Prologue: Decades of Research, Centuries really.
“Ever since a particularly traumatic experience as a foal, I’ve been looking for ways to make sense of the world around me. Science provides explanation of things we never thought possible!!”
I once had a good friend, wife, children, the happy life our princesses wished for every stallion and mare. If the world around me was as it should have been, then I would still have those things. To hold my straw blond darling in my hooves, to kiss my young and sweet fillies good night, tuck them in after a long day of work. THAT was how the world was suppose to go. Yet, it didn’t. It never would for me, no matter how desperately I wanted otherwise, or even attempted.
Legends, stories told through word of mouth, histories colored in romantic ideals and morals. The very foundation for any cultured civilization, even ours in Equestria. Like for instance the legend of Nightmare moon, her jealousy and rage to enshroud the world in eternal night, warning us of what dark thoughts could do to a once kind mare. Or of the stars being the maleficent things they were, demanding the blood of the living. The former legend just so happened to be true, the latter…I’ve no solid evidence to support such a theory. Not that it matters if those striped bastards believed it as truth…how unbecoming of me…if the zebras believed it.
It’s been well documented what transpired before we ponies, all of us, burned the surface of equestria to a horrible landscape known as the wasteland. It’s been my burden to understand. To know just how badly we failed, how our best intentions had killed so many. How it failed to kill me, and how I long for such a thing. But, I can not. Not until I do all that I can to fix all that we’ve broken. It just doesn’t help I’m so close to being feral.
Oh, That’s right I forgot to mention…I’m a ghoul, Long living one too. When the first balefire bombs had raged through Equestria’s population centers, I was there! And let me tell you…surviving something like that hurts…it hurts a lot. Living through such an ordeal, that…hurt even more. I don’t think many ghouls admit to this, but our nerve endings still work. So imaging your fur and skin stuck in a permanent third degree burn, yeah…it’s enough to make some ponies mad.It has, now that I think about it, The robots I helped design suffered the same problem…I wonder if i could improve the design so they were a little more normal…Then of course I would have to change how the synapses would be wired up…maybe if I altered the way they sense the environment, or reduce or remove the compulsion programing, both actual good o’ computer programing, and/or brainwashing… Sorry, I have a tendency to ramble about ideas once I get them started. My wife thought it enduring…my colleagues, on the other hoof…not so much…where was I?
Oh! The pain…it is unbearable at first, least those ghouls born from megaspells such as I, but eventually the thresh hold for pain grows to match it, that’s if you can keep your mental fortitude. Suppose my own guilt helped to keep myself, or maybe it’s just a strange quirk of fate. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. Still haven’t found the answer to it. I’ve been stuck on this chard, and poisoned land for several centuries. In my long life I have seen beacons of hope rise and fall in this corruptive nightmare our elements caused. How our divisions made by the ministries helped fuel the atrocities done by both sides of our war. We with our weapons and spells for battle. The Zebras with their mystical potion making and fetishes, especially that horrid pink mist. I did study it for a bit…nasty stuffs mind you, but how it blended both nature and necromantic magics was a thing of beauty. Truly a pity it’s only application was immediate death upon inhalation, or a miserable half life of being fused to anything touching you. (Steelhooves has my deepest sympathies. Even if the stallion want my head on a spike. I am absolutely convinced If he spotted me in the company of some unscrupulous raiders not only would he not save me, He would help them do what ever it is they do, before killing them of course. Not that he isn’t without a legitimate reason for that.)
The reason the Steel Ranger hates me, is simple…I was one of the engineers for a good portion of the ministries’ projects. I helped make the armor the steel rangers used. I helped make the half pony robots that had been driven mad and now kill everything. I helped make the device used that had made an even further abomination that calls itself “The Goddess.” I Helped develop the stables and designed some of the “Experiments” that Stable-tec had placed in them. I helped make the pip-buck usable to anypony that wasn’t a unicorn…still proud of that one…oops…for got another fun fact about me…not a unicorn, or a pegasus…just a down to earth…er…maybe not so much…but…never mind that…I’m just trying to say I’m an earth pony. My fascination with the sciences instead of magic helped make me the foremost knowledgable pony on non-unicorn application of magic (ironically, mind you, since that was never what I was after anyway…My passion was with clocks, time and machines) made my contributions pony kind indispensable. Which lead to my greatest achievement and sin. I had worked primarily with the Ministry of Peace, with a great friend of mine. Her pacifist nature had blinded me to all that could go wrong…what was wrong with what we were working on. If it hadn’t been for me, I would say it’s creation would have been nigh impossible, or, at the very least, taken so long to develop that the war could have ended before it was even at the prototype stage. I would like to think that…
No the real reason that SteelHooves would love to kill me, would do everything in his power to make my demise hurt for as long as possible, is what ended the world, make him the half living zombie he is today. I helped develop the original megaspell. I put the zebrican nations and equestria on the fast track for destruction. Turned my wife into a ghoul, killed so, so many ponies with my good intentions… burned the world into a deadly, corruptive, husk that lays before me. It’s a fact I wake up to every day of my, now, unnatural life, and I would do anything to make the past right. Sadly, all I did was make it worse…so now, I do nothing of the sort. Just aim to help one pony at a time for as long as I can, and I expect to continue to do this for quite some time.
I once had a good friend, wife, children, the happy life our princesses wished for every stallion and mare. If the world around me was as it should have been then I would still have those things. Now I only have my name, and even that I hide away shamefully. Long before the world burned I was known as Time Turner. Now? Now I just go by Doctor, a promise to myself to help in what ever way I can until my rotting body turns me feral.
Author's Note
Another Idea stuck in my head. took less then 20 minutes to write, edit, and post, so yeah...there might just be some grammatical errors. So now i have three stories to bounce between. I have been working on the second part of Borders (nearly half way typed and then the self editing.) So I'm aiming for that to be out by Saturday at the latest. If you have any questions feel free to ask. Glad to answer them 
Chapter 1: The Start of a Long Day
”Legend has it that on the longest day of the 1000th year, the stars will aid in her escape, and she will bring about everlasting night.”
There are a multitude of things that makes being a ghoul so magnificent…or maybe a little less pleasant sounding term…like good, or acceptable, yeah, that last one will work. So the things that make being a ghoul acceptable? Never have to fear getting old, that’s a plus! Or never having to worry about radiation sickness, aside from further mental degradation if exposed too long. Some ghouls never need sleep, (Myself being one of those types, though I still sleep to relax as it were, but It isn’t quite required.) We have a higher healing factor then most ponies, though it depends on how irradiated we are. And when we glow with magical radiation it makes us unable to give hugs, so that’s not so good. So yes for every good thing that makes a ghoul a ghoul, there’s the down side. I can handle all most everything I can about what I am, save for one thing.
Morning breath
I swear that it’s like the timber wolves of old decided to make a den in my mouth every morning I decide to relax, and reflect. Not that I do it often, brings back too many memories, too many ghosts…Oh, sweet merciful Celestia, what was it that crawled and died in my mouth last night. I can still taste it, then again it might have been the mass produced sugar coated sugar they called cereal at one point in, well many points in time, that I ate last night. Some decades into the future they’ll do the same once everypony starts working again, instead of fighting just to survive. But that’s too far down the road, to matter now. I open and close my mouth, all in a futile effort to rid myself of morning breath.
“Now then, where am I?” My raspy voice broke the silence of the morning, reminding me of the fact that I was the only living thing around me bringing my Pip-Buck up to meet my gaze.
Now a fun little fact about Pip-Bucks! I was, you guessed it, the lead designer on such a wondrous little device. I also had an entirely different name for it…though the marketing boys at Stable-Tec said it was to wordy to be sellable to the ponies. (Personally I think naming it the Techno-Arcane Response/Delivery Information System would have been cool. I think it would have been called a TAR—) *snap* That, That was something odd. Here I thought I was alone…apparently not.
Eyes Forward Sparkle, was one of the subroutines of a pip-buck, that the R&D boys at the M.A.S. developed, that was stolen by, some unnamed and supremely hansom and dashing, earth pony (allegedly) and was given to Stable-Tec (Don’t give me that look!) Originally it was just to be a helpful compass function…but as the war progressed and the Ministry of Morale’s paranoia grew about the zebra spies, the stolen, er, borrowed program was used to determine who was friendly and…less friendly by a subtle and not quite pre-war legal mind reading spell, designed to filter out intent. Nothing hostile would be blue, or green, or orange, or what ever color you wanted your pip-buck to be, and red for those that wished harm. The EFS range was and I quote “As far as a pegasus could see on a boat, in the middle of the ocean on a clear, but not too hot day with a little bit of wind. The kind of wind that would only help to make the journey nice, but not too nice and…” Basically the stallion who worked on the EFS range, Long Winded, took to his name sake in order to say about five or so miles, you know line of sight, with out buildings. So as was practiced instinct I took a glance at the EFS.
And wouldn’t you know it, Nothing. Not a single red, or blue (for some reason I find my self partial to anything blue) bar to tell me anypony or any thing was out here with me. I’d call it paranoia, but when so many things in the waste wish to kill you paranoia might just save your life (I count a minimum of 15 times in the last year it’s saved me.). So with my nerves calming down, I went back to my previous question. Where in tartarus am I? All I see around me are destitute, rotting, and ruined buildings. Partially standing billboards littered the land scape, some from the Ministry of Morale (Your neighbor might be working for the stripes and may no longer be your friend! Report them to your friendly sprite-bot so we can make them your friend again) some from the Ministry of Arcane Sciences (Zebra’s can’t think. Don’t be like them! Bring your best mind forward and help with magic research!), and others just for product placement (Sparkle cola, Stable-Tech, ect.) And since so many of these signs were scattered throughout the landscape of Equestria, it did little to help me with the location problem, though the partial road sign did help a bit.
“Va, Ho, Ver, some kind of number…miles away. Hmm…” I voiced aloud, my raspy baritone echoed briefly in the silence, Celestia, I miss my trotingham accent. It was vastly superior to my current voice… “Va,Ho,Ver…Va,Ho,Ver…AH HA! I know where I am! Vanhoover! I’m near by Vanhoover! But by why in Equestria was I heading there?”
That was a good question, Why was I here. There wasn’t anypony I knew this way. There wasn’t any dangerous weapons or secrets…If I could recall correctly (Though given the state of my mind…I couldn’t entirely rule it out.) So what ever could be the reason I headed out here? For now I just would have to chalk it up to one of those mysteries of life… Still, I’m curious to see the damage done to VanHoover, to see just how effective my work was…*Snap* O.k. First time a random twig breaks could be coincidence, a second time within the span of a few minutes was somepony following you. Once again I took a glance at my EFS, and again it showed nothing. Peculiar… I thought, Something would have to be showing on my EFS if there was somepony following me…yet my EFS shows nothing…what could cause that…hmm…Well if it wasn’t a Living thing I would suspect that it would be, though highly improbable…ghosts. Wait! Ghosts! Spectral interference! The only thing that could cause such a thing was a,
“Stealthbuck!” I shouted. Though, in hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have.
Before I knew it a sweep of automatic gunfire had hit the dried and cracked land in front of me. Immediately, my eyes scanned the world around me looking for a shiver in the air. Wildly turning my head, I couldn’t seem to locate the gun wielding pony firing at me. Judging by the we he, or, statistically, she was letting loose her bullets, they were a terrible shot, or were trying to prevent me from leaving. Given what ever pony was firing was cloaked in a stealthbuck I would hazard the latter. Not wishing to be subjected to the gunfire, I began to prostrate myself in an effort to get them to stop shooting at me.
“Please! I mean you no harm, stop shooting at me!” I cried out, though my voice made me sound like a dying goat. (seriously It’s not that pleasant, I’ve heard them scream like that…It’s really, really bad sounding, had nightmares for weeks.)
“Quiet! The only one giving demands or requests is going to be me got it!” A young sounding voice returned from under the clouded sky. “Now, Open up your saddle, Give me all your weapons, bullets, grenades, first aid items, and food if you have it.”
“Alright, just please stop shooting, I can’t stand violence…”
“What did I say about requests!” the stealthy pony fired another shot, this one hitting just before my muzzle.
Normally, I would have responded with a quip of some kind, but luckily enough my usually missing survival instincts, kept me from speaking, Least till I could find where ever the pony holding me hostage was. So quietly, I rose and turned toward my saddle bag. Pulling out just what the pony had wanted, or what little of what they asked for I actually had. No guns, No bullets, no grenades, a paltry amount of first aid (I’m a ghoul, I just need to find a pocket of radiation and I’m all set. My first aid skills are laughable at best, I was a scientist. Not an actual doctor, despite my name change.) so I only kept a few healing potions and bandages, the basic of basics. I would try to remain calm, as I put the pacifying items out to please the pony making demands in front of him/her (it was a little odd that I couldn’t tell if it was a mare or stallion…though that voice sounded a little younger. So maybe it was a filly or colt?)
“Here’s what you asked for.” I spoke, calming a calm tone, in an effort to ensure they didn’t turn jumpy.
“Your holding out on me!! Nopony can live here in the wastes with this small amount of shit!” Another shot fired off, this time it grazed my foreleg, I gave a cry of pain before the mysterious pony continued, “I’m only going to ask once more…Give me your weapons!”
Asking…You know? Asking is suppose to end in a question, right? Be some polite manner of wanting to receive a favor of some sort, not demanding something with violence. That would be threatening, not asking. Personally, I don’t do well with threats. No really, I don’t. Normally I’d use my eclectic intellect to disarm and defuse the situation. But with that stupid, yet technologically brilliant, stealthbuck the armed pony was wearing, limited just what I could do. I would just have to be patient until the magic charge dissipated and then work on a way to escape the gun wielding pony.
“No, I’m not holding out.” I grumbled, I don’t think the other pony heard that, my raspy voice disguising it well. “I’m going to take of my saddle bag, so you can inspect it…so I can prove that I have nothing that you value.” I took the lack of bullets fired as a go ahead.
Times like these I thank Celestia and Luna that everypony has a little bit of magic. Unicorns have the most obvious, being able to directly manipulate the field, pegasi can fly with grace and move clouds as if they were floating cotton balls in the sky, and lastly earth ponies had magic in their bones and hooves, (Literally, I did a twenty-five page dissertation on the matter, which was strong enough to hire me into the M.A.S. with out an interview) making earth ponies stronger then the others and natural green hooves. So for earth ponies we have a small magic field at the end of our hooves, which allows us to hold onto items on an non grasping surface, when, with out the magic, it wouldn't work. My Saddle bag would be impossible to put on, or take off without help if it wasn't for that fact. Not that it was a easy to do anyway, It took a bit of clever contortion to access the straps holding the bag to my barrel. After five minutes of fiddling I place my old and withered saddle bag on the ground before me, in much the same matter as the healing supplies.
“There, please feel free to take a look.” I said, acting more cheerful then I felt.
“Take ten paces backward and turn around.” The voice commanded, I complied, I heard my saddle bag left from the ground, and I shuddered when I heard what I had in my bag was emptied unceremoniously, “What in tartarus? What in the goddesses name is all this stuff?”
Stuff? Stuff!? STUFF!!? This mysterious pony has the gall to call some of the most advanced scientific machinery in the wastes STUFF!! Why with just three items in that bag I could not only dismantle a megaspell down to it’s base components, I could turn said megaspell into a helpful low yield healing generator designed to heal anypony within a fifty foot radius once activated. Wouldn’t take much, I mean the bases for every megaspell came from the original, which was designed to heal ponies instead of killing them. I would just have to take the gems and arcane formulas and either remove them or…I’m digressing again aren’t I? Suffice it to say what I had in the bag was worth more caps then any weapon, bomb, or megaspell could pay out in trade (if you knew how to use it…), and they called it stuff. I couldn’t help it, I grew upset and stopped thinking for moment.
“It’s not stuff, It’s highly advanced science equipment! Something a petty raider wouldn’t understand!” I…I would live to regret those words.
Fire burned my barrel, and I felt a trickling warm run down my fur. It seemed in my short outburst, the cloaked pony had taken issue with what I said. Natural curiosity, born from too many years in this blood stained world, force me to turn my head and inspect the damage. It seems I’m quite lucky my abductee wasn’t using bigger bullets or hollow point rounds. While the entry wound was ablaze in pain, (though it was duller then if I was a smooth coat, er, I mean, perfectly healthy pony,) The bullet did little to no damage, (just a few bites of irradiated food and it would heal up nicely). Black ichor lazily oozed down, pulled toward the ground by gravity, being the only sign that I had been hit. My coat was rotted so much it was hard to tell if it was a bullet, or just my natural state of being. I grimaced when I saw the damage.
“I’m not one of those monsters.,” Hissed the invisible assailant, “I’d rather be dead then one of those mad ponies. So never say, insinuate, or assume that I am a raider. Now, What are you doing with these.”
“Doing what I can to help.” I replied.
“Help who?”
“Everypony I can.”
The silence that followed my statement was expected, the laughing that followed did not.
“HAHAHAHAHA, HEeee, hooo.” The pony was trying to recover, “Oh Celestia did I need that. Are you bucking stupid? Helping everypony? Hello? Didn’t anypony tell you this is the wastes? Ponies don’t help one another here, they only do what they can to survive.”
“Trust me,” I gave a little smirk, “I know more about the wastes then you can believe. And while it’s true, ponies are doing all they can to survive, if there is only one thing I can say about the wastes. It’s that nopony will turn down good help if it’s needed.”
“Sure, I believe that, Just like how the princesses will come back and return the land to the way it was before the war. Still, if your so driven to help other ponies, I could use you. There’s a slaver ring held up in a warehouse in southern Vanhoover I’m aiming to dismantle.”
“Ah, I do detest slavers, though if I am to help it would be nice to know the pony I’d be working with…”
“Shadow, that’s all you’re going to get. Now, pick up your shit, and lets go.”
“Ok.” I sighed, Feeling it in my old rotting bones, that this was just the start of what was going to be a long affair.
It took a good hour and a half to pack up my equipment from the small pile “Shadow” had dumped onto the ground. With the way she/he carelessly sprinkled my equipment to the ground, I feared Shadow might have broken some of the more sensitive devices. So I had to visually inspect everything. With the constant signs of displeasure coming off from the mystery pony at how long it was taking, picking up each item in my hoof, carefully inspecting every meticulous detail for any scratches, dents, broken wires, and the like. I did it in part to unsure none of it would back fire and cause a problem down the road, not something I particularly was interested in having happen. After each item had passed my inspection, I ever so carefully laid it inside my saddle bag. When I was half way through sorting my *sigh* stuff, I could here the tell tail signs of Shadow’s impatience, as a slow rhythmic tapping of a hoof was heard. I couldn’t help myself, I slowed down my once overs, just to spite the invisible pony and to have a little fun at his/her expense…I really need to find out if the pony was a mare or stallion, it’s not really nice to refer to him/her as, well, him/her. Eventually I had secured everything just the way I wanted it, which was a complete disorganized mess, which only infuriated Shadow, and had put back on my saddle bag.
“You done? Because I’m not quite so sure you took enough time looking over your stuff.” Snarked Shadow, “It’s not like there are slaves or anything, I was asking you to help with. I’m certain that their captors are treating them well.”
Well, now I feel like a complete jerk, How does that happen anyway? Somepony out of nowhere shoots you up, threatens you and then says something that makes you feel like a jerk. Still, I Couldn’t let Shadow know that, well, not entirely anyway.
“I do apologize that it took so long. But the equipment you just dumped on the ground is fairly fragile. I had to make certain that they’d still be working if I need to use them. So, now that we’re ready…ish, I just need to know one thing before we go. Mind you Its very important that I know this, and it will determine everything I say going forward. So just keep that in mind when I ask this question. I am dead serious.” My tone grew heavy. I looked serious, but it was hard maintain it do to with the fact it looked like I was talking to the air, and my question wasn’t as serious as I made it seem.
“O….K…” Came a hesitant reply, “Go ahead and ask you question.”
“Are you a mare or a stallion?”
Silence…
Nothing…
Still nothing…
“Female.” Shadow finally said, before another gun shot rang out, once again a bullet tore through my side.
“Hey you shot me!”
“I didn’t hit anything important. You’ll live.”
Yes, with the bullets she was using, I’d live, but that wasn’t the point.
“You. Shot. Me!”
There are Celestia knows how many miles between us and Vanhoover, and I’m going to travel with a mare that shot me twice, and had done so…so…flippantly. Yeah, This was going to be a long arduous trip, I could tell that much already.
Author's Note
Ok, So I have one more story idea to get out there, but I'm not going to work on it seriously. It's going to be a two-part one-shot if you will, and a ode to a wellish known internet personality. Also, I'm surprised just how many down votes I've already gotten on this 
...I mean I just posted the prologue and it already has more down then up 
. give it a chance people...seriously, wait till there is at least, I don't know, five, maybe ten chapters before just going thumbs down. Just saying 
.
