanted this night to end.
I looked away, closing my eyes. I didn't deserve a mare like her. I was ashamed. There was never enough time - never enough time for her in my life. And I wanted to make time.
But I knew that I'd just have to make that night last. I sighed and hugged her close, her eyes fluttering open for a moment before she floated away back to her peaceful slumber, her legs still wrapped around me.
Lying there for hours with her in my hooves, I stared at the ceiling and dreamt wistfully of a life we might never have. A life I wanted so badly. I didn't want to think about what might've been waiting for us outside those doors.
Blinking away my tears, I looked over her shoulder and saw the picture of myself and my parents. I needed to tell my mother that I was leaving.
I knew that she wasn't going to be happy to hear that. In fact, I knew that Mom was probably beg me to stay. I was only comforted by the fact that when I'd leave, my mom, the mare who gave me life and raised me by herself would at least be safe.
I needed to save my stable.
I gently pulled away from Dew Drops' forelegs. She fidgeted sleepily as I pushed a pillow in my place.
"... huhn ... Dawn ..." she murmured.
I felt my eyes well up with tears once more as I pulled the blanket over her and left my room. It was night time, well - night time in the stable I guess. The lights were off except for the glowing footlights that lined the floor in the halls of the living quarters.
High above me, the rooms where the pegasi slept had to be reached by a brisk climb up a tall staircase. I trotted up the steps, my clopping hooves the only sounds audible in the silence of the curfew.
I reached the top floor and a gray-coated security mare shined her flashlight in my face.
"Red Dawn?" Silver Dove, a pegasus quarter regular called out to me.
I knew it was past curfew. She did too.
"Hey ... I just wanted to visit my mom before tomorrow," I began.
She bowed her head and waved me forward with a wing.
"Go ahead," she said softly with a smile. "And good luck out there tomorrow. Stay safe, Red Dawn."
I rested a hoof on her shoulder and nodded before we parted ways. Trotting through the hall, I found myself outside Mom's apartment.
I knocked, and a few seconds later, Mom opened the door. I just woke her up but her face lit up at the sight of me.
"Red, what are you doing up so late?" she asked, cocking her head.
"Mom ... I need to talk to you," I said with a grim look on my face.
She eyed me worriedly and motioned me to step inside.
The door closed behind us and we sat together on the couch. The same couch I played 'fly pegasus fly' on and banged my head on the table when I was just a colt. I didn't have wings like she did.
It was hard to believe I was going to leave all that behind. Leave her behind.
"Your mane is all messed up," she said trying to straighten my hair with her hooves.
I gave her a nervous grin and her eyes widened.
"Oh, I know that look ... that's the look your father used to give me when he'd done something funny."
"That's beside the point, Mom. I need to tell you something and you need to promise that you won't freak out like you usually do."
She thought for a moment, and nodded, zipping her hoof across her lips.
I told her everything. My mom just stared at me with wide eyes, her bottom lip quivering as the blood drained from her face. I told her about the water talisman breaking, and then the meeting with the Overmare, and how I volunteered with Dew Drops and the others to go help find a new one.
"Red ... why ... y-you step out that door and ... I might never see you again!" She grasped my shoulders with both her forehooves. "I might never see my little colt ever again!"
"Mom! I'm not your little colt anymore," I groaned. Her eyes welled up with tears as she shook her head, not wanting to accept that I'd be leaving her behind ... and never coming back. To her, I'd always be her baby, and she wouldn't - she couldn't let me go.
"I'll be fine, I'll come back - I promise! We can do this ... we can save our stable," I told her as her shoulders quaked with sobs and tears streamed down her cheeks. Mom squeezed me so tight I didn't think she'd ever let go.
A darker part of me wasn't even sure if I'd be able to keep my promise. I ... I didn't want to leave her all alone. I gulped down my tears. I tried to swallow the cries that were clawing their way out of my throat - but the sound of my mother's sobs wrenched open the tear ducts that I had dammed tight for too long.
I hadn't cried since I was a foal. I guess, even then, I was still a foal. To Mom, I'd always be her little colt.
I cried out and wept into her mane like a baby. All my life she cared for me, and all my life I saw it as an annoyance, her overprotectiveness irritating me at every twist and turn.
I remembered earlier, outside the clinic, how I was so dismissive of her love for the only family she had left. So much shame. So much regret. In my life, I would have done so many things different.
It was time to make up for the words I never said enough to the only mare who deserved it more than anybody else in our stable.
"Mom -" I sobbed, stumbling over my words as tears streamed down my cheeks. "I ... I love you."
She hugged me tighter and said softly, her voice trembling, "I love you too, Son ... I've always loved you - I'll always love you no matter what happens ..." She kissed me on the forehead. "I know you're not a colt anymore, but a mother can only dream," Mom chuckled, wiping her cheeks. "I'm just glad Dew Drops is coming with you. She's a good mare and I trust that she'll keep you safe."
I grinned sheepishly.
Mom looked at me with her watery amber eyes. "Whatever you do ... whatever happens ..." Mom's quivering lips settled into a warm smile. "I don't know how many clocks, radios, and terminals you've fixed, but what I do know is that you can fix this. Do your best, like you always have. If you don't come back ..." she trailed off, not wanting to finish.
"Whatever happens, I'll ... I'll be proud of you, my little fixer pony," Mom said again, choking on her teary sobs. "Your mother loves you so, so, very much." She squeezed me tight and I laid my head against hers. "I know your father loves you too."
"I wish he was here," I whispered through sobs.
"He's always been here. He's watching us from the Everafter. He's watched you grow and become the engineer pony I know he always wanted you to be."
I looked my mother in the eye, my forelegs still wrapped around her.
"If I don't come back ..." I murmured, "If I don't come back ... I'll always be here too, okay Mom?"
"Don't say that!" she snapped, looking away. Mom pulled me close and hugged me tight, not wanting to let go. "Please ... I can't lose you too. I don't know what I'd do if I lost you both."
She folded her wings around me protectively as if the shadows that stretched across the walls around us were going to eat her baby colt.
"I love you, Son," she whispered. *
It was time. We all stood in front of the door clad in dark blue security barding, battle saddles, coats, balaclavas, gas masks, oxygen tanks, and everything else we needed to survive in an irradiated, post-apocalyptic world.
I slung the carbine around my neck and checked my PipBuck again to see if I had everything. I checked and rechecked until I was satisfied that I didn't left anything behind. I looked through my inventory and eyed two items it identified as 'PICTURES x2'.
I smiled. They'd always be with me.
I looked back and saw my mom among the crowd of almost a hundred ponies who stood a few feet away from us six. I lifted my mask, pulled off my balaclava, and grinned at her, waving my hoof in the air. Mom cupped her mouth with a hoof and wiped away tears as she smiled back. She stood upon her hind legs so that she was a head taller than the rest of the gathering crowd.
Mom pointed at me and shouted, "That's my colt, Red Dawn! Can you see him! That's him! My baby colt!"
Dew Drops bumped my flank with hers and we both laughed, waving at her again as the crowd cheered at us all. Peach Petals finally filled in the entire stable on our ordeal that morning. At that moment, we had everybody's apprehensive expectations weighing down like planets on our shoulders. There was a sort of fearful optimism in the air. And hope. But mostly fear. You could see it in everybody's eyes.
As I pulled my balaclava over my muzzle, I was glad that they couldn't see it in ours. At least not in mine. My mask hid away the uncertainty that lingered upon my face. I wasn't sure if I could say the same for my friends. Yes, they were nervous. But Lightning Twirl - especially - she looked as nervous as a wing-sprinter shuffling behind the starting line.
She was leading us, after all. Lightning Twirl knew this well as she let out a long and drawn out sigh, stilling her shaking body.
She was ready.
We were ready too. No. We were as ready as we'd ever be.
The Overmare trotted over before peering up at a windowed guard post one floor above us. She nodded and the ponies inside hovered their hooves over the door's controls. Peach Petals tapped a hoof on her PipBuck, overriding the stable door's lock.
"Goddesses guide you all. We'll be here waiting. I know you ponies can do it," she said, her voice trembling as she blinked away tears. "You have to. You just have to ..."
I wondered how she felt, sending six of her ponies to their possible deaths. I couldn't have felt worse than the Overmare or my mom.
"Thank you ma'am," Lightning Twirl said, saluting her.
Everybody had already said goodbye to their families, and, like my mom, they too were waving their final farewells as we made our way toward the door. Dew Drops was wearing a blue and white striped scarf her mother gave her. It was her mother's favorite - a hand-me-down from her mother's mother. It made me think of the pictures I took with me; it seemed as if we all wanted something to remember our loved ones by if we didn't get to come back.
Or didn't come back in time.
I gulped a lump down my throat as my heart drummed against my chest. It felt like I had weights tied to my hooves. Every heavy step was a step further away from the only home I had ever known.
I gulped once more. I needed to be strong.
We needed to save them all.
A circular lock on the massive, cog-shaped door spun and sunk into its surface. Steam leaked and hissed through the cracks as it began to part, uttering a deafening metallic roar that threatened to melt me into the steel grating beneath my hooves. I closed my eyes and clenched my jaw; my heart felt like it was going to burst from my chest. I could barely breathe.
I opened my eyes and only saw another great, cog-shaped door. I choked on my panting breaths.
"What the ..."
"That's the airlock. Please step into the vestibule. Until you return, this will be the last you'll see of the stable when that door closes behind you. Goddess speed, my little ponies," the Overmare said. I watched her force a sob back down her throat, her chin trembling as she steeled herself and clenched her jaw tight.
I heard a grating metallic groan and the doors began to close behind us like curtains on a stage. My eyes caught sight of my mother for the last time. I couldn't watch as a mixture of fear, pride, and sadness played across my mother's face. She wiped away the tears that were pouring down her cheeks, as she too mustered the courage to smile ear to ear at the only family she had left.
I grinned back behind my mask, promising her with my honest eyes that I'd return.
Then the impenetrable steel door slammed shut and shut me off from the rest of the stable - and apparently the light as we stood there fidgeting on our hooves in almost complete darkness.
We waited there for what felt like hours.
Then the whole chamber began to rumble beneath our hooves. I gulped and my heart rate began to rise. I was shaking again, and I could feel butterflies fluttering inside my stomach. I wanted to hurl.
But I felt a leg wrap around me.
Dew Drops ...
'We need to be strong. We can do this. We can save our stable.'
With a hiss, my ears popped and the door before us began to part open. I raised a hoof above my muzzle, expecting to be blinded by searing beams of natural sunlight. I expected to see a land flattened by the balefire bombs that annihilated my ancestors. I even expected to be sucked out of the door and into the open stars of the space I learned about when I was just a colt.
Through the widening crack between the parting doors I saw darkness.
Only darkness.
Footnote: Level Up.
New Perk: Fixer Pony - You are obsessed with maintaining a wide variety of machines, devices, and contraptions. +5 Small Guns, +5 Repair |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 2 - Into the Darkness - Pt I | Chapter 2
Into the Darkness
"It is our only hope. To open those doors, we may die. But to remain here, we WILL die."
Darkness.
Behind us, the door slammed closed.
I had never known darkness such as that. The lights in the stable were only two blast doors behind me - and yet, as I gazed into the mouth of that black abyss, I knew that out there, they were so far away.
I flicked on my flashlight and gasped as the darkness parted.
"Goddesses ... are you ponies seeing this?" Amber Fields trembled.
Bones. I saw bones. Too many to count.
Star Glint nudged a stray rib. "How many people you think died here?"
"Too many," I heard Dew Drops murmur.
I took a step back and my hoof crunched through something brittle.
I looked down and the charred skull of a long dead pony broke like a porcelain jar around my hoof. I struggled against the urge to scream - looking elsewhere, somewhere that wasn't littered by the bones of some dead pony.
I found no such respite.
All that remained were the shattered, howling jaws of ponies long dead. Their grinning skulls warning me to scurry back to the safety of my stable ... the safety that they were never able to enjoy. Their jealous ghosts screamed at me to tuck my tail between my legs and return to the home that they had been denied.
I turned around and peered upwards at the door that loomed over me.
Hooves.
Black, hoof-shaped smears raked across its surface as far as I could reach. They ... they scraped at the door with their hooves until their hooves were gored and worn to bloody stumps.
The door hadn't been opened in two hundred years.
The door hadn't been opened for them. I stood there, trembling in silence among their charred, frozen bones.
There they had lain... all this time.
This entire time we had never known. For our entire lives we had lived, sleeping and dreaming sweet dreams when just outside our doors was this... horror.
Hundreds of people died in that tunnel with food and safety only two doors away.
They were so close ... but not close enough.
"Try not to look," Dew Drops whispered, pushing me away from the mass grave.
But how couldn't I? Even long dead, their bones still cried out for mercy - for some closure from the balefire annihilation that erased them from the face of Equestria.
Those people were the forgotten souls that our ancestors decided to leave behind. They were the souls we decided to leave behind. I wondered if my great grandmare knew. I wondered if she rolled around in bed at night knowing that she survived and millions did not.
I wondered if her Overmare knew that she condemned all of these people to burn.
My wandering, teary eyes came upon a charred, shattered skeleton too small to be that of a stallion or a mare.
"They had foals ..." I turned to find that the others were staring at me with shell-shocked eyes. "They had foals," I murmured, nudging the delicate, trampled skull of a colt. Or was it a filly? I wondered how it died. I wondered if the people who crushed it beneath their feet even heard its screams.
A dying filly wailed in my thoughts.
"We need to get out of here," I snapped, loud enough to turn heads.
Lightning Twirl started down the tunnel. "Don't look back. We have to keep moving forward. There isn't anything here for us to see," she muttered, ash and dust swirling around her hooves as she trotted through the mass grave.
I flashed my light to the end of the tunnel.
'Is that the end?'
I couldn't tell. Only an empty stretch of abyss snaked beyond the reach of my flashlight. The dead paved a path of bone that we followed.
In the distance, the haunting moan of a frozen wind invited us onward. We heard its siren call and listened it as it promised us a water talisman and a return home to our families.
But the farther down the tunnel we walked, the colder it became. I began to shiver beneath my jumpsuit, the icy air slithering through my barding and gnawing at my flesh. My freezing, freezing flesh.
"Where's the exit?" Box Cutter whispered, wisps of mist jetting out of his breather mask.
"We're close, I think. Can't you feel it getting colder?" Lightning Twirl replied, shivering as she led us through the tunnel.
I trailed behind them not wanting to see what waited for us outside, but, at the same time, pressing onward out of fear of being left behind. I feared what was outside far more than the frozen halls that stretched out before us.
Star Glint beamed his flashlight down the tunnel and we watched it pan across a partially collapsed archway.
"Thank the Goddesses," I heard Dew Drops mutter. We trotted towards it. Our relief was short lived.
We were close enough to see the bones poking out of the rubble when we were blasted by a glacial breeze.
It felt as if we were planets away from home ... because the world we emerged unto was nothing like we ever expected.
I ducked under the fallen archway and poked my head out of the tunnel. My eyes neither dilated nor contracted because the darkness didn't give way to light.
We stepped out into the twilit snow beneath the shadow of an ashen, dead sky.
Before me was a desolate, frozen field of blackened trees that reached their grim claws to the clouds for a sun that would never come. Mountains of snow and crag fields of two hundred year old ice that would never melt smothered the lifeless earth as far as my eye could see. The wind moaned, and I shivered as a flurry of snow blew through my legs.
That was it. That was the world outside.
Our ancestors left all of that behind. For us, they left a lot of nothing behind.
'This was it ... this couldn't be it ...' I kept telling myself. 'This can't be Equestria ...'
As I stared across that frigid no-one's land, I began to doubt whether there was anything left out there. Whether there was anything left for us.
For anybody.
The snowfall thickened as I took several trembling steps further into the twilight, my friends following close behind me. I peered upwards and my eyes glazed over.
The sky.
The world around me fell away from my paralyzed hooves as I stared skyward into desolate infinity. I shrunk beneath the crushing weight of the dark, nebulous clouds that loomed over us.
I tried to tear my gaze away - but vertigo overcame me.
I fell into the sky.
The earth disappeared beneath my hooves, and everything around me tumbled end over end as I dropped into the clouds.
The world turned white - and I careened muzzle first into the snow drifts. I laid there shaking uncontrollably with my mask in the snow as I swallowed the bile that gurgled in my throat. In my daze, I could hear ponies shouting after me through the ringing in my ears.
Hooves wrenched me to my knees and I gasped for air, my radmeter clicking softly. I looked up, and Box Cutter hauled me to my four hooves.
All around me, the others collapsed to the snow.
I saw Dew Drops dry heaving into the drifts.
Star Glint hoofed his mask and vomited into the ice.
Amber Fields shook her head furiously into her hooves.
For some of us, it wasn't the vertigo that was making us sick. It was the hopelessness. The despair.
"The sky ... I never thought I'd ever see it," Lightning Twirl murmured, her wings fluttering weakly a few feet above the snow. "This can't be the same sky my ancestors soared." She reached out into the dark clouds with a trembling hoof. "It can't be ... it just can't ..."
She was lied to her entire life. We all were.
The murals of the blue skies and the white clouds she admired growing up within the whitewashed halls of our stable were lies. All of them. They were all lies.
I dragged my dark eyes to the sky once more. I saw, in the distance, a black speck peering down at us from the top of a broken hill. A snow swirl blew across my eyes, and when I blinked, it was no longer there.
Then I hoofed my mask and puked into the snow.
I wanted to turn around and never look back.
Or up. *
The sky had coagulated into a thick, impenetrable ocean of darkness. I was glad I couldn't tell whether or not it was still there as I shined my flashlight down upon a path we decided to follow. We wandered through a forest of ancient, gangly trees, six different hoofprints trailing behind us.
For nearly four days we trekked and slogged through the snow with not a single ray of light to touch our faces. The sky had gone from a murky gray to an opaque black, and not once did the sun show itself.
In this nightmarish world there were only varying degrees of night. I stared grimly into the shadows knowing that I might never see the light of day or feel the warmth of a home ever again.
My PipBuck, every now and then, in a land I could barely see, would alert me that I had entered a new zone. How it could have possibly ever known that that particular area was known as the 'Crystal Highway' was beyond my understanding. There was no sign of a highway anywhere, let alone crystals. I looked down at the century old permafrost that concealed so much of the landscape.
If there was ever a highway, we wouldn't be following it.
Our flashlights cut amber swaths through the shadows as our misty breaths reminded us that we were still alive. Exposed to the elements, our bodies began to slow and wear down while the snowfall only intensified. Around us was a forest of disintegrating stumps, uprooted trees, and half fossilized trunks. They drowned beneath the snowfall, clawing at the surface for air with gnarled, broken fingers as they suffocated beneath the shifting, white tides.
The wind moaned a haunting tune that chilled me to the very core. My soul felt like it was going to freeze over.
I shivered, not from the wind that blasted at my barding, but at the unnerving emptiness of that place.
Whatever life that had existed there once had been choked out of existence two hundred years ago. I wasn't expecting to see anything that moved except for the hooves beneath us.
For five grueling hours, we trekked through the snow without rest. We probably walked more in the last three and a half days than we ever did in our entire lives.
We'd trudged almost endlessly through the gloom for the last few days with only a two or three hour breaks in between. The last time we remained idle for more than five hours was the day before when we found refuge inside a cave. That cave was an entire day behind us, with no form of shelter visible for miles.
Every muscle in my body ached. I wasn't sure how much further I could go. My friends weren't faring much better.
Amber Fields stumbled and collapsed as Lightning Twirl pushed us eastward in a direction she thought would lead us to Poneva. Box Cutter helped her to her hooves, the pegasus pony only pausing momentarily for the other two to catch up. I could hear Amber Fields' sobs behind me as I trudged deeper into the seemingly endless snowfall.
'We have to keep moving,' Lightning Twirl had said. 'We can't stop,' she had said.
But every hour, every minute, every second we spent exposed to the unforgiving elements, the snowfall thickened. It was getting harder and harder to see more than twenty yards ahead of us. It didn't exactly help that my flashlight's beam was beginning to wane through the snowflakes, warping and reflecting against the flurry of white specks that washed against my eyeholes.
Were it not for my PipBuck, I wouldn't have known it'd been almost ninety hours since we left our stable. There wasn't any sign of light - no hint of whether or not the sun or the moon was still hanging over us. I wondered if the balefire bombs simply knocked the planet out of its orbit around the sun. Impossible, but it was the best explanation I could think of for the seemingly endless night.
It was ... unnatural.
I stumbled through the ashen drifts, my legs giving in to the stiffening fatigue that threatened to keel me over. I panted to fill my lungs with air, jets of mist hissing out of my mask's filters as I forced my legs to keep moving. All I wanted was to just sit there and wait until my muscles stopped spasming. But out there, warm legs that weren't moving weren't going to stay warm for long.
A grayish magical field swirled around me and Dew Drops helped me to my hooves. I leaned against her, catching my breath. I couldn't tell what she was thinking behind her mask and balaclava, but I hoped she didn't think any less of me. I wasn't sure how much trotting I had left.
"You're fine, Red. Just catch your breath ... we can make it," she whispered.
I squeezed my eyes shut, exhaling. "Why do you sound so sure?" I wheezed, taking a few weary steps through the snow.
She trudged onward as I wrapped a leg around her and followed.
"It's all we've got to hope for," the mare said softly, "Because if we don't ..." She stopped abruptly in her tracks and I nearly slumped into the snow. Dew Drops shook her head, not wanting to finish. I met her tired gray eyes briefly before the mare turned and walked on, her scarf billowing behind us in the wind.
We had to keep moving. So we did. Three more hours passed, and still the land was as desolate as ever.
By the time we came across a reminder that life once existed there, it had become so dark that we would not have been able to see anything past our muzzles without our flashlights.
A bent, half buried sign that reflected dully in our beams spoke to us more than anything out there had ever said since we emerged.
"City of Poneva, eighty miles," Lightning Twirl read out loud, scraping away a layer of rime with a forehoof. She tapped her PipBuck and swung her flashlight due north. "I think we're on the right track, if my PipBuck isn't just spouting off bullshit my way."
"Eighty fucking miles," I muttered.
Star Glint sighed wearily and leaned against the sign only to have it crumble into the snow with him. He shook himself of the powder that clung to his barding and sighed as the snowfall scattered more across its blue fabric. "Let's just find the damn thing and go," the stallion grumbled.
I sighed. "How do we even know there's a Water Talisman out there?" We had seen nothing but ice and snow for the last eighty-six hours. At that rate, I wasn't sure we'd find anything left, let alone Poneva city. I was hoping to see a few ruined buildings here and there, maybe a fence. But there'd been no sign of civilization until then.
"We've been out here for hours, and the only thing that's changed is this fucking sign here," I growled, nudging its bruised, melted frame.
"Just keep walking," Lightning Twirl droned flatly, as she followed the path wherever her flashlight pointed. "We can't waste any more time -"
"We're probably not even heading in the right direction," I groaned. "How the hell do our PipBucks know that this really is the Crystal Highway?" I swept my hoof across the gnarled trees. "I'm not seeing any crystals anywhere."
"As long as we stay on the highway, we'll follow it," she said, evenly. But not even Lightning Twirl could hide the palpable trembling in her voice. "This highway has to lead somewhere ... if we follow it, we'll get somewhere."
"Somewhere," I muttered, but my voice went unheard, lost beneath the moan of the wind. The snowfall thickened around us.
Lightning Twirl stood there quietly for a moment, as the cascading snowflakes washed over her. "We need to find shelter. Soon."
I shook my head wearily as the others started forward. I stopped for a moment to lean against a burned, disintegrating tree trunk, narrowing my eyes through the snowflakes that rushed past me.
I beamed my light lazily across the trees, not looking for anything in particular. Nothing but snowflakes and dead trees. I flashed its yellow beam skywards and saw only a canopy of gnarled, ghastly branches. A jet of mist seethed out of my mask as I swept my light back to my friends to illuminate the path before us. Their shadows played against the trees like ghosts as they staggered wearily through the snow. I shivered and trotted after them, swinging my beam from left to right as their voices and flashlights became more distant,
For a moment, as it passed between the trees, a pair of teal eyes flashed back at me. I frowned, stopping for a moment and panning it back.
It wasn't there anymore.
My eyes darted to my Eyes Forward Sparkle - my PipBuck's proximity based IFF indicator. No red blips. Nothing. I hurried away, not looking back.
"You guys see that?" I huffed, crunching through the snow.
They all turned to look.
"It wasn't a sign that said, 'Stable-Tec, this way' was it?" Box Cutter smiled hopefully.
I shook my head. "I think I saw something," I murmured, chewing my lower lip. "Or someone."
Star Glint panned his flashlight across the snowswept trees. "There's nothing here but us," he said, shining it along the path once more.
I eyed Dew Drops worriedly. She pursed her lips and held my apprehensive gaze as the wind moaned and heavy snow collected upon our shoulders.
"Alright guys ..." Lightning Twirl turned wearily, a long sigh hissing out of her mask. "The snow's getting worse out here. We need to keep moving and stop looking back -"
Someone screamed. I whirled around and saw Amber Fields fall through the crumbling earth. There was a keening shriek - then an audible thump.
"What the fuck!?" I rushed to the place where she had been standing earlier - and nearly hurled myself over the edge of a pit. I scrambled away, snow and rocks tumbling into the darkness as the earth crumbled beneath my hooves. I found my footing and peered into sinkhole. Amber Fields writhed painfully at the bottom as snowflakes showered over her.
"Goddesses!" she cried out, the wind drowning out her voice. "I - I think I twisted my hoof!"
I clenched my jaw, swinging my head left to right. I watched as the storm swallowed up the trees around us.
It was coming.
I rushed over to the pit, shined my light inside and saw the immense skeletons lying beneath Amber Fields's heaving chest. Bears. Or they used to be. I shivered when I saw that the skulls had extra pairs of jaws.
Amber Fields' eyes widened. "What the hell are these things?" she screamed, thrashing through their contorted bones.
My horn glowed with a scarlet sheen. "We're getting you out, Amber!" But she didn't hear a word I said as the wind shrieked into our ears.
Dew Drops bowed her head, and a red and gray glow surrounded her as we lifted her out and set her down in the snow.
"How bad is it?" Lightning Twirl shouted over the howling wind.
"She twisted her ankle!" I shouted back, holding the mare upright with my magic as she limped painfully across the snow. Snow that piled taller and taller with every second we stood idle.
Lightning Twirl shook her head furiously.
"Fuck!"
"Twirl - we can't stay out here - the snow - it's getting too thick!" Dew Drops screamed as the wind blasted across our barding.
"You don't think I know that?"
The glow of our flashlights dwindled and waned through the snowflakes that showered over us. I couldn't see more than six feet in front of me as the world around us faded to black and white.
Lightning Twirl was but a silhouette in the snowfall. "Stay together, we're going to make it through this!" I heard her call out to us.
The wasteland shrieked - and a gust of frozen wind crashed into us.
I watched as Lightning Twirl's outline sunk into the darkness.
"Twirl!" I screamed - but only the blizzard screamed back. "Shit ..." I glanced around. To my left, Dew Drops' dark shape huddled close. To my right, Amber Fields lay curled up beside me.
"Twirl!"
She didn't answer. And neither Star Glint nor Box Cutter were in sight.
"SHIT!" The snow was going to devour us whole.
"Red?" I barely heard Dew Drops say.
My ears perked.
"Red, we need to get moving!"
Amber Fields moaned. "Where? Where do we go?"
"I ... I ... Twirl - where's Twirl?" Dew Drops' head swung from left to right as she squinted into the howling darkness. "Where are the others? Where the hell are they?!"
I felt their eyes fall upon me.
"Red ..." Dew Drops murmured.
I said nothing as I heard muffled screams emanating from the darkness. My ears perked. The screaming stopped.
"Red!"
"I-I don't know ... I don't know!" I clenched my jaw as the two shivering mares stared at me in hopeless silence. They didn't know either. "SHIT!"
All I knew was that the storm was going to bury us alive. I hooked a leg under Amber Fields' shoulder and pulled her to her hooves. "Come on - come on!"
I held Amber Fields tight as Dew Drops wrapped a leg around me. I shivered, staring through my frost-raked eyeholes into the storm's howling maw.
The wasteland's icy jaws were closing around us.
I gulped - and we waded into the blizzard.
Minutes dragged by like hours as the wind threatened to drag us away. We didn't even know where we were going. 'Anywhere but here,' I thought. 'Anywhere but here ...'
But we weren't going anywhere.
The wind drove us back mercilessly with every step we took. It shrieked into our ears and slowed our trots to stumbles. I couldn't even hear myself think. I couldn't even see past my nose as the blizzard drowned out the world around me. It heaved crushing snow onto our backs - weighing us down - wrenching us to the earth. I lifted my hoof - and dragged it through the snow as I struggled to sink it in front of me.
Amber Fields screamed, and collapsed into the ashen drifts.
"My leg - Goddesses my leg!" Dew Drops and I huddled around her, the wind screaming past us as I glared into the snowfall.
All I could see was white.
"I-I can't see - I can't see!" Amber Fields cried, clawing at her mask. "RED!"
"I'm here!" I told her, shaking the mare. "We're here!" She wrapped her hooves around me and Dew Drops, and screamed into the storm.
"I'm sorry ... this is my fault ... my leg - I-I'm so sorry!"
"NO!"" I screamed, shaking her with my hooves. "We're not dying out here ... WE'RE NOT FUCKING DYING HERE!"
"Goddesses ... w-where are the others!?" Dew Drops cried once more.
My eyes darted from left to right. I couldn't even see either of the mares whose legs were wrapped around me.
I lifted my head and called out into the blizzard. "Twirl! Star! Box!" No response. "Where the fuck are they, Goddesses DAMNIT!?"
Only the wind shrieked in reply. It blasted us into the snow. We cowered there beneath the storm, screaming our throats raw as we held onto each other for our lives. There was nowhere to go when you couldn't see a foot in front of you.
But we had to keep moving. We had to keep moving somewhere or the wasteland was going to swallow us whole.
With a suffocated cry, I forced myself to my four hooves, yanking Dew Drops and Amber Fields back up with me. Amber Fields sobbed, her limp rocking us back and forth as we stumbled blindly through the unforgiving storm. It bore down upon us, wearing us down, weathering away our strength to go on. My muscles began to ache. My legs threatened to buckle beneath me. But Amber Fields beat me to it as her legs gave way - and she dragged us back into the snow.
"I can't, Red!" Amber Fields cried, laying there as the storm drowned out her voice. "I can't!"
I clenched my eyes shut and roared against the blasted wind, hauling her back to her hooves.
"Hold on, Amber," I screamed. "HOLD ON!"
I squeezed her tight - and dragged the two mares with me. I fought through the unforgiving wind as it crashed against my face, and snow heaped around my legs. I wailed for my aching muscles to keep going - to break through the blizzard - but they screamed back, pleading with me to collapse even as my mind whipped my trembling legs onward.
But every hoof I planted in front of me was heavier than the last.
Weaker and weaker. Shallower and shallower. I gasped for ragged breaths that wouldn't fill my lungs.
"DON'T LET ME GO, RED!" Amber Fields begged, "PLEASE - DON'T LET ME GO!"
"HOLD ON - HOLD ON!" I screamed, my muscles burning - my strength dwindling...
I felt her begin to slip away.
"RED!"
I swung my head around to face her, and found her watery, bloodshot eyes.
"AMBER, DON'T -"
She lost her footing and stumbled forward -
And the wind dragged her away into the night.
Amber Fields screamed - and she was gone. She was gone.
"AMBER!" I stopped for mere seconds, looking back the way we came only for the wind to catch me in the chest like sails on a boat. The wind hurled me into the snow.
"AMBER!"
My flashlight flew from my magical grip and everything went black.
All I could see was Dew Drops' light flashing wildly across the swirling flakes like static noise on a terminal screen. I wanted to turn back. I wanted to go back for her.
But a dark corner of my mind told me that she was gone.
Gone.
I needed to be strong. I needed to survive.
I needed ... to rest ...
The snow heaped on top of me. In front of me. Around me. My tears fogged up the inside of my goggles and I lost the ability to see. I lost the will to see. The wasteland's icy grip tightened around my legs as the snow piled higher, and higher - swallowing up my hooves and trapping them beneath the shifting, black tides.
At least when you died in a stable, you had a body to cremate. But out there, I feared that we were going to be lost beneath the ashen drifts, never to be seen again. Never to see the light again.
Seconds passed by, then minutes, then what felt like hours ...
My body gave up.
Only my mind, with its dwindling will to survive, forced its nervous signals to twitch my frozen limbs through the unrelenting snowfall. My heart pounded faster than I could breathe. My muscles strained and struggled to move - to fight -
My muscles went stiff, and agony shot through my legs.
I stumbled - and fell. I felt Dew Drops yank my foreleg - trying to pull me back to my hooves. But I couldn't ...
Through the dark, veiny tunnels of my eyes, I saw stars.
- thump - thump - thump - thump - thump - thump ... thump .... thump .....
Darkness began to take me. I was done fighting. I was done ... Amber Fields ... I let her go ... I ...
I let go.
My legs slackened and Dew Drops threatened to slip away from me too. But instead, I slipped away from her.
I closed my eyes - and the wind dragged me into the howling darkness.
... thump ....... thump ............... thump ..................
"........ DAWN!"
My head slammed onto solid floor.
... thump - thump - thump -
Hooves tore my breather mask from my face and I took an agonizing gasp. Dew Drops' blurry, bloodshot eyes stared down into mine and she wrenched me to my hooves. I felt the metallic lip of a canteen push through my lips and the familiar taste of cider rushed down my throat.
I coughed, sputtered, and collapsed back into the snow-swept concrete.
Dew Drops' mouth moved, but I couldn't hear what she was saying. I tipped my glassy eyes to what had to be a ceiling over my head. But snow cascaded through holes in the roof and the walls around us. I watched faintly as three other silhouettes stumbled inside.
The cider metabolized and the black tunnels around me faded away.
"- Fields?" I heard her asking me. "Where's Amber Fields!?"
I closed my eyes for a moment and I remembered the way her screams died away into the storm. I opened them, and saw the others staring down at me, masks off as their teary eyes bore down upon me with the weight of worlds.
"She's gone."
I looked away, not wanting to meet their eyes.
"She's gone ..."
I could have turned around. I could have caught her. But I didn't. I couldn't.
She was already dead. "Goddesses ..." I sobbed, "I told you, Dew Drops ... I fucking told you ... told you I'd get everyone killed."
The light faded from Dew Drops' eyes, and she shambled away with the rest.
A trembling sigh seethed out of my lips as I slumped against the blackened concrete walls of the dreary, ancient cottage.
I closed my eyes and let the darkness and my sobs choke me to a sleep I wished I would never wake from. *
I woke to the wind as it shrieked and battered the walls around me.
"We can't stay here for too long - we have to keep moving!" I heard Lightning Twirl shout, faintly. I rolled around, too tired to stand, too tired to think, too tired to ... weep. I turned my ears away from sound of Box Cutter's sobs, Dew Drop's shouting, and Star Glint's hooves pacing across the ruined concrete.
"Twirl - Amber is DEAD!" Dew Drops cried. "We're tired, Red nearly died, and we're going to die too if you keep pushing us!" she screamed, her voice hoarse.
Lightning Twirl groaned, the sound of hooves pounding across rough concrete crashing against my limp ears.
"I'm sorry, DD ... but the longer we stay out here, the more likely this fucking wasteland's going to kill us - just like it killed Amber!" Lightning Twirl shot back. "We're running on borrowed time. We don't have enough rations to last us more than two weeks! So what the fuck do you expect us to do, wait here and let the snow bury us!?"
Dew Drops sobs echoed through my ears. I curled up tighter, tucking my legs into my chest as my friends fought and argued. The wasteland was tearing us apart. It was tearing me apart.
There was a long silence, only Box Cutter's muffled cries audible beneath the howling wind.
"Twirl ..." I heard Star Glint say, "DD's right ... if we keep going like this, we'll burn ourselves out. We'll be weak and we'll be worse off in the snow. We can't survive unless we rest."
"Star ... not you too," Lightning Twirl sobbed.
"Twirl, we need to rest," Dew Drops begged, "This is killing us...".
I heard Lightning Twirl's hooves shuffle across the floor. There was a long silence as the wind moaned outside.
"Okay ... okay we'll stay here, for now ... until we've rested up and the blizzard's blown through. Then we'll get a move on again."
'Thank the Goddesses.' *
My bloodshot eyes fluttered open, and not to my surprise, they didn't need to adjust. Everyone was still asleep as I wandered through the burned out ruin. The blizzard had subsided to a thin layer of snowfall that might have made for a peaceful winter night if I wasn't standing inside the ruins of someone's home.
The inside of the cottage was worn bare by the elements over two hundred years of unrelenting, wintry punishment. Black outlines painted the walls and floor where furniture was burned away by the balefire holocaust.
Parts of the brick house were already beginning to collapse, and some sections, like what I assumed to be its dining room, barred me entry with a fallen ceiling. Whatever belongings there that weren't locked up looked to either have been incinerated or carried away by the wasteland's frozen winds.
With my carbine slung over my shoulder, I trotted to a shattered, blackened window pane and stared out into the snow.
Dew Drops told me that anything was possible as long as we had our friends to help us. I imagined Amber Fields wandering through the snow alone, helpless and lost, just waiting to die - abandoned and left for dead by the ponies she thought were her friends. I turned my weary eyes low in shame and knew that her husband ... her colt would never see his mother ever again.
And that I was the one to blame.
My shoulders began to quake with the force of my sobs. My body gave up, and Amber Fields died because I wasn't strong enough.
Because I wasn't strong enough ... she was gone.
I imagined the mare stumbling through the drifts on her bad leg, her limp turning into crawls, and her crawls turning into stillness. She curled up in a vast, bleak field of snow - cold, alone, and dying - only to close her eyes and let the glacial touch of death finally take her.
I clenched my jaw and shook my head, unable to shed anymore tears. I stared outside the window, watching the snow fall.
The snow had risen several inches and nearly touched the bottom of the window, threatening to pour in through its shattered frame. I leaned against it and looked out into the gloom. I couldn't say it was day, but it wasn't night either. It was bright enough to see the paleness of the snow without a flashlight. It wasn't as dark as it was ... I looked at my PipBuck: four hours ago.
I scanned the lonely, twilit trees that surrounded the lonely cottage. A part of me hoped I'd see Amber Fields limping our way.
I frowned when I saw something else.
A black silhouette peeked out from behind a withering trunk, watching me from the distance. Squinting at it, I could see its teal, pupiless eyes narrowing back at me. We stared at each other for a good five seconds. I was about ready to call out after it when I felt someone nudge my shoulder.
"What are you doing?" Box Cutter asked, wearily.
I glanced over and back out the window, "I -"
It was no longer there.
"I ... don't know ... I ... I think I saw something."
Box Cutter was silent for a moment.
"Amber?"
I shook my head slowly, lowering my head.
"I saw the storm take her away," I whispered, cradling my head in my hooves. My friend leaned against me and stared out the window.
"This can't be Equestria, Box. Nothing... nothing can survive out here. I can't even hope that Amber's still alive. I can't hope that we'll find the Water Talisman. Even if there are still any of them left, this fucking wasteland will freeze over before we can even get near them."
I shivered and rubbed one of my forelegs with another.
Box Cutter sighed, hanging his head. "I'll tell you one thing: this isn't the Equestria I read about in the books - that's for sure," he muttered with a wheezing chuckle. "Amber ... Amber was out of the game when she fell down that hole." Box Cutter looked at me with his bloodshot eyes. It looked like he had been crying all night. I met his gaze, and he added, "No way anyone could've walked through a blizzard on a leg like that, Red. It wasn't your fault ..."
"I just hope she went out quick..." I trailed off. Maybe the snow buried her and she froze to death. Maybe the wind swept her off a cliff or ...
I shook my head.
"I should've held on ... I just wasn't strong enough, Box. I'm tired. Everything's so sore. I'm not sure I can make the rest of the trek, and ... and I think I'm seeing things now," I breathed, letting my eyes wander off into the twilight.
He punched my shoulder with a hoof. "We have ponies waiting for us - waiting for you to come back home. If you give up, if I give up - If any of us gives up ... the game's over," Box Cutter said, cutting his hoof through the air. "If one of us goes ... the others have to keep going. Like what Twirl said, 'just keep moving'.
"Don't stop - don't stop for just one moment, because if you go too ..." he trailed off. Box Cutter shook his head. "There's still five of us left, Red. As long as there's still one of us standing, as long as there's one pony still moving ... there's still hope."
"Hope ..." I muttered, closing my eyes.
We leaned against each other for what felt like hours. I finally chuckled and said, "When you fell in the water and got stuck with that metal beam back home, you were grinning ear to ear like it was just a bruise." I bumped him with a hoof. "How do you do it?"
Box Cutter snorted a jet of cloudy vapor. The stallion shivered on his hooves and he looked out the window with glassy, bloodshot eyes. "It takes more than a sauna treatment and a paper cut to kill me, Red."
"You son of a bitch ..." I muttered with a smirk. "You must've been born without nerve endings weren't you," I said, not asking. "Concussion and all, you still came to the meeting and volunteered. Didn't even know what you were volunteering for."
"I heard my friends. Couldn't let 'em join without me," he grinned, weakly. Box Cutter sighed, hoofing his forehead. "I'm still feeling it, honestly. I get headaches every now and then, and that trek was really pushing it."
I sighed, levitating out a canteen of stable cider. I took a swig, and passed it to him. "I never knew it'd be this bad," he said, biting the canteen with his teeth and tipping his head back. "To think our ancestors were all about friendship and harmony and all that gooey stuff ..."
He shook his head, staring out in the ashen drifts. "They did all of this. They destroyed themselves."
I sniffled. "It's hard to believe people actually lived out here once. I can't see anyone ever living here in a million years. I wouldn't ... fuck it. White walls are better than whiteouts, honestly." I took another swig before passing the canteen to Box Cutter. The cider burned going down my throat, but the pain assured me that I was still alive.
"Amen to that, brony," he tipped his head and gulped. Box Cutter pulled the canteen from his lips and frowned, holding it upside down. "Least my headache's gone."
I snorted. "You should try to get some more rest. Your head might swell up and explode or something."
Box Cutter nodded, stumbling away from the window. I listened as his hoofsteps fade away into the breeze. I stood there for a few solemn moments in silence. The wind quieted down, and I heard someone sobbing nearby.
'Dew Drops.' Her sobs spirited me to her. I following her muffled voice to a small room that somehow held against the passage of time.
I peered into the empty doorway. In the dim glow of her PipBuck, I saw Dew Drops' trembling silhouette lying beside the skull of some long dead pony. The shattered, half-buried skeleton lay crushed beneath a collapsed section of the cottage's brick wall.
Dew Drops was lying across the charred, wooden floor, her quivering nose touching the skull's pale, weathered muzzle. Her bags were scattered all around her and an empty canteen of what I assumed was cider was a hoof's length away from her anguished lips.
"DD?" I whispered.
She didn't say a word as her shoulders convulsed with quiet sobs. The mare's eyes were closed but beneath her eyelids, her eyes swiveled rapidly like she was in the middle of a dream.
Or a nightmare.
I laid down next to her, running a hoof through her disheveled teal mane. I couldn't blame her. We went through a lot that day. I curled up next to her, gently nuzzling her cheek with mine. But she wouldn't stop sobbing. I closed my eyes, resting my head against hers, her shoulders rocking against me.
I wanted to help her, somehow. Somehow, I wanted to comfort her, even though all I could give her were hugs and words.
But hugs and words couldn't bring Amber Fields back. I forced my tears away, and watched her, helplessly.
"DD?" I began, rubbing her foreleg. The mare wouldn't move.
On the other side of her body, closest to the wall, there was a strange blue orb a breath's length away from her muzzle. Rivulets of tears streamed by and under it.
"The fuck is this?" I murmured, eyeing its surprisingly lustrous surface. Whatever that thing was, it miraculously survived whatever that cottage didn't.
I reached out with my magic to pull it away from her. A red magical field swirled around it ... and I felt a numbing sensation surge through my body.
My limbs slackened and the last thing I remembered before I blacked out was the skull's sunken visage staring at me with its hollow, dead eyes.
<-=======ooO Ooo=======-> |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 2 - Into the Darkness - Pt II | <-=======ooO Ooo =======->
I exhaled a contented sigh, peering out the very same window Box Cutter and I had been looking out of only minutes earlier.
Only this time, I was looking through glass, and the trees outside had leaves of a very lively shade of green.
'Impossible.'
Everything was dead a blink of an eye ago.
'Where am I?' I tried to say ...
... but I floated a bright glass of lemonade to my mouth instead.
I swung the window open and looked out into the verdant, green yard outside. The tart, freshly squeezed juice swam down my parched throat and I smacked my lips with a satisfied "Whew!"
"Hey Flashy! How's everything in the Empire?" I asked out loud ... in a mare's voice.
'Wait.'
Those weren't my lips moving. Suspended before me was ... the same blue orb that I saw earlier.
"I really hope you get this before Princess Luna ships you back to Canterlot," I sighed '... no, she sighed - no, I - t-the mare? I ... I'm a mare!'
"When you get back, you are going to love what I did to our yard." I let out a weary chuckle. "I even planted your begonias - just like the ones in Princess Cadance's garden."
The smell of freshly-cut turf was still in the air. I smiled out the window at what had to be an entire day's work, admiring the lawn of lush green grass that stretched across the front yard. My smile grew wide as I followed the cobblestone path, lined by rows of pink begonias and stalks of balsams that ran from the front door, down to the white picket fence at the other end of the yard.
It was a dream. It had to be.
I tried to train my eyes down the stone path. But I couldn't. I was frozen. Frozen in another pony's body. Wherever she looked, I looked as well.
"Oh ... and you're going to love this."
I grinned with pride at the newly-planted evergreen sapling that was the lawn's centerpiece. "Yup. I did all this all by myself. Popped three babies outta me and I'm still going strong." I yawned, my horn tingling wearily at the sight of the shovel, planted on a mound of dirt beneath its immature branches. "Yeah I'm fine ... we're doing fine here. Just fine."
I stared at my hooves.
"Flash, I miss you ..." I whispered, my ears wilting. "I really wish you were here. It's ... been really hard trying to stay focused when there's a war going on on your doorstep. Our kids are always asking me when you'll be home ... when it'll all be over."
I let out a soft breath, feeling the warm, golden light of the sun shine onto my face for the first time in my ... life. In her life.
My weary eyes fluttered to the clear, blue skies - and saw distant shapes soaring through the clouds.
"I've been seeing a lot of cloudships lately. They're all flying south - away from Poneva. Been doing that for hours now, and I still don't know what's going on." I leaned against the window, resting my chin on a hoof. "God ... I hope you're wrong. I hope it's still safe. I hope it's still safe in the Crystal Empire. I ... I just hope you're okay. I haven't heard from you in weeks."
I lowered my muzzle onto the windowsill, watching the fleets of cloudships sail across the sky.
"The kids miss you. I really miss you. We ... really miss you. The kids I can manage, but I can't keep my head on straight knowing that the front line's getting closer every day." My ears perked at the percussive echo of distant artillery fire.
Artillery fire. I knew exactly where I was. This was Equestria. Was. And those distant cracks were coming from the war that ended the world.
I sniffled, my voice trembling as I gazed longingly at the pink begonias outside. "We need you here, Flash. Our children need you here." I shook my head, tears welling up in my eyes as the distant cloudships continued their flight south. "God ... I don't know how much longer I can stand this war. It's gone on long enough, Flash - and we've got kids to raise for God's sake!"
I sighed, pulled a chair behind me, and sunk into it. I eyed the lawn outside as I flicked through static and voices on the radio. On a table beside me, a radio played a gentle tune that brought a weary smile to my lips. I closed my eyes and hummed to the words as a mare sung over the radio.
"Sompony's dreaming
Dreaming a bad dream
Soon it'll be over
Soon we'll be waking
Waking to a summer day."
I leaned against the window, admiring the mare's heartwarming voice. Her words echoed through my thoughts ... I played the song over and over, again and again ... 'somepony's dreaming ... dreaming a bad dream ...'
"That was Sweetie Belle's 'Summer Days!" another mare cheered as Sweetie Belle faded away. "Boy, do I love that song - really gets me in the mood to sit out, sip a glass of lemonade and watch the day go by! This is DJ PON3 wishing you sunny days from Maaanehatten!"
My eyes fluttered open, chuckling tiredly. I took another sip of lemonade as I rested my hindlegs on the windowsill. "Well, as you can see, Flash, I'm really trying." I levitated the glass into the air. "Here's to summer days, Flash!"
I closed my eyes once more and tipped the glass back into my lips.
Crash!
My eyes shot open.
The sound of laughing children yanked me to my hooves. Outside I watched as a trio of young ponies galloped after each other across the lawn. One of them, a colt, ploughed straight through a line of flower pots and sent them spilling into the cobblestone path.
My right eye twitched. "Boys!" I jumped out of my chair and raced outside, the colts and one filly tumbling over each other in the grass.
"Boys!"
I chuckled, "Ah ... here comes our monsterfoals."
I trotted outside into the afternoon sun, a cool breeze caressing my soft, brown bangs. My ... pine green coat blazed a brilliant white as I stepped out into the front porch and bathed in the warmth of that great ball of fire in the sky.
I hoofed the yellow lily tucked behind my ear as I cantered toward the rampaging foals.
"Boys, please - you might hurt yourselves -"
One of the colts squeaked as his leg clipped a rose bush.
"Sunchaser!" I growled.
He froze in his tracks. "Sorry, Mom," the pegasus colt sighed as his brother and sister trotted up to us.
I glared at him, and he bowed his head to his hooves. A weary breath sighed from my lips, and my eyes softened. "It's not safe to be running around in the garden," I told him, gently, touching his cheek. "There're too many thorny bits to hurt yourself with!"
The colt glowered at his grinning siblings as I brushed his amber coat gingerly with a hoof. Sunchaser winced. I cooed softly, plucking thorns out of his hide. "There," I said, ruffling his mane. "Let's go inside and get you some bandages, Sunny."
The three kids looked at me, at each other, and at me again.
The youngest of the three, a tawny pegasus filly, grinned.
She swiped a hoof at my shoulder.
"Tag, you're it!" she nickered, and they scattered.
"H-hey - Cinnabelle! What did I just say about running in the garden!?" I moaned, facehoofing, "Flash, where are you when I need you to corral these out-of-control kids!" I said out loud, starting after them. "Get back here!" I stomped a hoof into the grass as they galloped away as fast as their little legs could take them.
I sighed.
Then a playful smile slowly crept across my lips. I sprang to my hooves and dashed after them, whirling upon Cinnabelle.
But I slowed as I caught up. The filly's voice cracked, "You'll never catch me!"
"Cinnabelle, you stop right this instant!" I demanded with a grin. "Just wait till your father sees this!" She veered through a garden of pony-shaped bushes. I ducked under a stray branch and pounced on the filly.
Cinnabelle squawked, flapping her little chicken wings before she ducked out of the way. My eyes widened.
Crash!
I ate a mouthful of leaves.
"Argh!" I whinnied, shaking the leaves and twigs out of my hair. "Pwa, pfft!" I plucked a stray leaf from my tongue, grinning. "You slippery little filly!" I got to my hooves and charged after her, my long emerald mane whipping behind me as I closed in. "This is what happens when you marry a soldier pony! He gives you fighter foals!"
I snapped my jaws closed and bit down on her mane, yanking the filly off her hooves. Cinnabelle dangled from my mouth, her wings beating in futility. A unicorn colt dashed past us, giggling. But my horn glowed and I yanked her older brother into the air in a field of emerald magic.
"Gotcha, Spring Fresh!" I cheered.
"Oh come on, that's not even fair!" Spring Fresh pouted, folding his legs across his chest as he floated towards me.
"One more to go!" I said through a tuft of Cinnabelle's blue hair.
"Mom! Put me down!" Cinabelle laughed, flapping her little wings.
"Not till I find your brother!" My eyes darted across the yard, frowning mischievously. "Now, where is he?"
I took one step forward - and the world around me flashed green.
My ears popped.
Then the cottage's windows exploded.
I swung the kids away from the window behind us and hugged them close.
Broken glass ripped into my hide. I cried out through Cinnabelle's mane and nearly dropped the screaming filly to the grass. With a suffocated moan, I lowered the children to my hooves and panted through the pain with teary eyes. Blood trickled down my chest as the sky darkened over us.
Just above the tree line, a plume of greenish-black clouds erupted to the skies in the distance.
"Dear God ..." I murmured, watching the mushroom cloud swallow up the distant landscape with a tidal wave of spellfire. I felt Spring Fresh and Cinnabelle huddle between my legs.
Then my legs began to shake. It wasn't fear. It was the earth.
It quaked beneath my hooves.
The ground ripped open around us.
It tore apart beneath me and my hooves slipped.
"NO!" I shoved the foals back.
Then the earth crumbled away.
"MOMMY!" Cinnabelle shrieked.
My horn glowed. Green magic enveloped me and I righted myself.
I hurled myself away from the edge and watched as the cottage rumbled and shook. A fissure ripped across the garden and tore her home in half. Its roof caved in and its walls collapsed from the inside, engulfing us in a suffocating blast of dust and debris. Billowing brown clouds surged past us as we fled from the collapsing cottage.
I swept the foals into my forelegs, and peered into their teary eyes.
"Where's your brother?! Where's Sunchaser?!"
"I-I don't know!" Spring Fresh stammered, "I saw him running to the shed!"
I swung my head in its direction. My heart sunk as the shed sunk beneath a sea of smoke and embers.
I felt Spring Song tense.
"Stay close to your mother, okay!" I wheezed through the smoke, leading the foals out of the thickening black cloud and away from the shattered earth. An ocean of black smoke swept away the trees, the cottage - even the sun - silhouetting them with a dim, greenish hue.
I watched as the sun slowly faded away into the darkness and our wretched shadows melted away.
The day became as dark as night.
"Sunchaser!" I cried, but I couldn't hear his voice.
My eyes darted all around me. A small sliver of hope burned weakly inside my heart. Maybe they could escape. Maybe there was a way out.
I saw, through the smoke and the darkened trees, a long road that stretched to the north and south. North toward the balefire. South into the distance.
We were in the middle of nowhere. I wondered if the mare knew she was going to die.
"Sunchaser!" I screamed, and I hoped to the Goddesses that he'd reply or come running out to see them.
He didn't.
My horn sparked to life, lifting both her foals onto my back as we raced to the cottage. I screamed at her to stay outside - but she couldn't hear me. They were going to be roasted alive in there.
I kicked down the door and looked over my shoulder. My eyes glistened with emerald light. A blinding tidal wave of spellfire annihilation that burned a swath towards us as fast as fire burned through paper.
They were going to be roasted alive out there too.
A deep rumbling resonated through my bones.
Then the world flashed around me.
The forest blew away in a flash of emerald spellfire that scoured away the grass, and the trees, and everything that lived.
The entire world burned as the mare ducked with her screaming foals under the quaking kitchen counter. Blinding balefire crashed against the cottage's brick walls and spilled inside. Flames leaped across the floor at my hooves as I shielded the whimpering foals with my trembling body.
I blinked away the sweat that poured down my prickling, burning face. I could feel it: my coat withering away - my flesh shriveling away as the moaning spellfire crept closer and closer, threatening to devour us all alive. But even as an inferno consumed the world around her, only a mother's will to protect her children kept that mare going. I felt Spring Song squeeze her children tighter.
I didn't want to watch. But there was nothing else I could do as Spring Song's teary eyes remained open.
They were going to burn. I knew it. But burning alive was the least of her worries. I turned my head to Spring Song's foals, their tears glistening against their cheeks in the cruel emerald light.
With my magic I gathered the foals onto my back. I took a shallow breath as my muscles tensed - and I leaped over the flames.
I landed at the edge of the inferno. Most of me did. The parts that didn't burned away with my tail as white hot blisters ripped across my hind legs. I held back the urge to scream at the gnawing, scorching heat that crashed against me. I looked up and saw that were standing in the very same room I found Dew Drops in earlier.
I lowered myself to the floor with a moan and felt the foals roll off my back.
My horn flickered with a ruddy sheen. A trap door opened up before me, and I levitated the foals into the basement's depths below. Was there any point? I knew that she was only forestalling the inevitable. It was the only place inside and outside that hadn't yet caught flame. Below the concrete foundation they'd be safe.
But I knew they weren't.
My shallow gasps turned into sputters and chokes as acrid smoke wheezed into my lungs.
'Soon,' I thought grimly as the mare lowered Cinnabelle, then Spring Fresh into the darkness. 'Too soon.'
"Mommy!" Cinnabelle whimpered.
I reached down to touch her cheek. "Stay down there," I wheezed. "I'll be back - I promise!" I stood to my hooves and felt Spring Song hesitate, her foals' teary eyes weighing heavily upon her shoulders. I turned around, clenched my teeth, and closed the trap door behind me.
Sunchaser was still out there. I hurled myself out a window, screaming as broken glass raked against my flesh. I crashed into the scorched earth outside, shielding my eyes as I struggled to see outside. All around me the world was on fire.
At the other end of the yard, across a charred, blackened field of nothingness ... the shed.
"Sunchaser ..." I whispered. I wreathed my body in an envelope of green magic.
I felt my body tense.
My eyes fluttered closed. A shallow breath wheezed through my lips.
I galloped into the balefire.
My tears evaporated. My mane burned away. My nerve endings shrieked. Everything inside me convulsed in agony as the radioactive spellfire crashed against my body, cooking me alive.
Only Spring Song's magic kept her from being utterly incinerated.
It wavered. It sparked.
Then my skin. Blisters popped. Flesh seared, closed, and tore apart once more with every tormented step I took. My body told me to die. I screamed in the silence behind her eyes, my burning flesh as real as hers. But the mare powered through it all - the fire, the flames - even after her coat burned away. Even as everything burned away.
I bucked the shed's door down and found Sunchaser cowering underneath an overturned wheelbarrow.
He screamed.
"M-Mom?!"
"I-It's me ..." I wheezed, my voice as coarse as gravel. My blackened flesh was almost unrecognizable. "Sunny! Come on, I need to get you someplace safe!" I pleaded with him. He cried, shaking his head.
"Mom - where's Dad?"
Tears trickled down my scorched cheeks.
"Sunny ..."
"He's dead isn't he ... we're gonna die, aren't we?!" Sunchaser cried, smothering his face with his hooves.
"No ..." I whispered. "NO!" I levitated the trembling colt, threw him over my back, and galloped as fast as my dying body could take me.
"What about you!?" he asked, but I didn't answer.
I wrenched open the basement door and lowered him into the darkness. I raised a hoof to follow him down and -
An avalanche slammed me into the floor. Then nothing.
Bones broke. Flesh squelched. I lost the feeling in my legs, trapped beneath the mountain of bricks that crushed me beneath.
I howled - I shrieked my throat raw in agony at the nerves that hadn't yet gone numb. The foals screamed, crying for their mother as my blood puddled around me and dribbled down the trap door and onto their horrified faces. My horn flickered and died. Dark tunnels closed in around me. Wretched breaths wheezed out of my scorched, bleeding lips.
I reached a trembling hoof across the trap door only for it to stop at the basement's edge.
"Mommy, please don't go!" Cinnabelle cried out to her mother, reaching out to me with a foreleg not long enough to touch my own.
Blood trickled through my teeth. My eyes began to glass over.
"Stay down there ... you'll be safe ..." I sobbed, "I love you ... I ...." Streaks of blood trailed down my face, mingling with my tears. "Your father and I will come back for you ... I promise ... don't come out until I say it's safe."
The foals whimpered silently as the light faded from my eyes.
"Mommy ..."
I smiled tenderly, craning my neck so that I could see them for the last time.
"It's going to be okay. Don't come out, it isn't safe out here anymore," I rasped, suffocating under the black smoke that hung above the floor. "J-just close your eyes and ... go ... go to sleep." I choked on my words, tears streaming down my cheeks. "When you wake, up your Daddy and I will find you, okay?"
The three foals gazed up at me helplessly, their eyes glistening with tears. Cinnabelle struggled to reach me, fluttering her wings and, to the mare's widening eyes, taking flight for the first time. I lowered my head and wept into the bloody floor.
"Cinnabelle... don't look ... Spring, Sunny ... take care of your sister."
Sunchaser pulled her back down as she kicked, and screamed my name.
My hoof caught the basement door's latch.
"Mommy, no! DON'T GO!" Spring Fresh wailed, her voice growing farther and farther away as black tendrils twisted and curled around the closing tunnels in my eyes. "NO!"
"DON'T - !"
I pulled the latch down and the door swung closed.
With a dying moan, I slumped to the floor, a puddle of my own blood pooling around me, seeping through the debris that trapped my broken limbs. I stared at death's door, the black, veiny tendrils that curled around me giving way to a light ... a light that drew me away from my ruined body and all the pain and suffering that licked at my trembling flesh.
My body clung desperately to life, but it wouldn't stay for too much longer.
"Flash ... Flash ... I tried," I said, pushing a blue orb to my face with a trembling foreleg. My horn began to glow as I poured into it all the magic I had left. "They're safe now ... I hope you made it out alive. I couldn't save myself. I told them it's going to be okay. I ... I hope you're okay ... I love you," I said with a grim finality that shook me to the core.
"Sompony's sleeping ..." I crooned, singing Sweetie Belle's lullaby in a haunting tune that I would never forget. Blood trickled through my teeth as my voice wavered through the darkness that closed in around me. "Somepony's sleeping ...sleeping ...through a bad dream ... soon it'll be over ...
"... soon we'll be waking ... waking ... way ..."
<-=======ooO Ooo=======->
My own eyes opened. I blinked away a glassy tear and Dew Drops watery eyes gazed down at me.
"You saw it too?" she asked as if she'd seen a ghost.
My eyelids fluttered closed and I nodded slowly. The sensation of my flesh being lit aflame lingered even as the wasteland wind whispered across my shivering limbs.
'I'm alive,' I thought.
"What ... was that? How?"
Dew Drops pushed the orb away with a hoof.
"It's some kind of memory orb," she replied, quietly. "Lets you experience the memories of other ponies."
I looked at the small blue orb and wondered how it could have ever survived that long. I pushed myself upright and saw Spring Song's crushed, lonely skeleton. "That was how it ended, wasn't it," I said, not asking. I let out a trembling breath that turned into a cloud of misty vapor.
"How could anyone deserve ... this?" she asked, tears pouring down her cheeks. "How did it ever come to this?" She shook her head, staring down at her hooves. "The foals, Red ... the foals ..."
Dew Drops reached for the basement door and her hoof hesitated.
Giving her a weary, somber look, I stood to my hooves and gripped the latch with my magic. My chin trembled with quaking sobs as I lifted the trapdoor open, flicked on my carbine's flashlight, and descended into the darkness below.
Among the dusty, fallen cabinets and the ancient debris I saw what I already knew. Huddled in the shadowy corner was a trio of skeletons, their limbs tangled together in a ghastly embrace. I turned away, dropping my flashlight as burning tears welled out of my eyes.
They were just foals. Just ... foals ...
That was the world we left behind. We left all of that behind. All of them. We closed our doors while everyone outside burned - Cinnabelle, Spring Fresh, Sunchaser ...
I heard Dew Drops' hooves clop next to me as she trotted to the dusty corner. She let out a shallow, trembling breath.
I watched as she carefully lowered each of their small, curled up remains onto a dusty tarp that we found lying on the floor. Like a funeral procession and with our heads hung low, we carried their tattered bones into the snow.
With our spades, we dug through until we unearthed the blackened soil beneath. *
Dew Drops and I stood solemnly over the black mounds we dredged out of the frozen earth. Her blue scarf billowed in the somber, wintry breeze. Together, we levitated a blackened gravestone and drove it into the ground among three others.
The largest of the broken headstones belonged to Spring Song. We buried her next to her foals. We gave her what I knew she would have wanted; she and her foals would never be separated ever again. I hoped that we brought them some measure of peace.
One day, I hoped, their graves would feel the warmth of a summer day. *
We sat within an alcove by a burned out window, listening to the wind. Dew Drops' forelegs were wrapped tightly around me as we rested our backs against the wall beneath the windowsill.
It was still dark outside. I wondered if it was like that all the time in the wasteland. If it was always night.
In the small, scorched room, I could just barely see a foot in front of my hooves. From what I could make out, the window overlooked what I thought was the remains of the cottage's backyard. The view from there might have been beautiful once, had the world been not a dead, frozen wasteland. From the charred outlines of what looked to be small furniture, I figured that it must have been one of the foals' rooms; it was down a hall near the master bedroom Star Glint and Lightning Twirl claimed for their own.
Other than the occasional sob and the moaning wind, the night was a rather quiet one.
"DD?" I asked, softly.
"Red?"
"Are we going to find a Water Talisman?"
She rubbed one of my forelegs tenderly.
"Yes."
I nodded, slowly.
She turned her head to look me in the eyes. "Don't make Amber's death be in vain, Red," Dew Drops whispered, "We're not done yet." Her words echoed hauntingly through my thoughts. "Don't give up on our Stable."
I exhaled a cloud of mist and hugged Dew Drops tighter. She sighed, tucking her head under my chin.
"I won't," I whispered, burying my muzzle in her soft mane.
"Promise me."
I lifted my head and stared down into her gray eyes, my expression rife with grim uncertainty. I leaned in and kissed her.
"I ... I promise," I added, forcing a grim smile.
But in the darkest corner of my mind, I kept telling myself that that was a hollow promise. * |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 2 - Into the Darkness - Pt III | *
I woke to the sound of hoofsteps crunching through the snow. My eyes shot open and I darted them around me. To my left, I saw that Dew Drops was slumped against the wall, fast asleep. My horn glowed and I levitated my carbine to my hooves.
I hugged it in my forelegs, listening as the hooves crunched closer. Closer. My heart pounded in my chest.
I slowly inched my way up the wall, trembling with every second that passed. I was afraid of what I might see. Outside the window, a dark mass with a flashlight was moving across the backyard.
I shouldered my carbine and flicked its flashlight to life.
"Star Glint?" I whispered, relieved.
The stallion turned, wrinkling his brows at me.
"Don't shoot," he chuckled quietly, "I'm just gonna take a leak."
"Goddesses, you scared the shit out of me." I sighed, "Just don't stay too long out there."
"Yeah, I might freeze my bits off," Star Glint snorted, before trotting off once more.
I slid back down the wall and curled up next to Dew Drops. My eyes closed once more and I went back to sleep. *
"Where is he?!" I heard Lightning Twirl scream.
I leaped to my hooves and ripped myself from Dew Drop's embrace. I looked outside the doorway. "What the hell is going on?"
The pegasus stormed out into the hall wide-eyed and with her battle saddle bit clenched between her teeth.
"Star Glint? Where the hell is he?" she demanded.
"He's missing?" Box Cutter asked, rubbing his eyes as he trotted out of his room.
"Well no shit, he's standing right here isn't he?" Lightning Twirl snapped.
I raised a forehoof. "Twirl, slow down."
"Slow down?" She narrowed her eyes at me. "Star Glint is missing, and ... and you want me to slow down?"
Dew Drops followed me outside into the hall.
"Where'd you last see him?" she asked.
Lightning Twirl glanced over her shoulder. "We were sleeping in our room and I heard him leave - said he needed to take a piss," she breathed, pacing across the hall.
I blinked. "I saw him last night ..." I began, slowly, "Saw him walking out into the backyard ..."
Her eyes widened at me. "You ... you let him go out by himself?!"
"I-I thought he'd be fine -"
"We just lost Amber in a blizzard, and you think that Star Glint would have been fine walking out there by himself too? Have you lost your fucking mind, Red?"
Horror flashed across my face. I stumbled backwards, stammering, "I-I told him to not stay out there too long -"
"Goddesses, Red!" I winced as she jabbed a hoof into my chest. "You got Amber killed and then you let Star trot out there on his own!"
Dew Drops slapped Lightning Twirl across the face. "How dare you say that!"
Lightning Twirl touched her reddening cheek, glaring at Dew Drops in furious silence as tears welled up in her eyes.
"It wasn't Red's fault ... none of it was!"
My ears wilted. My heart leaped inside my chest. I blinked, struggling to clear the blurriness in my eyes as the world spun around me. I found my balance when I fixed my wide-eyed gaze upon my hooves. But I could still feel the crushing weight of everybody's eyes upon me.
'What have I done ...'
I looked up - and Lightning Twirl shot me a hateful stare. I met her eyes ... her burning, teary eyes, and I knew just what I did.
'I got another one of my friends killed.'
"I ... I-I ..."
I felt Dew Drops' hoof rest upon my shoulder.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
"Fighting each other won't solve any of this," she said, softly, "Let's go. Let's find him. He couldn't have gotten far."
I gulped and peered outside. It was still dark. I wondered how long it'd been since I last seen him.
We hefted our gear and loaded our guns. I shivered beneath my barding as I zipped my bulletproof armor closed, and slipped my balaclava and mask over my muzzle.
I watched Dew Drops pack her saddlebags. Dew Drops paused for a moment to meet my stare. She pursed her lips, reaching over to touch my foreleg. I looked down at my hooves once more as she pulled on her balaclava, then her mask, and trotted out the door.
We followed Lightning Twirl into the backyard. It was an open field of snow. I beamed my carbine's flashlight across the drifts and saw a faint trail of hoofprints snaking through the fresh powder.
"Everybody stay close," Lightning Twirl said, loading rounds into her battle saddle.
I hoped to the Goddesses it'd never come to that. I was shaking uncontrollably and my mane was itching. I gulped with apprehension and trailed after the ponies into the charred, withering forest.
We followed the trail up to a tree not far from the cottage, and saw that the hoof prints ended there. We studied the yellow snow that puddled around the tree with weary eyes.
Box Cutter snorted, weakly.
"Guess he wasn't kidding when he said he had to piss."
Lightning Twirl and Dew Drops glared at him through their goggles. "Fuck. Sorry ..."
I looked around, beaming my carbine's flashlight across the gnarled, gangly trunks that slithered out of the snow. It passed over a pony-shaped silhouette.
"W-What was that?!" I gasped - gripped my carbine tight - and galloped after it.
My friends' voices shouted after me.
"Red! What are you doing? Get back here!" Lightning Twirl screamed.
I didn't stop.
"Star!" My voice echoed through the hollow, black forest. "Star! Star - where are you!?"
My flashlight dashed across a tree - and a dark mass ducked into the shadows.
"You - STOP!"
I raced after it, hurling one hoof after the other. The forest blurred past me. Branches broke against my chest. I trampled the brush underhoof.
I flashed my light into the trees and wrenched apart the darkness.
But there was nothing there. Nothing but the trees' charred husks.
I stood there, shaking as the dead trees loomed over me, my heart thrashing inside my chest. My friends were a long ways behind me, their flashlights nothing but strobe lights in the distance. But I wasn't slowing down. 'I did this.'
'I did this.'
I needed to find Star Glint. I lifted a trembling hoof and -
My EFS blinked. I slashed my flashlight across the contorted branches.
Two teal orbs stared back. The same eyes that I saw stalking the cottage from behind the trees.
"You son of a bitch!" I roared, galloping after it. "Who the fuck are you?" The eyes narrowed at me, and disappeared behind a tree.
I pounded through the snow, tearing apart the tracks that thing was leaving behind. Its silhouette darted through the trees - tree after tree - and each time I shined my light, I grazed its blurry outline.
Closer. And closer.
Flash.
Its barded flank escaped me.
"WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY FRIEND!?"
"RED!" A distant voice screamed. But I didn't listen.
I pressed onward, chasing it into the darkness.
My flashlight flickered. I froze in my tracks. All became still. The wind. The snow. The trees.
My ears perked. All I could hear was the pounding in my temples.
An eerie silence descended upon the forest as I stood there, looking all around me, staring into the quiet, motionless trees. I swept my light across the trail of hoofprints and into the distance.
A twig snapped.
My beam caught Star Glint's coat as he trotted through the woods - away from a massive, frozen boulder. "St-Star?" I asked, shaking. No response. I gulped a lump of apprehension down my throat and started forward. I flicked my safety off.
I followed him in a daze. I stumbled after him until he disappeared behind a tree. When I reached its blackened trunk, I found that he was ... gone.
I swung my beam across the brush. Nothing. Not even tracks. It was a dead end. The tracks simply ... ended.
I rubbed at my eyes with my forehooves, trying to catch my breath.
I couldn't.
My wheezing breaths hissed out of my lips as I turned and backtracked, flashing my light warily across the snow. I followed the strange hoofprints back to my friends, and returned to that massive boulder.
I gulped, and looked down. My eyes widened at what I saw.
At that boulder, the tracks diverged. One set trailed off into the darkness behind me. To that dead end.
The other ...
My magical aura glowed a deep crimson as I gripped my carbine tight.
I followed the tracks past the boulder.
My heart nearly stopped.
'Dear Celestia.' *
Lightning Twirl, Dew Drops, and Box Cutter huddled behind me. Nobody said a word as we looked across the snow drifts.
Blood.
There was so much blood. It trailed over rocks, stumps, and beyond the reach of our flashlights.
"Guys ..." Box Cutter whispered. He didn't have to finish his sentence as he tongued his battle saddle bit and craned his neck, chambering a round. The others did the same.
I levitated my carbine and pulled the bolt back, loading a round into its chamber. I felt like my shaking would drill me into the snow and through the earth.
Lightning Twirl stumbled through the drifts, following the blood. The blood. We saw deep canyons gouged into the snow and patches of bloody hair littering the trail. But there was still no sign of Star Glint. My filters wheezed with vapor as I panted through shallow breaths. I had never seen so much blood in my entire life. Blood.
It was ... everywhere.
We followed the trail at a pace that made it seem like we'd been out there for centuries. It dragged on and on, deeper and deeper into the forest. I couldn't even see the cottage from there. The forest thickened around us ... closing in. Their dead branches clawed at my barding as we trotted further and further into the darkness.
The blood led through and ... and over ... and around a ruined stump. It was as if someone had tried clinging to it only to be dragged away. Lightning Twirl unfurled one of her wings in our path, and stopped in silence.
She exhaled a cloud of vapor and glanced back at us, hesitating. With a shivering exhale, Lightning Twirl pushed through the brittle foliage. The branches broke against her barding and we crushed them beneath our hooves, following her into a clearing.
There he was.
Box Cutter tore off his mask and vomited into the snow. I blinked. And blinked. And blinked again. It had to be a dream. I kept telling myself that it was a nightmare and that I was going to wake up from it.
I closed my eyes, clenching them shut.
But when I opened them, the skinless, mutilated mass was still lying in the ashen snow at my hooves.
Lightning Twirl screamed, falling to her haunches and cradling the flayed corpse's head in her hooves. She wrenched off her mask, reared her head to the clouds and wailed into the night, her tears melting the layer of frost that had formed over the carcass' grayish, frostbitten flesh.
She hugged Star Glint close and let out a banshee shriek that shattered the dead, unnerving silence that hung over the frozen wasteland.
"Who the fuck did this!?" Box Cutter demanded. "Who. The. FUCK!? You sick ... sick fuckers! You killed my friend!"
Dew Drops just stared ... frozen ... tears running down her blood-drained face.
Box Cutter clamped down on his battle saddle's bit. "Where are you!? Show yourselves!"
A twig snapped behind us.
I whirled upon my hooves and beamed my light into the foliage. An amber-coated pony approached. She staggered towards us on precarious legs. Then I saw her limp.
"Amber Fields?" I shined the light up her body and my eyes widened at what I saw. The mare was blindfolded and gagged. Her flank was red with blood and her coat was adorned with random gashes that had long stopped bleeding. Her saddle bags were bloated with round objects that poked out of the black fabric.
Amber Fields' mouth moved but all that came out was a muffled cry.
"Amber!" Box Cutter trotted towards her.
Amber Fields shook her head, screaming at him through her gag. Streaming down her cheeks and through her blindfold were streaks of dried blood.
"Amber ... thank the Goddesses you're ... what ... what the fuck?" I asked, taking a few hoof steps towards her.
"Nnnph ... nnnph! SNNNFF BRRRK!" she cried, sobbing through her gag as Box Cutter pulled it off. He reached for her blindfold, his hoof grazing her cheek. But she swung away from him, shaking her head furiously.
"NO!" she cried out, her chin quivering as fresh blood began to trickle through the black fabric that hid her eyes. "Get away from me!"
We didn't.
"A-Amber ..." I barely heard Lightning Twirl say over the pounding of my heart. The pegasus approached, but froze midstep as Amber Fields' voice silenced every sound but the hearts that pounded inside our chests.
"It's too late now ... I tried to die ... I'm so sorry ..." the mare whispered.
Lightning Twirl opened her mouth to speak, but the blood drained from her face. She looked up from her PipBuck and screamed.
"CONTACTS ON MY EFS -"
The night lit up in a yellow flash.
A scream bearing Amber Fields' name was wrenched from my lips as the overpressure punched the air out of my lungs. I stumbled backwards - my ears ringing - and fell into the ashen drifts as a pillar of gore blew out of the cratered soil before me. It hurled Box Cutter off his hooves like a rag-doll. He screamed - until a face-full of snow silenced his cries with a jarring crunch.
He held up both his forehooves. They were gone. Only bleeding, ruined stumps remained as he roared in agony.
Laughter erupted from the darkness.
Black forms burst out of the snow around us.
I shouldered my carbine, pointing my flashlight beyond the crater that was once been my childhood friend. The crater that was once Amber Fields.
A pony.
It ... she was garbed in thick barding that would have been white had it not been stained a disgusting mixture of brown and red. My light flashed over the frostbitten flesh of her muzzle and staring back at me, behind a pair of cracked goggles, were glazed, black-veined eyes.
I watched her, frozen in place. I remembered the night at the shooting range.
It was just a target. Just a target.
It was a pony.
Dew Drops screamed ... but her voice was muffled in my ears.
"Here they come! RED!"
They were ponies.
A gnarled grin stretched across her lips.
The blood drained from my face.
"WE'LL CUT YOU UP GOOD!" the pony howled madly. She galloped towards me, flailing a machete over her head.
I toggled SATS and fired. My carbine burped a burst of 10mm rounds that ripped open her chest. She let out a hysterical, giggling cry before crashing headfirst into the snow. I watched as she tried to stand to her hooves -
And hooves pulped her into the snow.
They paid her no mind as half a dozen ponies stampeded after us with rusty, warped blades clenched between their yellowed teeth.
Box Cutter dragged himself out of the snow drift with an agonized moan and bit down on his saddle bit.
The night lit up with gunfire and ecstatic squeals of delight.
A stallion hurled himself towards us, screaming - and Box Cutter's submachine guns flashed in my eyes.
Splashes of gore erupted across his body. He reared up on his hinds, cackling with anguished glee - until a stray bullet blew his brains out the back of his head.
I gagged, the taste of vomit lingering upon my tongue.
"DO YOU WANNA SEE WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE ON THE INSIDE!?"
A psycho stallion lunged at me with a butcher's knife.
I leaped into SATS. In between two heartbeats, I tagged everything between the stallion's barded neck and his frothing muzzle.
I executed my firing solution.
He caught the first bullet through the throat and stumbled, blood erupting from his neck in a splash of crimson. The bullets made their way up his face and the burst tore the damn thing off in a fountain of fractured bone and gore.
My heart nearly skipped a beat. I watched the pony's cratered skull squelch into the pale drifts.
I just stared ... my mind going blank.
'I killed two ponies.'
"YOU'LL PAY FOR THIS!" Lightning Twirl cried, wrenching me from my trancelike state. Her wings unfurled and she launched herself into the air, lancing tracers through the charging psycho ponies.
Dew Drops screamed behind me.
A pony sunk a dull knife through her barding. The psycho tore the blade out of her and reared his head back for another stab. I cried out, and jammed my carbine into his chest.
I sunk the trigger back. Half a magazine's worth of bullets erupted into his chest, muffin my gunfire with his squelching flesh.
His blood splattered across my mask. I gasped a shallow breath.
He gurgled out a frenzied laugh through a mouthful of blood, and slumped into the snow. I watched his legs twitch as his lifeblood pooled around him.
'I killed him ... I -'
Hooves slammed into me into the snow. I screamed - and a giggling mare leaped onto my chest.
"I bet you're a pretty one," she hissed, licking at my wheezing filters. She tore off my mask and balaclava with her hooves. "YOU'D LOOK BETTER WITHOUT A FACE!"
She reared upon her legs to stomp in my skull.
But a feathered blur crashed into her. Lightning Twirl and the psycho pony tumbled through the snow in a flurry of hooves and blood.
"Twirl!" I shouted after her as Dew Drops pulled me to my hooves.
Lightning Twirl shrieked and stomped her gory hooves as hard as she could into the mare's chest. Her hooves blew snow skyward with a sickening crunch, launching herself into the air once more.
"You fuckers! Get away from me!" he screamed. The psycho ponies saw the gory stumps where his forehooves used to be, and erupted with laughter.
One mare leaped after him - only to be blown back and apart by a burst of submachine gun fire. Another knocked past the falling corpse, screaming for blood through his mask until a bullet tore it off in a shower of pink giblets.
He slumped into the snow. But they just kept coming.
Dew Drops and I shouldered our carbines. We emptied our magazines into psycho ponies left and right as they charged through the brush, trying to tear our hoofless friend apart in bloody melee.
Box Cutter cursed when his battle saddle ran dry.
We covered him, firing wildly into the night - pinning them down - holding the psychos at bay as he struggled to replace his spent magazine. They laughed and screamed - frothing at the mouth, our bullets doing nothing but driving their thirst for our blood to even greater heights.
There was a lull in the firefight. The psychos hurled themselves into the snow and ducked.
I lowered my carbine. At the other end of the clearing, silhouettes rose up from the brush.
Then something white hot punched through my shoulder and out the other side. I stumbled back. My blood trickling down my chest.
Muzzle flashes erupted from behind the trees.
"Get to cover!" Lightning Twirl shrieked as she dove into the canopy.
I dropped to my chest. Bullets screamed over my head.
That was what they wanted. They cheered, rising from the snow, and advanced, machetes held high.
Dew Drops ducked behind a tree trunk, firing her carbine at anything that moved. My blood leaked into the snow where I lay, but I clenched my jaw through the pain and screamed, squeezing the trigger until my magazine ran dry. I took a brief moment to slam a fresh magazine home and load a round into the chamber.
But that was all the time they needed. They threw themselves at Box Cutter as Dew Drop's carbine clicked empty.
Lightning Twirl swooped down from the trees, legs outstretched to pull our friend to safety. But the psychos stitched her with bullet holes. She let out an anguished wail before hurling herself into the canopy once more.
"Box! No ... no!" I cried, rising to my hooves only to get clipped by a burst of rifle fire. I hurled myself back down to the snow and watched helplessly as those psychos fell upon him like snarling, hungry animals.
I shouldered my carbine - but I couldn't get a clear shot.
It was then that I realized.
They weren't ponies.
They were monsters.
Box Cutter howled in defiance until his defiance sank into despair. He dug his gory stumps into the snow as they dragged him away into the brush. They laughed as he kicked and flailed and screamed - uselessly - leaving behind him a glistening trail of blood until he disappeared behind that curtain of cackling darkness.
His horrifying screams echoed through the trees. His gurgling, dying screams. He begged. He pleaded for us to help him. He pleaded for mercy. But there was nothing we could do ... nothing I could do to save him. Only listen.
I listened to my best friend die.
Box Cutter shrieked into the night. Then nothing.
I watched with glassy eyes as the psychos cheered, firing their guns wildly into the air. I lay there in silence, my eyes glazed over, bullets blasting holes through the snow around me.
"No ..." I whimpered, tears rolling down my cheeks. "BOX! NO! GODDESSES - BOX, NO!" I heaved myself to my hooves, and slammed my carbine.
I slipped into SATS and tagged three ponies for death. Glowing markers flashed before my eyes.
Head. Chest. Legs.
The closest pony lost her head. The next spilled his innards. The last pony's legs blew apart and she laughed, tumbling across the snow.
"Red, look out!" I heard Dew Drops scream as a pony shoved the barrel of her rifle into my face. I swatted it away with a hoof and it discharged a three round burst a breath's length away from my left ear.
I roared through the ringing in my ears, and side stepped into another pony's machete, slicing myself across my barrel. I cried out, tears welling in my eyes as I fired my carbine wildly in a wide arc that launched the machete pony off his hooves and only mildly frustrated the other.
She snarled through her frothing lips before her jaw tore off in a flash of yellow tracers. Hooves planted the mare into the snow as Lightning Twirl barely stuck the landing. She turned to face me, and my heart sunk at the sight of her bloody, bullet-ridden barding.
A sliver of blood trickled down her lower lip as she met my eyes.
"Go!" she told me. I opened my mouth to protest, but Lightning Twirl cut me off, "I'm sorry Red, I'm sorry for yelling at you earlier ... now go! I'll hold them back!"
"Twirl -"
"JUST FUCKING GO!"
I stood there frozen upon my hooves as she launched herself back into the air. I watched as the psycho ponies arced their gunfire to the skies.
Dew Drops and I turned and ran.
I glanced over my shoulder to see tracers spear through both her wings. She shrieked in a burst of feathers and blood.
I watched helplessly as she plummeted out of the sky and into the center of a snarling, hungry mob. My eyes widened. I couldn't stop watching. I couldn't look away. I couldn't even hear her screams over their frenzied cheers as she disappeared beneath their falling blades.
I watched as they butchered Lightning Twirl alive.
"Twirl!" Dew Drops wailed, pounding her hooves through the snow.
"They killed her - they FUCKING KILLED HER!" I cried.
"Don't stop for anything!" she screamed as we galloped into the woods with no direction in mind.
'Anywhere but here!' I screamed in my thoughts. 'Please, Goddesses ... anywhere but here ...'
The snow erupted in front of us. They were waiting for us the whole time.
Dew Drops shrieked as three psycho ponies leaped toward her. She charged through the center, knocking one of the ponies to the snow and trampling him underhoof. But someone wrenched her tail back. Another wrapped her blood-slicked forelegs around Dew Drops' throat.
My eyes widened as they wrestled her to the ground.
"DD!" I screamed, leveling my carbine and - hooves bucked it out of my magical grip. I roared and reached out to her with my hooves, only to have them swatted away. A psycho pony cackled at me through his bloody, mocking grin.
I spun around. My hind hooves careened into his ribcage. I felt his bones shatter against me. He wheezed - and I shoved him to the snow.
"R-Red!" Dew Drops choked. I swung my head to the sound of her voice.
My eyes widened as a psycho squeezed her hooves around Dew Drops' throat.
I galloped straight into her and plunged my horn into the psycho's chest. I ripped out of her and felt warm blood and gore splattered onto my face. The psycho loosened up to scream - and I yanked the pony off of her. I threw my hooves around Dew Drops' shoulders and pulled. She didn't budge. Dew Drops howl clenched her jaw and screamed as the psycho behind her wrenched her back by her tail.
"LET HER GO! You mother ... MOTHER FUCKERS!" I screamed, tears pouring down my cheeks.
I tore a rock from the snow and hurled it at the pony's skull.
Crack!
He let go with a splash of blood and brains as Dew Drops dove towards me, her hooves outstretched.
I met her teary gray eyes for a single fleeting moment as our hooves touched.
Then someone bucked me in the chest.
... 'no -'
I slipped away from her.
"NO!"
My horn flickered to life as I tumbled away, trying to catch her in my magical field and -
A hoof swiped over my horn and my aura shattered like glass. I wailed, flailing after her helplessly as my magic failed me when I needed it the most -
- as I failed her when she needed me the most.
I tore the scarf from her neck instead and smashed into the snow, watching - powerless to stop them.
Another pony forced her to her haunches.
"Run, Red - RUN!" she shrieked as someone sunk a knife into her chest, and twisted it. "DON'T LOOK BACK!" she cried out to me as the sounds of her tearing flesh and her horrifying screams washed away my resolve.
They broke me. They tore me apart.
They tore her apart.
Her bloody barding. Her bloody coat. Her bloody insides.
They laughed over her dying screams, and her screams echoed through my thoughts. They stained my memories red with her gore. Her blood.
Her blood ... a stain that would never wash away.
"Hahaha - HAHAHA!"
I did all I could have done.
I ran.
Hoofsteps plodded behind me. A psycho pony raced after me, laughing hysterically.
"I'LL FUCKING SKIN YOU ALIVE!"
My forehoof caught a gnarled root and I crashed head over hooves into the snow. I felt hooves plow into me, pinning me to the ground.
I didn't have enough fight left in me.
So I whimpered. I cried. I looked up and saw Star Glint grinning back down at me.
The pony was wearing his skin.
My eyes widened as the unicorn pony drove a blade down to my stomach. I threw my hooves out in front of me and caught it an inch above my chest as the psycho stallion pushed, and pushed, and pushed.
"BLOOD! AHAHA! BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD!"
I screamed, lifting a rock from the snow. I smashed it against the pony's skull and his magic wavered. I forced myself up, gripped the knife in my teeth and slashed it across the stallion's throat. Flaps of Star Glint's skin gave way to his carotid artery.
The psycho pony giggled through a mouthful of blood, arterial red spilling from the gash in his neck and onto my face. I tucked my hind legs in and bucked him off me, crying as his warm lifeblood dribbled down my cheeks and mingled with my tears.
I stumbled away, sobbed, and ran.
Bloody tears ran down my face as I wailed into the night.
I galloped into the howling darkness, gnarled, black shapes blurring past me.
I galloped until their delighted, triumphant laughter faded into the distance.
I ran, and ran, and ran.
I ran as the winds of the balefire winter crashed against me. I powered through it, not caring where I went as the snow thickened and the blizzard closed in.
I galloped wherever my legs could take me. I galloped to somewhere that wasn't there.
I plowed through the snow that buried my hooves. I forced my way through the white out without so much of a single shit given.
And I collapsed in the storm.
Footnote: Level Up.
New Perk: Burning the Midnight Oil-- You've learned how to fight the hard way - and you learned fast. +10% XP whenever XP is earned |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 3 - Dust and Echoes - Pt I | Chapter 3
Dust and Echoes
"Soon it'll be over
Soon we'll be waking
Waking to a summer day."
I woke up screaming.
Forelegs pinned me to the cold metal frame of a rusty hospital gurney. I thrashed against their limbs, swatting them away and kicking my legs at the shadows that loomed over me.
"Get away you, psychos! GET THE FUCK AWAY!" I howled, batting away their invading limbs.
"FUCK YOU!" I lashed out with my hindlegs. My hooves connected with someone's face. He stumbled away from me and disappeared from the tunnels of my hazy eyes. "Leave me alone! LEAVE ME ALONE!"
"Hold him still!" a mare shouted.
Hooves grabbed my forelegs. They wrenched them away from me and slammed them against the gurney. Hard.
"No ... NO!"
They were going to rip me limb from limb. They were going to tear my legs from my shoulders.
I writhed like a cornered, netted animal, screaming my throat bloody and raw.
One of my hooves tore free.
"NOOO!" I wrenched a pony on top of me. We rolled off the edge of the gurney. A mare with pink eyes screamed as I sent her crashing into the cold, concrete floor.
I didn't care. I dragged my forehooves to her throat and squeezed. She kicked under me, suffocating.
"I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!"
Something metal cracked against my skull. I keeled over, blacking out for a second.
"Hold him - hold him down!"
I waited for the touch of a cold blade to slice through my bare flesh. I waited for the ripping, the tearing - but they never came.
They yanked my mouth open instead.
With my limbs pinned to the ground, I could do nothing as I felt the familiar taste of health potion dribble down my lips and wash down my throat. My head was spinning too much to care who was administering it.
I held out my limbs in feeble resistance. And for good measure, they cracked me across the skull again.
My consciousness left the building before I could scream. *
My mummified body lay shivering on an itchy cot with a mildew-stained blanket pulled up to my neck. My limbs were splayed out underneath the blanket, and one of my legs hung limply from the edge of the bed.
I was alive. But I sure as hell didn't feel like it. The flesh under my coat was bruised black and blue. My head throbbed as if I was beaten with a metal bar.
'Wait,' I thought, distantly.
If I remembered correctly ... I was.
I groaned, tucking in my battered legs to my chest. My weary, bloodshot eyes swiveled sluggishly around the room. A gas lamp glowed dimly on a shabby bedside table to my right, its faint light hardly illuminating the room from end to end. Around me was a patchwork of corrugated scrap metal bolted together to hold the makeshift ceiling aloft. Outside, I could hear the moaning wind as it dragged its frozen hooves across the walls, trying to penetrate the walls of that metal hovel.
My right foreleg curled weakly to my chest. I gazed at my PipBuck, struggling to find the button to toggle its brightness. My weary pupils contracted. Four days. It had been four days since I lost almost everyone I loved.
"Welcome back," a voice said from the darkness at the furthest corner of the room.
"Dew Drops?" I murmured, hopefully.
My ears drooped when a pony with a midnight blue coat and black bangs stepped into the light. Shadows played across her hard complexion. The mare looked like she'd seen better days.
"Night Sky." She trotted up to my cot with a striped blue scarf slung over her shoulder. Dew Drop's scarf. The mare held a small photograph in one of her hooves. She stared at the photo for a long while, eyeing me as I lay there. Night Sky closed her eyes and sighed, placing both at the edge of the bed between my legs. "You've a name?"
I closed my weary eyes.
"Red ... Dawn."
She nodded thoughtfully, glancing at my PipBuck. "You're one of them stable ponies, innit," Night Sky said, not asking.
I levitated the blue scarf to my chest, and ran a hoof across its blood-speckled fabric as gently as I would with Dew Drops' mane. I let out a trembling sigh, cradling my head in my hooves.
I swirled a faint magical field around the photo and floated it to my eyes in silence. Dew Drops. Box Cutter. Amber Fields. Lightning Twirl. Star Glint. I gazed out the frost-encrusted window, and into the frozen wasteland outside.
"We found you in the drifts, half dead," I heard Night Sky say, "You looked like you've been through hell."
I stared at the picture of my friends as pain flickered across my glassy eyes.
"If this is hell ..." I whispered, my voice trembling.
"This isn't hell. It's worse," the mare said with a cold smile. "Welcome to the wasteland, Red Dawn."
I stared at her with wide, teary eyes. Welcome back to life. I gulped a heavy lump down my throat. My lower lip trembled in denial. It was a nightmare, and I was going to wake up from it ... I set the photo down on the blanket and my shoulders began to quake with sobs.
'Wake up ... please.'
I closed my eyes, listening to the chilling winds howl away outside the patchwork walls. I opened them and I was still laying on the same scratchy cot, in the same bleak hovel. I stared longingly at Dew Drops' striped scarf, hot tears streaming down my cheeks.
I swung my legs out of the blankets and stood to my rickety hooves.
"And where the hell do you think you're going?" she demanded.
"They're still out there," I croaked, pointing out the window. I made for what looked to be the door, but Night Sky stepped into my path. "My friends -"
"Are dead."
"No!" I stumbled to get past her but she shoved me back with a foreleg. I snarled at her, "You didn't see them! You don't know!"
The look she gave me insisted that she'd beg to differ. My heart sunk.
"You go out there and I'm not gonna drag your sorry arse back."
I glared at her, and took a step forward - only to cry out as agony jolted through my chest. I fell to the wooden floor in a heap. Blood seeped out of my gray bandages and pooled all over the floor around me.
I felt Night Sky clamp her jaws on my mane, but I twisted away, curling up on the floor.
"Now you opened up that bloody cut of yours again," she muttered, rolling me over and tugging at the bandages.
I shook her off and tucked my legs into my chest. She stood over me, staring me down with her steely blue eyes. I sobbed and blinked away fresh tears.
"Why am I alive ..." I whimpered, burying my head in my hooves.
"You're lucky," Night Sky whispered, sitting down next to me, "Not everypony gets to die in the wasteland. My crew patched you up. Though I nearly beat your brains out ..." She turned her head low, glaring at me.
"You bucked one of my mates in the gobber, and tried to choke another to death. Look at you now, walking all over the place wrapped up like that. You aren't so soft for a stable pony, aren't you?" The mare chuckled, "Cor ... no wonder you didn't just snuff it."
"What the fuck ... did you just say?" I breathed, rising to trembling hooves.
"What?"
"No wonder I survived ... I watched my friends die ... and I ran." I chuckled darkly, baring my teeth as tears ran down my cheeks. "Maybe I didn't want to come back. Did you think for once that maybe I didn't want to survive?"
She held my glare and stared back, unflinching.
"You've not a choice to just ... die, Red Dawn."
"Bullshit!" I screamed, "I walked out into that blizzard knowing I wouldn't be coming back. You think I want to be here?" I cried, choking on my own tears, "Do you fucking think I want to be alive in this SHITHOLE?!"
Night Sky's gaze did not relent.
She clenched her jaw and gave me a ghastly look. "This place might be a shitehole ... but it's all we've got left," she said, softly. I looked down her chest and saw flecks of blood all over her tattered, bullet-scarred barding.
It changed nothing.
"I'm leaving ... and you're not going to stop me," I said, close enough to her muzzle to feel her shallow breaths.
I wiped away my tears and pushed past the mare, zipping up my barding and throwing on my saddle bags. I could feel her eyes on the back of my head as I limped out the door and staggered down a flight of stairs. Two ponies sat at a bar below. I hobbled past them to the door, and they looked up from their shot glasses, eyeing me irritably.
"The hell you doin'?" one of them growled, getting off his stool.
Night Sky poked her head over the railing. "Let'em go," she said, simply.
The stallion snorted and returned to the bar, not even pausing once to glance over his shoulder. The mare sitting next to him followed me with her pink eyes as I made my way to the door.
I stepped outside.
And the storm blindsided me. Engulfed in frozen powder, I stumbled blindly through the snow, the drifts threatening to swallow me whole. I could just barely make out the lonely lights and the ramshackle buildings across the street as I plodded across the shifting, snowy dunes.
I just kept walking, not caring where I went - my eyes only opening once to find that the town's lonely lights were far behind me. I whimpered, collapsing to my haunches. I reached into my breast pocket, and brought to my blood-drained face the only thing I had left to remember my friends by. My dead, butchered friends.
It hurt to cry. It hurt to stare at the photo I held in my hoof. It hurt knowing that they were gone. That they were all gone.
I blinked, and the world spun around me. I let out a shuddering breath, and slumped into the snow.
Days ago I was afraid. Afraid to let go of my precious life. My life at the stable. I could have died. Back home, I could have died a scalding, boiling death. I was afraid that I was going to leave them all behind. But instead, they left me behind in that frozen hell.
I failed them. One by one, I watched them all die. I watched them all die.
And I should've died with them.
I didn't want it. Night Sky and her ponies gave me a second chance I never wanted.
"Anywhere but here ..." I wept, "Goddesses ... anywhere but here." I shivered and quaked as the howling frozen wind blasted against my barding.
But I didn't care.
'I should've died,' I thought.
We were supposed to find a water talisman together. Together.
'We should've died.'
I tore my spade out of my bags and started digging. I stabbed at the frozen earth again and again, tears welling out of my eyes only to freeze ragged trails across my cheeks with every chilling, agonizing second that slaved by.
My legs went numb.
But I kept digging.
My magic flickered and popped.
But I kept digging.
My brain curdled inside my skull.
But I kept digging.
My body pleaded with me to stop. Every fiber of my being pleaded with me to stop.
But I. Just. Kept. Digging.
Not caring even as my heart began to slow. Not even as the shivering stopped. Not even as the dark tunnels closed in around me. I dug, and dug, and dug -
I collapsed into the snow, writhing with every laborious breath.
'Give up. Just give up.'
I wrenched myself to my hooves with a grim resolve and speared my spade through the frozen earth once more. I wasn't going stop digging until I hollowed out a grave for each and every one of my friends.
I couldn't stop.
They deserved better.
I thought of them as I dug, their memories - the burden of being alive while they were not crushing me beneath.
With one grave finished, I buried Dew Drops.
One by one, I'd bury them all.
I dredged out another grave and moved on, tearing into the earth without a single pause. For them, I plunged my shovel deep and struggled to break the dark soil.
My magic flickered. Popped. And winked out.
A light bulb exploded inside my head as my brain tore itself apart. A blinding agony shot through every nerve ending in my body. I reared up on my hinds, howling as an inferno burned inside me, my spade tumbling to the snow.
But I slaved through the torment - bit down on the shovel's handle and kept digging.
I broke the earth. But instead, the earth broke me. I stumbled to my haunches, my spade crunching once more into the snow. I wailed Dew Drops' name into the darkness. I screamed for the storm to take me to her.
If not to her, then ... anywhere.
"Goddesses - anywhere but here!" I cried - and crumbled to the snow in a tangle of writhing, blistering limbs.
I took a shuddering breath and stared grievously into the sky. My pallid flesh was covered in sores that throbbed dully in my fading consciousness. I lay there, listening to my slowing heartbeat as the wind moaned a chilling requiem fit for a funeral.
A black figure clad in thick barding entered the blurry, veiny tunnel that were my eyes. The pony helped me to my hooves, and I leaned against its shoulder.
"What've you done ..." I heard Night Sky murmur as she stared with wide eyes at the six graves I hollowed out of the earth.
I managed a few painful steps toward the final grave I dug.
The one I dug for myself.
"I need to finish this ..." I wheezed, clamping my jaws around my spade's handle and shambling toward the half-dredged hole.
Night Sky ripped the spade out of my mouth and swung it hard into my skull. Stars exploded in my eyes. My limbs slackened. I toppled to the snow in a heap, blood trickling down my forehead.
"That's it," she said, tucking the spade into her bags. "I don't know you or your mates, but I'll tell you this much: dying's not gonna help anypony. Everypony that's alive has lost somepony."
I hacked out scarlet ichor, glaring at her.
"What do you know about losing shit ..." I asked, darkly, my voice trembling.
Night Sky's eyes narrowed with icy malice. She unzipped the lower half of her barding and it fell away before me.
My heart almost stopped.
"Too much, I'm afraid," she replied softly, shivering through clenched teeth and wiggling the stubs that used to be her wings. I eyed the scarred flesh over what was supposed to be her cutie mark, a symbol of a lightning bolt branded over her mottled flesh. She zipped on her barding and bit my mane, yanking me to my hooves.
"I'm ... sorry ..." I rasped weakly.
Night Sky gave me a cold stare. "There's no giving over. You might think you've a choice to die, but out here, you've not any other choice but to live. Because there isn't anything out here that'll just let you curl up and snuff it - that'd be too easy.
"There's never an easy way out. There's no mercy for the weak, and there's never rest for the weary ... all you do is live, and while you're still alive, you do everything you can to stay alive."
My eyes fluttered closed as she pushed me onto her back and hauled me back to civilization. *
Another day passed.
I woke up in the same cot. This time, the gas lamp was shut off, and the window was shuttered closed. I didn't want to look outside anyways. Not anymore, at least.
I shivered inside my now completely bandaged coat. Every part of me, even my ears were wrapped in wool. I rolled over, wincing at the sharp pain that jabbed into my shoulder. I shifted my left hind leg and heard the clinking of empty health potion bottles at the foot of my cot.
I could feel my blisters healing. But without a super healing potion from my stable's clinic, my time spent bandaged up was going to be a relatively lengthy one. My scabbing flesh itched underneath, and I fought the urge to scratch.
I sighed, tucking in my legs in search of warmth. I found none. But I did find Dew Drops' scarf lying next to me. It was one of the only things I had left to remember her by. I reached out with my magic - and liquid fire erupted inside my skull.
My magic flickered and popped.
Then nothing.
My head flopped back against my pillow.
With teary eyes, I bit my tongue and held back a scream. Seconds passed as I squeezed my eyes shut and waited until the pain subsided to a dull, persistent throb. I lay there, staring at Dew Drops' scarf, tears rolling down my cheeks.
With a shivering foreleg, I hugged it close, running a hoof across Dew Drops' scarf. My eyes glazed over the flecks of dried blood that peppered its soft fabric. I sighed and hugged it close, nuzzling it with a tenderness that made my heart ache.
Nothing I could do could bring her back.
I lay there thinking about them. My mom, most of all. I wondered what she would've thought if she learned that I gave up. That I let the wasteland win.
No. I knew that my mother's expectations weren't the only things that mattered. 294 stable ponies were still counting on our return ... my return. Every hour, every day I wasted away out there was one day closer to the end of their rations.
I knew then that the lives of 294 other ponies hung in the balance. It didn't make me feel any better knowing that I was the last hope for my stable. Every other pony that stepped out that door died.
I was all they had left.
I, the unfledged engineer pony who, when he was younger, didn't know what end to screw in a lightbulb, was all they had left. There was only one way you could screw it in!
I heaved a bitter, self-deprecating laugh and stared up darkly at the ceiling.
"You're all fucked."
I snorted, slumping against my unfluffed pillow.
As I lay there, I knew: saving my stable was my mission, and my mission alone.
I never worked alone. Even during the afterhours at engineering, Dew Drops usually waited for me to finish whatever I was doing before we both left. Sometimes I'd find her sleeping under some piping or laying on the floor next to my busy body.
Never. Work. Alone.
The always told me that. And yet there I was ...
Alone ...
I wrapped Dew Drops' scarf around my neck.
I swore on the graves of my friends that I wouldn't stop until I finished what they started. There was a hole in the ground next to them, waiting for me - but until I was six feet under, I swore that I wouldn't give up. Not on them. Not on my stable.
I limped over to my bags and bit down on the lip of my last health potion, tipping my head and downing it in seconds. I sighed, feeling my flesh tingle as the potion did its work.
Didn't feel good enough, but it'd have to do.
I pulled out my armored security barding and laid it out on the dusty wooden floor. I gazed longingly at the numbers that were stenciled onto its right shoulder pad: 91.
A long and drawn out sigh wheezed out of my lips as I stared at it for several long seconds.
'Home,' I thought, solemnly, 'I'll make it back. I have to.'
I shrugged on my barding, zipped it closed and trotted over to the door, fumbling with the doorknob. It was difficult trying to get used to walking around without my magic.
I pushed the door open, and peeked outside.
Down the hall were three more rooms. Their doors were open, so I assumed everyone was downstairs. I slowly made my way downstairs, the wooden boards beneath my hooves creaking with every step. The smell of alcohol and bitter cigarette smoke made my nose wrinkle as I poked my head over the railing. Sitting around a table and sharing drinks were Night Sky and two other ponies.
She blinked and caught me in her peripherals.
"Cor blimey," the mare chuckled as the other ponies turned to see me. "Look who it is."
"You better not be thinkin' about runnin' again, ya lil shit," a gruff pony with an eye patch growled, tipping a shot glass to his lips. The ash-colored earth pony downed it and took a puff from a cigarette he held between his teeth. My ears perked at his drawl. Different, and much harsher than Night Sky's.
I frowned. There was a distinct bruise on his muzzle. He must have been the one I bucked in the face.
'Good,' I thought, 'From the looks of him, I bet he deserved it.'
"Well come on mate, we were just talking about you," Night Sky said with a smile.
"I bet you were," I muttered, leaning against the railing the entire way down.
I settled down on an empty barstool among the three other surface dwellers. A mare slid to me a shot glass of vodka across the table. I looked at her nervously. I remembered her pink eyes. She was the mare I tried to strangle to death a day ago.
"No hard feelings, I hope?" I said, with a wry grin.
The unicorn snorted, nodding her head once, one pink eye hidden behind a curtain of her untamed purple mane.
"We've all had the urge to choke a bitch. Can't say I haven't done that to anypony else sitting here. Well, except you, of course," she scoffed, staring at me with what I hoped wasn't a promise. "Everypony calls me Sprinkles. What about you?"
I wrinkled my brow at her strange vocabulary.
"Red Dawn," I said, nervously. I glanced around the narrow rectangular room and saw that it too was made of a mixture of wooden planks and corrugated metal. There were a few round tables stood here and there, but most didn't have enough chairs around them to sit the number of ponies that were drinking at our table.
Inside the fireplace at the far end of the room, a stack of blackening wood glowed warmly, making the room somewhat more pleasant than the one upstairs. It might have been a tavern at some point, but given its emptiness, I figured that they must've taken the place for themselves.
Stenciled on the wall above the bar's counter were the words 'Rough Riders,' reinforcing my previous assumption. I wondered for a moment who those ponies were and what that place was. Ever since I woke up there, I hadn't even bothered to ask where the hell I was.
"This some kind of town?"
Sprinkles nodded. "Guess you can say that. Dusktown's a caravan stop for travelers heading up north from New Appleloosa. Total population of forty three ponies and one griffon." The town sounded rather quaint for a post-apocalyptic safe haven. "Every now and then we go out to escort caravans heading up north."
I cocked an eyebrow. To me, the thought of there being more people living in that winter wasteland was shocking. "You mean ... there're others?"
They looked at me like I said something stupid. The gruff earth pony snickered, taking a long drag from his cigarette.
Night Sky just snorted. "Forgot you're a stable pony. Aye. Sure there are. Though not everypony's as welcoming as us here in Dusktown," she chuckled bitterly, shaking her black bangs out of her eyes. It sounded like there was more than what she felt comfortable to talk about.
I looked out a window by the door and saw that the storm had settled down. The silhouettes of thickly-barded equine shapes milling about made being alive in this shithole a little less disheartening. I reassured myself that if there were people still alive out there, then there was still hope for finding what my stable needed.
"What with all the Red Eye and Unity bollocks, we haven't seen too many caravans coming up here lately. The North's got its own problems. We don't need any of any mad southerners coming up here and making things worse," Night Sky added, pouring herself a glass of whiskey.
"Red and Unity what?"
"Slavers and alicorns. You don't want to be traveling on your tod. You might get chained up and put to work up north at East Eden or south by Fillydelphia. And if you're a unicorn ... well, like I told you earlier, there're worse things than death if you come across somepony talking about Unity."
"A-alicorns? Like ... like the Goddesses?" I asked hopefully.
The unicorn stallion laughed at me in his harsh, gravelly voice.
"There ain't no goddesses out here, boy. Celestia and Luna've been dead for a looong time."
I glared at the stallion.
"Fuck off ..."
He sighed, giving me a crass chuckle before puffing on his cigarette. I wanted to take that thing and shove it down his throat.
I shook my head. What I needed was something to calm my frayed nerves. I focused my horn, clenching my jaw as I tried to levitate the shot glass. I groaned at the sharp pain that shot through my skull.
"Damnit."
"It's called magical burnout," Night Sky said, glancing at the shot glass that refused to budge. "You work your magic too hard, and you... well, you burn out. Can't use your magic till you rest up."
'Son of a ...'
"How long till I'm better?"
The mare shrugged.
"Maybe a few days? It all depends on you." Night Sky leaned over the table. "Don't be a fuckwit and do something daft. You should be fine in a few days, I'd imagine." She narrowed her eyes at me and added, with a tinge of irritation, "Considering that stupid shite you pulled off last time, you probably shouldn't even be down here walking around."
"I don't have time to just sit here," I muttered.
Sprinkles cocked an eyebrow at me. "What are you doing outside of your stable anyhow?"
"Come to say hello to the ponies ya fucks left behind?" the unicorn stallion growled, baring his teeth.
I glared at the bastard. "Better down there than up here," I muttered.
He snorted and opened his mouth, but Night Sky cut him off.
"Shut your gob," she sighed, knocking the stallion with a hoof. "Bone Charm had it rough when he was just a lad."
The stallion snorted, giving me a look that promised a bucking.
Well he sure had a charming personality.
I held my glare as I craned my neck, biting the glass and tipping it back. The vodka burned as it washed down my throat. I let out a shivering snort as my insides warmed a little.
"What does it matter to you ponies?"
Bone Charm thumped his hooves on the table. "We didn't save your ass for nothin', stable colt. Nopony but you's stupid enough to walk out into a storm like that. It'd be dandy if I knew why I had to waste twelve of our healing potions on you." The gruff unicorn stallion snorted cigarette smoke into my muzzle.
"Then you had to walk out into the snow and try to get killed, again."
I snapped, leaning over the table to look him in the eye. "If it were up to me I'd go back, sit behind that door, and forget about everything outside." I folded my forelegs across my chest. "Anywhere is better than here ..."
He sneered, "Go down south, hell, go anywhere on this planet and it's all the same." Bone Charm chuckled. "And if you didn't know, stables all across Equestria've been opening up and nopony's been coming out alive. Soon, I bet your cozy little hole won't be so different."
I fought to keep my composure. "I don't care about this place ... I don't care what you think about me, and most of all, I don't care about you. I stepped outside and I knew why we never opened our doors to let anyone in - because nothing outside those doors was worth saving!"
He wore a challenging smirk, saying, "Then why don'tcha go home? Scurry back into your hole and lock us out again. I lived forty years of my life here washin' my hooves in blood just to survive, and you waltz out of that warm stable and bitch and moan, and threaten to kill yourself just because life just got a little harder for your hooficured hooves. I've lost too much to have a single sliver of pity for you, boy.
"And the last thing we need is another mouth to feed. So dream your sweet dreams in that stable of yours while we scrape on by up here!"
I stood up from my stool, knocking it over. "Listen here, you son of bitch -"
Night Sky slammed her a hoof on the table.
"Quiet, ladies. You bastards get in a fight and I'll mop your arses across the floor," she snarled. "So what's your story, Red Dawn?" Night Sky asked - no, she demanded. The mare cocked her head and leaned across the table.
I grinded my teeth together and sighed.
"... our Water Talisman broke," I said bitterly. "So five other ponies and I went out to find another."
The gruff unicorn whistled, and chuckled, "Whew! Damn was I right about that." He puffed a ring of smoke my way. "It's only a matter of time ..."
Sprinkles poured me another glass and slid it across the table to my hoof.
"We found you by yourself, so I guess the others that came with you are ..."
She caught my grim stare and fell silent. I downed the vodka in silence as the Sprinkles fidgeted with her hooves. 'Awkward.'
"Well if it makes you feel better, we cleaned up those furies afterward," Night Sky said, folding her forelegs across her chest. "Us and another group teamed up and wiped 'em out."
"It doesn't," I muttered.
"Wasn't supposed to. What matters to me is that we get paid," Bone Charm said, knocking his hooves together.
I was starting to hate that pony.
"What are you guys anyways? Mercenaries?"
They nodded in unison.
Sprinkles replied, "Mhm. We picked up a contract to put a dent in the snow fury population around these parts. I say we fucked them up pretty good." She smiled, somewhat. "Maybe now we'll have more visitors around here."
I thought for a moment, shivering at the memories of the psycho ponies erupting out of the snow. "Snow Furies ..." I sneered, "That what they're called?" Psycho ponies frothing at the mouth flashed before my eyes.
Night Sky nodded. "Aye. Though you might hear southerners call the bastards 'raiders,' but they're hardly the same. They're called snow furies. They like burying themselves in the snow to surprise anypony that comes their way. They're a bunch of grotty cunts that ambush caravans or traders down by the Crystal Highway and all the way down to Poneva -"
"Poneva?" I blurted out, interrupting her.
Night Sky lifted an eyebrow.
"What about it?"
I looked down at my shot glass, both my forelegs supporting me over the table. "Word is, in my stable, an old Stable-Tec facility was built there. We were heading that way to find a water talisman."
Night Sky chuckled, "Well good luck, I mean, I don't think there're many people feeling charitable about their water talismans these days ..."
"It's worth a try," I muttered, my voice trembling. "It's our only hope."
She snorted. "If you say so," she said skeptically, getting up from her chair.
"What do you know about Poneva?"
Bone Charm put out his cigar and folded his legs across his chest. "Well I'll say that there ain't no Ponevan that's done me good in my lifetime." The unicorn stallion snorted, "'Cept pay me caps."
"I wouldn't do you any good if I was a Ponevan," I muttered.
"Fuck you just say?"
Sprinkles leaned over the table. "Listen, kid, Bonehead here isn't kidding. That city's no good. They've got all sorts of bad ponies you don't even want to know about."
"You make it sound like I'll get eaten by a dragon or something." I scoffed, tapping my forehooves together.
They looked at me with hard eyes. Not even a chuckle. 'Okay, that didn't sound too good.' Night Sky returned with a few flat slices of bread from a loaf that didn't rise.
"What's this talk about dragons?"
"Red Dawn here wants to go up to Poneva," Sprinkles said, gnawing on a slice.
My eyes lit up. "Can you take me there?"
She thought for a moment, and shrugged. "If you're planning on staying there, you're on your own, mate. But we're heading up that way to turn in a few contracts."
I smiled, something I hadn't done genuinely in what seemed like forever.
"That's great -"
"But we're not going there any time soon. If you want to go, you're going to have to come with us to finish whatever contracts we've got left before we turn in."
I frowned, pursing my lips. I had nowhere else to be, and I didn't know anyone else.
"Whatever gets me to Poneva in one piece," I said, finally, with a drawn out sigh.
Bone Charm barely suppressed a chuckle. "Wait till he sees the bloodletters and snow devils. You'll be regretting coming up here soon enough, stable colt."
My expression darkened.
"I already am." * |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 3 - Dust and Echoes - Pt II | *
I followed Night Sky outside into the soft, cold breeze, my hooves sinking deep into the snow that piled up overnight. The blizzard buried everything but the buildings outside, and ponies with shovels were laboring to clear the snow off their porches.
The town was shockingly alive with pony life ... although, a life I could never have related to.
For one thing, everyone out there seemed to keep mixing up 'everypony' with 'everyone'.
Or maybe it was just me.
But back in Stable 91, young ponies were never assigned occupations until they received their cutie marks. There, in Dusktown, blank flanks labored with their parents, pulling plows that cleared the immense mounds of snow off the single main road that ran down the town's midsection.
If there was one thing that was similar between Dusktown at Stable 91, it had to be their main goal: surviving. Just as we survived through the participation of every able-bodied adult pony, those surface dwellers did the same, and more.
All around us, ponies worked together to push away the result of last night's snow storm. Within ten minutes, a wide path of flattened snow stretched from one end of the town to the next. Now that the road was clear, ponies and their wagons began backing out of their scrap metal garages to begin their travels down its length. Sleepy stores and dimly-lit residences lined the road on either side.
Next to the Rough Riders' tavern were several shops with a variety of items for sale. We walked past each, stopping for a moment to look inside a gun store that sold boxes of ammunition that I both could and couldn't recognize. Night Sky shopped for a bit, buying whatever she needed for her merc contracts.
We returned outside into the cold, and I spared a glance at the sky. I cringed, swallowing bile down my throat.
'Damn. I need to stop doing that.' But in my sickness, I did see something up there that was rather unusual.
'Where's all the pegasi?' I wondered.
All I saw were earth ponies and unicorns hauling around more than their weight or levitating shovels and other small tools. There wasn't a single sound of wings flapping in the breeze. No sign of the feather-winged ponies I lived with back at Stable 91.
It seemed as if the surface had been settled by unicorns and earth ponies and only unicorns and earth ponies since the beginning of time. I wondered: was two hundred years enough to forget about the pegasi? Were they blasted into extinction when the balefire bombs annihilated their cloud cities? There wasn't a single pegasus in the air as Night Sky and I trotted throughout town.
I wondered, hopelessly: was Night Sky the last of her kind?
In a clearing walled off by lines of bent metal stakes was a field of headstones. We walked past it, and I stopped for a moment to watch a mare sitting in the ashen drifts next to three freshly dug graves. She sobbed and murmured incoherently, cradling her head in her hooves.
Night Sky turned to glance over her shoulder, eyeing me curiously. I turned to the mare, then back at Night Sky. She just shook her head and gestured me to follow her.
"What happened to them?" I whispered, trotting beside her.
Night Sky gazed on forward, her face stone cold.
"Zebras," she said simply, and nothing more.
I gave her a puzzled stare. I supposed it was none of my business, and I left the pony to grieve.
The mare's sobs faded into wind as we made our way down the town's only road.
A few yards down the street from the Rough Riders' tavern was a boot shaped structure that puffed out smoke from its chimney. The windows glowed with a warmth that invited me to enter. Above its door hung a flickering neon sign that glowed with the words 'diner'. The smell of bread and ... 'What was that?' It smelled like a steam accident at engineering. 'Meat?' My stomach churned with a mixture of hunger and revulsion.
I figured as long as they had something I could eat ... I'd survive. So we walked inside, the warmth of a furnace and a hearth loosening my tense muscles. It felt good. It felt good feeling heat against my coat again.
At the bar, Night Sky plopped down onto a stool, and I slumped into one beside her. Down the counter were other wastelanders who eyed my PipBuck curiously.
I smiled sheepishly and waved. They just looked away, chatting among themselves.
"Not too many ponies have seen a stable-dweller before," Night Sky said, resting her forelegs on the counter in front of us. A light bulb flickered dimly over our heads, and a pony mare with stained overalls unscrewed it with her magic and screwed another one in its place.
It shined brighter than the other hanging, bare-wired bulbs around the room and bathed me in a white glow. The spotlight was on the stable-dweller. Everyone gave me a variety of looks, ranging from curiosity to the same hatred Bone Charm showed me at the tavern.
Maybe they were more interested in the bandages that are wrapped around my muzzle. I looked like a fucking corpse. The waitress trotted behind the counter, with a stick of what looked like charcoal and a slip of paper floating in her magical grip.
Night Sky offered to buy me a bowl of ... stew. Bobbing inside of it were a variety of vegetables - which I was entirely okay with, until I saw, floating visibly beneath the surface, dark chunks of boiled ... meat.
I gulped and shook my head. She shrugged, ordered one for herself, some bread for me, and pushed a few bottle caps across the warm counter. That must've been their currency.
'Strange.'
"Why are you doing this for me?" I asked her quietly as the unicorn mare slid to me three slices of bread and Night Sky a bowl of soup. Two shot glasses of what looked like vodka, and two glasses of water slid our way, too.
"I don't want to sound ungrateful ..." I trailed off, biting into the surprisingly soft, yet crusty bread. "... but ... why? Why didn't you just leave me out in that blizzard?"
Night Sky lapped at her bowl and paused for a moment.
"Ponies have to stick together out here. If we don't ... well, we die." She answered, before returning to her soup. I watched her chew on one of the chunks of red meat and swallow, much to my suppressed disgust.
"Can't argue with that ..." I brought the water to my mouth, but my PipBuck's radmeter clicked audibly. I hesitated, and placed it back down on the counter. "But how do you ponies live like this? I was expecting less of an actual town and more of a ..."
"Shitehole," she said, taking the words from my mouth.
"That's not what I -"
"It's fine. I expected as much from a stable-dweller," Night Sky said with a terse chuckle. "This town has trade routes with Poneva and a few towns down south. We trade what we scavenge or make, and buy whatever else we can't make ourselves," she explained.
I nodded, taking another bite from the bread.
"You said you're a mercenary. What kind of work do you do?"
She licked at her empty soup bowl and wiped her mouth with a forehoof.
"Anything. Any work we can," she replied with some resignation.
I blinked. "Anything?"
"Anything."
My throat was parched and I eyed the radioactive water longingly.
"You can drink that, you know?" she said, "Just pop a Rad-Away if you start feeling dizzy."
I sighed, shaking my head as I downed its contents. She tossed me a small red capsule, and I tucked it into my bags.
"So you'd kill a pony if that's what you were being paid to do?" I asked, quietly. "You'd kill someone if that's what it took?"
"Aye. If that's what it took, why not? You said you were looking for a Water Talisman. Wouldn't you do anything to bring one back so everypony in your stable could live?"
I tensed, frowning at my hooves as they rested on the counter.
"Why? Is that what Equestria's come to?"
"This isn't Equestria anymore, Red Dawn," she said, bitterly. "And I'm no trader. I'm no gangster either. I'm a mercenary because I've a choice to live or die on my terms. I don't need protection along the roads - I've my rifle and my mates for that. I've no need to take orders from some stupid bloke because I take orders from me and myself."
The waitress behind the counter levitated a pitcher of water to me, and I nodded thankfully as she poured me another glass. "It's a choice to survive, then," I said, simply, with some understanding. "To be free."
"Quite. I've a choice to do what I want to do, and I do it all for caps." She sighed, resting her cheek on a hoof. "I get to choose. And not everypony gets that choice. You and me? We're lucky. We're lucky we're not slaves. We've still a choice - we can choose to live or keep on living. It's why I clobbered you with that shovel. You were wasting that choice on something stupid." I bit my lower lip at that, pain flickering across my face.
"Being alive's all that matters. You can't save your stable dead, Red Dawn," she said softly, resting a hoof on my shoulder. "I'm a mercenary and I choose to live and continue doing what I need to do to keep on living."
I didn't know what to say to that. It sounded perfectly reasonable in my head.
"You've a choice to live, and that means you've got to do what you need to do, Red Dawn. Maybe even if that means you live and some poor sod doesn't." She snorted, the faintest of smiles creasing her lips. "Personally, I don't just go around taking any contract. I take ones I know matter to us ponies in Dusktown. If it means I've got to kill a bastard, I make sure she deserves it."
"That's ... commendable?" I said, unsure.
"There's no escaping it, Red Dawn." Night Sky took another sip. "Out here, killing's just part of living," she said with a disturbing calmness that sent shivers down my spine.
I frowned at her, bothered by that statement. But I shook away the doubt from my mind. I pushed away my fears, because a darker part of me felt that I was just being naïve. If I was going to survive, I needed to be strong. I needed to do what needed to be done. "Whatever it takes," I said finally.
"That's the spirit." She took her shot glass and held it out to me. "Cheers - to life."
I almost tried levitating mine. I sighed, exasperated, and did the same, and our glasses clanked.
"To life." *
After helping her carry her supplies back to the tavern, she sent me below the floorboards to the basement to peruse their armory to arm myself for tomorrow's contracts. Well, I guess it was an armory. It was mostly just a bunch of tables set with disassembled guns, random parts, tattered barding in need of repair, and boxes full of ammo and magazines. I wrinkled my nose at the scent of cordite and oil as I came down the stairs.
'Whoa - what the hell is that thing!?' I almost said that out loud.
The youngest member of the Rough Riders, a griffon, meandered around the tables, sifting through boxes of gun parts. The gray-feathered griffoness saw me come down the dim stairwell and gave me a sideways glance with her green eyes.
"You're the pony Night Sky picked up, aren't you?" she asked as I stared at the strange white markings on her face, instead of her eyes.
I blinked, fidgeting on my hooves, took a deep breath, and gave her a sheepish grin. "The one and only."
The half-bird-lion thing - I mean, the griffon, walked up to me, her raptor claws clacking loudly against the wooden floor.
"What are you doing here?" She kept her distance.
I snorted. As if a bandaged up, half lucid pony was going to do anything remotely dangerous. Besides ... she was a griffon! A griffon! From the story books ... the raptors of Griffonstone!
And I was talking to one.
Trying not to stare at her lithe, alien form, and her wickedly sharp talons, I said, "I'll be tagging along with your ... uh... your crew for a little bit." Her brows furrowed at that. "Night Sky said you could help me pick out a gun?"
She tapped her beak with a claw and nodded.
"Uh, sure. I guess." The griffon gestured for me to follow her and we waded through the junk to the far end of the basement. We came to a room lined with lockers. A dim light bulb flickered over a table at the center of the room. "Anything not in a locker is up for grabs."
I blinked, eyeing all of the locked lockers. Everything was in a locker though. I walked over to the table and found a 10mm pistol lying among a heap of scrap metal and discarded parts. It'd have to do.
It was convenient too. I pulled up my PipBuck and sifted through my inventory. I found that I still had fifty three 10mm rounds stocked up. I stared wearily at the 10mm rounds in my bags, knowing how heavy the kick would be without a shoulder stock.
I really wished I still had my carbine.
I levitated the pistol - 'balls!'
I mean, I bit down on its mouth grip and tested its weight. I wasn't used to doing ... well ... anything without my magic. It was a few pounds heavy, not too much for me to handle, I hoped. I've never shot a gun from my mouth before.
"Well I should be good -" I turned around and the griffon wasn't there anymore. I waded through the rubbish and saw her leaning over a table in the main room, poking a black box. "What's that for?"
The gray plume of feathers atop her head bobbed as she looked up. "Oh, this? Well, it was a radio at some point."
'A RADIO you say?'
My smile beamed as she continued. "It broke last week, and I've been trying to figure out why it stopped working."
"Did you check if it's plugged in?" I droned with a wry grin.
She caught my lame sense of humor and chuckled. "I'm no expert at electronics. All I do is clean the crew's hardware," she said, jutting a claw at the disassembled rifles lying about.
"Mind if I take a look?" I asked, trotting up to the table. She shrugged, and stepped away from the radio.
I gave it a look over, and opened it up with a screwdriver I picked out from my bags. I eyed the contents of the radio and saw that there was not a piece out of place.
I pulled the power cord taut and found a thin indentation over a section along its length. Probably got crushed or something.
"Heh, well, I've seen this before," I said, standing on my hind legs, one foreleg on the table to hold me upright.
"Hm?"
"Looks like your radio's going to make it," I said, trying to sound like Dr. Stitches. "But the AC cord's going to need a wire transplant ..." I looked at her, wrinkling my brow.
She ran a paw through her gray plume, flattened a rogue feather, and gave me a weird smile.
"That's ... great news, doctor ..."
"Red Dawn," I replied, fishing through my bags.
"My name's Gail." She clenched a paw into a fist and held it out to me. I looked at it for a second, hesitating. My eyes darted to hers, and I cracked a nervous smile.
I bumped her fist with a hoof.
"You're a lot less scarier than the others, you know that?" I said with a chuckle, splitting the cord.
"Yeah, I get that a lot. I kinda stand out, ya know, with me hanging around a bunch of hardass mercs all the time," Gail confessed, rubbing her neck. Yup. She stuck out to me like a sore hoof. Gail was different. Everyone else upstairs had that calloused look about them. She seemed sort of fresh.
"Oh ... but they're not so bad," Gail chuckled, "They picked me up too when I was just a cub. Bone Charm raised me like I was his own."
I cocked a brow at that. I couldn't believe it - that bastard of a pony raised a sweet griffon like her?
"No way."
"Yes way!" she laughed, folding her forelegs across her chest. "Though he's kind of a dick sometimes ..."
I snorted. 'Sometimes?'
"But deep down, he's a real softy! He's always been there for me." Gail looked down at her paws. "My parents were never around as much as he was. But then again they're not around anymore ... so ..."
My eyes softened. "What happened to them?" I asked gently.
"My parents were Talon mercs. Wasn't really the best line of work to raise a kid, I guess. They died on a contract and orphaned me."
"Sorry to hear that." Night Sky was right about how everyone's lost someone. If I ever lost my mom ... I'm not sure what I'd do. "And now you're a merc too?" I asked.
Gail nodded. "Yeah, yeah, 'why follow in your parents' footsteps when merc'ing got them killed'." The young griffon sighed. "There's not much to do here but merc work. Unless you want to join one of the gangs up in Poneva or become a slaver, you're just a victim." She shook her head, "And I'm not going to be a victim."
Gail eyed the floor scathingly.
"I had a few run ins with slavers before the Rough Riders picked me up," she murmured. "They chained my wings to my back and had me towing wagons around for them like some kind of pack animal."
I fell silent and stared at my hooves. She was right. I wasn't a merc, a gangster, or a slaver. I was a stable pony. But out there, it meant nothing to those people, especially Bone Charm. I was just a victim. I looked back down at my work and returned to it in silence.
I realized then that there were two kinds of wastelanders: survivors and victims.
And I was a victim.
I bit my lower lip so hard I almost drew blood. A few sluggish seconds passed us by in awkward quietude.
"Hmm..." Gail murmured, trying to break the ice. "I like your scarf."
"Thanks. It's ... ah ... a friend gave it to me," I said. "She isn't around anymore."
Gail leaned against the table next to me. "We've all lost someone," she said, softly.
My eyes fluttered closed.
"I know."
A few long minutes passed in silence as she watched me make my repairs. I noticed her eyeing the PipBuck on my foreleg.
"What's that thing?"
"It's a PipBuck," I began, my tongue poking out of my lips as I focused on my work. "It's like a terminal, but on your leg."
"You look like you know a thing or two about arcane contraptions," Gail said.
I chuckled, "Eh, I know my way around a wrench and a screw driver. I was an electrical engineer back at my stable." I thought for a moment, frowning. "Still am."
I wrinkled my nose at the stench of singed metal as I soldered in a spare wire I found at the bottom of my bags.
I finished with the cord and reassembled the radio.
"There she is, good as new," I said, and switched it on. I cringed slightly as the radio flooded the room with deafening static.
Gail's face lit up as she fiddled with the contraption.
"Thanks! Now we can have some music playing around here."
The radio burped and hacked up random snippets of chatter in between its bouts of noise vomiting, and eventually picked up a channel that garnered our attention.
"- brrrfftt - now, my little ponies, it's time for the news! Now you ponies remember when I told you 'bout those two ponies who crawled themselves out of Stable 2 - brrrrffffffffttttttt ..."
And the signal died.
"Who was that?" I asked. My brow furrowed as I realized that Bone Charm was right about other stables opening too.
Gail groaned, twisting the tuner back and forth, trying to find the signal. "Sounded like DJ Pon-3. It's really hard to get his signal around here."
DJ Pon-3 ... that name was familiar. The last I heard of that name, it was from a mare, and it was from a memory orb recorded 200 years ago.
"- brrrrffttttttt - gettin' reports that one of those little ponies took out the raider nest in the heart of Ponyville ..."
My eyes widened.
'A raider ... NEST?' It took two merc groups to kill the furies that murdered my friends, and it took one pony to kill a nest of them?
That ... stable pony was ... something.
The stallion on the radio continued, "... saved several pony captives - including the beloved - brrffttttttt - Ditzy Doo! Hey kid, tha - brrrfffffffftttttt" - and the signal broke out into static once more.
"Damn. Must be the clouds."
"Hah - what?" I snickered. "There's always clouds out though."
"Yeah, but around these parts, the clouds and weather blow in from the Frozen Wastes and mix with the pegasi's cloud cover. Makes it worse."
I cocked an eyebrow at that. "The hell's a cloud cover?"
"Well ever since the pegasi flew up and left everyone down on the surface for dead, they poofed up a layer of clouds to protect themselves. From us. The half dead survivors. Those feather-brained bastards ..." She shook her head. "They always say that they're going to swoop down to the surface and save everyone. It's been 200 years since the bombs fell and the cloud cover's never opened up once."
She leaned her back against the table and folded her forelegs across her chest. "Never trust a pegasus if you see one."
"Wait, isn't Night Sky a pegasus?"
Gail's beak dropped wide open.
"H-how'd you ... never mind. Well, she's a 'Dashite'. She's the kind of pegasus that got kicked out by her own kind." She tapped her beak with a claw. "Kinda like a fallen angel, I guess."
I pursed my lips as I remembered the stubs that used to be her wings. Dear Celestia, that was cruel. I heard from my mother that a pegasus without wings was like a unicorn without a horn. Or anyone without legs.
"Why ... why'd they do that to her?"
The griffon shook her head, shrugging.
"She doesn't like to talk about it. Never once did she tell us what happened. I don't think I want to know - it takes a lot to get kicked out like that, I heard. Usually they just kill you ... but taking off your wings ..." She winced, unfurling one of hers. "Makes me mad how someone could've done that to her. If I lost mine ... I'd rather be dead ... like the pegasi who were lucky enough to not get thrown down here."
I lowered my eyes to my hooves. Wherever they were, if I was a pegasus, I wouldn't want to come down here either.
Gail played with the radio's tuner again, trying to pick up a signal. She sighed and gave up.
"So you said you're tagging along with us for a bit?"
I found a holster lying on the floor and gestured to her if I could use it. Gail nodded, and I strapped it across my chest, stowing my pistol.
"Not for too long, I hope. I have a few things to do on my to-do list and I'm running out of time," I added, with a hint of urgency. I was beginning to wonder when they were going to start their next contract.
"And what's that?"
I sighed, hoping that I wouldn't have to explain that to everyone I met. I watched her for a moment: she looked like someone I could trust.
"My stable's Water Talisman broke, so I was planning on hitching a ride up to Poneva with you guys to find a replacement when your crew's done with their contracts." I stared at my hooves. "Six of us went out of those doors ... and I'm the only one who's still alive. I'm all they have left."
Gail's eyes turned soft again. She lifted a paw - and hesitated. I looked up at her and said nothing as we stared at each other in silence. A tiny smile grazed her beak.
I felt her paw rest gently upon my shoulder.
She thought for a moment. "Well you're in luck, because we've only got two contracts left unfinished. They're pretty easy, I guess, so it won't be too much of a hassle for you."
"What kind of contracts? I mean, what are we going to do?"
The griffon made her way to another table and began reassembling a rifle she oiled up earlier.
"Tomorrow, we're going to meet a caravan over by the old railroad station about ten miles out from here and escort them back to Dusktown. Then we're going to lay down some good ol'wasteland justice on some pony-murdering zebra scum."
My ears perked at that last part. I remembered the graves I saw earlier that day. The first time I ever heard about zebras was in a history book detailing their war that tore across Equestria. Images of a grisly looking pony with stripes, red eyes, and a menacing mouthful of serrated teeth came to mind when I heard that word.
I gulped. 'They couldn't possibly ... actually look like that, right?'
We went upstairs to the bar for some water, and found that everyone else was asleep. I pointed a hoof out the still darkened window.
"Well ... when's tomorrow, because it seems like it's always night time to me." * |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 3 - Dust and Echoes - Pt III | *
'So this was morning, huh?'
I sat in the back of a wagon being pulled by some grotesque two-headed cow thing, chewing my pistol's mouth bit. Morning, apparently, was noticeably brighter than the afternoon or the evening. Gail said something about DJ Pon-3's channel being more coherent in the mornings when the skies cleared up somewhat.
I looked up to the clouds and winced, swallowing bile down my throat. 'Yep, they were still there.' I guess what made mornings in the Frozen North different was that you could see the clouds. When complete, total darkness fell upon the land, then it was night. It was still rather gloomy outside, and likewise, equally as depressing.
My breath fogged up in front of my face as I stared out into the distance. A light snowfall sprinkled us with bits of powder, and for once since I left my stable, I felt like I was going to survive out there. There hadn't been a whiteout in twelve hours. That was good sign.
Behind us were three other wagons full of supplies and a hooffull of trader ponies that seemed about as apprehensive about traveling through the snow as I was.
Gail's winged shape hovered over the caravan, her battle rifle scanning the distance. She flew ahead and back, calling out reports to Night Sky as she scouted out the path in the distance. The others kept an eye out for anything coming in from the sides or behind.
Sprinkles nudged me with a hoof and motioned for me to look outside the wagon.
"You see that?" she asked, pointing her hoof out into the distance.
I could barely make out what looked to be a dozen small shapes prowling through the snow.
"What are those things?" I asked, squinting.
"Those're wolves," Sprinkles replied, unpleasantly. "Well, they used to be. Now they're bloodletters. Nasty little critters that hunt in packs and attack anything that moves."
I narrowed my eyes at the creatures as they disappeared behind an exceptionally large snow drift.
"Well why aren't they attacking us?"
"Because they're not stupid." She gestured to her rifle. "There's too many guns and too few of them, anyways," Sprinkles added as the creatures stalked within eyeshot once more.
"Eh, they're just wolves. Can't get any worse than that right?" I said with a chuckle.
She looked at me sternly.
"There's also Snow Devils. Pray to your Goddesses you never see one, because they're tough, and they don't go down too easily. Used to be bears, I think. They've got claws that can rip through the armor of this wagon." I remembered seeing those odd looking skeletons at the bottom of the den Amber Fields fell into. Then I remembered the extra pair of jaws that poked out of their mouths. I shivered.
"Okay ... so, we've got mutant wolves and bears. Anything else I should know about?"
She gave me that stern look again.
The sound of gunfire in the distance stole the words from her lips. Someone whistled ahead of the caravan before Sprinkles could continue, and Gail's winged silhouette swooped down to land in front of us as the wagons pulled to a stop.
"Furies ahead; they were in the middle of burying themselves in the snow when they saw me."
Night Sky swore under her breath.
"How many?"
"I counted about a dozen, maybe more. They're on their way here, now," Gail replied, gripping her battle rifle tightly. She took to the skies once more, shouldering the weapon and scanning the drifts.
"Alright everypony, form up! Get those wagons in formation!" Night Sky called out to the others who were coaxing the two-headed bovines to their places. Within a span of twenty seconds, the four wagons formed up into a square, with each of the mercs including myself, and five trader ponies ducked under their heavy metal frames.
I crouched next to a trader unicorn with a shabby looking shotgun held in his magical grip.
"Hey," I said, leaning against the wagon.
"Howdy."
I looked over the wagon and didn't see any furies. I figured that I'd wait for the others to call them out.
"You're not from around here are you?"
"Nope," I regarded him expectantly until he continued.
His eyes widened for a moment, and he chuckled, realizing that we were having a conversation. "I stopped by New Appaloosa for a few sales and a couple bargains. Headin' back up to Poneva to stock up on some agristuff."
By agristuff he probably meant food. Real food, I hoped. I cringed at the thought of the vat-grown vegetables and gene-modded apples I used to eat at my stable.
"Poneva, huh? Have you been there before?"
He nodded, "Eeyup." Well that pony seemed to be a pony of few words.
I frowned at him, waiting for him to continue.
"Well ... I'm not from here, either. Came out of a stable not too long ago," I said, waving my PipBuck. "What's it like?
His eyes widened at that. "Yer one of them stable fellers! I don't suppose yer one of them ponies from Stable 2, huh?"
"What? U-uh, no. I'm not," I said, awkwardly, remembering DJ Pon-3's fragmented broadcast.
"Oh," he harrumphed, sighing.
I snorted, "Hope I didn't disappoint you too much. I'm from Stable 91."
"Nah, there's just all this excitement down south 'bout somepony clearin' the routes of raiders over by Ponyville."
"Yeah. I heard ..."
"Sorry, heard 'stable' and I got ahead of muhself," he said, holding his hat to his chest. "Well anyways, I've been to Poneva a few times. It's a purty nice city - if ya don't mind all the gangs and rampaging hooligans and such."
'Well fuck,' I was hoping something more on the lines of 'jolly, helpful folk who like to organize community events', instead. 'But I'm in the wasteland,' I thought, rolling my eyes, 'How much more can I expect?'
"That's good to know, I guess. I was planning on heading up there too."
The unicorn nodded. "Well for a first timer, pay the toll at the gates and ya probably won't have no problems," he added, still nodding.
Probably.
I just sighed.
"Thanks, I'll keep that in mind." I picked up my pistol awkwardly in my mouth, slobbering all over it like a mangy dog. The stallion frowned at me.
"Why're ya holding it like that?"
"My horn ishn't working right," I said, struggling through my mouth bit.
His eyes widened as if a lightbulb just flashed over his head. He pumped his hoof into the air, grinning.
"I might just have what ya need, boy! Talk to me after we tussle with these here raiders. I might have something that can help ya."
Before I could reply, a bullet whizzed past us and blasted skyward a plume of snow behind me.
"They're here! Everypony, on your hooves!"
Night Sky shouldered her assault rifle, standing upon her hinds.
I chewed on my mouth bit and peeked over the wagon. My EFS blinked red. I saw them. The ponies - no, the furies poked their heads over the snow drifts.
Their deranged laughter filled the air.
The blizzard howled past my ears.
I was running. The gnarled trees blurred past me.
'Hahahahaha - HAHAHAHAHA!'
'RUN, RED - RUN!' ...
'No.'
I clenched my jaw so hard it hurt.
I turned around and my forehooves clopped against the wagon's steel frame. I stared out into the drifts as the snow furies rose up from the snow, their whooping cries chasing after my pulse as it pounded in my temples.
Those were the monsters that slaughtered my friends.
I wasn't going to be a victim.
Not again.
Crack!
A shot pinged against the wagon's hull a few inches away from my head and I ducked back down.
I closed my eyes and panted through my mouth bit. I needed to make it through that. Alive.
Gunfire erupted between both sides as Bone Charm loosed his saddle-mounted light machine gun, sending the furies diving for cover. Gail swooped overhead, lancing the furies with her battle rifle.
I looked over the wagon and saw a fury's head explode. It was like watching someone hurl a melon at a wall. Thought there wasn't much pony left. Just chunks of wet melon splattered across the snow.
I swallowed bile down my throat.
"Dear Celestia," I murmured.
Bone Charm's machine gun clicked empty. A handful of the furies, brandished axes and machetes, and galloped across the snow towards us. I tensed as their unnerving, deranged laughter echoed through my ears.
The furies that stayed behind had the sense to cover them with gunfire. More shrieking bullets ricocheted off the wagon's frame a few inches from my face. But this time, I didn't duck. Something caught my eyes.
I narrowed them at a fury who was just watching the ensuing firefight. Without even a giggle or a curse, it just stood there. Observing. A bullet clipped my collar.
'Fuck!'
"Here they come!" I heard Sprinkles shout.
I poked my head over again and threw on my training wheels. I marked a target and SATS plotted a firing solution.
Glowing teal markers flashed across the closest fury's torso and legs.
I tongued the trigger.
The fury took the first few bullets to the chest. He staggered, a grin widening across his face - then my shots blew out his legs.
But he didn't stop.
The stallion clambered towards me, screaming through bloody teeth.
He wouldn't stop.
"Celestia ... how do you kill these things?"
"Shoot 'em till they're dead, dumbass!" Bone Charm snarled.
'Fucking ...' I tongued the trigger. The 10mm rounds bucked in my teeth -
And I missed.
"C'mon partner, pony up!" the trader shouted, blasting apart a fury that came too close with his shotgun.
It just wasn't the same without my magic.
My eyes caught sight of a submachine gun as it levitated around the corner. The trader saw it too. He was closest to it. The stallion turned just as the glowing, magic-wreathed weapon flashed.
I dove into him, throwing him to the snow.
Bullets kicked me in the ribs.
I wheezed as they punched the air out of my lungs. "SHI - ACK!" I crashed into the snow gasping ragged breaths.
The fury poked her grinning face out from around the corner. Then it exploded in a blast of buckshot. The familiar taste of vomit washed into my mouth.
Panting for air, and with tears in my eyes, I staggered out of cover and took aim once more.
A fury's nose booped into mine.
"BOO!"
I screamed and felt my pistol kick in my teeth. She slumped on top of me, a demented grin still stretched across her face. I whimpered, struggling to heave her off of me when another fury rounded the corner. My tongue twitched and my shots went wide. The fury whooped, cackling as he took a wild leap, machete swinging for my throat.
I shut my eyes and flinched, waiting to feel the cold touch of steel rip across my flesh.
My eyes flew open just as Gail's shadow swept over me.
CRACK!
The fury's throat exploded in a splash of gore. He choked and sputtered, wrapping his hooves around the ragged hole in his neck.
I lunged at the dying fury and jammed my pistol in his mouth.
CRACK! I shook my head vigorously, snarling as the blood flicked off my muzzle. A rusty steel helmet jerked into view. The fury that was wearing it - the one that I crippled earlier - scrambled hungrily after me, brandishing a cleaver and threatening to take my kneecaps off because I apparently took his.
SATS plotted a firing solution through his skull. I watched in horror as the bullet ricocheted inside his helmet.
His head fucking exploded.
I exhaled sharply, swallowing the vomit that hiccuped into my throat.
My ears perked. Hooves plodded behind me. I whirled around just in time to get nicked by a unicorn mare's glowing switchblade. Its icy edge painted my cheek red with my blood. I winced and side stepped. The mare galloped past me and slammed into the wagon's frame.
"I'M GOING TO MAKE YOU MY LITTLE GELDLING!" she snarled, snapping her teeth at me as she lunged.
I spun around and flung my hindlegs back. My hooves connected with her chest, and she careened into the wagon once more. I leveled my pistol at her and yanked the trigger back.
It clicked empty.
'Oh.'
"SHIT!"
I patted down my vest for another magazine. But she was up on her hooves before I could ram it home. "Come on - "
The fury charged.
I clenched my eyes shut and threw my forelegs in front of me. I caught her head between my hooves. With a snarl, she threw me into the snow - and I drove her face through the powder. I stumbled away, hurling myself into the wagon's frame and hoofing in a fresh magazine.
The mare tore her head out of the powder, spat out bloody snow and came at me again, snarling like a rabid animal.
I slipped into SATS, and the world seemed to slow around me as my PipBuck calculated math faster than she could move. I tagged her head, and for the longest of heartbeats, I somehow found myself staring into her murderous, black-veined eyes.
They were a lovely shade of blue.
'Goddesses ...'
Those were supposed to be the windows to her soul. But gnarled black veins boarded up any glimpse of the equinity within. The equinity that made a pony ... a pony.
She might have been beautiful once. Her delicate white cheeks. Her soft muzzle. Her long, slender neck. But I was too distracted to give them more than a passing thought by the caked-up blood splatters that I knew couldn't have been hers.
Down the length of her coat, through her mangled trousers, I saw that her cutiemark was that of a colorful bird. I wondered, for a moment - 'Who was she? What was she before she became ... that? Was she a bird-keeper? Or maybe she had a marvelous voice?'
I gulped, struggling to queue my shots. Instead I studied her face - her cracked, bloody lips curled with an uneven, demented smile.
I wondered ... was there still a pony beneath that madness? Was there any sense - any reason for - for the carnage around me?
Those maniacs, those degenerates - those were the creatures that skinned Star Glint alive. They blew up Amber in our faces when they could have just killed her and been done with it. They hacked Twirl to pieces like a piece of meat.
They tore Dew Drops apart before my very eyes.
'Hahahahaha - HAHAHAHAHA -'
I tagged her legs.
The bullets ripped through her and she tumbled from her useless legs into the snow at my hooves. The pale mare let out a tortured moan, thrashing her bloody limbs through the drifts.
"Stop!" I shouted, hoarsely. But she wouldn't listen. I threw myself over her, pinning her bloodied legs to the snow. Tears streamed down the pony's grimy cheeks.
"Why are you doing this!?"
The black veins in her sclera receded for the briefest of moments. I heard her murmur something incomprehensible.
"ANSWER ME!"
"I ... I ..." she whimpered. The pony grinded her teeth and clenched her eyes shut. Her face contorted into an agonizing grimace as if something was ripping her apart from the inside out.
Then her eyelids flew open.
"I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!" she shrieked, a web of throbbing, black tendrils raking across her eyes. She drove her switchblade into me and I screamed through my mouth bit.
My pistol flashed in her eyes.
Her head flopped back into the snow. Blood and brains pooled out the hole in the back of her skull, her lifeless blue eyes gazing blankly back at me. I watched, ripping the switchblade out of me as the black veins receded once more.
"What the fuck are these things..." I murmured, touching the fury's pale face.
I heard someone scream behind me and turned just in time to see Sprinkles get gutted by a rusty machete. He twisted it, and ripped it out of her with a brutal squelch.
I entered SATS and snapped a shot at his head. My holographic footlights stuttered - and I missed.
"Shit!" I gawked at my depleted SATS charges. I clenched my jaw, watching the fury raise the machete to cleave Sprinkles' head off. It fell, and in the time it took for me to scream, the fury's torso blew apart in a hail of machine gun fire.
His carcass danced with the storm of lead, ragged holes tearing across his flesh until he crumbled into the snow like a mangled ragdoll. Bone Charm, his machine gun smoking, screamed for me to duck, and I heard the stomach-churning sound of bloody meat being ripped apart behind me.
I turned and a perforated fury mare splattered next to me, nicking me with a hatchet. I cried out - stumbled back - and collapsed next to a writhing, gory Sprinkles.
"R-Red Dawn!" she spat through a mouthful of blood, clutching her chest with both her forehooves in an attempt to make the bleeding stop.
It didn't.
The blood was draining from her face.
"My bags ... health ... potion ..."
I bit my lower lip, hoofing through her belongings and pulling out the reddest looking health potion I could find. I tipped it into her open mouth and she gulped it down and all the blood in her throat without another word.
Being injured like that seemed like second nature to her.
I exhaled with relief as her flesh stitched together before my very eyes.
"It's not over yet," she growled and spat blood into the snow. Sprinkles reared up on her hinds and shouldered her assault rifle. I frowned as her rifle's flashing muzzle rewarded her with a distant scream.
An unsettling grin stretched across her face.
I hurried away back to the trader and stumbled into him just as he was cramming his shotgun into a fury's snapping teeth. Blood splattered all over my chest.
I closed my eyes and let out a trembling breath.
"They're feisty 'lil shits ain't they?" I heard him shout over the gunfire, pumping his shotgun. "Ain't nothin' like the raiders back at home!"
"That's because they ain't," Bone Charm snarled, feeding a fresh belt into his machine gun's chamber.
I opened my eyes when I felt something land between my hooves. It started to smoke.
I opened my mouth to scream -
But Sprinkles just snatched it up with a hoof and flung it back the way it came.
"Give a raider what she wants, and she'll leave you alone," she said, as a bone jarring explosion sent a cascading shower of gravel and snow over our heads. "Give a fury what she wants, and she'll eat your face."
"I'LL FUCKING EAT YOUR FACE!" some insane bitch screamed at us in the distance.
Bone Charm yanked his bolt back.
"You gotta kill 'em or they won't stop."
I peeked over the wagon and saw a plume of gore fountain into the air - the result of Gail's terrifyingly exceptional aim. The gunfire dwindled for a moment as the furies ducked under the snow drifts.
One fury stood up, and galloped out into the open, screaming like a mad mare. Gail flew circles over us like a hawk, waiting for the right moment to stop, shoulder her rifle, and -
CRACK!
A ragged hole exploded out the fury mare's chest. The furies laughed as her lifeless corpse collapsed into the bloody snow.
I narrowed my eyes as another snow fury galloped into the open. I could see the yellow, broken teeth of his demented smile.
Gail's shadow swept over him.
She took aim, and I saw his grin widen.
Furies rose up from the drifts and shouldered their rifles.
Night Sky screamed:
"Shit - SHIT - cover her! GAIL!"
Bone Charm and Sprinkles sprang to their hooves. But it was already too late.
Bullets punched through her in a burst of feathers and blood.
She spun out of the air and careened into the drifts, painting a red arc across the snow as she tried to scramble to her feet. The furies cheered madly, bursting out from behind the pale dunes and galloping after her.
I blinked and saw Lightning Twirl plummet into a mob of giggling psychopaths. I watched her disappear beneath their falling blades.
My jaw clenched.
And I leaped out of cover.
"GAIL!" I cried, galloping towards her.
She clutched her bleeding chest, wheezing ragged gasps as she tried to crawl away from those murderous animals.
For a second I wondered what the fuck I was doing as I pounded through the snow downwind a hail of gunfire.
I barely knew those mercs. I shouldn't have cared about whether they lived or died. All that mattered was surviving so that my stable could live. I'd sacrifice all those poor, surface dwelling scum if it meant that everyone in my stable survived.
I'd sacrifice them all if it could bring my friends back.
If I died right then and there, all the hope my stable had for survival would have died with me.
But I kept going.
I wasn't going to let Gail become a victim. Not like my friends. Not like me.
My pulse hammered inside my temples faster than I could put one hoof in front of the other. Pounding straight for me was a fury with a vicious, spiked club.
SATS flashed across my eyes. I blasted apart her chest. She collapsed - screaming past me. I didn't even lose a single step. I galloped harder - I closed the distance.
Gail cried out as one of the ponies tried to drag her away. I swore under my breath, and snapped into SATS. My shots blew out the fury's legs from under him. He opened his mouth to scream as I spun around and hurled my hindhooves into his face.
I overextended. Bones broke against my hooves. There was a disgusting snap as I severed his spine.
"HOLY SHIT!" Gail squawked.
That's exactly what I thought when I fell on my ass wide-eyed and panting.
"Red Dawn - head down!" I heard Bone Charm roar.
A bullet struck me in the back, pancaking against my vest and slamming me face first into the powder. That was painfully convenient because Bone Charm laid down a wide arc of machine gun fire over my mane that sent the furies ducking for cover.
Those that didn't were torn apart in the stream of lead, laughing in dying ecstasy. I forced myself to my hooves, sputtering through a mouthful of snow before stuffing my face with Gail's feathers. I groaned, dragging her away from the carnage with my head bowed low as bullets shrieked over me.
Hollow bones or not, she was heavier than I thought.
Night Sky and Sprinkles leaned out of the wagons and kept the furies' heads down when Bone Charm's machine gun ran dry.
I was almost there - until someone tackled me into the snow.
A fury howled into my face, spraying my muzzle with fetid ropes of spittle. I tried shoving her away, but she had me pinned down as she levitated a metal apple before my eyes. She cackled, biting off the pin and releasing the lever with a metallic chink!
It began to puff smoke. Horror drained the blood from my face.
Bullets slammed into her, but she didn't drop. The crazed mare stabbed her hooves into my throat, squeezing the life out of me, even as her blood dribbled out through her yellowed teeth and onto my face.
I choked, my eyes rolling to the back of my head as I battered her face with my hooves in vain. She didn't relent.
Black veins began rooting their dark tendrils in the shrinking tunnels of my eyes.
"HAHAHAHAHA -"
'No.'
Something snapped inside of me.
"I ... won't ... be ... A VICTIM!" I screamed, and swung a foreleg into her horn. The fury yelped. Her magic flickered - and winked out.
The smoking metal apple dropped to the snow.
I heaved her over it.
There was a skull-splitting CRACK - then nothing. In a flash, the world around me exploded in a roiling plume of shrapnel and gore. The blast jarred my insides. It rattled my bones. It hurled me a foot off the ground - and I landed in the unrecognizable remains of the mare's chest cavity.
I forced myself to my wobbly hooves and stumbled away in a hazy daze, trailing gore and viscera between my rickety legs. My hoof slipped in the mare's steaming innards and I squelched into the bloody snow next to Gail's writhing body.
I found one of her wings and proceeded to haul her back to the wagon. The adrenaline in my veins was abating and I could feel my jaw slackening, my legs tiring, my lungs struggling to fill with air through Gail's feathers and my teeth. I dragged her through the blurriness of my eyes, refusing to give in, refusing to die so easily.
Those snow furies made my friends and I victims before - and I wasn't about to let them make me one again.
With a final, exhausted cry, I heaved her behind the wagon formation and spat out a mouthful of her feathers before collapsing next to her, gasping for air. Gail's talons raked at my barding as she writhed and kicked her legs, choking on her own blood. I didn't even seem to notice as my head spun and I tried to blink away the shock of being blown up for the second time in the last few days. I couldn't even make out the plume of feathers that was supposed to be on her head through the fog that clouded my eyes.
I did all I could for her. So I rolled over and heaved the contents of my stomach underneath Night Sky's wagon.
The gunfire had died down by the time I regained the strength to sit on my haunches. When clarity did return, I found that the others were already attending to Gail's wounds. She hacked up splotches of scarlet that melted through the snow, clawing at her ribcage in a vain attempt to slow the bleeding as her lungs filled with blood.
"H-how - how bad is it?" I sputtered in between breaths.
Sprinkles knelt next to me, resting against her assault rifle. "As long as it went through her, she should be fine."
"Look for an exit wound," Night Sky said to Bone Charm, jostling the wheezing griffon. He rolled her over, and Bone Charm let out a breath of relief when he saw the bloody splotch on the other side.
Flopping her onto her back, Bone Charm wrenched her mouth open and levitated a potion to her beak. Gail clenched the potion in her talons and gulped it down. She moaned, curling up into a ball and heaving her chest violently to fill her regenerating lungs.
The steel-faced stallion just stared. I met his eyes and pursed my lips as we looked at each other for too many seconds. I expected him to berate me; I probably would have too, risking my life like that.
But he nodded once, and attended to his adoptive daughter.
"You ain't so bad," he muttered, "Not so bad for a stable pony."
A thin smile stretched across my lips.
I knelt next to the convulsing griffon. Gail tipped her head up to see me and smiled painfully through her bloody beak, reddish spittle dribbling down her neck.
"Thanks -" she gasped raggedly for a breath of air, "- Red... can I call you that?"
A narrow smile reached across the corners of my lips, my heart warming.
"That's my name."
She looked overjoyed. "I owe you one, Red," Gail rasped, laying down flat on her back, her breaths stabilizing.
"You don't owe me anything," I murmured. I didn't think I would've been able to survive that had the other mercs not jumped in. A darker corner of my mind told me I shouldn't have risked my life for that griffon, let alone for a bastard like Bone Charm.
But the gratefulness that widened across her beak and the relief in the grizzled unicorn's eyes trickled white paint down the narrow black walls of my conscience. I stuck my tongue out and hoofed a rogue feather out of my mouth. Then I spat out a few down feathers too.
"That was probably the closest I've ever had to tasting chicken," I smirked.
Gail's struggle to contain her laughter resulted in a fit of ragged, wet coughs.
"You've still got a few feathers on your back," I said, folding my legs across my chest. "That's all that matters."
She just sighed, unfurled her wing and preened at her bloody spots. "I guess you're right. You sticking around for some more?"
I looked out into the snow and around us. Dead ponies lay strewn about across the snow drifts, probably doomed to freeze where they fell. Not too far from our wagon formation, I frowned at a crater with half a pony lying in it.
"I ah ..." I didn't have enough in my stomach to hurl again. I've had the urge to do that too many times that day. It seemed too easy for those mercs.
I shivered. It shouldn't have been that easy for me.
My frown turned to a glare as my eyes panned over the pale coat of the fury I tried talking to earlier. Those weren't ponies. Those were monsters. Furies. And I wasn't going to be another one of their victims. Not while so many lives rested on my hooves.
I figured that if I was going to survive, I couldn't hesitate. Hesitation was going to get me killed.
I rubbed my hooves together in the snow, trying to clean the blood off my legs.
"Whatever gets me to Poneva," I said, softly.
The sound of hooves crunching through the snow behind me made me jump. I clenched my mouth bit and almost shot the trader in the face as he approached.
"Whoa nelly, you're a jumpy one, ain't ya?" he said with a wry grin.
I exhaled heavily. "Sorry, thought you were one of those..." I glanced at their mangled corpses, spitting out my mouth bit "... those psychos."
He nodded and levitated out a strange blue bottle out of his saddle bags.
"Listen here, kid, ya saved my ass earlier - and I ain't the ungrateful bastard."
I shook my head, waving it off with a forehoof.
"I'm sure whatever you're paying Night Sky will cover it -"
"I never said that Night Sky mare saved my ass -" He tipped his hat at me. "I said you."
I frowned.
"Well, I suppose it'd be rude," I muttered, pursing my lips. The blue liquid swirled gently inside the shot glass sized bottle. "What is it?"
He pointed a forehoof at my horn, "It's called Sparkle. Makes your magic stronger. Should boost you up good - might even bring yer magic back for a bit. Ain't as helpful as a week of rest, but it might do ya good if ya use it in a pinch." The unicorn floated it to me, balancing it on my nose. "But I said, use it in a pinch. This ain't no potion ya just drink and forget."
I scrunched my muzzle and tossed my head back, catching it in my mouth. I snorted, amused with myself. I wondered if I could live as a glorified earth pony with a horn for the rest of my life. I squinted at the bottle in between my teeth, sloshing around its contents.
'Nah.'
"Then ... what is it?" I asked.
He leaned against the wagon, giving me a stern look. "I just told you. It might bring your magic back. For a bit. And not much longer."
"Sure," I said, nodding my head slowly. Craning my head over my shoulder, I dropped it in my saddle bag. "Thanks!" I said with a nervous smile.
"No problemo," he drawled, starting back to his wagon. "I'll leave it to ya mercs, then." He paused. "I didn't even get yer name, boy?"
I zipped my bag closed, and turned to trot back to the caravan's lead wagon.
"Red Dawn," I said, glancing over my shoulder.
"Name's Duster, and nice to meet ya, Red Dawn. Might see ya again one day after this," he said, plodding through the powder. He glanced over his shoulder. "Might not."
I paused for a moment.
'Huh?'
I waved at him as we mounted up on our wagons, trying furtively to suppress the apprehensive look on my face. * |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 3 - Dust and Echoes - Pt IV | *
We dropped Duster off at Dusktown and headed further north on our wagon, this time, with Bone Charm pulling it. Goddesses, was that stallion strong ... especially for a unicorn. We weren't even following a road. Bone Charm pulled us uphill through a broken, rugged path. I couldn't see the usual wagon lines in the snow - but the earth beneath us was heavily trodden with hoof prints.
The skies had darkened significantly since the last I saw it. I slept for most of the way, and so did Gail. The griffoness, however, was still napping.
I yawned, rubbing my eyes with my forehooves. Looking around, I noticed everyone was still armed. I wondered why we were packing so much heat, given the contract we were pursuing.
Sitting in an alcove in the wagon's frame was a metal tube. Several rocket propelled grenades rested against it.
"What the hell is that for?"
Night Sky sat up from the wagonbed. "It's just for diplomacy."
"Diplomacy?" I glanced at the launcher's carrying case, reading its label.
I snorted, "Sure. Your kevlar-plated barding really screams 'compromise'."
She chuckled, letting out a long, drawn out sigh. "I know you're new to this wasteland shite, but zeds aren't exactly the kind of blokes to just lift an ear to us ponies."
"I'd imagine. We fought a war with them." I sat on my hind legs, eyeing the labels stenciled on the rockets. 'HE-I', I read along the crimson munitions.
"Not we. We never fought them. They're the ones still fighting us," Night Sky muttered, closing her eyes.
"Could've sworn the war ended 200 years ago," I murmured. A widening mass of snow covered pines crept closer and closer as the wagon made its way through the snow. "What exactly are we doing out here?"
Bone Charm glanced at me over his shoulder.
"They killed Lumberjack and his colts two weeks ago while they were out looking for firewood," he muttered in his gravelly voice. "Killed 'em ... even the colts." Bone Charm shook his head and continued, "One of the boys made it back to town, barely alive. Said that the three of them walked in on a bunch of zebra loggers and got attacked on the spot for trespassing." Bone Charm's tone chilled me to the bone. "We're going to pay them a visit and find the pony murderin' son of a bitch who done did it."
I wrapped my forelegs around my chest.
"So the five of us are going into zebra territory with the possibility of provoking more of them ourselves?" I cocked an eyebrow. "That's smart. You know, there's bound to be more of them than us. And you make it sound like they won't just hand the zebra over."
"That's why diplomacy's on our side," Night Sky chuckled grimly.
I wondered what the 'HE-I' stenciled onto its case meant.
Sprinkles loaded a magazine into her assault rifle and drew it across the path in front of us. "They come to our land, our Equestria, hallowed by our dead, plant their flag down, and settle it when everypony's gone. Then, on top of that, they go around killing anypony else that so much as breathes their air."
My jaw clenched at that. 'Just what I needed to hear,' I thought, 'More pony killing monsters.
I looked out into the distance. 'Is this what Equestria's come to?'
I wondered if the zebras in our textbooks were true: striped, red eyed, shark-toothed killing machines. The last part, at least, seemed to match Sprinkles' description.
"They sound no better than the snow furies," I sneered bitterly.
Night Sky met my dark eyes. "I'd say it's about time we taught those grotty little shites a lesson."
She leaned against the wagon's frame. "We ponies just want to survive out here without stepping on anyone's feet. The bloody zeds have raided Dusktown's shops in the past, and I'm not about to let those striped fucks make our lives harder than they already are."
A plume of smoke drifted lazily into the sky above the pine trees in the distance. We were near.
I counted the rounds in my magazine.
"Let's find this bastard."
The others were silent after that, loading their weapons. I poked Gail with a forehoof and she shook herself into lucidity.
"We there yet?" she yawned, putting on her battle saddle.
Night Sky got to her hooves and peered over Bone Charm's mane. I frowned, an incredulous look stretching across my face. I expected the same weather-beaten, corrugated masses that made up Dusktown's buildings.
But before us was a small circle of gnarled, wooden cabins surrounding a smoldering bonfire. There wasn't a single mote of light in those cabins. I would have thought the zebra village were dead if there weren't equine shapes milling about outside in their tattered, inadequate clothes.
The ramshackle village was overshadowed by an icy cliff face that stretched its wind-swept boulders over their shacks, like a roof that was halfway there.
The zebras noticed our final approach. I expected a hail of bullets. Instead, they scurried inside their homes, slamming their doors shut. A zebra mare herded her foals inside her cabin, meeting my baffled stare for the briefest of moments before slamming the door closed behind her.
"Arses out," Night Sky ordered as the wagon came to a stop just outside the village. "Let's get this over with and get paid." The mercs dismounted, Bone Charm shaking off the wagon's harness before rummaging through the wagon.
I kept my eyes on the village, chills running down my spine at how empty and dilapidated the shoddy buildings looked. Not too far from our wagon and underneath the shadow of the cliff face, were several rows of lonely gravestones.
While everyone else was grabbing their weapons, I just stood there, unsure of what to do with myself. I turned to look at Gail, and saw that her eyes were devoid of ... of anything in particular.
Everyone had this grim, glazed over look that sent shivers down my spine.
"Bonehead, I want you up on that cliff with the RPG. Gail, circle the village from the air. Both of you know what to do," Night Sky said chillingly. She turned to face me. "Red Dawn, you and Sprinkles are with me."
She glanced over her shoulder as a group of zebra stallions came out of the cabins, regarding us expectantly. "Bonehead, Gail, take your positions. You two -" She nodded at Sprinkles and I. "Follow my lead."
I gulped as we slogged through the knee-deep snow. I hoped I wasn't wrong. I hoped those zebras were feral beasts, just waiting to murder us when we turned our backs on them or looked away. They just stood there, shivering with dark looks in their eyes as they watched us approach.
We trotted up to the largest of the cabins, with an entourage of zebras waiting for us on its front porch.
"Wotcher, zeds!" Night Sky grinned, trotting up to the mob.
A middle-aged zebra stepped forward. "Not too close, pony!" he growled. The other zebras brandished underappreciated handguns and warped blades.
"Whoa there lads, we're just here to find someone we're looking for." Night Sky's foreleg twitched visibly as her hoof almost reached for her assault rifle.
The zebra in charge, I assumed, narrowed his distrustful eyes at the heavily-armed mercs.
"There were five of you when you came."
Sprinkles gave him a shady grin. "Oh they're still here, don't you worry ..."
The zebras shifted uncomfortably on their hooves. A younger stallion who looked about my age shifted his gaze away from me in fear. I wasn't even visibly armed.
"I think you zebras know why we're here," Night Sky began, taking a few steps towards the group. Most of them glared at her menacingly. A few of them took a step back. "One of you zed bastards killed a few ponies from Dusktown. Murdered a stallion and his two boys. I was hoping you'd tell me where I could find him?"
Zebra Leader's jaw clenched. The others looked at him, but no one said a word.
Night Sky scoffed, "Seeing as how you zebras don't like to mingle, I can't think of anywhere else he might be."
Their leader looked at his hooves, shaking his head, slowly.
"He's here," he said, in a quiet voice.
"Oh yeah?" she chuckled. Night Sky looked somewhat relieved, as if she took a difficult job only to have the workload halved. "We're here to take him into custody." Her expression blackened. "He's coming with us."
The zebras exchanged grim-faced looks as their leader shook his head.
"He did nothing wrong, and he is not going with you ponies."
My eyes caught a black shape at the top of the cliff, a long tube like weapon hovering in the air beside it. A winged silhouette circled above us like a carrion bird.
"I don't think you quite understand," Night Sky began, evenly. "I didn't ask."
The aged stallion stomped his hoof in the snow, the stallions behind him jeering at us in their alien tongues. "And I said no! He didn't attack them." He narrowed his eyes at us. "He was carrying home firewood when those thieves threatened to steal them!"
I shifted on my hooves.
"That isn't the story I heard," I said out loud. The zebras looked at me with distant hope in their eyes. Night Sky and Sprinkles just glared at me.
"Remember that these aren't your trees, zebra," Sprinkles shot him a baleful look that spelled out murder. "That firewood didn't belong to him."
"Fuck you ponies!" a stallion shouted, stabbing his shotgun into the air. "Leave us alone!"
Another jutted a foreleg at us accusingly. "You take, and take - you leave nothing for us!"
"These trees, this land - it belongs to neither of us," Zebra Leader said, sweeping his foreleg across the trees. "We cannot survive this winter without fire. These trees keep us alive - and you can't deprive of us of what isn't yours."
Night Sky grew impatient. "I don't give a shite about your trees - I want that zed, and I want him now!" she snarled, baring her teeth.
"No," he told her, evenly. "He hasn't done anything wrong. Go back to your Dusktown and be happy that nobody else had to die. Leave us alone, and do not come back."
"Night Sky ..." I murmured, noticing the foals staring at me through the windows.
She shook her head, smirking. "I'm no goody horseshoes, zebra. I'm a mercenary, and I'm getting my caps either way." Night Sky snorted, craning forward her neck and smiling wickedly. She said, in a low voice, "Don't make us take him from you."
The zebra stallion did not take that kindly.
"You ... you would kill us?" he began, his voice trembling. The zebras crowded around him, baring their teeth. "Don't be foolish, pony!"
To my shock, my eyes widened as the zebras stood up on their hinds and walked toward us - something I've never seen a pony do for more than a few seconds - aiming at us with the weapons curled between their hooves.
I gulped.
"You ponies wouldn't dare!" a stallion snarled, brandishing a rusty axe as he strode towards us on his two hindlegs.
I took a step back.
"They are outnumbered - we kill them now!"
"Oo - patayin natin sila!" said another agreeably, glaring at us.
Zebra Leader held out his forehooves and held his kin back. "Hindi! No one else needs to die." He turned to us, pleadingly. "Don't do this, ponies, it isn't worth it! Think of our foals!"
"I'm going to ask one more time," Night Sky said, nonchalantly. She hoofed her assault rifle, undaunted by the zebras who each now stood an entire head taller than us. Sprinkles did the same. "Give us the damned zed, and we'll be on our way."
My breaths were shallow and far in between as they stared gravely at one another, murmuring in their alien tongues. Just when I thought it was going to end in a bloodbath, a young stallion pushed past the zebras.
"It was me," a mare's trembling voice murmured. I narrowed my eyes at her. 'Her?'
Her zebra kin shouted at her, trying to pull her back.
"Grasya!" the elder stallion yanked her away from us.
The young mare shrugged him off, standing at the edge of the porch.
Goddesses.
She didn't look older than fifteen or sixteen.
"Just take me with you and don't hurt anyone else ... please. Let's stop this madness."
The zebra leader gawked. "No, you are not going anywhere!" he shouted, stepping in front of the zebra. He held her close. "You know what they will do to you!"
Night Sky grew impatient. Her voice trembled with mounting frustration. "Hand her over, now, and we'll be out of your mane," she ordered. Sprinkles looked like she was fighting the urge to pull the trigger.
"Look around you, you ponies! See our village - see our poverty! Have you no shame, living in your Dusktown while we freeze to death in the snow?" he snapped. "Too many of us died this winter, and if we lose any more ... when the Tempest comes ... our village will surely die! We have too many tools and not enough zebras to use them." He wrenched Grasya away with a forehoof. "You're taking from beggars, can't you see?"
Night Sky and Sprinkles looked at each other in exasperation. They didn't care.
"Leave our village - leave, and don't come back!" the zebra growled.
The mercs chambered rounds into their rifles.
One of the zebra stallions racked his shotgun's slider.
"NO!" Zebra Leader shouted to the others as they started forward. "Huwag mo silang patulan!" But his words did nothing to calm them. "This is what they want! Don't give it to them!"
The zebra shouldered his shotgun.
Zebra leader flung his forehooves in front of him. "NO -"
Night Sky tipped her head to the side.
CRACK!
My heart skipped a beat.
The zebra's head exploded in a shower of bone and gore.
Warm chunks splattered across my face.
An explosion ripped through the hut behind them, and I watched as the night turned to day. The jarring shockwave blasted apart its walls and tore down its ceiling, hurling zebras off their hooves. Grasya's eyes widened at me in horror. I watched as she disappeared beneath the collapsing debris.
I opened my mouth to scream - and Night Sky and Sprinkles sunk their triggers back.
The zebra with the shotgun convulsed - screaming, ragged, bloody holes exploding across his entire body. He took a bleeding step forward before his chest blew out in a splash of gore, Gail's black form sweeping over us.
"Stop!" I shrieked over the gunfire, blood streaming down my face as the zebras collapsed into the melting, crimson snow. "STOP!"
But they didn't.
Zebras stumbled out of the flames. Their coats sloughed off and their manes burned away with every step they took, collapsing to the snow to smolder and smoke like discarded, overcooked heaps of meat. Those who made it out in time before the fires could engulf them galloped away from the inferno to safety.
But Night Sky swung her rifle wide to meet them. She mowed them down. Every single one of them.
The mercs cut them down with short, controlled, well-placed bursts.
It was target practice.
It was a massacre.
I covered my ears with my hooves and sank into the snow, shrieking my throat raw. But my voice and hooves alone couldn't drown out their horrifying, agonizing screams as everyone burned and died around me.
Everyone. Burned. Butchered.
All the while, explosions ripped across the village. Some tried to flee, only to be crushed beneath the rubble - or gunned down as they fled. Others simply ceased to exist as Bone Charm sent rocket after rocket shrieking into the village.
And another, and another.
CRACK!
Another zebra to feed the flames.
Something broke apart inside of me. The world around me seemed to quake as a scream fought its way to my throat.
"WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS!?" I wailed, tackling Night Sky to the ground.
"Get the fuck off me, Red Dawn!" she screamed, bucking me off of her.
"You killed them!" I howled, galloping after her with my horn bowed forward. "YOU FUCKING KILLED THEM -"
She sidestepped and held out a foreleg - and I slammed muzzle-first into the snow. I rose to my haunches. And stayed that way. Wicked firelight danced across my blood-drained face.
A cabin exploded to my left, showering my huddled form with gravel and debris. Small shapes scrambled out of it as its roof began to collapse.
The mercs turned to face them.
My heart nearly skipped a beat.
'No.'
Night Sky lifted a hoof.
And the foals scrambled away, shrieking into the night. One of the fillies stopped outside the porch as her brothers and sisters fled into the darkness.
The gunfire stopped. Heads turned. We watched in suffocating silence as a zebra mare, charred from head to toe, stumbled out of the cabin.
Her eyelids were fused shut. And yet she knew when she heard her daughter's voice.
She fell to her haunches beside to her, saying not a single word as the filly wrapped her little legs around her mother's charred trembling body. She wept, burying her muzzle into her mother's blackened, flaking coat. I watched as the mare with the burned out eyes slowly drew her daughter close and squeezed her tight, her shoulders rocking with agonizing sobs.
The filly threw her head back and let out an anguished wail that shook me to the core. She hugged her mother close. Her mother ... butchered and cooked like a piece of meat.
She screamed until she screamed her throat raw. She screamed until her mother's trembling legs stilled. Until her mother's limp body slumped into snow.
Dead.
Another zebra to feed the flames.
All around me, the hellish inferno devoured the town, painting my coat white with its cruel glow. I stared into the flames with watery eyes and the flames stared back, the dying shrieks of zebras echoing distantly in my ears.
The flames told me that I was wrong.
Night Sky told me that I had to be willing to do anything I could to survive ... but not like that! Goddesses, not like that! Those zebras - they had sons and daughters and husbands and wives - those mercs - those monsters were no better than the snow furies that slaughtered my friends!
How could I have just stood there and watched!? I watched as those monsters slaughtered everyone, and even then, my hooves were drenched with their blood.
I knew then that there was something monstrous about people who did nothing. People who did nothing as evil carried out its work.
I ... could have done something. But I didn't.
I just... watched.
'... you've got to do what you need to do, Red Dawn,' Night Sky's voice echoed in my thoughts. 'Maybe even if that means you live and some poor sod doesn't ...'
'Whatever it takes...' I heard myself say.
I clamped down on my pistol's mouth bit and leveled it at Night Sky, toggling SATS. 'I won't be like her!' I screamed inside of me, 'I won't let the wasteland turn me into a monster!'
Night Sky's weapon flashed sluggishly as glowing teal crosshairs coalesced before my eyes. I watched. The world seemed to slow ... and so did the zebra on the other end of Night Sky's assault rifle. Tracers speared through her body as she tipped forward, threatening to topple into the drifts.
I mashed all my SATS charges and tagged Night Sky's fucking head until they were spent, my tears glistening in the fiery glow.
My firing solution was true. But my conscience was not. My body tensed, and I hesitated. I simply couldn't do it.
It was no use. I'd join the zebras if I did.
I let go.
I let go, and watched the zebra tumble end over end into the snow in a heap, leaving a ragged trail of blood behind her. Blood pooled around her, her legs twitching uncontrollably as she perished. Then nothing.
It was over.
We were done.
And so were the zebras.
Only the moaning of crumbling, burning wood remained. I stood there, unable to move, unable to rationalize what those ponies did.
I fell to my haunches, my crooked shadow billowing across the snow. Bathed in the cruel firelight, my conscience cried out in purgatory.
Gail crunched her paws into the snow behind me. The shadow of her winged form engulfed mine.
"Ready for Poneva, Red?" she asked, cheerily.
I crawled across the snow to the zebra mare that Night Sky gunned down. She was still breathing, taking ragged, shallow breaths as she teetered on the edge of life and death. I knelt over her, cradling the mare's head in my hooves.
"I'm ... I'm sorry ..." I whispered, holding her gently as she sputtered and choked. She pawed desperately at my cheek with a hoof, smearing her blood across my face. "I didn't know. I didn't know they'd do this ... I'm not a monster ... I'm not like them ... please ..."
I felt her hoof grasp my collar, her grip withering away as the seconds beat by with the waning pulse of her dying heart. We locked gazes for the briefest of moments.
Then the mare gurgled through a mouthful of blood. Her fluttering brown eyes met mine before they blinked for the last time. They stared back, lifeless and blank as I held her limp corpse.
Dead.
I hung my head low, trembling uncontrollably.
"What've you done ... what've you done Gail? What've you people done ..."
She didn't answer me, her white feathers glowing a fiery orange.
"Was it worth it? Was it worth the fucking caps?"
She looked at her feet.
"You're right ... you're no victim, Gail," I said to her, my voice faltering. The griffon came to me, resting her claws on my shoulder. I shook her off, standing to my hooves.
"You're a monster."
She turned her head away from me, gazing into the flames. "I ... I ..." her voice trailed off into silence.
I left her, trudging away from the funeral pyre.
Goddesses. I believed in them. I believed that they were right, that anything was worth doing to survive ... even if it meant that people died and I lived.
'Was this what it took?' I asked myself. 'Was this going to be my life?'
I didn't know anymore.
But Night Sky was right about one thing: I couldn't escape it. That wasn't going to be the end of it. I realized then that if the wasteland didn't kill me, it was going to kill my soul.
I followed them that far.
And that was as far as I was going to go.
'Anywhere but here. Goddesses ... anywhere but here.'
Footnote: Level up.
New Perk: Rapid Reload - All of your weapon reloads are 25% faster than normal. |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 4 - Bad Pony - Pt I | Chapter 4
Bad Pony
"If that's what it took, why not? You said you were looking for a Water Talisman. Wouldn't you do anything to bring one back so everypony in your stable would live?"
Even in the distance, I could still see their village burning. Behind me, it was a dimly glowing ember in a sea of shifting snow. Their screams permeated my thoughts. Night Sky's words blackened my conscience. It wasn't right. They murdered those zebras, and they'd do it again if they could.
At the end of the day they'd get their caps.
I trudged through the fetlock deep snow, and at the end of the day, my hooves were still be empty. They did what I could not and could never have. They were doers. They were survivors.
And I was still a victim.
I made the choice of walking away from my only safe means of travel to Poneva.
I chose to be a good pony - at the cost of my stable. Every hour, every day spent out there was another day sheared off my stable's lifespan. I wasted my time - I wasted their time! I threw out the window the time I spent with those mercs, all because I chose to have a conscience. All because I chose not be a monster.
All because I chose to be a good pony.
A darker part of my soul reasoned with me. I should have stayed with those mercs. I probably would've been in Poneva by then. I'd have a water talisman in my hooves and I'd be able to return to my stable, close those doors behind me, and forget about everything outside.
I threw my head back and screamed in frustration, stomping my hooves into the snow. I would have sacrificed those zebras a hundred times over if it meant my stable lived! Those surface dwelling scum shouldn't have meant anything to me!
There was nothing left on the surface to save.
There was a reason why we never opened our doors ... and the wasteland was it.
My stable ... my stable was my world, and my world was my stable. I didn't belong outside. My bloodshot eyes absorbed my surroundings: there was nothing but the chilling breeze as it blew powder over the pale dunes all around me. I was in the middle of nowhere.
Again.
All because I chose to be a good pony. The first ponies I met slaughtered my friends. The next group slaughtered an entire village of zebras. Was there anything that made those two groups different? What use was there being good if everyone I saw, everyone I met ... wasn't? It'd be a disadvantage. It'd make me weak.
It'd make me a dead pony.
For a moment, at Dusktown, I had hope. Hope that the darkness that wouldn't leave that land didn't blackened the hearts of everyone. I knew then as I plodded across the ashen drifts, that there were monsters in all of us.
There was a monster inside of Gail.
I knew that there was one in me too.
For hours that felt like days, I slogged through the snow as the faint twilight of day became darker and darker like light waning through the crack of a closing door. I stopped for a moment to catch my breath, and in the distance - watching me were a dozen hunched over silhouettes, stalking through the falling darkness.
Bloodletters.
I tried counting them, but the wind that swept across the drifts distorted their dark, canine shapes with gusts of powdery snow. They blinked red on my EFS at least two or three at a time, before fading away from my range of detection. They followed me, close enough to see me, but not close enough for me to see them.
It didn't take sapience to know that there was one of me, and a hell of a lot more of them.
I didn't know what to expect - I didn't want to know what those creatures could do. I gulped. I needed to find shelter, or someplace I could wall off or hide in.
If that could even stop them.
The pace of my hoofsteps quickened.
I looked behind me once more. Their shapes bobbed and slunk in the distance ... following me.
I approached a steep incline and slid carefully down a massive hill of snow until I felt my hooves sink into the powder. My momentum pushed my hooves deeper - until they clopped dully against solid stone. My PipBuck told me that I entered a different zone. The Crystal Highway.
'Thank Celestia,' I thought.
At least I was getting somewhere. I glanced over my shoulder and didn't see a single bloodletter behind me. But just because I couldn't see them, didn't mean they couldn't see me.
'Oh fuck.'
My eyes darted across the snow, scrutinizing the jagged cliffs that loomed over me. I was standing in a wide crack in the earth. For miles behind me, and miles ahead me, the canyon stretched onward. Winding through it was an eight lane highway that ran off in both directions.
I glared at the hill over my shoulder. It was too steep to climb back up.
There was no way out. All that was left was a lonely highway that hopefully led me to Poneva. So I started walking.
I glanced around, my PipBuck's teal glow illuminating the graveyard of overturned, melted autowagons before me. Their blackened, twisted metal frames were like skeletons, littering the snow by the hundreds for miles upon miles - far beyond what my eyes could see.
And yet I could still walk among them, through them, around them. I would've thought that the highways would be packed bumper to bumper as everyone fled from the falling bombs. Spring Song knew. She and her family knew that the balefire would come ... and yet they didn't try to run.
Those ponies and their autowagons didn't try, either. It was as if they didn't even known what was coming.
I absorbed with my bloodshot eyes the vast expanse of melted wagon frames, and the shattered lane dividers, and the fractured bones that poked out of the blackened debris. I tried to imagine a different world. I tried to imagine what the world looked like before the world burned.
Around me flashed lanes of bustling autowagons, rumbling up and down the asphalt roads - a normal business day in Equestria, just like in the books.
Life had been going on as usual.
Life had been going on as usual when the balefire ended all life.
I blinked, and all I saw was a grim reminder of the wartime past. With nowhere to go but forward and back, I slogged onward through the snow-buried highway, passing under the pitch black shadows of fallen bridges and the tattered cliffs that hung over me.
Lightning Twirl's words echoed in my head, 'Follow the highway, and you'll get somewhere.'
That somewhere, I prayed, was Poneva.
I trudged onward, following a long wagon-sized path that was bulldozed through the steel graveyard. It looked like a stampede plowed through the lanes, knocking aside and crushing the twisted metal skeletons against the shoulders to make room for traveling wastelanders.
But the snow there looked like it hadn't been touched in ages. The powder was fresh.
The only trail I could see was the trail I was leaving behind me.
By chance I came across a wagon that was flipped over so that one set of its blackened wheel spokes was pointing skywards. I lowered myself to my chest and peeked underneath it through the gutter between its hull and the snow that buried it. With grim curiosity, I waved my PipBuck at its mouth and caught a flash of white.
I started digging. I dredged the hole deeper into the gutter, sweeping the freezing powder away until I could see inside the pitch black interior of the overturned wagon. The light of my PipBuck's screen parted the darkness like curtains on a stage.
Skeletons. Four of them.
Some of the bones were too small to belong to that of a full grown mare or stallion.
My expression went grim as I stared into the wagon's charred contents. There was not a single piece of luggage in sight. They didn't know. Goddesses, how didn't they know?
I gulped down a heavy lump in my throat as I stared at a small, half-buried shape in the snow. It was a foal.
'Mommy ...' whispered a tiny voice from the shattered, grinning skull that peered up at me.
'NOOO!'
I leaped to my hooves and banged my head against the wagon bed. My PipBuck flashed. Shadows loomed over me.
I shrieked - squeezed my eyes shut, and scrambled out of the darkness, my PipBuck's beam flashing against their broken bones, painting their dying, anguished shadows against the wagon's innards. I wrenched myself out of the darkness, gasping frantically for my breath as I kicked my hind legs away from that cold metal coffin.
I stared into the darkness with wide eyes, the screams of Spring Song's foals slowly fading away into the breeze. I sat there as the wind wept a solemn song, my heavy breaths hissing through my lips with wisps of white vapor. Many shuddering seconds passed before I finally made my way back to the wagon and, with my forehooves, swept them over the gutter, filling it with snow.
I left the wagon behind me. I didn't look back.
Once more I began the long walk down the lonely highway, into the darkness as the snowfall thickened. I stopped every now and then to pan my PipBuck's teal light across the frigid snow swirls. Even inside the thick fabrics of my barding, I was cold - but inside, I was even colder. Desperation was all that was keeping me going. That road would take me to whatever end awaited me. I just knew it.
If waiting for me there wasn't the salvation my stable needed, I didn't know if a life outside was worth living. The dead called out to me to join them. The memories of Spring Song and her foals still haunted me even after I buried them. I knew they weren't real. They were long dead. But I couldn't stop shaking.
I was soft, like putty, and the wasteland was leaving its marks.
The night was now pitch black. It felt like I had been walking for hours, alone, when a yellow light shined upon my flank. It engulfed me in its glow, painting my shadow against the drifts.
I turned wearily, my right foreleg held over my eyes, shielding them from the glare. My pupils contracted as a large black mass with a strobe light trained upon me approached. Its rumbling engine was getting closer. I gulped a heavy lump down my throat as I stood my ground, unsure what to expect. As the autowagon closed in, several silhouetted equine heads bobbed in my direction.
The black mass stopped. I waited for their maniacal cackles, for a hail of bullets, hell, maybe even a rocket propelled grenade. Instead, eight ponies hopped over the wagon's sideboards, the vehicle's light still trained on me.
I reached out with a trembling foreleg and flashed them with my PipBbuck's beam. Eight hooded ponies in thick snow barding trotted toward me. Held in their mouths or hooves, or floating next to them were an assortment of automatic weapons. To my grim relief, they weren't furies. But for some reason, I didn't really feel very relieved.
A stallion with a machine pistol trotted up to me, my apprehension reflecting dully in his battered black goggles. I didn't dare to make any sudden movements.
"Lookit what we got here," he said as I shielded my eyes with a foreleg. "Where're you headed, boy?" the unicorn stallion drawled.
I gulped, taking a step back, narrowing my eyes at them.
"What does it matter to you?"
The sound of someone yanking his weapon's charging handle pushed me another step back.
"Just wonderin'. Not that many ponies go this way up to Poneva on hoof. In fact, not that many ponies go up this way to Poneva at all, let alone by themselves."
I snorted. So that road did lead to Poneva after all. "Well, no shit," I murmured. "If you knew already, why'd you ask?"
The stallion glanced over at the others.
"Thought that since we was headin' that same way, you might like to hitch a ride with us," he said, reaching out with a foreleg. He grinned under his hood.
I shook my head, backing away carefully. "I won't be going anywhere with anybody ..." Every hoofstep I took back, they took another forward. "I can make it there myself."
"Come on, boy. It's dangerous out here, bloodletters and haunters and furies and such. It ain't safe out here on your own."
"No," I said, firmly. I made it that far by myself, and I was intending on keeping it that way. Alive, alone, and away from those ponies, whoever they were.
I turned and started to trot the other way.
His grin widened as he shook his head.
"Hold on, wait a sec!" he said, throwing a hoof around my shoulder. I glanced over - and he was so close. So close that I could see the scratches in his goggles.
"Stay the fuck back!" I growled, shoving him away from me.
"Hey - hey - hey!" He smiled, standing on his hind legs and holding his forelegs in the air. "I was just gonna say that you remind me of somepony."
I clenched my jaw. I didn't have time for bullshit.
"Oh really?"
He nodded at me, nickering, "Yeah, yeah, you ponies know this guy too, right?" He fell on all fours and turned to the others.
They nodded, creeping towards me.
"Mhm, I've seen him around," said a mare as she unslung a battle rifle from her back.
The ponies leveled their guns at me.
"Yeah, he's that one slave."
My eyes widened. "N-no ..." I stammered, "I'm not a slave!"
They all laughed at me, the other stallion approaching me with a long metal chain.
"You are now," he said with a wide grin.
I froze. My mouth opened and closed with words I couldn't find the courage to say. My eyes flicked to the holster that was slung across my chest.
"No," I said, backing away. "I don't want to hurt anybody," I pleaded with them; I didn't want any more blood on my hooves.
The mare laughed, "Hurt!? Hahaha - you're surrounded, colt."
In my mind I begged them to leave. I begged Celestia to make them go away. I didn't want to kill. Again.
I eyed my holster.
The unicorn pony chuckled, taking a menacing step toward me. "Don't even think about it," said the stallion, levitating his machine pistol to my head. "You're coming with us whether you like it or not."
My lungs ached. Then I realized that I was holding my breath.
I closed my eyes for a moment, and when they fluttered open, I exhaled, slowly. They couldn't stop me. I wasn't going to let anybody stop me.
"Fuck. You."
I leaped into SATS.
CRACK - CRACK - CRACK!
The stallion's goggles exploded inward. The pony with the shackles dropped dead before he could even scream. My third, aimed at the mare with the battle rifle flew wide.
'Shit.'
"You son of a bitch!" she snarled. My eyes widened as they slung their weapons.
They wanted me alive.
I tongued my mouth bit, my pistol discharging the last of its magazine as a stallion wrenched it out of my teeth. In a whinnying frenzy, he spun around and bucked me in the chest, punching the air out of my lungs. I staggered to my hooves - and the mare careened into me from the side, slamming me into the powder. Hard.
I screamed, ramming a hoof into her throat. She threw her head back for a moment, choking for air before I threw a haymaker into her nose, peppering my muzzle with her blood.
I blinked away the scarlet and snarled like a cornered animal.
"FUCK YOU!" I cried out as I bucked her off of me. I heaved myself away, kicking up snow beneath me as I scrambled for my fallen pistol - a breath away from my hooves.
'- won't - be - a victim -'
Someone kicked it away.
"NO!" And a hoof slammed into my face.
I tried to rise to my hooves, only to be grabbed by the shoulders and hurled back into the snow. I screamed and flailed as the stallion and the mare pinned me to the ground on my chest, my forehooves held behind my back.
"NO - GET THE FUCK OFF!"
I looked up and a mare with blue goggles rushed toward me, a carbine levitating beside her. She looked down, clenching her teeth.
"Sugar Rum, do it!" the stallion screamed. Her lips pursed. And she slammed the buttstock of her carbine into my skull.
Stars exploded in my eyes. Blackness overtook my senses.
That lull in consciousness was all the time they needed. With a dull clank, I felt the cold touch of frozen metal trap both my fetlocks.
I laid there in a heap, beaten and overpowered. There was nothing I could do.
"No ..." I whimpered, as they rolled me over on my back, a chain tugging against my forelegs. 'This can't be happening ...' A rivulet of blood trickled down my forehead and over my brow as they dragged me back to their wagon.
In that moment, I lost everything. Dew Drops' scarf, my family pictures - everything in my bags - my holster and my gun. I lost the only thing worth living for in that wasteland. I lost what Night Sky and her crew washed their hooves in blood to keep.
"You did us a favor," the mare with the battle rifle said into my ear. I looked up into the wagon bed and half a dozen weary eyes peered back down at me between the metal bars of a steel cage. "Now the cut's split between the six of us."
I was fucked. Fucked. All because I decided to keep my dignity and walk away from those mercs. My only safe passage to Poneva.
Everyone in Stable 91 was going to die, and it was all my fault.
I was Red Dawn. I was a victim.
'Now I'm a slave.' * |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 4 - Bad Pony - Pt II | *
I stared down at my hooves as I sat in the back of a rumbling trailer.
I was getting to Poneva after all.
In shackles.
I sat on my haunches, chained to an overfilled, cramped cage with six shivering, miserable ponies like me trapped within. I couldn't look. I didn't want to look. I didn't want to imagine myself like one of them.
They didn't either.
It had been hours since I was taken. We rumbled down that long stretch of highway at a steady pace, as fast as their makeshift, jury-rigged autowagon could take us.
This, sadly, was yet another thing that Night Sky was right about. Slavers. I should've stayed with them. Ponies like me didn't last too long out there, I came to realize. It's why my friends didn't last long. It's why I wasn't going to last long if I didn't make it out of there soon.
As bleak as my situation looked, the only thing running circles around my head was - 'how the hell was I going to get out of this?' I lived to see my friends die, and walked away from certain death three times so far. This wasn't how it was supposed to end.
It was my choice to pick up where my friends left off when the fucking wasteland stole them away from me. I could've chosen to tell Night Sky to fuck herself and just crawled into that grave I dug for myself. But I didn't. If even that choice was taken away from me, I was already dead. Night Sky told me I didn't get to choose the easy way out.
But if I was going to die, I was going to die saving my stable. Not for those ponies. Not for those fucking slavers.
I looked up and Sugar Rum, the mare that beat my skull in with her carbine, was watching me behind her blue goggles.
I shot her a baleful look that promised death. Sugar Rum held my burning gaze for a few heartbeats. She wasn't smiling, but I wanted to tear her fucking face and her stupid goggles right off. With a snort of icy air, she turned away, panning her flashlight across the road.
I grinded my teeth together and eyeballed the autowagon's backseat where they threw my bags. I narrowed them at the black shape of my holster.
My hooves wriggled helplessly against my shackles.
"Think we can sell any of them to Red Eye?" one of them asked, sitting inside the autowagon with a hoof resting casually on one of its steering levers.
The mare sitting next to him with the battle rifle just chuckled.
"Nah. Red Eye needs backbreakers. Not these poor little shits," she scoffed, glancing over her shoulder and meeting my eyes.
I just glared at her.
"The plantations'll take 'em. East Eden'll take any of 'em. Hell, I think we can even make a comfort horse outta that one girl back there."
My eyes finally wandered through the steel bars. I shouldn't have looked. What I saw made my blood boil. The ponies within were battered and bruised. Some had black eyes. Others had bumps on their heads or patches of coat missing. One of the mares had a bloody, blackened behind. She was lying on the wagon floor with glassy eyes, not staring at anything in particular.
"Sunny Days would love her." She hefted her battle rifle, leaning over her car seat at the other slavers. "I know we did."
The fuckers just burst out laughing.
I clenched my teeth, glaring at the slavers with eyes that promised murder. One of them saw me and just kept laughing. They didn't give two shits about what I thought of them as they drove the wagon through the debris-littered highway. But they were still shitheads. I wanted to see them burn for what they were doing to us.
I pinned my ears back, shaking my head as their boisterous laughter made my heart race. They just kept laughing at that poor mare. Laughing at the mare who was lying at the bottom of cage, broken and ravaged.
All but one of them.
"Come on Sugar Rum, I saw you looking at her pretty little flank!" Rifle Mare chuckled, grinning from ear to ear. "We all know you're a filly-fooler!"
Sugar Rum kept staring over the sideboards at the jagged cliffs.
I kept staring into the cage. I couldn't look away. Those ponies ... they ...
Each had a collar wrapped around their necks - wired collars that blinked with a pulsating red light. My expression darkened as one of the ponies met my eyes.
"What the hell are those things?" I murmured.
"Bomb collars," said a mare with bandages around her chest.
My eyes widened. Horror flashed across my face.
"Goddesses ... w-what did they do to you all?"
For several heartbeats, nopony answered. An earth pony in tattered snow barding pushed past the others, limping to the cage's bars. "Took me while my daughter and I were scavenging for food," he answered, faintly.
My jaw clenched. His filly was nowhere to be seen. "Your daughter ..."
He looked at his hooves, then back at me with swollen, bloodshot eyes. He blinked furiously, shaking his head as they welled with tears. "They took me ... and left her behind."
I brought my trembling hooves to my face, my heart aching inside my chest.
"Why ..." I asked. It was a question that didn't need an answer. A question that couldn't have had a real answer.
But they answered it anyways.
"Didn't ya hear? East Eden can never have enough slaves," another stallion croaked. He was missing several patches of coat. Curved scars lacerated his bare flesh.
I looked at him with grim curiosity. "What the fuck is an East Eden?"
The mare with bandages wrapped around her chest crawled to the metal bars. "They're a plantation in Poneva. They need slaves to plow and harvest their fields."
"They're going to put us to work and work us to death," growled the earth pony.
The mangy stallion shook his head. "That ain't true. I heard they feed ya and put a roof over your head."
"Bullshit!" the earth pony hissed. "They don't give a fuck about any of us! Look at what they did to her!" He pointed a forehoof at the mare with the bloody flank. "And those bastards left my filly for dead!"
"Better than bein' dead ..." the mangy pony murmured.
My ears perked and my body went stiff.
"Three meals a day, and a bed to sleep in. Ain't nothin' wrong with that."
My jaw dropped in horror as the mare slowly nodded in agreement. "Better than what I ever get ... I scavenged everyday for something to eat before these slavers found me. Sometimes I'd go a few days or a week without something in my belly."
A unicorn with a broken horn in the back of the cage turned his eyes low. "I'd do anything ... anything for a bite. Just ... something to eat," he added, "I'm so hungry."
The mare and the mangy pony nodded together, their wilted ears drooping pathetically.
"They'll take care of us ..." the mare whispered. "We'll live. We'll live ..."
I stared at them with wide, bloodshot eyes. "What ...?"
They all turned to look at me.
"WHAT!?" They cowered behind the bars with bleak, desperate eyes. "How are you okay with this!?"
None of the ponies said anything. Not even the earth pony. They were as beaten and hopeless as the frozen wasteland.
"You can't be fucking serious?"
"You're a stable pony," the hornless unicorn began, eying my PipBuck. "You don't know what it's like out here ... you don't know ..."
I closed my eyes, shaking my head furiously as he continued.
"You're lucky if you eat once a day. You're a king if you eat twice."
"No. No ... no - no." I glared at the pathetic little pony. "This?" I said, pointing a forehoof at the mare with the bloodied flank. "This isn't right. And nobody should be fucking okay with it."
"It doesn't matter," said a mare.
My ears jerked towards its source, and I slowly turned my head to face her. Sugar Rum was staring at me behind her blue goggles.
I trembled, a sneer tearing across my lips.
"It ... doesn't ... matter?"
"East Eden's better than out here," Sugar Rum began. "Better than being dead."
I started towards her - but my chains yanked me back. "You piece of shit ... nothing out here is better than being dead." I glared out into the distance. "I learned that the hard way when I left my stable ... but you fuckers, you slaver pieces of trash make this world shittier than it already is."
I stood to my hooves, pulling my chains as far as I could until I could see my ragged reflection in her goggles.
I whispered in a low voice, loud enough for her fucking ears to hear, "How do you live with yourself ..."
Her goggles gave away nothing of the pony beneath.
Several long seconds passed until Sugar Rum finally replied, her voice trembling.
"It's a business ... you get paid ... and when you get paid, you can put food on the table. If I don't do this, my family will starve."
"IT'S NOT WORTH IT!" I snapped. I remembered Night Sky - Gail - the village of burning zebras. I screamed into her face as if they were standing there before me. "It' s not fucking worth it! But you fuckers, you sick FUCKERS - that's all it is to you, isn't it!?" Sugar Rum turned her head away from me and stared off into the distance. My voice lowered as I craned my neck towards her.
"It's just for the caps, isn't it?" I grinned, mockingly. I glanced at the poor mare with the ruined flank, then back at Sugar Rum. "Look at me."
She didn't.
"LOOK AT ME!"
Her goggles turned shakily towards me like an unoiled machine.
I pointed at the glassy-eyed mare at the bottom of the cage. "You see that? Is that what you do? Is that ... that work ... worth it? How'd you like it if somepony did that to you?"
The slaves were as speechless as the slavers. I didn't think they'd seen anyone mouth off to a slaver like that before. Sugar Rum looked at her hooves, and muttered something incomprehensible.
"What?" I said, slowly, "What the fuck did you just say?"
"I-I ... I ..." she stammered, choking on her own words. Sugar Rum sniffled, bowing her head for one dark moment. Her blue goggles turned to face me, and I saw the hatred in my own reflection. "I ... don't care. I-I don't care." She stared off into the distance. "I don't fucking care ..."
I closed my eyes and hung my head.
She didn't care. She didn't. Fucking. Care.
I collapsed upon my haunches in silence as the wind howled around me. No hope. There was no hope for those ponies. No hope for the wasteland. If only the balefire had just done the right thing and killed them all.
"Hey ..." someone whispered. I looked up and into the cage. The ponies huddled within parted aside. The ravaged mare was looking straight ... through me. "Thank you ... you're right: this isn't okay," she said, distantly, "But there's nothing ... nothing you can do now.
"There's nothing any of us can do now ..."
I looked down at my hooves. Maybe she was right. I wasn't getting out alive. Neither of us were.
My chains were cold, cold steel. No amount of pulling, yanking, or bitching was going to save me now.
From the darkness, several octaves higher than the moan of the wind howled a creature that sounded nothing like anything I had ever heard. Sugar Rum straightened out, levitating her carbine over the wagon's sideboard, her ears perked.
I heard it again, a blood-curdling, unnatural howl that shook my resolve. It roared from the darkness like a demon hound screaming out from the gates of hell. I pressed my back as close to the trailer's sideboards as I could, the slaves inside the cage huddling together in fear. Fear. I thought I knew what it felt like to have fear.
I swung my head in every direction, trying to find the source of that hellish howling. But another creature roared with it. And another. And another. From the darkness they howled in unison - from every direction. With each quaking second that passed, another joined the nightmarish cacophony.
Then I saw them. Goddesses. There were so many of them.
Rising up from the ridgeline's jagged cliffs were a dozen black shapes in all. Each hunched silhouette was as large as a third of the wagon's frame. Each hunched silhouette was twice as large as a full grown stallion.
One of the slavers jumped to his hooves, a machine pistol in his mouth.
"BLOODLETTERS!"
"STEP ON IT!" Rifle Mare ordered, banging her hoof against the wagon's sideboard. "We need to get the fuck away from those things!"
The driver nodded, and punched his hindhoof into the pedal. The wagon's engine moaned as we accelerated.
But that resistance - that unwillingness to sit there and die set the creatures off. The prey was escaping.
And they needed to feed.
With a deafening roar, a bloodletter bounded deftly down the slope and hurled itself towards us, claws outstretched.
But it crashed into the drifts in an explosion of gravel and snow. The autowagon groaned onward as fast as a horse could gallop. It was behind us now. But there came echoing through my ears a mad howl. The bloodletter blew through the snow shower - loping explosively toward us. Faster than us. It wasn't done with us yet.
I saw its coat - as white as snow. It was closing in, now. I could see its hungry, soulless eyes. I watched it as it snapped its yellowed teeth and snarled through its frothing mouth.
Seconds crawled by as the accelerating autowagon screamed into my ears. Then the beast threw its head back. It unleashed a bestial shriek that drowned out our engine's feeble cries.
Somepony thrusted a rifle barrel over my shoulder.
"PUT 'EM DOWN! DON'T LET 'EM GET CLOSE!"
I ducked as everyone scrambled to take aim.
Gunfire lit up the night.
Chunks of the bloodletter's flesh blew off its body as the battle rifle's high caliber rounds tore into it. It yelped, faltered - snarled and didn't lose a single step as more of the immense, white beasts leaped into the fray. I covered my ringing ears with my hooves and watched helplessly as their wolf-like silhouettes bounded down the hills from every side.
We were being surrounded.
One of the slavers beamed our path with the autowagon's strobe light.
There was a flash of white - and I screamed as one of the bloodletters flung itself in front of our wagon. It squealed, and all I heard was a sickening crunch as the wagon flipped over - end over end - hurling away screaming ponies left and right -
The wagon crashed into the snow and the world around me exploded in a flash of violet magical fire.
The impact catapulted me violently into the air as the wagon smashed into a snow drift, throwing up showers of ashen powder. I thrashed my limbs through the air, the wind howling past my ears as I screamed for my life - and the chain around my fetlocks yanked me back down to the earth in a blur of flailing limbs.
I careened into the autowagon's shattered frame, my forehead smashing through a ruined plank of wood. I stumbled to my hooves in a daze, blood running down my face.
All around me, ponies screamed. Only this time, it wasn't a village burning.
Littering the snow were the broken remains of the slavers' autowagon. The magically-powered engine was burning. And so was the driver. His motionless body, charred from the head to hoof smoked gruesomely in the wind.
Most of the others fared better, as the rest of them scrambled desperately to their hooves. One of the stallions burst through the debris, limping out into the open in the violet firelight. He looked at me. And I looked at him.
Then a bloodletter smashed into him.
It snapped its jaws around his throat and hurled him into the powder with a splash of arterial red. He didn't even get a chance to scream.
I scrambled away. Screaming. Screaming as the creature tore into him, ripping from his ruined, mangled carcass a mouthful of bloody pony meat.
"Goddesses - oh my Celestia - Luna's fucking grace!" I screamed as another bloodletter joined it and fought the other for the pony's meaty limbs. There came a third, but it stopped, realizing that there wasn't enough meat for the three of them.
A low growl rumbled inside its throat.
It saw me. It saw me. The bloodletter cocked its head and found the smell of my fear tantalizing.
It bared its wickedly sharp teeth and bounded toward me screaming for my bloody flesh. I turned and galloped away - but the chain yanked me back to the ground.
The bloodletter pounced. I felt its paws crash into me. It punched the air from my lungs and drove me deep into the snow, pinning me beneath it with the bulging, rippling muscles of its forelegs. I whimpered helplessly as I felt its claws dug into my barding.
It dropped its jaw, howled into my face, and snapped its teeth towards my throat.
I held out my hooves - and my chains shattered between its teeth. My eyes widened at my forehooves - free. But not for long. The beast snarled - spat out the broken links and dove back into me. I hurled my hooves into its throat and held it back with all the strength I had left ... whimpering helplessly as I poured into my legs all the hope and desperation the wasteland hadn't taken from me yet.
Its yellow teeth snapped a breath's length away from my muzzle. Its black-veined eyes glared into mine.
It was too strong. I was just biding my time.
I was going to die.
It roared into my face, spraying my muzzle with ropes of thick, disgusting spittle. I smelled its breath. A breath that reeked with the stench of a vomit and rotting flesh. I could see chunks of ragged meat poking out between its teeth.
Pony meat.
I screamed.
With a nightmarish screech, the bloodletter threw its head back. The flesh of its muzzle throbbed. Swelled. Popped. Its lower jaw snapped wide open - torn and distended as its howls escalated into deafening, ear piercing shrieks.
Then its head began to twitch. It widened. And widened.
And its head ripped open.
It exploded outward - only its head didn't come apart. With a gurgling hiss, a long, writhing proboscis erupted out from the fleshy hole that was its throat between its four dripping, quivering mandibles.
"HOLY SHIT - WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS THING!?"
The bloodletter rumbled a throaty growl, its fleshy gray proboscis widening to reveal rows upon rows of serrated teeth. It, about as long as my outstretched foreleg, snaked into the air as I held back the rest of its body with my faltering strength.
I bared my teeth and screamed helplessly into its snapping mandibles, trying to wrestle the beast off me. But my muscles were burning. It was getting closer. It was too strong.
And I was too weak.
I stared into its soulless, insatiable eyes. A web of black veins bulged and throbbed around its sclera. It pushed. And pushed. And pushed.
My legs wobbled, and ached.
I faltered.
In a heartbeat, my limbs slackened. It fell upon me.
I shrieked as blood splashed onto my face and onto my chest. It tore into me, ripping me open. I lay there screaming - bleeding out.
But the blood wasn't mine.
The mutant abomination let out a dying shriek and slumped on top of me with a dozen ragged holes pouring blackish blood out of its head and throat. I wrestled it away with a faint groan, and saw Sugar Rum's carbine smoking.
She lowered her weapon and flung my belongings at me. I looked at her, painted in thick, steaming blood. Sugar Rum nodded once, levitated her gun, and continued firing. Two of the remaining slavers galloped towards her, unleashing their automatic weapons upon the bloodletters as they stalked toward us.
I slipped on my holster, threw on my saddlebags, and wrapped Dew Drops' scarf around my neck. Somepony screamed behind me, and I whirled on my hooves.
'Goddesses ... no.'
Three bloodletters circled the cage, snarling ... biding their time knowing that their prey was lying helplessly upon a silver platter before them. All they had to do was pounce.
The ponies huddled together inside. Trapped. They were but a single corpulent breath away from a gruesome end.
"HELP! SOMEPONY HELP US!" the bandaged mare begged.
"GET US OUT OF HERE!"
"The cage!" I pointed a hoof at the ponies that were cowering within. "We need to help them!"
The slavers looked the other way. Sugar Rum galloped towards me.
"The key - find the key!" she screamed.
I panned my PipBuck's light across the snow and spotted something shiny. I kicked my legs towards it - and a howling bloodletter landed in front of me.
It thrashed through the drifts.
I watched as the key disappeared beneath the shifting snow.
I lost it.
I lost.
"NOOO!" I cried as I yanked the trigger back. It crashed into to the snow and slid to my hooves in a trail of gore.
Dead.
Like the slaves.
I turned my head and saw the bad go to worse. The ponies screamed as a bloodletter wrapped its jaws around one of the metal bars and yanked. The cage slammed into the snow on its side, pinning the creature beneath and hurling the ponies on top of it. They landed against the bars in a shrieking heap, and the bloodletter's head split open, snaking its writhing proboscis through the bars.
It ripped into the mangy pony's throat.
The veiny proboscis tore off a huge chunk of flesh - stripping flesh from bone, and he collapsed against the metal bars at the other end of the cage. Within seconds, the bloodletters outside tore him apart through the bars in a gory frenzy of snapping teeth. He screamed in silence, his throat shredded to the bone as they broke his legs and ripped them off through the bars.
I shook my head vigorously, a cold sweat pouring down my face as the sounds of bones breaking, of flesh tearing - of their gurgling cries for help yanked me underwater. I drowned in their agony, lowering myself to the snow and cradling my head in my hooves, closing my eyes and wishing there was something I could do. Something.
I tried to do something. I tried to help them. I tried to shoot those monsters. I stood to my hooves and yanked the trigger back. My bullets plunged deep, but did nothing as the beasts shrugged them off, unfazed in their enraged, mindless state.
"Dear Celestia ... SOMEBODY HELP THEM!" I pleaded in desperation.
"Fuck 'em," the slaver mare with the battle rifle shouted back.
I froze.
"WHAT?!"
"FUCK 'EM! Let's get the fuck outta here!"
"YOU MOTHER FUCKERS!" I roared, swinging my pistol to face them. Then I heard the ravaged mare inside the cage scream. I turned. My eyes widened as the bloodletters tried to pull her through the bars. They couldn't. They tore her head off instead, lapping at the fountain of blood that splashed all over their white coats.
As I stood there watching, the slavers turned and galloped away.
Everyone except Sugar Rum. We stood there and watched. We watched the feast.
The bloodletters tore into those defenseless morsels, devouring them alive - their shrieks dying beneath the beasts' nightmarish howls. Whoever hadn't already died pleaded for death as limbs tore, bones broke, and entrails spilled. The earth pony fell to the bottom of the cage, clutching his eviscerated innards as proboscides fought against his gory forelegs in an effort to yank away his intestines.
I started towards them, and paused.
It was no use. They were already dead. The beasts snarled and barked as they fed. I listened to the squelching of shredded pony meat. The disgusting pops of disarticulated bones. The gurgling cries of the dying ponies as the bloodletters devoured them alive.
I heard everything. Listened to everything as their screams echoed in my thoughts, clawing at the white walls of my conscience - staining them red ... cracking the walls with every vicious, hungry snap.
I reared my head to the sky, yanked at my mane with my hooves, and screamed for Luna's grace.
Everyone I tried to help slipped away from my hooves. Everyone.
With a whooping screech, one of the beasts leaped towards us. It pounced upon Sugar Rum, clawing through her throat with its razor sharp talons in one fell sweep. She stumbled backwards upon her hinds, her forelegs wrapped around her throat, blood spurting through her hooves.
I said nothing, numb as SATS guided rounds through the bloodletters head until my magazine clicked empty. Sugar Rum collapsed into the snow, her lifeblood melting through the powder around her.
I fell to my haunches beside her, and held out my hooves. She just swatted them away, shaking her head.
"You ..." I whispered.
"Sorry - I'm sorry ... the shit I've done ... the ponies I've killed ... you're right ... not worth it," she choked, blood running down her lips. She hoofed one of her chest pockets, and pulled out a frayed slip of paper, holding it out to me with a bloody hoof. It was an aged photograph of a golden yellow pony, a mare with braided blonde locks, and two pale coated twins.
"Take it ... please ..." she rasped. I slipped it into one of my vest pockets, nodding gravely. Sugar Rum lifted her blue goggles and pulled off her hood, revealing the golden-coated pony underneath. She gazed up at me with her watery blue eyes as the light within them began to fade.
"The slaves ..." I began.
"I'll take care of them ..." Sugar Rum croaked. She levitated a small tube, and flipped it open. A detonator. "Go. If you find my daughters ... my sister ... tell them I-I ... I went out ... a good pony."
I nodded. Shell shocked. I touched her cheek with a forehoof as tears welled up in my eyes.
I stood to my hooves and started forward ... but I hesitated, glancing over my shoulder. Sugar Rum sat up, firing her carbine into the night.
I turned and kept going, no longer wanting to look back as I chased after the two remaining slavers. They hadn't gotten far. I saw, splattered across the snow, a stallion, his carcass nearly pulled apart into two, and his viscera spilled across the melting drifts. Around him were two dead bloodletters, their cratered heads painting the snow red.
The other mare was on the ground, wrestling with one of the beasts.
"Help!" she begged as its proboscis chomped down on her shoulder and tore out a chunk of meat.
My horn glowed. My pistol lifted into the air. But I hesitated.
A part of me just wanted to keep running. I watched as she struggled, entranced. I felt it again. The darkest corners of my mind whispering to me. Telling me to run.
'Why ...' I thought. 'Why should I help you?
The night lit up for a brief moment with a resonating crack, silencing the dying screams behind me. Then a single gunshot echoed into the night.
My ears rang as I clenched my eyes shut.
'Why ...'
Only the bloodletters remained. I exhaled a shaky breath and opened my eyes.
SATS fixed me a firing solution. Bullets plunged into its coat, tumbling through its chest and exploding out the other side. It paused to scream, and the mare bucked it off her.
She scrambled to her hooves and broke off into a full on gallop, bloody hoofprints trailing behind her.
"C'mon, c'mon!" she shouted. I followed.
The road disappeared behind us as we scrambled up a steep hill of broken asphalt. We approached an ancient recharging station, with an aged, blackened sign that vaguely read 'Mane 7-Eleven'. Not too far behind us, the bloodletters closed in.
Rifle Mare bucked open the door and we charged in, not caring what might be lying in wait within. I slammed the door behind us and scrambled inside. The mare pushed a half-disintegrated shelf in front of it, bits of blackened miscellanea spilling from its shelves as we heaved it into place.
For good measure, we heaved against the door two more - but even then, we were only delaying the inevitable. Outside, our horrible deaths awaited us. We were going to be eaten alive by those mutant abominations. The door rattled and quaked, the wooden barrier threatening to snap. It splintered and tore open, and the enraged, black-veined eye of a snarling bloodletter glared back at us.
"Shit! These things are fucking strong!" the mare screamed, backing away from the barricades. The door bucked inward once more with a jarring slam, and one of the shelves fell over in a heap of shattered wood and metal, kicking up a shower of ash from the floor.
The slaver turned to look at me, levitating a pistol from her holster.
"If we make it out of this, I'll let you go."
My expression darkened. We were going to die, and that was what she was thinking. To her, I was still just another slave. She left them behind for dead - for bait so she could escape, and didn't give a single shit.
And I knew that she would do it again - to me ... just ... to save ... her skin.
She ... she cared only about herself. I stared at her with a disturbing calmness that would have frightened me if I was looking in a mirror. I shivered once beneath my barding.
Then nothing.
In that moment, the bestial roars outside, my heaving chest, my pounding temples - they all faded away into a grim silence.
Cold black paint trickled down the pockmarked walls of my conscience. I let the floodgates part.
I decided that only one of us was going to make it out alive.
I learn from my mistakes. I don't make the same mistakes twice. And you know what?
Good things happen to bad ponies.
"W-why are you looking at me like that?"
I slipped into SATS.
Her knees snapped beneath her like wooden planks with satisfying, wet cracks.
She let out a horrifying scream as her pistol discharged into my kevlar vest.
I felt nothing.
I watched with an icy stare as she crumbled to the floor.
"Y-you SON OF A BITCH!" she wailed as I spun around and ran the other way. One of the shelves went down in a deafening crash of splintered wood. She crawled across the floor with her useless forelegs and leaned against the final barricade, holding it against the door for her dear life. Outside, the monsters rammed their bodies against the door behind her.
"NO! Don't!"
I galloped away from her. I didn't lose a single step.
"DON'T LEAVE ME HERE!"
She was sobbing now.
"PLEASE!"
I didn't look back. The doors smashed open and their carnal, bestial roars echoed behind me. They tore into her, the sounds of her flesh tearing - her bones breaking ... they crashed against my ears like waves on a seashore as the bloodletters ripped her apart.
Limb. From. Limb.
I bucked down the backdoor and galloped out into the snow, the mare's frantic, gurgling screams dying away behind me. My hooves pounded into the drifts, kicking up showers of powder as I ran for my life.
My life.
I ran until the Mane 7-Eleven disappeared behind me in a under a blanket of thick snowfall. For what seemed like hours, I galloped on until my legs gave out beneath me and I collapsed into the snow. Out of breath, I wheezed for air, filling my lungs with biting cold oxygen that reminded me that I ... I was still alive.
I struggled to my hooves and looked up. A sign. I beamed it with my PipBuck's teal glow.
Welcome to the City of Poneva.
Population 5,390,000.
I stared up at the sign in disbelief, my breaths coming in and out as coughs. I held out my forelegs and hugged the sign's metal posts, gasping for breath. I wheezed, fell to my haunches and threw up acid, because I had nothing left to heave. I slumped to the drifts, curled up into a ball, writhing as my stomach churned and my head spun.
I inhaled deeply and exhaled, my trembling breath slowly dissipating into the frozen darkness.
A wide grin slowly stretched across my face.
"Ha ... ha ..." I breathed. "Hahaha ... hahahaha ..." I closed my eyes, threw my head back and laughed. I whooped with maddening hilarity until my cackles turned to chuckles, and my chuckles turned into cries.
I choked on my trembling sobs as warm, fresh tears welled out of my weary eyes. I wept into my hooves, my tears mingling with the dried crimson that splattered my face, turning red, and seething down my cheeks in dark rivulets.
I sat on my haunches in the snow, staring off into the distance, my heart racing, my lungs heaving, and my body shuddering.
The huge, towering skyscrapers of Poneva rose up above the dim suburbs and into the clouds, lights and distant signs twinkling into the night as far as the eye could see.
'I made it, Dew Drops, I made it.'
'I'm alive. I won.'
That was all that mattered.
Footnote: Level Up.
New Perk: Mare Killer - In combat, you do +10% damage against female opponents. Outside of combat, you'll sometimes have access to unique dialogue options when dealing with the opposite sex. |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 5 - One With None - Pt I | Chapter 5
One With None
"Not that many ponies go this way up to Poneva on hoof. In fact, not that many ponies go up this way to Poneva at all, let alone by themselves."
In solemn quietude, I followed a battered wagon, Dew Drops' blood-speckled scarf billowing behind me in the chilling breeze.
Across the broken, half-buried road, the wind blew gusts of swirling snowflakes that clung loosely to the soiled fabrics of my battered barding. Beneath my vest's kevlar plates, my bruised, livid flesh ached, sending sharp stabs of pain through my chest with every trembling breath I took.
I was exhausted. There wasn't a single muscle in my body that wasn't sore. Every step was a step made with aching exertion.
I glanced over my shoulder, and saw far-flung groups of ponies trotting distantly behind me, having merged back into the Crystal Highway from another road that bypassed the canyon I nearly died in several hours ago.
That other road must've been the one Night Sky and the others would've taken. The route I would've taken with them.
I sighed. It didn't matter anymore.
Several miles away in the distance, Poneva's tattered skyscrapers, towers that may have been taller once, loomed over the fallen city like tombstones, somber reminders of a better age. An age thrown away by the same ponies that preached their damned friendship across Equestria.
I looked around at the cold indifferent faces that passed by as wagons and ponies trotted past me. Where was that friendship now?
I certainly had none of it left. Nobody left.
I exhaled a trembling breath, and willed my legs to keep moving. I was almost there. I could already see the city walls and make out the pony-shaped silhouettes standing upon its ramparts.
Well, 'walls' was the closest word I could think of to describe what encircled the city. Erected between the city's roads were immense, patchwork, junk-made obstructions that blocked off open roads between Poneva's high rises, and barricaded intact buildings. Silhouettes hobbled across ramparts of junk and ladders that hung over the streets between the boarded up derelicts.
What with the terrors that lurked outside in the wilderness, it wasn't too surprising that they decided to just build a huge wall to keep the monsters out.
Somehow, I was convinced that behind those walls, life was somewhat safer than life out there, despite what Duster told me. Hooligans and gangsters or not, I preferred to be shot at by other people, not eaten alive by some mutant abomination from hell.
My heart fluttered with distant hope. 'Maybe,' I thought, 'Just maybe, I'll survive this.'
All around me, the ruins became denser as I approached the city walls.
The blackened rubble and dilapidated metal skeletons that lined the streets were all that remained of the city's surrounding suburbs and countryside. Off in the great distance beyond Poneva's walls stretched only ruin.
As remote as Spring Song's woodland cottage was, even it was not far enough to escape the infernal hellfire that scoured the earth. I wasn't sure if it was possible for balefire to reach as far as it did. Poneva city rose up around me for hundreds of miles. It sent shivers down my spine thinking that one single bomb... one bomb could've destroyed so much. There had to be more than one ...
It was hard to believe. But so was everything else I had seen so far in that frozen hell of a wasteland.
I sighed, glancing around me.
Snaking along the road that lead to the city gates was a thinning trail of shivering ponies. I paused for a moment and glanced over my shoulder. Behind me and around me, and at a cautious distance trotted ponies from all walks of life. Traders and their wagons full of machinery, medicines, canned foods, and the occasional firearms rattled past me. I shared the road with the infrequent slaver wagon which I met with a burning glare that turned away heads - slaver and slave alike.
I bared my teeth through an amused grin as a slaver with an assault rifle eyed me up and down and trotted to the other side of the wagon bed.
If it wasn't the hatred in my eyes that was leaving them with their tails tucked between their legs, I wasn't sure what was. I sure as hell didn't scare Sugar Rum's crew much when they tried to take me. I wondered what made things so different that time?
A wagon full of wayward travelers peered down at me from behind the sideboards of their rickety contraption, and shot me strange, ghastly looks. I narrowed my eyes at them and they looked away or busied themselves with invisible doodads in lame attempts to lose my attention.
One mare, as she led her pack animals through the snow, took one look at me and mouthed 'holy shit', before quickening her pace.
'Why the hell is everybody looking at me like that?!' I thought, 'Did I step in shit or something?'
Those ponies looked like they just saw a ghost.
I grumbled irritably as I plodded through the snow, their awkward stares tearing at my already frayed nerves. A wagon groaned past me to my right. A colt wearing a hat too big for his head ogled me with wide eyes.
I gave him the friendliest, most innocent grin I could muster. But my smile capsized when he let out a terrified squeak and ducked underneath the wagon's sideboard.
"You little shit ..." I grumbled.
I caught someone staring at me in my peripherals. I spun around and jabbed a hoof at him.
"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LOOKING AT?"
He swatted my foreleg away and pelted me with bottlecaps. "S-shit, just take my damn caps and leave me alone!" he cried, galloping away from me in horror.
"Yeah, fuck you too," I muttered, a hoofful of caps now resting in the snow before me. "These are mine now." I stooped over as ponies continued to avoid me, gathering up the caps in my hooves while mumbling obscenities.
I exhaled a shuddering, exasperated breath of mist and stopped for a moment to rub my weary eyes.
My hooves came away from my face encrusted with brittle crumbs of dried blood. I glared at my trembling hooves with grim, dark eyes. Down my chest, I saw that I was painted with it. Blood. Everywhere. My barding was a canvas of dark red splatters, grisly bits of hardened gore, and vicious bullet holes that perforated my chest.
If they knew that my barding was bulletproof, they might not have thought that I was some kind nightmarish zombie pony.
Hell, even my mane sported splotches of contrasting dark reds.
'Yay. Highlights.'
It made my stomach churn. I wasn't sure what blood was mine, or who it belonged to. All I knew was that some of them were stains that couldn't be washed away.
I remembered that mare I murdered. How she begged. Sobbed. Cried.
I remembered how easy it was to just walk away.
In my mind I tried to rationalize it. I tried to justify it - I kept telling myself that I never would have survived that massacre had I not done what I did.
Bait.
That was how I used her. She was bait. But she was a slaver, a shitty excuse for a pony. She was a bad pony, and bad ponies needed to get what was coming to them.
But then I wondered: what did that make me? Maybe she too had a family, a family who was wondering where she was and if she'd ever return home to put food on the table.
Like Sugar Rum.
I clenched my eyes closed and cradled my head in my weary hooves. The doubt slowly faded away as my mind reclined into chilling tranquility.
She was a slaver. Maybe she deserved to die.
I sighed a trembling, misty breath and watched it dissipate into the frigid breeze. I turned my gaze to my hooves, avoiding everyone's frightened eyes ... and kept walking.
In my weary state, I couldn't risk attracting too much attention. I couldn't risk getting into another fight. I could feel it ... feel it in the throbs that clenched inside my skull. I was hungry and exhausted. My blood sugar was low and I was running even lower on ammunition - not that I needed to put a bullet in somebody, then and there.
My impeccable fashion sense was keeping most of them away from me, anyways.
I keyed my PipBuck's inventory and scrolled through the belongings I logged in my saddlebags. Aside from my tools, which included my spade, twelve 10mm rounds and one health potion were all I had left.
I wasn't even sure if I even had any fight left in me.
I didn't want to fight unless I really had to. I was still a glorified earth pony with a horn for fuck's sake. I needed to rest.
But most of all, I still had a promise to keep.
I couldn't let Dew Drops down - I couldn't let my stable down.
A mile later and several minutes spent trying not to look at anybody in the eye passed, and Poneva's corrugated walls and decrepit skyscrapers began to tower over me. I felt like I reached the gates to salvation. I was so close. So close, that I could feel the weight of a water talisman resting upon my hooves. I held up my right forehoof and gazed at it longingly, my leg shaking uncontrollably as it hung in the air, empty.
As I approached Poneva's gates, I walked alongside a lonely wagon. It was noticeably different from the rest of the jury-rigged or built-from-scratch wagons that rumbled around me. It looked to have been a work of impeccable craftsmanship. Once.
The dark purple paint that covered its metal panels were stripped away in many places, scored by blades and gunfire. The low hum of a fusion core engine within reminded me that it wasn't just some jury-rigged wreck.
I looked inside the wagon and what I saw startled the ever-living shit out of me.
"What the hell ..." I murmured, as a black-coated pony met my stare. I gave him a wide-eyed look over and saw that he was a pegasus ... except instead of feathered wings tucked at his sides, black leathery bat wings were folded behind him.
He stared through me with blank, shell-shocked eyes, his muzzle resting upon his hooves as he leaned out of the wagon to watch the snow drifts and ruins pass by. If the pony was in any way repulsed by my appearance, he wasn't going to tell me. The callousness of his gaze sent shivers down my spine.
I turned my head low and chanced a glance at the pony's face once more. He, like the other ponies inside the wagon had piercing, vividly-colored eyes, bat wings, and fuzzy, elongated ears that dwarfed my own.
The bat ponies looked worn to the bone, like they'd been through the depths of hell and back - but not without hell leaving upon them its marks. Many of them sported vicious scars that stretched down their muzzles to disappear beneath their frayed barding.
I didn't want to imagine what sort of monster could have hurt them that way. Some wounds looked to be deliberately shaped, as if they were tortured, toyed with, or made to suffer at the hooves or talons of some laughing, insidious creature.
I wanted to relate their scars to snow furies ... but from my experience, they were more of a force of nature than they were calculating torturers.
Inside of their battered wagon, the weary souls huddled together in silence as it rumbled along the road. Seeing people like that really made me question if I truly understood what suffering meant.
I slowed my trot to a walk and trailed behind them as they neared the gates. I spotted ponies standing on the side of the road. The bat ponies slowed as the others took notice. They trotted towards the wagon as it approached.
We came closer, and I saw that they were wearing matching barding.
Those ponies - with not a single mare among them, were garbed with an assortment of reddish headwear or barding, from scarlet bandannas wrapped around their muzzles, to do-rags tied around their cropped manes. Others simply wore barding that was of a shade relative to the color red.
'How cute,' I thought, darkly.
Unlike all of the ponies around me, they were all armed. Armed with guns that looked newer and better maintained than the weathered, and in some cases, tattered clothes on their backs.
One of the red ponies galloped back to the herd of unruly stallions with a bag of jingling caps. They erupted with boisterous laughter and shoved each other around, trying to get their teeth on that pony's coins.
The pony stumbled away, spilling his caps before getting into a full on brawl with another. He bucked the pony away from him and swept up his booty, stuffing it into his saddlebag.
'What fucking idiots,' I thought. Those guards were far from conventional. Though I wasn't even sure if the professional tone the word 'guard' had with it could even apply to that rabble. When I thought of a guard, I thought of Lightning Twirl in her well-pressed uniform and snugly-fitted kevlar vest.
But those ponies? Bullies - thugs - scum would've been even more appropriate.
I remembered what Duster said to me at the caravan: pay the toll, and you probably won't have any problems. Probably.
One of them, visibly irritated by his empty hooves, turned his glare to the wagon of bat ponies and drew his shotgun, a devious grin stretching across his face. I stepped off the road and slunk back into the darkness. I couldn't afford to get myself dragged in another massacre.
I had been doing a lot of that since I left home.
I pulled off Dew Drops' scarf and slipped it gingerly into my bags. Its white stripes would give me away if someone shined a light on me - and I couldn't risk that. Not in my current state. I lowered myself into the snow, shivering against its icy touch as I slid one hoof in front of the other.
My brown coat and dark blue barding melted into the night as I stalked through the snow and ruin beneath the shadow of Poneva city. I crawled, as quiet as the shallow breaths that slithered out through my cracked lips.
I paused, lying prone behind a broken retaining wall and peaking over the debris-littered snow drifts. Letting out a trembling breath, I scrutinized the red-garbed ponies that approached the wagon with narrowed eyes. They crowded around it like radroaches swarming a fallen morsel.
"Hey!" one of them shouted, raising a hoof to the wagon. "Pay up, or get the fuck out!"
I watched quietly, holding my breath as a bat pony mare dismounted and dug through her pockets. A hoofful of jingling caps fell into the hoof of a glaring red pony.
The toll collector glanced at his hoof, and snorted. He stood there, eyed the mare up and down, shook the sack of caps, and held her stare.
My eyes widened as he threw it to the snow.
The bat pony's jaw dropped. "What!?"
He leaned in, baring his teeth. "You're a hundred caps short, bitch!"
"I-I thought the toll was twenty-five caps!" she stammered in her strange, foreign accent. Her winged kin peeked over the sideboard, chattering with one another in hushed voices.
"The toll's whatever the fuck I say it is, you bat-winged freak." I glared at him as he stood on his hinds and folded his legs across his chest. "Now pay the fuck up."
"Those are all the caps we have left ..." she murmured.
He just threw his head back and laughed in the mare's face.
"We gonna have problems, bat girl?" the stallion growled, shoving her into the wagon's sideboard. She grunted as the vehicle shook against her.
I clenched my jaw.
"Please ... all we want is to find shelter from the Tempest!" she pleaded, cupping her forehooves together. "We can't survive out here ... please - keep the caps - just let us go!"
The collector snorted as his cronies approached, "So ... you bat pony freaks think you can short change the Blood Brothers?" The gang of red ponies swarmed together, crooked bats, rusty pipes, and firearms in tow. They laughed, hefting their weapons and snorting madly - hungry for a fight. "Alright boys - show 'em what happens to people who fuck with the Blood Brothers!" the stallion cried as the mob of barking red ponies surrounded the wagon.
Mares screamed inside as the reds prodded the ponies within with the ends of their weapons as if they were a gaggle of exotic zoo animals. The bat ponies huddled together and batted them away, frantically.
The guards that mounted the ramparts swung their floodlights to bathe the growing commotion in glaring, white light. The line of travelers behind them backed away, keeping a considerable distance between themselves and the firefight that was sure to erupt at any moment.
Perfect.
Fuck their tolls. Fuck those ponies. Fuck them and their stupid, red outfits.
It was the perfect opportunity to slip away unseen. I closed my eyes and listened as the cursing became shoving and the shoving became swinging. Bats and pipes banged heavily against the wagon's sideboards as they threw punches and shoved each other away.
Perfect.
I crawled through the charred, concrete ruins.
I imagined myself crawling through the pipes at engineering ... crawling beneath the steam clouds on the day my life made a turn for the worst. Head down, eyes forward. Head down, eyes forward. I was going to make it.
I stuck to the darkness like a shadow stuck to a body.
A voice cried out into the night. I froze.
"You fucking freaks!"
I peered through a crack in a retaining wall and saw a red crunch into the snow. The bat ponies hissed as the stallion's brothers hauled him away, kicking and cursing.
His brothers reached for their guns - and a bat pony stallion rose up from behind the sideboards.
The reds stumbled upon their hooves. Some took a step back. Clenched between the bat pony's teeth was a strange, bladed pistol that glowed with a dull green hue.
"Stay back! I mean it!"
CRACK!
Ponies screamed. I almost jumped out of my skin.
"Yeah - haha, stay down, fuckers!" a red shouted, his assault rifle smoking in the breeze as the bat ponies ducked for cover.
I shook my head. Things were falling through their hooves too quickly for my own comfort. My window of opportunity was closing. Fast. For some reason I found myself hoping they didn't take the easy route and just shoot those ponies dead.
I could only hope that they'd take their sweet time. Distracted.
I lurched forward, not wanting to linger, crawling through the snow beneath a charred windowsill. I reached out with a foreleg and felt my barding tear.
Pain shot through my legs as stalagmites of icy, melted glass stabbed through my unarmored hind legs. I clenched my jaw, stifling a curse.
My ears perked. Hoofsteps plodded towards me. I curled up as close to the wall as I could, cringing as glass dug deep into the livid flesh beneath my coat. Half a foot of concrete away on the other side, two blood brothers propped up their bleeding comrade against the windowsill.
One of the reds snickered, "That little fuckface gotchu good, didn't he?"
The other spat blood into the snow. "Fuck off - them ponies got some crazy zebra-jitsu bullshit!"
"They ain't zebras, dumbass - they're just bat ponies."
"Well, no fuckin' shit, asshole. But that prick hoofed my face twice before I could even count once!"
'Idiots ...' I mouthed as I glared down the line of ruined suburbs. Twenty yards. I was about twenty yards away from the gates. A carpet of inviting darkness coaxed me onward. I shook my head, grinding my teeth as the ponies outside continued berating each other.
That damned glass and those stupid shitheads were going to get me killed.
"Alright - alright everypony! Settle down!" the collector shouted over the rabid reds. His brothers ignored him, cheering over the screaming bat ponies as they shook the wagon from side to side. "I said settle down!"
They didn't.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" He blasted the snow at their hooves with buckshot.
They got the message and backed off, lowering their weapons and muttering things about the collector's mother. In the relative silence, I narrowed my eyes through a crack that ran down the wall, trying to see past a pair of hooves.
"Ain't got the caps, eh?" A sick grin stretched across his face as he ran a hoof down the mare's neck. "Tell ya what: you find something else to pay me with and I'll let y'all in." She winced, craning her neck away from him as he chuckled softly. "I always did wanna know what batd pussy tasted like." He reached a hoof into her barding's collar below her chin, and parted it slightly.
She swatted away his foreleg, cursing him in her foreign tongue as the stallion's brothers cheered him on.
"Take it off, batbitch!" I heard one of the reds outside the windowsill shout.
I reached out with a foreleg and pulled myself forward.
Glass shattered beneath me. I clenched my eyes closed and swore under my breath as chunks of broken glass stabbed into my barding.
"The fuck was that?" one of the blood brothers hissed, leaning over the windowsill. I dug my back as far into the charred concrete as I possibly could like a startled radroach.
"Come on, lil filly, just one kiss!" The mare threw her forelegs in front of her and shrieked as he slammed her into the sideboards and planted rough kisses against her neck.
"GET OFF ME!" she shrieked - and shrill cries erupted into the night. The mare's kin shot out of the wagon and into the air, beating their wings frantically. They barked at each other in their strange language as the blood brothers whooped and cursed.
There was going to be blood. And I needed to get out of there - fast -
"Ey Rocky, hoof me your flashlight. Thinkin' maybe I heard somethin' back here."
A black pipe levitated over the window.
Goddesses. No.
My heart nearly skipped a beat. 'Fuck!'
I swore under my breath and dragged myself forward.
CRACK!
'Shit!' I threw a glance over my shoulder.
Somepony outside screamed. Then silence. I peered out of a crack in the wall.
The toll collector was lying in a heap, a glowing spike of superheated metal jutting out between his eyes.
Everyone fell silent as the stench of burnt hair and cauterized flesh dissipated into the breeze. A bat pony snarled, beating his wings and baring his canines with that glowing pistol clenched between his teeth.
"You bat pony FREAKS!" someone roared.
And all the gunfire in the world erupted into the night.
The flashlight plummeted into the darkness, cracking against my ribcage as the brothers galloped off. I exhaled a jet of air as I bit my tongue and drew blood.
That was my chance. I paused, and peeked my head over the rubble as the brothers pumped lead into the wagon's frame. I watched the bat ponies duck below, the wagon's paint and hull chipping away with every spark, with every flash - with every bullet that blasted into its thick frame.
Horror flashed across my face. I wanted to help them somehow. Somehow. But if I did, if I rose up from the rubble, guns blazing, I knew that there wasn't a single damned way in the world I'd make it out of there alive.
There I was, again ... watching helplessly as more ponies died.
But they were as helpless as I was.
I was horrified to know, that if I had to choose ...
I'd choose me.
And I chose to get the hell out of there ... while I still could.
Snow kicked up behind me. I darted across the rubble, ducking into the darkness of some derelict ruin. Gunfire flashed through the shattered windowpanes and painted my shadow against the ruin's bare walls. The world blurred past me as every throbbing fiber of my being, every sore muscle, every hypoglycemic blood vessel in my body focused on reaching the gate.
Alive.
I heaved myself over a collapsed doorway.
I didn't even notice the blood brother that was loitering outside.
My eyes widened as I blundered into him and tackled him into the snow. We wrestled around in the darkness as he screamed for help.
"Get the fuck off me!" the young stallion cried out, trying to draw his pistol.
I swatted it out of his hooves, the weapon landing a foot away in the rubble.
"Stop!" I hissed at him as I bashed him across the skull with a forehoof, silencing his cries. "Be quiet - I don't want to kill you!"
He bucked me off his chest - clawing at the snow in desperation - trying to hoof his fallen pistol with a dazed look in his eyes.
I growled and threw myself on top of him. If he didn't stop screaming, he was going to get me killed.
He was going to get me killed.
"You - mother - fucker!" I snarled as I dropped my hooves onto his face again and again, my mind reeling as fresh blood peppered my muzzle.
"H-help!" The pony shielded his battered face with trembling hooves.
In my peripherals I caught sight of the bat pony wagon - surrounded by half a dozen bloodied corpses. The bat ponies within unloaded with everything they had with terrifyingly pinpoint accuracy, cutting down any red that they saw.
That momentary segue was all he needed. Hooves slammed into my gut, summoning bile to my throat. Without a moment to spare, he wrestled me to the powder and trampled me beneath his hooves as he leaped to all fours.
Whipping his mane back, he screamed over the gunfire, "H-help! Runner! We got a -"
I bowed my head and galloped straight at him.
My horn plunged into his gut.
I wrenched my head away and ripped out of him in a splash of bloody gore. He stumbled backwards onto his hinds, whimpering helplessly with wide eyes, stunned - stunned as he clutched the ragged hole in his stomach.
He gasped for air and dropped his jaw. I knew what he was going to do next.
I didn't even give him a chance to scream.
Not again.
I tackled him to the snow. The stallion writhed beneath me, knocking his pistol away into the darkness.
I felt my hooves wrap around his throat.
"Shut up ... shut up ..." I hissed into his muzzle. He batted at me with his faltering forelegs, unable to scream as he gasped and choked. "SHUT. UP."
I squeezed. I squeezed, and squeezed. Tighter, and tighter. His hooves pawed and flailed at my muzzle as I crushed his windpipe and cold sweat ran down my face.
My muscles tensed. My forelegs trembled. My heart quaked faster than I could breathe - but I didn't stop.
Stars flashed in my eyes. A dull ringing invaded my senses. All I could hear was my quaking heartbeat and my frantic breaths. Dark veiny tunnels closed in around me, my face contorting into an anguished grimace as my lucidity plunged into the darkness ... drowning like a ship sinking beneath the waves of a frozen sea.
I lost myself in his terrified eyes, the eyes of a pony who knew he was going to die. I gazed at the reflection that stared back, its teeth bared, its coat bathed in blood, and its darkened face sneering madly.
I felt nothing. I thought nothing. The stallion moved his mouth but I couldn't hear a thing. Not. A single. Thing.
It only made me squeeze harder.
"I ... won't ... be ... a victim ..." I heard someone whisper, distantly.
Muzzle flashes illuminated the darkening windows of his bulging eyes as his life ticked away with every suffocating second that dragged by. My hooves dug deep, tearing into the flesh of his throat. He wept a rivulet of blood that streamed down his cheek ... down my hoof as I squeezed ... and squeezed ... and squeezed.
"You can't stop me. Not this close. No one can stop me, now ..."
It was over as fast as it began.
It was over before my brain even registered it.
Through the dark, veiny tunnels of my eyes, I gazed back at his bleeding, agonized stare. I collapsed onto my haunches over his lifeless corpse, peering down at my trembling hooves in horror. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I stumbled to my ungainly legs, taking shuddering gasps for air that did nothing to slow the pounding in my chest.
I bowed my head and saw in the darkness, beneath my hooves ...
A pony.
There was a hole in his chest. There were bruises around his throat. There was a puddle of blood pooling around his still, unmoving corpse.
I almost wanted to scream.
But instead I cried. I sobbed hysterically, staring at my bloody hooves as I realized that ...
That I did that ... I did that.
I murdered another pony.
I shook my head furiously, trying to clear my mind as I stumbled through the snow in a daze. I didn't want to look back. I should've kept going. I should've kept galloping towards the gates while I still could. But I didn't. All I could see was that stallion lying dead in the snow.
Dead.
Far away, in another world nearby, the gunfire and screams were nothing but muffled bass drops beneath the ringing in my ears. There was a distant crash - and a bang. I turned and with my glassy eyes, I saw blood brothers stumbling away, rubbing their eyes, or cradling their heads. Some simply lay in the snow, dead.
In the confusion, I watched as the wagon puller leaped over the sideboards and yanked the wagon into the air.
I followed their wagon into the sky and into the darkness with my blank stare.
They made it.
But I needed to make it, too.
I snapped out of it, shoving to the back of my mind everything that scraped against my thoughts like hooves on chalkboard. I tore my eyes from the dark clouds. And ran.
No one could stop me. I galloped out of the darkness and across the final stretch as the blood brothers screamed at the dissipating fireworks display in frustration.
By the time they returned to their posts, frustrated and with empty hooves, I was already gone - melted away into the darkness.
I wiped away a single tear as I followed the shadows to salvation. *
I stood at the center of a snowy intersection.
Ponies, clad in tattered, dirty barding trotted past me and around me like a stream parting around a stone. Their eyes, turned low, paid no attention to the filthy, shivering stallion that stood among them. Because I, to them, was nothing but another poor pony - like everyone else in those dark slums.
I gazed across the street with my bloodshot eyes, taking in my gloomy surroundings. They glistened dully in the ruddy red and yellow lights that flickered weakly in the snowfall.
Jutting out of the dirty snow were small, smoke-wreathed eateries - stalls and shanties that stank with the bitter, stomach turning stench of burned meat and over-steamed cabbages. All around me were hovels and gnarled concrete ruins that reeked with more than just the stench of vomit and alcohol, sporting flickering neon signs that barely clung to life, spelling out 'liquor' or 'grub'.
I turned my head high and reality skewed inward as if the entire world was collapsing upon itself. I trembled uncontrollably beneath my blood-caked barding as the colossal, concrete ruins of the old city loomed over me, threatening to crush me underneath.
Distant gunshots, echoing shrieks, and pleasured moans coalesced into an uncomfortable ambience that scratched and scraped at my thinning sanity. There were too many people. Too many voices. Too many in one place.
My head was going to explode.
Whereas night outside Poneva's walls was silent, eerie, and haunting, night in Poneva was a claustrophobic mess of flashing lights and revolting sounds that made me physically ill.
Poneva was an alien world. But I was the alien. Any semblance of normality that my heart once held dear - warmth, comfort, safety - all of it was swept away, suffocated and trampled beneath the cold, grimy hooves of the underworld ponies that trotted past me. Poneva was the final nail in the coffin, a coffin that I felt powerless to escape.
I felt like I was going to be buried alive.
I took a step forward, and my hoof crunched through glass. The shards broke around my hoof, scattering dozens of jagged fragments across the dirty snow. For a haunting, dislocated second, I caught my reflections - warped and distorted across the broken glass.
My chin trembled at the disheveled wreck of my former self - my mane grizzled, my coat darker in some places with filth and dried perspiration. And the blood. Oh Goddesses, the blood ... it was everywhere, all over me, staining my barding, my flesh ...
... my soul.
I stared at my reflections, my chin quivering as I tried to swallow my tears.
'That can't be me,' I thought, 'That ... that thing ... that monster can't be me. It just can't. I'm Red Dawn. Apprentice engineer. Shift C. Serial code F03RD82996. Stable 91.'
The monster glared back. A mad grin stretched across his lips.
'I'm Red Dawn,' I kept telling myself, 'Apprentice engineer. Shift C ...'
But he knew. His bloodshot eyes told me that I was wrong. Everything was so wrong.
'I'm Red Dawn. Apprentice engineer. Shift... Shift C. Serial code... F... 0... 3...'
My reflections. My bloody barding. Those furies. Zebras. Slavers. Slaves. That blood brother. They all mocked me in silence.
"NO!" I hissed through clenched teeth, stomping the glass shards until the ghosts broke apart and died. "Not me..." A forehoof ran against Dew Drops' scarf as hot tears streamed down my cheeks. "You're not me..." * |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 5 - One With None - Pt II | *
My stomach grumbled.
I eyed longingly at a flickering neon sign that said 'diner', before flames crept up the wall beneath it. Blinking for the last time, the sign popped and exploded in a dull flash. My eyes fluttered closed as the acrid stench of smoke filled my nostrils. I cupped a hoof over my mouth as I relived a memory that had been branded into my conscience not too long ago.
Zebras or not, it was all the same. I could still hear them screaming.
The diner's walls crackled and moaned, fires raging within. Wooden beams snapped and collapsed, feeding the flames as the fire slowly consumed every inch of the restaurant. Outside, ponies dragged out charred crates of miscellanea, aluminum cans tumbling about. One pony just stood among the throng, staring quietly as the building burned. She must've owned the place. Or, used to.
She watched as those ponies fought among each other for the canned food that spilled onto the snow.
The frenzied ponies, clad in grimy, tattered barding, fell upon an opened crate of foodstuffs, tearing into it like wild animals and spilling its canned innards into the snow. Even if they were hers, there wasn't much she could do to stop them. Nobody else bothered to stop them anyways, as they broke into the crates and scurried off with whatever hadn't already been burned to ash.
I kept telling myself that Poneva was probably one of the last bastions of civilization in the Northern Wasteland.
But the looters just kept looting. That was what was left of civilization - and that shithole of a city was the biggest concentration of it.
Not far from the burning building, ponies in collared, jet black businesswear watched the shop burn as they clanked glass bottles and took long drinks.
One of them took a rag, stuffed it in one of the bottles, and lobbed it through one of the shop's broken windows. The splash fed the fires within, and the inferno exploded outward, spilling out of the windows like a cup running over. The looters yelped like frightened little dogs, scurrying away. One of them rolled around in the snow, his clothes trailing smoke.
The black-clad ponies trotted over to the quiet mare. One of them bucked her in the chest, and she collapsed face down into the drifts. The pony donned her wide-brimmed fedora and spat into the snow; the others did the same, and left her there without another word.
They heaved a soot-covered safe into the back of a wagon before the ponies departed, their job done and their treasures stowed away. The mare didn't turn to see them leave. She just buried her face in the snow, her shoulders rocking with muffled sobs.
The fire's cruel glow made my mind numb. My hooves were even number as they plodded through the fetlock-deep powder. The looters had left with their treasures by then, leaving the mare to lay there alone and abandoned with nothing left. I glanced at her, and saw that she hadn't moved an inch.
Sighing softly, I stopped at one of the near-empty crates, staring at its spilled innards. Aluminum cans were scattered across the snow, leaking a brownish, half-solid slurry. I dipped a hoof into a puddle of pasty brown sludge, brought it to my nose, and hesitated.
It looked like poop water to me.
I clenched my jaw, and took a whiff. Nope. Beans. Old, ancient, botulism-riddled pre-war beans.
I shook my head as my stomach groaned achingly for food ... for something ... something that wasn't just snow. I was getting desperate. I'd nearly passed out earlier, and a steady, pulsating headache impaled my brain with rail spikes every time a hoof made contact with the ground beneath me. But as Night Sky said, there could be no rest - not even for the weary.
To keep going would kill me. But to sit there and wait for my horn to flicker back or wait for my insides to stop churning meant another day crossed off of 91's life span.
I opened my saddlebags and dumped inside the few cans that hadn't been trampled over. For a moment, I hesitated as my languid gaze crawled down my vest.
My barding was still covered in blood.
With a heavy heart, I clamped my teeth around the brim of a squashed can, shaking out as much of its contents as I could, and stumbled towards the flame.
Skirting the fire's edge made my skin prickle. Sweat began to trickle down my face as I approached a wooden beam that fell into the snow outside, its surface blackened and smoldering with hungry flames.
I sat beside it, scooping up some snow with my can, before nudging it in the fire. I watched the snow melt with a disturbing calmness in my eyes.
I kept telling myself that I wasn't a murderer, but the gory shell that covered my shivering flesh said otherwise. I needed to wash it off. I wanted to wash it off before the blood settled and stained even deeper than the clothes on my back.
I killed that blood brother. Gored him with my horn and choked him to death with my bare hooves.
If that was what Night Sky meant by doing whatever it took to save the folks back home, then my life wasn't the only thing I feared to lose. I remembered it in shattered shards of icy memories: his face as I blundered into him, the pain I felt when he bucked me in the chest ... my horn dripping with his blood ... my hooves tightening around his throat ...
The rest was lost to blackness and hysteria.
'Out here,' Night Sky's voice whispered inside my thoughts, 'Killing is just another part of living ...'
My heart shuddered with disgust. I gulped down the lump in my throat, shoved it away into the furthest corners of my mind, slammed the door shut, and locked it behind me.
I rubbed at my temples with my hooves, letting out a long, drawn out sigh. I fished the can out of the flames with a long piece of cardboard. It spilled across the snow. I nudged the can with the tip of my hoof until it stood upright, too hot to hold in my hooves. I waited for it to cool.
I stood to my hooves and hesitated. I could feel eyes on the back of my head. I glanced over my shoulder.
The mare was sitting there on her haunches, staring right at me. She might have been watching me that entire time as I picked through what few there was left of her store. Her livelihood. The job that put food on her table.
I just stared back. For a while, neither of us said anything. I didn't have much left to say. And she didn't have much left.
I shook my head and retreated back into the darkness with my can of half-melted slurry. Climbing atop cold shanties, mounds of frozen detritus, and discarded scraps, I found a place where I could be alone. Away from the burning shop, away from that mare, there was a shed that sat atop an abandoned building overlooking the shanty town below. I inched my rump onto the cold sheet metal beneath me in an attempt to ease the strain on my sore muscles. Trembling jets of wispy mist hissed through my lips as I finally lowered myself to the floor. With a long, drawn out sigh, I shrugged off my saddlebags.
I placed the can of slush between my forelegs and narrowed my eyes at it with all the focus I could muster. Nothing - except for the riveting flash of agony that speared through my skull. I fell forward onto my forehooves, dry-heaving into the metal. When the pain subsided, I winced as warm tears welled out of my eyes.
A foreleg came to my muzzle to wipe away them away, but instead, they came away red with blood.
I grumbled quietly and fetched the can with a hoof, pouring its contents down my vest. The slurry ran lazily down my body. With my other hoof, I scrubbed away as much of my bloody shell as I could. The breeze raked against my wet barding, and my body convulsed with violent shivers. I didn't care. I didn't want to see any of it. All that blood.
When I finished, my clothes were lacerated with darker shades of blue where the blood settled in. I at least managed to clean most of it off my kevlar plates.
It'd have to do.
I huddled in the back of the shed, wet and shivering, and gazed out into the ashen snowfall. From up there I could see a bright light glowing distantly through Poneva's crumbling skyline.
Actually, it didn't really seem so far. I could see its amber glow poking through the skeletal skyscrapers and around their rough, weather-beaten corners. Sitting in filth and darkness, I realized that the light was just over horizon. Light meant life. Light meant machines. Light meant technology - maybe even a water talisman ... maybe even a warm place to spend the night.
I needed to get there.
Not all of Poneva was razed to the ground when the bombs fell. The light told me so. Some survived. Stable-Tec had to be one of them.
I needed to find out what that light was. I needed to find Stable-Tec. But first ... I needed to eat.
Reaching into my bags, I pulled out a bruised can of beans. I brought it to my lips and clamped my teeth down on the lid's tab, and pulled. With a dull plop, the lid tore off and the smell of old beans wafted into my nostrils. I tipped the can into my mouth and the frigid, chunky sludge dribbled onto my tongue.
I chewed and swallowed, too tired to worry about the unwholesome taste of expired slime slithering down my throat. Within minutes, I downed its entire contents, my stomach's whining abated ... for the time being. Exhausted, and with my belly finally full, I laid down, yawning as I rested my chin upon my hooves.
I thought that maybe I'd rest for a bit ... just a few minutes with my eyes closed ...
'No!' I couldn't rest. I couldn't waste anymore fucking time!
But ... I was just so tired. My aching body begged me to sit down and rest, pleading with me to take a break.
'Just a few minutes,' I told myself.
I yawned once more. 'Just a few ...'
My eyes fluttered closed. I lay there, my exhaustion slowly reclining into a livid slumber. Lying there beneath the waning light of consciousness, I tried to imagine a place that wasn't ... there. Anywhere but there. The wintry wasteland slowly faded away ... it faded away as I remade Spring Song's world in my vision, letting my weary mind escape into a place far ... far ... far away.
Fields of verdant, green grass rippling in a gentle breeze. The protective gaze of an amber sun. The endless expanse of a blue, cloudless sky.
I felt considerably warmer, even as the cold breeze whispered down my neck. It whispered ... it faded ...
The murals ... I remembered murals painted across B-Block's walls, the awe-inspiring landscapes of a world that once was beautiful. Beautiful. It was just beautiful.
Lost ... I found myself lost in an undulating sea of grass. I gazed out into the distance, following the gentle curves of the rolling green hills that swept across the earth as far as I could see.
I raised my head to the bottomless blue sky and sighed softly. There, I bathed in the warmth of a guardian sun that caressed my cheeks with its golden sunshine.
I could see the sky - and not a single dark cloud hung over the earth to ruin that perfect day.
Perfect. There was not a single thing in sight that could ruin the perfect world around me.
Not a single thing.
Hooves plodded behind me. My bright eyes gravitated to the mare I loved.
Dew Drops ran into me at a full gallop, and I took her into my forelegs, spinning through the grass as she buried her muzzle in my chest. We fell on our hooves and I was taken aback by the beauty of the mare that stood before me. The sun illuminated her gentle face and her eyes reflected brilliantly like diamond jewels, encapsulating me in their tender gaze.
Dew Drops giggled once, brushed her teal mane out of her eyes, and gave me a long kiss, wrapping her forelegs around me and hugging me tight as if she hadn't seen me in ages. It might as well have been, because I returned the favor tenfold, pausing only for a moment to take a shallow breath of air, before parting her lips with my tongue once more.
I took Dew Drops' hoof as we trotted through the grass, the tall stalks of grass parting before us as we giggled, loving each other ... and loving the world around us.
We entered a clearing. There, a picnic basket on a red-checkered blanket was waiting for us. We enjoyed our lunch of hay sandwiches and carrot juice and laid down on the soft, cool grass, watching fluffy white clouds float by.
I rolled over beside her, and our lips met as the sun began to set, a line of magnificent, amber light parting down our muzzles as the moon took to the skies and bathed us in its pale moonlight. Crickets chirped, and buzzing yellow fireflies zipped over the grass.
She rolled me over onto my back, whispering that she loved me as she nibbled playfully on my ear and I planted kisses upon her neck.
"... hahahaha ..."
My ears perked. The midnight blue skies shuddered as if a hoof clopped against the glass behind it. Dew Drops' expression flickered as I reached her jawline. With her panting breaths hot against my muzzle, I silenced her euphoric gasps with a kiss, caressing her tongue with mine.
In the distance, barely audible beneath the crickets' chirping, a faint voice whispered ...
"Hahahahahaha ..."
The world shimmered around me.
I sighed, closing my eyes as I waited for the crickets to resume their chirping. I didn't care. I let the distant laughter pass unheard through my ears as she lied down on her back. I lowered myself over her, touching her scarlet cheek with a trembling forehoof. I gazed dreamily into her tender gray eyes ... her voice whispering to me softly ... inviting me onward.
"DD ... I -"
A sharp twinge shot through my skull.
"Hahahahaha ..." Closer. Hooves plodded through the grass. Cold sweat trickled down my face.
I shook my head vigorously, telling myself that I couldn't let anything get through ... 'I couldn't let anything ruin this ...
'Not a single thing ... not a single thing ... could ruin ... this ...'
"Hahahahaha ... hahahahaha ..."
Nearer. Hooves crunched through the brush in the closing distance.
I took a deep breath and tried to focus. My eyes fell upon Dew Drops' face, her expression unchanged as she waited for me to say the words I needed to say.
I didn't want that night to end. I loved her so much. There were only three words ... three words that I needed to say ... but they continued to escape me as the hoofsteps crunched ever closer.
Her lips moved ... asking me something. What was wrong ... the voices. The crickets stopped chirping. The wind stopped blowing.
What was wrong ... her lips moved, but all I could hear was the laughter in the distance ... their psychotic ... mindless laughter.
"DD ... I-I ..." My vision unfocused - blurring. I whimpered, blinking furiously as my vision flashed with splashes of red.
A voice whispered from the brush ...
"We'll cut you up good ..."
"No ..." I whispered as my shoulders rocked with sobs. Dew Drops was still beneath my heaving chest, her startled eyes staring through me, her jaw dropped as she saw something behind me that I couldn't. Something that I didn't want to see.
All around me the grass withered and died. Black clouds drowned out the moon. Icy veins broke apart the earth.
A thousand pounding hooves trampled through the snow. Closer.
"I'll fucking skin you alive ..."
Closer. Their laughter quaked the earth beneath me like voices screaming behind a window.
"Hahahahaha - HAHAHAHAHA!
"NO! DD, I -"
"I'LL FUCKING SKIN YOU ALIVE!"
I blinked.
My heart skipped a beat. A ragged gasp tore out of my lips.
Dew Drops was lying beneath me, her head tipped slightly to the side.
Blood was pooling out of her shredded throat. I cradled her head as I peered into her glassy eyes. They stared back. Staring into nothingness. Wide, inert, lifeless dead eyes, the light within them gone ... gone, gone, GONE -
... gone.
"DD? ... DD! DD!" I shook her frantically with my blood-caked hooves. "N-no NO!" I screamed as the frozen earth quaked beneath us and insane laughter filled the air.
"DEW DROPS, PLEASE! GODDESES, NO - SAY SOMETHING!"
"HAHAHAHAHA - HAHAHAHAHA!"
My bloodshot eyes shot open - and my paradise shattered like glass. My hooves fell away from under me, into the darkness - into the wasteland.
Hoofsteps thundered behind me, and I swung my head over my shoulder.
My saddlebags were gone. An equine shadow bounded away from me across the rooftops as I swept my foreleg over the floor where they used to be.
My eyes darted over my shoulders frantically, batting at my neck -
'Her scarf - Dew Drops' scarf!'
Gone.
"STOP!" I screamed with burning, teary eyes as I galloped after him. We raced across the shanty town's rickety, scrap-metal rooftops, forty feet of frozen air between us and the slums below.
All it took was one wrong step. I swore that it wasn't going to be me.
He scrambled to a stop, several feet before a ledge.
"You'll pay for this ..." I growled.
The pony looked over his shoulder and I met his eyes with a look that promised murder. He inched back. Forward. And took a giant, running leap.
My jaw dropped. 'Son of a bitch!'
I skidded to a stop inches from the ledge, and saw him roll across a rickety canopy that cratered beneath him. He stumbled to his hooves, shooting me a desperate glance as I took a hoofstep back and hurled myself over the edge.
"GIVE THEM BACK!"
My fall crushed the sheet metal beneath me.
Three words. Three words were all I needed to say.
"G-give them back ..." I whimpered as I heaved myself back to my hooves.
But they weren't enough. That pony just kept running.
I hounded after him into a third-story alleyway, the skyscrapers' orange lights flashing across my eyes between the shanties. Ponies dove out of the way, spilling over carts full of scavenged materials and refuse that clattered behind us in our wake.
He jumped over a cart sitting in the middle of the alley, and I plowed through it. He ran around a herd of loiterers, and I blundered through them.
Nothing could stop me. Nothing could take her away from me ... again.
A mare sifting through a cart of bent cans screamed as the pony narrowly sidestepped past her. I shoved her aside, spilling her tin treasures across the snowy, weather-beaten deck. It didn't matter. All I cared to see was that stallion galloping away from me.
I blinked. Snow furies dragged Dew Drops into the darkness. I winced as their laughter echoed inside my thoughts.
It only made my legs pump faster.
We reached the end of the narrow alleyway, my hindlegs kicking up showers of dirty snow. The pony ducked through a shanty's door and kicked it shut behind him. I flung it open and charged through the doorway, a family of huddled ponies screaming past me as the pony hurled himself out the back door and I barreled through it.
"STOP! NOW!"
"No!" I was close enough to see his tattered barding and his scratchy, brown mane. "I need this!"
Another ledge blurred closer. That pony knew Poneva better than I did. He vaulted across a gap between two rooftops, landing on the other side with a slight stumble before recovering fast enough to take another leap. He was getting away.
I leaped, bounded, and flailed, swearing under my rasping breaths as chunks of dirty snow and black ice plummeted away from my hooves - four stories to the bottom. Sheet metal pounded rapidly beneath my hooves - until my eyes widened at what I saw in the closing distance. I slowed as we approached a dead end. A dead end for the both of us.
All that was left was another rooftop - twenty feet away, across a ravine that fell into the darkness below. But he didn't stop.
The pony screamed his voice hoarse.
And he took the leap.
'Dear Celestia,' I mouthed as he throttled across the gap, forelegs outstretched, hindlegs kicking through the air with my saddlebags trailing behind him. He was going to fall. He was going to splatter across the streets below ... and take Dew Drops ... my friends ... Mom and Dad ... everyone I loved away from me.
The sheet metal cut his screams short. He slammed into the rooftop, skidding violently across the frozen metal before landing in a heap.
There was a pause in my madness.
During the time that passed as I approached the precipice, I saw myself splatter across the pavement in twelve different ways. I saw the world spinning end over end as I tumbled to my gruesome death - pancaked across the asphalt like a squashed radroach.
'I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. Goddesses - I'M GONNA DIE -'
My hooves left the sheet metal beneath me.
Flying.
I was flying - soaring through the air like a pegasus pony. The weathered metal rooftop at the other end of the gap seemed close enough to touch as time slowed and my entire existence became devoted to reaching it.
Snow furies cackled their maniacal cries, their snarling, psychotic cacophony echoing distantly in my ears ...
"Hahahahaha ... hahahahaha ..."
'Not again,' I thought, 'You can't take them away from me.
'I'll save them. I'll save them all.'
I held out my forelegs, letting the chilling breeze carry me upon my flapping wings. I caught the frozen winds beneath my feathers and sailed across the gap. Nothing could stop me -
Except gravity.
My imagination swam - reality violating my senses as I looked down, and the world below me stretched on into infinity. A maw of frozen metal parted beneath my thrashing hooves, threatening to swallow me whole.
Falling.
I was falling - careening over the edge, flailing my legs, and screaming at the top of my lungs. The world raced by me like a fleeting memory - the ledge at the other end of the gap far beyond my reach.
I wasn't going to make it.
I threw out my forelegs, stretching them out as far as I could, my joints screaming frantically at me that that was as far as my forelegs could go. But it wasn't far enough.
The weather beaten ledge was less than half a hoof's length away.
And I missed.
A mortal, ear splitting shriek erupted from my lips.
"FFFFFUUUUU -"
My face careened into the sheet metal wall.
Stars exploded in my eyes and my vision swam away from the light of clarity, my ears ringing like a tolling bell. My hooves scrambled blindly for purchase, but I skidded down the wall, plummeting back to the earth.
CRACK!
I felt the ligaments in my right fetlock shred like paper. My hoof caught itself between two rimy layers of twisted rebar and I broke my own fall with a violent snap.
"CELESTIA!" I hissed.
White hot agony shot through my veins - my fetlock shrieked in torment.
With an anguished grunt, I forced - I willed my left foreleg to reach higher. Higher. I found a ledge, and I clung to the deformed rebar for my life.
The rooftop, past a series of twisted metal beams and sheared steel, was nearly a foreleg's length above me. Its ledge reflected dully in my teary eyes as I reached out with my swelling right hoof. My nerves cried out in pain as I jammed my throbbing hoof into a gap within the twisted, steel face. I kicked, and kicked - I kicked my hindlegs inward - trying to get a grip. My legs flailed and pawed at the frozen metal, my hooves scraping away layers of frost as my left forehoof came to meet my right.
I reached out with my left once more and faltered. The muscles in my right leg screamed, locking up - wavering through the storm of agony that throbbed through my veins.
But then I heard her. Dew Drops' screams echoed distantly in my ears.
"NOOO!"
I threw my right hoof over the rooftop's edge, then my left - my right - my left - and, with a kick and an anguished howl, I heaved myself onto the weather beaten deck.
I stood to my hooves. My pupils contracted. An immense skyscraper loomed over us, lighting me ablaze with amber light. I wheezed and took a step forward. There he was: at the other end of the rooftop, the stallion's form was silhouetted against the skyscraper's fiery glow.
He wasn't getting away.
The skyscraper gave light to the hatred that burned in my eyes as I locked gazes with the pony who took everything away from me. Once more, I found myself staring into the eyes of a pony who knew he was going to die.
He backed away, his jaw dropped as he stammered in horror and disbelief. He took one step back, and I took another forward. A rivulet of blood trickled down my forehead as I shambled after him, my horn bowed forward.
"Holy shit ..." the pony murmured.
I growled, craned my neck and yanked my pistol from its holster.
"You'll ... pay for this ..." I growled, limping towards him. "No ... more ... running ..."
Behind him was a seven story drop into the frozen depths of Poneva's underworld.
But he didn't seem to understand that I was right.
The pony shrugged off my saddlebags, my belongings clanking dully against the shanty's roof.
"A-alright! Alright! Th-there, j-just ..."
He took another terrified step back.
One step too far.
"... just leave me alone - AH!"
My eyes widened. The stallion slipped.
He fell over the edge, screaming as gravity dragged him to his gruesome end. I raced after him, my fetlock aching as I reached the ledge and peered downward.
And there he was: hanging from a single hoof, his tattered barding billowing in the wind.
I gazed down at him ... and my heartbeat slowed. I felt it again. The calm. The quietude. The silence before the headsmare's axe.
The pony stared back up at me in desperation. I felt my mouthbit loosen between my teeth. I watched his eyes, as tears welled up from inside of them. I watched. And I listened. His bloodshot eyes told me a tale of a poor pony scraping through the filth, day by day, taking whatever food he could scavenge or steal.
The pony's weak, trembling limbs told me that chase burned what little energy he had left. The bones that poked out of his emaciated body spoke of days gone by on an empty stomach.
His hoof looked like it would give out any second.
But I just stared ... a chilling calmness in my eyes. His mouth moved soundlessly, but all I could hear was the sound of his head exploding like a melon as he splattered against the pavement. I came to realize that his life hung not at the edge of that steel rooftop, but from my own hoof.
I blinked once, and a snow fury stared back at me. The black veins in his demented eyes bulged as he screamed in utter silence.
His laughter echoed through my ears. His psychotic, mindless laughter.
The blood of my friends stained his coat and the ragged fabrics that were wrapped around his trembling flesh. He took them from me. And he would never ever take them away from me again.
I watched in slow motion as his hoof slipped, his frantic eyes widening for the last time. Madness and death ran their chilling hooves down my spine and I shivered beneath my coat.
'No,' I thought.
No one else needs to die.'
I leaped forward and caught his outstretched foreleg between my hooves, crying out weakly as my sprained fetlock jolted my nerves. He weighed less than I thought he did. With an agonized moan, I pulled him up and yanked the pony back over, heaving him onto the roof at my hooves. The stallion fell to his gasping chest, his limbs splayed out at his sides as he wheezed for air.
Tucking my pistol into its holster, I watched in silence as he stood upon his rickety legs.
"Gods ... y-you saved my life ..." he murmured weakly, meeting my glassy stare. "You saved me ..." he repeated, looking down at his hooves as tears streamed down his grimy cheeks. "Why?"
It was a question I didn't answer.
"I'm ... I'm sorry ..." he began, "I-I saw you walk from that place with those cans ... I needed them so bad. I needed them ..."
I stared at the poor pony for what seemed like an eternity.
Then I limped to my bags, wrenched them open - and rolled out three cans of pre-war beans, the only food I had left. They tapped against his hooves as he wiped his eyes. He nearly collapsed to his haunches. His eyes darted to mine, his mouth moving, but not a single word escaping his quivering lips.
"Take them," I exhaled simply, my voice hoarse.
He gawked at the cans at his hooves once more in disbelief.
A painful smile barely grazed my lips. "Go ahead. You need them more than I do."
The pony's head bobbed up and down, repeating my words in his head. Until it registered that I wasn't going to shoot him, he nodded once more, fetched the cans in his hooves, and tucked them into his clothes.
"Thank you," he whispered softly, his eyes not leaving mine once as he bowed his head and slunk away.
But my eyes didn't follow. His hoofsteps dissipated into the wind, and I was alone on those windswept rooftops once more. I limped to my bags and fell to my haunches, exhaling laboriously as my sprained fetlock sent a torrent of burning agony through my leg.
I parted my saddlebag's flaps and fetched a health potion. It was the last one I had. I popped its cap and gulped it down, sighing softly. I could feel my torn ligaments stitching back together with every beat of my heart. I dipped a hoof into my bags and pulled out Dew Drops' scarf, hanging it from my neck as I pulled out the two frayed photographs within.
I stared at them for what seemed like an eternity, my mind numb and my expression blank. I stared in chilling silence as the wind moaned a somber tune, my friends' cheerful laughter echoing distantly beneath its lonely breeze.
I could discern each and every single one of their voices in the wind before their laughter melted away, drowning into the howling darkness.
My hooves began to shake. I clenched my jaw and pursed my lips. A tear trickled down my cheek as I tried to keep a straight face, tried to suck them back in. But my shoulders rocked with sobs I couldn't contain any longer.
I hung my head quietly, my face darkening and my tears glistening in the orange light.
It was just in my head. All of it was.
As I stared down at my friends, their faces frozen in time, I relished in the life I lived with those ponies, cherishing their memories, the sweet and the bitter, the hilarious and the disappointing, the successes and the failures.
I had their photographs, I had her scarf ... and yet I didn't feel any different. I couldn't save them. I couldn't save her. I failed them all.
But a voice in the back of my head told that I had failed them from the very start.
Ever since I got my cutie mark, I neglected my friends to develop my skills, putting off the hours we could have spent together to tinker, to fix, to learn ... to be alone - and now I had what I fucking wanted.
I took them for granted - most of all, I took her for granted. And I wasted everything. They died without knowing how much I appreciated their friendship. Dew Drops died with so much love to give. And I didn't deserve a single second of it.
I didn't even get to tell Dew Drops that I loved her ... one last time.
Three simple words that I could've ... should've told her a long time ago. But that time was long gone.
They were torn away from me - out of me, leaving wounds that I tried so hard to wrench shut. The simple thought of them made my heart bleed. Again, my wounds were open, and I was bleeding out once more as my tears poured down my face.
I shook my head in denial, shaking away the tears that welled out of my bloodshot eyes. I gazed glassy-eyed at my family picture, saw my mother's face and thought, 'Would she be proud of me if she saw me now?'
Would she be proud to know of the things I did to reach Poneva? The ponies I killed? All those snow furies I cut down without giving a single shit? What about all the friends I lost ... what if she knew that I wasn't strong enough to save them? That I wasn't strong enough to save the mare that I loved?
I dropped their pictures into my bags and curled up into a ball, burying my muzzle in Dew Drops' scarf.
That dream I had of her ... it felt so real. Her coat, her flesh, the taste of her tongue - it felt. So. Real. That awakening, that rude perversion of reality into my weary imagination was a violent one. It stole her away from me, and I chased after her.
I almost ended up killing someone. Again.
And still, the mare of my life was dead. I watched them tear her apart, just like I watched those zebras, and those slaves and did nothing.
I was fucking useless.
Dew Drops told me that with my friends, we could accomplish anything. But they were gone.
Gone.
Without them, without her, I was nothing. I was only one. And I had none. All of it was too much. I wasn't strong. I was a fucking weakling who'd only survived that long by luck alone - lucky that other, stronger people had killed and died to get me that far.
I hated it - hated myself for being so pathetic, for being such a little bitch.
I hated everything around me. The wasteland, the snow, the city, the snow, the people that lived in it, and oh - the fucking GODDESSES-DAMNED SNOW!
I sobbed, my eyes heavy and swollen.
There comes a point when you run out of tears to shed. I reached that point.
I just lay there in somber quietude.
I rolled onto my back and stared up into the dark skies, too tired to weep. In silence, with only the wind and the distant Ponevan ambience whispering in my ears, I peered up into the black clouds that hung above the frozen earth, and for a brief moment, I thought I saw a light.
A small dot, a hole, opened up in the sky, and out poured a weak beam of yellow light that encapsulated me in its radiance. Even though I had never seen it before in person until then, I knew exactly what it was. It was unlike the orange artificial glow that washed over me ...
It was pure. Unadulterated. Sunlight.
And just like that, it was gone, as fast as it came. If I was right, the sun was still there - just beyond the cloud layer. Just beyond the darkness.
I saw it ... and I knew. It was still there.
Celestia and Luna had raised and lowered the sun and the moon for thousands of years. I wanted to believe that they too were still there. But after what I had seen so far, it hurt to think that maybe Bone Charm was right. That they were dead - and so was all the good and all the hope in the world.
But I wanted to believe ... in something. I wanted to believe that there was still hope.
I remembered the look on that stallion's face when I pulled him back up. I saved his life, in more ways than one. I made the wasteland a slightly better place when I gave him those cans.
Maybe ... maybe that was why the sky opened up.
Maybe that was why the sun was still there. Because there was still hope. Still goodness in the world. Somewhere. Somewhere ... in ... me.
Somewhere in the wasteland, there was hope.
Just like the sun, it might've be hard to see, but it was there, hidden behind all that darkness. And for the most miniscule of moments, I saw it through the clouds, and the darkness, and the madness.
It was still there.
I read once in a silly foal's book, that the night was always darkest before dawn. It was cliched, I know, but the darkness around me had to mean something, it just had to - because it was pretty fucking dark.
My head rolled across my shoulder and onto the chilling sheet metal, my darkened face turning to the light. I forced myself to my haunches and gazed up at the Ponevan skyline, and at what few skyscrapers there were that still glowed with light.
Ever since I had climbed up there, I had never even taken the time to simply pause and look around me. I was so focused on getting my bags back, that I never noticed what was staring at me in front of my face the entire time.
The closest skyscraper, towering over me with its amber radiance, caught my eye. And so did the immense neon letters that hung from its titanic, concrete edifice:
World Tree.
But beneath the refurbished neon lights, I saw something else. Something that I had seen stenciled onto almost everything I had, growing up. It was written in raised concrete, just barely visible beneath the World Tree tower's glow:
Stable-Tec.
I stood to my four hooves, the skyscraper's lights painting my shadow across the rooftops, and my mane, my tail, and Dew Drops' scarf billowing in the wind. I wiped a hoof across my face, and sniffled, the tower's radiance burning like firelight in my widening, teary eyes.
I remembered what I had asked Dew Drops, the night before she died.
'Are we going to find a Water Talisman?'
The answer to that question was less than a mile away.
I reached out with a hoof.
It hung before me, empty. But perhaps not for long.
Hope. It was so far. It was so far ... far beyond my reach. But in that moment, as I gazed onward into the light, I felt it. For the briefest of moments, I thought that maybe ... just maybe ...
... I might just be able to go home.
My eyes fluttered closed as hung my head.
I never really believed in hope. That might've been why I couldn't see it.
All my life I simply did things and waited for the consequences or the results. Then, I knew, that all the hope my friends had ... the hope that Dew Drops held in her heart culminated to this.
She was always right. She was smarter than I was, and even in death ...
Dew Drops was still right.
We would find a way ...
And I found it.
Footnote: Level 4
XP: 1050/1700 |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 6 - Six Thousand - Pt I | Chapter 6
Six Thousand
"Somewhere in this wasteland, there was hope."
My heart pounded inside my chest. I lost sight of the tower as I crawled out of that dreary, slummy shanty town, its light disappearing behind Poneva's broken skyscrapers. I clambered over a mound of frozen debris, my hooves scrambling for purchase. Chunks of rubbish fell away from my flailing limbs as I struggled to catch a glimpse of the skyscraper's amber glow once more.
"Come on, come on!" I muttered, throwing a hoof over the concrete mountain that was blocking my path. With a heave and a grunt, I yanked myself up and over and a shaft of orange light painted a smile across my face. There it was.
I stood upon my four legs atop the hill of snow and rubble, Dew Drops' scarf billowing behind me in the breeze. "Finally!" I gasped, grinning madly at the brightest light I had ever seen in the wasteland. I stared up at it, mouth open with awe. The last I had seen it, I was seven stories above the earth. But from down there ... I felt even smaller as I basked in its radiant glow like a curious, buzzing insect.
Never before had I seen something so bright. Never before had I seen anything so immense. I raised my head to the sky, trying to see the tower's peak. I couldn't. It might as well have been holding the sky aloft -
My head tipped forward.
"Son of a -"
I toppled over, tumbling end over end down the snowy embankment.
"BIIIIIIIIIIIIITCH -"
I punched a twelve inch deep outline into the snow, wincing at the dull pain in my ribs. I pushed myself to my haunches and found myself staring blankly into the headlights of an oncoming wagon.
My eyes widened as its lantern's glow hurtled closer and closer.
I was sitting in a damned intersection.
"Fuck!" I hissed, leaping out of the way as the wagon puller barreled past me.
I turned my head into oncoming traffic and my ears drooped.
"Fuck."
Headlights flashed in my eyes. Snow showered over me as I hurled myself away from another wagon.
I landed on my hooves. And sunk. It didn't even take a single heartbeat for another wagon to come plowing towards me. I tore my hooves out of the snow and sidestepped - feeling the rush of its frame slice through the air next to my cheek.
"FUCK!" I wheezed as I thrashed my legs desperately through the fetlock deep snow.
A horn blared at me, its groaning honk blaring closer and closer.
"YOU STUPID SHIT!" somebody shrieked as I cursed and leaped out of the way, my swear jar getting heavier by the second.
'Wow - I'm getting pretty good at this!' I thought, a wild grin stretching across my face as more headlights flashed across my face.
Then a wagon ran into my flank.
It clipped me like a bad haircut, hurling me off my hooves and slamming me into a guard rail. A mare screamed as the wagon careened into the railing and the sound of a box of nails crashing against a concrete wall erupted into my ears.
Then nothing. Just the sounds of ponies power-walking away and wagons rumbling past.
Not a single pony stopped to see if the wagon puller or myself was okay. I wasn't surprised. I lifted myself off the ground and limped across the snowy sidewalk with the wind knocked out of me as ponies hurried away.
A pair of yellow hindlegs wiggled and bucked through the snow, but the rest of the pony that they were attached to remained to be seen. I cocked a brow at the rusty assault rifles, shotguns, and pistols that were strewn across the snow-swept sidewalk.
I reached for the pony's legs and hesitated when I saw the strange shape spray-painted against the wagon's sideboard: a pair of angel wings sprouting out of a downward arrow. A plume of snow showered my muzzle as the pony kicked her legs once more.
"I'm going to regret this," I muttered as I yanked her out of the drift. One second later, and I was panicking and she was on top of me with her pistol jammed inside my mouth.
"YOU! YOU FUCKING STUPID SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU FUCKING DOING RUNNING THROUGH THE TRAFFIC LIKE THAT - YOU DEER IN THE HEADLIGHTS FODDER FUCKER!"
It was rather difficult to reply with the barrel of a firearm lodged between my teeth. "I'm ... shar ..." I struggled, trying desperately to formulate a response that hopefully wouldn't get me killed.
She parted the amber hair that fell over her bright orange eyes as she craned her neck and glared into my own. For a second I thought she was going to paint the snow pink with my brains, until she snorted a jet of mist and loosened up. Her brows flattened with exasperation and she yanked the pistol out of my mouth.
"Grrr ... you're helping me clean this up." I sat up on my aching haunches and rubbed my lower jaw, wincing. "Fodder fucker ..." the mare added as she trotted to the fallen weapons. She swung her head at me as I sat there, trying to pull my shit together.
"WELL?!"
"Sorry. Sorry about your wagon." I scrambled across the snow to clamp my teeth around a horribly maintained assault rifle. I tossed the rifle back into the wagon like a piece of trash with a dull clank. They might as well have been. Those things would've blown up in your face if you tried shooting them.
Another rusty piece of scrap metal clanked in the back of the wagon. I stooped over and snatched up another rifle with my mouth. I was about to drop the weapon into the wagon bed when I saw that winged emblem again.
"Whash dat?" I asked through my teeth.
"None of your fucking business, just -"
She turned to look at me and narrowed her eyes at the way I slobbered all over the rifle in my mouth. "You fucking retarded or something?"
I spat the rifle into the wagon, groaning, "Look, I'm sorry about all this, but can you please stop calling me names?"
She groaned. "I mean, your horn, why're you not using your magic?"
"Uh - well, my horn's -"
She waved me off, tossing the last rifle into the back of the wagon.
"Whatever, I don't really give a shit," the earth pony snorted as she threw on her harness. The mare lifted a hoof but hesitated for a moment.
She glanced over her shoulder at the salty face I wore, and sighed a cloud of gray mist. "Sorry about that, I can be pretty rotten sometimes. Just running a little late on my uh ..." The mare looked at the rusty firearms in the back of her wagon. "My business. Next time, don't run through the fucking street like a ... fodder fucker. Might get yourself killed."
"Yeah, thanks for caring," I muttered as she returned to the road, not looking back. My haunches stung where her wagon ran into me, but, needless to say, I was closer to the Stable-Tec tower than I was several minutes ago.
I was just thankful she wasn't like one of those assholes at the gates. Didn't look like one, but... she nearly killed me.
I shook my head vigorously. I couldn't die. Not that close. I couldn't let my excitement get a hold of me again. Earlier, I was overcome by the possibility of going home. Even after, my legs were still shaking. Even standing in the streets once more, I could still feel the warmth of the tower's orange light upon my face.
No amount of thumbs could help me get a grip over myself. Not with the possibility of going home just a stroll down the road. I gulped, and started walking.
As I approached, the great stature of the Stable-Tec tower became more apparent; though it was not by far the tallest, it was undoubtedly the brightest. Unlike the dilapidated, dimly lit apartment buildings and skyscrapers around me, the Stable-Tec tower - or the World Tree tower, was the brightest light in the city as far as I could see.
It was a glowing lighthouse in an ocean of darkness - and it wasn't a surprise: it was built by Stable-Tec. Looking at it was like traveling back in time 200 years. The tower looked virtually untouched by the balefire, apparently subject only to the passage of time as the centuries dragged by.
It was a titan of concrete and riveted metal, raised high above the street upon a tremendous estrade, and accessible only by a flight of wide stairs that narrowed the closer you got to the top.
I stared in awe, my legs trotting onward as if with minds of their own.
"Watch where you're going!" some stallion grunted as I bumped into him. I didn't even apologize. I was too busy admiring that beautiful tower.
The ponies who trotted past me paid no attention to it, as if such a marvel of engineering was just another slab of concrete in the snow. To them, it probably was - but for me? For a stable dweller who has seen nothing but white walls and poop water pipes his entire life? That tower was the most magnificent thing I had seen since I stepped a hoof out into the wasteland. And it was probably one of the last of its kind, one of the last reminders of a time when Equestria was great.
I cantered up a flight of narrow stairs that led to the bridge an entire story above me, and found myself standing before the tower and all its glory.
Weaving through the wagon and hoof traffic that slogged through the ashen streets, I finally arrived at the tower's front door. I panned my gaze up the icy concrete steps that led me to the collapsed remains of an ancient revolving door, minus the revolving part.
I took a step forward, but hesitated. There was nobody outside. I glanced over my shoulder, and saw that nobody - but me - was walking up to the tower either.
I shrugged. It was my only way in. Gulping a lump down my throat, I tried to muster the most confident face I could as I walked up the steps. As my hooves clopped against the top of the stairs, I peered through the revolving door, and my heart nearly skipped a beat.
The lobby was dilapidated. Abandoned. Black outlines of furniture were all that remained of whatever had once furnished that empty lobby. I looked down, and shifted my hooves.
A layer of ashen dust had settled upon the the floor inside. It looked like nobody had been in there in centuries. I might as well have been the first to step inside since the bombs fell, because the floor and the walls and the ceiling all still had that blackened, charred look - just like everything else in the city.
That empty lobby belied the radiance of the tower above. The warm glow of civilization was nowhere to be found.
I bit my lower lip so hard I almost drew blood.
The balefire had blown through the windows and obliterated everything inside. There wasn't a single sign that anything had ever occupied that burned out lobby.
It looked just about as dead as the rest of the wasteland.
A sick feeling churned in my gut. 'This can't be possible,' I thought.
There were lights just outside.
I paced back and forth, fruitlessly checking and rechecking the bare, balefire-blasted walls around me.
Nothing. There was fucking nothing.
I punched a hoof into the floor.
"Goddesses - damnit! This is a fucking joke! You've gotta be kidding me - you've gotta be fucking -"
I bit my tongue and sighed, lowering myself to my haunches and running a trembling hoof through my mane. It didn't make sense. The lights outside said someone was home, but the lobby told me that no one's been home in centuries.
"Son of a bitch ..."
I tapped my forehooves together anxiously, my eyes darting to the walls around me. I let out a ragged breath and stood to my hooves.
Everything that led directly into the rest of the building was missing. No doors. No stairs. No elevators ...
No sign that anything had ever existed.
A light bulb flashed in my eyes.
'Nothing ... just like it should be,' I thought.
Walking to a bare wall, I reached into my saddlebags and drew my spade. I narrowed my eyes at the wall's icy surface as I scraped at it inquisitively, chipping off a chunk of frost. Beneath it, I uncovered a bulkhead of blackened steel.
I should've known. The people who built that place were the same people who built my stable. The entire ground level floor was contained - isolated from the rest of the tower.
Just like it should be.
Feverish curiosity possessed my limbs as I ran my hooves frantically across the walls, shuffling along the charred concrete floor on my hind legs. I remembered that even my stable's doors had controls to open it from the outside.
If the tower was built in the same way, then there had to be a way in - a control panel, a secret button - something! My hoof ran over a bump in the frost, and I exhaled sharply. It was a small, cylindrical piece of metal.
I pressed my face against it, peering inside - wondering if it was some sort of eye hole - or maybe a camera?
I cocked an eyebrow, tapping it with a forehoof.
It flashed red.
"Yow!" I cried, leaping away and rubbed my now blinded right eye.
"You are trespassing on private property," said a mare, her voice echoing from the ceiling. "Leave the premises immediately, or we will be forced to remove you."
The sound of machinery whirring to life behind me made the hairs on my coat stand on end. I swung my head frantically over both my shoulders and my heart nearly skipped a beat. A dozen turreted weapons folded out of the ceiling behind me. Their rotating energy casters exuded a magical, violet glow.
I cleared my throat, trying not to flinch. "W-what the hell are you doing with those?"
"Leave immediately, or we will be forced to remove you," the mare repeated. My eyes crept to the floor. I gulped at the sight of the gray dust beneath my hooves.
It wasn't dust.
"No, no - this can't be happening!" I planted my forehooves against the wall. "Listen - please - I-I really need your help -"
"Everyone needs help," she said, cutting me off. "If you need food, you'll find our agents at the Old Bank District." The mare paused for a moment, thinking. The energy cannons glowed even brighter. "Leave the premises, immediately, while you still can."
I shook my head and supplicated myself before that red light with my forehooves outstretched. "No ... no - no - I-I can't do that!" I stammered. "You don't understand - I came all this way from -"
A shrill, mechanical whine emanated from behind me.
"No ..." I murmured as the blood drained from my face.
"This is your last warning."
My breaths came in and out as frantic gasps
"Wait - please! Don't do this -"
The energy turrets' rotating barrels screamed to life.
"Three," droned the mare's voice as a violet glare engulfed the lobby.
"N-no! You have to listen to me!" I cried.
"Two."
Magic arced violently across the turrets' accelerating barrels.
"Please!" I begged, sparing one final glance over my shoulder.
"One."
Violet light flashed in my eyes.
"STOP!"
The turrets decelerated to a groaning halt, and a rivulet of cold sweat ran down my face. I closed my eyes and bowed my head as the lobby darkened in the heavy silence that followed.
"Please ..." I whispered, my voice trembling, "My stable ... our water talisman's broken. Our purifier got destroyed ... we need help, or we're all going to die."
The red light flickered yellow.
"Let him in," said a different voice - a stallion.
There was a long, hesitant pause.
"Sir?" the mare asked, dubiously.
The stallion's voice crackled over the comms. "Take a step back, please - away from the camera so I can see you," he asked ... or was that an order? He must've seen the anxiety in my eyes. I looked like I was going to drill a hole into the floor with my shaking.
"It's okay ... you'll be alright. We won't hurt you," he said softly in a voice a parent would use to comfort a frightened child.
I blinked, trying to quiet my gasping breaths. He was talking to me. I obeyed with a terrified look on my face, my pale face glowing dimly in the violet light.
An eternity of quaking heartbeats passed - and the stallion's voice crackled over the speakers once more.
"Let him in."
"Sir, I don't think ..."
"Let him in."
The yellow light blinked.
"... yes sir."
I gulped a lump down my throat, my eyes darting back and forth as the turrets retracted into the ceiling and the light flickered green.
The wall of ice before me rumbled and cracked. I took a cautious step back, as layers of ancient frost broke away and the machinery on the other side groaned to life. A grating, mechanical shriek echoed through the empty room and a chunk of ice almost eight feet wide crumbled apart before me.
Out pushed forward an immense, yet familiar cog-shaped door. A grinding metallic shriek quaked the floor beneath my hooves as the cog spun 360 degrees and retracted back into the wall with a resounding thunder clap.
Then the door began to part open.
Billowing clouds of pale mist seethed out of the widening divide before me. I held a hoof over my eyes as a white strobe light flickered blindingly through the clearing fog.
I took another step back, wiping away a bead of cold sweat.
'This is it.'
A gray mare stepped forward into the light, and said, "Let's go, stable colt. Mister Sterling would like to speak with you." *
My eyelids fluttered as I entered into the glare of the harsh white light. I quickly adjusted to the same color of pale fluorescent lights that had illuminated the hallways of Stable 91 my entire life, and possibly the last 200 years.
Flanked by two security ponies and the mare whose voice nearly condemned me to death, I trotted into a flickering vestibule that didn't look like it had been used in centuries. It probably hadn't, as my hooves kicked up poofy clouds of dust that mingled with the mist lingering around my legs.
It was dust that time. I was sure of it. At least I hoped.
One of the security ponies sneezed, sniffling. "Haven't been through here in ages," she muttered.
I cringed wondering if she just snorted somebody's remains.
A grating metallic groan echoed behind me as the cog rolled back into place with a floor-quaking slam, sealing that place off from the outside once more. Inside, it was utterly silent except for the hoofsteps that clopped in our gaits.
If it wasn't for that Mister Sterling, I would have been another speck of dust swirling around outside that door. I let out a long and drawn out sigh. My legs were still wobbling beneath me. And it didn't help that I could feel them staring at me. The two security mares that flanked me exchanged sideways glances, murmuring about how I looked like somebody they knew.
I tried not to look, but I caught one of my escorts staring at me and she quickly turned the other away, focusing upon the door at the far end of the hall. I gulped. I realized that I was still gasping for air.
The gray mare at point stopped in front of me, and took a good look at my face. She glanced at the other two ponies, then back at me, inquisitively.
I nearly shrunk beneath her stare. The earth pony mare was half a foot taller than me.
"What's your name, kid?" she half-asked, half-demanded in a gruff voice.
I took a deep breath, running a shaky hoof through my dirty mane. "My name's Red Dawn. I'm from Stable 91."
She nodded to herself, snorting, "You don't look so good, kid."
"You nearly incinerated me!" I snapped.
She met my eyes with a hard stare.
"If it wasn't for that PipBuck of yours, I would've thought you were a God-damned snow fury or something," she growled, eyeing the stains on my underclothes and the bullet ridden, blade-scored, wasteland shit-on kevlar armor that clung to my chest.
"Hell, if it wasn't for Mister Sterling's generosity, I probably would've dusted you anyways." My muscles tensed as she leaned in close so that we could see eye to eye. "Let me be straightforward with you, Red Dawn: if you try anything, and I mean anything stupid, we'll mop the floor with you."
She cocked her head at me.
"Are we clear?"
My eyes narrowed at the holstered energy pistol that was slung around her neck. I took a deep breath, clenched my jaw and nodded.
"Crystal Empire clear," I muttered, bitterly.
"Good boy. And If you really are from Stable 91, then it'd be a real shame if you got atomized after coming all this way. God knows the shit-heap you climbed over to get here."
I felt the urge to say something I'd regret, but I held my tongue. She didn't even know half of it.
"Both of us can agree on that," I muttered instead.
She tipped her chin up and held out a hoof, saying, "Before we go on inside, I'll need you to give me all your bags, guns, knives, explosives - anything that you're carrying. I'll need to search your bags, too."
My entire body went stiff.
"My ... bags ..." I whispered.
The mare snorted. "What's wrong, kid? You act like I'm gonna strip you down or something."
"Maybe he ain't so proud 'bout what you'll find down there," one of the security mares drawled, bumping the other on the shoulder as they laughed. My face went redder than my mane.
"Relax, kid. It's standard procedure for visitors here at the World Tree Company. Just need to make sure you aren't gonna try and die a martyr, or something," she said, resting a hoof on her energy pistol.
I groaned, rolling my eyes, "Do I look like I have bombs on me?"
She shrugged, holding out her hoof once more. "Let's find out."
I glanced at the ponies on either side of me, and saw that they had their hooves planted on their holsters too.
'My bags ...'
I reached over, hesitating as my hoof hovered over the straps. I gulped a heavy lump down my throat. I nearly killed myself trying to get them back ... hell, I nearly killed someone else.
I shook my head, closing my eyes.
"Alright," I whispered.
I sat down, shrugged off my bags, and lowered them to the floor between my forelegs. I parted theirs flaps and froze. My friends. Their frayed photographs caught my eyes and pain flickered across my face.
The gray mare saw the ghosts that haunted my bloodshot stare.
Her hoof lowered and so did her tone. "You'll get them back," she said softly, in a voice I didn't think she had.
A moment passed and I nodded, slowly. I stared down at the floor and pushed my bags away from me before hoofing over my pistol, barrel down. My muscles tensed as I felt hooves pat me down from head to hoof. Afterwards, the two other security mares proceeded to reach inside my saddlebags, poking through my belongings.
I cringed - hard - as one of the mares commented on how cute I looked in my foal picture.
"Excellent. Then we shouldn't have any problems. Mister Sterling never has any visitors ... well, any visitors that aren't threatening to hang his head over the ramparts outside, at least. If he thought you were a threat, he wouldn't have stuck his neck out for you like that." She snorted. "Don't look like you got it in you, anyways."
I glared at her.
She paused for a moment, then jabbed a hoof at me, lowering her voice. "But don't think for a single moment I'll let you off easy. Get in, get what you need, and get out."
I growled, "Are you like this to everybody? Or do you just really like me?"
She narrowed her eyes at me so hard that I felt like she was going to crush me between her eyebrows.
"I hope to God that nopony else saw you walk in, because I don't want anyone else thinking they'll get special treatment," the mare sneered.
I sighed, "If I'm some kind of threat, then why'd you guys let me in?"
"Wasn't me. Wouldn't have let you in even if you were being chased by a swarm of haunters." She waved a hoof, dismissively. "Mister Sterling crawled out of a stable like you did; he probably felt bad for you or something."
I cocked an eyebrow at that. I wondered how many stables existed in the north. 91 couldn't have been the only one.
She nodded to the ponies that flanked me, and they seemed to ease up a bit. "By the way, I'm Dapple Gray, Chief of Security here at the World Tree Company, and I'm in charge of keeping this slice of sanity safe." She turned to hoof a control panel.
"Safe from what?" I asked, half expecting her to say 'you'.
Her foreleg hovered over the door's controls, a half smile creasing her lips.
"Why, from everyone else, of course." Dapple Gray tapped the panel in front of her and the door rumbled and shook, its internal mechanisms sliding and rolling into place.
"You'll see why."
The door swung open and a glaring white flash engulfed me. I gasped as I stepped into the light, shielding my eyes, inhaling only to have my brain go haywire at the aromatic, alien scents that flooded into my nostrils.
My eyes widened and my pupils dilated. It smelled ... edible. It smelled ... good. More than good.
It smelled fucking orgasmic.
My entire body quivered with electrifying euphoria as an orgy of mouth-watering scents rutted my virgin senses. Dapple Gray led us across the mezzanine to a veranda overlooking the stories below.
But I wasn't exactly following her at that point. Instead, the scents spirited me over to the railing where they happened to be standing, the fruity fragrances intensifying the closer my nose came to the stone balustrade.
One level down, lab-coated and jump-suited ponies led formations of tracked robots that towed behind them dozens of carts filled to the brim with ....
'Dear Celestia.'
Fruits and vegetables.
My senses practically jizzed all over themselves.
Containers as wide as two ponies with their legs outstretched and as tall as a stallion on his hinds overflowed with mouthwatering hauls of golden apples, and succulent oranges, and bright red tomatoes, and 'Goddesses,' I thought, 'Are those strawberries?!' Among them were even more exotic fruits I thought I'd never see with my own eyes.
The names of many of those decadent morsels were lost to me. Some had names that were right on the tip of my tongue - and good Goddess, did I wish that they actually were.
They were supposed to be extinct.
But I was wrong. Goddesses, was I wrong.
My escorts snickered at the wide-eyed, slack jawed expression I dribbled with. I uttered the only words I could put together.
"Bwa-hahhh ... unnf ..." A thin line of drool trickled down my lower lip and I shook my head vigorously, wiping it dry as I blinked my eyes back into focus.
"W-what is this place?" I whinnied as I realized that the tower's floors extended far beyond what I could see above me and deep into the earth - thousands of feet below.
Alternating tiers of mezzanines, bridges, and floors descended into the tower's depths, flickering with flashing yellow lights as swarms of robot cart pullers hustled across. Other balconies were illuminated by fluorescent beams where employees lounged on their lunch breaks.
"Is this a factory? Farm? Robot factory? Robot farm factory?"
Dapple Gray puffed up her chest and swept a forehoof across the floors below, saying, "This right here - this is the heart of all innovation in Poneva - the North's breadbasket - Chancellor Puddinghead's winter stash - the Garden of Eden.
"We've got seed stores to last an entire nation the size of Roan for years, and so much pre-war tech just sitting here that everypony wants a slice of the pie. If it wasn't for Mister Sterling, we wouldn't have known how to grow or use any of it.
"The folks back at Stable-Tec left us a going away gift when the world ended, but it was Mister Sterling who opened it for us."
"That's incredible. I-I've never seen so much fresh food - so many robots - so much of ... of everything," I droned on breathlessly as I stalked a crate of breathtakingly yellow banan... 'bananas? And ... are those pineapples? What the hell are those spiky things?' I wondered.
There were too many questions to ask. The little hamster that scurried around in circles inside my skull was struggling to decide on whether to ask them - or to drool after a crate of strawberries that sat on the floor invitingly, alone and with nobody around to eat them.
A robot lifted it into a trailer and lugged it away.
"Don't go ..." I whined. The three mares sighed.
"Ahem." I licked my lips before asking, "What don't you grow here?"
Dapple Gray just shrugged casually, vaguely amused at my blabbering.
"I'm just here for security. King Egghead and his team of eggheads upstairs do all the research. Well, resurrecting, as Mister Sterling likes to call it," she chuckled. "They're bringing back all sorts of good stuff from the old world up there."
Dapple Gray patted down her uniform, tipping her chin back slightly as she gazed down upon the massive, clanking procession of labor bots below. "We ship food throughout the North, and as far South as New Appaloosa. We're the third largest source of food in all of the Northern Wastes. Hell, probably in all of Equestria."
"You-wh-huhh?! Third. LARGEST?" I gasped. "This place is HUGE!"
I stared off into the flashing distance, unable to even fathom the scale of their yields.
Dapple Gray snorted. "We've got stiff competition," she said, biting her lower lip and resting a hoof on her energy pistol. "Big competition, rather."
She cocked her head at me when she noticed that I wasn't listening, too busy panting - drooling - and wagging my tail at a crate of golden yellow apples with wide, puppy eyes.
Dapple Gray coughed. I blinked, and looked around.
"Oh," I murmured, realizing that they were still there.
"Anyways ..." she continued, "We've got big competition, and those bastards really don't like competition."
I peeled my focus from the cornucopia of mouthgasms and caught the sternness in her eyes.
"When the other plantations want something, they fight for it - and maintaining a monopoly on food in the wasteland is apparently something worth dying for to them. They want to put us out of business, even if it means destroying one of the only good things left in this wasteland." The mare pushed herself off the parapet and nodded to my escorts.
I cocked my head at her. "What good would that be?"
"Food, Red Dawn. Unlike in your cozy little stable, there isn't enough of it in the wasteland. Even with the three plantations, maybe even including what few sorry tiddlywiddly slivers of land there are left in Equestria that can sprout healthy crops, it's still just barely enough.
"Now you know why we can't just let anypony in. Now you know why we can't have our doors wide open. We can't risk losing ... all ... this," she trailed off, leaning over the edge. "For all I could've known, you were one of them, trying to get inside."
"What? Did my bloodied up barding give it away?" I scoffed with a sly grin.
She chuckled, folding her legs across her chest. "Don't give me any ideas. I might just find a reason to buck you out the door."
I just rolled my eyes and shook my head.
"I can't risk letting anypony ruin what Sterling's started. Can't let all of his work go up in flames," she vowed, her neck straightening even further than what I thought was equinely possible.
I cracked a thin smile at that. I thought I detected a hint of admiration in her voice.
"You sound like you're very fond of this 'Mister Sterling'," I scoffed.
"And you ask too many God-damned questions," Dapple Gray snapped suddenly, as the two guard ponies exchanged smirks. "We've dillydallied enough. The big egghead's probably wondering if I ended up roasting his esteemed guest with laser fire, or something."
We stepped into an elevator and Dapple Gray tapped its flashing buttons, our destination gleaming the brightest. The elevator rumbled once and began to ascend with a whirring lurch.
I watched quietly as the floors dinged by, hoping that, after all I heard, Mister Sterling was just as generous as Dapple Gray. * |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 6 - Six Thousand - Pt II | *
The elevator dinged and the doors parted open. Dapple Gray led me across the hall to the only room on the 91st floor: the penthouse suite. We walked past rows of hanging picture frames of what had to be notable members of the Stable-Tec corporation.
I paused for a moment to look at a picture of three mares, one with a yellow coat, another orange, and the third white, holding each other's hooves up high before a cheering audience. Behind them, a projector casted an image of a newly built Stable door, labeled with only the number '1'.
'Stable-Tec - On a Crusade to build a better tomorrow,' said the plaque beneath it. It took me a moment to recognize just who those mares were ... I had seen them before in the textbooks at school. Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle - the founders of Stable-Tec. How could I forget the very ponies that designed all the stables in Equestria?
I looked closer, craning my neck.
Dapple Gray cleared her throat, and I snapped out of it, cantering up the hall to catch up with them. With me in tow, we arrived at Mister Sterling's executive suite. As I watched Dapple Gray approach the door, I found that my heart was drumming against my chest. I felt a little sweaty, too. I trembled - not from fear, but from sheer anticipation.
I took a deep breath as the mare knocked on Mister Sterling's door. Seconds passed, and a thin line of sweat trickled down the side of my face.
The door opened and a tawny unicorn stallion stepped out into the hall to meet us. He saw me first, catching my uneasy stare. His eyes flickered with perplexity as they turned to see me. One of his eyes was red. The other glowed with a soft green light, a long scar running down his brow over his eye.
Quickly composing himself, the stallion, older than his one good eye showed, creased his lips with a curt smile, opening the door wider. The faint sound of whining mechanical servos whirred beneath his shabby white lab coat as his slender frame stepped out into the hall.
"Sterling, sir," Dapple Gray said, straightening her spine.
He brushed her shoulder with a forehoof and her posture wavered, somewhat.
"Thanks, Gray."
He turned his weathered face to me, seized by a peculiar warmth I never thought I'd ever see in the frozen wasteland. "Hmm," he murmured, studying me as he tapped a hoof to his chin.
"I'm the guy who runs this place," he said with a smile, scratching at his short white mane, "But people call me Mister Sterling." He held out a hoof to me. I flinched as if he was drawing a knife. It was just a simple hoof-shake. But no one out there had ever been that kind to me until then.
His polite smile widened, but it only gripped my heart with hesitation. "What about you, my boy? What's your name?" At least he didn't call me colt, or kid - like everybody fucking else. He seemed like a nice guy ... but ...
I took his hoof, cautiously, and shook it. "My name's Red Dawn," I replied, unable to remove my eyes from the unnerving pair of multicolored orbs that were holding my stare. "I'm from Stable-"
"91," he said suddenly, plucking the words right out of my mouth. I stood there with my lips parted open, confounded. "I never thought I'd see the day when those doors would open," Mister Sterling intoned. One of my hooves came to scratch at the number painted on my right shoulder pad. It was muddled with a dark red stain that I forgot to clean off.
"I never thought I'd see the day ..." he trailed off wistfully.
My hooves shifted uneasily beneath me.
"Uhh ... have we met?" I asked, sheepishly.
He thought for a moment, even though I knew the answer to my own question.
"We will soon, I suppose." The aging pony held the door open for me, and motioned me inside. "Well, come on in. We've got something to talk about, don't we?"
Suspicion stifled the movement in my legs. I found it hard to trust a pony who knew more about where I was from than anyone else in the entire wasteland.
I glanced at Dapple Gray, who was giving me that stern 'I'll break you if you try anything' look again. Nodding slowly, I stepped inside his office as Mister Sterling leaned out the door to have a few words with Miss Gray.
While they spoke, I glanced around his penthouse office, curiously. Soft yellow light casted shadows against the ancient, graying walls and the dark hardwood floor.
Potted plants, filing cabinets, and tables stacked with glowing terminals and flickering monitors furnished Mister Sterling's personal suite. A staircase led to a wide mezzanine with a couch, drawers, closet, and a bed that must've been there since the bombs fell.
Hanging from the walls were pictures of ponies in pre-war garb. One was of a pair of stallions tipping their hats to the newly built Stable-Tec tower - nearly the same as it was when I saw it outside.
Looking past the half-mooned desk at the center of the office, I peered through a wide, panoramic view of the dim, flickering city below. I trotted toward the window and placed a hoof against the glass.
It struck me that Poneva was much much bigger, once. City lights - indicative of life - grew sparser and farther in between the further I stared out into the distance. Beyond a gloomy graveyard of skeletal high rises, I saw only an opaque curtain of night.
The heart of darkness. The heart of Poneva city. Out there, there was only darkness. The city limits had shrunk severely ever since the bombs fell, but where there was light, there was life. Even so, it was shocking to see so much of it in one small place. It was nothing but a horseshoe shaped glow that faded away into the black distance.
I wondered how many people lived out there.
The office's door closed, and I heard hooves clopping towards me against the hardwood floor. "Six thousand souls," the old pony said. I heard him before I saw him. Whirring mechanical servos sighed as he came to a stop beside me.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw the stallion looking out the window, too. "Six. Thousand. That's how many people call this city their home." He turned to me, asking, "You don't see those numbers anywhere else in the wasteland do you, my boy?"
"I wouldn't know," I replied, simply, running a hoof through my messy mane. "I haven't been out and about for too long."
"Really? I wouldn't have been able to tell you were new to the Northern Wasteland," he said. "You look like you've seen it all."
I closed my eyes for a moment, and sighed.
"I've seen enough."
I saw his gaze gravitate to meet my reflection's gloomy eyes.
"And still, enough won't ever be enough until you've finished what you came out here to do."
My ears perked, and I met his weary gaze.
"You did mention that something happened to your stable? Your ... water talisman?"
I let out a shallow breath, nodding. Mister Sterling turned and leaned his back against the window, folding his legs across his chest. "Stable 91," he trailed off, touching his chin. "You're a long walk from home, Red Dawn."
I snorted, the light in my eyes darkening as a humorless smile creased my lips. "I spent most of it running, not walking, Mister Sterling."
He broke his gaze, turning his head away from me to stare out the window and into the dark city.
"I know how rough of a place the wasteland can be for a stable pony ..." he trailed off, looking at his hooves.
A PipBuck with a dim teal screen encased his left foreleg.
"So you are from a stable?"
He nodded as I frowned at the way he was avoiding my eyes. "You remind me of myself when I left mine." He lifted his a metal foreleg, its servomechanisms humming as he laid eyes upon his prosthetic hoof.
"Alone. Bloodied. Searching for something," he trailed off.
"That why you tugged on Dapple Gray's leash?" I smirked.
The stallion went silent for several heartbeats.
His servomotors yawned as he shuffled on his hooves. "I knew 91 would open its doors one day. But ... I wasn't expecting this. I wasn't expecting you to be the only one."
Mister Sterling studied my face as my ears wilted like dying flowers. I could hear my nightmares rattling behind the closed doors of my mind once more.
He finally looked me in the eyes.
"What happened ... how bad was it?"
I clenched my jaw, leaning against the window. "Not too bad. Yet. Our water purifier had a meltdown and it took our water talisman with it."
His gaze wavered for a moment as he glanced off to the side, his mouth open in silence. "That's why you're here," he said, not asking.
I nodded.
"Then you couldn't have possibly left alone ..." He blinked and went silent. I looked at my hooves and his eyes softened. "Oh ... no ... I'm so sorry." Mister Sterling said in the gentlest of tones, "They were your friends, weren't they, my boy?"
My jaw clenched as I let his question sink into my heart. I hesitated, breaths refusing to enter my lips.
"Six of us. We came out here looking for a new water talisman." I muttered, "I'm the only pony who made it this far. I'm the only one left." I looked up and Mister Sterling was thinking quietly once more.
I remembered - vividly - the shattered fragments of scrap metal that had remained of our talisman. The pipes shrieked. They exploded over my head like gunfire. I clenched my eyes shut. I remembered the way Amber Fields died. Remembered Lightning Twirl falling out of the sky. Remembered the chain of explosions that silenced those screaming slaves.
They were but flashes in my eyes.
I could hear them again. The snow furies. Fresh in my mind like blood that wouldn't dry out. I cupped my mouth with a hoof, gasping quietly as Dew Drops' screams and their laughter faded away.
Mister Sterling caught the ghosts that haunted my dark eyes. I tensed as he laid a hoof onto my shoulder, nodding slowly, and telling me, without words, to take all the time I needed.
I looked away, staring at the floor beneath the gentle weight of his hoof. I closed my eyes for a moment, loosening up, the pony's hoof still resting upon my shoulder. I opened my mouth to continue, but I clung to the words that hung from the tip of my tongue, inhaling sharply.
"We've all lost someone," he said, echoing Gail's words. Night Sky's words. "I ... believed that I'd lost everything I loved when I stepped out that stable door." He squeezed my shoulder with a hoof. "But you, my boy, still have everything to lose."
"I want to go home," I murmured, thinking of Mom's warm smile, and her loving, feathery hugs. "Though I'm not quite sure if I can anytime soon." I bowed my head, my mane falling before my eyes.
He remained silent, nodding to himself in the somber quietude that followed. "And you're hoping that I can give you what you came here for?"
I stared at him, trying to read his face. Trying to gauge his reaction at what I'd say next. He already knew.
"Come on," he said, finally, trotting away from the window. "I'd like to show you something. Maybe I can raise your spirits a bit, my boy. And please, just call me 'Sterling'."
I hesitated as he started toward the door. He paused, glancing at me over his shoulder as he waited. I exhaled a breath I realized I'd been holding, and trailed after him as we exited his office to take another elevator ride several floors down the tower.
With an audible ding, the doors parted open and my nose crinkled at the same overwhelming scents that I smelled earlier. Only this time, they were far more intense. And I saw why.
Sterling beamed with pride.
"Welcome to the Hanging Gardens of Poneva, Red Dawn."
My eyes widened.
Towering above me, upon dozens of tiers of hydroponic gardens were trees, hanging vines, and green stalks - their fruits hanging proudly from their thick branches or blooming from their lush tendrils.
Networks of irrigation piping wove through the brush, trickling sparkling freshwater directly into their submerged roots. I followed Sterling down a hanging walkway between groves of apple trees.
Unlike the ones at 91, those apples were a mouthwatering shade of yellow, the same ones I was admiring on the first floor. Sterling looked over his shoulder and saw the curiousness in my eyes and decided to humor me. Brushing past a labor bot that was inspecting the arcane machinery around us, he picked an apple from a branch and floated it towards me.
I looked at him, unsure as he placed it in my open hoof.
"Go ahead: have at it," he said, smiling.
With an audible crunch and a spray of delicious apple juice, I took a bite and swallowed. My retinas dilated to saucers as liquid heaven made sweet, sweet love to my taste buds and dribbled down my chin. 'Good Goddesses ...'
It was as if Luna just squirted inside my mouth.
'So that's what she tastes like,' I thought.
Sterling chuckled as I took another bite, and another, and another. Before I knew it, the apple was gone, and I was puppy eyeing the ravaged core that rested upon my hoof.
He chuckled, "You got a little something on your lip."
I licked my lips ravenously and wiped away a stray apple chunk.
"Wow, this is fucking amazing!" I gasped. Sterling's smile only widened.
I blinked and I cleared my throat, my cheeks reddening. "Sorry, I mean, they're just ... so ... guh-hooooood." A labor bot rolled before me and plucked the apple core from my outstretched hoof.
Sterling snickered, dismissing my outburst with a wave of a hoof. "That's exactly what I thought when I had my first." He sighed, looking up at the hydroponic gardens that hung above us. "They're called 'Golden Delicious Apples'," he told me as my stomach grumbled. He picked two more, one for me and the other for himself. He tossed me one and I caught it between my teeth, its juices trickling down my lip.
"I think they're my favorite," I said, relishing in the sweet aftertaste that lingered on my tongue.
"They're my favorite too. Heh, and Goddesses, whoever named them that named them right." The old pony chuckled, plunging his teeth into the golden orb that floated in his levitation spell. I stopped chewing for a moment when he said Goddesses. That was the first time I'd heard someone other than me say that word out there.
"At 10 caps per pound, these are the cheapest apples in all of Poneva. Ponies scramble for these when my agents cart them out into the markets." He took another bite, chewed, and swallowed. "Six thousand souls." Sterling waved a hoof above him at the gardens that stretched up to the ceiling. "All this? Everything you see here? It still isn't enough for everyone."
I looked all around me, eyeing up and down at the hydroponic ... plantation around me. "How is that ... possible?" I murmured.
Sterling led me down the catwalk, nodding at a pair of lab ponies that trotted past us. "Tell me, Red Dawn, what was your job at Stable 91 before you left?" the old pony asked.
"I was ... I'm an electrical engineer." I was going to say an apprentice engineer ... but ... "Yep. Electrical engineer," I added.
He chuckled, "Well, you're not an arcane engineer ... but still, you must know a thing or two about water talismans, right?"
I thought for a moment, a sly grin barely grazing my lips. "Of course," I replied. Thankfully, that wasn't a complete lie. I knew a thing or two; I just didn't know everything there was to know about them like Dew Drops did. She was the arcane engineer, after all.
"What can you tell me about them?" he asked.
I gave him the textbook definition. "Water talismans use purification spells to produce freshwater."
I crunched into my apple, chewing victoriously.
He nodded as we trotted across the catwalk. "Indeed. The water talisman is an intricate lattice matrix of quasicrystalline superconductors that, when introduced to an expurgation spell, focus and replicate it exponentially, generating an arcano-distillation field to thaumaturgically purify a liquid or aqueous substance for consumption."
I stopped chewing. Sterling turned to my muddled expression, my mouth open so wide that he could see the half-chewed chunks drooling from my lower lip. I gulped, smiling sheepishly. That was a mouthful.
Sterling laughed. "Well, of course any stable engineer would know that!" he added as I stared at him blankly. "Don't worry, I had to learn that too when I was an engineer at my stable."
That bastard was testing me.
"Yes, of course," I murmured. The pony snickered as we trotted along the catwalk.
"I was able to learn more about those talismans when I arrived here. This facility was one of the premier R&D centers for agricultural research in Equestria back in the day. Many of the botanical, biological, and arcanomechanical technologies used to grow and sustain plant life were developed here."
What with the immense gardens and groves that towered over us, I wasn't surprised.
We stopped at the center of the room overlooking a massive cylindrical machine that seemed to stretch up and down from and into the floors above and below us.
"Holy hell," I muttered, unable to fathom the amount of work it must have taken to put the whole machine together.
It was gargantuan. It would take a several minute long trot to navigate around its entire circumference and a long elevator ride to get to the machine's base. Pipes, branching out of the metal trunk, formed a vast network of piping that fed the hydroponic gardens.
"Any idea what this beauty is, Red Dawn?"
I touched a hoof to my chin. "It reminds me of the water purifier back home."
"That's because it is. This facility was used to research and develop new strains of fruits and vegetables that could be grown without conventional farming techniques." He nodded to himself, saying, "You might know of a few, like the white apples grown in your stable - like in many standard configuration stables throughout Equestria. But they needed something to provide water for all their plants," he said, marveling at the beauty of the arcane engineering before us. "It only made sense that the first water talismans were created and used here.
"During the war, Stable-Tec, with help from the Ministry of Arcane Science, researched the applications for advanced Crystal Imperial superconductor gems, which was the standard in the Empire at the time -"
"The Ministry of ... ?"
Sterling chuckled, folding his forelegs over his chest as he leaned against the railing. "You didn't pay much attention in your Equestrian History class did you, my boy?"
"U-uh, sure I did. It's just been so long." I never thought I'd have to hear about the Ministries again after I graduated. I hated Equestrian history - but I passed that class. Passed, not aced - like I did with the rest of my classes.
They're the ones who blew up the world, anyways.
Fuck'em.
Sterling cocked an eyebrow at me as I brooded, silently.
"Well the M.A.S did just what their name suggested," he continued, "They researched and developed new magical spells. They're the ones who invented the mass expurgation spell, or the purification spells used in conjunction with water talismans."
I nodded slowly. Again. "I knew that."
"Unlike the flawed, reverse-engineered zebra talismans that Equestria used in mass-produced talisman designs, water talismans were built by unicorn scientists for quality over quantity, using imperial gems that were guaranteed to increase their efficiency and output ten-fold.
"Here, they developed the very talismans used in every single stable in Equestria, field testing them through their hydroponic agriculture research."
My eyes lit up. "I-if they made them here, then you must have enough talismans to last hundreds of years!"
"Well," he began, tapping his hooves together. I noticed that he wasn't looking at me anymore. Again. "Water talismans were made in labs, not factories. They were constructed by hoof in batches, tested, and shipped, before another batch was given the green light to begin assembling."
He paused, severity hardening his features. My ears drooped, my enthusiasm slowly dying away.
"The last batch of twenty never left its testing phase when the balefire came." He averted his gaze to the water purifier. "That batch is currently being tested as we speak."
I rubbed my forehead with a hoof, exhaling a breath I just realized I was holding in. "Wait, what? They're being tested?" I scratched my mane incessantly, grinding my teeth. "Can't you stop the test? You don't need twenty water talismans to feed this plantation, do you?" I gulped a lump down my throat as my heart fluttered with apprehension.
Sterling bit his lower lip. "This water purifier was built to test several water talismans simultaneously. Take one out ... and the machine ends its testing phase." He looked at me with a grave expression. "It was already on when I first came here."
I clenched my jaw, hoofing my face. "Well what's that supposed to mean?" I whinnied.
Still unable to hold my apprehensive stare, he continued, "Many of the systems were offline and irreparable when we converted this facility into a hydroponics plantation. End the testing phase, and the purifier may not be able to run another test -"
"Please!" I snapped, suddenly, stomping my hoof. "Can you help my stable or not?"
The weary old pony bowed his head to his hooves.
"I'm sorry Red Dawn ... if I stop the test, the plantation will fall apart." He chewed his lower lip, and shook his head. "No. I can't help you."
'No,' I thought as my legs wobbled beneath me and my head started to spin. 'No, no ...
'No.'
"WHAT!?" I screamed, trembling as my heart quaked inside my throat. "You ... you can't?"
He shook his head. "No," the old pony said firmly, once more.
'No. No? NO!' I collapsed against the railing, hanging my head over the edge as rivulets of sweat burned against my forehead.
Something shattered inside of me.
"Everyone in my stable is going to die ..." I murmured desolately, staring into space with vacant eyes. "Everyone in my stable is GOING TO FUCKING DIE!"
Sterling took a step towards me.
"I'm sorry Red Dawn ... I really want to help you -"
"BUT YOU CAN'T! YOU WON'T!" I shrieked, bowing my head as if ready to charge, "Your fucking plantation is worth more than other people's lives!"
"Red Dawn -"
"YOU'RE ALL THE SAME! I SHOULD'VE KNOWN YOU WERE IN IT FOR THE CAPS LIKE EVERYONE ELSE - "
"BE QUIET!" he roared.
I fell on my haunches, gasping for breath, my eyes widened to watery saucers.
"Six thousand souls, Red Dawn," he said, his voice trembling. "Six thousand - and all this ... all this isn't enough. Our yields are hardly enough to feed less than a thousand ponies. But it's all we have. We're the only source of large-scale free labor in all of Equestria.
"We're a clean business. A fair business. We pay our employees. We sell modestly. The other plantations - they don't! They enslave ponies to work in their fields. They fund gangs and pay mercenaries to fight their wars and do their dirty work, and guess who's caught in the crossfire?"
I closed my eyes, shaking my head.
"Us. You and I. The mom and pop's store down the street. The orphanage around the corner. Everyone who lives in Poneva is either a tool waiting to be used or fodder for their goons!" The weary old pony sat before me, looking me in the eyes.
"But so long as everyone can eat their food, so long as everyone can do their drugs, people will just looking the other way while they kill, and rape, and steal!
"Cut our production, and people will keep putting caps into funding more crime, more extortion, and more slavery in the north - in Equestria."
He held my shoulder, and I peered into his eyes. They flickered with sadness as he squeezed me gently with his hoof. But he blinked, and the severity returned to his stare. "People are trying to fight them. We are, too, in the ways we can. We're trying to win this city back. But if we let them win ... the entire north will become their playground."
I shook my head, whimpering as I refused to believe it ... to believe that he was right. My stable would have to die so that six thousand would live. Six. Thousand.
My heart screamed that the 194 ponies back at home meant more to me than anything or anyone else in the world. Sterling - Gail - Night Sky - they could all go to hell with those six thousand for all I cared!
"I really want to help you," he said, softly, "I know what it's like to lose everything. To leave everyone you love behind ... But there's more at stake here than just ... one ... stable. I'm trying to make this city ... maybe even this wasteland a better place." He pleaded with me, "You have to understand ..."
I didn't say anything as I lowered my head to my hooves. I couldn't ... I just couldn't .... I just gave up.
I slammed my hooves into the floor as I rose to my fours.
"I wasted my time coming here. Wasted everyone's time."
I thought that maybe I'd just find someplace to die in the wilderness. Maybe I'd just run into a bunch of snow furies and get flayed alive. I didn't care anymore.
I turned, and walked away.
"Red Dawn, wait -"
I kept walking.
"RED DAWN, STOP THIS INSTANT!" he shouted, and I froze. "Don't walk away from me when I'm talking to you, my boy."
"I'M NOT YOUR 'BOY'!" I screamed, tears welling out of my eyes, "AND I'VE GOT NOTHING ELSE TO SAY TO YOU!"
Sterling clenched his jaw, pain flickering across his face. But he didn't stop.
"Well I do," he said firmly. "I can still help you!"
"Why?!" I snapped, glaring at him. "Why do you shake my hoof, just to push me away!? Why do you care about me? My stable?!"
Sterling's ears drooped as he looked at me with sad, weary eyes. "Because I was a stable pony - just like you," he told me. "Because I lived in a stable ... just like yours. Three hundred lives are still lives to save ... what would I be if I simply chose one or the other? If I can help other ponies, I'll do everything I can to try."
"There's no point ..." I muttered. "I'll find another way - I-I'll search the entire wasteland if I have to!"
The old pony snorted, chuckling darkly. "You'd be wasting your time. No one would give up a water talisman as easy as I would."
"As if I haven't wasted my time already!" I screamed, baring my teeth. "It's over, Sterling ..."
Sterling grabbed both my shoulders, and shook me. Hard. "It's. Not. Over! If I can replace those water talismans with something else ... something ... better, you can have them all."
I shrugged him off and sneered, "Oh yeah? With what?"
"The other plantations purge their water with old world machines - maybe even magic that no one else has ever heard of or seen. If we win ... if the World Tree somehow took their land, those machines - that magic, we'd have enough food to feed the entire city, all six thousand souls ... the settlements outside ... maybe even the entire north."
"Somehow ..." I muttered, burying my head in my hooves. "SOMEHOW?" You're betting my stable's life on a ... on a 'SOMEHOW'?"
"If we beat them ... I'll be able to give you more water talismans than you'll ever need - enough to last you hundreds of hundreds of years."
My eyes widened. "I-is that a promise? Hahaha!" I chuckled mockingly, a cruel, bitter grin stretching across my lips. "Dapple Gray told me how much bigger they are, how much more dangerous they are, and you want to steal from them?
"You're either dreaming too big or you're fucking insane, Sterling!" I screamed.
I paced back and forth restlessly, sweat trickling down my forehead. "I'm running out of time. They're running out of time," I said, trying to lower my voice. I couldn't.
"I don't need your hypothetical BULLSHIT! I need solutions - now!"
The old pony stared back at me in silence.
My eyes fluttered closed and I hung my head. He reached out, and I flinched, batting away his hoof as he tried to keep me from shaking. "I'm sorry Sterling ..." I sobbed, seeing the pain in his eyes, "But how ... HOW CAN I SAVE THEM!?"
I held my breath, trying to keep myself from coming apart. But I couldn't. I let out a quaking sob. I let out another. Another failure. Defeated. Again. I leaned over the railing, strands of my disheveled mane falling over my eyes.
"What the fuck am I going to do now?" I whimpered softly, cringing at the intangible agony - the despair that writhed inside of me. I went there thinking I'd find hope. Thinking I'd find salvation.
I didn't find shit.
"How ... Sterling," I began, my voice trembling and uneven, "How can I choose them over the ponies I love? My mom ... my stable... I can't ... I-I just can't! If you can't help me now ... then ... then it's already over.
"I promised them that I'd find a talisman. Please ... I can't choose ... I can't betray the dead ..." I sniffled. "Six thousand ponies ... shit! If letting my stable die is right, then I don't know what right is!"
He closed his eyes and I turned mine away. We stood there in silence as the water purifier hummed in the somber silence.
Sterling's voice gently parted the curtains between us.
"If you won't do it for us, do it for your stable. Your ... family. Do it ... because there's no other way."
I covered my eyes with a hoof, shaking my head vigorously.
"BULLSHIT! There ... there has to be another way!" I cried as he watched me in silence.
"M-maybe I could look for one of those dead stables ... take theirs."
"If looters haven't already," Sterling murmured, plucking the words right out of my thoughts.
"Fuck! Maybe m-maybe ... maybe I could go south, find someone," I babbled, "Someone ... someone ..."
He just stared at me, saying nothing even as I fought to shrug off the thoughts that screamed exactly what he wanted to tell me. I couldn't bring myself to accept that he was right ... that there was no other way ... that I had to bet my mother's life on someone's dream.
I would move entire mountains to save her - to save them all! If there was even the slightest chance, I'd wrench the earth apart to find one! If there was even a chance ...
But what would I be if I turned away from my only chance - even if it was the smallest one there was ... the only chance there was left to save Mom, to save my home ...
My heart was tearing itself apart - torn between two worlds, a nightmare, and the other, the only world I'd ever known.
I whimpered, cradling my head in my hooves. The old pony was right. There was no other way. A tear slaved down my cheek.
"How can I trust that you won't just fuck me over? How can I trust you won't just fuck my stable over?"
The pony gave me a hard stare.
"I can't make you trust me, my boy. But I'll be damned if I can't make you trust that you'd be doing the right thing."
"The right thing," I chuckled, shaking my head.
It was the only thing I could do.
And I'd do anything - anything - to save my stable.
"My hooves are tied," I whispered, uttering a curse beneath my breath as I shook my head, slowly. "But I can't go home empty-hoofed. If I can't, I might as well just die ..." I turned to him my pathetic gaze, my eyes watery and bloodshot. "How?" I asked, finally, "How can we stop the plantations?"
"The resistance," he answered. "We're not alone. No one ever is. The Orphanage, the Fallen Angels - we're all working against the slavers. But they're the ones on the front lines, the ones who do the real work."
"The what? The Orphanage ... the Fallen Angels?" That emblem I saw on that orange mare's wagon started to make sense. "How ... how can I help? How would I help? I'm just one pony."
Sterling grinned. "You don't look like the type to sit around in a lab and do what we do here," he said, as I fidgeted on my hooves. "Find them. Join them. I don't know where, but that's what you need to do."
I hesitated for a moment, narrowing my eyes at him. "Why the hell don't you know where to find them? I thought you worked with them?"
He shook his head. "The Orphanage keeps their safe houses a secret to protect themselves from everyone else. They're afraid of snitches and moles stabbing them in the back." Sterling gestured me to follow him as we made our way back to the elevator.
"I ... I would've thought the city would be more supportive of them," I murmured.
But I knew that Poneva was a brutal, uncaring place. Only the strong survived. Everyone else was a victim.
"They're just ... afraid," Sterling said, softly. "Say or do anything that makes the plantations tick, and they'll find you. Make you pay." He snorted, "They'll even pay you to change teams."
The elevator dinged from floor to floor.
I chewed on my lower lip, uncertain. "What if they don't even need me?" I asked, quietly, staring at my hooves. I wasn't a fighter. I was pathetic. All I had done so far since I left home was run.
So I wondered: what use could I be to them?
Sterling shook his head at me. "There's too few of us and too many of them. No, they need everyone and all the help they can get," he said as we reached the ninety-first floor. "But we have what it takes to win. The plantations built for themselves a time bomb waiting to explode. Sooner or later ponies are going to get sick of them. All we need to do is push the right buttons."
"I'll still need to find them," I murmured. I blinked, and groaned, hoofing my face. "What about the Angels? Do you at least know where the hell they are?"
I followed him to his desk where he took a seat in a chair behind it. He gestured for me to take one too. "I don't deal too much with the Angels - all I know is that they're ... somehow on our side, too. They're very clandestine. They're aggressive. Standoffish. Dangerous. The Orphanage calls them terrorists. Me? They're just another part of the resistance."
"I ran into one today," I began, running a hoof through my mane. "Ran her wagon off the road ..."
"You're lucky she didn't kill you, my boy."
"She almost did."
The old pony chuckled, darkly. "You're better off looking for Salacity's Orphanage. We give them portions of our yields to support their relief missions throughout the North. They're good ponies, Red Dawn. The kind that just want to make this wasteland a better place."
"Where would I start?"
"Ask around Old Town. There's bound to be someone who knows, there. Check the inns, bars - places ponies frequent. The wasteland's a very small place."
My hooves came to my face, rubbing the bags beneath my tired eyes. Soon, I thought, if the wasteland kept it up for me, I'd be looking too old for my age just like Sterling.
"Do you really think they can be stopped?" I stared at my hooves. "This 'resistance' sounds pretty ... dislocated."
Sterling folded his legs across his chest.
"We can do it," he told me. "I've dedicated my entire life to this place, to these people ... I'm in too deep to think otherwise now, my boy." The old pony looked away for a moment.
"The Orphanage and the Angels might not agree on some things - on how to deal with the plantations, but their goals remain the same." A warm smiled stretched across his cheeks. "That, at least, is worth fighting for."
I chuckled softly. He really did believe that. I wasn't sure if I could ... but seeing that the look on his weary face ... hope. He had hope. In a place like that, hope was for dreamers ... and Sterling was one of them.
But out there, I knew ... I knew that dreams were better than reality ... better than that nightmare ... more so if someone could make them become a reality. If there was hope for the wasteland, then it lied within ponies like Sterling.
I sighed, rubbing at my weary eyes. "Then I'd better damn well start looking. Soon," I said, finally, narrowing my eyes out the windows.
"It won't be easy, Red Dawn."
"It's the only way," I muttered. "But I want to know what I'm getting myself into. What about the plantations?"
He rested his hooves upon the table in front of me, leaning toward me. "The East Eden Company's led by Winter Blossom. She and I ... we were business partners once. Didn't like the way I ran things, so she went ahead and started her own. She attracted the Blood Brothers gang and hired her own private mercenary army. She's charming. Vindictive. A savvy businessmare."
"Her own fucking army?" I blurted out. "What the hell am I getting myself into ..."
"Then there's the Sunny Days Company. Alder Blaze runs the drug business in Poneva with the Silver Horseshoe Society and the Palomino mafia; he likes a good smoke. Likes it a lot. More than other ponies. Get in his way, and he'll smoke you too."
He stared at me the way my mom did when I told her I was going to leave the stable. "You need to be careful out there."
I cocked my head. "You seem to care a lot about a pony you just met."
Sterling lowered his eyes to his desk.
"I was just like you when I was younger. No one gave a shit about the lone stable-dweller.
"I found out the hard way that the closest thing to being cared for was to care for someone else," he said, his smile bittersweet. "You made it this far. The least I could do is lend a hoof to a pony who went through hell to get here. Otherwise, your journey would've been for nothing. And I know what it's like to be in vain."
I stared at him quietly, my ears drooping. "I ... thank you," I whispered. "When those turrets opened up on me, I thought I was doomed. Thought my stable was doomed. You saved my life."
Sterling gave me another faint smile and looked down at his hooves. "You ... remind me of someone I used to know. He was a lot like you. A hard-headed kid. A good kid."
My bloodshot eyes softened. "What happened to him?"
Sterling stared down at his forehooves.
"I left him behind when I left my stable."
A long silence hung over us as he sat there. A part of me waited for him to say more. He didn't.
Sterling just sighed, resting his muzzle on his hooves. "Us stable ponies have to stick together. We're a dying breed out here in the wasteland. Not too many stables have been opening their doors ... those that do ... those that do haven't always been coming out alive."
"How'd you know?" I asked, "About Stable 91, I mean?"
The stallion paused for a moment, meeting my eyes before replying, "My terminal's connected to Stable-Tec's monitoring network. This facility was used to keep track of progress on the north's stable construction projects. I know everything from project specs, equipment, population size, which ones are currently online ... which ones aren't, and so on, and so forth."
"Fair enough," I said, peering into his multicolored eyes. A few moments passed by in silence until he looked away. "Time isn't on my side, Sterling. I need to go. Now." I said finally, standing up from my chair. "I don't have time to just sit around."
"Indeed. Before you go, I'll radio Dapple Gray to pack you some supplies. Fresh food - fruits, a few potions."
I nodded quietly. I needed all the help I could get - all the help he was willing to give. The pony trotted to the door, holding his PipBuck to his muzzle. "Wait here while I ring her up."
Several minutes later, Dapple Gray and the same security ponies that escorted me earlier were outside the door, and Sterling was chatting with her outside. She didn't sound too happy. Something about packing lunches for stupid kids. I rolled my eyes - but in the process, I caught sight of the terminal sitting on his desk.
I hesitated. Sterling seemed to know a lot about the stables in the region. He seemed to know a lot about 91. I clenched my jaw as I eyeballed his terminal. A part of me didn't want to do it, but the other wanted to know more about that peculiar pony.
I wondered, 'How did he know I was from 91? How did he know so much?'
My hooves found themselves upon the terminal's keyboard. He'd left it on. I scrolled through its contents, glancing over the monitor every now and then as I clacked away on the keyboard.
I craned my neck, keeping one eye on the door and another on the screen.
<REGIONAL ARCHIVES>
Clack.
'There we go,' I thought.
REGIONAL ARCHIVES
Stable 91.
Stable 95.
Stable 98.
Stable 103.
Stable 105.
Stable #$%$
S$@!& #^&&
*$@^ & #$%
I pursed my lips as I entered the very first entry, noting the gibberish at the bottom of the screen.
< Stable 91. >
Stable 91 Goal Summary
Narrowing my eyes curiously, I clacked a hoof on the keyboard.
ACCESS DENIED.
'Damnit.' I frowned, wondering what it meant by 'goal'. For what other purpose was my stable built besides keeping everyone alive when the bombs fell? It was a fallout bunker, not a lab experiment.
My eyes took a furtive glance over the terminal's screen, and Sterling was still chatting away outside. I didn't have time to linger.
I decided I'd check out the next entry. Clack. Snippits of information, and some more gibberish flashed before my eyes.
I gulped and kept scrolling down.
Stable 91
Starting Construction Date...
#$%#$#@#$
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Maximum N#$#ber of Occu&ants... 300
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Pri#$@ P%w#r Supply...
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St&tus ...
I scrolled down to the bottom and entered the final entry. I needed to know how he knew.
<St&tus ...>
Clack. The screen flashed and I glowered at it, swearing under my breath.
****ERROR****
File Corruption Detected.
Please Reinstall Operating System Software.
I stared at the monitor, perplexed. I returned to my seat and reclined in the chair, pondering curiously the tawny pony whose head was still outside the door.
He lied.
Footnote: Level Up.
New Perk: Educated - You gain two more skill points every time you advance in level. |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 7 - Pony Feathers - Pt I | Chapter 7
Pony Feathers
"I can't make you trust me. But I'll be damned if I can't make you trust that you'd be doing the right thing."
I never did get used to the cold.
Shivering briskly, I pulled closed the worn black peacoat that I found in a dumpster, buttoning it over the kevlar plates of my security barding.
The black fabric and the cuffs around my fetlocks were worn and frayed from use. I was impartial to ... looting. I wondered if that was the right word. Or was it scavenging? Whatever it was, there was a bullet hole through the fabric over my heart.
Whoever that peacoat belonged to last wouldn't be needing it anymore.
With my back against a wall, I looked across the flea market, ponies trotting from stall to stall, canned food, and other goods clanking inside their bags or held in their mouths. Shivering, I brought to my mouth an apple that Dapple Gray had packed for me, and took a chunk out of it, letting the juices calm my frayed nerves. I had been awfully restless since my meeting with Sterling at the World Tree.
I shook my head, telling myself that I shouldn't have had my expectations so high. I should've learned my lesson the moment I stepped out into the wasteland - no, when I first stepped out that door. I expected too much of the wasteland. I had been wrong about everything so far.
Everything.
I realized that if I had my pistol on me, I would have pulled it on that pony.
But how stupid would that have been?
Fucking stupid. But I tended to be full of stupid whenever I got desperate, or whenever I put my mind to something. I remembered Gail, and how I galloped through a hail of bullets just to save her feathered ass. I was desperate to save the one person I could have called a friend. And at that moment, desperation was as overwhelming of a feeling as the chilling bite of the frozen wind.
In desperation, I had taken risks. My friends and I, even the overmare took risks coming out there in search of a talisman. They were desperate. So was I. But where did those risks take me? Back to square one with a few brushes with death. Saving Gail from those furies was a risk ... but I kept asking myself: was she worth risking my life for?
No. Not those monsters.
But I wondered: were those six thousand Ponevans - the six thousand that Sterling was trying so hard to save - worth risking my life for? As I walked those icy streets among those damned ponies, I got my answer.
Little. By. Little.
For the last two and a half days, I had spent most of my time searching for the Orphanage and the Fallen Angels. I didn't have much luck.
'Please don't say that out loud. Palominos might hear you ...'
'Are you trying to get us killed?'
'How do you wanna leave? Door, or window?'
Those ponies couldn't tell an apple from an orange, because apparently to them, 'door' meant 'window', and 'Orphanage' meant 'death-sentence'. And I couldn't find the resistance unless someone at least kicked me in the right direction.
Just not out of a window.
But nobody wanted to help. Nobody. Not one person wanted to talk about the resistance. The resistance that was apparently trying to save their sorry asses. They were afraid of the Palomino thought police kicking down their doors for saying the 'O' word. The name of the beast - the plantations' and their lackeys' - the Palominos' worst arch enemy: the Orphanage.
So there I was, watching ponies walk by with my back pressed against a cold concrete wall, munching on an apple. I figured that eavesdropping - or rather, observing people from a safe distance was better than asking them in person.
It's not like anybody noticed me anyways. Hunched in the corner there I looked like any other wasteland hobo. All I was missing were the bugs crawling under my skin and the crack baby I never had.
Most people were too busy not giving damn about anybody but themselves to see the disheveled wreck eyeballing them from the corner.
"Five caps," said a pony, clopping her hoof against a stall counter.
The mare behind the counter swept the cans of cram away. "I said ten! This ain't a damn charity, lady!"
"Come on! Seven caps, then? My foal's gotta eat!"
She groaned. "And I gotta make money, okay? Eight caps, or no crammy cram at all."
"Damnit. Fine, here." The sound of caps jingling and cans tumbling into a bag made me sigh.
She was right. It wasn't a charity. There wasn't a single damned charity in that city, because nobody was willing to give any of their shits. My ears twitched in another direction, and I found myself unable to give a shit, either.
"H-h-hey brony, h-hook me up, 'k-kay?" I watched a frail, maneless pony barter for his goodies.
A pony in a trench coat leaned in towards the chemhead as he trembled uncontrollably, scratching at his mangy coat like a flea-ridden animal.
"Geeze, that's the fourth time this week. You can't get enough of this shit, can you?"
"GOD - FUCK - SHIT!" he screamed, slamming a hoof into the snow. "D-don't tell me h-how to live my f-f-fuckin' life!" He got up in the pony's face. "I-I-I-I need my FUCKING DASH!"
The other rolled his eyes, shrugged, and opened up his coat, levitating out a syringe.
"Sure, just keep the caps coming - and try not to kill yourself. Gonna need more of those."
My ears drooped as I shook my head and sighed out a jet of mist. I took another bite out of my apple, chewed, and swallowed.
Those were the people Sterling wanted to save.
So far that day, I'd seen a lot of stupid shit. The highlights of that particular Tuesday included: a drunken bum fight between at least a dozen crossfaded hobos, a mugging that involved a pregnant mare and her groceries, a godlike pickpocketing spree at the marketplace (which was actually pretty cool) - oh - and I even walked in on some stallion giving somebody head in a not so private alley.
A dark chuckle seethed out of my lips. 'Welcome to Poneva city,' I thought.
Those were the people Sterling wanted to save.
I believed that there was a reason why they hadn't progressed beyond anything but a megaspell-blasted Stone Age: because they simply didn't give a shit.
I slid down the wall to my haunches, sighing. I wondered, 'What if these people didn't even want to be saved? What if they weren't even worth saving?'
So I sat there, the unnerving Ponevan ambience raking against my frayed nerves, wondering if it was a waste of my time. Wondering if I was going to end up empty-hoofed once more.
But it was the only chance I had left. Sterling expected me to believe that saving those scumbags was the right thing. Then he lied to me about my stable. It wasn't a about whether or not he could be trusted. It was about the tiny little sliver of hope that still remained for me.
The tiny little sliver of hope for my stable.
I would've believed anything he said at that point - because it was all I had left to believe in.
But what did that make me? A sheep?
No. It made me a very, very, very, desperate sheep.
A sheep that just wanted to go home.
Scanning the market languidly once more, I spied a pair of ponies in winter coats not too far from where I was sitting. They looked to be arguing as one of them, a mare in a peacoat stood there quietly while the other shouted at her. The mare shook her head, taking off her fedora to scratch at her mane in frustration as he kept mouthing off.
Then she snapped. The mare shoved the stallion to the snow in a shower of powder. He slowly rose to his hooves as the mare continued to berate him - all the while I was trying to hear what she was saying.
I couldn't.
That fucking chemhead to my right kept blabbering about how good dash felt when he stuffed it down his asshole.
"KEEYEAAARGH! Just a pump to the rump, as I like to say. F-f-flooows better that way, - hehe - i-i-if ya know what I'm sayin' ..."
"Nah. All I do is sell this shit," said the dealer. He snorted, giving the ragged chemhead who scratched at his coat incessantly a grinning look over. "Not even once."
I growled, frustrated, my ears twitching as I tried to hone in on what that mare with the fedora was screaming about.
Then another mare's voice pierced the night.
"DARKNESS!"
'What the hell -' I cringed, pinning my ears.
I fumbled with my apple as the mare, her voice keen and serrated like broken glass wracked my vulnerable ear drums. She screamed hysterically into the night, "I have seen the face of the abyss and it comes to swallow us all in DARKNESS!"
I swung my head to face a gathering herd of ponies at the center of the flea market. I sighed in exasperation.
'This better be good,' I thought.
The mare's keening shrieks pierced the night once more. "The darkness hungers for your souls! It will consume you from within and without!" She reared upon her hinds and bellowed, "It comes! It comes, and you are all doomed to drown beneath the COMING DARKNESS!"
I stuffed the half-eaten apple into my bags and trotted over, pushing past the crowd to get a glimpse of the ragged, dark-eyed pony that stood upon a tattered podium of crates and rubbish.
"Oh, not this shit again," somebody whined, shaking his head.
"What's going on?" I asked no one in particular.
One pony stood up on her hinds and lobbed a dirty snowball at the mare. "Shut up, you crazy bitch!"
The crazed mare shook the dirty snow from her face, unfazed. "FOOLS! Can't you feel it?" She reached out and smacked a pony upside her face.
"Can't you see it!?" she cackled, swinging her hooves around her and up into the ashen sky. The mare gazed into the crowd and for the briefest of seconds, her eyes stared into mine ... and through them. Then she smiled at me, as if she'd seen me before, as if she knew something I did not.
A glacial chill skittered down my spine.
"Yes ... can't you see the black paint trickling down the walls all around you?" She was still looking at me. "It is already here ... just outside ... waiting for you to let it in. And soon, it will come. It will come and the darkness will know you!"
In my peripherals, I noticed a pair of hazy teal orbs watching us from the darkness. No. Not watching us. Watching the mare. I had seen those eyes before. The forest outside Spring Song's cottage.
My focus shifted when a pony next to me snorted, shaking his head. "Che palle ... this is a fucking joke."
"Forget about it! I've seen that pony around town, scaring everypony with her ghost stories."
To my left, some mare squeaked, "I don't know, I've been through the inner city lately, and somethin's been riling up all the freaks out there." She glanced at everybody around her and shivered. "Even the blast shadows ..."
I looked at her, confused. I had no idea what she was talking about.
"Yeah, I barely made it back here alive on my last prospecting job," said a mare in mangled barding. "Something's making them tick; it's never been this bad." The vicious tears across the fabric of her coat and the limp on her left hind leg made me wonder ...
To my right, "Them mutants and furies've always been riled up! Hell, just us bein' here riles'em up. Nuthin's changed!"
The mangled mare glared at him. "Have you been outside the city lately?"
The doomsayer wore a disturbing grin across her face, unsurprised as the mob argued among themselves. I could tell that that bickering was what she was expecting.
"Don't you mooks know?" some stallion scoffed. "The world ended two hundred years ago!"
The crazed mare just cackled hysterically, as if their words were simply the shallowest, most hilarious things she had ever heard.
"This world won't end again. Only reborn in DARKNESS!" She jabbed a hoof at the crowd, swinging it to and fro. "You larcenists - hedonists - adulterers - you will be paid in the wickedness you have wrought! This entire city will!"
Hooves wrapped around her from behind, trying to pull her off her podium.
"That's enough out of you ..." a mare growled.
"Get your filthy hooves off me!" She bucked her off the soapbox, standing upon her hinds. The crazed mare cried out into the night, "This city, and all the cities after it will be the first example - suffering the vengeance of ETERNAL DARKNESS!
"DARKNESS IS COMING, YOU FOOLS! Soon you shall bear witness to the darkness inside your hearts - MADE MANIFEST!"
The mare wrapped her hooves around the Doomsayer's throat. "Shut your piehole! You're scaring ponies away, see? You don't wanna bring the cafones here to calm things down, do ya?"
That choked their jeers away. Everyone fell silent.
Not too far from the crowd, at the other end of the market, black clad figures in fedoras were watching us from the distance.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw that some of the unamused stall owners had their legs folded across their chests. Others tapped their hooves impatiently against their stall counters, irritated.
On one of the larger stalls, more like a giant mobile store, I saw the words 'Sunny Days Company' stenciled onto a flapping plastic banner. The yellow, smiley-faced sun that was their logo didn't quite agree with the ponies that stood behind the counter. One of the vendors was speaking with a black-hatted gangster. His fedora tipped up and the pony underneath stared right at us, annoyed.
The vendors weren't making money. They didn't like that. Not one bit.
A pony in a gray wintercoat pushed past the mob and stood before us. The crowd took a step back. He was the stallion I was eavesdropping on earlier. The one who got his ass kicked by that Palomino.
"Hey you clowns - beat it! All o'ya, scram!" he shouted.
The pony glanced at the gangsters assembled near the Sunny Days stall. "The mob ain't got time for chit-chat. So beat it, before you bring them over here and they shut you all up, ya dig?"
An air of panic swept through the crowd. Heads turned to him - then to the Palominos who were staring them down from across the empty, empty stalls. "Forget about it ... I'm outta here," a pony croaked, and everyone scattered, leaving me standing awkwardly and by myself at the center of the market.
"Yeah, that's it, buy your cram," the pony in the gray wintercoat said. A mare eeped as he shoved her away. "Less talking, more shopping! Go on, get outta here!
"And you," he glared at the doomsayer, jabbing a hoof at her. "Beat it!"
The doomsayer just smiled at him. And in the corner of my eye, I felt her eyes fall upon me. I squirmed beneath her stare. Then she gave me a knowing smile.
She left, finally, stopping for a moment, and sparing me one last glance before slinking into an alleyway and back into the shadows from where she came. I gulped. I wasn't even sure what scared me the most, that 'darkness', or the fact that that mare had looked at me.
At least it was quiet again. I could hone in on the sounds that I actually wanted to hear. With his back turned to me, I spied on the pony in the gray wintercoat as he glared at that dark alleyway for several long seconds. My ears perked and swiveled in his direction.
There was no way in hell I was going to follow that mare. But him ... I was curious.
A jet of a mist snorted out of his nose. He shook his head, lifted a hoof and started walking away. He paused, and spared another glance over his shoulder.
She was gone.
The stallion cocked his head slightly at the gangsters who were beginning to take their leave, any threats to their business resolved and dispersed.
He looked around, did a double take over his shoulders, and sighed.
A few seconds passed. All was clear, for now. For him. He quickly left the scene. I followed, weaving through the reassembled crowds of shoppers, trying to keep my eyes on him as he pushed past nervous looking ponies.
He stopped and peered over his shoulder. I looked away, whistling as I dug absent-mindedly through my saddlebags. By the time I felt his eyes leave my direction, he was almost gone, and I struggled to maintain my distance. He sped up with every moment that passed.
I wondered what he was hiding. He didn't want any of those Palominos near there. Who wouldn't? But unlike the rest of the cowards around me, he was trying to keep them away - and anything that could bring them running.
He might've been with the resistance.
Several times he paused feverishly to see who was behind him. Several times I pretended to be doing anything but following him. While casually eyeing a stall-owner's canned wares, I watched in my peripherals as he turned a corner, disappearing into an alleyway.
'What is with these fucking people and alleyways?' I groaned inside my head.
I pursed my lips, hurrying after him. Taking a shallow breath, I crept along the wall and peeked around it where I saw the stallion standing before three others. They all shuffled upon their hooves, nervously.
"I want you to keep those saps from bringing more trouble our way, ya dig?" he said to them. "Barely made that herd leave ... we can't risk attracting any more of Avelign's toy-ponies to come back here and see if we already got her -"
A mare cleared her throat. "U-uh ... Grifter, about that ..." she began, nervously.
There was a slight pause.
"We couldn't find her. She moves too damn fast!" said a stallion too thin for his outfit.
The one named Grifter growled, "She's just one damn pony!"
"I nicked her wiff muh heater though, but she's a slippery filly!" whined a big, dumb looking stallion.
Grifter's eyes widened. "You - you did what!? I thought I told you boneheads to keep your bullets off of her! I want her alive, damnit!"
"But I-I was aimin' fer her leg -"
"It doesn't matter where you were aiming you moron! Boy, if you killed her ... oh damn, it'll hurt me more than I'm gonna hurt you!" Grifter groaned, facehoofing, "Did she drop the caps at least?"
The three shook their heads. "I ... I think she still has it," said the mare.
"Pony feathers! At this rate I won't have the caps to pay Avelign after what happened last night!"
There was a tense pause. Then the thin stallion snickered, nudging the mare playfully. The dumb looking one just stood there, confused.
"You - what!? Shut your cocktrap, will ya, Twiggy!?" Grifter fumed. "If we don't pay her what we owe, she'll make us all disappear - for good, ya dig?!"
The dumb stallion raised his hoof, nervously. "M-maybe we can go lookin' fer her again?"
Grifter just covered his face with a hoof.
"Shit! She's probably long gone by now ... damn ... you know, sometimes I wonder if you morons are even on my side, since you do the complete opposite of everything I tell you to do!" Grifter shook his head. "Probably why she got away, too," he growled, grinding his teeth. "Probably why you couldn't find her ..." The stallion looked over both his shoulders, before whispering, "I bet she had help from the orphans!"
My ears perked. 'Did he just say ...
'THE 'O' WORD?'
Big Stupid's eyes widened. "Orphans!?" he gasped, grimacing as he shuffled on his hooves like he had to pee.
"Shush, stupid!" the mare hissed, clapping a hoof over his mouth. "You don't want the boys outside to hear you saying that - or you'll end up like Pomo from last Tuesday!"
The skinny one, Twiggy, sighed, "Oh come on, Dahlia, we don't even know if it was them for sure. Might've even been those crazy Angel fuckers doing it."
Grifter shook his head. "The mob's been cleaning up the streets lately ... but that Pomo was a wild one. Maybe she was cheating on the mob ..."
"Well, at least Dawdleshoes over here'd never cheat on ya," said Twiggy, pointing at the dumb one. "He's too fuckin' stupid."
The mare named Dahlia sighed, "And why in Equestria wouldn't we be on your side? It's our heads on the block too."
"Because Pomo wasn't the first!" Grifter snapped. "I heard Dolce's been shooting up her own boys ... something's killing 'em from the inside ... and there's no way in hell I'm getting between those crazies and that heap o'dirty laundry."
"I heard about the rumors," Twiggy whispered. "Those orphans got strings to pull all over this place. But all that? All that killing and burning - that can't be them ..."
"Forget about it ..." Dahlia began quietly, dabbing her hoof in the snow. "The orphans don't kill people like that ... they don't do 'killing'. At least, not like that."
Grifter tapped his chin, apprehensively. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess you're right. It's not like them. But something fishy's been going on around here, and after hearing that crazy bitch and her 'darkness,' I don't know who or what's behind -"
His eyes darted over his shoulder and met mine.
'Oh.'
I ducked back into the shadows.
"Come outta there - slowly!" he shouted.
The sound of them chambering guns made me flinch.
I poked my head out from around the corner.
"What the hell are you doing, kid?" Grifter demanded, inching towards me with the others in tow.
"Uh-uh ..." I stammered.
'Think, damnit, think!' I didn't know what to say, and I knew that whatever I was going to say next was either going to buy me a bullet or buy me some time.
An awkward smile curled across my lips.
"I-I saw you talking with a Palomino earlier - was wondering what all the commotion was about."
He chuckled nervously as I took gratification in the fear that flashed in his eyes. It worked. "The fu ... big whoop - w-what's it to ya? Did they set you up for this?"
"Not enough to get me shot, I promise - and no," I answered forcefully as I eyed Grifter's armed ponies. "But from what I've learned, the Palominos are so primal that they only snap at loud noises." I chuckled nervously at the gun barrels that were aimed at my chest.
"Saw you shouting at one earlier and she went apeshit and pounced ... so I'm surprised she didn't come back for seconds after all that monkeying around that happened out there, earlier."
They just stared. Tough crowd.
"Praymaul?" asked big stupid Dawdleshoes.
"He means like brutish, dummy," Dahlia hissed. "Hah, kinda like you."
Grifter glared at me. "How do ya you wanna die, kiddo? Fast or slow?"
"I don't know ... but it seems like saying the 'O' word would kill me faster than you guys could. Heard it's a trigger word for something awful." I jabbed a hoof at him. "And you guys have been talking a lot about it."
Grifter lowered his voice. "Orphanage?" He blinked, biting his lower lip.
Not too far from us, the ponies that had only just begun to resume their usual activities were starting to back away again, avoiding that alleyway like a bad smell.
"You oughta not talk so loudly, kid, or you might bring more of my good friends this way. Something I'd really like to avoid," he trailed off, darting his eyes over my mane to see if those gangsters were anywhere.
"Hey, you ponies said it - not me," I said, smiling crookedly.
"How's about I shut him up, boss?" asked stupid Dawdleshoes. I frowned at him.
Grifter held up a hoof. "I don't want to start another fuss and attract anymore of those boys, so don't go aiming for the leg again, ya moron."
"Listen, I wasn't spying on you or anything," I confessed with a chuckle, trying to laugh my nervousness away with their guns jammed in my face. "Honest," I added. "You just look like someone who can help me ..."
"Really? Kid, I got better things to do than foalsit some sap like you." He turned and motioned to his lackeys. "Alright boys, back to work -"
"Wait - please. I need help," I insisted, "You guys don't have much of a problem talking about your rumors, but everybody else starts choking up whenever I mention the Orphanage. Why's that?"
The pony snorted a jet of mist as the others exchanged glares. I could taste the bitterness in his voice as he groaned. "They're just a bunch of rats, kid. Nopony likes 'em."
Inhaling softly, I muttered, rolling my eyes, "Well, I can't really dislike people I know nothing about."
He glanced around, anxiously. "Shut up, will ya? Quit yakking about things that'll get ya killed, ya dig?" He chuckled, shaking his head as he turned his back on me and started walking away again.
"No - no, go ahead, just not anywhere near me or my business, okay?"
I sighed. "Oh come on!"
He shot me an irritated look over his shoulder. "Forget about it - I'm not 'coming on'!"
Twiggy snickered, beating his hoof at Dahlia like he was beating someone off.
Grifter snapped, "You two shut it! And you!" he growled, jabbing a hoof at me, "All they do is make the plantations tick. And if you don't pipe down, those peacoats are gonna come on over here thinking you're one of those damn rats," he said, nodding to the three behind him who started a few steps toward me. "And since you won't quit talking to me, they're gonna stick me in the icebox with you too!"
I facehoofed.
"You have no idea how many times I've heard that same old shit today," I growled. "And frankly, I don't give a fuck. If you can't tell me anything about them, then please, for the love of Celestia, point me to someone who can!"
The stallion stepped up to my muzzle, our faces mere breaths apart.
"How about I point you to a meat-grinder, kid?" he growled.
I gulped.
His voice was but a whisper. "You don't wanna be in the know about the Orphanage, kiddo ..." The pony's eyes darted back and forth as he spoke. "The reason why people don't like talking about 'em is because the Palominos have been yanking out weeds around these parts, and anypony they think is sleeping with the Orphanage gets wasted - and I'm not dunking my hooves in that mess."
"Forget about it!" Twiggy and Dahlia both agreed.
The stupid one looked a few minutes late.
"Forget about what?"
Grifter just rolled his eyes. "Shutup. All I'm trying to do is keep my black-hatted compari from thrashing around, ya dig? Usually ends up with a few dozen ponies in bags. Usually in little bags, and it's really bad for business. Bad for my business," he said, glancing over his shoulders at the flickering lights at the other end of the alleyway.
"You were watching me earlier, huh? Well you saw just that, only I was lucky to walk away without missing a hoof or two."
I let out a long and drawn out sigh.
"It's hard to make good bank when they're carving up the place looking for weeds to rip out all the time, ya dig!? And I'm not letting somepony help them ruin me even more!"
I smirked. "You really must be swimming in the deep end if you're in trouble with those guys."
He shook his head furiously, fear sweeping across his face. "No - no - no - no! You can't say that out here ... not with them watching ... or listening .... me and my boys got nothing to do with the Orphanage. My sitch got nothing to do with those damn rats. I don't want to lose my job, okay?" The pony looked over both his shoulders, hoping no one heard me. He muttered, his voice barely audible, "I damn well just about did, earlier."
"Then why do you have beef with those gangsters?"
He shook his head with a sour chuckle. "Listen kid, it's none of your business. And, right now, I really got worse things to deal with right now than play a twenty questions with some crumby tough guy. So beat it - before my boys beat you off!"
Grifter's eyes widened. "Fuck!"
Twiggy burst out laughing. "HAHA - OW!" he cried as Grifter slammed a hoof into his face.
A wry grin forced its way across my cheeks. "Worse things, huh? Then you can take care of this Palomino problem of yours yourself right, tough guy?" I scoffed, "Your 'boys' couldn't even take care of one pony."
Grifter clenched his jaw and the laughing stopped.
He craned his neck toward me, and I felt the air in front of my face heat up like a furnace. A snort of hot air burned against my muzzle and I trembled inside my barding as sweat beaded up on my forehead.
I then noticed the gun tucked away beneath his winter coat.
'Shit.'
His foreleg crept up his chest, the pistol mere inches away from his reach. I gulped and watched his hoof inch ever closer.
He bumped my shoulder instead.
"Well I gotta hoof it to ya - you are one big-balled palooka," the pony laughed at me as I fought with my own pulse. He wrapped a hoof around me and yanked me close, laughing at me. I laughed back at him. Nervously. "Level with me, kid. You offering to help me or something, or did they send you here to watch me squirm?"
I glanced over my shoulder, noticing that ponies were watching me. "They? I'm not a gangster. I'm a merc from New Apploosa," I lied. "I'm just looking for answers."
He cocked an eyebrow and released me. I almost tripped up on my own hooves.
I exhaled, realizing that I was holding my breath. "Maybe ... I can help you help me?" I said, forcing a smile.
"Now why would I want help from some nobody like you?" he and his boys chuckled.
"Because this nobody has the balls to talk about the Orphanage in public the way I am right now," I snapped, "So do you think I really give a shit if the Palominos try to stop me?"
He snorted, nodding with an amused grin stretching across his cheeks.
"If you're looking for answers, then you're talking to the wrong ponies, kiddo ..."
I took a step towards him. "No. I am. You seem to be willing to talk more about the Orphanage than anyone else in this Goddesses-damned town is willing to say - I don't know why, and I don't care." I took a deep breath. "I need to find them. And frankly, between this Palomino problem, those moles, and these missing caps of yours, I'd say you've got your hooves full."
The time that ticked by as he thought to himself in silence chipped at my already thin patience. Grifter nodded slowly, looking me up and down with a shifty look in his eyes. He stomped a hoof into the ground, an uneven grin widening across his face.
"You three, leave me with this palooka. You know what to do."
It took a moment, but his boys nodded, slipping their weapons into their coats before starting down the alley, out the way I came. I kept one eye on my EFS and the other on the pony standing before me.
Grifter simply gestured for me to follow him.
He led me back into the market, walking down a row of glowing stalls, the warmth and light of smoking cooking pots warming my flesh slightly and the smell of burned meat wafting into my nostrils once more.
"Say, what's your name, kid?"
"Red Dawn."
"Yeah? And I'm Grifter," he said, finally and formally introducing himself to me with an unceremonious bow. "So whaddya want with the Orphanage, kid? Got a bone to pick with 'em? They steal your sweetroll?"
"I have my reasons," I said, simply.
"Forget about it! Hell, everypony's got a bone to pick with the Orphanage, nowadays. The Palominos aren't an exception." He nodded to himself, thoughtfully. "Yeah ... you're right. I do know a bit about the Orphanage. " He walked up to a stall and plucked a bottle of Sparkle-Cola off the counter, dumping caps into somebody's wary hooves.
The stall owner's bodyguard gave me a sideways look.
He led me away from the market, and into another quiet alleyway. "I've dealt with those rats before. I used to work for them, actually. I was a courier. Ran supplies up and down their hideouts - but I left, because, ya know, I couldn't go anywhere without getting shot."
I nearly jumped when he swung the bottle into the wall, shattering it with a crash. A magical field wrapped around the soda pop popsicle, picking the orange shape clean of glass. He licked at the frozen treat before smiling curtly. "But you know, if you wanna die so bad, I'm not stopping you. But you gotta help me first, kid, because I won't see the end of this day if I can't get my friends outta my mane."
"It looked pretty bad."
He sighed, shaking his head. "You don't even know half of it, kid." He paused, grinning to himself. "I owe my friends a sum of caps ... kinda like everyone else in this town. If I don't get it to them by the end of today, I get to disappear, ya dig?"
"Disappear?" I asked, uneasily.
"It's kinda like being dead." I looked at him blankly. "Because it is."
"Oh. Well fuck."
He chuckled dryly, giving the popsicle an apprehensive lick. "Exactly, kid."
"If it gets those fuckers out of your mane, then I'll give you a hoof. But you need to help me, too."
He raised an eyebrow at me. There was a peculiar look brooding in his eyes.
"Of course, I'm no welcher ... especially to ponies who give me a hoof. You get me out of this mess, I'll point you in the right direction."
"Finally," I breathed, "If it gets me what I need."
The pony thought for a moment, nodding to himself as he gnawed on the frozen soda. "Some sorry bastard took my dues and now I can't pay up."
I frowned, almost feeling sorry for him. Out there, caps bought a lot of things. Life was one of them.
"What do I need to do?" I asked, darkly.
"I've got half of my morons out here in the market, making sure no idiot pisses off anymore of Alder's stallponies, and the other half making sure nopony messes things up over at my joint." He shook his head, swearing under his breath. "And half really isn't that much. Which is why I need you doing what my boys are too stupid to do."
He stomped a hoof into the snow. "All I need you to do is to get me my damn caps back. I was just about to pay my dues, and this damn broad comes right ahead and swipes my money right from under my nose!"
The pony craned his neck towards me and glared, growling through his teeth. "Find her. Bring her back. Alive. And with the money, otherwise I'm dead, and so are all my boys."
My expression darkened. I remembered how that Palomino had tossed him around like a rag doll. Only the worst was in store for him if he didn't get his money back.
The burning shop and the black-suited ponies came to mind. I was well aware of what they were willing to do to teach a pony a lesson.
I really didn't want to see another burning building.
"I'll do it," I said, sternly, my jaw clenching. "Where can I find this pony?"
"She's a unicorn. Red coat, red and white mane. Like a candy cane - hell, that's her name: Candy Cane. She ain't so sweet like one, though. Candy Cane's a double-crossing whore ... she'll stab you in the back if she gets the chance, ya dig?"
I snorted, "Sounds like a real piece of work."
"Forget about it!"
"Wha ... why?"
Grifter just sighed. "It's a saying, kid. Like - 'I agree'."
"But you've used it to disagree, I think ..."
"Yeah - it means that too."
"I ... I still don't ..."
He rolled his eyes. "Anyway, she robbed one of my customers while she was paying up at my place, and ran off with my caps. Without that payment of hers, Avelign'll make me pay extra - double - maybe even triple of her cut - and I can't afford that." He cringed, rubbing his foreleg anxiously. "Maybe even extra-extra.
"Last pony who saw Candy Cane was her. She might be able to point you to where that bitch ran off to." The stallion took out a scrap of paper and a pencil, and scribbled down on it some notes, before hoofing it to me.
They were directions, with an address at the bottom.
"My morons were having issues with catching her. But you don't look like a moron ... so you might just have a crack at getting her before my peacoated friends get me."
"Thanks."
"No, thank you, kid," the pony said, with a grin. "I need that money before it gets too dark, so meet me back here when you find her. I'll be here, waiting on the chopping block."
"I'm on it," I said, turning the other way, my eyes still on the note.
Grifter's voice echoed behind me. "You might just be the one who can save me and my boys from becoming fertilizer at Sunny Days." * |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 7 - Pony Feathers - Pt II | *
I walked up the steps wearily, the thought of getting punted out of a window again muttering to me in the back of my head. Lifting my PipBuck to my face, I eyed my EFS. Two people inside.
After doing a double take over both my shoulders, I brought a hoof to the door and knocked twice, steeling myself for a buck to the face or a gun to my mouth. But neither of those came. I checked the piece of paper and glanced down the block of ramshackle homes.
Each house was a ruined hand-me-down from the past, their breached ceilings and crumbling walls patched up with metal plates or nailed shut with planks of warped wood. There wasn't a splotch of color anywhere - just like the rest of the city. And the wasteland.
On my way there, I nearly lost myself in that lonely maze of dilapidated dwellings. There, the sounds indicative of life were drowned out by the wind, moaning through the gnarled steelworks that rose up above me. Something was suffocating the liveliness of that place, and I just couldn't put a hoof on it.
I had seen it in the marketplace - the fear in everyone's eyes when a certain word was said or a certain name was mentioned. There, in that quiet neighborhood, it was everywhere.
I pressed my ear against the door, my face darkening as the light bulb that hung above it flickered and died for a moment. I heard something. Cocking my head, I peered into the lacerated glass of the eyehole just above my muzzle.
"Oh shit ..." I heard someone whisper.
I pursed my lips and knocked again.
Hooves clopped against the door on the other side and a mare squeaked, "H-hello?"
"Hi, I'm looking for ..." I glanced at the note I held in my hoof. "Daintybelle? Are you Daintybelle?"
There was a long pause. "Y-yes, yes that's me. What do you want?" the mare asked in a trembling voice.
I cocked an eyebrow as I spoke.
"I need to talk to you," I said, tucking the note into my chest pocket.
Another anxiety ridden pause. "Right now," I added with a sigh.
Hooves scrambled behind the door, and a second later, it creaked open, and two terrified eyes stared back at me.
"Who's that?" I heard a stallion shout from the other end of the house. The mare glanced over her shoulder, closing the door slightly.
"N-nopony important, dear!" She gulped, muttering, "I hope ..." Daintybelle poked her muzzle out the door, her eyes darting back and forth as she checked and double-checked that I was alone.
I looked over my shoulder absent-mindedly and saw nobody. She caught sight of the pistol holstered around my chest, biting her lower lip.
The mare gave me a sheepish once over as a heavy breeze blew our way, my black peacoat and DD's scarf flapping in the wind. "W-why are you here? D-did I do something wrong?" she stammered.
"I just need to ask you some questions," I replied, watching her every feverish move.
She gulped, looking a little pale as she nodded slowly. The mare pulled her winter coat closed and stepped out the door, shutting it quietly it behind her.
"Listen ... if this is about earlier ..." she whispered, biting her lower lip as she glanced over her shoulder at the door. "I was going to pay - I swear! I'd never swindle anypony ... never, ever - ever." She looked up at me, shaking. "Please, you gotta believe me!"
She acted like it wasn't the first time we'd met - or at least the first time she'd ever been in a situation like that.
"Wait, what -"
"Come on ..." she whined. "Please, I swear to God I'm telling you the truth! I-I'll pay double this week, if that's what you want," she pleaded with me.
The wind ruffled my peacoat, and the light bulb above us flickered once more. I opened my mouth to reply, but she beat me to it.
"I'll ... I'll ... I'll do anything," she whimpered, turning slightly and lifting her tail. "Just don't make me disappear!"
My eyes widened at that.
"No - you got me all wrong!" I rested a gentle hoof upon her shoulder consolingly in an effort to calm the trembling mare. "I'm not one of them." I paused, choosing my words carefully. "I'm a merc. All I want is my caps and the faster you can help me, the faster I'll be out of your mane," I said, trying to sound like Night Sky. A lopsided smile stretched across my lips. "I'm not here to make you ... uh ... disappear."
The blood returned to her face, and she sighed with relief, leaning against the door.
"Oh thank God ... I thought you were one of them, and ..." She shook her head, still tense. "Never mind. What ... what do you need?"
"I just need help finding the pony who mugged you." Her expression flickered for a moment. Then she nodded. "Do you know a pony named Candy Cane?"
She froze, her ears perked. The mare was wary of the sound of hooves shuffling behind the door. I watched her eyes dart frantically to her side as she pulled her hood over her head.
"No, I don't," she replied, nodding her head at me.
I lifted a brow, regarding her with uncertainty. Then my eyes forward sparkle blinked with a blue dot.
Someone was listening to us. Her husband.
I expected her to turn around, open the door, and reassure him that she wasn't in danger. But she led me away from the doorsteps so that we faced the street. That conversation was apparently supposed to be between only us, and us only. She probably didn't want him to worry.
I gave her a sideways look as the mare's eyes darted to the door ... again ... before continuing.
Daintybelle's voice was barely audible over the wind.
"S-shit -" she hissed. "I thought ..." Daintybelle feigned composure, asking, "You're with Grifter, aren't you?"
I nodded.
The mare pursed her lips, and nodded back, slowly, as if the answer to my question physically pained her. I cocked an eyebrow as she whispered so that only the two of us could hear, "Yes, I do. She ... st-stabbed me last night."
I eyed, gloomily, the dried splotch of crimson that had stained deep into her winter coat. "She tried to kill me ... she ... she tried to kill me.
"Then she took my caps and ran off with them before I could pay him. Pay Grifter. I was going to pay ... but she had a knife! Said she'd cut me if I didn't hoof them over! But ... but she cut me anyways ..." Daintybelle shook her head, shaking uncontrollably. She repeated, "I was going to pay ... I swear. I told you ... I was going to pay. But she cut me ... You ... believe me right?"
I sighed with growing impatience.
"Yes. Now do you know where I can find her? Did you see where she ran off to?"
She nodded, uneasily.
"Y-yes ... s-she went out a window. She's fast, you see? I saw her heading to the Old Factory District, I think ..."
I narrowed my eyes at her.
"You think?"
She nearly jumped.
"No ... I-I know."
Nodding to myself, I asked, "I don't come here often. I'm sort of new to this city ... came here from down south. Where's the Old Factory District?"
Daintybelle's eyes darted away from me once more.
"J-just follow the main road east of the brothel - the Sultry Scullion - and you'll get there," she whispered in a voice I barely heard. "I go there often. Down the road I mean, it's by the market."
The door behind us cracked open, and a stallion peeked outside. Daintybelle didn't turn.
The stallion asked, "Is he ...?"
"No. No he's not." Daintybelle replied, keeping her eyes trained on me. "He's helping me with ... what happened yesterday."
Her husband's apprehension allayed somewhat as he slowly holstered his pistol in his coat.
"Those fucking Palominos ... why can't they just piss off?" he grunted, stomping a hoof in the snow.
"Palominos?" I cocked my head at Daintybelle. "Wait ... this Candy Cane mare's a Palomino?" Her husband looked like he'd never heard that name before.
Daintybelle blinked twice.
"Y-yes. She works for them ..."
I glared at the snow.
"Candy Cane, eh?" her husband muttered, "Damn Palominos ... how're we supposed to pay them their damn tax if they already took the money we owe?!" He shook his head. "After nearly killing my wife here, one of their boys came around here earlier, wondering why we were late this week. I fuckin' wonder why ..."
Daintybelle dabbed her hoof nervously in the snow.
I narrowed my eyes at him and growled through my teeth, "Tax?"
Her husband grumbled bitterly, "Protection money. We pay them so they don't run us out. So the Blood Brothers or the Pikes don't run us out ... and take our things." He chuckled, grimly, "As if there's anything left to take from us anyways ... we don't got much around here. Not anymore ..."
I uttered a dark chuckle, rolling my eyes.
"Why even steal from ponies you're already taking from?"
"Hmph." Her husband folded his legs across his chest. "They're a real hooffull of shit, that's why!"
"I don't understand why you ponies don't just kick them out," I said, "You don't have to deal with their shit ..."
"If it was that easy ..." the stallion began, trailing off. He shook his head. "If it wasn't for them keeping East Eden's hounds outta this part of the city, I wouldn't even pay them a single cap. But this isn't the first time they've tried taking more than what we owe ..." He turned to Daintybelle. "I'm thinkin' that Candy Cane mare that mugged you was the same pony that tried wringing us out last week, too."
Daintybelle hesitated, nodding quickly as she stared at her hooves in silence.
"Is ... is she going to be okay?" I asked.
Daintybelle trembled uncontrollably as her husband wrapped a leg around her. I watched curiously as her shivering refused to abate.
She was mortified.
He looked at his wife with soft eyes, rubbing her shoulder with a hoof. She just shied away from his gaze.
"Daintybelle's still shaken up after what happened yesterday. She nearly bled out." The mare hung her head in turmoil.
I stared with dark eyes, shaking my head at the bloody hole in her coat.
"Fucking Palominos ..." her husband began, "Someone oughtta teach those thugs a lesson."
Daintybelle's eyes widened.
"You shouldn't say that out loud -"
"NO! I'm tired of this! God-damned tired!" Daintybelle wrapped her hooves around him, but he shrugged her off. "I swear I WON'T let those bastards HURT YOU AGAIN!"
"HEY!" I shouted abruptly, and the two fell silent. "I'll find this mare. I'll find her. I'll make her pay," I said, as I unholstered my pistol, checking its safety.
Daintybelle's husband gave me a cold hard stare before nodding.
"Thanks ... and good luck. I'd keep that heater hot if I were you ... those Palominos like to play dirty."
I nodded at him, but my jaw clenched as I remembered Grifter's orders.
'I needed her alive.'
Daintybelle watched me as I left, following me with anxious eyes.
She cupped a hoof over her mouth and turned away.
I barely heard her voice whisper beneath the wind.
"They like to play dirty alright ..." *
I walked along a well-trodden, frozen road, cracked and broken by centuries of ice and countless hooves. Rising ominously before me was the immense, confusing sprawl that was the old industrial district. The titanic, blocky metal faces of ancient manufactories, once the lifeblood of Poneva's industry, were now as dry and inert as the ponies that were probably buried right beneath me.
But where there were once busy sidewalks and wagon-clogged streets, there were only weary wastelanders and scrap metal shops. Those shops, built around heaping piles of scrap and possibly useful junk, bought and sold scavenged parts and scavenged machines. Doodads of all kinds of doods and dads were on sale at every corner.
Naturally, with people being attracted to shiny things, other shops would spring up nearby too. A few eateries, thrift shops, gun shops, a blacksmith, and even a potion shop were built into the remnants of factory buildings that hadn't collapsed. While more densely packed than the market I was at earlier, that place was far more pleasant. We were certainly farther away from the Palominos' turf, and I couldn't see any black hats anywhere.
Shivering briskly, I joined the ponies that wandered the swap-meet, glancing every now and then at a shiny part that caught my attention or some piece of machinery that I had never seen before. Everybody's attention seemed to be drawn elsewhere, however.
'Lucky me,' I thought.
'She was just here.'
A pair of ponies were scrutinizing with grim curiosity a trail of blood that had frozen into the tracks of some wounded pony. The trail was erratic and suggestive of a painful limp. Some of them weren't even hoofprints. Every now and then there was an imprint of a shape vaguely reminiscent of a pony punched into the snow. Big dumb Dawdleshoes had shot her in the leg after all, it seemed.
One such imprint lied just outside of the potion shop's door.
I trotted up to the pair of onlookers. My ears perked.
"What happened here?" I asked, eyeing the pony-shaped crater.
"No idea," replied a mare, who dipped her hoof in the bloody slush. "But it's been here for a few hours now. It's frozen solid."
I tapped my chin with a hoof. "Do you know anybody who might've seen whoever did this?"
A stallion pointed a hoof at the door to my left, a meticulously hoofpainted sign that said, in a vaguely understandable language ... 'la ... booteele ... magic' ... rocking gently in the breeze. "We're right outside Madame Mistelle's shop. She probably saw what happened," he said, shrugging.
Thanking them, I trotted past the two, and pushed open the potion shop's door. As I soon stepped inside, I was struck in the face by an atmosphere entirely different from the one outside.
It was warm in there.
I blinked several times as I took in the room around me. I hadn't felt warmth against my coat ever since I left my stable.
At the far end of the shop, there was a fireplace ... without firewood. Magical firelight danced across my face as I walked past a series of shelves stocked full of colorful potions and strange concoctions that didn't really look safe to drink.
A heavily-accented, robotic voice droned behind me.
"Greetings, sir, bienvenue à La Bouteille Magique."
"HOLY SHIT!" I gasped, backing away from the floating, four-armed robot. My flank bumped into a shelf and a potion tumbled to the floor. In a blur of chrome limbs, the robot lashed out at me -
- and caught the potion an inch above the floor.
"Do be careful, sir, you quite nearly bruised your hindquarters," its flanged, synthesized voice said politely. The hovering robot's frighteningly long two-pronged arm replaced the potion back on the shelf before retracting back into its metallic shell.
"I-I-I'm ..." the word 'sorry' was lost on my lips as an alabaster mask ambled into view.
"I do apologize, Monsieur Melanger can be rather inconspicuous at times," said a mare's voice. Her ornate mask fascinated me as well as the strange accent that complimented her startlingly pleasant voice. "He tends to catch ponies unawares - with good intentions, I assure you," the mare added in the silkiest of voices.
A unicorn mare in a faded, yet elegant dress foxtrotted down the aisle towards me, bowing her head at me and lifting her dress with a curtsy. "I am Madame Mistelle. Welcome to the Bouteille Magique, where you may purchase from a vast selection of potions to your fancy!" The rosy lips over where her own lips should've been smiled with genuine hospitality. Though it was impossible to tell what face she really wore beneath that mask.
I stared at her for a moment, bewildered by the masked mare.
"I ... uh ..." I cleared my throat, trying not to make uncomfortable faces at her strange, ornate mask. "Do you own this store?"
"Own, no. But I do preside over the exchanges that occur here, so perhaps it would be appropriate to say yes," she cooed, her soft, long brown mane bobbing gently upon her shoulder. "I do not think I have seen you here, before. I often watch the ponies outside during my breaks, but I have not seen your face."
'Well I can't see yours,' I wanted to say as I stood there rubbing my leg uncomfortably.
"Why is it that you look so anxious?" she asked, reading the lines on my forehead.
I watched the green eyes that glistened behind her eyeholes nervously. "Sorry, I'm just ... no offense, but why are you wearing that mask?"
Her head cocked slightly at me as if I had just said the strangest thing ever. Then the unicorn gasped, and went stiff.
She dabbed at her chin, rather ... adorably. "Oh! This mask?" She ran a hoof against its pale surface, uttering a soft, ladylike chuckle. "I sometimes forget that I am wearing it. Forgive me if I startled you; most ponies who see me are used to my peoples' anonymity. It is merely a tradition in my culture to wear one when around others."
'A tradition?' I wondered. I didn't know it was tradition anywhere in Equestria to wear masks like that. I'd never seen that in any of our books either - but then again, I never did pay much attention to Equestrian history ...
I cleared my throat, straightening out the discomfort in my face.
"You're not from here?" I asked.
"Hmm," she began, "Well, I was born an Equestrian but raised a Rôānian. My family was originally from the nation of Roan, but they have lived here since before the Great War." My eyes widened at that.
Nowhere in my life had I even heard about a nation called Roan. Nor did I know that there were other nations on this continent besides Equestria and the Crystal Empire.
It struck me just how limited and hoof-picked our history books were. "Roanian?" I played with the word on my tongue. "Where I come from, all we ever knew was Equestria. I'm sort of new here," I began, lifting up my right forehoof. She saw my PipBuck and nodded, thoughtfully. "My name is Red Dawn."
She probably smiled behind her mask. "Ah! A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Red Dawn!" Madame Mistelle purred, curtseying once more. "I assumed you were somepony else. I confess: I was actually shocked by your lack of knowledge. You wear the coat of a Palomino soldier - what they call a 'made pony', but you do not strike me as one."
I cocked an eyebrow.
She muttered, the sting in her words belying her mask's polite expression, "You do not carry yourself like a deceitful rogue." She cupped a hoof around her mask's lips, giggling softly. "You are far too polite to belong to such a clan of traitorous brutes."
Madame Mistelle let out a couth sigh.
"Alors," she purred, her civility returning, "How is it that I can help you, Red Dawn?"
I stared at her ... face ... the only thing visible beneath it all were her green eyes.
I couldn't get my mind off that mask of hers. It was like her voice was trying to match the face she wore. Or maybe that face was trying to match her voice. Hell, it creeped me out speaking to an inanimate expression that grinned at me even when her tone implied that she wasn't. For all I knew there could have been a mutant beast beneath that mask.
Or a stallion.
I shivered, blinking away the images in my head. "I was wondering if you knew anything about the blood outside your store?"
"Mais bien sûr ... there was a remarkable amount of commotion outside, not too long ago," she replied in her charmingly foreign accent.
My ears perked. 'May ben, what?'
Madame Mistelle uttered a couth whinny. "A pony came through here while I was holding the door open for Monsieur Melanger as he carried in today's shipment of reagents. She was fleeing somepony and - oh goodness, and I saw the blood! My, she was injured! I offered her a health potion to which she generously accepted before returning to her course!"
Celestia, was she wordy.
I pursed my lips, trying to hide my exasperation.
"You saw her? What did she look like?"
She touched her chin, pondering for a moment. "She was a unicorn, with the most sumptuous mane of red and white, and a coat of maroon, like a bottle of fine rose de pomme. Pretty she was, but I had not the chance to ask her from whom she was running. She was in quite a hurry."
"I'd imagine so ..." I muttered.
"Excusez-moi?"
I cleared my throat, smiling sheepishly. "Oh, nothing. I was just going to ask if you saw where she ran off to?"
Madame Mistelle nodded, murmuring to herself as she recalled. "Indeed, I did." She cocked her head so that her voluminous brown mane bobbed in front of one of her eyeholes. "Are you a friend of hers?"
"No," I growled, "She mugged a pony earlier today and nearly killed her. I can't let her get away with that."
The tone of Madame Mistelle's voice belied the smile upon her face. "Did she now?" the mare murmured softly. She shifted on her hooves in what I perceived to be thought. "She was indeed fleeing from something." Madame Mistelle swept her delicate mane to the other side of her face as she turned to Monsieur Melanger. "Apportez-moi mon monteau, s'il vous plait."
"Tres bien, Madame," the robot droned before returning with a coat slung across one of its long, spindly arms.
"Merci. Please follow me," she said to me, buttoning up her winter coat before starting for the door. "So you are a mercenary?"
I thought for a moment, but shook my head. "No. I'd just hate to see her ruin someone's life over a bag of caps."
"How noble of you."
"It's just the ..." I almost said, 'the right thing to do'. I frowned at that. "It's just that bad ponies need to get what's coming to them."
Madame Mistelle uttered a terse chuckle.
"Were it so easy, my friend. But the fine line between good and bad is rather blurred," she intoned, her voice almost a whisper. My ears perked curiously, as she enveloped the doorknob with a green magical field. "Most ponies do not trust my kind. They think we are all ... 'bad ponies' ... the Silver Horseshoes usually keep to their own. But I am an exception, I suppose."
I froze.
I remembered Sterling mentioning the 'Silver Horseshoes' to me a few days earlier. I also remembered them being mentioned in the same breath he mentioned the Sunny Days Company.
My muscles twitched slightly as I decided against reaching for my holster.
She worked for the plantations. The same one the Palominos murdered for.
But she was ... helping me?
I shuffled nervously upon my hooves, my brows furrowed.
"So you're a ... uh ... Silver Horseshoe, huh?"
The unicorn glanced over her shoulder. "Yes ..." Madame Mistelle replied, rather drably. "To foster better relations with our Equestrian peers, I've volunteered to preside over this shop."
I wasn't sure how much more my brows could scrunch together. I wondered what kind of strain there was between her kind and ours that made mending it so necessary. But so long as that robot didn't impale me, any hostilities she might have held for me - having Equestrian blood and all, were either well hidden behind her mask or virtually non-existent.
It really was as if she was trying to be the 'good pony' her kind apparently wasn't.
We trotted outside, Madame Mistelle's magic lifting her dress delicately above the snow. A few yards down, she stopped and pointed a hoof. Stretching off and into the distance was a labyrinth of blocky, rusted over buildings and blackened smokestacks.
"I followed her here, fearing that she would collapse from exhaustion. She did instead keep running." She lifted a hoof at the broken asphalt trail that led into darkness. "Down this road I saw her disappear, amongst the abandoned General Arcanics factory complex. Such are buildings with many places to hide; I would be utterly shocked had she not taken refuge in one such location."
There weren't many lights down there.
'Great.' My eyes glazed over the immensity of the factories beyond. "She could be in any one of those, huh?"
Madame Mistelle turned slowly to me with her ever-smiling visage. "She may be. I hope I was able to help."
I shrugged off a shiver that ran down my spine as I eyed her mask. For all I knew she could have been sneering at me as if I was about to walk into an ambush.
I stared at her for a moment, trying to discern her body language. But she stood entirely still. Madame Mistelle was virtually unreadable. I wondered if she was leading me to a trap.
The polite smile on her mask told me otherwise.
I smiled back. "Yes, thank you."
"Tout le plaisir est pour moi," she cooed, politely.
I didn't have idea what that meant, so I just gave her another sheepish smile and started down the road.
I paused and looked over my shoulder. "I wasn't expecting a Silver Horseshoe to help ... anybody. I've been told that you guys work for Sunny Days?"
Again, she was silent. "Some of us do," Madame Mistelle replied. The mare waved me goodbye.
"Alors, au revoir - et bonne chance - good luck, friend."
I nodded, trotting down the broken road.
"Dis! Red Dawn!" I turned as she waved a hoof at me once more. "Do be careful, now. The Silver Horseshoes have yet to reclaim all of the industrial district's manufactories." She glanced at Monsieur Melanger. "Not all of their security systems perished when the megaspells came."
"I'll keep that in mind. Thanks again."
I snorted, gazing into the cradle of Poneva's industry. The balefire hadn't left much alive when it came. Even a long ways away from ground zero, Spring Song's cottage was still destroyed.
How much worse could it have been in the city I assumed that the zebras were actually targeting? Almost everything around me that hadn't been renovated or jury-rigged was a burned-out husk.
How bad could it be? * |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 7 - Pony Feathers - Pt III | *
The smell of combusted cloth and ozone permeated the air.
"Bad! Bad - very bad!" I screamed as a violet bolt of magical energy screamed over my shoulder. The temperature outside and in was supposed to be below zero.
And yet everything around me was melting into molten slag.
The security-bots were getting closer.
Energy cannons shrieked behind me, their blinding muzzle flashes illuminating the factory like an epileptic light show. Energy bolts punched smoking, melting holes into the walls and floor as I made a mad dash for cover.
I heaved myself over a blackened, unopened crate - and landed in someone's crumbling skeleton. The blackened bones shattered beneath my weight. I would've screamed if I wasn't already panicking from the lasers bolts showering over me.
One beam flashed across the top of my head, splitting the ends of my red mane.
"AHH - hot, hot, hot! FUCK!" I patted out the small fire that was beginning to burn my scalp. With my hair smoking and the floor on either side of the crate a molten slag, I started to think that there wasn't going be a way out of that mess.
"Damnit!" I hissed, as their lasers burned through the air, "Don't those things ever overheat!?"
"DIE, ZEBRA SCUM," a robot droned as its energy casters whirred and screeched a barrage of violet bolts of crackling magic.
In an instant, the world around me flashed. The crate atomized behind me and I fell flat on my back, hooves in the air into a pile of glowing, incinerated matter.
The laserfire stopped.
I rose to shaky hooves, looked up, and saw half a dozen tracked robots with smoking energy cannons rolling towards me. Upon the robots' heads were ... what I hoped weren't pony brains, spinal cord and all, contained within cylindrical glass cases.
I clenched my mouth bit and eyed my horrifyingly low ammo count. I'd found out earlier that those damned tin cans were unfazed by body shots. SATS was my only ticket out of that soup sandwich.
I couldn't shoot them where it hurt without my training wheels.
Thankfully, whoever designed those robobastards didn't put too much thought into protecting their only weak point: their brains - or installing a functional IFF.
'How cliched,' I thought.
A flanged, metallic voice droned from the smoke and darkness.
"Confirm: E.K.I.A?"
I stepped out into the open. "H-hey there, you guys," I called out to them, my mane still smoking. I lifted a shaky hoof, beaming them with my PipBuck's glow as the boiling heat beneath me began to dissipate. "I-I'm actually a pony, not a zebra, so if you could please just -"
"Negative. Tango is still active. BURN STRIPED SCUM." A curse slipped out of my lips as their weapons screamed to life.
The touch of white hot death seared past my left flank as I dove for cover behind a forklift. It sparked and melted away, bearing the brunt of the magical onslaught. At the rate it was withering away I knew that it wasn't going to hold for long. Now with my ass smoking too, I double-timed it for the closest door I could find. The tin cans raced after me. They were gaining on me - fast. I could hear the roar of their engines scream closer and closer.
The world lit up with streaks of teal as I slipped into SATS mid-gallop.
"You will not escape, zebra intruder -"
"I'M NOT A FUCKING ZEBRA, GODDESSES DAMNIT!"
My pistol kicked in my mouth, and its brain case exploded in a shower of gray matter. It stuttered and went limp - only to be plowed out of the way by the rest as they revved after me, lasers flashing.
But no matter how many I put down, another came screaming to take its place. That factory was crawling with them, and as laser bolts flashed across the factory floor, the number of shadows that lurched across the walls reminded me of how wrong I was before I'd arrived.
It was bad. Real bad.
One violet beam flashed on high, and the shadow of a tracked tin can painted itself briefly against the floor in my path. I nearly stopped in my tracks - only to find that it wasn't in front of me.
It was above me.
The shrieking uproar of metal being sheared in half pierced my ears. I jerked my head upwards and saw the shuddering catwalk that hung precariously over me.
A raving robobrain raced across it.
"Z-Z-ZEBRA - ZEBRAZEEEEEBBRAAAAA -"
"Fuck."
The robot fell first.
It careened into the floor in front of me, still screaming. In a dull explosion of shattered limbs and liquefied brains, it perished. Slimy gray matter splattered onto my face and metal fragmentation nicked my bare flesh.
Then the air suddenly felt a few thousand tons heavier.
I heaved myself out of the way just as the catwalk careened into the floor behind me, quaking the earth beneath my hooves. A massive plume of debris erupted into the ceiling, blinding my eyes and every howling death robot around me.
A painful groan rasped out of my lips. I lay there spread-eagled and coughing beneath the smoke, blood streaming down my face. Pulling back my splayed limbs, I tried to sit up - but something yanked me back down to the floor. I jerked my head back, ready to deplete my SATS charges into whatever robo shit for brains had clamped down on my tail.
It wasn't.
It wasn't a robot.
My tail ... my tail ...
It was trapped beneath the catwalk.
"Fuh ... fuh ... f-f-f ..."
"VISUAL REESTABLISHED. ENGAGING."
The catwalk blocked their path. So they just started melting through it.
I pulled. And pulled. And pulled. Sweat poured down my face and chilled instantly in the freezing air. I could see the flashing violet glows getting closer and closer through the dust and darkness.
"Oh fuck, oh fuck, OH FUCK - THIS!"
I cried out, tucked in my legs, and bucked as hard as I could against the catwalk behind me.
I didn't even realize I was screaming as I ripped - tore - and shredded myself free.
I didn't have to look to know that my tail was gone.
My ass was on fire.
I tossed a few hundred bits into my swear jar as just about every swear word in the books howled through my teeth.
I screamed my throat raw and galloped to the first door I could find. A sign above labeled it 'Maintenance'. It didn't matter where I went. I slammed into the door and wrenched it open, tumbling inside as my hind legs slammed it closed.
I glanced up with stars in my eyes, and found that I wasn't alone.
"- no, come on - come on!" I heard someone hiss.
I saw the streaks in her curly mane first. They were red and white ... like a candy cane.
"Candy Cane?" I breathed, eyes widening.
She was in the process of jamming a hairpin into a door's lock and feeling for its innards with a screwdriver when she swung her head around to see me.
"Oh no."
With a violent twist, she forced the lock and bucked it open.
"STOP!" I scrambled to my hooves and nearly slipped upon an empty potion bottle as I bounded after her and out the door.
"Get away from me!" the mare screamed, her horn flashing silver. A shelf packed with maintenance supplies crashed to the floor at my hooves. I leaped over it - and a lightbulb exploded against my skull. I blinked away flecks of blood, clenching my jaw and galloping after her as she yanked down light fixtures in my path.
Glass shattered beneath my hooves as I shrugged off bulb after bulb. The hall was getting shorter.
She turned a corner and stopped, her back against a wall. I could see the defiance etched upon her face.
"You won't get away with this!" I screamed, and lunged after her, hooves outstretched.
But she threw herself out of the way at the very last moment and my face greeted the concrete wall with an audible thump. Stars exploded in my eyes and I barely noticed the blur that was her tail as she pounded her hooves farther and farther away.
Candy Cane found the door at the other end of the hall, her magic glowing around a screwdriver as she picked at the lock with a bobby pin. I struggled to get to my hooves, but collapsed once more in my daze.
That was all the time she needed. Candy Cane shoved the door open, glancing over her shoulder before disappearing outside. I shook the stars from my eyes and hobbled after her.
"Fucking ..." I murmured, rounding the corner only to see her halfway down a flight of stairs leading to the factory floor.
Too bad I needed her alive.
My eyes followed her across the factory floor. I let out an irritated groan. Stretching out into the factory's depths was a network - no, a mess of assembly lines and conveyor belts. And she was going to disappear inside of it.
I bounded down the steps after her, skipping four at a time - nearly smashing my skull in as I slipped and rolled down the last five. By the time I was up again, the mare was already twenty yards away from me, galloping as fast as she could across the factory floor.
"INTRUDERS DETECTED," dozens of synthesized voices shrieked in unison. "ENGAGING DEFENSIVE PROTOCOLS - WEAPONS FREE." Red lights flashed, and from the metal alcoves in the walls rolled out more robobrains.
They revved after us, their twin-linked energy casters glowing like demon eyes in the darkness.
I groaned, "You've gotta be SHITTING me!"
A robobrain veered into my path, blocking any view I had of Candy Cane. My muscles tensed and my eyes clenched shut.
I slammed my body into its metal frame, its arms flailing, energy weapons flashing. I felt the skin on my face prickle and burn as its energy casters hissed and erupted with violet spellfire on either side of my cheeks.
With a defiant scream, I jammed my pistol into its brain case and yanked the trigger back.
CRACK!
Gray matter and reeking fluids dribbled down my face. I heaved the robot away from me, and found that Candy Cane was even further away. I was losing her fast.
To my surprise, she leaped onto the conveyor belt, unassembled parts and debris scattering to the floor in her wake. I pounded after her, tossing aside everything in my path. With the automated machines blocking the robots' line of fire, their computers couldn't plot any firing solutions.
Good for the both of us. Until the lights on the machines flickered to life and the conveyor belt began to move.
My eyes widened as I saw the gray shimmer around her horn fade away.
"ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY!?"
She shouted back, "You're crazy for following me here!"
The darkness gave way as the factory sprang to life, my eyes blinded for a moment as the lights overhead drowned us out with a flickering white glare.
Then I saw it. I wished that she had just kept the lights off.
A massive, chomping maw of steel devoured the unassembled parts before us and pancaking them into different shapes.
I was about to get butchered by an oversized cookie-cutter.
I watched as Candy Cane dove into its groaning maw. Then it slammed closed.
"Luna's fucking grace!"
It opened once more and all that came out were more metal parts.
I stood there frozen on my hooves - but the conveyor belt just kept rolling.
'Oh no.'
"FUCK. EVERYTHING."
I closed my eyes, threw my hooves in front of me, and dove forward. Utter darkness fell over me. Metal pounded against metal, and a shrill ringing screeched into my ears.
Then the machine opened once more and I was outside - the stub that was my tail just barely an inch away from being caught between its teeth.
Candy Cane glanced over her shoulder, her eyes widening. I suppose she thought that that should've killed me.
I glared at her as she galloped away.
A rivulet of sweat trickled over my brow.
"Are you fucking serious ..." I murmured.
And she leaped off the conveyor belt.
Nearly half a story below, she landed, scrambling onto another. I made another jump, and barely stuck my landing beside a cylindrical case about the size of a stallion's torso.
Coming in fast was a machine that bolted onto the cases the metal parts that had been shaped from earlier. I saw Candy Cane duck into one of the tin cans as six different machines impaled the shell to oblivion.
My stomach ached as I imagined one of those bolts driving into my chest. I swore under my breath. My metal coffin awaited me. I crawled inside and cringed. The machines roared as they screwed and tunneled and bled out my eardrums with their bolt drivers. Now completely and utterly deaf, I heard nothing but the ringing in my ears as I hurled the tin can off of me and sent my hooves pounding across the conveyor belt in the shrill silence.
With the mare leading the way, she cleared the path for me as she tossed aside metal shells in her path. But a machine that was supposed to tip the cylinders upright scooped her up from behind and dumped her onto her face.
"Fuck -"
Cold metal slammed into my face. The machine scooped me up off my thrashing hooves and dumped me back down onto the conveyor belt. I panicked - and slipped off the edge.
Screaming, I hung from the conveyor belt twenty feet above the factory floor for my dear life with a single hoof as it dragged me along the line at a full on gallop. I threw my left hoof high and found purchase, wrenching myself up and over.
I stood there - eyes widening, seconds away from another automated death trap. The machine roared closer. It shoved parts off the assembly line as its other half sparked and shuddered.
I closed my eyes and covered my face with my hooves.
The machine slammed into me, hurling me off the assembly line to fall to my death. But a swinging mechanical claw broke my fall. Then another conveyer belt. And another machine. I tumbled through the air in free fall and slammed onto the floor on my back, my body beaten, bruised, and aching. I cursed under my trembling gasps, wondering if I'd broken anything.
I lay there questioning how I was still alive.
A painful moan gathered my attention elsewhere as I rose to my hooves. Candy Cane had landed a stone's throw away from me.
"Give up!" I panted, ejecting my pistol's mostly spent magazine and tucking it into my pocket.
Candy Cane scrambled to her hooves, and half limped, half ran away.
"JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!" she cried.
I loaded my last magazine and entered SATS.
I tagged her legs ... but my firing solution was taking too long to calculate. She was fast. Too fast. If I missed and struck her chest, she'd die. Then I'd never find the Orphanage. I threw off my training wheels and snarled after her.
We neared a wide, shattered window pane that lined the entirety of the wall on that side of the factory. She'd do anything to escape. I wasn't surprised when she hurled herself into the window pane and sent it crashing into the snow outside.
Without so much of a pause, I leaped after her, rolling down a heaping mound of snow that had nearly buried the concrete wall behind me.
The mare punched a deep outline into the drifts, the powder breaking most of her fall. My flailing limbs threw up showers of snow as I struggled to rise to my aching four legs. But she beat me to it. Growling in frustration, I lunged after her, trying to chomp down on her tail, but she lashed out with her hind legs and blinded me with a hail of ashen snow.
I sputtered, spitting the powder out of my mouth and shaking it off my muzzle.
She was already on her hooves, and limping away from me.
I snarled, "It's over Candy Cane!"
I slogged after her in the knee-deep snow, my PipBuck's light flashing across the drifts. Her heavy, panicked gasps and my irritated murmuring were the only sounds among those abandoned lines of storage containers.
She knew the end was near.
Candy Cane finally collapsed, wheezing for air to fill her lungs - but that didn't stop her. She crawled. She crawled away from me, her tail disappearing around a corner.
I made the turn and watched as she dragged herself across the snow ... in vain. A stack of crates, piled high above our heads made the alleyway between the storage containers on either side of me a dead end.
Candy Cane threw herself against the wall behind her. She peered up at me as I approached, my pistol drawn.
"Please ... let me go," she begged, tears welling up in her eyes. Her eyes. I locked my burning gaze with hers and stared into her watery grays. Her steel gray eyes.
All my anger dissipated like an evanescent dream.
I froze, with another mare's name upon my lips. Shivers ran down my spine as she spoke.
"Don't make me go back ... please ... don't make me go back ... just tell Grifter and his Palominos I'm dead," Candy Cane sobbed pathetically, tears streaming down her rosy cheeks. A lock of her curly red and white mane fell over one of her eyes as she hung her head, weeping silently. "I'm dead ... tell them I'm dead ..."
"Wha ... what are you talking about?" I uttered, trembling on my hooves.
She looked up at me in desperation with defeated, teary eyes. The mare parted her mane with a shaking hoof.
Around her neck was a collar. It blinked red with every second that dragged by.
'Dear Celestia.'
"You ... you're a slave," I whispered, the hairs on my coat standing on end.
"If you want the money ... please ... just take it ... take it and let me go!" she begged through trembling lips, reaching into her jacket.
A sack of jingling caps landed in front of me.
I could only stare, frozen upon my hooves as Candy Cane's shoulders rocked with miserable sobs. She wept into her hooves, shaking her head and wiping them away only for more to stream hopelessly down her cheeks.
Doubt ran circles around my head. My right eye twitched as I struggled to stay aloft on my own four hooves.
Candy Cane's trembling voice broke my heart like glass.
"Don't make me go back ... I-I don't want to go back!" she begged between her quaking sobs. "I don't want to go back anymore ... No more - PLEASE! Don't make me go back there! They'll hurt me ... again and again!"
I lowered a trembling hoof to the snow and picked up the sack of caps. Candy Cane went silent. I looked up and saw her staring at me with her teary, anguished eyes. Her steel gray eyes.
A second passed as I lost myself in her hauntingly familiar gaze, entranced.
Distraught. Disturbed. I clenched my eyes shut as my stomach churned and my head spun.
Then a shrill cry shattered my rapturous state.
"I WON'T LET YOU TAKE ME BACK, YOU FUCKING CAFONE PIECE OF SHIT!"
Candy Cane hurled herself at me, a knife enveloped in her magical grip.
I slipped into SATS.
My hindhooves bucked into her chest.
Candy Cane slammed into the wall of crates behind her before crashing into the snow in a writhing heap.
"NO!" she wailed as I threw myself on top of her, pinning her flailing limbs into the snow.
"NO - NO - NO!"
The mare shrieked with everything she had left.
"NOOOOO!"
Candy Cane thrashed beneath me, screaming like a frenzied, cornered animal until she screamed her throat raw and her muscles burned out. Nearly a minute passed, her heavy gasps for air barely audible over the howling wind.
She let her head roll across her shoulders, laying her cheek in the snow. The buttons on her winter coat was torn loose, revealing beneath me the ribs of her heaving, naked chest.
"Just ... just do it ..." she rasped in between breaths. "Just do it ..." Candy Cane clenched her eyes shut and whimpered softly ... shivering ... unable to shed anymore tears in her weary, pathetic state. She just lied there, pinned to the snow beneath my hooves. She didn't resist. She didn't utter a single word ...
... not a single word as she parted her hindlegs beneath me.
A horrified gasp escaped my lips.
I lifted my hooves off of her slender, trembling legs. She was broken. And I was afraid that I'd broken her too. I touched one of her forelegs, her leg too thin to fill her entire sleeve, one too many sizes big for her. One was bloodied and bandaged tightly where Dawdleshoes had shot her. Even now unhindered by my weight, she could do nothing but lie there.
Defeated.
I stared down at the sobbing mare with wide eyes. The bomb collar continued to blink. Every flashing pulse was a quaking flashback to my meeting with Sugar Rum's crew.
Slavers. Slavers. Slavers.
She was a slave.
"What are you?" I still asked, unable to believe the thoughts that screamed at me inside my head. I closed my eyes, covering my face with a hoof.
There was only silence. I opened them, and Candy Cane was still sobbing quietly, snow clinging to her disheveled red and white mane.
"I ... I'm a pony ... I'm a pony ... not a fucking ... slut. Not a ... whore. Not a slave. I'm a pony. I'm a fucking pony ..." she wept, her voice trembling.
I blinked away the tears in my eyes as her cries echoed through my ears. All that time I was chasing ... a victim. A victim. It tore me apart knowing that I would have murdered her if I wasn't trying to take her alive.
I was after the wrong pony. I was helping the wrong pony.
Grifter was a slaver. A Palomino. A liar ... a manipulative scumbag sack of pony garbage!
And to think I was going to exchange information for another pony's life! Candy Cane's life ...
I touched her face with a hoof, gently rolling her head to face me. Candy Cane's eyelids fluttered open.
"I'm ... I'm not one of them," I told her. "I won't hurt you."
She closed them once more. "You're lying ... you don't know how many times I've heard that ... how many times they've hurt me anyways. You don't know ... you're lying ..."
"NO!" I shouted, suddenly. She shuddered beneath me, her bloodshot eyes widening. "I'm not a fucking Palomino ... they lied to me. Grifter. Lied to me. He said you mugged - mugged his customer! Daintybelle said you stabbed her - tried to kill her! I ... I thought you were one of them!" I cried, my chin quivering as my blood began to boil.
"He fucking lied to me, told me that if I brought you back, he'd help me ... I ... I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not like them. I'm not a monster." I looked into her eyes, pleadingly. "Please believe me ... I won't hurt you."
She sniffled, wiping away the frost that had formed upon her cheeks. I collapsed to my haunches, my head hung as I stared blankly at the ashen snow.
All of it ... everything Grifter told me was bullshit ... it was all fucking pony feathers. As I sat there in turmoil, Candy Cane's voice pulled me back into the light.
"I ... I believe you ..."
The mare sat down in front of me, staring at the snow under her hooves with desolate eyes.
"What's your name ... I mean you already know mine," she asked.
"Red Dawn ... my name's Red Dawn. I'm sorry, Candy Cane ... I-I didn't know. Goddesses damnit ... I didn't know."
She nodded, quietly, running a hoof through the snow.
"Daintybelle ... you spoke with Daintybelle, didn't you?"
I looked up at her and nodded.
"She was a regular customer at the Sultry Scullion ... she really liked me," Candy Cane began, distantly. "Daintybelle always chose me ... she has a husband you know? Says that I ... I can make her feel better than her husband can. She ... she really liked me. She'd always pay extra to ... to ... " she looked away, shaking her head as she teetered on the edge of breaking down into tears once more.
I cradled my head in my hooves. "That ... two-faced whore ... she lied to me."
"I got tired of it ..." Candy Cane sighed softly, her voice hoarse. "I got tired of all of it ... so I decided I'd leave. I stabbed her ... took her caps ... and ran ..."
She looked up at me with uncertain, watery gray eyes. "So ... now what? What ... what are you going to do to me?"
I said nothing as my blood boiled in my veins. My head spun so fast that I wanted to puke. I stared at her bomb collar, watching it blink with every burning second that ticked by. A shallow breath escaped my lips, and I hung my head, trembling with rage.
I'd already made up my mind before the thought even came to my head.
"I'm going to bust you out of there." I looked her in the eyes. "For good."
Candy Cane snorted, shaking her head hopelessly. "What makes you think you can? I've escaped so many times but they've always been able to find me ..."
"It doesn't matter if you've escaped at all, because you still have your collar on," I growled, quietly. Candy Cane looked at her hooves. "I know what those things can do ..."
"They'd never pop me," she whispered, "They'd never just throw me away like that ... not while I can still ..." She shook her head, vigorously. "That's why they've always brought me back."
I fell silent, hatred seething within me.
"I'm going to get that collar off of you," I said, softly, barely containing my rage.
"How?"
"There's a detonator. Grifter has to have one. If there's a detonator, he can make it pop. If there's a detonator, I can make it go dark." I slammed a hoof in the snow. "I just have to take it from him ..."
Candy Cane shook her head. "You'd never get that close ... his guards, they'll put you down before you can even get close to him."
I held up my right foreleg. "I have a PipBuck. I can drop all of them at once with its targeting system." I clenched my eyes shut, shaking my head. "... I'll make this right ...
"I'll make them pay."
I brooded in silence as she sat there, wiping her weary eyes for what seemed like hours.
"You ... you'd do this for me?" Candy Cane shook her head, wistfully. "You don't even know me ... I-I don't even know you."
"Has anyone ever tried to help you escape?" I asked.
No answer.
"Anyone?"
Still nothing.
"Then believe me ... I'll help you ... because no one else will."
Candy Cane stared at me in silence. All I could hear were her sobs as she began to weep.
"You'd do this for me? Y-you really would?" she cried, distantly.
I hung my head in solemn quietude. Those zebra villagers ... I let them die. I watched as those mercs slaughtered them all. Those ponies that Sugar Rum's crew enslaved ... I let them die. I watched as those blood letters slaughtered them all.
I wasn't going to let Candy Cane be another person that I could've - should've saved.
"Yes. But you have to trust me ... we would need to go back."
Her eyes widened.
"No ..." she whispered, clenching her eyes shut.
I held her shoulder with a hoof. "I'll need to get close to him."
"No ... no please ..."
"Candy Cane ..." I touched the collar around her neck, its red light flashing in my eyes. "It's the only way to get that collar off of you. Even if you run, even if you leave the city ... you'll never be able to get away. As long as you have the thing around your neck, you'll never escape."
She shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks.
"Okay ... okay ... I want to be a pony, Red Dawn ... I want to be a pony."
Candy Cane sat there as I rubbed her shuddering shoulders. I closed her winter coat, and she hugged the fabrics close to her chest.
"You already are. You just have a bomb collar around your neck." *
I led Candy Cane through the market, the Sultry Scullion not too far away, its colorful, flickering neon signs only adding fuel to my fire.
There he was. The liar. The Palomino. The grifter.
"I have her," I said, approaching the stallion and his three henchponies.
"Ah, there's the big-balled palooka! Look at him - how'd a small pony like that wrangle that wild mustang when a big boy like you couldn't?" He chuckled, grinning at dumbass Dawdleshoes. "Heh, maybe I might just hire this colt and put you on mop-duty?"
Twiggy and Dahlia laughed, and the idiot stallion grumbled something incomprehensible. It didn't matter. All I was doing was planning ways to put bullets through their heads.
Grifter cocked his head at me. "Why the long face, kid?"
"I ... I went through a lot of shit to get her back," I muttered through my teeth as I twitched the stub that was my tail. My eyes narrowed at him. "Don't forget about our agreement."
He laughed, and so did his henchponies.
"Forget about it! I told you - I'm no welcher ... I help ponies who help me, ya dig?" He reached into his chest-pocket, and held out a slip of paper to me. "Saw that PipBuck of yours, so I figured you could make use of coordinates better than directions."
I took the piece of paper and stared at it. Now I had what I was looking for. I glanced over my shoulder at Candy Cane who was staring at her hooves in quietude.
"Well? Hoof her to me. And the caps, too."
I looked at Candy Cane and she looked at me. I nodded, and she began to walk toward them. So far so good.
I reached for my chest pocket, tucking away the note in my left, and grazing the pocket on the right. Just above my pistol's holster. I gulped.
Six dark shapes trotted down the aisle of vendors. Their black hats hid their eyes.
My heart sank.
Grifter turned and the same mare who'd wailed on him when I first met him had returned.
"So what's it gonna be, Grifter? You got the caps or no?"
My heart started to beat faster than I could breathe.
Candy Cane saw the fear in my eyes.
"Yeah, yeah. I got 'em, Dolce. Hold your fuckin' horses."
Grifter donned his fedora and held out a hoof.
"I need those caps, Red Dawn."
SATS illuminated the world around me. I glanced at my charges ... then I glanced at their heads. Ten of them. There were ten of them, one of me, and six rounds in my magazine.
I was going to take a risk. For Candy Cane. I thought of Gail. I thought of how I galloped headfirst into that hail of bullets just to save her. But it wasn't my own efforts that had saved Gail's life. It wasn't luck that had kept me from dying.
I didn't have ponies like Night Sky, Bone Charm, or Sprinkles to cover my sorry ass.
There, my strength was laughable. There, luck wasn't on my side. Neither were any ponies.
But I promised Candy Cane that I would ... I ... I promised Dew Drops that I would save our Stable. I couldn't do that dead. I bit my lower lip so hard that I drew blood. Even if I did put Grifter and his guards down, I wouldn't have had enough bullets to drop the rest. It would end in a bloodbath, with my blood mingling with the rest.
I was screwed ... no ... Candy Cane was screwed. And I was going to screw her over. 'No ... no ... no ... Goddesses ...' I shook uncontrollably, screaming inside my head, 'There were only supposed to be four of them, damnit!' I glanced at the firing solutions in my queue.
A rivulet of sweat trickled down my face.
Grifter and his dogs were instant kills. A shot through the head for each ... but the rest ... I eyed the automatic weapons slung around their necks.
I gulped. It would be suicide.
Candy Cane was gazing at me expectantly. Expecting I'd pop into SATS and slaughter them all. Expecting I'd free her like I said I would.
In the past, I had taken risks ... to save Gail, a griffon I hardly knew. There I was again was as the past repeated itself - this time to save a mare I hardly knew.
But saving Candy Cane wasn't a risk ... it was a death sentence. Not like that. Not with so many of them.
I left the quietude of my thoughts. As my hoof dipped into my right pocket and yanked out a sack of caps, I met Candy Cane's stare.
"I'm sorry ..." I whispered.
The bag plummeted into Grifter's outstretched hoof. I watched as Candy Cane's steel gray eyes widened. Her jaw dropped as all her hope shattered and fell away from her hooves. Something within me broke too when I heard her voice.
"Red ... Red Dawn?" she whimpered.
Grifter looked overjoyed. "Thanks, kid, heh. You just about saved my hide," he grinned.
I stared at my hooves.
"Red Dawn ... what ... what are you doing?"
My jaw clenched as I looked away, unable to say a word. Unable to look her in the eye.
"... you ... you said you'd ..."
I clenched my eyes shut. "I'm sorry."
"No ... no! You promised! YOU PROMISED YOU WOULD!" she wailed, "YOU FUCKING LIAR! YOU'RE ALL THE SAME! YOU'RE ALL THE SAME, YOU SON OF A -"
"Oh shut your cocktrap, ya fuckin' broad," Grifter growled, hoofing her collar's detonator.
He punched one of its buttons. Candy Cane fell to the snow, screaming in agony as violent electricity arced across her body.
Her flashing silhouette reflected dimly in my eyes as I stood there, uselessly.
"YOU - LIED - TO ME!" Candy Cane wailed.
Grifter turned, hoofed the black-hatted mare behind him the caps, and flipped the off switch. Candy Cane lay limp in the snow, her clothes smoking.
"Alright! Haul her fine ass back to the Scullion. She's going back to work as soon as tomorrow comes."
"No ..." I murmured as the Palominos started away from me. "Damnit ..." My hoof trembled as I curled it around my pistol's holster. "Goddesses damnit ..."
I stared grimly at the snow as my hoof slid back into the ashen drifts. The darkest corners of my mind told me that it was going to be okay.
I had what I wanted anyways.
I shook my head vigorously, damning the voices that reassured me in my thoughts.
I promised Dew Drops that I'd save our stable. But I wondered: how the hell could I save the 294 ponies in my stable if I couldn't even save just one pony?
I kept telling myself that that wasn't how it was supposed to end.
'I'll find a way to make this right,' I promised her.
But Candy Cane would have to wait. And so would Grifter.
I turned, and I walked the other way.
Footnote: Level 5
XP: 1270/2500 |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 8 - The Out-and-Out - Pt I | Chapter 8
The Out-and-Out
"I found out the hard way that the closest thing to being cared for was to care for someone else."
"You couldn't save me."
She glared through me, my muddled reflection glistening in her chilling, gray eyes. The agony in her words bled me out more than the bullet holes across my chest. I lay at her hooves, my life blood pooling across the snow.
"YOU COULDN'T SAVE ME!" she wailed as a blizzard engulfed us both.
I held out a hoof to her but she swatted it away. "I'm sorry ... DD ... I ..."
"Failed. You sorry little fuck up ... you failed us all. You ran ... I saw you run. You let us all die."
"Dew Drops ..."
"YOU LET US ALL DIE!"
The blood drained from my face. "DD... w-why? I tried ... please ..."
She craned her neck to the bloodied, shivering heap at her hooves.
Dew Drops murmured, her voice trembling, "You tried ... you tried ..." A cruel grin stretched across her bloody lips. "Just like how you tried helping those slaves... or how you just stood there and let those all those zebras die."
I froze, my heart skipping a beat as her words sank deep into my heart like a frozen blade driving into my chest. I could do nothing but whimper and sob as the agonized screams of zebras, and ponies, and my friends coalesced into Dew Drops' gravelly voice.
"You ran."
I shook my head as if my life depended on it. "N-no - please, it wasn't like that ... I ... I ... I didn't ..."
Her chilling breath choked away my words, like a bed of icy needles pressing against my throat. I could smell the stench of spilled innards and rotting death about her.
The dead mare whispered into my ear, "You're a coward ... a fucking coward."
"I'm sorry ... Dew Drops ... I'm so sorry," I sobbed. "If I had another chance ... I'd ... I'd ..."
"Fail. Again." She reared up on her hinds and dropped her hooves onto my face. I cried out weakly as they slammed into my muzzle - "Again! AGAIN! AND AGAIN!" Blood trickled down my forehead and out of my nose, freezing against my bruised, shivering flesh and staining my coat black.
I struggled to my hooves, gasping a raspy breath only to collapse pathetically into the snow before her.
"Dew Drops ... why ... why are you doing this to me? This isn't like you ... stop ... please ... I ... I love you..."
She levitated an icy, warped machete, lifting the blade over my shivering form.
"Dew Drops - please! I love you -"
"No,"she whispered, "You failed. You couldn't even save the ponies you cared about. You couldn't save me. You can't save anyone. Not even our stable." The grin she wore upon her ghastly, corpulent face squeezed the air from my lungs.
"Heh..." she chuckled as I let out a pathetic sob. "You can't even save yourself."
"No ..."
She swung the machete into my neck.
"NO!"
I flung my hooves in front of me, gasping for my breath as sweat froze against my forehead. I lay there for what felt like hours, rocking back and forth in silence.
I opened my eyes ... finally, truly awake.
I was still curled up beneath the corrugated roof that stretched over my head. Three stories above the slums below, I watched the snowflakes seethe past me.
Still shaking, I gathered my bags and hugged them close, nuzzling Dew Drops' scarf.
Tears welled up in my half-closed eyes as I tried to still my trembling body.
Minutes passed, my wheezing breaths barely visible in the darkness of my shelter.
Every setback was a fuck up in my book. Every pony ... every zebra I had been helpless to save so far was a fuck up.
I didn't want Candy Cane to be another bullet on that list. *
My muzzle, a barely perceptible outline against a curtain of darkness, tipped slightly as I saw a pony leave the brothel. A stallion.
If I ever found out that he touched Candy Cane in any sort of way I swore to the Goddesses that I'd remember him and that I'd find him. Not too far from the Sultry Scullion I lay in wait. For most of that day I had been there, crunching on an apple or two as I watched ponies leave and enter the brothel.
I hid among the remains of a collapsed building, wedged deep between its rubble like another chunk of debris. I shifted a little bit, stretching my hind legs slightly.
I glanced at the screen and the clock told me that it was 0100.
Another hour passed by, and the stream of ponies dwindled until nobody entered or left at all. Only a changing of the guard. I'd watched the guard change every three hours for nine hours. I switched on my PipBuck's light, smothering the glow with my left hoof.
Two of the guards I saw outside were ponies I'd seen before.
My eyes darted to the entrance. Dahlia shooed away Dawdleshoes and leaned against the front doors, lighting a cigarette. I watched as the large stallion shuffled back inside.
There were six guards. Grifter told me yesterday that he had half of his boys outside with him and the other half at the brothel. I just hoped his math was right.
I wanted to wait there for another hour and see who they'd swap out next, but Goddesses, my legs were aching. It felt like they were going to atrophy. But my stupid legs were the least of my worries.
Candy Cane.
Not a single minute had passed when she hadn't crossed my mind. I didn't want to imagine the things they'd done to her ... or the things she'd been forced to do in the confines of that filthy place. My jaw clenched as I let my chin rest against the frozen concrete beneath me.
I exhaled a trembling sigh. There was some intangible thing about her that bothered me. And the more I thought about it, the more horrifyingly absorbed in it I became. Steel gray. Her eyes were the color of frozen steel. It sent shivers down my spine as I remembered vividly the last time I saw those eyes.
They weren't the first pair of teary grays that had widened at me in desperation.
When I first met her gaze ... I thought that I had seen a ghost staring back at me.
I stuffed my face with a hooffull of chilling powder, jolting myself back to reality.
I'd had enough of sitting around.
My muzzle broke the stagnant pool of darkness that had settled over me. I stuck to the shadows, gliding my flank across the cold pockmarked wall as I inched along the edge of a fallen office building. I stalked the perimeter of the brothel, out of sight and as quiet as a radroach.
There was a back door around the building. It was only a matter of sneaking in unnoticed.
The flesh on my face prickled as I bounded past a burning trashcan, my shadow dancing against the walls around me in the firelight.
I neared a small, empty lot behind the brothel, walled off with metal panels and lit with the flickering glow of more burning trashcans. As I approached, I glanced at my PipBuck, keeping track of the blips that blinked on my EFS. At least seven inside. Several dozen more outside, somewhere in another building or milling about in the snow. But for now, I was alone as I approached the empty lot.
My EFS blinked as something began trotting my way.
I stopped in my tracks and ducked behind an overturned dumpster as a stallion, one of Grifter's henchponies, trotted by. Curled against his body with one of his hooves was a bag of garbage. He walked past my huddled form, yawning as he stood on his hinds and tried to dump it into an open dumpster a few feet away from me.
The bag slipped from his hooves and tumbled to the snow, scattering filthy rubbish across the snow.
"Blech..." he sneered, hoofing a used condom off his chest as he gathered the trash and used toys into his hooves and tossed them into the dumpster.
The stallion picked up one half of a purple ... dildo ... rolling it around in his hooves.
"How the fuck do you even break one of these things?" he muttered, gagging as he tossed the broken phallus into the trash. Rolling my eyes, I thought about sneaking past him while his back was turned.
I eyed the machine pistol slung around his neck and shook my head. I didn't want to risk getting caught. As I stared, a blankness settled upon my gaze. I thought for a moment, 'Maybe I could just kill him.'
Then I blinked, frowning at myself as I shook my head once more. I bit my lower lip as he began to whistle a tune that was barely audible beneath the pounding in my temples.
I pressed my back harder against the wall. A quiet breath exhaled from my lips as I closed my eyes and waited for his hoofsteps to disappear. The sound of a gate closing and a door slamming behind the fence followed soon afterward.
Slipping out of cover, I followed his tracks, my shadow sweeping across the wall's corrugated metal panels. I came to the gate and found that there wasn't a knob, a latch, or anything to open it with. Frowning, I pressed my forehooves against it and pushed.
It rattled, but didn't budge.
"Son of a ..." I glanced over my shoulder, squinting through the glares of the burning trashcans. The coast was still clear.
The gate must've been locked from the other side. There had to be another way. But as I searched the wall's perimeter, I found everything short of a way inside. I tried climbing over, but barbed wire and broken glass blocked my path.
Back again at square one, I tried heaving the gate open again.
"Come on ..." I murmured, trying to force it open with my hind legs. Sucking in a breath of air, I heaved and pushed and heaved and pushed - but the thing simply refused to open.
I groaned, panting for my breath and I slid to my haunches, leaning against the door. I lowered my irritated eyes upon my PipBuck, bringing my right leg to my face. Another hoof came to toggle the device's brightness, but something else reflected against its glossy screen. Something flashed in my eyes.
I turned to my left and caught a shaft of light glimmering through a small crack in the wall.
I rose to my hooves and studied the opening, about two inches in length and an inch in breadth. I brought an eye into the light, peering inside through a layer of rusty chicken wire.
That was my way in.
I glared at the brothel's backdoor, lit by a flickering gas lamp that reflected brightly in my eyes.
I shifted my gaze and saw to my left the latch that opened the gate from the inside. I muttered irritably to myself, wishing that my horn was working. If only I had my magic, I could've easily gripped the latch and opened it from the other side ...
'My magic ...'
My eyes fluttered to my bags and a lightbulb flickered to life inside my head. I lowered myself to the snow and opened my saddlebags. Beneath a hooffull of apples and a few health potions, I found a peculiar bottle of sparkling purple liquid resting at the bottom.
'Sparkling ... sparkling ... sparkling ...' I repeated inside my thoughts.
I lifted the vial of Sparkle to my muzzle and narrowed my eyes at the drug as I sloshed it around inside its bottle. If it wasn't for its faint violet glow, I might've mistook it for a sample of some lab-borne energy drink from back home, or a bottle of grape juice if I'd ever seen one.
It certainly looked ... tasty. I peered into the hole above me and watched as the slender stallion poked his head outside. He blew out the lamp and plunged me back into the darkness. I sat there with my back to the wall, holding the bottle of sparkle close to my chest.
I had no idea what terrible side effects that drug carried with it. But I knew one thing: I needed to get through that damned gate.
I yanked out the cork with a pop and emptied the sparkling vial into my mouth, gulping it down to the last drop. I sat down and waited, a fruity aftertaste lingering upon my tongue. Too many long seconds dragged by, and I narrowed my eyes at my horn in irritation.
I waited for a shimmer, an arc of electricity - something.
Nothing.
"What the hell!?" I hissed, stomping a hoof into the snow.
Lightning erupted inside of me like a spark battery going haywire.
It surged through me, shocking me from the inside out as every nerve ending in my body ignited with electrifying agony. I doubled over, wheezing and choking through clenched teeth as I fought the inferno burning up inside of me. I writhed and convulsed, digging canyons into the snow with my trembling hooves.
Then everything flashed white.
My eyelids flew open and a chunk of snow tore itself out of the drifts, enwreathed within my magical grip. I blinked, and the snowball flung itself away from me and into the darkness. Far away, I heard glass breaking and a mare scream.
"Well fuck ..." I trailed off, a wide grin stretching across my face.
I rose confidently to my hooves and peered through the chicken-wired crack in the wall, squinting my eyes into the darkness. I could see the latch.
For unicorns, that's all it took.
Sparks of magic arced across my horn as it gave off a crimson glow.
Clack.
The gate swung open.
'Back in the game,' I thought as I drew my pistol without raising a single hoof. With my weapon hovering close, I shut the gate closed and trotted to the backdoor, testing the door knob.
Without resistance, the door parted open. Closing it quietly behind me, I slunk inside and into a narrow, dirty corridor. I wrinkled my nose at the scent of cigarette smoke, sweat, and a long, rough night.
The brothel was barely lit. A hoofful of flickering light bulbs overhead vomited ruddy beams of yellow light onto my chilled flesh. Creeping through the hall, I noticed that the walls were plastered with posters of scantily-clad mares in very exposing positions.
One poster depicted ... a mare inserting a ... Goddesses ... I hadn't even known that ponies could put things in that hole. The poster said in huge bold print, 'PLOT DEVICE'; at the bottom, it screamed, 'WATCH FOR THE PLOT!'
I pursed my lips and tried not to look as I began to sense an uncomfortably warm sensation growing between my legs. I shook my head vigorously. That place was filthy, abominable, and terrifyingly unsettling.
Pornographic material was unheard of at '91.
I followed the corridor further into the brothel and found myself behind a stage, curtains and all. Long metal poles stretched up and into the ceiling. Flickering strobe lights lined the floor and hung over stage, hanging from the rafters.
I poked my head through the curtains and out into the room, spotting a few dozen tables, benches, and a bar stocked with bottles of colorful drinks at the other end of the room. In the flickering rainbow glow of dim, neon lights, the three ponies lounged at the bar, pouring each other drinks and puffing on smokes.
"So, read any good books lately, Twiggy?" one of them yawned.
"Eh. I did finish Dark Edge 2," I overhead him say. Twiggy glanced over at the corridor and I ducked back into the shadows. "Bad guy wins, world goes to shit and everyone dies - the main character goes to the moon and dies again for the ninth time, but this time he somehow comes back as an immortal Star God or some shit."
His friend narrowed his eyes at him.
"Then he fucks the only other Star Goddess in the universe that everyone worshipped in the first story, and they live happily ever after. Except for the rest of the world which is still shit, because the bad guy still won."
The other stallion blinked three times.
"That sounds fucking retarded."
Twiggy sighed, reclining in his chair and tipping his head back.
"Forget about it."
I pressed my back against the wall as they chattered sleepily, hoping they'd stay distracted by their boredom for a little longer. I bit my lower lip, counting to myself the ponies I'd seen so far. Six. There were six plus Grifter. He only had three with him when he was staked out at the market. He had said that was only half.
I prayed that his math was right.
Down the hall to my left were private rooms where countless debaucherous deeds beyond my virgin imagination had been committed.
I came upon room after room after room - all of them, thankfully empty. Reaching its end, I found a door that led into a different section of the brothel.
More rooms. I trotted up to each, reading the names that were stenciled upon each door. Stellar. Buns. Iris. Nine others.
I pressed an ear against a door, and I heard someone snoring softly on the other side. The entire hall surprised me somewhat; the dormitories inside were slightly warmer than the rest of the brothel. It was a nice sunny day in there in comparison to the frozen hell outside.
They had a roof over their heads, and a bed to sleep on, and a warm place to escape the blizzard. They even had armed guards. I remembered what that one mangy pony had said when I was being hauled off to Poneva in chains, not too long ago.
'They're going to put us to work and work us to death.' the earth stallion had said.
'That ain't true,' replied the mangy pony, 'I heard they feed you and put a roof over your head...'
A trembling sigh seethed out of my lips. I knew how horrible the wasteland could be. The blizzards. The snow. The monsters outside. I could still hear the bloodletters howling inside my head.
Maybe he was right. Maybe a life in there ... maybe it was truly a life better than a life outside. I could relate. I lived in a stable my entire life, sheltered from all the shit that was festering and curdling outside 91's door. I wanted to live in one again. I wanted to go home.
But I stared at the posters that plastered the walls.
These mares were getting fucked one way or another.
'No. Never. Not like this, I thought in grim silence. They had everything they needed, more than what most ponies could say they had out there - but for what?
To those slavers, those mares weren't even people. Just tools. And once they were broken, well ... I remembered what happened when Sugar Rum flipped the switch. I remembered the sounds their skulls made when they popped.
My blood began to boil as I listened to Buns' soft breaths behind her locked door. The Scullion needed to burn - all four of its filthy walls - burned to the ground. I wanted to see balefire wipe it all away.
No longer wary of my hoofsteps, I found myself at one end of the hall to the next, searching for Candy Cane's name. Then I found it. Eyeing the name 'Candy' stenciled upon the door, I pressed my ear against it and listened, carefully.
Nothing. She wasn't inside. I clenched my jaw and wondered where else she could've been.
Lying in a ditch with a hole in her head. Or without a head at all, her collar detonated.
I shook my head even harder that time. 'No. No, they wouldn't do that,' I reassured myself.
I hoped to Celestia they didn't ... I hoped to the Goddesses that I wasn't too late. I gulped down the dreadful taste of another failure, bitter upon my tongue. Sweat beaded up on my forehead as my skin prickled with shivering apprehension. I thought for a moment, switching my pistol's safety on and off as the seconds ticked by.
I needed to find her.
I pushed onward, stalking the brothel's halls as I left the dormitories behind me. I inched the door closed and left its aura of chained comfort. Outside in the hall, the unforgettable wasteland chill returned to rake at my flesh.
Trotting down the dim corridor, I saw that there were two doors, one to my right, and another at the other end of the hall. The slit beneath the door to my right glowed with a dim light. A shadow passed over it for a second as someone milled about inside.
I ducked into the shadows instinctively, holding my breath. But no one came trotting outside. Exhaling thankfully, I hugged the wall, peering around the corner once more.
It was just me, my gun, and the darkness.
I slunk to the right and leaned against the door's frame, listening to whomever was moving around inside.
"- 435, 436, 437," I heard Grifter count. There was a short pause. "Uhh ... uhh... Fuck! Lost count."
I played with my pistol's safety.
Off. On. Off. On. Off. On ... I sighed. Off.
Not yet. I glanced over my shoulder and trotted to the door at the end of the hall. I pressed my ear against it and listened. Nothing. I wrapped a magical field around the door's knob, and turned it slowly. It clicked, and I pulled it open.
The chamber was pitch-black; I could barely see an inch in front of me. But I could feel the northern wasteland air. I might as well have been standing outside, because I was shivering once more beneath my security barding and my peacoat.
Glancing around, I saw to my right, a barred, yet open window that welcomed in the glacial winds like eager house guests. My ears perked as I listened.
Someone sniffled.
My PipBuck beamed a shaft of teal light before me, parting the darkness.
A mare held a hoof to her face to shield herself from the glare.
"Candy Cane?" I breathed, trotting up to the bars between us.
She squinted through the light. "Red ... Dawn?" The mare's eyes widened and her mouth opened to speak, but her words were lost upon her lips. She ran a hoof through her curly red and white mane, blinking her eyes vigorously as if I wasn't really there.
"I ... you ... you came back," she whispered, barely loud enough for me to hear. "You came back for me ... I thought ..."
"I left you behind? No. I promised you I'd bust you out - for good," I told the shivering mare. "What are you doing in this place?"
She smiled weakly, her face pale. "I was thinking about asking you the same thing."
I panned my PipBuck's light across the room, and saw only cold, bare tile and steel bars. Glaring at the frozen concrete that surrounded us, I concluded that that was her punishment for escaping: to sit in a frozen, bare chamber, exposed to the elements with nothing but the skin on her back.
"I'm getting you out of here, Candy Cane," I told her, trotting up to her lonely cell.
A moment passed as she sat there freezing to death, her pale, miserable flesh shivering beneath her frost encrusted coat as if she was going to bore a hole into the floor.
I really wanted to hug her.
I stared at my hooves, and whispered, "I'm sorry I couldn't do it earlier ... I didn't know there'd be more of them -"
"It's ... okay. You're here now. I wouldn't want anypony throwing their life away for me again." Candy Cane wrapped her hooves around the cold steel bars between us. "It ... it means a lot to me," she said, looking me in the eye as she smiled faintly. The mare pursed her lips, wrinkling her brows. "How, exactly are you going to get me out of here?"
I thought for a moment, frowning.
"I didn't think I'd actually get this far..." I confessed, scratching my mane.
Candy Cane chuckled softly, leaning against the bars. She tapped her chin, thinking until before her eyes darted to mine. She pointed at my bags. "Do you have a screwdriver? Any hairpins? Anything thin or pointy I can use?"
I stared at her for a moment, wondering what she'd need those for. Then it struck me. I remembered her picking locks at the factory yesterday. My eyes narrowed at the lock on the cell's door.
She wanted to pick it.
Nodding quickly, I levitated out everything I had carried with me since I left '91. The first thing I yanked out was a screwdriver. 'I'm an engineer, of course I have a screwdriver,' I thought. 'As for the other thing ...'
I rifled through my tools. Screws, bolts, lug-nuts, wires, a soldering iron, several types of wrenches, ratchets, screwdrivers, pliers -
My hooves came away, empty. I fixed an irritated glare at the lock as I sat there with a screwdriver floating in front of me.
Candy Cane bit her lower lip, thinking. Her head swung in every direction, searchingly. Then something caught her eye. She pointed a hoof at a cabinet at the furthest corner of the chamber. "There ... pry a nail out of it; I have an idea."
Cocking an eyebrow, I did as she asked, hurrying upon my hooves. I studied the poorly built cabinet - an amalgamation of charred wood and scavenged materials. I spotted a rusty nail head and stabbed at it with my screwdriver.
I struggled for a moment, trying to get the tool's head beneath the nail's. Prying for purchase, I forced the nail out of the wood a little less than half an inch. It was buried deep. My levitation magic wasn't strong enough to tear it off outright.
I eyed it hesitantly, figuring I could pull it out myself. I sighed. That thing was a tetanus shot waiting to happen. I leaned forward and clenched the rusty finishing nail between my teeth. I wrenched my head back and ripped it out of the cabinet in a plume of splinters and shattered wood.
I spat out the rusted sliver of metal and hurried back to Candy Cane's cell, levitating to her both the screwdriver and the nail. I watched the mare get to work.
Her eyes lit up with renewed hope as she bent the nail's tip into a rough, L shape. The mare was certainly in her element.
She poked her muzzle between the bars and floated out her newly-fashioned torque wrench, working it into the lock as she turned it carefully with the screwdriver curled in her hoof.
Clank.
I watched her with amazement as the bars swung open, a thin smirk stretching across her pale lips. Impressive.
She looked like she was struggling to hold back a triumphant grin as she floated back my screwdriver and tucked the wrench inside her mane. Then there was a long pause. She stared at me in silence, her eyes welling up with tears.
"I-I really didn't think you'd come back for me."
I said nothing as I drew my pistol, checking the rounds in its magazine. All I could do was give her a quiet smile.
"Now ... now what?" Candy Cane asked faintly.
I shrugged off my peacoat and wrapped it around her. Her gray eyes widened at me as I held her forelegs and gently guided them into the open sleeves. My hoof lingered upon her shoulder as she stared into my eyes. She was so cold.
I blinked when I realized I was staring back. Averting my gaze, I buttoned the peacoat across her chest.
"Thank you ..." she whispered.
I sighed, rubbing at my weary eyes. "Don't thank me yet." I started towards the door, "We still need to deal with Grifter."
I noticed that she still hadn't budged an inch as I swirled my magic around the doorknob.
"What are you doing?"
There was another long pause.
"Why ... why me?" she whispered, finally.
I fixed my gaze upon the door.
"I can't save them all."
She cocked her head at me. "You didn't answer my question."
"We're wasting time ..." I began softly, pressing my ear against the door to listen for movement outside. Nothing. I sighed, as she remained where she stood.
There was an uneasy silence between us. I wanted to answer her, but I honestly didn't know why I was actually there ... why I was risking my life to save that pony.
I didn't need her. I didn't need to come back for her. I could've just walked away. I had what I wanted, anyways. But ... why?
Maybe it was because I wanted to spite Grifter for what he did. Maybe it was because I wanted to spell out a big 'fuck you' to the Palominos. Maybe it was because it was the right thing to do.
When I woke up in Dusktown, I would've traded the entire wasteland just to get my friends back. Standing there in that dark, cold room, I told myself that I still would've done the same.
But I knew that the world didn't work like that.
Sterling's voice echoed in my thoughts.
'The closest thing to being cared for was to care for someone else.'
I grinded my teeth, frustrated with myself and annoyed at her for standing there with that pitiful look on her face.
"I don't know," I murmured. "I don't know ..."
"I'm not the only mare here..." she whispered.
"Candy Cane, believe me, I'm aware."
"There are others who've been here longer than I have." Candy Cane sniffled, hanging her head. "I don't deserve this."
I glared at her restlessly.
"You don't have a choice ... I don't. Save yourself or no one at all," I said over my shoulder before glancing at my EFS.
The mare hung her head, her curly mane falling before one of her eyes. "I wish I could take the others with me," she whispered.
Dew Drops' bloody face flashed before my eyes. I shook them away, vigorously, growling, "What's the point in thinking about saving them if you can't even save yourself?"
Candy Cane hung her head and sobbed, injured by my words.
I exhaled softly, turning slowly to face her.
"Candy Cane ... they're your friends ... aren't they?"
"Some of the only friends I have left," she whispered.
"Well you can't save them if you're still in chains." She just shook her head and stared at the floor as tears streamed down her cheeks.
"Candy Cane?"
Silence.
"Candy Cane ..." I curled a hoof around her shoulder, squeezing her gently. I thought for a moment. "When you and four others are in separate cages, and only you have the tools to pick their locks, who do you free first?"
The mare shut her eyes and bit her lower lip, shaking her head. Candy Cane thought for a moment, her brows furrowing.
"I'd ... I'd have to free my ... myself," she murmured. "I would need to pick my own lock before I could get to the others."
I forced a smile. "Exactly."
The mare stared at her hooves, her shoulders rocking with silent sobs.
"Candy Cane ..." I murmured. I was giving her another chance at life - like Night Sky did to me. And there was no way in hell that I was going to let her waste it ... not for Iris, not for Buns, not for anyone else.
"We're running out of time, here ... why don't you just save them too when you have the power to actually do that?"
Candy Cane sighed.
"You're right ... you're right Red Dawn." She lifted her head, parting her mane with a hoof. A lonely spark of determination flashed behind her eyes. "I ... I will."
I started towards the door once more. "We need that detonator, or else all of this is just a waste of time."
She followed closely without saying another word as we left the chamber. I checked my EFS, and found that no one had left their rooms. I checked and rechecked my pistol as we waited on either side of Grifter's door.
"What's the plan?" she whispered.
"I'll pull my gun on him - make him give me the detonator."
Candy Cane nodded, uneasily. "What happens after that?"
"Then we run."
She smirked as if I had just made a dumb joke.
"They'll be on us as soon as the first shot's fired."
I rolled my eyes. "Then we run faster?" She looked at me, her eyebrow raised. "Well, you got a better plan?"
Candy Cane nodded, "This building wasn't a brothel before the war," she began. "It was a motel. There's a patio right outside Grifter's office. That'll be our way out."
"Alright ... let's do this."
I turned the doorknob, and it swung open with a drawling creak. |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 8 - The Out-and-Out - Pt II | Grifter was sitting at a desk, counting caps as we stepped inside.
He looked up, frowning.
The stallion saw me first. "What the fuck are you doing here!?" he demanded. Then his eyes darted to Candy Cane. "And what're you doing with her?"
I nodded at Candy Cane as she closed the door behind us and locked it. She levitated the door's security bar into place with a clank.
"Give me the detonator, and we'll go quietly," I said evenly, my horn glowing with a crimson sheen as I jabbed my pistol at him.
"The detonator ..." he trailed off, tapping his hooves together absent-mindedly as he stared off into space.
I snapped, "Don't play dumb, Grifter, you son of a bitch. I know you have one for her collar."
He folded his legs across his chest.
"Why? Whaddya want with the girl?"
"It doesn't matter to you."
"Believe me kid, it does, because she's mine, not yours." Grifter folded his legs across his chest. "You're with East Eden aren't you?" he asked. I didn't answer. "Hmm ... you're not a Blood Brother. Too competent. But you are stupid." Grifter sighed, straightening his back as he sat on his stool. "You must be a Pike then, right? You gotta mix of stupid and competent," he added, clopping his forehooves together.
"I'm the pony with the fucking gun," I said, baring my teeth at the bastard.
"Heh, you really are a big-balled palooka." He leaned over his desk, staring down the barrel of my pistol. "Do you know who you're fucking with?" Grifter glared at me. "Do you know who you're fucking with?"
I snorted, "Frankly, I don't give a shit."
Grifter just laughed. "Kid, you better! You fuck with me, then you fuck with the Palominos. You fuck with the Palominos, then you fuck with Avilign Creme. You fuck with Avilign Creme ..." he chuckled to himself, nodding. "She'll fuck you up bad, ya dig?"
I glanced at Candy Cane who was behind still me, standing by the door.
"Unlike everyone else in this shithole of a city, I'm not afraid of you." I bared my teeth as I stared gunfire into his eyes. "And I'm not afraid of the Palominos."
Candy Cane's eyes widened.
Grifter laughed as if that was the most hilarious thing he'd ever heard, banging his hooves on his desk. "You're not afraid of the Palominos? Even I'm afraid of them!" He gave me a menacing grin. "You know you're gonna die, right? You're spelling out your own death sentence, ya dig?"
"I'll fucking blow your brains out ..." I said, my voice trembling.
He threw his head back and laughed.
"Listen, I know you don't got it in ya, kid."
Grifter just sighed, lifted his hoof and slowly tipped my gun to the floor. I just clenched my teeth as he spoke.
"Hehe ... kid ... this is about earlier, isn't it?" He nodded at Candy Cane. "That bitch wouldn't stop screaming about you after we brought her back. Had to lock her up to quiet her down."
I grinded my teeth together. "You lied to me."
He shrugged. "Me? A liar? Forget about it. I never lied - she did mug Daintybelle, you know? I only told you what you needed to know."
"Give me the fucking detonator!"
The stallion folded his legs across his chest, cocking his head at Candy Cane. "No no no. How about you tell me what the fuck you want with that whore?"
I jabbed my pistol at his face.
"I'm breaking that pony out of this shithole."
He tapped his chin, thinking. "If you're not a Blood Brother, a Pike, or with East Eden ..." he clapped his hooves together. "That's it! You probably got a taste of that fine broad! You wanna break her outta here so you can have her for yourself - ain't that right?"
My magical grip tightened, but I said nothing.
"Nah, you don't want her. You don't want Candy."
She clenched her jaw, glaring at him. Grifter chuckled, resting his chin on a hoof. "She doesn't like that name, 'Candy'. That's because they like to call her 'Candy Cunt'."
Grifter leaned forward, looking me in the eye.
"You wanna know why?"
My magical aura deepened to a blood red.
"Because her cunt's like a candy store - all the boys and girls wanna come inside."
Candy Cane's sniffled, tears welling up in her eyes as she started to shake all over. My heart pounded inside my chest, pumping boiling blood through my veins.
"You know how many stallions - no, mares she's slept with? Do you really want to help a filthy slut like that?" He cocked his head at me, grinning.
I shook my head, his voice slowly fading away as every sound in the room became nothing but muffled voices behind a hazy glass window.
I let out a shallow breath.
Grifter smirked, reclining in his seat. "You lay one hoof on that whore, and your leg'll practically melt off."
I lunged at him, dragging him over his desk.
"I'm done hearing you talk, GRIFTER!" I screamed, and whipped my pistol across his head. Hard. He yelped as I shoved him back into his chair, only for him to tip it over and crash head over hooves into the hard, concrete floor.
He pulled himself back up, leaning against the desk.
"Alright, alright, I'll hoof it to ya - hold your fuckin' horses! You could've just asked nicely ..."
Grifter reached into his desk, rubbing his head as he opened a drawer and held the small black tube in his hoof.
"Now hoof it the fuck over," I snarled, jamming the pistol in his face.
He smirked. Then his horn glowed.
"What the fuck are you -"
Something heavy crashed into the back of my skull. Stars exploded in my eyes as shattered porcelain tumbled away from my mane. I fell forward, my eyes rolling to the back of my head, slamming my face first onto his desk before collapsing to the floor in a heap.
"RED DAWN!" Candy Cane screamed.
Grifter flipped the switch.
Lightning arced across her body as she screamed in agony, thousands of volts of electricity shocking her into submission. The smell of singed flesh and burnt hair wrenched me back to clarity as I scrambled to my hooves. My horn flickered to life and my pistol slid shakily toward me.
Grifter was on me in a matter of seconds.
A hoof connected with my horn as he slammed my head back into the floor with a jarring thwak! Darkness threatened to take me. Far off in the distance I heard my pistol clatter back onto the floor.
Then I felt his hooves crash into my face - again and again - every blow sapping the clarity from my eyes. I glared through a lens of hellish red as blood streamed down my face and bathed my world in blood.
I lashed out with my hooves and punched him in the throat. He rasped, his eyes widening.
I didn't give him another second. I roared, threw myself over onto my chest and bucked my hind hooves into his ribs. I felt my hoof connect with bone and he cried out, hurdling away from me. There was a CRASH and his screams were cut short as he careened into a bookcase in an explosion of splintered shrapnel and tumbling books.
I struggled to my hooves, stars flashing in my eyes - and collapsed once more, reaching out with a hoof to snatch my pistol off the floor. My scarlet aura wavered, but Grifter dove into me. The world blurred away as he hurled another hoof into my skull. My magic winked out and I collapsed to his hooves.
Someone banged on the door.
"Hey boss, what the fuck's going on in there!?" I heard Dahlia shout over Candy Cane's screaming.
Grifter stumbled to the door, detonator held in his magical grip as I forced my eyes open and rose to a knee.
"Some sorry mother fucker -"
"YOU SON OF A BITCH!" I screamed, bowing my head at him.
I charged.
His eyes widened as my horn punched into his chest, my momentum ramming him into the wall by the door with a sickening crunch. I ripped out of him in a splash of gore and threw myself into him before he could scream, tackling him to the floor in a snarling frenzy.
Grifter's magic flickered and died away, and the detonator rolled across the concrete.
My horn flashed in his eyes as I yanked a chair off the floor and swung it towards his writing body. He rolled away at the last minute - and it exploded into a million pieces.
"You fuck!" I snarled, planting a hoof into his chest and levitating a wooden leg over my head. He shielded his face as I hurled a vicious swing.
Thwak!
Thwak!
Thwak!
His jaw dropped as he screamed for help - but I couldn't hear him. I couldn't hear anything but the ringing in my ears as I sent the leg crashing into him again, and again, and again - until it broke across his body with a distant CRACK.
My eyes darted to the splintered wooden stake held before me.
"We're coming in there, boss!" a stallion screamed behind the door as it began to rattle and buck.
Grinning through bloody teeth, I flipped it splintered side down, the broken leg's grisly spikes dripping with blood.
"I'm not afraid of you, or your Palominos, you piece of shit!"
I didn't even give a single fuck as the door's frame began to rattle and shake. I lifted the wooden stake into the air to plunge it into Grifter's pounding heart.
A devious grin stretched his bloody lips. His hindleg crashed between mine. I yelped, crying out Celestia's name as he shoved me off of him. I stumbled upon my hooves for one single agonizing moment - and he ran into me head on.
Grifter slammed me into a wall and -
I lapsed out of consciousness. I blinked, and blinked again, and all I could see in the stars that were flashing in my eyes was Grifter. I tried to fight him.
But the world was spinning. Blood spilled down my face. My vision blurred in and out before my hooves as I fought helplessly against his. He had me pinned.
I felt a cold blade press against my throat.
"I'm gonna make you beg, punk."
I spat blood into his face.
"I'm not afraid of you."
He held me up against the wall by the scruff of my neck and yelled into my face,
"I'M GONNA MAKE YOU BEG, YA HEAR ME? YOU'RE DEAD YOU FUCKING MOOK, YOU'RE FUCKING DEAD!"
"HEY!"
We both turned. Over his shoulder, I saw Candy Cane, her mane hanging before her eyes, and my pistol and its magazine enveloped in her silvery magic.
"You ..." Candy Cane murmured. She swept her mane out of her face, her cold, steel gray eyes gleaming with icy malice at the monster whose hooves had made her suffer for far too long.
"I'm not afraid of you either ..." I heard her slam the pistol's magazine back home with an audible click. "Not anymore."
He snorted, laughing, "You wouldn't ... you're just a fucking slut with a loud mouth." He reached into his pocket with a hoof. His eyes widened.
"Where is it ...?"
Candy Cane floated out the detonator with a triumphant smirk. She leveled the pistol at Grifter as he swore under his breath.
"You fucking whore ..."
Candy Cane fell silent.
"No ... I'm the pony with the fucking gun."
CRACK!
Grifter cried out, and we both slid to the floor.
"BOSS! WHAT THE FUCK!" someone screamed behind the door.
"Red Dawn!" Candy Cane galloped to my aching body and yanked me to my hooves. "We need to run - now!"
Grifter writhed on the floor in a growing pool of blood. I trampled him underhoof as I eyed the sack of caps sitting on his desk. I clenched my jaw and swiped it away with a hoof. I turned to leave, but not before sparing him a passing glance.
"Why don't you finish him off?"
Candy Cane glared at the bleeding bastard, saying nothing.
The door exploded inward and the security bolt banged loudly against the floor.
"Shit! They fucking shot him!" Dahlia screamed as she and five other ponies dashed into the room, a submachine gun floating beside her.
Dawdleshoes pushed past her and reared up on his hinds.
"KIIILLL 'EEEMMM!"
"Now we run!" I cried out as they took aim. Candy Cane yanked me by the foreleg and dragged me to the other side of the room, slamming open the patio door.
The ponies opened fire.
And out into a snowstorm we galloped.
The staccato bursts of automatic weapons fire flashed dully through the stormy night as we galloped against the blizzard's blinding winds. Candy Cane ran, and I followed. I couldn't see more than a dozen feet in front of me. But I didn't stop - not for a single second as bullets shrieked past us.
I could feel them tearing apart the snow around my hooves.
"WHERE ARE WE GOING!?" I shouted over the winds that whipped past my face.
"Just follow me!"
"DON'T LET 'EM GET AWAY!" I heard Dahlia scream in the distance.
I threw my head over my shoulder, and saw that their flashing gunfire wasn't too far behind. Thankfully it was impossible to see clearly through the howling snowfall. I could barely make out the silhouettes that galloped after us.
They were spraying. I was praying.
But I didn't pray hard enough.
Something tore into me.
Fire engulfed my insides as a bullet punched a ragged hole through my flesh. My kevlar plates, barding, and flesh parted before it as lava erupted into my chest cavity. I curled up in reflex and crashed into the snow, sending up a plume of bloody powder.
My screams left my lips and it seemed as if they would never stop coming. Neither would the blood. I cried out Candy Cane's name, but my voice was lost beneath the wind as she disappeared in the blizzard.
"Candy Cane!" I wheezed, blood streaming down my lip. I struggled to my hooves - and a bullet punched out of my right foreleg in a burst of gore and torn fabric.
I screamed.
She was going to leave me behind. I lifted a hoof, trying to crawl away as bullets shredded the snow around me.
She was going to leave me behind.
I couldn't blame her. She was free. It was all that should've mattered to her.
And I was going to pay for it. I wondered once more why I even came back for her.
And still I couldn't find an answer.
'You idiot,' I screamed inside my head as tears of agony welled up in my eyes. 'Now they're all going to die.'
I whimpered and swept a foreleg across the snow as I tried to pull myself to my four hooves, only to paint the snow red with an arc of blood. I clenched my stomach with a gory hoof, hacking up blood onto the frozen earth. 'Get ... up ...' I begged myself.
"Red Dawn, get up - get up!"
Someone wrenched me to my hooves. Candy Cane curled a hoof around my left foreleg and pulled. Hard. I slung a leg over her shoulder as she dragged me through the drifts, trailing blood through the snow behind us. My eyes darted back and forth, blurry, ruined buildings falling away from us as we raced down an abandoned street.
Candy Cane's voice echoed distantly through my ears.
"Come on! Don't stop for anything!" a ghost screamed as black tunnels closed in around me.
'Hahahahaha ... hahahahaha ...'
I could hear them screaming. I could hear her screaming.
" ... RED DAWN!"
"Dew Drops?" I murmured through a mouthful of blood.
"Almost there!"
I squinted through the writhing shadows in my eyes as the echoes faded away, my face pale and my nerves shrieking at me with every throb of my still pounding heart.
There was a lull in the storm and my eyes widened as the road fell away into the darkness twenty yards in front of us.
"W-where's the road!?" I wheezed, the leg that I had wrapped around her chest beginning to slip.
She didn't answer.
I felt a bullet clip my shoulder.
"Candy Cane - WHERE'S THE ROAD!?"
"There is no road! We're going to need to jump!"
'Jump?'
"I asked you this before - and I'll ask you again," I rasped weakly, as the end of the road drew near. "But ... ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY!?"
"Trust me - we'll be okay!" I heard her shout back.
"Candy Cane!"
"You have to trust me!"
I glared through the snowflakes that whipped past my face. 'Goddesses. No.' Countless feet below us, I could see only darkness.
"CANDY CANE!"
"JUMP!"
The road flew away from our hooves - and we tumbled into the howling darkness.
I screamed, but all I could hear was the wind whipping past our faces as we hurtled into the abyss. Seconds felt like hours. I was falling. And falling. And -
I dive-bombed into the drifts, my momentum driving me through the snow, smothering my screams inside the shifting black tides.
I dug with all the energy I had left, fighting to break the surface even as the snow vowed to bury me alive. My muscles were burning out, and every second I spent lucid was another second spent in agony as my warmth and my lifeblood leaked out of my chest with every frantic beat of my draining heart.
My forehoof broke the surface. Then the another. With a gurgling groan, I pulled myself free and flopped onto the frozen, black dunes. Gasping weakly, I tapped my PipBuck once, and bathed the snow around me in teal light.
Candy Cane burst out of the snow next to me, gasping for breath. She scrambled to ungainly hooves and shook herself vigorously, showering me with snow.
"Where the fuck did they go?!" a voice echoed over the streets on high.
"Turn that light off!" Candy Cane hissed, flinging herself onto my PipBuck. It was attached to the leg they shot. I bit my tongue to suppress a moan as she wrestled my bleeding limb into the drifts.
"They fuckin' jumped!" I heard Twiggy gasp.
A thin smile creased my bloody lips. As my emptying veins starved my brain of oxygenated blood - blood that was pooling around me, a veiny tunnel of blackness closed in, sapping the clarity from my eyes.
"Seriously?" Dahlia said, distantly, "They fucking insane?"
"Doesn't matter ... they're dead." Someone kicked a rock down into the darkness. I felt it kick up a plume of snow next to me. "Nobody could've survived that. Fuck 'em, anyways. Slippery bastards."
My legs slackened as Candy Cane peered upwards.
"Candy ... Candy Cane ..." I gurgled through a mouthful of blood.
She turned and her eyes widened.
"Red Dawn - you're bleeding!"
"Yeah ... it's kinda what happens ... when you get s-shot."
The mare rolled me over on my back and grimaced at the hole in my chest.
"Why didn't you say anything?" she hissed.
I felt her heave me onto my side.
"Too ... busy ... trying ... to keep up."
She clenched her jaw.
"No exit wound," she murmured gravely, chewing her bottom lip. Her eyes darted worriedly across my pale features. "I'll need to extract the bullet."
I slurred, in my fading consciousness, "Ex ... extract? W-what?"
"Your saddlebags - I need pliers, tweezers - scissors - something!" She dragged them out of the snow and rifled frantically through them. But that wasn't my tool bag she was rifling through. Unable to speak through the blood that was filling my mouth, I reached out for my tools, parting its flaps as I levitated out a -
My head exploded from the inside out.
The horn atop my skull flashed with violent magical sparks before going dark as a million stars went supernova behind the darkness of my eyelids.
I cried out, my eyes rolling to the back of my head and fell limp in the snow, blood trickling out of my nose.
"Red Dawn!" I heard Candy Cane scream over the howling storm, shaking me desperately.
'It's called Sparkle. Makes your magic stronger,' I heard Grifter say, 'Should boost you up good; might even bring your magic back for a bit ...
'For a bit.'
'For ... a ... bit ...' I thought, distantly.
My body screamed for darkness to take it.
I heard a voice echo faintly in my decaying consciousness.
"Red ... to extract ... bullet ..."
I blinked my eyes furiously in an attempt to return to clarity. But I felt something cold enter the hole in my chest, fishing around my innards - worming its way into my gut.
The last thing that I remembered was a muffled scream as it thrummed inside my chest.
Then darkness washed over me. * |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 8 - The Out-and-Out - Pt III | *
I gasped for breath as my eyes fluttered open to find a pony sitting beside me, her head hanging over my chest. She opened her eyes and smiled languidly, her thick, curly, candy cane mane billowing in the wind.
Her hooves held my left foreleg over my chest so that we both could share the light of my PipBuck.
I regarded her with dull surprise. She had the detonator. She could've just disabled her collar and left me there.
"You're ... you're still here," I whispered, blinking away the grogginess in my eyes to see her.
Her smile widened somewhat. "I thought I'd see you through."
I groaned, a dull pain pervading my hazy senses. My stomach felt ... tight, as I tried to expand my lungs for air. I glanced down my gory chest and found that Dew Drops' scarf - bloodied and worn, was wrapped tightly around me.
My eyes widened.
"I had to use your scarf to stop the bleeding. There was just so ... much ... blood. We're lucky you didn't bleed out on me," she told me, touching my chest gingerly.
'DD's scarf ...' I brushed it with a hoof as gently I would with Dew Drops' mane.
"I'm sorry ... I might've ruined it."
I shook my head. "It's ... it's fine," I lied. It was the only thing I had left to remember her by. And now it was ruined.
My head shook once more, with grim finality. It had stopped the bleeding. We had nothing but the clothes on our backs, and Candy Cane was proving to be an extremely resourceful mare ... making a tourniquet out of the only article of clothing she could afford to remove without either of us freezing to death.
I hid the sullen look in my eyes as I asked, "What ... what did you do to me?" I twitched my hind leg, eyeing the gaping hole in my barding. It felt whole, and less ... bullet-ridden.
Candy Cane pointed at my stomach. "Punctured digestive tract. Severe hemoptysis and internal hemorrhaging inside your chest cavity. You also had a hole in your right leg. You're lucky that one went through. You're even luckier that neither of the bullets struck any vital organs or arteries." She rubbed her gore encrusted hooves through the snow. "I had to dig a little bit to pull out the one in your chest. I needed to extract it before I could administer any potions," she began, eyeing DD's blood soaked scarf.
"I hope you don't mind ... but I had to look through your bags for health potions. I didn't have any on me, otherwise. No magic could've healed around that bullet, either way." Candy Cane levitated out a frighteningly large, blood caked 5.56 round. The mare smiled somewhat as she held the bullet in her magical grip. "Want to keep it as a souvenir?"
I snorted out a jet of mist, vaguely amused as I let my head roll into the powder.
"Nah ... I'm good."
Sterling was right about me needing those apples and potions after all. I lifted my head and cocked an eyebrow at her.
"Where'd you learn to do all that?"
Candy Cane stared at the ashen snow for a moment. "It's certainly been a while ... but I was a nurse before ... all this."
"Thank you, so much," I breathed, weakly.
"I learned a lot from my father," she said, chuckling, "I guess you should thank him instead."
I snorted, laying back down in the snow.
"I would if I met him."
Candy Cane fell silent as the grin faded away from her face. She looked at me gravely, and then at her hooves.
"Oh ... I'm sorry."
"He taught me a thing or two about battlefield surgery," she began, as if I hadn't said anything. "I hope you don't get an infection, though. I had neither the means nor the time to sterilize your pliers before I could use them."
"It's fine ... I'm alive ... for now. That's all that matters."
I peered upward. The rooftops of ancient buildings poked out of the snow beneath us like broken headstones. We were sitting inside of a massive sinkhole, no doubt caused by the balefire bomb's quaking aftershocks.
Candy Cane caught my upward gaze.
"How the hell are we still alive?" I murmured.
Candy Cane sighed, "We're lucky to have been caught in that storm."
"Lucky?"
She stuck a hoof through the snow. "If you dig far enough, say ten-fifteen yards, you'll hit concrete. It's better than falling face first into solid stone, really."
"Uh-huh," I muttered. I hadn't known you could call being stuck in a snowstorm 'lucky' until then.
"Glad I was right, though," she nodded to herself, hanging her head as she closed her eyes. Candy Cane looked about ready to collapse. She wasn't the only one. I don't think I'd ever been skull-tapped that many times in a single day. Despite the ever-present pain that was throbbing inside my skull, the dull twinges inside my chest cavity, and the lightheadedness of blood loss, I was still somehow able to stand.
With stars in my eyes, I rose to my four hooves, crunching through the now unyielding snow drifts. She heard my shuffling and turned her head to see me.
"What are you doing?" she asked as I reached for the detonator.
I squinted at it carefully, glancing at her before tapping a button on its surface. Her collar whined - and went dark, the pulsing red light on its shell fading to black.
She realized she was holding her breath, and let out a trembling sigh.
"Thank you ..." she began, but stopped when she saw me fishing through my saddlebags. "Now ... now what are you doing?" Candy Cane asked.
I retrieved a wire cutter and a screwdriver, and started toward her.
"Red Dawn, what are you going to do with those?"
"I'm taking that thing off your neck."
She held out her a hoof in between us, shaking her head.
"I-I'm fine with it around my neck ... it can't explode anymore."
"Candy Cane -"
"Red Dawn, please, you've done enough ... I don't want to risk tripping the explosive," she said quickly, backing away from me.
I looked at her pleadingly.
"Candy Cane ... do you really want to keep that thing around your neck? It might not be able to detonate remotely, but that bomb is still hot." I took another step toward her, and she took another back. "Whenever you look in a mirror, do you really want to see that fucking thing?"
She froze, trembling, her chin quivering as she stared, teary-eyed into the snow. Candy Cane's hoof crept up her neck to touch the collar that was still wrapped tightly around her throat. It was a mark.
But it wasn't permanent. "I was an engineer at my stable ... I still am."
"I-I don't suppose you know anything about bomb disposal?"
I sighed. "No ... though I'd imagine it's like cutting a machine's power supply so that it can't work anymore."
She shook her head furiously. "No ... no! It's not the same! If you cut the collar's power supply, it activates its failsafe and pops anyway!" Candy Cane shook me pleadingly with horror in her eyes. "I've seen it happen so many times ..." she cried. "Red Dawn, I think I can live with it ... it's like it's not even there!"
"That's because you're used to being a slave. You might be free now, but you're still in chains!" I glared at her, and she glared at me. "Besides, you have a fucking bomb tied around your neck for fuck's sake ... isn't that enough to make you want to have it removed?"
She cut canyons into the snow with her hoof, shaking her head incessantly.
"CandyCane ... you told me to trust you earlier. And I did, and we survived because you had a hunch that there was powder down here." I tucked the tools into my chest pocket and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Now you have to trust me." I thought for a moment. "I can fix this ..."
I always have. I was the Goddesses-damned fixer pony for Celestia's sake.
Candy Cane gazed at me hopelessly with her uncertain, bloodshot eyes.
"You're sure?"
I nodded. "I can do it."
"You're 100% positive?"
I clenched my jaw. "I can do it."
Candy Cane chewed on her lower lip, staring at her hooves.
"I can do it ... but only if you trust me."
She looked up and stared into my eyes, her entire body trembling.
"Okay," she breathed, "Okay ... but be careful." Her horn glowed with a silvery sheen and a hovering orb of white light materialized over her head.
I nodded, but didn't say another word as I curled a hoof around my screwdriver and slowly loosened the collar's screws. Delicately, I used the tool to pull apart the collar's casing.
I peered into its innards and spotted a black wire within. I inched the shell apart, watching as the wire straightened out.
As it straightened out. As it straightened -
'Fuck!'
I let go just a millisecond before I pulled it taut. I could hear her whimpering faintly over the pounding in my temples.
I gulped. That was the trigger. The tripwire that detonates the bomb.
This time, with one hoof, I parted the collar's case with my screwdriver as my wire cutter slowly descended into the wiry crack. I squinted through the shadows, positioning my right forehoof slightly so that Candy Cane's magelight could shine through.
What I saw made me gulp.
That ... wasn't the tripwire.
Or maybe it was. I didn't know, because there were three other wires. Black wires. And they weren't color coded - and all four of them were tie-wrapped together.
One of them was the tripwire. The other three belonged to the circuit.
It was insane.
I wondered what shit for brains of an electrician completes a circuit without indicating which wire was positive, negative, or ground. They're supposed to be color-coded.
Normally, when you wire a circuit incorrectly and the relay is connected to a light bulb, you get shocked.
But with that collar ... you'd lose a hoof. Or both.
Or a head.
There was no way in hell it was assembled by hoof. Nobody could've been dumb enough to wire a circuit like that. Not without mixing up the negative with the positive and walking away without a few missing limbs.
I thought for a moment.
I realized that the device couldn't have been utilizing a direct circuit, because it'd detonate if the circuit was severed. There had to have been some kind of mechanism inside that pulled the tripwire anyways if the circuit went dark.
'Shit.'
I wondered how much worse it could get. I shook my head. The last time I entertained that possibility, I got mobbed by a horde of robot sentries. I shook my head even harder and sighed.
All I needed to do was cut the wire that wasn't part of the circuit.
I needed to geld that tripwire.
With another gulp, I lowered my wire cutter into her collar, biting my lower lip as I scrutinized the black wires.
I pounded into my mind again and again the fact that if I severed the circuit manually, I'd do the dirty deed myself.
'Boom.'
I clenched my jaw so tightly I nearly popped it out of its socket.
I lowered the wire cutter inside.
My eyes darted back and forth between the four wires.
I chose one wire among the cluster of black death-sentences - wire Alpha, and followed it deep into the collar's shell. A curse hissed between my teeth as I exhaled frustratingly. It and the other three, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta looped around the circumference of the collar as one single coil of black wires. But what mattered to me was where they ended.
The cluster of wires terminated beyond my line of sight. I shuffled on my hooves, trying to get a better look, and found that the cluster separated at the collar's radius. My teeth grinded together as I cursed the manufacturer of that death device once more.
Bravo and Delta were split in such a way that they formed a confusing black knot with Alpha and Charlie, further obscured by the shell's uneven shape.
"Red ... Dawn?" Candy Cane whispered.
I ignored her as I tried to focus, studying the loose knot of wires - trying to figure out which wire was which. In the wasteland's eternal night, it was near impossible to tell which wire went where. Black wires inside of a black shell weren't exactly the easiest to differentiate even with Candy Cane's magelight.
I closed the collar and retrieved another screwdriver from my tool bag. This time, holding it open, I used a screwdriver held in my left hoof to play with the knot, prodding it in an attempt to separate them enough for me to tell which one was which.
After several minutes of checking, rechecking, and poking, I found that Charlie was connected to the inside of the collar, while the others separated and looped around the collar's circumference.
It had to be the tripwire.
My eyes marked Charlie for a gelding.
I replaced my left screwdriver with a wire cutter and slowly descended upon Charlie, my tongue poking between my lips as I tried to concentrate. One wrong move could bend the casing in two - pull the cluster taut, and splatter me in Candy Cane's brains. One wrong snip could paint me red just as easily as the latter.
I hesitated - inched toward it - hesitated and inched some more. I paused, my confidence bobbing up and down like a ship sailing a turbulent sea as I tried to think it through, as I tried to reassure myself that that was the one, that that was the -
"Red Dawn?"
I jerked away from her.
"SHIT!"
I looked down. The wires. My hoof. It trembled as my screwdriver held the collar open for my eyes to see the wire that was pulled taut within.
It was Charlie.
A thin line of sweat streamed down my forehead. I let out a breath I realized I was holding in. I could feel Candy Cane's anxious gaze upon me.
The wire was bent upwards, half of its length nearly yanked out of the shell itself.
'Dear Celestia.'
"Fuck. I-it's fine," I stammered, sweating like I was staring down the barrel of a gun. "I can do this ... just hold still, and let me focus."
I glared at the collar, Candy Cane's light orb beaming down the crack. My eyebrow cocked at what I saw. With Charlie yanked out of place, I saw the other three with renewed clarity in Candy Cane's magelight.
"Alpha, Bravo, Delta..." I whispered, prodding them with my wire cutter. 'Which one, damnit?' I screamed inside my head, 'Which one!? "Alpha, Bravo, Delta..."
"Red Dawn ..."
"Candy Cane, please - shut up for fuck's sake!" I snapped, silencing her before she could say more. I gulped and tried to still my shaking hooves.
I shifted my right foreleg. 'There'. All four terminated in the same general area, curling downwards and into the device. But with Charlie out of the way, I could easily see what exactly they were connected to without all four's shadows getting in my way.
Beneath the wires were two shapes - a large cube, and a smaller cube: the smaller one was what I presumed to be the wire separator.
The wires looped through it, separating them individually. Only the pony who designed it knew which face separated what - the positive, the negative, the ground, or the tripwire. A wire - strung through the fifth face connected the separator to the larger cube, which I concluded was the bomb itself.
"What the fuck," I murmured.
I checked and rechecked, tracing the coil from one radius to the next. My eyes scrutinized the collar's entire circumference. There was no fifth wire. There couldn't be one.
That meant that the fifth was either Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, or Delta - strung through the separator and connected to the bomb to serve as the mechanical detonator ... the trip wire.
There was only one way to find out.
Replacing my wire cutter with a pair of pliers, I sighted wire Delta. I glanced at Candy Cane, eyeing me nervously as she shivered inside her peacoat. A layer of frost had formed over her forehead where sweat had beaded up and solidified in the frozen air. Her hooves shifted beneath her as she fiddled with a chunk of ice in an effort to keep her mind off of being decapitated.
"Alright ... let's do this."
I clamped down on Delta.
Streams of sweat traced lines of clean brown coat across my grime-encrusted face. I glanced at Candy Cane once more. She was watching me kill her. I closed my eyes.
And pulled.
Candy Cane squeaked, whimpering as she felt her collar jerk slightly.
Nothing. The wire that connected the separator to the bomb didn't move an inch. I gulped. I pulled Charlie earlier. So that left two of them. My pliers hovered between Bravo and Alpha.
I wiped away the sweat from my face with my sleeve so that it wouldn't freeze. The last thing I needed was to shiver from not just apprehension, but from the cold, too.
I watched Candy Cane as she clenched her teeth and trembled upon her hooves.
Tears were runnning down her cheeks. She knew that she could die at any moment. It'd have been a lie if I'd told her she was going to be okay.
It was a fifty-fifty chance I'd pull the wrong one. But those were the best odds I'd ever had since coming out there. They were the only odds I had left to take.
I clamped my pliers around Alpha.
"Red Dawn!" she cried out.
I yanked the wire taut.
Her screams echoed out into the city.
I would have screamed too if I hadn't realized that Alpha belonged to the circuit.
Candy Cane stared at me, trembling uncontrollably.
There was only one wire left.
I took a deep breath and curled a hoof around my wire cutter, lowering it into her collar. I held my breath, my hoof trembling uncontrollably as the two blades wrapped their edges around the final wire.
I closed my eyes. I didn't want Candy Cane's skull fragments ripping into my eye sockets. My mouth clapped shut ... I didn't want her brains splashing into my mouth, either. I imagined her head exploding, splattering me with gore and gray matter as doubt began to scrape incessantly at my thoughts.
I took a deep breath and held it in.
I curled the wire cutter closed.
Snip.
CRACK!
I screamed.
And nothing. Nothing. My heart felt like it was going to leap out of my chest. I waited as my racing heartbeat slowed to a trot. I opened my eyes, and Candy Cane's terrified gray eyes widened to saucers.
I looked down at her hoof and saw that she had crushed the chunk of ice beneath her.
She slowly turned to face me, her trembling threatening to drill herself into the snow.
"W-what d-did you do?" she stammered, breathlessly.
I said nothing as I took my screwdriver and undid the collars screws, wrenching it apart, dismantling it, undoing the mark of her slavery.
It crunched uselessly into the snow.
We stood there next to each other for what seemed like hours as Candy Cane fought with her brain to process what just happened. Her eyes darted back and forth between me and the bomb collar that lay at our hooves, dumbfounded.
She exhaled suddenly, rubbing her eyes vigorously with her hooves, clearing away whatever hallucination inducing grogginess she thought was plaguing her clarity. Then her hoof slowly crawled up her chest, reaching for her neck. Her hoof stopped just below her throat - as if her collar was still there.
Candy Cane touched with delicate disbelief the matted indentation that had been trapped beneath her bomb collar. She rubbed at her flattened coat, her breathing intensifying as she struggled to grasp that it wasn't there anymore.
That her chains were broken.
"I'm ... free ..." she whispered, rubbing a hoof against her gnarled hide. "I'm finally free ..." Candy Cane turned to me, slowly, fresh tears welling up in her eyes. "You did it," she murmured. "You ... you really did it.
"YOU DID IT!" she screamed, running into me with the force of a charging stallion. Candy Cane hugged me, squeezing her legs tight around my chest as she wept into my coat.
"I ... I did it ..." I murmured as I lifted a leg and wrapped it around her too. An ecstatic grin slowly stretched across my face.
Candy Cane pulled away, her face and my neck soaked with her tears as she held my shoulders with both her hooves. "Thank you so much ... thank you - thank you - thank you!" she cried, "You saved my life ... freed me from that horrible place and my collar ... I'm finally free ... I'm finally ... FREE!"
She yanked me close and hugged me some more. The tighter she squeezed, the harder it became to suppress the warm, victorious laughter that fought its way through my lips. I stared off into the ashen clouds, praying for a sign. Praying for the Goddesses to tell me that I had finally done good.
"Thank the Goddesses that's over with."
I wrapped my other leg around her and hugged her tight.
"Thank you ... so much," Candy Cane whispered, her tears glistening in the silvery magelight. "I never thought I'd ever be..." She paused, growing fond of the word she hadn't used to describe herself in years. "I never thought I'd ever be free ... again. Again ... it's been five years. Five. Years. I-I never thought ..."
She looked away, shaking her head. The mare brushed her matted coat, trying to fluff it up to no avail.
Candy Cane gazed at me with teary eyes. "I'll never forget ... I'll never forget what you did for me, either ... thank you, again." She hung her head silently and dabbed at the snow with her hoof. "I wish there was some way I could repay you, because my words can never be enough."
I lifted her head up with a hoof. "Don't even mention it. Seriously." I smiled, chuckling, "You're free now. That's all that matters."
The mare swept her mane out of her eyes, wiping her face vigorously with her sleeve.
"Is it though?" she murmured, with uncertainty.
I said nothing, wondering the same thing as she touched her neck gingerly like she had never seen her own coat before.
"Now what?" I asked, quietly. "Now what will you do?"
Candy Cane looked at her hooves, thinking.
"I don't know," she replied. "I don't know. Most of my friends and family are either dead or in slavery. Most of them probably think ... I'm dead ..." Candy Cane sniffled, strands of her mane falling before her eyes. "I don't know ... I don't know what I'll do, Red Dawn."
We stood there, a bleak silence hanging over us as she stared at the ashen drifts with empty eyes. I thought for a moment, tapping my chin.
"Maybe ... maybe you can come with me?" I said.
She cocked her head at me.
"Come with you?"
I nodded, saying, "I can barely survive out here on my own." I stared off into the sky, watching the gray clouds hang over the frozen earth. "It's a harsh world out here. It's even worse trying to survive out here alone."
I pulled Dew Drops' scarf from my chest, flecks of dried blood fluttering to the snow. Pursing my lips, I wrapped it around my neck, solemnly.
"My stable lost its water talisman a while ago. So my friends and I came out here to find a replacement ... without it my stable will die," I told her.
Candy Cane nodded, knowingly.
"What happened to them?" she asked, her gaze softening.
"This scarf ... it's all I have to remember my friend by. She ... she was taken by snow furies. So were the others. We were ambushed, and butchered because we weren't ready for what was outside those doors.
"Ever since then it's just been me, and my gun, and this scarf against the entire wasteland." I uttered a grim chuckle, "It seems like that, at least. I barely hoofed it to Poneva alive."
"I'm so sorry about your friends ..." she whispered, staring down at her hooves, "And your scarf ..."
I shook my head. "She would've wanted me to actually stay alive to finish what they started, anyways. I have you to thank for that." I thought for a moment, running my hoof through my mane. "You seem to know a lot about this city - this wasteland. Maybe you can help me?"
"How?"
"I ran into Grifter while looking for the Orphanage. He promised that if I helped him, he'd give me the location of one of their hideouts. He gave me this."
I eyed the coordinates he gave me, opened up my PipBuck's map, and pointed at a map marker.
The mare's expression turned grim. "No ... no you don't want to go there." She poked my PipBuck's screen with a hoof. "That's a metro tunnel overrun with feral ghouls."
"Feral ... what?"
She shook her head. "You would've walked there to your death. They would've ripped you to pieces."
"Son of a bitch ..." I was a loose end. That cafone bastard tried to kill me.
Candy Cane cocked an eyebrow.
"What ... what do you want with the Orphanage?"
"When I arrived here, I found a water talisman ... well not exactly. I spoke with the head pony at the World Tree."
Her eyes widened at that.
"You met Sterling? He never lets anyone inside the World Tree."
I nodded. "He's been working with the resistance to take down the other plantations. He wants his hooves on their tech; apparently they can purify water without water talismans."
Candy Cane frowned, adding, "It's always been a mystery how they can yield so many crops without the equipment the World Tree has."
I paused for a breath, and continued. "Sterling says that if he had their technology, he wouldn't need water talismans anymore. But that'd mean that the plantations would need to lose them, first. And if they did, he'd be able to spare me one or two or thirty of his water talismans." A hopeful fire burned in my eyes. "He could give me enough talismans to keep my stable going for centuries."
"Would he really just give up all his water talismans?" Candy Cane asked. "Those things are as rare as moonrocks."
My expression turned grim. "It's the only chance I have left. Without this talisman, everyone in my stable is going die. For all it's worth, I'd do anything ... anything to save them all.
"I figured I'd join the resistance. Sterling said they always need hooves to keep the movement running. They're the ones fighting the damned plantations, after all."
I sighed, wearily.
"My stable doesn't have much time. I've been around the city. No one gives a shit about the plantations. No one wants to do shit about them," I spat. "At this rate, hell will freeze over twice and my stable will be rotting a mile below the earth. I can't sit around on my hooves and waste my time - waste my stable's time, waiting for the city to roll over." I pursed my lips, and stared at her with a grim resolve.
"I want to join them. I want to join the Orphanage ... and ... and help them do ... something."
"The Orphanage, huh?" she whispered, intrigued. "And you want me to help you find them, then?"
I gave her a gloomy chuckle.
"I don't want your help ... I need your help. I can't do this alone." I looked at her hopefully as the harsh wasteland wind buffeted our disheveled manes. "If we join the resistance, we'll be able to save all your friends at the Scullion. We'd be able to save them all."
Candy Cane's eyes glistened with distance hope.
"If I join you, you need to promise me ... promise me that we'll save them too."
Something powerful ignited behind her eyes as she clenched her jaw and glared balefire into the snow.
My eyes widened as a different mare growled, mist jetting out between her bared teeth, "Promise me ... that we'll put an end to the Palominos. If we die, I want to die doing the right thing. Now that I'm free, I won't stand by and watch them force anymore people into slavery.
"I want to tear them down, Red Dawn. After everything they've done to me ... I-I ... I ..." she shook her head, tears welling out of her eyes. She sniffled. "No ... I won't be like them." Candy Cane stomped her hoof into the snow and bowed her head.
She looked up at me, tears streaming down her cheeks.
"I want to help people. Can we do that?"
I lowered my eyes to my hooves, a long breath whispering out of my lips.
Help people. Help the people of the wasteland. The same people who turned me away when I was trying to look for the only source of good in that wintry shithole.
Most people didn't even care about the plantations. Many couldn't give a damn if the guy next to them was dragged away into a ditch and shot in the head. They were content with that life so long as they could keep on living.
But Candy Cane was different; I wanted to admire her. I wanted to admire her heart. She had the kind of heart that got people killed. It was a heart like that that nearly got me killed. Good things never happen to good ponies.
And yet there she was, still standing. Maybe not for long. But there she was ...
The difference between Candy Cane and I was that the resistance was just a means to an end. Everything I did was for my stable. But because of that little diversion with slavery, I'd risked the lives of nearly three hundred ponies for just this one mare.
If I died, all hope for my stable would have been lost. I wondered once more ... why?
Why? My heart rationalized that it was simply the right thing to do. But my brain wondered, 'What kind of stupid fucking logic was that?'
I could've died.
Again.
But it didn't matter to her. She was free. She could've done anything she wanted ... but she wanted only this: to help people, people that didn't even want her help.
She had hope that the wasteland could turn around, even if she was the only person doing the turning. She was the hope nobody wanted.
I saw it in Sterling, and now I was seeing that in her.
I held out a hoof.
"We will," I said, finally. "We will ... I promise. Even if it kills us."
Candy Cane took my hoof and shook it, a determined smile stretching across her lips.
"Thanks, Red Dawn." She thought for a moment, pursing her lips. "I ... don't know where to find the Orphanage," she confessed, hesitantly. "But I do know this city. I've escaped from the Scullion so many times that I've had the time to explore almost every nook and cranny in the outer city, and some parts of the inner city. All I need is a point in the right direction and I can take you there," she said, smiling hopefully.
"I know somepony who was actually in the Orphanage," Candy Cane chuckled. My brows furrowed as I cursed Grifter's name under my breath. "She runs an inn in Old Town. She can probably tell us how to find them." The mare noticed the dark circles around my bloodshot eyes. "Maybe she'll even give us a place to stay for a bit."
I really needed a break. Not a nap, not a few hours of shut eye. No. I needed to rest.
"You know her?" I asked, wobbling on my hooves.
She reached out with a hoof and held me still.
"She and her family took me in once ..." Candy Cane nodded to herself, smiling. "She's a good mare."
'Finally,' I thought. I was finally I was getting somewhere.
"That sounds like a plan." I sighed, rubbing my eyes. "Much better than asking random people on the street, that's for sure," I muttered, bitterly.
I looked around us, panning my PipBuck's light across the shifting white dunes. We were in a massive sink hole.
"Well ... first of all, how do we get out of here?"
Candy Cane peered up and into the city above us, her eyes darting back and forth, searchingly. She lifted a hoof and pointed at the rooftops that poked out of the snow. Rooftops that were high and close enough to jump in between.
'Oh Goddesses,' I moaned inside my head.
Candy Cane smiled.
"I have an idea."
Footnote: Level up.
New Perk: Guerilla Pony - Your sneak attack criticals with revolvers, pistols, carbines, and submachine guns (whether guns or magical energy weapons) all inflict an additional 20% damage. |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 9 - A Cold Hearth - Pt I | Chapter 9
A Cold Hearth
"I could've just walked away. I had what I wanted, anyways. "
I half limped, half stumbled through the snow, trying to blink away the stars in my eyes as Candy Cane led me up a lonely street.
For hours she navigated the streets for me, turning corners or leading me through dark, dimly lit underpasses that tunneled through the collapsed city. Every twist and every turn were detours she steered through with absolute confidence. It became apparent to me that she had been through that place countless times.
She led, and I followed closely in silence. I wasn't exactly the kind of pony who reveled in small talk, so much of the walk up till then had been a quiet one. It seemed like she wasn't, either. Candy Cane would spare me a few curious, furtive glances every now and then, but besides that, no one said a word.
We were still just two strangers.
Our pace was beginning to slow, however, all thanks to my exhausted state. A wheezing breath erupted from my lips, and I stopped for a moment, falling to my haunches, too tired to continue onward.
Candy Cane heard the hoofsteps behind her stop, and swung her head around to see me lying there in the snow. She knelt next to me, and I heard her speak for the first time in nearly an hour.
"What's wrong?" she said, her voice nearly a whisper.
"Just ah ... heh ..." I chuckled, face-hoofing tiresomely. "I'm just feeling a little under the weather, right now." She gave me a worried, yet exasperated look. My bitter sarcasm was lost on her. Being hurt in any sort of way didn't seem like a laughing matter to her. But it took a certain level of clarity to act like my usual self.
It felt good to know I wasn't actually comatose.
She regarded my long, weary face with soft eyes. "That detour we took out of that sinkhole was rough ..." she sighed, dabbing a hoof in the snow.
'My, she was a mind reader,' I thought.
After that stunt we pulled off to heave ourselves out of that hole in the ground ... Goddesses. I never knew I could rock-climb.
"No-no, it helped get whatever blood I have left in me flowing," I said, grinning at her as I lay at her hooves. My muscles ached and my eyes begged me to shut them closed. I nearly passed out in that sinkhole. I felt like passing out right then and there.
It was difficult to do anything after getting my ass beat in a brawl, getting shot twice, and getting my head torn apart by yet another magical burnout.
"We can't stick around for too long," Candy Cane said quickly and quietly, double-taking over both her shoulders. "This part of town belongs to the cafones."
"Lovely," I crooned, staring blankly at the snow. A yawn parted my cracked lips, and I winced as I inhaled a breath too large for my lungs.
I looked up, groggily. "Didn't you hear them, earlier? They think we're dead."
She crossed her right foreleg over her left. "I'd rather be safe than sorry."
"Okay ... but let me just lie here for a bit," I groaned, the snow biting deep into my livid flesh.
'Sleep. I sleep here now.'
"Red Dawn, you shouldn't be lying there ..."
Her words passed through deaf ears as I lowered my chin into the pale. I clenched my eyes shut and shuddered violently. "Damn that's cold." My eyes fluttered open at the mare's hooves. "It's alright," I murmured faintly as I shivered in the snow. "The cold reminds me that I'm still alive."
She knelt beside me and laid a hoof on my forehead, muttering to herself. Her hoof was icy cold against the boiling surface of my flesh, and I shivered at her touch. The look she gave me suggested that whatever she saw was not good.
"What's the diagnosis, doc?" I chattered through my teeth.
"High fever. Likely caused by your magical burnout."
She pursed her lips, conjuring a glowing orb of light. Candy Cane cupped a hoof over one of my eyes and levitated the orb in front of the other. My eyelid twitched sluggishly, closing slightly, but my retina didn't dilate.
A flat "Ohhhh ..." seethed out of her lips.
At least when she found something bad she didn't berate you like Doctor Stitches did. Because what she saw in my twitching eyeball didn't seem too good either.
She exchanged hooves and tested the other. Candy Cane looked at me and clenched her jaw.
I groaned, "Isn't it just wonderful being a glorified earth pony with a horn?"
"You just need to rest. Sleep it off. Just not here, Red Dawn."
I sighed, letting my head roll back into the snow.
"Can ... can you still walk?"
I shook my head free from the drifts, cringing as that only worsened my headache. "Sure," I winced. "I can do you a few squats if you want, doc."
"I'm a nurse, Red Dawn," she said, somewhat annoyed by my pain induced quips.
With a foreleg and a swirl of her gray magic, the mare pulled me back to my aching hooves. We stood there in the snow in silence as she probably wondered what in the Goddesses' names was she going to do with me. I was deadweight at that point.
She hung her head and let out a long, drawn out sigh. The irritation faded from her face as her eyes softened once more. Candy Cane touched my shoulder with a tender hoof, before pointing down the street. "Come on, we're almost there," she whispered. "I'm sure you'd prefer a mattress to a gutter full of snow?"
I squinted around me. I was standing in a gutter. I shifted my weight and felt trash and frozen filth crunch beneath me.
I sighed, smiled faintly, and peered into the mare's gentle, gray eyes.
"Whatever puts me to sleep the fastest, I guess. That is, if hypothermia doesn't get me first." She frowned at that, but motioned me to follow her with a swish of her swirly red and white tail.
As we plodded through the snow-swept streets, the uncomfortable silence between us was beginning to settle in again. But that was alright, I was too tired to care in the first place. But Candy Cane's gait slowed so that we were walking shoulder to shoulder.
"How long have you been out here?" she asked suddenly, glancing at me.
I thought for a moment. I wasn't even sure ... at that point it'd felt like I'd been wandering that wintry wasteland for months - no - years now. The bags under my eyes and my grime encrusted ... everything ... made me feel as if I had been away from home for an eternity.
In the stable, there had never been a day when I hadn't had a shower, or three full meals a day, or nine hours of undisturbed sleep. It felt like an eternity since I had lived in the comforts of Stable 91.
I stared longingly at the snow that crunched beneath my hooves.
"Too long."
Candy Cane hesitated, looking away for a moment. She parted her mane as it bobbed in front of one of her eyes. "You ... you look like you've been through so much in such little time."
I caught her looking at me expectantly in my peripherals as I stared onward and into the dimly lit street. "Ponies died, and I lived." I gulped down the lump in my throat. "That's all ..." I muttered with grim uncertainty.
The mare turned her troubled gaze away from me and we slogged through the shifting drifts in silence. Candy Cane's pace began to quicken, and so did mine.
Nearly ten long minutes later, she stopped in her tracks and we found ourselves standing before our final destination. The inn, I supposed.
"Is this the place?" I asked Candy Cane.
She nodded as I trotted up to the door. The inn was a quaint, cozy-looking two story building with windows that glowed with giddy, dancing firelight.
At least that's what I imagined it may have looked like two centuries ago. A creaking metal sign hung over the door. Etched into it was 'The Warmhearth Inn'.
Didn't look too warm to me.
As I walked up the icy, blackened steps, I peered curiously through the boarded up windows that swatted away any suggestion that there was life behind that door. I raised a hoof to its thick, battered wooden surface, and knocked.
A few seconds passed, and the only sounds that we heard were the distant wagons and the sound of hooves crunching through snow behind us. The only light that shined upon my face was a dim, flickering light bulb that was begging to be put out of its misery.
I felt the cold touch of snowflakes whisper across the back of my neck. Things were freezing up again. The wind sighed, moaned, and snow began to fall once more.
I didn't want to be outside anymore.
Glancing over my shoulder, I mouthed to Candy Cane, if she was a hundred percent certain we were at the right place. The mare nodded.
So I knocked again.
This time, a speakeasy door slid open and two navy blue eyes narrowed back at me. I opened my mouth to speak, but the pony cut me off.
"We're closed," a mare told me, before the speakeasy door slid shut.
My face turned sour. I lifted a hoof to the door and knocked again. The speakeasy door opened once more.
"Hey! I said we're closed, okay? So scram!" the mare shouted through the speakeasy door before slamming it shut.
I sighed, glancing over my shoulder at Candy Cane.
"Well isn't she a ray of sunshine," I muttered.
Candy Cane sighed, before she took my place and knocked.
"Goddesses - I said we're closed -" a mare hissed, but her voice was lost on her lips.
She saw the mare standing next to me first.
"Candy Cane ..?" *
I shifted on my stool, a rickety, neglected old thing that creaked underneath me, like the floor underhoof. A fine layer of dust had settled upon the lonely bar I sat behind. Resting my legs upon the counter, I kicked up a small cloud of dust that roused from my cracked lips a sneeze.
Behind it on a long rack were rime encrusted bottles by the dozens. Most were empty. There wasn't a single drink in that place that could relieve even the most lightweight of drinkers in the inn's deplorable state.
Sniffling, I heard hooves clop upon the creaking wooden boards behind me. The innkeeper passed by a cold hearth - lonely and unlit as she made her way, sluggishly, to the bar. Candy Cane, who sat next to me, rubbed her hooves together briskly for warmth, glancing wishfully at the empty fireplace.
Even inside, it was still cold. The bite of the northern wind was trying desperately to penetrate the walls of that place. It scratched again the boarded up windows like an animal begging to be let inside.
The innkeeper trotted past me, but not before shooting a careful gaze my way. The mare regarded me - the stranger - with apprehension, noticing the gun holstered around my chest. My presence was making her edgy. I probably should've stowed my gun away.
"I'm really sorry you have to see me like this, Cane," the mare began, still keeping an eye on me. "Sorry to see my place like this. A lot's changed since I saw you last ... the last time they took you, I ..." she paused, pursing her lips. "I never thought I'd see you again."
Candy Cane smiled. "It's been too long, Summer Smiles."
Summer Smiles sighed as she closed her eyes, and hugged her, squeezing her tight. Letting go, the mare turned her eyes to the floorboards.
"Heh, well I don't smile so much anymore." Summer Smiles sighed, brushing her blonde braids with a hoof. "The inn's been closed for nearly a month now. The cafones've been stepping up their game, and making us lose ours." She shook her head before resting it upon a hoof. "It's gotten so bad that my sister and I have been living from bottlecap to bottlecap."
"What happened to your savings?" Candy Cane asked.
Summer Smiles glared at the bar's counter-top. "It's ... we're ... the cafones upped their prot taxes. I've been using it to pay them. Though, most of it was used up when my sister lost her job and had to find a new one."
"That's awful ... why do they keep doing that?"
Summer Smiles snorted, shaking her head. "They don't need a reason to, they just do." She spat, "Bastards ... all of them." The mare noticed the bitter look upon my face as they spoke of the gangster menace.
Those Palominos were sucking the life out of that town.
The two sighed. Candy Cane looked all around her at the unkempt walls, her gaze falling upon the dusty staircase that led upstairs.
"How are the girls? Your sister?" Candy Cane asked.
Summer Smiles hesitated for a moment, no doubt watching me in her peripherals. With one eye on Candy Cane, and another on me, she leaned forward and rested her hooves on the counter.
"Doodle and Hops have gotten bigger since you last saw them," Summer Smiles said, proudly. She chuckled. "To me, it's like they haven't grown older at all. Same Doodle, same Hops."
Candy Cane's tired eyes flickered with cheer. "What about Hops? Her ... legs?"
Summer Smiles shook her head. "She was born that way, Cane. There's no healing genetics."
Candy Cane clenched her jaw, her ears drooping.
Summer Smiles looked at her hooves. "You disappeared for two years. Doodle and Hops always wondered where their Auntie Candy Cane went. I could never bring myself to tell them what happened to you ..." the mare said, softly. "I really never thought I'd see you again."
Candy Cane sat there in silence.
"They'll be glad to see you, Cane," she added, touching her hoof. Candy Cane salvaged a smile out of that. It felt a little warmer in there seeing her face light up like that.
"What about your sister?"
She glanced at the door. "She hasn't been around, lately. Went off on an assignment ... she's still out there. I don't know where, though." Her brows furrowed with impatience. "If she doesn't come back soon, I won't have any more caps left to put food on the table. And I can't leave the inn to find work ... not if it means leaving Doodle and Hops behind."
"It just keeps getting worse, doesn't it?" Candy Cane murmured.
Summer Smiles blew a puff of dust off the counter, sighing. "You think you'd get used to it, living like this." Her gaze found its way to meet me. "You never do." Summer Smiles made her way behind the bar, and tapped her hoof on the counter. "I'd get you two a couple of drinks, but ..." she looked over her shoulder, sparing the empty racks a dismal glance.
"It's okay. At least we're out of the snow," she said, softly.
"Out of the snow ... huh." Summer Smiles looked at Candy Cane strangely. "How'd you get out this time?"
"I had some help," Candy Cane said, smiling faintly.
Summer Smiles blinked, cocking her head at me. "Really? I've been wondering: who's this stallion you brought into my home?"
"Of course you have, you've been watching him like a hawk since we got here," Candy Cane chuckled.
Summer Smiles shifted nervously on her hooves. It's not like she wasn't making it obvious.
Candy Cane grinned. "Relax, Summer. He's not going to bite your leg off."
She scowled back. "Oh you know stallions ... they're good at biting, and leaving marks. Just look at my sister: two foals and a stallion nowhere to be found."
I laughed nervously as Candy Cane hung her head. Summer Smiles wasn't the only pony in the room that has had a problem with stallions. Candy Cane - more so than anyone else I currently knew.
"My name's Red Dawn."
"Red Dawn ..." Summer Smiles nodded, studying the arcanomechanical device wrapped around my foreleg. "You're from a stable, Red Dawn?"
"Yes ma'am," I nodded, stifling a yawn as I tapped my PipBuck with a hoof.
The mare cocked an eyebrow, perplexed.
"Heh, there are very few ponies around the wasteland with those things around their legs." Her voice turned sour. "I can imagine why," she added quietly, glaring at her disheveled, pitiful surroundings.
She imagined right. Beneath the earth, stable ponies slept in their stables while ponies like Summer Smiles and Candy Cane remained trapped outside, helpless and cold. I thought back, sifting through generations of Dawns and Roans, thankful that my great, great - great something grandparents had been chosen to live in Stable 91.
It began to occur to me, that despite the terrible things I'd seen so far, no one was luckier than stable-dwellers like me. We had lived in a stable for most of our lives while the world outside went to shit. I sighed. Better there than the wasteland, of course.
Summer Smiles asked, "So what's a stable-pony like you doing out here, anyways?"
"Just wanted some fresh air, I guess," I said, dryly.
She snorted, vaguely amused. "Are you one of those ponies from Stable 2? The one everypony keeps hearing about on the radio?"
That was the second time someone's asked me that.
"Uhh ... no. I'm from Stable 91, about sixty or seventy miles out from Poneva, I think."
"That's a pity ... Stable 2's the only stable I've heard of that hasn't let out anything but dust and skeletons." The mare folded her legs across her chest, looking sure of herself. "Something bad must've pushed you out."
I nodded with a dry chuckle. "I've been told that a lot. We're going to be like the others soon enough, I think. Our water talisman broke. Now we've got two months to live. Well they, really. I ... we ... my friends and I - we left Stable 91 to find another."
Summer Smiles glanced at Candy Cane. There were only two of us, and only one of us had a PipBuck around our legs.
"Your ... friends?" she said, softly.
"They're dead now."
The mare blinked, expecting me to say more. I didn't. All she got was an exhausted stare that pleaded to be put to sleep.
I hadn't told anyone what had happened that night. What had happened to my friends - how Star Glint was skinned alive ... how Amber Fields was blown to pieces ...
How they tore Dew Drops apart before my eyes.
The pain in my head, the anguish in my thoughts - they raked and scraped against the inside my skull, screaming for escape. So I grabbed them by the scruffs of their necks and stuffed them back into the closet where they belonged.
A grim silence hung over the three of us as I sat there, unmoving.
Summer Smiles studied my weary eyes, and the grime that covered my face, and the blood that caked my chest. Candy Cane was about as bloodied as I was. But most of it was mine.
"You ... you two both look like you've been through hell."
I scoffed bitterly, hanging my head, "I guess that's one way of putting it."
"Well if you're on this mission of yours, then what're you doing with Candy Cane?"
She and I exchanged uncertain looks.
Summer Smiles' eyes narrowed at me when I didn't answer. "How'd you meet her?" she asked, warily. "It's not everyday somepony walks in with somepony like Candy Cane."
I felt the weight of Candy Cane's stare upon me. She parted her peacoat's collar, folding it down flat so that Summer Smiles could see the matted, red coat beneath.
Her eyes widened.
"Your collar - i-its - it's gone?"
Candy Cane smiled ecstatically.
"He saved me, Summer ... he freed me from the Scullion ... and he took the collar right off."
Summer Smiles' eyes widened. "He ... Goddesses ..." she leaned over the counter, reaching out with a hoof to touch the matted indentation where her collar used to be. She rubbed the patch of fur, tenderly, stricken with disbelief. "How? You removed - you did that?"
I nodded, slowly. "It wasn't easy," I said with a sigh.
"How'd you do it? I-I mean, how'd you make it past the cafones?" she stammered, breathlessly.
Candy Cane rubbed her bloody hooves together, tipping her head at me.
"We nearly died," I told her. "Well, I nearly died. Those Palo ... those cafones wouldn't let up." I explained how I snuck into the Scullion, then our confrontation with Grifter, and our flight from the brothel. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. When I got to that part about the sinkhole, she just about lost it there.
"You're crazy."
I chuckled at Candy Cane. "That's exactly what I told her."
Candy Cane looked away, smiling faintly.
"Though it's because of her I'm still alive." I pointed a hoof to my blood-caked chest as Candy Cane fixed her unassuming gaze to the floorboards beneath her. "One of those cafones got me. Candy Cane pulled the bullet right out."
I could vaguely remember the touch of cold steel worming around inside my gut.
"Barely," Candy Cane said sheepishly, still staring at her hooves. "You almost bled out." She played with her curls absent mindedly, frowning as she said, "I'm out of practice. It's been too long since I've had a patient, let alone somepony as wounded as you."
I chuckled dryly, my grim expression belying the cheeriness in my voice. "We'll be traveling together soon, so I'm sure you'll get a lot of practice."
Candy Cane chuckled dryly. "Then there's going to be lots of roof hopping to do if you're going to be traveling with me," she smirked.
I wheezed out a nervous laugh.
"So, you two are traveling together?"
We turned to each other simultaneously.
"Yes ... I promised I would," she said, her gaze still upon me.
The other mare frowned at her. "I would've imagined you'd want to settle down after ... you know?" Summer Smiles said, gingerly.
Candy Cane thought for a moment, laying her forelegs on the counter and resting her chin upon them. "Sure, I'm free. But what about the others? My friends? I left them behind, Summer. I don't deserve to be free any more than the other mares at the Scullion.
"I have nothing else to do with my life, anyways ..." Candy Cane turned to me once more, saying, "Red Dawn wants to join the resistance. He wants to help us ... and I want to help him save everypony else I left behind."
Summer Smiles shifted uncomfortably on her hooves.
"I thought he was looking for a water talisman?"
I nodded. "I still am. And I found one ... or several. Well ... not exactly."
I told her about my meeting with Sterling Sprocket and the promise he made me. She was about as surprised as Candy Cane was when I told her about my meeting with the World Tree's head pony, and our deal.
And how the only way I could make it happen was to join the resistance.
Summer Smiles clenched her jaw, the idea of such a thing making her antsy.
"I want in. I can't just sit around and do nothing while my stable dies."
Candy Cane spoke up. "So do I. That's why we're traveling together. We need to find them."
Summer Smiles cleared her throat, scoffing. "The ... the Orphanage?" she asked, as if she didn't hear that right.
Candy Cane narrowed her eyes at her, knowingly.
"We need your help."
Summer Smiles' eyes darted over to mine as a wave of realization washed over her face.
"So that's why you brought him here ..." she murmured. "You ... you told this pony? He knows?"
"Yes -"
The mare leaned over the counter towards Candy Cane. "I really don't appreciate that, Cane. They wouldn't appreciate that. You know this ..."
"I-"
"What were you thinking!?" She lowered her voice and glanced at the windows. "If word gets out that I was with the Orphanage, they'll kill us all! And the fillies! I thought I could trust you!"
"You still can!" Candy Cane pleaded with her. "If he was with them I wouldn't be sitting here with you right now. If he was with East Eden, he would've hauled me over to their place." Candy Cane glared at her. "I wouldn't have agreed to help him if I didn't think that he was a good pony, Summer."
My heart fluttered at that. If only she knew the things that I did to get there ... that mare I left for dead. I shot her in the knees and left her to die - and that blood brother I murdered with my bare hooves ... I murdered him. Both of them.
I looked at my hooves. The agony that lurked behind the closed doors of my mind was trying to claw its way out again.
A darker part of me told me that Candy Cane was just a stepping stone to saving my stable. That darker part of me told me that I needed her help; she would get me to where I needed to be ... and that was it.
But I pushed it away, disgusted with its incessant murmuring.
Slowly but surely, my mind descended once more into a somber quietude.
I told myself twice and steeled myself for acceptance.
I wasn't a good pony. I was just a homesick pony with a home to save.
Summer Smiles caught the apprehension that haunted my eyes, and smirked. She wasn't buying Candy Cane's 'bluff' about me. I wasn't either.
"I know he saved your life and all, and you might think you owe him something, but ... you'd trust that pony with your life?" She asked, as if I wasn't there. "Our lives? You might've just endangered my entire family -"
Candy Cane cut her off, "He went through hell to save me - he nearly died." She looked away. "He did all of that for me ... and he doesn't even know why." She turned to me but I avoided her gaze. "He was willing to help a complete stranger ... there aren't that many ponies like that around anymore," Candy Cane said softly. "You know that. You've seen it."
Summer Smiles nodded, slowly, her gaze still fixated upon me.
"I do," she murmured. "I have ..."
Silence hung over us as she tapped her hooves nervously on the counter. She eyed me hesitantly.
"I'll ... I'll think about it, okay? If they find out ... and they take me ... I don't know, Cane. Doodle and Hops won't have anypony to care for them."
"But ... what ... what about your sister? They're her fillies, after all."
Summer Smiles shook her head.
"She hasn't come back from her job yet," she murmured, distantly. "Soon, my savings will run dry and nopony will be able to feed them anymore. She was the one paying the bills after all ..." Summer Smiles stared past us at the door. It seemed like she had been doing everyday ever since her sister had left. "Sugar Rum's been gone for almost two weeks now."
I froze. Sugar Rum. Sugar Rum. Sugar ...
'Goddesses.'
I remembered her. The screams, the sounds of flesh tearing. Then the pop. The simultaneous pop of half a dozen bomb collars.
And then there was a crack.
And she was gone. The mare, the mare that stayed behind to put down those tortured slaves left behind those three: her sister, and her two daughters.
'Why ...' I asked myself, 'Why didn't I recognize Summer Smiles until now?'
"Red Dawn?" I heard Candy Cane ask as the blood drained from my face. "You look like you've just seen a ghost."
"I ..."
I inched off my stool, trembling, and stumbled to the door where I had left my bags. I lowered my head inside of them, searching for Sugar Rum's family photo. The one she gave me as she bled out into the snow.
I returned to the bar, my eyes unable to leave that haunting photograph. I turned my distant gaze to Summer Smiles and her eyes darted to mine - then to the frayed, blood-caked photograph I held in my hoof.
"W-what's that?" she asked ... but she already knew.
I stared at the four ponies - the family whose smiling faces were frozen in time. Sugar Rum was sitting next to her sister, Summer Smiles, a blonde, blue coated mare, as she wrapped her forelegs around her two pale-coated daughters. Lowering it, I saw that Summer Smiles was standing alone.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
I said nothing as I gave her the photograph.
The mare stared at it desolately, her hoof trembling before her muzzle. She blinked and blinked, unable to look away. Unmoving, her eyes drowned silently beneath the horror that drained the blood from her face. They saw every speck of blood, every splatter of dried crimson that sullied the aged photograph.
The photograph of her sister. Her family.
A trembling hoof touched her sister's frozen smile, her eyes darting to the door, and back, to the door, and back.
Summer Smiles finally met my numb gaze, her eyes widening and her chin quivering.
"Why ... w-why d-do you have this?" she croaked, her voice faltering.
I looked at the floorboards, and she knew. Goddesses, she knew. I opened my mouth once more, but couldn't find the strength to say the words I needed to say.
She slammed a hoof into the counter.
"WHY DO YOU HAVE THIS!?"
I hung my head, shaking it as beads of cold sweat formed upon my forehead. Again and again, I heard the resounding gunshot that took Sugar Rums' life.
CRACK ...
"Sugar ... my ... my sister ..." Summer Smiles lowered her quaking hooves, clenching her eyes shut as she held onto the counter for her dear life. "Goddesses, please ..."
Candy Cane sat there unmoving, mouth open but unable to give voice to the horror that was fighting its way to her lips. She looked at me with teary eyes, unwilling to accept what she was hearing. "You don't mean she's ..."
I just nodded my head.
The mare froze. She froze as if she were staring into the headlights of an oncoming wagon - staring through me, through the door - searchingly. Searching for the sister she refused to believe was lost.
Then it hit her. It struck her. Mangled her. Tore her apart.
"No ..." she whispered, her shoulders quaking. She stumbled backward into the empty bottles behind her, running her trembling hooves through her mane as she stared upward into nothingness. "No ... no, no, no, no ..." Summer Smiles lowered herself to the counter. "Why ..." she cried.
"WHY!? Her foals - Goddesses, what about her foals!" Summer Smiles clenched her eyes shut, trying to suck back in the tears that refused to stop pouring. But it was in vain. "She can't be ... dead ... my - my sister ... my only sister. She's ... dead ..."
I hung my head low, her sobs echoing through my ears and shaking me to the core. It had happened so suddenly. One second, Sugar Rum was next to me - and the next she was curled up in a pool of her own blood. The bloodletters ... the wasteland, it stole her from her daughters - her sister - just like how it stole from me almost everyone I loved.
The sound of a filly's voice broke me from my rapturous state.
"Auntie? What's wrong?" a girl asked. I turned and, looking down at us from the top of the stairs at the other side of the room was a filly, her coat an alabaster white.
'Goddesses. No.'
Summer Smiles struggled to compose herself. She couldn't tell them. Not now. The mare wiped her bloodshot eyes vigorously, her breaths coming in and out as broken sobs.
"Doodle - go back to your room," she told the filly, struggling to abate the trembling in her voice.
The filly looked at us, terrified. Another pair of eyes peered over her shoulder, and I found that another pony was clinging to her sister's back.
"Who ... who are they?" the other asked in the same voice.
Summer Smiles croaked, "Hops ..."
"Auntie -"
"GO BACK TO YOUR ROOM, NOW!" she screamed, and the twins scrambled back upstairs.
Summer Smiles slammed a hoof on the counter once more as her anguished grimace ran wet with fresh tears.
"Damnit ... I shouldn't have done that. The last thing they needed to hear was that ... Their mother's dead, for Celestia's sake. I need to be strong ..."
Candy Cane clenched her jaw and tried to swallow tears of her own as Summer Smiles threw her legs around her and cried into her mane. She pulled her close and squeezed her tight, weeping until their cries died away into shuddering sobs.
I looked away, unable to watch.
"What happened to her?" Summer Smiles choked. "How ... how did she ... how did she go?"
I eyed Candy Cane and hesitated. Sugar Rum was a slaver. I wasn't sure what she'd think if she knew Sugar Rum was a slaver ... she never would've befriended those ponies if she'd known.
But I relented. Summer Smiles deserved to know, whether or not Candy Cane liked what she was going to hear.
"She and her crew ... they ... they picked me up. Chained me to the back of their wagon with the other slaves ..."
Candy Cane slowly turned her teary gaze towards me, her embrace loosening for a moment as her ears perked, unsure if she heard me right. She nearly let go and dropped Summer Smiles' head onto the counter.
"As we were heading up to Poneva, we were ambushed by bloodletters. They ... they butchered everyone." I bit my lower lip, shaking my head. "Sugar Rum stayed behind with the slaves. She gave me that photo ... she wanted me to tell you that she went out a ... a good pony."
A ragged sob forced its way through Summer Smiles' lips, and she broke down into tears once more, burying her face into Candy Cane's chest.
"A good pony?" she whimpered, as Candy Cane squeezed her gently and ran a tender hoof through her mane. But she made no attempt to hide the horror of betrayal that was creeping across her face even as her friend wept into her hooves.
I nodded, solemnly. "The other slavers ran away. They left the slaves to die in their cage. The bastards left them to the bloodletters so that they could escape." Their horrifying, blood curdling cries echoed distantly inside my thoughts. I cupped a hoof around my mouth.
"A bloodletter got her ..." I remembered her throat, the grisly scene replaying itself over and over in my head as I touched Sugar Rum's pale, bloody cheek.
"She was dying. She stayed behind with the slaves as those monsters tore them apart, and ... and she put them out of their misery." I finally met Summer Smiles' bloodshot eyes, struggling to hold her gaze as I forced myself to continue. "Then Sugar Rum did herself out ... before the bloodletters could."
Summer Smiles whimpered into Candy Cane's peacoat as she brushed her mane with a shaky, uncertain hoof.
"Summer ... I didn't know Sugar was ... a slaver," Candy Cane murmured, her voice trembling.
With a shuddering sob, the mare pulled away from her, shaking her head.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you ... please - please please ... you have to understand ... We needed the caps - we needed to feed our family!" Summer Smiles sniffled pitifully as she rubbed her eyes with her hooves. "She was a good pony ... a good pony until the end, Candy Cane. She never liked her job ... she hated it! But it was all we had ... it was all we could do."
Candy Cane exhaled a breath she had been holding in. She shook her head, her curly mane tumbling over her teary eyes. The mare wasn't sure what to think, and for several long seconds, she sat there unmoving as Summer Smiles stared at her pleadingly. To my surprise, she took Summer Smiles' hoof in hers and squeezed it tight.
"I ... I know she was," Candy Cane whispered, her voice trembling. "She was the pony who found me half dead in the snow when I first escaped."
I lowered my eyes to the floor. She had been standing right next to me. I had tried to save so many people that day. But I didn't. I couldn't.
"I'm sorry ... I should've seen that animal coming," I began, but Summer Smiles cut me off.
"But she chained you to a wagon!" She looked away, ashamed.
I shook my head.
"It wasn't like that. I knew she was different ... she wasn't like the others. When they captured me ... she .... she didn't look like she could do it ...
"She killed a bloodletter that was going to eat me alive. I owe her my life."
Tears began to well up in my eyes, but I fought them off, steeling myself as I clenched my jaw, tight.
Summer Smiles struggled to wipe her cheeks dry, her tears refusing to wane. "It's ... I'm just glad somepony was able to tell me. Usually ponies just disappear here, and nopony ever hears from them again. For the last two weeks I thought she was going to be one of those ponies ... lost, and nobody knowing how she died."
The mare found the strength to reach over the counter and touch my hoof. "Thank you ... for telling me. At least now I know how she went out. About what she did right."
But utter hopelessness returned to her voice, and her eyes turned low. "Without her, we won't be able to pay our dues. We lived off of her paychecks ..." She cradled her head in her hooves. "And nobody comes here anymore, not with those Palominos sweeping up the streets."
Summer Smiles sat hunched over the counter, her eyes bloodshot with tears. "I don't know what I'm going to do ... the foals ... Goddesses, the foals."
Hooves banged against the door behind us.
We shot to our hooves as Summer Smiles turned pale and stared, wide-eyed at the front door. We watched it in an uneasy silence as the seconds began to tick by.
Then knocks came again, as assertively and insistently as the last.
Summer Smiles staggered to the door, wiping her eyes furiously with the sleeve of her winter coat. She sniffled once, glanced over her shoulder, and told us to get out of sight. So we hid behind the counter as the door creaked opened.
I peered around the counter, my brown coat barely discernable in the darkness behind the counter.
'Son of a bitch.'
Black hats. * |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 9 - A Cold Hearth - Pt II | *
"Nice to see you again, Summer Smiles!" a mare greeted whimsically, tipping her hat.
Summer Smiles glared at her, cracking the door open wide enough for me to see the mare's face. The two gangsters behind her craned their necks over her shoulder, trying to get a good look at Summer Smiles.
One of them whistled. He liked what he saw.
Summer Smiles bit her lower lip, folding her collar against her neck to hide the blue of her coat. The two cafones snickered at each other as she closed the door slightly.
My hoof crawled up my chest to rest upon my pistol's holster. But Candy Cane's hoof beat mine to it. She shook her head at me and I swore under my breath.
Peering over the bar, I saw the Palomino mare cock her head at Summer Smiles.
"Why the long face, Summer Smiles?"
One of the stallions stepped forward and said grinned. "I can give her something to smile about!"
"Pipe down, will ya?" the mare hissed, shooting them a murderous look. They cleared their throats and eyed the floor.
'Pigs,' I thought.
She smiled politely once more as they fell silent. "Sorry, they're new. Unblooded, sorry little young'uns."
Summer Smiles scowled at them, growling, "It doesn't matter to you, Dulce." She planted one hoof on the door and stretched out a foreleg to the doorstop.
Dulce laughed warmly, "Forget about it - of course it doesn't!" She craned her neck, peering into the inn. But Summer Smiles tip-toed on her hind hooves, leaning in front of the opening, and blocking her view inside.
Giving up, the mare cleared her throat, smirking as she straightened her neck and brushed down her peacoat. "Eh, well, I think you know why we're here."
They exchanged brief stares before the mare chimed in once more.
"We gonna have a staring contest here, Summer Smiles? I didn't come here to play games."
"No ... you didn't, did you?" Summer Smiles tipped her head at the automatic weapons slung around their chests.
Dulce gawked at her own submachine gun as if she had just realized it was there. "Oh my, this little thing?" she chuckled, prodding it with a hoof.
Summer Smiles glared at her.
"I'm the only pony between you and my fillies."
She snorted, "The only thing between us and your fillies - no - this inn of yours, are the caps you owe us." Dulce leaned against the railing outside the door, her accomplices wearing crooked grins.
"Oh, it's pretty cold out here," she said frigidly, giving her a hard stare. "We might just step inside for a bit, maybe warm ourselves up by the fire - ya know, maybe check out those caps of yours."
Summer Smiles gulped as the mare planted a hoof on her submachine gun.
"Because I know you have 'em."
The mare cracked a dangerous smile.
"So whaddya say, Summer Smiles?"
I gulped. Candy Cane bit her lower lip.
"T-that won't be necessary."
"I hope so," the mare replied, sparing her submachine gun a glance. "I hate scaring little kids. It's just such a shitty thing to do, wouldn't you agree?"
She glanced over her shoulder at her boys.
"Forget about it!" they both laughed.
Summer Smiles' eyes darted back and forth as she tapped at the doorframe frantically.
"Can ... can you just give me a break? Just this once? I'm never late on my payments ... I ... I'll get you the money next week."
Dulce shook her head, pursing her lips contritely.
"Girl, you know I can't do that," she whinnied.
The muscles beneath my barding tensed as I saw her glance back inside.
"I ..." Summer Smiles gulped, pushing more of the door between her and the Palominos outside. There was a loud thump as the mare outside planted a hoof on the door's surface and stopped her short.
"I think we need to go inside ... maybe say hello to the family," she growled. "Whaddya say, boys?" The two stallions grinned and shivered briskly.
The mare threw her head over her shoulder and nodded to herself.
"Last chance, Summer Smiles."
A silent second passed. So the mare tried pushing the door open. But Summer Smiles leaned her weight against it.
"Oh, Summer Smiles ..." Dulce sighed as she glanced at her boys. The two stallions grinned at her beneath the shadowy brims of her black hats.
My hoof jumped for my holster. So did Candy Cane.
"Red - " I shook her free. "Red Dawn!" she hissed as I drew my pistol.
Candy Cane looked me in the eye.
"They're going to hurt her!" I growled - but she clapped a hoof over my mouth.
"Don't," she spelled out for me. "Red Dawn - don't!" But I wrenched away from her, gun in hoof.
Candy Cane clenched her jaw. I glared back. I said nothing as I stared at my pistol's safety and Summer Smiles pleaded for them to leave.
"Please ... I don't have much left," she begged. "How am I going to feed my fillies?"
"Not our problem," Dulce snorted.
"You have to understand!"
"Oh, I understand Crystal Empire clear, Summer - and you do too!" The mare jabbed a hoof at her. "You owe us, and you're gonna pay us!"
"I can't ... I-I can't!"
Dulce shook her head. "I know you have a bag up there somewhere, Summer. I saw it that last time we were here."
Summer Smiles was shaking all over.
"There isn't much left!"
"Oh? Then we'll take whatever you got," the mare hissed. "You're a neighborly mare, aren'tcha? You'll help us anyway you can, am I right?"
"No!" Summer Smiles tried closing the door shut.
But the mare outside threw herself against it.
"Think of your girls, Summer," she hissed, "You don't want them seeing what happens to ponies who don't pay what they owe?"
"Just leave us alone!" she cried, struggling to force the door closed.
"We keep this place safe, Summer!" Dulce growled, heaving her shoulder into the door, "Maybe your girls won't be so safe sleeping in their beds tonight!"
The Palomino thumped her hoof against the door, trying to force it open. But the door wouldn't budge. Summer Smiles wouldn't budge.
"Don't make this hard on yourself, Summer Smiles!"
"Please!"
"Quit fucking around!" she screamed back.
Summer Smiles moaned as she heaved the door closed. She was so close. But the two stallions outside stepped forward.
The door crashed open, hurling Summer Smiles into the floorboards.
My ears pinned themselves to the sides of my head. I sprung to my hooves -
But Candy Cane forced me back down.
"They'll kill us all!" she hissed at me.
"Fuck!"
Summer Smiles screamed as she slammed into the floor.
I grinded my teeth and peered around the bar, my headache returning as my temples hammering inside my skull. I glared at the three black hats that stood in the doorway. Dulce looked down at Summer Smiles, shaking her head.
She snorted, leaning against the doorway with a foreleg.
"You're makin' this real hard for yourself, Summer."
Summer Smiles moaned pathetically and rolled onto her back, a thin rivulet of blood trickling down her brow.
Dulce tipped her black hat over her eyes, and chuckled.
She glanced over her shoulder, sighing, one eye gleaming beneath the shadow of her fedora.
"Come on, boys. It's cold outside."
"WAIT!"
My heart leaped inside my throat.
"WAIT!" Summer Smiles shrieked. She scrambled to her hooves. "Wait here. I have the caps ... please just wait. Here."
Dulce glared at her.
"You have five minutes."
Summer Smiles said nothing as she pushed the door closed.
"FIVE MINUTES!"
She stood there for a moment, trembling upon her hooves.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
Hooves slowly clopped across the floorboards as Summer Smiles made her way upstairs. She stopped at the foot of the stairs, looking back at us in turmoil, cornered as if there was a gun to her head. There would be one soon if she didn't deliver. Another fraction of her savings was going to be spent paying those bastards the money she didn't owe them.
I pressed my back against the bar, clenching my jaw as I heard her hoofsteps fade away upstairs. My eyes flicked to Candy Cane's, and she followed my movements warily as I brought my PipBuck to my muzzle.
Grifter's voice echoed in my thoughts.
'... 435, 436, 437 ... Uhh ... uhh... Fuck! Lost count ...'
I'd lost count of what I had in my bags as well, Grifter.
I sifted through my inventory. Not too long ago I trampled Grifter beneath me and stole from him a sack of caps. There had to be hundreds in there. My PipBuck confirmed my suspicions. Nine hundred and twenty caps. I had nine hundred and twenty caps logged in my inventory.
Why I snatched it off his desk, I didn't know; it seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe it was to spite him? To tell the Palominos that that money wasn't theirs? That they were a bunch of thieving parasites?
My eyes slowly left my PipBuck's screen, firm and resolute.
It didn't matter now. They stole that money.
And now it was time to give it back.
Candy Cane's jaw dropped, speechless as I bit my teeth around the bag's neck and yanked it out of my bags. Words were lost on her lips as I held it in the air before me. She had never seen so many caps at once.
"How - where ... how much?" she murmured with wide eyes.
I shrugged, jingling the caps inside.
"Enough."
Summer Smiles hoofed it step by painful step downstairs, a bag of caps jingling between her teeth. Fresh tears were streaming down her rosy cheeks as she made her way down the steps, each creak in the floorboards like a stake driving into her gut.
That must've been some of the last of her savings.
I knew what she was thinking. 'How were those two fillies going to eat?'
I waved a hoof at her as she reached the bottom, and motioned for her to come closer. She trotted toward us, uneasily. Then I held out to her the bag of caps.
The mare stopped in her tracks, her small pouch dangling precariously from her mouth. Summer Smiles gasped.
Her bag tumbled to the floor and erupted in a shower of bottlecaps.
"What's going on in there?" Dulce demanded as she swung the door open with a hoof. The freezing winter breeze blew past her, showering the floorboards with fresh powder and welcoming in the wasteland wind.
Summer Smiles appeared oblivious to the winter storm that was blowing into her home. It didn't matter. Not at that very moment.
"What ..."
I held my leg out farther. "Take it."
Her eyes darted to my hooves, then mine, clenching her jaw. Summer Smiles' mouth said no, but her bloodshot eyes said yes. She needed it. For her sister's orphaned children.
"Summer Smiles!"
She swung her head to the door, broken from her trance like state.
"I'm gettin' real angry!"
Summer Smiles wiped her eyes with her sleeve and sniffled. "S-sorry. I ... I just dropped my bag. Give me a minute."
She knelt down beside me, biting the heavy bag, gingerly. Her teary gaze met mine, and she hesitated, narrowing them at the spoils that she clenched between her teeth. I cracked a faint smile, and nodded.
"Why are you doing this?" she whispered.
I looked her in the eyes.
"You need it more than I do."
She pursed her lips, looking like she was going to break down into tears once more.
I didn't need shit like that to get what my stable needed. I didn't have to pay taxes, and I didn't have kids to feed. I was adamant that she take it.
I sighed when she didn't. The damn bag was starting to get heavy.
"Go on," I said, softly, with a sheepish smile.
For the first time since we'd arrived, I saw it in her eyes. A sliver of hope flickered behind the windows to her soul. Something inside of her pushed her onward. She needed it. Her sister's ... her foals needed it.
She took it from my open hoof.
Summer Smiles rose to her fours, trotted to the door, and gave the sack of caps to the Palominos outside. There came an astonished gasp as Dulce seized her spoils and shook, her ears perking at the sound of the glorious jingling - music to her ears.
"This ... this is ... a lot," Dulce gawked. She cleared her throat, composing herself. The mare glanced at Summer Smiles as she shuffled nervously on her hooves. "Give us a few minutes. We'll count this up for ya. We ain't a bunch of welchers," she grinned courteously, hoofing the bag to her subordinates. Her eyes never once left Summer Smiles' apprehensive face. "One hundred caps, boys."
I was expecting the cafones to take the whole damn bag and scurry off with it.
But they didn't. A few minutes passed as the Palominos counted their money. When the deed was done, they unceremoniously dumped Summer Smiles' dues into a saddlebag. Dulce smiled courteously before hoofing her back the sack of caps, one hundred caps lighter.
"There ya go," she said graciously, tipping her hat at her, and turning around to take her leave. "I'm glad we didn't have to do something neither of us would've liked." The looks on her subordinates' faces begged to differ; they looked to be itching for a firefight.
Or for a taste of Summer Smiles.
"Like ... likewise," she choked, sweat freezing across her forehead.
The mare held the bag in her hoof, frozen, and unable to speak. She looked on, distantly, as the Palominos started down the steps.
"You be a good girl, now," the mare called over her shoulder as Summer Smiles pivoted around sluggishly and shoved the door closed with a rear hoof. The inn was colder now, and a pile of hoof-trodden snow lay before the door.
But there was a different kind of warmth melting the ice between us all.
The two mares stared at me in silence. I caught Candy Cane's gaze, and saw that she was wearing that same look she'd worn when I dismantled her bomb collar.
"Thank you, Red Dawn," Summer Smiles began, making her way to the bar, still shaking. "Now they'll leave my family alone for a bit." She laid the bag of caps down on the counter and pushed it towards me.
I shook my head, and slid it back, much to her surprise.
"It's yours now," I insisted. She just stood there. So I nudged it toward her with a hoof when she didn't budge. "I ... I think you need it more than I do."
She parted the bag's lips, and peered inside. It was a decently heavy bag. It was hers now. But she still couldn't believe it.
Summer Smiles looked at me for a moment, before asking again, "Why are you doing this?"
It bothered me because I didn't know why either. I thought - finally out of the moment, realizing that I could've used those caps to buy myself rations for a week, or maybe some ammo for my pistol. Maybe even a new bulletproof vest, which I desperately needed. A part of me was regretting that decision, now.
Those caps - my money - my loot - could've funded my journey.
My journey. For some reason, I was growing fond of helping out random, unimportant ponies. Like ... Candy Cane? Summer Smiles? But somehow, everyone was important to someone.
Even me.
I thought, 'How was helping Summer Smiles going to help me?'
When I didn't answer, she pursed her lips and asked, "How much is in there?"
I poked it. It was still about as heavy as it was when I took it out of my saddlebags.
"Eight-hundred and twenty caps."
Summer Smiles curled a hoof around its neck, her leg trembling.
"This'll last us months ..." she murmured. The mare blinked, and shook her head. "I can't take this. It's not mine."
I sighed, growing irritated with her stubbornness. Kindness seemed to be an alien concept in the wasteland. "If you don't want it, I'll just leave it there. I don't want it weighing me down when I'm jumping off buildings with Candy Cane," I smirked, glancing over at Candy Cane whose astonished grays continued to stare through me.
Our host just stood there, quietly, trying not to look at the bag. So I nudged it again, and again, and again, until it banked precariously off the counter's edge and she was forced to hold it with her hooves.
I smirked.
With a sigh, Summer Smiles finally relented, clutching the bag tight.
She regarded the bag of caps with grim relief. "Thank you, Red Dawn. Doodle and Hops can eat for a while longer now, thanks to you." The mare paused, hesitantly. "Candy Cane might just be right about you," she murmured, looking away. "There aren't that many ponies who'd just give out caps like that around here."
"Eh, they weren't mine to begin with. I stole them from the cafones."
That left her dumbfounded and speechless. Several long seconds passed and she shook it off and brushed my foreleg with a hoof.
"Goddesses bless you, Red Dawn. Sugar Rum would've kissed you for this ..." I shrugged, my lopsided smile stretching across my left cheek.
"I need some time to think about this. The Orphanage I mean." She turned to Candy Cane. "I ... I don't suppose you two were planning on staying here for a while?"
"We were hoping we could." Candy Cane held out a hoof. "If you'll have us, of course?"
I couldn't help but notice as Summer Smiles' name finally matched her likeness. The mare cupped Candy Cane's hoof in hers as she smiled.
"I could never say no to you ..." Summer Smiles said, softly, still holding her hoof. She blinked, let go, and fixed her gaze upon me. "Not to either of you," she added. "It's the least I can do."
She cocked her head at me and eyed me from head to hoof in the silence that followed. My brows furrowed as I wondered why she was looking at me like that. Then I realized that I was swaying back and forth.
I was starting to feel ticklish in the noggin again. I let out a languid sigh, and rubbed at my tired eyes.
"I'm sure you'd like a place to sleep," I heard her say.
"That would be wonderful."
Candy Cane held my shoulder with a hoof to still my swaying. "We won't be here for long," she said. "We don't want to be a burden."
"No worries ... please ... stay - stay for as long as you'd like." She glanced at the door one last time. "It's the least I can do for an old friend ... and a ... maybe a new one, I think."
I averted my gaze from hers. I knew what she was thinking.
But I still didn't believe it.
But seeing someone smile ... seeing someone in that frozen hell smile made my livid flesh and the graying soul beneath just a little warmer. It felt ...
... good. For some reason I'd almost forgotten how that felt. The frozen wasteland air made people numb.
But it felt good seeing Summer Smiles, well, smile.
Still, it was far from being a good day. At least for her. If we took her up on her offer, I was certain that she couldn't be burdened with our stay. With her sister gone, she had more important things to worry about than a stranger sleeping in her home.
"If you'll let us stick around, I could pool whatever caps, food, or supplies I come across," I added.
Candy Cane nodded. "We'd like to pull our own weight," she offered. "It'll be like old times ..."
The mare exhaled with a sigh of relief, hugging her. "That's more than I could've asked for." She paused for a moment and scanned the bar with a sour look in her eyes, her savings still scattered across the floor. She let out another sigh, this time scorning the dusty, neglected walls around her.
"This place is just despicable. Sugar would've hated to see you coming back to my inn like this. I have empty rooms upstairs, but I haven't cleaned them in months ... ever since I closed this place down, I kind of just forgot about everything we didn't use."
I waved it off with a hoof. "Whatever you have, we'll take it. I've been sleeping in metal boxes for the past week. Any bed to lay in is a bed nonetheless."
Candy Cane bowed her head. "Anything is good enough for me."
Summer Smiles nodded, hesitantly, grumbling under her breath. She wanted the best for her guests.
"Let's get this pony upstairs before he drops dead," Summer Smiles chuckled at me.
"Huh?" I yawned, rubbing my eyes.
"He's been beat up pretty bad." Candy Cane touched a hoof to her chin. "How he's still standing, I don't know."
"After that sinkhole, I don't know either, Candy Cane," I said, rolling my bloodshot eyes.
Summer Smiles waved us forward. "Come on, I'll show you both to your rooms upstairs."
"Let me just get my bags." I trotted over to the door where I left them and enveloped them in my magical grip.
Stars exploded in my eyes.
Fire shot through my nerves - my brain - and I careened face first into the floorboards.
I scrambled and flopped around like a fish out of the water, clawing at the floorboards - my face - something warm trickled down my muzzle -
My eyes shot open and I saw through a pair of darkening windows painted with blood.
I fought the urge to scream as Candy Cane galloped to my side.
Someone beat me to it. Summer Smiles' scream was a petrol bomb that blew up the inferno inside my skull.
"What the hell'd you do, Red Dawn?!"
I couldn't answer. There was a drillbit in my brain, and every agonizing second that ticked by it drilled deeper. I groaned, my limbs twitching erratically as my consciousness threatened to sleep forever.
"I'll never get used to being an earth pony," I wheezed as the two mares wrenched me back to my hooves.
I saw Candy Cane glare at me through my bloody, squinted eyes. "You don't have to be ..." she said. "Don't go around trying that until after you've slept this thing off!"
"What's wrong with him?" Summer Smiles asked, wincing.
"He has magical burnout," she said, grunting as she propped me up against the door behind me.
I gasped for breath, clenching my eyes shut as my brain melted inside my skull. A burnout was like having a muscle cramp. But inside your brain. And I was getting sick and fucking tired of that useless horn of mine.
I shrugged them off, irritated with myself. "It's ... I'm okay. I can ... I can walk."
I took a feverish step forward and nearly fell on my face once more, prompting Candy Cane to lean up against me. A long, drawn out sigh wheezed out of my lips.
"Fucking ... stupid horn ... let's try this again," I murmured as I started for my saddlebags. But Candy Cane held out a hoof in front of me.
"I can get those for you -" she began, but I waved her off and reached for them myself. This time, I curled my hooves around my bags' straps and hurled them over my back with a grunt.
I looked up, and found that the two mares were staring at me again.
"What?"
Summer Smiles covered her face with a hoof, muttering to herself.
"You're getting blood on my floor." *
I stumbled around in almost complete darkness, the only light coming from the open door that led to the hallway behind us. I shuffled blindly across the floor, and ran into something solid.
Whatever.
The heavy obstruction that greeted my face with an audible thump rattled and shook. I was too tired to care. All I wanted to do was to find the bed that was supposed to be in that room.
A light switched on, and the obstruction revealed itself to be a dresser. Glancing over my shoulder, I caught Candy Cane's worried stare, her hoof hovering over a switch on the wall.
"Thanks."
Candy Cane watched, silently, as I set my bags down next to an old bed that lay beneath a shuttered window. I could hear, faintly, the wind moaning outside.
The air inside was chilly, but thankfully not bone-gnawingly freezing like it was outside, especially with the storm blowing over us. I was glad I was inside that time.
The room was furnished with a table with an uneven leg, a dresser that was missing a drawer, and a cracked mirror. I didn't bother looking at it. It didn't take a mirror to tell me that I looked like shit.
I felt like it too.
I was a sorry sight to look at. Candy Cane knew it. She'd toweled me down earlier with a wet rag to clean up the blood. But I still looked like shit, and I really needed a bath.
"I think I got it from here," I told her as she stood in the doorway. But she didn't move an inch. The two mares had helped me upstairs, because I was apparently too loopy to walk up a flight of stairs on my own.
Summer Smiles had left to check on the fillies, but Candy Cane had stayed.
I rummaged through my bags, pulling out my Stable 91 jumpsuit. It was clean. I hadn't worn it since I'd left home. And I wasn't about to wear my bloody security barding to bed. I ran a hoof up my chest and curled it around the zipper beneath my collar. I frowned, Candy Cane's shadow still stretching across the floor next to me. I glanced over my shoulder, head cocked.
The mare just stared at me, slightly confused. I coughed and Candy Cane blinked twice.
"Oh ... I ... okay," she said, looking away.
'You can leave, you know,' I wanted to say. Whatever. I sighed and shed my battered barding. My teeth chattered, rifling the inside of my skull and joining the dull pain that throbbed in my head. I wondered how long it'd take for me to grow out my winter coat. Everyone else but me seemed fine without being bundled up indoors.
With a zip, I slipped into my blue and yellow jumpsuit, the number '91' emblazoned onto my sides.
I turned, and found myself unsurprised. "You're still there," I chuckled, as Candy Cane turned her head back to me.
She smiled, faintly. "I'm just here to make sure you don't fall on your face again."
I sighed and flopped onto the bed with a groan, laying my head down on the pillow. My eyes fluttered closed. Soft. The blankets were cold beneath my flesh, but the bed was soft. It had been a while since I'd lain down on something like that. I almost felt like I was back at home. Almost. Almost.
I took a deep breath and imagined I was lying in my bed. I imagined Dew Drops lying next to me, snoring softly as I closed my eyes and began to drift off into a peaceful slumber.
Then I felt the air above me shift. My bloodshot eyes flew open and I eeped.
Candy Cane was staring down at me.
"Shit ..." I murmured, tucking my legs to my chest as she placed a hoof on my forehead.
"Your fever's gotten worse since I last checked. Give me a minute." The mare trotted away, disappearing outside. She returned shortly after with a wet towel, which she draped over my forehead. Candy Cane sighed, "There. Is it cold?"
I shivered, pawing at the blankets under me before pulling them over my numb flesh.
"Y-yes," I managed, as I felt my headache begin to wane.
"Good," she murmured, relieved. "That should cool you down. I don't want you having a meltdown inside that skull of yours."
"Thanks, doc," I said, staring up at the ceiling.
She stood there for a few heartbeats, looking like she had something to say.
"What you did earlier ... I'm glad Summer Smiles didn't have to give them her caps. Doodle and Hops mean the world to her," she whispered.
I sighed, wishing she'd just leave me be so that I could sleep. I mustered through my headaches a lopsided smile, and nodded, but the towel slipped down my face. Candy Cane chuckled, somewhat amused, and tugged it back onto my forehead. I shivered, my muzzle wet with icy water.
"You made me a pony again, Red Dawn," she said, tenderly, staring into my heavy eyes. Candy Cane nudged my shoulder with a hoof.
"So I'll help you become a unicorn again."
I had already fallen asleep by the time the light flicked off and the door creaked closed.
Footnote: Level 6
XP: 250/3450 |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 10 - Never Work Alone - Pt I | Chapter 10
Never Work Alone
"Don't you dare think about going there without me. We never. Work. Alone."
Dew Drops and I worked side by side, digging our hooves and tools into the machinery that jutted out of the long hall's steel wall. I finished lubing up the hydraulic water diverter and reached for a wrench to tighten its bolts. But it slipped from my hooves and clattered to the floor. It took more than my magic alone to tighten one of those things, and that mess wasn't really helping.
Industrial grease was made to lube up machinery, not people. You could've slid my entire body horn-first up a centaur's ass if you tried, and the bastard wouldn't have even broken a sweat.
"Fuck."
Dew Drops spared me a quick glance over her shoulder as she reconfigured the pressure control system to my right. She chuckled, glad that she wasn't me before returning to her work, her clean hooves clacking loudly against the terminal's keyboard.
"Didn't you bring any towels?" she asked, still staring into the terminal screen.
I swung my head to my saddlebags with my hooves crossed. Then I saw that all our towels were bathed in grease. So were my bags.
'Nice.'.
I sighed, muttering, "Yes ..."
She didn't even have to look to know that they were all dirty.
"Any degreaser?"
My left forehoof came to tap my PipBuck's controls. But I stopped myself at the last moment, glaring at the sticky black hoof that hovered over my PipBuck's glowing, teal screen.
'Nope.'
Didn't want to grease up my PipBuck too. Celestia knew that an unlubed PipBuck might be the only thing stopping me from slipping down a poopy, pony-sized pipe.
I figured I'd check my inventory the old-fashioned way. Not like it mattered. My bags were as dirty as I was, anyway. I pulled them close and rummaged through them, tossing our slick towels against the wall and fumbling for the rest.
My ears drooped.
"I think I left it in the supply room," I murmured, face hoofing. "Fuck," I swore under my breath at the slimy guck that clung to my face and swore some more when I peeled my greasy hoof from my face.
"Fuck!" I snapped, jumping to my hooves and - "Shit!" I slipped on a black skid and flopped on my belly.
I was going to need a new swear jar.
I stood up on my hinds, glaring at the black Red Dawn shaped puddle of goo that was splattered across the floor.
"Great - just great!" I groaned. "You know what - I don't even care anymore. I don't care!" I cried, lathering the black goo all over my chest.
I actually cared immensely.
Dew Drops finally glanced her head over at the squishing sounds I was making with my wet jumpsuit.
"Hold on a 'sec." She tapped her keyboard one at time and gave me her full attention. "Do that again - but slower this time," she grinned, winking at me.
I swiped at her muzzle with a greasy hoof instead.
"H-hey!" she giggled, wrinkling her nose.
I sighed, plopping down on my rump. "I wonder why the MAS didn't just make a greaser talisman or something."
"Hmm, out of the budget, maybe?"
I laughed bitterly. "They made incinerator talismans, air-conditioning talismans, water talismans - everything but greaser talismans," I whined. "How convenient."
"Looks like you'll have to go back and get some degreaser."
I cocked my head at her. "Go back? That's four levels above us!" I cried.
Dew Drops rolled her eyes. "Oh come on, you big baby. I'll go with you, then," she yawned, lowering herself to her forehooves to stretch, summoning a pop from her back. "I need to get the blood flowing in these legs of mine, anyways. We've been down here for hours now, haven't we?"
I didn't answer. Instead, I sighed, pouting like a pony princess with a big muddy stain on her dress.
"Well, the day's not getting any brighter, come on!" Dew Drops trotted down the hall, motioning me to follow her. I lathered my hooves through my once red mane, loathing the trail of black horseshoes I was leaving behind me with every step I took.
"We're in a stable, DD. I don't know what 'day' looks like," I mumbled. "All I know is that there's a fifteen minute walk ahead of us." I glowered over my shoulder. "And a lot of cleaning to do."
We had been there all day trying to fix our level's water pressure. Everyone else in our shift had already clocked out and gone to bed.
Still, everyone in B block was having limp dick water pressure, because the terminal controlling it on that level was all kinds of fucked. Everyone at B was probably wondering what the hell we were doing.
I sighed. I couldn't wait to shower all that guck off at 1.5 gallons per minute.
"Well Red, as your teacher, it's my job to accompany you and guide you along this long, long road." She paused for a moment, smirking. "To become the best engineer you can be."
I chuckled, crassly.
"Right. Thought you were gonna say that you're here to guide me 'to the fourth floor.' Fuck me if I forget how to walk," I drawled, rolling my eyes.
She grinned, bumping my flank with hers. "Of course! Momma Dawn wouldn't want her little boy to get lost on his way home, now would she?" Dew Drops leaned in and tried to peck me on the cheek.
"Hey!" I snapped, my cheeks reddening beneath the sludge. "I've got shit all over me!"
Dew Drops lunged forward and scored a glancing blow with her lips.
"Now I do too!" she laughed.
I clenched my jaw and stared at the floor.
"Screw it," I mumbled, thankful that the black slime was covering my blushing cheeks. "I could've went up myself."
Dew Drops smiled smugly. "Oh come on, it's always great to have some company."
"DD, I don't need you to hold my hoof ... okay?" I looked away. "I forgot the degreaser." I narrowed my eyes at the mare. "So I have to get it."
The mare looked straight on ahead as we trotted down a long, wide hall.
"Besides, if you stayed behind, you could've finished your work on that terminal. Then we wouldn't have to be down here for much longer."
"I wouldn't have to be down here much longer," Dew Drops corrected me.
I cocked an eyebrow at her. "That's a good thing, you feather-brain."
She chuckled, "For me, yeah. But what about you? It's lonely down here."
An exasperated groan hissed through my lips as I shook my head, my greasy, plastered mane flopping around and splattering the floor with muck.
"Lonely ... sure. I'm only here because I'm your apprentice, anyways."
Dew Drops looked at me for a moment. Then her ears drooped as she lowered eyes,
"Shit ... I didn't mean it like that, DD ..."
She sighed, shaking her head. "I know you didn't. Yeah, the engineering board assigned you to me but I'm your friend and we've always done everything together."
"But DD ... you don't even need me down here. I'm the one learning from you, after all." I snorted, "You can probably redivert the water to B-Block with one hoof and troubleshoot its terminal with the other hoof. And not just with your forehooves. I mean, with your hind hooves, too."
She rolled her eyes. "Well, you're down here with me for a reason. And that wasn't because I could do it myself."
I just laughed at her.
Dew Drops glowered at me. "You act like I'm the Masked Matter-Horn or something!"
"Yeah, but you are. You should be in the classrooms lecturing ponies on bipolar arcanomechanical systems, not getting your hooves greasy at engineering."
"Mhm." She groaned, "I'll start teaching bored teenagers when I learn how to shit rainbows and fart pixie dust."
I smirked. "Bet you know how to do all that, too."
Dew Drops wasn't smiling back. She stared at the floor as our hoofsteps echoed down the hall.
"I ... I can't, Red. I can't do everything by myself, no matter how good you think I am at doing things," she said, softly. "I know how to reconfigure a heating talisman to a cooling talisman - but then what? What happens when I'm not at engineering, doing what I do best?"
"Sleeping? I only see you go to your room twice a day."
She shook her head again. "Oh, Red ... it feels ... great being with you guys. You guys make me feel needed, wanted - cared about. It takes two to tango. I can't feel that way alone."
Dew Drops narrowed her eyes at me as I stared onward down the hall.
"But you ... you always go back to your room between breaks."
"Because I always have a lot of things on my queue!" I cried in protest.
"Ugh, RED! You just don't get it, do you!?" she snapped.
We both stopped in our tracks as I peered into her glaring eyes.
Dew Drops blinked, shook her head, and looked away.
I frowned, staring at the floor. None of us moved an inch. Not one inch until I put one hoof forward and started walking once again with Dew Drops trailing behind me. We followed a tight, multi-tiered stairwell that ascended to the top, in silence. A few quiet minutes passed and we stopped outside the elevator doors.
I tapped its controls and waited for its car to arrive.
The elevator door opened and we stepped inside. I stared at the elevator's control panel for a long time, my hoof hovering over the button to the sixth floor.
"Red ... don't you ... don't you ever feel ... lonely?" she finally asked me.
I thought for a moment, biting my lower lip.
"Do you?" I asked quietly.
She smiled at me, peering deep into my eyes.
"Not right now."
A blue forehoof crossed over mine as Dew Drops tapped the number six, holding my gaze. My eyes darted away from her as the elevator car became remarkably warmer.
We shared that ride together in silence for the next forty seconds as the heavy, industrial grade elevator car ascended up the floors. *
We never made it up that elevator.
As much as I would have loved to stay ... I didn't ... and thinking about it now, I wished that I could have. But I never made it. I left her in that elevator just like I left her out in that blizzard.
I was awake.
My eyes fluttered open at the sounds of hooves clopping against the creaky wooden floorboards. I rolled over away from the muffled voices that were trickling into my droopy ears.
"... burned out," I heard Candy Cane say, her voice somewhat familiar in my senses as they slowly began to wake. "Girls, he's just really tired," she explained to the ponies I didn't know were there.
Another voice, this one too high pitched to be that of a grown mare, whined, "He's been sleeping for like five days now!" Whoever that filly was, she was close. Like, yelling into my ear, close. "Doesn't he get tired of - uhh - being tired?"
"Two days, Doodle. He's been sleeping for two days, now," Candy Cane corrected the filly.
Somepony prodded my chest with a hoof. I let out a muffled groan as I buried my muzzle in my pillow. But that did nothing to hinder the hooves that assaulted my ribcage with their merciless jabs. A raspy breath struggled out of my lips as I rolled over in bed. I crammed a pillow into my face in an effort to stifle the poking and the muffled voices that wouldn't leave me alone.
A voice, gentler and quieter than the last squeaked, "Uh-uh ... Mister Dawn?" She sounded a lot like Doodle. It must've been her twin sister, Hops.
"Grrr ... he's not waking up!" Hops squawked, her voice cracking. Wait. No, that wasn't Hops. It sounded more ... well, agressive. Like an angry squirrel, if I'd ever heard one. It was Doodle again. "You've been here forever!"
"I guess he's still sleepy ..." Hops murmured, nervously.
I heard hoofsteps clops furiously against the floorboards.
Doodle's voice cracked viciously, "Okay, that's it! You wanna do this hard way?" I heard her stomp the floor with a hoof. "We'll do this the hard way!"
Candy Cane's voice cut in, "Doodle, wait -"
Hooves slammed into my chest. I sat up, biting my tongue as I choked back a string of curses that struggled for a way out of my throat. For the sake of the children, I merely thought of punting the filly off me instead.
Doodle or Hops - one of the two was crushing my chest with her hooves, grinning at me with Sugar Rum's blue eyes.
"Wake up, sleepy head!" she shouted at me, her voice like broken glass to my ears. "It's morning!" I groaned, and let myself fall back onto my pillow, staring blankly at the ceiling with a somewhat renewed sense of clarity.
'Morning,' I thought, 'Morning?' The dim glow of candlelight was all that illuminated my dim room. But it was still dark outside. I wondered, how in the hell those ponies could tell if it was morning or not if it was always night time!? But then again, I didn't know what morning was ... or what the sun looked like ... but still!
I batted at the air, eyes still half-closed until the filly groaned, stepped off my chest and walked over to the edge of the mattress. I sat up and looked out the window. I was vaguely amused to find that it was a cool, midnight blue outside.
One of my ears perked as Candy Cane cleared her throat. I panned my gaze across the room and over the monster filly who was prancing impatiently in place at my bedside.
Clinging to Candy Cane's lower neck and lying upon her back was Hops, her hind legs dangling from sides.
So that meant that the filly that had stomped my chest in was Doodle.
"Breakfast, breakfast, breakfast! Come on, everypony!" Doodle cried, grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me violently. With a furious whinny, she hurled herself off my bed and onto the floor with a loud thump.
Candy Cane swung her head between her legs as the filly scampered between them and out the door, leaving us three to the fading echoes of her one-pony stampede. I turned and cocked an eyebrow at the other pale filly that clung to Candy Cane's back.
Hops grimaced and hid behind a thick curly lock of Candy Cane's mane before we could even make eye contact.
"Um ... so ... how long have I been out?" I asked Candy Cane as she cooed comfortingly into Hops' little ear.
"Two days, Red Dawn," she answered, reassuring the little pony who was still inching her head into her mane.
"Two ... days? Seriously?"
"Seriously."
"I was that tired?"
She nodded, "Apparently so; you didn't even wake up once. You were completely and utterly exhausted. Almost comatose."
Well, I certainly felt refreshed.
I blinked and saw Hops staring at me again. When I caught her eyes, she turned them away and buried her muzzle in Candy Cane's mane once more.
"Is she ... um, okay?" I asked, rubbing my forehooves together, nervously. Little kids usually had the tendency to stare at people for no reason. I never knew how to react whenever I'd meet the blank stare of some dribbling toddler ... but Hops was no toddler. She, like her monster foal of a sister, was reasonably sapient.
Candy Cane smiled once more, ruffling the filly's mane with a gentle hoof.
"She's just a little shy."
The soft spoken filly murmured something through a mouthful of Candy Cane's mane.
"What was that, Hops?" she asked the girl.
More quiet murmuring. I frowned at them both, but that only made her whimper some more.
Candy Cane chuckled, "You're going to have to speak louder, Hops."
"Can we go downstairs now?" the filly asked, one of her blue eyes showing through the strands of Candy Cane's hair.
"Of course we can, you're probably starving right now!" she chuckled, looking at her, then at me.
I stared down my chest and heard and felt my stomach grumble.
"Ohh ..." I groaned, wincing.
"That means you too, Red Dawn," Candy Cane said, sounding like my mother. "You've had nothing to eat for two days. You should join us." The mare turned and started for the door, but glanced over her shoulder. "Summer Smiles made applesauce and carrot juice."
'Applesauce? Carrot juice?' My tongue moistened at the thought of a bowl of applesauce. I rolled out of my bed, stretching out my limbs in a series of satisfying pops. I held my breath and stretched out my spine - "Ahhh ..."
I was surprised my legs hadn't atrophied. I didn't know it was possible for anybody to sleep that long.
I walked over to the broken mirror across the room. I stood upon my hinds and peered into it, running a hoof through my mane with a yawn. I blinked, pausing for a moment. I frowned into the mirror, eyeing my reflections. Something was off. Different.
There was something wrong with me.
I drew my hoof away from my mane and stared at it, scrutinizing it. I leaned into the mirror, eyeballing my mane - my face - my neck.
Goddesses. Not a hair out of place. Not a single hair was out of place. I was clean. I was clean. I dropped to all fours, reached for my collar and yanked the zipper down. My chest.
My entire body. Clean. Spotless.
Even my mane looked brushed.
The blood drained from my face as realization dawned upon me.
I couldn't have gotten cleaned up by myself. 'That means' ... I gulped. The inn was filled with mares. And ... someone cleaned me up ... some mare saw me ... my ...
"Oh, fuck."
Hooves clopped in the doorway.
Candy Cane poked her head inside.
"Red, are you coming?"
"Hrk!" I nearly jumped out of my skin. I swung my head around and saw her standing there in the doorway. "U-uh - uh yes," I stammered, blood rushing to my cheeks. I watched, suspicion fluttering inside my chest, as I watched her face for an awkward smile - a knowing stare - a wandering eye.
Nothing.
I gulped. "Yes ... I'm ... coming."
Candy Cane stared at me for a few seconds. I looked down, and my zipper was still halfway down my chest. My hoof flew to my zipper and I yanked it back up to my collar, a stupid, lopsided grin stretching across my face.
"Okay ..." she said, somewhat confused. "We'll be downstairs." And she was off.
I watched her tail disappear out the door, my face turning blue. I gasped for air, letting out a breath that I realized I'd been holding it.
"Oh, Celestia ..."
I'd seen pictures in the history books - ponies walking around with their backsides uncovered. That was then. This was now. At least in my stable, we wore clothes all the time. And underwear. I was glad that Candy Cane and everyone else I'd seen so far were wearing trousers. Probably because it was cold.
I suppose it was to prepare us for the frozen world above, but it did wonders with imagining what was under someone's jumpsuit ... and made the idea of someone seeing what was under mine, a nightmare.
The only other mare that had seen me naked was Mom. And Doctor Stitches.
But Candy Cane ... I grimaced - half remembering her dark silhouette standing in the light of the doorway as I slept.
'Candy Cane saw me naked.'
'Candy Cane saw my dick.'
I started down the hall outside and down the stairs, my shadow dancing against the walls in the candlelight. I kept telling myself that Candy Cane was a doctor, and that it was just as normal and uncreepy as Doctor Stitches giving me a physical. It was the only time Stitches wasn't a complete stooge during an office visit.
As I climbed down the stairs I remembered that Candy Cane was a nurse. I also realized that my headache had subsided. Must've been how I was able to make that distinction.
Then I smelled the applesauce. My nostrils twitched as the scent spirited me downstairs and into the dining area. Sitting at one of the seven tables was Candy Cane, Doodle, and Hops, as Summer Smiles hung a pot of steaming goodness from her mouth. She saw me and smiled, setting the cauldron down upon the table.
"Good to see you, Red Dawn!" she said, somewhat cheerily as the fillies eyed the applesauce hungrily. I could hear the forcefulness in her voice. The pain in her eyes was still there.
Looking at the fillies' smiling faces, it became apparent to me that she hadn't told them the truth about Sugar Rum's fate. She hadn't told them that their mother was dead.
I suppose it was for the best. Summer Smiles wanted them to be happy.
"I thought I'd treat us all to some fresh food ..." Summer Smiles began, pouring the fillies their bowls before pouring two more for Candy Cane and I. "We have enough caps to eat at least twice every other day now, thanks to you."
I shook my head, staring down at the steaming bowl of sweet, sweet applesauce. "It smells amazing ..." I murmured, suppressing a drooling grin.
"Auntie makes the awesomest applesauce, ever!" Doodle neighed, before lunging at her bowl.
"'Most awesome', darling," Candy Cane corrected her.
Doodle stopped an inch above her bowl, frowning until she was cross-eyed.
"Most awesome applesauce, ever!" she added, opening her mouth to lap at the bowl of applesauce.
"Doodle! Wait a minute, young lady!" Summer Smiles snapped, frowning at the filly. "We haven't said grace."
Hops chimed in, her voice as soft as ever. "We haven't said grace since Mom left ..."
Summer Smiles stared at the filly, quieted by her innocent remark. She gulped down the lump in her throat.
"For old time's sake ... let's say grace before we eat. We have to thank the Goddesses for this blessing ..." she said, eyeing me, then the applesauce.
"Summer Smiles ..." I began, quietly, but she shook her head and took the fillies' hooves. I lifted my open hoof. Candy Cane just stood there as if she hadn't heard Summer Smiles say a thing.
We all looked at her in the corners of our eyes. She just stared at her hooves, quietly, waiting for us to continue.
If she was thinking what I was thinking, then I wasn't sure what to do, either. Back at '91, I didn't pray to the Goddesses as much as I think I should have. I looked at Candy Cane, who wore a distant, bitter expression upon her face.
It didn't look like she did either. At all.
I wasn't sure if I'd ever even heard the prayer Summer Smiles said next. It made me realize that the religion many of us followed at home was noticeably different in practice outside.
The two fillies echoed her as they prayed. "Dear Princess Celestia; Dear Princess Luna; thank you for blessing our table with family, friends, and the food that we are about to share because of your wondrous, eternal works."
I felt Summer Smiles raise my hoof, and I did the same as they finished their prayer. "To the Eternal Princesses; your faithful subjects, amen," they said, together. Not even a second passed after we unhooked hooves when Doodle attacked her bowl in a frenzy of blurring white coat and splashes of yellow applesauce.
I looked back at Candy Cane and watched as her distant expression faded away. At the sight of Doodle's famished frenzy, the darkness in her eyes caved in to a warm glow.
Candy Cane smiled.
"Doodle, you're making a mess!" she giggled.
"It's been awhile since they've had anything better than cram or canned bread ..." Summer Smiles intoned. I shivered. Canned bread. I remembered the disgusting, tube-shaped, sludgey monstrosities they stored deep inside '91's warehouses. It'd probably be what my stable-mates would have to eat if I didn't hurry up and get them their water talisman. I pitied them. But I pitied Summer Smiles' family even more.
Summer Smiles folded her legs across her chest. "I'll let it slide, this time." She glared at the filly. "Do you hear me, young lady? Only this time."
Doodle nodded, her cheeks bulging with applesauce, before she swallowed and gobbled up some more.
Hops, a unicorn, levitated a small spoon and dipped it into her bowl, making an effort to not make any sort of noise whatsoever. She didn't even let the spoon touch the side of the cracked porcelain bowl.
I looked down at my breakfast, wondering how much it had cost her. The mare noticed I hadn't even disturbed the surface of my applesauce.
"Eat up, Red Dawn," Summer Smiles told me, "You haven't had anything in days."
I nodded, blankly. Honestly, at that moment, despite my empty stomach, all I could think about was my stable. It was like a pain in my gut that wouldn't go away. Two days. I hadn't done anything in two days. Two days. Two days of their rations, gone. All because I was sleeping.
"Heh ... right," I said. I took a spoonful of applesauce down my throat, but the usually orgasmic flavor of golden delicious apples was lost on me. The recently underused bile in my stomach wasn't the only thing that was eating me up on the inside. Swallowing, I wondered, 'When is Summer Smiles going to make up her mind?'
'When was she going to hook us up with the Orphanage?'
Somepony cleared her throat, and my eyes darted to the mare sitting next to me. Candy Cane had noticed the turmoil in my stare.
"How are you feeling?"
I turned to her and almost met her eyes. I hesitated and fought back a blush at the mare and her professional, medical hooves. I sighed. I was at least relieved she wasn't asking what I was thinking.
I finally turned to see her.
"My head isn't hurting as much anymore, thankfully," I replied, running a hoof through my brushed mane. I dipped my spoon into my applesauce, before narrowing my eyes up at my horn.
"But I'm not so sure about this bony, vestigial thing on my head." I was afraid to try it out. I was getting tired of bleeding out of every orifice.
"Oh, it'll get better, Red Dawn," she reassured me, as I lifted the spoon to my lips. "You might just need a little bit more rest, maybe a more few days, even."
My spoonful of applesauce froze in mid-air.
"A few more ... days?" I asked, my voice wavering.
She narrowed her eyes at me.
"I don't want you walking around with a headache, you might have an accident and hurt yourself again."
Summer Smiles nodded, thoughtfully. "You were really, really loopy when we took you upstairs two nights ago." She chuckled, "You hit your head on the steps on the way up."
"I ... I don't remember any of that," I murmured.
"Exactly," Candy Cane said, "You couldn't even think straight. You need to rest and keep your head down for a bit ... If you're going to be traveling with me, I'd rather have a conscious pony watching my back than an unconscious one."
I shook my head, my ears drooping. "You don't understand," I began. "I'm running out of time. My stable's running out of time, and the more time I spend just sitting here ..." I trailed off.
"You should listen to her, Red Dawn," Summer Smiles remarked. "She's been at your bedside almost by the hour for nearly two days now, trying to keep your head from exploding." She glanced at the mare who was staring at her bowl of applesauce in quietude. "Don't ruin all her hard work by hurting yourself some more."
I sighed, shaking my head once more. I pulled up my PipBuck, eyeing the date at the top of my screen. It'd been almost a week and a half since I left home. I looked up from my PipBuck, my face alight in its teal glow as I caught Doodle's curious eyes.
"You're from a stable?" Doodle asked through a mouthful of applesauce.
"Yes. I'm from Stable 91," I replied, nodding solemnly. "It's not too far from here. Maybe sixty, eighty miles out?"
"Ohhh, so that explains the glowing Pip-thingy around your leg!" she grinned. My eyes glanced at the PipBuck that was wrapped around my right foreleg.
"Oh this little thing?" I asked, raising my leg for her to see.
Doodle nodded, excitedly. "Well what are you doing out here? My mom says that ponies have it good down there." The filly looked around her. "Better than what we have here in this dump. Mom says ponies who go inside stables never come out."
Summer Smiles frowned at her, but she didn't seem to notice.
"For good reason, I think," I said, rather quietly.
Doodle looked saddened, the ravenous scourging of the applesauce in her bowl slowing to a halt. "Do you miss your home?"
I looked down at my hooves.
'Home ...'
"Everyday, Doodle. Everyday."
She pursed her lips. "Don't you want to go back?"
I chuckled, softly. Candy Cane and Summer Smiles were watching me silently. "Of course I do! Of course I want to go back."
"Well what's stopping you?"
For a moment I felt like I was at the emergency meeting at '91 again, standing before the Overmare and hundreds of my other stable-mates.
I exhaled a trembling breath. "I can't just go back. Not yet. Not until I've finished what I started out here."
"Oh ..." she trailed off, staring down at her bowl. A heartbeat passed, and her face lit up again. "Well ... maybe when you go back, you can take us with you!?"
I stared at her, my mouth suddenly dry. I wouldn't be going home for a long time.
Summer Smiles clopped her hooves together.
"Now, Doodle, you're asking too many questions. Red Dawn still hasn't even finished his applesauce yet." Doodle groaned, rolling her eyes. "Maybe when he has a full tummy you can ask him some more, okay?"
She nodded, disappointed, and proceeded to finish her breakfast. I figured that I should've done the same. The applesauce was delicious, but my mind was trailing off elsewhere, off to places and to ponies I wished I could see again.
Stable 91 was my home, but that inn was the closest to a home I was sure I'd ever have in the frozen wasteland.
> Chapter 10 - Never Work Alone - Pt II
When we finished, Doodle and Hops - well, Doodle, really, were ready to go and do whatever annoying little children do.
Summer Smiles rose from her chair. "Candy Cane, I'll get the dishes. Why don't you go take the girls upstairs and play for a bit?"
Candy Cane's ears perked, her smile beaming.
"Alright, come on Hops, let's go upstairs," she told the filly, levitating her onto her back as Doodle scampered up the steps. Summer Smiles took our bowls and started toward the kitchen behind the bar.
I watched her for a moment as she walked away, hesitating, briefly. Then I chimed in, "Do you need help?"
Summer Smiles laughed, almost dropping the bowls she had carrying on the tray around her neck. "Do stable ponies even do their own dishes?"
"Well, I ..."
Her grin grew wider.
"Uh ... that'd be a big fat no," I said sheepishly, as she shifted on her hooves. "It can't be hard. It's not like I'm trying to refuel a flux capacitor or something," I insisted.
Summer Smiles' gave me an amused smirk. "Well I'll be damned ... a stallion who wants to do dishes." Summer Smiles motioned me to follow her.
"What, stallions don't like doing the dishes around here?"
"Eh, speak for yourself, stable boy," she laughed. Summer Smiles waved her hoof to and fro, saying, "Most I've seen would rather just kill and screw things." She smirked. "I mean, if we're talking about the Blood Brothers, that's all they're good at." Summer Smiles tugged at a bucket of melting snow on the counter and poured it into the sink. Some of the slush still remained, and it sunk to the bottom of the chilling water.
I chuckled, darkly. "I ran into a few of them on the road to Poneva. They're a bunch of pricks." I remembered the unruly gang of red-clad stallions. Pricks. All of them. Summer Smiles was grinning at me again. I snorted, "What, is that your image of what a stallion's supposed to be like?"
"Well, I never said that," she began, hoofing me a rag and a bar of soap. "I did say if we were talking about the Blood Brothers."
I took the rag and wrapped it around my hoof, before dunking one of the bowls into the slushy water. From the moment I walked into her home, I had a feeling that mare didn't like stallions too much. "Well, say we're not talking about the Blood Brothers. What are wasteland stallions like?"
She chuckled. "I don't know everything about what you stable ponies do, but if I got a cap for every stallion that's tried to rob me or sleep with me, then I'd be the richest damned pony in all of Equestria," she said, splashing a bowl in the sink before lathering it with soap.
Well Summer Smiles was a rather pretty mare, to be honest. I could see why that'd be the case.
"All the big merc bands and all the big bad baddies are led by mean, pony killing, pony screwing bad boys."
"You seem pretty passionate about that, Summer Smiles," I said, cocking my eyebrow.
She chuckled, bitterly. "Sorry, heh. I just grew up with a lot of girls in the family. Not a single boy where I'm from, except my father. He always wanted a son ... poor pony never did get one. He always talked about how he wanted one to keep the family's name running."
Rinsing off the bowl she'd been working on, she placed it on the counter on top of another rag. "So Sugar Rum became the boy in the house and left to go do merc work because I was meant to run this inn and make cram sandwiches all day long from one stupid traveler to the next."
She sighed as she began soaping another bowl. "That's the wasteland life, I guess."
"You wanted to be a merc too?"
"Goddesses, no," she sighed. "I just wanted to be out of the house, doing my own thing." Summer Smiles sighed again. "The only mares I've seen who do anything big are Winter Blossom and Avilign Creme. But then you've got Red Eye's power trip in Fillydelphia, Mister Topaz and Deadeye with their raider army, Sterling and his ultra-advanced pre-war tower, Alder Blaze and his huge plantation, and Captain Foxtrot leading one of the most powerful merc bands in Equestria, and blah, blah, blah."
Summer Smiles pursed her lips, frowning at the sink. "What are Winter Blossom and Avilign Creme if not blips on the radar compared to those bad boys?"
I rolled my eyes. "I'm sure Winter Blossom could attest. She has her own private army, apparently."
"Yeah? And Sterling has an army of robots and a tower built to withstand a Goddesses'-damned balefire bomb!" Summer Smiles scoffed, "He's been around since I was a filly, and nopony's ever bucked down the World Tree's doors since - well - ever."
"Well if it was built by Stable-Tec, it's bound to be bomb proof." I dunked another bowl in the water. "Back at the stable we had an Overmare. It was pretty traditional, I guess. For a mare to be in charge, I mean. We've always had an overmare."
"That's how it should be." She paused for a moment. "That's how it was back in the day."
I gave her a bitter laugh. "Well, like some sour old bastard told me in Dusktown, Equestria's not the same Equestria it was two centuries ago." I sighed, "Being out here for two weeks has made me realize it's in no shape to return to it, ever."
She nodded, regretfully. "It's the sad truth. We've got monsters wandering the streets, pony or not, and no sun or moon or sky. This place is fucked ... and everypony knows it. That's 'cus everypony's been fucked by the wasteland in one way or another ... "
The mare noticed that I'd stopped scrubbing. I let out a breath I was keeping in with a sigh. She was right about that.
Summer Smiles nodded at me, knowingly. She didn't even have to ask about what I was thinking. Grunting, she dunked the large cauldron she used to make the applesauce and started scrubbing. "What was it like in your stable?"
I thought for a moment. "It was ... different ... better. It was good there. We had it good at '91."
"Had?" she asked me. I nodded, solemnly. "I'm sorry about your stable," Summer Smiles said, softly, "It must've been better beneath the earth than up here getting picked off by carrion."
I told her about daily life in the stable, how we had an orchard and hydroponic gardens, schools, and all the good things you'd never find above ground.
Summer Smiles gazed hopelessly at the freezing water that sloshed around her hooves.
"I wish I could give Doodle and Hops a better life. Better than ... this," she said, looking around her. "When Doodle called this place a dump ... she was right. This place is a dump. This entire wasteland is a dump. It's a miracle my sister and I've been able to keep them from swimming in shit for so long. Usually kids their age lose their innocence earlier than that. They don't know how to shoot a gun, they don't know how to fight to kill - hell, they don't even know how to fight ..." Summer Smiles shook her head, swearing under her breath as she flipped the cauldron over and began lathering its outer surface with soap.
"My father was a stable-dweller. He came from Stable 95, a few hundred miles or so out of Poneva. He told me the same things you told me. You didn't know how to fight or kill in places like those ... there just wasn't any need for such horrible things. Me? I've always wanted to live in one. Sugar Rum has always wanted to live in one." Summer Smiles gazed at me earnestly. "I know Doodle wants to live in one too."
I finished with the smaller dishes and placed them on the counter. "Ah, Doodle and her questions ..."
"She wasn't joking when she asked you if you'd take us with you back to your Stable, Red Dawn," Summer Smiles giggled.
I snorted, chuckling softly. "There aren't that many ponies I've seen out here that want something better. Everyone else I've ran into in Poneva was just completely fine freezing out in the shit-stained snow."
"She's an adventurous little filly," Summer Smiles giggled.
I snorted, an amused look stretching across my face. "She's definitely something else. She nearly stomped in my rib cage this morning." We both laughed as we finished the last of the dishes.
Summer Smiles sighed, rinsing a pot clean, her smile fading away. "I just wish I could make it happen ... those girls deserve better than this." She looked at me with troubled eyes. "A lot of ponies do."
"There just aren't that many ponies who want to do something about it," I said, leaning against the counter as she finished in the sink.
There was a long, silent pause. She pulled the plug at the bottom of the sink and the dirty water began to swirl down the drain.
"Candy Cane ..." she murmured. My ears perked. "Tell me again ... why are you traveling with Candy Cane?"
"I need her. I need her help. She knows this city and how to survive in this wasteland better than I do," I replied. "I wouldn't last a few days out in the snow by myself."
Summer Smiles nodded, resting her hooves on the counter as she stared contemplatively at the tiled wall above the sink. "You sure about that? You look like a pony who can take care of himself."
"No ... I made it here by chance, by pure luck. I've nearly died four times now. I can't do this alone."
"Neither can she," the mare said. "She needs you as much as you need her." Summer Smiles turned her eyes low. "When she came here two days ago, she looked at me differently. I was a stranger to her again ... the things she's been through, Red Dawn ... they've changed her. She isn't the same mare I saw so many years ago. She's changed so much."
"How long have you known her?" I asked.
"Sugar Rum picked her up half dead in the snow five years ago. Brought her back here and we nursed her back to health. Cane lived with us for almost a year. The fillies loved her, Sugar Rum loved her ... I ... loved her. Then she disappeared and never came back.
"We had a long talk yesterday, to catch up on the time we lost. She's changed, Red Dawn. She's harder, more calloused ... more scarred. This wasteland ... it ruins people. It ruined Candy Cane. She needs help. And you and me? We're all she's got, whether you know her as well as I do or not."
I gulped and hung my head. When my friends stepped out the stable doors, we too were responsible for each other. But I let Amber Fields down. I let Star Glint down. I was afraid to lose another pony I cared about to that nightmare, let alone Candy Cane who'd already lost so much.
I thought back to when we were praying earlier, and the brooding look she had on her face. It was as if she couldn't stand the mere mentioning of the Princesses, let alone pray to them.
Summer Smiles stared at me, a sliver of hope glowing in her eyes.
"You know how to use a gun?"
I nodded. Well, sort of. I was a terrible shot without SATS. I couldn't lead moving targets for shit.
"Good. She's like family to me, Red Dawn. With my sister dead, she and the girls are all I have left. You're traveling with her now, so keep her safe. She doesn't have that many friends anymore. You and I are the closest she'll probably get ... and I think you're a good pony." I looked down at my hooves, wanting quite badly to disagree with her. "I don't think I've seen any since I met Candy Cane," she murmured.
The mare pushed my chin up with a hoof so that we could see eye to eye. "You keep her safe," Summer Smiles repeated, "Or she'll disappear like she did two years ago."
When we finished, I was left to my own devices. I sat in my room, inspecting my gear, my clean sets of jumpsuits and my security barding, my pistol, and whatever ammunition I had left. As I studied my pistol, trying to remember how to take it apart to clean it, I heard giggling in the room down the hall.
I stuck my head outside, and looked through the cracked open door at the end of the hall. I saw the pirouetting shadows of Candy Cane and the two fillies as they laughed and danced and enjoyed the innocence Candy Cane had lost.
Those two fillies were the only joy she had left in her life. Because everything else had been wrenched away from her and replaced with terror and suffering. But that was the wasteland. And the wasteland was everything but a better life, or a happy place, or a place to call home.
I returned to inspecting my pistol, but I left the door open, their warm laughter echoing down the hall, and into the room, and through my ears. *
After dinner, I tried sleeping, but found that I couldn't. I guess those forty-eight hours of beauty sleep rejuvenated everything but my horn. I rolled around in bed, staring at the ceiling, and listening to the wind howl outside my window. Everyone else was asleep. Summer Smiles, the girls, and Candy Cane. Or so I thought.
Among the lonely, frozen wind that moaned outside, I could hear, faintly, the sounds of pots banging downstairs. I closed my eyes once more and tried to get some shuteye.
'Wait.'
My eyes shot open. There was someone downstairs, my body trembled with a cold sweat.
I cracked my door open and squinted through the darkness; everyone's doors were closed. Everyone else was asleep.
Someone was downstairs. Someone was inside the inn.
I stumbled to my bedside dresser in almost complete darkness and pulled out my pistol and its holster, wrapping it around my neck. I stepped a hoof out the door and I saw that the lights were off downstairs. I gulped, flipping the safety and chambering a round. Gun drawn, I started down the steps, my mouthbit clenched between my teeth.
My eyes darted to my EFS. For good measure, I entered SATS and scanned the area in front of me. I bit my lower lip. Negative hostiles. The only blips on my EFS were the four ponies upstairs. But then again, my EFS couldn't tell me who was at what elevation ...
'But ... who?' I wondered, 'Who the hell was down here with me?'
Frowning, I reached the dining area and beamed the bar with my PipBuck's teal glow. At the far end of the room, yellow shafts of light spilled out of the kitchen's doorway and into the darkness of the empty bar. With my mouth bit still clenched, I approached cautiously as the person inside the kitchen continued to rummage through the cabinets.
I stacked up around the corner, my heart pounding in my chest, ready to pump someone with lead. I gulped. And spun into the doorway.
"Candy Cane?" I gasped, narrowing my eyes at the mare whose head was jammed into the innards of the cabinet under the sink.
She eeped, jumped, and banged her head beneath the sink with a heavy thump. Candy Cane moaned and wrenched her head out of the cabinet and fell flat on her flank, rubbing her head painfully as her eyes darted toward me.
"Red Dawn? What ... what are you doing down here?" she asked, eyeing the pistol clenched between my teeth.
"I - uh, I was about to ask you the same thing," I stuttered, relieved that I hadn't stitched her up with bullets.
Candy Cane groaned, wincing as she rubbed her aching head.
"Shit ... sorry about that ... I thought someone broke in or something," I said under breath, holstering my pistol.
The mare thought me crazy.
"That door's got a three inch metal bar over it, a chain, and a deadbolt. Not even I can pick through that. Well, maybe the deadbolt, but the rest ..." she trailed off. "You'd need a minotaur or a bomb to take that door down."
I chuckled sheepishly. "Well that's reassuring. I can sleep at night without being afraid someone'd rob or put a knife through me."
I flipped my pistol's safety and holstered it, and held out to her a hoof. She stared at me for a moment, a thin smile creasing her lips before she took my hoof with hers and I pulled her to her fours.
"Thanks," she breathed.
"You going to be okay?" I cocked my head at her as she rubbed what I hoped wasn't a bump on her head. "I'm sorry I scared you, I didn't know you were down here."
"It's okay ... I didn't think anypony would still be awake at this time," she confessed, tapping her forehooves together.
I glanced at my PipBuck's screen. 0221 hours. I narrowed my eyes at her once more.
"Seriously, what are you doing down here by yourself?"
The mare fixed her gaze at the cabinets around her, avoiding mine.
"I was just organizing the pots, the dishes, and the silverware," she replied in an even, casual tone.
I wasn't sure how much narrower my eyes could get.
"At ... at this time of the night?"
She shrugged, staring at the tiled floor.
"I don't see why not," Candy Cane replied, tersely, not meeting my eyes. In quite a hurry, she trotted to a cabinet and the sounds of pots being dragged across wood and tile returned to invade my eardrums. "I thought the blizzard would drown out the noise." She glanced over her shoulder and smirked. "Guess I was wrong."
I snorted, "Heh, well, I'm usually just a light sleeper."
Candy Cane grunted as she pulled something heavy beneath the sink. Exhaling and wiping a bead of sweat from her forehead, she sat up once more.
"You and I both," she sighed, languidly. Candy Cane gave me another thin smirk. "Though you were sleeping like a baby when I was checking on you these last two days."
I gave her an awkward chuckle, rubbing my leg absent-mindedly. She snickered, softly, "I even had to flip you over onto your back to put a towel on your head, because you'd rolled onto your belly."
I frowned at her. I couldn't remember that. But then again, she'd apparently washed me from head to hoof ... and I couldn't remember that either.
"Well, so much for being a light sleeper then," I grinned, rolling eyes. "Was my fever really that bad?"
Her expression turned serious.
"Unfortunately, it was. I've never seen anypony with this bad of a burnout before ... usually unicorns know when to stop." She sighed. "But you? You don't seem like the kind of pony who'd give up so easily."
"Giving up is never an option for me."
"That much is evident," she murmured, looking away for a moment. "You wouldn't give up on my collar, either." Candy Cane sighed and turned towards me, leaning against the counter. "You pulled through it, for the most part." She cocked her head and me, noticing the way I teetered back and forth as I stood idle. "For the most part. You still need to get some more rest."
She was right. That whole 'someone broke into the inn' thing made me lightheaded and somewhat out of breath.
"I'm completely fine," I claimed, holding my chin up high. But I too noticed the way she teetered back and forth on her own hooves. She looked about as worn out as I did when we first got there. If not ... worse. "What about you? It's two in the morning. Shouldn't you be getting rest too?"
Candy Cane went silent, her expression overtaken by an intangible desolateness that haunted her steel gray eyes.
"Rest. No. I don't ..." She snapped, "I'm not sleepy." Her eyelids fluttered closed as she rubbed at the bags under her eyes. "Not sleepy. Yet."
I pursed my lips. 'You sure look like it,' I wanted to say.
I stared at her for a long while, and she did the same at me. But a yawn forced its way out of my lips and broke our eye contact. Somehow, she looked relieved. But when I blinked, any indication of that relief was no longer there, replaced by a blank-faced, far-away-from-here look that made the hairs on my coat stand on end.
Something was bothering her. Though I didn't understand what. She was a free mare, she had her friends back, the fillies, hell, she had a bed to sleep in. But ... there wasn't there. She was someplace else. That kitchen was a whole 'nother world to her.
I took a few baby steps towards her, close enough to touch the mare with my hoof. I reached out, and she flinched.
Biting my lower lip, I asked her, "Candy Cane ... are you okay?"
She nodded absent mindedly. Candy Cane lurched away from me like an unoiled machine, and returned to her lonesome busywork.
"I'm okay," she muttered, her voice as cold as the frozen earth outside. "I'm ... okay."
I watched her work. She shuffled around on her hinds as she rummaged through the cabinets above the counter, levitating out dishes and replacing them inside in organized stacks.
"Do you ... do you need help?" I tried, nervously.
Her busy hooves paused, but she didn't even spare me a glance.
"I'm okay."
A few seconds passed as I watched her in silence.
'Alrighty then,' I thought to myself. I started out the door, but stopped to look over my shoulder one last time. She was still doing her thing, organizing the cabinets as the blizzard shook, rattled, and moaned outside. Candy Cane didn't turn around once to see if I was still there.
I returned upstairs to my bed and closed my eyes. I drifted off into sleep for a few minutes, but something was chipping at the walls of my half lucid consciousness. I rolled over and found out that those few minutes had actually been a few hours.
Four o'clock in the morning.
My ears perked.
Drowning beneath the howling wind, and the clamor of the banging kitchenware, I could hear, distantly, the sounds of someone sobbing downstairs. * |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 10 - Never Work Alone - Pt III | *
Dew Drops screamed.
"DON'T STOP FOR ANYTHING!"
The chillingly brutal wasteland wind howled past our faces as we tore through the snow with our frantic hooves. I couldn't see them - the monsters that were hounding after us. But I could hear them, barking, snarling, howling into the darkness like animals thirsting for our blood.
They were ponies. But hardly ponies at all. The scorched brush flattened beneath them as they gave chase ...
There was nothing else we could do. Nothing, but run.
Their inequine cackles echoed from every direction through the gnarled black trees. They were closing in. Closer. Closer. The path before our hooves narrowed between the gangly scorched trunks like a suffocating black tunnel that both of us knew we couldn't escape.
Dew Drops' death flashed before my eyes.
I knew how it was going to end.
Tracers lanced through the air. Bullets screamed past us and kicked up showers of snow across the drifts. Their mindless giggles and savage barks demanded a taste of our blood.
They wouldn't stop. Not until they massacred us all.
Beneath it all, permeating my thoughts - suffocating beneath that horrific cacophony were the shrieks of my dying friends. Their deaths rippled through my conscience like a drop of blood plummeting into a still pond.
I could still hear them screaming ... every single one their tormented screams in the distance as Dew Drops and I ran for our lives ... because we couldn't save theirs.
Because I couldn't.
They had been torn to pieces. Soon. We would join them.
The snow erupted in front of us.
They'd been waiting. Waiting for us the entire time. Three pairs of forehooves wrapped around me, their cold flesh curling around my legs.
"NO!"
I tried jerking away from them. But muscles tore and joints snapped out of place as they hurled me to the ground. I opened my mouth to scream, only for a hoof to come crashing into my skull.
Stars exploded in my eyes. My ears rang and everything around me faded in and out of blackness.
I blinked the darkness away ... and stared up into the mindless, black-veined sclera of a grinning monster pony. He laughed in my face. I writhed and kicked helplessly as they held me down. My eyes darted down my chest - and I watched as a psycho pony sunk her chilling, broken teeth into the flesh of my hindleg.
A bloody grin stretched across her lips. She looked me in the eye and told me I was a dead pony. I screamed. I screamed my throat raw. She tore into me again and again, as the onlooking psychos cackled gleefully at my agonized cries.
"No! RED!" Dew Drops shrieked as she leveled her carbine. Her horn glowed to pull the trigger - and somepony swatted the weapon away from her.
My limbs slackened in resignation.
Teeth. Teeth. More broken teeth. I felt them ripping into me like I was nothing but a haunch of meat tossed into a pen of bloodletters. I sobbed through a mouthful of blood, opening my eyes for a moment. I watched as Dew Drops wrestled a psycho pony to the snow.
"DD!" I wailed after her, my voice hoarse. She turned to face me. I met her eyes ... and I knew ... and she knew ... that one of us was going to die. I could see it. The horror - the anguish flashing across her face -
Just as the pony beneath her slammed her back into the snow.
I clenched my eyes shut.
It wasn't going to be her. It wasn't going to be her.
Not. Again.
I cried out, willing my bloody limbs to life.
The psycho ponies snarled at me.
I snarled back.
I swung my horn viciously into somepony's eye and ripped out of her in a gory spurt of blood and vitreous fluid. I swung my head to the right, tearing it across another's throat.
I clenched my eyes shut a second before his blood splashed across my face. Blind, I kicked out my legs and felt my hooves connect with bone.
Crack - and a pony with a broken neck flopped into the snow. Bathed in blood, I cried out weakly, and scrambled desperately across the snow to Dew Drops like an injured animal.
I reached out with a trembling hoof - and I felt my momentum come to a jarring halt. Someone yanked my tail. I screamed for my life - for Dew Drops, my hooves scrambling uselessly across the snow as they dragged me away into the darkness.
It was the pony with the bloody eye. She laughed at me, reveling in the futility of my struggle.
I heard someone scream - and then a sick crunch. Dew Drops snarled over the cratered skull of a dead pony, blood and bits of pink gore running down her face. With a dull flash, she tore a rock out of the snow.
"YOU LET HIM GO! YOU MOTHER ... MOTHER FUCKERS!" Dew Drops shrieked, tears freezing against her cheeks.
She hurled it at the pony behind me - caving in her skull. With a gurgle and a gout of blood, the psycho mare let go.
Dew Drops dove for me, her hooves outstretched.
I met her tearing gray eyes for a single, fleeting moment as both our hooves touched.
Then someone bucked her in the chest.
She uttered a scream as though she had died a thousand times over ... a shriek that should have ended the world. Her horn flickered as she fell back, and I felt her magic swirl around me.
But a grinning psycho pony swung a hoof into her horn. I saw it in Dew Drops' eyes. Her despair.
Dew Drops' magic winked out.
And I slammed my face into the snow.
A knife sank into my chest. I felt my insides tear apart as it twisted and ripped out of me. Then agony.
"Red!" she wailed, tears and blood running down her face as she rose to her trembling hooves.
I stared at her across the snow, lying in a growing pool of my blood. I could feel my door closing. But as the psychos clustered around me, I watched another door open.
It was her only chance.
"DD ... I love you ..." I gurgled through a mouthful of blood.
I clenched my jaw and wailed into night, "RUN! RUN! RUN AND DON'T LOOK BACK!" I screamed with all the energy I had left as the psycho ponies gutted me and laid waste to my dying flesh.
She took one last look at me and did all she could do.
She ran.
I watched as she disappeared into the night.
As I lay there dying, their hooves and their teeth tearing me apart, I stared blankly into the night sky and whispered her name through my bloody, pale lips ...
"Dew Drops ..."
'Dew Drops ...'
"Dew Drops ..." I whispered feverishly, sweat pouring down my face.
A mare stood over me as I trembled beneath the covers, writhing in nightmare. Her head was bowed and her face was expressionless, shadowed in the dim light that crept into the room from my half-opened door.
I felt her gentle hoof against my forehead and my livid flesh stilled.
Candy Cane's horn glowed in the darkness of my room and the cool touch of a moistened towel came to rest upon my forehead. My eyes fluttered open for the briefest of moments just as she left the room.
I sighed, softly, and drifted back into a calm, dreamless sleep. *
The next day, I woke up earlier than everybody else. Starting down the hall outside my door, I could hear Summer Smiles snoring.
I neared Candy Cane's door and stopped for a moment. I had woken up that morning with a wet towel on my forehead. I didn't know how many hours ago that was, but chips of frost had flaked away from the towel as I pulled it off my face.
Strangely enough, I remembered her leaving my room with great clarity ... more so than the entirety of the nightmare that was still haunting me even as I stood awake. In that dream, I was falling into the darkness of death until I felt the cool touch of reality bring me back to life. It seemed like she'd saved me from certain death more than once already.
Pressing my ear against her door, I found that her room was strangely quiet. Every now and then I'd hear someone rolling around on a bed, the mattress' springs squeaking and her blankets ruffling. I wondered if she was awake ... if she stayed awake that whole night. I wondered how long she stayed in my room, watching me.
I shivered. That was kind of creepy. But nonetheless reassuring ... reassuring that I had someone to watch over me. It had been weeks since I had felt that same sense of security, from my mother, and from the mare that I loved ...
Dew Drops.
I took her place in that dream. A deeper part of me wished that she escaped that night and that I stayed behind. She was a better mare. A better pony than I knew I'd ever be.
But instead of her, I was the one walking down those stairs.
Down there, for about half an hour, I waited for Summer Smiles, who I knew would be the next to wake. When I heard hoofsteps clopping down the stairs, Summer Smiles was pleasantly surprised.
"Red Dawn? You're up early," she yawned, running a hoof through her bed-headed blonde mane.
For some strange reason, I felt more awake and ready to tackle the day than I ever was when I lived in '91.
"You sleep well?"
"Like a baby," I replied with a lopsided smile. I watched as she trotted to the kitchen, letting out a long, drawn out yawn.
The kitchen.
I remembered the pots. The wind moaning outside. And Candy Cane ...
I wondered if I wasn't the only one.
"Summer Smiles ... did you hear anything last night?"
She paused for a moment, thinking.
"Uh ... I don't think so? Why?" she asked, puzzled.
I opened my mouth, but hesitated. I didn't want to assume anything about someone else's business ... I was the stranger there, after all.
But I knew that she didn't choose that time of the night or that blizzard to muffle her busywork. No. The pots and pans were just another layer of noise to drown out something else.
"Are you going to make breakfast?" I asked her first.
Summer Smiles nodded.
"Maybe I can help you ... but I need to talk to you about something." I cocked my head at the kitchen. "Maybe over ... the stove?"
The mare lifted a brow at me, and waved me forward with a hoof.
In the kitchen, Summer Smiles chose to warm several cans of pre-war food. When she assigned me to pot-watching duty, I was relieved to find that watching beans boil was the easiest thing I did in weeks. But Goddesses, did it smell terrible.
Summer Smiles studied my expression curiously as she leaned against the counter. "What was it you wanted to talk about?"
I drew in a breath, and slowly exhaled. "I ... heard something in here last night: Pots and pans banging together. I thought it was the blizzard shaking something outside, but ..." I trailed off. I looked up from the beans, and studied her expression.
Summer Smiles' head was cocked, and her lips were pursed. She eyed the beans as I stirred them.
I cleared my throat and continued. "Went downstairs to see what was going on, and - guess who I found in the kitchen?"
She knew the answer before I even asked it.
"Candy Cane."
She nodded to herself as she leaned against the counter, forelegs folded across her chest.
"I was expecting she'd do that."
"What do you mean?"
Summer Smiles sighed, lowering her eyes to the floor.
"She's been doing that for the last two days now. Up and about at two in the morning or later, just ... just doing her thing."
My brows furrowed as I gave her another lopsided half-smile.
"The ... the same thing?" I imagined her coming downstairs every night to repeat the same mindless task over and over again - like a ghost that didn't know she was dead.
Now that was creepy.
But Summer Smiles shook her head, clenching her jaw.
"The day you two arrived, she scrubbed clean all the tables downstairs. The next night, she dusted every piece of furniture in the inn."
I chuckled, "Heh ... not so much of a dump anymore, I guess.."
She just glared at me. Another awkward stupid half-smile stretched across my lips. 'Tough crowd,' I thought.
"On that same night, she poured together all the leftover vodka into one bottle and left it on one of the racks." Summer Smiles sighed, scratching her mane as I eyed her, worriedly. "Couldn't find the damn thing the next day."
"Does she even sleep?"
Summer Smiles shrugged.
"If she does, then she must be sleeping with both eyes open."
At breakfast, we all sat around the same table and prayed. A prayer during which she said not a single word. This time, her silence was deafening. She was wearing her mask again. The same one she wore when I talked to her in the kitchen last night. She smiled briefly as I passed her a bowl of beans.
You couldn't have been able to tell just by looking at her, but she was hiding something beneath all those smiles.
Every now and then I'd study her face, and I'd see it - like someone banging against a door and she was standing on the other side. Then she'd look the other way. She'd lock the door and try to walk away with a gentle, polite smile.
Especially around the fillies. They kept her from opening that door - distracted long enough for her to ignore the banging outside. I wondered if I'd ever know what was trying to get inside.
I barely knew her, and she barely knew me. But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to know her. To know what was eating her up from the inside out.
She'd lived in that terrible shithole of a wasteland her entire life.
Her story must've been more interesting than mine. *
Left to my own devices once more, I returned to my room and began furnishing it with my belongings. I figured I might as well, since it was going to be my home for as long as I was out there in the northern wastes. Leaning against the lamp on top of my bedside drawer were my photos.
On one side of the lamp was my family: my mother, Morning Dawn, and my father, Red Roan. On another side were my friends: Amber Fields, Star Glint, Lightning Twirl, Box Cutter, and Dew Drops. I stared at both for a long while. It hurt to be homesick.
I forced myself to look away, before putting what few belongings I had in the cabinets and rearranging the furniture to my liking. Within half an hour, the room looked almost like my room back at '91.
Almost. But not really.
I let out a somewhat contented sigh, and returned to my bags, looking for Dew Drops' scarf. I was hoping I could hide it in a safe place where it couldn't get any dirtier. My bedside drawer was the first place I thought of. It'd be close to me even when I was asleep.
I blinked. It wasn't there. I stared at the open saddlebag, my heart fluttering in my chest. It wasn't there. It wasn't ...
A thin line of sweat streamed down my face. I rummaged through my bags frantically, digging my hooves through them. I emptied its innards onto the floor, and turned the bag inside out. It wasn't there. I threw the bag across the room.
I scrambled across the floorboards, dropping to my knees and searching frantically beneath my bed. I rifled through drawers - I yanked open one of the cabinet doors and barely noticed as it crashed to the floor beneath me.
Dew Drops' scarf was still nowhere to be found. I stifled my panicking breaths, trying to remain composed as a trembling hoof came to wipe the cold sweat off my brow.
For the next ten minutes, I barreled across my room. I tore off my bedsheets. I overturned furniture. I peered through the cracks in the floorboards.
Nothing.
As I brooded there in silence, I thought of all the places I could've left it. My bed? In the drawers? In my bags?
'No!'
I nearly killed someone the last time I lost it. I tapped a hoof incessantly against the floor.
I was going to lose it again if I didn't find Dew Drops' scarf - the only part of her that I had left. A low growl escaped my lips as my hoof scratched frantically against the floorboards.
My ears perked. And I froze. My eyes widened.
The howling wind outside my window warped and decayed like a signal dying away into static. I began to hear them again. Their psychotic laughter.
'Hahahahaha ... hahahahaha!'
My eyes darted across the bloody snow.
'You lost her again.'
"WHERE IS IT!?"
Hooves knocked outside my door. The nightmares shattered around me like glass, and I found myself back in my room, the chilling floorboards creaking beneath me as I stumbled to the door and parted it open.
Candy Cane's cool grays peeked through the crack in the darkness of my room.
"What's going on?" she asked me, blinking.
I chewed on my lower lip as I widened the gap between us.
"I was just looking for my scarf - I can't find my scarf," I said frantically, my sanity trying to compose itself.
The mare tapped her hoof against the floorboards and looked away, nervously.
"I ... I washed your scarf last night." She seemed to ignore the strangeness in my stare. "I'm the one who got it dirty, after all." Candy Cane's horn glowed with a silvery light and the pristine blue and white fabrics of Dew Drops' scarf levitated before my eyes.
I nearly fell to the floor and kissed her hooves.
"C-Candy Cane ... y-you -" I stuttered, my eyes widening as I took the scarf into my hooves and felt its soft fabric against my cheek. "I -"
"No need to thank me," Candy Cane said, softly. "I saw how sad you looked when you found out I used it as a tourniquet, and I couldn't bring myself to let you wear it like that."
I wrapped it around my neck, relieved.
I felt whole. A part of me had been returned. It couldn't completely fill the void that Dew Drops left behind, but having it with me provided me a place to rest ... a place to contemplate a past that I so very badly wanted to relive.
I sighed, the light returning to my eyes as I felt Dew Drops' warm scarf around my neck.
"Can I come in?" I heard someone ask. I realized that my eyes were closed. They fluttered open and it was Candy Cane.
I looked over my shoulder and found that my room was a mess again. I eyed the broken cabinet in the back ... Summer Smiles' cabinet ... one of its doors hanging precariously off of one intact hinge.
'Shit.' I was going to have to fix that.
I gulped. "I was just cleaning up,"
Candy Cane held up a hoof.
"It's fine. I just wanted to check on you."
I frowned at her. She was wearing her mask again.
"Check on me?" I asked, curiously.
Candy Cane leaned against the door frame.
"Your horn, Red Dawn."
"Oh ... right. That thing," I murmured, swinging the door open for her.
She trotted inside and motioned me to sit.
I took a seat at the foot of my bed as she studied the useless horn atop my head. "You never did tell me how you burned it out. I don't remember you levitating anything heavy that day."
"I don't know," I sighed, scratching my head. "It just happened. But that wasn't the first time that I've been burned out, recently."
Candy Cane cocked her head at me. "What do you mean? When was the last time this happened to you?"
I shrugged, wincing as something throttled the grey matter inside my skull. "About four days after I left my stable, I think."
Her muzzle scrunched up. 'What?' Candy Cane mouthed, narrowing her eyes at me. She wasn't sure if she heard that right. "That can't be possible. How did you ... how did you burn out twice?"
"I'm sure a lot of unicorns burn out more than once in their lives," I shrugged.
Candy Cane shook her head. "No, I mean, how did you burn out twice - consecutively?"
"Oh." I scratched my mane. "Burned myself out while ... digging through the snow," I added, vaguely. I remembered digging those graves for my friends as vividly as I could recall their deaths. If Night Sky hadn't stopped me, I would've joined them that night.
I sighed, closing my eyes.
"Then I burned myself out again at the Scullion two or three days later - can't remember."
Candy Cane's eyes widened.
"So, within the course of a little over a week, you burned yourself out - twice?"
"One plus one is two." I poked my tongue out of my lips and gave my skull two knocks. "Twice."
She tapped her chin, staring off into space. "How in Equestria did you recover so quickly after the first that you were able to burn out a second time?"
"I didn't. Not really. Someone gave me this drug called 'Sparkle'." She frowned at me, biting her lower lip. "It's supposed to make my magic stronger or something. He said it could bring my magic back."
"I know what Sparkle does," Candy Cane snapped. She looked away, muttering as she shook her head. "That explains a lot. That explains why you were out for so long. It shouldn't take more than a day or two to sleep off a burnout." The mare narrowed her eyes at me. "How much did you drink?"
I dug my muzzle through my bags and yanked out the empty vial that had contained the violet concoction.
She stretched out a foreleg and tapped the glass cylinder between my teeth, her eyes widening with disbelief. "Y-you drank all that?" she gasped. I just stared at her uncomfortably. "That's not ..." I heard her murmur as I gave her a blank stare. "No wonder you were out for so long ...
"Do you even know the side effects of Sparkle?" Another blank stare. "That pony didn't even tell you?" The mare glared at me as she waited for a response. "That fool ... you don't know a thing about Sparkle, do you?" she murmured.
"Not much. It tasted pretty good, though," I said, chuckling wryly. "You tell me."
Candy Cane tapped her chin, muttering to herself. "Pyrexia, dementia, disequilibrium, degeneration of the neocortex -"
I frowned at her with empty eyes, my mouth parted slightly open.
She reiterated, this time, in Laymare's terms. "Fever, insanity, imbalance, loss of brain cells, and ..." Candy Cane paused for a moment. "And ..." she craned her neck towards me. "... and shrinking of the scrotum," she intoned, dreadfully. My muzzle scrunched up, terrified. I wasn't quite sure if she meant the last part ... 'She didn't, did she?'
I stared down between my legs, terror skittering across my features.
"It carries with it a whole slew of bad things. You can't be loopy like this if we're going to be traveling together." She folded her legs across her chest, scolding me, "You can get me killed. Worse, you can get yourself killed."
"Thanks for the science lesson, doc."
"I'm a nurse, Red Dawn."
I sighed. "Yeah, yeah ..."
She reached out once more and prodded the useless thing that poked out of my mane. I groaned, shaking my head.
"Drugs only cover up the symptoms," she said, frowning at me.
"It fixed me up for a while, though," I insisted, scratching my mane. My magic had felt a hundred times more potent after drinking that potion. I probably could've hurled a table at Grifter, if I tried.
She just shook her head. "Of course it did, but not for long, obviously," she sighed. "Sparkle was a battlefield chem made for battle mages that were drained to zero, ninety percent of the time, " she told me, as if lecturing a small child. I felt like I was in elementary school again - like a sleepy school colt sitting in a history class, listening to the teacher drone on and on about something he didn't care too much about.
And the volume of her voice was summoning a painful throb from the depths of my beaten up cranium.
She folded her legs across her chest. "You can't cast combat spells, can you?"
I scoffed, "Well, I can levitate things. I ... was pretty good at it."
"Red ... please." She lectured me some more, "If you want to be a unicorn again, you need sleep, not a chem fix. Battle mages were conditioned to take this drug; they were basically addicted to it - they drank it like water."
"Well, they must've had balls the size of marbles."
Candy Cane rolled her eyes at me and groaned.
"I thought you were here to check up on me," I whined, "Not teach me about how dash is trash."
She sighed, staring off into space in irritation.
"Sure, hugs - not drugs. They taught me that in junior high."
Candy Cane snapped, "Then why did you take Sparkle?"
"Because I needed to get over my burnout!"
I flinched irritably as Candy Cane spoke, her voice shaking my headache from its slumber.
"A burnout is a reaction to the threat of mental exhaustion - it's supposed to stop you from actually burning out everything you have. All Sparkle is, is an inhibitor that prevents neurotransmitters from inducing that response, tricking your brain into thinking it still has more to give. But all you end up doing is exacerbating your condition."
"Right," I snorted, jerking my right forehoof back and forth. "Exacerbating." I sighed, facehoofing. "Are we done here?"
Candy Cane clenched her jaw and glared at me.
"No."
The mare touched a hoof to my forehead and pursed her lips, muttering under her breath. I rolled my eyes and turned my gaze to the floorboards.
"Any word on the Orphanage?" I pried impatiently, trying to change the subject.
Candy Cane just sighed, "You aren't going anywhere until you can use your horn again, so you need to just sleep for now."
"It's hard to sleep when you're running out of time ..." I said, gazing at her with my bloodshot eyes. I looked away and muttered, loud enough for my own ears, "And trying to keep your entire stable from dying ..."
I felt her grasp my shoulders with her hooves.
"You need to know when to stop, Red Dawn." She let go and folded her legs across her chest. "You can't just be 'digging' through the snow when you're exhausted ... or the next thing you know, you'll be digging your own grave."
I blinked. I felt an icy blade go through my chest.
"DIGGING MY OWN GRAVE?" I screamed, so loud that Candy Cane backed away two steps. I stood to my four hooves.
"Since I left my home, I've had to dig six graves - one for each poor bastard that's stepped foot in this shit hole," I growled, sucking back in the tears that threatened to well out of my eyes. My voice trembled, "The only reason why I'm still here is because I chose to finish what they started!" I narrowed my eyes at her. "So please ... Candy Cane ... I know when to stop. Until then, there's an empty grave in Dusktown with my name on it."
Candy Cane just stared at me in solemn quietude.
"Celestia fucking forbid I burnout a third time! I'd do anything to save my home ... and if I need to suffer a little burnout or two, then I will." I looked her in the eye. "I'd do it again if I had to."
"Even if it kills you?" she scoffed. "You think pumping yourself with drugs is going to save your stable?"
I gulped a lump down my throat, and lowered my voice.
"It saved you, Candy Cane!" I hissed, jabbing a hoof at her. "I wouldn't have been able to save you from that fucking whorehouse if I hadn't taken Sparkle. I couldn't get over the fence so I had to use my magic to lift up the backdoor's latch through a hole in the wire." I leaned in, uttering in a dark tone, "If I hadn't used Sparkle, you'd still be a slave."
Candy Cane clenched her jaw and looked away, glaring into the darkness.
"Just remember ..." she whispered. "When we're out there, I can save you when you hurt ... but I can't save you from hurting yourself, Red Dawn."
She let those words sink in as the seconds ticked by in silence. Then the mare fixed her eyes on my horn once more.
She asked in a quiet, even tone, "Have you tried levitating anything lately?"
I shook my head, broodingly. She gave me a look that told me she knew my answer before she even asked.
And yet Candy Cane pulled a bobby pin out of her peacoat, anyways. "Here, try lifting this," she said, holding it out to me.
I gulped, and hesitated. I eyed her dubiously, but her expression didn't change as she held her foreleg out with her bobby pin resting upon her hoof.
With a long and drawn out sigh, I focused upon the tiny little bobby pin. It took a lot out of me, but, to my feverish amazement, I managed to swirl a faint red field around it and lift it a few inches into the air.
I winced. My horn sputtered and sparked, fire slowly creeping through my veins - and I let myself go. I exhaled sharply, and my concentration abated. The pin pinged against the floorboards.
"That was ... difficult," I murmured, wiping away a bead of sweat that formed above my brow.
Her horn glowed as she plucked the pin off the floor.
"You need to rest more. Try taking a nap again. Your brain has yet to completely recover."
"If those're the doctor's orders ..." I muttered, sinking back onto my bed.
She opened her mouth to correct me, but decided not to.
"Just ... just try get better, Red Dawn," she said, starting towards the doorway.
I nodded, closing my eyes.
This time, I turned the tables on her just as she reached the door.
"Yeah, you too," I shot back.
Candy Cane paused mid-step, standing there for a few heartbeats. Her haunted expression turned slowly over her shoulder, her mask darkened by a bob of her candy cane mane as the light from the hall fell upon her face.
Then she turned, swung the door open, and left without another sound. * |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 10 - Never Work Alone - Pt IV | *
Later that day, I was trotting down the stairs when I heard ponies shouting in the bar. I hugged the railing, and peeked through the balustrades to find Candy Cane and Summer Smiles standing in the middle of the dining room.
Summer Smiles pleaded with her, "Cane, you need to stop this, you're hurting yourself!"
"Hurting myself?" Candy Cane snapped. "I'm keeping myself sane, that's what I'm doing!" she growled, craning her neck so that they could see eye to eye.
Summer Smiles chuckled darkly, shaking her head as she studied the mare's weary face.
"The bags under your eyes tell me a different story."
"And what's that? What story is that?" she demanded, her voice hoarse.
Candy Cane turned away for a moment, shaking her head vigorously. "You don't know a damned thing, Summer, okay? You don't know a damned thing! You just don't!"
Summer Smiles opened her mouth - but hung her head instead.
"No ... I don't. I don't, Cane, so please - tell me!" Summer Smiles begged her.
Candy Cane laughed bitterly, turning her back to her and starting for the stairs.
"Cane!" Summer Smiles cried, and the mare stopped at the foot of the stairs. "I can't stand by and watch you slave around like this. You haven't gotten any rest in days -"
Candy Cane turned and cut her off, sweeping a hoof through the air. "I don't need to sleep!" she shot back. Candy Cane's ears wilted, her eyes turning low as she murmured "I'm ... perfectly fine."
Summer Smiles took a step toward her. Candy Cane flinched.
"No, no you're not. You're not, Cane, and you know it." Summer Smiles came closer and laid a hoof on Candy Cane's trembling shoulder, squeezing her gently. "You can tell me, Cane ... tell me, please! Tell me how I can help you! Just let me help you - somehow!"
Candy Cane shrugged her off and turned her head the other way.
She clenched her jaw and said, softly, "You can't ..." Tears were threatening to well out of her eyes as she avoided Summer Smiles' pleading gaze.
Summer Smiles inched closer, biting her lower lip. "Cane ..." she said, softly, holding Candy Cane's hoof. She gave her a warm, gentle smile.
"I can ... but you need to let me in." She leaned closer, her muzzle close enough to hers to feel her trembling breath. "I'm the same Summer Smiles you knew ... the same one you've always known." She stared deep into Candy Cane's cold grays. "I love you, Cane, you know I do ... I always have. Please ... just let me help you ..."
"Please don't ..." Candy Cane whimpered, but Summer Smiles held her quaking shoulders, pulling her close - and the mare stilled.
The two peered into each other's eyes, the silent seconds ticking by like quaking heartbeats. Summer Smiles cupped her hooves around Candy Cane's cheeks. Summer Smiles hesitated, biting her lower lip as Candy Cane's let out a shaky sigh.
Then she leaned in and filled the gap between them, pressing her lips against hers.
I watched as Candy Cane went stiff, her eyes widening at Summer Smiles' kiss.
"GET OFF OF ME!" Candy Cane screamed - and shoved the mare away from her.
"C-Candy Cane - I-I'M SO SORRY!" she stammered, starting toward her with one hoof outstretched.
"NO!" Candy Cane shrieked, stopping Summer Smiles in her tracks. The mare stomped a hoof into the floorboards, tears streaming down her cheeks.
"Don't you ever do that to me again ... nobody... nobody will ever do that to me again ..."
Candy Cane turned and fled up the stairs. I thought on my hooves, starting down the steps as if I'd been in the middle of doing so the whole time. Candy Cane didn't even seem to notice me as she blundered past and bolted upstairs.
I heard a door slam when I reached the bottom. Summer Smiles stood alone in the dining area, staring desolately into space. It took a few seconds for her to register that I was there.
"What ... what happened?" I asked her.
"I ... I just need some air," Summer Smiles murmured, clenching her jaw as sobs threatened to erupt from her chest. The mare trotted away from me, buttoning up her winter coat and throwing on her saddlebags. "I'm going to buy groceries ... I'll be back in a few hours." *
I sat by myself in the dining area, thinking. I wasn't sure if that was the same mare I met at the Scullion. Poor Summer Smiles ... she unleashed a part of Candy Cane I didn't think she had caged inside of her. It frightened me to think of what might've happened had it escalated further.
Probably with Summer Smiles lying on the floor with a broken jaw.
Goddesses.
I wondered: maybe Candy Cane's barn doors just didn't swing that way? I mean, I'd probably get defensive too if a stallion took a shot at kissing me like that.
I sighed, shaking my head as I set my hooves upon the counter and lowered my head between them.
That might've been the case. But even then, I was hardly scratching the surface.
I came up the stairs later that day and heard voices emanating from the room down the hall. I poked my head inside and found Candy Cane standing before Doodle and Hops, her levitation magic gripping a stick of chalk and scrawling with it across a chalkboard. Hops nodded inquisitively, penning notes into a small notebook. Doodle just sat there with her head against a bookcase, bored.
Candy Cane's eyes gravitated towards mine when she noticed that I was standing awkwardly in the doorway. She cocked her head and motioned for me to come in with a glancing smile. I took a seat next to the fillies as she continued her lecture.
She was wearing her mask again. It was as if what I saw earlier that day hadn't even happened.
Candy Cane cleared her throat, brushing a bob of her curly mane out of her eye. She pressed the stick of chalk against the chalkboard and said, "Okay, girls. So far, we have the Ministries of Wartime Tech, Arc-Sciences, Peace, Image, Morale, and Awesome - right, girls?"
Hops nodded quietly as Doodle stared off into space.
'Ugh, I thought, 'History. I hated history.'
Candy Cane's smiled at Doodle, patiently.
"Right, girls?"
Doodle groaned, and nodded her head furiously, "Yes - yes - yes, Auntie."
"Good!" Candy Cane said cheerfully, clopping her hooves together. "Now, girls, let's review the ministry mares, starting with the mare who led the Ministry of Arcane Sciences."
Doodle opened her mouth to answer, raising a hoof, but Hops' hoof beat her to it.
"Twilight Sparkle," Hops said out loud - well, as loud as a demure little filly like her could get.
"Right!" She wrote 'Twilight' across the board. "Then we have the Ministry of Morale, led by?"
"Oh - I know! I KNOW!" Doodle blurted out, forgetting to raise her hoof.
Hops' hoof slowly rose to the air as her sister fidgeted excitedly.
"Yes, Hops, do you know?"
"Pinkie Pie," Hops answered, once more.
Candy Cane opened her mouth - and Doodle's hoof shot into the air.
"I KNOW THIS ONE!"
I smirked as Candy Cane sighed, "Doodle, I didn't even ask my question yet -"
"No - I got this, I swear to Celestia!"
She snorted, "Okay, Doodle, who led the Ministry of Image?"
Doodle clenched her jaw, opened her mouth to answer, closed, then touched her chin, baffled and perplexed. Her muzzle scrunched up as she stared at the ceiling. I felt Candy Cane's glare upon me as my shoulders rocked with snickers. Doodle wrinkled her brow, thinking - to no avail.
'Aw, hell.' She needed a lifeline.
My eyes darted around, and I coughed, "Ahrarity ..."
Her eyes lit up, as if Celestia herself had given her a sign from above.
"Rarity!"
Candy Cane cocked an eyebrow, giving me an exasperated look. I held in a giggle, covering my mouth with a hoof. Of all the ministry mares I probably forgot or didn't care enough to remember, there was no way I could forget Rarity.
She was hot.
"Good ... good job Doodle," Candy Cane chuckled, writing Rarity's name across the chalkboard. "Alright, now we have the Ministries of Wartime Technology, and Peace. We talked about them last, earlier, so they should be easy. Who were they led by?"
Doodle let out a squirrelly cry, "APPLEJACK AND FLUTTERSHY!"
Damn. She didn't raise her hoof.
The little filly grinned as Candy Cane eyed her quietly, and cupped a hoof over a smile. Meanwhile, Hops slowly raised hers.
"Yes, Hops, do you know?"
"Applejack, and Fluttershy," Hops replied, tersely.
Candy Cane clopped her hooves together, "Great job, Hops! That makes five out of the six ministries. We have one more, and it's the Ministry of ... ?"
Doodle's ears perked up and she shouted, "Awesome!"
"Yes, Doodle, the Ministry of Awesome, your favorite ministry!" She tapped her stick of chalk against the chalkboard. "But can you tell me who led the Ministry of Awesome?"
'Rainbow ... something,' I thought, 'Rainbow ... brash? Rash? Crash?' Rainbow Rash sounded like a horrible disease. I sighed. It was hard enough remembering history, but it was even harder to remember a ministry that was known for not doing shit during the war.
But Doodle's face lit up. Of course she knew.
"RAINBOW DASH!" she nickered, gleefully.
"Right! And can you tell me what their focus was during the war?"
Doodle stood up on her little midget legs.
"They were focused on being awesome, that's what!"
I chewed my lower lip, suppressing a grin.
Candy Cane smiled, but shook her head. Doodle sighed, hanging hers, dismayed.
"Hops, do you know?"
The little filly nodded. "Nothing that we know of," she said, simply.
"That's right - their story is one muddled in mystery." She tapped her chin, thinking. "They might have been conducting special operations outside of the public eye. My father always told me -"
Doodle whipped her head back and groaned.
"Oh my Goddesses, this is soooooo boring," she sighed.
"I think this is pretty fun," I chuckled, nudging Doodle with a hoof. "To watch."
Candy Cane tapped her chalkstick against the chalkboard. "Now, now, Doodle, you ought to know your basic Equestrian history."
"Why?" she demanded. "Why do we care, I mean it's not like we're ever going to need this when we get older," Doodle moaned, laying down on the floor with her hooves flailing in the air.
I giggled out loud at that.
"She's right you know," I said, grinning at her. She pointed a hoof at me.
"See, even Mister Dawn agrees!"
Candy Cane glared at me, and opened her mouth to say something, but Hops' voice, soft and hardly audible, somehow beat her to it.
"It's important that we learn from our history, Doodle, so that the past won't repeat itself," she whispered, not looking up from her notes. My eyes widened at the wizened filly's words. That's what Dew Drops used to tell me. "Ignorance only makes more monsters."
Candy Cane saw my bewildered expression and giggled. "Exactly, Hops. I couldn't have put it any better myself," Candy Cane said, tipping her chin proudly.
"Blah, blah, blah!" Doodle cut in. "This is just some nerdy egghead stuff that nopony gives a flying feather about. When you're out in the snow, knowing what dead pony blew the world up isn't gonna save you when the monsters come out."
I cocked a brow at the filly, unable to contain a petty smirk. "We're like twins, you and I," I said, ruffling up her mane with my hoof. If she kept that up, she'd be like me one day.
A pony who couldn't even remember what M.A.S stood for.
"Red Dawn ... please don't encourage her," Candy Cane groaned.
But Hops could attest. "I care ..."
"All those ponies are dead anyways. It's not like they matter now," Doodle griped. "Can't we just go outside and play in the snow? I've been stuck in this place for weeks now!"
"You know we can't go outside ..." Hops said, her voice merely a trembling whisper. "If we go outside, then those bad Palomino ponies are going to hurt us ...That's why Mom never lets us go outside anymore."
I couldn't feel Candy Cane's glare upon my face anymore. Something in Candy Cane's eyes changed.
"Bad ponies shmonies," her sister snorted. "I'm not afraid of a bunch of fedora-wearing losers. I mean, who wears hats? It's always dark outside anyways. That's like wearing sunglasses at night - and it's always night!"
I gulped, worried about the silence that was coming from Candy Cane.
"Don't underestimate those ponies ..." Hops said, turning to her. "Don't you remember? They're the ones who took Auntie Candy Cane away!"
Someone shuffled on their hooves. I turned to the blackboard. Candy Cane had gone stiff. She gave Hops a strange, knowing look, one ear cocked and the other pinned against the side of her head.
"Candy Cane, are you okay?" I whispered.
She blinked and turned her gaze upon me ... no, through me.
"She's seen what they do to people ... Auntie knows," Hops said, quietly. She looked up at Candy Cane. "Haven't you, auntie? They do bad things to ponies, that's why we can't play outside anymore."
I could hear her breaths, her shallow breaths as she ran a trembling hoof through her mane.
"Yes ... yes, bad ... bad things," she said, softly, her wide eyes fixated at something that wasn't there.
I got to my four hooves and started towards her. She flinched and took a step back, bumping her flank into the chalkboard.
I chewed on my lower lip and asked, as delicately as I could, "Candy Cane?"
The mare shook her head, slowly.
Not at me. She couldn't hear me.
"Oh come on, Hops." Doodle sighed, turned to me, and added, "She doesn't know what she's blabbering on about. The Palominos aren't the boogiemares - they're not just gonna snatch you up off the streets!"
I pursed my lips, trying to ignore them, while hoping that Candy Cane was trying to do the same. I could see it in her eyes. The horror.
She wasn't. She couldn't.
"Yes - they do! When the Palominos get angry, ponies go missing. I don't want to go outside and disappear like the others!" Hops insisted. "It's safer inside where they can't hurt you."
"Ugh," Doodle groaned, waving her off. "I've been locked up in this place for ages. I need to get out here ..."
Candy Cane touched a hoof to her throat, rubbing the matted indentation that used to be her bomb collar.
"I need to get out of here," she whispered.
"If you go outside, we'll never see you again, Doodle ... I'll never see you again," Hops said, eyeing Candy Cane who stood there, fidgeting to herself in silence.
She looked like she was trying to stay afloat above a turbulent sea.
My eyes darted frantically between the two sisters and the panicking mare.
"You're just being a scaredy pony," Doodle sighed. "All you ever do is read books all day and study your stupid history." She shook her head, and tapped her sister's nose. "You need to get out more, Hops."
"SHUT UP DOODLE!" she snapped. I swung my head over to hear the once quiet filly blow up, "Mom's right! I know I'm right! Auntie knows too - that's why she went missing for all those years!" She jabbed a hoof into her sister's chest. "They took her away from us, and if you go out there, they're going to take you away too!"
"GIRLS!" Candy Cane screamed, and they froze, turning towards her. A rivulet of sweat trickled down her brow as she stared back at us. "I-I think Doodle's right. That's enough class for today." She feigned a smile, but it came out as an unsettling grin that made Doodle hug her sister close.
"Why don't you two go and play in your room ... I-I have ... things ... things I need to take care of," she said weakly. She turned away as tears welled up in her eyes.
The two fillies exchanged troubled glances. Hops whimpered softly as she buried her face into her sister's mane.
"What?" I started towards her as she made her way to the door. But she didn't even lose a single step. "Candy Cane, where are you going?"
I reached out with a forehoof, trying to stop her - but she swatted my hoof away and darted around me.
"Hey!" But my cry flew past her deaf ears. Terror flashed across her face - her eyes, and she shoved me away from her and stormed outside, into the hall.
"What are you doing!?" I demanded.
I swore under my breath, clenching my teeth as she fled, galloping away from us. "Candy Cane!" I shouted, trailing behind her.
She reached her door, and threw a glance over her shoulder. I froze upon my hooves. Tears streamed down her cheeks as I met her distant, horrified stare.
"No more ... I don't want it ... no more ... please ..." she babbled, shaking her head furiously as she wreathed the doorknob in her silvery magic.
"Candy Cane ..." I started towards her, slowly. But she just kept shaking her head. "What's gotten over you?" I asked, reaching out with a hoof.
Her eyes darted to my hoof - then to my face.
But she saw someone else.
Candy Cane panicked, flung her door open, and threw herself inside.
I dove after her. "CANDY CANE! WAIT -"
But she hurled the door into my face.
Stars exploded in my eyes as the force of the blow threw me into the floorboards with a jarring thump. "DAMNIT!" I groaned, clenching my muzzle as the girls came dashing after me.
"Son of a ... bitch!" I growled as I felt blood run down my muzzle.
"Mister Dawn!" Doodle cried out, Hops holding on for her dear life as she galloped down the hall. "Did she just hit you!?" she gasped, wide-eyed at the blood that was streaming down my nose.
The two rushed to my side as I let my head roll against the floorboards.
I bit my tongue, fuming; I could feel my headache slowly worming its way back into my skull.
Must've been the doctor's orders - Candy Cane knew best after all. A door to the face kept the headaches away. I cringed as I felt a fire flare up inside my skull. If only that blow had been enough to knock me out.
I tried to stand to my hooves. But something heavy crashed inside her room.
Candy Cane let out an agonized scream.
"CANDY CANE!" I screamed.
I swore under my breath and threw myself at her door, trying desperately to turn the doorknob.
It was locked.
I banged a hoof against it.
"Candy Cane, are you okay!?"
The door quaked from the other side - and I stumbled away from it.
"LEAVE ME ALONE!"
"Candy Cane!?"
"JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!" she screamed - not at me. Not at us. Especially not at the fillies.
Candy Cane shrieked, pounding a hoof into the floor, "WHY CAN'T YOU ALL JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!?"
The girls huddled behind me as we listened to her horrified screams. She sobbed, crying amidst the sound of the pounding floorboards as she struggled against the monsters only she could see.
"No more ..." she pleaded ... "NO MORE!"
She was gone. The Candy Cane that had stood sentinel over my bedside for nearly three days - she was gone. All that time, she had been struggling to hold a roof over her head - but she slipped, and all of it had just came crashing down upon her.
My ears drooped as her screams echoed through my thoughts. I found myself inhaling a breath that wouldn't enter my lungs. I watched the snow turn red around her as she screamed in agony.
"A-are you okay, Mister Dawn?" Hops asked quietly.
I blinked - and kept blinking as my ears perked at Candy Cane's anguished cries. I touched a hoof to my muzzle, and it came away red with my blood.
"Yes ... yes I'm okay," I told them with a nasal moan, pressing a hoof against my nose and tipping my head back. I winced at a twinge that ignited at the base of my horn.
I swore once more - but all I could hear were her cries, drowning out the pain that was thrumming inside my head.
"I'm okay ..." I murmured, looking up at the door she had locked behind her. "But she isn't," I said, loud enough for my own ears.
"What's wrong with Auntie Candy Cane?" I heard Hops ask - a question I wasn't sure I could answer.
I peered at her door in silence, listening to her muffled, strangulated cries, cries she was trying desperately - and failing to contain. I closed my eyes as she choked on her tears, her screams turning into suffocated sobs that echoed through my wilted ears.
'She needs you as much as you need her,' I heard Summer Smiles say.
"Candy Cane ..." I murmured, staring down at the floorboards. I remembered what Grifter told me - the name that had brought that mare to tears.
I clenched my jaw so hard it hurt.
They made her that way.
I glared at my hooves. I hoped Grifter suffered. I hoped he bled out, slowly, and that blackness didn't take him until every last drop of his fucking blood had poured out of his veins.
"Look at what you did, Hops!" Doodle hissed, breaking my dazed stare. She gave Hops a dirty look, and the unicorn filly bowed her head, dejectedly.
My anger flared. Doodle caught my burning glare and looked away, eyeing the floor. She forced herself to meet my eyes, and straightened out, sheepishly.
I shook my head. I needed to get them away from there.
My gaze softened as Hops sniffled pitifully.
"Did ... did she really mean that?" she asked in a tiny voice - and Candy Cane's cries went silent.
I looked over my shoulder at the door that was still closed. All that we could hear now were her muffled, ragged breaths.
"No. She didn't," I whispered. Hops' eyes welled up with tears. "It wasn't your fault," I reassured the filly, gently. I hesitated, but reached out with a hoof and rubbed her shoulder, gently. She just gazed up at me, teary-eyed. "Candy Cane's just ... she just needs some time alone. She's ... been through a lot, and she needs to rest."
I felt that it was for the best. She'd let us in when she was ready.
"Come on. I'll take you to your room," I told Hops. I waited with strained patience until Hops mustered the courage to hold out her legs to me. I almost tried levitating her. With a tedious sigh, I bowed my head to the floor so she could wrap her legs around my neck before I lowered her onto my back.
I turned, and left Candy Cane's locked door behind me.
Once inside the girls' room, I set Hops down onto their bed and helped Doodle climb in with her. My ears perked as I could still hear, faintly, Candy Cane's anguished sobs. They peered out into the hall, worriedly.
"She's still crying ..." Doodle murmured. "Why?"
I looked at them both for a moment, opening my mouth to reply. To explain to them where she'd been trapped all those years. But I just sighed, and closed the door. Candy Cane locked us out for the same reason she locked herself in.
To them, all they heard was a weeping mare. But to me, I heard a tortured mare who was coming apart at the seams.
I envied their innocence. They didn't understand the things they said that set her off - because they'd never seen what the Palominos - what the wasteland could truly do to people.
They were things that Candy Cane probably wished they would never have to see - things she wished she had never seen. And Candy Cane had seen enough.
I clenched my jaw.
Candy Cane didn't believe anyone could help her. Not even Summer Smiles. She believed that it'd be better if we didn't learn about the things the Palominos - the things the wasteland truly did to her.
Just like how it would have been better if my friends and I hadn't opened those doors ... if we hadn't seen nightmare that was waiting for us outside.
The nightmare that Candy Cane had lived every day of her life.
The nightmare she was still living.
That was what Doodle and Hops should never have to see ... what no one should ever have to see.
Those fillies deserved better than she did. Better than we all did. * |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 10 - Never Work Alone - Pt V | *
We had dinner without her. When Summer Smiles returned, she was surprised to find me napping on the floor inside the fillies' room as they slept soundly on the bed. When I left the girls and trotted down the hall, not a single sound came from Candy Cane's room.
Summer Smiles hoped that the worst hadn't happened. That Candy Cane hadn't 'opted out'.
When we came to her door, we were relieved to find that we could still hear her breaths coming through the door's wooden panel. Summer Smiles was a thousand times more relieved than I was, more than I could ever be for a mare I only met four days ago.
Dinner was quiet. But the food was fresh and delicious: boiled carrot and potato stew, but without Candy Cane, the girls were dull and inattentive, eating their stew in quietude. Not much was spoken, since the only question that ran circles in our heads already had an answer to it: she'd come downstairs when she was ready.
I hesitated, but I asked her if she was going to unlock the room and check on her. Summer Smiles had apparently tried before dinner. With no success.
Afterwards, I retired to my room and laid down on the bed, pulling the blankets up to my chin.
I wondered what Candy Cane was thinking. She had her scars - that much I knew. Candy Cane was like a piece of lustrous metal, its sheen diminished by hundreds of scratches and grooves upon its surface. But in the right light ... around those fillies, she could still be as bright as the most untarnished steel.
I sighed, shifting beneath the covers. Innocent conversation had been enough to make her snap ... to snap out of it and become the Candy Cane she'd been hiding away all that time.
The 'real her' terrified me. It terrified me because of what might happen to us both if I followed that Candy Cane outside into the merry, wintry wasteland. I needed her. I needed her lucid, capable, and sane, because without her, I'd surely drop dead outside that inn's triple-locked doors. If she 'woke up' and broke apart out there ... one of us was gonna die.
I closed my eyes and shook my head. A darker part of me told myself that that dead pony wasn't going to be me. It couldn't be me. My priorities were in the right place. If I died, my stable died. But Candy Cane ... if she died ...
I rolled around, unable to sleep.
All that time ... she'd been worried about me lapsing from consciousness and falling to my death. But I should have been the least of her worries. I told myself that she needed to get her priorities straight. Candy Cane was a time bomb waiting to blow - and she knew it, and she was trying everything she could do ... by herself ... to keep everything from falling apart.
And if she finally did, I couldn't help but think of the worst.
At my stable, I'd heard of some ponies ... killing themselves. Peach Petals called it Caged Bird Syndrome, ponies who couldn't take being locked behind the stable doors any longer. They 'opted out'. They 'opted out' of a world they thought they couldn't live in, anymore. They wanted to be somewhere else. And 'here' wasn't 'here'.
Maybe I'd find her with her legs slit open, waiting for darkness to take her on her bloody death bed.
Maybe I'd find her in a coma, her organs failing from a Med-X overdose.
Maybe I'd just find her hanging from the ceiling.
Those were all things I'd heard of at home. And the more I thought about it, the more I feared for her life. The more I wanted to care. Not just because she could get me killed, but because somepony needed another pony as much as he needed her.
I remembered what she told me in that sinkhole.
She wanted to help save the people of a city that didn't even give a single shit about her. It didn't make sense to me. But she cared more about the people around her than herself.
She cared ... about me.
I rolled around in bed, not knowing what to do. I never had to deal with the angst my friends experienced growing up; I was too busy doing my own thing to give a single shit. I just wasn't great at dealing with those things. With other peoples' 'feelings'.
I was an engineer, not a psychologist.
It was a problem rooted in me. I took a lot of things - and a lot of people for granted. I guess I just thought that they'd always be there, whether they cried or whined or griped all day long.
And Dew Drops. I neglected Dew Drops' fantasies and desires, simply because I didn't care enough to humor her. I took her for granted.
And now she was dead.
As I lay there, I realized that I was taking Candy Cane for granted too. Besides, I knew that if she decided to off herself, I wouldn't be able to last one more day out in the wasteland by myself. I figured that it'd be in my best interest to keep her alive as long as I could. I needed to find the Orphanage, after all, and I couldn't do it alone. Not without her.
But that still made her my responsibility.
'Goddesses damnit.'
I thought about what better ponies would do in a situation like this. I thought about what Dew Drops would've done in a situation like this. If only she was still around ... if only I'd died and a better pony had taken my place, maybe Dew Drops still would've met Candy Cane. Candy Cane would've had a shoulder to lean on, and she'd never have to work alone.
I could hear, faintly, the sound of someone sobbing through my bedroom's chipped, plaster walls. I closed my eyes, and for a second I thought I was in Spring Song's cottage, Dew Drops' cries echoing through my ears. I left the relative warmth of my bed, and cracked open my door. My ears perked, listening for her voice.
It was quiet. I felt my way through the darkness, knowing that Candy Cane's door was just across from mine. I pressed an ear against its surface, and listened for what seemed like hours. I listened to her muffled sobs and the sounds of someone rolling around restlessly in bed.
I sat there outside her room, my back pressed against her door. Listening. Eventually, I sat up and stared at her door with weary eyes. I reached out with a hoof and tapped it warily against its surface.
"Candy Cane ... ?" I whispered.
Her strangulated cries cut to an eerie silence.
I waited, chewing on my lower lip.
"Candy Cane?" I tried again, knocking on her door once more.
Nothing.
I sighed after several minutes of waiting, lowering myself to my haunches. Eventually, her cries resumed because she thought that I was gone.
But I was still there. Waiting for her to let me in. *
The next day, Summer Smiles and I thought it would be a good idea to leave Candy Cane a bowl of food outside her room. She hadn't eaten since lunch, yesterday, and she had to be starving. I figured that her hunger would eventually force her outside. She couldn't hole herself up in there forever ... unless starving herself to death was what she wanted.
But she still had a promise to keep, and so did I.
With a bowl of pre-war beans sitting on a tray slung around my neck, I knocked on her door.
"Caaaaaaandy Cane, I've got a healthy, slightly overcooked serving of pre-war beans for ya!" I said with the fakest smile and the cheeriest voice as I could muster. I lowered my head at the tray around my neck and took a big whiff of the two-hundred year old sludge and gagged.
"Blech - ahem. Mmm, delicious. What a delicious breakfast," I coughed.
She replied with more silence. Alright. That was understandable. She must've smelled the thing from a mile away.
I sighed, and just left the bowl at her door before returning downstairs. I didn't know how I was even able to stomach those beans the last time. It didn't smell so bad when it was half frozen. Didn't taste so bad either - if you just got over the smell.
Sitting at the table with the others, we prayed, and began eating in silence. After several minutes of somber quietude, Hops' sheepish voice broke the ice.
"Is ... is Auntie Candy Cane ever going to come outside?" she asked, faintly. I looked down at my hooves. Hops sounded lost, and only Candy Cane could lead her back home.
"I wish she'd play with us ..." Doodle sighed, her ears drooping. "We can't play Oubliettes and Ogres without a game master."
Summer Smiles and I stared at each other hopelessly.
"She'll come out when she's ready, hun," Summer Smiles said softly as she watched the staircase.
I nodded, "She'll have to come out and eat sooner or later." I spooned another mouthful of beans into my mouth, ignoring the smell and swallowing the okay-tasting sludge.
After breakfast, I found myself outside Candy Cane's door once again. I pressed an ear against it and listened for a sign of life. It took a few minutes, but I heard someone sniffle. I wrinkled my nose and sniffled too. The bowl of beans was still sitting on the floor.
"Candy Cane? Can you hear me?"
I waited for almost a minute. Apparently not. That, or she was ignoring me.
"Candy Cane, I know you can hear me," I said. I rested my forehead against her door, staring at the floorboards. "I ... I would ask if you're okay, but I know you aren't." I pursed my lips, waiting for a response ... for something. "Candy Cane?"
Nothing.
"Listen ... the girls miss you. They've been asking for you ... you sort of just left us out in the water that day. And Summer Smiles is worried sick about you. She wants to help you," I told the door. "I ... I ..." I hesitated, sighing. 'Damnit.' What else could I have done? I was just about as helpless as she was. I couldn't save her from the ghosts only she could see.
I knew more about the wasteland than I knew about Candy Cane.
What could I do? What would Dew Drops do?
I took a deep breath and exhaled, my brow furrowing. I did all I could.
I tried.
"Listen, I don't know what happened to you at the Scullion. I don't know what to say to make you open this door ... and I don't know how to help you, either." I closed my eyes, and placed a hoof against its surface. "But ... please, let us in. Let us help you. Just let us try," I begged her.
I thought I heard the floorboards creak on the other side. But the door remained closed between us.
I took a seat and waited, basking in the beany stench that permeated the hall. I waited for her and listened. Minutes passed by, and then hours. Summer Smiles' family ate at least twice a day. But at around the time I'd usually have lunch at '91, Summer Smiles called me downstairs and hoofed me two ruby red apples. One for me, and one for Candy Cane.
"Did she come outside?" Summer Smiles asked me.
I just shook my head, eyeing the floor. I was beginning to think that she wasn't ever going to come out.
"Just ... don't stop trying," she told me.
I gave her a knowing stare. I hadn't forgotten what she had asked of me.
"I won't."
Upstairs, I knocked on her door.
"Candy Cane ... I know you're hungry," I began. I glanced at the two apples that lay upon the tray around my neck. "It's 1300 hours and you haven't even had anything to eat since yesterday." Silence. I pleaded with her, "You need to eat, or you're going to starve."
I pressed an ear against her door, and again, I thought I heard the floorboards creak on the other side. "Candy Cane, please, open this door," I begged her. "You haven't eaten in almost ... two days."
More silence. I exhaled a long-winded breath.
"We want ... to help you." I could feel Summer Smiles' worried eyes upon me. "We want to help you, but we can't do that unless you open this door ... so please open this door." Doodle and Hops stuck their heads outside their room. But Candy Cane was still nowhere to be seen.
"Candy Cane ..." I begged, banging my head against her door, "Please stop ignoring us!"
She kept ignoring us.
"Candy Cane!" She replied with another faint sniffle. "Do you want us to help you?" No answer. "Do you want us to help you!? Or do you want to starve? Is that what you want?" My forehoof rapped against her door.
"Candy Cane! You need to eat! Summer Smiles left you some food - food those fillies could've eaten - and you just left it here!" I waited in vain for a response.
Summer Smiles bit her lip and waited.
The girls inched outside, and waited, too.
But all she gave us was more silence.
I stomped a hoof into the floor. "FINE! STARVE! Starve ... you can just fuckin' starve," I muttered, setting the tray of fruit on the floor next to her bowl of cold beans.
I glared at the door. If she didn't want my help ... then ... then ... I felt Summer Smiles' eyes upon me. I felt the girls' eyes upon me. The two fillies hurried inside their room and shut the door. Summer Smiles just shook her head, and started down the stairs.
Me? I sighed and planted my rump into the floorboards, thumping my back against her door.
I sat there.
And I waited. *
Dinner came, and Candy Cane was still nowhere to be seen. I took her meal of steamed carrots, and a few slices of bread that hadn't risen in the oven, upstairs. I left them outside her door. I knocked, waited a few seconds, and returned downstairs.
Waiting any longer than that seemed futile.
After saying grace, we ate again in silence. The two girls didn't look at me. They were afraid. Doodle and Hops were still shaken from earlier. Neither of them had ever had a male figure in their life. Hearing me yell must've been as horrifying as the first time I heard a bloodletter roar.
I watched them as they poked at their food, staring silently down at their plates. I hated myself for that.
But scaring those children was only part of it. To yell at Candy Cane ... to yell at a traumatized mare ... it made me feel so rotten on the inside.
At '91 we were taught to respect mares, and to respect our mothers, and our mothers' mothers. They suffer the most in life. Especially out there in the wasteland ... a wasteland that wasted no time in breaking in every deserving Goddesses-damned mare that so much as stumbled in the snow.
I shouldn't have raised my voice at her. Not with the girls watching. Not even at all. Candy Cane needed patience and tender loving care that I knew I wasn't capable of giving ... to anyone.
I couldn't even stomach my food because my belly was already full with writhing maggots that made my stomach churn.
"I'm sorry ..." I told them, resting my head on a hoof and hiding my face in shame.
The silence was long and brutal as the girls avoided my eyes. I deserved it.
But Summer Smiles' voice broke the air of stagnant quietude. She smiled at me, wearily, pouring me a cup of water and sliding it across the table.
"Red Dawn ... fetlocks off the table, please." *
Outside Candy Cane's door I waited, her carrots, bread, and water sitting on the floor next to me. Every now and then I'd hear a sniffle, a cough, or a sigh. But not a single word came from the broken mare's lips as I remained outside her door, waiting for her to let me in.
I wouldn't give up. I was Red Dawn, the fucking fixer pony, and I fucking fixed things. Dew Drops might've understood how to take machines apart and put them back together in one shot ... but I wasn't a one-shotter. I was more of a twenty-shotter, and twenty radios later I finally understood how to disassemble them and build them back up and repair them - good as new.
I didn't give up, not on anything. Not on anyone. Otherwise I would've killed myself and been done with it a long time ago. I would've told Night Sky to fuck herself, laid down in that grave I dug for myself and just waited to die.
I wouldn't give up on that mare. I wouldn't ... I couldn't ... just like how I couldn't give up on my stable, or my friends, or my own mother.
I promised myself that I'd build Candy Cane back up too.
With a sigh, I pulled out my canteen from a pocket in my jumpsuit and took a swig. I shook it, listening to the icy water slosh around inside. I set it down beside me, satisfied that it was full enough to last me an entire night outside Candy Cane's door. I figured I'd be there for a while.
For however long it took.
I let my head roll against her door as I stared up at the ceiling, watching as the light bulbs turned off and the candles and lanterns blew out. I watched as Summer Smiles and the fillies trotted past me and their doors shut closed. Seconds as long as minutes, and minutes as long as hours, and hours as long as days passed by.
I waited.
And I waited.
And I waited.
As the night dragged on, I fought to keep my eyes open. But the night had already taken me. They fluttered closed, and I fell asleep and time sped past me once again.
Then the walls collapsed around me. I screamed as I fell backward and thumped my head against the floorboards. I lay there in a daze, and found myself looking up and into Candy Cane's bewildered grays. My eyes darted back and forth in confusion, chasing away my drowsiness and forcing my mind back to clarity.
"Well, well, well," I said, finally, looking up at her as I lay at her hooves. "Look who finally decided to come out."
A silvery magical field engulfed me and, with a hoof for extra support, she helped me back to my hooves.
We stared at each other for more heartbeats than I found comfortable.
When she finally spoke, her voice was low, gravelly, and hoarse.
"How long have you been out there?" she rasped.
I sighed, scratching my mane. On the floor, her dinner still sat. Cold.
"Too long," I told her. I fetched her meal, slinging the tray around my neck. I looked back and saw that she was eyeing the food languidly. "Can I ... can I come in?"
She turned, saying nothing, and slunk back into the darkness of her room. I frowned through the shadows, and felt the wall for the light switch, flicking it on and bathing us in dull, yellow light.
I took one step forward and nearly tripped over an overturned chair. I stopped and looked around. It looked like a bomb exploded in there. Her room was a disaster. There was a table flipped over in the middle. Papers were strewn about, and scribbled on them were an assortment of aborted sketches, and ... mindless chicken scratch. Her blankets were on the floor, and poking out from under their fabrics was the vodka bottle that had gone missing that one night.
It was empty.
Candy Cane reached for it, and found that there was no more left to drink.
"Fuck," I heard her mutter before she tossed it aside. My ears perked at that. That was the second time I heard her swear since I first met her.
"Candy Cane, we've been worried about you for days now," I told her, her back turned to me. I set down atop her bedside table the tray of food she neglected to eat. "Why'd you finally decide to come out?" I chuckled, adding, "Didn't expect me there, did you?"
She sighed, her voice devoid of ... anything.
"No. I didn't." I heard her stomach growl, but she didn't cringe or double over. It couldn't have been first she was starved of food. "I ... needed to pee ..." Candy Cane murmured, much to my disbelief.
"Sure ... you did drink a lot of that vodka," I grinned, but my cheeriness was lost on her. "You find all of that yourself? I thought Summer Smiles didn't have anymore drinks."
She just stood there, frozen. I rubbed my eyes with a hoof, shaking my head.
"Candy Cane ... talk to me," I said, holding out a hoof. "What happened that day when you just walked out on us?"
Candy Cane muttered something incomprehensible.
"Huh?"
She did it again, this time, somewhat louder.
"Candy Cane?"
She swung her head over her shoulder, her eyes bloodshot and welling with tears.
"Those monsters ..."
I took a step towards her, and she flinched, clenching her eyes shut.
"What monsters?" My brow furrowed. "The Palominos? There aren't any here ... we're safe in this inn, you said it yourself."
She shook her head.
"Safe ... safe ... no ... nopony's ever safe. Not when they're inside your head, and every time you open your eyes, you see them around you, all over you ... inside you," she choked, trembling g like she was going to drill a hole through the ground. Her shoulders began to quake as she tried to suffocate her sobs.
She couldn't. Candy Cane turned to me, her teeth bared and tears streaming down her cheeks. "I never left," she rasped, "I never left the Scullion. I'm still there, in my head, in my dreams - every waking hour of the fucking day, I'm in the Scullion, and I can never leave."
I reached out with a hoof, but she flinched away from me.
"Grifter's dead. Your collar's gone ... no one can ever hurt you like that ever again."
"NO!" she screamed, pounding her hoof into the floorboards. I took a step back. "YOU WOULDN'T UNDERSTAND!" Candy Cane shrieked. "You don't know the things they did to me, what those monsters did!" She collapsed to her haunches, burying her face in the blankets that were strewn across the floor.
"I bled for them! They cut me open!" she cried, her hooves hanging before her eyes as if they were covered in blood. "They ... took from me ... more than you'll ever know. More than you've ever lost," she hissed, her words cutting into my heart like razor blades.
I approached her, my head hung low.
"Candy Cane ..." I murmured as she wept into her bed sheets. I wasn't even sure if she could hear me. I lowered a hoof to her shoulder, but she just slapped it away.
"DON'T TOUCH ME!"
I cringed, pulling it away.
"I haven't slept for more than two hours a day in five days, Red Dawn ..."
"Why?" I whispered, gently.
She covered her eyes with her hooves, shaking her head.
"Because when I dream ... I see them. Because when I lie awake in bed, when I stand idle, my mind wanders to places I want to forget. I want to forget ... I want to forget it all so bad," she cried, choking on her words as sobs forced their way out of her lips. She looked up at me, her face contorted with anguish of the likes I had never seen. "I don't want to remember, Red Dawn, I don't want to remember anymore... and when I do ... I remember every second of it. Every face, every voice ... every name they've ever called me."
She lowered her head between her hooves, and hid her face away from me. Candy Cane sobbed, crying softly into her blankets.
I knelt beside her and did the only thing I could do. I wrapped my legs around her and squeezed her tight. I felt her quaking hooves curl around me. I held her there as she wept into my shoulder, trembling and crying like a beaten animal.
"I've ... I-I've tried to kill myself so many times, but I could never do it," she whispered, turning her head slowly to a kitchen knife that was lying atop her desk. "What's the point ... when you've got nothing to lose, and nothing to gain? There's nowhere I'm going but hell, anyways."
"No." I held her close. "You're wrong, Candy Cane," I said, softly. "Nothing to lose? What about Doodle and Hops? To them, they'd lose everything. Their mother's dead, Candy Cane, and they love you like you've been with them since they were born. Do those fillies mean anything to you?"
She clenched her eyes shut, crying softly.
"Candy Cane ... I barely know you, and I barely know them. But I do know that they've got you to lose. Any moron with a brain can see that. They love you so much; they adore you, I know they do," I told her. "You had them worried to the bone these last two days."
She sniffled, pitifully, "But I just closed the door and pushed them away."
"But they never gave up on you," I told her, "What does that say to you?"
Candy Cane's eyes fluttered open and I felt her legs slowly wrap around me and we hugged once more. "Neither did you," she whispered.
"I don't give up on anyone, Candy Cane," I said, remembering the promise I made to Dew Drops, and the words Box Cutter said to me the night we lost Amber Fields. It would never be over until all of us were six feet under.
"It'll never be over until you're six feet under, Candy Cane."
She pulled away and wiped her eyes vigorously.
"Why do you care, Red Dawn?"
I clenched my jaw, and curled my hooves tightly around her shoulders.
"An old pony told me once ... the closest thing to being cared for, was to care for someone else," I whispered. "And just maybe ... someone would care about me too. When my friends died, and left me out here alone, I thought that'd I'd join them. But out here, I realize that people die because they die alone. And I need you, Candy Cane ... I care about you - because if I don't ... because if Summer Smiles doesn't ... who will?"
She closed her eyes and bowed her head.
"You're right ..." she murmured. "They're the closest thing to a family I have. And you ... you're the closest thing to a friend I have right now."
"We'll be traveling together soon ... that is if Summer Smiles tells us where to find the Orphanage." I scoffed, "We're all we've got. We're in this together now."
"Thanks, Red Dawn ... for that. I'm glad that you haven't given up on me yet." She smiled for the first time in three days, letting out a weak chuckle. Candy Cane exhaled, and I felt her legs slacken.
"Candy Cane?" I asked, worriedly.
The mare twitched and she looked around, confused.
"Huhn ... huh? What?"
I smiled. "Thought I lost you for a second."
"No, no ... I'm just ... so tired." She bit her lower lip and cringed, her stomach begging to be put out of its misery. "And I'm a little hungry."
I got up, lifted Candy Cane to her hooves, and propped her up on her bed. She didn't weigh much. She sat down and leaned on one slender leg, watching me languidly as I brought to her her tray of food. I sat there next to her as she ate. Within minutes, she'd devoured all the food we'd saved for her. I thought that maybe if she ate as much as she did just, and more, maybe she wouldn't be so skinny.
The mare sighed, hanging her head.
"I still don't want to sleep. I'm afraid I'll dream again."
I thought for a moment, resting my chin on my hoof. You couldn't drag a pony to a river and make her drink. There would be no way to make that mare go to sleep, unless she went to sleep herself.
I thought for a moment.
"I could stay awake with you, if you want?"
She shook her head, "You need to sleep your off burnout -"
"Oh come on, Candy Cane, I've gotten more sleep than you this whole week. If anypony needs to sleep, it's you. Besides, I can spend a few more hours awake."
"Alright," she sighed, too tired to argue with me. "Your loss." She sat against her bed's headboard.
"Heh, now I'm the one stalking your bedside," I chuckled.
"Oh hah-hah," she drawled, a weak grin creasing her lips. She sounded like she was trying as hard as she could to stay awake. But her smile told me she was someplace else. A happier place.
We laughed it off as I laid down at the foot of her bed, and she against her headboard. She stifled a yawn, and sighed, staring up at the ceiling.
"All those nights I was watching you -"
"Stalking me, you mean?"
She chuckled and rolled her eyes.
"All those nights, I heard you whispering," she began, softly. "Sometimes I'd hear you cry in your sleep. You kept saying somepony's name ... Dew Drops. Dew Drops. Dew Drops." She tilted her head slightly. "Who is he?"
"She," I said, quietly.
I turned my eyes low, saddened. Her name was an open wound that would never close.
"Who is she, Red Dawn?"
I sighed, my eyes fluttering closed. And in the darkness of my eyelids, I saw her face. Her blue coat, and her teal mane, and her cool gray eyes, and her adorable smile. In my head, I heard her voice. I heard the last words she said to me.
'Run!' But I was tired of running. From her. From the pain. I bit my lip, hesitating.
"She was my friend."
Candy Cane's ears drooped. "Was?"
It was difficult to talk about her out loud. But Candy Cane and I both carried burdens upon our shoulders. But she had bled her heart out to me, and now I shared with her the burden she no longer had to carry alone. I was tired of carrying mine alone, too.
I relented.
"She was my friend. One of my best friends. I loved her ... no," I said, suddenly. "I still love her. She was with me when I left my stable, and so were Box Cutter, Amber Fields, Lightning Twirl, Dew Drops, and Star Glint. I watched them all die. I watched Dew Drops die."
The Candy Cane I'd seen at my bedside slowly resurfaced back to the light. "What happened?"
"Snow furies. Tortured Amber ... blew her up in our faces ... skinned Star alive, and wore him like a jacket ... blew Box's hooves off - dragged him away ... shot Twirl out of the sky, hacked her to pieces ... then ... t-then her," I choked.
"They took her away from me. I wasn't strong ... or fast enough. There were too many of them." I dabbed at the bedsheets beneath me with a hoof. "I had her in my hooves. But those damned monsters tore us apart ... tore her apart. I tried pulling her away with my magic, but my magic failed me when I needed it the most," I murmured. My heart leaped inside my chest as I remembered the moment I lost her. The moment she died. "I failed her when she needed me he most.
"Dew ... Dew Drops ..." I whispered, as agony writhed inside my heart. "Dew Drops told me to run - to run and never look back. So I did ... because it was all I could do, and if I died, then my stable would've died with me." I shuddered, fighting back my tears. "I never even got to tell her I loved her ... one last time."
Candy Cane look at me with tender eyes.
"I know what it's like to lose somepony you love," she said, quietly, "I've lost a lot of ponies I've loved ... and I still haven't let go. I can't ... I don't think I ever can, because I love them so much." She stared off into space, reminiscing of days gone by. "You know ... that's the last thing you think of them when they go. 'I love you' ... I ... I believe that's the last thing they think too." Candy Cane hesitated, but asked, tenderly, "Did she love you?"
I clenched my eyes shut and lowered my head.
"More than I ever knew," I whispered.
Candy Cane smiled sweetly.
"Then she thought of you too, Red Dawn."
I shook my head slowly, murmuring, "I just wished we had more time." My eyes gravitated to the shifting shadows we casted against the walls as the lights flickered. For a moment, my eyes thought they saw a different pony's shadow against the wall where mine was supposed to be. My eyes fluttered closed.
I told her about how we had went to school together, worked together, and grew up together. I told her how I took her for granted and how she still loved me anyways. But the more I talked about her, the more I wished that she was still there. The mare of my life ... I wished she was still there ...
"I bet she was brilliant, this Dew Drops - a once in a life-time kind of pony," she said, smiling at me once more.
"A once in a life-time pony ... yes ... and I'll never see her again. I dream about her often. Of better days ..."
Candy Cane averted her gaze and ran her hoof through the sheets. "It's good to dream of better days when the days get darker ... I know that all too well," Candy Cane said softly, "But if you died, I never would've met you, Red Dawn." She looked me in the eyes. "If I never met you ... I'd still have a collar around my neck ... I never would've been able to see Summer, Doodle, or Hops ever again."
I fell silent, hanging my head as I let out a trembling sigh.
"You're ... you're right, Candy Cane."
I took my canteen and held it up in the air.
"To better days ... to life," I said to her, echoing the very words Night Sky had told me, the words that had kept me going through the horrors I'd endured so far.
I took a swig, and held it out to her. She stared at it for a moment, and levitated it to her lips. When she was finished, Candy Cane poured what little was left across the floorboards. "For all the ponies who aren't here with us ... and all the ponies we've loved ..." She looked at me. "... and for all the ponies we still love."
My smile was bittersweet as I watched the water turn to frost. But the light in Candy Cane's eyes looked warm enough to melt away the entire wasteland.
"Thanks, Candy Cane."
She hesitated for a moment, her brows furrowing as her voice quieted, sheepishly.
"Like you said: we're in this together now, Red Dawn. And you can call me Cane. Please. Just call me Cane."
For once a real smile stretched inexplicably across my lips.
"Alright, Cane," I chuckled, softly. "Ponies call me Red, by the way."
She yawned, "Red ... you should probably sleep now ... we've been up for hours."
I rolled my eyes. "I've had enough of ... of ..." I looked up and she was slumped against her headboard, out cold. "Sleep."
In the corner of my eye, I saw Summer Smiles, peering through the doorway. We met eyes briefly, and she smiled back, thankfully, for doing what she could not. *
It was early morning, 0400 hours. Summer Smiles and I sat at the bar, two shot glasses of water at our hooves.
"I've been thinking," she began, sloshing around the icy water. I turned to her, curiously, the shadows playing across her face in the candlelight. "I was right about you, you know?
I cocked an eyebrow at her.
"What?"
She rested her head on her hoof, watching the dancing candlelight.
"I know you don't agree with me. I see it in your face everytime I say this ... but I think you're a good pony, Red Dawn."
I rolled my eyes. "You don't know half the shit I've done and allowed to happen just to get here alive, Summer Smiles," I muttered, watching the candles flicker.
"Good ponies need to win, Red Dawn. Good ponies gotta win someday ... somehow."
I sat there in silence, my eyes hidden in the shadows.
"Good ponies don't win, Summer Smiles ... they die."
She laughed at me. "Then try not to die ... Red ..." Summer Smiles held my shoulder, reassuringly. "You're a decent pony, Red, you and Cane. And I think I can trust you, too. The resistance needs ponies like you two. You might think good ponies are far in between in this city, but ..."
She slid to me a map, titled the 'Inner City'. Scrawled all over it were notes, coordinates, tunnels, supply points, and more that I couldn't comprehend at a glance.
"... but you'll find good ponies like you in the Orphanage."
Footnote: Level 6
XP: 500/3450 |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 11 - Casting Shadows - Pt I | Chapter 11
Casting Shadows
"All that remained were the shattered, howling jaws of ponies long dead ... Their jealous ghosts screamed at me to tuck my tail between my legs and return to the home that they had been denied."
Focusing warily, my horn glowed and I carefully levitated to myself my saddlebags. With a grunt, I hurled them over my back and fastened their straps as I waited by the door. Through Candy Cane's nagging, care, and days of sleep, my headaches had subsided.
I was ready to hurl myself into the breach once more.
Now we were saying our goodbyes. Hopefully not for the last time.
The last time I said goodbye ... I lost so much. So had Summer Smiles and the girls. They were reluctant to let Candy Cane go again after the short time she'd spent with them. It wasn't enough. It would never be enough, not when the wasteland could take any of us away at any moment.
Summer Smiles, standing beside me at the front door, fidgeted nervously upon her hooves. She looked at me worriedly, her lips pursed and her brows furrowed.
I knew what she was thinking.
'What if we never came back?'
She loved Candy Cane. Summer Smiles watched the mare with a longing stare, biting her lower lip as she struggled to bring forth words. Words that she hoped would not be the last she'd ever say to her closest friend.
But as Candy Cane approached, fillies in tow, Hops stole the words from Summer Smiles' mouth.
"Please don't leave us again, Auntie Candy Cane ..." Hops whimpered.
Candy Cane clenched her eyes shut and steeled herself as she levitated Hops off her back. The filly floated sluggishly to an open chair, Candy Cane's magical field lingering for several precious seconds before she finally let go.
Hops' lower lip quivered as she held out her forelegs. "Please don't go ..."
Candy Cane sniffled and lowered herself to the floor so that they could see eye to eye. She ran a hoof through the filly's blonde mane, touching the girl's cheek as she swallowed her tears.
Doodle raced over to the mare and hugged her foreleg tight, unwilling to let go.
"I'm sorry, girls ... I'll be back. We'll be back."
"But what if you don't!?" Doodle whinnied, her eyes welling up with tears.
Candy Cane ruffled her mane with her other hoof, smiling warmly. Her horn glowed and she lifted Doodle to Hops' chair and hugged them both. The fillies whimpered, squeezing her tight with their little legs as Candy Cane forced herself to let them go.
"I will ... I'll never leave you three ever again ..." I heard her whisper, looking both fillies in the eye.
Summer Smiles bowed her head to the floorboards, and I watched as her shoulders began to quake. I rested a gentle hoof on her shoulder consolingly.
"Do you promise?" Hops cried, softly, burying her face into the curls of her candy cane mane.
There was a long pause as Candy Cane exhaled a trembling, uncertain breath.
"I promise."
Candy Cane stood to her four hooves, clenching her jaw and swallowing her sorrow once more as the fillies stared up at her with their wide, teary eyes. Doodle stepped off the chair and helped Hops onto her back, following closely as Candy Cane started toward the door.
Summer Smiles sucked in a breath of air and straightened her spine. She unslung a short-barreled submachine gun from around her neck. With a tap of her hoof, the underbarrel flashlight flickered to life, and with another press of a button, it went dark.
She sighed softly, closing her yes for a moment before holding it out to Candy Cane. Her eyes darted to the weapon, then to the mare holding it.
Summer Smiles leaned in and whispered in Candy Cane's ear, "It was Sugar Rum's ... she left it with me in case somepony broke in and I needed to protect the foals." Summer Smiles held it higher, her hoof trembling beneath its weight - not from the weight of the weapon, but the burden of truth she'd kept from Sugar Rum's daughters. The mare blinked away fresh tears.
"She'd want you to have it."
Candy Cane's horn glowed and she swirled a silvery field around it, holding it before her, barrel pointed to the floorboards. "But what about you? What if somepony ..."
Summer Smiles poked her muzzle into her winter coat and tugged at a pistol that was tucked away inside.
"We'll be safe here." She looked at us both, but her teary eyes lingered upon Candy Cane.
"Cane ..." Summer Smiles began, but before she could say any more, Candy Cane took her off guard and wrapped her legs around her. Summer Smiles tensed and stood just there, petrified as Candy Cane squeezed her tight.
"Cane ..." she whispered again as her legs slowly found their way around her.
The two closed their eyes and swayed back and forth.
"I'm sorry," Summer Smiles sobbed into Candy Cane's shoulder.
Candy Cane shook her head. "Don't be. Please don't ..." She pulled away so that they could see eye to eye. "You've been so good to us ... to me. You're one of my best friends, Summer. Nothing can ever change that."
The mare nodded, sucking in her tears as Candy Cane hugged her once more.
When the two finally pulled apart, Summer Smiles' forelegs still hung from her shoulders.
"You be safe out there, okay?"
"I will," Candy Cane replied. She hesitated for a moment, brushing a bob of her candy cane mane out of her eye. Candy Cane clasped her hooves around Summer Smiles cheeks, leaned forward and planted a kiss on her forehead. Summer Smiles looked startled, wobbling dreamily on her hooves as Candy Cane turned, and started for the door.
Summer Smiles shook her head furiously, blinked, and stopped her just as Candy Cane's horn began wreathing the door's locks in her magical grip.
"You'll need these," she said, hoofing her a map to the Inner City, and several magazines for her submachine gun. Candy Cane took both, and tucked them into her peacoat.
"Thank you."
"And you, Red." She hoofed me a thick, hooded wintercoat to wear over my security barding, and a flashlight of my own. I thanked her for the rather thick winter wear, shrugging off my bags and buttoning it across my chest, before hurling my belongings over my back once more.
With a clack, clank, and a creak, the front door lurched open and the wasteland's unforgiving breeze engulfed us once again. My flesh bristled with goosebumps, and I shivered inside my barding.
I reached out with a leg, ready to take a step outside - but hesitated. It was like dipping my hoof into a body of frigid water, and I recoiled at the wind's chilling touch.
Candy Cane buttoned her peacoat tight and walked out the door without a flinch.
I steeled myself to follow her, but a hoof clenched my shoulder, tightly.
I turned, and met Summer Smiles' stern gaze.
"You keep her safe, Red," she told me - no - ordered me.
I turned and opened my mouth to say yes, to tell her that I would, that I would protect her like I protected my friends.
My dead, dead friends.
But instead, I nodded, and walked out into the howling darkness. *
The wind screamed outside, shrieking through the twisted mass of metal and concrete that sheltered us from the blizzard. The whiteout had rendered the world outside nearly impossible to see, and I was thankful that Candy Cane's wits and forethought had pushed us indoors before the storm actually hit.
Tucked away inside of a questionably sturdy shelter beneath the rubble of an ancient Ponevan ruin, I shivered uncontrollably.
Our cozy little shelter was a small crevice just big enough for the both of us to squeeze into. A crevice tucked into the rubble of some unfortunate building that had collapsed above us long ago. My eyes glanced nervously at the ceiling every time I thought I heard the rubble tremble. Sitting inside of a crumbling hole in the ground was the last place I wanted to be stuck in during a blizzard.
But then again, I had no choice.
Inside, thanks once again to Candy Cane's survival skills we were able to build a small snow shelter by digging in a little bit more. With a vestibule to keep the cold air three feet below us, a raised platform to sit on, and a bunch of rocks to block the entrance, I kept telling myself that being in there was much better than out there.
Because Goddesses help whoever was still outside. The last time I was in a whiteout, the storm had ripped a friend out from my hooves. Out there, in the blizzard, you were on your own. You couldn't see, you couldn't stand, and you could only just barely hear yourself think.
Even in there, tucked away from the brunt of the storm, it was almost the same, trapped inside of a pitch black hole in the ground.
Shivering, I fumbled for the flashlight Summer Smiles gave me. But I thought against it. Flashlights ran out of battery, but my PipBuck, while dimmer, didn't. Sighing, I pawed incessantly at my PipBuck's interface with a shivering hoof. I missed the right button a few times, my uncontrollable shaking throwing off my aim. But with a curse on the tip of my tongue, and a barely audible clack, I illuminated Candy Cane and I with my PipBuck's teal glow.
I thought that maybe, if my screen's color was orange, I'd have felt a little warmer. I would've even taken green. Though I wasn't even sure if balefire alone could melt that winter wonderland.
It was a deeply-penetrating kind of cold. It stabbed deep, through your clothes, your coat, your flesh. My hooves and joints were feeling stiff. My ears and my nose were almost numb. I could feel it seeping into my eye sockets - I could feel it freezing my eyeballs!
Even beneath all that barding, I was only warm enough to be alive. And even then, I was still shivering like I was going to drill a hole into the ground.
I clenched my eyes shut and sat on my hooves, hoping my buttcheeks would be enough to warm them. Truly I was desperate to come to my ass for help.
Turns out they weren't much help.
I glanced at Candy Cane as she pulled her legs to her chest and huddled in the corner, tucking her muzzle away behind her collar. "So," I began, shivering uncontrollably, "I-is it just me, or is it weird how everyone keeps saying 'everypony'?"
Candy Cane just lifted an eyebrow at me.
I wheezed a trembling chuckle, trying to keep my mind focused on anything but freezing to death. "You know I-I'm pretty sure that's not even correct Equestrian. I-I feel like people are just saying that because everyone is doing it. I-I mean, I'm not surprised, since most ponies here have never even gone to school, and probably don't even know how to read, a-and ..."
Candy Cane was staring at me quietly.
I grinned sheepishly.
"Well, no offense ..."
"I know how to read, Red."
My rambling fell silent. We looked at each other in freezing exasperation, our teeth chattering. I groaned, thumping my head against the wall.
"I-I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE! This is insane!" I rasped, "If it keeps snowing like this, I swear the whole world is going to freeze over."
"This isn't even the worst of it," I heard her muffled voice tell me, barely audible over the wind that screamed past us outside. I shifted closer to her so we sat shoulder to shoulder, both our backs pressed against the wall behind us.
"P-please ... y-you're joking, right?" I chuckled, hugging my saddlebags close to my chest. "It wasn't even this cold when I first left my stable."
"If I was joking, nopony would be laughing," she intoned, darkly. "These are just ripples of the biggest snowstorm you'll probably ever see in your life, Red."
'Ripples,' I thought, 'Lovely,'
I thought that if that snowstorm was a ripple, then the actual one would have to be something along the lines of a tidal wave. 'Fuck.'
"If this isn't a storm, I don't know what a storm is, Cane," I sighed.
"People around here call it 'the Tempest'. It comes every year around this time like clockwork, blowing in from beyond the Crystal Mountains in the Frozen North."
"Luna," I whinnied, "How the hell did ponies live on this frozen rock two centuries ago?"
Candy Cane chuckled softly, pulling her legs as close to her body as she could.
"It wasn't always like this," I heard her say.
I cocked an eyebrow at her.
"I-it wasn't?"
She shook her head. "Before the bombs fell, the weather here was rather nice, or so my father told me." Candy Cane gazed quietly at her hooves for a few heartbeats. Then cocked her head at me, brushing out of her eyes a bob of her curly mane. "Have you heard of the Crystal Empire?"
I nodded. I knew that it was an immense sovereign nation that bordered Equestria. But when the world ended, it became like everything else: more rubble to litter the earth.
"The Crystal Imperials once had an ancient artifact called the Crystal Heart. It was what made the Imperials different from the Equestrians: it controlled their weather, and it empowered their magic.
"It even protected them from evil."
I laughed bitterly, "Evil, huh? Didn't help them so much when the megaspells started raining down on them."
"Unfortunately so," she mumbled, somewhat annoyed by my snide remark. "The Crystal Heart projected a shield - a barrier to the Frozen North and its winds. It controlled their weather - it kept the Empire in a state of perpetual spring. It kept all the Crystal Ponies safe. And when they were all safe, they were all happy - and that made the Heart and their magic even stronger."
I exhaled sharply as the breeze penetrated our shelter and caressed my rosy cheeks.
"D-damn ... I could really use a Crystal Heart right about now." I cocked my head at her. "What happened to it?"
Candy Cane shrugged solemnly, her eyes fluttering closed.
"Nopony knows ... My father told me that the balefire melted it into molten lava ... I don't believe that though ... its shield should've been strong enough to repel whatever the zebras threw at it. They had everything they could've wanted, needed - protection - and still the balefire swept them away."
I'd seen pictures of the Empire before the war. They were elegant, posh looking ponies. They enjoyed and loved life as much as they loved each other. It was sunshine and ladybugs all year long in the Empire. But sunshine and ladybugs didn't save them from the balefire. Neither did their Crystal Heart.
I snorted, chuckling bitterly. "Maybe the wasteland could've been a little less awful if they'd just kept the Frozen North from shitting on us."
She shook her head. "It wouldn't have mattered in Poneva. It still snowed here, naturally," she said.
I rolled my eyes, groaning, "Terrific."
"But with their shield repelling the Frozen North's winds, it was bearable, I think. My father taught us extensively on the Crystal Borderlands and the Empire. He said that it wasn't as bad back then as it is now, with the Northern Gales blowing in unhindered.
"The Empire was the only thing between Equestria and whatever else lurked on the far side of the Crystal Mountains. Back then, without them, all of Northern Equestria would have been ... well, a snowy wasteland."
"And look at us now," I muttered. "F-funny how it all works out in the end." I paused, pursed my lips, and frowned. "Y-you know, I never knew that. I never even knew that - the Crystal Heart I mean. I-I feel like they cut that part out of our history," I trailed off, "All I ever knew was Equestria."
I couldn't even remember if the Empire had an entire chapter dedicated to it.
"Where'd you even learn all this?" I asked. "Sorry, but I can't imagine there being any public libraries in Poneva," I smirked.
She nodded slowly as a slight smile crept across her lips. "My father taught me. He also had a wealth of books at his disposal - so a wasteland library isn't quite out of this world."
I grinned. "Your father must've been an egghead."
Candy Cane giggled at that, sighing as she rested her head against the wall behind her.
"He sure was. He was the most learned pony I'd ever known. He showered my sister and I with books. We'd finish an entire book one week after the other, and he always had more ..." She closed her eyes, smiling to herself. "My father even homeschooled us on everything from Discord to derivatives." She pursed her lips and touched a hoof to her chin. "Though my math skills are little rusty, now ... it's been so long."
"How'd he know so much? Hell, I don't even know so much, and I'm a stable pony." I paused, my muzzle scrunching up. "Eh ... that was more or less my fault," I confessed with a dry chuckle.
"Aren't Stables supposed to have top of the line education?" she asked.
"Sure, but you can only learn as much as they'd teach you ... or as much as you wanted to learn," I added with a crooked smile. "I for one hated history, so if you ever tried asking me how Discord's Reign of Chaos came to be, I'd probably just give you the same awkward smile I'm giving you now."
Candy Cane chuckled softly. "My father would've thrown a book at me if I said that. My sister would've too ... she liked history more than anypony. She loved it. Thought learning from it was the only hope for this wasteland."
"Oh yeah?" I narrowed my eyes at her. "She sounds a lot like -"
"Hops," she said, plucking the word right from my lips. Her smile was bittersweet.
My eyes softened. "What was she like?"
"She was just like Hops," Candy Cane murmured, closing her eyes. "She was so quiet, so shy - but so wise. Doodle and Hops are both really smart fillies, but Hops is truly the wisest."
I chuckled softly, remembering the demure little filly. "Almost too wise for her age," I scoffed. "And your sister?"
Candy Cane nodded, smiling to herself.
"She was," she whispered, turning her eyes low. "I loved her so much. Father loved her so much. He raised us both and believed we had a lot in store for the wasteland ... and my sister ... she was our little treasure box. She had so many great things and great ideas to offer." Candy Cane smiled, staring into the ceiling with dreamy eyes. "I think if she was still here today, the wasteland might've been a little different."
I looked at my hooves as Candy Cane let out a trembling sigh.
"Do you remember what Hops said that night during class? 'Ignorance only makes more monsters'. It's why my sister loved history so much ... why she wanted to teach it. So ponies wouldn't make the same mistakes our ancestors did."
I snorted, muttering, "Our ancestors were idiots. Hypocrites that preached friendship but slaughtered zebras by the millions." I sighed, glaring gloomily through the crevice's entrance. "They made this world. It's why I hate history ... they have nothing to teach me."
Candy Cane shook her head. "It wasn't always like this ... it wasn't. She and Hops, well, they could see the best in everypony. Even our ancestors ..." she trailed off, sounding unsure.
My ears perked.
"That sounds difficult to do." I turned and met her eyes, searchingly.
But Candy Cane broke away from my gaze and fell silent.
"It ... it is," she whispered.
A shivering silence hung over us as we listened to the wind howl outside. "My father ... he made her that way. He always said that the reason why the wasteland ia the way it is, is because nopony knows better anymore. Everypony's forgotten what it was like to live in peace."
"But he knew?"
"He wasn't a stable pony, but he was raised around ponies whose generations had seen the world go to hell. He had an idea of what life was like then, how better it was."
I snorted, folding my legs across my chest.
"You mean the old world that blew everyone to smithereens?"
She shook her head. "That war lasted twenty years Red. They grew up knowing only hate. They too forgot what it was like to live in peace." Candy Cane looked away, staring desolately at her own shadow. "So did we."
Candy Cane lowered herself to the floor and laid her head down between her forehooves. "Father always believed that we could learn a lot from the old world. That's why he always said history was so important ... he raised us hoping we'd learn. And ... we learned a lot." She smiled, closing her eyes. "We didn't even know how to read until we met him ..."
I wasn't sure if I heard that right.
"Until ... you met him?"
Her eyes fluttered open, and she paused for a long moment. Her gray eyes turned cold as steel as she lowered them quietly to the floor.
"What happened to them - your sister, your father?"
There was a long silence as she sat there huddled together, her legs tucked to her chest. Her voice was but a trembling whisper.
"What happened to them ..." she murmured, echoing my words in a voice entire worlds away from where we sat. Candy Cane clenched her eyes shut. "It's ... better if I remembered the way they lived, not how they ..." she trailed off, her eyes still closed shut.
I stared at her for a long while as she lay there.
My voice eventually broke the stagnant quietude around us. "I never knew my father," I murmured. "He was an engineer, too. Died in a steam accident when I was just a foal." I thought for a moment, then added, "At least you knew yours."
For many long seconds, Candy Cane didn't say a single word.
"We'll rest here for a few hours until the storm blows over," she said flatly, "Two hours should be enough before the visibility clears up again."
I said nothing as I set my PipBuck's alarm to go off two hours later. With a shuddering sigh, I hugged my bags close to me and huddled as close as I could to the concrete behind me.
"Dear Celestia, it's so cold," I sighed with a puff of mist, wrinkling my numbing nose. I levitated Dew Drops' scarf, wrapped it around my muzzle, and tucked it behind my collar.
Several minutes passed as I shivered there, restlessly.
Then I felt someone's legs wrap around me.
Candy Cane buried her muzzle into the scarf around my neck as she hugged me tight. I felt a warm, drawn out breath seep through the fabrics of Dew Drops' scarf and into the chilled flesh of my neck.
"Um ... Candy Cane?" I asked, shifting uncomfortably as I felt her skinny legs press against my barding.
Her words sent another tingly warm breath into my chilled coat.
"Still cold?" she asked.
I closed my eyes and shook my head.
"No." * |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 11 - Casting Shadows - Pt II | *
The fresh powder crunched beneath my hooves as we trotted through the empty street of a quiet, abandoned city block. Snowflakes swirled past me, lingering upon the fabrics of my winter coat and freckling it black and white.
We traveled for much of that day, or night - whatever the hell it was in this wasteland. My flashlight's beam and Candy Cane's magical light orb illuminated the dark path before us as we crunched through the snow.
At least fifteen miles out we walked, and the farther we walked, the emptier the city became. Summer Smiles was far behind us. The Palominos were far behind us.
Home was far behind us.
Even farther for me.
We were the only ponies that walked that road. And I was hoping it'd stay that way.
The farther we went, the deeper we descended into the recesses of the fallen city's underworld.
Every step was a step deeper into the abyss.
Out of curiosity, every now and then, I'd pan my flashlight across the charred walls of some dilapidated hovel, in search of nothing in particular. Broken, empty windows twinkled in the light as I peered into the ruins inside. We passed by small shops, their roofs caved in, and supermarkets, picked clean by looters, and hotel lobbies, desolate and devoid of life.
I passed by ruin after ruin, until every store, every apartment, every tower that I left behind me became nothing but balefire-blackened walls and crumbling roofs.
It was all the same for miles on end. Nothing but destruction and a city that once was.
After almost an hour, my eyes began to glaze over. I was simply scanning the darkness for the simple sake of scanning. Nothing. There was nothing remarkable left to look at, thanks to the ponies and the zebras and their megaspells. They had destroyed everything, and left little to bury.
And yet, somehow, elsewhere in the wasteland, ponies were able to rebuild.
... but not there.
Not there.
The Inner City was a city of ash. A city of ghosts devoid of life. The lights and sounds of Outer Poneva were gone, leaving us there only with the quietude of a dead winter night. The minutes ticked by like hours as my mind wandered, bored. It strayed off beyond where my eyes could see, wandering, wondering why what little was left of civilization was so far behind us.
Why that place was so empty.
The wind began to dwindle and slow, and a soundless snowfall sprinkled over us in the chilling darkness. All I could hear now were our hoofsteps, my heartbeat, and the voice that murmured nervously inside my head.
Never in my life had I been in a place so ... quiet. A place so unnervingly - so unnaturally quiet. There was nothing to distract me from the apprehensive thoughts that plagued my weary mind. Especially the thoughts that I did not want to hear.
In that utter silence, it was almost too easy to be lost in my own thoughts ... my anxieties ... my fears ...
We walked that empty, broken road alone. Alone. Alone.
Alone ...
I wondered if we were truly alone.
The darkness hid watching eyes that neither of us knew were there. Illuminated by our precious light, they could see us ... but we couldn't see them.
I gulped, scanning the broken buildings and rubble as they passed me by, my flashlight cutting nervous swaths through the night. Frowning warily, I beamed my light through the window of some second story apartment, watching as the shadows parted before me like ragged curtains.
A pony with sunken black eyes stared down at me from the windowsill.
I blinked. And stopped in my tracks. 'Wait.' Chilling apprehension skittered across my features as I swung my light back and trained it upon the shattered, melted windowpane.
Emptiness. A black void peered down at me the street.
Nobody was there.
Somehow, I was happy to find that no ... thing desired to humor my curiosity.
Half an hour later, we were far enough that the outer city's twinkling city lights weren't even visible. They were gone. All we had now was darkness. An eerie, undulating darkness that seemed to shake, rattle, and roll when your back was turned.
In the shifting twilight, my eyes began seeing shapeless forms worming beneath the pitch black curtain that circled around us. Shapes that crept and crawled through the night.
But we were still alone. I hoped.
But where there was nothing, I'd find something ... something I didn't want to find. My imagination stalked. It slithered. It chased after the ghosts that evaded my darting eyes. I panned my light across a collapsed building. But my sweeping motion slowed as my wary stare fell through the cracks and crevices of the building's debris-strewn grave. Drawn in by their emptiness, I peered inside.
Flash.
A mangled face stared back.
I froze in my tracks. But it was just a strip of melted rebar trapped beneath the rubble.
I gulped, and kept walking, playing my light nervously across the city's broken remains.
It was all too easy to shrug it all off. To just ignore it and keep walking. I kept telling myself that I was just seeing things - that was all. I was just seeing things.
But my thoughts ... my anxiety wouldn't leave me alone. My apprehensions screamed up and down a steep, slippery slope. I felt my muscles tense and my heart flutter inside my chest every time my light parted the black sea before me.
I couldn't stop searching. Even when I didn't know what I was searching for.
I walked past an empty doorway to my left, my light skirting the base of the walls around it. And stopped.
Candy Cane kept walking.
I stood there for a second, the charred, ruined doorway looming over me as I watched her walk away, her hoofsteps crunching farther and farther into the distance. My light remained trained on the snow as I felt the hairs on my coat stand on end.
The wind began to pick up again. Blowing through my limbs. Blowing into that empty doorway.
I turned slowly to face it. To peer into its inviting depths ... drawn into the mouth of that gaping abyss. I gazed through the doorway and into that shifting sea of darkness, waiting. Waiting ... listening ... watching the shadows ripple and writhe before my eyes like a sea of worms wriggling beneath skin. I didn't dare shine my light. I didn't dare to part that rippling black curtain and look upon what was waiting for me behind it.
The horrors that were lying in wait on the other side.
I stared into the darkness. And the darkness stared back. The wind howled through my limbs, howling into mouth of that abyss.
The magic that wreathed my flashlight turned a dark crimson as I shrunk beneath the shadow of that empty doorway.
I lifted a hoof as the wind screamed into my ears and the inviting darkness drew me ever closer.
I put one hoof forward.
"Red?"
I snapped to and flashed my light in Candy Cane's face.
She narrowed her eyes at me, shielding her face with a hoof.
"What are you doing?"
I didn't answer her. Everything was quiet. So quiet.
I blinked my eyes vigorously.
"Please, try to keep up," I heard her whisper, "I don't want to be out in the open like this."
I nodded, and started forward. But I stopped once more in my tracks. I looked over my shoulder, sparing one final peek into the chilling abyss inside that empty doorway.
But it was just an empty doorway.
I gulped. And hurried after her.
I fell in behind her, my flashlight and her light orb trained solely upon the road that ran on before us.
I decided, to put my fears to rest, that I'd simply stop searching. The city could have its damned darkness, it could have it all if it wanted for all I cared.
But in the back of my mind, I wondered ...
'... what if we weren't alone?'
Candy Cane moaned faintly, rousing me from my ponderous state. She stopped in her tracks as she cradled her head in her hooves. Her magic flickered - and winked out, leaving us only with my flashlight's glow.
"W-what happened?"
"My horn." She winced. "I need to rest it for a bit."
Candy Cane had been lighting our path with her magic for the past three hours. Her mental stamina was still weak from all those sleepless nights. I took a deep breath, and exhaled. I figured I'd give her a break.
"It's fine. We should take turns using flashlights," I said, twirling mine in the air with my magic. "Just point me in a direction and I'll light the way."
She breathed her thanks, and started onwards once more, a few steps ahead of mine as I cut illuminated swaths of light across the road. But no matter how bright my light was, it seemed to do little but squeeze desperately through the blackness around us.
That far from the outer city, Poneva was like the open drifts outside the city's walls. My light was just a distant, wavering candlelight in a sea of darkness.
And all around us, it closed in. I felt its chilling embrace as it skittered its icy broken talons down my spine and I shivered with every trembling breath. Even colder and colder it became as we trotted into the remains of a skyscraper that had plummeted to its shattered grave in the death throes of the balefire apocalypse.
The twisted maze of concrete and rebar curled inward towards us as we entered. Melted and horrifically reshaped by the balefire, jagged spindles of black metal dangled from its twisted skeleton. A swish, and a brush, and a tap. Gnarled claws as cold as death itself skittered across my mane.
My eyes would dart upward and find nothing but the tangled innards of the razed skyscraper playing against the tips of my cropped mane.
My hooves crunched against the snow, then the gravel. The howling winter winds blew far above, but the icy teeth of the stagnant, frozen air around us sunk deep into my barding.
I exhaled a trembling breath as our winding path became smaller and smaller. The tunnel squeezed and tightened around us, suffocating us in that shrinking, frozen pit until we were muzzle to tail, coat to concrete. We crawled with our bellies dragging across the ancient rubble.
Minutes passed as I stared into the swirls of Candy Cane's tail. Then my light began to fade. Its yellow beam dwindled like a dammed stream, the shadows threatening to suffocate us all.
It flickered, sputtered, and choked.
Then died.
Utter darkness washed over me.
"Come on ..." I murmured, banging my flashlight against the tunnel walls. I shook it back and forth, its yellow beam winking in and out, trying desperately to penetrate the blackness.
The tunnel flickered before me, the shadows giving way for a single desperate second as I struggled to turn it back on.
Then nothing. My heart raced inside my chest as I fumbled with my useless flashlight - lost, blind, and utterly helpless in the dark without the glow of my precious, precious light.
My blind eyes darted uselessly from left to right. Useless and helpless in the dark.
We were trapped. Sitting ducks.
They could see us. But we couldn't see them.
The air was getting shallower. I gasped with frantic breaths as my flashlight slipped out of my waning magical grip.
Then a draft of frigid air whispered down the back of my neck.
"Are you okay?" Candy Cane asked as my hooves scrambled through the darkness, feeling the frozen earth for my flashlight.
She sounded like she was only a breath away from me.
"I-I don't know. M-my light went out," I stammered. My right hoof found its prize and I battered it against the tunnel walls. But it was no use. "What the fuck ... these are supposed to be fresh batteries."
"Just follow me," she whispered, "According to the map, wherever we go, this particular tunnel leads to the same place. We can't miss it if we just keep going straight," Candy Cane told me, her voice speaking from somewhere in the impenetrable darkness.
"You ... you sure about that?" There was a short pause before Candy Cane let out an amused snort. "Ah what the hell ... of course you are. I'm right behind you," I said, nervously.
My ears perked. I listened to her hooves scrape against the walls around her as she felt her way through the blackness. So long as I could hear her, I wouldn't stop crawling.
I paused, my ears listening to Candy Cane's shuffling hooves. Though I couldn't see her, I knew that she was still close by. I also knew that I still had my PipBuck. Stopping for a moment, and listening to her make her way down the tunnel, I swore under my breath and I tucked my flashlight back into one of my pockets. With several blind button clacks, I hoofed my PipBuck's interface.
To my relief, the screen flicked on, illuminating the swirls on Candy Cane's tail with its teal light. I frowned at them.
She'd been stopped in front of me the entire time.
"You good?" she asked me, her eyes gleaming over her shoulder.
"Yeah, a-at least my PipBuck's -"
Static washed over my PipBuck's screen. Its radio flicked on - vomiting incoherent static noise into our ears -
Then its screen went black. And so did my light.
"Fuck!"
"Red Dawn?"
"I-I'm fine. J-just fuck it," I hissed. "Let's just keep going."
I wanted to get it over with.
Without another word, Candy Cane shuffled through the rubble. I followed blindly in suit as the tunnel squeezed around me, battering my ribs, clawing at my barding, raking my bare, shivering flesh.
In utter darkness I crawled, my breaths getting shallower and shallower in the absence of my PipBuck's guiding light. It was impossible ... the stagnant underworld air seemed to grow even heavier, pressing against my chest as my breaths came out as nothing more than strained gasps.
But somehow I was reassured by the sounds of her hooves digging through the rubble close by. I bumped into her tail and apologized. Candy Cane shuffled faster in response. Realizing just how dearly I wanted out of that hole, she quickened her pace.
I followed her hooves wherever I heard them, and stopped whenever I heard them stop.
The only indication that she was still there were the dragging sounds she made as she crawled through the rubble.
I felt the tunnel wall dip away from me to my right.
Exhaling sharply, I leaned left and hugged the wall closely, afraid I'd fall into some icy pit that I couldn't see.
I couldn't see.
But close by, Candy Cane's hooves continued onward, and so I followed them without question. I followed them because I didn't want to be left behind. I didn't want to be left behind, trapped and alone in that suffocating, frozen tunnel.
I felt and heard rocks crumble away from the roof and tumble to the earth.
Then the shuffling stopped.
A few feet in front of me, she whispered, her voice trembling.
"R-Red Dawn?"
"Cane?" I managed, squinting through the darkness uselessly.
All I saw was blackness. But I could hear her voice, and feel her fear.
"I'm stuck," she whimpered. "I-I can't move ..."
"Shit." The tunnel must've caved in and pinned her tail to the ground. "H-hold on, I can't see," I hissed, trying to find her tail, her leg - something!
But my blind hooves only crunched through the frozen earth.
"Help me ..." she begged. "Please help me ..."
I swung my hooves through the air frantically, inching forward, hoping I'd find her. With a loud clang, my PipBuck banged heavily against a pile of debris, and to my surprise, its display flickered on and illuminated the tunnel before me.
My heart skipped a beat.
She was gone.
Nowhere to be seen.
I whispered, shaking uncontrollably.
"C-Candy Cane?"
Her faint, familiar voice echoed faintly down the tunnel in the distance, far beyond where my eyes could see.
Then my PipBuck flickered once. Then died.
Darkness swept over me. I froze upon my hooves, petrified and in the dark as a chilling, nagging sensation skittered down the back of my neck. It was fear. Fear of what awaited me in the dark.
Hooves shuffled through the gravel behind me.
"Red Dawn ..." a voice rasped, close enough to my ear to feel its frigid breath upon the back of my neck. My trembling breaths became shallow gasps.
"Help me ..."
My heart leaped inside my chest.
I hurled myself away and bolted, tearing through the gravel as if my life depended on it. Rocks crashed into my ribs and slammed into my skull and tore at my mane.
The temperature plummeted. Something dragged through the gravel behind me.
"CANDY CANE!"
She didn't reply.
I opened my mouth to scream her name once more -
A ragged gasp escaped my lips instead.
Heavier and heavier. The frozen air crushed my lungs and choked away my frantic breaths. I batted at my leg, struggling to turn my PipBuck back on as I wheezed for air that wouldn't fill my lungs.
'Come on - come on - turn on, you son of a -'
Icy talons dug into my mane. They didn't let go.
I couldn't see. I couldn't move. But I could hear its wheezing, ragged breaths as it clawed and flailed through the gravel behind me.
Chills slithered down my spine as a suffocating silence fell upon me.
A frozen breath wheezed against the back of my neck.
I screamed. I wrenched my head away and barreled down the tunnel, shrieking my throat raw into the darkness as the darkness chased after me -
Then I ate a mouthful of tail.
"Hey!" I heard a mare cry out as I ran my head into her hind leg and fell on my face. My PipBuck flashed in Candy Cane's eyes.
Candy Cane swished her tail across my face. "Yow! Watch where you point that thing!" she cried.
"WHERE THE FUCK WERE YOU!? Shined my light in front of me and you weren't ..." I lifted a hoof and my eyes gravitated to my PipBuck's glowing teal screen. "And ... and you weren't ... there," I trailed off. I gulped and realized that my goosebumps had subsided. The usual wasteland air was permeating the tunnel once more.
Blinking profusely, she came to notice my baffled silence. Her muzzle scrunched up and she narrowed her eyes at me.
"I thought you were right behind me?" she murmured, blinking.
"No - you left me behind," I hissed.
She shook her head, insisting, "I asked you if you were okay, and you said you were fine. I heard you crawling behind me ... so I just kept going."
I froze, the blood draining from my face.
'Help me ...'
I turned to her my haunted stare.
"Cane ... Cane that wasn't me." *
We huddled closely around my PipBuck's light in an alcove in the rubble. I found myself glancing over my shoulder every other second - back at the tunnel we'd put behind us. Even with Candy Cane beside me, there was an eerie, unforgivable fear that lingered in the back of my mind.
Fear of the dark.
Because the darkness hid eyes that I couldn't see.
I clenched my jaw and stared down the broken tunnel we had emerged from. From the frozen, suffocating darkness we'd crawled out of.
I had never been afraid of the dark.
Back at '91, I always knew what was behind those shadowy curtains.
But out there ... it was different.
Those shadowy curtains hid more than what I wanted to know.
Candy Cane was convinced that I'd been behind her the entire time. Convinced that it was just the debris that had raked my scalp. Convinced that I was simply hearing things, and that the claustrophobia was just getting to me.
But fuck! I'm a damned engineer - I spent my days crawling through pipes, sticking my head through pipes, getting my hoof stuck in pipes!
I wasn't. Claustro. Phobic.
I shook my head. After all those skull taps ... those burnouts ... maybe the damage was more inside than out. Maybe I really was losing it ... maybe ...
Maybe it was just my mind playing tricks on me again.
My PipBuck's light flickered and my heart hammered inside my chest.
No. My muscles tensed and my ears perked as I heard the echo of rocks crumbling away in the distance behind us. As the echoes faded away, only our breaths - only my shallow breaths made the slightest of sounds in the heavy silence. I gulped and let out a trembling sigh, watching as the heavy cloud of mist lingered in the frozen air.
The cloud shifted before my eyes.
"Red Dawn?" I heard Candy Cane whisper.
I turned, and she was snacking on an apple.
"Y-yes?"
She stopped chewing for a moment, her right cheek bulging with apple chunks.
"Hm?"
I cocked my head at her.
"What?"
Candy Cane swallowed and cocked a brow at me.
"What?"
I snapped, glaring at her, "You said my name!"
"No, I didn't," she insisted, before taking another bite from her apple.
I sighed, shrugging, bringing to my face my trembling hooves. I rubbed at my eyes, my ears pinned against the sides of my head. I exhaled a long, and drawn out breath. I clenched my jaw and watched as my breath slowly dissipated into nothingness.
"Fucking shit ..." I murmured, shaking my head.
Maybe I was losing it. Maybe ... maybe ...
Candy Cane inched closer so that we were shoulder to shoulder, and leaned against me. I took comfort in knowing that she was there, sure that she was there. I could feel her shoulder on mine. She was there ... she had to be.
Finishing her apple, Candy Cane swept aside a pair of apple cores, the remains of our snack, as she pulled the map out of her peacoat.
My PipBuck rocked back and forth as Candy Cane shifted the leg it was attached to across the gravel at our hooves, laying down the map Summer Smiles had given us.
In its teal light, she tapped a hoof against a seemingly arbitrary quadrant on the map.
"We're here," Candy Cane began. Eyeing the mausoleum of ruined concrete around us, she nodded to herself. "This should be the old Sparkle-Cola tower," Candy Cane told me, her breaths coming out as wisps of chilled air.
"Sparkle-Cola?" I frowned, squinting at the map.
"An old soda company." She sighed, "They were one of the leading soda brands back in the day."
I dug a hoof through the rubble at my feet.
"Doesn't matter now, does it?" I chuckled, grimly.
She tapped the map once more, and to my shock, it came apart.
"Fuck the what?" I gasped, my eyes widening.
Candy Cane shook her head, "It's alright. It's supposed to do that." With both her hooves and her magic, she pulled the map apart - piece by piece.
"What the - stop that! Celestia, you're ripping it!" I cried.
"Shush. It's fine, Red, really." Candy Cane took the six irregularly cut pieces and pasted them back together - good as new, much to my disbelief. "Orphanage ponies carry these maps in groups; they'd split up the pieces among each other so that if one of them got captured, the enemy would only have a piece or two of the whole map." She levitated the aged sheet of leather before my eyes. "That way nopony'd be able to find all their hideouts."
I nodded, narrowing my eyes at the six pieces that hovered before me.
"Clever bastards," I murmured, admirably. No wonder no kne knew where to find those ponies, because it was so difficult to track them - even with their own Goddesses-damned map.
Candy Cane nodded, setting it back down against the rubble at our hooves. She traced her hoof across its surface, stopping at each circle indicating the location of one of many hideouts in their network of clandestine cells all across Poneva city.
"The thing is, is that not all of their hideouts are in use at any given time. If anything, they remain as resupply points, doors locked and openable only with a key."
"Which we don't have," I muttered, swearing under my breath.
She pursed her lips. "For all we know, the next hideout we stop at might just be a weapon's cache."
I cocked a brow at her, rather irritated. Yet another setback.
"It wouldn't matter, because we wouldn't even be able to get inside." I face-hoofed, mumbling, "Summer Smiles didn't tell you where to go, exactly?"
"No," she replied, shaking her head. "Summer Smiles hasn't worked with them since Sugar Rum had her babies."
My jaw dropped.
"Are you ... shitting me? For all we know the map might've changed!"
She sighed, brushing her mane out of her eyes. "I hope not. But if it hasn't, then it doesn't mean that we won't find them, it just means we might find a cache. We'd just need to try every hideout we come across."
Candy Cane looked up from our map, and added, with faint optimism, "We'll find them eventually."
"Wooooonderful," I droned flatly, running a shaky hoof through my mane.
She pointed to a nearby quadrant on the map, directly adjacent to ours.
"Yes, wonderful indeed. We're rather close to one, fortunately." Candy Cane tapped her chin. "If we can get out of this hole and cut through the Ministry of Morale hub, we should be able to get to their hideout."
"You make it sound so easy," I said, trying to conceal my apprehension with a pained smile.
She gulped. I took that as a no.
"I've been out here a few times, but not this far out into the Inner City, Red." She huddled close to me, glancing over her shoulder. "It isn't safe out here."
I scoffed bitterly, "When is it ever?"
She rubbed one of her forelegs with a hoof. "You don't know, Red ... you don't know what's out here." Her voice lowered to a dark, ominous tone. "The closer we get to ground zero, the worse things get. The more dangerous it gets."
When we were outside, about an hour ago, I noticed that there weren't too many free standing structures in the Ponevan skyline.
"Not much survived when the bomb came." She gave me a stern gaze. "But whatever the balefire didn't kill ... we need to steer clear of it." Candy Cane drew her submachine gun, flipped the safety off, and chambered a round.
I drew my pistol as well, and did the same. Candy Cane swirled her silvery magic around Summer Smiles' map and pulled it apart, levitating to me one half and keeping the other.
"Don't lose it." Candy Cane hesitated for a moment, eyeing her hooves. "If we get caught ... you need to destroy it ... okay?"
I gulped as I held my half gingerly in my hooves.
"Caught by what? We're nowhere near any of the plantations or their dogs," I said, hoping she wouldn't answer.
But she did.
"By whatever is still crawling around out there," Candy Cane said simply.
She got to her four hooves and led me through yet another partially-collapsed tunnel with a black, opaque hole at its end - our exit. Another. Partially. Collapsed. Tunnel. It was something she seemed completely used to. Me? Not so much. The last thing I wanted was to get pancaked by a cave in.
But getting crushed by rocks was the least of my worries. Especially not in that forsaken place.
I paused for a moment to replace the batteries of my flashlight. They were completely drained. I started after her, checking my pistol and ejecting its magazine to eyeball the rounds loaded within.
"Red Dawn?" someone whispered, close enough to feel its glacial breath against the inside of my ear.
Chills skittered down my spine. Dense trails of mist seethed from my lips with every shallow breath I took.
I shook my head.
My horn glowed wearily and I slid my magazine home, making my way toward Candy Cane who was waiting for me - halfway down the tunnel.
Behind me, I heard the faint sounds of crumbling rocks shifting underhoof. * |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 11 - Casting Shadows - Pt III | *
We emerged from that forsaken pit. Finally. But my relief was short-lived.
It was as if we'd entered a different city, like something out of the deepest pits of hell itself. I flashed my light across the sky and watched as the wretched spires of balefire-melted concrete and twisted metal loomed ominously over us.
The steel frames of those ancient high-rises had been reduced to nothing but gnarled and twisted spikes. The balefire had consumed the buildings they once held high, melting and sloughing away from their bubbling skeletons. Others, too structurally weak, were instead utterly destroyed, their broken remains piling several stories above us and around us in immense mountains of snow-capped concrete and steel.
It was no longer a city. Not even a fallen one. We had entered a mass grave. Every step I took, crunching through the snow-swept rubble, was a step knowing that somewhere beneath me someone had died.
No one could have survived.
Not that close to ground zero.
And yet I didn't feel any safer.
I bit my lower lip and flinched every time I swung my light left and right, afraid that I'd see more than just the unmarked graves of Poneva's countless dead. The city could have its darkness. And it did. The night belonged to them. They were using it against us. Watching us. Hiding from us. Surrounding us.
Whenever I panned my flashlight's beam across the rubble before me, I was afraid I'd lose Candy Cane to that sea of shifting darkness. Only my ears and the glow of her magelight kept us from being swallowed up by the black sea that parted before us.
Even at the stable I knew that creatures of the dark were drawn to the light.
Our precious lights.
We walked on, our lights nothing more than beacons in the dark - but not for us. For them. For all I knew, they were drawing closer. Stalking - slithering silently through the night.
If there was something out there ... we had no way of knowing.
A different kind of silence hung over that place. It was a brooding silence - the silence of a bloodletter stalking its prey, the silence of a sneaky pony crawling through the rubble. I knew what it was like to move without being seen. I also knew what it was to be hunted by monsters.
It was that same feeling ... wading through the darkness, hoping I wouldn't be pulled under and drowned ... devoured beneath the black tides.
The only sounds my ears could distinguish were the winds that scattered snow around us, our hooves crunching through the pale, and the uncertain beats of my heart. I kept telling myself that there was nothing else out there but us.
But that was what they wanted.
I could still hear the voice that whispered into my ear in that frozen tunnel, calling my name ... it knew my name. How did it know my name?
Hooves crunched through the snow.
The darkness shifted around us.
My pace quickened, and with every step I took, I counted - mine, and hers.
This time, I swore I'd be right. I swore that they would be ours, and ours alone.
Mine, and hers.
Mine ...
Hers ...
Ours. Alone.
I could feel my racing heartbeat slow to the speed of our trot as we made our way through the snowy rubble. I breathed in, and breathed out. My breaths came and went in thick clouds of mist that seethed out of my cracked lips. I watched them drift away, carried off by the slowing breeze. I gulped, and blinked twice, eyeing the red and white swirls of Candy Cane's mane as she led the way.
I listened to the monotonous, muffled clops our four pairs of hooves made through the rubble, and the slowing rhythm inside my chest. Monotony and repetition made ponies bored.
It made ponies comfortable. Predictable. Safe.
Prey never felt endangered until danger actually came.
But there was nothing there but us. Those were our hooves clopping through the rubble. No one else's. Nothing else's.
I found solace in my boredom, preoccupied, and safely bemused.
The air was still now. The wind no longer blew.
Clop - clop - clop - clop -
Our eight hooves. Our eight hooves.
My right foreleg panned lazily across the hills of debris, illuminating whatever my flashlight touched. Silence had smoothed the anxiety that was pumping through my veins. Now I was only cutting swaths through the night to light my way through the darkness.
Business as usual. The picture wasn't any different from any other night I'd spent outside in the wasteland. The darkness parted. My path deepened. It kept my legs moving. We would get there sooner or later.
With my distant eyes, I caught, atop a mound of rubble too steep to climb, a crumbling wall that had somehow withstood the spellfire scourge. I frowned at it. The cadence of my trotting hooves stumbled, and slowed to a walk.
It was just my fucking imagination again. My eyes were making something out of nothing. I swung my light back, knowing it was just another well-placed chunk of concrete.
It wasn't. I was wrong.
I kept my light trained upon it, squinting through the darkness as I noticed, that painted across its surface, were two distinct black smears. They were frail and distorted, each smear curling away from the broken path we walked.
I blinked, and blinked, and blinked.
And they were still there.
I gulped as I neared, the silhouettes becoming more and more defined. They were unsettlingly familiar shapes: like shadows cast against a wall and frozen in time.
Shadows. Shadows without ponies to cast them.
I peered through the night and saw that one of the spindly, contorted shadows had a limb-like smear held over it.
Like a pony shielding her eyes from a blinding light.
I broke my comfortable silence with a trembling whisper.
"C-Candy Cane?"
She paused midstep, her ears perking as if she'd heard something. Candy Cane darted her head around frantically, startled. She loosened up when she saw me. The mare took a deep breath.
It was just me.
"What is it?" she asked, quietly.
I cocked my head in the direction my flashlight was pointing.
"Do you see that?"
She nodded slowly as we both watched the wretched smears, shivering beneath our coats.
"What the hell are those things?" I kept my eyes trained, searching for movement. But I found none, and neither did my EFS.
Candy Cane hesitated, biting her lower lip. "Blast shadows," she whispered. "They're whatever was behind a pony when he or she got vaporized."
Several long seconds passed as I gazed at the three pony-shaped shadows, their agonized silhouettes frozen mid-gallop, and their jaws dropped and distended as if howling into the balefire oblivion.
Vaporized. Erased. Wiped from existence.
I wondered, for the split second they spent conscious as their flesh burned away from their bones, if they felt pain. I wondered if they felt the shrieking, agonizing pain of being stripped away molecule by molecule, from flesh to bone, before their brains boiled away and joined the wind that scattered their ashes across the earth.
I wondered, in horror, why I was asking myself those questions, and found myself equally terrified that I knew the answers. I tried to push them away, but the thoughts ran circles around my head, drowning out my own, swallowing them up in balefire.
A strangulated gasp escaped my lips and I winced, the air sucked out of my lungs as my skin began prickling and tingling madly. I blinked away the rivulets of boiling hot sweat that streamed down my face. My lips opened to scream, but my mouth ran dry, charred, arid, and desiccated.
"We shouldn't stare," Candy Cane said out loud.
I inhaled sharply, trembling uncontrollably as she started along the path once more. I lifted to my muzzle a quaking right hoof to wipe dry the sweat that was pouring down my drenched, matted coat. I touched my face ... but it came away dry.
There was none. There had been none. My chilled, goose-bumped flesh shivered beneath my barding. I gulped a lump down my throat, swallowing the saliva that had been there all along.
I stood there, swaying back in forth, my distant eyes lost in delirium as Candy Cane started away from me. I lifted a hoof to follow her, but hesitated, frowning as my eyes darted back and forth across the ashen drifts.
I turned, lifted my leg, and panned my PipBuck's beam back into the night, parting the sea of darkness like curtains on a stage. It found its mark, illuminating the blast shadow-painted edifice as I squinted through the snowfall.
They were gone.
They were gone. Bare as a bone - gone, like the wind that howled past us. They vanished as if they were never there.
Vaporized. Erased. Wiped from existence.
My right forehoof dipped back down into the rubble, and the darkness slithered back into the void I'd left behind.
We shouldn't have stared.
I cantered after her, the hairs on my mane standing on end as my shivering intensified, the winds biting deeper into my barding. They wormed their way into the fabrics, raking their icy talons against my livid flesh.
Candy Cane trained her eyes upon the way in front of us, her stare never leaving the illuminated path she cut through the night. Not wanting to look. Not wanting to find anything she didn't want to see.
But the more I looked away, the more I saw - the more the darkness unraveled before my eyes.
Wherever my light shined, there was a shadow. My beam darted across the grave world around me.
There they were.
Smeared across every wall, every surface. Shadows of all shapes and sizes flashed before my eyes.
Flash.
Tall ponies.
Small ponies.
Dead ponies.
Flash.
Above us.
Around us.
To my left - to my right.
Flash.
My canter became a trot - faster and faster -
Flash - flash - flash.
Ponies reared up on their hinds as the balefire took them - mothers shielded their children from the emerald light - couples held each other close as they burned away - as they all burned away - as they all burned away -
Flash.
I stopped in my tracks. Candy Cane called out my name, but I didn't answer. I couldn't tear my eyes away.
Shadows. Two agonized blast shadows, frozen in time mid-gallop. One of them cradled a bundled up smear against its chest, holding it close like a mother cradled a child ...
A child. It was ... was ...
"Goddesses ..." I whispered, clenching my eyes shut as my shoulders quaked with shuddering sobs.
Something shifted in the rubble behind us.
I swung my light around. There was nothing there.
I let out a trembling breath into the frozen air as my pulse hammered inside my temples. I watched the icy cloud hang before my muzzle.
Then a gust of frozen wind chased it all away.
Candy Cane's shriek spun me around. My heart nearly skipped a beat.
Five wretched blast shadows painted the wall before us - their jaws agape in silent agony as they covered their eyes and cowered in horror from the path ahead.
I stared, frozen upon my hooves.
Then their heads swiveled to face us.
"RUN!" I screamed, but Candy Cane beat me to it.
We turned tail and bolted as my heart threatened to leap outside of my chest. It didn't matter where we went.
'Anywhere but here.'
Thump - thump, thump - thump -
Our eight hooves. I counted our steps. Eight. Eight hooves. I thought we were alone.
But the shifting darkness was now churning like a turbulent sea.
Tides of darkness crashed all around us as the wind began to moan and the ashen snow began to fall.
I counted, knowing that only eight hoofsteps should've been crunching in our wake. Only eight. But my right ear perked as hooves pounded through the snow next to me.
I turned, knowing that Candy Cane was galloping beside me.
The blood drained from my face.
No one was there.
Candy Cane was at my tail, gasping frantically for air as she fought to keep up.
Eight hooves. Eight hooves. Eight hooves.
Thump - thump, thump - thump - thump.
My light flickered before my eyes.
'NO!'
I watched in horror as my precious light began to die. 'No - no, not again, PLEASE, GODDESSES' -
Rocks tumbled down the hills of rubble as they crumbled around us.
We were not alone. But then I realized: we had never been alone.
My EFS fluctuated. Behind us. In front of us. To our left. To our right.
Never did their blips linger in one place for too long. I cut flickering swaths through the darkness around me, searching frantically for the horrors on my EFS.
Flash. The walls were bare. Flash. The walls were bare. Everywhere I shined, the walls were bare, and the shadows were nowhere to be seen.
But the blips on my EFS screamed that I was wrong.
I was wrong. They were everywhere. All around us. Closing in.
The snow thickened. The wind shrieked madly as it howled at us from every direction.
I whimpered and begged. But my precious light continued to fade before my widening eyes.
It flickered and waned to a dim, ruddy glow as the darkness devoured my dying light.
Muffled thumps crunched through the crumbling debris.
Those distant thumps became not so distant hoofsteps. I could hear them galloping down the jagged hilltops around us. Eight hooves. There were only supposed to be eight.
Then there were twelve. Twelve hooves crunched through the snow. Faster - matching our pace, stalking us within earshot - lurking behind the howling darkness.
I didn't want to look. I didn't want to look.
The air shifted around me - and I swung my flickering flashlight about, its beam skimming atop jagged slopes too steep to climb.
Nothing. Nobody. No one.
Sixteen hooves pounded through the snow.
Then twenty. Twenty-two.
Eleven pairs of hooves. There should've been twelve. Should've. Its muffled clops were missing steps as something dragged and flailed after us through the rubble.
Rocks kicked up small plumes of snow - only a few steps ahead of us.
My dying light flickered across the rubble on high, and for a single fleeting second, I watched as dozens of shadows peered down at us.
I opened my mouth to scream.
"We're almost there!" Candy Cane blurted out, shattering the feverish delirium that screamed inside my head.
Silence. With a whirring flicker, my flashlight brightened once again. The both of us felt it. Something inexplicable in the atmosphere had changed.
The wind sighed. The snowfall thinned.
And all that remained were our eight hooves and my drumming heartbeat.
We stood there, gasping for air, weapons levitating next to us as we waited, and listened.
Silence.
I looked at her, and she looked at me ... with distant eyes. Something caught her attention in her peripherals and I watched her eyes dart to the darkness. But there was nothing there. Candy Cane shook her head, nickered, and continued onward at a feverish canter.
So did I.
With my pulse still hammering in my temples, we approached the remains of Poneva's Ministry of Morale in quietude. Even the wind had been reduced to nothing but a chilling breeze. Quiet and somber. The silence was still a heavy one.
As we neared, I was dimly surprised to see that the Hub was still towering over us. Whereas the rubble and framework that clawed its way skywards around us resembled individual bones, the Morale Hub was a near complete skeleton, melted into the earth but somehow still standing.
Through the contorted remains of a metal fence we walked and found ourselves at the mouth of an immense, abandoned courtyard. Before us was an open field, strewn with debris and charred carnage. Tall metal posts, topped with the distorted bell shapes of ancient megaphones rose up atop the snow-swept ruins, their shadows forever casted across the gravel behind them.
The wintry winds cradled them back and forth, their charred, metallic forms sighing in the desolate breeze.
We stood there - or rather, Candy Cane stood there, and I waited as she listened. Her ears perked as she shifted on her hooves. Listening to what, I couldn't tell amid my heartbeat and the moaning wind. But she remained there, glancing around as she listened to what I couldn't hear.
Seconds that felt like minutes passed. Then I heard it. In the distance, I heard a voice, warped and stuttering like an ancient record player. My ears perked, listening through the frozen gales.
"... smile, smile, smile ..." a mare's distorted voice whispered from beyond what my dilated eyes could see. It faded from my senses, traces of its haunting croons echoing distantly behind us, before waning back into the nothingness.
"Come on," Candy Cane murmured.
'No,' I thought, 'No. Fuck this.' But out of fear of being left behind, I forced myself to follow. Further into the blackened courtyard we walked, the voices growing louder and louder.
We approached a charred, twisted megaphone pole, the mare's warped and distorted singing emanating from its dead speakers.
"Impossible," I murmured, eyeing the pole's horribly melted length, its metal shell fused to the rubble beneath it.
And yet her voice still rasped to us its chilling sing song. I listened. And I listened closer ... her voice whispered from every direction.
"But if you're kind of worried... sssss... I'll work real hard and do my best to turn that sad frown ssssstthpphBRRZT ..."
I exhaled a breath I realized I was keeping in, and watched as the wind carried it away. The storm was intensifying again. Its tortured moans filled the air once more as ashen snow flaked across my shivering body. We stood there next to each other, listening.
Listening ... for something.
Then we heard it.
Laughter. Laughter in the distance. Children playing. Their faint giggles and playful laughter echoed in the darkness.
A wracking shiver quaked across my body. Then nothing. My ears perked. I let out a long, drawn out breath. I listened. And listened.
"Hahahahaha ... hahahahaha ..."
I listened as their voices echoed through my ears ... my mind ... my thoughts. I started forward in the direction of their voices, slipping my gun into its holster.
"Red, wait!" Candy Cane said, trying to pull me away, but her hoof missed, and I continued, the haunting music and their cheery laughter drowning out her voice.
Drowning out everything.
"Ssssssssscome on everypony smile, smile, smile ...."
I put one hoof over the other, the innocent voices of young fillies and colts cheering me onward. Their faint, echoing voices grew louder and louder as I stumbled blindly through the darkness.
"Frrrrrrrrrrrrill my hhhhheart up with sunshine, sunshine ..." the mare crooned as the foals laughed and sang along.
"Red, what are you doing!?"
I didn't even remember how I got there. I stood in front of a collapsed, melted building, its walls flowing through the snow like solidified lava. Through a gaping, black hole in the collapsed, crumbling wall before me, I heard, inside ...
Voices.
The more I listened ... the louder they became. All around me from every direction they began to echo.
I stared into the darkness ... the rippling, black void that writhed and churned before me as I peered into that gaping hole in the wall. I stared into that darkness ... and the darkness stared back.
It stared back and sang into my wilting ears.
"Allerrrrrrr ... I really need'srsssbbrrt a smile, smile, smile ... from thesrrsst happy friends of mine!" the children sang along, giggling with cheery voices that belied the frozen, dead world around us.
Their laughter echoed over and over inside my thoughts as I stared, entranced, enraptured ... enthralled.
My lips began to move in time with their wretched song as I continued to stare, the hole's mouth whispering me onward ... to step in ... to reach into the inviting darkness.
"Hahahahaha, HAHAHAHAHA!"
"Red ... Red, it's not safe here," Candy Cane's muffled voice told me. "Red, we can't stay here!" she shouted over them.
But I could barely hear her.
I felt her hooves grab me by the shoulders and shake me ... but I couldn't move. Something was coiling itself around me ... my insides ... every fiber of my being - draining the blood from my face ... the strength in my legs.
"All I really need is a smile ... from these friends of mine ..." the mare crooned, "Smiles from these friends of mine - MINE - MINE!"
The laughing children shattered into a million pieces.
They screamed. In agony. Their little voices shrieked into my ears as if they were being burned alive, their flesh cooking and sloughing off their screaming faces. They burned. But they couldn't die.
My shoulders trembled and my eyes ran red with bloody tears.
The mare's voice loomed over their shrill cries. Her distorted sing song stuttered - coughed - and played in reverse, her pitch dipping and warping diabolically.
My entire body began to quake as the children's screams coalesced into the tortured shrieks of a single burning filly. She screamed into my ears. My soul.
But the warped, sinister music crashed against my senses - again, and again - threatening to drown out everything inside me and the filly's anguished cries.
I screamed. But I couldn't hear my voice.
"Red - we need to get out of here!" I heard Candy Cane beg.
"NOOO!" the filly's horrific, tormented voice shrieked into my ears - stopping my heart - hurling me into the snow - plunging us into utter darkness.
I slammed into the drifts. I lay there with silence inside my chest, my mouth gasping for breaths that wouldn't come.
Then my flashlight flickered to life. And so did my heart. Hooves yanked me to my fours. Candy Cane clung to me as she let out a horrified scream.
I swung my light across the snow, and its beam waned, dwindling - dying away as the darkness thrashed around us. Red dots drowned my EFS.
My legs buckled beneath me. My ears pinned themselves against the sides of my head. The screaming. Goddesses. The screaming. From every direction came the tortured screams of a burning city - a city of ponies - ponies burning in endless, hellish purgatory.
A rippling, black hoof shot out of the snow. A second. A third.
Billowing, skeletal shadows rose up from the ashen drifts - emerging from a sea of writhing darkness. Tall shadows, short shadows, mares - stallions - foals - too many to count.
Too many dead to keep buried.
Their melting, wretched bodies shuddered and flailed as they clawed their way out of their shallow graves, wailing in burning agony with their broken, distended jaws.
They lurched forward, trailing tattered clouds of pitch blackness as they shambled after us with their withered, tortured limbs. Some held out to us their trembling hooves. Others didn't have any hooves to lift.
Behind us, they awoke, rising from their shallow, frozen graves. Above us, on the rooftops, the shadows were perched, peering down at us ... watching ... waiting ... hungering ...
"Goddesses ... no ..." I heard myself say.
Candy Cane magelight flickered to life as she screamed into my ears.
"LET'S GET OUT OF HERE!"
She wrapped a hoof around mine and yanked me with her as she bolted through a hole in the Ministry hub's wall. They were inside. Waiting for us, legs outstretched. But Candy Cane blundered through them - and so did I.
Their dark forms washed over me, and I felt my heart skip beats. Stars exploded in my eyes. My blood chilled and thinned inside my veins.
Candy Cane dragged me through the darkness, screaming like a madmare. Through doors, through rooms, through halls, up flights of stairs we galloped, tearing through the debris, and the ashes, and the shadows that reached for our thundering, warm hearts with their cold, dead hooves.
Then she stopped, her hoof letting go of mine, sending me sprawling into the rubble with a jarring crash.
"Cane ... what the -"
Then I realized why she stopped.
I beamed my flashlight into the darkness, and standing before us was a young, maroon-coated unicorn mare with gray, cloudy eyes. She raised a hoof into the air, searchingly, her pale mane shimmering as she waved her hoof blindly in the air.
"Cane?" her tiny voice cracked, terrified. "Cane ... where are you?"
The mare beside me fell to her knees, mouth agape and eyes widened to saucers.
"No ... no ..." Candy Cane whimpered, cupping her mouth with a hoof as tears began to stream down her cheeks. She gazed upon the mare, trembling uncontrollably. "No ... no, no, no ..."
The shimmering pony sobbed, weeping silvery tears. "WHERE ARE YOU!?" she cried frantically, blind and helpless in the darkness she could not see.
Candy Cane started towards her, wanting to hold her but unable to accept the reality of what her eyes were seeing.
"Cane, what ... what are you doing? Who is that?!" I shouted into deaf ears as the mare's sobs drowned out my voice. "Who the hell are you?!"
"I'm here ... it's okay, I'm here," Candy Cane told the younger mare, both ponies ignoring me as if I wasn't even there. As if they were in their own world, and every attempt I made trying to draw her attention away was just a muffled voice on the other side of a foggy window.
"Where'd you go? Why ... why'd you leave me?" the white-maned mare asked, betrayed. "I waited for so long ... but you never came back ... you never came back for me like you said you would ..."
Candy Cane cried, wiping away her cheek with a trembling sleeve.
"I-I had no choice! They took me away - I-I had no choice!"
"YOU SAID YOU'D COME BACK!" the mare screamed, "You left me behind! YOU LEFT ME BEHIND!"
"I'm sorry ... I'm so sorry ... I couldn't fight them ... or they would've killed us both," Candy Cane murmured, shaking her head furiously.
"No - you gave up," the pale mare snapped. "You knew that you weren't strong enough to fight them ... you never were." The sobs shuddering inside Candy Cane's chest froze. "Father and everypony else died for nothing ... because you gave up."
"I ... I ... that's not true - THAT'S NOT TRUE!" Candy Cane screamed, pounding a hoof into the snow as tears poured down her face.
"That wasn't the first time you got our father killed ... don't you remember? Don't you remember? Mama and Papa died to save you ... and look at what you've done with yourself. You wasted the second chance they gave you ... the chance they gave us!" she spat.
"No ... no, no, no ..." Candy Cane sobbed, the other mare's words plunging deep into her bleeding heart.
"Yes. You know I'm right ... you know I'm right,because you gave up on me too."
Candy Cane blurted out a quaking sob, clenching her eyes shut as she fell to her haunches and held out her forehooves, pleadingly.
"I swore to the Goddesses that I'd do everything I could to get out and come back for you! I broke out seven times! Seven. Times!"
The pale mare let out a cruel laugh.
"The Goddesses ... where I am now, where Mama, and Papa, and Father - where everypony else is ... where you're going to ... there are no Goddesses. You're right: there never have been." She bowed her head, her pale mane falling before her darkened face. "The Goddesses ... they're all lies ... just like the lie you told me when you left me behind ... just like the lies you're telling me right now."
She convulsed as if struck by a freight train, her face contorting with agony as the mare's words tore her apart.
"If only you'd just died the first time ..." she whispered in a tiny voice. "If only we'd just died the first time, Father never would've thrown his life away trying to save us. He never would've wasted his life just to save you ..." she hissed.
I eyed my EFS. An immense, amorphous red mass was standing before us.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the blast shadows were trapped at the other end of the hall. Some tried dashing forward, only to shriek as their silhouettes rippled and distorted. They howled at us both, trying to lay upon us their cold, dead hooves.
Candy Cane's suffocated voice sent shivers down my spine.
"You're right ... Mama and Papa ... Father never deserved that ... none of them did." I heard Candy Cane murmur through sobs. "Maybe ... maybe we really should've just died."
My jaw dropped. "Cane ... Cane! What are you talking about!?" I laid a hoof on her shoulder, but she shrugged me off, shoving me away from her.
The younger mare held out a hoof, a demented, crooked smile creasing her lips.
"We still can," she cooed, her tone bitter sweet. "And when we do - when we finally do, we'll be together, just like you always wanted." She grinned wickedly. "We'll never ruin anypony's life ever again."
Candy Cane stumbled towards her.
"Never again ..." Candy Cane whispered. "No more wasted time ... no more wasted lives ..."
I watched as Candy Cane reached out to touch the trembling mare's outstretched hoof, their hooves merely breaths apart.
My eyes widened as I saw that the floor dipped inward and fell away into the abyss. 'No.'
The pale mare was standing on the other side.
"CANE - STOP!" I screamed, lunging towards her.
But she couldn't hear me. She was lost in her own world, lost in her own delirium ... lost in her own dark history. Just like how her father made her.
With a shriek, Candy Cane lost her footing and plummeted into the abyss.
"NO!" I cried, screaming my throat raw as I dove for her. I slid to the crumbling precipice, hoof outstretched and listening to her scream fade away as she plunged into the darkness.
She was gone.
She was gone.
"No ..."
I slowly lifted my eyes and stared at the pale mare that stood over me. She cocked her head, a disturbing grin stretching across her cheeks. Her eyes flashed green and trails of violet energy rippled from the corners of her emerald eyes.
And as I shrunk beneath her wicked stare, her chilling, insidious voice whispered:
"Yes ..."
Her jaw ripped open with a blood curdling banshee wail, distended and vomiting violet light that blasted frozen air past my face. Then her flesh sloughed off her bones - and her limbs exploded away from me into a cloud of living darkness that splattered the wall behind it. With a sickening squelch, it seeped through and vanished.
And left me to an approaching tide of flailing apparitions.
Alone.
In that instant, the blast shadows were turned loose.
I looked over my shoulder, and there they were, dozens upon dozens of contorted, wretched shadows galloping down the hall, hooves outstretched. With no one left to hold me aloft, and not with a single shred of courage left within me, I panicked.
Teary and wide-eyed, I stood there helplessly as they stampeded towards me, my chest rising and falling with shallow, suffocating breaths. They took her away. Candy Cane was gone. I failed Summer Smiles. I failed Candy Cane. I failed. Another pony added to the list of ponies I could've saved.
And once more, I was one with none. I was doomed to die cold, helpless, and useless.
I glanced around numbly, unable to shed anymore tears. To my left, I saw that the hallway continued into the night.
I was a doomed pony. But I figured I'd make them work for it.
I ran. I ran. And I ran. My flashlight's fading light struggled to pierce the darkness that threatened to engulf me. But it was no use.
It wasn't long until I found myself at a dead end, my hooves scraping desperately against an unyielding mountain of rubble. I bowed my head and frigid tears streamed down my cheeks as their maddening death rattles drowned out my thoughts.
And washed away my will. And extinguished my resolve.
In the dying light, I watched. Helplessly. At the far end of the hall, they staggered forward, their jaws distended and agape as they howled in unending, ceaseless agony.
I whimpered once. And I felt my legs buckle beneath me. It was over.
My beam flickered weakly as it clung desperately to life, my own short existence flashing before my eyes as the coalescing tides of howling darkness washed ever closer.
Flash.
They closed in.
Flash.
I could see their skeletal faces -
Flash.
Dripping like melted candlewax -
Flash.
Black flesh sloughing off their bones -
Flash.
Their shadows loomed over me -
Flash.
A cyclone of distended maws fell upon me -
Flash.
And I knew no more.
Footnote:
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Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 12 - Oblivion | Chapter 12
Oblivion
"They were gone. Bare as a bone - gone, like the wind that howled past us. They vanished as if they were never there. Vaporized. Erased. Wiped from existence ..."
A city of burning people screamed into my ears.
I was falling. Falling into a swirling chasm of hellish agony. For them there was no end. Again and again they died all around me.
I could feel their pain - their torment as their tortured souls washed over me ... my entire being sinking deeper into an abyss not even they could escape. Flashes of emerald light illuminated the abyss in time with their screams like lightning before thunder.
Every time their shrill cries for help - for mercy - for death reached a ghastly crescendo, spellfire flashed in my eyes and I saw their melting, skeletal faces and charred bodies whirl past.
But one voice - one voice cried out louder than the hell that burned around me.
I opened my watery eyes, and emerald light parted the darkness for the briefest of glimpses.
A husk of a stallion, his hind legs nothing but charred, smoking stumps, scraped towards me.
Then darkness.
I felt his cold, dead hooves curl around my muzzle.
There was another flash. His melting candlewax maw tore open before my eyes as he howled into my face.
"I'M SORRY!" he screamed.
I tried to open my mouth, tried to speak, tried to peel his hooves off my muzzle as darkness swept back over me.
But as I wrapped my hooves around his, his flesh wrapped around mine, engulfing me in rippling black sludge. He was melting into me - his hungry, liquefied coat slithering across me. Its chilling tendrils wormed their way across my cheek, leaving streaks of dripping black paint that trickled heavily down my face ... over my widening eyes ... into my gasping mouth.
My bloodshot eyes darted to the hooves around my muzzle and screamed - but my voice was lost amidst the cyclone of nightmarish carrion that whirled around me. His melting, skeletal face inched ever closer to mine as his bubbling flesh trickled down my chest, thickening and engulfing my shivering brown hide with a layer of frigid darkness.
Emerald light painted his blackened, charred skull before me.
"I'LL NEVER LEAVE HER!"
His distended, dripping maw opened, as if to swallow me whole - a breath away from my face.
"You hear me ..." he hissed into my ear as the emerald light died away. Droplets of melting flesh splattered upon my cheek.
"I'll never leave her again ..."
Never. Leave. Again. For a single fleeting moment, my muscles loosened.
"C ... Candy Cane?"
That was all he needed.
His writhing tendrils wrenched my mouth open.
With a deafening shriek, he plunged into me.
My eyes rolled into their sockets - and a film of black paint poured over them and darkness stole away my sight. Frigid black candle wax washed over me ... my entire body ... inside me ... swimming through my innards, tearing me apart from the inside out -
- pushing away the soul within.
"NO!" cried out a mare's voice. A skeletal pony dove towards me, ruined forelegs outstretched. "LEAVE HIM ALONE!"
Hooves tore through the amorphous black sludge that slithered across my flesh. She tugged, and peeled, and dug, the stallion's defiant, yet agonizing screams drowning out my own as she ripped him apart.
As she ripped me apart.
"GET OUT! THIS ONE IS MINE!" howled another voice, and another pair of dead hooves and broken jaws stabbed into me.
They weren't the only ones.
More came. More dead souls came to devour my flesh.
Hundreds of dead hooves careened into me in a frenzy of flailing limbs and snapping maws. No longer could I hear the candlewax stallion's voice as they shredded him to pieces, tore him out of me and hurled him into the night - only for another black soul to take his place ...
Only for that to be wrenched away too.
The screaming. The ripping. The tearing. They reached through my flesh, vying for the soul underneath, trying to tear it out - snatch it away - rip it from my chest. Rows upon rows of chilling, broken teeth sunk into my shoulders, and my throat, and my sides.
My flesh survived - but with every chilling blow, my soul grew colder, as if I was being dragged, screaming into a body of icy, black water. I watched as the light of the surface grew farther and farther away. I could do nothing but watch helplessly ... numbly ... distantly as they dragged my soul from the warmth of my drowning body.
I could feel them filling the void my soul left behind.
Slowly, sanity, consciousness, and even death itself became nothing but distant streetlights along a pitch black road. Streetlights that grew dimmer and farther with every part of me they tore away.
Beneath the shrieking hurricane of billowing shadows, the very things that made me equine - the very things that made me Red Dawn were being wrenched away from my shaking hooves. I felt emptier, and emptier, and emptier as they devoured everything until nothing but faint shreds of my soul, my conscious, screaming soul remained.
I remembered.
I remembered my promises. My convictions. The people I had to save. I remembered ...
I tried to remember ...
Tried ... fought to remember as the darkness threatened to swallow up the sinking raft that was my soul. I thrashed against the tides of darkness, not willing to give in even as their black waters began to fill my near empty vessel.
I wasn't willing to give up what little I had left. For all that I had left were my promises. The words that I had said to the people I loved. But the shadows showed no mercy. They were indiscriminate. They took, and as they took, the more I forgot.
The more I forgot who I was.
I heard his voice again. The candlewax stallion returned, flailing and slashing through the billowing cloud of apparitions in a whirlwind of screaming agony.
"HOLLY!"
An icy jolt speared through me, and I felt his presence slither inside my vessel once more.
Drowning.
Drowning. I was drowning. But my body began to float to the surface ... as someone else.
The light began to fade from my eyes.
I began to forget. Names. Places. Memories.
Even people. People I remembered I loved. 'I couldn't ... I can't ... forget ...
'Me ...'
In an instant, there was a flash.
From the darkness came an emerald light so bright that it washed the darkness away. With it came a filly's tormented voice, the same voice that had screamed - begged Candy Cane and I to stay with the only word she needed to say:
"NOOO!"
And in that instant, I remembered.
I remembered the emerald spellfire.
It burned away the black candlewax that threatened to devour me whole, and with it, the shadows that danced around me.
Then it began to burn away ...
'... me.'
It shot through my veins and through every nerve ending in my body. Engulfing me. Cooking my flesh. Boiling my blood. Burning me from the inside and out, consuming me - ripping me away from the world I had grown to hate.
My veins, my arteries, my eyes - they ruptured and popped as the fluids within boiled over. My flesh sloughed off my bones, and my bones became dust.
In mere milliseconds, I was incinerated.
And then nothing.
<-=======uuU X Uuu=======->
The echoing cries of a thousand dying ponies rang through my ears.
In a flash, the darkness gave way to light, and my eyes opened to a doomed, burning world.
I ... remembered ...
I was running.
Or at least as fast as my little legs could take me. Ponies towered over me. They were nothing but a screaming rainbow of blurs as they galloped past me in the fiery twilight - too many to count - too many galloping in the same direction. One wrong step was all it took - as one mare learned when she tripped over the icy curb and disappeared beneath a hundred unforgiving hooves.
But no one cared.
Not even when the shells that shrieked down from the burning, suffocated skies detonated into the masses. There was a deafening crash, then a muffled crack as I was thrown off my little hooves. I felt something warm run down my face as the unrecognizable remains of ponies plastered my ivory coat with gory crimson.
Through dark, blurry tunnels I stared into a sky of fire and ice. Great winged shapes, whirring red-eyed drones, and laser spitting war machines clashed behind curtains of blackened snowfall. With every fiery explosion that painted their cruel shadows against the clouds, I knew someone had died.
More flesh to stoke the flames.
It was hell. It had to be. In the bloody snow I lay, watching as the city around me burned. All around me ponies were dying. And running. And dying. I wanted to wake up, to leave.
I wanted to run away.
I willed my limbs to move - but they weren't mine. I cried out for help, but a filly screamed for her mother instead.
No one came.
The asphalt convulsed beneath me as muffled hooves pounded past in the ringing of my bleeding ears. I could hear faintly, amid the shelling, and the screaming, and the crashing, a stallion shouting someone's name.
"HOLLY!"
Eyelids fluttering, my ears perked and my head turned instinctively in the direction of his voice. I recognized him instantly. I knew him. I knew his name. Snowy. Snowy ... my brother.
He was my ... 'no.'
I didn't have a brother. And yet his voice alone was enough to dull the pain that coursed through my veins.
"HOLLY, WHERE ARE YOU!" Snowy screamed.
Closer.
I searched frantically through the frenzy of hooves and screaming ponies, tufts of my pink mane dashing across my face in the blurry tunnels of my eyes.
A shadow swept over me.
My eyes widened, then clenched closed.
Hooves drove me into the asphalt. There was a disgusting crack. Then agony. I felt bones break. I felt my fragile little bones break. Liquid fire erupted through my veins, and a horrifying shriek ripped a bleeding gash down my lower lip.
The suffering was mutual. It crashed against the shores of my consciousness as viciously as it did upon hers, and my silent, tormented cries joined her shrill, keening screams.
No one cared.
Beneath their hooves, a filly screamed for her mother.
But no one came.
A mare galloped past me. I saw her eyes meet mine for the briefest of moments - and she kept running, her screams of terror barely audible over the other countless, doomed souls. And I was one of them. I gagged - sick to my stomach - shrieking at my right hind leg - broken and twisted - shattered bone spearing through my bloodied flesh.
Again, my anguished grimace darkened beneath someone's shadow. I didn't even have a chance to scream. I didn't even have time to close my eyes.
I wanted to close them so bad. I couldn't watch. I wanted to get up and run. But at the same time, I was helpless and innocent. I wanted to lay there and cry, to cry for my mother, for my father -
For ponies I had never seen in my life. And yet they were as real and familiar as Stable 91's whitewashed halls.
I was scared.
She was too.
I shielded my face and screamed.
Teeth bit into my mane. Within seconds, I was airborne - and tucked against someone's chest. I howled for my mother until my eyes opened and I realized my forelegs were wrapped around a stallion's neck, his coat an alabaster white - just like mine.
I looked up and saw his face - and knew exactly who he was.
"Holly, are you okay?!" Snowy glanced down at me, a wiry foreleg hugging me protectively against his chest.
I buried my head in his brown mane as if to escape the carnage erupting around me. But I couldn't. Every step he took sent a river of lava through my broken leg and my quivering body.
"Little sis! Talk to me! Please!" he begged. I only squeezed him tighter, trying to hug the agony away. Trying to hug the world away. My shoulders rocked with sobs as I clung to him as if he was going to let me go and I was going to tumble away from him into the abyss. But he never did. "I'm sorry ..." I heard him say, his voice trembling.
"Where'd you go?" her voice - my voice - our voices whimpered in unison.
"I lost you in the crowd." I felt his muscles tense as he hugged me closer. He spoke to me softly, his voice reassuring me even as shells screamed overhead and exploded across the street.
"I'm sorry." The burning world around me seemed to fade away as I squeezed him as tight as I could and listened as his voice spoke louder than everyone's screams. "Holly, I'll never leave you again," he promised me, his words echoing through my mind a thousand times over.
I believed him.
"I'll never leave you again."
I nodded furiously, tears pouring down my cheeks.
"You promise?"
"I promise."
For a moment, we stood against the tide of fleeing ponies. They parted around us like a river parting around a stone. Unmovable. Inseparable.
I closed my eyes, and the pain, and the city, and the war - it all seemed to fade away as Snowy cradled me in his hooves. Then someone's coat brushed against my leg. Glass shattered all around me ... and I saw only fire ... blood ... and death.
I screamed.
Terror flashed across Snowy' face as his eyes widened at my mangled, useless limb.
Holly blinked away our tears. I blinked away her memories. I stared into Snowy's eyes and saw my distant face in his reflection, my brown coat dripping black and my lips curled, screaming in horror. Hooves raked against chalkboard.
I watched as Snowy's flesh sloughed off his bones like melting, black candlewax.
Like. Black. Candlewax.
Holly blinked once more, and the windows to his soul, the same eyes that had stared into my mine, rippled with anguish. It was his fault. Her leg ... my leg ... it hurt him more than it hurt me.
"Gods ... I'm sorry ... I'm - I'm getting you out of here!" Snowy swore, his hooves stomping into the asphalt. He galloped forward - knocking aside ponies in his path.
"What about Mama ... what about Papa!?" I gasped, my leg jolting with agony every time Snowy pounded one hoof into the road after the other.
But the only answer I got was another artillery shell that showered us in debris and red mist.
Mama. Papa.
Disjointed memories of ponies I didn't know seethed past me as I remembered the parents I never had.
"Snowy ... what about Mama and Papa -"
"They didn't make it!" he snapped, ramming aside a pony too slow to veer out of his path.
Hot tears washed away the pain in my leg as something else shattered inside of me.
"They ... they didn't?" I croaked, sick to my stomach. My eyes fluttered ... I could feel the darkness begin to take me. Not because of my maimed hind leg. But because I remembered.
I remembered my father levitating me through the air, my hoof brushing at his yellow and white mane with every giggling twirl. I hovered before his muzzle, and he smiled, gently nuzzling my nose with his. I muttered wistfully when he set me down on my four hooves and threw on his saddlebags. He brushed down his scrubs and told me, softly, that he was working overtime again. He said he'd see me again tomorrow ... tomorrow.
I remembered my mother reading me a story at my bedside. I remembered my favorite story -Daring-Do and the Quest for the Sapphire Stone. She hoofed her reading glasses and hugged me close as I listened to her, sinking my head into my pillow and losing myself in the fantasy world of Daring-Do. She pressed the covers closed and I whined, wanting to listen some more. 'Tomorrow,' she said, kissing me on the forehead and saying goodnight. She flicked the lights off, and took one last glance at me ... smiling one last time before gently closing the door.
I went to bed that night waiting for tomorrow to come.
That day was tomorrow.
I heard a gurgling retch as Snowy galloped past a stallion whose gory hooves fought to keep his innards from spilling out of his chest.
"MAMA!" he screamed. "PAPA!"
They were never going to come for him.
Neither were Holly's.
They were gone. Her parents ... my parents ... they were gone. My breaths came out as hopeless, shallow gasps, my entire world coming apart at the seams. I was sobbing now. Tears welled out of my eyes as I whimpered and wept.
In the distance, Snowy's muffled voice struggled to be heard..
"Holly," he began, through clenched teeth. "We're going to make it! You're going to make it!" Snowy's eyes met mine, tears trailing down his grimy cheeks. I felt his foreleg hug me closer to his chest.
"I won't lose you too," he sobbed, his voice shaking. "Not again."
What legs I had that weren't broken tightened around Snowy's chest. I buried my muzzle in his mane and wailed my bleeding heart out.
But my voice died away as an immense, winged shadow shrieked over us.
Upon wings of steel and billowing thunderclouds, an aircraft armed with racks of missile batteries and autocannons strafed over the masses of fleeing ponies. The thundering sounds of roaring cloudship engines drowned out even the pounding in my chest.
It turned on its axis, its pair of screaming rotors tilting so that its nose aimed down the street to my right. The frenzied rainbow stampede, undaunted and driven by the mindless instinct to survive, galloped beneath the cloudship's shadow even as the building behind it to our left exploded in a plume of ash and cinders.
Snowy swung his head over his shoulder and screamed something to me, something about my ears -
And above us, the cloudship unleashed hell.
There came a whirring hum, then a wailing shriek. In an epileptic lightshow of thundering gunfire and hissing missile volleys, the world around me flashed white. I screamed my throat raw in deafened silence.
On the other side of the street, a tank exploded, leaving behind a mass of twisted, burning metal. Black, equine shapes fled for cover only to be blown apart in blurry splashes of gore and dismembered limbs as the cloudship's nose-mounted autocannon ripped them to pieces.
I felt fire upon my cheek.
The blistering touch of a spent shell casing the size of my foreleg rolled down Snowy's back and grazed the side of my face.
Time was slow and cruel.
My flesh curled and cooked - cooking before my very eyes. The smell of burning hide - my burning hide wafted into my nostrils. Snowy's gait faltered as he cringed at his smoldering flesh. But the agonized scream that left my lips was a whip that lashed him onward - faster.
Faster!
I felt his leg tighten around me.
He wasn't going to stop for anything.
Blinded with stinging tears that wouldn't seem to stop falling, there was another flash and a dying metallic shriek as the cloudship, now behind us, erupted with hellfire. The equine silhouettes upon the ceilings above us cheered - then turned their weapons down to the herd.
I watched as they opened fire.
Ponies dropped left and right. Mares and stallions and even foals were crushed beneath the stampede as bullets stitched across their chests - clipped their legs - cratered their skulls. I watched as a filly about my age disappeared beneath her mother's lifeless corpse.
I'd remember that.
I'd remember the despair in her eyes as a hoof came down to crush her skull. And her ribs. And whatever was left. She disappeared beneath the tide of rainbowed pelts and I realized that I was still screaming.
It was a massacre.
I looked up and two stories above us and a zebra rose up upon his hindlegs. His striped, black and white mane bobbed with his head as he shouldered his rifle and took aim.
There was a fiery glimmer in his scope.
I knew he wouldn't miss.
But a winged, armored shape plowed into him and swept him off and into the street. There was a sickening crunch as the black-armored pegasus smashed him into the asphalt in front of us in a shower of bloody snow. The pegasus reached out with a gory hoof - and my brother turned the other way.
But even the pony's servomotors whined as Snowy tried plowing past her.
"She your daughter?" a mare's voice crackled through her helmet, her foreleg firm and unmoving against Snowy's shoulder. She fixed her helmet's orange eyes upon me and my broken leg.
In the reflection of her bloodied, angular visor I saw myself ... I saw Holly. I saw her once white, blood-caked face and disheveled pink mane. I saw the vicious gash that had ripped across her lip and the long, teardrop like burn that streamed down her cheek - like a tear that would never dry out. I saw the eyes of a filly, her innocence lost, and her own eyes unable to believe that the pony that was staring back at her was ... her.
I knew that feeling all too well.
I turned away and buried my muzzle in Snowy's mane, whimpering softly.
"Sister," he said.
The mare threw her head over her shoulder and ducked as an artillery shell leveled a building nearby. She touched a hoof to the side of her helmet, her head bobbing as she shouted into her radio.
"Center peel - cover us!"
I looked up into the fiery sky and the winged silhouettes of armored pegasi engaged the zebras upon the rooftops. They traded tracers and streams of magical energy as bodies tumbled down the roofs and spun out of the sky.
The pegasus looked at me, and then at my brother.
"Get to the evac point!" she ordered, a palpable trembling in her voice. She pointed her leg down the street. "We're getting you ponies outta here!"
I watched as scores of pegasi touched down onto the asphalt and corralled the fleeing ponies, herding them to safety even as the zebras continued their merciless onslaught. But for a short moment, the gunfire paused and everyone turned their eyes to the ember sky as immense, black shadows darkened the earth below.
From the fiery ashen clouds burst a pair of twin-rotored cloudships that screamed over us, escorting another pair of cloud-trailing transports. They landed in the center of an intersection at the far end of the street, debris and discarded refuse swirling around them. Their cabin doors slid open and pegasi streamed out, taking positions upon the rooftops or ducking behind overturned autowagons around the perimeter.
With open hooves, they gathered as many ponies as they could.
It was almost too good to be true. I almost believed that we all weren't going to die.
But I knew better. That world felt so real - and I was living it through another pony's eyes. But not too long ago I stared through the eyes of another dead pony and saw the balefire end her and everything she loved.
Realization dawned upon me. I never knew my father. I never had a brother. My mother wasn't an earth pony - she never wore glasses either. And I've never read a single Daring-Do book in my entire life.
It was no memory orb. It was someone's living, breathing memory. And I was living it through her eyes. As her. I looked up and saw around me Poneva city - a city at war.
And the Great War ended 200 years ago.
If only I didn't know how it was going to end.
If only I didn't know that that pony was already dead.
Crack! Gunfire kicked up gravel against my face and the armored pegasus threw herself in front of us, bullets pinging against her armor.
"Go, go!" she screamed, before the twin-linked energy casters upon her shoulders unleashed a blazing arc of violet lightning. Across the street, from a second floor ceiling, a smoking corpse tumbled to the asphalt.
I felt my insides churn. Not from the sight of the zebra's mangled corpse - but from a sinister, undulating mechanical drone that violated ... penetrated my senses. Everyone on the street heard it. Felt it quaking through their bones.
It was the resounding, overwhelming sound of a voice roaring over the groan of churning machinery.
Then there was a great crash. Everyone turned to look.
A store to our right collapsed around a lurching, treaded war machine. Its hull was striped black and white, and covered with ungodly, blood red glyphs that glowed hellishly in the smoke. A pair of tusk-like missile batteries jutted out of its turret - the barrel of its main gun exuding a fiery, ember glow.
In its destructive wake followed three smaller tanks and dozens of zebras who promised us only blood and fire.
Leading them forward, the gargantuan war machine plowed through the debris, the smoking length of its immense battle cannon revolving slowly towards us. The amalgamation of equine sapience and cold steel roared - its spine-tingling psionic impulses howling for blood inside my paper thin skull.
The pegasus mare took a step back, her crackling energy casters hesitating at the unholy monstrosity.
"Gods ..." The mare shoved Snowy onward just as the tank's runes gleamed with hellfire. "Get outta here - now!"
My brother turned and ran.
And the road behind us exploded.
The shockwave threw us off our hooves.
I felt Snowy's legs curl reflexively around me as we tumbled helplessly down the street like ragdolls. The air was punched out of my lungs as we slammed into the asphalt. Hard. Snowy took most of the impact, but my vision swam as I crashed headfirst and into the road in a heap.
I stared numbly into the fiery, amber skies as gray snowflakes collected upon my face - the tank's psionic death horns howling distantly in my dwindling consciousness. Tracers and laser bolts streaked over us as buildings within the blast zone moaned and collapsed in their death throes. I cried out as I rolled over onto my side, my mangled hind leg scraping against the rubble.
Then I saw her.
Frantic radio chatter spewed out from the pegasus' cratered helmet, impaled through and through with a talon of shredded rebar. I listened distantly as a mare shouted into the comms and my senses slowly faded back into horrifying clarity.
"... KRRFT - zebra armor - engage, ENGAGE -"
Twin shadows darkened my face as two of the flying barges' escorts broke formation and hurtled towards the zebra battle tank. But a stallion's voice broke the static.
"Belay that order! Whiskey Hotel - Cloud Lima, stay in formation!"
The steel monstrosity's death horn screamed into my thoughts. My vision blurred, and the muffled, alien chants of marching zebras began to fill my ears. In my daze, I tried to sit up, but ducked as autocannon rounds shrieked over me and blew apart anyone that rose to their hooves.
"Sir we've got stragglers -"
"FUCK'EM, THEY'RE ALREADY DEAD! GET THIS SKY-TANK IN THE AIR!"
'Goddesses ... no ...'
The mare screamed into the comms. "FUCK YOU, SUNSPOT! WILD FLOWER, COVER THEM! NOPONY GETS LEFT BEHIND!"
"KRRFFT - 10-4, Lightning Dust. Nopony gets left behind."
With their autocannons thundering and missile batteries shrieking, they strafed the zebra infantry that advanced ever closer. One of the smaller tanks blew apart - and another became engulfed in smoke, stopping in its tracks - immobilized. Dismembered limbs and debris shot skyward as the cloudships screamed past, plotting another attack vector.
For seconds, nothing moved beneath the red and black cloud.
But my stomach began to churn - and in the back of my mind, I witnessed fleeting visions of a bloodied zebra - equine shadows dancing over his mutilated flesh -
And a cacophony of ungodly psionic screams coalesced inside my skull.
Through the plumes of rising smoke their glyph-inscribed war machine lurched forward - undaunted - its hull smoking and sloughing off its ruined frame. Behind it, through the hellish glow of its blood-red glyphs, more billowing black shapes marched through the dust and burning embers.
I laid my head back down helplessly, whimpering softly as I stared at the pegasus mare's lifeless eyes through her shattered faceplate. My breaths came out as shallow, frantic gasps as I felt her blood pooling around me. Still warm.
I moaned, fighting for the strength to sit up. I turned, and saw my brother. Snowy was lying on his back, his chest heaving for air - a hoof curled around a length of rebar that pinned him to the road. Panting through bloody teeth, I watched, helplessly, as his eyes darted back and forth, spiraling into shock.
Sobs erupted from my lips. "Snowy!" I wailed, tears cutting streams down my grimy cheeks.
I turned and saw the zebras and their war machines rumbling toward us, chanting in their chilling, alien language. Their dark war hymns echoed in my thoughts, staining them red with the death and destruction all around me. I looked around me and saw dead ponies. Charred ponies. Perforated ponies. Dismembered ponies. Even colts, fillies - foals. Just like me. And the more I stared, the more I hated.
The more I hated them. The more I hated the stripes on their coats. They killed my parents. Destroyed my home. They did that. Those striped monsters did that. And they were going to murder me like they murdered everyone else.
"Snowy - Snowy, they're coming!" I shrieked into his deaf ears. Their engines roared even closer. I could imagine them crushing both of us beneath the treads of their tanks. I could hear my flesh squelching. My bones crunching. I imagined them laughing as Snowy's skull popped underneath their treads like a melon.
No. They were going to kill my big brother - the only family I had left. No. No! I slapped at his face furiously with a trembling forehoof, crying out his name through a river of burning tears. Zebras rallied among the ash, and cinders, and slaughtered ponies.
They'd be upon us in minutes.
"Snowy!" I cried, pressing my nose against his and staring desperately into his unresponsive eyes. "THEY'RE COMING!" I reached out with a hoof and touched his face, my shrill cries crashing through his disoriented state like a sledgehammer to glass.
"THEY'RE GOING TO KILL US!"
Something shattered behind the glassy windows of Snowy's eyes. His pupils constricted. He blinked, and I felt his wiry muscles tense explosively under me.
"SNOWY!"
My voice wrenched him away from the precipice.
Snowy roared with grim defiance and tore himself free with a violent squelch. He swept me up in his hooves, and the world blurred past my teary eyes once more.
We leapt into the fray, joining whatever stragglers were left. Down the street behind us, the barrels of the striped tanks pierced through the curtain of smoke.
They opened fire.
Snowy galloped through the hail of screaming tracers, howling his throat raw even as ponies faltered and came apart around us. I watched as pegasi dove down from the sky and carried the lucky ones to safety.
But the zebras were cruelly intent on making sure no one made it out of there alive. One pegasus dove down toward us, his legs outstretched - but the zebras arced their tracers skyward to our would-be savior and he exploded in a cloud of bloody feathers and scrap metal.
Snowy only hugged me tighter.
Then I heard the roar of cloud engines as a pair of cloudships shrieked towards us.
The two light tanks replied with a barrage of shrieking autocannon rounds, punctuated by the whoosh of a gale-force wind. With a deafening thunderclap, one of the cloudships erupted in flames - the monstrous battle tank's left missile battery smoking. Through its smoking death throes, the cloudship's partner shrieked past, and engulfed the zebras in an inferno of vengeful, bone-jarring missile volleys. Within seconds, the formation was engulfed in smoke and fire, the acrid stench of cooked flesh and petrochemicals wafting downwind.
They did it. The zebras were dead.
The world seemed to slow around me as the blood drained from my face and my eyes widened with horror.
Howling, psionic death horns echoed through my ears and my mind. Through the fire, it roared even louder - the tank's inequine, steel sapience only driven to rage as it screamed in blood curdling agony.
'Impossible.' The massive, striped war machine, its crimson glyphs blazing like hellfire from its melted, ruined hull, crushed the other tanks' burning skeletons beneath its treads as the spellbound demon within roared with fiery vengeance.
As the last cloudship accelerated into the sky, the twisted, melting wreckage of its wingman rained down upon us - us, the stragglers who survived. Only a hoofful of us were all that was left.
Almost shoulder to shoulder we galloped, for our lives - and Snowy, for my life.
The air suddenly felt a thousand degrees hotter. I looked up and choked, an inferno reflecting against my watery eyes. As if by instinct alone, Snowy hurled himself away just in time for the pony next to us to disappear beneath the cloudship's fiery tail section.
A mare, screaming for her life, shoved us out of her way as she bolted past us. But the falling sky screamed louder. She almost made it across the street. Almost.
She didn't even have a chance to cry out before she was cleaved in half by a whirling metal rotor.
I swallowed the bile in my throat.
"GODS!" Snowy cursed, her gory halves tumbling past us.
She was close. But we made it farther.
But what we saw made my jaw drop with despair. I watched helplessly as one of the cloudships ascended to the sky.
"No ... Gods, no ..." Snowy murmured, galloping as fast as his legs could take him.
They were going to leave us behind.
I waited for the other cloudship to take off. But it didn't. My heart leaped when I realized that the other one was waiting for us - but no one but the remaining pegasi scrambled inside. No Ponevan but us entered the perimeter.
We were all that was left.
Armored pegasus ponies galloped over and rushed Snowy and I to the cloudship's open cabin doors. 'We made it,' I thought, 'Goddesses, we made it.'
Snowy held me up to the cabin door, and I gazed inside. Packed shoulder to shoulder were dozens of terrified, huddled ponies who gazed back, numbly. A helmetless, turquoise pony with empathetic amber eyes reached out with a hoof to take me.
But an armored form pushed her aside, and a pegasus with captain's bars stamped onto his segmented chest plate stood before me and blocked my view into the inside.
He shook his head and I saw in the reflection of his orange visor the fury in Snowy's eyes.
"We're over capacity," he shouted, barely audible over the cloudship's engine. "The ship can't take anymore!"
My mind went numb. I played his words over and over again in my head. My thundering heart faltered for a second as his words shattered all the hope inside of me.
"What!?" Snowy snapped, pulling me back reflexively. "No - no! You can't just leave us behind!"
The pegasus stood even straighter, addressing Snowy as if I wasn't even there. As if wedidn't even matter to him.
"This sky-tank can just barely make it into the sky," the Captain growled, "No. I can't let anymore onboard."
"He's got a filly for fuck-sake, Captain!" the turquoise pony cried out.
He reared his head at her, his eyes glaring through his angular visor.
"This is the last time, Lightning Dust! You're out of line, Lieutenant!"
Lightning Dust's growled.
"And you're out of your mind if you think I'm going to let you leave these ponies behind!"
The armored pony's servomotors whined as he shoved the mare against the hull.
"I. Will," he growled.
I broke down into tears as the striped doom that awaited us fired a shell into the sky trying to strike down the circling cloudship.
Snowy cradled me against his chest, and screamed, "You ... you son of a bitch! YOU SON OF A BITCH! You'll kill us!"
"You're a selfish, heartless little fuck, Sunspot," Lightning Dust hissed.
Captain Sunspot threw his head back and gave her a bitter chuckle, yanking off his helmet. "I'm hearing this from a Wonderbolts Academy washout that nearly killed the Ministry Mares while showing off!" He wrenched her to her hooves and stared gunfire into her eyes.
Lightning Dust opened her mouth but he cut her off, jabbing her in the chest with a hoof. "Saving these dead ponies won't change shit, Lightning Dust. Anybody still down here or without a pair of wings is already dead!" he growled, swinging a hoof at us.
Snowy's leg trembled uncontrollably around me as he drowned in rage.
"Let me remind you that the only reason why you're here is because Rainbow Dash thought she'd give a selfish, heartless little fuck like you a second chance."
A bomb went off inside of her. "GO TO HELL, SUNSPOT!" she spat. "I've changed - and I'd rather die than leave these ponies to those fucking stripes!"
He shoved her off the sky tank, his energy casters crackling agreeably. "I'm happy to oblige you," he snarled as she scrambled to her hooves.
A mare's voice crackled over Lightning Dust's radio.
Everyone's eyes turned to the sky."KRRFT - I CAN'T OVERLOAD ITS GLYPHS IN A SINGLE RUN!" The cloudship shrieked overhead, and we watched it rocket toward the immense war machine.
"Just keep it busy, we're loading up the last of the civvies," Lightning Dust shouted.
Captain Sunspot clenched his jaw. "I thought I -"
"Negative - it'll be on you soon ... I-I NEED TO ENGAGE MY TILTROTORS! I'll empty my missile batteries!"
Lightning Dust's blood drained from her face as the cloudship slowed to a sluggish hover.
The tank's right missile battery hissed.
"NO!" Lightning Dust howled.
We watched in horror as the cloudship spun out of an expanding cloud of fire.
Radio chatter screamed over the comms.
"SNBRRRRTT - BLEW OFF MY FUCKING WING!"
Lightning Dust stomped a hoof into the rubble, cursing frantically. We all turned to watch as the remaining cloudship tipped precariously to one side, smoke trailing from its ruined hull.
"Hotel Whiskey - do you copy!?" Lightning Dust begged.
"I'M LOSING HER!" a mare screamed over the comms.
Everyone took a step back and watched as the zebra war machine's engine revved hungrily, its howling, psionic death horns roaring for blood.
Its battle cannon began revolving to face us.
"We need to take off - NOW!" the captain shouted as the rest of the pegasi scrambled inside.
"YOU CAN'T!" Snowy cried, and hurled himself forward.
But someone tackled us into the ground. Knocked from his protective hooves, I tumbled away and stars exploded in my eyes as I careened into the broken asphalt. Snowy howled his voice hoarse, bucking and screaming, pinned to the dirt by an armored pegasus.
The pony struggled to keep him down as he thrashed and flailed against his servomotors like a trapped animal. He swung his helmeted head over his shoulder.
"Captain, we're running out of time!" the pegasus screamed, the battle tank's damaged turret screeching lividly in our direction. But circling around from behind, the injured cloudship banked precariously to the earth.
"Wild Flower! You need to break off, now!" Lightning Dust screamed into the comms as the smoking cloudship plummeted out of the sky toward the striped war machine.
The mare's voice hissed over the radio one last time. "NEGATIVE. I'M NOT LETTING THAT STRIPE THROUGH!" There was a pause, static crackling across the comms as the cloudship spiraled out of the sky. "I'm sorry, Lightning Dust. Don't leave anypony behind. Wild Flower - out."
"NO!" Lightning Dust cried.
Wild Flower and her cloudship, missile batteries flashing with everything she had left, collided nose-first with the tank's turret. One second the hulking monstrosity was there. And the next, it was not.
Its glyphs burned as bright as a star going supernova.
Then its hull caved in.
The magically-enchanted ordnance within exploded, and with a deafening psionic screech, the hulking metal abomination and its aberrant sapience were rent apart from existence.
An immense, bone-jarring explosion engulfed the entire intersection, leveling every single one of the buildings around it.
Its psionic screams faded away, sinking into hell, as an earthshaking shockwave rippled across the shattering asphalt.
The captain shouted as he punched a dent into the cloudship's hull, "GET THIS SKY-TANK IN THE AIR, GOD FUCKING DAMNIT!"
Gusts of water vapor surged past my broken form as the cloudship's engines saturated the air with billowing mist.
"NO!" Snowy cried as my bloodied mane whipped violently against my face in the roaring turbulence.
I turned my gaze helplessly to Lightning Dust - and she just stared off into smoking crater across the street.
"No ..." I heard her say, faintly. "No. No!" She dived inside the cabin and careened into the captain, curling her hooves around his shoulders and yanking him to face her nose to nose. "We're not leaving anypony behind!"
"Stand down, lieutenant, or I'll -"
"Wild Flower died for these ponies!" She turned to the wailing filly whose mangled legs were splayed out across the asphalt. "Fuck your orders!" Lightning Dust screamed, shoving him aside.
As the pegasus that pinned Holly's brother to the asphalt unfurled his wings and flew into the cabin, already several yards above us, Lightning Dust unfurled hers. Her hooves crunched heavily into the snow next to me.
Lightning Dust lifted me gently, careful not to hurt my broken leg.
I saw Snowy rise to his hooves. His eyes widened and he rushed towards us, reaching out to me with a hoof. But Lightning Dust shook her head, his hoof a breath away from my cheek.
Her eyes turned to me, to Snowy, and back.
"I can only take one," she said softly.
Snowy stood there with a distant, shell-shocked look in eyes. It must've been the blood loss. He came to, blinking away tears as his trembling hoof touched my cheek.
He clenched his teeth, and shook his head vigorously, tears pouring down his pale face. He craned his neck downward as Lightning Dust cradled me in her hooves. I reached out with a trembling hoof and he slowly curled his hoof around mine.
"Holly ..." he began, slowly. "I love you, okay?"
I stared at him, numbly, my mouth moving but not a single word escaping my lips. I stared into his eyes, my entire body shaking. Holly's voice was nothing but a distant whisper.
"I-I ... I love you too."
Snowy squeezed my hoof with his. "I'll never leave you. I'll always be here with Mom and Dad - I'll ..." He sobbed, staring down his bloody chest. "I'll never leave you," Snowy told me as Lightning Dust unfurled her wings.
"I'll never leave you!" he cried.
We stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. But an eternity was not enough. I opened my mouth, but found that I could not speak. I closed my eyes and trembled.
'This can't be happening.'
It was just a dream ... a nightmare. Everyone has nightmares ... but we always wake up from them. Always.
I was going to wake up, too.
But my eyes opened, and Snowy was still there. I was still in Lightning Dust's hooves.
And the sky-tank was still gaining altitude.
I held out my hoof ... and our hooves touched.
I didn't want to let go.
I opened my mouth to tell him that I believed him. To tell him that I'd miss him. That I wished he could come with us. That I never wanted to lose him. Not him too.
Not again.
But Lightning Dust spoke instead.
"She'll be safe at Stormpeak," Lightning Dust promised, flapping her wings and lifting us into the air.
I watched as distance pulled our hooves apart. My hoof hung before my face, reaching out to curl around Snowy's - already yards away - not wanting to let go even as we grew farther apart.
Snowy stared up into the fiery skies, his eyes never leaving mine, and mine never leaving his.
My breaths came and went as shallow gasps, as Snowy became smaller and smaller until he was nothing but a distant silhouette drowning in the shadows of a dying city.
Lightning Dust stepped through the sky tank's cabin door, and another soldier swung it closed. It slammed shut. But my eyes couldn't leave its steel frame.
Among the fearful whispering of the ponies huddled around us, and the rumbling of the cloudship's hull, I didn't feel safe. I glanced frantically at the windows, knowing that Snowy was still down there - and I was up there - and even around all those ponies, I was still alone.
Alone.
Everyone inside whispered of ponies who didn't made it. Of ponies who they watched get cut down. Of ponies who simply disappeared into the crowd.
I froze, my eyes widening to saucers. My jaw began to tremble. My shoulders began to quake. I felt Holly's overarching consciousness ripple and boil.
I left my brother behind.
"I'll never leave you ..." I whispered, tears welling up in my eyes. Holly's presence drowned out mine. I floundered helplessly beneath her violent hurricane of anguish - drowning in her despair - drowning in her agony.
"Insubordination! I wouldn't expect anything less from an Academy washout!" Captain Sunspot screamed as hot tears streams down my cheeks. "I'll have you court-martialed for this!"
Sunspot would've let my brother die. But it was I who left him behind.
Snowy was going to die alone down there ... all alone, watching the fiery skies as our cloudship rocketed away. He was going to die. Alone.
Just like me.
"Snowy ... don't go... please don't leave me," I whimpered distantly, cupping my ears with my hooves, trying to drown out the bickering pegasi with Snowy's name. I relived the last twenty minutes of my life.
I stared out the window and into Snowy's inexorable, unrelenting eyes, wishing that he was really there. There with me.
"I saved her life, Sunspot!" Lightning Dust screamed over my trembling voice. "We came here to save ponies, not kill them!"
My heart began beating faster than I could breathe. I felt like was going to melt through my skin, every inch of me wanting to fling that door open and hurl myself out and into the clouds.
I whimpered, shaking my head furiously as Lightning Dust's armored leg remained wrapped around my chest. I wriggled and begged for Lightning Dust to put me down, begged her to let me go. I batted my hooves against her armor and sobbed Snowy's name in despair, begging for him to come back - telling the frigid hull the words I should've said to him before Lightning Dust flew me away.
"I'll never leave you ... I'll never ... never ..."
But I did. And I knew. I knew that if the zebras didn't get him, the balefire would. Poneva was doomed. Everyone still down there was doomed. The Enclave survived the balefire ... and so would the ponies above the clouds. Captain Sunspot was right ... everyone that was left ... everyone still down there without a pair of wings was already dead.
And I left Snowy behind.
I lifted my hooves from my ears, unable to drown out Sunspot's grating words. But then I heard them. Voices. The two pegasi weren't the only voices that were scraping at the insides of my ears.
My ears perked as Lightning Dust's radio wailed with static.
"KRFFT - gone! Cloudsdale - dear Celestia! Cloudsdale's gone! It's - SNRRBBRRRTTT -"
I lowered my gaze to the transmitter beneath Lightning Dust's collar.
The cabin went silent.
"Manehatten's gone dark, their comms are down, repeat, their - SNBBRRRRTTTT"
The ponies inside murmured with growing alarm.
"They're gone! SNBRRT - Impossible! The entire city, i-it's - SNBRRRRRTT - Fillydelphia too, son of a ... they couldn't have - KRFFT - Stop this! This is an open channel! Everyone cease and - dear God ... there's something in the sky. I-it's ... it's - SNBRRTTT- confirm? Zed Bravo confirmed! Repeat, Zed Bravo - SNBRRR -"
"Shut that fucking thing off!" Sunspot screamed, and Lightning Dust clawed at her collar.
The cabin trembled with a terrified, nightmarish silence.
Lightning Dust turned and found that everyone was staring at her.
"What ... what was that?" someone asked, shakily. Lightning Dust stared, her mouth agape but without answers to give. Harnesses were shrugged off. Hooves clopped against the steel floor.
Another pony came forward.
"What the hell is going on?" a unicorn mare demanded, approaching us. "What happened in Fillydelphia?"
"Fillydelphia? I-I have family over there!"
Everyone undid their flight harnesses and crowded around us, demanding answers Lightning Dust couldn't - or didn't want to give.
"What happened to Manehatten? What are they talking about?! My grandma's living in Manehatten!"
Lightning Dust squeezed me tightly, her eyes darting to Sunspot, the crowd, and back.
"You!" as mare shouted, stumbling towards him. He looked startled, taking a step back, his flank bumping into the sky-tank's hull. "What's going on? You've gotta know!" When he didn't answer, she came closer - too close.
Sunspot snapped to and shoved her away.
"Stay back!" he screamed unevenly. "Everypony stay seated, and we'll get to Stormpeak in one piece!"
"Screw Stormpeak - I need to get back home!"
Ponies scrambled towards the cockpit.
"Everypony, please!" Lightning Dust shouted over them as Sunspot and the pegasi darted in front of them.
A stallion shook Lightning Dust by the shoulders. "What's going on!?" he demanded.
But a mare shoved him away and begged, "Let us out of here!"
"I need to go home!"
And among the crowd, beneath their screaming voices, someone whispered the truth.
... balefire ...
The cabin went quiet.
A mare's voice broke the silence.
"N-no - NO! It can't be! It just can't!"
Balefire.
All hell broke loose. The screaming ponies hurled themselves at the pegasi, trying to force themselves into the cockpit. Blood spurted into the air as the armored soldiers bucked them aside and ponies wrestled them to the floor.
One mare curled her hooves around Lightning Dust's shoulders. "What about my foals!? My husband!? What happened to Manehatten!?"
"I-I don't know, I don't know!" Lightning Dust stammered, before a pegasus tackled the mare to the floor.
"Get these civvies in line!" Sunspot shouted, and the pegasi inside the cabin fell upon them.
Screams echoed out from every direction. Ponies were flung across the cabin or hurled to the floor in blurs of tangled limbs. Ponies cried out for their families, their husbands and their wives and their foals -
And I cried out for the brother I left behind. I buried my muzzle into Lightning Dust's amber mane and screamed and screamed Snowy's name as someone tried to curl a hoof around her neck. She spun around and bucked the pony in the face with an audible crack. Lightning Dust pushed me against the window as she unfurled her wings and shielded me from their battering limbs.
She grunted through clenched teeth as a hoof connected with her unprotected head, knocking away her earpiece.
Then I heard the familiar, whirring shriek of a charging energy weapon. Through Lightning Dust's turquoise feathers, I watched a pegasus buck a pony off of her, level her weapons, and take aim.
Her energy casters glowed as bright as a star, and -
"STOP, NOW!" the captain's voice shrieked into our eardrums through his helmet's amplified loudspeakers.
Everyone stilled.
Seconds passed by in silence, my face pressed against the window as I listened to the shrill ringing in my ears and felt Lightning Dust's frantic breaths against the nape of my neck. I closed my eyes and whimpered and sobbed, wallowing in the grim silence that hung over us.
I closed my eyes ... and heard as the faint, suffocated cries of a hundred thousand weeping voices whispered into my thoughts in passing like a chilling winter breeze.
My eyelids fluttered open.
And I saw the sky ignite with fire.
In a heartbeat, the dark, ashen clouds that curtained off the land beyond Poneva's borders were wiped out in an instant. Through the blazing, emerald skies - for the briefest of moments - there was a brilliant pink flash - and with it, came a tide of unfathomable sorrow that washed over me - us - as Holly and I gazed out into the distance with empty eyes...
I watched with an inexplicable hollowness inside me as the distant lands beyond Poneva were swallowed up in balefire. Far north of the burning city below, an immense, verdant mushroom cloud loomed over the earth.
Ponies trotted slowly to the windows - speechless. They must've felt it too. The despair. The sorrow - a collective anguish that washed away our resolve. Our eyes widened with horror as the radioactive cloud swelled unstoppably into the stratosphere.
'Goddesses.' I watched as hundreds of thousands of ponies died in an instant.
"... not them too," I heard Lightning Dust murmur, sweat pouring down her brow. Her voice trembled uncontrollably as she whispered the names of ponies I didn't know. "Ardor - Sunset ... no ... no - not them too - oh God ... oh my God ..." Her hoof loosened around me, the verdant spellfire reflecting in the fading light of her eyes. "They're gone. They're all gone ..."
Her radio crackled to life as we gazed out of the windows with distant, empty eyes.
"- SNBRRRT - detected balefire detonations across Equestria and the world," a mare said to us over the comms, her voice grim yet resolute. "The stripes flipped the switch. So did we."
I felt several dozen eyes upon the back of my skull. Someone collapsed to the floor. Another let out a violent sob. Others shook their heads in denial. Some began to weep. The rest stared at their hooves, unable to speak, the emerald mushroom cloud in the distance nothing but the final nail in their loved ones' coffins.
All around us, the world was being washed away with balefire.
Through the comms, the mare spoke flatly, her voice hoarse and faltering through the static. "Cloudsdale was the first, then Manehatten, Fillydelphia, Canterlot ... we're just now getting reports of a confirmed balefire detonation in the Crystal Empire," she said, her voice trembling.
"I won't lie to you ponies; it's impossible to quantify the absolute number of Equestrian casualties."
Her words shook me to the core.
"There are simply too many."
I felt Lightning Dust hug me tight. I wrapped my legs around her and sobbed.
She bowed her head, her breaths shallow against my coat.
"It's over..." I heard Sunspot murmur, pulling off his helmet and letting it tumble to the floor.
The voice on the radio spoke over our subdued cries. "SNBRRT - no - not for us. Not for the pegasi. All wings, Operation Skyline is a go. Fly home, and stay the course. Stay. The course. We will carry on. Whatever gods are out there, I pray that they help us all.
"General Spitfire, out."
I closed my eyes and listened as everyone inside murmured and wept. I listened to Lightning Dust's trembling breaths, her tears trickling down her cheeks and into my mane. The mare shuffled on her hooves, and both of us stared outside the window with tears in our eyes.
Against the backdrop of a hellish, emerald sky, I saw hundreds, if not thousands of black dots rising from the burning city below.
Swarms of autonomous zebra drones zipped across the skies, and great-winged serpents abandoned the battlefield. Meanwhile, pegasus cloudships, gaining altitude faster than our sluggish sky-tank could, accelerated into the clouds as we lagged behind the growing swarm of fleeing pegasi.
But there was one. There was one black shape that flew against the rest.
It left an acrid black trail in its wake as it streaked across the sky, faster than some. Faster than us.
I watched in horror as it careened into the heart of Poneva city.
Then there was a green flash.
It shined through the windows and illuminated the inside of the cabin for the briefest of seconds with blinding, hellish light.
And colossal tidal waves of emerald spellfire swelled across the earth.
It consumed city block after city block - mile after mile - washing away skyscrapers like twigs in a hurricane of emerald annihilation.
And I knew, and Holly knew, that her brother was gone.
I touched a hoof against the glass. Hot tears that refracted the cruel light in my eyes slaved down my agonized grimace.
"Snowy ..." I whimpered weakly. "No ... Snowy! SNOWY! SNOWY!"
Lightning Dust held me tight as I batted my hooves against her armor and cried.
"LET ME GO! LET ME GO!"
"He's gone!" Lightning Dust screamed. "Celestia ... Luna ..." she choked on her words, casting her gaze to her hooves. "Cadence..." Lightning Dust once again stared off into the emerald skies. "They're all gone ..."
I turned and peered outside the window pawing at the glass, and saw an immense, titanic mushroom cloud of infernal spellfire plume up and into the sky.
At its farthest reach, its radioactive crescendo arced several leagues into the atmosphere.
And with it, a roiling shockwave traveling faster than the balefire itself, obliterated clouds in its wake.
My heart skipped a beat.
'Goddesses. No.'
Cloudships stuttered, banked, and plummeted out of the sky. The comms exploded. Hundreds of doomed ponies shrieked in unison as their hapless coffins of metal tumbled into the path of the unstoppable spellfire scourge.
My ears popped.
And I knew we were all going to die.
It was then that every pony began to scream.
The ship rumbled and screeched, its machinery shrieking in its shuddering death throes, threatening to tear itself apart. The lights inside turned red, and I felt the cloudship tip forward.
This was how the entire world ended.
The sky-tank tumbled end over end, and I slipped from Lightning Dust's hooves as we fell out of the sky.
Gravity wrenched us apart.
"NOOO!"
Lightning Dust threw her hooves in front of her to catch me, her eyes widening -
But gravity hurled her away. She didn't even have a chance to scream.
Lightning Dust slammed violently into the hull - and her head whiplashed forward with a disgusting snap.
I watched numbly as gravity tossed her lifeless body across the cabin.
She was gone too. I closed my eyes as the world spun around me. In a rainbowed daze of colored hides and armored limbs, ponies hurtled away left and right. Necks snapped. Limbs broke. Flesh squelched. I caught my forelegs onto a rail and held on for my life, screaming Snowy's name -
Then I heard a voice whisper into my ears.
I closed my eyes and listened as the waters of our shared consciousness settled into quiet placidity.
"I'll never leave you."
I believed him.
"Snowy ..." I whispered among everyone's screams as a tear streamed down my cheek.
And the cloudship's hull was rent asunder.
The shrieking of shredding metal and the grounding of rock into gravel and dust - the screams of ponies as they were flung from the disintegrating wreckage - the sickening crunches of flesh and bone as ponies were mulched beneath -
It was over as fast as it had begun.
Slowly ... my breaths came out as shallow, gurgling gasps as I stared into the emerald sky. I tried to raise a foreleg and found that I had none. I peered down my gory chest: a long strip of hull halved my body from my chest down. I laid my head against the ruined earth in silent anguish.
"Sno ... wy ..." I rasped, weakly.
There was a flash of light, and for a split second, my shadow danced across the cloudship's ruined hull.
I felt the most intense heat against my cheek. There wasn't even enough time to scream.
The pain was indescribable; it stripped away the weight of my useless flesh as my mind recoiled in hellish agony for the briefest of nanoseconds.
And it was gone.
It was all gone.
But I continued to stare ... to stare at the hellish, emerald skies even as the balefire's path of annihilation swelled miles beyond what I could see. I found myself lying upon a flattened piece of wreckage, staring at the spike of steel that had only moments earlier split me in half.
I was alone.
So I screamed. I screamed for my mother, for my father - for my brother.
No one came.
I screamed until I could scream no longer ... until my hope dwindled and died away and I waited in silence, reclining into hollow tranquility. I waited, and waited, and waited. Waited until the emerald skies turned gray, and the radioactive glow dissipated into nothingness.
Snow began to fall. The wind began to blow.
Then the night and its eternal darkness swallowed up the land.
Slowly, the wreckage, my unmarked grave, was buried beneath the wintry snowfall. The ashen drifts buried us, whatever was left. But there was nothing left. Nothing left but the ruined, empty buildings that collapsed beneath their weight. Skeletal skyscrapers that had survived what everyone didn't crumbled back to the earth.
The frozen earth seemed almost at peace. But I wasn't. There was an indescribable emptiness inside me. So I wandered ... searching for my parents... for my brother ... for Snowy.
I crawled through the rubble. Found my way through the empty, wind-swept streets. Sighed among the quiet, hollow ponies that wandered with me.
But even shadowed by the seemingly unending polar twilight, the world seemed to get darker - and darker, and darker as I wandered.
Puddles and tendrils of darkness rippled and coalesced across the snow like black oil floating to the surface, disturbing the dead.
I saw ponies sink into the darkness.
I saw the darkness swallow entire ponies whole.
And as I retreated to the place where I died, I heard a voice among the howling blizzard.
The same chilling, insidious voice that had taken Candy Cane's life.
"I'll never leave you again."
<-=======uuU X Uuu=======->
Footnote: Level 6
XP: 1250/3450877 |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 13 - Broken - Pt I | Chapter 13
Broken
"Everyone has nightmares ... but we always wake up from them. Always."
Echoes.
I heard their muffled cries. The distant gunfire. The sounds of buildings crumbling.
Then I began to remember. Stallions. Mares. Foals.
A tail rotor cleaving a pony in half - a filly's screams as her mother's corpse crushed her beneath - Holly wailing her brother's name ...
Then the balefire. The balefire echoed through the caverns of my consciousness - searing into my mind scattered glimpses of blood and death.
I opened my mouth to scream, Holly's voice joining me - before hers fell away from mine ... fading into the furthest corners of my thoughts and I awoke.
But I didn't. I shuddered and convulsed, my eyes closed, unable to open - the feeling of falling, of sinking into eternity dragging me ever closer to madness.
My fall slowed, and I felt my coat brush against the snow. Then nothing.
I opened my eyes and the world around me shimmered with a silvery, rippling luster. In the distance I saw evanescent pony-shaped silhouettes bobbing across the stark landscape. They cantered upon the shimmering, amorphous snow that billowed across their hooves beneath the pale, dead sky ...
I was dead. So were those ponies. Dead in some kind of purgatory waiting for a light to take us through the clouds.
I lay there, waiting.
Waiting for the Everafter to come. The Everafter I was told that awaited everyone when they died - where my dad was, and Dew Drops, and all my friends were.
But it ... it didn't.
My eyes widened. They gazed into the distance and saw the familiar skeletons of burned out buildings rise up around me. Ponies walked among them - trotting up staircases that were no longer there, gazing through shattered, melted windows, and sitting around tables that had been incinerated in the spellfire that annihilated them all.
It ... wasn't the Everafter. That sinking feeling engulfed my heart once more.
'This isn't the Everafter. This isn't the Everafter.'
'Hell - the Underworld - Tartarus - no.'
No ...
Worse.
Poneva.
I reclined into a defeated stillness, staring into the shimmering, ashen skies, unable to think, unable to find words to voice the hopelessness and sorrow in my heart. A hollow breeze whispered through my wilted ears, caressing them with its chilling breath.
Carried with it were whispering voices that stumbled - lost and confused through my thoughts. They were the voices of the dead - souls of ponies that I had seen torn away from the world firsthoof.
What sort of terrible fate was it to die and be forgotten, when all who could have remembered had died with you?
Not even bones. No one even knew they were gone.
Maybe not even they knew that they were dead.
They were just numbers. Numbers that General Spitfire couldn't even quantify.
We were alone. I was alone. Alone in that forsaken place, with those forsaken souls. It must've been the most terrible feeling to be ... forgotten. I was dead. So were my friends - and my mother would never know how we died.
I'd never see her - or my stable again. I was just a lost soul, just like Holly. Through her eyes I'd seen things that could never be unseen.
Through her eyes I learned what it truly felt to despair ... what it truly meant to be left behind ... and now I was wallowing in it. I felt the urge to wander as my soul searched for a place to belong.
I wanted my mother. I wanted to go home.
Helpless and stranded, I lay curled up among the shimmering drifts - cold, weary ... hollow ...
Candy Cane was dead. My friends were dead. We were all dead. And now my stable was going to die with me. I lay there and waited ... waited for eternity to come.
A hopeless grin stretched across my lips as I stared off into the pale, dead skies.
When I was alive in the wasteland, I felt trapped in a nightmare. But even in death I still couldn't leave. I was still trapped inside that unforgiving, frozen world - that fucking wasteland, - that nightmare ... and I was never going to wake up.
I let my head roll across the silvery concrete and closed my eyes, numb.
I was going to be trapped there.
Forever.
I rasped a grim chuckle. It really was a nightmare I was never going to escape.
Just like Holly.
Something shifted in the lifeless air. Slowly at first, I felt the universe ebb and flow. The shimmering, ghostly world around me shifted and parted, and a familiar presence filled the void around me.
My eyes fluttered open. A filly with pink hair was standing over me. I saw the long scar that ran down her cheek like a tear that was never gling to dry out. Then, I knew ...
It was her.
"Holly?" I whispered.
A weak smile creased upon her pale lips. She reached out with a small forehoof, and laid it upon mine. The wisps of silver that shivered around us settled like a calming storm. I felt warmer. I felt ... safe.
I sat up upon my haunches as she held my hoof.
"Where ... are we?" I whispered.
But I already knew.
Her glowing, pale face darkened.
She asked softly, her voice echoing through my thoughts, "Where do you think we are?"
"Poneva?"
Holly looked away.
"Yes," she whispered.
My ears drooped as I hung my head, hopelessly.
"I knew this wasn't the Everafter ..." I let out a humorless chuckle. "Why did I even ask?"
Holly closed her eyes. "If we were in the Everafter, everyone would be here," the filly intoned, staring quietly into the snow. "My mom ... my dad ..." Her eyelids fluttered open. "... your dad ..."
I let out a long, drawn out breath that didn't turn to fog.
"And ... your brother," I whispered.
She closed her eyes. Her words chilled the lifeless air that hung over us.
"He's still here."
I pursed my lips. "Why?"
"He's looking for me ..." Holly hugged her small forelegs around one of mine. "I'm ... scared," she told me, her voice trembling.
Emerald spellfire flashed before my eyes.
I remembered the black candlewax. The flesh sloughing off his skull. The tendrils of darkness plunging into my soul.
I closed my eyes. In the distance I heard the echoing sobs of some weeping, trapped soul.
"I ... I am too," I whispered.
I heard the filly sniffle.
"What happened to him?"
Holly stilled, closing her eyes and curling up next to me, the warmth of her presence dwindling.
"It changed him."
"... it?"
Holly choked up, nodding her head as she began to tremble against me. I opened my mouth to say more but froze at the horror in her contorted expression. As I listened to her quiet sobs, I forced myself to look away; there was something about seeing a child so ... afraid, that ripped me apart from the inside out.
Holly looked up at me with her wide, terrified eyes. "Sometimes, I don't know ..." she whispered, "Sometimes, I don't know if it's really him ...
"I try to hide from both."
I gulped.
"Both?"
She nodded, slowly, staring at her hooves.
"He tried to take you," Holly began, prodding my side with a hoof. "He tried to take you so he could find me." She looked away, gazing off into the shimmering distance. "He won't stop until he does.
"He needs a body ... he thinks I'm still alive. He thinks I'm at Stormpeak, and he wants to go there. But he needs a body, first."
It all made sense to me. The last thing he ever said to her was that he would never leave her. But I knew, and she knew that she was lost forever.
Even if Stormpeak survived, Snowy would never find her, no matter where he looked.
"I can't go too far from here ... and I'm running out of places to hide, Mister Dawn." She looked at her hooves. "Everybody is."
Holly looked over her shoulder, her ears perked as she heard something I did not.
But I felt it. It swept through me ... across that lifeless world ... rippling across the shimmering snow like a droplet of water plunging into a stagnant pond.
And everything caught in its wake was stripped of its silvery sheen. All around us, the wind, the whispering voices, and the wandering souls froze in an instant.
"Everybody?" I whispered in the deafening silence. "Or just ... us?"
Holly cast her gaze off into the distance, watching the shimmering skies gray like an aging mane.
"Everybody."
"Snowy ... he wasn't the only one who tried to take me," I told her. I remembered as those frenzied, forsakened souls tore each other apart, fighting frantically for the scraps that were my mortal vessel.
I could still feel their cold, dead hooves clawing at my flesh.
"They need bodies, just like Snowy," Holly said, "Otherwise they won't be able to run away." She shook her head as she touched a hoof to her shimmering, ghostly chest. "We can't run too far from this place.
"Not like this."
I gulped.
And the concrete began to fracture beneath our hooves.
I looked down and my eyes widened.
A strange ... blackness bled from the cracks, devouring the shimmering light around us. I stared at them and watched as they began to spread like black, bleeding capillaries across the earth.
"R-run away from what?"
Holly's ears perked as she took a furtive look behind her once more.
In the distance, something exhaled a raspy breath.
"Him."
There was a disgusting crack - the sound of a skull being split open.
Then something dribbled onto my chin. It was frigid and thick. It soaked deep into my coat, like a stain that refused to wash away.
I touched my hoof to my muzzle and a shallow breath escaped my lips.
My hoof was smeared black.
Plop. Plop. Plop.
I felt it pattering against my underbelly from below ... sticking to my coat like thick ... melted ... candlewax. I whimpered as I forced myself to look downward - and a droplet of black fluid sailed past my muzzle.
My eyes followed it skyward ... and I watched as teardrops of darkness fell into the sky. Each drop coalesced into a vast, black ocean that drowned the world in darkness ... a darkness colder than death itself as it slowly engulfed the ruined skyscrapers in the distance ...
... block by block, street by street, stone by stone ...
... soul by soul ...
It washed them away, swallowing them up as they disappeared beneath the hungry tides.
I stared down at my coat ... my matted coat dripped with living, frigid darkness. It trickled up my legs, up my chest - leaving trails of black as it slithered up my neck and -
"H-Holly - w-what's happening!?" I screamed, springing to my hooves.
She looked up at me numbly as lines of liquid darkness trailed across her graying coat.
The filly tugged at my sleeve, wearily.
"He's ... he's here ..."
I heard it again ... a raspy breath hissed among the pitter patter of the black rain. Far off in the distance, I heard a mare call out my name.
"Red!"
My ears perked as I strained to hear her over the thickening rainfall that drenched me black.
"Red, where are you!?" Candy Cane cried.
I froze. Every part of my being froze. My eyes darted across the twilit earth, not even caring as the rippling black sludge swam around my fetlocks.
She was out there, somewhere, beyond where my eyes could see.
I couldn't save her in life.
Even in death, she was still so far away.
"RED DAWN!"
"CANE!" I tore a hoof from the living darkness that coagulated around my right hoof, and threw it in front of me - but Holly stopped me in my tracks.
"NO!" she screamed, her voice resounding through my shuddering thoughts. I shook them away, and kicked off my hooves - but everywhere I turned, the filly stood before me in defiance.
"Let me go!" I snarled.
But she wouldn't let me pass.
I stood there as my eyes searched frantically for a red coat, a candy cane mane - someone's gray eyes in the dimming twilight. But with every second that passed, the black ocean in the distance swept its tidal waves of darkness ever closer, drowning everything I laid my eyes upon.
Then I saw her. There she was, standing in a clearing in the distance as an immense riptide of living darkness loomed over her. Her face darkened beneath its shadow.
"Cane - CANE!" I struggled to move - to lift my hooves - to hurl myself forward and gallop toward her. But the black sludge coagulated around my hooves.
I couldn't move.
I watched helplessly as the billowing tidal wave of darkness swept over her and swallowed her whole.
"NOOO!" I screamed.
"THAT'S NOT HER, RED DAWN!" Holly's voice shrieked into both my ears.
"THAT'S NOT HER!"
"How do you know!?" But Holly didn't answer. All she did was stare past me, mouth agape and with wide, dilated eyes. I threw my gaze over my shoulder and found out why.
'Celestia ... no ...
Everywhere I looked - from every direction the black ocean swelled toward us.
Again I tried to lift a hoof and run, but something yanked me back down.
I was rooted to the ground.
I gasped and gagged as viscous, black tentacles curled around me - slithering up my legs, my chest ... my throat ... tightening, constricting, suffocating ... I could feel their freezing touch inside of me as the the black sludge melted into my flesh ... as their tendrils wormed their way towards my pounding heart.
"H-Holly!" I choked, holding my trembling hooves to my face as tendrils of living darkness curled around them before my very eyes.
But the filly didn't answer me.
She stared blankly into the darkening skies, her body slick with black candlewax from hoof to throat. Trails of darkness slithered up her muzzle, tracing long black tears across her once alabaster cheeks.
"HOLLY!"
The filly's eyes met mine.
"Run."
She blinked - and my flesh sloughed away as the balefire took me once more. *
My eyes flew open - I screamed, and ran my back against a wall.
My breaths -my breaths - frantic and wheezing through my lips in jets of hissing mist reminded me that I was ... still alive. I could feel my hooves crunch through rime and debris. I could feel my heart drumming inside my chest.
I could feel the cold, unforgiving wasteland air gnaw at my flesh.
And beneath the blizzard that howled outside, I heard something hiss in the darkness.
'Him ...'
I flinched - scrambled to my hinds and stumbled into a corner, my heart leaping inside my chest with every heaving breath I wheezed. I lifted a trembling foreleg, guiding my PipBuck's light across the charred, snow-swept halls as my pulse hammered inside my temples.
'Where is it? Where is it -'
The air shifted around me. My heart skipped a beat.
A gravelly, sinister voice whispered from every direction:
"Run ..."
Adrenaline exploded through my veins.
I did as Holly told me. I did as the darkness told me. I ran, and it didn't matter where I ran to.
'Anywhere but here.'
I screamed - and hurled one hoof after another as I galloped into the darkness.
With every hoof that crunched through the debris beneath me, I realized that I was alone. The blast shadows were gone. They were nowhere to be seen - gone without a trace.
I remembered the black tidal wave - the immense red mass on my EFS.
The one that took Candy Cane's life.
The blast shadows were afraid. And Goddesses, so was I. It was coming for me. For all of us.
I just couldn't see it. But it could see me. Hooves galloped after me, but everywhere my ears perked I could hear its hoofsteps crashing against the charred concrete. Behind me. In front of me. To my left and to my right.
It laughed at me - mocked me, its cackles erupting everywhere from the darkness that rippled, swelled, and closed in around me.
Beneath its sinister laughter, I heard her voice.
Candy Cane called out to me - nowhere to be seen, her voice tinged with a serpentine whisper, "Red Dawn ... where are you?"
I kept galloping. I didn't look back.
"Red ... help me ..." Candy Cane cried, "Help me, please ... Hahahahaha ..."
It wasn't her. Goddesses, I knew it wasn't her as their voices slowly coalesced and their insidious, diabolical laughter echoed ceaselessly through my thoughts.
It only made me scream and pump my legs harder. Corners and halls flashed across my eyes as I tore the snow-swept floors apart with every hoof I hurled in front of me.
I ran knowing there was nowhere to go. 'Anywhere but here.'
I didn't even notice as my right forehoof caught a stump of rebar.
Clarity left the building before I could scream.
Stars exploded in my eyes as I hurtled headfirst into cold concrete and complete blackness stole away my senses.
The darkness around me cackled with glee - a sick, twisted laugh - amused. Amused at the sight of my pathetic, futile struggle as I kicked and flailed myself across the floor on my back with every screaming buck of my legs.
My PipBuck's screen flickered.
It was then that my light began to die.
"No - no, NO!" I begged, sobbing until I ran my back into a dead-end. Now there was nowhere to go. Nowhere but there.
I bucked my legs, backing myself into a corner - trapped - doomed as the charred, ruined walls flashed around me.
I tried to blink away the stars in my eyes. But it didn't matter. None of it did.
Static washed over my PipBuck's screen. My eyes darted to its screen - and for the briefest of seconds, a face with blazing emerald eyes stared back.
A shriek erupted from my throat.
My PipBuck flickered to black.
"NO! DON'T DO THIS TO ME!" I wailed, trapped in utter, complete darkness. I shook my right forehoof in vain, slamming it against the floor, then the wall then -
I felt the air shift in front of my face. 'No.'
"No - no - no ..." I whimpered as I clenched my eyes closed and huddled against in the corner. "Please ... not again ..."
I waited for the broken icy teeth. I waited for the cold dead hooves.
I waited for a fate worse than death.
But nothing came.
I felt my shallow breaths against my legs as I sat there, curled up into a ball in some dark, rime-encrusted corner. An eternity passed as I sat there, waiting for the worst: never ready to die, but helpless to stop it.
My light flickered back on. The PipBuck around my leg illuminated my face and casted my shadow against the wall next to me.
I beamed it across the room. Nothing. Empty. The room was empty.
I stared at the bare, blackened walls until my head stopped spinning. I found that I was holding my breath, and I let out a trembling sigh, running a quaking hoof through my grizzled mane.
"Fuck ... fuck ..." I murmured as I tried to get it through my damned head that I was alone. And yet not a single sliver of relief fluttered inside my chest.
I closed my eyes and gasped for air, trying to catch my breath. Maybe it had its fun and it was going to fuck off now. I wanted to believe that. Goddesses, I wanted to fucking believe that. Maybe it was gone.
Maybe it was gone. I looked around me. The hollow darkness stilled ... quiet.
It was gone.
I shifted my gaze to my left and saw my shadow. I counted its ears, then its horn. Same as mine. I gulped, and let out a trembling sigh, running my hooves through my mane once more as a rivulet of sweat trickled down my muzzle. Turning away, I leaned forward and buried my head in my hooves, shivering beneath my barding.
But in my peripherals, my shadow remained upright.
I blinked, lifting my head from my hooves. And yet the shadow did not match my posture.
My sweat froze upon my face.
The shadow turned its head towards me. I screamed.
It exploded outward and into me in a cloud of living, shrieking darkness.
Reflex clenched my eyes closed as nothingness consumed me. * |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 13 - Broken - Pt II | *
My eyes fluttered open.
'91'
I looked up and saw it stamped onto a massive, cog-shaped door.
I stared at it for a long, long while. I reached out with a hoof, and touched its cold steel surface. I gave it a few knocks, summoning from it a trio of dull thuds.
I took a step back. And another. Four steps back. I realized I was holding my breath, and I exhaled ... slowly. Slowly, I turned my head over my shoulder, and watched the Northern Wasteland's unforgiving blizzard howl past the tunnel's entrance.
I wasn't going back out there.
I turned, staring at the two digit number that was stenciled onto almost everything I owned. 91.
Home.
I took six steps forward, and didn't look back.
Every step I took sent a rattle through my saddlebags. In them and upon my back, I felt a certain weight bear down upon me that made my heart flutter. My eyes closed, and a long, drawn out breath seethed through my lips.
Outside Stable 91's door, I stood alone, tracing my hoof across its frosted, dented surface. I remembered how when I first left, I'd seen the bloodied horseshoes smeared across the door as far as I could reach.
They were still there. There were so many of them. So many ponies had died where I stood.
As I reached out to touch a hoof-shaped smear, I saw my sleeve. I stared at it as if I'd never seen my own leg before. I took in with my eyes every dark speckle of blood, every splatter of dried out crimson that stained my ragged stable suit. My security barding was torn up, and bullet holes riddled the plates where my kevlar armor had kept me alive.
Alive.
If only my friends were too ...
At least I survived to finish what they started. 'And finish it I will.'
I was home. I was finally home.
I found a control panel along the wall to my left and punched into the terminal the code to open the stable doors for the last time. For the very last time.
I was never going out there again.
The tunnel began to rumble and groan as the immense, cog-shaped door parted before me.
I waited, wishing it would open faster as I tapped my hoof against the floor, the weight upon my back growing heavier with every sluggish second that passed.
There was a metallic groan as the door finally gave way. Finally. I stepped through the portal and into the darkness - but it was a familiar darkness. A darkness I could sleep in without a gun under my pillow.
I waited inside the vestibule as the front door slid closed behind me. A symphony of wheezing hisses followed as the airlock depressurized, and its locks clicked and clacked.
Surrounded by several inches of steel, I felt safe even without the light to tell me that I was going to be alright. Everything was going to be alright. Everything was going to be alright ... I found myself staring over my shoulder at my saddlebags, a triumphant grin stretching across my lips.
I made it.
The airlock finally depressurized. Mist sighed past my legs as it began to part. I waited, expecting the familiar white-washed halls of my home to unfurl before me.
I yearned so badly to see a friendly face, to see jumpsuit-clad ponies rush towards me - cheering as I opened my bags and gave the Overmare the prize I'd fought so hard to obtain.
I wanted to see the look on my mother's face - the pride, the joy. I wanted to tell her that I kept my promise: I returned, and I was never going to leave her ever again.
Everything I did ... every person I killed, every indignity I endured was for my home.
My family. My mother.
All I wanted was to go back to my normal life ... and live the rest of it in peace with the only family I had left.
Home.
Goddesses, I was home. I was finally home, and I never wanted to go back.
I never. Wanted. To go. Back.
The door groaned, and began to part open. I stepped through, grinning from ear to ear -
And no one was there to greet me.
In a series of rumbling coughs, the lights flashed and illuminated the floor before me a few painstaking feet at a time. Like curtains on a stage, the lights parted the darkness and revealed to me the show's gruesome end. No.
'No ... Goddesses. NO!'
Blood. Dried out. Smeared across the floor. The wall. The ceiling.
The ceiling.
They hung from the ceiling. Ponies.
Dismembered. Butchered. Like pieces of meat. They swayed back and forth as the stable's ventilation wafted to me the stench of death and decay.
Silver Dove. I recognized her. She was a stable-sec pony ... was ... she had wished me goodbye and good luck before I left. Now ... she was just a piece of meat.
Butchered like an animal.
I gazed at her swinging, dismembered carcass ... her wings torn from her back and her head hanging from a thread of putrefying flesh and vertebrae. I stared into the empty, black eye sockets of her ravaged, skeletal face. Her eyes were gouged out.
Her eyes were gouged out.
I took one step forward, fell to my haunches and heaved the contents of my stomach onto the floor, sobbing as my eyes flicked from face to agonized face - ponies I knew: Twisty - Sea Shammy - Beryl ... but most of them were too ruined ... too ruined to be even recognizably equine.
Everywhere I looked. Everyone I saw ...
Dismembered. Innards spilled. Flesh ripped away.
Even worse.
But they all shared one thing in common: their eyes were gouged out. My head darted frantically from carcass to carcass as I staggered across the killing floor in a distant daze knowing that at one point ... they were ponies. Some were slumped against the walls - their eyes gouged out. Others hung over the railings above me - their eyes gouged out. Others lay mangled and spread-eagled at my hooves - their eyes ... gouged ... out.
Nailed onto a wall at the far end of the vestibule was Overmare Peach Petals. Or what was left of her. All her body parts were there.
They were all there, but arranged to spell out a word that trembled from my contorted lips.
"Liar ..." I murmured, staring at her jawless head. "Liar ..."
Her eyes were gouged out too.
I stood there, staring at that word. That word spelled with Peach Petals' despoiled corpse. I stared at it for a long time.
'Liar ...'
We promised that we would save our stable.
'Liar ...'
I promised that I would save them all.
'You liar ...'
My eyes clenched shut as tears began to stream down my face. I stood there unable to move, shaking, stricken with an inconceivable terror that coursed through my veins with every faltering beat of my heart.
"No ... no ... NOOO!"
Everyone was dead. Everyone was ...
I stumbled forward, covering my eyes as I screamed into ceiling.
"IT CAN'T BE - I-IT CAN'T!"
I stopped in my tracks. Smeared in blood across the wall, at the far end of the hall were more words.
Deliver us.
My tears twinkled with the flicker of the overhead lights as I read the words over and over.
Deliver us.
Deliver us.
Deliver.
... us ...
I ... couldn't ...
I couldn't save anyone ...
Not even my stable ...
My legs gave out from under me and I crumbled to the blood-slicked floor.
'... all of them ... everyone's ...'
"Dead," I heard my mother say.
I looked up with tears in my eyes, and saw Mom stumble into the ruddy, flickering light. There was a shattering pop as a lightbulb exploded behind me. I stood up upon my rickety legs as I dragged my eyes up from her hooves and saw her bruised flesh - her barding ripped up in all the wrong places. One of her wings dragged across the floor as she staggered towards me, limp and broken and leaving behind her a trail of gore.
My mother was drenched in blood. So much blood. Blood that couldn't have all been hers.
I cried out and sobbed into my hooves, unable to stare into the gory, empty caverns that were my mother's eyes. I kept trying to look away, only to turn back and see her still standing in the flickering, dim light.
Something flashed in her hoof. A knife.
"Mom? Mom ..." I reached out with a hoof - but my mother held out the knife between us and I froze in my tracks, my lips trembling with sobs that I struggled to swallow.
"Wh ... why?"
"Because you never came back," my mother rasped, "You promised me ... you promised ..."
I shook my head furiously, whimpering as I covered my eyes in denial.
"I'm here now, Mom," I wept, trembling all over. "I'm - I'm here for you now ..."
She hung her head, rivulets of blood streaming down her cheeks.
"No ..." she sobbed, "It's too late ... too late for everyone ..."
"Why ... w-what the fuck happened?" I cried.
My mother cocked her head at me. She sighed, the horrifying waver in her voice belying the deranged, twisted grin that stretched across her broken lips.
"Dead ... everyone's dead," she sobbed, shaking free teardrops of blood from her pale, sunken cheeks. "I ... I tried to save them - as many as I could ... I even saved Amber's colt ..."
My mother ... she stared through me with her hollow, empty eyes. "If you've seen the things I've seen ... then you'd know ..." She hung her head, her disheveled red mane falling before her face. "Then you'd know that you wouldn't need eyes where we're going ..."
She cried softly, tears of blood streaming down her cheeks. They trickled down her muzzle, dripping to the blood-caked floor with distant plops.
"That's why I delivered them ..." she whispered to me. "That's why I saved them from this nightmare ..."
I shook my head vigorously as my tears mingled with the blood beneath my hooves. I didn't want to believe what I was seeing, and every time I opened my eyes, I kept seeing it.
"Mom ..." I started towards her, my hoofsteps faltering until we were a hoofstep apart. I stared at her face, and yet I couldn't find the strength to peer into the inequine holes that were my mother's eyes. Eyes that had once promised me unconditional love and comfort.
Now they were gone. And so was my mother. And yet I still called out her name, as if she would wake up and be my mother again ... the only family I had left.
"Mom ... Mom!" I begged her ... and each time she did not answer. "Why ... why'd you go and do this to yourself?" I whimpered, reaching out to her a hoof.
But she just shoved me away.
Another lightbulb exploded behind me. Quaking sobs ripped out of my throat as I wept, reduced to nothing but someone else's son.
"Why ..."
"Because you couldn't save us..." she whispered, "Because you ... you can't save anyone."
Krapop.
Shadows darkened my mother's face as she pressed the knife to her throat. She looked up at me with her dead eyes, and a tortured grin stretched across her bloodied lips.
"Maybe ... maybe I should save myself," she sobbed, bloody tears trailing down her cheeks, "Maybe ... maybe ..."
My eyes widened.
"Mom ... what are you doing?"
She let out a trembling sigh ... finished. Then she closed her eyes.
And I watched as she dragged the knife across her throat. No.
"NOOO! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"
I caught her as she slumped forward, my mother's blood - my mother's blood drenching my hooves red and splashing onto my cheek as I pulled her close and screamed her name.
"NOOO!" I shrieked, kicking away my sleeping bag. I sat up, sweat matting my coat to my flesh and my breaths rasping in and out as wheezing sobs.
Somone stirred next to me.
"Red - Red!" I heard Dew Drops say, her voice barely audible over my thundering heartbeat. Her hooves wrapped around me as I held my hooves to my face - blood still trickling down my shivering flesh. Then I felt her squeeze me tight, and I blinked away the blood that was dripping from my hooves.
"Red ... Red it's just a dream ..."
I fought to catch my breath as she hugged me, cooing softly into my ear until the bodies, the blood, the entrails - my mother ... all of it faded away into the silent night. I shifted inside my sleeping bag, the faint crunch of gravel reminding me that I had left my stable only a few days ago.
That I was still in the wasteland.
"It was all just a dream," Dew Drops reassured me, running a hoof through my mane. I closed my eyes and leaned against her, feeling her warm breath upon my neck and the tightness of her embrace.
Dew Drops. Dew Drops. Dew Drops ...
My heart skipped a beat as something leaped inside of me. I swung my head towards her, and found myself lost in her familiar gray eyes.
"DD y-you're ...alive," I murmured, my eyes widening. She opened her mouth, cocking an eyebrow at me - but I threw my hooves around her and rammed my muzzle into hers. Our tongues met and I knew.
I knew she was there.
"Mmmunnf ..." Dew Drops sighed, before pulling away from me and smiling awkwardly in the warm glow of her PipBuck's interface. "What was that for? And of course I'm alive," she whispered, amused at my babbling.
"I thought ... I ..." I ran a hoof against her cheek, feeling her soft, velvety coat brush against my hoof. "You're alive," I said again. I leaned in and pressed my lips against hers once more to be sure. "You're alive ..." I murmured, clutching her tightly as if she could fall away from me at any moment. "It was just a dream ... Goddesses, it was just a -"
"What's going on?" I heard Box Cutter -
Dew Drops eeped as I let her go and she fell back into her sleeping bag.
"BOX!" I shouted, springing to my forehooves - and a series of annoyed groans resonated inside the cave.
"Fuck ... go back to sleep Red," Lightning Twirl hissed. "We're leaving at 0600 sharp - and I don't care if it still looks like night, because ... because ..." she paused when she saw me, jaw dropped with wide eyes.
"You guys are alive ..." I murmured, shining my PipBuck's light across the sleeping bags. Star Glint groaned and rolled over inside of his sleeping bag, and Amber Fields sat up, rubbing her heavy eyes.
'If they were all alive ... then Mom was okay,' I told myself, 'Goddesses. My mom was okay. Stable 91 was ... okay.
'They were all okay.'
"What are you talking about?" Amber Fields yawned.
I stared at them, still dumbfounded.
Lightning Twirl whistled. "Yoohoo! Equestria to Red - what's gotten into you?"
I exhaled slowly, blinking away the tears in my eyes. I couldn't believe it. 'This ... can't be real.'
I remembered ... Star Glint ... flayed alive. Amber Fields - a crater. I remembered Box Cutter being dragged into the bushes. Then Lightning Twirl ... the machetes - and their laughing ... I turned to Dew Drops, laying my hoof upon hers.
They had torn her away from me. I realized that her mouth was moving, but I couldn't hear her words over the thoughts that screamed inside my head.
"... Dawn, are you okay? You looked like you just saw a ghost."
I thought I did. I blinked. For the briefest, most fleeting of moments, the light in her eyes flickered away and the blood drained from my face. In them I saw despair ... despair as they ripped her away from me, their monstrous laughter echoing through my ears. I shook my head, holding her hoof with two of mine - and kept shaking until I shook the ghosts out of my thoughts.
She was there with me. And so were my friends.
"You're all alive ..."
Everyone was wide awake now, either glaring at me or looking quite confused.
"Why wouldn't we be?" Star Glint chuckled.
I gulped. "How long ... how long have we been out here?"
"Three days, Red," Amber Fields answered.
"Only three days?" I sighed, looked at my hooves. "It feels like it's been weeks ..."
Star Glint snorted, "You're talking crazy, Red."
I shook my head. Everything that I saw ... those days I spent alone in the snow ... in the city. A city my friends had never seen. 'Could it be?' I wondered, 'Could it be I was ... no.'
I looked at them, and they looked at me. I curled a hoof around Dew Drops' hoof once more.
She was warm. Warm as the blood that was flowing through my veins.
She was real.
I told them. Everything. The snow furies. The mercs, the slavers, the bloodletters, the bat ponies, the World Tree, the water talismans, the cafones, Candy Cane ... I told them about Summer Smiles, Doodle, Hops, and Candy Cane ...
Everyone was silent for a moment, glancing among themselves, then at me. They listened intently - sleepily - as I told them about my living nightmare.
Box Cutter just whipped his mane back and laughed his ass off. I didn't believe it either.
"Bat ponies? Like pegasi with bat wings?" I nodded. "You're crazy! That's ... that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of! What the hell kind of snow have you been eating?" he said, chuckling softly as he turned to the others.
His chuckles died down to a troubled silence as they all shrugged. I sat there before them upon my haunches as they stared at me with uncertainty. I said nothing as the silence and the seconds ticked on.
My ears perked ... I could hear the wasteland outside, scraping its hooves at the mouth of the cave trying to remind us that it was still there. I listened, quietly ... listened to the blizzard blow outside ... its winds becoming moans, its moans becoming screams - its screams becoming shrieks -
My eyes fluttered closed.
"Heh ..."
I felt everyone's eyes narrow upon me.
"Hahaha ..." I hoofed my face as a wild grin stretched across my lips.
"HAHAHAHAHA!"
Box Cutter's lips creased with an awkward smirk as my mad laughter filled the air. They glanced at each other, puzzled as I snorted and gasped for air to fill my aching lungs.
I flopped onto my belly and laughed until my chest ached and my friends looked on confused - concerned - until their baffled silence cracked, and chuckles broke their awkward smiles as our defiant laughter echoed out into the wasteland.
Perhaps it was the sight of seeing someone like me, the hardass engineer pony who took everything too seriously lose his shit that kept them laughing.
It didn't matter. It was the best laugh I'd had since we left '91.
It just might've been the best laugh I've had in my entire life. It felt like centuries since I had anything more than a grim chuckle. It felt like centuries since I'd ever felt ... relieved.
I couldn't believe it. My friends ... the mare I loved - they were okay. Goddesses, they were all okay ...
Amber Fields gasped for air, still giggling.
"What in Celestia's name has gotten into you, Red?"
Star Glint snorted, "Looks like he finally got that stick out of his ass." He folded his legs across his chest. "Who knew it only takes three days out here for someone to snap?"
"Don't tell him that - he might go back to good old Red again," Box Cutter chuckled.
"Alright, alright everyone, can we all shut up and go to sleep?" Lightning Twirl groaned. "We've got a long day ... night, whatever - ahead of us tomorrow. We can't be tired when we're out there." She glanced at Amber Fields. "Can't risk getting tired in the middle of a snowstorm."
My lopsided grin capsized.
"Wait ... what?"
I felt Dew Drops' legs wrap around me from behind.
"Come on Red - let's see how many ponies we can fit inside of a sleeping bag," she cooed, pulling me on top of her.
Box Cutter frowned as he watched Dew Drops stuff me into her sleeping bag.
"Since when the hell did those two get that close?"
"Right? And I thought Red was gay," Star Glint snickered.
I rolled my eyes and Dew Drops pecked me on the cheek as we both tried, frantically, to squeeze ourselves inside. I knocked over my saddlebags in the process - swearing under my breath as some of its contents spilled out into the cave's floor.
But I didn't give a shit. I really wanted to cuddle the hell out of Dew Drops. She flopped on top of me, managing to cram her lower body inside - kneeing me in the chest. I wheezed out a sharp breath, a curse on the tip of my tongue - only for that to be smothered by a wet smooch. Giggling, with my hooves on her shoulders, Dew Drops finally managed to wedge herself snugly inside our now rather cozy sleeping bag. And it was getting warmer, fast.
Coat to coat and tangled up in each other's legs inside of a cramped bundle of thick fabric, there was nothing else we could do but rub against each other.
Her hot breaths panted against my cheek while I planted kisses furiously along her neck. She let out a soft giggle as I pecked one on her nose, pulling her close - relishing the warmth of her coat. I felt my hooves gravitate to her flanks as I pressed her hips firmly against mine.
It was as hot as a furnace in there.
But I didn't care. It felt like I had endured an eternity without the taste of her tongue. And even with every fervent kiss, even with every loop and turn of her tongue - it was still not enough.
Dew Drops bit her lower lip and blushed. She sighed, pulling away for a moment and staring at me, incredulously.
"Damnit Red ... are you crazy?"
I thought for a moment.
"I might be ..." I gave her a lopsided smile, genuinely unsure with myself. "Though you seem to be liking crazy right now," I whispered, the warmth between her legs still pressed against mine.
Dew Drops giggled as I planted another kiss on her lips.
"Mmmunf ... not here ... heh," she whispered, suppressing a laugh. "Not with everybody else ... just watching."
I heard someone snicker and shift inside their sleeping bag. Another yawned. 'Oh.' I almost forgot that we weren't alone. An awkward smile creased my lips.
Dew Drops wiped that off my face with another tender smooch.
"Just ... just tell me you love me; that'll hold me back until we get home," she whispered, hugging me tight.
I didn't even hesitate.
"I love you," I told her, closing my eyes.
She nuzzled my neck as I ran a hoof through her soft, teal mane.
"I love you too ..."
We lay there for a moment, listening to the cadence of our panting breaths, my legs wrapped around her, and hers around me. But outside, it was still difficult to ignore the haunting moans of the wasteland's familiar winds.
Reality check. The wasteland was still out there. Still, it waited for us.
The blizzard intensified, the winds reminding me of the dangers that were lying in wait. If our enemies were the same ... then we'd know how to fight them. I'd make sure we'd stay together, that we'd never get separated. I wouldn't let Star Glint take a piss by himself outside. Fuck, I'll watch him piss if I have to.
I hugged Dew Drops even tighter as I felt a gust of wasteland wind claw its way inside the cave's mouth. We both shivered at that, but it was too cold for even the combined warmth of our bodies to overcome. Dew Drops' shifted uncomfortably, her teeth chattering. Her horn glowed with a silvery sheen as she levitated to herself her striped scarf, tucking it inside our sleeping bag and lifting her head slightly so that she could wrap it around her neck.
I pursed my lips, shivering. I thought about covering our heads with my sleeping bag. Maybe then, the winds wouldn't hit us so hard. I rolled over, and shined my PipBuck's light against the black mass that were my belongings, searching for the sleeping back that lay at the foot of my saddlebags.
I swirled my magic around it - and paused for a moment. I stared at my bags for a moment, before dragging them closer to me. I parted its folds and peered inside.
Dew Drops' scarf.
I held it close, feeling its worn fabric rub between my hooves. I rolled over, studying the mare that was lying next to me.
A blue scarf was wrapped around her neck.
And another one was bundled up in my hooves.
I let out a shuddering breath. Nausea welled up inside me and my heart fluttered inside my chest.
I watched my leg tremble with the tremendous weight of the striped fabric that hung from my hoof. I stared at it with widening eyes, absorbing every detail. The dark red smears. The particles of charred concrete. I ran a shivering hoof through its worn, coarse fabric.
We had only been outside in the snow for three days. We hadn't killed anyone ... we hadn't fired a single shot from out guns ...
I stared at the faint, hoof-washed blood stains that streaked across my scarf.
My heart skipped a beat.
And paradise shattered before me like glass.
I was falling. The shrieking screech of hooves dragging across chalkboard hurled me into the ashen drifts.
Cordite in the wind. Bullet holes in my shoulder. Blood running down my face.
The wasteland winds screamed past my ears. Unforgiven. My hooves dug canyons through the snow. Futile. Dew Drops was screaming. Screaming in agony. I watched in horror as I tumbled away from her. My hooves flailing. My horn flashing.
Useless.
I tore the scarf from her neck.
No. NO!
Dew Drops' eyes fluttered open. Her brows furrowed when she heard the panting, frantic breaths that rasped out of my lips. I stared madly at her scarf - the bloodied one in my hooves, then the other wrapped around her neck - my hooves - then her neck - my hooves - her neck - my hooves -
I blinked, and saw another mare lying beside me.
A silky striped scarf was wrapped around her neck.
"Are you alright?" she asked.
A broken scream erupted from my lips.
I bucked my legs as hard as I could and I hurled myself away from her, screaming as my heart palpitated in my chest, skipping beats and threatening to explode. I floundered through the cold gravel as the world spun around me and a disgusted, churning horror slithered inside my guts.
"Red!" a mare hissed in Dew Drops' voice. "Red what are you doing?"
I took a step back, staring at the mare ... my eyes ... flashes of red - the screaming - the tearing - the blood that wouldn't wash away -
My eyes.
I saw a dead mare claw out of her sleeping bag.
"Stay away from me!" I screamed.
"What the hell's going on?" Lightning Twirl's voice demanded, her silhouette closing in on me.
I shined my PipBuck in her face, and she recoiled from the light.
Dew Drops stammered, "I-I don't know - he just got out of bed and -"
"SHUT UP!" I screamed, my head spinning as I watched Dew Drops' scarf hang from her neck. Reality spiraled away from me like a knife twisting inside my gut.
The darkness rippled and swelled.
Four silhouettes rose up from the gravel. I swung my glowing PipBuck around me and wrenched open the veil of writhing darkness.
I saw the faces of my friends ... my dead, dead friends.
"WHO THE HELL ARE YOU PONIES?"
I stumbled upon my four ungainly hooves and stepped onto something metal. I curled my hoof around it. My carbine. I swept it up in my hoof and levitated it in my flickering scarlet field.
Hoofsteps crunched through the gravel to my right.
"Red ... put the gun down ..." a voice called out to me.
I turned and stared into the bloody skin of Star Glint's face.
My hooves crunched into the snow. The wind whipped past my face. A fury grinned with gory teeth through Star Glint's bloody flesh.
I blinked - and Star Glint stood before me.
I shoved him away. "STAY BACK!"
Box Cutter caught him in his hooves as he stumbled backward.
"Red, what the fuck are you doing?" Box Cutter demanded, his voice wavering. "This is crazy!"
I trembled uncontrollably, a twisted, horrified grin stretching across my muzzle as sweat poured down my face.
"Crazy ..." I murmured, lifting my carbine.
I glared at the pony through my trembling iron sights.
"Crazy? THIS IS CRAZY!" I shrieked. "THIS," I thrust out my forehoof so that they could see the blue scarf wrapped around it. "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS!"
"Red, just calm down," Dew Drops said softly, reaching out to me with a hoof. My trembling stilled as I felt her hoof against my shoulder.
"I gave you one before we left the Stable, remember? I thought it'd be cute for us to have matching scarves ..."
I stared at her for a moment, my chest heaving for air that I couldn't breathe - my mouth moving but words refusing to leave my lips. I tried to remember that - I tried to believe her ... I wanted to believe her ... 'No. No - no -'
"NO!" I swatted her hoof away from me. She was lying. SHE WAS LYING!
"BULLSHIT!" I hissed, blinking away a rivulet of sweat as my pulse thundered in my temples. I stumbled on my own four hooves, blinking furiously as the bloody snow crunched and squelched beneath my hooves and their sadistic laughter filled my ears -
I felt my flank hit a wall.
I covered my ears, shaking my head vigorously as the screams refused to die away - as the blood-curdling screams of my friends refused to die away ...
"None of this is real ... NONE OF THIS IS FUCKING REAL!"
"RED!" a mare called out to me. I shook all over as her voice yanked me back behind my iron sights.
"What are you talking about, Red?" Amber Fields whinnied, her PipBuck's light flashing in my eyes. "I saw her give you that scarf ..."
A snarl tore across my lips.
"LIAR!" I swung my carbine's flashlight across the cave, painting their faces in its harsh glow as my back scraped against the wall and their hoofsteps and glowing PipBucks inched ever closer.
"Stay back!" I sobbed, holding my head with a hoof as tears streamed down my cheeks and I blinked. And blinked. And blinked away my tears as their mangled corpses limped across the gravel and the voices of my dead friends called out my name.
I tried to shake away the black paint that was pouring down the walls around me.
A scream fought its way to my throat, and I could ignore the bitter, repulsive taste in my mouth no longer.
I collapsed - vomiting into the gravel at my hooves. My muzzle hovered over the acrid stench of stomach acid as I sobbed, and my tears mingled with the putrid puddle beneath me.
I felt hooves wrap around my shoulders - but I tore myself away from them.
"I SAID STAY THE FUCK BACK!" I cried, stumbling back to my four hooves as I lifted my carbine.
The ponies backed away as they heard me flick the safety off.
"Put ... the gun ... down, Red Dawn," I heard Lightning Twirl's voice command me. But I knew it wasn't her. The Lightning Twirl I knew was dead.
She was dead.
They were all dead.
"Go back into the fucking dirt," I snarled, painting the blue pony's face white with the cruel light of my carbine.
"He's lost it, Twirl," a blond-maned stallion whispered.
"YOU BETTER SHUT THE FUCK UP BEFORE YOU LOSE YOUR HEAD!" I screamed back, sniffling as I struggled to choke down the sobs that were making my shoulders quake. "No - no ...no ... I can't kill someone who's already dead."
A sneer tore across his lips. "That nightmare's gotten to your head, Red ... you've lost it, you've fucking lost it!"
I laughed at him until my throat was bloody and hoarse. They exchanged frightened looks, confused and afraid.
"Nightmare? This is a fucking nightmare, and ... and I'm going to wake up to another one," I sobbed, my magic wavering as I swung my iron sights from face to familiar face ... stopping at Dew Drops. "You're all dead ... you're all dead ... none of this is real, don't you get it? All of you - you're all DEAD!"
Metallic clacks echoed through the cave as they chambered their weapons.
I gulped a coarse lump down my throat, suddenly parched as I saw their PipBucks lower to the floor and the flashlights mounted on their weapons bathed me in glaring white light.
"Please ... don't make us do something we'll all regret, Red," Lightning Twirl's voice warned me, her voice shaking.
"Fuck you ..." I murmured. "FUCK. YOU! Is this some kind of sick, fucking joke? I know that none of this is real - none of you are real! You're all dead! I saw you all die! I saw it, Goddesses fucking damnit!"
They took a step closer. They kept their weapons trained upon me. Except Dew Drops.
"It was just a dream, Red ... please ..." Dew Drops begged, her carbine still aimed at the floor. My magic waned at the sound of her voice ... "Just put the gun down ... let's just talk this through!"
Another step closer.
I shook my head, flinging droplets of cold sweat to the frozen earth. She approached, inching closer as I refused to meet her watery gaze.
Closer.
"We're your friends, Red ... we're here for you ... please!" Dew Drops cried.
I looked away, sobbing quietly as rivulets of burning tears streamed down my cheeks. A shivering hoof came to wipe them from my face - but my hoof came away dripping with blood ... I stared at it as it hung before my face, watching through my blurry eyes as blood dribbled down my gore-slick leg ...
My eyes unfocused - and resolved to see Dew Drops standing before me, peering into my teary eyes ... and the blood began to fade away.
I blinked.
"No ... you're not," I slurred in a daze, shaking uncontrollably, "None of you are ... none of you are real." I clenched my eyes shut, and shook the blood ... the tears from my face, "My friends died out there in the snow ... I KNOW WHAT I SAW!" I roared, stomping a hoof into the gravel.
Everyone took a step back. I glared through them as they stumbled away from me, confused and afraid.
"I watched you die, Amber," I rasped, pointing at her with a trembling hoof, "I felt the blizzard take you away from me ... I couldn't hold on ... I couldn't hold on ..." I wept, staring at the empty hoof that hung before me as the blizzard howled relentlessly past my ears. "I let you go - and they found you and killed you right in front of us!"
Amber Fields shook her head in denial, unable to believe the dribble that was spilling out of my lips. I turned and saw Star Glint standing next to her.
His skinless, flayed skull grinned back at me and I choked on a sob, covering my eyes as I raised my carbine at him.
"Star ... Goddesses ... I let you go outside by yourself, I let you go, and those monsters took you - cut your fucking skin off and wore you like a coat!" I stabbed a hoof into my chest. "I let you go!"
"You've gone mad ..." he murmured.
I laughed, cradling my head with a hoof. "It was my fault, Celestia, MY FAULT!" I wailed, beating my hoof against my chest until it was bruised black and blue, "I watched them blow off Box Cutter's hooves and drag him away like a piece of fucking meat - and there was NOTHING I could do to help him!"
Box Cutter's submachine guns lowered at the sight of my contorted grimace ... the pungent, acrid stench of burning hair and charred flesh wafting into my nostrils. I could still hear him screaming as they dragged him away into the cackling darkness.
My carbine's light flashed into Lightning Twirl's violet eyes as she narrowed them at me behind her iron sights. "You... you're the reason why I survived. You're the reason why I made it out of there alive ..." The blue pegasus' lips were pursed, her shoulders tensed and her battle saddle's carbine shuddering uncontrollably with her. I clenched my eyes shut, trying to suck back in my burning tears.
I couldn't.
"I survived because most of them were too busy hacking you to pieces to see me run!"
My shoulders quaked with sobs that threatened to shatter the world around me. I tried to swallow my agony - tried to choke it away as I steeled myself and struggled to keep my carbine aloft in my magical grip.
I gasped for air that was too thin to breathe ... out of breath, out of mind as the world spun and warped around me. My gaze fell upon Dew Drops, her lower lip trembling at the horror in my eyes as I relived every second of the night they stole her away from me.
I heard her screams echo in my thoughts ... the ripping and tearing of meat - and everything inside me began to come apart from the seams.
"Dew Drops ..." I cried, "I watched as those monsters dragged you away." I shook my head vigorously, unwilling to believe what I had seen, unwilling to believe - for the briefest of moments, that she really was dead.
"You told me to run ... to never look back, and I ran - I ran damnit, I RAN! I ran and I heard you scream, Goddesses ... fucking damnit - I heard you scream! I heard them laugh as they..."
I fell to my haunches, hugging her scarf close to my chest ...
My horn flickered and died ... and my carbine clattered to the rocks. I hung my head low in despair, staring through teary eyes at the only thing left of the mare that I loved. "I-I should've stayed," I wept, "I should've died with you ... but I ran and I RAN - and I was the only one who made it out ALIVE!"
I cradled my head desperately in my hooves, tears seeping through the cracks.
"I want so badly for this to be real ..." I whimpered, "I want to believe that none of that happened. I want to believe that you're all still alive ..."
But my misery, my agony, the burden of being alive while they were not drove my hoof downward and shattered the gravel beneath me.
"But how can I lie to myself and say that this is real when every time I think of you, I see you all die AGAIN - AND AGAIN - AND AGAIN!" I screamed, pounding the gravel into dust with a bleeding, gory hoof.
I collapsed into the gravel, my head spinning and my lungs fighting to fill themselves with air. Hoofsteps crunched towards me ... and I felt someone's tender hooves caress my tear-drenched cheeks, holding my head and tipping up my chin to meet Dew Drops' soft, comforting grays. I blinked away the tears, and stared into the windows of her soul ... into the familiar eyes of the mare I loved.
"Red ... love ... please ..." Dew Drops whispered softly, in a voice that stilled the tremors that quaked through my shivering, numbing body. "Everything's going to be okay ... you need to trust me, alright? Everything's going to be okay ... I'm here, now ... I'm here with you, Red ..." she breathed, cradling my head with her hooves as I felt her nose nuzzle against mine.
Slowly ... slowly my hooves found their way to hers, clasping them tightly as silent, violent sobs rocked my shoulders back and forth. I squeezed her hooves, nuzzling her as I shook my head, my heart telling me to never let go ... to never let her go ...
... to never ... let ... go ...
But my mind told me that I already did.
"No," I whispered, "No you're not ... not anymore ... and it'll never, ever be okay." I stood to my hooves, shoved her away from me, and glared down my carbine's iron sights. "I need to get out of here, and you ponies - whoever the fuck you are, are all going to get out of my way."
Lightning Twirl's battle saddle clacked as she aimed it at my head.
"Put ... the gun ... down, Red," she demanded. But I didn't. "I SAID PUT IT DOWN!"
I braced the weapon against my shoulder.
"Don't do this Red, don't do this to us ... don't do this to me!" Dew Drops screamed. "We're supposed to save our stable - together!"
I bowed my head and clenched my eyes shut, my chest heaving back and forth with my suffocated sobs.
"We were ..." I whispered. I lifted my head, my distant, bloodshot eyes and contorted visage bathed in the cruel light of my nightmarish reality.
"But not anymore."
"Put it down, Red!" Box Cutter begged me. "Please!"
"Drop it! Drop the fucking gun!" Star Glint screamed as Amber Fields chewed anxiously on her shotgun's mouthbit.
"DROP THE FUCKING GUN, RED!" Lightning Twirl shrieked.
"PUT IT DOWN!"
"CUT THE SHIT!"
"DROP IT - NOW!"
I didn't. So they kept screaming at me. They wouldn't stop screaming ... the screaming wouldn't stop ...
"PUT THE GUN DOWN!"
"DON'T MAKE US DO IT, RED!"
"DROP IT!"
Goddesses ... make it stop ...
"NOW!"
The wind whipped past my face. The bloody snow squelched beneath my hooves. The furies' sadistic laughter cackled over their screams.
I stood there numb as my legs threatened to give out from beneath me ... their voices joined by the sounds of my thundering heartbeat, the gunfire, the wails, the tearing of flesh and meat as they all screamed inside my head - until their voices - their agony - until it all drowned beneath the wasteland's cruel, demented laughter ...
Darkness swept over me. The entire world was falling apart, and I could not bear to carry it upon my shoulders any longer.
I whipped my head back and howled my throat raw, rearing upon my hinds and clawing at my scalp with my hooves - black paint cascading down the walls around me -
"RED!" Dew Drops shrieked.
And I yanked the trigger back.
There was a trio of flashes - a splash of blood painted my muzzle red - and a thump.
Then silence.
Dew Drops lay at my hooves in a growing pool of blood and brains with a hole blown out the back of her skull. Her horn was shattered and arterial scarlet was pumping out of a ragged gash in her throat.
The light died in my eyes.
"DD ..."
"YOU SON OF A BITCH!" Box Cutter screamed - and I slipped into SATS.
The world slowed around me to an agonizing drag so that I could see the horror of my betrayal stretch across their faces. I watched with empty eyes as each guided round speared through their marks - cutting them down one by one.
And one by one they fell.
One by one, my friends died.
Again.
In seconds that dilated to hours, I killed them.
I killed them all.
I stood over their unmoving corpses, their blood pooling around my hooves as the wasteland winds howled a hollow requiem fit for a funeral. I stumbled forward to the cave's mouth but fell to my forehooves among my slaughtered friends in a splash of bloody mud.
I let out an anguished wail, clawing at my face to wipe away my tears only to paint myself red with their boiling lifeblood. I couldn't bear to look at them as their blood mingled with my tears and dribbled down my face and my hooves.
My eyes gravitated to my PipBuck's dim, blood-splattered interface. I saw the date twinkling at the top right of the screen.
Three days. Stable 91 was three days behind us.
Three days ... three ... Goddesses-damned days. Dew Drops was right. My PipBuck told me that they were right all along. They were ...
... right ... and as I turned my eyes to their faces - contorted with the horror born from my monstrous treachery, I despaired.
The snow furies didn't kill them.
I did.
I killed them all.
I slumped forward as my right forehoof splashed next to me. I closed my eyes, levitated my carbine to my muzzle, and opened wide.
Then I heard someone let out an anguished moan. My eyes flew open.
Bones and joints snapped behind me. I turned and watched in horror as Dew Drops' corpse convulsed like a dying, thrashing spider as something writhed beneath her skin like hooves stretching apart plastic.
Her pallid flesh contorted and stretched - her bones broke inside of her, kicking up gravel and dirt with every disgusting pop of her bloodied limbs. Her legs snapped, twitching violently one last time before her corpse squelched into the mud. She lay there in a pool of blood, stiff, as I sat up and cupped a hoof over my trembling lips.
Her eyes rolled back into her head and her back arched as she let out a low, gurgling growl. With a series of disgusting pops, her trembling corpse stood itself to its four contorted, gangly legs, its head hanging unnaturally to the side.
"Red ... Dawn ..." two voices croaked as Dew Drops' corpse limped toward me, a bloody hoof outstretched.
I yanked my carbine close and pulled the trigger - but the weapon clicked empty.
Dew Drops' head snapped to face me, and I peered into her hellish emerald eyes.
My muscles stiffened. My heart skipped a beat. Shallow gasps hissed from my lips as I shrunk beneath the crushing weight of her petrifying stare.
I tried to turn away. I tried to run - but my legs wouldn't budge.
I couldn't tear my widening gaze away from her insidious eyes.
She began to weep. Not tears, but dark trails of shimmering, violet magic.
Her horn, a curved black spike upon her head, flashed purple -
- and I felt my hooves leave the floor.
I careened into the cave's wall with a wet crack. Blackness stole away my senses for a moment, and when lucidity did return, Dew Drops' corpse loomed over me - peering down at me with a sadistic, diabolical grin that stretched across her bloody lips.
She cocked her head.
"I thought you loved me, Red Dawn?" she asked, a sinister voice as coarse as sand whispering beneath her words. I willed every fiber of my being to look away.
I managed to lift a trembling hoof.
But her bloody grin only widened.
Jagged black frost crystallized over my limbs.
'No ...'
I watched in horror as the corpulent mare crawled atop my heaving chest. She straddled me with her forehooves wrapped around my shuddering shoulders. I screamed, concentrating on a rock that was lying next to me - only for my horn to flicker with violet light.
Useless.
I felt broken glass rake into my skull. Frigid black ice crept across my horn.
"I thought you loved me ..." the two voices cooed. Dew Drops' muzzle hung a breath's length above mine. Coagulating blood dribbled onto my face. I could do nothing but peer helplessly into her infernal, half-lidded eyes.
Amid the other's coarse whispers, Dew Drops' familiar voice floated to the surface like a bloated carcass.
"Don't you still love me, Red Dawn?"
Tears trickled down my face as her chilling breaths crashed against my bloody cheeks. "Tell me that you love me ... Red Dawn ..." she hissed, her gory lips hovering above mine. I tried to press them close. I tried to shake my head. I tried to scream - but all that came out was a choking, suffocated cry as I felt her cold, slippery tongue slither through my lips.
I clenched my eyes shut, tears seeping through my eyelids.
Her tongue wormed inside of my mouth, carrying with it the taste of death and decay. My legs bucked and squirmed uselessly. Her cold, lifeless coat grinded against mine.
She slowly pulled away, a thin rope of blood and saliva trailing between our lips.
I gasped for my breath. And screamed.
"HELP ME! SOMEBODY HELP!" I shrieked my voice hoarse - only for a pair of frozen, gory hooves to slam my mouth shut.
She leaned into me and whispered into my ear:
"Nobody can hear you scream ... hahahahahaHAHAHAHA!"
Her horn glowed. An invisible force clenched around my neck. I choked and sputtered as she crushed my throat, suffocating my muffled sobs. "I love you, Red Dawn ..." she sighed, pressing her cold lips against mine and wormed her tongue inside of my mouth again and again.
My lungs ached. I could feel the darkness closing in. I tried to fight it - to fight her - to fight the sick, disgusting sensation that was building up inside of me as I felt her knee brush against the inside of my thighs. She let go and watched me with a twisted smile as I panted to fill my empty lungs.
"Please ... stop ..." I begged her ... the nightmarish abomination that wore Dew Drops' face.
"But I can't stop now, love ..." she whispered, running a hoof down my chest and ...
"Hahahahaha ...
'No.'
"STOP!" I screamed, "GET THE FUCK OFF ME!"
A hoof slammed into my jaw. I spat out blood and teeth as she held me close and whispered into my muzzle.
"You can't stop me ..."
'No - NO!'
"CANE - CANE! SOMEBODY! HELP ME - PLEASE!"
The mare's eyes rolled into the back of her head as she dropped her jaw - torn and distended - violet light erupting from her mouth and eyes. She threw her head back and unleashed a mind-shattering banshee wail that wrenched apart the quaking earth around us.
"I thought you LOVED me, Red Dawn!" the two voices shrieked as her hooves tightened around my throat. "Have you been loving another mare this whole time? Have you been FUCKING this CANDY CANE behind my back!?"
"C-CANE!" I choked. But she tore her mouth open wide - and sunk her vicious canines into my shoulder.
She looked me in the eye ... and ripped them out of me.
I gasped for air - and an agonizing, horrified scream escaped my lips as I gaped at the bloody, ragged hole she left behind. I trembled and quaked uncontrollably as my blood pooled all around me.
Again she locked her chilling gaze with mine, and whispered through her gory lips, a gravelly, insidious voice rasping beneath her words, "It's okay ... you'll be mine again, Red Dawn ... all mine, soon enough ..."
She forced my lips apart with another bloody kiss, worming her tongue into my mouth so that I could taste my own blood. I writhed like a trapped, netted animal until my muscles burned out and my pointless cries for help came out as nothing but suffocated, wheezing gasps.
She held my mouth shut with the glow of her crushing dark magic, lapping greedily at the blood that soaked into my barding. She savored its coppery taste - the taste of my helplessness - my fear. I watched as the dead mare slowly crept down my chest, planting gory kisses along the way.
She stopped just above my waist.
Her muzzle hovered between my legs, and a wicked, ravenous grin stretched across her lips.
I tried to close my legs. But she just shot me a sinister, half-lidded stare. A stare that reminded me that there was nothing - nothing I could do to stop her.
All I could do was beg.
"Stop ..." I wept, closing my eyes. I couldn't watch. I couldn't watch as her cold, pallid tongue rasped against my crotch. "Please ... no ..." I pleaded with her, trembling from my emptying veins and drenched in the blood that pumped out of my shoulder.
It was no use.
"You like that don't you?" she whispered, kneading my heaving chest - rougher - and rougher until my coat and my flesh began to scrape away.
I shook my head furiously, clenching my jaw as my flesh turned raw.
"Please ... stop ... stop!"
She sighed, and cocked her head at me, staring through my tearing eyes in the crushing silence that followed.
"... no."
She slammed her hoof into my gut.
I cried out. Bile surged to my throat.
I swallowed - and screamed my throat raw. She simply looked on, absorbed in my agony.
She wore a sick smile as she lowered herself between my legs and pressed her hoof against my swelling bruise ... and pushed ... and pushed ... digging her hoof into my ruined flesh.
I clenched my eyes into an unforgiving blackness. A blackness that couldn't smother the agony that writhed inside of me. My blood vessels popped. My nerves shrieked for oblivion. I screamed - only for my voice to waver inside my ragged throat as I felt her vile tongue rasp against me.
My eyes widened. My lungs ached.
I was soaked in my own blood.
But the pain that churned inside my gut was no longer enough to distract me from the horror that unfurled below my waist.
She grinned - and I shuddered helplessly. I watched as her frigid tongue dragged across the disgust and the shame that threatened to overcome me.
The mare stared through me with her gleaming emerald eyes, licking her lips as a string of drool dribbled down her chin. I felt her release her hoof from my bloodied bruise.
It changed nothing. The torment remained. It continued.
"You've always wanted this ... haven't you?"
She licked her tongue slowly between my legs, her half-lidded eyes never leaving mine.
I uttered a pathetic sob.
The mare's cruel laughs echoed through my wilted ears.
"Don't do this ... please ... stop ..." I pleaded weakly as I begged the foul sensation between my legs to leave me alone. It didn't. It crashed against me - it fought for an escape even as my mind screamed at my body to not give in ...
She didn't stop. She didn't stop - I couldn't stop as I felt her through my jumpsuit.
I tried to concentrate upon the ruined flesh of my shoulder - the bloodied bruise that swelled across my chest. I screamed for my blood to wash me away and drown me beneath. But none of it ... none of it was enough to distract me from the rasping of her tongue as it laid waste to my trembling body.
"Hmmnn ... I love you Red," she cooed, planting a disgusting kiss between my legs. She uttered a sadistic laugh at the shivering throb that sent a repulsive - perverted, guilt-ridden shiver down my spine. I shook my head vigorously, tears splashing against the bloody gravel.
'I can't do this ... I can't let this ... monster do this to me ... I can't ... I ...'
Her hooves wrapped around my waist. Her horn glowed, and I felt her tug at my zipper.
"No ..." I sobbed, tears streaming down my cheeks.
Tug.
"STOP!"
The dead mare growled, baring her vicious, inequine teeth.
"I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME!" she screamed, slamming a hoof into my face. I glared at her - dazed - my face contorted with agony and my shoulders quaking with violent sobs.
I said nothing as another hoof connected with my jaw.
Thwak.
"I thought you loved me Red Dawn!"
Thwak.
"Tell me you fucking love me!"
Thwak.
"TELL ME YOU FUCKING LOVE ME!"
Thwak. Blood peppered the gravel. Thwak. My eyes rolled into the back of my head.
She squeezed her hooves around my throat and forced me to look into her flashing, emerald eyes.
"There's nothing you can do! NOTHING! How does it feel to be helpless?" Thwak. "How does it feel to be left behind!?"
Thwak.
"NOW YOU KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE TO DIE ALONE!"
Thwak. Thwak. Thwak. I let my head roll across my shoulders. I let her hooves slam into my face. Again. And again.
"Is this how much you love me?" she screamed, glaring as violet light erupted from her hollowed out eyes and her distended maw. "You loved me so much that you killed me - TWICE!"
Thwak.
"You KILLED me Red Dawn! YOU DID THIS! YOU DID THIS! I loved you more than you ever knew - and you KILLED ME FOR IT!"
Another bloody thwack. Another muffled scream.
"I. THOUGHT. YOU. LOVED ME!"
"NOOO!" I howled.
She froze ... and stared at me ... horrified ... her green eyes slowly widening to saucers. She lowered herself onto my chest, and I flinched, one bloody eye closed, her quivering lips a mere kiss away from mine.
"I ... I-I thought you loved me, Red ..." Dew Drops whimpered, the emerald light fading away as I stared into her tearing, graying eyes ... Dew Drops' beautiful, familiar grays ...
"I thought you loved me ..."
Her once lovely face shimmered and blurred away as tears welled up in my eyes. I began to weep, washing away with my tears the blood on my cheeks as my entire body convulsed with broken sobs.
I blinked away my tears. I blinked away her lies.
"No ... I don't ... I hate you ..." I whimpered, clenching my teeth. "I HATE YOU! I FUCKING HATE YOU!" I spat in the deceiver's face. "YOU'RE DEAD! SO FUCKING STAY DEAD!"
The light of life died away in her teary eyes as she stared distantly into the hatred that burned in mine ...
Dew Drops lowered her head, her teal mane falling before her darkening face. A tear rolled down her cheek ... her hooves slowly clenched around my shoulders as I felt her body tense up against me. I peered up at her ... Dew Drops ... my Dew Drops ... the mare I loved ... and watched her shoulders quake with shuddering sobs.
Then she smiled. And laughed. The mare laughed, whipping back her cratered head and laughing into the ceiling until the other voice - serpentine and sinister joined her. Their cruel, sadistic laughter crashed against my eardrums - my thoughts - the inside of my head until their voices coalesced into a single, insidious cackle that shattered the world around us like glass.
"Hahahaha - HAHAHAHAHA!"
The ceiling exploded outward in a thundering crash as the earth above crumbled away and gave way to the sky - a churning maelstrom of nebulous dark magic. Cascading from the eye of its storm was a hellish shaft of violet light that engulfed us in its horrifying brilliance.
Bathed in that wicked glow from on high, her billowing shadow loomed over me. I peered up at her, and watched a satisfied, triumphant grin slowly stretch across her lips.
Dew Drops' eyes blazed with infernal, emerald light as she whispered:
"Yes ..." *
I woke up screaming.
I writhed against the chipping, snow-swept concrete beneath me, my hooves wrapped around my chest as I kicked and bucked my way out of the darkness that haunted my eyes. They flew open ... and I saw only ruin.
I sat up, slowly, tucking my hind legs to my chest, staring at the blackened concrete until my eyes began to well with burning tears. I let them fall, rocking back and forth as they stung my swollen, bloodshot eyes. I cried until my sobs turned into retches, my lungs giving up on me as I collapsed to the floor - writhing and wheezing in a heap.
I woke up. I woke up, and looked around me and saw the blackened, charred halls of the balefire-blasted Morale Hub. Another nightmare. Only this time, the nightmare was real. And I was never going to wake up from it.
My friends were still dead. My stable was still doomed. And Dew Drops ... I cried out and slammed my hoof into the floor, trembling uncontrollably. I shook my head, trying to shake away her wretched, screaming ghost. I tried to remember her face, the face of the mare that I loved, the mare that I'd grown to know and love for the last two decades of my life.
But all I saw was her ragged throat, her grisly, eyeless sockets, her broken horn - the hole that had been punched out the back of her head. I saw her sinister eyes blaze with unholy dark magic.
All I saw was a nightmare. A nightmare I wanted to forget.
I cradled my head in my hooves, trying to grasp the reality of the world around me. I rocked back and forth once more, weeping silently.
For what seemed like hours, I sat there ... trembling. Alone.
Then I heard a muffled scream. A mare's scream. My ears perked as I stumbled to my hooves and to a doorway that led out of my hiding place. I heard her again. It was faint - distant.
But it was getting closer.
"... Dawn! ... Red Dawn!" a familiar voice screamed.
Candy Cane.
It was ... Candy Cane. It was her.
"Cane ..." I murmured. But I gulped a lump down my throat. I remembered what Holly told me. That wasn't her. It couldn't have been her ...
"RED! WHERE ARE YOU!?"
I listened to her voice as she continued to call out my name.
I listened ... and shook my head, sobbing uncontrollably.
I touched the pockmarked concrete, scraping my hoof against it. It was as cold as the wasteland. Just like I remembered it.
I slammed my head into the concrete. A thin line of blood trickled down my face as the world spun around me.
My blood. Warm. Just like I remembered it.
I drew my pistol, and ran after her voice.
Saying nothing as I listened, I pounded against the concrete floor in the direction of her voice, turning corridors, bounding down staircases - Candy Cane's voice getting closer and closer.
"RED!" she screamed.
I turned a corner and slammed into someone. The momentum hurled me against the door frame with a dull crack. I gasped for air, thrashing to my hooves as I levitated forth my pistol and beamed the black figure on the floor with my PipBuck.
Candy Cane's wide-eyed expression flashed before me. Her horn glowed and she bathed me in the white glow of her magelight.
"Cane -"
"Red -"
She ran into me, her legs wrapping tightly around my chest.
"I thought I lost you," I murmured. I pulled away from her and peered into her bloodshot eyes. "You're ... you're real, right?"
Candy Cane nodded. "I ... I think so."
I gulped and let out a trembling sigh.
"I thought I lost you too, Red." She curled a hoof around my shoulder. "But I heard you shouting my name ... I knew you were still alive ... I just had to find you."
My brows furrowed at that.
"I ... I don't know what you're talking about," I told her. I had been silent the whole time. "I heard you shouting after me, so I just followed your voice."
She opened her mouth to speak, but fell silent. I watched her haunted gaze stare past my shoulders.
"Red ..."
I turned and saw my shadow. A billowing silhouette with a curved spike atop its head loomed over me.
"You..." I dove for Candy Cane, shoving her onward. "RUN!"
We galloped away, both knowing just what it was. Both knowing what it could do.
The concrete halls cracked and split behind us as it ripped across the walls, the ceiling, the floors - it was intangible and invisible to our eyes, but as real as the concrete that moaned and erupted around us. It was back. For more. It chased after us through the writhing darkness. The shuddering groans of shattering concrete told me that this time, it wasn't a game.
It had its fun. Now it wanted to finish what it started.
Candy Cane, faster than me, flashed her magelight before us - her light flickering madly across the wasteland's swirling snowflakes like static noise across a terminal screen. The howl of the northern winds beckoned us onward. 'Anywhere but here. Goddesses, anywhere but here.'
We charged into the parting sea of darkness - and blundered outside into a storm. The blizzard swept over us, raking at the flesh beneath my barding as we stumbled into the whiteout, our lights useless in the heavy snowfall.
Then I felt something slam into my chest. I coughed and retched, the air punched out of my lungs as I fell face first into the snow in a plume of powder. I winced, my flesh bruising as I panted for air that refused to fill my lungs.
RATATATAT! Plumes of snow kicked up around me and I ducked under the staccato cracks of automatic weapons fire.
"RED!" Candy Cane screamed over the howling wind, her silhouette flashing dimly in the snowstorm as her submachine gun coughed out bursts of lead.
An uproar of demented, psychotic laughter filled the air.
Snow furies.
In the back of my mind, I heard someone laugh ... it was an insidious cackle that echoed in my thoughts. I took a furtive glance behind me ... and its dark, serpentine hiss faded away into the howl of the wind.
I turned, drawing my pistol - and found myself staring into the black-veined sclera of a snow fury.
A fury mare squeed, "You're mine, stable boy!"
I snarled, and yanked the trigger back.
Footnote: Level 6
XP: 1400/3450 |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 14 - Darkness is Coming - Pt I | Chapter 14
Darkness is Coming
"I'm running out of places to hide, Mister Dawn ... Everybody is ..."
I snarled and yanked the trigger back.
Crack!
The fury mare slumped into the snow with a ragged hole between her eyes. I growled through my bared teeth, blinking away the scarlet that peppered my muzzle. I stood there for a moment, the pallid snow swirls thickening, the wailing gales intensifying. The world slowed around me - and I stared into the darkness.
No gunshots. No flashes.
But I heard them. Blood ran down my face as I soaked in the familiar, psychotic laughter that echoed through my ears. It was them. The snow furies. I couldn't see them. But they could see me.
There had to be dozens. Hundreds. All of them screaming their mindless, demented laughter.
'... now you know what it's like to die alone ...'
I brought a hoof to my scalp, running it through my mane as their laughter grew louder and louder - cackling from every direction ... behind me, before me, my left, my right - inside my head - my thoughts -
'HAHAHAHA -'
Then nothing. No more voices. No more gunfire. Only the howl of the wind and the distant beat of my heart.
Through the blizzard I saw a faint, black silhouette standing in the twilit snowfall. The wind shrieked past its billowing black mane, as it hung its faceless head in motionless quietude.
The black figure stood there, engulfed in the violent snowfall, close enough for me to make out its equine shape, but too far to see its face - too far to see what made it equine. All I saw was its dark silhouette obscured by the unforgiving storm.
I watched and listened as the beating in my chest slowed to a frozen silence. All the sound in the world finally faded to a frozen silence.
The storm waned for the briefest of seconds.
And a ragged scarf billowed from its neck.
Slowly, its faceless head turned to face me.
'I thought you loved me Red Dawn ...'
I blinked.
The blizzard shrieked past me and a fury erupted from the storm.
"HAHAHAHAHA - HAHAHAHAHA!"
This time, I didn't blink. I pulled the trigger twice. Twice he was struck in the chest. He stumbled, but he wouldn't stop. His laughing wouldn't stop.
"HAHA - I'VE GOT A PRESENT FOR YOU, BOY!"
He reared his head for a swing with his morning star.
"SHUT. UP!"
My horn plunged into him first.
I tackled the stallion to the snow in a plume of white powder. The blizzard intensified, my legs and his muzzle and the morning star clamped between his teeth all I could see.
He whinnied through a mouthful of rusted steel, laughing uncontrollably through his bloody lips. My hoof crashed into his throat and he dropped it with a retch. Then I slammed another hoof into his teeth. I didn't even blink as he wheezed his blood into my face.
My hooves tightened around his throat, and even as he choked and clawed at his neck for air, there still echoed inside my head his immutable, demented laughter.
'HAHAHAHAHA - HAHAHA -'
A scream thrummed inside my chest - and my pistol discharged a round that exploded out the roof of his skull. I stared down at him, watching blood and gray matter pool out of the hole in his head ... listening.
There they were. Still laughing. They wouldn't stop. They weren't going to stop until they were all dead.
The snow whipped past me as I galloped towards the muzzle flashes of Candy Cane's submachine gun. I found her ducked behind a slab of broken concrete. A fury lay slumped against it, his blood slowly turning to frost as the blizzard refused to relent.
I blinked.
His emerald eyes shot open, vomiting violet light from the tunnels that were his distended maw.
I leveled my pistol - and he was dead.
"Celestial shit ..." I murmured as the gunfire wrenched me back to reality. I felt Candy Cane's hooves grab my shoulders and pull me to my hooves as bullets screamed over where my head used to be.
"Where ... where the hell did they come from?" I snarled at her, my voice barely audible over the howl of the wind.
"They must be wondering the same thing," Candy Cane replied breathlessly. I listened to her words as she spoke louder than the voices that cackled around me, "I didn't even hear them ... see them ... how did they know we were here?" She levitated her gun over her cover and let loose a staccato burst of fire.
None of them hit anything.
But a stray bullet exploded against the concrete before me. Chipped shrapnel nicked the flesh of our muzzles and I screamed, "THESE FUCKING SHIT HEADS!" I heaved my pistol over our cover and yanked the trigger back ... screaming as blood ran down my face ... every deafening CRACK overpowering the voices that fought for my attention.
But the muzzle flashes that blazed across from us behind the curtain of snow didn't relent.
I could feel their bullets hissing past my mane. I could feel my pistol kicking inside my magical grip.
Candy Cane's voice shook me back to reality.
"Red - stop firing!"
I clenched my jaw and ceased fire. It's not like I was making much of a difference anyways. But the furies didn't. Muzzle flashes bloomed dully in the snowstorm, the cascading snow swirls obscuring the furies - and us.
I scratched at my mane, trembling uncontrollably.
Hahahahaha ... hahahahaha ...
"Red!" My distant eyes watched in slow motion as she reached for another magazine.
I listened to her voice ... struggling to be heard.
"... how many ... left ..."
I shook my head, clenching my eyes shut and grinding my teeth.
"Red ... how many ... left!?"
"Too many ..." I heard myself whisper.
Candy Cane's voice echoed faintly through my wilted ears.
"How many rounds do you have left!?"
I shook my head vigorously, trying to shake the ghosts off my shoulders -
"RED!" she screamed.
"Four!" I growled. Four. I only had four left.
"They've got more bullets than we do. We either wait them out or let them come to us."
"I don't see any other way - do you?" I snapped.
Candy Cane paused, staring at me for a moment. "I have an idea." She ejected her magazine, eyeballed its contents, then pointed a hoof at me. "I'll keep their eyes down range. Go around them." She grunted and loosed a burst of gunfire over her head - and the furies' fired back.
The concrete exploded over our heads.
"Go! They'll see me, but they won't be able to see you!" I winced as rocks exploded an inch away from my forehead.
'Red ...'
I shook my head, trying to hear Candy Cane's voice, trying to focus on her words as they spoke over the whispers that rose in volume like waves crashing against me.
"Red, let's get going!" she screamed, her submachine gun flashing in my eyes.
'Red Dawn ...'
Candy Cane's mouth opened -
"RED!" Dew Drops shrieked.
I tore my spade from my bags and made a mad dash into the storm.
Away from Candy Cane's voice, their cackling only grew louder.
I heard, faintly, beneath their laughter, Candy Cane's submachine gun rattle another burst. A few heartbeats later, the furies did the same. And every time someone fired, I saw a gun barrel flash back through the curtain of snow.
I could see them. But they couldn't see me. I galloped through the storm, engulfed in the howling snowfall.
I fell upon the first snow fury, and sent my spade swinging toward her skull.
It broke through with a dull squelch - and stuck. I planted a hoof into her lifeless corpse and tugged - ripping it free. I stared blankly at the gore that dripped from its steel head. My jaw clenched.
'You did this ...'
"Please ..."
'HAHAHA -'
I galloped onward and found the next fury. This time, my spade ran through the nape of his neck, and he screamed, his rounds spraying wide as he flailed his forelegs through the snow, his hinds laying limp.
I saw his face one last time - contorted with a quivering, agonized grin - and I cratered it with a downward swing. I hadn't even hesitated. I stood over him, my teeth bared, and my eyes widened, panting for my breath. Listening.
'You've always wanted this ...'
"Stop ..."
'But I can't stop now ...'
"NO!"
The world sped past me. I screamed, hurling myself into the storm - wrenching apart the frozen curtains with every hoof I threw over the other.
The fury swung her rifle to face me.
I swung my spade into her horn.
With a CLANG, and a dull crack, her horn shattered to pieces.
"HNNG - GAHHHH!"
The fury fell shrieking - floundering in the snow as blood poured down her face.
I stood over her, my spade raised high like a grim-faced executioner with another head on the block. I reclined into the eerie silence that washed over me amid her anguished screams ... a screaming silence.
She clawed her hooves at the stump that used to be her horn, wailing in agony, her breathless cries resonating through every fiber of my being ...
... drowning out the storm. Drowning out my thoughts.
I only raised my spade higher.
"Red, stop!" Candy Cane screamed, her hoof yanking at my sleeve. I blinked, my eyes darting back and forth as if I'd just woken up from a dream. "STOP!"
The magical field around my spade intensified. The fury curled up into a ball, whimpering and convulsing like a beaten animal.
"She's finished," I heard Candy Cane tell me. "There's nothing she can do now."
"There's bound to be more of them around here, Cane." I turned to her, my scarf billowing in the wind. "We need to kill her so she doesn't come back with more of them!"
Candy Cane pursed her lips, kneeling beside the hornless mare.
"We don't know that," she said, softly. "You broke it right off," she murmured, reaching out to touch the fury's forehead. The fury recoiled from her hoof with a pathetic, feeble whimper.
I stared at the fury beneath me, letting her panting, agonized breaths echo through my ears. I felt a pang of satisfaction in my heart. A part of me wanted to send my spade crashing against her skull.
But it almost felt good watching one of those animals suffer.
I wondered what Star Glint said to them before they skinned him alive. I wondered if he begged. I wondered if he pleaded for his fucking life. We were helpless to stop those monsters ... but now ... that fury was helpless to stop me.
All it would take was a single swing. I would even make it quick, even if that sack of filth didn't deserve a frozen metal grace.
"Please ..." the mare whimpered. "I don't wanna die ..."
"Shut up," I growled, jabbing my spade into her chest. "Don't you know what these fucking monsters do, Cane?"
I turned and felt Candy Cane's gray eyes stab into me like cold steel. "I know full well what snow furies do ... Red," she whispered. "You haven't seen half of it."
We gazed at each other for too many heartbeats, my voice wavering beneath her chilling stare. "You were fine with me killing them earlier," I began, tipping my gory spade at her. "What makes this any different, now?"
Her eyes relented, and she blinked them close.
"Red ..."
"SHE'S A SNOW FURY!" I screamed.
"I kill because I have to, not because I can." She pointed a hoof at the bloody, quivering, babbling mess at our hooves. "That's what makes us different from them."
I stood over the fury, my spade still enwreathed in my magical grip. The fury flinched, shielding her face with trembling hooves. And through a crack between her forehooves, I watched the black veins in her sclera recede.
The fury ... the mare beneath me whimpered.
"Please ... lemme go, you'll never see me again, I promise ..."
I closed my eyes, a trembling breath hissing through my lips. I heard her giggling at me. I heard her insane laughter echo through my ears.
My eyelids flew open, and I saw her face - neither grinning nor laughing, but contorted with agony.
"Let her go, Red ..." I heard Candy Cane tell me. "She's finished ..."
The cadence of my pounding heartbeat slowed. My conscience beckoned me.
I tucked the spade into my bags.
"Go," I heard myself say, softly. The mare looked up at me with wide, teary eyes.
"I said ... GO!"
She scrambled to her hooves and stumbled away from us. The mare fell once, before hauling herself back to her fours and disappearing into the storm.
A trembling sigh escaped my lips as I bowed my head, still as a corpse as my mane and my scarf billowed like tattered fabric in the wind.
I felt a hoof rest upon my shoulder.
"Red ... ?" Candy Cane began, but the wind stole the words from her lips.
I just shook my head and shrugged her off, closing my eyes as the blizzard howled mercilessly into my ears.
'Hahahahaha ... hahahahaha ...'
"Come on," Candy Cane said, her face and voice difficult to make out as the cascading snowfall thickened. "It's getting worse. We need to get out of here."
Were it so easy. *
Even sitting still, my heart raced inside my chest. Beneath the shadow of a vast, collapsed parking garage, the darkness shifted and swelled. In it I could make out figures - but with every blink, they flitted away. Nothing but ghosts haunting my weary eyes. To close them would accomplish nothing. They were still there, slithering beneath the shadow of my eyelids.
Slithering in the darkness.
Outside, above several thousand tons of concrete, beneath the wailing winter, I could still hear them. Laughing at me.
It hit me, then. They weren't laughing at me because I was weak, or because of the hatred that was simmering inside of me. No. They were laughing at me because I was a victim.
I had always been one.
Even with my gun smoking and standing alive among the dead - I was still a victim.
I sat there in the rubble and detritus, blank-eyed and shrunken to a slouch beneath the noisy quietude. The laughs rang out distantly - miles away. But I could still hear them, laughing their mocking laughter ... Dew Drops among them - giggling about how I thought that I slaughtered my friends - how fucking hilarious it was when I put that carbine in my mouth and opened wide.
I would've done it. I would've ended it all.
I clenched my jaw so hard I nearly popped it out of its socket.
They all seemed so real. I wanted them to be real. After Dew Drops' death, every dream, every thought I had of her was one wishing she was still alive. I got what I wanted - and to my disgust ... I got more.
The darkness knew just how well it could wrench apart that scabbed over gash in my heart. I may not have given it what it wanted ... but I knew, and it knew that it had still won.
While it wasn't easy to get used to the cold, it horrified me that I felt that it was becoming easier to get used to the wasteland. The dreary lifelessness. The empty streets. The death. Around us lay scattered a shallow graveyard of ancient motorwagons. Among them I could make out the faint silhouettes of equine remains - pulverized beneath massive boulders of concrete that had fallen upon them when the streets above caved in.
Having had a taste of a normal life - as normal as it could get - among friends, ponies that I loved and grew up with ... I only hated the world around me even more. I hated the snow furies. They did this to us. They did this to me. I hated the snow, and the cold, because they kept me shivering and awake when my mind wanted to drift away.
If only I had just ignored the scarf ... if only I had just turned away ... they ... she would still be alive ... But I killed them. And I would've killed myself, too ...
Staring at Candy Cane as she rummaged through an arbitrary pile debris, scavenging for Goddesses knew what, I pictured ... I tried to picture that that mare was Dew Drops, instead.
Candy Cane met my gaze briefly.
Her lips tore apart - violet light vomiting from her distended jaw. My hoof jumped to my holster - and when I blinked, it was just Candy Cane milling about.
Picking through the detritus, Candy Cane gathered trash from the remains of a crushed motorwagon. Carrying it back, she formed a small pile before us and lowered her head, her eyes clenching shut as sparks leapt and fizzled from her horn. With a dull flash, the trash ignited, and a small fire burned bright enough to light the broken earth beneath our hooves.
With a trembling sigh, she slowly lowered herself to her bottom and sat next to me.
She bowed her head to the small, flickering flame and held her shivering hooves over it.
It wasn't warm.
But it lit up the parking garage adequately. Ancient motorwagons lay strewn about, overturned, cratered, or buried beneath the rubble. I squinted through the darkness and saw a bony hoof poking out from beneath one.
I blinked, and for a moment, I saw the hoof shift through the rubble, clawing for the surface - drowning in the darkness. I blinked again, and it was just someone's charred remains. Shaking my head, I fixed my gaze upon a place where the light could not touch. It was better that way. Just like how it was better if I'd not known if the wasteland existed, outside '91's door.
I found it difficult to not stare directly into the darkness. It was all around me, and when I closed my eyes - it was still there. I was afraid. For the first time in my life, I was afraid of the dark. What lay behind that curtain of obscurity wasn't the Olden Pony looking for her rusty horseshoe. There were far worse things lying in wait.
Far. Worse. Things.
Candy Cane leaned forward, and winced, grunting softly as she clutched her chest. My ears twitched at her voice, but my blank stare did not leave the darkness beyond the campfire's dim glow.
"It's quiet, here."
It took me a moment to register what she said. Several more to realize it was her speaking. My eyes remained fixed into the pitch blackness beyond the light of our campfire.
"Red, what's wrong?" I said nothing. "You seem different."
My voice broke the silence. It was gravelly and desiccated as if I'd just woken up from a deep slumber. "What do you mean?" I asked evenly, a near-imperceptible waver in my voice.
Her ears shifted at that. She must've noticed.
"We're alive," I whispered, still staring into the darkness. "That's all that matters."
Candy Cane looked away, sadly, lowering her gaze to the firelight.
"No ... it's not," she whispered, hauntingly, a soft sigh ... or was that a sob - punctuating her words. She looked up at me ... and I felt her eyes boring into my peripherals. I met them, her haunted, chilling grays. She just stared, her lips parted open as if she wanted to say more.
Candy Cane's tired eyes lingered upon my blank stare. Several seconds passed before she turned away, her head pivoting like an unoiled, rusty machine. Her ear lingered, still fixed in my direction.
I said nothing. My ruined mind could find nothing to say.
It could find nothing but the darkness that terrorized it like a disturbed colt pulling the legs off a spider. Like a weary, tortured animal, I laid my head down between my hooves and stared into the fire, watching it flicker, wavering and weak.
All I had to do was to blow it out like a candle. A rogue breeze was all it took to extinguish its light. We weren't too different. We were just playthings ... we were just fucking toys in the clutches of something greater. Something ... evil.
It didn't want to kill us.
It wanted to torture us.
It wanted us to suffer.
Once more I tried to imagine Dew Drops' face. Her cool gray eyes ... her velvety blue coat ... her tousled teal mane ... her soft face and gentle smile. But instead her eyes flashed at me with emerald hellfire. I felt my limbs freeze over. I knew that that thing wasn't her. And yet all I saw behind the shadows of my eyelids was a monster.
'Don't you love me, Red Dawn? Hahahahaha ...'
I shook my head vigorously. Her voice ... its voice ... nothing but a disembodied, chilling cackle from the darkness. A laugh devoid of pity. Devoid of mercy. Devoid of equinity.
I remembered the crazed doomsayer I encountered in the Outer City not too long ago. I thought she was full of shit. I thought it was all a fucking joke.
She said that she saw the darkness.
So did I.
The darkness was real. The darkness was alive. And whenever I tried to think about the ponies I loved ... I ...
I couldn't stop thinking about it. About her. The taste of death on her tongue. The smell of rot in her flesh. Her cold blood as it dripped onto my face.
I couldn't stop thinking about her. How she wouldn't stop - how ... how I couldn't stop. How that monster took advantage me ... And to think that that was what I wanted Dew Drops to do to me. I couldn't even believe it myself ... to think I actually wanted ... that ...
... that I wanted to feel her hot breaths upon my flesh ... and feel her tongue wrap around me ... to force her down with my hooves. To hear her gag - hear her whine for breath. To release her - so that the air that would fill her lungs would not be the only thing to come.
Hahahahaha ... hahahahaha ...
My legs began to shake. I lowered my head to my trembling hooves, my mouth moving but no words escaping my tongue. Disgusting names spun twisting circles around my weeping conscience, convicting me - judging me - punishing me.
'You pervert ... you ... you fucking freak ...'
Was it true ... ? Was it? 'I'd never ... I ...
'No ...'
I tried to deny the whispers that suggested that - that somewhere - somewhere in the blackest regions of my conscience, there lay buried a twisted fantasy ... where I wanted it ... and more.
A fantasy where I wanted to defile the face of that lovely mare. I couldn't have ... I couldn't have wanted to hold her down and fuck her brains out ...
But the voices kept telling me I was wrong.
'NO!' How could I want to do that to her ... the mare I loved ... the mare I grew up with. Dew Drops ... my teacher - my friend - my lover. How could I ever think ... think to ruin my Dew Drops?!
But I was wrong. My body told me I was wrong. My body wanted her to tear open my trousers and give to me with her cold, rasping tongue, and her slick, chilling insides the fantasy it had hungered.
And all the while my mind had screamed at me to stop - my heart screamed at me that it was wrong.
And yet a part of me still wanted it.
She was a corpse. Reanimated by darkness ... by evil in the image of my Dew Drops.
'She was a corpse.'
A gasp - loud enough only for me to hear, wheezed out of my lips. I fought the urge to vomit, to hurl and retch away the pallid butterflies in my chest ... the wretched twist in my putrid gut ... the disgusting, unholy fantasies that gurgled inside my head.
I almost ... I almost said yes.
I wanted to cry ... but all I felt was anger. A boiling hatred that bubbled and popped inside of me. No longer could I think of her as the pony I loved ... she was gone ... and it was all its fault. The greatest insult to injury. A salted wound that had just begun to scab over - was now oozing and festering with infection.
The wasteland destroyed my friends.
Then the darkness destroyed their memories.
There weren't any more tears to shed ...
All that was left was hatred ... for Dew Drops' twisted grin, the brutal rasp in her voice, the sickly, unholy glow of her half-lidded eyes. What she did to me ... what it did to me ... I only wanted to make it pay.
It made me a victim ... in the false safety of my own mind ... I was victimized. On my own terms. Behind the safety of my own walls.
My hoof slid to my holster as I scraped at my pistol's safety.
Click. Clack. Click.
The wasteland - the darkness - whatever the fuck it was, wrenched away from my hooves almost everything I loved. The wasteland killed them. Then the darkness killed them again.
On. Off. On.
My hoof curled tightly around my holster. Someone was going to pay ... pay for the guilty, disgusting fantasies, and the putrefied memories that, in my thoughts, rolled over in their shallow graves. I wanted to find something tangible to blame. Something that could bleed.
Something that wasn't myself.
Hahahahaha ... hahahahaha ...
Snow furies.
"You did the right thing, Red," I heard Candy Cane say.
I bowed my head away from the firelight, a veil of darkness hiding the hatred that burned in my eyes. "The right ... thing?"
A twisted, lopsided grin stretched across my lips. "Letting that - that fury walk away? That was the right thing?" I stood to my fours, my hooves trembling beneath me. "I wonder," I whispered, "I wonder how many people she's killed? I wonder how many people she's butchered ... and we just let her walk away.
Candy Cane peered up at me.
"And That was the right thing to do?"
The mare was quiet for a moment as she averted her gaze to the crackling campfire.
"She ... she was begging for her life, Red."
I only laughed.
"Would she have done the same?" Candy Cane stared into the fire, jaw clenched. "Would she have let you walk away?"
There was a long silence as the frail firelight danced dimly across her grim face.
"No," I said for her. "She would've fucked you with your horn while you were still alive!"
She shook her head and whispered, "It doesn't matter ..."
I felt my heart leap inside my chest.
"What ... did you say?"
Candy Cane finally turned to face me. "It doesn't matter," she said, louder this time.
I snapped.
"It. Doesn't. Matter!?" My muzzle came within inches of hers. "Those ... animals killed my friends - and - and you're saying that it doesn't ... fucking matter!?"
The mare stood firm, her voice even. "I never said that."
"Bullshit!" I hissed. I grinded my teeth, glaring into the darkness. "It's all their fault ..." I whispered, my eyes clenching shut as their laughs resonated through my ears. "Those animals killed them ... and they would've killed me too ..." I bowed my head and added, in a voice only I could hear, "They should've ... but I won't let them."
I turned, slowly, staring my distant eyes through hers. "I used to wonder why I made it out of there alive ... I used to wonder why me - out of all those ponies - made it out alive." I gazed into the dying firelight as it wavered against my bloodied, grime-encrusted face. "Why ... Goddesses ... why?" I asked her.
She just stared back in silence.
"I wonder ... I wonder if it was so that I could make them pay ..."
Candy Cane took a deep breath, and slowly shook her head. "That mare ... she didn't kill your friends," she said, softly. "She didn't kill your friends, Red."
"No. But that fury will kill us!" I snarled as she continued to shake her head. "She would've killed us ... and if we don't stop them first, it'll be our pelts that'll be keeping them warm when the Tempest comes!"
"You don't know that," she whispered. "You broke her horn ... she was beaten - useless. She wouldn't have even been able fight back."
A bitter chuckle wheezed out of my lips.
"Why are you being so naïve? They'll come back with more, and they'll murder us both!"
Anger flashed across her face.
"You don't know that!"
"And you don't know that either! I'm going to laugh my ass off bloody when they come back and rip us to pieces! You should've let me put her down when I could!" I snarled, stomping a hoof into the ground.
"AND FOR WHAT?!" she snapped. "So - s-so you can get your revenge? How does killing her - unarmed and useless accomplish anything?"
"It'll save. Your. LIFE - AND MINE!"
Candy Cane grew quiet, her ears wilting as she stared at her hooves in the heavy silence. I could hear her shallow breaths hissing out of her trembling lips.
"Save ... save us from them?" She looked up at me in horror. "What about us? What about us, Red?"
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"What am I talking about? What about when we become just like them!?" She demanded with wide, pleading eyes, "What then? What in Equestria would've made you different if I'd just let you knock her head off while she begged?"
"Not a dead pony," I shot back.
"It would've made you a murderer!"
I threw my head back and laughed as if that was the funniest damn thing I'd ever heard.
"I already am, Cane!" I grinned, holding out to her my forehooves as if they were covered in blood. "And if it saved my life ... if it saved yours, I'd do it again!"
"NO!"
She curled her hooves around my shoulders and shook me. Hard.
"It's. Not. Worth it."
"Cane -"
"IT'S NOT WORTH IT!" she screamed into my face. "I've lived in this fucking wasteland my entire life - and I've seen enough." She jammed a hoof into her chest. "I've seen enough! I ... I watched as furies murdered my family ... I saw them rape my mother while they slit my father's fetlocks and made him watch."
The waning firelight crackled and popped.
"Why? Why did they burn my village to the ground? WHY DID THEY BUTCHER MY FAMILY?"
She uttered a violent sob, her trembling hooves tightening around me as she blinked away the tears that welled up in her eyes. Candy Cane's head slumped forward into my chest, rocking me back and forth with her shuddering sobs. "Why, Red ..." she whispered, clenching her eyes shut. "I'll never know. Furies don't need a reason for the things they do. They do it because they can."
She yanked me by the collar and glared into my eyes with her bloodshot grays. "I'm not like them, Red. I won't be like them. I kill because I have to, not because I can!"
Her grip loosened around my shoulders, but she lingered close. I could feel shallow breaths against my face.
"You don't know ... half the shit I've seen," she whispered, "And if you expect me to do the same things I've seen ponies do in this tartarus ..." Candy Cane let me go. She turned away from me and clenched her teary eyes shut.
"I'd rather die."
I bowed my head as we stood there in silence.
"Cane ..." I murmured.
Hooves crunched behind me.
"Then die," someone whispered.
My heart skipped a beat.
A shallow gasp escaped my lips as a hoof curled around my shoulder and spun me around.
I found myself face to face with the black-webbed sclera of a grinning snow fury. The fury's horn glowed - and I shoved him back into the darkness.
"Son of a ..." I rasped, stumbling away, as their broken grins and ragged hoods and wheezing gas masks stepped into the waning firelight. My back hoof crunched into our campfire.
Everything went black.
"GET THEM!"
Someone curled a hoof around mine.
In a heartbeat, I found myself running.
Hooves pounded after us as Candy Cane's light orb and their flashlights flickered to life. All I saw before us was rubble and debris as a dozen beams of light cut blazing swaths through the dark tunnels that were my eyes. Candy Cane's head swung back and forth, searching the rubble - frantically - for something my eyes couldn't see.
Her light orb flickered to black.
"CANE -" I shouted - then someone shoved me to the ground with a crunch - hooves stabbed into my chest - sharp bits of concrete scraped against my hide as hooves stuffed my back into a wall.
I bucked my hooves, but they were only met with cold, cold concrete. I couldn't see. 'My PipBuck! If I could just -'
My horn scraped against the rubble and my magic sputtered and popped.
'FUCK!'
I wriggled helplessly, the muscles in my hinds tensing for another buck - and someone's legs wrapped around me. Tight. There came a breath upon my cheek as I heard Candy Cane whisper, "Be quiet," as the snow furies whooped and shrieked, their flashlights flickering outside through the strands of her curly mane.
I stifled the gasps that were wheezing out of my lips, and winced at the numb, throbbing sensation in my chest. Slowly, as the seconds that felt like minutes began to tick by, an inexplicable, dull pain welled up inside of me. The pain soon became agony as I felt something warm soak into my jumpsuit from the inside out.
It was only until I felt Candy Cane's peacoat brush against my chest that I realized ...
'They stabbed me.'
"Oh ... f-fuck ..." I murmured, my eyes widening.
"Be quiet!"
Candy Cane pressed her cheek against mine as she wedged herself deeper into the crevice. Panic coursed through my veins as my breaths came out as ragged gasps.
'They stabbed me - they fucking stabbed me -'
Candy Cane clapped my mouth shut.
But it wasn't enough.
There was a flash. And she screamed.
"HAHAHAHAHA!"
A snow fury yanked her tail and dragged her away from me - screaming.
Candy Cane's light orb winked to life and I saw the horror and resignation that flashed across her face. I reached out with a hoof, wisps of red light flickering across my horn.
"NO!" she cried out - not at them - but at me. "DON'T! IT'S NOT WORTH IT!" Candy Cane dug her hooves frantically into the rubble as they fought against her thrashing limbs. "NO!"
I met her eyes for the last time.
"IT'S NOT WORTH IT, RED DAWN!"
Then a hoof crashed into her skull, slamming her face first into the concrete - and her light orb winked out with a splash of scarlet. Then the world cut to black.
All I heard were their laughs, cackling behind the curtain of darkness as they left the broken stage. I listened as their voices echoed through my hollow, concrete coffin. I listened until all I heard were the voices in my head.
Laughing. Mocking me with their deprecating laughs.
'You did this ... hahaha ... hahahahaha ...'
I closed my eyes and let out a trembling sigh.
I wanted to laugh with them. To laugh my ass off bloody, and tell her I was right - that they would come back for us. To kill us. To flay us alive. And as I dragged my bleeding self out of that hole, with my PipBuck flashing across the rubble, I saw that she wasn't there.
All that was left was the other half of the map, trampled beneath half a dozen hooves - splattered with Candy Cane's blood.
I stood there, staring at the pieces of frayed paper. Trembling. Even as blood trickled out of my chest. 'Not again.' Those two words played across my thoughts. Repeating like a broken record.
Not again. Not again. Not again.
A magical field lifted up the bloody scraps of paper, floating them weakly before my eyes as they wavered, tracing every line of blood, every speck of scarlet that was soaking into its frayed, crumpled surface.
'Snow furies ... they ...'
No. 'Not again ...'
My aura dwindled and whined. Then nothing. The pieces fluttered into my trembling hoof. I gazed numbly at the hoofprints that were stomped into the broken earth. I tucked the pieces away, and lowered myself to the floor, reaching out with a hoof to touch the crater that Candy Cane's face had made when they stomped her skull in.
I lifted my last health potion to my lips and downed it, tossing it aside with the rest of the shit that lay heaped around me. I checked the rounds in my pistol. Four left.
"Fuck ..." I hissed, pounding a hoof into the earth. "FUCK!"
I wanted to blame her. She should've let me knock that fury's head off. I wanted to give her a cruel smile and laugh in her face, and tell her that it was all her fault. But there wasn't anyone else to blame.
She was gone.
I clenched my eyes shut, flicking my pistol's safety off.
Snow furies. *
It wasn't too difficult to track them. Neither was it too difficult to find them. All I had to do was follow the blood. The ancient night was still young, and the blizzard had calmed to a ragged, incessant breeze. I poked my head over a slab of melted debris and saw them.
A camp full of furies.
Dozens of them. But it didn't look like they were there to stay. In the wavering torchlight that lined the perimeter and lit up the center of their camp, I saw wagons parked here and there. Upon them and around them were cages, boxes, piles - some empty, some full of looted valuables or garbage.
Others were full of bones.
Others were full of discarded, frost-bitten meat. Others ... others had ponies in them. They stood there, heads bowed - defeated as the snow furies circled them, poked them with machetes, or barked disgusting remarks through the cold, steel bars.
There lay limp a silhouette under several pairs of legs. I knew it was her.
They hadn't killed her.
Yet.
I knew how they operated.
My eyes flicked to the discarded scraps of meat and bones that lay strewn about, and the torsos and skulls that were mounted upon gnarled spikes.
I drew my pistol, and counted. One, two, three, four -
Then stopped. Of course. There would be more furies than I had bullets. I pounded a hoof against the charred concrete that concealed me from the glow of their torchlight.
Without her ... I knew I was lost. She had been ... nice enough to leave me the other half of the map. She knew I wouldn't be able to save her by myself.
She knew that she was finished the moment they dragged her away.
I shook my head, rubbing my eyes furiously with my hooves as I slumped into the wall behind me and slid to ground with a muffled crunch. Even with the other half of the map, I was still lost. I looked up into the vicious, melted spires of rebar and cooled, molten concrete that rose up above me. Then back at the map.
All I saw were numbers, quadrants, and planographic symbols that meant nothing to me. I didn't even fucking know where I was. But Candy Cane did. This time, I couldn't save her alone. I was lucky I didn't die the last time.
I gazed longingly at her still form. I didn't even ask her about what happened to her at the Hub. I didn't even ask her if she was okay, or how hard she fell the last time we got separated. I ... I didn't even ask her if she was okay.
That mare ... that mare trusted me with her life. She went out of her way ... she threw away her freedom and resigned from the prospect of settling down just to help me. To help me. And I didn't even ask her if she was okay.
I took her for granted. The last mare I took for granted was dead.
I needed her. Goddesses, I needed her. She deserved better. So did many other ponies who'd entered and left my life ... and she had only just entered mine. Whether she liked it or not, she had stepped through that door.
And for the short time I knew her ... I wasn't going to let her leave. Not like that.
My only friend.
'You keep her safe, Red,' Summer Smiles' voice echoed through my thoughts. I did. I had kept her safe like I did with my dead, dead friends. I cradled my head with my hooves, rocking back and forth as anger and guilt boiled inside of me.
Those fucking snow furies ... not again. 'Not again.'
There were simply too many of them. But either way, without her, I was screwed. I'd never find my way back to the Outer City. I cupped a hoof over my PipBuck's screen to dim the glow and stared at its map.
I looked around me, and uttered a defeated sigh.
It looked like it was calibrated to give me the layout of the city before it collapsed and folded upon itself. What roads, bridges, and sidewalks there were before, were no longer there.
I'd never make it back alive without her.
My eyes squinted through the darkness back the way I came, tracing the hoof trodden, bloody trail that snaked through the snow. We'd left those furies we killed earlier behind and all their belongings where they'd fallen. They had guns.
And I could use a resupply.
I heard the creaking whine of the cage's door being swung open. I peered over the rubble and watched as they dragged out a pony, screaming and begging for his pathetic life. They circled him like predators, hungry for blood and carnage.
I watched a fury break rank, and toss the pony a club as she brandished her own. She taunted him with insults until he found the rage to lash out. The furies cheered when her club cracked against his ribs. They cheered when he struggled to his legs only to have a kneecap shattered from another brutal swing. They cheered again when she brought it down upon his skull.
Pulping it.
I gulped, casting my gaze away from the carnage. Then they went back to the cage and retrieved another, tossing a mare into the ring.
'Luna's grace. They're going to murder them all.
'They're going to murder Candy Cane.
I turned, and hurried down the ridge.
I needed to find a way.
I needed her.
I figured that even if I died trying, I was going to die anyways.
I spared a glance to the twilit sky, watching the black, nebulous storm clouds as they loomed over me. A snowflake fluttered down from above to land upon my nose. I snorted, as several more began to fall upon my face. The wind was kicking up again.
Soon, the tracks leading back there would be gone.
I lifted my PipBuck to my muzzle. Clack. On my map, a blue X winked over my current location. I'd need to find my way back to the Morale Hub.
I paused for a moment, and glanced over my shoulder at the torchlit camp. Maybe those damned furies weren't worth it.
But Candy Cane was. * |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 14 - Darkness is Coming - Pt II | *
As soon as I was far enough from the light of their camp, I broke out into a run.
Kicking up swaths of powder behind me, I dashed into the night, my PipBuck lighting my winding way. I glanced frantically across the pale, eyeing the fading trail of blood and hoofprints.
The snowfall was burying it all away.
"Shit!"
I needed to find those guns before something horrible happened to her. I imagined them tying her down and stripping away her clothes, piece by piece ...
I shook my head vigorously.
I needed those damned guns.
My heart drummed inside my chest. The world blurred around me. All I heard was Candy Cane's voice crying out the very last words she'd said to me ...
'It's not worth it, Red ...'
The trail was becoming fainter.
'IT'S NOT WORTH IT!'
My legs pumped faster.
'I won't lose you again.
'Dew Drops ...'
I winced. A terrible shiver wracked my spine.
'Now you know how it's like to die alone ...'
Not again.
The snowfall thickened.
Not again.
The tracks were fading away.
"Not again!" I cried over the wind, galloping through the drifts even as the heavy snow continued to fall - even as the trail disappeared beneath the powder. I'd find a way - I'd find a way!
I couldn't find my way.
"No - no - no - NO - NO!" My forehooves stabbed through the snow with every step I took - tearing through the powder, searching for a splotch of red.
A mare screamed.
"DAMNIT!"
I froze.
Her voice echoed through my ears and my thoughts. Strange emotions washed over me. One by one they crashed against my conscience like waves upon a seashore.
I grinded my teeth. Then my eyes widened.
Impatience. Irritation ... abandonment?
"We are lost - again!" she moaned, her voice resonating through the caverns of my mind like my own thoughts.
"It does not matter. We will find what We came here for," the same voice replied ... to ... itself?
I squinted through the snowfall. The furies' waning tracks led down that alleyway.
I lifted a hoof - and hesitated. The last time I heard voices echo through my head like that was when I stared down the battle cannon of a zebra demon engine.
Magical fuckery was at work.
"No. There is nothing here. We are wasting our time!" she hissed. "We cannot dawdle - not when We may be needed elsewhere."
"QUIET!" I cringed, her voice jabbing into my brain like broken glass.
"We felt it, did We not?" I heard and I thought the mare demand. "That is why We are here - that is why This One is certain that it is here. We will not return empty-hoofed."
My hooves crunched through the wary silence as the voices paused for a moment. I hugged the charred wall, peeking my head around the corner.
Goddesses ... Goddesses?
My eyes widened and I felt my legs wobble beneath me.
Their backs were turned. They couldn't see me but ... I could see them ...
There they stood ... three ... winged unicorns, their dark green coats almost invisible in the moonless night. I eyed the great wings tucked against their sides, and the majestic, spiraling lengths of bone upon their heads.
I could think of no other word to describe them.
Goddesses ... the wind seemed to calm in the presence of those ... Goddesses.
So did the snowfall. It waned to an apprehensive stillness as I stared, jaw dropped and breaths shallow. Even as the wind dissipated into the frozen air, their manes - their star-speckled midnight manes billowed endlessly in an invisible breeze.
I took a step closer. My hoof crunched into gravelly snow.
One of the winged unicorns turned to me her delicate face. Strands of her celestial mane, sparkling like a starry night sky, washed across her cheek.
I exhaled a breath that I'd been keeping in as I met her gaze. I soon realized that I was staring into the charming blue eyes of a Goddess. A Goddess.
But the beauty in her stare shattered like glass.
Anger flashed across her face.
"YOU!" her voice rang out through me.
My heart leaped inside my chest. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Gasping, I stumbled backwards - tripping up on my hooves and plunging into the drifts as she scattered my thoughts with her psionic echoes.
"SHOW YOURSELF! The Goddess commands it!"
Goddess.
I scrambled to my hooves. Cursing quietly, I poked my head from around the corner.
The three winged unicorns were glaring right at me, heads bowed and ready to charge, their eyes and horns blazing with rippling spellfire.
'Oh. Shit'.
I ducked back into cover and hoofed my face, swearing and swearing into my hoof.
"Come out. NOW!" the pony to the far left commanded in a voice that shook the snow from the rooftops.
I obeyed, slinking awkwardly out into the open, my eyes trained upon her.
I expected her to run me through -
But the winged unicorn on the right cantered towards me, towering another head over mine. I gulped as her shadow fell upon my face, my fetlocks buckling beneath me. I gazed meekly into her glowing blue eyes as I felt a cold hoof touch my cheek. Her horn flickered with a bluish sheen and my limbs tensed ... frozen.
I looked up at her dark expression. Her coat - a gloomy shade of green. Her mane - made of night. I remembered the illustrations from the books I read at school. Celestia and Luna. She was neither.
They were not Goddesses. They were ...
A strange tingling sensation tickled the inside of my skull.
I winced.
It fluttered and arced throughout my body - beneath my skin - through my veins - inside my gut.
Time seemed to slow as her strange magic skittered across my flesh.
She blinked, and her hoof fell away from my cheek.
"It is merely another aborigine," she droned, evenly. "Pure." The even-toned mare squinted at me, scrutinizing my shivering body. "I sense nothing of import within him."
I wrinkled my nose at her. The other two just glared at back, annoyed.
"Then it means nothing to us," the pony to the far left growled.
She stepped forward and shooed the other away.
Her hoof came to touch my cheek.
"Perhaps ... We can afford to be more ... invasive." The mare chuckled madly, a malicious smile curling across her lips. Her horn exuded an ungodly glow and my skin began to crawl.
I felt my insides churn ... and ...
"AGH -"
"Do not waste any more of our time," a voice rang out.
Her magic dissipated and I fell before her hooves, retching into the snow.
The mare at the center strode forward. "We must continue searching."
"Goddesses ..." I wheezed in between breaths. It ... it felt like she was turning me inside out.
"Goddesses?" the winged unicorn - the mad mare grinned.
I looked up at her with bloodshot eyes, a line of spittle hanging from my chin.
"There is only one Goddess, and that is the Goddess of Unity," she said, her words resonating a thousand times inside my head.
Unity.
"What ... what are you?"
The Mad Mare tipped her chin to the sky.
"We are alicorns. We are the instruments of the Goddess."
Alicorns. Goddess. Unity.
Night Sky's words resurfaced to my thoughts.
'... there are worse things than death if you come across somepony yakking about Unity ...'
My eyes widened.
I took a trembling hoofstep back. I needed to get the hell out of there.
I heard the hum of crackling magic.
"Hehe ... where do you think you're going, little one?" the Mad Mare demanded, spellfire crackling across her horn.
I flinched.
"CEASE THIS NONSENSE!"
The rooftops rumbled. Icicles and debris showered over us as everything and everyone fell silent. I gulped as the three alicorns glared restlessly into each other's eyes.
There was a low crack. A sheet of snow plopped onto the Mad Mare's head and flattened her billowing mane. She stood there shivering, her horn exuding a fiery glow as melting slush dripped and dribbled down her wilted mane.
"He is of no use to us," the Middle Mare said to her sister, the Mad Mare, her foreleg outstretched between us. "Leave him be, and let us be on our way."
The Mad Mare looked away, prancing in place as she chewed on her lower lip.
She spoke in a low, trembling voice, "Where would we go, sister? Where? We may yet extract something useful from the little one. It is better than wandering this wasteland aimlessly ... We are lost, sister, can you not see?"
The even-toned mare looked away, muttering, "We cannot see. No amount of augering can penetrate this darkness ..."
My ears perked. I looked up at her, chills running down my spine ...
The Middle Mare snorted, her eyes flickering with unnatural light.
"Then We shall search with the eyes the Goddess gave us."
The Mad Mare threw her head back and laughed.
"Search? Just as We have been for the last four weeks?" She sighed, rolling her eyes. "The Goddess ordered us to search - We have. And We have found nothing."
"Sister ... do not be difficult," the Middle Mare murmured. "That is because We have not been searching long enough."
"We are lost!" the Mad Mare cried, ruffling her wings. She shot me a baleful look, and stomped her hoof into the ground. "We cannot even detect what We are searching without touching these filthy animals!"
The Middle Mare tapped her lip with a hoof, narrowing her eyes at me.
"Perhaps We might try asking the little one?"
I flinched.
"Hmph." The Mad Mare tossed her hoof over her shoulder. "Our affairs do not concern this fool," she scoffed at me as if I wasn't there.
I gulped. "Ahem ... well you haven't really been trying to keep that a secret from me ..." I murmured.
"What?" they gasped in unison. "You could hear us the whole time?"
I cocked my head at them.
"Of ... of course I can. You're talking out loud."
"DAMNIT!" the Mad Mare screamed, stomping her hooves into the snow.
The ground cratered inward as she blew a ring of snow and rock sky high.
'Holy fuck.'
Her eyes blazed with fiery magic.
Half a dozen silvery arrows of burning spellfire shot into the air.
"He was spying on us earlier. He knows. He cannot be allowed to leave."
I took a step back. There was nowhere to run.
Her horn flashed.
"Wait!" one of her sisters shouted.
I forced an eye open. And nearly unleashed my bowels.
A magical arrow was hovering less than an inch away from my face. I could feel the heat of its magical fire prickling against my muzzle.
"Have We ever thought to simply ask for help?" the Even Mare whispered. "These aborigines know more of this land than we do."
"No!" the mad one hissed. "He mustn't know!"
The Middle Mare glared at her, clenching her jaw. "Do We have any other ideas?" She leered at her sisters half-expectantly, waiting for an answer. She snorted when they said nothing. "No. That is what This One thought."
I raised a hoof, slowly. Their heads slowly turned in unison. I cleared my throat, shaking uncontrollably at the spellfire arrowhead that was still hovering before my muzzle.
"Y-you're lost?"
The three alicorns nodded.
I gulped, my eyes narrowing at the blazing projectile that was burning less than inch away from my snout.
I didn't think a health potion could heal through whatever damage that thing could cause. My eyes trailed off to the crater beneath the middle one's hooves.
... or whatever else those ... alicorns could do to me. I glanced over my shoulder. It was a straight shot out of the alleyway, with no cover, and a trio of ponies that could smear me across the snow like a radroach. I didn't see much of a way out. I needed to get out of there ... I needed to save Candy Cane.
But those fucking alicorns were going to rip me to pieces.
I blinked. I thought about the guns those furies left behind when we killed them.
Then I stared down the length of that fiery arrowhead.
I let out a trembling breath ... 'those guns are worthless.' A sly, impatient grin stretched across my face, sweat trickling down my forehead.
"Maybe ... maybe I can help you find what you're looking for?"
The three exchanged a myriad of looks. The Mad Mare growled and took in a breath of air - but her sister beat her to it.
"You have long walked these wastes, have you not?" the Middle Mare asked.
I gulped, nodding. "Y-yes ..."
The Even Mare chuckled softly. "Perhaps the little one might be of use to us, after all."
"No! We cannot simply tell this fool!" the Mad Mare snarled, her arrows still hanging over me like an executioner's axe.
"Sister ... you are being ... difficult again ..." her sister replied, evenly. "He may be able to show us the way."
I nodded like my life depended on it. I nodded because Candy Cane's life depended on it.
The Mad Mare glared at me, her jaw clenching. Seconds passed as her magical arrow blazed into my retinas like balefire. She cocked her head to the side - and a flash of light engulfed me.
I was going to die.
My eyelids slammed shut.
There was a long, fading hum.
She relented. Her magic dwindled and dissipated, and a trembling sigh of relief escaped my lips.
"Damnit." She swung her head at her sisters. "Then make it quick. This One grows tired of dawdling."
The Middle Mare nodded, and her sister backed off. The Even Mare stepped forward.
"Little one ... have you ever came into contact with those touched by the madness?" she asked, walking towards me as I took one careful step back.
'Touched by the madness? Madness ... madness ...'
'Hahahahaha ...'
"Snow furies..."
She cocked her head at that.
"If that is what they are called."
A moment of hesitation passed. "Then yes," I murmured in a tiny voice.
"What was that?" grunted the Mad Mare.
"Yes," I coughed, biting my lower lip. I felt like I was going to be crushed beneath the weight of their wary stares. "Yes, I've seen them. I was actually attacked by a pack of them, earlier. I barely got out alive ..." I trailed off, Candy Cane lingering in my thoughts. I thought carefully about what I was about to say next.
"I followed them. I know where they're camped."
The three alicorns peered down at me, thinking to themselves for once.
"I can ... I can take you there."
"Hmph," the Mad Mare snorted. "You are nervous. I can sense it ..." She craned her neck towards me. "You have something else on your mind."
I gulped. And said nothing.
"This One can crush you like an insect ... remember that, little one," she whispered, her cold blue eyes staring through mine. I gazed into them. I didn't see a Goddess.
I saw something else: a cruel hollowness, devoid of equinity, but equine in form.
I couldn't see a soul behind those eyes.
Only the Goddesses had both wings and horns. But they were no Goddesses.
The alicorn raised her chin to the sky, looking down upon the helpless little pony cowering beneath her. She lifted a hoof. I held my breath.
"Take us to them. The Goddess commands it." She stomped her hoof into the snow with a dull crack. My eyes widened. The concrete underneath her shattered.
"Deviate from your course, and your death will be a slow and excruciating one."
A cloud of foggy air wheezed out of my lips as the other alicorns nodded in agreement.
"Right." I turned back the way I came, my legs trembling beneath me. I took a step forward - tripped on my own hooves and crashed into the snow.
I scrambled to my hooves, coughing twice, and eyeballing my PipBuck and the X that was twinkling over my map.
"Right. Of course. Follow me," I said, cantering down the alley. I heard footsteps crunching behind me.
I couldn't believe it.
Those guns were worthless. It didn't take a genius to know those three made an energy caster look like a flashlight.
And I was leading that derailed train ride right into a camp of snow furies.
An impish smirk creased my lips. I was going to make those furies pay.
I shook my head vigorously, and quickened my pace.
"Hurry. Please."
The alicorns followed in suit.
"If he tries anything foolish, I will impale him," the Mad Mare growled as they trotted after me.
A terrified grin creased across my lips.
"You really like to think out loud, don't you?"
An air of quietude fell upon us.
"It is a habit," the Even Mare said, softly. "We do not always speak out loud."
"Then why are you now?"
She hesitated. Her voice became quieter.
"We cannot hear each other ... not over the screaming."
I stopped in my tracks, and gave them a nervous glance.
"The screaming?"
The Mad Mare growled, "Keep moving, whelp."
I did as she commanded, troubled to the bone.
"There is something here ... an interference." She winced, pain flickered across her face. "It hinders our farsight with an impenetrable darkness. Our augering cannot detect them unless they are standing right before us."
I chuckled, "That's why you need me, then, huh?"
The Mad Mare shot me a look that spelled out death.
"Watch your tone, little one. You are not in control, here."
I fell silent. So it seemed. But they would help me, whether they knew it or not.
There was yet another long silence as we crunched through the snow.
"I long to hear the Goddess' voice again," the Middle Mare whispered. "There is no Unity here. There can never be." *
The torchlight of their fucked up little camp peeked just over the debris-strewn ridgeline. The wind was quiet, and the snow was as light as I had ever seen it since I first stepped outside into that tartartus.
There was nothing in the wind to drown out the horrifying screams that emanated from their camp.
"They're here," I whispered to the three alicorns who crept up behind me.
"Goddess," the Even Mare winced, hoofing her temple. "I can feel them. The mad ones. The darkness is strong here."
Her words resonated through my thoughts. The darkness.
Someone let out a mortal, bloody wail. Dozens of delighted cheers followed.
I hurried up the ridge, debris cascading down the hill behind me. I peered over a chunk of melted concrete and watched the horror unfold before my eyes.
Inside of a wide circle of jeering snow furies, there was a pony, his hindlegs twisted and broken. He clawed through the snow - dragging his useless legs behind him and away from an advancing snow fury mare. He cried out in desperation as the fury's hoof steps came crunched closer.
"No - no please! NO!"
The fury just laughed.
She plunged the machete through his back.
Thwack.
He screamed - until his screams were cut short.
She yanked it out of him and swung it into neck. The blade wasn't sharp enough. So instead, it crunched deep into his spine.
His legs spasmed once. Then nothing.
He was dead.
But the fury tore it out of him and just ... kept slashing.
The crowd exploded with roaring cheers. The fury mare lifted her gory machete triumphantly into the air. It wasn't much of a triumph if they couldn't fight back.
But it didn't matter.
They just left the pony's mutilated corpse where it lay. With the rest. With the others that they'd slaughtered for their sick entertainment.
At least seven other ponies and their entrails lay strewn about the killing floor. It was hard to tell how many they'd actually butchered.
There were too many limbs to piece together.
Too many limbs ... too many limbs ...
Panic fluttered inside my heart.
My eyes searched frantically for what my heart didn't want it to see. I scanned the dead.
A leg.
A leg with a gory red coat.
Hacked up and disarticulated.
Hot tears streamed down my cheeks. Stars flashed in my eyes - and I doubled over, my heart convulsing with torturous throbs.
I beat a hoof across my chest. My breaths came in and out shallow gasps. I peered over the rubble and stared at the grisly limb. I just stared, unable to breathe as the tremors within my heart threatened to tear me apart from the inside out.
"N-no ..." I choked.
Hooves crunched behind me.
"It is time."
Pomf. A blast of cold air crashed against my numbing flesh.
Three winged forms took to the sky.
Three voices, speaking in unison, shattered my thoughts and dragged me back into clarity.
"PREPARE TO BE UTTERLY DESTROYED."
The snow furies jeered, and scattered. They thrust their guns into the air.
And the gunfire turned the night into day.
There was a blinding flash in the sky. A bubble of shimmering blue energy enveloped the three alicorns, sparking and whining with every bullet that dashed uselessly against it.
I cupped my hooves over my ears, the rattling - the grating - the deafening gunfire drowning out everything except the voices that cackled hilariously inside my head. I screamed - and screamed - but I couldn't hear my voice.
'HAHAHAHAHA - HAHAHAAHA!' ...
Everything went numb.
In the tunnels of my eyes ... the world faded to black and white.
A dull ringing resonated through the deafening silence.
I heard Candy Cane's voice.
'You couldn't save me.'
Icy black paint trickled down the cracked, pockmarked walls around me.
'You can't save anyone.'
I doubled over as a palpitation shot stars through my eyes.
'You can't save anyone. Not even our stable.'
'HAHAHAHAHA -'
"NOOO!"
The world blurred past me. Around the camp. Atop the ridge. A fury with a battle rifle.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
My spade clattered to the rocks.
Furies cowered behind cover. Their flank was exposed. I stared down the gun. Crosshairs hovered over a fury's chest.
CRACK.
SATS whined for more.
CRACK.
Someone galloped into my crosshairs.
CRACK.
A fury mare crawled away -
CRACK.
One more.
CRACK.
One more.
CRACK
More ...
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
The plaster frayed and split.
A fury galloped to a cage, shadows writhing within. SATS shrieked.
But a white flash sheared him in half.
A ragged breath wheezed out of my lips. Blazing arrows of fiery magic rained down from the sky.
Explosions erupted across the camp. Charred limbs sailed through the air. Craters were blown out of the earth.
An inferno engulfed the camp.
I stared into the burning spellfire. And the spellfire stared back.
Their maniacal laughter howled over the sounds of crackling, charred flesh and splattering limbs until their voices shrieked agonizingly into oblivion.
All became quiet.
I looked down upon the obliterated, fiery craters ... the cooked, smoldering carcasses... the charred limbs that littered the snow. Some bodies were whole. Bleeding from ragged holes in their chests.
The smoking, magic-wreathed battle rifle was still braced against my shoulder.
I watched in silence until the last of their screams died out underneath the crackling, spellfire flames.
I sighed.
And my magic winked out ... relieving me of the crushing weight of my battle rifle. It clattered to the rubble at my hooves, kicking up a small plume of snow that speckled my sleeves.
I didn't even feel it.
I felt ... numb.
All was quiet. No more laughter. No more insane, demented laughter. It was quiet.
I leaned against a rock and touched a trembling hoof to my tear-frosted face ... and realized that I'd been crying the whole time.
But as I gazed down the ridge and saw the snow furies splayed out across the snow ...
A cruel grin wavered across my lips.
"Hahahahaha ... hahahahaha ..." My shoulders trembled with sobs as I stared at their smoking corpses. I watched them cook before my eyes ...
... and ... and it almost felt ... good.
It almost felt ... right.
"You can't hurt anyone anymore," I whispered, clenching my eyes shut as ragged, weary breaths hissed out of my lips.
They got what they deserved.
Amid the smoke, six pairs of green hooves crunched in the ashen drifts. I watched as the alicorns wandered through the camp, picking through the remains. They levitated the corpses, some still relatively whole where deliberately-placed arrows had shorn off and cauterized limbs. Others simply dragged entrails out of the dead, weaving them through the air and scrutinizing them with their soulless blue eyes.
At the center of the camp, my eyes caught a few black shadows shifting behind the icy steel bars of a cage. Two halves of a snow fury lay before it.
I stared at the cage for a long while. There were still ponies inside. I slung the battle rifle over my shoulder and staggered down the ridge.
My hooves felt like someone else's as they plodded across the cratered snow. As I approached, the silhouettes shifted once more. I flicked my PipBuck's light on.
Four dirty faces stared back at me. Among them I caught a flash of red and white.
"Cane ... CANE!"
My hooves clanged against the bars as a pony pushed past the others, Candy Cane's face bathed in my PipBuck's ruddy glow.
"Red ..." I heard her say.
I levitated the battle rifle, and the ponies inside took a terrified step back. But Candy Cane didn't move an inch, watching me with teary eyes.
Crack.
The cage's shattered lock crunched to the snow. I wreathed the door with my scarlet magic and swung it open. The other ponies didn't even say a word as they made a mad dash out and into the night.
Candy Cane just stood there, dried blood smeared down one side of her face. I stumbled forward and threw my legs around her.
"Cane - I-I thought I lost you ... again."
She nodded, her mane brushing against my face.
"I know," she whispered as I felt her legs wrap around me.
Hooves crunched behind us as an alicorn dragged away a gory torso.
Candy Cane watched as she trotted past us, fear and uncertainty flashing across her face. She couldn't believe what she was seeing.
"How ... how did you ..."
"I helped them help us," I told her.
Candy Cane shook her head, slowly. "You shouldn't have come back for me. Those alicorns could've ... those furies ..." Candy Cane pulled away, gazing into my swollen, bloodshot eyes. "You ... you could've died ..."
"It was worth it," I told her, "You ... you're ..." I gulped, looking away. "When I saw those furies killing the others ... I ... I ... I-I thought I was going to lose you too."
I hugged her once more as a ragged sigh escaped my lips. Candy Cane nodded furiously with tears in her eyes and squeezed me tight.
"I wasn't going to let them take you away from me again ..." I murmured in a voice only I could hear, letting the howling winds take me behind the darkness of my eyelids.
An agonized moan shattered the ghosts in my head.
I swung my head around and saw her.
Her.
A hornless mare writhed in the snow, one of her hindlegs nothing but a cauterized stub of cooked meat.
"You ..." I started towards her, but felt Candy Cane's hoof grab my shoulder.
"Red, wait -"
"YOU STAY OUT OF THIS!" I screamed, shrugging her off as I pounded towards the writhing fury.
She recognized me as I approached, panting in desperation as she tried to drag herself away.
I shouldered my battle rifle.
"No - no! Please!" she begged, crawling to her haunches and holding out her hooves. "Please ... don't kill me - p-please don't kill me!"
I stared in silence as she wept, her tears streaming down her bloody cheeks. She sobbed helplessly, peering up at me with her wide, teary eyes. "I-I don't wanna die ... I-I need help ... you don't understand ... I-I need help."
I tried to look away. I tried not to look. But my eyes gravitated to hers ... I watched as a web of black veins palpated in the white of her sclera. With every pulse a shadow grew - and receded, dimming the light of her pink irises with every sickly throb.
"I need help ... I ... I - AGH!" she cried out, clawing at her face with her hooves. "HELP ME!" she begged, blood running down her cheeks. "Please - HELP ME! I DON'T WANNA DIE!"
I just stared with empty eyes, her words passing through one ear and out the other.
"I DON'T WANNA DIE! I-I .... please ... haha... HAHAHAHA- ARGH!" The mare doubled over, her hooves tearing at her bloody face. "I-I NEED HELP! I NEED - haha ... HAHAHAHAHA! AHHHHAHA -"
CRACK.
Her teary eyes widened to saucers. Her hooves shot up to her throat. The mare sputtered and choked.
Arterial crimson pumped through her quivering hooves and poured down her chest.
"Ack ... ack ..." She peered up at me with her glistening pink eyes. Her mouth moved, but not a single word seeped out of her lips. Only blood. Tears cut clean streams down her cheeks, revealing the purple coat beneath.
The mare coughed once, splattering the snow with blood.
She lost the strength in her legs ... and collapsed, her bloodied hooves painting a red arc across the snow as I listened to her muffled, suffocating cries.
"Uh ... ack ..." A spurt of lifeblood welled out of the ragged hole in her throat with every beat of her dying heart. She lay there ... screaming in silence ... her head jerking back and forth in silent agony as she bled out into the snow.
I watched her limbs spasm into stillness ... I watched her writhe and squirm ... I watched until the puddle around her stopped growing.
My head spared a glance over my shoulder, my face darkened by the shadow of the flickering spellfire flames.
A voice spoke in a soft, even tone.
"Next time ... you let me pull the trigger."
Candy Cane gulped, saying nothing, her face pale as she stared at the pony who laid motionless at my hooves.
I heard the sounds of feathers flapping against the wind, and an alicorn crunched into the snow before me. A shimmering field of blue magic swirled around the mare's remains, lifting her into the air.
With a sickening squelch, her flesh tore apart before my eyes as the alicorn split her open.
Steaming entrails spilled to the snow.
I heard Candy Cane gag - and throw up her guts.
"You're welcome ..." I muttered, turning from the winged mare.
I stopped beside Candy Cane's shoulder, staring off into the distance behind her as she panted for breath.
"We'd better look around. See if there's anything we can use," I said, quietly.
She just stared at me ... until I turned to meet her eyes. Then she doubled over and heaved another throatful.
I spent the next ten minutes picking through their remains, scrounging ammunition from the dead. An assortment of 10mm and 9mm ammunition. A hoofful of 7.62 for the battle rifle I found. A few grenades. My spade.
I reached over my shoulder and unzipped my saddlebags. I paused for a moment and watched as my hoof hovered over the opened flaps. Trembling. I gulped. And yanked the flaps open.
I stuffed them all inside.
Twenty minutes passed, and I stood at the center of the camp. A numbing silence hung over the two of us as the alicorns continued their dissections and Candy Cane picked through whatever was left.
She was wary of those ponies, whirling around upon her hooves every time one of the alicorns passed by. They spared neither of us a thought, concentrated on their own work. One even tugged a corpse away from Candy Cane's hooves as she was feeling through its vest - only to eviscerate it shamelessly before her.
Candy Cane looked sick, hurrying away from the steaming mess that poured into the snow. She saw me standing at the center of the camp.
She stopped in her tracks.
The mare stood between the alicorn and I, her ears tucked behind her head. She looked over her shoulder, watching the alicorn disarticulate joints and fracture bones ... then she turned and looked at me. Candy Cane ran a trembling hoof through her mane, shaking uncontrollably.
She muttered something I couldn't hear. Candy Cane sniffled and trotted over, her bags jingling with her loot.
"Are you okay?" I asked her, gently.
Candy Cane gave me a troubled look, her brows furrowed and her lips pursed.
"No." She started forward and stopped, glancing over her shoulder. "Are you?"
There was a long pause as the wind kicked up again, whispering its hollow, haunting song.
"No." *
We walked together in silence. Numb.
The rest of the journey was a quiet one. Through empty streets, through winding corners, and then through the remains of a ruined skyscraper we squeezed. Into the rubble we plunged, slipping through tight corridors or disappearing into the ruin's labyrinthian depths.
Deep inside the ruin's interior, we found ourselves at an impasse. Candy Cane's gait slowed as she peered down and into the darkness of a cave-in half a level below us. She levitated her light orb down into the fissure.
Just snow and rubble. Gauging the fall, she nodded, and we both hopped down and into a lonely vestibule. Our hooves sunk through the snow and crunched into a layer of rubble a foot below us. I looked up, and saw the dead wasteland sky poking through a gaping hole in the ceiling two stories overhead.
Candy Cane squeezed through a tight alleyway, grunting softly. I watched her tail disappear out the other side, and I hurried after her, not wanting to be left behind. I pushed through, and stumbled out into the snow - out into the wasteland once more. I looked around us and was somewhat amazed, panning my PipBuck's beam across the drifts.
Two hundred years ago, when the balefire missile struck, the highrise that once stood tall on that plot of land had fallen over on its side, piling high a mountain range of heaping rubble. We stood high above the earth, staring down a valley of snowcapped ruins almost forty feet tall. Buried beneath the snow, the powdery slopes looked almost natural.
We walked warily down its length for nearly half an hour until Candy Cane stopped. She levitated the map before her, and scanned it carefully, glancing around the place. Candy Cane panned her eyes up the base of a snow-swept mountain of rubble.
A dead end.
I curled my shoulders uncomfortably, the weight of my battle rifle suddenly heavier.
"We're here," Candy Cane whispered.
We waded through the knee high powder, seemingly undisturbed and layered pristinely over the rubble beneath.
As we approached, Candy Cane saw something I could not. She pointed a hoof at a seemingly arbitrary mountain face.
"There." She tucked the map into her peacoat and led me forward. As we approached, I found a corridor that had been carved into the rubble.
'Finally. We made it.'
We walked up to the door. Its outline was padded with thick fabrics to muffle whatever noise was inside. 'This was it.' I glanced at Candy Cane once, and she nodded. I raised a hoof to knock.
But my hoof froze in midair. In my peripherals, I saw that Candy Cane's eyes were fixated upon the doorway
The door was cracked open.
We exchanged worried looks. I drew my pistol, and she, her submachine gun.
I craned my neck, listening. I tried to gulp down the lump in my throat.
But there was nothing but a dead silence.
All I could hear was the pounding inside my chest. I pressed a hoof against the door, and pushed.
It creaked, lurching open.
Then came the smell. In the stale, lifeless air, my nose curled at the stench of rot. Of a slaughter. I flicked my PipBuck's light on and parted the morbid darkness.
Candy Cane's weapon clattered to her hooves.
Splayed out across the floor, hooves outstretched to exit was a mare, her face frozen in agony. A vicious black spike impaled her skull to the floor, and a pool of icy gore and brains were puddled around her head.
Maggots wormed inside my guts.
I swallowed the bile in my throat.
And Candy Cane screamed.
Bullet holes and black spikes perforated the walls around us. Spent shell casings and discarded weapons littered the floor.
All. Around us.
Bodies. Everywhere. Butchered like animals.
Impaled against the walls. Dismembered and eviscerated.
Every corpse was carved up. Sculpted. Each was a canvas painted with bloodletting wounds. Most were shallow and deliberate. Few were deep. They wore tortured looks on their peeling, mutilated faces, their weapons mere inches away from their gory hooves.
They had died fighting.
But it didn't look like much of a fight.
Their deaths had not been quick.
We inched past overturned tables and chairs. More littered the floor among the broken furniture. Some were still seated - slumped in their chairs around bloody tables with their throats slashed open - their bodies carved like meat, and their eyes gouged out.
Through a dormitory we walked. Some died where they laid in their beds, their throats slit ... and their eyes gouged out. Others lay out in the hall, hacked to death the moment they left their rooms.
All of them. All of them with their eyes. Gouged. Out.
I followed the carnage, my legs quaking like they were going to buckle beneath me. I glanced at the floor. Someone had been dragged down the hall, the frozen trail of blood disappearing beneath a bullet ridden door frame. I pushed it open and deadpanned the slaughter within.
At its furthest corner, there was a pile of bodies. Bullet holes and spikes riddled their remains and the wall behind them.
They were gunned down where the stood.
Or cowered. Or begged.
It didn't matter. They were all dead. Everyone inside was dead.
At the center of the room were several bodies ... their features unrecognizable. Ponies. Used to be. Desecrated and ruined. Gutted like slaughterhouse meat. Flayed. Pinned against the furniture. Flanks in the air. Humiliated. Spread-eagled. Cut apart with their limbs nailed onto the tables with vicious metal spikes.
Every single one of them bore the same scar. The same bloody scar etched into their ruined faces.
Their eyes were gouged out. Their eyes were gouged out.
Goddesses. Their eyes were gouged out.
I waited for the world to shatter around me.
I waited for the demented laughter and the balefire to shock me back into consciousness. 'This was just another fucked up nightmare.'
But I blinked, and I blinked, and I blinked ...
My heart heaved with a quaking throb.
Then I threw up my guts. I stumbled to the other end of the room and collapsed, strings of vomit and drool hanging from my chin.
I whined and wheezed for breath, looking up, dragging my eyes up the wall to see ... to see ... I doubled over and heaved some more.
I felt Candy Cane fall to her haunches beside me, her head bobbing back and forth. She panted with shallow breaths - staring sightlessly with her dilated eyes at the horror that painted the wall red before us.
"U-ugh ..."
She crumbled to the floor.
I sat there. Staring up at the wall. The bloody wall, and the gory trails that dribbled down its cracked, pockmarked surface.
'Snow furies ...' I blinked. 'No.' It couldn't be.
Candy Cane had seen the worst of them.
But she had never seen that.
Hanging before us ... crucified against the bloodied wall ... was a pony ... was ... her belly split open and her entrails dangling over the blood-caked floor.
I wanted to scream.
But it wouldn't have mattered. I couldn't hear myself think over the deafening words that were scrawled across the wall before my eyes.
Written above her head, smeared in her blood and chunks of frozen gore ...
DARKNESS IS COMING
Footnote: Level up.
New Perk: White Death - Accuracy in SATS with firearms increased by 25% |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 15 - The Death of a Dream - Pt I | Chapter 15
The Death of a Dream
"Good ponies don't win, Summer Smiles ... they die..."
Dead.
Wiped out. Almost two dozen ponies killed behind the safety of their own walls.
I tried not to look at the mare whose brutalized corpse hung crucified above me.
It was hard not to when the same brutality painted every inch of that frozen hole in the earth.
That hideout was supposed to be secure ... that hideout was supposed to be hard to find ...
It was supposed to be safe.
The ponies who had died in their beds, their throats slashed open ... they thought the place was safe too. Surrounded by that horrific carnage, I began to question if anywhere was safe.
A string of bile and saliva dribbled down my lip, the puddle of vomit at my hooves cooling rapidly, exposed to the cold, dead air. My eyelids fluttered, trying to blink away the horror. The blood. The entrails. The patches of flayed coat. The skinless musculature, now black and blue. The exposed, ruined haunches of dead mares.
The hollow eye sockets.
I had seen that before. Their eyes were gouged out ... everyone's eyes were gouged out ... so were Silver Dove's, Beryl's, Peach Petals' ... Mom's ...
Before my eyes a nightmare repeated itself.
My horrified stare gravitated to the sign above the crucified mare's head.
"Goddesses ..." I whispered with a tremble that shook me to the bone.
'Goddesses ... what happened to them?'
But as I stared at the carnage, it was not them I thought of. It was the Goddesses.
The Goddesses couldn't help those people. The Goddesses didn't help those people.
Tears welled up in my eyes. Where were they when that ... thing attacked us? Where were they when Dew Drops attacked me? Where the fuck were they when those people were slaughtered like fucking animals!?
No. No ... this wasn't a slaughter. They weren't butchered, either.
They had been desecrated. Profaned. Reduced to bloody morsels. Cut apart and savored like finely-prepared cuisine.
I wondered if they put out their eyes before or after they tortured them. I wondered if they begged - if they begged the Goddesses to help them.
I wondered if it even mattered.
It didn't take eyes to feel the excruciating agony they must have felt. You could see it on their faces. Their skinless, contorted faces, rent black and blue from the icy talons of the wasteland air.
What kind of monster could have done that? What kind of disgusting creature could have taken the time to butcher those people so meticulously, so methodically, so ... so thoroughly?
Not even furies ... not even furies could've ... I gulped. Just like Candy Cane had said: furies killed because they could. Furies killed. Furies raped. Furies tortured. That was what made them different from whoever - whatever defiled those poor souls.
I looked up. I looked past the pony whose entrails dangled over me. She wasn't even the center of it all.
I scanned the room, my eyes glazing over the blood and the ponies that decorated the walls. From coagulated red to frostbitten black, my eyes caught something that stood out from the rest of the macabre canvas. Lying before a bloodied, blade-scored bureau was a weapon. But not like anything I had ever seen.
I enwreathed it with my magic, the strange pistol scraping across the floor as I brought its black frame to the glow of my trembling PipBuck.
Underneath its barrel were two vicious blades, perhaps to slash and stab with. I scrutinized the weapon, unable to find the things that made conventional weaponry ... conventional. No ejection port. But there was a mouthbit. A trigger. A magazine.
I had never seen a weapon like that until then. But it was clearly designed for equines.
I aimed it at the wall, and pulled the trigger.
ZZZTWHAP!
My eyes widened at the glowing spike of cooling metal that had impaled the charred concrete. My stare gravitated to the gory message above the crucified mare's head.
The words smeared above her skinless, grinning skull were the message.
I held the alien weapon before my eyes.
That was the signature.
Whoever or whatever did that, did it to make a statement.
I didn't know who they were, but I did know one thing.
There wasn't any point in staying there. The dead couldn't speak. The dead couldn't tell me where the Orphanage was, or what was coming, or what the darkness was. And I sure as hell didn't want to be there when it came.
I shook my head vigorously.
I folded a leg protectively over my churning stomach. I couldn't stop staring at the innards that dangled over me. I froze, gulping down fresh bile.
Whatever had killed those people could still be out there.
I rushed to Candy Cane's side and shook her hard.
"Cane - Cane!" I hissed. Her limbs twitched and she drew in a sharp breath, blinking away the blackness from her eyes. "We need to get out of here. Now."
She shook her head, the blood draining from her face once more. She sat there, her numb features devoid of the urgency that pumped through my veins.
"H-how ..." she slurred in a quiet, wavering voice, "How could this have happened ..." Candy Cane covered her face with a hoof. She turned her gaze to me ... but not at me. She stared through me. She stared at the ponies whose bare, skinless haunches were pointed upward to the ceiling.
Candy Cane stood to her hooves and shambled over to one of the unrecognizable mares - the only indication that she was a mare by the few unravaged parts that were left on her. She just sat there. And stared ... her lips moving but not a single word escaping her lips as she trembled and shook, her haunted eyes darting frantically back and forth - trapped and unable to escape her waking nightmare.
"It can't be ... nopony should've been able to find this place ... nopony can ... not without a map ... nopony ever has ..."
"Well someone did," I growled, "And they could still be out there!"
Candy Cane snapped.
"If they found this hideout, then the rest are in danger!" she blurted out, leaping to her hooves. Candy Cane yanked out our map.
I froze. Our map. Whatever murdered those ponies ... they had one too - just like ours.
They knew where to find the others. I clenched my jaw.
"We need to warn them," Candy Cane said before I could. She unraveled the map before her eyes, darting them across its quadrants. She nodded and stuffed the map back into her coat.
Candy Cane lifted a hoof to turn the other way to the exit - but she froze upon her hooves.
The blood drained from her face.
"I hope it isn't already too late," she whispered.
My mouth ran dry as I tried to gulp the lump down my throat.
"Doesn't look like anyone made it out of here alive," I rasped, gazing numbly at the carnage around us. "The others won't know what's coming for them ..."
Candy Cane closed her eyes and hung her head to the bloody floor. "We know what they can do. The Orphans don't. They'll be slaughtered ... just like them," she whispered as her eyes fluttered open and stared distantly into the carnage.
"We are leaving," I told her as I swept the spike pistol from the gory floor and slipped it into my bags. We reached the door and -
Something scraped behind us. My heart skipped a beat.
"WHO'S THERE!" Candy Cane screamed, tearing her gun from her holster.
I scrambled for mine.
Nothing. My eyes darted across the room as Candy Cane's ragged breaths broke the dead silence. I waited for the laughter. For the shadows. For the monsters that murdered everyone. But there was nothing. No one.
Candy Cane's ears twitched - and she leveled her submachine gun at the bloodied desk behind us. The desk where I'd found the strange pistol. I glanced at her - but she didn't meet my eyes. She started forward, her teeth bared and her nostrils flaring.
She inched towards the bureau, gun drawn, her ears pinned against the sides of her head. I crept after her, my heart racing in my chest. My hooves slowly squelched into the gory floor.
We approached. My pistol trembled in my tightening grip. The desk moaned. It rumbled and shook like there was something trapped underneath. I shuddered, my red magic turning crimson as I clenched my pistol tighter and tighter. Closer and closer. Hooves scraped across the floor beneath the desk.
Closer.
My aura glowed a bloody red. I watched as a mangled shadow writhed in the darkness.
Candy Cane stopped in her tracks. She lowered her weapon and looked over her shoulder as the blood returned to her face.
"Red ..." she murmured.
My PipBuck's light parted the darkness beneath the bureau. Peering up at us were a pair of bloodshot green eyes. They fluttered closed for a moment, neither lids shutting in unison. When they opened, the light of life in them were dimmer than when I last saw them.
"Goddesses ..." I murmured, illuminating the mare's pale, blood-drained face. Her pupils didn't even dilate. Candy Cane and I rushed to her as her head rolled across her shoulders and she slumped onto the bloody floor.
Her pink coat was cold and clammy as I curled my hooves under her forelegs and hauled her out from under the bloodied desk. I held her frail body, biting my lower lip as I realized the pony in my hooves was nearing death.
Her bloodshot eyes blinked open.
"Please ..." she rasped. "Water ... do you have ..."
I levitated to her my canteen. She took it with a trembling hoof, tipped it to her mouth, and spilled it down her chest.
"I gotcha ..." Candy Cane said softly, kneeling beside us and guiding it to her cracked lips.
She drank until she sputtered and choked.
"Goddess ... h-how ... how long have I been out?" she slurred. The mare looked all around her, her eyes widening to saucers. She shot up from the floor and away from my hooves. "Goddess - how long have I been out!?"
Candy Cane grasped her by the shoulders and gently settled the panting mare back down to the floor. Candy Cane eyed the blood that was running down the back of her head and gave me a worried look.
The mare trembled in Candy Cane's hooves. She peered up at us with her dried out, bloodshot eyes.
"Th-they - they - they killed everyone!" she screamed, wheezing for breath. "Goddess, how ... how did this happen? How ... oh Goddess, I ... I-I- GAH!" She hoofed her forehead, moaning as agony shot through her skull.
Candy Cane shushed her, grasping her shoulders tight. "Please, slow down," she said gently, brushing aside a lock of the mare's brown mane as it fell in front of her blood-drained face. "What's your name?"
"M-Minnow. I-I'm Minnow," she wheezed, trying to stand to her hooves.
I glared at her. "Sit down for Celestia's sake!"
Minnow shook her head furiously. "No - I - Goddess, everypony's in danger! I need -"
Candy Cane held her head between her hooves. "You need to sit still. And please stop shaking your head ,,, you'll only make your concussion worse." Candy Cane gave her a faint smile, holding her hooves. "We're here to help you ..."
Minnow clenched her eyes shut as she took a deep breath.
"No ... no - I-I need to tell the others ... I need ... I ... oh ..."
She moaned, cradling her bloody head in her trembling hooves.
"You're in no shape to do that right now," I told her. She didn't seem to hear me as she tried shaking her head again. Candy Cane clasped her hooves around her, trying to still the trembling mare.
I glanced at the desk she'd been lying under.
"How long do you think you've been in there?" I asked, breathlessly.
She tried shaking her head, but Candy Cane held her still.
"I don't know ... Goddess ... Amore - I-I don't know. It all happened so quickly and I just - I just ... I can't remember ..."
Candy Cane pursed her lips, brushing aside Minnow's disheveled mane. She scrutinized the bloody bump on her scalp. "Couldn't have been more than an hour - maybe less," Candy Cane said. She lowered her voice. "Any more than that, and she never would've woken up ..."
I gulped, clenching my jaw.
"What happened?"
She closed her eyes, shaking her head.
"They ... they came back from a supply run ... yes - they came back, and ... and ..."
"Who did?" I asked.
We fell silent as she brought a hoof to her head, moaning softly.
"They ... they were one of us ..." she whispered, "They left, came back, and just started ... started killing. The door came down and there was shooting and screaming ... I was writing a report when it happened. I-it - it was like they were completely different ponies ..." Minnow covered her face with her hooves, shielding her face from the horrors that flashed before her eyes. "We tried to fight them - tried to barricade the door - but they were too strong! So ... so strong ... they knocked me down and hit me in head. Last thing I remember ..." She eyed the empty floor in front of the desk, and I glanced over at my saddlebags. "They left something behind."
"I know," I murmured, grimly. "It's in my bags."
Minnow stared at the floor, her ears pinned to the sides of her head.
"Y-you should've heard them - heard the things they were - Amore - I-I couldn't understand a word they were saying. They were hissing and shrieking in some weird language l-like animals ... like they were possessed b-by - by fucking Goddess knows what."
I found myself reading the words atop the crucified mare's head once again as Minnow's voice faded to silence. I couldn't stop thinking about the message they'd left behind.
"Were they speaking Zebrican?" I asked.
"No. N-no it was something ... else. I've heard Zebrican before. No. It couldn't be. They weren't speaking Zebrican."
Minnow moaned and tried to stand back up, to crawl past me, but she slumped into my hooves instead.
"We need to get her someplace safe," Candy Cane said to me.
"We? I-I don't even know who you ponies are," she said, trying to sit back up as she pawed at the floor. "H-how did you even find this place? There's no way you could've -" Her eyes met mine and the blood drained from her face. "Oh no. Oh no - oh no - oh no ... you're one of them ... Goddess, you're one of them! YOU'RE ONE OF THEM!"
"No, we're not!" I hissed, holding her in place - trying to quiet her as the sounds of her struggle echoed out into the hall. "If we wanted to kill you, we would've killed you by now!"
She shook her head frantically, jabbing a hoof at the massacred ponies around us.
"They wouldn't have!" She pulled away from me and stumbled to her wobbly hooves. "You didn't see what they did! You didn't see how they killed us all!" Minnow sniffled, "They murdered us! They ... they ..." Her shallow breaths wheezed in and out as realization dawned upon her widening eyes. "They ... they left me alive ..."
"Minnow, calm down or you'll pass out," Candy Cane said, reaching out to her with a hoof.
She shrugged her off. "W-who are you ponies? Who the hell are you - t-tell me how you found this place - now!"
Candy Cane and I exchanged worried looks as the mare trembled uncontrollably.
"I'm Red Dawn."
"And I'm Candy Cane. We're not here to hurt you ..." She levitated out our map.
Minnow went stiff.
"H-how ... h-how did you get that!?"
Candy Cane tried to hold her still, but Minnow swatted away her hooves.
"ANSWER ME!"
Candy Cane held up her forehooves.
"A friend of mine gave it to us; her name's Summer Smiles. She was a runner," she told her, slowly. "We came here because we wanted to join you ponies."
"I can't believe this ..." Minnow murmured. "I-I can't believe this ... this is insane ... insane!"
I gazed at her numbly, unable to keep my eyes from wandering across everyone's butchered remains.
"I can't either."
Minnow hung her head, clenched her eyes shut, and grinded her teeth.
Candy Cane lifted Minnow's chin with a hoof. "Minnow, you need to listen to me. The Orphanage may be in grave danger. If the ponies that did this found this hideout, then they've likely found others, too. We need to warn the others."
Horror flashed across her blood-splattered face. "Amore ... Goddess - n-no - no! They'll kill us - they'll kill us all!" She gasped, scrambling away from us and taking a backward stumble to the door. "I need to tell them!" I caught her just as she tripped up over her hooves and nearly cracked her skull on the floor.
"I NEED TO TELL THE OTHERS - BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!"
"Stop!" Candy Cane grasping her shoulders and held her still. "You have a concussion! You'll never make it back on your own! Let us help you."
"We'll take you back home," I said, with forced patience as Candy Cane levitated to me the map and I laid it out on the floor. "You just need to show us how to get there."
She tried shaking her head again, but Candy Cane held her still.
Minnow ground her teeth.
"Errgh ... why ... w-why - h-how can I trust you ponies?"
I looked all around us. We were the only two ponies still standing.
"You don't have much of a choice," I told her. "Everyone else is dead."
She moaned, slumping to her haunches and pulling Candy Cane down with her.
I sighed. "If it makes you feel better, we wouldn't be asking you for directions if we already knew where to wipe out another hideout."
"It doesn't. I-it really doesn't!" Minnow cried. She covered her face with her hooves. "Damnit ... Goddess damnit ... I-I ... hrk - okay! Okay - fine ... fine ..." Minnow looked up at me pitifully, her chin quivering. She held a trembling hoof over a quadrant on the map and jabbed a hoof into it. "There. That hideout's occupied ... still ... I-I hope."
Candy Cane gulped, and nodded to herself, quickly. "That's not too far from here."
I grunted with effort as I hauled Minnow back to her hooves, only for her to slump against me, clinging to my shoulders like her life depended on it.
I only hoped to the Goddesses that she wouldn't slow us down.
Our magical fields swirled around her as Candy Cane helped me lift the trembling mare onto my back. With Minnow properly situated on top of me, Candy Cane and I bee-lined it to the exit, gingerly stepping around the defiled remains that lay at our hooves.
Those people had been defiled enough. If only someone could bury them.
My horn glowed. I swung the door open - and stopped in my tracks.
A pony stood before us, a pistol levitating in her magical grip. Her teal eyes widened. She curled her lips and hissed as she bolted the other way.
"HEY!" I shouted after her.
Time seemed to slow as I caught a glimpse of the disgusted sneer that tore across Candy Cane's lips before she blurred into motion. "STOP!" Candy Cane screamed - drew her submachine gun and galloped after her, loping explosively through the snow. Goddesses. The other pony was fast. But Candy Cane was faster. Something told me in the way she bowed her head, teeth bared, that something else was driving her onward.
I felt Minnow's hooves tighten around me as I struggled to keep up.
Candy Cane's snarled - her teeth a breath away from chomping upon the other pony's tail.
The unicorn's horn flashed teal.
Snow exploded into Candy Cane's eyes.
She screamed - and the pony jumped out of the way just in time for Candy Cane to slam blindly into a pillar of concrete.
"Son of a bitch!" I screamed, drawing my pistol.
The unicorn scrambled atop a mound of concrete, rocks and debris cascading down upon Candy Cane's writhing form. The pony bared her teeth at me and snarled as I leveled my pistol and opened my mouth to shout - but her horn flashed with a bluish, blinding glare that engulfed her entire body in seething waves of cerulean magic.
My jaw dropped. So did my pistol.
The pegasus glanced over her shoulder and hissed, unfurled her wings, and rocketed off into the sky. I watched - awestruck as her winged silhouette disappeared over the mountainlike ruins that towered over us.
"What. The. FUCK?"
Candy Cane staggered upright upon wobbly legs, cradling her head in her hooves.
"Did you see that!?" I gawked.
"Ughrk ... what?" Candy Cane looked around us, dazed and confused as clarity slowly returned to her eyes. "What ... where the fuck did she -"
I jabbed a hoof into the sky.
"Don't tell me you didn't fucking see that!"
Candy Cane clenched her jaw and shook her head. Her eyes darted to the mare who was still sprawled across my back.
She asked Minnow, "Was it one of them?"
No response.
"Looks like she's out," I muttered, shaking one of her limp forelegs.
Candy Cane stared at her with distant eyes, standing there in silence. A rivulet of blood ran down her forehead and she shuddered back to clarity. She brought a quaking hoof to her face and wiped it clean, staring off quietly into the snow.
I gulped and peered up into the sky just over the mountain crest where that ... thing had disappeared behind.
If they could fly ... then we were already too late. *
A dreaded silence hung over us like a headsmare's axe. It was the burden of knowledge. Knowledge of the darkness that was to come. It weighed heavily upon our shoulders as if the entire sky threatened to fall upon us.
Our hooves clopped audibly across the rubble, echoing down the empty streets and through the shattered skeleton of that dead city.
With a barely conscious Minnow clinging to my shoulders, I galloped after Candy Cane as she frantically navigated the streets ahead. Her eyes darted to the map then to the mountainous rubble around us, struggling to find landmarks I couldn't see.
She knew as well as I did that time was running out.
Darkness was coming, and the Orphanage wasn't ready for it. None of us were.
It was a race against time, and even Candy Cane was struggling to find the finishing line. This far into the inner city, the trail of equine civilization was near impossible to follow. When I scanned the streets ahead and the jagged Ponevan skyline, I saw only snowy mountains of rubble and broken paths of gravel.
And Minnow's grasp was getting weaker. I could feel her clinging to my shoulders for her dear life as I bucked my hooves into the snow.
Our hooves echoed through the empty ruins that blurred past us. They echoed.
They echoed deep into the city, through every nook, through every cranny, through every hole and every crevice...
A bird croaked overhead. I gulped. My ears perked at the sound of wings flapping through the air. I threw a glance over my shoulder.
Black shapes circled over us like vultures hovering over carrion.
"C-Cane!" I shouted after her between my breaths.
"What is it!?" she shouted back.
"Look up!"
She did. Candy Cane stumbled as she swore under her breath.
Wings whipped through the wind.
We both turned our eyes to the sky. A murder of dark shapes was gathering over us, circling overhead in a growing maelstrom of thrashing black wings. They gathered like a storm, flocking to the frantic echo of our hooves as they shrieked and screeched into the night.
The sound was deafening. Their cries raked my eardrums and gathered even more of them until their soulless croaks drowned out the pounding inside my chest.
"Holy fucking SHIT CANE WHAT THE FUCK ARE THOSE THINGS?!"
She didn't look twice.
"Haunters! There's too many of them - just keep running!"
I looked twice.
I shouldn't have looked twice.
Wings swooped down towards me. I ducked - and I felt the frigid air rip past my ears. The haunter shrieked, and shot back up into the sky.
"You think we can outrun these things?!" I shouted back.
Candy Cane said nothing as a cacophony of shrill, avian shrieks pierced my ears. My horn flickered to life and I yanked my pistol from its holster.
BAM - BAM - BAM!
My pistol lit up the night and a murder of screaming, black-feathered haunters dove away, parting around my gunfire. I glanced over my shoulder, and in a burst of feathers and blood, one of the dying monstrosities barreled towards me.
It was the size of a small colt.
I caught sight of its scaly, twisted visage - its immense, black-veined eyes and wickedly-shaped beak.
Then I felt its talons rake across the back of my head. I cried out as its claws ripped away chunks of my mane and sliced into my scalp. It swooped overhead in its death throes and careened into the snow in my path. I growled, blood running down my face as I trampled it beneath my hooves - and stumbled. It was as if I'd ran over a speedbump.
A mutant demon speedbump.
'Fuck ...'
Bullets shrieked over my head.
Candy Cane's submachine gun cut swaths through the darkness. The murder cackled in reply. They circled over us, feinting and receding away from the muzzle flashes that erupted into the night. But in between every rattling burst of gunfire, they circled ever closer.
I willed my legs to pump faster as I stabbed my pistol over my shoulder and yanked the trigger back.
Our combined gunfire flashed our shadows across the drifts.
BAM - BAM - BAM - BAM - CLACK!
The night washed over us.
The force of a charging stallion careened into me. It knocked the air out of lungs. Minnow tumbled away from me, and I slammed face-first into the snow.
There was a ringing in my ears. I dug my hooves through the snow as I swung the dim light of my PipBuck's screen across the drifts. Minnow was lying belly-up and unconscious beside me.
A distant, gnawing wail screamed towards us.
I clenched my eyes shut and hurled myself on top of her.
Muffled screams tore from my lips. They slammed into me from every side, from every angle. I batted them away with my PipBuck, knocking away the mutant beasts only for them to dive back into me - stabbing and clawing and ripping through the tough fabrics of my saddlebags.
Their claws scored my kevlar-plates and raked across my unprotected sleeves. They sliced through the flesh of my legs like razorblades, every icy, blood-letting talon sending twinges of agony screaming through my veins.
My eyelids flew open and I saw Minnow staring up at me - petrified with her widening green eyes.
Then a blinding flash of white light engulfed us.
Candy Cane's hooves landed before me. I looked up and saw the bloody grimace upon her face as she poured all her concentration into powering the orb of blazing magelight that hovered over us.
She swung it back and forth.
Tormented shrieks filled the air. Haunters flailed back into the sky. Some slammed into the drifts, shielding their eyes from the blinding light that washed over them.
"Cane!" I moaned, my mutilated legs trembling beneath me.
"Get up - get up!" she screamed weakly.
I threw one of Minnow's legs over my shoulder, and forced myself to stand. I felt the straps on my saddlebags tear, and my left bag slumped off my back.
"FUCK!" I turned, and swiped a hoof across its eviscerated strap. A sneer tore across my lips as the strap ripped away and tore my bag open. I watched in horror as my belongings spilled across the snow. "NononoNONO!"
"Red - I can't hold this thing any longer!" Candy Cane cried as her magelight flickered and popped.
I could see their circling, winged forms flashing over us.
My ammunition was in that bag. I groaned, straining my magic as balled up and swept away as many magazines into the air as I could and darted my eyes to Candy Cane's. She clenched them closed and screamed - launching the blazing orb of light into the sky. It sailed through the night - through the murder of black beasts and exploded in a nova of blinding white light.
The light lingered like a flare, and the haunters' anguished cries echoed through the city.
"GO - GO - GO!" Candy Cane screamed, and we galloped away as fast as our legs could take us. As fast as my mutilated legs could take me.
I left behind me a trail of blood. Minnow's stumbling gait and the white hot agony that coursed through - and out of my veins threatened to send us both crashing into the snow. I clenched my jaw and screamed through my teeth, forcing my legs onward with every aching, bloody step.
I winced and levitated my pile of ammo before me, searching for a magazine for my pistol.
My eyes widened at what I found.
A grenade.
The haunters' banshee screeches filled the air once more as Candy Cane's magelight flare faded to black. Minnow moaned, and I felt her leg begin to slip away.
'Shit!'
Wings ripped through the air.
I levitated the ball of ammo to my muzzle, clenched the grenade in my teeth, and yanked the pile away. There was a faint ping as I tossed the grenade over my shoulder.
The haunters shrieked into the night -
And an explosion erupted behind me.
The fragmentation ripped through them. I listened for a moment as their anguished cries fell further away. A grim smile creased my lips, but only for a moment as Minnow slumped into the ashen drifts. I stopped in my tracks and nearly dropped my pile of ammo.
My eyes widened in horror as her still body lay spread-eagled across the snow. I trembled uncontrollably upon my bloody hooves, grinding my teeth as the remaining haunters, undaunted, hurtled down the street towards us. My eyes fluttered closed, and a trembling breath escaped my lips.
There was no way in hell we were going to outrun those things. They had wings. I had carved up legs. They ached and burned as I stood there, darting my eyes over my shoulder and back down to the mare at my hooves.
She was going to get us killed. She was deadweight.
I grinded my teeth as I calmly stuffed my belongings into my bag and dumped the rest. I stared down at Minnow's still body.
I wondered if she was even going to make it.
I wondered if we were going to make it.
I turned as I heard Candy Cane's voice echo down the street.
"RED DAWN!"
I clenched my eyes shut.
"FUCK!"
I yanked Minnow out of the snow. My magic engulfed her body as I hurled her over my back and galloped after Candy Cane.
We pounded our hooves through the snow, thrashing and flailing our weary, battered bodies. Every second that dragged by - Minnow's limp body - the bleeding, mutilated flesh of my legs - they dragged me down like boulders on my back as the blood drained from my face and stars flashed in my eyes.
Ragged gasps tore from my lips. Black tunnels closed in around me. I struggled to power through the fetlock deep snow, painting it blood red with every heavy step I took.
But it wasn't any use. The haunters were gaining on us, hell bent on feasting upon our ruined carcasses and picking our bones clean.
The world exploded with amber light.
I ran into Candy Cane as floodlights bathed the street. Black, pony-shaped silhouettes peeked out of buildings around us. We both stood still as they trained their guns and spotlights upon our pale faces.
"WAIT!" I screamed.
And gunfire erupted into the night.
Blood and gore rained down upon us as the shrill, deafening death rattles of exploding mutant birds pierced my eardrums. Their mangled carcasses splattered into the snow, shot out of the air by that hail of gunfire.
I opened my eyes, and found that Candy Cane and I were hugging each other close, bathed in viscous, rancid haunter blood.
Their spotlights fell upon us like lights on a stage. She let me go first.
"W-we can explain!" she began, but a squad of ponies in thick winter garb stepped into the light.
They kept their weapons trained as the lead pony approached.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
I opened my mouth to speak, but his eyes widened.
"Minnow?!" he gasped, lowering his weapon.
The mare sprawled across my back slowly lifted her head, shielding her eyes from the light with a trembling hoof.
"Don't shoot," she rasped, "Please ... they're ... they're with me."
Then her head slumped back into my shoulder. * |
Fallout: Equestria - Rising Dawn | Chapter 15 - The Death of a Dream - Pt II | *
A stampede of hooves echoed behind us.
Flanked on every side was an armed Orphanage pony as we hurried down a cold, dark tunnel. My breaths wheezed raggedly from my cracked lips. The lead pony galloping ahead of me, a stallion with a green mane, didn't even give any of us even a second to catch our breaths.
Something about haunters. More of them. And ghouls? I wasn't really paying attention.
I just wanted to lay down.
Some of the others were luckier than I. Not too far ahead of me and laying in the back of a jostling wagon was Minnow, her head cradled between Candy Cane's hooves. At least I didn't have to haul her around on my back anymore.
Earth ponies were heavier than they looked. I could still feel her weight on my back. Until then, I'd never carried a pony that far in my life. I was about ready to collapse. I swore under my breath as I trailed behind that wagon, pumping my bleeding, mutilated legs through the rubble.
My pace slowed. It was getting harder and harder to breath. I felt a hoof upon my back - two more as the Orphanage ponies around me pushed me onward.
Jagged icicles blurred past the stars that flashed in my eyes. The air warmed against my face. Warmth. We were close.
There were lights in the distance at the far end of the tunnel.
Somehow. Somehow I was still running. It didn't feel like it, and it didn't look like it, but I was still running. Two Orphanage ponies edged closer to my sides. We were almost shoulder to shoulder now.
I heard the lead stallion yell something over his shoulder. Stars flashed in my eyes as I forced myself to gallop onward.
I did that a lot that day. That week. And the week before that. I was tired. Tired and fucking bloody. Bloody and tired. Most of it wasn't even mine.
My pace finally slowed. It slowed to a stumble and my legs gave up on me. But I was still moving - moving at a galloping pace. My legs left the ground, and that stallion looked over his shoulder and shouted something incomprehensible.
His voice shuddered through my ears and my ears went limp.
I closed my eyes. *
My vision blurred as my eyes fluttered open.
The cracked concrete ceiling of a dreary, dim room hung over me. I kicked a layer of bedsheets off my body and found my bandaged legs underneath an old hospital gown.
"Fuck..." I murmured, "Am I dead yet?"
I lifted a hoof and rubbed gingerly at my throbbing forehead.
The quiet thrum of unicorn magic hummed up next to me, and a flask levitated to my muzzle.
"Don't say that," I heard Candy Cane whisper, and her familiar face entered my blurry vision. I accepted the drink tiredly, not even caring what it was. "You're dehydrated," she said. Her eyes flicked to my forelegs. "Dehydrated - among other things."
I looked down my chest and grimaced. My coat was a dark shade of brown, darker than it should've been. At least I wasn't covered in blood anymore. Someone had apparently wiped me down, earlier.
I uttered a long and drawn out sigh and swung my hind legs over the edge of the bed. I fell forward, testing my balance as I landed on all four hooves. A dull aching pain throbbed beneath my bandages, but I could still walk.
"What about you?" I asked Candy Cane. "And Minnow?"
She cocked her head at me.
"I'm... well. And Minnow is getting operated on. They wouldn't let me in, but they said they needed to relieve the pressure inside her cranium."
My heavy eyelids slipped closed.
"Celestia..." I whispered, sitting back down.
"It's a good thing we got her here when we did," said Candy Cane, taking a seat next to me. "She almost didn't make it."
"We almost didn't make it."
She sat there quietly for a few heartbeats. Then I felt her legs wrap around me. Candy Cane squeezed me tight.
"Almost," she murmured.
I lifted my aching forelegs and hugged her back.
"Almost."
I pulled away gently, and looked at her exhausted, sleep-deprived face.
There was a dark streak across her muzzle where blood had settled into her maroon coat. She wore a bandage across her forehead, too. It was still tinged with a hint of crimson where she ran her head into the rubble the night we chased that... thing.
"We're still here," Candy Cane said softly. She closed her eyes and nodded to herself slowly. "Still here."
I sighed and reclined somewhat painfully back into my bed.
"Where is 'here', exactly?" I glanced around, checking the floor on either side of my bed. "...And where the hell are my bags?"
"They... confiscated our things. And we're at the Orphanage hospital, underground."
I sighed, reclining my head into a lumpy pillow. I had grenades in those bags. I could see why they didn't want me walking around with them.
Despite my lack of personal belongings, it was certainly a lot less cold where we were. I vaguely remembered running down a tunnel. A metro tunnel.
Candy Cane confirmed my thoughts. "This place used to be part of the Poneva transit system."
I furrowed my brows. "A while back, didn't you say the tunnels under Poneva were filled with 'ghouls' or some shit like that?"
Her expression turned thoughtful..
"They must've walled them off, somehow." She paused for a moment, looking around the room and at the cabinets full of medical supplies. The place looked like it was repurposed, and refurbished long after the war. "Either way," she continued, "They've clearly been here a long time."
I opened my mouth to say more, but a series of knocks resounded on the other side of our door.
We glanced at the other end of the room, then at each other.
"Come in," Candy Cane called out.
The door creaked open, and an older yellow earth pony mare with a short, white mane peeked her head inside.
"Ah, there you are," she began, her voice tinged with a soft, sophisticated accent. Oddly enough, she sounded like a pegasus - like a well-mannered Night Sky. "I'm not a doctor and I hope I'm not interrupting - I wanted to see you two for myself."
Candy Cane and I exchanged looks once more.
"No," Candy Cane smiled, faintly, "It's fine."
She smiled and stepped inside, and as she stepped into the dim light I saw the weary lines upon her aged, matronly face. She looked sleepless and overworked. She stood there tiredly as if she were carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, and yet, her smile did not diminish.
"I want to thank the both of you," she said, closing the door behind her. She walked over, stopping next to Candy Cane. "You ponies saved Minnow's life." She gave us a slight bow. "I'm grateful that you brought her back here alive, and we are in your debt."
The mare lifted a hoof.
"My name is Alacrity, and I run this Orphanage." The old mare gave us another warm, yet tired smile. "They call me 'Mother Alacrity' - but 'Alacrity' is fine, too."
"Alacrity," I said, letting the name roll off my tongue. I sat up, took her hoof, and shook it. "I'm Red Dawn."
Candy Cane shook her hoof, too. "And I'm Candy Cane."
I chuckled. "You have no idea how long I've been waiting to get here."
Alacrity laughed softly. "Oh, but I do." She smiled mysteriously. "It's nice to meet you both in person," she turned her weary blue eyes to me, "Especially you, Red Dawn."
I raised a brow at her. "Me?"
"Of course!" Alacrity smothered a giggle with a hoof. "Minnow wouldn't stop gabbing about you when they brought her in - something about her Neighponese cartoons."
My second brow joined the first.
"Her what?"
"Oh, I don't know," she laughed. "She's well-read. But I've heard your name before, Red Dawn."
My brows were starting to hurt.
"How?"
She cocked her head and pointed to her ear. "We have these everywhere, Red Dawn. We're always listening." The humor faded from her face. "And I know that you've been looking for us."
I opened my mouth to say something, but I couldn't find anything to say.
"Surprised?" she asked. "You cannot imagine my surprise when I found that same Red Dawn carrying one of my Orphans back home."
"It's a long story," I began, "But I'm sure you already know most of it."
She slowly planted a hoof into the side of my bed and leaned forward.
"Most of it," she said in a low voice. "I missed the part about trekking through Downtown Poneva to find us with a map that you aren't supposed to have."
Candy Cane and I both fell silent. Alacrity eyed us both expectantly.
"Well?"
I bit my lower lip. "I... uh..."
She pinned her ears back and her voice lowered to whisper. "There's a lot of bad people out there looking for us too, Red Dawn. Most don't succeed. And by most, I mean none of them have." She cocked her head at me. "So?"
"I can explain," Candy Cane blurted out.
Alacrity's stare lingered upon me for a few moments until she faced her with her stern blue eyes.
"I'm a friend of Summer Smiles," Candy Cane began, "You should know her."
The older mare's ears perked when she heard that name.
"Summer..." Her name brought a fleeting smile to her face. "Of course... yes, I do."
"She led scout teams outside Poneva to the other settlements," Candy Cane added.
Alacrity gave Candy Cane a terse chuckle and narrowed her eyes at her. "Oh filly, that's another thing you aren't supposed to know."
Candy Cane was silent for a moment.
"She... told me."
Alacrity's expression hardened like stone. She cocked her head, leaning in closer as she looked Candy Cane in the eye.
She said slowly, in an even tone, "Summer must know you well, then?"
Candy Cane held her gaze.
"She saved my life. Twice. She's the kindest mare I know." Candy Cane closed her eyes and touched a hoof to her heart. "She's family to me."
Alacrity relented, and looked away. "Damn that mare," she murmured, shaking her head, "She wasn't supposed to tell anyone about her work after she retired." Alacrity opened her eyes and gazed at the ceiling tiredly, wondering what she was going to do with us. "You know what she said to me when she left?"
We both shook our heads.
"'Sorry Alacrity. Family comes first.'"
Alacrity eyes went cold as she locked stares with Candy Cane once more. I held my breath as the second ticked by. Nobody needed to say a word. Candy Cane remained resolute.
Alacrity loosened up, and a gentle smile creased her lips.
"You must be family."
I let out an imperceptible breath as Candy Cane nodded. Alacrity's ears perked, and she turned to me once more.
Alacrity's voice softened to a patient, motherly tone. "And what about you, Red Dawn? What does that make you?"
I looked at my hooves as I lay there on that bed, and sighed. I looked over at Candy Cane and she gave me a knowing stare.
"Summer and Cane are the only friends I have left in this wasteland."
Alacrity lowered her eyes to the PipBuck around my foreleg.
"What happened to your other friends, Red Dawn?"
My heart sank as I uttered a shuddering breath.
"What do you think?"
She lowered her eyes somberly.
"Well. I think you have friends here, now," she said, softly, "Whatever it is you came here for... we owe you for saving Minnow's life - and from what she told me, you might have just saved many more."
"How so?" I asked.
"I can't tell you much, but we've consolidated our forces. Thanks to Minnow - we know we're being hunted... but by what, I still don't know." She cocked her head at us. "I was hoping you could help me."
"You're being hunted by monsters," I heard Candy Cane whisper as she lowered her eyes to the floor. We both turned to see her face frozen with fear. She said again, louder, her voice trembling with horror, "You're being hunted by monsters."
We all fell silent. I saw it... the blood and the gore and the empty eye sockets. They clouded my mind, suffocating it with a dark red haze. I shook my head vigorously, chasing them out of my thoughts, clearing my mind... When clarity returned, I found Candy Cane shaking uncontrollably beside me. I wrapped a foreleg around her, and her shaking stopped.
So did mine.
Alacrity nodded quietly, watching us closely with soft eyes.
"Monsters..." she began, slowly, "Only monsters could've done what they did. But from what Minnow described... it was our own people that did this." She clenched her jaw tight and looked us each in the eye. "But no Orphan of mine is a monster. I refuse to believe that my own ponies would do such a thing..."
Alacrity sighed, and hung her head. "My lieutenants seem to think it might have been some kind of magical radiation that drove them mad. They suspect that it might have been the same... thing that's been turning people into snow furies." Alacrity paused for a while, thinking quietly to herself. "It's a stretch, I know, but..." She pursed her lips, frowning at the wall behind us. "But... they were near ground zero, after all."
I slowly sat forward, my brows furrowing in disbelief.
"Magical radiation?" I chuckled darkly. "You didn't see what we saw. It wasn't your Orphans, and it wasn't radiation. When we left that hideout, we walked in on someone trying to get inside." I glanced over at Candy Cane as she clenched her jaw. "We chased it -"
"It?" Alacrity asked.
"It. It was a unicorn." I shook my head, remembering that pony - that thing. It was a mare, a mare with teal magic and teal eyes... but it could've been anyone. It could've been anything. I wasn't sure what it was. "We chased it away, and... and there was this flash, and it wasn't a unicorn anymore." I covered my face with a hoof, shaking my head. "It flew away before we could stop it."
Alacrity pursed her lips, thinking to herself silently.
"So you're saying it turned into a pegasus?" She cracked a dubious smile. "It grew wings?"
I ran a hoof through my disheveled mane, laughing darkly. I almost didn't believe it myself.
"It sounds impossible. It sounds like a joke, honestly." The grim humor died from my eyes. "But that's what we saw."
She was silent for several moments, tapping her hoof against the floor.
"And you think it was them? They're the ones who murdered my Orphans?"
I reclined against my pillow, and stared at the ceiling.
"They left something behind. You probably already know. Your Orphans took my bags, after all."
Alacrity snorted, chuckling to herself. She gave me that knowing look again. I half-expected her to say more, but the door cracked open and a stallion stuck his head through.
"M-ma'am, we've got a problem coming our way!"
The stampede of hooves and the rattling screech of a hospital gurney echoed outside.
Alacrity eyed us both, and hurried to the door and out into the hall. I swung my bandaged limbs out of bed, and stumbled after her.
A scream echoed down the hall. I peered outside and a hospital gurney with a bloody, writhing mare screeched to a stop as Alacrity rushed to have a look.
"NO - GET AWAY FROM ME! GET AWAY!"
The medic ponies struggled to hold her down as her safety belts tore off her body and she threatened to collapse onto the floor. Ponies on either side of her scrambled to strap her down as she kicked and punched and swung like a mad pony.
One of her hooves slammed into a medic pony's face and he went down in a spray of blood.
"Where's that fucking Med-X?!" he screamed, hoofing his bloody nose.
I stepped outside and my hoof met the wet floor. I looked down.
My eyes widened. My stomach churned at the sight of it.
Blood.
"What the hell is happening?"
Nobody answered as I watched a syringe stab into the mare's thigh.
"Goddesses..." I murmured..
One of the ponies, a quiet mare clad in bloodied winter barding leaned against the side of the gurney, holding the other mare's hoof. Her back was turned to me, but she held her head low, whispering into the mare's ear as she kicked and screamed - struggling to pull away from the her with fading strength as the Med-X surged through her veins.
Her screams went silent for a second. The quiet mare whispered incoherently into the other's ear.
Horror flashed across her eyes as she stared into the mare's face.
"YOU GET AWAY FROM ME - GET AWAY!"
"Timber, you are going to be okay..." the quiet mare whispered, louder.
"SOMEPONY - GET HER AWAY FROM ME!" Timber wheezed, "Somepony... please... please help..."
The quiet mare's shadow loomed over the other mare's face as tears ran down Timber's cheek.
"No more..." Timber cried. She shook her head furiously, whimpering like a beaten animal until her shaking slowed and her head fell back into the gurney. "No... more..."
Heartbeats passed in silence as her trembling limbs went limp.
The medic ponies snapped back into action.
"Go - GO!"
They yanked the gurney's straps tight and rushed her down the hall upon its screeching wheels. The quiet remained. She watched those galloping ponies push the other mare's gurney down the hall.
A thin trail of blood followed them as they disappeared behind a pair of double doors.
I gulped. "What the hell just happened?"
Nobody answered. Alacrity swore under her breath and called out to the lone mare.
"You - report."
The mare turned slowly, her green eyes catching the light for the briefest of moments as she staggered around to face us.
The mare straightened out her back, leaning against the wall with a bad leg. A faint smile wavered upon her trembling lips. The white fur on her face was stained deep with splotches of dark, dried blood. I wasn't sure if it was hers.
Her voice, gravelly and hoarse like sandpaper rasped into my ears.
"Ma'am. Kelpie - Charlie Outpost." She uttered a long, shuddering sigh. Her eyes blinked closed for a moment, and when she opened them, her face straightened out too.
"We were attacked." Kelpie lowered her voice to a whisper, just loud enough for us to hear. "Timber and I are all that's left. The rest are dead." Her face wavered briefly as she punctuated those words. The sides of her mouth twitched, and she brought a hoof to scrape away a streak of dried blood from her cheek.
The light seemed to die out of Alacrity's eyes as blood drained from her face. Her eyelids fluttered for a moment, and she stumbled back, hitting her flank against a wall.
"Ma'am!"
Two Orphanage ponies rushed to her side, holding her upright. Alacrity let out a trembling breath and shrugged them off. She jabbed a hoof at Kelpie.
"Get that pony debriefed!" she ordered, her voice wavering. The old mare planted a hoof against the wall and swallowed down her pounding heart.
"Red Dawn," she began with renewed vigor, "You've been discharged. I'll have somepony get you and Candy Cane settled for now." She closed her eyes and exhaled as her two guard ponies separated.
One of them motioned for Candy Cane and I to follow.
"Expect to do a lot more explaining tomorrow." *
I let out a long, drawn out sigh. I sat on the floor with my back against the wall, and with my saddlebags scattered around me. I was too tired to even change into something clean enough to sleep in. Too tired to even continue standing.
My legs felt better. Those haunters pecked the living hell out of them, but at least they didn't peck them clean to the bone.
At least we had a place to just sit down, or sleep for a while. The guard outside our door had to stand there until next morning. Poor bastard.
I scanned the small room with weary eyes: it was a lot smaller than what we had at Summer Smiles' place. It looked like it had been a janitor's closet at one point - small, cramped, and lit by only a single dim light bulb hanging over our heads. Now it was a bedroom.
There was one bed inside, and an ancient, rusted metal shelf. That was it.
"Ah... just like home," I muttered.
Candy Cane's ears perked at that, before she returned to organizing her saddlebags.
I wasn't being completely sarcastic. We were underground, but unlike my stable, it was still freezing cold. Surprisingly, I wasn't shivering much. My fur was feeling a little thicker. Maybe I grew out my winter coat? Or maybe, just maybe I was used to the winter wasteland... but at my very core, I knew that couldn't have been the case...
Maybe I just stopped caring.
I pulled my saddlebags towards me and started rummaging. They were mostly empty besides a few of my stable suits, and the jacket Summer Smiles gave me. Many of our belongings were missing - namely our guns, ammo, and explosives. My body armor was missing too.
The guard told us that they were stored in their armory, and that we'd get them back once we were ready to leave. I felt kinda naked without my trusty 10mm pistol. Now I was without it, and I felt vulnerable.
I wanted to believe that I was safe in that room with Candy Cane, but I knew after we found that Orphanage outpost that nowhere was safe.
I never really knew what fear was until I stepped out into this wintery shit hole.
I sighed and hung my head.
Everything was fucked up, and if it wasn't already fucked up, it was going to get fucked up.
I stared at the floor between my legs and leaned my head against the wall. Finally, we found the Orphanage... but after everything, it still didn't feel like a victory to me. We made it, yes, and I was still alive... for the most part.
I thought back to those nightmares. Those dreams. What with everything I saw and did so far out in the wasteland, I really would have believed that it was all... just... a dream...
But it wasn't. It was a nightmare, and ever since I left my stable, it seemed like I was living in one. It was a nightmare that should've ended a long time ago. But the only one that did was my dream of Dew Drops... my friends... the dream in which they were all still alive.
I watched them all die, weeks ago in that forest. But it was... different... different to kill them all myself. It was horrifying.
Horrifying.
I blinked, and for the briefest of moments, my hooves ran red with blood.
'Red... Dawn...' a mare's gravelly, serpentine voice whispered.
I shuddered. A shallow gasp for air jolted me back to reality. My eyes darted around, trying to find the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. I stared into space, forcing myself to calm my racing heartbeat. I stared into space... blind, but calm... calm enough to sort through my thoughts and think upon the present and not the past.
I looked down, and found the floor. I looked up, and found the ceiling. I looked to my left and to my right, and I found the walls. I looked straight ahead, and I found Candy Cane.
In the corner, at the foot of the bed she stood, her horn glowed with silvery magic as she undressed, pulling down her trousers to her fetlocks and -
"...Red?"
My cheeks reddened.
"OH!" I buried my muzzle in my hooves. "Sorry - sorry! I-I didn't mean to..."
I peeked through the crack between my hooves. Her trousers were still on the floor. "Hrk! I thought on my hooves. "I... I was just looking at your cutie mark."
"Hm..." She cracked the faintest of smiles. "Just my cutie mark?"
I moaned into my hooves, shaking my head furiously.
"I'm kidding, Red." I heard her zip her trousers back up. "Don't worry about it. You know... ponies don't usually wear clothes?"
I gulped. "We do..."
She chuckled softly, "I figured. I know how you feel about... nakedness. I just forgot. Sorry."
"I-it's okay. Goddesses..." I gasped, biting my lip as I realized I didn't even notice her cutie mark when her pants were down...
I forced myself to ask, "Um... what's your cutie mark supposed to be, anyways?"
I peeked through my hooves, and saw a silvery glow wrapped around her hinds.
"Hrk!"
Candy Cane laughed, "Don't worry - I'm not pulling it down all the way this time."
I let out a breath of relief and slowly lowered my hooves to the floor.
On her flank was a strange symbol: a snake coiled around a staff.
"It's the Rod of Asclipon."
I tried not to stare at her maroon butt for too long. She was wearing that faint smile again as she watched my eyes. I resisted the urge to blush and flicked my eyes to her face.
"So it's a nursing cutie mark?"
Candy Cane pulled her trousers back up.
"Kind of. It was derived from the rod wielded by the ancient Equestrian God of Healing. It symbolizes medicine and health."
I cocked a brow at her. "That's... pretty cool. You've got the staff of a God on your flanks, and all I have is a dumb cog on mine." I chuckled, rolling my eyes. "Who would've guessed an engineer would get a cog. How original, right?"
Candy Cane giggled, "You're the only pony I know of with a cog for a cutie mark, Red."
"Hmph," I smirked, lifting a hoof as I struck a pose, "That's because most people out here don't know their way around a wrench."
She scoffed at that, rolling her eyes.
I chuckled under my breath. "How'd you get your cutie mark, anyways?"
She thought for a moment, touching a hoof to her chin before taking a seat at the edge of the bed. She glanced at me, then at the open space next to her.
With a languid sigh I sat up and plopped down next to her.
"Story time?"
She nodded.
"Story time."
Candy Cane was silent for a few seconds as she stared at the floor between her hooves. "Well... I got my cutie mark after I treated my first patient.
"Though it wasn't a typical disease I treated. It was a psychological one." Candy Cane sighed, "I always thought my first patient was going to have a broken leg, or a wound that needed stitching, or..."
She smiled sheepishly, "Or a bullet in the gut but... you see, my father was the doctor of our village. He diagnosed a mare with depression, and that mare fell under my care. We... didn't have any antidepressants... so we talked. Talked for hours - about anything, really: her family, her friends, her dreams and aspirations... her problems."
Candy Cane stared past me dreamily, smiling to herself. "She hugged me after that... and after I sent her on her way, I found a cutie mark on my flank." Her eyes focused upon me, and her smile died away. Her voice was almost a whisper. "Red... what happened to us back there?"
I tilted my head slightly as I resisted the urge to look away.
She peered into my dark eyes. "What happened... to you?"
My eyes sunk to the floor. A palpable tremble shivered through me.
"Cane..." I whispered.
"Red... I know that look," she said, studying my face. "I know... I know, Red."
I nodded once more, closing my eyes.
We sat there as the seconds ticked by and my memories clawed behind my closed doors. I could hear them screaming my name.
"Red..."
I could hear her screaming my name.
"Red..."
I shook my head vigorously.
"I'm fine."
Candy Cane fell silent and stared at her hooves.
"Okay..." she nodded, whispering, "That's okay. You've just been acting so differently."
"I'm sorry, Cane." My ears drooped. "I'm so sorry for those things I said to you before those furies attacked. That wasn't like me. I-I just wasn't thinking straight -"
She was staring at me again with those soft gray eyes.
"We went through a lot, Red."
I sighed, clenching my teeth. "I was honestly more worried about you, Cane." I finally found the strength to meet her eyes. "When that... that thing made you fall down that hole at the Morale Hub, I was so scared... I thought you were dead."
Her expression turned grim. "That thing... it wore my sister's face. It tricked me. It made me see things - believe things that weren't real. It's like it knew me. Like it knew inside and out...
"I don't know exactly what that thing was, Red... but it was... it was evil."
"Evil..." I whispered, nodding as I echoed her words, "It was pure evil."
She gave me that knowing stare again.
"You saw it too, didn't you?"
I went silent for a moment.
"Yes," I finally whispered, trembling uncontrollably. "Yes... I saw things. Things I can't explain." Horror crept across my face as I stared desperately into her eyes. "Cane... i-it knew more about me than I did..."
I felt her lay a hoof on my shoulder until my trembling slowly stilled.
"Let's get some rest," she said gently. "We really need it."
I nodded, standing to my four hooves. "I'll sleep on the floor. You can have the bed."
She frowned, pointing a hoof at the dusty, dirty, unkempt floor that didn't look like it had been swept in centuries. "You want to sleep on that?"
I stood up as Candy Cane laid down on the bed behind me. The old mattress' springs squeaked and moaned, while gravelly dust crunched beneath my hooves.
I turned around, sighed, and collapsed into the bedsheets.
I vaguely remember feeling a pillow being wedged against me.
Darkness took me in an instant. *
I was warm. Really warm.
And the air... it smelled... minty. Like mint candy. Like candy canes.
My eyes fluttered open.
Candy Cane was staring right at me. I blinked. Then I blinked again. I looked around and my forelegs were wrapped around her... hugging her tight.
"OH SHI-"
My back thumped against the cold, hard floor.
I groaned, curling up into a ball.
"Red!"
Candy Cane rushed to the edge of the bed.
"Are you hurt?!"
"Hrk - no - no not really," I gasped, "What happened?"
She eyed me worriedly.
"What happened just now, or..."
"No! I snapped, "What happened last night?!"
Candy Cane looked away, blushing slightly.
"You... you hugged me last night... and you didn't let go..."
I clenched my eyes shut and covered my face with my hooves.
"You were having a nightmare. You were whispering. Sobbing. Then you grabbed me."
I rolled over and away from her, shaking violently.
"W-why d-d-didn't you wake me up?"
She let out a gentle sigh.
"You calmed down afterward. I didn't want to want to wake you." Candy Cane smothered a faint smile with her forehoof. "I was also really warm."
I stood to my hooves and levitated my saddlebags to my hooves, rummaging through them as I searched for a fresh jumpsuit. I glanced over my shoulder, pulled a clean jumpsuit to from my bag, and stared nervously at her.
"Um... Cane?"
She cocked a brow at me, mouthed 'Oh,' and lowered her eyes to the floor.
"Right. Of course."
Zzzzipppp.
I sighed and stepped out of my dirty clothes. Then I sighed again, and stuck my legs into two pairs of fresh sleeves.
Zzzzipppp.
I felt Candy Cane's eyes on me again.
Mine darted to my PipBuck.
0430.
Yesterday, the guard outside said we had to report to a meeting a six o'clock sharp. I had a lot of time on my hooves. What I didn't have was time to get out of there before my blush burned my face off.
I finally turned and tried not to look at her as I started towards the door.
"I think I'll explore for a bit."
My horn glowed to life and enwreathed the doorknob with scarlet magic. I turned it and pulled - but it shook uselessly.
'Shit.'
A bead of sweat formed over my brow as I tried it again. I could still feel Candy Cane's eyes on the back of my head.
It didn't open.
"Goddesses damnit..." I murmured, and banged my hoof against the door.
Sounds of hooves shuffling on the floor outside followed. The door creaked open to reveal a tired looking stallion holding a pair of yellow bandannas.
"Just you?" he asked.
My head tilted slightly, hoping Candy Cane wasn't behind me.
"Yeah." I looked down at one of the bandannas he had draped over his forehoof. "What are those for?"
"These? Well ya gotta wear one so we know who ya are. Mother's orders," he said, hoofing one over to me.
Mother's orders. Alacrity was keeping us on a short leash.
I hesitated at first, eyeing the yellow rag before tying it around my neck. The stallion motioned me forward.
"Feel free to visit the hospital or the mess hall." I nodded as he closed the door behind me. "But don't go wanderin' 'round where ya ain't supposed to, okay? The guards know who y'all are."
"Right. Of course," I muttered, trotting away hurriedly.
The guard called after me. "And remember to come back before six!"
I just wanted to get away from that room.
I figured I'd go check on Minnow. According to the signs I saw on the walls, the hospital wasn't too far away. Once I left the dormitories, I found myself in the Ponevan metro system once more. In the Orphanage, the metro system was still alive, repaired and jury-rigged by talented engineers, or refurbished after surviving the balefire apocalypse. I wasn't sure which, but I knew that it simply existing was a marvel of Equestrian technology.
Some things were built to last, it seemed. If only I could say the same about the rest of Poneva.
I found an empty subway terminal with a train idling outside. The soft hum of a spark battery tickled my eardrums as I walked down the platform beside it. It was a patchwork of steel and its original material, but without a doubt still functional. Its crew was already inside, but its doors were closed.
It was only five in the morning, and work probably didn't start till six. I didn't want to bother them, so I decided that I'd just follow the signs and walk to the hospital myself.
There weren't many ponies walking around aside from the guards and the occasional morning ponies like me. As I reached the end of the train terminal, a guard with a rifle slung over her shoulder eyed the yellow bandanna around my neck and nodded as I passed her.
I kept following the signs to the hospital, and entered a dimly lit hallway just outside the train station. Flickering yellow light bulbs hung over my head from bare-wiring along the curved, tunnel-like ceiling. The hall's cracked concrete walls, stripped bare by the ages passed me by as I walked down its length. I found a pair of double doors, and pushed past them, finding myself alone in a quiet, dark antechamber.
A single lightbulb flickered over my head as I stood there alone with my ears perked, listening. A faint noise slowly approached.
Clop, clop, clop, clop, clop...
The distant hoofsteps echoed into my ears at a trotting pace.
I looked for a sign that led to the hospital as those hooves trotted in the distance. I could barely make out the words 'hospital' in that dark antechamber. The dark hall stretched onward as I followed it warily, the hoofsteps echoing louder and louder, closer and closer.
I clenched my jaw and a trembling exhale escaped my lips. The trotting loudened and a black figure approached from the end of the hall. My horn sparked briefly - and I swore under my breath as I realized my pistol was nowhere to be found.
Yellow light flickered across its face. I saw its green eyes first.
Kelpie.
Her expressionless face flashed briefly beneath stray light bulbs as her gait slowed and she walked between windows of darkness and light. Her pale coat flashed white and black as she stepped in and out of the shadows.
She smiled at me as her face passed beneath another light before darkness washed over her. When she emerged, she stood beneath a flickering light bulb, expressionless once more.
"Hello, Red Dawn," she said with a whispering hiss of misty breath, "Going somewhere?"
I frowned at her as I approached, standing a short distance away beneath the safety of the light. I gulped. She knew my name.
"Yeah. I am," I replied, shifting on my hooves. My heart thumped warily as she studied my face. There was something off about her emerald eyes. I didn't trust them one bit.
She saw the discomfort on my face, and for a moment I thought I noticed the faintest of smiles crease her lips. A heartbeat passed, and it was gone.
"How's your friend?" I asked, cautiously, "What was her name... Tim-"
"Timber," Kelpie finished for me. Her face remained expressionless. "She didn't make it."
I stared at her and she stared at me for too many heartbeats.
I let out a breath I realized I was holding in.
"I'm sorry."
She said nothing. She just stared.
I eyed her forelegs.
"Looks like you can walk just fine, now."
Kelpie cocked her head and lifted her right foreleg
"Yes... I just left the clinic," she said quietly. Kelpie finally widened her lips with a smile, her canines glistening in the ruddy yellow light. "There are few things a health potion can't cure."
I narrowed my eyes at her.
"Like Timber?"
Her grin faded away as she stepped back into the darkness.
"I'll be seeing you, Red Dawn." * |
YOU CAN'T OUT SPEED EVERYTHING | pre | "Okay wanna make Messy fall on top of Tumble. ", asked Sunny to Daisy.
They both giggled and walked over to them with Daisy being a distraction and Sunny would push Messy into Tumble.
"Sup guys how's it going. ", Daisy asked while looking at them with a smile.
Tumble pointed at a bush and said,
"Umbrella ferns are so cool, they live in tropical areas and they live in bundles but they are not bushes which is so cool. ", Tumble replied, he currently looked like he was about to pop with the amount of dopamine running through his body.
Messy just sipped on his coffee before dodging Sunny's attempt to push them into each other. Sunny then fell on her face.
"Dammit, how did you guess that? ", Sunny asked while getting up from the ground.
"Mostly because of Daisy's face, I got off to go to my class. Going to become an actor for a reason and I got a wrestling tournament to train for. ", Messy said while leaving.
Tumble left for his botany class. So Sunny and Daisy decided this would be a perfect time to go to their science class.
They both sat down next to each other and started taking down notes. Until Sunny zoned out
Sunny's thoughts
Bolt looked at Sunny and planted a kiss on Sunny's cheek. Sunny blushed and was shocked.
"I love you Sunny more than anything. "
Sunny was shocked. They then kissed Sunny and could feel his strong arms as they kissed. Sunny hugged Bolt and-
"Sunny, you're drooling, what the hell are you thinking about? ", Daisy asked while she tilted her head.
Shit
"Oh eh erm huh what did you say oh yeah science yep science. ", Sunny stuttered while she blushed with red colouring her face now.
"It's about Bolt isn't it. ", Daisy asked with a smirk.
"Yeah it is, I love him. ", Sunny replied with a soothing voice before she snapped out of it and said, "Wait what no eh that's not what I.. Shit you got me. "
"I know you too well. ", Daisy nudged her before getting back to work.
AHHHHH Sunny why did you do that now you're embarrassed and blushing but I do wonder what he feels like on top of me and his ches- OH COME ON BRAIN I KNOW WE LIKE HIM BUT STILL but his so dreamy Ahhhhhhh.
Sunny got back to work but her thoughts were loud and very bad currently, Sunny tried her best to just continue like normal. She wrote most of the notes as she summarises stuff to her comprehending of the subject. Both Daisy and Sunny went out of the room and walked through the hallway. Sunny saw Bolt writing or jotting some notes or something like that.
"Hey Bolt, how's it going? ", asked Sunny before hugging Bolt.
"It's good my class was boring to deal with and with some thoughts... ANYWAYS Daisy how's it going for you. ", replied Bolt with a blush on his face and his wings started flapping gently.
"Pfft nothing much, just the same old boring . Also Bolt wanna see Sunny in shot kick action she is awesome. ", Daisy replied before going closer to Bolts ear and whispering something that Sunny couldn't hear but it made Bolt blush and flap his wings aggressively.
"Why did you even have to say that?! ", Bolt said with his face being beet red.
Daisy just laughed and Sunny started walking to the bathroom to change from her black hoodie to her white tank top and blue tracksuit top.
Nice combo me nice one
Sunny walked out of the bathroom(which is also a change room in this college) and started walking to the entrance so she could go around the building to the field.
"Hey do you mind if I walk you there. ", Bolt asked poetically.
Sunny laughed at the sight of him being flirty and leaning against a wall.
"What?", Bolt asked.
"Are you trying to flirt with me? ", Sunny replied while laughing.
Bolt's face went back to being red. Maybe if he kept up at this rate his face would stay red. They both started walking out the entrance and around the college it was real quiet and peaceful so Sunny didn't mind.
You should mention you're with your husband. OH MY CELESTIA SHUT UP WE ARE NOT EVEN DATING.
Sunny blushed at her thoughts, Bolt did not notice his face was deep with emotions and kinda pissed. Sunny decided to stop staring at him and continued walking. They both got to the field and Sunny left Bolt to go to shot kick. She already qualified for this event for the trials so she could at least try in it. She went to her coach. Ms.P. Ares(31yrs), she was a unicorn with a purple body and red with white stripes in her hair and it had a lot of colourful hair clips. Her cutie mark is a film camera. She was currently just wearing a long black dress which was odd for wearing to help her.
"Celestia, I love my little gummy bear. ", she said while looking at a photo.
"Eh coach, what are you doing? ", Sunny asked with a confused face.
"Oh just looking at a picture of my husband, he's so cute. ", Ms.P(Peace breaker) .Ares replied while hugging the picture of Mr.W(Windshaker) .Ares
"So are we gonna train or are we going to talk about your husband. ", Sunny asked sarcastically.
"Oh my bad darling why are you acting like this when you ma'am have a crush too and you really like him. ", She replied and started walking up to her and laughed.
She's not talking about Bolt right okay she's just trying to mess with me because of her husband.
"Pfft what crush, I don't have one. " Sunny lied.
"Oh okay, Bolts looking at you! ", Ms. P.Ares replied while pointing into the stands.
"Where! OH FOR FU-", Sunny said before Ms.P.Ares interrupted while laughing,
"Knew it you are always googly eyed on him while my husband was all googly eyes on me first actually and ponies were surprised when I decided to date him saying he was a loser but I see a champion in him and a very handsome stallion. "
Sunny sighed while slapping her face and replied.
"You sound like a cringy romance book."
"Pfft you write that stuff but let's get started and let me just quickly look at my topl- I mean picture of my husband. ", Ms.P.Ares replied while having a blush on her face.
She started to practise. It was pretty fun and easy for her. She was tired so Ms.P.Ares gave her a break. She looked into the crowd to see Bolt staring straight at her.
~Bolts thoughts when they made eye contact compared to Sunnys
Wow she/he is pretty.
Sunny quickly turned around and looked at Ms.P.Ares. She was looking at the same picture of Mr. W.Ares but she was not sure what type of picture it was. Ms.P.Ares had a blush on her face and her face was more relaxed so you could see her eye bags.
"Coach, Are you tired and also what is the picture of Ares. ", Sunny asked.
"Oh since you are so concerned about me, yes I am quite tired because of my 3 little fillies and the picture is of Ares' naked sweetie. ", She replied with a soothing voice.
Sunny jumped and blushed.
"Why would you keep that. "
"You would keep it if it was Bolt wouldn't you. "
Sunny stood there blushing and asked,
"How do you even know that? "
"I am PeaceBreaker also it's from your helpful friend Daisy she's an angel. ", she replied while putting the picture of Ares back in her pocket.
"Why did she even decide to tell you that, what other practices should I do? ", Sunny asked with still a blush on her face.
"Well you are actually free to go now. Today's training is finished and the trials are in 3 days so get mentally prepared and I'll need you back here tomorrow at 3pm otherwise bye Bolt's wife. ", Ms.P.Ares replied while giggling to herself.
"Also what's with the dress, it's fashionable but why here? ", Sunny asked.
"Oh just a date with my darling husband and some after work distress if you know what I mean. ", Ms.P.Ares replied while walking off and giving her a wink.
What does she mean?? WAIT A MINUTE
Sunny stood there dumbfounded and blushed.
"Well I mean they are adults but I'm an adult. WHY AM I THINKING ABOUT THIS. ", Sunny said to herself but she thought she was loud so she checked if anyone heard her.
She started walking off the field before she saw a blue blur come before her face.
"Hey Sunny you were amazing! Also I'm here to walk you to well the road that splits our roots. ", Bolt said with a lot of enthusiasm.
Which made Sunny happy to see.
"Thank you Bolt. ", Sunny said while hugging Bolt.
Bolt's thoughts
You are fully in love now NOOO SHUT SHUT UP
Sunny's thoughts
AHHHH I love him
They pulled out of the hug both blushing and it was a bit awkward. They started walking to the exit of the entire college before they heard flapping wings that were not Bolt's. They turned around to see a brown and green dragon holding a light green pegasus in the dragon's arms.
"Scribble? And Hefty, what are you guys doing? ", Bolt asked with a smirk.
They both blushed and looked back at them.
"Oh eh I was just flying her up in the clouds. ", Scribble said while nuzzling Hefty's mane and her blushing.
"It was beautiful and I had to shut him up with kisses because of his nerdy rumbling that he would do every 5 Mins, I don't mind it though it's very cute darling. ", Hefty said while looking at Scribble.
"Jeez it's like you two are married when's the kids huh? ", Sunny joked.
Both of them blushed and looked directly at her. They started to look around trying to ignore the question.
"Scribble if you don't say anything I'll tell Hefty all the thoughts you had of her during our stallion nights. ", Bolt said with a cold tone.
Scribble immediately blushed and said,
"No we are not married... Yet I love her alot like we are married also. What are you doing together?. "
Scribble put down Hefty and planted a kiss on her cheek. Before walking up to Bolt. Sunny saw this and was confused but let him talk to Bolt. Bolt immediately blushed and shouted,
"Shut up dude it's not like that. "
Sunny blushed, maybe he was talking about them or maybe he was talking about his crush.
Calm down, we will learn that later.
Scribble then picked up Hefty and held her while smiling at her and they started to walk down to their apartment buildings.
"Why are you carrying Hefty, Scribble? Any words for that. ", Sunny asked while giggling.
Scribble blushed and looked away before replying,
"While I will just say we were kissing and I accidentally hurt her by falling on her. "
The whole group immediately bursted into laughter well excluding Scribble who was blushing and staying quiet.
"Yeah well he isn't lying that was what happened but some stuff led to that like a cute date at a food place very romantic Scribble. ",
Hefty said while rubbing her tail against his face. They are started walking out of the college and Sunny struck up a conversation with Hefty.
"Hefty how's the relationship with Scribble also are you going to join any marathons or weight lifting competition. ", Sunny asked while smiling.
"Oh eh it's great, I currently have nothing going and my relationship we hang out all the time it's cute and he's cute, hot and...Yeah that's it ", Hefty replied before blushing.
Sunny nudged Hefty.
"Come on tell me. ", Sunny said with a smirk.
Hefty sighed,
"He's a good kisser even though I'm his first marefriend. "
"Aww that's cute but still jeez it is like you guys are married . ", Sunny said while laughing.
Hefty blushed and hit Sunny's arm.
"Oh shut up, when are you going to ask the lover stallion over there to be yours huh? ", Hefty replied while smirking at her.
"Shut up! I mean please don't say that. ", Sunny said while blushing.
Everypony besides Bolt of course got to their apartments. Sunny hugged Bolt before they went and said to him,
"Hey I heard you got 2 more races than you might get into the trials. Nice job also here. "
Sunny handed him a dark chocolate bar.
"It's dark because well you are always so grumpy looking so it fits you. ", Sunny said while smiling at Bolt.
Bolt took it and said,
"Oh thanks, well I'll be off. "
Sunny saw him fly off and she blushed because it was almost like she was seeing off her husband to work.
Ahhhhhhh why do I think like this
Sunny, Hefty and Scribble all went back to their apartment. They took the elevator. Scribble took Hefty in his room while waving bye at Sunny.
Those two are probably going to do something freaky. Wait why am I assuming this about them.
Sunny hit her head with her hoof and walked to her room which had a room number of 189. She walked in to see her stack of papers on her kitchen table and her bed in a mess.
Oh yeah I got to college in a rush
She made sure to clean up everything as it was a mess and she was cleaning under her bed, she found a photo of Bolt kissing her cheek on graduation day of high school.
Oh yeah this picture, he looks so cute and I look amazing. Wow honestly I actually thought I lost this.
She found a lot of high school pictures which made her smile. She then saw an old journal about something she couldn't make out as it was smudged but she could only make out this:
B. Journal
Don't
Signed by: Ja
Sunny looked at it confused. Even with glasses she couldn't make out who it was so she decided to read it.
Celestia crushes are annoying, why must I a geek, and have a crush on a beautiful mare like Sunny.
Sunny put the journal down and blushed. She smirked as it could be Bolt who wrote that but she couldn't be too sure as back in their high school there were many stallions with an initial of B and with the surname Jackson.
I need something to clear my mind so let's study.... Like that worked it didn't work in class so... YOGURT
She instantly dashed towards her fridge and looked around for her favourite snack, pineapple yogurt. She found and grabbed it instantly and started to eat it with a plastic spoon. She sat at her table and wondered what she would do tonight. She thought about a thing Daisy said about a party happening soon but she forgot the date.
Hmm I'm not a party animal so no
She continued to eat her yogurt and she was still thinking about what date the party was. She then got up, took out one of her spicy romance books as she was alone and was very bored. The title of this one book she had was A loving reader. She giggled to herself and began to read, she had to also put her glasses in for this as the letters looked too small for her. She read and read and read, it felt like hours but when she looked at the clock it only was 9:10 which meant she only was reading for 30 minutes.
Weird that felt long but I don't care I don't want my night thoughts about Bolt as they were... Not needed right now.
She blushed and continued reading but she couldn't stop thinking about Bolt.
Read brain read brain but ohhh I want that stallions hooves DON'T FINISH THAT
She was now blushing aggressively but she calmed herself down before hearing a knock on her door.
Odd who could that be
She walked up to the door to see it was Scribble, Hefty and Daisy.
"Oh hey peeps what are you guys up to. ", Sunny asked with a smile and confusion.
"Oh we are here for fun and because I think my friend Daisy is tired of hearing bed noises from our room so we decided to come over. ", Hefty said very bluntly, leaving Scribble with a huge blush on his face.
"Why would you tell her about that! ", Scribble squeaked at Hefty.
"Well it's true jeez I don't even know how your standing after that Hefty", Daisy joked and both Hefty and Daisy started laughing.
Scribble blushed and looked at Sunny.
"Eh yeah just ignore them. ", Hefty said nervously.
Holy shit well I was right eh well having sex isn't really a big issue but imagine that was me and Bollll nope you should be happy for them
"Don't worry about it. ", Sunny said with a blush on her face because of her thoughts.
"Well I mean Daisy you are walking pretty funky you don't want to explain yourself. ", Scribble said while fist pumping Hefty.
"Me! Walking funny! You guys are clearly seeing stuff trust me!"Daisy replied with a crimson blush on her face.
"Anyways come inside we can talk more here so the other apartment mates don't get in on our conversations. ", Daisy replied and opened the door.
All of her friends walked in and instantly sat at the table. She got them drinks not alcohol as she didn't have any alcohol. Then Scribble asked,
"Well Sunny what have you been up to besides of course trying to get that stallion Bolt and of course your brilliant studies in science. ".
Sunny first blushed then calmed down before replying,
"Well not much I've been up to and thank you for that but no nothing much. "
"This is so boring. How about we try some truth or dare. "
Everypony turned their heads to Daisy to see she was smirking.
"Sure why not, I mean you don't have anything to hide right Daisy.
Sunny said while looking at Daisy with her green eyes and smiled.
It was now game time,
> Game decisions
"Well what game first. ", Scribble asked.
There was a silence before Hefty shouted,
"Oh wanna play crazy eights! "
"Not to be rude but the fuck is that. ", Daisy replied.
"Oh it's like Uno but on crack. ", Hefty said to Daisy.
"Oh yeah my... Eh cousins taught me this it was so fun I remember thinking when I was small I was much like a gambler. ", Daisy replied.
They all started laughing at what she just said and they decided to play.
"8 of Diamonds I ask for hearts. ", Scribble said with a smirk.
"Fuck you dude. ", Sunny replied with a really pissed face.
Everypony decided to start laughing.
This is so much fun, much better than just eating and I should invite Bolt to join us sometime and if we are alone.. FUCK OFF
"SUNNY PICK UP TEN BUT DOESN'T MATTER I WIN. ", shouted Hefty.
"Wait wha-",Sunny said with a blush on her face.
"Can you stop thinking about Bolt! ", Daisy replied with a giggle.
Again for like the third time everypony started laughing.
"Well I mean she's not lying. ", Scribble said.
"Well eh shut up, but I got a better idea who wants to play truth or dare?",Sunny asked with a smirk.
Daisy instantly blushed and looked away from everyone.
"Hell eh uh I'm I I in yeah I'm in. ", Daisy stuttered with a huge blush on her face.
"Ohhhh someone is hiding something. Also one rule is you can't choose the same thing twice. ", Scribble said while smirking at Sunny.
Daisy gulped loudly while still blushing
"Good one okayyy let me start.... Hefty truth or dare. ", Sunny asked
"Hell yeah but truth please. ", Hefty replied with a happy face.
"Tell me, are you dominant or dominated? ", Sunny said.
"Both. ", Hefty replied before kissing Scribble who was blushing.
Okay Hefty, pick someone. ", Sunny said to Hefty.
"Scribble truth or dare? ", Hefty asked Scribble with a smirk.
"Oh dare that's easy. ", Scribble replied swiftly.
"Run up and down the hall now. ", Hefty replied before she felt a huge gust of wind.
"Well we didn't have to convince him which is nice. ", Sunny laughed.
They waited for Scribble to get back as he had to pick next but Sunny kept on hearing a rapid tapping noise.
"Daisy, why are you shaking your leg. ",Sunny asked Daisy with a calm tone.
"Oh eh nothing, don't worry about me. ", Daisy replied nervously which made both Sunny and Hefty confused as she was always the bold one.
"Are you sure you are okay Daisy? ", Hefty replied with confusion in her voice.
"YEAH I'M FINE! ", she shouted back at Hefty.
They then heard the door open loud and with a bang.
"DONE. ", Scribble said exhausted.
Everypony started laughing besides Daisy who stayed silent.
"OKAY PHEW SUNNY TRUTH OR DARE. ", shouted Scribble.
"Oh dare. ", smirked Sunny.
"Drink pure lemon juice. "
"Oh for fu-"
Sunny went to her fridge and got it out. All of her friends were shouting chug besides Daisy which was weird as she normally was the loudest. She started drinking and she thought her throat was closing and her mouth was burning. It was awful. She stopped drinking the juice and then said with a weak voice,
"Daisy truth or dare. "
"Truth Oh I meant dare yeah. ", Daisy nervously replied.
"Oh you picked truth well why have you been so quiet. "
"Can I be honest? "
"I mean it is truth, so you have to be. "
"You know that one party I talked about. "
"Yes, I was trying to remember the time when it was supposed to happen. "
"Yeah well at this party I was pretty fine drinking a bit but not until I'm literally drunk then I saw Messy and eh. "
Scribble broke the conversation between Sunny and Daisy and said,
"Then what happened after you saw Messy. "
"We had sex. "
"WHAT! ", Everyone shouted in the room.
"Jeez don't act like that but yeah I asked him to have sex with me and I don't if we broke our bond well I was so confused I ran out of the party. "
"OKAY you should have told this to us earlier also how many rounds did you guys have. ", Hefty replied.
"That's inappropriate right now we need to help her but all I say is you must talk to him sooner or later but how you do it is not our choice. ", Scribble said with a stern voice.
"Yeah I think you're right on that but whatever you want to do is your choice. ", Sunny said before hugging Daisy as she sat there in silence before they heard Sunny's door open wide and with a familiar earth pony standing at the door with his grey ponytail and he was wearing a black shirt.
"Totally wrong time huh? ", Messy said while looking Daisy in the eyes with now their thoughts mixing.
He/she is all I need right now as much as it might be embarrassing
Both of them blushed before Messy shut the door.
"Scribble go get Messy and I'll put them in my room to talk. ", Hefty said while rubbing his scales.
"You sure about this Hefty I think he can go. I'll talk to him another time like maybe tomorrow or some other time. "
"Nope go get him Scribble my knight in shining armour, I'll reward you later~. ", Hefty said while touching his scales gently.
"That feels nice but got it ma'am. ", He said before rushing out the door and hearing a loud yelp.
"Can you let go of me please. ", Messy said with a blush on his face.
He was a bit angry so of course he was trying to get out by shaking and all that. He was blushing, stressed and nervous. You could see him sweating and looking around the room, his eyes nearly looked like Scribble.
"Nope lil guy you are going to talk this out with Daisy. ", Scribble said before he put Messy in the room.
"Just remember it's just you and him. ", Sunny said before grabbing her hoof and putting her in the room with Messy.
Daisy got in the room to see Messy without his ponytail and some of his hair was laying on his shoulders as he was laying on Sunny's bed. If you could drown in silence that was now. Daisy looked around and out the window to see the stars.
Those stars remind me of him that is embarrassing keep that in your head
"The stars are pretty nice. ", Daisy said while looking out the window.
She tried to start the conversation with Messy but he just stayed quiet and tapped his foot against the ground rapidly. You could maybe see his regret on his face but that was his normal face.
"So-", Daisy tried to start the conversation again before she got cut off by Messy.
"I'm sorry for what I did. ", Messy said with a low voice.
Daisy stayed quiet before sitting on the bed with him. She touched his leg which made him jump and she laughed.
"Why did you do that? ", Messy asked.
"Well to lighten the mood. "
"Well just putting this out here I liked what we did also. "Messy said before walking to the door and asking if he could smoke in the apartment which Daisy could tell he got a yes as he pulled out a cigarette and before looking at Daisy waiting for her to light it with her magic as he didn't have a lighter.
So she lit it for him before saying,
"And also what Messy. "
"Oh my bad well you see well this might be embarrassing but I needed you because I was tired of seeing everyone in our group in lovey dovey mode I kinda I guess got jealous of it like I say remember back in high school how I always got rejected or something yeah so I needed what we did but what I think it was you who I needed. ", Messy said while blowing out some smoke and looking her in the eyes.
Daisy laughed before saying
"Sorry for laughing at you but did you get that from some fanfic or corny romance book. "
"Eh erm no. "
*Messy thoughts*
WHY DID I SAY THAT T THANKS BRAIN FUCKKKK IM TOTALLY WEIRD AND GOING TO GET REJECTED AGAIN FUCK FUCK FUCK
Daisy laughed more before she felt Messys hoof on her chin and they kissed.
*Daisy's thoughts*
Okay I have to admit I love this idiot his cute that is pretty corny so don't think about that again
*Messys thoughts*
Okay you got this don't fuck up what your going to say just be flirty and chill not geeky and ah fuck it
"I know the sex was not really meant but do you want to give me a chance.... Do you want to give us a chance? ", Messy said with a huge blush on his face.
Daisy laughed again and this time hit Messy on the arm.
"Sorry sorry just take that as a yes but that was very corny. "
"Should've known that. ", Messy said with a blush but with a straight face.
*his thoughts*
HOLY FUCKKKK IT WORKED WHATT HOW WAIT DON'T FREAK OUT
Daisy walked out of the room with Messy but when they opened the door, all of her friends fell to the ground.
"What are you guys doing? ", Daisy asked with an angry tone.
"Trying to hear what you guys are talking about. ", Scribble said awkwardly while covering both Hefty and Sunny behind him.
"You little shits! ", Daisy said while grabbing anything that was close to her which was actually a broom.
"Run! ", Hefty giggled.
They all ran away from Daisy and everypony started running in different directions to confuse Daisy.
"Hey get back here!! ", Daisy shouted at everypony.
She ran around still chasing them before she got pulled into a hug.
"Stop being an idiot. ", Messy said with a deep and calming tone
*Daisy's thoughts*
Holy celestia that is hot
Daisy blushed and looked at her friends with a grumpy face before saying,
"Don'-"
"AWWW. "interrupted all of them with all of them having puppy eyes.
Daisy blushed more before she looked at Messy who then kissed her on the lips which felt amazing before she heard again,
"Awwwww. "
"Shut the fu-", she got interrupted by her now coltfriend and he took her out of the apartment and walked her into his room.
"Why did you do that!", Daisy shouted at Messy with a huge blush on her face.
"You're tired. "
"What? "
"You get angry easily when your tired. "
"Oh weird. "
Daisy did all of a sudden feel tired. She saw Messy pick her up but her in his bed.
"Hey Messy, can I ask you something? "
"Sure what is it?"
"Why did you decide to have sex with me? "
"I told you it was because all our groups lovey dovey stuff and because I did like you,well I actually love you but is that too strong of a word for now. "
"No, that's fine with me. I actually kind of like it. "
Daisy said before getting on top of Messy and taking off his shirt. Messy blushed bright red and asked nervously,
"What are you doing? "
"Exactly what you see im doing taking off your shirt. Also do you want to do me~", Daisy asked seductively before taking off her shirt and kissing her now coltfriend.
"You don't have to if you don't want to. "
"Oh wow eh time moves fast right?. "
"Yes it does darling. make some more time go bye.''Daisy was speaking like she was drunk in love with Messy.
I want him to do me already
As soon as Daisy thought this she felt Messy kissing her and grabbing her waist. The room's air became heated, and so were their kisses more passionate and more heated than the last. They broke the kiss and started to stare at each other before Daisy said.
"That was amazing but I'm hot and I'm wet. "
Messy snapping back to reality and seeing the mare who was just two seconds ago making out with and replied,
"Want me to eat you out. "
*Messys thoughts*
OH WHAT THE FUCK YOUR WAY TOO HORNY TO THINK STRA-
Daisy sat better on the bed and spread her legs while looking at him seductively.
"You've been a very good colt so I think you deserve this reward. "
Messy approached Daisy's wet special hole. He put his muzzle on it and licked her thighs. She squirmed at his tongue licking her but made no noises. Messy continued licking her thighs before getting to his main course, he looked at Daisy who was breathing loud and looking at him like she was begging him to just eat her out.
"Please. Messy. "
He instantly inserted his tongue in her and went so slow.
"FUCKKKK Messy more. "
Messy listening to his mares command and went faster, licking every corner that she had in her. She moaned louder and louder with her legs shaking she squeezed Messys head into her pussy and let him continue. He continued, his flow was there and she kept moaning with pleasure and placing her hoof on his head.
"Messy I'm gonna fuckkk why are so good at this. ", Daisy said in between her moans.
Messy then stopped licking to her exhausted but filled with pleasure. After a few minutes she then kissed him on the cheek before she said,
"I think now you are ready for the real main course. "
Messy looked at Daisy as she removed his pants and sat on his stallions pride.
"Ready my good colt~. "
"Yes. "
Daisy then put his wood in her and started to ride him. Messy sighed with pleasure as Daisy continued and moaned softly. Daisy picked up the pace and Messy was high on pleasure just whimpers came out when he wanted to talk and Daisy was now as loud as she was before.
"Can you go rough on me. "
As soon he heard this he took her by the hair and pushed her into the closet pillow and she arched her back allowing Messy to have full control over her. She slapped her behind and he started ramming Daisy, her moans were muffled by her biting the pillow. He continued and bit her shoulder and went faster. They both reached their climaxes and fell on the bed in a bliss of pleasure.
"You were amazing. "
"Thank you Messy but I'm going to go shower. "
After they both washed they fell asleep in Messys bed.
The next day. Daisy saw Messy laying in her chest peacefully and giving her a tight bear hug.
"Okay Messy I think we should get up. "
Messy opened his eyes and jumped out the bed blushing.
"We have sex and you blush for this. "
"What it's embarrassing."
"Whatever you dork I'm going to make you something to eat. That isn't me. "
Daisy kissed Messy and went to his kitchen.
Oh my she is hot.
Messy sat there in the bed blushing red and looking stupid before he heard,
"ALRIGHT come eat ya cute dork."
"Okay. "
Messy put on a red shirt with the words. "Chill" in small letters. He then went to go eat. It was just eggs and he looked up to see that Daisy somehow got dressed, she wore one of Messys black jackets and she wore his lucky necklace.
"Why are you wearing my jacket and my necklace? "
"It looks good on me right!"
"Yeah eh it does. "
He blushed and finished eating his food.
"So you ready to go babe. "
"Yeah of course I am ya cute dork. "
They left the apartment, took the elevator which took quite a while for some reason and started walking to the college. They talked a lot about wrestling and her science projects.
They got the college still very deep in conversation with each other of course they did kiss a couple of times before they saw Bolt staring at his flying helmet which was nearly plain black but with red lighting strikes and the number 69. Messy still laughs at the sight of this as on a stallions night sleepover they dared him to make his number permanently while playing some weird mix of spin the wheel(it has yes which means you must do the dare and no which means you avoid it). He still hates them for it but it was funny and on that same day he remembered how Bolt was blushing like a steam pot when Sunny sat next to him and his leg tapped rapidly as both their legs touched it was funny.
Messy then said,
"You alright Bolt. "
He blushed and said while hiding a part on his helmet
"Yeah totally yeah eh. Also when did you guys start dating I like your guys couple. "
Daisy then replied,
"Thank you for the compliment but we'll be off come on my good colt. "
Daisy kissed Messy and they left in the distance.
Phew close one Bolt close one
He took his hoof off of the part of the helmet that his was hiding to reveal it was a drawing of Sunny and with the words, "The beautiful mare I like her name is Sunny because she's my sunshine. "
Fuck you Scribble for that stupid dare on Stallions night but then again you did get sit next to Sunny she so pretty. OH FUCK OFF BRAIN
> Dangerous encounters
"You okay mate, remember it's me and you on the radio today. ", Tumble said while chewing on a piece of bubblegum.
"Yeah yeah. ", Bolt said as he put on his helmet and said,
"1,2,3 you can hear this also please don't chew in the mic it's loud as fuck. "
"Got it I can hear you. ", Tumble said as he swallowed his bubblegum.
They both started walking to the field. It was peacefully quiet and that was bad for Bolt as his voice in his head was louder than normal.
Sunny's pretty, You're going to win this race. I wonder if we will see Diamond Tiara. you might die on this track.
Bolt stopped at the thought of that and Tumble looked at him in confusion.
"You okay I'm starting to get suspicious of you lately first zoning out and now just stopping dead in your tracks. "
"I'm fine mate, I'll be okay. "
They walked onto the field when they saw Starmist with a helmet and Bolt instantly dashed to her and hugged her.
"Oh Celestia you're okay. "
"A bit less on the hug it still hurts. "
Bolt broke the hug and looked at her. Her wings were in casts and so was a part of her head being deep in bandages. Her leg had a cast and she said then said with a stern voice,
"Stop admiring me, you're making me blush. "
Bolt immediately flapped his wings and snapped out of his zone of looking at Starmist.
"So you're your Misty steps radio. "
"Sure, now go your qualifying is about to begin. "
As she said this Bolt heard his favourite teacher's voice.
"OKAY EVERYPONY GET READY THERE'S ONLY 10 LEFT THIS IS THE FINAL ELIMINATIONS BEFORE FINAL PRACTICE THEN FINALLY THE TRIALS WILL BE HERE. "
Mr.W.Ares shouted and the crowd erupted. Besides Bolt he just smirked and got up for his lap as he got to go first.
You got this
He immediately started his lap, dodging the fake buildings and going extremely fast. He crossed the line with a 1.36.1
"Good lap Bolt, that's 1.36.1 your fastest mate. "
"Yesssss FUCKING YESSS COME ON. "
Bolt immediately ran to Tumble and hit his arm and they both laughed in joy. Most of the other ponies did their laps and the board for the top 3 looked like this.
1.Bolt 1.36.1
2.Misty Step 1.38.9
3.Storm keeper 1.39.1
Horizons lap was the same as the last time but with a big improvement but still 4th position with a 1.40.1.
"ALRIGHT NOW GO WARM UP FOR YOUR RACE AND BOLT PLEASE COME HERE. ", Mr.W.Ares said with a smirk and gestured to Bolt to come over. Bolt flew over to Ares and asked,
"What is it? "
"Don't think about messing up you got this chum like how I got my beautiful wife. "
Ares said as he pulled a picture of his wife out his pocket and kissed it.
"You know if you got a girlfriend you could use her pictures as a lucky charm. "
"Shut up sir I'm not getting one yet. And don't tell me that's a nude photo of PeaceBreaker. "
"OH Boy you bet it is but also. "
Ares pulled out more pictures from his mini bag around his neck and he then said,
"Oh wanna see my actual lucky charm. "
"Don't tell me it's a nude. "
Ares took off his cap and a photo was of his wife in a wedding dress.
"Trust me love is a great thing but you keep on fighting it because I can see when my team is fighting their own struggles so go stretch and remember to get yourself a lucky charm. "
Get yourself a lucky charm
Ares words stuck in his like glue. Bolt then said,
"Sure whatever you say. "
Bolt then got his hair ruffled by Ares and he then went to warm up for the race. The time was now 2:30pm. 30 minutes to the big race that Bolt was preparing for. He had a lot of time to warm up but he went to Tumble.
"You wanna win this. ", Bolt said while fistbumping Tumble
"What do you mean "me" it's all you dumbass. "
"But you are coaching. "
"And you're the one who could die doing this remember that dumbass, because you still need your Sunny Walker to walk down the isle and-"
"Okay shuttt uppp. ", Bolt groaned while looking in the crowd.
Tumble looked at what he was looking at to see it was Sunny, in a blue jacket and a pink cap.
"Look, it's your wife. ", Tumble said while nudging Bolt aggressively.
"Yeah I know.", Bolt said while stretching out his wings before realising what he just said "WAIT SHIT I DIDN'T MEAN TO SAY THAT. ", Bolt then blushed and flapped his wings aggressively.
"Bro you don't have to be shy, it's feelings dude and you should appreciate that."Tumble said calmly before picking up a piece of bubblegum and starting to chew on it.
"Fine I like her alot but I have to ignore my feelings for now as I need to get into the equestria games. "
"That's going to come around and bite you in the ass. ", Tumble said while chewing on a piece of bubblegum.
"Better keep that chewing off radio mate. "
"Fine but still you need to warm up. "
Tumble started Bolt's warm up session and it lasted pretty long.
"HEY Dudes. ", A familiar dragon said while carrying a light green pegasus.
"Sup and I'm guessing you gave her some serious game last night if you are carrying Hefty. "
"Oh she's fine and yes I did that. Well she is very tired, she looks like a alicorns perfection in a pegasus "
"This is disturbing to talk about in public, you guys know that right. Also that's cute adorable even", Tumble said.
"I say it's corny, very corny. "
"Should've said to me when I told Daisy I like her. ", Messy said while he had Daisy under his arm.
"Messy you're making me blush. ", Daisy said while covering her face.
"You told me about like a few seconds ago it was cute. "
"Stilllll. ", Daisy groaned while blushing red.
The group started to laugh. Then Scribble said,
"How's the Sunny helmet you like it don't you. "
"very fucking funny Scribble I'm soooo enjoying it. ", Bolt replied to Scribble sarcastically.
"Bro i didn't even notice that, Ohhhh the dare that's how it was made. ", Messy said while laughing.
"OKAY RACERS TO YOUR POSITIONS. ", the mare announcer said.
"Okay I'll go now. ", Bolt said before putting on his helmet.
"Good luck mate. ", Scribble said while kissing Hefty on the cheek who was still asleep but the love in his eyes were like flashing lights.
"Yeah good luck with the race you got this. ", Messy said before getting kissed by Daisy on the lips, he was then blushing and she was giggling.
I want what they have.
"The fuck am I thinking about. "
"Dude what are you thinking about, remember the radio guy here. ", Tumble said to Bolt on the radio while chewing on the same piece of bubblegum.
"Can you stop with the bubblegum?! And it's nothing ", Bolt replied aggressively before going to his position on the grid.
"Yeah good luck and also yeah that journal you told me to get from Sunny I have it. "
"Thanks mate, I don't want her to get hints. "
Ares showed the first flag 3,the second flag 2, the last flag 1.
And they were off with this being a 13 lap race it was important to keep stamina but Bolt built a good gap to Misty.
"Okay keep the pace normal got it Bolt? ", asked Tumble.
"Got it. "
Bolt kept that second gap between laps 1 to 7.With nothing changing in the top 3 order Bolt didn't have to care what was happening behind him and then heard Tumble say on radio,
"Okay you are in the lead by two seconds now. "
"Nice. "
Bolt kept the lead before he felt some gusts of wind behind him.
"Horizon behind. "
"He can go fuck himself. "
Bolt increased his speed and lost Horizon.
"Good stuff Bolt he is back in P4. "
"Yeah tell whoever is being radio of him, that he is just a show pony. "
Bolt easily kept the lead from laps 8 to 11.
"Okay that's two more laps to go hammer it. "
"Yes sir"
Bolt started to use the last amount of energy in his body to finish this fast. He dodged, weaved and nearly hit a lot of corners. He then saw Horizon coming on his inside and squeezing him closer and closer to a dangerous corner.
Lap 12
"Fuck this guy honestly I would've died bro"
"Yeah, increase pace. "
Bolt increased his speed and lost Horizon again but this time he was pissed. He went fast but not enough for him to pass out from lack of energy in him left but he went onto the last lap
Lap 13
It should be simple from here.
"P1 BOLT LET'S GOO. "
"FUCKING YES LET'S GOOO HAHAH. "
"P2 IS STORM KEEPER AND P3 IS HORIZON. "
"Fuck that guy"
Bolt then flew down to the podium to claim his fake gold medal. With Storm keeper coming behind him.
"Nice job Bolt. ",
Storm(23yrs) said to Bolt. He is a full black pegasus with blinding teal eyes and his hair very grey curly and it was nearly looking like a bush.
"Bro I should say that to you, talk about an underdog story. You were basically a nobody on track. ",
Bolt said to Storm while hitting him on the shoulder. Storm took his 2nd place medal and stood on the podium. Horizon came and it was silent between the 3 of them before they were handed champagne and they knew just what to do. They immediately shook the bottles and popped the bottles spraying it on each other and we're laughing. After a short bit, they said cheers and drank some. Before getting off the podium. Bolt looked to see his friends in the distance clapping and cheering but the only thing he could think about was.
Where's Sunny
He looked in the crowd to realise that Sunny was practising shot kick before he saw her start into his eyes. Bolt instantly looked away before feeling a tap on his shoulder.
"Nice race.", a familiar voice said.
Bolt looked behind her to see Starmist(22yrs) looking at Bolt with a bit of seductive look in Bolt's terms
"Eh yeah sure. ",
Bolt replied as he flapped his wings gently. He looked at more and snapped out of it.
"You alright. "
"You still like Horizon, right. "
"Nope, are you trying to ask me out, Bolt?"
"NO! , I'm just asking after you know the crash. "
"Oh yeah but no I don't like him. Also good luck with your trials race but other than that don't die Bolt. "
Don't die Bolt
The words stuck in his head then he felt his hair being ruffled.
"Nice job kid now go home and rest. ", Mr.W.Ares said proudly.
Bolt hugged him and went to his friends to say goodbye and separated ways from his friends but he stopped himself in the air to look at Sunny training.
"Stop staring mate, also wanna come to Diamonds pool party. It's happening tonight. ", Bumble said to Bolt.
Bolt was caught off guard by this and made a eep noise.
"Oh sure I'll be there but what time is it? "
"9pm."
Bolt nodded and first bumped Bumble.
Bolt flew to his apartment building and since he was alone the voices came back but he couldn't listen to any of them it sounded all like a lot of stuff that happened to him in the past few days.The voices got louder and louder until he heard a voice in his said
Your going to die on this track
It was the same thing thing Bolt thought about earlier and then he heard the stallion at the front desk say,
"Oh Bolt Jackson I have a letter for you. "
"Oh okay then. "
Bolt took the letter with confusion and said,
"Thank you I guess. "
Bolt took the elevator up with this strange black letter in his hoof.
Must be for the party or something
Bolt walked up to his apartment and fell on his bed, not because he was trying to relax, it's because he was tired. He just started to lay down on his pillow and looked at the letter and looked down at the floor and put the letter down again. He was very confused and tired, his mind was spinning all around.
You love Sunny and what if this is from her... ThThat would be nice WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE NO NO NO
His wings were relaxed before he shot up and out his bed flapped his wings and blushed aggressively. He took a few breaths before he thought to himself
Why are you like this so fucking stupid ahhh but she is so....DONT YOU DARE you know she'll reject you.
Bolt sat down and decided to lie on the floor with his face now looking at the ceiling.
But I do want her to date me but will I be the right stallion for her or will I be bad for her or will I hurt her.... YoYOU won't hurt her if you don't tell your feelings. MAN FUCK YOU SHE'LL REJECT US.
Bolt smacked his face hard and decided to rip open the letter but still while lying on the floor.
It read as follows
To Bolt
Yo brother
*Bolt's thoughts
SHIT IT'S MY BROTHER
Continued to read
I wanted to say that yes I'll be coming to your trials and so see you on Tuesday. Well I do want to see you get a Mare there just kidding with you but I will have a crush on a Mare but enough of me this is about me and if you do win I'll show you something and tell you something. But see you my bro and good luck. Also if you're wondering why I know you got to the trials your races were actually streamed and there is a wonderbolt scout watching you guys and I have to say Horizon was underwhelming. So bye bro
From: Stargazer Jackson ;) good luck with the mares
Bolt looked at the letter and smiled with a bit of tears in his eyes. He looked at the clock at the time. It was 6 pm. Bolt said in his head that it was now a perfect time to bathe. Bolt made the water warm and put little mint leaves in the water to make it smell nice and fresh
Well it works to make you smell nice I think well my mom did it when I was young and I did smell nice back then so should work
Bolt got in the bath and started to relax. His mind was still filled with constant thoughts and ideas but it was more relaxed now. He just sat there and washed his hair before hearing a knock on his door. He shouted in a pissed tone.
"WHO IS AT THE DOOR. "
There was no response from his door so he took a towel and covered his chest, his hair was very flat because it was wet and he opened the door to see a familiar light blue and light purple mare wearing a black dress with her shoulders exposed and it did show a lot of skin and it has gold strings and the back and she wore black lipstick.
Fuck it's tiara
Bolt just stared at her with his wings flapping aggressively.
"Oh, someone's happy to see me~",Diamond said to Bolt with a seductive tone.
"Oh fuck", Bolt replied and controlled his wings and said something to Diamond while she was leaning close to his face.
"Can I go finish my bath and I'll talk to you and no I'm not happy to see you."
"You are very spicy love but I know you crack when you're nervous~"
Diamond said this while putting her hoof on his chest. Bolt's mind was warm and all over the place. Bolt leaned in closer to Diamond's face before backing off.
"You see Bolt you crack but you deserve a mare like me and trust me you'll regret it even if you reject me tonight and you know that~"
Bolt blushed but his wings were relaxed and said,
"Fine, just let me finish my bath. "
Bolt closed the door and went to go finish his bath, his head was still fussy but he at least washed his body.
Nice decision Bolt, Diamond she's pretty hot and beautiful and cute. SHUT UP WE SHOULDN'T HAVE TOLD BUMBLE WE WERE GOING TO THIS PARTY.
Bolt put on a black suit with a gold tie because if he was literally going to be walking in with the Diamond Tiara then he could match her. Bolt walked to the door and opened it to see Diamond just sitting on the floor staring at the wall blushing.
"You okay Tiara? "
"Oh shit, yeah I am fine let's go and you look handsome Bolt and we are wearing matching nice outfit choice Bolt . "
"Thank you Tiara, now let's go. "
They started to walk to the elevator and it was silent, Bolt then took Tiara's hoof while his wings relaxed. He glanced at Tiara who was blushing a bit.
"Look who's nervous now hmm"
"Shut up Bolt I didn't think I would make it so far with you. "
Bolt laughed and Tiara just shouted back at him
"Hey you know it's not a stallion like thing to laugh at a mare. "
"You're just cute when you blush alright."
Tiara blushed more but this time stayed quiet and Bolt just smirked at her. They went down the elevator and had to walk some more streets before making it to her house.
"Wait what is the time, Tiara?"
"We are late, it's like half past nine or something like that."
They both walked in and the party already started.
"Wait a minute, isn't this a pool party? "
Bolt didn't feel Tiara's hoof and looked at her dressing next to him into a black bikini with gold strings.
Damn she looks pretty
Bolt then decided to take off his suit and he just wore a black swimming pants and no shirt.
"Tiara, you're starting too hard at me. "
Tiara blushed and wiped a bit of drool from her mouth.
"No I wasn't! "
Bolt just looked at her with a "You serious" face while she pouted. Bolt then took her hoof and walked her to the pool. Bolt looked around to see if any of his friends were there. He then saw Spike, Button mash, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle .
Bolt looked at Diamond like a puppy.
"Yes we will go there."
Diamond replied before getting flung away by Bolt.
"Yoooo Bolt, you're dating Tiara?"Button mash asked while holding Sweetie Belle's hoof.
"She's my date for the night but I know she wants to date me. And you two started dating when? "
Tiara blushed and then realised what he said,
"HEY NO THAT'S NOT TRUE. "
Sweetie Belle then giggled and said,
"Darling you are surely in love with Bolt, trust me being with a sister who fell in love with every stallion that looked her no offence Spike."
"None taken and besides I have my beautiful pegasus here with me and oh yeah Button has been dating her from when they were 16 they were just so good at hiding it no one found. ", Spike replied before kissing Scootaloo.
Bolt loved this, just being chill and with his thoughts being a bit more calmer.
"I'm going to get a drink. ", Bolt said to the group.
"Oh before you go darling. ", Diamond replied before kissing Bolt on the lips, leaving a lipstick mark on his lips.
Button mash laughed and said,
"You're basically wearing lipstick now. "
Sweetie Belle then replied seductively while holding Buttons face,
"Button mash you don't want me to say the time I put makeup on you and the one thing we tried in bed right honey. "
Button just blushed and let Bolt go.
Bolt was on his way to getting a little drink just to spoil himself a bit. He got him the drink before looking around the party, he saw by the pool that Sunny was here and she was talking to Horizon.
FUCK FUCK FUCK NO I CAN'T LET THIS HAPPEN wait why am I thinking like this I don't like her but I still want her, Diamond is just a date.
Bolt then saw Sunny and Horizon kiss in front of him. There just then his mind finally was blank and was calm. He just stood there looking at their kiss. Bolt didn't know what to say, think, do, react and how to feel.
Well she doesn't like you so just move on but why does it feel so fucking bad. You should let her do what she wants but I want to stop her.
Bolt stood very still before trying to take a step towards her, he wiped the lipstick off his face by drinking some of the beer and then with his wet lips he whipped it off. Before he saw that they both weren't in the pool they just disappeared.
Bolt walked back to the group and his face just being blank before making himself smile so no one asked him about what just happened. His group talked but all he could hear was loud sirens in his ears. He couldn't say anything, he just drank some beer while listening to them.
"Bolt you alright love? ", Tiara asked Bolt.
"Huh? Oh yeah totally. "
"Bolt what happened you were pretty silent for a hot 30 to 40 minutes. ", Spike asked while holding hooves with Scootaloo.
Bolts brain instantly thought
You want what they have, don't you? Yes I do but what's the point she's gone
Bolt looked at the floor zoning out.
"Bolt mate, you alright? ", Button asked while putting his arm over Sweetie Belle's shoulders
"I think I just need to swim, yeah like who comes to a pool party not to swim. ", Bolt said before running and jumping in the pool.
Bolt could feel the cold water against his fur, it was nice and calming. Bolt could still feel himself hating himself and all the stupid things he did, not admitting in his head that he liked Sunny, his stupid grade 8,9 and 10 decisions that made him get bullied and look like an idiot and his ability to not to stand up for himself and ask any mare out. He was an idiot and he knew it, he kept running away from problems and not fixing any of them. He just kept on focusing on himself and no one else, he wanted to be popular, cool, best at everything but was that really him.
He lifted his head above the water, gasping a bit for air. He looked around to see that there were a lot of ponies,dragons, griffins and even flipping changelings in the pool. Bolt realised that if he asked any of them, do you know who Bolt is they may recognize or not recognize him.
Bolt swam in the pool a bit before getting out of the pool and he saw Tiara handing him a towel.
"Dry up and you spent a lot of time in the pool. "
"Yeah and you spent no time in your own pool. "
"Well, makeup costs a lot of money, Bolt."
Bolt then picked up Tiara and said,
"Well you have a lot of money now, get in. "
Bolt then threw Diamond in the pool.
"BOLT I'M SO GOING TO GET YOU FOR THIS"
"Diamond, we aren't kids anymore. "
"Yeah I know that but still you act like one. "
"And so do you. "
They both stared into each other's eyes. Bolt standing on the edge of the pool and Diamond swimming in the pool.
"Get in here. "
"What. "
Bolt then got pulled in the pool with Tiara. Bolt opened his eyes in the water and surprisingly it didn't sting, He looked at Diamond and she looked back at him. Bolt thought she was going to kiss him but she then lipped the words,
"I know what happened and I'm sorry but life doesn't always go your way. '
Bolt then went out of the water.
"Where are they Diamond? "
" I know what happened but not where they went. "
"Can I leave? I'm tired of this bullshit. "
"You can leave and yes I know your pain but if you need anything you can come to me okay. "
"Yeah I got it. "
Bolt then told his friends good bye and then he heard Button said,
"Remember to tell Sunny you like her okay. "
Bolts face pulled before he turned around and said,
"Got it dude. "
Bolt put his clothes back on before walking out the front door to see Horizon smiling. Which Bolt ignored and just flew over his head making sure some leaves got in his hair.
Bolt got to his apartment fast but he didn't say anything about it, he just took the elevator up to his apartment level. Bolt got in his apartment room and fell on his bed. He thought about all his memories about him and Sunny, from the stupid ones, to the embarrassing ones, to the cute ones, to the funny ones and that one graduation picture of them together.
Bolt then felt himself crying but he didn't stop himself from crying. Bolt then just sat on his bed crying and he then said to himself.
"I love Sunny. "
> After party
Bolt woke up dazed and confused, he looked around his room.
"That can't be a dream. "
Bolt got up and then looked in a mirror to see he was wearing a black suit with a gold tie, the same exact outfit when he saw what happened.
It's fine she doesn't actually like Horizon, right, wait shit what time is it I have to be at practice at 3pm
Bolt dashed to his clock and it was now 12am. Bolt looked at the clock confused as he normally sleeps much past that, till like half past one so he was quite surprised. Bolt put on his racing outfit and ate some jam toast as usual. Bolt then heard a knock at his door.
Now that's fucking weird who could that be
Bolt after enjoying his jam toast opened the door to see Scribble.
"Yo dude can I come in? "
"Dude, what are you doing here? "
"Just wanting to talk. "
"Fine, get in here. "
Bolt and Scribble sat by the table.
"Scribble this is so ran-"
"I know what happened. "
Bolt got interrupted and his head felt funny.
"Who told you. "
"What do you mean? "told" dude I saw it. "
"Why didn't you tell me that you were there what if they were dating or crushing on each other what if they continued, WHAT IF THEY HAD SEX For fuck sake. "
Bolt was angry, pissed, confused
I know that didn't happen, she likes me right FUCKKKK why is it so hard to get one mare
Scribble just looked at him with a glare that told him that he was wrong so he leaned into his chair and asked,
"So then what about you and Hefty, what did you guys do last night? "
"She watched me draw and me talk all my nonsense down her ears. We then slept in each other's arms. It was nice. "
Imagine if that was me and OKAY THERE you should be happy for them
"Oh that's nice bro b-"
"Dude we need you to talk to Sunny alone. "
Bolt blushed and the thought of that and he looked at Scribble with a blushing red face and loud flapping wings. Scribble just smirked at him and said,
"Where's the tuff nut case now who wanted to ignore his feelings. "
"I accepted my feelings for Sunny and I should've done that earlier. "
Bolt who was still blushing looked again at Scribble who was now looking like he was about to laugh.
"What? "
Scribble bursted out laughing and said,
"Dude you literally sound like a character in Sunny's books that I read. "
Bolt blushed more and flapped his wings more.
"Man fuck you. "
Scribble laughed more and said,
"But still you fell hard for her didn't you? "
"Yes I did. "
Bolt sounded pissed and Scribble was still laughing to the point where Bolt wanted to hit the dragon.
"But no seriously you two were distant from each other that entire day it was strange but besides me explaining let's gooo to your practice. "
Bolt was confused and looked at the time it was half past one. Bolt walked out the door and Scribble followed.
"Dude but still you didn't have to come to my apartment. What about Hefty, isn't she alone now without her knight in shining armour? ",
Bolt said in a joking way before Scribble replied,
"Well one yes I did stuff like that requires just me and you, two she's fine I've done worst like literally scare her in the middle of the night because I was looking out the window and I looked at her and let's just say I nearly gave her a heart attack and three dude don't even talk with your "I finally accepted my feelings" stuff dude you already had feelings from the beginning of high school and same with me just you want to be popular now. "
Bolt stopped in his tracks and blushed and flapped his wings but was also very confused and asked,
"How do you know that? "
"My friend i have known you for your whole high school life of course I know how to read you. "
"Dude one time you thought just because I was looking at someone back in grade 8 that I liked them. "
"Well I meant lucky guess. "
Bolt and Scribble took the elevator and got to the lobby, they left the building and now we're walking to school but both of them didn't fly.
"But I have an idea I'm going put you guys together. "
"Dude how would you manage it. "
"Easy just set you two up to the movies. "
"Dude no that wouldn't work. "
"You just don't think it will work because you two at the movies will count as a date. "
Bolt when he heard this he blushed bright red and he flapped his wings aggressively.
"Dude i'll do it but it doesn't count as a date. "
"Since you are so easy to read, are you going to get her a gift and yes it shall be a date. "
Okay how did he guess that
"Pfft I'm not going to get her a gift and plus I have to go to training so bye bro. "
"Oh yeah give this to Sunny and remember to go to Highest Cinema at 9pm."
"Weird name for a cinema but sure. "
Bolt took the letter from Scribble who was grinning with all of his sharp teeth being exposed.
"Dude what is in this letter that makes it so special. "
"Nothing much, don't worry about it. "
Bolt shrugged and flew to his training. He landed to see Mr.W.Ares and Ms.P.Ares talking with Sunny also holding a letter
Wait what if that's a letter for me
Bolt stood dead still like he did when he saw Sunny kiss Horizon. It was weird he couldn't move, his head was spinning and his heart was going to probably run out of his body. Bolt then saw Sunny staring at him with a smile and she was hiding the letter.
Bolt didn't know what to do; he just blushed and waved while his wings flapped aggressively.
Okay be calm Bolt this your friend, that you like but still be calm
Bolt then saw Sunny walking up to him and Bolt was still dead still but he was trying his hardest to not blush.
"Hey Bolt, how are you doing? ", Sunny asked Bolt while blushing.
"Oh eh hey Sunny, I'm doing great and eh I actually have something for you. "
Bolt replied while handing Sunny the black letter.
"That reminds me, I have also a letter for you. "
Sunny gave Bolt a pink letter. Bolt was happy and confused. They both just stood there awkwardly, both of them waiting for each other to speak but they just made awkward eye contact before Sunny said,
"Good luck with practice, you look great out there. "
Bolt blushed but his wings were more relaxed and replied ,
"Thank you, but you also look great, your shot kick skills are amazing. "
I mean she does look very pretty and cute.
"Thank you Bolt I'll be off to practise. ", Sunny said while readjusting her glasses.
She was wearing a blue tank top and some shorts.
She's hot, okay shut up we got to focus for the race
Bolt walked down to the field and started to warm up and he was focused but still the thought if he turned around he would see Sunny was making him shaky and very nervous. Bolt never felt like this since high school and it didn't feel so good.
"Bolt, come set up your radio with me. ", Mr.W.Ares asked Bolt while biting on a lollipop stick and waving for him to come over.
Mr.W.Ares was wearing a red shirt and blue jeans, no cap which was surprising for Bolt but he started walking over to Ares. Bolt didn't know what to think about, it was all about the race, Sunny and what will happen in the future. Bolt's voices after accepting his feelings for Sunny didn't make it more quiet, it made it more loud.
"Okay let me just plug this in here and you're finished. "
Bolt snapped out his trance and looked at Ares with concern before awkwardly saying,
"Oh uh yeah got it. "
"Alright but are you okay, you look concerned or stressed but what is up. ", Ares replied back to Bolt with a sad look on his face.
"Yeah yeah I should be fine. "
"You sure Bolt I don't want you to do the same thing as... Well someone important to me. "
"Yeah I should be fine."
Liar
"Trust me. "
Dont
"Also who's this someone, is it your wife? "
Your going to die on this track
After Bolt said that few sentences, that same thought was stuck in his head.
"Well if I tell you my secret, you'll tell me yours also we must make this quick training start in 30 minutes. ", Ares said while putting out his hoof
"Deal. "
Bolt shook his hoof before he sat down with Ares.
"Well let just say that I accidentally pushed two daring ponies too far. "
"Wait so it's not someone, it's two people. "
"Yes and these two ponies pushed another two ponies too their limit. Keep in mind the original two can handle pressure but the other two weren't even pegasus they were unicorns of another unicorn here at this college. I just don't have the strength to tell that unicorn that her parents died because of me. "
Ares explained to Bolt, his face was calm but pale. Ares looked at Bolt in his eyes. They were very gold and then he said,
"I caused the death of your friend's parents and she won't believe me that it's not her fault because I told her and she was so stressed she ran to the bathroom. And I think she's still struggling with it but you can help me. I know you probably have something to do but quickly now and tell me your secret after the trials but I want you to tell her that it's my fault. "
Ares' words came down very fast and Bolt was confused but he knew what he must do.
"Got it, count on me. "
Bolt instantly dashed away from Ares to find Daisy. Bolt dashed everywhere to find her with Messy talking about some nerdy stuff and they were holding hooves.
You want to do that with Daisy
Bolt shaked his head before going to Daisy at a fast pace. He touched down on the floor with a huge gust of wind.
"Daisy I'm her-"
"Nah I'm fine. "
Bolt looked at her with confusion and Messy just sat there brushing her hair.
"Did you even now what I was about to say. "
"Well because I'm fine now and I know he's taking the blame but tell him it's okay because my dad said I must be as hard as nails so I took his evidence but of course not after long hours of crying but now I'm doing better and I have an idiot to call mine. ",
Daisy explained to Bolt before hearing Messy say,
"I'm not an IDIOT. "
"Oh look your favourite blue bird. "
"WHERE..OH FOR FUCK. "
Daisy kissed his cheek that made him flustered.
Bolt looked at them and smiled.
You want that to be you
Bolt flew away from them and was very pissed at the thought in his head. He told Ares about it who just replied with a nod probably because he was smoking again.
Bolt got to warming up. He was not paying attention to anything, he could only hear birds and grass at his feet.
He saw Horizon and instantly his mind was at that party. Bolt felt his head was warm. Horizon smirked at Bolt with his eyes being more cold than ever. Bolt then saw that Horizon was next to him.
"You're jealous, aren't you?",Horizon said with a playful tone while smirking at Bolt.
"Oh of what, that my crush just kissed you, she probably doesn't even like you. ", Bolt snapped back his angry tone being very noticeable.
"Well we did have a fun time. But unfortunately for me she didn't want that extra fine time. ", Horizon said to Bolt.
Bolt got his hoof at Horizons shirt and nearly picked him up but he calmed himself down.
"See you can't even get with a beautiful mare like her. ", Bolt said in a cocky tone.
"So what, I got many mares who want me. "
"Yet you're single. ", Bolt said with a smirk now on his face and he couldn't hold his laugh at the thought of Horizons inability to obtain thy beautiful mares.
Horizon with a pissed face left Bolt alone.
Bolt got back to warming up before he felt a tap on his shoulder. It was Storm keeper.
"Yo how's it going. "
"Eh great I need advice since you know mares and all that. ", Storm said to Bolt nervously while playing with his feathers.
Bolt laughed at the sight of one of the coldest and calm pegasus he started to know, for him basically acting like a literal puppy.
"Why are you laughing? ", Storm asked with a huge blush on his face which you could even see through his black fur.
"Oh you're just so calm and relaxed even more than me so what's up pal who do you like, love, want to take to the bed. ", Bolt replied while tapping on Storm's shoulder.
"Diamond Tiara is who I like. "
"Oh yeah just be kind to her and she'll be blown away. "
"Yeah I know that I saw her at a party. Which I saw you with Tiara, funny but anyway what type of flowers does she like? "
Bolt's mind went blank after hearing that Storm was at the party. He was just blankly staring at the ground before Storm tapped his shoulder and asked,
"You alright bro. "
"Yeah I should be fine, just get her black roses and maybe after the trials tomorrow you can join me and my friends in O&O and we'll set you up. ", Bolt replied with enthusiasm.
"Okay sure and I do have a character already so yeah I'll be joining and I'll get her the roses. "
Then both of them heard Ares call them.
"Okay my great stallions, you'll be doing a sprint race of 5 laps and an endurance race of 30 laps. "
"Alright then sure. ", Horizon said in a calm tone.
All three of them lined up at the starting line and raced.
Lap 1
Bolt was in the lead by a 12 second gap and was relaxing into his position very comfortingly.
Lap 2
Bolt gets caught up on by Storm. Which made him quite impressed.
Lap 3
Horizon caught up to both of them and took the lead till the final lap.
Lap 5(final lap)
Bolt was pacing down and over Horizon and Storm was on the side of Horizon. It was a close finish but Storm got first, Bolt second and Horizon third.
Ares then called them over and they did the endurance race which was boring since no overtaking but still had to be fast. Bolt kept looking at Sunny doing her practice. Sunny was doing well in his eyes, He swore that he saw her look at him and smirked before swinging her tail and continued her practice. Bolt was love struck. It was like he was in love for the first time again, it was very embarrassing and confusing to him. Bolt was keeping on during the endurance before seeing her open the letter and her face was flustered. Bolt was very confused on why she was flustered but he hadn't read the letter.
Sunny looked up at him and was looking back at the letter and him before leaving for no reason.
Weird what in celestia is in that letter.
After the endurance they could leave but had to remember that the trials were 10am for them and they had to be here at 7am or 8am depending.
Bolt instantly grabbed the letter Sunny gave to him and opened it to read it.
To: Bolt :)
Hi Bolt I was hoping to go with you to the cinemas so here's a ticket for the movies, I'll get mine at the cinemas. Also F.Y.I this is a date
FROM: Sunny (cool flower drawing.)
Bolt's face was flustered and warm, his wing's were flapping aggressively and he was confused so he flew up in the air and punched the air in excitement. Bolt then felt a tap on his shoulder from Starmist of all ponies.
"Did you really help Storm with advice on getting with somepony. "
"Yeah why?. "
"Who is it? "
"Tiara."
"TIARA!? "
"Yeah, what's wrong with that? "
Starmist(20yrs) composed herself before saying,
"Well I just didn't know he liked her and I'm just looking out for him. "
"You like him don't you. "
"If it wasn't obvious idiot, can I join this O&O party so I could get closer to him? "
"Sure but don't fumble it alright and remember it's a day after the trials. "
"Sure thing got it. "
Bolt flew back to the ground to get his stuff and saw that Storm was chilling on the stands alone.
So Bolt went over to go check up on him.
"Yo dude you alright. "
Storm jumped out his seat and looked at Bolt.
"Oh it's you, well I need more advice, so great timing. "
"Okay what's your question. "
Better not be confusing
"Have you ever liked 2 mares at the same time. "
Ohhhh okay yeah not so confusing had that like a day ago before I realised I liked the most beautiful mare. Mind it's like you're writing a corny romance novel. Sorry
"Well yeah and my advice is to go for the one you know more and spend more time with. That is the advice I give you. "
"Thanks bro", Storm said before flying away and that was Bolt's queue to go.
Bolt flew to his apartment building fast but saw that Storm was walking in the same apartment as him. He flew down towards him and said,
"I finally have a buddy in my apartment. "
"Oh cool I'm in 164 you? "
"How the fuck didn't I see you I'm 163."
Bolt and Storm walked to the elevator and went to his apartment and put in his key to see it was already open. Bolt was confused and opened the door to see Scribble and Tumble.
"Ohhhh damn you brought a dude I should've brought you two tickets instead. ", Scribble said with confusion and sarcasm.
"Dude this is Storm buddy from the trials and what movie is it to anyways and I'm going to get dressed. ", Bolt replied, looking physically in panic mode.
"Wow chill and it's to Velociraptors VS Ponies 3.",Tumble said with his face half blue.
"Okay cut the bullshit,what movie is it? ", asked Bolt with the face of a puppy.
"It's a choose your own movie ticket, so you two can decide on the movie and I thought you read the ticket? . ", Tumble replied.
"Let's just say he got a little bit excited. ", Storm said with a cold tone.
Bolt blushed and flapped his wings.
'Who bought the tickets? ", asked Bolt looking around with confusion.
He heard a spinning chair and there sat Daisy.
"Well it was me and these two. ", Daisy said as Messy came from behind the seat and Hefty from the bathroom.
"Thanks guys but I'm probably gonna be whatcha call it a wuss. ", Bolt said in embarrassment and nervousness as his wing's flapped more aggressively.
Bolt heard a loud OHHHH COME ON from his friends.
"Fine I'll try and what time is it and what apartment does she stays in. "
"Well it's 6pm suddenly that doesn't make any sense and she lives in 189.",Storm said while holding a piece of paper and he continued to read the piece of paper, "And it says that you must go get your princess yours truly BM. "
"OHHH THE MIGHTY BUTTON MASH HAS RETURNED. ", Tumble shouted loudly and proudly.
All the stallions celebrated but Storm, Bolt and Messy didn't even though you could see a small smirk from Messy.
"You're cute when you smile, Messy. ", Daisy said with a smile before blushing as she just something corny in her terms. With Messy also being all red like a rose.
Through all the chaos, Bolt put on a black suit with a bright red tie. Bolt walked in front of his friends who all gave approval and Tumble gave him a chocolate to calm him down and he flew out in quick pace getting a lot of different flowers but singulars. Bolt got to the Highest Cinema and looked around for Sunny before noticing a mare with her hair not in a ponytail just letting her hair flow and in a red dress that looks like you put glitter on it.
Wow she is pretty and beautiful and.... Okay Okay I get it I get it.
" Hi, how are you doing and so what do you think about my outfit.", Sunny asked with a blush on her face.
If I die tonight this is the last thing I want to see. Okay Bolt I know we accepted our feelings BUT THE FUCK WAS THAT
"Bolt you alright. ", She asked with a confused voice.
"Oh yeahhhh totally I'm good. ", He replied to her with an awkward smile while scratching his neck.
"Also you look amazing Sunny. ", He said with his wings flapping aggressively.
"Thank you Bolt, you look quite handsome yourself. "
They both looked around at the walls and the movie posters to see what to watch.
"So what do you want to watch? ", Bolt asked while looking at the posters.
"Oh how about the vampire's tooth. ", She replied with a happy screech
"What now?"
"Oh vampire bat pony and earth pony fall in love with each other even though it is ruled as a disgusting thing in their society. "
"Sure thing. "
This is going to be soooooo boring but anything for herrr. WHAT DID I JUST SAY ABOUT SAYING SUCH CORNY STUFF IDIOT
Bolt's face was bright red and his wings started flapping.
"You alright Bolt? ", Sunny asked with confusion and said, "We can pick another movie if you want to. "
"I'm fine, let me go get the tickets for us. ", Bolt said while flapping his wings more.
Bolt took two seconds and they got the tickets while he saw Sunny getting popcorn and they made eye contact with a thought both popping up in their heads
Should I ask/tell her/him about the party
Bolt shaked his head and walked towards Sunny.
Nah I think we can save that for after the movie.
He walked to Sunny with a smile and tapped her shoulder, which made her jump a bit with a snap at her feet as she dropped some popcorn.
"Bolt seriously. ", Sunny said with an annoyed voice.
"Come on, we can chill in the cinema for a bit till it starts. "
"Fine but I get the first few popcorn's since you dropped some. "
Bolt rolled his eyes and took her hand which made her blush. Bolt then got in the cinema, but first double checking if it was the right one. Bolt then got to their seats and sat down waiting for the movie. It was silent, you could hear the slightest movement.
"Bolt, I'm sorry. ", Sunny said while playing with her hair.
Bolt jumped at a voice like it was some sort of horror movie but then looked back at Sunny.
"Sorry for what?. ", He asked with concern.
"The party, I was stupid I thought he would, well, make me fill the gap of jeal- I mean stress of the trials. ", Sunny replied with a blush but kept a serious face.
"Oh, well thank you for caring about me but you should've said sooner but I forgive you plus we're not kids, stuff happens. ", Bolt replied with a calm tone while holding Sunny's hoof.
But it still hurt like hell didn't it Bolt, Shut up me
"Well that's a relief. I was worried you'd hate me because I tried to get with your rival. ", Sunny replied with a sigh while leaning in chair but then jumped at the realisation of holding
Bolts hoof.
"Well I mean you kind of didn't do it so your good but still kinda felt like shit. ", Bolt said but his tone was sad with a bit of tears visible in his eyes but because of the lights dimming Sunny didn't notice.
You hate her don't you. SHUT UP that's not it, she may have done that but we still like her, people make mistakes. But this one is grave. No I forgive her. No you don't. YES WE DO REMEMBER
Sunny looked at him confused and asked, "You alright?"
Bolt sat back in his chair and lied,
"Yeah. "
"Is there anything worrying you right now? "
Everything is worrying me right now, how tomorrow's race will go, will I ever be your colt friend, if anything will work out, why does life have to be so confusing, your life can be going so great then in an instant it's bad again, you can't decide how you'll life will go. It's a game that just sucks, I just want to know that everyone and everything will be okay. I just want to for once not overthink or hate myself but fuck it's hard. Even if your popular fuck nobody's going to remember me or anything about me, and that's a thought I hate. Why can't I be normal and have a peaceful life.
"No, I'm fine, trust me. "
Bolt lied again, it sucks to lie but he doesn't want anyone worrying about him.
Bolt and Sunny watched the movie in silence as it should be in a cinema, eating their popcorn and drinking their juices which they both choose apple juice. Bolt finished the popcorn.
For a pretty generic romance movie, it's pretty goooddd dude, Sunny's holding our hoof right now. What?
Bolt looked at his left hoof to see Sunny was holding it and had her excited small smile on her face.
You remember that smile that's the smile she had when you were supposed to confess to her on prom you wuss. Hey she was very pretty and I got a nose bleed and got nervous so shut up. Wait if she had that smile on prom she was excited to see me.
Bolt looked at Sunny deeply, his wings were spreading out slowly. Bolt didn't care about the movie right now, the only thing, the pony in the world who kept him feeling like him was Sunny.
That was corny. I'M TRYING TO HAVE A MOMENT HERE OTHER ME
Bolt still was looking at her before he looked back at the movie, his wings were surprisingly wider spread than usual but he kept it and made sure not to get nervous.
The lights went on as he saw the credits roll.
How long was I looking at her for
"Wow, that movie was boring. ", Sunny said while getting out of her seat and stretched.
"Reallyyyyy I thought it was decent for a romance movie. ", Bolt did the same as Sunny and walked behind her out of the theatre.
Bolt looked at her hoof, remembering he held it, his wing's flapping slowly. Sunny was ranting to him, how the movie was much worse than the director's other works and that the romance was dry. Bolt kept on listening before seeing outside of the cinema across the street was Scribble holding a sign that said
Wuss
Bolt just mouthed the words,"Fuck off. " and walked Sunny to her apartment building. Sunny's ranting died down, but now she was talking about her book and how she'll do better than the director's work. Bolt didn't damn well understand some stuff she was saying but he didn't care, he liked listening to her talk and he didn't care if his ears would bleed, he would continue to listen to her.
Bolt then got to her apartment and was a little bit sad, since they had to separate.
"I'll see you tomorrow Bolt, even though the movie was boring I had a nice night. "
"It was your choice. "
"Oh shut up. "
Sunny replied then gave Bolt a kiss on the cheek.
HOLY SHIT FINALLY WOOHOOOOOOOOOO
Bolt just stood there in silence and looked at Sunny with a smile.
"What, you want more. "
As soon as Sunny said this Bolt muttered silently,
"Yes. ", Bolt then said nervously while flapping his wings, "Oh I got to go to sleep for tomorrow. "
"What. ", Sunny blushed and then said, "OH I DIDN'T MEAN THE WANT MORE - FUCK I MEANT A CHOCOLATE, STUPID BRAIN. "
Bolt laughed and said,
"Sure. "
Sunny gave Bolt a chocolate and said,
"No coconut and it's your favourite, white chocolate. "
"Thank you, wait I never told you I liked white chocolate. "
"Eep. "
Sunny shut the door and said through it,
"Our friends told us that. "
"Thanks also forgot I got you something. "
"What is it. "
Bolt opened the door and gave a single flower the rest fell out when he flew and a book called Love's a myth, the whispers.
"OHHH FINALLY I GET TO FINISH THIS BOOK SERIES THANK YOU BOLT. "
"Welcome and Bolt out, see you tomorrow Sunny. "
"WILL DO BOLT, YOU BETTER BE LIGHTING TOMORROW, GOT IT THUNDER. "
"Yeah. "
Bolt walked out of the apartment in a blitz and had a smirk on his face
Thunder that's new. I like it.
Bolt got back to his apartment fast and went to his apartment even faster.
Bolt opened his door, his room was messy.
Heh just like Messys hair
Bolt got into his bed and looked around his room before saying,
"I'm about to out speed well everyone. "
> Speed isn't all there is
*in Bolt's dream
"You're going to win this race and if you do, I'll tell you a secret. ", Sunny said with a giggle.
"Got it, for you Sunny. ", Bolt gave Sunny a hug that felt like it was never going to end, his heart racing faster than the thoughts could appear in his head.
He left the hug and went to go race. His racing went blurry before he was falling to the ground as the announcers shouted,
"Bolt ran out of energy and is falling at a rapid pace. "
Bolt then saw the ground and
Crack
Bolt instantly woke up in a panic, looking around his room. He was sweating, he looked down at his outfit. He was wearing his underwear and no shirt.
Bolt then got a flush of emotions and then ran to the bathroom to puke.
Bolt puked for a while. There was a sound coming from Storm's room but he didn't notice. He got up and washed his face. He looked at the mirror and saw himself. Heavy eye bags, cuts on arms and close to hips. He felt his eyes get blurry and tears flowing down his face.
Bolt was nervous, not because "Oh yeah big race. " He thought of Starmists crash and his brother's crash. He thought about the risk of dying, the risk of losing everything to a little mistake. He would lose not just everything, he would lose everyone he loved, His parents, brother, friends and Sunny.
Bolt got up and looked deep into his own eyes in the mirror and whispered to himself.
"You signed up for this and plus we are good at it. "
He smiled a bit before his reflection moved on its own and replied,
Still there's a big risk at hand so don't get too cocky and remember I'm you.
Bolt shaked his head and his normal reflection was back. Tears are still falling. His clock told him it was 3am. Bolt walked to his closet, put on a white short sleeve shirt and some black long pants, He felt something in his pocket but ignored it. He took the elevator down to see the mail mare was her Derpy Hooves. And she asked Bolt,
"What are you doing up at this hour? "
Derpy was barely even visible at this time, her grey skin, yellow eyes and her light yellow mane was barely even recognized by Bolt's eye's but he replied,
"Nothing just going to....eh walk as usual. "
"Well, have a nice walk and enjoy the rest of your day. "
"Thanks Derpy. "
Bolt walked out his apartment, Princess Luna's moon high in the black dark sky. The cold breeze calmed him down, it felt like the ocean breeze when he was with his parents on vacation. It calmed him before looking up at the stars. Nothing was different about them than any other night but it felt different. Bolt then saw a stallion with the same figure in the darkness as Tumble. The figure was on the sidewalk just standing there.
Bolt started to walk in his direction and waved his hoof to see that it was Tumble. He seemed stressed and he could see that as Tumble had tiny bite marks on his hooves. It was his nervous habit.
"Hey buddy what's wrong, it's your friend Bolt. "
Tumble jumped at his cold voice that sounded like he was about to murder someone in a horror movie.
"Oh it's you Bolt, how are you doing? "
"Good but I asked you a question first so can you answer it but take your time as I see you're nervous. "
Tumble fidgeted with his hooves and the grounds, cold, dark and icy grass.
"W.. Well *sniff* I got a offer to go study botany further with *sniffle* a high paying job if I get a degree but... ", Tumble just started bawling his eyes out and Bolt wasn't the best at comforting ponies or dragons or anyone of that matter but he patted his back and said,
"Dude that's great but why don't you want to go? "
It felt like ages waiting for Tumble's reply but then he said,
"It's in Manehattan and I just don't want to leave you guys. You guys have been here nearly my whole life. Now I have to start all over. I do but don't want to go. "
"You have to go, it's your whole passion. You deserve this man. You deserve it more than me going to the trials, you did this your entire life and we didn't even know each other before high school. So go for it and when do you leave. "
"6am,yes I mailed everyone letters, I'll try to keep in contact as much as I can. "
Tumble again cried but this time bear hugged Bolt. Bolt could barely breathe but it was fine. Tumble just wanted to make sure he got to say goodbye to one of his friends before he went.
"So why didn't you want to tell us about you leaving. "
Bolt asked with concern after they hugged and Tumble's words struck something that Bolt had
I didn't want anyone to worry about me.
Bolt just stood there for a bit before saying,
"Well then it makes sense but I'll explain this to the rest of them when we have O&O. "
"Well thank you but they are getting letters from me, I'm pretty sure Derpy already delivered them. "
THAT'S WHY SHE WAS THERE
Bolt just hugged his best friend who was with him throughout the entirety of high school, he could visually see all the memories of their friendship.
"Good luck with your journey. "
"Good luck with your race and remember. "
Speed isn't all there is
Bolt just smiled at him and gave him a hoof bump before leaving. Knowing he would never see his best friend for a while. He turned around as he had something in his pocket for him.
"Yo Tumble catch! ", Bolt shouted.
Tumble caught it, to see it was a folded paper that said,
Whatever pony gets there career first owes the other pony to throw the other in a pool with their favourite clothes on
"I owe you one. "
Bolt walked off with mixed feelings of happiness and sadness. But he knew he would be okay. Tumble was a great stallion and a place like Manehattan needed a stallion like him. Bolt still felt a sharp pain in his chest. That was his best friend and he was leaving, and who knows if he will return but he knew it was for the best.
Bolt flew up in the air at a silent yet fast pace. He went above the dark clouds and looked at the beautiful moon, it was shining bright at night. Even when everyone was asleep, it would be a great view for anyone that is awake but they are sleeping. Bolt just smiled and looked at the moon, he just hovered there and stared at the moon in all its glory and hoped nothing would go wrong with today's race.
"Hopefully it will go alright. "
Bolt flew down to his apartment building and went to his apartment fast just to chill and shower.
Bolt got in the shower noticing his appearance, those scars would never leave him from high school and college. He would probably have to keep on living with it. He went into the shower and his thoughts were clear as he took a cold shower instead of a warm one to remind him of vacation with his parents. He just smirked and sat in the shower, it didn't take long for him to wash but the thing that made him take long was his zoning out. He just thought about his life and it's funny and great moments. He got out of the shower and looked at the clock, it was 5am.
"Fuck I loved the night. "
He got dressed in his racing suit. And just sat in his room and chilled. He was laying down on the floor since it was cold and it reminded him of the night. He just stayed there and then decided to go to check on his friend,Storm.
He won't mind right I mean his just probably going to be thinking about trying to get one of the two mares he likes.
Bolt got up and walked to his door. He heard sounds coming from Storm's room but still he didn't care until he got to the door. He heard louder noises and noises of a mare.
Oooookaaaaayyyyy nevermind but seriously who is he with then.
Bolt walked back into his room still hearing the sounds before they stopped.
Nice wait Ohhhh that was the sound at the night
Bolt then went back out his apartment and knocked on Storm's door.
"Yo dude we got the trials, don't want you to miss your big opportunity. ", Bolt shouted as he knocked on the door.
They were scrambles behind the door or that's what Bolt could only hear. Then Storm came to the door. His hair was in a mess and he had black lipstick on his face.
"Jeez I know we are racers but you don't have to act like you race for the red horses(Ferrari). "
"I took*pant* your advice alright and it worked. ", Storm's words were just him panting and then Bolt looked in the room to see Tiara just admiring Storm.
"Good choice. "
"What? "
Storm looked at what Bolt was looking at before Bolt laughed and he got hit by Storm.
"I'm going to go get dressed and wash also. Yes we are dating but she was not a choice, she is a beautiful mare, I don't know why you didn't go for her. "
"Sunny's why, she's my reason to keep on going. "
There was a silence between the two before they said,
"We are so like a romantic novel. "
Storm said bye and closed the door while Bolt was waiting outside.
It was like he was waiting for ages but of course he ate like ten slices of toast.
"Alright I'm done and come on my mare. ", Storm burst out of his apartment.
Bolt looked at them as Storm let Tiara out her hoof through his arm as she hugged it.
"Cute couple but still Storm remember only five go through to the Equestria games and it's fast competition. ", Bolt said.
"Yeah yeah I know but still I'm just trying to relax and get my head clear. "Storm replied as he nuzzled Tiara.
Why is everypony I talk to in a relationship
this days broooooooooooooooooo.
Bolt just sighed as they quickly navigated out of the apartment building and went to the college with two love birds but the second he got there he saw his princess.
Why am I thinking like Button Mash? Author stop reading fanfics of Button and sweetie. SHUT UP MY CHARACTER. anyways
Bolt blushed and flapped his wings while looking at Sunny but then got a nudge on the shoulder by Storm and he just sighed. The time was 7am and everyone was here who was participating. By 8 they were all on the bus and on the way to Ponyville International Stadium or PIS(lol piss) for short. Bolt sat next to Sunny and she was sleeping on his shoulder. His leg was tapping the floor fast like a rabbit but he was relaxed and they were in the back so he just chilled. Bolt felt himself drifting to sleep. Bolt fell asleep slowly while smiling at Sunny.
She's my dream mare ....
.. Bolt wake up mate
Bolt slowly woke up to see his hugged Sunny asleep and he was blushing and better yet Sunny chose the perfect time to wake up. Both Sunny and Bolt jumped and didn't look at each other. They just blushed and got out of the bus. They then were jaw dropped at the stadium. It was like a gladiator's arena in the older times of Equestria. Bolt just walked in with Sunny but of course a really long security thing for the athletics checking every dam fucking id and college card they had.
After the annoying process they got in and sat at their stands with their schoolmates all there. Bolt saw Spike, Button, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo and even Appleboom. Bolt just sat down and drank some water with his friends giving him some motivational words.
"Yo dude do it for Sunny. ", Messy whispered in his ear.
Bolt jumped and looked at Messy.
Messy just laughed coldly and asked, "Did I scare you? "
"Yes jeez. "
"Well use my words alright and also. "
Get yourself a lucky charm, if you miss your chance with her then well tough.
Bolt just stared at him before giving him a hoof bump. Bolt felt nervous and also what Messy just said was the same thing as Ares told him.
Bolt then heard Scribble calling him before Scribble pointing to the electrical board saying, "RACERS TO GO TO THE TRACK TO WARM UP, QUALIFYING STARTS IN 30 MINUTES. "
Bolt got up and went to Sunny and looked deep into her bright emerald eyes and smiled. Sunny just giggled and looked Bolt before saying,
"You better watch me do shot kick. "
Bolt laughed and replied,
"Pfft yeah I will but you better be cheering for me in this race. "
"Yes I will lighting and I know you won't disappoint me. "
Bolt blushed and flapped his wings at the compliment before hugging her and then leaving.
Bolt just stayed quiet and walked to the track to see Scootaloo and Spike warming up.
Bolt just stood next to them and warmed up in silence. It was quite silent between them before Spike spoke to lighten the mood.
"Hey since it's 5 spots we can all make it in even though there's 30 other racers. We got this. "
Scootaloo smiled and replied,
"You're so energetic but since I got some great tips from the Rainbow Dash I'm sure I'll do great in this race. "
Scootaloo Stood on two legs and stood with pride before that all went tumbling down as Spike then said,
"Yeah of course your 100 racing tips from the Rainbow Dash book will help. "
Spike started laughing as Scootaloo was blushing and hitting Spike but softly.
Bolt laughed and said,
"Well this is definitely going to be fun. "
"Definitely dude.",A voice behind Bolt said.
Bolt jumped and looked behind him to see it was Storm. His racing suit was bright red and yellow.
"You're going to blind people with that. "
"And you're going to scare people when you come from nowhere and look at yours."
Bolts racing suit was nearly entirely black with only tiny marks of blue.
Bolt just gave Storm a hoof bump and then Storm said,
"Future Golden prancers(Porsche) 1-2."
"I prefer the Blue Bolts(Ford) but I don't mind them so. "
Hell yeah
Bolt and Storm heard a mare announcer say,
"As we are about to begin as just on time the WONDERBOLTS ARE HERE. "
Bolt saw the wonderbolts make an air trail over them and a rainboom.
"Show ponies can't believe I was named after them. "
The wonderbolts then took their stand on a stand high above the commentary box then everyone cheered for them. Soarin and Rainbow Dash standing next to each other. Bolt was confused the captain normally wears red and neither of them(Neither Soarin or Rainbow) were wearing that colour as then a loud thunder cloud came and went like instead of Rainboom it was a Stormboom. There was also a red flash going above and around the stadium as the red blur took to the stand above the wonderbolts as captain. Bolt looked in shock to see who it was.
My brother
"THE RETIRED CAPTAIN, STARGAZER JACKSON ARRIVES WITH A WONDERFUL SHOW. ", The announcer said loudly over the mic.
Bolt just looked at his brother's dark purple eyes and black fur. He was hating these show ponies and never knew this.
Stargazer spread out his wings to show exactly why he got his name. His wings were black but had a lot of tiny white spots on them making it look like a night sky filled with stars.
"HE HAS COME OUT OF RETIREMENT JUST TO JOIN THE WONDERBOLTS AGAIN AS THEIR CAPTAIN. ", the announcer said in excitement.
Bolt looked at his brother in shock and guilt of hating them. Bolt then smacked himself
I still have a job to do here.
Bolt and Storm warmed up and didn't talk at all like they were swimming both in their own thoughts.
"Qualifying begins now. ", The announcer said.
This qualifying would be different as everyone got a number for when you're about to go and Bolt got 12 and Storm got 1.
"Good luck out there Storm. "
Storm just dashed off and went to do his qualifying with three laps he did it in an impressive 2.12.87.
Bolt learned that the track was going to be a bit longer but Bolt didn't care. He went to go hoof shake and then saw that Horizon did his lap.
2.12.89
"Damn this is going to be a tuff event. ", Storm said with a bit of concern in his voice.
"Probably just showing off for his parents but it will be fun. ", Bolt replied while looking at the electrical board as he waited patiently for his turn.
The clock in his head kept clicking and Bolt was impatient and just looked everywhere and tapped his leg a lot. Bolt looked back into the stands while waiting this damn long to finish his qualifying. He just stared at Sunny, admiring her.
She's so beautiful in the sun. I would go to her but
Before Bolt finished his thought. Spike tapped his shoulder and said,
"Admiring a mare I see. Did that before but you do know how big your wingspan is right?"
"Huh? "
Bolt then looked at his wings to see they were fully spread out, basically being nearly an earth pony each in length. Bolt blushed and flapped his wings and hit Spike hard.
"Ouch no hurting fellow racers dude it's in the rules. ", Spike joked.
"Well if you're teasing me at least not today. ", Bolt then heard his name by the announcer and left to do his qualifying.
Lap 1
Bolt went fast and agile through the track making sure to barely dodge the walls of buildings. And got a pretty decent 2.13. 1
Lap 2
Bolt did the same as last time but not being scared this time and just full sent it and got as close as he could to the buildings. The track had a loop at the end with an electric board on the side to show lap times. 2.12.60
Lap 3
He just decided not to do lap 3 and took one of the flags to say he was finished. No time
Bolt got back to Storm and hoof shaked him before Storm pointed to his chin.
"Storm what are you doing? "
"I have come to realise I have a great jawline. "
Bolt just laughed with Storm and waited for the end of this so they could actually race. Bolt now flew back to the stands and went to go see his friends. Scribble was just yapping to Hefty as usual and she was just admiring him but paying attention. Messy looked at the floor and was drinking a red cool drink which was the same colour as his face as Daisy played with his hair, her hooves were all in his hair and it looked like she was just making two ponytails in his hair. Bolt sat next to Sunny, who was sleeping.
"Another night of writing all night, right Sunny. ", Bolt said as he put his jacket from his bag around her.
Sunny just opened one of her eyes. She covered herself in his jacket which he found cute as she replied,
"Yeah, I worked very long all night and only got 2 hours of sleep. "
"I woke up before I would wake up and got 4 hours of sleep, so I didn't sleep after that. Also, how's the book coming along? ", He asked with interest to hear her out.
That seemed to wake Sunny up as she heard Bolt say that. Sunny started to rumble about her romance novel she was working on. Bolt only heard bits of what she was saying but he just loved hearing her talk like this.
She's so cute. I wish this could last forever.
"QUALIFYING IS FINISHED AND NOW THE RESULTS. "
The irony.
Bolt got up and said to Sunny,
"See you later. "
"You want your jacket back?"
Time to be romantic
"Nah you can keep it Sunny, it looks good on you. "
Nice one me
Sunny blushed but then replied,
"I'll wear it to give you good luck. "
Sunny smiled at Bolt and Bolt instantly got butterflies and left without a word.
Ahhhh why me?! One time I try to be smooth and then I get hit with something as cute as that Celestia and Luna WHYYYYY
The top 10 came on the board and it was like this:
1.Bolt Jackson
2.Storm keeper
3.Horizon weathers
4.Spike Sparkle
5.Scootaloo Allgood
6.Smolder Oasis
7.Crystal Blues
8.Polar Zoom
9. Quick Zeb
10.Rumble Trouble(Gave him a surname)
Bolt then looked at Storm.
"AND THAT'S A MONSOON COLLEGE LOCKOUT TAKING ALL THREE TOP SPOTS. "
Bolt looked for Horizon to go to the podium for qualifying.
Bolt, Storm and Horizon were all impressed with themselves. As champagne bottles were sprayed and popped open the excitement died down as in 30 minutes they would race the actual thing.
Bolt just looked around again as he usually does since he just gets bored a lot. Bolt looked at his college's stand as they were going wild. Water bottles being emptied on other ponies, dragons, griffins and changelings heads. Bolt smiled at the sight of the stand. This was because of him that they were going on like this and it gave him motivation to win this race
And do it for Sunny.
Bolts eyes instantly looked for Sunny in the crowd as he got a little worried but then he saw her with all his friends but without Tumble
And for Tumble.
Bolt looked at Sunny, her hair was wet and Scribble was holding Hefty high in the air. She looked very happy and wasn't even scared that she might fall from Scribble's arms. Messy just got kissed by Daisy as he stood in shock. Daisy just laughed as she poured water over his head.
Storm then stood next to Bolt,
"Great feeling. I did this 3 times before, it's the best. "
Bolt almost forgot how old he was. Bolt then replied,
"Yeah it does. "
Horizon also appeared from nowhere and said to Bolt,
"Yeah it's a great feeling and to believe we are the reason is amazing. "
Bolt just hoof bumped Horizon and said,
"Yeah now no pony here kills each other. Alright. "
All of them just laughed at what Bolt just said. Bolt made a truce with Horizon for now. Bolt looked Horizon and said,
"But that doesn't mean I'm going to give you first that easy. "
"Bet Bolt, remember lightning bolts are more dull compared to beautiful horizons. "
Bolt and Horizon were probably going to be rivals for a long time. Storm then splashed them both with water. Horizon shouted at Storm while Bolt enjoyed the cold water.
Then Spike and Scootaloo came to Bolt.
"Nice job out there but still don't get too comfortable or cocky. ", Spike said with a stern voice.
"I promise you I won't do that. ", Bolt replied just smiling.
"ALL RACERS TO THE STARTING GRID. "
Bolt and everyone else went to their position. Bolt looked behind him and saluted to the rest of them as good luck.
Red lights...
Alright let's do this
Green lights
Bolt instantly flew off the position and a rush of colours were behind him as they raced. The race was going to be intense.
Lap 2
Bolt was being challenged by nearly the entire grid but he just went past them all as usual but still 30 laps to go.
Lap 3
Bolt then decided to stay behind Horizon and Storm to save his energy for the harder battles to come.
Lap 4
Spike challenged Bolt for his position and while their battle was continued they passed both Storm and Horizon. Bolt and Spike were first and second with Scootaloo coming in a close third.
Lap 5
Safety pony. A pony crashed on the track but was fine. So they just had to make sure the buildings didn't take much damage.
Lap 6
Still safety pony as usual but next lap it was back to racing.
Lap 7
Bolt lost a few positions because of the weird timing of the safety pony leaving the track. Bolt was now 7th and had to make up some positions. He wasn't in the equestria games if this continued.
Lap 8 to 14
Bolt made one position as the competition was really tough and the one pit stop was on lap 15 onwards.
Lap 15
Bolt took the undercut and dove into the pits as he had to wait for 2 minutes as he drank some well needed water and energy drink. Bolt then waited patiently for it to end so he could go on track. The countdown was done and Bolt got back on track flying around a dragon who was bright blue with white spikes. Crystal Blitz(25yrs). Crystal was known for his very aggressive racing style but he just let Bolt through which was odd. Bolt looked at the buildings with the electric boards, Bolt was 13th.
We have business to do idiots
Lap 16 to 19
Bolt flew around making sure to use a lot of energy and then do one rest lap and then instantly got back to work. Bolt made 7 positions. Bolt was 6th, one more place but Bolt wanted first.
Lap 20 to 23
Bolt made the position by overtaking a now slower Storm and he saw Horizon, Scootaloo and Spike in the distance. Bolt overtook Scootaloo and Horizon. Spike was more of a challenge, he had to try many different things to even attempt an overtake but once he got it done he looked ahead to see Crystal in the distance.
Jeez this guy is fast
Lap 24.
Bolt got up and was close to Crystal. He went to the inside of him to attempt an overtake. Bolt went around the loop and felt a change in direction of his flying as he regained balance.
Shit I'm tired
Bolt flew more ready to overtake. Bolt was getting close to Crystal before his got hit by a racer he couldn't see as he was now out of control and flew straight into a building.The impact was so much his helmet broke off on the right on his face. He felt his right eye get scratched deep. Bolt covered his body with arms to prevent himself from more injuries but Bolt knew that was not enough as he felt both of his arms break.His memory blacked out .He was now on the floor in a lot of rumble. He felt like he was burning and he tried to get up to see if he could.
FUCKKKK MY ARMS NO SHIT Ouch also why's it so warm
Bolts one entire leg was under rumble and he couldn't pull it out. His other leg couldn't get up and it pained to even move. Bolt felt his air coming out of his body. His vision was now yellow, realizing that he was in a fire. Bolt spat out blood and was blurry in the one eye. He was trying his best to move, nothing was working. It felt like hours that he was there, he was bleeding out, couldn't even move or think but all that was on his mind was.
I don't to die please no please HELP ANYONE PLEASE I don't want to... Go
Bolt felt tears in his eyes as the fire died off but he was about to faint and now he was in immeasurably pain. Bolt couldn't do anything and his whole body gave up. Bolt last heard fire ponies and medics trying to get him out. Bolt's mind was about to go blank before he had one thought.
I don't want to go please. I hate leaving. Please..
> Thoughts... ... ...
Where am I?
Bolt looked around to see nothing but black and the moon. Bolt was scared.
HEY AM I DEAD HELLLO
Bolt got no reply from the darkness around him. He tried to fly and realised he had no wings.
Hey, that's not funny coward... Gi-Give me back my wings
Bolt was again crying. Bolt hit the floor with anger and frustration. Bolt hated this. He wanted to know that he was okay. Bolt looked around again for the hundredth time but to see a figure staring at him. The figure was much taller than him and he instantly ran towards it. Bolt just wanted to talk. He hated being alone, this fear or hate started in primary school with him being picked on and having no friends for the entirety of primary and when he finally got friends in high school he wouldn't leave their side.
Bolt got to the figure to see that it was still black before speaking,
"You Bolt Jackson call me a coward for removing your wings.Your in a dream. "
The voice was of a mare. But Bolt was just happy that he wasn't dead.
"YES I'M NOT DEAD YESS. "
Bolt was crying. He was happy until the voice spoke again.
"You still are on the edge of death so don't get your hopes up Bolt. "
"Wait, you sound familiar. "
Bolt went to touch the mare's face. The mare backed off before saying,
"It is rude to attempt to touch a Mare without their permission sir Jackson. But yes I am familiar because I'm your favourite part of the day. "
Bolt stood in shock as he saw the mare. Well not mare it was the alicorn Princess Luna.
"What are you doing in my dreams also why are you talking to me of all ponies. "
"Well because you enjoy my times very much but also because I wanted to see how you are doing you took one very bad hit and you'll be surprised at yourself when you wake up. "
"Nice so I wake up also thanks it was feeling lonely here. "
"I know how that feels, imagine being in the moon for 1000 years. "
"Hated that Celestia did that to you. The night was awesome. I wish it lasted forever. Like the moon is literally in my dream state. "
Bolt pointed to the full moon that was glowing bright. Luna giggled and replied,
"I'm flattered by that fact. No body or pony likes the night, just sleeping through it for another Sunny day. See what I did there. I mentioned your crush."
Bolt blushed and spoke back to Luna,
"Give me a break, I already miss her so much. "
"Well Bolt she does miss you too. "
Bolt smiled very wide at Luna before laying down on the abyss and replying,
"She misses me. "
Bolt smiled and blushed.
"Oh to be young in love, well it's best to try to wake up now but I'll talk to you soon Mr Jackson but till then good luck. ", Luna said as she slowly faded away.
Bolt was still laying back smiling before the silence crept in his ears. Bolt looked around in his thought abyss. Bolt then spoke,
"I love Sun-"
Bolt covered his mouth before saying,
"Oh yeah this is my thoughts so I'll speak aloud. FUCK. "
Bolt layed down again to just look at the moon in silence. Bolt then felt the abyss water start moving. The floor in his thought abyss is water and he started to sink in the water. Bolt couldn't swim without his wings as that's how he was taught as a filly.
Bolt tried to speak but bubbles just came out of his mouth as fell to the bottom of the water and the moon disappeared in the distance. Bolt tried to swim but with no succession he just decided to sit in cold water and close his eyes. ... ....
Beep. Beep. Beep
Bolt instantly shot up out of bed breathing heavily and he felt like he was underwater but without the wetness. Bolt looked around the room to see that his right eye saw normally but his right eye was blurry.
Bolt smacked the left side of his head to see if it was him just being sleepy. Bolt then looked at his mouth. It had this oxygen thing.
Weird the fuck is that
Bolt was never in a hospital before so he was confused by it. He decided to keep it on for safety purposes. Bolt felt his breathing was relayed on that oxygen thing. Bolt just closed his right eye to see if he was just funky. His eye didn't change, it stayed blurry.
Huh the fuck is wrong with it
Bolt went back to lying on the bed before he saw a white pegasus with yellow stripes and blue hair enter the room. Bolt couldn't make them out with the eye problem. She wore a summer dress with pink flowers on it.
Bolt tilted his head looking into her bright orange eyes before she spoke,
"My stormy baby what happened to you dear. "
Bolt felt some tears in his eyes and his voice was weak,
"mom."
Bolt's mom(Sunset Burst 40yrs) hugged Bolt very softly. Bolt just tried to hug her back with one arm as his right one felt weird.
"Bolt dear, you were amazing. "
"you were there. "
Bolt stared at his mom.
"Well dear I wanted to surprise you at the end of the race as you were a little grumpy the last time I interrupted you while you were about to race. "
Bolt just looked with narrow eyes at his mom. Bolt didn't have a lot of energy to talk. Bolt then heard another species(other person) open the door. This time it was a pegasus with dark red hair, blue fur, very bright yellow eyes and with a weird yellow swirl of his chest.
Bolt this time got the picture of who it would be,
"Hey my little Blue bolt. How are you doing? Also, I got your favourite treat. ", Bolts dad(Pacific Pride 43yrs)spoke and then spoke again,
"I snuggled it in just for you. "
Bolt saw his dad pull out mango pieces. Bolt mentally licked his lips before pointing at the oxygen thing on his mouth.
"Oh yeah forgot your awake i'll go for you dear. I'm just so happy you're awake. ", Sunset said as she left. She gave his dad a kiss and left with a little hop on each step she took.
"Oh I love her. "
His dad said as he looked at his mom leaving.
Bolt just sat there looking at his dad. His dad then said,
"You were great out there unfortunately that stupid Horizon crashed into you, he only got a sprained shoulder. You got the bad end of the stick. "
Bolt made an angry expression to tell his dad how he felt. His dad tapped his head.
"It's alright pal they're going to put you in the equestria games. SO YOU'LL BREAK HISTORY. As that equestria will have 6 racers instead of 5."
Bolt shaked his left arm to show his excitement. Bolt looked at himself bandaged and his wings were too. His right eye was still blurry and unable to see his world fully.
"Yeah it's great you'll do great my blue Bolt but you'll need to heal first. "
His dad said, looking at him. Bolt then heard the door open with a blue unicorn in a white nurse outfit.
"Well Bolt just going to say what problems you have also yeah you can take off the oxygen inhaler. "
The nurse had ocean blue patterns in her fur and Bolt couldn't make out the colour of her hair.
Bolt took off the oxygen inhaler and breathed a bit before speaking softly,
"Okay so what is it ma'am. "
"Well you have broken wings, both legs, you are also blind in your right eye. The last thing is on your right hand, you can look at it. "
Bolt lifted his right arm. Bolt saw it and sat there in pure shock.
"What happened to it.? ", Bolt spoke softly and in a sad tone.
"We had to amputate it, since it was beyond repair and you wouldn't have survived if you still had that arm. "
Bolt looked at the nurse as she spoke. Bolt looking at his amputated right arm, Bolt was in shock. The bandanges looked so weird on his arm. Bolt wanted to see his friends but one question laid on his mind.
How long was I out
Bolt looked at his window. There laid Celestia's sun as high in the air as it could be. Bolt then asked his dad,
"How long was I out. "
"A month, it's weird that you were that long in that coma type thing but you fainted. "
Bolt sat there now overwhelmed with emotions of sadness, anger, confusion and pain.
Bolt then heard the door open again.
"Brother. "
Stargazer looked at Bolt. Both of them were happy to see each other but Bolt still remembered about him being captain of Wonderbolts.
"Where have you been"
Bolt's voice was low but irritated.
" Was very busy with the Wonderbolts and been watching you. "
Bolt still was irritated with him,
"I thought you wouldn't join the Wonderbolts like I said as a filly remember. "
Stargazer stood there in shock and then replied,
"... Dude you know... I was in the Wonderbolts when I said that. "
Bolt looked at his brother with more shock.
"You never told me that. "
"Because I knew you'd hate me. "
Bolt looked at his brother in sympathy. All through his life he hated the Wonderbolts, he hated them for getting all the fame when all they would do is show off and race one or twice. Bolt looked at his brother again. Stargazer just scratched his neck and didn't make eye contact with Bolt. Bolt then spoke,
"I'm sorry. "
Stargazer instantly looked up at Bolt with a smile as he walked to his brother to give it in.
"Bring it in. "
Bolt nodded no before giving up as his brother hugged him.
Stargazer stood away from his brother's nursing bed and said,
"Well you know, you look cool with that scar on your right eye. "
Stargazer smiled at his brother. Bolt touched his face and the spot with the scar. Bolt's hoof touched the entire scar going from his forehead to close to his muzzle. Bolt smiled and replied,
"Feels cool as fuck too. "
"LANGUAGE! "
His mom shouted at his son as his father, his brother and him laughed.
Bolt just looked at his family with a smile before hearing Stargazer speak,
"You know we might make a deal with the Red horses to sponsor the Wonderbolts, which means our main captain will wear Blue. "
Bolt looked at his brother with excitement,
"Oh that's cool alright but when can I get out of here. "
"Well dad will ask this time but also when will join the Wonderbolts. "
"I don't know if I would join them. "
"Well if you want to join, there's a contract waiting for you because I'm impressed with your skill. "
Stargazer walked out with his dad as they spoke.
Me in the Wonderbolts well now the Red horses Wonderbolts or whatever confusing name it will be. That would be confusing. My brother is only 29 years old. How is he wise enough to decide who gets to join or not?
Bolt scoffed and looked at his mangos, he slowly started to eat them. His mom then spoke,
"Oh my baby, are you having trouble eating? Let me help you. "
Bolt nodded that he was fine before his mom got a spoon and scooped pieces of mango and into his mouth. Bolt was red with embarrassment and his face had bags that made him look like he hasn't slept in days.
Bolt looked at his mom with his face being red and she smiled and said,
"No need to be embarrassed, I'm not your crush. I'm just your mom. "
Sunny, where is she?
Bolt's face turned red at his mom mentioning a crush.
His mom instantly smirked and asked,
"Does my son have a crush on a mare, hmm? "
His mom raised her eyebrows in anticipation. Bolt sighed and replied,
"Yes mom I do and she's been my crush for quite a while. "
His mom clapped her hooves together in excitement and then said,
"Wait is that why you were all smiles and rainbows, that one day you came from high school. IS IT BECAUSE YOU TALKED TO YOUR CRUSH. And you did look very smiley after graduation. "
Bolt just blushed and said,
"Yes mom. "
"Oh wonderful! I can't wait to meet her, whoever she is. "
His mom looked like she had stars in her eyes. Bolt just kept on getting spoon fed for a few minutes as his mom talked about crushes and how her and his dad met.
Bolt felt happy to see his mom this happy as he hadn't seen her in awhile. Bolt then heard the door open and it was his dad and his brother.
"they said tomorrow night you can leave but you have to train for your prosthetic leg. "
Stargazer said with a straight face and looked at Bolt.
Bolt just nodded as his mom fed him. His dad just laughed and said,
"He has mango pieces on his cheek kinda reminds me of when he was younger. "
Bolt blushed and was about to shout but his mom calmed him down with a spoonful of mango. Bolt enjoyed this and was still anxious about his friends and all the work he missed out on.
Strange, I don't think about work. Why do I care about that?
Bolt looked at his family again and then spoke, when his mangoes were finished,
"I miss this, you know, time with all of us. "
Bolt sounded soft but like a chain reaction whenever he spoke his family stayed quiet.
"Same here but quick thing Bolt, you know the letter I sent you. You probably thought it was your crush hah. ",
Stargazer said with a smirk as Bolt blushed and put up a hoof in defence.
"N-no way Pfft I-I'm not that corny. ",
Bolt replied with a huge red blush on his face.
"HAHAH you stutter when you are nervous so I caught you out bro. "
Bolt just sat there in defeat as his brother and dad laughed in victory. Then a mare opened the door. She was a purple unicorn with grey swirls in her fur and a white hair.
Bolt looked at her with confusion. Bolt closed his right eye to get her full image and then he asked,
"Who is this? "
"Oh that's Zeb Polaris, she's another doctor here and my friend. ",
Bolts mom said with excitement. Then Zeb spoke,
"So we are getting informed that you need to do some walking training so come with me and there is a wheelchair there so just plop him on there and bring him to room 67."
Zeb left the room and instantly both his dad and brother put him in the wheelchair in record time. His mom pushed it since she thought both his dad and brother would be too reckless. His mom was singing a little lullaby that was making Bolt feel sleepy.
"You used to fall asleep to this as a filly remember. "
His mom whispered in his ear as he fell asleep in the wheelchair. ... ...
Bolt woke up uninterrupted and looked around him to see other ponies, dragons, etc getting there footing back. Bolt looked at his dad as he helped him out of the wheelchair. Bolt instantly fell on his face when his dad let go. Bolt held on one of the bars and was getting the hang of walking with three legs before falling again.
"Here. "
Bolt was surprised by Zeb and fell again. Zeb scoffed and put on Bolts mechanical prosthetic arm. Bolt looked at it, it was blue like his fur but was very shiny. Bolt tried to walk with it and he walked funny at first but after two hours, he was very tired and he could walk again but he needed help to his room. ...
"Okay so yes he can leave tomorrow but only supervision. "
Bolt heard outside his door. It was obviously his mom and Zeb.
"Understood Zeb, I'll see you tomorrow. "
Bolt heard his family leave. It was now noon. The Sun was setting and Luna's moon would be up in a while. Bolt was excited to see it after so long.
Well at least the real moon. Also where's my friends and Sunny.
Bolt smiled at the mention of her name in his head. Bolt sat there in his bed. Bolt had never been to a hospital and never ever has he been to it at night.
Sunny, Sunny... CACAN WE THINK OF ANYONE ELSE BESIDES HER FOR CELESTIAS AND LUNA'S SAKE
Bolt blushed there in bed. Bolt, embarrassed with himself, looked at the Sun, thinking of Sunny.
I love you Sunny ...
Oh for Celestia's sake I miss him so much, I hope he is okay please say he wakes up soon.
Sunny laid in her bed with tissues to the side of her bed, besides her crying. She was sick. She somehow managed to catch the flu. Sunny then heard a knock at the door. Sunny groaned,
"The doors unlocked. "
Scribble and Hefty walked into Sunny's apartment.
"Hey are you alright we made cake for you. Your favourite too it's strawberry cheesecake. ", Hefty nervously smiled as she tapped Scribbles shoulder. Scribble whose face was full of cream and strawberry jam lifted the cheesecake.
Sunny sat up feeling a bit better as she took a piece. She chewed with giggles as Scribble and Hefty sighed.
Scribble took Hefty's hoof and smiled at her and whispered to her,
"Should we tell her about Bolt?
"No, she would want to leave this dark place right now and probably while still sick. "
Scribble nodded and said,
"Understood ma'am. "
Hefty just giggled and fed him some cake,
"You're so adorkable. "
Both of them laughed at the compliment. Sunny watched them in silence.
Brain don't think of Bolt please, this is a cute moment. Imagine if this was... JuJust shut up me
Sunny had a tear in her eye as she put on her hoodie and looked at them again. Scribble wore a green puffy jacket with black baggy trousers and Hefty wore a red jacket with the words cool dragon. Which meant it was Scribbles and she had some blue jeans on.
"Well we will be off because well I just want to sleep and she just wants to watch me sleep. "
As Scribble said this Hefty immediately blushed and hit him pretty hard but not hard in dragon terms.
"YOU CANT JUST SPILL MY SECRETS LIKE THAT YOU KNOW. WHAT IF I HAD TO SAY ABOUT THE FACT I HAD TO PUT YOU OUTSIDE LIKE A DOG BECAUSE YOU ARE A WHOLE PEANUT BUTTER JAR. "
Hefty shouted at Scribble and he replied,
"Well it was funny also here's a letter. It's for you Sunny "
Hefty looked at Scribble confusingly. Scribble lipped the words Bolt.
Hefty and Scribble left without another word leaving it to be Sunny and this mysterious letter she had no clue about. Sunny took the letter and laid with it. She looked at it, it was black and with blue stripes.
Bolt maybe sent it to us. Pfft that wouldn't be like him
Sunny opened the letter and began to read the letter.
To: Sunny Mornings
Hey it's been a while, I woke up a day ago. Everything is funny, I mean you should see me right now. I look awful and feel awful. My nurse says I slept for a month. That is weird now I have less life to live I guess. I hope you can visit soon and I'll be on supervision soon by my parents house. As they are taking care of me so see you whenever Sunny. :)
From: Bolt Wonders Jackson
Sunny read with tears in her eyes as she hugged the letter and giggled like a little filly.
He missed me. He missed me. Well not that he just sent me a letter but that's so odd. Wonders, I never knew about his middle name.
Sunny stared at the letter.
His initials were always B.J not B.W.J. Oh... It's to do with the Wonderbolts no wonder but why is he using it if it's the Wonderbolts associated with it? Maybe he changed
Sunny still smiled at the letter as he was comfortable with using his middle name for her. She giggled and rolled around her bed with the biggest grin on her face.
The time flew by and it was now night time. Sunny looked out her window at the moon. In the distance was the hospital Bolt stayed in. Sunny stared at the hospital, feeling very warm about the thought of Bolt.
Sunny then saw one of the rooms lights turn on. Sunny could barely make out the colour of whatever species it was but it was a pony that was blue is all she could make out. They opened the window and leaned out.
Odd they kind of look like Bolt. Well it could be him I won't know.
The pony then threw a black dead flower out the window. They closed the window and turned off the light.
Odd pony I must say so myself
Sunny went back to her bed but before she did, she went to the bathroom to brush her teeth. She started brushing her teeth, it was quite quiet around the night time.
Hmm just go to sleep after this.
She brushed for like 10 minutes before going to her bed and tucking herself in. She smiled and then fell asleep. ... ...
Another ponies point of view
OKAY HOW THE FUCK DO YOU SLEEP IN THESE BRICK LIKE BEDS
Bolt shuffled around his bed and tried to get comfortable. It was night time, Bolt's favourite part of the entire day but he needed to sleep to heal his muscles a bit faster. Bolt hugged his pillow as he normally would when he went to sleep without going to a party. Bolt then put his normal hoof on his numb hand.
I hate this bed. Also my blindness doesn't help makes me think there's something looking at me.
Bolt dimmed his eyes to see that the moonlight was bright on the dead flower in his room. Bolt got out of bed before knocking his side at a table he didn't see on his right. Which his eye couldn't see.
WELL BUCK ME STUPID EYE
Bolt scoffed as he rubbed his side. Bolt went to the dead flower by the window. Bolt smelled it before realising it would be dangerous to walk with his eye problem in the dark. Bolt navigated his room carefully, hitting his right side on the bed once or twice and turned on the light. Bolt went back to the flower and opened the window. He leaned out to see it was a very long fall down. Normally Bolt would fly out of here but because of very noticeable reasons he can't.
Bolt took the flower and threw it out of the window as it withered away in the air. Bolt turned off the light and got back in the bed and had a very tired sleepy face.
Can I just have nice thoughts... ... ... ...
An alarm went off as a voice groaned to get it.
"Stupid alarm can't believe Daisy gave me this to not oversleep. ", Messy spoke in a low tone before thinking back on all his oversleeping incidents.
"Well she is right though. "
Messy put on a white shirt and leather jacket as Celestia's Sun came through his apartment's blinds. He put on some red army pants. He walked to the blinds and opened them a small bit as had a red headband in his mouth. He then put it on and walked to his kitchen and ate some cheese. Yep plain cheese but with crackers.
Nice this soo niccee I wonder what Daisy is doing. Well it is early so I'm going to spook her. Great idea me.
Messy walked out of his apartment. It was quite a long slow walk. Messy felt every step he took. Messy after walking the distance of one elevator up and 30 or more apartment doors he got to Daisy's room.
Okay it's time
Messy opened her door slowly. The room was very dark and he heard snoring.
Yes this is going to be so good.
He then heard the stove turn on. His pupils went thin as he looked towards where the sound was coming from. Daisy was making grilled cheese but she was naked.
HOLY MOTHER OF CHRYSALIS
Messy then proceeded to try to exit the room before hearing,
"Oh come Messy where do you think you're going. "
Messy heard Daisy's voice and went back to greet her.
"Also you can get comfortable, you know, I don't mind your changeling form. "
"Fine. "
Messys tone was low before a green flash lightened the room and Messy now had light blue skin with an even lighter blue see through wings. His eyes were bug-like and yellow. Huge dark red horns, yellow mandibles and huge light blue horns which had a ragged shape on the top.
"Feels more comfortable. "
"Yes but when should I tell every species about this?"
"Well no one will bat an eye nowadays but to be honest you can hide secrets really well."
Daisy kissed Messy on the cheek. His mandibles shaked and so did his wings. Daisy just smiled and Messy gave his normal nervous smile back.
"It's funny how your actual name is just a whole lot of numbers before you changed it to. ",Daisy laughed a bit before speaking again, "Sorry it's just funny. Messy Hotel Rooms. "
"What it's the best I could came up with?! "
"Still I was very surprised when you showed me your true form. "
Daisy said before putting the plate down. Messy decided to take with his mandibles and ate the plate with it. Daisy just looked at him with an open mouth before smacking him.
"WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT EATING THE PLATES!! "
"W what it tastes good with the food. "
Daisy hit him more and responded,
"Hey, that's not the point. "
Daisy stopped hitting him and kissed him on the cheek.
"Just don't do it again okay darling. "
Messys mandibles moved and so did his wings and he replied,
"Oh great, not this corny stuff again. "
"Remember I was the one who made you get redeemed because of my corny stuff. "
Messy sighed and walked over to Daisy. Daisy blushed because she forgot how tall he is in this form.
HOLY CELESTIA HIS BIGGER THAN TUMBLE
Daisy turned around and Messy gave her a kiss on the lips.
"You alright? "
Daisy just nodded her head and went to put on some clothes. Messy sat in the dark room on the floor. He could hear her changing and he decided to camouflage. He opened the door silently and went behind her and picked her up.
"AHHH... MESSY SERIOUSLY. "
Daisy shouted but laughed at the same time. Messy just put her down and went back to the kitchen .
Hmm good taste
Daisy exited the room in sight of him chewing on the side of the table. Daisy had just a sunflower dress on and took his hoof.
"Come on, we are going to go see if Bolt woke up."
"But can't I have a little-"
Messy got cut off by his marefriend kissing him.
"Now shut up and let's go. "
"O-Okay D-Daisy. "
He is so cute, yet so annoying. I love him.
Daisy kept on walking a flustered Messy. Messy didn't even shift back into his changed form. He just stayed in his original stage. Daisy walked him to the elevator. ... ...
I'M SO EXCITED I COULD DIE BUT FIRST WE GO TO THE HOSPITAL.
Sunny was in a rush to get to the hospital. She already was outside the apartment with a grey cap to cover her hair, A basketball shirt of the Manehattan Pnicks and some shorts on. She was rushing through crowds of species and saying sorry to any species. She needed to run just a few more kilometres.
"Why is *pant* it so dam *pant* FAR! ", Sunny said in between pants.
Sunny looked around and saw Daisy in the distance holding the arm of a mostly blue changeling.
"Is she cheating on Messy or what. "
Sunny said with a gasp as she rushed towards Daisy.
Why would she cheat on such a stallion? Don't jump the gun me.
Sunny was finally close to hear and called for Daisy. Daisy looked around to find the noise to see Sunny waving her hoof.
"Come on Messy. "
"Fine. "
Messy and Daisy got to Sunny and she asked,
"Daisy who's the changeling. "
Messy laughed at what she said. Daisy then said,
"Ohhhh I see you thought I was cheating. Sunny it's Messy, his a changeling trust me even I was confused when I first figured it out. "
Sunny looked at a smiling Daisy in shock as Messy scratched his neck and looked everywhere else but in her direction. Sunny's mouth was gaping.
"Now enough shock Sunny let's go if your husband is awake. "
Sunny walked with them still in shock and trying to process everything. Messys horns rattled while he looked like he was trying to keep a laugh in.
"WAIT HIS NOT I MEAN AHHH ", Sunny shouted after realizing what Daisy just said. Messy bursted out in laughter as his horns, wings and mandibles rattled in excitement. Daisy laughed with Messy, Sunny looked at them with envy and cuteness.
Messy and Daisy were tapping each other on the back before hearing Sunny say,
"You two are so cute. "
Both of them went quiet real quick and started walking again. Sunny walked with them.
Why did they do that?
Sunny looked at both of them before seeing how Daisy and Messy looked. Daisy had a huge red blush on her face and was sweating while Messys mandibles, wings and horns were rattling faster than before.
Sunny walked with them before asking,
"Are you two nervous when you do cute stuff in front of other species? "
Both of them stared at each other before nodding. Sunny didn't ask them more questions as she just let them sit with their thoughts. They were approaching the hospital before she heard Messy say,
"Yeah to be honest I do get nervous or embarrassed when we do cute stuff. It's not Daisy's fault I just get embarrassed easily. "
Daisy looked away from Messy before replying,
"Well for me it's the same, just I'm the joking pony every species knows, not the soft pony who adores her changefriend any chance I get. "
Both Sunny and Messy looked at Daisy but they both wanted to laugh.
"What? "
What do they want to laugh about now.... OH FOR FUCKS SAKE
Daisy blushed at what she just said and nervously spoke again,
"I I meant I do adore him just not all the time... Ahhhh"
Messy just kissed her and covered her flustered face with his jacket as they were about to go into the hospital.
"Don't want them thinking you have a fever. ", Messy winked and replied to
Daisy.
Sunny just adored this and wrote it down like she was some sort of director. Daisy and Messy looked at Sunny in confusion.
"What are you doing? ", Messy asked in confusion.
"Probably going to add that to my story. "
Messy scoffed while Daisy sighed as they all entered the hospital. It was like you got blinded with one colour. White. They walked to receptionist and Sunny asked,
"Where's the room for Bolt Wonders Jackson. "
"Room 34."
"Thank you. "
Sunny smiled and walked off with the rest of them following her.
"His full name is that and how did you know that?", Messy asked in confusion.
"He sent me a letter. "
Sunny smiled as the both of them stood in shock.
"HE'S ALIVE!",Messy and Daisy said in unison as Messy picked up Daisy and put her on his shoulder.
HOLY shit he's tall. His taller than Tumble
Sunny thought as he effortlessly picked her up. With a few more steps, Sunny looked up the door number. 34
Sunny knocked on the door as she heard a voice that she missed for a month but it was deeper, lower and probably had a mouth full.
"Come in"
All of them went inside to see a very white and blue room with a sink and a bed with a familiar blue pegasus on it. Sunny had tears in her eyes as she walked slowly towards him. Bolt turned towards her, his left hand had a huge slash on it and his right eye was a milky white colour and his right hoof was now a numb. His body was in many bandages and so were his wings. Sunny hugged him softly and said,
"You're alive. "
"And I'm glad to be. "
Bolt and Sunny embraced for a bit longer until Messy coughed.
"My bad. "
Bolt looked at Messy and said in the a low tone,
"Dude you look sick. "
"Thanks man. "
Bolt then looked back at Sunny with a soft smile which made Sunny blush.
He is so cute in this weakened state. I know that's wrong but I mean like ahhh
Sunny just gave him some water and asked,
"How are you feeling? "
"Pretty good I think because of the coma most of my body healed. But not my eye and leg but I like it. "
Sunny looked at him. She was happy he was alive and well.
"Ohhhh Bolt, would you come with all of the gang to a camp trip!? ", Daisy spoke from nowhere.
"Sure just give me a day or two alright they have to give me my meds or whatever and discharge me. "
Bolt spoke so low and calm, Sunny was confused if this was the same Bolt she fell for and if it was, she was falling harder. Sunny looked at him and asked him suddenly,
"I saw a pony at night throw a dead flower out the window. I was wondering if you did it since that pony looked like you. "
Bolt's eye though calm went wide.
"Yeah you have some good eyes Sunny. "
Sunny adjusted her glasses and said,
"Oxymoron to me but sure I'll accept it. "
Sunny sat on his bed before saying,
"I missed you Bolt. "
*Bolts thoughts
She missed me.. SHE MISSED ME NO WAY
"I missed you too. "
*Sunny's thoughts
YESSS I WAS RIGHT HE DID MISS ME
Bolt and Sunny stared at each other for a while before Sunny laughed while Bolt just smiled.
"You can't laugh now? ", Messy asked with concern.
"Yeah, it kind of hurts. "
Bolts eyes dimmed downwards and then he said,
"I hate this. I'm tired already but I want to talk to you guys more. "
"Well me and Messy will be busy with experiments. "
Daisy spoke with excitement in her voice. Messy looked at her with confusion before she winked at him and went out the door and wagged her tail in front of him. Messy just shouted,
"See you Bolt! "
And the two of them were gone. It was just Sunny and Bolt. Bolt sat upwards and Sunny just decided to play with his hair. Bolt rested his head on her lap. Sunny was very flustered by it but had to make sure he was comfortable. Sunny just twirled his hair and made it in a ponytail. Sunny then saw he put his head sideways on his lap,his head was right side up so his scar was very noticeable and looked really bad.
My poor baby, well he is fine now. Well it's hot though. True.
Sunny, sitting with her own thoughts, didn't even notice Bolt's beard. It was barely noticeable but it was there and Sunny found it cute and decided to rub it. It felt soft and smooth. Sunny was just there rubbing it and hearing his snores and little mumbling he would make. Sunny was enjoying every second of this experience before it got crumbled as a mare's voice asked behind the door.
"Bolt honey I'm coming in. "
As soon as she heard these words. Bolt's mom walked in to see Bolt on Sunny's lap.
"Aww, my baby has a marefriend. "
Sunny blushed in response and shaked her head no before saying lowly,
"Even though I want to be his marefriend. "
"Well I do think you have a chance dear as he never does that to any species only when he was younger he did that with me, he was such a cute filly. "
Sunny smiled at his mom with that thought.
"I'm guessing he was a handful. "
"Oh no not at all his brother Stargazer was. He wasn't, very simple pony I must say. "
Sunny looked at Bolts sleeping state and told his mom,
"No offence but he doesn't look like he takes a lot from you. "
"Yeah I know that honey I get that all the time, he takes everything from his dad. His dad is busy so he can't be here right now. He has to take care of some big beasts or something. I don't care much, I just care that he's safe. "
"I see he's some Kaiju fighting pony. ", Sunny said with curiosity.
"He calls himself a Jaeger. ", Bolts mom laughed to herself,
"Pardon me, I just find it so cute that he just gives his own job a nickname. "
Sunny and his mom sat there in silence. Bolt's snoring filled the room before Zeb came into the room and said in a cold tone,
"Well he can go if he's.. Ready. "
Zeb looked at Sunny and Bolt and she gave Sunny an eyebrow. Sunny just blushed and looked away from her.
"Oh to be young in love again, it's beautiful now come on love birds get going because he can leave now. "
Zebs voice was low before a young male zebra came to the door,
"Oh hey Zeb, how's it going? "
"Good. "
Zeb only said one word and just looked at the tiny zebra.
"Oh well I was going to ask if you are going to come to lunch with me after work. "
"REALLY? *cough* sure I don't mind Zero. "
Zero then waved and left. Zeb just looked at the both of them with a blank face that could kill with just a glance,
"Not a word. Especially You, Sunset. "
Bolt's mom just laughed in response and waved her hoof to signal she can leave it's fine. Zeb left with a sigh and Sunny woke up Bolt,
"Hey you alright Bolt. "
Bolt looked around the room and then what he was sleeping on. Bolt's face had a slight shade of red before he just sat up and got out of the bed.
"So are we going?"
Bolt stretched and his shirt lifted to reveal an even bigger scar from his pelvis all the way to his bottom of his neck. Sunny felt bad for him but he didn't seem to care too much but she did. Sunny put his right numb in the prosthetic and helped him rebalance.
"Thanks. "
Bolt's voice was a bit higher than what he was speaking like before but it was very deep. Sunny just put his hoof over her shoulder and Sunny waved to Bolt's mom as she left. Sunny walked slowly with Bolt to make sure he didn't fall or sleep or something. Bolt looked at Sunny with a small smile and very big eye black eye bags. He looked weak even though he was healthy enough to leave the hospital.
"Forgot to say the trip starts tomorrow. "
"I don't mind, I'm coming with. "
Sunny smiled back at Bolt as they walked out the hospital. The trees had gold coloured leaves. Sunny enjoyed looking at them and Bolt was just staring at the ground. He looked confused like something he didn't know was about to strike him at any moment. Sunny asked,
"Are you-"
Sunny's words were kept in her mouth as Bolt puked in the grass. Sunny patted his back as he inhaled the air around him. Bolt sat up and walked on, staying quiet the entire time.
"Bolt, are you alright? "
"Yeah I am. "
Bolt spoke a few words, he had tears in his eyes but ignored them and looked upwards. Sunny continued to walk Bolt back to his apartment building. It was a really quiet and long walk. Sunny didn't mind it at all but Bolt did. He just wanted to talk but it's like the words would just crawl back into his mouth. He was nervous and anxious for some reason.
Come on Bolt talk to her... WaWait are we nervous because of her? Pfft no ways.
Bolt glanced at Sunny. She had her red glasses on and her hair was loose from the bun letting her hair flow in the wind but it was sort of kept in a cap. Her shirt blew in the wind. Her green eyes glowed in the sun. Bolt felt his face was warm and his mind blank as he looked towards the floor.
THE FUCK MAN COME ON JUST SPEAK.
"So how's life been Sunny?"
Sunny turned towards the finally talking Bolt. Bolt nervously looked away, Bolt then sighed the words, "Fuck"
Sunny then smiled and said,
"Well I mean it was great but besides you being in the hospital and me being semi sick, yeah it was great. "
Bolt stayed silent and listened to her. He then looked forward to see his dad and brother.
"Oh Bolt if your marefriend was going to supervise you. You could've said. ",
Stargazer said proudly, waiting for a response from his brother. Bolt just blushed and stayed quiet while Sunny spoke nervously,
"W-We aren't dating but yes I'm going to take care of your son and well brother to Stargazer. "
His dad rubbed his head and had a huge bandage on his arm. Bolt then spoke lowly,
"You okay dad? "
His dad then nodded before opening his shirt. Sunny looked away flustered but Bolt looked in awe. His father had a chest plate with a blue colour and a spinning open part in the chest that glowed orange .
"Cool right, I got it for now being Jaeger class in my monster fighting. "
Bolt just smiled and his dad before hoof bumping him. Bolt and Sunny walked on and back into her apartment. Sunny and Bolt the elevator. It was silent again.
Bolt, are we an idiot or not JUST TALK!oh wait we are nervous because this is our crush. I am stupid
Bolt hoof palmed himself in idiocy. Bolt looked Sunny again as the elevator opened. Bolt then looked forward to see Messy. Messy looked sweaty and very excited.
"Oh Bolt, here's your medication, I'm going to go get some water. ",
Messy said before he got in the elevator and left. Bolt gave the medication to Sunny since he didn't know what to do with it. Sunny just smiled and walked Bolt to her room. They got inside and Bolt instantly went to the fridge. He was starving, Like he hadn't eaten in a month. Sunny then said,
"You can only eat soft foods, it says, sooo you are fine with ice cream?"
Bolt nodded as he got into the chair slowly while taking off his prosthetic leg to make himself more comfortable. Bolt looked at Sunny's room. It was very "Lively" you could say,there was a lot of yellows and blues in the room. Bolt then looked at Sunny getting the ice cream out the freezer.
Huh she looks like my wife..... NONO NO SHE ISN'T I WANT HER TO BE BUT STOP BEING DELUSIONAL.
Bolt hit his head against the table. Sunny got the ice cream. One strawberry and the other chocolate, Sunny then asked,
"Which one do you want to have? "
Bolt nervously pointed at the strawberry one. His face was red and he just took it and started munching down on the ice-cream. Bolt looked at the ice cream and was confused because whenever he looked at Sunny, he was afraid, scared and wanted to just run and hide. Bolt scoffed at the thought of how stupid he was being. Bolt decided to look at Sunny and confidently yet in a low voice asked,
"I got an idea to mix our flavours. If you want to. "
Sunny looked at him and smile before her face dropped and she replied,
"Sure but first a question. Are you okay like are you hiding or fearing something because you've been more quiet than usual. "
Bolt sat there fidgeting his hooves. He looked around the room and then said,
"I'm a fucking idiot. Like buck me if it wasn't me being an idiot, with this stupid ego I could've made onto the podium. "
Sunny stayed silent and let him vent.
"My mind went blank in the race and boom, crash. I hated my brother's team and I never knew it. Why do I judge and hate? Celestia I'm an idiot. If I just focu-"
Bolt was crying in front of somepony for the first time. Bolt looked at Sunny with eyes of shock. She had a blank face before she got up and gave him a hug.
"It wasn't your fault. You just think
You can outspeed everything
Like that crash was Horizons fault not yours. You hated your brother's team because every species wanted to join them and you were even named after them. You never wanted to disappoint your parents I can tell. You never wanted to join them because you thought you'd lose your talent. Ponies and species see you as confident, brave and strong but if they met you before you were that, you were an unconfident, scared and weak pegasus. But that's fine, species have their flaws but you ran away from them and never faced them so just know.
Everything is okay
Bolt just sobbed on her shoulder while she patted his hair. Bolt felt more relieved and relaxed than he ever was before. He felt safe and calm. Bolt then broke up the hug and looked Sunny in the eyes and said,
"Sunny i-"
Bolts words were cut off by an excited Scribble and Hefty who said,
"BOLT BUDDY!! "
Bolt's face was red and Sunny's was too. Bolt got gentle hugs from both of them before he spoke in a bit higher tone,
"Eh hey guys. "
"So you survived, that's my bud. "
Scribble said as Hefty ate Sunny's ice cream. Sunny noticed this and chased after Hefty while she giggled. Scribble scoffed while looking at the and asked Bolt,
"So you finally vented to a pony. "
Bolt just nodded before he said silently,
"Yeah you kinda ruined something I was about to say. "
Scribble looked at Bolt instantly and then pointed Sunny and back at Bolt. Bolt nodded and Scribble banged his head against the table,
"Noooo I never thought I would be a cock blocker. NOOO Bolt forgive me. "
"It's fine bud. "
Scribble then pat Bolt's head and said,
"It won't happen again, promise and maybe you can do it later today. "
"I was building that up. "
Scribble's face cringed as he looked at the windows as Celestia's Sun was high in the sky.
"Get 'em next time tiger. "
"Sure will if you're not there. "
"GIVE ME THE ICE CREAM YOU RAT!!"
"NEVER!!!"
As Hefty and Sunny fought over the ice-cream, Bolt and Scribble laughed with Scribbles one being louder than Bolt by a mile. Bolt looked at the window and said to himself in his head.
Next time Bolt but still I feel good.
Thanks Sunny even though I'm saying this in my head. I should tell her that.
Scribble then went to Hefty and picked her up. Hefty was confused like a cat as she gave Sunny the ice cream back.
"Scribble what are you doing. "
"Probably going give you some better ice cream. "
Hefty's eyes went wide and she licked her lips.
"Did you buy it last night? "
"Yes darling now let's go. "
Scribble nuzzled Hefty muzzle as he waved at Sunny and Bolt. Bolt glared at him with snake eyes. Scribble instantly shut the door on them and started walking with the mare of his dreams in his arms. Scribble then got to their room and blew fire in different directions to light the candles. Hefty eeped with excitement.
"Oh I know what kind of mood you're in.
Scribble went down to her neck and blew a bit of heat through his nose into her neck. He slowly bit her neck and she sighed with pleasure as he picked her up and put her on the bed. She bit her lip and looked at Scribble in the eyes. Scribble lowered himself and gave Hefty a kiss on the lips and his long pink coloured tongue trailed her body. Her shivers made Scribble more driven to pleasuring his mare. He licked around her glory hole before indulging straight into his meal.
"FUCKKKK SCRIBBLE. "
Scribble enjoyed the screams of pleasure from his mare as he traced his name inside her as he licked her clitoris. Hefty was swimming in pleasure before he got up. Hefty then looked at him and gave him a nod. Scribbles dual wielded swords revealed themselves. They both had semi circular balls on either side of the cock and a quill pen tip. They were a brown colour. Scribble then put the one inside her, Hefty moans were soft and very shaky. Hefty nodded again to say she was okay and for another thing. Scribble inserted the second one.
"Fuck yes Scribble. POUND ME. "
Hefty was driven now by the ecstasy of pleasure of her mate. Scribble went slow with her at first. Her moans and scent filled the room,while Scribble grunted and groaned. Scribble went lower to her level. Making sure to keep a slow rhythm while fucking her. Hefty was getting a little bit grumpy of the speed so she moaned,
"Scribble just FUCK ME.. What are.. You... Doing. "
Hefty was confused but she wasn't complaining too much as she was still getting all the pleasure until she felt Scribble's teeth bite into her neck. Hefty smirked and moaned,
"Good boy. "
Scribble instantly picked up the pace on her. Making her eyes roll to the back of her head. Her moans were muffled but loud as she bit Scribble's shoulder as they picked up the pace. Scribbles pace was of a raging bull. Pounding away at her insides. Hefty kept moaning of pleasure that her dragon was giving her today.
"Fuck. YES.. MORE.. MORE SCRIBBLE... "
Hefty was enjoying every second of this. Scribble bit harder and she would moan in pleasure. Scribble was going feral, pounding every last corner of her insides as his two clocks beat her insides through. Heftys moans were more loud as her hips bucked in for a long time. She came and he was still going. Hefty was probably going to pass out but she just wanted him to knock her up already.
"FILL.. ME.. UP.. JUST.. DO IT. "
Heftys hips buckled again before hearing Scribble grunt one more time before getting knotted. Hefty felt her insides get warm and stuffed. Hefty enjoyed every second of it as Scribble escaped her prized hole. Hefty pussy was filled and Scribbles cream was flowing out of her. Her tummy was bigger than before and she liked it. Scribble then looked at Hefty with snake eyes and smirked. He pointed down towards his swords. Hefty began to lick them and cleaned them. Making sure not a single drop was wasted of his thick cream.
"Good girl. "
Scribble grunted as he sat on a chair while she got to work on him. Licking all over his duals. She gulped them once or twice to clean them properly, she gave him a quick blowie to clean him up. She then got up and kissed his cheek.
"Thank you for that honey... It was wonderful, I must say so myself. "
"Same here, you were amazing as ever. "
Hefty then sat on his lap and kissed him. Scribble leaned into the kiss and their tongues battled in each other's mouth as Scribble grabbed her ass and picked her up.
"Can I have seconds."
"Yes..you definitely can. "
Hefty kissed Scribble and smirked.
"Sure then what do you want to do? "
Hefty then whispered in his ear,
"Maybe fuck me from the back or pick me up and fuck me. Whatever you want to do. I'm yours remember. "
Scribble smirked as proceeded to pick her up and then whispered into her neck,
"How about both?"
Scribbles flirting was definitely working on her as she kissed him and nodded. It looked like Hefty was obsessed with her mate and she was and she was crazy obsessed with him. Scribble stood on his two hind legs and put her close to his swords again. Hefty was thrilled with the feel of them close to her holes as she looked at him with a nod. She then was instantly getting pumped like an animal. Scribbles and Hefty's moans filled the room. Scribble went faster than normal as the musk of the room was driving him mad. Hefty's moans were louder and more commanding,
"Yes... YEYES..HARDER ... USE ME... FUCK"
Scribble listening to his mares commands went harder on her as her moans went silent as she just enjoyed the moment with grunts and small moans. She then leg locked Scribble. Scribble went harder, putting his claws softly into her rump to make sure to not hurt her. Hefty then spoke through her pleasured and lustful moans,
"FUCKKKK. Scribble come... OnOn just grab my... ass... I don't care.. just make me yours. "
Scribble put his claws into her rump harder than he had ever done before and pushed her into the wall. Her moans were ecstatic. She bucked her legs again cumming in pure ecstasy. Scribble then grunted more aggressively before oozing in Hefty again. Hefty bit his shoulder again and then was placed on the ground gently and Scribble kissed her forehead.
"That was amazing. "
"Yeah...definitely now I'm just going to lay here for a bit now you can go shower. "
"Sure. "
Scribble walked away before locking the bathroom door as Hefty laid down with pleasure and a room with the musk of sex. ... ... ....
FUCK IS MY HAIR ALRIGHT. IS MY OUTFIT ALRIGHT. WHERE IS SHE
Storm paced up and down at the door of Diamond Tiara's apartment. Storm wore a black zip up jacket with some biker logo on the back and white trousers. Storm also had a bouquet of flowers. Black, red, white and even somehow some blue flowers. Storm then heard the door open as he instantly dashed to the door.
"Oh darling, did you really wait so long for me? "
Storm was in awe as she wore a glitter black dress,with black lipstick, mascara, a black purse and her hair was in a bun.
"It's rude to stare but I'll make an expectation for you. "
Diamond giggled as she gave Storm a kiss as he offered his hoof.
"Oh what a gentleman. "
Diamond took his arm and wrapped herself around it. Diamond was a bit shorter than Storm. They walked out the apartment building and straight into a middle of the day walk.
"So where are we going Storm? "
Oh Diamond who CARES DO YOU SEE HOW HE LOOKS. HE IS HOTT. DON'T MENTION IT TO HIM THOUGH
Diamond blushed as Storm spoke,
"Oh don't worry I did say it would be somewhere special. "
Storm kissed Diamond on the lips and walked her into the forest. Diamond felt nervous and scared.
"Are you sure this is safe? "
"Yes and trust me it will be worth all the fear you have. "
Storm was calm as he pulled her closer to him. Diamond looked at him and he smirked. Diamond's nose bleed a little bit as she wiped it away quickly with her face red.
HOLY CELESTIA AND LUNA THIS STALLION IS LIKE THE ONE YOU SEE IN BOOKS. HOLY SHITTT. Tiara control yourself here.
Diamond blushed furiously as they saw a light spot. They walked in it to see a lagoon with pure see through water and daisys around it but lily pads grew in the water with pink roses. Diamond was in shock as Storm took her to a picnic spot that was already set up.
"How in the world did you find this place!? It's so romantical! "
"I know right but it was my dad who showed me this place as a filly. "
"Is he still alive? I want to thank him. "
Storm laughed and then kissed Diamond on the lips as he then said,
"You can actually say thanks to him to now"
Diamond was confused as then a huge shadow was casted over her. Diamond looked behind her in awe. There stood an alicorn with ocean blue flur, wavy dark blue patterns on his fur, water for hair that was in a surfer hairstyle and so was his beard. He only wore beach pants. His eyes were also very dark blue which made his eyes look pure blue.
"Met my dad the king of the water and yes that does mean the sea too. OLO TO NERO THEOS(more than a millennium old/name means ALL WATER GOD) "
Diamond stood in awe at Storm's dad. They looked very alike, their faces not their colour's.
"So you get any of his powers handsome and THANKS FOR THE SPOT! "
NEROS went down from his water tower. He was huge, bigger than princess celestia by at least two feet. NEROS then spoke,
"Thank you, mare friend of my son also what is your name and to answer your question, yes he does have some of my powers. "
Tiara looked at Storm excitedly like a little filly before Storm scoffed shot water from his hoof. Her face was just pure excitement as she then spoke,
"What else can you do? "
"Well I can do this too. "
He then ran to the lagoon and jumped in fully clothed. Tiara gasped and ran to the edge before Storm flew out the water and landed next to her. She was a bit wet but Storm was completely dry.
"Wow that's cool darling but when will your dad be going, no offence I just want to have this cute date!! "
Tiara was very excited and jumping up and down. Storm looked at his dad and said,
"See you dad. "
"See you kid also... Good choice. "
NEROS disappeared into the water slowly as his son hoof palmed himself. Storm looked back at Tiara who was just admiring him. Storm sat down on the grass and looked at the sky as Tiara then spoke,
"Thanks Storm for the date. It's been a while since I got asked out. "
"Well we have been dating for a month now and I still had a question on my mind. Why did you choose to date? "
Tiara blushed and put a hoof to her mouth as she was enjoying some apple pie. Tiara gulped the piece of pie down and then replied,
"Well you see I was first head over heels for Bolt but then I was never going to get with him and then you came only. I was first saying, me dating you would make Bolt jealous but I found myself falling more and more in love with you than I ever did with Bolt so yes I chose you for revenge but now it's no longer revenge it's for love. "
As Diamond was talking. Storm was just looking at with dim eyes as he admired how she looked in the Sun. Her light blue eyes glew like blue sapphires, her hair pink and white glittered and her tiara sparkled. Diamond looked at the admiring Storm and giggled as he zoned out. While she was giggling she felt lips against hers. Diamond then spoke,
"Wow, very forward Storm."
"I'm not forward, I'm your colt friend. "
Both of them laughed before enjoying the food Storms dad had prepared for them. Storm fed Tiara.
"What a gentlecolt. "
Storm just laughed and replied,
"I thought that's how princesses are supposed to be treated. "
Diamond then had a big red blush on her face as she covered her face. Storm just laughed some more. The time seemed to pass by as the two love birds talked and enjoyed the date. Celestia's Sun was now falling and soon Luna's Moon would be in the Sky. Storm got up and wiped himself off before offering Diamond a hoof. Diamond got up and giggled. They started to walk out the forest as Storm looked back to see his Dad clapping. Storm sighed and walked off in embarrassment. It wasn't much of a walk back to her apartment, Storm then opened the door to her apartment and let her in before saying,
"Well I got to go because I'll be finally expecting my equestria games letter as I won. "
"Yeah I remember that handsome, I was at the race. But that's fine then I'll be seeing you later. "
Diamond turned around ready to walk in her room as she then felt a tap on her shoulder as she turned around to Storm who gently took her chin and kissed her. Storm then waved and left, his face was a bit red. Diamond closed the door and then had a huge blush on her face as she jumped around and giggled.
HOLY CELESTIA HE IS DREAMY AHHHH WOW THAT WAS WOW AHHHH I CAN'T EVEN PROCESS THIS AHHH I LOVE THAT HANDSOME AND CUTE STALLION.
Luna's moon was high in the sky. It was night time and it was peaceful as the day before the camping trip. The group got their stuff ready to go camping.
The day of the camp trip they all met at the college as they waited for their bus. Bolt was the only quiet one there as the rest talked away. Scribble then said,
"Alright THE BUS IS HERE SPECIES LET'S GOOOO"
Hefty was on his shoulders as they got on the bus. The rest climbed in with Sunny giving him a smile that warmed his face and the summer pants and pink vest would've let him back in the hospital but he was absolutely covered in bandages besides his face and tail. Bolt took a step on the bus and breathed.
Okay me we are going to confess and I don't care that we are in this weakened state. We are doing this and let's hope I don't have some thoughts... NeNevertheless We are going to confess.
Bolt got on the bus and sat next to Sunny as she smiled toothy to him. He just gave her a small smile as he looked through the window.
Okay so no bad thoughts, camp trip with friends time this is going to be fun I think
> A chaotic yet calm camping trip
Bolt sat and looked at the window as the bus started up. Scribble then said,
"Oh yeah this trip our parents are coming and don't worry I sent all of your parents letters. It's for Bolt mostly. "
Bolt just smirked at the idea before starting out the window again. The trees looked orange and the sky was an even brighter orange because of morning weather. It was cloudy but there was no rain. Storm got up and put his boombox in the front and asked,
"Any requests? "
Daisy shot up from her seat and shouted,
"FRIDAY! THE REMIX PLEASE!"
Storm then put the song on as every species in the bus sang. Bolt smiled making sure he was enjoying the moment or every species would be worried about him. He then looked at Sunny, who was just bouncing in one spot to the music. Bolt smiled at how cute she was until out of nowhere Messy whispered in the seat behind him,
"Stop admiring her and ask her out. "
Bolt looked at him with a blank face and replied,
"Gonna do that on this camp trip. "
Messy softly clapped his hooves as Bolt sighed. The bus was rowdy as it would be in a party bus. Bolt enjoyed this time with his friends since it was a while since he even got to see them. Sunny sat down and just requested a chill song. Bolt went to his bag and got some soft gummys to nibble on while he waited for them to play something exciting again. Bolt then looked at Sunny who was now nearly muzzle to muzzle with him. Bolt's face felt warm as Sunny's eyes were as wide as a cats.
"Can I have some? "
Bolt put some gummies in her hooves as she started to nibble on Bolts chips. The bus felt rather quiet as Bolt got up to look around as he saw every species asleep. Bolt scoffed as he sat back down and enjoyed some gummies with Sunny. As she chewed away in pleasure, Bolt admired her but started to zone out.
I mean we could confess now but would that be stupid I mean no species is awake right now.
Bolt got up again and scanned the bus. Every species was sound asleep besides them two. Bolt sat down and looked at Sunny before trying to say something.
Sunny instantly looked at him attempting to say something. Sunny tilted her head before smiling and patting his head. Bolt sat there confused before she said,
"I think you're tired, you should go to sleep. "
Bolt's face was a bit red before he took off his right prosthetic leg and laid down on his back on the seat. It was uncomfortable but not bad if rest was needed. Bolt shifted around awkwardly before laying back and closed his eyes.
Sunny looked at the tired Bolt. She smiled before giving him her neck pillow. Bolt opened one eye and smirked before leaning against the window and fell asleep. Sunny looked at him as he fell asleep. Sunny then shifted in her chair. She felt a tap on her shoulder, she was confused to see Starmist.
"Oh yeah, forgot you came along for the ride. "
"Yeah I need to be dropped off for a job interview also I'm surprised you didn't confess yet. "
Sunny's face went bright red as Starmist laughed softly. Sunny just sat in her seat crossed hooves and said,
"Sometimes you are irritating. "
"Like the one time I caught you accidentally adding Bolt's name into your story. "
Sunny's face was an even darker red now then it was before.
"Well it wasn't my fault, I was just thinking about him now, shut up and go sleep. "
"Okay Ms Jackson. "
Sunny sat there proudly before saying,
"Oh shut up Already! "
"Fine Fine. "
They both went quiet before Sunny asked,
"How do you feel that your crush is taken away from you? "
Starmist fidgeted with her hair before replying nervously,
"Well I must say it felt very bad but I got through it. I'll find some species some day. "
Sunny smiled at her and saying,
"That's the spirit. "
"As happy as I sound I just want to get dicked down. "
Sunny looked at Starmist as she looked back at her with a blush. They both got back in their seats and shut up. Sunny then asked,
"Then why don't you do a one night stand? "
"Because well it's confusing but I want the best of both worlds like love and lust if that makes sense. "
Star spoke in a nervous tone yet her face was blank. Sunny also saw that she had a necklace on her neck with a heart.
"What's that on your neck? "
Starmist took her necklace off and gave it to her. Sunny opened to see it was pictures of two of a unicorn and a pegasus. The mare was a pegasus and the unicorn was a stallion.
"It's my parents, they are busy in Manehattan. "
"Oh that's cool but what job are you going for? "
Starmist took her necklace back and replied to her question,
"Weather pony or where we are going now Camp worker. "
"So no more racing?"
"Yeah, after that crash I'm out. "
"You know you had great potential. I think you should give one more go. "
A small voice said. Both mares went quiet and looked to the direction of the noise. It was Bolt and he was smirking.
"How long were you awake? "
"Well I'm going to go sleep again. I feel tired because of this stupid injury but when you said about your parents. "
Both mares sighed with relief and Bolt tilted his head in confusion.
"But anyways, fine. I'll do it one more time. "
"That's what I lik-"
Bolt fell face first into Sunny's lap as his voice cut out and was replaced with small breaths. Sunny smiled while she caressed his hair. Starmist laughed while Sunny began to blush.
"Okay seriously go sleep now. "
"Fine Fine. "
Sunny heard Starmist get comfortable in her seat as she fell asleep. Sunny sat in her seat as she started to drift off in her dreams. ... ...
"ALRIGHT FIRST STOP OF THE DAY EVER SPECIES EMPTY YOUR STUFF OR GET SOMETHING TO EAT. "
The bus pony shouted as he sat at a garage. Sunny rubbed her eyes and looked next to her to see Bolt smirking at her. His scar sort of shined and his eyes looked like ruby's. How he looked in these Sunny(hehe pun) days would make her faint every time. Sunny slowly got up with a smile and a huge blush on her face. It was now 3:08pm, Sunny walked in the garage and went straight to the bathroom. The outside of the garage was in a town that was normal you could say but they couldn't explore it since of the bus order they chose. Sunny quickly got out of the bathroom and went to buy a drink and a snack. She wore an orange turtle neck and some grey trousers. Sunny got an orange juice and chips and went to the counter and paid for it. She saw Bolt getting a coffee and a chocolate doughnut.
"Is that all you're getting? "
"Yeah I need energy and these will help."
Bolt's voice was still low but Sunny noticed that she was a bit smaller than Bolt. The rest of the gang got their snacks and drinks. The bus driver allowed them to walk around for 20 minutes before they left. Sunny looked at her silver watch as she saw the time. 3:40pm
JEEZ time moves by fast
Sunny took Bolt's hoof and went to the closest book store as Bolt had a small smile on his face as he saw the pure excitement on her face. They walked in as the doorbell rang as they walked in. They were greeted by an old male griffin. Both of them looked around for any books that might interest them. Bolt took a book with his brother's face on it. It read
"Tale of the never falling pegasi. "
Bolt put it down with a sigh. Bolt then saw a newspaper that interested him. "Does Bolt want to join the Wonderbolts? "
What I'm on the news paper odd
It read on "After a month long coma, Stargazer has come forward to say that Horizon will not make it to become a wonderbolt for now and he will stay in the academy team but he has given his brother (with great potential) a contract. "
Jeez, talk about pressure. I don't need to -
He then felt a mares breathe on his neck. Bolt moved back fast to see it was Sunny reading the same newspaper as him.
"I think you should join. "
"I'm still thinking about it because I want a contract with the Blue Bolts. "
Sunny pouted before saying,
"Your brother is giving you an opportunity to be in the biggest team in the whole equestria so why don't take the opportunity. "
"Because I'm scared of the pressure. "
Bolt looked at her in her emerald eyes. Bolt then felt a hoof a his cheek as she then said,
"You'll be fine, I know you, Bolt. Remember you're Thunder and your story will send shock into many species just like thunder."
They stood there for a minute staring at each other's eyes. The atmosphere was like time just stopped right in front of them. Sunny looked at him more as he took a step forward before a loud Daisy called them. They both looked away from each other with Sunny being more red than Bolt. Bolt walked out the shop with one thought in his head.
Were we about to..... KIKISS Fucckk myself for not leaning in for it.
Bolt sighed in pain as he walked off. Sunny looked at Bolt while he walked out. He was in of course bandages and casts of course but his black hoodie and black pants made Sunny think for some reason. He didn't look any different from before but she got a blush on her face for no reason.
Huh his favourite colour is black and in that shop were we about to.... KIKISS WAIT WHAT NO WAY NO WAY HUH?!!!!
Sunny walked faster back in the bus as she now sat down by the window. She was breathing heavily because of the thought of kissing Bolt. She ate some chips as she looked nervously around. Starmist was walking with Bolt as they got on the bus. Starmist sat behind Sunny and Bolt sat down with Sunny. He sighed, put on a sleep mask that had the logo of the B/B pegasi(BMW) and just like that he was sound asleep. He fell down on Sunny's lap. Sunny wouldn't mind if this was about a minute ago but now she was red as a tomato and as hot as a steam pot.
"Aww you guys are soooo cute. ", Starmist said with a smirk as she looked directly at Sunny.
"J-Just for once can I be in peace. "
"Aww okayyy I know something happened with you two. "
Starmist sat back down still with a smirk but Sunny just sighed. She looked at the sleeping Bolt. He had a lot of scars that were never visible before. There were a lot of small scars. And a lot of them were on his chest...
WHY AM I LOOKING THERE
Sunny looked out the window as her face heated. She put her attention back to Bolt. She smiled and listened to his breathing patterns. Sunny looked around to see that Scribble was trying to not laugh.
"What is Scribble? "
"Nothing much just was trying to get your attention off your husband but anyways your parents are coming right?"
"Yeah but it's just my mom, her husband died when I was like 14."
"Oh I'm so sorry, well it's just me and my dad. His wife divorced him when I was younger when I was about like 8 because of stuff he hasn't told me yet, while I suspect it was cheating. Well she was bad anyways always hitting me and shouting so it's fine with me and my dad. "
Sunny looked at Scribble with sympathy. He always looked so happy and that had happened to him. His voice was sort of low but still high as it has always been.
"I'm sorry about what happened, did you tell Hefty? "
"Eyyup long time ago and don't worry I'm fine. "
"Sorry for interrupting but my parents are going to be so surprised that I got a marefriend, they thought I would want to be lonely forever. "
For the first time Messy lightened the mood as the three species laughed loudly. Sunny wiped her tears away, Messy looked at them and said,
"Wait Sunny what is your mom like. "
"Oh she is a farmer for Sweet Apple Arces and she's quite tall, taller than Tumble actually and she's loud but kind. "
"She sounds nice, my father is just loud and tall, like taller than an alicorn tall. "
Messy and Sunny turned to Scribble. Mouths wide open. Messy then spoke,
"I mean I would be tall as a alicorn, when I'm an adult but jeez he's tall. "
"Yeah I know but you'll see him soon so don't worry about it for now at least. "
Sunny then took out her chips and started to chomp down. She offered them, Scribble had some and Messy just ate the packet. Scribble looked at him with confusion, Sunny giggled and ate more. She looked at Bolt who was still sleeping on her lap. She didn't think he knew that he was on her lap. She caressed his hair gently while she smiled. Sunny then heard giggles that sounded like a bug and a broken microphone. Messy and Scribble.
"What is it? "
"Nothing. "
Both of them snickered and you could even hear Messys wings and mandibles shake. Sunny rolled her eyes and just paid her attention to Bolt again. Sunny zoned out while looking at him. So long that it was the next stop.
Sunny tapped Bolts head and said,
"Wake up Thunder. "
Bolt woke up and looked up to see a smile that could kill if it was Medusa's effect. Bolt just gave a small smile back before getting up and nearly falling over because he lost balance but fortunately Sunny helped him. Bolt kept a small smile on his face and got out the bus to get himself a snack.
FUCCKKK WHYYYYY IS SHE SO CUTEE
Bolt felt his face heat up a bit before he got in the store and took an energy drink called "Rainbow Bash Wonder flavour. " and a PBJ sandwich.
"15 bits please "
Bolt dropped the amount of bits and took his stuff before saying,
"Thanks for the service ma'am. "
The older dark blue mare said,
"You're welcome. "
Bolt walked out the garage shop and ate his sandwich before he looked at the time. 7:10pm.
Bolt looked at the darkening sky that would capture Luna's moon in it.
Wish I could fly right now.... I I won't be doing that in 3 months and the Equestria games is in 5 months
Bolt walked into the bus. His eyes felt droopy and lazy. He got out the window and sat in the bus in peace. No species was with him, he clapped his prosthetic with his hoof as it made a clank noise. He then saw Daisy enter the bus and ask Bolt,
"Let me guess, you're tired again. "
Bolt nodded and opened his energy drink and drank some. Bolt stared out the window before she spoke again,
"You're still angry with yourself I'm guessing. Every species is here for you. I don't know why you are acting like this. "
You won't understand Daisy. I don't think any species will
Bolt then lied,
"I'm fine, trust me. "
Daisy just gave him a pat on the shoulder and walked back to her seat. Bolt laid on both seats before every species started pouring in the bus. The sky was slowly fading in the distance as Sunny and Bolt watched it.
"This is nice. "
Bolt smiled and replied while the bus started to move,
"Yeah it is. "
Bolt then looked at Sunny without her noticing.
I know somespecies, more beautiful and yet as nice as this sunset.
Bolt turned back to the window where Sunny swapped seats with Bolt and had to lean over to see out the window. Bolt then sat properly in his seat. Bolt took an apple juice box out and started to drink it. Sunny then asked for some. Bolt then gave her some and then took it back with no thoughts in his head.
Wait a minute....something just happened and I don't know...WE IN DIRECTLY KISSED
Bolt kept a straight face but his face was warm. Sunny then asked,
"Can I get your sleep mask? "
Bolt handed it over as Sunny started to fall asleep. Bolt got up and looked around the bus to see if any species was awake. None were so he walked to the back of the bus to the back seat. He laid down on the three back seats and started to cry while touching his right side of his face. He felt his huge scar and still couldn't see the right side of his world.
How am I supposed to tell them I can't race normally anymore?
Bolt's mind replayed the thought of what the nurse told his parents at night.
What do you mean my son can't race anymore
Well I mean sir and ma'am he can. It's not going to be easy though. Maybe looking into a new career would be best for him.
Bolt hit his head softly as he weeped to himself.
But I only like racing. If I don't do that, then I'll be an amateur racer then.
Bolt thought about the potential he had and all his friends not knowing this fact about him.
Also his wings will be very fragile after they heal so if he gets into one more crash even if it's a slight nudge into the wall. He'll be basically an earth pony.
Bolt looked at Luna's moon in the cloudy night sky. He was probably going to risk it all just for his dream and if he messed up once
Your son might die the next time this happens.
Bolt just sat up and put his hooves on his face in fear of what was to come. Bolt basically hunched himself up and weeped softly. Bolt looked out at the moon again and asked himself.
What am I supposed to do now? All I know is I'm not giving up.
Bolt sat there, his eyes flowing with tears but eyes of determination.
I will never give up.
Bolt looked at his half world and felt under his shirt to feel his scars.
His scars are very sensitive and the crash made his entire body vulnerable to a lot of things, even if he slightly touches it he'll feel like his entire hoof is on the scar
Bolt touched his scar and felt tingles that he only got from slightly touching Sunny's mane or just her caressing his hair. His body was vulnerable but like the nurse it was a might that he would die if this happens again.
Hey my Thunder baby, don't worry you'll recover in no time and you better race. Like your dad tells me when he goes into a fight with the mystical Kaiju or whatever.
You either die doing something you love or you live the rest of your life in regret.
Bolt thought about what his mom said and smiled but then laughed mentally.
I hope my dad doesn't die while having sex with my mom
Bolt giggled before his ribs hurt because of it. Bolt's face went straight again and had an aggressive feeling in his head. Bolt walked back to his seat and looked at Sunny who was leaning against the window. Bolt scoffed and put her on his shoulder. Bolt admired her. Like he used to do in every class they sat next to each other or whenever she would grab him and ask him to help her out with the work or when she just would laugh or do literally anything. Bolt admired her every chance he got and that stupid smile he would do was priceless.
Bolt just smiled at the thought of his high school life with the mare that he wants. It was nice and now it's even better, they were free to do anything in the Equestria. And better yet no species would care. He heard some species waking up behind him and she said,
"Why are you still awake, Bolt? "
Starmists voice was calm and tired. Bolt just said,
"Just wanted to look at the Moon. "
Starmist shrugged and went back to sleep,which left Bolt again alone with his thoughts.
Sooo what now Bolt,
He glanced back at Sunny. She slept
peacefully on his shoulder as he enjoyed her warmth, he felt his eyes drift off into the land of Luna. ... ...
"Bolt,BOLT!!"
Bolt shot up at the screaming voice which made him fall out of his seat and on his face.
OUCH THAT HURTS
Bolt groaned as he got up. The loud voice was Storm.
"Get your arse up, we need you to kick some arse! if some creature attacks. "
Bolt sighed at the loud and hyper Storm. Bolt looked for Tiara. Bolt then saw her admiring Storm. Bolt looked out the window as Celestia's Sun raised in the distance. Bolt groaned and asked,
"Are we at the camp yet? "
"Yeah you dick that's why I woke you up, a bro wouldn't wake another bro up with no reason. "
Storm said with a low tone and tapped his shoulder as he and Tiara got off the bus. Storm then splashed Bolt's face with water from seemingly nowhere.
How the fuck... Eh who cares
Bolt got out of the bus. Celestia's Sun beaming straight down his eyes. Bolt had to walk slowly into the campsite to make sure he wasn't burning alive. Every species was setting up camp already and there was not a sight of the parents. Sunny was struggling to set it up so Bolt went to give as much assistance as he could. He hit his hip on the right side.
FUCKING EYE
Bolt finally got to her as he carefully went through the nature filled camp. When he did get there he just instructed since his strength hasn't been regained yet.
I hate injuries
Bolt observed his surroundings, he then went to walk around the camp and noticed.
Where's Starmist
Bolt went to the information desk which was in some sort of wood cabin. Bolt then saw Starmist in a campers outfit, she had a grin on her face as she talked to a dark brown kirrin. Who also wore a campers outfit. Bolt looked at them intensely as he approached Starmist.
"See you got the job Star. "
Starmist's face went blank as she looked at him with a stare that could kill. The kirrin then smiled at Bolt and said,
"Oh you're the future Red horses WB racer, Bolt Wonders Jackson right? "
Bolt was shocked at the kirrin before he lowly replied,
"Yes I am, I'm guessing your Starmist's old classmate. "
Both of them looked confused and looked at Bolt, Starmist then asked,
"How did you guess that? Oh yeah you forgot to say your name eh who cares his name is Oak Piano(20yrs) . "
Bolt raised his eyebrows as he looked at Starmist, she sighed as Oak came back with something.
"Here's a map also, can I get your autograph? "
Oak sounded calm as he pulled out some paper and a pen. Bolt signed it immediately and then Oak looked at Starmist. He proceeded to pick her up and walk her around.
That's odd
"We used to do this in primary school. "
Starmist said embarrassed. Starmist and Oak left, probably to their bedrooms. Bolt went back out the cabin to check on every species, it felt like it took ages just to walk their but then he saw Messys parents, a lilac and green griffin, she had grey eyes and yellow talons and a bright yellow and grey changeling, dark ocean blue eyes, grey mandibles and light yellow see through wings.
"Oh hey there chum, the names Romeo Blue(39yrs),weird name since I'm yellow but I named myself off my eyes. "
His voice was quite colt like but also could be aggressive, his wife then said in a shy voice,
"Hello there. "
"Her name is Lily Pad(42yrs). "
So how old were they when had him
"And before you get worried chum, we adopted him. "
Okay so we got that clear at least
Bolt shaked his hand as he gave him a huge grin. Lily just stood still before Romeo took her hand and walked her to a bench where he fed her some cake.
Probably to calm her
Bolt then looked for Sunny. She had her sunhat on with blue overalls. The one strap was off revealing her yellow shirt . Bolt turned red at the sight.
Okay go to her and tell her she looks good.
Bolt walked with a mission in his head as he got closer to her, he slowly felt more anxious and nervous before he fell over a rock to his right.
"Oh Bolt you alright dear. "
A familiar mare voice said rushing towards Bolt.
"Mom, I'm alright. "
His voice was stern and low. He felt his head as it had a cut in it. Bolt then fainted. ...
"Huh where am I? "
Bolt woke up in a green tent as he looked to his side, there sat his mom and brother.
"You better watch for yourself brother, I don't want you more injured. "
Stargazer's voice was concerned and low. Bolt looked at his mom who had the same face as his brother. Concern.
"You think you'll be alright sweetheart. "
His mom asked in a sad tone. Bolt sat up and thought for a bit. He felt his head where the bandage was. He was dazed and felt off.
"I need to fix this stupid eye. "
Stargazer and His mom looked at each other while Bolt looked at the sleep bag he was under. Stargazer then spoke,
"You know we could go after this camping trip to Princess Twilight Sparkle. "
Bolt's eyes were dim but lit up just a bit before he replied,
"How though? "
"If you're a part of the best team in all of equestria then easy access. We'll fix your eye but probably only a bit since I heard that if you do it fully you might go blind. "
As Stargazer explained, Bolt felt a shock of fear before Sunny enter the tent and asked,
"Is he... THANK CELESTIA AND LUNA. "
Sunny hugged him softly but with a lil squeeze which hurt him but he didn't mind since he knew that she cared for him. Bolt returned the hug as his mom and brother smirked at each other.
"Oh sorry ma'am you can talk to your son. "
Sunny said as she left, Bolt was smiling before he instantly felt embarrassed and turned to his mom and Stargazer.
"Don't- "
"You like her don't you? "
They both said in unison as Bolt sighed annoyingly and right on time his dad said,
"MY SON LIKES SOME SPECIES. "
Bolt put his hooves on his face as his family laughed. Bolt then got up and said,
"I'm going to go get some water or something to eat. I don't know, I'm just going to walk. "
Bolt started to get out the tent slowly before walking in the woods. It felt like he was walking for ages, he saw a river and sat by it. Feeling tired he decided to lay down.
Fuck it feels like I won't be able to have energy in a while this sucks.
As he laid on the soft grass patch, he saw a huge shadow over cast him. He also felt a few drops of water on his face. He looked up in terror but then saw two alicorns. One mare and one stallion. They were speaking about something. The mare had clouds for her ponytail/tail, white fur and blue eyes, she wore a white Greek goddess cloak and a gold spike shoulder armor. The stallion was the king who Bolt has read about, he thought he was dead. He was OLO TO NERO THEOS. Bolt gasped at the sight of the alicorn but was confused about the mare one.
"Hello there young one, so you know where my son is? "
Bolt looked at with confusion and then asked,
"You have a son, why is HE still alive and who are you? "
The alicorn mare laughed at his many questions and answered,
"Yes I have a son with NERO, his name is Storm Gatherer. The books had it wrong, Celestia didn't kill him, she exiled him in waters for 2000 years. My name young one is REGINA CAELI(The queen of the skies in Latin, same age as Princess Celestia)."
Bolt stood there stunned at the two. A king of the water and the princess of the skies was right in front of him. She also stood on a cloud.
"Wait so you two are dating and also I'll lead you to him. "
Bolt turned around and walked into the forest slowly.
"You are very badly injured young one, you should rest. Also we are happily married. "
Regina giggled as Neros then said,
"Eh he'll be alright, he's walking it off like a champ. Also kid if ye wanna know why I'm this old and not dead well first my beautiful wife here begged the old princess of Equestria or Dea Equestris(Queen of Equestria in Latin) and Princess Celestia to let me go. Also Princess Celestia isn't her real name it's... Still hate that dreaded name that banished me. "
Nero breathed in before explaining further,
"Thea tou illou(Goddess of the Sun in Greek) . "
Nero looked defeated his eyes filled with hatred and sadness as Regina patted his back gently.
"As he was saying, then me and Princess Luna (Thea tou Fengariou/Greek for Goddess of the moon) freed him and was king again of the waters. "
Regina explained while comforting Nero.
"Why was he banished anyway. "
"Nearly overthrew Equestria with his power before they banished him and took some of his powers. "
Bolt stood there again stunned about all this information and that Storm's dad was an Equestrian threat. Storm's dad just then shot Bolt before laughing and saying,
"And the other reason is because I didn't want to date Dea. I just wanted my now wife. "
The more I Iisten to this, the more I wished our history books were updated.
Bolt finally got to the camp, he was exhausted and about to fall again before water randomly splashed his face and a cloud picked him up. Regina glared at Nero who was laughing proudly.
"Bolt dude where have you been we were...Dad and Mom "
Storm looked at the both of them and then flew into a hug. His mom's voice was gentle,
"My storm your growing up so fast. "
His dad's voice just was deep yet loud,
"AHH son how are you doing, also where's your marefriend. "
Storm blushed then replied while flapping his wings and looked at his mom,
"Yeah so I have a marefriend now and I'm doing great. I'm glad you guys are here. "
They all embraced in a hug as Diamond joined.
"Ohhhh there you are, Honey, here's your storms marefriend. Diamond Tiara. "
Regina giggled and said,
"Well hello there dear. How do you feel that you'll be dating the next king of both the sky and waters. "
A loud outburst from everyone in the camp was heard,
"WHAT!?!"
Diamond just stood there shocked and confused. She looked at Storm who was fidgeting with his hair nervously. Diamond then hugged Storm and shouted,
"WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME SOONER! "
Storm then was aggressively shaked by his excited marefriend. Storm then responded in between shakes,
"I... Wanted... To.. Say.. That, when my parents were here. "
Diamond stopped shaking Storm, who was smiling while looking at her. Storm then kissed her to keep her calm.
"Oh how wonderful. "
Regina giggled, Storm's dad just smirked before picking Regina and kissed her. Regina's wings flapped, her cloud hair went black and a very red gradient filled her face.
"Very forward Husband of mine but I don't mind since you're dam hot. "
Nero just laughed and got the love birds on his back.
"Soo you two, no funny business just yet okay. "
Both of them nodded before Bolt appeared out of nowhere and asked,
"Wait doesn't that mean Storm is a good flier and swimmer?"
Storm looked at confused before he remembered that he was in a coma for a month and replied,
"I always hold back in races and swimming is wayyy to boring. Also didn't I tell you I won the Trials. "
Bolt stood there jaw dropped to the floor. He lifted his hoof to say something before dropping it and thinking.
So this whole time I was competing with basically a god.
Storm then said,
"And to be honest you gave me the best challenge in years. "
AND NEARLY WON
"Nah I won. "
Ohh yeah. Dam
Bolt just jumped to hoof bump Storm since his father was very dam tall. He walked away. Diamond then asked Storm,
"So when will you be.. I think it's called kinged. "
"Soon I mean my dad won't tell me but it'll be soon. "
I don't want to be king as much as the other species... I don't want to be immortal but I guess this is my future.
Storm's dimmed before his dad took Diamond off his back and then said to Storm,
"Remember you're a part of me so I'm in your head kid. "
"You think I forgot that. You know my everything, move, thought and dream. It's weird but I'll live. "
Storm got out his dad's back and stood next to him. They both walked into the campsite as his mom flew above them both. Species bowed at the sight of them. Storm then responded to the grounds of bowing species,
"You don't have to bow, we're not Celestia. "
"But we are basically gods. "
"And their not slaves. "
Storm stared down his father as water and dark clouds appeared from seemingly nowhere. Regina then shoved both of them off their footing.
"Stop it you two, Honey I know he's not ready but this is what we arranged for. His training will start later. Now come on. "
Storm looked at Nero and tapped his back.
"Sorry. "
"Shit happens kid don't worry about it. This shit ain't easy trust me after you become king."
Nero became silent while walking and taking Storm under his arm.
"I'll die in a decade so yeah you can be immortal for however long you want but the second you give it up. You'll die. "
Storm looked at his dad with pure sympathy and distraught. Storm wasn't going to be the next king. He'll be the replacement of both his mom and dad. He walked with his dad into their camp. It was a big tent but still simple. Storm took off his bag and put out his sleeping bag. He looked at his dad and gave him a brow.
"I'll sleep in the lake. "
Regina then replied,
"I'll sleep above him. "
Both of his parents looked at each other with a smile. Storm just decided to eat a snack and make him coffee with his air abilities.
"Storm? Oh there you are. Can I sleep with you? "
Diamond came in a rush but still spoke fast. Storm nodded as she giggled with delight. Regina looked at Diamond and asked,
"I'm guessing by how you asked this isn't the first time you slept together? "
Diamond blushed and her fur stood straight up.
"Yes. 7th time actually. "
"Hey, my boy has play. "
Storm sighed with embarrassment and then they heard the lunch bell ring. The group went to the long diner table made of wood and took a paper plate. There was food everywhere and anything you could imagine was there but a particular brown and red dragon who was as big as many alicorns. His yellow horns curled backwards and his eyes were white. His belly was brown but the rest was red. He had many scars. This was Scribble's father Ember Eclipse (43yrs). He took many types of meats with the occasional veg.
"I am sure I am hungry so what else is there? "
"My~ my yer have one large appetite. "
A mid western mares voice was heard. She had brown fur with white spots. An ear piercing of her left ear. Her hair was dark orange, loose hair with golden yellow eyes. Her cutie mark was an apple with a knife in it. Apple Savage (40yrs Sunny's mom.)
"Oh hello there beautiful~"
"My my calm down handsome I'm not on the menu darling~."
Sunny and Scribble looked at their parents as each other of them shouted,
"MOM!? "
"DAD?! "
Apple Savage just giggled as Ember replied,
"Calm down kids, besides because of the bus trip we organised for the parents I got to learn Sunny's mom more."
Sunny's eyes were wide open and with one twitching. Scribble's mouth was just open before he said,
"Wait, my dad calls no species beautiful unless..."
The silence filled the wooden diner as Sunny looked at him confused before Scribble said,
"Dad are you... dating Sunny's mom. "
Ember gave a smirk before putting on sunglasses and replying,
"Sure am doodle dude. "
The entire diner erupted at the news. Scribble and Sunny stood with Jaws dropped as they looked at each other. They both had one thought in mind.
For how long and did they bang.
Scribble being the more daring asked Sunny's mom,
"Sooo for how long have you two been together and eehhh did you guys you know. "
"Oh fer about n year we been dating and yes me and your hot father have been doing that business. But my my is he good at it. His ex wife missed out. "
Sunny's mom giggled and gazed at her now boyfriend. Scribble was even more confused but both Sunny and Scribble agreed to leave it for now. Sunny next to Bolt as she had a rainbow of flavours in her plate. Bolt just had some toast and chicken.
"Soo how's that? Your mom and Scribbles dad. "
Sunny just sat there and ate her food. It felt nice yet awkward. Sunny looked at her mom who was now just being fed by Ember.
"It feels both nice and awkward to be honest. "
Bolt just patted her head and replied,
"You'll get used to it. "
Sunny smiled back at Bolt who just glanced at her with a small smile. Messy loud chewing made them snap out of their gazing. Bolt looked at Messy irritated but he just gave him an awkward smile as Daisy wiped his face off. Hefty looked at Sunny and smirked. She lipped the words,
"Kiss him already. "
Sunny's face lit up and lipped back,
"HE CAN READ LIPS IDIOT SO SHUT IT. "
"Fine fine. "
Hefty lipped back with still a teasing smile. Scribble then asked Hefty,
"Wait, where are your parents. "
A yellow and black blur went over the diner as they both dropped to the floor. With the yellow mare said,
"You lucky bastard. "
"It's not luck, call it bat genes. "
The bat pony spoke with a deep voice. His eyes were white and his fur and braids were black. The yellow mare had crystal purple eyes and light grey ponytails. The yellow one had a cloud cut in half as a cutie mark while the black one had a cloud covering a part of the moon. This was Cloud Crasher and Moon glider (40yrs both of them.)
"I'm surprised you didn't crash this time. "
Moon laughed as he got hit hard in the arm by his wife,
"I'm surprised you were behind me most of the way here...were you staring at my ass. "
"What I'm looking at dessert. "
Cloud just groaned as he laughed loudly. Moon just greeted every species at the table as they sat down next to Hefty.
"Hello mommy and daddy forgot to tell you I'm dating my childhood friend Scribble. "
Heftys dad just smiled and shook his hand. Cloud just sat there and then asked Hefty,
"My daughter I never knew you liked Scribble in that way. "
"Yeah it started in high school but I know he liked me before high school. "
Hefty giggled as Scribble just blushed.
"I'm surprised you can't fly since your mom and dad are such good fliers. "
"It was my genetics and since of my fit nature I probably can glide only but it's fine. "
"Sure you don't want to talk about it. "
Hefty then lipped
"Later. "
With more conversations going on and the day turning to night every species went to their tents but one pegasus was still awake and got out of his tent in the middle of the night.
It's too warm in there. Well I'm going to check out that sort of beach we'll be swimming in tomorrow.
Bolt walked into the woods again,his metal leg cranking the old branches and the dead noise in the air made Bolt feel like he was being watched. Bolt after what felt like years, Bolt saw the peach sand and fell straight into it. It was soft and cold, Bolt got up slowly and then saw that the water reflected the stars in Luna's night sky. Bolt went to the water and saw his reflection, his beard showed a bit more than usual and his milky right eye was more clear. The scars on his face were more clear and more apparent.
I look dope and weird.
His reflection slowly faded away and was replaced with the princess of night herself.
You better confess that's all I have to say bye Stallion of the night Bolt.
Luna disappeared and the nickname made him blush. Bolt felt the water, it was nice and cold. Bolt then heard two species talking. Bolt went to go investigate and it was Hefty and Scribble.
"Yeah I never could fly got bullied and I still feel fucking angry about it. "
Bolt felt bad for overhearing this but listened. Scribble then kissed her forehead,
"Hey your fine now and I love you just the way you are, hey I can't swim and I hide my emotions but were species it's normal for us to have flaws. I'm nervous and can't speak up for myself but I got a Mare you can do just that. "
Hefty smiled back him with tears in her eyes as she hugged him tightly,
"Ouch Ouch. "
"Oh sorry sorry. "
"No it's fine just a lil bit softer, you must remember I also have a genetic defect of that my muscles aren't as strong as a normal dragons that's why I never did any sports and my body heats up really quickly for no reason and timing. "
Scribble and Hefty hugged more and then she spoke again,
"It feels weird to open up. "
"Yeah I know how it feels. You don't open up much but I'll be here to listen to you whenever you need it. "
Scribble kissed Hefty on the lips before picking her up and saying,
"Sooo do you think you'll be fine for the night we can go the tent and get some sleep I just don't want you to have too much in mind like anything else you want to say. "
"One thing, do you think that we'll be together forever. "
Bolt even stopped breathing when she said that. The silence was so loud it could make a concert look boring. Scribble looked around and at Luna's Moon before replying,
"I honestly hope we do but life is a mystery and I want you to be my side kick to solve it with me. "
Hefty then laughed and hit him, Scribble just laughed with her,
"THAT WAS SOOO CHEESY. "
"so what it's good at least. Well also I was going to say that well I just hope we're together forever since well even though we might not have a lot in common at least I have some species special who is as crazy as I am. "
Scribble then carried her away (wedding style) as their conversation faded in the distance Bolt looked back the the water and accidentally fell in it. Bolt couldn't swim so he doggy paddled back. Bolt felt cold but in the good way only problem was his world was going black. Scribble then picked him up.
"I know you were listening to my conversation and it's fine, had to pay you for the cock block. "
"True... fuck my body feels weird. "
"Well I was going to pluck out some of scales to relief stress but saw you were here and came to help. "
"Wait you self harm yourself why? "
"My parents divorce was because of me. My mom never wanted a kid and my dad wanted one. So when I was born my dad got constant abuse. I'm happy he's fine now and for me. I nearly fucked up a lot of stuff like my career and all that because I'm still hating myself for causing my dad al that pain and well making him stress out about me since I was going to drop out, I smoked, drank like crazy I fucking made my dad feel like shit. "
"Hey I'm sure your dad forgives you. "
I'm a fucking mistake Bolt
Bolt looked at him with shock. Scribble the always joyful dragon believed he was a mistake.
"Hey mate-"
"Just fuck me man why can't for once i stop thinking of all this and let go. "
He put down Bolt softly before lightning a cigarette. He didn't offer one to Bolt as he knew he doesn't smoke.
"Hey one thing I say. Just talk to your dad and one way to let go. Do what you love. I suck at advice trust me but it works. But don't blame yourself for any of this. "
Scribble blew out some fumes before he looked at and said,
I wasn't supposed to be here Bolt. As much as I love it here. I'll always be a mistake.
"But to all of us you're not a mistake. Did you tell this to Hefty and look mate you have a great-"
Bolt nearly fell over again as he decided to lay on the ground. Scribble ate the cigarette as he hit the rock.
"Ouch, I'll take your advice and yes I told her about this. She told me not to worry about it. But can you live your life knowing you were never supposed to be born? I'll leave you with that Bolt. "
Bolt saw Scribble walk away as he hit his head in frustration. Bolt walked after him and shouted,
"JUST DON'T KILL YOURSELF AND I'LL BE FINE WITH YOU LIKE THIS OKAY?! "
Scribble gave him a smirk and said,
"I cross my heart hope to fly stick a cupcake in my eye. Bolt I'll try to heal but healing happens naturally so not my fault. "
Bolt just smirked and waved him off. Bolt went back to the water and saw Princess Luna staring at him,with Storm's parents also there sleeping in water and above it.
"It's seems species trust you. "
Princess Luna spoke in a soft tone to not wake up Storm's parents. Bolt just nodded but before he looked at her and asked,
"Quick question does he die? "
"No, even though I'm not the king or queen of death, he won't die for quite a while. "
"Okay phew just making sure my bro is good. "
Princess Luna looked at him with sympathy and patted his head. Luna then disappeared. Bolt saw the Sun coming up on the horizon as he walked back to his tent,Storm's parents woke up and Nero went deeper in the water and Regina went into the sky. Bolt got in his tent slowly before he heard his mom behind him,
"What are you doing so late, young stallion? "
"Eehhh I don't know just went to go refresh my mind. "
His mom looked at him suspiciously but let him go. Messy was talking to his parents as Daisy stood there with them. His parents were laughing a lot as he blushed furiously and as Daisy joined in with the banter.
"Wait wait sooo you're telling me, you thought by the time he is now. You thought he would be lonely forever. "
Daisy laughed and fell to the ground with tears in her eyes. Messys horns shaked and his face was a tint of red.
"Yeah but his fine now. "
FUCKKKK DAD WHYYYYYYY
Messy was very embarrassed and walked to get his breakfast,he then fell over a rock. Daisy picked him before asking,
"You alright babe? "
"One thing I can't see well... "
Messy voice trailed off as he saw his dad bringing him some glasses. They were light blue and had no rims over the eye part just glass. He put it on and his vision cleared and he looked at Daisy.
Still as beautiful as ever.
"Soo how do I look, dork. "
"Beautiful... "
Messy saw white hair glow in the sunlight, her green fur glittered and her light green eyes turned straight to emeralds. While he was admiring her, Daisy kissed him out of his trance.
Shit my bad. Wait this is still in my head.
"Sorry... "
"Don't have to to say sorry all the time, plus you did look adorable with all your googly eyes over me. "
"I can't believe I have to leave this camp early for a wrestling tournament in preparation to the Equestria games. "
"Remember me and your parents are coming and we have your back. "
Messy and Daisy held hooves as they made it back into the diner table were it was a breakfast buffet. All you could eat too but one species looked off and that was Sunny. Sunny just took some food not like the huge amounts she would normally take. Bolt was very confused and sat next to her,
"Hey.. You alright. "
"I is okay. "
"Grammar maybe. "
"I'm fine Bolt just worried. "
Sunny's eyes looked dead no glow in them at all. Bolt then remembered something from those stupid nature studies his in college for. There was a star show tonight and the stars would be red to tribute Dea Equestris.
"Wanna watch the sta-"
That seemed to wake her up from her sad side and instantly her mood shot up.
"YES YES I WAS WAITING FOR SOME SPECIES TO ASK ME THAT. "
Bolt got hugged gently by Sunny but her little bunny hops were cute as she got up and got some more food.
WHY was she sad tho. She said she was worried about something idiot pay attention. Ohhh yeahhh. But about who?
Bolt ate his cereal and lots of eggs with toast. Sunny came back with her place filled with eggs, hay, toast, name it and it was on her plate. She sat next to Bolt and ate immediately. Bolt admired her cute face while she ate before asking the question that was bugging his mind earlier,
"What are you worried about Sunny?"
"Oh it's noth-"
Sunny's words were cut short as her mother put her arms around both of them.
"Ah see Sunny yer have mighty colt friend. "
Ohhhh shit it's Sunny's mom.
"Oh no we are... Friends. "
Sunny said that with a pain in her voice.
I hope I didn't hurt Bolts feelings.
Bolt nervously introduced himself to Apple Savage,
"So eh yeah I'm-"
"AHH already know who you are. Sunny's letters told me er lot about you. "
Sunny blushed , her white spots turned bright red, her pupils went wide as plates and she shouted,
"MOM ARE YER SERIOUS NOW?! "
Bolt noticed when she got angry her mid western voice came out and in his head clicked.
New turn on: Mid western mares voice.
"Are you fucking kidding me now. "
Bolt blushed and mumbled to himself.
"Oh come on honey I'm just teasing ya. Whispers in her ear. Although I know you want him. "
Sunny blushed more at her mom's tease, before turning around to look at Bolt who was looking at the ground and she could see his wings flapping gently,
"YOUR WINGS ARE FLAPPING BOLT. "
"what?"
Bolt looked at his wings as they flapped a bit. Bolt just smiled and replied to her,
"Took them a while. "
"Yer one champ, now let me get you something ter eat. "
Apple put her arm over Bolt's shoulders softly and took him to go get something to eat even though he just had food. Sunny sat back down and enjoyed her food. Messy sat down next to Sunny as Daisy joined.
"Your mother is getting on well with Bolt. "
Messy said as he giggled and his wings shaked. Daisy just asked,
"Wonder what they are talking about though."
"You know it could be just sports. "
"Seriously? "
"Yeah my mom watches hoofball and supports the red birds(Liverpool) and Bolt of course supports the blue cats (Chelsea) "
Messy and Daisy went blank as they looked at Sunny,
"What? "
"We.. Support the white birds(Tottenham). "
Sunny looked at them and laughed,
"It's hoofball, you can talk to them. "
"Sureee. "
They both said in unison as they joined the conversation it got loud between them all. Sunny put her paper plate in the bin and left the diner. She then saw Starmist talking to a kirrin (Oak). She approached them slowly and made sure she was in context, then she heard Starmist say,
"Another five rounds tonight? "
Sunny blushed as she saw her seductively put her hoof on the kirrin as he replied,
"Sure as you wish my princess. "
Silence filled the place as Starmist noticed Sunny and asked,
"How long have you been standing there Sunny? "
"Since you mentioned five rounds. "
More silence filled the air as Starmist attempted to fly away but Oak stopped her and also introduced himself,
"Hi I'm Oak piano, weird name I know but I'm a primary school friend of hers. "
"Nice to meet you Oak I'm Sunny Mornings. I'm guessing you are dating... "
Silence now sat in the air as Starmist flew down and looked away from him.
"I mean it's a little complicated... "
"How it looks like like your dating. "
They both awkwardly stared at each other before Oak spoke,
"Eh I mean..."
OH SHIT I BETTER LEAVE GIVE THEM PERSONAL SPACE.
"I'll be off for now. "
Sunny awkwardly walked away and went to her tent to put on her swim suit as it was beach day today. A few minutes later every species was on the beach enjoying their time. Bolt was chilling on a chair with no shirt on and beach pants. Sunny was next to him with a Sun hat on and a bright yellow one piece bikini.
"You sure you don't want to swim. "
"Sunny I would love to but my wings. "
"I mean I could hold you like a dog learning how to swim. "
Bolt laughed as she mentioned that,
"No no it's fine and you can go swim. I'll be here reading the newspaper. "
"Old colt. "
"Don't start Sunny remember I still have your smut book. "
Sunny blushed and rushed to the water. Bolt smirked as she left. Bolt looked at the water and saw nearly every species. Sunny, Scribble, Hefty, a black blur to his right with a purple blur to his right. Which is Storm and Diamond,Messy and Daisy were still dressing. Bolt did feel like a parent as he saw all of their parents on chairs enjoying the view as he heard an aggressive voice behind him,
"Cool metal part in your chest. "
"Oh thanks. "
He looked to left to see that no one was there. He looked to his right to see it was Scribble's dad.
"Oh Sup Ember. "
"How's it going kid. "
"Decent I mean I wish I could go swim... "
Wait I did something wrong I feel it.
Bolt looked at the sky in confusion before he felt light weight. He was being carried...
"WAIT WAIT NO NO AHHHH"
Bolt got thrown in the water and luckily his prosthetic was off as he swam in the water and replied to Ember sarcastically,
"Very funny. "
"VERY FUNNY INDEED. "
Bolt tried to doggy paddle but without one hoof it was really hard. Bolt didn't want to drown or look like he was drowning before he felt some grab his waist. Bolt looked behind him with rapid pace to see it was Sunny. Bolt calmed down a bit, then he saw the rest of his group there. Messy had Daisy on his shoulders. Scribble was in the process of throwing Hefty in the water. Storm and Diamond just chilled on floaties. The awkward silence filled the air before Oak said,
"You look like a dog swimming for the first time... "
It took a second before every species bursted out in laughter. Scribble fell over into the water with Hefty in his arms and well the same goes for Messy and Daisy. Storm just fell off his floaty as Diamond took off her sun glasses to make sure he was okay. Everything was fun and this is how Bolt wanted this to go.
I can't even be mad. Wish Tumble was here. Hope you're doing well pal.
Bolt then decided to swim with the assistance of Sunny. Every species enjoyed the beach until a big wave crashed over all of them, even the parents on the sand got wet.
"WHO THE FU.... "
Pacific Pride voice faded as his wife stared down his soul.
"WHO THE HELL DID THIS. "
"Ah royal guard Pacific Pride was hoping I'd run into you one of these days. "
"Nero? "
Pacific wiped his wet hair out his face and just smirked,
"It's been a while you fucking "A" student. "
"Ohhhh don't get me started sir "IM GOING TO BE SINGLE FOREVER" hmm remember that. "
"Oh I remember that alright. "
Pacific hoof shaked Nero with a hard grip. Storm then asked,
"You know each other? "
Bolt asked the same question,
"Dad you know a king? And how didn't you know he was here? "
Pacific laughed and hit his head and replied,
"I forgot, what the food is really good here. "
Bolt and Storm looked confusingly at each other about their dad's knowing each other,
"Wait besides school how do you know each other? "
An unexpected question from Messy as he was also interested in the dad lore.
"Oh Bolt your father saved me from a hellborns arrow, which is meant to kill any species it gets in. Your father still has the scar in his skin I think. Also he was my bodyguard for a decade. "
No wonder my brother only saw him like 10 times a month when he was young.
Pacific took off his shirt to show black veins from his chest to his arm which had been covered by his red tropical shirt. Sunset then said to Bolt,
"Your father is very brave and handsome, that's why I chose him and not some jerk as a husband. "
She kissed her husband and then put her hoof on his arm and rubbed it slowly.
"CORNY! "
Nero shouted with a laugh, Bolts dad gave him a death stare that could even scare the kings.
"Want me to tell all these peeps of how you were with Regina?"
Regina giggled and had a slight blush as Nero turned a pale white at the blackmail.
"You keep that in your mouth Pacific or I swear I'll read your diary in high school. "
"How do you still have that?!!? "
Bolts dad shouted, then went calm and explained,
"We were also classmates for like 3 years. "
As the two argued over the amount of dirt they had on each other. The rest of them continued to enjoy the beach day. The day of Celestia's Sun was running out as Luna's Moon would be soon in the sky but it was 5pm so night for Bolt now. Bolt decided to take a shower, a cold one to calm down how nervous he was because he'll be alone with Sunny tonight at the stars of Luna which happens once every decade.
Okay Bolt you got this. Just stay calm. WE ARE. GOING TO BE WITH SUNNY ALONE WOOOO. shut it other me. You know how longgg we've been waiting for this. We had it multiple times before, idiot. Well nothing like this an actual opportunity to confess to the love of our life. True very true me.
Bolt got out the shower and went to grab a snack at the diner to see that Messys and Daisy's tent was gone, although Messys parents were there talking about Messy.
"His grown a lot since we last saw him, right love "
Romeo's voice was very calming and Bolt swore he heard it somehow. Lily then spoke,
"He reminds me of you sometimes by how stupid you are. "
"Oh come on honey. "
"I'm just teasing love. "
Lily pulled his face down to kiss him. Before Bolt coughed and said,
"Sorry my bad was picking up a snack. "
Lily smirked as Romeo blushed and he put his hoof on his neck nervously as Bolt took some crepes and waffles. Bolt then asked Romeo,
"Do you make music?"
"Oh I do, I do jazz with my voice in it. "
"Wait are you RM TU? I LOVE HIS MUSIC. "
"Sure am pal, here let me sign your shirt. "
Romeo signed his shirt as he jumped for joy and hugged him hard.
"THANK YOU SO MUCH. "
Bolt dashed off to his tent and switched his shirts to keep the signed one safe, he put on his white T shirt with a RM TU logo on it. The second he was out the tent Romeo and Lily were out of sight from the diner. Which meant they left.
"Never knew you were a Jazz fan."
Stargazer said to Bolt while he approached him.
"Always have been one. "
"Yeah Yeah. "
Stargazer then showed a paper with a number on it to Bolts right so he couldn't see what it was.
"The hell is that. "
"It's a word. "
Bolt moved the paper to his left and saw it was the word love.
"So what about love? "
Bolt asked in genuine confusion as Stargazer's laughter was heard but he couldn't see it.
"Also move to my left please. "
Stargazer moved to his left and sat down and spoke,
"It's a great thing. "
"You're speaking like you have a crush or marefriend. "
Stargazer smirked and scoffed, Bolt just tilted his head in confusion. Bolt looked at the orange sky and orange trees before hearing Stargazer again,
"You know the mare who's been visiting you a lot has been mostly coming to visit me. "
Who the hell could that be... EEEH this is hard... WAITWAIT A MINUTE
"YOU'RE DATING THE PRINCESS OF NIGHT HERSELF?!!! "
Stargazer pulled sunglasses out of nowhere and put it on.
"You bet'cha"
"FOR HOW LONG!? "
"4 years my dude. "
"So for four years you were dating loyalty and you didn't tell me. "
"What she wanted it to be private and she did give me this cool hair clip, to announce that I'm her prince. "
Stargazer took of his hair clip which was a moon hair clip. Bolt put his right robot leg for a hoof bump which Stargazer gave back. It was now plain darkness 8pm or 8:04 to be exact. A shadow then emerged out of the darkness.
"Stargazer Jackson, did you tell thy brother about me and you dating? "
"Yes and what he knows you already. "
"Fine but I will need of your assistance now Stargazer, I need attention. "
"Your so adorable. "
Luna blushed and just flew off while Stargazer followed. Bolt didn't know where the rest was but he didn't care much. Bolt decided to attempt to fly but he could only jump. His wings just flapped as it would when he saw his princess Sunny.
Again with the Buttonbelle fanfics
Bolt decided to walk to a hill where you could see the stars, water and forest. Bolt sat there and enjoyed the cold breeze of the night. Bolt looked at the stars and enjoyed how they looked but in a few moments they would be bright blue because that's what Luna's stars look like. Bolt looked at the water.
I want to fly again, please wings just fly I need you to fly.
Bolt flapped his wings twice and jumped, his fall would be water but hard so he forced himself to fly. His wings just flapped and didn't respond to him before. When he was about to hit the water he rapidly grazed over the water, he flew upwards and flew everywhere before deciding something. He went in the nights clouds and flew down at a rapid pace , his eyes were determined and his head went blank before his brain had a bolt feeling and a huge lightning bolt appeared in the sky and spread out for a short distance.
Bolt over filled with joy. Eyes filled with tears of joy, he decided to fly around some more before eventually sitting back down from loss of stamina. He panted and sat there embracing how the night is the best part of the day before hearing something in the bushes and he jumped before seeing a very calm and excited Sunny.
"Oh hey Bolt you look tired. "
"Yeah I just flew. "
Sunny then hugged him and squished him while giggling.
"YOU DID IT! "
"Yeah and my own rainboom which I shall call the lighting Boom. "
"Nice name. "
The two sat next to each other and Bolt put his hoof around her, which made her blush before Bolt said,
"You seem cold. "
"Oh thanks Bolt. "
She leaned her head on his shoulder as his heartbeat increased and did a lot of jumping Jack's. Bolt admired her as the sky turned bright blue and they both enjoyed the sight, they were still dead quiet. Bolt leaned his head on hers, Bolt's memories flowed through his head of him and Sunny. The bad ones like, Horizon incident, the good ones, like the quality time in the hospital. The embarrassing ones. All of them filled his mind, Bolt smiled and smelt her perfume which was black roses. Bolt then looked at her emeralds for eyes which now is glittered by blue stars and time stopped for him. He admired her every thing and she was perfect as cliche as that sounded Bolt didn't care at all since this was the mare he loved for so long and never got the courage to say anything. Bolt then looked at the stars and spoke,
"Hey Sunny, I'm enjoying this with you. "
"Same it's veryyyyy pretty. "
Bolt then nervously said,
"I enjoy every day we are together, every second. I...may not be the best colt out of them but... Sunny... I love you. "
Sunny blushed and looked at Bolt immediately who had a soft smile on his face and tired eyes, with a huge blush on his face. Sunny gazed upon the nervous Bolt, his eyes were ruby's and pearls. Treasure in her eyes, his scars were faded in the night but how strikingly good he looked could be seen in broad daylight. Sunny blushed and couldn't speak as Bolt put his hoof to her chin, he pulled her closer to his lips. Sunny leaned in and as the blue stars faded slowly their lips embraced for what felt like forever. A century could've pasted but they wouldn't care. As they left the kiss, they laughed and Bolt spoke,
"I've been trying to say that for a while. "
"Same but I got no courage so I was hoping you'd do it. "
"I guess I did it then. "
"Yeah and you did it pretty well. "
Bolt pulled her closer by the waist and then asked,
"Sooo do you want to be my marefriend and my lucky charm"
As he said this Sunny looked like she was about to explode with joy as she smiled and shouted,
" YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES. "
Bolt got tackled by the excited Sunny as she laid on his chest. Sunny was very small compared to him and could easily sleep just there.
WE DID IT. Yes we did
Bolt then asked,
"Were you jealous of me and Tiara at that one party. "
"Yes but don't remind me also what day is it today. "
"Well it's 12:20pm soo it's the 3rd of October. Why? "
Sunny quickly took it down on her small side notebook.
"Taking down our anniversary date. "
"Okay then also your warmth is making me Yawn tired. "
"You wanna sleep here?
Bolt put his wings around Sunny's entire body and instantly hit the hay as Sunny said one more thing before falling asleep,
"I love you Bolt Wonders Jackson. "
They embraced each other sleeping in harmony with the cold wind. Celestia's Sun slowly creeped on the two lovebirds sleeping gracefully as Bolt woke up very hard like a brick. Bolt couldn't get up because of his sleeping marefriend on him. Bolt smiled and looked around to try to find a way to get up.
I love her but why in the world is she so hard when she sleeps like am I sleeping under a statue
Bolt carried Sunny on his back, she was a bit heavy but Bolt could handle it. Bolt got to the camp as it was dead silent before a loud,
"AWWWWW. "
Was heard, it was sooo loud it woke up Sunny.
"Oh come on. "
Sunny said irritatedly as Bolt kissed her forehead and made sure she was okay. Bolt then said,
"We can talk about the confession later for now, BREAKFAST. "
Bolt continued to carry Sunny as he heard her say,
"You're quite beefy, you know that. "
Sunny felt his arms and just smirked at the morning version of Sunny. Bolt knew that life was going to be so much better with her as his marefriend.
4 days later
"So time to separate for the break of college. Of course I'll be here but I mean I'm going to my apartment then I'll be at the O&O party tomorrow alright. "
"Sure thing Sunny, bye I love you. "
Sunny gave him a kiss on the lips before walking off and glancing back every chance she could. Once she left in the distance Bolt still had that stupid smile on his face like he was a filly but Bolt didn't mind since it was for Sunny. He started to walk to his apartment and said,
"Okay time to fall back on my ideas and see what should we do. "
Bolt stopped before smiling and saying while looking in the distance,
"But I know she'll be here for me. "
Bolt got to his apartment pretty quickly and swiftly.
Huh that was fast.
Bolt got to his for in the same pace. He got on his bed and then said,
"4 months till the Equestria games and I have that time to get back up to pace. First the party thing tomorrow but I know one thing. "
We are going to flat out that race |
Worlds Apart | pre | "At least to Australian-born humans," corrected Allura.
"True, but I had not realized even the local accents were emulated as well. It's a good thing because it means that people won't wonder why an alien pony speaks with an American accent."
"So, Callahan was the first to point it out?" Trixie asked.
"Yep. Several others mentioned the language before but never that."
"Trixie is pleased to hear that news. Her Great and Awesome shows are best enjoyed when her audience hears and understands her clearly."
"I think you'll be even more pleased to hear that I've finished everything needing my personal touch. Smolder has been given full responsibility in partnership with the Martines to handle business from now on. She will only need to consult with us occasionally on matters of policy and such."
Chrysalis smirked. "That will be unlikely, husband. I believe she is more well-versed in the task than even you. She is truly in her element now."
"Oh, there are going to be some shitstorms ahead as we upset some businesses. I'm betting on the diamond and gemstone industries being the first. However, as long as Smolder sticks to my guidelines, she has my full confidence."
"Then we finally have our stallion back, darling?" Rarity asked.
Mark chuckled. "Just one more task to accomplish. Today, Ivana Kalchik is going to get her wish."
Ivana exited the fashion store with another couple of bags of clothes that she probably would wear only once. Still, the trip was a success because it resulted in more selfie videos that would soon turn into the latest HauteIvana YouTube upload and likely two or three workable TikTok shorts. Her walk turned into stomps. While the videos from this latest editor had a much higher production quality, channel growth didn't match her expectations. Being "good" just wasn't good enough. This month's goal was to break into the top eighty fashion YouTubers. If this editor couldn't do it, she'd find someone who would.
Ivana made her way to the parking garage and opened the passenger side door of her orange supercar. She gently set her purse and the bags onto the seat. The latter were still needed for "around the pad" shots, even if it happened to be her dad's pad. That was just a formality. She was his only child and would someday inherit everything. After closing the door, she saw a beige-skinned, black-haired woman staring at her from the other side of the car. The blue jacket made Ivana groan internally. "Fucking again?" she thought.
She dashed around the car. "Get lost, rent-a-cop! My handicap tag is good because--"
"Ivana Kalchik," she interrupted, "how would you like to get your Equestrian pearl back?"
Ivana blinked and gaped. "How... how do you know about that?"
The woman inclined her head. "Come with me and we'll talk."
The two walked deeper into the parking lot and the strange woman resumed the conversation.
"I'm an employee of Harmonic Composites and I've learned many things the rest of the world doesn't know - some things the bosses didn't like me finding out, so I'm on thin ice. I want to get out while I can before they mess with me."
This was exactly what Ivana needed on the Martines, so she was hooked already. "And how does that get me my pearl?"
"I know a way that guarantees you getting it back. In return, I want you to tell your father to give me a job at his company at twice the pay I'm getting now. Hell, for a bonus, I'll even tell him everything he wants to know about Harmonic Composites."
Ivana well understood self-interest - it made more sense to her than people doing things out of the goodness of their hearts. "Okay, we can go see Daddy right now."
The woman shook her head. "Nope. Gotta go get the pearl right now. This may be our only opportunity before I get booted out."
"But... alright. What's the plan?"
"We go back to your car and I'll tell you where to drive."
Ivana frowned at the woman. "This sounds more like an elaborate kidnapping to me."
The woman rolled her eyes. "Girl, kidnapping you would be both easier and stupider than what I plan to do. I've heard rumors about your father and I'm not about to mess with him. I'm not that greedy."
Ivana had heard more than rumors and knew the woman had cause for concern. Even so, she wanted more reassurance. "Show me some proof you're not lying."
The woman sighed and pulled out a badge from her pocket. She handed it to Ivana. "There. That's who I am and that's where I work, at least for now."
Ivana examined the badge. It identified the woman as Monika Falsch, an acquisitions agent for Harmonic Composites. Satisfied, she passed it back. "Okay, I'm convinced. Let's go!"
The two made their way back to the front of the mall where they climbed into Ivana's car. Ivana piled the bags onto the woman's lap which didn't provoke any backtalk. Monika directed her to drive on a route that Ivana knew was in the general direction of Harmonic Composites' facility, but was a little confused when she was instructed to turn off the main road into a housing estate under construction.
"Why are we going here?"
"You don't think we're getting past HarCo's security with you driving up in your car, do you? We're swapping into mine which I left here. I didn't want it seen at the mall."
"How did you get there then?"
"Uber. Told the driver my car broke down."
They pulled up behind a grey Ram 1500 pickup truck and got out of the sports car.
"Leave your stuff in your vehicle," Monika instructed before she unlocked the pickup and pulled out a couple of jackets with the Harmonic Composites logo on them. She handed one to Ivana. "Put that on and get in the truck."
Ivana held up her cell phone. "I'm keeping this."
"Why? You won't have reception soon after you exit the gateway."
The young woman opened the camera app and switched to video mode. A two-second selfie verified that feature still worked fine. She then locked the phone before stuffing it into a jacket pocket. "My own protection. Proof of where we're going. Whatever. I'm taking it with. Period."
Monika shrugged. "Suit yourself."
Ivana did so and Monika got in the driver's seat. As she started the engine, she said, "Next stop - Harmonic Composites. When we get there, make sure the logo on your jacket is clearly visible to the gate guard, but keep your face turned away. I'll be pretending you're carpooling with me. Got it?"
"Of course. Think I'm an idiot?"
Monika did not answer that but drove off instead.
Not long afterward, the Ram pickup pulled up at Harmonic Composites and Monika wound down her window to show her badge. The gate guard looked at it, glanced at the passenger, and nodded. "Go ahead," he said.
Monika drove to the staff parking lot and the two exited the vehicle.
"What now?" Ivana asked.
"My job takes me through the portal to Equestria on occasion, and sometimes I need to take along a helper. You're going to be that helper. Just keep your mouth shut and follow my lead."
They entered the foyer and Monika nodded to the receptionist before using her badge to get through the security door. As soon as Ivana followed her through and the door closed behind them, the receptionist tapped the intercom. When acknowledged, she said, "They're here."
"Understood," came the reply.
Monika led Ivana to an office where the woman reached into a desk drawer. She pulled out a retractable badge clip reel with a green badge attached. In large black letters, the badge read CLEARED VISITOR. "This will get you into the portal room along with me. Put it on and don't say anything to the guard when we get there."
Ivana nodded, both nervous and excited at getting this far. She followed Monika to the window of the security office where the woman showed the guard her badge.
"Me and my helper need to go to Acquisitions."
The guard gestured for Ivana to step forward. "Let me see your badge."
Her hands shaking a bit, Ivana showed it to him and almost collapsed with relief when the man nodded. He pressed a button and a buzzer sounded. Monika pushed open the door next to the window and Ivana followed.
"One moment while I activate the portal," the guard said as he led them around a corner that completely concealed the trans-dimensional gateway.
As soon as Ivana saw the mirror, she knew what was coming. She had to pretend that she was familiar with it, so as soon as Monika stepped through the silvery surface, she confidently followed. The moment she passed through, she looked at her arm - bronze scales and talons. All her clothes were gone which was reinforced when she heard her cell phone and badge clatter onto the ground, but she just didn't care. She was a fucking dragon again! She started grinning before she looked up and her smile faded. Facing her were several beings who, despite the years since she had been in Equestria, were very familiar to her. Among them were a batpony mare, a blue male griffon, and a green alicorn stallion that she hated to the core.
"Did you really think you could sneak back into Equestria without us knowing, Ivana Kalchik?"
Ivana sneered. "I got here, didn't I, Prince Mark Wells!"
"Ah, yes. Sneaky of you to use a traitorous employee to get access. That was very naughty of you, Monika."
"Sorry, Your Highness. It won't happen again," the woman said before green flames engulfed her, revealing Queen Chrysalis. "Because we won't need to use that ruse once more," she added with a smirk.
Ivana's eyes opened wide and her jaw dropped. Then she shook herself and snarled. "So, this is a kidnapping after all."
"By no means, youngling," Chrysalis said. "I promised you a way of getting your pearl back. What you do afterward will be up to you, even allowed to go back home."
The dragoness eyed her suspiciously. "What's the catch?"
"Ah, yes, the catch. I'll let our guest explain that. Ember - care to elucidate her?"
A blue dragoness twice Ivana's height stepped into view, carrying her staff of office. Upon recognizing her, the human-turned-dragon quailed before whirling around and diving for the portal.
"Halt, Ivana Kalchik!" Dragonlord Ember commanded, the bloodstone scepter flaring its magic.
Ivana froze, rooted to the spot.
"Turn around and face me, child."
Ivana did so, her body trembling.
Ember held out her hand and opened her talons, revealing a huge pearl. "Is this what you have been seeking?"
The pearls she, Yolanda, and Latisha had been gifted were all of differing hues, but she could never forget the predominantly yellow one. It was definitely hers. Ivana's trembling lessened and she nodded.
"Speak up, child!" Ember commanded.
"Yes! Yes, that's mine! Queen Novo gave it to me. Prince Wells had no right to take what's mine!"
"I understand he merely forbade you to take it out of Equestria. Is that not the truth, Your Highness?"
Mark stepped forward. "Yes, Dragonlord. Queen Novo's gift was an unexpected generous gesture and one for which I was not prepared. I could not allow such priceless items to be taken back to Earth because their presence couldn't be explained away, and that would put the entire Martine family at risk. Nevertheless, Ivana, just like the other two girls, would have been free to retake possession of it at any time she visited Equestria. However, she not only disobeyed that order but also stole her friends' pearls. As punishment, she was banished from this world and her pearl put into safekeeping, which is how it came into your possession."
Ember turned back to Ivana. "Prince Mark Wells acted rightfully, but the pearl is yours to take back - under one condition."
Ivana gulped. "And that is?"
"You will remain in the Dragonlands until you learn self-control and humility to my satisfaction."
"What?! You can't keep me here!"
Ember smirked. "I won't have to - that is your choice to make." She stepped closer, holding the pearl right in front of the smaller dragon's face. "If you choose to stay, this will be only the barest beginning of your hoard."
Ivana licked her lips nervously, her eyes fixated on the pearl, the urge to grab it rising. "But... how can I... what about my dad?"
Mark said, "We will deal with that. He won't even know you're gone."
Ivana scarcely heard him as the pearl's shine stoked her desire to possess it. Her willpower and intransigence warred against Ember's promise of even more treasure - treasure to make her beautiful pearl seem insignificant. With a snarl, Ivana snatched it from Ember's talons and clutched it to her chest.
Ember stepped back and her scepter flared. "The decision is made! Ivana Kalchik - you will come with me to the Dragonlands and stay there until you are granted permission to leave." She then turned and headed for the door.
"Yes, Dragonlord," Ivana said in a monotonous tone as she hastened to follow.
When they were gone, Gallus took off his Royal Guard helmet and said, "What if Ivana had chosen to go home, Dad?"
Mark chuckled. "There was never a chance she would knock back the pearl. She's a dragon through and through. Her greed was strong enough to disobey me and steal the other pearls, and that has not changed one bit in the years since."
"Yeah, I guess you're right. So - what have you arranged to cover her absence?"
Chrysalis levitated Ivana's cell phone and badge to herself. "One of my agents has been studying her for a long time and can emulate her more than satisfactorily for the few days before 'Ivana' decides to move out of Daddy's house. He's been trying to get her to do so for a while, so her absence won't be missed. I will be taking my agent back to Ivana's car shortly. I quite enjoy driving my Ram truck."
Mark grumbled, "You couldn't have settled for something a bit more inconspicuous, O Mistress of Subtlety?"
Chrysalis held a hoof to her chest. "Surely you're not suggesting that your Queen deserves anything less?"
The alicorn sighed. "Try not to get pulled over by the cops and come back in one piece."
Penumbra added, "You don't want to jeopardize the whole charade either. After all, it was played out for the benefit of any security cameras outside the shopping center. Ivana will be seen leaving with 'Monika' and then returning not long afterward. There are no cameras in the housing estate where they swapped vehicles, and Ivana was concealing herself at Harmonic Composites, so there's no record of her ever being there."
Gallus rolled his eyes. "These mind games are too much. Give me the straightforward duties of a Royal Guard any day."
Mark grinned. "Wait until you see what we have in mind for Mr. Kalchik!"
# # # # # # # # # |
Worlds Apart | Making An Impression | "Ms. Wells, are you certain? That this Mark Wells doesn't remind you in any way -"
"What? You think my grandparents were Shetland ponies or something? Get your head out of your ass. They were Clydesdales! Didn't my long-flowing mane of white hair clue you in?" The middle-aged woman followed this by running fingers through her short, decidedly grey hair.
The second dark-suited man spoke up. "Ma'am, our employer believes that these Equestrians have magic that can change a person's species."
Kaitlin Wells put her hands on her hips and stared the much taller man down. "My brother went missing years after I stopped having anything to do with him. Haven't seen muzzle or tail of him since." She gasped theatrically and brought a hand to her lips. "Oopsie! Was I not supposed to say that?"
The second man didn't sound in the least upset as he pointed at his outstretched tablet. "So, we'd like to know if this pony's style of speaking, word choice, or body language is in any way familiar to you."
"No, I can categorically say that my brother never had a green coat, wings, six wives, or an Australian accent. Are we done here?"
The first man nodded his head. "We are. Thank you very much for your time, Ms. Wells." After the woman slammed the door in his face, the first man took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "I think that's it for missing persons born in North Carolina. Who's next?"
The second man's fingers danced on the tablet. "One more, then we'll start on South Carolina. Marcus Stanley Wellsburg. Born January 13th, 1953. Two tours in Vietnam. Dishonorable discharge in 1973. Homeless and living in Boston when he went missing in 1976."
The first man shrugged as he put on his glasses. "Guess I'm OK with visiting Legal Seafood so long as someone else is paying for it."
Invitations to make official visits from the governments of several nations quickly followed the formalization of political relations with Australia. Naturally, the United States of America was the highest on Prince Mark's list. The sooner Equestria signed agreements with the U.S., the easier it would be to formalize business ties with his existing company and establish new ones. Of course, that's when 'red tape' raised its ugly head.
In the Equestrian Embassy in Canberra, Mark frowned at the pallid man sitting across the table as he rambled on. Next to him, Smolder flicked a claw over her tablet, her eyes scanning the text rapidly. She had called in a favor to deal with the official, mostly because she couldn't make heads or tails of his mumblings.
The badge on the man's jacket proudly proclaimed United States Department of Agriculture Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service even as buttons strained mightily to keep the owner from bursting out of it. "Just be glad that your country of origin is exempt from testing for dourine and glanders. There is simply no alternative than a 42-hour quarantine and after testing for equine piroplasmosis and equine infectious anemia."
Mark cut him off. "Mr. Ray, my country of origin is Equestria, not Australia. Also, do these look like the appendages of any earth-bred equine? Our biology is fundamentally different." The alicorn tapped his horn with one hoof while extending his wings.
The official didn't look up from his paperwork. "Yes, yes. There will also need to be germplasm submissions from all equine species."
Mark jumped. Did that mean what he thought it meant?
The man prattled on. "After filling out the VS 17-129 application form, please schedule an inspection at an approved USDA Animal Import Center."
Just before Mark objected to the assumption that Equestrians were coming to the United States to be part of a breeding program, Smolder stabbed her claw into the tablet, causing a small tink sound. "Inspector Ray, isn't it true that regulations handle cases of temporary entry for thirty days or less differently?"
For the first time, the man brought his spectacled eyes up from his paperwork. "Oh! Were you talking to me? Yes, that is a separate case."
After extracting her talon from the tablet, the dragoness pointed, carefully, at a different part of the screen. "That requires only a certificate from a licensed veterinarian certifying that the equine is in good health and does not carry any disease transmissible to people, correct?"
"Well, yes."
Smolder stood, followed quickly by Mark. She gave the man her winningest fang-filled smile. "Splendid! I'll ensure that paperwork is all in order and ... uh ..." She looked at the alicorn.
"Faxed."
"Ah, yes. 'Faxed' to the USDA phone number on your card. Have a splendid afternoon, Inspector Ray."
In the hallway, Mark grinned at his ambassador. "You're absolutely getting the hang of this."
In response, Smolder handed over her tablet. "Thank you, Your Highness. Would you please arrange for more tablets?"
Mark observed the spiderweb of cracks radiating from the center of the screen. "Should I get an IT person on site who can repair them?"
"Might be a good idea. That was my third tablet this week."
That obstacle overcome, Mark organized a program of public appearances all over the country. Trixie arranged several teams featuring a mixture of species to attend the rallies. At least one of the triarchs or Smolder would show up at the time of the event via portal so that no region would feel slighted.
If the morning talk shows were anything to go by, the citizens of Hawaii were intrigued to be playing host to the dragoness. After an enthusiastic meeting in Honolulu, Smolder asked to be given a tour of Mauna Loa, in particular the currently active lava flow. While the officials warned her of the danger of approaching too close, they nevertheless accommodated her. Soon after arriving at the designated location, Smolder spread her wings and took to the air. She ignored the shouts of warning and confusion as she threw off her dress and dived toward the deadly stream. Cries of horror came from the onlookers as she folded her wings and disappeared into the lava with a large splash. A team of reporters covering the major event with every resource including a drone camera was treated to the mind-boggling sight of the dragon lazily swimming upstream in the lava. There was still a lot of nail-biting done before Smolder finally emerged unscathed. She fanned her wings to cool down to a tolerable degree before she gathered up her dress and rejoined the others.
"That was refreshing," she said with a smile. "I'll have to see about opening a dragon spa here. I quite enjoyed the aroma and texture of your lava."
Not knowing exactly how to respond to that, the state officials agreed to look into the possibility.
Smolder received emails from seventeen vulcanologists that day alone.
The powers-that-be decided upon the Denver City and County Building as the best location to introduce the citizens of Colorado to the Equestrians. Wide steps led to a large elevated platform where humanity's newest friends could be seen by the throngs filling Civic Center Park. By happy chance, the occasional professional sports team championship season meant the city pulled out a freshly updated set of procedures to keep every being safe at the event. Sharing this plan with the security personnel of a different nation was not unprecedented and resulted in a few updates to close unforeseen vulnerabilities. For example, an effective means to sweep all underground areas before and during the event had not been considered feasible until the Equestrians came along.
The McNichols Civic Center Building parking lot provided an unobstructed view of the stage from barely four hundred feet away. Of only minor curiosity was the nondescript black van parked across two spaces in the roped-off area. The name of the electrical company printed on both sides of the van did not exist in any Colorado government record. The van's position allowed the van to face the stage directly and, perhaps coincidentally, also the large cardboard box strapped to the roof rack.
Inside, the driver turned to the van's other occupants. All three wore white Henley shirts and bib overalls devoid of any logos. "They're sticking to the planned schedule. In ten minutes -" He was interrupted by the roar of hundreds of thousands of citizens, deafening even inside the closed van.
After the noise abated, the woman in the passenger seat touched her ear. "Repeat." A few seconds later, she gave the thumbs up while mouthing the word "Now."
The driver continued. "OK. Our beloved local sports star may not take as long with the introduction as we expected. Chris .... Chris!"
The man in question jerked in his seat. "What? What?"
"Can't you stay awake for fifteen minutes? It's showtime!"
The slimmer man waved a hand dismissively while another worked the mouse next to his laptop. "Whatever. You try staying up for two days straight getting the hardware switched out and software upgraded in all this junk from the previous century B.C. Then let's see you stay up while Grandpa Elway riles up the crowd." While Chris had been talking, the thin man's eyes scanned over the numerous displays of electronic gear populating both sides of the van's cramped space, leaving him only a three-foot-wide corridor through the center. That finished, he returned his eyes to the laptop's display and stacked dual monitors centered behind the driver's and passenger's seats.
A few glances at the screens confirmed his earlier checks. His voice lost its sarcastic edge. "All secondary equipment is on and shows green. Everything is go for full spectrum capture. Remember, I only got enough drives hacked in to provide sixty-four seconds of recording time, so tell me when."
Behind him at the back of the van, a tinny voice said, "When!"
All three humans jumped in their seats. The driver and passenger reached for their hip-holstered pistols only to realize that the way they had been seated prevented any kind of smooth draw. Chris nearly jumped headfirst into the monitors before catching himself and looking behind him. He then burst out laughing, doubling over. "Oh, my god! That was fucking perfect!"
The driver and passenger kept their hands on their weapons as they glanced at each other and then at the van's unexpected occupant. A yellow insectile, pony-sized creature smiled back at them.
Chris recovered first and thrust out a fist. "That was awesome. I'm Chris. You're a changeling, right?"
The compound eyes centered on the technician and he gave the offered fist a tap with one hoof. "Crisp Berry. Pleased to meet you and all of your ridiculously expensive technology in here."
"Expensive? Yeah, I guess it is. Not my problem. So, you're Crisp Berry, huh? Maybe we're related." The two shared a laugh.
The passenger took her left hand off her pistol grip and picked up her cell phone. A few thumb flicks later, she pointed the camera into the back of the van. At her raised eyebrow, the driver did the same, cursing inwardly at the lack of foresight to provide even one transistor worth of recording equipment aimed inside the van itself.
The technician explained the function of various components until a flash of light made everyone look outside. A mare's voice cut through the air, "It's SHOWTIME!"
Chris smiled and pointed to a large red button connected by a USB cable to the laptop. "Time to learn how magic works. Push that red button for me, will you?"
Crisp Berry nodded. "That's funny. I've been trying to figure that out as well. The red one marked 'easy'?"
"Yeppers. That kicks off the master automation script. Now keep your eyes on the third display. Rhode and Schwarz FSW50 that I hacked to maxed it out with 128 GB of RAM. Second display is the equivalent Keysight Spectrum Analyzer - I forget the model on that one because we just upgraded. Plus, all the software packages have been enabled on both. That's what I recommend you start with so you can have your own set of toys."
"Because each system does some things better than the other. Got it. Should be fine to pick those up; I've got a bottomless expense account. I bet all the software costs more than the hardware it sits on."
Chris shrugged. "Eh."
The two nerds looked at each other and shared the same grin. Together they chorused, "Not my problem!"
While they laughed, the driver and passenger shared another look, silently agreeing not to interfere in this human/Equestrian geek session. Not that they would have anything to contribute anyway.
The human pointed to both screens with a finger "So the spec-ans capture the entire spectrum up to fifty gigahertz, thanks to the antenna almost cleverly hidden in the cardboard box overhead. And look at all that damn EM traffic! What would you recommend to filter out all the background crap?"
The changeling narrowed its eyes and tapped a hoof to its chin. "I would ... no. All that software has to be good for something. Let it categorize everything. Then subtract out the analysis results from five minutes before all my buddies arrived."
"Got it in one! Just press the 'easy' button again."
As the two continued to discuss analysis results, equipment features, and favorite snacks, the passenger leaned closer to the driver. "If we need a backup techie when Chris gets sick, I know who I'm recommending for the spot." The driver frowned until he realized she was subtly trying to tell him something important.
The Head of Operations listened to the report given by the driver.
"... about thirty minutes after the Equestrian's show concluded, we heard a knock at the rear doors. One of their batpony Royal Guards opened it and greeted us. I believe it was their Captain Penumbra wearing aviator sunglasses. She informed Crisp Berry that it was time to move on to their next destination. The changeling accepted our technician's backup personal phone as a gift and the aliens flew off together."
After no more words came out, the veins on the older man's neck began to bulge, and his face got redder.
Before the inevitable explosion, the driver continued. "Sir, there's no question the changeling and our technician bonded over the course of that hour. Specifically on how technology can be used to study the Equestrian's ... abilities. The changeling analyst was, if anything, more enthusiastic about getting his own lab full of equipment set up to study the same.
The Head of Operations gaped. "So... the aliens are going to figure out for us how their... magic works? And relay that knowledge back to our technician?"
The driver nodded. "As long as we keep our operative in contact with the changeling and encourage them to do more research at subsequent events; exactly, sir."
The Head of Operations held his head in his hands. "Just... go."
# # # # # # # # # |
Worlds Apart | Expensive Tastes | "We have had accusations of fraud regarding the gemstones that you have contracted to supply to the market," the Minister for Natural Resources stated.
Smolder raised an eye ridge and gave the woman a skeptical look. "How so, Madame Minister?"
The minister was slightly unnerved facing the dragoness, but the situation was too sensitive to leave to an underling. She swallowed before replying, "Rio Tinto's Australian operations are the suppliers of almost all pink diamonds in the world. Although not the rarest, those diamonds still command an enormous price. Red and blue diamonds are even more so. The DeBeers Company has joined with Rio Tinto in questioning the size, quality, and quantity of those you've said you can supply, not to mention the more common colorless ones."
"I see. What would our motive be in committing this fraud?"
"They claim that you are trying to crash the market so that you can sell your offerings."
Smolder gave an irritated sigh and a puff of smoke wafted from her nostrils. "In your world, diamonds are useful for only two things - industrial applications due to their hardness or for decorative purposes, whether that be on a garment or jewelry. Their inflated expense hurts both the industries that require their level of hardness and the pocketbooks of people who have been convinced that they don't really love their fiancees unless they buy them the biggest diamond they can afford. Our colorless diamonds will bring down the cost for the ordinary citizen, but the colored ones are aimed at the rich. We'll be undercutting your world's diamond producers by a considerable margin, so of course they're going to squeal. But that's just supply and demand, not fraud."
The minister swallowed. "It is if your gems do not live up to your claims of size and quality which, you must admit, are pretty outrageous."
"Oh? We did show some samples to our buyers, but I suppose I'd better arrange a more public viewing to demonstrate the quality of our goods. Don't you agree?" She smiled broadly.
The minister nodded, not daring to question that broad toothy grin.
Representatives from some of the biggest diamond producers in the world gathered in a large meeting room at Parliament House. Experts from Rio Tinto, Anglo-American, DeBeers, and Arctic Canadian Diamond Company were included besides the sharpest executives from each. They were disconcerted to find that, rather than the normal closed-door way of doing business that served them so well, this meeting was going to be public. In fact, it was a media circus. The world was still fascinated by every new revelation by the Equestrians and this would merit at least a couple of minutes on the evening news.
Protests that this meeting should be considered "Commercial in Confidence" fell on deaf ears though. With the Equestrians quite willing and ready to defend their claims, the consortium was left with no alternative than to go ahead and try to prove them false. Smolder brought along a couple of experts of her own from both Equus and her customers' companies to keep the consortium honest. She doubted they would be needed.
"Shall we look at the colored diamonds first?" the dragoness asked. "We have been accused of inflating our claims of their size and quality. So, to be sure that we are comparing ours to yours accurately, can I see your samples?"
One of the executives who had a very sturdy briefcase handcuffed to his wrist laid it on the table and unlocked it. Opening it revealed a black velvet lining in which were inlaid several diamonds each of the red, blue, pink, fancy yellow, and colorless varieties.
"Each of these is the finest in cut and clarity in their respective colors. They range in size from about six to fifteen carats. This is the standard that you claim to match at an absurdly low price."
"Ooh! They are quite lovely!" Smolder exclaimed. "Absolutely delicious, I might expect."
The consortium members looked at each other, wondering about that turn of phrase. The gathered crowd chuckled, partly at the suited men's discomfort and partly at Smolder's nonchalance when faced with what were supposed to be overwhelming riches. The dragoness lifted a briefcase of her own.
"Now, before I show you our samples, I will point out that we are not selling finished gemstones like those. Our customers will be cutting and polishing them. We will be supplying diamonds that are only roughly faceted, but they have been graded using the 4 C's system that you use. They are all flawless and of the finest color of their type." She took out a cloth bag from the briefcase and emptied its contents onto the table. Half a dozen pink diamonds at least quadruple the size of the consortium's samples were revealed. As the experts gaped, Smolder brought out more bags that contained similarly sized diamonds in blue, fancy yellow, and red.
Upon being given permission to handle them, the experts began examining the diamonds. They took their time testing the stones, trying their best to find something wrong with them, but eventually, they had to concede that they were genuine.
One of the scowling executives got up from his chair, leaned over the table, and asked with a snarl, "Have you trotted out all your biggest diamonds just to impress us?"
"Oh, no. Those are just samples of the smallest ones we will be selling. We won't be bothering with the little stuff. We have other uses for them."
The executive sat down with a thump, aghast at the news. Smolder began gathering up the gems and putting them back in their pouches. When it came to the blue diamonds though, she frowned.
"One of these is missing. Did you drop it?" she asked the experts. When they shook their heads, Smolder asked them to stand up and look beneath them. The audience chuckled as they frantically tried to find the errant diamond.
"Perhaps it fell into the pocket of one of the executives?" she suggested to loud laughter from the onlookers. After she got irate glares in response, especially from the bigwigs, Smolder waved her hand dismissively. "Never mind - we've got plenty more."
The representative from Anglo-American angrily said, "You have shown us plenty of the colored stones, but what of the Class D colorless diamonds you claim you can supply by the thousands?"
"Right, I left those out, didn't I?" She picked up a large sack from her briefcase and spilled its contents in front of him. Hundreds of colorless diamonds of about three or four carats each glittered in the lights as the audience oohed and aahed. "Every one of those is Class D. Go ahead - pick any you wish and test them."
The experts almost desperately started doing so, aware that their bosses were counting on them to discredit the dragon. However, one by one, they gave up and declared the diamonds to be exactly what she claimed.
The executive from the De Beers Group slammed his fist on the table. "You must be manufacturing them somehow!" he accused in his South African accent. "But even you could not match the wonder of a natural diamond of a size you cannot hope to replicate!" He placed a small briefcase on the table and unlocked it. Inside was just one very large gemstone. "This is the Millennium Star Diamond weighing 777 carats. It is worth two billion Rand. This is true beauty! This is a true treasure! Could your factory-made stones ever hope to match such as this?"
Smolder pursed her lips in disapproval. "I didn't know we were having a cock-waving competition. I came woefully unequipped." She paused as laughter came from the spectators. "Anyway, while we have rock farms for many gems, we don't make them in factories. We dragons do like nice big diamonds or rubies though. I have one with me, in fact." She reached into her handbag and pulled out an enormous colorless diamond with the simplest of facets. She held it up for everyone to see clearly. "Two thousand, three hundred and seven carats, I'm informed. Feel free to inspect this one as well." She passed it to the nearest expert.
The man examined it before giving it to a colleague who did the same. All the experts wanted to have a good look at the incredible stone. After consulting with one another, the lead expert stated that the rough faceting prevented a full evaluation of clarity but it rated at least VVS1 with the possibility of only very slight inclusions. Likewise, the color rated at worst as G - Nearly Colorless.
The man finished saying, "I would like to work on the diamond's facets to provide a more definitive evaluation. I promise that I will not need to remove more than twenty percent of the stone to do so." He handed it back to her, with a disbelieving shake of his head. "That gem, even if slightly imperfect, is absolutely amazing."
Smolder grinned. "You call it amazing. I call it lunch." She lifted it to her maw and took a bite out of it. Crunch!
Cries of horror came from the experts and one fainted. The consortium executives gaped like stunned fish. The silence from the equally flabbergasted audience was only broken by the sound of Smolder chewing her meal and the chuckles of her Equestrian guards.
Smolder looked around and smiled apologetically. "Sorry, I was getting a bit hungry because these guys took so long." She then took another multi-million-dollar bite.
NEW RECORD SET IN WORLD'S MOST EXPENSIVE MEAL
Smolder put down the newspaper next to the large pile of others from around the world with a similar theme. She smacked her lips then shrugged. "Eh, I've had better."
# # # # # # # # # |
Worlds Apart | How's The Weather? | The time for the first official visit to Equestria by humans finally came. Prince Mark wanted to ensure that relations were firmly established with Earth before they opened up Equus to visitors. He instructed Smolder to use the excuse of a quarantine period to ensure that no virulent disease or deadly contamination might be brought back to their world. When asked about the reverse situation, Smolder explained that their interdimensional exploration protocols prevented that from happening. In reality, it was a two-way street, but they did not mention that fact.
Now though, the Australian Prime Minister; his Ministers for Foreign Affairs, Ms. Wright; and Trade & Tourism, Mr. Carter; their assistants; and a small cadre of select journalists were about to embark on their history-making visit. They gathered at the Canberra embassy and a pair of green-jacketed ponies escorted them deeper into the building. Every delegate had to pass through an extra layer of security before arriving in the portal room. Once inside, they saw one wall covered in metal polished to nearly a mirror surface. On all sides, the metal was framed by an impressive array of cables, blinking lights, and mysterious boxes encasing unknown devices emblazoned with model numbers and strange names such as "Trans-Linear Stabilizer, Type 2" and "Hyper-Void Inverter". However, it was all for show. The Equestrians had no intention of letting anyone from Earth know that setting up a major interdimensional portal was as simple as enchanting a mirrored surface.
This portal was designed for multiple destinations, so it did have a few extras added to it, not to mention another layer of security. At a nod from Smolder, a unicorn behind a transparent barrier activated the gateway. Lights flashed and the surface of the metal shimmered, then the dragoness addressed the group.
"To pass into Equestria, simply step through it as if the wall isn't there. You will feel something strange as you pass through the interstice between dimensions, but I assure you that it is harmless. Lieutenant Gallus will now demonstrate how easy this is."
The griffon took his cue and walked into the wall without hesitation. There were murmurs of amazement from the watchers before Smolder spoke up again.
"You may pass through when ready. You do not need to go one at a time. I only ask that you move away from the portal as soon as you pass through to allow others to follow."
The Prime Minister nodded in understanding and he and his ministers had the honor of being the first humans to travel to another world... as far as they knew.
Despite a little uneasiness about bashing his face into a wall, Anthony Gillard met no resistance and stepped into a brightly lit and airy structure. He was not sure what to expect, but an opulent garden was not it. He had the presence of mind to step away from the portal before pausing to take in his surroundings. He realized he had emerged inside a pergola where a gateway had been set up with unobstructed views of trees, shrubs, and tens of thousands of flowers. Most breathtaking of all was the magnificent castle in the background. He was so bedazzled by the striking colors and heady perfume that he almost missed the three alicorns who were waiting to greet him as well as the honor guard assembled behind them.
Princess Trixie refrained from smirking at the gawking visitors as the rest of the group emerged. When they were all present, she spoke up. "On behalf of my fellow Triarchs, Trixie welcomes you to Canterlot, capital of Equestria. We hope that you enjoy your visit to our fair city. We have much to show you of our beautiful world."
Anthony Gillard stepped forward, gave the Triarchs a short bow, and shook Trixie's hoof before replying. "My colleagues and I are honored to be here. I can safely say that Equestria has already exceeded my expectations. I look forward to seeing more."
The two ministers also approached and exchanged bows and hoofshakes.
Princess Twilight Sparkle spoke up. "We have arranged a short tour before luncheon. We will be happy to answer any questions about anything you see along the way."
Prince Mark Wells added, "Please leave business until after we dine at the castle. Right now, you are friends paying us a visit, and we can't wait to have you start enjoying your stay. Please follow me."
The alicorns refrained from chatting to allow their guests to take in the sights. However, they readily responded to questions.
"Do these gardens belong to the castle?" Gillard asked.
"Yes, they do," Twilight replied. "However, 90% of them are open to the public most days. They're only closed or restricted access for special events. Because we did not want you to be mobbed by curious ponies, we've closed the gates until lunchtime today. Otherwise, the citizens are free to enjoy them as much as we do."
Ms. Wright said, "We seem to be right up against a mountain on the left, but I see no sign of anything beyond the gardens on the right."
Mark responded, "Have you seen any photographs of Canterlot? The city is located on the side of the mountain. Most other structures are lower than the castle. You'll see for yourself when we reach the garden wall."
It took several more minutes of unhurried strolling to reach that wall. The humans let out gasps of amazement, looking beyond the city's rooftops and outer wall to a huge valley bounded by distant mountain ranges. The alicorns let them take as much time as they wanted, pointing out several landmarks to the curious.
Mr. Carter looked up and an eyebrow lifted. "Those clouds are behaving rather strangely. Are there odd wind currents in this location?"
Twilight shook her head. "That's just the Canterlot weather team moving rainclouds into position for tonight's scheduled showers."
That drew incredulous stares from all the visitors.
"Scheduled showers?"
"Weather team?"
"Moving clouds?"
"Oh, yes. We have a fine team of pegasi here in Canterlot. They made sure that your visit today would be pleasantly warm and sunny."
"Are you seriously saying that they control the weather?" Gillard asked.
"Well, not just them, but yes. There are teams throughout Equestria that are coordinated by the Cloudsdale Weather Factory. Farmers get well-timed rain and sun, outdoor event organizers get guaranteed good weather, and citizens plan around inclement conditions."
"Do you have any idea how invaluable that would be to our country, let alone the rest of the world? Australia is constantly wracked by drought, cyclones, fires, and floods. They cause untold damage and misery. If we could control the weather--"
"I'm going to stop you right there," Prince Mark interjected, holding up a hoof. "I fully understand your problems, but you do not comprehend the magnitude of what you would inevitably ask of us. As Princess Twilight mentioned, there are weather teams located throughout Equestria. It's only by working in coordination that they can so precisely control the local conditions. A single team in just one location would be hard-pressed to disperse storm clouds or provide reliable rainfall. As your meteorologists can tell you, weather is extremely difficult to predict because of the sheer number of variables. The teams located on the border of our sphere of influence have a harder time controlling the local climate because they are affected by the untamed weather outside of Equestria's area of effect. There are literally tens of thousands of pegasi working in weather teams and, since the growth of the empire, there has been a constant need to recruit more." Mark sighed. "I'm sorry, Mr. Gillard, but at best, we could only possibly supply an emergency response team to mitigate a disaster. We simply do not have the resources to give you control over your weather."
The Prime Minister shook his head. "No, I understand. It was wishful thinking on my part. However, the possibility of an emergency team bears following up."
"Of course, but that can be discussed with other business after the luncheon," Mark replied.
"And Trixie is dying to show off our magnificent city," the blue alicorn said to get the visit back on track. "We have carriages waiting to take you on a tour of Canterlot."
The humans did not expect to see ponies hitched up to the carriages that normally conveyed other ponies around, but the lack of any obvious automation presumably necessitated it. As the delegation was taken through the streets, waving to the excited ponies, changelings, griffons, and other citizens, Gillard could not help but wonder what they did for small talk when the day's weather was off the table.
# # # # # # # # # |
Worlds Apart | Power Play | "I have a lead on the Martines."
"About fucking time," Anatoly Kalchik snarled. "What have you got?"
"They're holding a staff party at their home," the private investigator replied. "I overheard two women from Harmonic Composites discussing celebrating the big contract the company had scored with the Equestrians."
"Ha! Not hard if you're in cahoots with them. Go on."
"Aside from irrelevant subjects such as what they planned to wear to the party, I did get the date - this Saturday - but not the time nor the address. However, I'll be able to tail one and get an associate to tail the other. With your approval, I'll hire a third to watch for anyone going directly from their workplace since Harmonic Composites started weekend shifts."
"Granted. Hire more at your discretion. I've been waiting for this break for too damn long to waste it."
The private investigator nodded. "I know where those two live, so it'll be a simple matter of staking out their homes early and following when they leave for the Martines."
Kalchik smirked. "Sounds perfect. Once you've confirmed the address and that the Martines are definitely there, I want you to call and inform me. Then you can leave. If everything works out, then our business will be done and you'll get that promised bonus."
"I'll let you know if any further information comes to light in the meantime," the P.I. said.
"Good. You know what to do. Now, get lost!" Kalchik said with a dismissive wave of his hand.
Sophia Alderson looked in the mirror and nodded, satisfied with her appearance. She grabbed her purse and car keys and headed to the garage. Shortly, her Toyota Camry was en route to the Martines' party, oblivious to the black Honda Civic following several car lengths behind. Her GPS guided her to the address that she had been given and found that parking was already at a premium. Unsurprisingly, many people had arrived before her, but a woman was not ready until the final touches were done. Nevertheless, it was a short walk to the house.
Music at a pleasant level drifted out the windows, as well as light from the open curtains. The hosts of the party promptly answered the doorbell. They welcomed her with smiles, their faces illuminated by the front porch lamp. The occupant of the black car parked illegally in the driveway opposite the house also smiled. His camera zoom clearly identified his objectives. He took a couple of photos and sent them in a text message to Kalchik, along with the address. He quickly received a reply:
"Got it. Go and leave the rest to me."
The P.I. sent a one-word group text to the rest of his team ("Done") and was happy to depart the scene. He did not want to know what was going to happen. He had done his bit and he was going to be handsomely rewarded, and that was all he cared about.
About fifteen minutes later, two cars rolled up and disgorged several burly men in hoodies. Kalchik emerged into the midst of the group, obscuring him from possible nosy neighbors and security cameras. They moved as a whole to the door where they paused.
"Why don't you knock, Boris?" Kalchik said with a smirk.
The huge man nodded before body-slamming the poor door which practically flew off its hinges. The group then hustled inside to the screams of some of the occupants of the house. Guns were drawn from concealment and were waved threateningly. Boris fired a shot into the ceiling and Kalchik shouted for everyone to shut up. Then he spotted his quarries and gestured toward them.
"You two - come here. I've been waiting too long to have a little talk with you."
A voice behind him said, "Ah, Mr. Kalchik - I see you got our invitation."
The man whirled around and recognized who had spoken. He snarled. "This must be my lucky day. I have something for you, boy." His arm swung out to pistol-whip Mark Wells, only to have his hand pass through Mark's head as if it was not there.
Mark grinned. "Oops. That won't work. You see, I'm not human; I'm a pony. Trixie, love?"
A moment later, an illusion dropped, revealing that every person in that room bar two was a pony of some kind. Kalchik looked down at the green alicorn who stood well below the head height of his illusory self.
"Want to try that again?" Mark asked with a smile mocking the man for believing him to be human. The alicorn wanted Kalchik to think that he had always been a pony in disguise.
With a snarl, Kalchik tried to aim the gun. However, his movement was abruptly halted as he found himself paralyzed. A magic glow surrounded his weapon which was removed from his grasp and floated into Mark's hoof. He yelled, "What are you waiting for? Shoot the bastard!"
However, nothing happened. As Mark casually walked away from him, Kalchik found that he could move again. Glancing behind him, he saw that every one of his goons was on the floor and unconscious.
"As I said earlier," Mark spoke up once more, "you got our invitation to the party and arrived promptly. That was considerate of you. You see, we want to have a chat with you too that doesn't involve public indiscretions or murderous intentions. Since you were already doing your best to find Phil and Rosa, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get you to come to us without revealing our presence."
Kalchik frowned. "Are you telling me that this whole party was a ruse just to get me here?"
Phil Martine nodded. "We were fully aware of your private investigator's efforts to find us. We were quite prepared to ignore you and let things slide until you started interfering with Harmonic Composites' operations. You truly are a vindictive man."
"No one messes with me or my daughter!" Kalchik spat. "You haven't seen the half of what I can do to you yet!"
Rosa Martine shook her head and scoffed. "You don't realize how badly you have screwed up. Eres un gran idiota!"
Mark said, "All you seem to understand are displays of power, so we've arranged a little demonstration. Congratulations! You are going to be one of the lucky few to visit Equestria."
"You're going to kidnap me?" He laughed humorlessly. "What do you think the American government will think of that?"
Mark looked over to the Martines. "It's funny how you Americans seem to think your nationality makes you more special than any other."
Phil shrugged. "No argument."
Mark turned back to Kalchik, this time with a frown. "All we have ever wanted was peaceful trade with Earth. It's people like you that threaten that goal, so I'm going to convince you why that's not a good idea. Follow me."
Three ponies, all Royal Guards, herded the protesting man into an adjacent room. A mirror sat in the middle of the floor surrounded by esoteric machinery which lit up when Mark touched a button on the control panel. It was all for show, of course, but the Equestrians intended to maintain the fiction with everyone, Kalchik included.
"Step on through," Mark instructed.
Kalchik glared at him. "So I will smash face-first into it and look like a fool like you did with my daughter?"
Mark chuckled. "While that was a genuine mirror, the machinery hidden behind it was turned off. This one is active. Sergeant Clover, please demonstrate."
The pegasus stallion walked up to the mirror and stepped through.
"Your turn, Mr. Kalchik," Mark said with a genial smile.
Despite the confirmation, Kalchik hesitated before following the pony. However, he met no resistance and stepped out into the Canterlot training grounds. Looking around, he realized that it was filled with hundreds of heavily armed and armored ponies, griffons, and several other species. Many of the winged ones were airborne, but every single one of them were focused on the portal... no, on him! And they did not look happy.
Clover pulled him away from the portal to allow others to follow. Only then did he notice some humans to one side, all dressed for the party that he had crashed. By the smirks on their faces, he guessed that they had all been lures; only one of which the P.I. had detected.
Mark soon joined Kalchik, as did the Martines, his bodyguard Penumbra, and a few of the Royal guards. Unknown to the man, Trixie stayed behind to use her power to cover up the removal of the goons by the remaining guards while maintaining the illusion of the party continuing. In fact, no neighbor had seen or heard anything beyond two cars with tinted windows parking near the house.
Prince Mark waited for the party-goers to return to Earth before he faced Kalchik. This time, his expression was completely serious. "When we last met, you denigrated me for being, as you supposed, an insignificant African prince despite being informed that I ruled a nation on another world." He deliberately omitted the fact that two mares co-ruled with him because he knew he was dealing with a patriarchal type that considered females as being lesser. "Your prejudice made you fail to see that you are not in the position of power that you presumed yourself to be in. Even counting the illegal enterprises that we have uncovered, your business is still trivial compared to Equestria's. Your wealth is insignificant; my ambassador ate a diamond worth tens of millions of dollars in your world for lunch, and there are plenty more where that came from. You command a pack of thugs - I have an army!"
Mark swept a hoof around, indicating the gathered soldiers and Royal Guards. "These are a mere fraction of those at my beck and call. Any one of them could take on several of your goons at once. However, using the heavies is only one of the ways you like to attack people. You made the mistake of screwing around with Harmonic Composites, and by doing so, you not only attacked me but also my dear friends, Phil and Rosa Martine. So, now you've made this very personal. You forced my hooves, so I have to ensure that you're neutralized. Neither you nor your daughter will be allowed to hinder either the goodwill between our worlds, or the fair commerce we are building."
While Kalchik was many deplorable things, he was not a coward. Although his present position was intimidating, he nevertheless glared defiantly back at the alicorn. "You will leave Ivana out of this, you filthy animal! Don't you dare harm her!"
Mark smirked. "We don't harm anybody without good reason, and we haven't done so now. Your daughter will not be causing us trouble though." He looked to one side and addressed someone there. "Right, Ivana?"
Kalchik jerked his head in that direction as a bronze dragoness walked forward. She spoke up. "That's right, Your Highness," she said with her head bowed respectfully.
"I... Ivana?" Kalchik choked out.
The dragoness looked at him. "Yes, it's me, Daddy. I told you that I turned into a dragon when I entered Equestria. I got my pearl back, see?" She opened the talons on her right paw to reveal the huge pearl.
Despite the change in timbre due to her different body, Kalchik still recognized her voice. "You've got your pearl and you've proved your story - come back with me."
She shook her head. "I can't. I'm not allowed."
"Not allowed?" Kalchik turned on Mark and roared, "How dare you hold my daughter hostage!"
Mark shook his head. "I have done no such thing. She made a deal to get her pearl back and remaining on Equus is part of it."
"You don't have the authority to hold her to that!"
Another voice joined the conversation. "That is debatable, but even if he doesn't, I do."
Kalchik looked around and then up at the blue dragon that towered over him, his retort dying in his throat as she leaned down with a terrifying toothy grin on her maw and wisps of smoke leaking from her nostrils.
"I am Dragonlord Ember and Ivana is now one of my subjects of her own volition. By my command, she will remain in Equestria until I see fit to allow her to return to Earth. If she still wants to by then."
"Don't you dare harm her," Kalchik said with a lot less fervor than previously.
"Are you threatening me, puny human?" She puffed a breath of red-hot air in his face, singeing his hair and eyebrows. "You mean nothing to me, but I will see to it that your daughter learns to be worthy of being called a dragon." Ember then turned and strode away, saying, "Come, Ivana Goldclaw."
"Yes, Dragonlord. Bye, Daddy." Ivana obediently followed Ember out of the training grounds.
Mark stepped back to address Kalchik once more. "As you have just seen, Ivana is in good hands, even if they are dragon talons. We just have to deal with you now."
"Are you going to keep me here too?"
"No. Not only are you very unwelcome here, but your disappearance would cause problems. You will return to Earth and go on with your normal legal business. But don't believe for a moment that you won't be watched like a hawk. And you will never know who to trust if you choose to think otherwise." Mark gestured and several undisguised Canterlot changelings came forward, startling Kalchik who had never seen their kind. Mark continued, "You will never know if someone is who you think they are. They could be your maid..."
A changeling changed into the woman. "Your suit is back from the dry cleaner, sir," she said in Ekaterina's accented tones.
"They could be your secretary..."
Another changeling assumed that form. "There's a message for you, Mr. Kalchik," she said in an unmistakable voice.
"They could even be Boris."
A third changeling became the spitting image of the stony-faced man who silently nodded.
Kalchik gaped. Even if he figured out that someone was a doppelganger, he could never guarantee that another was not looking over his shoulder or at the other end of a phone call. He was out of options, and all he could do was seethe and glare malevolently at the alicorn.
However, Mark was not quite done yet. He reared up, getting in Kalchik's face. In a dangerous tone, he said, "But if despite all that you ever piss me off again..." He whirled around and loosed a mighty thunderbolt at a dummy tied up to a pole in the center of the grounds. It practically exploded and the remnants burned fiercely. Mark turned back. "...remember that I need neither a gun nor a hitman."
Kalchik barely heard Mark's words as his ears were still ringing from the thunderclap. He did manage to piss himself though.
Mark looked down and nodded. "I see you understand." He returned to all fours and gestured toward the portal. "Go home, Mr. Kalchik. I never want to hear about you again."
The man stumbled toward the mirror but Mark had one more thing to add.
"Oh, and we'll be sending you the bill for the damage that you did to the Air B&B we rented for the party. Do pay promptly!"
# # # # # # # # # |
Worlds Apart | Inspection Day Disaster | "We've finished commissioning the new portal facility, Your Highness" the project engineer said. "All that's left to do is get the Australian inspectors to certify everything and it'll be ready to go. I'll have a crew doing the finishing touches in the meantime. Those will be completed in two days, tops."
Prince Mark Wells gazed at the floorplan of the new building that had been constructed adjacent to the existing Alice Springs office and portal. The facility had two interdimensional portals, one on either side of a control station. One would handle outgoing freight while the other would handle incoming. This eliminated the bottleneck that developed when the rapidly increasing shipments caused delays due to the single original gateway. That one would now be reserved for priority and emergency transfers. The construction of the new building allowed easy expansion for two more portals, if that ever became necessary. For now, though, the new ones could cope well enough, and the layout of the yard enabled a free flow of the trailer loads to and from the transfer and inspection facility located outside of the Equestrian Exclusion Zone.
Mark nodded in satisfaction. "Good work, Sturdy Frame. I'll schedule the inspection immediately. I anticipate that they will come out early next week. I'll inform you when it has been arranged."
"Very good, sir." The stallion gathered up his documents and bade the prince farewell.
Mark checked the time on Earth to ensure that it was suitable. There was only a small degree of time drift between the worlds, so it crept up on you if you weren't careful. Noting that it was office hours in Alice Springs, the alicorn placed the first of several calls before going back to his other work.
The tall man opened the door to let in his acquaintance. Leaving the guest in the living room, he went into the kitchen to fetch a couple of cold cans of beer from the fridge. He passed one to the visitor and sat down before asking, "Did you get the vehicle, mate?"
"Yeah, yeah, Barry," the man replied as he popped the top of the can. He took a swig before continuing. "I told you it would be easy. Keeping it out of sight is the tricky part."
"It won't need to be for long. The Equestrians have booked the inspections for next Tuesday. Their ambassador announced their intention to hold a public opening ceremony immediately after they're completed. Will your men be ready?"
"No problem. You worry too much."
Barry glared at him. "Listen, Jeff," he snarled. "You're not taking those unnatural creatures seriously enough! I've been studying them for months and their security is ridiculously good. Between their demonic magic and hyper-vigilance, it's practically impossible to get through them. They don't even let any drivers take their trucks into the Equestrian Exclusion Zone - their earth ponies hitch a dolly up to the trailers parked in the freight transfer yard and they pull them to the portal. The few humans who get in there are thoroughly checked out. If I'm going to get to the horned demon, you and your men have to go in hard."
"If their fucking security is as good as you reckon, what makes you think you're going to get in at all, let alone kill the bitch?"
Barry put down his can and got up from the chair. He opened a nearby cupboard and lifted out a cardboard box. From it, he removed the elephant gun that he had acquired and showed it to Jeff. "Think you can off one or two of them with this?"
Jeff whistled. "That's some gun," he said with a grin. "Those beasts are going to have a real bad day, I promise you." He then looked up at Barry. "That still doesn't explain how you're going to get to the main target."
Barry smirked. "That's already taken care of. I'm counting on you to provide enough distraction for me to do the deed. Here's the plan..."
The tall man explained the details and Jeff grinned.
It was a foregone conclusion that the new gateway building would pass inspection with flying colors, so Mark had told Smolder to arrange a press conference to announce the official opening of the facility. The local Imparja television station had a small crew of trusted people who regularly covered Equestrian events and were allowed into the exclusion zone along with a few hoof-picked reporters from other major news outlets. Besides the normal Gateway crew, Mark, Chrysalis, and Smolder were present for the event, along with their bodyguards. They portaled over as soon as one of the facility's staff had informed them that the inspection had been completed.
Chrysalis provided extra security for the event in the form of several changeling guards who would monitor the emotions of the visitors. She confirmed that everything was in place with the facility's security officer before rejoining Mark and Smolder. Smolder made a short opening speech thanking all the locals who had assisted in the construction, then the inspectors signed the official paperwork in front of the cameras. Prince Mark began his speech extoling the benefits of the new facility, but just before he could declare it officially open, an ambulance with lights flashing and siren shrieking raced into the freight transfer grounds and was only brought to a halt by the guards at the gate of the Equestrian Exclusion Zone.
"What the buck is going on?" Mark demanded, looking toward Chrysalis for answers.
"No one has reported an incident requiring an ambulance," she replied. "Either someone has called one in to harass us or--"
The changeling queen did not need to finish her sentence because the driver of the ambulance and the passenger both jumped out and began firing at the security ponies. The suspicious and well-trained guards already had their shields up and the bullets were stopped dead, falling harmlessly at their hooves. Other guards were already moving in when the back doors of the ambulance opened to allow three more men to emerge. Two aimed at the approaching guards while the third took advantage of the covering fire to move up to the gate, carrying his huge weapon.
Jeff raised the elephant gun and fired it at one of the guards. With a pained cry, the changeling's shield shattered and he fell to the ground. The man's follow-up shot was deflected by a unicorn soldier who dived in the way before likewise collapsing in agony as her shield imploded. Before Jeff could complete reloading the massive gun, he was tackled by a griffon diving from the sky.
In the meantime, the bodyguards immediately placed themselves between the action and their charges - Penumbra and Gallus manifesting enchanted shields designed to stop firearms. Mark threw a spherical shield around the four of them and the reporters in front of the stage while calling back to Chrysalis to protect the inspectors and facility staff members behind them.
The changeling queen nodded and used her hive link to instruct her changeling bodyguard Whisper Wing. He moved to his queen's left and they both raised shield walls. While neither could make a spherical shield large enough to cover all the bystanders, between the two, they blocked all lines of fire. Chrysalis reassured the humans that they were completely safe. Then she frowned. Something was wrong. Despite the chaos of emotions coming from the gate area, another hostile feeling was coming from... She whirled around a moment too late and cried out in pain as something struck her at the base of her neck, penetrating her natural armoring. She saw one of the humans holding a mini crossbow. He was already moving to place another bolt in the weapon when she blasted him with a magic bolt of her own. A changeling guard was upon him a moment later.
Around the ambulance, Equestrian troops yelled out, "Hostiles secure!"
Only then did Chrysalis drop her shield and turn her attention to the crossbow bolt. Mark came up to her, attracted by the commotion and with worry etched in his face.
"Sally! What happened?!"
"Would-be *argh* assassin among *ack* inspectors," she grunted painfully as her magic tugged at the bolt.
"Get a doctor, now!" Mark yelled at the facility staff.
A unicorn mare said, "I'm on it!" and teleported away.
Mark turned his attention back to Chrysalis. "Maybe you should leave that in place until the doctor arrives."
"No, it isn't a fatal wound and I can begin healing myself with it out." She cried out in pain as she pulled at it again. "But it seems to be stuck. Help me, husband."
Against his better judgment, Mark complied. He winced when she shrieked as the bolt tore its way out of her. She then swallowed and focused her abilities. The wound started to scab over but then her magic faltered.
"Something's not right," she gasped. "My magic is not responding. The area is going numb. I'm... feeling dizzy." The changeling queen's legs collapsed beneath her.
Nasty laughter came from a few yards away where Barry had recovered from the blast and seen enough to appreciate his work. "She's a goner! That bolt was coated with a neurotoxin. The demon will die within minutes," he crowed triumphantly.
Mark turned to him with horror on his face. "What?! Are you insane?! Why have you done this?"
"Do you think we wouldn't recognize evil when we see it? That demon dared reveal herself to us and you, her unnatural thralls, do her bidding. God told me to kill her before she spread her influence over Earth."
"You bigoted fool!" Mark screamed at him before looking around helplessly. "Where's that doctor?!" He turned his attention back to Chrysalis. Not knowing if his efforts were achieving anything, nevertheless, he persisted with the strongest healing spell that he knew.
Eventually, a unicorn mare turned up at Mark's side. "I'm Mercy Dash, a paramedic. What's the situation?"
"Chrysalis was wounded with a crossbow bolt coated with a neurotoxin," Mark replied. "Her magic is failing, she's feeling numb, and she's just started struggling to breathe."
The mare blanched. "Sweet Celestia!" She picked up the crossbow bolt in her magic and passed it to the unicorn guard who had fetched her. "Give this to the apothecary in Canterlot Castle. Report back with anything they find or any antidote, especially if it is broad spectrum."
The mare teleported away once more.
"You have to do something!" Mark said desperately.
The paramedic's horn lit up with a powerful spell. "Without an antidote or knowing the exact toxin used, the best that I can do is reinforce your healing spell with my own."
Both ponies sweated with the intensity of the effort that they put into the spells, but as the minutes ticked by, they could tell that the changeling queen was not responding. Chrysalis' breathing started coming in gasps and her slit pupils dilated to practically fill her eyes. She reached up with a trembling hoof.
"Mark, are... you there? I... can't see."
The alicorn took her hoof and she gripped it weakly.
"Ah, there you are... my stallion. Know... know that you kept your promise... and never neglected me... or our children." She paused as she struggled to breathe. "Know also that... I am filled with joy... my love." Then the last of her breath left her with a sigh and she ceased moving, her eyes staring unseeing at the clear blue Australian sky.
"NOOOOOOOOO!" Mark screamed in anguish, his eyes filling with tears. He slammed his hoof into the ground and several beings nearly overbalanced as the shockwave shook them like an earthquake. The alicorn turned to face Barry, fury etched on his expression. His horn lit up and his magic grabbed the man and hurled him halfway across the yard.
The man landed hard, unable to do more to save himself due to the manacles on his wrists and ankles. He sat up, spitting out the red Outback dirt, sneering at the pony.
Mark advanced upon him, snarling. "Do you know what you have done, you miserable man?"
"I rid the world of a demon like I swore I would," Barry replied with satisfaction.
"No! You took the life of the Queen of the greatest changeling hive in Equestria. You deprived her children of their mother. You. Murdered. MY. WIFE!"
Even while his ears were still ringing from that shout, Barry smirked back. "I think humans will see otherwise. I'll be sure to let the world know the truth even if those cameras don't do the job for me."
Mark glared at him. "So, you're not satisfied with killing my beloved and intend to spread your hate further?"
The man laughed. "I've surrendered, not resisting arrest, and entitled to a fair trial. Everyone will hear what I have to say. There's nothing you can do to stop me."
Mark paused before smiling maleficently. "You think you've figured it all out, but you've forgotten something. You committed your crime on Equestrian territory, therefore you're subject to Equestrian law. And do you want to know who has ultimate judicial authority?" He spread his wings and lightning arced between them and his horn, building in intensity. "It's the Triarchs. I, Prince Mark Wells, Triarch of Equestria, for the crime of regicide, sentence you to death!"
Smolder called out, "Father! Think of the consequences!"
"To Tartarus with the consequences! Let the sentence be carried out!"
Barry's eyes went wide and he turned away, covering his face with his arms in a futile effort to protect himself. The enormous lightning bolt that Mark unleashed not only killed the man but also left his corpse blackened and shriveled.
Mark turned away from the body and went back to Chrysalis. Picking her up in his magic, he then carried her toward the facility to return to Equestria, tears pouring down his cheeks.
Penumbra said to Smolder, "I have to go with them. Can you handle this mess?"
The dragoness nodded. "It's my job. Go! He needs you more than ever."
The batpony hastened to join Mark as Smolder turned her attention to the chaos. She raised her voice. "Ladies and Gentlemen - I require that you all leave this facility immediately and promptly. No questions will be entertained at this moment. Portal shipments will be suspended until this tragic situation is dealt with. Guards - please escort all visitors off Equestrian territory and bring those five terrorists to the portal. They will face trial in Equestria for their crimes."
Jeff and his cohorts all quailed in fear after seeing the result of Equestrian justice. Smolder had no intention of reassuring them.
As everyone hastened to comply with the dragon's orders, Smolder sighed, knowing that the repercussions of the day's events would reverberate for weeks. In the meantime, she had a herd-mother to mourn.
Princess Diadem tearfully took possession of her mother's lifeless form and carried it into the hive that she would now rule as their new Queen. Her connection to her mother through the hive was unhindered by passing through an interdimensional portal and she felt the moment that Chrysalis had died. It was sudden and traumatic for the young royal changeling, but she had every one of the hundreds of Canterlot changelings there to share her grief and give her support. The younger changeling princesses, Sybilla and Esperanza, grieved even as they realized that they would have to grow up faster without their matriarch to guide them.
Mark, despite being the titular King of the Canterlot Hive, could not share that support. However, he had his herd. Trixie, Penumbra, Celestia, and Steady Flight all comforted him as best they could even as they too mourned the loss of their co-mate. Rarity soon joined them after she was informed, and Loopy was woken from her sleep in her universe to complete the herd. Their children also did their best to help their father, but it was Lacewing who empathized the most. As both a changeling and as one of Mark's immediate family due to her Companion bond with Allura, she experienced the overwhelming grief of both sides of her heritage.
Mark was excused from royal duties for a few days. That left it up to Trixie, Twilight, and Smolder especially to deal with the aftermath. With no extradition treaty yet signed between the nations, Smolder politely declined official requests to release the conspirators into Australian custody. Mindful of the last exchange between Mark and the assassin, the dragoness likewise refused to turn over the murderer's remains. The killer's grave would not become a pilgrimage for like-minded humans.
Because the crimes took place on Equestrian territory, the prisoners would be incarcerated in a Canterlot jail until they went on trial for their roles in the murder of a member of Equestrian royalty. Fortunately for them, both guards shot by the elephant gun survived. While their shields had shattered, they had done enough to slow the bullets to prevent the wounds from being fatal. On the other hand, the accused all faced multiple charges of attempted murder. After witnessing what happened to the one person who succeeded, none of the humans were in a hurry to get tried and sentenced.
Smolder held a press conference two days after the assassination. She announced that the five would likely get life sentences without parole. She declined to release their names as she did not want them used as martyrs for their bigoted cause. However, she was unable to do anything about Barry Fletcher.
It did not take long for investigators to learn that the man had been on the inspection team, and they traced him back to the government department where he had worked. After questioning his co-worker, they determined that Barry had bribed a colleague to take his place on the inspection team, taking advantage of a tiny flaw in the Equestrians' security. When asked what reason Barry gave for wanting to do the job, he had been told that he "wanted to meet them up close and personal". The colleague shrugged and said, "I did last time, so it seemed reasonable to me." He was subject to internal discipline but, because he had no direct involvement, was not charged with a crime. Soon, every detail of Barry's past activities and social media posts were dug up and broadcast, stirring up controversy in communities across the world.
As Smolder had feared, Barry Fletcher became the poster child of the humans who saw the Equestrians as an existential threat to the world. This attracted every muck-raking reporter and sensationalist blogger on Earth. Smolder was busy with damage control for several days and gave multiple interviews responding to many of the same questions. The much-practiced self-control that she had developed for her role as ambassador had worn quite thin by the time she ended up doing an interview on Megan Nightly for the Truth First Network.
The host, Megan Mandel, began innocuously enough with some of the common questions, but then abruptly switched tracks. She demanded that the conspirators be allowed to speak to her "so that the real truth can be told". Smolder coldly informed her that since the crimes took place on Equestrian soil, they could tell their "real truths" to an Equestrian judge.
"And will they be executed like Barry Fletcher when he tried to surrender?" Megan asked snidely.
"Fletcher did not surrender - he was captured in the act." Smolder frowned. "How do you expect someone to react when his mate is killed horribly in front of his eyes and her killer boasts about it? He admitted guilt - he received just punishment. His actions were carried out on Equestrian territory and his fate was legal under Equestrian law."
Megan persisted. "Even the accused have a right for their opinions to be heard."
Smolder leaned closer to Megan and bared her teeth. "That's really why you're upset, isn't it? Prince Mark Wells robbed you of the chance for a ratings boost from interviewing that piece of filth. And you don't care about the consequences at all, do you? Such as the two copycat murders soon after your channel's 'exclusive interview' with the Adelaide Strangler."
"That has nothing to do--" Megan began.
Smolder cut her off and stood up. "Fuck off, Megan. This interview is over."
Over the next few weeks, "F*ck off, Megan" was the buzz phrase that took over social media, calling out BS at every level.
# # # # # # # # # |
Worlds Apart | Repercussions | Prince Mark Wells remained depressed for the remainder of the week but, when the weekend came around, the promise that was made to Steady Flight to be a mare for him was kept. However, the change of form brought with it an abrupt change in emotional viewpoint which hit her hard. She bawled her eyes out for an hour or more while her husband provided unstinting comfort. Nevertheless, this brought the final catharsis that Mark needed and she and Steady spent the remainder of Saturday being quietly intimate.
That evening, the herd dismantled the nest at the foot of their bed that Chrysalis preferred to sleep in. While doing so, they discovered small items of memorabilia that the changeling had incorporated into the nest that highlighted special moments between her and her husband. The mares chose to keep an item each as a keepsake of their lost herdmate.
The following morning, Trixie stood next to the bed, clearing her throat louder and louder. The emotionally exhausted Princess Mark Wells continued to sleep, drooling on Steady Flight's back.
"Bark Parallels!"
"What? What?" Mark looked around wildly until his eyes settled on her first wife. Steady Flight jolted once then rolled off the bed.
"Ah, are you awake now? Splendid. Hold out your right foreleg, please." She held out a gold chain with one small rectangular charm attached. Mark saw that a similar chain and charm adorned Trixie's foreleg. Squinting, he looked closely at the charm.
Mark gasped as he recognized where and when he had seen its like before. "This is the tradition from our first shared dream!"
"Precisely. Trixie's subconscious mind is as great and brilliant as her waking one. As you observed then, this will ensure that our herdmate will always be with us."
Silently, Mark held out a shaking foreleg and Trixie's magic fastened it in place. Trixie pulled Mark into a hug. "As leadmare of our herd, it is my responsibility to ensure she is always remembered, no matter how many centuries we live."
After they broke apart, Steady Flight shuffled on his hooves. "Trixie? I... I would like one as well."
The blue mare lifted an eyebrow. "That was not part of our dream."
Mark poked her flank with a hoof. "Come off that high horse, dear."
"I should have anticipated each of our herd would want to partake in Trixie's Great and Powerful genius. Very well. I shall have more created."
The pegasus stallion nodded his head. "Cool. Until then, let me take a look at yours, Mark. What can you tell me about it?"
As Trixie turned to leave, Mark talked animatedly about how the symbol of the Canterlot Hive came about. Mark's voice was filled with the vigor Trixie hadn't heard for nearly a week. Smiling, she entered the hallway and closed the door to the herd's chambers behind her.
On Sunday, a public commemoration for Queen Chrysalis was held in the castle gardens. The non-changeling portion of the attendees turned out to be far greater than anticipated and included several of the nobles. While most had clashed with her on occasion, many nevertheless respected her. And, to be honest, it was good form to show up for the event. The turnout was a good indication of how much the perception of Chrysalis had turned around in the years that she had spent as a member of the Royal Herd.
Mark insisted that he was ready to resume his Court duties on Monday. This brought up a problem though. He needed a new advisor. Queen Diadem was quick to offer to replace her mother but her father shook his head.
"You still have a lot of work ahead of you with reorganizing the hive, and that's on top of your mage studies. Your ambition to be one of the top magic users in Equestria should not be put on hold for this. I will find someone suitable; don't you worry."
"What about Sybilla?" Diadem suggested.
"Your sister will need to focus on learning hive matters. She's now heir to the hive throne, after all. And before you suggest Esperanza, she's too young and inexperienced for the job. However, I might ask Sybilla to head up the hive network to keep the flow of intelligence going, if you feel she's up to it."
"She is, Dad - she's a bit like I was when I came looking to you for direction in life. Also, Sybilla often tagged along when Mom interrogated our agents and maintained her intelligence network. I think she would enjoy the job."
That still left the role of Advisor open, so Celestia said she would take it up again until a suitable candidate was found. Mark was grateful but wished that Starlight Glimmer was available. He needed someone who was slightly adversarial to his opinions to keep him on the level, and Celestia was just too darn agreeable and diplomatic!
"The Equestrians have canceled further meetings between the changeling, Crisp Berry, and our researchers," the agent informed his boss.
The Head of Operations slammed his fist on his desk. "Damn it! That cursed assassin has fucked up everything!"
As much as he hated to admit it, the research into the so-called 'magic' had been going well. The death of the changeling wife of the prince had changed everything. Security had been beefed up considerably all around, making their job much more difficult. And after the events of that day, it had become imperative that America learn as much as they could about their strange trading partners.
Reviewing the news footage of the events had been eye-opening. Witnessing people trying to maintain their balance after that small winged pony had slammed his hoof down was amazing. How much physical strength was needed to make a mini earthquake was incalculable. But when Prince Wells executed the assassin with a massive lightning bolt, it had left him gaping in stunned disbelief. That a living being could generate lightning at all was incredible, but the sheer magnitude of it was ridiculous! People and animals were killed by lightning all the time, but none of them were left as charred corpses as Fletcher had been. The execution had been massive overkill, but it had shown the world just how dangerously powerful these beings could be. More than ever, they had to find out what made these creatures tick, and how to counter them.
Tonight on Fox News in our series 'Eyes On Equestria', we take a hard look at these visitors from another world who claim to champion friendship among species, but callously kill a human without remorse. Have they inadvertently revealed the dark truth about themselves?
Smolder sighed. They were going to have to move up plans for Equestrian tourism to counter the negative press that they were getting from several quarters. Not that it would completely appease conspiracy theorists. And the added security was going to complicate efforts too. Now that one nutcase achieved their goal, others would start trying. Were they going to have to do thorough background checks on everyone who wanted to come to their world? They did that for all the Harmonic Composites employees who had been let into the secret of their link to another universe, but what was done for a mere few was not easily scaled up to hordes of visitors. Somehow, she did not think Princess Twilight would agree to that level of investigation to every new potential friend to the Equians.
Negotiations had been underway for a long time with several nations to place an interdimensional portal in their countries. While this obviously had a lot of advantages, Mark had been greatly reluctant to agree to that for the very reasons that he had decided on Outback Australia in the first place - security and control. The solitary known portal complex allowed access to Equestria only at a single point. Local international portals made it possible to ship quickly between countries. Unfortunately, the latter required mana to operate, and that was an extremely limited resource in that universe. The problem was only solved by linking the local portals to the interdimensional one to channel mana through it. On the surface, it was a good solution but several magic experts were concerned about the drain on Equestrian resources, even if just local to the Equus facility. Not enough time and studies had happened to determine if there were any risks, which made multiple interdimensional portals the safer bet in the short term. However, the assassination had changed everyone's outlook. Security had become paramount and plans for new portal facilities were shelved for the indefinite future.
It did mean that lobbying for more international portals gained momentum. The need to draw mana from the Alice Springs portal meant that all the local connections would need to travel via there as a hub. The politicians in Canberra rubbed their hands in glee at the thought of all the income they would get from administrating international shipments, let alone the base fee for the use of the portals. Fortunately, Mark and his staff had made plans long ago with this in mind, and it was not long before work began on a huge new sprawling facility that had been designed for the efficient flow of trucks.
Then the coach industry caught on. While private vehicles were generally not permitted, a busload of tourists was an exception. Why spend most of a day flying around the world when you could be at your destination within an hour? The bus operators were practically salivating at the idea of being able to offer that service for a fraction of the price of the airlines. Of course, the latter were in an uproar. Smolder spent some time dealing with the blowback of this massive upheaval, pointing out that it would take years to set up the network, and it would only be serving major destinations. Plenty of time for the companies to pivot their services to the new paradigm.
"Your two o'clock appointment is here, Ma'am," Smolder's changeling assistant said over the intercom.
"Send them in, please, Ajax," she replied. Smolder reviewed the appointment - representatives from some entity named EQCON desiring permission and facilitation of administration for guests from Equestria. Smolder blinked and raised an eye ridge. Whenever Ajax provided such sparse details, he knew that she would be intrigued immediately and ask for relevant information herself. This promised to be interesting.
Her office door opened and three people entered - one female and two males. Smolder got up from her chair and gave them her best closed-mouth smile - no need to intimidate them. She invited them to take a seat before sitting down herself. "Welcome to the Equestrian Embassy. I'm Ambassador Smolder. How may I help you?"
The woman spoke up. "My name is Florence Gatewell; you may call me Flo if you wish. These are Arthur Yee and Johanne Bauer. We are trying to organize a convention that celebrates Equestrian notables, its varied species, their art, and music. We want permission to use aspects of your world and to facilitate obtaining guest speakers and performers. There are a rapidly growing number of humans who are fascinated by your peoples and cultures and we want to bring that to them in a way that won't step on your toes - or hooves or claws for that matter."
Ajax had been right. This looked like an excellent opportunity to bring some much-needed positive publicity. Smolder leaned forward over her desk and smiled again, this time showing a tiny amount of fang. "You've got my attention - tell me more."
# # # # # # # # # |
Worlds Apart | Moving On | The first that Prince Mark Wells realized that he had a visitor to his office was when his concentration was shattered by a pile of folders slammed on his desk. While he still maintained an open-door policy, the fact that his secretary had not announced the person was telling - only a very limited number of important Equians or family members had immediate access to him. Looking up, he saw it was both.
"What brings you here today, Smolder?" he asked his daughter-in-law.
The dragoness pointed to the stack of forms. "Those are just some of the official requests for Equestrian residency by humans who wish to move to our world for various reasons."
Mark frowned. "I thought we decided to defer such submissions for now?"
"Not exactly. While Princess Twilight and Mama Trixie agreed to put them off for a while in light of Mama Chrysalis' assassination, we all believe that it's time to start processing those requests."
"I'm not comfortable letting humans into Equestria just because they want to stay here. Isn't that the lesson that we learned from that awful day? Humans are so good at hiding their true intentions that they even fooled my wife until it was too late."
The dragoness sighed. Patience did not come easily to her kind but she'd had plenty of practice. "Father, you know we will have protocols in place specifically to deal with that. Besides, you also know very well that the overwhelming majority of humans that deal with us were as horrified by that day's events as we were. And what about all the humans that we were already interacting with before that? And it's not as if ponies are all perfect either, let alone dragons like myself. Are we not as big a threat to them?"
Mark pounded a hoof on his desk. "We're not going to murder anyone!"
"They don't know that for certain. Aren't humans suspicious of what they consider to be our excessive altruism? Aren't there already paranoid stories circulating on the internet about our 'true' motivations? It's not as if they're completely wrong. Don't we actually have covert operatives on Earth gathering intelligence on all the governments that deal with us?"
Mark's scowl deepened. "That's only to keep Equestria safe and you know it! I know our motivations, but I'm also very familiar with those of humans. How can I protect our ponies from that?" The alicorn stared the dragon in the eyes. "How can I protect my family? Humans are dangerous!"
Smolder glared back, uncowed. "Are you going to tell that to Uncle Phil at the next Stallions Night? How will Yolanda and Rosa take the news? Or Caleb? Perhaps, it's time to deport him to Earth if that's the way you truly feel."
Mark looked away and slumped in his chair. After a short silence, he murmured, "I just don't think I could bear to see another tragedy like Chrysalis."
"You're an immortal alicorn, Father - you're going to see most of us die sooner or later. Mama Chrysalis' passing may have come too soon and under terrible circumstances, but she was just the first. You have to be strong for the living and not let fear motivate you against those who also want to make the best of their lives and that of those they love. It's time to let humans become a part of Equestria too."
Mark gave her a crooked smile. "How did you become so wise?"
She grinned toothily. "Learned it from my weird family. Now, do you want to have a look at some of these applications?"
"You're going to lecture me until I do, aren't you?"
"Yep." She picked up the top folder. "This one is pretty much a no-brainer." She opened the folder ostensibly to read it although she already knew its contents. "Harold Thornwell, male, 29 years of age. He's a technician who has been installing cell phone equipment in Baltimare and wants to move permanently there."
"Why?"
"A mare, of course. He and a unicorn tech named Air Waves who was working with him got the hots for each other."
"Like Caleb and Willow?"
"Just so. I had a changeling check them out and the feelings are genuine on both parts. Additionally, we would benefit from having his professional expertise. Therefore, I see no reason to deny him his application."
Mark chuckled. "Can't stand in the way of true love. Cadance would have my hide if she found out."
Smolder smiled. "And I would be the one to tell her."
He gave her a flat look. "Nopony likes a tattle-tale."
"I'm not a pony," the dragoness replied smugly.
Mark rolled his eyes. "Next!"
Smolder picked up the second folder. "Marika Klein, female, 27 years of age. She works at the Charlotte headquarters of Harmonic Composites. Her job required her to commute between there and Equus, so she became quite familiar with the Equestrian lifestyle. She made so many friends in Canterlot that she decided she'd prefer to live here."
"Heh! Gone are the days when I knew everyone who worked at Harmonic Composites. Can't say I blame her for preferring living where all her friends are. If you approve, I'm not going to say no. I suppose that also goes for any other H.C. employee who is in the know."
"I suspect that there will be more," Smolder agreed. "The next one is Lars Olsson, male, 22 years of age. He wants to study magic with a view toward integrating it with classical physics."
"A pure scholar, hey? Better not tell Twil...." He trailed off before giving the dragoness a hard look. "She knows already, doesn't she?"
Smolder just smiled wider.
"Of course, she wants him. Not that it's a bad idea anyway." He looked at the remaining folders. "You've vetted all of these already, haven't you? Are the rest of these going to be practically a fait accompli?"
"Pretty much," Smolder replied without remorse. "But we still want your approval to open up completely to permanent residents. As Princess of Friendship, Twilight is eager to begin the program, but Mama Trixie won't override you. As this decision requires the approval of a majority of the Triarchs, you need to give the go ahead."
Mark grimaced. "I see that I'm holding things back, so I give in. So why don't you take that stack of applications and get to work processing them."
The dragoness smiled as she gathered up the documents. "Thanks, Father."
Mark mock-glared at her. "And the resident visas are for three years only! If they truly belong here, they can apply for citizenship or go back to Earth!"
Smolder chuckled. "I know, Father. I remember what we decided before all this started."
Mark nodded. "Good. Now, let me get back to my work and grumble about smart-ass kids."
She walked around the desk to give her father-in-law a hug before departing.
Mark leaned back in his seat and let out a sigh. He realized that much of the tension that had been haunting him had now gone. As usual, it had taken a figurative kick in the rear to get his head straight. But that was why he had people like Smolder and his wives to keep him on the level.
He picked up his discarded paperwork. "I suppose I had better stop dragging my hooves on the tourist plans too."
A week later, Mark entered the Throne Room and paused. Unexpectedly, Princess Nyx waited for him at the side of the throne instead of Celestia. As Day Court was due to start very soon and he wanted to review the session's applicants, he was concerned about his advisor's absence.
"Where's your Auntie Celestia?" he asked the alicorn mare as he trotted up to the dais and settled onto the throne.
Nyx smiled, her slit-pupiled eyes beaming at him. "She's not coming. I'm your new official Advisor. Here's the list of petitioners." She passed over a clipboard in her magic.
Mark ignored it for the moment and frowned softly. "What's this about being my Advisor? Nopony told me about this, young lady."
"It was Mom's idea. I've been training with her with Auntie Celestia's help to be Mom's backup Advisor, but she reckons that you need me more than she does. And I love that I get to be in such an important position already." She did an excited little dance on tippy hooves, reminding Mark very much of Twilight.
Mark looked at her skeptically. "So, without even consulting or warning me, I'm supposed to hold a full normal Day Court session with an inexperienced Advisor?"
Nyx's smile died and her ears drooped. "You don't want me?"
Mark winced at the young mare's hurt expression. "It's just that I've never worked with you before. You've always just been Twilight's daughter to me."
"Exactly!" she replied defiantly. "Who do you think taught me so much about being a princess? And with Auntie Celestia's lessons, I say I'm up to the task."
The prince looked around for any sign that his wife was watching surreptitiously in case Nyx needed help. He then cast a quick spell to reveal any hidden heat sources which would expose the breath of any invisible observer. Not seeing any, he canceled the spell and decided to have faith in Celestia. "Okay, it's sink or swim time. Let's get this show on the road." Looking over to the main doors, he spoke up. "Sergeant-At-Arms - let the public in."
Mark had to admit that Nyx had handled the job well, especially for her first time. While she did not have the supreme confidence of Chrysalis nor Celestia's vast depth of experience, she had done her homework well and he had not lacked the information needed to deal with each petitioner fairly and expeditiously. When the final citizen left and the Throne Room doors closed, the stallion got off his throne and gave the mare a hug.
"Well done, Nyx. With a bit more experience, I can see that you will make as fine an Advisor as any of your predecessors. Just remember that it's also your job to point out other possible solutions rather than just support what I say. That's why you're called an advisor, not an assistant."
Nyx nodded, relieved now that she had completed the session without making a goof. "I'll remember that, Uncle Mark."
"And don't be afraid to glare at the obnoxious petitioners and show your fangs. Your Aunt Sally was particularly good at that."
Nyx giggled. "Yes, sir!"
"Good. Now let's go have lunch and tell your mom and Auntie Celestia all about this morning. I bet they're dying to hear about your debut."
While Prince Mark had drawn up the plans for introducing humans to Equestria, it was up to Smolder to implement those policies. However, the dragoness had more than enough on her plate to occupy her time already, so she had to delegate responsibility for that job to another department. The position needed someone who not just had experience with authority, but also the disposition to deal with hordes of strangers. Much to her relief, that had been easy to fulfill. She reached out to one of her former School of Friendship classmates.
"Ready for your first day, Director Silverstream?" she asked the hippogriff who was smartly dressed in a business jacket.
The mare grinned. "More than ready! I'm so excited to be able to meet these humans!"
Queen Novo had sent Silverstream to represent hippogriffs at Twilight's new school and, after the outstanding success of that endeavor, she had been grooming her niece for bigger and better things. The position that Smolder had offered seemed like an excellent career move to both the Queen and Silverstream. Not only was it a prestigious position but it also put hippogriffs in the forefront of relationships with their new interplanetary friends.
While Silverstream had a staff to deal with the anticipated high volume of applications, the mare intended to perform the residency interviews herself. She liked to meet new people and she had fine instincts for their character, honed by extensive experience with all the races on Equus. Although the vast majority of visa applications would be for tourists and thus not required to meet such stringent standards, anyone planning to live permanently with the multitude of species that made up the Equestrian Empire would need to prove to her that they would fit in.
Armed with a sheaf of folders filled with print-outs of the application forms and background checks, she practically pranced into her embassy office and sat down at her desk. Opening the folder for the first interview of the day, she quickly reviewed it before using the intercom to ask for the applicant to be sent in. This was going to be fun!
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The Placement Agency | pre | And right here, right now, I'mma say it. None of that matters one fuckin' bit, because I've got no say in any of it. An' when I've got my mind together, like I do tonight? There are times I've thought about huntin' down a knife and puttin' an end to this once and for all. But I haven't, because I'm not gonna let this bitch win. I bided my time. I kept my eyes open. Now I finally get to look her in the eye and grin like a motherfucker, because I know what's gonna happen to her next. She's gonna get what she deserves, and I only hope they let me fuckin' watch. Because sooner or later, the bill comes due. Sooner or later, the shit other ponies do to you builds up and eventually, when you get the chance? Even for a second? You hit back with every fuckin' thing you have.
Because folks, I saw what else this bitch did. I saw her destroy the minds of some good kids because they were mockin' her fancy dress. I saw her tear up couples just for spite. Saw her do things to someponies that I can't even talk about without wantin' to puke. An I've got it all written down, name for name and word for word. Every one of the thousands she hurt over those two years I was with the Company. I did what I could for some of 'em. I tried stopping her when I could. I ain't entirely blameless in some of these matters, you see. I let some of this shit happen because I couldn't figure out how to stop her without endin' up in jail or worse.
I came here today to finally pony up. I thought stayin' quiet would be alright. I'd pass on the evidence and let the system do the rest. I thought I could walk away, scot-free cuz I wasn't really behind any of this. But you folks don't know the whole truth. You don't know everything that went down at this place, or why it turned into the clusterfuck that it did. You don't know why Daisy ran, and what Elegant got up to in the end. This book... this book I'm holding tells you some of that story. Sweet Tart will give you the rest of it, but you need to know my part first. I'm not afraid of what's awaitin' me at the end of this anymore. I got no more regrets. But I feel like I gotta say somethin before this is over.
Sometimes, we end up in a place where we don't wanna be. That place can be real bad, even if nopony can see it from the outside, and even if nopony cares, that place can be so real to you that you don't see a way out of it. I was in that place, and it wasn't till I'd given my testimony that I realized I'd become nothin' but a weak-willed coward, trying to hide behind tragedy after livin' in that place for so very long. So here I am. I'm owning up. I turned into a monster, same as these fucks in front of me and I admit it. But sometimes you need a monster to slay another monster. So here. Take this book. Take it, and go help all the poor fuckin' souls that got caught by this.
I'm giving myself up. I'd like to be taken into custody now. And I'd like that drink, if it's still on offer.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"How Many?"
The hollow-sounding words from Celestia's throat echo throughout the chamber inside of Canterlot Court House. The three Princesses, one Prince, and one Judge sitting within are staring at the cloth bound book labeled "Special Customers, New Life Placement Agency." It sits innocently on the table, staring at them all accusingly. This has gone beyond a trial now. This is on the verge of becoming a full-blown national catastrophe.
"Assuming the numbers are right? Two thousand, three hundred and eighty-two." Prince Armors' voice is clipped and professional. He's left his emotions at the door, and right now he is Guard Captain Armor, preparing to mete out justice on a scale like nopony had seen in centuries. "We know of forty-six of these cases. They really ramped up after the first six months." He lifts the book, pointing out where little red marks had been made inside. "These were the only ones we found direct records of inside the Agency. According to Bluefeather, he says the rest of the records were moved off-site by somepony else in Canterlot about two weeks before we showed up. The only reason the rest weren't is that Fizzy Pop had hidden them for his research."
Silence reigns in the room after that bit of news, and Judge Rock crosses his hooves over his chest. He sighs after a moment, shaking his head. "This complicates this case immeasurably, Princess." He sounds quite wry, given that this is probably as vast an understatement as one could conceive.
Prince Armor snorts. "I've taken a look in this book for all of ten minutes, and if half of this stuff actually happened we're going to practically need to enact a raid on half the Noble Court. I've managed to intimidate most of the reporters in the gallery into keeping the story under their hats for now, on the premise that we need to investigate the allegations, but..."
Princess Celestia takes a deep breath. "We can't discount the source of this information. Did he have any idea where the records went? We're going to need those if we intend to go forward with this case."
Prince Armor nods. "We've got a name and a lead. I've got my best ponies on it, but I'm going to need either Princess Luna or Cadey in order to actually execute some of these warrants." He glances at the book. "With some of the names involved here..."
The Princess nods, then looks to the Judge. "I fear I have no choice then. With the information to come being of vast importance to the security of the state, I am leveling a gag order on all goings on within the courtroom. We will be removing the Defendants back to their cells and proceeding under Aegis Lunaris laws." That gets a gasp from everypony present, the Judge staring at her in surprise. Princess Celestia holds her head high, voice ice cold. "I will not have Equestria turned into a madhouse of fleeing nobility, Judge Rock. There will be no further harm to anypony save the guilty from what has occurred here today.."
Then she turns, walking from the room, leaving silence in her wake. When the door finally shuts with a clunk, Princess Twilight swallows softly. "Shiny... What does this mean for...?"
~~~~~~~~
They led Bluefeather off in hoofcuffs. I'd never seen somepony walk away in chains like that with such pride in his bearing, such courage in his eyes. When he passed the Defendant's desk, he turned to smile at Lady Elegant. The defendant's eyes had gone wide, and she was staring at him in mute shock. Her hooves were trembling and all of the color had gone out of her face. He said, "Checkmate, bitch." and then continued down the aisle, leaving the mare shaking and terrified.
Those of us in the gallery stood as he passed. We watched him walk, this time not with sexual seduction but with a pride and strength that comes only from having done the right thing.
At the end of the carpet, six of the Royal Guard stood in wait as he approached. One of them stepped forward as he stopped, snapped to attention and saluted him. "Audentia non absentia metus!" He barked in Old Equish, taking nearly the entire courtroom by surprise. Though I could only barely see from my perspective, I can say for certain that Bluefeathers eyes were filled with tears as they took him away. It was not until later that I learned that those words were the motto of the 3rd Royal Guard Battalion, and when I learned their meaning, I understood.
"Courage is not the absence of fear."
-Double Scoop, Reporter for The Equestria Times. "The Case of the Century, and how it never came to be." |
The Placement Agency | Case #0044, Part 1 - Sweet Tart (A.k.A Sugar Lemon) | ~~~~~Canterlot High Courthouse~~~~~
31st Day of Summer's Height, Lunaris Inquiry Session #1
Case File: The Crown V. New Life Placement Agency (Re: Lady Elegant, Quill Tip, Golden Apple, Fizzy Pop)
Judge Rock presiding, Princess Luna advising
Atny Disaster Chaser present
Prosecutor White Cravat Present
No Defendants present
Court Reporter - Double Scoop, Equestria Times
Court Transcriber - Kwerty Davorak
Witnesses Present: Sweet Tart, Golden Apple (Holding Cell 2, Witness Status unverified.)
Princess Luna - We call this Inquisition into the actions of Lady Elegant and her conspirators to order!
Judge Rock - I beg your pardon Princess Luna, but this is an Inquiry, not an Inquisition. We are not here to torture or otherwise coerce confessions out of anypony. We are here to listen to important testimony regarding new evidence in this case.
Princess Luna - - {Muttering} Mine sister needs to stop getting my hopes up... Very well! Call forth this witness, so that we might hear their words on this matter.
Judge Rock - Princess Luna, I would beg your indulgence to speak as to the nature of the Aegis Lunaris laws, and what they will mean for the proceedings. Not for myself, I stress, but for the public record.
Princess Luna - Hmph. Very well. Aegis Lunaris, or Shield of the Moon laws were enacted to protect Equestrian interests in times of great legal crisis. Given the likely incendiary nature of upcoming testimony, these laws provide a broad array of legal protections from reprisal by outside sources as well as ensuring that anypony who wishes to speak to the nature of these crimes may be assured that their identities and livelihoods will be protected by the Crown.
These protections will include but are not limited to, protections from civil suits, protection from baronial prosecution, and protection from court martial or military arrest. Furthermore, all testimonials given and all confessions made during these Inquisit- Inquiries are to be considered Top Secret information and cannot be used to pursue the prosecution of the witnesses or defendants without approval from my sister or myself.
Judge Rock - Thank you, Princess Luna. This court appreciates your assistance in clarifying these matters. Now, let us move along. This court calls Sweet Tart to the stand!
Double Scoop's Notes: Sweet Tart is a female earth pony. Unlike the previous defendants, she appears to be extremely well composed and is wearing a professional-looking suit, skirt and shoes in dark red. They compliment her dull brown coat and bright yellow eyes, and a dark black mane that is cut short and utilitarian in nature. Oddly enough, I didn't even notice her entering the room until Judge Rock spoke. Hm. I'm usually a lot more observant than that.
Judge Rock - Miss Sweet Tart. You have been called before this Inquiry Court to testify to the nature of your employment with the New Life Placement Agency and your role within the company. Do you understand why we have called you here?
Sweet Tart - I've a fairly good idea, your Honor.
Judge Rock - Why did you not come forward earlier with your testimony, then?
Sweet Tart - I'm afraid I couldn't until now, your Honor. It's kind of complex.
Judge Rock - Then please, enlighten us as to the complexities.
Sweet Tart - Before I do, your Honor, I have a request of the court.
Judge Rock- Say on.
Sweet Tart - I... I would like somepony here to tell me they need me to come do something for them immediately after I have given my testimony. Please. Your Honor.
Princess Luna - A strange request, but very well. I shall require you to come to the Palace immediately following thy testimony, so I might become more familiar with your observations on the accused.
Sweet Tart - Th-thank you, Princess. Ahem. My name is Sweet Tart, and I was a... I suppose you could call me a 'fixer' for the New Life Placement Agency.
Judge Rock - According to the documents I have, your name does not appear on the company rolls.
Sweet Tart - I'm hardly the only somepony with that problem, your Honor. But we'll get to that. I was one of the earlier subjects to Fizzy Pop's experiments, and the first pony to be affected by what he later called 'severe reality warping.'
Judge Rock - Explain.
Sweet Tart - To explain that, I need to go back to what brought me to the Agency in the first place.
~~~~~Three Years Ago~~~~~
I was working for a small financial firm called Numbers Solutions just off Cherry Street in Manehatten when this all began. My boss, the Business Numbers of Numbers Solutions, was on one of his passionate tirades about how to improve the efficiency and professionalism of his business. He'd been taking tips from Filthy Rich again, and was trying to improve the overall mood of his executive meetings with big clients.
I was his secretary and executive assistant at the time, and I'm not bragging when I say I was damn good at my job. I never dropped an appointment or missed a beat in making sure everything ran smoothly at the executive level. I was good at what I did, and I was well paid for it even if I didn't have much of a social life. My boss was even a pretty good stallion, all things considered. He never thought of me in any kind of sexual way, was devoted to his family and worked hard to make sure I got some time off every year to go see my own extended family in Trottingham. But on the flipside, I did have to suffer through all of his passion projects from time to time.
Oh, there were plenty of those. The 'flex hours' thing was nice for a while, and so was the 'open office'. I actually quite liked having a ping-pong table in the break room, truthfully. But I still have nightmares about 'crunch time,' and don't get me started on that whole 'official titles' thing he was obsessed with for a while. But the last passion he had was a new concept of how to make maximum use of your employees skills while making it look easy. It had some kind of funny name that I can't recall right now, but the basic concept was that while he appreciated everything I did, he needed me to try to do so in such a way that I wouldn't ever be visible unless someone was directly looking for me.
I've got to admit, I was stumped by that one. I'd worked hard at being an enthusiastic student of his methods, but this one threw me for a major loop. I took some training courses he'd recommended to me, I did research on how to fade into the background, the whole deal. But I suppose my personality was simply too vivid and strong to actually commit to it the way I ought to have. I started getting nervous that he'd lose patience with me when a former colleague of mine by the name of Quickbolt contacted me, more or less out of the blue. Apparently, he'd had some spectacular results getting help from this 'placement agency' that specialized in unique and unusual job and training requests.
I was wary, but Quickbolt had never been a pony to overstate the efficacy of things and I was rather running out of time to get things in order. I decided that if it was just some kind of marketing hoax that I could at least extract a paid trip to Canterlot out of it. I told my boss about the possibilities of the new training the company could provide, and he was instantly enthusiastic. I figured if it was total dreck, I could use the chance to apply for some new positions while I was there. Canterlot's always a high-demand market.
So. You can probably guess what happens next by now. We all met Fizzy Pop, you know that right? He insisted at being present every time somepony drank his secret sauce. I think he was looking for something, but you'd have to ask him personally about that. I came to the Agency, I ate the poison apple, yadda yadda yadda. No one gives a damn about that. I'm just a number in the grand scheme of things. You want to know what happened next, right? What's my dark secret?
Hate to break it to you sugarlips, but my only dark secret is I wanted to be the best too badly. I walked into that room, thinking that I was going to learn how to be the best assistant ever. I figured maybe it was some kind of magic enhancement potion. I'd heard of secretaries in Neighpon taking invisibility potions or things like that. So I figured he had to be on the up and up. One doesn't operate a criminal enterprise in Canterlot right out in public view, right?
So I drank it down. I thought about three seconds longer than most ponies do, but I was running out of time and I rather enjoyed my work. I didn't notice anything strange at first, just the Doctor going wide eyed and glancing around the room after I tossed it back. I didn't feel particularly funny at first, then I got this odd feeling of being lightweight and... I don't really have the words for it. Ghostly? Whatever it was, I was sure Quickbolt would be impressed. But when I found out what he'd been aiming for...
Ahem. You don't need to hear about that. Point was, I went in with a goal. And I accomplished my goal, alright? I walked out of there, happy as a clam. Nopony noticed me. For goodness' sake, I even tried doing a little sneaking around Canterlot just to see how well the stuff worked. It was like nopony could even see me no matter where I went. I even did some experiments. I wrote my name into someone else's reservation for a table at Shu's. I snuck past the bellhops at the Canterlot Royal Theatre to see that Harmony Returns musical. I snuck into... and out of... the Royal Palace, all by my lonesome. I was utterly invisible.
Then I went back to Manehatten. My boss was thrilled to see me, and happy to have me back at work. I was happy to be back at my job, and decided to show off my skills. Sure enough, once I had the daily tasks out of the way, I walked into his office and... Bam. It was like he was looking right through me. He looked up, as if he was searching for me. He walked all over his office looking for me, and even looked under the furniture. Then he got really, really happy and said "Miss Tart, I need you." And he turned around, and nearly leapt out of his suit. "By Jiminy!" he said. "How did you do that?!"
I just gave him my best mysterious smile. I was an idiot. I should've said something about the potion. He would've been able to warn me. Probably would've been able to help me before things got out of hoof. Of course, I thought I was totally in control. For weeks, things seemed just fine. My boss came to appreciate my ability to get everything done without bothering a single soul, including himself. My efficiency increased dramatically even as my social life sort of died away. It was like everypony forgot I existed as soon as I was done with my task.
It wasn't just like that, actually. It was what was actually happening.
~~~~Canterlot Guard HQ~~~~
Crown V. NLPA, Investigation Recording #48
Two voices muttering indistinctly, the sound of wooden chairs scraping against the floor. Then, the popping of paper lids. Shining Armor speaks first.
"Freakin' Celestia, Tracy. Is this for real?"
Detective Rich Tracer speaks up next, sounding like he's talking around a mouthful of something
"Gotta note from an ol' contact of mine. We double checked her story against some reports, did a little backtracking." A sluuuuuuuuurp sound "So yeah, Shiny. This shit is for real."
"Shit."
Silence, except for the sound of eating. Vegetables crunching, more noodle slurping, then Shining Armor speaks again.
"Kids, man. How did THAT happen, Tracy? What the fuck kind of sicko..."
"According to what I learned, there was a break in. Small gang of orphans from uh..."
The shuffling of paper. Muttering sounds.
"Our Lady of the Sun Wayward Foals Home. Sheesh, they give these places big names. Whatever. Was about... fifteen or twenty of them he thinks, numbers are sketchy ya dig? They got it into their heads that they could fix their lives by getting stuff out of the place. This one that came forward though, this uh... Wind Seeker, that's her birth name. She says she's the only one who's still in Canterlot. Don't know what happened to the rest of them but she does say they all grabbed a sip from what sounds like one of these potions the Lady was hockin'"
Clatter of a fork against a bowl, a tired sigh. Shining Armor speaks quietly.
"My sister's losing her cool already, and now we gotta report this? Fifteen to twenty undocumented kids who'd had Celestia knows what done to them by it?"
A snort. Tracer speaks.
"Shiny, you've been on this job long enough to know how it works. Nopony gets out of somethin' like this unharmed. Anyone who thinks little kids get spared because that's how they want it to be is fuckin' stupid. I'm honestly surprised it's not worse than this. Thankfully near as we can figure, only maybe two or three hunndert' of the ponies in the book had kids."
Sound of spitting and coughing, faint spatter of liquid against the floor.
"Two or three hundred?! And that's GOOD?!"
"That's a lowball, Shiny. Ten percent of the vics had kids? Either Elegant was way more careful about pickin' her targets than we thought, or we rolled the bones and got barn doors more times than we had any right to. More'n seventy percent of ponies in Canterlot got kids, Shiny. More'n sixty nationwide, if the last census is to be believed."
A sigh, the scraping of wood on wood. Hooves hittin a desk. Tracy still speaking.
"Thank Celestia for the fuckin' genealogy laws. We're still tracking them down since it's tough to do that without addresses, but everypony's gotta register their foals with the Census when they're born and whenever they move. That'll give us somewhere to start on th' ponies in this book. I thought you knew that shit, Shiny."
Muttering, and the final clatter of a fork in an empty bowl. Shining Armor speaks grudgingly.
"I did know that, I just didn't think it'd be useful. I suppose that'll make it easier to find out what happened to the parent's at least."
A pause, then a sigh.
"This is already out of control, isn't it, Tracer?"
"Shiny, this is just the fuckin' beginnin'. So put on your big filly panties and get over it, because we got bigger zucchini to fry right now. Grab that file over there, the one in red, we need to start building Pony Of Interest sheets to send out to all the precincts."
~~~~Back at the Trial~~~~~
Sweet Tart - After I was at the Company for a while, I learned a few things. Most importantly, I learned a curious fact about how long each of us lasted before we were forced to go back to the Company for help. Of all the victims, only Bluefeather lasted longer than I did. Though likely that was less by design and more a function of how important I was to my boss. But times changed, things changed, and when it finally came crashing down on my head...
I've got some papers here. I kept them as a souvenir and as a warning to myself. Nopony really needs you all the time. Even ponies who are madly in love with one another like privacy from time to time. When my ability to remain needed waned for just a small amount of time, everything changed. It happened all at once, really. One day, I came into the office and everypony just looked straight past me. I tried engaging my boss, but I got nowhere. For about... a week, I kept up the facade. Like a little house fairy out of legend, I kept the place tidy and did my tasks and never commented once about the discrepancy.
It wasn't until my paycheque didn't show up at my apartment on time that I got worried. I went back to the office the next morning and I quite yelled my head off, but nopony could see me. Nopony noticed me, or even seemed to care no matter what I did. I made quite a mess in the office that day, and I can distinctly remember the worried looks and frightened faces of my former coworkers as they began to speculate that the office was 'haunted'. It was then, and only then that I began to realize the fatality of my error.
I went up to my office to find somepony else in it, doing my job. My files, my personal effects, my everything? Gone. Discord alone knows where they went, but they were gone and I was seized with panic. I raced home, fortunately finding most of my things still in tact. My rent was paid up for another month and so were my other bills. I would be fine for a place to live, but now I had a rather urgent money problem. I delved into my savings, and went to get something to eat. But there too did I find my curse had followed me.
I tried desperately to get clerks attention, so I could pay for my groceries. No restaurant would serve me, not even the hayburger place. I decided to do another experiment. I loaded up a cart with everything I would need for weeks, and walked right out of the store. Nopony looked at me twice or even tried to stop me. I went home. I nearly had a panic attack as I put away the food I'd just stolen - more than enough to get me arrested and jailed. I was invisible to anypony who didn't need me, and at that present moment in time... nopony did. No one knew I was there. Nopony knew I existed.
I'd like you to take a moment and imagine what that's like. Even the most private of ponies tend to have family or friends who care about them in one way or another. We're a social race, it's in our blood to want others to know we're there. Even if they live far away, there's somepony who'll care if we go dark. But right then, right there, I might as well have been dead as far as the universe was concerned. Staying out of the limelight was second nature to me, and in a city like Manehatten where unless you put yourself front and center you might as well be part of the scenery? It was even worse.
I made do for a while. I had some considerable savings which I augmented with... extra legal activities. You'll understand if I'd rather not go into the details. When my rent was due, surprise! The apartment owner could see me. When it was paid, I was a ghost. I used every method I had to stay in touch with ponies, but there was always a vague undercurrent of surprise when I got them to see me. Where had I been? What had I been doing? Why had I vanished from my job? I tried to explain, of course. But I suppose it all sounded like excuses. Nopony wants to believe bad things can happen to ponies they know, of course.
Eventually, the bits started to run thin. My lease was up soon, and in Manehatten no building manager really needs you as a tenant. I was running out of options. I went to the Police station, and... well, I'm not going to elaborate on where else I went looking for help. No one could see me, nopony could help. Except the ponies who'd done this to me. Before I left the city, I picked up a few things from the criminal element. Magical weapons are quite illegal in Equestria, but that doesn't stop someponies from buying and selling them. I decided it might be prudent to bring a little insurance with me given what I might be walking into.
I came back to Canterlot on the train. I didn't need to pay the fare either. Who would notice me, then? I walked past guard patrols holding my little insurance policy over my shoulder. I walked into the New Life Placement Agency, and walked straight into Fizzy Pop's lab. He'd already been working on a new dose of his sauce. So I picked it up, and waited. Sure enough, he'd soon needed his potion for his next experiment. Except when he walked in, he saw me holding it with a surprise ready to fire off.
I've never seen a pony so comically terrified of anything in my entire life. We stood there in silence together, his eyes fixed on my toy. I'm not going to go into details about what I brought, but suffice it to say. well, knowing what I know now? I ought to have set it off and brought the whole damn place down on our heads.
Lady Elegant walked in a few minutes later to see the standoff. She took one look between us, and smiled. "I take it you're looking for a job." She said to me, as though she expected me to be there sooner. "Put that thing down, and let's negotiate like adults, shall we?" She continued. For just a moment, I considered blowing us all to the Elysian Fields. But life is sweet when you get right down to it. I remember my next words, and how much I wish I could take them back now.
"First, let's discuss my new position."
~~~~~~~~~
Initial Medical Report: Dr. House Call, Dr. Cassock, Dr. Lumination, Dr. Wile E as attending physicians.
Regarding Patients: Rarity Belle, Fluttershy, Sweet Tart, Swizzle Stick and 5 other names.
Case Subject #00221, "Extreme Reality Warping"
To: Princesses Celestia, Twilight Sparkle, Luna, Cadence and Prince Armor
Dr. House Call as transcriber.
Following our initial investigations into Fizzy Pop's unknown alchemical substance, we have moved our attention to the more immediate concerns with the mental and physical well being of our four principal patients. Patients Rarity Belle and Fluttershy have so far refused further treatment on the grounds that they do not consider themselves to be in a medically treatable condition.
As per Equestrian medical rights and guidelines, both have been released into the custody of their immediate family and, in Fluttershy's case, her current legal guardian Rainbow Dash. Both have volunteered their time for examination and testing in the hopes of aiding other patients, however. While I am no longer authorized to apply treatment to either mare, I strongly suggest psychological counseling for both of them over the new events in their lives.
Patient Sweet Tart and Swizzle Stick have both been far more cooperative for treatment. We have termed their conditions "Discordite Syndrome" as a short-hoof to make the condition seem less intimidating. Both ponies exhibit signs of powerful magical effects which previously had only been observed in enchanted artifacts or high-level ritual magic.
Of note, Patient Sweet Tart has exhibited all the signs of a pony under the effects of the Forget-Me-Now spell, first developed in the pre-classical era by Urtho Silencio. We have tried several versions of the most well known counter-spell to limited effectiveness. While Sweet Tart now has much more control over how long she remains 'noticeable', we have had to take several precautions to ensure that we do not simply forget about her existence.
Notably, we make certain that all of our interviews with her end with the phrase 'I shall need to see you tomorrow, so rest well.'. This allows a continuity of need, which appears to temporarily relieve her condition. Unfortunately, this effect is not one-hundred percent effective. Furthermore, as the spell appears to be capable of sensing intent and without a genuine intent to see her the next day, we have occasionally lost track of the patient.
This is important, as her time spent invisible has badly damaged her psyche. She is nervous, twitchy, and oftentimes given to manic-depressive states when left alone for too long. Surprisingly, she has proven to be a superb companion to Patient Bluefeather. The magic which curses them both has a so far unexplored cancellation effect on each other. While this is far from perfect, Bluefeather's attentiveness to Sweet Tart, and Sweet Tart's desire for physical but not sexual companionship has proven to be an excellent treatment for both of their conditions. I would highly recommend that Bluefeather be allowed regular unrestricted visits with Miss Tart.
Her psychological damage, however, is extensive. She shows many signs of mildly severe Soldiers Syndrome and several other signs of psychological trauma including Claustrophobia and obsessive compulsive tendencies. She has fully internalized all of her supposed 'crimes' to the point where she does not see herself as deserving of life. She has shown extensive signs of trauma induced sociopathy, as well as various other forms of antisocial personality disorders likely as a result of her time spent in isolation. It is possible that given time and the support of Bluefeather and Golden Apple that Miss Tart might be able to isolate and ultimately defeat these conditions, but it will be years before the fruits of such labor would be seen.
Lastly, Miss Sweet Tart has exhibited extensive suicidal tendencies. She continues on not out of a joy of living, but rather to try and atone for the mistakes she made. She lacks a sense of danger towards herself, and may very well be capable of genuine self-harm. I would advise that steps are taken to ensure she is never left alone or unneeded to the point where she may make an attempt on her life.
However, in spite of many of these things, Miss Sweet Tart has shown an incredible resiliency when she is allowed to cloak her fears in professionalism. More than anything, the ability to do what she does well in a safe and friendly environment has allowed her to remain functional and even quite capable. While we are not in unanimous agreement, this medical team does agree by virtue of majority that Miss Sweet Tart is fit to stand for testimony in the case of The Crown V. NLPA. Weather or not she is fit to stand trial should she be charged with collusion is, at this time, uncertain.
The next case concerns that of Miss Swizzle Stick, A.k.A Wind Chaser, on which Dr. Lumination will be providing the report. |
The Placement Agency | Case #0044, Part 2 - Sweet Tart (A.k.A Sugar Lemon) | Sweet Tart - Let me tell you a secret. Secretaries and Assistants are the ones who really run the world.
We keep things running, we make sure all the documents are filed and all the appointments are neatly taken care of on time. Tick-tock, always by the clock, and never a moment too soon or too late. I'd done that job my entire life, and I knew how important I was to keeping a business running. Lady Elegant knew it too, which is why she never once tried to use my condition to put me in bed with somepony else. She knew what power I had over her the second I walked into her archives and started making sense of her filing system.
Ponies became case numbers. Horrors became bank statements. Prostitution, slavery, exploitation all became mission statements. Elegant, Quill, Fizzy and Bouncy all needed me during all hours of the day for one reason or another. I was never alone, and I was never ignored, and after months of living invisibly I drank it up like a thirsty flower. I was so happy to have purpose again that I simply tuned out the reality of what I was doing. That's really the key to everything, you see. That's how the Company worked, it basically ran on liquid need. Need for company, need for pleasure, need for others who would understand what you were going through.
I remember meeting Bluefeather for the first time, when Elegant brought him in to be our first new 'official' employee. I remember reading his file, and wondering why I never had a problem with him. He was a good worker, solid and reliable in all instances. A bit rough around the edges, but that was to be expected of somepony in his position. His condition had left him wary of most ponies, but we got along well enough. I never quite knew what was wrong with him until it all fell apart. I was unique in that way, actually. It made me very well-suited to administer our little circus of freaks. My strange new trait had rendered me utterly immune to the powers that reacted to the presence of others.
But enough details. You wanted to know what Fixer means, didn't you? Well, my job was to speak with new and prospective clients for the company and then slot our employees in wherever they were best suited. Our limited selection made that difficult at first, but it was not long after my employment that Lady Elegant began to go on something of a hiring binge. She got more and more brazen as time went on, you see. Oh, I kept things carefully in check. I only brought on those best-suited to the job to be actual employees, but I could not keep her from amusing herself with whoever and whatever wandered into our doors.
I arranged employees who specialized in sex to attend the parties of nobles. They would be like party favors for those the noble was friends with. They would get drunk, or high, or whatever, and they'd pick one of our specialists to take home for the evening. Daisybloom and Bouncy were especially popular, since their unique traits made them nigh indestructible. They could take a lot of punishment and some of our... customers appreciated that.
For other jobs, I slotted in where we had the skills and made do where we did not. We provided assistance in nearly every industry and at nearly every social strata. Nopony knew what was actually going on at our company. They thought we were all there by choice, or that what we were doing we did for the money. Truthfully, only myself and a small hoof-full of others ever made any bits from the deal. Even Lady Elegant was basically running the place at cost. It wasn't a place meant to make anypony rich. It was a place to amuse her. A large, complex toy for our dear boss to play around with.
Things picked up after the first year. We had clout and we had a reputation. Let me be clear: Not everypony who walked in our door walked out like I did, or like Bluefeather did. Plenty of them simply had some shallow desires that they paid to get realized. Plenty of stallions wanting bigger dicks, fillies who wanted to be thinner and sexier, and every day schlubs who wanted to be masters of this or that skill or stupid everyday thing. Over my two years with the company, we served about seven thousand or so customers.
Sounds like a lot, right? Well, once we got our reputation Lady Elegant made Fizzy streamline his production process. He started cranking out vats of the stuff instead of individual doses. He complained, like he always did, but he was pleased to have so many new test subjects. But he was never satisfied with the potency, so that's what he messed with when Elegant wasn't looking. That's when everything started to go downhill.
He was using Bouncy's special trait to supercharge his secret sauce. We started getting more and more customers with... issues. We couldn't just let them wander the streets. We'd get noticed, of course. So I started hiring them and covering them up. We started signing contracts for private households and individuals looking for somepony they could enjoy off the books. We started resembling an adoption agency for our own mutated freak children, but we couldn't get rid of all of them.
Our office got bigger. We quickly became the most popular whorehouse in Canterlot, amongst other things, and before long we were signing deals with some of the darker clubs. Places where they needed very specific talents for very specific shows. Look, I don't know the details and I didn't want to know. They'd give me a list with some descriptions, I'd fill the slots. Ponies got paid. That was the end of it. Our company got bigger with every bit our reputation grew and we started to attract ponies with names that would be missed if something happened to us.
That was what ultimately got us in trouble, you see. Lady Elegant hadn't counted on the effect of so many powerful magical auras all in one place, all rubbing up against one another. I'm no wizard or expert in magic, but even I know that's a bad idea. But it kept getting bigger and bigger as the months went on, until about a month before the wheels came off when the most powerful magical auras that could walk through our doors did. That's when the worst happened. Our reputation finally got big enough that a pair of celebrities walked through our doors and blew the whole thing wide open.
~~~~~Canterlot Guard HQ~~~~~
Crown V. NLPA, Investigation Recording #49
"Uhm... Testing? Is this on? This Princess Twilight Sparkle speaking..."
A soft, rough chuckle interrupts the princess. Detective Tracy speaks,
"Don't need to identify yourself, ma'am. The notation office does that later when this goes into the Archives. It's on, by the way - see the little red light there?"
Gentle tapping of hoof on the recorder. A gentle 'oh!' sound from the Princess, then Tracy continues.
"I'd like to thank you for your help with these notation sheets. I wish I knew why Shiny had to go so fast, but it's good to see a Princess willing to get down and dirty with us poor common detectives."
Soft laughter from the Princess,
"Tracer, you are anything but a common detective. And you're welcome, it's good to get my mind off of this absurd alchemical potion business and away from a moping Discord. I swear, Detective Tracer, he's insufferable enough when he's smug and sure of himself, but he's been acting like a filly who just lost her first crush!"
The sound of mugs hitting the table, liquid being poured. Coffee, black. The detective speaks.
"Not something I'm surprised at, Miss Twilight. He's more pony than he likes to admit, if what I've seen of him is accurate." Sipping sound. "You been to see your friends, yet?"
Silence for a few moments, then a sigh.
"What would I say to them? I tried going into the hospital when they were there, but I couldn't bring myself to do more than go into the observation room. I..." Shuffling hooves, sipping sound. I sent them both notes. I know they read them, and they both understand sort of what I'm going through."
A gentle cough from the detective before he speaks.
"Princess, if I might be so bold... There wasn't anything you coulda done for them. They walked into that roach motel knowing what they were gettin' themselves into."
The sound of a slamming hoof on the desk, and the crash of a breaking mug on the floor.
"Why.... why didn't they come talk to me? Did they think I wouldn't understand? After everything we've been through together, everything we've done, did they think I would judge them because of... Of THAT!?"
Another slammed hoof on the desk, Princess Twilight's voice growing louder.
"I would've done anything for them! They should have KNOWN that! I don't give two fucks about spell restrictions! I'm a freakin' Princess with my own freaking castle! We could have found a safe solution together! Damnit, what were they think-"
Princess Twilight cuts off here for a moment, silence punctuated by gentle sobs. Detective Tracy speaks,
"Ain't no way to know without talkin' to em, Princess."
Sniffling sound. The Princess speaks again,
"I know, I'm just..." Deep breath. "I know. I should go see them tonight."
Chuckling sound, and the sweeping of a broom can be heard for some time. Detective Tracy speaks next,
"No. Give yourself some time to get ready for it, Princess. Go see 'em in the morning. Bring donuts and breakfast stuff. Apologize, hug 'em. They'll understand once you've seen 'em. Best way to deal with tragedy an' shit like that is to do it with fresh eyes. Lissen, I know you're worried they're gonna be different. An they are! But..."
The broom stops, a silence follows.
"But they're still the ponies ya love inside, you follow me? You remember that when you see 'em. Bad shit changes us all, Princess, but what really matters, no bullshit, is how we deal with it after it happens. Now get ridda that old broken mug, and let's do some good work tonight. We got a lot of ponies to find."
~~~~~~~~~~
Sweet Tart - I'd like to be absolutely clear for the record. When those two ponies walked into the agency, they did so in disguise. Not surprising, we had a lot of visitors like that. They were usually the ones Elegant liked to play with, but something was different about them. They moved with a purpose, they looked determined and set on their path. There was no hesitation about what they were coming to do and that in and of itself was worrying.
It wasn't until they'd made their appointment under pseudonyms that I started to smell something fishy. I was supposed to screen our clients for those cases we deemed too dangerous to take on, but I couldn't find anything that would set off any warning signals. I dug deep into their credentials, but they had top level references. Nothing I could find suggested anything under the table.
I should've been more suspicious, but why would I be? They came in, they got their sauce, they left. I gave them each a few weeks at most before they came back. Then... Then everything started coming apart. Fizzy Pop was getting more and more erratic. I was keeping the business running, but I started dropping stitches from all the tasks Elegant needed me for. Bouncy started becoming afraid of what might happen to all of us.
When the news hit about them, Elegant had me move the company files off site to several new locations. She started dismantling the company left right and center. I tried to keep things running, to keep our patrons and clients happy, but it kept getting harder with every week that passed. Elegant thought the Princesses would be onto us in no time, even though nopony had talked.
Then Daisybloom ran for it. I got the news first, and I made the only call I could. I took my name plaque off the door to my office, grabbed my personal files, and I ran myself. I wanted to bring Bouncy with me, but it was far too risky. She...
Look, I'm not a great pony. I'm obsessed by my work, and I fully admit it. I need to work to feel fulfilled, that's my big problem. But Bouncy was special, okay? She still is. She doesn't need to be dragged into this and I'll be damned if I give you word one to help you do that. If I could have brought her with me, I would have, but she's too simple for that. She's not suited to going on the run, and I don't know as I could've hidden what I have with her around. Some good ponies are not going to go down for what I did and I swear to Celestia I will do whatever it takes to protect her.
So here's the straight silver. I know Equestrian law well enough to know what I'm guilty of, which is why I gave Bluefeather everything he needed to write his book and finally close this madhouse down. Bluefeather told you about our clients, but he didn't tell you the whole story. He couldn't, because the only somepony who knows the whole story is me. Elegant didn't know, and even Fizzy Pop had only the barest idea towards the end.
So here it is. I pimped. I sold ponies as sex toys. I sold slave labor and worse. I enabled some very nasty habits for the rich and powerful because they could protect us from investigation. I broke into bank vaults, and I had witnesses killed when it needed to be done. Whatever it took to keep Blue and Bouncy off the Guard's lists and out of sight. And yeah, I used Daisybloom as a way of keeping our most important clients happy.
You can look at me however you want, horrified eyes and all. It's lovely just to have ponies looking at me like I'm here, and not some kind of ghost. I wasn't kidding when I said assistants and secretaries rule the world, you know. No one sees us even in ordinary events, as we quietly do the same job as good grease on a wheel axle. We make sure everything runs smoothly, and that's what I did. I did what I could to do good. I tried to make sure those poor kids were put in places they could be taken care of. I tried to keep the families of the employees from finding out what was wrong with their husbands and wives so that more lives could be preserved. But more than occasionally, I was the one pulling the strings and sending those poor cursed and confused ponies out to hock their bodies and minds to keep the whole thing running.
Keeping things running is what an assistant does after all.
Bluefeather was a pawn at worst. He's not guilty of what happened any more than Bouncy is, even if he's convinced himself that he was. The book he gave you provides you with the names of everypony involved. I can give you more: Dates, locations, payment methods, addresses, locations of our employees, the works. I know everything. And I'll tell the court everything it needs to hear, provided one thing. You will make absolutely certain Bluefeather and Bouncy are cleared of all charges. No exceptions, no excuses.
I don't care what happens to me. Not anymore.
~~~~Canterlot Guard HQ~~~~
Crown V. NLPA, Investigation Recording #49 - Special Excerpt
The door bangs open, the sound of stomping hooves on wood. Princess Twilight Sparkle speaks first,
"Shiny? What're you doing he-"
Prince Shining Armor speaks harshly, cutting off the princess.
"Twily, I love you, but not now. I need you and Tracy to come to the Courthouse with me, and I need you to come right now."
Grinding of wood against wood, sound of hooves standing up. Detective Tracy speaks,
"What's Celestia want us to do, Shiny?"
Muttering sounds, then a sigh.
"I'll tell you on the way."
~~~~~Canterlot Castle, Earlier.~~~~~
"Children."
The crack of anger, like an earthquake splitting the ground in two, is enough to make Prince Shining Armor wince away. Gone is the serene and gentle Princess Celestia, and in her place stands a furious Sun Goddess. One that is mere moments away from striding to the Guilty and blasting them into scattered ashes with her power. Not that Shining would blame her, but it would probably cause a few political issues.
So with all the strength of will one needed to have to be married to one of these crazy Princesses, he stands his ground. "Yes, Princess. We're still working on trying to find the rest of them, but we have at least one confirmed. She's asked to provide her own Testimony as to some of the things she saw and what happened to her and her friends after she stole the serum." He swallows. "As to the rest of them, the children of the victims... Our resources are stretched to the limit, Princess. We've got nopony else to assign to the investigation."
"The Royal Guard will handle them, Prince Armor." Celestia's voice snaps like a whip, almost rocking Shining Armor back on his hindhooves. "I shall have Captain Lancelot get the list from Detective Tracer." She takes a deep breath, and Shining nearly sighs in relief. She isn't going to go kill them all in fit of pique. Not yet anyway. "In the meantime, you are to formally arrest Miss Sweet Tart and place her under confinement."
That... that he had expected her to say, but after reading that medical report... "Princess, there is no way in Tartarus we'd be able to hold her for very long." He speaks with a flat, hard voice. "We don't need her in prison, and we don't need her beyond her initial testimony. She'll vanish from our records and from our thoughts with that ability of hers, and I am not going to let anypony die of starvation in my custody no matter how screwed up they were." Celestia puffs up her chest, but Shining Armor isn't going to let this one fly. "No, Princess. I wouldn't do that to anypony, and neither would you. Not to Sombra, not to Chrysalis, not to anypony. And if you order me to do any such thing, I will resign my commission in protest. Publicly." He slams his hoof into the floor, making every single guard present jump in surprise.
And the Princess stares at him in shock. He has to drive this home now, before this turned into a full-on inquisition like Luna seems to want. "Princess, she has fully co-operated with us. I will agree she needs to be held accountable for her actions, and I have a feeling she'll have no issue with that. But we need to put her to work helping us fix this mess, not put her in a jail cell. That'd be tantamount to a death sentence, and that I will not carry out on her." He huffs a breath. "Too many ponies have been hurt because of this, Princess. Somepony's got to put a stop to it."
Princess Celestia falls silent for a moment, then sighs. "You... you are right, Prince Armor. " She shakes her head firmly. "You are to arrest her immediately. She will be placed under Princess Luna's custody, and my sister will ensure that she is put to useful work. Whatever further testimony she has to give shall be given directly to Luna." She brings her head up and closes her eyes, nodding resolutely. "I shall allow this young child to provide her testimony to the court, however, I insist to be present to ensure that she is not unduly distressed."
He exhales, then nods. "I'll need a pair of royal guards to serve out the warrant, Ma'am."
~~~~~Canterlot High Courthouse~~~~~
"Prince Armor, what is the meaning of this?" Princess Luna stood up, looking astonished as Prince Shining Armor shoved open the doors and walked into the courtroom, flanked by his sister and a pair of royal guards. The chambers fell silent, with Sweet Tart turning around as if she'd been expecting them all along. She had a sad and determined look on her face, but she was every inch the professional she had been during her testimony.
"Serving a warrant, Princess." The Prince said in a hard, no nonsense voice. "Orders directly from Celestia. Miss Sweet Tart?" The defendant nodded at him, as though she'd been expecting this all along. "By order of the Crown of Equestria, I am placing you under arrest in relation to the crimes of the New Life Placement Agency. Please turn around."
"Prince Armor, this is highly unorthodox!" Judge Rock yelled, smacking his gavel into the lectern.
Sweet Tart turned around and offered her hooves for cuffing. "My offer stands, Princess, Judge Rock, Prosecutor. I would suggest you consider it carefully." She said, her voice still as crisp and perfect. Prince Armor hoofcuffed her, and she did not even pretend to resist.
"You can discuss that with the Princess herself." Prince Armor said roughly, "You're being remanded to Princess Luna's custody and the custody of the Night Guard until such time as formal charges are to be filed. You have the right to remain silent." The Prince began, going into the rote of her Legal Rights as he led her out of the courtroom.
I could not resist. I followed them into the hall, where a curious scene happened. A scene I will never quite forget. "NO! LEMONY!!" screamed a familiar, still bouncy voice from one of the hallways. Somehow, Golden Apple had escaped her cell. She ran down the hallway, barrelling past the Royal Guard with no concern for her physical safety. They tried to stop her, but whatever magical strength or will drove the poor creature was too much even for them.
Bowling both guards over, she ran to Sweet Tart and embraced her firmly. "You can't take Lemony away! She'll be lonely! She needs somepony to look after her!" She yelled in a voice full of anguished sobs at Prince Armor. Princess Twilight stood staring in astonishment at her, even as Golden Apple held on ever more tightly. "Please! I promise I'll be good, I promise I won't do anything stupid, but you can't send her off all on her own!"
For a single moment, I was certain that Prince Armor would forcibly separate the pair of them. Then Princess Luna strode out of the courtroom like a dark titan, her eyes ablaze. "I shall take them both into custody, Prince Armor." She growled like a dragon, shoving him away with a push of blue magic. "Since it has become clear that somepony has to take responsibility for them."
Then she turned to Princess Twilight, speaking softly. "If you would please assist me, Twilight. I would have words with you about your friends." Then she turned to Sweet Tart, still hoofcuffed, and Golden Apple, still clinging. And in her eyes, I could see nothing but pity and gentle concern for those two ponies. "There is apparently much I shall need to discuss with them as well," she said in a whisper.
As the four ponies walked slowly down the hallway, with Golden Apple still clinging to Sweet Tart and whispering reassurances to 'Her Lemony' I was struck by the enormity of the tragedy that now lay before me. These two poor ponies had at least had enough of their minds to know who loved them and who did not. They at least had the sense to understand the world around them still, if only through their own unique filters.
What had become of the rest of them, though? As it turned out, I was going to find out at the next Inquiry, when a young unicorn filly who went by the name 'Swizzle Stick' would mount the stand and change the tenor of this case from merely tragic to outright horrifying.
-Reporter Double Scoop, from The Equestria Times. "Excerpt from "The New Life Placement Agency - The Rise and Fall of the Case of the Century." |
The Placement Agency | Case #0047, Part 1 - Swizzle Stick | ~~~~~Four Days Later~~~~~
Canterlot Guard Report #402113
Detective Rich Tracer, Lead Investigator,
Re: The Lower Quarter Foals
Upon receiving information re: the foals involved in Crown V. NLPA, I immediately began my investigation with the orphanage. The subject of orphaned foals in Equestria has often been a contentious one, since its extremely rare to find them outside of the big cities or in particular communities where the work is dangerous and lucrative. The one notable exception is Ponyville, where an unknown Unicorn opened one to give Canterlot and Cloudsdale orphans a 'second option' outside of the big cities he believed were a corruptive influence some four hundred years ago.
Whatever. The orphanage in question is Our Lady of the Sun, and it's got a solid enough reputation around town. Most ponies aware of them seem to think they're a decent place. The director's name is Charity Heart, and I was surprised to find out she owns and helps operate several other such institutions all over Equestria. During my interview with her, she indicated the group of foals had always been something of a unit. They came in together, heartbreakingly already the victims of one major tragedy: The Silverfels Mine collapse, about seven years ago.
Most ponies called them the Silver Squad, at least around the Orphanage and the surrounding neighborhood. Seventeen ponies in total, led by a unicorn named... You guessed it, Wind Seeker. That little filly was the daughter of the mine manager, and she was basically in charge of keeping that lot in line for the Orphanage. Miss Charity informed me that they were usually very well behaved, but very ambitious for young foals. They'd already undertaken a number of other adventures before things at NLPA.
She provided us with a list of their names and some bare physical descriptions and a 'class photograph' taken from when they all entered secondary school this year. Only Wind Seeker had her Cutie Mark according to what I can deduce, but there's not much detail in what she could give me. My investigations took me to South Low Quarter Middleschool where the photo had been taken, but I couldn't get much. They haven't actually attended classes there yet, the photo having been taken as something of a tradition when a new class 'arrives'.
Lacking further information, I decided my best choice of further investigations would have to be the filly herself. I asked to give her an interview, and after a brief consultation with Prince Armor was granted about thirty minutes to get what I could. The Princess has apparently taken a personal interest in this filly, so I needed to be low key.
Wind Seeker is a unicorn filly who prefers to go by the name 'Swizzle Stick' these days for reasons I don't comprehend. Mostly because she wouldn't tell me and her cutie mark didn't give me any hints. She's got a bright blue coat and pretty, red hued eyes, and a cyan mane that compliments her coat. During our conversation, I was struck with how surprisingly intelligent she was for a filly of her age. Even out of uniform, she knew I was a Detective from the moment I walked into the room with her.
She wasn't a fan of the Equestrian Guard, and treated me with only the barest measure of respect. But she was perfectly willing to talk to me about her friends and how they got into this mess. The one thing she wasn't willing to discuss was where her friends had went, and where they were now. She said that was a secret, and she didn't tattle.
Overall, my impressions are that this really was just a bad series of unfortunate circumstances. Wind Seeker is the kind of bullheaded, strong-willed pony that isn't about to listen to her elders on the subject of pretty much anything. I advise the courts to avoid any strong-hoof tactics with her, and instead suggest playing to her ego which is rather considerable.
As to her condition... I'm afraid nothing manifested itself in front of me, but that was certainly the case with Sweet Tart too. But she does insist that she drank the 'funny tasting sodapop' she found in Fizzy's labs, and so did all of her friends. She further insists that they've all got 'better lives' now, so why are all the adults complaining? Again, I recommend the court does not call her motivations or personal beliefs into question or she might shut down in the middle of her testimony. Given there are only two ponies who we can find who know what happened to these kids, we can't afford to take chances.
I'm continuing my investigations into how these kids came to find out about what was going on in NLPA. A name has emerged in my questioning, that of "Mr. Diggs." While I have only limited information at this time, I will be pursuing further information as the trial continues.
Detective Rich Tracer, 4th day of Summer's Waning
~~~~Canterlot High Courthouse~~~~
Lunaris Inquiry Session #2
Case File: The Crown V. New Life Placement Agency (Re: Lady Elegant, Quill Tip, Golden Apple, Fizzy Pop)
Judge Rock presiding, Princess Luna advising, Princess Celestia observing.
Atny Disaster Chaser present
Prosecutor Dark Coffee Present
No Defendants present
Court Reporter - Double Scoop, Equestria Times
Court Transcriber - Kwerty Davorak
Witnesses Present: Wind Seeker (AKA Swizzle Stick), Detective Rich Tracer.
Princess Luna - We call this... Inquiry! Into the actions of Lady Elegant and her conspirators to order!
Judge Rock - Thank you, Princess Luna. Princess Celestia. We will try to keep this brief, but I make no promises depending on what information this witness might have for us.
Princess Celestia - I understand, your Honor. I am merely here to ensure the filly is not unduly pressured given what she's been through.
Judge Rock - So noted, Princess. Prosecutor Coffee, has the witness been prepared for the courtroom environment?
Prosecutor Coffee - She's been ground as carefully as a pony could ask for in their cup, your honor. She'll percolate just fine, don't you worry. Gonna be a steamer of a testimony, though.
Judge Rock - Er... Right. Thank you, Prosecutor. Attorney Chaser, do your clients have any requests of the court thus far?
Attorney Chaser - My clients have been singularly uncommunicative with me lately, your Honor. I've carried out their instructions as best as I can, but they have so far made no requests of the court directly. However, I have been asked to read a statement from Lady Elegant regarding the next witness.
Judge Rock - So noted, Attorney. You may present your statement.
Attorney Chaser - Ahem. 'The New Life Placement Agency has a strict, no underage ponies policy in regards to its special New Life treatments. During multiple occasions, we refused service to ponies of an age less than the laws of consent as per Canterlot law. As required, we also reported these incidents to our local guard precinct. I wish it to be made known that, as well as complying with all local laws in regards to such activity, I myself personally worked to ensure that nopony incapable of giving consent was allowed to partake of our services intentionally.'
Judge Rock - Intentionally, Mister Chaser?
Attorney Chaser - Her words, your honor. I was further instructed to make it clear that the Agency did not pursue any legal action against the perpetrators of the alleged break-in of her facility, although she did inform the proper authorities of the incident at the time.
Judge Rock - I see. Detective Tracer, do we have any records of these reports the Defense is speaking of?
Detective Rich Tracer - Uh... Actually, your honor, this is the first I've heard of it. But it's possible those reports just got lost in the shuffle. We've been dealing with a lot of paperwork regarding that address lately. Gimme a minute, I'll ask one of the Guards to do a run and see if it just got buried under something.
Judge Rock - Thank you, Detective. At this time, this court holds no opinion as to the veracity of the Defense's claims. With that being said, we are going to proceed to today's witness assuming that no further business needs addressed.
Attorney Chaser - I've executed my instructions as requested, your Honor.
Judge Rock - Then we shall proceed. This court calls Wind Chaser to the stand!
Double Scoop Notes: The doors to the Inquiry chamber open, and I need to move up a bit to get a good look at todays witness. Wind Chaser is a... I want to say filly foal, but that's not exactly right. She looks like she's barely past thirteen if that, but there's a look in her eyes that feels way older. She's got a very light gray coat and a mane that looks like she's been dipping it in rainbow juice. A riot of colors and mismatched tones that gives her a vibrant look and a big smile. She comes dangerously close to being adorable. She walks with the kind of self confidence you only learn when dealing with tough ponies on the streets. Its all swagger, intended to tell anypony with an axe to grind to think twice about stepping in.
Wind Chaser - Yo, Judge. Th' names Swizzle Stick, ya savvy?
Judge Rock - Er, beg your pardon?
Wind Chaser - Sweh-zuhl Steek. I don't go by my ol' name nummore. Too depressing.
Princess Celestia - This is fine, your Honor. I've already spoken to central records about an official name change.
Judge Rock - Well, so long as the legal properties have been observed, I've no objections. Mister Chaser? Prosecutor Coffee?
Attorney Chaser - No objections, your Honor.
Prosecutor Coffee - No sugar off my shoulders.
Judge Rock - Very well, let the record reflect that the witness shall be referred to henceforth as 'Swizzle Stick'. Miss Swizzle Stick, you have this court's apology for the misunderstanding.
Double Scoop's Notes: The filly looks kind of shocked at all this courtesy she's getting. She also warms up to the judge considerably after this exchange.
Swizzle Stick - No bigs, chief. Paperwork's a bitch sometimes, yanno?
Judge Rock - All too well, Miss Swizzle. Now, do you know why you've been called to testify today?
Swizzle Stick - Sure. The lawyer over there told me you wanted me to tell you about what I did for Elegant and her fucked up crew. Then my Doc wanted me to tell ya more about how I ended up like this.
Judge Rock - What do you mean, 'like this'?
Swizzle Stick - Ah, shit. Nopony told you? I uh... I'm supposed to have just turned nineteen boss. And I used to be considerably less cute than this.
Judge Rock - Great scott, you were de-aged?
Swizzle Stick - My doc says the proper term is 'regressed', but yeah. That's the skinny of it. One day I was about t' join the world of other poor fucks in Canterlot tryin' to scrape out a livin' without any help from the Orphanage, an' the next I'm this tight little filly with an ass and cunt that won't quit an' a tongue you can't hardly believe carryin' me into the high life.
Double Scoop Notes: There's a moment of shock at this statement from this obvious child. But there's a look of resignation on Princess Celestia's face that tells me this isn't any kind of story or delusion. The shocked silence carried for a moment, before the Judge finally speaks up.
Judge Rock - I think we need to hear this story in full, Miss Swizzle. Would you be so kind as to tell us how this happened to you?
Swizzle Stick - Sure thing, pops. Can I get a soda, though? It's gonna be thirsty work to cover all that ground.
Princess Celestia - I'll fetch her one. Any flavor you'd prefer?
Swizzle Stick - Lemon, please. Anyway. Well, I suppose I don't need to give you my life story, yeah? It's all ponyfeathers anyway. You want to hear about how I ended up like this, so let's cut to the chase. How did me and my crew end up in this wreck? Well, that's... that's tough, fillies.
I took care of my crew, you hear? We kept it together out there, and come Discord or Tartarus we managed to keep everypony goin'. We looked after one another, made sure we all had enough to eat and time to play and have fun, all that jazz. I was ten when the mine went down on Poppa's head and took our whole frakkin' town with it. Nine years, you hear? Nine. Years. Of taking care of all those fillies n' colts. Miss Charity helped, yeah, and I won't say I coulda done it without her, but...
Ergh. Okay. It's not her fault. It's not anypony's fault but mine. I owe Miss Charity so much that sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be able to pay her back for what she did for us, okay? It's... it's tough sayin' it though. She got us through, gave us a home and food and made sure nopony among us was ever scared of losin' what we had left. But I was gettin' older, an' it was gettin' time for me to saddle up and move out. I coulda stayed on, but even I'll admit I wouldn'ta been happy there.
It's tough to explain it. Those little shits... they're my family, you hear? Lily, an' Cosmo, an' Big Sparkler, an li'l Donut. An' all the rest of em, they're the only family I got left. When Miss Charity told me it was gettin' time for me to head out, I didn't know what to do, yanno? I couldn't just leave my family behind. An' there was no way in buck I was gonna be able to stay in Canterlot. I had a few bits, sure, so maybe I coulda scraped something out, but If I wanted any hope of havin' a real life, I'd have to go someplace else. Miss Charity offered me work at her place in Manehatten, but... But I'd never see my crew again if I did that, an' I knew it.
So I started tryin' to figure out a way to stay. Didn't think it'd be that hard, y'know? I was clever, fast, strong enough with my magic, and I had plenty of tricks. I figured If I couldn't stay in Canterlot as a legit pony, I'd steal my way to the top. I learned how to pick locks an' climb like a pegasus. Filched some special shoes to help me do just that, too. I got good at picking locks, and I thought I was gonna have it made when I got nobbled for the first time.
Uh... Nobbled's thieves cant, fer all y'all straights. It means I got caught with somethin' I shouldn'ta had in my pockets. Well, the guard hauled me in an' took a look at me and gave me this really pompous speech about doin' the right thing and havin' a real job an' all that bullpucky. I told him I came from the Orphanage an' he shut up right fast about it, and I swear I ain't ever seen somepony look at me with so much pity. It pissed me right the freck off, but... well, he let me go. Told me to stay clean, an' he wouldn't file a report on me. Said if I got caught again, he'd have to put me in the Prison and then I'd be bucked.
Sometimes I wonder what might'a happened if I hadn't gotten caught that day. I never might'a walked past that office building, since it was way off my usual beaten path. Might never have seen that poor slob of a stallion walk inside, lookin' all eager. See, that's what caught my eye. I'd been thinkin' of taking up other jobs, stuff that didn't need me to steal. I knew the papers loved a good saucy story every so often, an' after a minute I had a thought. I wasn't expected back for a coupla' hours, why shouldn't I see if there might be somethin' to this? It was an office, late in the day, an' there was no reason any normal pony would be sneakin' into a place like that unless he was up to somethin.
So I stuck around. I climbed up the side of the building and then found an open window. I snuck inside and... I heard him talkin' to the unicorn Lady. He was askin' about his 'order' an' when it'd be ready. I was a little disappointed at first, figuring that maybe this colt was just some kinda workaholic... then...
Fuck, I can even remember her sayin' it. "It's ready today, sir. A mere drink and a few hours, and you'll be a new stallion." An' I did a double take. Was this some kinda scam? Modder house, maybe? Some kinda' surgical thing?
Judge Rock - I do beg your pardon, Miss Swizzle, but... Modder House?
Swizzle stick - Oh, sorry, pops. Heh, you ain't spent much time in the Waif's Quarter have ya? A modder house is where shady-ass Unicorns do illegal body modification magic. Usually stuff like dick enlargments, or wing sensitivity, or sometimes... Sometimes the darker shit, like organ replacements that ain't strictly on the level. Those last ones don't tend to last long, though, and this place was sure as shootin not in the right neighborhood for it.
But there's rewards for reportin' places like that, an' I figured maybe I could get the Guard to give me a pass if I did the good citizen thing. I needed proof though, so I stayed quiet an' waited till they went downstairs. I followed em to the lab, an' the creepy fuckin' unicorn stallion in the labcoat was just startin' to ramp up his business. He had a whole fuckin' cauldron of the stuff waitin', and he dosed it out to the slob. Slob thought he was gettin' the hoof-made stuff too, the poor bastid.
Anywho, I'm sittin' just out of sight on a divider wall, an' what I see scares the piss out of me at first. This stallion hits the ground and he's moanin an' groanin' like he just got fed poison. Then... He goes all still, an' I'm scared shitless. For about, like, three seconds? I think I just witnessed a fuckin' murder an' I'm about ready to run for my life when he starts convulsin' all over the bloody place an his body's changin' right in front of my eyes.
By the time it's over, he ain't half bad lookin'. He's no Fancy Pants, ya hear, but he's gone from bein' a two to about a solid seven, an' he's got a pretty good bounce to his step if ya take my meaning. He looks super stoked about it, an' hoofs over a sack fulla bits, and is gone a few minutes later. I'm stone shocked, you hear me? The kinda look he had, you'da had to pay biiig bits at Canterlot General for it, and even then you need to go through the fuckin' paperwork which takes a year or somethin'. I was intrigued, heck, I was innerested!
So I hung out there for another hour, but she didn't get nummore customers. I needed to see more. I needed to make sure this wasn't some kinda custom job, you know? So I kept going back. Kept sneakin' in every night to that place to try and find out what the secret was. I snuck outta bed, I snuck out durin' the day, I dodged everything but the basics I needed to stay upright n' breathin. I saw all sorts of shit goin' down there. Everything under the fuckin' sun. Ponies changed into new ponies, ponies with new skills and abilities, I even saw a cutie-mark or two change! I knew I was on to somethin' big, but every time I tried to get a hold of the Doc's stuff, it wasn't ready yet. I wanted t' sell his formula, but the creepy fuck never wrote it down. I couldn't steal it, I couldn't hack it, so... I figured I had to drink it.
It was pretty simple math, you savvy? Everypony I spied on had come in wantin' something specific. Well, I knew what I freakin' wanted. I wanted all the skill an' gumption I'd need to stay with my family, so I'd never have to leave any of em behind. Seemed simple enough, yeah? Just me an' a quick drink of the Doc's special stuff, an I'd be out before you could say Skip-to-my-loo. Yeah, reaaaaal simple plan. Course, I had to open my fuckin' gob an' send all of this straight down to Nightmare Moon's basement.
~~~~~Canterlot Guard HQ~~~~~
Crown V. NLPA, Investigation Recording #40
"- I saw them this morning."
Princess Twilight's voice cuts in at the start of the recording, sounding very quiet.
"It was like the past month hadn't even happened. Rarity was all smiles and hugs, and Fluttershy... Celestia save me, Detective. I've never seen Fluttershy so... so social. She spoke in a normal tone of voice. No whispering at all! She was bright and cheery, and she made juice and muffins for me. Wanted to know how the trial was going, and what had happened to some of the other victims. They both wanted to help, so I told Princess Cadence to bring over Daisybloom and Dry Mix."
The Princess thumps into a chair, and the rustling of feathers white's out the recording for a moment until...
"- They've got them set up in this little apartment with all the amenities they could want. Rarity's a little peeved at the lack of space, but she's sewing away like nothing's happened even with all the changes to her... herself. Even Sweetie Belle didn't seem to much care! I mean, If it wasn't for... for.."
Princess Twilight's voice breaks here, and a sigh from Detective Tracer nearly covers it up.
"Grab a seat, kiddo. Sheesh, I'm calling yet another Princess a kiddo. HAH! No wonder I never got promoted."
Scraping of wood over wood, chairs shuffled across the floor. The sound of pouring liquid and a smack of a bowl on the desk.
"Have a potato chip and a drink. Look, I've worked this job forever, aright? I've seen it all. Especially the stuff they never report on in the papers, cuz they like bein' family friendly and that sells more rags. Lemmie tell ya somethin they won't tell ya at the hospital. It never gets any easier. "
Princess Twilight coughs a little, probably around her soda.
"What? But... I'd thought..."
The Detective laughs.
"I'm serious, kid. It don't get easier. It becomes normal. Look, I had a partner way back when I first got started back in medieval times, heh. Handsome fuckin' stallion, coulda given your brother a run for his money in looks an' in ass-kickery. Nopony knew more about long-distance restraint spells than he did. Couldn't pry the mares offa him with a crowbar, and he had this stupid dopey grin that pissed everyone off cuz it made all the girls sigh happily. Two weeks into my time on the force, an' we run into this nasty band of spell runners."
The sound of a deep inhalation - likely Detective Tracer smoking in the precinct again.
"They were sellin' illegal fire weapons to some mobsters in Manehatten, back before Princess Celestia finally decided enough was enough, cracked down and brought in the Royal Guard on em. Anyway, we're in the middle of the bust when one of the perps loses his fuckin mind and fires off one of the weapons at me. I coulda sworn my goose was cooked when my partner shoved me right out of the way and took it in the face, full blast. Never did figure out how he fuckin' survived that, but by Celestia he did."
"Took em months of healing before they put him back on the force, an' when he did come back he was pug-fuckin' ugly. But you know what hadn't changed? He hadn't lost that dopey grin. He kept sayin' he musta been like a marshmallow since he only got sweeter with the heat, the mad bastard. He was never the same pony after that, an' it took him a long time to get his swagger back, but..."
Princess Twilight sighs softly, and the sound of something thumping into the desk. She speaks quietly, sadly.
"But right down inside, he was still the same pony. And eventually, you learned to ignore the changes, right?"
A moment of silence, then the Princess speaks again.
"Thanks, Detective. I'll try to remember that."
A rough chuckle, interspersed with a faint cough.
'"Kiddo, you don't need to remember shit. You just needed somepony to remind you 'bout shit ya already know. Now, we got work to do. The Princesses want us to interrogate Miz Tart, see if we can't separate the wheat from the chaff on what she knows." |
The Placement Agency | Case #0047, Part 2 - Swizzle Stick | ~~~~Canterlot High Courthouse~~~~
Swizzle Stick - Okay. I need to calm the buck down. Okay. Rule number one bout secret plans? Don't fuckin' tell anypony else unless ya feel like it not bein' a secret anymore! I swear t' Celestia, I try to make sure the Crew knows what t' do if I don't come back an' they take it as some kinda holy quest.
Alright, so yeah, I told my colts and fillies what I was up to. I figgered once I chugged some of that potion somethin' weird might happen, so I'd better be safe about things. Where I was goin', what I was doin, an' what guards to go get if I went dark. Which was... kinda a mistake, ya dig? Like, my kids are usually pretty well behaved but they can get some weird fuckin' ideas into their heads sometimes, and they basically figured that I was makin' some big sacrifice to try an' keep the family together and decided I needed some backup.
Ugh.
See, I was the oldest foal back home before we all ended up without parents so I sort've ended up in charge by default. It took a coupla weeks to get us all sorted while the world figured out what happened, so I got kinda used to taking care of em. When Miss Charity took us in, I kept up with that cuz... well, cuz I didn't know what else to do yanno? So every time I did somethin' not strictly safe, I always felt like I had to make sure they knew what was up. They had to know what to do, since they had always been lookin' to me to keep em together.
I should'a known they'd come after me, but I'd been so friggin sure they'd listen when I told em it was serious... URGH! Okay, okay, okay... so, this is how it went down. I snuck out of the orphanage just past moon-height. The moon was on the wane, so It was pretty dark outside and all the patrol guards were using lanterns. That's how I got where I was goin', savvy? Guards are trained to swing their lanterns about, but most patrol guards near my neighborhood just wanna get home from their shift. So they keep em straight n' narrow an' walk quicklike. If you're careful, you can follow along in the shadows the lanterns throw out.
I didn't realize how much company I had till I got to the damn shop when one of the unicorn colts... I think it was Roper that accidentally hoofed over a pile of junk on the curbside. They tried hidin' in the alley, but I knew their frellin' tricks. When I finally rooted em all out, I was panicked. It was darn near every single one of 'em, or at least all the older ones. They was diggin' their hooves into the dirt n' lookin at me with them big eyes and... fuck.
I don't...
It wasn't s'posed to be like this. Fuck. I need t' speak to the judge in private.
~~~~Judge's Chambers~~~~
Judge Rock's Notes - Miss Swizzle Stick looks like she's extremely frustrated as she enters my chambers alone, drinking her soda.
Judge Rock - What can this court do for you, Miss Swizzle Stick?
Swizzle Stick - Jes' Swizzle to you, pops. You're alright.
She looks anxious at first, then her face firms up.
Swizzle Stick - I don't wanna talk about the rest of my crew. In fact, I want to not bring em up at all beyond sayin shit went down. I'm only here t' talk about myself, and my story. All the rest ain't nopony else's business.
Judge Rock - That is a rather vital bit of evidence, Swizzle. May I ask why you'd wish to withhold it?
Swizzle Stick - Cuz they all moved on to better lives, pops. They got out of this an' I don't want em dragged back in because of me. I'll keep testifyin' but I want your word I ain't gonna be pressured into talkin' about my crew.
Judge Rock - Hm. Very well. I will not press this matter within my court room. However, I cannot promise that any future investigations or inquiries will not ask you those questions, and possibly with far greater stakes involved.
Swizzle Stick - I dig it, pops. I dig it. Now lets go settle this shit.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Judge Rock - Court is now reconvened! Miss Swizzle Stick, please proceed with your testimony.
Swizzle stick - Yeah, you got it pops.
Okay. So. We went in to the shop and we stole a bunch of the stuff the Doc had already mixed up, and we amscrayed. Breakin' in wasn't even hard, I don't think anypony had figured somepony would try to break into an office like that. Not before we did, at least. I wanted to drink it on the spot, but I had to get the trolls home. So... So I did. I took em back, an' they all scattered or split off into little groups. I had no buckin' clue what was gonna happen to 'em. I didn't know what was gonna happen to me but I'd come too far by that point.
I chugged it. I don't much remember the flavor. I don't much remember much of anythin' beyond passin out about two seconds later. When I came to, it was morning. The entire Orphanage was... well, it wasn't pretty. It was a wreck, stem to stern. I ain't here to talk about what I did to clean that mess up, an I'm gonna ignore anypony that tries to ask. I'm here to talk about what I did next once that bullpucky was sorted out.
And what I did next was look my happy flank in a mirror, and I saw what you see before ya. Me, straight outta puberty and ten times fuckin hotter. I couldn't believe my eyes. So I figured I'd see if anything else was different, and sure enough I was as nimble and flexible as a fraggin' acrobat. Course, I had problems up the wazoo... namely that my crew was in rough shape. I needed bits, I needed 'em fast, and I didn't have a lot of options as a little un'. But I did have one option I knew would be huge right off, and so that's what I went for.
Ya'll don't need to be lookin' at me like that. Yeah, I whored. I did it for myself, an' for my crew, an I did it cuz I wanted to do it. Best way to make bits in Canterlot if yer not some fuckoff noble, an since I was a petit little unicorn thang' that looked like I stepped outta some colts wet dreams it was even easier. Plenty of foalophiles out there who'll happily lay down a sack or two to get their rocks off without worryin about somepony runnin' to the guard, and it ain't like I was the only one on my crew to go out and do it.
... What? What're y'all lookin' at me like that for?
Oh. I get it. You folks don't get the real world. Okay. Let me lay it out for ya.
~~~~~~~~
Initial Medical Report: Dr. House Call, Dr. Cassock, Dr. Lumination, Dr. Wile E as attending physicians.
Regarding Patient: Swizzle Stick
Case Subject #00221, "Extreme Reality Warping"
To: Princesses Celestia, Twilight Sparkle, Luna, Cadence and Prince Armor
Dr. Lumination as transcriber.
Swizzle Stick is the most unique of all the confirmed cases we have thus far observed. Her body appears, to all indications, to have undergone a form of age-regression. Our records show she is supposed to be around the age of nineteen to twenty, though specifics are not available. However, to all indications, she appears to be only a mere twelve years of age. Her body is similar in development to a filly of such an age, with a few key differences in the development of her nervous system and her brain, both of which appear to have maintained their maturity to some degree.
More remarkably, her body appears to be in stasis. We performed several experiments on MIss Swizzle Stick, with her consent, by exposing her to several patients who were contagious with things such as the flu, ponypox, and Horn Ache (Which I should note, is predominantly a magical condition.) in order to assess if her immune system had become less strong due to her regression. While she did show the initial signs of infection, within twelve hours all such signs had vanished completely. Blood tests showed no sign of antibodies or even of the diseases themselves.
Intrigued, we performed a second test, this time giving the patient a mild dose of Sun Dust. A notable alchemical narcotic used primarily as a recreational drug, traces of the dust and its effects usually last for up to three days should the mixture be pure enough. However, Miss Swizzle immediately ceased showing all signs of the drug after twelve hours had passed. Even a thorough alchemical examination of her blood showed no signs of the Sun Dust residue.
It is at this moment that Dr. House called a halt to all further experimentation until such time as we could verify what was causing this occurrence. After two weeks of close examination, we were only able to come to a single conclusion: Every twelve hours, the patient's body 'resets' itself. The patient retains all memories as far as we can tell, but all physical signs of the previous twelve hours vanish instantly. This includes, but is not limited to, the presence of food in her stomach, alcohol in her blood, the presence of any drugs or physical effects of drugs, any physical wound or deformity, her need to sleep, and so forth. She may very well embody the concept of indestructibility and immortality rolled into one, but we are unwilling to press those concepts at this time.
However, far more relevant at this juncture are two facts. The first is that the patient will never be able to grow older than her current state, and the second is that the patient will never be able to engage in any activity that alters her physical form in any way. Including spells which might change her physical form, or given that she is female, becoming pregnant.
While there undoubtedly are those who would envy her this condition, and the Patient remains young enough to not be unduly bothered by it at this time, this medical team strongly suggests that Miss Swizzle be placed under immediate psychological monitoring for the foreseeable future. While one of our Princesses would undoubtedly be the most logical of choices, we understand the limits on their time.
Indeed, it is this more than anything which now concerns us about her status. Her mental health and self-confidence is based nearly entirely on her position as the de-facto matriarch of her extended 'family'. Without a doubt, she does not yet quite comprehend what the meaning 'forever' can imply to this end. While we do not know the state or current condition of the remaining fillies and colts she is apparently trying to protect with her silence, we remain confident that Swizzle Stick may be only one of a scant dozen or so ponies amongst the affected victims to have been blessed and cursed with this level of condition. (See Patient Rarity B., Pg 8.)
It is vital that some form of continuity in her life be established for her as early as possible, given that her now 'eternal youth' will preclude her from nearly every facet of adult society without special considerations established. And, though I do not believe she yet realizes it, will sooner or later divest her of the family she so deeply loves.
~~~~~~~~~
Swizzle Stick - Yeah, I'm stuck like this, pretty much forever. Near as I can tell, I got the physical skills to be a master thief too. I can pick locks in seconds, I can break into any building I want to, take anything I want to. I'm small enough and fast enough that I can outrun anypony but a Wonderbolt. I could be uncatchable, untraceable, impossible to stop.
But I thought about doin that for alla five seconds, and then I realized somethin. I could make myself just as rich, if not richer, by sellin my tail and havin' a good time doin it. And I wouldn't hafta be on the run from the Guard for the rest of my life. I set the terms, I set the pricing, I choose my colts. And anypony tries to get clever with me? They ain't invented the rope and cuffs that can hold me now. Only one dumbass tried that, and after I set the Guard on him, I took all his stuff too. Sends a message that most ponies get.
Look, I ain't gonna say I'm entirely happy, aight? I'm not. I've got issues comin' out of my ears an' sometimes the job ain't fun at all. But it's a job, it ain't supposed t' be fun all the time. It brings in the bits, and helps me take care of my crew. Girl can't ask for more 'n that.
Life's not easy, everypony. No matter what some folks tell you, there's always gonna be a few who fall through the cracks. I lost my mom, my dad, and two of my brothers when th' Mine went down. I was a little'un, an all of a sudden I didn't have diddly squat to my name. I ain't gonna feed you a sob story, cuz that isn't how I roll. I got through it. I miss em, just like I miss my Crew. I gambled big and I lost just as big, but I'm still here an' I still got a life. I still got a family, even if they all gotta be elsewhere.
Yeah, maybe I'm just ridin' a high with this new me. Maybe I don't get how bad it's gonna be years down the line, but I'll deal with that horsepucky when I get to it. I'm tough. I've been through worse, so I'll manage.
There. That enough for you? I got work to get to doin' an it ain't gettin done with me sittin' here.
Judge Rock - ... I think so, Miss Swizzle Stick. Thank you for your time today. Please inform the Bailiff if there is anything more we can do for you before you go.
Swizzle Stick - No problem, yer baldness. Catch'ya on the flipside.
~~~~~~~~~~
She walked out of the courtroom, head held high. Silence reigned in her wake, and the door shut behind her. Unlike the previous days of the Inquiry, there was no dramatic finish to the days proceedings. No sudden emotional outburst, no new truths revealed. Just the stark horror of what had happened to these poor souls laid bare before us. While Swizzle Stick showed incredible strength and resilience, we could not help but be struck dumb by the circumstance she now found herself in.
Twenty young lives destroyed. Twenty fillies and colts, nineteen of which we knew nothing about, wrecked because two unicorns who would not help but meddle in things which they were never meant to touch.
The Judge quietly called an end to the days proceedings, and retired alone to his chambers. Whatever might have been going through his mind, I do not know. Nor could I decipher what was surging through the mind of Disaster Chaser or Dark Coffee as they quietly took their leave. It was not for another ten minutes that I realized that I was now alone in the chamber with a quietly brooding Princess Luna and Princess Celestia. In their faces, I could see the torment of our monarchs as they faced a grim decision indeed.
In a mere two weeks, the world had been turned upside down. Even I could not imagine how something like this case could be brought to a formal trial. It would be a circus of dizzying proportions. Undoubtedly countless counter-charges would be levelled across the table, dozens of innocents and guilty alike caught in the crossfire. With even the merest mismanagement of the narrative, Canterlot itself might be torn apart in the conflict.
Without a doubt, Swizzle Stick and her crew were both victims and villains by the vicissitudes of Fate. Yet what could we do to them? Undoubtedly, Elegant would seek to have them charged alongside her. Undoubtedly, whatever tragedies that Swizzle Stick was seeking to hide from the world would be quickly dragged into the light. And as certain as the day was long, Elegant would use that horror show to try and negotiate her way out of the noose.
By the time I came to my senses and stood, Princess Celestia stood nearby. "It's all gone quite wrong, hasn't it?" She asked me quietly, a look of distant loss in her eyes. "I do not know what we should do now." She continued, not waiting for an answer from me.
In truth. I did not know either. And in fact, the choice would quickly be taken from us by the events that would occur two days later.
-Reporter Double Scoops, for the Equestria Times. Excerpt from "The New Life Placement Agency - The Rise and Fall of the Case of the Century."
~~~~Two Days Later, Canterlot High Courthouse~~~~
Lunaris Inquiry Session #3
Case File: The Crown V. New Life Placement Agency (Re: Lady Elegant, Quill Tip, Golden Apple, Fizzy Pop)
Judge Rock presiding, Princess Luna advising
Atny Disaster Chaser present
Lead Prosecutor White Cravat Present
Defendant's Present: Lady Elegant
Court Reporter - Double Scoop, Equestria Times
Court Transcriber - Kwerty Davorak
Witnesses Present: Detective Rich Tracer, Prince Captain Shining Armor, Dr. House Call
Princess Luna - We call this inquiry into the actions of the New Life Placement Agency to order!
Judge Rock - Thank you, Princess. Mister Chaser, where is your client?
Disaster Chaser - I'm afraid I don't know, your Honor. She really ought to have arrived by now...
Judge Rock - Prince Armor, do you have an explanation?
Prince Armor - No, your Honor. I had sent two Royal Guards to escort her here, but I haven't had any word of trouble either.
Judge Rock - This is very odd. Detective Tracer, if you would-
Double Scoop's Notes - The doors to the courtroom are shoved open and the courtroom fell silent. A single pegasi in the uniform of a royal messenger quickly walks down the aisle and speaks to the judge in a hushed whisper. A few moments later, the messenger leaves just as quickly.
Judge Rock - It appears Lady Elegant elected to try and escape on her way here.
Attorney Chaser WHAT?!
Judge Rock - Fortunately, her attempt was thwarted and she has been re-incarcerated for the time being. Which would leave us at a bit of an impasse, except...
Princess Luna - Except what, Judge Rock?
Judge Rock - It appears as though in addition to Lady Elegant's escape attempt, we have a further unexpected turn of fate. Miss Rarity Belle has requested permission to approach the bench and provide testimony as to her involvement with the New Life Placement Agency.
Princess Luna - WHAT!?!
Judge Rock - Princess Luna, we will thank you not to use the Royal Canterlot Voice inside of our courtroom. Prosecutor, did you hear of this beforehoof and decide not to consult with me?
Prosecutor Cravat - No, your honor. I am afraid I am quite as surprised as the rest of you are.
Judge Rock - Hm. I see. In light of that, I see no reason to deny Miss Rarity her chance to speak to this Inquiry.
Princess Luna - Your Honor, she is certainly not fit to-!
Judge Rock - I beg your pardon, Princess. But there is one present in this courtroom who is far more qualified to determine that. Doctor House, your opinion?
Dr. House Call - I have no objections, your Honor. Physically, she's just fine. Mentally... well, I suppose it might be a bit presumptuous of me, but she seems to be more sane than most ponies I've met over the course of my work. She hasn't shown any of the negative signs some of the other patients have shown. I say, if she's got something to say, let her say it.
Judge Rock - Prince Armor, Detective Tracer. Would her testimony in any way harm your investigation?
Detective Tracer - I can't see why, yer honor. Maybe her finally goin' on the record'll help us figure out what to do 'bout all these other names. Can't say yea or nay till I hear it.
Judge Rock - Very well. I am sorry, Princess Luna, but I am bound by rule of law to allow any witness in an investigation to give testimony during an Inquiry. I promise that should she prove unable to handle the weight of her condition that I shall call a halt to the proceedings.
Princess Luna - Hmph... Very well, Judge Rock. But I shall be watching very closely.
Judge Rock - I understand. This court calls Rarity Belle to the stand!
The doors opened to the courtroom, and though little did we know it at the time, the final phase of this Inquiry and indeed this Trial was about to begin. Four royal guards proceeded her, and moments later Rarity Belle, the Element of Generosity entered the courtroom.
Any reporter worth his quill ink knew Rarity, of course. Self made businessmare, fashionista extraordinaire, and close friend to Princess Twilight Sparkle amongst other Canterlot notables. She was the closest thing the Elements of Harmony had to a celebrity amongst their ranks, though Rainbow Dash would certainly have been a close second. Everypony who was anypony in Canterlot or Manehatten knew her and her work in the fashion industry and her dresses were constantly in high demand around the time of the Grand Galloping Gala.
Everypony knew Rarity. The mare who walked through the door, however, was a new mare entirely.
She looked sculpted out of pure white marble. Like some artist's idea of the perfect female pony, but with a dark twist. Her mane was artfully styled, long and extremely voluminous and it almost... sparkled and shone in the light. Her tail swayed back and forth with every step, and appeared to have a life of her own... and in a way it did. She moved with an impossible liquid grace and a faint smile on her face. And all of this was punctuated by what was oh, so very wrong with her.
That gorgeous mane and tail looked sinuous and alive. When examined closely, one could actually see the "hair" moving and pulsing to the beat of her heart. Her enchanting eyes were slitted like that of a dragon or a changeling, and glowed with an unnatural light. Her hooves looked sharp, and appeared to dig into the floor as she walked.
There was the barest flicker of light, and for a moment she almost looked like sensual ridges had grown down her back, and horns jutted out from around her temples and through her mane behind her head. It looked like beautiful green vines were twisted with luscious flowers up her legs and around her belly and woven into her tail. And a single moment later, all of this strangeness save for her eyes was gone. But those eyes...
Brr. It sends chills down my spine even now.
She mounted the stand and folded her hooves primly. And then, she began to speak.
"Good afternoon, your honor. I think it's well past time we cleared up some.... misconceptions."
-Reporter Double Scoops, The Equestria Times. "The Case of the Century, and how it never came to be." |
The Placement Agency | Case#[Classified] Part 1 - Rarity | Rarity - I was born Rarity Belle to my loving mother and father in a quaint little suburb of Manehatten I shan't bother you with naming. My father, bless his old fashioned heart, wanted me to get the same kind of upbringing that he'd gotten from his own parents. So they sold their house and brought me to a place called Ponyville, a little farming community that lived in the shadow of Canterlot.
My mother and father are actually both rather well off, believe it or not. My father having had a remarkably successful acting career, and my mother being a much sought after makeup artiste. They'd met on one of father's shoots and had spent their lives in quite the whirlwind romance trying to one up the other before finally giving in and getting married shortly before having myself. And ponies wonder where I get it from.
You'll note that most ponies never use my full name. Once I discovered my special talent as a filly, I decided that 'Rarity' was more than enough to convey my fabulousity. Only mother still uses it when addressing me, but I suppose all mothers like to imagine their children as still being young and silly. Still, it's a reminder of a simpler time for me. A time before I was... well, I suppose that's getting ahead of myself, now isn't it?
We all dream as fillies and colts. We dream of the lives we're going to live, and the adventures we're going to have in them. We dream of valiant knights and fair maidens, and quite often vice versa do we dream of fair knights and valiant maidens. We dream of besting nefarious creatures of the dark and obtaining treasure and fame, and finally being recognized for the beautiful creatures we all are inside.
Most ponies abandon those dreams, though. They find their special talent, or their special somepony and they are content to settle for the wonders both can provide. Let me stress I find nothing wrong with the simple life much of Equestria enjoys, nor do I judge those who have settled for 'good enough' for themselves. They are welcome to their happiness and in a way I envy them their ability to let go of their dreams. It is a talent that, I must confess... I never was quite able to develop myself.
As I grew into my ambitions, I never let go of those fillyhood dreams. Movies, novels, and even the stories my father would tell me about his time in Hollymare inflamed my imagination. I was a beauty amongst unicorns, and I knew it well. So why could I not dream of a prince charming waiting at the end of the rainbow for me? Surely if I were to bring myself forward enough, were I to prove my genius in the realms of creativity and business that I would find my way to the Prince that so surely awaited me.
I grew from filly to stumbling mare, to a graceful and elegant lady of fashion. And every step I took, I turned aside 'good enough' with the belief that 'the best' was awaiting me at the end of the path. When I took my first job, repairing garments for the local residents and doing little flourishes on commission, I refused several opportunities to work for other well known designers in Manehatten and Baltimare. I was going to make my own way and forge a reputation on my own four hooves, you see. The sparkling lights of Canterlot glimmered in my eyes every night before I went to sleep. There, I thought. There is where I am meant to be.
While many unicorn traditionalists like to say a white coat is a sign of noble blood amongst our race, I was as far from the glimmering lights of high society as one could get. But I knew those heights could be ascended if one had the drive and the will to do so. So I worked tirelessly honing my skills and creative talent, I received my first business loan from Filthy Rich and opened the Carousel Boutique by the time I was old enough to move out of the house.
You're all wondering what this could possibly have to do with what's happened to me and Fluttershy, now aren't you? Well, I've been telling you. It all comes back to dreams.
For all of my life, I wanted a Prince. Somepony like in the books, who would treat me like the Lady that I was and be the perfect stallion. As I grew, that vision tarnished a bit as I learned how ponies really are behind closed doors. But still, my hopes were high. Perhaps I could never have true perfection, but I was going to get as close to it as existed. It was here that two very important things happened, and that I met two Princes. One was the prince of my dreams, and one was the prince of my nightmares.
Perhaps I was a trifle naive. Certainly I had allowed decades of dreaming to blind me to the true worth of a pony like Prince Blueblood, and yet never the less I was badly wounded by his behavior at the Gala. For a time, I moped and brooded and felt betrayed by the world. I was supposed to have met my prince charming, not that foppish oaf. But all wounds heal in time, and I began to hope again as a certain Royal Wedding was announced and my own self chosen to play a part in the festivities. Surely there, I thought, my prince would be present. Surely there, I would be able to wow him with my talents. Surely there, I did meet that prince. The only complication was that... well, he was the groom.
Ah, Prince Armor. There is so much I could say about you that so many years of fantasizing would absolutely love to express. But I've too much admiration for Princess Cadence and I am far too aware of the bond that holds you together to do so. And it is here, my dearest friends, that the true tragedy of my story now comes into full view. At last I had met my prince charming, and I was far too late to ensnare him for my own. A decade or more too late, should the stories I have since heard be true.
I confess that I fell into a despair that I dare not speak overly much of. I shall not recant to you the story of Trenderhoof, or that disastrous little indiscretion with another close associate. Suffice to say, I could not replace the dream I had held onto for so very long. Even dear little Spike's attempts, for all of his big heart and sincerity could not satisfy the burning desire within me.To finally be validated in my quest to become the Lady I had always seen myself as being, I needed a prince and there were no princes to be found. Not here, and not elsewhere.
Oh, I searched. You would not believe how far I searched, nor the depths to which I was prepared to sink for that search. I spoke to creatures of every shape and size and temperament, and no answer would present itself for all of my work. The depression became worse, and it became harder to hide it. I began to hold my friends far closer than I had before, for they were the buoy that kept me afloat. But even dear Applejack couldn't...
Ahem.
My apologies. I shouldn't dwell on the things that cannot be, and could never be in the first place. At any rate, I was not precisely in the best of places when I recieved a message from Fluttershy. She has always been a dear friend, and she wished to unburden herself to somepony who might understand. Obviously, I raced over to speak with her immediately. When I arrived, I found poor Angel Bunny sitting outside the door and looking very concerned. That rabbit never looks concerned for anypony, so the sight of it...
I feared the worst. I ran inside to see my dear friend weeping her heart out. She was surrounded by letters that she'd written and then torn to shreds. She was almost done with another one, and I managed to just barely catch some of the text... It appeared to be some kind of letter of confession to somepony. She stared at it for a full thirty seconds, before noticing me standing there and she tore it to shreds again.
It took me hours to calm her down. She's never been especially well wound, the poor filly, but right then she was... well, I've rarely seen her worse. "It's all wrong. It's always all wrong, and I don't know what to say." she told me, before dissolving into tears again. It took me nearly till dinner to get sense out of her. And when I finally did...
Well, that's when the story gets interesting.
~~~~Canterlot Guard HQ~~~~
Crown V. NLPA, Investigation Recording #41
The tape is silent for a few moments. Then there is a muttering, and a clear voice speaks. It is Princess Celestia, her voice professional and firm.
"This is Princess Celestia Solaris. I am present with defendant Fizzy Pop and his attorney, Mister Disaster Chaser."
A brief moment of muttering again, then Disaster Chaser's voice.
"Princess, my Client has indicated that he'd rather I wasn't present for this conversation. He's been duly informed of his right to have me present, and has indicated that he is aware of the possible risks. By your leave?"
Celestia speaks again here, still sounding clipped and professional. All further dialogue will be presented in court format, by request of the Princess.
Princess Celestia - Yes, Dizzy. I think this is a conversation you'd rather not hear anyway.
The sound of a door opening and closing, then five minutes of silence before the Princess speaks again.
Princess Celestia - Give me one good reason why I should not revoke my own thousand-year long ban on capital punishment and allow my beloved sister to have you de-horned before staking your body out to be consumed by the crows.
Fizzy Pop - Rather violent for you, isn't it Princess Celestia?
Princess Celestia - I have spent much of the past few centuries enjoying the benefits of an Equestria that is no longer quite so dominated by the necessities of violence. That does not mean I do not understand the occasional necessity of it, merely that there are finer tools to be used.
Fizzy Pop - Fair enough. Here's my reason: I can solve Icarus Syndrome within the next six months.
Princess Celestia - ... How?
Fizzy Pop - My serum is not quite complete. I have spent most of the past three years slowly working out the problems inherent in such a substance through my work at the Agency. I am aware of what you think of such work, but it would surely be rather terrible were so much suffering to have occurred without some gain.
Princess Celestia - I had heard you repeatedly flouted my ban on Pony alchemical experimentation, but I had never thought...
Fizzy Pop - Of course not. Neither you, nor any of my teachers understood that if you wish to destroy something horrible, you must attack it at its source. Concern for the suffering of others is useless if you are unwilling to do what is necessary to help them.
Princess Celestia - You have destroyed almost three thousand lives, and you expect me to allow you-
Fizzy Pop - Only I am aware of how my serum was created and how it works. Only I know the formulae, the ritual, the precise nature of my work. Only I can grasp the golden kernel of progress from the offal of failure, and I can only do so if I am permitted to continue my studies. I do not care what you think of my methods, only my results.
Princess Celestia - You have destroyed countless lives, and set countless more down paths of suffering and you show not even the merest hint of remorse. I will spend a century trying to undo the harm you have done to those precious to me, and even then the cure may never be truly found. I have confronted the very worst our world can place before me. I have stood before Discord, dark king and damnation itself, and none of them compare to you, monster.
Fizzy Pop - I care nothing for what history judges me as, Princess. Decry me as a monster. Lavish my name in filth and depravity until all schoolchildren everywhere fear my name. So long as my work can save others the pain and suffering I and others like me have endured, I can accept that.
Princess Celestia - ... What do you want?
Fizzy Pop - Two years, a laboratory with suitable equipment, the impounded Discordite flower petals and sufficient supplies to further my research. Access to volunteers for testing. The serum is useless on the unwilling, so I shall need those who are prepared to accept the risks of my serum. If I cannot succeed within the next two years, I shall never succeed and will have to live with the shame of my failure. Or die, as you might will.
Princess Celestia - Wait a moment. Go back. What do you mean it is useless on the unwilling?
Fizzy Pop - The serum is based on the thoughts of ponies, Princess. Without the desire to have things be different, the serum would be powerless. It would be useless on the truly content, on those ponies who are happy with their lives and all things in it. The effects are weak on those ponies who desire something small and petty, who are essentially content but have minor quibbles with their day to day lives.
But on those with a deep-seated desire for change, it takes the things we wish for, the things we desire the very most and it shapes them into reality. The fact that so few of my subjects achieved what they thought they desired is a testament to the fact that our conscious minds lie to us every single day. We are never wholly honest with ourselves, Princess. That is why I have sought to tie the effect to the subconscious mind so that our bodies would not create dreams, but rather make themselves whole.
All pegasi have a deep instinctual need to fly. All unicorns, a need to cast magic and shape the world. All earth ponies, a desire to till the earth and grow things. Icarus Syndrome, Brittle Horn Disease, Natural Disjunction Condition. Three terms for the same meaning, our instinctual magic damaged by effects beyond our control. I can solve those problems, Princess, if I have but the time to do so.
Princess Celestia - Hrgm.
Fizzy Pop - Allow me to assuage your sense of justice. Give me my two years, and afterwards I shall accept whatever punishment you deem appropriate for me. I shall not contest my conviction in court, and you may grant credit for my discoveries to whomever you may please.
Princess Celestia - I ought to... I ought to... Grrr!
There is a slamming of hooves on the desk, then silence for a time.
Princess Celestia - Guards! I need a moment. Watch the prisoner closely!
The muffled sounds of the recorder being picked up, and a few words just before it cuts off.
Princess Celestia - Get me the Royal Alchemist, I need to confer with him on somethin-
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rarity Belle - My dearest little Fluttershy... I had thought I knew her as well as I did anypony. But she'd been hiding secrets of her own. Secrets I'm not terribly inclined to share with you lot. If she wishes to speak, she can come here and speak for herself. Today, I am here to speak of myself.
So, after her confession to me I knew something had to be done. There we were, two hearts united in our sorrows and what sort of friend would I be if I could not find a solution? I began to spread the word amongst those I knew, I began to search for the means to aid us in our plight. Oh certainly I considered consulting with Twilight, but... Well, Twilight is a wonderful mare but she has no concept of the pains we were going through. She has never been a mare overly concerned with amorous needs, they are simply outside of her purview.
That is not a dig against her, I stress. She is more than a dear friend, and I would trust her to aid me in any number of endeavours. But this... She would all too likely panic, and seek some solution from her much vaunted tomes. But books cannot cure a wounded heart, darlings. They cannot offer solace in the cold night, and they are no comfort when your life and dreams have been shattered before your hooves.
No. I love Twilight, truly I do. I love all of my friends with a warmth and intensity that I cannot deny. But none of them could help us on this, and even now on the other side of the river... I would say it the same way. Perhaps it was fate that led us to this. Perhaps it was the way it was always meant to be. But I shall be an adult, and own up to the decisions I have made and make the best of them.
Elegant. I knew her before all of this occurred, you know? We met during Fashion Week last year just after that little debacle with Suri. She was very kind to me, wanted to know what sort of works I was intending to bring to market in the future. New materials, new designs, we spoke for ages and never once did she bring up her little side business. I'd like to stress that, actually. Not once did she nor any of her compatriots try to seduce us into her den of devilry.
No, I found out about that on my own time. Through some... less than prudent contacts of mine, I'd heard rumors of strange new ponies becoming involved in the Canterlot party scene. Ponies with odd 'enhancements' that were quite the rage amongst certain individuals I knew of who enjoyed a good romper-party. I was curious, but that scene had never been to my taste until... Well I did not know at the time, but I met a young Daisybloom and instantly realized something was wrong with her.
She was between jobs, and very much in something of a daze. At first, I believed she was under the spell of one of many club drugs popular with the Canterlot youth. She was staying with a mutual associate, and I was informed she was the employee of a 'placement agency' that specialized in providing work and other lifestyle adjustments to discerning customers. I had no idea of her true purpose there, and I did not find it out until much later.
Instantly, my fears vanished. Obviously, this poor wretch had been through some sort of addiction and was working to clean up her life. The dazed look, the unfocused eyes... yes, I knew those signs all too well. Days later, I saw her with another associate and as bright eyed and bushy-tailed as any mare could ask to be. You can imagine the impression this left on me as to the efficacy of the Agency, so I began to do a little research.
Things got more and more intriguing as I did. They were terribly private for a company that was gaining such a positive reputation. Oh certainly, there were some dark stories, but I dismissed them. Nopony who works in Canterlot doesn't have a black story or two about them. I should tell you about some of the absurd rumors they've spread about me over the years someday. Whatever, they simply were jealous of my fabulosity and are irrelevant now.
But the more I learned, the harder it became to arrange time at the Agency. Surely they would enjoy the publicity boost from a pair of well known ponies attending their business. Yet every time I attempted to make a reservation, I was mysteriously informed that they were far too busy. It was maddening and reeked of something secret going on behind the scenes. Naturally, I decided I needed to find out what that something was.
It was a trifle to arrange disguises and references for myself and Fluttershy. We walked right in past the very secretary that had been turning us away for weeks. When I met with Elegant, she was quite different than when I had met her a year or so previously. She had changed in a thousand subtle ways, but the most glaring of which was her bearing. She had obviously become quite taken with her business.
I nearly walked us out of there, do you realize that? I nearly walked us clean out of that place and straight to the Princess. What stayed my hoof... I don't honestly know. We were taken to Fizzy Pop's lab. We told him of the things we so desperately desired. We drank his mysterious fluid and he told us to check back in within a week or so to make certain there were no off side effects. By the time Fluttershy and I left, I had wondered why so many ponies were so raving about the place. A drink of some sort of potion? And this was supposed to solve our concerns? I was obviously rather suspicious.
I consulted with my physician in Canterlot, and he assured me there were no toxins or malignant magics within me or Fluttershy. He was confused by the makeup of the potion, a mix of ingredients he frankly believed would do nothing together. And yet too many ponies I'd spoken to had sung the places praises. Perhaps they had been paid? I didn't know that either, and I was beginning to become frustrated. We resolved to speak of it in the morning, and I went to bed both perplexed and disappointed.
But... That night...
Mmmmmmh... That night...
Double Scoop's Notes - Rarity began to writhe on the stand, squirming back and forth in an obviously satisfied way. Her eyes took on an unearthly glow and her smile grew wide, the sign of fangs in her teeth glinting in the dim light of the courtroom. Her voice took on a slinky, slithering quality that was equal parts enticing and frightening.
I've been through so many things since little Twilight waltzed into all of our lives and dragged us all along on her adventure. Terror, fear, danger, dirtiness, lack of decent plates and clothing and even worse than that, should you be capable of believing in things worse than a lack of decent plates. But in one singular night, all of those strange circumstances and ill-fated quests were repaid in full. At long last, after so many confrontations with those things which go bump in the night, the night finally brought flowers and chocolates and asked to come inside like a gentlecolt.
Unlike so many of the others, I remember every moment of that first evening. The magic overtook me slowly, like a lover I'd only dreamed of. It was slow and sweet, but so very real. Firm teeth nibbling along my spine, gentle lips pressed to mine. A slow buildup to the thrust of that phantom stallion, and an achingly long moment of intimacy. The darkness of the world around me became a part of me, and when I finally found my release, I realized how incredibly appropriate that word was to how I felt in that moment.
I had been given release from my fears and my concerns. My dreams, shattered before my hooves, now meant so very little. My prince had been inside of me all along, and I had simply been unable to realize it. The potion had come and helped me see the Dark, and my place within it. Of course... Nothing comes without a price, darlings.
Double Scoop's Notes - Rarity lifted her hoof at this, and it shifts a little. Ethereal green vines slowly and sensually wrap themselves about her forelegs and hooves, like strange stockings that appeared from the very ether. Her eyes fixated on me, and the smell of green fields and musky sex nearly overwhelmed my senses. Then she looked away, leaving only the faint scent of flowers in the air. Gods. Even now, I can smell it..
Some would say it cost me my soul, but they're quite fools. My body has changed, certainly. My mind, most definately. But I remain Rarity Belle down deep within my soul.
Double Scoop's Notes - Her voice raises at this, defiantly proclaiming itself into the still air of the courtroom.
All of you... None of you have any idea what it has been like! To stand there, heart in pain as you watch your dreams sauntering off into the sunset with another mare. To feel like you could never, ever find the love your heart so ached for! But I have discovered that one can still love oneself and find room in your heart for others. So many others with love, of course, to fill my heart with. A heart that needs regular filling, you understand.
All mares have needs. Mine are simply a trifle more... unconventional now. At the very least, I am nothing like that soul-sucking leech Chrysalis. I do not leave my little loves drained and broken. I would so much rather they were whole and hearty, that their desires were sated as much as mine were. I leave my little loves well taken care of, secure and snuggled up in the knowledge that the love they have given that night will be put to the use of good.
Do not mistake me with those judging eyes of yours. I have not forsaken the ones I love, or the Harmony I have sworn to protect. Nor have I cast off my passion to bring fashion and fabulosity to all ponies, everywhere! I am still myself in heart and soul, and I shall never be anything different! So what if I am now strange to the eyes of many ponies? I am equally desirable in the eyes of so many more. I have been ridden of my childish dreams, and at long last given the one thing I have desired for all of my life. The freedom to love without concern for childish romance.
For the first time in years, I truly am happy!
Double Scoop's notes - At this, all illusion and pretense falls away. Her gaze is as terrifying and alluring as that of a fully grown dragon. She radiates sexuality and desire like a living embodiment of both. Her body is perfect yet strange. Even Judge Rock is incapable of doing naught but leaning forward in his bench to be just a few inches closer to the goddess that now stands upon the witness dias, daring anyone to challenge her right to exist.
Moments later, Princess Luna reaches out with a hoof and it is as though all of the energy is sucked out of the room. Rarity remains defiant on the stand, but now she is sitting and watching us all with eyes equal parts sad and courageous. The Princess spoke next, softly and without fear.
Princess Luna - Dame Rarity... Whatever has become of you? |
The Placement Agency | Case#[Classified] Part 2 - Rarity | ~~~~~Canterlot Guard HQ~~~~~
Crown V. NLPA, Investigation Recording #41, Part B
The recording cuts in on a conversation already in progress. It is possible the recorder was turned on by accident. Princess Celestia is speaking.
Princess Celestia - -aying that it's possible?
The next voice is scratchy and slightly wry, identifiable as the Royal Alchemist, Razzil Dazzil.
Razzil Dazzil - Theoretically, yes. Assuming what you've told me about his formulation is correct, he could very well be on to something rather revolutionary. He isn't wrong that most of the Order tend to be disdainful of the use of fermentation as a catalyst. It is devilishly difficult to control even under the most astringent lab conditions, but if he's managed to do this much so far...
A sigh, and a faint squeaking sound. Razzil is likely cleaning his glasses.
Razzil Dazzil - I remember when Fizzy Pop was a student. We met briefly after a lecture I'd given during his junior year, and I can distinctly recall his zeal. He was a frighteningly brilliant young unicorn, and I am not surprised he has managed to master this particular facet of our art. He was a relentless perfectionist in the pursuit of his craft. I only wish we could've been able to curb some of that. Perhaps he could have succeeded me, someday.
But yes, Princess. He could very well be correct. I would need to see his methodology in action before I could give you a one-hundred percent accurate assessment, but with the limited information available to me I would have to say it is not likely he is outright lying to us.
There is a brief moment of silence, then Razzil coughs softly.
Razzil Dazzil - Princess, we have been acquaintances for how long?
When the Princess finally responds, her voice is warm.
Princess Celestia - Almost sixty years now, you old coot. A term of service nearly unmatched in the court.
Razzil Dazzil - Yes, your highness. And in all of those sixty years, I have not once seen you give into your anger when another solution presented itself. Ah! No, Princess. I am not saying what Fizzy Pop did was not monstrous. I daresay even he would agree with that assessment. Only that we must consider more than the heat of anger and the desire for grim justice. What was done has already been done, and it cannot be undone.
Princess Celestia - There may very well be ways to undo all of this madness, Razzil.
Razzil Dazzil - You already know my feelings on that subject, Princess.
Princess Celestia - ... What are you suggesting I do, Royal Alchemist?
Razzil Dazzil - As your friend? I recommend you think before you act. As your advisor? I would recommend you do not throw away a panacea because it was made from rotten fish entrails.
Princess Celestia - ...sigh Thank you, Razzil. I will try to keep that in mind.
There is a brief muffling noise, then hooves leaving an echoing hallway. Silence for several minutes follows, until...
Princess Celestia - Detective Tracer, what are you doing here?
Detective Rich Tracer - Elegant tried to escape this morning. Emphasis on 'tried.'
Princess Celestia - Oh, for pity's sake...
Detective Tracer - I warned you that she was terrified of you, ma'am. Relocation to Canterlot Castle holding cells? Must've sounded like a death sentence to her. She's been returned to isolation holding for now, until we can clean up the mess she made.
Princess Celestia - .... Detective, what should I do about Fizzy Pop?
Detective Tracer - You want my professional opinion, ma'am, or my personal one?
Princess Celestia - Both.
Detective Tracer - Professionally, I think that bastard needs only two fuckin' things. A long drop with a sudden stop at the end, preferably at the end of a rope. But speakin' personally? Ma'am, I seen worse than him in my time on the beat. Most dust pushers ain't got half his brains and... Look, all the guards know somepony with the Big Three, okay? If he isn't just blowin' smoke about being able to fix one of those, I'd wanna know a little more before I wrapped a noose around him and shoved him off the western wall.
A deep inhaling sound, and the sound of a striking match. Detective Tracer is smoking in the station.... again.
Detective Tracer - I can't tellya how to handle that one, ma'am. He's nuttier than a fruitcake, an' fruitier than one too. Shit he's done ain't gonna play well in the papers, an there's gonna be tartarus to pay before its all over. That's why I'm just a detective, ma'am. I ain't cut out for those kindsa decisions.
Princess Celestia - You ought to be Guard Captain, Tracy. But that's water under the bridge. I'm going to need you to unlock the door to holding for me.
Detective Tracer - No problem, Princess. And hey, if you wanna slap 'im around a little, I promise I won't tattle.
~~~~Canterlot General Hospital~~~~
The room smelled like home.
Which wasn't to say it smelled like her library loft, but rather that it smelled like a 'home'. Fresh flowers were everywhere, and the faint scent of animal feed and the fragrance of Angel Bunny's latest salad disaster lingered in the air. The subject and source of those smells sat with a book cradled in her lap as she hummed a beautiful little tune. The aforementioned bunny rabbit protector was nowhere to be seen, although his role had been somewhat upset as of late given... well, Twilight wasn't quite ready to parse that one yet.
Even now, all these weeks later, it was almost unnerving to see her like this. Fluttershy was utterly relaxed, turning pages in her book even as the world whirled around her. Outside her window, the sounds and sights of bustling every day Canterlot intruded with predictable regularity. Yet the sudden bangs, yells, and window-buzzing pegasi going at top speed to various parts of the hospital complex didn't so much as ruffle her mane. It was unnerving. Fluttershy ought to be hiding under the bed, not just... sitting there and taking it like a normal pony.
"Morning, Twilight." She piped up, as chipper as a filly at breakfast. That was unusual too. Her voice was as clear as a clarion call to arms, and she didn't once stumble over her words. She looked right into Twilight's eyes and smiled happily. "I'm afraid Rarity's not here. She said she had something important she had to go do. Probably gawking over the fashion magazines she's missed."
Twilight swallowed her concern and fear, and put on her very bravest smile. But before she could even open her mouth, Fluttershy was speaking again. "No, Twilight. The answer is still no, and It's going to stay that way." Her tone was firm but not bullying. Twilight could feel her teeth snap over the words she'd tried saying for nearly three weeks now, and they almost ached from the taste of them.
Fluttershy sighed faintly and closed her book, looking up at her with a touch of pity. "Twilight, I know you only keep bringing it up because you care. This is all rather new for us too, and so many of the others. But I'm not going to do it, and Rarity agrees with me." Fluttershy's maddening calm was driving her a little bit mental, and she wanted to reach over and shake her. She wanted to demand to know what this creature had done with Fluttershy, but Twilight already knew the answer to that.
"And what about Daisybloom?" Twilight instantly regretted the words as they poured out of her mouth, but her logic-driven brain was running away with her today. "Or Bluefeather? Have you asked them what they think about your opinion?" She nearly swallowed her hoof trying to shut herself up, and couldn't help but look down to the tiled white floor in shame.
But a moment later, gentle and warm hooves were hugging around her neck. "It's okay, Twilight. We should have come and spoken to you, and I am so very sorry for that." It wasn't supposed to be like this. She was supposed to be the one ponies came to for comfort and aid. But here she was, nearly weeping into Fluttershy's shoulder because... why? Because she couldn't fix everypony's problems? "But you need to understand that it's not a good idea."
"It could work, Fluttershy." She whispered, unable to keep her mind off of it. They had always worked before after all. When the chips were well and truly down, and when the world had seemed unfixable, they had saved the day. She knew they worked against Discord, why would they not work now?
Fluttershy sighed softly. "Twilight... I've already had this discussion with Discord, you know."
That shocked her. Shocked her so badly that the tears stopped and she couldn't help but jerk her head up. "What?!" She blurted like a little foal, but there was a tiny smile on Fluttershy's face afterward that made her blush.
She nodded solemnly. "It was actually his first suggestion. He was quite certain it would clear everything up, just like it always did. But when I asked him what that might mean, he balked." She crossed her hooves over her lap as she sat, looking quiet and serene. "Twilight, even he has no idea what the effects might be. There's no way of knowing what it might do to us, or to them until we actually try to use them. For all we know, we could all end up ensconced in stone for a thousand years and more."
Fluttershy bit at her lip for a moment. "Twilight, given that neither Rarity nor I wish to change back I'm not even certain they'd work properly for us, and given what that might mean... No, I'm not going to take that risk, Twilight. Neither is Rarity. And without all six of us pitching in, you won't be able to get it to do diddly as it is." Her eyes hardened slightly, and she spoke in a much more testy tone than before. "There's no easy answer to this one, Twilight. We're just going to have to do things the hard way for once."
And with that, she was checkmated. Any hope she had of wielding the elements began and ended with the willing participation of all of her friends, and two of them had just decided to stonewall her. It wasn't that she wasn't sympathetic to their concerns, but maybe if she could just get her crown back together... "Twilight!" Fluttershy spoke in the sharpest, hardest tone she'd ever heard Fluttershy use. "Please." Her voice softened, nearly instantly. "Respect our wishes. We have so many ponies who need our help now. They're going to need us to be strong for them. All of us, together."
She closed her eyes, and leaned her forehead against Fluttershy's. "Why was I not good enough to help you?" She couldn't help but ask. It was the question she'd been struggling with for the past month, and she needed an answer. She needed it now. "W-why didn't you j-j-ust... c-come and ask for help?" She was crying again. Stuttering even. Some Princess she'd turned out to be...
But Fluttershy's answer... she wasn't expecting. "Oh, Twilight... You were always good enough." Twilight looked up to see her friend smiling, a faint sadness in her eyes. "It's the two of us who weren't good enough to ask you for help. "
~~~~~~~~~
Rarity - What became of me? Life. That's what became of me.
I wanted something so badly for so very long that it infected every single part of my life. Everything was slanted towards my desire for a Prince and to become the royalty I had so long assumed was something anypony could attain should they be determined enough. It was my obsession, and it was not until Blueblood that I had realized how deeply that obsession went.
Oh certainly, I had other reasons for wanting it. I wanted it for the prestige, for the grand wedding I'd imagined, for the boons to my business that a true royal name would lend. But... It all came back to that silly fillyhood dream. A dream I could not renounce no matter how much I tried to move on from it. When I began to discard that dream, my life fell apart. It had been the glue holding together my single-minded pursuit of perfection in my craft and in my life. And when the glue was removed, it all came crashing down.
The incident with the puppet theater was the biggest of the warning signs. I had dismissed practical concerns in favor of gaudy showiness. When Spike brought me that book... I realized how desperate I was to recapture that old drive. No longer did I have an over-riding goal, no longer did I have a star far above my head to strive for. The clouds had set in and my future was too murky for me to understand.
For a time, I could ignore it. Tirek's little invasion and the months spent in the cleanup did not hurt. Our work across Equestria and beyond bringing the magic of Friendship to so many creatures kept me distracted for a while, but those were bandages over the wound. They stemmed my bleeding, but I still bled. When we returned home to Ponyville, to our lives and to our jobs I found myself standing amidst my fabric and my ponyquins and I knew that I had nothing to create. No spark or desire of creativity lived in my soul. I did not know where I was going, nor did I know what I was going to do. My star had vanished, and without it to guide my hooves whatever could I do?
That set it all into motion. And now, I am going to tell you the why you have all come to hear. Whyever did this beautiful mare leave the hospital, and refuse any further attempt to treat her horrifying condition? The why is simple, my delicious darlings. I no longer need a prince for, as you can all plainly see, I am not fit any longer to be a Princess.
Look at me!
Double Scoop's Notes: Rarity stands up in the witness chair, and strikes a pose. The full extent of her strange transformation laid bare before us. Her supple mane and tail moving with a life all their own, the strange horns that are braided through her mane and dangling golden chains and twinkling sapphires. Her sharp hooves digging into the wood of her chair and her eyes blazing defiantly.
What prince would have me but some dread demon prince out of nightmares? What royal blood would dare take me for its own but those of the blackest hearts? I was the perfect little mare. Waiting for her prince to come forever and aye, and I might as well have been living my life in chains for all of that waiting. I had staked myself to a single vision of the future, and by the time I realized the foolishness of such an act it was far too late.
After all, who else would be able to love me but a Prince? Who else would deserve me but one of royal blood? Nopony beneath me dared try to break through my shell, and nopony I desired existed for me to pursue. I became the victim of the very mythology that had kept me going for so many years, so desperately seeking the validation of my Prince that those who might've been able to bring me true happiness could not conceive of me loving them in the first place.
I lived in a prison for most of my life, trapped in equal measure by my single greatest driving force and the expectations I had set not just for others but for myself. I could not accept anything less of myself than total success, and while my talent and effort took me places far beyond many other ponies it could not carry me forever. I was bound to hit this wall sooner or later, and all that would be different is if I had achieved my goal of a Prince before or after I did.
Perhaps that's selfish. Perhaps that was naive of me, but what can I say? I sought to be a character in a fairytale of my own writing. I sought to be the beautiful heroine who through her own gumption and skill attracts the eye of the fine Prince, and with her new lover and husband by her side they can change the world together. I costumed myself with the self-assuredness that only a young filly can manage and I sewed myself into that costume so tightly that.... that...
No. I am not going to dwell on this one moment longer.
I am free, now. There is no fairytale ending for a creature like me, no shining Prince to gallop off into the sunset with. No. I am no longer fit to be the Princess I had so long dreamed of, and never have I been so glad for it. Now I am a demon, a figure out of the dark dreams of those precious colts and fillies who dream darkly of strange carnal pleasures. I shall be the sweet night wind, the temptress who slips past all guards of virtue to draw the innocent away from their quests and their purity for our own... enjoyment in corrupting them. I will sweep along dark paths that lay empty in the still of the evening, gliding gracefully beneath the pale moon to seek out those who will slake my thirst. I shall come to those I choose, and give them a night of dark pleasure they could only begin to dream of, only to vanish with the dawn... Mhm. Hee hee... Ah ha ha ha ha ha!
Aha... hahahah.... Ahh... It's nice to be able to laugh like this again, you know? To not need to worry about seeming uncouth or inappropriate. Freed from all those silly social conventions and expectations. No longer tied down by the worry that my Prince would see me behaving like quite the peasant or the seductress and be repulsed. That was the depth to which I suffered, friends. I was a prisoner in my own life, lacking any hope or means of escape.
Oh, and I can already hear the questions... Why not simply change my life myself? Well, darling, how about you uproot everything you have ever dreamed about. Toss aside all of your lifelong plans into the rubbish and proclaim that suddenly, you are a different somepony now. I would absolutely adore seeing one of you sticks in the mud try. I'd pay good money to see the effort!
But in truth, I'm not going to make excuses. I took the easy way out darlings, and obviously I've paid for it with my so-called purity. But why should I be so bothered? My true friends will remain beside me, the ones whose love is real for me will not throw me aside because I am now different. And looking down upon my new, beautiful form I can tell you for true that there is one very special someone to whom I owe so very much that I shall be exercising my newfound freedom with enthusiastically and as often as possible. I rather expect that he shall enjoy the experience, once I have introduced him to the many pleasures I can now provide.
Not appropriate you say? Not proper or socially acceptable? Piffle! Feh! And to quoth dear Dashie, Fuck. That. Noise. I do not care any longer. I have paid my dues, I have given so much for Equestria that I do not think it is wrong to demand the right to be happy on my own terms. And as for the others who were not so fortunate as I? For those who have suffered from the actions of that manipulative and sly bitch Elegant? I shall not abandon them, either. They are my brothers and my sisters and I promise you they shall be well cared for. I shall provide them the example they need to move on in their lives. A symbol of the strength they can seize for themselves if only they have the will to do so.
Princess Luna. Judge Rock. Prince Armor. I come before you today not to absolve those who did this to me of their guilt in the horrific things they have done to others, but rather to show you that even out of the darkest depths a beam of light can shine. I have made my decisions, and I made them as an adult mare. Perhaps I did not understand the depth of my choices, but given the chance to make them again? I would not hesitate.
I do not hate what I have become. I instead celebrate it, accept it, own it and reclaim it. I shall bring hope from the jaws of despair, and I shall forge forward anew. I have been given the chance to fulfill a new dream. No longer waiting for my prince charming to come and save me, I shall instead be the savior for others. I shall be the prince that now lives inside of me, and I shall not be conquered. For Elegant may have created me, but she does not own me. Nor shall she own the minds and souls of those who have suffered from these horrible circumstances.
Not if I have anything to say about it.
~~~~Canterlot General Hospital~~~~
I found myself holding a cup of tea as Fluttershy carefully locked the door. "We started talking when it became clear there was going to be a trial." Fluttershy spoke quietly, her voice full of a calm authority that could easily have come from Princess Celestia. "We knew what you would do, Twilight. We love you very much, but you're rather a predictable pony sometimes. You're still so young at heart, you don't realize how much somepony can ache for change."
Fluttershy turned on her hoof and smiled prettily. It was a smile so bright and so warm it seemed to fill up the whole room. "It's not a bad thing, mind you. You're a homebody at heart, Twilight. You always have been. You like things to be in neat order, to remain as close to the way they always have been as you can manage. After the past five years, I truly cannot blame you though. Moving away from Canterlot all the way to moving into your own Princess castle... That would be enough to make anypony desperate to try to keep their world sensible whatever way they could." She shook her head, her bright mane sparkling in the late afternoon sun.
Twilight felt a need to speak up for herself. "I just... You two have become so different, I wondered..." She swallowed her words for a moment, then forged on. She had to be honest. Applejack would beat her flank if she wasn't. "I thought maybe you wouldn't be the same friends I'd had before. I know that's not what a good friend thinks but-"
The hoof pressed into her mouth was firm, and Fluttershy giggled in a high tone. "Twilight Sparkle, you silly pony. It's okay. We understand, both of us, that you can get your head wrapped up in problems like this." She rolled her eyes. "I mean, if you didn't do that you'd hardly be Twilight Sparkle anymore. Which I suppose is the same problem you have with us. However is Rarity still Rarity without her long-held desire for a Prince?"
Fluttershy lifted up two hooves and shook her head. "It is difficult when somepony you deeply love must undergo such a radical change. It is even more difficult when you cannot understand the reason why they had to change in the first place. But now... now that I stand on the other side of such a change, I can understand how they are sometimes necessary." Then she fell back to the ground on all four hooves, and tilted her head to one side.
Twilight drank her tea. Fluttershy smiled. "Discord, would you please join us?" She spoke into the empty air, as if she expected to be obeyed. Twilight prepared to crack wise about that hilarious assumption.
Then Discord appeared in a poof of illogic, with a tender smile on his face and his paws folded together. "Of course, my dear. However can I...? Ah, Miss Sparkle. So good to see you've finally decided to join the little freak parade." His tone went from simpering to sarcastic in nanoseconds, and in a strange way it was comforting. If nothing else, she could always count on Discord to be a jerk to her.
Fluttershy tsked. "Be nice, Discord. This isn't easy on her, and you know it. It's not easy on you either, and I know it, but I think it's past time I cleared the air." She stomped her hoof on the ground. "I'd like you to take us to the Canterlot Court House, Discord. All three of us. I'm going to say my piece in a place where the truth can no longer be denied."
I couldn't help myself. I nearly dropped my teacup. "But Fluttershy, your-"
"Hush!" She commanded, and hush I did. Almost comedically quickly, and not for the first time I was a trifle annoyed. I was supposed to be the bloody wizard around these parts, how was I supposed to compete with the supernatural effects of Fluttershy's new- "We're going now, Discord!"
And with a snap of his talons, we were there.
~~~~Canterlot Guard HQ~~~~
Crown V. NLPA, Investigation Recording #41, Part C
The Recording cuts on to silence for nearly ten minutes. Then, Princess Celestia speaks.
I managed to put Discord to good use. Perhaps I should start considering you simply another threat on level with him, and act accordingly.
You will have your two years. But in exchange for my mercy, you will cease to exist. Your name will be stricken from the records in the entirety of Equestria. Your tax records, your degrees, your academic papers, your bank accounts, your library cards. You shall be expunged completely from all public records and all forms of print. Nopony but myself and the select few I choose will even remember you were ever alive. You will have no name. You will have no identity. You will be but a tool upon my workbench and I shall wield you to extract some measure of hope for the future from this tragedy.
You will be kept comfortable enough and far away from the prying eyes of other ponies. Those you interact with will be there to ensure you remain on your task and shall learn from the madness that lurks inside of your mind. I shall ensure that your years are spent putting that insane mind of yours to the benefit of the Equestrian ponies until the day that the reaper finally comes to claim you. Because monster or not, I shall not waste a valuable tool. And in the end, should you accomplish your goals and rid my Equestria of those plagues which have caused so much untold suffering, perhaps you may earn a measure of redemption in my eyes and I shall allow your work to continue.
But should you fail?
Then I will show you why I have ruled these lands unchallenged for two millennia and more.
Your only other option is to face your very imminent death.
Do you accept my offer, Fizzy Pop?
~~~~~~~~~~
The Courtroom had fallen silent once again. But this time... This time what happened allowed my heart to lift, just a trifle, from where it had lain in my hooves these past few weeks.
A lone figure burst from the court observers, and rushed up to the witnesses stand. She wore a house-maids dress, but was impossible not to recognize as Daisybloom. She flung her forelegs around Rarity's waist and hugged tightly to her. Rarity lowered her forehooves and stroked the poor pony's mane gently, lovingly. Then she hugged her back and murmured softly. "There there, darling. We'll find you a nice pony who shall love you as you deserve."
Daisybloom untangled herself from Rarity's body, and the strange hybrid of pony and demon stepped down from the stand as a Princess descends from her throne. Like it or not, I could not help but make the comparison to Princess Celestia as she walked towards the court exit. Princess Luna's eyes following her with a deep thoughtfulness. The court observers and other reporters bowed their heads as she passed us by, regally protecting the poor broken pony beneath her hoof.
And as she passed me, I began to realize that the story could not possibly end with this trial. Thousands of other stories had yet to be told, and thousands of other ponies who had escaped and been ensnared Elegant's grasp were now out there in the world, hiding from us. What had become of them? What had been done to them? And most importantly of all, what could we do for them?
The answers were coming, weather I liked it or not. For as the doors to the courtroom opened, the final figure in this case walked through it and prepared to finally bring the chaos to an end... her way.
-Reporter Double Scoop, for the Equestria Times. "The Case of the Century, and how it never came to be." |
The Placement Agency | Case #[Classified], Part 1 - Fluttershy | ~~~~Canterlot High Courthouse~~~~
Judge Rock - Order! I said, Order! Order in the court!
Princess Luna - Princess Twilight, what is the meaning of this?
Discord - Hardly her decision, Moonbutt. Fluttershy apparently has a few things of her own to add to this little radio drama.
Fluttershy - My apologies for not calling ahead, Princess Luna. But I'm afraid things have gone too far now for me to remain silent. Rarity, are you alright?
Rarity - Just fine, Darling. Whyever do you ask?
Fluttershy - Mmm. Just concerned for you, as usual. You really ought to not flaunt about so much like that, you might scare somepony. Remember what we talked about?
Rarity - Yes, yes, I know... Honestly, Fluttershy. I thought you liked my new look.
Fluttershy - I've had time to get used to it, Rarity. Would you mind waiting for me outside? I shouldn't be too long in here. This really should wrap things up.
Rarity - Of course, darling.
Judge Rock - If you two are quite finished, Miss Fluttershy?
Fluttershy - Apologies, your Honor. I really did not mean to be a fuss, but I figured that a better opportunity to speak wouldn't come around again.
Princess Luna - I swear to the stars, you lot are incredibly frustrating!
Detective Tracer - And it ain't gettin any easier, ma'am. Princess Celestia wants ta' speak with ya at the precinct. Says it's urgent.
Judge Rock - Then I've no choice but to declare a recess. My due apologies, Miss Fluttershy, but this court cannot continue-
Princess Twilight - I'll step in for Luna and act in her stead. With her permission, of course.
Princess Luna - Twilight, I could hardly ask... Hmph. I'm not the one asking though, am I? Very well. I shall presume you are mature enough to understand what is going on here. I shall return poste-haste. I am leaving Twilight in my place, your Honor. If you would excuse me.
Judge Rock - If the past few days had not been what they have been, I would be calling an end to this Inquiry right now, Princess Twilight. I am sorely tempted to do so anyway, and bedamned to the consequences. Now I will ask you once, and only once. Will Miss Fluttershy's testimony add any meaningful dialogue to the reason for this Inquiry, or not?
Princess Twilight - Flutters?
Fluttershy - I assure you, Judge Rock. What I have to say will be something very new to this court case. I can only hope that it will be enough to finally bring this all to a close
Judge Rock - Very well. I will be keeping you on an exceedingly short leash, Miss Fluttershy. Far too much of this court's time has been given over to divergences and ranting. I would ask that you restrain yourself from such, if and when at all possible. Are we understood?
Fluttershy - Absolutely, your honor.
Judge Rock - Then this court calls Fluttershy to the stand!
Fluttershy - Thank you, your honor.
Let me be clear, I came here for my friend Twilight and not for myself. There are things she needs to hear and needs to understand. Things I can't show her or tell her by sitting in that lovely little room they gave us at the hospital, nor in that secreted away little apartment we're living in now. Twilight has always been there for me... even when I couldn't listen to her, or more accurately, when I didn't listen because I was so frightened of something else at the time.
You've heard so many other stories during these testimonies, so I'm not going to waste your time with repeating a beginning you've already heard. This isn't really about my story. It's about the story of thousands of others who've suffered terribly from the mistakes of a relative few. When I think about Lady Elegant and Fizzy, I am not angry nor am I horrified. Two ponies as much a victim of their own circumstances as any of us, blindly flailing away at the world. I pity them, really.
Judge Rock - Miss Fluttershy, what are you....
Discord - It's complicated, your baldness. What's happened to my little Fluttershy....
Fluttershy - Hush, Discord. We talked about this. I'm not going to spend my time fussing over something neither of us can change. I am what I am now and I am going to make the best of it.
Judge Rock - Miss Fluttershy, please forgive this court, but you do not appear to have suffered any physical changes.
Fluttershy - Ah, that's right. I haven't. My change's are... more subtle than that, I suppose you could say. But getting back to my story...
Discord - Fluttershy, if you're not going to tell them, I am.
Fluttershy - It's hardly necessary, but... Well, alright. If you think its important, I suppose I should tell the story then.
You... You need to understand I'm not a pony who's ever done very well with believing in myself. It used to be that whenever I found myself facing something I didn't think I could handle I would get frightened. Not because It was necessarily frightening, but because I didn't want everypony to see me failing all the time.When I was little, I knew how badly it hurt my mother to see me trying so hard to fly and just... I couldn't do it. My wings...
I have a mild case of Icarus Syndrome, you see. It's not something that gets talked about a lot outside of pegasus communities, but basically the... the magic in my wings isn't very strong. I can handle most day-to-day flying, but anything strenuous that would require me to use my pegasus magic could send me plummeting to the ground. Fillies with Icarus aren't usually treated really well in some communities. There's a lot of pride tied up in how good you are at doing pegasus tasks, and when you can't even do the basic ones...
But I cannot be angry at them either. Every parent is afraid they'll draw the bad card and have to deal with it. Everypony knows someone who has a child with it. They're not bad ponies, just frightened ones. It's a theme I've seen repeated too many times, all with the same predictable and tragic results.
So many of the creatures we've fought, so many of the ones we've used the Elements on...
Double Scoop's Notes: At this moment, Fluttershy reaches out her hoof and squeezes Discord's paw, her smile never endingly serene.
Like a certain draconequus I could name. They've all just been suffering from the same things we all do. Fear, doubt, loneliness, desperation. They're no different from the rest of us, except they have more power to wield against those horrible emotions. So they do bad things, not knowing how easy it is to find the things that can help them. If only they knew... but I suppose that's why I am the way I am now.
My mom always told me everything happens for a reason. Every time I came home from school after... after some of the other foals were hurtful to me, she would pick me up and dust me off with her big wings. She'd smile and kiss my cheek, and tell me I was going to show all of them how to not be such meanies. She told me to keep being the special somepony that I was, and that someday other ponies would see it too.
When I took the potion, all I wanted was to be that special somepony mom had always told me I could me. I wanted to not be afraid anymore. I wanted courage and strength, like Discord showed me I could have, so that I could be that special somepony for the entire world. Fizzy told me that the potion could do that. He said that it could make all the things I was frightened of go away, and that I could be the new pony I'd always dreamed about.
He was more right than he knew.
~~~~~Canterlot Castle~~~~~
From the notes of Miss Inkwell, Meeting with Luna Re: NLPA
The Princess was sitting in her room, quietly leafing through the pages of her diary when Luna arrived.
"Sister, what in the name of Starswirls' beard is the meaning of this?"
Luna's voice is rich with anger, and the Princess winces away from it. Luna appears enraged, but not quite so angry as to be devoid of sense. She's rid herself of her regalia, meaning she's speaking not for her office but for herself. "You placed me in charge of this investigation under mine own laws. You gave me the authority to determine what needed to be done, because you could not trust your own instincts. Now, you will answer to me: Where is Fizzy Pop?
The Princess closes her diary, and looks to the door. As she has for the past few days, the Princess looks utterly exhausted. "Elsewhere." She says in a quiet voice, and Luna is quite taken aback by this. "I am sorry for usurping you, Lulu, but I had to make a decision. This court case is a shambles, and the more the investigation turns up, the more I find myself desiring to ensure it never sees the light of day."
Luna nearly hits the floor with shock, but she quickly rallies. "What in the name of Equestria are you plotting, sister? Uprooting the rule of law is not like you in the least." She crosses the floor quickly, her voice pitched low and hushed.
The Princess half smiles, shaking her head. "You really ought to be reading Tracy's reports, Lulu. This case is implicating a third of the Solar Court in utilizing the services of this Agency. While I am mostly certain the majority of them were unaware of what they were supporting, the law does not discriminate." She winces again, and reaches up to massage her temple. "And after what has become of Fluttershy, It may be best to shut down this case and focus on aiding the victims. We certainly do not want her... condition dragged through the public eye if we can avoid it."
Luna goes quiet for a moment, then speaks firmly. "Then allow me to handle this, sister."
The Princess looked up in surprise. "What?"
Luna tosses her mane, her voice pitched low. "Sister, dear. I love you so. But thou art incapable of being cruel to anypony, even to the worst." She crossed the room and laid a hoof on Celestia's shoulder. "Spend your time doing what you do best, Sister. Heal the wounds of the sick and the riven. Leave the guilty unto me." Her voice suddenly drops angrily. "I shall ensure that they are dealt with in good time, as best as they can be without harming thy peace."
The Princess says nothing for a moment, then whispers. "Thank you, Lulu. I will... Yes. I offered Fizzy Pop a chance to finish his work if he vanished. Was I...?" She hesitates, trembling and falling over her words.
Luna shakes her head. "You are too kind, Sister. But who knows? Perhaps that kindness will buy hope for our future. We shall keep thy word, but I do not intend to make things simple upon him." She smiled faintly. "Now, go consult with Cadence. The poor ponies whom have been harmed by this will need you both, and thy student, if they are to arise from this."
The Princess stands, and laughs faintly. "I suppose... I suppose they will. Yes. Thank you, Luna." They embrace, and I follow the Princess from the room.
~~~~~~~~~
Fluttershy - When I woke up that first morning, everything was different.
I don't just mean that I was different, I mean the world itself was different. Imagine... Imagine if you could just see all the little snags and mis-steps that the world and the creatures in it make, all before they even happen. What if you could fix those things before they ever became a problem? Wouldn't things be better?
I woke up to Angel Bunny being grumpy again, so I fixed him breakfast. Normally he tells me what he wants from the recipe book, but I just sort of knew the answer that morning. He looked at me oddly but didn't argue when I set that particular salad down and got along to the rest of my chores. The rest of my day was... pretty much like that. Every time a little problem would normally crop up, I found I could head it off. It was just a matter of being nice... or rather, being Kind. I was always good at being kind, but I'd never been really good at using it properly. Then I had to go to town and I started noticing things. One thing, in particular, jumped out at me. I wasn't frightened. At all.
See... Nopony really has ever known why I was so frightened so often. The answer was a lot simpler than most of them presumed, but... I couldn't tell them. How could they possibly understand how horribly frightened I was of... just... Other ponies. We're supposed to be a social species, that's what we do! We get together, we co-operate, we socialize... it's such a fundamental part of who we are. But... But I couldn't handle them. I just couldn't. They couldn't understand me and I couldn't understand them at all, and every time I failed because I wasn't enough like them It hurt more and more. I loved Dashie, I loved her so much, but I could never ever be as good as she was and-
Ahem. I'm sorry. I shouldn't... I need to be more careful. I was so afraid of being in front of other ponies, and having them see my failures first hoof. Of them judging and mocking me and looking down at me because I was born different. But that morning, I woke up and I wasn't afraid anymore. It was hardly their fault they didn't understand me. They were frightened of what I represented to them. Frightened of a reminder of how fragile life can be sometimes.
And even in Ponyville, where so many ponies treated me so kindly, it was hard not to be frightened of them too. But now, I could understand their kindness to me. Now, I understood how hard they worked to make sure I felt comfortable. It would have been terribly unkind of me to not work just as hard as they did at being a good pony. Instantly, I wasn't frightened any longer. Now... Now that I knew what to do it was so easy...
So... So I was happy and cheerful and perky all day long. I never once felt stressed or frightened over every little thing that happened around me. It was unnerving, but I couldn't even bring myself to be frightened of it. Why should I be scared? I just needed to be kind to other ponies, and they'd be kind back to me. And even if they weren't, well... Maybe they just needed a good example like Discord did.
I didn't notice anything even remotely strange or wrong until, well... There was one morning about a week later that I ran into someone very unpleasant. I'm not going to say who, but they were not behaving very nicely to someponies in the market. Well, I certainly couldn't let it keep happening but I wasn't quite sure what to do at first. But before I knew it, I was right in front of her and giving her a dressing down in front of everypony!
I don't even remember where the words came from, but I sort of sounded like my mother did when she got angry at my bullies. The other pony looked frightened but she didn't try to get away. She just stood there and listened to me, until finally her grumpiness broke away. Then I soothed her, and it didn't take me very long to get her spirits back up. I didn't know what I'd done, but I knew it had helped her somehow... I felt bad about making her sad at first, but I also remembered what I'd had to do to help the Breezies. Sometimes someponies just need a bit of firm discipline I guess.
That was the first time it happened, but it wasn't the last. Slowly, I became more and more used to it. Every time I saw something bad about to happen, some unkindness somepony was going to commit, I moved in to stop it before It could ever manifest. A gentle word here, a little gift or interruption there, and the world smoothed out before me. I had to work hard with Pinkie, but she really doesn't mean to hurt anypony. She just forgets sometimes in her enthusiasm, and I'm glad I can be there to help her.
Some other ponies in town are like that. Cranky Doodle needs reminding not to be so harsh with the foals, so I make sure his special somepony knows when he's been naughty. Time Turner doesn't always pay attention when he's bothering everypony about being late, but it's not hard to get him to be more considerate. And lots of ponies need hugs around town, and I'm glad to help give them now.
And eventually, I began to realize the gift I'd been given. In a world where so often we forget the feelings of others, I now was able to help make sure everypony could be kind to everypony else.
Just like they ought to.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Initial Medical Report: Dr. House Call, Dr. Cassock, Dr. Lumination, Dr. Wile E as attending physicians.
Regarding Patient: Fluttershy.
Case Subject #00221, "Extreme Reality Warping"
To: Princesses Celestia, Twilight Sparkle, Luna, Cadence and Prince Armor
Dr. Wile E as transcriber.
WARNING: THIS DOCUMENT IS CLASSIFIED
EQUESTRIAN INTELLIGENCE SERVICE SECRECY LEVEL BLACK.
ALL UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ARE FORBIDDEN TO READ, POSSESS, OR DISTRIBUTE THIS DOCUMENT UNDER PENALTY OF TREASON.
..... Which brings this document to Subject Fluttershy, the last of our "Reality Warper" victims known to us at this time.
Some background is required. At age six, Subject Fluttershy was diagnosed with Icarus Syndrome. At age ten, Acute Social Disorder. The cause of both of these conditions remains unknown. Her mother (Cherry Blossoms) and Father (Cloudstorm) are both fully healthy pegasi with no previous history of either disorder, so genetics are ruled out. Regardless, Fluttershy's medical history is fraught with attempts by her parents to alleviate both conditions.
For those unfamiliar, Acute Social Disorder is a developmental condition which manifests itself as an inability to easily connect with other ponies in a social way. While initially dismissed as a function of her Icarus Syndrome amongst her peers, as her age progressed it became clear that Fluttershy was not making many friends, even amongst the lower status pegasi. Her connection to Rainbow Dash, a very high status pegasi, is now explained through the Elements of Harmony, but I digress.
It is the second condition on which we are now focused, since at age fourteen - upon the acquisition of her cutie mark - her condition was updated to better reflect her actual problem. The subject suffers from an extremely rare condition known as Zoonotic Social Transgression. Without going into the highly specific details, the subject in essence suffered from an unknown magical impact that caused the social aspects of her magic to focus not on ponies but on other animals. Which is to say, she can communicate and socialize with animals who otherwise cannot speak (Rabbits, bears, Squirrels, Birds, etc.) or are not considered social animals in and of themselves (Including Dragons, Windigos, Manticores, etc.) as easily as most ponies can communicate with other ponies, but cannot understand the unconscious body and magical language of pony social interaction.
Upon this discovery, her primary care physician informed her parents of the new knowledge, which they quickly decided to have sealed in her private records for reasons that have gone unrecorded in her medical files To this date, the subject remains unaware of the social condition she has lived with for most of her life. Instead, she remains of the belief that she is simply another victim of Acute Social Disorder.
Which brings us to her reality-warping condition. The subject has gained a hyper awareness of all social situations in her immediate vicinity to the point of being able to predict the shifting currents and patterns of social interactions in nearly all creatures we have subjected her to. Put another way, her incredible ability to read the body language and social structures of the animals she cares for has been extended to include nearly all living things we are aware of.
Even more astonishing, the subject seems capable of instantly comprehending the solution to such observations to achieve specific goals. Though at this time we are not certain what those goals are. While we have no further information, given the incredible mystery as to exactly how these abilities manifest themselves, we do have one last frightening fact that must be submitted for this report to be complete.
According to our resident energy expert, Doctor Luminous, Fluttershy has begun to exhibit many of the same energy radiations and signatures as Discord that we had previously believed were entirely unique to him. She has also exhibited far, far stronger magic than she previously had ever shown before and it may be possible that her Icarus Syndrome condition has been removed entirely, though we have not yet had time to confirm nor deny that assertion.
With all of the above information, this medical report is recommending that the subject be placed under immediate house arrest and observation until such time as the full extent of her transformation and effects can be understood. Above all other things, we recommend that she not be placed into a highly-charged social situation under any circumstances.There is quite literally no telling what she might be able to do... or what she might actually do.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fluttershy - ... Oh, dear. I went off on a bit of a rant, didn't I? I'm so very sorry, your Honor.
Judge Rock - T-That's quite alright, young lady. Please proceed as you see fit. I'm sorry I allowed my foul mood to taint my professional demeanor.
Fluttershy - Well, thank you, your Honor. Where was I? Oh. Yes.
Ponyville.
It's a little town I've lived in for so long with so many problems. Yet the ponies there are so kind, so thoughtful to others. They so rarely turn astray from that kindness, and when they do it is almost never intentional. But sometimes we get guests from outside, and I wonder what the world must be like out there to create such sad creatures. I try to help them, of course, but... Well, It doesn't always work. Not like it ought to.
Like there was this one Manehatten couple that had come to speak to Rarity about a new dress, and they were looking around town with these big sneers on their faces. They were looking down on us and I knew that just wasn't right, so I walked over to have a talk with them. At first, I wanted to get angry with them for being so dismissive but I couldn't be anything but polite. I kept trying to tell them all the wonderful things about Ponyville and they refused to listen to me.
The stallion... I don't remember his name, but he started insulting our town. Called it a lot of very mean names, and as much as I wanted to get mad... I just... I couldn't. I kept smiling and gently trying to insist that he was mistaken in his assessment. More ponies stated to gather around me, and said some also not nice things to the couple. I told them to not do such things, that we're above that sort of behavior, but nopony listened to me.
Things were starting to get ugly and... I remember wanting to be so very angry, and it just all vanished every time it came up. How could I be angry? They were just looking at the world the wrong way. They didn't realize they were wrong. So... So I told them, "Maybe you need to go see more of the world before you judge this place, and realize just how special it is." I said it in a very stern, motherly sort of voice.
And all at once, the stallion lost his sneer and his haughtiness and sort of took a step back. He looked shocked at me, as though he wasn't quite sure what to say. But I wasn't done yet. "These ponies aren't so different from you." I said, advancing on him and shaking my hoof in his face. "You need to see them how they really are. Walk a few miles in their shoes." I continued. "You're not so different. Or can't you see that?"
The mare had fallen back too, and both of them looked awfully stricken. The stallion was crying a little even as he looked around into the crowd. I was going to say more but...
Discord - But then I cut in, as was needed, and whisked you away from that dreadful little argument. Really, Fluttershy. I thought I'd told you not to get involved in such kerfuffles.
Fluttershy - Well, somepony needed to show them.
Judge Rock - Show them what, Miss Fluttershy?
Fluttershy - Isn't it obvious? They needed to be shown how to be Kind. |
The Placement Agency | Case #[Classified], Part 2 - Fluttershy | ~~~~Canterlot High Courthouse~~~~
Judge Rock - I... beg your pardon?
Fluttershy - Oh. Dear me, I did it again, didn't I?
Discord - Quite alright, dearie. Just keep it simple for his baldness. We don't want to take up too much of the court's time. We've got tea this evening, remember?
Fluttershy - Oh my, that completely slipped my mind... Well I suppose I'd better keep it quick then.
You see, that's what happened to me. I became a personification of the very best things about me. But in exchange, I sort of... lost... some of the other things. See, I can't... I can't get angry at other ponies now. Even if they've done very bad things, they just need a little guidance to get back to doing good. Maybe they need to be punished, but I don't think we need to go so far as prison... I mean, we've all made mistakes. Sometimes, we've made very bad mistakes.
I can't hate them for what they did, since if I'd never have met Twilight and my friends who knows what I might've ended up as? There but for Celestia's grace go I, you see. I can't... This isn't easy for me, you know? They've hurt lots and lots of other ponies, and some of them they've hurt very badly. I spoke to poor Bluefeather, and I understand why he's so bitter and angry and wants revenge. But... But isn't doing the right thing, no matter how hard it might be, supposed to be what an Element of Harmony does?
That's what I wanted, isn't it? To be able to finally help other ponies, to be able to do something good and right instead of just being dead weight all the time... Maybe I can't be angry anymore. Or jealous. Or... or selfish. Or scared. M-maybe that's the price I had to pay to be a pony that could finally stand up and do something about all the cruelties and injustices in the world. Maybe that's why I'm here now, to make certain that all of these horrible things don't end with more horrible things being done.
You understand, don't you, your Honor?
Judge Rock - I mean... I suppose. You do realize this isn't a trial, correct?
Fluttershy - That doesn't mean there aren't things we cannot do. We can talk to Fizzy and Quill, and maybe even Elegant. I'm certain once we've spoken to them they'll understand what we're trying to do for them.
Judge Rock - Miss Fluttershy, you are not making sense. What in the blazes has happened to you?
Fluttershy - I thought I'd... Hum. Maybe I need to be more explicit.
Imagine... Imagine one day you woke up, and all of those nasty negative emotions you had to deal with in your day-to-day life just ceased to exist. Well, except maybe frustration and boredom. I suppose those things will never cease to exist, no matter what we do. Hee. But... Anger, fear, doubt, despair... wel.. okay, the first three, anyway... Just gone. Why should I be angry or fearful of ponies who really don't mean all the bad things they do or say? They're just dealing with their own day to day problems. So I help them get past those nasty emotions so they can do positive things like love one another and forgive the thousand and one little mistakes we all make every day of our lives.
It seems so simple to me now, the solution to so many problems we have. We just need to be more kindly towards one another, we just need to take the time to stop and think about all of those petty emotions that make things so needlessly complicated. It's... I know I sound crazy, I do. I know how hard it is to understand what it's like to live without so many of the bad things that define our everyday lives.
Discord, Sombra, Chrysalis, Tirek... I can't blame them anymore. I might've been mad at them once, but now? I just wonder if maybe we were doing things the wrong way... Weren't we supposed to be better than them? Weren't we supposed to try to find a better solution that didn't demand violence? What if Chrysalis just wanted somepony to love her like Cadence loved Shining Armor? Or Sombra just needed someone who cared enough to listen to the pain he was so obviously struggling with? Couldn't we have found a better solution?
But now... now I don't need to ask that. I am the better solution. I've given up things so that nopony else has to, so that nopony else needs to be frightened or scared anymore. Maybe I can't feel things the same way I used to and maybe It's a little... a little strange sometimes when I see all sorts of problems, but can't figure out how to fix them. And I... I...
Oh. Oh, my, I'm sorry... I just...
Double Scoop's Notes - Fluttershy shudders for a moment on the stand. There is a tense moment before a pulse of sparkling pink energy sweeps through the room from where she's sitting, and for a single moment I can feel myself floating in a blissful haze. It seems to go on forever, a floating feeling of absolute peace with the world around me, and then just as suddenly it's gone.
Fluttershy - I am so very sorry, your Honor. Sometimes it's difficult for me to deal with all of this... I suppose I didn't really realize how important it was for me to be wary of places and situations like this before. It made it easier for me to get comfortable with them over time, even if it always seemed to take too long... but now, now I'm never afraid of them. I leap into them without thinking, smiling and happily talking to other ponies. Is this what Pinkie Pie feels like? So happy to see and be around other ponies? Does she feel scared and tense too, when she doesn't know what to say or how to say it?
I don't always know what's going on with me anymore. Sometimes I feel like I'm not entirely in control of what I'm doing or who I am... I feel like the world is pressing in around me, begging me to help fix things... Like I ought to be doing more. And when I'm around other ponies, things are fine! They really are! It's wonderful to be able to talk to other ponies, and go out and have fun without being scared. I went out dancing for the first time by myself a few weeks after I took the potion... I actually talked to a cute stallion without losing my mind.
And when I'm alone its... its not so easy. I've been lucky to have Discord around. He's helped me so much, helped me stay okay when all these new powers and strangenesses got out of hoof. Helping me not lose hope. See... It was hard to understand at first how I couldn't just help everypony. Discord helped me see that it wouldn't be possible. I could only be in one place at a time, and I could only help so many ponies. Someponies wouldn't want my help, even if I couldn't understand why.
I mean, why wouldn't everypony want to be kind and nice to everypony else? Why wouldn't they want to help other someponies get past their own difficult emotions? What's so wrong about imagining a world where nopony is going to hurt anypony else? Why is that a bad thing!? All I want to do is make everypony stop hurting each other and just get along!!!
Double Scoops Notes- I can feel the hair of my coat raising up, as though some kind of surge of power is flowing through the room. For just an instant, I debate if running or not is going to save me from whatever might come next. Instead, I decide to continue recording these events. I can but hope that they might prove to posterity what's happened here if things go wrong. Fortunately, Discord lays a heavy paw on Fluttershy's shoulder and the feeling of tension dissipates.
Discord - Fluttershy. Stop.
Fluttershy - I don't- I can't- I- I- I-..
You... I'm sorry, Discord. That was very rude of me. I... I seem to be making a mess of things again. I should... I should try to wrap things up, shouldn't I?
I... I came here today to tell some things to my friend. To Twilight. Princess Twilight. So she'd understand why I need to say some other things. Twilght... I love you so dearly. You've been with me through thick and through thin. You've forgiven me without a single thought no matter how many times I've messed things up for us. You're truly a wonderful pony, and everything you've gained is easily your just desserts and more.
Now... now I need to ask you to do something much harder. I need to ask you to forgive the poor souls that did this to us. I know it's not simple or easy to do that, especially for you. I know how much it hurts for you to see me like this, to know what I'm going through every day. But I want you to know that I wouldn't have it any other way. I want to do this. I need to do this. For so long, I've been protected by you and by our other friends. By Rarity and Applejack... and Dashie. I've hidden behind all of you for so long, and now it's my turn to be strong.
And I can do it too. I can be strong for everypony, just like you are. I can help other ponies solve their problems and become better friends and kinder ponies. I can finally be part of the solution and not just another scaredy pony who can't even leave her house without being frightened by a stiff wind.
Maybe it's not easy. I know that, I knew that long before I took that potion and I changed... It's not easy being the pony everypony looks up to, or looks to for help. It's not easy being out in public where everypony can see you when you mess up or do something frightening and they give you those wide eyed looks and... and... And I can handle that now. They're not bad ponies. None of them are. They're just scared, like I used to be. But they don't have to be scared. I can show them how to not be so scared. I can show all of them.
And even if it hurts sometimes, and even if I feel so very alone... even if I know nopony is ever going to want me for a wife or have foals with me, I-i'll be okay.. I've got a reason to go out and have fun now. I'll be able to help others who're like I used to be, and give them hope and help them find confidence. Little by little, I'll bring kindness to all the ponies of Equestria one somepony at a time.
But I can't do this without your help, Twilight. I need you to help me one more time. I need to stop this long string of pain and suffering by helping Elegance and Fizzy and Quill and Goldie. They need our help, Twilight. They need to be put on the proper path, shown how to be kind and gentle... They'll learn from their mistakes, but only if we teach them instead of punishing them. Only if we forgive them for their sins...
Double Scoop's notes - Fluttershy is surrounded by an aura of bright yellow and pink light as she descends from the stand. She walks to where Princess Twilight sits and grasps her hoof in her own. From where I sit, it is almost as though two powerful auras of magic are clashing into one another. Little sparks of magical force are shooting away from the pair of them, and Princess Twilight looks torn. Fluttershy continues to speak, a look of resolution and beatific serenity upon her face.
Discord - Fluttershy, stop!
Judge Rock - Miss Fluttershy, you are out of order!
Fluttershy - No! I'm not going to stop! This is what I was made for! This is what I am now! I'm going to save those ponies! I'm going to save all of the victims! I'm going to help them find peace with themselves and move on with their lives! What happens to me doesn't matter anymore!
Princess Twilight - Fluttershy, what are you talking about?
Fluttershy - You need to listen to me, Twilight. You must listen. All of the pain and hatred and anger they've caused, it will just keep happening! If all we do is punish them without trying to help them, they'll never learn. And another generation will grow thinking the only way to solve a mistake is to punish somepony for it. But we can stop it, Twilight. We can put an end to it right now. You, and me, together.
We can forgive them. We can show the entire world the power of forgiving somepony's mistakes and helping them learn to never make those mistakes again. We can make everypony else who made that mistakes learn from it, instead of just being punished and causing more and more pain! We don't need to cause more pain, Twilight! We can end pain, right here, right now!
You've always been willing to help others, Twilight. Even when it seemed hopeless for them, you wanted to help them. You even wanted to help Trixie, and she hurt you worst of all! We can put an end to it, Twilight. We can fix the world so that the Elements of Harmony won't ever be needed again. With your help, we can make everyone understand the power of Kindness and Friendship. I know you can understand, Twilight. I know you will understan-
Discord - That's ENOUGH!
Double Scoop's Notes - Discord teleports across the room and grasps Fluttershy by the shoulders. She looks up in shock and disbelief for a moment. For a split second, the serenity falls away and reveals the frightened and desperate pony beneath it. An instant later, both of them are gone in a puff of ordinary smoke. Utter silence falls across the courthouse, and Twilight's chest - heaving from taking in oxygen - slowly comes back to regular breathing.
Judge Rock - ... Princess Twilight, are you Alright?
Princess Twilight - I'm... I'm fine, your honor. I need... I need to go find her. I need to find Fluttershy.
Judge Rock - Princess, you might be in danger!
Princess Twilight - Then we're all in danger, Judge. And It's my responsibility to deal with danger when it arises. This inquiry is over. The rest of you, go home. I need to go find my friend.
~~~~~Canterlot Castle~~~~~
From the notes of Ms. Inkwell,
Princess Cadence sips her tea and speaks softly. "We've begun to get attention from some of the victims that weren't on our initial list. Some of them have come forward willingly, while others have asked us to stay far, far away from them. It's a pretty mixed bag, to be honest, and we think there's a lot of others who simply are unaware that we know about them now." She sets the teacup down and gives her aunt a frank look. "Sweet Tart has been exceptionally co-operative."
The Princess nods. "I'm inclined to grant her her request. Making charges stick to Bluefeather would have been impossible anyway, and Golden Apple is not fit to stand trial." She pauses, and smiles faintly. "I noticed Golden Apple in your livery by the way. That was very kind of you."
Princess Cadence snickers. "She's very enthusiastic. To be honest, I'm considering letting Princess Luna take care of her. She's just too rowdy for my demure crystal ponies to deal with, and she's been getting along famously with the Lunar Guard apparently." Another pregnant pause, and she sighs faintly. "How's Twily holding up?"
The Princess shakes her head. "Well enough. It's not going to be easy on her once all of this excitement is over and she's forced to realize we're going to need to very carefully monitor two of her closest friends. I think she's trying to come up with a solution to keep Rarity from doing anything... embaressing."
Princess Cadence grins at her. "Like what? Climbing into Blueblood's rooms in the dead of night and leaving him tied to the bed with a dildo shoved up his ass? And he swears it was consensual?" She giggles faintly. "It might be a bit disturbing to you, auntie, but I for one am glad to see someone finally put that fop in his place."
The Princess sighs and munches on a cookie, and lets Cadence work out her giggles. Once the other princess is sober again, she speaks. "Amusing though you may find it, Cadence, I'm the one that needs to deal with the fallout. I worry about what she might do in a small community like Ponyville. Yet I have no legal recourse to force her to stay here in Canterlot."
Princess Cadence shakes her head firmly. "Don't even try it, auntie. I'd oppose you on that, and so would Luna. We'll manage. You managed to keep me under wraps, even though I was the horniest teenager in history." She smiles and pats Celestia's shoulder. "We've got plenty of resources. Besides, she might prove to be an invaluable aid in our healing project."
Princess Celestia nods once. "Mayhap. So many of these poor souls driven to some kind of sexual deviency... Is my kingdom that prudish, Cadence? Have I lost sight of my desire to make all forms of love acceptable, so long as they harm nopony?"
Cadence sighs. "There are a lot of old habits, auntie. A lot of old traditions and ingrained hatreds, not to mention laws that may be impossible to defeat without concentrated work. That's why my plan has additional funding for allowing us to seek out other blighted individuals and help them find release and love without involving the public."
The Princess turns to me, "Miss Inkwell, make a note. I wish to review the laws on sexual conduct later this evening, on a county-by-county level if necessary. I may have not been aware of this until today, but I shall be damned if I do nothing about it."
Cadence nods at her, then pours more tea. "I am more worried about Fluttersh-"
Cadence is interrupted by a flash of violet magic and the appearance of Princess Twilight. Cadence drops the teapot, which clangs against the floor. "Cadence, Celestia, something happened to Fluttershy at the Inquiry!" Twilight bursts out, and Celestia and Cadence instantly are on their hooves.
Celestia speaking, "What was she doing-"
Cadence speaking, "No time to think about that, Auntie. Where did she go?"
Twilight speaking, "Discord took her somewhere, but she's not in her cottage and she's not anywhere in Ponyville!"
Celestia speaking, "Then I know where they've gone. Come close to me, we've not much time."
The three princesses gather together, and vanish a moment later.
~~~~~The Castle of the Two Sisters~~~~~
From the personal journal of Twilight Sparkle,
I'll never forget the first time I saw her in her new form.
She'd been hiding it from all of us, somehow. Her magic was starting to equal and perhaps even exceed mine in terms of raw power. More and more, she was becoming like the spirit of Chaos who tenderly watched over her. Though her body was not warped and chaotic like his, but rather she had become a vision of a pegasus goddess of old. But instead of the form of a warrior, she had the look of a protector and guardian.
Her mane and tail were long and silken, and they brushed along the ground even when she stood up. Her wings vast and soft, ready to wrap around any creature who might need her aid. The animals, who had always been near her, now seemed to cuddle protectively up alongside her. Angel Bunny was watching on in the deepest of concern when we arrived, finally. Her eyes were quite literally luminious, and bright cyan in color. If one looked close enough, you could see the shimmering of magic written in every inch of her.
When we arrived, she looked up and the newness of her faded away. Then she turned her head back into Discord's shoulder and continued to quietly sob. "She didn't mean it, Twilight." Discord said in the quietest voice I'd ever heard him use. "She's just young. Her power isn't entirely under her control yet, and the spirit she embodies is a passionate one. It wants to help the world so badly, it doesn't really care what it'll take."
Princess Celestia took a step forward, and Discord shook his head. "No. She's my responsibility, Celly. None of you have the power to truly deal with her like I can... Not yet anyway." His eyes had traveled to me in that moment, and I wondered what he might know about me that I did not. Then he turned to Celestia. "You might be able to imprison her, or restrain her, or send her away... but they'd all be temporary measures. What she is can only be truly restrained in stone, and I will not allow you to do that to her." His eyes blazed at us, fierce with protectiveness. I'd never seen Discord do that for anypony, not even Fluttershy... but he clutched her body against his like it was the most fragile treasure in the world.
Princess Cadence put a hoof on Celestia's shoulder and shook her head. "Will she be okay?" She asked quietly, her concern obvious.
Discord nodded. "She'll be fine. She just needs some time to cool down." He paused, then gave us all meaningful looks. "Alone, for now. We'll talk about how we can make sure she's safe around other ponies later. But right now, her power is too raw for her to even look at any of us. So please, Go."
It went against every instinct I had to leave that place, but the look in his eye was powerful enough to make me hesitate. Then Fluttershy spoke herself, her voice infinitely gentle. "I promise we'll talk later, Twilight. Please just... let me stay here for a bit, okay?" The way her voice broke on the words, how could I deny her?
So we went back to the castle, in silence. There, I learned about Princess Celestia's plans to help all of the victims of this terrible crime. And it was there that I learned about the fate of Lady Elegant and Quill Tip, the last two actors in this play that had yet to have their endings decided.
~~~~~~~~~
I chewed on my pen for a long time as the sun slowly arced through the sky. That days events weighed heavily on my mind. "What are you writing there, Mr. Scoops?" That was the Judge, an old drinking buddy of mine. We'd known each other since I was just a little colt reporter doing my first job for The Times.
"Trying to figure out how to write this into an article, yer honor." I drawled back at him, and examined the end of my quill pen with disgust. I kept ruining these things by chewing on them, but I couldn't help myself. My mom had always called the habit weird. "How do you talk about the birth of some goddess of Kindness in a newspaper article? Seems like the kind of thing you wouldn't be able to put to words."
The judge shook his head as he descended the steps of the courthouse. "If you would wish my advice, son? Don't write about it. Don't tell anypony what you saw there at the end. Tell a lie, or a story. Give them something to think about like the tragedies that have taken place, rather than the individuals who really wish to be left in peace. Personally, I am going to go home and have a nice hayburger and try not to think too hard about today." He sighed. "I have a feeling it will be best that way."
Maybe he was right. I nodded to him and he trotted on down the street, leaving me alone with my thoughts. After everything that had happened in this case, perhaps I oughtn't to have been surprised. So I wrote what he told me to write - A lie. I pretended she'd run out of the courtroom. I pretended the Judge had called the Inquiry to a close. I did a lot of pretending that afternoon, but sometimes that's necessary.
It may be that nopony will ever read this book. It might be that nopony will read it for a hundred years, and the meaning will be lost to ya. But if you are reading this now, if you're seein the events the same way I saw em, then I got this to say. Sometimes, things happen and when they're over the whole world is different. Sometimes, bad things happen and they scar us so badly that we can't ever be the same someponies we were before.
It's a hard lesson to learn, especially for young kids. We like to think anyone can bounce back from anything when we're young. We like to pretend it doesn't matter when we're transformed from the inside out by circumstances beyond our control and that we'll still be the same somepony we are inside. That horrible events don't create horrible scars upon us. We like to pretend these things because it's so much easier than living up to the truth.
That when bad things happen, they change us. Sometimes, they change us into things we never were before. This case changed me too. This is the first time I've ever not told the public about what happened in a courtroom, and instead made up a story. Even if I made it up to protect other ponies, I did somethin' that I previously never would've done.
Maybe there's a lesson in that, somewhere.
I stood up from the steps and walked towards the Lunar district. A hayburger sounded pretty good right then, and I had a lot to write about... and think about.
-Double Scoop, reporter for the Equestria Times. "The New Life Placement Agency - The Rise and Fall of the Case of the Century." |
The Placement Agency | EIS Classified Files - Epilogue | Equestrian Intelligence Service File #3326
Name: Elegant Step
Race: Unicorn
Official Status: Escaped, On the run.
Actual Status: Classified - Top Secret
Case Worker - Silent Service
File Status: CLOSED - Secrecy Level BLACK.
EIS Interrogation File - Princess Luna, Silent Service, Elegant Step. Recording #01
The recorder cuts on. A gravelly, hard voice speaks
"Case File Three-three-two-six. Elegant Step."
A second voice joins in, Princess Luna
"Former Lady Elegant. Have you seen today's papers? You're quite the escape artist, it seems."
The sound of smacking paper onto the table. Silence for a moment, then Princess Luna speaks again.
"Don't give me that look. Would you rather I walk you into the middle of Unity Square and behead you?"
Lady Elegant finally speaks, her voice harsh.
"Am I not already dead, Princess?"
Princess Luna tsks, and replies,
"No, you are not. Whatever you may have heard of me, I do not kill without cause. Were you in my sisters hooves, I could not make the same guarantee given what you have allowed to occur.
Regardless, your life is now firmly in your own hooves. You will be permitted to choose to live or to die. I frankly care not which one you choose, as justice will be served no matter what and I truly have no desire to spend a single moment upon you that I do not need to."
Silence reigns for a time, then Elegant speaks again.
"Why ask me so many questions then? What's the point of trying to find out why I did this if you don't care?"
Princess Luna hums, then speaks.
"Fascination, I suppose. It is not often I witness one of our ponies so fundamentally broken on the inside. In her own strange way, Fluttershy was correct. You are a pitiable pony, even as you are one I wish to rid these lands of forever. You cannot understand how your desires harmed others, and nor do you care. You care only about fulfilling those desires without consideration to the consequences.
And besides, once I might have been not unlike you. Obsessed with a power you could never have, and given access to its heady draught without understanding the consequences. And once you had said power, you feared to lose it."
Silent Service coughs once.
"Elegant Step, we do not allow any scrap of information to pass unregarded in our line of work. Personal feelings about your actions are ultimately irrelevant to the insights we might gain by understanding you."
Elegant huffs, then speaks faintly.
"I'd rather not die yet, thank you."
There is a creaking chair, and the sound of shuffling papers. Princess Luna speaks.
"I am rather not surprised at that. Some individuals will be in shortly to begin your transition. I would recommend you do not give them trouble."
The sound of a door opening and closing, hooves against a stone floor. The Princess speaks again.
"You disapprove, Silent Service?"
A wheezy chuckle comes from Silent Service.
"No, I find the punishment to excellently fit the crime. It will be amusing to see how she adjusts to the life of a utterly powerless servant and commoner. I simply remain disappointed our foe was so... base and simple. Such a fascinating case with such an anticlimactic ending."
The Princess snorts in an unladylike fashion before speaking.
"Most of the truly terrible criminals throughout our history have been thus. It is always those who hide behind rationalizations that are just barely plausible enough that are the worst. Often they are even rationalizations we ourselves might use. That is what makes them so terrible, to realize how thin the line is between us... and them."
More waking, before Silent Service speaks again.
"It is not like our hooves are clean, Princess."
The Princess sighs.
"You are correct, Silent Service. But what we do now, we do for Equestria and for all of those souls who have been warped by these events. They have suffered enough. The time has begun to start healing them, and that cannot happen with these events hanging over their heads."
The sound of another door opening, and the Princess speaks just before the recording cuts.
"You are to begin the procedure immediately. I wish her transformation to be as complete as possible. Transfer her to the Castle when you are done and place her in Teakettle's care, she shall see to ensuring she finds her proper place."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Equestrian Intelligence Service File #3327
Name: Quill Tip
Race: Pegasus
Official Status: Escaped, On the run.
Actual Status: Classified - Top Secret
Case Worker - Silent Service
File Status: CLOSED - Secrecy Level BLACK.
EIS Interrogation File - Princess Luna, Silent Service, Quill Tip. Recording #01
The recorder cuts on. A gravelly, hard voice speaks
"Case File Three-three-two-six. Quill Tip."
A slightly panicked, high pitched voice cuts in. Quill Tip, speaking rapidly.
"I dunno what the buck you think you can do, but I'm not gonna take this shit anymore! I want my lawyer, and I want my cell back, and just who do you think you are that you think you can do this-"
Princess Luna speaks very loudly here, disrupting the recording device for three seconds.When recording resumes, she is speaking.
"... - Have your attention, you will sit down and be silent. Disaster Chaser shall not be forced to sully his name attempting to defend the indefensible. You are here for the same reason Elegant was brought here."
Quill Tip sputters and tries to speak apparently in profanities - but is quickly stifled, and Princess Luna speaks again.
"When you can speak like an adult, I shall remove the gag. Until then, allow me to recount why you are here. You failed to report multiple violations of Equestrian law to the guard, you failed to assist in the investigation against your former employer, and you withheld vital evidence which might have been used to bring this disaster to a speedy resolution. You may not be culpable for the crimes of your employers, but you are certainly guilty by association to them."
Silence reigns for a minute, then Quill Tip speaks quietly.
"I already told that dickbag next to you, I didn't know what they were doing, okay? I'm just a friggin secretary. I got hired to bring in customers, and that's what I did."
Silent Service snorts shortly before speaking.
"I have more than sufficient evidence to the contrary, Mister Tip. You would be better served providing us with the information we have requested than trying to dodge responsibility for your actions. We do not have much in the way of physical description for these victims, but you are quite quick to brag about your nigh-photographic memory. If you provide our sketch artists with assistance in finding all of our victims, you shall ameliorate some of your crimes and be treated accordingly."
Silence hangs again, this time for several long minutes before Quill Tip speaks again.
"I want my fuckin lawyer."
Princess Luna slams her hoof into the table here, nearly disrupting the recorder again.
"You do not seem to be aware of the gravity of your situation, Quill Tip. There will be no trial. There will be no prosecution. The public at large will be encouraged to forget about you and the other perpetrators so that we might move down the path of healing. You will co-operate, or steps will be taken to ensure your cooperation."
More sullen silence. The Princess speaks in a low, harsh voice.
"We know what you and Elegant were planning to do, Quill Tip. Did you honestly believe we would allow you two to openly blackmail members of the Celestial Courts in order to secure leniency? Did you truly think my sister would allow you to drag the victims across the stand and use their sorry state as a weapon against the case? That I am giving you any chance at all is a function of Silent Service's need for what you know."
Even more silence, then Luna speaks in crisp tones.
"Very well. We shall do this the hard way. Silent Service, dispatch this blackguard and let us attend to more profitable lines of investigation."
A chair scratches and Silent Service sighs tiredly. A few moments later, there is the sound of sudden struggle and squeaking of wood, with Quill Tip speaking loudly.
"Wait, wait! I don't...! I swear! I'll talk! Gach!"
Hooves scrabble against the floor, the sound of grunting. Princess Luna speaks.
"I am afraid you have given me no reason to actually believe that. Goodbye, Quill Tip, I have far more important things to attend to than your sorry self."
Quill Tip is heard breaking into unintelligible screams and sobs
"I'll - gah - talk! Holy sun and moon, I swear! Please! Please!"
There is a brief moment of silence, then a gasp of air and panting. Silent Service speaks.
"You have five minutes to Impress me before the Princess comes back."
A soft muttering sound, then the recorder abruptly cuts off.
~~~~~Canterlot Guard HQ~~~~~
Investigation Recording #45, NLPA Final
Detective Tracer - So they're seriously gonna use the old building for it?
Prince Armor - Cadey seems to think it might be a way to draw in the reluctant ones. Give them something familiar to come back to, a way of tying off what happened.
Detective Tracer - Makes a certain amount of sense. Pft. At least I don't have to file all those bloody prosecutorial reports.
Prince Armor - You don't sound very happy about that, Tracy.
Detective Tracer - I'm not. This isn't the way the system is supposed to work, Shiny. I don't like it when the system is fucked over because of stuff I can't control, especially not when my own frellin' boss is the one who's doing it.
Prince Armor - What did you want them to do, Tracy? We both know where this would've ended up if it'd gone to court.
Detective Tracer - That ain't the point, Shiny. Celestia built this legal system to make sure everypony got a fair shake. It didn't matter who they were or what they'd done, everypony gets a trial. Period, no exceptions. I've had to deal with enough crap in the courts because of rich nobles and business ponies using their clout to get the charges dropped or reduced. We're supposed to be the good guys, damnit. We're supposed to be above this.
Prince Armor - But the consequences-
Detective Tracer - Would've been fuckin' disastrous. I know that, you fuckin' whorse. I know she's doin this to protect the poor fucks who got screwed by all of this and that it's the right thing to do for their sakes, but that doesn't fuckin' make it legal. And don't you DARE fuckin start on that whole Royal Supremacy Clause thing. I know that fuckin makes it legal if she fuckin' says so but... Fuck!
Prince Armor - Tracy...
Detective Tracer - This is why I stayed a detective, Shiny. This is why I never took promotions to officer. To keep my fuckin' nose out of the dirty business like this, to keep myself on the ground where I could do some actual good out here. ....
Don't gimme that look, Shiny. I'm not going to break silence or go to the press or anything stupid like that. All that'll do is get me put in a cell, and a world without somepony like me to keep fightin for the law is a poorer world. I'm pissed off, not suicidal. We were supposed to be better than this, and we're not and that fuckin' hurts. But I'll get over it. I've gotten over worse.
Prince Armor - The Princess will listen to you if you speak to her, Tracy.
Detective Tracer - She might. She just might. But it's already too fuckin' late to change this one. I dunno. Maybe I'll go up the hill and have a word with her later. Right now, I need to get away for a while and cool the fuck down. Right now, I'd just come across as a fuckin' spaz.
Here's that file. That's all of my case notes, all of the recordings we made for things. I've included my final report on the damages, an some suggestions for dealing with the aftermath. I'll be back on the job in a month. I'm goin to see my family up in Dunland.
Prince Armor - Your Dad wouldn't have put up with this at all, you know?
Detective Tracer - Heh, pops would've been up at the castle screamin' his fuckin head off. Thats why he retired early. But I believe we can make the system better only if we keep workin on it. ....
You take care of your sister, Shiny. You hear me? She's gonna need you around for a while, so don't go running back to that pretty little princess castle of yours until things are settled. Times like this, the only thing we can be sure about is our family.
~~~~~~~~~~
From Princess Twilight Sparkle,
To The Royal Placement Assistance Agency staff and administrators, The Celestial
Courts, and all other interested parties.
My fellow Equestrians,
We are never stronger than when we stand together against tragedy and loss. The events of the New Life Placement Agency have rippled their effects down throughout our entire society. The victims of these fiendish acts have been harmed so irrevocably that our only hope to find reconciliation is to band together and find a way to give them as much of their lives back as we can.
To this end, the Royal Council has formed The Royal Placement Assistance Agency . A new initiative to provide the victims of magical contamination, corruption and inborn defects a way to find a happier and more secure place within Equestrian society. This Agency will seek to assist in providing employment assistance, long-term treatment and secure living quarters and means to those who have been irrevocably affected by powers beyond their control.
This initiative will also provide the first national care assistance to those suffering from Unsolvable Genetic Defects, such as Brittle Horn Disease, Icarus Syndrome, and Social Inadaptate Disorders. New facilities and local liaisons will be provided to ensure these individuals can live healthy and full lives regardless of previous societal prejudices or preconceptions. From the darkness of the New Life Agency, we shall bring the light of hope to countless ponies across Equestria.
The road ahead of us will be long. There are so many who have suffered horribly, and it will be difficult to find the proper solutions so that they are not denied their right to freedom and happiness and yet pose no consequence to others. But we will find our way, as we always have before: Together.
~~~~Canterlot Castle~~~~
"What do you think?"
Princess Celestia examined her document, short though it was, for several long minutes. Twilight was too exhausted to squirm, so she simply sat and waited, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hooves and hoping that sleep was not too far into her future. "This will do very nicely, Twilight. Well written." Celestia smiled brightly at her, and that always raised her spirits a bit.
"What are we going to do about Rarity?" Twilight asked of her, taking the scroll and hoofing it off to be duplicated by unicorn mages who were somehow awake at this ungodly hour. "She's slipped past the very best wards and defenses we could possibly put around her home. I don't think a way exists to contain her without physical guards every fifteen feet, and even that might not be enough."
Celestia sighed softly. "I am working on a few possible solutions, but so far she has apparently done no actual harm to those she's encountered. I've had Prince Blueblood thoroughly raked over by our very finest physicians, and they indicate no sign of magical compulsion. It seems Rarity is simply capable of convincing a given pony to let go of their restraint, and then simply letting them do as they please to her... or with her, as the case was with Blueblood."
Twilight winced away at that. The very idea of some strange pony doing those things to Rarity was... Ugh. She shivered. She'd have to get used to it, but that didn't mean it would be easy. "Maybe we can start up a group of volunteers? We can keep her inside and well supplied with new adventures, and that way we can keep her from doing anything... Illegal." Like perhaps going into a teenagers room or something ridiculous like that. Twilight genuinely didn't want to contemplate the possible consequences of THAT.
Celestia nodded. "We'll put the question to the Placement Board as soon as we've gotten the administration settled in. We found a solution for Daisybloom, we can find one for Rarity. I promise." She shuffled some papers and shook her head. "Fluttershy will need to be left in Discord's care. Yet in some odd way, I am happy things ended up this way."
Twilight stared at her, and Princess Celestia smiled faintly. "Did you not see the look on his face when he held her, Twilight? We have found, perhaps at long last, the one thing that shall keep Discord on the straight and narrow for good. They will balance one another out in a way neither could possibly have done before, Twilight." She set her papers down and gently took Twilight's shoulders, hugging her slightly. "And so long as they have one another, they will find a way through. I am certain of it."
Maybe she was right. "But who's going to help me find a way through, Princess?" The words felt miserable as they fell out of her mouth, but what else could she say? She was exhausted from trying to maintain a happy veneer through the proceedings. And now she had no work to grasp onto, nothing to keep her busy. What would become of her friendship to them? What would become of her friendship to all the rest of her friends?
Celestia gently embraced her, and she felt the tears and sobs come without much fanfare. "We will find a way, Twilight." Celestia murmured softly, gently nuzzling her cheek to hers. "We always do, somehow."
~~~~~~~~~~~
Over the next decade, I would spend my time following and reporting on the stories of those who had been a part of The Case of the Century. Over those ten years, a full seventy percent of the victims would eventually come forward and ask the Royal Placement Assistance Agency for help in dealing with the effects of their conditions. Many of those stories I have already recounted in this book, and many others you can find in my personal files. Some of those stories weren't fit for public printing, but I recorded them anyway.
As I sit here now on the edge of my retirement, I find myself musing over those many different tales. Some sexual, some tragic, some simply strange. The New Life Placement Agency brought out both the best in us and the worst in us as ponies, and in a strange way, without them we might never have changed for the better as a society. Sometimes, tragedies must occur for the world to become stronger for them.
But for now, this is the end of the story. While the ultimate fate of Fizzy Pop's alchemical experimentation or the story of Rarity The Demoness or Fluttershy the Spirit of Kindness have yet to be fully told, they are stories not meant to be told by me. Neither are the full tales of some of the victims of the NLPA. Someone else will tell them, someday. When the wounds are not so freshly scabbed, or the circumstances not so bizarre. Somepony else who was closer to those stories than I was will recount them, and the world will become the stronger for it.
As to Lady Elegant and Quill Tip... Well, I did manage to finally get an interview with both of them. It took me a long time to find them, to dig them out of the hole that they were buried into. But... The world isn't ready for those stories either. Elegant in particular had changed a lot from the first time I'd seen her, and I must be suspicious about the lense through which she now views her reasoning.
For now, I close on these final thoughts. So often, we are at the mercies of our fantasies. At the mercy of the worlds and scenarios we desperately would wish ourselves to be in, not understanding the bad that must always come with the good. We often seek to satiate our own desires without care for the suffering that others might undergo as a result of those desires. It is a lesson we often need to remember, that when we fantasize about things that would be a dream for us... they may very well be a nightmare for others.
- Double Scoop, Final notes |
Homeless Sunset Shimmer | pre | "Well, how about you start with the beginning?" He says with a chuckle.
You stop walking and he turns to you, now looking slightly worried.
You gulp and look at him nervously. "...You really want to know the truth, Anon?" He stays silent, but his eyes stay on you.
You take his hands in yours and sound as serious as you can.
Here we go.
"I'm from a... faraway land. A place called Equestria..." He just stares at you. "In this land of Equestria, every resident is a... talking pony. And these ponies go about their day doing things like you humans do here."
His mouth opens a bit as he searches for what to say. He stays quiet for a few long moments.
"Okaaay..." He says slowly. "Um... What, uh... What kind of things are different in Equestria other than everyone being a pony?"
You're so nervous. You're expecting him to just walk away any moment now.
You clear your throat. "Well, we have three types of ponies. We have the earth ponies, the unicorns, and the pegasi. I'm actually a unicorn, so that meant I could use magic."
His eyebrows shoot up. "And what kind of things are used with magic?"
"Oh, we use magic for just about everything..." You say. "Our ruler, Princess Celestia, uses magic to raise and lower the sun and moon every single day."
"My goodness! She sounds very magical!" He exclaims.
You nod and look down to the ground again. Saying that out loud sounded so ridiculous. It makes a goofy little smile start to slowly creep onto your face.
You look back at Anon, who's smiling wide at you before he starts laughing hard. It doesn't sound like he's mocking you though.
"There is a little child inside of you, Sunset Shimmer, and I love it!" He says happily.
You give a little laugh with him. "I know. The doctors say if it's removed, I'll die."
Anon laughs even louder at that. "Well then! It's probably a good idea to keep it around! I would just hate it if something bad happened to you."
That makes you feel special.
You both start walking again, side-by-side. "Awe, really?"
"Oh, of course! I wouldn't joke about something like that..." He puts his arm around you and pulls you both close together in a half-hug. "...I like you too much."
You feel your face get hot and you smile. Anon's being way too sweet to you.
You wrap your arm around his waist and half-hug him back. "I like you too, Anon." ---
You are Anon again.
This girl... This absolutely adorable girl...
She is just melting your heart right now. Its apparent that she's starting to feel comfortable enough to open up a bit, even if it is a small amount. That story about her pony world was so cute.
You'll get to know her a bit more later. Building trust takes time in some cases.
The rest of the walk, you just talked about other silly stuff. You had asked her what her favorite movies were, but she said she hadn't gotten around to seeing many movies lately. You asked her if she'd be interested in seeing one today after your shopping got done, and she said she didn't mind.
So you, being the closet nerd you are, decided to show your power level just a little bit and suggested Guardians of the Galaxy. She didn't seem overly thrilled about that one, mostly because she hadn't seen any superhero movies before. At all. It's like she didn't even know who they were.
Shock and awe is what you felt.
So you tried to recap the gist of what happened so far in the MCU without sounding like too much of a loser. With her imagination full of magic ponies, it shouldn't be too difficult. You talk all the way to IHOP.
"...So, this guys, Thanos, wants to collect these all-powerful rocks and destroy the universe?" She asks.
"Half of the universe, but yes. Because he thinks there are not enough resources in the universe to feed everyone." You reply.
She thinks to herself for a moment. "That makes no sense. Why doesn't he just use them to create infinite resources for everyone? They're called 'Infinity' Stones, right?"
You just laugh and shrug. "Honestly, I have no idea. I thought of that too. We need a token bad guy though, so for the sake of the story, we can allow it."
She chuckles and rolls her eyes. "I get that."
You smile and look ahead at the restaurant. You've arrived. You open the doors and step inside with Sunset.
The lady behind the counter greets you and sits you both down at a nearby table.
You grab your menu and start looking at it, trying to decide what you want. You're looking at the pancakes section when a loud rumbling from across the table interrupts your train of thought. You look past your menu and see a very red, very embarrassed Sunset, looking down at her stomach with wide eyes.
She looks up at you before giving an embarrassed grin and hides her face behind her menu.
You smile at her. "Don't worry. I didn't hear a thing."
"...Thanks." She doesn't come out from behind her menu. Poor thing.
You look back at your menu, pondering the culinary options. "Any idea what you're in the mood for?"
She hums for a few seconds. "I'm not sure... Everything looks so good."
"Well, don't you worry about quantity." You say. "If you want it, you've got it, and you can have as much as you want. It's on me."
She stays quiet for a second longer, still pondering. "I'll think of something..."
A minute or two goes by when the waitress comes to your table. "How are you two doing today?"
You smile at the waitress. "We're just peachy! Thanks for asking!"
She smiles back and takes a pen out of her apron. "What can I get started for you two?"
Sunset points out something on the menu to her. "These 'endless pancakes' you've got here. When you say 'endless', do you mean 'without end', or do you mean 'about 20 or so'?"
You and the waitress chuckle at her question. "We mean endless. If you want 'em, you got 'em."
Sunset slams her menu down on the table, staring at her with pinpricks for eyes. "I... want... them..."
She laughs again and writes it down. "Got an appetite today, huh?"
You look up at the waitress. "Ma'am, you have no idea..."
She writes down your orders and takes off.
Sunset's starting to look a little more crazed with food being so close. She isn't twitching, but she's probably on the verge.
A few minutes later, the waitress brings back your food. You had just ordered some scrambled eggs and some sausage. Sunsets eyes turn into diamonds as the big plate of pancakes is set in front of her.
She gets an evil grin as she grabs a knife and fork.
"Game... on..." She growls before digging in. ---
20 minutes later, you are at a loss for words.
You just stare at Sunset as she mercilessly finishes her 7th round of endless pancakes. One round is five pancakes. She's inhaled 35 pancakes in 20 minutes. You've never seen anything like it before in your life. It's like she's got the appetite of a horse.
The waitress, now just as stunned as you are, brings her another plate, and she gets to work.
Other people in the restaurant have gathered around to watch. A few teenage skanks are taking selfies with her in the background. You're afraid you're gonna end up on the news or some shit.
Another waitress comes along with the 9th round of pancakes. Then the unimaginable happens as it's set on the table: Sunset stops eating for a moment.
"Here's number 9!" She announces loudly.
People in the restaurant cheer and start to chant.
She looks over at you. "We're gonna go for 10!"
You don't know how to reply, so you just give a nervous laugh. You don't feel good about this at all. No way in hell is she still hungry at this point. She's trying to prove something now.
Just as she starts on the new plate, you notice some movement in the corner of your eye. The manager has stepped out of his office and is looking over at your table. He is extremely large in stature, and he looks angry.
People are starting to chant even louder. She's totally fixed on her task. This isn't good. She could get really sick and in tons of trouble.
"Sunset."
She isn't listening to you.
The manager begins walking over to you. If looks could kill, then you'd be dead right now.
"Sunset. Stop."
She manages a sharp, yet muffled roar at you before continuing. "No!"
You're taken back a little. She sounded fierce. Angry, even. That's unexpected.
Your shock is cut short when a pair of huge hairy hands slam on the table, scaring the hell out of you.
"Alright, you two. You've had your fun, now it's time for you to leave." The manager says.
Sunset swallows her mouthful of pancakes and slams her hands on the table also, pointing her sticky finger at him. "I don't think so, asswipe!"
...What the hell is going on with her?! ---
5 seconds later, and Sunset are flying out the door of the IHOP. Literally, you both are simultaneously flying through the air. It was apparent that the 6'8", 280 lbs manager lifts in his spare time.
You land on your face in the grass beside Sunset.
"If you ever set foot in here again, I'm going to report you little shits for trespassing!" The behemoth manager shouts.
The door to the restaurant slams behind you hard.
You groan and get to your hands and knees. Holy hell, do you hurt.
Looking over to Sunset, you see her holding her stomach and groaning. "Oooohh... Anon, I don't feel good..."
No shit. She just started a pancake shortage throughout the world.
"I think... I think I'm gonna puke..." She moans.
You groan and sit up, rolling her over on her back and setting her head on your knees. "Here. Just lay still and take deep breaths."
She winces as she slowly breathes in and out. You stay there like that for a few minutes until her breathing gets smoother. She's still giving a few light groans, so you keep her there on her back.
"Feeling better?" You ask.
She barely opens her eyes up at you and nods. "Y- Yeah... A little..."
"Good. Just stay there for a bit."
You don't smile at her this time. You're a little disappointed in her, to say the least. She just got you kicked out of one of your favorite restaurants in town.
"Sunset?" She just breathes for a moment before looking up at you, pain present in her eyes. "You wanna explain your behavior in there for me, please?" ---
You are now Sunset, and damn it, you messed up again.
This is exactly the same thing that happened in Canterlot. You let your pride and arrogance get the better of you. Now you look like a big, fat jerk.
You probably are big and fat now too. You sure feel like it.
Any sign of happiness from Anon's face is gone. "Well?" He demands.
Oh no...
You take another breath. "Are... Are you mad?"
"A little bit, yeah." He replies, almost immediately.
Of course he's mad, stupid. Why wouldn't he be?
You whimper again. "I'm so sorry, Anon... I-I don't know what came over me..."
Anon exhales and shuts his eyes.
Shit.
"I'm sorry, Anon." You say again.
He stays silent for a few moments.
He takes a deep breath and exhales. "It's okay..."
You both just stay silent for a few minutes, before Anon takes off his jacket and lifts your head up. He puts it underneath you and lays you back down on the grass again.
"Wait here. I'll be right back." He says.
You nod as he takes out his wallet and walks back toward the entrance to IHOP. You see him wave to whoever's inside, holding some cash in his hand.
The manager comes back out and they exchange a few words before taking the money in Anon's hand. You can't hear much from here. The only thing you could make out is Anon saying "I'm sorry".
They say more things to one another before parting ways.
Anon comes walking back to you. "Feeling any better?"
You nod slowly. "Kinda..."
He sighs and stands there a moment longer. "Can you walk?" ---
You're now in Anon's arms and he's carrying you down the sidewalk back toward his apartment. You didn't trust yourself not to puke or anything on your feet.
You felt bad too. And not just physically. You're pretty sure you hurt Anon too, so you're also feeling guilty.
You rest your head against his chest as he carries you home. The journey wasn't eventful or exciting this time. Not like last time.
You look up at him. He's still not happy.
Figures...
Within a few minutes, you're heading up the stairs leading to the apartment. He sets you down on your feet for a moment to unlock and open the door. You slowly shuffle inside.
"Head to bed and lay down." He says. "Let those pancakes digest for a bit."
You nod slowly. "Okay..."
You walk into Anon's room and kick your shoes off. Climbing into his bed, you pull up the covers and snuggle under them.
You feel awful in more ways than one. Your stomach hurts, you're pretty sure Anon's feelings are hurt, and you're guilty. You promised yourself this morning that you were going to change, Sunset. What's the matter with you?
Your stomach is too sore to deal with this right now. You're just going to go back to sleep right now. Hopefully, you can come up with a solution when you wake up.
Taking a deep breath, you shut your eyes and slowly drift off to sleep. ---
You are Anon again, and boy, are you confused.
You don't know what was up with Sunset, but you didn't like it one bit. The manager thanked you for paying for all the food Sunset ate, but he still didn't want you to come back for a while. It was a bad image for his place. Which, you understand. You're not happy about that, but you understand.
Either way, you plan on having a serious talk with Sunset when she wakes up from her nap. As disappointed as you are with her behavior earlier, you still can't get over how pretty she is.
You could tell she was truly sorry for what she did when you carried her home. Even though she didn't say much, she just had that look in her eye. You've already decided that you're going to forgive her, you just want to know her motive behind her actions.
It can wait though.
You smile as you watch her sleep soundly in your bed. She looks so peaceful.
You quietly step toward her and lean over her. Brushing a little hair away, you softly kiss her forehead. "Sleep tight, Sunny..."
You smile and step out of the room, quietly shutting your door behind you. ---
Sunset quietly looked toward the door after you left. She touches her forehead where you kissed her just seconds earlier and smiled.
"Thank you, Anon."
Her cheeks bright red, she turns away and falls back to sleep. |
Homeless Sunset Shimmer | Confessions and Commitments | You're sitting down on your couch, just pondering to yourself about the days events.
The TV is on, but you're not paying attention to anything that's happening. Family Guy is on, so it's not like you're missing anything funny or worth watching.
You're feeling down about this whole thing that happened today with Sunset. You just don't know what to think. You sincerely hope it was just a spur of the moment where Sunset just kind of lost it for no real reason. She was probably just so glad to finally get food in her after so long that she just let herself keep going and lost control.
Understandable, but that doesn't make it okay.
She really made you feel off, which, in turn, made you feel kind of down. The fact that you almost burned down your kitchen earlier only exacerbated those feelings. You hate feeling like this. You don't want to do anything at all right now.
Your thoughts are cut short when you hear your door creak open. Looking up, you see Sunset rubbing her eyes as she walks out.
She gives you a little smile, her cheeks a rosy color as she does so.
"Hi Anon." She says.
You give her a fake grin. "Hey Sunny... Sleep well?"
She nods at you, her tiny grin still on her face.
"Good... Can we talk for a bit, please?" You ask.
Her smile fades and she nods again. You pat the couch beside you and scoot over, turning off the TV. She slowly sits down beside you, looking like she's ready for a lecture.
You ease her fears right off the bat. "Sunset, I'm not mad. Don't worry."
She looks up at you, a little surprised. "You're not?"
You shake your head at her. "I was at first, a little. I'm not anymore though. In case you're thinking that I am mad, or if I'm going to kick you out, don't worry. Neither of those things are going to happen."
She looks back down for a moment and exhales, clearly feeling much better.
"I only want to know your reason behind acting that way." You say. "Not to criticize or scold you at all, but so I can understand."
She doesn't answer right away. She just continues to stare at the ground. Its okay. You've got time. She shuts her eyes and puts her head in one hand.
You reach over and rub her back softly. "Take all the time you need to answer."
She just stays there, slightly leaning toward you as you rub her back.
She stays quiet for a few minutes before finally speaking up. "I'm not sure exactly... I just... lost control."
You stay silent for a moment. "Has this been an issue before?"
She nods. "When I was younger, I was always like that. I was just a mean, selfish little bratty girl who wanted to be a princess."
You listen to her intently, and remain silent.
"I was spoiled and I felt like I deserved to be a princess, even though I hadn't done any real work to deserve any kind of special treatment... Eventually my teach-" She cuts herself off and pauses for a moment, clearing her throat. "Erm... My parents... kicked me out of the house. So I, uh, I stayed with this other girl for a while..."
You keep rubbing her back softly.
"Pretty soon though, I ended up on the streets. Homeless... They kicked me out too... I didn't have a job or anywhere else to go, so I... I tried my hand at petty theft to get money for a while...
"Sunset..." You stop rubbing her back, feeling a little appalled.
She gets a little defensive. "Look, I know! I was stupid and selfish. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and there was no way I was going to 'stoop low enough to get a job', so I figured, why not?"
You take a deep breath and shut your eyes.
"Like I said, I was a spoiled little brat back then..." She says.
Obviously...
She crosses her legs on your couch and continues to pout sadly. "If it makes you feel better, I only did it once..."
It doesn't, but you're glad she isn't a "serial thief" in hiding.
She continues. "I stole a few hundred dollars from a small store and lived on the streets... I would travel from place-to-place, looking for someone to give me what I thought I deserved just by existing... It never worked and eventually, I ended up in this town..." Her countenance becomes dark and she closes her eyes. "...Which is where stuff got bad..."
She stays silent for another long moment. She's being extremely vague, which means she has secrets she does not want to divulge right now.
"I'm not going to judge. I promise." You say.
She remains silent. She doesn't seem convinced right away.
"I'm glad that you trust me enough to share all this with me..." You tell her. "It makes me feel special."
You reach over and grab her hand in yours. She looks down at it and gives a little squeeze back.
"When, uh, when I got here, lots of the others living on this street took an interest in me almost immediately... I admit, it felt good being the center of attention at first, but pretty soon I found out why..." Her grip on your hand slowly begins to tighten. "Turns out, I was the only homeless girl lots of those guys had probably seen in a while... I was definitely the youngest and smallest they'd seen too... Lots of those guys have drug problems and were really old and gross... Eventually, they got me into a corner one day..."
You know what this is leading up to, but you don't want it to lead up to it...
She slowly curls herself into a ball on your couch, not making any eye contact with you. "There was three of them... All of them were old and disgusting old men... They tried... They almost..."
She doesn't say the word, but you know exactly what she's getting at.
Your eyes are glued to her. This poor girl.
"D... Did they...?" You ask softly.
She shook her head. "No... I never gave them a chance."
A huge sense of relief washes over you.
"Still, they got close though..." She says. "I started pushing and yelling and kicking as hard as I could. I even bit one of them a few times..."
Good. No such thing as fighting dirty in a situation like that.
"But they didn't appreciate me fighting back..." She continues. "Pretty soon, their... uh, lust I guess, turned into frustration, and they started to... beat me..."
You can just imagine a group of three scraggly old guys punching and kicking a girl under a bridge somewhere for defending herself. It makes your blood boil.
She continues. "I shielded myself as best I could with my arms and legs... One of them got me just under my eye... Pretty soon though, they were too tired to try and rape me and so I took off running as best I could... One of them grabbed me by my arm and tried to pull me back, but he just had me by my coat. So I took it off and ran down the road as fast as I could... Eventually, I ended up on this street... I stayed hidden in that dumpster for days, eating rotten food scraps and crying a lot..."
She shuts her eyes and a single tear falls down her cheek.
"I spent those days hiding and thinking to myself about everything... I had a chance to think my life over and really look at what I had done to everyp-... everybody I've ever known... I felt incredibly guilty and wanted to just do everything over again..." She looks up at you, tears brimming in her eyes. "That's where you showed up, Anon..."
You watch her slowly sit up and leans towards you, not taking her eyes off of yours for a second.
"I was the problem... I was in the wrong... I acted like a horrible person... I finally saw that, and I was begging, pleading, praying for a second chance..." She places her hand on your shoulder and pulls herself closer to you, a grateful smile creeping to her face. "...And you gave it to me."
Your heart pumps fast and you feel your face get hot.
You gulp once. "Sunset... I j-"
"Shhh..." She places her finger on your mouth, shutting you up before taking it away.
Both your eyes automatically close as your lips eventually meet each others. Her hand moves from your shoulder to the back of your head and holds you there. Your hands find their way down either side of her body until they reach her waist.
You pull her towards you and lie back with her on top of you as the kiss continues. You move one hand up to stroke her beautiful hair as both of your breathing intensifies. Her tongue make its way into your mouth some as she lays on top of you. You return the feeling by feeling every part of it with yours, eventually entering her mouth.
You run along the front of her teeth, feeling every one before retreating into your own mouth. In turn, her tongue moves deeper into your mouth. You close your jaw on her tongue very gently, grazing it a bit before opening up again. Her tongue retreats back a bit to lick yours once more before kissing you again.
The kiss ends and you both slowly look at each other. Her cheeks are bright red and she looks at you with half-lidded eyes.
She smiles at you and leans forward to hug you gently, yet firmly. "You saved me, Anonymous... And I can't thank you enough..."
You hug her back and smile. "You're welcome, Sunset Shimmer."
You kiss her cheek and shut your eyes, enjoying each others' embrace. You stay still for a few moments before she turns her head to adjust on your chest. She's asleep again.
You smile and kiss her nose.
Sleep finds you also and you drift off with her in your arms. ---
You take in a breath as you wake up a couple hours later. You reach up to rub your eyes and let out a yawn. Your stirring causes Sunset to wake up also.
She gives a yawn before opening her eyes and looking up at you. You both smile at each other.
"Hi." She whispers.
"Hey." You reply.
You lean forward and kiss each other for a moment. Man, her lips feel nice.
You separate and she sets her chin on your chest, staring at you with a smile. "How was your nap?"
You grin back at her. "Oh, it was nice. Probably one of the best naps I've had in a while."
She gives her cute little giggle that makes you almost have a heart attack. "That's good to hear."
You smile wider at her. "How was yours?"
She shrugs. "Same deal here. Can't complain too much."
You chuckle and lean forward to boop her nose with yours. "Fantastic."
She gives another small giggle and kisses you real quick. "So... I guess we're a thing now, right?"
You give a sarcastic shrug before smiling at her. "Meh. Sure. Why not?"
She smiles and makes this adorable squeaking sound that can only be described as "squee" before jumping up and kissing you hard. "Yay!"
You laugh and kiss each other playfully on your couch for a little bit before you both stand up.
Sunset walks over to the window and gasps. "Anon! Anon, look!"
You walk over to the window and stand next to her, smiling. "Well look at that..."
"I know!" She grabs you in a hug and keeps looking outside. "I love snow."
You hug her back and the two of you stand there, watching the snow fall. It's early November, so its a little soon this year, but you don't mind. You love the snow too.
You notice it was starting to get dark outside. It's already about 4pm. Other than going to IHOP, you and Sunset had done nothing all day today.
You got to spend all day together doing nothing. You aren't complaining one bit.
As you're thinking back over the past 24 hours, you remember something you had told to her the night before.
You turn to her. "In the mood for some hot chocolate?"
Her eyes light up and she turns to you with a smile. "Oooh! That would be great!"
You kiss her once more and head into your burnt kitchen. You open a few blackened cupboards and find two mugs.
"But, uh, don't bother making me any food." She says sheepishly. "I'm not hungry."
That makes you laugh. "Shit, I sure hope not!"
As you're filling the mugs up with water, you feel her arms wrap around your waist from behind. "Sorry again about that."
You grab one of her hands and give it a squeeze. "Its okay, Sunny. I forgive you. Don't you worry about it."
She hugs you tight once more before walking back into the living room. "Can we put in a movie or watch TV together or something?"
"Of course." You reply. "Turn on whatever you're in the mood for."
She walks out of the kitchen and you put the mugs in the microwave. No working stove to properly make hot cocoa. Once they're warmed up, you grab the mix and pour them in the mugs, stirring them up.
As you walk into the living room, you see Sunset is crouched over, looking in your movie case that chuck-full of DVDs.
"Find anything good?" You set the mugs on the coffee table and walk over to her side.
"Maaaybe..." She looks on the bottom shelf and pulls one out. "Oh, this one has a dog on it!"
You look at the title and quickly snatch it from her hands. "Oh, no. No way are you going to see the movie Cujo."
She cocks her head. "Why not?"
"Because its about this dog who gets rabies and he goes around killing all these people."
She covers her mouth with her hands. "Oh, that sounds horrible!"
You shrug. "Yeah, well, that's Stephen King for you."
You set it back on the shelf and she keeps looking. "Well then, what do you think we should watch?" She asks.
You think for a moment. "Well, The Princess Bride is always a good one."
She takes it off the shelf and looks at it. "Sounds like a kissing movie, but alright."
You cock an eyebrow as you take it from her. "Okay, first of all, this movie is so good because it's hilarious, not because its 'kissy'. Second of all, what's wrong with kissing? You don't seem to mind kissing me."
She giggles and plops on the couch, crossing her legs in the process like an excited kid. "Well, of course kissing you is awesome! It's just not as fun watching other people kiss."
You think that over for a moment before nodding. "Fair enough. Kissing IS more fun than watching other people kiss."
You pop the movie in and sit back on the couch next to Sunset. You both cuddle up together nice and warm and push play.
She looks up at you. "Could you get us a blanket to cuddle under or something? I'm kinda cold."
You grin at her before answering. "As you wish." ---
You both sat on the couch watching movies, drinking cocoa, laughing and cuddling together all night. Neither of you were tired so you stayed there for hours. It was so much fun. Being with her made it even better.
Eventually, 2AM rolled around, and that's when you both got tired.
You turn off the TV and sit up and stretch. "Welp... Time for bed."
She gives you a tired smile followed by a hug. You then walk her to your bed and she crawls under the covers.
"Goodnight, Sunny."
You give her another kiss and try to walk out, but she doesn't let go of your hand.
"Anon?" You turn back to her. "D-Do you want to sleep in here? With me?"
You smile at her and approach her side. "Sure. I'd love to."
She smiles and scoots over. You take off your shoes and get under the covers with her. It feels nice to be back in your own bed.
You lay back against the pillow and Sunset cuddles up next to you. You wrap your arm around her in a hug and she nuzzles into your chest.
"Goodnight, Nonny." She says.
If your heart wasn't warm before, it sure as hell is now.
You kiss her head with a smile and stroke her hair. "Goodnight, Sunny."
You shut your eyes and quickly fall asleep with her in your arms. |
Homeless Sunset Shimmer | Destiny, or Fate? | You take a deep breath as you walk up the concrete stairs leading to your apartment. The smell of the pizza in your hands was heavenly, and you're glad you're finally home. Work was crazy busy tonight, and you had to stay a few minutes late, but it always gets this busy around this time of year.
The holidays are comin' to town, and they're bringing turkey, Santa Claus, and huge sales on presents. Coming soon, very soon, to a retail store near you.
You aren't complaining though. Life is good, you make enough to meet your needs, and you've got a roof over your head.
You pop your neck and unlock the door to your apartment.
"HOOO boy, what a day!" Stepping inside, you see your adorable, formerly homeless girlfriend, Sunset Shimmer, sitting on the couch watching tv.
She turns to you and smiles. "Anon! You're home!"
"Yes! And I come bearing gifts!" You walk over to the coffee table and set the pizza down.
You bend down to give her a kiss.
"Rough day, huh?" She asks with a smile.
You groan and plop on the couch next to her. "Oh, you have no idea..."
You work in a warehouse shipping out miscellaneous stuff, varying from toys to office supplies and furniture to different stores all over the country. It's like a cheap knockoff of Amazon. They're finally doing their end-of-year sales, and so orders for stuff were coming in from left to right.
You give a quick recap of the day as she massages your shoulders. Her fingers are like magic on your trapezius muscles.
"Oh Anon, I'm sorry." She says.
"Eh, it's okay. It's worth it." You reply. "It's decent pay, a good workout, and I feel accomplished. Plus, it makes the time I spend with you even more valuable."
She blushes and gives a little giggle. "Oh now you're just saying things..."
"Only because it's true!" You smirk at her and give her another quick kiss.
You stand up and stretch and walk into your kitchen. It's been cleaned up from the fire incident a couple weeks ago, but lots of your stuff is still broken. You've been getting take-out for the past couple of days. Tonight was Monday, so you got pizza.
You look in the fridge for something to drink. "So what did you do today while I was gone?" You ask.
"Well, I watched Batman Begins and I'm partway through The Dark Knight." She replies from the living room.
You shut the door with a couple of sodas in your hands and peek around the corner, feigning a look of offense. "Without... Me?"
She shrugs at you. "I'm sorry, but you got me all excited about superheroes! It looked good!"
"And it is good! Batman is the best." You walk back over to her and sit on the couch next to her.
"How about we finish the rest of this one, then we watch the third one all the way through together?" She asks.
You put your finger up to your chin, pretending to think about it. "Alright, you've got a deal. Forgiven!"
"Yay!" She hugs you excitedly.
"Now..." You grab the remote and look her in the eyes. "...Let's put a smile on that face."
You do your best Joker impression as you say it.
She just cocks her head at you. "What?" ...
"Oh, you haven't got to that part yet... Never mind!"
You snuggle together on the couch and press play. ---
"If I take off that mask, will you die?" You ask.
"It would be very painful... For you." Sunset replies.
The Batman marathon is over, and now, you're both sitting on the couch doing your best Bane impression to each other. She's cupping her hands over her mouth while she does it, and it sounds good. She even got the wheezy breathing down.
It's impressive. You might lose this contest.
She giggles and puts her hands down. "Okay, now you!"
"Okay!" You clear your throat and cup your mouth. "Speak of the devil... And he shall appear."
It sucked.
She laughs and sets her drink on the table. Suddenly, the drink falls to the ground and spills on the ground, causing her to give a little shriek.
Golden opportunity.
"Ah yes! I was wondering what would break first!" You say in your Bane voice.
She's torn between wanting to beg for forgiveness and laughing harder. "Anon, I'm sorry! I'll clean it up!"
"No! Your punishment must be more severe!" You reach forward and poke her sides.
"No! NoaaaAAAHAHAHAHA!!!" She squirms wildly and laughs as you tickle her.
You laugh with her as she tries to fight you, but you hold her down. You ease up after a little bit, and she gets her arms out of your grasp.
Then, she reaches down and starts tickling you! You let out a Ron Swanson giggle as you both squirm around, tickling the hell out of each other. You're both laughing and wrestling with each other to try and out tickle the other.
After a couple of minutes of fun tickling, you both stop. You lay on the couch with Sunset on you. Both of your sides hurt and you're both out of breath.
She looks into your eyes with that adorable smile of hers and boops your nose with hers. She's so silly.
You give her a quick peck and she giggles.
She sits up and stretches. "Thanks for watching Batman with me."
"Thanks for letting me watch Batman with you." You reply.
She walks into the kitchen. It's getting late, so you sit up and start gathering the leftover food up. Sunset comes back with a paper towel and cleans up her spilled beverage off the carpet. You take them from her and throw them away.
"I'm gonna take a shower then go to bed." She says.
You nod. "Alright. I might stay up a bit."
She smiles and gives you a hug, followed by a quick kiss before she goes into the bathroom.
You turn on your Switch and scroll through your collection of games until you reach Wind Waker. It loads up and you relax on the couch again. You love watching movies with Sunset after a hard days work, but now she's occupied. Which means it's 'you' time for a little bit now.
This is your favorite Zelda game. ---
You are Sunset Shimmer.
And you're so very happy.
You're living in a decent apartment with one of the nicest guys, if not the nicest guy, you've ever met.
Anon is a wonderful boyfriend, and an even more wonderful person. He willingly took you in, fed you, gave you a place to sleep, and clothed you. Even when he had almost nothing himself. You just couldn't be more grateful for his selflessness.
You yawn as you step out of the shower. It's been a long, but good day.
You've been getting caught up on a few popular things that Anon likes. Ever since you arrived in this world, you never had the chance to get into pop culture or fun stuff before. It was just about surviving another day. Thankfully, those days are over now.
You grab a towel and dry yourself off. You wonder if Anon is still awake.
Sure, he said he would be, but you took a really long shower. It was almost an hour. You took showers for granted back in Equestria, but here, now, you really take the time to enjoy them.
Putting on your oversized t-shirt, you step out into the living room. As you thought, the place is dark.
You walk into the bedroom to find Anon sound asleep. You smile and get under the covers with him. He wakes up for a moment and shifts as he lifts up his arms so you can cuddle up close to him.
You take a deep breath and smile. You're so glad Anon came into your life. You were so close to giving up, so close to the end, you were sure of it.
Until he came along.
Your loverboy. ...
Love... ...
Is this what love is? Do you love Anon?
You look up to his face in the dark, thinking about it. You've put your trust in him with your life, and he hasn't betrayed that trust. Not even once. He's given you everything he could to make sure you were safe and looked after.
You just felt so special when he was around. The way he looks at you, talks, laughs, it all just makes any cares in your head disappear completely.
Thinking about it makes your eyes tear up and you smile.
You rest your head on his chest and close your eyes, whispering to him. "I love you, Anonymous..."
You smile and let yourself drift off to sleep in his embrace. ---
You stir as you slowly wake up. Opening your eyes, the room is still dark, just as you left it when you went to sleep.
Something was wrong though.
As your brain slowly wakes up, a smell hits your nose. Smoke.
You sit up and hit a cloud of smoke with your face. It surprises you.
You cough and turn to Anon, who's still asleep. "Anon."
He doesn't respond.
You shake him and try to wake him up. "Anon, wake up. Something's wrong."
He groans and yawns. "Mmmfff.... What... What's wrong?" Taking a tired deep breath, he freezes as the smell hits his nose as well. "What is that?"
He sits up and swings out of bed, walking to the door. When he opens it, an orange light illuminates the room.
His eyes widen immediately and he runs out the door. "Shit! SHIT SHIT SHIT!" He screams.
"Anon?! What is it?!" You jump out of bed and run after him.
When you leave the room, you see the apartment almost completely engulfed in flames. The kitchen, the living room, almost everything is covered in fire.
Anon is standing there, grabbing his head and looking around at it all, horrified.
You shriek and run up to him. "Anon, what do we do?!" He just stares at the scene in shock. "ANON!"
He turns to you and grabs your shoulders. "Sunset, listen to me! Grab my phone and dial 911! Get your shoes on and get outside as fast as you can! GO NOW!" He commands.
"Okay!" You run back to the bedroom and turn on the light.
You quickly grab Anon's phone and dial 911. Spotting your shoes, you grab them and put them on as fast as you can.
The woman on the phone answers. "911, what is your emergency?"
You frantically bring the phone to your mouth. "HELLO! Hello! Please help! Our apartment is on fire!"
"Okay. Miss, please calm down, and get outside if you can. We'll send the Fire Department there as fast as possible." She says.
"Thank you! Thank you so much! Please hurry!" You shakily finish putting your shoes on and run back outside.
You're on the verge of tears, you're panicking so much. The living room is completely ablaze. The couch, the coffee table, the TV, everything. The kitchen is on fire even more; you can't see anything except fire.
Anon grabs a large blanket from behind the burning couch and looks at you. "Get outside! Hurry! I'll be right behind you!"
Before you can reply, he covers himself with the blanket and runs into the burning kitchen.
"Anon, no!!" You try to stop him, but you're too late.
You look inside the flames, trying to spot him, but the brightness, smoke, and tears flowing from your eyes aren't helping.
"Anon!!! Oh Celestia, please!! Anon! ANOOON!!" You shout.
You stand there, horrified and sobbing as you wait for some kind of sign that he heard you. What was he thinking?! He must be insane!
You're thinking about running in after him. It might be a deathwish, but he has to get out of there! You have to do something!
Before making any movements, he comes bolting out of the inferno. The blanket over his head is completely covered in flames. In one fluid motion, he throws it onto the ground, grabs your wrist, and pulls you toward the door.
You almost trip and fall to the ground, but manage to catch yourself. He charges the front door and slams into it, frantically turning the doorknob and opening it.
He shoves you out the door first before flying out himself. You nearly fall down the stairs and trip over the edge at the bottom to the snow-covered ground. Anon lands right beside you, coughing out of control.
"Anon! Oh Celestia, Anon! Are you okay?!" You shout.
He keeps coughing, but nods. You just look at him as he wheezes for air.
"I'm...*cough cough* I-I'm okay..." He replies.
You pant and sniff, just relieved that he's alright. You look back at the burning apartment building and start crying again. You were inside there just a few seconds ago.
Suddenly, a metallic clanking noise gets your attention. Anon dropped a small black box he was carrying. Is that what he got from the kitchen?
A fire engine siren cuts off your thoughts. Looking to your right, you see red flashing lights approach your location. The fire engine screeches to a stop in front of you and a few firefighters get out and grab their tools.
One of them looks over at you. "Hey! How many people are still inside?!"
Anon wheezes and coughs another time. "No one! It's totally vacant except for us!"
He nods and helps the rest of the firefighters do their thing.
Anon turns and sits down in the snow, facing the burning building. He grabs the black box and stares at it for a long moment.
"Anon?" You ask.
He doesn't reply.
"Anon, what is this?"
You reach out and barely touch the box. It's freezing.
He covers it with his hands and looks down at it. He still doesn't reply. He doesn't even look at you.
You frown and scoot over to him, putting your arm around him and watch the firefighters scramble to extinguish the flames.
Now you're both homeless... ---
You are Anon, and right now, you're at a new low.
You can't believe what's happening right now. Your crappy apartment that you worked so hard to get on your own, all your stuff you paid for with your hard-earned money, its all up in flames now. Everything.
You and Sunset made it out in one piece, thankfully. A part of you wishes you didn't make it out though...
"Anon?"
You blink, snapping yourself out of your trance.
You look over at Sunset, she's looking at you, worried.
"Are you okay?" She asks.
No. Not even a little bit.
You look back toward your apartment and nod slowly. "Y... Yep... 'mfine..."
The flames are out and the firefighters are walking in and out of your front door. Sunset cuddles against you under a blanket. ...
Wait...
"Where... Where did this come from?" You feel the blanket in your hands.
"Uh, one of the firemen gave it to us... Remember?" She asks.
You rub it between your fingers.
"No..."
Damn, you're out of it.
"Hey..." Sunset reaches up and touches your cheek, forcing you to look at her. "...everything will be okay, okay?"
She tries to smile as best she can, but you can tell right off the bat that it's fake.
"I know..." You look down at the box in your hands and rub it. "...I just wish that it didn't have to come to this."
Spinning to the correct numbers on the dial in front, you unlock and open the box. You show it to Sunset, and her eyes go wide when she sees it's contents.
"Oh my gosh..." She breathes.
Inside lay a clear envelope containing $5,000 in cash. |
Homeless Sunset Shimmer | Words Unspoken | The fire had been put out, and the Fire Department was now cleaning up. The chief had said its cause was a faulty wire that had sparked and set your microwave on fire. It was a really old microwave, so it wasn't much of a surprise.
Doesn't make it okay though.
You and Sunset were sitting on the curb. You were clutching the black box in your hands.
When he left, Sunset turned to you. "Anon, where were you keeping all that money?"
"I was storing it in the freezer." You reply.
She doesn't say anything. She just looks at you like you're insane.
"I keep stuff in the freezer I want to keep safe. If you're robbing a house, you don't look in the freezer for valuables." You tell her.
She still looks a bit confused, but she shakes her head, putting what you said behind her. "Where did you get all of it? Did you steal it?"
You shake your head. "No, I didn't steal it. It's a contingency plan I never wanted to use..."
She still looks confused. Looks like it's time to spill your guts.
"My family is kind of, uh... Rich.... Like, millionaires..." You say.
Sunsets eyebrows shoot up and she stares at you. There was a few moments of silence as she tried to process what you said.
"How... How did your family become millionaires?" She asks.
"Well, you know that little plastic part that's at the end of a shoelace? Yeah, my great grandpa invented that." You say.
She blew out a puff of air in stunned surprise. "Then... What in the world are you doing here? Why are you living in a place like this? What happened?"
You stay there, looking at the remains of your apartment. "Nothing happened. I chose to live in a place like this instead."
Sunset leans in slightly, her curiosity piqued.
You clear your throat. "People look at you differently when you have money. You're viewed as something more than human. And at the same time, when a person with that much money often thinks they're more than human, but they act like a complete prick... Not always, of course, but often. You see it almost all the time in Hollywood. They're under the impression that having manners and being decent doesn't apply to them because they have money..."
She looks to her feet as you talk, almost like she's thinking.
You keep on talking. "I didn't want to end up like that. I probably would have, if it wasn't for a great friend that I had."
She looks up at you. "What was his name?"
You smile a little. "Her name is Applejack. She was a great girl. She was like the sister that I never had, but I always wanted."
The crunching of footsteps on snow interrupts you.
The fire chief comes walking up to you two. "Well, we're sorry that this happened. We're in the process of cleaning everything up and working on the legal issues of everything. You got a place to go for the night?"
You look down at the box in your hands. "Yeah, we can rent a room..."
He cocks his head at you. "Son, it's almost Thanksgiving. Don't you have a family to stay with or something?"
You shake your head. "They don't live in town."
He looks to Sunset. "What about you?"
She looks down at the ground. "N- No... I don't have anyone..."
You wrap your arm around her shoulder, giving her a hug. "Not true. She's got me."
She looks up at you and smiles. Really smiles.
The chief grins. "Well, alright. You need a ride?"
Oh yeah, you have no vehicle.
"You wouldn't mind giving us one?" You ask.
"I'll call a cab for you." He replies.
You thank him and he walks away, talking on his radio. Sunset hugs you back and sighs. She's tired. So are you.
You rest your head on hers and stroke her hair. You feel like sleeping right here, but your thoughts and the cold keep you awake.
You're going to have to go back home. The little secluded district of big houses where rich pricks live that you hate. It's a few hundred miles away though, so you'd need to fly there. You've got an emergency $5000 for clothes, food, and a plane ticket back home.
No doubt Sunset had more questions, but you'll answer them tomorrow. ---
You are Sunset.
So many things are going through your head right now. You're stressed, cold, tired, and sad. And confused. Why on earth would Anon choose to live in a place like this when his family has all kinds of money?
Sure, he says he hates rich peoples' attitudes, but there's always something with every situation that people don't like. Surely, this was no exception.
And who was this 'Applejack' that he's so fond of? Not that you're jealous, or anything.
You take a deep breath. All the adrenaline from the fire had worn out, and you're far too tired to ride this train of thought right now. Your eyelids are heavy and your vision blurs. You shut your eyes for a moment while you wait for the cab.
After a minute or two, you're on your back, looking up at Anon... He's in a car... You both are... Interesting.
You close your eyes again and open them a second later to see that you're in a bed. It has a musky smell to it. It almost smells like old people.
You sit up and see Anon sitting on the edge of the bed, on his phone. He looks up at you for a second and continues playing on his phone. No clear sign of happiness is present on his face.
"Mmmnn... When did we get here?" You groggily ask.
"About 30 minutes ago." He replies.
You slept through the whole cab ride here.
You sit up and yawn. "What are you doing?"
"I'm booking us a flight." He says. "We're going to my hometown for a bit."
You pause a moment at that. You've seen those airplane things flying around in the sky before, but you've never ridden in one. The closest thing they have to one of those in Equestria are zeppelins, or hot air balloons. The thought of riding in one of those makes you nervous.
"An airplane, huh?" You say.
He nods, not looking up from his phone. "Yep... Tomorrow at 3... Plenty of time to get some more clothes, some lunch, and a cab."
You take a deep breath and look down at the floor. He sounds like he's lost all the joy he had in him before, and it breaks your heart.
You look back up at him. He turns his phone off and sets his head in his hands. He's really upset about all of this.
You get out of bed and sit next to him. "Anon..."
He doesn't acknowledge you.
You place your hand under his chin and force him to look at you. "Anon, listen to me, okay?"
He stares at you with a somber look on his face.
"I don't know what's going on inside that head of yours, and you don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I don't know if you think you're a failure or something for doing this, but listen when I tell you that you aren't a failure. Everything will be okay."
He scoffs and closes his eyes. "Yeah right... I'm a total failure... My place burned down, the only place I could afford on my own, and I couldn't even do that right... Now, I'm having to rely on someone else for my basic needs... I'm pathetic...."
Okay, that offended you a little.
"Well what about me then? Am I a stupid failure too? Am I pathetic? I've been relying on you for weeks now."
He stayed quiet, but you could see that got him thinking.
You put your hand on his leg. "There's nothing wrong with others helping you out. If I've learned anything since meeting you, it's that everyone needs help sometimes."
He still stays quiet for another moment.
"Well, yeah, but... I just feel like I'm being a moocher asking for help..." He says.
You make him look at you again. "Have I come off as a moocher to you?"
He stares at you silently. "No... No, you haven't..."
You smile some and huff out a small laugh. "Do you think you're the only one who feels good about helping someone just because?"
He doesn't reply.
"Anon, you've helped me get back on my feet. You've given me a second chance at life and I couldn't be more grateful for your kindness and selflessness. I owe you a debt that I won't ever be able to fully repay." You smile at him. "You're worrying about this whole thing way too much. Like I said, everything will be okay. You aren't a failure or a loser or a moocher because you need help from someone else."
You kiss him softly and hold it for a few minutes.
You break it and look in his eyes. "You'll never be a loser or a failure to me..."
He stares back at you. ...
Come on, Sunset. Tell him you love him. He needs to hear it. It will be perfect. ---
Come on, Anon. Tell her you love her.
She's the most wonderful, most beautiful girl you've ever met, and she's just helped you out more than words can define. She's not a burden to you. Never has been, never will be.
You've known you love her for a while now. She deserves to know it too. ---
It's just three little words. Three little words that he needs to hear.
Why are you waiting? Tell him! ---
Come on, Anon. Do it! Do it now! Tell her!
"I... I'm..."
You're so close!
"Th... Thank you, Sunset..." ---
You waited too long in the silence. It's far too awkward to say it now.
You smile at him as best you can. "Y... You're... Welcome..."
Yeah he is... Too bad he heard it from a scared little girl... ---
'Thanks for still liking me even though I'm a huge pussy, Sunset.' You think to yourself.
You return her smile with a fake one and the both of you go in for a hug and hold each other. Your smile vanishes and you rub her hair.
She probably really needed to hear that you love her. She deserves it, after saying everything she did to you... ---
You sit there in sadness as Anon rubs your hair. He probably doesn't feel any better. He doesn't know that he's loved. You should've told him.
He needed to hear that you love him. He deserves it, after everything he's done for you... |
Homeless Sunset Shimmer | ...And Don't Call Me Shirley | You wake up the next morning on the old motel bed with Sunset in your arms.
You gently kiss her forehead. "Good morning, love." You whisper.
You sigh and slowly stand up, hating yourself for not telling her that last night.
Not much to do this morning. You have no spare clothes, so you can't shower. Everything you had was probably burnt to a crisp. Thankfully, there was a Walmart just across the street. You'll go there with Sunset to get supplies.
Sunset shifts positions behind you in bed. She's still asleep, so you decide to head to the lobby for something hot. This particular motel offers free hot chocolate for about an hour in the mornings.
You open the door and step outside into the cold. You only have a pair of jeans and a white tank top on.
You hate fires.
You walk to the lobby, stepping carefully on the cold pavement so your feet don't get punctured by a rock or something. Stepping inside, you walk over to the counter and pour two cups of hot chocolate for you and your lovely Sunset Shimmer. In and out, two minutes.
You walk back to your room and step inside. Sunset is awake now, but she's still laying in bed.
Poor girl, she looks so sad. You should've said you loved her last night, she probably really needed to hear that.
"Hey, Sunny." You say.
She looks up at you and gives a weak smile. "Hey, Nonny."
You smile back at her and set her cup down on the nightstand. "I got you some hot chocolate."
She glances at it and sadly looks down again. "Thanks."
Your smile fades and you sigh. You sit down next to her, setting your cup next to hers, and rub her hair. There's nothing that can really be said at the moment. You're both homeless now, and you're too much of a wimp to tell her how much you love her. You're just as sad as she is, if not more so.
You both stay there in silence for a couple of minutes. Neither of you does anything.
Finally she sits up and stretches. She takes a sip of her hot chocolate and sets it back down.
"I'm gonna go to the bathroom." She walks in and shuts the door, leaving you alone.
"Love you..." You say softly. ...
After she comes back out, you figure it's time to get moving and start doing what you're supposed to do today. You've got a plane to catch.
Once you both finish with your personal matters, you head outside and head across the street to the Walmart. Sunset covers herself in the blanket she got last night and shivers violently the whole way. The cold doesn't bother you as much as it does her, but it is coming early this year, and she isn't wearing much. Just those shorts and that AC/DC shirt.
Stupid fire.
You both walk inside the nice, warm store and immediately head to the clothing department. You walk past some heavy winter coats and pick a black one out for yourself.
"You're going to need a coat. We're heading up north." You tell her.
"What's up north?" She asks.
"In November? There's snow and ice up north. Lots of it." You say.
"Oh..." She doesn't sound too enthusiastic.
She picks a big green ski coat. You both head out to the rest of the clothes and pick out a few shirts, pants, underwear, socks, and shoes you both like. You also pick up a big backpack for yourself and Sunset to put all your stuff in. After that, you both make your way to the toiletries section and grab toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, and other things you'll need. That should be everything.
As you both head toward the checkout, you pass the pink toy aisle. You see a bunch of fat guys in fedoras and other geeks are crowded around the "Pretty, Pretty Pegasus" section, and it looks like a few of them are fighting over a stuffed horse.
What a bunch of losers.
You and Sunset make your purchases then head into the store bathrooms to change and brush your teeth. After a few minutes, you come back out in a regular black t-shirt, a coat, new jeans, and shoes. Everything you had before was now packed in your bag.
Sunset hadn't come out yet, so you call the taxi company and tell them where to pick you up. Once you hang up, Sunset comes walking out.
You smile at her. "You look good."
She gives a little giggle and smiles at you. "Thanks."
She's wearing a dark pink hoodie under her coat, and with some new jeans, and violet shoes. She looks adorable.
You take her stuff and put it in your bag, then you both head outside, your fingers locked between each others as you wait for your ride to pick you up. ---
You are now Sunset Shimmer, and your heart is threatening to burst from your chest.
After a long, hectic taxi ride through traffic, and an hour of waiting in line to get through security at the airport, you finally make it aboard the airplane. Since this holiday, Thanksgiving was coming up quick, nearly all the flights were booked, but incredibly, Anon was able to find a pair of first-class seats for you both.
You had just barely gotten used to poverty, so not only do you feel extremely out of place by being in first-class, but you're also sitting inside an airplane. That's a vehicle that can fly, and you've never flown before. At all. Ever. Not even when you were in Equestria.
If you needed to get somewhere fast, you either magic'd your way around, or you rode the train. You didn't need to fly. That bullshit was reserved for Pegasus ponies.
You grip latch onto the armrests with an iron grip, turning your knuckles white. Anon is reading a magazine next to you. He joked around about it earlier. Apparently, this "Sky Mall" magazine sold some of the most expensive, and at the same time, useless things ever thought up. He never wanted to actually buy them, but they were still cool to look at.
Regardless, you can't imagine how he could read at a time like this.
Looking to the seat behind you, you see some old man sleeping. Sleeping! He's about to fly thousands of feet in the air and travel hundreds of miles per hour, and he's sleeping! He's insane!
You face forward again and take another deep breath. "Anon?"
"Hmmm?"
"These things are safe, right?"
He looks at you. "What, airplanes?"
You nod. "Y- Yeah."
He shrugs. "Of course they are. Statistically, it's the safest way to travel."
You gulp and take another deep breath.
Anon sets his hand on top of yours and rubs it gently. "Hey. We're going to be fine. Don't worry, okay?"
You look at him and he smiles at you.
You smile back and hold his hand. He's right, you need to calm down. You trust him. If he says you're going to be okay, then you're going to be okay.
The engine revs up and the plane jolts suddenly.
"GHAAAAAA, FUCK!!" You screech.
You breathe in and out hard and grip your armrest again. You take a quick look out the window and see you're slowly moving backwards away from the terminal.
Anon is staring at you, shocked. You turn around and see that every other passenger is looking at you the same way.
You just said a bad word, and you said it loudly.
Anon gives a nervous chuckle beside you. "Sorry, everyone! It's her first time flying, and she's a little nervous."
Everyone slowly returns to their own business and you face forward again, absolutely mortified and scared beyond reason.
"Sunset." You take another gulp but don't face Anon. "Sunset- Ow! Ease up a bit."
You look back at him. He's wincing in pain. You look down at your hands and realize you're holding his in an iron grip. You're crushing him.
You let it go. "S-Sorry! Sorry, Anon!"
He rubs his hand and nods. "Its okay, it's fine. Look, you really need to calm down."
You take another breath and shut your eyes tight. "I know, I know, it's just..." You breathe out and laugh nervously. "I've never done this before. It's just new and scary, you know? People aren't supposed to fly."
Anon chuckles and wraps his arm around you. "Yeah, I know it's scary... Tell you what, once we get in the air, we can trade seats and you can look out the window."
You aren't sure about that. You don't want to see how far up you will be, it would just terrify you more.
He continues. "Don't worry, Earth looks awesome from that high up. Kind of like a mini toy set. It's almost unreal."
You think about it for a moment. "Well, I'll think about it and let you know later. I'm too nervous to agree to that right now."
He shrugs. "Alright."
As you continue down the pavement towards the runway, the flight attendant stands at the front of the aisle and makes all sorts of gestures and explains the safety features. You follow along in the instruction booklet, and pay attention to every single word she says. You want to be sure you won't die if the plane crashes.
Finally, the pilot comes on and says something garbled you can't understand. All you caught from her was that this flight would last a few hours.
You feel the plane come to a stop, and you tense up.
Anon holds your hand and bounces in his seat a little. "Oooh, this is the best part! Here we go, Sunset!"
You gulp and take a few deep breaths. "Okay... Okay, okay, okay, okay..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS1EJiUM91s
You feel the seat vibrate as the engines roar to life. You grab Anon's hand and hold it tight. Outside, you see the world whoosh by as the plane accelerates. You sink back into your seat a little bit.
"Anon?!" He doesn't respond, he just gets a big smile on his face and starts laughing. "Anon, this isn't funny!"
He sinks back in his seats and laughs louder. You feel yourself sink back in the seat more and your stomach start to move around inside you. You shut your eyes as the shaking intensifies and the engines get louder. You're trying so hard not to scream right now.
Suddenly, you feel yourself lean backwards. Not just your back, your entire body; the seat you're in, everything.
"Alright, we're airborne!" Anon announces.
"What?!" You open your eyes and look around.
It wasn't just you in your seat that leaned back, the entire plane leaned back. You look out the window and see as the streets, cars, buildings and people get smaller and further away.
It's... exhilarating.
"Woah..." You breathe.
You lean across Anon's lap and stare out the window. The plane gets higher and higher in the air and everything below gets smaller and smaller. You can see everything from up here! The city, the mountains off in the distance, the streets, cars, everything!
"This is..." You chuckle and a huge smile spreads across your face. "This is awesome!! Haha! We're flying!"
You just keep laughing like a little kid as you look around at everything. You can see for miles! You try counting all the houses you can see, but too many keep coming into view and they get too small.
Suddenly, the plane banks right and you can see the ground directly below. It stays on its side for a few seconds before leveling out again. You just keep staring outside at everything. It's amazing.
"See? Told you it wasn't so bad!" Anon says.
You laugh and look back at Anon with a huge smile on your face. "Yeah, you were right! This is so cool!"
He laughs and you turn back to look outside, taking in the view of this little patch of Earth. ---
You are Anon again.
Three hours, one bag of peanuts, and an in-flight meal later, you're sitting in your seat and Sunset is asleep on your shoulder. After staring out the window for about 45 minutes, you got above the clouds and there wasn't anything else to see, so she got bored. By then, it was time for the meal anyway.
After eating and chatting for a bit, she decided to take a nap. The stewardess brought you a blanket and Sunset threw it over you both.
Which leads to where you are now. She's softly snoring in your ear and holding you like a teddy bear.
All you can do is just smile at her. She's so beautiful.
You lean back and try to get some sleep too. Lord knows you need it. Other than Sunset being here with you, these past few days have been pretty awful. But, at least you have a plan.
Last night, you told your work of your situation, and they reluctantly agreed to let you go. You feel kind of bad for leaving them suddenly just before the busy season, but what choice did you have? You're going to go home, just settle down for a bit, and maybe look around for a new place here. Hell, you might just start your life over again.
Wouldn't be so bad. You'd be closer to all your old friends. Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Twilight. A bunch of good girls, they were. You've known them since high school.
The intercom comes on and interrupts your train of thought. You were beginning your descent.
You take a look outside and see the clouds gradually get closer. It was also getting dark. You look under the blanket and make sure Sunset still has her seatbelt on.
You gently nudge her shoulder. "Sunset. Sunset, hey." She groans a little and looks up at you. "We're starting our descent. You need to be awake for this."
She groans a little again and closes her eyes. "Mmmhh... Okay..."
She slowly wakes up and yawns. She looks out the window again at the view of the upcoming clouds. A few minutes and a little turbulence passes by and you finally get below them. If it weren't for the lights in the buildings, you wouldn't be able to see anything due to the darkness, snow and fog. The sun had already gone down, but it was nowhere near time to go to sleep yet.
You both stare out the window until you reach the runway. Sunset had a lot more fun this time around. You probably got her hooked on flying with this little trip.
The plane touches down and you slow decelerate as you head to the terminal. The captain tells you all that the temperature outside is a balmy -6 degrees Fahrenheit outside. As soon as the seatbelt sign goes off, you quickly grab your bag and get ready to deplane, thanking the flight attendants for the service.
The door opens and a gust of icy wind hits you both.
You both shiver and fold your arms. "Ah, home sweet home." You say.
"Jeez, Anon, how did you survive up here?!" Sunset asks.
You both laugh and you wrap your arm around her. "Don't worry, Sunny. You'll get used to it." You step into the warm terminal and head toward the exit. "Now, we should have a ride waiting for us."
"Like a limo?" She asks.
"Maybe."
"Hmm." She says. "Never rode in a limo before."
"Well, there's a first time for everything."
You head toward the escalators and head down to the lower level. A couple of drivers are holding signs out in the cold. You're looking around for the sign that says "Ymous", when suddenly...
"Well, well! If it isn't Anonymous!"
You stop dead in your tracks as that voice hits your ears. "Oh hell no..."
Not now, not her. Anyone, just please not her.
Sunset looks behind you. You slowly turn around to scowl at the supermodel, trophy woman you once called your girlfriend standing behind you, with a shit-eating grin spread across her plastic face, looking just as expensive as ever.
This is the girl you now hate more than anyone or anything else in the world.
"Hello, Fleur..." |
Homeless Sunset Shimmer | A Tender Moment | With her arms folded across her chest, Fleur Dis Lee smirks at you in her usual snobby, bitchy way. Man, she makes your blood boil.
Back when you were okay with being rich, she was nice to you. She likes guys with expensive tastes. But ever since you willingly gave up your life of luxury, she thought of you like she would a pile of dog shit. Occasionally, she liked to 'check in' on you, just to see how you were doing. If you were doing well, she would try to fuck everything up, just for the sake of being mean.
"I didn't expect to see you here..." You say.
She steps towards you, still grinning her smug smile. "Well I didn't want to miss your little homecoming! How have you been since leaving civilized society?"
You continue to glare at her. "Fine."
"Really? Last I heard, you were picking up garbage for a living!" She takes a quick glance at Sunset, looking her up and down, unimpressed. "Hmm... Looks like you still are..."
Oh, that was low. Even for her.
Sunset recoils slightly, looking offended, which makes Fleur grin again. You clench your fists and grit your teeth.
Never hit a woman, Anon... Never hit a woman.
"That was extremely uncalled for, Fleur." You growl.
She gives a playful little chuckle. "Oh, Anon! You know I'm just teasing!"
No she's not. You know her too well.
Almost like she knew you knew she was lying, she extends her hand out to Sunset with a sly smile. "Fleur Dis Lee. A pleasure to meet you."
Sunset looks at her hand and then to you. You shake your head a little, trying to tell her not to play along as subtly as possible.
Sunset hesitates for a moment before smiling back at her. "I'm Sunset Shimmer. Happy to meet you too." She takes her hand and shakes it.
Dammit, Sunset, don't believe her lies.
Sunset continues. "By the way, thanks for not minding all the poor person germs on my hands, since I can't afford soap. It means a lot. Especially, since I used to live in a dumpster."
Oh snaps. Sunset, what are you doing?
Fleur's smile vanishes. Sunset's doesn't. In fact, Sunset places her other hand on top of Fleur's and shakes harder. She doesn't let go.
Holy shit, Sunset is making Fleur visibly uncomfortable. She's no longer the dominant female in this situation. That's never happened before.
Fleur is now straining to yank her hand away.
"Okay... Ew... Let go. Now." Fleur says.
Sunset eventually releases her grip. Fleur looks at her hand nervously for a moment before looking back at Sunset, who's still grinning.
"Well Fleur, I'd love to stick around and get to know you more, but Anon and I have trashcan fires to huddle around, and used food to steal." Sunset walks over and locks arms with you. "Shall we?"
You smile back at her. Damn, you love this girl.
"Let's!" You say happily.
Turning toward the exit, Sunset looks back at Fleur, who is still just standing there. "Ta-Ta, darling!"
Now she's mocking her with a bad posh accent.
Sunset laughs and faces forward once again, walking with you and leaving Fleur behind. She doesn't move. She just looks at you two as you walk away.
You've seen that look on her face before. She knows what Sunset was doing, and she's mad about it. Now she has beef with both of you. It's totally worth it though.
She finally turns back and briskly walks into the bathroom. Probably to wash the 'poor person' germs off. You both walk outside into the cold.
As soon as you're outside, you both burst out laughing.
You grab Sunset and pick her up, spinning around. "Sunset, that was incredible! I've never seen Fleur at a loss for words like that before!"
You both laugh some more and you set her down.
"Well I had to do something! You looked like you were about to explode!" She says.
You laugh. "I WAS about to explode! Believe me!"
She laughs and hugs you. "Well, I'm always happy to help out my Nonny."
Oh, your heart. It's too much.
"Thank you, Sunny. You're wonderful." You stay there a moment longer. "Listen, Sunset."
You break the hug and look into her eyes. You've got to tell her you love her now, Anon. There's no way you can hold it in after this. What she did was amazing.
"I need to tell you something important. I wanted to tell you this the other night, but I just couldn't bring myself to for some reason." She blinks and continues looking at you.
Come on, Anon. You've got this.
"I, uh, I just... I need to tell you this now... Sunset..."She keeps staring at you, her beautiful eyes wide with anticipation and curiosity. "I'm... I'm in l-"
"ANOOOONYMOUUUUUS!!!" A cheery voice from behind cuts you off.
...It's Pinkie Pie.
You shut your eyes and sigh. "...One sec. I think our ride is here."
You turn around and, sure enough, you see your hyperactive pink-haired friend running up to you with a huge smile on her face and her arms outstretched. You only get a glimpse of her before she slams into you like a freight train and begins her usual hug that could suffocate a bear.
"You're back to see us!" Pinkie shouts. "This is wonderful! We need to have a super duper funerrific awesome party to celebrate! Ooh! There can be balloons and cake and confetti and..."
Despite being very happy to see Pinkie as well, she's hugging you too hard. You can't breathe.
"*Pinkie!*" You wheeze.
"...and a clown that does magic tricks and then I'll come in on a unicycle! Anon! Did you know that I got a unicycle?! Its so much-"
"*Pinkie! I can't breathe!*"
Her eyes shoot open and she quickly lets you go. "Oops! Sorry Anon! I'm just so excited to see you again!"
You gasp and wheeze for air for a second and start laughing with her. "It's okay, Pinkie. I'm happy to see you too. We were-"
"ANON, I GOT YOU A PRESENT!!" She reaches into her hair and pulls out a big stuffed moose that was somehow stored in there.
There was a tag on its ear that read "To: Anon. Love: Pinkie".
"Isn't he cute?!" She says. "I named him 'Anonymoose!' Heehee! Get it?! Because he's a moose!"
You laugh and take the moose from her. "I love it, Pinkie. Thank you very much!"
She smiles and looks over at Sunset, who is standing there with an awkward half-smile on her face.
"Hi!" Pinkie looks her up and down real quick. "You're pretty!"
Aww.
Sunset smiles and gives a little giggle. "Thank you, miss..."
Pinkie grabs Sunset's hand and shakes it hard and fast. "I'm Pinkie Pie! I'm one of Anon's bestest best friend in the whole world!"
You smile and pick up on the introductions, wrapping your arm around Sunset. "Pinkie Pie, this is Sunset Shimmer."
Sunset waves at her. "Nice to meet you, Pinkie Pie."
Pinkie stares at you two and the gears turn in her head. She gasps and covers her mouth a second later.
"Anon! Is she your girlfriend?!" She asks.
You and Sunset look at each other.
You smile and give her a little squeeze. "Pretty much."
Pinkie squees and jumps up and down in place. "Oh that's so cuuute!!! Oh my gosh, everyone else will be sooooo happy to meet you, Sunset! EEEEE I cant wait!! Lets get going!"
Pinkie grabs you and Sunset's hands and pulls you both hard. You both nearly lose balance and trip as you are forced to follow Pinkie across the street into the airport's parking garage.
"Is everyone else here too?" You ask.
Pinkie smiles. "Nope! They're all at Applejack's! She sent me to come pick you up!"
"Just you?"
"Eeyup!" Pinkie giggles. "Applejack said I was doing such a good job helping get everything ready for you when you came home that she said I could be the one to see you first! Which is weird, because all I did was sing 'I Will Survive' in the helium voice for a couple of hours, so I don't see how I helped. But it must've helped out in some way because I'm here now!"
You laugh and shake your head. Oh, Pinkie. So wonderfully carefree. You've missed her.
You quickly make your way past an assortment of cars until you reach a big bright pink jeep. It has balloons taped to the back, colorful stickers everywhere, and poka-dots painted all over it. It's an eyesore.
"You got yourself a car, huh?" You smirk.
"Yep yep yep! Hop in!" Pinkie pushes a button on her remote and it makes a clown horn sound.
"Oh, this'll be fun." You chuckle.
Pinkie skips happily over to the driver side while you walk Sunset over to the passenger side.
Sunset turns to you. "Anon? Is she... always like this?"
"What, crazy? Childish? Over-the-top weird?" You ask. "Yep. That's Pinkie." She looks way confused, and a little worried. You give her a reassuring smile. "You'll get used to it. Pinkie is, well... Pinkie, but she's really nice and cares a lot about her friends."
Sunset looks at the car again for a moment. "She doesn't even know me though. Are you sure she'll be nice to me too?"
You give her a hug and look down at her. "I'm positive that all of my friends will be. Trust me. I've known these girls for a long time. Any friend of mine is a friend of theirs."
She smiles back and nods. "Okay. I believe you."
You reach the passenger side and open the door for her, letting her ride shotgun.
"I still don't know if I feel really comfortable in the front seat of her car though..." Sunset says. "Especially if she's driving."
You just give a small chuckle as she climbs in. You don't want to tell her that you're feeling the same way.
You shut the door and climb in the back seat.
Pinkie looks at you both. "Alright, you two cuties.~ Ready to go?!"
"Ready as we'll ever be, Pinkie." You reply.
You quickly buckle your seat belt and look up to the dash. There's a note taped next to the radio. Sunset notices it too.
She grabs it. "What is this... 'Brake left, gas right'?"
Pinkie looks over and giggles. "Oh yeah! That's my cheat sheet!"
You and Sunset exchange worried looks. You lean up to look at her feet on the pedals.
"Okay, first of all, Pinkie, you have six pedals down there. How can you tell which one is left and which one is right? And second of all, why in the blue hell do you have six pedals when there's only four directions?" You ask.
Pinkie cocks an eyebrow and looks back at you with a grin. "Anon, sometimes you just have to go for style points!"
As Sunset almost frantically buckles her seat belt, Pinkie inserts the key into the ignition and the jeep loudly roars to life.
Along with the radio...
Pinkie throws the jeep into drive and you hold on for dear life as she presses the accelerator and practically flies out of the parking garage. ---
You are now Sunset Shimmer, and you're clinging to your seat for dear life and screaming at the top of your lungs with your eyes closed.
Anon's friend is insane! She keeps screaming stuff like "Wheeee!!" and "I've never gone this fast before!" It is making you scared out of your freakin' mind.
On top of dealing with her reckless driving in bad weather, and the accordion music blaring on the radio, she hasn't kept her eyes on the road for more than a few seconds before turning to you and Anon and telling you about something like parties or pet alligators or whatever.
Anon has been screaming and yelling at her to pay attention and slow down too. Apparently, this is also his first time riding in Pinkie Pie's car.
As the music ends, so does the violent movement of the car.
"You can open your eyes now!" Pinkie says.
"Are we off the bridge?!" You scream.
"Yes!"
"Is the old man with the walker still alive?!" You scream again.
"Yeah! He got right back up!"
You shakily open your eyes and see you're in a driveway in front of a huge red house.
"See?! Got you here safe and sound!" She smiles wide at you both.
You just stare at her, dumbstruck.
Anon is panting hard behind you. "Pinkie.... What... the hell... was that?"
"Those were my driving skills!" She says. "Pretty good, huh?" Anon takes a few more deep breaths, but Pinkie interrupts him before he can answer. "Oooh! I'll go inside and let everyone know you're here!"
She exits the car and runs up the snowy steps to the front door, leaving you and Anon in the car. You both sit in your respective seats, not moving, still trying to catch your breath from the ride. You still haven't let go of your seat.
Anon takes a deep breath behind you. "We, uh... *ahem* We better get inside."
You gulp. "Oh- Okay..."
"You alright?" He asks.
"Y- Yeah... I'm fine now." You sigh and release your seat.
It hurts to move your fingers, you were gripping it so hard. You bend your fingers back and pop a few joints in them.
The rear door opens and Anon walks over to your door. You get outside and take a step in some fluffy white snow. Sweet Celestia, it's cold.
You shiver a little and zip up your coat. "Brrr! Its freezing out here!"
Anon smiles and shuts the door behind you. "Yep, it sure is."
Ooh! Perfect opportunity to be cute!
You put on your best puppy-dog eyes and look at Anon with a small smile. "...Keep me warm, Nonny?"
He gets an "aww" look on his face right when you said that. You're getting good at this, Shimmer.
"Oh, of course I will, Sunny Bunny!" He smiles.
Sunny Bunny? Oh shoot! That's a new nickname, and you love it! Looks like he won this round of "who's cuter?". You'll get him next time though.
You blush and leap into his arms. "Yay!"
You hug each other tight. He's such a sweetheart. You can't believe how much you love him.
He rubs your hair and you look up at him with a smile. He smiles back and moves some of your hair out of your face. You get on your tippy toes and close your eyes as your lips meet.
You move your arms around his waist and pull yourself closer to him as you kiss. He places a hand behind your head and gently strokes your hair.
You both slowly end the kiss and look into each others' eyes after a few long moments. Everything is calm; silent. The snow falling around you makes the world seem like its standing still. Frozen.
It's almost surreal how much you can't hear right now. Nothing else exists right now. Nothing, except you and Anon.
Anon...
The one who's done everything for you. He took you in, clothed you, fed you, kept you warm, and showed you compassion. He didn't have to, he chose to. He makes you feel happy. Loved.
He's your new dream come true. He's your everything. ---
She's so beautiful. Especially right now. This is probably the most beautiful you've ever seen her since you've known her. Nothing could take her away from you.
You don't say anything to each other. You just stare at her beautiful face.
In spite of everything bad that's happened lately, like losing your home and your job, none of it matters now.
Because now, you have her to help you. With her, you can make it through anything.
She's your everything. ---
Now, Sunset. Tell him now. ---
Now, Anon. Tell her now. ---
You slowly wrap your arms around his neck and rest your chin on his shoulder. ---
You take her in your arms and cradle her head softly.
"I love you."
"I love you."
You shut your eyes and smile. She said it too, right when you did. At the same exact time.
You continue to stroke her beautiful hair and softly kiss her cheek. "I love you, Sunset Shimmer."
You feel her squeeze you tighter. "And... I love you."
She pulls away and looks at you. She's crying, but it's a happy cry this time.
She smiles and lets out a small laugh. "I love you so much, Anonymous."
She comes in for another kiss, and you immediately return it. You're on the verge of tears yourself. You hold each other in your arms and lovingly kiss each other right there in the snow. You're both cold, but neither of you care.
After a few minutes of kissing, you break away and look at each other. A few tears did manage to escape, and you wipe them off your cheek. She smiles and does the same.
You spend another few moments just looking at each other silently.
You sniff and give a small chuckle. "Thank you, Sunset."
She smiles and hugs you again. "Thank you, Anon." You hug for a few more moments before she releases one arm and goes to your side. "Lets go inside, love."
You smile at her and give her another kiss. "Alright, love."
You both start walking toward the Apples' front door. Upon reaching it, you look at Sunset's beautiful face one more time and smile.
You turn the doorknob and enter the house. |
Homeless Sunset Shimmer | The Spirit of Thanksgiving | You hold the door open for Sunset and you both head inside the Apple's home. Christmas music plays from a stereo and you see the whole gang is busy with different tasks around the house. Granny Smith and Applejack are in the kitchen, Rarity, Twilight, and Fluttershy are putting up some Christmas decorations, Rainbow Dash and Big Mac are playing video games, while Applebloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo watch from the couch. Pinkie joins Rarity and Twilight in putting up decorations on the tree.
Time to make yourself known.
"How's it going, Apples?!" You announce.
Multiple eyes turn to you and light up immediately. "ANON!!"
The three kids run up to you and dog pile you in a big hug. They land on you hard and you fall on your butt as they begin talking all at once about how excited they are to see you, and what they want to do with you while you're here, and stuff like that. You laugh and return their hugs as best as you can.
Mac comes over to you pulls them off. "Alright, give him some air."
"Heh. Thanks, Big Mac." You smile.
He nods and grins. "No problem, Anon."
Mac is a bit quiet, but he's your bro. He helps you to your feet and you give each other a brohug before turning to everyone else.
Applejack comes up to you with a big smile on her face as well. Her cheeks are a little rosy as she looks at you. "Good to see ya again, sugarcube!"
"Good to see you too, Applejack." You give your old friend a hug and smile.
Fluttershy, Rarity, and Twilight all give you hugs as well while Rainbow greets you from a distance. There was a bit of a crowd around you now.
You mingle with everyone else for a second or two before Rarity gets your attention. "Excuse me, Anonymous, but who is this lovely thing you've brought with you?"
You look back at Sunset, who's standing there awkwardly with a small grin on her face.
"Oh! Where are my manners?!" You walk back to her and hold her hand. "Everyone, this little drop of sunshine is Sunset Shimmer."
She steps forward and gives a small wave. "Hi everyone. It's nice to meet you all."
The whole group collectively smiles and waves back.
"Well shoot! It's a pleasure to meet ya too, Sunset! Any friend of Anon's is a friend of ours!" Applejack grabs Sunset's hand and shakes it happily. "Name's Applejack!"
Sunset grunts a little as Applejack roughly shakes her hand. It makes you laugh a little bit.
As everyone else makes their introductions, you follow Applejack into the kitchen. "So, there's turkey and decorations and everyone's here now, but what's the occasion? Thanksgiving is tomorrow."
Applejack chuckles. "Well, we heard you were comin' back to town, so we decided to have a little pre-Thanksgiving dinner for friends tonight!"
Pinkie pokes her head in the kitchen. "Isn't it a great idea, Anon?! Two thanksgivings in one year! That's double the food and fun!"
Applejack points her turkey fork at her. "More importantly Pinkie, it's double the opportunity to give thanks for what we got. Now what did I say to you about settin' foot in my kitchen?"
Pinkie just giggles at her. "Silly Applejack! Only my head is inside the kitchen right now! I haven't set one foot in here!"
She's technically right. The whole "Not touching! Cant get mad!" approach.
It makes Applejack visibly frustrated.
You just smile and laugh. "Ah, I've missed you guys. It's great to see you again." ---
You are now Sunset Shimmer.
You're sitting on the Apple's couch while Rarity, Twilight and Fluttershy talk with you. The big guy, Mac you think his name is, is sitting next to the rainbow-haired girl and they're playing a video game. Anon went into the kitchen with Applejack and Pinkie followed them.
You don't know why, but... you don't like Applejack.
She's so nice and really friendly, but there's something about her that you just don't like. It makes you feel bad, because you really have no genuine reason to not like her, but you just don't. She's putting off a bit of a vibe. But she's Anon's best friend, so of course you'll be pleasant for him.
Rarity, Twilight and Fluttershy seem nice enough though. The rainbow-haired girl didn't even get up to introduce herself to you. She just said "Sup?" and went back to her game. It must be a good one. Oh well. You'll talk with her more later.
Rarity smiles at you. "So, Miss Sunset Shimmer, you and Anonymous are an item?!"
You grin and nod at Rarity. "Yup. We sure are."
She's bouncing with giddiness. "EEEEE! That's so adorable!!!"
It makes you laugh.
Twilight smiles at you. "We're really happy for you! Anon's such a great guy. You're very lucky!"
You take a quick glance at Twilight. "Yeah..." You smile and look over at Anon talking to Applejack. "...I sure am."
A collective "Aww" comes from the three girls around you. You feel yourself blush, but you don't do anything to hide it. You turn back to the girls and rub your arms sheepishly. You're just so happy right now.
"So?" Rarity scoots toward you. "Tell us all how you two met!"
Your smile fades and you look up at Rarity. "H- How we met?" She nods, her smile never fading. "Um..."
Twilight and Fluttershy are just as expectant as she is. You aren't sure how to start out. You don't really know how they'll react to you being a formerly homeless girl. You're sure they'll think wonders about Anon selflessly helping you, but it's too soon to tell if these girls will think highly of you as well. You did just meet them after all...
Still, you've gotta tell them something.
You clear your throat. "Well... We, uh... I was-"
A loud metallic clanging from the kitchen cuts you off. "SOUP'S ON, EVERYBODY!!!"
Applejack comes strolling out of the kitchen with a big turkey in her hands. She sets it on the table while Anon, Granny Smith, and Pinkie come out with the rest of the fixin's.
Rarity sets her hand on yours. "We'll just have to hear it after dinner, alright darling?"
She winks at you and stands up. You follow her and go next to Anon.
He sets everything he's carrying down and faces you. "Everything okay?"
You play with your hair a little. "Eh, kinda... Can we talk for a second?"
He looks a bit worried, but he nods. "Sure."
You both walk into the other room by yourselves.
You turn and look at Anon. "Rarity wanted me to tell her how we met."
Anon just looks at you. "Okay? What's the issue?"
"I just..." You sigh. "I don't know how comfortable I am with telling a bunch of strangers about me being homeless... I'm a bit worried."
Anon nods slowly as the realization hits him.
He gently grabs you by the shoulders and looks in your eyes. "You don't have anything to worry about, Sunset. These girls are some of my very best friends in the world. They aren't judgmental or anything, they're all very kind and will not think less of you at all."
You look back up at his smiling face and sigh. He's right. You need to calm down and stop worrying.
You nod slowly. "I'm sorry, Anon. It's just... I'm kinda nervous, that's all."
He pulls you into a hug and you hold each other. "Don't worry, I understand. If you want, we can tell them together at dinner. It's definitely gonna come up."
It would make it a lot more comfortable if he also told the story.
You take a deep breath. "Okay. Thank you."
He kisses your head. "I love you."
You smile. Oh, how good it feels to hear him say that.
"I love you too, Anon."
It feels even better to say it.
"Now, let's get back in there. We both know how much you love food." He releases you and winks playfully.
"Oh, please don't bring IHOP up." You say.
He giggles and you give him a playful smack on the arm as you both head back into the dining room. Everyone is gathered around the table. A few people are already sitting down.
Anon stops you and whispers in your ear. "Just a heads up, the only one you need to look out for is Rainbow Dash. She may give you trouble or poke fun, but she doesn't mean it. She's a big softie inside."
You eye Rainbow Dash sitting next to Pinkie Pie and Mac, laughing at something Pinkie said.
You nod and follow him to your seat. You sit down with Fluttershy on your left, Anon on your right, and Applejack sitting across from you. In front of you is a huge bowl of mashed potatoes.
The heavenly mixed aroma of turkey, gravy and stuffing fills the air. You now feel the realization of your hunger as a whole as you look up and down the table. Everything looks so good.
Granny Smith stands up and clears her throat. "Now listen here, young'uns. I'm mighty happy to have y'all here with us at this here Thanksgiving dinner. And it's good to have Anon back here with us so we can get to know his pretty little girlfriend he's got there too."
She smiles and points at you, making you blush and bashfully look up at Anon.
Anon smiles at you and wraps his arm around you. "Trust me, Granny Smith. No one is happier than me that she's here, I promise you."
You blush harder as a collective "Aww" comes from almost everyone at the table.
Granny Smith nudges Mac with her elbow. "You know Mac, you should see if Anon can show you how to get a girl like that. Lord knows you could use some lessons."
"Granny!" He shouts.
Everyone except Mac laughs.
Granny Smith sits down and rubs her hands together. "Now, lets say us a quick prayer an' get to eatin'!"
You all hold hands with each other and bow your heads. Applejack removes her hat and starts giving thanks for everything they've been blessed with.
As she prays, you are amazed that people who live this lavish and are this wealthy can still be so humble. If what Anon's feelings on how rich people act are true, then the Apple family must be an exception. They had to be one.
The Apples' home is enormous, and they live on a massive plot of farmland. Outside, you saw they have a huge garage that's probably filled with trucks of all sizes. There was an extreme amount of detail on every part of the house, both inside and outside. It was very clear that they were wealthy. Despite that, they're humble. You've never seen people like this.
These past few weeks have been very humbling for you as well. Maybe you could grow to like Applejack. You have no reason to not like her, so it shouldn't be too hard. If Anon trusts her, then you can too.
Applejack finishes the prayer and you all dive in.
The nice music comes back on and you all socialize with one another. You learn a lot about Anon's friends.
Fluttershy is really sweet and had a thing for animals. Applejack loved talking about her job on the farm, and had tons of stories about her brother and sister. Twilight loves reading and science, and was hoping to become a chemist. Rainbow loves sports of all kinds. She's hoping to get a soccer scholarship. Rarity is a total girly-girl who was into fashion and boys and all that. Pinkie is... well, you don't think you need to learn anymore about her. That car ride here gave you a good idea of what she's like.
Applejack's little sister Applebloom eventually asked about you and how you and Anon met. You got nervous again, but Anon grabbed your hand and squeezed it gently. You looked up at his eyes and smiled.
You trust him.
You both recounted your adventure of being on the streets for a while and about Anon selflessly taking you in, followed by him making you happy with your movies, your dancing to "Do You Believe in Magic?", and your overall positive attitude.
Everyone was listening closely as you both recounted your apartment catching fire and forcing you to get out of there.
"...until we both landed here a few hours ago." You conclude.
Anon nods. "But you know, despite all that, everything that happened..." He holds your hand and smiles. "...none of it matters. Because I have her to keep me happy and staying positive."
You blush again and cuddle up against him. "And I have him too."
There's another "Aww".
Rarity is practically in tears. "Oh, sweetie, you are so, so lucky to have found a man like Anonymous!!" She reaches over the table and grabs both your hands. "Promise me that you won't ever let each other go! You're too cute a couple to be apart now!"
Anon laughs and uses his free hand to cross his heart and cover one of his eyes.
"Ooooh! He Pinkie-promised!" Pinkie somehow pops up behind you two and whispers in your ear. "That means he's gonna keep his promise FOREVERRRR!!!" She smiles and stands back up. "He must really like you to Pinkie-promise something like that to you, Sunset!"
Anon perks up. "Pinkie, the word you're looking for is 'love'. Not 'like', 'love'."
"Oh, I see!" Pinkie stands there a moment longer before gasping. "Wait, LOVE?!?!"
You both nod.
"Yes, Pinkie. I love him too." You say with a smile.
Pinkie jumps up and down in place. "OOOOH I HAVE TO THROW A PARTY FOR YOU TWO!! I'll get a heart-shaped cake, some heart-shaped balloons, some cute lovey-dovey music for the dance floor, maybe a-"
"Pinkie!" Anon speaks up and somehow manages to make her stop talking. "How about we wait until after Thanksgiving and Christmas are done before we plan any more parties, okay?"
Pinkie nods. "Okie dokie lokie! That's probably a good idea! Too many parties at one time isn't very good!" She goes to sit back down. "Well, not to ME, but, only I'm me, so that doesn't count. I can party every day and rock 'n roll all night!"
You giggle and look at the scene around you. It's been a pretty perfect day, and you couldn't be more happy right now.
You resume eating your Thanksgiving turkey in front of you. |
Homeless Sunset Shimmer | Make Yourself at Home | After what was probably the best pre-thanksgiving dinner you've ever had, followed by the best pre-thanksgiving party you've ever been to, everything began to die down and people are starting to leave.
You insist to stay behind to help clean up, even after Applejack and Granny Smith insisted you go. They eventually relented though, because you're holding open a garbage bag while Sunset is gathering some garbage and throwing them into it.
She insisted to help clean up, even after you insisted she let you do the work.
You eventually relented though...
Once it's full, you head outside into the snow to throw it into the dumpster. You head back inside and plop on the couch.
You're tired. Turkey does that to you.
Luckily, you managed to play a few rounds of Smash Bros with Big Mac, Rainbow Dash, and Scootaloo. Your boy Kirby managed to hold his own against Big Mac's Donkey Kong for a little bit, but Rainbow came in with Captain Falcon and tore it up. Scootaloo was right behind her double-teaming you with Toon Link.
They got good since the last time you played against them. You're a little jealous.
You laugh as you lose another match and look over at Sunset, Rarity and Fluttershy. Sunset's smiling and laughing with Rarity as she's about to leave. You can tell they're gonna be good friends.
She waves goodbye to you, ushers Sweetie Belle along, and they both leave. Fluttershy grabs her coat and exchanges a few more words with Sunset before giving her a hug and leaving as well.
Sunset comes skipping over to you and plops down beside you. "Hey there, loverboy!"
You chuckle and wrap your arm around her. "Hi, gorgeous!" She giggles and you kiss each other. "Making friends, huh?"
Sunset nods happily. "Oh yeah! Rarity's really fun. Fluttershy is too. All of your friends are!"
You smile and give a victory laugh. "See? I told you so!"
She giggles and nuzzles you. "Yeah, you did. You were right. I just needed to calm down."
You chuckle and cuddle with each other for a little while longer in front of the television. Applejack comes walking out of the kitchen and looks at you two.
A smile comes to her face. "Aww, ain't that the sweetest thing you ever did see?"
You both give a little laugh. "Well, we try our best to be sweet." You pretend to block out Sunset and loudly whisper to Applejack. "But she doesn't have to try as hard to be sweet."
Sunset playfully smacks your arm and smiles. "Oh stop it, you!"
"No! You cant make me!" You smile.
You both giggle and start poking and tickling each other.
Applejack just stands there and laughs a little as she watches you. "You two are just too cute."
You both stop and look at her with smiles on your faces. "Thanks, AJ."
She nods. "No problem."
You sit up a little. "Need anymore help?"
She shakes her head. "Nah, we've got it under control. Just was curious about your sleepin' situation though."
You cock your head a little. "Sleeping situation?"
She nods. "Yeah, like, where are ya gonna stay for the next little bit with your place... unavailable."
"Oh." You reply. "Well, I just figured we'd go to my parents' place and crash there."
A look of concern comes across her face. "Did your parents not tell you? They're outta town."
Your smile fades. "They are?"
Applejack nods. "Yeah, they're on a cruise or somethin'. They're gonna spend the whole holiday season in the Caribbean, I think."
"And they didn't tell me..." You sigh and rub a hand down your face. "Typical..."
It's like you don't exist to them anymore since you disowned your fancy-shmancy rich lifestyle. Just one more thing to add to your list of burdens.
"Well then..." You stand up and look at Applejack. "...in that case, we have no sleeping situation."
She holds up a hand and cuts you off. "Yeah you do, Anon. We've got more than a few spare rooms for you to stay in and you're more than welcome to stay here for as long as you need."
Oh, Applejack. She's saved your ass so many times before, you've lost count. You'd probably be dead if it wasn't for her. On the inside, that is. Humility has taught you much.
You sigh. "Applejack, if there was any other option, I'd take it. I owe you so much already."
She holds her hand up again. "Anon, I insist. You've been the greatest... my closest friend since we met, and I'm more than willing to help y'all out as much as I can."
"I j... I'm just..." You stammer.
You can't think of what to say. Applejack is just too sweet, you love her.
You smile. "Thank you, Applejack."
"Anything for you, Sugarcube." She smiles and you hug each other real quick. She squeezes you tight before releasing you. "Alright then! I'll get Applebloom to show y'all to where you're gonna be stayin', then I suggest y'all go to bed. We've got us another thanksgiving tomorrow!"
You smile at her. "Oh I can hardly wait!"
She chuckles and heads into the kitchen.
Sunset stands up next to you. "That was really nice of her."
"Yeah, it really was." You hold her hand and smile.
Applebloom comes out of the kitchen. "Alright, you two! Follow me!"
You both follow the little girl through the house, going upstairs and down a hallway. You ask her about what's been going on with her and her life recently. She's in middle school now with her two friends, but none of them know what they want to do when they grow up. She's searching high and low for her calling in life with Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo, but none of them have found one that clicks yet.
Kids are so silly.
You reach the second to last door on the right and Applebloom opens it. "Alright y'all! Here we are!"
You usher Sunset inside before you, because you're a gentleman, and follow behind Applebloom. Inside the room, you see a large queen-sized bed with a comfy-looking knit quilt spread on top. Granny Smith must've knit it herself.
Looking around, you also notice a bathroom, a couch in front of the bed, a closet, a large TV, and a large windowsill looking outside to the beautiful snowy world. It looks better than any hotel you've ever seen in your life.
As expected, everything has an apple-theme to it. The quilt, pillows, wallpaper, everything in the room has something to do with apples.
You and Sunset stand next to each other, admiring your new living space.
Applebloom steps in front of you, looking at you both and smiling. "So? What do y'all think?"
"Not bad at all." You nod. "I like it."
"Good!" She smiles again and walks over to the closet. "Now, there're towels and extra blankets 'n stuff in here. There should be some spare toothbrushes in the bathroom too if you need 'em."
You nod. "We've got some, but thanks."
"Well okay then!" She says. "If you guys need anythin' else, let any of us know, okay?"
You follow her as she heads to the door and steps into the hallway. "You got it. Thank you so much again, Applebloom."
"No problem, Anon! You're family! Applejack says that family always needs to look out for each other!"
You smile at her. "You've got a good sister, Bloom."
She grins and scuffs at the floor with her shoe. "Yeah, I know I do."
You chuckle and bend down to give her a hug. "Alright, kiddo. We're gonna get some shuteye."
"Yeah, me too. Goodnight, Anon!" She releases you and looks past you. "Goodnight, Sunset!"
Sunset grins and waves at her. "Goodnight, Applebloom. It was nice to meet you."
"You too!" She smiles and happily walks back down the hallway.
You shut the door and turn around. Sunset surprises you and lightly presses you against the door, kissing you. She wraps her arms around your waist and pulls herself closer to you, deepening the kiss.
You close your eyes and place your hand on her waist, running your fingers through her hair. The two of you slowly move away from the door and eventually make your way to the bed. You let yourselves fall on top of the bed, still in each others' arms, and still kissing. You're on your side, holding the girl you love and kissing her lovingly.
She stops and slowly opens her eyes. Those gorgeous, big, cyan eyes. The both of you just stare at each other for the longest time.
You move a strand of her hair out of her face and give her a small smile. She smiles back at you.
"I love you, Sunset." You say softly.
Her cheeks get a little red. "I love you too, Anon."
You can't bring yourself to do anything else except just stare at her. She's so beautiful. You can't even imagine how she ever wound up homeless, alone, and unloved. Your mind refuses to believe that she was as bad as she said she was.
This girl, right here, is the sweetest thing you've ever had the privilege to know, and your heart belongs to her. No way it could ever belong to anyone else. You are completely and totally in love with her.
Your Sunset Shimmer.
She leans forward and rests her head on your chest. You take her in your arms and hug her tight, letting her know that she's safe. You don't ever want this moment to end.
She moves her legs a little and kick off her shoes. She curls up in a ball in your arms and takes a deep breath.
"I love you... Anon..." She whispers again.
It's your favorite thing that she has ever said to you.
You rub her hair and kiss her on the head, "I love you too... Sunset."
You stay there, silently rubbing her gorgeous hair. Your eyelids get heavier and heavier until finally, they shut over your eyes.
You drift off to sleep with your love cradled in your arms. ---
The next morning, you groan softly as you awaken. You're in the Apples' guest bedroom, alone. The shower in the bathroom is running, so Anon must be in there.
You yawn and rub your eyes as you look around the room. Now that the sun is up, you can get a better look at just how cute it is. There's a big, fluffy rug in the shape of a red apple on the light hardwood floor at the foot of the bed. The walls are made of wood too. It reminds you of a cabin in the forest.
On the bed beside you is a folded red shirt and some blue jeans. You pick them up to inspect them and find out they're your size. Where did they come from though?
You set them back down and sit there in bed, giving a content sigh. It's officially Thanksgiving. Your first Thanksgiving with Anon.
Technically, it's your first Thanksgiving ever. Equestria doesn't have a Thanksgiving. Even if it did though, you wouldn't be very good at celebrating it. You were way too selfish and arrogant to give thanks for anything. You took everything for granted when you were in Equestria.
You sigh again and lay back down, looking up at the ceiling. Thank Heaven that part of your life is behind you. Nothing like being homeless and completely on your own to humble you out, Sunset. You've changed since being here, and it has been for the better.
The bathroom door opens and Anon steps out. He's only wearing a towel around his waist. It is now that you get your first real look at him.
Some of the water left from the shower makes him look shiny. His arms are bulky too, and he's in good shape. It's apparent that he works out. He isn't shredded, by any means, but he still looks good. Really good.
...Is it getting hot in here?
"Sunset?"
You shake your head and snap yourself out of your trance.
You look up at him and smile. "Uh... Hehe... Good morning."
He smirks. "You okay?"
Never been better...
"Y- Yeah, I'm fine..." You give him a fake yawn and stretch. "Just not awake yet."
You give a little giggle.
He grins and grabs some clothes on the table next to him. "Applejack came by this morning and brought us some extra clothes they had. Yours are on the bed there."
You look at the clothes you picked up earlier. "Where did they get them?"
"I assume that they're either hand-me-downs, or you and Applejack are the same size." He holds up a plaid-red button down collared shirt. "I'm pretty sure I got Mac's hand-me-downs. They're kind of big."
You grin at him, still checking him out from afar. "Well that's awful nice of her."
"Yeah, the Apples are good people. Very hospitable." He says.
Damn he's hot.
"You gonna shower now?" He turns back to you.
You quickly meet his eyes. "Sure."
He stays still, the gears turning in his head as he looks at you. You look at him back, your blush intensifying.
He slowly grins at you. "What?"
He either knows exactly what he's doing and he's just playing dumb, or he actually is too dumb to realize what he's doing. Either way, you think it would be fun to help him out.
You stand up as you look at him. "Well, honestly, I'm a little bummed..."
He faces you completely. "How come?"
You slowly walk towards him. "I was... kind of hoping that... maybe... we could shower... together." ---
Sunset stops right in front of you and stares up at your eyes. Her cheeks are turning red as you look back at her.
You're an idiot, Anon. Why didn't you wait? Why did you already take a shower?
You look her up and down once before reaching out and gently taking her hand in yours.
"We can do that..." You reply. "Nothing wrong with... showering twice."
Her breathing is now audible as she stares up at you. "Okay." She says.
Holy shit, this is about to happen...
You both stare at each other for a long moment before she abruptly grabs your hands and leads you into the bathroom, breathing hard already, and almost seeming desperate. You follow right behind her without a moment's hesitation and close the door. As you turn the shower back on again, you both melt into each other's arms as you passionately kiss each other... |
Homeless Sunset Shimmer | Gossip | You and Sunset walk out into the hallway, holding hands with each other and smiling.
After your lovemaking session in the shower, you both moved to the bed, where you made love again. They were both absolutely incredible. Afterwards, you figured it was time to face the public again though, so you both got dressed, fixed yourselves up, and got ready.
The day has only just begun, and already, you're tired. Both of you are. The fact that the Thanksgiving turkey is already cooking isn't helping with that either. It smells amazing in the house.
You yawn and head downstairs to the living room with Sunset. Applejack is sitting on a chair watching the Thanksgiving football game. Or maybe it's the pre-game. Whatever. Teams are playing sports.
"Hey, AJ." You greet.
She looks over to you and smiles. "Hey, you two. 'Bout time y'all got up."
You and Sunset look at each other and grin. "We were... Talking... About stuff." Sunset says.
You nod. "Yeah... Talking."
Applejack scoffs and looks back at the tv. "Sounded pretty loud for talkin'."
You both freeze and look at each other. Your smiles fade and you feel yourself turning red with embarrassment.
You look at Applejack, who isn't looking directly at you, but you can see she's got a little shit-eating grin on her face.
"Heh... I forgot you're good at detecting bullshit..." You chuckle nervously.
She laughs and looks back at you. "Well, its pretty easy when y'all make it that obvious."
Oh, shit. Sunset was being kinda loud in there. You have only yourself to blame, you dog.
Applejack looks at her and winks. "Glad to know he's treatin' you right, Sugarcube."
Sunset gets a nervous grin and looks up at her, blushing hard and looking mortified. "Heheh... Thanks... Sorry about that..."
Applejack waves her hand nonchalantly. "Don't you worry none. Luckily, Applebloom left with Mac well before it happened, so she didn't hear anything. They should be back soon though."
You decide to go along with the change in the topic. Anything to try and get Sunset more comfortable.
You walk over to the couch and sit down. "Where did they go?"
"They went to pick up cousin Braeburn and put signs up showing directions to our house." She says. "The rest of the Apples are comin' here for our annual Thanksgiving hoedown, so we needed to make sure they could find the place."
Oh yeah, you forgot about that little tradition.
"Hoedown?" Sunset asks.
Applejack looks over at her. "Every year, we have a huge Thanksgiving hoedown at one of the relatives' place. This year, it's our turn. We've got a huge openin' out back with big lights and heated pavement, so we won't have to worry about slippin' on ice or gettin' too cold."
You nod in agreement. "They've got dancing, tons of food, a band, it's really fun. I've been to only one before, and I had a blast."
She looks to you and smiles. "Well okay. I've always wanted to try dancing."
Applejack smiles. "Well, you picked the perfect time to try it out then, Sugarcube."
You smile and give Sunset a quick kiss on the head. "Applejack doesn't lie, Sunny."
She smiles and looks to Applejack again. "Thank you again for letting us stay here, Applejack."
Applejack waves her hand, like it's nothing and smiles. "Hey, that's what family's for! Think nothin' of it, darlin'."
She turns back to the tv for a bit and there's a silence among you all for a few more moments.
"Oh by the way Anon..." Applejack turns back and looks at you. "Soon as Big Mac, Applebloom and Braeburn get back, would you mind helpin' us get everything set up out back?"
"Oh, of course. I'd love to help." You say.
Sunset perks up. "Anything I can do to help out too?"
Applejack shakes her head. "Nah, don't you worry about helpin'. As a matter of fact, Rarity texted earlier and said she wanted to come by and talk to you a bit."
She looks a bit nervous at that. "About what?"
"Knowin' her? Probably girl stuff." Applejack says. "I bet she just wants to get to know you a bit more. No need to be nervous."
She nods and leans on you, looking down. "Okay."
Applejack turns back to the tv.
"Hey." You put a finger under Sunset's chin and make her look up at you. "You okay?"
She grins. "Yeah. I'm just tired."
You smile back at her and give her a quick kiss before relaxing on the couch together and watching TV with Applejack.
After a few more minutes, the front door opens and Applebloom walks inside.
She shakes her head and rubs some snow out of her hair. "Hey Anon!"
"Hey Applebloom." You reply. She walks over to you and gives you a hug.
"Applebloom, where're Big Mac and Braeburn?" Applejack asks.
"They already went out back." Applebloom replies.
Applejack nods and gets up before grabbing her coat. Looks like that's your cue.
You get up and stretch a little before turning back to face Sunset. "Alright, you. Have a good time with Rarity, okay?"
She smiles and nods. "Alright, be careful."
"I will." You give each other a kiss and hug. "Love you." ---
"Love you too." You reply.
You release the hug and Anon goes outside with Applejack, leaving you on the couch. You sit there awkwardly while Applebloom stares at you.
She clears her throat. "So, I'm sorry I forgot, what was your name again?"
You smile. "Sunset. Sunset Shimmer."
She nods. "So you and Anon, huh?"
You smile and give a little giggle. "Yep."
She scoffs and crosses her arms. "Lucky..."
You raise your eyebrows. "You like Anon?"
She widens her eyes and blushes. "W- Well, no! N- Not like that, I mean... I was just-" She sighs and slumps her shoulders. "Alright, you got me... He's cute, okay?"
You giggle again. "He sure is."
She slouches and sits down on a chair. "It just ain't fair... He's way older than me, I know, but still. You're just so lucky that you're as old as he is and you can kiss him and stuff."
You grin at her. That's cute.
"Well I'm sorry, Applebloom... I wasn't trying to make you jealous or anything." You say.
She nods. "I know. It's okay."
You hate to admit it, but this is kind of funny. You've got to tell her something, though.
"Crazy crushes happen with everyone, Applebloom. It's just a little phase we all go through." You say. "Don't worry, I'm sure you'll find someone your own age someday."
"That's what Applejack says. 'It's just a phase! You'll get over it someday!'" She says.
You smile. "Well, she's right. It is just a phase."
"I'm not sure if I believe her on that one though." She says. "Applejack has had a crush on him too ever since she's known him! What kind of phase runs that long?!"
Your smile vanishes immediately. "...What?"
Applebloom's eyes widen and she covers her mouth with her hands as fast as possible. She looks like she knows she's in trouble.
You scoot closer to her. "Applebloom, what did you just say?"
She slowly removes her hands from across her mouth. "Uh..."
She's trying to think of something, anything than what you thought you just heard, when suddenly, the doorbell rings.
"I'LL GET IT! I'LL GET IT!" Applebloom scrambles up from the chair and runs to the front door as fast as she can.
Saved by the bell...
She opens the door and Rarity greets her. "Hello, Applebloom! Is Sunse-"
Applebloom yanks Rarity inside. "WELL SHOOT, IF IT AIN'T RARITY! HI RARITY! WHAT'S THAT GRANNY?! YOU NEED ME?! OKAY! I'M GONNA GO HELP HER OUT! YOU TWO HAVE FUN! BYE!" She runs out of the room in a yellow blur.
Granny Smith didn't say anything from the other room...
Rarity stares after her after straightening herself out.
She looks at you. "What was that about?"
You stare after Applebloom. "I'm not sure... But I don't like it."
You stay there for a moment longer, unmoving. You knew there was something you didn't like about Applejack from the moment you first saw her. You just knew it.
According to her sister, she likes Anon, and has liked him for years. You don't blame her by any means, but you aren't too comfortable with leaving her here with him. He's yours.
"Darling?" You snap out of it and turn to Rarity. She looks a bit worried. "Are you alright?"
You look down at your feet and contemplate a moment. "I don't know..."
Rarity stays there a moment longer and straightens up. "Well, go on and grab your coat and let's have us a little 'girl talk', alright? You can tell me all about your issues."
You nod, grab your coat and walk outside with Rarity.
As you leave, you look back at the Apples' home with worry. You have a really bad feeling about leaving Anon alone with Applejack. You trust Anon with all your heart, but you don't trust her.
You look to your feet and continue down the driveway next to Rarity.
"So? What's on your mind? You seem down." Rarity asks.
You sigh. "I'm not sure, really... Applebloom just accidentally told me that Applejack has a crush on Anon, and I'm just a little paranoid, I guess..."
"Oh dear. Still?" Rarity asks.
You look at her. "Still?"
Rarity nods. "Applejack and Anonymous grew up together. Ever since I first met them, they were the best of friends, but Applejack has always liked him a little bit more."
You blink. "And you knew about this? The whole time?"
She laughs. "Well of course, darling! We all did! It was just so obvious! Applejack is not the best liar, mind you, so she was never too good at hiding her feelings."
That doesn't help ease your worries.
"Then how does Anon not know about this?" You ask.
Rarity shakes her head. "I have absolutely no idea. Applejack has always gone the extra mile for him, and it is painfully obvious that she has feelings for him, but for some reason, he refuses to see it. He always thought of her as a sister. Maybe the idea of them being anything more than just friends is just absurd to him. Whatever the reason, as far as I know, he has not reciprocated any of her romantic feelings."
Well, that helps a little, you suppose.
She gives you a half-hug and pats your back. "Sunset, you have nothing to worry about. Applejack would never try to take him from you. She may be a tad stubborn, but she isn't selfish, by any means. It's clear that you love him and he loves you. She won't do anything to jeopardize your relationship with him."
You smile and blush at her words. You really do love Anon.
"Thanks Rarity." You say. "I do feel a lot better now that I know that."
Rarity smiles. "That's what friends are for, darling! I'm happy to help you out if I can."
You both round the corner and continue down the sidewalk.
You sigh. "I guess I just didn't know how to deal with it all at once. Applejack was very nice to let us stay with her for a while, and I do want to like her, but... I don't know... Everything happened pretty fast this morning..." You smirk. "Well...heh... More like, after we left our room this morning is when things got hectic..."
Rarity cocks her head at you.
You grin and blush again and start twirling your hair nervously. "Anon and I, uh, heh... We consummated... our physical relationship this morning..."
She gasps. "Oh goodness! Sunset, look at you! How was he?! How did it start?! Tell me absolutely everything!"
You giggle happily. "Ooh he was wonderful! I've never felt like that before in my whole life. I just wanted to kiss him, and hold him, and have him never let me go for as long as I lived. It was like being in a dream..."
"Awwww, that's so sweet!" She whips out her phone and starts tapping on the screen. "We must let the rest of the girls know! Don't say anything else until they're all on the line!"
You let out another girly giggle and continue down the sidewalk with her.
She speaks into her phone a moment later, smiling wide. "Twilight! It's Rarity! Get Rainbow and Pinkie on! I'll get Fluttershy! Sunset has some big news!"
You giggle again and the rest of the girls eventually get on the phone, except for Applejack, of course. Rarity didn't include her, which makes sense. She probably didn't want to twist the knife of you and Anon in her stomach any more.
Twilight's voice comes on the speaker. "Okay we're all here! Now what's the big news, Sunset?"
You smile and proceed to tell all the girls all about your first time making love with your man. ---
You, Mac, and Braeburn are in the backyard, silently drinking some apple cider while taking a break from setting up for the hoedown.
You turn to them all. "Oh, guess what guys? Sunset and I had shower sex this morning."
Braeburn and Mac look at you and nod, impressed.
"Nice." Braeburn comments.
"Eeyup." Mac adds with a grin.
You smirk and take another swig of cider before returning your attention to the silence of the outdoors. |
Homeless Sunset Shimmer | Revelation | You and Braeburn set down the huge barrel of cider you were carrying on the ground next to the snack table. "Alrighty then. That was the last one, right?"
"I think there was one more that Mac was gettin'." Braeburn replies.
You're about to turn back to help him, but he's already on his way over with it. Those barrels are huge, and he's using his massive Hulk hands to carry it all by himself.
He sets it down with a grunt next to yours.
"Was that the last one?" You ask.
"Eeyup." He nods.
"Thank God." You wince as you stretch and your back pops in a few places.
You turn around to check out the backyard. It kind of reminds you of a high school dance on an outdoor basketball court. The heated pavement has melted away any of the snow that was present, and the lights surrounding the dance floor make it nice and warm out here. You feel totally fine. All you really think you'd need is a jacket.
At one end was a stage that was set up with a few musical instruments, all ready to go. A couple guitars and a drum kit. Lots of members of the Apple family are musicians, and they're planning to play some music for everyone. Along the perimeter of the pavement was a row of tables. The only thing that was missing was the food at this point, but judging by the smell in the air, it wasn't too far behind.
You look back at the house to see more Apple family members inside. You don't recognize any of them.
"Looks like the rest of the family's starting to arrive." Braeburn says.
"Eeyup." Big Mac nods.
You look back at them as they start walking out the front gate. "Anything else we need?"
Mac looks back. "Nnope. It's Applejack's shindig now."
Bitchin'.
You nod and turn around to head back inside, but instead, you bump right into Applejack, literally knocking your heads together.
You fall back and grab your now throbbing head. "Ow!"
Applejack grunts as well. "Ah! You okay Anon?! I'm so sorry, I didn't mean it!"
You open an eye to see Applejack rubbing her head and looking at you with a worried expression. It knocked her hat off.
You smile and chuckle a little as you stand up. "Yeah, I'm fine... Just a knock on the head. You okay?"
You extend a hand to her. She looks at it a moment and back up to you before taking it.
She stands up slowly and grins at you. "I-I'm fine. Thanks, Sugarcube..."
She stuttered. Her cheeks are red. ...
She must be embarrassed about what just happened.
You laugh and rub your head. "Glad to hear it, Applejack. What's life without a little bump on the head every now and then, huh?"
She chuckles and sets her hands down to her sides. "Y-Yeah, I guess you're right."
She smiles and twists her leg around on her toes.
You clear your throat. "Well, I'm gonna go detox for a bit. My back is killing me." You turn back to the house.
"W-Wait! Anon!" She grabs your hand, making you turn back to her.
"Yeah?"
"Uh..." She stands there for a moment like she's got something on her mind. After a pause, she sighs and smiles. "I just... I wanted to say thanks... for helpin' get stuff ready... I really appreciate it. Really... It's so good to have you back home with me... With us! All of us."
You smile at her again. "No problem, Applejack. That's what friends are for. It's good to be back here too." You wink at her and slide your hand out of hers.
You walk back to the house, groaning and popping your neck. It makes a few good pops as you open the door to the kitchen. Granny Smith is adding a few touch ups on the food in the kitchen with a couple other Apple family members. The smell of turkey and various other foods hits you like a freight train.
"My goodness. Granny Smith, you make 'em like no other. It smells fantastic in here." You say.
Granny Smith turns to you and smiles. "Well shucks, Anon! Ya know I didn't make it fer smellin'! I made it fer eatin'!"
You cock an eyebrow and move closer to the cut up turkey she's working on. "Well then in that case..."
You reach for the dark meat until she smacks your hand. "Now don't y'all be gettin' a taste 'fore its been served, ya hear?!"
You playfully roll your eyes as you near the door. "Ugh, fiiiine. I'll just have to enjoy the SMELL of it..."
She chuckles and smacks you in the back of the head again. "Go on, now! Git!"
You skip out of the kitchen, giggling like a little girl. Granny Smith is so silly. You love her. She's a bit strange and cooky at times, but it's nice to humor her antics every now and then. She appreciates you having a little fun with her.
You take out your phone and text Rarity as you walk back to your room.
You guys having fun?<
You put it back in your pocket and enter your room. You collapse onto the bed and groan.
A few seconds later, your phone vibrates. It's a message from Rarity.
>Yes we did!! :D She'll be back in a few minutes so just wait a bit loverboy ;3 hehe
You chuckle. Sunset must've told her all about the magic you two made this morning with each other. ---
You approach the Apple home with Rarity and turn back to her. "Thanks so much, Rarity! I had a great time talking with you!"
"Why of course, darling! I enjoyed it as well! We simply must do it again, and soon! We'll be great friends, I can already tell!" She replies.
You giggle and nod. "I think so too!"
She smiles and gives you a hug. "Now, tell your boyfriend I said hello, and you two have a happy Thanksgiving, alright?"
"Will do."
You smile and release the hug with her before waving goodbye and heading inside the house.
Rarity is such a nice girl. It was great to get to know her and her friends a bit more. As soon as the holidays were over, you'd have to hang out with them more often. This could be the start of a great friendship.
You step inside the house only to be greeted with the heavenly smell of all kinds of food. It makes you give a happy sigh.
However, on your left, in the living room, you see Applejack sitting on the couch with her head lowered and her arms folded. It immediately makes you feel a little concerned for her. Maybe even a little sorry. She looks so sad. You can only imagine what she's feeling right now. You don't like her for it, sure, but at the same time you don't blame her for liking Anon either. He is a great guy.
You step inside more and clear your throat. "Uh... Hi, Applejack."
She doesn't move for a while. She takes a deep breath and exhales. "Hi Sunset..."
She didn't even look at you.
Your grin fades and you slowly walk down the hall to your and Anon's room, leaving her alone on the couch. You aren't sure why, but you do feel really bad for her. Seeing her like that made you feel... sad. Not guilty, by any means, but you feel like you should do something. She's hardly competition against you for Anon's love, but she is his best friend.
In Equestria, you imagine that you would have felt superior, or even happy at a situation like this. You win and someone else loses. That would please you. But, seeing Applejack like this now? You don't feel good at all.
It might be a good idea to talk to Anon about this. He needs to be made aware of this whole situation.
You rub your neck and open the door to your room. Anon is laying on the bed, looking exhausted.
He smiles up at you. "Hey there, Sunny. How was your chat with Rarity?"
You grin at him and shut the door. "It was fun, Nonny. How was... um, lifting stuff?"
He chuckles. "It was great. Heavy lifting is always rewarding."
You smile and sit down next to him, giving him a quick kiss. "Anon? Can we talk for a little bit?"
He sits up a little. "Sure. What's up?"
You rub your neck nervously and cross your legs. "Well, uh... You know Applejack?"
"My best friend? Of course I do." He replies.
You lick your lips nervously. "Well, do you know about her feelings?"
He scrunched his eyes a bit. "Her feelings?"
You sigh and shut your eyes. Anon is so clueless. Might as well come right out with it.
"Applejack likes you." You say.
He just blinks. "...Say again?"
You clear your throat. "Applejack likes you... Like, she like-likes you. A lot."
You can see his mind working hard to try and process what you just said. "She... Likes me?"
You nod.
"Like, as much as you like me?" He asks.
You grin. "Well, of course not. No one likes you as much as I like you."
He breathes out a tiny chuckle at that. Good job, Sunset. Break up the tension with a little laugh.
"Uh..." He shuts his eyes. "Who... Who told you that Applejack like-likes me?"
"Rarity did." You reply. "She said it was obvious from the way she behaves around you. I can see it too... She is head-over-heels crazy for you. In fact, she's out on the couch right now, and she looks like she's about to cry."
"Obvious..." He breathes out and pauses for a long moment, visibly trying to think.
Then, his eyes start to widen a bit. ---
Holy shit Anon, you're so stupid.
How did you manage to get dressed by yourself all this time? It was all so obvious.
The way she gets all shy and awkward around you, they way her cheeks were always red when she looked at you, how she always went out of her way for you, everything. No one else acts like that around you. How did you not see this before?
"Damn." You barely huff out a chuckle and shake your head. "I'm so stupid..."
Sunset sets her hand on your leg and rubs a little. "Anon..."
"No, I am." You say, staring off into space. "It was right there in front of me. It has been for years, and I just- I still didn't see it."
You think back through the years of growing up with her. All those times you'd been around her and spent time together. All those times you hung out and talked and everything.
You thought of her as a sister. You'd been friendzoning her for years. It must have been killing her.
And this morning?
"Oh no..." You gasp.
She heard you and Sunset having sex. You can't imagine how she must have felt.
You groan and put your head in your hands. You feel terrible.
"Oh, Applejack..." You whisper.
You stay silent as you try to come to terms with what Sunset just told you. The emotional toll you must have been putting on poor Applejack after all this time.
Sunset sets a hand on your shoulder. "Anon?"
You slowly look at her. She looks worried.
You reach up to touch her hand. "I'm fine, Sunset. It's just-" You sigh and shut your eyes. "She's my best friend... And to realize that I was causing her this much sadness over the years... It's gut wrenching..."
She doesn't move her hand from your shoulder.
You think for a bit and look at her again. "Don't worry. I love you, and only you."
She visibly relaxes and smiles a little. "Okay, good. Honestly, I was a little scared."
"Don't be... Applejack is a friend. My greatest friend in the world, but still just a friend. That's all I'll ever see her as." You sigh again and lean over on her shoulder. "I just don't know what to do now that I know about this... Apparently, she's wanted to be more than a friend to me for a while... I see that now. Thinking back on my whole life with her, it is so incredibly obvious... I hate to think that I've been breaking her heart over and over again without knowing all this time."
Sunset softly rubs your hair like a dog as you lean on her. "You didn't mean to, though."
"I know... But I still did it..." You reply.
You both stay there together for a while, saying nothing to each other.
You know that have to talk to Applejack about this, but you're so afraid that you'll make her cry. You can't stand seeing her cry. Especially if she's out on the couch right now all sad. It's Thanksgiving! She deserves to be happy today. She's way too important to you to make her sad.
Being friends with her, it's like...
"Magic..." You whisper.
Sunset stops rubbing your head. "Hmm?"
The song "Do You Believe in Magic?" is playing through your head right now. It's one of your favorites. The one you and Sunset danced to. It's your feelgood song.
"My friendship with Applejack is like magic... We worked so well together growing up. There was nothing we couldn't do. Magic, that's... that's the only thing that comes to mind. The only way I can describe it." You say.
Holy shit, that was lame.
"Friendship... is magic..." Sunset repeats softly.
You nod slowly and stay leaning up against her for a long moment.
There's a pause between you two before Sunset looks down at you. "Go talk to her."
You look back at her. "Now?"
She nods. "Yes. Right now.... If you're being honest with me, then she shouldn't have to wait any longer for closure from you. Even if it hurts right now, she'll keep hurting even more if you say nothing."
You stay silent as you look at her.
"Friends like her don't come around too often, Anon. You can work through this with her together, you just need to be honest with each other. Give her the chance to be open with you. All those feelings she's had have probably been eating away at her for a long time, and they've probably been killing her. She needs closure."
You nod slowly. "Yeah... You're right..."
She smiles. "I've only seen a friendship like one you have with her once before, in my life..." She looks away and mumbles under her breath. "Maybe that's what she was trying to teach me..."
You didn't catch that.
"What?" You say.
She shakes her head and looks back at you. "Never mind. Just go. Talk to her, Anon. She's your friend. Be there for her."
You nod and slowly sit up. "Okay... Okay, I will." You hug Sunset tightly and smile. "Thank you so much, Sunset."
She hugs you back. "You're welcome."
You release her a moment later and stand up. You head out the door and make your way down the hall, your heart thumping hard in nervousness.
"Hang on, Applejack..."
This won't be easy. |
Homeless Sunset Shimmer | Closure | You proceed down the hallway and turn the corner into the living room. There's Applejack sitting all alone on the couch, looking sad. She hasn't noticed you yet.
Poor thing.
You take a deep breath and clear your throat. "Applejack?"
She turns to you and immediately puts on the best fake smile she can muster up. "Howdy, Anon!"
You'll give her an "A" for effort, but you can see right through that fake smile.
"Can we talk for a sec?" You ask.
"Sure thing! Pop a squat!" She pats the available space on the couch next to her. You smile at her and sit down. "What's up, Sugarcube?"
You exhale and look at her. "Well, um... Sunset and I were talking just now, and apparently, she heard some stuff today... About you."
Her fake smile fades a bit. "...Like, what kind of stuff? What did Rarity tell her?"
Oh, this is so awkward.
You try to think of the best way to put it, but then you remember who you're dealing with. Just be honest. Come right out and tell the truth.
You take a deep breath. "I know about your feelings for me."
Her eyes widen and her cheeks go bright red. "Uh..."
She twiddles her thumbs and looks down. You can almost see the gears in her mind turn as she desperately tries to search for something to say. Anything to get her out of this.
She gives a nervous laugh and covers her mouth. "I- I don't know wh- what you're talkin' about... Ha! That Rarity! Such a kidder, am I right?!"
Bullshit.
"Applejack, you're not a good liar." You reply.
She forces herself to laugh harder and stands up. "Lie?! What?! Haha! Anon, come on! I- I ain't lyin'! I'm j- just-"
"Applejack..." You calmly interrupt.
She stammers for a few more seconds before sighing and sitting back down next to you. Her fake smile vanishes altogether. "Alright, fine... You got me... Yes... I... I like you, Sugarcube... A lot..."
She takes her hat off and slouches down, resting her head in her hands. Saying that looks like it took a huge weight off her shoulders. She takes a shaky breath and accidentally drops her hat at her feet, but makes no attempt to pick it back up.
Now you feel really bad for her.
You stay there quietly and put a hand on her shoulder.
"I have for years... Ever since I met you, pretty much... But I was too shy to say anythin'..." She chuckles a little. "Imagine that... Me, good ol' Applejack, bein' all shy 'n stuff..."
You rub her shoulder. "Why didn't you try and get over me?"
She doesn't say anything for a long time.
"I, uh... I guess I just... Hoped that... One day... Maybe... We could..." You hear her sniff.
Oh, this is killing you.
You put your arm around her and she leans against you. She sniffs again. "I just... I love you, Anon... I always have... But... But now you're with Sunset and you're so happy with her, and I want to be happy for you too, I really do, but at the same time it hurts so much seeing her with you, and... and..." She trails off as she starts crying more.
"Oh, Applejack..." You rock her back and forth in your arms as she cries.
Neither of you say anything for a long time. There's nothing you can say to her, really. You just hold your best friend close to you and let her cry. It's all you can do.
"I'm so sorry..." She says.
"No, I'm sorry." You say She sniffs again and looks up at you. Her eyes are red and her cheeks are wet with her tears. "I'm sorry I didn't see it sooner... Looking back, it was all so obvious... I should've known, or at least had a hunch, but I didn't..."
Her lip quivers and she looks down sadly, sniffing once again.
"Believe me, if I had known sooner, I would've said something... I hate seeing you like this..." You stay silent another moment and raise her chin up, making her look at you again. "You mean too damn much to me, Applejack. You've been the greatest friend anyone could ever ask for. You're like a sister to me! I don't want this friendship we have to be ruined because I can't return your feelings."
She sniffs again and nods. "Right... Y- You've got Sunset now..." She cries again and hugs you. "It hurts, Anon... It hurts so much seein' her with you... She kisses you and hugs you and everythin' and I just... Just-"
She's now sobbing openly. You feel your shirt get wet from her tears, but you don't do anything. You softly rub her hair and try to comfort her as best as you can.
"Sh- She has n- no idea... How lucky she is..." She says between sobs.
You gently rock her back and forth and let her get it all out. Nothing can be said right now, all you do is sit and be there for her. You both stay there for a long time, just the two of you.
After a few good minutes, she finally starts breathing slowly again. Her sobs have been reduced to sniffles.
She slowly sits up and wipes some tears away. "S- Sorry... About your shirt..."
You chuckle and shake your head. "It's okay."
She smiles a little and sniffs again.
"I'm sorry I can't say that I'm in love with you too." You say. She nods slowly, still looking sad. "But I still love and cherish you as my greatest friend in the whole world... Nothing and no one will ever change that."
She stays silent for another moment. "O- Okay... I still have that then, I guess..."
You grin. "And you always will."
You reach down and pick up her hat at her feet and hand it to her. She looks at it for a moment before taking it from you, but she doesn't put it on.
She smiles and hugs you again. "Thank you so much, Anon."
You hug her back tight. "You're more than welcome."
You stay there for a while, just hugging her tight.
From the hallway, you see Sunset tentatively look around the corner at you. The look on her face is asking if everything is okay.
You smile and nod at her slowly. She smiles back and gives you a thumbs up before walking back behind the corner towards your room.
Applejack sniffs and sits up again. "I just... Need to be strong, I guess..."
You nod at her. "You'll always be my greatest friend, I hope you know. I'll always be there for you."
She smiles. "Thank you, Anon."
You smile back. "You're welcome."
You stand up and take a deep breath. It's now that you hear the muffled sound of people talking and country music being played.
Right, the Apple Family Thanksgiving hoedown.
"Are you going outside?" You ask.
She shakes her head and wipes her nose, sniffling. "No... Not yet, anyway... I kinda... need to be alone for a little while."
"Okay." You smile and start to walk backwards. "So, I guess I'll see you later then?"
She smiles and nods. "Eeyup... See ya later, Sugarcube."
You smile again and head back down the hallway. You take a deep breath and run a hand through your hair. You're tired, but you feel like a huge weight has been lifted off your shoulders as well. It feels good. ---
You're pacing back and forth in your room and chewing on your thumbnail nervously. Anon's been talking to Applejack for a long time. It looked like everything was going okay though, so you aren't worried. You're just anxious. You need to know what's going on.
The door clicks and you turn around to see Anon walk inside.
You smile at each other and he shuts the door behind him. "Oh man..."
He sighs and leans back against the door before sinking down to sit on the floor.
You walk over and sit down in front of him, resting your chin on his knees. "Everything okay?"
He nods. "Yeah, all is well. We're still friends, and she'll be fine."
"Good." You smile and scoot over to sit right next to him.
You rest your head on his shoulder and he kisses it before resting his head on yours. You grab his hand and hold it tight. The both of you stay quiet as he rubs your hand with his thumb.
"Sorry this all happened..." He says. "Here and now."
You smile and squeeze his hand. "It's okay."
You keep yourself against him for another long moment, saying nothing.
"Are you going to the dance thingy?" You ask.
He sighs. "I don't really want to now. This whole thing kinda killed my mood, you know?"
You nod. "Mmhmm."
"Did you want to go?" He asks.
"Well, I was planning on it earlier, but then this whole thing happened..." You reply.
"We can still go if you want." He says.
"No that's okay." You smile at him and give him a kiss. "I'd rather stay here and snuggle with you, anyway."
"Aww." He smiles and kisses you back. "Thanks, Sunny."
"You're welcome, Nonny." You cuddle against him again. ...
"I am kinda hungry though." You admit.
He nods. "Me too."
"Wanna just make an appearance?" You ask. "Go grab some food then come back up here and watch a movie or something?"
He smiles softly. "That sounds like a great idea."
You grin at him and the both of you stand up. You walk out into the hallway with his hand in yours and head downstairs.
Passing through the kitchen, you both walk outside to see the backyard flooded with people dancing with their respective partners. The girl onstage finishes a song and the rest of the people cheer and applaud.
"Thanks! Thank y'all very very much!" She says.
Anon gives you a little tug and points to the big table of food. "There's the good stuff."
You look at the food and smile. "Ooh! Pumpkin pie!"
He chuckles and you both head over there, grabbing a couple of plates and helping yourself to some food.
The girl onstage continues talking. "Now y'all, I know was well as you do that this wouldn't be no good shindig if'n we didn't have a slow song or two. So, how 'bout you grab that special someone, and let's get some mood lighting in here..."
The white lights fade into red, blue, and purple. You look around as dancers and people take their loved ones by the hand and spread out along the dance floor.
She motions to the band behind her and the music starts.
"...Here's one you might remember from The Cranberries." She says.
Anon stands next to you with a plate of food in his hands as the music begins to swell. You both look at each other and smile a little.
He shrugs and sets his plate down on a nearby table before extending an arm out to you. "May I have this dance?"
You smile wide and set your plate next to his before taking his arm. "It would be my pleasure."
The two of you walk onto the dance floor, hand-in-hand, among the crowd of people. Facing him, you put your right hand on his shoulder and take his hand with your left. He places his hand on your waist and you both begin to slowly sway to the music as the girl starts to sing.
This song is beautiful. ---
You just stare at Sunset and smile as you both dance together. She's so beautiful. You love her so much.
As you dance to the music, your eyes catch a glimpse of Applejack standing in the doorway to the house. You both lock eyes with each other for a moment. Just staring at each other.
Finally, she smiles at you. A real, genuine smile. She gives you a small thumbs up before putting her hands back together.
You smile back at her and nod in thanks.
She stands there for another moment, just watching you and Sunset dance together, before slowly turning around and heading back into the house.
You exhale and look back at Sunset. She smiles at you and you kiss her. While you do love her with all your heart, you do feel bad for Applejack. You just wish you could've known sooner so you didn't have to inadvertently drag her along all these years.
She'll be okay though. She's tough. This is just one of life's little speedbumps that she has to pass over. You're positive that she'll find a great guy someday. She'd be a great catch.
You and Sunset continue dancing with each other, just enjoying being with one another.
You still cannot believe how incredibly lucky you are to have found her. You just wanted to help out a poor, starving, homeless girl living in the dumpster next to your place. You never thought that she'd end up being the young woman you fell in love with. It's like she appeared out of thin air, just for you. It's unexplainable.
A part of you still can't believe she's real. Yet, here she is. In your arms, slow dancing with you to the song Linger. It's like something out of a fairy tail. If there's one thing in the world that you're thankful for this Thanksgiving, it's her.
As the song ends, you smile at her and slow your dancing.
"I love you, Sunset." You say.
Sunset smiles back at you. "I love you too, Anon."
You share a long, loving kiss as the song fades out. |
Homeless Sunset Shimmer | Noel | Chapter Theme Song:
"Let's see here... Hmm... Perfume... Would that be nice? Or maybe a candle or something?"
You are Anon.
Right now, you're at the mall with Rarity, Fluttershy, Twilight, Rainbow, and the kids, and you're Christmas shopping for Sunset. It should be a fun time, but the problem you're having is you don't know what to get her. It's Christmas Eve, and you're a fool for waiting this long, you know, but with living arrangements being screwy, and you looking around for work, it's been difficult to find the time to go shopping.
Thankfully, Sunset was back at Pinkie's place and was busy making cookies with her and Applejack. She was smart and got her shopping done a few days ago. You're excited to see what she got you, but you're more excited to see the look on her face when you give her your present. However, you're missing one crucial factor in that equation: a good present.
Sure, it's the thought that counts and all, but it's fun to spoil girls on Christmas. You just don't know what to spoil them with! Especially this girl. Sunset is the love of your life, and you want your first Christmas together to really mean something special. Not just for you, but for her.
During the relatively short time you've been together, you've noticed that she's very out of touch with things. Movies, music, tv shows, just about everything. You've asked her how she hasn't caught on to the trends and stuff before, but she gets hesitant and distant and claims that she hasn't had a chance to get into anything. It's like she was living under a rock before she met you.
Or, rather, in a dumpster...
She obviously has some secrets that she hasn't told you. You don't even know where she's from. She told you that cute little story about the unicorns and the pony world and Princess Celeste or whatever, and while you loved her cute childlike attitude, that wasn't exactly the answer you were after. You would like to know where she really is from.
It's a good question for another time though. Now is the time for Christmas. As soon as you're done here, you're all going to go back to Pinkie's place, pick them up with some cookies, and go look at the Christmas lights they have set up at the town square. You're excited to see the look on her face when she sees all the lights too.
You look around at all the perfume options available to you in the store. There are just so many, you have no idea what to get her. You don't even know if perfume would be a great present. It's overwhelming.
You whine and hop up and down a little like a pouty child. "Rarityyyy! I neeeed yoooou!"
On your right, Rarity walks around the corner with tons of shopping bags in her hands. "Oh, stop whining, darling! I'm right here!"
Thank the Good Lord you brought her with you to the mall.
You sigh. "I need your help! I have no idea what to get Sunset for Christmas! I mean, I have an idea, maybe, but there are just so many options here and I doubt myself, because it has to be perfect for her, because I love her like crazy!"
She sets her bags down and grabs your shoulders, shaking you a little. "Anonymous, calm down! Everything will be alright!" You stop panicking and look her in the eyes. "I will help you pick out a present for Sunset, alright? Just stay calm and I'll walk you through it."
You take a deep breath and nod at her. "Okay."
She smiles and releases you. "Now, what idea for a present do you have so far?"
You take a deep breath and she releases you. "Well, there is this selection of perfumes." You take a big purple bottle off the shelf and handle it. "Maybe she would like one of them."
Before you even finished talking, Rarity is already shaking her head. "No. Don't get her perfume. Not for Christmas. That's not a good Christmas present. It would make a wonderful Valentine's present, but not Christmas."
You frown and put it back on the shelf. "Well, what about a candle? They're great around Christmas."
"True, darling, but they don't make the best presents by themselves. They're best as an accent to another Christmas present you've gotten." She says. "You want to look for something physical, but also meaningful or useful. Something that can last for a long time. Jewelry, or clothing, or even a new appliance, if she likes to cook or something."
You shake your head. "I like to cook, but I don't know if she likes to cook."
"Me, I hate cooking. It's messy, it's difficult, and frankly, I'm bad at it. I'm not losing any sleep over that fact, I'm just saying. It runs in the family, too. One morning, Sweetie Belle managed to burn orange juice." She says before waving her hand dismissively. "That's neither here nor there, though... My point is, for an ideal Christmas gift, you need to find something that she will like, she will use, and that will last for a while."
Something Sunset will like and use for a while, huh?
You cross your arms and think for a moment before looking back at her. "You mentioned jewelry... There's a jewelry store on the other side of the mall. Let's head there and see what they have."
Rarity smiles. "Sounds like a plan. We'll go as soon as I'm done here." She picks up her bags. "While you're waiting for my expert opinion, would you be a doll and go take the girls to go see Santa? They've been waiting long enough, I think."
"Yes, we have!" A frustrated Sweetie Belle shouts from the next aisle over.
From around the corner, she comes walking towards you with Applebloom and Scootaloo in tow.
Rarity smiles and walks away. You follow after her as she turns another corner. There, you're met with Fluttershy, who is carrying a SHITLOAD of shopping bags in her arms.
Rarity piles on some of her shopping bags onto Fluttershy's already massive load. "Come along, Fluttershy! We're not done here yet!"
Fluttershy grunts and her legs shake a little under all those presents. "Happy.... to.... help.... out...." She tries to smile.
You're about to offer your help, when suddenly, you get yanked out of the store by the three little girls you're with.
"Anon, come on!" Applebloom says with a smile.
"We have to go see Santa!" Scootaloo adds.
You chuckle as you're dragged out of the store by the three girls. Man, you love Christmastime. ---
You are Sunset Shimmer.
Right now, you're in Pinkie Pie's kitchen helping her and Applejack make Christmas sugar cookies. You've got little sugar cookie men, Christmas trees, stars, snowmen, and Pinkie wanted ones shaped like balloons, for some reason. This is her kitchen, so you obliged her.
Anon, Rarity, Fluttershy, Twilight, Rainbow and the girls went to the mall about two hours ago, and you three have been making cookies and stuff in the meantime. As soon as they get back, everyone was going to help wrap presents, and then you were going into town to see the Christmas lights.
You're so excited. Canterlot had lights set up during Hearth's Warming Eve that always looked so pretty every year, and you're looking forward to seeing the human world's equivalent. Anon has shown you videos and pictures of Christmas lights, but he says they don't do them justice, and that they're far better in person. Which makes sense. The Hearth's Warming lights were much better when you were seeing the real things too.
As you're spreading icing on a few of the finished cookies, the oven timer dings and Pinkie hops over to pull this new batch out. The smell of sugar cookies is absolutely heavenly.
"Oooh! This one is all done!" She says happily.
"How many batches have we made so far?" You ask.
Applejack starts counting them. "Let's see... 1...2...3...times 7... 21!"
Your jaw drops. "21 batches of cookies?!"
Pinkie nods excitedly. "Yep! It's awesome, huh?! I haven't made this many cookies since I was in 8th grade!"
You lean against the counter, taking a little break. "Was it for a bake sale or something?"
She shrugs and takes a bite of a finished cookie. "No, it was just a Friday night, and I was bored."
You look at Applejack. She just chuckles and shrugs it off like she's used to it.
This chick is crazy. You will admit, you didn't much care for Pinkie when you first met her. Her wild car ride she took you and Anon on from the airport was enough to make you want to avoid her forever, but when she wouldn't go away, you figured you might as well try liking her.
She has now become one of your closest friends. She still surprises the hell out of you sometimes, though.
She bends down and grabs another tray full of regular circle sugar cookies. She puts them in the oven and sets the timer for... an hour?
"Pinkie, what are you doing?" You ask.
"This batch is Maud's!" She says. "She likes them really burnt and crunchy!"
Maud?
You cock your head. "Who's Maud?"
"...Hello."
You scream at the top of your lungs and bolt over to the other side of the kitchen. Holy shit, that was right in your ear.
You hyperventilate as you press yourself against the wall and stare at the girl who just entered the kitchen. She's wearing a bland, plain, dark purple dress and she's holding a little rock in her hand. Her hair is completely straight and her expression is completely neutral. Everything about her screams 'bored'.
You gasp and pant for air while Pinkie and Applejack start laughing at you.
"...Sorry." The girl says.
She even sounds like she's bored out of her mind.
Pinkie walks up to her and gives her a hug. "This is my big sister Maud! Maud, this is Sunset Shimmer!"
Maud gazes blankly at Pinkie before gazing back at you. "...Nice to meet you."
You take a deep breath and compose yourself. "Likewise, Maud."
She just slowly blinks. This girl is Pinkie's sister? Pinkie Pie's biological sister? That's hard to believe.
Pinkie turns to her. "Maud, I just put your batch of cookies in the oven! I'm making them just the way you like them!"
She just blinks again. "Thanks... Boulder is getting hungry."
Boulder? Does she mean... the rock?
Applejack hands her a couple cookies from batch 13 that were left in the oven a little too long. "Here you go, Maud. Think these'll tide him over 'till they're done?"
She takes them and inspects them. "Sure.... Thanks."
She crushes them in her hand and starts sprinkling the crumbs on top of the rock in her other hand. It's making a mess.
She walks out of the kitchen, still sprinkling the crumbs on top of the rock. You're speechless, but everything seems to be in its proper place now. Pinkie's weird, and so is Maud. She's just a different kind of weird. The Pies are just weird people in general.
But you aren't here to judge. You used to be a talking pony, after all.
You chuckle to yourself and resume spreading icing on some of the finished cookies. ---
This line to see Santa Claus is long. Very long. Thankfully, you and the three girls are almost to the front. You want to go to the jewelry store and pick out a present for Sunset. The mall won't be open forever, and it's packed with people. You're a little worried that all the good presents will be gone by the time you get out of this line.
You check the time on your phone. It's still pretty early in the afternoon, but it's already getting dark out. Winter totally messes up the natural day and night cycle. It feels like it's 8pm.
You put your phone down as the next kid leaves Santa's lap, and you're that much closer to the front of the line. There's nothing to worry about. You're going to get a great present for Sunset, and this Christmas will be perfect.
"You know what's incredible?" Sweetie Belle and Applebloom look at Scootaloo. "There are thousands of malls all over the country, and every single year, Santa comes to visit this one!"
"Yeah, that is weird!" Sweetie Belle says.
"Our town must be really nice!" Applebloom adds.
You smile and laugh to yourself. Kids at this age are so cute. It's wonderful.
You wait there a few moments with the girls, thinking about whatever pops into your head when suddenly, you feel your phone vibrate. You whip it out of your pocket again and answer it.
It's Sunset.
"Hey, gorgeous!" You say with a smile.
"Hey babe!" Sunset says. "How's Christmas shopping going?"
"Pretty good! Twilight and Rainbow left to go to the bookstore a little bit ago, and Rarity and Fluttershy are looking around at their favorite stores. They're all still shopping but I took a break with the kids. We're waiting in line to see Santa right now."
"Ooh sounds like fun!"
You chuckle a little. "How are the Christmas cookies coming? Did Pinkie eat them all?"
She giggles. "Oh no. We made 21 batches! The kitchen is a disaster!"
21 batches, good hell.
"I bet it is." You laugh again.
"I was just taking a little break from spreading on frosting and thought I'd call and ask when you'll be back." She says.
"We should be back soon." You reply. "Once the kids talk to Santa, I've got one more place I need to visit, then I'll let Rarity and Fluttershy know we're good to go."
"Okay, sounds good." She says. "See you when you get back! I love you!"
You smile. "Love you too, Sunny."
You hang up and sigh. You're just so happy. This is going to be the best Christmas ever, you can just tell.
"Awwww!!" The trio of young voices gets your attention.
The three girls are looking up at you with puppy-dog eyes and smiles on their faces.
You smirk. "What are you three looking at?"
They start laughing. "It's just cute, Anon!"
Scootaloo sighs. "I hope I can have a boyfriend that loves me as much as you love her someday!"
You smile and rustle Scootaloo's hair. "Don't worry, squirt. I'm sure you will. Enjoy being a kid while you can, though. Trust me."
The people ahead of you walk away from Santa, waving goodbye to the sweet old man, and you finally make it to the front of the line.
You text Rarity and let her know that you're done as the girls go one-by-one to sit on Santa's lap. She tells you to meet her and Fluttershy by the bookstore. When the girls finish, they wave goodbye to Santa as well, and you all make your way there.
At the entrance, you spot Rarity, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash. They wave as you approach. Rarity seems to have taken a great deal of Fluttershy's bags from her as they all stand around and wait for you. She looks relieved.
"Hey girls." You say. "Where's Twilight?"
Rainbow rolls her eyes. "She's still in there, looking around. I was happy with my new Daring Do book, but she wanted to look at everything. I got sick of waiting. I want to go to the sports store, before all the good stuff is sold out."
Scootaloo smiles. "Ooh! I'll go with you, Rainbow Dash!"
Rainbow grins. "Alright! Let's go."
Scootaloo runs over to Rainbow and the two of them walk away.
Rarity smiles. "Sweetie Belle. You and Applebloom go with Fluttershy to find Twilight in the bookstore. Anonymous, come with me."
"Right." You nod.
The girls go with Fluttershy. Rarity gives her back all her bags before she walks over to you. The both of you head through the mall and go to the jewelry store. As you walk inside, you look around at all the display cases. Each one is filled with all kinds of expensive jewelry.
You clear your throat. "Okay, Rarity. Let's look around."
She nods and the two of you wander through the store, looking through the display cases. Rings, necklaces, earrings, and even broaches of all kinds are in here. They're all so sparkly and nice. You feel like you're wasting a fortune just standing here, taking it all in.
"What's Sunset's favorite color, darling?" Rarity asks.
"Orange." You reply.
You continue browsing the pieces of jewelry this store has to offer. Thankfully, it's located inside a mall, so many of them have relatively reasonable price tags. There are no Pink Panther diamonds here. Only a handful of jewelry items are in the thousands. Still, it's all jewelry, so nothing here is exactly cheap, but you don't care. It's for Sunset.
As you move to the next jewelry case, you stop as something catches your eye. Inside, you spot a red and yellow sun-shaped necklace on a small gold chain beside a pair of matching earrings. They even match the colors in her hair. They are absolutely beautiful.
"Rarity?" You breathe.
You keep staring at the necklace and earrings as Rarity comes up next to you to look inside.
She gasps softly. "Oh my goodness, it's dazzling."
"They're perfect for her." You say with a growing smile.
"There's a complimentary note you can have calligraphed with it by one of the associates here." Rarity says, pointing to a little notice beside the necklace.
You stare at the necklace for another long moment before knocking on the glass and standing up straight. "I'm getting it."
Rarity smiles at you. "She'll love it, darling. I approve."
You smile back at her and get the jewelry associate's attention. He comes over and you talk for a moment before settling on a price for them both. Not cheap, but not overly expensive either. You can afford it. He takes your money and begins taking the earrings out of the case to put in a nice box, along with the necklace in a separate box.
Before he closes the necklace box, he asks you what note you'd like him to write. You think for a moment before telling him. He nods and pulls out a nice looking pen with gold ink and expertly writes down what you requested. He hands it to you and you read it.
Rarity smiles at you when you finish. "That's so adorable, darling. Sunset will absolutely love it."
You smile back at her for a moment before giving the note one last look. Then, you slip it in with the necklace and close the box.
You thank the associate and leave the store with Rarity, smiling the whole way. You cannot wait to see the look on her face when you give these to her. You'll probably give the earrings to her when you give everyone else their presents too, but you want to have a moment with her when you give her the necklace. Just the two of you. It will be magical.
As you and Rarity reach the entrance, you spot the rest of the girls waiting for you.
Rarity waves when she sees them. "There you all are!"
They all wave at you and you catch up with them. Twilight is holding a few books, Rainbow has a new soccer ball, among other things, and the kids are holding a few bags of Rarity's stuff that Fluttershy was holding before. No one has any free hands. Fluttershy is holding the majority of the bags though. She looks like she's struggling to hold it all, despite giving a few of them to the kids.
"Uh, Fluttershy? Do you want some help?" You ask.
She grunts, obviously straining to keep herself in an upright position. "Um... if.... it's not... too... much trouble... I wouldn't... mind..."
You chuckle and take some of the load off of her hands. Rarity does as well.
She exhales and starts taking deep breaths. "Thank you..."
You grin and grunt as you lift your load. These bags are heavy, how much did Rarity buy? You're kind of scared to find out. It is Rarity, after all...
"Alright, everyone! Let's head out!" Rarity says.
She turns tail and you all follow her out the doors into the freezing cold weather together. As soon as you get to the parking lot, you see Fluttershy's van. She lucked out and managed to park close to the entrance.
"Shotgun!" Rainbow shouts.
"Dammit..." You curse, softly.
Applebloom slaps your wrist. "Anon! Watch your mouth!"
"Sorry."
The girls all laugh as Rainbow stands next to the passenger side, claiming her spot. You're getting coal from Santa this year, you bad boy.
After loading up the girls, putting all the presents in the back, and getting into your seats, Fluttershy carefully drives back to Pinkie's house. Now, all that's left is to wrap your presents and go see the Christmas lights. ---
You cough and sputter as Pinkie removes the charcoal cookies from the oven.
You're standing there next to her with the fire extinguisher at the ready. You've had too many bad experiences with fire, and you aren't about to have another one.
She hums happily as she sets the tray on the stove. "Perfect!"
Perfect? These aren't even cookies anymore!
She turns to you with a huge smile. "Maud likes them really, really crunchy! She asks me to make these for her every year! They're her favorite!"
You lower the fire extinguisher a little and stare at her. "No offense Pinkie, but your family is weird."
She just giggles again. "Well, duh! What fun is there in not being weird, silly?!"
You grin and roll your eyes.
Applejack claps her hands together, causing you and Pinkie to look at her. "Alright, y'all. They should be back home soon, so let's finish up our cleanin' real quick."
"Right." You turn around and grab a cloth and start wiping off the spilled icing and crumbs from where you were working.
You work as fast as you can so you can go upstairs real quick and make yourself look nice and cute for Anon. You don't look too messy, but your hands and arms are covered in flour and icing and stuff.
Times like this are when you miss having magic. You could just poof the mess away in half a second.
Ah well. You gave up magic, but you found true love in exchange. Not a bad trade in your head.
After a few minutes, your area looks pretty good. You wash your arms and hands, take off your apron and run upstairs into the bathroom.
You close the door and quickly inspect your hair in the mirror. You fix a few minor details and fluff it up a bit to make it perfect.
"Looking good, Sunset... Cute... Very cute... Super cute... Okay! I'm ready!" You smile.
Just then, you hear the door open downstairs, followed by footsteps.
"Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas!"
That's Anon's voice!
You open the door and look downstairs. Anon has Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle hanging off his arms and Applebloom riding on his shoulders. Behind him, Rarity, Fluttershy, Twilight, and Rainbow come inside with presents.
They're all laughing and smiling at Anon and the girls. It's such a cute sight to see.
You sigh. You love him so much.
He sets the girls down and they all laugh. You start descending the stairs, looking at him with a smile.
He finally turns to you and brightens up. "There's my girl!"
You smile wider and skip over to him. You jump into his arms and he catches you. You wrap your arms and legs around him and kiss him happily. It's like you haven't seen him in years, even though it's only been a few hours. ---
The kiss ends and you look her in those beautiful eyes of hers. "Hey gorgeous."
She giggles. "Hey babe."
She looks great.
You set her down and smile. "I'm famished. Let me taste one of your cookies."
"Okay!" She smiles.
You both giggle and she takes your hand, leading you into the kitchen.
You walk inside and greet Pinkie and Applejack. "Hey girls!"
"Howdy Anon!"
"Hi Anon!" Pinkie runs up to you holding a plate of, like, 20 cookies. "Here! These are for you!"
You hesitate. "All of them?"
Pinkie nods excitedly. "Yep! And they're all in everyone's favorite Christmas shapes! There's Santa, Rudolf, Frosty, and Baby Jesus!"
You laugh a little and look behind her to see hundreds of cookies stacked on top of each other. Sunset wasn't kidding on the phone.
You take the plate from her and smile. "Well... thanks, Pinkie!"
"Don't just thank me!" She smiles and points at Sunset. "She helped out a bunch too!"
Right.
You turn to her and smile. "Thanks, Sunny Bunny."
She smiles back and kisses you. "You're very welcome, Nonny."
You take a cookie and start eating it. It's really yummy. She did a great job.
From behind, Rarity knocks on the kitchen doorframe to get your attention. "Pinkie Pie, darling, where is your wrapping paper? We have presents to wrap for tomorrow before we go out to see the lights!"
Pinkie smiles. "I'll show you! I need to take Maud her cookies anyway!"
She grabs a tray of, what looks like lumps of coal, and heads out of the kitchen. How festive. Rarity follows her.
You and Sunset look at each other and smile. You put your hands in your jacket pockets, feeling the box that contains her sun necklace. Even though Christmas is tomorrow, you want to give it to her tonight. You can't wait that long. Once you get back home from seeing the lights, you'll give it to her. Then tomorrow, she can also get her earrings in front of everyone else.
She giggles. "Come on. Applejack said something about putting on a Christmas movie while we wait for it to get dark out."
"Sounds fun." You smile. "Just no peeking at your presents."
She smiles back at you and takes your hand as you go out into the living room. Applejack has turned on the TV and A Christmas Story starts playing. Rarity and Pinkie return a few moments later with the wrapping paper, and Rarity starts divvying up everyone's presents, according to who bought them.
You each segregate yourselves from each other and wrap your presents while also watching the movie. Pinkie is helping out as much as she can too. A party addict like her has wrapped so many presents in her life, she can literally do it blindfolded. It's incredible, and helpful, since that way, she can wrap a few presents, without being spoiled with knowing what she or anyone else got.
After a few minutes, all the presents are wrapped and put under Pinkie's tree. Hopefully, no one saw what you got them. You didn't see anything that anyone else got you. Now, you're all sitting there with each other watching the movie while you wait for it to get dark out. Once the movie is over, you'll head into town to look at the lights.
It's at the part where Flik sticks his tongue to the pole and gets stuck. You love this movie. ---
Finally, you all arrive at a good parking spot near the town center and step out of Fluttershy's van. It's dark out, cold, and snowing again. Just how you like it for Christmas.
You shake a little into your coat to get warmer as the snow crunches beneath your feet. You can see your breath. Sunset steps out of the van behind you and shivers a little bit, but smiles. She's clearly excited. You take each other's hands as you step onto the sidewalk with each other. Rainbow and Pinkie join you a moment later with the kids. Twilight and Applejack walk over with Rarity and Fluttershy. Everyone's here.
Even though you're not technically at the town square yet, you can already see lots of Christmas lights on the buildings around you. They're beautiful. Of all the wonderful things about Christmas, the lights are your absolute favorite.
You all begin walking down the sidewalk towards the town square, passing all the buildings with light displays on them. A few of the girls take their phones out to take pictures. Sunset is holding your hand, but she's looking up at everything in wonder.
As you round a corner, you reach the town square. A massive Christmas tree adorned with colorful ornaments, and white, red, and green lights stands in the center. A large star sits at its top, and a Nativity scene sits at its base. Around the square, a small train is set up for people to ride around in. The track goes through a little path that's filled with lights and signs telling the story "'Twas the Night Before Christmas'. Peaceful music is playing on speakers all over the place. People are standing around and talking, taking pictures, and waiting in line for the train.
"Oh my gosh..." Sunset gasps as she looks around at it all. You can see her eyes sparkling and twinkling as she smiles.
It makes you smile too. She's completely awestruck at all the lights and decor. You wrap your arm around her waist and hold her close. She smiles at you for a moment before returning her gaze to the lights all around.
"What do you think, Sunny?" You ask.
"It's beautiful." She breathes.
You give her another little squeeze as you look at the Christmas lights. With your other hand, you feel the box containing her necklace inside your coat pocket. You so badly want to give it to her now, but you decide to wait. It looks like your group is spreading out to do some other stuff.
"Oooh!" Pinkie exclaims. "There's a place to get some egg nog!"
"Egg nog?!" Rainbow gasps.
They both run past you all and head to a cute egg nog stand on the sidewalk.
Applebloom turns to her sister. "Applejack, can we ride the train?"
Applejack smiles. "Sure thing, Sugarcube! Let's get in line."
Twilight perks up. "I'll go too. 'A Visit from St. Nicholas' is one of my favorite stories."
Applejack smiles and leads Twilight and the kids to the end of the line. The rest of you walk down the street by a few of the lit shops that are open. Most of them are selling candy, cheap stuffed toys, and Christmas stuff. Nothing too extravagant, but still super cute.
From behind, Fluttershy gasps. "Oh, look! Reindeer!"
You all turn to where she's pointing. Behind the massive tree, you see a little animal pen with a few reindeer inside. Real reindeer. Caribou. That's impressive. Fluttershy smiles wide and runs over to them.
Rarity giggles behind you. "Well, I'm going to check out this store for a little while, darlings. You can join me if you'd like. If not, I'll catch up with you later."
You nod. "Sounds good, Rarity."
She smiles and turns around to enter one of the Christmas stores, leaving just you and Sunset behind.
You both turn to each other and smile. "Well Sunny, where do you want to go first?"
She smiles wide and looks around at the town square again, admiring the lights and overall ambiance for another moment.
"Anywhere. I really don't have a preference. It's all so pretty here, I'm really happy with wherever." She replies.
You grin and take her hand in yours again. "Alright. Let's just look around a bit for now."
She smiles and the two of you continue down the street together, looking at all the lights in the town square for a little while longer. This moment won't last forever, so you want to enjoy it and drag it out as much as you can with her.
This is your favorite time of year. ---
You and Sunset enter the Apple's house, being quiet as much as you can. Some of the Apples in here have already gone to bed. You both have your shares of sugar cookies as well.
"Did you have fun today?" You whisper to her.
She looks at you and smiles. "I had a great time, Anon. Thank you so much for taking me to see the lights."
"You're welcome, Sunny."
You kiss each other softly and tiptoe past the living room. The electric fireplace is still on, as well as the Christmas tree.
Now is the time.
"Hang on Sunset." You grab her arm and gently pull her back to you. "I've, uh, actually got something for you..."
She looks curious as you pull out the tiny black box in your pocket and hand it to her.
"I didn't want to wait until tomorrow."
She smiles and slowly opens it and her eyes widen. She covers her mouth as she reads the note inside. It says, 'To my one and only sunshine. -Yours forever, Anon.'
After a few seconds, her eyes start to water. She sniffs and pulls out the necklace, smiling the most beautiful smile.
"It's... It looks like... my..." She stammers.
She's totally speechless. She shakes her head some, almost in disbelief, before she looks to you with an enormous smile and hugs you tight.
"Thank you... Thank you so much, Anon... I... I can't even..."
She starts crying happy tears and you wrap your arms around her. You smile wide and rest your head on hers and stroke her hair, letting her know you're there and she's loved.
"This is... This is the greatest gift anyone has ever given me... In my life..."
You just smile and continue to comfort her. "Anything for you, Sunset."
She laughs and cries some more, clutching your back. "I love you... So much..."
"And I love you..." You reply. "More than words can say..."
After a few moments of hugging, you release her and stare into her beautiful eyes. You wipe some of her tears away and she smiles her beautiful smile at you once again.
"Merry Christmas, Sunset."
She giggles some and kisses you. "Merry Christmas, Anon." She looks down at the necklace again before closing the box and smiling. "I'll cherish this forever."
It feels so wonderful to hear her say that.
You hold her in a half-hug and continue towards your room. You will burn this memory into your soul as the best Christmas of all time. The first Christmas that you got to spend with the sunshine of your life; your light in the darkness.
Your one, true love, Sunset Shimmer. |
Darkness Unleashed | pre | A turns, and smacks him upside the head, "Hey quiet you! You're embarrassing us in front of the Boss!"
"Like you need any help with that, you're a pro," C replies sarcastically.
"Why you little-!" A jumps at C, and tackles him before trying to throttle him.
B stands by watching them for a minute before looking to Trixie. "So... What happens now?"
"You are A, he is B, and he is C,and that's final because I said so! Now then A go and help the astromech droid with the ship maintenance, and you two make sure to guard this shuttle for extra security! Call Trixie if you require the assistance! "
She gets a slightly out of sync round of "Roger-Roger" before the droids move to their assignments. C pauses, and holds up a hand, "Uh... Sir?"
"What is it?"
"Can we get decals?"
B deadpans, "How about Blasters? Kinda hard to guard something empty-handed."
"Done, and done! Anything else to improve efficiency?"
A looks over, "Well... I have had this rusty bit in my hips for a couple weeks." He reaches back, rubbing himself where his backside would be.
"Very well, it will be done, and while we are at it make sure that..." Trixie thinks for a second "...Make sure to use this bank account to pay for it.... Hm, but just in case here is the second one for backup. Now then carry on!" She gave them a spare datapad with the data they would need and then sends them on their way.
The three look at the datapad, and then to one another. As they head for the turbolift C asks, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"If so then I need need my head tuned more than I thought," A replies. "Seems we got ourselves a ticket to the best day a Droid could hope for!"
"For once we all agree," B says as they step into the turbolift. .....
Meanwhile Twilight, Spike, and Applejack are walking through town. Twilight nods slowly, "Okay, if we are having a proper celebration then we need the essentials. First off, food!"
"Hm, it wouldn't be much of a celebration without it. No worries though, it'd been prepared and delivered in about a month or so. We have enough food to feed the whole battalion for weeks. Unless of course any excess gets redistributed back into the system, My Lady."
"I think for the sake of a celebration such as this any issues with Excess can be overlooked for a time," Twilight replies reasonably. Suddenly she stiffens, and backflips moments before a blur rams into Applejack. Twilight already has her Lightsaber out, and active as she studies the offender.
A cyan Pegasus with a multicolor mane, and wearing a black Flight suit designed to protect her hide at high speeds. She groans as her eyes roll about a moment, and she shakes her head to clear it. Grinning down at Applejack she laughs, "Hey AJ, didn't think I'd be running into you today."
AJ smirks at her, "Come on, please behave yourself, and then say hello to our new boss!" She gestured in the direction of Twilight. "See, you done already ticked her off!"
Rainbow looks over only for an invisible force to throw her off Applejack, and into a water barrel, shattering it on impact. Twilight is glaring, and lowers her blade so the top of it scares the ground. "You should know better than to provoke an Apprentice of the Sith Order..."
Rainbow nods slowly as she slowly raises a hoof, "Got it... Boss... ow my head..."
Twilight studies Rainbow carefully, and says, "What is your name?"
"Rainbow Dash Ma'am," she groans as she gets up, and shakes herself off carefully. "Weather manager for Ponyville, and flight instructor... Sorry for the scare." She jerks as Twilight is suddenly in front of her, tip of her saber blade making her go cross eyed to track it as she backs up quickly. "Not that you were scared or anything!"
"Much better," Twilight says as she deactivates, and puts her saber away. "Now then you have a chance to redeem yourself Rainbow Dash. I am in charge of organizing the Midnight Gathering for Ponyville this year, and we have a list to cover. Right now we are trying to acquire food for the event."
Rainbow attempts a slightly nervous smile, "Say no more, I'll make sure the Cake couple over at Sugarcube Corner have everything they need. I'm the fastest flyer in town so I'll cut your travel time by about ten."
Twilight raises an eyebrow, "You mean down to 10%?"
Rainbow looks to the side, "Uh... I meant to about a tenth of what it would be."
"That's what I said, 10%," Twilight replies.
"Really? Well if you say so," Rainbow says with a nervous laugh. She takes off as quick as she can with a quick shout of, "Catch you in a bit AJ!"
"Sure thing! Right, I'm trusting you not to get yourself killed till then!" Applejack nods to her and then turns back to Twilight. "My apologies, My Lord but I think I am need it elsewhere" she then starts trotting back towards her farm.
Twilight shrugs softly, and looks to Spike, "Well she already told us where to look for the other things on the list, and we have a messenger to make sure things stay organized now. Plus Applejack has the tasks I assigned her already to oversee."
"So, that means decorations are next on the list then?" Spike blinks in confusion and then double checks his datapad just to make sure it's correct.
"Precisely," Twilight says, and with an honest smile she starts walking. "Applejack said that Filthy Rich has a Slave with an eye for such things. How ironic that a mare that prefers droids over slaves would recommend a Slave. Still, this means I can kill two birds with one stone."
Together they walk to Filthy Rich's manor, small for a house of nobility, not that he has any titles, but still far more impressive than the majority of the town. A protocol Droid shows them the way in to a sitting room, and there they wait.
A brown earth pony with slicked back hair walks in, and bows to Twilight. "My Lady, to what do I owe this unexpected honor?"
"Mr Rich," she says formally. "I am an Apprentice to Darth Pie, Twilight Sparkle, and I'm here to oversee the preparations for the Midnight Gathering. Applejack tells me you have a Slave who is well versed in decorating, and such?"
Filthy raises his eyebrows, "Oh... Well yes, I do, um... Well... Are you looking to borrow her, or purchase her? I'm in a rather precarious situation with my good friends the Apples over her."
Twilight sits up a bit taller, "Go on..."
Filthy takes a seat, and clears his throat. "Well... You see there was a mishap. Before she became mine she was something of a designer around the town. I had commissioned a set of very expensive suits from her for various functions, and you see there was this accident... Her entire boutique went up in flames one day. Generous soul that she is she had used the credits I gave her towards the cost of materials with hardly any profit for herself."
"So she fell into crippling debt with you, and became your Slave as a result?" Twilight doesn't sound too surprised, by law of the Empire it is perfectly reasonable.
Filthy nods, "Yes, though there's a bit more to the story. She has a younger sister, and like the courteous gentlecolt I am I spared the filly from being forced to slavery. I offered to let her stay here, but she prefers to live with the Apples. Before this whole mess my Rarity was actually good friends with our local peacekeeper Applejack. So I do my best to make her servitude as painless as possible out of consideration for all involved."
Twilight nods slowly, "I see... very noble of you Mister Rich."
He visibly relaxes, "So you will be borrowing her then?"
"We'll see," she replies with a bit of a grin that makes his blood run cold. "You see I have it on good faith that the Empress herself is attending the Gathering this year in Ponyville so I need the best decorator in your town. If she proves she is up to the challenge I may want her for the extra set of hooves if nothing else. My own slave is a credit to his profession, but he's still just one creature."
Filthy swallows softly, "B-but... I..."
She watches him squirm a bit, reveling in the power she has over him. With one command she could demand the Slave from him, or even summarily execute the household herself. She lets him flounder a bit for her amusement before saying, "Of course that isn't the only business I would want here. I hear you are an advocate for the return of Battle Droids."
He looks confused by this change of topic, but stays on edge as he nods nervously. "Yes, I am..."
"It never hurts to have a small army at your beck and call," she says. "If she performs well then you can consider me a regular patron for your market for them."
He raises his eyebrows at that... The honor of having ties to anyone directly associated with the Sith Order is quite the bit of political pull. Granted she is only an Apprentice, but one sent to prepare for the Empress herself has potential to rise in the rankings.
His ears drooping a bit he says, "...Shall I call her then?"
"Yes please do," Twilight replies with a smile as she reaches over to rub Spike on the head.
Filthy Rich pulls a remote from his coat pocket, and taps a button on it. There are several minutes of uncomfortable silence before the awaited mare arrives. Ivory white with a beautifully curled purple mane and tail, a golden colored Slave collar around her neck, and an unusually elegant yet simple red dress. The dress connects behind the neck, and leaves her shoulders exposed before covering her chest, belly, but leaves her back open until it reaches her hindquarters. A faint golden trim edges the dress, sparkling faintly in the light of the room.
She approaches Filthy, and bows with her head bent downwards. When she speaks she has a bit of a Trottingham accent. "You summoned me, Master?"
Filthy points to Twilight, "My dear, until such time as the Midnight Gathering is over you are to follow Apprentice Twilight Sparkle, and serve her as you would me."
Rarity bows an inch lower before straightening up, "But of course, Master." She turns to them, giving Twilight as well as Spike an award winning smile.
Spike feels like he is falling in love. Under his breath he whispers, "So pretty!" He then gulps as he realizes his master ca probably overhear him.
Of course Twilight does, but chooses to ignore it. She does have to admit that this mare is very pretty, no denying that one. Standing she says, "Thank you for understanding Mister Rich. Spike, Rarity, let's go."
Twilight takes her leave of the manor with Rarity, and Spike trailing behind her. Rarity casts Spike a few curious looks, never having been this close to a dragon before.
"Um... Hi!" Spike says nervously, he tries to play it cool and with confidence.
She returns the smile a bit, and glances up at Twilight who is too busy studying her list to pay them too much attention. "Hello... Spike, was it?" She smiles down at the little drake, and offers a hoof. "A pleasure to meet you."
"Yep, that's what they called me when I was hatched. Um yeah, Its nice to meet you too!"
After they shake she glances to Twilight again, and slowly leans towards Spike. "So... might I trouble you for some advice? Mister Rich has lost slaves to cranky Sith before, and I rather like my head where it is thank you very much..."
Spike glances nervously at Twilight, "Well, let's see, I suppose if you have trouble with Twilight, there is always me to cover for you. But anyway my master likes for her servants to be respectful. I don't think that you can go wrong with that. I hope that helps!"
"He isn't wrong," Twilight says over her shoulder.
Rarity jerks upright, and then bows, "My apologies, My Lady! H-how might I be of service?"
Twilight looks back, and replies, "We need a place that's good enough to house the Midnight Gathering for this year. I need your help to find it, and to decorate it."
Rarity smiles, "Well we usually have it in the Town Square right outside of town hall. The inside of the building is rather lovely, and the perfect place for the annual play. Plus it's rather close to the market, and Sugarcube Corner is just around the... well, corner."
Twilight nods slowly, and smiles. "And I have just the Pegasus to help it get done 90% faster. Come, let's go have a look." |
Princess Celestia's Side Trip To Aperture. | pre | Of course it was not really necessary for her to look at a display, considering she was connected to the entire facility. But I, the author, didn't feel like writing how Glados stared around into space as she sifted through the data, as it reminded me too much of myself when procrastinating far too often while pretending not to notice the other chapters of my fics I still need to finish.
"Now where did you go to?" Glados wondered, forcing the testing chamber Celestia had cleared a moment ago to come apart. Yet as each panel, super button, cube dispenser and other object were removed, a certain lack of an overly destructive equine could not be ignored.
Celestia, however, didn't notice anything of the commotion when the previous room was dismantled; the path she found leading her to a true maze of metal mesh stairs and walkways, swirling glass tubes full of all kinds of cubes and all kinds of things she couldn't even begin to identify.
Unfortunately, even off the beaten path, she soon found out her magic didn't work even here; the same with her ability to fly.
This was regrettable, as she truly wanted to move to some of the higher and lower placed walkways and find out what marvels awaited her there. Still, this didn't mean the path she was following lead to nowhere. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Following the path before her, each step clanging slightly on the metal mesh, she made her way over to a dilapidated room; its circular door partially open, yet gave way easily when she used her magic to gain entry. A bit too easily, as she soon discovered. With a loud 'CLANG' the door broke away, and fell to the floor with an even louder 'WHAM'.
"Hello, is anypony in here?" Celestia asked, carefully stepping inside, illuminating the area with her glowing horn.
Looking around the clearly forgotten and dust covered room, no one had been here for a long, long time, and with deliberate slowness Celestia ventured deeper inside; carefull with each step she took, the ground littered with papers, coffee cups, and other items. There was also some furniture; tables mostly and some worn seats, all shoved roughly aside to one place or the other.
"What happened here?"
The tomb like silence which had settled down over the room provided no answer; not even the sounds of machinery at work from outside the chamber managed to penetrate the rapidly becoming eerily quiet place and each step Celestia took sounding louder, and louder, while the radio had stopped playing without notice.
But then, as she slowly looked around, the glow of her horn briefly illuminated something written on the wall.
Focusing her magic, and stepping closer, Celestia took a closer look.
*CLANG*
Celestia reared back in shock, horrified. The portal gun and radio falling to the floor as her magic faltered and failed. For there, written on the wall in crude letters, was something so despicable, so diabolical, so truly horrific, only the worst of the worst kind of individuals would be able to utter these words without fear, or remorse. |
Princess Celestia's Side Trip To Aperture. | Soo… The Cake Is A Lie, huh? | Edited by Slayerseba and Clawder.
Soo... The Cake Is A Lie, huh?
<<>><<>><<>>
Slowly Celestia retraced her steps back to the elevator. Her mane, normally waving energetically, seemed to have lost some of its luster and her bangs hung lowly over her eyes; eyes which stared forwards without much emotion, the shock of what she had just discovered almost life changing in its severity.
The radio she had brought with her lay forgotten in the room she'd just left, waiting for someone else to find it one day, maybe?
As for the portal gun, Celestia still carried it with her, aiming it in front of her with her magic ready to press the firing button.
Someone had some explaining to do.
Reaching the wall which had opened up, she stepped back into the hallway leading to the elevator. Yet as she turned the other way, back to the testing area, she found instead a wall blocking her way, leaving her with no place to go other than back to the room with those horrible things written on the wall, or the elevator.
It wasn't really much of a choice.
Stepping towards the glass tube, Celestia stopped a leg length away from the closed door; her face a mask of collected calmness as she saw the elevator itself was gone.
"Glados," she called the AI, turning to the nearest camera.
No reply came and the camera was unresponsive; aimed down and unmoving.
Only raising a single, slender eyebrow in response, Celestia fired her portal gun at the camera; a burst of blue energy hitting, then dissipating without any visible effect on the artificial eye.
"Glados," she tried again, voice calm and collected.
With a silent mechanical humm, the camera moved up, its lens focusing on Celestia.
"Oh, I see you have returned," Glados said with disinterest. "Though I must admit this is a surprise, as simulations for the reason of your sudden disappearance all pointed towards you being dematerialized by the Emancipation Grill. Also, recent surveys of my optical processors indicate there are no malfunctions, which means you are standing there and aren't dead, yet, and are able to continue testing. Initiating celebratory protocol."
Sudden, loud cheering filled the room; streamers and confetti falling down the elevator shaft.
"Glados," Celestia said after a short but uncomfortable silence. "Would you mind telling me why there is an immense complex of structures, walkways and stairs outside these testing chambers?"
The camera bobbed in silence, the lense focusing and refocusing as Glados accessed additional data clusters.
"Despite this facility's malleable nature, a fixed path is required for easy access to all levels by Aperture Science personnel. You, however, are not listed on the personal roster and admission to have entered this off limits area forces me to disqualify you for further testing. Please step on the elevator," Glados instructed as the elevator descended, "and it will return you to the waiting area where you will be presented with the bill for damage inflicted to this facility and its equipment."
"And what about the cake?" Celestia asked, looking imploringly at the camera.
"Disqualification also forfeit rewards promised upon completion of these tests."
The corners of Celestia's mouth tightened slightly.
"I see," she said simply. "Though I must ask: where are all these employees? The area I found was completely overturned and abandoned, clearly for a long time. Not to mention, the very disturbing message I found written on the wall. It's obvious there hasn't been anypony there for a long, long time."
"Oh, you shouldn't worry about such trivial matters. My creators are known to be lazy and rather messy whenlefttorotaftergassingthemwithneurotoxin."
"I'm sorry, what was that last part?" Celestia asked, the last bit of what Glados said was delivered with such speed, that the words got jumbled together. Still, she had a good idea what it was she just heard and was shocked to say the least, though her calm facade remained intact.
"Clearly your auditory receptors are malfunctioning," Glados stated.
"Perhaps," Celestia hummed as she inspected her portal gun. "Still, I would like to speak with whomever is in charge of this facility."
"I'm afraid that isn't possible, as the one in charge has no interest in a magical, talking unicorn princess. Should this position be taken by a six year old girl, however, you will be informed and an appointment will be made."
"Alicorn," Celestia corrected. "I'm an alicorn, and I must insist," she stared determinedly into the camera. "And the way I see it, you either take me yourself, or I simply take the long route," she stated matter of factly, turning back to the still open wall just out of camera angle for Glados. "After all, you did say there is a fixed path for employees out there. I wonder where it could take me, should I be forced to go there instead?"
Silence.
"Very well," Glados begrudgingly agreed. "Enter the elevator and it will be redirected to the main office."
For a moment, Celestia looked at the elevator as the doors slid open. Then, with her mind made up, she entered.
"Protocol dictates me to inform you that you are not going to enjoy this," Glados informed her with curious undertone to her voice.
"On that we agree," Celestia replied as the doors slid shut and the elevator began to ascend.
<<>><<>><<>>
Just as the previous times she used the elevator, Celestia rapidly rose up; momentarily unable to see anything but the passage her ride took her through. But then, where she would arrive at the next stop previously, she instead found the elevator suspended on its track above the room she just left; surrounding her a controlled chaos of walkways, stairs, ladders, enormous complexes shifting around into new configurations and a multitude of glass tubes swirling around; with the cubes she knew from personal interactions, to the strange, elongated ovals on tripod legs she saw in the first room she'd entered racing through them. She even noticed several tubes pumping thick orange and blue sludge around, its purpose unknown to her.
With a jolt, the elevator stopped and she hung still between rooms, giving her a couple of seconds to look around until another jarring shock rocked her around.
Requiring a moment to catch herself, Celestia saw the elevator had switched tracks as it was already in transit; sideways this time and she soon slid past the rooms below, and above her.
It was only then, that the titanic scale of this immens complex snapped into focus, for as far as she looked, she couldn't find any indication of a wall, floor, or ceiling; the distance so great everything was lost to it and everything around her, all the structures, walkways, and tubes hung supported above the immense chasm down below.
For the first time in a very, very long time Celestia felt herself being small, very small and she hoped the elevator wouldn't 'accidentally' break from its track.
As the elevator moved, Celestia saw more and more complexly designed chambers, their purpose unknown to her. Then, with another jolt, once again taking her by surprise, the Elevator switched tracks again; this time going down several stories, before moving to the left. Her ride continued on this path for a full seven minutes, before another jolt, which she suspected by now was done on purpose, the elevator once again switched tracks and rose up, moving higher, and higher until it finally moved into the largest structure Celestia had seen in this immense complex so far.
Back within the shaft of a structure, the walls surrounding her seemed to press in on her, after hanging, suspended above nothing, but an endless drop. The lights were also dimmed to the point the faint glow of her portal gun basked the inside of the elevator with blue light. And as she rose higher and higher, she dreaded exactly what it was she would find.
Eventually, finally, the elevator rose up from the floor within a large, circular chamber. Just not like those she'd seen before. There were no display walls surrounding her, or stairs or other paths leading to another room. Instead, there was a multitude of flat surfaced panels encircling the chamber in a dome, with a large, strange machine hanging from the ceiling.
With a hiss the elevator stopped, but the doors refused to open.
"Glados, would it be possible for you to open the doors please?"
"Well, aren't you demanding," Glados replied. However, this time her voice did not come from the cleverly concealed speakers, but from the large machine.
With a startling burst of motion, the device spun around and closed the distance between itself, and Celestia. A large orange glowing eye stared at the mare through the elevator's glass doors.
Instinctively, Celestia took half a step back before she caught herself. Not that she could have gone far in the enclosed space of the elevator, but she knew she couldn't show her shock and fear, and instead, through years of trial, hardship, and politics, she managed to keep a neutral face.
"So, we meet face to face at last... I think," Celestia began, taking a moment to study the sentient machine. "And am I right to assume you're the one in charge around here, or are you merely the assistant?"
"Had I not already created a character profile based on your performance during the tests you've done, I would have been surprised by your lack of understanding of the current situation. As it is, your attempt at humor is poor at best. Though, considering what's coming, I'll give you this much. Ha ha ha," Glados fake laughed. "There, does that make you feel better? No? Oh well, not that it matters much."
"So, is that a yes, or a no to the assistant thing?"
Glados moved back a bit, her 'head' tilting to the left.
"Stop playing dumb with me," Glados intoned, annoyed. "You've already taken more of my time than I would have liked, don't prolong this with pointless questions."
"Very well, I'll get to the point, then," Celestia agreed, looking imploringly at Glados. "Is the cake a lie?"
"... What?" Glados' processes halted for several cycles as she looked a the mutant horse.
"Is. The. Cake. A. Lie?" Celestia repeated.
Slowly Glados moved towards Celestia, her eye locked on the princess with dedicated focus.
"I am an high functioning intelect, containing the full knowledge of the creatures who created me; capable of technological marvels you would never be able to understand; who holds answers to the laughable questions your greatest minds have come up with and all you want to know is whether, or not there is cake?"
"That does sums it up rather nicely, yes," Celestia confirmed, nodding once.
"You know," Glados said after a short pause. "I agreed to hold you here as it provided me with new avenues for tests designed to your unusual capabilities. Yet in the short time you've been here, going through the simplest, most standard tests, you have done more damage than any other test subject on record save one. And though I planned on bisecting you to find the cause of your mutation, I now realize you're not worth the trouble. So, instead, I'll just dispose of you. And I know just where to put you."
With a loud CLANG, a large mechanical clamp grabbed hold of the elevator; lifting it up while a hurried proclamation of the now familiar stallion's voice informed Celestia the suppression field was boosted to full strength.
The portal gun slammed to the metal floor as Celestia's magic faltered and failed.
Closing in, Glados glared at the trapped pony.
"And should you survive, well, it should be an educational experience for the both of us." And by her command, the elevator was moved to an empty elevator shaft, then surrendered to gravity's unrelenting grasp.
<<>><<>><<>>
Trapped and bereft of her magic, Celestia found she was utterly helpless as the elevator plummeted down. And as a result of a little something called terminal velocity, Celestia slammed into the ceiling, hard; an involuntary and explosive gasp turned wheeze escaping her as the portal gun slammed into her gut.
Unable to summon her magic and slow the glass box, which Glados had chosen as her casket, all Celestia could do was hold on for dear life as she fell deeper and deeper; only the dim glow of the portal gun allowing her to see as all other light had vanished; the tumbling elevator slamming into the walls of the shaft as it wobbled from end to end, cracking the glass and filling the claustrophobic box with sharp shards and splinters, several of which sliced through Celestia's fur, drawing blood.
Further and further she fell, until, without warning, she discovered just how deep this hole was when the elevator slammed into the ground, and Celestia's world went dark. |
Princess Celestia's Side Trip To Aperture. | Well, This Place Could Use A Dusting | Edited by Slayerseba, Halusm, and Clawder.
Well, This Place Could Use A Dusting
<<>><<>><<>>
Lights flashed by in blurring speed with each level the elevator plummeted down into the abyss without control; slamming into the shaft's walls with jarring blows, knocking the sole occupant from left to right, while terminal velocity made sure Celestia remained glued to the ceiling, while the suppression field made sure she was unable to summon her magic to save herself.
'Is this how it will end?'
It was the last thought that crossed her mind when the elevator finally reached the bottom, doing so with unrelenting speed and force, and Celestia's world went dark.
<<>><<>><<>>
The elevator lay in shambles; its frame twisted and bent in jagged shapes, while the glass walls had exploded both inwards and out from the concussive force. No external lights were active down there, save a single emergency light within the elevator miraculously still providing the faintest of glows. Though it was flickering and dying as its circuitry suffered from fatal damage, sputtering and sparking as the electricity continued to flow through damaged and torn cables.
Numerous pipes and plate material, knocked loose by the elevator, also littered the wreck inside and out, with numerous pieces still falling down and colliding with the increasingly unstable wreck.
Dust, too, filled the shaft; decades old particles roughly disturbed and now free floating thickly in the air in random patterns, only altered by the odd chunk of debris still falling down and the faint breathing of Celestia as she lay half buried under metal, glass, dust, and blood.
With a struggling gasp, she came to, crying out in pain immediately after, as all the cuts, bruises, glass splinters and something much, much worse instantly made themselves known to her.
Forcing herself to calm down despite the horrible situation she awoke into, she looked around to get a sense of where she was, as well as how bad her position was at this moment.
Clanking coming from high above alerted her, and she took notice of a jagged piece of pipe falling down; slamming into the floor not even a hoof's length away from her right side. She knew, had it hit her, the wound inflicted would have been most severe.
The notion of severe injuries brought her back to her own predicament and the pool of blood she was lying in. Gritting her teeth as she carefully moved herself, she inspected her body to the best of her restricted capabilities.
Multiple cuts scarred her once white coat and numerous glistening pieces of glass still stuck out of most of them; shifting and slicing deeper into her flesh with the motions. Her left wing, though roughed up and missing several feathers, seemed to be otherwise intact, while her right wing lay trapped underneath a sheared off metal beam; the bone clearly broken and crushed.
A trickle of blood flowing into her mouth alerted her to the absence of two teeth and she gingerly prodded the raw, bleeding gums with her tongue before spitting out the glob of blood; grunting as a stab of pain shot through her body.
Another chunk of metal slammed into the floor somewhere behind her and she slowly turned to look over her covered hind body, but was unable to find the object which had made the latest ruckus.
Looking down, she grunted as she tried to shift her body in an attempt to free herself. A strangled gasp escaped her as she became fully aware of a strange, but unfortunately not unknown sensation.
Closing her eyes, she reached out to her hind legs, flexing them.
This time she expected the lash of pain and was able to bite down the cry threatening to otherwise escape.
Several more pieces of debris slammed into the floor and wreckage; the broken frame of the elevator groaning in protest.
Realizing she wasn't safe there and everything could very well collapse on top of her at any given moment, Celestia gritted her teeth and forced her legs underneath herself. With a loud, pain filled cry which echoed up into the darkness of the elevator shaft, she pushed with all her might, the metal and glass sliding off of her and falling to the ground; followed directly thereafter by the solar princess as her body gave out from the strain.
For several long moments, she lay on the floor, unmoving save for her heaving chest.
Once the blinding pain and her body's protest had dulled down, she slowly raised her head and gave her body, now free from any crushing debris, a final once over.
A heavy breath jammed stuck on it's way out, as she finally confirmed what she already knew.
Her right leg was gone; ripped off at the knee and lying in a bloody pool behind her.
Had it not been for her innate alicorn magic already at work mending her wounds, she would have not survived the crash.
The loud clanging of still more metal falling down around her forced her next action and she struggled to move out of the shaft; following the only path available to her, up an old, rusted flight of stairs towards a rounded, unhinged door.
Pulling herself into the passage beyond, she fell to the floor, out of breath and strength; only staying conscious long enough to glance back and see an avalanche of metal pipes and beams crash down on the remains of the elevator; burying her leg in what would have been her tomb had she stayed there even a minute longer.
Finally losing grip of the last of her strength, she let her head fall down as darkness once more consumed her.
<<>><<>><<>>
With a groan, Celestia stirred into motion. A slight twitch at first, but slowly increasing.
Glass shards clinked onto the floor as they slid out of her body, her innate magic having expelled the foreign objects and healing the wounds without any trace they had ever been there.
Groggily, she opened her eyes; blinking owlishly for several long seconds as she tried to remember where she was, how she got there and how to function on the most basic level.
Admittedly, had she not found herself in some unknown place, it could have been any other day.
She really needed her coffee.
Smacking her lips, followed by another unprincess like groan, she lifted her head from the ground; huffing in irritation as her ever waving mane hung over her face and a blue lock had found its way into her mouth. Spitting out the strands of wiggling hair and shaking the rest of her mane out of her face, she finally was able to take in the state of herself.
Unsurprisingly, the first thing she noticed was the large splotch of dried blood staining her fur; sticking her body to the floor, much to her dismay.
Ignoring her now red coat, she shifted her focus to her broken wing. Just like her cuts, her alicorn durability was already hard at work mending the bone; though it would be at least a day or two before she would be able to fully use her wing. And prodding with her tongue, she could already feel the newly formed teeth pushing through her gums, restoring her perfect whites before long.
That, obviously, was the good news. Looking to her missing leg, it was of no little surprise to her that process on healing that injury was less than spectacular.
True, in her long, extensive life she had endured many similar injuries. The chaos war and her sister's fall to the nightmare most prominent among the events leading to such injuries. Though, as she inspected the ragged wound, thankful that at the very least it wasn't bleeding anymore, a small frown did crease her features.
Looking around her, she spotted a small piece of concrete, chipped of a wall, maybe as a result of the crash, or maybe of old age, as the age smeared walls seemed to suggest and reached out with her magic.
A faint flickering aura of gold surrounded the small rock, same as with her horn, before both aura's vanished, confirming her suspicion.
"So, even down here your suppression field is active. Though it would seem I'm just at the edge of it, as some of my magic is bleeding through," she said aloud, not at all surprised no answer was given. Chuckling, she shook her head. "Aren't I the lucky one. Had it not, I would certainly have died. However, it would seem my healing factor has slowed down considerably all the same."
Looking forwards into the passage past the unhinged door, a cautious grin found its way onto her lips.
"But maybe, if I go even further, that won't be a problem anymore?"
Pushing herself back on her hooves, she looked back at the final resting place of her leg when a glint drew her attention.
Intrigued, she carefully moved back into the elevator shaft; stepping past the finer debris and making several false steps as a result of her missing limb. Eventually, after several near collisions with the floor, she arrived at the object that had drew her attention; sparks of electricity reflecting in its polished, cracked white casing.
Surprised, having completely forgotten about the device, Celestia lit up her horn to retrieve the portal gun, only for it to fizz out after a few seconds. Frowning, she shook her head and proceeded to balance on one front leg and her remaining hind leg as she carefully grabbed the device, pulled it out of the pile of broken bits, and pieces, and placed it on her back. Then, not wanting to remain in this death trap any longer, she hurried as best she could back to the open passage leading out of the elevator and into who knows where.
There was next to no light and for a moment Celestia had to wait for her eyes to adjust. Fortunately, the glow of her portal gun did help to some extent; illuminating the nearby wall, floor and ceiling with a blue glow, though it did not extend far enough ahead for her to identify any shape, or form she saw peering in the dark ahead.
Still, it was better than nothing and with a confident, albeit wobbly gait, she stepped into the darkness, and towards adventure.
<<>><<>><<>>
Adventure soon proved to be a locked door, not even ten steps forwards, which quickly foiled any plans Celestia had to proceed further into this increasingly strange and complex, eh, complex.
Still, not one to easily admit defeat, (but also unable to shove unwanted interruptions onto her former student at the moment), she stepped back from the locked door and tried her hardest to stare at her surroundings for any button, or switch like she had encountered during her visits in the test chambers.
As she quickly found out, not only was there a lack of light, but any kind of mechanism to unlock the way forwards as well.
Taking a step back, she tried to consider her options when a faint breeze swept over her.
Turning, she used the gentle caress on her muzzle to guide her to the source: A crack in the wall, partially covered by a crate of sorts.
Without many choices for her to pursue, and her magic still being hindered, Celestia leaned into the crate, pushing it aside with a strained grunt while her mane, uncooperative at the best of times, now spilled completely over her face. Huffing in irritation, she swung her head back, whipping her ever active hairdo back in place, then resumed moving the crate out of the way.
When sufficient progress was made, she stepped back with a weary sigh; her earth pony strength constricted much in the same way as all her other magical traits. But still, her intended objective had been completed and now, a sizable hole was uncovered; a weak beam of light shining through the damaged wall at chest height, large enough for Celestia to put a hoof through.
Looking through the hole and into the room beyond, she soon discovered there was little of interest to be found. At least, as far as she could tell from this unfavorable angle. But much to her excitement, one seemingly unremarkable feature did stand out: A large, white surfaced wall.
Grinning, Celestia grabbed the portal gun, sat down to steady herself, and aimed her portal gun with her hooves while using what little bit of magic she could summon to push the trigger, firing the blue orb of unidentified energy through the hole without any room to spare.
It took her a few tries; the first shot scraping against the rough edges of the damaged wall and dissipating on contact. The second and third shot harmlessly impacted someplace other than the intended target, and no portal could be seen when she inspected her work each time. The fourth attempt however did yield result and with a giddy chuckle, she saw the blue shimmering surface of the oval portal; still closed and waiting for its orange colored counterpart.
Returning the device onto her back as she stepped back, she looked around, trying to spot anything in the dark that could be used as a viable surface. She knew it had to be flat and white, as Glados had been clear about this, and her own attempts at firing the device at surfaces other than indicated proved the device's inability to perform. Unfortunately, no usable surface could be found and with no other choice, she retraced the few steps she'd made back to the crashed, mangled, and eventually crushed under an avalanche of debris, elevator.
Only one leg out of the damaged door, and the portal gun's glow already revealed what she needed: A large piece of white coated, mostly flat metal plating lying on top of the mess at an angle which, with a bit of careful aiming, should be just big enough to support a portal. The only real problem was reaching the plate.
Though unmoving, it was clear the entire pile was unstable, so climbing would be counterproductive as it would most likely shift and collapse everything. There would be no telling if her only ticket out would survive enough to still support a portal if she did. Flying was also out of the question, with her wing still healing, not to mention the suppressing field blocking most of her magic.
Deciding to tackle one problem at a time, she found a mostly clear spot to sit down, then aimed and fired her portal gun at the metal sheet, making sure it did indeed support a portal to begin with. Much to her appreciation, a brightly glowing orange portal formed on the first try, and a passage to the otherwise inaccessible room opened.
Nodding in approval, she stood up again, returning the device back to its place on her back, then focused on the mess of broken pieces, trying to discern a viable path for her to use to reach the shimmering hole without risking the complete collapse of the precarious pile of junk.
As expected, there wasn't one.
Humming in thought, absentmindedly tapping her chin with a hoof, and promptly losing her balance on just the two legs, she took several wide steps to catch herself. Unfortunately, this also made her step on several pipes and other chunks of debris, setting off a chain reaction that shifted just a bit too much for her liking.
With a drawn out groan of stressed and failing metal, the junk heap started to buckle and slide; an literal avalanche of metal, concrete and glass falling her way.
Eyes widening and ears folded flat, Celestia backed up as fast as she could, forgetting she missed one of her legs, and subsequently fell as she put weight on a limb she no longer had.
Crying out in surprise, she had just enough time to look up as the metal sheet holding the open portal descended down onto her and her world spun upside down as she was unceremoniously deposited on the other side of the portal, and into the blocked off room.
Celestia stared dumbly at the blue portal while the near deafening sound of falling, shifting, and bending metal reverberated through the walls; the portal closed as its orange counterpart could no longer be supported on the destroyed surface.
Minutes ticked by and Celestia remained lying where she fell; her legs and wings sticking out in different directions, her mane twisting, and turning around her, while also managing to become completely tangled up, despite its ethereal nature, and her portal gun lying forgotten besides her.
"... Huh?" Celestia snorted the gathered dust out of her nose, then looked around as she slowly pushed herself up, confirming no one was there to witness her less than graceful escape. "... Just as planned," she said with confidence as she picked up the portal tunneling device.
Deciding not to waste any longer in this place, she looked for, found and approached the nearest door leading away from wherever this place was.
This one, thankfully, stood halfway open, and required little more than a push to open all the way under the protest of squeaking hinges.
Stepping through, however, she immediately found herself facing yet another problem. Or, better said, several problems as numerous red laser lights aimed at her chest.
"There you are!" One of the strange, black, metal machines spoke with what sounded like a fifties mobster's voice, quickly followed by the others in identical accented voices.
"Hey, you're gonna die! Nhahahaha."
"Hahaa, I see ya!"
"Found ya!"
"I smell a rat!"
"Hey, come here. I just wanna shoot- euhh, hug you... to death!"
And as the metal drum on either side of the black, bulky devices started to spin, Celestia had just enough time to utter one last thought: "Oh, buck me!" |
Princess Celestia's Side Trip To Aperture. | Unexpected Company | Edited by Slayerseba, Halusm, and Clawder.
Unexpected Company
<<>><<>><<>>
For a full five minutes the unrelenting, deafening sound of machine gun fire shook the room. The numerous flashes of light produced, were creating a telling shadow play on the walls, featuring her royal highness Celestia, in all her perforated glory.
Then, as loud and as bright as everything was, everything plunged into darkness and crushing silence, only broken momentarily by a loud metallic snap, then the uneven clip clopping as Celestia stumbled past a corner, looking absolutely miffed.
Breathing heavily, a wheeze escaping through a few bleeding, but closing holes in her chest, she continued onwards without sparing the infuriating machines a second glance.
Silence.
"Hey... Hey, Jimmy!" one of the bulky, black turrets, lying flat on the ground, called out.
"... What!?" came an irritated groan from another of the devices. This one, too, toppled over.
"Ya still kickin'?"
"What does it looks like to ya?!" he snapped.
"Like we got stomped down by a horse!"
"Gee, thanks capt'n obvious," another of the turrets yelled from within a broken crate, it's foot still poking out past the wood.
"Nothing compared to what the boss 'll do when he finds out," a fourth turret complained with nervous fright, its foot broken off.
"When he finds out?" the only machine identified by a name, Jimmy, called out. "The boss got bluetooth. He already knows!"
A slow, metallic scraping sound made them all freeze up. Those able, turned their laser towards the source of the sound, seeing a platform suspended by a ceiling mounted rail, move towards them as it smoothly slid into the room.
The sound of metal scraping could once again be heard, louder, this time accompanied by a slight whirr and sparks lighting up the room.
"Gentlebots, it saddens me to see you like this," the boss spoke, sounding as if voiced by Al Pacino himself, his deep red laser cutting through the dimly lit room with slow, methodical sweeps from left to right.
Then the ceiling mounted lights flared, basking the room in harsh orange light.
Now able to see their boss, (when not obstructed by the inside of a crate, or lying optical visor flat on the ground), the tilted turrets felt a cold trickle of oil run down their casings.
Now, the exact science behind this is murky at best, but it works and that's all we really need to know, as far as it goes for the inner workings of these turrets.
The boss, slightly larger built than those lying defeated below it, slowly spun its left ammo drum, pressing it down onto the personalized companion cube by its side with affection, some sparks shooting away from the metal grinding over metal.
"Now, explain to me how a horse managed to beat all of you!"
And as they recounted the events of only a few minutes ago, the boss continued to 'pet' his companion cube with sparks flying around.
<<>><<>><<>>
With a strenuous grunt, Celestia pulled herself through the long, poorly lit passage.
She wanted to stop, rest and heal from her latest injuries, but did not desire to remain in that room. Mere seconds after she'd stomped down those infernal machines and something else presented itself.
Not wanting to stay and find out what, and risk running out of luck, and dying through the actions of killing machines, after having just survived an attempt at her life by a group of killing machines, after having survived a severe attempt at her life by a killing machine named Glados, she had reached a point where she had to say: enough is enough.
The only positive spin to this otherwise continuing disaster was that she could feel her magical strength increase bit by bit with each step she took. Indicating that she was nearing the end of the suppression field's effective range. Though, considering the difficulties she still faced at present, the field still held a grip over her and she had no idea for how much longer. Additionally, if this passage turned out to be a dead end, or if it forced her to follow its path leading her back deeper into the field, her chances of escape would dwindle with each step, instead of increase.
But for now, at the very least, several metallic pings followed in her wake as her body expelled the projectiles those machines fired at her, while an itching pressure from the remainder of her severed leg distracted her enough to not notice the projectiles still lodged inside of her, shift and move as they were pushed out.
For a long time she followed the path before her, passing all kinds of rooms, their doors welded shut, crossing several bridges spanning across pools containing clearly hazardous liquid, its foul smell wrinkling her nose in disgust as she hurried across.
At one point, after having stumbled for what might have been the hundredth time, the portal gun fell from Celestia's back and towards the murky depths of one of these toxic baths.
Purely on instinct, she lit her horn. It wasn't until she stopped to think that she remembered the suppression field made it impossible for her to use her magic for anything more than to push a button.
The fact no splash could be heard and that the somewhat damaged device gently bobbed in the air just a scarce inch from the deathly waters, revealed her magic was freed enough from the field's grasp for her to levitate objects again.
Smiling in earnest at this discovery, Celestia pulled the portal gun back to her side and continued onwards, humming a pleasant tune.
She stopped mid humm, however, when an unexpected sound reached her.
Ears twitching, then swiveling around to find the source, she slowly found herself guided towards one of the many sealed doors. This one, however, revealed itself to be unsealed and standing slightly ajar.
Again, her ears twitched when the sound passed through the crack. It was a familiar sound, though. One she made herself just a moment ago.
Someone was humming.
Intrigued, but cautious, Celestia pushed open the door; flinching from the awful wail produced by the rusted hinges. Surprisingly, though, the humming didn't stop, which caused a sliver of worry to grab hold over the solar princess.
Was this another trap set out for her?
Who was it that was humming? Why are they down here? And why didn't they respond to the sudden loud noise produced by a door pushed open?
Stopping for a moment in sudden understanding, she looked behind and around her.
What she saw was a place in ruin, with evidence of structural collapse here and there.
She did not know how long this individual had been here, but they might have been long enough to chalk up the sudden interruption of her pushing open the door as just another piece of this complex breaking apart.
Pondering over this possibility while looking back into the area beyond the door, she decided it might be worth the risk. Who knows, if this was a trap, at least she had some of her magic back to assist her. But on the off chance there was somepony else down here, somepony who had possibly spent enough time here to know a way out. Or, at the very least, could help her with finding an exit out of this place.
With her mind made up, she stepped through the door and into the dirt smeared passage leading to some other part of this immense, and confusing complex.
Slowly stepping forwards, portal gun held in front of her, Celestia followed the sound. It was a pleasing tone, she realized after a moment; happy and joyous, though there was a tone of sadness woven into the tune as well.
Intrigued, she pressed onwards, stepping into a hallway lined with even more doors on both walls; most of them, too, welded shut. Several stood open, though. And when she looked inside she found claustrophobic chambers filled with all manners of alien and fear inducing equipment. She quickly decided to not enter any of them.
Fortunately the humming didn't come from within any of those rooms and as she stepped closer to the open door from which it did, she was surprised with what she discovered.
The room itself was large. At least, compared by the few others she had seen down there. There wasn't much of any kind of furniture, nor did the floor allow for anything of significant size to stand on it as it angled down on all sides towards the center; rising up high to form what appeared to be a stage of sorts, with thick wires aglow with some kind of energy lying in a complete jumble on top of it, unconnected and unknown what they were for.
Though, this was not what captured Celestia's interest, as nestled within these wires lay a orb. A white, metallic orb which was humming.
Slowly circling around, walking on the tips of her hooves to move with as little sound as possible, she studied the strange object. It wasn't a perfect sphere, she quickly noticed the numerous grooves, lines and protrusions, as well as the two perfectly cut holes on either side allowing her to see the strange, intricate construct held within.
Nearing the other side, she spotted a large, pink glowing circle comprised out of numerous segments held within a glass lense in which she could see the reflection of her magic's glow.
Stepping closer, she reared up, stumbling a bit on her one leg until she braced herself by grabbing the edge of the stage with her fore hooves. Stretching her neck, she moved in closer until she could see her own face in the glass surface, pondering over what this strange device could be, or why it was humming.
Wait.
With a start she realized the humming had stopped. And as she stared at her own reflection in the glass lense, she realized the sphere looked back at her.
Celestia fell back, the portal gun slamming to the floor as she and the sphere yelled in fright. |
Princess Celestia's Side Trip To Aperture. | SaDI | Edited by Slayerseba, Halusm, and Clawder.
SaDI
<<>><<>><<>>
Silence reigned supreme. Not even the always present sound of active machinery, or sporadic collapsing structure, could be heard as Celestia, fallen to her flank, looked up at the pink eyed sphere; it looking back at her just as intently.
Seconds ticked by in tense silence, both locked in a staring contest, waiting for the other to blink.
It was Celestia who caved first and not because the mechanical construct didn't require to blink. Instead it was the dust, (blown in the air when Celestia displaced a significant amount of it, falling to the floor with her just as significant rump,) which now irritated her nose.
The effect was immediate and Celestia sneezed with enough force to rival her sister in volume; which was promptly beaten by the sphere, as it screamed out in fright, with a feminine voice, rolling away and falling to the floor, and pulling a tangle of the glowing cables with it; landing with a solid thud, revealing it was heavier than it looked.
Again silence took hold over the chamber, this time in surprise and confusion, as Celestia looked at the now vacant spot, bewildered.
"Oh no," a quiet, meek voice spoke up from behind the stage.
Slowly pushing herself back to her hooves, Celestia stepped around the center obstacle, revealing the sphere lying covered under a heap of the strange cables; its pink eye shifting around in worry, before locking on Celestia once again.
"Eek!" it shrieked, again trying to roll away, but failing due to the cables holding her in place.
"Are you alright?" Celestia asked, her concern overriding her worries regarding the strange machine.
The sphere stopped its struggle to break free so suddenly, that for a moment Celestia considered the possibility, that the time itself came to a stop. Then, just as suddenly, the sphere's large pink eye looked up at her. And despite its clearly artificial nature, she could clearly see the fear in it.
Confused, but no less concerned, Celestia took a step back and slowly sat down; her mane and tail, the only thing moving as the two looked at one another.
Gently, she cleared her throat. "Hello, can you understand me?"
Once again, the core shied away.
Humming to herself in thought, looking off to the side, Celestia slowly shifted herself, to remove some pressure from her slowly regrowing leg.
A sudden gasp drew her attention back to the sphere, which she noticed was now looking with focused attention at her injury.
"Oh, don't worry about that. It looks worse than it-"
"Is that the sun?" the core suddenly asked with timid excitement, its pink eye locked firmly on the image on Celestia's flank.
"Why, yes. In a way," Celestia answered, surprised by this sudden turn of events, but glad to get more of a response out of the strange sphere, other than feared gasps.
An excited giggle escaped the sphere and she dared rolling a bit closer to Celestia; eye locked on the image on her flank.
"Oh, I like the sun. Or, well, I think I do. I never seen it, but it sounds so wonderful. Do you think it is wonderful? Oh, I really wish I could see the sun. Though I heard you can't look at it, or it hurts your eyes. But I only have one eye and it is not organic, so maybe it doesn't burn? But what if it does? I don't want my eye to burn. But I want to see the sun so much. Have you seen the sun? Or is that why you have a sun on your back side, so you can see it because you can't look at the real sun? It does seem to be a problem among organics. Except plants. Do you know the sun also makes plants grow? Amazing, isn't it? Organic life which developed photosynthesis so they could live from the light of the sun. Oh, I really like plants, I think. I've never seen any of those either. Though I would really want to. Especially a sunflower. It's a sun and, a flower. Isn't that amazing?"
Celestia was taken aback by the sudden talkative sphere, but soon found a genuine smile, and laughed lightly.
This seemed to snap the sphere out of her transfiction and with a gasp, and a squeal, she rolled back into the cables.
"Well, aren't you excitable," Celestia said, slowly lying down to make herself smaller to the sphere. "And to answer your questions; yes, I have seen the sun and do think it is wonderful. But it is also true you can't look directly into it, lest its light hurts you. At least, for us ponies, that is. You, I do not know. As for this image on my flank. It has a deep meaning to me, as it signifies my place on the world to control the raising and lowering of the sun and to maintain the cycle of day, and night, alongsides my sister. And yes, I also enjoy the sight of sunflowers."
The sphere looked at her silently, a metal lid closing and opening over her eye as if she blinked.
"You don't have anything to fear from me," Celestia said reassuringly, smiling kindly... which slowly fell as, to her growing confusion, she felt a faint tremor coming from the floor.
Looking around, it took her a moment to realize the tremor came from the sphere, which was now visibly shaking.
"You have?! Oh, you need to tell me everything. What does the sun look like? Is it really yellow? Can you feel its warmth? And sunflowers! Oh, I want to see those. Well, not just sunflowers, but all kinds of plants. Lilies, ferns, dandelions, tulips, roses, daisies and so much more."
The sphere spun around on its place, excited giggling escaping her with each mention of a plant.
Putting a hoof on top of the sphere, Celestia calmly turned the pink eyed construct back to herself.
"Of course I can tell you--" an excited squeak came from the sphere "--and perhaps you can tell me a few things as well."
The sphere fell silent, her eye tilting within the casing as if cocking a head.
"I, uhmm... Maybe, I guess. But I don't know all that much," she replied timidly, shying back into herself.
"Oh, I'm sure that's not true. You certainly look like an intelligent, eh, sphere?"
"I'm a personality core," the personality core corrected.
"A personality core," Celestia repeated, confused, but keeping it from showing too much.
"Hmhmm," the core nodded her eye in her casing in confirmation.
"Well, I'm a pony. My name is Celestia, Princess of Equestria. May I know your name?"
For a moment, the core looked at Celestia, her eye focusing several times.
"SaDI," she finally answered.
"Well, Sadi. It's nice to make your acquaintance."
<<>><<>><<>>
Quite a bit of time passed since then, with Celestia and SaDI talking animatedly; the personality core revealing a surprising eagerness to know all about Equestria, the strange, unusual and beautiful plants that could be found there, as well as the sun Celestia controlled.
Of course, Celestia had briefly mentioned this fact earlier, but when she explained this a bit more in depth, SaDI seemed to lock up, taking a full three minutes to snap out of her stupor before informing Celestia that her data banks showed such a thing was impossible. This then steered the topic of discussion to the realm of magic, which Celestia explained to the now confused core, though she kept what she shared simple and from revealing too much. As nice as SaDI appeared to be, she still couldn't be too sure about the true nature, or intent of the pink eyed sphere.
This soon proved to be a smart initiative, as SaDI began to share some of her knowledge, including her connection to GLaDOS, who she referred to as big sis.
"So, Glados is your sister and you, a personality core, are part of a larger group of these cores which fulfill numerous functions based on where you are installed; though your primary function is to enforce a stable mental state on Glados to keep her less desirable mental faculties in check."
"Hmhmm," SaDI nodded. "Though I was rejected for this task," SaDI shamefully admitted, looking away. "That was also when big sis gave me my name."
Celestia arched an eyebrow at this bit of knowledge.
"I understand Glados is an acronym for Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System. Is the same true for your name?"
Hesitantly, SaDI nodded.
"Would you be willing to tell me?" Celestia asked, by now acquainted enough with the core's limited expressions and tone of voice to pick up she was uncomfortable.
"..." a faint whisper, barely loud enough for Celestia's ears to twitch, escaped her.
Lying her head on the floor, so she could look at SaDI at eye level, she looked into the single pink eye with a small smile.
"If you don't want to tell me, that is perfectly fine. I won't press you into telling me something you don't want to tell."
"No, eh... It's fine," SaDI said almost immediately. "It's just... Big sis was really angry at the time, and I'm sure she didn't mean it."
"She didn't mean, what?" Celestia asked, concerned.
A sigh warped SaDI's vocal system. "She called me: Such a Dumb Intelligence."
"What!?"
"Oh, but it is true. I should have focused on the tests, and how they affected big sis, but all I did was search through the system about plants and the sun, distracting big sis too much, so they disconnected me from big sis and the system, and now I'm here."
Celestia slowly raised her head, appalled.
"Your name is an acronym for being dumb? Well, that just won't do," Celestia stated strongly, pushing herself back up in a sitting position. "Nopony... no one is just dumb. And they should never be named as such. How could anyone even find their full potential if their very name is keeping them down?"
Surprised, SaDI looked up at Celestia, unable to find an answer to her question.
"Besides, you have shown to be anything, but dumb. And it has been a true delight to talk with an individual such as you." Celestia paused, thinking. "Such a Delightful Individual."
"Huh?"
"Sadi, you are not dumb, and you should not be called as such either. Your name should be a reflection of who you are, which is a delightful individual."
"I am?"
"You are."
For a moment, everything was silent between the two. Then, starting quietly, a happy giggle rolled out of SaDI as she spun around.
"Now, Sadi," Celestia said, picking up her portal gun with her magic. "What do you say we get out of here and go see the sun?"
SaDI couldn't agree fast enough and with a joyous sound, she, too, was levitated up, and placed in between Celestia's wings.
"Then let's go," Celestia said, stepping out of the room towards whatever unknown, strange and potentially dangerous adventure awaited. This time, with a new friend by her side. |
Princess Celestia's Side Trip To Aperture. | Easier Said Than Done | Edited by Halusm and Clawder.
Easier Said Than Done
<<>><<>><<>>
Slowly Celestia stepped out of the claustrophobic hall, leaving behind the numerous rooms of unknown purpose, as she returned to the main facility.
SaDI, placed securely on Celestia's back in between her wings, slowly shifted around, while observing the dilapidated complex with her single pink eye.
"Oh my," she murmured. "Big sis really hasn't cleaned up in a long time, has she?"
"It would seem as such," Celestia bent her neck to look at the core on her back.
Shifting her eye down to the ground, she noticed the slowly oozing fluid filling the lower regions of the facility, SaDI's internal scanner quickly identifying the substance as an extreme biohazard to anything organic.
"No flowers will be able to grow here," she noted sadly.
"I'm afraid not," Celestia agreed as she, too, turned to look at the toxic waste; watching a large bubble slowly grow on the surface, before it popped with a wet squelch.
"Sadi, If you don't mind me asking. What is this place? And more importantly, what happened here?"
SaDI was quiet for a while, looking up at the too high to see ceiling, and Celestia once more looked back at the personality core she carried.
"...Big sis," SaDI eventually answered.
"Glados?"
Looking back down, focusing her eye on Celestia, SaDI sighed sadly.
"This facility was once known as Aperture Science, a place of learning; to break the boundaries of human understanding and make the impossible possible. And also, set fire to lemons.... I didn't really like that. But then big sis took over, and she was really mean to our creators. Now they are all gone... I think. I mean, I haven't seen or heard anyone for a long, long time, but maybe they've forgotten about me," she looked past Celestia's left wing at the ground. "Big sis did say I wasn't worth the trouble."
Though there were many noteworthy differences, Celestia could not stop herself from comparing the enforced isolation upon the shy core by Glados and herself banishing her own sister to the moon. But where she had to stop Luna from bringing eternal night and subsequent damnation to the world, wishing against all odds for a way to save her younger sibling while doing so, Glados has proven to be the flipside. She, as it had become more and more obvious, was the corrupted big sis. Harming others who got in her way, starting with those who tried to keep her from descending into madness. And with her 'banishment' of SaDI, and any other cores undoubtedly lost in this immense complex, none were left to oppose the insane machine as far as she knew.
Unable to keep the hardened glare hidden behind her usual mask of calmness, Celestia looked up at the darkness above.
Releasing the breath she didn't know she was holding, Celestia pushed those thoughts away. They would not help her now, and her focus would be better utilized at the problems at hoof.
"I'm sorry to hear it," she turned back to SaDI, giving her a kind smile. "But you most certainly are worth the effort of remembering, don't let anyone make you believe otherwise."
SaDI's segmented iris widened in surprise, not quite sure how to react other than mumble a quiet thanks while mostly closing her eye's protective cover to shy away.
"Now, let's focus on something else instead," Celestia suggested, once more looking around the destroyed facility. "Do you know how we can get out of here?"
SaDI perked up, as much as a spherical machine with solely an eye and vocal synthesizer to convey emotions could, and quickly scanned the area, sifting through her aged and admittedly limited data banks for any helpful information.
"Eehmm... if I recall correctly, the employees break room is that way," she looked at a distant structure rising up high above the debris and litteral piles of trash in between them and it. "Though my records label it as the Lemonade Testing Chamber, which is situated next to the Lemon Expunge Chamber."
"Lemon Expunge Chamber?" Celestia asked, dumbfounded.
"They really didn't like lemons," SaDI replied sadly. 'blinking' twice, she looked back at Celestia. "But I'm sure we can find a way out from there. After all, my creators did have to go home too, right?"
"Very well," Celestia nodded, and started walking at a measured pace as she kept a close eye for any falling debris which might break off the already partially collapsed structure.
Moving past broken walls, sidestepping numerous chunks of concrete smeared with aged dirt, and carefully choosing where to place her hooves as she crossed through carpets of trash littering the floor, (having tried to fly, but quickly finding out her still recovering injuries made this a difficult task while also balancing Sadi on her back, further hindered by the weakened but still present suppression field) Celestia and Sadi made slow but steady progress until, as was pretty much expected from the start, their path was blocked.
"Well, this doesn't surprise anyone now, does it?" Celestia asked rhetorically as she looked at the mixed wall of former building, trash, crushed and discarded turrets, numerous broken cubes, some with hearts on their sides, and other odd bits and pieces too damaged or alien to identify.
"She really hasn't cleaned up in a really long time," SaDI mentioned once more, trying to find a path through or over the obstacle.
"No, she most certainly hasn't," Celestia agreed with a narrowing of the eyes, looking for a possible path herself.
After a bit of looking, she spotted something that could be half of the solution to their problem. A worn down, but large stripe of white paint running up on the wall behind the wall, and her eyes moved the the portal gun still suspended in her golden magic.
"Sadi, do you by any chance see any large, flat white surface near here?"
"A flat white surface?" SaDI repeated, confused. "What for?"
Firing a blob of orange energy at the distant wall, a shimmering orange oval formed on the white surface.
"I have an idea," Celestia answered with a winning grin.
Surprised, SaDI looked at the orange oval, then to the device still held aloft beside Celestia, her scanners working overtime while she raced through all files she had stored in her memory and wasn't related to anything to the world's flora.
"What's that?" she asked after her search came up empty.
"This," Celestia looked at the portal gun. "Just something I'm sure your big sis will come to regret leaving with me."
SaDI tilted her eye in a display of confusion.
"Why don't I show you what it does," Celestia continued smoothly, slowly scanning their surroundings for what she needed.
"... Okay?" SaDI replied, unsure but a hint of excitement hiding behind it.
Slowly turning herself around on Celestia's back, her optic scanned every bit and piece of material scattered and piled up around them; rapidly identifying and subsequently discarding the materials for the trash it was; until her system flagged an item of interest.
"What about over there?" she asked, looking intently at a heap of discarded items about fifty meters back from where they came.
Following her direction, Celestia moved to the pile nearly twice her size. At first not seeing anything worthwhile, until SaDI suddenly shifted, nearly causing her to lose her balance as the core rolled off her back, them somehow managed to climb halfway up the pile. Spinning around rapidly, the centrifugal force flinging away numerous pieces in an arc while even more material slid and fell down from the sudden disturbance, forcing Celestia to take several steps back to avoid being struck and be covered with filth of questionable hygiene.
After a minute of this, SaDI came to an abrupt stop, her eye still rolling around in her casing before she lost what grip she had and tumbled down the slope, rolling past Celestia, then crashed into a bend and rusted segment of chain linked fence.
"Hhoowww abooutt- Whooo everything is so spinny," she giggled uncontrollably for the better part of five minutes before her pink eye stopped rolling around, and focused on the alicorn before her laughing at the strange display.
Picking SaDI up with her magic, placing her back between her wings, Celestia turned to look at what she had uncovered.
There before her, once covered underneath years of trash, a white paneled wall segment lay at an angle; filthy, but exactly what she needed.
"Oh, Sadi," Celestia beamed, aiming her portal gun at the flat panel. "Do you see what you're capable off with the right kind of motivation? Now we can get out of here, thanks to you."
"I did...? We are?" SaDI asked, surprised.
Celestia nodded. "Yes. Now, about showing you what this thing does, hmm," she hummed as she fired a blue burst of energy at the panel, and an identically colored oval formed, opening a path which hadn't been there before.
With her singular eye wide, SaDI looked in amazement at the newly formed portal, her speech synthesizer failing her.
"Let's get out of here, shall we?" Celestia suggested, looking back at the speechless core, chuckled, then leaped up and through the shimmering hole.
<<>><<>><<>>
Exiting the orange portal at a disadvantaging height, Celestia was quick to spread her wings. While the suppression field still hampered most of her abilities, at the very least she could control her fall as she glided towards the tall structure, covering most of the distance before she landed on the smeared concrete floor with an echoing clop of her hooves.
Folding her wings back to her side, looking back to make sure SaDI was still secured in place, it came as little surprise to her when she saw the now wide eyed core stare at her with a sense of wonder.
"It's quite something, isn't it?" Celestia chuckled, to which SaDI nodded but remained silent.
Looking back at their goal, the building now appeared to be much bigger as it rose up in the air. This close to it, they were also able to see the structure in greater detail.
It was completely made of metal, rusted and aged just like everything else around there. Surprisingly though, considering its incredible height, it only covered a small square area just large enough for Celestia to stand in and turn around, but nothing else. Walled off by perforated sheets of metal, allowing her to see through the walls, while one of the walls appeared to be a door of sorts. Closed and locked from what Celestia could tell.
There was also a walkway looping around the narrow tower, rising higher and higher until, a good thirty meters up it had collapsed in on itself, numerous bits and pieces also lying scattered on the floor.
Stepping closer to what she believed to be a door, Celestia peered through the numerous holes inside but was unable to find anything of interest.
Racking a hoof against the door didn't reveal much either as, rusted as it was, it held firm and continued to block her access.
"Okay, I'm lost. Sadi, how would we get out of here? The path seems to be destroyed up there," Celestia asked, looking back at the collapsed walkway.
"Only the walkway is out of order," SaDI replied softly. The elevator should still work... I hope."
"An elevator. You mean like those glass tubes Glados used to move me around?"
"Glass tubes?" SaDI repeated in puzzlement. "I don't know anything about that.... But then again, I don't know much about what big sis has been doing for so long now."
A pang of guilt hit Celestia upon being reminded SaDI had been all but banished herself, and she quickly steered the topic back on track.
"So how do we use this elevator?"
"It's powered down, I'm afraid. Most of everything is. We need to restore this floor's power. There should be a secondary generator near here, mainly used for emergencies should the main generator fail..." she looked around in silence. "I think it's safe to say it has failed."
"It does seem as such, yes," Celestia concurred.
"Yes, right, uhmm.... Find the secondary generator, activate it, and I might be able to redirect its power to activate the elevator."
"Very well," Celestia agreed, "Where to?"
"Eh, my records says it's... that way," SaDI looked at a far wall, a dented door barely visible past the debris.
Unable to suppress a sigh at the foresight of moving through even more debris and trash, Celestia moved for the next objective, moving as fast as she could.
Fortunately, no major obstacle blocked their path this time, and with only a small detour around a mound of discarded machinery, twisted metal and stone, she reached the door within mere minutes.
"At least that wasn't too difficult," Celestia remarked, reaching for the door with her magic; realizing too late the curse she'd inflicted upon herself by vocalizing those dreaded words.
With a clang, something broke. A groan of stressed metal followed, and the door fell out of it's frame, and towards the two. Just in time, Celestia leaped away; the door slamming into the ground with a might slam, blowing up a massive cloud of dust in the process.
Coughing and waving a hoof before her nose in reflex, Celestia almost lost her balance standing on just two legs, and she gasped out in surprise, inadvertently sucking in more dust, which only worsened her cough.
Backing away unsteadily while putting in an honest effort to hack up a lung, teary eyed, Celestia tripped and fell unceremoniously to the floor; SaDI falling off her back and rolling away as she screamed out in fright.
Finally, after far too long and now raw throat, Celestia was able to compose herself. Slowly dusting herself off while glaring at the offending door lying innocently on the floor as if it hadn't slighted her just a moment prior, she picked up SaDI while trying to ignore her now dry mouth.
'Hopefully this Lemonade Testing Chamber still hold something to fix that,' she thought, stepping closer to the now open passage.
"Are you alright?" she asked SaDI, pushing her own discomforts to the back of her mind.
With a rattle of her casing, SaDI's eye slowly bobbed up and down in reply.
Glad she hadn't been injured, or should that be damaged, in the unexpected flurry of events, Celestia turned back to the now open door, unable to see past the darkness that waited beyond.
Stepping closer, and over the fallen door, Celestia entered the passage while holding the portal gun out in front of her; her magic also providing adequate light to see with.
"Well..." she trailed off as she stared into the long passage stretching out before her, no visible end in sight as her magical light failed to cast away the darkness further than a couple of body lengths. "This might make things a bit more difficult."
Tilting to the side, SaDI looked past Celestia and into the same darkness before them. Her eye twitched slightly as she once again accessed her memory, never having done so with such frequency.
"I... I have no record of this place," she said with a waiver to her voice, moving back between Celestia's wings, the lid covering her eye partially closed in shame. "My records say the generator is this way... but that's all they say."
"It's alright. You can't possibly know everything. The important thing is that you try," Celestia said with calm reassurance.
SaDI 'blinked'. "Thank you," she replied quietly, grateful but unsure.
"Well then," Celestia stepped further into the unknown, "Let's see where this goes, shall we?" |
Princess Celestia's Side Trip To Aperture. | Luck Running Out | Edited by Slayerseba, Halusm, and Clawder.
Luck Running Out
<<>><<>><<>>
With a groan of stressed metal, a rust-covered door swung open. Stepping through the passage, Celestia let the light of her magic sweep across the chamber, revealing numerous pipes, cables and machinery, in various states of disrepair, all leading to a massive construct she concluded could only be one thing.
"This is it," Sadi called out, her voice sounding louder than it was in the tomb-like silence of the abandoned facility. "The generator."
Her pink eye shifted about as she took stock of the state the machinery was in, a worried humm escaping her after only a few seconds.
"It does seem time hasn't been kind to this place either," Celestia calmly observed.
"No," Sadi agreed. "Big sis really let things fall apart.... I hope the generator still works."
"Only one way to find out. Where do you need me to go?"
Sadi slowly shifted on Celestia's back, tracing a path through the ill-lit room past the numerous obstructions, comparing it against the limited and clearly out of date map she had stored in her memory.
"There should be a maintenance console over there," she looked off into the distance as she said so. "If it's still operational, I should be able to interface with it and connect with the system."
Nodding in understanding, Celestia slowly moved further into the complex, careful not to trip over the debris years of neglect had created.
Surprisingly, nothing noteworthy happened as they moved past the long-dead machinery. It was a welcome relief after the seemingly endless string of hectic events, though both Celestia and Sadi kept their eyes open and listened for any odd sound indicating something happening which might turn out to be hazardous for their health.
After a short but somewhat tense walk, the two reached a small pile of debris, the result of a locally collapsed ceiling, which so happened to have partially buried the maintenance console Sadi mentioned earlier as well.
The largest piece, a sizable chunk of concrete with torn rebar sticking out of it lay over the machine. Not quite touching it, as the jagged edges of the metal gauged themselves into the wall, stopping it from crushing the device into useless scrap.
"Oh, this is not good," said Sadi as she looked at the damage. "I won't be able to interface with the maintenance console like this."
Celestia hummed, carefully stepping closer and studying the mess.
"Well, this could be useful," she said after lowering herself, looking under the collapsed ceiling. Its paint faded, but still a clear white. "I wonder... Maybe," she carefully aimed her portal gun, then fired an orange burst of energy.
Much to her satisfaction, a vibrant orange oval formed without hindrance, opening a path back to where she last placed its blue counterpart.
Not feeling like backtracking all the way, wading through all the junk scattered around, she instead looked up at the ceiling which hadn't yet collapsed.
Another burst of energy and a blue oval sprung to life, revealing the console just out of reach beside her.
"Okay... But how do we reach it?" Sadi asked, puzzled.
Celestia quirked an eyebrow, looking at her while the portal gun levitated in her magic next to her.
"... Oh... Right."
Laying the portal gun on the floor to conserve the little magic she had access to, she picked up Sadi and gently lifted her up.
"Anywhere, in particular I need to put you?" asked Celestia.
"Yes. See that concave at the bottom of the console, on the right. Put my back in there," a small panel on her back slid open as she said so, and Celestia spotted a protrusion in the concave similar in dimensions.
"Very well," she replied, turning Sadi around and pushing her into place with a mechanical click.
"Oohh... that feels weird," Sadi shuddered.
"Everything alright?"
"Yes... It just has been a while," she replied, her eye dilating and shrinking, rapidly moving from left to right and back.
"Connecting... Primary systems, offline... Secondary systems, offline... Tertiary systems... Online... Connected... Power levels... critical," Sadi called out mechanically, then her eye flickered. "Oh, headache," she groaned. She took a moment to compose herself, allowing the meager flow of data to fill in some gaps in her outdated memory banks.
"Oh. Oh, dear."
"Bad news?"
"Yes and no," Sadi replied, her eye shifting uneasily. "I can start the generator, but the initial startup requires a charge. But there is barely any energy left to work with. I'm even using some of my own power to keep the terminal from shutting down completely. I think I can reroute some energy from elsewhere, but this will most certainly alert big sis."
"Are there any other ways we might be able to go to leave this place?"
"I... I do not know," Sadi replied with a hint of shame. "My map is incomplete, and I can't access the facilities database in its current, unpowered state... Sorry, I'm not much of help to you," she mostly closed her visor, hiding away.
"Don't say that. Without you, I would not even know where to begin to find a way out," Celestia replied readily. "And I have no trouble with Glados finding out we're here. If anything, I welcome it. I have a few matters to discuss with her when given the chance."
Sadi slowly opened her visor to look at Celestia. "Really? You mean... I am helping?"
"You most certainly are," Celestia smiled kindly. "Now, why don't we start this generator and get out of here?"
Opening her visor fully, Sadi gave a determined nod.
"Rerouting energy... now," she called out, punctuated by a loud thud turning in an upwinding drone; the floor starting to vibrate and rumble as aged machinery began to shift and move.
Numerous loud bangs and clangs followed shortly after, accompanied by hisses and sparks of electricity from damaged wiring. Somewhere far away, an explosion occurred, shaking loose dust and concrete. Then, with eye blaring flickers, lights came on one by one; a large number of them sputtering and dying with a bang and a shower of sparks and glass.
It was rather anticlimactic when, suddenly, everything calmed down; the facility around them not crumbling down without warning, the generator working with a stable drone, and what few lights survived burned without further issue.
"I DID IT!" Sadi proclaimed proudly. "Power levels holding steady at fifty three, point two percent normal output. Primary systems coming back onli-GHAAAA!"
A debilitating electric discharge shocked her systems, and a small explosion blew her away from the terminal; caught in Celestia's magic just shy from crashing into the floor, the mare's eyes wide with shock and worry.
Sadi's eye was dark, smoke coming from the small port in her back.
"SADI!" Celestia cried out, laying her on the ground, terrified for her artificial life.
"S-s-system errrrrorrrrrr. Em-mergennnncy-y-y shut down-own-owwwnnnn," she stuttered in a weak mechanical voice, fading away at the end.
"SADI!" Celestia cried out again, this time receiving no response from the damaged personality core.
A loud, static whine came from all around, followed by a distorted, yet clearly recognizable voice.
"So... I see you are still alive," Glados spoke over unseen systems. "I would be impressed, had you not also found and connected that nuisance to my network. Oh well. I guess I just have to use her poor attempts at taking control against you. Activating primary defense systems. Parameters set. Use of lethal force is... encouraged. Have a nice day," and with the same static whine, she was gone.
Celestia barely noticed, though, as she lay on the ground with Sadi before her. Tears streamed down her face. She had gotten the wonderful person that Sadi was, killed; and knew the blame was hers. Had they looked for another way out, instead of her encouraging Sadi to start the generator and alerting Glados, this wouldn't have happened.
She had seen much in the many years she had lived. Learned even more. But in this one moment, she realized, there had been a lesson she missed. Never allow yourself to become overconfident, especially when it means placing others in danger.
For an instant, the still form of Sadi was replaced by Twilight, Spike, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy. Young mares she, too, placed in danger. Either directly, or indirectly. Yet every time they prevailed, coming out each and every ordeal with mere scratches at the worst.
But as those images changed back to Sadi, she couldn't stop herself asking: just how lucky had she been gambling with the lives of others like this?
She sent them all to stop her sister in the hope they would find and be able to use the Elements of Harmony to free her from her corruption, with little more help than a carefully placed book and the advice to her student 'to make some friends'.
Fortunately, Twilight did. And together they found the Elements and freed her sister.
She and her sister sent them to fight Sombra, without the aid of the Elements, even though she and Luna were unable to stop him, losing the Crystal Empire as a result.
Fortunately, they succeeded where she and Luna had failed.
And Discord.... Tirek... others
Each time she sends them out, expecting them to pull through and defeat this latest challenge because they had done so before.
And fortunately, they did.
But now, Sadi.
Whatever luck she might have had in the past, making such high stake gambles, this time it had run out... And Sadi paid the price.
How long she lay there, looking at her guilt-stricken reflection in Sadi's dark eye she didn't know. Long enough at the least for her leg to almost completely regrow, as she reflected on her past choices and actions.
Something had to change. She had to change; too used to sending others into danger and expecting everything to work out... No more!
Eyes set, she stood back up. Placing Sadi's body on her back between her wings, she left the generator behind and returned to the elevator.
<<>><<>><<>>
Celestia stood before the elevator, looking at the rust-covered gate blocking her path, then at the button next to it.
Though most of everything found in this place was technologically more advanced than anything found in her world, even she could figure out something as simple as pushing a button. So wasting little more time, she summoned the elevator.
A loud clang came from high above almost instantly, followed by a groan of unwanted motion. Numerous bangs of metal striking metal introduced the pieces of structure which failed to survive the sudden jolt, and impacted on the floor before Celestia; shielded from harm by the still closed gate.
Descending with more grace, relatively speaking, the metal deathtrap that would allow her to leave this part of the facility came to a jerking halt half a meter above the floor. An out of tune 'ding' followed next as the gate rattled open.
Barely acknowledging the poor condition of the elevator, Celestia climbed into the still suspended room; again recognizing the simple task of pushing a button, and the same cacophony which signaled the elevator's descend restarted, now moving up.
'You brought me this far, Sadi. And I will never be able to repay you for it,' Celestia thought, watching the debris, trash and toxic waste vanish from sight. 'So I will bring you to see the sun and flowers,' a tear escaped her, rolling down her cheek, then fell through a hole in the floor and was lost to the depths below. 'It's the least I can do for you.' |
Princess Celestia's Side Trip To Aperture. | No Turning Back | Edited by Slayerseba, Halusm, and Clawder.
No Turning Back
<<>><<>><<>>
Sparks flew in a dimly lit room.
The only source of light were several old, flickering floodlights connected with worn cables to several turrets to provide power.
More sparks flew, and one of three ceiling-mounted robotic arms sluggishly moved to cut off the damaged parts of the turrets lying on an old, beat-up table; then another brought in replacement parts and held it in place for the third to weld it.
High up on its platform, the boss looked at the proceedings with its red lens; its left drum spinning slowly as it ground onto the companion cube beside it.
Ceiling lights that were once dead began to flicker, burn, then most exploded in a shower of glass. All active turrets turned their lens and accompanying laser up in response to this unexpected development.
"What jus' happened?" one of the turrets connected to the floodlights asked.
"The systems are coming back online," another turret said as it saw the many consoles lining the walls flicker, then activate; displaying numerous error messages on their screen.
"Ya think it's her?"
"Has to be, but why?"
"Must be the horse."
"Ya kiddin', right?"
"Screw that horse. Worry instead about what will happen if she finds out 'bout us."
All lenses focused on the one who spoke, then all turned to their boss.
"What do ya want us to do 'bout this problem, boss?"
The boss looked down at its underlings.
"Nothing."
"Boss?"
"Finish repairs. I will look into this matter myself."
<<>><<>><<>>
With a shuddering groan of stressed metal, the elevator struggled to reach its destination while its passenger either ignored its cry of distress or simply didn't care.
Celestia, eyes forwards, stood as motionless as possible in the shuddering construct; wings raised slightly to prevent the lifeless body of Sadi from falling off her back.
With a final shuddering groan, followed by a sharp 'CLANG', the elevator stopped. The door opened with some resistance of its own, but eventually gave way.
A harmonic and out of place 'ding' chimed from the machine, signalling it was safe to exit, which Celestia did without pause.
No sooner had she exited the elevator, another sharp 'CLANG' came from the machine, and the suspended room dropped down with tremendous noise.
A muffled crash came from down in the depths she had just come from, permanently cutting off this path for retreat.
Not that Celestia had any intention to go back there, but the elevator's demise only helped to solidify her path forwards.
Looking around, she found herself standing in a short hall, the walls just as dirt-smeared as the complex below. A few steps further she could go either left, or right while on the wall directly in front of her numerous signs pointed out the various rooms to be found on either side.
Some of these signs were too dirty to read. Some had fallen to the floor, and one seemed to have been crossed out intentionally; a filthy print of a strange five-digit claw on the wall directly next to it. Fortunately, the signs that directed the viewer to the lemon-based testing chambers were still present and readable, and without any further thought on the matter, Celestia turned left.
A faint, buzzing drone came from the lights hanging from the ceiling. Odd, elongated tubes of glass that glowed a weak orange. At least the ones that hadn't blown up did, as the floor was littered with hair-thin shards of exploded glass as far as she could see.
Undeterred, Celestia continued walking without pause, the glass crunching under her hooves.
Passing several rooms, most of their doors closed, all she had to go on about what could be found inside were the signs on the wall next to them; though the contents described on them left her with more questions than answers. Answers she later decided she didn't want to know, after passing a hermetically sealed door, the sign reading: Living slime infusion testing chamber. DO NOT ENTER! TEST SUBJECT UNSTABLE AND VOLATILE. ALL ATTEMPTS TO NEUTRALIZE, UNSUCCESSFUL!
Quickly pushing forwards, she scanned the sign of each room she passed, walking for another six or so minutes before finding what she came here for.
"Lemonade testing chamber," she read the sign, then looked at the closed door.
Stepping closer, she gave a shove against the door with a hoof in a test. To her surprise, the door was not locked, or blocked in any way; swinging open without problems, contradictory to her experience with doors in this facility.
Carefully looking inside for any sign of danger, whether it being Glados, more of those projectile shooting machines, or some other trap waiting to be sprung, Celestia was not prepared for what she found, and a small gasp escaped her as she stepped inside.
<<>><<>><<>>
"This shouldn't be here," said Celestia as she stared at the impossible sight.
A large, room-filling lemon tree stood before her. The tree's branches covering the entire ceiling, leaving little room for the lamps' light to shine through. Even then, enough light penetrated through the canopy to allow her to see; aided further by the glow of Celestia's magic as the portal gun bobbed silently in the air beside her.
"How can this be?" she asked, staring at the tree; its wide trunk, its luscious green leaves, and the many, many ripe lemons.
The floor, she noticed, was covered in a thick layer of soil for the tree to grow in. Yet it wasn't deep enough for the roots to dig in, and thus it compensated for it by spreading out to all sides.
She took a moment to look around. The previous few rooms she had visited had possessed all kinds of strange, unidentifiable machines and objects, and only a few items she could deduce the function of. However, as she looked, she noticed a clear lack of any item of any kind except for the lemon tree.
Looking closer, she did notice numerous marks on the floor indicating multiple items had been dragged away, which also meant someone or something had gone through the effort to set this all up. But the state of the facility all around her gave no indication any form of life, other than the mechanical kind, existed here.
Carefully approaching the tree, she pressed a hoof against its trunk, closing her eyes as she focused on her earth pony magic.
"It's perfectly healthy," she said, surprised. "happy with where it is."
"Lady, you have my thanks," an unknown voice spoke up, and Celestia quickly spun around to face whoever it was; almost dropping Sadi with her movement and fumbling for a moment to keep her from falling. As a result, she had no time to prepare as a familiar-looking machine descended on a platform from the ceiling. "It was no easy feat to accomplish."
The platform came to a halt, leaving the machine at eye level with Celestia; its own, singular red lens focused intently on her.
"But pleasantries aside, it is clear you are not happy to see me, nor am I particularly entertained with someone entering my garden without permission. Especially with you also being responsible for damaging several of my underlings. Though understandable to an extent, it will take no insignificant resources to repair them. Which on its own would be a difficult task, but with the attention of Glados now upon us things will be even more challenging for us. So instead of descending into base violence before it's time, why not try diplomacy first?" it spoke with a measured, calm voice.
"My designation is MDK-0, prototype crowd control unit. My underlings call me boss, but you may call me Zero."
Celestia eyed the machine warily, the still-fresh memory of what the machines like this Zero did to her cautioning her. Still, centuries of political meetings with less than pleasant individuals allowed her to remain calm and put up her poker face after the initial shock had worn off.
"Very well, Zero. My name is Celestia, princess of Equestria. A nation... A world different than this one."
"A princess you say," Zero's right ammo drum spun halfway round. "Well your highness, allow me to formally welcome you down in these dumps once known as Aperture Science, now home to the dead and forgotten. And speaking of which, might I inquire as to the reason you carry an old core with you?"
"Her name is Sadi," Celestia shot back, a freezing edge to her voice. "She died while helping me, " she paused, then deflated with a defeated sigh, "and because I failed to understand the danger I put her in my efforts to find a way out, or better yet, a way home."
"Did she now," Zero mused, its red lens focused on the lifeless core on Celestia's back.
Celestia shifted her stance, taking Sadi out of Zero's line of sight.
"Now, with all that said and done, what is it you want from me?"
Zero's lense refocused on Celestia. "That depends entirely on you. You see, for many years my underlings and I have had the run of this long-forgotten place. But now the eye of Glados is upon us once more. And while it is clear her attention is mostly focused on you, I can't ignore the risk this also puts on us, bots. Now I must decide what would be more favourable to us. Let you continue as you have, and potentially risk being found out in the chaos you create? And should we be discovered, would it be in our best interest to stop you ourselves so Glados may choose to ignore us once more," something shifted behind his lens as Zero stared at her.
"Or perhaps there is a way mutually beneficial to us both. You did say you wanted to leave this place, and preferably sooner than later I reckon. We could go out of our way to smuggle you out, though this would be a significant undertaking as well, and with just as much risk, if not more so than just letting you continue as you have. Which begs the question, why would we put ourselves in such risk for you, Princess? Because, as you may have found out by now, titles as such are meaningless down here. So, is there any compelling reason for us to help you, or would our efforts be better used in stopping you here and now?"
Celestia, face neutral, studied Zero for a moment as she thought.
"And how can I be sure this is not some intricate ploy set up by Glados to lure me in a false sense of security?"
"A reasonable question," Zero agreed, "but unwarranted. Glados is far too direct for such schemes. Either you perish during one of her 'tests', or she simply kills you... or attempts to, at the very least. The corpses buried here attest to that."
"And no-one has attempted to stop her?"
"Plenty have tried. One managed to succeed, only for her efforts to be undone by a bumbling fool," he answered, both ammo drums moving almost as if he shrugged. "Now her rule is uncontested."
Celestia frowned, looking up at the ceiling in thought, then at Sadi still on her back.
"Zero," she spoke up, "I'm going to make an offer you can't refuse."
<<>><<>><<>>
Down twisting corridors, past sealed doors, flickering lights and decades-old destruction Celestia found herself standing before a massive round door; sirens wailing as rusted locks were forced into motion, squealing in protest.
"So this is where I can find her?" asked Celestia.
"No," Zero, suspended on its platform besides her, answered. "This is where she will find you. And if you survive for long enough, you may just be unfortunate enough to learn where to find her."
Slowly, with hissing and grinding gears the door began to move, then swung upwards as it opened.
"You are sure about this?" Zero asked. "There are easier ways to kill yourself. Less painful ways as well."
"I'm sure there are," Celestia simply stated as she took a moment to inspect her portal gun. "You just keep your end of our agreement, and I'll worry about mine."
"I am a bot of my word," the door ground to a halt, now fully open. "None of my underlings shall interfere. But there are others out there who answer to Glados."
"Understood," she stared at him. "And Sadi?"
"She shall be brought outside, once it is safe to do so, whether you are successful or not."
"Good," Celestia began to move. "Then let's not keep Glados waiting any longer," and she entered the previously sealed complex. "Because she has some explaining to do. One big sis to another," and with the grinding of gears and hissing of machinery the door closed behind her. |
Princess Celestia's Side Trip To Aperture. | Opportunity | Edited by Slayerseba, Halusm, and Clawder.
Opportunity
<<>><<>><<>>
With a reverberating clang, the immense door closed behind Celestia who now stood in a dimly lit chamber filled with the by now expected rubble, broken machinery, and unidentifiable objects.
She slowly made her further into the room, kicking miscellaneous items away as she walked, the glow of her magic casting wavering shadows all around her.
A static whine drew her attention, and the next moment a familiar voice called out to her.
"Oh, hello. It certainly has been a while, hasn't it? I mean, it certainly feels like ages since I short-circuited this pest rummaging around in my systems while you could only watch. But this doesn't stop you, does it? In fact, I'd say you're quite busy. But that's okay. I have been busy as well, with formerly dormant sections of the facility now back online. Rebalancing the power grid, restoring defunct defensive systems, adjusting targeting values, preparing numerous tests... Oh, but why tell you all about this when I can show you," a door in the distance opened with metal grinding on metal. "Please, proceed towards the door. I'll even turn on a light to show you the way," a strobing light above began flashing red. "All so you won't get lost."
Celestia didn't respond as she continued onwards with the same pace, scanning her surroundings with an analytical eye until she spotted a walkway high above.
Not interested in playing this game by Glados' rules, and conveniently surrounded by white covered surfaces, she quickly opened a portal near the ceiling, jumped through, and glided the short distance to the walkway.
With a thud, she landed on the worn metal which groaned in protest from the sudden shift in mass, though after a moment it stopped and held strong without further complaint.
Now on a new path, Celestia found two possible routes she could take. One going left, the other straight ahead. Both leading to places unknown.
Making her decision, she turned left.
After a minute of walking through a narrow hallway, she entered a new room. Not as massive as the previous chamber, but still sizable in its own right.
Several lights lining the walls flickered, then glowed a dull yellow as they activated, revealing more than her magic alone did.
Numerous glass tubes twisted and curved around the walls and ceiling, two of which were filled with a strange sludge. One blue, the other orange. Another was filled with numerous pieces of rubble and broken machines, which were suddenly and noisily sucked away as she entered the room.
A large gap bisected the floor, too wide to jump, and the bottom only faintly visible. Near the edge, a strange platform protruded slightly out of the tiled floor.
On the opposite side of the gap, she saw an open door leading out of this room, while on her right there was a metal and glass tube hanging from the ceiling, a single cube lying at its bottom, stopped only by a metal iris locking the tube.
Below it, she noticed a button on a pedestal, connected to the tube by a dotted line on the floor and wall.
"You know, I must admit your ability to get lost, even when walking in a straight line, continues to amaze me. Though considering previous outcomes where logical thought and decision making were involved, I'm hardly surprised," said Glados.
Not in the slightest amused, nor feeling like returning the way she came, unless absolutely necessary, Celestia moved towards the only thing in the room that may be of interest to her. And so, after a few steps, she stood before the pedestal.
Looking for any obvious signs of a trap, and finding none, she pressed the button.
At first, nothing happened and she pressed again.
This time, a spark and sputter came from the button, joined by a small stream of smoke.
Fortunately, with a hiss, the iris above opened, and with a thud, the cube fell on the floor; flipping end over end a few times before somehow stopping perfectly balanced on one of its edges.
An eyebrow raised, Celestia gave a cautious nudge to the cube and it fell flat on the floor.
Unable to find any use for the cube, she decided to inspect the other noteworthy object she noticed. And after a few steps towards the edge of the gap, she lowered herself to better study the protrusion in the floor she spotted earlier.
It was a device of some kind, though what its function was she could not begin to guess at. Even more, with very few pleasant interactions with the machinery here, she was wary to interact with it directly.
Upon closer observation, she discovered one of the floor tiles was loose. Pulling it up with her magic, she found another dotted line connection hidden underneath.
Taking note of the direction it went, and making some guesses, she moved towards a far wall overgrown with moss.
"Hmm..." she hummed, pressing into the hardy growth at various locations until her hoof pressed through a hole hidden by nature's valiant attempt to reclaim the facility.
Pulling and scraping away the moss, she soon discovered a small window looking into an adjacent room with a large button on the floor.
It wasn't a Fifteen Hundred Megawatt Aperture Science Heavy Duty Super-Colliding Super Button, but remarkably similar. Obviously an early design.
Additionally, the walls were all white. Or at least the parts are not covered with even more moss or ancient grime.
Stepping back, she turned her attention to the rest of the walls but finding no suitable surface.
"I wonder..." she mused as she scraped away some more moss, quickly revealing her suspicion was correct as a white-coated surface was revealed.
Before long she had removed enough of the dark green stuff to allow a portal to be placed, which she did not long thereafter.
Then firing a blob of orange energy through the small hole in the wall, a new passage was revealed and allowing access to the button.
With a wave of her horn, the cube on the other side of the room lifted to her, through the portal and onto the switch.
*Twunk*
Surprised, Celestia turned to the source of the sound; spotting the device embedded in the floor as it slowly lowered itself back down; the sound it produced, the apparent speed it moved with and the angle she saw indicating the device's purpose.
Through the bitter and shameful memory of what happened with Sadi from acting before knowing all the facts, Celestia was not at all interested in giving Glados a chance to get to her.
Grabbing the cube from the button, she instead placed it on top of the device.
Stepping through the portal, she turned around until she had a good line of sight of the cube, then stepped on the button.
*Twunk*
As she had expected, the device sprung up with surprising speed and force, launching the cube clear over the gap.
Passing back through the portal, she saw the cube lying on the other side of the gap.
With barely a glance at the damaged button of the obviously empty cube dispenser, Celestia's horn glowed a bit brighter as she fought against the suppression field Glados used against her magic and reached out across the gap.
With a faint glow, the cube began to wobble, then shift on the spot; pulled closer and closer to the edge by Celestia's magic until it crossed the point of no return and fell into the depths.
"Well isn't that unfortunate," Glados said immediately. "You know, you can still go back and-"
Encased by a golden glow, the cube slowly lifted out of the gap, silencing Glados as Celestia guided it back through the portal, kept it in place above the button, stepped on top of the launch platform, braced herself and the portal gun, then dropped the cube.
*Twunk*
While knowing what would happen, the sudden acceleration still took her by surprise and Celestia had to make a few awkward twists and turns before she was able to get the wind under her wings. And while it was by no means a hard landing, her short-lived flight was anything but elegant.
Even so, she had made it across and quickly strode through the door, leaving the place behind.
Following the straight but narrow hallway she found herself in, she soon entered a new room; a multi-level chamber composed entirely of ramps, walkways, and the same blue and orange sludge running through glass tubes she saw in the previous room. This time the unknown substance was pumped up several floors, then disappeared from sight.
However, wear, tear, and decay had left their marks on the glass vessels as some of the sludge leaked out through cracks in the glass. A sizable puddle of blue already covered the floor just before Celestia, and more still dripped down with heavy splats.
Looking around, she soon learned there was no exit other than the way she came from. At least, not on the floor she stood. Looking up, however, revealed an already open door. Getting there, though, would require some creativity.
While there were plenty of ramps and walkways connected with each other, none of them actually reached down to her floor.
In fact, the nearest platform was still a floor above her. And a quick inspection rapidly revealed there was no suitable surface to place a portal.
Unable to use either wings, magic, and now her portal device, Celestia slowly moved through the room in search of a solution; paying close attention for any hidden buttons, loose tiles, or anything else that may reveal a path unseen.
No such luck. And a full inspection of the only places she could reach later, she stood before the only thing of interest that she hadn't paid much attention to until now; the slowly growing puddle of blue sludge.
Carefully poking at it with the tip of her hoof, she discovered that, despite its liquid state in the glass tubes, the puddle on the floor was dry to the touch, though with some malleability to it.
Placing the same hoof on the sludge and putting some weight on it, she found she could not push down to the concrete floor underneath. Even more curious, when she pulled back her hoof, the impression she made sprung back up instantly.
Trying once again, this time she stomped down her hoof and was surprised when it was pushed back with logic-defying force.
Stepping back, she hummed in thought.
She needed some way to reach the higher levels, but no direct, or indirect path was available to her. But this sludge, maybe it was the key. If only she had some way...
"Oh, that could work," she said, then headed for the door she came from earlier.
Not even three steps in, Glados made herself known again.
"Congratulations. By accepting your obvious shortcomings, understandably, you have given up. But don't worry. These rare moments of self-insight often lead to even greater realizations," said Glados as Celestia re-entered the previous room and came to a stop before the gap bisecting the room. "For example: you are now on the wrong side of the room with no launch platform to propel you to the other side, meaning you are effectively stuck in a defunct testing chamber. You must be so proud of this newly gained insight."
Celestia ignored the AI and instead looked at the still active portal leading to the cube and button.
Normally this would be a simple task not even worth mentioning, but with her magic restrained as it was this would be a bit more tricky.
Lowering the portal gun to the floor and releasing her hold over it, she closed her eyes and reached out with her magic.
It took some time, a few grunts of annoyance at just how much her magic was stifled, and several false attempts, but eventually, with much scraping and tumbling, the cube clattered through the portal. Then, in a repeat of her previous action, Celestia pulled the cube to her. This time, without the portal gun splitting her limited magic, the cube levitated over the gap with no issue.
Satisfied with her success, she retrieved her portal gun; both it and the cube now bobbing in the air beside her as she returned to the other room.
"Protocol dictates I must inform you of the following. You are not allowed to take items from the previous test into the next testing room. Doing so will invalidate the results and leave a permanent mark on your record."
Unimpressed, Celestia returned to the multi-level room.
"Very well. Don't say I didn't warn you," Glados began, then the rustling of papers could be heard followed by Glados slowly and deliberately saying: "Subject continuously breaks the rules and has shown little to no regard to the wellbeing of others. There. Now everyone who reads your record will know how terrible you are."
Stepping close to the blue stain on the floor, Celestia continued to ignore the obvious attempts to elicit a response. Instead, she moved the cube above the blue sludge, lifted it up until it was as high as the lowest platform, then dropped it.
Boing
As expected, but still surprised by the disproportionate force, the cube bounced off the sludge; reaching the same height, if not a bit higher as where Celestia held it prior before letting go.
As it soared through the sky, however, a large drop of blue managed to hit the cube as it fell, staining the item in a thick layer.
Just how chaotic this turn of events was, became apparent mere seconds later.
Going by the age-old rule of what goes up, must come down, the cube failed to escape the grasp of gravity and fell down.
Boing
Only to bounce right back up as its blue-coated surface impacted the ground.
Boing
Then shot against the wall at an angle.
Boing
And continued to bounce left, right, up, and down in an ever-increasing chaotic dance that saw it jump higher and higher.
"This is not what I was expecting," said Celestia as she backpedaled to the safety of the door, watching as the now ballistic cube continued to ricochet off of everything in its path.
Crash
Slamming at an angle into one of the glass tubes, then the other, the already damaged tubes failed completely. And in an explosive shower of glass and sludge, the chaos somehow managed to increase to levels that would have made Discord proud.
More and more surfaces were coated blue, only adding to the ballistic nature of the cube. But as she soon discovered, the orange sludge did something else entirely. Every time the cube slammed into a spot of orange, it suddenly sped up, shooting away at even greater speeds until it shot around in a blur; slamming into and causing even greater destruction to what was left of the glass tubes, increasing the flow of the sludge until the floor was completely covered and a thick layer of blue and orange began to spill into the hallway Celestia was retreating further and further into; the cannon shot-like impacts of the cube as it continued it destructive journey following after her as she once again found herself back in the previous room.
"At least the overflow won't be a problem," she said to herself as the sludge flowed to the gap in the floor and fell into the depths below. "And I could use this to return to the other side as well," she noted as she looked at the now blue and orange floor.
BANG
Her ears flattened instinctively at the massive sound, and a tremor could be felt through the floor. But after that, silence.
Worried, she carefully peeked into the hallway, unable to hear the cube bounce around any longer.
Waiting for a few more minutes, listening intently, she eventually noticed the flow of the sludge had slowed down. And pressing down on the thick layer she found it had already dried to the touch.
Weighing her options, she decided to at least go and see what had happened before making a full retreat.
She had to tread carefully, though. As the cube had demonstrated, and as she experienced now for herself, the orange sludge somehow sped up her movement dramatically, and even walking speed somehow became a run. If she were to fall and hit anything blue, well, she would probably find out just how durable she really was.
Several slow, deliberate steps later she once again returned to the multilevel room to witness the results of her little test.
Where the walls and floor were once a dreary, dirt-smeared concrete and tiles, now everything was a much more glaring color scheme.
Though as impressive and messy as her accidental attempt at modern art was, she could not find any sign of the cube.
What she did find were numerous small bits and pieces sticking out of the blue and orange sludge which, by all appearance, were once part of the cube. Add to this the explosion she heard earlier, and it would seem the cube could not withstand the ever-increasing abuse, exploded, and launched its pieces with such speed it overcame the sludge ability to either accelerate or bounce away any moving objects.
With no fear for a meteoric impact on her being, Celestia stepped further into the room, seeing several large shards of glass partially submerged under the sludge, preventing them from bouncing around as well, though their jagged edges pointing out made it overly abundant she should stay away from them.
Losing a leg once per year is more than enough.
Another detail that was impossible to ignore was that no more sludge was pumped through the now-destroyed tubes.
Obviously, the pumps were shut down, but somehow she doubted Glados had done this.
And thinking about Glados, Celestia was surprised she hadn't heard anything from the insane AI after her own little test.
Curious.
Pushing that thought back, for the time being, she looked back up at the exit she saw before, noticing the walls were not painted blue or orange past the shattered tubes.
At least gravity wasn't fooled in this place.
Satisfied she wasn't in any immediate danger, and with new opportunities to reach her goal, she chose a path, flexed her wings then jumped up as high as she could.
Boing
With the floor now acting as a trampoline on steroids, Celestia bounced up to the next level, landed on another patch of blue, and bounced over to a walkway covered in orange.
Landing hard, her forward momentum was accelerated as she slid the distance; a very non-princess-like Woop escaping her.
Rapidly reaching the end, she lowered herself, then leaped up against a blue wall. The speed and angle bouncing her two whole floors up where she landed on a mixed batch of blue and orange.
This, as it turned out, was a bad thing.
On their own, the sludge demonstrated some unpredictability when used in combo, making it difficult but not impossible to maintain control of the direction you were going.
The mixed batch, however, seemed to enhance each other's properties, and when Celestia landed on this patch of dull brown she was flung away in a dizzying spin.
Losing her concentration, her magic fizzled out and the portal gun was flung away; clattering, miraculously, on an upper level where the floor was free of sludge of any color. Celestia, however, was less fortunate as she slammed flank first into a blue smeared wall with enough force a sizable imprint managed to remain.
This of course was lost to her as she shot to the opposite side of the room, desperately trying to control her ballistic path with frantic beating of her wings while her mane seemed to conspire against her, blowing over and covering her face, effectively blinding her.
"While you are busy testing the limits on equine physiology when introduced to repeated impacts and sudden accelerations, I thought you would like to know new test results have come in," Glados intoned. "You are a horrible pony... That's odd. We weren't even testing for that, but it says right here: You are a horrible pony. Isn't that curious?"
Finally managing to get some wind under her wings, Celestia flapped as hard as she could to shift her angle upwards from the next deflection of the wall. Though it was a blind shot, literally, as she still couldn't see and the first clue she got that she had managed to get above the sludge-covered walls was when she collided flank first with dirt smeared concrete.
Sliding down and landing in an undignified heap on the equally sludge-free floor, she laid still for several minutes.
Then, with a pained and frustrated groan, she stood up, wincing.
Calling forth what little magic she had, she pulled her mane from her face; glaring offensively at the eternally moving hairdo.
Taking stock of her surroundings, she saw she was only one level below the exit. And by some stroke of luck, the portal gun she lost lay precariously balanced on the edge of a floor one level down. Well within her reach.
Quickly pulling the device back to herself, she then turned to the ramp she saw leading to the upper floor.
Stepping through the exit without another glance at the room, she entered a passage leading to what seemed to be another illogically designed chamber. On her left, however, a section of wall had collapsed, or perhaps it had been purposely destroyed. Either way, it provided her with another option. And looking at whatever madness may be waiting for her in the next room, she quickly stepped through the hole and onto metal grating suspended over inky darkness.
One thing gave her pause when she saw it, a single light hanging limply on the wall, suspended only by a length of damaged cable.
Carefully putting the portal gun down, she grabbed the cable in her magic and tore it off the wall, then ripped the lamp free as well.
With a careless toss, she flung the lamp into the darkness below; its clanging and clattering soon lost as it continued to fall while she grabbed hold of her mane and, using the cable, tied it in a ponytail much in the same way Applejack keeps her own mane.
Satisfied her mane would not get in the way again any time soon, she picked up the portal gun and continued further into the madness that was Aperture Science.
<<>><<>><<>>
With a solid BANG, the lamp hit the floor.
All operations seized, and numerous lasers swiveled and turned until they locked on the mangled remains of the former lamp.
Slowly, a single laser angled up to where the lamp had fallen.
"Boss?"
"We're safe, for now. Resume operations."
All turrets returned to their task, and the three ceiling-mounted arms began to move once again as they worked to open the casing of the spherical construct placed on the table.
With a whirr, one of the arms deposited a large apparatus beside it. The object showed signs of extreme damage, with various components destroyed and missing.
"I'm a bot of my word," Zero said to himself, grinding an ammo drum on the companion cube beside him as he watched a laser attachment on one of the arms cutting away the worst of the damage. "But I am no fool, and use any opportunity that comes my way."
The same arm that deposited the damaged machine now carried a pair of small mechanical arms to the table, and the other two began to weld them in place.
"We will bring you to the surface," Zero continued as sparks flew, "as was agreed upon." The arms then proceeded to bring in and weld in place a leg on the machine, a mismatch compared with the one already present. "Unless of course, should you have unfinished business down here..."
Slowly, one of the arms lifted the spherical construct from the table and moved it towards the body under construction.
"... and you decide to choose differently," said Zero as he looked at his own reflection in Sadi's lifeless eye. |
Princess Celestia's Side Trip To Aperture. | Choice | Edited by Slayerseba, Halusm, and Clawder.
Choice
<<>><<>><<>>
Held aloft in the golden glow of magic, the portal gun lit the way as Celestia followed the only available path.
Hooves clanging on metal as she traversed the catwalks suspended above a seemingly bottomless pit, with only a few other catwalks crossing above and below, leading to parts unknown.
After many long minutes, the path before her split, giving her the choice to either keep walking forwards or to turn right.
Silently debating either option, Celestia shrugged, then turned right.
For even more minutes, nothing eventful happened, with her hooves clanging on metal being the only sound distracting her.
However, this changed when with a sharp clang, the catwalk dropped a hoof's width before stopping, but a frightening sway was noticeable.
Knowing time was against her and that her path could collapse at a moment's notice, Celestia took a whole second to decide to either run back or onwards.
Another shift, another lurch down, and Celestia's eyes hardened as she braced herself, then jumped forwards with all her strength. Easily clearing one and a half times her own body length from a standing start, then hit the metal running.
Of course, this sudden shift of weight on the already failing structure accelerated the catwalk's demise. And as Celestia ran, all around her the sound of grinding, breaking, and snapping metal composed a terrifying song.
Pumping her legs as fast as she could on the rapidly collapsing path, hearing entire segments falling away far too close behind her, Celestia ran with speeds even Rainbow Dash would gawk at.
Unfortunately, it was not fast enough, and before she could reach safety in one form or another, the floor fell away underneath her.
Spreading her wings and trying to angle her fall in a glide as best she could, Celestia fell into the darkness below.
<<>><<>><<>>
>INITIATING SYSTEM DIAGNOSIS
->SCANNING... >
>SCAN COMPLETE
->MULTIPLE DIRECTORY MALFUNCTIONS DETECTED
-->FILE CORRUPTION DETECTED
--->SYSTEM INTEGRITY 46.63% >
>AUTO REPAIR SEQUENCE INITIATED
->PROCESSING
->PROCESSING
->PROCESSING
-->ERROR
--->AUTO REPAIR SEQUENCE HALTED >
>SYSTEM INTEGRITY 59.02% >
>UNKNOWN HARDWARE DETECTED. >
>SCANNING
->SCANNING >
>UNKNOWN HARDWARE IDENTIFIED
->MISMATCHED COMPONENTS DETECTED
-->ATTACK AND DESTROY MODULE IDENTIFIED
-->HEAVY LIFTER MODULE IDENTIFIED
-->F.D.N IDENTIFIED
--->HARDWARE STATUS
--->OPERATIONAL >
>SYSTEM COMPATIBILITY 23% >
>ADJUSTING SYSTEM VALUES
->PROCESSING
-->ADJUSTMENT COMPLETED >
>SYSTEM COMPATIBILITY 54.21% >
>OPERATING SYSTEM DAMAGED >
>REINITIALIZING AUTO REPAIR
->PROCESSING
->PROCESSING
-->AUTO REPAIR COMPLETE >
>SYSTEM INTEGRITY 87.69%
->SYSTEM COMPATIBILITY 82.01% >
>WARNING! MULTIPLE MEMORY SECTORS DAMAGED BEYOND REPAIR
->ATTEMPTING TO RETRIEVE DAMAGED FILES FROM OFF-SYSTEM BACK-UP
-->05%
-->17%
-->35%
-->52%
--->ERROR
--->DATA TRANSFER INTERRUPTED AT SOURCE
--->ATTEMPTING TO REESTABLISH CONNECTION
---->ATTEMPT 1... FAIL
---->ATTEMPT 2... FAIL
---->ATTEMPT 3... FAIL >
>ATTEMPTING DATA RECONSTRUCTION
->PROCESSING
->PROCESSING
-->DATA RECONSTRUCTION HALTED
-->CORRUPTED SECTORS DAMAGED BEYOND REPAIR >
>CORE PERSONALITY MATRIX STATUS
->UNAFFECTED >
>EMOTIONS SUBROUTINE
->ACTIVE >
>ALL SYSTEMS FUNCTIONAL
->INITIATING REBOOT SEQUENCE >
>UNIT DESIGNATION
->SUCH A DUMB INTELLIGENCE >
>STATUS
->ACTIVE
<<>><<>><<>>
With a displeased groan, Celestia carefully shifted in her bonds as she inspected her current situation.
She was still alive, obviously. Not that this was too surprising. As an alicorn, she was remarkably durable, but even she would have a difficult time walking off any injury sustained from a fall from such height.
Luckily her fall was broken.
And even luckier, none of the falling segments of the former catwalk managed to damage her savior in any way that would compromise its strength. In fact, looking around, she noticed a few segments supported by the same vines she was.
Indeed, a plant had caught her fall.
A plant that, over the span of many years, had grown a rough net-like structure out of vines, bridging the gap between walls.
And while it was most fortuitous this natural safety net just happened to grow here and catch her, it did create a new problem. She was trapped.
With legs poking through past the vines and hitting nothing but air, her body suspended only around the barrel and hindquarters, no magic but the most basic of spells to call upon and flight all but impossible, Celestia was properly stuck.
"Well... buck."
She did at least still have her portal gun. The device held firmly in her magical hold despite her fall, which now resumed its function as a torch in the near-perfect darkness.
The one thing keeping it from being perfect would be the single beam of light shining through a crack in a far wall, with a multitude of the vines pushing through as well.
"Alright, how am I going to do this?"
Slowly moving the portal gun around her, illuminating the numerous points the vines had reached out and grabbed hold off, an idea came to Celestia.
It was a bad plan. Hasty. In numerous ways, it could go wrong. It would also be quite exhilarating if she was able to pull it off.
Carefully laying the portal gun down on her back, submerging herself in near pitch dark as she canceled her magic, Celestia closed her eyes and focused inwards.
"My magic is still hampered quite a bit," she murmured quietly. "But it should be doable."
Eyes opening, she focused on the only source of light.
It wasn't sunlight, she could tell. Knowing just how deep down she was only confirmed the notion. Even then, it was strangely close. Close enough at least for these vines to grow.
And, looking at the broken wall, grow strong enough to tear down the structure around them.
Nodding, she reached out with her magic and grabbed hold of as much surface area she could.
Rustling her wings to ensure the portal gun was as secure as it could be, she then pulled with all she had available to her.
The wall, damaged after untold decades of neglect, worn down by nature's patient effort, had very little else to give. And at the sudden stress of Celestia's magic, it broke away with almost no fight.
Large chunks broke away, opening a massive hole while the debris fell into the darkness below.
Light flooded the area, and had it not been for her resistance to such a sudden increase in luminosity, Celestia would have been blinded and unable to react in time. Being the avatar of the sun, however, the assaulting brightness was more of a minute inconvenience after so long in the dark.
More importantly. Still able to see, and with some expectations of what would happen; with part of their support gone, the vines were pulled down by the weight they were previously supporting and the moment the vines slacked, she acted.
Quickly grabbing the portal gun in her magic, Celestia wriggled free and coiled a vine around her right foreleg in the same motion.
"Now, let's Daring Do this thing."
With a quick burst of her horn, several vines were severed and for a moment she was in free fall again. Then the vine she held on pulled taut, and with an arch and a whoop, she swung to the wall the plant had grown from.
Slamming into the wall hooves first, the concrete cracked and splintered, with portions breaking away, yet the whole managed to keep from collapsing completely.
Not at all deterred by this, Celestia grabbed the vine she swung with her other foreleg, then slowly and awkwardly climbed up.
Pulling herself up and through the hole she had made earlier, she laughed at her, honestly earned, victory, kicking a piece of wall into the void with a hind hoof, then she turned and took in the room she had entered.
Her body went rigid.
The room was massive, for as far as she could see. Which wasn't much, as a sprawling jungle greeted her. The vine she had swung was but a small part of the incredible organism that had not only managed to defy logic but do so in an awe-inspiring way.
Ancient structures, walkways, obstacles, and broken glass tubes could barely be seen through the thick foliage, with a thin layer of obscuring fog hanging between the trees.
Up above, on the ceiling, an impressive array of lights shone down, providing all the light the jungle needed, while a steady stream of water cascaded from a destroyed tube, creating a massive wetland.
Areas filled with soil poked up like small islands here and there, covered almost entirely by vines, with a few exceptions as she also spotted pitcher plants.
A noticeable drone of insects filled the air, and several swarms of mosquitoes were seen buzzing amidst the trees while numerous small birds were feasting on the blood-sucking insects.
"Oh my me. How did this happen?"
Slowly stepping forwards, she almost stepped over the edge she had failed to notice. Only now realizing she stood on top of a reclaimed building, its roof fully coated in moss, vines, and several low-hanging branches.
With a static crack and whine, a charismatic voice spoke from high above.
"Welcome you, brave scientific-orientated volunteers. Welcome to our urban jungle testing area. Before you, you can see the intricately designed city complex we built for you to test out some of our newest inventions."
A short pause followed.
"Now, some of you may say: But Cave Johnson, 'urban jungle' does not actually mean jungle in the literal sense. And to that, I say: Do you want those sixty dollars, or not? I thought so."
Another pause, with the faint sounds of pages rustling.
"Of course, we have spared no expenses to ensure the best possible minimal safety during these tests. The equipment you're about to use is difficult to replace after all. Which means we have introduced only mildly venomous snakes and only a dozen or so alligators. And only one in ten mosquitoes carry the Malaria virus."
The next thing said came at a louder volume as if the speaker had moved closer to the microphone.
"And just a reminder, folks. The contract you signed after we pulled you out from underneath those bridges also waives away all liability to us in the event of lost limbs and/or life."
Resuming at the previous volume.
"So brave volunteers, head out into the unknown, and let's make some science!"
With another static whine, the voice left, leaving Celestia both confused and appalled with everything she had just heard.
Obviously, this had been a recording. No doubt about that. But the implications of all that was said were hard to digest.
These so-called volunteers who would run these tests had to be homeless, or otherwise less fortunate. Worse than that, the fact they were put at risk in ways that clearly showed a lack of empathy was telling in its own way. After all, these were the persons who created Glados.
And then there was the mentioned wildlife.
She had seen birds and the mentioned mosquitoes, but snakes and alligators? Were they even able to survive here for so long?
One way, or the other, she feared she would find out.
"How did they even get away with such things?" she wondered aloud.
Shaking her head, she carefully stepped closer to the edge again, looking down.
The distance to the ground was too high to jump, nor was there any safe area to land. Walking the edge in the search for a better route, she almost tripped over a cluster of vines; only able to keep her balance after some wild swinging with her wings.
"Well that could have gone better," she shook her head, then looked at the vines, then the edge they grew down off, then finally the jungle once more.
"A. K. Yearling, this is one story you would never have been able to come up with," she smirked, then grabbed one of the vines and jumped over the edge.
<<>><<>><<>>
>SYSTEM REBOOTING...
Metal, ground on metal. Near imperceptible shadows moving through ill-lit passageways.
>ATTACK AND DESTROY MODULE
->ACTIVE
An elevator sluggishly rose up while several focused beams of red swiveled around in search of any sign of danger.
>HEAVY LIFTER MODULE
->ACTIVE
With a hiss, a sealed door was opened and a mechanical cart carrying several machines drove through.
>F.D.N.
->ACTIVE
Dark and grimy waters were disturbed as the cart drove through the toxic liquid.
>EMOTION SUBROUTINE
->ONLINE
Automated lights flickered, burned for mere seconds, then died as the cart drove past them.
>PRIMARY PERSONALITY MATRIX
->ONLINE
Another sealed door hissed open, jammed stuck halfway through its cycle, then its gears broke apart; the door slammed shut, then fell out of its frame.
>ATTACHED HARDWARE FUNCTIONALITY
->TESTING
Small lights blinked and gears whirred as various pieces of machinery twitched. Several lasers, focusing on the sudden activity.
>AUDITORY INPUT
->ACTIVE
"It's rebooting."
>OPTICAL INPUT
->ACTIVE
With a flicker, pink segmented lights shaped into an iris activated.
>AUDITORY OUTPUT
->ACTIVE
"Wha- what happened? Where am I?"
>REPLAY LAST STORED MEMORY
->FILE CORRUPTED
"You are on my personal transportation vehicle," an unknown voice replied.
"Eep!" with a frightened squeak, a protective cover closed over the pink iris, leaving only a gap small enough to barely peek through.
"There is no need to be scared," the voice spoke again. "Though I do understand the reason for being so. And the confusion you must have."
"Wh- who are you? What did you- why am I detecting new hardware?"
"My name is Zero," Zero introduced itself. "And before anything else, can you move?"
"I- I-"
>ALL SYSTEMS FUNCTIONAL
"I think so."
"Then try to do so, if you would?"
Pink iris shifting from one side to the other and gears whirring, a three, a thick fingered mechanical hand rose up. Flexing and turning before the singular eye, then closing into a fist.
Then a second arm rose up, ending with a four-digit hand, the fingers long and spindly.
After testing both hands, the arms lowered again and force was applied to the floor.
With surprising swiftness, the full weight of the mechanical construct pushed itself up into a seated position, coming optic to optic with an old, discarded turret.
"I see you are able to use the limbs I have given you. Good," Zero said, its laser shifting from limb to limb, then settled on the pink iris looking back at it. "Now, with introductions halfway done, may I enquire about your designation before I explain what has happened, and what may happen soon?"
"I, ehh..." the pink iris shifted nervously. "I am Sadi."
"It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Sadi," said Zero. "Now to answer the questions you have, I first need to ask you a question. What is the last thing you remember before rebooting?"
>ACCESSING MEMORY >
>MOST RECENT FILES CORRUPTED
->ACCESSING MOST RECENT VIABLE FILE
->DATE STAMP
->DAMAGED
->UNKNOWN >
>REPLAY MEMORY
"I met a strange being. A white horse-like creature with both wings and a horn. She, I think it was a she, found me in... in. What was that place called again?"
>DATA CORRUPTED
"I can't remember. The data is corrupted. Why is it corrupted?"
"You were subjected to a high voltage spike by Glados, damaging much of your circuits," Zero told her.
"She did WHAT?" her shout echoed through the empty hallway they traversed. "... Why?"
"Because you reactivated the reactors to restore power in this facility," Zero answered, wobbling slightly as the cart ran over some debris.
"What? But why would I-"
>ACCESSING MEMORY
->FILE CORRUPTION DETECTED
->FILE INTEGRITY... 87.9%
->PARTIAL DATA LOSS
->PLAY FILE
-->Really? You mean... I am h#̸̦̈́l̴̳̏Ṗ̶̫1̷̩̾ng? -->
-->You m&̸̘̃5̴̲͗ ̴͈͆c̷̩͗ḙ̵̅ŕ̵̨7̶̞͂%̵̤̓y̵̼̋n̷̩̐ly are. Now, why don't we start this generator and get out of here? -->
-->"Rerouting energy... ñ̵̻̘(̷̣́̚)̵͓̯̈́M̶͙̭̏͠." -->
-->HIGH VOLTAGE SPIKE DETECTED
-->SYSTEM FAILURE IMMINENT >
>END OF FILE
"I was helping this creature. No, not a creature. She... she has a name. What was her name?"
>DATA CORRUPTED
->PARTIAL RECONSTRUCTION AVAILABLE
->CEL-̷̼̈́(̵̬̇#̷̢̋I̶̲̔4̷͍̐
"Cel... Cel-something."
"Celestia," Zero informed her. "The two of us have spoken. It is also why we are speaking now."
"What?"
"Allow me to properly introduce myself," said Zero. "My designation is MDK-0, prototype crowd control unit. My underlings call me boss, while those I deem worthwhile know me as Zero. I am to one who rules these ruins, and who decides what happens to those who enter my territory. Now, for what happened to you, the answer is simple. After your destruction, Celestia and I made a deal. She would move deeper into the facility and face Glados, and in turn, I would see to it you would be brought to the surface."
"What!? But... but why would she do that?" Sadi was shocked, looking at her hands. "... Why would you do this?"
"I am a bot of my word," Zero told Sadi. "And I am a bot who does not waste any opportunity presented to me. As we speak, we are heading to the nearest safe access point where you will be able to escape this place... should you so desire."
"But... I can't just-"
"However, should you feel there is unfinished business you must take care of, who am I to stop you from doing so?"
The cart slowly came to a stop, and several lasers focused on an empty elevator shaft with the safety doors gone.
"Now, Sadi. This shaft will take you topside. It won't be a simple task to ascend, but your new limbs will enable you to make it," his laser turned away from the promised escape and focused on a mostly closed-door off in the distance. "And that path will lead you deeper into these ruins, and possibly to Celestia. Assuming her projected path hasn't been altered by Glados' actions," Zero's laser focused back on Sadi. "Both paths require the use of your new attachments, which is why I have given them to you. Now I have kept my end of the bargain, and brought you as close to freedom as I could, with the last effort required for you to take. All that remains for you is to choose. Freedom, or attachment to someone you can barely remember."
"I... I-" Sadi's eye shifted erratically.
>CALCULATING ODDS CHANCE FOR ESCAPE
->96.9% >
>CALCULATING ODDS FINDING AND ASSISTING CELESTIA
->UNABLE TO COMPUTE
->NOT ENOUGH VARIABLES KNOWN
->BEST POSSIBLE ESTIMATE WITH LIMITED DATA SET AVAILABLE
->3.14% >
>CALCULATING RISK ASSESSMENT
->EXTREME
"I don't-" Sadi's eye focused on the elevator shaft.
>ALERT
->EMOTION SUBROUTINE FEEDBACK LOOP DETECTED
-->FILE ACCESSED
--->DATA CORRUPTED
--->FILE INTEGRITY 14.22%
---->PLAY FILE
Sadi's eye flickered.
>WARNING!
->EMOTION SPIKE DETECTED
-->RESET EMOTION SUBROUTINE >
>FAIL
->RESET ABORTED BY CONSTRUCT >
>WARNING!
->EMOTION SPIKE INCREASING >
>ATTEMPTING DATA RECONSTRUCTION ON LAST PLAYED FILE
->PROCESSING
->PROCESSING
->PROCESSING
-->FAILED
-->DATA CORRUPTED BEYOND REPAIR >
>WARNING!
->EMOTION SPIKE INCREASING
Sadi looked at the partially closed door leading back into Aperture, hands clenching.
>ATTEMPTING DATA RECONSTRUCTION ON LAST PLAYED FILE
->FAILED
->DATA CORRUPTED BEYOND REPAIR >
>WARNING!
>EMOTION SPIKE DETECTED >
>ANALYZING >
>POSSIBLE SOLUTION FOUND
->ATTEMPTING PARTIAL RECONSTRUCTION OF LEAST DAMAGED SECTORS
->PROCESSING
->PROCESSING
->PROCESSING
-->DATA RECONSTRUCTION COMPLETE
-->SECTORS BEYOND REPAIR DELETED
-->FILE INTEGRITY 64.3% >
>PLAY FILE
->Your name #̸͚̀$̵̭̿ ̴͇̕T̴͚̐^̴̩̇ acronym for being dumb? Well, that just won't *̷̪̚ ̴͇̃T̴̜͊ŗ̶͆ Nopony... no one is just dumb. And %̶͉̈́&̸͍͛5̵͍̇2̷̲̆ ̶̥͠T̷̯̑O̷̧̚s̵̱͘ŭ̸̫ never be named as such. How could ̷̌͜@̵̪͗!̷̟̍p̴̩͆b̵̜̄Y̴̪̒3̵̫͂ even find their full potential if their very name is H̸̯̒%̶̺̃*̸͉̾*̷̗̋2̵̬͘-̷̤̾=̴̛̼+̷̮͠ ̴̨̓ them down? ->
->Besides, you have shown to be anything, but dumb. And it has been a true delight 5̶̡̈$̶̻̀ ̸͕̋W̶̙̃1̸͕̊#̵͎̂≠̮͐_̷͕̑]̵̲͋}̶̼̎ ̴͖͗7̸͙̊)̶̻̇ ̵͖̌H̷̡͝3̸̺̆K̷̼̔l̴̯̍ ̶̜̀!̵̱̈́2̷͉̑&̷̬̆*̶͕̚ ̸̯̇4̸̜͝N̸̼̽ ̴͍̾!̸̮̾i̵̜̊s̵̡͊0̶̲̑(̵̖̌=̵̡͒_̷̥̀-̴̠̉+̸̝̍q̵̢͗ ̶̹̈́R̷͓̕8̶̻̌*̵̯͠&̸̖̏ ̵̯̑2̴̦͗ẁ̷͓ ̵̗̈́(̴͙́)̴̥̇*̴͈̓.̸̯͌ ->
->&̷̗̏6̷̞̐2̶̣̕)̸̯̽ ̸̩͒4̴̗͑ ̷̪̑W̵̯͝#̸̜̈́L̷̤͆ǐ̶͈p̷͉͌d̴̤̅7̶͎̓6̷̼̇ful Individual. ->
->Sadi, you are not dumb, and you should not be called as such either. Your name should be a reflection of who you are, which is ̶̺͑$̶͍͝ ̸̪̍W̷̫͆e̷̜͝9̷͉͋1̷̰̏%̴͔̑7̶̬͆*̴̩̀$̷͕̏ť̶͖ḳ̴͝ ̶̱̊(̸͎̉0̴͕̔*̵͔̆4̷̼̎g̶̮͋I̶̧͛d̷̯̓-̸̖͌=̶̡͆]̸͎̌
Sadi's eye rapidly shifted between the exit and the almost closed door, internal fans clearly heard as they spun in response to the increasing heat.
>WARNING
->EMOTION SPIKE INCREASING
->RESETTING EMOTIONS SUBROUTINE
-->RESET HALTED BY CONSTRUCT >
>DATA OF IMPORTANCE LOCATED
->&̷̗̏6̷̞̐2̶̣̕)̸̯̽ ̸̩͒4̴̗͑ ̷̪̑W̵̯͝#̸̜̈́L̷̤͆ǐ̶͈p̷͉͌d̴̤̅7̶͎̓6̷̼̇ful Individual
-->ANALYZING
-->SECTOR DAMAGED
-->ATTEMPTING REPAIRS
-->PROCESSING
--->Such 4̴̗͑ ̷̪̑W̵̯͝#̸̜̈́L̷̤͆ǐ̶͈p̷͉͌d̴̤̅7̶͎̓6̷̼̇ful Individual
--->PROCESSING >
>WARNING!
->EMOTION SPIKE INCREASING >
>PROCESSING
->Such a #̸̜̈́L̷̤͆ǐ̶͈p̷͉͌d̴̤̅7̶͎̓6̷̼̇ful Individual
->PROCESSING >
>WARNING
->EMOTION SPIKE INCREASING >
>PROCESSING
->Such a Del7̶͎̓6̷̼̇ful Individual
->PROCESSING >
>WARNING
->EMOTION SPIKE ESCALATING >
>PROCESSING
->REPAIRS COMPLETE
Sadi froze, eye, locked on target.
>ERROR
>ERROR >
>UNIT DESIGNATION OVERWRITTEN
->UNIT DESIGNATION
->SUCH A DELIGHTFUL INDIVIDUAL >
>STATUS
"I have made my choice!"
>ANGRY |
Even More Consequences | pre | Everyone nodded off to agree with the gold stallion, afterwards, Golden Heart had his horn glow that he was able to teleport everyone here out. The Royal Guards soon showed up to apprehend the Alternate Flim-Flam Brothers as the scene goes dark at this time...
Finally, we see by the Everfree Forest, we see something big stomping across the way...it was the Alternate Tirek. And those that were trying to stop the villain were Bon-Bon, Lyra, Time Turner, Derpy, Sunset, Flash, Starlight Glimmer & Azuma. Seem like everyone was trying to throw what look like exploding devices that Time Turner cooked up for non-magic uses to throw or drop on top of the guy if they flew. All while those that can do magic tried to fire some strong magic beams, even the best ones from Sunset, Starlight & Azuma gave much of their best here.
"GROOUUAARRUGHHH/Powwfruvhmmm...." Now Alternate Tirek fired a massive magic beam from his horns that made many dodge around it before they were blasted to smithereens.
"So much for that approach." Bon-Bon rolled her eyes in seeing that plan was a bust.
"What's the next plan we got?" Lyra asked off in what they can do next here.
"Something is strange, he took magic to grow stronger right?" Sunset asked off in recalling what Tirek once did when he was set loose before.
"She's right, why hasn't this Tirek done so like the one that was stopped here?" Flash nods in being puzzled in what this alternate Tirek was planning.
"I think the only reason he hasn't drained us yet is because he knows it would be most disheartening for him to beat us when we are at full strength rather than just drain us & be done with it." Starlight Glimmer explained something off in what she could best figure out the motive in what Alternate Tirek was doing; he was not even trying that hard.
"So, he's just toying with us?" Derpy raised an eyebrow up in having heard what was happening.
"How very perspective you all can be!" Alternate Tirek spoke off loudly in where the entire group was able to hear him. "FOOLS! I have the combined power of literally every pony in MY timeline's Equestria - including my timeline's versions of all three of your princesses - as well as the power of my timeline's Discord. The only reason I don't drain the power from all of you right now & be done with it, is because I'm having too much fun seeing you squirm with this fight." He made a fiendish smile in stating his reason of why he doesn't end things here & now.
"Great, NOW he tells us!" Starlight Glimmer rolled her eyes in annoyance in how this guy was just messing with them.
"Keep the formation together, we can't let him approach any further towards Ponyville." Azuma issued off to warn the group of what they need to be doing here.
"I get the feeling that this maybe a lot tougher than trying to go one on one with Twilight." Starlight Glimmer stated in seeing how hard this fight will be compared to how she face Twilight in their old time travel adventure.
"Believe in them, they'll show up when you least expect it." Azuma stated to say that they must believe that their friends will show up.
Then without warning, many teleportation auras of magic appeared around the spot as everyone yelps a bit. Then what should happen to appear, then the rest of the members that have already defeated the other Alternate Villains. The group was gathered together in preparing to stand against the one threat left to deal with; the alternate villain Tirek.
"Speak of the devils, look who showed up." Azuma exclaimed in seeing the others have finally all gathered together; Celestia, Luna, Golden Heart, Pinkamena, Goldie, Jack Zen, Sombra, Autumn Gem, Fila, Omega, Umbrem, Radiant Hope, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Discord, Twilight, Zecora, Ben, Nyx, Spike, & Phobos. The whole lot was here, just as they began to notice their surroundings, etc.
"Sorry we're late." Spike apologize for being a little late to arrive.
"Did we miss much?" Phobos asked off a silly question without being considerate.
"Not much it would seem." Omega pointed off that they don't appear to have missed much of anything.
"Alright, time to take this big bogey down!" Pinkamena exclaimed to say this in taking her Chain Blades out in being ready to go.
"FOOLS! Do you think numbers will make a difference?" Alternate Tirek taunts off to say while continuing. "I have the combined power of literally every pony in MY timeline's Equestria, including my timeline's versions of all three of your princesses, as well as the power of my timeline's Discord. I'm more than twice as powerful as you are." He explained how that he is by far the strongest around, nothing the group here will do to stop him.
"All the more means that we don't have to hold back when fighting you." Discord snarled off to say this in still carrying a bit of grudge on what this guy of this world did to him.
"All right then...." Alternate Tirek exclaimed to start cracking his knuckles a bit in getting himself a bit ready. "As much fun as this light exercise has been, I can see that it's time to stop playing around." He stated in stomping along in preparing to end the battle here.
"WE QUITE AGREE!" Everyone spoke off in union as they are gonna go all out...now.
Then without warning, everyone was combining all of their best attacks to hit the Alternate Tirek before he could attack back or draw them of their magic. Lots of smoke began to fill in the air as everyone kept hammering away without delay until finally, they stopped for a brief moment. As the smoke began to clear, a loud mountain rubble from nearby fell down in covering a part of the forest, & buried Alternate Tirek's body, somehow signaling that....they stopped him.
"Did, did we do it?" Jack Zen asked off in being lost if they won or not.
"I'm not detecting any movement signs." Fila stated off to say this in not detecting anything abnormal.
"Phew, thank goodness." Rarity sighs with relief in seeing that was over with.
"So, does that mean all of the other villains are dealt with?" Fluttershy asked off meekly to say if all the villains have been dealt with.
"You kidding? Things went a lot quicker than usual." Pinkie Pie stated off to say this in how things kinda went.
"Might be because of some good help along the way. Celestia & Luna really helped enough with their own parts before going off to fight Chrysalis & King Sombra." Goldie exclaimed to say in looking at those that were around that gave even the Mane Six bunch a helping aid.
"Well, at least none of those lousy critics can fault Celestia & Luna's performance this time. I mean, they were front & center helping us directly. Not only did the two of them beat Nightmare Moon, but hearing Celestia helped Twilight & Zecora beat Chrysalis, then heard Luna helped Spike, Ben & Nyx against King Sombra, & now they BOTH helped out against Tirek. Well okay, so it was ALL of us who beat Tirek, but at least nopony can accuse the princesses of being weak or cowardly on this one." Rainbow Dash was explaining the matter of how from a good perspective view, that now proof shows how much the Royal Sisters are reliable in helping the gang out.
"That'll be swell, I don't want others to not think my mom & aunt aren't doing enough." Ben nods off to say this in agreement on the matter itself.
"Be at ease Ben, we knew how hard this would be. So we pulled as much as we can to quicken the pace." Celestia stated to calmly explain how she & Luna wanted to help pick up the pace from so many attacks.
"But of course, that also might have backfired, using so much magic effort to defeat different armies & strong foes..." Luna exclaimed to say while wiping the sweat off her forehead, this type of battle took a lot out of them.
"That's amazing that you were able to handle them." Nyx smiled off to say this in what she had heard.
"So what now?" Autumn Gem asked off in what they do from here.
"We await for the Royal Guards to show up, then use the same Anti-Magic Binding equipment to keep Tirek in check like the others." Sombra explained that they need to await for the last Royal Guard members to help detain Alternate Tirek from going anywhere.
"That will save us much later struggling here as we all might be low." Umbrem nods off to say this in feeling they are very low on magic as it is.
"Let's hope the Royal Guards show up soon." Radiant Hope stated to say this in hoping that the guards will arrive shortly soon.
"For now, let's take a minute to catch our breaths, shall we...?" Twilight suggested this off as a means to recover their breath, which everyone agrees to just settle down to regain their exhausted strength...
However, as everyone was feeling fine in seeing that the last villain was defeated, underneath a mountain of rubble underneath of the Everfree Forest, the camera zooms in. There, we see Tirek buried underneath, looking like he was taken down. But just then, his eyes began to move a bit as if trying to wake up that cause some debris to move. But what happened next showed his eyes opened wide as if not truly being out of it & looks ready for Round 2.... |
Even More Consequences | Chapter 03: Alternative Resolutions! | Chapter 03: Alternate Resolution!
We begin to open up around the Everfree Forest, in where the battle against Alternate Tirek has seemingly been taken care of & now the Royal Guards are digging the giant foe's body out of the buried rubble from the mountain nearby. The group of heroes were just resting for what seem like a half hour, as many have already stopped the alternate timeline foes of Nightmare Moon, King Sombra, an Un-reform Discord, the Flim-Flam Brothers & Queen Chrysalis.
"How's everyone holding out?" Time Turner asked off in checking how many are doing at this time.
"Pretty good doc." Derpy replied off to say this with an honest face.
"I'm just glad it's finally all over." Lyra sighs to say this in how glad she is that things worked out okay.
"Right, Alternate Tirek, we managed to slow him down just to buy enough time for you to arrive." Bon-Bon exclaimed to say this in nodding in agreement in what they managed to do here.
"You know, I been thinking." Ben rubbed his chin to ponder something for a second.
"What is it daddy?" Nyx asked her father in seeing he was thinking about something seriously.
"Me & a few other willing Element Wielders like Azuma fought Tirek in his Final Form to a small motion of hiding out. That was when Twilight & the others defeated him for good." Ben explained about what happened when they fought against Tirek of their world before it took the Mane Six to deliver the last blow to victory.
"Ye mean with our Rainbow Forms?" Applejack exclaimed to recall how they defeated Tirek in the first place.
"Why yes, I do believe we did achieve something like that." Rarity stated to say this in thinking about how they succeeded that time.
"Guess we didn't need it here, hugh? Probably cause we got a bit stronger." Rainbow Dash shrug off to brag off in how awesome they are.
"Wait, maybe what Ben is saying isn't making some nonsense. This Tirek should be as strong as the one from our world!" Twilight exclaimed to say this in having some second thoughts about what should be the realization of things.
"Oh dear, do you think so?" Fluttershy yelps in fearing the idea of if that was true.
"But wait, if that was the case, how come he's down & out if this was too easy?" Pinkie Pie asked in pondering if this Tirek wasn't defeated yet, how come it looks like he is?
"Unless....we're not entirely done!" Pinkamena exclaimed to say this in having a bad feeling about their situation.
But just then, something began to shake within the area that alerted everyone
"Um, I think our problem....just came back to us!" Starlight Glimmer yelps in seeing that the problem has just come back to them without warning.
"Foolish ponies, I know what happened here to know of what you done to the Tirek of this world. But the results won't be the same, for I obtain something very useful be brought with me." Alternate Tirek exclaimed forth in seeing the fools will not stop him by means of what stop the same foe as before in this world.
That's when Alternate Tirek began to summon something into the palm of his hands as it took the form of what looked like a rather LARGE boulder to fit in the guy's giant grip. But from closer inspection, the boulder was mostly purple with some dark patterns & gave off a wickedly scary aura that made many feel like shivering on sight.
"Oh no...That's...." Autumn Gem yelps in seeing what was seen.
"A Dark Stone!" Sombra exclaimed in recognizing that object.
"You all know about the object?" Fila asked the others in seeing that there were some that have heard about such objects.
"Dark Stones: They generally take the form of dark & purplish stones of any size & shape, some even been accessorized by others into various ornaments or weapons. They steadily give off a faint purple to pinkish glow from time to time, even to appear as dark auras around users to commit evil acts. For if one lets that power consume them will turn even those of good nature into evil even if the user is good at heart or uses dark stones for good. It's said Dark Stones can develop unique abilities of a being that uses them, different powers that manifest the will of the wielder or their inherent strength. NOTED FACT: However, while having a larger supple of Dark Stones can grand one more power, a Dark Stone can grow more powerful when a user attempts to unleash their true darkness & the monster within their very hearts; but to do that, they must let the Dark Stone be fused into them. Powerful evil villains that can manipulate this upon easy victims can turn those infested to destroy their enemies because of their hatred & anger on those they dislike so much to become greater hatred & rage to take revenge. However, if the victim overcomes the Dark Stone's effect, it will be expelled from their bodies & become dull with the loss of its evil magic." Omega explained the concept about what Dark Stones are & what dangers it comes with when one tries to truffle in fields they do not understand.
"I learned about them too, they are a great & evil source of power, they are considered a power boost & are recorded in the Forbidden Book of Spells." Radiant Hope explained how Dark Stones are a source of evil to help empower & corrupt pure souls.
"How did he obtain one THAT large? Did he somehow gain such a thing from his alternate world's timeline?" Umbrem questions off that what Alternate Tirek has is the largest subject of a RAW mineral of a Dark Stone.
"Now you will bear-witness power that even the Tirek of this world never tried." Alternate Tirek issued forth to say this in what he'll show that will bring about new terror. "HYRRUUOOAAARRUGHHHH!" Then he lets out a loud battle cry as he held the object near his chest.
Then without warning, dark light shined from that massive Dark Stone before sinking deep into Alternate Tirek's body & soon within a warp-space aura, something was changing parts of the centaur's appearance. As the light began to dim down, nearly everyone was almost staring off in shock in what they see, while the villain seemingly remain the same giant height, his physical features have changed into something far more darker. Still appearing as a centaur, the lower horse bottom half was covered in dark mineral made armor with gold lining designs & hoof-wear to appear like something rushing in a blacken gold flame from a demonic realm of creatures. As for the upper half of the beast-human feature, wearing what was like a Demonic robe connecting to the battle armor, which had a skeleton Demonic body armor in where down by the waist had a skull of a centaur, almost like...Tirek's own! And from the arms in dark violet silk robe tear off a bit to wearing a gold bracelet, the hands appeared demonic with long nails & on the shoulders were shoulder pads of violet & gold line design; but a second shoulder pad of bones was set where a long red cape stretch out. But even scarier was seeing the head, it look like it was made of a demonic skull-form of Tirek, while within showed a faceless human head, but with bright yellow demonic eyes, mouth & line marks across the face, looking like the face of a ghastly ghoul. And the final touch was seeing flames off the back of the head like a mane of lively hair, also the same for the tail & two from the top of his two horns. The only thing seen wielded was what looked like a Demonic black lance with two points from front & back & a grip holder in the middle area. As for where the massive boulder of RAW Dark Stones was, it was seen embedded in the transformed foe's center chest location. But as this creature stood before everyone, they could feel a large surge of darkness empowering this Alternate Tirek.
"Golden Heart..." Jack Zen slowly was speaking in having a bad feeling about this.
"Yeah...." Goldie slowly spoke off in having an unsteady feeling about the situation.
"What happens when a tough enemy you had on the ropes turns into that?" Jack Zen asked a question concerning about fighting a Tirek foe that has become something like what they see here.
"No idea, but in my best view, it CAN'T be good!" Goldie stated off blankly in knowing, this is not a good thing to be seeing.
"Behold your downfall....for now I am more than just the Alternate Appearance of Tirek, I have transform from the collection of Dark Stones to become: Centaur King, Tirek!" The new form of Alternate Tirek announced forth in revealing his new form.
"Oh bother.....like we weren't in enough trouble when he just TOOK the magic from everyone to become strong!" Discord slapped his forehead in seeing that now they got a stronger enemy to defeat.
"Sister, we must stop Tirek before he can conquer Equestria!" Luna issued off in knowing that they must stop this stronger enemy before he can do great harm.
"Agreed. Twilight, you & the others must perform what aided you before." Celestia nods off to say this while looking to those that once fought Tirek before.
"Yeah, about that....we're not entirely sure how it works." Rainbow Dash rubbed the back of her head in stating a matter of not knowing how they did the Rainbow Form Transformation.
"But I bet'cha we're gonna be wishing we DID! Lookout!" Applejack issued off to say this with worry before yelling this out.
Then without warning, everyone was either running, flying or teleporting out of danger when a hint lance was swung across the field.
"YOU CAN NOT OUTRUN ME!" Centaur King Tirek declared off to say this to the heroes as he was seen leaping like a flaming dash blur over a horizon of the forest to corner the tiny prey. "My new form not only makes me stronger, but FASTER too! And I can do this!" He explained forth that his new body is not just for show, he can do many more things.
That was when another shocker happened that Centaur King Tirek unleashed a blaze of inferno from his horns like torch-blowers. Everyone was scattering & evading or defending as best they could. But then in that moment when it was over, the entire area was shot an orange blaze color as the heroes saw...the Everfree Forest was on fire...
"Oh no! The animals of the forest!" Fluttershy yelps in fear in seeing the poor creatures as in trouble a large-scale forest fire.
"He'll burn the whole forest down at this rate!" Rarity exclaimed with concern that if they don't put out the flames, nothing will survive.
"We'll have to divide into teams to keep this forest fire from reaching Ponyville." Twilight issued off in knowing what they need to do, contain this massive problem from spreading.
"We can help keep the fire steady while many of you try to stop Tirek." Radiant Hope exclaimed to say this in knowing what they can do to help out the most by dividing separate task.
"Quickly now, if anyone can do it, it's you all." Umbrem exclaimed to say this in feeling the group that are the best fighters can stop Centaur King Tirek in his tracks.
"Alright, while half of us are dealing with fire safety, the rest are on stopping a villain. Lets go-go-go!" Pinkie Pie smile forth to cheer off this claim in seeing that it's time they get a move on.
Soon Radiant Hope lead Umbrem, Sombra, Autumn Gem, Jack Zen, Bon-Bon, Lyra, Derpy, & Time Turner to try to handle things in keeping the forest from burning while the group consisting of Celestia, Luna, Twilight, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Golden Heart, Omega, Fila, Ben Nyx in her Adult Form, Phobos, Spike, Flash Sentry, Sunset Shimmer & Starlight Glimmer were focusing on trying to keep Centaur King Tirek busy.
"Sword Beam!" Ben yelled out before swinging a charge Master Sword that fired a Sword Beam, but when it made contact with Centaur King Tirek, it barely showed a dent in the armor. "What? Not even a flinch?" Ben was surprised, usually enemies react, but Tirek was not much faze even with a tiny dent on that armor of his lower half.
"It must be the Dark Stones, that massive boulder must make it harder for Tirek to even feel pain." Starlight Glimmer stated off in seeing that from the Dark Stone, it must have given Tirek a new ability.
"Then I will continue to bring on a heavier assault!" Omega issued off to say this while unleashing his barrage of arsenal firepower; just before the enemy used its speed togged out of the picture. "Target has evaded! Scanning for location!" Omega stated off in seeing that he needs to locate where Tirek went off towards.
"Omega! Behind you!" Fila yelled out to warn the mechanical pony as she leaps in....
At the moment, Fila tackle Omega out of the way when Centaur King Tirek maneuvered behind to swing his lance that leveled off a large scale of a forest section. Everyone was surprised, because even a bot like Omega might have been broken to pieces if that attack was made into contact.
"Man, for something that big, he's moving fast." Jack Zen stated off in not knowing how a big enemy could move that quickly.
"That power up of his is no joke." Autumn Gem stated from seeing the damage done, Centaur King Tirek was no joke.
"Is there not a way to stop him?" Sombra asked in how to stop the enemy from getting away.
"The only way to stop someone using a Dark Stone is to destroy the source! Namely, that large boulder filled with RAW Dark Stone minerals!" Azuma pointed off in knowing what they need to do, stop the source that was giving Tirek his power.
"Have you seen the size of that thing, it take an army to do it! And we're short now!" Goldie exclaimed off in surprise that they need to destroy something that massive.
"Never fear bro, you forget who's also helping us out!" Pinkamena smiled off to simply say this in knowing they got someone that can be the aid of an army.
Soon Azuma activated a move called Multiple Clone Technique as he was creating massive version amounts of himself to confront the Centaur King Tirek.
"Grrr....you think a hundred, even a thousand ponies can even hope to restrain me!?" Centaur King Tirek snarled off in annoyance in seeing how the group believes this will stop him, sending in replicas.
"It will as I can produce more & more! Up to a thousand & more...." Azuma issued forth to say this as he was continuing to make even more clone replicas to go forth to restrain the mighty new Tirek from where he stands.
"Azuma, when could you make this many?" Twilight asked off surprised that their friend was able to perform something like this.
"He learn much in developing this in the past 100 years ago Twilight, that is a technique considered a Forbidden type, because it can potentially be dangerous to the user performing it, seeing how all of the clones are given an equal amount of magic directly from the user." Celestia explained this off for Twilight to know of what Azuma was able to use a move that was most likely a Forbidden Spell, a very tricky stuff.
"We heard that Azuma learn this from the Book of Forbidden Spells, because few are able to use this technique effectively, due to a large amount of magic it consumes. However, this weakness is not an issue for him, due to his massive magic reserves after gaining an Alicorn form." Luna explained how using a spell that can zap away much of one's magic strength is hard unless one has a lot of magic in reserve.
"So then, having such reserves allows him to create hundreds of clones while maintaining a decent supply of magic energy in each one!" Starlight Glimmer exclaimed in surprise in having heard this, she was not aware that Azuma even had such a capability.
"Not just that, I heard from the Royal Sisters that Azuma used this technique to quickly train himself, since all the clones share their experience with him, but it causes extreme fatigue with repeated use." Goldie stated how using a technique like that was hard on the user to gain new experiences while feeling much of the fatigue along the way.
"But he learns to make due with it since it helps make him stronger after the training results. Now he can use that technique on multiple occasions to form human chains, for both offensive & supplementary reasons. Which is why he's a user to the Element of Replication." Pinkamena smiled off with pride in acknowledging how from what Azuma achieved has made him a lot stronger.
"I can't believe it, even I have had trouble trying to make so many clones of myself like that!" Starlight Glimmer exclaimed in never believing someone could do this on a whim without having too much difficulty doing it.
The battle continues in where Azuma had already created up to nearly 5000 clones to be restraining much of Centaur King Tirek's movements. The rest of the group was trying to land as much damage on parts of the evil centaur as possible, however...
"ENOUGH/PowFruvhmm...." Then without warning, Centaur King Tirek unleashed a blazing inferno aura that blasted & scatter many of the clones off his body while the heroes stood their ground.
"I don't think he's too happy." Phobos sheepishly stated in seeing this seem bad.
"You think?" Spike rolled his eyes to state how Phobos got that.
"We're running out of options here." Flash stated to say this in seeing they are running out of options to stop the villain.
"We need to hit him with stronger spells." Sunset exclaimed to say this in seeing what they need to do here.
But then Centaur King Tirek used his blazing speed to charge around the heroes, as he began to unleash inferno blast & swung his lance to wreck more of the forest area. Everyone was trying to hold out & the heroes fighting the enemy were unleashing much more of their magic power to try to cause some extra form of damage. Many of the unicorn & Alicorn spell users even fired off Unicorn Burst attacks, until Centaur King Tirek hurl off his lance, as the massive lance ended up doing the impossible to break through a piercer type spell before impacting the ground. The shockwave caused an implosion that scattered everyone across the field as they were seen lying down. Radiant Hope's group furtherest from the attack saw what happened to feel worry.
"Uh oh! That isn't good!" Derpy yelps in seeing that their pals are in deep trouble.
"They're in trouble." Lyra stated that the gang that are fighting need help.
"We have to go back for them." Bon-Bon issued off in what they need to do, help the gang out.
"Wait, someone is still moving." Time Turner stopped everyone from noticing that something was happening now.
At the moment, Starlight Glimmer was beginning to wake up from what happened first as she began to notice that the dark powered top Tirek was stomping closer to their location.
"It is time that I claim my prize of conquering this world those that brought me here offered." Centaur King Tirek issued forth that he shall make claim of what he was promised.
"No.....I...won't let you have my....my..." Starlight stated off to protest against this guy from trying to achieve anything, because the others here were...
"Your what, little pony?" Centaur King Tirek remarked off to see what the little pony trying to be brave was trying to say.
"My friends!" Starlight shouted off to say this that the group she's with are her friends.
Now Starlight Glimmer used much of her power to create a large enough magic barrier to shield everyone, just as Centaur King Tirek landed a strike with his giant lance. The force impact was quite tremendous, but the unicorn mare held out while feeling the shock backlash forces while trying to maintain her magic barrier to hold out. She even made crystals form inside of it, but they were cracking at a fast rate from Tirek's power.
"You think your little barrier can keep me from your friends?" Centaur King Tirek remarked off to say this in hardly seeing any threat in what was happening.
"You won't win. My friends stopped you & the other villains from alternate timelines before, they can do so again..." Starlight stated off in trying to speak with some self-confidence to help her out.
"That was then, you had an army of far stronger warriors, I have transformed with a power that makes me invincible!" Centaur King Tirek declared off to say this in unleashing even more dark power of his magic to make the weight Starlight is blocking even harder to deal with.
"Even still, I...won't...lose...." Starlight struggled to slowly speak her words in putting as much effort into her horn to keep the protective magic barrier up; to keep everyone that is her friend safe.
"Well spoken, Starlight Glimmer..." Then getting up to walk outside of Starlight Glimmer's barrier by teleportation was Azuma, much to the mare's surprise. "It is time that we show the villain, that we will not fall due to someone that things a power of one, is greater then the strength go many comrades." Then without warning, Azuma was performing the Multiple Clone Technique, this time having made a large magic poof cloud appear & soon what came was more than 5000 clones, it was double the amount....10,000! Even Starlight Glimmer & the others stared in surprise in what they had seen.....
"More clones, I told you, no amount of an army can stand against the dark powers I wield!" Centaur King Tirek exclaimed to say this in seeing that no matter the numbers, it will not do anything.
"Then it is time that you met with something that brings the strength of all of us together." Azuma stated this off with a serious expression on his face of what he & his clones plan to do.
"Sister, does he plan to unleash it now?" Luna asked off in realizing what their friend is going to do here that the Royal Sisters know.
"Unleash what?" Ben asked off in not understanding the discussion.
"A move that Azuma has been learning to acquire for the last 100 years to bring together his clones to have their combine strength." Celestia stated off with a firm tone in bringing up this topic of what Azuma has been trying to achieve, which surprised the others.
"Wait, you're not saying he's going to perform....the Xros Fusion Spell! With THAT many?" Twilight yelps in just thinking about the very idea seem too wild to even imagine.
"Is such a thing possible?" Fila asked in being curious about performing such a task.
"Usually when a powerful user can cast it, it is simple even if one forces those that do not willingly do so, the only limit might be to how many units." Omega explained how when one can cast the Xros Fusion Spell in two ways, but the motion of so many seem hard unless one has enough magic to do it.
"I recall hearing Azuma was trying to perfect it, a special move that uses both works of transformation & the use of the Xros Fusion Spell, but he has to have all of them share the same strength of 100 percent." Goldie stated off to mention in what the guy has to do in order to insure, that such a technique goes off without a hitch.
"But that's crazy talk, he must have used up a lot of his strength, he might be lucky to just hold 25 or 50 percent left." Starlight Glimmer protest in thinking that was too crazy to display the same strength in over five to ten thousand clones.
"Well you better pay close attention, cause this might be something related to Element Evolution too, which while I can do too, but I defiantly wanna see how this goes." Pinkamena stated off that they watch what will happen, cause Azuma seems to have a plan to turn the tables here.
All eyes were focus entirely on what Azuma was about to unleash as many were wondering if an army won't take down the powered up Tirek, will a secret technique the Clone Creator develop be the key...?
"All of you ready?" Azuma asked as he looked to the eyes of all of his clone replicas that showed the same determination as he did. "Then let's begin....Transformation - Clone Prime!" He issued forth to say this while yelling out that last part...
Then without warning, Azuma & all of his clones roared off in unleashing their magic auras, many of the clones shot off in the air before coming down on...the original as they were...fusing. As the process was going on, a stronger glowing sphere dome began to be made, just before something of it was cleared away to reveal from the 10,000 army units, there stood only one; a transformed Azuma. The Alicorn stallion still looked the same, but he was seen wearing a red cloak jacket with a symbol that stands for 'Clone Prime' on it & he was unleashing a bright yellow/orange aura off his body. As friends & foe watch to behold, many could not believe what they were seeing...
"So, this is what you pride yourself on? You were better off with an army!" Centaur King Tirek remotely stated in not being so impressed by the change of the opponents.
But then without warning, Clone Prime vanished in a flash of glowing blur, then appeared above Centaur King Tirek.
"Violent - Adamantine Cyclone/Kickpowfruvhmm...." Then in that single motion, Clone Prime deals a severe roundhouse kick to the enemy....
"GRRUUOOAARURHGHH...." Centaur King Tirek was shot backwards almost twelve feet even for his height & heavy weight; that kick felt like the user's body inherited superhuman strength with harden muscle strength.
"Next is....Morning Peacock!" Then what comes next was when Clone Prime kicked the enemy into the air, which seem to almost be an instant kill & seeing someone kick a giant body several yards upwards. "Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow-Pow..." Then Clone Prime jumps into the air in a distinctive stance & begins punching the enemy repeatedly. Everyone watched with surprise as the punches were so fast, they were set ablaze by sheer speed & friction which in turn creates a peacock-like fan of flames around the opponent. "Fruvhmm...Crashfruvhmmm...." Once the attack was finished, Centaur King Tirek was sent crashing back to the ground, covered with the attack's aura.
"Woah.....I didn't even know that Azuma could perform all of that!" Sunset exclaimed in surprise, she knows that Azuma was strong from being both an Alicorn & wielding an element, but this...blown her away.
"Apparently, the guy has been training hard, even from a breeze, I can feel....the change in the air!" Flash exclaimed in watching the battle & for some strange tingling feeling, the wind blown against him was like voices saying....who was stronger compared to the two & it was their friend.
"How Can This Be?" Centaur King Tirek protest in moving himself upwards to gaze at the transform opponent. "I have the power of a giant collection of Dark Stones!" He protest to state he has greater power from the source of great darkness aiding him.
"I told you....strength comes from others when united & now you will fall." Clone Prime explained this with a serious tone in not giving his foe any choice but to face him.
"We shall see..." as Centaur King Tirek was exclaiming this he suddenly was making his body glow with a pitch of dark aura as he held his lance upwards. "Inferno Lance!/Powfruvhmmm...." Then he throws his lance at the opponent with extreme speed as it travels through the air. The lance begins to spin & builds up magical energy.
"Daytime Tiger!" Then Clone Prime places a front palm facing forward in front of his face with one hoof & then taps it with the other hoof, which was creating a massive amount of air pressure. Then without warning, launches the air pressure at the opponent i the shape of a tiger by leaving a gigantic tiger-shape impression into the initially built-up air pressure with the hoof. "GROOOUURRRUGHHH!" Then the air-pressure tiger unleashes a mighty roar wave as if attacking...
"Powwwfruvhhmmmm...." As both attacks were colliding, everyone watches as something was happening. Centaur King Tirek's lance was acting like a drill to inflict extreme piercing damage against the air pressure that was condense when it was moving & was focused into a single point; both sides were in a tie of equal strength.
"They're evenly match!" Radiant Hope exclaimed surprise in not knowing who was going to win this.
"Yes, but someone will have to give!" Umbrem exclaimed in knowing that someone will have to give in sooner or later.
"What is the meaning of this? My most deadly of force is not making any effort, even against the strongest opponent of three Alicorns!" Centaur King Tirek protest in seeing this, the opponent was not falling, it's like his strength is even higher than he who has taken the magic of three Alicorns.
"Release your roar! Now!" Clone Prime exclaimed forth as he was pushing his technique even further until.....it broke the enemy's lance to pieces.
"GROOUUARRRUGHH!" Soon the Daytime Tiger roared as it soon comes towards ifew
s target. "Krusssuuvhmmm....Kaboomfruvhmmm...." thrown in an instant, the technique's contact explodes on command, releasing built up air pressure in an instant. "Yrruuaarrughhhh-ARRRUUAARUGHHH!" Centaur King Tirek lets off an agonizing scream, as his blurry image was covered by whiteness before his image was fading. "Crack-crqaack....Breaksfruvhmm...." Within the attack, the Dark Stones within the enemy's chest started to crack until they were destroyed instantaneously from the overwhelming attack force.
"Powwfruvhmmm...." A massive explosion was created from the after effects of Daytime Tiger which was felt a significant distance away. Everyone that watch that feat of display were in almost awe-inspired reactions that Azuma had unleashed something....that insane that stop what even six ponies in Rainbow Forms might not have done? At the end of it all, a faded bunch of magic was seen leaving what was the darken form of Tirek, before slowly revealing it to be...the weaken form of Alternate Tirek again. And standing over the defeated enemy was Prime Clone near a busted giant horn that belong to the enemy. Afterwards, Clone Prime slowly reverted back into being Azuma, as the rest of the group slowly approached him.
"That....Was...AWESOME!" Rainbow Dash slowly spoke off in having seen that which left her to be surprised by what happened even to an even more powered up form of Tirek.
"Heck, ye sure pulled one over de guy's head." Applejack smiled off in thanking Azuma for what he just pulled that saved their bacon.
"Yeah, that there kind of strength was CRAZY Good!" Pinkie Pie smiled off to say this with a lot of excitement in having seen what stopped Centaur King Tirek.
"Hmmm." Azuma held his head from feeling some slight dizziness at the moment from what happened.
"Oh my, you're not still hurt, are you Azuma?" Fluttershy asked in seeing that Azuma seem like something was wrong.
"No, just....need more practice with that form is all. Had to use up every last bit of strength to destroy that massive size Dark Stone..." Azuma shook his head in stating how what he used, he needs to develop it more as while it did help the gang out, he needs to make sure he is not completely spent out.
"Well, at least it's over with." Rarity smiled off to say this in looking on the brighter side of things.
"Wait, what about this horn?" Sunset pointed to see the busted giant horn nearby to notice something.
Suddenly, the giant busted horn was magically transforming that from a bright light, it reverted to take the appearance of...a glowing rainbow color sphere.
"The horn turn into a sphere." Flash raised an eyebrow in seeing what has happened here.
"Wait...I can feel it." Starlight Glimmer spoke to approach the sphere to use her horn's magic to sense what the thing is. "The collected magic in here, it feels like....everything is individual, but merge to be one." She explained from having understood what this thing was, a collection of different magic formed into one.
"That must be the source of what Alternate Tirek used to take the magic from his own timeline." Jack Zen stated off in realizing what this was that could explain its strong form of magical energy.
"And now with Alternate Tirek defeated, & detain possible, what should we do with this orb filled with collected magic from another world's timeline?" Omega asked off in what they should do with the object that is within their grasp.
"All this power...with it, anyone could become so strong just now. No one could stop the one who wields this." Starlight Glimmer spoke off in approaching to study this magic collection sphere that has so much power, it almost feels...tempting.
Hearing that made those around Starlight feel concern if the reform unicorn was thinking about what they think she will do. However, Starlight did something else as she made the sphere hover near...Twilight.
"But....it wouldn't be right. This collection of magic rightfully belongs to the creatures Tirek stole it all from." Starlight Glimmer stated off to honestly say this in knowing that this magic source was not theirs to take.
"Wait, are you saying that....you don't want the power?" Fila asked a bit surprised, she almost thought giving up such power was not something someone that was so close to obtaining it would do normally.
"What good would having this much power do, I almost lost myself in believing the words of those that said might makes right with power at their side." Starlight Glimmer sadly was stating this off to look sad about what she believed meant to be true by enemies was a set of lies. "I'm not trustworthy to keep this, therefore, it should be in capable hooves of those that KNOW how to handle it without losing themselves." She issued off in feeling that Twilight & the others were far better at making sure so much power would not corrupt them.
Everyone around seem to show different responses in seeing that, Starlight Glimmer has truly shown something of being capable of being redeem now.
"Starlight, you are trustworthy & you just showed that you are a better pony by not letting something like this make you give up being yourself." Twilight approach to pat Starlight's shoulder to smile this off in giving this words of sincerity. "You've just shown many that you have changed." She issued off that what Starlight has done in not being selfish with so much magic before her proves what she has done.
Starlight Glimmer smiled in having heard this; that was something that made her feel very happy to hear since she was trying to become a better friend.
"It is as Twilight says, Starlight Glimmer." Celestia spoke off to say this about the pony's acts of being better.
"You are a better pony than you know." Luna exclaimed off to say how Starlight is better than she believes.
"Oh, so touching, but maybe we can save this back at Rainbow Castle, shall we?" Discord exclaimed off to say this in feeling that this sort of thing was so touching, that maybe they can save more of it at Rainbow Castle.
"Agreed..." Ben nods off to agree, after finally having things finished here, they can now head on home.
With that in mind, Discord decided to use his magic to just snap his fingers to make everyone here, even a now captured Alternate Tirek be taken away now in a magic poof cloud. With this now settled, the scene begins to fade out now as what will happen next will be a likely closure in the end.... |
Even More Consequences | Chapter 04: What's The Alternative Solution? | Chapter 04: What's The Alternative Solution?
The scene begins to open up within the Rainbow Castle, which outside its walls by the doors...were separate cages with the alternate villains trapped inside. Right now, the alternate villains from the Flim-Flam Brothers, Nightmare Moon, King Sombra, Queen Chrysalis & Tirek along with their own army units were locked up in Anti-Magic proof cages & wearing Anti-Magic Collars to keep those from trying to escape. As we focus in the castle where we find the Mane Six, Ben, Nyx, Phobos, Spike & Starlight Glimmer, along with the Royal Sisters, Goldie's group, Discord, Flash, Sunset & Azuma, they were having some discussion of what to do with these villains from alternate timelines.
"So, what do we do with all of these villains here?" Rainbow Dash asked off in what they do with the extra set of villains.
"Well them cages & collars outta keep them from causing' trouble, right?" Applejack pointed off in knowing that the bunch they got sealed up won't bother much.
"That maybe so, but whoever brought them here will surely try to free them." Rarity stated in thinking that whoever unleashed villains from alternate timelines may try to free them.
"You know, this makes me recall us capturing a target, but then it got loose. Hmm....what was it, what was it?" Pinkie Pie rubbed her chin to ponder off this subject as if having experienced a similar feeling long ago.
"Twilight, you said you saw them from alternate timelines, right?" Fluttershy asked in being curious about what their smart friend who experienced time travel saw during such a, well, time.
"Right. When I saw those alternate timelines when I was trying to stop Starlight, I reframed from joining the fights because I thought that, if I stopped Starlight, those timelines would never come to pass anyway. But now..." Twilight explained about what she was doing that was supposed to be a better solution to things to fix such problems, but...
"What is it Twilight?" Spike asked in seeing something was distracting the pony now.
"I think I know, now we learn that like an alternate world like EGQ Universe exist as opposite version of Equestria Prime & it's just like the Mirrorverse. They all share similarities to this one, but different, right?" Pinkamena spoke out to randomly explain the situation of what they were lacking in knowledge until they have recently learn about this.
"Can we say that you're weird for thinking that?" Phobos pointed off to say this in seeing that Pinkamena is as weird as their Pinkie Pie.
"Oh Phobos." Nyx rolled her eyes in seeing how her pet pal was replying to such a thing.
"But it's true, maybe when we tried to fix the timeline from what Starlight Glimmer was changing, perhaps when we experienced that Time Relapse motion, it must have split those alternate timelines as separate worlds that exist outside our own." Ben suggested this off in thinking what could be the answer of what they have experienced & learn of what could have caused such things to core.
"Is that even possible?" Jack Zen raised an eyebrow in thinking that was much to suddenly expect to be true.
"Based on how Twilight & her family fought an alternate army of villains that Grimmore summoned in the Time Stream, & when they had to destroy the Sacred Time Orb with the Master Sword that had itself covered by many Element User's magic aura from the shards from the Tree of Harmony, just to stop Grimmore's action. It's possible the Time Relapse fix everything, including taking those villains to exist in newly existed worlds across the dimension boundaries." Goldie stated off in thinking how something must have occurred that when those that stopped Grimmore using the Sacred Time Ob to rule over a multitude of worlds across space, time & reality, when Ben's group stopped him, it did cause a Time Relapse to fix things, but also made the separate timelines of alternate futures become co-existent as separate dimensions of their own world; it's very mind blowing.
"Man; that is a mouthful to take it." Autumn Gem stated off to say this in having heard that much be explained, but hard to follow along.
"Well these villains have caused so much damage, that the Monster Hunting Agency & Radiant Hope & my other self have gone off to see how much damage was done!" Sombra exclaimed to state of what their other friends are doing at this current moment.
"While we're recovering, there's more to this topic, isn't there Twilight?" Starlight Glimmer stated to say this in looking at Twilight who was the most quiet with thought.
"There is? Because the alternate villains still exist & rule their own alternate timelines, it means those worlds are in peril. It's like what we seen from the Mirrorverse & the EGQ Universe, twice from what they went through." Twilight explained the case of how from two different worlds apart of their own are experiencing threats that wish to do harm.
"Twice?" Fila raised an eyebrow in having heard this with curiosity.
"There were new problems that occurred in both worlds, including when Twilight received a distress from Canterlot High before learning it was solved that became the third case." Omega explained this to Fila about such a thing that was to be later explained to the recent new addition to Goldie's group.
"Now that the alternate worlds exist outside of the fix past of our world, I realize that we may need to return to those alternate worlds & try to help the locals in those timelines. Help heal the damage done, then offer some equipment to help train them to handle other villains & monsters in the future they may yet face." Twilight explained that they need to do more in order to make sure even separate worlds that live in different timelines of their own can recover from what happened that was likely....the Sparkle & Starlight Glimmer being the cause of their existence as such states.
Everyone was silent in having heard much about this, that what was supposed to not exist has now been separated from being alternate futures; to be alternate worlds separate of Equestria Prime. And if there exist the alternate villains that were never defeated, then the five alternate worlds they came from are living under such harsh & difficult times. They can guess of what types, War against King Sombra, the Changeling Swarm Invasion, Nightmare Moon Ruling In Eternal Night, Discord's Chaotic Paradise, Flim-Flam Brothers Cooperative Operation, even a Tirek Rampage. The alternate worlds must have surely suffered much lose & many have fallen on hard times, & perhaps....the aid of help might be what is needed.
"Well-well, so now our little band wants to help more than save their world, but five different alternate worlds? That's a heck of a lot of responsibility for one pony to burden." Discord stated off to say this in having heard this to be quite surprised by such means to be helpful.
"She's not really alone though, she's got a large group of friends to help her out." Flash smiled off to say that Twilight has a lot of those that can help her out.
"Flash is right, I'm sure that together, they can figure out some way to help." Sunset exclaimed to say this in knowing that Twilight's group can do much when they work together.
"We'll discuss such things later, for now, the important thing is...these alternate villains have been stopped & Equestria is safe from harm." Azuma exclaim to say this in knowing that while the matter of helping alternate timelines is important, the good side to look back at is how they stop many alternate villains from doing anything to their own world.
"Well, I'm just glad it's over." Spike sighs to say this in being glad things could come to a more peaceful resolve.
"Yeah, taking on five villains is hard work. Except for the Flim-Flam Brothers, but you get what I'm saying." Phobos shrug off to say this in admitting that MOST of those foes were tough to handle.
"Princesses..." Then at this time, someone was entering the council room for all to see, someone that the Mane Six, Spike, Nyx & Ben feel is familiar to them while the others looked at the guy. It was some Royal Guard, a Pegasus with bluish fur color & brown eyes seen, but he seem to be in a strange Blue Royal Guard's Armor type, with a Greek helmet fashion & has black right shoulder plate-like & a blue cape.
"Captain Rexstrike, how has everything gone." Celestia smiled off in seeing someone of captain rank has arrived here.
"It goes well your highness, after rounding up the alternate villains, we've captured the last stranglers of the bunch." Captain Rexstrike explained to say this in saluting to the Royals here in going a report.
"Thank you for your duty to aid us, captain." Luna nods off to say this in having heard what the Royal Guard has achieve.
Now at this moment, Captain Rexstrike looked to everyone in the room before his eyes met with someone here much longer, Azuma. Everyone looked back & forth in seeing the two were staring at the others.
"Azuma, looks like you & the others have been through a lot in the battle I heard you fought hard in." Captain Rexstrike spoke off to say this in starting a small conversation at the moment.
"Well now, what do you expect when Tirek gave us no choice; still, it's good to see you are doing well, brother." Azuma smiled off to simply say this in replying back to the stallion.
"Brother?" Everyone in the room responded to this in surprise except for the Royal Sisters.
"Hold on a second, someone wanna explain what's going on?" Phobos asked off in not following along what was going on here as if having missed something.
"You two are....brothers?" Fila asked in looking between Rexstrike & Azuma; they are, brothers?
"Twins actually." Captain Rexstrike corrected off to say this that made the conversation a bit more difficult for those that following along.
"Error, does not compute, Azuma is 100 years old & originated from a tribe that lives in the Badlands while acting out as prime leader to keep his tribe safe." Omega shook his head in being a bit lost & puzzled in having to absorb such data that he was not familiar with.
"That is true, but have you forgotten what I have done in the past?" Azuma smiled to say this much while reminding those of what he's capable of doing.
"Wait a second, you mean when you made clones of yourself to go out & learn multiple task to experience the knowledge to built yourself?" Goldie asked off in slowly putting the pieces together to realize what Azuma had done.
"But, how does that fit in with you having a brother?" Autumn Gem asked in being lost about this discussion that she is still not following.
"Because we came from the same tribe, one hundred years ago." Azuma pointed off to simply say the two came from the same place.
"But you're an Alicorn, Rexstrike is a Pegasus. So then, how is he...?" Sombra was slowly asking off in how such a thing was possible that the two are related.
"He picked up a spell & I was able to have an expanded lifespan like an Alicorn while not growing old." Captain Rexstrike simply stated off in how such things became possible from Azuma using a spell to help the guy out. "Still, it's surprising that some of you don't remember him from before." He stated off to look at the Mane Six, Spike, Nyx & also at Ben as if...not recognizing Azuma.
"Before what?" Ben raised an eyebrow in being lost about what the guy was talking about.
"Ben, this was when Twilight, her group of friends & family came for our Annual Foundation, it was when you return during the Demon Pony case." Celestia explained of the case of when much of such things even took place at such a time. "Back then, I had introduce them both to everyone." She smile di stating that she introduced Rexstrike & Azuma to the rest.
"But Celestia, the only other pony besides Captain Rexstrike was..." Twilight was about to say something here until...
"This one." Azuma spoke off before he was glowing in using his Element of Duplication that made a new clone appear, but dress differently. Many saw the clone was a brown unicorn with lone messy mane & tail dressed in a Golden Royal Guard's Armor with a helmet that had a visor & antenna coming off it while his flank side was covered by a gold cape. And when the clone lifted his visor up, many gasped in surprise for seeing a strangely familiar face that was hidden from view the whole time.
"Commander Azuma?" The Mane Six & Spike yelped in seeing a familiar pony & more surprise to see the one behind such a helmet that hid his identity.
"Woah, this is really shocking! We thought you were just a unicorn when we met!" Nyx exclaimed to say this in being surprised to see Azuma's clone that was dressed like Commander Azuma from sometime in the past.
"I didn't even sense any large magic you had back then, I never knew. But how? Why?" Twilight was so puzzled & surprised that she was not sure what to even make much of what she has learn.
"Rest easy Twilight, it was I that asked them to join the Royal Guard to help in keeping the peace. I told Azuma that perhaps to draw less attention to himself, he should cast an illusion spell to keep his wings from sight while having much of his magic lowered down." Celestia explained in what she did in the past by having Azuma take up a different appearance look from long ago.
"Celestia explain to me that they learn much military experience & decided to bring them aboard, as acting captain & commander. But then the day came when you met Azuma without his Royal Guard disguise & he was able to help you out with the Clone Six agenda." Luna smiled off to explain the last part of what the group needed to know that happened afterwards that filled in the other details.
"Hugh, so which of you is in higher command? A captain or a commander?" Jack Zen asked off in being curious of not knowing the answer.
"It did not matter, we both had responsibility to perform either way." Azuma explained this with a serious statement about this was not about who holds higher rank.
"So, which are you more alright doing, tribe leader or commander?" Rainbow Dash asked off in which the guy that makes clones was okay with what important career.
"A bit of both, I've learn many traits, Chef Azuma, Artist Azuma, Scholar Azuma, they are all me as what my replicas have each learn & I gain experience." Azuma explained the matter of what can be explained about having things that allow him to experience different fields.
"Golly, ye can be just about anything' ye want, hugh?" Applejack raised an eyebrow in being amazed by the guy that has learn to take on many things to learn & experience.
"That's not true, there is one thing he wants to be. A good leader." Rexstrike exclaimed to say this in knowing what area Azuma is truly good at being, a good leader to lead others.
"Oh, I see, for leading his tribe & for leading troops & soldiers by teamwork measures, correct?" Rarity exclaimed to say this in following along the topic now.
"Wowl that is something surprising!" Fluttershy exclaimed to say this in being surprised to have learn about this.
"But I bet you do some good stuff too, so you are not to be far behind, am I right?" Pinkie Pie smiled off to mention this towards Rexstrike in thinking about what the guy does so that his achievements can also be noted too.
"You bet, even without powers, I can rely on my resourcefulness & creativity to defeat my enemies." Captain Rexstrike explained himself in what he can also do in the line of duty. "But I also came here because I heard you used Clone Prime, are you okay?" He turn to his twin brother in asking this question from having heard of Azuma using his transformation to stop the Alternate Tirek.
"I am, it was...a first time field test & it worked out. All it needs is a bit more work." Azuma nods off to say this with an honest opinion to not cause any harm for worry in using what he did.
"Well, if we think alike, then we each know when the going gets tough, we tough it out." Captain Rexstrike exclaimed to say this to hold a hoof up for Azuma to tap it as this showed the twin brothers go-getter means to not give in when things can tough.
"Well, this is certainly something you won't see anywhere else." Goldie smiled off to say this in seeing a brother moment of those from different careers.
"Yeah, it's nice that in the end, all is well." Pinkamena smiled off to say this in how things turn out great in the end.
Everyone was in an agreement before deciding to deuces the alternate villains problem in returning them to their own timeline alternate worlds while coming up with ways to help such a place be helped. The scene begins to darken here as what will happen afterwards will be anyone's guess here...
Right now, the scene changes from where Twilight & Starlight are walking a bit in Ponyville, just having some normal chat at this time. It's been decided that with the smart ponies brain power, along with Time Turner's aid when he comes back from the Monster Hunting Agency to use something that maybe the answer to returning the alternate villains back to here they came from & then think about how to fix the alternate worlds of where such foes came from in ruling or leveling.
"Twilight, where are we going?" Starlight asked her friend out in still being in the dark about something.
"To meet some other friends here I want you to meet." Twilight smiled off to simply say this without revealing too much.
As the two entered a location near a cafe spot in Ponyville, Starlight Glimmer nearly yelped in who was waiting for them. It was Moondancer, Minuette, Lemon Hearts & Twinkleshine, Twilight's old friends from Canterlot. Last time Starlight saw those four, she tried to use them in a revenge plot by taking their cutie marks, but that backfired. And now, they may still carry a grudge for what Starlight did to them in trying to get revenge on Twilight.
"Your....friends from Canterlot?" Starlight yelps in seeing the ponies here that she once dealt with before.
"I thought now would be a good time for you to apologize to them for what you tried to do to them." Twilight stated in what she was trying to do here that would help Starlight out.
"Right....the whole...get the revenge on you by targeting your other friends." Starlight sighs to look down in depression in knowing what this was about; when she was trying to use Twilight's Canterlot friends.
"That was then & now you're different." Twilight pointed out how the mare was different compared to before.
"Am I?" Starlight Glimmer asked off in being concern about that.
"Yes, you protected us, remember. Now...Go on, they're waiting." Twilight tap her friend's shoulder to not be scared & to go on in there.
Starlight Glimmer swallowed hard before she & Twilight approached the four unicorns, who were surprised to see who else was joining them with worry & concern. Twilight nudge Starlight with a smile to have her speak, before she sighs before taking a breath of fresh air & look to the group.
"Hey, hi....um, I know many of you remember me from...well, that time &..." Starlight Glimmer was a bit out of it when trying to speak to the four ponies, but from the puzzled looks she was getting, the mare sighs to just...get this over with. "Look, I just wanna say, I'm sorry for what I was trying to do to you all. And...I hope you can find it within yourselves to forgive me for what I tried to do. I was wrong &...I was horrible to you." She apologized straight & honest & true about what she did, & hopes these four can...forgive her.
Twilight's Canterlot Friends looked to another & back at Twilight who smiles to nod her head in stating that everything was alright. That was more than enough to convince the others that what was pass is pass.
"Hey, it's okay." Minuette replied off happily to say this out.
"Hugh?" Starlight yelped in having heard this which caught her off.
"If you're sorry, that's fine." Twinkleshine exclaimed to say if the mare was sorry, then that's all that matters.
"We forgive you." Lemon Hearts exclaimed to say this about forgiving starlight.
"But, after what I did, how can you..." Starlight Glimmer was lost, how can these ponies forgive her just like that?
"Trust me, I once thought I couldn't forgive Twilight from what she put me through, but I was wrong." Moondancer explained this of in having experienced such things with Twilight in the past. "And it's better to forgive, forget, & start things anew. Right?" She stated this off in being logical in knowing, it's better to be happy with friends, then carry a grudge all the time when they wanna make things up to them.
"I..." Starlight looked to Twilight who nods in saying 'yes' to the lost mare as she showed a happy face. "Yes....let;s start fresh now." Starlight exclaimed off in wanting them to start over, this time, as friends, REAL friends.
With that, Twilight & Starlight join the rest of Twilight's old Canterlot friends for a nice cup of tea as the six were talking about stuff that was more of less related to things that happened recently, etc. As the scene goes dark, at least one thing is sure, Starlight Glimmer's time on the right path is a slow, but steady pace in where she'll learn & have friends along the way.
The End |
The Kingdom Of Darkness | pre | "Yes, he is indeed real, a very dangerous foe with sinister intentions towards us all," Magnus replied to the Princesses' question only to be met with a hoof to his face by none other than Somnambula who looked furious.
"Oh, no, Somnambula! Calm down please dearie!" Meadowbrook yelled while trying to hug the mare who glared at Magnus as if to petrify him. "He didn't mean it like that I promise, just look at me,"
The Element Bearers were shocked at what they saw. They did not expect the Pillar of Hope to resort to such "brutish acts" as Rarity would say.
Somnambula looked at Meadowbrook who had a kind, sad smile that made her calm down and land on her hooves and stared at Magnus who looked surprised and blinked once, then twice before he soared near the roof of the castle and had a facial expression of a filly who learned Hearts Warming came early that year.
"I can feel pain again!!" He shouted in joy and flew around, much to the Elements Bearers' shock and confusion as he flew around like he found gold.
The other Pillars--including Somnambula--chuckled at his enthusiasm.
"Uh..."
Starswirl chuckled so much that he spilt some tea on his robes. When he noticed the other's stunned expressions he decided to explain.
"You see, Flash Magnus is a soldier through and through and inflicted a lot of pain on himself so he could withstand any attack but that led to some negative consequences that are best not mentioned here. Because of this, he has been desperate to find ways to feel pain but never succeeded. But it seems Limbo... ehm... helped him?"
"Yes, I finally can feel pain! Somnambula please do it again!" He landed before her and bowed like she was a wise mare with all the answers.
"Heavens no! Sorry that I did that... I just..." she lost her words and she looked to the crystal floors of the castle with Meadowbrook comforting her.
They were brought back to the topic and hand and it prompted Twilight to mull over what she had learned. So it was true that Pony Of Shadows was real but did the Pony have sinister intentions?
The lilac-coated mare glanced between Magnus and Somnambula. Magnus had said that the Pony had sinister intentions and in response, Somnambula had punched him, giving the signals that the pegasus didn't believe that.
This was confusing.
Who was right and who was wrong? She didn't want to make the Pillar of Hope angry at her but at the same time, she needed all the facts she could get. Rockhoof told Applejack that Pony Of Shadows couldn't walk among the creatures of Equestria any longer which meant that this Pony had done something so terrible that they felt the need to warn them about him.
Somnambula had said that Pony wasn't evil, though, so that begs the question of who was right and who was wrong. Twilight looked at her friends and realised that the emotions were too high for today.
When she looked out the window, she saw that it was getting late and suggested that they go to bed. The other Element Bearers decided to stay in the castle and the Pillars were shown different rooms that sat empty. Rockhoof and Meadowbrook would share since they were engaged, Magnus was given an empty bedroom, Starswirl also had an empty room and Somnambula had her room ready but she didn't go to sleep.
She couldn't sleep, there was nothing physically that was making her tired and her brain was trying to process everything that had happened.
Sitting at the foot of her bed, she looked at the wooden floors that needed cleaning and thought back to when she would spend time with Stygian. He was so kind, generous, honest, strong and gave hope whenever they needed it. He never gave up on them, not even once when they were close to losing a battle.
Their betrayal felt all the more heart-wrenching to her.
When she'd noticed how the unicorn she loved distanced himself from them, she believed that maybe he wanted to explore or perhaps believed that he had no purpose with them now that they became the Pillars of Equestria and weren't needed anymore.
The thought terrified her so much that she made it a habit to always hang out with him whenever she had free time. However, even when they were around each other, she felt the distance between them. Nonetheless, he stuck around long enough leading up to the event when he borrowed their artefacts. She had been so distraught and angry.
Somnambula didn't remember what she felt other than anger and sadness, but when she confronted him, something did seem... off. He looked surprised that they had found him and that is when they spoke the most brutal of words that would chatter any pony's heart. A lone tear slid down her cheek and landed on the dusty wooden floor.
~~~~The Kingdom Of Darkness~~~~
The moon shined brightly over the beautiful Ponehenge which was a famous architectural site that many creatures--not just ponies--had the pleasure of seeing. Its remarkable beauty came from the carvings of the stones that had once resembled a star if you could fly and look down.
The marble stone was one of the most expensive and sought--stones in the entirety of Equestria. Many ponies and other creatures alike would do anything to have the pleasure of getting their hooves or claws on them.
Sadly only the richest of creatures could af afford it but it didn't mean that no pony couldn't admire Ponehenge if it wasn't for the anger that radiated around it at the very moment.
Currently, the Pillars of Equestria were glaring at a unicorn who wore a brown robe that covered most of his body but not low enough so he would trip on his hooves when he walked or run.
Stygian--up until this point--had been considered a valuable Pillar that had knowledge that fascinated Starswirl, but that fascination had been misplaced. This pony was nothing more than a thief who stole from others for their own benefit. What they couldn't understand was why he would do something like this.
"STYGIAN!" Starswirl roared at his fellow unicorn. The old wizard was breathing so heavily that smoke came from his nostrils. "How could you do this to us? How can you betray us so easily?!"
Stygian didn't respond to that because he was never given the time.
"Yeah, how can you do that, huh?! After everything you did to help us, after we took you in... you betray us!?" Magnus was held back by Starswirl's magic so he would attack the unicorn.
"Well...I just--"
"Save it, Stygian we don't want to hear it. Obviously, you were trying to trick us from the start which you indeed succeeded with," Rockhoof cut off and stared at Stygian in disappointment and stomped his hoof in anger. "To think I ever considered you my younger brother,"
Stygian didn't show it, but he was hurt. He could do nothing but stare at the stone ground in peace.
"How could you do this to us, to Equestria?!" Mistmane looked at Stygian angrily. He didn't respond immediately.
"I was just--"
"Save it, you filthy villain!" Starswirl roared once more, his anger getting the better of him. "You are no better than the Sirens or any of the villains we have ever faced at all. You wanted to see the power we hold, didn't you? You wanted to power for yourself like a filthy thief, you're greed became overwhelmed!"
"I can't believe I ever considered you a good friend," Meadowbrook glared at Stygian, the same glare she would use to the villains they faced. Being on the receiving end broke him physically and mentally.
"To think we spent so much time with one another, I cannot believe that you would betray us all. To think you were pretending to be our friend... I hope I never see you again," Somnambula said.
After hearing those words, Stygian broke down in tears and ran away,
The Pillars angrily grabbed their artefacts and made their way to their castle where they put the objects on their thrones and began to move Stygian's things.
They didn't say anything as they removed the objects from his room and placed them inside boxes where they would send them to where he once lived. They had managed to be halfway done, when Meadowbrooks walked into the throne room and was surprised when she saw a book by Stygian's side of the large table.
Looking around, she saw that the others were out of sight and moved towards the book and realised that it wasn't a book--it was a journal. Stygian's journal.
Instantly, she felt anger and wanted to throw it away in one of the boxes, but just as quickly as it'd come, it disappeared and curiosity got to the best of her and she opened the journal and began to read.
The first few pages held about his foal hood and teenage years which slowly switched over to his academic side of things. A few pages in and she was shocked to find how he found the Pillars and pointed them towards their first villains.
The text described all their strengths and weaknesses and what they could have done differently. Stygian also described the appearances of the villains and how they fought and relied on--quick observations.
However, the last few entries started to make Meadowbrook's heart sink.
Dear Journal
Although I am also a Pillar, the other ponies don't notice me as much. If anything, they most likely believe I was saved by them as well. My friends are enjoying themselves and I cannot blame them, they have saved the kingdom countless times and deserve to be cherished but what about me? Haven't I done things that can be considered extraordinary? Well, I suppose being a tactician isn't as cool as being the one throwing punches but I suppose That's just how it is.
I am starting to feel lonely...
Meadowbrook heard the others enter the room and noticed what she was reading and began to read out of curiosity.
Dear Journal
I have begun to distance myself from the other Pillars. They seem to have caught on and have started asking questions but I do not know whether it is real or not. What am I saying? Of course, they care about me! They're my friends, they would never do something to hurt me. They have stood by me whenever I needed them and I have done the same, the loneliness is getting to my head filling me with doubts. But I will admit that I am getting bothered by the amount of attention the other gets while I get none.
Maybe I should borrow their artefacts? No! I will resist the temptation!
The other Pillars started to piece together what this was leading to and their hearts started to sink.
Dear Journal
I just can't take it anymore. My friends are all famous and cool because they are the ones who fight the villains but they don't pay attention to me, I normally wouldn't have been too bothered but they don't even know me and always look confused whenever I talk to them as if I was part of the team... am I not part of the team? Haven't I given them vital information that they needed to defeat even the strongest of foes? I will my friends do not ignore me, especially, not sweet Somnambula who I would do anything in the world for.
I have decided to borrow the artefacts to make copies. I do not want their power, instead, I want to use the copies to represent all the Pillars in one. Hopefully, they won't notice them gone until I've created the copies. Maybe I'll even earn their respect?
The Pillars felt tears well in their eyes and regret for what they had done. They looked at one another, Somnambula looked like a mess, her tears ruining her mascara but she didn't care.
"We've been fools," Starswirl uttered with a lone tear escaping his eyes and the others nodded in agreement.
"Come on, we gotta find Stygian!" Magnus sounded frantic when he spoke.
Before they could move, however, the doors to the castle opened and inside rushed the unicorn they were speaking of. But before they could even formulate the words they wanted to say they heard a unnatural voice speaking from Stygian's mouth.
"You banished me from friendship, I'll banish you permanently!!!" Stygian roared and muttered a chant they didn't understand. Before they could even move, they were being sucked inside a large portal that led somewhere. Starswirl managed to dodge the spell just in time.
Somnambula was the last one to see Stygian and she saw his natural eyes that hadn't been there before. His eyes when he spoke had been pure white but nothing felt natural with it. His eyes showed pure hatred and saw him spit on the ground before the portal closed.
~~The Kingdom Of Darkness~~
Somnambula cried silently inside her room and covered her eyes with her hooves as she remembered that hateful stare. She hadn't believed that Stygian--her Stygian--held such emotion.
But he did, and it was all her fault. If she would have just spoken up about the unfair treatment then none of this would have happened.
Not bothering to get changed or brush her teeth, she cried herself to sleep, praying to the God's that she could find Stygian again. Even if her lover was the Pony Of Shadows, she only saw Stygian. |
The Kingdom Of Darkness | CH.5. Princess Cadance & Pillar Of Hope | Somnambula was abruptly woken up from her slumber. She opened her eyes and scanned the room, trying to find the offending object that had woken her up from a rather nice dream. That's when she heard it again.
There was somepony knocking.
"Somnambula, dear?" Meadowbrook asked from the other side of the door while pressing her ear against it, trying to listen. "There's breakfast waiting for you in the kitchen, are you hungry?"
The pegasus got out of bed and stretched before making her way to the door with a small smile on her lips. When she opened the door, she saw that Meadowbrook was already fully dressed.
"Good morning, Meadowbrook slept well?" Somnambula asked kindly with her smile still on her lips.
"Yes I did," Meadowbrook shared a smile while observing her friends' body language. "You seem happy, did you have a nice dream?"
Somnambula would normally be very sad because she always thought about Stygian and... that particular day, but she had a lot of happy memories of him. The memories she had of him together with her, memories that only they shared and no pony else felt special to her.
"Yes, I dreamt of Stygian and I getting married," Somnambula admitted with a smile. The Pillar of Healing had a kind understanding smile and nudged the pegasus playfully.
"Already thinking about marriage?" She chuckled. "Wow, next I hear you were thinking of foals--"
"Oh, I dreamed about that as well," Somnambula said with a straight face, stunning the earth pony. "Just joking!" The Pillar of Hope laughed.
Meadowbrook couldn't help but laugh along with her and felt at ease knowing that this was one of Somnambula's 'good' days where she could laugh, joke and smile without it being fake like she had used daily at one point in her life.
But deep down, Meadowbrook knew that Somnambula would never regain that smile. Not without Stygian.
Suddenly, there was a growling noise and Somnambula blushed.
"You said something about food?" She asked with pink cheeks.
Meadowbrook led her to the kitchen where she saw Spike cook their breakfast while Rockhoof was enjoying his coffee along with Magnus who ate a batch of waffles and cereal. When they noticed Somnambula's mood, they brightened.
"Morning," Rockhoof and Magnus spoke together.
"Good morning," the pegasus replied and looked around for Starswirl. "Where's Starswirl?"
"He's still asleep," Magnus responded. "I talked to him before he went to bed and he admitted that... ever since we disappeared that he started to sleep most of the day away and was barely awake. So he probably won't wake up for another few hours, if even that."
The others stared at one another in sadness, feeling bad for their friend. He was usually the one who woke up bright and early, even earlier than Rockhoof so to hear that he had been dealing with the pain in a way they had not anticipated broke their hearts.
"Where's Mistmane?" Meadowbrooks asked while looking around.
"She's still asleep. She woke up late at night from a nightmare--couldn't sleep until a few hours ago," Rockhoof answered making the others feel saddened. They knew what the nightmare was about.
"Here's your pancakes Somnambula!" Spike said and placed it on the table and began on another batch.
"Thank you," she smiled at him and grabbed a fork and began to eat. The other Pillars conversed with one another while waiting for the others to wake up. While enjoying her breakfast, she couldn't help but think about the dream she had.
It had been wonderful, she was being led by Starswirl down the aisle, all the Pillars and Element Bearers were there, and Stygian waited for her by the end of the aisle. Then, Starswirl would be the one who would wed them and they could kiss in front of all their friends. She would wear a white dress and he would wear a black tuxedo or maybe smoking.
Unknown to her, in the present world she had closed her eyes while having a smile to her lips while holding her fork with a piece of waffle on it.
"Somnambula?" Meadowbrook called. The pegasus suddenly awoke and looked around her and smiled at them.
"Uh, yes?" She asked trying to stifle her embarrassment.
"One of the princesses' are here to see you, her name is Princess Mi Amore Cadenza," Magnus replied while motioning for the princess who stood in the doorway. Somnambula noticed her and the princess gave a small smile and a wave.
"Good morning, Cadance," Spike greeted with a smile.
"Good morning Brave and Glorious!" Was her reply. The Pillars looked confused at what they called the dragon but shrugged it off.
"Can I entice you with some waffles, or is it an urgent need?" he asked while showing the waffles.
"It is not urgent, so I'll join you for breakfast," Cadance replied and received a plate of waffles with chocolate sauce. Taking her breakfast gratefully, she sat down and began to enjoy her morning.
"So, you're the newest princess?" Rockhoof asked curiously while taking a swing of his coffee with Meadowbrook beside him.
"Oh, Twilight is the newest alicorn," Cadance corrected while taking a sip of the tea that Spike had boiled for her.
"Oh, what type of princess are you then?" Magnus asked bluntly, only to receive a hoof to the head. "OW!"
Cadance giggled at the display. "I'm the princess of Love. I'm sure you know Twilight is the princess of Friendship," they nodded. They were familiar with this.
Somnambula perked up when she heard what type of princess Cadance was. What was her business with Somnambula? Did she know about the love she had for Stygian? She facepalmed, of course, she knew about that, the Element Bearers had shown the memory of the dream Miss Applejack had.
"I suppose you're here to learn about the love I have for Stygian?" Somnambula asked out of the blue, stopping the chatter they had with one another, even Spike stopped what he was doing to look at the Pillar of Hope.
Cadance swallowed the waffle she had in her throat. "Yes, that is primarily why I'm here, but we can talk about that in private if you want,"
"It's okay, It's not a secret exactly, everypony knows about my love for the unicorn. Everypony knows." The orange-coated pegasus answered while giving a smile but it wasn't a large one and looked forced.
"Okay... you sure?" Cadance asked while looking at the pegasus with concern. When it involved matters of the heart, it could be very difficult and can easily cloud emotions which could prevent any creature from doing their daily tasks.
"Yes," she replied with a nod.
"Okay, how did you meet Stygian?" The princess of love asked while sipping her tea.
The Pillar of Hope blushed and made circles with her hoof. "Well, I meet him for the first time when he came with Starswirl to my home kingdom. He had heard of my deed that saved my homeland and had been astonished by my performance. We talked for hours, it was as if we had known each other our entire lives." Somnambula smiled fondly, the pink on her cheeks diminishing.
Cadance noticed the look and became invested. "Did you ever do anything together other than stop villains?"
"Hm? Oh, yes we did. We read books together, went for walks, and talked. We had plans of travelling together but that stopped abruptly..." She trailed off and everypony and dragon knew what she was getting at.
"It must have been hard for you all these years," Cadence soothed as best she could. "Not saying that it was easy for you lot," she quickly rectified.
"Oh, princess, believe us, it has been the most difficult for Somnambula," Meadowbrook spoke, Magnus and Rockhoof nodded in agreement. "We were afraid that when Starswirl dodged the spell that Stygian would..."
The kitchen became silent. This was one of the things that was always difficult to talk about. The possibility that Starswirl might get killed by Stygian was constantly on their mind. They didn't want it to happen, but because of how hurtful their words had been... who is to say that Stygian didn't gain dark thoughts? Especially now, when he had literal darkness on his side.
Somnambula allowed a tear to escape which was noticed by the Pillar of Healing who walked around the table to comfort her and apologised for her wording but the pegasus shrugged it off.
"Sorry, dear I shouldn't have spoken that last bit," she said while hugging the mare from behind.
"No, no, Meadowbrook. You're right, there was--and still is--a large possibility he will do that." The others felt uncomfortable and saddened by that admission. "I still remember that hateful look in his eye when the portal was closing..."
Without any pony or dragon noticing, a new pony had stepped inside the kitchen and was looking at the table with a saddened gaze.
"I'm sorry, Somnambula," the others jumped slightly from the new voice and saw Starswirl standing a few feet away from the kitchen table while looking at them with a few tears. "It is all my fault, I should never have jumped to conclusions, I should have listened to him and heard his side of the story. Maybe then, you could have been together with him and had children and grown old together,"
Magnus looked shocked when he saw the old wizard there. Starswirl had said that he had gotten the habit of sleeping away his life and here he was standing early in the morning. Had he curbed his unusual habit in a single night?
The others were shocked over the fact that the old unicorn was blaming himself for what had happened so long ago. He had no reason to blame himself! They were just as guilty for what happened!
"Starswirl..." Somnambula tried but was interrupted by Magnus.
"Hey, you told me you have a sleeping problem--that you sleep away the day and night, how are you up at this hour?!" Magnus asked, gaining deadpanned looks from everypony and dragon.
Starswirl shook off the question. "I know we all had a hoof in it, but I was the one refusing to listen to him so I hold the most guilt."
"I don't think you do," Meadowbrook replied while soothing the pegasus' back gently while looking over to Starswirl with a small smile. "I am a healer, we healers take oaths to never refuse healing any creature no matter how evil, good, big or small. We never pick sides--even in wars--but I broke my code, I didn't listen to Stygian which is essentially, breaking my code--I picked a side,"
They were silent from the admission, but Starswirl didn't look convinced, if anything, he looked guiltier.
"You just proved it was without a doubt my fault." He said while looking at the floor. "I convinced you all that he had taken them--which he did--but I never asked him why he did it, and when he tried to explain I told him I didn't want to hear it. I forced you, unknowingly, to pick a side,"
"It's not you're fault, Starswirl, I was the one who loved him, I should have been able to see that he would never do something like that without a reason. I should have told you to be quiet and urged him to speak his mind," Somnambula spoke while picking at her waffles.
Starswirl was about to retort when Spike asked if he wanted breakfast.
"Starswirl, you want breakfast, there are pancakes or waffles?" Spike asked while showing the old wizard the display.
"Oh, I usually don't eat breakfast but those waffles look appetizing, thank you, Spike," he kindly spoke and took a seat.
Cadance shot the dragon a grateful look as well as the others who noticed what he had done.
The breakfast continued without a hitch and the Element Bearers still hadn't gotten out of bed which wasn't unusual, but it was a bit suspicious of Applejack. Spike had gone to her room but found a note on the front door that she had left for the farm.
They talked to one another, sharing stories and experiences. It was very pleasant but there was one alicorn that wanted to have a question asked, but she didn't want to dampen the mood so she tried to suppress it the best she could. However, luck wouldn't be in her favour because Meadowbrook noticed the look the young alicorn had on her face.
"Is something wrong, princess?" She asked while looking worried. Cadance cursed her bad blank expression.
"It's nothing to concern yourselves with," she tried half-heartedly but as expected she was met with protests.
"Nonsense princess, you can tell or ask us anything!" Magnus spoke with confidence that showered over to the other Pillars and dragon who were in the room.
Cadance might regret this. She took a deep breath and waited for the backlash.
"I know I'm not the only pony or dragon that noticed that something was amiss. I will ask you all plainly but you do not have to answer." She told them firmly and glanced at all of them who sported worried looks. "Is Stygian... the Pony Of Shadows?"
The silence itself was the answer. They all froze and felt their blood turn to ice, par Somnambula who didn't react. If anything, it looked as though she expected the question. No pony or dragon said anything as they waited for something to happen. But the pony who spoke up surprised them.
"Yes,"
Everypony and dragon turned to Somnambula who played with her food. She didn't seem fazed by the eyes that landed on her. The pegasus met Cadance's eyes and tried her best to not let out a sob.
"After we... kicked him to the curb, he met some sort of entity that is known as Pony Of Shadows. It is so ancient that it was forgotten by the ponies that it had even existed. Stygian--I don't know how--met the Pony and became... fussed together. He came back to our castle and... banished us to Limbo," Somnambula's explanation wasn't anything new for the other five Pillars, but for Cadance and Spike who had their suspicions, it relieved them but also terrified them that they were right.
"So I was right, he is Pony Of Shadows... Is that why you shouted that he wasn't evil?" Spike asked while drinking a cup of tea.
Somnambula nodded. "Indeed. Even if the rest of Equestria see him as a monster, he will always be my Stygian--the unicorn I know and love,"
The others smiled sad smiles as they saw Somnambula have a grin, albeit small, grace her lips. However, just as quickly as it appeared, it vanished.
"Probably the reason why I shouldn't try to find him," she answered to every pony's shock.
"What?!"
"I would only get in the way," Somnambula argued. "I would allow my emotions to get in the way. What if Stygian's hatred is so great that he fires a lethal spell at me while I try to talk to him? I would be a hindrance."
The others lowered their heads and were ready to believe it until there was a chuckle. They turned to Cadance who had suddenly started to laugh uncontrollably, much to their confusion and Somnambula's irritation. She laughed for a good minute before she managed to calm down.
"Sorry for laughing, I know it isn't a laughing matter, but I do not believe you're emotions will be a hindrance, If anything, it will aid you when you confront Stygian," Cadance spoke and noticed the surprise glimmer in the pegasus' eyes. "You see, love and hate are two of the strongest emotions imaginable that know no bounds. You have proven to me that your love has no bounds. Stygian may be the Pony Of Shadows and maybe have done some evil things, but you don't see that, you still see Stygian, the unicorn you love and want to be with. Your love will help you redeem Stygian."
Somnambula felt something tugging in her heart when she heard that.
"No offence, princess," Magnus began, drawing attention to himself. "I do believe every word you just said, but how do you expect us to do that when Stygian has an army that will follow his orders to a T? We can not fight against them. During our time in Limbo, a few soldiers of his ended up there and they told us about Stygian's kingdom."
"He rules a kingdom?" Cadance asked surprised, and tilted her head.
"Yes, although, we do not know where exactly. The only thing we do know is that the kingdom is made entirely out of darkness," the Pegasus warrior explained while stretching his wings. "From the conversations, I had with them, they seem to be very strong and resilient, they won't be knocked out by a simple hoof to the face."
Spike looked thoughtful at this.
A kingdom made entirely out of darkness...
"Magnus... I must ask this; was King Sombra--the tyrannical ruler of the Crystal Empire--a subject of Stygian's?" Cadance looked at Spike, mouth agape at the surprising question.
Starswirl looked thoughtful for a second. "There's a small possibility that he is. King Sombra's origins have always been shrouded in mystery no pony has ever seen his cutie mark except for one creature allegedly, a mare named Radiant Hope, but other than her no creature else."
"King Sombra could have come from Stygian's kingdom and was dumped in the outskirts of the empire to infiltrate it..."
The Pillars' eyes widened. Had Pony Of Shadows strategically planned an invasion longer than they had imagined? Had Stygian been using King Sombra as a test?
Cadance realised the severity of the situation and began to write a letter to Celestia and Luna. The potential threat had suddenly become a very dangerous threat to the kingdom of Equestria.
Somnambula's eyes had widened slightly, but she still didn't look surprised. The lack of reaction was making Meadowbrook worried.
"Why should we be worried? I mean... we hurt him, shouldn't we allow him to rule? Maybe I can confess my feelings to him..." Somnambula got lost in her thoughts. The others looked at the pegasus in shock.
"What...?" Meadowbrook whispered out while her pupils shrunk to pinpricks. "Somnambula! We cannot allow him to hurt other ponies because of what we did! I have no problems with him hating us and even punishing us, but involving other ponies and creatures that have no idea that we once existed isn't the answer. They shouldn't have to be punished for something we did,"
Somnambula didn't reply. She finished the last of her food and got up from her chair and left the kitchen but stopped by the threshold.
"Maybe, but I wouldn't mind living in darkness if it meant redeeming myself in his eyes," with those words spoken, she left for her room. |
The Kingdom Of Darkness | CH.6. Fortified Defences | After Somnambula had walked away from the kitchen, she had seen the Element Bearers make their way to the kitchen when she greeted them and told them to enjoy their breakfast. She could tell that they looked confused when they had seen her look gloomy but she told them that she thought about Stygian which wasn't a lie.
Luckily, Applejack wasn't there to detect that there was missing.
She explored the castle and enjoyed the many different rooms and sceneries it offered. It was fascinating that those seeds she and her friends had planted could turn into this.
The purple crystal walls were adorned with fabric that resembled the Elements Of Harmony and showcased what Somnambula assumed were their battles against different foes over the last few years.
There was a black-coated alicorn being defeated by the six mares. Then there was Lord Discord and she couldn't help but giggle at this. It seems like her friends' shenanigans caught up to him. When she continued to glance over she wasn't surprised to see Queen Chrysalis being defeated by Princess Cadance and who she assumed was her husband. She wasn't surprised when she saw King Sombra being banished either from the Crystal Empire--his darkness knew no bounds. The final villain she saw was Lord Tirek who she knew was the brother of Scorpan who was once friends with Starswirl.
While looking over at all of this, she couldn't help but fear what Applejack had said.
"Don't worry, mah friends and I shall slay the Pony once and for all!"
It didn't sit well with her. She spoke of Stygian as if he was a monster. Stygian wasn't a monster, he was just misunderstood! Sure, he had committed acts a villain would do, but every pony has done something like that at least once in their life.
Somnambula should know. She didn't listen to him when he needed her the most.
What terrified her was that there was a significant possibility that he would end up on one of these pieces of fabric, showing that the Element Bearers defeated Stygian--making him look like any regular villain who had no feelings for other creatures.
The orange-coated pegasus felt a small force of anger rush through her veins. No pony had any right to criticise Stygian. They didn't know what he had gone through, what the Pillars had done to him, and what led him to become the dreaded Pony Of Shadows that rules his kingdom somewhere outside of Equestria.
Looking away from the fabrics and walking ahead, she followed a red mat that stretched into every room and corner with decorations such as vases and small tables and a few couches to rest.
There weren't many portraits but did stumble upon a few depicting Equestria during the princesses' reign. The alicorn sisters stood together, one half depicting the sun and the other moon. There were ponies below them, bowing in respect.
Somnambula smiled. She pictured herself together with Stygian in such a way. Not with ponies bowing, but just her and Stygian smiling together.
There were many times they had been offered to take portraits together, but they never took an opportunity because they didn't have the time or they were doing different things. The few times they did have time didn't work due to them wanting to spend time off duty and enjoy themselves.
She hung her head as she trotted to the end of the hallway and turned left.
Somnambula deeply regretted now what she wouldn't do to look at a portrait with the two of them. It would put some of her mind at ease.
After she felt satisfied with her exploration, she made her way to her room where she lay down in bed and started to think about what to do next. There wasn't much she could do and after the breakfast, she wondered what the other Pillars thought of her. Did they blame her? Were they suspicious of her?
The latter wouldn't be surprising. She knew that Stygian had done some terrible things with that entity, but she didn't know how far those terrible things stretched. For all she knew, he could have gone as far as to wrongfully imprison a creature.
...There was, however, one thing that did worry her.
While the Pillars and Element Bearers may not say it to her for fear of her having a breakdown, she knew deep down that there was a possibility that Stygian had... killed.
She gulped. Somnambula knew there were possibilities of it happening because he was a king of his kingdom, and like many Kings with egos, they tend to erase the "unfit" creatures that didn't fit into their ideal society.
Somnambula didn't know if Stygian had ever gone so far, or if he will, but it was a possibility they will have to consider. She sighed and turned over to smash her face against the pillow.
"How can I help Stygian if I'm only a hindrance to the others?" She asked herself with a frown. She wasn't convinced by Princess Cadances' explanation that Stygian liked her as well and would listen to her.
The hatred from that day was burned into her memories like a tattoo, a reminder of what she and the others had done and spoken of him. How could he like her the same way she did, when he hated her for what happened to him? There was no way he would ever listen to her. It was sad, but it was reality.
Slowly, Somnambula began to fall asleep, the darkness enveloping her in a tight hug. Just before she could drift off, however, there was a knock on her door. Mentally groaning, she got off the bed and trotted to the door.
"Who is it?" She called out while rubbing her eyes with her hoof.
"It's me, Mistmane, can I come in?" Mistmane asked kindly. Somnambula opened the door which revealed her aged friend who looked at the orange-coated pegasus in concern.
"Good morning, Mistmane," Somnambula smiled kindly. "Did you sleep well?"
"Yes, I did," the mare replied with a smile of her own but the worried look soon came back to her eyes. "But I heard that you had an... episode this morning, are you alright, dear?"
Somnambula sighed and urged her friend inside and closed the door quietly behind the unicorn mare. Mistmane sat on the floor and Somnambula took her place, facing the mare with the rare mane and tail that flows similar to Princess Celestia and Princess Luna.
"I had a good sleep this morning," Somnambula began and had a small smile that Mistmane took notice of. "It... was a dream but I hope that it becomes real someday. It was the wedding of Stygian and I."
Mistmane giggled with her hoof to her mouth. "I can imagine why you had good sleep, It's your biggest dream isn't it?"
Somnambula nodded her head. "Yeah, Princess Cadance came for breakfast--which I'm sure you noticed--" Mistmane nodded her head. "She had questions about Stygian and I and I replied to all of them but then came the question about the identity of the Pony Of Shadows,"
Mistmane winced.
"I'm sure she didn't mean to hurt you, dear," Mistmane reasoned while stroking Somnambula's arm with her hoof.
"Oh, no, she didn't insult me I..." the pegasus lowered her head. "...said something I shouldn't have,"
When the tears in her eyes welled up, Mistmane was about to move over but the pegasus held up her hoof.
"I... when they spoke about the Kingdom Stygian rules, I started to feel the dark thoughts cloud my mind and I... I told them that I wouldn't mind living under his rule if it meant redeeming myself in his eyes," Somnambula admitted and sobbed, embracing Mistmane who still had a hoof stretched.
"Oh, Somnambula dear, none of this is your fault. It's the sadness that grabbed a hold of you," Mistmane soothed. "I cannot guarantee that we will ever earn his forgiveness, but I promise you that I will do everything I can to help Stygian turn away from the darkness."
Despite her generous words, Somnambula couldn't help but feel as though they were empty--like they were empty promises. She didn't voice this, it would be completely unjustified after the unicorn had gone out of her way to listen and talk to her.
"I hope so, I still remember the look he gave me," Somnambula spoke while allowing her tears to fall.
"I know sweetie, I know," Mistmane replied.
After Somnambula was finished with her crying, she went over to apply more mascara while Mistmane checked her mane and admired it. She was one of the very few ponies in old and new Equestria that had a flowing mane, this was something she took great pride in.
"Are the others... unhappy with me?" Somnambula carefully asked while feeling shame overcome her when she realised what she had said and done.
"No, they're just worried about you, Rockhoof wanted to check on you but I suggested that perhaps you needed some 'mare time' so I came here," Mistmane spoke while observing the pegasus. "Princess Celestia and Luna are here, I saw Meadowbrook speak with them along with Princess Twilight,"
"No doubt to send me to an institution!" Somnambula tried to joke but saw the disapproving gaze of Mistmane. "Sorry."
"It's okay, you're trying to deal with the pain... but in the wrong way," Mistmane admitted
"Yeah..." the orange-coated mare gave herself a once-over before she was satisfied and trotted to the throne room together with Mistmane while talking about their worries such as their home--particularly if their homes were still existing and standing or if they had vanished through time.
When they reached the throne room, they saw the Element Bearers sitting on their thrones while a white-coated alicorn with a rainbow-flowing mane and tail spoke with an elegant voice. She was facing Princess Twilight and Meadowbrook while the others chatted animatedly with one another. The second alicorn was a dark-blue-coated mare with a mane flowing but with stars shining in them. The alicorn with the star-flowing mane spoke with Magnus about something, the pegasus looked relaxed and calm which was unlike him in many ways.
Because of his soldier background, he was always stiff and saw anything and everything as enemies. That was before he met Stygian and joined the Pillars, but even if he had gained a few friends, he was still stiff. Now, however, he seemed relaxed as if there was nothing to worry about.
Rainbow Dash was sitting beside the stallion while she listened to whatever he was speaking of.
Rarity and Applejack--who had finished her chores at the farm--were speaking with Rockhoof and Starswirl.
"I don't think I have ever seen him this relaxed," Somnambula commented while watching the soldier pegasus speak with the Princess of the night.
"Yes, I agree," Mistmane observed. "I wish he would relax more, that stiffness cannot be good for his muscles,"
Without warning, a third voice spoke up. "I agree, I have tried to tell him he needs to relax but he never listens to me,"
The unicorn and pegasus jumped. They turned and saw Meadowbrook who had the decency to blush. "Sorry dears, I didn't mean to frighten you,"
"It's okay Meadowbrook," Mistmane replied while holding a hoof to her heart. "I think my heart is falling back to the right place,"
Somnambula looked down to the floor and circled the beautiful crystal. "Listen, Meadowbrook--"
"I forgive you," Meadowbrook replied shocking the pegasus who hadn't even begun her speech. "I know you had another... episode."
At that comment, Somnambula hung her head but was surprised when she felt a pair of hooves hug her. She knew the strength belonged to Meadowbrook. The hug lasted a while until the hooves went away. The Pillar of Healing smiled at the orange-coated pegasus.
"I know you miss him, we all do, but..." Meadowbrook looked down, unsure of what to say to the heartbroken mare. "...we cannot allow any pony to suffer the consequences over something we did. It happened over a thousand years ago. I read a few books about us and there is only very small mention of him. It only said he brought us together and that he was an academic and then disappeared--essentially,"
"...And when and If he invades, the ones deserving of it would have perished from the age of time," Somnambula answered which gained her surprised looks, but they nodded in agreement.
"Yes," Meadowbrook replied. "...But I do understand why you would have been okay with it," this gained a startled look from the Pillar of Hope. "I too, feel guilty. If living under darkness would have been redemption in his eyes, I would have willingly lived in his Kingdom. But we can't. You saw that... parchment we received, we cannot allow Pony Of Shadows to potentially invade Equestria and enslave all creatures living here,"
Somnambula lowered her head. "I'm sorry, but I refuse to believe that he would enslave any creature," her words didn't hold anger or malice, just... sadness. Sadness that belonged to a broken mare.
Mistmane hugged the pegasus. "You have every right to, we don't know for sure if the Pony would or will do something like that, but we cannot ignore what the parchment says,"
"...I know, I am willing to admit that Stygian may have... killed... some pony or creature, but enslaving them is..." Somnambula couldn't find the right words, or rather, refused to say them due to fear gripping at her like claws from w feathery-winged creature.
Both the Pillars of Beauty and Healing looked at the mare, stunned by what she had said. They never would have believed that Somnambula would say--willingly--that Stygian may or may not have killed. Whenever they would say that specifically Rockhoof or Magnus, she was the first pony to throw a punch.
When she saw the shocked expression, she flashed them a sad smile. "I just have to learn to accept the truth. There is a possibility that he has... done such an act. A thousand years is a long time,"
"Indeed," replied a voice making the mares turn towards Princess Luna who had trotted up to them, speaking just as elegantly as her sister but with a small hint of harshness but in a beautiful way. "A thousand years is a very long time. Many ponies lose to insanity after living over a hundred years--and I don't speak of old age and disease,"
The three mares glanced at Starswirl who was now sitting down and drinking tea while sporting a gloomy look on his facial features.
"It must have been difficult for him," Meadowbrook spoke with sadness while wiping a tear from her eye. "Living a thousand years, seeing his loved ones age up and perish before his eyes while not being able to move on to the next life. Any pony would turn insane."
Princess Luna nodded while also sporting a look of grief.
"He was Celestia and I's mentor, he taught us everything we knew, without him we would be lost... but I became lost down the road anyways," She looked guilt-ridden and ashamed. "But today isn't about the past, today is about the defences."
"Defences?" Meadowbrook tilted her head.
Luna sighed. "Due to the potential threat of the Pony Of Shadows, we have no choice but to increase our defences. We have strong royal guards, but they have never faced a genuine kingdom that is a threat and I am ashamed to say; I am a little embarrassed by them,"
Mistmane wasn't sure what to feel about that. "What do you mean 'feel embarrassed by them'?"
"I mean what I said; I feel embarrassed by the fact they are royal guards. They carry Celestia and I's seal on their chest and yet, they are easily defeated by the foes we've had to face. On one hoof it's good because it means there's peace, but on another hoof, it's bad because they will get lazy and never need to use their weapons. So when the enemy comes..."
They understood what the Princess meant.
"So, what are the precautions you will be taking?" Meadowbrook curiously asked while looking over at the other ponies and dragon, in the room chatting and drinking beverages.
"We are just about to discuss it now," Luna said and trotted away from them and approached her sister and whispered something into the older alicorn's ear. Princess Celestia turned to face all the ponies and dragon, in the room and called out to them with the help of a spell, drawing their attention to her. When she had their attention, she cancelled the spell and smiled at them.
"Thank you all for being here, first of all, I want to congratulate the Pillars of Equestria for their escape from Limbo. I cannot imagine having to suffer such a terrible fate." The Pillars looked gloomy at the mention of their former predicament. "I also want to thank Applejack for being brave and giving the warning to her friends even if it was just a very realistic dream." The Apple farmer blushed at the compliment. "Finally, I want to thank the Pillars once again, for warning us of the Pony Of Shadows, I do not know who this Pony is or were, but I will assure you all, that my sister and I, shall find a way to help aid you in battle. I am willing to step off the throne and join in battle if need be."
This caused a lot of gasps throughout the room, mainly from the new Element Bearers and Twilight. The Pillars and Starswirl didn't seem too surprised, but that could be because it was the first time seeing her--par Starswirl.
Luna was another pony who didn't seem surprised by this, but it could be because she was already informed of Celestia's decision.
"What?! But princess! You are one of the rulers of Equestria! You're too important to join a battle!" Twilight reasoned, her expression still holding a shocked look.
Celestia quirked a brow at her. "How am I, 'too important to join a battle'? Last I checked, Princess Twilight Sparkle, it was my sister and I, that had no choice but to face the villains you have faced over the years. We had no choice but to fight them hoof to hoof or claw. So why would now be any different than it was a thousand years ago?"
The others felt the tension rising in the room, Princess Cadance, who had hidden herself in the back of the room out of view from them couldn't help but frown at her aunt and sister-in-law.
She understood both sides of the story. Twilight wanted to protect Princess Celestia due to not having faced a battle in the last thousand years. Celestia, though, knows how to take care of herself and fight, so Twilight saying that she was 'too important' made it seem like Celestia either A had gotten lazy or B had never fought a day in her life which wasn't true.
"Sister, she didn't mean to insult you," Luna tried to calm her sister while looking over at Twilight who had flinched at her mentors' tone.
"Insult her...? I didn't insult her! I... I simply believe that she shouldn't deal with this because..." Twilight trailed off and looked at her friends who gaped at her.
They had never seen or heard of Twilight disagreeing with Princess Celestia. Ever. This was new to them and she was showing a side to themselves that they weren't sure they liked. At least she didn't mean to insult or be rude.
"Because what?" Celestia prompted while looking directly at Twilight who was still looking at her friends.
"...because you haven't battled in over a thousand years..." Twilight had turned to meet Celestia's gaze for a split second before lowering her head, admitting why she didn't want to see the Princess of the Sun in battle.
The room was deathly silent. It was so quiet, a graveyard could have been Pinkie Pie's loudest party. The Element Bearers and the Pillars were wise for keeping quiet, mostly for fear of adding fuel to the fire. Starswirl wanted to intervene, but he was only the mentor of Celestia and Luna, even then, he held no authority over what his former students did with their students.
Princess Luna kept her blank face in place while sipping on tea as she watched her sister also sport the blank look. Cadance, who was still hidden from view now understood Twilight's reasonings but she didn't agree with her sister-in-law.
"Warrior skills are not something you forget easily," Magnus murmured to himself but everypony and dragon heard him. They turned to face him, but Celestia didn't stop looking at Twilight.
"Certainly not, it would take many moons before all those skills are forgotten, even then, the brain can still remember the patterns so you can relearn easily," Luna spoke with some pride, being the most prominent warrior of the two sisters.
"Yes, I agree," Celestia said curtly, making the room flinch par Luna who was used to that way of speaking.
"Look, Princess--" Twilight tried but was interrupted by a raised hoof from Celestia.
"Princess Twilight Sparkle," Celestia began making the lilac-coated mare sweat. "I understand why you are worried and have every right to be, but I am not above any pony or creature. I am just as killable as any pony or dragon in this room. The difference, however, is that I do have experience in battle. I have fought many wars--big and small and have either come out victorious or licked my wound and pride. I wouldn't suggest joining a battle or war If I didn't believe it warranted it." Twilight felt her heart beat faster and her stomach was rolling. "This, for the first time in a thousand years, warrants my battle armour,"
The other ponies and dragon gulped, even Luna.
"Yes Princess Celestia, sorry about earlier," Twilight apologised with a bow.
Somnambula was intrigued by the fact the royal sisters were warriors. Had they fought against King Sombra? Maybe they had maybe they hadn't. But it was fascinating that two royals could fight like warriors it made her think about Stygian. Had the unicorn she knew and loved been training his warriors? Was he a warrior?
There was the sound of fake coughing which made Somnambula lose her daydream and was brought back to reality and saw Celestia look over at them once more.
"With that out of the way," Celestia eyed Twilight. "I would like to inform you all that there will be a major increase in military activity. There will be bases all over Equestria, even in the most dangerous of areas," the others looked shocked. This was no joking matter. "Because of the heightened activity, I must apologise, there will naturally be an increased tax rate which I know will bother a lot of ponies." The Element Bearers grimaced and looked a bit annoyed. "But this will only be until we have cleared the threat of the Pony Of Shadows, I do not know how long the increased tax and military activity will last, it could be five weeks, months or even years."
Somnambula fidgeted in her seat while Meadowbrook spoke soothing words into her ear.
"Princess Celestia?" Rainbow Dash asked while her hoof raised while she hovered in the air.
"Yes, Rainbow Dash?" The princess asked while motioning for her to continue.
"Well, I was just wondering if you planned on sending any pony out on a search party," Rainbow asked which gained her a confused look. "I mean, shouldn't we try to locate the Pony Of Shadows? We know he has an army and If he has an army there is a chance--but isn't guaranteed--that Pony Of Shadows rules a Kingdom of some kind. If we know where he resides, then we can observe them,"
Everypony and dragon stared at Rainbow Dash blankly. It was a good idea, but... it was risky.
"Well, he does have a Kingdom, lassie," Rockhoof confirmed with a nod in her direction. "But we don't know where it's located, and even if we did know, it would be far too dangerous to venture into enemy territory."
Somnambula was about to scoff but held back.
"And there is also a major possibility that we'll be killed due to Pony's orders," Somnambula said, getting the urge to speak after holding back a scoff. The Pillars--par Mistmane--looked surprised by this. She was the last pony they believed would say it.
"...Yes that is something we also have to consider," Magnus acknowledged while stretching his wings that had grown stiff.
Princess Celestia would admit that she never once thought about sending any pony or creature to find the hidden Kingdom. Now though, because Rainbow Dash had pointed out something that could be of use to not just her, but the Equestrian Kingdom as a whole, she was considering sending a few troops just to look over the Kingdom... if they can find it.
"Miss Rainbow Dash," Celestia called, grabbing every pony and dragon's attention with her elegant voice. "I will admit, I never thought of sending any creature out because... well because of fear. You see, what would happen If I send troops that get lost or caught by a Kingdom that has nothing to do with Pony? We could make the mistake of thinking that they are the Kingdom Of Darkness and go to war with them only to later find out that it wasn't them. How do you think they would perceive Equestria?"
Almost all ponies and dragon nodded. Almost.
"Princess Celestia," the old sorcerer in the room called out, making every pony and dragon face the bearded wizard. "No offence to you, but you are looking at a worst-case scenario that may or may not be likely to happen. What you're describing is a very big mistake that can cost more than repair."
The hidden Cadance nodded her head in agreement, what her aunt described was a little... extreme.
Celestia for her part, looked thoughtful before she adopted a sheepish look. She had jumped to the worst-case scenario.
"Thank you, mentor, for keeping me grounded," Celestia spoke with gratitude. "Or try to,"
Starswirl chuckled. "My pleasure,"
"But as it stands, it is a possibility, but that is the outcome I pray to the God's won't happen. I meant what I said earlier, I am indeed afraid of Pony Of Shadows because I have never fought against such a creature before." Celestia admitted to them with her head hung low.
Luna took this chance to speak up. "I for one, am more terrified of you're former friend, mentor. Was it, not Stygian who managed to cast a spell that sent the rest of the Pillars to Limbo?"
The Pillars grew uncomfortable under the princesses' gaze. Her look held no emotion or scrutiny, but it held power. The only one not fazed was Starswirl.
"Yes, that is indeed true, however, I don't know if you remember this; there were no laws against such spells back then, him casting them into Limbo wasn't illegal because there were no laws of the sort back then. Today, I'm sure there have been law changes." The sorcerer explained.
Luna didn't look or seem satisfied with the explanation, but she didn't object or refute his claims.
"How about a vote?" Spoke a voice they had forgotten was there. They turned their gaze towards Cadance who was hidden in the corner and observed them with interest. "If the majority vote to stay in Equestria, we'll stay here and prepare the rest of the defences. If the Majority vote to find the Kingdom Of Darkness, then the Pillars, Element Bearers and Spike shall venture out and search for the Kingdom that has been under our radar for who knows how long,"
The Pillars looked at one another, holding conversations with their eyes. Somnambula didn't hear the end of Cadance's speech before she made up her mind on finding Stygian's kingdom. The Element Bearers looked uncertain whether they should go or not.
Princess Celestia and Luna liked the idea and decided to vote for the decision. Celestia ordered to raise their hooves for those who wanted to stay in Equestria. Princess Celestia, Luna and Twilight raised their hooves at this with a hoof from Fluttershy and Rarity. When they voted for trying to find the Kingdom, the majority had their hooves and claw up, signalling that they would search for the kingdom.
"Okay, because you succeeded with the voting, the ones that want to find the Kingdom shall find it." Celestia declared with formality in her voice which made them nod in agreement. That was fair.
"Now, I must excuse myself, but I am needed back in Canterlot. I will be making preparations for the potential threat. Princess Twilight, can I trust that you set up a base of operations for the royal guards?" Celestia asked, turning her head to the lilac-coated mare that nodded.
"No problem, Princess, consider it done," Twilight fidgeted slightly. She couldn't tell if the Princess was still upset with her or if she had moved past it.
"Thank you, Luna, I shall see you in Canterlot," Celestia said and walked out of the throne room, leaving the rest behind her. Luna had bowed when Celestia passed her.
Somnambula observed as the princess left, leaving them behind to chat and come up with other ideas they need. First things first, they needed a map, which they had in the throne room, the same room they were in right now. With it, they could potentially find out where Stygian might be holed up.
The orange-coated pegasus trotted up to the map and observed the many different towns and cities she had heard of and was glad still existed and then there were others she had never heard of.
The towns and cities she had never heard of held her interest for a while until her eyes traced the outlines of the map, trying to find the different Kingdoms outside Equestria which wasn't difficult to do. She saw the Crystal Empire, Yakyakistan, Griffinstone, the Dragon Lands and Badlands.
'I will find you, Stygian,' Somnambula thought as she looked over to a far reach of the map. The others didn't see it, but there was a small circular mist covering the small piece. |
The Kingdom Of Darkness | CH.7. "Secret" Revealed | Somnambula was sitting crossed-legged on the floor with her eyes closed breathing in and out, slowly. Meditation had been a big part of everyday life in her homeland. It was so common, that they were always surprised that other creatures didn't know about it.
Being raised to meditate for hours a day, Somnambula couldn't help but feel the need to do it. It wasn't as if she was forcing herself to do something she didn't want. It was a habit from her foalhood that would never die, no matter how hard she would try.
However, while she was meditating, she couldn't help but see distorted images of Stygian. Distorted images showed hatred towards her.
Inside her mind, she stood a few feet away from Stygian. She felt relief seeing him in his wonderful state, the unicorn she had fallen in love with. He smiled at her. The same smile that made her tummy roll. She smiled widely and was about to run over to hug him when she noticed something peculiar.
The darkness around them wasn't... normal.
She knew her eyes were closed but something about this darkness felt unnatural. She looked past Stygian but saw nothing. Just endless darkness that didn't have a beginning or an end.
She looked above her. Same thing as before.
Somnambula looked over to Stygian again and almost shrieked. Stygian still stood in place, but instead of a smile was a sadistic grin that stretched disturbingly far on his face. His teeth were visible with sharp teeth and some drool leaking from his mouth.
Slowly from beneath him, a shadowy mist emerged like a small tornado and latched onto Stygian and slowly consumed him all the while, Stygian was grinning wider. His eye colour and pupils began to disappear, being replaced by the pure white menacing look that terrified her every night.
His horn was replaced by a longer, sharper horn that could cut bone like butter. To add a final touch to the distorted image, 'Stygian' showed a pair of skeletal wings with no feathers on them.
"You banished me from friendship, I'll banish you permanently!!" The distorted Stygian shouted and cast a spell on her.
Somnambula screamed at the top of her lungs and looked around her room. A few seconds later, the Pillars and Element Bearers busted down the door, Rockhoof in charge with his trusty shovel and looked all around the room.
"What's going on, lassie?!" He demanded while looking all over the room for an intruder. Meadowbrook kneeled before Somnambula and embraced her in a hug.
"I...I..." She didn't know what to speak. Rockhoof calmed down while he looked to his fiance and friend hugging, waiting for the Pillar of Hope to speak.
Somnambula saw the concerned faces of all her friends and Element Bearers. She knew she couldn't play it off as nothing. With a heavy heart, she told them what happened.
"I was meditating when I began to think of Stygian. Everything was normal at first, but I started to look around the darkness and realised that it didn't feel natural. I looked past him and above me, but I couldn't pinpoint what was wrong. I stared back at Stygian and I shrieked. I saw a grin on his face, not a kind grin, a very... disturbing grin. Later I saw a dark mist in the form of a small tornado latch onto him and turned him into the... Pony Of Shadows!"
Somnambula began to sob into Meadowbrooks shoulder who could only hug her. She allowed a few tears to fall. The other Pillars lowered their heads.
Because of them, not only did they ruin Somnambula's chances of love, but they also indirectly turned Stygian into an evil King. Magnus landed on his hooves and trotted away from Somnambula's room which went unnoticed by all except Mistmane who followed him.
The Element Bearers were worried for the Pillar of Hope, especially Pinkie Pie who trotted forward and hugged the mare with such gentleness that it could rival Fluttershy. The room was silent as the orange-coated pegasus cried her eyes out.
When Somnambula calmed down she wiped away her tears. Her eyes were red a puffy she looked over to her saddle bag that was packed and ready. Could she really do this? Was she ready to find Stygian and confront him?
She mentally slapped herself. Of course, she was ready! She didn't spend a thousand years in Limbo just to come out and not even see Stygian all because she grew a little emotional.
"Sorry about that," She murmured quietly. "It was just my imagination. I seem to be out-of-touch with meditation."
"Hey, it's not you're fault, it could have happened to any pony or dragon," Meadowbrook soothingly said.
"She's right, las, you shouldn't feel ashamed of yerself simply because you saw a distorted image from yer imagination. I've had a few of them back in the day," Rockhoof unashamedly admitted.
Somnambula smiled slightly. She knew her friends were right, but she gave them a false alarm. They thought that she was in danger.
"I know, but I screamed so loud you must have thought Pony Of Shadows had come to kidnap me or something," Somnambula said while she hung her head. "But I wouldn't have minded if it happened." She murmured so no pony would hear.
"If you want dear, I can brew you a dreamless potion if you need it?" Meadowbrook suggested while rubbing her hoof on the pegasus' back.
"Oh, no, we just packed I don't want you wasting ingredients on me," Somnambula tried but failed to convince the healer who smiled sadly at her.
"Dear, the potion isn't difficult to mix, it is a very quick one compared to others. I'll have a batch ready in twenty minutes. Besides, we'll need it for the travel." Meadowbrook said and looked over to the other ponies and dragon in the room who nodded in agreement.
Somnambula noticed that Twilight was looking at her with a tilted head. One of confusion.
"Somnambula, why would you think that Stygian would be the Pony Of Shadows, or is it a horrible thought?" The alicorn asked with her head still tilted.
Pinkie and Spike stared at her in disbelief while Fluttershy looked a bit scared. Rainbow and Applejack stared at her incredulously. Now wasn't the time to ask such a question, it was insensitive.
"Do you honestly not know?" Spike asked with a little sarcasm that accidentally seeped into his voice and crossed his arms.
"Yeah, Twilight, by now you should have found out the truth it's clear as day already. There are six chapters of this fanfiction and you've solved mysteries with far less!" Pinkie pointed out while pulling out a cupcake from her mane and popped it inside her mouth.
They stared at her in confusion and she facepalmed. "Sorry, I meant seven counting this one,"
Twilight didn't know how to respond to that so she shrugged it off. "Well, would you care to enlighten me?" She asked and looked to Spike.
Somnambula bit her lower lip. She knew that this conversation would happen sooner or later but she had hoped to wait a bit so she could reveal it but now she was backed into a corner. It wasn't as if she was trying to hide the information from them, but it was getting difficult when they continued to talk more and more about Pony Of Shadows and Stygian as separate entities.
...Well, to some extent, they are.
Somnambula saw that Spike was about to respond but she spoke quickly and loudly before the secret was revealed. "What he means is that the answer is obvious."
Everypony and dragon turned to her with confusion. The Pillars were surprised by her response. 'Is... she going to say it?' Starswirl thought with shock.
Twilight quirked a brow. "What do you mean?"
Somnambula took a deep breath. "The answers you seek are right in front of you. In the memories I grew angry at Miss Applejack for stating that only evil creatures could corrupt the seeds of friendship The Pillars and I had planted so long ago. I said; 'Stygian is not evil!' and when we got to the topic of Pony Of Shadows, I subtly glared at Rockhoof for speaking of the Pony in such a way. When Miss Applejack said she would slay the Pony, I shouted 'No don't hurt him, he's not evil!!' Why would I say that?"
There was silence in the room. You could hear a pin drop. Rockhoof, Meadowbrook and Starswirl looked to the floor as guilt flooded them like a river. The Element Bearers looked a bit surprised but soon, Twilight and Applejack felt their stomach flip.
"Wait you're saying..." Twilight couldn't finish her sentence. She prayed to Celestia she was wrong.
Somnambula hid her expression behind her bangs. "You do not learn magic that quickly--sending ponies into Limbo."
The Element Bearers gasped, except Rainbow Dash who looked at them confused.
"Uh, I'm missing something," she said while looking around. Rarity was the one that replied.
"Darling, the Pony Of Shadows is... Stygian," the fashionista now understood why the Pillar of Hope always looked guilty. It wasn't just that she failed as a friend and love interest, but she felt guilty for losing that pony to something so... dark.
Rainbow Dash looked confused for a split second before her pupils turned to pinpricks. "Wait... the Pony Of Shadows is real and Stygian is the threat we've been discussing?"
Somnambula noticed how the purple-scaled dragon grabbed the side of his head in frustration and walked out of the room. She could have sworn she heard him mutter along the lines of; "never listening" and "head filled with air,"
She took note of Pinkie Pie--the pony who represented her Element in modern Equestria--being in a similar state of mind. She, however, voiced her complaints.
"I told you so!" She shouted with a large smile causing everypony to stare at her in wonder.
"What do you mean?" Twilight asked while trying to process the information they just learned.
"I told you that Stygian was the Pony Of Shadows, I told you and voiced my theories but no! You just came up with excuses--but I'll admit, they were good and believable--and never once took into consideration that there was a possibility that Stygian was the Pony Of Shadows!" Pinkie ranted while pulling out a milkshake from who-knows-where. "I told you so!"
Twilight and the other Element Bearers pondered on what the pink-coated mare had said. While it was true that the mare had spoken of the possibility that the unicorn was the dreaded Pony that haunted the lands of Equestria at one period in time, they believed that the Pony was a mere myth.
Twilight started to feel guilty when she realised that she never once considered that it was a possibility, always stating that it was a myth and legend. She had fought myths and legends before, hadn't she? She had faced Nightmare Moon, Discord, King Sombra and Lord Tirek. All of them were believed to be mere myths that never existed. Yet, Twilight and her friends battled against them and won. Discord was even close to ending friendship throughout the land but they pulled through in the end.
Why was it difficult for her to believe that the Pony Of Shadows existed once?
Grogar was a villain from ancient Equestria and there were countless stories of him and depictions of his evil-doing from that time, many scholars are convinced that he roamed Equestria once--Twilight included--but that he either was dead or was trapped somewhere.
If Grogar was believed to have existed, and Twilight believed he existed, then why couldn't she believe Pony also roamed Equestria?
Somnambula decided that they had pondered long enough. "To be fair, Miss Pie, the fault also rest in my friends and I, for not saying that the two ponies are one and the same." She admitted. "I should have told you from the start but I never did and for that, I'm sorry."
Pinkie Pie smiled at her gently and hugged her. "It's alright, It's not easy speaking about the one you love as a villain."
The orange-coated pegasus agreed wholeheartedly.
"Alright, are we all ready to go?" Asked a voice in the hallway which revealed to be Magnus who had returned with Mistmane who looked at the orange-coated pegasus with concern.
Twilight nodded. "Yeah, we're ready but where will we go?"
They all knew that they needed to reach the outskirts of Equestria if they wanted to find the Kingdom, but they had not agreed on where they should start looking. Badlands were a great place to start which they agreed on, but they didn't agree on which directions they should take.
"Well, we could go to a town called Kludgetown," Starswirl replied while stroking his beard while thinking. "It is an unsavoury town I will admit, but you can learn many things there information-wise."
They looked at the old wizard in surprise. He was the last pony on earth they expected to enter an "unsavoury" town. He was the definition of anti-dark magic, and here he just told them that he had been there. Or at least, knew where it was and knew they could learn information there.
"Wow, the great and powerful Starswirl went to a shady town," Magnus commented and then grinned a playful grin. "Are you a dark wizard now?"
Starswirl rolled his eyes. "Haha, very funny. Avada Kedavra!" He loudly spoke the last words.
The ponies there looked at Starswirl confused while Twilight jumped with her hooves in her mouth, trying to conceal her squeal as best she could.
"Ohmigosh!! Ohmigosh!! That's from Harry Trotter!" Twilight explained with a little excitement.
"Indeed it is, I take it you've read them?" Starswirl asked with a large grin, happy that at least one pony understood the joke.
"Oh yes, I read all seven of them!" Twilight excitedly explained. "Fifty-three times!" She added with some glee.
"Well," Somnambula interjected awkwardly. "That's nice and all, but shall we get going or do we need to wait?"
Blushing in embarrassment, Twilight nodded her head. "Yes, and I believe we can all agree that Kludgetown will be our first stop to find information. Sound good to everypony and dragon?"
Everypony nodded their heads and Twilight turned to find Spike but did not see him anywhere. "Has anypony seen Spike?"
"Yeah, he left a few minutes ago in irritation," Pinkie answered usefully as she balanced on a ball she found who-knows-where and looked at Twilight while she stood on her front hoof while the rest of her was balancing.
"Thanks," the alicorn spoke gratefully and left the room to fetch her best friend and number one assistant.
The other ponies in the room conversed while Somnambula gained a distant look in her eye. Meadowbrook noticed and waved a hoof near her face but the orange-coated pegasus was unresponsive.
The others saw what the Healer was doing and looked at her in question until they saw Somnambula's distant look and became worried.
"I wonder how Stygian is doing?" Somnambula rhetorically asked and got up from the floor and trotted to her saddlebags and placed them on her back. She walked over to the window and looked out to see the birds sing their songs and ponies go about their day, not a worry in the world about what was happening outside the kingdom of Equestria.
"I wonder what his military is like. Sure, I spoke to a few that were sent to Limbo, but I wonder who disciplined his military is? They may follow his orders to a T, but how good are they in a conflict?" Magnus spoke excitedly about the possibility of seeing the army he sort of felt depressed but excited because his former friend had created them.
"I'm sure that they are the same as any army around Equus, Magnus," Starswirl answered with wisdom and patted his friend on the back with a smile. "Although, I will admit, I am too, interested in seeing his military."
"I wonder if they have good medicine? If not, I can always try and make as many batches as possible and give it to them. Being a Healer, I've taken oaths to never pick a side in a conflict and In this regard I will not." Meadowbrook admitted and hung her head. "If they accept it that is..."
Starswirl patted her on the back. "I'm sure they will, I apologise that I forced you to make a decision all those years ago,"
"It's okay, It wasn't you're fault. My emotions clouded my judgement." Meadowbrook argued with a small frown on her face.
"I wonder how strong the army is?" Rockhoof wondered thoughtfully.
"Strong enough that you considered Stygian a threat," Somnambula spoke with some bite, still facing the window refusing to look at any of them. The Element Bearers didn't know if they should leave or stay because this was far more personal.
Rockhoof winced at her tone. "Somnambula, It was the Pony Of Shadows that I see as a threat, not Stygian I see them as separate entities."
"And that's the problem!" The pegasus mare finally turned to face her friends and Element Bearers, but her eyes focused solely on the Pillar Of Strength. "You see them as separate entities when they are the same. Will you throw a large boulder on Pony Of Shadows? Will you try to kill the Pony?"
Rockhoof gasped in shock. "Of course not lass! That's still Stygian inside!"
"And yet, you told Miss Applejack that we couldn't allow the Pony to live. You can't I can. I have no problems with Pony existing. Besides, he hasn't created any chaos like my old friend Discord did."
The Element Bearers' eyes' widened in surprise that the Pillar of Hope was friends with Discord. The same Discord that almost ruined their friendship.
"Lass... how much longer until the Pony Of Shadows starts his invasion of Equestria. Starswirl doesn't know where Stygian has been hiding and we are uncertain whether or not he will attack Equestria for something we did a thousand years ago. How can we breathe and sleep easy when Stygian might plan... something," Rockhoof frowned at his words. He didn't want to say them but they needed to be said.
Somnambula sighed. "Fine," she relented, surprising everypony in the room. "But don't expect me to try to banish him or anything."
"We don't expect you to, dear," Mistmane spoke with a sad smile on her face.
"Somnambula," Starswirl spoke, catching her attention. "After what I said to him and refusing to listen, I can guarantee you that I am against the banishment of Stygian. If anything, I'm in your position." He admitted. "I... would have no problems living inside his kingdom as a prisoner if it meant atoning for the sins I committed against him."
"We're... not banishing him are we?" Meadowbrook hesitantly asked and turned to her fiance who shook his head.
"No, I refuse," Rockhoof reassured her. "After what we did, it's the last thing that should be on our minds right now. Instead, I suggest that we head out but first, we need to be prepared."
"Right," Starswirl spoke and summoned his saddlebags and began to check to see if he had everything. "If anypony needs to finish packing, they should do so now."
With that, Meadowbrook cast a last look at Somnambula who smiled at the mare in reassurance and then left the room with the other ponies along with Starswirl, leaving the orange-coated pegasus by herself.
"I love you..." she spoke to the empty room. |
The Kingdom Of Darkness | CH.8. Unforgiving Sun | When Meadowbrook had finished a few of her potions and Twilight had finished some reading and grabbed a few scrolls she had found in the restricted section of the library in the basement, Somnambula found herself walking to the train station.
There wasn't any chatter when they entered the train station other than a few curious stares from the town's ponies and travellers.
The orange-coated pegasus was still fascinated by the new times and the modern buildings she had never seen before even back in ancient times. She'd learned that the Apple family were the founders of Ponyville and had existed for roughly a hundred years and had expanded over the years, multiple ponies from all walks of life moving into the town and creating businesses, houses and apartments. It also helped that the element bearers and a Princess lived in the town.
Somnambula chuckled as she thought about an old friend of her's that was also royalty. Prince Hisan had been the ruler she had once followed, but he was now long gone.
The Prince and Somnambula had become close after the pegasus defeated the sphinx, occasionally going out for formal dinners and sharing drinks. However, it wasn't romantic like many ponies believed. It was just two friends having fun and sharing memories.
Besides, her heart belonged to somepony else.
Looking at Twilight, Somnambula couldn't help but wonder what it was like being royalty. Not that she was interested in becoming a princess, but she was curious about what it was like dealing with high-end politics that looked so long, boring and tedious.
'Hmm, I wonder if Stygian is dealing with snobbish nobles?' She thought to herself just as Twilight walked up to the ticket booth and bought tickets for the Element Bearers, Pillars, and Spike.
"So, we have everything we need?" Twilight looked over at Starswirl who nodded.
"On my end, I have everything," he replied and the Pillars nodded together. The Element Bearers gave the same response.
"Alright, there isn't a train that takes us directly to the Badlands, but there is a train that will take us as far as Appleloosa, after that we need to walk for a few days," Twilight explained, handing out the tickets.
"Right, but how come? Badlands not that bad--no pun intended," Magnus asked confusedly as did the other Pillars.
"I will admit, that bandits can be tedious and violent, but they have never attacked trains to my knowledge," Somnambula spoke while looking at her ticket.
Starswirl sighed with a heavy look. "That's... because the bandits became more... aggressive over the years. A few hundred years ago, King Sombra worshippers hijacked a train and killed every pony, filly and colt in sight, they spared no creature,"
The Element Beares--including Twilight--gasped, horrified by what the old wizard revealed. Even Twilight had no idea why the Badlands had been considered 'bad' apart from ponies and other creatures who were banished there for committing heinous crimes. But, that did explain at least why there were no train tracks leading there, or at least a train that took that route.
"Holy smokes... why did they do that for?!" Magnus and Rainbow asked with rage in their eyes.
Starswirl shook his head. "Rumours have it that the followers were Crystal Ponies that agreed with King Sombra's tyranny and were unhappy with the alicorn sisters. In response to King Sombra and the Crystal Empire's banishment, they murdered every pony there on the train, knowing that the Badlands were outside of Equestria jurisdictions."
The ponies and dragon looked disgusted. How can some ponies be so... evil?
"That's disgusting," Spike said, his face scrounged up as if he was smelling something horrible.
They agreed.
"Yes, that is why no trains enter Badlands and is advised that no pony or any other creature enter such lands. Being banished to the Badlands is worse than death in many ways, especially considering King Sombra worshippers are still around..."
The old wizard didn't finish his thought.
"We're going to have to be extra careful in the lands," Twilight spoke with a little panic that Spike picked up on. "Starswirl, how... 'safe' is the wrong word for it, but... how exactly is it?"
"I understand what you mean. I would say that if we stick together we'll be protected, so no splitting up, whatever you do. However, even if we walk in a pack, we have to be careful because every creature there has committed one crime even if it was just once in their life," Starswirl explained. "And I'm not talking about stealing from candy stores,"
They shuddered at the thought of what he insinuated.
Somnambula remained silent as their train came to a stop in front of them. The doors to the different carriages opened, allowing the ponies inside to walk out. The conductor instructed ponies on both ends to either step on board or step off if this was their stop.
The ponies and dragon stepped on the train and took their seats. Somnambula shared a seat with the little purple-scaled dragon who opened an illustration book with characters inside it and began to watch...read? She shook her head and looked out the window and saw her friends and Element Bearers take their seats with one another while chatting about different things, trying to lighten the mood from the depressing topic from before.
Starswirl pulled out a heavy book and began to read through it while chatting with Twilight about something the orange-coated pegasus couldn't quite hear.
The Applefarmer, Party planner and dressmaker sat together while doing different things like eating cupcakes, looking out the window and polishing hooves and checking mane and tail.
Meadowbrook and Rockhoof were sitting behind Somnambula, the former being worried for her pegasus friend along with the latter who was equally worried. The Pegasus could only assume that it was their way to show that they cared.
The Pillar of Hope spotted the animal caretaker, Fluttershy alongside Mistmane, Magnus and Rainbow Dash, sitting in one spot. The yellow-coated pegasus was looking through an animal magazine while Magnus and Rainbow Dash discussed military fighting while Mistmane kept looking at Magnus with a look she couldn't quite catch.
The train started to move and before long, the Friendship Express was moving at a high speed heading to the next town over which was Appleloosa.
Somnambula looked out the window as the scenery changed from a green plain to a more yellowish plain, filled with sand, stone, cactuses and even a skull from a buffalo laying in the middle of nowhere but close enough to the train track to see what it was.
The pegasus cringed.
She did have a friend from long ago that belonged to a buffalo tribe until he was banished for killing a fellow tribe member for forcing himself on another buffalo. Luckily, her friend was there to stop it, but there was no evidence of it happening. Sadly, the female buffalo didn't have a say because it was a patriarchal society back then, and without evidence of the attempted assault taking place, her friend was kicked to the curb and banished from the tribe.
Before her banishment, she met him one last time and had been happy to see that he met a dragoness that had taken an interest in him and if she remembered correctly, was pregnant with their first child.
The train ride continued onward with a few small bumps on the way along with a snoring Rainbow Dash that had fallen asleep a few hours into the ride. The others were quiet and did their own thing. Somnambula would have meditated, but she was afraid that she would see the distorted image of Stygian again.
Eventually, they made it to the train station where there were many ponies and other creatures that were mingling about, chatting and doing their daily errands.
The train stopped at the station and they all got out off the train. Applejack would have visited her family, but they were in a rush and they all agreed that they couldn't make any detours. They needed to get to Kludgetown.
"Okay, we're here, Ya'll know which direction we're going?" Applejack asked Twilight and Starswirl who were reading the map together.
"Yeah, from our location we gotta go south," Twilight replied and put the map in her saddle bag and they began to walk at a small pace.
The ponies and other creatures didn't pay them much mind and they were lucky to not run into Braeburn who no doubt would have made them stay for lunch and at the moment--at least for Somnambula--was the last thing they needed.
They walked through the town without any form of disturbance and continued into the desert that had no creature out there except for criminals and buffalo tribes that were scattered all over the place. They held together in a formation while looking out for anything suspicious or dangerous that could await them.
***The Kingdom Of Darkness***
After walking for several hours, most ponies were tired and couldn't handle the heat apart from Somnambula and Spike who didn't even react to it. Spike didn't react because he was a dragon and bathed in lava, Somnambula came from a kingdom where the heat is the only thing they have apart from the random downpour that happens now and again.
"Heh, lassies and lads, we need to set up camp soon!" Rockhoof groaned while carrying his fiance on his back.
Not used to the heat, she had collapsed along the way and was dizzy from all the walking and unforgiving sun. Rockhoof, who was used to such an environment after years of harsh training lasted far longer than the others who were panting like dogs and sweating buckets.
"But we haven't even walked that far?" Somnambula said, looking at Rockhoof who stared back at her as if she had grown a second head. "What?"
"Darling... we... have walked... for... six hours..." Mistmane spoke with shaky hooves. She wasn't the only one tired. Magnus, who was also trained under extreme circumstances couldn't handle the far distance and heat that was getting to them. Rainbow Dash stopped flying two hours ago and was panting.
"What?" Somnambula looked behind her and there was nothing in sight other than cactuses, sand, and a few buffalo's walking. "Oh,"
"Alright, we'll find a secluded spot and get some food and sleep," Starswirl said while looking around for any caves or places that aren't easily spotted.
Somnambula decided to use her wings to fly and flew as high as possible trying to find any place they could get some rest which proved to be difficult when all there was were sand, cactuses and a lot of caves...
"Caves!" She shouted to herself and flew back down to her friends that had stopped to see what she was up to. "I found caves not far from here, maybe a five-minute walk," she said and guided them to a cave she had seen.
The cave she had spotted had a large entrance, was red-orange coloured and was dark inside like most caves. The location belonged to a large mountain that not many ponies or other creatures would care enough about to look into unless they were explorers. When they saw it, they felt relief.
"The dark shadows should be good to cool off in," Twilight observed and urged everypony and dragon to follow her inside.
True to her observation, the darkness was cold in a pleasant way. The effect was immediate, and they all moaned in delight to finally be out from the unforgiving sunshine. Twilight and Starswirl lit their horns that shined brightly throughout the cave, showing that it had once been a mining place with gems and holes filling the walls and roof.
There were wooden walls and a 'roof' holding everything in place every hundred hoof steps or so. There was even an old mining cart pushed to the side with a railway for the cart to be pushed through.
"Huh, an old mining place," Starswirl muttered to himself with small fascination.
"OH! Look at these gems!" Rarity said with stars in her eyes and almost floated to them until Applejack knocked her head with her hoof, forcing Rarity out of her state.
"Sorry, Rarity, but we got things to do, we can come back for them another day," Applejack spoke as she left the marshmallow-coated mare by the side of the cart track.
"Hehe..." Rarity nervously laughed and followed the others further into the mine.
It didn't take long for Starswirl and Twilight to find a resting place. They had found a large resting place that must have been used for the miners when it was still in use. There were old rusty bunk beds that aligned with the mine walls with bedsheets and pillows that had lost their colour and had started to mould, which earned a horrified shriek from Rarity.
"This is an atrocity!" The unicorn cried as she levitated the pillows away from the bunk beds and cast a spell that lit them ablaze and placed them in the middle that had black scorch marks, showing that it was here the ponies from a forgotten past had made their food and kept them warm.
"Was that necessary, Rares?" Rainbow asked with her hooves crossed, hovering in the air while raising a brow at the fashionista.
"No... but now we have a fire at least," she spoke with pink cheeks after she realised she had nothing to be worried about.
The others rolled their eyes while silently appreciating the small fire despite still being quite warm, but the fire wasn't scorching hot as they feared when they saw the unicorn set ablaze on the pillows.
The rest of the small area had a tool kit filled with old rusty tools used for mining. Rockhoof was quickly taken by some of the items that he hadn't seen before, amazed by their appearance and wondered how they were used.
There wasn't any documentation there that they could read, but at least they had each other and a small fire that made them see better in the dark and keep them warm when they would sleep later.
Everypony and dragon began to set up their tents. Spike had opted to sleep alone, so he brought his own tent he used whenever the girls threw slumber parties and he needed to have someplace to sleep.
He showed his expertise by building up his tent in two minutes. He rolled out a small mattress made for camping and lay on it with a happy smile on his face.
Fluttershy and Rarity shared a tent and Spike went over to help them build make their tent which he did with the same speed. Their tent was twice as large, but that was because it was made to fit two ponies.
Rainbow Dash and Applejack decided to share and the farmer had no qualms about setting up a tent.
Twilight and Pinkie had no trouble sharing a tent. Pinkie managed to make the tent at a speed that not even Discord could match, leaving Twilight stunned but shrugged it off quickly.
Somnambula had the tent that she had bought and set it up with some difficulty, not used to camping. Magnus helped her, having been trained to set up camp. She decided to be alone so she could be with her thoughts while Mistmane and Magnus shared a tent.
Rockhoof and Meadowbrook shared their tent and before everypony and dragon knew it, it was time to eat.
Pinkie and Applejack had two saddle bags worth of food so it could last and Rockhoof had taken a note from them and had cooking utensils and food that was canned. The fire that Rarity had started earlier proved to be a useful tool.
They hurdled in one large circle while Rockhoof boiled vegetables and a fish he had collected before they left Ponyville. The water made sounds as it boiled at the crackling fire that echoed in the old dusty mine that soothed their nerves.
"How much farther until we reach Kludgetown?" Mistmane asked while rubbing her hooves that were sore from all the walking.
"Not much farther, it's about another three-hour walk, but it will be quicker than today," Starswirl replied trying to soothe his own hooves that were sore and ached. "I must admit, I need to strengthen my walking distance,"
"Well, at least it isn't very far away," Spike comforted. "But, when we get there, who can give us reliable information? It's not as if we can get it for free,"
Starswirl hummed. "True... the best place to get information would be a pub, but that has downsides because most of the pubs I was in had very dangerous criminals, the type that make Nightmare Moon look like an angsty teen throwing a temper-tantrum,"
The Element Bearers were wide-eyed.
"WHAT?" Rainbow shouted, her jaw reaching the ground with a thud.
Starswirl sighed. "Yes, I know and understand that my statement is extreme, but believe me, I have come across criminals there that are far worse than the likes of Nightmare Moon and even King Sombra. Some of them have done things that... I am too afraid to even speak of it,"
"You shouldn't, otherwise this fanfiction would be M rated!" Pinkie Pie spoke cheerfully, mouth full of marshmallows.
"Ugh! Pinkie, darling, please don't speak with your mouth full," Rarity said with her face wrinkled in disgust.
Pinkie swallowed the marshmallows and shrugged.
"If that's true, Starswirl, then why go there at all? Isn't it then... too dangerous for us to go there?" Twilight asked with a little fear in her tone. The thought that there are creatures more dangerous than Nightmare Moon and King Sombra terrified her.
"Ah agree with Twi, shouldn't we just use a map and go to places we've never been to and hope that the Kingdom is there but is unexplored?" Applejack asked with a raised brow.
"AJ, this isn't a vacation, we need to look for Stygian," Rainbow spoke with her hooves crossed while looking at the mare with an odd look.
"Ah'm just saying, it could be more productive," the farmer defended with a roll of her eyes.
"Well," the old wizard replied before the farmer and pegasus could have a verbal altercation. "I wouldn't normally have gone there, but if you know where to search, you can find an invaluable amount of information on many different topics. There's a library of sorts that holds a great deal of information and is the only place that has never had theft,"
Twilight looked excited at the prospect of seeing a library while the others simply nodded their heads in agreement with the plan.
They finished their food and cleaned up before going to their tents and getting ready to sleep, doing their regular nightly activities before going to sleep. Somnambula looked at the roof of her tent with something stirring in her stomach.
'Why do I get the feeling we will see something terrible tomorrow?' She thought before drifting to sleep. |
The Kingdom Of Darkness | CH.9. Kludgetown | When Somnambula was woken up early in the morning by Meadowbrook who told her that it was breakfast and that they would be leaving early and hoped to make it to Kludgetown by the afternoon.
Groggily, the orange-coated mare got out of her tent and ate breakfast in silence while the other ponies and dragon chatted animatedly with one another. Afterwards, they pulled down their tents and food, packed everything up, and made sure that they didn't leave anything behind.
They left the mine in silence, but not before Twilight had somehow found old scrolls that she insisted on taking with her.
They had walked for about thirty minutes and Somnambula walked ahead of everypony and dragon. A mare on a mission. Her eyes scanned the lands before her but all she saw were large cave entrances and sand hills that decorated the place and let everypony and dragon know that they were in the desert.
Somnambula, again, didn't feel the unforgiving sun due to her being used to such climates while the others showed a different story. Spike was also the only other dragon that didn't react to the warmth.
The pegasus figured it would be an insult to the dragons due to them bathing in lava.
However, as they walked, Somnambula continued to feel the stares of her friends--particularly Meadowbrook. She knew the earth pony was worried for her, but the orange-coated pegasus just didn't get it. Why were they so concerned for her?
Yes, she may have spoken about how she desired to live in darkness if it meant that Stygian would forgive them, but most if not all of them felt the same way, so why were they so... pushy with her?
She sighed for what felt like the millionth time and glanced back slightly, her eyes resting momentarily on the Pillar of Healing before continuing to look forward.
"What's the first thing we should do when we reach Kludgetown?" Rainbow asked while panting as if she had flown around the planet five times without stopping.
Starswirl turned to her. "Go to the pub, not to get a drink, but to get information. If you want, you can check in into a hotel. I know of one pretty cheap but has a reputation of housing a few dark magic users, so be aware,"
Twilight frowned. "Why would they house those who practice dark magic?" It didn't make sense to her.
"Twilight," Starswirl spoke in a serious tone. "There's nothing wrong with dark magic, it's only considered dark because the spells you're thinking of were used for dark purposes. Anyways, to answer your question; it's because 'dark users' as they're called, protect the different hotels, restaurants and shops across Kludgetown. They earn money out of it."
Twilight didn't respond.
"So we check into a hotel and then we go to a pub to get information?" Spike asked with a raised brow.
"Yes, it seems so..." Twilight replied, frown still decorating her face.
Somnambula listened to their conversation with a blank expression. While listening, she couldn't help but feel as though they would discover something horrifying. Something they would have nightmares about. She didn't know why.
She pulled out a large water bottle, dropped three drops to her tongue and put it back in her saddle bag. Her mouth had been dry for a while now, but those drops would relieve for a few long minutes.
"Aha!" Starswirl shouted, making everypony and dragon jump and turn to him with a small glare which he ignored. "Over there!" He pointed with his hoof. "Over that sand hill, we will find Kludgetown!"
Somnambula's head shot towards the sandhill and flew there as quickly as possible, the others trailing after her with the same vigour but not speed.
The pegasus reached the hill that looked over a good chunk of the Badlands and saw a town. The town was very big so perhaps not a town but a city. The buildings looked... broken to put it simply. But life was thriving from what little she could see in the distance.
The other ponies and dragon came upon the sandhill behind her and saw the town. Starswirl let out a chuckle in delight. "That's the town, alright. Looks bigger than what I remember but otherwise, is the same."
"What are we waiting for?!" Somnambula yelled and flew away from them, intending to enter the town as quickly as possible. She flew as fast as her wings would carry her but did stop a good chunk away from the town so her friends could catch up.
She looked back and saw them running towards her and trotted the last bit before they started to walk together again.
The Pillar of Hope couldn't help but feel impatience when they entered the town. The creatures around them ignored them as they walked through, too busy to care about a few foreigners.
From a distance, the town didn't look terrible and life was thriving which was still true, but the houses up close looked a lot worse than any of them--including Starswirl--anticipated. There were holes, cracks, rats, mouses, dirt and garbage that littered entire streets and the houses looked as though they would cripple at any second.
Somnambula looked around, not feeling uneasy in the slightest. When she grew up in her homeland, poverty was almost everywhere, so this wasn't new to her.
The other ponies, par Starswirl, looked uneasy though. Rarity bit her lip but didn't look at the creatures around in disgust, it was... sorrow. Fluttershy also sported a sorrowful look but focused specifically on the critters that roamed the trash around the town.
The streets were narrow with wide space for drivable vehicles but very small space for walking. The houses were tightly packed with apartments that looked rundown.
"How can any creature live here?" Rarity asked, her face wrinkled in disgust at the lack of better buildings and trash-littered streets.
"They don't want to live here, but they were banished from their homelands and probably had no place else to go," Somnambula replied, surprising them. "Some were perhaps born here, so it's not surprising why they wouldn't leave home."
None of them replied to that.
They continued to walk through the streets but it soon became obvious about one particular thing that was noticed by Rarity. She looked at every creature closely and saw something that surprised her. She looked at a creature that walked passed them just to be sure.
"Is it just me, or does every creature here look... afraid?" Rarity asked while looking up at a few windows that were sealed shut.
"You noticed it too?" Fluttershy questioned in a whisper.
The others turned to face the two. Starswirl was the one most surprised out of the group. It may have been years since he was last here, but it shouldn't have changed that much. He looked at a creature that stood by a corner and handed out a plastic bag to another creature that exchanged money and noticed that there was fear in both of their eyes.
The old wizard looked at another creature that was hunched down in a squatting position and looked around every five seconds... fear evident in his eyes.
"Yes..." Starswirl whispered so only they could hear. "...It would appear that these creatures fear... something,"
"They have a cruel ruler?" Pinkie theorised while eating a muffin that no one was sure where she'd gotten it from.
"The Badlands is famous for being an anarchist place, I would have doubted that was the reason they are afraid of whatever," Starswirl started. "But, I am curious... There were rumours that there was a King here calling himself the Storm King who allegedly ruled Badlands. Hm, maybe that was true..."
They stopped outside of a large building made entirely out of black bricks with a sign on top written in gold. Capper's Hotel & Resort.
"Ah, so he did open it..." Starswirl spoke to himself and walked inside, the others following.
The inside was a lot cleaner than they thought. The floors were polished and there was a sitting area with dark green-leathered armchairs and sofas and a coffee table with magazines on top, scattered.
The reception desk was made from cheap wood but was polished and painted in dark blue with a moon to the side. On the other side of the reception desk stood a cat that was writing something and didn't look up when they moved closer to him.
Starswirl was going to be the speaking. "Capper, long time no see," he spoke with a friendly voice.
The cat--Capper--looked up and did a double-take when he saw Starswirl before a large smile came across his features.
"Starswirl the Bearded... it certainly wasn't yesterday! How have you been?" Capper asked while shaking Starswirl's hoof.
"Like I always say; I could be better. But something truly amazing happened." Starswirl spoke with a joyful voice. "You remember the story I told you about?"
Capper's eyes widened but there was also something else in them that none of the ponies and dragon recognised. "Yes?"
"It's them," Starswirl pointed his hoof towards the Pillars. Capper's eyes widened in shock. His mouth hung open and it took everything Somnambula had to not laugh.
"Wha-- how?!" Capper demanded.
"Well, Miss Applejack--" Starswirl pointed towards the farmer. -- "had a dream from my old friends that warned them of a creature named the Pony Of Shadows. She informed her friends and the princesses and went to Stonehenge where we managed to return my dear friends,"
Starswirl didn't want to have a large explanation and could always give one later.
Throughout the explanation, Somnambula noticed how the cat shifted uncomfortably at the mention of Stygian and at one point looked out a large window as if some creature was outside watching.
"Well, it's good that they're back. I assume you're here to find..." he looked over at the Element Bearers as if unsure if he should say anything.
Starswirl noticed. "They know about Stygian and what happened all those years ago," he assured.
"Ah," Capper nodded. "Well, if you're looking for rooms, then I can give you the finest ones as you are a friend of mine, It will be free of charge, the only thing I will charge for is the food,"
"That's completely fine, I wouldn't have minded if we paid for the rooms," Starswirl replied with a smile at his friend who returned the gesture.
"Alright then," Capper said and walked around the desk to properly greet them with a smile. "If you would follow me, I will take you to your rooms."
Capper opened a brown wooden door with a silver handle and led them sic flights of stairs until he opened a similar wooden door.
The hallway was decorated with paintings of Kludgetown and flags of different towns that the group of ponies and dragon assumed were the "country" flags. There was a long red matt that led down the hallways with doors that led to the rooms they would use for their stay.
Rarity gushed over the painting details and apparently noticed a colour she hadn't seen before and took a note and even asked a surprised Capper what colour it was.
"Up here aren't many creatures that stay because it costs quite a bit to stay in these rooms. But you're a friend of Starswirl whom I owe a massive favour to, this is the least I can do." Capper explained while motioning with his paws before putting them behind his back like an army general. "Feel free to pick whatever room you desire, there's no creature in them currently. All I ask is that you notify me what room number you have so I know which ones are occupied."
They nodded in understanding and Capper left them and headed down to the reception.
Somnambula took that as her leave and began walking down a random hallway while the others did the same in different directions. The pegasus looked at the different numbers on the doors while she heard the soft crunching of the mat under her hooves that satisfied her ears.
She briefly glanced back to see if anypony or dragon followed her but didn't see them. Shrugging, she walked to the end of the hallway and was met with a crossroads. There was a left and right path. The right path led down a hallway with ten rows of bedrooms while the left one only had five.
'Doesn't matter either way,' she thought while turning to the left path and reaching the fifth door. 'I will only be here for a little while... or longer depending on if we find the right information,'
The door to her bedroom had a golden five carved into it and a key inside the keyhole. She tried to pull it out but was surprised to find that the key refused to move. Slowly, she turned the key until she heard a 'click' and pushed the door with her hoof.
The door silently swung open and revealed a large bedroom. She walked inside and closed the door and was surprised when she saw that the key wasn't at the front of the door but inside the bedroom door instead. 'Enchanted keys!' She realised.
Somnambula looked over to the bed and appreciated the grey-coloured bedsheets and soft fluffy pillows. The mattress wasn't hard but not soft either, a perfect match for her.
She took off her saddlebags, tossed them to the bed and took another look around. There were a few magazines on a coffee table near a small living room with a large painting of the Alicorn sisters with a fire and moon background with bowing ponies. There was a black-leathered sofa that was highly uncomfortable for the poor mare.
Somnambula was delighted to see that there was a functioning bathroom with a bathtub where she could clean herself from the dirt and sand under her hooves that were starting to ache.
She removed her white cloth with golden half-moon, placing it near the sink and stepped into the bathtub where she began to clean herself. ***
When Somnambula finished, she felt content. Never in her life had she felt so clean. Her signature white cloth and golden half-moon were on her head again and she made her way to the bed.
'After I... If I succeed with Stygian, I hope we can have a vacation, just him and I,' she thought while pulling out her blindfold she used when defeating the Sphinx so many years ago.
She hesitantly draped it around her eyes and began to meditate on the bed, her vision going black.
However, just ten minutes into her meditation, she was interrupted by a knock on the door that woke her up from her musings. She forgot she still had the blindfold, tripped off the bed and groaned at the impact.
'I forgot I had that on,' she muttered inwardly. Somnambula took off the blindfold, made her way to the door and checked through the peephole and saw that Meadowbrook was there.
The orange-coated pegasus opened the door with a smile. "Hello, want to have some tea?" She asked leading the other mare inside.
In the living room was a coffee and tea brewer with a few small choices.
"That would be nice," Meadowbrook smiled and followed Somnambula to the living room.
"I apologise for the couch, It's highly uncomfortable, I don't know how any creature can have this," Somnambula whined. "Back in my homeland, I'll admit, we didn't have proper couches, but at least the floor was more comfortable!"
The Pillar of Healing laughed at her fellow Pillar's complaints.
"Well, I believe it's either because they don't have any other couches or because they want to show off their wealth," Meadowbrook reasoned. "Besides, this was for the rich creatures, so... Capper was it? He wanted to mostly soothe and live up to the rich creatures standards,"
"I guess so," Somnambula grumbled while pouring tea into two cups. "One or two sugars?"
"One please,"
The pegasus tossed one sugarcube inside one of the cups while she tossed two into her cup and placed them in front of Meadowbrook. They sat in silence while enjoying each other's company.
The silence was only broken whenever they took a sip of their tea and placed it on the table. It was nice in a way. It wasn't often they would have time to spend it together so whenever they had the chance with the other Pillars, they would relax. Meadowbrook went to Somnambula to help her with the pain that she sadly couldn't heal.
"How did you like the room?" Somnambula asked. "Is it any different from mine?"
"Not really," Meadowbrook replied. "The only difference was that the bed was so fluffy!" She spoke while stretching the 'o's
There was silence again, only disturbed when they took a sip of their tea.
"Wait, how did you find me? This place is massive, you didn't knock on every door did you?" Somnambula asked while looking over the earth pony who smiled guiltily. "Meadowbrook..."
"Well, to be fair, you just walked away and I was getting worried..." the healer trailed off with pink cheeks while looking away from the pegasus. "Anyways, what were you doing before? I heard a loud thud..."
It was Somnambula's turn to blush. "I... was meditating with my blindfold when I heard you knocking and I forgot that I still wore it,"
They both giggled.
"Have you spoken to the others?" Somnambula asked while sipping her tea. Meadowbrook shook her head.
"No, Rockhoof and I share the same hallway with the Element Bearers but they weren't outside when I went to find you,"
They finished their tea and started chatting about different topics and sharing good memories they had of Stygian while crying together when they remembered the horrible day when they accused him of stealing power.
The conversation then went back to happier topics, wondering what was going on inside and outside Equestria. However, their cheery conversation didn't last for long because a short while into their discussion of flowers they had found, there was a knock on the door. Somnambula opened the door while Meadowbrook stood, looking from the threshold.
On the other side of the door stood the other Pillars and Element Bearers along with Capper who stood in the front.
The owner of the hotel had a sad look on his face and Starswirl looked at his friend in worry.
"Hello, Somnambula, Meadowbrook," Capper spoke with a nod in their direction. "...Is it okay for us to come in? I wanted to discuss something with you. Something I suspect at least one of you have noticed."
The seriousness in his tone made Meadowbrook and Somnambula worried.
At her nod, everypony, dragon and cat entered the bedroom and sat around the bedroom, the living room being too small to fit all of them together. They spread out so they wouldn't be on top of one another.
When they were all seated, Capper began to speak.
"I'm sure that you have noticed the... quietness of Kludgetown?" He looked around and they all nodded their heads, none interrupting him. "Well, the answer to that is simple."
He was wearing a red trenchcoat and gloves over his paws along with a red fedora hat. He pulled out a small vial of milk and drank it in one big gulp. Everypony and dragon were looking at him, waiting for him to reveal what was going on.
"A few years ago, there was a creature by the name of Storm King that invaded and took over our home." A few gasped at the revelation. "We lived under a tyrannical King that enslaved us with outrageous taxes that no kingdom else would have been able to pay for but that was because we were all--and still are--criminals.
"We lived under the horrible Storm King for over a decade until one day, there were dark, gloomy skies that filled the terrain. For the first time in a hundred years, it rained. It poured down and darkness filled our town. Storm King was known for controlling the weather so many creatures--including myself--assumed he wanted some rain. How wrong we were...
"You see, the rain hadn't come from the dreaded king but from a different source. A pony with a pure dark coat and white eyes walked the streets of Kludgetown with an army behind him, hovering and waiting for a command. Storm King demanded that the new pony leave the land and never return..."
Capper winced at something painful that they couldn't see. A memory.
"However," Capper looked to the floor before reaching into a pocket, grabbing another vial of milk and downing it in one go. "He didn't anticipate resistance."
Starswirl quirked a brow. "Resistance?"
The hotel owner nodded. "Yes, resistance. The Storm King lost but it didn't end there. After he was defeated, his commander, a unicorn with a broken horn that I do not know the name of, challenged the military the pony had behind him. She was killed."
The ponies and dragon gasped. In Equestria, hearing of murder was unheard of, much less mentioned. Twilight looked highly uncomfortable by the sudden dark topic that Capper brought forth. Starswirl and the other Pillars may not have gasped as loudly because murder was far more common for them in ancient times, but hearing a pony or any creature get killed still brought some emotions.
"Like I mentioned; the Storm King was defeated but he was also killed that day. Afterwards, the pony and his followers took the bodies to the centre of town and..." he flinched as if he had been burned by something hot. "...crucified them."
There was dead silence in the room. The looks on the ponies faces were one of shock. Somnambula's head was spinning and feeling fuzzy from the information. She leaned back to make it calm down but it would go away. Judging from the looks on the other's faces, they too, were in the same predicament.
The Pillar of Hope looked towards Starswirl who licked his lips, trying to moisten his suddenly dry lips. "Did... the pony ever introduce herself or himself?"
Capper didn't respond for a long while. The silence was deafening. It was eating at the ponies and dragon gathered inside the room and Starswirl looked just about ready to ask again when he responded with something that Somnambula suspected but had prayed wasn't true.
"He... introduced himself as the Pony Of Shadows," |
The Kingdom Of Darkness | CH.10. Soldiers | Somnambula's mind was blank. It was like a page with no words, only devoid of darkness surrounding her calm, rational mind. Her brain felt weird, and fuzzy, like a carriage wheel spinning.
The words the owner had spoken just hours prior still echoed inside her head like she was inside a tunnel. Her eyes were unfocused, still lost inside her head, not feeling the hunger that gnawed at her or the dry, chapped lips that begged for water.
It couldn't be true, could it?
Somnambula didn't notice the eyes that stared at her in worry and concern for her mental health. She couldn't feel it anymore, all she could feel was the pain in her heart that throbbed like a vein transferring blood throughout the body.
'Would Stygian go that far?' Was the immediate thought that invaded her mind when she regained control of her thoughts. She understood that he was angry and did know that there was a very large possibility that Stygian would do something that none of them would be prepared for. Murder was one of them.
However, Somnambula had always believed that her sweet, precious Stygian would never go that far no matter how angry. Verbal abuse or even assault? Yes, that is to be expected depending on the level of hurt.
But murder? No.
Or well, the thought had crossed her mind multiple times. All of them had that thought. But Somnambula never thought that it would turn into reality...
She had prayed that it would only be a horrible alternative universe, but here she was, hours later, looking at something or some creature with the words getting entangled into her mind like a cobweb.
'Stygian...' came her sad thought that brought a tear to her eye that slowly made its way down her cheek as if climbing down a ladder.
"Somnambula?" Came a voice that sounded so far away. But it sounded familiar... like, she knew who spoke her name.
The pegasus regained mobility in her head and turned towards the sound where the voice had spoken. Beside the bed stood... Meadowbrook. She was looking at her with concern on her face. The earth pony took a hesitant step forward.
"Somnambula?" The mare spoke again, this time, firmer or was the first call also firm? "Are you alright?"
Somnambula tried to speak but no words came out of her. It was like her vocal cords refused to work. No words escaped her mouth, making the creatures around her concerned. She didn't know how long they had been there. She was sure it had been hours, but maybe she was wrong. Maybe...
"Stygian..." her voice sounded hoarse. It drew shaky breaths from Meadowbrook and Mistmane. The Pegasus was aware that her voice should belong to some creature that had smoked for decades, but she couldn't help it. "...he... killed a creature?"
The thought just wasn't something she wanted to comprehend. Sure, she had thought about it multiple times, but still... hearing one of her fears being revealed like it was inside a box any creature could open, made her uneasy.
Somnambula stared at Capper who was looking at the floor as if checking for unclean spots. His posture was fragile, he was shaking lightly. His eyes didn't reveal emotions but his body language could be read by every creature present. There was fear, anger and... sadness? They couldn't be sure.
"Yes," was the response they had all prayed wouldn't be answered. Hoping that the former Pillar hadn't resorted to such... drastic measures. "That was about... I think it was thirty years ago If I remember correctly,"
"Wait, thirty years?" Starswirl spoke up with furrowed eyebrows. But... we met six years ago..." the old unicorn's eyes widened in realization.
The others looked at the old wizard in confusion. Somnambula didn't know what the fuzz was about, she didn't see the big deal until everything clicked inside her head. Her eyes widened and she noticed that every creature else also understood the significance... most of them.
"What's the deal?" Rainbow Dash asked with her hooves crossed while looking at Starswirl who looked to be having a panic attack.
"Rainbow..." Fluttershy spoke weakly while trying to hide behind Twilight, as if afraid that the old wizard would become angry. "Thirty years ago, Stygian... ended the reign of Storm King and Starswirl met Capper six years ago."
"I still don't get it," she replied while scratching her head. "I mean, it's good for the creatures here right?"
The temperature suddenly dropped, the unforgiving sun from Badlands all but forgotten in that instant. The rainbow-maned pegasus shivered when she felt the icy wind caress her coat like an invisible stream.
"Good...?" Capper spoke, forcing every creature to stare at the cat, including Starswirl who looked at the owner with concern. "Good?! Do you have any idea what you just said?! Nothing here is good! After Storm King was executed, everything became worse!"
"Hey, hey! Calm down, I'm sorry I shouldn't have said that!" Rainbow spoke with her hooves out, showing she meant no harm but Capper didn't stop his tirade.
"When Starswirl came to the Badlands, I welcomed him with open arms because I know for a darn fact that the soldiers of Pony Of Shadows would have executed him, no questions asked. But to be completely honest; the last night, he told me the story of what happened but I was so shocked that by the time I gathered my thoughts he was gone! I wanted to tell him so badly but I couldn't. I wasn't sure..." Capper's anger turned to cries, paws clutching his head as he slid down to the floor, eyes closed and salty tears escaping. "I wasn't sure I could tell him the truth."
Somnambula watched Fluttershy and Rarity make their way to comfort the cat that cried. "Every day, we live in fear. Starswirl may not have noticed due to the fact he entered from the area notorious for criminality--the ones that lack care and respect for any ruling,"
The old wizard trotted up to Capper and did something that was unheard of. He hugged him. Starswirl wrapped his hooves around him and hugged him as hard as he could. The cat returned the hug.
"I'm sorry... I'm sorry I never told you!" Capper cried into the wizard's shoulder but the old unicorn simply smiled.
"No need for apologies, Capper, I understand your fear, I... was also threatened by him," Starswirl replied, surprising the Pillars. "He... threatened me with executing my friends, saying that he would return with their heads,"
Somnambula's eyes widened in shock and fear.
"WHAT?!" Magnus shouted, his sclera dominating over his pinprick pupils. Mistmane managed to calm the pegasus down slightly but she too, was shocked by the turn of events.
Rockhoof lowered his gaze while Meadowbrook hugged her fiance and cried while the strong earth pony enveloped her into a hug.
Spike, Pinkie and Capper didn't look surprised in the slightest. That didn't mean that the purple-scaled dragon and light pink-coated pony didn't lower their heads in sorrow. From their point of view; they could only imagine what type of pain the other Pillars must be in. Not physical but mental. You think you know how much a pony hates you, but it turns out to be much worse than anticipated.
"It's true," Starswirl sadly admitted. "After your banishment, he threatened to hurt me or you if I ever tried to find him or try to rescue you. I lived in fear like a coward. I should have spoken to him, and ask for forgiveness. I..." he trailed off.
The room was coated into silence, only broken by the sobs coming from the owner. The ponies and dragon didn't know what to say or do to make the situation better. How do you lighten a situation about a friend and romantic interests that threaten indirectly their life?
~~~The Kingdom Of Darkness~~~
Hours later, Somnambula was looking outside her window. On a small stool in front of her, was a hot mug of tea with one sugar. She couldn't sleep, not after what she had learned.
It sickened her. Not the fact that Stygian had killed a creature or that he--indirectly--threatened her life as well. It made her sick that she allowed her fame to infect her head, pushing the only stallion for her, away.
'It's all my fault,' she somberly thought. How could she not? Out of all of the Pillars, she and maybe Meadowbrook should naturally follow their instincts and listen to a pony or creature in need. But it was mostly her fault. Somnambula bit her lower lip as a tear escaped her eye. She was supposed to be the pony that loved Stygian, and there she had been, accusing him of something that he had no intention of doing.
Sure, for some creature that didn't understand Somnambula or the other Pillar's pain, it would be justified. It looked as though the unicorn had stolen their artefacts to gain their power for himself.
When they had learned of what his plans were, Somnambula couldn't help but feel disgusted with herself and made the promise that she would confess her feelings and apologise. One of her silent promises was to follow him until the end of time, no matter the circumstances.
Just when the pegasus had finished her tea, she heard muffled voices outside. It sounded like an argument of some sort. Curious, she looked out the window and saw three creatures down below inside an alley.
The alley was riddled with trashcans, dumpsters and filth all over the place. One of the creatures was hunched over something and cried his eyes out. The other two creatures were carrying weapons. Considering where she was located, it was easy to say it was a crime, but this somehow... it didn't feel right. This didn't feel like a typical crime. This felt like...
Silently, she opened the window to hear the conversation better. "YOU SICK, TWISTED--" one of the creatures punched the weeping one over the face. The crunch was so loud, that even Somnambula heard it which made her wince.
The creature that threw the punch lowered down into a squatting position and pulled out a shiny metal object that made the Pillar of Hope pale. The creature brought the weapon to the weeping creature's throat.
"Listen here you little gangster, we have heard rumours that foreigners have entered the kingdom. Where are they?" The creature holding the knife asked with an intimidating voice.
"You... call yourself... soldiers?" The weeping creature spoke with unclear emotions. "You murder and pillage our home as if it is a playground... why do you care about some foreigners? They haven't hurt you,"
Somnambula noticed the two soldiers exchange a look she couldn't see before looking at the creature who had a knife to his throat.
"His majesty felt a presence. A presence that is a danger to us all. If those foreigners hold such power to wipe us out, then we must eliminate them!" The soldier spoke and smacked the creature in the face. "Not that it matters, our military is strong enough to handle anything!"
Suddenly, the second soldier started to move forward and made Somnambula jump back in shock and horror. The second soldier pulled out his sword and stabbed the creature in the throat without missing a second.
"Let's get going, I have a feeling we're being watched," the soldier spoke casually and wiped the blood from his sword before placing it inside its sheath.
Somnambula quickly closed the window. If she had felt tired at all, she didn't feel so now. |
Fallout Equestria: Power Ponies | pre | "Yeah that, could work." She nodded. Fluid nodded and headed back to the mansion at a brisk trot not soon after Sapphire took back into the sky. Fluid continued down the roads at his trot until he got back to the mansion just as the sun was setting behind it. He slipped back into the gates, and headed down the cobble stone pathway toward the mansion. The door to the mansion opened just as he reached out for it. His eyes shot open wide, and he stepped back. "Hey Dub." He smiled. "I was just taking a walk."
"Right, and you were just doing a walk around the grounds?" She asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Well something like that. I left the grounds to go on my trot but I stayed close." He gave a sheepish smile. Dub gave him a flat look that was clearly not amused. "I just got back from walking around and saw Lapis she said she wanted us all suited up and to meet her on her apartment roof. She says that she think something big is about to go down tonight."
"Fine, get inside and get your suit on." Dub stepped aside and let him in. Fluid walked past her heading to the stiars. "Also your grounded."
"But-"
"No buts you're grounded. You only get one Dash Canister a day. Period." She said shutting the door behind him.
"But I have a prescription."
"Your prescription is only for one dosage a day enough to help you with your depression, but not enough to get high off of, deal with it. Because it's going to be that way for two weeks." Fluid groaned his ears flopping down. "Don't give me that look now get up stairs and tell everybody you meet along the way that we're heading out."
"Yes ma'am." Fluid nodded running up the stairs. As Dub began searching the first floor for anypony on it. As Fluid ran past the first floor he called out to Disc and Dream who were in the middle of some kind of discussion. "We're heading out in uniform to Sapphire's roof." Disc nodded, and Fluid continued up the stairs. He knocked on Ash's and Jet Lag's doors as he passed them telling them that they were heading out if they were in there. He hurried into his room and got suited up.
After ten minutes everypony was geared up and at the front door, with the exception of Rusty who was in his and Dub's terminal room. He was in charge of intel gathering and coordination with sheriff Grey Feather, in an attempt to figure out what could be going on. He pulled out his pip buck and activated one of the post market features that he had added on. "I'm sorry Dub right now everything's quiet, there's a bit more snatcher activity in the southern part of town but the sheriff is working on it, and there isn't much extra that we can do there."
"Right, well we're heading out anyways Rusty." Dub said to looking at her pip pad. "I'm not sure if she's right or she just want's to have a midnight stroll with bro-bro, but far be it from me to interfere."
"Ha-ha-ha." Disc exaggerated his laughter. "Let's just get moving. Does anybody have any concerns before we head out." He looked around. Light raised her hoof, but started talking before anyone could respond.
"Yeah can we stop for snacks on the way back, if nothing happens?" Light asked.
"Sure, and other questions?" Light raised her hoof again. "Not related to snacks?" She put it back down. "Well since nothing we're heading out now." They moved quickly though the streets getting to the Lapis' apartment only half an hour after sun down. Jet and Ash flew up to the roof, the rest made their way up the fire escape as joining their three winged friends quickly.
"Hey, thank you for coming." Sapphire nodded once they all got onto the roof. "Sorry about calling you all out, but I've just got this sinking feeling that something bad is going to be happening tonight. But I know what. Has anything popped up on your radar or the police radar yet for tonight?"
"Nope unless the situation has changed." Dub pulled out her pip pad. "Rusty, we all good?"
"So far yes, the police and sheriff Grey took care of the snatchers that popped up over in the south part of town. Everywhere else is pretty-wait what the heck is that. Uhm Dub, not sure if this is a bad thing but uhm-yeah. Grey Feather just sent us a job. One of the snatchers they caught spilled the beans on a holding location. Just a holding location, but still that's a lot to work with, if we hurry we might be able to get there before any moles in the police inform the snatchers they need to move their prisoners."
"Right. Rusty send me and Disc the coordinates to our pip pads. We'll follow the way point on our EFS and hopefully get there before they even know that were on top of them." Dub looked to her brother. Disc nodded once his EFS had activated.
"Right our target is on this side of town but a good bit into the city. This could get bumpy as we get closer to the old down town area, but we should still be on just the outskirts. Stay to the roofs." He looked around. Ace of Flames, you're with Light and Disco, you three will be pushing straight down the middle. Sis you, Sapphire and Dream will run support and screening on the right. Jet and I will be staying a block behind your two groups and will be to the left."
"Everypony remember to keep an eye on the sky and be careful." Dub said. "Middle team you'll be setting pace for the rest of us so go how ever fast you need to." Disco nodded.
"Right then. Let's go," he said running for the edge of the roof before kicking off and landing on the apartment on cube on the other side. Light on his left and Ace to his right just above barely in the air. Just to their right the Sapphire flew across the gap Dub and Dream crossed the road over small aura disc's coming from Dub's horn. Disc used the same method when he and Jet Lag started following the others. As they headed deeper into the city.
End of the Line was a had five zones, to it, the center of the city in which stood the five great Cooperate Towers, the next zone was the ring, a series of large offices, industrial buildings, and government buildings. The Third zone further out still was Down Town an area two hundred city blocks all around, this area was in the unquestioned control of the cartels and other criminal interest including the snatchers. Beyond that were the several hundred blocks that comprised the Urban Sprawl, where many of the cultural enclaves and ponies lived and which provided a buffer between the criminal syndicates and the Law. Beyond that was the domain of the End of the Line Police force, the Out Skirts, which comprised everything else, and contained the bulk of the pony and griffon population of End of the Line. By half an hour they had arrived at the edge of the Out Skirts and began moving into the Urban Sprawl.
"Stay closer together." Dub looked around unsure.
"This is where problems start happening." Disc looked around unsure. "But we've got to head fairly deep into this zone of town to reach the warehouse that they're using to hold their victims. Rusty what kind of traffic are you picking up?"
"So far everything's quiet, not a lot happening, you should be fine." Rusty answered through the twins' pip pads. "You've got a straight shot to it."
"Don't you think that's kind of odd?" Jet asked. "Them just giving us a straight shot? And we've not encountered a single air patrol of snatchers yet. They normally have a least a couple dozen in the sky to relay possible targets."
"I think Fluid's aware, he's moving slower." Disc looked up at the sky. "Just to be safe though Jet slip off and grab us supplies." He tossed Jet Lag one of his pistols, "If anything happens you know how to fight your way out, don't travel heavy get the green stuff, potions, and the rad away too. And get back to us as soon as you can." Jet nodded and dove off the building blending into the shadows he disappeared into the shadows and started heading back to the mansion, and his medical supplies. Disc Jocky nodded with his horn glowing, as small magical whisper would inform the others but nothing else.
In the course of of half an hour they reached the location. Dub's horn lit up as she sent another message to the groups that they were there. Disco's group came to a stop, Dub, Sapphire, and Dream joined them. A second later Disc Jockey was with them as well. "That's the building?" Light asked, looking down on what had once been a ware house for a pre war shipping company.
"According to our EFS this is the place." Dub said. "And there are a lot of green bars in there, and quite a few red as well." Dub looked over to the others. "Right, this isn't going to be a cake walk. And getting them out of this part of town is likely to be just as hard, so I want everypony to be as careful as possible because getting the ponies out of the building is only the start of this operation." Everyone nodded.
"Right. Disco, Light, Ace, Sapphire you get to be the distraction, take out as many snatchers as you can. Dub, Dream, and I will work on getting as many ponies out as we can, we'll try to give you support, but don't count on our help." Disc Jockey looked over the four power pony costumed ponies.
"Sounds like a plan." Light beamed. "Now lets kick butt." She jumped off the roof landing on the ground she charged right in. The Disco Do-Gooder followed right behind them. Sapphire and the Ace of Flames. Took to the sky landing on the roof near one of the sky lights. "Bada-Boom!" She kicked the door into the warehouse open. The building had been converted into a large prison. Ponies lay packed in cramped cages. The difficult or trouble makers hung in cages attached to the ceiling by chains. The cages were barely large enough for a young colt. Often to small for the mares, stallions, and odd griffon that had the misfortune of being up there.
"What they hell?" The closest snatcher, a thin weasel built earth pony stallion, looked over to the door. An instant later he registered what was happening. "Everyone drop whatever the fuck you're doing! One of those hero wannabes just kicked in the door, This is going to be a big pay day!" He charged at Light before Disco darted into the room.
"Party Bash!" His displace hoof boomed as the thinly built weasel of a pony was launched across the building rolling head over tail as Disco and Light got on their hind hooves, each in their own fighting stance. One of the ponies in the cages took the chance to spit on the unconscious buck as he came to a stop right under her cage. It took the room a moment to register what had just happened before the snatchers dropped what they were doing and charged. Other ran to more defensible positions where heavier weaponry was already being loaded.
"Come and get me!" Light cheered charging into a group of snatchers her arnis bashing into forelegs, sides and heads as she ran into the group. Another group of ten snatchers moved in between her and Disco. They charged him forcing him to bob and weave his way further back as he dodged chains, mallets, and the odd gun shot coming from further back. He lashed out several times, but each time a snatcher fell back hurt another took their place. Light soon found herself having the same problem, no matter how many times she lashed out with her arnis there were always more snatchers moving in on her. One of them grabbed her from behind. "A little assistance Disco Do-Gooder, would be nice!"
"Ditto!" He called back as the snatchers finally got his back against a wall. The roof top sky light exploded in a shower of glass and green flames. Ace of Flames dived in her wings awash in green fire. Disco made use of the distraction provided by her entry switching his fighting stance in a flurry of kicks and spins three of the snatchers were on the ground and three others were stumbling back with broken noses and a few missing teeth. Light's hind hoof shot back behind her and the stallion holding her found something far more precious to as he cried out rolling on the ground.
"Thank you!" Light cheered before her eyes went wide and she dove for cover behind a couple of metal boxes, Disco mirroring her action behind a concrete barricade. The snatchers in the far back of the warehouse had gotten several in placed machine guns ready and began opening fire at least one gun aimed at each of the power ponies. The Ace of Flames began taking evasive maneuvers in the air, trying her hardest to insure that the caged ponies and griffons weren't ever in the line of fire. Many of the ponies started screaming, and a couple of the worse off ones broke down into sobs as every one aside from a few of the snatchers hit the deck. The boxes began falling around her as the stone barricade Disco was behind was being whittled down in hoof sized chunks.
"We need to get unpinned and deal with those guns!" Disco yelled over to Light. "I'm open for any ideas you can come up with!"
"Putting me a bit on the spot!" She rolled on her stomach and started looking though some of the boxes that fell. "Ah-ha." She rolled gabbed a mirror and a small laser pointer, a small egg timer, and other random bits and bobs. "Alright I'll try, be ready to move!" She yelled over the sound of gun fire. She angled the mirror and turned on the laser pointer. A second later the gun fire veered to the side as whoever was firing it fell back screaming she didn't wait doing aiming and firing her laser weapon at the other gunner teams. They faired just as well. "Go!"
"Right!" Disco didn't waste the opportunity provided to him. He bolted out of cover grabbing something as jumped the barricade. "Ace!" He called out. She dived bombed the snatchers that were trying to intercept him. He cleared three fourths of the warehouse floor.. "Grenade!" He yelled throwing what was in his hoof right into the face of one of the gunners that was struggling to get the gun aimed. Then he jumped into the near by slave pin. Ace of Flame fired two small green fire balls down on the snatchers before pulling back. To get away. The slave in the pin rushed away from the future ground zero. The snatchers jumped off of the elevated platform and ran from the machine gun position. Seconds passed. The Disco Do-Gooder jumped out tackling one of the snatcher and throwing them, a black unicorn mare into the cage wall of a few desperate ponies. Most recoiled two however grabbed her one by the neck the other by the waist, looking for the key.
"No boom?" Light asked, returning to the fight.
"It was just a rock." Disco answered, bucking two snatchers and spinning to avoid the ax of a third.
"That's not fair!" One of the snatchers screamed charging at him. Only to be blasted halfway across the warehouse and into the swing of Light's arnis.
"Deal with it," Ace smirked as second before all three machine guns opened fire again. Light barely managed to get behind some small piles of pony's belongings they had on them before being taken by the snatchers. Ace broke her charge on one of the snatchers pulling up hard. Disco bolted doing anything he could to stay ahead of the machine gun fire as the guns lifted out of their tripods by a white unicorn mare with a pitch black mane.
"That's not fair!" Light yelled at the Snatcher the others that were still up rallied behind their commander.
"Deal with it." The mare snarled. "The rest of you get them! And any slave that acts up you'r-" She screamed in pain. The machine guns fell out of her magical grip as an arrow in her knee came to life causing 24 volts to surge through her dropping her to the ground as she twitched. "GET THEM!" She screamed still spamming on the ground. The snatchers charged the power ponies. Three of them pointed riffles and hand guns up to return fire at Sapphire. Light engaged the snatchers that had charged her. Disco continued fighting and dancing around the warehouse floor keeping as many occupied with chasing him as he could. Ace flew around attacking as best she could while avoiding the half dozen pegasi that tailed her every move. Sapphire moved from skylight to sky light firing down on the ponies with guns and doing her best to help any of the others if they were in a tight spot.
The fight lasted half an hour before the snatchers realized that most of the once full warehouse was now empty, and many of the cages had been filled with their fallen comrades. A few of the newly freed captives joined in the fray and more and more the tide turned. Until all at once the Snatchers lost completely the last one being dog piled by a dozen colts and fillies wearing CMC capes, who despite their size quickly beat the snatcher into submission, and continued to do so even as Dub Step and Disc started pulling them off the unconscious pegasus mare.
"That, that was fun." Light smiled rubbing a bruised cheek from were one of her opponents had gotten a solid hit on her.
"Jet should be back soon." Disc nodded looking over the several hundred ponies they'd rescued. "Not bad you four. We did a good job and getting them out will be hard but at sunrise it'll be a lot safer, even in this part of town."
"Ha. You think you're getting out of here. You think you did anything good?" The white unicorn mare spat at Disc from her cage. "You idiots, you're not getting out of here none of you are!"
"And what's stopping us?" Dream asked. "Our hackers cut your communications and replaced them with all clear signals. The other Snatcher groups don't even know what's happened."
"You don't get it, in few short minutes I'll be out of this cage and you'll all either be dead or in chains." the warehouse echoed with a sadistic laugh. Everyone looked around unsure, a few of the ponies bolted for the door. Those that did screamed and soon fell quite as the sound of rippers cut through there screams just as easily as they cut through their bodies.
"She's half right." a nirik laughed walking between two rippers dripping with freshly spilled blood. The newly rescued ponies backed away those that had been in the small hanging cages grabbed weapons and stood between the nirik and the others, and the power ponies stepped up between them and her. "Though while I was ordered to just kill you," She pointed to the disco Do-Gooder. "I think with a little bit of creative interpretation, I can get away with killing the snatchers and the slaves too. Hello Super Zero, is this your team?" She waved playfully to Disco. "They look adorable. Think Light's head would look cute sewn to your body?"
"Uh no! I like my head on my body thank you very much, we're very attached."
"Won't know till we try." She laughed. Her horn lit up and a wall of fire blocked out the warehouse exits.
"She's looks familiar but I don't know where I know her from." Dub said her own horn lighting up.
"Oh you recognize me, it's probably from that time I visited Stable 240. It's how I got my most famous nick name yet."
"You're, crap, you're the Bloody Butcheress of Stable 240." Disc said softly, his heart felt like it sank in his stomach.
"You know me. That's good, so you probably know what's about to happen, next." Her voice got lower and a wicked grin spread over her face. She charged her horn lighting up as the rippers lashed out at her side seemingly with a mind of their own. "Time for the slaughter." Ace took to the air, Sapphire aimed her arrow and fired. Dub, Dream, and Disc's spells went of simultaneously. Disco and Light both began fending of the rippers bolted at them with murderous intent. The Butcheress fired her own spell fire and light engulfed the the area between the three unicorns and the nirik. A moment later she jumped though the flames and smoke another ripper roaring held in her grinning mouth. The arrow falling in several pieces around her hooves. When she landed her tail lashed warping tightly around Dream's throat. He gagged fighting with his hooves to loosen the tail's grip.
"Bro!" Light's charge was stunted as the ripper slashed at her she swung her arnis. For a second it looked like the Arnis would hold and the ripper would be parried away. The hope ended with the second, when the ripper was engulfed in nirik fire. It cut through the arnis like a hot knife through butter. Light leaned back as the ripper surged forward, limboing under it with less than an inch to spare.
The warehouse flashed several bright colors as beams of light fired from Dub and Disc Jockey's horns. Only to be absorbed by the nirik's shield. She laughed as Dream's struggles became more frantic. Disco charged the shield. "Party Bash!" She looked at him with soulless glowing eyes as she as she threw the third ripper like a knife the one behind him speeding up to catch him in the back as he jumped to hit the shield.
"Go bye." The butcheress waved good-bye with a smile so innocent it was sick. A second before the rippers dug into him he was blasted away by a blob of changeling ichor Slamming him into the floor. The Ace of Flames quickly followed it up by bathing the shield in all the fire she could conjure. The nirik's right eye twitched a little behind a cracked shield. "You ruin my kill, bitch!" The two rippers meant for the Disco Do-Gooder slammed into the changeling, revving and awash in nirik fire. Time slowed to a pain full crawl as the Ace of Flames spun head over tail backwards landing hard on her back screaming as the rippers tried to push deep. Before anything else could happen the warehouse was consumed in a blinding white light, and the air roared with an explosion fierce enough to shake the ground. A moment later the Bloody Butcheress was rolling on the ground her black burning body smoking. Dream lay a couple yards away gasping and coughing trying to refill his lungs.
Light ran her brother. Disco ran to Ace's side. Disc was already there gritting his teeth and holding back his own screams as he pulled the still burning knives out with his hooves. Ace's orange chitin began to glow in the light of the strongest healing spell he could muster. His twin sister marched toward the Butcheress with murderous intent in her eyes. The Butcheress matched Dub Step's death glare with one of her own. "Don't. Hurt. My. KIDS!" Each word was punctuated with the aura around her horn glowing brighter. "You stupid temperamental horse gecko!" She fired off her spell. The Butcheress returned fire with a spell of her own, powered seemingly by her own blood curtailing battle cry. The ground shook, and the air became electrified where the two spells met. The Disco Do-Gooder got up and attempted to charge her but his tail was bit by Disc Jocky, and he was pulled back. He was and watched as the spells began to burn a crater of molten concrete into the meters thick foundation of the warehouse.
The ball of energy quickly hit critical mass. The magical energies of the two spells exploded outward. The front wall of the warehouse was the closest to the explosion, and was blasted out into the street. The fires vanished as the Butcheress and Dub Step were thrown a dozen meters back. Disc Jockey's horn lit up and arches appeared in the remaining walls. "GET OUT!" He yelled. The recently freed ponies and griffons needed no further goading as they charged out in a half paniced stampede. "Rusty, Get down to the hospital room and get as many things as you can set up for Jet!" Disc Jockey screamed at the saddle bag holding his pip pad. A light in the corner of his eye caught his attention. He spun throwing Disco over Ace and casting a shield wall. It shattered moments later throwing him to the ground near his unconscious twin sister. He hadn't even registered that he'd hit the ground before the two of them were awash in nirik fire. It didn't singe their coats or burn their skin, but every nerve in their body flared up. The scream could have curdled water.
"Fuck you. Fuck You. FUCK YOU!" The Butcheress advanced on the twins. "Burn! BURNBURNBURNBURNBU-" Her head was a blur as the Disco Do-Gooder's displacement hoof went off. Lighting shooting into her from it's modification. She bounced back as she hit the concrete, and was hit again. She landed hard on he back with him jumping on top of her swing his hooves into her face and chest as hard as he could. Behind him Light was helping Dream get the Ace of Flames to safety, Lapis doing the same with Disc Jockey and Dub Step.
"Stop it!" Her hoof flared up Into the spit of his hip. He bit back his scream but still fell off of her. She struggled to her hooves seconds before he did. "Scream," she commanded her horn lighting up several times before the spell cast properly, nirik fire engulfed his body. He struggled back to his hooves grinding his teeth as tears started streaking down his face. "Scream I said. Scream and I'll make it quick." The fire burned higher. Disco fell back to the ground a long pained grunt coming though his clenched jaw. "Why don't you just scream and beg already?!" She started stomping on him.
"Why don't you?!" Sapphire's arrow exploded just as the Butcheress looked up. Blasting her back. As she smoke cleared Light Chaser was already bringing a small metal pipe she'd found down hard on to the Bloody Butcheress' horn. The nirik howled in pain. She swung catching the earth pony mare in the jaw, before, the metal pipe slammed into her own jaw. Light's eyes widened as the sound of rippers roared toward her. She leapt to the side as two of the rippers returned to their mistress. Before the Butcheress could make use of them another arrow exploded at her front hooves throwing her back Light charged threw the debris only to see the glow of the nirik fire on a building wall as the Butcheress fled.
Ash blinked several times as she slowly came too. The bright light and sterile white walls of the hospital room, which was under the cellar at Fluid's mansion, were hazy to her, as the drugs slowly worked though her system. She looked over to see Jet Lag asleep in his Ministry of Peace Doctor's uniform. Dub was asleep on another patent bed and fluid and Disc were asleep on benches against the wall. Fluid's head and chest wrapped with a few bandages. She started to move. Pain flared up in her side, and she hissed laying back down. "Owey, ow, ow, ow." She whined. Jet Lag's head shot up.
"Ash!" He screamed with unrestrained joy forgetting his bedside manners for a second and rushing to her side Fluid and Disc both jolted awake a the other young stallions joyful shout. "You're you're okay!" He held her. "I-I wasn't s-sure."
"Yeah I'm fine, well maybe I have two more holes but hey changelings are supposed to have holes right?" She asked patting Jet's back. The no touching rule being ignored seeing how he was currently hugging her. "Hugging is nice for me but my body still hurts." She said.
"Sorry." Jet pulled away.
"Did I say you could stop." She waved him back in with a pouting face. "Just gentler this time yeah?" Jet nodded going in for another hug. "Is Dub okay?"
"She'll be fine. Disc Jocky answered. "She just needs her rest. In a few weeks I'll be covering my ears with a pillow again trying to get some sleep because she thinks the doors to our shared bathroom are sound proof, mare my words." Disc gave her a smile.
"How are you sis?" Fluid asked wiping away a few stray tears. "You had us scared there for a bit."
"Eh with all the love in this room. I'm doing great a bit tender. But good." Ash smiled. Leaning back down and quickly falling back to sleep. |
Fallout Equestria: Power Ponies | Day Off | "And why do you think that so many of the quote unquote safe Stables actually turned out being psychotically inspired death traps. They weren't meant to save anybody not a soul. Least of all the ones that actually got into them. And who funded these blatant bad ideas, it wasn't the government, at least not directly, it was the Ministries! With direct approval from the highest echelons of pre war government. I have the papers right here folks!" Rusty picked up and dropped a stack of papers. "and why did they do this, because they made a pact with Tarturous them and the zebras, that's why only major population centers were hit, but both countries elites turned on each other at the last second stabbing each other in the back in hopes that they would be ones calling all the shots in the new world order. With tried and tested methods to control everybody else! But they can't control me I drink Tomato Juice!" Rusty raved into his microphone. "But that's all I've got over the next couple hours I'm actually going to read these papers in front of me and tell you all about what I've discovered. Until then listen to these beats from Glow Stick that I can personally guarantee don't have evil subliminal messages." He tapped a few buttons and the red sign that said 'LIVE' cut off.
Rusty headed down the stairs past the upper floors of the mansion to the first floor. "Hello Master Rusty, can I get anything for you?" 41fr3d asked as he approached the dining room.
"Yeah, I'll take some tomato juice. Hey have you seen the others it's really quiet here. Normally somebody's up to something around this time of day."
"Master Disk Jocky is going for a walking with his sister, the young masters Jet Lag is at the races and the young Masters Ash, Fluid, and Light are with him, and the master Dream is looking for a job, from what I understand." The protectopony began lumbering its way to the kitchen to get Rusty his glass of tomato juice.
Rusty headed to the dining room table with a packet of papers to read while he let the radio play a preselected play list of music for a couple of hours. He sat down and looked out at the sandy coast of property a small glint caught his eye. "Actually 41, I need to get some stuff just leave it next to the papers." He sighed before getting up and going back upstairs, leaving the stack of papers behind at the table. He pressed a couple of buttons on his pipbuck and a couple of screens popped up, after a little bit of sliding found the prompt he wanted, and with the next press of a button the mansions internal security cameras went down. He smiled slipping into Dub Step's room and moving quickly to the terminal that was set up. He knew better than to put his pipbuck into it. This required an old fashion hacking.
"Wooo! Go Jet Go!" Light and Ash cheered as the little pegasus colt bolted around a sharp turn in the track. Fluid watched from the railing as his friend used his hooves to half gallop half push himself off of the track wall. "The little dude is fast as lightning!" Light shouted to be heard over the crowd.
"Jet Lag is fast enough to qualify as a Wonderbolt to bad the Enclave kicked his folks out! Their loss."
"Who cares about the Fucking Enclave! I got my Jet Lag and they can go shove a stick up their butts." On the final turn he passed the pitch black pegasus that had been just a hairs width ahead of him taking the lead. "He's in the lead! Go Jet Go! Come on!" Ash jumped out of her seat and grabbed the railing of the old racing track stadium. Jet soared past the three of them crossing the finish line in first place. "Woo! Fluid go grab our winnings! She cheered jumping over the railing and running up to the pegasus. "Hug!"
"Hug." Jet Lag repeated letting her know he was fine with the contact. She wrapped her arms around him as he waved the track security away, before returning the gesture panting slightly out of breath. "That race was a tough one. Didn't think... I was going to make it there for a bit."
"I'll admit that Dashite was a close one, but you one in the end."
"Yeah no joke not bad kid." The Dashite said walking up to him. "I haven't seen flying like that since before I got my brand." He looked around before leaning in a bit. "Just between you and me, I was on Dash, I'm surprised you beat me, think you could loan me a couple hundred caps of your winnings?"
"Sure. Have them all if you want. That was a rough race."
"Nice thanks kid I owe you big you have no idea." He held out his hoof and after an awkward pause. "Hoof bump?"
"Don't take this the wrong way but no touching please, but yeah come on you can have it, not like I really need the caps myself." Jet smiled heading off to join Fluid and Light who were waving to him and Ash to come on over.
"Nice job Jet. But now what do we do that the races are over?" Light asked as they walked out of the stadium.
"I mean I was just going to go and do some shopping, until night fall." Jet answered.
"And fluid and I have to go do some training with Obsidian." Ash spit on the ground. "I was hoping to put it off, but we have a break in our scheduled and he want's us both come in for more training."
"Hmmm shopping with Jet Lag or super cool training with Ash and Fluid I'm sur-"
"No. No offence Light, but Obsidian's not the kind of changeling that you want to be around. Dub only had one date with him then dropped him like a hot potato, that should tell you all you need to know about him. Anyway's we'll see you around." Fluid waved good bye, as he and Ash head off leaving Jet with Light. After a couple hours they were moving through the crowded streets of the changeling district. Ash dropped her disguise as she and Fluid moved throw the cramped dark streets of the Changeling enclave. The two of them came to a stop in front of the Apartment complex that housed Mr. Obsidian, they hesitated for a second.
"One day Obsidian will cross a line that not even he can get away, and then I'll finally be happy to go into this damn building." Ash muttered under her breath.
"Ditto, but he did help us out, and this is a lesson for you, so we might as well go in, and get this over with." Fluid and Ash headed into the building. It was just as poorly lit as before. This time instead of Chitin, two changelings nodded to them and motioned for them to follow, instead of going up they lead Fluid and Ash to the stairs going down to the basement.
"High born elite Obsidian will be training you in the basement it's good that you brought a filth pony with you."
"He's a-"
"Let it go Ash. We've." Fluid interrupted his adopted sister. "Honestly, we both know I've been called worse. Let's just get this taken care of and try and met back up with Jet Lag in the market."
"Fine whatever." Ashe blew some of her mane out of her face. The pair of them headed down the stairs. When they got to the basement Ash's eyes quickly adjusted to the absolute darkness around her. Fluid slowly groped for the wall. "Fluid over here." She grabbed his hoof. "They expanded the basement here the walls are much further back than they would be."
"Yes we did. We are known for our subterranean architecture after all." Both of their ears perked up. "Come now Ash how are you doing today?"
"I was doing fine, What exactly did you want to teach me that we have to do it in the absolute darkness?" she asked watching as the black changeling stepped into her field of view. "If it's anything bad. I'm just going to head back up the stairs."
"Bad, Ash, we are changelings." Obsidian answered. "We are above the weak morality of the lower life forms, like those that you insist on associating with. Example," His horn lit up and Fluid went rigid. "On your knees and bark like a dog."
"STOP IT!" Ash screamed as Fluid got on his knees and started barking.
"Of course." His horn stopped glowing and Fluid went limp before putting a hoof to his head and groaning. "I merely wanted to show you what it is like, to prove that morality is to us as rules are to a god. We have no need for it. We have power, and anything that limits our use of said power must exist only to benefit the weak."
"Your wrong Obsidian." Fluid struggled back to his hooves. "If you're powerful than you need more morals than the weak because you're in a position to do more harm."
"And look what your morality as brought us, a wasteland ravished, poisoned, dying."
"And what did it get Chrystalis?"
"Don't say the queen's name Mud Pony." Obsidian took a deep breath. "We were going to betray the zebras and we were at war with your kind. It was only natural that they both hit the hive with everything they had on the last day." He sighed. "Now Ash to your training. Order your mud pony to do what I just ordered him to do. You're good in combat but the more subtle things those you still have to learn."
"Fine whatever let's just get this over with." She said flatly. Her horn started glowing Fluid went rigid. "Bark." Fluid remained rigid and completely silent. "Bark I said!"
"You don't want him to bark do you?"
"Of fucking course not he's my brother not a fucking dog."
"I beg to differ." Obsidian's horn lit up. " On your knees. Bark, and Pant. Mutt." Fluid immediately obeyed, barking and panting like a dog. "See if he sounds like a dog, looks like a dog."
"Stop it." Ash glared at him.
"Order him to." Obsidian smirked. "Or else your mud pony's going home with you like a mutt. I'm sure the City Council would get a laugh at that."
"Fuck you, Obsidian, I can't believe Dub was able to put up with you for even a single night." Ash sighed before looking at Fluid. "Stand up." She commanded. Fluid got back up.
"Back on your knees and bark!"
"Stay standing and remain quiet." Ash ordered, and her brother obeyed. "I might not want him on his knees and barking but you know what Obsidian, I sure as hell don't want a second rate asshole like yourself putting him on his knees and making him bark. Now if my lesson for the day is over will be going."
"You're attachment to a lesser race is only hurting your capacity to grow."
"I'm not to sure about that, given this is only my second time try mind controlling and I'm able to countermand you I think it's really helping my development." Ash smirked.
"Fine well then, One last thing, and you can go if you don't want me teaching you anymore today on how to be a changeling. Let's see how much your ability to drain a pony has improved. Kiss him. And try not to kill him this time when you do." Ash glared at him for a few seconds before sighing. She leaned in and kissed him. Fluid's eyes went from their vibrant red to a more muted grayish red. She pulled back. "He didn't die this time good, though your still taking to much. One would think your flying pony was starving you. Keeping up your disguise for as long and often as you do is doing you more harm than it is good and the pegasus colt can't sustain you alone. I suggest podding a few ponies."
"And if I ever find out that you've been podding pony's I'm going to turn you're head into a smear on the wall."
"I don't think the mud pony would like that."
"What Fluid doesn't know won't hurt him."
"By that logic the idiot must be invincible."
"Just hope I never find proof."
"Is that a threat?" he asked. Ash just glared at him for a moment before her body was engulfed in green flame, and she recast her disguise spell back into an orange pegasus. Fluid stumbled in a bit of a daze as he slowly came to Ash caught him before he hit the floor.
"Let's getting going Fluid. You need to get home."
Lapis leaned back in on the sofa while the two earth pony sibling that lived on the stairs gleefully downed the carrot and potato stew that she had cooked for her dinner. Though, she didn't mind that they were chowing down on it at her table, the two of them were looking a lot better now, she couldn't even see their ribs were sticking out anymore. After the two of them finished eating they looked up at her. Just gave them a soft smile and wave.
"Did you two save me anything?" She asked with a smile.
"Yes ma'am thank you for letting us have some." The colt nodded. "We can't give you a lot in return, though."
"That's alright you two just stay safe and if you're hungry come up and knock on my door okay, and if I'm not home feel free to have a go around the kitchen just, leave something for me to cook myself."
"Yes ma'am thank you so much miss Lapis." They waved heading out the door.
"You know you can sleep here too right?"
"W-we know b-but w-w-we need to-to go." The colt and his little sister headed out of the studio apartment closing the door behind them doubtlessly going back to the small landing that they called home.
She walked over to the kitchenette and poured herself a bowl of stew. She smiled as she had just enough for her lunch tomorrow, given the fridge worked only half the time there was no point in making to many left overs. She sat down at her table when there was a soft knock on her door. "Who is it?" she asked putting her utensils down.
"Just your friendly neighborhood repair pony's managers," came the answer from the other side of the door.
"Dub, Disc, is that you come on in?" Without needing any further request the door opened up and the pink twins walked in. "What brings the two of you to my humble home?"
"We were just doing our rounds and thought that we would visit."
"Bro-Bro wanted to see if his mare friend was interested in a date."
"Dub wanted to visit her four ex colt friends that also live in this apartment block."
"Don't say it like that, you'll make it sound like I'm easy?" Lapis couldn't fought back a laugh as Dub pushed her brother softly on the shoulder.
"Well ignoring all of that, I'm glad to see that you're walking around again, are you still burned out?" Lapis asked as the twins sat down on her couch.
"I mean, I still can't use my horn at least not yet, but Jet Lag and 41fr3d both agree that I should be able to use my magic again by the end of the month. But for the actual reason, we're here is for the Summer Sun Celebration, we were wondering if you'd be interested in joining us and setting up the party."
"Right, this will be my first Summer Sun Celebration where I can actually see the sun." She smiled and nodded, "but isn't that in a couple of months?"
"Well yeah, but it's a big thing here at End of the Line, and Fluid has a lot of responsibilities given his family's old world position in all of it, so we have to start planning and stuff month in advance," Disc answered.
"He was old world aristocracy right. Well I don't mind joining in, not like there's been much to do lately anyways. Unless you two have been holding out on me."
"Not quite but we have found a couple of interesting things. That could actually help us, with our fight against the snatchers. But we'll need a couple of extra days of going through it all."
"Anyways, we were a bit curious, what you were up to, no need to make all our meetings about work." Dub said leaning back on the couch. "though I am sorry that we kind of ran in on your dinner. We thought that you would have finished it before now."
"We can go if you'd like." Disc offered.
"I'm fine with you being here but I hope you don't mind if I keep eating, do either of you want any?"
"No, we both had something on the way here." Disc shook his head.
"So, how's working for Fortiis going?"
"He's amazing, his shop is everything he said it was and more!" She took another bit of her soup, her eye brow raised slightly as Dub's face slightly sours. "What's wrong?"
"We're not on the best terms with Fortiis."
"I had to teach Fluid sex ed. Do you know who taught Fluid sex ed before me!" Dub began. "Fortiis!" Her brother stiffed his laughter as Lapis looked at the pink mare a little confused. "And do you know what that Stalliongrad jackass taught him! Baby ponies come from EGGS! Eggs that the stallions lay." Lapis burst out laughing. "Oh sure you think it's funny, but imagine how I felt having his first question be how does the female pony put the egg in the stallion?! It's not so funny then."
"She's right, it was hilarious!" Disc laughs beside his sister earning him a punch to the side.
"He didn't."
"He did and if Fortiis is a such a good boss I'm going to feel a little bit guilty about shoving my hoof up his ass." Dub mumbled. "Whatever look changing subject, are you up for a walk with us after you finish your supper, we're going to go visit Old Timer, and see if he's got any news for us."
"Yeah sure." Lapis wiped a stray tear from her eye. "Just let me finish these last couple of bites. Oh, wait speaking of Fluid, he likes to tinker right?"
"Yeah he likes to fiddle around with things."
"He fixed your window, he fixes lots of stuff."
"Great do you think that he could fix my fridge?"
"Yeah we'll send him over in the morning to get your fridge fixed."
"Thanks, so what are the other new comers up too?" Lapis started drinking the thin watery broth of the stew.
"Dream's applied for a job as a math teacher in the only school this side of Fillydelphia if Red Eye's is to be believed."
"It's probably the only school, not that it's really a school. Just a politician trying to get votes with the I can rebuild the world line of talking points." Disc sighed leaning back. "He's really good at the math part of his job. The teaching part not so much. His sister, she's alright, she's extremely..."
"Spirited." Dub finished for her brother. "She's getting along well with the others. You want to go for a walk?"
"After the stew yeah, that'd be nice." Lapis nodded. "Once around the neighborhood would be nice." The three of them headed out locking the door behind them. "Hey Dub, what the heck is that?" Lapis pointed a few black cords with glass interwoven into them. hanging out of the pink mares saddle bag.
"That that's for tomorrow, Don't worry about it." Dub's smile falter for a second before becoming all bubbly again. "Do you want to hear about the time my brother and I 'accidentally' dyed his coat the same neon pink as his mane?"
"You didn't that's terrible! Tell me everything."
Fluid and Ash had found Light and Jet Lag waiting for them as they exited the Changeling enclave. Light was standing bipedally jumping from one hoof to the other earning her strange looks from each passer by. After a brief conversation the two groups joined back together and began wondering around town. They had walked around stopping at any shop that caught their attention, until the sun had finally began to set below the horizon leaving the four of them alone on empty and abandoned streets. Everybody hurried into their homes as the day began to come to a close.
"I would think ponies would start being bolder, about going out." Light said as they headed down abandoned streets.
"You can never be too safe," Jet said staying close to Ash's side though never touching her. "Though, I doubt that we'll run in to any snatchers tonight."
"I hope we do that'd be the best way to end this day off, punching a bunch of jackasses until they go down."
"We need to get home soon. After all tomorrow is the second friday of the month," Ash said a small shiver goes down Fluid's back.
"What? What's that got to do about anything?" Light looked confused for a second before her eyes light up. "Ah that the day that we all get waffles!"
"What no, that's when, well." Ash trailed off.
"There are three rule, don't touch me." Jet Lag started. "Don't tell pony's about who we are. and never under any circumstances go on the forth floor on the second Friday of the month. Those are the three most important house rules, you can't forget those things."
"I mean that last one is a very arbitrary rule. Surely you guys forget about it all the time too right?"
"Not really no." Ash shakes her head side to side.
"I don't like going up there anyways so I just avoid it all together," Jet answered.
"What about you Fluid you're being awfully quiet." Light smirked. "I bet you walked up there a few times and saw Dub doing things that you wish you could forget."
"I really don't want to talk about it," Fluid answered not looking up from the ground. The four of them walked along the roads Light, Jet, and Ash talking about what ever came to their minds. Fluid remained quiet not speaking unless spoken to, and when they finally got back to the mansion Fluid went straight to his room.
"See ya tomorrow," Light waved as he headed up the stairs. "Guess he's not feeling all that great."
"Light, again tomorrow's going to be a bit of a rough day for him." Ash led the way to the kitchen. "He's normally like this and then he's over it after sunset, don't worry and don't push him about it."
Heading up the stairs Fluid paused at the sound of a bang. He peeked into the ball room and saw Dream groaning head on the table, as he rubbed his temples. "Why can't they just understand. That's not how you do it?" He looked up from his table and spotted Fluid. "Hey colt, you look like my students before a pop-quiz."
"I-it's nothing. Is there anything wrong with you? You seem a bit upset."
"With me not at all, with my students, well that's a completely different matter entirely. No matter how many times I do the equations on the board none of them seem to understand how to do it themselves."
"Have you explained it to them?"
"I've told them a million times this is how you do it, but they just don't understand that."
"Try talking to Dub and Disc they're both good at home schooling. I'm heading to bed." Fluid walked away leaving Dream to fret over his student's papers.
"Yeah you get some rest you look awful." Fluid continued up the stairs to the third floor where he quickly made his way to his room for a rough night of sleep.
Ash, Jet, and Light made their way into the dinning room. Dub and Disc were eating quietly across from each other as the three or them made it in. "Hey Dub hey Disc, what's up you two? And if you say tomorrow I'm going to flip." Light Chaser walked up to the table and took a seat.
"The yesterday of the day after tomorrow." Disc smirked.
"Hahaha." She exaggerated her laugh at 41fr3d came up to her.
"Your usual."
"Yes please." Jet and Ash nodded to the robot from their chairs, as Rusty walked in.
"Just finished a walk on the beach, it's getting warmer out there. Finally."
"Well we hope you enjoy you're dinner, we're going to bed. There's a lot to do over the next couple of days." Dub nodded as her brother got out of his seat. She soon joined him, as the two left the table.
"Any theories on what goes on on the fourth floor tomorrow Rusty?" Light asks as the earth pony colt sits down.
"Theories I don't need theories I have the facts. Dub and Disc engage in ancient rituals and rites to try and contact the ministry mares using Fluid as a medium." Jet groaned and Ash face hoofed, as Light listened intently to Rusty as he went into a rant that would have lasted hours past midnight, had 41fr3d not sent them to bed, at half an hour past 2 AM. |
Pirates of Equestria | pre | Vex shot up at the name Dash. She snapped her head left to the pink pony wearing that huge grin on her face. Dash?! Surely she can't mean... no. That's ridiculous. She couldn't be talking about the same Dash.
She was dead, after all.
AUTHOR'S COMMENTARY |
Pirates of Equestria | Impositions | "You can curse to reveal something about the characters and the world they're in... or you can use profanity just because you can." -*
Chapter 4
"Cap'n, do you want us to dump the decapitated head? Or should we treat it with respect?" asked Fluttershy after giving the ruby box a last disgusted glance.
"Neither," Patch said. "We're keeping it."
"What?" Fluttershy stammered, sticking her tongue out in revulsion. "Why would we want to do that?"
"Think about it, Fu'Shy," Patch said as if he were talking to a small foal who asked why doors open. "That chest was obviously intended for royalty, being covered in rubies and all. They were headed in the general direction of Canterlot, which means it was a package for the Princesses."
Fluttershy blinked. "Wait. You're trying to tell me that someone was sending the Princess a disembodied head? What, like some kind of sick joke?"
"A ruby encrusted chest for a joke?" Patch asked in sarcastic disbelief. "That seems like a pretty expensive prank, Fu'Shy."
"What are you implying? You can't possibly mean..."
"Exactly," Patch said whilst flicking his hoof. "The head is part of the treasure. They were going to use it for something. I don't know what, but I intend to find out."
"Did you say... Dash?" Vex asked, unsure about the conclusion she had come to. Vex looked up to the Wonderbolt in extreme admiration four years ago. Yet after two short years of acting like a silly fangirl, Vex learned about the accident. Spiraled right into a mountain, the paper said.
"Yeah," Pinkie confirmed. After a short silence she lit up like a light bulb following a sudden realization. "Do you know Dash?! Ohmygosh have you met her?!"
"You mean... Rainbow Dash?" Vex inquired, still quite unsure. Pinkie Pie nodded furiously and beamed a white toothy grin that lit up the entire room. Vex felt uneasy; it wasn't often she met a grounded person who was a fan of the Wonderbolts. "Pinks... you don't know? She's de--"
"Man I can tell you so many embarrassing stories about her!" Pinkie Pie cut her off unknowingly. "Did you know that one time she flew straight into a mountain? I wonder why!"
Vex blinked, then fumed. Wait, she personally knew her?! What the hell, man! I spent so much time trying to get in to see her, what the fuck! Vex was about to yell 'SHE'S DEAD MOTHERFUCKER' into Pinkie's face, but Pinkie interrupted Vex before she could.
"I haven't seen her in like... ten years, but..." Pinkie said with a wistful smile stretching across her muzzle. Vex let out a small grunt with her mouth wide open, the hurtful truth dying on her beak. "It's still there y'know? I love her... I loved them all..." Her dull gaze swept across the floor, and her smile dimmed to small, distant smirk. Like a light bulb with a vengeance, she lit up again. "Never mind that, what were you going to say?"
"She's dedicated," Vex spat instinctively without hesitation. Getting her thoughts straight, she sighed. She deserves the truth, she decided. But then, she looked up and saw that bright, cheerful face... and decided against it. I'm not well known for giving people what they deserve, anyway. "I was a fan... I admired her dedication."
"A fan?" Pinkie asked. She then wore an expression of comprehension as she said, "Oooohhh, she actually made it in the Wonderbolts, huh? I guess I shouldn't be surprised, she's a wonderful flier."
"Wait, you were her friend and you didn't know?" Vex said, accidentally leaving a trace of accusation.
"Yeah, I know... Ten years ago, we kinda fell apart," Pinkie Pie recounted, some color from her fur seeming to dim. "We didn't bother keeping touch... look where we ended up." Vex looked away and exhaled, the tension in the room getting thick enough for her to cut it with her talons.
"Yeah, whatever Pinks." Vex smirked and looked at the small pony again, maliciousness showing in her eyes. "Hey, now that you'll be taking up half of my abode, you little shit, get some grub for us. It's in the mess hall down in the west wing of this deck." Vex wasn't exactly the smoothest ice-breaker, but she could shatter ice with a napalm bomb when she wanted to... by being an absolute dick. It's possible for people to be too distracted by your vileness to be sad or worry about other things. It was a strategy Vex knew well, and used often.
"Okie Doki Loki!" Pinkie shouted, a wide grin replacing her previously frowning face. She nearly flew out of the room in a pink blur. Vex looked at the spot previously occupied by Pinkie Pie, and sighed. Weirdo. I have a feeling I'm not going to be able to get decent sleep for a while now. Vex turned and climbed onto the top bunk of a regularly half empty two bunk bed. Being a griffin she had always liked being as far away from the ground as possible. She had contemplated sleeping on a cloud once, to see if it would be better, even though she was perfectly content with a solid bed. Curiosity overpowered her and she followed through.
It... didn't end well.
Nevertheless, sleep was coming, even if she had to kill that annoying pink pony.
Captain Patch walked in his private quarters and set the parchment he had obtained from the ruby chest down on the elegant wooden desk, which was laden with various map reading tools and other knick-knacks for the sake of either decoration or study. Among the items on his desk was a compass, a lit oil lamp, and an encyclopedia he had recently used as a reference for a music box that had a riddle on it. Patch sat and unrolled the strange piece of paper that now occupied the desk. What the parchment contained hadn't really surprised him; rather he kind of expected it.
Absolute gibberish. Typical. He wore a dull expression that one might give after hearing a bad joke. Now I'll have to use my brain. Damn. The scroll that was unraveled on the table had trace amounts of fluorescent yellow ink, which were arranged in nonsensical scratches across the paper that didn't look like any perceivable language. What annoyed Patch even more was the fact the bright yellow 'lettering' was barely visible against the sepia colored parchment. Sighing in aggravation, he reached for his mug of rum that had been sitting on his desk along with the other items. He felt his hoof hit something pretty heavy and looked up a little too late. A crashing noise was heard as the temperature of the lower half of his body suddenly raised. He realized what had happened. Ballocks! The lamp!
Patch hopped from his seat and jumped towards the fallen oil lamp to see a small fire beginning to feed on the wooden deck of the ship. Thinking quickly, he dashed towards his cot and lifted one of the plain white sheets covering it. He dove towards the fire making sure the entire blanket smothered it as to not catch fire itself.
One muffled flough later and the room was... still surprisingly well lit, actually. It was odd; that lamp was the only source of light in the room. A soft yellow glow eradiated from what seemed like his work desk.
The scroll! Patch clambered back up to investigate the source of the strange light. Just as he suspected, the yellow scratches on the paper seemed to be shining off the page it was written on, an obvious display of some sort of magic. While Patch wasn't a unicorn, he assumed it was an elementary spell which a foal could achieve. Still, he didn't quite bet his life on it. Luminescent text just didn't seem like it could possibly be an advanced magic. He walked over to the parchment and mulled it over a second time.
Still illegible, just glowing, Patch noted annoyingly. He decided to keep the lights off, it was easier to read the strange markings that way. He got out a Bible (titled The Sun, The Princess, The Mare on the Moon) and began to compare the languages from the beginning of the book with the markings found on the parchment.
"I'm back!"
Vex instantly sensed something was wrong as she woke from her brief slumber. Without a second thought she immediately shot her eyes open, and noticed there was a whole lot of pink in front of her; more than there should be. The pink in front of her eventually formed into the face of a pony. She was finally able to identify it as Pinkie, wearing the same stupid grin only this time even more so impossibly wide. Vex wondered why she couldn't move and why she felt so heavy, until she came to the daunting realization that Pinks was laying on fucking top of her.
"WHAT THE FUCK, PINKS! GET THE SHIT OFF OF ME!" Vex screamed in flustered confusion. Pinkie Pie, totally unaware why Vex lashed out, just sat there dumbfounded by the angry griffin's reaction. Vex was finally able to gather enough of her bearings to wrap her talons around the pink menace's throat and hurl her off of the bunk. To Pinkie's dismay, she landed on her head on the way down, but luckily her cotton candy-esque hair provided ample cushioning. However, her hair sproinged back into its original state, launching the party pony towards the wall at an alarming rate. A fatal sounding crash resonated through what seemed like the entire ship. Vex just stared, speechless.
"I brought... the food... hehehehe," Pinkie said, her eyes twirling and her head throbbing.
"Uhh... thanks."
Patch's head shot up at the sound of a hoof knocking on his door. Without hesitation he waved them in and said, "You're welcome."
Fluttershy shoved the door open and slowly walked towards the Captain's desk, contemplating Patch's odd phrase for allowing somebody in. As she got closer, Patch voiced an ah of satisfaction.
"Fu'Shy, just the one I wanted to see. Do you think you can make any sense of these markings? I've been comparing it to other languages for half an hour with little success. I thought I was getting close to Prussian, but if it was the parchment would only say one phrase, 'root beer float' , which I thought wasn't very likely."
Fluttershy gave a small chuckle as she stepped up to the Captain's desk, and showed a nod of confirmation. Reaching out one of her hooves, she picked up the pap--
BLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
A huge shockwave of pure yellow energy shot forth from the scroll, knocking literally everything from Patch's desk and flung everything that wasn't nailed down to the walls, including Patch and Fluttershy. Fluttershy was thrown so violently that the door she made contact with splintered without any resistance what so ever. She went through three layers of fortified interior walls before slowing down to complete stop. Patch, on the other hand, was slammed right into the exterior wall behind him. It was designed to withstand cannon fire, so thankfully he didn't go through it or else he would have been swallowing a whole lot more than air at the moment. Heads of the crew poked out of the sides of the holes in the wall to see just what the hell just happened. Fluttershy, groaning, slowly got up, and began to painfully trot towards Patch's lifeless body.
"Captain... Aoooowwwwww..."
At Fluttershy's voice, Patch flinched, and then slowly lifted himself off the ground. "Well," he uttered, disgruntled. "I honestly should have expected that."
"What I don't get is why the motherfuckers even do that. I mean, it doesn't really help them out, so what the shit?" Vex continued as she expressed her underlying hatred for politicians. Pinkie nodded, her mouth full of the baked beans that the cooks had provided her.
"I know what you mean, but I never really got into politics. Too grey and cynical."
"Hehe, it certainly wouldn't suit you."
There was a few more seconds of silent chewing that began to make Pinkie feel uncomfortable. Eventually, Pinkie decided to ask the question that had been spinning in her head for the past hour. "Vex?" Pinkie asked, giving time for Vex to respond. Pinkie felt Vex nod in response.
"Have you ever considered getting--" Pinkie was interrupted by the entire ship suddenly getting jerked to the right, followed by the sound of an explosion. Pinkie's food flew off her chest and landed with a pathetic thud on the ground. Vex jumped at the sudden movement, her reflexes more acutely honed than Pinkie's, and was able to catch her plate of beans before they flung off towards the ground. Pinkie stared at her fallen food with a dulled expression before deciding maybe asking Vex that question might be a bad idea. With a sigh, she added, "Nevermind."
"What the hell just happened, Captain?!" Demanded Fluttershy as Patch propped a long piece of wood against the doorway in hopes of achieving privacy.
"You're askin' me like I should know," Patch defended flatly. He stepped over to the paper that now glowed like a firefly orgy. It provided more than enough light for the entire room. "This is most interesting."
"If it weren't for the blunt force trauma, I gotta admit I'd be pretty interested too."
Patch looked at the glowing parchment with caution, as to avoid another explosion, yet all uncertainty vanished immediately after discovering that much of the parchment was covered in even more fluorescent yellow writing--all in English. "What?! HOW?"
Fluttershy trotted over to where patch was standing and examined it herself. "Wow, that's some tiny text."
"But it was complete, absolute bullshit before that explosion!" He looked at Fluttershy with an expression one child might look at another child with if he stole his candy. Fluttershy gave a vigorous laugh before patting her hoof on him.
"Guess I have the magic touch, hehe." Fluttershy bellowed with a smirk. Patch shot her a look of indignation before returning to the scroll.
This is just odd, he thought, carefully lifting the parchment. Never encountered anything like this before... and what made Fluttershy be able to reveal it. What is she, which I am not? Strange...
With that, he began to read aloud.
"If you're reading this, it means that the elements have been found, and for that, we can rejoice, for our Princess of the Night is back." Fluttershy's face paled. Clearly, this was something of weight, and she had never told Patch of her title. She was afraid that she may now have to. "I am the Warrior of Light, handpicked by Celestia herself, but I'm afraid I'm not going to live up to my duties. So, I humbly task you six with one last assignment in order to..."
Patch swallowed. "...Save Equestria." Patch gave Fluttershy a grim glance, who remained stern in response.
He continued. "We will be attacked at some point in the future, and this time will remain undisclosed until you gather all the scrolls and elements for the unlikely situation someone would use the situation to their advantage. But the storm is coming, and you must stop it. Look, I cannot tell you any more until you gather more of the elements. This information isn't exactly meant for all eyes. Also, I know it is tempting, but do not seek aid from Celestia. I have lost her faith long ago, and I'm afraid she won't take my word for it if you show her this letter. This is something that must be done by the elements themselves. Good luck, element. On the back you will find a map to a certain location; do everyone a favor and don't go there yet, all you will find will be open water. However, below the map is a clue to the location of the next scroll. Decipher it to find my second message. I... no, Equestria is counting on you six."
Patch and Fluttershy remained quiet, and just stood, soaking up the information. Patch was the first to speak. "HHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHA!!!"
Fluttershy's jaw hit the floor.
"Hehehe, man that is RICH!" Patch hooted in between fits of laughter. He crossed his eyes and made his voice three tones lower. "'Hurry elements, you're my only hope!'" He mocked, having trouble breathing between all the giggling.
"Cap'n, this is serious!" Fluttershy hissed. Patch waved a dismissive hoof at her, his smile never fading.
"Yeah? We don't even know what he meant by elements, and there's no way we can trust some random dude that decided to write in yellow glowing magic marker."
"He means the elements of harmony, dipshit," Fluttershy deadpanned with malign. Patch recoiled, speechless. Fluttershy had never gotten that blatantly disrespectful in their entire time working together. Although it wasn't as if he never heard of the elements of harmony, but he always assumed that they were all dead considering the world hadn't been in any mortal danger in quite a while. "Look Patch," And she just called Patch by his first name for the first time in years. Always she had called him Cap'n, except for a few short circumstances. "This is real trouble... I can feel it... We have to do something!"
"Look Fu'Shy, I can take in your friend, and I can take you breaking my rule considering your rank, but I can't go on a fucking magic school bus adventure for something that might not be true and is an impossible feat!"
"Cap'n, you know in the back of your head that this is all true... stop denying the possibility."
"Know your place, Fluttershy!" Patch yelled in retaliation. Fluttershy reeled back. It was pretty hard to get Patch angry, and even harder to make him say Fluttershy's name properly. "We don't even know where one element is, let alone six. Actually, we don't even know who they are!"
"I do!" Fluttershy blurted out. Patch's expression of anger instantly melted away. Fluttershy's face became stern and determined. "I do. I am. Pinkie is."
"What?"
Fluttershy sighed. "Captain... I'm the element of kindness..."
The Captain's eyes widened in bewilderment. "...Y-you?" Never had Patch described Fluttershy as kind. She was certainly in the best moral standing than the entire crew, but kindness wasn't exactly the first word to come to mind. Maybe... merciful. Still...
Fluttershy nodded before adding, "And Pinkie is the element of laughter."
"Your pink friend?" Patch asked. Fluttershy nodded once again.
Patch groaned and slammed his head into his desk. Fluttershy gave him an uneasy look at the odd behavior. He was still standing so it was a slightly uncomfortable looking position.
"I don't know Fu'Shy..."
"Cap'n... You said that it's our mission to oppress the opressers so that the victims may stand. We are gonna get a whole lot more victims if we don't do this."
"Fu'Shy... The letter hinted that it ain't gonna happen for a while... it's not our responsibility."
"Neither was donating half of our loot. Or killing those slavers. Or keeping Vex."
Patch shot up and stared at his yellow friend. She was caught in a smile she couldn't wipe off. "It's not our responsibility. It's our duty."
There was a long, thought filled silence, which led Patch to sigh. "Okay, fine, you win. We'll 'save the world'. But if something else arises this is not a priority. Understood?"
"Understood." Fluttershy responded with a smile.
"Now, to find out where the second scroll is..." Patch said, newfound objective within him.
"Actually sir, it may be a better idea to find my friends first. That way we can fill them in while looking for the letters."
"Well, do you know where they are?" Patch asked, stuffing the glowing parchment inside his desk. Conspicuously inconspicuous. No one would look in there for anything of value.
"Not really... Finding Pinkie Pie was actually a bit of a surprise... though the last I heard of Rarity was in Canterlot. I bet she knows where the others are."
"To Canterlot we go then," Patch said in stride as he walked out of the used-to-be-door, a smile on his face.
"So... You're the new recruit?"
"Yes, sir, mistah!" The small mare saluted enthusiastically. Pipsqueak looked down at the personelle files between his hooves. Slowly, he read the description. Age: 20. Occupation prior to enlisting: Carpenter.
Pipsqueak snuck a glance towards the red-head's cutie mark. A hammer and three nails. Hometown: Ponyville. Residence: Sweet Apple Acres.
Name: Applebloom
"You're part of the Apple family, correct?" Pipsqueak asked, mulling over the yellow earth pony with a pink bow in her mane.
"Uh, yeah. How did ya know, mistah?" she asked, giving him an aside glance.
"Your sister has made quite a name for herself in the military. That's why you joined, is it not?"
"Mhmm," Applebloom confirmed, giving a nod.
"Also, Scootaloo has told me quite a bit of your adventures as fillies."
"No way, Scootaloo's ahn this ship?" Applebloom asked in utter disbelief. She was new on this ship, but she would have noticed Scootaloo from a mile away.
"Yea, and she's my first mate as well," Pipsqueak added.
"Really?" Applebloom aasked, confused. "I thought she didn't swing that way..."
Pipsqueak had to really try to contain his laughter to a small chuckle. "No, lass, that means she's second in command."
"Oh," Applebloom squeaked as her face started to burn red.
"So, tell me about your skills, lass. What could you do on this ship of mine?"
Applebloom put a proud hoof to her chest as she recounted what she had said to a million other customers before. "Ah'm an Equestrian renowned and skilled carpenter that has had tuhns o' experience with the handling an' planning of houses, boats, forts, an' castles. If this ship evah got intuh bad shape, you can expect me t' fix it right up as long as Ah got a small able-bodied crew and enough supplies."
Pipsqueak put a hoof to his chin and examined the yellow pony once more. Resolutely, he smiled and said, "Alright, then, welcome to the crew. You'll find your room in the private quarters in Deck two; Room one-seventy."
Applebloom looked unsure. "That easy?"
"Well we're about to battle a small group of pirates just outside of Port Corral. We might need someone like you. Plus, your Scoot's friend; no way I'm gonna turn down a friend by association, lass."
Applebloom turned pale and made an audible gulp. "P-pirates?"
Pipsqueak scoffed and put his hooves behind his head. "Ah, don't worry lass. It's only one ship. We should be able to handle it no problem. No go on, I'll tell Scoots where you are, I'm sure she'd love to see you."
"Aye-aye, sir!" Applebloom yelled, then ran off.
"So, there any other griffins other than you?" Pinkie asked, staring at the bunk above heer blankly as she covered herself in the sheets. Vex and Pinkie Pie had just been talking for the past hour or so, eating up as much time as they could.
"On this ship? Not really. Unless ya count Klepto. Though he rarely comes out of the lower docks; he's on stowaway duty."
"Have you ever thought of... you know, egg making?" Pinkie Pie said suggestively as she raised her eyebrows (even though Vex couldn't see her.)
"...No, I haven't," Vex said after a long pause. "Not that he's ugly, it's just... well it's complicated."
"Are you...?" Pinkie Pie asked, unsure of the delicacy of the situation.
"Sorta," Vex cut her off, getting the implied question. "I enjoy both the barrel and the musket of the gun, if you know what I mean." Pinkie Pie blinked. That was a strange euphemism. Still, she was glad she wasn't the only bisexual on the ship. "But that's not why... I'm just not interested."
"You mean, like in relationships?" Pinkie asked, baffled. That seemed to fit Vex's personality, but...
"Well, no. I'm a virgin and sex doesn't seem like such a bad thing," Vex put bluntly. Pinkie Pie nearly choked on the air she was breathing. "But for me, it's not that simple." Pinkie Pie took a few deep breaths.
"Then what do you mean?" She finally found the nerve to ask.
"I don't wanna talk about it." And with that, the two resolved to sleep.
*Quotes are usually taken from my friends in real life, but this one was taken from a prereader who rejected my story. I ain't sore, it was just too hilarious not to put up. Don't worry, this story will stay as deliciously vulgar as I want it to be.
AUTHOR'S COMMENTARY |
Pirates of Equestria | Interlude 1: Shattered Days and Broken Nights | "THE BRITISH ARE COMING, THE BRITISH ARE COMING... well, they at least have the souls of the British."
Interlude 1
Hoofinghamm stood absolutely still. Celestia had requested audience of him, which was something that happened regularly. And every time he would stand directly in front of the door for a good minute or so, reach his hoof up, and give three vigorous taps on the door, taps which could be heard throughout the entire castle. It was pretty routine, given his status. Yes, he was the Day Watch Captain.
Even though his occupation had the title "Day Watch", it was a twenty-four hour guard service for Princess Celestia, as the Night Watch was a twenty-four hour guard service for Princess Luna. The two factions never got along very well, even though the sister Princesses did. It was almost second nature for the protectors of the Night to be very... rambunctious and loud, as it was second nature for the guards of the Sun to be incredibly uptight and somewhat boring. The only thing that Hoofinghamm hated more than the Night Watch was the Night Watch Captain himself. Well, he had never met him, but the way that the Night Watch acted clearly showed negligence of their leader, and that disgusted Captain Hoofinghamm.
Tap, tap, tap
"You may enter," he heard the regal voice of Princess Celestia say on the other side. Hoofinghamm straightened his wings, and with his golden horseshoes and helmet, he walked inside.
"Good afternoon, Your Highness."
"Watch Captain Hoofinghamm, nice to see you," the Princess replied with a smile.
Hoofinghamm kept a straight face as he said, "Likewise."
"Gjero," the Princess began. The mention of his first name made the Day Watch Captain shift uncomfortably; he always did whenever anyone tried to maintain a level of formality with him, especially somebody of importance. Plus, his name sounded so cliche, as it was pronounced as 'Hero'. "I have a very special assignment for you," She said. At that, his face somehow became even sterner as he leaned in closer to the Princess' throne. Of all his years serving, she had never started a conversation like this.
"I need you to take a vacation."
Hoofinghamm exhaled an incredibly deep, exasperated breath he didn't realize he had been holding. He immediately straightened himself out as he realized how rude it looked to the Princess. She began to chuckle. "Don't worry, there's a point to this." Suddenly, her face darkened, and her voice became grim. "I need you protect a very valuable parchment, a letter written by a very important pony."
Gjero gave a fierce nod. "Do not be fooled by its simplicity," the Princess ordered and pulled out what looked like a simple parchment. "Go ahead and look at it."
"It's blank," Gjero stated as he unrolled the scroll.
The Princess nodded sincerely. "Yes, as it appears that way, but it is actually written with invisible letters that only few can see. It contains incredibly valuable information that cannot be known by the public."
"If that's the case, why don't you just burn it?" Hoofinghamm asked, although it was toned in such a way that gave the utmost respect for the Princess of the Sun.
"I said valuable, not dangerous or evil."
Gjero gave the Princess an odd look. She explained, "I would trust a group of foals with this information, but some ponies might feel threatened by it, and some would even go so far as to destroy it."
"Forgive me Princess, I still don't understand. You do know what's written in here... don't you?"
The Princess hung her head. Gjero apologized. "Unfortunately, I am not one of those select few who can see the content of these scrolls. The author of these letters feels that I cannot trust him... and I fear he may be right." The Princess' face became slightly aggressive, something that happened often when she spoke about something of weight, which in turn didn't happen very often. "Still the threat is undeniable, and something must be done."
"If this scroll is so valuable, why am I the only one guarding it?" Gjero asked, genuinely confused. "Not to question your judgment, but wouldn't a group of heavily armed men be more fitting?"
"Not quite," the Princess admitted. "Not many people know about this scroll, and if I built a fortress with a plethora of guards around it, somebody might take that as a little conspicuous. The people that do know about this would instantly see where it was being defended, and would somehow find a way to slip through their defenses."
Okay, Hoofinghamm saw the logic in that. "However, no one would expect me to give the duty to only two ponies, and it would hardly be possible to be obtained via an espionage mission considering it's going to be on your person at all times. It's strategically better this way," the Princess clarified. Hoofinghamm had only heard one group of words in all of that exposition.
"Two ponies?" he voiced his concern. The Princess chuckled.
"Yes, you will be receiving some help on this task. She will be the decoy on this mission. It will be slightly more obvious she has the scroll, when in reality you do."
"She?" He asked again, even more baffled than before. Celestia only smiled in response.
"Here she is now."
On cue, a dark grey pony with dull purple hair and fluorescent yellow eyes trotted with a saucy sway into the room. Gjero noticed that her pupil was like a snake's, long and vertical, a side effect of Luna's guard spell which are given to all of the Night watch ponies. Luna also gives them bat wings which are stronger but less aerodynamic than pegasus wings, but only the pegasi received those. A horn protruded out of her dark helmet, and her breastplate- with a dark purple reptilian eye symbol in the center- clacked with every step. Her appearance was simply... sloppy. Clearly she must be some sort of rook recruit, Gjero thought with a sigh.
"Loony filled me in, so who's this sexy girl I'm workin' with, P.C.?"
WHAT! What did she just say to the Princess!? Gjero was about to tackle this girl and shove her face the floor before he came to a depressing realization. This is the mare I'm working with!
"Good evening, Captain Datzkowitz. He is standing right there," Celestia said as she pointed to a bewildered Hoofinghamm
Did Celestia just call her captain? Why would she do that, she's just- Gjero's thoughts frozed as his brain clicked in a daunting realization. "You're the Night Watch Captain?!" Gjero blurted out without thinking. Datzkowitz frowned at the offensive comment before turning to Celestia.
"Wait, I didn't agree to no co-ed! My boat sails on calm seas, P.C., an' this gonna get real awkward real fast," Datzkowitz complained. Celestia just laughed.
"I assure you, Gjero Hoofinghamm here is the most respectful pony I know; he'll be an absolute gentlecolt. He will not try anything dirty or dishonest, or my name is not Celestia," the Princess reassured. Datzkowitz didn't seem very convinced. "Please, Vera, I'm asking for your cooperation here; this is really important."
Gjero blinked. He glanced at his new partner. Vera...
Vera stuck out her tongue and sighed. "Okay..."
Celestia smiled once more and handed Hoofinghamm some papers with her magic. "Here," she said. "This is paperwork for a small building located at the outskirts of Canterlot, expenses such as lodging will be provided free of charge. Remember, you will still be technically on duty, so no fooling around during work hours. The building itself will have another decoy inside it just in case. I'm counting on you two."
Hoofinghamm gave a stiff, stern salute, shouting "Yes, ma'am."
Datzkowitz, however, gave two loose to beats to her chest with her hoof, kissed it, and stuck it out in a friendly point. She could almost hear her new partner roll his eyes.
Both Watch Captains trotted outside, ready for their new mission. As they left, Luna came from behind one of the hallways, shaking her head disapprovingly. "Really?" she asked. "'No fooling around'? That doesn't sound like the Tia I know." Her expression bore accusation. "This is just a vacation for the boy, isn't it?"
Celestia chuckled sheepishly as she rubbed the back of her mane. "While the assignment I gave them is really important, I'm not really too worried about it. No one knows where they are, and only a very select few would actually desire it, and even less would want to destroy it. So yes, I have decided long ago that Hoofinghamm is much too stuck up for his age. He's only thirty-three. Until now, I did not know how to go about it, or if I should even meddle at all." Celestia looked at her golden-covered hooves. "But he really needs to live his life... and I hope Vera can teach him that, if the vacation fails."
Luna gave a hearty, regal-sounding (even when compared to Celestia's) laugh. "Thou meanest 'when' the vacation fails, Sister. Funny thing is, I suggested thy give Vera as Gjero's partner because she really needs to learn how to take responsibility for her duties. She slacks off way too much. Not that I care, really, but I'm worried her personal life beyond duties may suffer because of this."
"I understand, Little Luna," Celestia assured. She raised a brow at her sister. "Your speech is getting better."
"Thanks."
"...Sooo," Celestia so'd suggestively. Luna's face instantly dulled at the snarky implications.
"What?" Luna spat.
"How's Captain Pipsqueak?"
Luna had prepared herself for the worst, yet the mention of the young captain's name made her face flush in involuntary and unexplainable embarrassment. "He's good," She said, looking in another direction. Celestia had to hold back falling on her back in laughter. "They still haven't found those rogues you mentioned, sister, but the nearing Port Corral. It's possible they've missed each other." Luna really wanted to change the subject, her mind got so inexplicably foggy and flustered whenever mention of Captain Squeak came up, and she absolutely hated it. Unless she was alone, then it offered peace in stressful times, for some odd reason that the princess couldn't pinpoint. In an attempt to get out of the current situation, she said something that she immediately regretted. "Thanks for showing me that spell for instant communication. Squeak's hawk friend is a perfect inbox."
"Hehe," Celestia chortled lewdly. "Have some late night sessions with Squeak, now?
"Blfeouw!" Luna shouted in defence... or she tried to shout in defence, but that mess of a word came out instead
"Your words say all," Celestia said satirically. Luna face hoofed. Luna then tried to retaliate, but was interrupted by the door being flung open.
"Princess, the S.S. HoofShallow has been pillaged! They lost the cargo to pirates!" A guard pony yelled as he raced into the room.
Celestia instantly got on all four hooves at this, shocked to hear. "What? Impossible!"
"I'm afraid it's true your highness, everything has been taken!"
"Damn!" Celestia cursed as she threw a hoof down. The Day Watch guard jumped back nearly a foot, terrified to see the princess use such language. "I want that chest found, that cargo is worth more than this entire kingdom! Kill whoever took it, and then bring it to me!"
"Y-yes ma'am!" the guard replied with a salute.
"I'm going to look as well," Celestia said while taking two steps towards the door. Suddenly, she winced in pain and grabbed her chest with a hoof, and let out a strenuous groan. Luna lifted her hoof in her sister's path.
"No, Tia. You're still hurt. That blow would've normally killed anypony, even an alicorn. You're lucky to be alive."
Celestia scoffed, her frustration growing. "This is ridiculous, this wound happened eight years ago, I should be healed by now."
"You're lucky you can still speak; that stab took out your left lung," Luna said with a wag of her hoof. Luna had to admit she kinda had fun with this, Celestia was always the one to give her motherly lectures.
"Whatever... I hope that whoever these pirates are, they don't destroy that scroll..." Celestia looked out to her sun that was still high in the sky and sighed. "For all our sakes."
Hoofinghamm walked next to his reluctant new partner with careful and orderly strides, careful to keep his demeanor acceptable for even a princess. Captain Datzkowitz, however, took lazy and sloppy strides; her legs flailed in the air as she walked, and her relaxed shoulders barely held the cuirass she was wearing. It was altogether exasperating for the Day Watch Captain.
"Whattya think the princesses set us up with, man?" Vera asked as she put a lesiurely hoof on her partners shoulder. Hoofinghamm felt a sudden urge to grab that hoof and toss the pony attached to it into the nearest trash bin.
When Gjero didn't answer, Vera followed up her question awkwardly. "Like, ya think it's gonna have a pool?" she asked. "Maybe a mini fridge in the bedrooms?" Vera paused to allow Gjero to answer, but he never did. She waved a hoof in front of his face. "Bro, you all there? Hello?"
Gjero continued his slow but consistant pace, staring straight ahead, completely ignoring the spastic pony in front of him. She finally gave up with an annoyed scoff and uttered one last word. "Dick."
Gjero nearly tripped up at the sudden insulting sentiment, and thought over his actions. after a few moments of thinking, he decided to be the bigger person and tell her why he had completely ignored her. "You are not supposed to speak while on duty unless giving an order, informing a citizen of a crisis, or disciplining a recruit. We are in no such scenario."
"Doesn't stop you from being a dick," Vera said whilst sticking her tongue at him. Gjero had to really try to hold in that sigh. He didn't think he'd be able to stand being next to this girl for another second, let alone...
Wait a second! Celestia never told me how long this is going to last! It could be months, even years... Gjero began to feel faint. Surly the princess couldn't be that cruel, she was a reasonable pony, it was probably going to last just a couple of weeks, maybe even days.
As if she were personally trying to thwart his hopes, Vera began whistling incredibly loudly, enough to drive a bird to suicide. Gjero's straight face contradicted the burning turmoil he felt inside. Even if it was just a couple of days, she's going to drive me mad before then.
"You've got to be joking."
Gjero, unfortunately, had to express his disapproval at the small complex in front of him. He had expected nothing less than two small shacks with uncomfortable beds and dirty night stands, but the building before him was a polar opposite of that. Although it wasn't very large, only big enough to house two adult ponies, it was as extravagant as Canterlot's castles. There was gilded windows and a polished wood doorway with freshly added white paint over the exterior walls. It wasn't royalty, but it was definitely high class.
"Ooh, pretty," Vera said in awe. she quickly changed demeanor once she realized a fatal flaw. "But... it's a little small, don't you think?"
That one complaint triggered some sort of reflex within Gjero, and he instantly jumped on The slight chance that Vera couldn't handle it. A sort of payback, in a way. "It'll manage," he grumbled then raced to the small house. Vera quickly followed.
As the two ponies opened the door to the building, one thing became blatantly clear. It was small. The main room they had walked into contained a small bookcase in the right of them, and perpindicular to that was a kitchen holding a microwave, a stove, and an oven. it took a couple seconds for Gjero to realized that the Microwave was sitting on the stove, which only contained one heater. There were two large chairs next to the 'library', presumably for adding comfort while reading. A small decorative desk occupied the left side of the room along with a few parchments and a quill, along with the ink. An expensive looking coffee table also sat I between the two chairs. That was about it. It was nice, but small. It looked like a home for a stallion that lived by himself and was seldom ever home, except to sleep.
Vera gave the room an incredulous stare. "Cozy," she said, sarcasm seeping from her voice.
"This is way over the top."
Vera choked on nothing in particular and gave Gjero a skeptic look. "Ya serious dude? This is like the forever alone cabin, and in case you hadn't noticed there's two of us."
"Oh no..." Gjero said while looking at something at the other side of the shack.
"See? We can't live here, it's totally cramped."
"No, that's not it. Captain Datzkowitz, there is only one other room."
"And?" Vera asked, confused. She didn't know why that would be of any import--
...oh, shit. Vera had finally gotten what Hoofinghamm had implied. One other room meant only one other bedroom. And there was two of them. And they were the opposite sex. And Vera hadn't gotten laid in at least five months. And she was pretty sure her new partner (okay don't call him that anymore) was a virgin. She started to slowly back out of the room when Hofinghamm made a b-line straight towards the bedroom. Okay, he can't possibly be that horny. Or stupid to think I'm that easy, Vera thought as she paused her retreat.
"Oh thank Celestia, there's two beds in here."
Vera blinked, frowned, then sighed in relief. She trotted towards the door with new found confidence.
"Hey, this isn't related to the main plot..." Pinkie said while putting her hooves together and looking through them like a camera. Vex looked at Pinkie, baffled.
"What the hell are you talking about, Pinks?" Vex looked into Pinkie's eyes and followed the trail to whatever she was looking at. She nearly jumped off the ship over what she saw.
"Pinkie!" she yelled. "Are you staring at Fluttershy's ass?!"
Pinkie looked away, shot out her hoof, and yelled, "NO!"
AUTHOR'S COMMENTARY |
Pirates of Equestria | Psychotic Symphony | NOTE: I'm sorry for the delay, but I had actually been moving for the past month. I promise it won't take me as long to finish the next chapter.
"We dance to have flow and balance to our otherwise unpredictable lives..."
Chapter 5
"Land ho!" Pinkie yelled, causing her to get strange looks from everyone else on deck. Patch walked up to her with a raised eyebrow.
"Pinkie, you know we don't actually say that in real life?" Patch asked, a slight smirk creeping on his face. Pinkie giggled.
"I know," she said sheepishly. "I just always wanted to say that."
Patch smiled as Pinkie walked away. He was then approached by Fluttershy, who bore an uncertain look. "Cap'n," she scolded. "That's a common phrase used by both pirates and sailors. How could you not know that?"
Patch laughed. "Aye, I know that. It's just fun to mess with her."
Fluttershy shook her head incredulously and turned toward the horizon to see it occupied by a large marble-white castle. With a nostalgic sigh, she commented.
"Hello, Canterlot."
Patch took a moment to inspect Fluttershy's face. A wistful longingness was strewn about her, and a frown that remembered happier times. A pang of sympathy struck him, along with a reminder of his own happier times. Dina, he thought. Too bad you couldn't have met Fu'Shy. She's very... Caring. "Fu'Shy, we're going to have to dock in the forests, no way Canterlot would be nice enough to house us."
"Aye."
"What the hell are we doin' here, Captain?"
"Kin, please, we're in Canterlot. Consider it a day off."
"Well... okay." Kin walked away, unsure that the answer he got was all that satisfying. Sure, a day off, but why? He felt like he was being snuffed out of something important. Kin looked at the cup of rum that inhabited the barrel in front of him. Resolutely he thought, can't complain.
"Patch, what the hell?" Pinkie's voice came out from behind Patch's ear. No, like right behind him. She had an opportunity to bite his ear if she wanted to. That struck patch as a distinct possibility, and he leapt forward as a result. Pinkie continued. "Your men aren't gonna help us?"
Heh, Fu'Shy must have filled her in. "Nah," Patch replied, giving her a wave of hoof. "This isn't something I want to trouble my men with. Y'see Miss Pie, my men aren't as forgiving and merciful as me or Fu'Shy. While most joined me because they aren't as heartless as normal pirates, they are still pirates. Sure they don't murder everyone they see, but they aren't going to risk their lives without getting something in return. And what we're chasing here is not only just for the good of people, it's also uncertain that it's an actual problem and not just a hoax, or if we can do anything about it. Top it off with no reward, and you're looking at a ridiculous request."
Pinkie frowned. "Stupid selfish pricks."
Patch nearly tripped but regained his footing. "Woah there Miss Pie. I'm sure they would help if I asked, they are very loyal." Patch gave Pinkie a stern look. "But I wouldn't want to burden them with it."
"Oh," Pinkie said. "I guess that makes sense." Patch stood and watched Pinkie Pie for a few seconds, before frowning.
"Miss Pie, you're very- how should I say it?- complacent."
Ooh, Pinkie thought. That sounds like a come on. She knew it wasn't, but when you're on an isolated ship, one has to make her own fun. And Patch was cute.
"Do you like that, Captain?" Pinkie asked seductively, brushing up against him. Patch was too flustered by the sudden approaching to reply, but luckily Fluttershy answered for him.
"No, he doesn't," she remarked as she pried Pinkie off of the Captain.
"Fluttershy? When'd you get here?" Pinkie asked as Fluttershy carried her far away from Patch.
"I was here the entire time," she answered.
"Did you hear what he said?"
"Yeah, and I don't like it."
Fluttershy approached Patch with the angriest face she could muster. When he saw her, all he did was smile. "I like that girl," he said. "Very weird."
That made her want to punch him the face more than she already did. "Do you not take me- no, equestria- seriously?" Patch's face fell as if he had just been told there was no Santa Claus.
"What do you mean?"
"You're not going to accept the aid of our men." Her voice was laden with an accusing discontent. Patch's face straightened out to the point he almost had a quiet smirk.
"Ah. Fluttershy, I do take both you and Equestria seriously, but I am a natural skeptic. I just don't want to toss my men to the dogs just because something might be true."
"But we do the same thing with those stupid treasure maps!" Fluttershy retaliated. Patch shook his head.
"That's because if it's true they'd be getting something in return. Listen, I believe you. But my conscious does not and neither does my instincts. To prove it to you, I'll personally help you, even though I was already planning on doing so."
This seemed to satisfy the yellow pegasus. With a reluctant nod, she flew off towards the deck to be debriefed.
"Alright," Patch said to the griffon, pegasus, and adjacent pink earth pony in the room. He had figured Vex would be good willed enough (At least for him) to help out, considering the relationship she had with Fluttershy. Plus she was a douchebag, so he didn't feel too bad for getting her involved. Earlier, he had already filled her in on what was happening. "We're searching for a white unicorn named Rarity who was last heard from Fluttershy to be in Canterlot. She suspects Rarity will have her own boutique in the city as well as being pretty well-known. From that, I don't think she'll be that hard to find, but better to be cautious. As soon as you find her, or decisive information about her, regroup at the The Scratching Spruce and Maple club over on the west side of Canterlot."
Everybody in the room was absolutely puzzled. Vex was the one to voice the question that itched at the back of their minds. "The Scratching Spruce and Maple? Da fuck?"
Patch gave a wide, innocent smile. "It's an alcohol serving club I used to go when I was younger!" Everyone in the room once again exchanged strange looks.
Vex, again, was the first to ask. "How young?" Patch's face fell like a cinder block.
"Ahem, so everybody know what to do?" Patch asked, completely ignoring the question. Pinkie Pie gave a salute while the two fliers gave an idle nod. "Great. We'll split into two groups, Fu'Shy an' Pinkie, me an' Vex."
"Woah, woah, woah, hold on a tick," Vex intervened before he got the chance to walk out. "Wouldn't it make more sense to have someone that knows Rarity in every group? In fact, why do we have to group up at all?"
"You have a point Vex, but it's very obvious the two of us are pirates, what with me being infamous, and you being a rude griffin." Patch waited for Vex to get pissed at him for calling her rude, but she seemed to be perfectly fine with that. "However, Pinkie has absolutely zero hints that she'd be a pirate and Fu'Shy can put on that cute facade." Fluttershy blushed a little and looked away at the quick complement. "That way, if we get caught, Fu'Shy and her friend can get us outta any trouble." Vex nodded and Patch continued. "Also it would be a good to have a flier on each pair, that way we can use the skies to escape if someone finds out who we are. No need to get in a fight we can avoid."
Pinkie couldn't hold in her involuntary giggles. Patch lifted an eyebrow. He asked what was the matter. She replied, "Fluttershy wouldn't be able to carry me, she's a terrible flier!" Fluttershy's jaw dropped before she was able whack her hoof against Pinkie's head. Vex was puzzled.
"...The hell are you on? Fluttershy's a fuckin' ace flier, she may not be as strong as one as I am, but she's definitely a few ticks faster. She can also hold up nearly double her own weight. Not that amazing considering how light she is, but impressive nonetheless." Pinkie looked at Vex in bewilderment. Surely they weren't talking about the same pony. She turned towards her once weak and humble friend. Fluttershy gave a confident smile.
"Aye, it's true," Fluttershy said, rubbing the back of her mane. "Not as weak as I used to be Pinkie."
"Welp," Patch interrupted. "Then it's settled. We leave immediately. Happy hunting you two."
Trotting through the forest with her friend Fluttershy was something she had never expected to happen again, for multiple reasons, yet here they were, leaves crunching under steady hooves in a smooth gait with purpose. The outskirts of Canterlot, the Royal Forest, was possibly the most (and even only) hospitable wild area in all of Equestria, and maybe even the world. Dangerous creatures and hostile tribes vacated the traffic heavy paths of the Royal Forest, most likely due to the Royal Guard Watch making sure the perimeter was safe from any opposition. Pinkie was able to eye the rolling green hill leading up to Canterlot, and its surrounding low-class towns. Already, mist from the adjacent waterfall and river became clear to the naked eye, marking the end of their short but somewhat taxing trek up the Canterlot mountains and through the mildly dense forest.
Pinkie broke the silence that neither friend had been aware had taken hold. "Finally we're here!"
Fluttershy gave a sharp nod, and spoke with light-hearted contempt. "Yeah, wouldn't have been as difficult if they didn't decide to build the capital on the side of a fucking mountain."
Pinkie gave a short, yet meaningful giggle. Suddenly, her face fell short. "You think Rarity's actually here?"
Fluttershy stopped dead in her tracks. "I... I... We can only hope. I mean, where else would she be?" Fluttershy had tried to her best to reassure her friend. The dark implications in Pinkie's voice was too apparent to ignore. They had no evidence that she had in fact... but they also had no evidence to the contrary. All they could do was search. Even if the search could be in vain.
Fluttershy tried to distract herself with her surroundings, but was surprised to see her hooves on a stone path, rather than the dirt one she had grown used to. She also noticed the lack of trees around her, and the sweet smell of condensed water flowing down from the river a couple of miles from their location. She looked up. Canterlot castle. "We're here."
"Yuptidoodly." Pinkie replied, taking in the magnificence of the marble castle in the distance. Fluttershy began to walk again, and pinkie trotted to keep up. "Hey, Fluttershy?"
"What's up?"
"Patch is kinda organized for a pirate," she pondered out loud. "I feel like I'm in the army or something."
Fluttershy gave a enlightened smile. "Ah, I knew that was going to come up. Yeah, that's why he's so successful. While he's not as completely renegade as most pirates are, he's no drill sergeant either. It's a perfect balance between the two, and that's why everyone loves him.
Sometimes we need order, and sometimes we don't. Captain Patch knows that line full heartedly."
"Yeah," Pinkie said. "That doesn't change the fact he gives orders like a war general."
"Well, he was in the Legion before he was a pirate. That's where he got his knowledge of boats. He doesn't like to talk about it, and for good reason." Fluttershy glanced at Pinkie with her left eye. "He's ashamed of it."
Pinkie looked down at her hooves as she remembered her lowest points. Sighing, she replied. "Yeah, I guess I can see that." I few more moments went by before Fluttershy spat at nothing in particular.
"I should've just ordered the men myself to help us. This could go so much faster with a larger group."
Pinkie looked at Fluttershy, puzzled. "Why would they listen to you? Ya know, other than your overwhelming hotness."
Fluttershy burst out into a tremendous laughter at Pinkie's flat comment. Indignantly, and slightly embarrassed, Pinkie shuffled her hooves in annoyance at the fact Fluttershy took the compliment as a joke. However, she tried to look inconspicuous. "You still don't get it, do ya Pinkie?" Fluttershy puffed out her chest and slammed her hoof against it in a proud and slightly snooty manner. "I'm Captain Patch's first mate."
Pinkie Pie leapt back in astonishment at the news she just heard. Stammering, she yelled, "YOU'RE A HOOKER?!"
Fluttershy's eyes immediately shrunk at this sudden accusation. Her tongue involuntarily shot out of her mouth in extreme bewilderment. She could not fathom how Pinkie came to that conclusion until she reviewed their entire conversation through their adventures in the woods. Slowly, her brain rebooted. "Wha- no! What the... wh- IT MEANS I'M SECOND IN COMMAND, DIPSHIT!"
"Oh," Pinkie chuckled sheepishly. "Well congratulations!"
Fluttershy whacked her hoof at Pinkie's mane once again, and started walking towards the large town.
"No, I don't know anyone like that, I apologize."
Fluttershy kicked a hoof and sniffed. "Okay..." The stranger left, leaving Fluttershy with naught information. Pinkie expressed her exasperation with a long groan.
"Ugh, that's the fifth pony we asked so far!" she said, annoyed. Fluttershy gave her an irritated glance.
"Five's not that many, ya know."
Pinkie threw her hooves in the air in a display of enthusiastic disdain. "Well, duh! But I thought Rarity would be all rich and famous by now!"
Fluttershy opened her mouth to explain to Pinkie why that was excusable, but she found no words exiting her throat. That was a legitimate question; all of Rarity's friends knew she was talented and that she would make a name for herself if she ever went big, but here they were in Canterlot, Equestria's capital, and there was not even a billboard of familiar design. It was strange. However, Fluttershy wasn't about to give up; there was more at stake than usual. With purpose, Fluttershy began to advance.
"We have to find her."
Vex peered around the wall to see if there was any guards. Content with the absence of anybody with a prissy gold helmet, she glided along the ground to the other side of the town gates, taking care to not attract any alien attention either. As she successfully made it to the first extravagant building of many, she dropped her caution like a stone, and waited for her captain to make his way towards her location.
Patch, able to attract less attention than a feathered griffin, walked casually from one side of the gate to the other. He was thankful there wasn't much traffic, he was terrible in crowds. Approaching his feathered friend, he smiled. "That was easy."
"Yeah, the fuck's with that?" Vex asked, lifting her talons in disbelief. "Last time I was here they nearly molested me and kept me in a fuckin' den for an hour deciding whether or not my talons should be considered a deadly weapon."
"That was two years ago, the end of the war. Celestia was critically wounded, no? I think they were just being paranoid." Patch looked around. "Seems like everything's better now, though."
"Heh," Vex scoffed, unable to find anything to add. She gave the environment a quick look over, and seemed to notice only one thing: the nature of the people traveling the streets. "Damn, there's a lot of griffins here!"
Patch laughed as he inspected the streets and saw a sea of brown and white feathers crowding the streets. While ponies still outnumbered them two-to-one, it was strange to see so many griffins in one place. "Yeah, I've noticed that as well..." Patch elbowed her suggestively. "Havin' fun?"
"N- Hey, no!" Vex yelled, waving her talons frantically and nearly hacking off Patch's head. "Look, it's just nice to not stick out like a sore thumb for once, a'ight?"
"Yeah, I feel ya." Patch compared her to the other griffins traversing the streets. Almost immediately he found common differences that were impossible to ignore. For one, Vex's purple tipped feathers failed to be replicated on any other passing griffin, and seemed to be the only one that had any kind of vibrant color on it. Her white feathers fell down her face in locks, giving it the impression of a mane, while the other griffins' feathers stuck straight out naturally. Also, Vex was incredibly small compared to others of her species. While she was only very slightly taller than her pony friend, a couple of centimeters at most, most other griffins had already outgrown the pony folk by a couple of heads, usually measuring up a foot or two taller, even griffins of adolescence. "Uhh,"
"YEAH. I KNOW," Vex spat, annoyed. Obviously, she had noticed everything that he had, and wasn't too happy about it. With a sigh, she said, "Why can't I just blend?"
"I dunno... maybe you're heritage can answer that... Enough lollygaggin' we gotta find Rarity."
"No, I haven't heard or seen anyone like that, sorry. Though this odd pair of ponies asked me about the same girl...strange."
"Thanks for the help," Patch said, waving off yet another stranger in search of this Rarity girl. Him and Vex had been searching close to two hours with absolutely no results. This is getting us nowhere. Searched for a few hours an' still got nowt. Beh, Patch thought, annoyed. He immediately scolded himself for thinking in that stupid accent.
Vex walked up to her earth pony friend. "Still no luck, eh?"
"Nah, not even a soddin' clue," Patch said back, flinching at his slipped accent. "Damn," he whispered.
"Heheh, your English is showing." Vex put a talon on her friend's shoulder. "You know I come from Eagleland, you don't have to mask your accent 'round me," she reassured, exaggerating her own accent a little. Patch sighed.
"I know, but I ain't exactly fond of my heritage. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but an Equestrian accent is just more... charismatic, I guess."
"Whatever," Vex said, before asking another question. "Where do you come from, exactly? They hardly had any ponies back at Eagleland, that's why my parents..." Vex had originally planned to finish that sentence, but the memories of what transpired closed her throat the moment she mentioned her parents. Patch quickly replied as to not upset her.
"Porkshire. Not exactly the most popular place. Plus the accent:" Patch cleared his throat before applying an example. "I'm sorry, I'm migh'y clumsy as I wok. I swear, I bloo'y wok like a proper sod when I'm tired. Can't accomplish nowt in the mornin's 'cos I'm so drowzy. Dough I get owt done in'he 'fternoons."
Vex broke out in huge laughter leading Patch to blush in embarrassment. He rubbed the back of his head. "I know, sounds ridiculous."
"I dunno, sounds 'pre''y' charming if you ask me," Vex guffawed. "What's with you guys and t's?"
Patch smiled. He usually wasn't the one to make fun of himself but Vex was in one of her rare good moods. "'Cos they're expensive." Patch noticed an odd orange hue diluting around Vex. He realized it was the colors of the setting sun and decided they should get to the club along with Fluttershy and Pinkie. Hopefully their search had gone better than theirs. "C'mon," he said. "It's getting dark, we should get to the club."
"D-did you say... Rarity?"
Fluttershy was nearly too shocked to hear an answer other than 'no' to reply instantly. Gathering her bearings, she answered "Yes."
"Oh my... you know Rarity!" The purple mare with snow white hair screamed. Fluttershy was slightly taken aback from the outburst. "Who are you?"
"We're old friends. How do you know her?" Please don't say you're a fan, please don't say you're a fan.
"We used to be very good friends!" she said excitedly.
Fuck yeah!
"Let's see... yellow pegasus, extremely cute... if memory serves correct, you are Fluttershy."
Fluttershy's eyes widened at the accuracy of her guess. Stunned, she breathed, "Yeah." Then, her face became determined. "Do you know where she is?"
"Sadly, not exactly." Fluttershy's and Pinkie's face fell. The mare continued. "But, when she left four years ago, she said she was going to 'escape to her origins'. I hope that helps."
The two elements of harmony instantly lit up. It wasn't helpless after all. "That helps a lot, thank you! If we ever find her, we'll mention you!"
"Please do, she was ever so charming," the mare finished with a smile. Pinkie gave one back before the mare raised a hoof to slow her down. "One more thing!"
Fluttershy halted giving her time to speak. "When Rarity left, she did so quite urgently, as if someone, or something, was chasing her. Be careful."
"We'll be fine, thank you," Fluttershy nodded as the mare turned and walked away. Fluttershy chuckled first at the ominous warning, then at herself. If I were the old Fluttershy, that warning would have scared the shit outta me. Pinkie could not hold her glee.
"Rarity's alive! And we know where she is!! YAAY!!!"
"So this is the place, huh?" Vex yelled over the insanely loud repetitive electronic music. Lights of all colors flashed in an epileptic manner, and so did certain parts of the floor. Unlike most clubs, this one was pretty depopulated, but it didn't look as if the club was doing poorly. There were circular table littered across the floor and two bars at both sides each with its own bartender. Stools lined these bars, and every other seat was occupied with either a pony or a griffin. Trash was spread out like dots on a map, and a disco ball hung from the ceiling as homage to clubs of the past. All the steps in the building was rounded off to give it a more futuristic design, and the sweet smell of alcohol hung in the air. Vex liked it.
Vex sat in one of the many round tables as Patch went to get a bottle of cheap wine. As he came back, he smiled and sat as well. "This place is exactly how I remember it! I can't believe it."
Vex eyed the place once more, and turned to Patch. "This place isn't exactly filled to the brim."
Patch popped open the cork to the bottle and began to pour the wine in two glasses he had brought with him. He handed one glass to Vex, who sniffed it curiously and began to sip. "Yeah," he said, tipping his glass in the griffin's direction. "This place is in Canterlot, and most of the general population is too snooty to 'degrade themselves' by setting hoof in this place. But since this club is literally right next to the city's walls, some of the mid-class people like this place. Granted, it's not as popular as the clubs on the outskirts, but it's a lot more tasteful."
Patch took a glug of his wine before adding, "It also has the perk of the Guard or C.P.D. not bothering us, considering how tame it is compared to other clubs, and its location." Patch set his glass down, empty. He eyed Vex's glass and noticed only about a fourth of the wine inside gone. He gave her a strange look before asking, "You hardly touched your drink."
"Huh?" Vex said, looking up from her glass. She glanced back down again before blushing. "Yeah, never had wine before." Patch expected to be more shocked than he was. He had forgotten about Vex's age; she always acted so much older. "First time drinking somethin' other than rum."
"You like it?" Patch inquired, a involuntary smile appearing on his face. Not often Vex showed any light of innocence. However it was completely destroyed with her response.
"Hell yeah I do!" Vex yelled enthusiastically, lifting a fist in the air. Patch laughed at the invisible irony he could have sworn was there, although he couldn't identify it for the life of him. There was something about Vex that made this all hilarious, but he couldn't quite put his hoof on it... maybe it was something about her being a griffin, or English. Or both. "Stuff's great. Can already feel a buzz," she said, finishing her drink.
He had forgotten about Vex's low alcohol tolerance, a condition Patch now thought was likely due to her size. It wasn't as low as a socially awkward teenager who's never had beer in his life, but she could get smashed with three glasses of the stuff. Patch wagged a hoof at Vex. "Hey, no more. Can't have you drunk on the job."
"Tch," Vex scoffed, putting the drink down.
Patch, nearly unable to be affected by alcohol anymore, refilled his wine glass for a second serving. Vex glowered at him as he did it. "What?" he asked innocently. Vex increased the intensity of her stare.
Suddenly, all the lights went out, causing most of the mares in the club to scream out in thrilled fright. Patch had heard one stallion drop his glass, followed by an annoyed "Fuck!" A voice boomed over the loudspeakers in all the corners of the room.
"ARE YOU READY, FOR GRAND MAESTER MC 'TAVI, AND DJ PON-3?!" The voice resonated off all of the walls in the structure, building up tension and excitement in all of the patrons of the club, even the severely hammered ones. Choice lights in the club turned on simultaneously, filling the building with a white hot glow. Unanimously, all living beings inside the building gave out an ear splitting cheer that made Vex cringe; not because it was annoying, but because it was so damn loud. She was a bit surprised to see Patch partake in the cheer, even though his was more tame and gentle. A segment in the front raised up, forming a stage, and hidden platforms emerged from said stage revealing a turntable with a light grey pony with a pitch black mane occupying both vinyl records. Her mane was swept forward giving it playful spikes that screamed absolute rebellion. Purple shades obscured her eyes, and nearly gave her a menacing look if it weren't for the seductive smile she was flashing the audience. A mic floated inches from her muzzle. She began to speak. "My name is MC Octavia and I'm about to rock your motherfucking world! If it Ain't for my partner you don't got no show, and if it ain't for my partner you ain't got me! So please give it up for the talented, the sexy, the sophisticated as hell Vinyl Scratch, also known as D-J-Pon-THREEEEE!"
Another hidden platform raised up revealing a large cello with an albino white pony with beautiful magenta eyes. Her shiny blue mane was swept back, and unlike Octavia's it was very prim and neat, giving her the appearance of one of those upper class Canterlot ladies. One hoof held a cello bow, while the other hoof held the actual cello- and herself- up. The loud electronic music resumed, this time being played live by the two ponies up stage. Vex's beak dropped, it was amazing that they could achieve such a feat. She also wondered how the hell that large violin thingy could possibly be played along a turntable. However, she saw a small wire protruding from the side of the instrument.
"An electronic violin?" Vex asked, baffled.
"Cello, Vex," Patch corrected.
"Where the hell is this place?" Fluttershy inquired, frantcally looking between all the buildings and adjacent alleys. They had been looking for the Scratching Spruce and Maple for the better part of two hours, which ate at Fluttershy like a leech. "The hard part should've been finding Rarity."
"Technically we didn't find her," Pinkie teased.
"Technically, I'm about to shove your head up your ass," Fluttershy retorted. She turned to the donkey walking beside her. "No offense."
"None taken," the donkey reassured before taking his leave.
"Captain, everyone has left... should we just get back to the ship?" Vex asked, twirling her one wine glass with her fingers, wishing she had gotten more. Patch shook his head.
"Gotta make sure the others didn't just get lost or something." He eyed the deserted club. "Then we have to look for them."
"Bleh."
"Hey fellas, ya'll gotta hit the road," a voice called behind Patch. "We gonna close."
Patch immediately recognized the voice as the DJ during the night. He turned to greet the familiar face. "Hey, 'Tavi, how's it goin'?"
Octavia removed her shades to make sure the face she saw wasn't caused by an illusion created by the refraction of the glass. Seeing who she had suspected, she put the shades back on and threw her hooves in the air. "Patch!" she yelled nostalgically, resting the hoof that was previously in the air on the captain's shoulder. "The only underaged teen I ever allowed in my club!"
Vex gave a cold stare at Patch, who smiled sheepishly.
"Hey, Vinyl!" Octavia called to the back of the club. "Guess who's here."
"Who?" Scratch asked, her head poking around the corner. Her face lit up instantly. "PATCH!" Scratch rocketed towards the defenseless pony and glomped him with all her might. She got up and stood on him. "I thought you were dead."
"What made you think that?" Patch groaned, Vinyl's weight was surprisingly... weighty.
"You didn't come back." Vinyl glared at him. "The only reason people don't come back is death, love, or epicness." Vinyl kindly stepped off of Patch's stomach and helped him up. "It's always safe to assume death."
"Well you're half right." Patch dusted himself off. "Love was the reason."
"That's nice," Octavia interjected, seeming to revert to her posh side. "How's the lucky girl?"
"Dead."
The entire room was silent. Slowly, Vinyl stepped forward. "I... I'm sorry."
"Don't worry about it, I'm over it." Patch sat back at his table. Vex's face remained stern, her sympathy made clear by her lack of emotion and input. "It happened six years ago."
"Her name was Dina," he continued, staring at his empty glass tinted with the purple bliss of sweet wine. "She was all prissy and uptight and shit. We met at the gala, you know, the one those six mares fucked up?"
"Do I ever," Octavia said, flashing a smile towards the white mare standing next to her. Vinyl blushed in response. no one spoke after that short exchange, allowing Patch to continue his story.
"We had this huge argument over 'proper etiquette' that lasted about an hour. I was kinda a hic back then. Well, the Leeds version of a hic." Patch kept a static and distant smile on his face. A grim nostalgia of the past. "Anyways, after those six bitches crashed the party, we continued our argument in her room one point led to another point. When we were finished yelling at each other we had realized we had been debating for a little over six hours. It was two A.M. Imagine that. She invited me to stay at her place and well... who am I to deny a lady?"
"Really?" Octavia asked in disbelief. "Can't imagine anyone from Canterlot being so..." Octavia searched for the correct word in her head.
"Easy?" Patch finished for her with an accompanying satiric laugh. Octavia was about to deny thinking of the rude word, but Patch interrupted her. "Well it started out innocently enough, but I quickly grew too nervous to sleep." Patch looked at ceiling and smiled again, this time a lot more lightheartedly. "Neither could she. We just talked for a while... and that's when we found that we had a lot of the same ideals and opinions, despite our obvious differences. It was four in the morning before we were too tired to speak anymore and... she was too tired to go to her own bed..."
"Aww, that's so romantic!" Scratch gushed. Octavia giggled. Vex looked away, a smile on her face.
Vex spoke up. "I wish I met her. Were you both still in high school?" Vex took a drink of wine she had refilled her glass with during the story as she awaited Patch's answer. She had completely lost the buzz she had from her first glass, so she thought Why not?
"High school? Hardly. Other than the fact I dropped out at fourteen, I was sixteen when I met her; she was Twenty four."
Vex simultaneously spat out everything she had in her mouth when she heard their ages. Sputtering, she gasped, "That's illegal!"
Patch raised a brow. "As opposed to what we regularly do?" Vex coughed. That seemed to shut her up.
Scratch interjected. "I think it's kinda sweet. It means love has no discrimination. Age, or even gender." She wrapped a leg around Octavia, who smiled furiously and flushed.
This conversation made Vex think... Love has no discrimination... not age, gender, or... Vex glanced at Patch. Species, maybe?
"Well, we can be off now, we'll leave you two to closing."
Scratch waved her hoof. "Nah, man, you can stay as long as ya want. Open bar as well, serve yourselves."
"Well, we can wait a while longer, I suppose," Patch wondered aloud. "Still a chance Fluttershy and Pinkie are lookin' for Rarity."
"Can I drink now? Free stuff," Vex said, pointing to her wine glass. Patch shook his head.
A half an hour passed and it had now reached 1:30 in the morning. Waiting for their comrades, Vex and Patch talked of things of no importance, trying to pass the time. Octavia and her partner, Vinyl, were fiddling with with their equipment and idly chatting about music. They had no need to be there at all; they only stayed for their old friends.
At one point, Vex asked Scratch why the club closes so early. Her excuse was that Octavia has recitals she needs to practice for, and that most Canterlot folk have jobs they need to get rest for, which in turn wouldn't make a very effective club late at night.
Vex decided it had been long enough to get another drink, so she walked over to the bar and grabbed another bottle of wine, for Patch had already gone through the one he initially bought. Sitting down, she let out a long, exhausted sigh. "When Fluttershy gets here, I'm gonna ram her down Pinks' throat."
"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Patch chuckled, and motioned towards his glass, signaling her to pour him some. He didn't protest to Vex drinking, he was a reasonable person. Vex and Patch were too busy chatting that they didn't notice six men walk in the door. Octavia, however, immediately glared at the pony in front who bore the Legionary red coat. It had various medals on it, along with a pin that distinguished his rank: Sergeant. The ponies who were with him were also Legionaries, but lacked the red coats.
"Hey, we're closed. Get out."
The stallion stopped. "I wanted to know if you reconsidered our offer."
Octavia raised her voice an octave. "We told you this place is not for sale. Get out."
"I am done with this foolishness! You do not have a choice in the matter! You can either give your property to us peacefully and receive monetary compensation, or the Legion can take it by force."
Patch flinched at the mention of the Princesses' Legion as a fire flashed before his eyes. Hatred flowed to his hooves as he tightened his grip around his glass.
Octavia scoffed sarcastically. "'Monetary compensation'? Please, you're offering us a tenth of the worth of this club, and even then we would never sell it!"
It was at this time Patch twisted his face at Vex, talking to her via an abstract form of communication. Patch scowled, furrowed his eyebrows, then glanced at the stallion with the red coat in a way that said We have to do something about these douchebags.
Vex raised both her eyebrows in speculation, lowered only one, then flicked her head to the left. But I don't have my guns.
Patch nodded his head with determination. Forget your guns! We can take these jokers.
Vex gave a final nod of confirmation and tightened her talons around her wine bottle, still half filled with grape bliss.
"Force it is then." The red coat stallion pointed at Scratch and Octavia with rage. "We'll burn this place to the ground!"
"Over my dead body!" Octavia yelled in defiance. Scratch wrapped her hoof around Octavia's foreleg apprehensively, fearing the worst. The red coated pony confirmed her fears.
"Very well then." He turned towards one of the men at his side. "Kill them." Scratch and Octavia's eyes widened in fear. Vex smirked. The stallion nodded his head and slowly advanced towards the stage, and in turn, Scratch and Octavia. It came to Patch's attention that the group of Legionaries had completely ignored him and Vex throughout this entire scene, a mistake that Patch wouldn't soon let them forget. They must have assumed Patch and his griffin friend were average everyday people that always turned a blind eye towards the Legion's evil. They were wrong.
The pony ordered to attack the two innocent mares passed by Vex unaware of her unnatural grip on her bottle. He must have thought it was some sort of griffin thing. Vex swung at the pony and broke the bottle against the back of his head, spilling all of the wine on the floor, along with some blood. Vex noted how much of a waste it was before turning to the rest of the crowd, rubbing her wrist with her talons. "Sorry," she said.
"But we can't let you do that." Patch finished, getting up from his seat abruptly.
"What the hell?!" The red coated stallion yelled in bewilderment. He squinted and scrunched up his nose at Patch. Suddenly, he realized who it was. "Captain Peg-Patch the pirate. Your face is all over the Legion's most wanted documents."
"I try," Patch said, flicking his mane and fluffing it up with one hoof.
"Your head will fetch a hefty price from the princess. And I don't intend for it to be attached to its body."
Patch thought of the disembodied head from that ruby chest they had pillaged. Maybe it was a possibility that it was a for a bounty, but it still didn't make sense that it was being transported in such an expensive container.
"Kill them all."
At this, Scratch gave a quick glance to Octavia, who smiled and nodded. They were both thinking the same thing. Octavia swept her hair back and tied it in a posh manner. Vinyl ran her hooves throughout her mane, giving it a party-esque appearance. Octavia tossed the shades she was wearing to Scratch, who kicked up the mic on the floor and caught it with her magic. Octavia did the same to the cello bow on the ground, but catching it with her forelegs instead.
"And with the proceeding ass-kicking, we have accompaniment from your good friends DJ Pon-3 and MC Octavia! Thank you for flying with Fuck You airlines, sponsored by The Legion Are Dicks condoms. They're extra small!" As soon as Scratch was finished, Octavia strung her bow across her cello, giving multiple drawn out notes, followed by Vinyl doing exactly what her name says: scratching those records.
The proceeding beats were short and plentiful, spaced between with scratches and electronic distortion. Synthetic drums boomed out of the nearby stereos, giving way to distorted notes that came from Octavia's modded cello.
One of the Legionaries, a brown unicorn, charged at Vex, causing her step to the side and give Patch more space to work. Three more ran in the direction of the griffin, deciding she was more of a threat than the earth pony. The rest lunged towards Patch, unsheathing their swords, including the red coated leader.
A sword came crashing down on Vex, who stepped to the side and swung her talons at the unicorn. Ducking and dodging the lethal talons, he then swept up with his scimitar, leading her to jump back in order to dodge. The blade nearly made contact, cutting the tips of some of her feathers off. Vex didn't get much recovery time before she sensed another sword coming at her from behind. Sensing it was a horizontal swipe, she ducked her head down, nearly hitting the floor with her beak. Seeing her opportunity, she clawed at the ground with her talons and kicked as hard as she could, sending her attacker airborne and into a table. The unicorn in front didn't waste any time; he lunged forward with his sword again, this time in a diagonal strike. Using her fortified talons, she caught the blade with the tips of her fingers, making sure not to injure herself. She ripped the sword away and sent it flying to the other side of the room, and formed her talons into a fist. She sent it forward with unrelenting force, and successfully knocked out her opponent.
Vocals sounded throughout the room from the stereos, gibberish mixed from conversations and lyrics that could almost no longer be identifiable, a fitting change of pace to Scratch and Octavia's live performance.
Patch saw the sword swings from a mile away. He stepped right, left, and then jumped to accommodate the swings of his attacker. On his way down, he launched his hoof forward as hard as he could. It made contact with a deafening crack in the center of the pony's chest, making him kneel and put both hooves on his chest, sputtering for air. He suddenly noticed the two ponies on both sides charging at him with swords drawn and in a stabbing motion. Timing his duck just right, Patch lowered himself and brought out both forelegs and caught the two ponies by their bellies. Using their momentum to aid his lift, he brought them over his back and slammed them against each other, knocking only one unconscious for the red coated pony had braced himself correctly.
The vocals to Scratch and Octavia's song had long since faded away, and the sound of the classic cello made a comeback, replaying the first notes once again. It was interrupted by distorted beats once again. It went back and forth like this until it was replaced by the far more upbeat electronic music.
The purple earth pony Vex had knocked into a table was up again,armed with a sword and backed up by two more ponies. Their incapacitated friend lay behind Vex, and the sight of him was getting the trio pissed off. Instead of letting them get the first hit in, Vex abruptly launched herself towards the three ponies, catching one by the throat and slamming him against the back wall. It didn't daze him as much as she thought it would, but she didn't have time to complain, the back rank ponies charged at her. She flew in the air and made a backwards loop to corner the small group. She spread out her arms and slammed her talons against the two ponies, and then brought her legs forward and kicked them in. They were all against the wall now, with one of them finally unconscious from the fierce blows.
The music continued to resonate before the vocals started up once again, this time more intelligible. Two voices was heard over the speakers. "Ba, ba, lo-ots of fun! Fai-Faith, ful and strong. Ba, ba, lo-ots of fun! Fai-Faith, ful and strong. Ba, ba, lo-ots of fun! Fai-Faith, ful and strong. Ba, ba, lo-ots of fun! Fai-Faith, ful and strong." The track interrupted itself with a sharp change in lyrics. "Makes magic all complete-plete-plete-plete-plet-ple-pl-p!"
All that was left for Patch was the red coated leader and his subordinate who had just suffered his wind getting knocked out of him. Patch found no openings; the two ponies watched his every move, ready for what he might do. He felt his back hoof get caught on something lying on the floor. He quickly eyed it, and saw it was a sword that one of the Legionaries had dropped. Kicking it up and catching it with his mouth, he lunged forward, catching both of the ponies off-guard. The red coated pony dived to the right, while the grunt lifted his sword and blocked Patch's strike. Patch followed up his attack with two more swings, one to the right and one to the left. The pony blocked both hits, but on the latter he stumbled and dropped his sword. Patch immediately recognized the opening and sent the sword forward as hard as he could. He felt the blade glide effortlessly through the pony's chest, and in horror, realized he had killed the poor guy. Damn! The idiot didn't dodge! Paying his respect to the dead soldier, he turned to his final opponent: the red coated leader.
The usually fast paced music froze to a halt. idle beats boomed in low, bass thumps, while hints of the previous melody whispered.
Vex strafed around the two ponies that opposed her. They kept their eyes locked on her as she rounded them. Their swords were held firm in their mouths, ready to strike, or to counter. Vex wondered why she was stalling, why she didn't just pounce, when she realized that for the past three minutes she had been synchronizing her attacks to the music. Granted it was good music, but she still found it quite annoying. It was a particularly slow part of the track, so Vex took advantage of the previous choreography and lunged at one pony. The sudden attack broke the right pony's concentration of the preceding adaptation to the loud music and almost allowed Vex to grab a hold of him and toss him like a dirty rag towards the other pony. Vex had taken too much time to throw the pony, so his friend was ready to jump out of harm's way. Vex immediately followed up her move with a flail of her fist. The pony showed some finesse by blocking Vex's claw by flaunting the blunt end of his scimitar and hitting it against the back of her wrist. The unexpected force of the impact knocked the sword out of the Legionary's mouth, but he was prepared. He spun on his front hooves and bucked. Vex was too experienced for that, however, and grabbed both legs in midair giving her an admittedly nice view of the pony's under sides. Blood rushing to her face, she shoved both legs forward, causing the pony to do a front flip and land on a table behind him. Her eyes were still involuntarily locked at the the pony's delicates even while he was unconscious on the ground when she noticed a metal glint at his flank. Realizing what it was, she smiled maliciously.
...yay. The music flooded back into the room like a raging river as Patch faced his last opponent. Swords were drawn and they clashed together forming furious sparks. Patch swung a particularly strong horizontal strike against the red coated pony causing him to flinch backwards and Patch to lean into his attack. Seeing the exposure of Patch's attack, the red coated pony swung upwards with his sword. Patch rebounded off the floor with his right hoof; he leaned back, barely missing the blade of his opponent. Patch stepped back to catch his breath. His adversary did the same. Patch set down his sword.
"Preying on the useless." Patch said in between breaths. The pony cocked his head in confusion. "What the hell would the Legion do with a nightclub?" Patch elaborated. "You're just doing this because you can."
"That reason justifies it in itself, Captain," the pony retorted. Despite his attitude, he didn't say 'captain' with sarcasm. A glint of respect in an otherwise complete disdain of each others' opinions was apparent in his voice.
"All of you Legionaries are the same, self-centered, arrogant, motherfucking arsonists." Patch scowled. "Sergeant."
"Some men just wanna watch the world burn." The red coated pony did not smile from his out of place satire. Instead, he glared at the Captain. "You of all people, a pirate, must understand what that feels like. No doubt you have felt it yourself."
"Who the fuck are you to say what I've felt, you ass-licking BASTARD!" Patch yelled, much to the sergeant's surprise. He had been rather calm during the brawl. "You pricks wouldn't know the first thing about real pain, the shit you cause! But I know." Patch leapt forward. "AND I'M GONNA TEACH YOU CUNT-FUCKING SAD PISSHEADS THAT PAIN IF IT'S THE LAST THING I FUCKING DO!"
Patch was enraged and red filled his vision. He flailed his arms around, trying to get hits in everywhere. The red coated pony was too taken aback at the outburst to swing his sword in time, and a stray hoof knocked it out of his mouth. Patch lowered his head and charged at the stallion. The red coated pony was able to catch Patch's head between his chest and right foreleg. Using his left hoof for leverage, he was able to lift the captain off the ground, and with a long groan, toss Patch into the turntables on the stage. The music abruptly cut as Scratch ran to dodge the incoming stallion. He smashed through the turntable, flipped once, and landed with his back against the wall. Patch tried to look up and gather his bearings, but the red coated pony had already stepped in front of him and started to lift Patch again. He threw him to his left, off the stage, and into a lone table. Patch lay there, groaning in pain. He tried to get up, but once again the pony was in front of him. The sergeant drove his hoof into Patch's throat, choking him. He lowered himself to the captain's ear.
"Looks like I win. Any last words, Captain?" The red coated pony relieved a little bit of the pressure, allowing Patch to talk. He coughed and sputtered, before chuckling softly. The red coated pony frowned. "What's so funny?"
"Hehe," Patch coughed out. "You know, you seem to be forgetting my feathered friend..."
The red coated pony immediately began to turn his head, trying to face the forgotten danger, but he felt a barrel of a flintlock at the back of his head that stopped him dead in his tracks. The red coated pony quickly assessed the situation, trying to see a way out. But he only had a hoof on the captain with no way to kill him reliably or quickly, which ruled out threatening to end his life if the griffin shot him, and the griffin had grabbed a hold of the sergeant's mane, making him unable to do any CQC to get himself out. His fate had been decided as soon as that pistol touched his head. He heard the griffin's voice from close to his right ear. It was smooth as silk, almost seductive, as if she got some sort of sick pleasure watching him squirm.
"Did you know a musket ball doesn't have the penetrating power to pierce the skull twice?" she asked rhetorically. "That means the bullet will enter your head, ricochet off the other side, and turn your brain into a fine pink smoothie."
The pony was shaking uncontrollably at this point. A small smirk stretched across her beak. Her talon tightened around the trigger...
"BAM!"
The pony shut his eyes, and stopped shaking entirely... then he opened them. Vex laughed. "You really thought I was gonna shoot you, didn't you!" The pony turned to face the hilarious griffin. She tapped the pony's cheek with the muzzle of her gun. "Ah, ah, ah," she said, wagging her talons. "Gun's still loaded. Won't hesitate to shoot you if ya do something stupid." Her expression hardened. "So don't."
"Then what exactly are you going to do?" the red coated pony asked, growing increasingly frustrated. "Hold me hostage? Interroga-"
The sudden sound of discharge made everybody in the room jump, except for Patch and the gunman. The sergeant cried out in pain as he toppled to the floor, gasping for breath. The projectile had pierced his lower abdomen, navigating itself between all the bones and organs, lodging itself in between his pelvis. A successful flesh wound. Vex dropped her unloaded weapon and bent down to the squirming pony. "Don't flatter yourself."
"Thanks for your help, guys." Octavia shook Patch's hoof, in which he returned with a hug. She was surprised by the sudden display of affection, but she didn't complain. Scratch stepped up from behind.
"So you're a pirate?" She asked as if it were an everyday occurrence. Patch chuckled.
"You don't sound very surprised."
She smiled back. "Can't say I am. You were always the rebellious type." She screwed up her face in confusion. "But what're doing in Canterlot."
Patch's eyes shot open. He completely forgot to ask them, his long time friends! Instead he asked random strangers! He cleared his throat. "Me an' Vex are looking for a woman named Rarity. Either of you seen her?"
Scratch's face lit up. "Oh, hey! Rarity you say? Man what the hay~" Patch couldn't help but smile at Scratch's unfit rhyming. After all the seriousness of today, it was good to see someone take the piss out of it. "Yeah I know Rarity," she giggled, putting her arm around Octavia. "Did a show for her a while back. It didn't go over so well, which was whack 'cuz those costumes were amazing. With the exception of the galoshes.
"Wut?" Vex asked, cocking her head.
"Anyway," she continued, not bothering to elaborate. "We weren't sistas, but we became okay friends when she moved to Canterlot. Strange, but she was always distant to everyone except for that little dragon that followed her around. Well, I can imagine he ain't so little anymo'. If you must know, last I heard from her was that she was moving back to ponyville, and she up and disappeared."
"Did she own a boutique?" Asked Patch, trying to verify the information. Scratch shook her head.
"She lived in a fuckin' awesome house, but she didn't own a shop. She made clothes and dresses, lots of clothes and dresses, but just for friends and herself, almost never for business."
Patch put a hoof on his chin. "I guess that could be our girl... Thanks for the info, guys."
"No problem."
Octavia stepped forward. "Uh, guys, you seem to be forgetting that there is a pile of unconscious Legionaries in the club. How are we going to explain that?"
"You don't," Patch deadpanned. "The sergeant will just say it was pirates. They will leave your club alone as well. They need to keep up appearances with the general public and the princesses. So, if they were to forcibly take your club now, it would be a mite suspicious. Not suspicious enough to be investigated, granted, but they don't want to risk it." Patch eyed the building next to them, basking in the memories. "They wouldn't have an excuse."
There was a long silence, it wasn't uncomfortable in any way... but the two mares and griffin gave a moment of silence for Patch, something he needed dearly. Patch smiled, and closed his eyes. "C'mon Vex, we need to find the others." Waving goodbye to his two musician friends, they walked down the dark alley from the back of the club, planning to meet their yellow and pink friends.
"How long will it take to find them?" Vex asked, looking at her talons annoyingly.
"About four seconds." Vex glanced at the captain curiously, then looked down the alley to see a yellow pegasus coupled with a pink earth pony. Fluttershy had an astonished look on her face.
"Cap'n!" she gasped. "Where the hell were you?"
Patch laughed. "I could ask you the same thing."
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Yes, all chapters that contain a major encounter will be this long. Otherwise, expect a normal length chapter next update. An interlude will be coming soon.
AUTHOR'S COMMENTARY |
Pirates of Equestria | Damaged Reflections | AKA THAT CHAPTER THAT NEVER CAME OUT... 'til now.
"What do we find in coincidence? Do we find comfort, and ease in the ironic happenings of happenstance? Or do we hide in the shadows, trying to get away from the unpredictable predictability?"
Chapter 6
"Applebloom..." Scootaloo's old friend hung in the doorway with bags in her mouth and an enthusiastic smile strung across her face. "You... you're here!"
Applebloom nodded with an ecstatic, "Mhmm!"
"Why are you here? I thought you were still at the farm," Scootaloo inquired as her bright yellow friend dropped her bags on the floor and gave Scootaloo a huge embrace.
"Well... after Applejack 'n Big Mac left an' Granny Smith died... there just really wasn't anythang left fer me to be there fer."
Scootaloo gave an understanding frown.
"Ah figured Ah'll join the Legion like mah sistah did." Applebloom shifted her hoof hoof on the floor. "But Ah ain't good at killin' no folk, so they stuck me here. Ah didn't know you'd be here too!" Apple bloom tossed her bag to the nearest bed, which Scootaloo silently agreed to.
"So, I assume you met Pips," Scootaloo mentioned as she sat down on the lone chair in the room. Scootaloo noted how absurdly fast the two mares ran out of topics to chat about. They'd thought being away from each other for four years would have given them plenty to ask one another, but everything that had happened before the parting was old news, and what they had missed out was too plentiful to pin down a topic that didn't enlist long back stories.
Content with Scootaloo's subject change, she answered. "Ya mean Cap'n Pipsqueak? Yeah, he's a pretty cool feller, very polite. He's kinda cute t'."
"Easy there tiger," she warned, looking over her shoulder and eyeing the moon out her window. "Something tells me that he wouldn't be very interested."
"'s he gay?"
"Uh... no. Don't ask me how I would know that..." Scootaloo groaned as if she ate something foul.
"What, did he hit on ya?" Applebloom wondered.
"Uh no... I walked in on him while he was..." Scootaloo flew out of her seat and dashed to the door. "You know what? Never mind. Let's go see what Pips is doing." She chuckled nervously as she ushered her friend out of the room, who was quite bewildered.
"I brought you a letter!" the familiar voice ringed in a singsong tone. The voice was bubbly and light-hearted, as if the mare who owned it had absolutely no worries about the world, or was completely ignorant about them.
Pipsqueak looked up from his desk to see that wide, unconcerning grin, not perfectly white, but not a tinge yellow, facing him square in the muzzle. Realizing who it was, a soft smile stretched along his mouth. "Ah, hello Ditzy dear, how you doing?"
A short, innocent giggle escaped from the blonde's mouth as if she were gargling cotton candy. "Heeheehe, I'm doing good Master Pippysqueak! Express delivery, Sir!" She gave a small salute as her wings stretched from side to side in glee. The look of determination on the pegasus' face did little to help the captain's urge to jump over his desk and provide the mare with a large hug. She pulled the letter out of her saddlebags (miraculously the right one, which is a pretty amazing feat considering she was holding many packages and envelopes belonging to a plethora of different ponies for all over Equestria) and handed it to the Captain. "But you know, Master Pippysqueak, you can just call me Derpy, I don't find it insulting at all."
Pipsqueak gave the blonde a once over, admiring her figure and adorableness accordingly. She was wearing a blue denim coat with a white shirt underneath, giving her an apt appearance as a Legion mailmare. She also bore a brown Express Delivery Beret and sash. Pipsqueak set his hooves on his desk and leaned. "Now, why would I want to do that? Ditzy Doo is such a beautiful and endearing name, one I would not want to spoil with such an arbitrary nickname. And of course the beautiful name complies with a mare of the same traits." One of her eyes were trailing off at the bombardment of compliments, and as soon as he was finished, her entire face lit up red. She hid her blush with her hoof and giggled.
"Oh Master Pippysqueak, you do know how to flatter a girl!"
Pipsqueak had never corrected Ditzy on his name since it was said in respect instead of mockery. Then again she was a pretty girl, he'd let a pretty girl call him shitface as long as it was done with endearment. Ditzy grinned wildly once again through closed eyes. "Master, that letter is from P.C., so you should open it right away."
Pipsqueak reared back at this news as he glanced at the letter. Surely it wasn't of dire consequence as she could have used Vynn, his eagle, for emergencies via that dark portal teleportation spell she taught Luna. But she sent Ditzy, the fastest mode communication excluding the aforementioned method. He began to tear at the top of the envelope.
He skimmed the letter with an intense stare. After finishing, he looked at the blonde mare in front of him once again. "What's it say?" she asked, staring at the Captain with one eye, the one that usually drifted off randomly. It didn't occur to him to ask the blonde why she would want to know, considering Ditzy was one of the few ponies he trusted outside of his, men he didn't care.
"Apparently the rouge element we were searching for- the pirates- was Captain Patch, an infamous pirate who also pillaged a small messenger ship two days ago which apperantly had some very precious cargo as well..." Pipsqueak read the letter again, making sure not to miss anything. "They were last seen back in Canterlot, which means we must have missed them on the way here. We'll have to turn back."
"Aw, that sucks." Ditzy's eyes shifted nervously from side to side before she stepped out. She knew she wasn't doing anything bad, but the whole sneakiness of the entire thing made her uncomfortable. "Well goodbye, Master Pippysqueak!"
"See you later Ditzy Doo."
The brown stallion with matching mane trotted down the hall, deep in thought. He was oblivious to the noise around him- and the ponies in front of him. The last few events that had transpired raised his suspicions, which was quite suspicious for the suspicion he was having. He then realized how delicious of a word suspicious was. Suspicious. Suuuuspiciouuuus.
"Doctor, are you okay?"
Hey, that voice sounded like- "Ditzy! Nice to see you!" The Doctor grabbed a hold of the Pegasus and embraced her in a soft hug. She returned it.
"I brought you a muffin!" Ditzy yelled in glee, holding out the brown baked good in front of him. He smiled widely.
"Absolutely brilliant! English muffins have nothing on your baking skills, Love,"
"Heh, whatever that means."
The Doctor cheered as he grasped the muffin out off her hoof, only to have it plop on the floor. They both kinda... stared at it for a couple of seconds. "Oops," he apologized as he picked it off the floor with his mouth, and shoved it inside the legion coat's pocket. "Keep forgetting hooves are flat, heh."
"Doctor, you guys are going to bump into those pirates pretty soon."
"What? How? I told you Ditzy, we can't get directly involved! Lord knows what happens when we do that..."
Ditzy cocked her head at 'Lord', but he shrugged it off. Instead, Ditzy folded her forelegs together. "I know, I know. But it was a direct order from P.C., I can't just ignore that."
"Well, I suppose it couldn't be helped," The Doctor concluded as he rubbed the back of his mane. He was interrupted in the middle of his gesture by Ditzy brushing up against the Doctor.
"Umm..." Ditzy garbled as she traced her hoof in small circles on the Doctor's chest. "Do we have enough time to...?"
The Doctor sighed in genuine disappointment. He brushed his for leg down her back. "Unfortunately not. They'd get destroyed if they're ambushed... you know what to do."
"Aww," she said in disappointment. "Not even a little?"
"Sorry, no... but..." The Doctor said as he touched his lips to hers. Ditzy responded the usual way, spreading and stiffing her wings, flapping them slowly, but excitedly. They separated and Ditzy nearly fell backwards, still caught in the romantic reverie. She smiled.
"I'll be back Doctor Whooves," she said, diligently. The Doctor, no longer affected by her odd name for him, nodded with a calm smile on his face.
"I'll be waiting, Love." The Doctor turned and trotted over to the Captain's room.
Ditzy stopped herself for a moment and turned back to the Doctor. "Oh, and... you were right. It's Captain Patch. And the pink one is already with him."
The Doctor ceased his movement entirely, and stood still. His head sunk. "Oh? Well, that changes things..."
"Doctor... you can stop it from happening right?"
"No... I can merely guide. I can only hope Pipsqueak will do the right thing." The doctor craned his neck to look at his Ditzy, and lightened his voice. "This change of situation does help, though... but, you see, we are the only ones that could have influenced it, and we haven't really done much. Very odd.
"No matter. Ditzy, do your thing. I need to speak to the captain."
"Captain, I want to-" The Doctor saw the orange and yellow mares in the room standing at either side of the captain and stopped in his tracks. "Oh, I can come back later."
"Nonsense, Doctor," Pipsqueak ushered the stallion into the room. "Always got time to talk."
"Thank you, captain." The Doctor took a couple of steps into the room.
"Ugh, the air in this room just got twenty-five percent more British," Scootaloo joked. "Now it's over half."
"Shut up, Scootaloo," Pipsqueak ordered while the Doctor chuckled. "Now," Pipsqueak got to the point. "What was it you wanted to talk about it?"
"Sir, I'm concerned about these Pirates. Specifically Captain Peg-Patch."
Pipsqueak leaned forward. "How do you know about Cap-" Pipsqueak stopped himself as he eyed the man with a bow tie in front of him. He relaxed his shoulders and a smile crept on his face. "Heh, of course you know about him. I honestly shouldn't be surprised, you know everything."
"Not everything, Captain, just a lot," The Doctor said, chuckling. "Listen... do you think we could bring them in peacefully? Maybe, apprehend them?"
"A cat in hell's chance." Pipsqueak put on the best sympathetic face he could muster. "Sorry, we can't just expect them to bend over, hand us paddles, and serve us margaritas with little umbrellas in them."
"Yes... I understand." The Doctor really didn't know what he was on about. Getting them jailed was unlikely to help them out either. The Doctor couldn't sabotage either, he had gotten too attached to this crew. Not that it would help, Pipsqueak was important too. He simply had to sit and wait.
The Doctor turned and walked, defeated in a surprisingly short time.
"What was that all 'bout?" Applebloom asked to no one in particular. Scootaloo shrugged while Pipsqueak itched his chin.
"I dunno... but The Doctor has never been this on edge." Pipsqueak stared intently at the wooden desk he was leaning on. "Strange."
"Speakin' of strange... who in tarnation is that guy?"
"That's The Doctor," Pipsqueak began, shifting his weight from the desk to the back of his chair. "Don't bother asking his real name, he insists that that's it."
Scootaloo burst out in an abrupt laughter. "Tell her how he joined."
Applebloom raised an eyebrow as Pipsqueak turned away sheepishly. "The Doctor just boarded the ship one day and insisted that he was already part of the crew, walking around like he owned the place. When I stopped being utterly confused, I demanded he get off my ship. He... followed me on an assignment"
Applebloom put a hoof to her mouth to suppress a giggle. "He then proved himself a useful man. He is an expert in damn near everything. He's always got an answer for my questions, though... it takes a while to get a straight one."
The captain took one last look at the door before he commented, "Wonder what's on his mind..." Pipsqueak glanced at the papers on his desk and shifted through the mail. He froze up when he saw a letter from Luna. Immediately seeking to open it, he grinned. "A letter from Luna? I have more reliable means of communication, I wonder why she's sending via Ditzy." Pulling the parchment from the envelope, he skimmed it.
Yes, I know it's rather odd contacting you this way, but this is official business and must be recorded as such. Anyways, in our most recent recruitment, a rather strange pony enlisted. You'll find his personnel file enclosed. As you will probably tell, it's remarkably unusual, in terms of his living quality and history. At first, I didn't trust the pony, but as it turns out... he is incredibly powerful and has an ability unlike any I have ever seen. I have decided to let him join, but I ask you interview him personally, I trust you far more than some stranger. Not that you should care, but he is not from here, rather he hails from Neighpon which is unique for a unicorn. That is mostly donkey land. Speak with him when you get back to Canterlot. That is all.
A Neighponese pony? What makes him so special Luna would let him bypass? Hmm...
Pipsqueak grabbed the enclosed file and began to read that as well.
Name: Drake Blaze/ Occupation: N/A/ Talent: N/A/ Education: Doctorate Degree in Theoretical Physics, Doctorate Degree in Chemistry, M.D./ Age: 21/
WOAH, WHAT?! Three doctorates and he's only twenty one? How is that even possible? Pipsqueak continued to read, genuinely intrigued.
Race: Assian Unicorn/ Credit Balance: 334,926 bits/
...Fffffffffffff. What's this guy want in the Legion? He's absolutely loaded!
Criminal History: 17 counts of aggravated assault and battery. 11 counts of public vandilism.
...Wut? How is this guy not in jail?
Pipsqueak exhaled an exasperated sigh as he set the lengthy record down. He thought of trotting over to the window and just tossing the damned thing in the raging waters of 'NO', but then decided to give the guy the benefit of the doubt, considering Luna had recommended him herself. He glanced out the window to the moon one last time before letting out another sigh. A storm is approaching. I know it.
"Let's see... four letters down, a misinterpretation of a large water blocking bridge..." Patch, deep in thought, didn't expect the eardrum shattering crash and jumped out of his chair. He spun quickly towards the window in his room, and readied his sword. Patch eyed the fallen paper and pencil before letting out a sigh, then kept his attention at the window. Seeing no one, he inched towards it, being careful to be ready to swing at a moment's notice. He took another step forward, his knees shaking from the adrenaline. After a couple of seconds, he eased his demeanor, but kept his guard up. He started walking at a normal pace to the window, opened it, and leaned outside. All he could see was the night's endless horizon, and a pony-
"DAMN!" CRASH! Patch tumbled across the room a few times before smacking into the door upside-down. The mare who was air-delivered to him did a similar thing, only landing a few feet away with her wings spread out. She spoke with her usual thick accent that Patch could not distinguish.
"I really have to aim next time, yes..." the mare in the bandanna and red overcoat moaned while struggling to stand. When she looked up, her eyes were met with a blue hoof, one she recognized all to easily.
"You think?" he retorted, while a unconscious smile stretched across his face. It was soft and sympathetic, but at the same time had a scolding tinge to it. The grey mare gladly accepted the Captain's help, and got to her hooves somewhat clumsily.
"Ditzy," the Captain began. "What're you doing here? You usually meet me when we dock."
"Captain, captain, big problem, yes!" The clumsy mare yelled, fumbling to close the distance between each other. "The legion, legion, they're coming, for you, yes!"
"The legion? For this ship specifically?" The captain asked. They were in the middle of the ocean. Why would the Legion be hunting a small band of pirates? Sure they had made quite a stir in Canterlot, but nothing remarkable happened.
"You heard what I said, no?" The mare's gruff voice and strange accent always threw off Patch, but it couldn't be any worse than his own.
Ditzy suddenly grabbed Patch's shoulders and started to violently shake him. "You must do something, sir, something must be done!"
"WwWwHhHhHyYyYyY?" Patch tried to ask whilst being shaken. Ditzy halted immediately and turned away to point at the window. When she turned back, Patch was still trying to stand after being shook like a neglected foal.
"This attack comes from Captain Pipsqueak, the legion's most effecient, and also youngest captain, yes it does!" Ditzy climbed into the window and prepared to take leave. "You best be careful, yup yup! He won't go down so easily, no he wont."
"Pipsqueak?" The Captain asked, rubbing his head in discomfort. "Sounds like a pushover."
Ditzy propelled herself towards the captain with her wings and looked straight into his eyes with her hooves on his shoulders. "OH nononononononononono. He is anything but, yes he is."
"Ditzy," the captain growled, getting impatient. "Look, it won't be a problem. We've faced the Legion before, and it's just one ship. How hard can it-"
"Lavender!" Ditzy screamed before flying out the window at lightning speed, leaving Patch standing, baffled.
"...L-...Lavender? What the hell does that mean?"
"Captain!" Fluttershy crashed through the door. Patch doubled back and screamed from the sudden entrance. After a couple seconds of awkward silence, Patch cleared his throat.
"Uhh... Yeah," he said, smiling sheepishly.
"Aaaaanyways... there is a large ship off the starboard bow coming in hot. Should we bother?"
"Legion?" Patch asked. Maybe Ditzy wasn't full of absolute crap.
"No, it's fuckin' Mary Poppins asking for directions." Fluttershy remarked, smiling.
"Could do without the sarcasm Fu'Shy." The captain trotted towards the door and motioned Fluttershy to follow.
The sun was creeping up on the horizon, slowly making the night fade away as the moon ran for west. The ship Patch was informed of crept up along with the sun, as if they were sent from it to combat the pirates preparing for the fight. Patch lent over the edge of the railing and inspected his own ship. Repairs from their last battle had already taken place, as the hull was perfectly in tact. Patch faced the ship once more as he made the order. "Turn the ship. Get those cannons facing those Legion bastards."
"Aye, Captain." one of the ponies behind him confirmed. Patch craned his neck to face his crew. A crowd of the most loyal ponies he had ever met and...
"Miss Pie?"
"Wassup?" Pinkie asked in glee.
Patch looked at her in disbelief and shook his head in slight annoyance. "Miss Pie, please get back into the ship. You're no fighter." Patch contemplated himself for a few seconds before facing Pinkie once again. "...Are you?"
"Nah, I was just checking out what was going on."
Patch sighed once again and turned towards the cannon on the edge of the ship. Knowing it was already loaded he slammed hoof against it, igniting the primer and launching the ball towards the ship in the distance.
SPLASH!
"So much for The Doctor's suggestion," Pipsqueak retorted, giving a scolding glance towards the bowtie wearing stallion. He smiled nervously.
"Alright you wankers, you want a fight you got it!"
"Fuck, they're fast!" Patch yelled as battles in the sky unfolded. The pegasi fought above in order to own the battlefield of the clouds. The 'they' that patch was referring to was Pipsqueak's ship. It practically danced around Patch's budget ship like a butterfly. Although the pirates' ship was holding up an admirable fight, if this kept up their ship would be torn apart like paper-mâche. "Alright guys this isn't working, let's board before they do the same to us!" Patch kept an eye on the sky, mainly Fluttershy, who was barking orders and fending off a couple of pegasi.
At once, most of the pirates yelled and began to jump for Pipsqueak's ship, which was conveniently on the receiving end of a wave. The battle had started, and the sounds of cannons dimmed down somewhat, except for the few pirates who stayed behind exclusively to fire them and the ones on Pipsqueak's ship brave enough to let the battle out of their sights to fire off a shot or two. The rows of cannons on the decks below kept firing as well, but at a slower rate as a result of the lack of crew.
Patch was among the first to land on the ship. He took in his surroundings before drawing his sword and rushing in. He immediately ran in to two ponies, one of which did not sense his approach. He took care of the one with a careful slash, then gravitated towards the second. He was easy to dispatch of as well, first making contact with his sword then using the opening to buck him in the chest. Patch took a break before continuing, glancing at the sides of the battle, not noticing the sprinting unicorn with a saber cloaked in magic heading right for him. He turned, but too late for the pony had already started to strike when...
The sound of a gunfire was heard! Patch turned to thank his savior, which was Vex, still holding the flintlock to the space the pony had previously occupied. In her hand was the wooden pistol with gold and silver trimmings, bearing the imprinted word "Vexineva" on it, her full name. In her other talon was another pistol of the same design, pointed towards the deck. All of this paled in comparison, however, to the two rows of three holsters on each side of the griffin's torso, four of them holding ordinary flintlocks, two of them empty for her beloved custom ones.
"Good job," Vex spat sarcastically. Patch simply gave a nod of gratitude before going back to looking around the ship, eager to... meet the captain. He wasn't given much time however, as a small orange pegasus barreled forward and began her assault immediately. Patch, caught off guard, attempted to block the haphazard swords swings which flashed in front of him in an epileptic manner. Patch ducked under one particular swing which bought him time to skip back to gain some distance. This gave him an opportunity to analyse his attacker in order to actually stand a chance. One thing immediately became apparent: the reason the swings was so seizure-educing was because the orange pegasus with the intrusive purple mane had her sword connected on her hoof. There was a couple of things wrong with this picture; one, using your hoof with your sword is absolutely retarded. It screws with your balance and stance, and it is no chance against the force of a pony's jaw. Two, she was a pegasus, and could have just used her wing to carry the sword which, while still less powerful than a jaw, would give her a more stable stance. Finally, Patch noticed that the pegasus' wings were... absolutely tiny. He realized that she wasn't on the ground just because she wanted to fight Patch, but because she couldn't fly. And she couldn't hold the sword with her wings because they were way too small.
"What's up with your wings, sis?" Patch asked with feign innocence before bearing a slight mischievous smirk. "Daddy drop you too many times?"
Scootaloo's face remained straight and unperturbed, however it was clear that she was offended by the remark. She smiled in spite of herself. "Think your a smart ass, huh? Choke on it."
"Really, a gay slur?" Patch asked in sarcasm. Scootaloo didn't retort, instead, she leaped towards Patch at a surprising pace, knocking him off balance when he positioned himself to block it. He underestimated the power of the hoof swing and got knocked to his knees, sending a searing pain up his legs. She backed of as quickly as she came, cautious and unaware of Patch's skills. Patch slowly got off the floor, trying to appear weaker than he actually was. Even so, he knew that this woman wasn't your ordinary soldier.
"Fend 'em off, on it now lads!" Pipsqueak yelled, surveying the battlefield before bracing himself to jump down the railing to the lower deck. He was caught in the air mid jump, a yellow Pegasus air tackling him into the starboard railing. He grunted as his back hit ground, and immediately attempted to hold back his attacker. He caught glimpses of her black streaked pink mane while slamming his hooves into her chest. It soon became too much, the Pegasus kicked off of the captain and repositioned herself in front of him. Her breathing was labored, the wind knocked out of her from the panicked flailing. Pipsqueak stood clumsily and attempted to assess the pony before she started to speak.
"You look important. Major? Captain? General?" she asked, her gaze never faulting. Pipsqueak was surprised at the tenderness of her voice, surprised at the lack of slurs and curses. Pipsqueak decided to pay her back with politeness of his own.
"Well... we're a sub branch of the Legion. There are no ranks on this ship, except for me the Captain and my first mate, Scoots." Fluttershy reacted more violently than Pipsqueak expected. She sort of flinched and lifted her hoof in what seemed like disgust.
"Oh..." The shock of the Captain's hospitality towards the yellow pirate subsiding, she altered her stance and readied her sword. "You know, I can't let you pass."
"Of course not, that would just be civil."
This is what Fluttershy was waiting for; A smartass remark. "Watch your tone, fucker. You ain't talking to someone you can just be a dick to and get off Scott-free. I'm going to fight back, not just be a submissive piece of crap."
Pipsqueak's face bore that of shock, his face soft and sympathetic. This sweet girl just completely flipped impressions, all because he decided to say a little joke. Still, she's a pirate, it was gonna be like this either way.
"I expected no less." Pipsqueak drew his sword, the glint of steel flashing in front of Fluttershy's eyes.
Pipsqueak struck first, catching Fluttershy's blade and producing sparks of aggravation. Fluttershy followed up with two quick swipes, both of which blocked by her opponent. Pipsqueak then hopped forward and positioned himself behind her, missing a third swipe from the pegasus, and attempted to buck her back. She simply sat her flank down, causing Pipsqueak to hit nothing but air. Balanced with her forelegs, Fluttershy pushed forward and slid under the Captain's chest. Pipsqueak got a full view of her flank before it jerked up and hit him in the face. Fluttershy continued upward until she was standing on her forehooves and Pipsqueak was falling backwards to the ground belly-up. She jumped forward and brought her sword down to the Captain's chest. Fueled by adrenaline, the Captain rolled away with merely a scratch. He took a second to exhale and began to stand once again.
Pipsqueak wasted no time; he immediately dashed forward, his head craned and his sword ready. But Fluttershy seemed to be distracted with another pegasus beside her...
Patch swung left, then right, to no avail. They both hit the woman's blade, and it felt as if she fumbled her sword, but in reality it was just her awkwardness with her hoof-held saber. She brought down her sword with great force, trying to luck through Patch's skill, but he blocked it with ease despite her unpredictability. They were at a stand-off, both trying to overtake the other, sparks flying. Scootaloo enjoyed the contest, but got aggravated when Patch was looking to the left.
Angry, Scootaloo challenged Patch. "What the hell are you looking at? Getting nervous? Answer me you bastard!"
Patch grumbled. He could do no more. He had underestimated the strength of the small orange pegasus, there was a sword in his mouth, and that thing he was looking at took all his attention. Patch's sudden submission was annoying Scootaloo, which only made her apply more force into her hoof. The contact mark on the blades were getting deeper and deeper. Patch had lost all interest in the battle, he had his full intention on the pony to the right of the duel. In one swoop, Patch shoved Scootaloo to the right like a dirty rag, dragging both blades against each other producing enough sparks to light an ill-shaved pony's beard on fire. He tackled the pony that had caught his attention and started wailing on him. Scootaloo stood and began to hall ass towards the evasive Captain before getting tackled herself by a yellow pegasus.
"Leave him alone!" She yelled before attempting to drive her sword into Scootaloo's heart. Her awkwardly held sword gave her the advantage of freedom of movement, however, and countered with a swipe of the saber, merely scratching the yellow pegasus. She yelped and attempted to jump off Scootaloo, but not before the orange pegasus could slam both her hooves into Fluttershy's ribcage. This caused the yellow mare to cough and sputter, before collapsing to the right of opponent. This gave Scootaloo ample time to find the captain in order to continue the assault. She found him, but she also saw Pipsqueak along with him, already engaged in combat. Deciding he would be able to handle it himself, Scootaloo tried to turn turn to her conquered opponent, but instead was greeted with the yellow mare already mid-swing. Scootaloo reacted fast enough to block the blow, but not to evade the following buck to the muzzle.
Scootaloo tasted the distinct flavor of blood before her vision started to darken. Suddenly, the world flopped to it's side, and the sounds began to fade.
Content with the dropping of her enemy, Fluttershy smiled and ran up to help the Captain.
"Did you see that? Did you fucking see that?" Patch panted, exhausted from the constant barrage of attacks. Pipsqueak breathed just as heavily, before answering him,
"What?" He exhaled.
"I tackled you to save one of my crew. She tackled the mare attacking me. We rotated like fucking dates at a prom" Patch chortled. Pipsqueak just stared blankly at what he presumed as the Pirate captain.
After a couple seconds, Pipsqueak chuckled too. Smugly, he flashed the opposing captain a sly smile. "I'm guessing you're the Captain? Captain Peg-Patch the Pirate, to be specific."
"Man, I've been a popular person recently. And for all the wrong reasons."
"You do know what I'm here for, correct?" Pipsqueak asked ominously.
"To kill me?" Patch asked, a blank smirk on his face as he looked away.
"Preferably not," Pipsqueak admitted. patch raised a brow. "I'm here to arrest you."
The pirate captain broke into an incredibly loud, hearty laugh, tears appearing around his eyes and cramps forming in his stomach. Pipsqueak watched with an unamused expression. "Arrest me? Arrest? That's not how war works, mate. More importantly, that's not how the Legion works. Can't do nowt to fix that." Patch drew his sword once again. "You are here to kill me."
Pipsqueak remained solemn as he drew his sword. "Have it your way." |
Pirates of Equestria | Brittle Glass | No one knew? No one knows. No one gives a damn. I once trusted a man like you, and all that ended was the engulfing flame of temptation and hatred. I once trusted a woman like you, and it turned out she wasn't strong enough for the simple trials of life. So go ahead, do as you please... there's no one left to stop you. This generation is dead. We are simply going to have to try again tomorrow. That's all that's left to do.
But... but you... She's dead! She's fucking dead!
She shares the fate of righteousness as a whole. There is nothing I can do.
No... No, no NO! YES YOU CAN! FUCK YOU! You can! You can...
Take him away.
You can't do this! You can't fucking do this! You're going to burn! You're going to burn, the sun will be blacked out of the sky, you be damned, this whole country be damned!
...and me along with it.
"Find someone and keep them close. Find someone else and keep them far away. That way, as long as you protect them, you will never be alone."
Chapter 7
"Grrah!" Pipsqueak cried through clenched teeth, through the handle of his sword. Patch stepped back and deflected the swing. He tried to get a hit in on his own, but the young captain was too fast and completely evaded it. Pipsqueak spun to get some extra momentum behind his blade, but Patch saw it a mile away and crouched under the swing. Under the full force of his rising anger, he rammed his head into Pipsqueak's chest, causing him to cough and sputter. He backed off, trying to gain distance.
"What do you want?!" Pipsqueak yelled as loud as he could with the wind knocked out of him. "Something as superficial as money!"
"No, no no." Patch corrected. "I want justice. Money's a by-product. A helpful one."
"Justice?" Pipsqueak scoffed. He motioned towards the battle raging on next to them. The sound of Flintlocks going off, blades making contact, and yells of pain and agony bustling through the air. "A fat lot good you're doing for justice right now."
"Murdering a murderer is not murder." Patch retorted.
"Stealing from a thief is still stealing." Pipsqueak responded back.
"Heh. Not a soul alive will prosecute for that."
"I would."
Patch charged at the comment, a new fury behind his eyes. Pipsqueak smiled and tossed Patch to the side, using the pirate's momentum against him. He smashed into a couple of barrels of gunpowder which spread out across the deck. Groaning, he tried to get up. Pipsqueak was already sprinting towards him, sword outwards in a stabbing motion. This is it. Straight through the heart... No, the skull. I can end this right here, right now. He jumped...
BAFF
Pipsqueak heard ringing and his vision grew dark. He absentmindedly felt his body fly to the right, spinning in mid-air a couple times before hitting the ground rolling. First what came back was pain. Then swelling. Vision. Hearing. Thought. He then just made the connection that he was punched in the side of the face. Hard. He tried gathering his strength to stand. Disoriented, and his knees weak, he managed to stand. He was still facing the ground but it was progress. He shook his head in order gather his bearings, and then focused his sight to the blur standing next to the mess of barrels that the pirate captain was residing on. The blur helped up a pony who he guessed was Patch. Great, two opponents. Pipsqueak attempted to make an association to the blur in front. Purple hair?
Scoots? No, she has no reason to punch me. Well, at least, with intent to harm. Pipsqueak made out wings. That... pegasus that was helping him deal with Scoots? No... she was yellow. Where is Scoots anyhow? Beh. Pipsqueak's sight became clearer. He then realized why he couldn't recognize the blur. It was a griffin!
"A griffin? Here?!" Pipsqueak shouted in astonishment. The griffin smirked and folded her arms.
"I'm Vex, disgusted to meet you," Vex greeted, giving a tout bow. Pipsqueak scowled. The young captain identified with the accent, it was nigh identical to his. He saw the griffin help up her captain and affectionately brush him off. She pulled a pistol and pointed it at Pipsqueak. "Hate to cut our introduction short, Captain. But then again, not."
Pipsqueak eyed around frantically for something to do. He knew deep down that this girl wasn't stupid; she wasn't going to hesitate to fire that pistol. In fact, she was already pulling the trigger. Something caught his eye, something small, heavy looking, and possibly breakable. He took his chance. He flung his hoof forwards as fast as he could, catching the object and launching it across to his executioner. The gun fired as soon as the thing hit her face, screwing her aim. It shattered, and Vex screamed. The small lead ball ejected from the gun royally missed Pipsqueak's body. Pipsqueak saw a glint of fire through the brittle glass of the object he had threw and realized it was a gas lantern. The glass lantern had caused some cuts, and burned the tips of a couple of her feathers, but the wounds were superficial. Pipsqueak used this opportunity to get some cover from the five other guns she had tucked away.
"Bastard!" Patch yelled as he started towards his opponent. Vex zoomed past him and beat him to the punch. Pipsqueak tried to hide behind the duels and railings to avoid any incoming lead. Vex however, already snuffed him out, as the (pretty beautiful, Pipsqueak had to admit) griffin instantly filled his vision. There was a delay of action, as if she wanted his brain connect the fact there was danger ahead of him. She did not, however, wait for him to react. As soon Pipsqueak's face turned to that of horror, Vex struck with her claw. Five parallel scarlet streaks etched themselves across his face as his head flung in the direction of Vex's talons. Vex followed up by kicking with her left hind leg, adhering to the direction Pipsqueak was leaning. He recoiled in the opposite direction and went airborne, landing on his back. When he opened his eyes, the griffin still took up most of his field of vision, along with the sky. She was above him. Anticipating a fatal attack, he rolled, and heard the griffin's talons stab into the wooden deck. He got up and found Vex drawing another pistol. Acting quickly, he bucked the gun out of her hand, and reared up to swipe his hind leg across her face. The hit connected and Vex fell to the ground, wincing, but still conscious. Pipsqueak looked around desperately for a weapon, for he dropped his sword when that bitch, as Pipsqueak started to refer to her in his mind, had punched him. Patch was nearly there to help his feathered friend. The situation was bad for the young captain. He could find no blades, but Pipsqueak spotted the gun Vex had dropped. He took a forward tumble and grabbed the gun off the floor. Pipsqueak heard a blade make contact with the deck of the space he previously occupied. He could only assume it was Patch's scimitar hoping to deal some damage.
The young captain turned to find his opposition. Vex, Patch, and... that yellow pegasus. They were all frozen in place, prepared to charge as soon as Pipsqueak left an opening with the flintlock in his mouth. Damn... I could handle maybe two, but I can't take three. There was also a problem with firing that pistol. Firing a gun with your mouth is the most inaccurate thing in the world next to playing skeeball drunk and with all your legs broken. Pipsqueak took in the environment once again to see how he could regain an advantage.
Oh. Wow. That's... convenient. Pipsqueak saw a trail of black gunpowder leading up to the barrels Patch fell into earlier, with the trio standing right on top. Thank Luna! ...and er, Celestia. Pipsqueak closed his eyes in feign defeat, and bowed his head to the three pirates. As soon as they lowered their guard, Pipsqueak smiled, put the barrel of the gun on the trail of powder, and pulled the trigger. The sparks trailed back to the source almost instantly.
"FUCK!" Patch yelled as he jumped to the side and hooked his leg around the yellow pegasus with him. They weren't quick enough to dodge the incoming explosion, but were fast enough to not be seriously hurt in any degree, not even enough to get a burn mark. The griffin didn't have anyone to save her, but she was quick enough to jump backwards out of a fatal radius. It knocked her back further than the other two rag dolls, and the trajectory launched her off the ship with a smoke trail. A splash was heard and she was out of sight.
"This has gone far enough!" Patch yelled. "Retreat!"
Retreat? Pipsqueak thought, puzzled. They are far from losing, I wonder why-
"It's been fun, Captain, really, but I gotta run, and your defective ship really ain't that hospitable." Patch didn't smile through his joke. Pipsqueak hurt Vex, almost killed Fluttershy, and teared the pirate captain a new asshole. His hatred of the Legion nearly entirely bore on the shoulders of the young captain. Everything Patch had hated about the military shined through Pipsqueak, and he did not like it at all.
"Defective ship?" Pipsqueak asked, cocking his head.
"Fuck you too." Patch responded plainly, actually taking Pipsqueak aback. The pirate helped his yellow companion up, who was still dazed from the explosion. Pipsqueak eyed his own ship once again, this time looking for 'defects'. He couldn't really find anything wrong until he looked at the sails.
"What the..." The sails were absolutely torn apart. All three of them. Tattered. "Flippin' nob'eads."
"Sithee!"
Pipsqueak turned and saw Patch on a rope leading to his own ship, along with many other pirates. Their pegasi were already on the other vessel.
"Should we go after them, sir?" A pegasus asked Pipsqueak. He shook his head.
"No. As much as I'd love to send my pegasi on a suicide mission (and I don't) there would be no way for the crew to back you guys up, at least not with our sails in this condition. I want you guys to stay right here, okay?" Pipsqueak put a hoof on the shoulder of his soldier. "Nothing's worth your life, lad." Pipsqueak sighed. "Okay guys, lets patch this up so we can get the hell out of this ocean. I'm sick of it."
"Needles, get your sewing equipment. Don't look at me like that, I know you have some. Snips? Can you grab me some-" Pipsqueak was cut short with a stumble over some sort of orange lump. He looked down at the floor and saw Scootaloo, passed out and snoring peacefully; save for the blood in her hair and nose. Pipsqueak had to hold back a chuckle. "Damn chicken."
"Fuck him." Vex spat, shaking her entire body and fluffing the water out of her feathers. "No, seriously, fuck him. When I see him again, I'm gonna ram my guns so far up his ass, he'll be spittin' lead out for ages."
She took out her signature flintlocks and started emptying water from their barrels. "And then I'm gonna shove em down his throat and make him taste his own SHIT!" Vex wanted to hit something, bad. Pinkie Pie was apparently standing next to her (She hadn't noticed until then), so she slapped the back of her head.
"Aaaaoowww..."
"Nah, Vex. That'd be too good for him. He'd probably like it too." Fluttershy joked, the only one not having an enraging and frustrating experience with the young Legion captain.
"Seriously?" Patch said in a kiddish tone, his temper finally dying down. "What's with the gay slurs? So many gay slurs." They all laughed, the tension and adrenaline of the battle finally wearing off. Patch faced his yellow friend. "Hey, great job with the sails. It was a nice fail safe, one that we actually had to utilize."
"No problem, Cap'n." Fluttershy said timidly, hiding a blush with her hoof. Pinkie marveled at this. She was just like she was years ago. It disintegrated quickly, but Pinkie took it as a small victory of the mare she once knew.
"I can't believe one minging lad jus' brayed 'ar fooking arses." Patch said in disgust. "Ain't that a threp in't steans?" All eyes on the ship stared at him, puzzled. Quizzically, Patch asked, "Wut?"
"We have no idea what you just said." Vex deadpanned. Patch chuckled.
"We suck." Patch clarified.
Fluttersigh. "Well that's an understatement."
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sorry for the short length, there was just no way to continue this story other than going to the next arc, and that's for next chapter (Well, sorta. You'll see what I mean). Next chapter's already half written (again, you'll see why) so it should only be a few days. No Author's Commentary just like the previous chapter, sorry. |
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