Fallout: Equestria - Of Taint and Colts

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.”