Fallout: Equestria - Of Taint and Colts

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.