Fallout Equestria - Long Way Home
Chapter Thirteen- Trick Of The Lights
Previous ChapterChapter Thirteen- Trick Of The Lights
The room stayed silent for a moment.
“Was she…” Lifebloom said in a tone that people do when they think it’s impolite to speak of a subject.
“What the fuck did you mean by ‘you don’t have a soul’?” I had regained some form of speech, the default form, actually. Pissed.
“Without a magical signature, you can’t get poisoned by the random micro-spells radiation is composed of.” The glare I gave Lifebloom put him in a mood of placation. It showed. “So, the good news is you can’t become undead.” The two of them must have thought that I was deaf along with soulless, seeing as Helping Hoof took to whispering something into his assistant’s ear.
“At the cost of being nothing more than a machine…”
I jumped off of the table; the examination was over. I had discovered two interlocking things: by their standards, I was a piece of machinery. And, that contrary to everything I had ever observed… women don’t actually love pale, soulless males. Not all of them, at least not the one that mattered. It was with great gusto that I put on my favorite mechanism for exclusion, which the medical ponies must have interpreted as a sign of coming hostilities. Nope, I was only hostile to the distance between Icepick and I, and perhaps the fact that as time passed, that distance was increasing.
I thought about leaving immediately, but then glanced over at where she had left her armour. There was a lot of shock and awe just grafted onto that armor. Really, It would have been the height of irresponsibility just to leave it and go look for her.
A couple minutes later, I had pulled all of the ammunition from the armor system. I set off with haste. Though as I left, a sardonic snort was issued from me. This situation was absurd. The door closed, and I stepped outside into the light of fluorescent tubes whose ubiquity was the cause for concern to many a psychiatrist. I had someone to find and talk to… The realization that she was my biggest concern at that point sent a shiver down my spine. Regardless, I was on the hunt.
---===*===---
My path was erratic, well up until the point that I realized she would be hard to find, given the fact she really was a pretty average looking earth-pony. Sans the suit of armor laying in the doctors office floor of course. I decided that she would probably end up in the room we were staying in, if only for the supply of alcohol.
And as I made my way up there as quickly as I could, I just hoped I’d get a chance to tell her some things I needed to say. Maybe things that I had yet to say to myself. Out of all the things my oxygen deprived brain had time to think about, not for a second did it think about whether or not this was the right thing to do.
The door was locked when I came up to it, and in my addled state, it felt like the end of the world. I don’t blame myself; those Doctors had the half the bedside manner of Doctor Stone. Honestly, they had about twice as much as I.
“Can we talk about this please? I really don-” I said loudly through the door. The seemingly impenetrable barrier swung open, surprising me for a moment. She had gotten good at interpreting my body language, therein lies why she quickly acquired a bittersweet smirk on her face at my surprise.
“I think they’re mistak-” I said to her before she cut me off. It was only then as she began to speak that her cheeks became wet.
“Maybe they are…” her voice had an uneasy tone in it.
I stepped into our room, closing the door as I did so. Some initiative was taken, and I walked over to the bed and sat down, while taking off the mask I wore.
“Even if it was something like that, why does it matter? I mean, it wouldn’t change anything…”
“I freaked out, and I’m still worried right now. How are you supposed to take something like that?” She said this with a shake of her head.
“I’m honestly wondering that too… What the fuck kind of bedside manner was that?” She chuckled and sat down next to me.
“You were completely serious when you said there wasn’t anything magic in your world, this just confirms it…”
“It still freaks me out a little every time I see it, but in comparison to brains in jars and all the rest of the strange things going on around me… no, not just around me, inside of me. I don’t even know what me is anymore. Maybe I never did.” I had become slightly frantic, maybe the fact we were having a conversation like this, about something related to me, my own characteristics had thrown me off. I didn’t want her to see me like this, yet I knew on some level she was the only one I could talk to without the facade.
“You’re you, metal and all.” She said with the firmness of someone speaking their mind about something they care about, with a touch of knowing they're right, in their own eyes at least.
“Yeah, maybe right now, but do you know what I was like before any of this?”
“Not really, you've never talked about it, And I've never asked…” She replied in a voice that sounded guilty. Why would she be the guilty one? I had always been the stupid one. I still don’t understand why she’d go all the way to Baltimare to find me. She should have stayed here. I probably would have bitten the bullet in the desert on my way to a place that was most likely looted lifetimes ago.
“And I love you for it, the not wondering about me… what if I told you I was the guy that wouldn’t look at homeless people in the streets, the kind of guy that looked the other way as people got mugged. It’s a lot easier to do things that could be confused for heroism if you don’t even know if you’re alive. Icepick, I’m like a ship that got half of it ripped out. I barely look like myself anymore. I don’t act like I used to. I have hazy memories of being a scared guy, scared of everything. My apartment had four locks on it. I bought guns as a crutch. The guy you’re sitting next to isn’t anything like what he remembers, what he used to be.” I finished in a huff. My voice had never gotten above what would be a normal volume.
“I get it… I think. You’ve been through some shit, shit that breaks some people. But does it matter that you’re not the same guy? Did you really like that guy?”
“How can I answer the question of whether or not I’d prefer him? I’d prefer his context in almost every way: he gets to see the sun, he gets the ability to eat till he bursts, he gets to be a lazy half bum and still do mindless things. It doesn’t matter that he chooses to stay indoors. Safe, without people to hurt him. Go to a lecture, eat, go to work, don’t talk to anyone about anything that isn’t critical to doing the job. Do everything that needs to be done that day. I remember all of that, a little more every day, actually. Someone else’s life. Maybe it’s the contextual difference. I doubt it.” I paused; I hadn’t quite ran out of things I had needed to vent for… a lifetime. Icepick appeared to be right on the verge of blurting something out. I must have gotten good at telling her species’s body language as well.
“I doubt that you’re a machine. I’ve never heard a machine talk about their problems of dissociative self. Not that what you're saying is wrong; from what you’re saying about the old you, he’s not someone who would have lasted long here.” I laid back and gave her a sidelong look.
“Icepick, I’ve been here like, a month, I don’t know if I’ll live through tonight.”
“Then Jake, why do you still act like you will?”
“It’s more probable that I will, I just try not to think about anything like it's a certainty.”
“You still want to go into that crater, don’t you?”
“Yeah. I don’t care about it that much; if you don’t want me to go, then I’ll stay. More importantly, I need to know if we’re still what… what we were. If nothing else, I’d like to think I’m worth a second date, soul or no soul.”
“Well, I’m late for a shift and I do like having someone to sleep with. For warmth-”
“Nope, I’m dating a sex fiend. Oh, spare me the horror, oh what will the other members of your order say?!” I said in my terrible pseudo-english accent.
“So, concubine… where did you stash my armor?” She said in a tone that sounded just as bad as the accent, but better because she cared enough to carry on with the in joke. Yep, we were a couple.
“It’s laying on the ground where you left it; that shit’s heavy.” I beat her to the punch by pulling out a fifty caliber round and dropping it on the ground. “Sans the ammo, of course.”
She looked at me for a time; with an expression of contemplation that was at odds with her own admitted time constraints.
“Let me get this straight: you can barely move my armour, and it takes me an hour to re-arm my guns?” That statement had more truth in it than either of us realized, well at least the theme of it was pretty universal.
---===*===---
So I did go with her to rearm her guns, and in the empty clinic we left each other. However, before she had her helmet back on, she did kiss me. I had a feeling that we had strengthened our relationship. That, and she was really good at suppressing her own feelings when in the presence of a… loved one who had bigger issues.
It was hard to believe I had someone who wanted me, who I got along well with. It was almost enough… I had actually contemplated staying here, with her for a second before catching myself. I steeled myself and shoved the thoughts of my own future out of my head. It was someone else’s problem. A dark chuckle spread across an empty room. It stopped almost as soon as the issuer heard it himself. I needed to go talk to the society about the information extraction job. In that vein, I stepped out.
---===*===---
In approaching a member of the now more open Twilight Society, I was told to wait in a hallway they had led me to. The only problem was the whole ‘waiting for an hour in a hallway with interesting technology just a few meters away’ thing. To be fair, when someone tells you to wait in a place, and they don’t define what they mean by ‘here’, it gives you the freedom to wander, if only within a few meters.
Honestly, in all my conversations with the residents of the tower, it had become apparent that the Twilight Society had been secret for centuries, and that they were a known as a bunch of pompous pricks by a bunch of pompous pricks. Which in and of itself is an achievement. The fact that membership is kinda limited to unicorns, and mostly unicorns with ancestors that had Ministry of Arcane science access might have contributed. That’s not to say that they didn’t have a really shitty PR team now that the DJ had left. Well, the DJ and his assistant. Regardless of that, they had put me in a situation that necessitated a little exploration on my part. Hence my self guided tour of the place.
If the place would have been abandoned, I would have had no qualms with breaking down any doors that kept me from what could be world bending technology. But alas, I had my reputation as a semi-employable mercenary to keep. So it was with sadness that I passed by many locked doors, which were almost all of the doors. Before long, I was at the end of a hallway that I assumed would be something like a dead end. What I didn’t expect were a pair of ponies coming down a hall perpendicular to mine.
As they walked in my direction, I noticed that I knew one of them. I was about to be graced by the likes of Double A. The stallion next to her was in a labcoat of all things. They were giving each other looks, lecherous looks. They spotted me and with a whispered phrase from Double A, they passed right by me, and that was that. It was only by chance that I heard the stallion talk about a room that only he could enter, and as his voice passed just out the range that I could hear it comfortably. The words “force fields” were uttered by Double A. That led my sidetracked mind off on a tangent in a hallway. Energy shields? They have those? Had. Why didn’t they put them on their powered armor? Was it a size constraint? Lack of power density? My mind was filling with up to the moment that I heard the soft sounds of a suit of armor and the louder noise of that person’s boots smacking into the floor.
Yep, Elvis was running around the nearly unused corridors of the scientific wing of Tenpony tower. The realization that he could lose me very quickly in this place hit me before I even moved from that spot. It wasn’t surprising that just a few seconds later a door sealed shut. A powered one at that. The noise Elvis generated was gone as soon as that happened. He could have been doing all kinds of shady shit, and no one could really stop him. The place was big enough that if a single person came across him, and detected him, then he could probably silence them before they got word off to anyone else that he was out there stalking about. Looking for something, maybe? I questioned his motives, his goals, and his sanity. Not nearly enough, though, to tell anyone about the sighting. Besides, it probably wasn’t going to be determined to anything. For all the shit he could or would pull, doing anything that would in turn make the wasteland proper, or even a powerful group target him seemed beyond him. Elvis had a strong sense of self preservation. Arthur was the one with suppressed self destructive tendencies. It was all idle speculation anyway. Elvis might have just wanted to be alone.
The opening of a door down the hall nearer to where they thought I would be,made me turn my head on instinct. A sound of a quadruped walking was picked up by my ears. It was time for a briefing. I turned the corner and stayed stock still. Moments later, the sounds repeated, followed by the woosh of a door being sealed. No, I really needed to know what Elvis was doing. That was a motivation. The possibility that I would get to see an energy barrier was also a motivating factor. I set off in the direction of Elvis’s last known location.
I didn’t find him. Honestly, the half hour I spent searching the place was in vain. Both from a technological acquisition standpoint, and finding out what the fuck Elvis was doing standpoint. It was that, along with the idea that I had blown off a job that I think everyone dreaded, that left me in something like a sour mood.
So when I did happen upon someone, I was miffed. The very fact they were in a secluded hallway to begin with seemed strange to me. That, as well as the books he had been carrying. There were a lot of books, big ones at that. Well… it seemed strange to me after we collided, then picked ourselves up. Perhaps five seconds or so passed of polite apologies, mirrored automatic politeness if you will. In that time, I did get a look at the pony I ran into. A small looking buck. The flash of light that telekinesis released made me look at first. Him then, the floor; he was picking up books one by one and setting them on his back.
“Let me help,” I said before bending to pick up the books he had been carrying.
“I didn’t think mercenaries had altruistic streaks,” the buck said with some bite.
` “Considering I’m really about as much a mercenary as your remark was a venomous retort, it’s not beyond reason,” I replied in a humourous tone.
He must have heard the warmth I was trying to get across. A wry smile crossed his face soon after.
“So, you see through the thin veneer of expressed slight, therefore you’re probably asking questions in your head, but it’s unlikely those question are about the best way to harm a buck you just knocked over?” He asked with a mix of cynicism and its twin in his voice. Regardless of anything else, I had found another scholar. The hunt for the educated members of a burned out carcass of a society never ended, it seemed.
“Not to cut you short, but why are you walking around with all these books in the middle of nowhere?”
He looked at me as if trying to determine how trustworthy I was. After realizing my face wasn’t really visible, he shifted in his hooves a little. “I’m a teacher… I needed some literature for the foals,” I looked at the cover of the book. They were all copies of ‘The Prince of The Moon’. I didn’t hear the next couple of words he said, I never got to say goodbye to Glycerine. I needed say some words to her- the thought of leaving without giving resolution is horrible. “-it’s hard doing it. The Enclave, they had no reason to take the tower… Balanced Force was a good mare.” He had become solemn, it was the tone of voice change that brought me to attention. I had to ask though…
“What did Balance Force do?”
“She taught the Natural Sciences, Mathematics, and she loved to teach the elementary forces. She caught an energy bolt to the chest when we threw the Enclave out.”
He was still hurting. I could see it in every part of him. It was within my capabilities to sympathize.
“Um, hear me out for a second. Would you on take a temporary educator on a provisional basis?”
“I’d love the help. Getting young ponies literate is enough of a challenge.” He gave me an honest, appraising look for a moment before setting up a question with answers that meant more than what the words themselves could ever convey.
“I’ve heard some limited speculation about you. A wanderer who came from nowhere, with no easy to see motivations. I only ask; can you teach them?”
“I can do a lot of work, and this work’ll do some good. So yeah, I can teach some kids. I know this is sudden… but anomalous events make up all the important events.”
“But only fools see patterns in them.” The buck who still hadn’t revealed his name said before looking at the pile of books I was idly holding, and getting an idea.
“How about I continue the interview as we carry the books to the classroom?”
Man of action, I see. Pragmatism… he had it in spades, it seemed, he wasn’t desperate, just open to useful possibilities. I felt that I was on the way to gainful employment.
---===*===---
As I left the room that, come tomorrow would be mine to indoctrinate children in, I knew a couple things that were nearly certain: the buck’s name was Papercut, he really didn’t know much about any scientific field, and there was most definitely something that I construed as a bounce in my step as I made my way out to one of the local food vendors. I was going to surprise Icepick with a dinner I had cooked in the suite, and with my (temporary) new job. Damn… was I becoming someone worth something? You know, other than all the jokes I could make when I made it home about a cyborg school teacher, I felt that maybe if I did well at this, I could look at the mirror and see someone I’d actually want to meet in a dark alley at night.
My footsteps weren’t the only sounds in the hall, but they were the loudest.
---===*===---
The range was doing it’s job. An electric job, of course. I doubted they could get a gas running here. That wasn’t the thought running through my head as I waited for Icepick to get back. No I was really wondering what I wanted to wear in front of the kids tomorrow.
“I’ll ask Icepick,” I said out loud before realizing that she wears exactly two things on any occasion: power armor, and the undersuit for the armor.
“Wait… I have an undersuit too.” There was a current of sadness at how long I had thought about the issue before realizing I was literally wearing the solution.
As I went in to check on the soup I began taking off my outer armor. A few minutes later the the outer layers of the suit were laying on the table, it was scratched, beaten, and still going in spite of it all. It felt like a metaphor for my own life at that point, which might have just meant I had grown really attached to my casing upgrade, as my lost voice would have said.
---===*===---
I lifted the lid of the worn pot. It smelled better than the stuff Gumdrop had sold me a long time ago. The meat was really gamey in all the test bites I had taken. Regardless of this, I thought it tasted good enough. The opening of the door surprised me enough that I dropped the spoon I had been using into the bottom. A couple droplets of hot water flew up striking my hand. In my general experience, people don’t like to hear a yip of pain the moment they open a door. People tend to get worried at that.
“Are you okay?” Icepick asked while running into view.
“Fine,” I said automaticly as the immediate surprise wore off and any residual pain dulled into non-existence.
“I made food,” I said cheerily. She responded by turning around and gesturing at the main release of her armor. I obliged but not before turning off the range.
“Thanks, I really just want to eat and lay down.”
“You have a fun day guarding these people?” I asked as I helped her slide one of her leg sections off.
“They had a security breach close to the megaspell chamber. Something set off a motion sensor, something large-”
“Yet able to get through a shield.”
“How?”
“I was up near there. I heard Arthur moving around up there... I think it was him, pretty sure.”
“Noted… By the way, did you know that you'd be a really bad politician?” She said in half joking way. She must not be that worried about Arthur. Or suspicious about Arthur, rather.
“Funnily enough, the one time I actually helped a ‘politician’ out, I sounded really confident. It’s just that what I was saying was more than a little self serving.”
“What you’re saying is that the only time you sound confident is when you’re lying?” Icepick said before moving behind me to get a bowl.
“Kind of. I’ve noticed my awkward run-on ramblings get the most pronounced when I’m trying to be the most truthful that I can be.”
I looked down at her to see her reaction, the look on her face told me two things: That soup was a logistical nightmare for these people, and that she wanted help at that moment, but was too prideful ( I guess) to ask for it. Needless to say I put some soup in her bowl. Then did the same for myself.
“Thanks,” she said softly, a touch belatedly as well.
We moved in something like concert towards the table we had yet to have used. As I sat down, I noticed the strange thing she must have pulled out of the silverware drawer: A spoon with a rubber bands attached to it.
“Never seen me use a spoon before?” She asked after she caught me staring as she pulled the utensil on. Two bands to hold a something in place and maintain stability. Nice?
“Yeah, I mean it makes sense, still kinda weird to my eyes.”
She utilized it by sucking down a spoonful of broth. Effective?
“So I have some good news. I assume you want to hear it. I got a job teaching.”
She would have dropped the spoon if she had the ability to do that. Surprised would have been a concise understatement.
“You mean with Foals? T-teaching foals?” She looked worried.
“No, I’m teaching the natural and arcane sciences. No, they’re old enough to make their own decisions about what I teach. Besides, I have the old teacher’s lesson plans to use as a framework.”
“Old teacher?”
“Enclave plasma shot to the chest. I only got the job by chance, her colleague(and suspect lover) was getting some books together, and I ran across him. He seems pretty nice.”
“That’s terrible, but teaching is marginally less dangerous than exploring radioactive craters, so I’m on board.” She smiled at me. It had the hint of bittersweet happiness in it that I had come to love about her.
“Only marginally, though,” I said in my pseudo-serious tone reserved only for occasions like this. She laughed, and I felt for a moment that maybe in spite of it all, we could work out.
---===*===---
As I looked at myself in the mirror, I knew I didn’t look like the image I had of myself in my head of Jake the teacher. If the weird idealistic part of your mind understood context, then maybe you wouldn’t imagine yourself wearing a blazer with leather elbows. I brushed my hair to the left with a hand and took a last look at what used to be an average looking guy, in the old context. I laughed a low desperate laugh at the realization that context is literally and figuratively everything. The realization that was always on the tip of my pre-conscious, at best. After another minute or so of rumination, I remembered that I had a job to do, and I needed to leave to do it.
Just before the door to the room closed, the lights flipped off, and in that moment the mirror went from a utilitarian piece of furniture to a something made more than useless by a change in its context.
---===*===---
“Alright class, I’m a teacher at this point, so I do have to put up with a perpetual question and answer session. However, this is a good time to ask the normal personal questions.”
The class filled with mostly normal terrestrial variants of the dominant species on this planet looked slightly startled about being put on the spot. Soon enough though, a hoof was thrust into the air. I nodded at the thruster.
“What are you and where did you come from?” The pony who asked seemed energetic in her gesticulations, which was strange, given the fact I hadn’t really seen anyone here use hoof motions.
“Man, If I had a bottle cap for every time I had to answer those two questions, I’d have too many damn bottle caps. No, but in all honesty, if my origins don’t make you want to tear into the curriculum presented here, then you aren’t really cut out for a world built on inquisitiveness.” I paused to look at the group before moving ahead. Their chalk board would suffice. I drew a crude circle before adding the word earth under it.
“This is where I came from… It had one, maybe two, sapient species on it, the obvious one being humanity. Homo sapiens. You wouldn’t know it, but we were at about a fifty-fifty chance of turning our own world into something similar to yours. Really though, there is a lot more variation between this world and my origin point. The place that I got pulled into against my will was a place that seems more and more like yours. The nearly mirror image between the two is why we speak the same language, have the same written language, and have compatible technology. Your Equestrian wasteland is an image of a perverted, in the classical sense of the word, version of my own world, plus a couple hundred years of time drift.” The board had a few other crude sketchings on it. My lungs had a moment to do their job as the class took a moment to comprehend what I had said.
“That’s convoluted,” A buck in the front of the class said bluntly.
“How do you think It felt to live it?” I snarked back, not with hostility, just in the way that someone does when they’re trying to build up a rapport.
“I saw you walking around with almost as many guns as the stable dweller carries. So I’d imagine it sucked. A lot.” He had a tone that, heard by itself, could almost be mistaken for a friend talking to another friend.
“Can we get on with the lesson?” A meek voice called out from the back of the room.
“So today, class, we’re going to continue on with the unit on forces. My favorite unit, circular motion, no less.” The students murmured slightly, as was natural. I assumed my position at the chalkboard yet again.
---===*===---
As I walked out of the room after teaching three classes in a row and dealing with the frantic tries of negotiation that homework brings out, I wanted to get back to my suite.
The next few hours flew by. I did some refresher problems along with reading some of their textbooks. It was honestly more of an afterthought to heat up some canned food for Icepick and I.
I wasn’t expecting the look on her face when she came in, helmet a noticeable bulge in her pack. Grave would be the right word.
“I notified the society about the probability that Elvis was the one poking around up there. They were horrified, because they had just sent him on the mission in the crater.”
“So that sounds exactly like the kind of thing that happens when an information asymmetry in a system plays out. What happened next?”
“They got some of the technicians to do some searching. They found a bomb.”
“Why the fuck would he put a bomb in there?” I yelled. The time I saw him talking to a sprite-bot then popped into my head. I kept it to myself. For the time being, at least. “What are they going to do about him?”
“I don’t know exactly, but nothing good for his health,” She answered swiftly.
“Bomb threats make people angry.” I paused to think. They have to be… “This is being kept from the public, isn’t it?”
“They only wanted to tell me to kill on sight. I didn’t want to do that. They didn’t want to tell me anything about it, and when I did say I would pull us out, they gave up the details. So don’t tell anyone.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t have a lot of people to give state secrets out to.”
“Something tells me you could make it happen.”
---===*===---
. Healthy skepticism of established knowledge would serve her well, although I wasn’t sure it was that and not some lack of self esteem.
“Very good, and now quick question… as listeners of the radio, I believe you must have heard some things about the Stable Dweller. Now, raise a Hoof if you were interested in not just her actions, but her tools?” I spoke to the assembled ponies, most of which having never left their tower. A vertical gated community, complete with all the trappings of an elitist society. I hadn’t read about a lot of the Stable Dweller’s accomplishments myself, but the hearsay was pretty prevalent.. News the old fashioned way, I guess. What I did hear told me that what I had done in my time here was nothing compared to her. An alien with unknown motives is trumped by a populist heroine with a gun that lights people on fire. That was fine with me. Honestly though, I was more interested in the reactions of the youth to the stories of her. The stirrings of revolution were forming in their hearts. Change had come for better or worse. Their parents had always had the benefits of living off the inflated prices they could afford to charge others in their social strata. A social hierarchy had formed. The few that knew the secrets of their society, along with the ones that could go into the secured parts of the place, were a step above those in the tower. Well, at least status based on genetics had some pragmatic basis in this instance.
Maybe this generation was on point to figure out that all the bottle caps in the world didn’t protect you from the superpower in the clouds, or the armies of a quasi-communist state. Not just that, because the cabal in charge here had acknowledged these facts. They just pursued tentative alliances with a fourth rate power and the revival of one of the same weapons that had damned the world the last time around. To be fair, maybe I was biased when I learned that the weapon being readied was named after their long dead God-Queen.
When I looked back at the room, many hooves were raised. Well, time to gain some interest… and be the cool teacher. “Good. So, as I understand it, she uses a couple different firearms. Now, I mentioned it before, but the plow is the most important invention in the history of civilisation. However, in this class showing Physics, practically can be aided by a look at weaponry. Practical Tools are derived from esoteric knowledge.” I waited for questions. None came, so I continued. “The Stable Dweller tends to use a Large caliber revolver. Now, a gun like that has a lower projectile velocity, but the projectile fired is larger.” I got some nods of understanding and a couple bored looks. I pointed at the board. The equations I had written gave some more substance to the lesson. After a few seconds, I decided to pull out two items- a two-millimeter gauss round and a five-five-six bullet separated from its casing. As they were two inert items, I thought they’d make good classroom aids. I took one in each hand and held them out to the class.
“You want to make some conjectures about what fires these?”
A hoof raised and I nodded at her. “The big one looks like a regular bullet, so a chemical propellent. Can I see the smaller one?” In my walking over to what had become my star pupil, I could see that the class had their eyes glued to the pony near me. Starswirl… in the last couple days, she had gotten less hesitant to speak. Her intuitive grasp of the subject and general thoughtfulness had reminded me why I liked learning but hated the concept of high school. The projectile was put in front of her, and she picked it up with her mouth. “This is ferrous, isn’t it ?” She responded after letting it drop back onto the desk.
“Yes,” I said in an encouraging tone.
“And it’s pointed, not like a pistol round, Which relies on mass to be really deadly. So, is this a specialist’s rifle round, or is it a machine pistol round?”
One of the many snarky bucks stood up and blurted out “Did you not see the rifle with coils over the long barrel? It’s a magnetic accelerator. Tiny bullet, massive velocity.” The collective feeling of an answer that led to many other questions, some of which I would answer, and some of which would be answered within the group could be felt. The majority felt encouraged. The group of one was not.
“You’re right. Just, don’t let it go to your head.” I said with a shrug, a non-committal one at that. I could empathize with both extremes of personality. Though I felt a need to help one and let the other learn the folly of their actions at his own expense, I could honestly only hope that he would survive the lesson. I heard Starswirl speaking under her breath. Her words were indiscernible, but sounded critical of herself.
“Don’t feel stupid, or a failure, when someone asks for conjecture not knowing the answer is par for the course. It’s not your fault, you did well.” I said to her before turning around and telling the class that I’d give them some problems based upon the acceleration profiles of the different ballistic weapons. It was only after they were working on the problems that I realized I didn’t have a laser rifle to have them look at to describe the acceleration of photons. The fact that having them look at a grenade launcher and its principals would be good practice did cross my mind.
I did worry about the decent human being that had been gone for a couple of days. He would have been perfect to show what an education can do for you. Well, his stuff would have been a welcome edition to the stuff that I could tout as a tangible product of sound research methodology. Besides, what cool teacher could resist showing off a working suit of Terran Power Armor?
I drew a deep breath and began to erase the board. Someone else had this room in a couple minutes…
---===*===---
“So I heard from somepony in security that you had taught their colt how long it would take to fall from the top of the tower.” My utterly nonchalant look gave her pause. She must have my meaning, because her voice shifted to a more steady ‘why did you do that’ speech pattern. “Lacquered Baton caught their foal trying to sneak onto the roof with a bag of paper weights.”
“So? Galileo did basically the same thing.” I said tersely.
“First of all, I don’t know who you’re talking about, and second of all, ponies don’t like it when their sons do stupid things.” Icepick said honestly.
“These parents don’t really understand children then,” I responded way too snidely.
“Shut up. you’ve never had to deal with children. You treat them like adults that need a mentor. You treat everyone like they’re one step from a child but with a couple words from you, they can ascend to a plane as lofty as yours,” She said with a conviction that sounded repressed.
“What?” my voice wavered with shocked sadness.
“You heard me, you try so hard to build yourself up, to feel different, superior even.” Icepick hadn’t gotten any louder, an increase in volume would have cauterized the wound, slightly.
“I just try to be a good guy. I mean, if you knew half the shit I’ve pulled in the last couple weeks…” The words that came from my mouth were as a honest as any other thing said by me that night. “You know who saved me from the festering shithole that was Baltimare. A place where I wasn’t far from dying, a place where success meant more fucking bottle caps, more fucking booze, maybe a one night stand complete with a spare consciousness. But there, if I failed, it wasn’t necessarily my life on the line. it was others, innocent or not. Intelligent or not. Failure was totally an option there.
Luckily for me, you came there to pick me up, to give me a modicum of a realized existence. I’m sorry that you know me well enough that you figured me out, watching me tick is like waiting for a pendulum to stop. it’s all inertia and an efficient swing.”
“The school teacher that just wants a happy life. Is that what you want to be?” It was an angry question… Not just toward me, but to something she held dear.
“More than anything else.” the words left my mouth. She laughed, hysterically.
“What happened to the guy that fought with the mare he had barely just met?” Icepick asked her rhetorical question before answering it herself. She was healthy, naturally. The magic that permeated her body, the ultimate difference between me and her, the thing that made me more alien than the rest. The very thing that would make sure I’d die a croaking, extended death, a breakdown with no return to what once was. Entropy taking its course was the same thing that nearly guaranteed that someone with a half decade lead on me in years still laughed with no coughing, no stoppage, no biological limit to what her lungs could belt out.
I could do nothing but stand there… she had found a comfortable place on the carpeted floor. Even in her mentally questionable state, I still felt a longing, a need for her. In that vein, I dropped to the floor and reached out to hold her. She stopped after a few seconds of continuous contact. Our eyes locked, my hollow hunter’s eyes held by eyes that were wrought differently. I moved my head to rub my cheek against hers.
“What was that about? you don’t have to tell me, but I’m going to worry if I don’t know,” I asked with hesitation. I didn’t want another multiple minute laughing fit. She could have been the commissar of an army built on dark sarcasm, it didn’t mean I liked her showing that side off.
“I can’t do this,” she said softly before giving me a single kiss. As she pulled away, a smirk was on her face. A sardonic one, at that.
“What can you not do?”
“It’s not you that’s the problem. No, you have enough of those, and it shows. Your coping mechanisms are nice though. Annoying, but nice. No, it’s the whole domestic bliss shit. I read about life back in the day. When mares were mares, and bucks minded the house and knew when to plow the field.” She looked me in the face then nodded down at our legs. The smirk was doubled when she looked at me again. That earned her an amused chuckle from me. “When I look outside the walls, when I walk out there and look at the desicrated corpse of a skyline, I see how fake it is here. The Enclave had this place for about a week. It turns out that they aren’t that different from these ponies, from how I was brought up. We all thought we had won. Or at least, were sitting in the least terrible position. It turns out that we had all lost something along the way, or we had to try harder to retain what we had. A sea of recycled goods, ideas, books, weapons, armor. Oh we had plenty to drink, It was just that we knew that the next person would get what we had.” I rarely had heard her get so sentimental about anything. In the pause, as she found her words once more, I held her tighter. “That right there. It’s not normal. I never thought my buck could do that… Honestly though, I got the intelligence reports from the Fillydelphia Rangers. They reported that somepony had united the slavers there, an enigma. He talked a big game about building schools, restarting factories, restoration. Then, under our gaze, he went out and did it. I was just barely an initiate at the time, still based not that far from here, at a base that was wiped out by the Stable Dweller.
It didn’t take long before the Ranger high command tried to take him out, repeatedly. Might be why he made one of his first military moves of taking the original Ranger base there. The fact that he’s done something, anything, constructive is his biggest selling point. Doesn’t matter that he’s selling the same philosophy that led to the need for a rebirth of the land. Collective responsibility for saving the children, Collective responsibility for defeating the zebras. A collective scar on the land, a collective scar in our hearts. It’s not that he’s too wrong, it’s that he is right in all the ways that should matter. And that’s why he’s started all of this, the reason the Enclave decided to show off their power armor and their ships. The reason why these ponies are frantically trying to get their own scary weapon from the past. The reason I-we broke from the old order. We left an order that treated the droppings of a fallen generation as a precipice for our species.
When I’m around you like this, I forget about all of that for a while. But it’s like a hangover that you keep back by drinking. It comes back in full force when you realize what you’re doing. You care about me, about people, about everything. It’s not indifference, it’s the knowing that you’ve done things that others never will. The knowledge that you just want a place you can improve by peaceful means. You don’t have a conviction that gnaws at you night and day, to go out and do the only thing you were born to do. You only fight out of necessity. If you fight for anything else, you get hurt almost as much as the person who loses,” She finished with a tired sigh.
“I feel bad because I don’t think I can be the warrior you want me to be. When I put that armor on, it turns me into a different person. I can’t really explain it but… consequences are buried under a layer of abstraction. I shoot better in that thing than I can now. It segments me. I like this guy right now, holding you. Not a guy with red eyes and a perpetual scowl.”
“You’d become him to keep holding me, though?” She asked tentatively.
“Yeah,” I said before going in for a kiss this time. The night was short, and we let ourselves out. It was never explicitly stated, but I had an inkling of an idea that I wasn’t the only person whose armor was more than met the eye.
---===*===---
“How did you do that?” One of the students asked in rush.
“On a limited budget and a literal alignment of the planets…” I answered with a touch of reverence.
“You said there was a record on it?” Starswirl stated her question, in something approaching a confident voice. Learning to ask questions when you genuinely need help is the hardest lesson you learn while learning. A question about a genuine yet thoroughly academic interest is on the right track.
“Yeah, it was a gold record, with a sample of U-238 on it for radiological dating. The sounds of Earth, greetings in a lot of languages, all the understated fanfair.”
“Wouldn’t it be funny if It got here, because we have record players and speak the exact same language?” Hearthstone the Wunderkind pondered aloud.
“Imagine that and multiply that by about a thousand… You know, I already admitted that it fel-” My response was cut off by sound of the front door being kicked open.
“They sent someone after Arthur!” Icepick’s voice bounded out of her armor’s speakers. I dropped my pen as the words hit me. Fuck, I couldn’t lose another one.
I felt like whatever I was building here could only stand as long as the people I had befriended were ambiguously not dead.
The stunned classroom looked on as I tensed up, feeling the muscles of my throat ready.
“Who, when are they leaving?” I yelled out to the person who had yet to stop moving in my direction. Everything arrived in a static position as she stopped inches in front of me.
“A bounty hunter… I can’t remember the name… She already left. They wouldn’t tell me.” Icepick’s bitter tones wounded me, the instinctual reaction to harm whoever had led to her state was egging at me. That kind of feeling is rarely, if ever, removed with logic. The fact that anything I could do short of vaporizing the place could be better done by her was known. Regardless, I also knew that I cared more about her feelings on the matter than I did my own lackluster reaction to a death threat against someone who I could still call a friend. Maybe I had already internalized his probable death. Another name crossed off a list that was always sitting on a knife’s edge. What had I become? Someone on the list probably knew.
“I can’t even…” I said with the resolve that comes from resolving to reach a resolution. “Sorry, class is over. You have your problems. Read the pages. Again, I’m sorry.” I addressed them before getting the hell out of there with Icepick only a stride behind. I closed the door with a haste they had never seen from me. I wondered if that would be last thing they’d see of me. Out of all my myriad of fears, that one, the fear not of death necessarily, but just… the idea of eternal separation had become a shadow over everything I did.
I turned to face her. We needed to discuss our next move, somewhat privately, I might add. Ehh, deserted hallway was close enough to private.
“How close are they to getting it done?”
“I think they’re done already.” Her voice dropped. She wasn’t far from letting out a laugh that would wake the dead. The problem was that I wasn’t that far from doing that myself.
“Really? Because I haven’t seen any beams shoot down from the clouds to smite the enemies of this downsized city state.” I asked, still in the throes of anger yet honestly wondering about that. I mean, the kids would have mentioned it if the weapons usage had gotten any notoriety. Which a death laser tends to get, I’d assume.
“I think they’re waiting. The Enclave managed to beat Red-Eye. What’s left of his army in the Everfree is going to reinforce Fillydelphia. That’s what I heard.”
“Then let’s leave. I-we need to go after…” I said, before the reality of the situation struck me just as the sadness in her voice registered in my mind. She had been ordered to stay. It made sense. The power of a dead god, a new, more people-friendly organization, and a new sense of Self-actualizing morality had set the stage in this place. And she was away from the one thing she thought was truly hers. Fuck.
I stooped down slightly, gracelessly, to wrap my arms around her shoulders. In vain, I squeezed. The steel didn’t yield to the flesh. It was no surprise when the helmet popped off. When she moved to remove it herself, I didn’t give her the chance. If there is anything that has graduation in the universe, it is in the way you put something down. In that case, it got about halfway between her head and the floor before I let my fingers release.
“I got my orders from some of the reinforcements they sent our way today. I got a promotion and orders to hold position.” There were tears in her eyes now.
I knew about some guys in the past that were given promotions under interesting circumstances… I just hoped that wasn’t the case here. If it was, then I guess I’d have to give credit to whoever was pulling strings down in good old Twenty-Nine. Either way, I knew now that the Applejack’s Rangers were reformers, not revolutionaries.
To avert doom, sacrifices must be made. It matters not that an ingrained need to sacrifice oneself, and a thinking altruistic desire to help others by any means that a person can do by themselves are different in which they are built. It only really matters that people are willing to do what you think is right. The commander, decider of fate. El Muerte. My thoughts bounced around in the chamber of my mind. Equivocation, empathy, apologetic thoughts, a suppressed scream and a set of white knuckles. In the span of just a moment, I was pulled and stretched to let them all take control of my decidedly finite conscious mind. I opened my eyes as the feeling of lips on my cheek brought me back to ‘reality’. One dab on my part was enough to remove the trace of a tear on her part.
Her smile was a beacon, and now that I think back on it, mine probably did the same for her. The ashes of a conflict centuries old had been stirred up, with Icepick and I in what looked like the middle of it. Neither of us knew then how much energy the person who had kicked the embers had left
---===*===---
Later on, after stuffing our faces, because we wanted to, the both of us just wished to lay down on the bed for a while. An errant thought prompted me to speak.
“You wanna try that whole domestic bliss thing? I mean, I think one way or another, this is probably more of a trial run.” I hesitated for a moment, then decided against adding ‘whether or not we want it to be’. The only people who like being told that they have no control over something are the ones that already acknowledge it. I didn’t know that she didn’t believe in a deterministic situation, but I wanted to believe that she believed she had some control of fate in that regard. Stalwart defenders of volition are hard to come by in a wasteland. I didn’t want to lose the one I knew I had.
“How about I tell you what I want? I want to do something to help, defend the people. Living with enough to get by, a rucksack next to a fire, going off with more ammunition than food. Even just moving around being seen, making ponies know that something has changed. Being a harbinger of better days. That’s what my goals are. I love having you around, you’re a good buck… It’s just that if you want to stay with me, you’ll probably have to learn to teach out in the open, or in a stable somewhere close by. This place doesn’t need help. It needs to help others. The people in charge don’t really see that, but as long as some good comes from us staying here, as long as the new Rangers act like a force for good, then I’ll listen to them.”
“I think I can deal. Besides, if this place does go to shit, then my plan involving aliens is our best bet,” I said with a smile barely tugging at my features. I was warm, I was content. I awaited a response.
“It can’t be worse than manipulating a group of people into building superweapons?” Icepick said in a lax tone, denoted by a yawn.
“Are you talking about me, or just that plan in general? because I honestly don’t think people start building superweapons without being manipulated.” I laughed after a second of silence. Her laugh had a tone to it, like someone accidentally referencing your own inside joke.
---===*===---
The next day passed with the two of us biting our nails, waiting for something to snap. When something did go down, it went down hard. The news was sparse at the time, and a reasonable timeline is only a warped mirror to display the event in the minds of those learning about it in the future. I really didn’t know if day after would have any long-term effects. Conjectures about the future of an entire land are almost always wrong. But I’ll humour you. If anything can improve the lives of those people, it’ll be the sun.
Everything that I got to see that day was normal excepting the moment I... and well… everything after.
---===*===--
The morning felt the same as any of other times I had woken up with Icepick already gone. I mean, it’s not like I needed her around or anything, I just loved being around her… It just happens that dawns are more pleasant with someone else there who feels the same as you. That morning, I chewed my bottom lip as I dressed. We always left the bed unmade, so when she got out of it, it left a distinct pattern of disturbed sheets. At least I had a place to stare at when I wished that she was there. The only thing I knew I’d say was that I had slept without dreams. Nearly meaningless, though I still thought she’d like to hear it. I had a sneaking suspicion that regardless of anything she would say to the contrary, she did feel obliged to protect me against anything that would do me harm.
A yawn, followed by someone shuffling papers around accompanied my preparations for what I hoped would be a mundane day. Part of me wanted it to be like that, though the yearning for an end was palpable as well.
So the walk down to my room was nothing short of normal. If I were to guess, then I’d say that being surrounded by one hostile army for a while, then getting temporarily annexed by another one that literally came out of the blue probably left a population calloused to the entire prospect of a war out of their sight. In general, the differences between the average person here and a person living in year two of the Leningrad siege were many. Saying they had a common thread would be a self-evident understatement. Full disclosure- In my book, being threatened by annihilation counts as being manipulated.
Class began per usual. I checked papers and answered questions before moving on.
The class had found its working arrangement for the day, groups had formed, they were figuring out how to do the problems that I had laid out. Without warning, the place’s hidden (from me at least) PA system was turned on, the announcement was drowned out as soon as the words Clearing Skies were heard by us. They must have heard more than me, because in the course of a minute, I was following the wild mass of normally sedated students.
It wasn’t an isolated event, because PA system… Still, it was intoxicating, even being near a group that had picked up a tentative, perhaps neurotic energy. To them, I must have seemed calloused in comparison. To them, the sky was falling… away. I had never spent time next to a group like that. A fundamental truth, monolithic as it was, yet it had been torn away. Happiness interspaced with a few cases of vertigo upon discovering a frontier that had been denied to them.
With the balconies crowded, only a few were left inside during this special day. The few that were inside could see the lights flicker as the massive redundancy provided by the surplus reactors did what their ancestors had designed them for. Comparatively, the power was needed to run the targeting systems, along with the framework apparatus. Or so I heard, later on. At the time, I myself was enjoying the benign moment as the sun began to show through. For a moment, I was elated to see something I had thought lost. It was only after a few seconds of feeling, its warmth on my skin, that I remembered that this sun wasn’t mine.
To be fair, the dull ache that accompanied this bitter remembrance would have
hurt me a lot more if the doubt that I would get to see my sun again hadn’t been building up inside. Anesthesia as a fringe benefit of an amputation. Doubts that up until this point been easily suppressed were finally cropping up. What does this place lack? Now, I couldn’t list off love and hope as they were very probable nos, now they were things that looked within my conceivable grasp. Thoughts impelled by circumstances in rapid flux had the run of the place as I stayed out there almost as long as the natives.
---===*===---
The hallways were filled with people celebrating what seemed to be a reversal of fortune. Later that night, when everyone learned about the surgical strikes by their very own home team on the enemies of both state and decency, I’m told the drunken masses redoubled their efforts at making it a night that would be recorded in history books. Actually, just the increased possibility that they’d get to write their own history would have been cause for celebration. But that’s just needlessly pedantic.
Recollection is a luxury. Refinement costs something by its very definition.
---===*===---
Singularly, the moment I saw Icepick for the first time that day, I had never been happier to be alive. The look of pure joy I saw on her face made me that happy. Really though, there needs some clarification. Being happy you didn’t just die is not the same thing as a reaction to positive stimuli. In the span of a few seconds after entering the command room, I spotted her just as she spotted me.
We both moved at a slowed, salacious pace towards an inexact midpoint. It was a christmas miracle that the room was much closer to empty than full, though I would have laughed at someone who happened to bowled over by a large mare in powered armor. I might be a ‘good buck’, but however, I am not a saint.
When we reached one another, the embrace and kiss were a blur. In any case, it was followed up by another and another. We did hear someone in the room give a whooping call. Positive though the reaction might have been, it did kill our mood. A little.
“Wanna go? I heard someone out there say the wine was ‘on the house’. And given the fact we don’t really pay taxes or own any booze, it can’t possibly backfire.” I said to her in an uncharacteristically husky voice.
“What if we don’t remember today? Or tonight.” She mirrored me every way except for a strong pull towards me. “Let me guess? ‘Knowing that you don’t remember something is almost the same as remembering in the first place.’” If I couldn’t have heard her, then the look of abject humour on her face would have given her away. I melted just a little right then and there.
“No, that’s crazy. I don’t know who you’ve been spending time around.” If she hadn’t heard me, the kiss on her forehead would have put things right.
“Whatever, all I know is that you’d hate the guy,” she said matter of factly.
---===*===---
“So, what do you think it means?” I asked Icepick as we just lay on the bed drinking the lukewarm wine someone had been passing out.
“With the sky opened up, I don’t know. I mean, the Enclave isn’t gone and Redeye’s army is still out there. The Hardliner Rangers aren’t done either. Still though, it’s beautiful, isn’t it? I didn’t get to see it today, but I think it will be there tomorrow.”
“You know we have a balcony, right?” A second passed with her her face glazed in thought.
“Let’s do that,” she said resolutely, bounding off the mattress after stretching.
I followed, but I could tell she would be getting out there faster than I. She really must have forgotten what people said about the night.
As I closed the door she had left open, she kind of tackled me. It was surprising.
“Look up,” Icepick said quietly. This was the first time she had seen stars. The deck I was laying on with someone now resting on me was a little chilly, but the look I saw on her face every couple seconds made it worth it.
“I wish I knew the constellations here. They’d probably need two hundred years of stellar drift to be accounted for but, It’d still be nice.”
“I can’t believe I forgot about this. Slipped my mind,” she said with a slightly embarrassed chuckle.
“You know what’s really funny?”
“What?” She said with her head turned the newly un-obscured heavens, I had been appropriated as a pillow, I realized with some mirth.
“I haven’t seen a night as clear as this in years. Light pollution would be a sick joke to you guys. Really, the last time I got to see a cloudless, sparkling night sky was a trip to Zion. Maybe you won’t make the mistakes we made. Nope, I think you already did. No, I hope we don’t make the same mistakes you did. Err, I hope you keep the night sky the way it can be, and I hope my home won’t nuke itself.” I said the last bit on a fluster, words failing every once in a while.
“What was it that you did before you came here again?” She asked with humour in her voice.
“Political commentator,” I said normally, before snorting.
“Okay, what did you want to do before?”
I scratched her head a little while thinking about an answer. Then, when I found an answer, I tried to make it not sound stupid. Well, the second thing didn’t pan out in the thirty seconds I gave myself.
“I wanted to help people. Make a difference. Be selfless. Give the world the push it needed to make the transition to a sustainable civilisation. Whether or not I can ever do anything like that is another matter, although, with just the blueprints I have on me, I think I’m in a better position than ever to do those things.” As I finished she had turned her head.
“You really miss it there. You probably fit in better there. I don’t blame you.” Her melancholic words made my body ache. She’s not really right, but not all that wrong. She obviously cares about you, while still knowing you plan to leave her at the earliest possible moment. You know this, but you still do what you do. Is there a bigger asshole on this planet?
“No- I can’t explain it, I can’t handle it here. I was never really free from death and violence back on Terra. I was shielded, though. You’ve seen what I’ve become in a little more than a month, it’s not pretty. I never told a group of people that I would sexually abuse their corpses after the implied murder I would bestow upon them. Not even once.” I shivered a bit, thinking of that night. However talismanic the armor I wore had become, both literally and psychologically, it showed that I was thoroughly in the thrall of this place.
“Don’t you want to make sure that no one else has to do that?” Icepick had put out the invitation to go on her grand crusade to fix a world that had fucked itself so hard that the descendents of the survivors ten generations on were still barely eeking out an existence for the most part.
“I’m not really confident I won’t make it worse.”
“This is from the same guy that thinks he can fix the world that has billions of people and balefire bombs pointed at itself,” her words stung.
She turned away before getting off of me and walking back into the room. I laid there, thinking. Story of my life. It’s absurd. I mean, I think I could help. But you already told her that you wanted to be around her, stay with her.
“If I never get a chance to leave this place, then I won’t have to decide. And that is the most likely outcome, all things considered, doorways or not.”
I sighed before picking myself off and stepping in.
“Icepick, I don’t know. It’s not fair. In like, any other set of circumstances, this would be a non-issue... as in an issue that never even existed.”
“But it wouldn’t be the same if you were just a random buck from here,” her words rang true.
“I mean, if I found you at a bar on Terra, it would probably wouldn’t have gotten so serious so quickly. Really, a whole lot of things would have been different, but the problems would have been more along the lines of ‘what pizza toppings should we get?’, not you know, whether or not we should be going after a bunker in the middle of an irradiated desert. Just in general, the whole radiation thing isn’t all that common where I come from.” I sat down next to her,the bed depressed under my heavier weight.
“I just had a thought. I’m literally the first mare ever in the history of the entire universe to have this problem.” I responded by making an effusive gesture before putting an arm around her. “What should we do? Suggest something, please. If it’s really stupid, then I’ll shoot it down. But I think you know when to be serious.”
“Alright, don’t let this seem like a highlight reel of my fuckups, because these are just the ones I think we can fix, or at least ameliorate. First off, you really do need to know that there are things crawling around the baltimare sewers. Monsters that have been plotting for as long as there has been a wasteland, probably before then. I need to deal with this one way or another, doorway be damned. Secondly, I have a feeling that whatever Crucible Caravans is- it isn’t exactly good for anyone. That one is more of an educated guess. The making sure that some person with delusions of grandeur doesn’t get into the place that is full of alien technology is important too…”
“I see you’ve been thinking about this a lot.” Her voice had a note of surprise to it.
“Guilty as charged. No, but seriously, when I know I’ve fucked up, I can’t stop myself from thinking about what I could have done differently. When I know I could maybe solve the problem, then my brain gets incessant. One of those annoying coping mechanisms, I guess.”
“That’s more than I would have thought. Oh, and did you just forget to tell me there are other-worldly creatures just doing whatever in the sewers?”
“Yeah,” I said bluntly. I moved for a kiss and was met by her. She disengaged after a second.
“So if an alien came down here right now and offered you a ride back right now, would you take it up on it?”
“I would have to think about it,” I said before laying back on the bed. She looked circumspect about my answer.
“Would you go with me?” I asked.
She responded by turning her head slowly, just to jump on me. “Just shut up, this is the day the sun came back.” Very quickly I was pinned under her, And she was readily exploring my mouth.
I didn’t ruin the night for her.
End of Chapter Thirteen: Trick Of The Lights
Quest Perk Added: Day of Sunshine- All companions in your party gain a +1 companion nerve boost.
50% to level up.
[End of source material. Insert new disk for third act.]
Salary Added: +250 bottle caps