Fallout Equestria: The Isle of Hope

As the sun was setting behind the sickly viridian clouds that clung to the sky indefinitely, Cerul and I found ourselves staring up at the black muzzle of a semi-automatic rifle clenched in the teeth of a very stoic, very confused guard perched on top of a wall made of sheet metal riveted to the side of an old train car.

“Ah don’t recognize ya from these parts,” He drawled slowly. “State yer business or git gone.” His final word was emphasized with a globule of spit being shot from his mouth to the hard earth at our hooves.

I shuffled my hooves awkwardly, unsure of what to say since I tended to just get myself into trouble with talking when my tired mind didn’t play along well. Cerul picked up on this and pranced in a circle around me while speaking to the guard. “What my somber friend here is trying to say is that we have walked from the Big 52 all day, and we would be oh so thankful if you would let us in to catch ourselves some Z’s, my good sir!”

The guard simply narrowed his eyes to the point that one would find it hard to tell if they were open at all. I never could understand how she stayed so energetic and charged up either.

“We are just two young fillies out to rest our weary hooves,” she continued. “Won’t you please let us in?” With that she stopped and gave the guard her best darling eyes.

“Well, ah s’pose ya aint raiders from Ponyville, seein as they all got shot a few days back, and ya do look as ya say,” The guard trailed off in thought before pointing a hoof at me and continuing again. “Ah need ta hear from that one first, though, a‘for ah make mah decision.”

I opened my mouth for a few moments and raised a hoof. Rethinking my words, I closed it again and placed my hoof on the ground. This activity repeated a few times before the guard, nonplussed, pulled back the safety of his weapon with a click. The sound jarred me, and I managed to squeak out the few words my tired mind could compose through my cringing.

“Do you enjoy the works of Corkscrew Brew or A.K. Yearling?”

A few moments of silence passed between us as a gust blew a small dust tornado across the landscape.

With a small wrinkle of a smile slowly breaking out across his face, the guard began to laugh heartily. “Shoot, young lady, ah aint never heard that as an introduction a‘for! Ah can’t say ya aint an egghead or a bit crazy, but ah know tha two’a you aint like no raiders er bandits ah ever seen. If’n you’ll head over ta the gate around this way,” he directed us with a hoof. “Ah’ll get Brandybuck to open it up.”

We did as we were told and walked alongside the guard on the wall who would cackle every few steps to himself. Brandybuck was a small, red maned earth pony with alluring features and a warm smile, and, as we approached, she exited a small scrap lean-to next to a gate controlled by a tall winch and conversed softly enough with the guard from before that I could not pick out what was said. Regardless, she looked at us as she did so and waved us toward the gate. With a sultry saunter, she entered the lean-to again and punched a button which started the wench to lift the barrier out of the way.

As we walked underneath the bulk of the gate, which looked to also be a train car, Brandy spoke down to us from her shack. “Have a nice stay in New Appleoosa, and don’t cause no trouble!” With that, she winked at us and turned back to lower the gate back into place.

I paused to take in the lay of the land in the waning light and noticed that it was based on a radial system of railroads all meeting at a central point in the middle of the town square. I knew that Old Appleoosa was a trading town, so I had to suppose that the second version was of similar origin. But this, this was a city made of train parts. A caboose there, an engine here, and flat cars used as walls nearly everywhere. A neon blue sign flashed at us from a nearby building, if it could be called that, which read Browncoat Inn and Tavern, and with a nod passed between us, we began to trot in its direction.

The ground below our hooves was a bit muddied by the liquid flowing from a drainpipe which emptied into a nearby cistern, so we had to shake the muck off before we entered the structure. A small bell rang as the door was pushed open, and a scruffy stallion behind the dented metal bar waved us over.

“Welcome ta Browncoat! Mah name’s Lager. What’ll ya have?”

I began to open my mouth, but thought against it since Cerul would probably jump in first.

I was right.

“We just want to rent a room, sir. Oh… and a cake, if you have one! I love cake.”

Cerul’s mouth hung open a bit and a little bit of drool began to appear on her lips as she drifted off into her thoughts. I tapped her shoulder and she just teetered a bit in place before I took over the conversation for her.

“I suppose she’s a bit more tired than she lets on. Anyway, I realize you probably don’t have cake, but if you have a room available, we would really be grateful if you’d rent it to us.”

Lager rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Hmmm, Ah think we do, but it ain’t nothin special. Come on, follow me.”

I shook Cerul until she was alert again, and she frowned when I told her there was no cake to be had. “Come on, Cerulean, it’s time to get some sleep.”

She nodded and yawned as we began to follow Lager up to the second story hallway where four rooms from what looked to be old passenger cars branched off of it. We were led to the last room which faced the edge of town where we entered from, and Lager turned to face us.

“Ya both look dead tired, so get some sleep. It’ll be thirty caps, but don’t worry ‘bout that tonight. Ya can pay me in the mornin.”

I smiled at him. “You don’t have to do that.” I pulled out fifteen caps. “Here, a down payment so you don’t put us up for the night for no reason.”

He nodded once at us and gave a crooked smile in return before walking back down the stairs.

“Hey, you’re falling asleep standing up,” I whispered softly to Cerul as we dropped our things on a table near the door. Both of us chose a side and collapsed onto the hard mattress, probably asleep before hitting the surface.

The smell of gunpowder always was distinctive.

I felt the tang of it on my tongue, and heard the dull thwup thwup thwup of a discharging rifle coming from outside the train car. I only had a few minutes before one of the slavers returned with wounded for me to tend, but I knew that I needed to go look after the fillies and colts kept in the cages.

I felt the metal saddlebags chaffing my flanks as I scrounged around with my magic to organize some bandages and sap salve —they were helpful for medical purposes and safer than fabric, but they hurt something awful sometimes.

The scraping metal of the door hinge struck me as I began to finalize my preparations and close my saddlebags. The silhouette of a pony shone in stark relief to the yellow lights in the night on the wall in front of me. I assumed it was Nail Biter, here to bring me to the others as she closed the door behind her.

“Nail, it’s about time!” I closed my saddlebags and turned to face her.

I think I began to pester her about leaving me in here while others were outside being injured since I wouldn’t be any help inside this car, but I was struck by what I saw as my eyes adjusted to the petite newcomer in the dark.

Was that a PipBuck on her leg?

“Oh… no…”

Everything began to blur into an unnatural pace as lines of light and dark, gold and purple and black, raced across my vision as images flashed and my head spun. Dirt and blood flew everywhere as land mines exploded and bullets drilled new holes into shoulders, chests, and heads. I felt a great, green goddess shouting in my mind while I tried to comfort the little ones. I saw her crushed. There was running and fighting and killing and stress. Then the train was racing, barreling down a mountain, and I was certain that it was the end.

I felt the crash and my head struck the ground with a thud.

“Ouch…” I whispered as I opened my eyes to peer into darkness. I felt my body shaking, fearful that I may have broken a limb or worse. I flexed each of my legs slowly, one at a time, and realized that I could only feel the small sting in my shoulder from where Shepard shot me.

It took me a few moments, but I stood up in the silence and knew that there was no train, no crash, and I had to focus my eyes on the sleeping form of Cerulean on the bed in front of me to convince me that what I was seeing was real.

I stared at the ceiling, tracing lines in the wood and nails as if they were the constellations of old my father always spoke about. “They’re getting more vivid, Cerul.”

She just snored softly in reply.

It seemed to be a comforting sleep she was having, so I decided not to wake her with any more talk. I crept into the hallway and shut the door as silently as I could. I needed to take a walk to shake off the heavy cloud hovering in my mind, and I knew that sleep would only make it worse at that point. I stopped at the bar again and rummaged around in my saddle bags to pull out another fifteen caps which I set near the old register that I had seen Lager using that prior evening.

The small bell chimed again as I walked out into the early dawn, and I saw red and pink streaked clouds from the East welcoming me to town once more. It always baffled me how the sun setting could be so full of revulsion, green and sickly, but that the same sun could rise with such beauty that would last but for a few minutes before the cloud’s sickness of green returned. I supposed that it was just the world reflecting what we had done to her; we had taken the beauty and twisted it up into something fit only for terror and hate and disease.

The colors began to change from their palette of happiness to that of disgust, and I figured it was time I moved on. I started my walk by following the road the Inn was on toward the center of the wheel shaped town, stopping along the way to read the few signs that dangled from the various train cars and buildings. One in particular caught my eye, so I decided to head inside in order to browse a bit.

I shook the damp air out of my coat as I came to a front desk of the small store. On the desk was a small bell mounted to the wood which I struck a few times, assuming its purpose.

“Hello? Sorry if it is a bit early in the day, but I’m just here to check out your shop.”

I waited to see if there would be a reply, but all I heard was some shuffling and what sounded like a box full of tools hitting the floor.

“Um, I guess I can just go if it’s a problem,” I said as I turned back towards the door.

A hoof grabbed my shoulder and stopped me before I could even take a step. I turned and my eyes grew wide as I found myself face to face with a gray ghoul, grinning from ear to ear.

I fumbled to pull out a weapon of some kind, but the ghoul was too fast as she knocked the weapon away and reached behind her to pull out… a small chalk board?

I stared, slack jawed at what I was seeing as the ghoul, which I now noticed was a Pegasus, began to write with her mouth.

“I’m Ditzy Doo! A friend!”

I read this out loud, more for my benefit than for her, and realized how blind I had become if I was so quick to jump to violence. I knew very well that there were plenty of ghouls who weren’t feral, and some were even accepted into society freely, like, I supposed, Ditzy here, but I had tried to kill her anyway.

“I... I’m so sorry,” I managed to squeak. “It has been a long few days and… oh, there really isn’t a good excuse.”

I frowned and dropped my head.

“You can report me to a sheriff or someone if you like. I know I deserve nothing else.”

The fissure hissed and boiled mocking me in such a way that I felt a heat welling up.

Ditzy tapped my shoulder and pointed to her board again.

“It’s okay. Happens a lot.”

“You sure?” I questioned sadly.

She nodded rapidly, still giving me that ridiculously endearing smile.

I noticed that one of her eyes was slowly rotating off center to point at the wall, and I began to tilt my head to follow it before I caught myself and blinked to try and cover up what I had done.

She laughed silently, covering up her mouth with her hooves as she did so. I only knew it was laughter because of the way her shoulders bounced as her wings lifted her a few inches from the floor, but the silence made me realize that she had not spoken a word since I had arrived.

“Ditzy,” I intoned cautiously. “Can’t you speak?”

Her laughter stopped abruptly and then her body slowly came to rest on the ground again. She sighed and began writing, stopping to let me read what she had written before erasing it to start the process over.

“No. Can’t talk. No Tongue. Was taken from me. Long time ago now.”

I was at a loss and could only frown and apologize for what some terrible pony had done.

She tapped me again and shook her head vigorously.

“No. Don’t be sad! I’m fine now. Being a Ghoul. It has some use. You know? Quick healing. I’m a tough. Old bird.”

I laughed with her this time as I felt some relief returning to me.

She continued scribbling.

“Welcome! To Absolutely Everything!” She waved her hoof proudly around her in a semicircle, letting me take in the scene.

“Do you actually have absolutely everything here?” I said with a bit of a giggle caught in my voice.

She nodded, somehow more quickly than before, then flew off into a back room to return a few seconds later with a large, bound book that would have given even Twilight Sparkle a run for her money in terms of speed reading. She placed it on the main counter and waved me over.

“This is. My Inventory. I have lived. A long time. So I know. How to get things. Trust me.”

She peeled open the cover and let me peruse the tiny scratch like writing on the first page.

“Apples, ant hides, anchovies, axes…” I turned the pages and kept reading. “Spark batteries, Mogar plushies, radio dials, tooth paste? You really weren’t exaggerating, huh?”

I looked up at her and she had coolly been leaning back against the wall and tilting her head slightly, as if to say, “Yeah, I’m awesome.” And I had to admit that it was very impressive!

A few flakes of skin fell from her crossed hooves as she began to move again, directing me to sit at a stool she pulled from her side of the counter. I did and she lifted the chalk board from the table top and placed it around her neck like a necklace before starting to write at me again.

“I’ve been busy. Been gathering. For the team to return. With the little mare. And the others. Sorry for mess.”

“Team?” I asked. “Who are you talking about?”

She used a hoof to erase the board and began to reply.

“Right. You’re new! Sorry. Forgot. A few left. A day or so back. Went to old town. Some mission. Calamity got supplies. Haven’t heard back since.”

“Calamity?” I exclaimed. “What? Something awful happened? Why are you so calm if your supplies were destroyed by some terrible event?”

She laughed again, surprising me. As she continued, I noted how her demeanor reminded me of Cerul more so than anypony I had ever met. I made a mental checklist box to remind myself to bring those two together at some point since it would probably be hilarious.

“Not A Calamity. The stallion. His name is. Calamity. He was helping. Little Pip.”

My head begin to spin again as I heard a scream building. I closed my eyes and began pressing my hooves against my ears. I knew that name.

Why did I know that name!?

Then as quickly as the rush of pain and sound began, it was sucked away with a touch of a hoof from Ditzy.

I opened my eyes and saw the chalk board waiting for me.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, Ditzy,” I replied. “I… I just have a small headache. Sorry about that.”

She nodded slowly, dubiously.

“I know what. Memories can do. I’ve seen it. Long lives do that.”

I flicked a small figure of a pony on a spring that was resting on the desk and watched it bounce around. I supposed she would understand how memory affects a pony better than most ponies alive today.

“If you don’t mind me asking, Ditzy, how old are you? How have you stayed so cheerful with such adversity in your life?”

She smiled in return, bringing up her board.

“I lost count. Of the years. A few decades back. My story is long. I’m not always. Happy. I just try. To remember. What’s important.”

“And what’s important to you, Ditzy?” I leaned in closer.

“All life is. Everypony. We all just need. Friendship. I have been lucky. In my life. To know many ponies. As my friends. Some of them. Were the best. The best in Equestria… They’re gone now. That broke me. A few times. But I always. Rebounded. Remembering that. Even in death. They are with me. In memory.”

I sat back and tried to take in what she had said.

“You seem like you would have such great stories to tell, Miss Doo. Have you ever thought of writing a book?”

She managed to smile even wider, causing the lines of her mouth to wrinkle and the skin to grow tight where her coat had disappeared on her face.

“Yes. Memoirs. I’ve kept a journal. For years. Never compiled them. You think I should?”

“Of course!” I replied with a slap of my hoof on the desk. “The Ditzy Doo Chronicles! I could see it now, and, trust me, because if I know anything, I know books. Researched them for a long time with the Rangers out of Baltimare…”

I swallowed as I felt an unsettling in my stomach to keep myself from getting that sickening feeling again.

“Baltimare?” Ditzy wrote rapidly. “Best Muffins. In the Wasteland. There! A place run. By brothers. From Germaneigh. Ever been?”

She seemed elated to talk about muffins, so I chuckled a little.

“No, sorry, never got to really explore the city since we mainly just stuck to the outskirts and the research cove.”

She shrugged with her hooves slightly angled out and returned to writing.

A cuckoo clock somewhere in the shop counted seven, and she stopped abruptly as something came to her mind. She erased what she had started to say and scribbled hastily.

“Sorry. Gotta go finish. Preparations for. Checking on. The team who. Went to Old Town. Thanks for listening! I don’t get. To tell stories often. Feel free to. Come by again anytime!”

She began to fly off to the room she had come from originally, but stopped in the doorway to turn back to look at me. She lifted the board again to her mouth.

“By the way. Never got your name!”

“Starwind Solace.” I responded. “Wonderful to meet you Ditzy.”

“Pleasure is. Mine. See you later?”

“Yes,” I smiled. “Of course! I’ll come by before we leave town, if you’re around.”

She zoomed over in a blur and I found myself wrapped in a very squishy hug. Pressed against her clammy body, I heard her steady heartbeat, a more healthy and comforting sound than anything I had heard in a long while. Ghoul or not, Ditzy Doo seemed like one of the most alive ponies I had ever known.

“Always good,” Ditzy scratched. “To make new friends.”

I nodded and mimicked her wide grin, and she left the room to return to work.

Turning toward the door, I caught sight of a bobbing set of books precariously resting on top of the head of a stallion walking past the dirty window.

“Where there are books,” I said to myself. “A library or bookstore there may also be…”

I trotted at a leisurely pace out of the shop to see the book carrying stallion turning a corner. I moved a little more quickly, hoping to catch up with him, but as I came to the street where he had turned, I was met with another empty lane.

I huffed and scowled before continuing my walk down the street. I kept glancing into the small train car buildings in hopes that I might find the elusive book pony, but it was not to be as I came to the end of the path with the city wall keeping me from moving forward.

I rolled my eyes and turned back around.

“Maybe one of these other places will have somepony in them to help me out.”

I proceeded to walk into the nearest building which had the emblem of a raging Pegasus emblazoned above its doorframe. Music was pouring out of the room as soon as I opened the door, and a hoof grabbed mine before yanking me into the fray.

I spun and spun as colors and sounds became a single blur. I couldn’t keep up with what was happening as I scrambled to get a hold of something, anything to let me have some stability. My eyes spotted purple, red, blue, and green bars flashing here and there as if the E.F.S couldn’t decide what was going on either. Through it all I saw a barstool hurtling in my direction, clearing a path through the mass of ponies around me.

“Get back ‘ya varmints!” A hard voice yelled over the din.

“Awh, come on Crane,” another voice yelled back. “Can’t you see she just wants in on the fun too?”

The stool, hovering in the air, cleared the last remnants of the crowd around me and a bulky unicorn stallion appeared behind it.

“Follow me outta’ this mess.”

I nodded and gulped before we walked through the crowd and up to a bar with spots of dirt and rust mottling its surface – certainly not as clean as the Browncoat’s.

I looked back as I sat at a stool next to the unicorn who helped me out and realized that I had been pulled into a mixture of a dancing and fighting that was as savagely beautiful as it was dangerous.

“What are they doing?” I asked the stallion as I cringed at a particularly painful looking pirouette.

“Dash heads from a Saddle Arabian caravan passin’ through.” He responded. “They’re really only trouble for themselves as long as you stay outta’ their way.”

“Yeah,” another voice chimed in from a stallion behind the bar to my right. “and they may make a hell of a mess, but them's is good business.” The stallion chuckled as he went back to cleaning a glass with an oil stained rag.

I dropped one eye and cocked my head as I stared back at the rumble behind me.

“Huh… if you say so.”

A glass was planted on the bar behind me and I turned to see the barpony with a bottle in his mouth, pouring a tall glass of something.

He put the bottle down before pushing the glass to me.

“It’s on me. I know that that crowd can be a hoof full.”

I nodded and realized that I hadn’t really caught my breath since coming in.

I took a deep breath.

With no hesitation I lifted the drink to my mouth and drank all of its contents in one gulp, not thinking about the taste or…

I gasped for air as a stinging in my throat and mouth caused me to start coughing uncontrollably.

“What…” I practically died coughing, “Was that!?”

The unicorn from before just smirked at me. “Wild Pegasus. And damn if you ain’t the bravest little filly this side of the 52 for takin’ the whole glass in one go.”

My right eye was twitching as I rocked in place for a few moments to somewhat compose myself.

The stallion gave a chuckle and extended a hoof to me. “Name’s Crane, lifter o' freight, and friend o’ anyone who can drink like that.”

I weakly hoof bumped him. “Ni… nice to meet you. Mine is Starwind.”

“What’re you in town fer, missy?” Crane asked as he swirled the contents of his glass.

“Just passing through on our way to the Manehattan area,” I replied with a sigh. “Though, at this rate, I may get killed here and never make it!”

“Manehattan?” Crane asked. “You see this,” he gestured with a sweep of his hoof. “And think that it’s dangerous, but want to head to Manehattan? You really must be even braver than ah thought... That or crazy.”

“Well, psychosis is likely a part of most ponies’ psychology, if you believe the studies of the psychologists in the MoAS.”

Before he could reply, I pulled out an old book that I had little interest in and a pencil and began sketching out the design of a helmet with a space in the crown for an orb on its blank title fly.

“This is a recollector. They used these to record memories and, in some experiments, to analyze dreams and emotions, and they often would catch glimpses of murderous intent and other tendencies which they originally passed off as anomalies. Some arcane researchers had another opinion– though there is contention in nearly every field, so that isn’t surprising – and it was that we all were essentially standing on a razor of stability that could quickly cause a pony to fall into insanity. I always thought their methodology was a bit overreaching, but it is fascinating research, really.”

Crane looked as if he had fallen out of the pages of a pre-historic picture book as he was discovering fire.

“Um, sure,” he replied dully.

He shook his head and glanced up at an old standing clock on near the wall behind me.

A startled look crossed his face.

“Is it that time already? Damn. Alright, ah gotta get to work, miss Starwind. Thanks for the drink, Apple Whiskey, ah’ll pay you when the caps come in tonight.”

Crane was up and out of the door before the barkeep could reply. I just shrugged at the puzzled pony.

“Thanks for the kindness, mister, but I think I may stick to water in the morning next time,” I said to him as I began to follow Crane’s way out.

“Yeah, yeah,” he replied. “Hey, if you see Crane again, tell him that next time I’ll be chargin’ double!”

I laughed and edged my way past the brawl and back out to the street.

I had to nearly run to keep pace with Crane’s surprising quickness. “Hey, Crane, could you slow down a bit? I was curious about the book situation in the town. Crane!”

The fifty or so feet between us was slowly growing as I realized why he didn’t respond. The clash of a loud whistling, the sound of shouting ponies, and the whine whirring machinery slapped me across the face as we made our way onto the street where I found Absolutely Everything.

As we neared the center of the town, I began to spot ponies wandering about, carrying bundles and boxes and bags of various kinds to their businesses and homes. A large line of freight cars pulled by a group of stallions in overalls had just pulled in, so I guessed that work must start for everypony in this town around the time trains run through. It would explain the lack of presence before now.

I stopped to take in the life around me. There were ponies laughing and ponies shouting and ponies sweating under the weight of burdens they carried. I loved the sound of it –the feel of it. This was the way that Equestria should’ve been; this was the way it was before. I basked in the sounds of little colts playing in the mud, the mares gossiping about this and that, and the general atmosphere abuzz with motion and vibrancy.

As I looked forward again, I realized that I had lost track of Crane, but I didn’t really care about that so much now. I thought of waking Cerul to take it in with me, but she did seem incredibly comfortable in her sleep, and, besides, we had all day to do this, so I decided to just continue on.

I wandered closer to the train and saw the crowd surrounding the ponies who were unloading the crates. I supposed I should help them out since I was there, so I began pushing my way into the least clustered area to help a filly struggling with a small satchel.

“Here, let me help you with those straps,” I said to her before tightening the small latches tying the bag to her back. She just smiled and scampered off to catch up with her family who were carrying bags of their own.

I made my way closer to the large group and found myself stuck in the middle of a jumble of new arrivals waiting for their duties.

“Don’t turn around,” A warm, mare’s voice from just behind me whispered into my ear.

I froze, wide eyed at whatever could be happening. “What do you want?”

“I just have a proposal for you,” Responded the sultry sounding pony. “In the bar, I couldn’t help but hear that you know a lot about technology and arcane science, and, well, I think that you may exactly who we are looking for in our particular situation.”

“And… what is that?” I ask dubiously. “If you say it has to do with a school or library, I may have to just say no right now.”

“No, none of that. We need you to help us out with a small… energy flow predicament at a nearby power station that hasn’t been raided or picked over yet. If you are interested in tech untouched by any ponies since the megaspells, I suggest you head to the hills you see over the wall in front of you. Bring your peppy friend with you, if you think she will help, but she may just cause you trouble, so I suggest you just head out now.”

As I turned to ask her about how she knew about Cerul, I was unable to speak as a pair of golden eyes flashed underneath a crimson hood at me – I swear I could feel them piercing me like a knife.

Shouts from nearby drew my attention back to in front of me. A large crate was careening on the edge of the flatcar as one of the earth stallions had accidentally dropped the load on his forehooves.

Without much thought, I pushed to the front, next to the train, and strained myself to levitate the large box off of him. I felt sweat beading at my forehead as I held the weight aloft in my magic.

I turned my eyes on a group of stallions near me and aggressively whispered at them through gritted teeth. “Get him out from under there. Right. Now!”

They scrambled to pull the pony out, and I slowly put the box on the ground to my right.

I gasped for breath. “What’s in this thing? Anvils?” I looked around and all of the ponies just looked as confused as me.

I whinnied softly and just turned to walk back the way I came since there didn’t seem to be any more immediate peril. “No matter, I suppose.”

The injured stallion called out as I was walking away. “Thank you, miss!”

I waved back at him and smiled, and then I turned to look back down the street with a more serious face on to see where that hooded mare could’ve gone. I couldn’t be so foolish as to just run off and venture into a place I had no real answers about…

Or could I?

I handled myself fine today and yesterday, and my wound was feeling better since I got to rest a bit, so why couldn’t I?

I sat at the intersection of the path to the Browncoat and the gate out of town, and just began taking stock of everything.

On one hoof, I thought, there would be chances for technology and new knowledge, but with no real certainty of safety or making it back in time to leave for our trip today. On the other, I could be missing out on something amazing in simply staying here to relax with Cerul before leaving.

I bit my bottom lip and scratched at the dirt.

“It couldn’t hurt to just see how far the station is from here could it?” I asked myself softly.

I lifted my PipBuck to my eyes and turned the dials to find the world map. I traced the line that had been created at some point to a marker on my map marked as Sub-Station Delta, and I realized that it was only a couple of miles away; I could be back before Cerul even wakes up! I could just go, take care of their problems, play with some new tech, and be back in time for us to get out of town and on our way to Manehattan…

As I came to, realizing what was happening outside of my thoughts, I found myself walking away from the closing gate, which was still being watched over by Brandy, headed in the direction indicated by the mare.

The power of my curiosity would likely be the death of me.

I crept slowly up a dusty hill covered in prickly, red, dead grass to peer down into the small valley which contained the old plant. As I had come within a few hundred feet of the direct area around it, my E.F.S had been picking up red markers in growing numbers, so I had decided to approach as quietly and secretly as possible in order to see what was happening.

The black building with an array of power lines running into its rear and out of its front seemed desolate of any life as I could not spot any movement around or within. Still, I knew better than to trust my sight or my E.F.S for all things, so I planned to look for another way into the facility rather than using the doors leading in directly.

These places typically had drainage systems for their crystal cooling vats, and at this point they would probably be dry as a bone and passible as a secondary entrance, so I began to skirt in a circle around the perimeter, looking for such a place.

It sometimes paid to actually have to read those dusty manuals that ponies usually threw out, and, in that case, it could not have been more true as I went about one hundred feet in an arc before nearly falling into a hole in the earth filled with dry bits of crystal and bone fragments that was hidden underneath a small alcove that housed a pipe with a diameter greater than my height.

I whistled to myself, impressed. “You don’t often see outflows that large on anything less than a Class A reactor… What the hell do they have in you?”

I used my forehooves to propel me to eye level with the tube, and I saw that it was barren, which, in this case, was a great sign. Since there were no markers on my E.F.S at my eyelevel, I climbed the rest of the way into the drainage system and began a short trek up an incline and into the dark.

As I walked with unsure steps, I began hearing a low melodic hum echoing from the far end of the tunnel. Feeling a slight bend in the system as I continued, I also began to see a thin, orange glow floating its way from a distant exit. A few more steps and a blue marker popped to life in my vision. The hum resonated more deeply with every step, an amber tone with subtle lifts and falls that both filled me with hope and dread as I felt this music from somewhere within myself and from the surroundings. Nearing the opening, I crept more and more slowly towards the lip of the pipe, expecting a weapon discharge or a melee to ensue, but as I peeped over the edge and down into the spacious concrete chamber, I was met only with the sight of a reclining, mottled brown and gray stallion with a hoof rolled cigarette drooping casually from the edge of his mouth. I paused for a few moments for the last few notes of the first verse to be set free.

Instead, the humming stopped.

“Ya don’t have to creep like that, missy.” I nearly fell the fifteen or so feet onto the chamber floor as his raspy words caught me off balance and off guard. “Iff’n you were gonna shoot me or steal from me, I imagine you would’ve been a might more clever or aggressive than that, so go ahead, come on down. I don’t bite.”

With that last statement, he chuckled dryly to himself and pulled his loose Stetson a little closer down to his eyes.

I slowly levitated myself down to the floor to take the extra pain on my wounds out of the equation before dusting myself off and timidly walking into the small sphere of light given off by his burning cigarette.

I rubbed the back of my head. “Um… hi?”

He narrowed his eyes a bit. “Hi.”

There was a pause as we both just stared at each other. He was a ghoul, I could tell that much pretty easily, but both I and my E.F.S had yet to determine if he was to be friend or foe. I supposed I would have to push it one way or the other, so I took a few steps closer and rigidly stuck out a hoof.

“I’m Starwind, and it is a pleasure to meet you, mister…?”

“Sand,” he replied. “Sand Stone, really. All muh friends called me that… course, ah ain’t got many of them left, ah s’pose, so call me what you want.”

“Well, Sand, I am glad to meet a friendly face in this place. If you don’t mind me asking… why are you alone in the dark down here?

His cigarette was beginning to burn out so he rubbed the butt onto the wall beside him before pulling out a second and lighting it with dented lighter emblazoned with the symbol of six crystals arranged around an atom.

“It’s muh home these days. Ah ain’t got much use for company, and, in muh experience, most normal ponies ain’t got any need fer me neither, if you get what ah mean.”

“Oh… yeah, I know what you mean,” I gently replied in the stillness. “I hate very little in this world because I know everything can get better in time, but I think I hate the intolerance that ghouls like you face most of all. Sorry, I know that it may seem a bit forward for me to say, but I was raised to accept ponies for who they are, not what they look like or seem to be on the surface.”

Sand grunted softly. “So, it seems decency hasn’t left all folks so far. Ah used to work here, ya know? Ah was s’posed to become head engineer fer this plant after the refit, but then the government and those… those zebras destroyed us all. Ah used to hate the zebras before that day– hell, ah thought they were the lowest bastards on the face of the planet. Ah figured they were worse than Sombra, himself, since the mad king never considered detonatin’ everythin', but muh mind changed after that day. All of us creatures are equally despicable, and ah think realizing that has kept me sane to this day. But ah guess that ain’t muh point, sorry. Ah meant to say that it’s nice to see that it doesn’t take atrocities to bring out the best in everypony else.”

I pondered what he said for a moment before replying. I couldn’t tell what it was about this stallion, but he felt like someone I could open up to about things that I usually never thought about– he reminded me of someone I lost. I figured it wouldn’t hurt anypony to bring it up, so I walked a bit closer and sat against the wall.

“I thank my mom for that, you know? See, she and my father lived in the commonwealth once upon a time, but when my mother began noticing the lack of empathy for those outside the commonwealth as well as the segregation and hate spewed towards ponies there that broke the mold a bit, she decided to take it upon herself to make things better. So, with my father and a few others backing her, she picked up and broke away from the Commonwealth to travel from the rad pits of Saddle Arabia to the Shimmering Oceans seeking out a new home and ways to help out those in need. In their travels, she had me and taught me much about the world and her studies, but she died during the birth of my sister… She was likely the best pony I ever had the chance to know, and I regret every day that my sister had never gotten the chance to know her too, but…  I think what I was getting at was that her death was the catalyst for the formation of New Commons, my father’s intense teachings to me and my sister, and my attitude today. It may not be that I was formed by an atrocity, but I think the best lessons are those we learn in the hardest times.”

“You have a story teller’s heart, Starwind,” Sand said with a brief chuckle. “Ah guess muh only possible reply is to ask you the same question you asked me: what are you doin’ down here?”

“Well, I was asked to by some mare who was there one second and gone the next. I guess that sounds ridiculous, but that is my only explanation.”

Sand gritted his teeth to the point that I figured he would bite his cigarette in half, but somehow he managed to keep it in place.

“She wouldn’t happen to have been wearing a hood and a dark red cloak, did she?”

I thought back. “Yeah, I guess she did, why?”

He shook his head slowly. “Good thing you are smarter than most in comin’ through here, ‘cause her and her ilk have taken up a small roost in this place. They made traps out of the security system ah built!”

I quickly scanned the room for red markers.

“Traps? What!? Why would they do that? And how did they not manage to get you too?”

Sand waved his hooves in front of me.

“Whoa, whoa whoa, miss Starwind! Look here. We’re in the cooling tank, and it is sealed from the inside by yours truly. No one knows this system better than me, so you don’t have nothin’ to worry about. Plus, those foals couldn’t secure a system if they were zip tied to a megaspell missile and their lives depended on it. Ah would suggest you turn right around and leave after we get done talkin’ though, ‘cause while they aren’t a danger to you here, ah wouldn’t try to get up there into the main complex unless you happen to have a portable terminal or somethin’ crazy like that.

I smiled to myself and raised my hoof into the light near his face.

“What, you got somethin’ wrong with your hoof or… oh… oh!”

“That’s right!” I grinned. “Beautiful tech is it not?”

“Ah haven’t seen a PipBuck in… a lot longer than ah care to think about, but that’ll do it! Course… ah still think you should leave though. Those folk upstairs ain’t known for bein’ the kind and welcomin' type, regardless of their security systems.”

“But…” I looked down while muttering to myself. “I need answers! They must have had a reason for sending me all this way just to try and ambush me.”

Since when did I start being paranoid? I made a mental note to check that out later.

“Hmmm,” he rubbed under his hat in thought. “Ah s’pose ah might be able to rig up a proxy so you can access their terminal systems from here, and there may be some information on there, but ah won’t, in good conscience, help you go up there, so that’s all ah can do to help you.”

A wave of relief passed over me as I didn’t really want to get shot at or attacked today, if I could help it.

Within a few minutes of me following and adapting his instructions on how to work this particular maneframe from a virtual machine, I found my way into the directories of the administrator’s main computer. There were many hundreds of records, receipts, journal entries, and business documents of all kinds, but it seemed as if the longer I was scrolling through the list, the farther back the dates went. Sand suggested I query for all files made in the last three to four years since that is about the time the group moved in. With that done, the results were down to five files, so I just decided I would arbitrarily open one to see if it was even remotely useful.

“Sand, pick a number between zero and six.” I murmured as I mulled over the cryptic file names.

Sand raised an eyebrow. “Uh… three, ah guess.”

I opened the third file and it turned out to be an audio diary.

“Oh, Wake, you know I hate recording these things,” a young mare’s voice spoke over the air.

“I know, but life is so short and we have to leave a mark somehow, baby,” a husky stallion voice replied.

“You always make life here out to be so dark, but we have each other!” The mare insisted. “That should be enough to give you hope.”

“It is baby, it is, but… with Jupiter breathing down our necks about setting up camp here for the big guy… he says there may have to be dead weight cut. He says –”

There is a loud blaring alarm and a shuffling of papers.

“These drills are driving me crazy! We’ll talk again later, okay?”

There was a click and the recording died away.

Sand coughed before laughing a bit.

“Well, ah guess you never know what’ll end up on those things, huh?”

I didn’t reply as I opened the next entry.

“Eight, nine… where is number ten?” The husky voiced Wake urgently asked. “Baby, can you find number ten? We have to get this fully active to meet their deadline tonight or there might be – oh… heh, hey, Merc, what are you doing here? “

“Sally-Mae, get out. Now.” A gravelly voice cut through.

A door closed and a chair scraped across the floor.

“You said you’d have all ten crystals ready to be placed in the array, Wake.”

“Well, yeah, we had them around here… somewhere. Sally-Mae and I were just gathering them up when you came in. I –“

“No, you either have them or you don’t,” the dark voice edged in. “We know about you and her, Wake. We know what you two have been hiding, and the hand is never fooled. You may want to cut off your recording now because this next part is not something you’ll want to remember.”

Another click.

This time Sand didn’t make a sound, and I couldn’t blame him. Slowly, I clicked the fifth, and final, entry.

“Sally… sally, I’ll be following you soon, babe,” wake slurred. There was a clinking of glass and what sounded like a thick bottle shattering on the floor. “The hand has the array nearly ready to go. Seems like Merc found the tenth, afterall. Isn’t that HILARIOUS?!”

Another crash of glass was accompanied with a grunt and what sounded like dry sobbing.

“But I’ll show them… Yeah… Yes. They set up all of this security for their methods, and they think that you’re the only one who was smart enough to see what they were wanting to do, Sally, but… but… you and I, we’re gonna show them. See this? Course you don’t… anyway, this is gonna put them back three months at least.”

There was a silence on the air as cold as death.

A metallic click filled the void. “They set all these traps up to protect their work, they say, but I know better, sally. The Hand of Omega was behind it all. The trappings, the deaths, your… yeah. They say that we’re getting prepared for some visitors who need special attention – some mares who are on their way to New Appleoosa. Heh. A shame I won’t get to hit on ‘em, you know, sally; the way I used to do to make you jealous.”

The sound of stifled gasps escapes my PipBuck once more.

“Now, I won’t give them the satisfaction of doing it, and I told you I would be following you soon, so there’s no time like the pres –“

A gunshot echoed in the spacious chamber and for a few minutes Sand and I just sat and looked at one another, a passing moment of repose. The wheels in my mind were turning over to digest what I just heard.

I stopped the playback and began to tap my hoof on the concrete. “Two mares.”

“Huh?” Sand snapped out of his quiet. “What did you say?”

I quickly skimmed into the metadata of the last recording and noticed that it had been created in the last two days.

I felt the blood drain from my face. “Two mares who were just coming into New Appleoosa! Cerul!”

Sand’s eyes were wide.

“Sorry, Sand, I have to go now. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I have the nagging feeling that something terrible is going on, and I just might’ve made it worse.”

I sprinted back toward the pipe and used my levitation spell to boost my steps up a magically manifested staircase until I was level with the tube floor without missing a single step. I was sometimes impressed with how coordinated I could be when I wasn’t surrounding my head with too many clouds.

I had 3.5 miles to go, and I knew how to shorten it by at least half of that.

I concentrated as I was nearing the wasteland side of the tunnel and in a blinding flash of white and blue, I was sprinting toward Brandy’s gate into New Appleoosa. Perhaps I underestimated how good I was at teleporting these days.

“Oomph!”

Brandy’s head popped over the edge of the wall. “Need in, darlin’? You didn’t have to try and break down mah gate – just ask.” With a batting of her lovely eyelashes, she disappeared into her shack. I shook my head and tenderly felt the small bump forming just behind my horn.

At least I didn’t hit the wall horn on because horn sprain is... Well, let’s say it’s not a friendly sort of pain.

The gate wench rumbled to life, and dust shook off of the train car as it was hoisted up. When it was open enough for me to squeeze under, I wiggled underneath and burst at full speed toward The Browncoat.

I slowed as I neared the door’s stoop and nothing seemed amiss.

“Maybe I was overanalyzing things,” I whispered to the wood paneling as I turned the knob and pushed the door inward.

There was no chime.

There wasn’t anything missing. No damaged chairs or tables or anything of the sort, but…

There was no chime!

I began sprinting again up the stairs. “No chime. No Bell. No Lager. No…” I careened into the room at the far end and skidded to a stop just inside the threshold.

“No cerul.”

I took small steps around to where there was still an imprint of a curled up mare in the sheets and sat back on to my haunches.

“No… no, no, no, no, NO! Not again…” I felt somepony speak but couldn’t pick out the voice from the din of the fissure’s laughter.

My eyes blurred with my feelings welling up, but as I dropped my head to let them fall, I managed to spot a flash of blood red in my last moment of clarity.

I used my magic to lift the small piece of fabric to a few inches from my face.

I knew this color. I knew this cloth.

The golden eyed mare.

I pushed the feelings back down and stuffed them into the smallest box in the back of my mind before shoving it into a closet full of condensed fears next to a few skeletons.

Cerul needed me, and I wasn’t going to let myself stop again – not this time.

Packing the piece of cloth into my saddlebag, I grabbed the rest of our stuff and ran back downstairs.

“Lager! LAGER!”

A bleary eyed Lager walked out from a door beneath the bar. “Wha…?”

“Lager! Someone broke in and ransacked our room and Cerul was taken! I don’t know where, but I need to find her. I just have this,” I pulled out the cloth and waved it in front of his eyes. “Have you seen anyone wearing a cloak made of this? Please, please say yes…”

Lager slowly narrowed his eyes at the fabric before sighing. “Miss, Starwind, I’m sorry, but–“

I figure he said that he didn’t know anything, but I was too far out of the building to hear how he finished his statement.

The interactions flew by as pony after pony blended into one in memory because no one in the street that I could ask had any knowledge of the cloth or the golden eyed mare. After an amount of time I can’t recall, I was asking one particularly flustered flour courier with a missing ear about the possible correlation between the fabric swatch and the granularity of his flour. Without a single word, he just turned and ran off into a nearby train car building.

“Hey! Come back here, you ground wheat carting cad!”

I frowned and wiped the sweat off of my brow before pulling back my hair and tying it off with a small ribbon I found earlier while searching Cerul’s bag for any more clues. The street was empty due to news that a crazy mare was in town to shake people down or something, so I was about to resort to knocking on doors to question ponies when a white dust covered baker with a half scorched chef’s hat resting just off center on his balding head approached me from the same building the courier just ran into.

With a hoof prod into my chest with each word, the stallion angrily pushed me into the wall immediately behind me. “Hey. Hey, hey, hey what’re you doin’ to my assistants?! You out to ruin my business? Did the syndicate send you?! I swear if you don’t answer me soon, I will bake you into a damn pie!”

I felt my muscles tense and a bit of heat flushed into my face. “You shut your mouth! If your little flour foal had just answered my questions, everything would be fine, but no! Some ponies just have to scurry away and hide. Some ponies just have to be obstinate and disregard common courtesy! SOME ponies think themselves better than those in need! I just want somepony to tell me what this fabric leads to, who the golden eyed mare is, and where my friend is!”

Red was pressing into my vision as I felt like I was on the verge of hyperventilating. I pressed a hoof to my chest and sat down hard onto the ground with a small sob.

“Golden eyes…” The chef crouched to my level and a grin as crooked as a scar in the earth after an earthquake formed across his face. “I may have an answer for you, you crazy mare.”

I rose to my hooves and clutched at his shoulders, nearly nose to nose. “What!? I’m not crazy! I… Wait… Oh! Tell me! I… I… Please, please tell me as fast as you can, Mr. Chef.”

“Tsk tsk tsk,” the chef pushed me away and waved a hoof to chide me like a teacher would to a conceited child. “Firstly, the name’s Hard Roll. Secondly, you need to calm down because folks ‘round here are on the verge of tossing you out. And thirdly, yes, I have an answer for you, but… I am of the opinion that if you are good at something, or know something somepony wants to know, never ever do it for free.”

I sniffled and felt a bit of something irritating my eyes. “What are you saying?”

“I’m only being a good businesspony. You help me… I help you. A fair trade, don’t you think? For your end? Two hundred caps– I need a more powerful oven to get my bakery off the ground, and Absolutely Everything has a nice little one on hold for me. For that you’ll have your answer. Seems to me to be fair.”

I felt the finality in the air, so I levitated out the pouch I kept the caps from my research grant money in, and counted out two hundred. After the thirty I had given Lager and this, I would only have a few left to get by on, but I wasn’t going to let such a small thing deter me when I could finally get my Cerul back.

The chef held out his hat to collect the caps and I dropped them in neatly.

“There’s your caps. Now. Tell. Me. What. You. Know.”

The edge of my voice was perhaps a bit too hard as the stallion frowned at me, but the brief shadow on his visage passed and he continued. “There’s a large complex nearby where the ponies you are looking for meet up. I know because I get orders to send bread out there to feed them when there are larger meetings. I’ve never been myself because I know it is a terribly stupid decision to go anywhere outside of a secure place like this alone, but that’s why I have my couriers here– they send theirs to order from me, and I send mine to deliver to them. On occasion my boys have reported delivering to some pretty menacing figures… some of which, they say, have eyes of gold. If you have a piece of paper and something to write with, I can draw you a rough map.”

I quickly whipped out the same sheet of paper I drew the recollecter on and a pen. Hard Roll had surprisingly good writing skills for a wastelander, likely due to icing cakes or piping in his work, but I hardly had any time to consider this as I ripped the finished map from his hooves and sprinted back towards Brandy’s gate while holding the map in front of me with magic so I could plan my route.

Judging by the dimensions, I had approximately a mile to go before I would run across a large set of conjoined buildings called Gallopfrey Point Mall.

I looked up to see the gate drawing near. “Brandy! Could you please open up? I need to get going… quick!”

She must have heard me as the wench responded and I was able to lower myself slightly but still remain at full speed. I had a heading, but I knew that every second which passed would be one more second those ponies could be doing something terrible to Cerulean. I strained my legs to a limit I hadn’t known before, pumping them with more force than any out of shape pony like myself should, but I didn’t care. I covered the first three fourths of a mile in a few minutes, and as I crested a hill I spotted the tops of a few rose colored buildings in the distance. They were easily another half a mile or more away.

“Damn that Baker and his shoddy map scaling!”

I felt deep within me that they were my targets, though, so I closed my eyes and let my magic do the rest of the work.

Poof!

I swayed in place as I forced myself to a stop before I collided with a doorframe to a concealed entryway of one of the buildings that were much farther away mere moments before. I gulped quietly as I realized how stupid it would’ve been to give myself away by breaking into the dangerous ponies’ base, or, even worse, ending up cut in half by a wall that I happened to teleport into, screaming because I had no idea where I was going to end up when casting the spell.

A shudder passed through me, but I shook it off. I somehow made it without raising any alarms to my knowledge, and evening was falling so it would be the best time to attempt this as long as they didn’t have any large light emitters inside. I was happy to just have gotten as far as I had.

I tried the reinforced glass door in front of me first, but it was locked– not unexpected, but certainly not as simple as I was hoping. Next, I walked back a bit and observed what I could without walking into the open. There were quite a few ponies about if my E.F.S was to believed, and I only managed to see a few who weren’t hostile.

“Fifty seven…” My ears drooped as I imagined having to face them all.

I felt the squeezing pressure inside me pushing me to despair and give up before I had to become a killer again, but… it’s Cerul, and I couldn’t be bothered to think about that at the moment, while her life wasn’t guaranteed. I looked up, noticing for the first time that there were banners draped from the tops of the roofs which were the same color as the cloth, but these bore a red hand on a black, circular field of starscape. One such banner reached nearly to the ground near me. I pondered the significance of this symbol, but pushed that aside as an idea struck me.

Within a minute, I was attempting to scale the side of the building, utilizing the banner’s mounts as counters to my weight and the banner itself as my safety rope.

What? Too absurd? I read a lot of Daring Do when I was a filly, and I got bored and tried to reenact a few of my favorite scenes once upon a time! Believe me, this was foal’s play next to attempting this with a bit of twine and a nagging sister. Plus… it helped that I could use my telekinesis to lighten my weight to nearly nothing in order to make it simpler.

Regardless, I managed to crest the top and threw the banner back into position so nopony would be any wiser of what was going on.

I noticed after being atop the building that there were skylights dotting the surface every twenty five feet or so.

“Perfect!” I rubbed my hooves together smugly, and mused to myself as I walked quickly up to the first one nearest to me. “If this weren’t so dire, I might be acting the part of a spy in one my books.”

Peeking into the dimly lit space below, I noticed that there were ponies in familiar cloaks resting and speaking with one another around small trashcan contained bond fires. This was great news as it meant that many were too busy conversing to notice a mare’s head obscuring the remnants of the waning light from above them.

“Nothing.”

I moved to the next.

“Nope.”

And then the next.

“Come on…”

Six skylights later, I decided that I needed to get down to be able to spot Cerul since none of the prior vantage points had opened up into anywhere but the main avenue through the dilapidated shopping center, and this particular one at least had a blue bar near it. The area below seemed to be an old cinema foyer complete with tall sign lettering that extended to within a few feet below me.

I grinned and tossed my head back. “Cerul, you would laugh if you saw what I am about to do… Well, I suppose you laugh at nearly everything anypony does, so that isn’t saying much, but… well, yeah.”

I used a cauterizing spell to cut out a hole in the glass large enough for me to easily fit through and gently levitated the loose piece to rest on the rooftop. “Now for the hard part…”

I felt a nagging pull in the back of my mind as a small tinge of vertigo took hold, but I just held my breath and began to lower myself by my forehooves onto the lettering below. I managed to quietly find a balance point on the “A” of the sign, and I took a breather to find my next foothold and plot the rest of my route down. The simplest seemed to be to use the bridge of the A to get one level lower, and then I would have to make a leap for the top of the ticket booth which looked to have a roof hatch.

It was rare for me to despise storytelling, but it was points like these, after performing stunts that I only ever read about, that ever made me feel that way since they put such insane thoughts into my head. In stretching with my lower hooves to reach the bridge of the letter, I found that I didn’t have reach enough to even touch the surface, so I was just dangling by a pair of weak hooves, which were half wounded, above nearly fifty feet of free space.

“Urgh… Need… to… swing… and…” I let myself take whatever vector my swing lead me to, and found that I overshot the bridge. As panic gripped me, I kicked out with my hind legs and caught it firmly enough that I managed to give myself another few feet of horizontal coverage. I felt the air rushing below me as if I were a Pegasus who had lost their wings. I knew I had a gamble running, so I braced myself for impact and curled into a ball, hoping to lessen whatever was going to hit me. In flash of pain I hit the ground hard and sprawled out as my momentum subsided.

I was alive. That was always a good sign.

I glanced around in the dark to see that I had just barely managed to make it to the roof of the booth after all. I was not the most graceful mare by any means, but, by the Goddesses, was I ever lucky sometimes.

I stood, wobbled, but managed to stay standing as I felt a resurgence of throbbing in my shoulder. I really hoped that it would get better before tomorrow because my days seemed to be getting more and more physical.

I mean, physical activity could be fun, but what happened to the bookworm?

I shrugged it off and crouched low as I heard muffled voices coming from somewhere nearby. I strained and realized that they were emanating from within the theater itself. I crawled over to the hatch and popped it open with the smallest of winces as the hinges were rusty and squeaked a bit. After taking the flight of stairs down from that point, I saw that I had ended up in the display booth line for the various theaters.  I glanced around, noting that there were no bars on my level, and I followed my ears to the projectionist window that let in the sound from a theater marked “3.” Looking through the window, I spotted an ancient looking yellow stallion and a light red old mare in their blood red cloaks speaking into a cage placed in front of the screen in the theater. The lights in the room distorted my ability to see anything beyond that though, so I couldn’t make myself known, even if it was Cerul inside its confines.

With a powerful baritone that seemed to catch at unnatural intervals in his speech pattern, the stallion spoke while the mare just looked on with a face that could’ve been made of stone. “We know you, little filly. Omega always knows. Now… why don’t you tell us about your connection to those blue box cultists, hm? No? Well, that’s fine. We know you’ve had hours to stew here, and, trust me, we have all the time in the world to wait for you to come around.”

The filly in the cage apparently spoke, but not loud enough for me to catch what she said as the stallion began to laugh wickedly. “You think anyone is going to believe that you have no idea what we’re talking about?! Omega remembers you from the explosion. You remember that, surely. Yes, yes, of course you do. Hard to forget such a tragic event in a young filly’s life, right? Hahahaha!”

Something chilled me about this duo more so than anypony I had ever met, but I couldn’t dwell on it because I knew that I needed to find out who was in that cell without alerting anypony to something being out of the ordinary. I frantically racked my mind for a spell or trick that would work as the stallion continued.

“What’s that? Water? You are thirsty? Awh… poor thing. Shall I fetch it for you? Perhaps with a squeeze of lemon? HAH! Only a fool would ask me for such things, given your circumstances, but… I admit that you have spirit, and I like that in a mare– just ask Jupiter here. Isn’t that right, darling?”

I stopped my planning to watch as the mare simply nodded ever so slowly, but in that nod I was overcome with a wave of power and absurd arrogance that could only come from somepony who had viciously found their way to the top of a food chain.

“Right. Well, you seem to be of no use to us now, and I would rather not waste my time here. Let’s go, dear. We have plenty to tend to elsewhere.”

The pair turned and began leaving the theater. I sighed in relief as they took the burden off of me to find a way to distract them, but a part of me was a bit sad that I didn’t get a chance to put one of my mad hatter schemes to the test.

When I heard the door below me shut, I quickly jumped through the window and caught myself in my magic before I hit the floor. I dropped a little more heavily than I intended and I froze to make sure nopony was going to barge into the place and begin firing. A moment passed and nothing occurred.

“I really should be more careful to not use my magic so much…” I whispered to myself. I knew I had limits, and I had pushed them beyond what I expected myself to be capable of today already.

I quickly and quietly trotted up to the bars of the cage to peer in. There, curled in a ball in the farthest corner away from me, was my charcoal colored mare with the laughing eyes.

“Cerul!” I hastily whispered. “Come on, I’m gonna get this cage open and get you out!”

One of her eyes popped open before the rest of her reacted as if she couldn’t trust her senses to tell her I was real. When I saw realization in her eyes, she bounced to her hooves and began to speak, but I magically clamped her mouth shut as I took a look at the lock.

“Shhhh! We don’t want to draw undue attention.” I winked at her and let her mouth go free.

She giggled softly and walked up to me. “You are a crazy mare, Starry. You shouldn’t be here, though! These ponies are baaaaad news, and I don’t want to see you get mixed up in–“

The door to the theater opened with a crash and I turned to face whatever the scarlet cloaks, these “Hand of Omega” minions, had sent at me and Cerul. To my surprise, a single stallion, bearing the same striking golden eyes as the mare from before, sauntered in, grinning from one side of his mouth.

“Why helloooo, my long lost silly filly. Crazy to see you here after all these years! I… Well! You should’ve let me know that we were going to have company for dinner! I would've made more for all of us to share!”

This stallion couldn’t be real could he? I mean, he had the bravado, the irritatingly smug grin, the amazing hair, and the typical suave super-villain air about him! There was no way!

I held up a hoof. “Now look here, I don’t know what you all are doing with my friend, but I can’t let you–“

“YOU!” Cerul shouted louder than I thought possible of anypony.

I turned around in time to see my friend standing with her forehooves around the steel bars, bearing the shadow of something horrible, terrifying, and unexpected. Without a second thought or even an instance to let the air settle in her lungs after the shout, Cerul pulled the bars she was holding apart as if they were no more resilient than warm clay, and in even less time she was a blur of destruction, rending a hole into her cage, exploding outward with inequine force, and running with her blinding speed to come face to face with the stallion. In her mouth she held a piece of the cage, a jagged, glinting blade crafted from her enclosure’s demise, and in even less time she was on the stallion, stabbing, and stabbing, and stabbing some more until the blood and gore from the stallion’s punctured chest poured out like a fountain of death. She didn’t touch his face though, and as he looked down, his brain not yet caught up with the rest of him, his face revealed a series of emotions.

Shock

Confusion.

Revulsion.

Fear.

Cerul tossed away the makeshift weapon and stared into the eyes of the stallion as an unrelenting force of nature, unforgiving, and full of a powerful hate that was almost divine in its wrathful utterance, but as he collapsed, too weak to stand, Cerul fell onto her haunches and let the blood run around her and down the aisle.

Without warning, Cerul began to laugh and sob. This laugh was not of mirth or embarrassment as would be so typical of her, but of hatred, of loathing, and of anguish.

I sprinted up to her to pull her away from the dying stallion and his flowing lifeblood, but she wouldn’t budge as she continued her loud wailing and hideous laughter. “Cerul… we… we need to go. Come on… Cerul? Hey, darling, it’s me, come on we need to get out of here before anypony comes back. Cerul!”

She was deaf to anything except for whatever emotions were filling her.

My talking must have pushed speech into the stallion, though, as he coughed up a slurry of blood and bile before whispering at me. “That… that mare… she… what is she?”

“I would love to know that myself, but right now she is just my hurt friend, and you… you are dying. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, but–“

“Save it, you bitch!” The stallion spat. “I don’t need your–“ The stallion let out a gasp and a rasping cough mixed with what fluid was left in him. “Your filthy pity!”

“No,” I walked toward him as my friend wallowed behind me. “I suppose you don’t. But you are going to get it anyway. Peace is what you need now. Rest.”

I conjured up a charge of electrical energy to my horn, a spell designed to overpower the synapses and create a euphoria in the recipient for use as an anesthesia, but this was the most powerful I would ever administer. If he didn’t want rest or peace or forgiveness than I wouldn’t give him a choice.

I cast the bolt of magical energy square into his pincushion chest, and I saw the light leave his eyes.

I felt nothing.

Not loathing, not fear, not the fissure even. Just the cold emptiness of a void opening up inside me to glut the maw of death.

Turning back to Cerul, I walked to her and knelt down, not caring about the pool of pony excrement and blood that would cake into my fur.

“Shhhh, shhh, it’ll be okay, Cerul. I’m here.”

I wrapped my hooves around her and felt her writhing as sobs wracked her body.

“But… but… I don’t… I can’t… you don’t understand, I…” Cerul couldn’t articulate anything beyond this.

“Don’t worry about it, darling. I know. I understand. Whatever this was, whatever happened to you, whatever happens after this, doesn’t matter. Let’s just move on together. It isn’t easy to accept what happened here. Trust me… I know. But, you have to be able to pick yourself up and move on. This is a cold wasteland, filled with destruction and the pitfalls of those that came before us, but we can’t sit here and let it take us down with it.”

“But… I….” Cerul paused for what seemed to be an eternity as I just let her cry into my shoulder, which had started bleeding again at some point. “Okay.”

She looked up at me for the first time since this began, and I saw through the red streaks of blood on her face and in her bloodshot eyes, into her laughing soul where she was picking up the pieces.

At that moment the entire building shook as a roar came from outside accompanied by shouts and gunfire.

I picked Cerul up off of the ground and we began to sprint toward a door marked emergency exit in the theater, but as we rounded into the space in front of all the seats that led there, an explosion threw us back against the far wall causing my vision to go spotty with black specks flying in every conceivable direction.

Through the smoke I caught sight of a glint of steel and flesh and fire. For a moment I thought I saw black eyes breaking into my mind through my own, but it must have been an illusion or some trick of the light as a unicorn stallion covered from neck to hoof in steel armor that carried a red mark on its flank walked forward from the debris.

“So, we found you at last, Starwind Solace.”

Cerul was out cold and I worried she may have a concussion, so I began to try and spark up my magic one more time to check her out, but my magic faltered and sparked to nothing as I felt my reserves run out.

The steel pony rushed over to us and kicked me with one massive hoof so that I flew into the front row of seats. I felt my ribs aching and was left coughing until a few spots of blood flew from my mouth. A cold, heavy weight pressed against my temple as I lay there, unable move or speak.

“Awh… did that hurt? Good! Traitors like you should suffer. Alas, I need you alive to bring back to base for… trial.” He spat that last word out as if it was a piece of lodged corn. “Get up, you pathetic excuse for a ranger. We’ll see you patched up enough to ensure that you can make it to Baltimare.”

“No!” I croaked. “Cerul! I won’t go without–“Another fit of coughing struck me. “Not without her.”

The stallion looked back at my passed out friend and chuckled. “Sure. Bring her too. I so love to have more meat to grind into submission when the trials come to fruition!”

The steel clad stallion walked back the way he came, but as he reached the exit his horn lit up and our bodies began to be dragged after him.

I felt my blood and the blood of the stallion I effectively killed, but none of that mattered as much as the fact that Cerul was safe.

Whatever happened from this point… we would at least face it together.

Footnote:

Level Up!

Level 4 –

Sneak 45

Companion Power Gained! – Cerulean Smash! Cerul will occasionally gain a +5 to Strength in a fit of rage if she is confronted with senseless cruelty or some mystery of her past.

Author’s Note:

This was... a doozy. I've been sitting on this chapter for a few months now on accident since I got so caught up in the new work coming my way. I have started working with the team making the FoE game as a composer and music producer as well as just recently picking up a music gig with the team working on Fallout Lonestar (non-pony) and a job scoring a Rooster Teeth community film. I'm not sure why life is throwing me fallout related work out of the woodwork, but I can't complain!

I will likely not post until at least 2015 since I have little time between school, work, and all my side projects and music, but this is still a living thread! The bible for the whole story is written, but it may be a couple of years before I actually get the chapters out there.

Starwind has a lot left to do, and I really want to tell her story. Oh, and sorry for the cliffhanger...

Until next time,

Go check out the original FoE as well as the FoE game being made!