Fallout: Equestria - Of Taint and Colts

Chapters

The Haze
The Baptized
The Again
The White
The Firsts
The Slip
The Fragments
The Shadow

The Haze

Chapter One - "The Haze"

All day every day it's the same routine. We walk through the halls following our Hazemaster, a pony whose special talent is to keep the sky pink. We chat about our day. We talk the same words, we walk the same paths, we think the same thoughts. I thought these thoughts yesterday. I'll think them tomorrow. It never changes. Every day at 13:43 sharp, as well as every other hour, minute, second and millisecond this pattern stays.

Thus saith the Crusader in my Stable.

She calls herself Crusader Babs Seed, a half-finished computer program from eons ago. She guides all our actions from her Purification Hall. Few have seen her. Only I have ever repaired or improved her. I'm the only one who can - I have the logo of the Crusader maneframes on my flank, a blue four-point star angled at thirty-five degrees with a sharply italicized "C" in yellow. This makes me rather important to her as far as ponies here go. About the only one who is more important are the security detail she keeps near to her. Everyone enters the Communication Hall to talk with her via hologram. Few enter the Control Bay, where the machine is kept. Only two ever enter the Overmare's Room, where the Mare herself resides - myself and the head of security.

I don't like him.

I light up a cigarette and plug it into my petite mouth. I take a long drag and blow the smoke into the pink cloud as I round a corner to get to my workstation.

"Hey, Crusader Candy..."

A sultry voice weaves its way to my ears. I turn my head slightly to see a slender mare, thin but athletic in build. Her mane is a golden yellow, tinted by the haze. Her coat is a soft periwinkle blue, matted to her in places, burned off in others, and appearing to drip from her body like molasses in a couple other spots. Two ribs on her left side show through. A small loop of intestine dangles from another. Her eyes burn with purple intensity, and they lock suggestively with my own teal optics.

"Cloud Kicker," I state flatly.

I knew of her reputation. Back in the days of Equestria, she had been a wicked bang mare. Stress relief? Yup. Feeling lonely? Absolutely. She was always trying to get some new tail. That didn't change because she had become a ghoul. In fact, it seemed to have exacerbated the problem and erased all her so-called "rules".

"You up for a little roll in the hay later?" She winks with a half-toothed grin.

I had gagged in the past, especially after she had come on to me the first time. Now, however, I simply shake my head and walk on.

"Babs Seed doesn't like interruptions to the schedule of those who are Purified," I state. "I have free time scheduled at twenty-one hundred forty-five next Thursday. However, I'm planning on utilizing that forty-five minute break to work on the Crusader Herself."

Translation: I am not into ghouls. Buck off. Cloud Kicker gives an exasperated grunt and flies off.

In some ways I'm envious of my pegasus friend. She doesn't have to keep to a regimen like the rest of us do. She can leave the Stable at will and open her wings to fly. I can only do so on my scheduled free time or as part of my regular routine. In others I am dreadfully afraid for her. What did that kind of freedom do to a pony? Did it make them go insane? Did it open their eyes to a world beyond their own? I could never think of such a thing!

Freedom... what is it, exactly? Scary, that's what. It was scary when I had it a few decades ago, before I was Cleansed. It's still scary. I like my Overmare, my Crusader. She keeps things nice and neat and peaceful and pink. Pink is nice. Pink is normal. I like pink.

I throw my pale yellow head up, tossing the stray strands of long ramrod-straight blue and pink mane from in front of my face, the thoughts flying from my mind into the haze. I begin comforting myself with repetitions of my mental schedule, taking refuge in the monotony.

After a few thoughtless minutes of going through the bland and gray (and safe!) Central Highway and bumping into every possible pony in the Stable that I could, I proceed to a large room, the Pink Cloud rolling thick out from under the large iron double doors. Everything is gray except for the bright red circle that still remains, and the burned-out husk of the remnants of my Stable's number - eighty-five - etched permanently in the door by Babs herself by a laser turret when the paint began peeling. I look up into the sky from where the balefire bomb injected its caustic contents through the roof and into the Stable. The hole and heavy wear from where the megaspell had hit, stuck and simply "leaked" away instead of exploding like it should have was jagged and rusty, polluted and corroded from a hundred years' decay. Miscellaneous patchwork metal pieces scavenged by contract raiding parties, together with what remained of the maintenance drone fleet and an increasing crew of repair ponies, fought an ever-drawn battle with the corrosion to close in the sky.

For those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, a balefire bomb is a huge sphere of magic. Not just one type, either, but hundreds, possibly thousands of spells of different kinds, woven together to cause the most catastrophe possible. The Pink Cloud is the result of a particular mixture of chemicals and potions woven together by zebras and placed within these bombs two hundred years ago during a war between Equestria and some land near us containing a bunch of zebras.

That war had long gone silent.

I pass out of the Solarium and through the double doors into the Communication Room. Babs Seed, a brown mare with shielded eyes and a gray and pink mane, stands on a white glowing platform in the middle of the room, wires strung haphazardly every which way to many enchanted gems. A few disappear into the walls, traveling throughout the complex and powering all sorts of equipment. Babs, like many other times, was simply staring at the ground, organizing her schedule with help from a magic pair of eyeglasses that allowed her brain to "see" what her eyes could not. Not many ponies came to visit her personally these days. She had things running on such a tight schedule that most didn't need to see her. The broadcasters we all carried in our PipBucks, a complex fetlock-borne multipurpose device, usually relayed her instructions to us if she wanted us to do something else.

I approach her and clear my throat.

"Candy," she states, relief in her voice. She looks up and smiles. "I was wondering when you would get here."

"When my schedule allows," I greet politely, bowing a little towards the aged ghoul.

Babs groans. Why? I thought this was what she wanted. "For the hundredth time, Candy, you don't need to stand on ceremony with me," she insists. "I would prefer if you didn't. I'm not that kind of mare."

I'm confused. "It's you who grant us our Clarity, is it not?"

Babs sighs. "It is. I just wish..."

She stops. I don't push the issue. I don't dare. She has that face on her that said she was going to hurt someone if I did. I don't want that one to be me.

"Nevermind." Phew! "My connections to the machine are loose. Can you come back here and fix them?"

I nod. "For the Overmare," I say.

The small door underneath the hologram device open. I walk down the stairs and into the small walkway leading to the Crusader Maneframe room. The haze gets thicker as I did, but instead of suffocating me, it strengthens me. I pass through this tubing and under a door, the door that leads to the Maneframe proper. She hadn't said something was wrong with the machine, so I didn't need to check it out.

As I approach another doorway, two small round drones hover near me. I stand and stay perfectly still as they make their little observations. The Pink Cloud becomes blinding as it intensifies and hovers for a few minutes. The little drones swirl the mist until it is caked over my body. A low hum then emits from one of them. The other replies with a few high-pitched squeaks. A few rounds of this pass, and the door opens, the Cloud blows away, and the Overmare's room appears.

The room is oblong in shape, with the widest points to my left and right. A window to my right gives the Overmare a view of the entire Stable, and a couple monitors to the left and right of that change depending on what Babs wishes to see. Access to every camera in the entire complex is hers from this point. The wires from the Communication Room have nearly doubled in amount and connect at various points to an amorphous orange blob in the middle of the room spewing out amounts of Pink Cloud that would have killed and decomposed a normal pony the second it stepped into this room. This blob cannot move. It has no way of doing so, given it is fused to the floor. Occasionally, liquid pink seeps from many open sores all over its body, mixing with decreasing amounts of red blood and welding scabs like scales to its skin.

The only thing that even resembles a pony is the wicked deformity to which the majority of those hundreds of wires are attached to.The ball that sits atop the blob is transparent gelatine, displaying in perfect clarity every last muscle, organ, skeletal remnant and moving part of a pony head. The cables are connected directly to her brain where the communications helmet has fused to her skin, her skull, and her gray matter. The pony-like head droops like that of a stroke victim's on the left side, and has imploded inward like one caught in an explosion on the right.

She is our Overmare, our controller, our Queen.

She is Babs Seed.

I bow low. It isn't every day I get to meet her. Despite being a near-amorphous and paralyzed blob, she is usually welcoming and hospitable where she can be. My broadcaster clicks on.

"Cut it out, Candy," it squawks.

I stand and look her in her visor. "As you wish."

The blob shudders. "I can't seem to reach Sector Twenty today. Can you climb up to my helmet and take a look?"

I immediately proceed around to the back of the blob. The stairs carved out of her back begin making themselves visible. They are biomatter of many kinds, fused shut with a generous eruption of the Cleanser. I set foot on one. It is solid like a steel catwalk, but warm like a perfect cup of coffee. I ascend the gory staircase, admiring the clarity in which I see her deformed organs, some swelled to ten times their normal size. I make a note to inform Babs' personal doctor of the erratic heartbeat and collapsed third lung, as well as the bloating of some extra tissue around the heart that seemed to be the source of all our holy Pink Cloud. Her doctor would know what to do.

Oh yes, I forgot she has her own personal health practitioner. She is allowed to see Babs as well.

I ascend to the Neckring, the platform around her head that is made of her gargantuan shoulder blades, fused together by the Cloud. I look over the cables, pausing to give a light bow every time I pass before her field of vision. She has gone silent, my guess being that she is focussed on security and safety.

"Unit Shining Embers! Report to Cannon Three. Your lunch is over," Babs barked.

I set on the head, tugging and adjusting wires as necessary. Babs would give me feedback based on what I was doing. Sometimes I simply tightened something up. Other times I reattached wires that came loose. For the life of me, though, I could not find the wire that attached her to Sector Twenty.

"Hang on. I'll be back with a replacement."

I leapt down to the ground and walked out of the Overmare's room and down the narrow hall underneath the Crusader room. I bypassed the Head of Security for the Stable, a rough-cut gray stallion with a square muzzle, a missing ear, piercing eyes of sharpest yellow and a tightly curled mane of dazzling white. He was dressed in a tuxedo and wore a golden monocle over his right eye.

"Candy," he snidely snips.

I growl before spitting "Canyon" out with the disdain of a hundred-year-old grudge.

Canyon Trench is his name. He seems to see me as a rival for the power of the Stable. I have no interest in that. I would much rather breathe the clean air-

"Overmare Babs Seed, this is Unit Thunderlane. Where is Unit Crusader Candy?"

My PipBuck had blared on with the voice of my Hazemaster, a dark gray pegasus with an electric blue mane. One-time lover to my great-grandmare Bon Bon, and brother to our little Secret here in Stable 170.

"She's helping me with repairs."

"When will she be back in formation?"

"By my estimates, in about two hours. She will return to her regular schedule then."

"Thank you. For the Overmare."

Where was I? Oh. Yes, leadership and Canyon's view that I'm a threat of some kind. I would much rather breathe clean pink air than lead the entire Stable from the Overmare's room, hooked up forever to that machine and sitting on a throne made of an old mare. No. That's not me. I repair her. I fix her. I make sure the system stays intact from the top. I have to. Crusader knows what catastrophe would befall us if I didn't.

Instead of making a beeline for the giant double doors, I make a full U-turn at the bottom of the stairs and trot to the Crusader's supply room. I crack open the worn door and peer inside. The room is devoid of much of its original contents. There's a few feed cables, some jimmied-together power cords, three water talismans, a glass orb, seven or eight centuries-old vials of a potion called "Rad-Away", and a small box of something called "Party-Time Mint-als". I would have to inform Babs that there were no more replacements.

Then it hit me. Sector Twenty had gone dark.

That Sector housed the Head of Security and his men.

I bit my lip. I needed to find out what was going on, and fast. I had a few suspicions, but nothing concrete. I head for the door, intending on petitioning Babs Seed for an investigation into the activities of the Head of Security. I couldn't let the security force suspect anything. I knew that most, if not all of them, supported Canyon. They could not be relied on. I hope that Babs will let me investigate. It would be me, alone, against the entire security force of the Stable.

...in a former military compound.

As I passed into the hallway leading to the Overmare's hall, I realize exactly how futile it's going to be. On top of everything else, Canyon had been one of the war's most respected generals. He had singlehoofedly stalled the zebras about a hundred miles to the southwest of this Stable. If he was at the helm of this coup, it would mean the end of Babs Seed and the beginning of a post-war dictatorship.

I stop myself. Candy, you're letting your bias colour your opinion of the situation again. Let's just tell Babs, go home, and do a little digging of our own.

But that'll rouse suspicion, the rational part of me says. Canyon Trench and his men watch this entire Stable like Babs does. They'll notice something out of line. I stop directly under the door. Besides, I may not need to do anything. Maybe Babs Seed has been watching and has her suspicions. Maybe if I tell her there are no more replacement cables, she'll unearth some grand plan of hers.

I swallow as the doors open. I'll just have to trust her.

The room is as before, except for the stallions I had met on the way out. The room is noticeably heavier in atmosphere. I swallow again.

"I just need to talk t-"

WHAM! A hoof strikes my mouth. Pain explodes from my jaw like fireworks of old. I am sent careening out of the room and down the hall. A muffled voice that I am too numb to register screams my name. Soon, Canyon's face is within spitting distance. He lifts me up by the scruff of my neck. I can smell the rancid stench of fish upon his breath.

"Babs works for me now, little mechanic," he sneers. "I'm going to take real good care of her from now on. You aren't needed anymore." He drops me and begins walking away. "Take this piece of filth and throw her beyond the Holy Mist. She is no longer welcome in Stable Eighty-Five."

I gasp. I panic. I begin to beg and plead. But my cries go unheeded. I am lifted up by my forearms and dragged from Babs' room as Canyon begins menacingly walking up to our Overmare.

I have to get back to her! I have to get back to her! I have to get back to her!
I scream and cuss. I struggle. I panic.

Nothing seems to work. The two stallions who now hold me are far stronger than I've ever been, so my movements do nothing to their hold. I plead to each of them, telling them Babs is in danger. One chuckles.

"Babs ain't in no danger, miss," he says, his piercing pink eyes blazing with humoured indignance, especially against his otherwise drab, deep gray body hair. "She's got a new boss now. Canyon's gonna run this Stable like it was meant to be - like a military base! That means no weaklings, no stupidity, and no uncooperative repairponies."

The other, a palomino pony with blonde hair and orange body, nods silently.

As our trek continues, I realize that this coup must have been percolating for a while. Being security, they would know everyone's routines. They would have been able to plan everything down to the last detail. It hit me that I was foolish to think that I would have been able to stop them so late in the game. In fact, they likely had been watching my movements extra carefully in preparation for an event like this.

Candy!

What the buck? Babs?!

Yes, it's me. Don't worry - we're on a secure channel. I don't know what Canyon has planned. I do know he's going to throw you out of the Stable.

What!?

Don't panic! There's a reason you have a Crusader emblem on your flank. I can't tell you now, but trust me on this: you do not need the Mist to breathe.

What?

Just shut up and listen: when you leave the Stable, don't worry about me. I am the Mist of this Stable. They can't kill me. I'll be fine. What you need to do when you get out there is to find a place for the Secret to hide. When you've found it, come back and take him away. This Stable isn't safe for him anymore.

What?

One last thing... I love you, my Child.

"What!?"

With that, the signal vanishes, and the hallway we were walking down, as well as the entire Stable, vanishes as well as the stallions stuff me down a garbage schute.

I scream.

I look down.

The fall is long.

I can't see the bottom.

I am going to die.

The Baptized

Chapter Two - "The Baptized"

I wake to nothing. Not the sound of humming ponies. Not the voice of my Overmare. Not even the familiar sight of a beloved pink haze. I look around. Where I have been ejected is clouded in a different kind of haze – white, ghostly, wet. The sky is clouded over, a permanent sheath to this land below. The snowflakes fall upon all that is around me. The air is chilly, but, surprisingly, not uncomfortable. The Stable where I made my home since I was birthed still seeps the Cleanser into the sky, occasionally burping out large volumes of it upward like a factory.

I refocus my eyes. There is indeed a slightly pink tinge to the air, but it is faint and far overpowered by the regular water mist that obscures most of what’s around me in three directions. A stench enters my nose, like that of rotting food, pony excrement, and miscellaneous other types of decay. I look down, shuffle the snow out of the way a little, and stifle a retch. Piles of compost of many kinds rested beneath my hooves. A rotting apple, a half-eaten hunk of alligator (!), some clothes left for far too long, an old notepad, a cracked, slimy glass ball… I was in the Stable’s external garbage dump. Blearily, I stand up. I grimace as one of my rear hooves lands in something too soft to be food and too warm to have been a snow drift. I hesitate to look back, but I do anyway.

I retch.

My hoof had landed directly in pony fecal matter.

Gross gross gross pony poop gross gross gross!

I blast away from the Stable. I have to find a deep pile of snow to wash myself in. I need to clean myself off. I can’t have this on me! I shake the hoof around as I gallop awkwardly for some kind of water source. Luckily for me, there is a good-sized drift about a few strides away from the Stable in the shadows of a nearby forest. I make for the drift, narrowly dodging and ignoring a pony body that flies at me, screaming in pain. I throw myself into the drift and begin hoofing away at the awful violation of my pony on my rear hoof. Backed by the sound of battle, I bathe my body in the cold.

A minute later, I stop panicking as the last of the wretched filth leaves my now-pristine form. However, I also begin shivering. Just as I do so, a rat-a-tat-tat fills the air. Jolted out of my frigid analysis, I turn around in time to see one pony drop dead and another get riddled with holes from the turrets of Stable Eighty-Five, blood and innards flying free of their former cage. I gasp and scream. Soon, the ground explodes in a rapidly moving straight line directly in my vicinity. I leap upwards and bolt for the nearby brush. The gunfire gets closer. An ice bridge I unwittingly cross shreds with the rapid violation of the frosty surface. Just as bullets nick my mane and my tail, I disappear into the foliage, slowing down to a stop. The trail of projectiles supersedes me on a trajectory that would have shredded me to death in an instant if I hadn’t slowed.

As soon as I stop, a hoof clamps itself over my muzzle. I struggle and scream as loud as I can, fighting the appendage for all I’m worth. A voice as smooth as silk enters my ears, calming me slightly, as he drags me deeper into the dark grassy forest. I cannot see my assailant, but I am thankful for the warmth he gives me. I am also grateful for the pull, as seconds later a series of bullets riddle the ground where I had stood just a moment before.

“Steady now, miss,” he says. “You’re in danger here.”

Without anyone to trust, I struggle a bit more, unsure of what he wants. He only restrains me and makes no moves to any other end, except to cover my body with a warm, brown burlap cloak.

“I won’t hurt you. Come with me.”

I relax to the point where he lets me go. I turn to look at him and shriek. He is a brown unicorn about a head taller than I. His left eye is hidden under a black patch, with two scars forming an X pattern beneath it. I could only assume he lost the body part. His other eye was forest green and kind, though it showed wear from years of trials. Hundreds of old wounds pepper his toned body. A frostbitten ear is forever pinned forward as the other scans his surroundings for hostiles. His horn glows a pale orange, levitating a rather large machine gun to his right, opposite from me. It pans in as many directions as he looks.

I swallow nervously. He knows what’s outside, the one place we Stable-dwellers are usually never allowed to go, and from his gestures, it is not a kind place. I hope he’s as friendly as he says he is. I don’t know if I can survive outside… a-lone…

…Buck. Shit. With a pogo stick. I’m not safe here. I want my Stable back. Sweet Celestia! My friends! No! Oh Crusader… let Canyon be merciful to them… Luna damn it all… I want my Stable back…

That smooth voice pierces my sudden cloud of tears.

“I’m sorry, but let’s cry when we have time to cry.” He hoofs me a pistol. I look at it bewilderedly as he turns and makes his way even deeper into the foliage. “We have to make it to Shattered Hoof before sundown. Otherwise, we’ll freeze.”

“What do you expect me to do with this?” I ask as our trek through the snow continues.

Without missing a beat, he replies, “Stay alive.”

Well, if that’s all I have to do… “How do I use it?” I ask.

“The trigger is that little switch on the bottom,” he mutters as we come to a crossroads in the forest. He hesitates for a split second before turning a little to the left and pressing on. “You load ammo into it from the handle. Don’t worry – if you use it only when you need to, you should be good for the trip to Shattered Hoof.”

I gulp. I’m not supposed to do this. I’m supposed to be a Crusader repairpony, not trekking through a snowy forest where Luna-knows-what could kill me. I sob a little as I look back at the Stable. There went my whole, comfortable existence. All my friends, my entire routine, my life… everything I had ever known was now gone, thanks to a no-good, greedy jackflank of a military pony.

I knew I couldn’t trust him…

I bit my lip and looked forward, following that brown rear through the dark forest. A few steps deeper bring us into a place with very little daylight. Being that it was the twilight hour when I awoke anyway, that left us with very little light. Add to that the constant cloud cover and after just a couple steps more the light from his horn becomes our sole beacon through these woods. Battle rages nearby, just beyond the treeline. I wonder what’s going on.

“Zebra and pony raiders, fighting a war long dead,” he mutters, seeming to read my mind. I silently walk on. “They haven’t let go. Even after all this time, the zebras haven’t let go. We’re still scum to whatever government remains in these lands.”

I hear teeth chatter. My guide was cold. “Um, mister…” I begin.

“Call me Shift,” he states.

“Mister Shift, I’m warm enough now,” I say. “If you need the bag back, you can have it.”

“You sure, little miss?” he asks without looking back.

“Yes. I’m warm enough for now,” I reply.

He stops for a split second, thinking something over. I look at him, puzzled. What’s going on? What’s he going to do? Did I offend him?

“Tell ya what,” he says. “I’ll carry you.”

What?! “I could never impose such a thing on you!”

He shrugs. “This way, we’ll both be warm. You’ll have my body heat, I’ll have yours, and our heat will be preserved by the blanket.”

I gulp again. This stallion was asking me to mount him… non-sexually, of course, but still… it was… wrong!

I take a step back in shock. “N-no… I’ll give you the bag. I think I’d be more comfortable with trading the bag here and there.”

I’m suddenly lifted off my hooves. Gasping, I kick rapidly in panic. No! No! No! This isn’t how it was supposed to be! I said no!

“Miss, I’m sorry to do this,” Shift says, “but I think we need to pick up the pace.”

“I can run! Really! It’s fine!” I flail my hooves and wings every which direction to make sure he couldn’t put me on him without hurting himself.

Shift groans and barks, “We’ll be nearing a field that’s right on the edge of that battle soon.” He indicated the battle to our right. “Can you run and shoot at the same time?”

I flail a bit more, then slow slightly. His words scare the living daylights out of me, and I bite my lip. I know the answer, just as he does. I can’t shoot. I don’t even know how to aim. I’m certainly not about to kill anyone.

Sighing, I go limp. “Okay, Shift. I hope you can run fast.”

“Fast isn’t the problem,” he mutters. “It’s going fast enough that’s the trick.”

He places me on his back. I do what I can to grip his barrel. He begins walking again, his horn alight in luminescence. Wrapped in the warmth of the burlap sack and placed atop a stallion, I notice an immediate increase in temperature. Though our heads are still cold, at least our bodies won’t freeze.

I get an idea.

I begin shuffling the sack around. Eventually, I bring it up over my shoulders. I pull at it a bit with my teeth, then tuck my head underneath and nuzzle into his mane. I then bring my wings down to cover what I could of my legs, but then second-guess myself and use my wings to bring the sack up his neck as far as I can before repositioning them to cover as much body as possible.

“Whoo,” the stallion said. “Whatever you did back there sure warmed me up.”

I smile. I’m still not too comfortable with him, but as long as he’s watching me, I shouldn’t have too many problems adjusting to this new world. I hope I’ve found a friend in this wasteland.

Through the fibres of the burlap, the forest continues moving. I watch the line of trees begin thinning. We’ve been walking for nearly an hour. Just now, the temperature in this sack is getting to be bearable.

A dried piece of meat appears before me, enrobed in a familiar orange glow. “Jerky?”

I look at the dried brown thing in front of me quizzically. “What is it?”

“Cow meat.”

I gag. “No. Oh, no. I don’t think I’ll ever be hungry enough to eat cow meat. No. Do we have anything else?”

He grunts. The offensive piece of bovine body does not move away. “Learn to eat what you must out here,” he mutters. “There are times where you won’t have a choice. I ask again: jerky… or nothing?”

I flinch at the meat. While it’s true I haven’t had anything to eat since yesterday, when my routine lunchtime at thirteen-thirteen came to pass, I’m not about to lower myself to consuming another living creature’s flesh to survive.

“I’ll make due,” I say as my stomach growls in protest.

The cow slice disappears from view. “Suit yourself,” my host says. “It’s still a couple hours to Shattered Hoof, and this is the last rest stop between here and there that’s friendly.”

I whimper. “I…”

“Tally-ho!” he shouts.

The forest disappears. If it weren’t for the equines in mortal combat on the white plain we begin crossing, it would have been beautiful. Instead, that snowy vista is punctuated by zebras and ponies locked in a death match of survival. Blood is everywhere. About sixty corpses in various states of destruction lie across the scene, while another fifty equines do battle over their remains.

“This is fortuitous. We’ll likely pass undetected,” my ride says.

We accelerate past the battle. I turn my head to the other side. The field is unblemished over there. Everything is pristine and white.

Very bright, I observe. Things under clouds aren’t usually this bright.

I look around and see a clear sky.

Clear sky.

Clear.

Head darts one way.

Specks.

Head darts another way.

Big round shiny thing.

This is the clear. Night. Sky.

“…Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa……?!?!?!?!”

A chuckle reverberates from below. “You’ve never seen the night sky, have you?”

I vocalize my denial nonsensically, drawing it out like a king cobra stalking its prey.

“Neither did I, ‘til about five years ago,” he replies with another chuckle. “It was the strangest thing. For a long time, there was constant cloud cover. To the east, in Equestria, an unusual cloud buildup occurred at some point during the war, and it had spread out over zebra lands… at least, from what I was told. However, a few years ago, it just disappeared. Occasionally, you’ll still find pockets of the cloud bank like over Stable Eighty-Five, but mostly nature just runs its own course now.”

A brief, sharp wind pierces the burlap. I shiver. “I wonder what happened over there.”

He replies, “Hell if I know. I was born out here, so I’ve never known Equestria.”

I go silent as we gear down from a full sprint to walk for a while. We’ve left the sounds of battle behind us. It is quiet here, save for the crunching of snow under his hooves. It’s pleasant. What I can see of the plains of snow around us is beautiful. We seem to have ascended to a higher plane – I can barely make out the forest we left and the dark splotch of pony fighting. Even the silhouette of my beloved Stable along the horizon still stalks me.

My stable…

I feel some tears creeping up into my eyes, but instead of crying, I yawn. I haven’t been up long, but the brief physical exertion of earlier, combined with the high adrenaline of nearly dying, as well as the tension of sneaking past a battlefield, seems to have worn me out.

Before I can close my eyes, shots ring out.

“Aww shit!” my ride exclaims, turning left and kicking up snow.

I close my eyes tightly as the sound of gunfire and shouting fills the air. Snow explodes underhoof, sending fragments of cold and white up into the sack. The shock is enough to send a squeal from my lungs.

“Hold on tight!” Shift exclaims.

Nearby gunfire explodes from the firearm Shift directs. I hear a few screams from within my shawl. I refuse to look as battle suddenly explodes around me once again. I descend in elevation. A quick upward movement, several shots, and another drop occur.

I realize we’re pinned.

Just then, another bellicose howl erupts from farther away. The flurry of gunshots intensifies. Soon it envelopes us and moves back towards the Stable.

“Tourniquet! Your unit made it!” Shift exclaims.

A split second passes while snow shuffles. I decide to chance a glance up from the mane with the increasing scent of sweat.

A feminine voice joins his, but there’s something off about the tone. “Damn right I did, Gearshift. I promised my best pal in these wastes I’d come through for him, I’d better be damn ready to deliver. Now get whoever it is you’ve got to town.”

A happier tone from my ride emerges. “Thanks, you ugly crackpot. I owe ya one.”

“Get home, you mercy junkie,” she teases.

Her voice is clearly broken because, although I’m sure she’s chuckling, I swear I hear some kind of motor starting from this Tourniquet’s vicinity. All I catch of the mare is a cloak of gray metal, without any distinguishing features about her otherwise, before we once again leave a battlefield.

That’s two strokes of good luck on the way to Shattered Hoof. Nothing can go wrong now!

Less than a third of a step after thinking of something related to invincibility, the ground explodes. Literally, it just… BOOM. I am thrown head over flank off Shift’s back. Where he winds up I have no idea. All I know is I’m lying wet in the snow, now freezing my mane off. I hear snow shuffle around me, and I know I’m surrounded. I slowly lift my head up to look at my assailants.

I come face-to-face with three cloaked zebras.

I swallow and smile. “Um, hi.”

The nearest zebra looks at me with a flat expression. He is the poster stallion for all ghost stories children of Stable Eighty-Five are told involving zebras – the blue-eyed, tall, brutish-looking thug with tribal war paint and an evil grimace. He levitates his rifle right between my eyes.

I’m going to die.

Again, less than a second after thinking in absolutes, that same scratchy voice erupts from where solid ground was terminated.

“Dammit! You striped bastards!”

Tourniquet!

Blood.

All is blood.

This pony who had just talked to Shift came barrelling through, armed with artillery most would envy. She shoots self-guided projectiles at the enemy, narrowly missing me with the blasts. She bores a hole through a couple other zebras. She moves so fast, I swear that I’m swimming in a pool of blood and guts. I barely have time to take in what I’m seeing.

Finally, the mayhem stops. I look around. The steel-coated mare is glaring hard at a small foal. The one tiny filly that remains urinates herself and runs, crying, into the woods. Around me lie four zebras… or five. I can’t tell – the bodies are disfigured in such a way as to nearly be unrecognizable from each other. The pool of red that now covers me is palpable. I can taste it on my tongue, on my lips. I can feel the snow soften under my hooves. I realize I now stand in a pool of blood. I have been baptized in a land and a language I do not know.

Time freezes. My thought processes freeze. Everything becomes nothing to me as the events of the last few hours catch up to my shell-shocked brain.

I was betrayed by the one pony charged to protect my safety within the Stable. I was thrown out like common household garbage. I lost my Stable and all my friends. Less than five minutes into this Celestia-forsaken wilderness, I watched three ponies die. Over the next ten minutes, another sixty corpses crossed my vision. I was helped by a pony who defended me for all of an hour. Finally, at the end of it all, I lose that pony and nearly my own life to a surprise attack.

A sickening feeling builds within the pit of my stomach. I am in a foreign land where all common rules of decency no longer apply. I need help to understand the laws of this world before I can even think about trusting the Secret to this Tartaran landscape. So much needs to be done in so short a time. Can I do it, or am I already too late?

I collapse on my stomach and look down at the blood surrounding me.

That could have been me.

I…

…

Tears.

Lots of tears.

Despair.

Crying.

I cry and I panic. My mind races. I see the Wonderbolts of old, racing in a circular track, with questions upon questions and questions of questions upon questions tailing them, printed on long tapestries of hopelessness. I am lost in this sea, drowning in panic. Slowly the raging tides calm. Millions of thoughts eventually coalesce into a single sentence, and the first goal of my newfound existence becomes abundantly clear.

How am I to survive in… THIS!?

The answer eludes me. I hope I can find a friend in this frozen wasteland. If not… well… I pull out the gun and look at it, then hurriedly put it away.

No. You’re not my friend. Not now, not ever.

I only hope I can keep that resolve.

The Again

Chapter Three - "The Again"

I wake up to a crisp, sunny day, numb and thoughtless in the morning light. The tent I am in is white in colour, blowing around with a strong breeze. A fire in the middle of the sparse tent, filled with a couple scrounged blankets, foamies and a couple boxes of jerky and other dried foodstuffs, keeps the canvas shelter warm and dry. A bag of jerky and a bag of dried veggies rest in front of me. To my left, a disturbed makeshift bed tells of an occupant who has left.

I begin the arduous process of standing up. Immediately, I note that my joints and my back are both stiff. I begin stretching to work out the kinks, first extending my forelegs and arching my back, then doing the same for my hind legs. I twist my neck in many ways, and do the same for my hooves and the rest of my body. A chorus of snaps, pops, and cracks sound off in a harmony of relief that slowly washes over my body, allowing my body to erect to a comfortable standing position. I deliver to my physical tank one last stretch that allowed me to shed the rest of my discomfort before nipping the bag of dried whatever that I was certain wasn’t meat and tearing it open. Observing the less-than-desirable food, I shudder, realizing there likely will be nothing else to eat in this snowy plain. I lick up what appears to be a dried carrot and begin chewing.

Whatever flavour there should have been was washed away in the sea of time. Instead, the tastes of salt, age, and other preservatives pierce my taste buds. The foodstuff makes me gag. I briefly shut my eyelids to the rest of the food, for fear it will be ruined by the nothingness I might exude from my empty gut. Once I finish choking down the abomination, I wince as the rest of the bag falls within my field of vision. It looks like it contains slices of dried apples, bananas, another carrot, several leaves of lettuce, a couple slices of tofu, and a bag of nuts: standard military rations for a typical Equestrian army soldier. These rations, however, were still ill-designed to last for two hundred years. As such, most of these items look at least several weeks past due.

I eye the mixed nuts. At least these should still be palatable.

I crack them open. The smell wafts into my nose. The earthy, salty aroma is heavenly to the senses. I have never known what true food that has not aged tastes like, but these nuts seem to have survived very well.

I recall the only fresh-like flavours from the Stable. It was a cheap imitation of food, a paste developed by teams of Stable Eighty-Five’s brightest minds years ago in an attempt to preserve what little food we were able to bring in before they shut the doors. These synthetic pastes were derived from actual pastes made of the last remaining apple, strawberry, chestnut, and lettuce plants available to our families. Just before the Pink Cloud hit, scientists perfected a synthesis machine to replicate all the nutritional qualities of the food product. They could not preserve a lot of the flavour, though, so anything that came out of the machine tasted like a sweet potato.

I had only ever known that flavour.

I take a pale, curved one into my mouth and begin chewing. The first crunch sends a flavour explosion like I have never known into my senses. The earthy aroma, the salty flavour, the firm texture… it is as water to a desert wanderer. I slow my chewing right down, forgetting all the troubles of the past.

That was called a cashew, my brain tells me in the middle of my reverie.

How did I know that?

I ponder the question for a second as I swallow, the flavour of the cashew, as well as the beautiful nut itself, disappearing into obscurity. I eye the remaining nuts predatorily, an evil grin caressing my face, the previous question all but forgotten as fast as it had sprung up.

My stomach called, and it is not going to be denied.

Ten minutes later, I walk out of the tent with small flecks of foodstuff caressing my face, closed eyes and a big smile telling the world that all my troubles from the previous day have been forgotten with one simple meal. I knew what I had lost, and I knew that I had a lot of learning to do, but there was no point living in the past, right? A mare’s gotta move forward!

WHAM!

I find myself flopped over onto my side. My head and side both hurt. I wince.

“Watch it, ya little jackass!” a pony with a voice of gravel barks.

I lie there, stunned for a second, as the pony whose path I crossed leans down and looks at me straight into the eyes. Finally, I can see the talker! He’s a square-faced Earth pony stallion, built far wider than he is tall. His windswept mane and scarred coat are matching mint green, with a large white stripe through his hair. His eyes seem to be made of gold.

“Got anything to say, yellowflank?” he sneers. “You’re in my way.”

I scramble to my feet and scurry back. “Sorry! Sorry! I didn’t see you there!”

He steps closer. A couple other ponies nearby also step into the fray: one, a purple unicorn with a dark purple mane, the second, a bright green pony with ketchup-and-mustard hair. Both are stallions.

“Next time you get in my way,” he mutters, “I’ll break your jaw.”

I curl up. Tears start to form in my eyes. “S-sorry…”

“Mine Walker!”

Tourniquet!

The stallion rolls his eyes and lets out a fierce growl. “What do you want, you fucking Steel Ranger?”

The mare is behind him. I can see her looking in our direction. She has a gun out, ready to unleash hell. I smile at him, a little less fearful, but a tear of fear still escapes.

“Leave Gearshift’s last rescue alone!” she exclaims. “We don’t want Shattered Hoof to get a reputation!”

He growls loudly. Turning around, he shouts, “We already have a reputation as a safe house for anything that moves because of that bastard! I’m sick of his merciful ways and rescue raids! He’s dead! D--E--A--D! Grow up and get a back bone, or we’re all the same way!”

“Now just a second!” I exclaim, standing up. “He brought me he–”

“You don’t have a voice!”

I don’t get a chance to finish my sentence. Along with the scream, the stallion whirls around. I see the hoof heading for my face just in time. I avoid the promised broken jaw with a drop and roll. My trajectory leaves me blinded in beige as I roll into a nearby tent and wrap myself up in the material. A couple screams echo across the camp. I’m too busy trying to fight myself free from the canvas to know what’s going on outside, but in the background I hear the same stallion who tried attacking me get run off by a few ponies. I pick out the words “pervert” and “bastard” in the mix.

By the time I’m out of the canvas, only Tourniquet and I are left standing by the fallen tent. I blush as I see the assembly inside. Two beds are laid out near one of the tent poles. A couple of hoofcuffs are strapped to them. A whip and some bottles of some kind of gel are littered on the ground. The bed looks wet and sticky. Pools of white material are sequestered in the center of the bed.

I blush as Tourniquet chuckles. “It’s alright,” she says. “You get used to it in Shattered Hoof.”

That doesn’t make me feel any more comfortable. She looks me over and nods toward a nearby tent. I follow her.

“My next tour’s not for a couple hours,” she says. “Let’s sit down and have a drink.”

I totally forgot about water, I think, suddenly feeling the parched and dry throat that had been neglected for a while. “That would be great, Tourniquet.”

I can’t see what she’s doing with her face, but her tone’s brightened. “While we’re walking,” she says, “tell me about yourself. I don’t think Shift gave me your name before he…”

“He never got it,” I say. “He told me his name, but he never got mine.”

We pass through the entry towards a makeshift bar with crates of two-hundred-year-old cider and many other types of liquor behind it, including a house brand I can’t pronounce.

Tourniquet nods. “That was his way. He’d give out his name to whoever asked, but he had trouble remembering others. He only remembered my name because we grew up together. We were both children of ponies stranded in the land of the zebras during the war, orphans of circumstance beyond our control.”

We are briefly interrupted as we take our seats. Tourniquet orders a beer. I request a glass of water.

“When he heard of this place, Gearshift found a way to get here, then swept me off to Shattered Hoof, a place of eternal cold, and yet eternal warmth. I’ve lived here ever since, even starting up a branch of the Steel Rangers here. He never agreed with their methods, but their hearts are in the right place… was always a bone of contention between us…” As her sentence tapers off, she looks down into her beer and sighs. “Now he’s gone…”

I place a hoof on her cold metal one. “He seemed like a nice guy.”

“If you knew him for an hour, you knew him for life,” she says with a “chuggle”, a half chuckle, half mechanical chugging. “His virtue was mercy, and he was transparent about it. It was the most powerful weapon we had. The zebras respected him for it. They stayed away from Shattered Hoof because of him. He was the most forgiving pony I had ever seen. You and he could be shooting each other’s faces off in battle in the morning, then trade raiding stories with him over lunch.”

“Oh, get over your pathetic sob story, you stupid robot pony,” a voice shouts.

A wind blows in from a suddenly-open doorway. The very same voice I had already learned to dislike now speaks with open hostility towards us. Mine Walker has four ponies with him, all smiling with dark sneers. I begin feeling uncomfortable. Within a couple strides, all four ponies surround me and Tourniquet.

Yup. Definitely uncomfortable.

“Without Shift here, there’s a hole at the top,” the one at the rear says, a large, muscular brown stallion with spiked pink hair. “We aim to lead.”

Tourniquet growled. “You… you’re kidding!”

Oh buck. Not again!

“Not on yer life,” the one to the right of Mine Walker, a sandy-colored mare with the mane of an icicle and a drawl, says.

Are we…

“Pledge your allegiance to me,” the leader declares while lifting a machine gun to our heads, “or get the hell outta Shattered Hoof… foreigners.”

We are, aren’t we?

I look over at Tourniquet. Her armour is quaking with rage. “You… I… H-how dare you…!”

Mine Walker cocks the gun. “Bow, fuckers.”

Tourniquet growls again. “Pony.”

I realize she’s talking to me. I stand at attention.

“Let’s just leave.” She’s sounding defeated. “Let’s let them run Big Macintosh’s legacy to dust.”

The pony to the left, a gaunt black and red pony with an eternally downtrodden face and piercings everywhere, growls his first words: “A dead time for a dead pony.”

Yup. Another town bites the dust. I’m beginning to wonder if only dishonest ponies get any breaks in this world I’ve been quite literally tossed into, or if I happen to have the worst luck the Wasteland has ever seen.

With that, an upset Tourniquet and I are unceremoniously led out of Shattered Hoof with guns to our backs, thrown out into a world devoid of civilization. As we leave the town, Mine Walker and the gothic pony stay behind while the rest escort us out of what they claim is the territory of Shattered Hoof. The purple unicorn stallion from before suddenly flashes to my side and hoofs me a canteen. His voice is that of a nasally bookworm stricken with a case of bronchitis.

“I shall take them from here,” he says. “You two can go back to Shattered Hoof."

The two guards with us return back to Shattered Hoof. We walk in tense silence for another mile. I don’t dare break the silence. I surmise that these two have had some kind of relationship in the past. They can’t look at each other now, let alone talk.

“You should have this,” he says. “It is three days’ travel in any direction to the nearest settlement.”

Tourniquet frowns in his direction. “I thought you were on our side, Dusk Shine.”

Dusk looks away. “I am sorry, friend. I am allied with whom I am safest. Right now, I have to appease Mine Walker to be safe, so I do so. When I am alone, I think of our friend always.”

“You knew Gearshift?” I ask while turning to look at the walking grape now trotting beside me.

Dusk makes direct eye contact. His gaze is inquisitive. Forceful. “Yes, Miss…?”

“Crusader Candy,” I inform. “Shift saved my life by giving his up.”

“He died as he lived, then,” the purple pony perused. “I can rest at ease.”

“Drop the damn innocent colt act, Dusk,” Tourniquet snaps. Our progress out of Shattered Hoof stops. Tourniquet is looking at Dusk with a very threatening pose. I step back to get out of the way of her guns. She continues. “Mine Walker sent you out here. Why?”

Dusk, bewildered, steps back. “I do not know what you are talking about.”

“Back with the Guards, you said that you were there to relieve them,” Tourniquet said. “What is Mine Walker trying to do? Rub it in that he has everything I came to care for?”

Dusk’s pose goes from peaceful to aggressive in one motion, and his voice adjusts to match. “Okay! Okay! I lied! I lied, Tournie! I had to see how you were doing before you left! Mine Walker was not going to allow me to see you off, so I disobeyed him to see you! That is why I am out here! I was hoping you would have picked up on that, but I guess not. I guess it was too much for me to see the last of my two closest living friends off, likely for the last t-time.” Dusk broke down completely. “Tournie, I don’t want to lose you, too.”

Tourniquet goes stone silent. I can’t tell what she’s thinking because of her mask. Finally, a sound reverberates from her metal case.

“How many followers does he have?” she asks.

Dusk’s eyes immediately roll, but in the way that he is counting in his head. His eyes bounce along the top of his sockets, adding figures I can’t guess. He finally closes his eyes, lifts up a hoof, then two, then sets them back down. He twirls his mane, then begins counting the strands in his hair.

“…divide by the square root of minus-thirty-four…” he mumbles.

Impossible. I smile, proud of my math.

Tourniquet groans and snaps, “Just get on with it!”

“He has about sixty-three who listen to his commands,” Dusk says after a brief chuckle.

Impossible. I squeak in shock. “That’s an imaginary number, right?” I ask.

Dusk shakes his head. “As real as they come. That negative square root was just to fool you.” He chuckles again.

Tourniquet and I lock eyes and groan as we synchronically roll them. Wise guy…

“Anyway, Tournie, he has sixty-three ponies,” he repeats.

Tourniquet groans. “How many did Gearshift have before he kicked the bucket?”

“Fifty-seven.”

“Damn!” Tourniquet screams. “This was coming anyway! Oh, for the love of fucking Luna’s holy plot!”

I look at Dusk and point back at my flailing, screaming, cursing traveling companion. “What’s she on about?”

Dusk sighs. “It is a big political mess. Mine Walker and Gearshift were the two most popular ponies in Shattered Hoof. When the last leader left, Mine took over as leader. He was successful for a year, but the power got to his head. He began running Shattered Hoof like a military encampment, complete with drills, organized marriages, and even raids. He got so bad that anyone who did not operate under his strict command was excommunicated and exiled. The local bottle cap economy was regulated to the point that only zebra bones were used as currency and the only way to buy anything was through the black market. Enough ponies were upset by this that talk began to circulate of making Shift their leader. At first, he resisted, claiming that he was just happy to serve the ponies. However, he began to realize that this very quality was what made him so fit to be a leader in the first place. Eventually, he reluctantly agreed. A week later… actually one year ago today, the ponies of Shattered Hoof elected to make Shift the undisputed leader while Mine was away. He restored the free market and several other civil liberties, which made the ponies love him even more, until Mine started his mind games as… what was the term he coined? Ah yes… ‘the yakuza of Shattered Hoof.’”

“So, with Shift out of the way, Mine Walker can now claim his place,” I surmised.

“It certainly expedited his plans,” Dusk confirmed. “Mine Walker had been working on victory by subversion, trying to undermine Gearshift’s tactics by using the short memories of ponies against each other. He created a calculated campaign of defacement and began subtly shifting the balance of power in his favor. There are only one-hundred-thirteen ponies in all Shattered Hoof, so for him to have sixty-three supporters…”

I did some quick calculations. “That’s fifty-five per cent of the populace. What kind of democratic system does Shattered Hoof have: simple majority or two-thirds?”

“Biggest-stick-wins, even if the stick is only a quarter of the ponies here,” Dusk muttered. “If only we were at least advanced enough to have a primitive democracy! No. Shift was working on it, though, resurrecting pre-Royalty Equestrian values of representation-by-population, et cetera. The ponies loved it, until Mine started blaming the rise of Night Mare Moon and the war for it. Sometimes I forget how stupid and sheep-like ponies can be…”

“Stable Eighty-Five was like that before I left, except the pony that took it over had no opposition except me, apparently.” I look longingly back towards the direction I believed the Stable to be in. “In the Stable, nobody thought for themselves. Everyone breathed this beautiful pink fog. We all walked the same way every day, talked the same lines, played with the same ponies… it was heavenly…”

I am suddenly stuck in a daydream of clouds of pink. Walking the same hallways, looking at the same flank, talking to whomever I had always talked to… it was nice. It was sweet. It was…

…safe.

The White

Chapter Four - "The White"

I dream.

I dream of walking the same roads.
I dream of thinking the same thoughts.
I dream of following the same plot.

I dream.

I dream of the ash-gray sky.
I dream of the stone-gray walls.
I dream of the pink over every life.

I dream.

I dream of filly and colt.
I dream of the safest route to roam.
I dream of my mother in our home.

I dream.

So many visions pass over my eyes it’s unreal. I hadn’t realized exactly how homesick I was until that point. Everything else in the world is lost to my daze. I can’t make out the words or instructions of my friends. I think Dusk Shine leaves at some point, the nerdy, studious stallion and I exchanging glances as he leaves. I follow Tourniquet robotically over the snow away from Shattered Hoof. The snow is evil, a coating of such purity, yet such deception. I had just learned the harshest lesson in the wasteland, and whoever was in charge of the heavens had seen fit to bean me with a sledgehammer made of it.

I had to trust no one until they proved they could be trusted.

Even the trusty schedule of the Stable had betrayed me in the end, for it had blinded me to the coup d’état brewing against my Overmare. The safest thing I thought I had, my routine, turned against me in my hour of need.

And yet, I want it back.

“Crusader Candy!”

A voice in the thick of a winter snowstorm startles me out of my reverie, and stops whatever mindless procession I am making. To my horror and eternal gratitude, I realize I’ve halted right at the edge of a cliff. The fall is hundreds of miles down a steep embankment.

Within seconds, Tourniquet has pulled me back from the cliff. “Wake up, Candy! These mountain passes are dangerous!”

I gulp and inch further back. “When they said Stable Eighty-Five was built on a flat plateau, I had no idea it was so high in the mountains!”

“It’s the Stable with the second-highest altitude next only to the one at Canterlot, and one of only three outside former Equestrian land holdings,” Tourniquet says. “At least, that’s from the records my ancestor Scootaloo left behind.”

I look down. Far at the bottom of the cliff, a field of bones as far as the eye could see littered the canyon. A thin blue gas emanates from amongst the bones. I look to my left and right and realize that this is clearly not a natural formation.

“Something went off here during the war,” I mumble. The snow slows.

Tourniquet shrugs. “This was here when they gutted the Correctional Facility for materials to make Shattered Hoof ten years ago. No one really knows what happened along this ridge. All we know for sure is that the great stallion Big Macintosh died in the line of fire saving Princess Celestia here.” Tourniquet looks down over the ridge. “His remains are somewhere in that jumble.”

“In history class they told us his remains were brought back to a place called Ponyville,” I recall. “I thought they were buried at the Macintosh War Memorial.”

Tourniquet shook her head. “What rumours and theories I’ve picked up since arriving suggest that the unit Mac was a part of narrowly held off the zebras after his death. I gathered he fell after saving Celestia, but then the offensive mounted by the zebras afterward drove Celestia and his unit back. In fact, it was in such large numbers that Celestia herself had to flee as fast as she could fly.” Tourniquet looks at the crater and shudders. “A Solboom is something no one can escape from.”

It instantly becomes clear to me that none of the rocks in this area have any life growing on them at all. Not only that, the rock surface is sheared smooth. Glass-smooth. It reflects the moonlight so brightly that it illuminates the other mountain, which in turn reflects back to us a perfect representation of the clear night sky as we see above. A little mental tracing and the entire mountaintop a hundred feet higher than our current position that was sacrificed in Celestia’s escape comes into view about fifteen miles southeast.

I gape. “So this canyon was created just before a balefire bomb, and all the ponies and zebras below…”

“Victims of a so-called benevolent ruler’s cowardly escape,” Tourniquet growled.

We walk along this “Solboom Ridge”, as I term it, in amicable silence for a while. I realize I haven’t heard what my companion and Dusk Shine had talked about. Come to think of it, I don’t remember seeing Dusk’s cutie mark… he had on a black cloak, obscuring most of his backside.

“So, what did you and Dusk talk about?” I ask. “My mind was a little preoccupied.”

Tourniquet snorted. “You’re telling me. You rambled about how structure and routine were your perfect world and that the Stable provided this, and then you just… shut down.”

“S-sorry…” I squeak, trying my best to hide behind my mane.

“Watch it!” Tourniquet shouts.

I am shoved into the side of the mountain. A burst of pain explodes along my right side as it connects with the rocks. I wince as I recover from the collision. All of that is temporarily forgotten as the walkway I was about to step on crumbles to nothing. I yelp and leap back, but the pathway behind and beneath me crumbles as well. I scream. A hoof grabs my own, and I dangle precariously off a ledge. I kick frantically.

“Tourniquet! Don’t let me go!”

“Hold on! Let me get you up!” Tourniquet calls from above. I hear some struggling noises as she tries to get a grip. I’m slipping! I’m slipping!! “Just a sec…” Clank. An actual warm hoof! Grip! I have grip!! “There! Now, for the other one.”

Crud. Crud crud crud crudmuffins… I’m slipping again… “Help me!”

“Damn this fucking…”

I slip a little farther down. I screech.

Tourniquet barks, “Geez! Will ya shut up down there?” A pause. “Hey, aren’t you a pegasus? Use your blasted wings, ya flying sack o’ meat!”

My eyes fly open. I feel a strong heat come over my cheeks. How did I forget I could fly?

“Let go,” I instruct flatly. “Just… let me go. I’m embarrassed enough as it is.”

With that, I enter freefall as Tourniquet and I unlock hooves. The experience of flying outside of a commanded schedule is a little scary. It feels as if my PipBuck would activate and tell me to get in line. Fully expecting this to happen, I unfurl my wings anyway. I pull out of the slow spin I’m in band catch the cold wind under my wings.

There is no sound from my PipBuck.

There is no structure.

There is no sound at all.

I am free.

I ponder freedom for a moment as I slowly bank left, the wind grazing my wings. My mane whirls in the breeze. I flap my wings to gain the fifty feet or so I had lost in my fall into Celestia’s desolation. The night sky and the stars… those beautiful crystalline sky-bound gems… they absorb me into them as I soar higher than the mountains. The air is biting up here, even more so than below. I’m wearing a brown cloak that I probably got from Dusk, so that helps repel a cold I had practically ignored for the better part of the day, lost to the suffocation of homesickness. I decide to let Tourniquet know I will be flying for a while, and to make herself comfortable, so I could seriously take stock of what had happened over my life. As I pass lazily through the canyon at my current elevation back to where I had first fallen away, I spot Tourniquet on the ridge. She had backed up a ways as the path had collapsed in front of her, and rests beside a large boulder near the edge of the cliff. The path no longer appears in any danger of receding, at least, not yet.

Maybe I should put my self-reflection on hold…

I shift my wings and feathers and angle my form toward the core of the planet, aiming for the Steel Ranger. It isn’t long before I can see her sealed metal shell in detail. I land a few seconds later, at an awkward canter, and work myself down to a trot. A brief spell brings me eye-to-eye with my traveling companion.

“Good flight?” she asks.

I nod. “It was. I’m still waiting for my PipBuck to click on and tell me off for unauthorized flying, however.”

Tourniquet chuckles. “You’ll get used to it, I’m sure.”

I look solemnly over the cliff face. “I guess we’ve got to find another way to get to… wait. Where are we going?”

My companion stops for a second and lowers her head in thought. She lifts a hoof and taps her chin. She sighs.

“Well, if you can fly us over that crevasse, we can get to that land over there,” she says. “We’ll be working our way towards what was once called Equestria. Otherwise, we’ll be heading through Ba’asr Pass to the village of Einamir, due west. It’s the closest village to us, and the biggest group of zebra allies that Shattered Hoof ever had under Gearshift.”

“What will we face?” I ask.

She smirked. “Nothing much, except raiders and maybe a few deformities. It’s actually a fairly easy path if you keep your gun loaded.”

“And that way?” I point toward Equestria.

Tourniquet shrugs. “Best guess from the one Steel Ranger party that made it through the pass is we’ll come across much of the same, except more vicious. They said something about a ‘garden of Equestria’ or something purging all the radiation from the land, and cleansing it of all the damage that zebras did during the war. Problem with that cleanser, apparently, is when it wiped out all the balefire bomb remnants and chemical compounds damaging and irradiating Equestria to oblivion, it caused an undetected chemical change within the monstrosities that had grown reliant on the various Clouds and radiations. Most of them either went insane or developed societies of their own in an effort to protect what they could salvage of what they lost. They said it was more chaotic than ever, and most other groups other than the New Canterlot Republic had perished. Even they were falling to raiders, thieves, and chaos when the Rangers came. They didn’t go into too much detail beyond that, though one mentioned the name ‘Gawdyna Grimfeathers’ and the word ‘assassinated’ in the same sentence.”

“So Equestria is more dangerous than I’d ever been taught,” I summarize.

“There isn’t anywhere safe on this continent,” Tourniquet said. “When Equestria fell, apparently everything fell.”

“Maybe the zebra lands are safer.” I suggest.

Tourniquet grins. “Only one way to find out.”

So we head back a few kilometres, trotting leisurely and trading stories about our lives. I tell of emergencies within the Stable, disrupting the normal flow of life. She revels in days of no activity, enjoying what little time of nothing there is in the wasteland. I regale her with some of the Stable’s inventions, like artificial paste food and the food synthesizer. She passes on stories of favourite guns and friends won and lost. In this way, we trade stories as we walk on.

It isn’t long before we tread back upon a very familiar slope, one we had descended down from Shattered Hoof on our way out of their territory that I had failed to notice in my earlier daze. I look up at a ramshackle watchtower, perched about halfway up the embankment. I catch the eye of a burlap-cloaked pony. As he raises his gun a little, I tear my eyes from him and pick up the pace a bit.

“Something catch your eye, Candy?” Tourniquet asks.

I gulp. “S-something like that. We better get off this ridge.”

Bang! “You don’t see me arguing!” Tourniquet blasts off at a dead run.

I chase after her, not waiting for the follow-up shots. We run into another shallow valley, descending the other side of the mountain, away from the homeland of ponies and into zebra territories.

Well, this is it, Candy, I tell myself as our short sprint comes to an end, there’s no going back now.

The white road in front of us beckons to our hooves. Tourniquet and I walk this lonely path together, whatever desolation of yesteryear that remains cloaked firmly and emphatically by sixteen dozen winters’ cold embraces.

A growl.

Tourniquet and I lock eyes. I blush.

“Got any rations on you?” My partner rolls her eyes and hoofs me a piece of jerky. I groan. “More jerky?”

I feel like I hear the world chuckle as Tourniquet repeats the exact same line Gearshift did earlier: “Learn to eat what you must.”

I repeat my groan. “Fine…”

I take the piece of meat in my hoof and look it over. It didn’t appear to be anything special, just a piece of flesh carved from the muscle of a formerly living creature. I hobble on three legs and take a slow lick of the stuff. It’s almost tasteless, and the texture is that of unpolished leather. I stop and grimace before putting on a poker face and taking a bite. As expected, all I can taste is the wood it was smoked on, and some of the spices used to make it edible.

But it wasn’t horrible.

Ponies aren’t naturally accustomed to eating meat. As such, the tastelessness wasn’t entirely unexpected. I polish off the piece, grateful for the first semblance of food since the nuts nearly twelve hours prior. My gut sends me a gurgle of thanks. I trot a little faster to catch up to Tourniquet and prod her for a second piece. She chuckles.

“Not as bad as you thought, eh?”

I hum a little, neither expressing displeasure nor approval. “I’m tired of being hungry.”

Tourniquet hoofs me over another piece, which I promptly consume.

“How about we set up a campfire and break out our lunch rations while we warm up?” she asks me.

I stop and give her my strangest look. “Setting up a fire in the middle of the snow? Are you nuts? You can’t do that.”

Tourniquet looked up into the sky. “Get me some wood. I’ll show you how ‘nuts’ I am.”

I looked around at the white of the road around us, not seeing a source of wood for miles. I scoff and glare at her. “Where’s the wood?”

“Down that hill and on a plateau to the right,” my companion said. “I’ve been down this road many times before with Gearshift. The forest is sparse and small, but it should have enough wood to keep us warm as we eat.”

I smirk. I know I’m right. There’s no wood for miles. As I lift off, flying through the sky, I follow the path. Immediately, the smile on my face falters as a small bunch of shrubbery becomes visible. The shrubbery quickly gains altitude, transforming into a small thicket of three-foot-tall trees. I land and grimace, taking in the wood before me with no small amount of trepidation taking hold inside myself. Only one thought takes hold in my head.

“There will be no living with her after this.”

I proceed to break branches and build a small pile with the wood I collect. In a few minutes, I’ve gathered about twenty pieces. I carefully angle my wings to create a sort of basket, and then I dig underneath the branches. After a couple tries where I snag all but seven branches, I realize I can’t get all of them on with the method I’ve been trying. I pick up the remainder with my teeth and load them on my back.

I’m forced to leave two in the snow. I am completely out of shape for this kind of work. I grunt and struggle as I climb the shallow hill towards the encampment. Every step I take up the white bump sounds like an echo in eternity. I begin sweating under my limited clothing, the strain on my left wing in particular palpable. I had used that side in my attempts to shovel the sticks onto my back, so it would only be natural that it would be worn out. However, I think I may have layered the other sticks too much to that one side.

I grunt and attempt to shuffle the weight over. This works a little, but causes a single stick to shuffle in such a way that it stabs my right wing with an errant branch. I bite my lip in an attempt to ignore the pain as I continue trudging through the powder. Every step is a practice in torture from then on – the stick continually jabs at my wing, mere inches away from a pressure point. On the odd step, it presses up against that point, lancing my wing with a sharp slash of pain.

Seven agonizing minutes later, I sloth my way towards a familiar Steel Ranger who has dug a three-foot hole into the hard-packed snow and covered it with blocks of more snow. A little tubular opening, again made of ice, juts out from one side. Another half-minute of pain and the wood is dropped in front of my companion while I let my wings collapse to my sides, not even bothering to fold them up. I allow the icy wind to soothe my aching muscles as I slip into the structure on my belly. My wing bones fold neatly around my flank into that little opening.

A brief bit later, I pop out the other side. As I move away from the entrance, I look at the clean dome carved out of pieces of the snow. I admire the small circular collection of stones in the middle, placed atop a large, flat stone. There is a singular boulder large enough for two ponies on one side of the room. I realize it is already warmer in here than it was outside, and with the firewood I gathered, it could only get better.

The entrance began to grunt. Seconds pass, then Tourniquet’s flank appears from inside the hole. I watch her wrestle a branch through that small hole, muttering profanities I was sure weren’t Equestrian. Eventually she breaks through and begins dividing the branch up. She repeats this process of dragging a branch inside and turning it into kindling of different sizes until we have in our possession a pile of wood that is at least barrel-high.

I hear the release of a metal container. It is then that I realize Tourniquet is taking her Steel Ranger outfit off for the first time since I’ve seen her. The first thing that comes off are the leg braces, revealing a coat of mottled greens, and a long, ugly scar that worms its way up her armor, which comes off next. The scar continues writing its path of destruction in a loop up her left shoulder, down in a crude and jagged angle over her back, and around to her flank, encircling a cutie mark of a red cross. The tail that slides out is striped equally with crimson and white and flows like the ocean from her backside, curling daintily around itself into a double-slipknot. I estimate that, if let loose, it would run to a length that would allow her to circumnavigate her form.

Finally, she takes off her helmet.

The face that stares back at me is perfectly formed: a dainty muzzle, two pale pink eyes, and a mane matching the coloration her tail done up into three loops. She has a serious look on her face, a grimace at taking off her armor.

However, the eyes are dead. There is no life in them at all.

I stare, puzzled, at this mare before me. Those eyes tell me nothing about her or her personality. They are blank. Totally blank. What does it mean? What is wrong? Something isn’t as it should be here. That is not how eyes should look. They barely move as she looks around. They barely seem to serve any purpose at all, other than as decorations for her f-

Wait.

Tourniquet is blind!

The Firsts

Chapter Five - "The Firsts"

“You got it.”

I…

I-I…

I’m stunned. I’m speechless. I’m completely at a loss for words. Tourniquet is blind! Completely blank-sight blind!

“How are you surviving?” I ask. “I mean, how do you know where to shoot? Where to look?”

She smiles as she rearranges her armor. “Implants.”

I trot alongside her and gaze at the shell. She smirks and begins fiddling with the helmet.

“You’re curious to know how they work, right?”

I nod silently, my eyes locked onto the interesting mechanisms within the protective headgear.

“The armor is standard issue wear for Steel Ranger attire – multiple calibers of weapons, self-inoculation equipment for field injuries, and med kits for anything more serious. The helmet, however, is custom made. It has two nodes that connect to a couple small implants in my skull.”

She shows me the inside of the helmet, as well as her own head. Indeed, where her temples should be, are two gold plates with small, rounded holes. Matching these positions in the helmet are two gold nodes with small, rounded bumps.

“These implants go to my visual cortex in my brain. My helmet’s visor receives visual input like a giant camera lens and sends the information to my brain. My brain then processes the information and sends it to my enchanted gem-eyes. My eyes then paint a picture for my brain of silhouettes, friendlies, neutrals, and foes based on input from other senses, including my own thoughts.”

I gawk. “Let me get this straight – your armor is able to keep track of things you think.”

Tourniquet nodded. “That’s what my eyes contribute – they’re made with the same basic spell framework as a memory orb, except they’re designed for real-time processing instead of storage.”

“That… what… imp…” I stammer for a while in utter disbelief. “Who has that kind of technology nowadays? Who the hay has that kind of money? What would it take to make something like that? Who got them for you?” So… many… bloody… questions!!

“I don’t know any of that other stuff, but I can tell you who got them for me.” She chuckles bitterly. “Who else? Gearshift. Fucking bastard… fucking gorgeous bastard…”

As she breaks down, I feel a knot form in my gut. I approach the stone with the lonely green mare on it and crawl on. I awkwardly wrap a wing over her and allow her to mourn her loss freely for the first time since she lost Shift. She tucks her muzzle into my wing pit, causing a shudder to escape. I fight it for her sake – I can’t help that I’m ticklish where most pegasi are aroused! I endure the sensitivity as Tourniquet cleanses herself of her loss.

I realize I’m tearing up myself as the Earth pony beside me cries. I am suddenly reminded of the effort Shift took to save me, a total stranger even up until his death. Yet, how did he know I was there? Was he just passing by? Did he save me on purpose? I owed my life twice over to a pony I could never repay the debt to, a stallion I barely knew.

A shock to my senses from that same junction startles the tears out of my eyes. I turn my head towards Tourniquet. She is slowly working her way around my wing, nibbling and crying at the same time. I admit, I’ve never considered myself… that way. In fact, I haven’t even thought about doing the dirty dance at all. Now, in the barrenness of winter, nearing the dawn of a new day, the sensitivity of never being stimulated catches up with me, and I can barely act against the sensations her attentions are awakening.

“T-Tourni…”

She paralyzes me with a simple nibble on my wingtip. Her breaths are short… choppy… almost panicky.

“No words…” she said, clearly desperately trying to suppress further tears with her foreplay, “…just feel.”

I moan and melt into the night, disappearing within the caresses of a suddenly very attractive Earth pony.

Never have I woken up so drowsy before. I feel like I’m weighed down by a thousand pounds of snow. I crack open an eye. The dead fire in the middle of the igloo tells of a melting atmosphere as the rocks are filled with a shallow puddle of water. I’m not awake enough to be concerned, but aware sufficiently to realize that I’m a little hungry. A few small holes throughout the structure allow thin spears of light to penetrate the interior. The dampness of my cloak tells of dripping water that only began recently. I become aware of a sack of warmth next to me.

Tourniquet…

I smile kindly as I regard her still-sleeping form. I admit, it was needed stress relief, even if neither of us were in our right minds. Regardless, there was little to regret about the act or the warmth it provided. However, it felt… incomplete, like there was something more to do yet.

A stallion might be what I’m missing.

I chuckle at the thought, and, despite the bawdiness of its contents, I put it away easily. I am in no state of wakefulness to entertain that kind of thought seriously. I stretch out, flexing all my muscles in order. I decide to wake up to whatever rations Tournie had set aside for us. I ruffle through her things and dig up a bag of jerky and some raisins. I tear them open and begin munching on my breakfast. As I do, I slowly awaken to the rest of the world. There is a light breeze blowing through the igloo, warmer than before. It feels almost spring-like. The details of the holes we have exude a clear, sunny day.

I yawn as I fill my mouth with food. I smirk a little. I must look like a cow chewing its cud, with the expression I feel I have on my face: a dumb, thoughtless animal, mindlessly gnawing on necessary sustenance. Again, however, I’m too tired to sustain the thought for long, and resume burning a hole through this ice block in front of me while eating my first full meal in nearly twenty-four hours or so.

All too soon, however, the meal is over. I grimace as I set aside the bags. I decide to get outside for a morning flight, something I hadn’t experienced before. As I slip outside, I’m reminded of my previous thoughts regarding Cloud Kicker and freedom. Who would have thought that I would be enjoying the same freedoms as she did, that my schedule would be interrupted so that I could come out here and be a part of life outside the Stable? I certainly didn’t. Nor did I want to.

I take off into the mid-morning sun, the snow around us beginning to melt into the daytime warmth. It is surprisingly warm for this high up in the mountains. The air is thick and much easier to fly in than up where Stable Eighty-Five is. I pull off a simple corkscrew, whirling and spinning high into the sky. I reach a point where I am level with the top of the mountain, able to see for thousands of miles around, before lazily aileron rolling into an inverse flight. I curl my wings into a ball and plummet to the surface. The wind is wonderful. My second flight without the Stable… it’s liberating. Exciting…

…and weird.

It’s weird to go from desiring such strict regimentation and fearing freedom, to experiencing freedom and being scared out of my life, and then from having freedom to liking it, yet still desiring the regimen… on my third day out of the Stable, no less. It is truly a bizarre oxymoron. It almost feels like a vacation, in a sense.

Not that I would know what a vacation feels like.

The Stable never allowed vacations. Now that I’m outside the walls, I can understand why. I haven’t found safety anywhere I’ve been out here yet, and I highly doubt that I can elsewhere. Vacation is an illusion here, nothing more than a dead concept from a dead era. It almost feels frivolous to me to even consider the notion that so many of my Stable mates deliberated and even anticipated on occasion. How could one disturb their routines with a vacation? It still baffles me.

I level out a mere dozen feet from the mountainside and flap my way back up the ridge. I catch a couple hooves on the rock and gallop for a while up the ridge. I leap up off the cliff face and quickly aileron and curve around so I fly the other way. I look around a bit for the igloo. I spot it at a distance, the superstructure melting away. A snow cube from the night before has melted to nothing over a mottled green blotch on a large stone laid out for two.

She’s going to be really cold when she wakes up.

With a smirk, I dip back down into the range below. I barrel straight for the igloo. A few minutes of accelerating descent are cut short as I flare my feathers out and angle up a bit so I aim for a bit beyond the ruined dwelling. I pass over the sleeping pony and hover on fluttering wings before I descend, landing carefully atop her so as not to disturb her slumber. My four hooves straddle the sleeper, and I gently lay down atop her as a blanket. I nibble her ear, prodding her awake with kisses. Tourniquet shudders under my attentions.

“Five more minutes,” she mumbles.

I shake my head slightly. “No, sleepyhead. Time to get up.”

A low rumbling that could be mistaken for a snore rolls up from beneath. I grin and bat her lightly with a hoof. “None of that, Tournie.”

“Mmmmnnnnrrrgghhfine…”

I step off Tourniquet and allow her some breathing room. She yawns and rolls over. Cracking one of her eyes to the daylight, she snorts, then stands up. Seeming to ignore the cold, she steps over what remains of the wall of last night’s shelter, squats, and…

WHOA! Going to busy myself while she relieves herself!

I quickly make like the snow’s the most interesting thing in the world, drawing patches in the softening drifts, my face redder than a cherry tomato. The air is already warmer down here than up in the mountains. I look up and scan the path we are to take. The snow is absent from the valley floor. The splotchy greenery is interwoven with laces of brown, dying foliage and blackened, war-mangled earth. A forest to my right, deeper into zebra lands, is still smoldering with the smoke of oil that was lit during the war and still burns to this day. A couple scattered villages lie ahead of us, one alight with the red of a bonfire. What greenery that still lives looks patchy and sickly, a stark contrast to the nearly scar-less distant image of Equestria I had been able to discern from a distance. This land, the homeland of the zebras, was still festering with the wounds of war. It is clear that whatever strategies the Princesses of old may have had to save Equestria were not evident in the plans of the zebra leaders. A clandestine building near one of the villages was instantly recognizable as a failed attempt at a Stable, even from this distance.

The ill-fated Stable Fourteen.

I grimace. Although not the last Stable built, it was Equestria’s last act of goodwill towards the zebras, and the final Stable constructed in their territory. However, who was in charge of the stable and its construction had long since disappeared from memory. One theory suggested that Ministry Mare Fluttershy, before she had disappeared without a trace from the history books, was secretly overseeing the construction of this Stable herself. Another stated it was going to house the largest balefire bomb ever created, that Stable-Tec’s Apple Bloom had found hiding in Equestria just before she was locked in Stable 3. The most popular and most likely within Stable Eighty-Five, however, is that a prison break occurred at the Correctional Facility, and one of the prisoners, formerly of Stable-Tec and with a knack for remembering everything he or she saw, tried to organize their cellmates into constructing a Stable for themselves.

However, I don’t know for sure. Regardless, it was never completed.

The incomplete Stable is as a lantern to a fly. I suddenly wanted to dig into that place to find out what happened there with my own eyes. Stable Eighty-Five may have been a regimented place, but a lot of ponies in their down time took to gossip about the outside world. Even Babs Seed in her younger days had participated in the rumour mill, especially once the bombs had stopped falling and the guns had stopped firing regularly. Nowadays, though, routine is all that matters there. The rumour mill had stopped churning a few years ago. There is only the gray of the Stable, the droning of work, the pink of the air.

…Kind of dull, really…

Whoa. Where did THAT come from?! That’s the first time I’ve ever thought of it being dull in a Stable. Is this wasteland changing me that much? I have a craving for sweet potato nutrient paste…

“Candy!”

A voice startles me once again. Is this going to become a habit? Maybe it already is… I just ate. Why am I thinking so hard about nutrient paste? I just ate a full meal. I’m not even hun-

“Candy!!”

I jolt back to reality and look at Tourniquet as if I was a deer caught in the path of a chariot. She is once again suited up in her armour. How did that happen?

“You’ve been standing there, staring at that old Stable for twenty minutes now,” she says. “I’ve been trying to get your attention the whole time!”

I blush and recoil on myself. “Sorry…”

Tourniquet sighs and walks down the slope. “Candy, Candy, Candy… doing that could get you killed out here.” I rather doubt she’s joking. “Anyway, we’ve got to make Einamir by nightfall. Shattered Hoof usually sends ponies down into the valley via this pass every Thursday. We really don’t want to meet them with that crazy Mine Walker leading them. He’s probably got them on watch for a Steel Ranger and company or something of the sort.”

I swallow. That was true. I didn’t want to be turned inside out. I follow my friend in steel and suddenly find myself wishing I had one of those suits. As we descend to the valley floor, Tourniquet keeps a gun out. I shuffle around nervously, hobbling for a couple seconds, and finally return to a normal gait. I glance around quizzically at an odd weight around my foreleg, and lift my hoof. To my surprise, my gun has strapped itself to my foreleg. Somehow, the sight of it at the ready comforts me, especially with Tourniquet looking kind of skittish.

“This is where we’re usually attacked.”

Now that’s something I did not need to hear…

I don’t want to be attacked. I want to go back. I want my Stable. I want my little shell. I want my routine. I don’t want another gun I don’t want to shoot no guns no bullets no no no no no no!

“W-we’ll be ok-k-k-kay, r… r-right?”

As I follow her, Tourniquet’s suit pops a couple panels and exposes two small-caliber, machine guns. I take that as a sign of insecurity and start to moan in nervous fear. We take a few steps down towards the village.

“Will you shut your fucking trap!?” Tourniquet screams.

I flinch back at the sudden outburst. What did I do? I can’t help if I get nervous in tense situations! Tourniquet, you’re the only one I count as friend out here… don’t shout at me like that!

“S-sorry…” I squeak.

Don’t yell at me don’t yell at me don’t yell at me…

BLAM BLAM BLAM

HOLYFUCKWE’REDEADHOLYFUCKWE’REDEADHOLYFUCKWE’REDEAD…

Tourniquet launches into action, whirling in place and firing from her chain guns. Ponies and zebras drop like flies around us, but more emerge from the mountain. I watch her take down waves and wa-

ACK! They’re shooting at me, too! I lose Tourniquet as I run away and duck into a small cave for protection.

“Blast, Candy!” I hear her scream. “Shoot these motherfuckers, will ya?”

I swallow as I hear the gunfire draw closer. No less than two seconds later, I am wrenched from the cave by a unicorn’s magical grip on my hair. Within seconds, the face of my captor makes itself visible. The bouncy pink hair frames a pair of piercing blue eyes, which are glaring at me like a flankhole’s would.

“Your name’s Candy, eh?” the gruff all-pink stallion growls. “You’re kinda pretty. You’ll make us a good profit!”

I squeal, curling up in his grip. “Don’t kill me… please…”

“Don’t worry, little pegasus,” he replies. “I don’t intend to hurt you… just sell you and your friend and make my boys here some good caps.”

BANG

Eyes fly open. I look at my captor. His eyes are open in shocked awe. A round red hole dripping blood is where the middle of his forehead would be. His grip on me loosens slowly and finally collapses as he falls to the ground. I only feel three hooves hit snow. I look at the fourth, raised at a precise angle to shoot point-blank into his brain. I gape in terror and feel tears start to fill my eyes.
All sounds of battle fade away. I stare at this body in front of me for what seems like hours. Blurs rush by. Somewhere in the distance I hear Tourniquet praise Celestia for something. I don’t give a damn. I have just taken a life. This stallion, likely with a family to feed, has just died at my hooves. As the hoof reconnects with the earth, I begin sobbing. Never did I think I would take a life.

“I’m sorry…” I mumble.

I heave and sob. I’ve never felt this kind of pain before. I feel as if I’ve betrayed the very planet I was born from. Life has always been of highest value to me, and now that I’ve broken that, it feels like this goddess-damned wasteland has strangled the last vestige of morality I have left. I would rather die than take another life. So help me Luna, if I have to, I would rather kill myself than murder another. It’s not right. It’s not right.

It’s not fucking right…

I feel a pressure on my side. Through my tears, I see Tourniquet look at me through her steel helmet. She knows practically everything I’ve been through so far. She’s the only one I trust. I hope she’ll be with me forever.

Out here, however, that’s a precious wish that doesn’t stand a mouse’s chance of surviving the radiation of Whitetail.

Tourniquet and I walk swiftly away from yet another sea of carnage in this dead land. I walk a little closer to her, keenly aware that my gun will be needed again. I am also aware of a bit of bitterness within my friend for not saving her.

The tears increase, but my sobs dissipate. A fire awakens within me, a perpetual storm that has brewed since the dawn of my arrival in this bastard land. Dark thoughts begin to take root.

What am I on in terms of bitch-slap count now, huh, Celestia? Four? Five? I’ve been run down so many times now I’ve lost count. When will I get a break? The Stable was never this harsh a mistress. The Stable was never this hellish a landscape. The Stable was safe. It was friendly. It had routine, a predictability I could count on. Out here? Nothing of the sort. Celestia, why did you see to throw me to the wolves?

“Let it go.” Tourniquet’s calm words ebb the tide of rage a little bit. She shakes her head. “Let it go, Candy. It’s not worth getting worked up over.”

I sigh. “I know, I know… I can’t help it. It’s war out here all the time! How do you put up with it? How do you keep going? What do you do to stop yourself from going insane?”

Tourniquet walks a little farther in silence. She doesn’t seem to have considered that question at all with the way her armour shuffles a little and her eyes scan the noontime sky for answers. Just as I’m about to call her on it, she responds.

“Remember when I said Gearshift’s virtue was mercy?”

I nod.

“That’s how we go on out here,” she says. “Bottle caps may be the currency of this land, but virtues are the blood that keeps the strongest souls of the Wasteland alive and battling for better days. You find that one thing to fight for, that one immutable facet of your soul that you will not violate no matter what. You find that goddess-damned pillar and you chain yourself to it. You hold on for all you’re fucking worth to that and never let the wasteland take that away. I guarantee you will fight harder, live longer, and save more lives than you ever fucking thought possible.”

I snort. “What fairy tale did you hear that from?”

She stops for a second and sighs. “From the most important pony to ever live in Equestria.”

“Who, the loser Princesses?”

“No.” She turned to me and smiled. “Her name is Littlepip, and her story is legendary amongst the Applejack’s Rangers.”

The Slip

Chapter Six - "The Slip"

“Littlepip?” I asked. “Why should I care about some pony from some extinct land?”

Tourniquet swept a hoof across the sky as we walked. “The sunlight? The weather we’re experiencing? The crazy organization it has? They’re all her doing. No one knows where she comes from – some say a Stable somewhere near Ponyville Ruins, wherever that is, others say she was a reformed Raider who got sick of her murderous life, and still others speculate she’s a demon spawn from Tartarus – but, regardless, she’s the one who controls the weather from a tower somewhere in Equestria.”

“So, you’ve never seen her yourself?” I ask.

My companion blushes. “Um, no… I’ve only heard rumours… Gearshift and I were both born to descendants of P.O.W.s, so we’ve never known Equestria except what news merchants, travellers, and the occasional slaver or not-too-far-gone raider bring.”

“You seem to have a fascination with the land, though,” I muse.

“A distracting curiosity,” she admits. “Helps me forget what I’ve been through for a time. I wouldn’t mind walking in the great SteelHooves’ shoes for a while… he was one of Littlepip’s companions five years ago on her journey.”

“Okay, so Littlepip’s a pony who runs the weather,” I summarized. “Yawn.”

Tourniquet’s next sentence is interrupted by a small Earth pony colt with the body of an orange and the mane of a bright red cherry. It almost hurt my eyes to look at him in the sunlight.

“Y’ain’t heard o’Littlepip!? Only the most badass pony who ever lived?” he shrieks. “Y’been livin’ under a bloody rock’r somethin’?”

“I was kicked out of my Stable three days ago,” I inform. “I don’t know anything. Really.”

The colt slaps his forehead with a tiny hoof. He turns to Tourniquet. “Gearshift?”

She nods. “His last.”

The colt freezes. “Aw dammit… now he can’t teach me how t’shoot…” Just as he began to sob, he bit his lip hard. “Can’t cry… ain’t cryin’… Gearshift won’t want me to ‘til I got home.”

Tourniquet pats the colt on the back. “It’s alright, kid. He died doing what he loved.”

“He died because of me…” I spit. “I won’t have that again.”

Tourniquet snorts. “A fine job you did out there, then, leaving me to the wolves.”

“I know I screwed up,” I mutter. “Seems like everything I do just pushes me from bad to worse. I’m a newbie out here, and already the Wasteland seems hell-bent on wiping me off the face of the planet! What gives?”

Tourniquet snaps, “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Candy!” I reel at the sudden reply. She continues. “Yes, you’ve had it hard since you’ve been out here! Yes, you’ve lost more than you’ve gained! Yes, you haven’t been able to enjoy your routine like you have! But dammit, girl, look at the rest of us! We’ve spent our whole lives forcing even the smallest drip of a living out of this Celestia-forsaken trash heap of a continent. Gearshift, me, even little Slip Kid here… we all fight this war every damn day in the hope that there will be something better tomorrow.”

“Hang it,” I shriek. “I want my goddess-damned Stable back.”

Just as we’re ready to knock teeth, a tiny voice interrupts our argument.

“Miss Candy?”

I look down at the colt Tourniquet called Slip Kid. His teal eyes meet my own.

“If y’really wanna be safe out here, stop lookin’ at y’flank,” he said. “Gearshift weren’t a pony to dwell on th’past. Knew thinkin’ like that would kill him.”

I look away from the colt. I didn’t need to be lectured by someone younger than me! He doesn’t take the hint and soon has stopped me in the middle of this procession. I look past him and see we are only meters away from the walls of Einamir. Come on, kid, do you have to do this now!?

“Hey!” he says, leaping up in front of me, grabbing firmly onto my mane and yanking my head down to his level. “Listen! Fuck where y’came from. It’s gone. Dead. Done. Y’out here, and y’aff t’survive…” he gulps “…however y’can.”

I raise an eyebrow. The way he said that last phrase brings to mind a number of questions. How has this kid survived? What has he done to live? Where’s he from? A quick glance at his cutie mark reveals everything in one manifest, blasphemous, disgusting picture.

As if the Wasteland could be any crueler…

“Stop looking,” he chokes. My eyes leap back to his. I see him shed a tear. “I got that cutie mark when I was a raider, or, at least, the child of a raider clan. Don’t ask me how, please… it involves my mom ‘n my sister ‘n a lot o’ daddy’s juice ‘n it hurts to think about.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “I won’t ask about it.”

“How about we talk about yours instead?” he asks, making my apology vanish into thin air. “It’s a weird cutie mark, even for a Stable pony.”

I pause for a second, taking a breath to collect my thoughts. “Well, my cutie mark says that I’m a repair pony for the Crusader computer mainframes. When I lived in Stable Eighty-Five, I helped our Overmare by–”

“Crusader? Overmare? What?” the colt asks.

Right… uneducated wasteland Raider boy… I think. Wouldn’t know anything about Stables.

“Basically, I repair types of machines that can act and think for themselves,” I say. “These machines are called Crusader maneframes. The leader of Stable Eighty-Five is hooked up to one of these machines because of a disability. It was my job to keep that machine going.”

“So you repair computers?” Slip asks. “Could you repair a terminal?”

The question blindsides me. I stop and ponder for a second. “I… could, yes, i-if I had the right tools.”

“Good,” he says. “I know someone in Einamir who c’n use a computer geek. Might keep y’out o’ trouble.”

Tourniquet catches the colt by the foreleg. “Easy, hotshot. Remember, we civilized ponies don’t just order each other around unless we’re on a mission…”

“…on a mission…” Slip echoes exasperatedly before falling back in line. “Dammit, Tournie, I know, I know… I’m sorry, Candy.”

“No, no, it’s okay,” I say. “It might be better for my sanity to work on something monotonous for a while, something mundane.”

We pass through the archway between two giant slabs of gray stone under two large, iron doors, through a magical ward of green plaid, over a large moat six feet across and who-knows-how-many-feet deep on a wooden bridge designed to fold up, and finally through a second thicker wall and another thatched iron door with spines. Hustle and bustle and other assorted commotion greets us as we pass through the gate. Easily tens of thousands of ponies, lush, thick grass, cobblestone pathways, and several rows of clean, beautiful small-town cottages line these streets. Many vendors are selling their wares at the base of their homes. Occasionally a Steel Ranger, like Tourniquet, or a local foot soldier, identified by a red beret with a silver diamond, would pass us by. In defiance of all I was taught, zebras and ponies show no hatred towards each other in this town. Posters of the mare of the Ministry of Peace… Flushy, I think her name was… line every wall and lamp post. I glance back at the wall. Ponies are patrolling the perimeter of the fortification. Some are stationed high in watchtowers. Most are on routes. All of them are actively watching the Wasteland for predators or victims.

Tourniquet catches my eye with a step, then redirects my attention to the road ahead with a flick of her muzzle. “Einamir – the Shining Light of the North. Welcome to the only bastion of civilization for three hundred miles, save, of course, for Shattered Hoof.”

“I love this town!” Slip muses excitedly, hopping up and down.

I had no idea pony life could be like this. It’s so colourful, so pristine, so orderly! There is hope here! I sing in my heart, a glorious smile upon my face. Babs was right! Oh, praise the Overmare, Babs was right! The Wasteland does have decent ponies! I can find a spot in this hell for the Secret!

No, no, don’t get ahead of yourself yet, Candy. You have to figure out if there is anyone trustworthy enough to speak of the Secret with. Come to think of it, Babs had said that there were a couple of ponies she could trust that Canyon had dropped into the Wasteland without her permission before me. I had always just assumed it was idle banter as I was repairing her. After all, being the naïve little bitch that I am, I simply tossed some of those conversations away as rumour and spit. Foolish filly…

What were their names again?

I ponder the names of the trustworthy ones she had mentioned, but I can’t come up with any right now. I put it aside for later. Conveniently, my wandering mind is hidden by my awe for the town, and neither Tourniquet nor Slip notice.

With Slip leading, we stop at a cute little house on the corner. It’s a stout thing, about twice as many hooves wide as tall, with a valance of blue hanging off the veranda and a series of potted plants flanking the door to either side on the railing. The siding is a nice pale yellow, not too striking, yet not too faded, and the borders are a cute robin’s-egg blue. The windows are sandwiched between two matching blue shutters with little hearts cut out. The portcullis is plain white, with a trio of small, round porthole windows embedded at different heights.

Slip approaches this door and knocks. “Slinky!”

Slinky…? I wince a little. Why would the foal have that as a name?

A brief pause occurs before the colt becomes impatient. He repeats the knocks, but faster and firmer. “Slinky! It’s Slip Kid! Open up!”

There is only the buzz of conversation to greet us.

Slip groans. “Crud. He’s out.”

“I guess we find somewhere else to go?” I suggest.

Slip shakes his head. “No. I have a key.”

I shoot a confused glance at Tourniquet who just nods. My attention turns back to Slip, whose mane is lit up in a silver hue. A key removes itself from that red rat’s nest atop his head and deposits itself in the door.

I thought he was an Earth pony… I muse.

A quick flick and a push and we are inside. Slip waits for us to get in, then shuts the door behind.

I scan the room. It is Spartan in nature, with just three recliners, a small terminal, a table set, and some sleeping blankets scattered throughout. A set of stairs leads to the upper floor. The walls smell of some kind of meat, not quite jerky but still animal. Their decorations of crayon and marker immediately identify all the residents as youths about Slip’s age.

“Where are your adults?” I blurt.

Slip, who has disappeared into another room, laughs. “I’m more ‘sponsible than any of the adults I’ve run into, ‘cept Shift and Tournie, o’course. Ain’t the mess I’m worried about – a full fridge an’ belly an’ a clean poop bucket, that’s what matters. If’n y’wanna clean it up while y’here, Candy, ‘n git ‘r done.”

Another, more rancid smell passes my nose as Slip suddenly shouts, “Aww Cloud Kicker… why y’gots ta leave yer shit in here that long?”

Cloud Kicker?! She lives here, too? I thought she was a military brat.

“I think I will, Slip.”

With no reply, I get to work. I begin sifting through the piles of refuse in the abode, organizing them into little piles. Used Rad-Away bottles, Sparkle-Cola cans, a few bottle caps, and several used tissues are the first articles I find. An old, yellowed magazine featuring provocative pictures gets thrown into the trash pile. Several plastic bags, some coated with a fine white powder, others with a material that makes them sticky, and still more with small pills of various kinds, join the bags and magazine. I note that there isn’t a single refuse can in the immediate vicinity, so I decide to find a box to make one out of. A little bit more rummaging reveals a large cardboard box about two feet tall and a square foot across. It will have to do. Slowly I move all the discarded material I gathered into the box.

It takes a couple hours, but I finally have this floor of the hoarder’s paradise clear of most of the garbage. I have a neat little pile of things to organize, one of Slip's friends on the couch, and a Steel Ranger coming down the stairs with two more boxes of trash and at least two bags of bottle caps.

Why aren’t they in with the garbage?

I ask the question and she shoots me a confused look.

“Don’t you know?” she asks. “They’re money.”

…bottle caps… currency…

I throw up my hooves, dumping all the trash I’ve just accumulated. “I give up. This whole place is backwards.”

Tourniquet chuckles. “You’ll get used to it, Stable girl.”

“I don’t want to.”

Slip walks in with a can of beer [!] and takes a sip. “Y’already experienced death, something you’ll see a lot. Maybe y’just need t’let go’n’see things without Stable-coloured glasses.”

I growl at the smug kid and his beer.

“Maybe you’ll witness ra-”

NONONONONONONONONO

“Slip!” Tourniquet shrieks. “I don’t even like to think of that, and I’ve been out here for my whole life! Cut it out!”

The colt shrugs. Shrugs! He shrugs at the one thing few mares actually enjoy! What a conceited… wait, smirk? Mischievous eye glance? Chuckle!?

…Dammit, Slip, if you weren’t a colt, I’d smack you upside the head.

“Slip, you do that again, and I WILL smack you,” Tourniquet warns.

That only earns her a lascivious flank-wave and some moans too disturbingly well-trained for an amateur. “I been so bad, Mommy! Spank me!”

The only sound in that house was Slip’s laughter.

Five minutes later Tourniquet sighs and goes off into the next room. “Ex-raider colts…”

As I continue cleaning, furious and disgusted with a colt that has zero sense of tact or humour, Slip is killing himself laughing. He doesn’t appear in the least bit concerned that both of the ponies traveling with him are mares, and that rape is a horrible, horrible crime to us. I want to lay into him, to make him suffer for insulting mares that way. He should know better!

That’s the thing, my diplomatic side states. He doesn’t. He thinks it’s all a joke. It must be Raider humour.

Well, why didn’t his parents teach him any better?

They were raiders. Remember what you were taught about Raiders in the Stable?

Mindless buffoons, the lot of them, according to the damn propaganda. I still think they’re just idiots who chose criminal stupidity. Still ponies. I refuse to believe they can’t be changed.

Raiders are ponies so damaged they’re irrecoverable, victims of a scourged wasteland who have had to give up every facet of morality they had just to breathe the scent of food.

Tell that to this kid. I indicate Slip absentmindedly with a hoof and make a passing note that he’s staring a little too intently at a magazine no foal should be privy to.

You just pointed at him, y’know.

I gasp.

“What’s up, Candy?” the colt asks.

I swallow. “G-urm, nothing…” I cough. “Keep… knxxxx… stroganoff, er… something…”

“Strokin’ off… You’re fine with me masturbating!?” Slip exclaims. “Cool!”

Faster than I ever thought possible, I turn beet-red and fly out of the room, screaming. I find the bathroom and begin washing my mouth, ears, face, and the rest of me with whatever rough sandpaper I can find. I did NOT need this! I did NOT need this! I did NOT need this! No no no no no!

The scrubbing begins hurting, but I can’t get the filth off. I can’t get the image out of my head. I-no. No no no no no…

“Candy?”

I-I didn’t need this, no… I don’t want you… how can you just… Slip, you amoral bastard…

“Candy.”

Gotta wash my brain out with nitroglycerine and a match… maybe that’ll…

“Candy! Stop!”

My world spins too fast on an axis I didn’t want to turn. I come face-to-face with Tourniquet, who stops me from pouring… actual nitroglycerine down my throat…

Whoo…

I think I need a nap.

Heeeeee…

THUD

The Fragments

Chapter Seven - "The Fragments"

Chapter brought to you by Bayonetta: Lady in Black RTS Mix, from REMIX: thaSauce.

I’m walking inside Stable Eighty-Five, the gray walkways of the Residential District, Floor Three, heading towards my apartment block. I walk behind several ponies doing the same thing. I just finished my shift, working for the Stable cafeteria. I know, it’s not the most techie of jobs, but I’ve got to do something while I wait for orders from Babs to come and fix her. I also happen to be a kickass cook with the paste we’re all raised on. I can make this mush taste a few different strengths of sweet potato. I can turn it into a soup, a burger, a taco, even a pancake and a packet of fries!

Then again, when your subject matter is practically foolproof, it isn’t hard to invent different ways of eating and cooking it.
I mean, I made little strips of it, burned it to a crisp, and ate it just to break up the flavor monotony. Seriously – it’s like when the scientists discovered this pile of crud, the military that ran this joint said, “okay, fine, we only need enough food to keep the replication factory working,” and then hid away all the trees and sunlight with those clouds. Even the scientists were taken away to some other facility, place, floor… wherever! Ever since, we’ve been eating this Celestia-forsaken paste and living with barely any creativity. Heck, one of the foals, Thunderlane and Shotput’s… had her pencils taken away by her instructor because she was doodling, of all things, Princess Celestia.

I think Canyon Trench did that, actually, and I think that happened today.

One can never tell what’s what in the land of dreams, though. You might be recalling a memory from last week, yesterday, next year, even a farcical construct from your worst fears. Am I witnessing things in this dream from my own lifetime, or something my mind builds? Can anyone ever be truly sapient in the land of dreams?

Oh, look. A peanut’s floating across my periphery. What’s a peanut? How do I know it’s a peanut? How did I know the cashew was a cashew and not a donut? As a matter of fact, how do I know all these different foods, while only ever having eaten the one kind?
A black hole opens in the void, darker than even the darkness of the cloud that surrounds me. I begin drifting slowly downward, towards the ever-increasing black. I envision, for a second, a little trampoline at the bottom, in that little classroom of foals I was a part of as a kid. Yet, I shoot through it like nothing’s there, like I’m not even there.

Was I ever there?

The classroom pops above me, sending a rainbow of light across the plane beneath me. Pieces flower from the darkness, eagerly engorging themselves on the light from above. I drift around this pool of light now, a wraith within the mists of my mind. I pass through my first birthday with my parents – a golden pegasus mare with a silver mane, and a broad-shouldered red stallion with blue-and-pink hair. I pierce the environs of a particularly painful memory, one where many of the colts and fillies would pick on me for being almost emotionless. Many hugs of my mother and father flutter around my head. Numbers, lots of numbers and computer code, innumerable strands of easily-decipherable materials woven in complex webs, forming other memories as animals, ponies, and other creatures happily playing in a field of grass pass by as I fall through a tube of light.

Soon, these all fade. A bright green light appears as a crack on the horizon, the plane of gravity I’ve been drawn to from my descent. My hooves touch down upon the soft earth, feel the heat of the summer sun, and taste the salty ocean air.

And all I can ask is where.

Where is my mind drawing these images from? I’ve never been to the sea. I’ve never felt the summer sun. Half these creatures no longer exist because of what the zebras did – Megafall, the Final Day of Equestria, as we call it in Stable Eighty-Five. Yet, I’ve been there, to every last one of these places. It feels so familiar. I taste the ocean upon my tongue, play with the saltiness between my teeth, and even attain a certain amount of perspiration from the heat.

But just as soon as these sensations are fully realized, they’re swept away. The hard smell of machinery and oil fills my nose. Pistons join the grassland as I fall, through tubes of fibreglass and paint.

“Candy.”

What was that? A voice from Beyond? Unlikely – it was probably a figment of Crusader Candy past. I see my father, surfing on a wave of light, down to meet me. He plants a swift butterfly kiss on my cheek before shattering into a million colours, each absorbed by fragments around it. My mother taps me on the shoulder and gives me a hug before dissipating into the light with a splash. Friends and family are slowly reduced back to luminescence, absorbed in the swirling vortex that powers the great Machine surrounding me, a factory powered by rainbows.

“Candy.”

The mechanics start to constrict me, wind around me, choke me like a hundred vines. Slowly they pull me apart, one-by-one, until I can see my insides. What emerges isn’t blood and bone and sinew, like my fellow ponies. No. It’s cords and cables and oil, metal fragments and fissures and sparking. I separate into my component parts, every bit and bolt and screw joining every other one in matched pairs and sets.

“What’s going on?”

My cry goes unheeded. I am ejected from the Machine, thrown headlong into darkness. I hit a brown patch of scorched earth, my brain and thought processes still intact despite not feeling any other part of my form.

Odd as it may seem, I’m okay with this, okay with all that happened before.

“Candy!”

That voice! That warm voice from somewhere Beyond! It calls to me once again, for the third time. I look around, unable to do much besides roll my head around a little. It comes to rest in a cleft between two rocks, staring squarely at my disassembled body.

“Candy! Wake up!”

The earth shakes violently. My head is firm within its resting place. The earth itself rises into a giant head, facing away. As it turns, I see a hand – how the fuck do I know these things? – emerge from the earth. It has four fingers: the first, a wrench, the second, a screwdriver, the third, a drill, and the final, a hammer. The earth shifts slowly, turning and shedding rocks as it cracks. I watch one of the cracks split the earth dangerously in front of my parts.

“Wake up!”

I can now see the titanic figure towering over me. She is the one who was mouthing those words! She will fix me! Hallelujah!

Wait… that’s me!

“Now, Candy, this will only hurt a bit… let me fix you.”

I can’t scream. I don’t want to scream. Yet, I should scream. Why am I not screaming? I’m fine with this? I’m fine with this. Why am I fine with this? I shouldn’t be fine. I’m not fine. I should be screaming. I can’t scream. I don’t want to scream. Yet, I should scream. Why am I not screaming? I’m fine with this? I’m fine with this. Why am I fine with this? I shouldn’t be fine. I’m not fine. I should be screaming. I can’t scream. I don’t want to scream. Yet, I should scream. Why am I not screaming? I’m fine with this? I’m fine with this. Why am I fine with this? I shouldn’t be fine. I’m not fine. I should be screaming. I can’t scream. I don’t want to scream. Yet, I should scream. Why am I not screaming? I’m fine with this? I’m fine with this. Why am I fine with this? I shouldn’t be fine. I’m not fine. I should be screaming. I can’t scream…

The drill rings loudly, deafeningly over the entire core of my soul.

“Clear!”

As soon as the shock hits my chest, I explode awake, gasping for air. As my eyes adjust to the light, I see two medical ponies of rather generic brown tones, though one was a mare, the other, a stallion. Between them at the foot of the bed are my two friends, Tourniquet and Slip.

“Candy!”

Immediately upon noticing my awakened state, the little perverted scamp dives headlong into my chest and hugs me as tight as he can. Tourniquet approaches me with a teary-eyed smile.

“Don’t ever do that again, you bitch!” she mumbles, chuckling.

I giggle back. “Sorry, Tourniquet. I guess the shock of the past three days finally caught up to me.”

“I’m sorry I did that, Candy!” the boy suddenly wails. “I’m never ever ever gonna do that again! Fuck, I’m so bloody stupid! You’re not a raider. I shoulda known. I sh-shoulda fuggin’ known…” he breaks down into tears.

I grunt a little and run my hoof through his red hair. “Next time,” I mutter through shortened breaths, “ask before telling me you’re, uh, going to… do… um, that thing…”

“Ma–erk!” Slip shrieks with a wince. He glares at Tourniquet, who’s just setting her hoof down. “Okay, fine. Fine fine. Sorry… I’m such a dick.”

A moment of hugging later, Slip slides off my body and onto the floor.

“So, how long was I out?” I ask. My eyes slowly blink.

“A couple days,” Tourniquet says. “I was afraid I had lost you!”

I smile. “Three… um, five days a-and you’re already fawning over me.”

Tourniquet snorts, barely holding back a laugh. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you make a non-sarcastic joke.”

A slight headache pulses behind my eye. I wince. “What happened when I fell?”

Slip gulps. “Y’fell an’ hit da floor pretty hard. Y’head hit th’floor. Knocked y’cold. I’m sorry I’m sorry…” He nuzzled my hoof.

I swallow and breathe slowly. “I must’ve hit pretty hard to knock myself cold like that.” I put a hoof to my head and curl into myself. “Sweet Celestia, my head feels like it’s on fire.”

When I open my eyes, two small red pills and a glass of slightly murky water have appeared in front of me, surrounded by a silver glow. I give a quick smirk of thanks to Slip before downing the offered substances. My wings flick and I look about.

Other than Slip and Tourniquet, I share the room with five other beds. Three are occupied, one with a sleeping red-and-black Earth pony whose head is obscured by bandages, a yellow-and-green unicorn whose left foreleg and right hindleg are missing and who is also reading a rather large book, and an entirely catatonic pegasus whose entire body is casted, his desecrated cutie mark indiscernible behind the cloud-and-lightning-bolt brand.

“A Dashite,” Tourniquet says, putting a label to the desecrated one. I must have lingered on the mark. “Looks like he or she were forced out of the Enclave back when it was still a major power… but to be cooped up in here for five years? What else is going on?”

“I’m still healing.”

The mass of bandages spoke! Maybe the pony isn’t catatonic. His – yes, unmistakably a he now – his head rolls over and stares in our general direction. His red mane is bisected with a white bandage, which wraps around his eyes. His light rose body hair and soft voice tell me he’s a kind being.

“Why for five years, though?” Tourniquet asks, then hastily adds, “If you don’t mind me prying a little.”

“It’s been more like seven years.” The stallion coughs. “Between the damage the Enclave gave me and the cancer inside me, I can’t leave until I’m healthy. My family risked too much to come here for me just to turn back.” He exhales a mirthful chuckle filled with pain and bitterness. “They probably think I’m dead now.”

“Why?” I ask.

“A Dashite can’t return to the clouds above,” he says. “When I left, I was caught. My youngest son was killed trying to sneak me through the clouds. I was branded and banished. I wouldn’t be surprised if my wife’s taken on a new husband.”

“Who’s she?” Slip asks.

“You wouldn’t know her,” he sighs. “The most beautiful pegasus in the history of the world – long, purple-and-white hair, a nice silver sheen to her body, wings as prim and preened as any noble pegasus’ should be. She’s an exemplary model of Enclave loyalty.” He scoffs. “Some damnable loyalty I had…”

“The Enclave? Surely you don’t mean the pegasus empire above the clouds?” Tourniquet asks.

“The one in the same,” the bandages breathe.

Tourniquet looks out the window in the hospital. “That empire fell years ago. Didn’t you hear?”

The room is silent.

“So it is true,” the stallion mumbles. “I heard the staff talking about it when the hospital was just this one house and Einamir was simply known as ‘the ruins of Alghanor Bokkat’, which was about a year or two after I arrived. One of the orderlies said that she had traveled from Junction R-7 at the time – R-7, can you believe it? That’s way in the centre of the Equestrian Wasteland! – and suddenly the clouds parted. I laughed them off, of course, stating that nothing could penetrate that cloud barrier, yet talk of sunshine persisted. Now here you are, saying the same things.”

Tourniquet, Slip and I look at each other in disbelief. Five years and this colt still didn’t believe what was going on?

“Why believe us?” Slip asks.

“Usually, ponies are told things that ease their pain. When I was first admitted, they said that the sky was beautiful and bright blue… I always assumed I was in an Enclave hospital. Then I heard them talking about Earth ponies and that blew the location theory and their credibility right out of the water. I remembered that the sky had closed in, so there was no such thing as blue sky. Yet patients lately speak of the same blue sky, how beautiful it is. The foals that end up in this wing still talk of it with reverence and slight abject fear.” He sighs. “If I still had eyes to see it with… I would love to observe it for myself.”

I smile hopefully. “When they get those bandages off–”

He buzzes his lips and growls a little. “Don’t give me false hope,” he says sternly. “My eyes were slashed through right down the middle and the nerves burned as part of my banishment. I can’t ever get my sight back. It was a damned miracle I was dumped smack in the middle of town.”

I look to Tourniquet helplessly. She acknowledges my wordless question with sullen eyes and a shake of the head.

“Remember, I don’t even know where Shift got these,” she says.

“Oh, don’t go busting your brains over an old pegasus like myself,” he replies jovially. “I appreciate your concern, but I’ve lived a good, full life. Heck, fifty-six years is pretty good for a Dashite Wastelander. Whenever I go, I go.”

The three of us witness a genuine smile through the bandages. It isn’t right to leave him like this. He should have his family with him in his hour of need. Where would we go find them? Where would we even start?

“Do you know where your family might be?” I ask.

He remains silent.

“Hello… um, sir?” Slip says.

Slip and I look at each other, then at Tourniquet. She slowly walks over to the pegasus and places a hoof against his neck.

A sigh. “Dead.”

I freeze. Someone has just died right in front of me again. Is this bloody fucking Wasteland kidding me? I’m so mad I could just…

…

I sigh.

I’m actually not mad. I’m not even surprised anymore. It isn’t even worth it. I’m a part of the Wasteland now. If I wanted back into Stable Eighty-Five to get the Secret, I’d have to fight my way in. For now, Canyon’s won, I’ve lost, and I’m out here forever. I have to adapt to survive.

I feel around for my pistol. “Where’s my gun?”

“Safe in th’vault at my house,” Slip declares.

“Tourniquet, when I get out of here, you’re going to teach me how to shoot,” I say. “If we end up out there again, I need to be more than a pathetic pony prince waiting for his knight armed with the cadence of love to save him.”

Tourniquet replies, “I never knew you cared so much.”

“Oh you stupid…” I mirthfully exclaim. “Sh-shut up!”

“I ain’t go that way, Candy!” Slip says. “Y’all too old.”

I feign a wounded heart. “I’m not that old!”

Slip panics. “Y’not old! Jus’ too old f’me! I do…”

Tourniquet and I crack up laughing.

He throws us an annoyed look. “Very funny, bitches.”

That only stops us for a few seconds before we explode in laughter.

“Well well, miss,” a stallion says as he enters the room. “Sounds like you’re in much better condition than when you came in.”

I smile. “Very much, doctor, both mentally and physically.”

“That’s good. I hear you’re not from the Wastes,” he says. “Five days out of Stable Eighty-Five… I’m surprised you didn’t crack sooner.”

“Who told you that?”

A wave out of the corner of my eye tells me the answer. Tourniquet’s hoof lowers to the floor and I continue smiling.

“‘Course.”

“Yes. Though I don’t know what you did to earn her loyalty. She rarely ever sticks with one pony for long,” the doctor mutters. “Usually leaves them to die when they get like you were.”

…What.

I look over at Tourniquet who is blushing and refusing to look at me. Slip glares at the doctor.

“Now I ain’t havin’ some fucked-up bastard talk sass about my Tournie here,” he growls. “You take dat back right now, penis-head!”

I choke back my laughter. For all his bravado, he’s still a colt!

The doctor kneels down in front of the colt with a smile. “Where’d you learn that language, mister? Your mom and dad must be very disappointed in you.”

As Slip’s face darkens a thousand times over what it had been, I realize that’s a soft spot for the colt. I don’t like this at all.

Slip butts heads with the doctor. “You really don’t wanna go there.”

The elder stallion chuckles as he walks out of the room, giving me a glance. “Remember what I said. Keep an eye on her”

So far, Tourniquet had been nothing if not friendly to me. I’m having a hard time assimilating the new information, so I decide to trash it. Whatever Tourniquet had done in the past was dead and gone. Slip, too. I refuse to believe that the only two ponies who had helped me are worthy of such paranoia. Heck, I refuse to look at any pony with judging eyes first. At least I can maintain some semblance of self-respect!

“So, how long ‘til I get out of this dump?” I ask.

Tourniquet and Slip look at each other and nod. “According to the doctor,” Tourniquet says, “you can check out at any time. We just have to watch out for concussions.”

I nod. “Now that I’m adjusted, well, somewhat, I can finally begin my mission for my Overmare.”

The Shadow

Although I would like to continue my search today, I am still somewhat unsteady as I check out of the hospital. It will be another full day in Slip’s home before I manage to walk around comfortably on my own. Without major incident, however, I am checked out of the hospital and leave, exposing myself to the light of a crisp blue sky.

It’s at that very moment that I can finally think about the sight of the sky, and I freeze. It feels like I could lose grip on the ground and splash into that eternal ocean!

I cuddle down to the ground and whimper.

“What’s with you?”

Tourniquet is looking back at me strangely. I shiver in fright and point up.

“The sky? You’re scared of the sky?”

I nod. “It’s so big… Can we fall up?”

Slip laughs. “Nopony’s ever fallen up, Candy. You’re safe.”

I swallow. “I hope so! Let’s get inside… this openness is freaky!”

Tourniquet smirks.

“What?!”

“I can’t believe it took you five days to freak out about the sky. According to the doctor, agoraphobia is usually evident much faster.”

I glare at her. “Well, I was getting over the combined trauma of being thrown out of my Stable, getting caught in my first firefight, being exposed to meat for the first time, nearly dying, being thrown out of another village like a piece of trash, building an igloo to sleep in, revelling in the feelings of fu…” I stop my brain to suppress a very private moment “…uuhree flight, discovering the Shattered Hoof Gorge, and meeting a colt with way too much knowledge of anatomy and bad words for his age! My mind was a little busy to deal with the frivolity of how big the sky was at the time! My brain just kind of shut down!”

Tourniquet and Slip snicker.

“What now?!”

Slip drops back to walk beside me and whispers, “You banged Tournie, didn’t ya?”

I slap him as we howl in laughter.

We pad our way through the town again, then soon find ourselves on Slip’s couch, snacking on some sort of foodstuff.

Tourniquet swallowed hers and said, “Okay, you said that you have to find a secure location for something from Stable Eighty-Four…”

“Eighty-five, yes.”

“…then get into the Stable and take it…”

“Yes.”

“…from a mad general who has full-on mana cannons under his control…”

“Yes.

“…then bring it back to the secure location…”

“Yes.”

“…without telling anyone what it is.”

“Yes.”

Tourniquet slowly shakes her head. “Okay. Now that you’ve broken this mission down for me, it sounds absolutely preposterous.”

I quickly shake my head to be sure I’ve heard right and glare. “Wait, what? In what way?”

“Well, first,” Tourniquet said, shuffling her body a little, “there’s the problem of finding anything secure here in theses Wastelands. Unless you want to take it into Tenpony Tower or Junction R-7, which I’m told are relatively secure, you’re shit outta luck. Everything that would have been secure on this side of the old Equestrian border has long been raided. If you tried to make it to the New Canterlot Republic, you’d be killed before you even reached it. I’m surprised this town hasn’t been demolished yet.

“I’ll find something, I’m sure. It’s just a matter of looking hard.”

“Geez, you’re determined…” Tourniquet says, running a hoof along her helmed head. “Well, I hate to admit it, but the doctor was right on one account. You really have to be careful about who you trust. This town, for example, is a breath of fresh air, to be sure, and a good oasis for the weary. However, it does have a dark side.”

I scoff. “What settlement doesn’t? I mean, even a well-oiled machine like my Stable still has an odd person who steps out of line. I have half a mind to get the Secret and just trust it to this town.”

“Well, for starters, the town’s run by these bitches called th’ Citadel,” Slip Kid whispers. “They’s got spies everywhere. Nothin’ goes in or out o’ this town without ‘em knowin’. Hell, I’m damn surprised they ain’t gone an’ checked your ass out at the fuckin’ gates!”

Tourniquet nods. “They’re a rather ruthless bunch of Equalists. That is, anything that isn’t precisely equal, they quickly eliminate. Did you see the cutie marks of this town?”

I pause and think. The guards who wore their armor? No unique, colourful cutie marks on them. The townsfolk? Them too. The filly who briefly ran from a fruit stand to her mother as we made the turn to Slip’s the first time… I realize that, other than visitors, all the citizens of this town haven’t had cutie marks.

“They didn’t have any.”

Slip shakes his head. “Wrong. They all have fucking cutie marks. They’re all white slashes!”
The same scenes flash in my head. By Celestia, Slip’s right! Each and every pony involved has a plain white line where their cutie mark should have been!

“Why would they do that?” I ask.

“They call it Celestia’s Blood,” Tourniquet says, fishing out a mouthful of hay fries before continuing. “They say that when Celestia entered the Single Pegasus Project for the first time, she had her wings sheared half-off to fit inside the maneframe. When that happened, she bled white. The three ponies who were helping her get set up just before were so sickened by what Celestia was doing to herself as penance for the war, which she wholly blamed upon herself, that when they finished, they took her blood and smeared it upon themselves. Once Celestia took control, they left with the collected vats and left Equestria forever.”

“And they ended up here.”

Tourniquet sighed. “No. They did not. Two barely made it two feet out the front door when they were killed. A third managed to flee, injured, to a neighbouring town where a mother was nursing her injured daughter back to health. Two drops of Celestia’s Blood was said to cure any disease completely.”

“Did it?”

“No,” Tourniquet said. “But the mother, when she lost the child, left with the stallion and denied themselves their talents and cutie marks by painting a white diagonal line across their flanks. They wandered for a while, spreading medical aid and the religion of Equality wherever they went, and eventually became the first settlement in this town, on the edge of zebra country, near the war front at Shattered Hoof.”

I gasp. “How did they survive!? The zebras would have killed them on the spot.”

Tourniquet shook her head. “By the time they built the settlement, the war had ended in this area and no one, zebra or pony, was going to enter Shattered Hoof Ridge without a damn good reason. The scar Celestia had left behind tore the soul outta the place for about a hundred years. The subsequent balefire bomb left that foul blue mist that eats ponies alive, should they fall into the gouge.”

“Anydick,” Slip interrupted, “the Medical Facility was a’purposed by the Equestrian government an’ any record of it bein’ that disappeared. It became some re-edjamacation place, then was left to rot, then was razed to th’ ground last year. Shattered Hoof Town’s built on the ruins.”

“The current town shares its name with the Fortress, but it’s a separate settlement on the other side of the mountain.” Tourniquet interjected. “Occasionally, delegates try to get it to change its name, but we’re pretty proud of our little town.”

“So we were in New Canterlot territory the whole time?” I ask. “Wow. Are we still in it?”

“Yes, but the Citadel is in a dispute wi–”

Everything else she says is drowned out by a loud siren that echoes clearly in my head. When the noise stops, I see Tourniquet scramble for the door.

“What was that?” I inquire.

Tourniquet is busy waving ponies down and inviting them inside. I notice most of those pouring in are mares and foals.

Slip replies, “Tha’s th’Patriarch’s Call. It means th’Patriarch o’ th’Citadel’s gonna make his rounds soon.”

A random mare, her coat a brilliant ambrosia and half a head of silver hair, chimes in. “You new here, filly?”

I nod.

“Don’t get caught outside when the Patriarch’s guards come–”

A filly shrieks. “MAMA!”

I get up and push towards the window. Six unicorns are restraining an Earth pony mare, hind legs parted, facing away from us.

“What are…”

The ambrosia mare begins to shed a tear. “I’m sorry, newcomer. You shouldn’t see this.”

A large, red stallion clad in shimmering white robes steps forward, a morose frown upon his face. His high, nasal voice is like a buzzsaw to my brain, rending my thoughts apart to leave no room but for his ideas.

“Sister Chaste Serenity, it is with utmost sadness that I must punish you for your tardiness. As you well know, any mare caught outside after My Horn is subject to Submission Protocol.”

I could see the shadow of something bouncing against his belly. Chaste whimpers, then begins to struggle.

“No! Dammit, no!”

One of the Patriarch’s guards brings a hoof down hard upon the small of her back. Her child screams again. Most of the foals are crying.

I frown. “Is he…?”

A whimper from the ambrosia mare, who I’ll now call Amber because calling her such a long title is annoying the tar out of me, confirms my fears.

“That fucking bastard!”

As if hearing me, he glares at the house, then pans his eyes around.

“Remember, Sister Chaste, if order is broken, security from raiders cannot be ensured.”

With that, the punishment commences.

“Why the hell do they put up with that?!”

Our guests have left. Watching them leave, I very quickly note that none of the females walk with their heads held high, even among those that didn’t witness the atrocity before them. Even most of the fillies eyed their male peers with suspicion, while the colts trotted blissfully into the sun. I’m left stomping around the house, fuming my head off.

Slip frowned. “No diff’rent’n a raider camp. Brainless and ‘pressive .”

Tourniquet’s look hardened. “I want to tear the throat out of the Citadel. Seriously – the Patriarchy makes me sick. It has every single time I pass through this town.”
“But them ponies dun know no better, an’ most o’th’ mares’n stallions’re willin’ t’ put up wit’ a li’l loss o’ dignity f’their safety.” Slip mumbled.

“It’s true.” I turn in shock, but realize who is speaking. Apparently Amber has stayed behind. “I’d much rather be in here with civilized creatures than out there in the unknown, but I do so wish it didn’t involve such a degradation. I’m Leftov Centre, by the way. Sorry you had to wait so long for a proper introduction.”

…not what I’ve been expecting, given her name.

What.

She continued. “Frustration’s been mounting lately over the oppression of females, especially among the younger population. However, there are people older than us who performed the practice for their superiors willingly. They consider complete subservience to be the mark of a citizen of Einamir. Most of them learned from their fathers, and all of them were taught by the original Celestia’s Blessed.”

My intuition begins whispering into my ear. To confirm its suspicions, I look over at Tourniquet. “Must be the group that came from the mare and stallion you mentioned to me earlier.”

Leftov nods. “The youth are disenfranchised with the notion of that level of subservience, though. A wave of them even went through secret weddings, call themselves common law, or even simply move in together and fuck to avoid First Night Rights.”

I frown. “That doesn’t sound like a good thing.”

Leftov shook her head. “It isn’t. The Patriarch has laid claim to any girl’s virginity. Says you can’t fuck until he’s popped your cherry. Luckily, it’s not that enforced. Hell, after an event like this, there will be a wave of ponies losing their virginity. Unfortunately, not many of them will be by choice.”

As if to punctuate her point, a scream is heard from the alley nearby. I run to a window and peer out into the street.

There are six colts pounding a hysterical adult mare just outside the window! Not only that but four stallions are doing the same to a pair of crying fillies!

And they were cheering. Each! Other!! On!!!

I nearly retch all over the window, but manage to hold it in while I whip my head out of the frame. A dull thump echoes throughout the room as I collapse to the floor in equal parts fury and disgust. I empty my stomach onto the floor. I would not be entrusting the Secret to such a depraved place. At all.

I look over at Leftov. All traces of her formerly together demeanour have vanished entirely, replaced with a contorted, downcast slump and eyes pouring rivers of hate onto the floor. A blubbering whimper soon escaped her lips in a gasp.

“Help us. Please.”