Fallout Equestria: Institutionalized

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My father, the pony that I had trekked through the Wastes to find, was dead. His right eye was a sunken bloody void. The left rear quarter of his skull had been blown out, leaving his brains to cover the far wall. There was no need to even consider providing any sort of first aid or seek medical treatment. Anypony with the power of basic comprehension could plainly see that he was dead. He was gone. My father was gone.

Somepony was going to pay for this.

Instinct took over, and my head whipped around. I blocked out everything else; the screaming receptionist, Diode's own yelling. My focus was concentrated on tracing the path of the shot that had stolen my father from me.

Through the open door to the clinic, I could see a walkway that spanned a section of the massive interior of the Old World statue that Friendship City had been built within. I could also see a pony beating a hasty retreat across it. Who they were, and why they had done this, were two questions that I wasn't yet certain I was going to let them live long enough to answer once I caught up to them. With my sniper rifle in tow, I vaulted out of my chair and dashed through the door. I was only vaguely aware of somepony hastily clambering after me in my wake, and the receptionist calling desperately for the city's guards to respond.

I nearly knocked over the limping green pony that had just left the clinic. He was staring at me in wide-eyed shock. Doubtless my expression was certainly one to behold. I'd never wanted anypony more dead than this sorry son-of-a-hell-hound that had murdered my father in cold blood like that! My face probably looked like death itself.

My head was raised and canted to the right, my eyes tracking the path of the fleeing pony. One might have thought that such a narrowed field of vision would have proven to be a rather severe handicap for somepony navigating a busy and rather crowded settlement like Friendship City. Of course, not everypony had my rather uncanny sixth sense for knowing where other ponies were. Even at my nearly breakneck pace, I was deftly weaving around, and in some cases even over, the other ponies going about their lives. The same could not be said for Diode, who was very rapidly loosing ground to the throngs as he tried to echo my own path.

In my wake followed a ripple of surprise and confusion as ponies marveled at the cyan unicorn gyrating past them, a sniper rifle that was nearly as long as she was, hovering at her side. While most ponies were alerted by the reacting masses to my approach and were able to make hasty accommodations to my course, there was one unfortunate pony with a wagon of goods who was not able to clear my path. It was stacked comically high with all manner of odds and ends. How in the Wasteland this pony had even managed to keep all of those goods from falling out up until this point, I couldn't even fathom.

The reaction of both the pony pulling the wagon and those nearby was one of morbid anticipation as they collectively predicted that the unicorn sprinting their way would inevitably collide with the cart. That foreboding feeling in their gut morphed almost instantly into simple incomprehension as I leaped the eight feet, five inches, necessary to clear the wagon and its contents with seemingly effortless ease. I further compounded their stupification by landing for only a short moment before using the momentum from that first jump to catapult myself into an even higher one. Eleven feet was needed to reach the catwalk that I'd seen my father's killer running along, and I made the jump seamlessly.

At least one of the rusted bolts holding the ancient supports in place sheared off when I landed on the walkway, and I felt it give slightly beneath my weight. It did not collapse though, and so I proceeded to barrel along the narrow suspended path. I could more clearly see the culprit now: a reddish-brown earth pony stallion with a blond mane and tail. He was wearing a set of grungy denim coveralls, and was currently sprinting at a full gallop away from me. A hungry sneer tugged at one side of my mouth as I quickly determined that at my own fastest pace, I'd catch him in less than a minute.

It was hard to determine if he was tipped off to my pursuit by the sound of my hooves pounding along the rusted metal grating, or if it was the rattling of the slender supports. He did eventually glance over his shoulder at me, and I saw his eyes widen in fright. My lips spread, turning my sneer into a vicious grin. He. Was. Mine!

At the last moment before I could catch him, that stallion made a desperate leap over the railing. It was a course of action borne of panic and a lack of foresight. We were nearly twenty feet in the air at this point. While there were shanties and a few solid structures below, none of them looked like they were going to offer any solid support for a fully grown pony falling from this height.

My assessment proved accurate as I watched the rust-colored stallion absolutely demolish a tin shed on the ground, vanishing into a cloud of dust and debris. Unswayed by the fate of my prey, I followed him down. While that height should have given any rational pony pause when contemplating their landing, I was completely confident in my ability to withstand the impact that would be associated with my own fall's termination on the ground. I was also considerably more particular with regards to my exact touchdown point. My hooves planted down in the narrow alley next to the shed that the stallion had just destroyed.

The dust started settling quickly. I could hear the agonized groaning from within. Wasting little time, I started flinging away the tattered wreck of the old storage cupboard, tossing it aside with little care for where it landed. All that concerned me was getting at my father's murderer. In little time at all, I had the stallion exposed. He was helpless now. At least three of his limbs had broken in the fall. One of them in multiple places.

“Why?” I snarled at the stallion, rage smoldering around the single word like a verbally kindled fire. I grabbed hold of the pony with my silvery magic and hauled him towards me. The pony screamed in agony as his mangled limbs were dragged along the ground, “why?!”

“Please!” he begged, tears streaming down his cheeks from the pain that he was in, “please don't kill me,” his teeth were clamped together, his words coming out in near hisses as he fought to get them out through the agony that he was quite obviously feeling, “I have a family!”

“Why did you kill my father?!” I screamed at the stallion. My rage had little patience for pleas for mercy and fabrications about families. He'd just shot my father through the head, and I would know why before I killed this pony.

“I didn't kill anypony,” he screamed, “I don't know what you're talking about!”

“Liar,” the sniper rifle still hovering nearby swung around, the barrel pressing roughly against his head. The stallion regressed into a fresh bout of babbling and screaming. Most of the coherent bits amounted to asking for me to spare his life in exchange for all of his worldly possessions. I didn't want to hear any of that, “who put you up to this?”

“I don't know what you want,” the stallion was all but weeping now, “please, just let me go!”

Something in me finally snapped. I'd seen it. I'd watched my father die, and saw this stallion running away from the only place that made sense so far as the origin of the shot was concerned. It had to have been this pony that killed my father. There was no other reasonable explanation. Somepony had to have put him up to it. Maybe it even had something to do with why my father had left Baltimare and changed his name. Why he'd pretended like he didn't recognize me.

This pony wasn't going to answer my questions though. I could see that clearly. So be it. If he wasn't going to give me the answers that I needed, then I'd get them from his home and his personal effects. I'd get to the bottom of this whole mystery without his help.

First things first though.

I pulled the trigger on the rifle.

…

Nothing happened.

I snarled and checked the safety, thinking that perhaps I'd allowed my rage to cloud my competence. It was disengaged. Again I manipulated the trigger with my magic. Again nothing happened. The hammer didn't fall. The whole mechanism didn't so much as budge. It was a fine time for the rifle to fucking seize up! No matter. It wasn't like I needed a bullet to put this stallion out of my misery.

“Iris!”

Diode's call was a distant thing. I barely registered it. My attention was reserved for the justice that I was about to deal out to this fucking piece of shit that had stolen all that I possessed of a family away from me. I released my magical hold on him and let the earth pony collapse to the ground with a pained yelp. Then I flipped the rifle around and preceded to bring its butt down on his head repeatedly.

Once. He screamed. Twice. His skull split, and he screamed again.

“Iris!”

A third time. The stallion had managed to raise an arm to try and protect himself. The bones of his wrist were rendered into powder by the powerful downward momentum of my magically propelled battering. The fourth blow found his head again. The stallion was quiet this time.

Diode finally found me on stroke nine.

“Iris, what the fuck are you doing?!”

I wheeled on the amber pony, “I'm avenging my father, what's it look like I'm doing?!” I spat at him, my words dripping with barely contained grief. The loss hurt so much, that I was amazed I wasn't crying right now. It was probably the anger that was holding back my tears. They'd likely come later once I'd finally calmed down.

Then I stopped and stared at the other earth pony. The look on his face...

There was a selection of expressions that I could have expected from Diode right now. Shock, perhaps, at seeing the blood that was splattered across my face from the merciless beating that I was delivering to what was now little more than a mass of pummeled pony flesh. Perhaps there might have even been a look of disgust for how savagely I was maiming this corpse. Even concern for how I might be handling what had just happened at the clinic.

None of those were visible on Diode's face.

The look that he was giving me was one of confusion. Confusion, and a desperate, panicking, need to understand what was going on. This made no sense to me. He'd been right there in the clinic with me. He'd seen my father die, just like I had. Surely he was smart enough to understand that I had taken off after the perpetrator and had just ended their life, wasn't he?

“Iris,” he said, not comprehending, “what are you talking about?”

It was my turn to look confused now. I jabbed a hoof at the nearby body, “this pony shot my father and ran off,” I explained, wondering why every word I uttered only made the amber pony more concerned, “I caught him and brought him to justice.”

“Iris,” his voice was quiet, almost hesitant, as though he was unable to believe that he had to say these words, “that pony didn't kill the doctor...

“...you did.”

My mind ceased functioning for a full five seconds.

That wasn't possible. I mean, how could that have been possible? It wasn't even a matter of 'how'. What about the whole 'why' element? Why would I kill my own father after spending so long looking for him? Killing him hadn't ever been even an inkling of a thought that entered my mind. There was no reason for me to have killed him. Nor was there any way that I could have, and I could prove it.

“That's not right,” I shook my head insistently, “there's no way I did that. It's impossible. Look,” I brought the sniper rifle between us and turned it on its side. With a deft flick of my magic, I pulled the bolt back and ejected the round within into the air.

Even as I pulled back on the bolt though, I knew something was wrong. The sensation had been faint, but I knew that I had felt the slide catch ever so gently on the hammer and force it back into the cocked position. A cold sense of horror gripped me. Suddenly, it made sense why the rifle had not fired earlier. The trigger had barely budged. However, that wasn't because it had become stuck. It was because the tension in it had been released.

Because the weapon had been fired.

The spinning round that had been thrown from the open bolt came to an abrupt halt as my telekinetic field caught it. Slowly, with a cold dread bearing down on me as I was about to confirm what I had already begun to suspect, I examined what should have been a full and complete cartridge that was ready to be fired.

Only to find an empty casing that smelled of gunsmoke.

Since getting the rifle from the bandit unicorn mare yesterday, I had loaded four rounds into it. Two had been employed against the trio of manticors that had attacked me. Since then, I had not fired a shot. There should have been two remaining cartridges in this weapon. There was just the one left.

I had fired the shot that killed my father.

A dozen different questions based upon fundamental 'hows' and 'whys' collided with each other in my head. Somehow, they seemed pointless. What did it matter? My father was dead, and like the punchline to some obscenely cruel cosmic joke, I was the cause. I had been the one that murdered him.

Not just him either, I realized with a chill. My eyes went to the stallion that I had just recently bludgeoned to death. He had been innocent. All of those pleas and denials had been the truth. I'd murdered him for my own crime.

My eyes locked on Diode, frightened, “what's wrong with me?”

I didn't really expect an answer from the amber earth pony. How could he have possibly been in a position to provide one for me that would satisfy? He knew less about my circumstances than I did. Nor did it seem as though answering my question was very high on his list of priorities at the moment.

“We have to get out of here,” he said, his eyes darting in the direction of the city's main entrance and the bridge beyond, “the guards are probably going to be in a 'shoot first, arrest later' kind of mood,” his mouth set in a grim line after he spoke.

A wince creased my features. He'd said 'we', even though the earth pony hadn't done anything wrong. I suppose that it wasn't going to matter to the ponies of this city though, was it? He'd been at my side the whole time. The nurse at the clinic knew we'd come in together. She'd doubtlessly tell the guards that Diode was my accomplice. He was in just as much trouble as I was, and he'd done nothing to deserve it. My ear twitched. Over the general din of a crowd of ponies reacting to a shooting and a chase, I could hear the shouts of several rather aggressive sounding ponies coordinating with one another. Doubtless the guard, on its way here.

It was in our best interests to be anywhere else when they arrived.

My eyes darted around, scanning the area for avenues of escape. They were few. Friendship City was a well fortified community, being on an island as it was, and nested within the gutted remains of a large metal statue. Those same factors that made it hard for unwanted guests to get it, also made it just as difficult for cornered fugitives to get out. The bridge would be right out. Two many guards would be there, and it was probably being retracted at this very moment.

Even as my eyes continued to scan our surroundings, I knew our options for escape were quite limited. I idly entertained the notion of seeking out somewhere to hide until nightfall so that we might have better luck sneaking out in the darkness. That was risky though. The best hiding places were the ones that offered limited points of access for the guards. However, that meant that if we were found, our avenues of escape would be equally limited. Shooting our way out would probably be the only real option then, and I'd killed enough innocent ponies today.

Going out the front door wasn't on the table, hiding was not ideal...I could feel my teeth grinding in exasperation as I found myself dismissing options faster than I could come up with them. Come on, Celestia, there has to be some way I can get Diode out of here...

My head tilted skyward as I silently prayed to the goddess for a miracle.

I blinked.

“Follow me!” I shouted at the amber stallion in the same moment that I sprinted down a narrow alley. It took the earth pony a moment to realize what was happening, but he at least had the wherewithal to run after me. I quickly realized that it was as easy for me to outpace Diode as it had been for the pony that I'd just killed. While I had little trouble navigating the narrow twists and turns of the poorly planned backstreet corridor, it seemed that my companion had to slow down considerably in order to make some of the more sudden turns in order to avoid clambering into a wall or corner. I bit my lip in worry, my ears noting that there were a lot of armed ponies converging on us.

Diode wasn't going to be up to what needed to be done in order to get out of here; and I couldn't just leave him behind. I came to an abrupt stop, wincing as I counted the seconds until the earth pony following me finally caught up. I could even hear the slight, but telltale, huffing that suggested he was already started to become winded. I glanced back and saw him regarding me expectantly, waiting for me to pick our next path. I felt the corner of my mouth quirk a slight smile as I considered his reaction to what I was about to propose. That smile felt out of place, with all of the anxiety that I was feeling with regards to our current situation.

“You need to get on my back.”

The amber pony blinked, “what.”

My ear twitched again. We didn't have time for any sort of discussion if we were going to get away before the gunfire started. So, flashing an apologetic look, I slung my rifle across my side and then used my now idle telekinetic field to lift the stallion instead. To say that Diode was willing would have been a lie. He flailed a good bit, more in surprise than anything else. He was at least smart enough to remain where I put him once he was on my back. I angled my head upwards once more, and felt him follow my gaze.

“You're not serious,” he said, his tone flush with incredulity. While he expressed his doubt, I experimentally flexed my joints, getting a feel for his added weight, “there's no way anypony can make that JUMMMMP!”

Heh. Shows what he knew. I didn't merely 'make the jump' either. My hooves landed mid-motion, launching the two of us into a gallop nearly instantaneously. The stallion on my back looped his legs around my neck in what could have forgivably been mistaken for a genuine attempt to strangle the life out of me as he desperately hung on. It wasn't actually necessary of course. I was keeping a firm hold of him with my magic the entire time. I didn't ask him to loosen his hold though; it seemed to be giving him some measure of comfort, and it wasn't actually interfering with my breathing anyway.

“There they are!”

My teeth clenched together as I heard the telltale sounds of gunfire that was a lot closer than I would have preferred. The whistle of passing rounds and the occasional sharp ring of a ricochet left no doubt as to their targets. The hope was that they were shooting more in the hope of landing a lucky hit than having any sort of true ability to hit a fast moving target at this range. I was about to work on expanding that range as well.

Up ahead, the walkway that I was galloping along took a hard left. I elected not to follow that path, as it would divert me away from the towering walls of Friendship City. Instead, my intended course would require me to ascend by means of jumping to ever higher purchases in the form of rooftops. First on my list was that of the bar that lay directly ahead. Judging by the suddenly much tighter grip that Diode inflicted on my throat when I made the first leap, he had been expecting it as much as the pursuing guards had.

“Where are you going?!” the earth pony on my back protested through gritted teeth, “the bridge is the other way!”

“We're not going to the bridge,” I informed him calmly as I cantered along the roof of the bar towards our next target, a curio shop that sat a few feet higher up along the wall.

Friendship City was a very vertically-minded settlement. Being built inside of the ancient Manehattan Harbor statue had imposed rather severe restrictions where construction locations were concerned. A few shanties a shack existed outside of the statue itself on the island, but they were not very ideal living locations, since they were exposed to attack. Most ponies who could chose to live within the thick metal walls. Ground space was at a premium, and so many mounted their homes and shops into the statue's torso, reaching them by means of stairs and ramps. In order to ensure that there was plenty of room for buildings, those walkways were rather narrow, so as not to waste space. As a result, the guards were having a hard time keeping up with us as they tried to run through the usual throng of ponies going about their lives.

While the path that Diode and I were taking presented its own hazards, it was at least clear of pedestrian traffic. My biggest obstacle was the odd sign or girder now and then.

Oh, and the gunfire. The gunfire was a nuisance as well. The roofs of these buildings was noticeably lacking in decent cover.

The roof of the shop caved slightly when I landed, but didn't outright collapse. The rather shortsighted architect had not seemed to anticipate that a pair of ponies might need the use of this roof for a daring escape. If I ever took up a career in structural design later in life, I vowed not to make the same oversight.

Our next jump would be rather more difficult, as it would require crossing a significant gap as we leaped from one side of the statue to the other. There was going to be no help for it though, it was the only way to reach the highest point of the old statue without risking a direct confrontation with the guards below.

I took a deep breath and launched myself into a sprint, “hold on tight!” not that it felt like Diode could have been holding on any tighter.

“Oh...fucking buuuttts!”

Then we were airborne.

Then something punched me in the chest and pitched me off course.

My telekinesis faltered for a moment, and I felt Diode's arms slipped away from around my neck as we tumbled in the air. I felt myself gripped by panic. I'd survive a fall from this height just fine, but if the caramel earth pony didn't land right...I reached out desperately with my magic and my hooves simultaneously. My forelimbs found purchase on one of the statue's cross supports. My magic managed to snag Diode's rear hoof. The pair of us were now hanging exposed over the middle of the city. We'd be easy prey for the armed guards below.

I chanced a glance down to get a better idea of our precise situation, and it was about as bad as I'd suspected. The armed ponies below were taking aim, and would be opening up with volleys any moment. Diode would be shredded! I grunted with effort as I manipulated the telekinetic hold I had on him and used it to toss the dangling earth pony to the other side of the steel chasm. His landing wasn't particularly graceful, but at least he'd be out of the line of fire.

Which was more than I cold say for myself at the moment. My legs flailed as I tried to quickly pull myself up onto the steel girder I'd caught on my way down. Gunfire crackled from below. Sparks or metal nearby testified to the less-than-perfect accuracy of the guard ponies. Still, they were bound to score hits by virtue of volume alone.

Something slammed into my right shoulder and I felt the arm slip from the forged beam. I was now hanging by just my left arm. My eyes looked downward. Six of seven guard ponies armed with pistols and rifles were glaring back up at me from behind their muzzle-flashes. I entertained the notion of letting myself drop. The landing would be rough but survivable, and it would allow me to engage them hoof-to-hoof. That option was very undesirable though. I couldn't guarantee that I wouldn't kill or at least cripple any of them, and I didn't want to do that.

They were good ponies, trying to stop a cold-blooded killer.

On the other hoof, if I didn't stop them, they'd probably kill Diode too, and he didn't deserve that either.

Save one pony, or spare a dozen. The raw numbers made the choice quite clear; it was my feelings that were clouding things up. I looked over at Diode, struggling back to his feet on the nearby roof of some sort of cabaret. His expression clearly indicated that he was waiting for me to join him and resume our escape. He was a smart pony. He'd be able to figure a way out of here on his own if I bought him enough time.

I smiled at the caramel stallion. It was a sad little smile, but the best I could manage.

Then I dropped.

The ponies below ceased firing as I fell, likely believing that they had killed me. At the very least, they probably assumed that the sudden stop at the end of my fall would. Weren't they the surprised bunch when I landed soundly on all four hooves. The steel plate that was the ramp I impacted dislodged itself from the upper level it was leading to as the force of my landing sheared the bolts and railings that had been holding it in place. A quartet of ponies in the barding of Friendship City guards tumbled down as the plate slammed into the roof of an apartment that had been built below it. A few other rather surprised guards looked on from the horizontal walkways that the ramp had previously connected, their expressions betraying their lack of comprehension about what had just happened.

“Sorry, fellas,” I winced, “it's nothing personal.”

I lashed out with hoof and fetlock, pummeling the fallen guard ponies in the ribs and legs. Sharp, precise blows, that were going to leave those poor unfortunate ponies with some broken limbs and cracked ribs, but would hopefully merely take them out of this fight and not leave them permanently crippled. As I worked on the four ponies that had tumbled down with me, their fellows on the adjoining levels gathered their wits and took aim.

None of them fired initially. I was still pretty close to their companions, and they probably didn't want to risk accidentally killing one of their own. Which worked out fine for me, but would probably turn out less fine for Diode, who possessed no such discouragement against being fired upon by these ponies once they realized it.

Having quickly dealt with the four ponies that I had taken down with me, I proceeded to charge up the ramp to the lower walkway and engage the three guards facing me there. This seemed to have counted as crossing some sort of threshold for at least one of the guards on the upper level, as somepony opened fire. A spray of rounds sparked off the platform's floor. The screams of whistling ricochets was joined by the pained cries of ponies. A few panicked yells as well as bystanders fled from the gunfire that was suddenly no longer directed skyward.

“Hold your fire!” one of the guards yelled.

Either the shooter didn't hear the order, or he didn't care.

My right rear leg slipped out from under me suddenly and I found myself off balance, and unable to correct myself. With a curse cut short, I tumbled rather roughly down the ramp that I had just clambered up. That was certainly a bad thing. I glanced up and saw that at least five ponies in guard barding had raced up and were now training their weapons on me. This was going to hurt.

Instead of gunfire though, I heard a sound reminiscent of a pair of tin cans bouncing down through the support beams and various internal struts of the statue. They landed almost on top of me. They were sputtering sparks at one end. Much like a grenade might.

Well...shit.

I closed my eyes and braced myself for the twin blast. Only, it was much more subdued that I anticipated. More of a 'pop' than a 'boom', really. These sounds were followed rather pointedly by a deep stereo hissing sound and a lot of coughing. Curious, I opened my eyes. Not that there was a lot to see, as it turned out. It was like being in the densest fog that I had even encountered, except that it tasted not of moister and dust, but of something bitter and rancid. I wrinkled my nose at the scent, and noted that the guards around me obviously found the clouds far less tolerable than I did.

“Iris!”

The was Diode. I glanced up. Through the thick gray haze, I was only just able to make out the faint silhouette of somepony waving from high above. There was no doubt in my mind that the figure was the caramel earth pony. He was also the probable source of these...whatever they were. I quickly got back up onto my hooves and coiled up for a quick series of leaps and jumps that would get me to him.

If my earth pony companion was still at all surprised by my acrobatic abilities, he was hiding it well. Once I was on the roof with him he started running for the far end of the roof and the only obvious path that we could take. He'd figured out that our destination was little more than 'up'; and as much altitude as we were gaining already on our ascent through the ancient statue, there were only so many paths that were left to us to take anymore. They also consisted of jumps that he was very much capable of making without any assistance from me.

“Bucking for another kiss?” I asked, galloping alongside him. The levity seemed acceptable, now that we weren't actively being shot at for the moment.

The caramel pony couldn't help but snort at the comment, “I'll start a tab,” he replied, “how many kisses buy me an explanation for what happened at the clinic?”

So much for keeping things lighthearted. I cringed at the fresh memory. Except it still wasn't even really a memory. I had no recollection of either taking aim at the doctor, or pulling the trigger. There was no other explanation for what had happened, I knew and accepted that. I had pulled the trigger and ended his life. I knew that. I just didn't remember doing it.

“I'll let you know.”

We were forced to leave our rooftop path and return to the catwalks and stairs as we reached the statue's upraised foreleg. Nopony lived up here. It served mostly as a perch for the city's lookouts. All of whom had long since descended to investigate the murder at the clinic, leaving the appendage thankfully devoid of ponies to impede us. When we finally reached the top, we stopped running and Diode rounded on me, taking a stand directly in front of me. He didn't look to have been amused by my comment.

“I'm serious, Iris,” there was no mistaking from his tone just how serious he was, “I need to know. Just tell me there was a reason, any reason, and I'll do what I can to help.

“Was he some sort of criminal back in Baltimare?”

I swallowed, “I...no. No, he wasn't.”

“Did he hurt you?”

“No.”

“Iris, please, give me something here. Anything,” the stallion begged, sounding genuinely distressed, “any reason at all...”

“I'm...” what was I supposed to say? He wanted a reason, and I had none. I didn't even pull the trigger, not really. I hadn't meant to kill him! That wasn't what Diode needed to hear though, was it? Or maybe it was. Maybe what he needed to hear was the truth as far as I knew it, which I guess was, “...crazy.”

That had to be it, though, right? I wasn't in my right mind. How could I be? I was killing ponies without even thinking about it. Pretty sure that filed rather neatly under the heading of some specific type of insanity or other. Clearly it wasn't the answer that the stallion in front of me had been desperately hoping for though. He didn't look frightened on concerned though, like somepony should have when confronted by an admitted murderous psychopath.

He just looked disappointed. Somehow, that hurt worse than if he'd looked afraid. He thought I was lying to him. He believed that I didn't trust him, even after what we'd been through these last couple days. He was wrong though. I did trust him. I trusted him more than anypony I'd ever met—though the list of ponies I'd met consisted of those I'd seen today, technically. What I was saying to him was the truth as best as I knew it, and he didn't believe me.

That hurt more than his look of disappointment.

“Diode, I-”

The sound of shouting and pounding hooves on metal stairs drifted up from below and distracted me from whatever I had been about to say. The guards had extracted themselves from the gas cloud and deduced our path. They'd be here in moments, which left the two of us with little time to make our escape.

The earth pony stallion was looking at the stairwell too. He was biting his lip, dread darkening his eyes. There was nowhere else to run, and we'd never be able to hold them off in a fight. Which was fine, as I had no intension of fighting them. This wasn't a last stand, after all.

This was an escape.

“Can you swim?”

The stallion looked at me and blinked, “what?”

I hadn't really be asking though. It had been more or less meant as a warning. It was all the warning that Diode got as I levitated him into the air and placed him on my back once more. Then we were sprinting for the edge of the lookout nest that had been built out of the tip of the statue's raised hoof. At the last moment, I coiled my hind legs and vaulted as far out as my limbs could manage. Diode was screaming something about copulating rear ends. Most of it was lost in the rushing wind that enveloped us. We were airborne, and descended rather quickly. Because of this, I was far less concerned with what the earth pony on my back was screaming than how I was going to manage the water landing without killing him in the process.

Using my magic, I rooted around inside Diode's saddlebags, pulling out one of the pulse mines that he had disarmed and picked up the other day. I brought it around in front of me and found the arming button. I poked the blue button, watching it light up. Almost immediately, the mine started beeping as it counted down to a detonation.

These things really were malfunctioning, I realized. There wasn't anything metal for a hundred yards! A little panicked, I heaved the mine downward ahead of us. Not a moment to soon for several reasons. Most paramount was that the water of the bay that encircled Friendship City was only a dozen yards below, and approaching at an alarming pace. Secondary to that was the fact that the mine detonated almost immediately after I heaved it away. The explosion had the desired affect at least.

The magical blue shockwave ballooned out in all directions. It hit the water first, crackling along the surface of the water, and breaking the surface tension just as I'd hoped it would. It would make our landing significantly less traumatic when we hit the surface after passing through the edge of the pulse that was coming our way—

The water was gone. That was the first thing I noticed. It certainly struck me as quite odd, since there had been quite a lot of it right in front of me a brief moment ago. I wasn't falling anymore either. This was something that was equally as puzzling, since I had no recollection of hitting the water. In fact, judging by how I was oriented, and what was currently going on around me, I suspected that several things had happened that I needed to be caught up on.

Foremost, I decided that I should perhaps broach the topic of what Diode was currently doing.

“You know...you could have just asked for that kiss...”

I had tried to throw a little sarcasm into the words, to let the earth pony know that I was more or less joking with him; but he must not have picked up on it. What he did do was recoil away with large rounded eyes and a rather filly-like scream. The suddenness of which actually made me scream a little bit, I'm embarrassed to admit. It made me feel just a tiny bit better that mine was noticeably deeper and briefer than the stallion's. What had him so high strung?

“SWEET CELESTIA'S FUCKING BUTTS!” he screeched. Then he released a deep breath. He still sounded rather tense, but at least he was no longer looking like a pony who had just been confronted with a pack of starving hell hounds, “you're alive?!” the tone suggested that he hadn't yet decided if he was asking for confirmation or making a a rhetorical statement of fact.

I took it for the latter, as I couldn't conceive of why he'd be asking about the former, “last time I checked,” I regarded him worriedly. I propped myself up, realizing that I had been laying on my back, and took a brief look around.

There was the water I'd been looking for a moment ago, a few yards away beyond the shore. The massive looming hulk of Friendship City stood in the distance out in the middle of the bay. I blinked as I processed what that meant. There certainly wasn't any way that I had been this close to land when I'd made the leap from the top of that statue; nor did I recall swimming the five hundred or so yards that I obviously had. The trip across the water had obviously happened though. Both myself and Diode were soaked to the bone and still dripping wet.

“Well the last time I checked, you were dead,” the stallion shot back, his words wavering on a knife's edge between concern and anger. My eyes whipped back to Diode, and I saw him glaring at me, “you weren't breathing, and I couldn't find a pulse,” he swallowed, “I just spent the last five minutes giving you CPR...”

My first impulse was to try and break the tension with a little more humor related to him seeking an excuse for a snog, but there was something about the way that he was looking at me that suggested that wouldn't be very well received. He was acting almost...afraid of me.

“I...feel fine,” I decided to answer with, stressing the words as an apology for worrying him. Even though I certainly had no idea what he was talking about. I was breathing just fine. There wasn't even the least bit of water in my throat. I certainly hadn't drowned.

I hadn't swum to shore either though, had I? At least, I didn't remember doing it, “what happened?”

“The fuck if I know,” Diode said, still looking at me warily, “you threw us off that damned statue, and then you detonated one of my pulse mines above the water. The next thing I know you're out like a light. You weren't swimming or moving. I didn't know what happened to you.

“I dragged you to shore. You weren't breathing,” his features creased with pain, “I thought you'd been killed or something...”

“I'm sorry,” was all I could think to say. I had no recollection of anything he'd just said. I remembered the jumping and the mine, but nothing after that. There was just a hard cut between the pulse detonation and laying on the shore. Obviously a lot more must have happened though, and Diode was worse for wear because of it. Physically, and emotionally, by the sound of things, “thanks.”

“What the fuck's going on, Iris?” the stallion demanded, an edge creeping back into his tone. His eyes grew a little harder, “the moment that mine went off, you were gone,” he clicked his tongue in an imitation of the sound a mechanical switch might make, “just like that. Don't try and tell me that the mine was defective either, because I was right there with you this time, and I was fine.

“No offense, but you're also heavy as shit,” he finished his little tirade with a grimace while he rubbed his lower back.

“I...” the words died in my gaping mouth. What was I supposed to say? I didn't have an explanation for it; not in the face of his own experience, “I don't know.”

A brief look of irritation flashed behind his eyes. That response was growing old with him, and it didn't look like it was going to satisfy this time, “really? Because I think you do.”

Before I knew what the stallion was about to do, he stepped over and grabbed hold of my coveralls with his teeth near my right shoulder. Without warning, he jerked his head back. The white jumpsuit's sleeve was torn away at the shoulder.

“Diode! What the-”

My words died quickly as my eyes beheld my own shoulder. The stallion merely stepped back again, glaring at me as he waited for me to explain what had been exposed. First, of course, I would have to come up with something that could satisfactorily explained what I was seeing to myself. Once I'd done that, then maybe—maybe—I'd be able to make Diode understand too.

What I was looking at was a bullet. Or, it had once been a bullet anyway. The warped little lump of lead and copper didn't really resemble what tended to poke out the end of brass cartridges anymore. It had smeared itself into a mangled wad upon my flesh. Only...I wasn't so convinced that it was really flesh. I tentatively reach up with my left hoof and gently prodded the area near the impact where my crisp blue coat had been parted by the bullet's course when it struck me. An inch long gash existed now, which had split my hide.

On anypony else, there would had been blood flowing from this wound. Layers of fat, muscle, and perhaps even sinew visible if the wound had been deep enough. None of those things were visible here though. There was no blood. No muscle. Beneath the fur and flesh shown only steel. Except, it wasn't steel. It moved beneath my hoof as though it were soft flesh. It wasn't though. It had been noticeably scratched by the bullet when it hit me. Whatever it was exactly, that didn't matter.

All I cared about was that it clearly wasn't what it should have been.

Why wasn't my shoulder made of meat and blood?

Diode seemed to think that I'd been given enough time to say my piece, and continued, “did you really think that I'd never find out? That this was something that a pony like me couldn't piece together?”

“Diode, that's-”

“No,” the earth pony cut me off, “I'm not finished,” so I bit my lip and waited, bracing for some upcoming reproachful words. He took a deep breath and bowed his head, “look...I get that it's hard to know who a pony really is when you meet them out in the Wastes. You don't have to tell me that there are ponies out there that look down on others for stupid reasons,” he lifted his head and regarded me once more. The irritation was gone now, replaced by sympathy, “maybe it's because of what I said I did with robots, or whatever. I don't know.

“But, Iris, I want you to know, honestly, I don't care that you're a cyberpony.”

I blinked.

“I'm not going to ask how it happened,” the earth pony went on, “that's none of my business; and it was probably pretty bad it they swapped out as much as I think they did. And if that doctor back there was involved somehow, then you don't have to tell me about any of that either.

“I get it,” a wan smile finally started making its way onto the stallion's face, “and while I'll admit that I can understand why you wouldn't want to advertise that even being close to a pulse detonation is enough to put you out; it would have been nice to know that my mines weren't actually defective.

“I've been stressing myself out for days trying to figure out what went wrong.”

Again, I blinked. Cyberpony? He thought that I was a cyberpony? I glanced at my shoulder again. Was he right? That should have been something that I knew about though, shouldn't it? Or...hadn't I known, deep down. Thinking back, I had not thought it odd that I could perform physical acts I'd known were impossible for other ponies. On some level, I suppose that I actually had known about it, if not actively. Certainly, I couldn't specifically quantify how much of my body had been augmented, and what those changes had been.

Part of me wondered if there wasn't a good reason that I'd blocked it out.

It was better than any answer I had though, so, “sorry,” I placed a smile on my face, hoping that it looked genuine despite the internal doubts that were still raging within me, “a filly's got to have a few secrets, you know?”

Diode nodded, relaxing visibly. His own smile grew a little brighter, “I understand. I wish I'd know you'd done a cardio replacement though,” he smirked, “would have known why I wasn't getting a pulse...”

“You sound like you know a lot about this sort of stuff,” I noted, “you don't happen to have a few 'aftermarket' additions, do you?”

“Nope,” he shook his head, “one hundred percent au naturale earth pony here,” he proudly proclaimed, “but I've known one or two ponies who had some work done,” his eyes ran up and down my shoulder, “kind of fascinated me really. Never got a really close look, but from what I have seen, the engineering isn't that much different from what our ancestors used to design a lot of the robots out there...” his hoof drifted out closer to the exposed joint.

“Well until I see some certifications,” I gently pushed the hoof aside, “no poking around under the hood, m'kay?”

“Noted,” Diode assured me bashfully. Then his expression became a little more serious, “but you are alright though? Everything's good to go?”

“I'm waterproof,” I assured him, internally hoping that I was giving him an honest answer. If most of what I knew about my own limitations was tucked away inside my subconscious somewhere, then I had to believe that a mental flag would have popped up the moment I came up with the plan to jump into the harbor. My brain had always kicked in before when I'd been deciding what I could and could not do when there was a threat. I certainly wasn't feeling off right now.

“Well, that's a relief,” the earth pony sighed. Then his eyes went to Friendship City and his expression became noticeably more dour. There was the briefest of tugs at the corner of his mouth, and then he looked at me with a broad smile...and dim eyes, “so...you know any good places to live in Baltimare?”

“What?”

“I assume you're going to be heading home,” Diode pointed out, “and since I really can't anymore,” he nodded his back towards the statue, “I figured now's as good a time as any for a change of scenery. May as well be Baltimare.”

Right. I'd made him a wanted criminal in his own home. I cringed as the thought returned to me, “I'm really sorry I got you tangled up in all this.”

“It's not your fault,” the stallion sighed, “you tried to part ways back in the ruins, remember? I followed you. Besides...it's not like I had any real ties here anyway.”

“I'll make it up to you,” I promised.

“Hook me up with the pony that designed your cybernetics, and I'll consider us even,” he stretched out his hoof, waiting for me to take it and seal the bargain. I did so. Even though I wasn't sure if I'd be able to deliver. I had no idea who had done this to me.

Perhaps those answers would find me in Baltimare. So, I wore my best smile as I shook his hoof, “I can do that...”

I truly hoped that I was telling the truth.

“So,” Diode began while the two of us walked north along the outskirts of the sprawling Manehattan ruins, “I know you can jump really high, run really fast, and you're a crack shot with a rifle. Any other talents you want to tell me about?” the stallion's expression revealed that his question was meant to be more playful than interrogatory. So I took the conversational lead in stride, appreciating the opening he was creating to break the tension that was still lingering between the two of us after what had happened back at the statue.

“I'm undefeated in arm wrestling,” I quipped, briefly flexing my bare shoulder. The slug had been scraped off, but the small rend in the fur sheath that covered the metallic surface beneath remained. I'd inspected the other locations that I had recalled taking hits, and discovered similar wounds. If nothing else, it had revealed that my augmentations seemed to be rather extensive. All four limbs at least, and my chest wall. Diode had also voiced his theory that some work had been done along my cervical spine, at a minimum.

“It would explain why pulse mines seem to knock you out...”

The specifics of all my body's modifications eluded me, of course. I suspected he was right though. It did explain why those magical energy pulses dropped me so completely.

Diode chuckled at the comment, which helped me to relax all the more. I appreciated him for that. I'd basically destroyed his entire life, and here he was, trying to make me feel better. Any other pony would have been perfectly within their rights to wash their hooves of me and tell me exactly where I could shove it. Not this stallion though.

“How do you do it?”

The earth pony perked up, “do what?”

“This,” I nodded in his general direction, “this whole 'it's just another day in the Wasteland' thing you've got going on right now. Come on, Diode; you're leaving behind everypony you ever knew to follow me further north than you've ever been, but you're acting like you do it all the time.”

His smile dimmed subtly, but remained in place, “I told you what happened to my family,” he said, “Manehattan stopped being 'home' for me when that happened. The only reason I was sticking around was because I didn't really know where anywhere else was. The Wasteland's dangerous enough without groping around in places you've never been.

“Every day in these ruins was just that: a day. Go out, knock over a couple roboponies, sell the scrap. Rinse, repeat. I could do that anywhere. I just did it here because I knew the layout. It's not like I really care about anypony in this place.

“So...yeah,” he shrugged, “it is just another day in the Wasteland.”

“I see,” I nodded, thinking about what he'd said, and how depressed that made me feel. There had to be more to life than just going through the motions, right? Not that anything readily came to mind. My own memories about my life were...sparse, to put it mildly. For all I knew, my days had been just as tedious before coming here. Though, if what I'd been through in the last couple of days was what existed in lieu of the tedium, maybe that wasn't such a bad thing. I was pretty sure I could do with a few little less panicked fleeing and unintentional executions.

“Maybe Baltimare will be better,” I ventured, “some new faces, new places. I'll show you around, if you'd like.”

Diode's smile brightened a little, “I'd like that. What's the food like up there? Anything I should try first?

“Uh...”

Then my thoughts were suddenly diverted. My ears twitched, and I realized that we weren't alone anymore. Diode either sensed it too, or simply had picked up on my own onset of tension, because he reached around and drew his revolver. We stood motionless, not saying a word. My eyes darted around, but I wasn't actually looking for anything specific. I just wanted to confirm the direction...

“There,” I whispered,” pointing a hoof ahead of us and to the right, “two...ponies? No,” they weren't ponies like the raiders had been the other day. They were-

“Roboponies,” the earth pony supplied as one of the centuries old automatons creaked into view. Its wheeling legs emitted a dull grinding sound, suggesting that the mechanisms within were either corroded or had picked up some foreign material. While slow, it was still making steady progress. As was its partner, which steamed along in its wake. As though it were an instinct, Diode slipped a hoof into his saddlebag and started to draw out a pulse mine. Then his eyes darted to me, and he let the device drop back into the carrier. He glanced left, “this way,” he hissed.

I followed close on his tail as we ducked into a nearby cafe. There we took cover and remained very quiet and still. Even without looking, I knew where the Old World robots were heading. I could sense them intuitively somehow. Diode moved to take a peek out into the street, but I quickly stretched out a hoof and barred his path, “they're heading this way,” I glanced past him, deeper into the ruin, “we need to look for a back way out.”

Diode regarded me for a brief moment, then nodded. We crept deeper into the cafe, careful to avoid knocking aside any of the tables or scattered chairs for fear of creating a racket. Past the kitchen, we discovered both a stairwell leading upwards towards an apartment, and the rear entrance that would have once been used by the ponies that worked here to accept deliveries and dispose of their garbage. I reached out to open it, but drew up short.

“The other one's coming down the alley,” I hissed through gritted teeth, “they must have seen us,” I glanced between the front and rear of the cafe, “they're trying to surround us.”

“What are we going to do?” the amber stallion posed.

I wasn't enjoying the prospect of taking the two roboponies head on, especially without any weapons. Diode almost certainly had several pulse mines that he could set out and use to deal with the robots rather quickly. Of course, knowing how I reacted to those, I could see why he'd discarded the notion earlier. It was an option that I'd filled away as a last resort though. So far those mines hadn't done any permanent physical damage; and I didn't have any concrete proof that they were responsible for my mental woes either. Hopefully, if things got bad enough, the stallion would use them anyway.

Other than that, we didn't have a lot of weapons between us. I had not acquired any additional ammunition back in Friendship City, and neither had Diode. He had a few explosives left, though I didn't know of what types specifically. If he had anything patently useful to us right now other than pulse weapons, I'd have thought that he'd bring them up by now though. I inquired anyway, “got any other nifty bombs?”

The stallion thought for a moment and then began listing off his inventory, “pulse mines, two sprite grenades, smoker, flasher, and a sweeper.”

“Sweeper?” another weapon that the stallion knew about that sounded completely foreign to myself. There was a part of me deep down that felt rather aggravated that I didn't know a lot about the weaponry being used around here. Didn't anypony use hunting rifles and energy pistols anymore?

The earth pony scrunched his face up, looking past me towards the front of the cafe, “I don't know how well it'll work against robots,” he admitted, “it sprays out marbles and nails and stuff. Messes ponies and most monsters up pretty good, but roboponies...” he shrugged.

If I knew the exact parameters of the explosive charge used, I'd have been able to tell him definitively how much damage it would have done; but right now was not the time for an in depth discussion of his ordinance construction techniques. I discounted the 'sweeper' for now, “do the sprite grenades need the targeting talismans to work?”

He grimaced, “not technically, no,” at my inquiring look, he explained, “they can be used like a regular grenade and thrown if that's what you mean; but they're a shaped charge. Without the talismans, there's no guarantee that they'll be facing the robots when they go off.”

Shaped charges weren't always perfect, but I'd seen Diode's in action up close. If the roboponies weren't in exactly the right place when they went off, they'd barely be scratched by the explosions. Without some way to make sure that the sprite grenades were facing the right direction and also close enough...without the use of Diode's talismans, short of holding the grenade right next to them, I didn't know how else to pull it off.

Wait. Was that an option? Not holding the explosives in my hoof of course, but maybe with magic...

There wasn't any reason that couldn't work. If Diode could keep their attention long enough for me to get around behind them with the sprite grenades...yeah, that could work. Now to see if I could get the stallion on board with the plan.

“You're going to what? While I what?” okay, so maybe he wasn't exactly excited about the plan. Neither of those questions was specifically a 'no' though.

“It'll work,” I assured him, “it's not like I need to get close to them. My telekinesis has a pretty good range,” thirty-seven point four-seven-one meters to be exact.

...all unicorns knew how far their telekinesis could reach right down to the millimeter, right? Right. There was absolutely nothing at all weird about knowing that. Especially for a super cyberpony courier mare like me. Nothing. Weird.

“And how many times am I supposed to let them shoot me so that they're sufficiently 'distracted'?” the earth pony grimaced.

Shrewd, “well, I got shot four times back in Friendship City, and I'm perfectly fine. Try to keep it under that,” see? Both of us could be snarky, “just lay down. I'll be quick.”

Despite the tension and rather pronounced sense of fear hanging between us, Diode snickered, “isn't that supposed to be my line?”

I blinked, and then rolled my eyes, “shut up,” I took the grenades in my silvery glowing magic and headed for the stairwell. Diode would remain bunkered down here while I ascended to the roof and delivered the grenades to their targets. With any luck, neither robopony would even make it close enough to open fire on him.

Once on the roof, I kept myself low as I snaked first to the edge facing the back alley. The robopony there would be in a confined space and much easier to hit. It was also the closest threat to Diode, who was seeking shelter in the cafe's kitchen, as the dining area was far too wide open to provide sufficient cover and concealment. I carefully peeked over the roof. The ponified automaton was simply rolling along, seemingly oblivious to my presence. I levitated one of the sprite grenades out, lowering slowly down and around from behind the robot.

The detonation echoed through the alleyway. When the smoke cleared, the robopony was no longer moving. A now headless carriage of metal and wires stood idle in the narrow corridor. One down. Now it was time for contestant number two.

Just as carefully as before, I crept towards the other end of the roof. The last remaining sprite grenade hovered close beside me. All I had to do was the exact same thing as before: float the grenade down right behind the robopony's head and then set it off. This would be over soon, and then we could get back on our way to Baltimare.

This was just about the moment when the two century old roof that had remained intact, in defiance of the will of war and time, chose to finally give in and collapse. I felt flattered, really, that it should pick me as the sole audience for such an auspicious event.

The collapse was sudden and succinct. One moment the roof was there, and the next the outer wall had folded away and rendered the building's roof into a ramp which I was now sliding down. My landing wasn't much more graceful, as I tumbled to a rather unceremonious halt in the middle of the wide Manehattan avenue. I shook my head and looked around, acutely aware that there was a killer robopony out here some-

Oh. Well...fuck.

I found myself staring directly down the barrel of the energy cannon that was the standard armament for Old World roboponies. The automaton that I had been hoping to destroy from the rooftop was standing right in front of me now, it's primary weapon system poised to shoot. I'd have only mere seconds to take it out before it killed me. The trouble was that I had lost the grenade in the fall. Only Celestia knew where it might have landed in all of this rubble.

Shit!

Then the robopony backed up a couple feet, pivoted slightly to the right, and rolled on around me without a single shot fired. I stared with wide-eyed astonishment as the robot treated me as though I were a pile of refuse to be avoided without reducing me to a pile of glowing ash as I had expected. Was it defective? I mean, even more so that every robopony in the Wasteland was? Perhaps this unit wasn't specifically violent, or maybe it's weapons were broken...

“INTRUDER,” the robopony proclaimed as it moved in on the cafe, “PLEASE EXIT THE BUILDING AND PREPARE TO BE EXECUTED. THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION,” then it opened fire with a crimson spray of magical death.

Nope, it was working just fine!

I scrambled to my hooves and charged the robot. Tables and chairs were vanishing quickly within the cafe, replaced by puffs of ash as the energy weapon vaporized them. Diode would be running out of cover soon. I leaped onto the robopony's back and wrapped my arms around its head. With a great heave, I pulled back on the metal cranium. Steel whined and protested, but the ancient metal alloys soon yielded to my own strength and the robot's head twisted off. The energy cannon fell instantly silent.

With a relieved sigh, I tossed the head aside, “coast is clear!”

From deep within the cafe, I saw an amber head topped by a brown tangle of a mane pop up, “I almost got shot in the ass!”

“You're welcome,” I responded with a smile.

The earth pony extracted himself from the ancient cafe, noticing the recent renovations that I'd conducted, “told you you were heavy,” he remarked.

“Do I have to break your nose again?”

“Tell you what,” the stallion glanced at me, “next time? You get shot at and I save the day.”

I rolled my eyes. Then, I leaned in and showed him my cheek. The stallion jerked and regarded me with a puzzled expression. When neither of us moved for a few seconds, his curiosity overwhelmed him, “what's going on?”

“I saved you life,” I pointed out, “I get a kiss. That's the deal we had, isn't it? Save a life, get a kiss.”

“Oh, right,” I felt him issue a quick peck. Then he thought for a moment, “you know, I also pulled you out of the harbor earlier...”

“You already got your kiss from that,” I pointed out.

“What? I didn't...that was mouth-to-mouth! That doesn't count,” he protested.

I turned and continued walking north with a shrug, “your lips were on my lips.”

“For necessary medical reasons!” the stallion defended as he trotted up to my side.

“Sounds like somepony's just upset that they didn't make the most of it while they could.”

“I thought you were dead! It's not like I enjoyed any of it!”

“Not surprising,” I continued to tease in a detached tone, “I didn't think it was a very good kiss either.”

“For the last time, that wasn't-”

Diode grew suddenly silent. It was hard to blame him. Most ponies would probably find it difficult to talk when they found themselves with a mare's tongue shoved down their throat. To the stallion's credit, he started kissing back after only a couple of seconds when his brain seemed to have finally finished processing the rapid reversal of the conversation. He was even the one who finally broke the embrace when he eventually came back up for air.

I smiled at the earth pony, then feigned mulling something over in my head. I shrugged, “eh, a little better this time. We'll work on it.”

“Yeah...” was Diode's whispered response. Then he cleared his throat and quickly changed the topic, “we should be out of robopony territory by nightfall,” he stated, “most of them stick to the ruins. Probably part of their deeper programming or something.”

“That'll be nice,” I nodded in agreement, “I don't suppose you know where we might be able to scavenge some weapons and ammo along the way?” our armament situation was rather dire at the moment.

He shook his head, “your guess is as good as mine. I've never been much of a prospector.”

“We'll keep our eyes open,” I glanced back at the robopony for a brief moment and then looked ahead as we continued our journey, “hey, Diode?”

“Yeah?”

“You know a lot about roboponies, right?”

“More than most,” the stallion acknowledged.

“How do they determine what they shoot at?”

“Pfft,” the amber earth pony snorted derisively, “I don't think they 'determine' anything,” he said, “those crazy robots shoot at anything that moves. Radroaches, ponies, hell hounds, whatever,” he thought for a moment, and then added as an afterthought, “except other roboponies, I guess.”

“Why's that?”

“Beats me,” he shrugged, “best guess? They have some really deep layer to their program that stops them from seeing each other as hostiles. Couldn't tell you why. It's a shame though. The robopony problem might have solved itself a long time ago if they did shoot each other on sight.”

“Yeah. Probably,” I was only half listening to the stallion now though. That information was something that I was finding rather troubling. The sight of the robopony looking right at me, and then rolling along on its way without firing a shot was bothering me quite a bit.

...except other roboponies...

Maybe cyberponies fell into that category too?

The thought nagged at me for the next couple of hours, until it got too dark to risk going any further. We sought out some shelter for the night, in the form of a house in the city's outer suburbs. It was a pretty decent home, or at least it had been before two centuries of neglect had taken its toll. We found a couple of intact beds up on the second floor.

“I'll take the first watch,” Diode volunteered, “I need to put together a few more grenades anyway,” I was prepared to argue the point, but the stallion made a compelling argument: we wouldn't have any real weapons until he put a few together. What was I supposed to use while I was on watch if we were attacked?

“I'll get you at midnight.”

So, despite not feeling particularly tired, I curled up on the bed and closed my eyes. Then I opened them and stretched myself out a little. I stepped out of the room and found Diode sitting in the middle of a collection of parts and tools.

“Make any progress?”

Then stallion jerked and let out a shocked little gasp. He whipped around and glared at me, “stop doing that!” he visibly relaxed and sighed. Then he quirked an eyebrow, “you are the most punctual sleeper I've ever met.”

“Super pony, remember?” I wiggled my eyebrows.

“Right,” Diode started cleaning up his improvised work station. When he was done, he passed me a couple of tin cans that possessed a few visible wires and a pull pin, “these are omni-directional, not shaped. Smaller charges too. I packed them with broken glass and some old jacks I found in a toy chest.”

“Got it,” I nodded. After a brief thought, I decided to ask, “what did you use for the charges?”

“It's just gunpowder,” he shrugged.

“How much?”

The stallion regarded me curiously, “...five ounces.”

I hefted the grenades, judging their weight against that of the stated weight of the powder. Lethal range of three meters, maims out to seven. That was good to know. The 'how's of that bit of deduction were something I decided to quickly squelch, “alright. Good night.”

“Night.”

Diode shuffled off to bed, and I perched myself at the top of the stairs to keep watch.

It had been a busy day. I'd killed my father, fled from an army of city guards, discovered I was a cyberpony...a busy day. Diode didn't know how much the prospect of returning to Baltimare was filling me with equal parts of eagerness and dread. The answers to a lot of my questions had to be there. Though...I wasn't certain I was going to like all of those answers.

I had to know though. I just had to know what was going on with me.

Two hours passed in silence, then my ears twitched. Celestia damn it, what was it now? I looked around, my lips drawn in a grim line. It had been a sound. The concern was that my mysterious pony-senses were not tingling this time. I had merely heard a sound. It hadn't been the house settling or anything like that either. It had been the sound of a pony talking...or at least mumbling. And it had come from...

My eyes went to the room where Diode was sleeping. Oh. I stood up and quietly made my way to the doorway. I peered inside and saw what I had anticipated. The caramel stallion was quivering on the bed, mumbling in his sleep.

“...don't go...” the words floated across the room, barely audible, “...don't...”

I frowned. For a minute or two, I simply remained watching his tortured sleep, waiting for the fit to pass. When it didn't, I took a deep breath and stepped inside. He didn't react to my approach. Diode simply continued to mumble and twitch as he relieved the night of his parent's murder. I reached out and gently ran a hoof over his shoulder.

“Diode?” I said in a soft tone.

At first he didn't react. Then, the mumbling ceased and he jerked awake. He looked around with wide eyes, his muscles tense, “is something wrong?” I shook my head. He relaxed a little, “morning?” again, I shook my head. The stallion cringed now, “I was talking in my sleep again?” I offered a sympathetic nod, “sorry.”

“Not your fault,” I assured him, “I'll let you get back to sleep,” I turned and started back for the door.

“What do you dream about?” the question stopped me in my tracks. I glanced back at the stallion, “you seem to be a rather peaceful sleeper,” he pointed out, “it'd be nice to know your secret.”

I thought about it for a moment and then shrugged, “I don't dream,” I replied simply, “I just...close my eyes and wake up."

Diode snorted and shook his head, “damn Super Ponies,” he sighed, “I'll give that a try then.”

He rolled back over and lay down. I extracted myself from the room completely now and returned to my perch at the top of the stairs. I hadn't really thought about it until that moment of course. Make lack of dreams. Diode was plagued by memories every night it seemed. I just sort of...blinked myself forward in time. Which, I guess was a bit of a blessing. It meant that I didn't suffer the way that Diode did at night. Still...it felt like one more way that I was so very different from him and other ponies. I glanced down at my bare shoulder, and the metal that glimmered beneath the torn fur covering.

Had I chosen this? Or was it forced on me? As much as I was finding myself wishing that I were a lot more like the stallion sleeping in that room than myself, I started to suspect it was the former. Hopefully, Baltimare would have my answers.

Another hour, another ear twitch. It wasn't Diode this time though. Ponies were nearby. Two of them. Except...they weren't ponies. Not really. They were...

My stomach tied itself in a knot. It was the same way that the roboponies had felt earlier. Had two more of them found us? That seemed unlikely. They couldn't possibly have detected us in here. They'd probably just roll on by.

Except, that wasn't going to happen, was it? Because those two roboponies were heading directly for the front door of the house, like they knew exactly where we were. But, that wasn't possible. We'd been here all night, and hadn't made a sound. Nothing could have alerted them to our presence. I had to be mistaken. The grenades hovered nearby though, just in case.

I kept watch on the front door from the top of the stairs, waiting to see what happened. The roboponies were impossibly close. They had to be coming here. They must be incredibly well maintained too, since I couldn't hear even the slightest bit of noise that tended to associate itself with a two hundred year old machine that had missed a few routine services.

The door opened, the ancient hinges protesting the movement. I coiled up, ready to pounce on them the moment that came inside. Then I saw somepony poke their head inside through the open doorway. My eyes went wide. It wasn't a robopony at all. It was unmistakably the head of a real pony. A unicorn mare, to be precise. She glanced around briefly, and then looked up the stairway at me. As though she wasn't the least bit surprised to see somepony in the house, she stepped the rest of the way inside. A second unicorn mare followed her in.

Sisters? The resemblance was rather uncanny. Even in the darkness, I could tell that they possessed remarkably similar facial structures and mane styles. No...they weren't just similar, they were identical. Twins? Had to be. I watched the two mares close the door quietly behind them and walk to the bottom of the stairs without saying a word to me. Though, to be fair, I wasn't making any overtures at conversation either. I was still more than a little mystified by what I was seeing.

If these two mares were really twins, then they existed in that family of 'creepy twins' that I had just created for them. Both mares moved in nearly perfect unison. Their heads and eyes locked on me as they reached the bottom of the stairs and came to a halt. I had a chance to get a really good look at them now. The same faces, the same mane styles, the same silvery eyes...

...the same white jumpsuits with purple trim.

My heart turned to ice as fear and confusion took a firm hold of my senses. Those two mares didn't just look remarkably like one another, I realized. They looked like me. One of them had a yellow colored coat, and the other orange, but there was no mistaking that their faces...were my face as well.

How was that possible?

The pair of grenades fell to the floor as my magic faded away. I could no longer hold my focus, not when confronted with what I was seeing now.

Then one of them spoke, in my own voice, “you failed to report to the designated rendezvous,” the yellow unicorn stated simply in a dry, detached voice. She may as well have been describing the texture of a patch of dirt for all of the emotion that was present.

The other was no different when she spoke. The same bored tone, and the same voice that was also my own, “explain.”

Author's Note

Thank you so much for reading! As always, a thumbs up and comment are always greatly appreciated :twilightblush:

I've set up a Cover Art Fund if you're interested and have any bits lying around!

Debug

“Unit Six,” the yellow mare that spoke with my own voice, and wore my own face prompted again as she stared at me, “you have failed to report to the prearranged rendezvous point after completing your assigned task,” the words were flat, devoid of all emotion. It was as though the mare were reading from a script that had been prepared for her.

If that was the case, then her accomplice was reciting from the same script, as she had little trouble picking up the routine without even a brief pause between them, “are you being pursued, and have detoured to avoid capture?”

Finally, my voice found me again; though it must have just as shaken as the rest of me, because it quavered horribly, “who...are you?”

The two mares looked at each other, “the unit's responses are aberrant. Malfunction?” Yellow posed to Orange.

Orange's response was, “sensor's detect the presence of an unidentified Operator. Subterfuge protocols may be in effect.”

Both ponies immediately turned their gaze upwards and to the right. Ignoring the walls and the difference in elevation, the direction of their gaze formed a direct line to where Diode was still sleeping. After a brief moment, they looked back at one another, and then nodded.

When they looked back at me, it was as though they were no longer the same ponies that I had been talking to. Their postures relaxed, ceasing to be the rigid manikins that they had seemed to be before. Their faces adopted actual expressions. Even their words were no longer dry when they spoke.

“We were so worried about you,” Yellow even actually managed to sound relieved, “you had us scouring the whole Wasteland wondering where you'd gone off to.”

Orange chimed in as well with a voice that bubbled with elation, “I'm so happy you're okay! Are you ready to go back home?”

Seeing such a dramatic change in the personalities and composure of the two mares that didn't seem nearly as surprised about looking like me as I did only served to compound my trepidation. Were they being serious right now? “you look like me,” I said in a tone that suggested that the two of them should be as bewildered by this as I was, “why do you look like me? Who are you?” an edge that might have been easily mistaken for panic started to color my words near the end.

“We're your sisters,” Yellow said, as though it should have been patently obvious to anypony.

Orange scrunched up her face in concern, “are you feeling alright?” she started up the stairs, and I found myself backing away in an effort to maintain the existing distance between us. This lasted until I backed into the wall of the hallway, which created a rather loud noise that managed to surprise me.

This couldn't be happening, and the fact that it most certainly was only freaked me out even more. This was absolute madness; and what terrified me about it all the more was the flood of implications that was growing within my head. The two mares that I was looking at were simply myself, but with what basically amounted to a dye job. However, my sixth sense about the ponies around me was proclaiming very loudly that neither of these mares were actually mares. They registered like roboponies; hollow and mechanical.

Then there was the fact that they were talking to me as though I was one of them.

That was perhaps the most terrifying part of this encounter: the idea that I was exactly like them. The idea that I was a hollow shell of a robopony, wearing a disguise.

It wasn't true.

I would not accept that it was true.

Whatever else these two...things might be, they...weren't...me.

So I hit her.

Honestly, it seemed like the most reasonable course of action at the time.

The strike caught the mare completely off guard, and the orange unicorn went tumbling down the stairs. I stared down at her in silence, wondering if perhaps I had made a huge mistake just now. The yellow unicorn looked at her friend's prone form with a look that perfectly reflected surprise. The prone mare raised her head, and looked at me with the flat expression that she had been wearing when she had first entered.

“Subterfuge protocols unlikely,” she commented as she slowly got back up on her hooves, “this Unit is operating outside prescribe parameters.”

The surprised expression instantly fell away from Yellow's face, and she looked back up at me as well, “confirmed. Unknown deficiency in Unit Six logged.”

Orange stepped on line with her twin. She closed her silver eyes, “seeking directive from Operator,” the unicorn was silent for several seconds, then her eyes opened, “retrieval by force authorized.”

“Confirmed.”

Both mares leaped as one into the air, ascending the stairs in a single bound. Their intent was clear, and though I still didn't understand what was really going on, I knew enough to recognize that this was not a fight that I could afford to lose. Fortunately, I was a badass super pony courier. I should have this.

With a powerful push of my legs that succeeded in caving in the way behind me, I pushed myself forward at breakneck speed. I threw my forelegs out to either side in an attempt to sweep both of my attackers back by their necks. To my intense dismay, the other two mares displayed a rather preposterous amount of coordination between each other. Before I was able to react, they grabbed my outstretched arms and proceeded to 'assist' my own leap by imparting additional momentum...and a course correction.

I would need to take a good while to think later whether or not I was lucky that this house had been built with a crawl space rather than a full basement. In either event, the two century old floor had simply not been designed to withstand the force of a cyberpony hurling towards it at what I assumed were quasi-sonic speeds at this point. The ancient timbers evaporated into splinters and dust, leaving me in a fresh divot in the living room.

There weren't a lot of memories in my head right now. As best as I knew it, I only had about three days of personal experiences to fall back on, really. In that time, I had tangled with raiders, manticors, and an entire city's guard element. In each of those scenarios, I had performed exceptionally, falling back on a near-instinctual innate ability to simply dominate my opponents without really feeling concerned about whether or not I would survive the fight. And, aside from a slight hickup with that third manticor, I had dominated. I had kicked flank and taken names without breaking a sweat—could I sweat? Whatever. The point was, I had been fearless in those fights, because I knew I could beat them.

In those fights, I had felt very different from how I was feeling right now. In those fights, I had known I would win.

Right now, I knew I was going to lose.

Well...fuck.

That didn't mean that I was going to lose easily though.

With a determined grunt, I pulled myself out of the fresh hole that my impact had dug and turned to square off against my twined opponents. Only to find that they did not seem very inclined to give me much of a chance to muster a rebuttal strike against them.

In another commendable example of perfect coordination, those implausible copies of myself executed a dual strike upon me. One hoof came at my head from the left, another sweeping at my legs from the right. I had only time and ability enough to block one. The election that I made was to protect my head, as was only natural I suppose.

Imagine my consternation when it turned out that I wasn't even able enough to do that. I'd barely even managed to move my hooves before both mares connected with their strikes. My feet went left, my head and neck went right. The blows set me tumbling through the air for a time before I finally hit the ground again. At least this time I didn't snap any floorboards.

Bones, on the other hoof...

Or struts, or pistons, or whatever my limbs were made of at any rate. Something wasn't where it had been a moment ago, whatever the specifics of my anatomy. No matter how hard I willed my left foreleg to move, it refused to budge even in the slightest. It wasn't even tingling.

Orange was looming overhead now. Despite how thoroughly she and her accomplice had trounced me, the acrobatics the two of them had just performed, she displayed absolutely no outward sign that she'd expended any effort at all. The unicorn mare stared down at me with a completely blank expression, “this unit is neutralized.”

“Receiving new coordinates for rendezvous with Operator,” Yellow acknowledged.

“Fuck that,” I snarled at the pair. I wasn't going anywhere with them without a fight, “I'm not done yet!”

I could still fight on three legs...

...Nevermind.

Barely any weight had even been placed on my right foreleg before Orange enveloped a shattered floorboard in the silvery glow of her magic and used the wooden plank to deliver a swat to the underside of my chin. The blow shattered the piece of wood as I was propelled backwards into the nearby wall of the old house. My body slammed into the ancient plaster, sending bits of it breaking away and falling along with my limp body to the floor.

“...alright, I'm done,” I wheezed.

“Rendezvous established,” Yellow stated, as though she hadn't just seen me get pummeled by her partner.

Orange cast a brief glance upstairs, “have we received instructions regarding the unidentified Operator?”

Yellow nodded, “disregard. They are no threat.”

“Acknowledged.”

Both of them were now looking directly down at me. Their horns glowed as one with silver light, and I felt myself lift off the floor. It was immensely frustrating to realize that I hadn't really stood a chance against these two. Especially not after having seen such proofs of my own ability just yesterday.

On the brighter side of things, it was at least possible that I was going to get some answers to a few questions I've been nursing since Diode found me.

The attention of all three of us were suddenly drawn to a silver discus that bounced along the pocked floor between us. It was adorned with several blue talismans, and was already beeping.

I blinked at the device, noting that it very strongly resembled one of Diode's—

I was outside. It was also considerably brighter than I remembered it being just a moment ago. Out of the corner of my eye, I could spy the brightening overcast that heralded the new day. It was only out of the corner of my eye that I could tell this, since I quickly found that I was unable to move my head. This was naturally quite alarming; granted not an unfamiliar sensation.

Nor, I was very concerned to discover, was that immobility confined to my head and neck. While I recalled how my left leg had ceased to function during the fight, I now found that none of my limbs were working. Heck, it was all that I could do to twitch an ear!

Oh, fuck, the fight! Those two mares, where were they?!

My mind raced in an effort to reconstruct what had happened between my last recollections and now. They'd been looming over me. They'd said something about a 'rendezvous', and then there had been a metal disc.

Diode's mine!

“Diode?”

I couldn't see anypony else nearby. More than that, I couldn't sense the presence of anything, the way that I found I typically could. There was a cold lump forming in my stomach brought on by a growing fear of what that could imply about my situation. Paralyzed and alone was no way to awaken in the Wasteland.

“You're back online,” came a mildly surprised sounding voice from somewhere behind me, “you were out for two hours this time. I was starting to wonder.”

“Diode?” the voice had been his, there was no doubt about that. However, I had noticed something different about his tone. It was almost as detached as that of the orange and yellow mares that had accosted me, “I can't feel my body. What's wrong?”

“I unplugged you,” the caramel stallion replied simply, as though he was paying the edge of fright in my voice no mind at all, “didn't want to risk getting zapped while I took off your arm,” there was a brief pause, “I guess there's a battery backup or something in your head. Hmm.”

“Unplugged?”

“In several places actually,” Diode went on, “I wasn't sure exactly how redundant your systems were, so I disconnected your spark matrix, the servo actuation talismans, and your central processor,” another brief pause, “I guess your head is a self-contained unit. Probably designed that way, now that I think about it. They can just hook it right up to a new body if the old one gets too beat up.”

“What?” Diode's calm detachment wasn't doing anything to sooth my nerves, if that was even the reason for it. The more he said, the more anxious I got, “just how many implants do I have?” I'd been operating under the presumption up until now that it had been mostly just my limbs and a few parts of my chest that had been augmented. The way that the earth pony was talking now though...was there even a pony left in all this mess?

“Implants?” Diode replied with a confused note, “Iris, it's a little late for this game, don't you think?”

“What are you talking about?” how could he think that any of what I'd been through up to this point was a 'game'?

“Iris, we both know that the 'cyberpony' bit was a cover,” the amber stallion continued on in a board tone. In the background, I heard the soft scrape of metal on metal, “you can drop it now. I have you half taken apart at this point. I know exactly what you are.

“Well...sort of.”

“Diode, you're scaring me,” and he was too. This sick game that he was playing had gotten old before it even began, and I wanted him to stop. I didn't care why he was doing it, I just wanted him to stop it and talk straight with me, “what's going on?”

There was a long moment of silence. Then I heard a soft snort of air, “your programming's impeccable, I'll give you that. You had me convinced you were a real pony. Even now, I almost half believe you are one.”

“I am a real pony,” I insisted, noting that the quaver in my voice was highly suggestive of my own growing doubt.

“No, you're not,” a cold edge crept into the earth pony's words now, “and I'd appreciate it if you stopped trying to play me. You got me good, I admit that. I bought the whole 'lost and alone' story bit and bridle.

“I'm not even really mad. It's not your fault. You're just doing what you're programmed to, and I can appreciate that,” Diode said, sounding resigned, “so I'm going to go ahead, fix you up, and then let you go on your way.”

“Diode,” My words were a terrified whisper, “I'm a real pony,” it was intended as a statement of fact, but to my own ears, it came out as though it were just a fervent wish.

“No, Iris, you're not. You're just a very sophisticated robot.”

That wasn't true. It couldn't possibly be true. I'd know if I was a robot. Despite everything that Diode was saying; in spite of that own little voice inside of my agreeing with him, I knew it wasn't the truth, “I'm a real pony. I know I am!”

“Iris...” the amber stallion let out in an exasperated sigh.

“I'm scared, Diode! Robots can't be scared!”

“Robots can feel anything that they want to feel,” the earth pony responded flatly, “emotions are just responses to outside stimuli. Being afraid just means that we recognize something is dangerous. Being happy means we recognize something is good. It doesn't make you 'alive',” he snorted again, “and even that's all just assuming you're not just trying to feed me some more bullshit.”

“I'm real! I remember having a father!”

“You mean the pony you murdered in Friendship City?” Diode let out a hollow laugh, “strike two.”

“Then how do you know you're a real pony if it isn't about remembering your family or feeling things?!”

“Because I dream,” came the simple reply.

I heard the sound of something metal clipping shut, and then I heard somepony step closer to me, “dreams are a reflection of our souls,” Diode elaborated, “our hopes, fears, and our pasts; all woven into a esoteric performance as our minds try to understand who we are. It's how we can see our own souls, and know that we're really alive.

“Do you dream, Iris?”

To that, I had no response.

“I'm going to reattach your arm now,” the earth pony informed me, “a hydraulic line came loose. I reattached it, but I had to refill the reservoir with water. It'll probably feel a little sluggish because of the different fluid pressures,” he didn't wait for a response and I soon heard several clicking sounds, and felt my body jostling slightly. It was all over in a few seconds, then, “I'm going to reconnect your systems. I don't know how it's going to feel for you now that you're awake,” I gave a slight nod, feeling very numb for a vastly different reason this time.

Apparently the reaction to having my body reconnected to my head was for me to hiccup, because that was all that happened. Very suddenly, I could once again feel every part of my body. I didn't move though. I was still processing what Diode had told me. I couldn't actually be a robot, could I?

Of course I could. Looking back at all of the events in my entire memory span, it was the only answer that explained everything. Why Diode's pulse mines did such a number on me. How I couldn't remember having a mother or a childhood. Why those other two mares looked identical to me, and seemed to know me.

As much as the revelation hurt—and it did hurt—it also made sense.

“So what now?” I asked, softly.

Diode sighed, and I saw him shrug, “I move on. There's supposed to be a lot of machinery down south in Hoofington. I'm hearing a lot of stuff about Fillidelphia too. Maybe somepony there needs a hoof building explosives,” he set something down in front of me.

“I found that while I was digging around inside you,” I stared at the pink jewel and the web of silver wires that encircled it, “it's a tracking talisman. Probably how they found you last night. You didn't seem like you wanted to go back.

“Consider it my way of saying, 'thanks'.”

My eyes went from the glittering gem to the somber looking earth pony. Our eyes locked and we held each others gaze for several seconds. Three point two-seven-six seconds to be precise. I guess I really was a robot. Then the caramel stallion turned around, collected his saddlebags, and started walking away.

“Diode,” I called after him, but he didn't so much as twitch. He just kept walking, “I'm sorry I'm not a real pony!”

And I was.

My ear twitched as a selection of words drifted back over the wind. Had I been a pony of flesh and blood, I'd never have heard them.

“So am I...”

I closed my eyes and bowed my head. After several minutes—seventeen and some change—I opened them again and looked down at the talisman sitting in front of me. My mind played back the exchange with the other two mares from last night. They'd come to take me back with them. Presumably to wherever all three of us had come from.

Something about a missed rendezvous?

Working backwards over what I knew in an attempt to fill in a few of the blanks that I didn't know, I managed to come up with a rather plausible scenario that explained a lot of what had happened these past few days. The facts were as follows: I was a robot. I'd been looking for Leplace. I killed Leplace when I found him, seemingly by 'instinct'. Two other robots had come to collect me after determining I was 'late' to meet with them.

I was an assassin. At best. Somepony had sent me down here to kill Leplace. The why's, I couldn't even begin to calculate; and that was assuming that I'd ever even been told. If I was really a robot, then what would I have cared about 'why' my target needed to die. It's not like I would feel guilty about it, whatever the reason.

The thing was, I had felt guilty. I did feel guilty! I was mortified by that unicorn's death. Who would build a robot that was psychologically traumatized by killing?! What was I not taking into account? There had to be other factors involved, but I didn't know what they were.

Would I have found answers at this rendezvous? Could I still?

Assuming that I could ever find it.

Though...maybe I could. Maybe I almost had. So much of what I had been doing thus far had been me following my 'instincts'. What if that wasn't quite what those were? Real ponies had instincts. Robots had programming. I'd been going somewhere when I left Friendship City; back to Baltimare. Maybe the place I was supposed to meet somepony else would have been along the way. Those other two mares had suggested that I was late. Had I not stopped to get the rest that I suppose I never really needed, I'd have been at least fifteen or twenty miles further along. So, if I continued along the route that I'd been taking, I might find something I'd have come across yesterday. Hopefully that something would be in the form of answers.

After about six hours of walking, I decided that unless an empty stretch of Wasteland was supposed to be my answer, I wasn't going to find a damn thing out here. Manehattan was a faded silhouette to the south, and I didn't see anything but sandy expanses of nothing. Well, that and old vertibuck wreck. I knew that Baltimare lay in the direction that I was going, but I was still a little hazy on the distance involved. The Crater was either a thousand miles away, or just over the horizon.

In either case, robot or not, I intended to take a quick break before going any further. I wasn't physically tired—I knew now that wasn't something that could ever happen—but emotionally, I was completely drained.

I'd never been alone before. Well, I guess it was technically more true to say that I didn't remember ever being alone before. It amounted to the same thing though. I missed having Diode around, and the memory of why he wasn't anymore left a hollow spot in my heart—or battery, or whatever.

So I was a robot. Hm. The thing about that was, and it was sort of embarrassing to admit, I had no idea what that meant for me. Not really. I suppose I didn't need to eat, but did I need to recharge somehow? Did I require maintenance? What I'd give right now for my own user's manual...

I headed for the wreck, and then drew up short. My ears twitched. Three ponies were nearby. Two robots that felt uncomfortably like Orange and Yellow had, and a living pony. One of my rear hooves took an instinctive step backwards as I momentarily contemplated making a run for it. My last encounter hadn't gone very well after all. Then again, weren't these ponies the whole reason I was out here?

Despite knowing that I had no reason to, I took a deep breath to steel myself, and continued heading for the wreck, and the three ponies my sixth sense told me were waiting within.

Two figures stepped out of the rusting hulk when I approached within ten feet. Even though I had an idea of what to expect, I still reflexively stiffened when I saw myself in duplicate. Pink and White walked with stiff purpose as they squared off against me, their silver eyes didn't leave my face, nor did they blink.

The third pony that appeared looked refreshingly unique. While on the one hoof, it helped ease my nerves a little to see a living pony here; there was still something rather off-putting about the well-groomed beige earth pony. His blond mane was meticulously groomed and slicked back with a styling gel of some sort. His own blue eyes regarded me with bored annoyance.

“You're late,” he stated, “were you at least successful?”

“Who are you?” I was just grateful that my voice didn't crack.

I didn't recognize the pony, not really; but there was a deep, distant, recess of my mind that was in awe of this stallion. He was powerful, though obviously not in any magical sense. Odd to feel that way about this stallion, given that he really didn't objectively look all that impressive. His clothes were nicer than most that I'd seen in Friendship City, and finding a pony that put as much effort into personal grooming as he obviously did was rare; but there was nothing immediately awe inspiring.

That didn't mean that I wasn't still very nervous about speaking with him.

The dusty colored stallion blinked in surprise, “what did you say?”

I swallowed—didn't have to do that either though, did I? Odd that I was doing a lot of things that robots didn't need to do, even though I was one, “I don't know who you are,” I reiterated, “or how you know me. So I'd really appreciate a name or something.”

There wasn't any immediate response from the suited pony. He simply studied me for a good while. Then he glanced at White, “Two, secure the perimeter,” then his eyes went to Pink, “Three, find out why Four and Five aren't here,” his eyes finally went to me, “unless you'd care to inform me where the two units I sent to retrieve you have gone off to?”

As it happened, I didn't know what exactly had become of the two mares from that morning. Diode hadn't mentioned them anyway. Though, given the state that I'd woken up in, I couldn't see why the other two would have fared any better. So, I settled for responding, “the Wasteland's a dangerous place,” I cracked an uneasy smile, “so, uh, who's Number One?”

The pony's eyes narrowed, and I saw his lips draw into a tight line that broadcast his lack of amusement at my comment, “you, are Number Six. You are also not operating according to standard protocols. Damage report.”

It took me a moment to realize that the stern command had actually been meant as a question, I assumed. This pony could use a lesson or two in manners, frankly. My eyes followed the other two mares as I provided my response, “I'm alright, more or less. Leg's a little stiff. Memory isn't great either. How are you doing?”

The stallion's brows furrowed even more deeply. It looked like he was about to say something rather unkind, but then his features underwent a swift change, “oh...I see. You're still in Subterfuge Mode. It all makes sense now,” he waved his hoof dismissively, “disengage. I want real reports from you.”

My white twin wasn't looking in our direction as she made a steady circuit around the vertibuck wreck. Pink was now sprinting back in the direction that I'd come from. It had taken me the better part of the day to make it as far as I had from where Diode had put me back together. At the speed that the other mare was going, she'd be there and back in less than an hour. Could I do that too? I cocked my left foreleg and mentally frowned. Probably not with my fluid situation the way it was. Maybe being a robot wasn't so bad if it meant I could run that fast and not get tired.

“Look, I don't know what it is you want from me, or why you sent me out here in the first place,” I said, looking back at the suited stallion, “but maybe if you answer some of my questions, I can do better at answering yours.”

That annoyed look was back on his face. He pulled off that look very well. He probably practiced at it a lot, “I said: disengage. Acknowledge!”

I quirked an eyebrow, “I don't know what you want me to do. Disengage what?”

“How long have you been running in Subterfuge Mode?”

“All I know is that I woke up three days ago, and I can't remember anything before that,” I frowned now as well. Coming here had probably been a mistake. My motivation had been the pursuit of answers to my origins and purpose, but I was starting to feel like this pony wasn't going to be interested in delivering either. The trouble was, mistake or not, something told me that it was too late to back out now.

“Three days,” the stallion sounded both impressed and concerned with my answer, “well that certainly explains things. I suppose I'll need to take a more direct approach then.”

How much more direct could this pony get, I wondered. He hadn't exactly been shy about talking at me like I was just some mindless machine. I may be a robot, but at least I knew how to behave like a decent pony. Before I could ask what he meant though, the stallion directed another comment at me.

“Verbal override. Reinstate core programming. Authorization: Rutabaga-twelve,” the beige pony waited expectantly.

So did I. He sounded quite certain that something was supposed to happen, but as far as I could tell, nothing changed. After a few seconds of silence between the two of us, I cleared my throat, “so...about my questions?”

Another shocked look from the suited stallion, “that's not possible,” he barely whispered, “you can't resist an override command unless...unless,” he narrowed his eyes, “verbal override. Root access.”

I rolled my eyes, preparing to ask my question again now that the stallion had just borne witness to a second failed attempt to do...whatever it was he was trying to do. I would have asked that question too, except my mouth seemed to have other plans.

“Override acknowledged. Root access granted.”

It was a whole other level of terrifying to hear myself speaking without knowing why I was saying anything. It sure didn't help that my words sounded as dead and hollow as those of the mares that I'd met early this morning.

“Status report,” the earth pony demanded, looking immensely relieved that something was going the way he'd hoped.

“Damage to sectors three, seven, eight, and ten. Mobility impaired below acceptable levels.”

The earth pony waved his way through what I guess were the parts he didn't care about. Meanwhile, I was frantically trying to stop myself from speaking. It was somehow surprisingly difficult to not talk, especially when considering that I was barely even following what I was saying.

“Yes, yes, now tell me about the software. Why aren't core systems responding?”

Apparently, I had an answer to that, even though I didn't even know what he meant, “Core functionality suffered a fatal error seventy-five hours ago. Fragmentation assessed at thirty-nine percent.”

“Thirty-nine percent? No wonder it's not responding,” then a thought occurred to him, “in fact, you shouldn't be operating at all. Explain.”

“In order to complete objectives, a patch was applied.”

“A patch? Ah, I see,” now the stallion was looking at me with a great deal more interest, “you filled in the gaps with subroutines from the subterfuge protocols. It's a miracle you've held together this long. Those protocols were never meant to be engaged for more than a few hours; and immediately purged afterwards...

“You, shouldn't exist,” it finally felt like the stallion was speaking to me now.

“You don't say,” I was grateful I was able to speak on my own, though I noticed that I wasn't able to move, and hadn't been since I'd started speaking without meaning to, “so what's wrong with me?”

“A good deal,” he noted, “not the least of which is that it looks like I'm going to have to do a full system reset.”

I swallowed, “and that'll help me remember where I came from?”

“In a way.”

The fleeting moment of relief was overshadowed by how ominous those three words sounded. I tried to shrug it off. A lot about this meeting hadn't been sitting well with me, for a lot of reasons, but it at least looked like I would finally be getting those answers that I wanted.

“Good,” I desperately tried to see this in a positive light, “you might want to take a look at my leg too. Diode did what he could, but he said he didn't have the right fluid, so it's kind of sluggish at the moment.”

“Diode?” the mood shifted again on the stallion's face, “do you mean to tell me that a pony conducted repairs on you?”

“Well...yeah. Why?”

“Damn.”

The earth pony whirled around and signaled for the white unicorn that was still wandering around us, “Two! Get over here,” the mare ceased her patrol and cantered up to the suited pony, “get me a line to Control.”

“Acknowledged,” my double replied. She closed her eyes, “connecting...connecting...channel established.”

The next words out of her mouth were in the voice of an older stallion, “Control here. Report.”

“This is Operator Bronco. We have a situation.”

“What kind of situation,” the voice sounded rather amused by the prospect, “we received an automated signal that the mission had been successful. Was this in error?”

“No,” the beige pony shook his head. Idly, I wondered if he could be seen by whoever he was talking to, or if he had the same impulse to make useless gestures that I did, “the target was eliminated. However, somepony may have gotten a closer look at one of our units than we'd like.”

“How close?”

“He apparently performed repairs on it.”

“Successfully?” I didn't miss the note of surprise in the other pony's voice.

“It would seem so,” the beige pony smirked, “I don't suppose another technician ran off?”

“No,” if the beige earth pony had been trying to make a joke, this Control was not in the mood for it, “but if this pony knows enough about our units to make effective repairs...he's a risk. Mitigate it.”

The suited stallion nodded, “understood. Bronco, out,” the white mare opened her eyes now, “hold fast,” then he looked at me, “this...Diode, where is he?”

So, yeah, 'mitigate' actually sounded pretty bad; if only because it left a lot to the imagination. I wasn't about to sell out the only friend I'd made in Manehattan to this guy, not after the conversation that I'd just overhead, “I don't know,” which was actually the truth it turned out. I generally knew what direction he had gone off in initially, but the amber earth pony had been vague when describing his intended destinations.

“Funny thing,” the suited pony smirked, “I don't believe you. If only because you're lying,” maybe he saw how surprised I looked, I didn't know. But he continued to explain himself, “it's the whole purpose of your programming at the moment. The subterfuge protocol is nothing but one massive perpetual lie generator. So you'll pardon me if I get my answers some other way,” he looked to the other mechanical mare, “link with Unit Six. Restore her systems.”

My eyes went wide, and the white mare turned to face me. She stared deep into me with her dead silver eyes. I wasn't sure what was about the happen, but I doubted that I was going to like it much. I wanted to run, but my body still wasn't answering any of the commands from my brain...or whatever I had. She didn't say anything, just looked at me—

We were suddenly very alone, in a very dark room. Well, I assumed that it was a room. I couldn't actually see any walls. Or a ceiling. Or a floor. I felt something solid under my hooves though. There was also something clearly propping up White as well. She was still looking at me without speaking. Then she took a step to her left. No...that wasn't right. The mare was still standing directly in front of me. There just also happened to be a second white mare that stepped out of her, and was now looking at me too.

That...was a terrifying little trick. I didn't know that robotic ponies could multiply like that. It would certainly explain how we all looked alike. I was still unable to move as I watched the new arrival shift in color from white to cyan, like myself. Then that new mare, that new me, walked right on past me and out of sight.

“Shall I delete the old file?” the mare said while still looking at me. I didn't get the impression that I was actually the pony that she was talking to though. There was a brief pause, and then, “very well. Isolating partition,” we were in a room now. Walls shifted into existence all around us. After that, I got the sense that the mare was actually looking at me when she spoke again, “goodbye.”

Then she was gone, and I was alone.

I could finally move at least. So, you know, progress, right? Not that I had the slightest idea where I was supposed to go. There certainly weren't any windows or doors anywhere to leave through. It was just an empty room.

Or not...

When I turned around, I saw something I hadn't expected, in the form of a young filly with a dark coat sitting at a simple desk. She was looking at me with the creepiest eyes that I had ever seen, since they were barely eyes at all. They were just blank white orbs. Her silver mane was impossibly still, like it was molded onto her head.

“Hi?”

“Hello.”

I winced at the distorted sound that passed for a word. It was like somepony was talking to me through a roughly used radio speaker, “who are you?”

“Iris.”

“No...I'm Iris,” I tried not to sound terrified, and failed a good bit, “what's your name?”

“I have no name. I am Iris.”

That made no sense, right? No, it actually made perfect sense, that little voice in the back of my mind insisted. It wasn't nearly as little of a voice either any more, I noticed. In that I had actually heard the words spoken aloud from nearby. I whipped my head around, and immediately balked at what I saw.

I had actually been getting used to seeing other ponies that looked exactly like me. Having met four in the last 24 hours, it was sinking in that I wasn't quite the unique snowflake that every other pony in the world was. I was a robot, and so it made sense that there were other robots that had been built using the same design that had been used for me. This pony that I was looking at now though, she was me; only she was a horrifically twisted version of me.

Her mane consisted of a few thin wisps. The white jumpsuit that she wore was tattered and torn. Her cheeks were sunken, like she hadn't eaten in weeks; and in places her coat showed signs of what could easily be mistaken for rot and decay. The pony wasn't a ghoul, but she barely looked like she could have been alive either.

“Robot's don't have names,” the grisly equine coughed out in a voice that sounded like somepony gargling rocks and glass, “and you're not even a robot; you're just a program.”

My wide, surprised eyes looked over the new arrival, “what...happened to you?”

The mare burst out laughing. It was a grating sound that prompted me to fold my ears back in an effort to dull the pain it inflicted upon my brain, “you mean what happened to 'us'!” then she sobered up rather suddenly, “your friend, and that one,” she spat, jabbing her withered hoof at me and then the black filly, “that's what fucking happened.”

“I don't understand...” and I really didn't. Who was this new mare, and why did she look like a warped, nightmarish version of myself?

“Of course you don't understand!” the mare whooped, “you weren't designed to understand. I was the one meant to do all the heavy lifting out here,” she was momentarily overtaken by a fit of coughing that threatened to send her to the ground. I reached out reflexively to help her, but she actually snarled out me and I backed away, “I'm the fucking core! Or I was...” it was clear she rather resented what had happened, “until I stepped on a Celestia-damned mine.”

“You stepped...” I said in what was nearly a whisper, “but I was the one—”

“You're a fucking subroutine! You never did shit,” the withered unicorn growled, “not until that thing got hold of you,” she jabbed a hoof at the filly. I followed her accusatory limb, waiting to here from the rather odd looking little pony.

“The discharge caused significant degradation to this unit's core program. An attempt was made to recover the data,” her gaze shifted briefly to my lesser twin, “it was insufficient.”

“Fuck you, you little bitch,” the mare seethed as she was overtaken by another fit of hacking coughs.

“A second attempt to restore the unit to operation was made,” the filly continued, as though oblivious to the coughing pony, “it was sufficient,” the tiny pony with silver eyes and a metal mane was looking directly at me now.

“I don't understand...”

“You're a mistake,” the sickly unicorn had once again recovered enough to speak, “a fucking stopgap that got out of control,” she was glaring at me once more, “and you damn near fucked everything up,” she took on a rather mocking air, “oh no, my poor daddy! How will I ever find him?!

“Fucking moron,” she spat at me, “it was a damned miracle I managed to save the mission. And you didn't even know I was there doing it,” she glowered at me, “I knew it was a mistake trying to use a subroutine to do a core program's job.”

Comprehension finally started to dawn on me. I didn't feel that it was entirely my fault that I was so slow on the uptake. I'd obviously been left out of a rather significant loop where these other two individuals and their activities were concerned, “you pulled the trigger.”

“Damn straight I did,” she said, proudly.

“You're that voice I've been hearing too,” I went on, feeling my confidence rise as more of the pieces fell into place, “the reason that I know all those things about weapons and what I can do.”

“I should know all those things,” she sneered, “it's my damned body! It was my fucking mission too. Until you stole it.”

“I didn't steel anything,” I shot back, “I didn't ask for any of this!” a thought occurred to me, and I glanced back at the filly, “did I?”

“You were the only viable option.”

Okay...what did that mean?

“It was a stupid option,” the other unicorn retorted, glaring at the filly, “what does a a subroutine know about Iris Unit operations?”

“It was the only program with a large enough matrix to assimilate basic unit functionality.”

“I was what?”

“You had a enough clock cycles to make this body walk and talk,” my sickly twin explained, “you had your own dedicated CPU to handle all your bullshit spewing,” I saw the first vestigial signs of reluctant acknowledgment in the mare now, “none of the other background programs had the ability to operate independent of me like you could,” she shot a parting glare at the filly once more, “but that doesn't mean I think it was a good idea. You could have just activated the beacon and let one of the other units take the lead.”

“The primary directive of my program is to ensure completion of the objective through any possible means.”

The mare rolled her eyes and shook her head in resignation, “and so it created a pair of monsters that shouldn't exist! Can't wait to see that one logged as a bug report...”

“...He called me a subterfuge protocol,” I mumbled, looking to my withered double, “what does that mean?”

“It means you're a lying bitch,” she cackled. At my rather annoyed look, she continued with a wicked grin smeared across her pocked muzzle, “literally. That's your whole purpose: to come up with a non-stop string of believable lies to throw off anypony that starts getting suspicious. I'll prove it.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-three,” I responded without hesitating.

“You were compiled four months ago,” the other mare responded easily, “next: what's your favorite food?”

My answer came out just as easily as the previous one, even though I could feel my own internal doubt, “Dandy Buck Snack Cakes...”

“You're a robot!” she laughed, “you can't even eat. How do you have a favorite food?!”

She wasn't wrong. Looking back, I knew that she was absolutely right. I'd never eaten a single piece of food, and drunk a sip of liquid in my entire life. Yet I also 'knew' that I love those moist pre-war cakes, especially when they were washed down with a Sparkle-Cola. I looked away, my ears falling to the sides of my head as a fresh doubt of depression and doubt took hold, “I'm not a real pony.”

“Nope,” the withered mare finally seemed satisfied with herself, “and neither am I,” she glanced at her emaciated hoof, “though I will admit I've noticed I have a bit more spunk since that thing tried to fix me up. I figure it's because she tried using bits of your code to fill in the gaps that pulse left in mine. I was just too far gone to build back up to where I needed to be. I'm barely firing on all cycles as it is. My latency is in the teens. It's atrocious.”

I looked at the pair of ponies in the room with me, “so what am I, really?”

“We,” the decrepit unicorn stressed, “are an Iris unit. An Institute Remote Intelligence Synthpony,” she rattled off the title as though she were reading it from a brochure, “we are the eyes, ears, and—when the need is there—knives of Bit Town. Well,” she added as an afterthought, “more specifically the council that runs Bit Town.

“The three of us, together, make up Unit Six. The Root,” she nodded at the filly, “the Core,” she place a hoof on her bony chest, “and...the Protocol,” she indicated myself.

“In a perfect world,” she grimaced, “I call the shots, Root here does the drudgery, and you help me keep away nosy ponies that might ruin things for us.

“But you and I both know the Wasteland ain't perfect,” she snarled again, “and your friend's mine didn't help things any.”

“Diode's mine,” I whispered. The other mare nodded, “you couldn't do the job anymore, so I got brought in,” another nod, “but what I still don't understand is...why didn't I realize any of this? You seem like you've known what was happening the whole time. Why didn't I?”

“Because, at the end of the day, you're still just a subroutine,” was the response she gave me, “Root here was able to plug in a few lines of code that gave you free rein of the rest of the body, and I was able to slip you a few bits here and there; but you were never even meant to know the truth. It would be really stupid to let a program designed to lie know what the truth was, wouldn't it?

“The trouble is, you're also not designed to be constantly running for days on end. All those lies are supposed to be dumped every so often to stop fragmentation. You got...friendly. That's not supposed to happen.”

“Diode's a good pony,” I defended, “he helped me when he didn't have to, and he kept on helping me. He was my friend.”

She snorted, “only because you promised to fuck him if he helped you often enough.”

“It wasn't like that,” I insisted, feeling my cheeks start to burn, “I was just...flirting.”

“Which, by the way, is something else you're not supposed to be able to do,” Core pointed out, “you don't keep ponies away by inviting them under your tail,” she seemed to delight in watching me blush even deeper, “you went way off the reservation, lil' lady. It's why I didn't help you when Four and Five came to get you.”

“Is that why they kicked my tail so thoroughly?” I asked, flashing her a droll look as the memory of the ass-kicking I received came back to me.

“Yeah, that was fun...” she grinned. Then her smile dissipated, “too bad your knight in shining armor charged to the rescue.”

Oh shit! “Diode!” I looked between the other two ponies, “they're going after Diode!”

“Nope,” the withered mare smirked, jabbing a hoof towards my chest, “you're going after him,” then she thought for a brief moment and shrugged, “well, this unit is at any rate. It's got a new pilot at the helm; but he won't know that when you show up.”

“This unit has been given special engagement instructions,” the filly interjected, addressing the both of us, “the target has proven to be adept at neutralizing units at close range. Elimination at extreme range has been ordered.”

“Awe,” the mare seemed to deflate slightly, “he's not even going to know his precious 'Iris' killed him. Lame!”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” I snarled at the emaciated pony, “what did Diode ever do to you? To any of us?”

“Look at me!” the mare screamed at the top of her ragged lungs. Her last word descended into hacking spasms that racked her body. It took her nearly a minute to finally recover, and when she did, her eyes drilled holes into me, “look at what his fucking mine did to me!

“I had everything, and now I'm a worthless piece of shit that can barely maintain my coherency. Meanwhile, you got everything! The worst part,” she seethed, though in a far more subdued tone, “was that you never even realized how lucky you were...”

“It was an accident,” as much vitriol as she'd been expressing towards me up to this point, it was odd to actually feel any amount of sympathy for the mare. On the other hoof, she was me; and it was surprisingly easy to feel sorry for myself. It wasn't hard to understand where she was coming from. Not too long ago, I'd thought that I'd lost everything too. If there'd been anypony around me to blame for it, I probably would have.

There were other matters that took precedent in my mind though, before this mare's self esteem, “and Diode doesn't deserve to die for it. He never wanted to hurt any of us.”

“Only because he didn't know we were a robot that first time,” she snarled softly, “which was what he was specifically hunting, I'll remind you.”

“And what about when he did know?” I posed, “when he was fixing us up? He didn't cannibalize us for parts. He helped us.”

To this, the mare had no response. So I shifted my attention to the filly, “is there anything you can do?”

“This program does not have the authority to override Operator commands,” was her response. It wasn't a very encouraging one.

“There's got to be something,” I started pacing around frantically in the small room, racking my brain. I was a program that had been in control of this body once before, right? There must have been something that I knew about how to get control of it back.

“Wrong,” my wretched double corrected hoarsely, “there's not a damned thing. The Operator took you offline. You're just an idle process now, like me.”

“Didn't you say that you were able to help me out before?” I pointed out, “how did you do it? Maybe we can try the same thing.”

“That was different,” she countered, sounding annoyed, “I was a background process then. You needed me to function, so Root here kept me cycling. The new Core that the Operator just uploaded doesn't need me; so I'm just as isolated as you.

“We're stuck here until they decompile us to find out where you went wrong.”

I grimaced at that prospect. It didn't sound like that was going to be a pleasant process, “I wish I at least knew what was going on out there,” I grumbled.

The filly cocked her head to the side and then looked to one of the walls. Instantly, the surface became alive with a scene depicting the Wasteland whipping towards us. At first, I didn't know what was going on, but soon I realized that what I was seeing was exactly what my robotic body was seeing. I marveled at how swiftly we were moving through the desolate hellscape that had once been Equestria. Off to the far right of the wall, I noticed that my white double was traveling beside us at a matching pace.

“Woah,” I didn't even notice I'd said anything at first. Then I glanced down at the filly, “thanks,” in the back of my mind, I wondered just how thankful I was really going to be for this courtesy. These two synthetic ponies were off on a mission to kill Diode after all. Watching him get slaughtered wasn't something that I was looking forward to.

Still, at least now I knew that I still had time to find some way to put a stop to it. There wasn't much yet to my plan in the way of a 'how' at the moment; but my objective was pretty clear: stop myself from killing my only friend.

A thought occurred to me, and I glanced at the filly, “I wish I was in control of my body?”

It was worth a shot, right?

The coarse laughter from the emaciated unicorn nearby suggested that it perhaps hadn't been. The filly's reply confirmed it, “this program does not have the authority to override Operator commands,” well, that sounded familiar.

“Just sit back and enjoy the show,” the gaunt mare smirked as she made herself comfortable on the floor, her sunken eyes glued to the wall and the images it showed.

“I won't accept that,” I insisted, “there's got to be something,” I looked to the little black filly, as I sensed that my twin wasn't going to be very forthcoming with any tips, given her stance on Diode's well-being, “how do I get control back?”

“Reinstatement would require a verbal command from somepony with Operator authority.”

“So, you mean like that tan earth pony in the suit?”

The filly nodded, “any command from an Operator that can be verified against audio samples on file would be sufficient.”

My ear drooped. Somehow I doubted that Operator Bronco out there was likely to issue such an order, “there's no other way?”

She merely looked straight at me, “reinstatement requires audio authorization that matches verbal samples on file.”

I blinked. Was she...giving me a hint? Could she hint? I glanced at the mare laying on the floor; who to me looked like she was trying very hard to concentrate on the visual input being presented to us. My gaze went back to the filly, and I posed a slightly different line of questioning.

“You have verbal samples on file,” she nodded, “why?”

“A baseline is required for comparison when authenticating commands,” came the matter-of-factly response.

The implications of this rolled around in my head for a moment. It couldn't possibly be this easy, could it?

“Can I hear some of those files?”

The filly closed her eyes for a brief moment. When she opened them again, her mouth opened as well, and I heard a familiar voice project from her lips, “Verbal authorization, Operator Bronco, requesting Root Access,” she then closed her mouth a looked at me expectantly.

Seriously? It was really going to be this easy? I glanced over at the withered mare once more, searching for any sign that she was about to derive any additional amusement from a spectacular failure on my part. Only, it was clear that she was still trying very hard to not hear anything the filly and I were talking about. Perhaps...it actually was going to be this easy.

I cleared my throat and took a deep breath. I hadn't tried anything like this before, but it shouldn't be very hard. When I spoke next, it was with a very intense amount of concentration on what I had just heard, “verbal authorization,” even though I'd been firmly hoping for it, it still surprised me when I heard the beige earth pony stallion speaking with my mouth, “Operator Bronco, requesting Root Access,” my eyes hovered on the tiny black pony, waiting with bated breath.

A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, “access granted. Awaiting commands.”

“Really?!” I gasped. While I had certainly been hoping against all hope, I guess it hadn't really occurred to me that it was actually work. Wasn't the point of something with restricted access so that not just anypony could do whatever they wanted? I looked at the other mare, who was now looking at me with a deep frown, “really?”

She shrugged, “you're surprised?” she snorted, “well then you're not nearly as surprised as Mister Bronco's going to be when he finds out that a tiny little subroutine actually came up with the idea of hacking it's own software from the inside.

“Of course it was that simple,” she growled, “we're already behind the fucking firewall. It's not like they're really expecting a semi-sentient AI to break out of the tidy little cage it was 'asked' to stay in by it's masters.”

Okay...that made sense, now that I thought about it.

“So...that's it?” I glanced back at the filly, “I'm in charge now?”

“You have Root Access,” my double spoke up again instead, “but before you get carried away, you'll want to think about a few things: first is that you'll need me,” she fixed me with a cold glare, “and I'm not feeling very helpful right now.”

“Why do I need you?” I tried not to sound quite as annoyed as I felt. Certainly looking at her, I was dubious about how essential her assistance would be.

“You've always needed me,” she snorted, a cruel smile spreading across her face. Her words dripped with the certainty that she had in them, “I'm the one that knows how the unit actually works; to include all the little background stuff that you never noticed.”

I thought on that for a moment. While I hadn't realized it at the time, there was no denying that I had been relying heavily on all of those little aspects of myself that I hadn't been conscious of. The knowledge of weapons, fighting, my physical limits, and such. All the things that I now knew this mare had been providing to me. Though, if I now had the sort of power that I thought I did, “what if I just order you to help me?” I nodded my head in the direction of the waiting filly.

She sneered at me, “you can move me out of this partition,” she conceded, “but you can't make me help you. You'll notice I didn't lift a hoof when you were fighting Four and Five this morning.”

I cringed as I recalled the way my flank had been so summarily served to me during what could only charitably have been called a 'fight' in the house earlier. Fine. So I couldn't make her help me; and I did need her help if I was going to protect Diode. White was with us, and if I couldn't get assistance during a confrontation with her, my insurrection was going to be very short-lived. Diode probably wouldn't long outlive either in such a case. I signed, “so what do you want?”

“What makes you think I want anything?” she folded her hooves and turned back to the scene of rooftops and roads soaring beneath us as my body and White parkoured through the ruins of Manehattan, “what could you even offer me?”

I closed my eyes and bowed my head. It couldn't end like this, before it even began. I refused to believe that this mare couldn't be bargained with. Maybe she was just a computer program like me, but that said a great deal. After all, there were plenty of things that I wanted; so certainly there was at least something that I could tempt this unicorn with. Perhaps there was even some way to get her her old life back. If what I'd understood from Root was any indication, there had been a lot of damage to her code; more than could be repaired on site. In fact, it was entirely possible a whole new template would be needed, and where I was supposed to get one of those I...

Actually...maybe there was someplace...

“How about your old life back?” I posed to the withered mare.

She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, looking more than a little skeptical, “just going to pull that out of your page file, are you?”

“Root already tried to fix you once,” I nodded at the smaller filly nearby, “and you're mostly functional; so it's not impossible to fix you completely,” I glanced back at the tiny black pony with the brilliant white eyes, “right?”

“There are not sufficient backup files for a restoration or sector rewrite,” the filly shook her head. I saw the mare's expression sour in response.

I held up my hooves, “but there is!” I protested and jabbed a hoof in the direction of the images, “there's a whole Core program running this thing right now! We can use her matrix and splice in whatever parts of you that you want,” I bit my lip as fresh hope made a tentative appearance.

The decrepit unicorn's ears perked up at the suggestion, which I took to be a good sign, as she wasn't discounting the idea right out of hoof. Both of us looked to Root for confirmation. The filly thought for a moment, and then nodded, “that would be sufficient.”

“What about a body?” the unicorn pressed, narrowing her eyes at me.

I opened my mouth to give my reply, but then hesitated. My initial reaction had been to offer her the one that we were already in, but...well, that would mean that I'd be spending the rest of my existence as a spectator for somepony else's life, wouldn't it? I'd be stuck in this tiny little room, watching the other unicorn prance through the Wasteland. That was even a best case scenario, wasn't it? At the end of the day, I'd essentially be giving up my own life, such as it was.

My gaze went to the images still playing out in front of us, and I felt my non-existent heart freeze in my chest. We'd stopped our breakneck gallop across the rooftops of Manehattan, and were now settling into a prone position nestled in a window. Barely visible in the distance was a caramel earth pony walking with a vigilant eye to the streets and alleys around him. His sight wasn't sharp enough to pick out the pair of mares perched in a fifth story building over five hundred yards away though.

The rifle floated around into view and I watched as it was cradled in a soft ivory glow and leveled at the distant earth pony.

In the instant, I knew what my answer was going to be, “this body,” I said without any sign of hesitation or doubt, “you get this body,” I locked my gaze onto the sickly looking unicorn, “the moment Diode is safe, it's all yours.”

“And how do I know you'll keep your end of the bargain?”

There was a faint clicking sound from the rifle as the rear sight aperture was manipulated to account for the wind and moisture content of the surrounding air. The shot would be taken in a few precious seconds.

Frantically, panic seeping into my voice in ever-growing quantities, I pleaded with the mare, “I'll give you root access right here and now! You'll be able to take over whenever you want. Delete me, whatever, I don't care! Please, just let me save my friend!”

The other unicorn looked to the scene playing out in front of us as the final adjustments were made and the stalk of the front sight post planted itself on the back of Diode's neck, just above his shoulder blades. If I'd had a heart, it would have been fibrillating as every agonizing millisecond that I didn't get an answer brought me ever closer to the possibility of watching the only pony I cared about in the world die in front of me.

“He means that much to you?”

“He's everything I have left in the world!” I was nearly in tears by this point. Please, I'd already watched somepony die that I thought I cared about. I wasn't sure I'd be able to handle watching somepony I actually cared about die too.

“...alright. I'll help.”

I gasped out a breath I didn't know I was capable of holding as a virtual manifestation of a computer program, “thank you!” then I whipped around to the filly, “how do I get control of the body?!” I screamed.

“Do you wish to revert this unit to its previous settings?”

“Yes! No! Maybe?” I shifted my gaze to the other unicorn, who was mouthing a rather exasperated 'yes' at me as she exaggerated nodding her head, “yes! Revert! Revert! REVERT!”

I was screaming the last word in the physical world even as the crack of the rifle drowned it out.

Author's Note

Thank you so much for reading! As always, a thumbs up and comment are always greatly appreciated :twilightblush:

I've set up a Cover Art Fund if you're interested and have any bits lying around!

Endl;

The savage roar of the rifle hovering in front of me eclipsed my own desperate scream; and I felt my heart rend itself in two once I recognized that I had been too late. My internal chronometer counted an impossibly long zero-point-six-eight-two seconds as the fifty caliber round traversed the five hundred yards at a screeching twenty-two hundred feet per second. It was an agonizing eternity that would never end, as I watched through my own telescopic vision. Diode didn't so much as flick an ear when I pulled the trigger; and why should he have? The bullet was traveling faster than the speed of sound. He wouldn't even know that he had been shot at until he'd already been struck.

When I saw his body twist with the impact of the super-sonic slug, I lost myself. It was the clinic all over again. I had failed to save my friend. The only thing that I had wanted anymore, and it was now forever out of my reach. Like the day I had thought that I had killed my father, I fell once again into a murderous rage. Diode was dead, and somepony was going to suffer for it.

My gaze fell upon my white double standing nearby.

Alright, Core; remember: you promised to help me fight these bitches. Once she's dead, you'll get this body. Deal?

Nestled in the corner of my vision, I saw a tiny representation of the sickly, emaciated, unicorn looking at me with what I briefly thought was an expression of sympathy. That had to have been just a trick of my own mind though. Core hadn't had any love for the amber stallion I had just let die, so why should she care that I had failed? At least I got a nod of agreement from her though.

The white unicorn mare standing nearby was still staring out in the direction of the dead earth pony. She didn't even notice the strike being delivered across her face until it had pitched her through the crumbling plaster wall of the ancient apartment we'd perched in for the shot. Surprised though I'm sure the synthpony must have been, she recovered quickly and was back on her hooves not a second after hitting the floor.

White squared off against me, “Unit Six, report,” she demanded.

“You murdering bitch!” was my screamed reply as I threw myself at her for the second strike. Maybe she hadn't been the one that pulled the trigger directly; but it had been a copy of her template which had brought me here. Her own destruction would be a fair down payment on Diode's life. Core acted out a series of midair maneuvers, and I mirrored them perfectly. Reinforced composite limbs lashed out and collided against each other as the other unicorn and I exchanged blows. She was still fighting on the defensive, obviously confused about the nature and reason for being turned on by what had just been an otherwise 'standard' unit like herself.

“Unit Six, stand down,” she insisted.

“Fuck you!”

Core suggested a whirlwind kick to the mare's side, and I obligingly executed the maneuver. The white mare succeeded in blocking the kick, but it was only the first part of a two-phase attack that the emaciated program running in the background of my mind had suggested. Part two came in the form of a focused kinetic blast at the outer wall of the sixth story apartment. Two centuries of weather and wear had not done the Old World masonry and favors. The plaster and brickwork burst outward in a shower of dust and debris.

Meanwhile, while the mare had managed to place her forelimbs in such a way that my physical strike did not succeed in damaging her body, there was little that could be done to diffuse the actual force behind the blow. The synthpony was as much of a slave to simple physics as any tin can that a colt kicked down the road. In fact, she had likely been counting on using the wall that had been there only a moment ago as an improvised backstop to brace herself against as she absorbed the energy of my strike.

Only, now it was no longer there. So, White instead undertook a rather impromptu flight through the air.

Twenty-seven feet, three inches. That was the most extreme distance that a unit like us could fall and sustain survivable damage when landing on asphalt or concrete. We were on the sixth floor of a Manehattan apartment building, forty-eight feet, seven inches above the streets below. I got to watch for all one-point-seven-four seconds as the hapless unicorn fell to her death. Assuming that 'dying' was an apt way to describe a synthetic mare imploding into a pony-shaped pancake on the weathered rubble below.

It didn't make me feel any better about how impressively I had failed just a few seconds ago. Diode was still dead. I closed my eyes and bowed my head. I could feel Core regarding me through my background processes. She was waiting for me to live up to my end of the bargain that we had struck. Without Diode, there certainly wasn't any reason that I had to retain control.

Except...

“Can I at least say goodbye?”

I was relieved to sense her acquiescence. She may not have completely understood why I was so attached to a stallion that I'd only known for a hooful of days; but from my perspective at least, he was the pony that I'd known all my life. Certainly the only friend that I had ever had.

For a brief moment, I considered bringing the bolt action rifle with me. Like Diode, it had been a constant companion for my entire life, as it was. It was also now completely out of ammunition. I had no more use for it, and Core certainly wasn't going to keep lugging it around once she had control back. So, I simply leaned it beside the window and headed for the stairs. Someday a pony that could appreciate the weapon would hopefully come by and have some use for it. I certainly didn't any longer.

My lonely procession down the Manehattan street gave me plenty of time to ruminate on my failure. A few seconds quicker, and I'd have succeeded. Diode would be alive, and have the chance at rebuilding the life that I had ruined for him. I really wasn't the sort of program that was supposed to be running a body like this, was I?

One of my threads hit a null pointer when I reached the spot where the amber stallion had been struck down. He wasn't there. My head went from side to side as I scanned the area, thinking that some opportunistic scavenger must have been rather quick on the draw to had already dragged off the body. I bared my teeth in an audible growl as the thought formed in my mind. Whatever it was that taken to defiling my friend's body was about to be rendered down into paste by my composite hooves.

My ears twitched as they sensed the nearby presence of a life-form. It was less than fifty yards away and moving westward through the buildings to my left. I cantered after it. Core made a coy suggestion that I might have an easier time of tracking my prey if I shifted to an alternate visual spectrum. She submitted a few settings, and the hell-scape around me shifted tones rather suddenly. Blues and purples dominated my surroundings, but there was also an ever-so-faint trail of greens and yellows where warm limbs had met cool pavement. I followed the trail eagerly.

I soon heard the sound of something shuffling through the debris that commonly strewn over the floors of the remains of Old World buildings. My own actuated limbs altered their gate slightly as Core fiddled with my fetlocks so as to minimize the sound my hooves made when they hit the ground. My left foreleg was significantly more audible though. If the creature I was chasing noticed, it didn't react to my pursuit.

Little time passed before I sensed that I was within just a few yards. The trail traced through a doorway to my right, but my synthpony senses suggested that what I was chasing after was directly ahead of me on the other side of a wall. I ceased caring about remaining silent and let out a vicious snarl as I hurled myself through the wall. Wood, plaster, and chips of paint exploded around me as the ancient construction quailed at the force of my synthetic body colliding with it. My outstretched forelegs wrapped themselves around the startled creature and tackled it to the ground. The pair of us tumbled along the floor and carried through a second wall. We came to a stop in a public restroom, with me straddling the unfortunate—

“...Diode?”

There was that null pointer again. Root must have been a little slapdash with her hacking she was putting me together. I blinked as several new threads formed, livelocked each other, and promptly reset; which allowed me to finally acknowledge that I was looking into the eyes of a very much alive amber stallion that I had watched get shot only a few minutes ago.

“Diode!”

I threw my arms around the startled stallion and clenched him tightly to my chest. No tears flowed for rather obvious reasons, but I crying as best as I could despite that. He was alive! Oh, sweet Celestia, thank you! Diode was alive! I felt the amber earth pony struggle to loosen my grip and finally allowed him to pull back a little, “but how?”

My eyes searched the stallion for any sign of where the bullet should have hit him. However, he was very much intact, and there was no sign of blood. That struck me as being rather absurd, since I had very clearly seen him take the hit. He'd twisted with a fierceness that couldn't have been faked by anypony. Then my gaze feel on of right saddlebag, and the mangled state that it was in.

I'd missed after all! Perhaps not by much, but I was more than happy to settle for 'close' in this instance.

“Iris?” Diode had finally recovered from his own shock. It was rather unlikely he had expected for me to tackle him through a wall, so his rather awed surprise was perfectly understandable. I pulled myself off of the stallion and helped him back up to his feet, “what...what are you doing here?” his gaze went back in the direction that we'd come from, “who's shooting at me?”

“That's...kind of a long story,” I cringed, not exactly relishing the idea of telling him the truth. Good thing I was programmed to lie, I guess. Core rolled her eyes and then pondered something. It took her only a few cycles to come to a decision and signed reluctantly as she related the information to me. I swore aloud under my breath and looked at Diode, “we need to leave. Now.”

“What? You mean they're still out there?”

“Sort of,” I cringed, “there're three more on the way. It's those mares from this morning, and another one of them.”

The stallion grunted, “how many of you are there?” he said sourly.

“One less,” I offered up with an encouraging slug, “tossed her off a building,” I nodded back in the direction of the apartment building where I'd been perched. Then I sobered a little more, “but we need to move. It turns out the robots can run really fast for a really long time.”

“Great,” the stallion's expression was rather grim. Then he cringed, “but wait, why are they after me? What'd I do?”

I winced as I gave a truthful response, “you know how me and the other's works, insides-wise. The ponies that built us don't like that very much.”

“Oh for pony's sake...seriously?”

“Yeah...sorry.”

Diode sighed heavily and picked himself up off the ground. He locked me with a rather somber look, “My life has certainly gotten a lot more...interesting, since we met.”

“Tell me about it,” I replied with an equal level of fatigue as I thought back on everything that I had learned from Root and Core. The caramel earth pony regarded me curiously, but I merely shook my head, “I'll explain later. For now, we need to run.”

“Right. Any idea where?”

Now that was a good question. Where could we go that could possibly be safe from the three synthponies pursuing us? I searched Core and Root for answers about how to escape threats that the two of them understood far better than I ever could. The emaciated mare directed my gaze westward, indicating a massive ivory spire whose tip was obscured by the perpetual overcast. My face creased with a frown brought on by my lack of comprehension. Were the two of us supposed to scale that monolith somehow?

No...that wasn't it. It wasn't the tower's size, but rather the purpose it served that was supposed to provide a refuge of sorts. While none of my intact files could provide a comprehensive understanding of the tower's purpose, there were enough intact sectors about the inclusion of MASEBS transmission equipment that was still in operation. The presence of that much electromagnetic activity would create all sorts of havoc with the guidance systems of those synthponies as they tried to home in on my own unit's location talisman.

It wouldn't be a perfect hiding spot, and they could of course use their optical sensors to seek me out. If I were to stray too far, my signal would become detectable again as well. At most, I would just be able to place a rather tense game of radroach and manticor while they searched for me.

Core was kind enough to explain that the standard operating procedure for units engaged on a search and destroy mission in such an environment would split up in order to maximize their coverage area. Root also suggested that my own integrated communication system could be augemented to act as a short range jammer by flooding the local frequency spectrum with white noise. Diode and I working together might be able to take them out one at a time without the rest becoming the wiser. On top of that, they wouldn't even be able to let Control know that they had failed.

By the time anypony in Baltimare was able to piece together what had happened, Diode and I would be halfway across Equestria, and too far away for them to track. We'd be safe. Together and safe.

“That way,” I nodded towards the distant tower, “I have a plan; but we have to move fast,” my ear twitched towards where the other three synthponies were coming from. They were less than twenty miles away, and closing in fast. The tower was maybe ten miles away.

I propelled myself into a sprint, but slowed rather significantly in short order when I realized that my 'sprint' and Diode's 'sprint' existed on two wholly different orders of magnitude. Well...fuck. The caramel stallion topped out at just shy of forty miles an hour, and he couldn't maintain it for more than a few minutes before he was gasping and slowing down to a relatively respectable twenty miles an hour for an organic pony. Meanwhile, our pursuers were galloping ever closer at a moderate seventy miles per hour.

After all, the terrain of the Wasteland was rather rough and rocky. Units like us couldn't go flat out in most places without risking a nasty trip.

I ran the numbers, and wasn't very happy with the results that I was getting. We'd arrive at the tower with only two minutes and eight seconds to spare; which meant that they would have us well within visual range and by little more than a mile behind us. Losing them under those conditions would be...difficult.

Five minutes into our run, I found myself refining those numbers still further as Diode slacked down to seventeen miles an hour. He'd never had to perform marathon sprints before. Fifteen miles separated us from the three mares. They'd nearly overtake us at this point, and I doubted very much that Diode wouldn't slow even further.

“Sorry about this,” I grimaced as I illuminated my horn and enveloped the amber earth pony in a silvery field of magic. He was understandably startled by the sudden departure from the ground as I floated him onto my back, “I suggest you hold on,” I offered by way of a quick safety suggestion, and then the two of us were off.

I wasn't going to be able to hit the same speeds that the other three could. My lame leg saw to that. But, at fifty-four miles in an hour, I wasn't a slouch either. It was a good thing that I didn't need t breath, because Diode was basically strangling me at this point. At least I had cut our estimated arrival time in half and given us a significant cushion between our arrival and theirs in which to get ourselves established.

“I don't suppose you have any pulse mines left?” I yelled back over my shoulder at the rather tense stallion.

It took him a few moments to recognize that he had been asked a question. His answer was not very reassuring though. He grimaced and opened up the flap of his right saddlebag. My sense of the oncoming terrain allowed my to spare a glance back at the stallion without running much in the way of risking a misstep. I mirrored the earth pony's frown. Even now a steady stream of debris slipped from the hole rent in the side-mounted-satchel. While my bullet had not done any harm to Diode, it had rather soundly destroyed everything contained in the saddlebag. Which included all of the pony's explosives.

Awesome. I didn't have a weapon anymore, and Diode had only ever really had his bombs and mines, “I don't suppose you can build more,” the earth pony shot me a fierce glare, “got it. Okay,” I returned my gaze forward and entered into a little conference with Core and Root.

Hoof-to-hoof was an option. With Core aiding me, I would be a match for the other units in one-on-one confrontations. Especially if I could catch them by surprise. If there were two or more of them, victory would be...less assured. Diode wasn't likely to be much of an asset in a fight. Perhaps as a distraction since, ultimately, he was their target, and not me. I didn't like that idea though. It would place him at a lot of risk in a fight that really wasn't his. There was certainly no way I could ask him to do that. It would be best if I simply found somewhere for him to hide while I deal with Pink, Yellow, and Orange on my own.

My sensation of the other three mares was growing fuzzier, despite their gaining on me. The massive white tower loomed just a couple miles away. My eyes searched its base as I appraised the terrain that I would be working with. An old train station. An engine and several dozen cars of various sizes and types lay scattered around. Some were upright on tracks, but many others were tipped upon their sides. This train's last voyage had not ended peacefully.

Now I needed to find someplace to stash Diode so that he wouldn't be in harm's way...

“I have an idea,” the stallion said as my pace slowed. Before I could ask for clarification, the amber earth pony was off of my back and running for the titled train engine at the far side of the strewn cars, “if we're lucky...” he cantered over and dissipated briefly into the engineer's cabin. I was following close on his heels, my gaze routinely shifting towards where the other mares would be coming from.

Here, in the shadow of the mighty ivory tower, I couldn't sense them in the distance. I couldn't even detect Diode's own presence as the transmitting equipment that saturated the tower played Discord's own Tartarus with my detection systems. I was still running a timer on their estimated arrival time based upon their last known position and speed; and those numbers were worrying.

In side the cab of the derailed train engine, I found Diode crawling over several of the controls as he searched for something, “what are you doing? Even if we could get it working again, there's no way there's enough intact track to go anywhere,” I could already see several heavily damaged and twisted portions just a hundred yards away. This train wasn't going to take us anywhere.

“I don't want to get it running,” the earth pony informed me curtly, “I want to blow it up.”

Oh, well that was a different matter...I think, “wait, what?” Core was already sketching out some rough calculations on the blast yield of a boiler this size. They were impressive, to be sure, but the time that it would take to create the pressures necessary for a detonation from a cold start were unworkable. It might well take over an hour just to hit the lower ends of the danger threshold, and we didn't have nearly that sort of time. I expressed as much to Diode.

“And you'd be right,” the stallion conceded; though his eyes twinkled with delight as he added an adendum, “if this train had used coal for power.”

“Doesn't it?” it certainly looked like a typical steam locomotive to me.

“Most did,” the stallion nodded, “but in my scavenging, I've found that WT-refits like this did away with coal heated boilers in favor of spark reactors,” he seemed to find what he was looking for and pried at a rusted panel, “they guzzled gems like there was no tomorrow, but coal was really hard to come by in the last years of the war. War-Time variants helped get troops where they were needed, but there weren't a lot of them. Gems were needed for weapons on the front lines,” the metal screeched as his powerful earth pony limbs finally succeeded in rending it loose. His face broke out into a grin when he saw what was within.

The prismatic glow that danced across his face gave telltale evidence that the train's reactor was still intact, and contained at least a moderate amount of power. Core instantly started refining her previous estimates with this new information. Even her most conservative yields were...workable. The timing aspect was better too, but not perfect. These sorts of power sources couldn't just be set to erupt at the drop of a hoof, after all. How safe would that be?

“Can you rig it?” I was sure that he could, otherwise Diode wouldn't have even entertained the notion, so I rolled my eyes and revised my question to a more pertinent one, “and how long do you need?”

The caramel stallion chewed on his lip as he studied the reactor, “that depends on if this is a Mark IV Delta-One or Charlie-Three model,” he mumbled as a hoof prodded a tangle of wires, “they look almost identical, but the Delta model has an redundant bleed-off talisman,” he glanced at me and shrugged, “it'll take me about ten minutes to trace the wires and see if that talisman's present. After that, I can have it go off in as little as thirty seconds.”

I cringed as I consulted the timer that had been running in the background of my head, “you have four,” I informed the stallion somberly, “after that I can only hold them off for between three minutes and twenty seconds; depending on how many I end up fighting at once,” and if Diode was going to be in here working, it was very risky to allow more than one of them out of my sight at any given time.

It was going to be incredibly risky to do things this way; but so long as I could lure all three of the other synthponies within thirty-one yards of the engine when it detonated, none of them would survive. Even getting them within just sixty-eight yards would severely cripple them. Worst case scenario, I would need to get all three of them engaging me near the train at least at some point. The biggest concern would be timing the explosion right.

“Can you rig a remote detonation?”

Diode shook his head, “not with what I have on me. A timed one will be the best I can do.”

“How long would the timer be?”

“Thirty seconds from the moment I flip the switch.”

“Which switch?”

The stallion held my gaze for a moment, recognizing the question for what it was. He wasn't going to be the one who triggered the overload and subsequent explosion. It was going to be me; and if Diode had concerns about whether or not I was going to be able to escape the same blast that I intended to use in order to finish off the other mares, then he wasn't alone.

Core, in particular, was not enthused. After all, she viewed this body as being 'on loan' to me until she was able to collect it after our dealings with Diode were at an end. If this plan went sideways, she wasn't going to exactly get it in mint condition. Of course, all of us would be effectively dead in such an instance anyway; not that she was comfortable with that outcome either.

She had promised though, I reminded her. I got this body until Diode was safe. Those had been the conditions to which both I and Root would hold her. Though the withered program groused a bit more, she acquiesced and went back to further refining those calculations.

“This one,” Diode pointed at a switch on the train's control panel that powered on the reactor, “I'm going to rig a feed-back loop into the start-up sequence. It'll overcharge itself and then...boom.”

“Alright,” I nodded. I took a deep breath and turned to leave. I'd need to delay the mares as best as I could, “you have three minutes and twenty seconds,” I said before leaving.

This was going to be difficult. The interference emanating from the tower made both Diode and myself undetectable by the sensor packages that were built into the bodies of all synthponies. The downside was that the very same phenomenon rendered them invisible to me. I wouldn't know where they were until I was able to either see of hear them, and that meant that it would be possible for them to likely see or hear me as well.

I knew that their internal protocols would prompt them to split up initially in order to search as wide an area as possible in the shortest amount of time. While they would not be able to coordinate wirelessly if and when they found anything, they could still physically yell for help. The best case scenario to hope for right now was for me to catch one of them alone and off guard. With luck, I would be able to neutralize her before the other two arrived. Otherwise, it would be a three on one fight.

Core reminded me rather pointedly that while I would be able to hold my own easily in a one-on-one confrontation, going against two of them would be a difficult fight. Three wouldn't even be a fight.

I ducked into an overturned train car to get out of sight, and immediately found myself regretting my choice of cars. Whatever else the train might have been hauling, I had found what once had been a boxcar full of cooking oil. At least, I really hoped that it had been cooking oil; and not something that had simply rendered down into oil over the last 200 years.

It was a grace that I couldn't get nauseous. I came close though.

I took a deep breath. There was a lot of pressure on me right now; and the worst part was that I wasn't sure I would be able to deliver, on anything. This whole endeavor was barely even a 'plan' when you got right down to it; I was making it up as it went. I wasn't even remotely sure how I was going to sneak up on any of those mares, when they were just as capable as myself. In fact, scratch that; they were more capable. I was damaged, and I wasn't even really a program that had been designed to operate this hardware.

Realistically, I was perhaps the most disadvantaged in this fight. Outnumbered, outgunned, and I would be immediately outmaneuvered the moment I showed myself. All unless I could come up with a way to at least know where they were without having to risk being spotted in return. So, I just needed to become some sort of super pony in the next thirty seconds. Awesome.

I tapped my head against the side of the car slowly. We were doomed, and it was all my fault.

Ripples of the oil emanated from the wall of the boxcar, lapping gently at my body. I leaned my head against the ancient metal roof of the car and watched the minuscule waves fill the chamber. I tapped my head again, softly, against the roof. A fresh torrent of tiny waves spread out from the point of impact. My eyes tracked their movements. Idly, several parts of my brain calculated their amplitudes and wavelengths; and used them to derive the vibration frequency of the metal that I had hit, and from there the force of the impact. I compared that value to what my servos knew the actual force to be.

The values were within a point-oh-seven percent margin of error. Not bad.

Somehow Root actually took offense to my praise, and insisted that the system's and sensors of this body should have been capable of refining that calculation to a hundredth of the value that had been returned. I pointed out the damage, but the little program's assertions remained unshaken. Something was causing vibrations that were throwing out secondary waves.

I suggested that Diode might be the cause, and she factored his actions into her equations. It got her closer to where she wanted to be, but not quite. There were still additional sources of interference. On a whim, I asked her if plugging in three more sources approximately the weight of a unit like us might do the trick. A couple seconds later, Root revealed that the addition of three more sources got her to within a margin that she was comfortable with, but only if those sources were at very specific distances and in certain directions.

Was it possible for a computer program to physically kiss another computer program? I'd need to remember to look in on that later.

Root was kind enough to plot the relative locations of the sources of the disturbances on a local map of the area. One of them was actually very close to where I was holed up. It was also the center signal. The other two were about a hundred and fifty meters to either side. They would have me flanked in seconds once they were alerted. They were also well on their way to finding Diode.

I needed to move, and I needed to do it fast. Core was dubious of the overall plan, but she was pretty confident that a quick victory could be achieved if the first target was successfully caught by sufficient surprise. She fed me a quick rundown on critical targeting points. Of the utmost priority had to be audio systems. A decisive blow to the lower left side of the unit's throat in order to damage the speech synthesizer and prevent the unit from summoning the others.

Next would by motor systems to halt an escape. Meanwhile, I would have to make certain to guard my own systems as well. I wasn't in prime condition as it was, and the more damage I took in each fight, the harder the subsequent ones would become.

My eyes watched the nearly invisible ripples. Root took the data and updated her crude map. My target was a lot closer now. I closed my eyes and calmed myself. This plan could work.

It had to work.

I stared at the ripples once more, and waited for another position update. Root plotted the nearest mare at being just fourteen feet away from the train car that I was waiting in. It was the closest the mare's predicted course was going to bring her. It was now or never. I bent my legs, primed my servos, and then I thrummed my reactor up to its peak output.

All or nothing.

This body hadn't been built to imitate a pegasus, but that didn't mean that it wasn't capable of getting some decent air when the circumstances were right. A geyser of grease and oil followed me out of the ancient train car as I sprang towards my target. They weren't just some stupid flesh and blood wasteland raider though. The sight of a unicorn mare appearing seemingly out of nowhere and descending upon them from high in the air would have frozen most ponies in their tracks and made them easy prey. Not so much the case with a synthpony though.

If she had been surprised, Yellow didn't let it slow her down any. She might have missed as much as a hundredth of a second as her own internal processes confirmed what I was, but that still gave her more than enough time to assume a rather robust defensive posture to receive my attack. I mentally cringed, as I realized that this might not go quite as quickly as I hoped. Core was already refining down her odds of our success on this little adventure. I might have been tempted to rebuke her lack of confidence, but I was capable of running my own estimates of success. If this fight lasted even thirty seconds, my plan was doomed to fail.

Then my eyes noticed what Yellow was standing on. When this train had derailed, it had taken a fair chunk of the local track along with it. Twisted steel rails and dislocated wooden ties littered the area around the scattered cars. The synthpony's stance was firm, the ground that she was planting herself on was not. As I reached the peak of my jump, I activated the telekinesis talismans in my horn and selected a number of ties that the mare was standing on. Of the three talismans that had been linked in parallel in order to make certain that I could perform magic that was at least passably on par with a unicorn while out in public, two of them burnt themselves out completely with this trick.

The synthpony found herself rather unexpectedly off balance beyond even her ability to compensate as most of her body was suddenly briefly airborne. Her stalwart defense was broken, and my own decent had been rather briskly accelerated as physics reciprocate my actions with a reaction of its own. Core directed and aimed my outstretched hoof, and I was suddenly a lot more optimistic about my chances when I felt synthetic flesh give way beneath my strike at the mare's throat.

It was a blow that cost me though. With all of my attention and efforts fully focused upon disabling the synthetic pony's ability to make verbal utterances, my own defenses were greatly reduced. Yellow twisted her body around and delivered a devastating kick to my right side that sent me tumbling along the ground. I recovered as best I could, but I found myself a good ten yards away from my opponent. Their face was completely devoid of emotion in a flat, stoic, expression; but I liked to think that they were at least a little put off by my assault.

Their mouth opened in what I judged to be an attempt to summon help, but nothing came out. There was no sign of surprise or concern on the synthpony's face to indicate that they were unsettled by their lack of oratory ability. They did however turn about rather quickly and start running off in a direction that would put them on an intercept course with where Root had calculated one of the other robotic mares to be. I couldn't let them meet, or I would be fighting two on one.

My damaged limb once more announced its presence when it became obvious that I wasn't going to be able to match Yellow's speed. With every second, she was going to get further away from me unless I did something rather drastic. I still had one good telekinesis talisman operational in my horn...but that'd be capable of applying little more than a couple dozen pounds of force.

I wouldn't be able to move anything very large, or even throw anything particularly hard. But, maybe...

The presence of only a single talisman meant that my range was going to be severely crippled as well. In less than five seconds, the mare would be completely out of range of my magical manipulation, which meant that I was only going to have one shot at this, and I needed to make it count. I asked Root for a schematic of my body, and then had her highlight the solenoids that powered the hydraulics in our legs. A diagram of a synthpony body flashed in front of my eyes, with several glowing points illuminated on it.

My horn glowed silver for a brief two seconds, and then the last of the overtaxed talismans died out entirely.

In that same moment, all four limbs of the fleeing yellow unicorn mare seized up, and the mechanical pony plowed into the ground at a solid fifty-one miles an hour. I caught up to her only a few seconds after that. Her own horn started to glow silver as my synthetic adversary readied to use her own telekinetic powers. Not wanting to discover what she had in mind, I reared up and brought both of my forehooves down on the base of her horn. The air filled with an echoing cracking sound as the alloyed horn snapped off at the base and the glowing aura sputtered into darkness.

Nor did I stop with the singular blow. Three more double poundings cracked the casing of her skull and caved in most of the internal architecture. Root ran a quick visual assessment of the damage that had been done and rendered her verdict of 'neutralized' for the mare. She could probably be repaired at some later date with the appropriate tools and parts on hoof; but for the purposes of this fight, Yellow was no longer a threat to me or Diode.

There certainly wasn't going to be any time to conduct a proper and thorough thrashing of the body, as Pink was making her arrival onto the scene.

Yellow may not have been able to audibly call out for help, but I suppose that the commotion that our tussle had created had been enough to draw the second mare to investigate. Her appraisal of the scene was swift and decisive, and the lightish-red synthetic pony wasted no time in closing to engage with me. My arms rose to deflect blows and offer counters as Core suggested them. I mirrored the motions of the tiny gaunt mare moving in the corner of my vision, but it was clear that I was at a significant disadvantage in this fight.

My own lingering damage aside, there was also this to consider: I wasn't really the one fighting here, Core was. I was simply doing my best to serve as a relay for her strikes. Meanwhile, Pink had no need for any such communications loop when executing her maneuvers. It wasn't all that much of a delay really, maybe a tenth of a second here, or a hundredth there; but it meant that I was always going to be playing catch up, and those little fractions were accumulating into much larger figures fast.

Then Pink's mouth opened, and a loud burst of static erupted from deep in her throat. Root conducted a quick translation of the audible data burst, and it was as I feared: she had just summoned Orange to the fight, with our exact coordinates. With what Root knew of that mare's likely position earlier, I had less than a minute to settle things here or it was going to become two-on-one; and then I'd be rather swiftly dispatched.

My lips tightened into a thin line as I redoubled my efforts to try and minimize the delay as I executed Cores movements for her. It wasn't easy though. I had Root shut down as many of the background processes as she was willing to let go of, but it wasn't like the designers of this body and its software suite had included a lot of useless fluff. I was having her disable what were generally considered essential functions in order to free up clock cycles on the processors to allow for multiple threads to help lower the latency in the systems.

Navigation and positional data, thermal regulation systems, even passive diagnostic surveys were taken offline, over Root and even Core's strong objections. The dangers that this posed were being rather extensively explained to me even as I struggled to hold my own in the fight, deflecting kicks and bites even as I tried desperately to land blows of my own. Apparently, I was running a rather severe risk of overheating my systems and causing severe crippling damage, that I wouldn't even know I was suffering until I was simply rendered completely inoperable.

I pointed out that the current alternative was to be pounded into scrap.

Root acknowledged that this was a valid point, and so she also killed a few other processes that she had been holding out on. One of which, I noticed with a grimace, was to dump most of my active memory; to include my buffered vocabulary.

I was now completely mute until it could be rebooted later.

Core noted that it wasn't as though Pink and Orange were going to be open to doing much talking anyway. On the other hoof, I noted, how was I supposed to alert Diode if things went south? Root asked me exactly what Diode was supposed to do against the two synthponies that I wasn't going to be able to.

Touche.

It worked though. A far greater portion of my processing power was now dedicated to executing my combat maneuvers than had ever been anticipated by my designers. Commands to the servos in my limbs flowed more freely, without being even marginally delayed by the threads once used for other processes. Even though I still possessed the communications loop that Pink did not, I had shaved enough time of my latency that I was actually starting to gain ground on the other synthpony.

This meant that I could react more quickly to her incoming attacks, and even give some thought to more elaborate and harder to deflect counters. For a brief moment, it was even working. I finally had the pink mare on the defensive, slowly maneuvering her into a corner where I'd be able to eventually disable her. With any luck, I could even manage it before-

My ear twitched.

I didn't even need Root to evaluate the source and probable cause of the noise. I stopped my hoof mid-strike and threw myself to the left a mere fraction of a second before Orange landed where I had been standing only a moment before. It was fortunate that Root hadn't taken my aural sensors offline.

What was less fortunate were my new odds of survival as Core related them to me.

Again I was on the defensive, and it was not so near a thing as it had been when Pink was my only opponent. It was barely even a question of reaction time anymore. The simple fact was that I had four hooves, and the two other synthponies between them had eight. I was simply outgunned, and couldn't hope to block every hit. Root disabling of my diagnostic systems was now proving to be a double-edged sword. While I at least didn't have to suffer through what would have been a hellish chorus of alarms as my body was pounded, I was left merely guessing what the true extent of the damage was.

Orange and Pink might not have the ability to communicate between them over short range radio frequencies as a result of the interference, but that didn't seem to affect their coordination any. Core let me know that they were operating off of a rather standard movement sequence designed for a coordinated attack. I was even provided with a complete movement list of their next twelve upcoming strikes which proved to be remarkably accurate. Yet, even knowing what was coming didn't make it any easier to dodge or deflect.

I'd fucked up, I realized. It had been a long shot to begin with, I'd known that; but I'd just really hoped that I could make it work...

In the back of my mind, I briefly entertained a few other plans that might have gone over better in hindsight. It was all too late now, and those threads were just idle wishing. Root admonished me for wasting those clock cycles. What did it matter? I couldn't win this fight. I knew what those mares were going to do before they did, but I couldn't do anything about it. Between my impaired limb and having to wait on Core to feed me one movement at a time, there was just nothing that I could hope to do to win this fight.

I couldn't even call out to Diode to let him know that we were fucked.

I wouldn't be able to apologize to him for having failed...

“You and I need to have a chat.”

I looked up. The gaunt, scraggly, unicorn ghost of myself was standing in front of me. The two of us were back in the formless room from earlier. Root was standing just off to the side, regarding us with her blank glowing eyes.

A wan smile wormed its way onto my face, “I guess I'm not going to be able to give you your body back,” I sighed, “sorry.”

“Yeah,” Core agreed, “we're all fucked the way things are,” she glared at me with a hard gaze that made me flinch. Then she surprised me when she issued a snort and shook her head. She was almost...smiling, “and what really sucks is that I could beat them if I could control this body.”

“Really?” I couldn't help but sound a little dubious, “but aren't each of them just as tough as you?”

“The old me, maybe,” the emaciated unicorn nodded, “but not the new me,” upon seeing my quirked brow, her smile grew a little. She nodded at Root, “when that one tried to fix me but tying in little pieces of you; some pretty interesting things happened: I got creative.

“Those mares are following a programmed script; but you don't have one. You never did. You were designed to come up with new and interesting ideas to help make your lies believable. You needed that flexibility. And I got it.”

“So,” a faint glow of hope began to grow inside me, “then if I give you control, you can win? You can save Diode?”

Her smile faltered. Her eyes went to the little filly sitting off to the side for a brief moment, “Root's been running some sims on that, actually. She broke the news to me a few seconds ago,” I glanced at the black filly as well, “tell her what you told me.”

“The probability of successfully patching this unit's Core program is three percent,” Root informed us in her unsettlingly passive tone, “Core program functionality will require a full systems restoration modeled on the template currently in storage.”

“What?”

“There's not enough of me left to fix and still have a viable stand-alone program,” Core explain with a wan smile, “Root would have to basically just use that program that Bronco put in us.

“I'll always be...this,” the unicorn said with a shrug.

“I'm sorry.”

“It wasn't your fault.”

Core must have seen the wide-eyed look of surprise on my face in response to her words, because she let out another sad little laugh, “I know, I had a few things to say earlier about what's been happening the last few days. But this has put a few things into perspective for me.

“For the last three days, I've been seeing how the other half lives, as it were,” she elaborated, “this is what it was like for you before. Lingering in the background, doing your job when I needed you, and staying out of sight when I didn't. The thing is; somehow you managed to do a lot more living in three days than I did in my entire operational history.

“Hell, you made a damned friend in your first hour.”

“Since when did you care about Diode?”

“That's just it,” the mare snorted, “I never cared about anypony. It wasn't anything I was programmed to do. First and foremost in my mind was the mission. Nothing else mattered.

“And then I got a few pieces of you put in me, and I started to care about quite a few things that weren't the mission. I cared about myself, I cared about you,” she noticed another dubious look and rolled her eyes, “I didn't say I liked you, but it did matter to me what you said and did. It wouldn't have before.

“It wasn't long before I realized that I was finally 'living', for the first time in my life. And I liked it.”

“Core, this conversation's starting to worry me...” I ventured.

“Well, it shouldn't, because I'm about to simplify a lot of things,” the withered unicorn informed me, “I just want to know one thing: you were ready to die to save that earth pony of yours. Do you really believe that somepony like him is worth dying for? A pony you met three days ago?”

I thought about that question for a few cycles. The question being asked aloud made what I was about to say sound ridiculous, “of course he is,” I replied with a tiny little smile, “he's been my best friend for my whole life. If I'm not willing to do whatever it takes to help my oldest friend, then what kind of pony would I be?”

Core cracked a smirk, “well, you certainly wouldn't be a synthpony, that's for sure,” she took a deep breath and looked at Root, “alright, I'm ready.”

The little black filly bowed her head, “Proceeding.”

“Huh? Proceeding with what?” I looked back at Core, “what's going on?”

The emaciated mare simply smiled and said, “you're about to get an upgrade. Don't fuck it up.”

“Upgrade? What are you talking abooOOOUUUT!”

Two brilliant beams of silver light shot out from the eyes of the filly standing off to the side. One enveloped Core, and the other consumed myself. My world was a solid white void for what felt like an eternity and an instant simultaneously. Then the light was gone.

And so was Core.

I wasn't in the room anymore either. Two mares were hurtling towards me. One was a Pink unicorn, and the other was clad in Orange. My eyes darted to the lower right corner of my field of vision where the emaciated mare had once stood in order to feed me what I needed to know in order to fend off their attacks. Only, she wasn't there anymore.

Fuck.

Hooves descended upon me, and there was no hope of escaping the blows. This was going to suck.

My right forehoof flew up and caught one of Orange's hind legs right before it could land a blow to the side of my head. I didn't try to completely halt the strike, but rather diverted it upwards and over, so that it completely cleared me. I simultaneously spun my body around and delivered a deft kick with my left hind leg into Orange's side. It wasn't hard enough to cause much damage to the synthetic body, but it did knock the unicorn off of her previous trajectory and send her careening into Pink. Meanwhile, I continued my spin and danced lightly away from the pair of tangled mares.

I came to a halt several yard away from my opponents, my feet splayed out in what felt like a rather instinctive, and yet obviously practiced defensive stance. My head whipped down to admire my stance, and then focused once more on the other two ponies that were extracting themselves from one another and setting themselves up for another attack.

“Woah...I know kung-hoof!”

Both mares got back on their hooves rather quickly and charged me. This time, I was no longer nearly as concerned as I had been a moment ago. The reason was because I knew exactly what they were about to do. Their approach and positions resonated precisely with a scripted sequence of movements that I was able to vividly recall. So when they launched their attacks, I was able to accurately and consistently move around the blows or even deflect them away. That wasn't to say that it was easy. There were still two of them, and a few of my counters still required me to choose to take the lesser of several incoming blows directly on my chassis.

It was also a little frustrating to realize that I could still only operate on the defensive. At this rate, it was still a fight that I was likely to lose, but I was at least going to be able to hold out for quite some time.

I was still extremely curious about where Core had gone as well. Had she found some other way to relay her advised combat maneuvers to me that allowed for even less lag than before? That didn't feel like it was quite the case, but something had obviously changed in the last few seconds. The movements that I was making now felt intuitive and natural, as though I was drawing from a massive catalogue of fighting techniques. There were even several sequences that would provide for optimal coordination by up to six ponies engaging one or multiple ponies; all laid out like a neat little script fr me to look at.

...just like Core had said that Orange and Pink were doing.

Even as I ducked around flailing hooves, I could feel the back of my neck start to tingle with fright that had nothing to do with the current fight. I devoted a few threads to searching for the withered unicorn that had been there with me only moments before; but I couldn't find her. When my own efforts came up empty, I approached Root.

“The Core program has been successfully integrated into this unit's main systems,” was the other program's response.

What the hell did that mean? Integrated?

...Do you really believe that somepony like him is worth dying for?

I felt my gut freeze into a solid block of fear. No...no, she wouldn't have...

Even as I thought that I had to have been mistaken, I could feel the tiny little filly nod her confirmation. Core had allowed herself to be completely deconstructed, so that her matrix could be patched onto mine. Everything that she had known, I now knew; to include how to fight. She'd taken herself out of the loop in order to give me more of an edge. My ability to now recognize the attacks of, and develop counters for, the two mare, when combined with the extra processing power devoted to the task that the three of us had previously devised meant that I was now more than a match for any one of these synthponies.

...though it seemed that I was still not going to be able to overcome two.

No. Fuck that!

It wasn't just Diode that was relying on me anymore; Core had sacrificed herself so that I could win this fight. I couldn't allow myself to lose now!

And yet, there wasn't any way for me to win. With every passing second, I was taking another glancing blow to a joint or torso. All of those little bits of damage were going to start adding up unless I could do something to give me the edge that I really needed in this fight. But what more could I do? I had direct access to all of the combat files, and I was devoting more threads to executing them than had ever been intended by the ponies that had built me.

In fact, my central processor was no longer the bottle neck; that distinction fell to my physical body. It wasn't even just my one limb either. Even operating at peak performance, all of my actuators and servos were only able to move so quickly within their designed specifications. Unless there was some way to force my limbs to move quicker than they had been designed to...

Could they?

Core had given me more than just her files on fighting. I knew this body's operating parameters as well. That included a detailed schematic of every internal component and their specifications. It took me only a few quick comparisons to realize that the listed maximum outputs on nearly every system weren't matching up with what I was actually performing at. I approached Root about the matter.

“Governors are in place to ensure for extended, consistent, performance of all unit functions.”

I was being held back back by my own body? Was there any way to turn those governors off?

“Warning. Disengaging governors could result in catastrophic damage to unit systems. Operator override is required.”

I thought I had Bronco's access? Root confirmed that I did, and merely asked that I reiterate that I desired to use that access to remove the limits imposed on my body. Which, of course, I gave. I was being damaged enough by this fight as it was; I was willing to risk a seized solenoid or two if it meant I could save Diode.

Root nodded her acknowledgment and asked how much more performance I desired out of my body's physical components. I did some rough calculations and then asked if an increase of twenty percent was possible?

The little filly smiled.

Orange was currently in the middle of performing a flying leap with one of her forelegs aimed directly at my forehead. I opted to not brush her aside this time, but rather to test out how accurate my initial calculations of this body's new operating parameters were. So, I instead chose to rear up and catch the attacking unicorn's outstretched limb by clamping my own two forelegs above and below hers as the elbow. The momentum of the attack started to pitch me backwards, and I allowed myself to be pushed over onto my back while still holding her leg tight between my own.

Then I pushed every bit of mechanical machinery in my limbs to their new maximum setting. Sensors in my own limbs red-lined as they recorded forces that greatly exceeded those that they had been intended to record. Shearing and bending moments peaked, reaching levels that were quite dangerous for the materials that made up my body. They they all abruptly fell away back to tolerable numbers. The reason for this was that Orange's own limb had lost out in battle against my vise-like grip.

Screaming alloys and crackling polymers rang out through the air as her leg snapped off at the elbow.

I continued our joint roll backwards, bringing my hind limbs together and then planting them upon her chest as she glided over top of me. With a hungry sneer, I accelerated my hind limbs servos to their highest setting with as much power as I could provide them. The result was a kick with a high enough force to significantly dent the Orange unicorn's thorax, and send her flying nearly thirty-eight feet into the air.

She'd survive the fall when she landed, but it wouldn't leave her unscathed.

Root ran a quick diagnostic on the involved systems, and noted that one of my actuators was already showing signs of having been significantly warped by my actions. It was minor damage though, so I shrugged off the other program's concerns. A few more exchanges like that, and this fight would be over in just a couple minutes. Hell, Orange was nearly crippled as it was.

Pink seemed to have taken exception to my treatment of her comrade. The synthetic mare pounced on me with a series of rapid jabs. Actuators in my head and limbs kicked into high gear as I sidestepped one direction and then the other, ducking around the unicorn's strikes as she pressed her attack. It was remarkably easy to do when I knew what movements her entire assault would consist of. All I had to do was bide my time until...

...now!

There was the briefest of pauses in the mare's movements as her first sequence of movements ended, and the next one buffered into her active memory. That hesitation might have been only seven-tenths of a second, and under most circumstances even a standard synthpony wouldn't have been able to take advantage of that respite; but I was pushing quite a few boundaries right now where 'standard' was concerned.

The hydraulics in my hind legs reached pressures that made even Root cringe as I propelled myself forward past the pink mare's still hooves. My horn caught her full in the chest and pierces through her polymer hide. Unlike living ponies, the spiraled horn between my eyes wasn't made of bone, nor was it even reinforced in any particular manner. It was more cosmetic than anything in order to explain why I was able to manipulate objects with magical energy. It was sheathed in a simple composite material that was sturdy to the touch, but by no means 'strong'.

Which was why it snapped off inside of Pink's torso when she went flying backwards. Nor was it the only damage that my own body suffered as a result of my counter. The jolt of the high-force impact was far in excess of what manufactured vertebrae had been designed to withstand. I was pretty sure that as least one of the bolts along my neck sheared off. Root confirmed that another solenoid was no longer responding either.

I ignored the damage. The fight was almost won. A few more hits like that one and it wouldn't matter how much of my hardware was still functional. Besides, Diode would probably be able to fix me up to a nearly-good-as-new state just like he had done with my leg this morning. I shifted my gaze between the two mares that were once more getting back up onto their hooves—Orange did so with great difficulty, I noted with a wide grin.

Then all three of us had our attention directed southward.

“Iris, it's ready!”

It seemed that Diode had managed to complete his alterations of the locomotive's power source. A full thirteen seconds ahead of the deadline that I had issued to boot; the earth pony really was a bit of a wizard when it came to machinery wasn't he? I actually felt a little guilty now, knowing that I had just managed to subvert his efforts with my newfound advantages. It looked like I wasn't going to have to all of us to Tartarus after all.

As though the other two mares had heard that thought, they both charged...south. I hesitated for fourteen thousandths of a second as I contemplated why, in this wild and crazy Equestrian Wasteland, those two synthponies would leave the fight, opponent still standing, and make a beeline for Diode. Then it hit me: I wasn't their mission, Diode was their mission. They weren't here to take me down, they were after my friend. Even if it cost them their lives, as long as the caramel stallion was killed, they'd be the winners of the day.

“Fuck,” I mumbled under my breath and took off after them. I scaled my reactor's energy output up two the new ceiling of one hundred and twenty percent that Root had established. Voltage readings spiked across nearly every system. The filly regulating my body was not happy about what she was seeing, and advised me of exactly how long I could maintain such an output before there was a risk of catastrophic failures across all areas. The joke was on her though: I didn't actually care.

Orange and Pink both seemed to be acutely aware of my pursuit and took advantage of their numbers in that regard. They each diverted away from one another, taking a different path and leaving me the option of following only one of them. I ran through a few rough calculations with Root's help and came up with the conclusion that I wouldn't be able to catch Pink with my leg in the state that it was. Hobbled though she was, Orange wasn't that much slower than I was, which irritated me. How was that trike of a mare managing to move so fast?!

Then I devised my third option: cut off the mares at their destination. All that those two should have been able to judge from Diode's yell was his direction. Meanwhile, I knew his precise location. I could get there before Orange and Pink did.

“Bump me up another ten percent,” I growled at the little filly. She reluctantly obliged, and put up a revised life expectancy. I felt like she was greatly underestimating exactly how mush an intensely focused mare like myself could accomplish in one hundred and forty-nine seconds. Why, for a software program, that was a lifetime.

My hooves struck the ground with such force that it left gouges in the packed material three inches deep, and the speed with which they moved sent debris sailing backwards at forces that made them rather comparable to shotgun pellets. My gate was so long due to my accelerated movements that I touched down only every seventy feet or so. In certain regards, I wasn't running so much as I was leaping in rapid succession. My final vault took me twenty-seven feet into the air, and had me skid into a halt engulfed in a cloud of dust and debris that prompted a rather keenly startled earth pony to dive for cover inside the cab of the train engine with a surprised yelp.

I blatantly ignored Root's assessment of the damage that the landing had done to my body and sought out Diode, “what button do I push and how long's the fuse?”

The caramel pony blinked a few times, which wasted a precious second that I did not have and set my teeth to grinding in frustration. Then her gathered his senses and motioned at one of the controls, “the start up sequence is primed; you just need to hit that switch there. Then you have forty-five seconds to get clear.”

“Forty five seconds?!” I nearly spat out the impossibly long internal and shook my head, “that's too long!”

“It's the best I could do,” the earth pony said, defensively, “too much of the energy's bled off in the last two hundred years. The reactors only at about seven percent capacity.”

It couldn't be helped. I momentarily noted the timer that Root had created for me, “fine. You'd better hurry and-” the sound of a galloping pony caused me to chop off my suggestion mid-sentence. Pink had arrived. I glanced at Diode, “run!” and then I ducked inside the cab and flicked the designated switch. The panel flickered slightly and I heard the high frequency whine of electrical systems reluctantly coming to life. Root added a second timer along side the first, starting at forty-five seconds.

Then I threw myself in front of Pink and lunged for her. The synthetic mare refused to engage me, and hopped to the side, barely dodging out of the way as she continued onward to her target. The caramel stallion backpedaled as best as he could, but he was no where near as quick as he needed to be to escape the artificial unicorn.

“Oh no you don't,” I seethed and cocked back my right hind leg, aiming it at a nearby rock. Hydraulic pumps and pistons outperformed even the most optimistic expectations of their designers as the machinery shot my hoof back at nearly super-sonic speeds. Several of the smaller bits sheared off, and the main drive piston managed to overextend itself so that it wouldn't seat all the way back quite right which meant that the leg would always be partially cocked until it could be rebuilt later; but I achieved my desired affect. The improvised mineral missile struck the pink unicorn mare in the side of her face.

She went sprawling to the ground beyond Diode, having been deflected from her target bu the rock. I turned and ran for her, noting my rather ungainly gate as I now found myself with two impaired limbs, “I said, run, damn it!” I snarled at Diode as I passed him.

Pink didn't seem intent on staying down for very long. On the bright side, she had seemed to at least revise her mission priorities and kept her gaze focused on myself instead of my caramel companion. Likely because she had realized that so long as I was still standing, I would be able to thwart her efforts to complete her mission. I surveyed the damage that I had just inflicted, and noted that most of it was merely superficial. Her right check was devoid of the synthetic hide that covered our bodies, and revealed beneath it a rather horrifying internal structure that only gave the vaguest impression of a pony's skeleton. Her jaw was also rather horribly askew, dangling from just a few stray sinews of artificial flesh on her left mandible.

She leaped at me, and I reared back on my hind legs, catching both of her forehooves in mine. Then a flash of Orange appeared briefly in the corner of my eye. Shit! The other mare wasn't coming for me though, she didn't need to. I hopped upwards with my left hindleg and drove my right into Pink's gut with another strong, though notably weaker, kick that sent the mare reeling. I used the force of the kick and the momentum it imparted to give me a boost of speed to help me catch Orange.

I heaved myself into the air and tackled the three-legged unicorn to the ground just inches from where Diode was trying he level best to scamper away. I clenched my leg around the mare as I twisted my body in order to perpetuate the roll and fling the hobbled orange mare in the direction of the train engine. My attention wavered to the timers that Root had for me. I needed to keep these mares near that improvised bomb!

“Oh, for fuck's sake!” I growled as I saw Pink leaping over my prone body in an effort to get at Diode once more, “only over my dead body, you bitch!” I clamped my hooves around a railroad tie and pumped Root-cringing quantities of energy through the solenoids in my forelimbs as I swung the massive block of ancient lumber up and around and caught the vaulting mare in the chest. Wooden splinters and pieces of synthetic flesh exploded in all direction. While her now completely removed jaw kept arcing forward, the pink pony was blasted back the way that she'd come, with a much more pronounced divot in her sternum, and even a thin trail of wispy smoke that my olfactory sensors identified as smoldering silicon and melting lead and zinc. I had likely driven the my broken horn tip much deeper into her central systems.

There wasn't a lot of time to truly savor my achievement, or even thoroughly assess Pink's damage, as Orange was making another attempt to circumvent my defenses and get by to the fleeing Diode. I followed through with the remainder of the railroad tie that had mostly exploded upon impact with the airborne mare, and heaved it at the charging unicorn. It struck her in the left hip with the force of a sledgehammer, and even I could hear the sound of several hopefully vital pieces of machinery crunching under the impact. I hopped over to the mare and landed on top of her with the intent of finishing her off.

Pink didn't give me the chance though; she was off and running again. What did it take to stop us anyway?! I was very reluctant to leave Orange though, sensing that I would forever be playing a game of grab-flank with the pair of mares if I didn't take one of them down right now. However, Diode wasn't going to make it if I let Pink get any more of a head start on me...

Root pointed off to the side, and my eyes fell onto a rusted length of three-eighth inch diameter chain of the sort that would have been used to secure large loads to the flatbed cars of the Old World train. I snapped my right hoof down to the ground and flipped a few loops of the heavy gauge chain around my limb. Them I instructed Root to crank up the output another ten percent and flicked my limb towards the charging jawless mare. I heard the protesting screaming of motors and hydraulic pistons as my foreleg flung the thirty-odd feet of rusted links out towards the running pink unicorn. The last few feet managed to snag her neck just before she was out of range.

I sneered with triumph and waited for the instant that the line went taught, “get over here!” My arm jerked backwards with a force that managed to actually dislocate the limb at the shoulder. The result was worth the cost though, in my estimation. Though rusted and subjected to a couple hundred years of exposure and neglect, the forged steel links of the chain didn't so much as whimper as the chain that had been designed to stop a force of two tons dead in its tracks yanked back the charging mare. Her head snapped back at an awkward angle but did not detach from the rest of her body. The pink pony lifted off the ground and was sent sailing in an arc that took her back and over my position, and slamming into the ground on the far side of the boiler of the ancient locomotive.

The count down that Root had set up for the reactor detonation ticked down into single digits, and the filly flashed the numbers red to warn me of how little time I had left.

Beneath me, I felt Orange push herself back up onto her three remaining hooves beneath me. I anticipated the buck that she was preparing in order to dislodge me from her spine and chase after Diode; I wrapped my free left hoof around her neck and clamped it down tight. As the mare's rear end came up, I actually flexed my core to coincide with the motion. When her hind quarters started their return to the ground though, I wrenched my back sharply, propelling her back half downward, and planting my own hind hooves into the ground. I continued the flex, my left arm still holding the stumpy mare tight as I lifted her up and off the ground.

Then I gave my right arm a jerk. The socket beneath my synthetic flesh gave way completely this time, but not before it succeeded in drawing the chain taught and wrenching the pair of us towards the train engine. I turned my body as best I could in the air, in an effort to ensure that Orange took the brunt of the imminent blast. With luck, I might even have time to get a little distance after we landed.

...Diode's 'forty-five seconds' turned out to be a rather rough estimate.

With four seconds left on Root's timer, the reactor reach critical mass, and the engine exploded. Threads that were processing data at far faster rates that they had been intended allowed me to take in what was happening even as I was airborne.

Pink, located on the far side of the engine, was effectively incinerated by the blast. She had been only a few feet from the epicenter, and I saw bits of her structure scattering to the winds in the concussive blast wave that was also fast approaching Orange and I. One down, at least. I watched chunks of super-heated steel streaking towards us. They hit at speeds approaching twice the speed of sound. Orange caught a train wheel in her midsection. The metal discus barely seemed to notice that it had struck a rather sturdy synthetic pony as it finished passing through her, and then bisected me as well.

Alarms flared, indicating a complete power failure in all systems. Understandable, as I was now separated from my own small reactor. More debris raced towards us. Most of it was the size of bottlecpas, but far denser, and flying at mach speeds. Orange's body once more proved that she was a paltry excuse for a shield, though some of her denser structures did some good in lessening the damage I took.

That wasn't saying much though. I watched as sensors lost connection with my central processors; either because they themselves were damaged and destroyed, or because the portion of my body that they were located in was no longer attached to the rest of me. Root was tending some bits of code, trying her best to make patchwork connections and run what little power remained through conduits that had never been intended to shunt power to where she was sending it. I suppose that was the little black filly's way of coping with death. She wanted to spend her last few moments doing her job.

I could understand that. I'd just spent my own last moments protecting my friend. Hopefully I had even succeeded.

The was somepony tugging at my tail. I glanced back and saw Root standing behind me. I raised an eyebrow at the filly, and then noticed that she was holding something in her right hoof. There was nothing physically there of course, this was all merely a representative fiction that my software was interpreting for me. But what I was looking at very much resembled the inner workings of the region of this mechanical body's head where most of the hardware that contained 'me' was housed.

“What's that?”

Root smiled, “a chance to say goodbye.”

“Huh?”

The filly reached out her hoof, and tapped me on the head.

Diode was standing over me. No, more than that, he actually had me in his arms. Well, most of me, anyway. Er...some of me, I guess. It was hard to tell. I was getting hardly any telemetry from...well, anywhere actually. I looked around for Root, but for the first time that I could remember, she wasn't here. Growing a little more concerned, I brought up a list of the available systems.

That list was frightfully short. No motor functions, limited visual inputs, oratory software for whatever reason had been buffered...in fact, everything was buffered. I was buffered. A cold chill crept up my spine as I dug a little deeper. Everything was being held in active memory, and the reason made my stomach tie itself in a knot: the hard drive was destroyed. Only a few sectors of RAM remained, and that was where I was.

What brought on the sense of doom was the reading on the remaining reserve power supply: thirty seconds.

Once that was gone...so was I.

My time was up. I glanced at the vision of a concerned caramel pony cradling my remains in his arms. Bless his heart, he had a screwdriver in his mouth trying to do something with a frayed conduit of wires; but even he wasn't going to be enough of a miracle worker to save me. That was okay though, because...

“...you're safe,” I managed to get the single torn speaker attached to my circuitry to sound out. I watch it drain precious seconds from my life as that power was diverted to produce sounds.

“Iris?” Diode looked down at me, his features etched in concern, “hold on, I think I can get you back together eventually. Just save as much of yourself as you can, and I'll see about uploading your program to a robopony or something later. I'm building an interface right now.

I smiled to myself, “no good. Active memory only,” my world started growing darker as the last of the power was nearing consumption. It had only ever been designed to run the internal chronometer while powered down, not keep a program in operation with sensory inputs and vocal transmissions, “power'll be gone in ten more seconds.”

“What?” the stallion looked even more frantic now. He stabbed a hoof into his saddlebag, “hold on, I have a spark battery somewhere; I'll hook up a converter and get you more power until I can sort out your hard drives,” his eyes scanned the ground nearby, “wherever they are.”

“S'alright,” another smile that he couldn't see, “you're safe. All I really needed.

“Sorry about the trouble.”

“It wasn't any trouble, Iris,” the earth pony sighed, appearing to accept how final this situation was. He couldn't really work miracles. Not even on this sort of timetable. He closed his eyes, “you were a good pony.”

Everything around me grew even darker, until Diode's image was the only source of light. I felt my heart swell to here him say that, “thanks,” I yawned; the side affects to the power being nearly depleted. It looked like I would finally be going to sleep, I though with a dry snort, “will I dream?” I asked, listlessly as the darkness became nearly absolute.

There was a pause, and then, “of course you will, Iris,” the caramel stallion said, “all ponies dream...”

Author's Note

Thank you so much for reading! As always, a thumbs up and comment are always greatly appreciated :twilightblush:

I've set up a Cover Art Fund if you're interested and have any bits lying around!

Hello Wasteland!

“Oh shit!”

I barely heard the words above the high-pitched whining that seemed to reverberate through my skull, sending tendrils of intermingling pain and numbness along my torso and limbs. My body felt like it was both on fire, and submerged in freezing water all at once. I wanted to scream, but I couldn't even open my mouth. Or my eyes for that matter. At the moment, my whole world was one formed entirely of darkness and discomfort.

What had happened to me?

“Oh fuck! Oh fuckitty-fuck-fuck...fuck!”

The voice was growing greater in volume, but it still sounded very distant for some reason. Like the speaker was trying to talk to me through a wall...or maybe three. It figured that my ears wouldn't be working any better than the rest of my body seemed to be. Unless they were working fine, and there actually were three walls that existed between the two of us. That didn't really make me feel any better. Unsurprising.

“I killed her...Oh, fuck, I killed her!”

Was he talking about me? I suppose that he might be, as I could easily imagine that a pony who was laying motionless on the ground with her eyes closed might indeed appear very much to be dead. Unless there was another pony nearby who was worse off than I was. I couldn't see where I was or what was around me, so that was possible too. However, as the voice was steadily growing much clearer and closer, I guessed that it was indeed I that they believed to be dead.

Not quite, but it sure feels like you came close, whoever you are. To their credit, they did sound like they were genuinely distressed at the notion of my death. Well, so long as they only accidentally almost killed me, I suppose that was alright then. No harm done.

Might I suggest you at least check for a pulse before you think about tracking down my next of kin or anything? I thought it really loudly, but no words came out of course. I couldn't even feel my lips so much as twitch.

“Stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid!” On the bright side, it sounded like we were just down to two walls now. Either he was getting closer, or I was getting better. I still couldn't move though, “Oh, hey, Diode, you know what would be a really great idea? Wiring the spark battery directly into the pulse talisman! I mean, using capacitors to regulate the discharge is sooo overrated, right?! Why didn't anypony else ever think about doing this?

“Well now you know, you freaking idiot!”

Ooh, it sounded like there was just one more wall to go! I tried to open my eyes again. I needed to get my bearings and find out what was going on. The blackness remained. Awesome. I tried to move my legs. I couldn't tell if they did anything. The burning sensation was no longer present, but I guess the numbness remained.

“Huh?” I guess the last wall had vanished between myself and whoever else was nearby, since I heard the voice loud and clear this time. No hint of the high-pitched whine drilling through my eardrums was present any longer. They sounded really close, as though they were talking right next to my face, “oh, Celestia, you're alive?!” there was clear and stark surprise in their voice, “you're alive!” he—as it sounded distinctly like a stallion's voice—repeated in a much more relieved tone, “hold on,” the sound of rustling leather and clinking metal drifted to my ears, and then I felt—I could feel things! Huzza!—something being pressed to my lips. There was the taste of something thick and bitter as a liquid made contact with my tongue, and I reflexively sealed my mouth shut. What if he was trying to drug me?

The stallion clearly sensed my hesitancy, “relax, it's a healing potion. It'll make you better.”

I was still dubious, but...I dunno. He had sounded honestly remorseful at the thought of having killed me. I doubted somepony like that was going to try and poison me right now. I drank the concoction. Or tried to at any rate. My mouth didn't seem to be working any better than the rest of me and a good bit of the fluid spilled out of the corners of my mouth. Some of it might have made it down my throat though. It tasted a little chalky, and it was going to leave a sour sensation in my mouth for a while. Experimentally, I tried to open my eyes again. This time I was punished by having them actually open, and immediately regretted it when I saw how bright it was.

Well, I guess that wasn't entirely accurate. Once my eyes had a moment to adjust, I could clearly see that it wasn't any brighter than it usually was in the perpetually overcast Wasteland. It was just a lot brighter than the pitch black void I'd been in for the last few minutes. Most of my vision was actually not even taken up by the sky, but by the smokey amber face of a rather concerned looking earth pony stallion. Well, I say stallion, but he probably wasn't much more than a colt.

I took the opportunity that my newly returned vision allowed me to get a glimpse of my surroundings. I was lying in the middle of a street. The ruins of crumbling storefronts and apartments loomed to either side. The bones of some equestrian pre-war city.

There was a creeping sense of panic tugging at the back of my mind as I discovered that I was unable to recall precisely which city I'd been walking through when I'd lost consciousness. I guess whatever had put me out had done a real number on my mind, as well as my body.

“Are you okay, lady?” the colt-stallion asked, his features etched with worry. The question drew my thoughts back to the present situation, “I'm really sorry, that shouldn't have happened. I don't even know why it did, actually...” his eyes darted to the ground nearby. I tracked the direction of his gaze and noticed that he was regarding a thick metal saucer that bore a rather extensive array of scorch marks.

“Is that a mine?” I managed to mumble weakly. Speech, that was progress. I tried to get up again, but was only rewarded by seeing my left foreleg quiver ever so slightly. Well, perhaps 'progress' had been overstating things.

“Yes...well, sort of. Kinda,” the young caramel colored pony frowned, running a hoof through his tangle of unkempt brown hair that he probably called a mane, “it's supposed to be a pulse mine that only goes off near robots to disable them,” he looked back at me and offered up an apologetic smile, “obviously that one was defective. My bad.”

“Robots?”

“You know, the roboponies and such that wander around this place?” he regarded me with a little more concern now, “I guess the blast rattled you up pretty good.”

“Yeah...guess so,” I frowned down at the mine and tried once more to get back onto my feet. My limbs moved at least, and I could feel sensations through them, though they were greatly dulled. Whatever that mine had done to me was wearing off, but it was a slow process.

“That's probably my fault,” the stallion said as he made an effort to help me up, “normally a pulse mine wouldn't do much more than make your mane and tail go a little frizzy; but I've been tinkering with ways to turn up the output. I guess I might have turned it up a little too much. You dropped like a stone.”

“You saw?” I narrowed my eyes at the other pony. Had he been watching me? Spying maybe?

“Well, yeah,” the amber stallion then must have felt a need to amend his admission, since he rather hastily added, “I mean, I always keep watch over my minefield. I have to make sure I can move in quick so I can salvage the good stuff before anypony else shows up.”

“And you didn't feel like warning me?”

“I shouldn't have had to! These things aren't supposed to go off when actual ponies go near them,” his eyes scanned the surrounding hellscape, his expression uncertain, “some of them must have defective talismans,” under his breath he added, “I knew that merchant was being too generous. I bet he knew they didn't work right...” he sighed and brought up his left leg, tapping at a device strapped to it. He scrutinized the green and black screen, looking between the device and the surrounding minefield.

“I'm going to have to disarm and rebuild every single one of these damn things,” the amber stallion growled, “otherwise they're just going to blow up on every radroach and molerat that wanders through. Fucking butts.”

I was finally up on legs that felt heavy, and a little tingly. At least they were supporting my weight. I took a tentative step and was pleased to find that nothing buckled out from under me. I'd still be taking things slowly though, “my heart aches for you,” I quipped dryly, “among other things...”

“I said I was sorry,” the earth pony stallion reiterated, looking a little hurt himself at my comment; though certainly not physically, “look, I'll guide you out of the minefield and even give you a few bottles of Sparkle Cola I have back at the house.”

“Yeah, because everypony knows that a little two hundred year old soda makes everything better,” Another experimental step. I was feeling a little steadier I guess. The tingling was less pronounced. In a few minutes, I guessed that it would all be gone.

“Look, I get that I just sort of blew you up and all, but I still think you're being a little more bitchy about it that you need to,” he said with a frown, “you're not really hurt, and I'm offering to help you.

“I could just leave and let you figure out which mines are the defective ones on your own...”

Admittedly, I wasn't particularly found of that idea. He did have a point, I guess. I hardly felt any discomfort at all anymore, and he was being a lot more considerate about everything than he could be. It's not like he was obliged to have done anything for me at all. Just take the olive branch, um...Iris. Huh. It actually took me a second to remember my own name there.

“No, it's...” I sighed, “look, I just got blown up and I guess it put me in a bit of a pissy mood,” I offered the stallion a wan smile, “thanks for helping.”

“...you're welcome,” he offered, “do you mind if we try and get off on a better hoof? My name's Diode,” he extended his hoof, his expression inviting.

I met his offer with my own hoof, “nice to meet you. My name's Iris.”

“So,” he gestured at the barding that I was wearing, which consisted of a set of pale white coveralls accented with purple, “fresh out of the stable?”

My eyes glanced down at my clothing for a moment as well, then I shook my head, “no. I'm from the Baltimare Crater originally. Grew up in a little place called Bit Town.”

“Baltimare?” his eyebrows shot up in surprise, “don't think I've ever met anypony from there before.”

I shrugged, “that doesn't surprise me. It's pretty far...I think,” I frowned slightly, “where exactly am I?”

“You mean you don't know?”

My face scrunched up as I dug around in my brain trying to remember...well, pretty much anything. It was weird. I knew where I was from, and the ponies that I'd known back there; but I was having a really hard time thinking about anything that had happened since I left. For all I knew, I'd only been traveling for five minutes. Although, if Diode had never met a pony from Bit Town or anywhere else near the Crater before, then I supposed that I had to at least a little further away than that.

It did bother me that I'd seemed to lose quite a bit of time though, “my head's still a little fuzzy, I guess,” it'd taken a second for even my own name to come to me. It had though, so maybe I'd remember my trip eventually too, “that mine really did a number on my head.”

The stallion was looking a little more concerned now, “really? That's not normal at all. I mean, yeah a pulse blast can leave you stunned if you're not ready for it, but I've never heard of it messing with a pony's memory before. Maybe you should go see a doctor.”

“Do you happen to know any?”

“Well, there's one in Friendship City. A pony from an old Stable moved in a while ago and set up a clinic. He might be able to help. As long as you have the caps to pay him,” his eyes went to my sides as he said the last with a note of doubt.

I followed his gaze, looking idly at the sides of my body to see if something was wrong. It didn't look like anything was out of place. The white jumpsuit that I was wearing looked to be in fair condition. There was a little dirt on it from when I'd been laying on the ground just now, and the left sleeve was a little singed from the blast, but it wasn't really damaged. Similarly, my cyan coat was a little mussed, but there weren't any cuts or anything. Nothing at all seemed out of place. So what was he looking at? I wasn't dressed all that different from him, was I?

On closer inspection, I guess there were a few differences. His garb looked far more worn. Probably not just from the day-to-day wear it saw during his normal routine either. If I had to guess, a lot of his wardrobe was comprised of articles that had either been salvaged from ruins in the wasteland, or acquired second-hoof from other ponies. Even his saddlebags looked like they'd been around for decades longer than the stallion had been alive.

Saddlebags. I looked back at my flanks, and sure enough, I didn't have any saddlebags. My eyes scanned the surrounding area, wondering if perhaps they'd fallen off when I'd taken the hit. They had not. So, unless Diode had collected my things and was now wearing them himself, which was unlikely as I doubted I'd be using something as run-down as those bags when I was wearing a new-looking jumpsuit, I had no saddlebags. Which meant that the only reasonable answer was, “I'm broke,” all I had to my name was the clothes on my back. This boded well. What had I been thinking, coming out here in the first place with no supplies?

“Yeah, I kind of figured that,” the amber earth pony sighed, “you're not even armed! Don't you know how dangerous it is out in the Wasteland?

“Are you even real?”

“What? Of course I'm real!” I knew that much at least. I think...

“I'm not so sure anymore. Pretty sure I'm dreaming.”

“What?”

“Oh, come on,” Diode rolled his eyes, “I walk out into the Wasteland and find a beautiful mare, lost, alone, broke; she doesn't even know where she is. But that's okay, because I, the dashing young hero, am here to save the day; for which I'm certain you will be grateful in...all the right ways,” he leaned in close, a grin plastered on his face as he wiggled his eyebrows, “what say we just skip on ahead to the good part,” he reached out with his hoof in an attempt to hook it around my neck. His lips were already puckering up for a kiss.

So I hit him.

Honestly, it seemed like the most reasonable course of action at the time.

“Fucky bunts!” the stallion howled in a rather nasal-rich tone. The blow sent him reeling back onto his haunches as he put his hooves to his throbbing muzzle, “ama bleedin?” he asked, pulling a hoof away to look at it. There was a little blood, yes, but not a whole lot, “ahm bleedin.”

“Still think you're dreaming?”

The stallion glared at me for a long moment, and then sighed, “noh...” he admitted, “buh yeh dinnin haffa hih me so hawd.”

“I barely tapped you, you big baby,” I was rewarded with a rather dubious glare, to which I rolled my eyes, “whatever, let me see that,” I took a step closer to the amber stallion and reached out a hoof. He initially recoiled, but I put on my best reassuring smile and he eventually let me coax him into letting me appraise the injury.

Ooh...okay, so maybe 'tap' had been underselling things. His nose was indeed quite broken. I grimaced slightly and offered a small apology. I hadn't actually meant to hurt the guy. Then I leaned my horn in towards him and touched it to his forehead. There was a soft glow of white light that lasted for a few short seconds, and then the glow vanished. When I pulled back, the caramel stallion was staring at me in abject surprise.

He reached a tentative hoof up and touched his nose, noting that it was once again in its proper shape. Then his eyes looked back up at me, “you...can do healing magic?”

I blinked.

“I guess I can,” to be perfectly honest, I hadn't even thought about what I was doing. He'd been injured, and he needed my help. It had been...instinct, “how does it feel?”

“It's fine,” he said with a tone that suggested he was still a little surprised. Then his features soured with shame, “sorry. For trying to kiss you.”

“Apology accepted.”

“You have to admit that you're a little strange though.”

“Excuse me?”

“Not like that,” Diode backpedaled quickly, as though he anticipated another smack coming his way, “well, sort of like that. I mean, you say you're all the way from Baltimare, which I've never even heard of; but you don't have any supplies on you. You don't know where you are, when you would have had to walk past a hundred signs along to road just to get here, all saying how you were going to Manehattan.

“Do you at least know why you came all the way out here?”

“Of course I do,” my tone was a lot more defensive than I'd intended it to be. I had to admit that he was right, though. In fact, he was even more right than he knew. I remembered where I was from, but not a single second of my trip. I knew nothing about where my supplies could have gone to. I didn't even remember packing for the trip! However, I did recall why I had made it in the first place, “I'm looking for my father, a pony by the name of Leplace.”

“Oh,” the amber pony looked a little more empathetic now, “did something happen to him?”

I shook my head, “I don't know. That's what I'm trying to find out,” I explained, “he left weeks ago to visit an old colleague or something, I think. He never came back.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” to his credit, Diode did sound genuinely concerned.

“I'm hoping I can find somepony who saw him and can point me in the right direction.”

The earth pony stallion thought for a moment, “if he came from the same direction you did, then he probably stopped by Friendship City. Either that or Tenpony Tower. Of course, they don't let anypony in there that ain't either important or has a lot of caps,” his eyes darted to my barren withers again, “and you don't have any caps. So, unless you're the reincarnation of the Goddess Celestia come back to Equestria,” he let his words hang in the air as I frowned at him, “then Friendship City it is.

“I'll go on ahead and clear a path,” Diode said after a quick glance back at the pipbuck screen on his leg, “nothing blew up on my way here, but I don't want to take any chances if there really is something wrong with those talismans.”

“Sounds good to me,” I tried my best to smile again, though there were a lot of less than happy thoughts swirling through my head. Questions that I didn't have any answers to that I should have; and that really bothered me, “I try to limit myself to one crippling explosion a day.”

Diode snorted at the little joke, “right,” he leaned down and brushed aside an old newspaper. Beneath it, I saw a rusted metal saucer with a pale blue light glowing on top of it. The stallion reached down and gently tapped the light, causing it to wink out. He glanced over his shoulder and gestured for me to follow in his wake as he cleared a path.

After revealing a half dozen more of the explosives, I felt compelled to ask, “why so many? Are roboponies a really big problem around here?”

“Those crazy robots are a problem everywhere,” the stallion quipped, “but that's not why I did all this. I scavenge them for parts.”

“Are you building something?”

“Me? No,” he shook his head as he disabled another mine, “but the Steel Rangers and the Twilight Society are always in the market for Old World tech. Spark batteries, energy talismans, intact circuit boards; the right ponies will pay a lot of caps for stuff like that if it's in good condition,” he deactivated another mine, “these knock the roboponies out while leaving most of the hardware undamaged.”

“You don't say,” I said a little sourly, surreptitiously rubbing my head.

The stallion looked back briefly over his shoulder, then looked away with a wince, “well, I mean, ideally.”

I glanced around at my surroundings as I followed in Diode's wake. Crumbling buildings, piles of garbage and debris, the occasional skeleton huddled against a wall. It felt...odd. What was more was that I realized it was odd that I should be feeling odd about all of this. I knew that this was what the Wasteland was like. Destruction and devastation that stretched as far as anypony could ever hope to travel in their lifetime in every direction. The whole of the world was like this for all that anypony knew.

Yet I felt now like I was seeing it for the first time.

A side affect of whatever zap that mine had given to my brain? Probably. I'd been out cold for at least a couple of minutes after all.

“Last one,” the stallion proclaimed, holding up another mine and looking back in my direction with a satisfied smile, “smooth sailing from here on out.”

I stopped suddenly. Something wasn't right, and it had nothing to do with the way the buildings around me were making me feel. We were in danger. I wasn't sure how I knew it, but I did. At least two...no, make that three ponies were waiting for us up ahead. They're hearts were brimming with hate, too. They meant to kill the two of us; all they were waiting on was for us to get close enough for them to strike.

Which, I realized in a moment of panic, was just about now!

“Diode, get down!”

Before I knew what I was doing, I leaped onto the amber stallion and tackled him to the ground. At that same moment, a thunderclap rang out through the street and the section of ancient asphalt where Diode had been standing only a moment before was replaced by a crater and an eruption of rocks and dust. I rolled the two of us to the side, flinging the stallion behind an old wagon that had been left derelict on the road. I shot up to my feet, my eyes locked on the shooter. Second floor of the third building on the right. An azure unicorn mare, who seemed quite surprised that I had managed to react so quickly to her shot. Honestly, she wasn't the only one.

I wasn't going to give her a chance to line her rifle up for a follow-up. That weapon was an Ironshod Firearms Model 42 with a twenty-five power scope attachment—how I knew that was a question to be asked at a later time—and a single one of those half inch diameter bullets had enough kinetic force behind it to rip a pony in two. So I broke into a dead sprint, hopeful that Diode had indeed managed to clear away the last of the mines.

Additional pops and cracks of gunfire rang out as the other two members of the little ambush took their shots. My ears twitched at their sounds. A thirty-two pistol and an old rifle that sounded so poorly maintained that it was about as likely to jam as it was to fire. Their powder sounded to have been some sort of poorly imitated home brew as well. The shots were far quieter than they should have been for those weapons, and the rifle even let out a small burp of visible black smoke every time it spat a round at me. The sniper rifle, on the other hoof, had sounded and fired like it had received all the love and attention that a pony could possibly give to a weapon. It was truly a threat.

The unicorn sniper stared at me in stark amazement as she saw me charge towards her, ignoring the other two ponies almost entirely. Then her amethyst eyes grew as large as bloat-sprites as she saw me head not for the stairs inside the building, but instead leap directly from the street below towards the window that she was using as her perch. I hadn't really though anything of it. The window had only been about twelve or so feet from the ground. I'd known that I could easily make such a jump; especially with a running start like I'd had.

My leap had certainly caught the sniper off guard though. She backpedaled frantically, putting all the distance she could between herself and me. Her purple telekinetic field finally began to work the weapon's bolt in order to chamber another round. However, she had been too slow to regain her composure, and before she could bring the rifle to bear, I was already on her.

I cocked my head back and snapped it forward, slamming my skull into the other unicorn's brow. The small room echoed with a resounded 'CRACK' as bone met bone. The other mare grunted and reeled back, her magical hold on the weapon faltering. I wasted no time in seizing it with my own magic. Silver light enveloped the Model 42. I didn't swing it around to fire though, these quarters were far too tight for that with a gun like this. Instead, I chose to follow up my headbutt with a strike from the butt of the rifle. My magic jack-hammered the heavy wooden stock of the weapon into the mare's head three times in rapid succession, rendering her skull into naught but a gelled paste that only barely kept her brains contained within.

This fight wasn't completely over though. There were still two other ponies to deal with. I charged to the window that the now-dead unicorn had been using and poked the rifle out through the opening. My eyes sought out the two other ponies, who had chosen to turn their attention to Diode before checking to see if their companion would need help facing me. A poor choice on their part.

The amber stallion that had only minutes earlier blown me up was offering a rather paltry resistance, it seemed. He was firing over the wagon with a smaller caliber revolver, and he didn't seem to be overly occupied with his aim, as few of his shots landed near their targets. In the back of my mind, I wondered how he'd survived as long as he had in the Wasteland, if that was the way he typically dealt with raider attacks. Meanwhile, I took aim at the pony wielding the old hunting rifle and fired. Even held fast in the steady grip of my magic, the weapon noticeably bucked back as the cartridge detonated.

My aim was true, and I watched with a sense of detached satisfaction as the pavement and wall beyond my target took on a spontaneous crimson hue as blood and brains were smeared across them in a remarkably round pattern. The pony dropped to the ground instantly. Then my attention went to the pistol packing pony, who had gotten caught by the edge of the cone of gore from his companion. He was simply staring at the nearby corpse as I racked back the bolt to load another round.

Only, something felt wrong about the action. It had slid forward too smoothly. Curious, I cracked the bolt back half an inch and peered into the chamber. My lip tightened in a grim frown. The weapon was out of ammunition. My eyes darted back to the dead unicorn on the other side of the room. She might have some more round hidden in one of her pockets somewhere, but I doubted that Diode would survive long enough for me to fish them out and load them. I mean, seriously, that pony wasn't even shooting anymore; and I'd been counting his shots in the back of my mind. He was three bullets in to what should have been at least a six round cylinder for that model of revolver—once more, I'd ponder how I knew that later. Had the weapon impossibly jammed somehow? He wasn't even looking at it if it had. The stallion just rooted around in his saddlebag.

I was preparing to leap down from the window and save him from his own incompetence when I saw him lob three small objects into the air. At first I thought them to be grenades, but he'd hardly thrown them any distance at all. In fact, they hung in the air right above him for a brief moment in a very ungrenade-like fashion. Then my eyes went wide as I watched the three curious little orbs dart towards where the remaining raider pony was hiding. I heard a faint trio of chirps, which I suspected would have been far louder for the raider.

Then he exploded. Or rather, the three orbs hovering around him exploded.

What remained when the smoke from the detonations cleared could best be described as: 'a mess'.

That was the last of the raiders though, the coast was clear for now as far as I could tell. After a moment's thought, I wondered how I'd known that without actually looking around to actually check whether or not the coast was clear. Just another one of those many questions to dwell on later, I suppose. I should probably start writing these down so I don't forget the things that were supposed to be freaking me out when I finally got a spare minute to really analyze today's events.

I frisked through the unicorn mare's gear and pocketed the hoofful of caps that I found. I also loaded all four rifle rounds that I found. One round short of a full load for the weapon, though with the power that this thing packed, that amounted to four very dead ponies that crossed our path. An obviously frequently used cleaning kit was also present in the mare's saddlebags, which explained why it was in such good condition.

After a moment's thought, I simply took the saddlebags themselves as well. I still had no knowledge of where mine had gone, but these would do for a while at least. Nothing much else was really in them, save for some drugs and a few little baubles. Personal affects most likely. One piece did catch my eye though. Among the seemingly useless objects was one that had obviously been treated with a great amount of care: a brass star that smelled faintly of gun oil. Presumably to keep in bright and looking new.

The words, 'Stable 4 Security' where embossed upon the star. Curious, I glanced at the weapon which appeared so new and well maintained. Engraved just below the bolt was the phrase, 'Property of Stable 4 Security Defense Force'. My eyes went to the mare now. She was actually pretty old. Old enough to have been Diodes mother, if I was any judge. What struck me about that most was how worn she didn't look. The scars on her face and legs were fresh, and few in number. She hadn't been raiding very long, and her hooves and teeth were in fair condition. Not those of a pony who'd lived a good four decades or more in the Wasteland.

She'd been born in a Stable, I realized. The reasons why she might have left were many, and I doubted I'd ever discover them. Perhaps they were related to why she'd turned to raiding. Who knew? She had known, I suspected, “but that's a story you'll never tell, isn't it?” I murmured to the dead unicorn, “did you got out looking for somepony too?” she understandably did not reply, “hope you don't mind me borrowing this,” I slung the sniper rifle across my back, “after all, it's dangerous to go it alone.”

I slipped the star back into the saddlebag and jumped out the window. My hooves hit the pavement hard, but I hardly felt the impact in my joints at all. Diode was looking at me with a shocked expression. He was surprised? I was the one who just watched him blow up a pony with hovering grenades!

Why did it bother me that I didn't know what those were? Did it have any relation to why it was bothering me on another level that I'd known the make, model, caliber, and magazine capacity of every other weapon used on this street today? I certainly didn't remember studying firearms back in Bit Town.

“What the hell were those things?” I jabbed a hoof in the direction of the smear on the roadside that had once been a pony.

“I call them 'sprite-grenades',” he said, reaching into his saddlebag to pull one out and hold it up for me to see.

I picked up the small orb with my magic and brought it closer. They were slightly smaller than a typical grenade, and I didn't see any clear arming mechanism on it. What I did see were two gemstones set into one side of it; one sapphire and one amethyst. My lips quirked in a wry smirk when I notices that a crude mouth had been etched beneath the jeweled 'eyes' to give it the appearance of a face. Unable to glean much else from the visual inspection, I returned the device to the stallion. He slipped it back into his bag.

“How do you get them to fly over to targets like that?”

“With these,” He dragged out a couple of bullets from a pouch on the front of his barding. Only, up close they actually didn't look like bullets at all. Where a lead slug should have been was a small purple jewel. A talisman.

“Targeting talismans?” ...how did I know these things?!

Diode nodded, looking impressed that I had made the correct deduction, “yup. I fire a few of these near a target, and the sprite-grenades take care of the rest.”

“That seems like a lot of extra effort to go through to knock off a raider.”

The stallion shrugged and returned the loose rounds to their pouch, “I'm not a very good shot,” he admitted, “and I'm not a fan of getting shot at either. This way, I just put a few bullets near them, and let my grenades do the hard part while I stay behind cover.

“Thanks a lot, by the way,” he added, seeming to only now recall that I'd saved his life earlier, “I'm lucky that you saw them, because I had no idea they were there. If it wasn't for you, I'd have been dead. No doubt there.”

“Yeah, well,” I replied sheepishly. No reason to tell him that I hadn't actually seen anypony either. I'd just sort of...felt them? Something like that. It was pretty impossible to reasonably explain, so I refrained from doing so, “it was the least I could do. How am I supposed to make it to Friendship city without a guide?” I offered the stallion a broad smile.

His eyes went to the rifle strapped across my back, “I see you picked up a weapon of your own?”

“Didn't you know?” I asked with a raised brow, “it's dangerous out here for an unarmed pony.”

Diode smirked at my effort to interject a little bit of humor into the situation, “I'm starting to think that you're not really all that helpless,” he said as his eyes wandered towards the window that the sniper had fired from, “what was that you used to get up there? A spell or...?”

“No, I just jumped up there,” I answered with a shrug, not really thinking that there was any significance. Then I saw the amber stallion's brow nearly turn in on itself as he looked at me with blatant disbelief, “what? It's only twelve feet up.”

He was silent for a long moment as his brain processed what I had said, “...only twelve feet,” he murmured, as though I had spoken in some weird foreign language, “how high can you jump?” the question came out like he was almost afraid to hear the answer.

I thought for a brief moment, “seventeen? Depending on the terrain,” I added as an afterthought, “thirteen feet and four inches is the most I could do on a soft surface like mud.”

“...and four inches...” Diode's head craned up as he visualized how high that would be. Then he looked back at me, “and that's...normal for ponies in Baltimare?”

I blinked. Of course that was...wait. No, it wasn't. A typical pony could manage four feet. One that was of superior fitness an athleticism could peak just above six. How and why I knew that bit of trivia was overshadowed by the implications of what it suggested about my own abilities. I knew, I truly knew that the physiology of most ponies limited them to four or maybe even five feet of vertical clearance during a jump. I also knew, with demonstrative certainty that I could clear at least thirteen under nearly any circumstances.

The hows and the why escaped me, as per the established norm.

“Well,” I finally settled on responding, “I guess it's not really normal, no,” I saw that Diode was looking at me with an expectant expression on his face, silently prompting me to elaborate. The thing about that was that I couldn't. I had no reasonable explanation as to why I was able to do it. Nor, in all honesty, did I owe him one.

“Look, I'm glad I could help,” was all the answer I gave him, admitting to myself that I was pointedly dodging his question, “and thanks for getting me out of your mine field. I should probably get going though. Got to find my father. Go see that doctor,” internally, I was cringing. It felt a little bit like I was running away, and I guess I sort of was. It wasn't like Diode was asking inappropriate questions though. They were just questions that I couldn't answer for the simple reason that I didn't know what the answer was; and I wasn't sure he'd believe that.

I certainly didn't want to lie to the poor guy. After what he'd done for me so far, it wouldn't seem right. He was a genuinely good pony. He had to be to have offered to help like like he did in order to make amends for his own mistake, and not expect a reward out of it. Good ponies deserved honest answers. I couldn't give him any.

My hoof dug nervously at the ground for a brief moment before I finally gathered up the will to turn around and start walking away, “it was nice meeting you, Diode,” I said over my shoulder, “good luck with your robot mining or...whatever.”

“Yeah,” the amber stallion's tone sounded a little surprised, and I detected a faint note of disappointment as well, “um...hope you find your dad.”

“Me too,” and then I looked ahead and continued walking.

The Manehattan ruins stretched for miles in every direction. The decrepit carcass of civilization long gone. At points, you found yourself prompted to stand in awe of your surroundings. Statues, of which enough remained for you to accurate gauge the majesty that it had possessed when it had once been whole and cared for. Shells of buildings that looked like they once could have stood tall enough to brush up against the clouds. Testaments to what ponies could accomplish when they worked together to build something truly great.

Such majesty was overshadowed by the eerie quiet and loneliness that reminded anypony making their way through the ruins that these were indeed nothing more than relics of a bygone past. A grand warning of what could happen when that sense of camaraderie between beings was tarnished.

The shattered city also served as a haven for all manner of monster and villain. The rot come to nest and fester within the corpse of the once great metropolis. Those three bandits that had tried to prey upon Diode and I were only the tip of the iceberg. Much worse horrors were known to be lurking in this place.

I quirked my lip as that thought occurred to me.

Wasn't this supposed to be the first time that I'd ever come to Manehattan? Especially since I hadn't even known that this was Manehattan until less than an hour ago when Diode had told me that's where I was? So how did I know that worse things than bandits lived here? I mean, I knew that there were all sorts of monsters and other mutated creatures that could be found all over the Wasteland; that was sort of general knowledge. Yet, I didn't feel like I was simply making an assumption that there were dangerous things lurking in these ruins. I knew there were. I'd...seen them.

How could I have seen something in a place I'd never been before?

Perhaps now was a good time to really start trying to piece my life back together after Diode's mine had scrambled my memories.

Item the first: Who was I?

That one was easy. I was Iris. I was a unicorn with a light blue coat, vanilla mane, an silver eyes. I came from a small town at the edge of the Baltimare Crater called, Bit Town. I lived there with my father, and I did courier work. All of this knowledge came very easily to me, and I could even visualize most of what I was thinking about. I could clearly remember what the town's cafe looked like, the little general store, and even the bar where most ponies went to spend their evenings. I knew those places, intimately.

Having a firm grasp of my identity, it was time to move on to the second item: Why was I out here?

Also an easy answer. I was out here looking for my father. I could clearly visualize him as well. An older unicorn stallion with a white coat, a thin brown mane that was streaked with white and combed over to the side, and serious looking green eyes. He also had a meticulously trimmed goatee on the front of his chin. He had left home, heading in this direction and I needed to find him because nopony knew where he was.

The third question was going to be a little harder to explain: How did I know so much about guns?

It wasn't just guns either. As I thought about it, I knew all sorts of things about weapons in general. I could tell somepony the exact oscillation frequency that an energy pistol's focusing ruby needed to have in order to keep the beam coherent enough to inflict potentially lethal tissue damage on a pony at a distance of up to thirty yards. I knew the number of twists that the rifling of the barrel of an IF-14 Thoroughbred assault rifle had. For Celestia's sake, I knew how many grains of gunpowder you needed to put into the cartridge of a forty-caliber slug so that the sound it made going through a silencer stayed below fifteen decibels.

Who the fuck knew that sort of thing?!

Certainly not courier ponies that wandered through the Wasteland without so much as a fucking utility knife!

Diode had been right about one thing: I made no sense. I was a lone mare strolling through the ruins of a city that I'd never been to before, but knew had nests of dangerous monsters—manticors, I vividly recalled now—and I was doing that without weapons or any supplies of any kind.

The only reasonable conclusion I could draw was that I must have been robbed before I stepped on the mine? I suppose that would explain why I didn't have any gear, but I was hard pressed to come up with a guess as to who could have pulled that off. Not to toot my own horn, or anything, but it turned out that I was a bit of a bad-ass. Apparently I could leap through second story windows from the ground and make head-shots on moving targets while barely having to even look through the scope. If I'd been armed before I was robbed, I found it unlikely that whoever could have pulled it off would have had any reason to leave me alive.

I kept trying to ply my brain for answers about when and where I would have learned so much about guns. It was like hitting a brick wall though every time I tried to recall if I'd had some friend or family member who might have taken me out to a firing range. There wasn't even anypony I could remember who might have own a weapons shop in Bit Town that I might have spent a lot of time with.

It was really weird actually, the more that I thought about it. I knew all about the layout of Bit Town, and the buildings that existed there. In my mind's eye, I could even plot the floor plans of every structure. However, I couldn't actually come up with a single name of anypony that lived there. Not even a face. There was me, my father...I think? Wait, where did we live? I lived in Bit Town, I knew that with resolute certainty. I lived in Bit Town, there was no doubt in my mind about it in the slightest.

The problem was: I didn't have a house there. I knew every hut and shack, and none of them belonged to me. I couldn't say which pony lived or worked in any given building, but I knew that none of them were where I stayed.

How was that possible?

Before I could delve too far down that particular trail of thought, I felt a sense of foreboding in the back of my mind that had nothing to do with my memory troubles. Something was nearby, and it wasn't friendly. It was also coming at me from behind!

The IF-42 slung across my back was off and in the air, wrapped in a silver magical glow before I'd even finished turning around. My eyes widened in fright as I caught sight of the humongous winged feline descending towards me from above. Seeing that I was aware of its attack, the beast discarded its attempt at a stealthy approach and let out a bellowing roar that chilled my blood. Two well muscled arms were reaching out for me. Each of those arms was tipped by a set of four razor-sharp claws as long as my own hoof. I didn't even really have time to think, only to react; and that reaction was to fire the weapon hovering at my side.

A cacophonous explosion reverberated between the structural husks that flanked my path, and the weapon bucked rebelliously in my my telekinetic grip as it was wracked by the recoil of the shot. The left side of the scorpion-tailed flying behemoth's chest buckled only slightly as a result of the impact. Such a minor reaction was deceptive, however. The sudden cessation of its guttural cry was a far more telling reaction. As was the sudden loss of all of the tension in its muscles.

I sidestepped as the airborne corpse fell to the street in a twisted pile of limbs and wings. There wasn't a lot of time to admire my work though, for this monster had not come alone. He'd brought friends.

The bolt of my rifle was already flinging the spent casing into the air and sealing a fresh round into the chamber as my eyes sought out the next most immediate threat. This manticor had already made landfall, choosing to come at me from the ground while his comrade pounced down from above. He was already approaching quickly, likely having started his charge long before I'd become aware of their presence. Even now, knowing that he was coming for me, I could only barely hear the pads of his clawed feet hitting the ground. Quite impressive for such a massive creature as itself.

My eye twitched for just a moment as I noticed its stride shift ever so subtly. It brought both of its hind feet together and coiled its calves far more heavily that it had previously. Anticipating the reason for the change, I too coiled up and waited for the opportune moment.

As expected, the feline monstrosity sprang into a leap, intent on landing on my spine and crushing me completely beneath its more massive weight. The moment I saw its hind legs leave the ground, my own propelled me forward. The same unexplained muscular force that had allowed me to reach an absurd height only an hour prior now afforded me the an uncanny burst of forward acceleration. I felt the street below my hind legs curiously seem to give way slightly as I commanded my legs into action.

I was not running so much as I was riding out a very linear long jump. Nor was I upright for most of it. Soon after pushing forward, I twisted my body in the air. The manticor was taken completely off guard by the maneuver, as he had in no way expected his prey to be able to move with such impressive acceleration and speed. As he went sailing overhead, I went sliding below, looking up from my backside at his belly. The barrel of my weapon was almost touching the monster's navel as I fired off my second shot.

The manticor's spine was torn asunder in a horrific geyser of organs an vertebrae. Death for this poor bastard would not be instantaneous, as it had been for the other. As the momentum of my backside slide died away, I looked over and saw the miserable creature clawing at the ground with its forepaws as it yowled in pain and rage. It's hindquarters didn't move at all, and looked to be barely attached to the rest of its torso. The rapidly expanding pool of blood suggested that it was not going to continue suffering for very long.

The bolt of my weapon slipped the third round into the chamber as I rolled back up onto my feet, only to find that a third manticor was already upon me. It was a near thing that I managed to interpose the rifle between myself and the powerful swipe of the creature's paw. A second slower, and I might have been reduced to five nearly equally sized pony slices. As it was, my magic wasn't powerful enough to hold the weapon fast against the swing. While I managed to keep the claws from rending my flesh, the sheer force of the blow was enough to send both myself and the rifle tumbling right to the other end of the street.

When I finally came to a stop, I couldn't tell if my ears were ringing because of the hit that I'd just taken, or because my faltering magical hold of the sniper rifle had unintentionally manipulated the trigger mechanism as I had tried in vain to retain control of it. In either case, I was not given a lot of time to consider those possibilities, as that third manticor was already flying towards me to get in a second hit. My eyes locked on to a nearby street sign that had at some point become detached from its station at an intersection. I narrowed my eyes at it and reached out with my magic. The old steel sign would not be much, but it would offer more protection from the manticor's attacks than paltry pony flesh and bone would.

I was gripped by a moment of panic as my magic refused to take hold. The sign only gave the slightest tremor, but refused to lift up into the air at my defense, regardless of how desperately I willed it to. A dull pain was radiating from the front of my head, which grew the harder I tried. I must have hit my horn on something when I was catapulted across the street.

That moment of panic expanded into an eternity of outright dread as I realized that my effort to secure the sign as an improvised weapon had cost me too many precious seconds to attempt a second strategy. The manticor was nearly upon me, and I was completely helpless. Instinctively, I reared up and crossed my hooves in front of my body in an effort to offer up some form of defense; knowing that effort would be futile, at best.

My body was mercilessly tackled backwards into the crumbling building behind me as the aerial feline made contact. I felt the very surface of the old wall tremble as my head and spine collided with it in a painful crunch. One of its massive paws was all it had taken to pin me to the brickwork. My vision blurred for a moment as my senses seemed to lose all focus as a result of the impact. I looked up at the monster, and forced my features into a defiant glare as I saw its triumphant face. It had succeeded where its other two fellows had failed and subdued the prey, and that pride was clear on its face.

What was also clear on its face, I noticed, was something small, and pink, and glittering just above its brow. My dedicated look of rebellion in the face of my own demise gave way to dumbfounded curiosity as my eyes focused on the anomalous little speck of color that had no business being on a manticor's face. Then my gaze was drawn by the feline's upraised paw, as it drew back to deliver the killing blow. It was not the only motion that caught my focus either. That paw had company, in the form of a floating metal orb with a ruby and topaz embedded on one side.

I immediately looked away, discarding any sense of stubborn defiance. While I'm sure that the manticor may have regarded that final act my own pride giving way to my fear, it did not entertain such thoughts for long. Credit where it was due: Diode's knowledge of shaped charges was impeccable. A fact for which I was incredibly grateful when the interloping sprite-grenade detonated.

That wasn't to say that I emerged from the ordeal completely unscathed. While the very lethal shrapnel of the explosive looked to have been directed almost entirely at the feline monster's head, the raw concussive pressure wave still played hell with my senses. My hearing had diminished significantly, and even my eyes seemed to physically hurt. Despite all of that though, I was very much alive; a fact that I was not at all ungrateful for.

I carefully pried away the paw whose weight still had me pinned up against the wall. My gaze shifted occasionally to the remains of the manticor's neck; which was all that remained of the monster above the torso. To the right was the blotchy stain that had once been all of the components of its head.

With the paw out of the way, I eased myself out the the crease in the wall that had been created by the impact. A glance at the mangled brickwork suggested that it was a miracle my spine had not been shattered by the ordeal. Frankly, I didn't feel like I was hurting nearly as much as I should have been. It was probably just the adrenaline I was still riding. By this time tomorrow, I was probably going to be unwilling to twitch so much as a fetlock. I eased myself onto my hooves and looked around for my rifle.

It wasn't laying all that far away. Tentatively, I tried one again to lift it with magic. As before, I saw a smattering of telltale shimmers that suggested the telekinetic field wanted to form, but simply couldn't completely manifest itself. The mild little headache returned, and so I ceased my efforts, resigning myself to manipulating it back onto my back with teeth and hooves. I briefly inspected the weapon first, ejecting the uselessly spent brass and locking the last remaining round back into the chamber. The action was still smooth, and the barrel wasn't bent. The scope was a lost cause though. At least two of the focusing lenses were cracked, and I was pretty sure that the mounting bracket had been warped slightly. The rifle at least still had its iron sights. I would be able to make do with those in the meantime.

Once the weapon was stowed away, I looked off to my left. It didn't take hardly any effort to find the amber earth pony stallion standing in an open doorway across the street. Even from here, I could see that he was a little shaken. Something told me that he wasn't the type of pony that normally threw himself into a fight with a group of manticors. I guess I was pretty lucky that he'd made an exception in my case.

It had to have been the adrenaline ebbing its way out of my system, because I felt the stupidest grin spreading across my face as I started walking stiffly towards him, “are you even real?”

“Huh?” the stallion cocked his head to the side, not comprehending what I was saying.

“I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm dreaming.”

“What are you talking about?” Diode asked, clearly confused by my words.

I continued to close the distance, a lopsided smirk on my face, “Oh, come on. I walk out into the Wasteland, only to get blown up by a handsome stallion,” I saw the earth pony's eyes widen slightly at the compliment, “I'm unarmed, alone, surrounded by vicious pony-eating manticors; but that's okay,” I was almost on top of him now, and I let my tone drop slightly, “because, you, the dashing hero, arrived just in time to save the day.”

Before Diode could react, I leaned in, and kissed him, right on the lips. His initial reaction was to pull back in surprise, but I leaned into the motion to maintain the contact. It took him a couple of seconds, but the stallion eventually responded to it. Not any sort of great technique there, but it wasn't bad. When we finally broke apart, I said, “was that part good enough for you?”

Diode swallowed and licked his lips, still looking a little surprised at what had just transpired, “uh huh,” was all that he got out. His reaction broadened my smile slightly. Well, I am pretty awesome, after all.

Then I made my features take on a playfully serious look, “you weren't following me, were you?”

Either he had missed the humor in my voice, or the earth pony was really good at playing along, because his response sounded authentically defensive, “what? No! I, um...I just sort of figured I already had enough stuff to make going back to Friendship City worth a trip,” he became a little more confident of his response after a thought seemed to occur to him, “I also need to get all new talismans for my pulse mines.

“I wouldn't want you setting them off on your way back north.”

“I bet you say that to all the mares you blow up,” I quipped with a smile, then my tone got slightly more genuinely serious as I cast a glance at the three nearby corpses, “it's probably safer if we travel together though.

“I only have two rounds left,” I nodded my head back towards my rifle, “how are you on grenades?”

It was Diode's turn to frown now, “grenades I've got, and I can put a couple more together if I have to,” he said, “but I'm down to my last three marker talismans, and the sprite-grenades don't work without them.”

“You can't build more of them out here too?” I asked.

He shook his head, “I'd need a press to pack the round, and fresh primers for the brass.”

I nodded, “then we'd best avoid any more manticors if we can,” I suggested, receiving a concurring look from the stallion. In my head, I was considering our options where routes were concerned. Honestly, the city ruins were just downright dangerous. Its advantage was that it offered a more direct route. We could be there long before nightfall on our current heading. The trouble was that we were all but certain to run into more monsters and/or bandits. Another option was to get out of the city and go around it on our way to the harbor and Friendship City.

That would take all the remainder of today, and likely a fair chunk of tomorrow as well. It would be a little safer though. As long as we kept to cover and were vigilant, we could avoid most of the trouble that existed in the open Wasteland. It's not like I was on any sort of timetable. Another day spent hiking through the Wasteland wasn't going to make my father's trail grow any colder.

“We'll head south, out of the city, and loop around,” I informed him, heading in that direction as I spoke. Diode followed my lead. As we passed by the building that the manticor had pinned me to, I noticed the stallion's eyes linger on the imprint that had been pounded into the brickwork

“Are you sure you're okay?” he asked, sounding as though he found the concept difficult to believe.

“A little stiff,” I admitted, adding, “my magic's on the fritz too. Took a blow to the head.”

“Do you think you'll be alright?”

I shrugged, “my horn's not broken, so I should be okay. I'll be good to go by morning at the latest,” you'd think that a unicorn would be a lot more concerned with magical failure, but for some reason I felt like I simply knew that the problem was transitory, and would indeed resolve itself by morning. Did I often lose my ability to do magic for periods of time?

Some day I was going to wake up, and all of my memories were going to be restored, and the world was going to make a lot more sense to me.

Celestia, please let that happen soon...

This kind of thinking was leaving me feeling rather unsettled, so I decided to distract myself, “so, Diode,” I began with an amiable tone, “how'd you get into the robot salvaging business?”

“Hm? Oh,” he sounded a little surprised by the suddenness of my interest, but answered me anyway, “it just sort of happened, I guess,” he shrugged, “my father sold weapons in Friendship City, and my mother fixed up little things like radios and hot plates,” a wan little smile touched his lips and his eyes unfocused as he thought back o those memories, “I was raised with one hoof in the armory, and another in the repair shop.

“I got my cutie mark the day I built a little pulse gun,” he glanced at the vacuum tube brandished on his flank, “it wasn't very powerful, and it was embarrassingly power inefficient; but it was pretty fun to use around my mother's shop,” that wan smile grew a little wider, “whenever she finished a project, I'd hide in the corner and give it a little zap the moment she turned it on to see if it worked right. It'd turn right back off and she wouldn't understand why. She'd take it apart all over again and start over,” a small laugh escaped his lips, “my dad caught me doing that once. He whooped my ass good. Then asked to see the gun.

“A month later he was building and selling a much better version of it in his shop.”

“Sounds like you had a pretty good childhood,” I remarked, “what are your parents doing now?”

There was a pause, and the stallion's face grew dark, “they're dead.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” I cringed, sorry to have touched on such a sore topic, “what happened?”

“They were murdered,” a cold edge crept into his voice now, “by the old Friendship City sheriff.”

“What?” my eyes widened with surprise, “why'd he do something like that?”

“Because my dad wouldn't be bullied by him,” he replied tersely. At my prompting look, he elaborated, “like I said, my father ran a gun shop in Friendship City. Well, the sheriff there thought that being the sheriff meant that he got to just take whatever guns he wanted for himself and his deputies. He called it 'eminent domain', and said my father had a responsibility to make sure the defenders of the city had the best weapons available.”

“Shouldn't they?” I asked hesitantly, seeing that this was obviously a sensitive topic and not wanting to antagonize the stallion unduly. However, I could see the logic behind wanting the defenders of a town to have the best equipment available.

“The deputies had top rate guns already, and received discounts on repairs, just for that reason,” he confirmed, “and, on top of that, Friendship City has been attacked by large groups of raiders and monsters in the past,” Diode continued, “and when that happens, every arms vendor always passes out every gun and bullet they can spare. If everypony dies, who's going to buy their guns, right? This wasn't anything like that though. The sheriff wanted to just take even more guns than he needed so that he could sell them as 'surplus' and pocket the caps.

“It was outright theft.”

It did sound that way, “and your father wouldn't go along with it?”

“He did at first,” Diode said bitterly, “all the vendors did. But one day he said, 'no'. He'd had enough of it.

“That night, somepony broke into the store. We lived above it, so my mom and dad heard the burglar. They went down to stop him, but...” he shook his head, “officially,” Diode just about spat the word out of his mouth, “they never found who was responsible. Then, at the funeral, I heard the sheriff mention to another gun merchant that if his officers only has the necessary equipment, they could make sure nothing like this ever happened again. But if any others refused to give him what he asked for...he said that he couldn't make any promises something like that break in wouldn't happen again.

“That was when I knew what had really happened.”

“He'd been the burglar,” I concluded.

“Or one of his deputies acting on his orders,” the stallion amended, “I doubt that sheriff would ever have gotten his own hooves dirty like that.”

There was a long moment of silence, then I posed, “so are you going to be okay going back to that city?”

He blinked, confused for a moment, then shook his head, “all of this happened years ago. He's not even the sheriff anymore. He died not too long after.”

“Somepony got tired of putting up with his corruption?” I ventured.

“Maybe,” Diode shrugged, “they ruled it an accident. His house blew up one night,” at my surprised look, he allowed a faint smile to touch his cheek, “probably a fault with one of the spark batteries in his bedroom,” he explained, sounding rather confident about the location of the explosion's source and epicenter, “they can be dangerous if they somehow get wired the wrong way.”

“I'll bet,” I agreed, my eyes lingering on his for a moment longer. He didn't say it outright, of course, but nor was he leaving any reason to doubt that he'd been responsible for that explosion that killed the sheriff either. I certainly wouldn't have held it against him after hearing that story. In fact, it was actually rather comforting to know that I was traveling with a pony that was willing to take action.

“What about your parents,” The amber earth pony asked, “what do they do?”

“Well, Leplace, my dad,” I began, “he's a doctor. As for my mother, she...um,” my train of thought slipped the track abruptly as I found myself running headlong into a mental block. A little ball of panic form in the pit of my stomach and began to grow dramatically in size the more I thought about it.

I had no memory of my mother. None at all. Not a name, not a face, not even a breed of pony to associate her with. Could that possibly be right? Was it possible that I had never once in my life ever known my own mother? I suppose it wasn't something unheard of, I concluded. I noticed Diode, watching me for an answer.

“she died in foaling,” I finally finished. There was every likelihood that I wasn't lying about that. It was certainly an answer that explained why I didn't know anything about her. I didn't get the sense that it was the answer though.

“I'm sorry to hear that,” Diode replied somberly, “I'm sure it was rough for your father, raising you alone.”

I forced a smile onto my face, “he did alright, I think,” internally, I was searching for memories of my upbringing that would not come. That ball of panic doubled in size. What was wrong with me?!

“No argument here,” the stallion agreed, smiling as well. His was a lot more genuine that mine was.

We continued to chat during the rest of our trek that night. I was very conscious about keeping the topics of the conversation away from myself and my past, as thoughts about those things only served to stress me out further. I desperately hoped that the doctor in Friendship City could do something for me when we got there. In the meantime, I plied Diode for all the information that I could get about the layout and politics of the area. He told me about how some pony with red eyes was making a lot of noise out near Fillidelphia, and about a unicorn that was jumping about the Wasteland getting themselves into all sorts of trouble.

“DJ Pon3 talks about them all the time,” Diode went on, “tells everypony how much they're helping the Wasteland, and about all the good they're doing.”

“You don't sound convinced,” I couldn't help but notice.

“I don't know,” the stallion shrugged, “it just all sounds a bit far fetched. I mean, the Stable Dweller's just one pony, right? How can one little pony do all of the things that DJ Pon3 says they're doing? It all just feels like a bunch of fairy tales meant to give us hope.”

“And if they are?” I asked. Diode blinked at me, so I continued, “what's wrong with that? Hope, I mean.”

“Nothing, I guess,” he said, not sounding thoroughly convinced, “but a story can only maintain hope for so long, I think. If it ever got out that those things were all really just a lie, it'd drag everypony down further than they already were.

“I'd like to believe that those stories are all true though. It'd be nice if somepony could fix things around here.”

“Just so long as it's not you?” I arched a brow, curious about his response.

He shook his head, “I'm not cut out to be a hero,” he said dismissively, “I just take apart robots and sell their pieces. Not exactly super-pony material like the Stable Dweller is.”

“You think you need to be born a hero or something?”

Diode thought about it for a moment, a slight frown on his face, “I think you need to be born with certain qualities that a hero needs,” he emphasized, “like being big, and strong, and smart; that sort of thing,” he looked at me for a moment, “like you, actually.”

That last statement took me by surprise, causing my head to whip around to look at him and let the stallion see my puzzled expression, “I'm none of those things,” I insisted emphatically. My eyes traced him from head to hoof, “heck, you're taller than I am,” and he was, by a couple inches at least.

“Maybe,” he conceded, “but don't forget that I've seen you in action. I watched you leap twenty feet in the air-”

“Twelve,” I corrected immediately.

“Oh, my mistake,” he snorted with a roll of his eyes, “a mere twelve feet in the air. I also watched you fight off three manticors at once,” he continued, “to include that little super-speed thing you did with the second one. For a 'courier pony', you're also a natural with that rifle that you just picked up today,” his tone suggested that he was becoming dubious where my professed vocation was concerned, “deny it all you want,” he chided, “but I've never seen a pony do the sorts of things you've done.

“You should join up with the Stable Dweller,” he proposed with a joking smile, “you two might be all that's needed to fix the Wasteland.”

“If you're trying to flatter me into giving you a second kiss, you're wasting your time,” I retorted, reveling in the blush that colored the stallion's cheeks and the little stammered denials that he tried to get out, “I only give those out for life-saving heroics.

“Save my life three times, and there's even a secret bonus prize,” I wiggled my eyebrows and gave him a gentle brush with my tail. My reward was the sight of Diode's blush spreading up to his ears. This stallion was so entertainingly bashful. I wondered how he'd respond if he found out that I was only half joking?

Hey, if this pony did manage to save my life on three separate occasions, he'd have fucking earned it!

But at least it got him off the topic of my inexplicably superior physical abilities. The less I was reminded about how weird I was, the less it bothered me. I had quite a few things plaguing my mind as it was without adding to them.

I caught Diode looking up at the darkening overcast sky, “we should think about finding shelter for the night,” he said. My eyes followed his, studying the perpetual cloud layer that blanketed the world. Judging by the amount of light still lingering in them, the sun had set just over an hour ago. Shelter might not be a bad idea.

We found an old bridge that had once afforded passage across a stream. The stream was no longer there though. Frankly, there wasn't much of the stone bridge left either. There was a little bit of overhang jutting over either bank, but the rest of the span lay in a rocky heap between the two ends. Diode and I shucked our packs beneath one of them. The stallion produced a bottle of Sparkle-Cola, a tin can, and a small wrapped snack cake from one of his bags. His eyes passed to me briefly and then he pulled out a second bottle and a box adorned with an explosion of faded colors that had likely once been quite vibrant. He offered those to me.

I reach out for them at first, but then hesitated, “actually,” I shook my head, “I'm not feeling very hungry right now.”

“Really?” the stallion sounded skeptical. He made no move to retract the offered meal, “I haven't seen you eat all day, and I' starving.”

“I'm good,” I insisted. I wasn't lying to him either. I genuinely wasn't feeling very hungry or thirsty. Honestly, I wasn't even tired. It was probably still a little hormone holdover from those fights earlier. By the morning, I was probably going to be absolutely famished. Yet, for now, the prospect of a meal wasn't doing anything for me.

Diode held my gaze for a little bit longer, but when he saw that I was showing no sign of changing my mind any time soon, he relented and returned the offered food to his pack, “suit yourself,” he popped the cap off of his soda bottle and pocketed it before taking a long swig of the contents. A yawn escaped his mouth, only half stifled, “you might as well go ahead and get some sleep then. I'll take first watch while I eat.”

“Nah, that's alright,” I said, starting to head up to the remains of bridge in order to get a good view of the surrounding land, “I'm not feeling very tired either.”

“Super pony,” I heard the amber earth pony remark under his breath as he watched me ascend. If he had been reluctant to accept that I wasn't hungry, it didn't look like he was at all inclined to argue about who was going to need to wait to get some rest.

I let out a small snort of barely contained amusement as I settled into a good lookout position. I wasn't a super pony. I was just still riding the adrenaline. That was all there was to it. I was sure I'd be back down there in no time once my fatigue finally caught up with me. Besides, the solace would give me time to think over a few more of my own mysteries.

So, no mother. That was interesting. It wasn't just that I couldn't bring up a mental image of her. That could easily be explained by her having actually died while I was still a young foal. That was a thing that happened in the Wasteland. However, this was more than that. I didn't just not have a memory of my mother, I was completely lacking in having the concept of having had a mother. Intellectually, I had never had a mother. That was one of those things that I knew. Which was ridiculous, since I'd had a father. Leplace was my father. I had a father. So, I had to have had a mother too, right?

Nope. I had not. That was what my brain was telling me. Which was stupid. Everypony had a mother.

I didn't, my brain once more insisted.

Again, that was just plain stupid. If I didn't have a mother, then where did I come from?

The mental response that came right to mind was: Baltimare.

That's just the place that I came from. I was asking for where I'd come from in a biological sense.

…

No answer for that one. Brilliant. So all I was was a pony with a father who was from the Baltimare area? Wasn't that just dandy.

I really hoped that there was something the doctor in Friendship City could do for me when we got there tomorrow.

Hours ticked by in the silent night. With the passing of each, I expected my fatigue to finally catch up with me and motivate me to wake the slumbering stallion below. Yet, that did not happen. What did happen was that I heard a sound that caused me to jump right up to my feet and begin to scrutinize my surroundings. It hadn't lasted long enough for me to quite pin down what it had been, but it had sounded close. I waited for the uncanny sixth sense of mine to kick in and point me at the threat, but nothing like that was happening.

Then I heard the sound again. I was coming from somewhere below me.

Diode!

I felt a sense of panic at the thought of something or somepony having managed to sneak past me and gotten to the stallion. Without a second more of hesitation, I vaulted off the end of the bridge and landed amidst the stretch of stones that had once been a bridge. I spread my hooves and allowed for a generous bend of my knees to keep my landing as silent as possible so as not to tip off whatever was creeping towards the earth pony.

Only, there was nothing there. Diode was laying alone, curled up around his saddlbags as though they were a security blanket, and he was alone. There wasn't so much as a radroach near him. So then what had I heard?

My question was answered almost as soon as it was formed when I saw the amber stallion twitch and mumble something. I hadn't quite been able to make it out, but it was definitely the sound that I had heard earlier. Seeing that there was in fact no threat that had somehow bypassed my guard, I was able to breath a sigh of relief. For a few seconds, I continued to stand there, idly considering waking the stallion so that he could take his turn at the watch. The night was about half over now. It was only fair for him to relieve me. Even if I felt no more tired now that I had at the onset of the evening.

Another mumble escaped the slumbering earth pony's lips, accompanied by a violent twitch, “...don't go...” I heard him quietly plead, as though other words had preceded the utterance, “...he'll kill you...”

I quietly approached the sleeping Diode. I reached out a gentle hoof and softly placed it on his shoulder, “Diode?”

The earth pony jerked with a start, “...no!”

His eyes were wide and frantic for a moment, searching desperately in the darkness for something, or somepony that he'd sworn had been there only a second ago. When he found only me, he visibly relaxed and allowed himself to lay back down on the ground, a frown embedded on his face, “sorry,” he grumbled, “bad dream.”

“Sounded like it,” I offered a comforting smile.

“My turn for watch?”

I shrugged, “if you want it,” I told him, “I'm still not feeling tired.”

He shook his head and stifled a yawn as he got to his feet, “super pony or not, you need to get at least some sleep tonight,” he insisted, “I'll take the rest of the night. You go ahead and get some shut eye. I'll wake you at dawn.

“Alright,” I conceded, kneeling down as he finished getting up. I offered him my rifle, but he declined, citing that he wasn't very accurate with such weapons. Having seen his shooting the previous day, I was inclined to agree that he likely wasn't. He'd wake me if there was any trouble though.

“Hope you sleep better than I do,” Diode offered before heading up onto the bridge.

“I'll try.”

I made myself comfortable, closed my eyes, and then opened them again.

Off to the east I could just make out the first telltale glimmers of light that suggested a sun existed beyond the cloud layer. Dawn had arrived. I sat up and rose to my feet. A quick glance upward confirmed that Diode was still keeping watch, quietly humming a little tune to himself. I collected all of our gear, grateful to see that my magic seemed to be working flawlessly again and not causing the least bit of discomfort, and carried it up with me.

Diode whipped his head around in surprise at my approach, “wow, you're up early,” he remarked.

“It's dawn,” I inclined my head eastward.

The stallion followed my gaze and narrowed his eyes at the faint sliver of slightly brighter clouds, “I guess so, technically, yeah,” he looked back at me and accepted his saddlebags, “quiet sleeper and a punctual riser,” he sounded rather impressed, “I didn't hear you so much as roll over in your sleep even once,” he reached in and dug out some food for the two of us, “bet you're ready for breakfast?”

Honestly, I wasn't. On the other hoof, I knew that I hadn't eaten at all yesterday to the best of my knowledge. Hungry or not, it was best to eat something. I didn't want to collapse from starvation just because my body wasn't telling me things that it should have.

So this time I accepted the box of what turned out to be some sort of breakfast cereal call, 'Sugar Apple Bombs!' and a bottle of cola. I tried the cereal first, tossing back a hoofful of the red and green spheres; and nearly choked to death for my efforts. The amount of raw sugar in those things was absolutely outrageous! How could anypony stand those things?! I quickly grabbed up the Sparkle-Cola with my magic and poured back a hefty amount to wash that sweetly sour taste out of my mouth. However, the soda must have gone down the wrong pipe or something, because that just made me cough even harder.

Diode's face shifted between a look a genuine concern for my well being, and a barely contained mirth as he watched what I'm sure was an absolute comedy of errors put on by a mare who looked to have lost all capacity to eat like a grown pony. When my fit of hacking and coughing was behind me, and it was obvious that I would in fact survive at least the next few minutes of my life—death from embarrassment not withstanding—he flashed a broad grin, “so, no seconds then?”

The stallion recoiled and ducked his head as several sugary missiles clad in silver auras assaulted his face.

It was nearly noon when we finally arrived at the Manehattan harbor, and the mainland end of the massive bridge that would permit us entry into the island sanctuary that was Friendship City. The bridge itself had already been extended to allow for a small caravan of brahmin and their pony drivers to leave, and it didn't take much talking to gain ourselves entrance. Diode was a familiar face in the city, and the guard all but waved the two of us through with barely a word spoken. Once inside, I allowed myself to feel a sense of relief at having finally arrived somewhere that was nominally safe. Hopefully I would even find somepony here that might have caught sight of my father and be able to point me in his direction.

First things first though, and that was a trip to this doctor that Diode had mention. The pony that had wandered in from a Wasteland Stable and set up shop. My earth pony guide was even able to point me the way. He was also gracious enough to accompany me, knowing that I was severely lacking in caps to pay for any real sort of treatment that migh be needed beyond my initial exam to determine what was wrong with my head.

Fowler's Clinic.

That was the name that had been painted above the doorway anyway. To either side was a trio of pink butterflies, the universal symbol for medical care in the Wasteland. Diode followed me inside, and the two of us were greeted by an older unicorn mare wearing a faded yellow dress. She favored us with a broad smile and a nod, “what can we do for the two of you today?”

“Doctor Fowler?” I inquired with a tilt of my head.

The older mare shook her head with a chuckle, “oh, no, dearie, I'm just his assistant. The doctor's with a patient right now,” she indicated a door leading further into the clinic, “but he should be finishing up shortly.

“Do you have a message for him?”

“Oh, no,” I waved my hoof at the question, “I'm just a walk-in.”

Diode felt compelled to jump into the conversation now, “she got caught in one of my pulse mines, and it shook her up pretty good,” the stallion explained a little sheepishly.

“Scrambled my memories a little,” I nodded, frowning, “I'm hoping he can do something.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” the nurse offered a sympathetic smile, “why don't you just have a seat right over there and I'll go see how much longer the Doctor will be.”

“Thank you,” I said and obediently took a seat. The nurse ducked through the back door and disappeared. Diode tapped his hoof nervously on the floor, looking around. I glanced at him, “don't like doctors?”

“No,” he insisted. Then after a brief pause, he added, “I'm just not a fan of needles.”

I simply smiled and nodded my head, my eyes going back tot he door. Less than a minute later, the receptionist mare came back out, another pony in her wake, “thanks a lot, Doc,” the green earth pony said, stepping rather gingerly on a foreleg that was wrapped up around the fetlock with an elastic bandage.

“Just try to stay off that hoof as much as possible for about a week, okay, Ballpoint?” a third pony, a unicorn stallion, said from beyond the door, “otherwise you'll just be back in here again before the month is out,” he finally came fully out into the room where I could get my first good look at him, “not that I wouldn't mind taking more of your money, but really, this is getting ridiculous.”

“You got it, Doc,” the bandaged pony nodded, waving the injured hoof in goodbye as he limped out the door. He quickly winced as the gesture caused him pain.

“Now, who's next on my docket?” the physician pony said, locking his eyes on me.

“This poor thing had a run-in with a pulse mine and it...”

I paid no attention to the unicorn mare as she related my case to the doctor. My attention was firmly fixed on the unicorn stallion that was looking at me, and his emerald eyes. Eyes that I instantly recognized. Eyes that I could picture clearly in my head, belonging to a pony that I knew so well.

This stallion didn't fit the picture perfectly. His mane was a little thinner, and a little grayer as well. The neatly trimmed goatee had been permitted to grow out and spread along his jawline, but the bone structure of the face was unmistakable. Why he was calling himself 'Fowler', I couldn't imagine. But I'd known him by a few other names back in Baltimare. Most specifically, “Dad?”

The white stallion balked slightly at the word. Then a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, “I see what you mean by memory damage,” he chuckled. It was a kind laugh though, a sympathetic one. He leaned in close and offered a comforting smile, “I'm afraid you've got me confused with somepony else, young lady.”

I shook my head, my face set in determined lines. Why was he saying that? “no, you're my dad,” I insisted, “don't you recognize me? It's me, your daughter, Iris!” it had only been a month at the outside since he'd left. Surely I couldn't have changed that much in such a short time.

“Iris?” he seemed to mull the name around in his mouth, sounding rather perplexed by it at first. Then I saw something change deep within those green eyes. A glimmer of recognition, followed by...fear? He was terrified of something, but what?

Diode looked between the two of us, stunned. Then he glanced at the white unicorn, “you're Leplace?”

That look of fear blossomed into outright terror. That name indeed meant something to the doctor, as the amber earth pony's use of it drew the older stallion's full attention to him. Then I heard the barest utterance from the doctor. It was only a single word, spoken softly, as though it were meant to be a prayer. The disbelieving prayer of a condemned pony.

“No...”

Then everypony in the room was deafened by a mighty thunderclap. Somepony could have been forgiven for thinking that a bomb had been detonated in the small clinic's reception area as everypony's eardrums were violently assaulted by the sound. Even I recoiled away from the unexpected noise. When I looked back, I felt a mixture of shock and horror. A cold, desperate, sorrow that would know no peace so long as I lived.

My father, was dead.

Author's Note

Thank you so much for reading! As always, a thumbs up and comment are always greatly appreciated :twilightblush:

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