Fallout Equestria: The Isle of Hope

Chapter 3: Direction

Sweat and the sheen of a morning mist covered the half folded blanket acting as my pillow as I found myself lying on a blackened mattress in a dark, cramped space with a few beams of unplanned light piercing the veil at sporadic intervals. I simmered in my thoughts and the relatively lackadaisical morning feeling that was blanketed by absurd amounts of humidity.

The ocean.

At least, my memories told me that this was what being near the massive body of water felt like.

Chilled, damp, and miserable are three very good words to describe how I felt, but they may actually understate just how uncomfortable this whole new life thing was with all its running around, fighting invincible ghouls, and…

Well, it was not a life I found particularly pleasant.

I tried to lift my body from the ground with slow effort only to drop down again with a dull thud from a pain that stretched its tendrils to the very ends of my hooves, originating just to the right of my chest, near my shoulder.

“Shit…” Last night’s events played back in my head as if somepony had left the fast forward button pressed in.

Fire. Murder. Walking. Twilight. The Church. Shepard. A shot. Blackout.

Well, that about summed it up, I figured. I ground my head into the blanket, fighting the minutes which passed as I put off the inevitable trial of attempting to stand again. In the silence that filled the room, I could hear a steady breathing that I hadn’t noticed in my thoughtful state.

I forgot my injuries and attempted to quickly roll over towards the noise only to wind up neatly nose to nose with Cerulean who, as per her usual self, seemed to be oblivious to everything. I swallowed gently in nervousness that I may be a prisoner and turned back over. Gathering my strength as best I could in order to stand, I wavered a bit with a few stumbling steps that nearly caused me to fall over her still form. Regardless, I found my balance and made it safely to a shelf nearby where I could lean for a few seconds.

I made my cautious journey with an obvious “I’m wounded" swagger toward a loose piece of driftwood, which was acting as a makeshift door, and pushed it aside to see that my suspicions about being near the ocean were not unfounded. I began walking — limping — away from the sheer cliff edge barely four feet away when a strong gust came from the slope on the other side of the shack. Panic gripped me as I began to slide backward, toward the edge of the drop, but I chose to not fight and just let my muscles give out again to allow my body’s friction to stop me from going any farther. My body rotated 180 degrees and skidded to a stop with a rush of pebbles and sand.

 I had not realized that my eyes were squeezed shut for the last few seconds.

With trepidation, I lightly lifted my stronger eyelid.

“I have made a terrible mistake…” My heart raced as I found my nose just over the lip of the sheer cliff, and I just lay there, petrified, staring out over the vast expanse of black and blue that stretched before me, rolling, surging, and just generally living out a violent existence.

If Shepard and Cerul had attempted to foalnap me, they sure chose a very proper spot; the intimidation factor was off the scale.

It also did not help that I had an insatiable itch on my left foreleg that would not quit! I found the source of the annoyance as I glared down at my stubborn limb, and another wave of remembrance took me.

I had a PipBuck!

 I had a PipBuck and a job to do, if its identifying quest counter still meant anything. I found on its map that I was present near a building which was named Cranky’s Bungalow and, after I clicked into the quest labeled “Main,” that my goal was inside of it.

“Bungalow?” I mouthed silently to myself as I stared up at the shack I had just exited with a raised eyebrow. I guessed that, in the correct light, and with a substantial amount of TLC, and an intense head cold, the old, beaten up structure could somewhat be considered a decent place to relax, but what kind of pony would want to do that in such a lonely location?

I started the process of convincing myself to stand and walk again, even more slowly than before, with a shake of my head. Once I found my way back up to the shack, I stopped just inside of the threshold. I had not really looked to see what my goal was, and, to be honest, I also had not really considered what I would do other than follow the general guideline. Luckily for me, my focus was not long lost as a groan came from where I was resting before. As I turned toward the noise, a blue bar flashed over Cerul’s dark form on the floor.

“No, I… I can’t, papa,” a small filly’s voice floated from her resting mouth. “She’s gone, and you know she is!” Her body began to spasm and thrash under the effects of a nightmare as though she were struck by the blows of some hidden figure. I knew that feeling all too well, and it took a few seconds for me to even lift a hoof as I observed somepony else suffering with dreams that couldn’t be shaken.

A dreamless sleep was one thing I was not gifted with from birth, and it has been both a blessing and a curse ever since. Something about the dreams I have had lately, though, made me wonder if they could be getting more vivid for some reason.

“You even think your dreams are special?!” my little sister used to mock me accusingly. I never thought any such thing and would not wish my dreams upon anyone. No matter how much I argued or how thoroughly I described the condition I often was afflicted with in my sleep, she would not hear a word of it without thinking me selfish or self-serving. Dusty always would hear me out, though. In fact, that is why we became friends on my first night of research duty under her instruction.

Dusty…

“Dusty!” I urgently said with worry sharpening my tone. I quickly scanned the room as best I could in the dim light for any sign of my saddlebags or the recording device I had tucked away within them but got no result.

I hurried over as best I could and dug into the few cabinets in the single room building, wantonly tossing their contents behind me, but every nook and cranny I searched revealed nothing worth my while.

“Oh, goddesses…” I sat on my haunches and began staring at the floor. “I couldn’t even give you what you requested of me, Dusty… I … I never did come through for you when you needed me to most, after all.” So much for the best pony Dusty had ever known. I was no better than the black eyed mare who murdered her if all I managed to do since leaving the library was lose the one redeeming light in my life.

“And don’t forget that you are a murderer too, now” an icy spike of a voice jabbed from within my soul.

Murderer. I really was not that different from the black eyed mare after all...

I had murdered. I slayed others to save someone, but who? Myself? Cerul?  Can there really be any good reason to take the life of a pony?

I felt Black Eyes’s words began to pour into my head again with their tenacity and cruel intent unsheathed like the blades of some would-be assassin bent to slay my hope, but I shut them out before I chose to listen and comprehend what they meant. Words, with what I knew, were supposed to be the most powerful weapon ever wielded, and I was not about to let the mare who took my best friend’s life end up poisoning me with her filth.

Regardless, despair was still resting hot and heavy upon my head as I felt the welling of tears in the corners of my eyes. Oceans washed the world with the cycle of water that brought rain, but tears, tears created from an ocean of grief, were washing over me at this moment. Silently, I let them flow again as I felt the resurgence of the grip of sorrow that had recently become the closest thing to a tether to reality as I could manage. My PipBuck beeped at me, but I ignored its beckoning because it had chosen to lead me back into this shack, back into the world that both my dreams and my waking eyes loved to show me in stunning detail.

“Star?” Cerul’s meek voice cracked my shell and peeled open my ears. “Are you alright? I really did try my best to patch you up… I know I am not very good with herbs and poultices, and such, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt so much that it would cause you to cry!”

Everyone always seemed to worry about me after I received a wound or two.

Between the small gasps for air I managed to get out a meager reply. “I’m okay.”

“You sure don’t look okay, Starry,” Cerul’s concerned voice rose with her standard cheer slightly muffled.

“Really,” I said meekly while I attempted to regain composure, “I’m fine.”

“If you say so…” Cerulean’s voice trailed off.

She stood and approached me from behind with her head slightly lowered to try and get a better look at my face. I dropped it farther towards the floor to block her out.

“Hey, why all the tears?” Her voice had an almost honey like sweetness. “I promise I don’t hate you, and I know my father doesn’t either… he just… got a little carried away, so please don’t cry!”

I just sniffled and continued picking out the grains in the floor one by one with my eyes.

A hoof gently lifted my head by raising my chin until I was looking into Cerul’s laughing eyes. “You know, I can tell when somepony has lost somepony. It shows in the lines around their eyes or the slight hitch in their step or the smallest of things, despite how hard they try to hide it. You? You don’t hide it a bit. I can see right to the heart of you, Star, and you carry something far too heavy to be burdened with it alone.”

She paused, her face showing lines of concern as she gathered her thoughts.

“I am still your friend, no matter what you may think of me after what my Papa did back there, so… so share it with me? You don’t have to say a word, but just let me help you carry it, and we can move out of this old, smelly shed to whatever lies ahead.”

She spoke words that resonated within me somewhere.

“Besides, being sad is no fun, and we deserve some fun after yesterday, I think!”

I smiled. A little at a time, I felt her infectious nature spreading as laughter bubbled up from my hooves. It felt a little like breathing for the first time after having to hold your breath a minute longer than expected while under the water.

I let her mirth wash over me for a moment before I continued.

“You know,” I let my voice start softly to adjust to talking again. “I really think I could use some fun.”

A thought came to me. “You wouldn’t happen to have grabbed my stuff before we came here did you?”

She lifted her eyes in thought. “Oh, right. Yes, I did do that!”

She bounced over to a board in the floor near where she was sleeping and tapped on one end to cause it to pop loose on the other. Out of the hole she pulled my saddlebags, a few cans of food, a bag of her own, and a few bundles of what looked to be corn.

I picked myself up again, more confident this time, and took a few more cautious steps toward the articles she piled near us. I poked my saddlebags once with my hoof to verify I wasn’t seeing things that weren’t there, and then lifted them to rest them on my back. The weight of them made my wound sting, but with them on I felt a little bit more like myself again.

“What happened yesterday?” I asked after a sigh of relief. “And how am I already able to walk around and maneuver my leg? I shouldn’t be able to do that…”

Now that I thought about it, I was very curious how somepony with little scientific, arcane, or medical knowledge could manage healing of this magnitude.

“Well,” she began while loading the various items before us into a saddlebag of her own, “Papa thought you filly-napped me, so he got… a little out of control and shot you. I rushed you out of there, grabbed what I could and came here since it was the closest thing to a hiding spot I know about. Like I said earlier, I used a poultice and some bandages to wrap you up with, and this is how it turned out. It isn’t as good as what Mama used to be able to do, but she always said that she was only very good at it because she had some zebra blood in her. I guess I just don’t have as much of that blood.”

I tried to interject since my curiosity was piqued about the chances of getting to understand a new type of medicine, but she couldn’t be stopped once started.

“… Anyway, I went back after I was sure you would make it, and I tried to talk to Papa about letting us come back so you can rest more comfortably, but he reacted, um... badly.”

Her lower lip began to quiver as she continued. “I don’t know what happened. My father was once a loving stallion, but it’s as if the wasteland has just sapped it from him over the years, and he just forgot himself... He told me that ‘if I would help out a filly-napper and keep him from dealing out justice…’ then I should just leave because I was already gone. I begged him to let me stay, to remember that he has a bad knee and can’t work the crops alone, and to remember that I really am his daughter… but, he… he didn’t say a word. Not a single word. He just picked up the closest thing to him and smashed it against the wall near me.”

Now it was Cerul’s turn to cry.

“He destroyed it, Star. He knew that I cared for it more than any other thing I own, so he broke it to bits. My violin…”

I felt that something greater than her violin had been broken given that Shepard seemed to only care for his daughter when I had met him first, and he just gave her up. Something picked at me about this, but I couldn’t let it bother me any longer since there was just far too much sadness in the room.

“Okay!” I stomped my hoof on the ground to reinforce my point and the subtle beeping began again. “We have a bit too much pity going on here, don’t you think? I think it is time we go find that ‘fun’ that you spoke of since it seems, I dunno…exotic for these parts!”

I reared up and tried to show off my best adventurer pose with a hoof over my eyes as I scanned the horizon and a sly grin to hide the pain that it was causing.

Her demeanor cracked a bit as I lost my balance and she caught me before I hurt myself further.

She giggled as she set me upright again. “Okay, Daring Don’t, where to?”

I opened my mouth to reply, but remembered that I still had no clue other than what my PipBuck was directing me to. Closing it, I looked down at the device and finally noticed the beeping that was coming from the tiny speakers built into its casing. It was a rapid, rhythmic pattern that seemed to loop with some beeps being short and some long.

“Horse code?” I asked the device. “You really are spelling things out over the radio in Horse Code? Well, it looks like someone is stuck in the stone ages.”

I scoffed at my humor before realizing that I was talking to an inanimate object.

Slowly, I raised my wide eyes to see Cerul turning blue as she covered her mouth with her hooves to hold back what she was feeling, but she was about to burst and in a passing second she erupted into hoof pounding laughter. “You are such an egghead! Bahahahaha! Horse" — a gasp for air — "code? Haha! What in Equestria are you talking about?!”

I kicked at the ground bashfully before replying. “Horse was an inventor and well-known scientist— the head of Robronco, actually— who lived before the megaspells and made the first of his fortunes on telegraph machines that used his proprietary Horse Code.”

Cerul was rolling on the ground while she wrapped her forehooves around her sides to try and contain herself as she continued her raucous giggling.

“Really, Cerul,” I said indignantly. “It isn’t that funny! It was his name and that’s what this beeping is! Look, I can translate it for you, so maybe we can move past this.”

I used my magic to turn the volume up, and tried to make out the pattern through Cerulean’s loud cackling. “P – L – E – A – S – E — Stop — H – E – L – P”

Cerul stopped abruptly and zoomed to my side, peering over my shoulder at the PipBuck Screen. “Help? Is somepony in trouble?”

“It seems so,” I replied softly.

With my eyes squinted in an attempt to organize my thoughts, I magically pulled out the small, wallet shaped pouch that I kept from the school, and began opening a small panel near the button marked “radio.” “I think, if I remember correctly, PipBuck’s have radios that function much like a common radio receiver, so, theoretically, I should be able to take the signal and route it through the mapping protocol to create a sort of tracking system.”

“And that means…” Cerul struggled with the notion.

“That it should beep louder, the closer we are to the source.” I finished her statement.

“Oh… neat!” She grinned.

A minute passed as I rewired the crystal lattice a bit, and I began to understand how the pieces fit together, what some of the circuitry functioned as, and that it all was a lot like the radio I built back at the library.

“This should… about… do it,” I whispered in concentration. “There!”

The beeping altered volume slightly as I calibrated the device by walking in the four cardinal directions.

“I think we have a heading, Cap’n Starry, Mam!” Cerul saluted me and I stuck my tongue out at her. However, she wasn’t wrong since I saw that the direction towards which the beeping was strongest was the one heading along the Big 52, the longest stretch of continuous highway in all of Equestria.

“This could be quite a long trip,” I warned. “The Big 52 isn’t named that way as a joke.”

“Oh, I know! I expected a long trip when we left the farm, so I zipped back a few times after I dropped you off here to gather the essentials. See? Food, some water, a package of gum, and three of my favorite trading cards from the old cereal boxes!”

I gaped at her. “Right… well, let’s get going then. No time like the present!”

Cerul took the time to clean up the mess I had made and politely closed the door after we left the bungalow saying, “I would be a little cranky if some random ponies stayed in my house without asking and didn’t even bother to make sure everything was as they found it!”

Decency was still there in the wasteland, but I guess that it was just hidden in the smallest of moments.

Afterwards, we took a gravel path I had not noticed before that wound up the hill, and, as we crested the top, I saw the distance we would have to travel very clearly. There were smaller roads winding from where we were towards, around, and through dilapidated, small towns and villages on their way to a greater place much like tributaries to a mighty river; to the Big 52. I trembled a bit as Cerul and I took a long look toward the signal. Somehow, I knew that if I took one more step, I would be committing myself to a path I could not back away from.  I took a deep breath and held it as I felt my hoof rise and then fall, a step forward amongst the dead grass.

Hours passed and nothing had happened or changed except for the steady increase in volume of the beeping as we approached the Big 52 and the selection of songs that Cerulean used to keep herself from boredom as we traveled.

"That last one was from my favorite old recording that we had stored at the church! It was about your favorite things, how they can make you happy to think about when you’re sad, and all of that. Sorry, I guess you just heard me sing it, but I just love that one! Do you wanna hear another?"

"What?" I responded abruptly after realizing I hadn't really been actively listening.

"Another song," she sighed. "Do you want to hear another?"

I looked back at her, and her winning grin almost convinced me, but the long walk and lack of danger almost had me bored, and I was too caught up in the confusing fact that normal, safe life had become boring to want more noise muddling up my thoughts.

"Sorry, Cerul, no," I replied. “I just have this bad feeling that everything is going too well, and I’m staying ready to teleport us away if we run into danger. It's a really difficult thing to concentrate on, so the quiet helps."

That was a lie, but I figured it was better than being rude.

"Oh, I forgot you could do that!" Cerulean bounced to my side, easily matching my pace. "Can you tell me how you learned to poof around like that?"

"Cerul..." I was about to repeat how I wanted some quiet, but I caught myself as I realized that she deserved some kind of answers from me after being forced out of her home and family for saving my life. "Well, I learned it from a book, an old book, which Twilight Sparkle wrote."

"Who's Twilly Sparkle?" She asked.

My hoofsteps faltered for half of a second as I snapped my head to the side to stare at her in disbelief. "You... you don't know who Twilight Sparkle, the greatest of all pre-megaspell unicorns, was? The very pony who was so regarded by Celestia herself that she earned wings to become an alicorn? I... you... I don't have any words."

I really didn't.

"Whatdya mean?" She smirked at the face I was unknowingly making. "Should I?"

"YES!" I shouted at the ground as I dropped my head in shame for her.

"Well, whatever, go on!" She cut in.

"Fine." I flatly said as I lifted my head up again. "I read a journal entry from when she was a younger mare living in Ponyville and I just imitated her methods for casting the spell. It really wasn't too hard, now that I think about it."

"Ooooooooh, someone thinks she is becoming the greatest of all post-megaspell unicorns, huh?" She shook her head as she began to laugh lightly.

"No, I don't!" I said with a flurry of somewhat painful hoof waving. "I just think that it is interesting for... you know... science-y reasons!"

That just made her laugh harder, but, as we covered another twenty yards, approaching a white, weatherworn structure of three stories with faded pink and blue trim from a side street that split around it, the beeping began to reach earsplitting levels.

"Ow ow ow!" Cerul shouted. "Turn it off!"

She slapped at my PipBuck with a free hoof and missed, causing both of our legs to become tangled.

My body did not catch on to this until I tried to take one more step, and both Cerul and I tripped, knocked heads, and came to rest upon our backs as the beeping continued.

I slowly tapped the mute button as I felt the tension associated with my fresh wound in my tendons. "Just ask next time. I can handle the technology stuff."

"Will do, 'Cap," she replied.

As we began to stand, I dusted myself off.

"I think," I pointed a hoof at the building, "we're here."

"Really?" Cerul asked. "This place looks pretty tame for someone needing to call for help. Are you sure we aren’t looking for a building covered in blood paint?"

I tapped the mute button again and the attack on our ears resumed until the sight of Cerul's twitching eye in reaction to it made me laugh and convinced me to turn the mute on again.

"Yes."

As I got that word out, a pair of red bars floated from behind the structure and began to patrol around the side of the building we were facing. They were flashing and indistinct, but these bars, the last time they showed up, meant terrible things, and I wasn't about to let a repeat of the library in Bloodbucket’s place to occur.

"Cerul!" I whispered intensely. "We need to get behind something and out of sight. Fast!"

Taking the lead, Cerulean began a quick, crouched trot to a crashed wagon between the red bars and us that bore signs which read "VOTE HANDY FOR MAYOR!" The wagon had long since lost its wheels, but the large, wooden signs resisted the erosion of time and kept the wagon propped far enough off of the ground for us to wriggle into hiding beneath it.

“What are we hiding from, Star?” Cerul whispered.

“Didn’t you see them?” I replied just as softly.

Cerul attempted to turn in the small space to face me. “No! See who?”

“There were these red bars, and they were kind of floating back and forth in front of the building!” I spoke all of that too quickly to realize how it probably sounded to somepony else.

Cerul paused, eyes wandering, with a look of mental searching on her face. “Uh… I don’t know if it’s a smart pony thing, but I have no idea what you are talking about…”

“Like back in the old school, those ponies, there were these red bars that floated above their heads…“ I trailed off, attempting to come up with a better explanation.  “They started showing up after I picked up the … PipBuck. Oh… E.F.S.”

I bumped a hoof against my forehead in frustration at myself.

E.F.S, or Eyes Forward Sparkle for those not familiar, was a technology derived from spells originally created for psychologists who needed to determine the hostility of patients when they were given questions about certain topics, and it was one of the first spells ever added to the arcane matrices within the first generation PipBucks. The functionality of this typically resulted in a small blip in the bottom of the user’s vision which would have a color associated with the temperament of the pony towards the wearer. Having those displayed as bars above their heads was something I had never known could be possible, but this PipBuck was a model I had little knowledge about.

I tapped a hoof against my chin. “I can’t believe I never thought about that before now.”

“Really, do I even need to ask what E.F.S is, Starry?” Cerul asked.

“It lets a PipBuck wearer see how other creatures will react to you based on the color they are associated with.” I replied simply.

Cerul squirmed forward a bit to get into my line of sight. “What color am I?”

I looked at her and nothing was there. I wondered if it was possible that the E.F.S system was flawed with this edition, but as I kept staring a bar popped above her head with a line of text under it which read “Cerulean.”

“Blue,” I replied. “I guess this PipBuck reacts to the thoughts of the user! Nifty…”

I may have had a little drool fall from my mouth as I stared lovingly at the device on my foreleg.

“Star?” Cerul waved a hoof at my face. “Staaaaaaaaaaar!”

“Huh?” I asked from my behind a haze of technological love.

Cerulean bumped my nose with her hoof. “This is cool and all, but we are still stuck under a wagon and you said there are two baddies out there.”

“Right!” I said.

Looking back out toward where they were before, the bars were nowhere to be found, and all that was really out of the ordinary was an old Sparkle Cola machine near to the front doors which had a dying battery causing it to flicker intermittently.

“Looks like they’re gone.” I said.

“What if they can fly or are able to poof away like you, and they are above us?” She asked in an even lower whisper.

“E.F.S isn’t affected by height, so if they are within the bubble of the spells effect, they will show up on the level of my sight.” I replied.

“And they aren’t around?” Cerul asked.

I glanced in all directions around us and shook my head.

“Let’s get going and help these ponies out!”

Going forward, there was only room for one of us at a time to wiggle out from the hiding spot, so Cerul took the lead and waited for me as I followed her out.

We galloped forward, covering the open distance in a few seconds. The cola machine kept one side of us covered as I kept my eyes focused on the side open for attack.

“What do you see?” Cerul asked.

I scanned in a circle, but no bars appeared.

“Nothing,” I was slightly astonished. “There isn’t anything showing up in the building or nearby.”

“That’s good, right?” Cerulean asked. “Doesn’t that mean the ponies inside won’t be in any danger?”

“Maybe” was all I could say as I began to analyze the double doors that opened into a small rotunda. I knew that all ponies, neutral, friendly, or otherwise, should show up in E.F.S, but nothing, not even a flash of a bar, was showing up. The area under my PipBuck itched terribly, and I couldn’t shake the feeling of uncomfortableness.

“We should probably get inside quick, Starry,” Cerulean urged.

I nodded, and, with a pull of my magic, the two doors opened very slowly.  I leaned over enough to peer into the dim space inside.

“Okay, it looks clear inside,” I said to Cerul. “It doesn’t seem like anypony is going to be coming after us today, Cerul.”

A look of concern flashed across Cerul’s face, and I was reminded of the conversation we had before going into the old school in the town that smelled like blood. “You are absolutely certain it’s safe?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’ll be fine,” I promised, “and we were coming here expecting to have to save somepony anyway, so it’ll be alright!”

Cerul shrugged and smiled. “If you say so, I’m gonna stay down here for a bit to keep watch and try to get us some Sparkle Cola from this machine.”

I laughed. “Alright! That walk we took did make me thirsty… Save me two?”

Cerul exhaled with a noise similar to that of a deflating balloon. “Hm. We’ll see, madam Starry! I may have to drink them all before you get back if you are too slow! Just go find those ponies, so we can get out of here.”

I scoffed and stuck my nose up into the air as I walked in, faking a disposition of haughty displeasure. “Very well! I shall return shortly!”

As my eyes adjusted to the lower light of the interior I picked out the remnants of a banner, still clinging to one side of a second floor bannister, which read “Election Day!” in bold, black letters above a destroyed lift that had debris spilling out of its empty shaft. My stately, façade faded as I glanced to my left to see that the wall was lined with cheaply created booths with a few punch cards randomly dropped in places, and, to my right, that there was a staircase with a door below it which was partially blocked by a fallen light fixture. A bygone era’s attempt at civilization was destroyed and decaying as a corpse of a good idea.

“Hello?” I asked just soft enough that the room absorbed the resonance.

I felt a cold chill pass through my body, and the silence was reply enough for me to move on. I took a look at the fallen lighting blocking the door, and decided that it had wedged itself so thoroughly that it wouldn’t move without taking out the staircase above it. Left with one route forward, I began taking the stairs to the second floor where there was a row of four doors and another paneled entryway for the dilapidated lift. I trotted over to where the elevator was between the two pairs of doors on that floor and took a long look at the small layout diagram of the building which was on the wall, per the fairly standard design for pre-megaspell Equestrian buildings.

Chivalry Courthouse, the diagram read, had a series of offices on this floor connected internally, by small hallways, to a maneframe area at the rear of the building with a third floor that had a large courtroom and a set of small, symmetrical meeting areas. A small chirping sounded from my PipBuck, and I lifted my leg gingerly to read the message that was now being displayed.

Local Map Update Complete!

I switched to the map view and saw that the diagram I had been previously looking at had been copied into the memory of the PipBuck. On the map, a small blinking arrow was placed at my location, and a dotted line was drawn from it to a location within the maneframe room. Taking the hint, I tried to open the closest office door and found it was blocked from within. The next two I tried were inaccessible as well, but the last door on the floor, closest to the side of the building from where I came in, opened to allow me into a once cozy office with a couple file cabinets, a few cushioned chairs that looked like that wouldn’t hold up to a touch, let alone being sat on by a full grown mare, and a sturdy hard wood desk with a dead terminal on its surface. The door on the far wall was dented with the handle missing, and when I tried to force it open with my magic, it would not budge an inch. I sighed and closed my eyes, thinking deeply about where there could be another way into the room beyond.

I heard a small sound from behind me that sounded like something heavy sliding across the floor and spun to see nothing. There was only the open door, the decayed, old furniture, and the dead screen reflecting my image on top of the desk. It was the reflection that first caught my eye, but as I looked more closely at the desk, I noticed that all of the drawers were gone except for three of them which had been forcefully replaced, causing them to sit awkwardly in their slots. I pulled one of them open as curiosity beckoned, and inside were a few bottle caps, which I pocketed for later, and a bobby pin next to a comb. The second drawer was empty. I had to bend the metal railing inside the desk to be able to remove the third, and, as I did, the bottom of the container fell out, and a metallic object clattered to the floor underneath a pile of legal documents.

I pushed the papers to the side, and the sight of a black cylinder hastened my work so I could levitate up the whole of the item. A jet black 10mm pistol with a silencer attached to its muzzle rotated lazily in my aura along with a few small boxes of bullets a couple of full magazines.

I felt hot breath on my neck from behind me. “You have had some experience in firearms training, so I know you can handle it…”

I turned and, again, I was met with nothing but the stuck door and a calendar of the six, smiling ministry mares.

I hadn’t even shot my 9mm. Dusty did all the fighting, and I just stood there. I couldn’t even remember if I still had that weapon, but a part of me felt that I would be happier if I didn’t.

I don’t murder ponies.

I don’t.

But, if I did have to, I would only do it to save ponies.

And, if I did have to, it would be better if I did it kindly, quietly, so… I should keep this pistol.

“But, if you do keep it,” I felt the fissure pressing on me from inside, “you’ll probably have to use it, and that means killing. It will be easier next time, I’m sure. You already did it once, after all.”

It would probably be easier, but I told myself I would only do it if I had to, if it was between my life and theirs or between the lives of others and those who would take them.

I slid the weapon into my saddlebag and felt the weight which I would have to learn to live with.

They taught us how to handle weapons in New Commons when I was a filly, but they never prepared us to handle the burden which having to use them created.

My PipBuck displayed a ratio in my vision that indicated the weight of the items I was carrying to how much I could carry easily and then said that I had added an item named “Dust.”

“Appropriate” I murmured. The old adage was that all creatures went from dust to dust, and I supposed that this was the weapon’s prior owner’s way of paying it homage.

The old office had nothing else of interest to me and I felt that if I didn’t move I might be inclined to give into the past, so I figured that I would try the next floor to see if I could find a way down into the maneframe room from there or, at least, to be able to run into the pony that sent the message out.

I took the stairs slowly, feeling the echoes of my hoofsteps in my chest. I came out of the stairwell and was met with a long hallway with three doors on each side of me, and a set of doors at the farthest end. The clatter of a falling ceiling tile from somewhere downstairs drew my, but the sound was absorbed like every other noise in the place. The air was stale, old, and I felt a small itch from behind my right eye that I couldn’t sate as I paused for a moment to attempt to rub it away with a hoof.

The overhead lights hummed softly as I picked the first door on my right as the place to start my search. A growing sense of unease caused me to hold my breath and take lighter steps in order to not draw undue attention, and I attempted to minimize the sound of the rusty hinges squealing as I pushed it open. A bare bulb hung, flickering, above an overturned conference table, and in the dim light I could pick out a shadow-cloaked figure sitting with their head resting against the left corner across the room.

“Hello?” I whispered just loud enough so that, hopefully, only the other pony would hear. “I’m here to help, like you asked.”

I always read that silence could be deafening, but I had never experienced it first hoof up until that moment as I took slow, small steps toward the figure. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

A few seconds of silence passed as I ended up only a few feet from the shadow. I reached out a hoof to touch their shoulder. I prodded the figure once, twice, and on the third time I felt a shift in the folds of the fabric, and something hard and resonant bounced away from us to stop against the table, beneath the small lit area with a few sharp impacts. A toothy grin of a skull, tarnished yellow by time, beamed up at me as I took in the bare spine sticking out of the black cloak before me. I felt a warm tickle on the back of my neck again and my mane prickled with the feeling of static cling. I slowly pulled out Dust with my magic and began creeping back toward the door while keeping my eyes locked on the skeleton in the corner; I didn’t want to turn away to see if something was behind me as I had before. My ears perked up at the slightest sound, but I heard nothing except my ragged breath as I hit something solid behind me which kept me from backing away any farther. I clenched my eyes shut and felt my magic tense up around the trigger of the gun in its grasp as time seemed to slow.

I hopped left as far as I could, spun around, and lifted Dust before opening my left eye to stare down the length of the weapon. The charred hide of a full grown stallion, draped in what was once a satin sash of grayish white, stood before me, a low rumble emanating from his chest in the form of a guttural growl. His eyes were bloodshot and slightly milky with a thin film covering them underneath the flaking skin of his eyelids as they lazily wandered from side to side as though he were searching. I levitated the weapon to line it up with his head as he snorted in the air around him with the vigor of a bull ready to charge, but he did not move an inch.

My mind raced as I attempted to calculate what the ghoul stallion was up to since any common feral would have attacked by that point. "Perhaps," I thought to myself, "he isn't feral and is just a bit ragged after staying in this wreck for so long. Maybe he is the one calling for help. I mean, he isn't showing up on my Eyes Forward Sparkle as an enemy... Of course, if the PipBuck hasn't been activated since the bombs fell, it wouldn't be able to tell of a threat so new to the world, would it?”

I scolded myself. “Don't be a foal, Starwind. You always trust too easily."

Did I trust too easily?

The struggle I was having internally must have bubbled to the surface as a small, exasperated huff broke the silence as it escaped from me.

The growl of the ghoul erupted into a bellowing howl and the sinews in his body visibly tightened as he lowered his body to charge me.

My heart stilled and everything around us seemed to slow and blur except for me.

A thin outline of green light surrounded the stallion as his body began moving at an imperceptible pace toward me with a mouth full of sharpened teeth agape. I aimed my sights toward his chest as I recalled my firearm instruction to direct all shots toward the target’s largest vulnerable spot, and the light surrounding the stallion focused on the chest in response.

Now is the time, murderer.

I swallowed and narrowed my eyes as I felt the trigger squeezed, releasing a dull thwump, thwump, thwump as the I fired the silenced pistol until the magazine was emptied.

Time regained its momentum and the stallion’s body collapsed under its dead weight as small wisps of smoke rose from the new holes in his chest and a few in his head. I felt the heat of the barrel of the weapon as I released the newly empty magazine and loaded in a fresh one, but I was surprised that I felt so little about the passing of this ghoul. I couldn’t understand if it was because he was essentially already dead in his feral insanity or because I had become so cold to the feeling of ending a life, but I knew that this was cleaner, quicker, better than the alternative. Dust would be an instrument of release and of ending pain, and I would merely be the one who would bear the burden of distributing its peace when it was required.

I walked quietly over to the corpse and arranged his legs into a position so that anyone who would come across him might mistake him for being asleep. While levitating him next to the skeleton in the corner, to get him out of the way, a small piece of metal fell from one of his remaining pockets. After depositing him there, I picked up the item, a dirtied, odd shaped key baring a falcon insignia with two gold bits in its beak, and placed it into my saddle bag since I figured that I may have a need for it later.

Stepping lightly out of the room, I quickly made my way to the next room down the hall which also was accessible. Ghouls in the building were a real threat, I knew, so I peeked around the corner with Dust in my teeth so as to keep the light of my horn from giving away my presence. The room was full of piles of leaflets bearing a similar symbol to the one on the key I picked up and two small check boxes with faded text next to them. I levitated one over to me to try and read what they said.

Mayoral Election

Candidates:

Pretty Handy & Milk Dud

Elective ballots that were never cast on that terrible day.

The symbol also had text in it along with the falcon which read Chivalry City: Home of Security and of Wealth

The irony was not lost on me, but it brought a poor taste to my mouth as I dwelled on it, so I gently put the paper back down and turned back into the hallway to continue my search.

My E.F.S was still not showing any signs of danger, but I did not remember a bar above the head of the ghoul in the first room, so I couldn’t trust it as a good indicator of safety.

“Damn, I wish I could get you a firmware upgrade,” I whispered to the device on my leg.

Across the way, I tried the opposite doors to the first two I tried, but both of them were locked. I attempted to unlock them with the key but to no avail. The final two doors before the one at the end of the hallway were unlocked, but they also just had piles of ballots and some old chairs similar to those I had seen in the office on the floor below, so I pressed onward and found myself staring up at bold lettering above the double doors that was missing most of the characters that once would have made it legible.

This should be the courtroom if the map downstairs was to be believed, so if there were to be survivors anywhere, I assumed they would be here. I paused, took a deep breath, and tried the doors. They creaked with age as I pushed them slowly open, and a small cloud of dust fell from its rest on top of the old frame. A small hum was emanating from within the room, and I could only faintly see through the darkness that filled the room. Somepony had kept the shades drawn and the bulbs that once hung in the room had long since died out, so I could only just pick out a small jury stand with a few chairs that were overturned and a pair of tables that acted as the judge’s podium and the councilors’ positions which were resting, crooked, on the black floor.

I moved into the room slowly since each step created a sharp creak or snap from below, stopping just before the open area between the judge and councilors’ stands, and used my magic to raise one of the shades to let in some light. The shade rebounded from its casing and made a loud knocking noise as I released it slightly too quickly.

Hissssss

The noise drew my eyes downwards as a chorus of similar sounds blended together.

The black of the floor begin to twist and shift as if it were made of velvet or some similar fabric that was too supple to be held within your hooves, and every four feet or so, a head or leg or torso would begin to rise from within the blackness.

“Oh…” I breathed out as silently as possible.

Film covered eyes peered around the room from within deep sockets as the ghouls in judge’s robes drooled and gnashed their teeth at the slightest movement of sound. The ghouls wandered aimlessly, and a pair of them blocked the isle that I had walked through previously. By my count, there were eighteen of the ghouls, and none of them seemed friendly. I recognized that I had plenty of bullets to handle them, but if I missed once I could have easily became ghoul bait. I looked around quickly, looking for a new route and, just before I gave up and begin trying my hoof at pistol sharp shooting, my eye was caught by a few flashing lights through a series of cracks in the tiled floor that ran from behind the judge’s stand to the middle of the room.

I closed my eyes, judging the hoofsteps I took to get to this point on this level, calculating.

I snapped my eyes open and lightly tapped my hoof at various points near me until I found a spot that sounded more hollow and weak than the rest. A few of the ferals began shuffling toward me as I double checked the floor at that spot, making more noise than I intended, and they started to growl as I pulled out Dust. I shot the ghoul closest to me in the eye to put her down before she could reach me and, after a careful moment of aiming down the sights, turned the weapon down to point at the spot I had found in the cracked tile. I emptied the rest of the magazine in a circle around the spot and stepped over it as the rest of the ghouls got the hint and began to quickly head my direction.

I only had ten or fifteen feet free in any direction as I began to jump and jump again to slam my hooves onto the fractured flooring, hoping that this film antic would work. With each excruciatingly painful attempt, I felt the mass beneath me shift and heard a series of cracks and groans from metal and wood, and, with one final leap, as the horde pinpointed my location in their blindness, I felt my stomach lurch upwards, into my throat, as the ground fell out from beneath me. In that moment of weightlessness, I ground my teeth together and concentrated to wrap the table closest to me in my magic before yanking sharply.

I collapsed in a heap of destroyed metal shavings, wood splinters, and tile dust on the floor of the room beneath the court, a jolt of pain stabbing through my chest and leg as my wound took the shock. The room was darkened quickly as light was cut off by the flipped table. I sighed and put my head down on the ground for a brief respite. A second passed before I heard the clopping of hooves on the wood above and smiled.

        “See, I can handle myself, Cerul,” I mumbled to the air.

After a few minutes of steadying my heart and breath, I tried getting to my hooves and managed to do so as long as I favored the hurt hoof.

The hum from before had grown in intensity since I had landed into my new hiding place, so I had to assume my calculations were correct, and that I had found the source of the broadcasting distress signal.

“Hello?” I asked openly, not expecting an answer.

I waited, but there was only a few beeps and whirs from machinery in the walls of the room.

I rolled my eyes. “Figures.”

A bright light lit the room and momentarily blinded me from the far side of the room. I squinted into it and raised a hoof to try and see the source.

“What the hell?”

A screen flickered with a pale green hue as small group of batch code continually scrolled across the screen. I walked up to the screen and noted that this was the maneframe I had tried to access earlier.

“Lucky me,” I mused. “Let’s see what this help request is all about.”

I attached my PipBuck to the terminal in the wall with a cable that ran from a recessed port next to the screen, and began the process to download the source code running currently.

“You clever boy,” I whispered to the computer before me. “An access through this backdoor, and… oh, I see… so, if I reroute the signal through the PipBuck and… yes, yes… YES!”

A loud, digital squeal pealed through the room from my PipBuck that caused me to cringe.

“He… hello?” I asked cautiously. “This is Starwind Solace at the Chivalry City Courthouse calling whoever created this distress signal. I know that you are using this maneframe as a proxy terminal to boost your original signal for the area, and that you have some really impressive access rights to the municipal grids in the area, so I think I can trust you. The fact that I know all of this shows that I am not some random raider or greedy scavenger, so I hope you can think you can trust me… Sorry, I may be a little forward. Can I start over? So I –“

“Woah, slow down, miss Solace!” A tinny, metallic voice cut me off. “I never figured anyone could break the MoAS Encryption. You must either be a ghoul with the access codes from long ago, or a really brilliant pony. Either way, I think I can trust you, yes.”

I blushed a little and then realized that I was reacting physically to the equivalent of a cold call. “Um… thanks! I am not a ghoul, but I have had extensive experience with MoAS computers in my work, and I just used a similar search algorithm to one I picked up from that to access the index of passwords in the central database before routing that through the sprite bot network you are using as a puddle jumping system to the central hub near the Cloudsdale Desolation and then –“

“I think I get the picture!” The small voice cut me off again, and I couldn’t help but blush even more deeply as I laughed awkwardly. “Okay, I get that you know I can access the sprite bots, and that I have a pretty wide control of the computers in Equestria, but that doesn’t really clarify who I am to you.”

“Right!” I tapped the screen as if it was a door. “Yes, what is your name, friend?”

“Watcher,” the voice replied simply.

“Oh, how cryptic!” I replied melodramatically. “I suppose it is because you use the visualization protocols of the sprite bots as eyes to watch the wasteland from some undisclosed location, right?”

I laughed in the silence, waiting for a response.

“How did you know that?” The voice seemed a bit too curt with that statement. Well, as curt as a synthesized voice could sound.

“Oh, I was just guessing based on the methods in the subroutines in the –“

The voice wouldn’t have any more of my technobabble.

“Alright, alright! Sorry I asked. Look, I trust you because you helped me like I asked. I was blind in the sector that close to the coastal side of the Big 52 and your intrusion fixed my control scheme there, so I thank you for that, but I need to get going to catch up with a filly in the area around Canterlot and this call is eating up my bandwidth. I’ll keep a look out for you. Stay safe, Starwind Solace.”

There was a click and then the line seemed to go dead.

“Hey, watcher!” I yelled to the mic in the PipBuck. “Hey!”

There was no reply as I continued to grumble to myself that someponies are just rude during phone calls.

I sighed and flipped over to the radio station that the signal was broadcasting on, but there was only silence.

I took a few minutes to search the room for anything of value, and I managed to turn up a few bottlecaps, a box of Blam-Os, a few energy cells, another box of bullets for Dust, and a faded photo of a handsome stallion wearing a silvery sash which read “Handy, first mayor of Chivalry.” I stowed everything but the photo, but I took care to place it on a high shelf where it would hopefully lie undisturbed, as the dead deserved.  One last look around me revealed that there was nothing here worth sticking around for anymore except for the ghosts of memory and a darkened world, but I did notice that there were solid red bars beginning to pop up in my vision in all directions around me.

A glance down at my PipBuck screen verified my suspicions as I saw that a text box alert was dancing on the screen saying that an update had completed since the connection to the PipNetwork had been repaired. I supposed that connecting to watcher had opened up the network long enough to download an essential update that this version of the PipBuck never received since it was powered down by Volt for the Librarian. The index of locations and creatures had been updated and it seemed to now be recognizing threats throughout the building.

I took time to count the bars out of curiosity and realized how lucky I had been to not get into some of the places I had been trying to enter since there were far more than just the small group above me in the building. At least five of these were milling about behind the one door that connected to the maneframe room I was currently standing in, and I wasn’t about to take any more life than I already had that day. Ghoul or otherwise, I was not going to be a killer if I knew I had another way out of this place.

Closing my eyes, I calmed myself and focused on the blinking red light of a dying Sparkle Cola machine, the beautiful curly, short mane of a charcoal mare, and the peeling whitewash of a small town courthouse before imagining myself standing among them and sending a pulse of magic to my horn to give the spell form.

In an instant I went from the cold dark of the maneframe room to the midday brightness and humidity with a small snap.

Spells always got easier with practice, and I was proficient enough now with this new  spell that Cerul had not noticed my arrival as I walked up behind her as she was eying up the cola machine with a glimmer of gluttony in her eyes. She bashed the side of the machine with a hoof, denting its surface and causing the machine to rock in place, but nothing was released from the slot on its face. I sat there a moment, a hoof tapping my chin in thought as I took in her brutal fight with the distribution device, and an idea struck me.

I walked up to Cerul and tapped her on the shoulder. She froze and turned her head slowly, a fearful grimace etched into her lips. Her features melted into a smile as she realized who I was and she swung her hooves around my neck and laugh lightly.

“Star, your back!” She said happily. “You didn’t die!”

“Yep, I am a tank of a mare,” I replied flatly. “Anyway, I think I can get into this machine for us.”

I stepped up to the machine and, with a flourish, pulled out the dirty key I had picked up inside. It fit perfectly into the slot near the payment port, and, with a turn, the door-like front swung open to reveal its treasures. Cerul rushed up and gasped.

“No way…”

She reached up a pulled out a bottle of Sparkle Cola that caused me to recoil in disgust.

“Cerul, don’t drink that! It’s radioactive!”

“I know, silly,” Cerul responded. “It’s Sparkle Cola Quantum, its super rare, and, from what I have heard, super delicious…”

“Okay… “I droned. “I guess that makes as much sense as some of the other things that we Equestrians came up with back in the day.”

Cerul pulled out and stored five other colas while I collected loose bottle caps and some pre-war bits that might have carried some value still, and when that was done we split a cola to celebrate our successful looting venture.

Laughing, Cerul smacked her lips in satisfaction while sitting against a wall. “So, what’s next, miss Smart Pony?”

 I didn’t really know. I knew that I had to find out where the signal lead, and that I had to, eventually, figure out where to go to give Dusty’s daughter the message I carried, but I didn’t have a job or any other aim or place to start searching to accomplish that one remaining goal. I answered with the only answer I had.

“I don’t… know.”

“Are you alright, Starry?” Cerul asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

“Yes, I’m fine,” I reassured her. “It just hit me that for the first time in a long time I don’t have any home to return to or any goal to aim for to keep me in the right direction.”

Cerulean rocked her head side to side and looked at me quizzically. “Couldn’t you just go back to your researcher buddies wherever they are from? I know you said that they were attacked, but didn’t you have a base somewhere or something that you could return to?”

I thought about my answer carefully as I tried to push back thoughts of Dusty and the library in the mountain. “No, it’s just me now. All of those books and scrolls and things that my benefactors wanted were burned up or destroyed, I’m sure, and I haven’t had a true home in years. I relied on the Rangers to give me purpose and something to keep me going…”

I suppose my expression must have given away my feelings because Cerul didn’t verbally reply as she scooted over to where I was sitting and rested a hoof around my shoulders. “Hey, don’t worry about it then. We can find somewhere new to call home on this journey, I bet!”

I tried to smile but I felt a pressure on my ears and eyes as if I was thousands of feet underwater. “I don’t have any direction to give us though. No ideas. No map markers. No signals.” Not to mention the fact that I had to kill another two ponies today, even if they were ghouls. I felt the fissure beaming in pride.

I frowned and shook my head before continuing. “I… I don’t think I will be of any use or help, and… well, I don’t know why you would want to stick with me anyway. Couldn’t you just return home? You know, make up to Shepard and tell him I tried to steal you away or something else he would expect so he wouldn’t disown you anymore?”

Cerul gave me a stern look. “No! I won’t leave you like this, and I couldn’t even if I did want to since he has never been the type of pony capable of being so forgiving. He was kinder once, a good pony at heart, I promise, but after mom died he just wasn’t the same. I mean, he drank so much that I couldn’t ever leave him alone because he might have died on his own, but now, as much as I hate it, he has gotten so used to it that I feel that he will be better off without me as a reminder. I wish I could return, but I think that a hero is not someone who swoops in to save the day all of the time, and is, instead, someone who lives and teaches many others to live good lives in order to save someone else’s life one day. I earned my cutie mark the day I learned about how cold the world could be, you know? It looks happy because I learned then that everypony has to be a hero in their daily lives to really turn this world around, and that I would be able to do that through happiness that I can help create and laughter that I can help spread. So, yes, maybe I could try and return, but I know that there is something great in you, Star, something that will let me be a better pony for all of those who need help. It isn’t that I can’t leave, but that I will not.”

She drew a deep breath, so I assumed she was done.

“Wow, I had no idea, Cerul…”

Her ears perked up and a smile returned to her face quickly. “No worries, Cap’n! All I’m trying to say is that we all can’t be happy twenty-four seven, but we should all have reasons to move forward. For instance, you see any kind of shiny technology and you just get this light about you! We all have our passions, and I know that sometimes we need to spread the joy around.”

I felt so stupid.

“Starwind, you idiot!” I slapped my hoof against the ground to emphasize my words.

“It isn’t a big deal, Star!” Cerul pleaded with me. “Please don’t get upset again…”

“No, I’m not upset.” I replied through a smile. “I just realized I didn’t check the most obvious place to look for directions!”

I peered down at my PipBuck and toggled over to the map section of the menu. There, following a newly placed dotted line was a heading.

“Ohhhhh!” Cerul said in mock awe. “What super-duper, awesome mission is on that gizmo?”

I stuck my tongue out at her and then winked when she made an even more ridiculous face back at me. “This PipBuck was supposed to have a specific owner, and we’re going to take it to her!”

“Wouldn’t she be, you know, dead?” Cerul deadpanned.

“Yes, but she was researching something to do with Twilight Sparkle and ancient Zebra history, which I think we should follow up with, and we need a direction, so Manehatten seems as good a place as any to head to at this point.” I supposed that the idea ran away from me a bit, but it was true that I had no better options and I was curious.

Cerul seemed nonplussed. “Um… Okay then, I guess. Onward to Manehattan! So, uh, what is Manehattan?”

My mouth dropped and hung open.

“What?!”

“What?” She responded.

“First you don’t know Twilight, and now Manehattan?” I asked rapidly. “Did you learn nothing when you were a filly?”

Cerul blushed and turned her head away. “No…”

I wrapped my hooves around Cerul this time despite the pain. “Sorry, sorry! That was a stupid thing to ask, and I am a bit insensitive sometimes. Don’t be mad, please?”

Cerul slowly turned back around and the heat in her cheeks subsided a bit. “I wasn’t mad. I know I’m not the smartest pony. If anything, I need you to teach me all of this stuff I don’t know, so it is okay. Go ahead, tell me all about what we’re headed towards, if you don’t mind.”

“Alright, but let’s get walking as I do,” I replied as I started the process of getting off the ground. “The light is starting to dwindle, and we don’t want to be caught out here at night.”

As I pointed out the direction of the city across the width of the Big 52 and we began to walk, I told Cerul about the ministry mares, the war, and how it all ended, but Cerul took particular interest in one story I learned from a few of my colleagues whose focus was history.

“You said that Pinkie Pie was the ministry mare of parties?!”

I laughed and nodded. “Yeah, kind of! She did a whole lot of other things too, but parties were Pinkie’s favorite things, for sure. A party for every foal on their birthday was her motto.”

“Wow! What happened to her in all of the mess on the last day?” Cerul asked in rapt attention.

The sun was a few hours from setting as I paused our pace to look her in the eyes. “No one knows what happened to the ministry mares for sure, but many historians I know believe that she died somewhere in Manehattan due to some transit records, terminal codes, and other stuff that they found in their studies.”

“Which way is Manehattan again?” Cerul asked using hurried words while stretching in place.

I pointed a hoof. “That way, wh–“

Cerul, using inequine strength, tossed me onto her back, told me to hold on, and began a full sprint in the direction I indicated.

“If anypony is throwing parties like those still, I want in!”

Footnote:

Level Up!

Level 3 –

Sneak 25

Guns 20

Perk Gained! Teleportation level 2