Fallout Equestria - Long Way Home

Chapter Eleven: Old World Blues

        Silver practically shat a brick when he saw the people entering his shop. It felt right. It was moments like this, that showed me that life experiences are valuable. Perhaps not inherently; maybe all value is built around context. However, in this instance, that mattered not at all. All it took was a slight mention of the power-armored do gooders to put the smarmy ass on his best behaviour. This was Icepick’s doing-- she was talented at manipulation. Then again, if I had a contingent of Steel Rangers, I would probably learn how to throw their weight around pretty quickly.

        Not to belittle her at all, Jealousy is a subtle thing, as I would learn. Throughout our visit to the friendly arms dealer, Glycerine stayed silent unless spoken to directly. I only noticed this afterward. At the moment, I was more focused on Icepick. I hadn’t spoken to her privately yet…  I needed to talk to her. So in effect, I watched Icepick dominate Silver with subtle threats, which I would figure out later was almost the exact same thing Glycerine had been doing. I wasn’t silent of course. Buying things from him went on unabated, with Icepick’s influence affecting the amount of caps exchanged for the commodities I bought.

        Grenades. The Rangers loved em’. Well, Icepick bought all the twenty-five millimeter grenades Silver had in stock. As a side deal I got myself a few more armor piercing rounds, Not as many as I would like, though. Too many things in this place had thick plating, myself included, of course.

        When we left, I found out that I would be carrying the grenades back to the bar. This didn’t agree with my self preservation.

        “There’s enough explosive in these to reduce me to mush.”

“Jake, I’ve had eighteen forty millimeter grenades on me since we left the camp today.” Glycerine broke her earlier silence with a jab at me, a jab that left me feeling like a whiner for complaining. Regardless, the grenades weighed a ton.

        “Can the person wearing power armor carry some at least?”

“Is it weird that I miss that whine?” Was the response that Icepick gave me.

        “So no?”

“What happened to the buck that made a scribe piss himself?”

        “I’m not a pack mule. Really though, I don’t like that guy very much.”

      “That the guy that threatens to ‘hate fuck corpses’?,” Glycerine added on in a way that made Icepick’s tale of my past behaviour seem tame.

  I picked up the pace before answering. That was a serious question: I could justify both instances, but that didn’t change the fact that I had some underlying problem.

“When I’m in the heat of the moment, things change. Context changes the values you observe from people; people are different when put under different conditions, pining any consistent trait in another person is near impossible. Any qualitative trait, anyway, body mass doesn’t change much for instance. Capping off this lengthy-ass not-answer is the realization that this is true of anyone.”

“That’s not true, some ponies are always the same. A raider is a raider.” Icepick responded quickly.

I was formulating a response by the time I noticed Glycerine frowning. Nevertheless, I responded quickly.

“If you only were in the right situation anyone would become a raider. I’m not saying raiders are right to do the things they do but in the end they’re not that different from you or me.” Ideological differences are pretty divisive… am I right, or am I right?

        “I don’t believe that; ponies are better than that.” Icepick said.

“Do you always kill raiders on sight?” I asked Icepick the question that put a grave look on Glycerine’s face. Glycerine’s expression deepened when Icepick responded with a look that said ‘Are you an idiot?’.

        “Thats part of what sent us down here. One of our mission objectives included sweeping the highway from Manehattan to here for nearby raider camps. Didn’t find a lot. We did find a radioactive hole in the ground on the way here.” Icepick told us with an authoritative tone up until she mentioned the hole- she mentioned that with a tone of quiet bemusement.

“Did you have something to do with that?” Glycerine asked after I began laughing.

We reached the door of the club as I answered, “I didn’t exactly take that energy cell from a flying saucer.”

                                        ---===*===---

        I stepped inside, dropped the sack of grenades down, then stepped back out. During that time, Glycerine went inside. I couldn’t see her expression as she walked towards the bar.  I was a little worried when I couldn’t see where Icepick was at. My stepping back outside remedied this. She had been waiting by the door. I was on my way over to her when she turned towards me. The thought that crossed my mind upon seeing her expression was ‘There will be words soon’.

“If you want to talk I have a hotel room nearby that I practically live out of.” My words softened that expression slightly. Some people would have seen the ghost of a smile on her face at those words. However, I’m not one of those people.

“You repaying for using my bed a while back?” She says.

“If I remember correctly, you didn’t hesitate to use the bed with me on it,” The words feel natural, if somewhat flirty.

“You wouldn’t mind sharing a bed again right?”

“As long as you’re there the morning after,” I said under my breath before realizing I did something similar to her.

        “What did you say?”

“I said ‘as long as you make breakfast in the morning’” So what I lied, lies are better than the things they prevent… in this situation at least.

        “I’ll get the apple bombs opened up for you.”

“Maybe Glycerine can cook?” She kicked me lightly.

“Maybe Fiberglass can carry grenades without complaining?” I kicked her flank. Gender equality is a beautiful thing, besides she was in steel armor.

“‘Hate-fucking corpses,’ really Jake?” She says after a sufficiently long length of time.

        The streets are emptied, and the hotel is looming over us already. Knowing this I respond by sticking my tongue out and making a noise that only toddlers make routinely.

        My interaction with the owner of the hotel had always been strictly business. This meant that when two dangerous individuals entered the place blowing raspberries at each other, he said nothing. I liked that about him, that and my arrangement where I paid for my stay at the end of a week. In spite of this I had never learned his name.

        This affected us, because the utter and complete non-expression on his face after seeing us acting like children… was fucking hilarious. To be fair, maybe he just expected this kind of stuff from me at this point. We made our way up to my room with a distinct lack of anything close to seriousness. I fumbled the key in the lock when we were in front of the door, in return she gave me the ‘you’re an idiot’ look for the second time that night.

        “Like you could do any better?”

“I could do it with my tongue in half the time,” She asserted. In my mind a primal part of me wondered the implications of those words.

        “Is that true only true for doors?” In the pause that followed I jimmied the door open.

She stepped inside the room before we spoke again. I followed her in and shut the door, then as a matter of habit I made double sure to lock it. As much fun as being shot at with a shotgun is, I had already vowed to avoid it in the future.

        “Are you flirty around all mares or is it just me?” Icepick said in a half-joking manner that somehow fit her personality quite well.

        “The mood only strikes me around you. Most of the time.”

“So no,” She said with more than a hint of a smile.

        “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

    “You’re a jerk,”

“You wouldn’t have me any other way.” I say with the kind of voice that only comes with a serious amount of truth in the humor.

        I laid back onto the bed, a feeling of quiet contentedness filling me. Glycerine was too sweet for me; she would get hurt if I got involved with her. Icepick on the other hand, seemed to shrug off things that would wound others. I could break Glycerine, Icepick not so much. There wasn’t much of a choice there. Besides I think Icepick needed a bastion of support. Or maybe more of a confidant.

“Did you miss me?” Icepick asked.

“Yeah, I missed the mare with the big gun.” Her face grimaced at those words. “No, but in all seriousness, I missed you. Not just that, after a lot of teasing and coaxing…” I choked on my words- the two biggest contributors to the (helpful) teasing were gone.

“What were you going to say?”

“Sorry, I just remembered some friends of mine.” This is what they wanted for you.

No, this is what they want for you. “I was about to say something along the lines of, ‘I like you’.” My voice goes into overdrive when I said the last three words. In the time that she took to respond I was stuck between wanting her not to comprehend the quickly spoken words, and wanting her to understand, hopefully voicing reciprocating in the process.

        “So you admit that there is some attraction.” She practically jumped with...joy? I had rarely had that much power over people’s emotion before. I didn’t like it. The potential to hurt others with just a few errant words. This coming from the same guy that believes gaining the power to nuke the word was a massive leap forward for the human race. Great. My thoughts had become humorously self deprecating once more. The sounds of clinking metal and things falling onto the rotted carpet of the floor caught my attention, yet my eyes stayed locked on the moldy ceiling. My thoughts turned to what my default state of being is. These thoughts weren’t good for me and I knew it.

        Not paying attention meant that when a warm fluffy thing laid it’s head on my chest, I was more surprised than I should have been. I turned my head to see Icepick laying beside me on the mattress. Seeing her there laying peacefully without the armor that had defined her life made me genuinely smile. People do change when given different circumstances. That was proven to me, at least. However, maybe there was some core of a person that all regardless of circumstances, stayed the same. Some part of a being that might express itself in differently in other context…

        Or maybe I should leave discussion of the soul to people more qualified than myself. That, and get ready to sleep.

“Where are you going?”

“Just far enough to get stripped down, then I’m going to sleep. You know, we have a lot of planning to do tomorrow.”

“That’s tomorrow though. Tonight, I’d just like to have someone beside me.”

   “Tomorrow, I need you beside me.” I didn’t add that I thought we were on the clock. The look on her face my words had garnered was the happiest I had seen all day. It’s those things that speak volumes about people, things like our unspoken agreement about sleeping arrangements. Yes, we talked about it, but those were merely comments. It was already pretty much set in stone. It’s pretty funny that two talkative, powerful people can barely vocalize their feelings. But then again, life is pretty funny. You just have to be in the right mood to laugh at it.

I crawled back into the bed I shared with a talking pony, at that realization I felt a smirk cross my face.  The feeling of coarse sheets was a welcome change from my thoroughly soiled undershirt. This of course didn’t hold a candle compared to the feeling that Icepick snuggling me did. I could tell that her heartbeat had sped up when I rolled onto my side, our chests were pressed together and all at once our eyes locked. In that moment I knew she had been doing some thinking of her own during the silence. Now I didn’t know what these thoughts were, yet uncharacteristically, I didn't spend time thinking about the possibilities. We stayed like that for long enough that by the time we moved apart, her heartbeat was synched up with mine. As we moved apart, I felt like I had to say something.

“We barely know one another, why does this feel right?”

“You ever thought about there being a force that controls our lives?” She asked me as she flipped over. I wrapped my arms around her body and pulled myself closer. This was done because I wanted to do it… and I needed to think.

        “I never doubted the possibility, I just assume there isn’t a force that cares enough about me to affect me.” I say before I feel Icepick press her back into me.

        “Maybe Celestia or Discord pulled you here for a reason. Maybe you were meant to do something here. I would have been dead if you hadn’t gotten here when you did.”

        “I can’t deny the possibility there were forces at play, but I can say that I’d have been dead if I hadn’t found you.”

“Doesn’t it make sense that Discord would want something like us to happen?”

“Wait, are you talking about the physical god Discord?” I asked the question with some terror in my voice. I had heard some ponies talking about Discord in the diner once. It hadn’t registered that she was referring to that god until her last rhetorical question.

        “I don’t think he’s a god but I do think he does exist out there somewhere.”

“And you think he’d take time out of his schedule to hook us up?”

        “Do you not think we’re chaotic enough when we’ve been together for him to want this?” She tapped herself and I with her hoof when she said this.  I dropped the issue.

        “Goodnight, Icepick.” I said this while simultaneously aching for sleep and questioning why someone named Icepick was so warm.

        “Goodnight and sweet dreams,” was the what she replied with. I could feel the exhaustion setting in. This put a damper on any thoughts regarding our relationship.

For the second night in a row I passed out comfortably; that by itself was a welcome change.

---===*===---

        I must been designed with a comfort in mind. She had ended up laying on my chest, most of her anyway. How she had ended up like this, nobody knew. Except for Discord, apparently? Wait. was he omniscient? If he was, then some of the base laws of this universe were quite different. A mental image of Godel and a talking chimera discussing theorems of incompleteness graced my mind’s eye. Gods, I needed to get up, I had things to do. The pony breathing on me was an obstacle to doing ‘things’ though.

Sleep hit me again. I awoke for the second time when Icepick moved to get off of me. It just happened that she had pressed her flank up against my dick as she did that. The grunt I made startled her. I just gave her look that said ‘go on’.

“Uh… I meant to do that,” She said with a facade of confidence that was completely nullified by her reddened cheeks.

“You don’t seem nearly as confident as you were last night. Oh wait, that was about your tongue skills.” I told the alien. My thoughts had turned towards sex, some wall in my mind had been breached. I didn’t really care. This was made more obvious when I reached out and pulled her closer to me. She didn’t object to the sudden kiss; when we broke off she shot me a bemused look.

  “Are you in heat or something?” She yelled at me a few seconds later.

“Unless this place has really weird effects on human males, I don’t think so. Why did you yell?”

        “I just really didn’t expect that out of you,” she says before sitting down on her rump.

“Yeah I can’t fault you for that, I don’t normally get like this.” I say apologetically.

        “You mean get horny?

“I-I guess?” I stuttered out. “The last time I was around you I felt really weird about feeling anything non-platonic about you, and besides, we were both exhausted.”

“In your mind, that meant this was the right time to come on real strong?” Icepick asked, the shoulder shrug I gave in response didn’t mollify her in the slightest.

   “Why would any other time be better?”

“I don’t know; can you understand that you being affectionate on your own is weird for me? I’ve never seen you get all touchy- it’s not a bad thing, It’s just we have things to do.”

Well, she’s not wrong. I’m usually not filled with an intense desire to be physical. For fuck’s sake.

We got up and dressed a few minutes after that situation, that time was spent in awkward silence with the exception of Icepick yawning occasionally. the fact that the noise in and of itself was cute only made me feel worse. It wasn’t the denial itself that irked me: it was my own erratic behaviour. But calling it erratic wouldn’t be correct because there was a logical stimulus. Calling it misguided would be wrong because there was little to no guidance at all. So, that left me to put on my gear and stew.

It wasn’t long before Icepick was encased in steel, and at that moment she acquired an air of professionalism that must not have been present last night. By this point I was in the middle of eating a box of dried apple slices. I was doing that while chugging down a bottle of ‘irradiated’ water. I had bought a dozen bottles after hearing a vendor talking to a customer about how he could never sell the shit. When I approached him to buy the water, he warned me about the danger. After responding that I didn’t care, he pulled out a magical radiation counter. If it had been a geiger counter I would have heeded his advice. Fastforward a few days and seeing as most of the bottles were already ingested, I had a feeling that if he used the same rad counter on me, it would tick. A lot.

It would have been perfect if the water didn’t taste like melted plastic. Would ingesting it make me resistant to chemical burns? After a millisecond of thought I decided… no, it wouldn’t. This realization only made me feel worse.

“Sorry… you should know that I probably irradiated you all of last night. Probably not a lot though. I mean i’m not a doctor but you should be fine,” I said awkwardly. Well, at least I didn’t give her crabs or something. Oh wait do ponies have different genital hair? Or could crabs live in all of their normal hair? Why am I thinking about this?

“Why are you irradiated?” She finally asked. Then she looked at what was in my hand. The words radded written on the bottle said two things; first, someone who wasn’t quite literate had bottled it, secondly…

“It was cheap.”

She gave me the classic ‘what the fuck is wrong with you?’ look.

My breakfast finished, I threw the empty bottle in my bag and left the room. Was she worried about me, or did she think I didn’t know radiation in most cases was dangerous? She probably thought I had a death wish or something.

I felt like disappearing for a couple hours would be good for everyone I associated with. It was just I needed time to be alone, I wasn’t Miss Congeniality on a good day: on a bad day, I was borderline intolerable. It wasn’t that I hated being around people, it’s just  people had always been a little more taxing to me.  Would sneaking off to go clean some firearms and read fill some equines with fears of my demise? Yes, but the alternative was a lot worse. Still, as I walked down the street, taking care to avoid the places where anyone who knew me would go, I felt a nagging suspicion that I should have told someone where I was going.

                        ---===*===---

How I ended up at the building I made some chems at for Silver, I didn’t know. Was I maintaining everything I had the skill and equipment required to maintain? It was the proper thing to do, so yes.

After finishing maintenance, a thought struck me as I took a walk out in the afternoon sun. Why am I even pursuing a relationship when I’m planning on leaving as soon as the opportunity arises? As soon as the question was asked, I started to try and justify what I’d been doing and in the end the only thing I could really get behind as an answer was.

“I don’t think I can hurt Icepick, she’ll never be happy as long as she has to wear that armor, and I can’t fix a world that isn’t mine to fix.”

        A thought struck me after a few seconds of staring at the tools I had used. I could go check that eldritch doorway. No, that was a terrible idea, I thought immediately afterwards.

        “Then again, it is a magic doorway,” how I knew it was a magic doorway was a good question in and of itself, regardless that must be what it is. I mean, why would someone build a door in a door frame that stood by itself, put it behind a facade, in the same room that also held the equivalent of a nuclear reactor?

        Am I going AWOL just to get another look at a magic door?

                                        ---===*===---

The short answer is... pretty much.The long answer is that I took my time killing the few ghouls that had migrated into the area. Arthur and I must have done a number to the city’s ghoul population. The few left over were swiftly killed. My marksmanship was clearly improving, without the aid of VATS, I probably was at the level of a marine marksman at the point, Which made sense given I was using a gun that was similar to United States military equipment. Regardless, I made it into the sewers and after a brisk walk and a look at my Pipboy’s saved maps. I was in front of the Stable. This time, I went through the stable on the lookout for anything that I could use to draw with. That, and take anything and everything of value, which mostly consisted of wonderglue. However my main goal of getting drawing equipment went pretty well. I made off with a clipboard, some (acid free) blank paper and a couple wooden pencils. I wondered briefly about why a lot of the pencils had bite marks on them, then the answer hit me. After that realization I suddenly wanted a bottle of hand sanitizer. That lead me to wonder whether or not the microbes here could be killed by magical radiation?

That book about arcane tech had nothing on biology and magic. So, that train left me with yet another question. Though one I could conceivably answer, all it would require in theory was a few petri dishes, a couple cheek swabs, and access to a source of magical radiation.

        Doing that was another question entirely. Besides, someone probably already figured it out. So, with my salvaged stuff, I made my way down to the reactor room. The door looked exactly the same as when I had last seen it. My defacto objective was to recreate the symbol on the door, though i really just wanted to get away from people and their peculiarities. That, and just look at the door. It was perfect in every way: clean, sturdy, and beautiful were all valid adjectives to describe the door.  Was it strange that a doorway that could not be opened was the most beautiful object I had seen since arriving here?

        I finished the task of copying the symbol down on the paper. Looking at my copy, I realized that mine was an effective recreation and nothing more. Crude or not, I had something to show for my journey into an irradiated mass grave. Now, if I could just find someone who knew what the symbol meant… maybe I could be on my way home at that point.

My trip out of the sewers took only a few minutes given the fact that I had been to the stable enough times to know my way around. At the stable door, I was left with a choice: Continue exploring the irradiated sewers, or head back and pretend to feel bad for leaving for a while.

If not for my ever-convenient helmet, I would have chosen the latter action.

                                ---===*===---

 Exploration is truly a grand thing, when you’re not alone and waiting for ghouls to jump out.  Regardless, after an hour of going through the sewer I found a ladder to the surface. The ladder led to a manhole, which after some prodding, finally yielded. The ability to see the same overcast skies wasn’t the reason I climbed up. At the bottom of the ladder, before climbing up, I had determined the ladder let out to a part of the city very near to the coast.

When I did get a good look at the surroundings, I observed my surroundings were the remains of a military dockyard. I had been hoping for a boardwalk or a carnival, but the reality was that this place was used to maintain ships. Well, I figured out that the place was used for retrofitting navy vessels after a few minutes of exploration. The thing there that drew my attention was a battleship in drydock. It looked better than any other vessel in  and around the clearly artificial harbour.

        Naturally when presented with a nearly untouched battleship, I felt a need to go aboard the thing. One walk around the land side of the dry dock led me to locate a rickety access bridge, which led to the deck of the ship. I stood near the rusted steel bridge, hesitation to go across was justifiable given that there looked to be a fifty foot drop from the bridge to the concrete bottom of the dock.

        As I looked at the bridge and the battleship to decide whether or not to risk crossing the bridge, I noticed that the battleship’s hull was near perfectly preserved, whereas the bridge was falling apart. It couldn’t have been the paint, the bridge still had flecks of paint left on it. So it must have been a difference in alloy, right? Damn, that means the battleship is made of some nice steel. Before I could get jealous, I remembered that my body armor was made out of a tougher material.  I then remembered the plating on that battleship was probably a foot thick in places; at least battleships from earth's past had plating that thick.

My final thought before deciding to attempt a crossing was, ‘A foot of saturnite, what would that stop?’.

        As I took my first tentative step onto the bridge, I couldn’t help but hope that my body wouldn’t be found a decade from now at the bottom of a dock. I tried not to think about anything after that. Moderate success was achieved: I stopped thinking about everything other than the sounds the stressed steel was making as I made it support my weight.

        Getting across was the most terrifying thing I had done in at least a week. I was afraid of heights, so crossing the bridge was torture for me. This meant I was coming back with something useful: if nothing else, going into the battleship would give me some way to delay the moment I would have to go back across the bridge.

        The door to the main deck was locked. It was a steel door, and well secured. I wasn’t going to be able to shoot the hinges off of this door. All the other doors on the deck had the same issue. On the bright side, I did have time to examine the main guns. They were large enough to be the equal of any battleship my Earth ever manufactured. Still, I wanted to see the specifications for those guns. I needed to know the bore of those guns, for spiritual reasons, of course. Regardless, the gun’s specs weren’t engraved in the sides of the turrets. This meant I had an actual goal, And it required me to get inside of the warship. As I realized this, I looked up and saw the conning tower. I bit my lip. I really didn’t want to go up there. Then again, I wanted to see the inside of a centuries old warship… built by ponies.

                                             ---===*===---

 Climbing the conning tower was the most terrifying thing I had done in my time there. Regardless, when I reached the top of the tower, I was unsurprised to find I liked looking at the sea. The binoculars set on a stand were nice as well. At that point my trip alone was justified. Seeing everything for miles around had an appeal to me, it even overcame my fear of heights. Well, it dulled my fear enough that as long as I kept myself from staring at the deck under the conning tower or the dry dock bottom, I didn’t feel nervous.

After a few minutes of ‘relaxation’, I remembered why I had come up there in the first place: namely to access the ship. When I began to search around the conning tower in a serious manner, I found a decayed corpse wearing the remains of an admiral’s uniform. I couldn’t make out the admirals name, but I could rummage through his pockets. He had a password written on a plastic card. Sleipnir. What it was for, I couldn’t discern. This left me to find a hatchway that I could open. After a few minutes of searching, it culminated in me climbing on top of the conning towers observation deck.

It turned out there was a maintenance ladder to the absolute precipice of the ship. It was still very, very high off the ground.

At least when I got up there, I found an exposed radio antenna beside a bunch of other dishes and what looked like a tesla coil. Upon investigation, I found out someone had drilled a hole in the hull to supply this radio tower with magical power. Yes, the hole was sealed, but it was done shoddily, I wasn’t a qualified as a welder in any way, but I could probably weld the improvised covering better than whoever had done it. This of course left me with an avenue of entry. A few minutes later, after a couple gunshots and some aggressive smashing, I had a hole into the conning tower of the Battleship. I made a mental note to reinstall the plate if the opportunity arose.

I swiftly dropped into the battleship to find the place dark, other than the light coming from the ship’s brand new skylight. I went about the old routine of exploring a defunct installation.

 The bridge I would learn was on the deck below the one I was on now, courtesy of a map I found on a wall. I was about to leave, having found nothing interesting up on that floor, when A thought struck me. What If I copy the map onto another sheet of paper?

        The thought of having a vertical cross section map and a horizontal, level based map at the same time excited me. It came as a shock when I turned towards the stairs that my EFS was filled with contacts. From the growling noises, I had a feeling I would be fighting more walking corpses. I pulled out my sidearm and proceeded to walk into the bowels of the ship.

         The bridge of the ship was impressive. The place had a quite a few terminals, some of them even had power flowing to them, one of which seeming to display a passive radar. It appeared that there was a large blip just on the outside of sensor range.

Radar display one (as it was labled) had a scale on it for distances. Given that it was a two dimensional overhead display of the sensor range, this was a nice feature. The blip on the radar was given the name ‘Equestrian Air Corp Raptor,’. The range on the thing was forty miles. Given that it was a passive sensor, this was pretty impressive. Then again, this meant the Raptor was using its own active radar.

        “Just how much of this thing is operational?” I said, thinking out loud. Could I get it operational? These questions filled my mind as I searched everything in the room. Would it be too much to ask to find an owner’s manual? Yes, it would be too much to find an owners manual, but a massive data dump full of the ship’s new schematics (it had just finished a massive refit); that I could find. And in that slew of data, there would be a number for the bore of those guns. Well, a guy can hope, right? Data downloaded, I was preparing to move on. Then the sounds of gunshots echoed from down inside the ship proper reached my ears. I moved away from the captain’s terminal in his ready room, Gun pulled out, I felt that I needed to know who was shooting at what. Ghouls must have been the target of the gunshots because their cries were increasing in volume throughout the bridge.

        Dammit. I had a talent when It came to discovering dangerous places, and to deny myself the ability to tell my friends I did something cool when I ran off would kill something inside of me. And so I began by getting to the stairs, my objective was to find out what was shooting. After several minutes of searching the lower decks, I came across a door labeled  Crew Quarters with a large number of contacts behind it. The rest of the ship I had seen so far seemed untouched, yet filled with things I didn’t want. Making my objective harder was the fact that the thing shooting had stopped… shooting. So this left me with an opportunity to go in guns blazing against a bunch of ghouls. Am I really going to do this? I thought out loud before backing away from the door. The impetus behind my reconsideration of the task was simply, ‘They probably have an armory’.

                                          ---===*===---

        I walked down the poorly lit corridors on the search for either a mad gunman or an armory. (Un)fortunately neither of these things appeared to me, what did appear were a few ghouls that were swiftly dispatched. So, I had a nagging suspicion that this place was irradiated. That explained why this place was untouched. Perhaps this entire dockyard was irradiated as well.  If I was being honest with myself, the cold steel of the ship was too similar to the steel of Dr. Stone’s facility for comfort. The occasional zombie pony also kept me from becoming comfortable.

        It was a turn for the best when I spotted the remains of a pony shaped robot surrounded by dead ghouls, the robot though smashed to the point of non-operation still smelled faintly of cordite. I had found the source of the gun shots. After realizing this, I took a breather. During that breather I took apart the robot’s chest cavity. I wanted to find the thing’s spark battery, and maybe the AI core. In the end, that robot looked like someone had pulled it apart ritualistic.

Now that I had found everything I was looking for, was it time to head back? I asked myself in the dulled light of a not so dead husk of a ship.

        “Yeah,” I said before thinking about the walk back to the rebuilt Baltimare. This time, I could access the ship deck directly. This would turn out to make the trip to the main deck of the ship a lot quicker. I stood in the doorway that let out from the tower to the main deck. The question on my mind was whether or not I should leave the door unlocked for next time. On one hand was the ease of access that leaving it unlocked would bring me. Then again, it would make someone else’s entrance way easier. And that could end badly…  I really should have checked the munition stockpiles inside. On that note, I left the place behind, door unlocked.

        The walkway between the vessel and dock wasn’t quite as terrifying as the last time I had gone across it. This probably had something to do with me climbing on top of the conning tower. Regardless, as I got back to the naval base proper, I felt like I had in some way justified my leaving the group. Okay, that was just excusing my behavior. I tilted my head back and just looked at the sky for a moment before deciding I hadn’t violated that vacuous code of honor I held dear, but I was making the same mistake I had been making a lot recently. But was leaving my ‘friends’ an actual mistake? I began to ponder this as I started walking towards a building a decent distance away. It had a faded crescent moon painted on it… A destination is a destination is a destination. Walking in a line is more conducive to thinking than standing.

The question taking up most of my attention was directed towards the question of my friends.

Was I crazy to need some alone time every couple days?

Was it insane to think that climbing dangerous things alone was less stressful than a few hours of social interaction with the people I had made friends with?

Could I even go it alone if I needed to?

*Smack*

I had ran into the side of the building. It was at that moment that solving my interpersonal issues one way or another became my most important objective.

As I walked around the building, I spotted a sign that read Armory. Less than coincidentally, the building’s entryway was right next to the sign. The doorway, like a lot of the doorways in this place, was locked. Normally, I would have been happy to see a terminal near the door as well. However, thinking about my people problems had left me in a pissy mood. The only thing that stopped me from trying to set the door access terminal’s power source to explode was the strangeness of the terminal itself. It had a weathered casing, yes, but the screen and keyboard were clearly of a different make than all of the other terminals I had seen as of yet. Upon activation, the screen was filled with a blue command prompt page.

This all seemed connected to the change in operating system. Baltimare Naval Yard OS,  that’s what it said.

“That’s new,” or was it old, considering the terminal probably hadn’t been activated in centuries? Shaking my head, I cleared that question from my mind, only to have another much more salient question take it’s place. Do I need to enter this building?

“Yes, because if I can’t break in and scavenge here, then I’m doomed to fail when I do find that bunker in the desert.” Previous successes with bunkers in the past notwithstanding. A smile crossed my lips at the realization that I was just challenging myself for no reason. Not because I was challenging myself, but because I had always given myself tasks that meant very little to others. That hadn’t changed.  The smile on my lips didn’t die as I took a moment to just lay back against a building that like a lot of things in this world, had stood the test of time. What would I be doing right now if a brain in a jar hadn’t abducted me, then shoved things into me for strange reasons?

Probably not anything related to finding backdoors in alien computer software.

                                ---===*===---

        An empty, yet clean room. I found one of these after opening the door. I didn’t have a long time to take that, given the group of contacts moving towards this room. The contacts were amber… small blessings? Epilogue was quickly out and aimed at the door that had yet to be opened. I was deliberating whether or not to make a break for the still open door, my reception committee made that thinking null and void.

        The door opened and three ponies walked in.

“What are your intentions here?” The lead… pony asked.

“Peaceful exploration?” Not a lie really, I didn’t plan on attacking anyone.

“If this device is functioning correctly, then your non-hostility fits with your previous answer,” The pony in charge said with suspicion aimed not just toward me but at his EFS equivalent as well. Probably.  He continues looking at me for a second before lifting a hoof to his helmet. The other two relax as I point Epilogue away from them. I figure out the ‘talkative’ one had just depressed a microphone button, given that I could hear him speaking in a strange language at whisper volume.

        Well, I couldn’t know what he was saying, or who he was talking to. So instead, I took a moment to really examine their equipment visually. It looked to be full body composite armor, different than anything I had seen thus far. The helmet was interesting, looking more like a scuba mask fused with a ballistic helmet. Viewing the backs of the two subordinates flanking Talkative, I could see that the air tubes were connected to a back-mounted air recycler. The weapons they carried were just as strange. Sleek black assault rifles with large capacity magazines. To top it all off they were saddle mounted, yet they had secondary triggers large enough to fire with a hoof. This, along with the inclusion of buttstocks gave me the impression that these were made with the intention of firing from a bipedal stance.

“You’ve been cleared to enter with escorts. Follow them. if you deviate course, you will be killed. She will answer queries,” He said suddenly with perfect pronunciation.

“Alright, I don’t seem to have much choice in the matter.” At that, he only gave a nod before pointing a hoof at one of the ponies beside him. Huh, should I risk a break for the door? I looked again at their weapons… not worth risking the chance unless they force the issue. Talkative fixed a gaze on Epilogue. Non-verbal communication is great- you can state your intentions without having to actually say anything that could get you in trouble. In this case it felt like ‘put it away or else’.

Then I heard the clop of hooves. My escorts were walking away. I guess that whole “do not deviate” thing had gone into effect just then. needless to say, I followed.

---===*===---

   We walked into a series of tunnels that were probably designed to be both uniform and confusing. Okay, it was most likely just a consequence of the uniformity. Regardless, my escorts seemed to know their way around; it was just a lot of walking. This led me to the conclusion that this place was fucking massive. That, and the fact that they had hidden the population of this place. To be fair, they didn’t seem like they had whisked the regular populace away. Guessing from the fact that every single door in the place was shut, their leaders had just told them to go to their rooms and close the door.

It was actually quite a shock to finally arrive at the destination. Then again, seeing a door that wasn’t shut in here would have been really intriguing at this point. Up until the point that I saw doorway with light filtering out, a paranoid part of my brain was screaming that they were just tiring me out so they could subdue and eat me. I had lagged behind my escorts because they had been trotting so quickly that unless I jogged occasionally, they were going to have a reason to shoot me. Still, at that point I had fallen behind.

“You can stay outside,” the words coming from the doorway. The voice sounded scratchy and strangely accented. Closing the distance to the door took a short time; time enough though to register the question of ‘who said that?’. Upon seeing the speaker, my first impulse was to reach for my gun.

“If you’re going to do that, then I can’t stop you, but I can say it would be a sad day for us all,” The talking zebra corpse said this with genuine sadness in his voice. He didn’t seem like he was threatening me. That was a start.

“Oh… you’re not feral… fuc-” I said, piecing some of this situation together. “Sorry… it’s just my instinct is to.” I started saying before he cut me off.

“I don’t hold it against you. I’m Ximroon, please pass through.” He says before gesturing at the doorway.

        “Alright,” I say as I let my hand drift away from my holster. I then move to enter, Ximroon moving to let me see the room I had been led to. It was another vintage laboratory. “This place doesn’t look ruined…  ”

        “Sadly, the only thing ruined here is me.” Ximroon says in serious voice as he closes the door behind him. I felt a pang of pity for him before he turns and smiles at me in a melancholy way. So his jokes are sad truths.

“No, you seem functional; you’re stripes look… great.” I stutter out. Why am I so bad with comforting?

“Heh, I guess I am ‘functional’. Now, enough pity. It does not suit you.”

“Okay, I guess I’ll be blunt; why are you here working with ponies?”

“You think those soldiers were ponies?” He then cracked a smile. I was glad that I hadn’t eaten in few hours. “I told Stone Hoof that no-one could tell they were zebras inside that armor. He still doesn’t believe that we could do better than an old bunker.”

“Okay, so many questions. Uh… how old are you? What are you doing here? What do you want from me?.” I spoke quickly.

“Likewise. Two-hundred sixty four, research, I can’t tell you for the same reason you can’t tell me your answer to the same question.”

        “I don’t know what you have to offer, pssh.” I liked this guy; something about him agreed with me. Probably the same sense of humour, or maybe his mindset from what I had seen from him? Regardless, I offered him a hand to shake.

        “I’m Jake, and I have a feeling that we should get some chairs.” He didn’t look like he was just leaving me hanging intentionally, did he not know…? “Shaking hands isn’t a normal thing here, yes.” At that he held out a necrotic hoof, we shook appendages. Gloves are wonderful things when you touch dead things. Again, I felt like I owed whoever thought up this armor a beer or a thank you letter. I totally didn’t frown when I realized that whoever had put these suits together had probably died centuries ago. Relics from a past age… the things that brought me to here and kept me alive. When I realized that I had been shaking his hoof for a solid half minute, I flashed him an unseen apologetic smile and released my grip. Poor guy didn’t know when to to stop shaking. I  just had discovered the theme of the night without even realising it.

                                         ---===*===---

        We had sat around a kettle propped atop a hot plate for the last few minutes, waiting for tea time to begin. Well, sitting was too low key of a word; we were having the most lively question and answer session to ever grace these halls. I had gotten the history of this base minus where the zebras had come into the picture. He had gotten the summary of how I had arrived here. He had an academic tone in both voice and his thoughts. That part of him was refreshing; his redirections when I asked about how he had arrived in this base were not.

As the tea kettle hissed, he got up to deal with it; something that had been nagging at me suddenly leapt out of my throat.

“Why does your ‘Equestrian’ sound different from the other zebras?”

“To answer that, you would have to know more about my past, I’ll answer your question, but be warned- you might not like where my story goes between then and now.”

“At least you didn’t end up as a brain in a jar.” In that statement there was assent to continue along with enough dark humour to tell him that he couldn’t horrify me. He handed me a coffee mug filled with hot tea before clearing his throat and sitting down.

“Back when the world had color. I was about your age when I traveled here for the first time. You see that hotplate over there?” I nodded. “I remember when the Equestrians invented a new spell that converted magic to heat. It wasn’t really the spell itself that was innovative, it wasn’t the ability to bind it to an object. It was world changing because you could use it indefinitely as long as you had a magic supply. I was sent there by my academy because I had just written an essay on the potential value that the conversion of exotic alloys to talismans could bring us. No, I went to Hoofington because I had always heard about the beauty of Equestria. That, and their preliminary findings were very exciting.”

I gave the old timer a laugh. He brightened up at that.

        “So to Equestria I went. You wouldn’t believe how much I wish I could turn back time. The basis of many technologies were created in just a few short years. It turned out that by changing the spell emitter along with the magic supply, you could make basically any kind of electromagnetic output.” He paused to let me realize the implications.

        “So everything from laser rifles to radio broadcasters is based on work you helped with?”

“Don’t forget about the mane dryers and toasters, but yes, I helped lay the groundwork.  Back then, I was treated no differently than the griffon that was head of the offshoot team. Joseph… I wonder happened to him, probably went home and became rich. He was nice to me, got me drunk on Hearth's Warming Eve once.” I think he regained his self awareness then. “My apologies, it’s just that I haven’t talked about any of this for a long time. When you get old, you find that the strangest things are remembered. So as I was saying, we were laying the foundation for everything you see around us.

It didn’t last. Not the discoveries, no, those were still plentiful when the end came. No, it was the cooperation, the willingness to look past our own interests. The greater good died.” He looked like he was about to cry, which I wasn’t sure that ghouls could even do.

“I think that some disclosure is needed now. This lab is one of the few rooms that weren’t purged of radiation. You should have taken in at least five hundred rads by now.”

“It won’t do anything, I’m immune to magical radiation. That doesn’t mean you get off for potentially poisoning me!” I had raised my voice to the point that he had backed up into his chair.

        “Stone Hoof said I could speak to you on the condition that I ‘obtain’ intelligence,” He reached under his chair and pulled a metal container into sight. “If I saw any signs of poisoning I was to give some radaway.”

“I bet you feel really guilty right now. I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same thing. Still, unethical scientists are really fucking annoying.” I couldn’t feel truly angry at him, annoyed yes, pissed not really. “You’re in the same boat as Dr. Stone. At least tell me that you can give me some answers. No, tell me why you act so guilty, I’ve told you how I fucked up, now reciprocate.” I growled at him. No, I actually was pissed, empathy had taken a back seat as I saw him avoid my glare.

“I can’t tell you why you’re immune at this moment.” He said with an apologetic tone.

“You want to know how I ended up in this tomb. Well, I’ll give you the abridged version.” He had summoned some reserve of courage, it seemed. I must have struck a nerve. “We left when we got orders telling us to come home. It was precipitated by a small diplomatic event: a ship hijacking.        That led to us taking what we had learned and using it to build things. Initially we were told that we needed weapons to fight animals and insurrectionists, and then the war began. You know how that went, right? Pressure was applied, both nationalist pressure and pressure from those that could send people to kill you in your sleep if you acted out. So I played the happy zebra even as my home town was killed, not by ponies… directly. It was our glorious caesar that sent young ones your age to die, it was my colleagues’ and my duty to arm them. Ultimately, I took a stand with some of my fellow researchers against the deployment of a weapon too horrible to imagine. It did not end well.” He stopped to take a breath, before a sardonic, slightly off kilter expression took shape on his face. My anger had died at this point. However, I didn’t want to interupt his story. Whether this was because I didn’t want to apologize or because I didn’t want to break his flow, I never would know.

 “We never did recreate Equestrian power armor. However, during the war, we did find and reverse engineer bomb collars.

 I escaped that fate- no, it was my father that got the collar. He was a veteran of the imperial guard. Some would say those were desperate days, but the moment you do something like that, then you should lay down your arms. There was no room for monstrous people before the war. I couldn’t tell you that we always had monsters among us, but I can say that some of us didn’t change. I apologize for the philosophy- I don’t talk to many zebras that listen anymore.”

“I’m sorry I pressed you. Just continue, no matter how tragic it is. Besides, I already know the end.” There, I did it. Or I guess, didn’t do it. Semantics aside, it’s just one less thing that I could have regretted forever. He looked at me after that and nothing as meaningless as words were exchanged.

 “I had no choice but to comply. They used me till the last days of the war. It seemed that they thought my talents were best utilized as a specialist aboard the submarine that brought the ancestors of the zebras out there, here.  Caesars Pride; it was well named and little else. Well, it was the finest boat Skitskarra ever produced. It would have brought the zebras left in that city pride as well, had they known about it.” Pausing once again, I got a sense of longing from him. He seemed like he could use a new station in life, two hundred years locked in the same place. His wanting to speak to me even with the possibility of my death made a lot more sense now. Words once again flowed from his mouth and I once again listened.

“The entire hull functioned as a stealth cloak, I was never so caught between pride and anguish as I watched the submarine disappear in drydock. You know what’s ironic? that battleship out there? It was built to fight our entire navy at once. Two super weapons within two kilometers of each other. Also ironic is that when we landed here I went out to look at that ship, I told Stone Hoofs grandfather Xandre that I was going out to gather intelligence. That was a lie. I went out there to die. After the missiles were fired and the harbor irradiated, I felt it would be poetic for my death to come from missiles my own submarine had launched. Yes, thats what Caesars Pride carried. Missiles. The radiation from those made me into this.” He gestured at himself. “A wretched caricature of something that had potential, fitting, it’s justice for what I had helped along. I could say that I had no choice; that I was forced to do things like build something that was inherently dishonorable. Cowardice. Nothing more needs to be said.”

“Wow that’s… you’ve had a lot of time to think about this?” He gave me a look that said ‘200 years’. “Well, you did what you could, and they punished you. I can’t hold it against you, I can’t absolve you of blame you deserve. But I ca-”

“You want something, don’t you?” He said neutrally.

“Kind of. Okay, there’s a good chance that this place is going to be searched by a force known as the Enclave.” That wasn’t really a lie, but I realized that I had been acting more and more like him recently. Regardless of his worth, I didn’t want to end up like that. I needed to be resolute.  “So, get me a meeting. Second thing, let me look at a suit of that armor and I’ll give you an offer that you would regret turning down.”

“You want a lesson on Equestrian arcane technology? Because I can give you one while we wait for a council meeting to be scheduled.    .

                                ---===*===---

My colleague had turned out to be an expert on Equestrian arcane technology. I had an idea that it was motivated by a competitive spirit. He really hated the war more than any other thing. Okay, that was the understatement of the century(well, past two.). Apparently the centuries of time he had alone gave him time to read every book in the base library. It explained why he was had a theory in every branch of science this world had to offer before the war.

Thus, it was amazing watching him strip a set of that marine armor down while talking about the various talismans involved with its operation. Everything seemed like an extension on the principles mentioned in the arcane engineering guide. Well, they were plausible within that framework.

“-given the energy surplus of the sparkle IV reactor, these suits were designed with interface capability for experimental modules. Unfortunately, none of the templates or prototypes were stored here, Except for the gravity multiplier.”

“What did you just say?”

“I’m assuming you meant “what is the gravity multiplier?” It’s a device similar to the levitation talismans used for sprite-bots and pegasus powered craft.”

        “You have the ability to manipulate gravity? How did… you had the st-” I couldn’t handle that revelation.

“The Equestrians have had that ability for millennia. What were you saying before?

“So, in theory, you could with the right use of spells and talismans create a device that moves around without expelling mass?” I hoped at that moment for him to both say yes and no. Who knew that a simple answer would could have terrible implications?

“It would require a massive power supply to move something entirely powered in that manner, but it would be possible.” He answered without seeing the implications, both beautiful and terrible.

“Let’s say you had a powerful source of acceleration to augment this levitation force. would there be a maximum speed possible using these talismans as a propulsion system?”

“If you have a powerful engine in the first place, why would you need a levitation system?” He was looking at me like I had grown a third head at this point. “For argument’s sake if you could focus the talismans less on gravity field repulsion and more on inertia negation then if you had an auxiliary propulsion system you could reach speed never before seen before.” I wasn’t proud of the loud cheer I let out as I heard him finish up.

“Do you not see that you have the stars in your reach?” I yelled at him happily.

“Why would we want to go nearer to those things?” He said in disgust at the idea.

        “There are worlds other than these… out there.” I said with a sweep of my arms towards the heavens. The dramatic effect was somewhat ruined by the feet of concrete obstructing our view of the sky.

  “I don’t doubt that there are things out there, what I doubt is whether I or anyone else would ever want to find out what they are,” He said this with enough resolve to make me hesitate to continue this line of conversation. Instead I looked at the armour. There was a talisman that he had yet to explain; a small box attached to the underside of the breast plate.

After several seconds and the beginning of an attempt on my part to remove that particular talisman from the suit, he cleared the air.

“That is the repair talisman. If it’s supplied with energy and its reservoir is filled with materials, it can rebuild anything short of catastrophic damage.” He said in a pedantic tone.

“Could I augment my armor with one of these talismans?”

  “I would have to ask first; do you have a generator built into your armor?”

“Not a magical one in my chest plating, although I think the helmet systems are powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. That’s probably what my Pipboy uses as well.”

“If you want to power a repair talisman, then you would have to use an external spark battery or a small auxiliary generator. And if anything is a constant in your escapades, then it’s your ability to get shot. If that were to happen and you had a spark battery right on your body, than it would be similar to grenade going off directly on your body.”

“Good point. However, I have a another question. What was the offshoot team the griffon was head of ?”

“The original name is meaningless, but I think I know why you're curious.

To give a functional answer, he discovered the way to convert electromagnetism into magical power.” I think the prospect of new research was enough by itself to give him a grin.

“I wasn’t lying when I said I lacked a generator in my armor, but I do have one embedded inside of me.” Instead of the horror I expected from him, I instead got his grin to change from a normal one to a devious one.

        “Council meetings take a long time to organize, I think this project has volumes of potential applications.”

        “Enough to necessitate a devoted research team and the resources to support it?” I asked the happy zebra.

        “I have control in matters of Research and Development. Then again, that’s if I stuck enough nonsensical equations into the report they would back it solely on the principle that they would never expect anything new out of me. That, and the education in this bunker has gotten progressively worse. Excluding myself, none of the inhabitants could have passed an elementary mathematics exam.” He didn’t seem to be exaggerating. I made my decision at that moment to say that he was a credible person. To be fair, at that moment other more interesting parts of my mind were thinking about the possibility of the knowledge that could be gained here. Still, others were more worried about my friends and the time that I could leave this bunker.

---===*===---

Before I knew it, I was up to my elbows in theory with just the barest hint of applications, and I loved it. Still didn’t assuage my fears that things back in Balitmare could go wrong. The dream I had later on that night in a cot in a corner of the lab had something to do with the enclave shooting my (favorite) hotel room with lasers. Needless to say, I wasn’t quite sure about the symbolism there as I woke up at four in the morning. My thoughts couldn’t stop filling themselves with more serious scenarios.

        In the end, I slept awhile longer; beautifully dreamless, as I preferred.

End Of Old World Blues…

Footnotes

All companion perks lost due to your distance from them.

        Level Up

Perk Added- Math Wrath- all action point costs are now ten percent lower.

        Is this a product of your action or something else. Better yet, what are considered your actions in that tangled mess of interacting systems you call yourself ?

        Science- 80

http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/2013/06/you-dont-say.gif