Fallout Equestria - The Wish Machine

Chapters

Ch.2 - Times are changing
Ch.1 p.1 - Balefire falls
Ch.1 p.2 - Balefire falls
Ch.1 p.3 - Balefire falls
Ch.3 - A stray dog for hire
Prologue

Ch.2 - Times are changing

Ch.1 p.1 - Balefire falls

Chapter one: Balefire falls

I would have never imagined I would witness and outlive the balefire bombs. Yet, I did. And I won’t say the experience was not worth it.

Every story begins with a tipping point. Mine starts with a swift, violent, harsh, and tragic play. I was a mare that had lived a boring life for forty five long years. Little did I knew that this day would be the last of my repeating, tasteless existence in an Equestria ravaged by war. I wouldn’t have imagined I would be changed forever.

“Drop that knife, Amethyst!” I cried out, tears rushing up my eyes. “Please…”

Shivers ran down my spine. I couldn’t stop my voice from shaking. But worst of all, I was speaking with that awful and sheepish tone actors used in drama movies. A rattle sound, a real nuisance for those who might hear me. I was pathetic, but the scene I was playing in was a concentrate of pitiful acting. The play was nothing but miserable.

“I won’t go back to the frontlines!” Amethyst shrieked at me so loudly her voice nearly broke down.

She curled up in the corner of her bed, settled next to a wall of her usually neat and tidy room. Feathers had been eviscerated from their pillows, scattered across the room like spilled intestines. Standing among them, the desk had been smashed into pieces. Adjacent to it, the walls were soiled with cryptic words, written with pen or charcoal. There were symbols and phrasings I couldn’t decipher. Hurt and stressful, I looked down at the hardwood flooring. It was scratched in many spots by maddened hooves. Now everything was a complete mess.

I swallowed my saliva and slowly stepped in Amethyst’s private room. Its blinds were closed tigh, leaving the place nearly pitch-black. The only light was pouring from the cracked-open door, throwing my daughter’s face into stark relief, my shadow cast over her legs.

My eyes met hers, and I gulped again, breaking the silence. A trickle of sweat dripped down the back of my neck as chills rolled down my back. Her eyes were two pink pits in a nearly bald face. In a berserk rage she had cut off whole huge pieces of her light blue mane. The top of her head was now sickly drawn, marred by slice marks. A small bit of her right ear had been torn away, and blood was oozing down on her cheek.

Scared, my gaze went down to take in the rest of her. Even hidden by my shadow, I could see the self-inflicted bruise on her breast and bottom chest. Scars left superficial gaps in her indigo fur. A glitter caught my attention and a sight that I wanted to back away from welcomed me. She was holding a knife over her wrist.

The look in her eyes was a punch in the guts. Tears were running across her face, staining her coat with small dark dots. I was having trouble not to curl up too, my mind craving to forget this scene. Her hooves constricted on the pommel of the blade, ready to stab herself. She wavered the knife’s tip between me and herself, threatening me not to come closer. I shuddered and shook my head, wondering how Equestria had become just so fucked up.

“Please Amethyst,” I pleaded. “Drop that knife.”

I called out to her over and over again. I used all the sweet words, all the fear and emotion I could put into my voice for her. I tried to console her, to entreat her to live through this. But whatever I tried, it never seemed enough.

A choked sob broke in her throat when our eyes met. Her head jerked on the side and she launched herself flat on her bed, jostling the lamp off the night table in the process. The porcelain fixture crashed, exploding into glimmering shards that caught the light as they came to rest by my hooves.

Yet, I had focused on a glint and a metallic noise that had pierced the sound of the lamp's destruction, a sound coming straight from Amethyst’s leg. I narrowed my eyes; what I saw cracked shivers upon my lips.

“When did you…?” I could speak no more.

I fought back the bile as I saw what she was so quick to hide. She concealed the artificial hindleg’s hoof under her pillows, the metal limb gleaming dully, framed perfectly in the light slithering from the doorway. A muffled whine issued from the tiny joints that drove it. Inspecting it numbly, I recognized the Ministry of Wartime Technology's insignia -an apple outline surrounding three gears, cut in half by a sword and lifted by phoenix wings- etched into the thigh. I had seen it before on basic replacement limbs given to the soldiers - for amputees, and those wounded in combat. My eyes crawled back to her face.

The hum of the servos stopped once she had hid her metal leg. The look she gave me was a blend of shame, anger and… a cry for help.

“You remember the first letter I wrote you, mother?” she blubbered. “When I finally got into the army.”

Our eyes met again. I swallowed the lump in my throat as I was unable to stand my daughter’s eyes, bloodshot and rushed by tears. Those eyes... I would never again wish to see in a million years; the dead look in a lost, broken mare's gaze. I couldn’t hold them... I found my hooves infinitely more interesting. My girl, reduced to bawling her eyes out and threatening to end her life. What a pitiful mother I was. Shoveling back my urge to throw up, I leaned against the side of her broken desk and slid my back down it until my rear hit the floor. A long moment stretched to eternity where neither of us spoke a word or twitched an ear. We waited for the other to break the silence. She sniffed, opening her mouth to take a deep breath. But I cut her off, raising my voice first in an attempt to comfort her.

“Yes, I remember,” I blurted through my trembling lips. “You were so proud and naïve I couldn't help but share in your success. I wanted to work so hard at the office. To be sure my efforts would only go for you. I didn’t know where you’d been deployed. All I had left was working hard, hoping it would help. I was so… so afraid… that one day a pony from your platoon would knock on my door with that letter telling you’d been...” Mortified by the thought, tears rushed my eyes.

I wept into my hooves so she wouldn't see her mother cry. I had indeed seen so many of my now distant friends receive one of those terrible black leathered letters during the past sixteen years. All were disgustingly similar, an overly sincere letter closed by a red seal, marked with a black strip and an Equestrian flag. And I… I had hoped I would never live to see one of those.

“I was so afraid you'd come back home in a box, or not at all. And…” I sniffled, my body wracked by a loud sob. “And when you came back for the first time, six months later. I…”

I stopped and looked at my little girl. She had turned her back at me, showing that she had even cut off her tail. Hair lied in clumps around her. She was folding her ears, hooves blocking my words. My lips fidgeted and tears blurred my vision again.

I swallowed the apple in my throat and bulled through my sorrow. I needed to talk, and she needed escape that loneliness darkening her mind. Like me, she wanted somepony to care about her. And I was her mother.

“You weren’t the same anymore,” I resumed, haltingly. “I mean… you were the same physically of course. You just had dark rings under your eyes, scars and the new bulk… But your smile… It seemed so fake when I saw you… I saw a broken doll, not the Amethyst I cradled when she was only a foal.”

I burst into tears and hiccupped. It took me a long time to get my sobs and voice back under control. I had to. Was I stacking up my grief, spitting it out at her face? I couldn’t tell.

“Zebras changed you. War changed you. And this world changed you too. You’ve never talked to me, never explained to me, and never showed me what happened. You kept everything for yourself and I could only watch as you… just slowly disappeared. I did nothing to stop your nightmare. I’m the monster!”

I finally managed to look at my filly again, who remained as silent as a tomb. She had even closed her eyes tightly. Only her lips were moving, reciting a silent mantra. Unfortunately, she still held the knife tight in her hooves, and her body was breaking with small tremors of emotion.

Please, don’t do it! I need you!

“I’ve seen so many wrong things… participated in so many crimes,” Amethyst spoke so suddenly it startled me.

Her voice had changed in the past few minutes. Calm and innocent, it quickly gave way to a raspy pained voice belonging to a mare five times her age. The voice of a mare who had watched upon a reality better left unseen.

“Kids, males, and females I trod, sliced, cut, killed, tortured, gunned, burned, desecrated, violated, raped and laughed over,” She pressed her hooves so tightly to the sides of her skull her scalp split, spilling warm red blood that mixed with her tears and staining the sheets. “I wasn’t supposed to be taught that. I was supposed to be the good mare, a hero, Like Big Mac. Even after his death. I have been acclaimed, awarded, and honored by the ponies around me. But their smiles… I’ve never seen so much hypocrisy.”

Her confession reached a new level, echoing in the room like a banshee’s scream as her voice rose in pitch and volume. She kept howling at me, from her sit and prostrate position. The window vibrated, and her words rammed loudly in the air as if they were a brick she were trying to floor me with.

“I didn’t sign up for this. I graduated with a doctorate in Applied Gemstone Science. I wanted to serve Equestria. And the army… just served my instincts. It taught me how to rip myself off my morals. The army only used me. They tore my morals away from me, taught me to be terrifying, not to be merciful and kind.”

She wept with a snarl as she wiped of her face the blood.

“I’m a murderer,” She confessed with a hiss. “And the Princesses will make me pay for this.”

“Please Amethyst, don’t do it,” I begged and wheedled of her, “I need you. You’re my daughter. I don’t want to be alone.”

Her eyes drifted in my direction, offended, like two pits of unfathomable darkness sweeping over me. Yet, I spot a light gleaming faintly underneath these two dark globes. A dull light of deliverance meaning the ordeal was over, that the burden was going to fly away. She raised her hooves, gently sinking the knife into her own throat, gushing blood as she let out one final sigh.

I screamed.

₪ ₪ Ѻ ₪ ₪

I didn’t remember how long I held Amethyst in my hooves, hugging her so tight I could have broken her bones. The blood coming from her neck had been dripping on my chest, running down to my belly. But the river had dried and the white bed sheets had turned scarlet, sticky, and cold. The light pouring from the door flickered and through the crack of the shutters I saw no shafts slithering in. Morning was still far away.

My tears had gone dry. My eyes and cheeks ached. My mind dizzied. I stayed stoic, refusing to let my daughter go away from me. I hoped that keeping this petrified position would bring her back. Sadly… I knew deep within she was gone, she was now just a shattered doll. She had been one since she came back from her first draft. A mindless and depressed young mare, close to anypony’s help.

I wanted to cradle her, love her, talk to her, and hear her voice. I was stupid, waiting for an answer that I did know would never come.

“It’s just a doll, now. She is dead, let her go… Let it go.”

I repeated again and again those words.

Another hour passed by before I collected all my sorrow and compressed it into the farthest corner of my being. But I couldn’t stop my sobbing, for I couldn’t be consoled. In the depths of my despair, I remembered a melody I'd long forgotten. Between sobs, I sang quietly.

“Little, little filly

Why are you weeping

While I'm watching

Over you?”

I kept rambling the beginning of the lullaby I had written for Amethyst the day she was born, a long time ago. I stumbled upon each syllable, unable to articulate the words before they died in my throat. I cringed and sought a comforting warmth in the hollow of her shoulder. Her flesh was quickly becoming stiff and icy cold. I had even left the knife in her neck, disgusted of the idea to touch it.

“Little, little filly

Why are you crying

While I'm staying

With you?”

After a while, reason finally made sorrow take a backseat; I had to get up.

Awestruck, I lay Amethyst’s body on her bed. My mane and fur were sticky with the gummy blood washed over my hooves and belly. The fluid had gelled my usually beige fur into red clumps. I crawled to my terminal and called the Ministry of Morale, they were supposed to take care of the dead, weren’t they? I killed the connection after a terse conversation with a switchboard operator with a despondent sigh. Who would take care of me, now?

At the time, I lived in one of the buildings at the edge of Canterlot. As a worker, the inner parts of the city weren’t affordable to me in spite of my well-paid job at the Ministry of Wartime Technology. And because I lived fairly far from the city center, the help came late. That was also my fault.

I jerked my head and mumbled something that could be taken as a weak ‘coming’ after the doorbell had rang bleakly. I opened the door to let the ponies come in.

Ponies with that Morale look to them trooped past me into the small apartment wearing cleaning-service uniforms. Among their number, disguised against casual observance by the group he moved with, was a Ministry psychologist. I just sat there numbly as they moved.

The psychologist tapped my shoulder, showing a large and soft smile. Creepy… After asking me to get up, he guided me into my own living room, sitting me down to keep me out from underneath the investigative ponies' hooves.

Balloon was his name, a unicorn with a pale blue and thick hide, an impeccable brown mane, and bright blue eyes hidden behind a pair of thin glasses. He presented himself nicely enough, calm in demeanor and cleanly dressed in a brown trench coat with a Pinkie Pie badge pinned on his chest. He pretended to care. I knew he was simply an agent from the crisis department of the Ministry of Morale. So, why was I so relieved to have him by my side?

I never remembered exactly Ballon’s words. He just hugged me as long as it needed it to be. I couldn’t move while the heart-shattering zipping sound of the body bag closed on Amethyst’s ghoulish face. He tapped on my shoulders and back, again and again, muttering the same ‘there, there, there’ for quite a long time as I watched the stretcher go away, disappearing in the entrance door. I cried loudly, burying my snout into his chest. I could taste the pity coming off the investigator ponies, and the fake compassion washing off the psychologist pony holding me. But I preferred to lie to myself, encaging me in a false but still warm lie, that somepony still cared about me.

Balloon and I seemed trapped in a bubble of time, a calm little island in a maelstrom of activity. To my perception, everything slowed down like a bullet-time moment from a propaganda movie. The psychologist gave me a pill, one of some sort that I hoped was a Mint-al, which would lift my mood and make me focus. Anything would be better than the sludgy way my thoughts was running at the moment.

I didn't think he really wanted me to think, or to feel happy. Just fuzzy enough to not think about what just happened, what those ponies were cleaning up, blood, a knife, and on… and on…. Balloon seemed to legitimately care, but that was his job, a big hypocritical job. I wondered how many mares like me he had to hug in a day, how many tears that coat and fleece had absorbed. But, somehow, I refused to think his embrace was faked. I wanted to be comforted and even a fainted moment of careful attention was fair enough for a mare like me.

“I need you to sign a statement," Balloon finally asked with a long and deep sigh, genuine at least.

He was more pained by his request than I was. Was he trying to extort something from me? I couldn’t think straight. The drug… The drug! Ah, damn that stallion! He did his job well, modulating my mood, playing with my sorrow and lack of reason at the moment, and thus my calmness. Amethyst was dead now, dead and cold as stone. A heavy and tickling tear roll down my left cheek. Balloon’s shoulders fell a little. I had not yet responded.

“Well, Vava,” he continued, “in time of war we need to keep the population happy, focused on the task… Ready to work their hooves out for the sake of all. Tragic events like Amethyst’s accident should not fall into somepony’s ears. It could depress them.”

I looked at him with red bulged eyes. My hooves shook violently as he hoofed me a paper. I glanced at it without paying much attention to the words. Paper and words. I hated paperwork… This, I just had to sign it. Yes, I just had to put my mark on it. Then my mouth would remain shut about Amethyst, forever. And everything would be over… fine. I would be able to go back to work, working my hooves out. Yes… working them to the bone. And just not thinking about the future. The training alarm and emergency sessions. The control wherever and whenever I would go. Knowing what I would have to do. To accept the routine… I rose my eyes and looked at him, battered and tired.

“What would the Ministry…” I initiated.

“She will be declared killed in action,” Balloon murmured with an unsettling easiness. “Private Amethyst died on the battlefield. A zebra assassin snuck behind her and killed her, in the most cowardly way a sub-pony being could. She had a quick death. And, she will be honored. She fell in the line of duty. You can be proud.”

Sickness slithering in my mind. I was going to lie to everypony. I was going to lie about Amethyst’s fate. I was going to give away my pride and my shame for Equestria’s sake. I looked at the paper for a long and stressful moment. I stared back at Balloon, tired.

“I’ve not a choice of signing this or not, do I?”

He took a long and slow breath, blinked and sighed again.

“No, you don’t,” he confessed.

Somehow, knowing I had no choice made the it easier. Chasing away my thoughts, acting like a puppet on the strings of a skilled actor, I took a pen left on the coffee table in my mouth and signed. I kept the declaration in my hooves, stunned, shunning reality.

I wanted to throw up. A sudden furry feeling like last night had been spent hard drinking settled into my gut. My head spun, making my balance off and wobbling me.

I looked at Balloon and hoofled him the paper. Putting it back into his trench coat, he smiled at me with a broad and friendly row of perfectly white teeth. It was still a gentle, nearly surreal, smile that could brighten up mangled and wrecked souls. I would have bet some bits he was related to Fluttershy, the embodiment of Kindness. Yet, behind that clean and perfectly aligned row of teeth, I knew something was utterly off, feigned, tainted by professional training. A long practiced knowledge of deceit he had learnt as a student-agent at the Ministry of Morale.

He swiftly got up and trotted back to the door, silent, willing to leave me a deserved rest. He was… caretaking to say the least. I swallowed my saliva. In a stroke of cleverness, I called him back with a muffled groan. He was already in the threshold of my entrance door when his head swiveled on his neck and stared back at me with hawkish eyes.

“Yes, Vault?” he asked, clearly annoyed by my impromptu question.

“You never asked me how Amethyst …” I stopped. The words I was going to spit out seemed odd in my mouth. I was not used to think that straight, to speak that openly. That kind and fragile mare I was should have lowered her head. I should be weeping in silence instead. Was it the drugs that caused my speech to go lisp? Making me so light-minded about my now dead girl? Or was I such a horrible mother?

“…how she passed away?” I finished. “Nopony asked me what really happened. I could have murdered her you wouldn’t have checked and questioned me?”

I had seen too many noir movies to know any investigator would have asked this question first, squeezing an answer out of me even if it meant breaking my spirit apart. Family is always the first on line for finding suspects. I had been disappointed by how casual the agents and “cleaning” ponies had been with me. This case had seemed to be a banal operation, like a policepony controlling randomly identities right out the streets. Shameful, I looked at myself. My beige fur was still covered with coagulated and dried blood, gluing my coat into thin needling clumps. I needed desperately a hot shower. However, would I be so keen to get rid of the last physical remain I had left from her? Dark, red and crackled blood on my fur.

The stallion chuckled with a disturbing grin, making me break away from my self-blaming destructiveness.

“Pinkie Pie is watching you, forever,” He declared, perfectly out of tune.

He turned back and walked away in the doorway, leaving me and my flat in an absolutely deafening silence. I stared at the closed door without any rupture for an hour. Did I even blink? And above all else, did he really say those words? I couldn’t… Don’t think about Vault. Just don’t.

My mind was unable to get rid of his last declaration, making me chew over it like a dog over an old leather sole. I couldn’t believe they had spied on me. They couldn’t, right? I was just suffering from paranoia; I was just slowly pushed back into the dark land of madness. I couldn’t dare to think they had watched my little Amethyst just pull that knife in her throat. And the pony I had on the terminal… Did he knew?

They had watched me and did nothing! My blood was boiling inside my head out of anger. I was so furious the idea of killing Balloon flew across my mind. Wishful thinking… I wouldn’t dare raise my voice higher than other pony. Yet, rage kept ablaze within me. I wanted to break apart everything from the floor to the ceiling, swinging doors off their hinges, breaking my furniture into confetti. But, anger was useless if nopony was there to see me suffering and help me out. I punched my head hard, trying to cast away the mere idea somepony behind a terminal in some remote and forsaken place of Equestria had witnessed my girl’s struggles… and just spectate it. Did he enjoy a mouthful of popcorn? Had he drunk while I was crying, spilling my inner thoughts? Ministry of Morale’s officers couldn’t. Pony ethic forbid it. They wouldn’t. My girl’s death couldn’t be an inevitable tragedy put on a pedestal like a reality-show.

I wished I would smash the first object I could have had a hoof on it. But I was so tired and drugged. Balloon had given me a strong pill or whatever it was. I would have been glad he spared me such proof of kindness. I tilted my head, leaning on the side of the chair and threw up. It was time.

With drops of bile flowing on my lips and chin, I sat back on my chair and cracked my neck on the headrest.

I screamed at the void before me until my lungs shut down in pain.

Disgusted and exhausted, I fell into a dreamless and oblivious sleep. Guiltiness didn’t even clench my guts during one of my recurrent nightmares.

₪ ₪ Ѻ ₪ ₪

The loud tick of an alarm clock woke me up.

As I stood up out of the comfy chair, a heavy load washed over me like a dark veil of sorrow. After giving a wondering glance at the surrounding furniture, still trying to muster my thoughts, I crawled out to reach one of my windows. A cold breeze swept over my face once my hooves had pushed it open. I sneezed. The sun was still far from rising, only the distant clouds had started sporting the dull pink glimmer of the morning.

I had slept fairly well, leaving me with a surprising impression of lightless, which unfortunately didn’t last long. I have always hated waking up. You forget your dreams and all the horrible week you’ve been through just rushes in your mind and puts a heavy load on your shoulders. A mental shackles. I got it right, it was a Monday feeling. All the troubles you had successfully put aside just knock at the door, ready to smack you in a face with a big ‘fuck you’ once you would have opened it.

I went into my room, searching for the clock and found it switched off, silent. The alarm wasn’t its deed and such deception made my morning mood worse than it already was.

The annoying ticking was coming from Amethyst’s room, echoing in the small hallway of my flat. Annoyed and still not recovering, I toddled heavily and walked in the hall. A long and dull grey hallway gave onto four doors, the kitchen, the bathroom, the living room and my girl’s room. No decorations at all, I couldn’t afford them. I spotted a pile of papers next to the door entrance, hanging under the thin slit reserved for the postmare. The mails dated from yesterday and the Ministry of Morale’s agents had paid no attention to them. A dozen of envelops were stacked up, pushed aside and creased where the door had compressed them.

Bills, bills and, you guess it, bills… I sighed and left them aside to later throw them away in the trashcan of my kitchen. Focusing on the alarm’s tics, annoying above anything else, I passed through the remaining letters in a jiffy. I would have gotten up if not for something to catch my attention in front of the closed door. Two envelops in kraft paper were lying on the parquet. Brown envelops on a brown parquet and plunged in a semi-darkness I had nearly missed them. Such pieces were unusual enough to kick the alarm’s song out of my mind. I had never received such kind of mail. It seemed rather important, to say the least.

I glanced perplexedly at the first one, I could read my address, my name, my work address, my gender, my age… and the whole without any error. Maybe it was the Ministry of Morale’s bill. I slapped myself for thinking about it. I was an aged mare, already cynic and spiteful. I lifted up the letter and turned it over, willing to peer an eye at the cover. The Stable-Tec logo appeared before me, printed in a bright white color. The shakes spiking through my hooves gained in momentum. With the tip of my hoof I opened it. Inside was a simple piece of paper and the same stable tech logo was printed at the top of it.

Mrs Vault Skin

We regret to inform you that you application through the lottery to the Stable-Tec program as a potential resident of the Stable 2, Stable located near Ponyville, has been rejected. Your competencies and past experiences have not been judged as sufficient as to make you an asset of our survival program, created and fully managed by Stable-Tec Co. Therefore you won’t be called in the future in case an emergency of level 1 occurs, requiring the stable and their occupants to be sealed up within for an undetermined length of time.

However, your name has been put on the Stable 31’s waiting list and you shall promptly receive an answer next week. Following our selection algorithm and application program you have 0.2% chance to be selected as a priority applicant.

Yours sincerely,

Stable-Tec

Printed by Equestria Edition Co. Manehattan

I took a deep breath and let out a long and depressed sigh. Another load on my unbearably heavy cart I would have to pull with me for the rest of my life. Rejection, I needed it at that damn right moment. I looked blankly at the letter for a few seconds. What was I thinking when I chose to apply to that stupid ‘lottery’ program? I was a random mare with no real qualifications, not an old rusted buck, but not young enough to be useful for Stable-Tec. I felt truly useless. I creased the letter in a ball of paper and threw it in a corner of the hallway with rage. Again, I sighed and my eyes drifted on the second letter.

This enveloped bore a single name, ‘Amethyst’. Remembering myself asking for a placement into a Stable for her was impossible, I wondered how this was possible. In fact, everypony above the legal age were not authorized to ask somepony else to sign them into Stable-Tec’s survival program ‘lottery’. We all had one chance, and only one. And if you wanted to get in, you had to do it yourself. I opened the envelope with my febrile hooves and read the content half-heartedly.

Mrs Amethyst Skin, Equestrian Army, caporal, 1st Military Engineers

My name is Scootaloo. As the Vice-President of Stable-Tec Corporation, I am delighted to announce you that, despite your non-application to our Stable program you have been selected among the few ponies that are designated to be the first Overmare of one of our Stables, Stable 101 to be accurate, located twenty kilometers south of Manehattan.

Through our first set of investigation procedures, we have found in your first layer psychological mapping, values such as ethic and commitment that go far beyond an average pony’s standards. We also found some traits that are key points for the Stable Program which aims to make every existing stable and yet-to-be stable a unique place.

I do know it might seem invasive for common folks but our program only focuses on protecting Ponykind. Henceforth, we would like to see you coming into our headquarters in Fillydelphia next week to interview you and sort out your commitment to our project or not. We already arrange a trip with your military commandant from your present location in Canterlot to our headquarter next week.

Yours faithfully,

Scootaloo, Vice-President of Stable-Tec Corporation

Printed by Equestria Edition Co. Manehattan

I heard a thump on the ground below me. My eyes peered at it with surprise and curiosity. A plastic card showing a small golden chip was lying inanimate at my hooves, shining in the hall’s yellow light. Lifting it up, I saw Amethyst’s photo. It fell again from my nervous hoof more than I dropped it, aback by the impression the photo gave me. Amethyst had her mane cut short, and she sported a smirk I had never seen her sport. It was her Equestrian Army’s entry photo. Where did Stable-Tec find it?

The letter had a post-scriptum note.

PS: This card is your pass to Stable-Tec’s headquarter, proof of our trust into your person while it is also meant to have far more characteristics, please keep it safe. Losing it means losing your capability to be selected as an Overmare.

I blankly stared at the card for more than I thought, lost in the depths of my empty mind. I had never taken a recent photo of Amethyst’s profile. I had photos of her when she was still young, just a filly in my hooves. But, as long as she grew up, we had become increasingly distant, only meeting during holidays when she was at her college. This card, and especially this picture were a reminder of my loss. I found a gift as well in this plastic card. I had always feared that I would forget what I’d lost, that memories could falter ponies.

The alarm clock’s complaint gained in momentum, breaking me away from my trance. I stood up, keeping the card in my mouth until I could store it somewhere safe. I walked slowly toward Amethyst’s room. Balloon had cleaned it, or somepony else did. There was no stain nor a slight evidence of past night’s events. Yet, the stench got into my muzzle, the windows had remained closed and the air had rotten inside the room. I winced in disgust, dizziness gripping my intestines. I wanted to go inside the room, to shut that alarm up. But I was blocked at the threshold of the door.

I whimpered, breathed in, sighed… waited. Clenching my eyes together, I took a long breath and lifted my hoof, stretched it in the entrance and forced my balance forward. I walking in. My skin itched as if hundreds of needles were puncturing it constantly, product of my own reticence to enter, torturing me. I inhaled again and stepped one hoof after the other, repeating the manoeuver again, brushing away the locks of my mane falling before my eyes. I rushed toward the clock and snoozed it. Ready to turn on my hooves, my eyes settled down on a folded piece of paper on the bed linen. I took it and leaped outside, panting. Was it a trauma or some similar shitty mental block, this room freaked me in spite of being outside. I was running with sweat, shivering.

I glanced back at the inside of the room, dark and silent. Only the ajar door was standing between the two of us, slowly swinging on its hinges. On the brink of puking my bile out, I spent a few minutes calming the shudders dancing beneath my skin. Once I was back to a more normal mood, my attention drifted to the paper in my hooves. Unfolding it, dropping twice thanks to my clumsiness, I read down a message message, Balloon’s words. I could see his name and signature at the bottom of the page.

The message was so well-written it was nothing a visual pleasure to me. It kicked in my memories some flashes from kindergarten, where teachers had explained how to shape letters in an old fancy way. A stallion’s exceptional calligraphy was only making him creepier. Unfortunately, I knew too well that a beautiful shape was often the hideout of a sorrowful meaning. I hesitated to read it, the topic being Amethyst, and only Amethyst. Balloon announced me she would be buried in two days and that, as her mother, I was of course expected to be there. I was quite pleased and shocked at the same time. This letter was oozing kindness and care, all faked. I had to come alone at the burial, and moreover, an agent would be there to take a photo of me weeping over the grave, war effort you know…

A few seconds were insufficient for me to realize what it meant. My heart pounded in my chest, its beat muffled the fearful and paining thoughts bouncing in my mind. I was definitely a bad mother. Did I really accept that? Yes, I had signed that damn paper. For the sake of Equestria, my girl had to be forgotten or at least who she is… was, had to be modified. It was a war-necessity.

I turned the paper upside down, trying to find a location. Nothing but just a ‘I’ll come to your office today to sort out your paperwork’. I close my eyes, my hooves trembling once again. Was that some kind of joke?

Furious, I shredded the paper into bits. Of course I would be there. Of course, I would see a last time the pale and face of my dear girl, impassive and stripped away from her smile. And be sure I would curse the world for this. I will cry, not only for her, but for me too. I, who had been so widely alright abandoning the freezing body of his girl. And I swore that Balloon would pay for it when he would come over my job location.

For sure!

I swear.

Maybe…

Did I really say that?

I chuckled with a cynical grunt at my own misery. I was angry, pissed off, desperate, and hopeless. Blame my personality for this. During wartime, everypony, I included, felt carried away by a monstrous force. There were those who fought it back like Big Mac, those who left the flow like Amethyst, using a permanent solution for a seemingly endless problem. And finally were those who gave in to this force, just like me, nothing but powerless ponies.

Devoid of will as I was, I had only a few hopes left. Hope for a better future, hope for a change, hope for a hoof to help me out. Yet, I had always been alone, or felt as if. Now that Amethyst was gone, I was truly alone.

My skin and mind tortured me. Creeping out of the hallway toward to the bathroom, I slid into the bathtub and let the water showering down my neck and mane. I was an anonymous pony going to a church to be washed out of their sins, standing in the tub like a mare in a confessional. I had faulted and failed ponies. And this was tearing me apart continuously, like a thirst unable to be quenched. Under the water I couldn’t tell if I was crying, water outpouring on me. I had to stop thinking about it, mustering my spirit would only hurt myself more that I had already done.

Just let the force carry you, Vava… Let it carry you away. It’s as simple as saying ‘Hi’.

When I left the tub I took a look at the mirror and jumped back in a fearful jolt. After a minute spent blinking and calming myself, I got rid of that distorted layer wrecking my vision… Or at least I tried. I was facing myself, a creamy beige mare with a dark grey mane with vanishing light green locks and green eyes. Yet, I could not really tell if it was really me or some kind of alternate self that was watching over from a parallel dimension. I wouldn’t be surprised if it started moving by itself. The reflection had enormous rings under its yellowing eyes. Its lips were dried and ridden with cracks, and wrinkles that shouldn’t be there scarred its face. Only its teeth were still white, or kind of. Decalcification could be seen near their roots. My cutie mark was the only thing that had stayed the same, a black shield sliced in two symmetrical parts like the two sides of a sliding metal gate, slowly closing on a simple bright green ring.

I was only looking at myself. It was only me, looking down at a degraded version of myself. Feeling violated by one’s own picture… was it some kind of twisted achievement? For a second I thought I was grinning at myself. I thrust my hoof into the mirror, breaking it in its frame. Some shards fell inside the watery sink below, and now a dozen of replicates faced me. Lowering the pace of my breath, I tried to calm down. But I couldn’t and broke into tears.

Quick Vava… put some make-up on, smile and it would be soon over, absolutely alright… Smile and wave, salute and remain silent, and the feelings would fly away, for sure.

I went to the kitchen, seven in the morning was marked on the digital clock hung to the wall. I had to go to work. I gulped my coffee in a jiffy, took a pill of restoratives and threw the empty tub into the dustbin. I opened the shelves, took some food and a sparkle cola. I spent the next five minutes eating a not-so-dietetic breakfast. After the usual shot of shivers from the back of my spine to the top of my head, I slowly trotted to the hallway. I grabbed my saddlebag and tossed it over my back. I was going to step out when I froze. Mindlessly, I went back to the kitchen, taking my daily rations and refreshment. I needed to eat something during the day, I needed to be efficient as a very long shift was awaiting me.

Hi,

This is the beginning of your adventure, hope you’ll see the end of the tunnel.

As for now, you begin with a status of, Simpleton Mare, LvL. 0

Good Luck!

Ch.1 p.1 - Balefire falls

Ch.1 p.2 - Balefire falls

Chapter one, Part two: Balefire falls

I stepped outside my flat and locked the door. The staircase, lit with a flickering light, had the horrid look of a decaying hospital. I frowned at the odor flying in the hallway. The cleaning service had done their job a few days ago, washing the place with bleach, medical alcohol and others chemicals swamping the air of this closed space. All together, the chemical itched my nose and dizzied my head. I looked up at the ceiling. The air recycler was dead, again. It had been malfunctioning for eons, and the repairpony was yet-to-be-seen.

“Okay Vava, calm yourself. Let’s go to work,” I murmured out, trying to convince myself, rubbing my temple.

“Hey… Vault…” a stallion grumbled behind me, reeking unhappiness.

Oh Princesses, I knew this voice far too well, and it was one I really, truly wanted not to hear that morning.

I swiveled on my hooves and stared into the eyes of a unicorn stallion, grey coat and a blue mane, groomed and nearly shining under the neon light. His cutie mark was a scroll with a green tick at its bottom. As always, his face was marred by a constant, relentless poker face. I looked down at his Ministry of Wartime Technology’s logo, sewed to his white blouse, right above his name. That stallion loved to brag.

“Hi… Admin,” I greeted through my teeth, faking a smile. “How are you today?”

“Quite fine,” he answered without a smile.

Now, he looked… deeply sad. A frown on his features and his frowned eyebrows clearly showed he was scanning me. He had those eyes, contracted, seeking for something odd to point out, hawkish to say the least. I couldn’t blame him, it was his job, seeking for errors, flaws and mistakes. It was even his damn talent, finding errors. He looked at me coldly and moved closer. My fur raised on my skin as he put his hoof on my shoulder.

“If you want to talk,” he brought forth with a sigh.

My eyes widened, watering. I bucked him away, my hoof striking his chest of all my might. My breath accelerated, turning louder. Admin coughed and winced, his breath suddenly difficult and raspy. Holding his blouse where now a hoofmark appeared, he let no words out. Instead he stared at me with eyes loaded with pity. I didn’t look back when I ran down the stairs, trying to repel the tears flowing to my eyes. He knew! He had eavesdropped, that bastard!

I couldn’t really blame him. The walls here were as thin as paper, letting paroles and sounds go through as if nothing had separated the flats. Thanks to that, all my neighbors had heard my screams and pleads, the whole night! And they did nothing. Amethyst’s death was known to the building and rumors would soon spread. How long would it need to have me labelled as a careless mother, as a pony that spilled the blood of youth, future of Equestria? For many I had let ‘an opportunity to win the war’ fly out and get wasted.

Everypony should have heard the MoM’s agents come and leave. They all knew! And for this, I hated my world.

I fell off, hurtling down the staircase. At the time, I lived on the seventh floor. My landing a floor below was harsh and hard, aching where the stairs had punctured my skin. Getting my issues and pain together, mustering myself about the throbbing pain in my limbs, I kept going down the stairs only to walk into the street.

When I pushed the entrance gate, the sun rising in the horizon flared over my eyeballs. I waited for a few seconds before daring open eye at my surroundings. It was half past seven and already an endless flow of ponies was walking down the crowded sideways, going to work or accompanying children to school. A normal day of a normal year. The radio rambled loudly in the street, announcing a bright and happy day for everypony, the war was contained. Bullshit! Pinkie Pie shaped balloons were hovering over the tops of the city, their crew equipped with large telescope and strange bowl-like tools. Pinkie Pie was watching you, forever. The propaganda couldn’t be truer.

I dug my space into the ponies trotting the streets. The metro station wasn’t far away from my flat, but reaching it was an ordeal during the peak of the day. Over-closeness was making the atmosphere incredibly hot. The content of my saddlebag clattered and clicked, rubbing the flank of the ponies circling me. Many spat curse words at me while the stress rolled down their faces with sweat. Though, pegasi had an easy life, flying over our scalps while earth ponies and unicorns had to struggle to breathe beneath.

I lifted my head and looked above me, seeking for fresh air. The sky was streaked with hundreds of communication wires and electric cables. The poles dividing the sideways into portions showed hug red speakers. From there came the songs and reassuring propaganda messages I had learnt by heart throughout the years, like a repeated mantra you would hear at the rail station while waiting for an always late train. Damn train drivers… In fact we weren’t even given the luxury to wait at the station anymore. They had always been on strike. Until of course the martial law had kicked in our daily lives. I knew those speakers could ring at any time, announcing an incoming threat, enjoining us to reach the nearest shelter. It could be anything… invasion, bombing, terrorist attacks, balefire bombs… Don’t think about that Vava!

“The end nears, my little ponies!” a voice yapped at the corner of the street. “We, yes I repeat, we have corrupted the Princesses with our vile wills, mere ponies stained by the sins of mortality.”

I took a look closer, ice-breaking through the crowd. There, standing on a hoofcraft wooden pedestal was an old bald buck. From his toothless mouth, he shouted at the ponies stopping by only to listen to his strange jabber. A strange fire was burning in his eyes which fascinated me.

“I feel it. The sky darkens and the ground pounds under the hooves of thousands and thousands of Zebras and Ponies thrusting themselves at each other, treading upon the corpses, bathing into blood, ripping off their throats and drinking their own sludge!” he eructed vehemently.

Among the spectating ponies, I saw a mother dragging her not-so-crafty pink filly away, her mane seemed to be made of gold and her eyes of the palest pink I had ever seen.

“But moooom, I wanna see the pretty pony!”

“Don’t listen to him,” she whispered. “He just fell on his head.”

“Okay…”

I snickered softly as the pinkish and cute filly disappear in her mother’s trail among the passers-by.

“The end is coming!” the ranter blurted out, paying no attention to the agitation he had created. “The time of the great diseases beckons, ready to harvest the souls of the worthy. Only to leave the unworthy on the scorched soil we once called home, now violated by our own decadence!”

More and more ponies had slowed around me, giving whispered thoughts to their neighbors, shocked and mesmerized by the old pony’s speech. A group of Ministry of Morale’s agents loomed afar from me, struggling digging their way toward the mood-pooper, who didn’t fret about that incoming threat. The rag of a pony he was chuckled on his improvised stage at the sight of the brown coated mares and stallions coming for him.

“Don’t you feel it in your guts? The dim light of the sun is dying. The night is creeping to us and the shadows veil unknown threats. And we hide the truth to ourselves…” he smiled and spent his last seconds of talking spelling out his final statement with a shocking calmness. “That we are all going to die.”

The agents, all bearing Pinkie Pie pins similar to Balloon’s, pierced through and stood in front of the buck.

“Stop your hummocks, you sick brainwasher,” one of them barked. “You’re under arrest for troubling the common folks’ safety.”

The old pony scolded his assailants with a wide smirk as they walked forward, circling him. They pushed him down and hoofcuffed him. He shouted as the agents pulled him away. As he struggled back, the emissaries threw him at the ground and dragged him behind, leaving a large path of dirt onto the asphalt. The ranter whined, his fur hideously burning with the friction.

“We will all die!” he screamed. “Or we will rot in a hell we will have built with our bare hooves!”

Then he was being gagged, shutting him up. And I even heard the loud crack from a stun gun being sank in the old buck’s rump. He shrieked, whimpered, then went silent. I watched the agents disappear with the apocalypse-monger and walked away. Damn, nothing is better in the morning than this kind of encounter to give you a small shot of pure happiness... The Streets were overcrowded and claustrophobia sparked some irrational fear in my mind, what if zombies was to appear? I needed to move. I looked a last time at the sun rising in the horizon and sighed. I turned back, swearing about Ponykind’s craziness.

The metro was no better place. Ponies urged into the carriages, pushing everypony inside, crushing them against the windows as an aura of lateness soared in the air. I tried to breathe as much as I could inside that messy crowd. The door’s speaker shouted their known beep, announcing the departure. They hissed on their lateral hinges and nearly closed when a pony jumped inside, running with sweat. The doors shut behind him. It was Admin

He closed his eyes, catching his breath with difficulty among the ponies pressing their elbows in his sides. After a long time spent wincing, wrestling himself in a position far more endurable, he focused on his close neighbors and looked right in my eyes. I was, I had to admit, standing right in front of him. If we had been lovers, I would have surely blushed. A bliss we weren’t. I looked at him with anger in my reddened eyes. He scowled back at me. Oh, I could say he was pissed off. He had always tried to seduce me, harassing me for years. We were co-workers after all. I was glad he was not my boss, just a ‘close’ colleague. He never abandoned the idea thought, making me really uncomfortable some days. But today I could tell he was extremely pissed. I knew he would get it back at me, one way or another. What a spiteful and immature stallion he was. I smiled internally, we were similar in some ways. The stare battle between both of us lasted a very long time.

The wobbling of the train carried on with an unceasing and repeating rattle, numbing like a lullaby. I looked at my hooves, trying to focus. When I had nothing to occupy my mind, I couldn’t back away from Amethyst’s face transfixing me with her watery eyes. Please, make it go away. Make something worth my attention, worth drowning my memories in. My head lowered and I swept the tear off my cheek with the tip of my hoof. When I raised back my head, Admin had turned his back at me and everypony was minding his own business. Even here, squeezed by that flow of anonymous ponies, each one of us was lonely.

₪ ₪ Ѻ ₪ ₪

The ministries formed a massive hub inside Canterlot. They had the biggest buildings, apart from the castle itself. Impressive, their massive shapes stood high next to each other in an immense square where hundreds of carts and ponies passed by every day, at any time. They were the first employers of the city and region after all, only Stable-Tec could compete with such mastodons.

And I, a tiny pony lost in a huge stream of anonymous faces, was one of their many workers. A cogwheel in the machine. To be honest, I was one of the many handyponies of the Ministry of Wartime Technology. I know the title isn’t very fashion, but in tarnation, I wasn’t among those ponies forced to sweep the floor over and over again until they ended as crazy as an amputated zebra. I worked for the Testing & Approval Department, or TAD to its employees. Oh, I can even hear ears twitching and curiosity buzzing in your chests like thousands of butterflies. The name was fancier than it really was.

The main entrance of the Ministry of Wartime Technology was reserved for the customers and spokesponies of the companies the ministry watched over, which meant nearly all of them. Ponies knew Applejack was a liberal, hating putting her hooves in somepony else’s business and pockets. Yet, she couldn’t let all of them roam freely and compete fiercely without a keen and strong aegis. We were at war after all, we shouldn’t fight each other but work hoof in hoof on a common project, being the victors of a world war.

Thus, the TAD had been created. It was not a repressive division of the ministry, bashing and fining every moving target on the markets. It was more of a patent factory, if I could make such comparison. All the new creations and ideas that went out in Equestria had to show up here sooner or later. For, they were tested, patented and then approved or rejected. I was often surprised during my shift that I could see and even touch the weapons and deadly inventions passing by. Applejack had to make sure it was not a threat for us all, hence we, TAD’s workers, were there to test out what could be the salvation of Equestria in the future. As a mid-life mare, I had been working there for nearly sixteen years. Yes, you could say war got me that job. And to be honest, I’d seen some scary stuff there. But all had slowly been replaced by a long and dull monotony. A routine I had been happy to embrace and make mine.

As I said, Admin and I worked there. Me as dogspony, him as a controller. And as simple workers, we had to enter by the backdoor. The Ministry of Wartime Technology was a gigantesque building designed like a massive barn of metal, wood and rock, maybe an acre long and seven stories high, the underground levels not being taken into account. It was also one of the most secured place in Equestria and we had to go through many checkpoints before reaching the backdoor entrance. Before we crossed those glass doors, sliding silently on their sockets, Admin stopped me, closing my path with a hoof.

“You fucking pissed me off, Vault,” he whispered. “You punched me albeit I only wanted to help you. I’m not the fucker you think I am.

His eyes tried to meet mine, to no avail.

“I won’t talk about what happened yesterday,” he delivered. “It’s just… I expected you to apologize.”

I huffed at him with a smirk. He was the one that had kept harassing me for years. And now, he asked me to beg for his pardon. I passed by. He was the mistaken pony, not me… right? The hallway was a clean marbled hall with a reception. Propaganda could be seen, pasted on the walls like masterpieces of art secured inside their minimalistic frames. One caught my attention, kicking in my curiosity. I had never seen that one before. A mare was rolling up the sleeves of her fleece, staring at me with assertive eyes. The yellow background showed a bright font inviting mares to work for the Ministry. Sadly, it only outlined that little by little, Equestria was running out of stallions to carry out the work into the plants and factories. Most of them were dying on the frontline. Having mares entering the army, signing for taking part of the frontline infantry was relatively new. Soon, Equestria would be a nation of widows and orphans….

I cut my contemplation off and walked back to Admin.

Sitting behind the reception desk, a mare was waiting for us. As always the secretary’s mane was magnificently curled and groomed. What was her name already? I couldn’t remember.

“Welcome,” the pony greeted us.

“Hi,” Admin replied dryly.

She eyed us, being side by side with Admin was eerie, evereypony knew we weren’t friendly. She sighted deeply and pulled out of her desk a set of plastic cards and pushed them in our direction.

“Here is your daily pass, Vault,” she explained before looking at my co-worker. “Here’s yours, Admin.”

“What’s the program today?” he asked, adjusting the card he had just clipped on his torso.

The mare brushed her chin, making a funny face.

“Hmmm… I think we received the crates from Mimezinga Ltd. today. And well, it’s the time of the year when we have to test the new models of life support suits.”

“Boring,” Admin grumbled.

“Ah, yes…” The receptionist cut him off. “You got the newbie today.”

I arched a brow. Then I realized with a loud ‘oh’. The Direction had hired an intern mare from the Canterlot University for Technical Studies, all on behalf of my boss who was undoubtedly waiting for us below our soar hooves. What was the freshmare’s name already? I was really bad at remembering names. I asked Meadows.

“The ID shows she’s called Chrome Wrench.” The mare showed the intern’s card to me, freshly made and shiny. And as the receptionist still had this one, it meant Chrome was already late for her first day of work. Admin chuckled.

“Let’s get started,” he sighed. “She will catch upon us.”

I truly enjoyed my job, a fatiguing and fast-paced duty that sucked my worries out of my mind. It was a stressing but rewarding work as you never knew what was waiting in the basement of the Ministry of Wartime Technology. When she was younger, Amethyst had once asked me if we had combat mechas. I shook my head with regret as Admin and I reached the elevator. Never again, I would hear her sweet voice.

The atmosphere in the TAD was pretty hot for a morning. I would not be surprised my co-workers would have switched on the air conditioner, making a fridge out of our reserved basement, the minus fourth floor that we gently called the ‘warehouse’. The descent passed slowly and went spent into utter silent. Admin and I never dared to look at each other, even for a fading instant. Only the annoying chirping music of the speaker kept us from drowning in an absolute silence. A ‘ping’ popped in the air and the doors slid open. A mess of crates, desks covered with papers, and ponies agitating in the foreground and obstructing a large test zone in the background stood before us. A true scene of chaos. The TAD would never change. Twenty reinforced doors leading to antechambers meant for every kind of testing were dug into the walls of the warehouse. All together, the TAD was a cathedral kept awake and alive by ponies faithful in the Ministry of Wartime Technology.

Tarnation, It was hotter here than on the first floor. Where were the technicians when we needed them the most? I saw fans on every desks, humming in the air as they slowly swiveled. At least we were glad the electricity bills weren’t written down our income statement. We would have filed bankruptcy a long time ago.

The TAD was usually maintained by four teams we used to call squads. We all had the exact same roles, we had divided ourselves in the sole concern of accelerating the work. Going through the equipment, patents, stuffs and shits and assessing them were an extremely long, tenuous and administrative process. Yet, it was kicking in some fun for most of us. Being a beta-tester was indeed not an opportunity given to anypony.

I saw one of the teams laughed in the background, gathered around a strange metal case. They pasted a rejection stamp on it. I chuckled with a smile. We all knew that all Equestrian designers that had to pass through our approval hated us. We were the ones that could break apart years long and costly investments, throwing back at them years of Research & Development that were a hellish burden on their balance sheets. Eh, we were a spine in the net present values of every company in Equestria. That every shareholder despised us was an understatement. And I had been wondering how lobbies had not taken us down yet. I understood our ‘customers’ well, I would hate knowing that an unknown and underqualified mare like me was holding the Damocles’s sword over their products, employments and economic future.

Admin and I went to our area. Among the four teams, ours was the smallest. Maybe because we were the assistant of the TAD’s big boss, the old and not-so-wise Rusty Cog. The old copper-colored Earth Pony was rummaging under his wooden desk. Only his brownish hind legs were left to see, jerking intermittently from side to side as he rolled over his rump, seeking for something. Many times he cursed the princesses.

“You’ve lost your glasses again, decrepit log?” Admin snickered.

“You little piece of shit,” the old stallion spat, knocking his head under the desk as he tried to sit. “Ow, damn fucking Celestia’s wide open plot!”

He hopped on his bum until he went entirely in sight. His wrinkles and furrowed brows gave him strange slit eyes, and his long tresses of white beard gave him the look of a wise oriental figure. I puffed a laugh behind my hoof as I knew it was all pretty lies. He was the most swearing pony I had ever met. A bald unicorn redneck at his finest. He was out of context inside Canterlot’s walls, like a stain on a white doily. However, he had seen Equestria industrial’s revolution and was even the inventor of the oscillating cylinder steam engines, which brought us the first modern locomotives. I wasn’t even born that he was already known. He was an antique buck we had to respect, that he deserved it or not was not at the top of our agenda. By the way, don’t ask me how Applejack had succeeded in getting him out of his retirement. For all of us, random workers of the fattest of the six ministry, it was a complete mystery. Every day there couldn’t be a moment when he wasn’t insulting the Equestrian government or the ministry mares.

“All’s complicated today. Y’all can’t drill there. Y’all can’t dig up here. Y’all patent that crap… Bla, bla, bla… Rubbish!” he rambled.

He looked up at me with his tired eyes. I spotted the coffee cups stacked on the ground and top of his bureau.

“You haven’t sleep again, Rusty?” I asked with a knot in my throat, repressing my craving to smirk.

“Nope.” He shrugged. “We’ve received a prototype from Stable-Tec and it kept me awake the whole damn night.”

Admin and I laughed at the statement.

“I thought you hated S.-T.?” Admin condescended.

“I hate Scootaloo and her two bitchy friends,” he croaked. “They think they invented the black powder and could sell the final product as if it was atomic compounds. Those brats!”

With his hooves Rusty mimicked a talkative and rambling mouth, all he needed was marionettes of the three mares of Stable-Tech.

“Oh, When I build something, I build it to last!” he condescended with a high-pitched and annoying voice.

See? Always insulting and rambling around, like the old, tired and spiteful buck he was.

“So,” I added. “What kept you awake about them?”

“They… S.-T. brought me a fucking power engine to test.” He pointed his hoof toward one of the room test.

“Number fourteen chamber?” Admin asked, surprised. “Why using the hermetic room?”

The massive steel door in the back of the warehouse was stamped with a big ‘14’. A bright red light was flashing over its frame.

“My hunch,” Rusty bragged. “And I was right to do so, the thing started glowing and it nearly breathed radiations onto my face. Room fourteen is closed until I’ve found what we need. I swore the three bitches tried to kill us all.”

Rusty bucked his desk over, sending all the porcelain cups on the ground. The noise of shattered porcelain scattering around filled the air; many heads turned in our direction. None of them were furious. They were… compassionate. Hell, we were the boss’s dogs after all. Yet, I had shivered slightly, the sound reminding me the lamp Amethyst had kicked earlier in the middle of the night, before… I bit my lips and whimpered.

“Are you okay?” Admin whispered.

I didn’t reply.

“Ah, ah!” Rusty shouted.

Thrust away, the desk had left a massive print of dust on the ground. I could see a small key nearly hidden under the cover of dirt. On its holder was written the code of the storage rooms. I gasped, it wasn’t just a random lost item.

“You’d lost the key for the life support suits’ storage!” Admin blabbered, his eyes swelled in their sockets.

“Meh,” the old stallion replied with a shrug seeping out carelessness.

“Oh dear Luna, why did Applejack recruit you?” Admin facehoofed, half-laughing, half-blameful.

“Because I have a brain and I haven’t put it on a shelf,” Rusty teased back with a smirk. “You shrimp!”

A sound of breaking wood burst behind the three of us. With curious stares we looked back.

“Sorry,” muttered a young mare, the cutest I’d ever seen in my life. “Pretty sorry…”

She backed away from an earth pony stallion staring with blazing eyes at her, showing his teeth. Yes, she was cute; a small pink unicorn with a white mane striated with strokes of electric blue. Her pink eyes shone under the many lights of the warehouse and her cutie mark was, as you guess, a beaming monkey wrench. She was surprisingly well groomed for a mare working in mechanics and technology. I wondered if she wasn’t some kind of spoiled child fallen from a wealthy nest called Canterlot’s high society.

“Excuse me,” she apologized again.

Like a ghost she drifted in our direction, making no waves in the warehouse. It was too late of course. Everypony had seen her, and amused smiles blasted onto many faces as she walked toward us. At least she would introduce herself better at noon, when everypony would go out on the square to eat at one of the cheap restaurants neighboring the ministries. She never dropped her smile, sheepish and apologetic.

She stood unsteady before Admin, who was eying her with picky eyes. Rusty, who was still holding the key in his hooves and me, yawned. I needed something to drink, my throat was dried. The air was so hot that I was glad when a fan waved in my direction, splashing air onto my face. I was also happy I had taken my stuff at home.

“Hi. My name is Chrome Wrench. I’m the major of my student year,” she initiated, ready to enunciate her whole curriculum to balance her mishoofed introduction.

“Really? What are you doing in this shithole then?” Rusty joked aloud.

Rusty kept chuckling and Admin grunted at him with offended eyes. I bit my lower lips, cracking down my own rising laughter. Chrome blabbered with an annoying lisp. I raised my hoof and patted her head.

“That’s okay,” I reassured her. “He’s just messing around with you. Welcome on board Chrome, I’m Vault Skin.”

I turned around, presenting one after the other the two stallions of the team.

“The young one is Admin Signature and the crumbling male wreck over there is the boss, Rusty Cog.”

She greeted her with a warming shake of her head.

“Well, before anypony here start sobbing with some kind of drama, you have a job to complete,” Rusty interjected at me, throwing the key in Admin’s hoof. Then he looked at Chrome. “You’re staying with me. You’re new, I must show the basement to you and present you to the clique. We ain’t here to make cupcakes.”

Chrome nodded with a pinch of hesitation and fell into step alongside Rusty. Admin and I trotted toward the storage rooms, walking around the different and messy desks of the other teams. The door we were looking for was a massive reinforced piece of metal located on the opposite side of the warehouse. Aligned like siblings, each door had a distinct purpose and was a protection against what rested beyond, should it be a shooting range or a broomstick closet. Well… we sure weren’t going to build one wooden door for such minor thing, better go for a plain stainless steel gate instead… Applejack should have loved the architects, how much money had been wasted in such antics. The door we looked for ended the row, it was nothing more than a massive antechamber where everypony was putting…. Excuse me… throwing the stuff we had assessed and rejected, and that no company had ever claimed back.

Over the years, what had been an empty three hundred meters squared room metamorphosed into an amazing Ali Baba’s cave. We had loaded and unloaded weapons, leather, plaque and magic armors, kilometers-long wires, things, stuffs, tings and thingummies that we had lost track of since. When Admin opened the door a strong musty stench breathed onto our faces, the sour smell of closed spaces and dust.

“Yuk,” I spat, making my tongue fret in my mouth in a desperate attempt to get rid of the reek. “Damn, is the air conditioner still dead?”

“Eeyup, Mare Obvious,” Admin retorted.

The air was blurred with the particles in suspension. Like many places in some key areas of the Ministry of Wartime Technology, the cleaning service was not allowed to come here and do their job. And we, the ‘testers’, were too lazy to do it ourselves. If Applejack had to come here someday, I wondered how she would take care of us. Maybe we would clean everything lickity split before her arrival, hoping she wouldn’t notice. Would she fire us all if she’d come to find out the mess the TAD was? Would she buck our butts up to the moon? At the moment, we had succeeded in getting rid of the Pony Resources’ aegis. Those damn executives couldn’t even hammer a nail.

Amidst a somber ambience the flickering lights hanging on the ceiling cast around Admin and me, I saw many black metallic racks strewn over the room. We went to the farthest one. Many blue pale plastic suits were aligned together on a coat-hanger bending under their weights. Damn me, those life-support overalls were fancy! The original company’s logo had been ripped off their flanks and they all sported a spherical glass jar hung on their collars. We had those things for two years at least, I didn’t remember having used them since. Admin and Rusty had them tested against radiation when we had gotten them. Then we had stored the whole bunch in the room and never touched again, until today of course. They were impressively efficient, radiation and chemicals dripping on it like water on a hydrophobic fabric. What was the reason of the TAD’s rejection? Well, if I remember well, Rusty had pointed out a flaw in the Artificial Intelligence coding. I had been surprised the old buck knew programming languages. He had to shut the program down after it had stabbed one of my co-workers with healing needles, the poor buck had had a cold and the A.I. had gone crazy about it. Me? Well I knew nothing about programming. Lines and Lines of code weren’t my hobbyhorse.

“Take your suit,” I advised Admin while I was ransacking among them to get an overall look at those jewels of technology.

When I looked back at him, I was surprised he had already done so, putting on as fast as possible, while keeping the creasing of the suit low.

“I’m waiting for you in front of fourteen,” he grumbled.

“Yeah, yeah,” I sighed out my tiredness, sweeping my hoof in front of him like I would do with a fly.

The odor of the storage kept needling my nose. Rubbing it while I was following behind Admin’s rump, I heard my belly growl. I opened my saddlebag and took a sip of my drink and eat a whole biscuit. I wished I had a bowl of milk to dunk it in. Yet, work beckoned and we quickly exited the room. My trip to the TAD’s private fridge would come later. Closing the gate behind me, I caught the key in my mouth and checked the door was indeed locked.

Back to our desk, Rusty was still talking to Chrome, her pale mane falling in front of her eyes. Often, she passed a hoof through her strokes, putting them back behind her perking ear. Stress irradiated from her.

“And last but not least,” Rusty chuckled with his raspy little voice, “my desk.”

He tended his hooves over the piece of wood, bucked over. He smiled and excused his messiness, scrubbing the back of his head. Rusty and Chrome laughed shortly before seeing Admin and I behind them. Chrome and I helped the boss tidying his personal space. Rising on his two hind legs, Rusty pushed his hooves on his sides and got a loud crack out of his backbone. He grunted in pain.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, trying to hide his quickening breath. “I’m not young anymore.”

While Chrome was sweeping the dust away with her hoof, Rusty spared us a flirting slap on our butts, taking us by surprise. Chrome gave a cute ‘eep and granted him a swift tap on his muzzle.

“How dare you?” I countered.

Snickering, I grabbed some dust on the ground and blew it onto his face with a playful grin. Rusty sneezed uncontrollably. The ponies that had seen Rusty’s pervert deed burst into laughter, making Rusty rumbled with a defeated pout. A battle was lost, but the game had only started. He was Rusty after all.

“Don’t think because she’s a newbie,” a mare from another team shouted,” that you’re allowed to go backward, old perv’!”

Rusty grinned and clapped his hooves once.

“Well, cease-fire. Admin, Vault,” he called out. We acquiesced in return. “Here you go in fourteen, check the generator and shut it down, find the compartment where the core is located, and take it out. You’ll need to get rid of the radiation. There is an air recycler in the fourteen. Just, let me find some air filters.”

He looked at Chrome, ghoulish, her hooves running with shakes as she tried to hide the quivers when she had seen our worried frowns. Too late.

“Did you say radiation?” she asked.

“Hey.” Rusty smiled with a shrug. “We ain’t paid for nuts. We have to get our hooves dirty, sometimes. But don’t worry, it’s your first day, I won’t ask you to go down there. You’ll stay with me. Watching some TV doesn’t bother you?”

She shook her head, plucking her lips for fear of telling something Rusty wouldn’t like. A beautiful prude, there weren’t many of them anymore. If I was into mares she would have put me into the mood… Ah, Vava, stop stalking on young ponies and talking rubbish. You were in your forties, she could be your daughter. Daughter…

I bit my tongue hard, but not enough to taste blood in my mouth. Please Vava, stop thinking for a while. You knew it wouldn’t bring good to you. I shook my head, trying to cast my wrong thoughts away. I brushed my mane clumsily, itching like hell, took a deep breath; and closed my eyes for a few seconds. When I opened them again, I stepped forward and trotted to the fourteenth door, Admin on my left side.

We could have passed a bison through that gate, round, hermetic and massive. I remembered Stable-Tec used the same type of model, bigger though. You remember earlier, when I told you every door was exactly the same? Well, I lied. Just a pinch. ‘Fourteen’ was the only one digressing. Others were just thin metallic doors, four centimeters thick. The ‘fourteen’ was built in a corner of the TAD’s level. It gave to a small hallway we used as a decontamination chamber. From the inside it was nothing but a cylinder where a floor made of metal sheets had been riveted. The upper limit of the passage displayed a series of shower heads. It had always been the cleanest place I had been given to see in my life. The gate the chamber gave on was similar to the first gate, just tinier. Beyond was a massive place, slightly smaller than the store room. It was a closed atmosphere area, there we used to test chemicals and hazardous compounds or weapons. Don’t ask me what, I wouldn’t be able to answer to that question. I was a factotum, not some kind of engineer or chemist. Admin on the contrary knew about that. And me, simple worker, I just carried stuff around, helped, sorted out data and did the most basic works. I knew a bit of accounting too. Yeah, I knew it wasn’t the best job ever but it was well-paid. The fixed salary was very low of course, but I was making a fortune out of the risk premium I got from that job, an unqualified mare such as me was extremely lucky.

“Well,” Rusty’s voice crackled in the interphone fixed under an unmovable camera, “prepare yourself. There is only mild radiation behind but it will still make the rad-counter tick. Admin?”

“Eeyup.”

“I want you to find the flaw and shut that power engine down. With Vault, find me the carburetor and take the fuel or whatever the core is out. Vault?” I nodded in front of the camera. “I want you to switch on the air recycler, there is a set of magic filters in the compartment under your hooves, take them. I also put your stuff there.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“Well, I’m initializing the procedure, the door opens in three minutes.”

The interphone burst with static and went quiet. I walked on the side of the decontamination room and opened the metal storage stuck into the ground with a nudge. A muffled but still screeching siren rammed into the air, announcing the imminent opening of the ‘special room’ as we like to call ‘fourteen’. In the square box below me was a set of five heavy and spongy disks, made out of some material that I couldn't identify. Yet, I could see them glowing with the bland white light of magic. I lift my saddlebag and slid it in the compartment, taking out its current content to make space.

“Hey, get ready?” Admin asked me mindlessly.

“Don’t worry, little pony,” I called back. “Just let me finish.”

Once I was done, I had stacked up the five discs next to me and was ready to initiate the procedure. Admin had put the glass helmet on.

“Come here,” I advised him. “I’ll close it for you.”

With my bare hooves, I clipped the golden-fish jar on his head fixations and zipped his suit up to his neck, folding back on it an additional radiation protection. We heard a short and surprising hiss, mentioning the living suit had entered into its closed system routine. Then, I walked behind him and opened a small brownish panel stuck on the back of the suit, I pushed on the red interrupters inside and was greeted with flickering lit up diodes. The H.U.D. flashed inside the helmet, flaring at Admin’s face who snapped out, wincing forcefully. A weak hum came from a tiny speaker sewed to the suit, filling the hallway with buzzing static.

“Can you hear me?” Admin asked through the glass protection while the speakers were adjusting to his natural tone.

“Five out of five,” I confirmed with a blink as his voice lost the last remnants of electronic spluttering. “I…”

“Vault?” Chrome spoke through the interface with a tone betraying growing worries. “Where is your suit?”

I couldn’t say through the static if she was stupefied, scared or both. I… I surprisingly hadn’t brought mine. My eyes peered at Admin. He glanced perplexedly at the camera, paused, and facehoofed with a loud sigh. I swept my foreleg on my head, pushing aside the messy locks falling onto my face. I had no suit or protection at all. Time was playing against me and I needed to act quick... Otherwise I was… Stop thinking about that, Celestia Dammit!

Admin and I tried to pull the exit door with all our might, to no avail as the hermetic lock had been switched on. The shriek of the siren intensified, making my heart beat rise dangerously. Sweat trickled on my face and tainted the ground with tiny drops of salty water. Think fast, act swift, don’t stop. I cried out for help into the microphone, wracking the ears on the other side of the channel. Through the interphone, I could hear Chrome pleading somepony to shut down the now deadly procedure. Irrepressible shakes rammed through my hooves. A mechanic voice rang into the air, beginning the final countdown, a red light wobbling over the next door announcing the process was still going on.

“Ten!”

“Nine!”

“Eight!”

Oh sweet Luna stealing Celestia’s cookies in the kitchen! Think! Fast, fast, fast…

“Seven!”

My mind fell into stressing numbness as I banged at the door with my bare hooves, making me lose a precious second.

“Six!”

I heard Chrome’s sobs, deformed through the electric interface with burst of static flapping my ears. I almost felt the tears watering my face.

“Five!”

I jumped to the locker under my hooves and ransacked it upside down. I found a pair of leaded goggle with tainted glasses, a box of empty diodes, and a gas mask. Meh, this stuff was not going to be useful if I was going to swim through pure radioactivity, were they?

“Four!”

I took a deep breath between my tachycardia-induced huffs and stroke my hooves onto the metal door once again. Chrome’s weeping had turned into a loud crying, cracking in the interphone. Damn, I made her cry…

“It’s just my first day,” she blabbered from afar.

“Three!”

I imagined her shrinking onto her hooves with watery eyes, trying to block the last words that would came out of me, cringed between the scared stares of my co-workers.

“Two!”

Celestia dammit. Did I mess up this time?

“One!”

“Well… Stop screwing around with the newbie!” Rusty deadpanned. “Go fix that damn machine instead of playing with her.”

The countdown stopped with a loud thump. The red light vanished and the door giving to the testing room swung open. I put the goggles and the mask on and slowly walked in with Admin by my side. Through the interphone I heard a massive flow of laughter. I commiserated with Chrome. I was grinning nonetheless. She was the freshmare, we had to build up a prank only for her to freak about. Hey, she was late for her first day! I pictured the whole TAD having looked at the play until they had all fallen on their rump, holding their sides. Poor Chrome, being a laughing stock was hard.

“But…” Chrome muttered with a lisp.

“There is no butt in this story, Miss Wrench!” Rusty chuckled.

“You have to get her out!” she howled. “Now!”

“No worry,” Rusty reassured. “Miss Skin ain’t a common mare after all.”

Eeyup! I didn’t get my cutie mark from bucking apple trees, you see. Mine was completely different. A black metallic shield closing onto a green circle, it had to be something particularly badass, or useful. To be short, my skin is ‘thick’ to radiation. It runs on it, unable to go through and stain my flesh. Don’t ask me why, but I can say my resistance is my talent, sort of. My name says it by the way.

Oh, that doesn’t mean I am completely immune to radiation. Why do you think I had to wear eyes protection and a mask… and clenching my butt?

Did I tell you my parents were miners? My family used to extract radioactive materials out of the Equestrian soil a while ago while I was still a filly. One day, I was seven years old, my parents had found out a metal so radioactive they had called a unicorn to move it away. Unfortunately, I had spectated the scene without a protection. A magic ray sparked off the irradiated rock and struck my side. My cutie mark appeared at this moment. Yes, this is how I got my talent. After a quick check my parents found out I hadn’t been irradiated and believed I was completely immune.

Anyway, at the time I was quite happy, my parents had always blocked me the entry to the mine. Too dangerous they had told me. But with my cutie mark, they had accepted me wandering into the mine, exploring wherever I thought it was interesting to go. Thus, I had roamed alone and without any protection in there for too long until one day I had collapsed. A doctor found cancer cells in my body. Only my skin was immune, that is the hard truth. Being told I was sick had been depressing. My talent was great, but not perfect. Yes, I couldn’t hide my disappointment, my talent was incomplete and had nearly killed me, together with my natural curiosity. Thereafter the revelation, my family had spent all their savings into a cure, RadAway had been discovered, and because we had found my illness early, I got to survive. However, we had lost our exploitation in the process, forced to sell it all.

Leaving the mine we had owned for longer than I can remember, my parents went to live in Fillydelphia, a massive, dynamic but somehow extremely unhealthy city… polluted and shallow of nature. The local council had recruited my parents as teachers at the Geological Institute of the City. And during their whole career as lecturers, they did pretty well and even became famous in this domain. Now, what about me? I ended at the Ministry of Wartime Technology. I had dropped school early due to my illness, and without any diploma, the opportunity I was given in the Canterlot’s hub had been a stroke of luck I had refused to throw away.

But let’s go back to our radioactive chamber, would you?

I adjusted the mask and glasses onto my face, ready to dive into the radioactive swimming pool awaiting behind the threshold of the second gate. Do you know what I hated the most about radioactivity? It’s that you couldn’t see it, smell it or even feel it at all, until it was too late. Ponies always expected a kind of greenish and fluorescent cloud, scary and overwhelming you could easily spot. Having just an empty space in front of the muzzle and a gadget next to you giving away a constant tick-tock sounds wasn’t frightening enough for the movie makers that had mystified the ‘almighty and poisonous radiations’. In my opinion, if I may speak frankly, I thought an invisible enemy was far scarier than anything else in the world. Oh yeah, invisible zebras were undoubtedly worst.

The hermetic room was a disc-shaped chamber which unique soft round wall was covered with instruments and tools of any kind, from the electric screwdriver to the gem-powered magic cutter. And in the middle of all these piles of tools nopony had the courage to sort out, I saw it. The object of our worries was a miniature power plant shaped as a strange squared cube which contours had been planned. Completely white, only a side showed a rack of thick cables and a panels of buttons together with a small screen display. I trotted in its direction, careful not to mess around and untie the mask shut on my face, biting the contours of my features. On his own, Admin had a hard time moving with his bulk suit, I smiled at him after he had fallen onto the ground in a loud thump that wrestled a flow of swears out of him.

“Damn you Vault,” He coughed. “You’ve got a too simple life.”

I shuddered at the remark, trying to act as I had never heard it. I looked at the linoleum flooring the hermetic room, biting my lower lips, memories flowing again in front of my eyes. Standing back on his hooves, Admin saw my placid face. I was struggling, hoping I could get his words out of my head, and with them, Amethyst’s face. I knew we were far from the interphone, only I could have heard him. He looked down at his hooves, shameful. A long silence settled between the two of us and only his hoof patting my shoulder break this dull code of silence.

“I… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…” he tried.

“Just finish your work,” I spat.

I smacked my head once I had made sure the cameras couldn’t see me. I breathed with difficulty through my thick mask, intensifying my thirst as I sought for air inside. Admin went silent and moved toward the cube. Then, going through the keyboard under the screen, manipulating cables, he took care not screwing up the operation. His horn flared brightly under his glass helmet, sending pale turquoise sparks that bounced inside the golden-fish jar. The outlines of the cubes shone dully under the white light pouring out of the ceiling. I toured around the large box approximately the size of a big stallion, the Stable-Tech logo was etched in each side of the item. As Rusty had said, I found a loose panel behind the cube. It took me time to take its screws out and open the plaque. Once unscrewed, a slight hum came out of the inside. The inside was bathed with a bizarre bluish light.

“You’ve found the core?” Admin asked shyly.

“Yeah, I think I got it,” I mumbled, struggling with my hoof inside the machine, trying to avoid breaking a wire loose.

I rolled over, pulling on a cylinder inside, forced on its locks, wobbled on my sides and… I heard a sharp sound. I drew out of the opening a glowing piece of junk, a long and heavy rectangle piece of shiny metal. The compound was built with a slit on its side, closed by a thick tainted glass. A strange liquid was flushing inside.

Admin raged in front of the electrical panel, kicking with his hoof over the box like an old TV screen, hoping energy would burst the screen back to life. To no avail. He looked at me, a frown cast on his face and his eyes screwed at me.

“Vault, I was doing a data override,” he bleated with a large pout.

“Ain’t your job. We don’t do industrial spying. I know your talent makes you naturally curious, but it’s not an excuse for taking apart things to find out what their purpose is. You remember the last time we had to check a megaspell rocket?” I grinned. “Glad Applejack was here to save your ass from the Morale’s agents.”

He frowned at me. Yeah, having a cutie mark making you able to point out any flaw or irregularities within whatever you get your hooves onto was a benediction for the TAD. However, it made Admin being quite of the holier-than-thou kind of unicorn. I wondered if his talent worked on ponies. I never wanted to know, it was creepy as zebra’s shit.

He was our own little replicate of Prince Blueblood. But his talent was also a part of his genius. We had no breakdown since the TAD had him recruited, four years ago. I glanced at the cylinder in my hooves, still glowing. The liquid I could see through the open slit was hovering inside the tube. Admin gazed at it with a weird and titillated expression. He tapped the rad counter on his torso which clicked in return. He confirmed it was the source of the radioactive leak. Taking a look closer, we found out a crack in the cylinder from with minuscule drop of glittering blue fell between us.

“Stable-Tec will have to handle quality control.” He screwed his eyes, I knew he was ‘talenting’ again. “They probably wanted to lower the production costs. Too bad it was also concerning the radiation protection. The MWT might want to audit Stable-Tec. for such fraudulent practices. Yet, I’m still troubled. When Stable-Tech builds something, it’s built to last.”

He looked at me with a perplexed look, always showing off this tiny screw of his upper left lips when he had a question worrying him.

“Do you think it could be a sabotage? I’ll have to report this.”

I shrugged. If he wanted to go through administrative papers, I wasn’t going to stop him. But I’d quit as soon as he’d have started.

“Well, have you finished?” Rusty’s voice crackled in the room’s speaker.

I nearly dropped the glass cylinder. It bounced around between my hooves before I caught and stabilized it.

“Yeah, just a second. Are you in a hurry?” I shouted.

“Somepony wants to see you, Vault. Guy’s name is Balloon.”Again, I nearly broke the radioactive cylinder.

I might have made a bit too much of a mess listening to Rusty. His voice was not neutral anymore, expressing a paternal worry for me.

“Everything’s alright?”

“He… He’s just from the Ministry of Morale. It was scheduled,” I explained. “Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

I heard him grunt, unpleased. Everypony who wasn’t part of the Ministry of Morale hated it. Some of us hated Pinkie Pie even more, her bulged eyes looking over us at every corner of every street, her posters glued everywhere, and thus, forever. With Admin, I put the broken cylinder in a leaded box and stored it in one of the sealed lockers displayed inside the room Fourteen. The Hazard Services would come at the end of the week to take it out. Then we put the air filters in a machine shaped as a funnel and switched the mechanism on. A ‘ting’ popped from the rad-counter, mentioning the radioactivity had begun to drop, the air was flowing in the purifier.

We walked back inside the decontamination chamber and once we had closed the door behind us, a warm demineralized water blend with many chemicals showered my whole body. The jets were strong, tickling. I threw away my goggles and my mask, letting the water blasting on my rump and face. It lasted for five minutes. A hot shower was never long enough.

When the shower ended, Admin and I found ourselves trapped into a mist of white steam. He unzipped his suit and put it in a near container with my own equipment. The Hazard Services will take care of it too, it wasn’t our job after all. A loud suction initiated and the steam vanished into a pipe located above us. I sighed. The cold was back again, lashing my flanks.

I had tried to get rid of the angst dwelling in my heart. But it had kept growing nonetheless. Everypony knew now Balloon was here and they would all ask questions. If not to me directly, they would come to Admin. I was doomed. I had always managed to separate my work from my private life. Only Admin had been an exception to this rule, with the enmities that went with. When I walked out of the antechamber, I saw Chrome, her eyes red with dried tears and her mouth creased. Oh, she wasn’t happy. In all the stares I saw anxiousness. I guessed many thought I had committed some awful and unforgivable deed in the Ministry of Morale’s eyes. Having an agent at one’s workplace was nothing but good. And because everypony was ignorant of the truth, I knew the tension was far more pregnant that it should have been. I took a deep breath and patted Chrome now disheveled white mane.

Rusty looked at me, a sad expression in his eyes. He swallowed his saliva.

“You want some help,” he asked in a whisper, knowing ponies were listening. “I have relations…”

“No. It’s not what you think,” I answered with a smile. “It’s concerning me and only me.”

Rusty looked at Admin, seeking for an answer. The grey unicorn drifted his eyes away, making Rusty frown. The old buck grunted and turned back at me.

“Okay.” He paused. “Just call me if you need help.”

“No worry,” I assured him. “Where is he?”

He sighed and looked at one of the warehouse’s doors.

“I gave him the fifth… Or to be honest, he asked me this one. He’s waiting inside.”

I gulped as I looked at the number, stamped in dark red on the nearest metallic door. The fifth room was the only one that had no contact with the exterior. No camera, no interphone… Only one door to go in, only one door to go out. I needed to brace myself for this encounter. Balloon had left his mark on me, a blend of terror and admiration.

“I’m just going to the toilets,” I told Rusty before creeping toward the mares’ privates.

He shrugged, rambling over the help he could offer me. Again, I denied his tended hoof. I needed calm above anything else. My hooves trembling to a small extent, I locked the door of the toilets. The privates were relatively large place where four closets were aligned on the left, separated by tiled walls and closed by wooden doors. The right side of the place was reserved for the sinks and a large mirror. I hopped toward the first sink on my right and nearly stumbled, how clumsy I was, wasn’t I?

I turned on the tap and splashed my face with a stream of cold water. I looked at myself, my ghoulish beige face with dark rings under the eyes. How ponies could stand me as a co-workers? I ransacked my saddlebag for a moment. Then, wiping my cheek, I sank my head in the sink, stayed a few seconds under the water, holding my breath. I rose my head again and… Balloon looked at me in the mirror.

I jumped on my hind legs, yapping like a scared dog, swiveled, plunged my eyes in his and fell back, hitting my head hard on the sink. My vision dizzied violently, my pounding heart hurting my temples. I put my hooves on my face, warmth rushing up my brain. My knees and heels shook with the spike of adrenaline I just suffered.

“Are you okay,” he asked, a frown on his face.

“Don’t do it, ever again,” I jerked with my raspy voice.

I looked deep in his eyes and I saw the flame burning beneath, he was angry. Was it aimed at me? I whimpered, seeking a hideout under the aluminum sink, still rubbing my head. A tear foreshadowed on my left eye. Now that a bruise sat on the back of my head, numbness dampened my concentration, forcing me to wobble back and forth in my fetal position. I couldn’t relieve myself from the pain completely.

“How long have you’ve been drinking?” he spat at me.

“I don’t,” I replied with a sob. “I haven’t…”

I shrieked when he pulled my mane and dragged me down the floor, spreading the content of my saddlebag on the linoleum. I hear the clatter of empty bottles. Balloon smirked.

“The scent may be not strong enough for your coworkers, but I can smell it. You reek,” he scowled at me in disgust.

I lied to you, again. As I had lied to me that day. From the shelves in my kitchen I hadn’t taken sparkle cola, as I had always done before. I had gone for a more… sophisticated and heady beverage, a cheap decoction of alcoholic potato.

Balloon pushed me against a wall, trying to stare at me. And always avoiding his eyes, I broke into tears. My legs would have failed me if he wasn’t here to maintain me on my febrile hooves. Whimpering I tried to flee from him like a child would from a punition. I tried to punch him. A useless attempt… I would have only made his brown mane slightly messier, curled his blue fur a bit more and maybe thrown his glasses away. Perhaps I should have aimed to his horn, but I had no strength at the moment, likely drained of it all.

“Everypony is the same,” Balloon criticized, nearly spitting at me. “Begging for everything to go away, like sheep.”

He let me fall on the ground. Shaken, I tried to crawl toward the entry, felling my guts growling with all the alcohol I had drunk without really noticing it. Why was it that agent the one who had to know how I was feeling? It was unfair.

“Amethyst has been buried earlier than scheduled, one hour ago,” he announced without a pinch of concern in his voice.

I blinked at him. He did what? Stoic I glanced at him, an emotionless expression. My rage rushed out of my lungs. I screamed, aiming at his throat with my bare hooves. He blocked me with his magic and grabbed my neck, making my upper body hover over the ground while I was gasping for air. Balloon had blocked my scream on his way up to my vocal cords. His magic was a closed gate inside my throat. I gasped, jerked, kicked.

While he was holding me in the air, he searched through his bag and drew out a strangely shaped item. A black tiara, which sides were flattened plaques that would cover a pony’s temples and even cheeks if he or she was small enough. Coughing for a breath of air, I looked at the inside of the tiara, inexorably floating in my direction, glimmering in Balloon’s magic. It showed five to ten rows of small screws, each separated with a larger one retracted on the exterior of the plaques.

Revelation struck me, I knew the item’s name. I had seen one passing by the TAD and Rusty had instantly refused to look at it, ‘the devil’s work’ he had spat out. It was a long time ago. It was nothing but a recollector, a terror-inducing item for those who knew the Ministry of Morale’s true ways. I tried to back away from Balloon, kicking in the air between my hooves and the ground. My back bumped into the brick wall opposed to the exit door as Balloon moved me like a puppeteer.

“Your growing mental disorder is a matter the Ministry of Morale is taking seriously. Through our mental mapping process, we found out you could become an unpredictable and socially violent mare,” he stated with a sigh, seemingly pissed off by my behavior. “It has been decided the memory of your daughter and everything that is related to her shall be erased, ensuring the well-being of the ponies close to you. As long as ensuring your continuation as the healthy and hard-working mare you are.”

My heart failed me and I cried, hoping I could melt inside the wall and get away from his grasp. The clutch around my neck tightened painfully and a heat wave rushed to my head. I was asphyxiating. My vision blurred and phosphenes popped through my vision. My hooves grated on my skin as I tried to rip an invisible rope off my neck. He rammed the recollector onto my head. The screws sliced my epidermis and cut off some clumps of my mane. One of my ears folded and I felt a tiny piece of skin being torn away. Blood flowed on my face, cheeks and eyes. I was wearing a dark and thorny crown that was going to break me apart.

My vision went red. I saw the healing potion in Balloon’s hoof, ready to clean the infamy he had printed on my face once his job done: a casual work that would cut through my memories like a knife through a cake, taking the best slices out first. I screamed, sobbed… and gave in. I lowered my head. Sparks flew in front of my eyes. A screech slithered in my ears like a hundred needles biting my eardrums. My temples and upper-cheeks burst in pain and the warmth plaguing my face drew back little by little, chased away by some kind of coldness numbing the skin. It was tickling, penetrating, violent, eerie, frightening… horrible. Sparks gave space to a magic mist orbiting around my head. I closed my eyes, feeling for the first time magic running through my veins. I cried and hiccupped, hoping for a black-out to end my misery as soon as possible.

Instead, Balloon sat next to me.

“You’ll see. It hurts just a second,” he explained with a cheerful smile. “When you’ll wake up, you’ll feel better. You’ll be better.”

I answered with a broken blabber as tears ran down my red and watery cheeks. He shook his head.

“Hell, what did you think?” he laughed dryly, sweeping the bloody tears off my cheeks and nose. “I was not a knight in shining armor coming for you. You thought I could come and end your pain, giving you some love.”

I nodded weakly, butterflies running through my veins as an anesthetic wave started in my tips, slowly crawling toward my chest and head. He laughed at me.

“I might do the first thing. But the second…” He shook his head.

I wanted to shrink in a corner and disappear under my shame. I wanted to forget, to be forgotten. I wanted my suffering to go away. I was hesitated. Maybe he was right in the end. I finally met his stare, birthing shudders along my backbone. He looked like a predator, eyeing his prey before the last deadly and life-ending leap. A charming predator who was creeping me out. I jerked away and failed to escape.

The grip on my neck came back stronger this time, my scream kept muffled again. Balloon pushed me violently on the ground, and his magic flew again around the recollector, the screws biting deeper into my skin and then, my flesh. He shut me up as I was going to cry out for help. I jolted. Trying to flee away, I only grated my back against a wall. He steadied me with his hooves, standing over me. He sighed as he neared his horn toward my forehead and the recollector. In my peripheral vision, I saw a black orb floating. A memory orb.

“Why mares have always to be that messy?” he asked rhetorically.

He smirked and looked straight down in my eyes, and his neutral face slowly scarred with a monstrous grin growing from ear to ear. I blinked, drifting away from reality, my ears low and defeated. All this was deeply wrong but I couldn’t struggle back. An urge to vomit craved my stomach as I lost contact with reality. I couldn’t focus, couldn’t think. That grin… I…

I felt violated, raped.

Ch.1 p.2 - Balefire falls

Ch.1 p.3 - Balefire falls

Chapter one, Part three: Balefire falls

A scream erupted violently, echoing around me, likely trapped in a bubble of constant and painful sorrow. The worse was that this scream… it wasn’t mine at all.

My eyes burst open. Palpating my face with clumsy and achy hooves, I found the recollector still in place, and my memories still bobbling in my mind. I could still remember Amethyst but… something was terribly wrong and eerie. I vomited, a sudden numbness invading my hooves and brain.

Was it because I couldn’t remember the events of the past few seconds? That I had fell into unconsciousness? My mouth was furry as if I had napped for far too long. I couldn’t describe the feeling except that it was giving me gags. Bile reached my mouth again and I threw up the last drops of alcohol wrenching in my stomach. My messy and unclear thoughts fought together to get the upper hoof. I looked around me with scared, bloodshot eyes. Admin was standing in the threshold of the door, raised on his hind legs and holding a thin and long gun I had never seen before. The shaft and the butt were made of wood and the mechanism was the one of a bolt-action rifle. Its chamber was glowing blue and the tip of the canon was exhaling fumes, billowing toward the ceiling until they had vanished completely into thin air.

Still lying on the floor, I blinked and turned over my hips.

Balloon was panting, blood dripping from the wound in his left shoulder. A thin spear had pinned him, going from side to side and impaling him again the wall. He was stabilizing himself on his hind legs, trying to move the least possible to spare him pain. The arrow itself was a long and slim rod of metal from which three teeth thrust out, biting in Balloon’s skin avidly, dampening any of his movements.

Rusty passed by Admin’s side, the young stallion still petrified with the gun in his hooves. My mentor galloped to me and held me in his hooves, not even glancing at the agent. Balloon’s coat was reddening with blood, staining and gluing to his pale blue fur turning to violet where the blood was flowing down. I curled in Rusty’s hooves and broke into sobs. His raspy voice that was usually gleeful and slightly perverted was now molded by anger, sadness and hatred.

“Give me a reason not to kill you on the spot,” Rusty croaked at Balloon’s face, torn with pain.

“I’m an agent,” Balloon stated with a maddened giggle. “I’m above the law. Wait that the Ministry learn about that misdeed of yours.”

A bang deafened me, following by the gasps of the witnesses standing behind the threshold of the door. Admin had shot a second arrow in Balloon’s right leg. The agent shivered as a flow of blood streamed down out of his limb. Slowly, a pond formed at his hooves, growing over time.

“Even if I die, such actions will have you terminated.”

“Shut up,” Admin raged, moving forward and lifting his weapon until the tip was pressing on Ballon’s head. “Just shut the fuck up, you sick monster.”

I sought reassurance in Rusty’s shoulder as I had tried to with Amethyst not long ago. He winced, I was reeking alcohol, vomit and fear.

His eyes never leaving Balloon’s, Rusty tried to take away the recollector. I screamed. The pain was unbearable, tearing away my skin, flesh and skull apart as the screws had sunken deep around my head. It cracked and broke apart. Bits of the recollector fell onto the ground and only a shard stayed stuck into my flesh and bones, build in with bloody screws. I needed care. Blood flowed onto my face and fur which had turned reddish instead of its usual beige. Rusty found Balloon’s healing potion and made me dunk its content. I felt less wracked.

“What have you done to her?” Admin eructated with a loud voice.

“Nothing,” he smirked. “I was only performing the preliminaries.”

I shivered at the thought. Admin threw the butt of his weapon in Balloon’s face, knocking him out. A long silence followed as many heads locked down on me through the frame of the open door. Rusty was keeping me awake, giving me gentle taps on the cheek. Admin’s hooves gripped on the rifle, its tip on Balloon’s neck. Finally, Chrome broke through the mass of ponies and entered the room. She was scared as much as I was.

“Why would an agent do that? They are meant to help us!”

I heard many jeers in her back. A nestling that had fallen from the nest, knowing nothing about the real world. I looked at her with my tired, blank and watery eyes, blabbering. Then I hugged Rusty in a shaky embrace.

“Amethyst’s dead,” I whispered next to Rusty’s ears, breaking down in tears. “She’s dead and he wanted me to forget her… But I couldn’t.”

The scared stares changed into angry glares toward the unconscious stallion. Many knew I had a daughter. And even today, family was one of the most sacred pillars of Ponykind civilization. Balloon’s deed was unacceptable and many whispers talked about making him pay. Rusty cleared his throat.

“We should seek help, Chrome go contact the MWT’s local direction and…”

A siren rammed the air, deafening and vibrating. The lights of the warehouse flickered, turning from their common yellowish white to a pale red.

“All the Ministry of Wartime Technology’s crews have to report to the managing team on the ground floor as fast as possible. This is a level one alert. It is not an drill,” a robotic voice alarmed through the speakers spread across the TAD’s basement. “All visitants shall regain their assigned bunker as fast as possible, the Ministry of Wartime Technology declines all responsibilities such as wounds or death once you’ve left the building.”

Panicked voices rose, following by hurried hoofsteps that changed into a charge toward the elevators. Everypony left in a short second leaving only Rusty, Admin, Chrome and I behind… and Balloon of course.

“Level one… alert?” Chrome muttered. “What does it mean?”

Rusty’s face was livid, if not ghoulish. His jaw hung slightly open and fear was easily readable in his eyes. He said nothing for a couple of seconds, gathering his thoughts together, building a tension that gripped our hearts.

“It’s the end,” he simply replied, his lower lip shaking with a sorrow I wouldn’t have expected him to show. “We must find a shelter!”

“Why?” asked Admin.

“The balefire bombs are coming.”

We all stopped and fell into a long, unsettling silence. Balloon, who had awaken, gave us a short laugh.

“Well, we’re all dead then.”

Chrome interjected, unable to believe in Rusty’s assertive words.

“It’s not possible, since when the Zebras have megaspells.”

The fact that Fluttershy had given the megaspell frame to our nemesis wasn’t notorious, but in the Ministry of Wartime Technology, everypony knew about that horrible truth, or at least had heard rumors. Rusty told her. Chrome fell on her side, holding his head between his hooves.

“I must warn my mother, my brother… my friends.”

“They will be fine,” Rusty explained. “Canterlot has many shelters built to stand balefire, they are not stable thought, but it can save you from the first blast.”

Rusty gave a worried look at the shaking red lights.

“We must go,” Rusty ordered.

We ran to the elevators, Rusty sustaining me on his shoulder. I couldn’t trot easily and I often fell, bumping my chin onto the hard floor. The warehouse, plunged into a red atmosphere swamped and warm stressed me. I felt like I was trapped in an oven.

My forehead was still bleeding despite the healing potion. The recollector had dug deep into my flesh and the last remnants of the cursed item was nailed into my skull. Touching it sparked wave of pain that paralyzed me. I needed to go to the hospital. All my thoughts were blurred, giving me a hard time to gather everything together to know what I was going to do next.

“What about Balloon?” I merely asked when we stepped into the elevator.

“He can rot in Tartarus,” Rusty berated as the door shut before us.

When we stepped outside, the sirens screeched at us, howling into our ears alerts and protection advises.

When we reached it, the ground floor was a hell of shambles. Ponies ran around, screaming and shouting. We passed in front of the reception desk, empty and succeeded in stepping outside, digging our way through the flood of ponies stirring up around.

We all looked at the sky. And at that true moment, I felt my heart falling into pieces.

In Canterlot’s Square of the Ministries, a massive and vast open space in the sprawl of buildings the city had become, we had a great view over the sky. Above us, glued to the steep mountain was the castle of the two Princesses. All was perfectly in sight as at this time of the year the sun at its zenith hid behind the tip of the mountain, casting a large shadow above the palace and the city below.

My eyes riveted on the horizon. I winced as a large flow of bright red then green lights burst out miles away from us. A sudden ignoble green light sparked, engulfing the blue skin in the distance where Cloudsdale was located. I heard ponies breaking into cries and pegasi’s screams. I could see the shockwave in the horizon, chasing away the clouds around where the detonation had flared.

I blinked, losing trust in my eyes. Strips of orange were streaking the sky, coming in our direction after going off at a tangent over the explosion we had witnessed. As many meteors running toward us, they whirled and screamed. At first it was nothing but a dull whiz. But it changed rapidly into a mighty roar. Everypony stopped, looking at that rain of fire hurrying toward our position, ready to spread fire and demise above and among us. Petrified, we stared. I heard Chrome murmuring a whisper to Celestia. Now I could see the missiles, a hundred of spears of metal rocketing to Canterlot. The worst was that it was only the first salvo. Many waves came behind the first row of missiles, one after another. The rectilinear race of the missiles curved as they neared toward Canterlot, only to drop straight down from above our heads. I gulped as the first missiles were mere seconds from us.

I wanted to live.

The mighty roar stopped, chased away by the hundreds of explosions that fire-worked in the sky, blocked by a shiny bubble of yellow and blue. This was undoubtedly Celestia and Luna’s work, may they be blessed! Stopped by the magical protection, the missiles blasted onto its surface in monstrous blazing balls of fire. The rain of rockets never stopped, and strangely none were a megaspell. Only a dozen of seconds separated each of the salvo. Yet, even between those periods of respite the ground never stopped shaking. I had never experienced what an earthquake was before. The ground hummed, cracked and trembled in a tremor that made buildings and roads roar. The explosions thronged on the magical shield spread hellish quakes in Canterlot, gaining in momentum as the bombings kept going on and on. The road below my hooves screeched open, the asphalt cracking under the almighty pressure applied on the city’s protection. The ambient zoom shattered the windows which showered the streets below. I witnessed ponies behind wounded by the sharp edges of the shards. In the distance I saw a building lower, then slide on its side until it disappeared in a massive cloud of dust.

Like the sound of two boats crashing into each other in a massive screech of tearing and bending metal, an overwhelming boom vibrated into the air. Rusty, Admin, Chrome and I shuddered and fell on our knees, trying to protect our ears from the unbearable noise. I peered my eyes at the sky, seeing nothing but a shield that was now entirely gleaming a pale yellow and a mess of explosions and smoke beyond. I hadn’t remarked yet that the sun was now hidden and that the only light bringing a chiaroscuro ambience to Canterlot came from the fire above us itself. I whimpered. It really never fucking stopped.

I heard a crack. Not that exploding crack coming from over our head. No, it was a sound of shattering glass with an eerie twinkle blend with a noisy buzzing, instantly followed by a swift puffing breath. I turned around, seeking for the origin of the humming. The sound repeated, as if a pony was unwinding a record to play it again. I could not hear just one origin. The sound was everywhere, at the same time.

Something caught my attention, a crack. Not on the ground, not on a window, not on a wall or on a cart left on a sideway. It was a crack growing into mid-air as if somepony was shattering an invisible window. One, two… There were too many cracks to be counted.

Even my blackest and scariest nightmare could not stand comparison. As the shield above us flickered to a dull blue light, the cracks opened around us. Widening, I stared inside and only see a shady pink glowing out of them. It grew in size like maws giving onto another dimension and a pink, thick, and sickly cloud slithered out of it. It weaved toward everypony, hungry and eager to swallow us all. This mess of pinkish gaseous slime was alien to me. My mane itched and my eyes ached just from staring at it. The nearest cracks had instantly swallowed a couple of ponies that had come far too close. Curiosity had always been a sin.

Screams…

Screams that slashed through my eardrum like a hot knife in butter. My eyes widened and I stared at the two shadows jerking in the nearest pink cloud. One fell with a muffled thump while the other leaped out of the colored mist.

A knot tied in my stomach, I watched avidly. The pony, a mare, tried to walk away from the cloud. Pink tendrils wrapped around her hindlegs seemingly trying to keep her in. She tried to back away, but her clumsy movements were revoltingly slow and dampened. And I saw her hooves… her skin… her eyes… all this was falling apart, melting like cheese in an oven, sticking to the bubbling asphalt until she broke down and hurtled into a pool of liquefied flesh, pounding organs, and cleaned bones. Time seemed to stop as everypony looked at the mess gurgling on the floor, unaware of the rising howls and screams around us. Cracks multiplied… dozen, hundreds, thousands of them… Everywhere, opening wide and giving birth to that pink cloud. The pinkish haze growled and fattened, getting bigger and bigger as it hovered in the streets, swallowing ponies and buildings alike.

The protection shield had turned yellowish again above me. The barraging of fire was not going to stop. And with a magically corrupted pink cloud eating ponies away, I was lacking options.

“Run,” Admin cried out, pushing me to my hooves and dragging me back to the Ministry of Wartime Technology’s entrance.

A tongue of pink cloud extended to the space I had occupied a second ago while we rushed to the elevators and went back to the TAD’s warehouse. I couldn’t think about anything but that we had trapped ourselves underground. The outside would wait for use to crawl out of our hideout, ready to leap for the kill. Tension built up in my heart.

I sat down on my chair next to my desk while everypony was ransacking a surprisingly empty of life warehouse. Everything had been left in the lurch, terminals were still switched on, the fans whirled around and bags had been dumped open everywhere. I stared at the paperwork dropped over my desk, my breath pushing some sheets over its edge. I had a small figurine of Big Mac, kicking the air against an invisible enemy while holding a revolver in his mouth. Built on a spring, I made its head wobble.

The ground shook, intensifying the back and forth movement of the toy’s head. Dust fell off the ceiling with a rumbling creaking, making me shudder. Chrome had curled up under my desk, whining. She was chewing her own white blue streaked mane. A second shook threw hums in the air. The walls vroomed and a complaint coming from the deepest depths of Tartarus echoed in the basement.

“The elevator!” Admin warned loudly. “Hurry!”

“I know for Luna’s sake. I fucking know,” Rusty replied.

Admin threw away a lot of the junk he’d gathered, sorting out the essential for survival. While Chrome was still busy whimpering, and I dreaming, Admin’s horn flared and a chunks of wood flew in the air, barricading the entrance of the basement, a long hallway leading to the lifts. I looked at the darkness beyond the frame of the door as the light flickered dangerously over our heads. Was it that pink cloud looming behind? The ground gave a violent jerk, tossing us all aside. I fell hard on the broken part of the recollector still riveted to my head and got knocked out.

When I woke up I saw the pink cloud weaving around me, biting my legs. I turned around and glanced at Chrome. She hadn’t moved, her eyes petrified on my unmoving shape. The cloud bit my skin deep… Why did it itch so much? I rolled over, extracting myself from the pink and deadly embrace and looked straight down at my hind legs. My beige fur was melting onto my bare and carbonizing skin. The change had been slower than for the poor pony outside. To my horror, the pink cloud was no radiation. It was something else, fast killing, nearly intelligent, and my talent was useless to face it. The question of my capacity to survive along with my co-workers struck me hard. We had no opportunities to run away. Trapped, we had to wait for a horrible death. Would it hurt to get turned into a puddle of bubbling flesh? Spikes of fear sparked down my backbone up to my neck, sending chills all over my body. I screamed and jumped away from the cloud’s range of action. Safe for the moment, I brushed my hind hooves as much as I could. For my stupor I ended with clumps of liquid fur on me.

Rusty and Admin tried to beat the cloud down, the first with a gun, the second with a wooden chair… to no avail. It was the end, I wanted to close my eyes and melt down slowly, painlessly. What would be the first thing to melt away, my life, or my body’s true integrity? Would I survive as a puddle of splashing meat?

I noticed something that finally gave me a smile. Fans… The warehouse had been hot the whole day. The temperature had been so unbearable with a broken air conditioner had forced us to bring back some fans. The fans scattered in the warehouse were still working, blowing air around and fighting the pink cloud back as it went by. I chuckled and rose up on my hooves.

“Rusty!” I yelled, pointing my hoof at the miraculous machines. “The fans!”

He looked at me perplexedly until a light lit up in his eyes. He grasped my idea and shouted at Admin. They all smiled together. We had found an exit door.

I dragged Chrome with me just before she ended trapped and killed by the pink cloud under my desk. I crawled with difficulty toward Admin and Rusty. Together, they were building up improvised systems, a series of fans, duct-taped with portable batteries. They had already made half a dozen of it. Celestia damned me, those two were fast workers.

Yet, we couldn’t even keep the pink cloud at bay. Admin took three of the portable fan-guns, grabbing them with his telekinesis, and threw an attack on the cloud, protecting Rusty from the crawling pink vapors. The old pony was raging.

“We have not enough hooves to carry them all!” he barked. “Vault, find me something to use more of them… Something!”

His voice burst in my ears, increasing the headache coming from the chunk of metal planted in my temple. I threw up in front of everypony and Admin backed away from me. I couldn’t feel my hind legs. What was that cloud.

“Please Vault, help us!” he screamed.

Regaining my composure I rogued around, seeking for anything. I breached open crates, unveiling a flood of weapons, cartridges and armors. I left it aside seeking for something else. I worked on restlessly for several minutes, the cries of my friends making my heart pump faster; their shouts increasing the stress in my mind. I cracked open a metal box and my eyes filled with glee. I had found saddlebags.

I see you coming… Saddlebags? How could that be helpful?

It was not any kind of saddlebags. They were a Swift Justice Corp.’s masterpiece of Earth Pony technology. An automatized saddlebag. I had never tested it, but I knew what its functioning. They were one of the only items Rusty really valued, even if he called it a fancy piece of hoofcraft. There was only one in the crate, well-protected between small balls of polystyrene. The saddlebag itself was made of aluminum and steel, shining under the flashing light pouring of the ceiling. The side sported nothing but a minuscule symbol, a shield and a sword etched alongside.

I tossed it over myself. It was a strange and heavy saddle. Instead of falling over my stiffs, near of my cutie marks, it was adjusted to sit right behind my shoulders, its far extremity touching the end of my back. A click cracked behind me and turning over, I saw another piece of item had fell out of the crate, an armband made of metal with a strange black ball in the middle. A light was gleaming intermittently from a yellow diode built in it. I strapped the armband on my left hoof. A humming noise popped out of the saddlebag and band. It was a mechanical adjusting process.

“S.J. Corp’s saddlebag model 101 activated, please insert you name,” a mechanic voice asked, coming from the armband.

I hesitated, pinched my lips and gave back my complete name.

“Vault Skin,” I spelled distinctively.

“User Vault Skin encrypted into the database. Welcome worker Vault Skin into the Earth Pony Inventory Management Frame, brought to you by Swift Justice Corporation.”

I jumped into the air, freaked out by an unexpected movement inside the saddlebag. The fear of a monstrous spider hidden within the metallic bag sparked in my mind. I tried to throw the saddlebag away, my panic forcing me to scramble. My fear increased as I become aware that the strange saddlebag had locked itself on me. Its mechanical locks had shut onto my chest. I screamed like a scared foal. Slender arms made of metal snaking out of the bags, clicking and rolling over their joints around me.

I panicked, rolling on my rump to get rid of the mechanical freaks sprouting out of the item… My pupils shrunk to pinpricks. I was afraid of spider.

“You can control them,” Rusty called at me.

Struck by fear, panicking and numb, I glanced at the arms and indeed saw that I could move them by only thinking of it. I couldn’t understand how, though. The pain that was breaking me, running from hooves to the tip of my tail slowly faded, replaced with surprise and awe. I could move those tiny arms around. However, there were a lot and I often messed up moving them around. All I could do was amplifying my headache by trying to move more than once at the same time.

Panting and on the brink of throwing up, I walked back to Admin, Rusty and Chrome. They were trying to push away the cloud with their fans. I looked around and my heart dropped. We were now circled, cornered between two sets of desk.

“Take some fans!” Rusty ordered.

Out of panic, I focused. The mechanical thin arms lifted three of the portable whirling fans, maintained in their tight grasps. I took the last one in my mouth. Chrome whimpered as she saw the pink cloud attack the furniture scattered in the warehouse, turning them into melting chunks as it eroded wood, metal and plastic.

“We’re going to die. We’re trapped here. The elevator is broken.”

She broke into tears.

“No,” Admin berated, spitting out. “There must be a way.”

The worried look Rusty gave him, together with the bloodied lip he was biting in was saying the opposite.

A second earthquake rumbled and sent shakes into our hooves, pushing us over. Building on this sudden failure of our security, the pink cloud moved on and neared dangerously. By instinct, we pointed our fans at the mass of deadly smoke. This action of last resort saved us from a melting death.

I laughed. It wasn’t that gleeful laughter a pony could show during a party. It was a mad laughter. I was picturing us all, a group of lost poor souls waving fans at an unbeatable threat, hoping to survive a mere second more. It was pathetic.

For sure we waved the fans. Our life depended on it. Moving nearly as a living being, tendrils of pink smoke swirled at us, trying to weave between the cracks of our defense. We all worked together as one.

The pink cloud had not swallowed the basement completely. I could still see the ceiling….

A loud zoom throbbed in the air and I saw cracks shaping on the top of us. The ceiling ripped open and fell on the ground in a deafening shriek. The gust of wind it produced forced the pink cloud through our defense system. It bit Admin’s skin and flesh, leaving a long bulging mark on his grey flank. Chrome had been touched too. The fur of her left hoof fall and fuse to the ground. Rusty…

“Rusty!” I screamed. He had fallen on the ground, holding his eyes, red with blood. I trembled, trying to find something else to do.

Everything slowed down and blurred. Panic birthed in my heart, anchoring me in a mindless survival state. My animal instincts dug its place into my mind, chasing away everything but surviving this hell. I heard screams and felt sick. Putting Rusty on my back, I kept waving the fan at the misty pink, eager to fight it back. I turned around, seeking for something of any help in the cracked open crates. The pink cloud had already pierced through many, melting their content into useless puddles. Yet, I managed to find out an untouched one. It contained gas masks. I distributed them and put one onto Rusty face.

With the four fans I carried, three into the mechanical hands from my new saddlebag and one in my mouth, I paved a way toward the surface, using the fallen chunks of the ceiling to go up to the level above us. We headed in a simple storage room. As I stepped in this level, I glanced behind. Chrome and Admin were combatting the cloud too, aware that it did not attack our back. We were all worn out, ready to give up.

Chrome’s white mane was curled and messy, glued to her sweaty pink fur. She, who had been groomed and beautiful when she had arrived, was now a wreck of stress who had put her thoughts on the backburner, trying to think to nothing but survival. I could still see her wincing. Her eyes were red with tears. On his own, Admin was maybe the least traumatized… Or he was hiding it very well. He had that determined stare that he would survive. A look beaming his assurance, that no wounds or black magic that would cut through his grey coat was going to stop him. Lastly, the brown mane of Rusty was falling over his gas mask, hiding his scarred eyes and facial copper fur. I saw a few drop of his blood on my rump.

I was a wreck too, mentally and physically. I wondered why I wasn’t jumping into the pink cloud. It was the easiest way to get away at the moment. I shook my head, casting those suicidal ideas away. I had to focus on the pink cloud, on my fan-guns and, on the immobile body of Rusty and on my two co-workers struggling in my back.

I was breathing hard, unaware the gas mask were useless against the pink cloud.

A thought assaulted me, hitting me in the guts. I turned to see my friends again and the opening leading to the TAD’s warehouse beyond. We had left Balloon behind. Had he suffered? I shivered at the idea of a stallion, shrieking as his skin and flesh was torn apart around the two arrows pinning him to a wall. I had left somepony to die alone down there. I turned my gaze away and with everypony else still alive we continued to fight the cloud with our improvised weapons.

We reached the level’s elevators and broke open the door of the emergency staircase next to them. We had to slam the door in, breaking the fused hinges. I wondered about the real effect of the cloud. Everything seemed to be melting off its location. I was amazed the whole build had not already turned into a cheesy substance, gluing us in forever, condemning us to be fossilized like many long-forgotten creatures. We walked to the next floor, the last one before the surface. I peered a look at this antechamber of pink death.

The underground floor that once displayed hundreds rows of dusty shelves was now a hell of a wreckage, I could only see ponds of metallic liquid. The walls secreted pink ooze and the ceiling was cracking open as if a giant pony was trying to break through bare-hoofed. I breathed in and gasped. I heard the stupor of my two conscious allies. The air reeked with a stench I had a hard time to catch. A mix between a rotten cheese and an old wet sock. We had to go on. We couldn’t stop. I turned back to Admin and Chrome, more shocked than ever.

“Walk,” I ordered.

And we walked up. We even ran up the stairs as if Tartarus had thrown a hunting party at us. And finally, we reached the ground floor. And when we pierced through the door of the emergency staircase, my eyes settled on what I can still relate that it was pure and embodied hell on Equestria.

Ponies…

Ponies everywhere, dead or dying, mute or pleading, all fused and melted to the walls or ground where they had stand and leaned on, searching for a hideout or a place to run away and where to find respite.

We forced back the cloud with our fan-guns… I was turning crazy. It was thick as cotton candy and spongy like a putrefied mushroom. Sometimes I stumbled across a stallion or a mare, or a kid, stuck and awaiting death, clearly still alive. In spite of their silent calls to help, disforming their distorted mouths, I passed by. I had done with pony beggars before… It was as simple as that, wasn’t it?

A tear ran down my cheeks as I couldn’t depart my eyes from theirs. The looks the younger ones gave me was heart breaking. Envious, jealous, mad, crazy, murderous, hating and pleading eyes all around. All together formed walls of eyes I couldn’t cross. I walked pass all this zebras’ hell, tip-toeing between the dying ponies, my eyes half-closed. I wished I had never fallen across such vision.

Chrome sat down in the entrance hall and broke into cries. We were only a few meters from the outside. Admin and I walked back to protect her from the pink cloud as much as we could. Her own fan had rolled away. Dozens of melted and muffled ponies moaned in pain around us.

“Please Chrome, get up,” Admin pleaded.

“I can’t. I just… can’t,” she blurted. “It was just my first day, just that. Why does everything I start end badly?”

She looked at me with revolting eyes. I nudged her with my muzzle, keeping my fan-guns high. It was my turn to supplicate her.

“Please. We all lost something today. I don’t want to leave somepony behind.”

I tried to push her up back on her hooves. She turned her back to any help and stayed in her prostrated position. It was Admin’s turn to try. I looked away. Damn it Vava, focus on the pink cloud. Slain it, kill it, rape it!

“Let’s go Chrome, we will rest later. You’ll have all time to rest when we get out of Canterlot.”

I snickered internally. I had only a few hopes to survive at the moment. Let’s face it, we’ve got burst of logic in such moment. We, ponies, could easily cast away emotion when fear had broken into our heart. ‘Act, don’t think’ was an untold but shared motto at that moment.

It was a miracle I hadn’t broken down into tears like Chrome. Maybe had I dried myself earlier? I wasn’t a warrior. I wasn’t a goddess. I wasn’t even a unicorn or a pegasus. I had to carve my way, bare-hoofed.

Rusty’s coughs called me back to reality. I looked at him with teary eyes, I could see saliva drooling from his open mouth inside his mask. Sometimes convulsion ran through his limbs, only to disappear a few seconds later. Panic was waiting at the threshold of my sanity. I had not to break up. Not now.

“You have friends Chrome?” Admin asked. “You have a mother, a father… a brother? A sister? They want you back… alive.”

Lifting the mask off Chrome’s face, he swept the tear dripping under her eye with the tip of his hoof. I peered an eye at Chrome. She was nodding. Admin smiled and pats her head in return. He was sweating hard from the magical effort of lifting so much heavy items for this long. I was tired too, but glad to see Chrome was putting a hoof on the ground and tensing her muscles to stand up.

Or at least she tried to…

She tried, again, again, and again… A long silent spanned between the three of us. I saw her flank glued to the pinkish ground, melting slowly in the tiles. The image of trying to leave a leather chair I had wet with my sweat a hot day of summer struck me. The impression of having my skin ripped off, stuck onto the leather had kept amusing me for a long. Now I was disgusted. Her flesh was stuck to the ground and she couldn’t even peel it away. The hoof she had use to lift herself had melted quasi-instantly into the tile.

By instinct I checked my hooves and Admin mimicked me with a spark of fear in his eyes. Tears stopped falling off Chrome’s cheeks. She only screamed. It was a shriek that could break glasses, froze souls and shred ponies apart. She glared at us with a pleading stare, the same the dying ponies around us had been giving us. I shoveled down the gag in my throat.

“Don’t leave me,” she whispered.

Admin turned his back to her.

“Don’t leave me,” she whimpered.

Admin tapped on my shoulder, his eyes blank and his will broken by a decision he never wanted to make.

“Let’s go,” he told me with a shake in his voice.

Chrome left her only valid hoof in my direction. I couldn’t get away from her sight. I saw her fur melting bit by bit as the pink cloud licked her flank, climbing upon her.

“Don’t ABANDON ME!” she screamed. “Please!”

Admin smacked my face and I turned away. Still with Rusty on my back, Admin dragged me in the street. Chrome’s call for help resonated in my head, until the deadly mist muffled her forever.

The outside was no better, ponies were scattered everywhere, dead or dying. Carts were melted to the ground and the buildings were falling apart around us. The zoom of crumbling rocks and concrete filled the air.

We ran until we arrived on a terrace standing on a hill above the Canterlot’s suburbs. The shield was still up in the sky and we were near its limit. I couldn’t see the color through the pink mist, though. But at least I could say the bombardment was still going on. The city was still shaking under the assaults of the bombing. Dropping his fan-guns, Admin left to me the duty to protect the three of us. He threw up violently. Wiping the side of his mouth, I saw his lips quiver. I knew what he was going to spit, remorse.

“I…” he started.

A loud screech of metal, earth, and rock roared. Through the cracks forming into the ground under our hooves crept a pink goo. Rusty, Admin, and I got splashed by the substance and the landslide carried us away. We hurtled down the remains of the hill. I ‘epped and went through the pink smog.

My main itched when I regain consciousness. My face hurt while I still hearing the screaming of the city’s inhabitants. Rocks had lashed my mane and skin. I rolled, fell, hurtled, bumped, and jumped over and banged against a hard wall. A clatter followed and a hard piece of metal struck the back of my head. I nearly got knocked out again but a low complaint kept me awake.

Next to me was Admin, his leg mangled and torn apart by the fall. At my hooves dwelled a last fan-gun and Rusty…

“Rusty,” I called, screaming.

He was nowhere to be seen.

“Rusty!”

No response. Thrown out of my common mood, acting only by instinct, I took the fan in my hoof as I caught the pink cloud creeping in our direction. I was covered with corrupted fur. I looked over and saw Admin’s grey coat had nearly all fallen off too, shaved like a dead pig coming out of a griffon slaughterhouse.

I looked behind me at the wall I had crashed in in my fall. My blood splattered a yellowish magic barrier. I had reached the border of Canterlot, and with it, the magic barrier that protected us from the bomb, but also encaged us with a monstrous and deadly monster. I thrust my hoof at the barrier, trying to break through to no avail. It showed resistance, I couldn’t even make it flicker. I was blocked on my way out of this nightmarish city, trapped in a dead hole called Canterlot, the shrine of Equestria only a few hours ago.

“Set me free!” I barked, punching the barrier.

I heard a whizz and turned around, the pink cloud was here. I grasped my fan and waved it around, trying to protect Admin as much as I could. But the pink was far too strong for me. It inevitably made his way closer. I yelled, screamed like a demon blocked between an unbreakable wall and a deadly and indestructible opponent. I was bargaining with death, and I was losing the bet. The pink grew larger, leaving a tiny space between me and him. I was so scared I forgot about Admin. Only my survival mattered now. I howled at the cloud even knowing it couldn’t hear me.

“Come at me, I’m tasty!” I condescended, trying to slay the pink cloud with my humming fan.

I fell on my rump, panting and unable to move. Still tightening my hooves around the fan, I held it between my crossed legs. I cried, closing my eyes and shutting my mouth. Defeated, I slid my back against the magic wall as I did with Amethyst’s desk a few hours earlier. It seemed like a lifetime. The itching bite of the pink monster ran on my skin, eroding my fur and licking my flesh. I sought for a space untouched by the pink cloud, to no avail.

It engulfed me completely. I had been so close to live…

I pressed my back against the magic wall, and I fell back. I suddenly breathed in uncorrupted air and my eyes shot open. The magic shield was gone.

My fervor and will lit up once again and I crawled away for the pink sphere that had swallowed Canterlot. I heard a rumbling quiver. I remembered a river had always been falling from the mountain. The barrier should have formed a temporary dam. Taking my courage into my hooves, still clenched on the fan, I ran as fast as I could. Whatever the cuts, the bruises, the broken bones and the itching mane, I fled. I needed to be free, I needed to run… I wanted to live.

The earth shook around me as I saw the fallout of the constant bombardment Canterlot had been suffering for hours. Chunks of metal lied, scattered in many craters, giving fumes billowing in the surprisingly hot air of the afternoon. I looked at the sky, covered by a thick lid of clouds and…

In the distance I saw a group of red strips slashing through the cloud, and a light shape racing to them. A flash blinded me and I fell on the ground, hiding my burnt eyes from the dull heat of that distant explosion.

Green… The Megaspell lit up the sky ten kilometers from Canterlot. I saw a shockwave coming. And it slapped my face with a loud deafening bang. It took me several minutes to get my spirit’s morsels together, giving me time to have a broad look at the whole horizon.

Far away, the fallouts coming from various explosions shone, weaving away with the wind. Canterlot and Cloudsdale weren’t the only cities that had been wiped out. I quivered. Green and pink… married into a deadly landscape captivated my vision. Canterlot, a city of countless souls reduced to ashes in hours. And around me? A homeland of broken dreams and overwhelming sorrows. Everywhere I looked I saw green, green, and green again. How many bombs had fallen over Equestria? Had we fought back? I didn’t know. I roared my rage to the sky, until my lungs shut themselves down and left me panting in the dust. I cried, cursing the world, the princesses, the zebras, Amethyst, Rusty, Chrome, Balloon, and Admin. I had survived the Last Day and they hadn't.

I had to get away from that infernal but captivating vision of the destroyed jewel of my homeland. Thus I ran in the rising dark as the sun glowed weaker behind the sky cover, leaving space to the coming night.

I ran away without knowing where I was going.

I let the madness that had built inside me over the course of events take over. I lost the track of time.

Footnote: **Level Up* – Survivor Mare LvL.1*

New Perk: Devil’s Fortune – You survived a barraging bombardment, radioactivity and the notorious pink cloud thanks to strokes of luck, ingenuity, and a pinch of craziness. Life suckers you but somehow you are glad to be alive.

Statistics work strangely with and around you, for your greatest advantage or biggest demise.

Quest Perk Added: Air Blower – You like fans, a lot. You couldn’t really explain that to random ponies, they wouldn’t understand.

Ch.1 p.3 - Balefire falls

Ch.2 - Times are changing

Chapter two: Times are changing

“Do you know what friendscaping was? It meant clearing one’s friends list. Today it’s called natural selection.

And you’re next!”

Thirst was driving me crazy, leaving an aching impression of raspy dust and rock needling my throat. Each breath ripped a hiss out of my lungs. My eyes, burnt by the gusts of wind washing over my body, focused on a landscape of only blurred colors. Colors I had never thought possible before.

My mind screamed with agony, too tired and exhausted. Escaping Canterlot had been a hell of a roller-coaster; with no ups, only downs toward Tartarus as, after the protection held by the princesses had collapsed into thin air, the pink cloud had blasted over the steep sides of Canterlot’s mountain. I witnessed the water reservoir over the castle, encased by the magic dam, released into the city, flooding the streets with radioactivity, fallout, and corrupted wastes.

I had fled as fast as I could, trooped past the lower terraces of the city, and while the torrent of murky, pinkish water reached my legs, I had stumbled upon the plaque mentioning Canterlot’s border. Then, I had jumped over the railroad, passed through the orchards circling the mountain and disappeared in the void of Equestria’s countryside… Or what remained of it.

The madmare I was hadn’t slept for hours. I had just kept galloping away desperately, rushed through ruins and ghost cities on the way toward the unknown. Monstrous green clouds accompanied me, hovering above distant points on the horizon, marking the location of now ravaged cities.

Running until the sun had set behind the low cover of clouds that had risen over Equestria, I finally fainted, exhaustion taking me away. My face hit the dust.

As I fell unconscious, I took a glance at my surroundings. A group of blackened trees sprouting toward the obstructed sky, the scorched bones of a dead talon. My sleep seemed dreamless, exhaustion having suckered me out of my will.

I woke with a bitter taste in my mouth, reminding me of an awful after-party, hype on Tequila and Rum. My tongue was dry, rasping on my palate with a taste of blood, and something I had never tasted before, a sour taste similar to vinegar melt with a taste of bad aspartame-filled soda.

Oh Tarnation, I felt awful.

“Kemps, no trumps and belote!” a known male’s voice snickered, instantly answered with the raging cries of a hoof full of ponies.

“No way,” a stern but younger one replied.

I heard the thump of playing cards thrown away, ricocheting over a wooden desk. Wait… Were playing cards made of scrap metal? I opened my eyes wide and, in spite of the aches torturing my body, I stood up. As I steadied myself, suffering of a long moment of mental loss, I broadly looked at the area around me, stretching my body meanwhile.

I found myself at the border of an abandoned field where scarce trees were growing. Wild weed had blossomed, replacing the vegetable patch that had once been harvested on this soil. But something was utterly wrong, so eerie that a knot crawled into my throat down to my stomach, revolting me. My pulse quickened and a drop of sweat ran down my chin. The strangeness of reality struck me hard, like punch in the gut.

The trees’ leaves had turned blood red, dead clumps falling onto the dusty soil, shaping a bloodied humus. The trees’ barks had turned black, with many cracks weaving upon it, sap seeping out like blood. Such vision filled my heart with disgust as the trees had been scrapped of their once green leaves. Fall was early this year, I thought mindlessly.

Around me, the fallen leaves marked a bloody trail between yellowing and reddening high grass mangling slowly on themselves like sponges under a bright sun, brought down by their own weight and dying from an invisible threat I couldn’t understand.

Disgusted, I looked up, my muddy mane falling across my face. Glancing hesitantly at the sky, I saw the dull and wan sun set behind the clouds. I had slept the whole night, all alone in the cold. I sneezed.

Low and dark clouds had swallowed the blue sky, leaving in my mind the eerie impression of a dark lid of mist looming over me. It was truly a depressing feeling; caged between a corrupted reddened earth and a low hanging grey ceiling.

Angst settled into my chest. Was I being claustrophobic?

A lightning bolt slashed across the sky with a bright flash and my eyes clenched shut with pain. The rumble of thunder rammed the air seconds later, forcing a whistle down my eardrums as the sky hummed and the earth vibrated with the noise.

“Counter-kemps and, of course, big cabaret!” an old and raspy voice called out, squeezing a clamor out of four other players.

“How do you do that?” a young mare’s voice twinkled with a crystalline complaint.

I rolled on my side, wresting myself out of my contemplation at the sky. There, between two bloodied out trees, appeared five shapes I could recognize among a messy crowd, as their faces were branded on my retina with hot embers. I ran in their direction, tears in my eyes, a gag in my throat, and hopes numbing my mind.

I stopped abruptly, eyes blinking haphazardly, my sight trying to focus on a quintet sitting around a table strewn with a mess of scraps and objects. I gathered my spirit together. There were five ponies, playing around the furniture, showing shredded faces, empty eyes sockets, and chest ripped apart like open-pit mines where crows had taken the organs away. Passing around a bottle of a troubled alcohol, they were laughing raucously. But when I saw they were glaring at me, I knew the loathing was for me. It was like daggers thrown right into my soul.

I gulped as the five dead shapes waved at me. The view made me fall knee-first to the ground, trying to dig a hideout for my eyes. Chrome, Admin, Rusty, Amethyst and… Balloon were gathered around the table, each one of them holding a hoof full of random objects, reenacting a poker game like skillful contenders competing for a valued prize.

Again, lightning banged over us, adding a flash to this heart-shattering and deceiving vision.

My breathing accelerated, becoming erratic. My chest swelled and shrunk intermittently with my tensed breath, nearly ripping apart.

Slicing through their distorted and bloody faces, going from ear to ear, their smiles sparked fear in my heart, making my mouth gag and my hooves shiver. Those snickering trashed teeth clacked in the void and I pictured faceless maws trying to bite in my flesh. I blinked a second time and my eyes drifted to the table where the five apparitions now contemplated their hooves.

“Why don’t you join us,” Admin’s apparition asked with a sweet tone he had never shown to me.

“She has no cards,” Chrome replied.

Admin huffed first in answer, before jerking his stare off my horror stricken eyes.

Chrome went through her hoof of ‘cards’, grinning: a golden ring, a domino, a screwdriver, a spatula, and a lighter. Its meaning was unreachable for me and soon my eyes preferred to scan each player’s features.

Chrome was fused to her metallic chair, the furniture rooted to the earth, its metallic glitter changing into a matte brown, the steel changing into wood as it plunged into the earth. She could only lift one hoof, the other bound horribly to its armrest, and her melted spine and neck impeded her from looking at me directly. I could still see her trying, cracking her vertebrae in the attempt, shooting greedy stares in my direction from the corner of her eyes. A tiny stream of blood rolled down her pinkish lips and cheeks, coming abundantly from her eyelids, opened on empty spaces where should have been her pink eyes. Then, I looked at her mane, once blue and streaked with white, it had now melted off her face, looking like burnt plastic. Her smile was eerie due to her yellowish teeth, cracked open under a horrible pressure. Could a pony grit and clench its teeth so hard they would shatter?

I swallowed down the drips of bile crawling back up my throat.

On his own, Admin was laying down on a rock, his shattered bones piercing through his grey coat. But, despite this horrid fate, he was still able to look at the Court of Miracles scattered on the round table before him as he pushed his mane off his eyes… his blue mane, similar to Chrome’s was melted into clumps of synthetic rubber. I couldn’t look into his eyes, forcing me to look down, right at his cutie mark… his open scroll with a green tick was now a shredded piece of paper with a red cross. I nearly threw up at the sight and tried to find an answer to this plight as my gaze crawled up his body up to his face. It was stuck with a joker smile and through his mangled teeth flowed out cryptic mumbles. I looked down again, focusing on something less disturbing. His hooves held on a box of chocolate, a quill, a chip, a monocle and a black strap of silk. I shook my head away.

I couldn’t distinguish Rusty’s old features, lost beyond a blurring mist that obstructed the view of him. However, even with this horrible veil cast upon his features, I could tell he was terribly deformed, the aftermaths of an ungodly torture. His half-closed mouth was drooling a vile black mucus, dripping into a large pool beneath him, and beyond his torn apart lips, was it a smile that I believed I’d seen? Taken aback, my eyes focused, nearly shutting close, his hooves grasped five medical tablets, blue pills, white pills, yellow pills, orange pills and pink pills.

My eyes moved on away from the old buck and set upon Amethyst, my poor little girl. Her purple fur was marred with dirt and chunks of earth clumped in her hair. I couldn’t just stare at her; I ran in her direction, stumbling across the field as hidden rocks forced me back, pushing me away from her.

She showed her back to me, refusing to talk, rejecting even the simple act to look at me. Please, just… look. From behind, I could see a horribly curved and serrated knife cutting through her throat, the tip piercing out in the back of her neck. From the wound, a black and viscous blood rolled in small drops across her skin and wooden chair. I screamed her name again and again, to no avail.

Leaves of scarlet flew past my vision, razor-cutting through the air, charged with heat haze coming from the void. Around me, the landscape had kept bleeding out in silence, and the round table in front of me was terrifying, sending large waves of chill down my limbs. In this prostrated position, the hallucination violated me, playing with my memories of those I cared and still care about, those I had met once or hated. All of them were now brought back from the abyss, only to torment my soul in a sickening and painful play.

A twisted snicker weaved in my twitching ears, piercing my mind like needles,. Out of fear, I slowly raised my head toward the last seat I hadn’t checked.

Balloon was sitting there, stoic and smiling, a long and thin spear of rusted metal in his shoulder. The wound was blackened with gangrene and tendrils of black veins sprawled under his fur, reaching every part of his body. Worse, a bramble garnished with edgy thorns had sprouted out of it, growing endlessly around the projectile stuck in his flesh. Its black leaves projected reddish reflects, and a single, black flower blossomed on its tip. A rose.

Balloon’s eyes had left their sockets, but he blinked at me, forcing my eyes shut, horrified. Frightened, I clenched my hooves on my face, desiring to cry out my anxiousness and pain. I couldn’t speak. I tried to scream once again, only my voice had run away from me.

I looked down at Balloon’s hoof. There appeared an origami picturing a flower, a drawing of myself, a shredded wire, a broken watch, and finally a whistle.

Each time I closed my eyes, only to reopen them, the gathering’s features degraded, more awful than ever before, rotting on their hooves as time passed and my stupor grew. Flesh dropped off their muscles, muscles shrunk on their tendons and sinews, only leaving bones behind. It needed me only a few blinks of an eye to see nothing but skeletons holding junk as if it were some treasures.

Rusty cleared his voice, creating a deeper and scarier tone, shudders ran down my backbone. His raspy tone was plagued with a noisy clatter giving birth in my mind to the idea of somepony stabbing back and forth a knife through his neck.

“White loss or countryside bard?” he spat out at the four other apparitions.

He threw on the table a white pill and an orange one.

“I wash a peasant and pluck a giraffe,” Chrome replied, willing to fight the buck back.

She threw her lighter violently. Flying over the board, it clattered and ricocheted on the wood, opened and lit up, blazing the paper strewn over the desk. None of them seemed to care, except Rusty, who grumbled as he always did while one of his lips detached itself from his face. The old buck stretched a hoof toward the table, ready to pick up the saw among the many objects piled up there. Mimicking him, Chrome was on the brink of drawing out a blue elastic, tearing up her flesh glued to the chair in a heart-shattering sound of torn paper. Yet, somepony neighed and stares settled upon Admin. With a grin widening larger than ever, he threw the monocle at Balloon and the piece of glass shattered onto his face, slicing his already abominable skin.

“I get out of jail and Royal Flush!” Admin cackled, shoveling the box of chocolate down his throat.

The delicatessens fall into his open ribcage, disgusting as I saw the inner flesh fret due to the newcomers.

Everypony left let out a long and raspy complaint.

“Damn!”

Everypony except Balloon, whose smile changed slightly, betraying a building trick. A few second later, the Ministry of Morale’s agent pulled a deck of tarot cards out of a pocket of his shredded trench coat, smirked like a skillful cheater and banged them onto the table.

“Eleusis!” His lips bulged with pus.

This last minute action wrestled raged complaints from the other players. Whatever the rules had been, Balloon had won. And I, I was down with that maddening tour of a land of madness.

I shook my head and crawled to the table, willing to punch the crap out of my own mind’s creepy creations. What I had lived through in Canterlot wasn’t enough. I had to make myself suffer more than I could bear. I stumbled across the table and fell flat on the ground, going through the furniture as if it was ethereal. Following my clumsy attempt to stop the vision, Raucous laughs and curses rose. Their snickers paining my heart and grieved my soul with remorse, sobs settled in my throat as tears trickled down my cheeks. Yes… among all the tricks I knew, my body chose that crying was the best option.

I raised my watery and red eyes, only to see five horrendous faces looking down at me with sadistic grins, empty sockets, blood drooling mouths, sharpened, saw-chiseled teeth, and lashed, snake-cut tongues. Balloon was the first to dig its way in my direction, unbearably slowly but inexorable. He playfully squeezed my head between his broken hooves, the thorns of the bramble growing out of his shoulder licking my skin and leaving painful paper-cuts on their trails. I wanted to scream as much as I wish I could. I had outlived… survived that stallion. Yet, during that critical moment, I wondered why… Why had I to live and not one of them? What had made me so different that I had been granted life while death had been their only reward?

Pain called me back to ‘reality’ as Balloon was going to break my skull to pulp. Blood struggled to rush my temples. My cheeks blushed with pain. The lack of oxygen in my brain numbed my senses. Balloon lowered his head next to my left ear and began a murmur, a raspy poem, creepy, heady, and sending chills down my body.

“The day the world shies”

Was it rain I felt showering my face, or was it my tears? Chrome’s head weaved in front of me, breaking her neck away from her chair in the process. She nearly touched my muzzle with his [ her ? ] bloody and cold snout, showing a dirty flirting smile.

“Ain’t the day after Tomorrow”

Admin’s voice echoed in my left ear, gaining momentum like rusty cogwheels sliding in motion. I pictured the door of chamber fourteen back in the TAD. I gulped, thinking of it and of what it closed on.

“The day the world cries”

Rusty growled from his remote position, giving me a hard look. I had disappointed him so much.

“Isn’t one called Yesterday”

Standing behind me, Amethyst’s pair of purple hoof clenched on my eyes, obstructing my vision as a cold stream ran on my mane, staining my face and neck equally. Her neck bone cracked when she tilted her head next to my ear, her crystalline voice sending shudders down my legs.

“The day the world dies”

Balloon took the upper hoof again and pushed my daughter aside. Then he gave a howl, shutting everypony up and leaving his deafening and languid voice guiding me on the trail of madness.

“Is a doom simply named Today”

Laughter rose, puncturing my spirit with terror as five crazed grinning faces loathed at me. Me, the pony who survived and didn’t deserved it. I tried to hide myself from them, but I couldn’t even clench my eyelids. I tried to move, but my hooves were restrained by invisible, lashing ties. Desperately, I sought for Amethyst’s face.

I nearly broke my neck trying to look behind me, at my girl… my lovely girl. And when my stare settled on her, I knew colors had begun to fade away from my features, as the creature I laid my eyes on wasn’t the Amethyst I knew. It wore a mask of a pony, the features of one of my kin… A bright smile badly painted on the porcelain, a snorting nose and two slits where eyes should have been. But it was cracked, and beyond those slits… two pits of blackness showing two blood red dots glaring daggers back at me, throwing them deep in my sorrowful heart. Fear turned my face white, chasing all remembrance of warmness away, as if I had stood too long in front in a blizzard. The… thing pretending to be my girl kissed me. Even if her lips were hidden behind the cold and frozen mask, she had lowered her head, attempting to make both our lips come together. The cold embrace sent shakes down my hooves and Amethyst’s hoof sweeping a tear off my face.

I shook my head as a disincarnated complaint, blend of the voice cords of my five protagonists weaved in my brain, petrifying me.

“And the dead can’t scream their agony

At the ungrateful livings…”

Chrome grabbed my left hindleg as Admin bit deep in my left front hoof. Unable to do anything but scream, I left spikes of pain running in my flesh.

“Walking the path

Marked by the dusty bones”

His face still blurred by mist, Rusty leapt at me. Both his hooves pulled at my left side, trying to reap off my flesh. Fear crippled my flesh, tying a knot in my stomach as a strange emotional anchor brought me down mentally.

“Painted with the blood

Of those who paved the way

For the undeserving and incompetent”

Amethyst cracked my neck, forcing me to stare again right at my co-workers. She nibbled my ear with a playful and disturbing grin. The voices never stopped, intensifying to shatter my eardrums in a cacophony of verses.

The colors seeped out of the world around me, inverting and turning to black and white. I fought back the rush of bile it induced in my belly.

“Among the rusty scraps

The gusts of wind blowing by

We unleashed the hell”

My eyes set on Balloon as I sought for comfort. Bad choice. Smiling, grinning, and laughing, he stretched his legs, each joint popping. In his hooves shone a bloodied knife, an edge I knew well. I shot a look at Amethyst, and found an empty bleeding stab struck through her neck.

“Over the magnificent meadows

Once lit by a blue sky

Now echo Screams, Cries ‘n Sorrows”

Balloon lowered the knife and loomed over me. I tried to back away from the edge, but my back hit Amethyst’s front legs. Powerless, I watched Balloon come closer, the gleaming dagger in a hoof. I shrieked when he grabbed my neck with the other and straightly thrust the edge between my legs. A holler of numbing and shattering pain broke me apart.

However, even as my howl of dolor rushed into my ears, Balloon’s raucous voice was louder, filled with resent.

“Fillies and colts left back on the track

Crying out for absent

moms and dads

Leaving their duty behind

For the sake of their own

Fleeing away from the blast”

The blade cut through me, starting from my groin, and sawed its way through my belly, my uterus, my ribs, my chest and finally my neck. Balloon sliced my throat, wrestling the dagger out. I gasped as blood jetted out of my nose, mouth, neck, everywhere…

“For the hope of delaying the deadline”

Convulsion spammed out of my limbs when the shapes of the five ponies torturing me vanished in puffs of smoke, billowing into the cold air of the morning. The red leaves kept falling onto my face, slowly burying me, melting with the color of my blood. And afar, beyond my troubled vision and unsteady breathing, I saw a shadow approaching.

Above me shone two glowing green eyes set over a mouth drooling a sticky goo onto my scarred face. I saw yellowish fangs, an avid maw, devouring eyes, and a skin made of wood and seeping black sap. It moved and a sharp and wooden tongue licked my face, followed by a cold breath of air blown over me.

I lifted my hoof up to the monster’s cheek, which howled and growled in return.

For no reason I chuckled, life was tricking me and you forbade me any rest.

The beast roared at me, ready to prey on my carcass and shred me to pieces. But a gunshot banged in the distance, and the whizz of a bullet followed. A loud impact banged over me. Instantly, the beast bounced away, replying with a mighty roar, and disappeared outside of my range of vision

Shouts echoed around me and a few silhouettes materialized over me.

“Keep with me, Lady!” The blurred face reassured. “You’re safe now.”

I think I cried.

₪ ₪ Ѻ ₪ ₪

A recurrent beep woke me up, along with loud cries and fearful screams. I could overhear ponies swamped with anger, sickened by angst, and brought down by their own anxiousness. And all together, they destroyed the silence and peacefulness we all needed. It afflicted me, and already my heart clenched in my ribcage. I curled up in a ball for a short moment.

It was indeed short lived. I shot my eyes open, burning my retinas with the light pouring from the ceiling. The whistling of the wind slithered from a crack of the roof which waved eerily. Surprised my eyes focused with difficulty, the ceiling was made of a greyish green military fabric. I had been left alone in a tent.

The shafts of light descending onto me, I blinked. Beyond the large gash moved a cloudy sky, lighting my face as the rest of the tent was plunged into a chiaroscuro darkness. Weeping and moans of pain flooded the air.

Leaning on my side, sparks of pain burst through my muscles and tendons, making my head reeled horribly. The flow of bile induced by my state was too strong to struggle and I vomited. Muffling the sound of my tortured throat, the hum of the dying ponies surrounding me added a load to my illness.

I had no linen and in the cold, the gurgling and lapping of my stomach fluids burnt me. Willing to have a broad look over my surroundings, I rose on my flank, rubbing my eyes and cheeks of the bile. With a dimly cold air licking my sides, small shudders ran across my body, and spitting out the last remains of gastric acid plaguing my mouth, I glanced at the spectacle I was unfortunately given to see.

Covering the ground inside the tent I was in, sliced open and soiled mattress were put on a bare ground, a blend of dust and blood. Moving corpses shivered, complained, coalescing into wracks of what was once healthy ponies. The reek of that scene assaulted my senses; it was a perfume of death, the fragrance of rotten and gangrenous meat, the odors of tears, the stench of blood and the void of hopes. I crossed my front hooves together, taking a fetal position where I stood, helplessly building a barrier against reality. I thought I was back inside the reception hall of the Ministry of Wartime Technology, where eyes settled on me, imploring, begging and asking for a mere glimpse of help. I sought for Chrome, nowhere to be found. And as my breath quickened, unable to fight back the daemon crawling down my neck, whispering promises of dying there, alone and anonymous. I needed to back away from that hellish place.

I let myself fall on the ground, crashing into an old buck that had been lying below me. Fortunately for me, he was far too weak to answer back with even a grit of pain.

Hurtling down that mass of stinking corpses, I moved toward the entry step by step, crawl by crawl, pushing aside the dying ponies and wounded scattered around.

A restrain plucked my left hind leg back behind me. Remembering my hallucinated acquaintances, family and friends trying to eat me away, I shot a scared stare back at my back hoof, only to find a strip of bandage tied to a rumble left between the mattresses. Gauzes and medical tissues wrapped me like a mummy, and even in the darkness I could feel and hear the creasing of the compresses on my scarred skin. To cut the bandage away, I pushed a couple of ponies aside, which moaned in pain. Thereafter, I resume my pitiful and clumsy crawling toward the exit. Closing in, a wisp of air licked my face.

As I stood outside, with the fresh air of the morning sweeping over my covered face, I became aware of my muscles’ stiffness, and that each inch of my body ached horrendously. There, feeling trapped among a harvest of tents, I sought for the first reassuring landmark one pony could find. But the wan sun and its light was hidden behind a low hanging cover of clouds. Disconcerted, I looked down at my bandaged hooves and attempted to tear the gauzes off my front legs and faces. Reaping them off, my fur torn away by their strong adhesive. Wincing in pain, I wiped the sweat and medical fabric off my face and decided to stop for the moment, the pain overwhelming my skin. My body and back legs could way.

Now half-released from that medical lock, fearful and awestricken, I watched upon the street of a gigantic refugees’ camp. The few trees I could see among the tents, once bright and green like the large meadows of Canterlot’s countryside, were now red, being gradually devoid of their dying leaves.

Around me were no pony cheering up, no smile were drawn on faces… No laugh of young colts and fillies cheered up the atmosphere as they would have chased a ball. The creasing of clumps of yellow weed as they were flattened by my weary hooves send shudders down my hooves, I was used to the hard but relieving surface of concrete.

It had rained and the humid dirt watered my hooves as I moved slowly. When I encountered a small pool of water, I looked down at it. It was murky, yet my reflection welcomed me. My beige fur was brown with filth and barred with scars and wounds, some part of my hide had fell, likely ripped off my skin. My face was tired, my eyes marked with dark rings and my mane... My long and usually tidied grey mane. It was nearly gone. A long and greyish bandage I had forgot to take away still circled my forehead, deformed by a bruise below. I preferred not to touch that one.

I trotted away, wandering aimlessly inside the camp. As I walked past many open tents, I laid my stare upon countless broken limbs and shattered hooves. I read scattered hopes in ponies’ twisted eyes, ponies who had survived a defying end. All were licking their wounds, trying to cast away the hell we had just escaped, to no avail. Everypony was silent, crying, their tears falling on their falling fur. I knew radioactivity filled the air, but what could we do against an invisible enemy?

A new realization stopped me straight, the truth I didn’t what day it was loaded me with a new issue. It was morning, yet the exact day remained unknown to me.

Lost in my thoughts, my stare wandered about over the faces of many scarred ponies. I saw a mare holding a coughing filly, a stallion plucking out his mane with hooves full of crooked hair. Shoveling down a gag, bringing frothing to my lips I looked away. A mare, her flesh eaten away by burns similar to white phosphorus’s effect met my eyes. Her blackened skin and muscles had rotted over the burns. Were there bones I could see beneath? Yet, she was not dead. I caught a colt slurping up the soiled water of a muddy puddle.

My breath quickened as I drifted my eyes away from that court of miracle. I resumed walking, only to bump into something.

Finding nothing but empty space before my eyes, I looked down, and my throat tightened in a sentiment of crude and unfathomable horror. A purple colt was tapping my hoof. Devoid of mane, just like me and everypony else, he looked at me with a pleading bleached puppy eyes. The pattern of his school saddlebag had been branded into his flank by dark fire, aftermath of a balefire bomb.

The colt opened his mouth, mimicking with his hoof his need to drink and eat. The little and pitiful beggar never spoke. And looking in his ragged mouth, I understood why. His tongue had been messily cut off, and now only a stump of flesh was visible. Coagulated blood filled the grooves between his milk teeth. He should have fallen and bit his tongue out, right? Or maybe a bombs shockwave had shut his mouth too fast? Yes it had to be that. He couldn’t have eaten it out of hunger? Tell me I’m right, please.

In the end, he remained silent. He didn’t even cry as he wandered away, and he never glanced behind, back at me. Sweat crept down my raised fur, down my neck to my tail, I moved on too.

As I walked down half-empty streets, creeping between torn and ragged makeshift tents, the stares of many ponies peered on me, eyeing me with a disgusting jealousy, and sometimes curiosity. I saw pleading, hating yes, and blank eyes, far too many to be counted.

Passing by a crossroad, I saw a vast space left open inside the encampment. This agora agitated like an anthill, ponies shuffling through maps, crates and scraps that had been scavenged. In its middle a flag of the Equestrian Army flapped with difficulty in the wind, next to… I took a short but deep breath. Ministries flags were hung onto pikes too, and among them, the Ministry of Morale’s was unmistakable. I still had Balloon’s maddened grin struck on my retinas.

The ambient hum came from ministries’ agents, arguing each other with some militaries around a large wooden table.

“This is utterly unacceptable.” a masculine voice whined. “How, in Tartarus’s damn sake, is it possible?”

Still stumbling my way up to the border of the street, I looked closer at the ponies scattered around the desk. Gathered into a circle, four ponies faced down a map. The pony that had broken the silent was an old white unicorn, whose light blue mane had turned into locks of silver. His once groomed and shiny moustache contrasted with the black suit he wore, splashed with mud and dirt, torn apart at some points. His stiff showed a regal cutie mark, three crowns, each bearing a brown diamond. Finally, a small string of platinum dangled on his chest, what had been fixed on it was now gone.

“Calm yourself, mister,” a mare advised with a stern and impressively grave voice, dunking more than a few heads among the ponies captivated by the discussion. “We have no report from Canterlot… At least, not yet.”

Focusing, I nearly closed my eyes to a knife edge’s width. The mare’s grave, tired and ghoulish face was visible, built in a steel rangers’ armor. Her burgundy-colored mane struck with a few pink locks dangled over her large, bulky, and armored shoulders, contrasting with her tanned brown fur. She had a monstrous three-barrels shotgun on her side and her muscular frame showed off that was a pure earth pony. Twinkling over her dark metallic grey armor, she sported a golden red insignia, two weapons I didn’t know but assumed to be semi-automatic rifles encased between two rockers and three chevrons. She was probably a sergeant, or something like that. I had never been good with military stuff.

“We still await the report from the recon I’ve sent four hours ago,” the sergeant brought forth. “Damn, I can’t find a pegasus to do the job. Where are they, those lazy bums?”

“Miss…” the ageing unicorn replied, slightly irritated.

“It’s Gunnery Sergeant Seed, would you?”

The unicorn hesitated, unfamiliar with such direct tone. Gathering his spirit together, the regal unicorn erased the frown off his face and awkwardly smiled.

“Miss Sergeant,” the unicorn continued. “I need to know what happened. I’ve been trying to join my friend with my personal terminal, but the network has been shut down.”

I heard a pinch of fear crawling in his voice. I stepped forward, willing to reveal the truth. But the stares shot at me outlined I wasn’t welcomed. I was just a wounded mare entering a forbidden perimeter, probably intending to beg for some food. Yet, I walked in slowly, hoofstep by hoofstep. I hated those negatives stares.

“We know that a megaspell exploded approximately ten miles north from Canterlot, but the city hasn’t seen green fire,” Gunnery Sergeant Seed explained. “Canterlot is forty miles from here, and right know I only have earthbound soldie…”

She stopped a lower graded private noticing her that I had crossed a restricted area.

As I swallowed my saliva, I became aware of how thirsty I was. My mouth had been literally washed with dirt. I slammed my tongue onto my palate and humidified my cracked lips as much as I could.

The sergeant screwed her eyes at me, scanning me from tail to ears with expert eyes. On his own, the unicorn looked sheepishly at me, backpedalling as I wondered forward. I wasn’t used to see such fearful gazes aimed at me. A sick mare moving clumsily next to armed soldiers wasn’t a reason to fret, back in my days.

“Canterlot is dead,” I pronounced with a raspy voice that didn’t belong to me. “I… I need water.”

The look they gave me made me gag on the rusty and aching lump in my throat.

“No water for the refugees. Not yet,” the sergeant mare stated dryly.

What kind of fucked up logic was behind that statement? I wondered. I needed to drink water, even before I could think about feeding myself.

“Who are you?” she added with a deserved frown. “What do you know?”

She stepped forward in a swift and scaring gesture. Now, I had done something wrong. Had it been my tone? My face? Just me? Yet, I hadn’t expected the white unicorn to bump into me, pushing the sergeant over. And it was with his hooves around my head that he bombarded me with questions, with surprisingly teary eyes.

“What do you know? Is Canterlot okay? How are the Princesses? And Fleur de Lis? Is everypony alright? Why do you say it’s dead.”

I sought to escape his stare, whining from his shaky embrace. I only sunk my itching eyes in the piercing glare of the Sergeant, looming over the unicorn’s shoulder.

“I… I’m sorry. Everypony died in Canterlot,” I choked on my own words, my voice sounding eerie into my ears. “The pink cloud… Everypony’s been dying. So fast…”

I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t think. Why? I cried for my lack of talent at explaining the ordeal I had been through.

“Don’t you see that wounded mare is shellshock?” the sergeant condescended at the unicorn. “She’s talking rubbish.”

I didn’t know where I found the strength. Yet, I grabbed an edge of her armor with my trembling hoof and my pleading eyes never left hers.

“Everypony died,” I sumed up. “Canterlot wasn’t hit by a megaspell. It was worse than that.” Tears ran down my cheek. “We were trapped inside the city, between the bombs and the pink death. We were trapped by the Princesses’ protection. We had to die. I should be dead. I. Should. Be. Dead…”

The last soaked bandages tied on my body fell as I tried to escape the unicorn’s embrace.

“What pink death?” the sergeant asked with a smirk, not believing me.

I curled up in fetal position, shivering.

“The cloud it melted everything, ponies, animal, life… They melt… like ice under goddamn Celestia’s sun.”

“I don’t believe you,” she snickered, thinking I was trying to emotionally bargain them.

In a scream, the regal unicorn kicked me aside, pointing at me with the tip of his hoof.

“Look at her saddlebag, Babs Seeds…”

“I repeat a last time. Use my fucking tag name… Oh…”

What my saddlebag? What was so important about it? With shivers running down my spine I turned over and looked at the metallic saddlebag I had stolen from the TAD’s surplus. I tried to shake it off, only to see it was utterly impossible. Frowning, it took me a few seconds to grasp what had scared the unicorn. The edges of the mechanic bag had melted into my flesh. Or my flesh had fused with its outlines. It depended on how you could take it. I stood stoic, the hallucinated picture of Chrome flashing before me. I poked the military bag once, twice… trice…

“It’s some kind of joke, ain’t it?” I spoke loudly to myself. “Please make it some kind of weird prank.”

I glanced at the sergeant Seed, who glared back at me with a stirring mix of disgust and curiosity. Knowing that I could get no help from her, I looked pleadingly at the unicorn, now holding a hoof in front of his mouth, fighting back a gag. I would have jerked on my sides, trying to get rid of the saddlebag whatever the way, but physical and mental strength missed me. I just gave in, crumbling down the ground in front of the steel ranger, crying.

“Bring her in, she gonna talk,” the sergeant ordered to her stooges.

I refused to struggle back as it was nothing but a worthless effort. Closing my eyes, my knees bit the ground as I was carried away from the public.

They brought me inside a small and isolated tent, two soldiers flanked me while the sergeant stood straight in front of me, her eyes scanning my body from tail to the tip of my ears.

“Give me some water please,” I begged her with my ragged voice.

She sighed and shrugged, sweeping the inside of the tent with the back of her hoof.

“Do you see any bottle here? And to be honest we can’t, nearly everypony is affected with radiation sickness. And the water is corrupted.”

I sniffed, wiping my lips of the dried saliva making my mouth furred and uneasy to articulate.

“But, I can’t be irradiated,” I hammered in.

She laughed softly and pushed aside all argument I would bring forth after that statement.

“Tell me, mare,” she asked.

“Vault,” I corrected.

“Yeah… Tell me Vault, what happened in Canterlot?”

I looked around, seeking for any pony kind enough to back me up. Nopony was there, but the old white unicorn. He waited in a corner of the tent, not daring to scout at me, playing with a lock of his sky blue and grey mane, curled up around his horn.

“He has some privileges,” the sergeant Seed snorted, making the unicorn cringe a little.

I nodded, mimicking a ‘oh’ with my mouth. But I never pushed forth my attitude, I wouldn’t dare being insolent in front of a mare capable of practicing dichotomy between my face and body.

“Now, Vault. I want to know everything.” Assertive, she raised her armored hooves and encircled my shoulders. The weight thrust on me pushed me toward the ground, yet the heaviest anchor put on me was the harsh pain of relief, as my mouth unfold my story, even its darkest corners.

₪ ₪ Ѻ ₪ ₪

I had blurted out all the ordeals I had been through, crying, whining and weeping over my condition. A freak that had escaped death. Everything… Even the sergeant had hugged me, and from over her shoulder I had seen the unicorn fled out of disgust, trooping past a couple of soldier guarding the entry of the tent. The cold edges of her armor weren’t the cuddling warm I had sought for. Yet, it wasn’t being alone.

Seed’s hesitant hoof rose in my back. With the other one she softly held my head tight. Looking into her eyes, I saw sparks of kindness.

“It’s over now… Vault, is that it?” she comforted me. “sleep now.”

The ragdoll I was obeyed without asking any question. I lay myself on the makeshift mattress left in a corner of the tent. Yet, I couldn’t sleep. I was enough awake, aware of my hunger and thirst. I clenched my eyes shut, leaving heavy tears running across my face and soiling the stinky mattress. I tried to calm myself, to lower the sobs I knew ponies could hear from the outside. My uneasy breath slowed and I chased away my thought, finally able to sink into an eerie sleep.

“You’ll die,” a voice snickered in my head.

I gasped out of my sleep, the sentence echoing inside of my head. Keeping my eyes shut, I curled up in a ball and tried to reach my mane. I’d have played with it, to escape the dull reality. But, as my hoof reached the top of my head, I remembered it had fallen. I touched my skin, devoid of any glimpse of hair. Even I, the mare that did not fear radiation had limitations. The world was slowly dying around me, and all started with my body, falling apart from the conjugated effect of the pink cloud and fallouts. Whines from the outside slithered in the tent. Adding to the gloomy atmosphere, the daylight had weakened, announcing the sunset.

Ponies were talking outside, young, old and raggedy voices blend together in an ambient hum. I covered my ears. Yet I was unable to muffle the two voices rising next to the entrance of the tent.

“How is she, sergeant?”

“I don’t know Mister Fancy Pants, I can hardly believe her. Canterlot… wiped out by a pink cloud that turns ponies to puddles…” The soldier paused, silence settling between the duo outside. Then she sighed. “But I’ve never seen such thing… You saw her saddlebag?”

“I would be glad if we don’t talk about it,” he asked. “But I don’t think she’s lying.”

“I don’t think too. And this scares me. If Canterlot is destroyed, the chain of command is broken and I may have to deal with public unrest in the camp… Especially with what’s coming over us during the next days.”

“You mean the…”

A voice perked next to them, panting.

“Ah… Ah… I’ve finally found her,” the male voice gleefully said. “Is she her?”

“Are you…”

“Yes, the mare with the strange affliction.”

I bit my lower lip, I was happy that somepony finally cared about me. But I wasn’t asking for that kind of scientific attention.

“Hey! What are you doing?” the sergeant’s voice eructed.

A dim light blasted inside the tent as a young light red pony peered in the tent and laid his eyes upon my silhouette. He was a unicorn, wearing a white blouse, a saddlebag hung on his side, sporting a bright red cross. He trotted in my direction and put a knee on the ground, his head going down toward me.

“How are you my dear?”

“Water…” I begged.

“You shouldn’t have taken away the bandages, you skin is seriously damaged and you’re sick.”

“Water…” I brought my hooves to the collar of his clothe. “Please.”

After a quick look in his back, he showed me a small plastic bottle, filled with pure water. Snatching it off, I brought it to my lips and drank… Only to spit it out, dropping the bottle as an acrid sensation of burning invaded my throat. I jerked over the made up bed, holding my neck in terror, the sensation of being eaten from the inside settling in my flesh.

“Calm down!” the carepony ordered, hauling me out of my whining and prostrated position. “Calm. Down. Please.”

He had caught the bottle mid-air, before its content spilled on the floor. Slowly, he pushed its top on my lips, mimicking with his other hoof a slow sip.

“Take it easy, it burns a lot. So go slowly.”

Yes, it burnt, my inside being revived by water. Sniffing, I kept drinking slowly, tears running from my eyes. I caught a glimpse of the sergeant’s mane behind the doctor. Seed shook her head disapprovingly.

“You’re wasting your resources, Brancard,” she snorted. “She will be dead by tomorrow morning. She’s just a waste of time.”

This hit me like a cannon ball. I sniffed, trying to contain the heavy tears rushing my eyes.

“Yeah, yeah… keep talking, steel ranger.” He waved a hoof at her, asking the soldier to leave, Seed is that it?

Seed left the tent, now only inhabited by the doctor and me. He smiled at me, bringing before my eyes a small bag containing a gleaming orange liquid, RadAway.

“How did…” I began.

He put his hoof in front of my lips.

“Hush now and drink it.” He inspected at the tent entrance, checking that we were indeed alone. “It’s just something they have in the military surplus. They’ve a ton of it, but not enough for everypony.”

I drunk the raspy liquid. Slowly, the headache I hadn’t paid much attention vanished. Meanwhile, Brancard put me on the side and scanned me with expert eyes. He seemed fascinated with the saddlebag and how my skin had… Don’t think about it, definitely.

“You’re doing this because I’m a curiosity for you, am I right?

He slightly stepped back, pinching his lips. For a short second he avoided my stare.

“I’d have say no, but it’d be a lie. But it’s also me who saved you.”

I snorted with disrespect.

“From what?”

“The timberwolf,” he explained. “You… you don’t remember?”

Thoughtful, I remembered the wooden and blacked face.

“I was hallucinating. I thought I did.”

“You were burning with fever, dehydrated and completely shocked. But the timberwolf was real. He would have killed you if I hadn’t used a rifle.”

With trembling hooves I hugged him, seeking as much comfort as possible from his warm presence.

“Thanks,” I whispered with my raspy voice. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Brancard, nice to meet you. Vault if I’m not mistaken.” I nodded. “I spied on you sleeping in the hospital tent while you were knocked out. You mumbled a few names and places.”

I looked at his hooves, dodging his caring eyes, ashamed of what he could have heard.

“I won’t tell anypony.”

That… wouldn’t help at all. I shrunk on my hooves with widened eyes. A long and unnerving silence settled between the two of us. As the wind whistled outside, the tents clacked and twisted on their strings. It moaned between the alleys overcrowed with ponies wandering aimlessly inside the encampment. Raindrops drummed onto the roof of my makeshift home. I was cold as I had not been given any bed linen. I also missed my mane, I used to wrap myself with it during my period of depression. My chest swelled and quivered. Sobs, hurtled up its way back in my esophagi.

“Hey?”

Brancard clapped his hooves before my face, calling me back to reality.

“You okay?”

“I guess so,” I blabbered.

The tears on my cheeks told the opposite. Brancard hugged me, awkward. It reminded me of Balloon, first giving me hugs, then laughing at me and menacing me with his recollector. The recollector… Thrusting me away from Brancard’s grasp, I jerked my hooves to my head, banging them onto a small metal plaque riveted to my forehead. What I saw earlier in the muddy pool wasn’t a bruise, hidden under the bandage I had left there. It was the mark of the Ministry of Morale. My breath became uneasy, trashing my chest as I hyperventilated.

“Calm down, Vault,” Brancard reassured. “It’s nothing!”

“How can it be nothing!?” I panicked. “If they found me, I’m the next to be terminated.”

“Get your shit together!” He slapped me. “Why do you think I nearly mummified you?”

I took the hint.

“I was protecting you,” he explained with a smile on his lips. “The Ministry of Morale’s agents roamed in the camp, they make the law and put a curfew for everypony.” He paused. “Even for the Steel Rangers.”

I wasn’t up for political thinking, but I knew that every sane pony hated the Ministry of Morales and its hounds. And if they ruled the place, what kind of exactions would they enact to insure their orders wouldn’t be discussed. It was frightening.

“Where are we?” I finally asked.

“The encampment is forty kilometers east from Canterlot, and fifty kilometerq south from Fillydelphia. We stand on a transport hub of Equestria… Well former hub. A lot of survivors are converging here from the near regions.”

Taking a deep breath, Brancard held my shoulders in his hooves, on the brink to unveil a hard truth.

“Ponyville, Appleoosa, Fillydelphia, Manehatten, and on, and on…” Surprisingly, he chuckled. Even him couldn’t believe it. “All has been wiped out by the megaspells, unfortunately...”

I had had no family aside from Amethyst, but she was dead. I forced my eyes shut, casting away the vision of my girl’s face during my hallucination. That mask was still bringing gags in my throat. I swallowed and looked at Brancard. I would have asked what we, the survivors, were going to do next. But…

“Why did you leave me in that tent?” I shuddered. “When I woke up, I thought I had been dumped into a mass grave. The stink…”

He bit his tongue. A worried and sorry look onto his face he tried to comfort me.

“I think he was the only place where the agents wouldn’t come.”

I found myself talkative that day.

“Why are you risking so much for me?”

“You mumbled Canterlot in your delirium. I thought you came from there and knew what happened. My sister, Lyra… She was there two days ago. When the bombs fell.”

So it had been two days. It seemed like a lifetime. I clenched my eyes, raised my hooves around his neck, and sharing in the suffering and cries I whispered:

“Nobody survived. Canterlot is a ghost city now. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I just ran away, abandoning everypony behind. I’m…”

My hooves on his back, I felt the shudders running under his fur and skin, swamping his backbone with shakes that echoed in my limbs. Tears fell heavy on my shoulders. And Brancard’s embrace tightened on my stiffened body. He cried out all the hopes he had put onto me.

“I knew it… Why am I being so stupid?”

We stayed prostrated for an unknown period of time, with the wind’s moan as sole companion. This lonely moment lasted, lasted and lasted. My chin resting on his left shoulder, my stare wandered around inside the tent, devoid of furniture.

We kept going in our common grieving until a scream rammed the air from the outside. I slapped us out of our position. Brancard swept a tear from his eyelid as I stood.

“You can’t go… you…”

“I’m Vault.”

“Yes.” He blushed, ashamed of not knowing my name until now. “You can’t go outside, they might find you.”

“But I want to move, I can’t stay here.”

Ransacking his saddlebag, Brancard pulled a pack of gauzes out, and wrapped me up, especially my head. Patching me up, he hid the bits of recollector still riveted to my head, far too remarkable to hang around carelessly and bandaged some of my wounds, mostly infected cuts and bruises.

“I think it’s okay now,” he told me, his tone betraying an inner pain I wasn’t able to mend.

We walked out of the tent together, turning our heads as the clamor of a distant crowd struck our ears. The loud hum melted with the rustle of fabrics and strings of the encampment. Focusing, I stumbled across the street, forcing me to use Brancard for support. And shoulder against shoulder, we headed toward the cleared place where I had first met the gunnery sergeant Seed, and Fancy Pants.

The agora was located near of the middle of the camp. It was so vast that, during my time spent alone, I had been wondering how many ponies could fit there. I had estimated that number around twenty thousand so far. We neared the area as we trot with difficulty in its direction. When we finally saw it, our eyes settled on a massive crowd, circling an apparently captivating event, which echoes were muffled by the clatter of horseshoes.

With Brancard, we dug our way toward the center.

A painful scream rose before us. My eyes, tired by the journey I’ve been through, looked down at the cringed and bruised shape of a pale blue mare, her flanks marked with flogging scars. Whining, she was rolling on her sides, trying to dodge the assaults from a pony, another mare, wearing a tight brown trench coat. A large brown hat sat onto her head, and she sported a Pinkie Pie’s token, pinned on her breast. The violent mare’s bloodshot eyes betrayed a lack of sleep. The frothing on his lips showed she was thirsty, hungry. She had fallen victim to hunger too. From beneath her hat I saw a white glimmer. A whip flew in the air and struck down the crying mare with a loud clack. She screamed under the hundred terrified eyes that contemplated the scene with a sudden and utter silence. I saw the sergeant Seed peered in through the wall of ponies. But, even if we were facing, she never looked upon us. All her might was aimed at the torturer. Fancy Pants followed close, his teeth greeted in terror.

“What are you doing?” Seed boomed, but received no answer. “Agent Genepi?”

“Babs…” Fancy Pants mumbled clumsily. “Stop it please. It’s the Ministry of Morale…”

A gust of wind snatched the agent’s hat, revealing a pale green mare whose cheeks had sunken out of hunger. Her mane had fallen and only a tuft of butter yellow mane dangled behind her left ear. She glared at the soldier, and her bloodshot eyes dunked more than a few heads into shoulders among the gathered ponies.

“I’m punishing somepony who dared to steal our provision stocks,” she bragged, nearly cackling.

Many ponies looked down at their bellies, empty and growling in pain. The agent Genepi smiled broadly, taking the silence for a mark of approval.

“We’re all hungry, desperate and on the brink of wasting our last strength! As the Ministry of Morale is in charge in time of uncertainty! As everypony knows,” she shouted her speech, staring with all her might at the sergeant Seed, “We have to stay a big and happy family through this ordeal the zebras have flung at us! And we all know that with the major cities destroyed, we have to take care of our current living stocks. For the sake of all! We cannot leave them unprotected!”

How she emphased on the ‘we’ made me feel queasy; but what sickened me more was the many ponies nodded, agreeing with such extremist paroles.

“Unfortunately, we shall face and stand filthy swine, such as that mare.” She pointed the crying pony at her hooves. “Such ponies that try to sneak in the stocks to snatch something to selfishly keep to themselves. Such ponies that, in fact, are robbing YOU from your chances of survival.”

Everypony, or could I say nearly all of them, agreed. Stupefied and stoic, my eyes plunged into the ones of the anonymous mare, lying pitifully on the ground. One of her hind leg was broken as a heavy load had been dropped on her articulation, probably one of Genepi’s angry kicks. When our eyes met again, I could feel nothing but fear; for her, but also for me as I knew I could have been standing at her place. The worse was that I could see my reflection in her retinas. I wanted to ran away, now.

“Yes, Ponies!” Agent Genepi continued with a mad grin. “By robbing the Ministry of Morale, she stole from YOU. She wanted YOU to die for the hope to live another day.”

The atmosphere heated up. Hooves stomped the ground, snouts puffing out billowing smoke in the cold, and teeth greeting.

“She bargained your lives for her own. And I think we need an example. Don’t you think?” Cheers roared I bit my lips. “An example to prove once and for all that we, ponies, are a great, big family, and that we must get rid of the rotten fruits. What do you think is a good punishment for a pony that wanted to murder you so badly?”

Electricity sparked in the air, rage and shouts spread like wild fire on weed.

“Death! Death! Death!” the voices gained in momentum as more and more pony started singing this fateful word along.

Brancard held me closer. I knew he wanted to help the wounded mare, I wanted it too. But, being left to public retaliation and the wild purge being hosted by the Ministry of Morale itself, I know I was powerless. I would only throw my life away if I’d interpose. I looked at the sky, the sunset hiding a low hanging lid of cloud. I could see reflects of red and yellow beyond the horizons. The sky was bleeding out.

“I know you know you can do nothing,” Genepi whispered to Babs Seed, obliging the gunnery sergeant swivel on her armored hooves and leave, anger and shame distorting her features. “If anger is not released now, the unrest will backfire on us, and thus you!”

The clamor rose and boomed, muffling the pitiful cries of the unicorn in the middle of the square.

“So be it,” Genepi howled as she took a small rock in her hoof, holding it high above her head. “She betrayed us, she breached the will of the Princesses, and she made fools of us all.”

Ponies imitated her and all shingles resting on the ground were now taken between trembling and revengeful hooves. I even saw a child harnessing his own piece of granite.

“Please,” the anonymous unicorn begged.

Whizzing, the first stone flew right in her face, breaking two of her teeth. The second struck her wounded hindleg. The third hit her in the eyes, and the squishy balls bulged and popped like a water balloon, swelled with red. The fourth come, and the fifth… and the sixth…

I stopped counting. The stoning was gruesome. Blood splattered and spilled everywhere on the ground from the convulsing body of the mare. The odor of death slithered in our muzzles. And basic instincts shined in everypony’s eyes, calling for revenge in this instant of pure insanity. From the corner of my eye, I saw Genepi drop her own piece of rock and trot away, a wide and wild smile drew on her lips.

I stood there with Brancard as long as the stoning continued, as hundreds of pebbles ricochet on the already dead but still moving corpse before my hooves. The body was struck again and again, until flesh went liquid, blood ran dry and the zoom in the air lost in intensity. The reek of battered flesh assaulted my senses and I couldn’t depart my eyes from that lifeless form that was once a mare. Brancard vomited, tears running across his face.

Cold bit my skin, I could see haze rising from the warm blood and unmoving body. In the billowing fumes, I witness… or I believed I did, faces shaping slowly. The mist took the appearance of a pony, slowly trotting around the carcass of the mare. A wide grim first formed onto its featureless face, then one eye popped out, followed by the second. A nose moved out of the white smoky flesh and finally pupils of blood red opened on me.

It galloped in my direction, the smoke becoming purple with blood seeping out of its neck.

“Vault?” Brancard asked. “Vault!”

I ran away from everything, leaving Brancard behind as I headed afar from that place.

I faced soldiers and agents, throwing wondering stares at me.

I stumbled across dead bodies eaten away by crows.

I pushed ponies aside.

I ran to a tall pylon towering around eighty feet. Madly, I climbed on its skeletal armature. My ears rejected the shouts of the soldiers asking me to stop. I clambered until I touched the top and finally, I took a broad look over the camp.

The encampment was a makeshift city of fabric, strings and despair… Wherever I look, I could see tents, widows, and children, crying ponies and dying shapes. All silhouettes seemed lost under a low sky where everything was wrapped with the brown and grey smoke of countless cremations. As tears flowed down my cheeks, my eyes drifted afar toward the horizon, far across this gigantic and grotesque land of death, where no place could be found free of the green taint, characteristic of balefire fallout. A lightning sliced the sky in half, booming over my head. Then a dark, greenish and ashy rain hurtled down from the sky, showering me with a disgusting stench of putrefaction.

I had headed into a graveyard, one anonymous stone with no epitaph for each tent. At the top of the telecom tower, I saw the pony hive agitating, shrieking as it tried to protect itself from the deluge.

The smoky shadows I tried to shake off myself loomed over my shoulder, with a sickly wide grin on its lips.

“What are you going to do, now?”

It spoke!

“For you’re just a waste among the trash.”

Footnote: **Level Up* – Survivor Mare LvL.2*

New Perk: Daughter of her time – The more you see, the less you care. Experience will toughen you up from the whiny little bitch you are to be better, or so you can think.

Side-Story Perk Added: Among the epitaphs – Remorse, guiltiness and broken hopes had damaged your subconscious. Hallucinations are recurrent and may show themselves randomly. You lose charisma with the ponies that have seen your unreliable twists and turns. You become more creative and unpredictable.

Ch.3 - A stray dog for hire

Chapter three: A stray dog for hire

We are all the same! Yes. Whatever you say. Whoever you are. Whatever will be your smoke and mirrors tricks… you won’t change the truth. That we are not so different!

“You’re right. I’m lost...” I answered to the grinning shadow billowing around me.

Seed had told the truth. Something was wrong with me. Shellshock or not, I shouldn’t be talking to something that wasn’t real. I stared at the… thing, sighing deeply.

“What are you?” I gasped, sobs clumping my throat.

“It’s a silly question,” the tricky smile snickered. “I am whatever you want me to be. But today… I. Am. You.”

The smile cast by the shadow sickened me and billowing forward, it poked my front leg. Its shady hoof turned into puffs of smoke as it sprawled onto my bandaged shoulder. The ethereal touch sent cold shudders beneath my bald ski suffering already from radiation exposure that was eating me slowly from beneath. I closed my eyes in answer and took a long breath, gathering my spirit to reply to another creation of my mind.

“I may be a waste,” I retorted meekly. “But when one hits rock bottom, there’s only place for becoming better… don’t you think?”

Fearful, I glanced at the dark shape. I swallowed my saliva as its smile grew even further on his lips, reaching his ears and beyond, until it was nothing left but a huge maw with sharp drooling teeth.

“And, you?” it cackled. “What do you think?”

A gust of wind swept over me. For any witness, I was a dark form clenching onto the top of a telecom antenna: bending and creaking as the wind arose. When I opened my eyes again, I looked down. Vertigo struck me hard, my head and ears humming in response. The haze surrounding me slowly evaporated, falling victim to the breeze. As far as my eyes could see there were nothing but yellow and red fields, and dead forests beyond the gigantic refugees’ camp. These moribund colors kept assaulting my senses, sending chills through my bones. I couldn’t compare such sight with anything I had seen in my whole boring life. It was too much to bear, a knot tied in my throat.

“Miss! Get down immediately!” a voice roared from beneath. “I won’t repeat myself. You’re on the Ministry of Morale’s telecom property. Measures will be taken against you if you don’t comply in the next few seconds!”

I glanced down eighty feet below. As my eyes settled on a Ministry of Morale’s agent, a stallion wearing the same fleece as Agent Genepi, my heart clenched out of terror of heights. Yet, the real spike of dread came from the mouthgun aimed at me.

“You’ve got three seconds to start moving!” the stallion ordered at me with an angry pout.

I nodded diligently and pushed myself carefully toward the ground. I was still shocked by the massacre I had witnessed a few minutes ago, and coming close to an agent frightened me to a horrendous extent. The face of Balloon and Genepi was flashing intermittently before my eyes, like a hot amber brand. Scared, my descent was dampened by my hooves, quaking far too much to offer me a steady stance. The slowly balancing armature of the telecom tower didn’t help.

A violent rush of wind fought me down. My left hind leg slipped.

My upper body rolled over the steel and rusty screws. I screamed as the air whistled in my ears, free-fall petrifying my heart. I hurtled down the tower for a second stretching to infinity, my body torn apart by my limbs crashing onto the tower’s steeps. Propelled further down, I did a last loop and saw the ground a few feet below. I shut my eyes closed and gritted my teeth, bracing for the deadly impact. I heard a cry which strangely wasn’t mine.

Then, I hit. It was a hard, breath taking and bones shattering blow… but not as violent as I had mustered for.

My body ached horribly, sending shivers down my hurting limbs. I hadn’t reached the ground, somepony had caught me before. The pony who’d stopped my fall dropped me onto the ground, stripping the deed off its apparent kindness. My jaw bit into the dust. I gurgled, sprawled pathetically in front of my savior. Shameful, I opened my eyes hoping it would be some known face. Seed? The wall of a soldier she was wouldn’t spare a second on me. She had called me a waste of time after all. Maybe Brancard, he was so kind in his own way… sort of. A pale green hide in a large brown coat welcomed me with two thundering eyes glaring down at me.

My heart froze. It was nopony but the agent that had startled my inner fear, Agent Genepi. Her hat cast a large shadow over her face, darkening her features. She bore an overwhelming expression of disgust. Or was it pity? Shock soaked my thoughts. Even the agent that had threatened me with a weapon backed away from her. She moved forward. I crawled back. I was an insect between the unplayful paws of a horrendous creature.

“Thanks?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at me.

Shot with fright, my widened eyes didn’t twitch the slightest. I only saw the mare who had condemned another one to death. Furthermore, she was the initiator of a public execution, using the public itself as death dealer through a gruesome stoning. Something I wouldn’t have expected to see in my life, and in Equestria.

A series of trots called me back to reality, and I glanced on my side. Brancard ran onto me, before stepping back at the sight of Genepi. His jaw going limp, Brancard broke into a shaking stutter.

“Miss… Eh… Madame,” he blabbered. “Excuse my friend… for her… behavior, it won’t happen again.”

The poor caretaker stallion lowered his head apologetically.

“Please, don’t be too harsh on us,” he begged.

A heavy silence built around us. Everypony was standing stoic, waiting for an outburst from the agent mare. All those looks aimed at the three of us were terrifying. Nopony moved and only the rusty squeaking of the waving telecom antenna broke this movie-like scene. A lightning bolt roared in the sky above us, and Genepi walked forward. Struck with fright, Brancard gave her space, stepping away from the dreadful mare. Then he completely stopped, his limbs gripped in fear of the pony embodying the law in the camp. Genepi’s eyes fixed him with disdain. She sported an unreadable poker face that instilled fear and questions that would stay unanswered.

“Genepi…” he squeaked.

The agent trooped ahead until her muzzle nearly touched Brancard’s face. The tip of her hat rustled his brown mane running with sweat. Brancard’s colors washed off his light red features. I gulped.

The rain started drumming on the canvas of the nearby tents. When the thunder roared again she swiveled on her hooves, whipping softly the nurse pony with her tail and… faced down at me. I could finally see her eyes’ color, a dull pale violet. Glowing into the chiaroscuro ambience of the day, it contrasted with her pallid green sunken face. A vivid tension sparked into my chest like a hole sucking my inner emotions and will into a far nothingness, filling me back with pure and utter terror.

The clatter of horseshoes echoed in Genepi’s back. With teary and shaky eyes, I glanced swiftly behind her. Then, my eyes came back on her torturing stare. Two agents had showed up, along with the Sergeant Babs Seed. They looked between Genepi and me, asking silently for an explanation.

It was at that moment I saw Genepi’s hooves running with minuscule shakes. Somehow, truth found an opening in my mind. She had stopped my fall bare-hoofed, catching me with mere strength and had managed that I won’t ended up wounded. I looked up and our eyes met again, my ears low in submission. The corner of her lips were twisted in a nearly invisible caring smile.

“Thanks…” I whispered, choking on my own voice.

“You’re welcome.” She winked at me.

It was over now. She had saved me, and now she was going away, right? But she was an agent of the Ministry of Morale, she was meant to investigate. As she looked at me, I saw curiosity coming to life in her eyes. Then a frown slashed through her face… Her eyes screwed to pinprick and she lowered her head, scrutinizing me. I petrified myself like a statue. I could be victim to her potential caprices, and the idea to end like the anonymous mare encased me in immobility. Tension eating me away, I could see from the corners of my eyes the scene, stoic ponies seemingly stuck in time, awaiting for whatever tipping point it was going to be.

Genepi stretched her hoof up to my forehead. She brushed over the bandages and gauzes covering me in my nearly entirety.

“Poor lost mare you are,” she beckoned. “You should be resting. No smile can come on such ravaged face. You must understand that we all need a healthy spirit in a healthy body.”

I fluttered at those words, I had heard them before. Balloon? He had been the kind of stallion to say so, and Genepi was also from the Ministry of Morale. Her hoof clacked against something beneath the bandages, creating a small crystalline pop. I curled up on the ground moaning as a wave of pain rammed my head. I saw white for a few seconds.

Genepi grumbled, screwing her eyes again as she sought for the sound’s origin. She began unfolding what was wrapped around my nearly bald skull. She would have done so in seconds if Brancard hadn’t jumped between the two of us. The stallion, trembling of all of his might, avoided Genepi’s blackened stare.

“You can’t do that, Madame,” he begged. “I… I can’t let her wounds get infected.”

He didn’t even fight back when Genepi shoved him aside, fascinated with what was hidden beneath my gauzes. As I knew what it was, I was once again forced back into fear. My puppy eyes pleaded her to stop, to swivel on her hooves and leave me, the ‘poor mare’, alone. She was young and relatively healthy compared to the old and cranky mare I was. She had all power here, and Seed’s deviating and surrendering stare only highlighted that fact.

Pushing me on the ground and taking her time, Genepi unfolded the remains of bandages. One by one, the bits of the medical tissue fell on the dust. She continued until the plane chunk of broken black metal screwed to my forehead came completely in sight. The remain of Balloon’s recollector shone, proving that the Ministry of Morale still had teeth plunged deep into my skin. The three agents flanking Genepi gasped in surprise at me. This was not good at all. I wanted to melt into pulp, to be liquid enough to slither in the cracks of the ground, unreachable to Genepi’s devouring eyes. With both hooves she grabbed my face, hauling me closer to her eyes. I jerked slightly, pain picking my neck, but I rapidly fall back into a dull accepting mindset. She scanned the bit and… chuckled. It wasn’t a laugh of amusement. It was closer to a kind of sadistic surprise, like a mother’s answer to her son’s expected bad grades.

Genepi released her talon-like lock and my head hit the dirt. Careless about me, she trotted around my body. After one complete tour of my starving shape, she peered a hoof at the large bulging object circling my back’s midsection, hidden beneath bandages. Tearing them apart, Genepi revealed a metallic saddlebag hung near of my shoulders. Even smeared by the mud and the days spent outside without a care for my body, it still looked perfectly functional, shiny under a thin layer of dust and mud. Curious, she touched with the tip of her hoof the lines where flesh and metal met. The contact never lasted long. Was she fearing her hoof would glue to it too?

Genepi lifted one of the saddlebag’s pockets, curious about their contents. She snickered at the sight of resting cogwheels and shiny joints waiting dully for any external stimulus. As I looked inside myself, I saw the slender mechanical arms folded and unmoving. I was still scared of them. Glancing back at Genepi, I caught her counting with silent moving lips. Curious myself yet still afraid, I also looked in. There were left enough place to store a small range of objects in there, a small fan was tossed in, I repressed a giggle. As I looked closer at the mechanisms, I thought about the possible movements they allowed me to perform. I was still an earth pony. The thought disappeared instantly as one of the arms clicked, unfolding quickly before coming back to its former idle position. I ‘eeped, wrestling me out of Genepi’s hooves, closing the pocket in my move.

Genepi glanced at me with furious but also curious eyes. I had cut her little game short. She cleared her throat with a series of small gentle cough. I took a short erratic breath and closed my eyes, covering my ears and head with both of my hooves, completely driven by an animal instinct, terror.

“Come to my tent at five o’clock,” she only ordered.

She showed me her back. Ans she walked away with her three stooges, leaving me in the mud and rain, sobbing, crying and pissing myself.

Brancard and Seed snuck closer, keeping their distance with me as they wondered how to act in my presence. They were god damn right… they had abandoned me to her! Hoofed me away and offered me to give in between that monster’s hooves! I heard ponies swear around me, the anticlimax end to my misery not convincing them. Were ponies only a fair animal to others?

“I…” Brancard broke the silence.

“Shut up!” I shrieked, cutting him off. “I’m dead… I’m so dead…”

I hit my forehead right at the place where the recollector was screwed into position.

“Everything because of you!” I hit. “You!” I hit again. “You!” Again, and again… and again.

Jolts of pure pain wracked my mind and body, cutting me down in my momentum. Brancard and Seed didn’t even stop me. Even as the frothing reached my lips and left me in a prostrate and unconscious state, they did nothing. Once I had fell on the ground, convulsing, my eyes finally looked at them. Pity had left their eyes, replaced by fear. A mirror of myself. There, knee-deep in mud and blood, I could only repeat to myself that, since the beginning, I had been absolutely lonely.

₪ ₪ Ѻ ₪ ₪

I woke up in a tent with flashes of white ravaging my vision. My eyes ached with the tears I had shed in my sleep. My head reeled in the awful pain sparking from the recollector’s chunk. I could feel the blood pounding around this scar made of metal. I rubbed my ears, twitching at the growls coming from my empty belly eating on the nothing inside. I was starving, slowly dying as my body ate away my resources. I would leave nothing but bones under a sick beige and ill skin when they’d bury my body. Only a few days had passed and already I was a different mare, the decaying wreckage of the broken pony I had already been.

I rolled down the mattress and let myself fell on the ground. Nopony was there to cushion me this time. My bandages had be retightened onto my flank and they did nothing to ease the pain. Lying flat on the ground I stared at the furniture. A table made out of wooden and metal scraps, a saddlebag and… one big three-barreled shotgun resting on its side. Huge dark red cartridges loomed on a slit open on the side of the loader. I finally spotted a steel ranger’s helmet, left to the dust on the ground.

“You were out for a long time,” Babs Seed snickered in my back.

I shrieked, my ears perking down as the sergeant snuck out of the shadow from where she had watched upon me. My heart pumped blood crazily in my chest while I was squeaking at the bulky soldier trooping in my direction. I would have shrunk before her if one question hadn’t forced my mind to gather its own bits together.

“What time is it?” I begged for some knowledge from the outside.

“It’s half past noon… Time to go to eat something,” she told me, hearing both our bellies growling in pain. “They are distributing rations to the refugees.”

“They?” I asked with the same mousy tone, casting away the idea that I had less than five hours before being forced to face agent Genepi again.

“The Ministry of Morale,” she stated without an ounce of emotion.

I gulped as we passed by the tent entrance, the meek light of the sun outpouring on us from the low cover of cloud. I stopped, giving a head to Babs Seed, until she slowed down and looked at me with worried eyes.

“Where are the pegasi?” I risked myself to ask, willing to change the topic of the conversation.

The answer I got back was quite unusual.

“We don’t know. No pegasi is answering the radios and with the weather being continuously the same for the past three days, we… I don’t fucking know.” She breathed in and looked at me with red eyes. “I would like to be at home, with a pint of cider in front of the tv… And ye’?”

“I would like to wake up in my bed.”

Babs snorted genuinely at my confession, taking it as a joke. But I wasn’t joking, I truly wished I would wake up from this nightmare, that I would find Amethyst lying in her bed, asleep, snoring… smiling… But I knew it would not happen, this lie I was begging for, that everything I had lived until now was nothing but an illusion, would never come true.

The sergeant looked at the sky with depressed eyes, sighing for a long moment before we summed up walking down an empty street. It had stopped raining.

A ticking similar to the hand of a clock attracted my attention. My ears perked at the nearly imperceptible sound. It was constant, low but never vanishing. When I first glanced discreetly at Seed, she seemed not to hear it. First it crept me out, raising what remained of my beige fur on my skin, under the left bandages. Was I hearing things, again? Then I looked upon Seed’s armor. My eyes stumbled upon a small round-shaped counter sporting a single hand inside a one hundred and twenty degrees arc. The hand was jerking back and forth in the arc marked with a strange metric. Only thereafter I read a three letter logo next to the meter wield to Seed’s armor… rad.

“Is that…” I choked on my words.

Babs tapped on her chest, making the ticking device go crazy for a couple of second. She laughed before glaring at me with tired eyes.

“You know what it is… Or should I really remind you its meaning?” she ironized. “It’s not enough to kill us all, but enough to leave us here dying slowly, leaving its mark on our skin and health.

She coughed and spat a raspy greenish phlegm. Afar from us, a loud cry erupted and died straight away.

“Look around you,” Babs Seed asked.

And I did so as she kept talking.

“No pony here will ever be cured from those events, none will get back on track. Zebras did not condemn everypony. They just punished everyone.”

I lowered my eyes. As I walked silent next to the sergeant, I was passing by the deadened faces of many ponies. The idea of a threat we couldn’t smell, see or feel radiation until it was too late was terrifying. This powerlessness was wrecking not only me, but everypony who knew about that. We were left to die here, bit by bit.

Quickly, the issue of radiation swamping the air got swept away by a more tangible threat knocking at my door. I had to show up in front of Agent Genepi today. Put simply, I was dead. Somehow she would know about my past, she would interrogate me about the bits of recollector stuck in my head. And in the end, she would ask about Balloon’s fate. I had sinned in the eyes of the Ministry of Morale. I was to be sentenced to a gruesome death or punition. That I was sure of.

I passed a corner blindly and bumped into somepony’s flank. The stallion didn’t skimp on swearing at me in response. After a long apologetic session I stared ahead of him and saw unending queues of ponies, awaiting their turn in front of a hoof full of Ministry of Morale’s agents. They were flanked by a small group of steel rangers, probably here to keep the crowd under control. They shouted at the mass of nameless ponies, barking at everypony that they had to stay in line. Any move judged to be wrong was the warrant to be refused their daily ration.

Each time a pony walked forward, the agents used a strange looking pistol that I couldn’t describe in the distance. Aiming at the left eye of the beggar for a couple of seconds, it always stated two kinds of answer. A yes, or a no. I gulped my saliva and a drop of sweat trickled down my neck. The agent would either ask a colleague to serve the pony a bowl filled with a slimy, greyish goo with a glass-like morsel of bread, or would send him away toward another group of tents. They were denying food to some ponies. And they were many of them.

Fearful and hungry eyes followed those sent away, escorted by a soldier. Sometimes, tears began to fall down the ‘chosen’ ponies’ cheeks, deeply apologizing for whatever he or she could have done. They even sent fillies and colts away, stupefying parents as they were forbidden food too. I bit my lower lips and turned my head. I couldn’t watch more of that show.

As the queue moved forward, I neared toward the line drawn in the dirt, meaning my turn was coming. My heart pounded increasingly and I fought back the fear growing in my heart. My breath accelerated, and the whistle my nose blew out attracted Seed’s attention. She looked down at me with perplexed eyes.

“Don’t worry, Vault,” she told me with a caring tone in her voice. “You’re with me now. Nothing will happen to you until five this afternoon.”

Thanks… Really! I needed another reminder of my death sentence.

I bit my lower lip, the stallion in front of me had been sent to the other group of tents. He had walked past me and disappeared, colors running out of his face.

It was my turn and I meekly trotted forward until I faced one of the agents. He inspected me from tail to ears, searching for parasites and other illness mediums. Being wrapped in bandages, the stallion looked at me with this raised eyebrow one usually do when found something breaking one’s daily routine. He snickered softly, lifting the gun in front of my eye. It was a scanner! I looked behind me at Seed who nodded at me, awaiting her turn. The agents grumbled and grabbed my jaw, turning my head back into position.

The tool was a strange laser pointer shaped into a mouthgun, sporting a small but detailed screen on its right side. It blazed into my left eye, leaving a burning sensation in my retina when it shot in its turquoise light. The sudden layer of pink in front of my vision stayed in my eye, highlighting a symbol printed on the side of the gun, Pinkie Pie’s cutie mark. Everypony knew those three balloons mark, we all had seen enough of the Ministry of Morale in our life.

Blinking, I rub my eyelid until a strident noise called my focus back onto the agent. His eyes screwed, frowning upon what he had received on his report. He looked intermittently between me and the screen, his expression becoming increasingly cryptic. The reflections of small red dots flashed onto his face from the screen. My head slowly dunked into my shoulders as the agent signaled his companions to come over. I heard mumbles and swallows among them.

“I’m with the Miss here.” I suddenly heard Seed explain, laying her armored hoof onto my shoulder. “And the agent Genepi has already an appointment with her.”

The agent sighed, sweeping away Babs’s argument. He looked at her with friendly eyes, then at me with… grieving pupils. A knot tied in my stomach.

“It’s not about that. I just can’t give you food, it would be a waste of resources,” he confessed, amplifying my growing fear. “We don’t fed the dying ponies.”

“Ah… ah… Good joke…”

A shudder crossed my limbs and back. I slightly laughed at the agent… until his hard look dunked me back in my depressed mood.

“You’re kidding right,” I blabbered.

“I ain’t…. Look.”

He showed me the screen mounted on his gun.

[:/Body condition unknown, high level of radiation: detected]

[:/Life Pronostic Engaged]

[:/Conclusion: Expendable]

I froze as I read each of those fateful words, once, twice... I shook my head. It…

“It can’t be possible,” I mumbled then screamed. “I took RadAway! I survived Canterlot! I haven’t even been in Balefire. It. Can’t. Be. True!”

The agent looked away, breathed in and sighed.

“I don’t even have to send you to the next shack. Just… fall back.”

A punch in the guts wouldn’t have been harder to take. His last… advice anchored me to the trashing reality. My head dizzied. My surrounding reeled. I’d have fainted if so many hadn’t looked at me, uncaring but somehow curious. They feared that my situation could be theirs. I’d have cried out to them a birthing hatred if Seed had not hugged me through her cold armor.

“Wait for me out of the queue,” she comforted. “We’re going to see Brancard after.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat.

“But I can’t die from radiation.” I fought back, showing off my stiff and my cutie mark branded there, a slit open black shield covering an orb which edges shone green. “This means my skin is immune to radiation.” Not really convincing, ain’t it? “I can’t fucking die from radiation, the report must be wrong. I worked for the TAD. That’s my cutie mark that got me my job!”

Seed frowned harshly at me. Was it due to the TAD? Not so many ponies liked that department of the Ministry of Wartime Technology… I would understand. Or was it because I was trying desperately to buy some time and hopes? She pushed me, a heavy hoof on my shoulder.

“Wait in the fucking corner,” she articulated at me, nearly kicking me away.

And I did, I hurtled my broken shape away from the queue, my head so low to avoid crossing the stare of anypony. I could hear them swallow hardly their saliva. Everypony had his turn. I sat next to a tent, sliding my back against its canvas. From here, I saw those who were given to eat, those sent to the other group of tents and those like me, meant to die. I heard a cry, a mare had received the same treatment as I. Pony not worth of being fed, not worth to be saved, left to die of hunger in the mud.

I heard a loud remark and my eyes drifted on Babs Seed, now gritting her teeth. She had been given two bowls of food instead of one.

“Why suchcare?” Babs spat more than asked.

The agent seemed surprised.

“Agent Genepi told us soldiers needed twice the usual ration to stay healthy… just to keep the situation under control,” he replied with a strangely loud voice for everypony there to hear. “She also said that… that was you who asked for such an unfair measure.”

I heard whispers. Many eyes settled on Babs Seed whose face turned from her tanned color to a bright angry tomato red.

“Are you trying to buy me?”

Babs Seed steamed, glaring daggers at her soldiers hanging around as they all glanced away with ashamed faces, partners in such crime.

“The situation should be equal for everypony… They starve, we starve!” Babs grumbled when she blasted past the agent, pushing him aside before she stood in front of her companions. “You’re such a disgrace. I’ll have you punished.”

She swiveled on her armored boots and faced down the agent nose to nose, eyes screwed, sinking him deeper into the layer of mud covering the ground. I could see her teeth gritting together. If they had been made of metal, I swear sparks would have burst out of her jaws.

“You,” she growled like a diamond dog. “Another lie like that one and I’ll have you tongue cut neat.” She paused and looked at the messy crowd, agitating about the privilege treatment the military had enjoyed until now. "And if I find that you give yourself and your… friends more than the normal daily ration, I’ll have you begging for my misericord.”

Babs took symbolically her ration from one of the stupefied Ministry of Morale’s agents, bucked down once again the agent that had stood against her, trotted past the crowd and came face to face with me. She gave me her ration. I looked at the large cup of iron with palid puppy eyes, breaking into silent tears as it was the most meaningful and tragic gift I’d ever been given… A bowl of greyish food.

“I… I just can’t,” I replied with my broken voice, staring back at her, my ears hanging low.

“But you will,” Babs cajoled. “Don’t refuse a gift something that ponies around you are begging for.”

I looked at the content of the plate, and ate it slowly in front of Babs Seed’s hungry but understanding eyes.

“Thanks…” I repeated, again and again, until I choke on the disgust the meal brought in my mouth.

The taste was awful, acrid and raspy, sliding down the throat like sludge. Kept under Seed’s gaze I refused to look up and ate the bowl, slurp after slurp, choke after choke, as slowly as I could. But in the end, I pushed down the dish and wiped the edge of my lips with a trembling hoof. My stomach wretched and clashed with the putrefied meal, its growls of hunger changed into a cry of pain. Twice I had to swallow back the pre-vomit rushing my mouth. The taste was unbearable.

My eyes blurry with tears, I finally glanced at Babs Seed who had watched over me during my fight against the craving to vomit. Her face was streaked with a strange motherly smile. But her traits were sunken, trembling and bleached by her current weakened state. As always, she seemed to cast away her problems. She stretched a hoof in my direction, offering me some help to get up. Sniffing and swallowing with difficulty, I rose on my hooves, shivers shooting down my spine.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yes… Thanks…”

We walked away from the Ministry of Morale’s stalls, leaving nothing behind but burning eyes, my coughs of pain and some ill-minded agents. The eyes of the mares, stallions and children aimed at me, the poor little mare who’d been refused access to survival, like many others. Shame poured onto me like melted lead, swamping my skin, burning and anchoring like invisible shackles. Yet, the worse was my ears as the grumbles coming from Seed’s belly weren’t muffled completely by the thickness of her power armor. Even if she tried, the soldier she was couldn’t erase the painful frown of hunger who’d settled onto her face.

I hit rock bottom when that haunting and taunting sound entered my mind. The echo never really left me.

There I understood that I was not only a waste… I was also a useless parasite.

₪ ₪ Ѻ ₪ ₪

Depressed I stared blankly at the roof of the tent. My eyes fixed on a clock hung onto a cable, paying attention to each of the hand’s ‘tic’ and ‘tac’. Bored and depressed, I counted the two hours left to spend before my rendezvous with Genepi. My hooves shuddered all on their own at the mere idea of what she could do to me.

Would she wipe out my memory? Making me once again a ‘good’, ‘caring’, and ‘obedient’ mare. Or would she simply kill me, like the anonymous mare? I couldn’t tell.

Babs Seed snored with difficulty. Her face rested onto the top of her desk, her mouth sprawling open drooling slightly. Often, she grunted with pain, rubbing mechanically her belly dying of hunger and turned over her chair, taking a new more comfortable position.

Left to myself in this just about silence, I had begun to study Babs Seed’s physical appearance as I never did before. Dark rings circled her red and bulgy eyes, opening intermittently in one of her unconscious jerks. Her disheveled mane was sometimes tied in the joint of her armor and fell onto her muzzle, fluttering softly with her steady breath. Her armor was old and bore many war scars, indents, mended bullet holes and large slashes that had took away the dark grey paint. The steel ranger’s common outfit was utterly scary. Soldiers were pony of war encased in an armor dealing death, keeping its wearer alive as much as possible. The TAD had tested a replica once. I had put it on to test the radiation leaks. Inside, the sensation of strength and power was numbing. It had been with pain that I had given it back. At the time I wanted to jump up to the roof and run a marathon while in this monstrous engineered creation that could wage war outside our borders.

I shook my head and focused back on Seed. She wasn’t a really beautiful mare. Like many soldiers, she had gone through fire, metal, and grief, leaving them either dead, disfigured, or changed forever. Now that I had stared at her for nearly an hour, I could tell. Apart from her armor and colors, the size of her neck’s tendons beamed her bulkiness. Her tanned henna brown skin was covered with small, nearly unnoticeable scars and burns. I only had my suppositions, an explosion? Shrapnel? A mishandled grenade? She would probably never answer my curious questions.

She almost looked alike Amethyst, apart from her main features, fur and mane’s colors. She had quite the same stature and steadiness. She also had that little shakes running under their skin, leaving me to believe that they subconscious had learnt to fear the unexpected. And of course, the same expression of disturbed sleep. Soldiers truly had no time free from fear… fear of the unknown, terror of the ambushes, and stress of war. Even their wounds of war had to chase them back in their dreams.

Thus I sat silent, alone with myself, waiting for the deadline to come, it was either the Ministry of Morale or the illness. I was so alone and left in my doubts I had begun to believe the latter could be right. But it couldn’t… that’s what my cutie mark was telling me, wasn’t it? I couldn’t die from radiation. I couldn’t!

I was horrifically alone among the noises, cries, screams and begs zooming through the air. Outside were ponies I never knew and would never talk to. Yet, their sudden fear of death and mental breakdowns were shared in by so much ponies that it couldn’t be left unheard. We were a big, anonymous and grieving family, which members were strangers to each other. Sometimes I understood the Ministry Mare, Fluttershy I think is her name. She wanted to care for everyone. Loneliness was an excruciating pain.

I would have sunk into that debilitating state of self-mourning for the next two hours if not for a soldier to enter inside the tent, his eyes bloodshot by the lack of sleep and stress. He shot a glance back at me. the unexpected ill mare I was, lying on a worn mattress inside a military tent, did nothing but stare at those red, teary and sleepless eyes. As I pointed Babs Seed out with my clumsy hoof, the soldier’s stare bounced away from me on his superior. I saw his ears perked in my direction, sneaking on every sound and movement I could initiate behind his back. Now I knew his problem… Paranoia. Maybe he feared I was some kind of threat. I chuckled at the consideration… this kind of consideration was better than nothing, wasn’t it? The stallion hesitated before shaking Babs’s shoulder.

“Ma’am, wake up,” he weaved forth, avoiding to wrestle her superior from sleep far too quickly. “There is something you must read.”

A scroll was visible, its tip sprouting out of his military saddle bag. I guessed it was an urgency, the pony taking no time to kick me out of the tent.

Babs Seed waked up slowly, her jaw slowly backing up to place with a raucous mumble. She rubbed her eyes, passed a hoof behind her ears, and scratched away the dried sweat that had ran over her face. The retching smell stuck into my nose. It had been an ‘eternity’ nopony had washed here, the water being accounted for and rationed. We had been bathing in filth and reeking stenches without even noticing. I pushed the back on my hooves onto my nose, trying to wipe the smell off it. I coughed, sniffing my own personal odor.

“What, initiate?” Seed shot with an angry and broken voice at the soldier.

The ‘initiate’, whatever it meant, shrunk sheepishly in the corner. He showed her the sealed scroll.

“Gimme that report.”

She snatched it off the soldier’s hoof and cracked it open with violence, tearing apart a piece of the paper. I saw her eyes ran across the writings with a maddening face. When she ended her reading, Seed closed her eyes, breathing in fits and starts trying to calm down her anger. Was it fear too that I can see hidden behind that façade? She shook her head and turned over me.

“I must go, Vault,” she stated with her characteristic cold and unnerving voice. “Something… needs my attention.”

I couldn’t see my face. But the way Babs glanced at me from her chair was how a freaked filly would looked down at a dying corpse. I said nothing. I just nodded.

“Just go through it,” she comforted me with a high-pitched voice.

She sounded off to me. But she never gave me time to reply. She went through the flappy entrance of the tent with the soldier and disappeared. Her duty called. Me, I had nothing to answer to.

I couldn’t stay there for two hours, alone and eating on my sorrow. I had to move on, even if it was hiding myself from the truth. I found the strength to get up and crawled out of the tent. Peering my head out of the canvas, I watched upon a nearly empty street formed by the endless continuity of tents. I saw a young pony licking on the radiation burns scoring his flesh. A young filly sat next to him, her lips quaking and eyes flowing out with tears.

“I’m hungry.”

“I know.”

“Why did they say no?”

“I… It’s my fault.”

I bit in my lower lips with sadness. How many ponies had the Ministry of Morale condemned today? The only answer was far too many. I walked down the path carved between the tents, but something plucked my bandages. It was the filly. My eyes widened. Please, don’t look at me with those eyes.

“I’m hungry,” she repeated to me.

“I’ve got nothing for you,” I say, knowing the implication of my words. “I can’t help you, sorry.”

Surprisingly, the filly accepted it without a whine. She slowly returned to her brother, or I guessed he was hers and sat in silence, tears rushing her eyes. Then she broke into sobs, and I left the place.

Walking by a corner I felt something itching on my side. Curious, I found between the rags of bandages the little morsel of bread Seed had given me. Shattering like crystal, the bit rested between my hooves. I stared behind me… at the corner where I had shaken off my eyes the two weakened ponies. Should I go back? I…

The truth is I couldn’t. I buried my thoughts and walked away, head low and ashamed. I bit in the glassy piece of bread, feeling it break and crack between my teeth. I ate it all, hiding my selfish cowardliness. I didn’t even cry and I continued my wander deeper in the camp.

There were not so many things to do. No entertainment, no waterpark or fun farm, no real open space to game properly, and of course no real place to think straight without being disturbed by the ambient noise. All I could see was groups of ponies, often three or four gathered in a circle around one or two dices carved into wood. I saw ponies gambled with everything they could find, from scraps of metal to their own rations.

After a fifteen-minute walk, my attention settled on five young ponies playing jacks with small pebbles, random scraps and two pieces of wool. Three of them were earth ponies, all joking and smiling. I guessed they had set in the rules that magic was cheating. The two other ponies, unicorns, kept themselves from flaring their horns horns. They had to use their hooves for once and it even broke a smile on my face to see them struggle playing. I hadn’t played jacks since my childhood and seeing how it had evolved captivated me. When one player’s turn came on, he had to throw the jacks he had previously collected into the air, and jacks could be anything. Then he had to shout a number, take this much of the ones left onto the ground, and catch back his falling jacks mid-air. A ‘who’s got the biggest dick’ challenge to be honest. As the game built on, the risk each player was taking to ensure a victory had to increase. The winner was the one owning the most jacks at the end of the round. It was historically a griffin’s gambling game and not so many ponies were good at it. Yet, it was still fun but you needed money to play, and the players hadn’t any bits on them. The question of the loser’s fate came to me.

“Tag, you’re hit!” all voices laughed but one.

One of the unicorns had lost, sitting poorly with his two jacks in front of his hooves.

“Shit… So, what’s the forfeit?”

“You’re gonna sing for us,” the earth ponies snickered.

The unicorn sighed. I hid my smile.

“You know I’m bad at that thing.”

“We don’t. That’s why you gonna show off!”

The game had attracted attention, and already half a dozen of curious ponies like me had stepped forward, seeking for an entertainment we lacked of here.

“Alright, alright,” the unicorn said, moving his hooves up and down to calm the loathing.

Rubbing his chin he ransacked his mind. He cleared his voice, spitting away a bit of viscous saliva, and inspired.

“Okay let’s go.”

He clapped his hooves together, giving for his friends and the uncanny spectators a simple rhythm to follow. It was slow, and enough heady to fix itself in my mind. I mumbled it softly, taken in the song.

“In a world shiverin’ in agony, what is left to see

For the wondering pony, alone in discrepancy

We’ve walked the hard roads of hopes that erode

Seeking for one’s abode, in a world hallowed

The unicorn forced silence among the watchers, his voice slow and pitched like a soft plea. An ode to our shared in plight. His song paced forward.

“Wherever I may go, Whatever I can see

My eyes suffer from sleepless nights

And watch upon dead seas and a flying crow

Flying over my body, fallen from days’ frostbites”

He looked at the sky with this sad, heart breaking face, grief-stricken by those times where sun hid by the sky. When was the last time we all had seen Celestia’s star? All we had was this know shady and smoky grey layer above our head.

“Where are the smile on the filly’s face

This world’s now just our disgrace

Did we deserve all of this, a world put to agony

Where we witnesses, are only left to see”

I thought about the filly, begging for food as she gripped in my bandages. My eyes fluttered with my lips. I kept listening.

“I…”

“Oh, come on!” a pony behind me called. “Go for the fun songs.”

I turned my head. I nearly gasped. The stallion, an earth pony, was one of them. One of the Ministry of Morale’s employees, not properly an agent, but one of its workers nonetheless. He had this pinkish color in his eye and fur that reminded me the Ministry Mare, Pinkie Pie. His bright yellow and still groomed mane shone. Finally, even if he had not the same brown coat of the ‘armed’ branch of his Ministry, he still had one Pinkie Pie’s coin pinned on his chest. His cutie mark was a bright orange vuvuzela from which burst noise. He was one of the ‘fun’ workers, whose role had had to throw parties throughout Equestria, which had become creepier and stranger over the years.

Ponies put space in between. The stallion sighed, knowing this situation was awkward but legitimate.

“No, really. I’m not against a bit of fun,” he asserted. “Really…”

“What’s your name?” the unicorn singer asked.

“Magic Trick.”

Many rolled their eyes and laughed lowly. I did too, such name was like selling one self’s relation to the Ministry.

“So you want something more hectic,” the unicorn said, fighting back the smile on his lips. Then stared at his four other friends.

“No, not that one!” His unicorn neighbor warned. “Tis just coming problems.”

“Hey, I’m not the pony who asked for it.”

Four of the five players grinned back to the pink stallion who raised an eyebrow as sole answer. The unicorn stretched and cracked his hooves joints together, yawned and readied himself.

“Do you know that song?” the unicorn asked to his accomplices.

“Of course we know,” the three earth ponies broke into laughter. “And sure, we gonna sing along!”

Clapping their hooves together, the choir gave us a beat to follow, producing song from the throat, their mouths closed shut. The unicorn accompanied the rhythm with tuned nods. Only his horned friend refused to follow.

“Alrighty then…

It’s a new day rising over Equestria

Ponies awake to birds’ orchestra

Opening my windows over the city

It’s already agitating and full of glee

Descending the stairs far quickly

Kissed mom and dad dearly. Really!

Took ma bag to the dam’ school

Promise pop’, I won’t be a mule

Friends greet, let’s have some fun

Just a bit, kick down the sprite-bot!

Yeah… just a pinch!”

All together the four youngsters beamed out in one unison.

“No, no, no, don’t tell mom

Oh, no, no, don’t tell the MoM”

I saw Magic Trick pinched his lips when the last verse erupted. He was laughing. Smiles. For once in a long, long time I saw genuine smile on the face of starving ponies. It ached my cheeks to smile, unused to such spree of laughter. It was contagious.

“Teachers gonna go all wrong

Ain’t gonna buck up in my tongue

Teacher! I must go, you’re to shun

Somepony waits in the rail station

And with friends I spree away

Yeah, ma friends ain’t the ones that stay!

Idle we ain’t, ‘n ma brother is kind’ blunt

Cuz’ he’s just come back from the front

Tonight’s a party that we have to throw

To our ones dearly, we’ll all aglow!

Yeah, straight to the memory!”

“Oh come on, get your shit together and go!” the unicorn picked on his sibling.

The fifth of the young ponies raised his eyes and joined the chant.

“No, no, no, don’t tell mom

Oh, no, no, don’t tell the MoM”

One of the earth ponies took two pebbles in his hooves, striking them together, making the beat gaining in momentum.

“’Good to see Equestria again’ he said

Zebras he bled with his fella now dead

He told me war was kind of a mess

So tonight is all his to relieve stress

Ma big bro’, best bro’ in the world

Brought some zebra pot t’be furled!

Taken over one he slit open

Fightin’ on Manehattan’s border

Tonight we gonna smoke the fun

Hide the light ‘n smash sprite-bots!

Yeah… just a ton!”

Ponies sung around, hooves stomping the ground.

“No, no, no, don’t tell mom

Oh, no, no, don’t tell the MoM”

Still singing, I saw one of them shook his head toward one of the tangent street. Looking ahead I saw real Ministry of Morale’s agents looming.

“He told me broaden ye horizons

World ain’t only made of petty guns

Look at the sun, sparkling warmth like canon

Feel its light, happiness is its might

Look at the bright side, yo friends’ smiles

Life be hard, times make us feel exiles!

War may split ponykind apart

But outsmart, keep that smile in your heart

Tonight’ll be off the chart, I cuss it

Forget the reality, we MoM’s bandit!

Yeah, fuck that twit!”

The all got up and fled away, leaving the jacks behind. We still heard the last refrain until they completely disappear.

“No, no, no, don’t tell mom

Oh, no, no, don’t tell the MoM”

The ministry’s agents stormed in front of us, leaving behind an achy cloud of dust. I coughed and rubbed my eyes and hooves together. Mud had splattered on my face. My cheeks were hot from smiling, I wasn’t even crying. I felt good, this kind of relief in the chest where heavy weights were suddenly snatched away. Even for a few seconds, happiness was with me.

But, like everything, it didn’t last long. The spectators scattered across the road, returning to their daily routine. Me? I simply put my head low and started my wander all again. I would have if not for a pink hoof to stretch and reach my shoulder.

“Are you okay?”

The stallion called Magic Trick looked at me with gentle eyes. He hugged me. I stuttered at the unexpected move, squeaking to him to release me. He didn’t, keeping me in this furry lock. It was warm, touching.

“I…”

He put his hoof in front of my lips, cutting me off.

“Be happy.”

“I just can’t,” I mumbled. “I… Genepi is going to gut me.”

He gave me a hard look.

“Don’t you talk like that. Genepi is… maybe not the kindest mare in Equestria. She is harsh but fair. I’m sure she won’t do anything.”

I avoided his eyes, staring down at my hooves. I saw small droplets fell on my front kneecaps.

“It’s raining,” he comforted me.

No rain was tickling my back and ears. Despite, I nodded.

“Yeah, it’s raining,” I acquiesced.

He hugged me tighter. Slowly, I tended my front legs up to his shoulders and gave him back the affection. It was warm, living. There was no blood dripping from a cut on his neck. No cold embrace from a dead body. No absence of vitals. He was hugging me. And he was alive, appreciating his place and moment like I couldn’t. I wanted to thank him, but the words lacked in my mouth, my lungs running slow on air. Thanks… Thanks… thanks…

“The party can’t continue forever, you know!” I acknowledged. “There is an end to everything. We just have to find to good moments to thrive upon and kick down the road the parts we strived on. Be happy.”

“What’s the point in being happy?”

“You’ll be better than you prior self. And if you’re better, you’ll share your change with others. And the others will follow you. To be better. It’s an ordeal. But it’s also a lifelong achievement.”

He winked at me.

“Don’t worry, Genepi may seem like a big bad mare, but she is fair. That’s all she needs. There is worse in the world.”

I opened again my mouth, only to have Magic Trick close it once again.

“Don’t tell me that Equestria could be better first. I once met Princess Luna, she told me ‘Change thyself before changing a world, flaws come from ponies, not from nature, and everypony is bounded to weaknesses, big or small, strong or weak. It’s to us to know about our limits. Only then we’ll know what to do.”

He was wiser than me, smarter and happier. His words were comforting but not enough strong to get over my fear of Genepi. I knew she would… might shred me to pieces. Those piercing violet eyes would set on me and I would die. What’s the name of that beast already… A co… Cock… no really, that was wrong… cockatrice! Maybe Genepi would win in a stare contest. But the greenish mare would first petrify me. Then, what Balloon hadn’t done right would be her lot to finish.

“Don’t worry,” he rambled.

Magic Trick looked down at his hoof where I spotted a watch.

“Damn I’m late.” He freed me from his embrace and trotted away. “See you later! I’m sure everything will be alright. Tell her you’re my friend.”

“Bye…” I whispered, waiving back at him among the alleys of the camp.

I slapped myself. I hadn’t asked him where was Genepi’s tent. I was dumb. Yet, it still meant I have time before going to her, my executor. Dammit Vava, stop thinking about that! You had one hour left, do something useful that time.

I trotted from where Magic had left me, wandering further in the large byways of the encampment. I was desperately searching for distraction. Anything that would relieve me from the fear whirling in my chest seemed good enough.

Somehow, I managed to come back to where the Ministry of Morale distributed the rations. At this time of the afternoon, ponies had deserted the place and the temporary barracks had been dismantled. I doubted the agents had been able to distribute food to everypony from here. They had to relocate somewhere else in the camp. Thus, the place was barren, and because no tents had an opening on the plaza, forming a long square-shaped wall of canvas, I had found here an island of tranquility. Walking in, I appreciated a relative silence. I sat down in the middle, putting as much space as possible between the claustrophobia from walking aimlessly inside the narrow streets of the camp and me.

Folding my limbs below my body, taking care not to muddy my bandages, I looked down at my back. I could still feel Genepi’s hoof passing on my melted skin. I pushed the bandages aside, unveiling the Swift Justice Corp.’s piece of junk now fused to my back. Fitting over my shoulder blades, the piece of black steel and aluminium was heavy and exhausting. Acting as an armor reinforcement, the way it had melted in my skin was impeding some of my movements. I couldn’t turn myself completely… Well, I wasn’t going to watch my butt on a daily basis anyway. I was too old for this kind of youngster’s things.

Now looking at my body. I inspected and checked every inch of my skin, looking where itches were the strongest, where the skin was the more wrinkled. I saw scars, vestiges of my age and past ordeals. My hooves were soar from walking endlessly in the daedal of tents. The run from Canterlot had also been harsh on me. I look at my upper left front limb, the armband was still here, its small black orb still glowing dully with a yellow diode.

I had never tried the saddlebag. I had managed to make it work under stress and pressure. I shuddered, thinking about Canterlot, Chrome, Rusty… everypony. I had tried to help them but in the end we had been scattered and left on our own. And I had fled. I promised myself I would never go back there.

I focused on the saddlebag, trying to consciously move the mechanisms inside. I wasn’t easy. I often got a swift reaction, cogwheels put to work for a second before silencing themselves. I concentrate my attention on a metallic arm within, eyeballing it and forcing myself to think about moving it. It wasn’t really effective. The arm jerked and span inside the saddlebag but never stretched out. After ten minutes trying I changed of idea and looked at my surroundings. I needed something for the arm to fetch. The saddlebag might have been a marvelous piece of technology, but if I couldn’t use it. The saddlebag was nothing more than twelve useless pounds thrust over my shoulders. I spotted a bowl, emptied and half buried in the mud. I stretched a hoof but was unable to reach it. Something punctured my left ear, whizzing past my head. Wincing, I reached my ear and my hoof connected with something. The clatter buzzing in my eardrum, I looked aside and saw one of the arm stretched over me. It had gripped on the bowl, its three pointy fingers bloodied.

The papercuts on my ear itched, rubbing it amplifying the unpleasant feeling. While my hoof was pushing on the superficial slash, my eyes looked at the arm. I wanted it to come back to me, bringing me the bowl. But it didn’t move.

“Oh, come on. Why it’s always ‘don’t think about it, it’s natural!’, or a kind of shit like that…”

I closed my eyes, changing my strategy. I thought about the arm, trying to visualize it in my mind, trying to feel it. I snickered. Well, I guess it’s like a paraplegic trying to move his legs. Damn, I shouldn’t have said that. The bowl clattered in front of me. Opening my eyes I saw the arm moving, its joints twisting and moving up and down in some kind of fluid and beautiful manoeuvers. But it stopped straight once I had stared at it.

“Celestia on Luna turning around the moon!” I raged.

I was done with that game. I had to go…

The arm folded back inside the bag in fits and starts, moved once its tips out of the pocket and finally backed in. It was to die of exasperation. I closed my eyes and rested my head upon my hooves, sighing.

“Ahem,” burst somepony behind me.

A massive jumpscare later and a few minutes past hyperventilating, I stood in front of a strange stallion. Clothed in a dark grey and folded piece of tissue which covered his dark grey fur and brown mane, the pony looked at me with glassy blank eyes. A purse hung at his side, its leather old and wretched.

“Hi…” I stumbled upon my words, slightly not reassured by his silent and stoic stance.

He scrutinized me. Looking at the remains of bandages still wrapped on my legs, he next titled his head on the side, wondering what the big piece of metal on my back was. Then, still silent, he eyed me while his hoof reached his bag and drew out a long scroll and a paper.

“What’s your name?” he spoke.

His voice forced my hooves back. My hooves palpitated at the breath taking sound, Raucous, like two saw trying to mow down each other. I look down at the scroll in his hooves, stretching endlessly on the ground until its lower part crawled up the pony’s side up to his bag. I was close enough to peer an eye at the content of the scroll. There were countless names written down, next to a sentence, a word, or nothing.

He wasn’t looking at me, but through me. He was blind, explaining that taint in his eyes. A stroke of wind passed on us and his messy mane fell onto his face. He was tapping his hoof on the ground without any sound.

“Ah… Eh… Vault… Vault Skin, why?”

He wrote it down.

“What is your goal?” he asked with the same smoker’s creepy tone.

“I… What? I don’t know.”

“You should. Everypony has a role.”

Taken aback, I coughed and sniffed. I had caught a cold. I wiped my nose and opened my eyes again.

“I don’t underst…”

He was gone…

I woke up, my head still lain onto my achy hooves. A sudden burst of stress clacked in my chest, what time was it? Looking up at the sky, I found myself facing only clouds. Running away from the plaza, looking behind me if not black coated pony was hidden among the cracks of the ground, I rushed to the first pony wearing a Ministry of Morale’s outfit and asked him where was Genepi’s tent.

I run up to the location and found it. It was not really difficult, though. Genepi’s tent was a massive piece of fabric on which somepony had painted the widely smiling and eyeballing face of Pinkie Pie, it just needed the hated ‘forever!!!’ to complete the masterpiece.

Running with sweat I entered. I was quite stupid, running to a rendezvous I didn’t want to go to. But it was my education, my mother taught me to be on time, always. The tent was empty of light. A few makeshift desks lying here and there, a large locker, many paper and reports I refused to look at, fearing somepony would caught me, and one futon with a… a faceless, light blue pony plush the size of a hoof.

“That’s creepy,” I mumbled, thinking to everything but a maddened agent Genepi playing with a kid’s toy.

Genepi was nowhere to be found. Standing still, I scanned the place hoping to found anything valuable.

“Rubbish!” A mare boomed outside the tent.

Purely on instinct, I hid behind the locker. Peeping out over its side, I saw Genepi, quickly followed by Brancard. The young buck’s face was white, scared and panting. Behind him snuck Babs Seed, closing the queue.

“What do you mean, it woke up?” Genepi continued, betraying a lack of understanding and trust.

“I swear. It was my shift at the hospital area and I was in charge of a mare dying of balefire burns. She convulsed and died of complication.” He took a break, breathing loudly. “How long will you hide that we’re swimming in radiation to everypony!”

A hoof connected to Brancard’s jaw, flinging him on the ground through mere strength. Babs interposed instantly.

“Should I remember you we don’t have enough RadAway for more than thirty thousand refugees! With among them more than five thousand that won’t live to see the next week? I had to make a choice. Can’t you understand, Doctor? I have orders to apply, and pony to police.”

“So you just kept everything to yourself.”

Only Babs stopped Genepi from unleashing her fury. Brancard wasn’t even fighting, massaging his jaw. Genepi bit her lips, looked aside and grumbled.

“And what if you’re right, what happened?” she conceded.

“We put the dead body in the mass grave like you’d asked for every dead. The grave was already full and ready to be proceeded, like stated. But, before we lit up the flames, her body started moving.”

“Nonsense!” Genepi retorted. “Dead are dead.”

“The agents put the grave on fire, but I saw her… it stood up!”

“We’re not in a zombie movie, Mister Brancard,” Babs Seed finally spoke, siding with Genepi. “Ain’t gonna be any brain eating monster on my watch.”

“But I saw it rise on its hooves!”

“Yeah, keep talking,” Genepi consented. “For once I agree with Babs…”

“Sergeant Seed.”

“Maybe.” She waved a hoof nonchalantly at her unexpected ally, still staring at Brancard. “Dead are dead, Doctor. Haven’t you learnt that in school? Even Fluttershy’s megaspell couldn’t bring back to life ponies. So don’t bring me that twaddle about trotting dead. You’re just stressed and tired.”

Brancard opened his mouth, but no quick response spiked at the Agent. His lowered his eyes and shut up.

“Yeah, I’m stressed. I’ve seen in three and a half days more ponies dying that in a lifetime. Two thousand thirty one deaths, in three and a half days.” He broke into tears.

“Oh for Luna’s sake,” Babs worked up. “I know you. You served under me, Brancard. We’ve done two campaigns together against the zebras. You’ve been on a Battlefield more than once before.”

His tears rolled down his cheeks as he lifted his head at Seed.

“It’s different, they were soldiers. It was their jobs. We’re talking about civilians.”

“What happened, happened… Stop trying to do more than you can. Help the ponies that’ll survive. Just…” Seed gritted her teeth. She hated what she was going to say. “Stop pretending you can save every pony. Don’t be a Fluttershy.”

Ouch. That was a hard sip to swallow.

Sadness rushed out of Brancard’s eyes, replaced with anger. He unbuttoned his vest, breaking away two or three seams in the process, revealing the Element of Kindness’s cutie mark sewed on the inside. Three pink butterflies. Everypony liked that mark, it was one of the last symbol that wasn’t related to war or death.

“You know what it is, sergeant?” he blustered. “It’s a life commitment.”

I gulped as Brancard threw his tantrum.

“You’ve changed, Seed. Over the last eight years I know you, you’ve just slip away. I just see a heartless bitch hidden behind a crackled mask of sympathy.”

He punched the canvas used as a door and walked out, expressionless.

“What a mule,” Seed erupted, Genepi laughing in her back. “Stop that, he really does a good job… When he wants to.”

“I believe you… sergeant,” Genepi played on the word, before she turned in my direction. “Stop hiding yourself. I know you’re there.”

My ears perked up. I stood up, facing a surprised Babs Seed and Agent with a lot of hidden resources. I thought I had hidden myself well enough, though.

“How did…”

She showed me her cutie mark, a large wide and white eye, whatever it meant. Babs blasted me with angry eyes, one eyelid twitching haphazardly. She definitely hated being spying on.

“I see that you came earlier for our little… rendezvous,” she croaked.

Babs Seed cleared her throat.

“Ain’t going to be possible,” she disagreeded. “I need her on the spot.”

Babs Seed wandered forward and occupied the open space between Genepi and me.

“You worked for the Testing and Approval Department of the Wartime Tech’,” She inquired.

I nodded in return, catching the expression of discontent on Genepi’s face from the corner of my eyes.

“So you know a bit about Structural Technology?”

Still nodding, I whimpered. I had strictly no idea what it was but it was better than facing Genepi.

“I need an engineer.” She glanced at Genepi who raised her eyes, moving her hoof, telling the steel ranger she wasn’t part of that dialogue. “The Ministry of Morale, along with the steel rangers, owned all the tech to make that camp run for months.”

Probably, but she would never squish mike like an orange between her augmented armored hooves if there wasn’t a problem.

“Somepony broke the purifying crystal of my regiment. There is no water available for the camp and I need a high ranked technology specialist to retrieve one. And the only pony I know here to be one is you.”

“Y- Yes,” I squeaked.

“Can you help me?”

“Of course,” I gasped.

Looking down at me from behind Seed’s back, Genepi smirked. I believed she was purring. Why?

“But I don’t know where to look for,” I replied.

“Shattered Hoof.”

Even Genepi stopped her grimace and walked up to Seed and me.

“You mean…”

“The re-education facility has a purifying crystal,” Seed clarified. “It’s twenty kilometers from here.”

“Can’t we go in a near village and take the water reserves?” I asked.

“We can’t, Equestria is blown away and we’re in a relatively safe part of the countryside. My scouts say the surrounding landmarks and locations are completely destroyed… deadly even.

“I refuse to let you go in there,” Agent Genepi suddenly bawled, cutting us off.

Babs and I turned our head at her, surprise. A drop of sweat ran down her neck. It was the first time I saw the agent with another face other than her wide grin of delectation.

“I can’t let the clumsy hooves of a… engineer and the Steel Rangers go in there alone.”

“So, you prefer leaving us to die from thirst here…”

Genepi was thinking, her hawkish eyes looming over my face, likely searching for any idea among my wrinkles.

“Why not send with us a pony from the Ministry of Morale,” I proposed.

Seed’s hold on me tightened. I nearly shrieked. Genepi was fretting on her hooves, thinking about who sending in there with me. My meeting with her was only delayed.

“Why not Magic Trick?”

Her eyebrows stretched up and she smiled, the long and sick grin that scared me so much.

“Yes. Why not.”

Footnote: Level Up – Survivor Mare LvL.3

New Perk: Speechless – while in a dialogue, if you did not initiate it, you gain a +10% in speech for your next action in a neutral/hostile situation, only by letting your protagonist ramble over per five minutes of silence.

Prologue

Prologue - The hand of the clock ticks and stops

I lie in my blood, my bones shattered in so parts. I can feel their broken edges titillate my organs. This recurrent and excruciating pain tears my body apart. And there, suffocating, in that puddle of dark red and circled by crumbling ruins, I only see billowing smokes and hear screeching sounds of mangling metal. I can’t think about anything else than remembrance. Yes. You understand me very well, lonesome wanderer. Above all of my wishes, I wish to be remembered. I want somepony to find that PipBuck recorder and listen carefully to this data. I want somepony to keep it like a treasure. I would give away my limbs, tongue, eyes, kidneys, and on… and on… just to know that somepony will listen to my long and once boring story, and will learn how I changed from a sheepish, annoying and anonymous mare to a creature that trod a blood smeared path for years on the tragic land of the wastes.

Until I was shot a few minutes ago of course. Until one daring pony spared me a final bullet right through my chest. A bullet that sealed my future… a future of death, nothingness and oblivion.

Equestria has changed with the balefire bombs, the taint, and the pink cloud. Ponies and Zebras alike spread their vicious poisons over the world, washing it with a mutagen bleach that scorched us all. We, the earthbounds, while the pegasi closed the sky above us with a low and thick lid of unfathomable clouds.

Some would bring forward the idea that the bombs changed ponies too.

I don’t think so.

Ponies never changed. I’m sure you know the truth. Everypony know it, even if they hide it from themselves. Let me just repeat it again. What we really are dwells deep beneath the skin, hidden and dormant. We just need a tiny little push to reveal our true selves, and break apart the cage we have been trapped in for so long.

Society. A jail that represses the most basic instincts and repels the most mind-boggling ideas. A society: many outspoken lies, unachieved hopes, and crying foals. This was the society from before the balefire. The world we lived in.

Now I have one question. Are we ponies that dream of being monsters, or monsters that dream of being ponies?

First of all, I’m not a stable dweller. Not at all. I’m a less than average pony that survived the apocalypse thanks to an ungodly luck. Oh, perhaps you were waiting for a more recent story. Maybe you won’t regret the trip if you keep listening, or reading… It all depends on how you get my story. I’m not even a unicorn, or a pegasus by the way. You must really be disappointed.

So who am I? I’m a boring, magicless, ground-bound pony. A simple earth pony mare that saw the scrolls of fate unfold before her eyes and witnessed the world give in to the abyss.

By the way, my name is… was Vault Skin. Strange name isn’t it? Yeah, my parents were miners before the war. My friends called me Vava. Now, I have plenty of names. Names ponies called me or fate decided to attribute me. And about my story? Well, fasten your seatbelts. And I hope you’ll enjoy the ride.

Ponies will always start their story with the dull and chirping ‘Once upon a time in the magical land of Equestria’. I will go straight forward.

Today in the devastated wastelands are ponies that roam, searching for deliverance, redemption, or something that would restore their faith. Others will seek for a meaning in their life or a purpose to fulfil. And some choose a path telling that you can’t repair something that has always been broken. A path that hammers in your empty and shallow head that you have to break things apart to ashes… and hope something anew will erect from it. From the dust.

Well I’m among the latter and this is my story, a story of faith, hope, blood, mud, and bones.

Welcome in the Equestrian Wasteland, where fallouts never fade away.