Fallout Equestria: The Isle of Hope

Chapter 2: Library Fees

 “You know, I really can imagine your plan not working,” the figure to the left of the small, round table said to the one on the right.

“Yes, well, it is much better than yours, filly-snatcher!” The amorphous figure on the right replied. “At least I did not put all of my eggs in the basket dependent on a single little foal realizing the nature of her bleak situation when she is more naïve than nearly any other pony in the entirety of history!”

They both paused, imperceptible eyes locking in a form of conflict that reached beyond words. I just found this all to be fascinating as I sat across the circular table from them, riveted, to hear these non-creatures’ heated debate.

“Also,” the figure on the left continued with a smug color to her tone, “what kind of name is Nightmare Moon, anyway? Why not just The Nightmare? Doesn’t that just have a more powerful ring to it?”

“No, I need a name befitting my regal aims, and what is more majestic than the moon?” The figure on the right replied.

Huh, super powerful evil egos in my dreams. That’s new.

“Regality is a waste of time if you can’t even be successful for more than a few hours when given a second chance!” The figure on the left exasperatedly said. “At least you managed to find a second wind! Most of us get tossed aside and are stuck with the consequences.”

I started getting the feeling that they do this often because they paused again, measuring their respective opposite up, and, since I was the one dreaming, I got bored of the silence and stood to stretch my legs and make this more interesting by telling them, with their lack of awareness of me, how I felt.

“You two are boring, you know?” I rhetorically asked. “How could a couple of centuries old evil beings sink as low as this? Pfft, couldn’t I be dreaming of something a little more present and realistic, like being a superpony or something?”

I laughed at their lack of reaction and my ability to freely mock what history told me was one of the most vicious and powerful magic users in the entire world.

“Hello? Hello!” I shouted repeatedly, moving directly next to where the vaguely pony shaped shadowy figures’ ear would be while waving my legs in between them.

I adopted a pose much like talking into a microphone as a talk show host and tapped the invisible receiver before continuing. “This is your daily news report, and this information just came in!"

I figured it best to throw in a dramatic silence to sell this.

"Wait, never mind, apparently my sources tell me that you are actually a has-been, all washed up, and old news after all... Sorry for the confusion!”

I paused, admiring my joke crafting which, admittedly, was most certainly lacking in hindsight.

I inhaled deeply and leaned forward even farther in preparation, placing my hooves around my mouth for a focusing effect to make myself as perfectly clear as a crystal pony.

“I greatly grow tired of this,” the figure on the right grumbles between what sounds like gritted teeth.

My mouth was caught, inches from the creature, half open, and I felt sweat beginning to form on my forehead. Quickly, I jumped back, landing on my hooves with a deftness I can only seem to manage in dreamland, unsure of what just happened.

They couldn’t mean me, could they?

The heads of the figures rotated faster than I thought this question, revealing slits of what ought to have been eyes that were, instead, burning with a blazing red light. I took a step back as the two began making a noise akin to a laugh but terrible, choppy, and inequine. My hoof sank into something soft and much more giving than the unforgiving, tiled floor. A part of me screamed to not take my eyes off of the two horrors in front of me, but morbid curiosity called and I had to answer.

“Oh,” I said as I took in the puddle forming around my hooves.

Lifting the one that lead to the discovery, I saw the cause of the squishy feeling. There, half stuck and half dangling, a single white, round mass with an iris of a pleading, pure green in its center bobbed while giving me an accusing glare.

“Don’t you just hate when that happens?” A wickedly jolly mare’s voice hisses from directly behind me.

My mane stood on end as I whirled on the spot, face to face with a new black figure of much greater definition and clarity. I closed my eyes and held up a hoof in defense against the malicious intent on those razor edged words.

“Hey, woah! Watch where you swing that thing!” Another new voice said, half chortling.

“Huh?” I said as I barely cracked one eye open, still defensively keeping my limb shield lifted.

I snapped my eyes wide open and took in the sudden transformation.

What had been a room that seemed to stretch infinitely in all directions with cruel stone artwork and the air of a mortuary had turned into a fairly cozy shack with a scrap metal roof and old, driftwood floors. In front of me, sitting near to my right side on the edge of the bed, holding between her fetlocks what seemed to me to be a cross between an old, small, shapely wooden wine cask with strings and a rigid bow with an old piece of cloth stretched along its length, was a charcoal earth pony mare with a short, curly, scarlet mane, and giggling green eyes that I could have easily mistaken for Dusty’s if only they had carried some semblance of emotional weight in them.

“Why am I tied down?” I asked while realizing I could not sit up or move any limb except the one I had managed to pull free in my sleep. “What is this place and who are you?”

“Ah! You know, just the realm of shadows and spookey-ookie creatures, to which I am their queen!” She replies while she sets her things down against the wall behind her and raises both forehooves to wave them in a mock threatening manner.

She giggled, and I sat resigned, stone faced without an ounce of humor left in me as I noticed the pounding headache that just decided to introduce itself as well.

“Oh, you sourpuss, I am Cerulean Joy, but all my friends call me Cerul!” She said with an airy tone that was the closest to serious that I could imagine her using. “And, since I try to make everyone my friend, you can call me that!”

“Okay… Cerul, is it?” I asked, a bit dryly.

She vigorously nodded, smiling in her happy oblivion.

“Well, I am Starwind Solace, and, now that we are acquainted, can you tell me why I am tied to this bed?” I asked.

“It ish because you broke into our Shtar Church and tried to burn it down, you little arshonist!” A slurred, older, male voice erupted from a green stallion with a filthy, slicked back, black mane who I noticed was in the opposite corner of the room. “You know how hard it ish for Cerulean to clean it alone?” He points to the charcoal mare with the laughing eyes, hiccupping openly.

“Not really that hard, papa,” she replied in an earnest tone. “Actually, it was kinda fun because the tapestry she charred always did have this nasty little habit of being boring, and I got to repaint it with my classic flair. I’d be willing to bet it is, at least, twenty percent cuter!”

Her grin pointed to us both in turn, and the grizzled stallion just growled in response before he continued his overly loud tirade.

“Sho, why are you here in the firsht place?”

“Well, sir, I don’t know who you are or what is going on here, so I can’t say why I was in the area without you telling me why I should trust you,” I replied with ice forming on every syllable.

I don’t like the kind of pony the world was turning me into.

“I have thish.” He pointed out a shotgun hidden behind an end table next to the wall he was leaning against. “And I have little patience for people who don’t ansher my questions!”

“Alright, alright.” I held up my freed hoof and waved it in his general direction.

“I am a researcher who was studying old book repositories when my group was attacked by ghouls and wiped out,” I answered with most of the truth. “After managing to escape using a new form of magic I had just picked up, I wound up in the church since it was the first place I could think of in the rush.”

Squinting quizzically at him I paused to allow myself time to discern a more careful route through this conversation. “Speaking of which, did you say earlier that it was your Star Church?”

“Mhmm! Papa and his organization claimed Star Church years ago and –“

“Be quiet, girl!” A hoof strike to the cheek and this sobering statement from her father silenced Cerul. “She is not one of us, and so she doesn’t need to know any of that!”

Drip. Drip.

There went the drops, falling into the bucket one by one.

“A researcher of booksh, huh?” He asked me. “Do you think you could find a particular book if I told you where it wash, and that it was written in ancient equestrian?”

Clearing the rising red from the corners of my sight, I replied slowly. “Yes, I could easily do that, but only if you let me go without any trouble and give me all of my belongings back.”

“How would I know you wouldn’t try to run away or worsh?" He asked, raising an eyebrow. “How 'bout I give you your belongingsh back after the trade ish done?”

“Fine,” I answered quickly as the stench of blood and filth and old books wafted through my memories to remind me of my burden.

“Good." He directed my path with the pointing of a hoof. "The book was lasht known to be in the library of an old shchool seven miles that way, and they should be black bound and written in red ink.”

“Could I, at least, know why you would want this archaic book?” I asked as Cerul began freeing my limbs in her silence.

“No,” he coldly replied as he stumbled from the room, slamming the door behind him.

“What would a drunk with an abusive tendency need with some old religious book in a language he probably can’t even read?” I asked, internally.

I never have good answers for my own questions, it seems, as I shrugged outwardly.

With my limbs freed, I rolled out of the old, stiff bed, and turned towards the wall to stretch before turning back around to ask Cerul a few things, but, as my eyes swept the room, I found that she had somehow vacated the room in the second or two in which she was out of sight without any audible indicators of her exit.

“Wow,” I said, impressed with her magic free feat as I headed towards the door which lead to the outside, pausing to pick up a comb in front of a very old and scarred mirror.

My magic faltered a bit, causing the comb to fall from its grasp as I attempted to run it through my tangled mass of a mane.  I never did much like how new, high level spells drained my stamina so quickly, and this new teleportation magic was a doozy.

I lifted the comb more carefully this time and began straightening out my bed hair while closing my eyes to attempt to hear a few small sounds from in the distance. I could make out the scuffle of hooves on polished tile, the low voices of gossiping mares passing by, and the slow patter of the community showers as Polish and Ivory twitter on about Dusty’s new policies on shampoo rationing. A prodding thought ran through my mind, and I realized that it is most likely true. Opening my eyes, the sounds faded and dried up in the stale air as I saw a mare with dirt on her nose and chips of concrete in her slightly realigned hair.

All the companionship I would know for the foreseeable future was just there, staring back at me from the stained, glossy surface.

Truthfully, I always thought this mare was plain to see at an average height and weight with purple eyes, a black coat and a silver mane that carried a few streaks of gold, purple, and black in the layers beneath. Daddy always said they named me after a strong wind that cleared the sky for a short time as I was born, and that I reminded them of the nebulas, galaxies, and Stars they were astonished to see for the first time in their lives. I couldn’t see much of that in me, so I tended to just think I looked astonishingly ordinary.

Shaking out the shudders that passed through me at memories threatening to make their home in my waking, aching mind again, I decided it best to just get a move on with the task at hoof. As I walked out of the shack, the daylight caused me to squint to see Cerul drawing water from an old, partially rusted well spigot in order to carry it to a plot of tilled land that contained wheat and small sections of other crops that were almost matured, and I figured it best for her if I didn’t cause her any more trouble with her father. She seemed like a nice enough pony, so I decided to be careful about how I interacted with her around that old drunk.

I checked my surroundings to better know the area for my return and found my way to an old, dirt road that ran the length of the route, starting from the small farm and church and began the trek with the morning humidity promptly dashing my efforts at looking decent.

“Lovely, frizz,” I complained quietly. The day was already too long.

After a mile or two of quiet, headache riddled steps over hilly, nondescript terrain I decided to take a rest under the shade of a small, dead tree that had been blown into a diagonal resting position by some storm in its lifetime.

“You and I are a lot alike, tree,” I said to its branches. “You couldn’t stop the winds of change and neither could I, it seems.”

I paused, watching the shadows of its thin branches play on the surface of my coat before continuing.

“Of course, you are a little luckier than me in that, at least, you aren’t being driven insane enough by all of this to start talking to inanimate objects.”

I sighed as a breeze caught something loose nearby, and a noise like that of collapsing wood drew my attention to the side of the tree opposite of me. I jumped to my hooves and magically struggled to lift a loose rock about the size of my head from the ground as I slowly walked a large arc around the perimeter to spot the source.

Nothing.

Well, mostly nothing.

On the ground, about twenty feet from the base of the tree and over a small hill, was a large, wooden crate, a little larger than the average pony, and on its face in bold, white, fading print the three letters “MMM” smiled back at me.

My breath was swept away like the dust swirling at my hooves. MMM brand snack cakes, known as the pre-war epitome of culinary artistry in portable form, were my one Achilles heel.

It was one of them, anyway.

I flung the rock away without care for its direction and attempted to scale the side of the box in less time than should have been possible for my worn down body. This was met with poor results. The box began to tilt as I scrambled for footing on the smooth sided frame, my weight too much for it to stay upright, and I fell, rolling down the slight embankment. The object of my desires was visibly following my lead as I got my eyes cleared of the debris that had found their new home in them. As the lip of the lidless crate hit the earth, a plume of red and brown was created, obscuring the opening, and, with the grace of a bowling ball, a messy, gray blur rolled out. My hooves couldn’t find traction as they dug into the loose sediment in an attempt to dodge the oncoming creature, and I felt the full weight of another pony land solidly on my back before collapsing under the strain.

“Thanks for the catch, Starry!” Cerul’s cheerful voice announced from above me.

I could only manage a muffled grunt due to my mouth being full of dead grass, dirt, and an annoyed beetle that had not managed to escape in time.

She responded while shaking off the red dust that had settled in her fur. “Oh, I followed you because I know the lay of the land better and felt bad about having my papa put you into this situation, silly!”

I glared at her, spitting out the horrible tasting concoction.

How did she understand what I was trying to say from just that very unattractive noise I made?

“I am just good at interpreting people and what they are trying to say, even when they can’t really talk very well! It’s why I am so good at making friends!” She replied, again baffling me.

“In any case,” I interjected before she can get to speaking again, “you should head back because if it is dangerous, I would rather not put you in harm’s way.”

A small rustling of the weeds between us, accompanied with a rising, strangled hissing noise caused us to jump apart, Cerul landed in a very fluid attack stance, fore hooves low and ready, while I landed in the awkward stance of a pony whose idea of combat consisted of how long I could fight off sleep while reading. That is to say, I caught my descent with my face.

“A radsnake!” I said to Cerul. “Watch, here is a great example. I can take care of this type of thing!”

I flared my magic up, just barely managing to lift a small boulder from nearby and brought it down, hard, upon the location of where I thought the snake was.

“There!” I said happily. “I knew I could take care of whatever comes my way! Hahaha hawa –“

The head of a radiation infused adder, as broad as my hoof, rose from below the rock, shrugging off the weight of the stone with little trouble. Its yellow and green eyes with split pupils bored into me as I realized I had no idea what I was doing out in the wastes with weakened magic and nonexistent combat prowess. Having pulled the length of its body out, the snake began to coil, preparing for a strike on the creature that inconvenienced its life today. I turned to run, and the snake leapt with a greater speed, fangs bared.

A flash of scarlet and gray, the meaty thud of flesh on flesh, and a small whirlwind of sand and pebbles brought my attention back around to see that Cerulean had not only managed to cut the snake off in mid strike with a well-placed hoof blow, but that she was circling the snake at her top speed to dizzy him. With unnaturally agile legs, Cerul became a streak through the cloud as she was steadily herding the snake toward a nearby sinkhole.

“Don’t worry Star!” I heard her say over the pounding of her hooves. “This is a piece of cake!”

The radsnake was neatly deposited into the deep hole with a hiss as it fell, and Cerul began to slow in order to skid to a stop with a small wobble in front of me.

“You can close your mouth now, Starwind. I know I have gotten slow since I had to stop running this season to tend the crops,” she said with a serious face and a drooping of her ears.

“No, I am not saying that!” I protested. “That… I… I don’t even… What are you?”

She laughed as a mischievous shadow fell over her face.

“Speaking of cake,” she continued in her natural timbre while ignoring me. “I never did find any MMM in that crate back there. Is that not just THE WORST POSSIBLE THING?”

I stared dumbly. One minute she is a speed demon pony who could create literal tornados to kill snakes, and the next she is mourning the lack of snack cakes.

“Actually, I feel pretty bad about that snake too,” she replied to my expression with a frown. “He was just upset that we disturbed his sleep, the poor little guy.”

“Hm. Well, I can’t say he was really all that little, but I get your point,” I admitted.

“You know the way better than I do, and I will cause less trouble with you around to keep me from any situations like this.” I spread my hooves in defeat. “So… I suppose you can tag along.”

“YAY!” Cerul yelled while bouncing on her hooves back towards the road, waiting there for me to follow her.

Shaking my head in a mixture of confusion and suppression of my own laughter, I headed back and the two of us continued our walk to cover the last few miles.

After a few minutes of silence, which I could only assume must be like being near comatose for her, Cerulean began a conversation to pass the time.

“It isn’t a wine cask with strings, by the way,” she said from in front of me, turning her head. “It’s a violin. The only one I could manage to come up with out of spare parts, anyway!” She smiled at the last word.

“I made the violin and bow myself from an old textbook that I found in the church’s small library,” she continued. “It is hard to keep in tune, and probably would frighten an old Equestria player to death to even call it an instrument, but that’s what it is to me.”

“You made a violin?” I asked incredulously. “That’s… really impressive, actually! I have come across musical lore and fabrication methods a few times while reading, and I can’t say that I could manage to make something that sounded legitimate from those objects, let alone while having read only a single book on the subject!”

I smiled back at her, my curiosity peaking a bit at new knowledge I didn’t have... yet!

“Yeah… well, papa doesn’t let me play much,” she said while turning away quickly. “He thinks it’s a waste of time.”

“I bet he does,” I said with a touch of frustration in my tone.

“You know…” I started to say out loud, but, on a second thought, finished in my head while hoping she couldn’t read my mind without looking at me.

You don’t have to let him treat you so poorly…

Silence fell between us as the moment passed like the ragged breath of a dying pony.

Feeling bad about the awkwardness I helped to create again, I tried to strike up some stronger dialogue.

“You said there was a library in the church? I never knew that, and I have been there a few times! Is that what this is all about, filling out the library?”

“No, it…” Cerul stopped walking for a moment to stare at the dirt with her full focus. “It’s complicated. My father, Shepard, he was once a leader of an organization that believed something similar to the Star Church’s originating system of beliefs, and, for the time, they were helping ponies and doing true, honest to the goddesses, good.”

She released a pent up sigh.

“But, there was a split in the highest leaders’ opinions over time, and, long story short, they all went their own ways, leaving my father nothing but a little filly to raise on his own and a closet’s worth of dreams that he doesn’t believe he will ever see come to be. This book is just one of a few relics from his past that he wants back, to give him a little more strength to hold on to the good in this world. He may not look it, but my father is a strong, good stallion, and he loves me more than it seems.”

She turned to look into my eyes and I looked into her’s as they lightly glistened in the midday heat.

“I… I didn’t realize,” I stammered. “I’m sorry I brought up something so personal. I didn’t intend to do that.”

She shook her head, picking up that smile that she almost always carried, making me smile in return as she said “It’s alright. He is rough around the edges, but he is my dad, and I love him despite how he may sometimes act.”

I nodded and she turned back to pick up our pace.

 “The book, itself? I only know that it is one of the last remaining texts on ancient zebra legend after some government book destruction thingy wiped out most of their history in Equestria except for the stuff that made them out to be wicked and scaryrific. Ya know, the enemies of our Equestria and all that stuff that the posters and billboards still say after all these years? That is mostly all that is left.”

Zebra lore? I may be tempted to keep that for myself since it is as rare as she says! She doesn’t know much of her own country’s history if she can’t recall that it was the Ministry of Image, under the leadership of Rarity herself that purged practically all academic material in Equestria to the tailored needs of the country. A terrible loss, to be sure, but, what is past has passed, and it hardly matters now. It is up to ponies like me, who care about our past and our future to take care of such things, so why shouldn’t I find a way to keep it? It isn’t like Shepard will know…

I really don’t like the pony I am turning into.

I shook my head to clear out the deceitful thinking.

I had a promise to keep, and that meant more than any book.

 I smiled, content with the higher road, and I realized that Cerul had been talking continuously while I was lost in thought.

“… and that is why I think I know how Equestria was really created! Don’t you think that’s just the bee’s knees, Star?” She asked me, giddy with herself.

“Uh… yeah, sure! You hit the nail on the head with that one!” I  lied with an awkward chuckle and the hope that she wouldn't question me further.

She didn’t and I released my held breath as we started seeing the outskirts of an old, half destroyed town with a plot of four or five buildings and little else except for a large billboard rising above the landscape. On it, where “Pinkie Pie is Watching… Forever!” would normally be written alongside her large, watchful, creepy face, a new coat of green paint had created a sort of free canvas space where, in white lettering, somepony had written “Reconcile yourselves and find the Truth!”

An uncomfortable feeling arose from within me as I was compelled to start drifting through ideas on this, but I pushed that to the back of my mind as Cerulean announced our proximity to the school.

“We’ll be there in a minute or two!” She said. “It is just on the opposite side of this little village. I like to imagine that little hedgehogs and critters from before the war still live here because, otherwise, this place gives me the spooks!”

She laughed and half sighed, making me shiver, and rightfully so since the dilapidated buildings did not really give the slightest hint of hospitality or welcome. Most of the four standing structure had, at least, one fallen wall, and all of them were lacking roofs entirely. The fifth, with an old coat of peeling blue and brown paint, still had the main components of a decent structure, but, for a reason unknown to me, the front, and only, door was chained, triple locked, and boarded over as if whoever left the place didn’t want to keep ponies out so much as keep something else inside. The air in the place certainly didn’t help either since it carried with it a twang of copper and salt which made me feel slightly sick to my stomach.

I could definitely see Cerul’s point. Damn spooky, indeed.

“Hold on a second,” Cerul whispered with a swift raising of her hoof to keep me from advancing any farther. “There it is, and it looks like there may be a raider nest inside.”

Peering around her leg, I spotted the blackened two story structure. It wasn’t a very large school by any means, but that was probably why the ministry glossed over its library as an unlikely place to find rare books. Above the main entrance to the building, a ladder held a sickly orange colored pony aloft as he painted words in red where once there was the name of the school in off-white.

“How can you tell there is a raider nest?” I asked. “Couldn’t it just be somepony putting up graffiti like on the sign before we came into town? They don’t have to be malicious.”

She tightened up her face and squinted a bit as she began to read the text he had just written.

“Bloodbucket’s Place! If you aren’t selling dash, apple off or banana die!”

“Apple off or banana die?” I puzzled, concerned that her reading skills may be far worse than I could have expected.

“They don’t actually say that, Starry, but I think some words are just plain rude and make ponies sour, so I like to substitute them for sweet things, like candy and fruit!” Cerul replied. “Nothing sweeter than the surprise of kind words!”

I, once again, stared at her for a slack jawed eternity.

“Alright… well, no sense waiting around,” I said, pushing past her hoof and trotting towards the distant stallion. “Let’s go see if we can at least make a friend of this ‘Bloodbucket’, and maybe make his life a little sweeter.”

“Star!” Cerul loudly whispered. “What are you doing? You are going to get yourself banana killed!”

She used her speed advantage over me to catch up, nervously pulling me back with gentle tugs on my tail.

“Just trust me,” I urged, “I won’t let myself fall prey to the assumption that everyone in the wasteland is inherently bad. I will not let myself be brought down by this place more so than I already have been!” Her face contorted in confusion as she continued with more gusto to try and pull me back.

I magically opened her mouth against her will and began running toward the figure.

“Hey, you!” I called to the orange stallion standing on a small platform above the doorway. “Can you come down here? I have a few questions to ask!”

The stallion dropped his brush and spun around in place only to lose his balance as one of his hooves slid of the edge of the narrow ledge, and he proceeded to flail his limbs as he fell the remaining fifteen or so feet to the ground.

Between his groans I used a mending spell to patch a few cuts he sustained from the journey to the ground.

“You should be more careful, sir,” I said with a confined giggle.

“What do you fuckin’ care?” The stallion replied as he tried to stand to dust himself off. “Haven’t you and the rest of Bloodbucket’s gang had enough of messing with me?”

Cerul stepped forward from her place of hiding behind me, which I had not noticed until then, and replied to this before I could open my mouth.

“Hi, mister! I’m Cerulean Joy and this is Starwind Solace, and we most certainly are not gang members.”

She stuck her tongue out at him as he lifted a weary pair of eyes to size us up.

“You’re right about that,” he said. “Two ponies as cute as you probably would have been used up and spent long ago in this joint. What are you doin’ around here? You should get away if ya know what’s good for you.”

“We’re here to check out the library. Why don’t you get away if it is so bad to be around this place?” I asked.

“Bloodbucket,” He replied simply. “He took my family and trapped them inside the blue house in town. Says he will only keep them alive as long as I work for him, the disgusting bastard. That’s why I am out here painting with… well, look for yourselves.”

Levitating down the bucket from its perch above, the stench of it arrived before the sight, and I finally figured out why the town smelled as badly as it does.

“Blood in a bucket…” Cerul said quietly, holding a hoof to her mouth.

“Yeah, how fitting, right?” The orange stallion asked. “A bucket full of blood to mark the territory of Bloodbucket. It’s sick, if you ask me, but no one around here cares what Toothpick has to say.”

“Well, Toothpick, I think I might try my hand at talking this Bloodbucket into two trades today,” I stated, no doubt clouding my confidence.

“Yeah, and if she doesn’t I will definitely put an end to… whatever this is.” Cerul said boldly while pointing at the bucket and at the blue and mold colored house.

“Look, you two can get yourselves killed if you want, and I won’t stop ya, but please don’t get my family killed,” he pleaded. “Just leave me and them out of your conversation, and go your own way. I think you’re nice ponies, so I hope you can find a way to make it out of there alright, but I hope you know that it is somethin’ awful through those doors. Far worse than out here, and it’s probably suicide to even try what you’re planning.”

Cerulean and I solemnly nodded in unison, sure.

“Here,” Toothpick said with a rustle of his saddlebag and a tossing of something metallic. “Take these keys. They should get you inside most any room in there, so, if I were you, I would just sneak in and sneak out without causing any trouble or alerting a soul. Otherwise you may find your blood in the bucket I have to paint with tomorrow.”

With that said, Toothpick began a brisk walk toward the town to leave us to our fate.

Cerul pulled me over and looked deep into my eyes, the jovial light that usually was in her’s was replaced with something I couldn’t name.

“You sure you want to do this, Star?” She asked a little too seriously. “I can fare pretty well on my own in a fight, but I know you haven’t had to fend for your life out here before. I think we’re doing good by that pony, Toothpick, and giving his family justice by helping them out, but I could probably do this alone. You don’t have to put yourself at risk!”

“Look,” I replied slowly. “I owe it to a lot of ponies to start being proactive and seeking out the best of others in the world, and if that means getting my hooves a little dirty, I will wade through any amount of muck.”

Cerul continued her stare, measuring my honesty and intentions. I felt confusion, guilt, and a little twinge of fear creeping into my thoughts as her unwavering gaze pinned me to the spot. A moment passed as a small gust kicked up the loose chaff at our hooves. She let go of my shoulders, took a step back, and grinned as a look of certainty and some form of satisfaction played on her face.

My thoughts raced at the whiplash of emotion Cerul managed to just create.

Who was this mare, really?

“Alright!” She cheered. “Let’s go free us some prisoners and grab a book!”

I smiled at this and turned to try the small ring of four keys on the outer door until the dirtiest of them finds its home and turned to allow us entry to the next step of our heroic crusade.

Small intestine, a liver, half of a lung, and the head of some young, smiling stallion with a bloody grimace sat in the center of the rounded room on the stained, ceramic front desk of the old school. Above the gore, on the level of our eyes, like streamers of a welcome party to hell, strands of sinew and flesh dripped the fluids of decay and age, and I felt the pressing sense that Toothpick might have been underselling the truth of this place.

My medical texts came to me in flashes.

The liver filters the toxins of the body, and, in modern ponykind, is irreplaceable without an assisted dialysis machine or clarification talisman.

I tripped, catching myself at the last moment before my nose became one with the pools around the two of us, my limbs stiffening from a lack of oxygen as I found my stomach churning.

Your brain has enough electricity in its synapse pathways to power a small alarm clock. Modern medical researchers have concluded that ponies as batteries would be a terrible idea as millions of ponies would be needed to power anything significant, and that is quite impractical.

Cerulean’s head fell to my level, a face full of terror and anguish playing a moving picture show of how a sane pony ought to react to all of this, as she slowly lifted me to my hooves.

Death is defined as the decay of every active cell in the body. In this manner, we are all dying since birth.

With six quiet, long steps, the two of us found our ragged way past the sights and smells of murder and into the lone, long hallway, lined with lockers and the old pasted up posters of the popular crowd of days long gone

“How… those were once a pony or… ponies,” Cerul whispered from beside me, keeping her composure together by a thread.

“Bloodbucket,” I gasped out in between the retching. “It looks like he really likes to live up to his name.”

We stopped, calming down while scrutinizing the stretches of paper on the walls, hoping for some sense of direction in their shallow words, but found the interior light inadequate for this purpose. We continued with our heartbeats and breathing becoming more arrhythmic and muffled, as we spotted a hanging sign above an open entryway to an unknown room with an orange light coming from inside allowing us a glimpse into its nature. Staring, wide eyed, into the dim, dead head-space, I made out the words “Library: Expand Your Mind!” in smudged, purple and white text as we approach at a crawl.

“Buckets and buckets and buckets of blood!” A frantic male voice chanted in a grinding monotone. “All of this blood must be cleansed from your bodies and I will find a place for it all!”

I felt my limbs moving at the pace of my racing thoughts, rounding the corner into the room with a small skid, taking in the executions before me.

A lone, sweat stained unicorn stallion was sitting with mountains of books surrounding him and a small barrel funneling smoke from the contained fire up into a hole in the ceiling. He was pulling page after page out and throwing them into the blaze, cackling with delight as he continued his chant to the sacrificed literature.

“Well, that is…not what I expected,” I stated earnestly.

Cerul’s hoof, flying with stinging force, clamped my mouth closed before I realized my folly.

“YOU CAN’T HAVE THEM. THESE BEAUTIFUL BLEEDING ONES ARE MINE AND VOLT’S!” The insane pony shouted as he cast off the loose paper covering his resting body in a cloud of white and red text.

Reacting to the flurry of energy, stress, and the dull burn of a receding headache, the blue bleeding into my vision captured the head of the rushing stallion and I felt the medical texts again as they emptied my magic into him. The final fifteen feet, his ragdoll of a body solidly slammed to the linoleum and slid to a rest inches from our point of entry.

Cerul quickly jumped in front of me and jabbed a hoof into my chest. “What was that? You said you wanted to try and talk it out with him, not kill him! Starry, I thought I read you as a better pony than that!”

Her loudly whispered words and the sudden heart rate spike from the last few minutes left me feeling a bit woozy.

“Anesthesia,” I murmured quickly in hushed tones. “I haven’t had to touch that spell since I made a few rounds on the medical circuit for my hometown’s clinic years ago. He isn’t dead. He’s just knocked out. I don’t murder ponies.”

Those last few words were meant more for my own introspection than for Cerulean.

Cerul elevated the stallions head in her hooves, sensing his slow breathing. “You are full of surprises, Star. I thought you went and killed him, but this is a way better option!”

If only she knew that he was probably suffering withdrawals from a dash addiction, and that he would probably die in this sleep or wake to suffer until his end in a day or two.

Again, the crack within my heart widened.

“Let’s just get to seeing if we saved the book we came to find,” I said with the precise words of a surgeon at work. “I’ll check his pockets and baggage for the access keys to the blue house while you get started on that.”

Cerul used her usual speed to pour through the books closest to the fire while I inspected the disgusting pile of wasted potential lying before me. I used my magic to save myself the filth of the task, and in searching his jacket pockets found a bundle of wet rags, a pencil, and three empty inhalers.

No dice.

The only other container of sufficient size to merit checking rested around his neck on a string, and, gently, I lifted this free to dump its contents into the same area as the other hidden items.

With a small gasp of anticipation, a single key bounced twice with a hollow ringing sound.

Thinking back, I mentally counted the size and sheer number of the restraining bolts, chained locks, and other devices to come up with a large disparity that would require many more than just that key.

I frowned in frustration, glancing up to see how far Cerul had come in her pursuits, and I noted that she had found her way to the final book tower before she would move on to the ten shelves spanning the rectangular space. Looking around for any point at which I could continue my search, I spotted a small glass window hidden behind a row of shelves in the back left corner that looked into what could be the librarian’s office.

“A more secure space would make sense as a hiding spot for more valuable items,” I reasoned to myself under my breath.

With the ease of someone who has waded through a large number of book storage facilities in the past, I manipulated my way through all of the clutter to find a metal door with a rusted keyhole keeping me from the contents within.

A small sign, scotch taped loosely to the exterior drew my interest briefly.

Gone to Manehattan for conference! Be back soon!

-Head Librarian PB

Good ponies caught in the chaos of a war greater than themselves, suffering the consequences of thrones and fools. What a pity it is to know what we lost for pride.

Shaking off the ghosts and choosing to hope that it was left unlocked, I tried the handle and found it stuck fast with the security bolt acting as my only deterrent.

Key chain, don’t fail me now!

The first key, a failure.

The second, a bust.

The third, another waste of time.

The fourth just added to the pure agitation.

My mind was spinning with possibilities, ranging from breaking the glass to attempting to use a little elbow grease and the information from the copies of Locks and Locks: Flufflepuff’s Guide to All Things Security that I had read, to gain entrance when I remembered the lonesome key I gained from the knocked out Bloodbucket.

It slid in tantalizingly, and the glee I felt extended further than should have been possible for unlocking a door as it caught firmly and opened.

Since a coat of dust was thick to the touch on all of the furniture and floor except for a small business drawer and a line of hoofsteps leading up to it, I assumed it was the most likely candidate in which to check for recent additions.

Feeling a light feeling that toyed with my unstable state, I can’t say that I didn’t feel a little bit like Daring Do raiding an ancient treasure trove as I walked the ten, one foot long square tiles towards the sliding file container, expecting a trapdoor or planned ambush.

A latch, magically pulled free, and a small amount of force applied to drag the box out revealed a larger ring of keys, similar to the one I already had, a bottle of sparkle cola, a few more spent inhaler cartridges, and, buried beneath all of this, a wallet sized book with a note attached matched with a brace like device that looks to be intended to be worn on the leg.

Gathering the items and putting them to one side of me, I set to the other side the book with the note and the wearable device for curiosity’s sake.

The note, unfolded and read, went something like this:

I came today to deliver your knew toy from RD, but I saw that you had left to Manehattan! Now, I know you are aware of how to use this, but, just to be sure there isn’t a repeat of the whole incident with the cheesecake, I have installed an easy to follow guide to basic maintenance and control for you. All of TS’s dialogues on those books you were wanting to research are also included. You’re welcome for that. It really wasn’t an easy task to gather just that little bit of information on the subject, so I hope you are content with it all. Anyway, I’ll leave this short to keep from rambling more than usual.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Sincerely,

Volt

After carefully folding the note back up and placing it in a small zipper pocket inside my saddle bag, I opened the wallet sized case to find five tools that looked to be made for very specific purposes, and my suspicions were sated when I spied a small emblem with the initials “S.T” in one corner.

If I believed in gods and goddesses, I would have fallen to my face to thank the technology deities for the gift as I dropped everything else to pick up and rotate over the brace in order to see the flat surface hidden from view.

In bold print, traditional for Stable Tech and their branding strategies, the word PipBuck and the number 6000 were clearly present above a four inch screen which was mounted with a few buttons surrounding it in the middle of the device.

PipBucks, what many considered the height of arcane technological innovation pre-war and up to today, were some of the most coveted and underutilized pieces of tech out in the wild. This was mostly because organizations, like the Steel Rangers, held the majority of them for use by those who couldn’t use power armor, but, on the rare occasion when one was free to be used by a normal creature in the wasteland, it was typically short lived due to a lack of understanding of how rare and powerful an advantage and risk just one can be.

I was no fool, and I felt that I had a fair amount of knowledge about them, so this worry about what kind of target I would become was present, but intrigue trumps worry every time.

With immeasurable glee, I found the seam and junctions of the PipBuck and quickly matched up the screws with the correct tool in the wallet-sized pouch.

Three pops and a whir of invisible mechanical components later, I had an open, willing PipBuck awaiting its orders, asking me if I was ready for the taste of beautiful, matte painted majesty.

Oh, yes, please!

The cold, dense weight of the sturdy contraption rested naturally on my left foreleg as the screen came to life with a bright blue tone welcoming me to the next generation of augmented living.

It has been 77380 days since last boot. New User Detected.

Connecting Neural Web and Syncing Profile…

Success! Your PipBuck 6000 Limited Edition Black is ready for use!

Afterwards, the screen displayed a long stream of code as a batch file ran prior to the interface being fully useful.

Once the formalities of the boot process had passed, I noticed a bouncing audio tape covering most of the screen with the text “Twilight’s Opinion” flashing alongside it.

From what I remembered of PipBuck maintenance, I found the accept button and opened the urgent message to let it play over the external speaker.

“Zebra history?” An older mare’s voice echoed in the small space as she paused nervously. “I don’t know much about their magic, its origin, or use other than a bit of training I had to have to help fix a few problems in Ponyville, and those books you asked about are not common anymore…due to a few choices by our ministries.

“Truthfully, Zecora was the only one who would know enough about this to be helpful since she was able to handle the poison joke and Trixie with the alicorn amulet, but… well, you know…” she paused somberly. “Anyway, I know that there are particular books of zebra magic that are some of the most dangerous objects one can hold, and extreme caution should be had with them.

“However, if you want to find out more about these books, I suggest you take a look in the Manehattan public library,” she whispered, conspiratorially. “I hear that those who aren’t tardy to the conference will get some special access to the restricted collection.”

Static began to bleed through and the audio cut off.

A beep drew my attention to the screen of the PipBuck, and I saw a small topographical map with a dotted line leading from an arrow to a destination that looked like a large city where a line of text read “Manehattan Conference.”

Manehattan? Zebra magic and lore? What an odd librarian.

“Did you say you heard voices from Bloodbucket’s room?” A voice cut through the small library from the hall outside like a blade through my chest.

My heartbeat picked up, and I lifted my eyes to look through the glass of the office in order to place the voices. Red bars were floating in my vision and I blinked quickly to get whatever they were out of the way, so I could see the full breadth of the situation. The bars remained as they moved toward the doorway, but I ignored them as best I could as I spotted Cerul bouncing slowly through the shelving aisles on her way to the center.

My hooves kicked up the dust on the floor as I sprinted, measuring the distance to her and the distance from the voices to the doorway, and time slowed as I saw the red bars turning into the room to become five black leather clad, armed ponies.

“Fuckers killed ‘im!”

I had twenty feet, a turn, and ten feet to get to her first.

Their guns rose, some in magic and some in mouth.

I turned the corner.

Cerul’s head broke into their lines of sight, and their weapons angled crosshairs onto her.

I had ten feet, and their triggers only had to travel two centimeters. I was out of time.

Between Cerul and I, a chestnut mare walked out during the second of reaction, and I felt her melting emerald eyes boring into me. I was frozen again. I heard the screams and could taste the copper and feel the familiar uselessness preparing me for a new burden. Ten thousand pounds of guilt, regret, and death was preparing to fall onto my shoulders, a yoke to bear as the earth ceased its rotation, but I saw through the instant fear.

Red mist on an invisible breeze blew the melting figure of the mare away, and I felt my body become rigid.

“NO!” My horn lit up and the five leather covered ponies became a second sun. “I WILL NOT LET YOU DO THIS TO ME AGAIN!”

Twenty-one.

By the time Cerulean turned to gape at me, I was beside her and lifting my horn to tap her and fill our world with darkness and flashes of color before I sensed my hooves collide with the ground as Cerul and I collapsed to the earth and rolled down a small hill in the fading twilight.

This dirt tasted familiar. Worms remember such things.

I raced to seek my new destination, recalling the area as best I could, and managed to control the rising pressure until I found the old sinkhole, retched, and vomited into the chasm.

I was empty.

The fissure gained five more gouges to increase its depth and chipped off the decaying bits around it piece by piece as I kept my eyes clenched. If the world were to actually end right at that moment, I doubted it would feel worse than this.

You idiot.

You little fool!

You murderer…

“You saved me…” Cerul’s voice broke into my vault. “I don’t know what you did just now or when you set them on fire, but you saved my life, so thank you so much! Are you okay? You look sick!”

I shook my head and opened my eyes before standing to look at her.

“I’m… I’m okay,” I lied. “I just need to get out of here.”

“I got the book,” Cerul chimed in with a smile, “and we stopped Toothpick from being forced to stay there anymore since we took care of those baddies, so we should celebrate!”

“That’s great.” I forced a smile, and began walking to get away from the town that smelled of blood. “Let’s just get it back to Shepard.”

Cerul tossed me the book, and I levitated it into my bag. A book, if Twilight was to be believed, that was rarer than many I had ever read, and I could not have cared less.

“It was super awesome how you zapped us out of there and to here!” She lifted my head up with a hoof to see her making an awed face while prancing in place in front of me as we kept a slow pace. “And you weren’t kidding when you said you could handle yourself! Those raiders were there for one second and then, poof, they were toast! They were incredibly disgusting and burned toast, but toast nonetheless!”

Toast really wasn’t too far off.

I frowned and clenched my stomach at the thought of what that spell was originally intended to be used for and shot a glare at her. She went wide eyed and just turned back to face forward, and we stayed this way the entirety of the trip.

The sun was completely set behind the ever-present clouds by the time we quietly came back into the farm, and Cerul picked up her hooves more quickly to get into the small shack prior to my arrival.

She was inside the building for a minute before I saw the only lights in the area coming from the church. I trotted to the building, and peered into the open double doors to see a green stallion resting his head against the far wall.

“Shepard, I’m back with your book,” I said as I walked towards him.

He stirred, and I met his bloodshot eyes. “You came back? Didn’t you take enough from me!?”

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“You tried to burn my church,” he shouted while standing, “you lied, and then you took my filly!”

“What? I –“

“You shut your damn mouth!” He cut me off, approaching with a long step for every word. “I lost my family. I lost my wife. I lost my daughter.”

I could smell the moonshine on his lips as his nosed pressed to mine, and his swaying steps left no doubt about what had transpired while we were away. “I’m sorry, but I had nothing to do with any of that, and Cerul isn’t gone!”

Backtracking, he stumbled to find his way atop the raised platform where the cistern was and began to pace back and forth. “YOU LIE! I am so tired of ponies like you... liars and thieves and killers!”

I felt the stares of twenty one ponies.

“You took her, and I will never see her again…” His hooves caught on the lip of the stair, and, as he tripped, he fell into the pew closest to the front. “We are all lost now.”

Walking forward with careful steps, I approached his curled up form and heard the sound of settling into despair.

“Really, Shepard, Cerul is fine, and you don’t have to cry…”I pleaded. “Look, I’ll just go get her from the house, and show you.”

I turned around to head out and do so, but half way down the aisle Shepard called my name with a rising cackle carried by the alcohol fueled air in his lungs.

“Starwind.”

I began turning to face him once more and heard the sound of a latch falling into place.

“I won’t let you do this,” he whispered. "Heh...hehe...I will end you here and now, so no one else has to be lost again.”

With the echo of a gunshot filling my head from the resonance in the chamber, a burning sensation spread from my chest outward, and I caught myself weakly in mid fall with my hoof on a small barrel which was placed once upon a time as a donation bin. It seemed as if it was poised to collect a more personal offering, and I was almost happy to give it.

“You can go to sleep now, little lost sheep.” He said through a muffled ringing in my ears. “Shepard is here to take care of you.”

My head bounced against the ground and I raised a hoof at Shepard who had split into six since I last looked at him. Every one of him had the same stretched grin which reminded me of a scar, a mark made permanent and filled with pain.

A series of charcoal blurs tackled the many Shepard-like blurry figures to the ground, and a single violent cry filled the hall before a supporting pair of hooves lifted me up to rest on their back, away from my death, and out into the night.

“No, take me back,” I begged with unstable emphasis on every other word. “I… I need this. I have nothing. I am nothing. The water there… it can … it can put it out, the fire. It is just so hot…”

The lights went dim in the distance and I closed my eyes.

When they opened, I was unable to move as I saw a heap of books, a small fire, and a library with a roof on the verge of falling in upon itself. I was in a heap just through the entryway and was watching a dark gray pony search through the books.

My books.

Five sets of hooves stepped over me, and I could feel their hot breath as they looked closely at me and spoke soundless words that I couldn’t make out. They turned, and, with a nudge from the pony farthest to the back, pulled out a series of poorly maintained rifles that looked like they wouldn’t hold up to firing a single shot, let alone many. I could smell their fear as the youngest, a colt that couldn’t be more than about the age of earning one’s cutie mark, visibly quaked and fumbled with the loose mouth grip he had on his single barreled shotgun.

 Hot shot. I think that's what they nicknamed him after his first raid a couple of nights back.

A dark gray mare, who seemed a little too happy for where we were, came into view from the section she seemed to be looking through, and a black pony quickly turned into the same common area just after her with determination and fear in her eyes. I knew those traits well, and I also knew where they would lead.

The group with the guns, my family, held them in place, rooted by the calm before violence. The words passed between the groups, shouted, whispered, or otherwise were empty, hollow, and devoid of meaning as they reverberated in the room. All of them lost to the air except for one.

"NO!"

 A half of a second passed and the five went from controlling the confused situation, holding the lives of those two in their hooves as they figured out what to do with them, to screaming, colliding into each other, and becoming flame and smoke. I attempted to reach out and help him, the little, scared soldier of fortune, but my body was still unresponsive as his mane burned down to his coat and his tongue fell, severed in the heat, from his open, begging mouth. The duo, not letting a moment pass before doing so, disappeared in a deep blue explosion of magic. The screams from the colt as flesh separated from bone were etched into the granite of my heart.

I knew from that moment that I hated the black mare.

Twenty-three seconds was all it took; twenty-three seconds of writhing, pain, and the acrid smell of life passing. Smoke from their death pyre blackened my vision, and all that was left visible were the six inches of litter covered floor next to me and piles of ash.

They were once ponies.

My eyes closed again as they began to water from the strain and fumes.

Ash. Worms. Dirt. Life. Blood. Copper. Books. Keys. Evil. Stars.

Death.

What a senseless waste.

Footnote:

New Companion Gained!

Cerulean Joy

S.P.E.C.I.A.L: Strength – 5 Perception – 5 Endurance – 4 Charisma – 7 Intelligence – 4 Agility – 9 Luck – 5

Level Up!

Level 2 –

Magical Energy Attacks 25

Medicine 15

Perk Gained – Is it Hot in Here? You figured out how to cook food and… other things… over a distance without needing to start a fire by hoof! You now have the chance to cause fire damage once to all enemies while in combat when outnumbered by at least twice as many as are in your party.

Writers Note:

 Thanks to KKat for the fantastic work of fanfiction that allows everyone who aspires to develop the universe more to do so with ridiculously good source material.

Thanks also to Somber for FoE: Project Horizons which is wickedly good in its own right and adds tons of depth to the FoE universe.

Thanks also to Mixermike622 for creating Fluffle Puff and all associated, lovely content. Go check out his tumblr pages, animations, comics, and buy his products! They are all fantastic and, personally, have gotten me through a few sour patches in my life.

Thanks also go to mimezinga for FoE: Pink Eyes which gave us a lot of great characters, and a new area of the wasteland to play in.

And, last, but certainly not least, thanks to Cirrus and Wr3nch for challenging me with their editing prowess! (In the future, I am going to abridge the “thanks” section for brevity)

Cheers, everyone, and be sure to check out the original Fallout Equestria on EQD and all associated work!