Fallout: Equestria: Counting Starsby fuck mcdickbuttChaptersArc 1: LuminescenceArc 1-1: On Shit Going DownArc 1-2: On BloodArc 1-3: On Big-Ass Armored TanksArc II: Eyes On the InsideArc 1: Luminescence Fallout: Equestria: Counting Stars. "I could get rid of all these clouds in ten seconds flat!" -Rainbow Dash, Ministry of Awesome "Yo, GW? You done with that recorder thingy?" "Yeah i just finished, wh-" "Your girl is up on the top deck. Go see her. I want my spot with this shit." "Alright, it's already on though. Where again?" "Top deck. Poop deck. Whatever, just leave." "Alright, he's gone. Ahem." *** *** *** Light. Light kills all, sustains all. All living things crave light. From the smallest speck of diatomic fungi, all the way up to the largest buffalo of the western plains, light brings life, sustenance. But light is also terrible. However many benefits Light can bring to us, nothing as great and as powerful as Light comes without a price. Light sticks its nosy tendrils of white luminescence into all the dark places it finds, grabbing the darkness and kicking it out to the Stars know where. Light intrudes. Light is nosy. Light burns. It scorches. Even as it sustains the green plants, it also shrivels them up and kills them, mutilates them. Corrupts them into mere, weeping shadows of their former selves, all as it keeps up the charade of happiness and luck that ponies seem to associate with it. Shadows, however, protect. They providing shade from the ever-present Light. Shadows hide and conceal us from the angers of the world when necessary. As terrible as the world can be, Shadows give respite from it, while Light simply pushes us back into the cruelty of reality. Light, because of this, overcomes Shadow. I prefer Shadow. My name is Lanthe of Glyphmark. Chances are, you haven't heard of me. Some of my recent acts have been slightly... less than heroic. My name has probably been wiped out from every archive in Equestria. But no matter how gruesome and wretched I may have become through the course of my numerous travels, no matter how many horrible acts I may commit as a result of my quest for legacy, one thing helps me to endure, even as the Stars themselves somehow manage to conspire against me and my companions as we speak. I. Will. Be. Remembered. I have no fear of Death, or even of the oppression of my people. My only fear, by now, is the fact that I will most likely face the fate of all the other ponies and zebras that have trod the same path before me. That I will crumble to dust, unloved, a mere footnote in the history books, if even that. Yet, I still must keep to the Shadows, for if I do not, they will find me. They will erase me, bludgeon me off the face of Equestria until no memories of me are left in but thier own wretched minds. Thee Stars are relentless. How, you ask, did I manage to get some of the most powerful forces in the known universe out for my head? I will tell you the story of how I got here, up until this point, as I hide like a coward in these Shadows that have come to be my best friends. But for now, I must keep to them, for the safety of myself and that of my beloved companions, my only reason to live other than to carve my legacy. For now, my children. For now. Arc 1-1: On Shit Going DownI guess if we didn't laugh at things that didn't make sense, we couldn't react to much of life. *** It was either the heaviest rainstorm or the pussiest tornado that Glyphmark had ever experienced. As I lay awake in my top bunk -which is a crappy-ass bed- the storm refused to get the best of me. I heard the rain pour down onto the Favela rooftops in a torrential downpour as I read my copy of “Guns and Ammo”. With the wind’s savage pounding and the rain’s deafening downpour rocking our home, it felt like the building we were in would have collapsed at any second. Considering how crappily this place was built, that occurrence was actually very likely. I propped myself up on my scratchy hay mattress; I was careful not to knock the candle on my nightstand into my bedding. I reached out and nudged the candle at a slightly safer distance away from me. Reassured, I continued to read my prewar copy of "Guns and Ammo", picking up where I had left off at an article about the short-stroke piston NRF- MD2 rifle. At that moment in time life was good. Far away I heard the distant echoes of the skeleton crew moving our supply of gunpowder into a dry storage area, since soaked gunpowder is bad gunpowder. I heard grunts and several colourful curses in heavy Zebraic through the rain. It was times like these that made me glad to be a day shift town guard. On the opposite side of the room I saw my roommate, and marefriend, Xephyr, sleeping peacefully on her bed. I could see her small, muscular black striped body poking out from under her sheet. On her bedstand stood a picture of her parents -two unknown zebras- handing Xephyr as a baby, wrapped in a bundle, to my father, Lancer, who was a teenager at the time. The photo on my nightstand is that of my dead mother, Iota and my, Lancer, who was halfway invisible under a stealth cloak. As the storm raged on, I decided it was time to get some shut eye. After all, the cold moisture of rain always makes them the best time to sleep. So I blew out my candle, tried to make myself comfortable in my crappy bed, and fell asleep. *** *** *** *** *** *** I awoke. Normally it’s not very pretty when I wake up in the morning; my brain gets fuzzy, my muscles don’t work, and by vision gets blurry; it’s just a large-ass mess. Today was no exception to that rule; I rolled over in my bed, my teared-up eyes making the whole world seem like I was hopped up on the ‘shrooms. My barrel bedstand looked like a giant brown blob. I stretched out my cramped muscles, flexing them methodically, as was my morning routine. Right quad, left quad. Right calf, left calf. As I stretched out my final muscle, I heard a few voices from outside, to the west side of our building; the skeleton crew was switching out with the day shift. The first zebra said, “Habere bonum trabea! Populatores sunt supposted ad esse male hoc tempore anno”, which roughly translated into: “Have a nice day, the raiders are abundant at this time of the year.” He was right; around spring, raiders, both diseased and professional, were at their strongest. As for why... well, I really don’t know. The day worker, who's voice I recognized as the guard captain's, shouted, straining his voice: “LANTHE! GET THE HELL TO YOUR POST!” His voice echoed throughout the Favela, probably waking up even those who had another two hours to sleep. The surprised gasps and muffled swearing from the areas nearby told me that was most likely the case. “Well, that woke me up.” I took a look at the old, analog watch strapped onto my left leg, towards the hoof, and immediately yelled: “Oh, shit!” when I saw the time. I needed to be at my guard post ten minutes ago! If I was late again, the captain was going to have my hide! Newly refreshed and woken up, not to mention fearing for my skin, I ran to my barrel bedstand, opened the top drawer with my mouth, and frantically rummaged through the contents, looking for a certain something. ‘No... no... no... n-is that a thong? No... no... YES!’ With that thought, I pulled out a familiar leather sheath out of my cluttered drawer. I buckled my gladius to my belt, around my neck, and then I tightened the straps with my teeth. After doing so I ran to the door, ignoring Xenith, who was still sleeping peacefully despite the ruckus I made, and entered the narrow hallway outside of my room. Taking a right, I dashed down the makeshift stairs, and ran straight into the kitchen. Upon entering, I immediately spotted a familiar zebra sitting at the small table in the center of the wooden room. A few beams of light from the holes in the wall illuminated his face, showing me my best friend, Desmond. Desmond, my best bro, was one of the original twenty members of the tribe that had settled in Glyphmark along with me. The extra hundred or so, who we called “newbies”, had been picked up in the few months following when the “Stable Dweller”, or Littlepip, had saved our town from starving to death by teaching us to produce Dash. "Svetkas!" I called out to him. This was a traditional zebra greeting, which had no translation into Equestrian. "Mornin' to you, too," said Desmond caustically. A raging insomniac, Desmond Starsword was often cynical and grumpy. However, he was my best bro, so I usually let it slide. After all, it would be kind of unfair not to, as I was be a complete ass to him when I didn’t get enough sleep. Damn, I was hungry. Slinging a waiting water skin onto my back, I said, "Hey, Des, toss me one!" Heeding my request, Desmond grabbed a granola bar off his plate, and flung it in my general direction. I caught it in my mouth, gobbling it down with a ferocity that bordered on madness. With crumbs of granola still on my muzzle, I shouldered the door open, entering the street. *** *** *** “Me excusare! Excuse me!” Glyphmark was an ugly town. When you weren’t busy plugging your nose from the sewage, or getting mugged by one of it’s 120 residents, you were able to take a long, hard look at it. And it wasn’t pretty. I lived in the Favela, or Pretium. This was where most of us lived, which was only really eating and sleeping. The Favela was made up of makeshift two-story buildings, mostly wooden frames with metal sheets attached to them with rusty nails. They weren’t the most comfortable of dwellings, but they suited our purposes nicely. If, you know, you count making us look like we live in a junkyard as one of their purposes. I didn’t want to wake up any of the still-sleeping residents of the living area, so I stealthily ran down the deserted, narrow, rusty streets of the Favela, my Gladius slapping against my shoulder in its sheath. After running past the town bar and saying “Hi” to some of our friendly local alcoholics, I spotted a familiar door leading into a building bordering the 12-hoof wall that surrounded our town. My eyes drifting from the sharpened tree wall, I ran to the door, shouldering it open as I had the one before. I could tell that this was going to be a bad day. *** *** *** Ah, the break room. The break room was the best. Always smelling of cigars and stale vodka, it was sure to give you just that push you needed to get through the day. My morning shift crew, who had spent the night in preparation for our early start, was strewn about on the couches on the perimeter of the room, snoring like a storm. Tossing my gladius belt onto one of the two pool tables, I casually waltzed my lazy ass over to the one free couch on the south end of the metal room. Plopping my flank down, I stretched my limbs. "It's great to be earl...." "WAKE UP, YOU INCOMPETENT MOTHERFUCKERS!" "Aah!" With a yell, my recently-plopped form rolled off of the flea- ridden couch and onto the floor with a resounding thump. I came to my senses, standing up. Screw it! Just screw it. The head guard, a cheery fellow by the name of Quintus, was a large, imposing zebra that had at least a few feet on me. He stood at the bottom of the staircase leasing up to his office, surveying the practical carnage strewn across the break room. Everyone stood up, and sleepily snapped to what some might call attention. He spoke again, in a low, gravelly voice. "Do your jobs. You know how." He commanded, his voice completely devoid of emotion. He then turned to me. “Lanthe, in my office. Now.” He went back up the small staircase, opening the door at the top. I uneasily followed, noting his apparent lack of the aura of anger that usually followed him around like some sort of of airborne parasite. I closed the door behind me and sat down, leaving the other members of my shift to scramble up the other set of stairs to the guard towers. I looked at Quintus across the low-lit, small room and sat down. Quintus took a sip of what I assumed was water out of his waterskin, keeping silence. I broke it. “Boss, if this is about my tardiness, I..” He responded. “No, Lanthe. I need you to work a triple shift tomorrow.” He pushed a few papers on his desk, as if to draw my attention from that statement. Damn. I exhaled, dumbstruck. A single shift was twelve hours long, and payed next to nothing. I needed more than that. I leaned back. “Sir, with all due respect, I’m gonna want a crap load of money for this.” I held my breath, ready for his reaction. “No pay.” He got up, and made his way to the door. I stood up and blocked him. “Now why the HELL is that?” I responded, switching to my native language about halfway through. He spoke in Equestrian, adamant to keep the conversation on his ground. “Lanthe, as of now, there’s only eight guards working the day shift, and two on the night. We’re running on half capacity.” “So? That’s two per tower! Why not just double up on everyone?!” He thought for a second, as if thinking of a reason. “You’re out best shooter.” I was confounded. I was one of the worst shots on the shift, and definitely the worst one here now. And that wasn’t even counting the fact that our rifles were mostly made of plastic. “You know damn well that’s not true.” In the most recent shooting practice, I had hit a bulls-eye. On someone else’s target. “Just do it. Now move your ass out of the fucking way before I do it for you.” I moved aside, regretfully letting him go downstairs uninterrupted. There it is. *** *** *** “So then he just laid it on me! Thirty-six work hours straight! That’s crazy, Right? Right?” I inquired. Desmond Starsword continued to munch on his hydroponic sandwich. “Des.” My single word reverberated off the metal-panelled walls, and still had no effect on the apathetic zebra. He looked up from the makeshift barrel-table, noticing me for the first time. “Huh?” I facehoofed. Although my best friend, he could be a real douche sometimes. I re-explained my situation to him. “Well,” He said after hearing me out. “I know a guy from ABP who can hook you up with some energy drinks. Angel Bunny Pharmaceuticals was the commercial center of Glyphmark. It used to sell prescriptions and over-the-counter meds, but we now use it’s hydroponics bay to produce Dash, a high-potency inhalant that induces powerful delusions of grandeur. Which, by the way, we call “energy drink”. I scoffed, “Sorry, but I’m not into pulmonary hypertension.” Desmond looked confused. “Dash induces edema, not hypertension, idiot.” “I was just saying a random medical term. Either way, drugs are out of the question.” Desmond gobbled up the last of his artificial sandwiches. “Look, let me think it over. I always find a way to solve crap this. Gimme some time to look around town, and there’s bound to be someone who knows about this shit.” “Thanks.” “You owe me.” He said, standing up. He winked. “I’ve gotta run. Drugs don’t make themselves!” *** *** *** I sat at the barrel-table in our building, watching the water-clock resting on our counter drip away the long minutes. I probably should’ve gotten some air around then, but the strange nature of my orders wouldn’t stop gnawing at me. Nevertheless, there would be no answers until Desmond returned with some sort of info or contact for me. *Drip* The water-clock counted off the next minute. I contemplated resting my weary head on the barrel-wood, but decided against it, fearing for the integrity of the years-old, rotten vessel. ‘If I spend much more time in this room waiting, I’ll suffocate.’ The small, metal room was beginning to slowly whittle away at my patience for my best friend. I needed something to keep myself busy before I became a vegetable. I was going insane. To entertain myself, I pulled the hefty leather belt off my neck, laying it on the barrel-table with an audible thunk. I gripped the leather-wrapped handle tightly with my teeth, drawing the sword out of it’s oiled sheath without a whisper of noise. I laid the instrument of war on the table next to the sheath. Two-and-a-half feet long, hand-forged, the titanium alloy leaf-blade perfectly weighted and optimized for the maximum torque and power whilst striking at one’s enemy. This was the standard-issue gladius for Zebra legionnaires for about a month before the bombs descended. I gripped it in my teeth once more, and stood up, assuming a combat stance. ~~~~~~~~~~ I swept my right-front hoof in a semicircle, testing out my opponent. My motion drew a perfect half-circle in the rubble at my feet. The large black Alicorn did absolutely nothing. This told me that she was a smart swordsmare, which could be deadlier than any artillery. The gladius in my mouth was my only advantage here. My only upper ground was that I could puncture that Emperor-forsaken shield. The midnight-colored being withdrew about two feet, stepping her shield out of the reach of my weapon. “You think that you have the skills or power to beat us?” Snarled the repulsive voice in my head. “You would be better off as a stain on the ground. That puny sharpened stick you call a sword will do nothing against me.” The alicorn contemplated something for a moment. I took the second’s hesitation to step mere inches inward, bringing me just within striking range of the beast. “We will make this more... fair.” The black alicorn stared down at me contemptuously, and said something under her breath. A sharpened sword, identical to mine, appeared in her jaw. “Fight, puny one. You will lose. You know it to be true.” My enemy swung her weapon in a deadly arc, leaving a smoky contrail through the air. I took stock of my new situation. Behind the beast was the ruins of Old Glyphmark, an assortment of shacks that had been crushed by the rampaging foe. The rubble at my feet was what remained of my house. I fought the urge to run, knowing that I would die here. My only hope was to take this bitch with me. I had the skills, but not the size or strength. I analysed my opponent. The only possible way to hit her would be to let her take my blade, and disengage. I would then have to weave a web of steel so intricate that she could not even touch my sword. I coiled my back hooves, ready to pounce. The alicorn laughed. “Feisty one. You will make a good piece of Unity.” I pounced, flying over the rubble. “Lanthe.” ~~~~~~~~~~ Desmond’s low and raspy voice woke me from my flashback. He looked at me in my battle stance, ready to lash out at my imaginary opponent at the slightest of provocations. He looked at me quizzically, although not all that surprised. I did things like this often, taking up a surprising amount of time as I did so. Desmond, however, had not been affected by the horrific events of our past nearly as much as the larger portion of the original tribesmen. He had a stoic-ness about him, the kind that would allow him to have a staring contest with a rock. And win. “Lanthe, stop foaling around with your dad’s old standby beating stick that he loved so much and listen.” I seriously considered making him into a Zebra-kebab at this point, but then I would have no information. ‘I’ll wait until later for that.’ I resisted the urge, sliding my gladius into it’s sheath and slinging it up and around my neck. “What?” Desmond closed the door behind him. The entire rotting building shook with the force. “Is Xephyr upstairs?” “No,” I replied. “She’s out with her mom somewhere.” “Whoa! Does Xenith know you two are-” “Nope.” “Wow, you’d better watch your ass around her, then.” He said, concerned. Xenith, Xephyr’s mom, was, like, Equestria’s leading supplier of kick-ass. She’d come to town with Littlepip three months ago. “Anyhow, I got you somebody to talk to. His name’s Demusei, and he works up at A.B.P..” “Demusei?” I over-pronounced the name. In Zebraic, it translated quite literally into “Pit Fighter.” “Yeah. And before you ask, no. He’s not a pit fighter.” I smiled. “We hang out too much.” “You owe me.” The striped ball of stoic that was Desmond went upstairs, ready to do whatever the hell he did when he wasn’t around me. *** *** *** “Do you WANT your ass on a stick, or was it some sort of accident? Because usually when somebody I BARELY know comes up to me and asks for a favor, they end up being the world’s largest ice cream cone! You see this baton? It’s about to be your new best friend.” I had just gotten finished asking the world’s most piss-poor excuse for a security guard for entrance to A.B. pharmaceuticals. It had gone south after I had maybe mentioned a little that I had a better job than him. But only a little. Angel Bunny Pharmacy towered over my short form, dominating the nonexistent skyline of Glyphmark. The building, a marvel of engineering by Glyphmark standards, towered upwards six stories, with another two floors underground where the Dash was made. Serving as both the administrative and economic center of the town, our home couldn’t, by any means, exist without it. Zebras of all ages and genders milled about the flagstone square in front of the towering mass, either working or on break. All of the former went about their business in brown HazMat suits, making it impossible to discern their identities. Those not in the bulky suits mostly spent their time eating or tossing any spare caps into the well dug into the center of the square. I turned away from the fat-ass guard, dismayed. I had been told earlier that Demusei, now not necessarily a guy, worked as a floor supervisor in the hydroponics bay, but that was about all I knew about him (or her...). I was stumped. I sighed, looking at the giant clock emblazoned on the front of the brick building. The half-wasted clock helpfully reminded me that it was eleven in the morning, giving us an hour until the traders showed up from the North. I got to my feet, making my way towards the zebra nearest to me. It was time to start looking. The zebra, a tall and skinny female, had just gotten finished throwing caps in the well, and was on her way out. A golden ring hung from her nose, signifying... something. I was never good at discerning the meaning of the jewelery that seemed to hang from the females everywhere. They usually had a meaning, though. “Hey do you know a guy by the name of Demusei? I-” “You are Lanthe, are you not?” She said suspiciously. I was taken aback by the commanding air that came with her speech. it seemed like SHE should be captain, not Quintus. I wanted to do what she wanted, now. “He of the armies of old?” She offered. Here she referred to my father, who still considered himself a member of the Roaman legion, regardless of the fact the war was over. I disapproved. What’s done is done is done. “One might call me that.” Venom dripped from my voice, provoked by mention of my father. “I remember your father. A stout zebra, he was.” I was disgusted. “I don’t take after Lancer. To him, I’m nothing but a ‘traitor.’ ” I spat on the ground to drive the point home. “Suit yourself. Either way, I heard you wanted information about Quintus.” I went for it. “Why did he give me a triple shift?” She looked around, a touch of paranoia in her eyes. She switched to Zebraic. “The orders came straight from the Mayor. She wants YOU on the shift, specifically the third one.” I wasn’t at all surprised. Although nobody EVER saw her, save for her assistant, it was routine for her to pull strings like this. What concerned me was the “Why”. “Well, why the third shift?” “All I know is that something very big is happening in forty-eight hours. And the mayor wants YOU overseeing it. And remember, whatever happens, it’ll all go down by twelve the day after tomorrow. You never saw me.” And with that, she disappeared. *** *** *** I opened the ramshackle door to my building, taking a quick look inside to make sure I wasn’t disturbing anyone. This had become a habit of mine, after a few weeks ago when I went in without knocking and found Desmond trying to create some sort of potion when I distracted him. Long story short, I had a rainbow mane for a week. Finding nopony of interest, I trotted lightly into the small 15x10 room. The sound of my hooves on the dirt floor reverberated off the metal walls. I had four hours until my under-shift started, and still no idea what the fuck was going to happen. And on top of that, most of my guard time would be spent looking through a rifle scope down at traders, leaving me oblivious as to what was happening around me. I heard the clip-clop of hooves on the stairs to my left, and took a look at my friend descending our stairs. Damn, I was hoping it would be Xephyr. “Anything good?” His voice was scratchy and hoarse, indicating that he had just gotten in one of his two forced hours of sleep per day. “I just found out. Apparently, twenty-four hours into my shift, shit’s gonna go down so hard that there’ll be a hole in the ground all the way to Roam. And then it’ll hit a fan somewhere. Desmond descended the rest of the stairwell clumsily. Walking to the barrel-table, he sat. Tired from his single hour of forced- “I-DE-A!” I stomped my hoof on the ground forcefully. “What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sleeping?” “A few days, give or take a few days.” He opened up the lid of the table, bringing out a bottle of Sparkle-Cola. “Mmm, carroty. What now?” He chugged the bottle, waking him up to his normal sentience. I blinked and waited a few seconds for the caffeine in the energy soda to kick in. “Do my shift with me!” I would’ve been more polite, maybe said ‘please’, but I was excited. He looked at me like I had a large, sentient lump growing on my face. “Lanthe, Lanthe, Lanthe. Have you learned nothing?” His voice rang with mock menace. “I require... compensation.” “Right.” I said. “You know what to do.” I did. I leaned into his muzzle, ready to embrace him in a passionate- Desmond pulled away, mollified. “YES!” I screamed. “I am the KING of gay chicken!” I pumped a hoof in the air. “You know it. I’ll help you.” Desmond was still trying to erase the memory. *** *** *** “You good jobwise?” Desmond laughed. “You know I don’t do anything there. I just sign the papers. Nobody is gonna miss me.” The zebra, smiling, sat in a flea-ridden couch in the break room. The expression on his face suggested that he was a little nervous. “You sure this will be OK?” I knew that it probably wouldn’t be, but I kept on my brave face. I needed him here, and I sure as hell didn’t want him chickening out. “It’ll be fine. I’m sure it’s just a drug deal or something.” I waved a hoof casually. Des let out a sigh of relief. He didn’t tell me, but I knew it had been bugging him for hours. He got up off the couch reluctantly, stretching out. “What now?” This part was routine. I did this for a job. “Alright. We need to remember GAS. That stands for Guns, Armor, and Other Shit. I just made that up.” Taking a key from off my gladius belt, I walked to the metal door on the opposite side of the room. I unlocked it and slid it open sideways, revealing three racks of equipment. "Alright," I said, taking a rifle off the first rack. I stood up and held it Zebra-style, bracing it between my two front hooves. "We need our standard-issue rifle, of course." I racked the straight-pull bolt action, wincing as the crappy rifle echoed with the sound of plastic parts. It felt more like a toy than a gun. This was the gun manufactured for the front-line riflemen towards the end of the war, when it started becoming more of an arms race than anything. I tossed Desmond a rifle. "The scopes are already zeroed in. All we need to do is put the sights where you want the bullet to go. The town's only about 300 yards long, so don't worry about bullet drop. Besides, you probably won't be shooting anyways." Desmond assumed my stance, looking down the 4x ACOG sight on the rifle. I moved to the next rack, this one housing our armor. This was definitely not as badly built as our small arms, as most of the protective gear was made of a high-quality ceramic-plate Kevlar. I bypassed the larger articles, knowing these wouldn't fit me or Desmond. I selected a smaller piece, known as the tiger shark. "Try this on for size." I gave the suit to Des, selecting a piece for myself. Mine was a slightly heavier model known as the "Cobra." My Armor, unlike his, was emblazoned with my name and trademarks across the back of the plating. After a fair bit of tweaking and pulling, Desmond was satisfied. "Some pretty high-grade stuff we got here." He opened the action if his rifle, sliding in a .388 Lapua Magnum that he had found in the reservoir carved into the stock. That specific round would travel four hundred meters with literally no drop, and leave a blue trail. "Want a sidearm?" I asked him. Not waiting for his answer, I brought out two Taurus 5.7mm pistols from the third rack. I put mine in the holster built into my suit. "Remember, once we're up there, there's no slacking. Keep yourself situated-" I said, putting up my bipod, "At all times. You see anything shady, or even remotely out of line, you report it to me." "Yershur" Desmond muttered through a mouthful of gun. I slammed closed the solid metal slider, locking it with my keys as I did so. Still nobody in the break room. Huh. That must have meant that everyone had started their double shift twelve hours ago. Except for the one lucky bastard we were relieving now. Gesturing for Des to follow me, I opened the small wooden door opposite of the armory, behind the pool table. It swung outward, revealing a narrow set of wooden stairs. Most off the times I ascended these, I feared for my safety, as the weight of my armor added almost an extra twenty percent to my weight. And that wasn't counting all the extra shit we sometimes carried. I took the first step, and the stairboard creaked underneath me. Thankfully, it didn't break. I picked up the pace, trotting up the stairs with a pep in my step. Desmond followed me up to a trapdoor, set about six feet above our heads. "Nayshapay" I called, a challenge. This was the challenge, a specific word that could only be responded to by another specific word, insuring that the person at the trapdoor wasn't a raider ready for lunch. "Dresspace!" Responded the guard manning the tower above us. The trapdoor opened with a creak, letting in a stream of Wasteland sun that the main town only got a few hours a day due to the large retaining walls. A rope ladder rolled down, signaling the guard was ready for transfer. I climbed up the ladder, out into the tower. This particular guard was a female by the name of Cypress. A strong type, she was the best sharpshooter in the guard force. I barely knew her. She stood up from her prone position, uncocking her rifle as she did so. "You my relief?" She asked. I simply nodded. When in formality, or a person that you don’t know well, Zebra etiquette was to be short, quick, and to the point, that is if you spoke at all. "I see you brought a friend." She gestured to Desmond, behind me looking ridiculous in his riot armor. He smiled at the buff mare, obviously nervous around her. Desmond glanced as she walked by, barely fitting herself into the hatch leading down below, closing it behind her with a thump. “So this is how you make a living, huh?” I exhaled slowly. It was, whether I wanted it to be or not.Although, technically, I didn’t make a living off of it. I was payed, like I said earlier, but it was next to nothing. I hoisted my plastic rifle. The object was a testament to the poverty of our settlement. Although well-established over the last few months, Glyphmark was visibly struggling with other wasteland powers. Last I heard, there was a huge militant base or something springing out of the ground up North. “Hey.” Desmond was staring out at the wasteland. A veritable desert, the barren, plague-ridden dust that extended for a few miles below Canterlot was bright, the dust crystals reflecting the Sun’s light back at our faces. Canterlot itself stood slightly above and to the west of our hometown, the protruding rock looking like some sort of bizarre hoofhold for some Equestrian rock climber. From our view, we couldn’t see the city on top of the mound, but I knew those gnarled old buildings and mansions from a few trips up there. I looked to the side, seeing Desmond craning his neck to look at Canterlot. He asked: “You ever been up there?” “Once or twice.” I replied. The approaching horde of ghouls were nipping at our hooves by now. Half-dragged, half-supported by my brother, I slid a bullet into my revolver, my last one. I clicked it closed, lining up the chamber with the bullet. Every painful step drew me closer to oblivion. the end of the royal hallway was at least forty feet away. My last spark of hope fizzled out. “Anything cool up there?” “Not much.” I replied, my gaze still focused on Canterlot. The city, along with providing me with nightmares beyond imagination, also poisoned our few attempted crops with it’s pink, poisonous water.We all hated it with a burning passion. Desmond spoke, tearing my gaze from the capitol city. “Ill take the first watch. You, rest.” He seemed confident in his abilities, so I took a seat in one of the two lawn chairs situated on the tower, and fell into a dark, dreamless slumber. *** *** *** I awoke to a hoof in my face. “Lanthe, wake up. now.” I glanced up at the sun, only two inches past it’s apex. It had only been a few hours. “Desmond, nothing’s going to happen for another-” I was drowned out by a large boom. My voice faltered. “Lanthe, I don’t know how to say this... but- shit went down.” That was the last thing I heard before we fell. Arc 1-2: On BloodDibs on the guacomole. Darkness. Well, technically not. I couldn't actually see anything. The equine mind cannot comprehend the lack of sight- ah- whatever, it looked dark as fuck. It was obvious that I was dreaming, as I felt I was floating in midair with no body. But this was a different kind of dreaming. There was no coin in my pocket to squeeze and wake up, no subconscious ranting. In fact, this wasn’t my subconscious at all, I felt. My subconscious was full of shit. You have aged beyong your years, my son. I thought. Wait, what? I didn’t think that! I- Your mind is strong. Your mental barriers were too strong for even me to bypass whilst you were awake, I thought once more. However, there is a reason I could sire so many, such a great force. My strength increases by the second, yet wanes by the hour. Alright, I knew my mind was effed up, but this was just batshit crazy. Like me. “Who are you?” I asked aloud, forgetting I had no mouth. The thought instead reverberated inside my head like an echo. Let’s just call me... your benefactor. Or Tod. Whichever one you prefer. “Tod.” This right here was a fucking testament to my madness. Names have great power, Lanthe. I implore you not to overuse them. I wonder- The voice in my head went silent for a moment. Ah, the Orchard. Strange, I would’ve thought you to be the Shadow. Nonetheless, your fate is set. “Saywhatnow?” Find the Caesar, Centurion. And be glad I chose to spare you. I care not for you. I care for the bastion. Roam, as you call it -- the city that is a testament of your people’s challenge to time. At this point, I really hoped I wasn’t going all sczitzo. I used to have a friend, Connor was his name. He went all bipolar a few years ago. It wasn’t pretty. Welcome to the legion, Lanthe. The REAL legion. The legion of change. *** *** *** "Pull, you fuckers! PULL!" I heard the voice of a mare yell. But that thought was lost to me, mostly because... I'm on fire. "HARDER, DAMMIT! Oh, crap! He's waking up. Lanthe. Lanthe!" the mare yelled again, panic and worry evident in her tone. My leg is on fucking fire. “Lanthe! Listen to me!” I'm burning! I'm on burni- "OH HOLY FUCKING SHIT! THAT FUCKING HURTS!" My scream resounded through my head, jarring my mind back to the reality from my former metaphysical state. Burning agony coursed through my veins like lava ravaging a lush mountainside, burning all feelings of life and replacing it all with biological hell -- a pain so terrible and unimaginable that I could do nothing but sit there and listen to my own involuntary screams of profanity and strings of nonsense. And as I yelled my lungs out, my throat finally began to feel rougher than a rocky cliff, and it’s soreness only caused me to scream louder. Through the agonizing hell I was in, I managed to open my eyes to try to confirm my location. What I saw through the haze in my vision was a rickety old floor side made of what was once a sturdy hardwood. Dust and pieces of wood flew about the room, and every few seconds the building would shake hard enough to send several more pieces of debris down on top of me. It may have looked different, but I knew where this was: this was the break room. "Lanthe, listen to me! This will numb the pain for a minute!" the mare said. Through the corner of my eye, past all the veritable blur and chaos of pain, I saw a shiny metal object flash in Cypress's bloodstained hooves. Something jabbed into my leg, and the pain decreased from a never ending deathless suicide off a mountain to a dull throbbing. I looked at my savior thankfully and panted, sweaty and tired from my screaming, my throat sore as scraped skin. It was Cypress. The oversized zebra was piercing my leg with what looked like a large hypodermic needle, labeled with some science shit I didn't understand. The pain was bad alright -- and no matter how much pain killer I’d take, it would still probably feel like my veins were the temperature of the sun -- but nothing compared to what I had felt a few seconds before. My mind wouldn't-,no, couldn't take that pain again. She looked urgent. “Lanthe, we don’t have much time. When you fell, you got a piece of rebar through your stomach. You’re lucky that you didn’t die.” I nodded jerkily. “We could use healing potions, but we need to pull it out first.” Her face looked sympathetic, yet madly worried. I could tell that she was starting to lose hope, but not for me. For her. And really, who could blame her? Nobody wanted to die, definitely not like this. Another earth shaking rumble racked the building, sending a cloud of wood and dust up and making the rays of light streaming through the shoddy walls visible one again, like... golden lasers stabbing into the room. Cypress exhaled shakily, seeming lost. A mare -- one by the name of Vigil -- judging by her voice, barged in through the door to the side and locked all of us with a look of total horror. Her gaze lingered on my wound for a second, her facial expression not leaving me very encouraged. She swallowed her stomach acids and gulped to speak. "Sarge? They're at the door. It's him or us. We have to leave him or drag him!" Vigil joined Cypress at my side, and I could see that she was half-dressed in guard's armor, with nothing but a hastily donned breastplate and an unbuckled helmet. A submachine gun with a folding skeletal stock hung from a sling around her neck. Vigil shook off her helmet, revealing her long, flowing, grey-and-white mane. Her eyes, an intense green, looked on with an expression of tension and terror. That did not raise my hopes up in the slightest. Cypress looked down at my face, her expression solemn and sad. "I'm sorry, Lanthe. We have no choice." My pain was beginning to come back, the fire blazing, the flowing lava beginning to roll down the slopes of the mountain once more. I dared not speak for fear of losing my lunch, but I nodded quickly. It was the right decision. "Sarge!" Vigil was already out the door, looking at the outside with wide and terrified eyes. "Coming!" She started for the door, and hesitated. She turned back. "They're taking prisoners, not killing," she said. She slipped a revolver out of her neck holster, checking the chamber and snapping it shut. "But if you start blazing away when they come in, they won't think twice about feeding you a bullet." She pressed the magnum into my hoof. She turned and hurried out the door. I looked at the revolver, a .38, by it's appearance. So I could either be taken prisoner, or take one or two with me and die a helpless stallion. What a nice set of options. "Spray and pray!" I heard the yell from outside, followed by a barrage of gunfire. After about five seconds, it stopped and was returned by a longer, louder, and faster barrage. But I never got to think about making a choice. I faded into black once more. *** *** *** For the third time that day, I awoke. It was getting kind of old, actually. Even me staring down the barrel of a gun didn’t surprise me TOO much. A wee bit scary, perhaps, but no more than the tower exploding upwards underneath my hooves. Wincing in pain, I put my weary head to the side and spat out a tooth, probably dislodged during the explosion. Rivulets of red blood followed behind it in trails, staining the already-red pool table with my mouth-gore. It was a miracle I didn’t choke on my own blood. The gun uncocked itself, and pulled the barrel away from my forehead. I recognized it as the one Cypress gave me earlier, the black .38 magnum. My gaze drifted to the stallion holding it. I couldn’t see his face, as It was concealed behind a large, balaclava-like face covering. It had only slits for his eyes, which were bright red, popping out of his wrap like warning signs. I could tell that my wound had been healed, albeit hastily closed up. I could still feel the injury, but the terrible and recursive agony that was there before had all but dissappeared. “Get up,” the stallion behind the gun spoke, motioning his head to the side as I did so. I groaned in pain. “Make no mistake; you can’t take me. I’ve seen that wound in your tummy. Now get up.” He was right. I couldn’t see my obviously terrible injury, but I could still feel the blood flowing from the wound. Knowing that pesky thing called physics, there was probably an exit wound too. Mustering all of the effort that I could scavenge out of my weak, limp body, I obeyed the stranger and slid myself off the table of the floor. I landed face-up. "Holy shit," Both me and my antagonist said simultaneously. I had left so much blood on the operating table that it was literally spilling off, the little red waterfall cascading down to the wooden floor and into the spaces between the wooden slats. And to make things better, I could feel the slick puddle of blood below me, confirming that I had an exit wound. My vision went in and out of double again, making the red waterfall into two fountains of kool aid. The masked pony, tearing his red, unending gaze from the fountain, began rummaging through his pack for something. I was starting to feel real light-headed now, my judgement clouded. I looked at my wound. "Woah." My entire front was covered in splotches of red punch, looking as if my fur had been colored with dark red paint. The wound itself had semi-closed up, only a few small, profusely amd freely bleeding holes remaining where the rebar had punched through my abdomen. Next to me, on the floor, empty blood packs and shattered vials of healing potion littered the area. My fur, now painted with red, looked as if I had been dunked in a vat of Cherry Sparkle-Cola. A joke, one from my early childhood, rose to the front of my teetering consciousness. my head was clouded, and I couldn’t think straight. "Hey!" I yelled at the bandit. He now had something in his hooves that I couldn't see, and was manipulating it. "What's black, white, and red all over?!?" A hysterical grin crossed my face. The guard ignored me. "Me," I finished lamely. I began spasming and laughing at this terribly funny joke, my bloody coughs mixing in harmony with my crazed, hysterical laughter. The masked stallion turned around, a large, black box-shaped object clamped between his two hooves. Pressing a button on the side of this device, he spoke into it. “We’ve got one more, Crank Three. He’s losing blood, and fast. Get Zambi in the Doom and we’ll get out of here.” He put pressure off the button. A garbled reply came through, sounding as if I were under water. My head was beginning to REALLY, really spin this time. I was no longer thinking coherently. The stallion rolled up the brick-like object in a cloth, and began storing it into his large backpack. As he turned around, I saw some writing on the back of his face-wrap, a three-digit symbol that my oxygen-deprived brain struggled to translate: KR0V6. “Can you stand up?” My captor spoke in a firm, yet slow and deliberate voice so that I could understand. I simply smiled a madstallion’s smile. “I’ll take that as a no.” Wrapping is hoof around mine, he tugged me upwards with a firm jerk. “Brace yourself.” The muscle-bound stallion assumed a stable stance, bracing himself towards the wall facing to the outside of town. A wicked smile crossed his face. My cerebellum was starting to comprehend that something was wrong. “Hey, man, I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing, bu-” I was interrupted by a large rumbling noise. Gradually getting louder, it eventually drowned out the sounds from outside. The stallion’s smile widened. “Get ready to meet-” The outwards wall exploded inward, wooden splinter-shrapnel stinging my hide with thousands of tiny, barbed needles. The stallion himself stood in his stance, taking the brunt of the force as if it was no more than a firecracker. With a proud grin, the stallion declared, “Cranky Doom.” *** *** *** At first I saw nothing through the cloud of smoke and sawdust, only hearing a throbbing bass guitar, louder than the rumbling that had preceded the blast. The debris from the impact littered the room, and had almost knocked over the blood-soaked billiards table. A long, sharp piece of hardwood had been dislodged from the now-nonexistent wall, and was now buried in the wall on the other side like a crude throwing knife. My captor, unfazed, began to move towards the demolished wall, dragging me as he went. Splinters, now shaken loose from the floor, dug into my fur and pierced my bloody hide as my body was mercilessly pony-handled and beaten towards the site of the explosion. I closed my eyes, disgruntled at the destruction of my property. “Let’s go,” Said the stallion, moving once again. I just stared blankly. “Zebra! Let’s go!” I looked at him. “Th-there...there...” I started. Then an anger in me erupted, and I screamed, “THERE WAS A FUCKING DOOR, RIGHT THERE!” I hoof-pointed to the spot where a small door had once stood as an exit to the outside. They had just... crashed through it. Like madponies. My... childhood home. Destroyed. Obliterated. I hadn’t seen the interior of the town, but judging by the sound and shakes from the explosions outside, it wasn’t much better off. By my sense of hearing, the town was being brutally razed to the ground. Razed to the FUCKING ground. "ZEBRA!" Tears flowed freely down my face, mixing with my mouth-blood. I was on my knees, crying and weeping. "Three months of work. Three. Months. Three. Three. Three.” My brain, now beginning to descend into a blurry throbbing, could only process that one word. THREE. The word resounded through my head one last time, before my thoughts stopped completely. I was no longer in control of my body. I couldn’t have had any more than a few liters of blood left. I could still see blurry images of the pulverized break room, but that was fading fast. I was dragged to the outside, through the charred hole. Thick, heavy clouds had rolled in, blocking out the sun so that I could see nothing but a blob of grey, and what remained of the walls towering upward. I rough pair of hooves dragged me further outwards, until I felt a metal surface underneath me. A mechanical whirr followed, and a shouting mare’s voice took precedence. I was bleeding out. Like, out-out. OUT. *** *** *** Sorry this took so long! I actually wanted this chapter to be much longer, but I figured that after a month that we might be a litte impatient. I must say, thanks for reading. And also, YAY! This is the farthest I've made it without putting a story on hiatus! Also, for all you nitpickers: The speeding up of events at the end was intended as a literary device to show Lanthe bleeding out. I liked it, but please leave feedback! Thanks, -Cade YYZ Arc 1-3: On Big-Ass Armored TanksCounting Stars 1-3: On Big-Ass Armoured Tanks "I, hey, yeah, want to travel south this year. I, oh, yeah, won't prevent safe passage here." -Layne Staley, I Stay Away. *** *** *** “AAH!” I woke with a hangover, and I hadn’t even been drinking. The hangover came not from staying up all night dancing and drinking too much bourbon, or partying for a straight 48 hours. This one came from lying awake for half the night with only a few pints of blood left in my severely deprived veins. A few hours ago, I had awoken, alone, in the back of this vehicle, light headed and delusional as ever. (Actually, not nearly as much as I had been right before I had gotten inside, so I guess I was better off than before, but I SO did not feel it). I had eventually fallen asleep, and had paid for it by dreaming that a horse was chasing a carrot on a stick in circles, round and round, until I had eventually become more dizzy and lightheaded in the dream than I had been in real life. Which, come to think of it, doesn’t seem possible. What, was my head fucking itself up? Damn, that must sound weird to you guys. I wish I could be more descriptive about those few hours, but there really wasn't much to tell. A dream like that was common for me, actually. Considering all the kinds of things I did, those dreams weren’t really all that surprising anymore. Oh yeah, the tank. I should probably describe the tank. Well, the inside of the thing (Which I assumed was a tank at the time of my nearly passing out, and of which I was correct) was clearly designed for tactical, not medical, use. The bed that I now laid upon had been hastily stationed inside the vehicle, as around me I could see rows and rows of seats. The seats were, as I said, of a practical design and did NOT look very comfy. They were merely parallel bars situated off the floor of the vehicle, a base of corrugated iron much like the stuff we’d used to build the huts in Glyphmark. Glyphmark. Whoever had taken me had at least partially razed my town. A familiar deep-seated anger swelled up inside of me, much as it had done multiple times in the past few hours. Pacify yourself, Lanthe. The voice inside my head served to cool me down, but in this state, I couldn’t help but dwell upon the many questions that had been raised in the past day. Who had foalnapped me? Why would they destroy my town? Why was this happening NOW, of all times -- when Glyphmark actually showed signs of improving after the hell it had been in the past? And most of all... “Who the hell is Tod?” I said the last line out loud. He was that... voice in one of my recent dreams, but... you know, I usually dreamt about stuff like poker or... horses chasing carrots. Having a dream where something talked me about Roaman crap did NOT seem normal, by my standards at least, especially when my only connection to my ancestral lands lay with my delusional daddy who, as far as I knew, wasn't even IN Roam at the time. This Tod... for all I knew, I was just going bonkers, but knowing the Wasteland it was much more complicated than that. Some necrotic signal broadcasted from the tanks, maybe. Such a thing was common in Canterlot. “Talking to yourself is a sign of madness, you know.” “AH!” I reeled with surprise. I hadn’t heard anyone sneaking up on me! “Shhh. Save your breath. You’re in bad shape.” The voice was feminine, a pony by the sound of it. I heard a hiss, the sound of a door sliding shut. I mentally berated myself for allowing myself to miss that. My body ached, reminding me of that last statement’s truth. I had been saved- for now, but I still was in a bad way. The scar on my stomach was still red and fresh, and my light-headedness was still prevalent through my cranium. “I’m just guessing here, but I’m gonna say that you don’t have any intentions of being my best friend.” I refrained to give the raider satisfaction by looking at it, even acknowledging its presence. My head lolled to the side as I spat on the floor of the vehicle. “Just go. I don’t want your charity.” The feminine voice laughed, a dry, humorless laugh. “Not to be rude or anything like that, but I don’t think that you have much of a choice. I can just stay here, while you can’t even move.” Then she added smugly, “Why, I could have had some fun while you were out.” Okay, that was just... no. Oh wait... actually, I would have been fine with that. If they weren’t fucking raiders... okay, now I’m confused, I’ll just stop talking about this topic and get back to the point. I closed my eyes, wishing the mare away. I just wanted to be alone, without these bastards. Whoever they were. “Like I said, unless you want to talk, there’s no point in staying here. Trash.” “I-” The voice started, sounding hurt. However, it stopped short, with a tone of understanding. “Oh, I’m sorry. You haven’t seen me, with your head turned and all. Here, let me explain.” I heard the form get up from the chair, and hoofsteps moving towards my side of the uncomfortable bed. “Open your eyes,” she said. I did so, much as I didn’t actually want to. “Woah! nevermind the trash thing!” My mind backpedaled into reverse, scrambling to make amends for my previous statement. Now I would very much have liked her to... well, you know. It wasn’t a pony, as I had thought. It was a zebra. She stood up, giving me a better view. She was small and muscular, like me; lithe in build but seemed like she could kick some flank. Her black-and-grey mane flowed down over her shoulders, cascading like a waterfall to almost halfway down her legs. Her gray stripes conflicted with the white, making her form impossible to follow. But the most important was the jewelry adorning her neck. “Is that...” My voice trailed off. Hung around her neck was a golden band, fitted with a simple, green gemstone. “Yes. It is.” Her voice was full of pride. The Great Amulet was supposed to be an artifact lost in history, thousands of years ago. It was originally wielded by the First Emperor himself, and then passed down to his niece. Generations had passed since then, and it was lost to the sands of time somewhere around the era when bread was invented. Each member of the family, however, had added a spell of their choice, unicorn magic, into the green stone. After it was lost, it remained so until a minor fiasco in which an enchantress, Zecora, found a similar replica, one with only minor powers. She smiled. “This is the Amulet. Wielded by Julius, Augustus, Theseus, Dimus, Calypso, Kensa, all the way down to Hippolyta before it was lost.” She shook her neck, swinging it around as she did so. I was shocked. “That means you... You have royal blood.” “Well...” She frowned, appearing to be musing. “That’s the question. Only members of royal blood can wield it. However, I can, but I am only descended from a cousin of the Caesar. “ “I’m guessing you aren’t a raider, either.” Damn, that’s hot... ride me, please! “Me? One of them? No! Actually, I was just sent to continue healing you.” She smiled, smugly tapping on her amulet with one hoof. “Royal blood. They can’t take it off.” “Well,” I said, awed, “It’s an honor to be healed by one so like-minded as you.” *** *** *** As the last waves of potent healing magic surged over me, healing my senses, I almost Immediately felt better. However, the magic had only served to heal my larger wounds, and left my scrapes, bruises, and open sores untended. That left me looking a bit like dessicated mud. Ouch. I winced as she helped me off the bed, lowering me to the floor in a semi-dignified position. She blew her mane out of her face, seeming to scrutinize her work. “That should do it for now.” She put her head under my stomach, lifting me up using her neck. “Damn, you’re pretty strong for someone so small. How old?” I was now on all fours, hobbling around the small compartment. “Seventeen. You?” “Fifteen, Sixteen. In there somewhere.” I groaned as my blood ran down back into my legs, temporarily confusing me as it flowed from my brain. “You don’t keep track?” “I would if I could.” I brushed her hooves from out underneath me, waving her off. I could stand well enough without her help now. “My idiot father never told me. Said it wasn’t important.” Her eyes went wide with shock. “That’s terrible!” “Yeah, he was never the sentimental type. He taught me ideals, how to fight, a little bit of Roaman history, then left me with the tribe a few years ago.” I cracked my neck, sweet relief coursing through me with each pop. “He still fights for the Roaman legion, somewhere. Always with the ‘honor’ and ‘duty to the Empire’ crap...” Then I glanced at her with a smirk. “Hell, I’m pretty sure that he would be your bitch, with the royal blood and all.” I laughed. “Actually, I’m sure of it. If he’s all fanatical about the emperor and such, why not you?” “Yeah, why not?” She stepped back, admiring her medical work. Seeing as I now felt MUCH better than before, I thanked her mentally for it and gave her the privilege of feeling some pride at her accomplishment. Wait, her- *** *** *** Team Penegrene, we're seeing some minor radar activity on the horizon to the south. They seem to be equine forms, but we aren't getting a reading on the Dex. Sentries, maybe? Confirm, over. Team Brat, we cannot confirm your observation. Dust storm's kicked up a bit, instruments are ineffective. Check with Harrier, they're closer to your bogies. Roger that. Communicating now. ... Team Penegrene, Harrier is not responding. Maybe due to the dust, over. Roger that, Brat. Harrier is out of radio contact for us. We're still a good two kilometers from your position. We'll get closer, but stay on the move. Maximum speed and nothing but. Copy that, Penegrene. Over and out. Out. *** *** *** I lifted a hoof, punching the intercom one last time as the final message went through. The stupid thing had been disrupting my sleep patterns. Now, when you think of an intercom, you think of one of those little plastic boxes that occasionally beeps, and you hear a lady telling someone to come to some random aisle for a cleanup or customer service. Well, no. Because it just COULDN'T be that simple. This thing was a military-grade, shockproof, water-resistant, armor-plated, analog behemoth which I was pretty sure was large enough to house its own subwoofer and sentient conscience bent on not letting me rest. And the universe hated me just enough to have it placed directly above my head. And it sounded like someone had left it on full volume. Every single radio transmission going through the vehicle (which I had inferred, was codenamed the Penegrene) was relayed directly into my skull as I was trying to catch upon sleep. If only they could play some decent music... But of course, it didn't. It still spat out chatter -- boring, useless chatter. I began to drift asleep, hoping to just get away from it all. Penegrene, this is Harrier. We’re gonna make a quick bathroom stop, over. “This FUCKING-” I lifted my hoof to punch the system again, bored out of my mind and frustrated at the extremely dull and uninteresting banter. I was interrupted by the sound of a knock on the door. Well isn’t that nice. Visitors, I thought, not at all happy about it. Maybe if they were calm, civilized ponies (or zebras) who were like the one I had met earlier and NOT psychopathic murderers who wanted to burn down and destroy more towns, then maybe I’d be open to talk. I strolled my way to the metal door, which I assumed led even farther into the massive vehicle. I put my face to the door. "Who is it?" "Let me the fuck in before I have your brains blown out of your skull, you ungrateful little sarcastic bastard. The intercom's going off now. No need for you to hear all our tactical communications." I rolled my eyes and said idly, "Come in then." The rust on the surface of the door grinded with a large screeching noise as the portal slid to it's resting position. When it was fully open, I saw Shemagh standing at the entrance. He growled. He had changed out of his gear since I had last seen him in -- the facemask and light armor were now replaced by a pair of aviator-style shades and some heavier, more protective ceramic plated barding. His midnight black coat seemed to absorb the light in the room, drawing my eyes to him. He motioned for me to move aside, and I did so. He stepped into the room. "Go." "I beg your pardon?" He whinnied. "Escape in the next two hours I'm on watch. I won't hinder you. I'll send in the Willow chick too, if you like." "What the shi-" "Just go." He turned to exit, leaving me bewildered. That happened fast. I spoke, stopping him short. "What's your name?" I mean, surely a gesture of polite consideration for my... ‘savior’ was a small price to pay for freedom. "Demetrius." Arc II: Eyes On the InsideHolly. Holy shit, just... Holly. What a fuckin' mare. A short, yet extremely muscular pony, she barely looked into my eyes at full height. However, even a stout one would tremble whilst doing so. The combination of her fierce white coloring, and her steely gaze made her extremely hard to talk to. Trying to get results out of her was like trying to pop a balloon by throwing glitter at it. Currently, she was engaged in a heated discussion with her second-in-command, the exact one that had apprehended me during my escape attempt. Needless to say, there was a bit of resentment towards me, and the feeling was mutual if not completely lopsided. He took my only chance of freedom, and throttled it until it asphyxiated. The discussion was one of my loyal validity. "Just show Im' the manual, wind him up, and let him loose. Hope for the best." She turned from the subcommander, and looked at me. "Or on the far more likely scenario that you're here trying to get out of this, Let me make it plain for you: You're not getting off the hook. Answer any questions?" "Actually, sir, that's not... err exactly my question." I mumbled meekly. Fuck, she was onto me. The subcommander spared me one sideways glance, making his distaste of my presence as blatant as possible. Or more likely as if he didn't believe in me at all. As for me, I was wondering just how many hours he passed practicing on the mirror to be able to make such a snide face - while keeping an eye out on where his next steps were taking him. I snickered. "What was that, signie? The commander asked. "Nothing at all, sir." "Good." It struck me as slightly ironic that the subcommander's suspicions of me were, and would probably remain, justified. My recent financial windfall and my sketchy arrival with two friends who were assumed to both be highly dangerous only served to undercut my point. But there was no proof, nevertheless. I was untouchable. Holly spoke. "You got a commission, private. Due to the lack of ANY knowledge of your origins or motivation. You start tommorow." I saluted and began to turn. Now was the hard part. I let my knife slip out of it's sheath. As I was walking to the door, the knife buried itself in the frame next to my head. "I think I'll leave that there. Nice decor." Said Holly. I smiled to myself. The bug would work. We had eyes on the inside.
Arc 1: Luminescence Fallout: Equestria: Counting Stars. "I could get rid of all these clouds in ten seconds flat!" -Rainbow Dash, Ministry of Awesome "Yo, GW? You done with that recorder thingy?" "Yeah i just finished, wh-" "Your girl is up on the top deck. Go see her. I want my spot with this shit." "Alright, it's already on though. Where again?" "Top deck. Poop deck. Whatever, just leave." "Alright, he's gone. Ahem." *** *** *** Light. Light kills all, sustains all. All living things crave light. From the smallest speck of diatomic fungi, all the way up to the largest buffalo of the western plains, light brings life, sustenance. But light is also terrible. However many benefits Light can bring to us, nothing as great and as powerful as Light comes without a price. Light sticks its nosy tendrils of white luminescence into all the dark places it finds, grabbing the darkness and kicking it out to the Stars know where. Light intrudes. Light is nosy. Light burns. It scorches. Even as it sustains the green plants, it also shrivels them up and kills them, mutilates them. Corrupts them into mere, weeping shadows of their former selves, all as it keeps up the charade of happiness and luck that ponies seem to associate with it. Shadows, however, protect. They providing shade from the ever-present Light. Shadows hide and conceal us from the angers of the world when necessary. As terrible as the world can be, Shadows give respite from it, while Light simply pushes us back into the cruelty of reality. Light, because of this, overcomes Shadow. I prefer Shadow. My name is Lanthe of Glyphmark. Chances are, you haven't heard of me. Some of my recent acts have been slightly... less than heroic. My name has probably been wiped out from every archive in Equestria. But no matter how gruesome and wretched I may have become through the course of my numerous travels, no matter how many horrible acts I may commit as a result of my quest for legacy, one thing helps me to endure, even as the Stars themselves somehow manage to conspire against me and my companions as we speak. I. Will. Be. Remembered. I have no fear of Death, or even of the oppression of my people. My only fear, by now, is the fact that I will most likely face the fate of all the other ponies and zebras that have trod the same path before me. That I will crumble to dust, unloved, a mere footnote in the history books, if even that. Yet, I still must keep to the Shadows, for if I do not, they will find me. They will erase me, bludgeon me off the face of Equestria until no memories of me are left in but thier own wretched minds. Thee Stars are relentless. How, you ask, did I manage to get some of the most powerful forces in the known universe out for my head? I will tell you the story of how I got here, up until this point, as I hide like a coward in these Shadows that have come to be my best friends. But for now, I must keep to them, for the safety of myself and that of my beloved companions, my only reason to live other than to carve my legacy. For now, my children. For now.
Arc 1-1: On Shit Going DownI guess if we didn't laugh at things that didn't make sense, we couldn't react to much of life. *** It was either the heaviest rainstorm or the pussiest tornado that Glyphmark had ever experienced. As I lay awake in my top bunk -which is a crappy-ass bed- the storm refused to get the best of me. I heard the rain pour down onto the Favela rooftops in a torrential downpour as I read my copy of “Guns and Ammo”. With the wind’s savage pounding and the rain’s deafening downpour rocking our home, it felt like the building we were in would have collapsed at any second. Considering how crappily this place was built, that occurrence was actually very likely. I propped myself up on my scratchy hay mattress; I was careful not to knock the candle on my nightstand into my bedding. I reached out and nudged the candle at a slightly safer distance away from me. Reassured, I continued to read my prewar copy of "Guns and Ammo", picking up where I had left off at an article about the short-stroke piston NRF- MD2 rifle. At that moment in time life was good. Far away I heard the distant echoes of the skeleton crew moving our supply of gunpowder into a dry storage area, since soaked gunpowder is bad gunpowder. I heard grunts and several colourful curses in heavy Zebraic through the rain. It was times like these that made me glad to be a day shift town guard. On the opposite side of the room I saw my roommate, and marefriend, Xephyr, sleeping peacefully on her bed. I could see her small, muscular black striped body poking out from under her sheet. On her bedstand stood a picture of her parents -two unknown zebras- handing Xephyr as a baby, wrapped in a bundle, to my father, Lancer, who was a teenager at the time. The photo on my nightstand is that of my dead mother, Iota and my, Lancer, who was halfway invisible under a stealth cloak. As the storm raged on, I decided it was time to get some shut eye. After all, the cold moisture of rain always makes them the best time to sleep. So I blew out my candle, tried to make myself comfortable in my crappy bed, and fell asleep. *** *** *** *** *** *** I awoke. Normally it’s not very pretty when I wake up in the morning; my brain gets fuzzy, my muscles don’t work, and by vision gets blurry; it’s just a large-ass mess. Today was no exception to that rule; I rolled over in my bed, my teared-up eyes making the whole world seem like I was hopped up on the ‘shrooms. My barrel bedstand looked like a giant brown blob. I stretched out my cramped muscles, flexing them methodically, as was my morning routine. Right quad, left quad. Right calf, left calf. As I stretched out my final muscle, I heard a few voices from outside, to the west side of our building; the skeleton crew was switching out with the day shift. The first zebra said, “Habere bonum trabea! Populatores sunt supposted ad esse male hoc tempore anno”, which roughly translated into: “Have a nice day, the raiders are abundant at this time of the year.” He was right; around spring, raiders, both diseased and professional, were at their strongest. As for why... well, I really don’t know. The day worker, who's voice I recognized as the guard captain's, shouted, straining his voice: “LANTHE! GET THE HELL TO YOUR POST!” His voice echoed throughout the Favela, probably waking up even those who had another two hours to sleep. The surprised gasps and muffled swearing from the areas nearby told me that was most likely the case. “Well, that woke me up.” I took a look at the old, analog watch strapped onto my left leg, towards the hoof, and immediately yelled: “Oh, shit!” when I saw the time. I needed to be at my guard post ten minutes ago! If I was late again, the captain was going to have my hide! Newly refreshed and woken up, not to mention fearing for my skin, I ran to my barrel bedstand, opened the top drawer with my mouth, and frantically rummaged through the contents, looking for a certain something. ‘No... no... no... n-is that a thong? No... no... YES!’ With that thought, I pulled out a familiar leather sheath out of my cluttered drawer. I buckled my gladius to my belt, around my neck, and then I tightened the straps with my teeth. After doing so I ran to the door, ignoring Xenith, who was still sleeping peacefully despite the ruckus I made, and entered the narrow hallway outside of my room. Taking a right, I dashed down the makeshift stairs, and ran straight into the kitchen. Upon entering, I immediately spotted a familiar zebra sitting at the small table in the center of the wooden room. A few beams of light from the holes in the wall illuminated his face, showing me my best friend, Desmond. Desmond, my best bro, was one of the original twenty members of the tribe that had settled in Glyphmark along with me. The extra hundred or so, who we called “newbies”, had been picked up in the few months following when the “Stable Dweller”, or Littlepip, had saved our town from starving to death by teaching us to produce Dash. "Svetkas!" I called out to him. This was a traditional zebra greeting, which had no translation into Equestrian. "Mornin' to you, too," said Desmond caustically. A raging insomniac, Desmond Starsword was often cynical and grumpy. However, he was my best bro, so I usually let it slide. After all, it would be kind of unfair not to, as I was be a complete ass to him when I didn’t get enough sleep. Damn, I was hungry. Slinging a waiting water skin onto my back, I said, "Hey, Des, toss me one!" Heeding my request, Desmond grabbed a granola bar off his plate, and flung it in my general direction. I caught it in my mouth, gobbling it down with a ferocity that bordered on madness. With crumbs of granola still on my muzzle, I shouldered the door open, entering the street. *** *** *** “Me excusare! Excuse me!” Glyphmark was an ugly town. When you weren’t busy plugging your nose from the sewage, or getting mugged by one of it’s 120 residents, you were able to take a long, hard look at it. And it wasn’t pretty. I lived in the Favela, or Pretium. This was where most of us lived, which was only really eating and sleeping. The Favela was made up of makeshift two-story buildings, mostly wooden frames with metal sheets attached to them with rusty nails. They weren’t the most comfortable of dwellings, but they suited our purposes nicely. If, you know, you count making us look like we live in a junkyard as one of their purposes. I didn’t want to wake up any of the still-sleeping residents of the living area, so I stealthily ran down the deserted, narrow, rusty streets of the Favela, my Gladius slapping against my shoulder in its sheath. After running past the town bar and saying “Hi” to some of our friendly local alcoholics, I spotted a familiar door leading into a building bordering the 12-hoof wall that surrounded our town. My eyes drifting from the sharpened tree wall, I ran to the door, shouldering it open as I had the one before. I could tell that this was going to be a bad day. *** *** *** Ah, the break room. The break room was the best. Always smelling of cigars and stale vodka, it was sure to give you just that push you needed to get through the day. My morning shift crew, who had spent the night in preparation for our early start, was strewn about on the couches on the perimeter of the room, snoring like a storm. Tossing my gladius belt onto one of the two pool tables, I casually waltzed my lazy ass over to the one free couch on the south end of the metal room. Plopping my flank down, I stretched my limbs. "It's great to be earl...." "WAKE UP, YOU INCOMPETENT MOTHERFUCKERS!" "Aah!" With a yell, my recently-plopped form rolled off of the flea- ridden couch and onto the floor with a resounding thump. I came to my senses, standing up. Screw it! Just screw it. The head guard, a cheery fellow by the name of Quintus, was a large, imposing zebra that had at least a few feet on me. He stood at the bottom of the staircase leasing up to his office, surveying the practical carnage strewn across the break room. Everyone stood up, and sleepily snapped to what some might call attention. He spoke again, in a low, gravelly voice. "Do your jobs. You know how." He commanded, his voice completely devoid of emotion. He then turned to me. “Lanthe, in my office. Now.” He went back up the small staircase, opening the door at the top. I uneasily followed, noting his apparent lack of the aura of anger that usually followed him around like some sort of of airborne parasite. I closed the door behind me and sat down, leaving the other members of my shift to scramble up the other set of stairs to the guard towers. I looked at Quintus across the low-lit, small room and sat down. Quintus took a sip of what I assumed was water out of his waterskin, keeping silence. I broke it. “Boss, if this is about my tardiness, I..” He responded. “No, Lanthe. I need you to work a triple shift tomorrow.” He pushed a few papers on his desk, as if to draw my attention from that statement. Damn. I exhaled, dumbstruck. A single shift was twelve hours long, and payed next to nothing. I needed more than that. I leaned back. “Sir, with all due respect, I’m gonna want a crap load of money for this.” I held my breath, ready for his reaction. “No pay.” He got up, and made his way to the door. I stood up and blocked him. “Now why the HELL is that?” I responded, switching to my native language about halfway through. He spoke in Equestrian, adamant to keep the conversation on his ground. “Lanthe, as of now, there’s only eight guards working the day shift, and two on the night. We’re running on half capacity.” “So? That’s two per tower! Why not just double up on everyone?!” He thought for a second, as if thinking of a reason. “You’re out best shooter.” I was confounded. I was one of the worst shots on the shift, and definitely the worst one here now. And that wasn’t even counting the fact that our rifles were mostly made of plastic. “You know damn well that’s not true.” In the most recent shooting practice, I had hit a bulls-eye. On someone else’s target. “Just do it. Now move your ass out of the fucking way before I do it for you.” I moved aside, regretfully letting him go downstairs uninterrupted. There it is. *** *** *** “So then he just laid it on me! Thirty-six work hours straight! That’s crazy, Right? Right?” I inquired. Desmond Starsword continued to munch on his hydroponic sandwich. “Des.” My single word reverberated off the metal-panelled walls, and still had no effect on the apathetic zebra. He looked up from the makeshift barrel-table, noticing me for the first time. “Huh?” I facehoofed. Although my best friend, he could be a real douche sometimes. I re-explained my situation to him. “Well,” He said after hearing me out. “I know a guy from ABP who can hook you up with some energy drinks. Angel Bunny Pharmaceuticals was the commercial center of Glyphmark. It used to sell prescriptions and over-the-counter meds, but we now use it’s hydroponics bay to produce Dash, a high-potency inhalant that induces powerful delusions of grandeur. Which, by the way, we call “energy drink”. I scoffed, “Sorry, but I’m not into pulmonary hypertension.” Desmond looked confused. “Dash induces edema, not hypertension, idiot.” “I was just saying a random medical term. Either way, drugs are out of the question.” Desmond gobbled up the last of his artificial sandwiches. “Look, let me think it over. I always find a way to solve crap this. Gimme some time to look around town, and there’s bound to be someone who knows about this shit.” “Thanks.” “You owe me.” He said, standing up. He winked. “I’ve gotta run. Drugs don’t make themselves!” *** *** *** I sat at the barrel-table in our building, watching the water-clock resting on our counter drip away the long minutes. I probably should’ve gotten some air around then, but the strange nature of my orders wouldn’t stop gnawing at me. Nevertheless, there would be no answers until Desmond returned with some sort of info or contact for me. *Drip* The water-clock counted off the next minute. I contemplated resting my weary head on the barrel-wood, but decided against it, fearing for the integrity of the years-old, rotten vessel. ‘If I spend much more time in this room waiting, I’ll suffocate.’ The small, metal room was beginning to slowly whittle away at my patience for my best friend. I needed something to keep myself busy before I became a vegetable. I was going insane. To entertain myself, I pulled the hefty leather belt off my neck, laying it on the barrel-table with an audible thunk. I gripped the leather-wrapped handle tightly with my teeth, drawing the sword out of it’s oiled sheath without a whisper of noise. I laid the instrument of war on the table next to the sheath. Two-and-a-half feet long, hand-forged, the titanium alloy leaf-blade perfectly weighted and optimized for the maximum torque and power whilst striking at one’s enemy. This was the standard-issue gladius for Zebra legionnaires for about a month before the bombs descended. I gripped it in my teeth once more, and stood up, assuming a combat stance. ~~~~~~~~~~ I swept my right-front hoof in a semicircle, testing out my opponent. My motion drew a perfect half-circle in the rubble at my feet. The large black Alicorn did absolutely nothing. This told me that she was a smart swordsmare, which could be deadlier than any artillery. The gladius in my mouth was my only advantage here. My only upper ground was that I could puncture that Emperor-forsaken shield. The midnight-colored being withdrew about two feet, stepping her shield out of the reach of my weapon. “You think that you have the skills or power to beat us?” Snarled the repulsive voice in my head. “You would be better off as a stain on the ground. That puny sharpened stick you call a sword will do nothing against me.” The alicorn contemplated something for a moment. I took the second’s hesitation to step mere inches inward, bringing me just within striking range of the beast. “We will make this more... fair.” The black alicorn stared down at me contemptuously, and said something under her breath. A sharpened sword, identical to mine, appeared in her jaw. “Fight, puny one. You will lose. You know it to be true.” My enemy swung her weapon in a deadly arc, leaving a smoky contrail through the air. I took stock of my new situation. Behind the beast was the ruins of Old Glyphmark, an assortment of shacks that had been crushed by the rampaging foe. The rubble at my feet was what remained of my house. I fought the urge to run, knowing that I would die here. My only hope was to take this bitch with me. I had the skills, but not the size or strength. I analysed my opponent. The only possible way to hit her would be to let her take my blade, and disengage. I would then have to weave a web of steel so intricate that she could not even touch my sword. I coiled my back hooves, ready to pounce. The alicorn laughed. “Feisty one. You will make a good piece of Unity.” I pounced, flying over the rubble. “Lanthe.” ~~~~~~~~~~ Desmond’s low and raspy voice woke me from my flashback. He looked at me in my battle stance, ready to lash out at my imaginary opponent at the slightest of provocations. He looked at me quizzically, although not all that surprised. I did things like this often, taking up a surprising amount of time as I did so. Desmond, however, had not been affected by the horrific events of our past nearly as much as the larger portion of the original tribesmen. He had a stoic-ness about him, the kind that would allow him to have a staring contest with a rock. And win. “Lanthe, stop foaling around with your dad’s old standby beating stick that he loved so much and listen.” I seriously considered making him into a Zebra-kebab at this point, but then I would have no information. ‘I’ll wait until later for that.’ I resisted the urge, sliding my gladius into it’s sheath and slinging it up and around my neck. “What?” Desmond closed the door behind him. The entire rotting building shook with the force. “Is Xephyr upstairs?” “No,” I replied. “She’s out with her mom somewhere.” “Whoa! Does Xenith know you two are-” “Nope.” “Wow, you’d better watch your ass around her, then.” He said, concerned. Xenith, Xephyr’s mom, was, like, Equestria’s leading supplier of kick-ass. She’d come to town with Littlepip three months ago. “Anyhow, I got you somebody to talk to. His name’s Demusei, and he works up at A.B.P..” “Demusei?” I over-pronounced the name. In Zebraic, it translated quite literally into “Pit Fighter.” “Yeah. And before you ask, no. He’s not a pit fighter.” I smiled. “We hang out too much.” “You owe me.” The striped ball of stoic that was Desmond went upstairs, ready to do whatever the hell he did when he wasn’t around me. *** *** *** “Do you WANT your ass on a stick, or was it some sort of accident? Because usually when somebody I BARELY know comes up to me and asks for a favor, they end up being the world’s largest ice cream cone! You see this baton? It’s about to be your new best friend.” I had just gotten finished asking the world’s most piss-poor excuse for a security guard for entrance to A.B. pharmaceuticals. It had gone south after I had maybe mentioned a little that I had a better job than him. But only a little. Angel Bunny Pharmacy towered over my short form, dominating the nonexistent skyline of Glyphmark. The building, a marvel of engineering by Glyphmark standards, towered upwards six stories, with another two floors underground where the Dash was made. Serving as both the administrative and economic center of the town, our home couldn’t, by any means, exist without it. Zebras of all ages and genders milled about the flagstone square in front of the towering mass, either working or on break. All of the former went about their business in brown HazMat suits, making it impossible to discern their identities. Those not in the bulky suits mostly spent their time eating or tossing any spare caps into the well dug into the center of the square. I turned away from the fat-ass guard, dismayed. I had been told earlier that Demusei, now not necessarily a guy, worked as a floor supervisor in the hydroponics bay, but that was about all I knew about him (or her...). I was stumped. I sighed, looking at the giant clock emblazoned on the front of the brick building. The half-wasted clock helpfully reminded me that it was eleven in the morning, giving us an hour until the traders showed up from the North. I got to my feet, making my way towards the zebra nearest to me. It was time to start looking. The zebra, a tall and skinny female, had just gotten finished throwing caps in the well, and was on her way out. A golden ring hung from her nose, signifying... something. I was never good at discerning the meaning of the jewelery that seemed to hang from the females everywhere. They usually had a meaning, though. “Hey do you know a guy by the name of Demusei? I-” “You are Lanthe, are you not?” She said suspiciously. I was taken aback by the commanding air that came with her speech. it seemed like SHE should be captain, not Quintus. I wanted to do what she wanted, now. “He of the armies of old?” She offered. Here she referred to my father, who still considered himself a member of the Roaman legion, regardless of the fact the war was over. I disapproved. What’s done is done is done. “One might call me that.” Venom dripped from my voice, provoked by mention of my father. “I remember your father. A stout zebra, he was.” I was disgusted. “I don’t take after Lancer. To him, I’m nothing but a ‘traitor.’ ” I spat on the ground to drive the point home. “Suit yourself. Either way, I heard you wanted information about Quintus.” I went for it. “Why did he give me a triple shift?” She looked around, a touch of paranoia in her eyes. She switched to Zebraic. “The orders came straight from the Mayor. She wants YOU on the shift, specifically the third one.” I wasn’t at all surprised. Although nobody EVER saw her, save for her assistant, it was routine for her to pull strings like this. What concerned me was the “Why”. “Well, why the third shift?” “All I know is that something very big is happening in forty-eight hours. And the mayor wants YOU overseeing it. And remember, whatever happens, it’ll all go down by twelve the day after tomorrow. You never saw me.” And with that, she disappeared. *** *** *** I opened the ramshackle door to my building, taking a quick look inside to make sure I wasn’t disturbing anyone. This had become a habit of mine, after a few weeks ago when I went in without knocking and found Desmond trying to create some sort of potion when I distracted him. Long story short, I had a rainbow mane for a week. Finding nopony of interest, I trotted lightly into the small 15x10 room. The sound of my hooves on the dirt floor reverberated off the metal walls. I had four hours until my under-shift started, and still no idea what the fuck was going to happen. And on top of that, most of my guard time would be spent looking through a rifle scope down at traders, leaving me oblivious as to what was happening around me. I heard the clip-clop of hooves on the stairs to my left, and took a look at my friend descending our stairs. Damn, I was hoping it would be Xephyr. “Anything good?” His voice was scratchy and hoarse, indicating that he had just gotten in one of his two forced hours of sleep per day. “I just found out. Apparently, twenty-four hours into my shift, shit’s gonna go down so hard that there’ll be a hole in the ground all the way to Roam. And then it’ll hit a fan somewhere. Desmond descended the rest of the stairwell clumsily. Walking to the barrel-table, he sat. Tired from his single hour of forced- “I-DE-A!” I stomped my hoof on the ground forcefully. “What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sleeping?” “A few days, give or take a few days.” He opened up the lid of the table, bringing out a bottle of Sparkle-Cola. “Mmm, carroty. What now?” He chugged the bottle, waking him up to his normal sentience. I blinked and waited a few seconds for the caffeine in the energy soda to kick in. “Do my shift with me!” I would’ve been more polite, maybe said ‘please’, but I was excited. He looked at me like I had a large, sentient lump growing on my face. “Lanthe, Lanthe, Lanthe. Have you learned nothing?” His voice rang with mock menace. “I require... compensation.” “Right.” I said. “You know what to do.” I did. I leaned into his muzzle, ready to embrace him in a passionate- Desmond pulled away, mollified. “YES!” I screamed. “I am the KING of gay chicken!” I pumped a hoof in the air. “You know it. I’ll help you.” Desmond was still trying to erase the memory. *** *** *** “You good jobwise?” Desmond laughed. “You know I don’t do anything there. I just sign the papers. Nobody is gonna miss me.” The zebra, smiling, sat in a flea-ridden couch in the break room. The expression on his face suggested that he was a little nervous. “You sure this will be OK?” I knew that it probably wouldn’t be, but I kept on my brave face. I needed him here, and I sure as hell didn’t want him chickening out. “It’ll be fine. I’m sure it’s just a drug deal or something.” I waved a hoof casually. Des let out a sigh of relief. He didn’t tell me, but I knew it had been bugging him for hours. He got up off the couch reluctantly, stretching out. “What now?” This part was routine. I did this for a job. “Alright. We need to remember GAS. That stands for Guns, Armor, and Other Shit. I just made that up.” Taking a key from off my gladius belt, I walked to the metal door on the opposite side of the room. I unlocked it and slid it open sideways, revealing three racks of equipment. "Alright," I said, taking a rifle off the first rack. I stood up and held it Zebra-style, bracing it between my two front hooves. "We need our standard-issue rifle, of course." I racked the straight-pull bolt action, wincing as the crappy rifle echoed with the sound of plastic parts. It felt more like a toy than a gun. This was the gun manufactured for the front-line riflemen towards the end of the war, when it started becoming more of an arms race than anything. I tossed Desmond a rifle. "The scopes are already zeroed in. All we need to do is put the sights where you want the bullet to go. The town's only about 300 yards long, so don't worry about bullet drop. Besides, you probably won't be shooting anyways." Desmond assumed my stance, looking down the 4x ACOG sight on the rifle. I moved to the next rack, this one housing our armor. This was definitely not as badly built as our small arms, as most of the protective gear was made of a high-quality ceramic-plate Kevlar. I bypassed the larger articles, knowing these wouldn't fit me or Desmond. I selected a smaller piece, known as the tiger shark. "Try this on for size." I gave the suit to Des, selecting a piece for myself. Mine was a slightly heavier model known as the "Cobra." My Armor, unlike his, was emblazoned with my name and trademarks across the back of the plating. After a fair bit of tweaking and pulling, Desmond was satisfied. "Some pretty high-grade stuff we got here." He opened the action if his rifle, sliding in a .388 Lapua Magnum that he had found in the reservoir carved into the stock. That specific round would travel four hundred meters with literally no drop, and leave a blue trail. "Want a sidearm?" I asked him. Not waiting for his answer, I brought out two Taurus 5.7mm pistols from the third rack. I put mine in the holster built into my suit. "Remember, once we're up there, there's no slacking. Keep yourself situated-" I said, putting up my bipod, "At all times. You see anything shady, or even remotely out of line, you report it to me." "Yershur" Desmond muttered through a mouthful of gun. I slammed closed the solid metal slider, locking it with my keys as I did so. Still nobody in the break room. Huh. That must have meant that everyone had started their double shift twelve hours ago. Except for the one lucky bastard we were relieving now. Gesturing for Des to follow me, I opened the small wooden door opposite of the armory, behind the pool table. It swung outward, revealing a narrow set of wooden stairs. Most off the times I ascended these, I feared for my safety, as the weight of my armor added almost an extra twenty percent to my weight. And that wasn't counting all the extra shit we sometimes carried. I took the first step, and the stairboard creaked underneath me. Thankfully, it didn't break. I picked up the pace, trotting up the stairs with a pep in my step. Desmond followed me up to a trapdoor, set about six feet above our heads. "Nayshapay" I called, a challenge. This was the challenge, a specific word that could only be responded to by another specific word, insuring that the person at the trapdoor wasn't a raider ready for lunch. "Dresspace!" Responded the guard manning the tower above us. The trapdoor opened with a creak, letting in a stream of Wasteland sun that the main town only got a few hours a day due to the large retaining walls. A rope ladder rolled down, signaling the guard was ready for transfer. I climbed up the ladder, out into the tower. This particular guard was a female by the name of Cypress. A strong type, she was the best sharpshooter in the guard force. I barely knew her. She stood up from her prone position, uncocking her rifle as she did so. "You my relief?" She asked. I simply nodded. When in formality, or a person that you don’t know well, Zebra etiquette was to be short, quick, and to the point, that is if you spoke at all. "I see you brought a friend." She gestured to Desmond, behind me looking ridiculous in his riot armor. He smiled at the buff mare, obviously nervous around her. Desmond glanced as she walked by, barely fitting herself into the hatch leading down below, closing it behind her with a thump. “So this is how you make a living, huh?” I exhaled slowly. It was, whether I wanted it to be or not.Although, technically, I didn’t make a living off of it. I was payed, like I said earlier, but it was next to nothing. I hoisted my plastic rifle. The object was a testament to the poverty of our settlement. Although well-established over the last few months, Glyphmark was visibly struggling with other wasteland powers. Last I heard, there was a huge militant base or something springing out of the ground up North. “Hey.” Desmond was staring out at the wasteland. A veritable desert, the barren, plague-ridden dust that extended for a few miles below Canterlot was bright, the dust crystals reflecting the Sun’s light back at our faces. Canterlot itself stood slightly above and to the west of our hometown, the protruding rock looking like some sort of bizarre hoofhold for some Equestrian rock climber. From our view, we couldn’t see the city on top of the mound, but I knew those gnarled old buildings and mansions from a few trips up there. I looked to the side, seeing Desmond craning his neck to look at Canterlot. He asked: “You ever been up there?” “Once or twice.” I replied. The approaching horde of ghouls were nipping at our hooves by now. Half-dragged, half-supported by my brother, I slid a bullet into my revolver, my last one. I clicked it closed, lining up the chamber with the bullet. Every painful step drew me closer to oblivion. the end of the royal hallway was at least forty feet away. My last spark of hope fizzled out. “Anything cool up there?” “Not much.” I replied, my gaze still focused on Canterlot. The city, along with providing me with nightmares beyond imagination, also poisoned our few attempted crops with it’s pink, poisonous water.We all hated it with a burning passion. Desmond spoke, tearing my gaze from the capitol city. “Ill take the first watch. You, rest.” He seemed confident in his abilities, so I took a seat in one of the two lawn chairs situated on the tower, and fell into a dark, dreamless slumber. *** *** *** I awoke to a hoof in my face. “Lanthe, wake up. now.” I glanced up at the sun, only two inches past it’s apex. It had only been a few hours. “Desmond, nothing’s going to happen for another-” I was drowned out by a large boom. My voice faltered. “Lanthe, I don’t know how to say this... but- shit went down.” That was the last thing I heard before we fell.
Arc 1-2: On BloodDibs on the guacomole. Darkness. Well, technically not. I couldn't actually see anything. The equine mind cannot comprehend the lack of sight- ah- whatever, it looked dark as fuck. It was obvious that I was dreaming, as I felt I was floating in midair with no body. But this was a different kind of dreaming. There was no coin in my pocket to squeeze and wake up, no subconscious ranting. In fact, this wasn’t my subconscious at all, I felt. My subconscious was full of shit. You have aged beyong your years, my son. I thought. Wait, what? I didn’t think that! I- Your mind is strong. Your mental barriers were too strong for even me to bypass whilst you were awake, I thought once more. However, there is a reason I could sire so many, such a great force. My strength increases by the second, yet wanes by the hour. Alright, I knew my mind was effed up, but this was just batshit crazy. Like me. “Who are you?” I asked aloud, forgetting I had no mouth. The thought instead reverberated inside my head like an echo. Let’s just call me... your benefactor. Or Tod. Whichever one you prefer. “Tod.” This right here was a fucking testament to my madness. Names have great power, Lanthe. I implore you not to overuse them. I wonder- The voice in my head went silent for a moment. Ah, the Orchard. Strange, I would’ve thought you to be the Shadow. Nonetheless, your fate is set. “Saywhatnow?” Find the Caesar, Centurion. And be glad I chose to spare you. I care not for you. I care for the bastion. Roam, as you call it -- the city that is a testament of your people’s challenge to time. At this point, I really hoped I wasn’t going all sczitzo. I used to have a friend, Connor was his name. He went all bipolar a few years ago. It wasn’t pretty. Welcome to the legion, Lanthe. The REAL legion. The legion of change. *** *** *** "Pull, you fuckers! PULL!" I heard the voice of a mare yell. But that thought was lost to me, mostly because... I'm on fire. "HARDER, DAMMIT! Oh, crap! He's waking up. Lanthe. Lanthe!" the mare yelled again, panic and worry evident in her tone. My leg is on fucking fire. “Lanthe! Listen to me!” I'm burning! I'm on burni- "OH HOLY FUCKING SHIT! THAT FUCKING HURTS!" My scream resounded through my head, jarring my mind back to the reality from my former metaphysical state. Burning agony coursed through my veins like lava ravaging a lush mountainside, burning all feelings of life and replacing it all with biological hell -- a pain so terrible and unimaginable that I could do nothing but sit there and listen to my own involuntary screams of profanity and strings of nonsense. And as I yelled my lungs out, my throat finally began to feel rougher than a rocky cliff, and it’s soreness only caused me to scream louder. Through the agonizing hell I was in, I managed to open my eyes to try to confirm my location. What I saw through the haze in my vision was a rickety old floor side made of what was once a sturdy hardwood. Dust and pieces of wood flew about the room, and every few seconds the building would shake hard enough to send several more pieces of debris down on top of me. It may have looked different, but I knew where this was: this was the break room. "Lanthe, listen to me! This will numb the pain for a minute!" the mare said. Through the corner of my eye, past all the veritable blur and chaos of pain, I saw a shiny metal object flash in Cypress's bloodstained hooves. Something jabbed into my leg, and the pain decreased from a never ending deathless suicide off a mountain to a dull throbbing. I looked at my savior thankfully and panted, sweaty and tired from my screaming, my throat sore as scraped skin. It was Cypress. The oversized zebra was piercing my leg with what looked like a large hypodermic needle, labeled with some science shit I didn't understand. The pain was bad alright -- and no matter how much pain killer I’d take, it would still probably feel like my veins were the temperature of the sun -- but nothing compared to what I had felt a few seconds before. My mind wouldn't-,no, couldn't take that pain again. She looked urgent. “Lanthe, we don’t have much time. When you fell, you got a piece of rebar through your stomach. You’re lucky that you didn’t die.” I nodded jerkily. “We could use healing potions, but we need to pull it out first.” Her face looked sympathetic, yet madly worried. I could tell that she was starting to lose hope, but not for me. For her. And really, who could blame her? Nobody wanted to die, definitely not like this. Another earth shaking rumble racked the building, sending a cloud of wood and dust up and making the rays of light streaming through the shoddy walls visible one again, like... golden lasers stabbing into the room. Cypress exhaled shakily, seeming lost. A mare -- one by the name of Vigil -- judging by her voice, barged in through the door to the side and locked all of us with a look of total horror. Her gaze lingered on my wound for a second, her facial expression not leaving me very encouraged. She swallowed her stomach acids and gulped to speak. "Sarge? They're at the door. It's him or us. We have to leave him or drag him!" Vigil joined Cypress at my side, and I could see that she was half-dressed in guard's armor, with nothing but a hastily donned breastplate and an unbuckled helmet. A submachine gun with a folding skeletal stock hung from a sling around her neck. Vigil shook off her helmet, revealing her long, flowing, grey-and-white mane. Her eyes, an intense green, looked on with an expression of tension and terror. That did not raise my hopes up in the slightest. Cypress looked down at my face, her expression solemn and sad. "I'm sorry, Lanthe. We have no choice." My pain was beginning to come back, the fire blazing, the flowing lava beginning to roll down the slopes of the mountain once more. I dared not speak for fear of losing my lunch, but I nodded quickly. It was the right decision. "Sarge!" Vigil was already out the door, looking at the outside with wide and terrified eyes. "Coming!" She started for the door, and hesitated. She turned back. "They're taking prisoners, not killing," she said. She slipped a revolver out of her neck holster, checking the chamber and snapping it shut. "But if you start blazing away when they come in, they won't think twice about feeding you a bullet." She pressed the magnum into my hoof. She turned and hurried out the door. I looked at the revolver, a .38, by it's appearance. So I could either be taken prisoner, or take one or two with me and die a helpless stallion. What a nice set of options. "Spray and pray!" I heard the yell from outside, followed by a barrage of gunfire. After about five seconds, it stopped and was returned by a longer, louder, and faster barrage. But I never got to think about making a choice. I faded into black once more. *** *** *** For the third time that day, I awoke. It was getting kind of old, actually. Even me staring down the barrel of a gun didn’t surprise me TOO much. A wee bit scary, perhaps, but no more than the tower exploding upwards underneath my hooves. Wincing in pain, I put my weary head to the side and spat out a tooth, probably dislodged during the explosion. Rivulets of red blood followed behind it in trails, staining the already-red pool table with my mouth-gore. It was a miracle I didn’t choke on my own blood. The gun uncocked itself, and pulled the barrel away from my forehead. I recognized it as the one Cypress gave me earlier, the black .38 magnum. My gaze drifted to the stallion holding it. I couldn’t see his face, as It was concealed behind a large, balaclava-like face covering. It had only slits for his eyes, which were bright red, popping out of his wrap like warning signs. I could tell that my wound had been healed, albeit hastily closed up. I could still feel the injury, but the terrible and recursive agony that was there before had all but dissappeared. “Get up,” the stallion behind the gun spoke, motioning his head to the side as I did so. I groaned in pain. “Make no mistake; you can’t take me. I’ve seen that wound in your tummy. Now get up.” He was right. I couldn’t see my obviously terrible injury, but I could still feel the blood flowing from the wound. Knowing that pesky thing called physics, there was probably an exit wound too. Mustering all of the effort that I could scavenge out of my weak, limp body, I obeyed the stranger and slid myself off the table of the floor. I landed face-up. "Holy shit," Both me and my antagonist said simultaneously. I had left so much blood on the operating table that it was literally spilling off, the little red waterfall cascading down to the wooden floor and into the spaces between the wooden slats. And to make things better, I could feel the slick puddle of blood below me, confirming that I had an exit wound. My vision went in and out of double again, making the red waterfall into two fountains of kool aid. The masked pony, tearing his red, unending gaze from the fountain, began rummaging through his pack for something. I was starting to feel real light-headed now, my judgement clouded. I looked at my wound. "Woah." My entire front was covered in splotches of red punch, looking as if my fur had been colored with dark red paint. The wound itself had semi-closed up, only a few small, profusely amd freely bleeding holes remaining where the rebar had punched through my abdomen. Next to me, on the floor, empty blood packs and shattered vials of healing potion littered the area. My fur, now painted with red, looked as if I had been dunked in a vat of Cherry Sparkle-Cola. A joke, one from my early childhood, rose to the front of my teetering consciousness. my head was clouded, and I couldn’t think straight. "Hey!" I yelled at the bandit. He now had something in his hooves that I couldn't see, and was manipulating it. "What's black, white, and red all over?!?" A hysterical grin crossed my face. The guard ignored me. "Me," I finished lamely. I began spasming and laughing at this terribly funny joke, my bloody coughs mixing in harmony with my crazed, hysterical laughter. The masked stallion turned around, a large, black box-shaped object clamped between his two hooves. Pressing a button on the side of this device, he spoke into it. “We’ve got one more, Crank Three. He’s losing blood, and fast. Get Zambi in the Doom and we’ll get out of here.” He put pressure off the button. A garbled reply came through, sounding as if I were under water. My head was beginning to REALLY, really spin this time. I was no longer thinking coherently. The stallion rolled up the brick-like object in a cloth, and began storing it into his large backpack. As he turned around, I saw some writing on the back of his face-wrap, a three-digit symbol that my oxygen-deprived brain struggled to translate: KR0V6. “Can you stand up?” My captor spoke in a firm, yet slow and deliberate voice so that I could understand. I simply smiled a madstallion’s smile. “I’ll take that as a no.” Wrapping is hoof around mine, he tugged me upwards with a firm jerk. “Brace yourself.” The muscle-bound stallion assumed a stable stance, bracing himself towards the wall facing to the outside of town. A wicked smile crossed his face. My cerebellum was starting to comprehend that something was wrong. “Hey, man, I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing, bu-” I was interrupted by a large rumbling noise. Gradually getting louder, it eventually drowned out the sounds from outside. The stallion’s smile widened. “Get ready to meet-” The outwards wall exploded inward, wooden splinter-shrapnel stinging my hide with thousands of tiny, barbed needles. The stallion himself stood in his stance, taking the brunt of the force as if it was no more than a firecracker. With a proud grin, the stallion declared, “Cranky Doom.” *** *** *** At first I saw nothing through the cloud of smoke and sawdust, only hearing a throbbing bass guitar, louder than the rumbling that had preceded the blast. The debris from the impact littered the room, and had almost knocked over the blood-soaked billiards table. A long, sharp piece of hardwood had been dislodged from the now-nonexistent wall, and was now buried in the wall on the other side like a crude throwing knife. My captor, unfazed, began to move towards the demolished wall, dragging me as he went. Splinters, now shaken loose from the floor, dug into my fur and pierced my bloody hide as my body was mercilessly pony-handled and beaten towards the site of the explosion. I closed my eyes, disgruntled at the destruction of my property. “Let’s go,” Said the stallion, moving once again. I just stared blankly. “Zebra! Let’s go!” I looked at him. “Th-there...there...” I started. Then an anger in me erupted, and I screamed, “THERE WAS A FUCKING DOOR, RIGHT THERE!” I hoof-pointed to the spot where a small door had once stood as an exit to the outside. They had just... crashed through it. Like madponies. My... childhood home. Destroyed. Obliterated. I hadn’t seen the interior of the town, but judging by the sound and shakes from the explosions outside, it wasn’t much better off. By my sense of hearing, the town was being brutally razed to the ground. Razed to the FUCKING ground. "ZEBRA!" Tears flowed freely down my face, mixing with my mouth-blood. I was on my knees, crying and weeping. "Three months of work. Three. Months. Three. Three. Three.” My brain, now beginning to descend into a blurry throbbing, could only process that one word. THREE. The word resounded through my head one last time, before my thoughts stopped completely. I was no longer in control of my body. I couldn’t have had any more than a few liters of blood left. I could still see blurry images of the pulverized break room, but that was fading fast. I was dragged to the outside, through the charred hole. Thick, heavy clouds had rolled in, blocking out the sun so that I could see nothing but a blob of grey, and what remained of the walls towering upward. I rough pair of hooves dragged me further outwards, until I felt a metal surface underneath me. A mechanical whirr followed, and a shouting mare’s voice took precedence. I was bleeding out. Like, out-out. OUT. *** *** *** Sorry this took so long! I actually wanted this chapter to be much longer, but I figured that after a month that we might be a litte impatient. I must say, thanks for reading. And also, YAY! This is the farthest I've made it without putting a story on hiatus! Also, for all you nitpickers: The speeding up of events at the end was intended as a literary device to show Lanthe bleeding out. I liked it, but please leave feedback! Thanks, -Cade YYZ
Arc 1-3: On Big-Ass Armored TanksCounting Stars 1-3: On Big-Ass Armoured Tanks "I, hey, yeah, want to travel south this year. I, oh, yeah, won't prevent safe passage here." -Layne Staley, I Stay Away. *** *** *** “AAH!” I woke with a hangover, and I hadn’t even been drinking. The hangover came not from staying up all night dancing and drinking too much bourbon, or partying for a straight 48 hours. This one came from lying awake for half the night with only a few pints of blood left in my severely deprived veins. A few hours ago, I had awoken, alone, in the back of this vehicle, light headed and delusional as ever. (Actually, not nearly as much as I had been right before I had gotten inside, so I guess I was better off than before, but I SO did not feel it). I had eventually fallen asleep, and had paid for it by dreaming that a horse was chasing a carrot on a stick in circles, round and round, until I had eventually become more dizzy and lightheaded in the dream than I had been in real life. Which, come to think of it, doesn’t seem possible. What, was my head fucking itself up? Damn, that must sound weird to you guys. I wish I could be more descriptive about those few hours, but there really wasn't much to tell. A dream like that was common for me, actually. Considering all the kinds of things I did, those dreams weren’t really all that surprising anymore. Oh yeah, the tank. I should probably describe the tank. Well, the inside of the thing (Which I assumed was a tank at the time of my nearly passing out, and of which I was correct) was clearly designed for tactical, not medical, use. The bed that I now laid upon had been hastily stationed inside the vehicle, as around me I could see rows and rows of seats. The seats were, as I said, of a practical design and did NOT look very comfy. They were merely parallel bars situated off the floor of the vehicle, a base of corrugated iron much like the stuff we’d used to build the huts in Glyphmark. Glyphmark. Whoever had taken me had at least partially razed my town. A familiar deep-seated anger swelled up inside of me, much as it had done multiple times in the past few hours. Pacify yourself, Lanthe. The voice inside my head served to cool me down, but in this state, I couldn’t help but dwell upon the many questions that had been raised in the past day. Who had foalnapped me? Why would they destroy my town? Why was this happening NOW, of all times -- when Glyphmark actually showed signs of improving after the hell it had been in the past? And most of all... “Who the hell is Tod?” I said the last line out loud. He was that... voice in one of my recent dreams, but... you know, I usually dreamt about stuff like poker or... horses chasing carrots. Having a dream where something talked me about Roaman crap did NOT seem normal, by my standards at least, especially when my only connection to my ancestral lands lay with my delusional daddy who, as far as I knew, wasn't even IN Roam at the time. This Tod... for all I knew, I was just going bonkers, but knowing the Wasteland it was much more complicated than that. Some necrotic signal broadcasted from the tanks, maybe. Such a thing was common in Canterlot. “Talking to yourself is a sign of madness, you know.” “AH!” I reeled with surprise. I hadn’t heard anyone sneaking up on me! “Shhh. Save your breath. You’re in bad shape.” The voice was feminine, a pony by the sound of it. I heard a hiss, the sound of a door sliding shut. I mentally berated myself for allowing myself to miss that. My body ached, reminding me of that last statement’s truth. I had been saved- for now, but I still was in a bad way. The scar on my stomach was still red and fresh, and my light-headedness was still prevalent through my cranium. “I’m just guessing here, but I’m gonna say that you don’t have any intentions of being my best friend.” I refrained to give the raider satisfaction by looking at it, even acknowledging its presence. My head lolled to the side as I spat on the floor of the vehicle. “Just go. I don’t want your charity.” The feminine voice laughed, a dry, humorless laugh. “Not to be rude or anything like that, but I don’t think that you have much of a choice. I can just stay here, while you can’t even move.” Then she added smugly, “Why, I could have had some fun while you were out.” Okay, that was just... no. Oh wait... actually, I would have been fine with that. If they weren’t fucking raiders... okay, now I’m confused, I’ll just stop talking about this topic and get back to the point. I closed my eyes, wishing the mare away. I just wanted to be alone, without these bastards. Whoever they were. “Like I said, unless you want to talk, there’s no point in staying here. Trash.” “I-” The voice started, sounding hurt. However, it stopped short, with a tone of understanding. “Oh, I’m sorry. You haven’t seen me, with your head turned and all. Here, let me explain.” I heard the form get up from the chair, and hoofsteps moving towards my side of the uncomfortable bed. “Open your eyes,” she said. I did so, much as I didn’t actually want to. “Woah! nevermind the trash thing!” My mind backpedaled into reverse, scrambling to make amends for my previous statement. Now I would very much have liked her to... well, you know. It wasn’t a pony, as I had thought. It was a zebra. She stood up, giving me a better view. She was small and muscular, like me; lithe in build but seemed like she could kick some flank. Her black-and-grey mane flowed down over her shoulders, cascading like a waterfall to almost halfway down her legs. Her gray stripes conflicted with the white, making her form impossible to follow. But the most important was the jewelry adorning her neck. “Is that...” My voice trailed off. Hung around her neck was a golden band, fitted with a simple, green gemstone. “Yes. It is.” Her voice was full of pride. The Great Amulet was supposed to be an artifact lost in history, thousands of years ago. It was originally wielded by the First Emperor himself, and then passed down to his niece. Generations had passed since then, and it was lost to the sands of time somewhere around the era when bread was invented. Each member of the family, however, had added a spell of their choice, unicorn magic, into the green stone. After it was lost, it remained so until a minor fiasco in which an enchantress, Zecora, found a similar replica, one with only minor powers. She smiled. “This is the Amulet. Wielded by Julius, Augustus, Theseus, Dimus, Calypso, Kensa, all the way down to Hippolyta before it was lost.” She shook her neck, swinging it around as she did so. I was shocked. “That means you... You have royal blood.” “Well...” She frowned, appearing to be musing. “That’s the question. Only members of royal blood can wield it. However, I can, but I am only descended from a cousin of the Caesar. “ “I’m guessing you aren’t a raider, either.” Damn, that’s hot... ride me, please! “Me? One of them? No! Actually, I was just sent to continue healing you.” She smiled, smugly tapping on her amulet with one hoof. “Royal blood. They can’t take it off.” “Well,” I said, awed, “It’s an honor to be healed by one so like-minded as you.” *** *** *** As the last waves of potent healing magic surged over me, healing my senses, I almost Immediately felt better. However, the magic had only served to heal my larger wounds, and left my scrapes, bruises, and open sores untended. That left me looking a bit like dessicated mud. Ouch. I winced as she helped me off the bed, lowering me to the floor in a semi-dignified position. She blew her mane out of her face, seeming to scrutinize her work. “That should do it for now.” She put her head under my stomach, lifting me up using her neck. “Damn, you’re pretty strong for someone so small. How old?” I was now on all fours, hobbling around the small compartment. “Seventeen. You?” “Fifteen, Sixteen. In there somewhere.” I groaned as my blood ran down back into my legs, temporarily confusing me as it flowed from my brain. “You don’t keep track?” “I would if I could.” I brushed her hooves from out underneath me, waving her off. I could stand well enough without her help now. “My idiot father never told me. Said it wasn’t important.” Her eyes went wide with shock. “That’s terrible!” “Yeah, he was never the sentimental type. He taught me ideals, how to fight, a little bit of Roaman history, then left me with the tribe a few years ago.” I cracked my neck, sweet relief coursing through me with each pop. “He still fights for the Roaman legion, somewhere. Always with the ‘honor’ and ‘duty to the Empire’ crap...” Then I glanced at her with a smirk. “Hell, I’m pretty sure that he would be your bitch, with the royal blood and all.” I laughed. “Actually, I’m sure of it. If he’s all fanatical about the emperor and such, why not you?” “Yeah, why not?” She stepped back, admiring her medical work. Seeing as I now felt MUCH better than before, I thanked her mentally for it and gave her the privilege of feeling some pride at her accomplishment. Wait, her- *** *** *** Team Penegrene, we're seeing some minor radar activity on the horizon to the south. They seem to be equine forms, but we aren't getting a reading on the Dex. Sentries, maybe? Confirm, over. Team Brat, we cannot confirm your observation. Dust storm's kicked up a bit, instruments are ineffective. Check with Harrier, they're closer to your bogies. Roger that. Communicating now. ... Team Penegrene, Harrier is not responding. Maybe due to the dust, over. Roger that, Brat. Harrier is out of radio contact for us. We're still a good two kilometers from your position. We'll get closer, but stay on the move. Maximum speed and nothing but. Copy that, Penegrene. Over and out. Out. *** *** *** I lifted a hoof, punching the intercom one last time as the final message went through. The stupid thing had been disrupting my sleep patterns. Now, when you think of an intercom, you think of one of those little plastic boxes that occasionally beeps, and you hear a lady telling someone to come to some random aisle for a cleanup or customer service. Well, no. Because it just COULDN'T be that simple. This thing was a military-grade, shockproof, water-resistant, armor-plated, analog behemoth which I was pretty sure was large enough to house its own subwoofer and sentient conscience bent on not letting me rest. And the universe hated me just enough to have it placed directly above my head. And it sounded like someone had left it on full volume. Every single radio transmission going through the vehicle (which I had inferred, was codenamed the Penegrene) was relayed directly into my skull as I was trying to catch upon sleep. If only they could play some decent music... But of course, it didn't. It still spat out chatter -- boring, useless chatter. I began to drift asleep, hoping to just get away from it all. Penegrene, this is Harrier. We’re gonna make a quick bathroom stop, over. “This FUCKING-” I lifted my hoof to punch the system again, bored out of my mind and frustrated at the extremely dull and uninteresting banter. I was interrupted by the sound of a knock on the door. Well isn’t that nice. Visitors, I thought, not at all happy about it. Maybe if they were calm, civilized ponies (or zebras) who were like the one I had met earlier and NOT psychopathic murderers who wanted to burn down and destroy more towns, then maybe I’d be open to talk. I strolled my way to the metal door, which I assumed led even farther into the massive vehicle. I put my face to the door. "Who is it?" "Let me the fuck in before I have your brains blown out of your skull, you ungrateful little sarcastic bastard. The intercom's going off now. No need for you to hear all our tactical communications." I rolled my eyes and said idly, "Come in then." The rust on the surface of the door grinded with a large screeching noise as the portal slid to it's resting position. When it was fully open, I saw Shemagh standing at the entrance. He growled. He had changed out of his gear since I had last seen him in -- the facemask and light armor were now replaced by a pair of aviator-style shades and some heavier, more protective ceramic plated barding. His midnight black coat seemed to absorb the light in the room, drawing my eyes to him. He motioned for me to move aside, and I did so. He stepped into the room. "Go." "I beg your pardon?" He whinnied. "Escape in the next two hours I'm on watch. I won't hinder you. I'll send in the Willow chick too, if you like." "What the shi-" "Just go." He turned to exit, leaving me bewildered. That happened fast. I spoke, stopping him short. "What's your name?" I mean, surely a gesture of polite consideration for my... ‘savior’ was a small price to pay for freedom. "Demetrius."
Arc II: Eyes On the InsideHolly. Holy shit, just... Holly. What a fuckin' mare. A short, yet extremely muscular pony, she barely looked into my eyes at full height. However, even a stout one would tremble whilst doing so. The combination of her fierce white coloring, and her steely gaze made her extremely hard to talk to. Trying to get results out of her was like trying to pop a balloon by throwing glitter at it. Currently, she was engaged in a heated discussion with her second-in-command, the exact one that had apprehended me during my escape attempt. Needless to say, there was a bit of resentment towards me, and the feeling was mutual if not completely lopsided. He took my only chance of freedom, and throttled it until it asphyxiated. The discussion was one of my loyal validity. "Just show Im' the manual, wind him up, and let him loose. Hope for the best." She turned from the subcommander, and looked at me. "Or on the far more likely scenario that you're here trying to get out of this, Let me make it plain for you: You're not getting off the hook. Answer any questions?" "Actually, sir, that's not... err exactly my question." I mumbled meekly. Fuck, she was onto me. The subcommander spared me one sideways glance, making his distaste of my presence as blatant as possible. Or more likely as if he didn't believe in me at all. As for me, I was wondering just how many hours he passed practicing on the mirror to be able to make such a snide face - while keeping an eye out on where his next steps were taking him. I snickered. "What was that, signie? The commander asked. "Nothing at all, sir." "Good." It struck me as slightly ironic that the subcommander's suspicions of me were, and would probably remain, justified. My recent financial windfall and my sketchy arrival with two friends who were assumed to both be highly dangerous only served to undercut my point. But there was no proof, nevertheless. I was untouchable. Holly spoke. "You got a commission, private. Due to the lack of ANY knowledge of your origins or motivation. You start tommorow." I saluted and began to turn. Now was the hard part. I let my knife slip out of it's sheath. As I was walking to the door, the knife buried itself in the frame next to my head. "I think I'll leave that there. Nice decor." Said Holly. I smiled to myself. The bug would work. We had eyes on the inside.
